Kushner in Krisis

Kushner Kompromat:   Chief of Staff Kelly made good on his promise, he is now treating everyone the same, at least with regard to their security clearances. As a result, Jared Kushner’s has been bumped down, in theory he no longer gets to see the super-duper secret stuff that someone with a top secret/sensitive compartmentalized clearance would get to see.  His new access is plain old top secret which puts him in the same category as the White House cleaning staff.  Of course this is all theoretical, if Trump, the final arbiter, wants him to see more information or wants to invite him into a national security meeting he can.  The official White House position as articulated by Sarah Huckabee Sanders is that Kushner is a “valued member of the team and will continue to do the important work he has been doing since he started in the administration,” and that losing his ability to see critical intelligence won’t impact his ability to continue solving Middle East peace or deal with China but that is total bunk.  You really can’t be a top diplomat if you aren’t in on all the security issues.  The intelligence agencies want the rest of us to know that the decision to deny Kushner permanent clearance is justified.  Last night the Washington Post reported that officials from at least four countries, including Israel, United Arab Emirates, Mexico and China have discussed ways they could use Kushner's intricate business arrangements, lack of experience and financial woes to manipulate him. In all likelihood this intel was leaked by one or more of those intelligence services that Trump likes to malign to make the point that Kushner really is a security risk.  For his part, Kushner has contributed to his own demise by foolishly attending secret meetings with representatives of several countries and their government sponsored banks without anyone else from the US in attendance.  Yesterday, it was also announced that Kushner and Ivanka’s personal public relations guy and close ally Josh Rafel is leaving the White House for “family reasons.” Rafel was responsible for making sure that Javanka got the best press coverage possible.  At least at this point, he hasn’t lined up another job so it’s likely that he just wants off the sinking ship or at the very least wants to limit his own legal exposure, he has already had the pleasure of visiting with Special Counsel Mueller’s team.  Dina Powell, the last member of team Javanka to jump ship has resurfaced at Goldman Sachs, she’s another one who wisely decided to get out early and it looks like she made the right decision. Rafel won’t end up at Goldman, but a year of presenting the challenging Javanka pair in the best light probably makes him a good catch for a P.R. firm with similarly dicey clients.  With all the focus on Kushner's security problems, no mention was made about Ivanka’s, but it’s fair to assume that her clearance has been lowered as well, her days as emissary to South Korea and other parts unknown may be over too.   

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Yesterday, Mueller dismissed the charges against Rick Gates, at the same time Gates’ travel restrictions were temporarily lifted and he was given permission to go on a family vacation to Boston, further indication that whatever he’s told Mueller’s team it is already proving valuable.  Pleading guilty and cooperating with Mueller has its benefits.  Hope Hicks spent the day testifying before the highly dysfunctional House Intelligence Committee where she admitted to telling the occasional white lie because that’s what you have to do when you work for Trump.  Though the White House didn’t assert executive privilege they did limit the questions that Hicks could answer to those that addressed events that occurred during the campaign though as the day progressed she did answer a few questions related to the transition but only because she had previously answered similar questions during her earlier Senate testimony.  Democrats on the committee want to slam Hicks with a subpoena to force her to answer the questions that she evaded, however Republicans are okay with letting her off because that’s what Trump wants and they wouldn’t want to do anything to rock his boat.  While Hicks was with the House, US Cyber Command Chief Admiral Mike Rogers was testifying in the Senate, he told lawmakers that he has not been granted the authority by Trump to disrupt Russian election hacking operations. He went on to say that the Russians “have not paid a price that is sufficient to change their behavior.” Rogers, who is due to retire soon, went rogue dispensing with caution, instead throwing Trump under the bus for his failure to forcefully strike back at the Russians for their efforts to disrupt the US elections. Later in the day NBC reported that during the 2016 elections seven states’ websites and databases were targeted by the Russians and that states where there were indicators of a breach included Alaska, Arizona, California, Florida, Illinois, Texas, and Wisconsin. During her daily press conference Huckabee Sanders pushed back at Rogers' stern assertion and undue concerns about the integrity of the electoral system, again blaming Russian election interference on Obama while claiming that Trump, who has done virtually nothing to punish the Russians for their behavior, has been much harsher on Putin and his cronies.  No one in the room bought her tired routine, the US election system remains exposed and election season is upon us.   

Midterm Madness:  With November just around the corner, midterm madness is ratcheting up.  Though she’s way ahead in the polls and will probably prevail in the end, veteran Senator Diane Feinstein failed to get the endorsement of the California Democratic party, neither did her more progressive competitor, whose primary complaints about Feinstein are that she is too moderate, too willing to cooperate with Republicans and too old, that last one was unsaid but implied.  The California primary takes place in June.  The special election for the Pennsylvania 18^th seat takes place in two weeks and its looking to be a squeaker.  Against all odds, Democratic candidate Conor Lamb, a gun toting, pro-choice moderate, is closing in on Republican Rick Saccone in what should have been an easy win for the Republican. Whoever wins here will have to run again in November in one of the redrawn Pennsylvania districts so the outcome is mostly symbolic, still a strong showing by Lamb, even if he loses, will be very concerning for Republican leadership.  Lastly, yesterday Trump signaled his intent to run for reelection in 2020 by appointing digital maven Brad Parscale to be his campaign manager.  Parscale, a Kushner crony, worked as Trump’s top digital operations guru for the 2016 campaign and was credited with possibly tipping the election.  He’s also come under suspicion for cooperating with one or more of those Russian bots and has been interviewed by Mueller, but then again that Russia investigation is FAKE NEWS so who really cares. 

North Korea:  Yesterday, Joseph Yun, the US special envoy responsible for North Korea abruptly announced plans to retire this coming Friday. Yun decided to throw in the towel shortly after Trump again rejected participating in unconditional talks to resolve the North Korean nuclear crisis.  Just a reminder, we still don’t have an ambassador to South Korea because the last guy proposed for the position had his nomination pulled after he too came out against Trump’s strategy for dealing with the Little Rocket Man.  No one in the White House thinks that Yun’s departure is much of a problem, so no worries, because the White House’s judgement is always spot on and, anyway, Ivanka looked really spiffy when she played Ambassador at the Olympics.  

What's Your Superpower?

A Dreamer Reprieve:  The Dreamers got a little more breathing room yesterday when the US Supreme Court refused to grant the administration expedited review of injunctions issued by two district courts.  As a result of the lower court rulings most of DACA has been temporarily reinstated.  The District Courts had conceded that it is lawful for Trump to end the DACA program by executive action but they disagreed with the reasons that had been given.  Though the administration could try stopping DACA now with a more thought out rationale, it’s highly likely that the Department of Justice will let the case follow the typical more time consuming route through to the Supreme Court.  As a result, Dreamers have gained a reprieve for another year or so, the amount of time that the judicial process through the appeals courts and up to the Supreme Court would ordinarily take.  The reprieve is limited to those already in the program, existing Dreamers will be permitted to renew their paperwork but at least for now, no new undocumented “children” will be allowed to apply for Dreamer status.  Though the court decision has extended the Dreamer’s painful state of limbo by taking away the urgency for Congress to come up with an immediate Dreamer solution, it has also removed a bargaining chip from Trump’s quiver, at least for now he can’t hold the Dreamers hostage by threatening to deport them if he doesn’t get his wall fully funded and all of his draconian immigration demands met.  There is still a small possibility that a legislative extension of the DACA program, together with a modest amount of wall funding could get shoehorned into the omnibus spending bill that must be approved by March 23 to avoid another one of those government shutdowns.  Of course, we’ve heard that story before.          

