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.