Hope and Guns

HopeLess:  Trump’s surrogate daughter, White House Communications Director Hope Hicks, is in the process of self-deporting herself from the White House back to the comfy confines of her parents’ Connecticut home.  The party line at the White House is that exhausted by the drama of working with Trump and somewhat freaked about by the attention she’d received about her relationship with serial wife abuser Rob Porter, she’d been planning her departure for a while. Though that’s possible it’s hardly a coincidence that she rushed her announcement out the day after she told the House Intelligence Committee that to be good at her job she had to lie, just little white lies, but lies nevertheless. The NY Post reports that Trump, generally one of his “Hopey’s” biggest supporters, ripped into her for revealing that lying went with working in his White House.  Immediately after he yelled at her, Hope, the Communications Director who should have known that resigning so close to her House testimony would leave the impression that she was running from her little white lies comment, was so upset that she rushed out her resignation announcement.  Hope, who had been known as the Trump whisperer for her ability to walk  Trump back from some of his worst instincts, will be missed by Trump but won’t be all that missed by Chief of Staff Kelly who has been angling to replace her with someone more experienced and less chummy with the boss. Although Greenwich beckons, Hope won’t be able to shake off her Washington days right away.  She was in the mix of many of the events that are under investigation by Special Counsel Mueller, including the deceptive letter that she helped write on Air Force One, the one that tried to characterize Don Jr.’s meeting with Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya as a discussion about aiding poor Russian orphans.  Among other things Mueller is focusing on whether or not she told Don Jr that telling one of those “white” lies about that meeting was okay because no one would ever be the wiser. Like it or not, she could be responsible for helping prove that Trump obstructed justice. Her legal exposure and bills will accompany her back to Greenwich.      

Russia, Russia, Russia:  Despite Trump’s repeated assertions that there’s been NO COLLUSION and NO OBSTRUCTION the investigation goes on and both remain on the table. Based primarily on conversations with those who’ve been called in to speak with Mueller’s team, NBC News reports that Mueller’s team is examining the timeline of events surrounding the release of the DNC and Podesta emails. Those  willing to talk about their time on the Mueller hot seat report that his team was thoroughly informed on the  timeline of events from the day that the DNC servers were first breached, to “coffee boy” Papadopoulos’ drunken conversation with the Australian diplomat, through to the coincident Podesta dump on the day that the Access Hollywood tape was leaked. Among other things Mueller’s team is focusing on the involvement of Trump’s longtime friend and sometime campaign team member, Roger Stone, who has claimed and then retracted claims that he had direct and repeated contact with someone at WikiLeaks about the emails.  Most significantly for Trump, the Mueller team is also trying to get to the bottom of his 145 calls for the Russians to release “Hillary’s emails” to determine what and when he knew about the emails and whether or not he really was signaling the Russians that it was time for them to begin the “dump.” Mueller is also looking into Trump’s relationship with  Attorney General Sessions, focusing on whether or not he really planned to fire him in an attempt to obstruct the Russia investigation.  For his part Trump has been throwing further fuel on the Sessions’ fire.  Yesterday, Trump started the day by tweet attacking Sessions for assigning the investigation of the FISA process that led to the Carter Page warrant to the Department of Justice Inspector General, Michael Horowitz, claiming that Horowitz was biased and not up to the task.  So much was wrong with that tweet, first Horowitz is up to the task and is known for being tough to both Democratic and Republican administrations and, more importantly, there really isn’t much of a need for the investigation, as indicated in the Democrat’s rebuttal memo, there was nothing wrong with the FISA application that resulted in the issuance of the Page warrant.  Sessions, who Trump now calls Mr. Magoo for his uncanny resemblance to the cartoon character, snapped back at Trump saying "As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution."  In a show of Justice Department unity, last night Sessions was seen out to dinner with Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Solicitor General Noel Francisco, the guy who would take over the Russia investigation if Rosenstein was fired.

Kushner Potshots:  Jared Kushner isn’t having a good week.  First, he lost his security clearance, then it was revealed that officials from at least four countries were overhead discussing how they could take advantage of his financial vulnerabilities and that was the good part of his week. Yesterday Reuters reported that the New York State Department of Financial Services has requested that Deutsche Bank, Signature Bank and New York Community Bank provide information on loans and other financial arrangements provided to the Kushner family real estate business. As if that wasn’t enough, last night the New York Times reported that the Kushner businesses received loans from both Apollo Capital Management and Citigroup shortly after officials from the companies visited Kushner in his White House office. In the case of Apollo, the $184 million loan was three times larger than any other loan that Apollo had provided anyone else.  The Citigroup loan, which followed a visit by CEO Michael Corbat, totaled $325 million. Kushner’s lawyer and a Kushner company spokesperson deny that the meetings and the loans were related however, legitimate or not, the optics here are awful. Kushner maintains an interest in the properties that were refinanced with the loan proceeds, as such he should not have taken meetings with these or any other financial institutions while his company was seeking money.  Then again son in law’s are exempt from rules, or at least they used to be.

Gun Showmanship: Ordinarily Trump’s open to the cameras freewheeling meeting about gun legislation with an assortment of Republican and Democratic Congressmen and Senators from both sides of the aisle would have been the biggest news item of the day but then again this is Trump world, rules don’t apply.  Taking a page from his earlier but later reneged upon promise to sign any piece of immigration legislation that crossed his desk, Trump made a similar promise about gun legislation, he did his best to appear open minded about the possibility of passing some real gun restrictions.  He freaked out the Republicans, and probably the NRA, by telling the legislators to stop being afraid of their NRA funders.  He seemed to give his seal of approval to raising the purchase age for semi-automatic weapons to twenty-one and, much to the dismay of the recently shot Congressman Scalise, he rejected the idea of including concealed weapon reciprocity in any comprehensive legislation, not because he doesn’t like the provision but because he correctly believes that it would doom any legislation to failure.  He also called for the passage of a really great comprehensive bill that covers everything all at once, except for bump stocks, because despite the fact that they can only be outlawed legislatively he continues to say he’ll take care of them by executive action.  Trump’s motives are questionable, chocking too much into a piece of legislation would make it impossible to pass and by not so subtly highlighting the different views of the various sides of the Democratic party by putting the more gun friendly West Virginia Manchin on the spot a few times, he made it clear that it wasn’t just Republicans who oppose the outlawing of semi-automatic weapons.  In one amusing moment, Senator Feinstein tried to school Trump on the real life impact that gun regulations have on decreasing gun related deaths. Sadly for Feinstein and the rest of us, it wasn’t clear that he could read her carefully written notes. Trump and a number of the Republicans pushed for hardening schools by arming teachers.  While they were making their argument, a teacher in Georgia proved how stupid that idea is by going nuts and shooting off his gun. Though Florida’s Marco Rubio was at the meeting, Florida’s Democratic Senator Bill Nelson wasn’t invited because he’s up for reelection and Trump didn’t want to give him an opportunity to showcase his views. Mostly the meeting was more Kabuki theatre.  Nevertheless, the corporate sector continues to respond to the persuasive pleas of the Parkland students.  Dick’s Sporting Goods is ending the sale of all assault style weapons and high-capacity magazines and will also require that any gun buyer be at least 21, regardless of applicable local laws.  Walmart announced that they will also impose the 21 year age restriction and that they will no longer sell items resembling assault-style rifles including toys and air guns.  Walmart discontinued sales of AR-15 style weapons in 2015.  

Hag Samaech. Happy Purim to all!