More Gun BS:  If only Trump had been in Parkland when the crazed shooter barreled into the Marjory Stoneman Douglas school.  He asserts that had he been there he would have bravely run into the building blocking the flying bullets with his little hands.  The oh so brave Trump who received five heel spur deferments during the Viet Nam era actually stood in front of the nation’s governors claiming that he, unlike those “cowardly,” armed local sheriffs, would have risked his life to save the students.  No one in the room took him all that seriously, they also don’t expect him to accomplish much on the gun control front.  Trump lunched with NRA leader Wayne LaPierre, who he referred to as a “great patriot,” on Sunday and though he told the assembled governors not to be afraid of NRA pushback, because “they are on our side,” he has already responded to LaPierre’s pressure.  Trump seems to be backing down from his call to raise the age limit for purchasers of semi-automatic weapons, instead focusing his attention on institutionalizing “crazy” people, hardening schools by arming teachers, and a probably illegal regulatory ban of bump stocks, all things that come right from the NRA playbook.  He’s also talking about supporting some form of legislation to modestly improve the national background system for firearm buyers but has not thrown his full support behind any specific plan and at least to date, those other great “patriots,” leaders McConnell and Ryan have not shown a willingness to do anything.  As to his assertion that he would have run into the gunfire, even Sarah Huckabee Sanders knows that it was just some more BS, during her daily press conference she clarified his remarks, saying that he really just meant that he was a “leader.”                      

Human Resources:  Since Trump has already made his former golf caddy, Dan Scavino, the director of social media, his son’s wedding planner, Lynne Patton, the HUD official in charge of housing for the New York region, his gal Friday and pants presser, Hope Hicks, communications director, his son in law, Jared Kushner, chief Middle East negotiator and jefe for all things Mexico among other things, and his daughter, Ivanka, sometime ambassador to South Korea, it really should come as no surprise that he’s now seriously considering appointing his personal pilot as the head of the Federal Aviation Administration.  His pilot, John Dunkin, is superbly qualified for the job if you, like Trump, believe that managing a fleet that consists of a 757, a Cessna business jet and three Sikorsky helicopters makes one qualified to manage the system that oversees tens of millions of air travelers and that will also include the overhaul of the nation’s air traffic control system.  Dunkin’s appointment isn’t a done deal yet, some Republicans are balking, but it is being taken frighteningly seriously, in part, because Trump really wants to make sure that air traffic over Mar a Lago continues to be banned even after he leaves the presidency.  As to Jared Kushner and the tale of his missing security clearance, he appears to still be working on lots of secret stuff, and at least so far, no one will say whether or not he is still allowed to read the super confidential presidential daily briefing. During an interview with NBC’s Peter Alexander, Ivanka, who was in South Korea on the US dime serving as ambassador to the Olympics and South Korea, got really annoyed when Alexander asked her about the many women accusing Trump of sexual harassment, saying that she believes her father because, well, he’s her father and that’s what daughter’s do.  Though her expressionless face was oddly frozen, she seemed to be really angry, when she added that the question was inappropriate to ask any daughter.  The perfectly coifed Ivanka wants to be treated like a real government official except when it comes to questions about her father, then she wants to be treated like his perfect little girl. Trump’s perfect surrogate daughter Hope Hicks is scheduled to appear in front of the House Intelligence Committee today, Hicks probably knows a lot more than she will be willing to say, so it’s likely that she, like several White House denizens before her will try to assert some sort of executive privilege, In any case, we won’t know much about what she has to say until someone leaks something, since her testimony will be given behind closed doors.  Lastly, Melania’s occasional event planner and long term society friend, Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, was ceremoniously dumped from her White House perch last night in response to news reports that she may have substantially overpaid herself for the work that she did on the inauguration.  Trump probably doesn’t really care that Wolkoff walked off with an extra million or two, after all the money didn’t come from his pockets, it was donated, but he is very annoyed that she got caught by his nemesis the “fake press” New York Times.  

When Pigs Fly

Guilty Gates:  After waffling about it for some time, Paul Manafort’s partner in crime, Rick Gates, finally pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the US and for making false statements to the FBI.  He also signed on to a cooperation agreement.  To the extent that he wants to minimize his jail time, or possibly avoid it altogether, he now has to stick to the truth and cooperate like crazy. Gates’s plea deal is significant for a number of reasons.  First, he was more than Manafort’s sidekick, he was Trump’s deputy campaign manager, and though Manafort was forced to step down from his role in August 2016, Gates remained on the Trump train and plane through the inauguration and then stayed involved with the Trump team as an advisor to one of Trump’s PACs.  As a result of his longevity he was involved in or was a fly on the wall for many of the meetings and discussions that Mueller is now investigating.  Second, and equally important, Gates can shed light on why he and Manafort were so eager to join the campaign in the first place, particularly why Manafort offered up their services for free, curious because at the time that Manafort and Gates signed on to work for Trump, they were both experiencing financial problems.  Though they’d made millions for their work representing Russia’s cronies in the Ukraine especially former president Viktor Yanukovych, they’d managed to burn through much of their savings and with Yanukovych’s regime out of power, they had lost a reliable income stream.  Further stressing their financial positions they were being sued by another Putin crony, Russian Oleg Deripaska, a known Russian crime boss, who was trying to reclaim $17 million that he had invested with Manafort for what turned out to be a bogus business scheme.  By the end of 2016 they were so broke that they had begun supporting themselves with the proceeds of fraudulent bank loans, another one of those things that Mueller was on to.  It’s likely that Manafort, a skilled power broker, albeit a broke one, offered to work for no pay because in his view proximity to power was far more valuable than a “meager” salary.  After he joined the Trump campaign, Manafort convinced Deripaska to back off from his lawsuit by promising him inside access to Trump.  Manafort also made Russian friendly changes to the Republican platform.  Whether he knew it or not, by hiring Manafort and Gates, Trump picked up Putin and a slew of supportive oligarchs and bots as his not so silent partners.  Mueller no doubt is trying to get to the bottom of all this in order to figure out who in the Trump hierarchy was in on the deal.  For his part, Manafort still refuses to cooperate with Mueller.  Late Friday, he issued a statement expressing his disappointment with Gates and reaffirming his commitment to proving his own innocence.  Manafort won’t be able to prove his innocence, the evidence against him is too compelling, so in all likelihood his statement was a less than subtle message to Trump that he’ll keep his mouth shut in exchange for a pardon.  It was probably also a signal to Russian crime boss Deripaska that he’s going to keep quiet about him too.  Unfortunately for Manafort a Trump pardon can only go so far, it won’t protect him from  NY Attorney General Schneiderman, who is thought to be building an “as needed” parallel case against him.  As to Russian retribution, hopefully Gates’ plea deal includes some witness protection.  For his part, Mueller hasn’t given up on turning Manafort, shortly after the Gates plea bargain was announced, he added another charge to Manafort’s growing list.  Manafort now stands accused of making $2.45  million in secret payments to a group of former European politicians in exchange for their support of then Ukraine leader Yanukovych.  The newest charges probably come from information provided by Gates.  Trump’s lawyers continue to feign a total lack of concern over Mueller’s progress.  So far they are sticking with the narrative that these are old crimes, none of which have anything to do with Trump.  As to Trump, he spent Friday venting at the CPAC meeting, giving a toe curling hour plus speech, one chock full of all of his old campaign standbys.  He called for the wall, lambasted Democrats, led a chant of “lock her up,” and retold his despicable anti-immigrant snake story.  The once proud conservatives ate it up.

Gun Games:  The Parkland students are an impressive and articulate lot, they may have sparked a movement but its not clear that their impassioned pleas will do much to limit the availability of semi automatic weapons or high capacity magazines.  Florida’s Governor Scott says that there is no need to ban semi-automatic weapons but does want to limit their sale to those twenty-one years or older, the same age limits already imposed on handguns.  He also wants to keep them out of the hands of the mentally unstable and is calling for more funding for school protection.  To his credit he’s dismissed Trump’s suggestion that armed teachers should become the first line of defense against shooters. That said Scott’s motives are questionable,  balancing his political ambitions against his fealty to the NRA, he probably wouldn’t be all that disappointed if the Florida legislature fails to act on his recommendations.  Trump spent most of the weekend blaming the FBI and everyone else who failed to stop the Parkland killer and arguing for the creation of a teacher militia, because teachers unlike school guards, and the Broward County Deputy sheriff who failed to run into the bullet spray, “love” their students.  He’s said that he’s okay with raising age limits for semi-automatic weapons purchases, something that puts him at odds with his NRA patrons, and is calling for better enforcement and coordination of the back ground check system but again he’s playing with words, he isn’t calling for anything new like closing the private sale loophole. Even his suggestion that he’s directed Attorney General Sessions to write regulations banning bumpstocks is suspect because absent legislation such a ban wouldn’t hold up in the courts.  If any legislation makes it to the floor of either the House or the Senate, gun rights advocates will push to include concealed carry reciprocity, a feature that would spread rather than curtail gun availability. The best chance for any significant gun curbs  remains at the state level.

