Lies and Bullets

The Porter Problem:   You would think that a group of people who lie so regularly would be good at it, but with this crowd practice does not make perfect and so the Porter problem won’t go away, instead it continues to garner a disproportionate amount of attention.  On Monday Press Secretary Huckabee Sanders blamed the FBI for failing to notify the White House that ex-aide Porter had a hairy history of spousal abuse.  Unfortunately, FBI Director Chris Wray wasn’t in on or willing to go with that cover story so yesterday in testimony before a Senate Intelligence Panel on Global Threats, Wray blew the most current version of the White House lie to smithereens by doing something that no one in the White House would ever do, he stuck with the truth.  He detailed how the FBI had kept the White House up to date on the problems with Porter’s security clearance, sending several reports between March of last year through to this January.  By speaking truth he blew a huge hole in the White House’s statements that they had just learned about Porter’s history and once learning had taken quick action.  When asked about this later in the day, Sanders grimaced and, rather than coming clean, once again lied, this time shifting blame by casting shade on the long term professionals at the White House personnel office, saying  that their lack of action and failure to share what they knew was responsible for the Porter screw up.  While she was reallocating blame, the Porter cover up got even murkier after it was learned that shortly after Porter’s wife beating problem went public the prevaricating Sanders attempted to get ahead of the story by organizing an off the record meeting between Porter and leading reporters from the NY Times, the Wall Street Journal, Axios and the Washington Post.  During that meeting Porter denied the accusations about his abusive behavior, explaining away one wife’s black eye as the result of a clumsy accident, something having to do with a Venetian vase spontaneously hitting her in the eye. That excuse and the meeting did nothing to convince the skeptical reporters nor did it clear Porter’s name, but it does provide another window into the White House’s deceptive practices and provides additional evidence that the timeline of events provided to the public was just another big lie.  Further while the official line remains that Chief of Staff Kelly took action within minutes of learning of Porter’s transgressions, it turns out that he was actually trying to save Porter’s career.  Kelly had planned to promote Porter to serve as his Deputy Chief of Staff, despite his abuse history and his problem getting a security clearance.  Kelly’s reputation is now in tatters, so much so that even the White House staff is calling him out for his lies and though a history of lying ordinarily wouldn’t hurt you in the Trump White House the party line is now that Kelly lies to cover a faulty memory and while obfuscation is considered desirable, dementia not so much. It sounds more and more like the “senile” Kelly will be shown the door soon.     

Russian Interference:  Wray wasn’t the only intelligence chief testifying before the Senate Intelligence panel yesterday, he was joined by Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, CIA director Mike Pompeo, Defense Intelligence Agency director Lt. Gen. Robert Ashley, National Security Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers, and National Geospatial Intelligence Agency director Robert Cardillo.  They were all there to address worldwide threats, and though they agreed that North Korea and China are problems,  a significant percentage of their time was spent answering questions about Russian election interference.  They all agreed that the Russians had been “highly successful” to date and that they will continue to be a threat to US elections.  They reported that each of their agencies was taking some actions to thwart Russia’s efforts.  However, when asked if there was any coordination coming from the White House, they acknowledged that there wasn’t primarily because Trump just doesn’t think that the whole Russia thing is much of a problem.  Saying “we cannot confront this threat, which is a serious one, with a whole of government response when the leader of the government continues to deny it exists,” a very frustrated Senator Agnus King of Maine actually tried to push them to convince Trump that it was a serious problem that required his action.  Similarly Rhode Island’s Senator Jack Reed  asked each agency director if he had received any explicit direction from the White House on how best to coordinate and fight Russian interference.  Again each head highlighted their agency’s actions but acknowledged that they were acting without any direction from above.  Even CIA head Pompeo, one of Trump’s closest advisors admitted that the lack of coordinated leadership and direct funding was a bigly problem.  Sadly, as long as Trump thinks that acknowledging and acting on Russian interference is an admission of his own complicity and, even worse in his eyes, an admission that he might not have won the election without Putin’s help, he just won’t act. The 2018 midterms will be here before we know it so some are calling for a return to old fashioned methods and paper ballots as the best defense against Trump’s failure to act and Russian interference.         

WTF Moment of the Day:  Late last night Michael Cohen, Trump’s long time personal lawyer, told the New York Times that he bought adult film star Stormy Daniel’s silence with $130,000 of his own money and that no one reimbursed him for that payment. He didn’t acknowledge that Trump and Stormy had a relationship, just that he paid her to be quiet because that’s what friends do.  Cohen came forward with his dubious admission in order to rebut claims that the payment had come from any member of the Trump family or campaign and to push back against assertions that he “violated campaign finance laws by facilitating an excess, in-kind contribution” to the Trump campaign. He went on to say that any allegations that he had violated the law on behalf of the Trump team were “factually unsupported and without legal merit,” adding that his counsel had submitted an official response detailing that to the Federal Election Commission.  This is probably another one of those bigly, hard to believe lies and it’s quite possible that Cohen, who once said that he would take a bullet for Trump, just proved that he wasn’t kidding.  Unlike Chief of Staff Kelly, this story isn’t going away anytime soon.