Hardball for All

Manafort Hardball:  When FBI agents raided former campaign manager Manafort’s house in July they didn’t knock at the front door and say hello, FBI calling. Instead, they picked his lock, barreled in, grabbed files, took pictures of his expensive suit collection and looked for evidence of illegal financial activities, giving him the full mobster treatment.  While they were there they told Manafort that he should expect to be indicted.  He hasn’t been indicted yet but he has been under FBI scrutiny for a long time.  In 2014, well before he joined the Trump campaign, the FBI obtained one of those secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants to wiretap his phones.  At that time, their focus was his work with Ukraine’s former ruling party.  At some point the FISA warrant was not extended and the wiretapping ceased.  Manafort joined the Trump team serving as campaign manager from May until August 2016.  During that time he was not the subject of a FISA warrant.  However, by the time he was fired from the campaign the FBI had noticed a good deal of unusual activity between suspected Russian operatives and Trump campaign members including Manafort who was believed to be encouraging coordination with the Russians.  The FBI obtained another FISA warrant and Manafort was put back under surveillance.  Trump never really stops talking to his team members even after they are fired, so it’s possible that he was “incidentally” picked up talking to Manafort, possibly about  Russian oligarchs, possibly about the weather. Unfortunately, Manafort was not under surveillance when he participated in Don Jr’s meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.  Manafort isn’t the only Trump team member in bigly trouble and running up legal bills.  Former security advisor Flynn’s family has started a legal defense fund and is soliciting donations from anyone who isn’t a foreign government or a member of the Trump family, not that Trumps pay legal bills. Trump has just added a new member to the White House legal team.  Steven Groves, UN Ambassador Haley’s former chief of staff, is joining the White House team to serve as a deputy to Ty Cobb, part of his job may be making sure that Cobb stops having loud legal conversations at popular Washington restaurants, especially conversations where he reveals the possibility that White House Counsel Don McGahn has a few secret documents squirreled away in a White House vault. Groves’ salary is being paid by US taxpayers.

Obamacare Under Attack:  Republican Senators Graham and Cassidy are pushing forward with their Obamacare repeal plan and are making disturbing progress.  Their plan phases out Obamacare, replacing it with block grants that give states the flexibility to design and implement their own plans, it also skews more money to “red” states than “blue” ones.  The new state plans would not be required to cover existing conditions or any of the Obamacare essential health services and there would be no limits on the cost of premiums for older participants.  It would gut basic Medicaid and eliminate the Medicaid expansion and funding for Planned Parenthood. The Congressional Budget Office has advised Majority Leader McConnell that, given the September 30 deadline for final passage, they don’t have the time to produce a full scoring report.  At best they can provide an assessment of fiscal impact but won’t be able to provide an estimate of the number of people who would lose their coverage, a number that would be even larger than for previous repeal attempts. Republicans have no problem voting on a plan without a full report and may even prefer voting without knowing how many people will be kicked off the insurance rolls.  Democrats are fuming.  Arizona Senator McCain, who together with Senators Murkowski and Collins voted against the last attempt to derail Obamacare, cited the concerns of his Governor and his desire for a return to “regular Senate order” as the reasons for his “no” vote.  Yesterday Arizona’s Governor Doug Ducey signed off on the Graham-Cassidy plan, so one of those reasons has fallen away. The “regular order” problem still exists but Graham is McCain’s BFF so his support is now a possibility.  Graham is marketing his plan to his colleagues by telling them that if it fails they will end up with Bernie’s “Medicare for all plan,” a potent pitch since nothing freaks Republicans out more than universal health care. Maybe Bernie should have waited a few more weeks before introducing his plan.  If McCain goes to the dark side, the fate of Obamacare will rest on the shoulders of Alaska’s Murkowski, Maine’s Collins and Kentucky’s Senator Paul.  Neither Murkowski or Collins have weighed in yet but so far Paul is a holdout because the plan doesn’t eliminate the Obamacare taxes he hates. If McConnell brings the Graham-Cassidy plan to the floor for a vote, ninety seconds will be provided for debate, seriously, ninety seconds.  In the meantime Republican Senator Lamar Alexander and Democratic Senator Patty Murray have been told that their bipartisan fix for Obamacare is off the table, putting more pressure on Republican Senators to line up behind the sinister Graham-Cassidy plan.   

Make the UN Great: Trump’s new slogan is Make the UN Great, no “again” at the end because as far as he’s concerned the UN has never reached it’s potential.  Trump will make his big speech to the General Assembly today, he’s expected to call for more burden sharing, less bureaucracy and to take a bellicose approach to Iran and North Korea.  Yesterday after meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, he said prospects for Israeli-Palestinian peace are better than ever because he is president and Jared is his Middle East whisperer.  He also hinted that he is getting close to walking from the Iran nuclear deal.  In addition to meeting with Bibi, he met with France’s President Macron who once again pushed him to remain committed to the Iran agreement and to rejoin the Paris Climate Accords.  Trump again told Macron how much he enjoyed his Paris Bastille Day military parade and expressed an interest in celebrating next year’s US Independence Day with a similar display of US might.  Yesterday Defense Secretary Mattis hinted that he has military options for dealing with North Korea “that might spare Seoul from a brutal counterattack” but didn’t go into any details. Unfortunately it sounds like the possibility of Trump seeing that US might in action is growing daily.  Sadly, we will see it too.

Social Networking: Facebook is under scrutiny for its role facilitating the propogation of false news stories during the election.  Mueller’s team and Congressional investigators are focusing on their involvement and Vanity Fair has suggested that Mueller’s investigation is also scrutinizing the election data operation that Jared Kushner bragged about in a 2016 interview right after the election when he told Forbes that “I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook microtargeting.”  He and his digital campaign chief, Brad Parscale, worked with the data mining firm Cambridge Analytica, whose major investor is right wing billionaire Robert Mercer, an investor in Breitbart News, a supporter of Steve Bannon and a contributor to Trump’s campaign.  Hmmm.