Kushner Konfidential:  Jared Kushner still doesn’t have a permanent security clearance and in all liklihood will never qualify for one.  The White House was updated on his status two weeks ago by Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein who informed White House Counsel Don McGahn that the Kushner review had hit a wall, by wall think Mueller’s investigation.  The fact that Rosenstein made the call is notable, it implies that  Attorney General Sessions couldn’t deliver the update because some, if not all, of the issues affecting Kushner’s clearance relate to the Russia investigation.  On Friday, while insisting that he is leaving the final decision about Kushner’s access to top secret information in the hands of Chief of Staff Kelly, Trump insisted that the problem is the “broken” screening system.  He then stared at Kelly while asserting repeatedly that Kushner is doing a great job solving Middle East peace and that, like Manafort before him, he’s doing all that good work without a salary.  No word yet from Kelly as to his final decision, it’s possible that Kushner’s view of top secret information will be limited but that we’ll never hear about it.  As to Middle East peace, a group of Russian controlled mercenaries paid for by Putin’s “caterer,” Yevgeniy Prigozhin, the same guy who financed the Internet Research Group company  that employed all of those election interfering bots, picked a fight with US forces in Syria.  The US forces prevailed, killing about 200 of the Russians, but the fact that a Putin controlled “private army” even took on US soldiers in a cold war like proxy fight is an indication that all is not right in the region.  Yesterday,  Enriquo Pena Nieto, president of Mexico, another one of those countries that falls into Kushner’s portfolio, postponed his planned visit to the US following a contentious phone call with Trump after it became clear that Trump would not publically acknowledge that Mexico is not paying for his damn wall.  Lastly, Ivanka, another member of the Trump family who doesn’t have permanent security clearance, spent her weekend in South Korea attending the Olympics while trying to avoid direct contact with any North Koreans.  Since we still don’t have an ambassador to South Korea, Ivanka also played diplomat, briefing South Korean officials about Trump’s newest sanctions against North Korea. The South Koreans were too polite to reveal how distressing it was to receive confidential updates from Trump’s daughter. As to North Korea, though they cancelled what had been secret plans to meet with VP Pence during his Olympic sojourn, they are now signalling an interest in talking, for now.   

Messy Memos:  The Democrat’s redacted response to the Nunes memo was finally released on Saturday. It was longer, more throrough and despite some critical redactions, did a good job of refuting Congressman Nunes’ spurious claims that the FISA warrant authorizing the surveillance of Trump’s campaign advisor Carter Page was illegally obtained.  Notably the Democrats dismissed the Nunes assertion that the warrant relied soley on the Steele dossier, pointing out that it was originally issued even before the dossier was written and then, at the times that the warrant was renewed, relied only tangentially on the dossier.  Moreover, all of the largely Republican judges asked to renew the warrant were told that the Steel dossier had been commissioned and paid for by opposition resources.  The Democrats response also mentions that the Page surveillance was successful in that it yielded valuable intelligence.  That said, Trump and his puppet Nunes are sticking with their narrative, though neither of them have actually read the Democratic memo, they called it fraudulent, insisting that it proved that they were right all along. Nunes went so far as to claim that the FBI and the Department of Justice were the ones guilty of collusion, not with the Russians but with the Democrats.   Saturday night in a phone interview with Fox’s Jeanine Pirro, Trump expressed his appreciation for Nunes’ support, asserting that someday history will recognize Nunes as a national hero.  Yes, and some day pigs will fly, until then the Mueller investigation goes on.                 

The Solution is.....More Guns

More Guns:  Teachers with guns, that’s Trump’s solution to school massacres. During another one of his study meetings he rambled on about the importance of hardening schools by putting weapons into the hands of all willing teachers.  He suggested that gun toting teachers be recruited from the ranks of the military and that winners of shooting contests be sought out as future educators.  He held out Chief of Staff Kelly as the kind of guy he wants to see teaching impressionable youth about civics and social justice. He also decried active shooter drills, not because he has a problem with schools preparing for worse case scenarios but because he objects to their title, saying that the idea of an active shooter was too scary for young students.  His solution for that was a rebranding. With all the attention on guns he managed to slip in a barely noticed call for the mass incarceration of “crazy” people who would be deposited in previously shuttered mental institutions. As to those armed teachers, Trump suggested that they be paid a modest bonus to encourage them to carry weapons, a budget busting idea that, to the extent that his target goal of arming 40% of the teacher population was achieved, would result in an additional $1 billion requirement for school security.  Trump’s current budget proposal cuts funding for school security, he didn’t suggest where the $1 billion would come from, maybe by supplementing bake sales with a few more semi-automatic weapon auctions or cutting down on school supplies like books?  As to legislative solutions, Trump appears to be supportive of strengthening the background check system and has expressed an interest in raising age limits for the purchase of semi-automatic rifles, however, that last suggestion is opposed by his sponsors, the NRA so it probably won’t go very far. Speaking at the annual Conservative Political Action conference (CPAC), Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s EVP, took a hard line against those calling for gun restrictions and attacked liberals, Democrats, Pelosi, Schumer, Connecticut Senator Murphy, the FBI and just about anyone else he could think of for their failure to prevent the Parkland attack and for exploiting the death of the murdered students and teachers. He went on to call all of them socialists, a hugely offensive term to a conservative audience, for trying to take away Second Amendment rights.  In many respects his speech echoed statements and themes that Trump uttered during his meandering remarks, leaving the impression that they share the same speech writer.  In her remarks, NRA’s spokeswoman Dana Loesch was even more combative, she attacked the “legacy media” for their “love of mass shootings.” Adding "Now, I'm not saying that you love the tragedy. But I am saying that you love the ratings. Crying white mothers are ratings gold to you and many in the legacy media."  Though the NRA’s remarks and its calls to leave gun rights alone were received warmly by most of the CPAC attendees and a large part of Trump’s base, the Parkland students and parents pleas for actions are having an impact with corporate America. Yesterday, Enterprise Holdings, the owner of the Alamo, National and Enterprise car rental companies announced that it is cancelling its discount program for NRA members and the First National Bank of Omaha announced the end of its NRA VISA affinity card.  It’s far from clear that the House and the Senate will pass any gun restricting legislation or that Trump, who will be speaking at CPAC today, will follow through on anything other than trying to arm teachers so it’s too early to call this a tipping point but the Parkland kids are proving to be very persistent, so its also too early to count them out.      

More Manafort Indictments:  The Mueller guys are at it again, doing their best to get Paul Manafort to flip on Trump.  Yesterday we learned that Andrew Weissman, one of Mueller’s most dogged team members, filed a new 32 count indictment charging Paul Manafort and Rick Gates with additional counts of tax and bank fraud for understating their income from 2010 to 2014 and for fraudulently obtaining three bank loans totaling $20 million.  Manafort made around $30 million off of his work for Viktor Yanukovych, the Russia aligned former Ukrainian president.  He hid that income from US tax authorities by laundering it through off shore bank accounts in several countries known to be havens for those trying to avoid paying taxes.  Manafort brought his money back to the US by investing in several expensive real estate properties, the asset of choice for money launderers.  After his lucrative Ukraine business dried up his income dwindled but his lifestyle didn’t so he lied to several banks to obtain loans secured by those real estate assets.  Gates helped him obtain the loans by falsifying financial documents to make it look like Manafort’s income was substantially higher than it really was.  The paper trail for these activities includes several incriminating emails, one in which a complicit bank employee asks Gates to redo a faked document to make it look less doctored. The case against the two also includes statements from some of the people who refused to abet their criminal actions.  Manafort and Gate’s fraudulent loan activities overlap with their time working with the Trump team and though, at least at this point, no one is suggesting that Trump or members of his team had any involvement with Manafort’s fraudulent loans, it is problematic that two of his most senior campaign officials were suffering severe financial problems, committing fraud and were indebted to Russian friendly Ukrainians all while working for the campaign. Though he’s long denied it, while serving as Trump’s campaign chairman, Manafort is believed to be responsible for making changes to the Republican party’s platform with regard to Ukraine, making the party position more favorable to Russian interests, an act that may have been a payoff to some of his Russian patrons. Despite the compelling evidence against him, Manafort is still holding out, yesterday his spokesman again asserted his innocence. Manafort, who faces spending the rest of his life in jail, may be counting on one of those Trump pardons in exchange for his silence.  Though it had been reported that Gates was about to reach a plea agreement with Mueller, that arrangement, to the extent that it ever existed, appears to be off the table, at least for now although it’s notable that Gates remains curiously silent.  The Trump party line continues to be that Manafort and Gates’s crimes have nothing to do with Trump.  We will have to wait for future Mueller indictments to learn whether or not that’s true.         

