When Do We Get a Mulligan?

Russia, Russia, Russia: While the rest of us were focused on immigration and the opening of the Statue of Liberty, Special Counsel Mueller was hard at work on other things like figuring out whether Trump had engaged in obstruction of justice.  The taciturn Mueller doesn’t disclose much if anything to the press but the people he interviews, or at least their lawyers, are more forthcoming so yesterday we learned that Mueller and his team interviewed Attorney General Sessions last week. Sessions was involved in a lot of the activities that concern Mueller.  An early supporter of Trump, he was a senior member of his transition team, his responsibilities included  coordinating foreign relations, he interacted with Russians, he lied about that to Congress and he was involved in the firing of former FBI Director Comey.  Also, though recused from the Russia investigation, Sessions still wields substantial control over FBI activities, and has been using his clout to try to influence FBI Director Chris Wray’s hiring and firing choices.  Following traditional investigatory strategy, Mueller has been working up the food chain so his interview of Sessions, his first with a cabinet member, likely indicates that he will soon talk with Trump, an event that strikes fear into the hearts of Trump’s lawyers who are concerned that he will fall into a perjury trap or two and have been trying to come up with alternative solutions like allowing Trump to respond to questions in writing, a suggestion that is not going to fly with Mueller. Trump and his lawyers may have even more to worry about.  Late last night CNN disclosed that Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s partner, has added Tom Green, a major White Collar lawyer to his legal team, and that Green has been holding meetings with Mueller, an indication that Gates may be ready to strike a deal. Gates would be a significant get for Mueller, his “turn” would put additional pressure on the recalcitrant Manafort to cooperate, not good news for Trump.  As to immigration legislation, at least for now, Senator Schumer has retracted his offer to fund Trump’s illusory wall in exchange for a resolution for the dreamers. February 8 isn’t that far away, but no solution to the immigration conundrum is in sight.    

The FBI Chronicles: Shortly after he was booted from the FBI, former Director Comey revealed that he had memorialized his conversations with Trump, kept his senior aides up to date on his concerns and left copies of those memos at the FBI.  Since his departure Trump, with the help of Sessions, has been doing his best to discredit Comey and the FBI and to destroy the careers of Comey’s former aides. Yesterday it was reported that after firing Comey, Trump called the next in line Andrew McCabe into his office for a meet and greet.  During that meeting, Trump inappropriately asked McCabe who he had voted for in the election and wasn’t all that happy when the stunned McCabe answered that he hadn’t voted.  Trump was even less happy that McCabe’s wife had received funding from then Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe’s PAC when she ran for a Virginia State Senator seat, he shared his displeasure with McCabe.  Trump did appoint McCabe as the acting FBI Director but only because at that time his options were limited.  Earlier in the week it was disclosed that Sessions has been pressuring new FBI Director Wray to rid himself of all of Comey’s favored aides and though Wray threatened to resign in response to that pressure he has been replacing Comey’s team.  Deputy Director Andrew McCabe hasn’t been fired but plans to depart the FBI in March once his pension is vested,  chief FBI lawyer James Baker has been reassigned and will be replaced by Dana Boente, the former US Attorney who signed off on the infamous travel ban when Sally Yates wouldn’t and, yesterday, Wray replaced Comey’s chief of staff Jim Rybicki with Zachary Harmon, one of his former law partners.  It’s not unusual for a new director to want his own team in place, but given the Trump and Sessions pressure, Wray’s changes raise concern.  Trump and Sessions aren’t the only two giving the FBI trouble. A group of Republicans, led by Representative Devon Nunes, are running around Washington with a “secret” memo detailing alleged FBI abuses of the federal surveillance (FISA) program. Prepared by Nunes’ aides, the memo alleges that FBI agents didn’t disclose that they “inappropriately relied” on the Steele Dossier when applying for a warrant to surveil Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. Conversations with Russians picked up during the Page surveillance were early indicators that the Trump team was playing footsie with the Russians and may have led to an expansion of the investigation into Trump team collusion.  Nunes and the other Republicans who have joined his crazy train are hoping to kill off the Mueller investigation by challenging its original premise.  Nunes’ lunatic fringe now includes Republican Senator Johnson who claims that he’s seen proof that there is a secret society of FBI agents out to get Trump. Even more Republicans are freaking out about some missing text messages between the FBI lovebirds who were reassigned by Mueller after some texts criticizing almost all of the politicians in Washington including Trump surfaced.  The failure to permanently capture all of their text messages is likely attributable to a technology glitch that came about during a service changeover, but since conspiracy theories are so much more fun the Republican set is blaming it on “intentional” FBI mishandling. As to his secret memo, Nunes refuses to release it to the Justice Department or the disreputable FBI, but has released it to likeminded crazies and may have already released it to one or more right wing news services despite the fact that it contains classified information. Ranking Member of the House Intelligence Committee Adam Schiff is even more irate than usual about all this but the White House is on board. Yesterday, Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders said that the White House backs “full transparency” around the memo and  Trump said that he might declassify its contents so that it can be distributed to the public.  Trump can’t kill the FBI so instead, with the help of his favorite toady Nunes,  he is doing his best to discredit it’s actions in the hope that his base will question all of Mueller’s indictments and conclusions.  It’s a strategy that seems to work well for Trump.  He’s already convinced Tony Perkins, the leader of the Christian fundamentalist Family Research Council, to ignore his moral transgressions and that he’s deserving of a Mulligan on life.  Perkins speaks for the lord, or so he says.

Trade Policy:  Yesterday, Canada agreed to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the eleven country trade agreement that the US helped to develop but will not be joining because Trump doesn’t like multi-national agreements. To celebrate the US’s increased isolation Trump and his team are on their way to the Davos World Economic Forum, where they will meet with the “globalist” free trade crowd to advance the Trump America First strategy.  Before heading out Trump announced a series of tariffs on products including domestic washing machines and solar modules and cells used to produce solar energy.  The new tariffs probably won’t do much to increase US production of either products, but will increase costs and, in the case of solar energy, will likely result in the elimination of around 23,000 jobs.  Trump isn’t all that worried about the impact on employment statistics because he is confident that a 1300 increase In coal mining jobs will more than offset the number of jobs lost in the solar arena.  Who are we to question his math, the lord and Tony Perkins are on his side?