Dasvidaniya

Russian Expulsion:  Yesterday, under pressure from Britain, the Trump administration joined twenty two other countries by retaliating against Putin for the poisoning of the former Russian spy, Sergei Skripal, and his daughter.  All told, the smack down involved the expulsion of 130 Russian "officials," with 60 of those expelled being kicked out of the US. Though he ultimately did the right thing, Trump was a reluctant participant, drawn into the group effort by the State Department and the US intelligence agencies only after it was made clear that US participation in the show of solidarity with our most important ally was essential and that the failure to participate would have been glaring and damaging to US relations abroad.  Notably, Trump who tweets about virtually everything, had nothing to say about the expulsions and the related closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle, leaving it to his communications department to explain the decision.  Standing in for Sarah Huckabee Sanders who was having one of her camera shy days, Raj Shah, called the Skripal poisoning attack “brazen and reckless” adding “we want to have a cooperative relationship” with the Russians but “their actions sometimes don’t allow that to happen.”   

The Legal Morass:  Even though Trump asserted yesterday that lawyers are lining up to represent him in the Mueller Russia probe, two more prominent attorneys, Tom Buchanan and Dan Webb of Winston & Strawn, turned down that opportunity of a life time.  Their firm confirmed that they had been approached by diplomatically reporting that “they were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so. They wish the president the best and believe he has excellent representation in Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow.” Kind words for Cobb and Sekulow, but realistically no one in the legal community believes that those two are really up for the job.  Around the same time that Winston & Strawn released their statement, prominent lawyer and former Bush era Solicitor General, Ted Olson, who has twice rebuffed invitations to join the Trump legal team said that the turmoil and chaos in the Trump White House is “beyond normal” and that the high number of personnel changes are “not good for anything,” adding “We always believe that there should be an orderly process, and of course, government is not clean or orderly ever. But this seems to be beyond normal.” As to Sekulow, it’s been reported that half a dozen attorneys affiliated with his legal group, the American Center for Law and Justice, have been helping him with Trump's case.  It’s not clear who is paying them for their efforts, just another one of those things that may not be totally above board.  Also on the legal front, the Stormy Daniels case continues to percolate.  Yesterday, her lawyer Michael Avenotti, escalated her fight adding a complaint against Michael Cohen to her lawsuit.  She is suing him for defamation for calling her a liar and exposing her to “hatred, contempt, ridicule and shame, and discouraging others from associating or dealing with her.”  Avenotti and Daniels aren’t Cohen’s only problems, it’s also reported that Cohen’s heavy handed, thuggish and possibly illegal actions have earned him more attention from Special Counsel Mueller who’d would like to get more details about Trump’s Russian business endeavors and views any proof that Cohen engaged in less than legal activities as a way to get more leverage against the Trump loyalist.  As to the whole Daniels affair, on the advice of his remaining lawyers Trump has added Daniels as well as his other accuser, former Playboy model Karen McDougal to his “no tweet attack” list, a list that previously only included Putin.  Yesterday, he refrained from mentioning the name of either woman, instead going with a less direct swipe at false news, tweeting, ” So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!” As to that great part, maybe not so much for Jared Kushner.  White House lawyers are now examining whether two loans totaling $500 million, one from Citibank and one from Apollo Global Management, to Jared Kushner’s family business may have violated any criminal laws or federal ethics regulations.

Census Games: Last night Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, one of the administration’s most ardent pro tariff guys, announced another change that could have a long lasting impact on who runs the country.  He announced that the 2020 US census will include a question asking participants about their citizenship status.  The citizenship question hasn’t appeared in the US Census questionnaire since 1950, its reappearance is controversial because it’s likely to skew results, undercounting immigrant communities, already distrustful of an increasingly xenophobic administration.  Ross’s assertion is that adding a question about citizenship status will help enforce the Voting Rights Act by preventing voting violations, a premise tied to Trump’s false allegation that millions of illegal residents voted for Hillary Clinton in the last election.  The census has little to do with who shows up to vote but does have a huge and long lasting impact on the determination of the number of Congressional seats allocated to each state and also directly impacts the allocation of federal resources for virtually everything.  Bottom line, the change will likely disadvantage blue states over red states.  California has already announced plans to sue, again. The census change will also add costs to the whole census process, pre testing has already been undertaken on the old version of the census, it’s also likely that adding the immigration question will complicate census takers jobs, requiring multiple visits to fulfil their responsibilities.  As to Ross’s tariffs, the increasingly volatile stock markets rebounded almost 669 points yesterday mostly due to news about trade discussions with the Chinese.   

Cambridge Analytica: Cambridge Analytica didn’t just interfere in the US elections, they were also involved in the Brexit vote, working on the side of one or more of the groups that advocated for Britain to exit the European community.  Now a whistle blower is alleging that one of those groups, Vote Leave, channeled money to a firm linked to Cambridge Analytica in a breach of local electoral law.  The allegations reach up to two of Prime Minister May’s leading secretaries, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who were both leading members of Vote Leave.  The whistle blower also alleges that Cambridge Analytica violated US election laws by sending foreign employees to work on the US 2014 midterm election campaigns despite being warned by their law firm that such actions would be a violation of US law.  Cambridge Analytica disregarded the advice, which came from Greenberg Traurig, Rudy Giuliani’s law firm, because, at least according to the whistleblower, directors Steve Bannon, Rebekah Mercer and CEO Alexander Nix just didn’t care.