The Kushner Effect:   Today is the day that Chief of Staff Kelly’s new rules concerning security clearances for White House personnel are set to go into effect.  White House Senior Advisor and son in law extraordinaire Jared Kushner still doesn’t have permanent clearance and according to CNN, his problems go beyond his multiple erroneous filings and complicated real estate entanglements.  Citing several of those innumerable unnamed sources otherwise known as White House leakers CNN reports that Kushner’s clearance is being held up because he is being investigated by Mueller and that as long as he remains a subject of that investigation the FBI won’t give him a clean bill of health.  Separately, CNBC reports that Security Adviser McMaster and Chief of Staff Kelly are both adamant that Kushner should not be allowed to continue reading the super-secret stuff that he’s had access to until the he gets the clearance he can’t get.  CNBC also reports that both are considering resigning if they don’t get their way.  In McMaster’s case there have been reports that he’s been out of favor for a while because he refuses to kowtow to Trump’s irrational demands, yesterday’s news that he’s completed his analysis of the impact of having transgender soldiers in the military and plans to tell Trump that he is recommending that they be allowed to stay despite Trump’s desire for them to be ousted provides another indication that he has no interest in being a Trump tool.   Trump is the final arbiter, he can override recommendations and grant Kushner clearance if he wants and he probably can boot the transgender soldiers but if he does either he may lose McMaster and/or Kelly, on their terms, not his.

Men Behaving Badly:  Eric Greitens, the Republican Governor of Missouri, is in bigly trouble. Yesterday, the married Governor was arrested for threatening to release compromising pictures of his former mistress showing her blindfolded, bound up and partially undressed, as payback if she ever disclosed their relationship.  Although he has now admitted the affair and has been forgiven by his wife, or so they both say, he denies ever trying to blackmail the accusing ex-girlfriend.  This scandal has been in the news for a while,  the Governor had already been resisting calls to step down, however yesterday’s arrest may be his tipping point.  The local Republican party, no fan of Greitens in the first place, is growing increasingly concerned that his scandal, bad under any circumstances but even worse in this “me too” year, is bolstering the chances that Missouri’s Senator Claire McCaskill, one of the most vulnerable red state Democrats, will win reelection in November.  The road to the midterms continues to be unpredictable and that’s putting it mildly.

Scripted Empathy

I Hear You:  Yesterday, Trump held his first study session on guns, this one with students, parents and teachers from several of the schools that had experienced gun related massacres.  Representatives from  Stoneman Douglas, Columbine, and Sandy Hook were included.  The White House contingent included Mike Pence and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos.  Someone in the White House prepared Trump for the session by providing him with a neatly written list of questions.  That Trump came with a few prepared questions isn’t all that remarkable, frankly it was encouraging to know that he can actually read,  however, it was disturbing to see that the list, which Trump clasped in his little hands, also included some scripted responses like “I hear you,” a recognition by his handlers that Trump’s own empathy skills are weak at best.  The invited guests had been carefully screened and at first appeared more awed by Trump, the White House environment and the cameras and strangely respectful given their tragic life experiences.  The first to speak sounded like they belonged in one of Trump’s cabinet meetings, they were a little too fawning and complimentary of Trump and his presidency but then a few of the family members went off script displaying raw emotion and pleading for something to be done about the easy availability of semi-automatic weapons.  One Parkland teen expressed his frustration by pointing out the irony that since he had turned eighteen the day after the massacre, he could now go out and buy an AR-15, the weapon used to mow down his classmates.  For the most part Trump listened, uttering one or two of those scripted empathy comments, Betsy DeVos nodded continuously like a smiling bobble head doll and Pence remained stuck with his usual fawning VP stare. Trump got his Groucho Marx moment when one family member called for better school security, the secret words that gave him the opening he was looking for and an opportunity to give his practiced NRA approved solution to school massacres, more guns, this time in the hands of teachers.  What could go wrong with that?  Trump again left the impression that he might support a tweaked version of the Cornyn-Murphy bill that calls for better reporting of people with backgrounds that should disqualify them for gun ownership. That and the slow walking of a regulation to ban bump stocks is probably as far as he will go. The NRA has little to worry about, at least with regard to Trump. They should be far more worried about the impressive, articulate and relentless Parkland teens who are doing their best to change gun laws and may be in the process of sparking a national movement, one with legs. Yesterday, during a CNN town hall in Miami they pushed back hard against an NRA representative and left the gun friendly Senator Rubio sputtering to defend his NRA financed positions.  They also embarrassed the NRA-A+ rated Florida Governor Scott into showing up for a meeting he was doing his best to avoid.  To the extent that Scott moves forward with his plans to run against the proudly “F-rated” Democratic Senator Nelson in November, the student inspired anti-gun movement could be the deciding factor that keeps Nelson in office.  

More on Manafort: The Mueller team has amended the filing against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. The filing is sealed so it’s unclear whether new criminal charges have been added or whether the action indicates the widely expected Gates plea agreement.  Also on the Manafort front, NBC news reports that investigators are now probing whether Manafort promised Chicago banker Stephen Calk a job in the Trump White House in return for $16 million in curious home loans for his properties in NYC, Virginia and the Hamptons.  The loans were made in December 2016 and January 2017 by Federal Savings Bank, Calk is Chairman of the bank, and initially raised suspicion because $16 million represents nearly a quarter of the small bank’s portfolio.  Banks do not generally lend that high a percentage of their capacity to one borrower. At the time that the loans were made others inside the bank questioned them and at least one bank official is now cooperating with Mueller’s team. Ultimately Calk, who was a senior economic advisor to Trump during the transition period, did not get a cabinet position, instead the reward for his largesse is involvement in the Manafort investigation.  Mueller is also looking into whether Manafort misrepresented his financial resources and inflated his income statements to qualify for the loans, another one of those things that is a bigly problem.

Immigration Hypocrisy:  During the 2016 election, after questions were raised about whether Melania Trump had violated US visa laws by working in the US before she had attained legal status, Trump promised that Melania would be holding a press conference in two weeks to prove that she had followed all of the rules.  Of course that press conference never took place probably because Melania couldn’t document that she had followed applicable laws.  Yesterday, it was reported that Melania’s parents are now green card holders on their way to becoming naturalized US citizens.  They are beneficiaries of those “chain migration” provisions, the ones that Trump wants to eliminate.  In the meantime, a DACA resolution remains mired in Congress, with chain migration one of the issues blocking passage of any immigration resolution.  Remember when Trump said that he would treat the Dreamers with love.  Just some more scripted empathy.

Van der Who?

