Train Wrecks

Diversionary Tactics:  The chartered train taking a contingent of Republican Congressmen and Senators to West Virginia’s Greenbrier resort for a party retreat, hit a van killing one of its passengers and resulting in a few minor injuries to the traveling legislators. Sadly nothing has yet managed to stop the other impending train wreck, Trump keeps moving forward at an ever accelerating speed.  The Nunes memo, his current weapon of mass distraction, hasn’t been released yet because it is being “reviewed” by the White House which is pretty ridiculous, since it’s looking more and more like someone at the White House helped Nunes and his staff write the memo in the first place.  If anyone but Nunes was involved that would sound crazy but since he’s the guy who ran to the White House last year with “evidence” that Obama wiretapped Trump, “evidence” that was given to him by one of Trump’s minions, the assertion is easy to believe.  Christopher Wray, Trump’s handpicked FBI Director warned that the memo omits key information that could impact its veracity and told the White House that he has “grave concerns about material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo's accuracy.” Apparently in intelligence circles the use of the word “grave” is a signal that sources, real people possibly in Russia, could be jeopardized by the memo’s release.  Despite that warning, Trump is expected to authorize the memo’s release because he is anxious to do all he can to discredit the Mueller investigation and is hoping that the inaccuracies in the memo, particularly the one that paints Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as an evil Hillary tool for authorizing the continuation of the Carter Page warrant, will give him an excuse to fire Rosenstein, moving him one step closer to curtailing Mueller’s investigation.  That Trump wants to end or severely damage the Mueller investigation isn’t all that surprising, however all the assistance that he is getting from individuals who were previously viewed as respectable is rather stunning. If he wanted to, Speaker Ryan could put an end to the Nunes nonsense since Nunes reports to him, but Ryan has decided to go along with the charade possibly to placate Trump in the hopes of continuing to advance his long term legislative agenda or for some other reason like the promise of a lucrative job from the Koch Brothers.  Chief of Staff Kelly, who was supposed to be the guy who would control Trump’s worst instincts, is instead doing his best to help him, first with immigration and now by pushing for the release of the memo. To the extent that Trump’s shenanigans ever catch up with him, Herr Kelly will probably claim the “just following orders” defense. Though a few other Republicans, mostly in the Senate have decried Trump’s actions, they haven’t turned their protests into actions. The Democrats are screaming but few are listening.  With tax cuts in hand and a bumpy but upward trending stock market, Trump may be succeeding in convincing the general public that his Russian collusion and obstructive crimes are just politics as usual.

Russian Investigation:  Though the train may be barreling straight towards him, Mueller remains undeterred.  He plans to hear testimony from Mark Corallo who served as spokesman for Trump’s legal team before he resigned last summer.  Corallo is expected to tell Mueller about a previously undisclosed call between Trump and Gal Friday Hope Hicks.  The NY Times reports that Corallo will tell Mueller that Hicks said that Don Jr’s emails, the ones about his Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, “will never get out” because only a few people had access to them.  That conversation caused Corallo to become concerned that Hicks was planning to “obstruct justice.” Hicks denies ever saying that, however, Corallo stands by his assertion, told Trump’s lawyers about his concerns at the time, jotted down some of those contemporaneous notes that have become very popular among those in the Trump orbit, and told Steve Bannon, who then told Michael Woolf the Fire and Fury author.  In his book Woolf wrote that Bannon warned Hicks that she could be in bigly trouble, threatened to call her father to report on her stupidity and told her that she should get herself a really good lawyer because she was going to need one. Despite all the assertions that Woolf’s book has inaccuracies, on this point its looking like he was spot on.  She better hope that her lawyer is really, really good and that he’s prioritizing her interests and future over Trump’s. Wanting nothing more to do with the Trump catastrophe, Corallo resigned shortly after the Hicks-Trump conversation about emails took place.  Also on the Russian front, not only has Trump failed to impose more sanctions on the Russians, but yesterday we learned that he continues to push for improved Russian relations. Apparently CIA Director Pompeo hosted a meeting in the US with two senior Russian spymasters, including sanctioned spy chief Sergey Naryshkin, even though he isn’t supposed to be allowed into the country.

       

Human Resources:  Brenda Fitzgerald, the Director of the Centers for Disease Control was forced to resign yesterday after details about her purchases of cigarette company stocks went public.  Due to some of her other investments, Fitzgerald was already recused from issues related to cancer detection and some aspects of the opioid crisis, adding smoking prevention to the list of things that she couldn’t get involved with was a step to far for Alex Azar, the newly sworn in Health and Human Services Secretary  who unlike Trump or his predecessor Mike Price, saw problems with the person in charge of the CDC being unable to work on most of the issues that she was supposed to be working on. South Carolina Representative Trey Gowdy announced that he won’t be running for reelection in November because he’s had enough with Congress. Gowdy’s planned departure is somewhat surprising.  He was known as the Congressman from Benghazi for his obnoxiously loud and persistent attacks of Hillary Clinton, so its hard to understand why he thinks that Congress has suddenly become intolerable.  Either he knows something really bad about Trump or, like his other departing colleagues, anticipates a leadership change in November or both.  New Jersey’s Democratic Senator Bob Menendez is off the hook with Justice.  Last week the Justice Department announced plans to retry Menendez for accepting bribes from his long term friend Florida ophthalmologist Salomon Melgen.  Menendez’s earlier trial ended in a hung jury late last year.  However, yesterday Justice announced plans to drop all charges.  Menendez may have to face a Senate ethics review, but he is no longer faces time in the clinker. Yesterday, a number of news outlets reported that Andrew McCabe, the embattled former senior FBI agent, learned about the emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop three weeks earlier than was previously reported and that love bird FBI guy Strzok, who has been accused of text slamming Trump, pushed for harsher treatment of Clinton over her email transgressions.  So just to be clear, two of the guys whose actions may have been most responsible for Trump’s victory are now going down for being pro-Clinton.  Another train wreck caused by human error.