Another Guilty Plea:  Special Counsel Mueller did it again, this time extracting a guilty plea from Alex van der Zwaan, a London based Skadden Arps lawyer who also happens to be the son in law of Russian oligarch German Khan, the co-owner of Russia’s Alfa Bank.  Though van der Zwaan’s crimes relate mostly to Paul Manafort and his Ukraine involvement they touch upon Trump and the Russia story in several ways. For starters Alfa Bank is currently suing Buzzfeed for publishing the infamous Steele Dossier because the dossier references ties between Putin and Alfa Bank, something the bank denies. Alfa Bank is also the entity whose computer servers were picked up having unusual amounts of interaction with the Trump company servers during the campaign.  If all that sounds mysterious and confusing, it’s because it is.  Anyway, back to van der Zwaan, he got himself into trouble by lying about a recorded 2016 conversation that he had with Rick Gates, Manafort’s partner and another unnamed Ukrainian based Manafort associate, referred to as person A, and for destroying emails related to an assignment that they had worked on together for the former president of Ukraine.  Rick Gates is the guy expected to reach a plea and cooperation agreement with Mueller later this week and he is probably the person who ratted out van der Zwaan’s deceptions.  Five years ago Manafort and Gates had arranged for Skadden to prepare what turned out to be a widely disputed report that attempted to justify the unlawful jailing of Julia Tymoshenko, a political rival of Victor Yanukovych, who was then the Putin supported president of Ukraine and Manafort and Gate’s most lucrative and possibly most despicable client, which says a lot because Manafort’s client base primarily consisted of nasty despots.  Van der Zwaan had worked on that assignment and the conversations that he lied about related to the Tymoshenko report, its dubious conclusion and the source of its financing.  Although the Skadden law firm has fired van der Zwaan and is cooperating with Mueller’s investigation, its reputation has also been tarnished by the affair since from the start its involvement and the amount and source of payment for the Ukraine assignment was sketchy.  Anyway, van der Zwaan’s legal career is now over and he faces the possibility of spending a few months in a US prison after which he will be deported back to either London, Holland or Russia.  Though it’s likely that Mueller prosecuted van der Zwaan primarily to put additional pressure on Manafort to induce him to start spilling his guts about what he knows about any Trump team shenanigans, Mueller also may be sending a not so veiled message to others in the White House, reminding them that lying to the FBI has fairly severe consequences.  At the same time, by forcefully going after the son in law of a Putin oligarch, Mueller may be sending a message to Trump that his Russian financial entanglements, to the extent that he has any, are fair game.  

The Kushner Problem:  Last week while all eyes were focused on the Parkland tragedy, White House Chief of Staff Kelly attempted to dig himself out of his Porter spouse abuse imbroglio by issuing a memo announcing that interim security clearances would no longer be valid after this Friday, a declaration that could affect the continued employment of the dozens of the people in the White House who still lack their permanent security clearances.  One of those people is Jared Kushner.  When asked about Kushner during yesterday’s White House press conference, Sarah Huckabee Sanders refused to comment on the status of Kushner’s security clearance but did reaffirm the value of his contributions, highlighting his role solving Middle East peace. Her comments, like almost everything else she said during the particularly combative news conference, were odd, possibly mendacious and confusing given Kelly’s new policy.  Last night Kelly released a statement expressing his “full confidence that Kushner’s foreign policy work will not be impacted as a result of the decision to cut access to classified information for staffers with interim security clearances.” Adding “As I told Jared days ago, I have full confidence in his ability to continue performing his duties in his foreign policy portfolio including overseeing our Israeli-Palestinian peace effort and serving as an integral part of our relationship with Mexico.” The NY Times reports that despite his kind words, Kelly is working hard to limit Kushner’s access to top secret information and that Kushner, no fan of Kelly, is fighting back forcefully, desperately trying to stay in the top secret loop. In the end nepotism may well win out over national security.

          

Guns:  While a bus carrying the teen age survivors of the Parkland massacre was traveling to Tallahassee to lobby for gun restrictions the Republican dominated Florida state house moved quickly, rejecting a ban on many semiautomatic guns and large capacity magazines. They probably figured that it would be a lot easier to resist the sympathetic students and their impassioned arguments if the gun debate was already banished from the legislative schedule.  After months of “study,” Trump announced that he is directing the Justice Department to issue regulations banning bump stocks, the add on that turns semi-automatic killing machines into even more powerful automatic killing machines. It’s not clear how long it will take to write and implement those “complicated” rules.  Before moving forward with anything else on the gun front Trump plans to engage in a series of meetings, starting with today’s sit down with a group of those who’ve been affected by gun violence.  In all likelihood, his “study” tour will go on for as long as possible, part of an effort to appear productive while doing as little as possible because any additional actions would enrage the NRA and Don Jr, who has advised his father to remain firmly in the pro-gun camp.  As to Don Jr, he’s been busy.  He’s in India marketing Trump branded properties, making foreign policy speeches and retweeting conspiracy theories that attempt to discredit students from Parkland, calling them out as paid actors or worse.    

That Women Stuff:  One of Trump’s accusers, Rachel Crooks is now running for political office in Ohio.  Yesterday, after the Washington Post ran a story about her, Trump took to twitter to attack her accusations, claiming once again that her assertion that he had forcefully kissed her back when she worked as a receptionist in Trump Tower was false primarily because he would never do that in public in front of the Trump Tower cameras, an odd denial that implies that he would have accosted her if there were no cameras present.  Crook who had contemporaneously told several people about his actions shortly after she’d been accosted, responded by calling for Trump to dig up those old tapes.  She provided the date, time and location to help him with his search.  She also said that “he should be afraid of the truth,” however, he’s Trump, his base doesn’t really care so despite his frenetic tweeting he probably doesn’t need to be all that concerned. Also on the election front, another local seat, this one in Kentucky, went to a Democratic candidate in a district that previously went all in for Trump. Though the Kentucky House will remain in Republican hands, the number of Democratic victories in local elections is starting to look more like a trend than an aberration. As to that trend, Republicans are getting increasingly concerned.  They plan to take their objections about the new Pennsylvania redistricting map, the one that could lead to four or more Pennsylvania Congressional seats going from red to blue in the November midterms, to the US Supreme Court.  However, since the Supreme Court already declined to review their earlier suit, it’s expected that the Justices will also refuse to consider the case.  It’s still winter, but fall is just around the corner.                 

Mourn, Forget, Repeat

Post Parkland:  The Parkland teens are doing their best to push back against the country’s tendency to mourn, forget, repeat.   The jury is still out on whether or not their eloquent statements and spreading protests will help but at least for the moment the gun problem is getting renewed focus.  Though much of that attention involves Republicans calling for more mental health services, services that they have no intention of funding, the NRA’s favorite president, Trump has expressed “support” for efforts to improve the federal gun purchase check system. In response to the Sutherland Springs Church massacre Senators Cornyn (Republican, Texas) and Murphy (Democrat, Connecticut) had introduced a bill that aimed to strengthen how state and federal governments report offenses that could prohibit people from buying a gun. The bill wouldn’t do much more than force localities to actually report what they are already supposed to report.  It’s passage would be nothing more than a band aid on the bigger gun problem, but it would be something. A version of the Cornyn-Murphy bill passed through the House but has been stalled in the Senate Judiciary Committee.  With Trump’s support there is a chance that it will get out of committee to a floor vote. Given Trump’s history of wavering and responding to the last call he receives, Cornyn and Murphy will have to act fast if they hope to benefit from Trump’s “support.”  Senator Feinstein is also pushing a gun related bill, hers will raise the age limit for rifle purchases from 18 to 21.  Right now 18 year-olds can’t buy handguns or beer but can buy the frighteningly popular AR 15 semi-automatic rifle, the mass murderer’s weapon of choice.  No word from Trump on whether or not he’ll support Feinstein’s efforts, but it’s fair to assume that his support is unlikely.  To the extent that Trump buys into any gun legislation, Feinstein’s proposal will probably not be the one he picks. It’s hard to believe that he will support more than one gun thing and to the extent that he goes with anything cutting back on lucrative AR 15 sales won’t be the one he’ll choose.   The White House also announced that Trump will be meeting with teens to discuss gun related issues later this week.  The catch is that they didn’t say which teens.  In all likelihood it won’t be a group from Parkland but a more restrained, quieter bunch, perhaps a crowd chosen by Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

Undoing Gerrymandering:  Yesterday the Pennsylvania Supreme Court released the State’s new district map, the one that they mandated after concluding that the State’s existing map had been gerrymandered to disproportionately benefit Republicans.  Right now thirteen of the eighteen Pennsylvania seats are held by Republicans, five are held by Democrats.  As a result of the new maps, the Pennsylvania congressional delegation is likely to change dramatically to reflect the state’s almost even split between Democrats and Republicans.  Expectations are that as a result of the changes Democrats will pick up around four seats during the 2018 midterms. Those four seats could be pivotal and may well provide the seats that the Democrats need to take back control of the House.  Democrats will need all the help they can get, polls show that the race for Congressional control is tightening as Trump’s tax cuts gain favor.  In the meantime, next month’s special election race between Democratic candidate Conor Lamb and Republican candidate Rick Saccone for the Pennsylvania 18 seat is tightening up.  They are competing for the seat vacated by Tim Murphy, the married anti-abortion congressman who was forced to stepdown from Congress after getting caught encouraging his girlfriend to get an abortion.  Trump won the district by 20 points in 2016 so this could be another one of those races where everyone gets all excited about the Democrat’s chances only to see him lose but by fewer points than the last guy who ran.  Despite the odds against him, Lamb, who is a pro-gun rights ex-Marine has about as good of a chance as any Democrat would have in the district.  Whoever wins, the victory will be largely symbolic, the winner will have to immediately gear up to run again in November, in one of those newly redrawn Pennsylvania districts.  In other election news, Mitt Romney has officially announced that he’s running for the Utah Senate seat being vacated by the retiring Orrin Hatch. In an effort to make nice with Romney, Trump tweeted his endorsement, an endorsement that Romney really doesn’t need but which is intended as olive branch to encourage the outspoken Romney to cut back on his Trump criticism.  Romney will probably remain a thorn in Trump’s side but it won’t matter much at least with regard to policy,  given the similarity of their political views Romney is likely to vote with Trump most of the time.   

Facebook Faux Pas:  Friday’s indictment detailed how the Russian Trolls used Facebook to advance discord and push Trump friendly, Hillary bashing ads.  Facebook management had faced a considerable amount of criticism for allowing the company platform to be used in such a manipulative fashion and for initially denying that it had been used.  By cooperating with Mueller’s investigation and on his indictment, management was trying to say that the company had  turned a page, that they were now doing their best to avoid getting involved in Russian plots.  That narrative blew up fast after Rob Goldman, a Facebook VP, issued a series of tweets asserting that the Russian Facebook ads were no bigly because in his view they hadn’t really influenced any voters.  Goldman’s tweets were picked up by Trump who quickly grabbed on to Goldman’s conclusions.  The tweeter in chief then tweeted his appreciation saying “The Fake News Media never fails. Hard to ignore this fact from the Vice President of Facebook Ads, Rob Goldman!” Facebook management was not happy with Goldman, not happy that Trump was latching on to Goldman’s assertions and really distressed at the suggestion that they were questioning Mueller’s indictment so on Sunday night, Joel Kaplan, the VP of Global Public Policy at Facebook, put out a statement saying “Nothing we found contradicts the Special Counsel’s indictments. Any suggestion otherwise is wrong.” Roughly translated, that means, “We asked Rob Goldman to throw his phone in a river.”  We would all be happy if Trump followed suit.  

Not a Hoax

Putin’s Chef:   Special Counsel Mueller proved once again that his relative silence should not be mistaken for a lack of productivity.  On Friday, his boss, Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein, went to the podium to announce that Mueller had indicted 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies and had obtained a guilty plea from one hapless American identity snatcher.  Mueller’s thirty plus page indictment reads like a chapter from a Tom Clancy novel, one of the early good ones actually written by Clancy. It details how Russian trolls, funded at a cost of up to $1 million per month by one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs, his former chef, now a leading Russian caterer, applied their technical skills.  The trolls disguised the geographic origin of their activities through the use of virtual private networks (VPNs) so that they could fully exploit Facebook and Twitter while sitting in their St. Petersburg, Russia offices. As a result, the wily Russians were able to interfere with the 2016 election process while few took notice.  Their actions weren’t limited to working the keyboards, a few wayward Russians actually visited the United States to gather firsthand knowledge of the US political landscape, traveling to a few locations including perhaps that other St. Petersburg, the one in swing state Florida.  The Russians also organized and funded political demonstrations, including a few with actresses dressed as Hillary Clinton in “lock her up” cages.  Trained to “speak and type” in convincing English they spread discord across social media, providing some funding to “unwitting” Trump affiliated individuals and groups with the goal of further disrupting the already divided US electorate.   The one American cited in the indictment sold the Russians the stolen personal data needed for US financial transactions. To be clear, he knew he was selling stolen personal data, he just didn’t know he was selling it to Russian players. The indictment reveals that that the Russians began their activities in 2014, but ramped up to full capacity for the 2016 election cycle. Though the Russian objective initially may have been general disruption they quickly jumped on the Trump bandwagon, they primarily supported Trump over Clinton but also weighed in during the Republican primaries by slamming Senators Rubio and Cruz.  To a lesser degree the Russians also lent their support to the Bernie Sanders primary campaign. Once it was clear that Trump and Hillary were their respective party nominations, the trolls encouraged disgruntled Bernie voters to stay home or throw their support to Green candidate Jill Stein in part by telling black and Muslim voters that they couldn’t rely on Hillary and spreading fear among white voters that Hillary was dangerously into black and Muslim causes. Though Mueller presents a persuasive, undisputed account of Russian election interference the Friday indictments do not address, nor are they intended to address, Russian-Trump team collusion, something that Rosenstein said in deliberately parsed words. Anyone listening carefully would realize that another Clancy like chapter is on the way and that the jury is still out on collusion but Trump isn’t much into nuance, particularly nuance that he doesn’t want to acknowledge so initially he was gleeful, tweeting that this indictment proved once and for all that there was NO COLLUSION and that he won because he was the better candidate.

More to Come:  The events detailed in Friday’s indictments dovetail too nicely with subsequent events including the hacking of the DNC server, the “Trump Tower” Veselnitskaya meeting, and Trump’s calls for the release of Hillary’s emails to reflect mere happenstance, so despite Trump’s assertions, his team is not out of the woods. The indictments also reveal that, despite Trump’s attack on the intelligence services and despite the fact that CIA head Mike Pompeo is a dedicated Trumper, the various intelligence branches are cooperating.  The transcript of one Russian troll telling a family member that it had been a crazy day at the office because they’d been forced to scurry after getting “caught” by US intelligence and another transcript revealing that members of the Russian troll farm were chastised for not getting enough nasty Hillary stuff into the twitterverse provide evidence of this coordination.  It’s notable that for these details to be included in the indictment, all of the applicable intelligence agencies had to have been on board otherwise the surveillance details would have stayed confidential. The methodical Mueller is known to be very strategic in the way that he runs his investigations, starting from the outside and working up to the head.  By revealing these indictments now and including some previously top secret information he has shown that his strategy also involves winning over the hearts and minds of the US public.  He is laying the groundwork so that if and when he reveals collusion and starts taking down Trump team members he will have already convinced enough Americans that Russian interference is not a hoax dreamed up to excuse Hillary’s loss, that election interference happened and that it is a punishable offense. By announcing these indictments he may also have provided a little more job security for himself and his “boss” the much embattled Rosenstein.  Another Mueller chapter was dropped last night, the LA Times report that Rick Gates, Paul Manafort’s partner who also served as a member of the Trump campaign team is expected to plead guilty in the coming days to reduced charges in exchange for his cooperation.  The juiciest chapters, the ones that reveal whether there was Trump family involvement and/or financial complicity are still in development.

The Trump Response:. Concerned that playing golf so soon after the Parkland massacre would subject him to criticism, Trump instead watched the news only to learn that he hadn’t been fully exonerated by the Friday indictments. Paradoxically he also attended a Studio 54 disco party being held at Mar a Lago.  The spinning neon lights did nothing to ease his fury so the increasingly spooked Trump reacted to the news reports about Mueller and the indictments by launching into a twitter tirade   He tweet blamed Democrats for furthering national discord, went after crooked Hillary, the “real” colluder, spewed venom at liddle Adam Schiff, his current congressional whipping boy and then, for good measure, found time to attack Oprah Winfrey. Despite proof that there was and continues to be Russian interference in the American political process, he did not say or tweet anything bad about the Russians.  Other presidents would have expressed horror and announced new harsh anti-Russian sanctions, or at least, plans to impose such sanctions, but not Trump, he still refuses to impose the sanctions that Congress mandated last year.  Most of his spokespeople and surrogates stuck with a Trump approved narrative, downplaying Russian interference and delivering the “NO COLLUSION” message. However, Security Advisor HR McMaster, the author of a seminal book on talking truth to power, missed or chose to ignore the directive.  Speaking at a Munich Security Conference to actual national security professionals, he said “As you can see with the F.B.I. indictment, the evidence is now really incontrovertible and available in the public domain, whereas in the past it was difficult to attribute."  Trump, unhappy that McMaster had gone off script swatted back, tweeting that McMaster “forgot to say that the results of the 2016 election were not impacted or changed by the Russians."  In other words, hey McMaster, get with the message, NO COLLUSION, I WON!  

Parkland Politics:  Sadly, everyone agrees that Nikolas Cruz, the Parkland shooter was a disaster waiting to happen.  His school knew it, his former friends knew it, the local police knew it and it turns out the FBI should have known it too.  They failed to act upon a tip that he had posted a video in which he said “I’m going to be a professional school shooter.”  Something should have been done though it’s unclear what could have been done under the current law.  Apparently the increasingly violent Cruz was shrewd enough to know what to say when visited by law enforcement, after countless visits he’d had a lot of practice.  The FBI’s failure is now being used by Trump and Florida’s Governor Rick Scott to distract attention from their love affair with the NRA.  Scott, a major beneficiary of NRA largesse, has called for FBI Director Wray to step down because it’s easier to go after the FBI than to go up against the gun lobby.  Trump is taking things a step further, together with some of his supporters at Fox he’s blaming the FBI’s Parkland omission on the agency’s focus on the Russia investigation, a patently absurd comment, the FBI is big enough to do both.  Trump is also assigning blame for the lack of more gun restrictions on Obama because when it’s convenient Trump forgets Republicans now control all three branches of government. Trump spoke at last year’s NRA Leadership forum and Governor Scott is scheduled to speak at this year’s.  The students at Parkland know B.S. when they see it.

Human Resources:  Late Friday, Chief of Staff John Kelly announced a new system for coordinating security reviews.  Sticking with the theme that any failings at the White House are really due to FBI oversights, the new system requires that the FBI do more than provide background checks.  Now they also have to yell the results of their reviews out on the White House lawn, because apparently that’s the only way to make sure that Don McGahn, the White House Counsel, or anyone in the White House personnel office will get the message about any domestic abusers or other unsuitable flunkies with problems that would prohibit them receiving permanent security clearances.  Seriously, the new plan holds the FBI responsible for making sure that White House decision makers actually read the reports that they are supposed to read, it also says that only people with proper clearance will see top secret reports.  Despite this new policy, no one is willing to comment about what will be done about Jared Kushner.  He still has access to top secret information, reads more of it than anyone else in the White House, and doesn’t have, nor can he qualify for, the appropriate security clearance.  Trump’s bimbo eruption problems are still out there, they’ve been tossed to the bottom of the news heap by the school shootings and indictments but, to the extent that anyone cares, they’ll rise up again soon.          

Empty Words, Loaded Guns

Parkland Tragedy:  On Thursday morning Trump tweeted his initial thoughts about Wednesday’s tragedy, laying the blame for the Parkland shooting rampage on neighbors and classmates who he said “should have reported the Parkland shooter to authorities after he first exhibited disturbing behavior.”  Trump did not mention guns.  Later in the morning, reading from a prepared script, he spoke in flat emotionless tones that betrayed his lack of empathy and his problem  showing compassion.  Again, he failed to mention the word gun once, focusing on the killer’s history of erratic behavior and mental illness. Trump, who generally has no problem veering from prepared words and displaying emotion when the subject at hand involves Islamic terrorism, kneeling football players or treacherous Democrats, couldn’t muster any emotion this time. His failure to mention guns wasn’t all that surprising, after all he owes the NRA considerable gratitude, they fueled his campaign with $21 million, a portion of which was donated directly to his campaign with the rest used to blast Hillary for her support of gun control.  As to his comments on the killer’s obvious mental health issues, they too fell flat not because mental illness didn’t play a part in the senseless tragedy but because just one year ago Trump signed a bill repealing a rule the Obama administration put in place after Sandy Hook that prevented people receiving Social Security benefits for mental disabilities from purchasing guns and because Trump’s budget calls for across the board cuts in mental health services.  Trump is scheduled to head to Mar a Lago for the weekend and now plans to allocate some of his weekend golf time together with another slot that had been allocated to a trip to Orlando towards a visit to Parkland, although if he’s been watching any of the news, or at least the news that’s not on Fox, he might realize that the people in Parkland aren’t likely to be all that welcoming and are unlikely to be satisfied by just another somber prayer.  He may want to reroute back to Disney World.  The families and students, and even the Broward County sheriff, have all been speaking out with raw emotion, calling for an end to senseless gun violence, and they, unlike Trump, realize that the gun part is significant and needs to be addressed.  Governor Scott, another recipient of NRA largesse is also trying to appear concerned and compassionate, his skills in that area exceed Trump’s, however, despite his statement that some kind of screening process might be suitable to prevent those with mental illness from buying guns, his willingness to actually do anything about guns is doubtful.  As to the Florida Senate, its members aren’t all that satisfied with Florida’s already liberal gun purchase laws, they had been planning a committee hearing on a bill to loosen background checks for gun purchases, but have postponed it, at least until the press cycle shifts to another story. As far as the weapon that was used to kill the Parkland victims, it was a Smith & Wesson semiautomatic rifle, legally purchased by the murderer last February, at Sunrise Tactical Supply in Coral Springs; with no criminal record, he cleared an instant background check via the FBI criminal database because everyone, even severely disturbed individuals, needs at least one semi-automatic rifle.

              

Immigration No Go:  So far nothing good has come out of the Senate debate on immigration reform.  Yesterday, several versions of immigration legislation were put up for a vote, with none of them receiving the required sixty vote plurality.  Trump’s preferred plan, the one that included his desired four part immigration framework, fared the worst going down by a vote of 39-60. The Trump plan lost 14 Republican votes but did receive support from three vulnerable red state Democrats, West Virginia’s Manchin, Indiana’s Donnelly and North Dakota’s Heitkamp.  Unfortunately, the best competing bipartisan plan also failed by a smaller margin, going down 54-45, in part because the White House together with the Department of Homeland Security campaigned furiously against it.  Eight Republicans joined all but three of the Democrats in supporting the bipartisan proposal, a plan that would have provided 1.8 million undocumented immigrants a path to citizenship while spending $25 billion on the stupid wall. Three Democrats, including California’s Kamala Harris and New Mexico’s two senators, Martin Heinrich and Tom Udall, voted against the bipartisan plan because they thought that it conceded too much to Trump, however they didn’t cast their no votes until it was obvious that the plan would fail anyway.  At this point some are saying that the Senate process is over, although it probably isn’t completely dead yet. For her part Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who has been in hiding since lying so much about the Porter affair, emerged to tweet attack Democrats for not being serious about resolving the DACA problem that Trump caused.   Although the March deadline for DACA is around the corner, for now it’s being held up in the courts so the actual deadline probably extends for a few more months, maybe until the end of the year.  The House is expected to vote on something soon too, but in all likelihood the House approach will mirror Trump’s and will be dead in the water in the unlikely event that it passes and makes it to the Senate.      

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Former Trump strategist and erstwhile BFF Steve Bannon finally returned to testify in front of the House Intelligence Committee yesterday. He didn’t say very much, limiting his answers to monosyllabic grunts. Following directions provided by the White House he was only permitted to respond to twenty five questions all of which had been drafted by the White House and agreed to by the Nunes wing of the intelligence committee. The questions had been engineered to prompt single word “no” answers. Even some of the Republican members of the committee were outraged by the constraints imposed on his testimony.  Republican Representative Conaway, the committee’s supposed leader except when Nunes jumps in, is considering consulting Speaker Ryan about issuing some kind of contempt citation.  No doubt, Ryan will be extremely cooperative. Ha!  One indication of the absurdity of the process is that Bannon is represented by the same lawyer who represents White House Counsel Don McGahn, the man who crafted the questions that the committee was allowed to ask. Fortunately, a few other people have been able to speak with and question Bannon.  He recently spent twenty hours with Special Counsel Mueller and his interrogators, and they were not subjected to any White House restrictions.  Mueller and his crowd have been busy.  Expectations are that the already indicted Rick Gates, who worked on the Trump campaign for longer than his partner, former campaign head Paul Manafort, is getting closer to formalizing his plea agreement with Mueller, we may learn more next week. At this point, it’s unknown whether Gates “turn” will be more of a problem for Trump or Manafort.  However, expectations are that anything that makes things worse for Manafort will eventually make things worse for Trump.    

Seventeen

Hypocrisy:  In what is now the third worst school massacre in the US, seventeen students and teachers were mowed down yesterday by a former classmate using an AR-15 semi-automatic weapon, a weapon that is easier to obtain in Florida than a handgun.  The shooter’s attack appears to have been well planned, he was wearing a gas mask and triggered a fire alarm first in order to get as many of his fellow classmates out in the open and into the line of fire.  Times being what they are, the school had prepared for such a moment and though many were killed and more were injured, others were saved because teachers and students had been trained how to take cover during just such an onslaught.  After the attack, as first responders and emergency workers struggled to identify all of the victims and parents and relatives came up against their worst nightmare, the loss of a loved one, politicians did what politicians do, they expressed concern and prayer.  One of those politicians, Trump tweeted his prayers and condolences, but didn’t appear on camera and didn’t issue a formal statement because what do you say about wanton murder with a weapon that should be outlawed or at the very least subject to stringent purchase requirements when you are in the pocket of the NRA.  Notably two other politicians, Mario Rubio and Florida Governor Rick Scott were more visible, finding no problem publicly expressing their grief while ignoring the easy availability of guns in their state.  Both of them have A plus ratings and have received money and endorsements from the NRA, a “distinction reserved for legislators who have excellent voting records on Second Amendment issues and who have vigorously fought to promote and defend the right to keep and bear arms.”  Governor Scott, a Republican who is expected to announce plans to run against Florida’s incumbent Democratic Senator Bill Nelson in the upcoming midterms, showed up at the crime scene press conference and was standing next to the Broward County Sheriff Scott Israel when the sheriff said that something had to be done about the availability of weapons.  Scott maintained a stony visage and appeared to squirm as he looked right through the sheriff.  Senator Nelson, who will face an uphill battle against the popular Scott in a state that Trump won if Scott decides to run,  also spoke out yesterday, his feelings were a bit more genuine, he’s one of those legislators who has an F rating from the NRA.  Connecticut Senator Murphy, who has stood out as one of the most ardent anti-gun legislators ever since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shootings took to the Senate floor to eloquently chastise his colleagues for their inaction and hypocrisy. Former astronaut Mark Kelly, the husband of the permanently disabled former Congresswoman Gaby Giffords also spoke, again pressing the case for rational gun regulation, the mission that he and Giffords have taken on ever since she was shot.  When Trump finally speaks expect him to say the usual nonsense, that now is not the time to address gun regulation because now is the time for mourning. Sadly the next violent rampage is probably just around the corner.

The Porter Problem:  As a result of Rob Porter and the outing of his spousal abuse problem we now know that the White House and the rest of the executive office is full of potential Porters.  Yesterday, a number of news outlets reported that around 130 members of Trump’s senior staff, including Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, White House Counsel Don McGahn and Sarah Huckabee Sanders still only have temporary security clearances.  Despite White House assertions that this is relatively normal, it’s not.  The FBI prioritizes the clearance of senior employees, in other administrations the clearance backlogs have been completed within nine months.  In all likelihood many of the people with temporary clearances will never be able to qualify for permanent security clearances.  It’s notable that Stephen Miller, Gary Cohn, Hope Hicks, Kellyanne Conway and even Trump’s Russia lawyer Ty Cobb, who joined the administration later than many of his colleagues have already obtained a clearance, an indication that if there are no problems with your background or papers, your clearance comes through on a timely basis. Former Federal Attorney Preet Bharara, always one happy to highlight this White House’s failings, tweeted out that all of the members of Special Counsel Mueller’s team have their clearances too.   Another White House employee, National Economic official George David Banks resigned yesterday because of problems with his security status, his infraction was that he had come clean about having smoking marijuana as recently as 2013. Although officials in the Obama administration may have been subjected to additional drug testing if they admitted to a weedy past, they weren’t forced to resign for the infraction, but Jeff Sessions and Trump take a hard line on drugs and from their standpoint pot stands with heroin, it’s a bigly problem, much worse than a history of spousal abuse.  As to spousal abuse, Trump finally made a statement on that subject yesterday saying that everybody knows that he thinks it’s bad.  Trey Gowdy, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee has finally had enough with the White House’s screwed up review process, he’s announced an investigation into the White House’s handling of the Rob Porter affair.  It’s notable that Gowdy is finally doing something but unlikely that much will come of it because he’s a Republican and he’s leaving at the end of his term in part because he really doesn’t want to be around when the sh-t hits the fan especially if it’s Republican excrement.  As to Chief of Staff Kelly, though the gossip mill still reports that he is on his way out with House Majority Leader McCarthy now leading the list of possible contenders for his job, yesterday VP Pence insisted that national hero Kelly will be around for a long time.  Then again Pence never really knows what’s up, or so he says.    

Cabinet Storms:  Troubles with cabinet travel continue to haunt the administration.  Yesterday, the department of Veterans Affairs inspector general released a report saying that VA Secretary David Shulkin’s chief of staff “doctored an email and made false statements to create a pretext for taxpayers to cover expenses for Shulkin’s wife on a 10-day trip to Europe last summer.” Yesterday, while reimbursing the VA for his wife’s travel, Shulkin, a holdover from the Obama administration, called the report “politically motivated.”  EPA head Scott Pruitt’s travel is also raising eyebrows.  He only flies first class, racking up $1000 plus charges for flights from NY to Washington, because he fears that hanging with the hoi polloi subjects him to security risks, possibly true because when you are leading the charge against the environment ordinary people don’t like you much and are willing to say so, to your face, on airplanes.  His office had claimed that he had received a permanent waiver permitting him to always fly first class, however no such waiver exists because waivers can only be obtained on a trip by trip basis.  Pruitt’s office has now walked back its claim.  So far, unlike former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, Shulkin and Pruitt are still members of the Cabinet, possibly because Trump is busy dealing with other eruptions.  One of those might relate to adult film star Stormy Daniels.  Now that Michael Cohen, Trump’s long time legal eagle, has come clean about paying her off, or at least has issued a carefully parsed statement about the payment that was made to keep her quiet, her lawyers have concluded that the terms of her confidentiality agreement no longer apply.  We will be hearing more from Stormy shortly.

Immigration:  The immigration debate in the Senate continues on.  In summary, the right wingers have their plan, a group of bipartisan moderates have a different plan and Trump continues to insist that he will veto anything that doesn’t meet his “four pillars,” funding the wall, eliminating chain migration, and ending the visa lottery in exchange for permanent status and eventual citizenship for an expanded group of Dreamers.  In other words, nothing much has happened yet and the March DACA deadline is around the corner.  Immigration is complicated especially when Trump and a vocal minority in the House and Senate really think that all immigration and immigrants are bad, except maybe those guys from Norway and Melania’s parents whose questionable immigration status is now the subject of press attention.  They are now living in the US, possibly the beneficiaries of chain migration, just some more hypocrisy.