Trump Unhinged

Petty and Mean:   Late Friday Attorney General Sessions fired Andrew McCabe the former Deputy, and one time Acting, Director of the FBI.  In theory McCabe was fired because an inspector general report concluded that he had been less than candid about a conversation that he had with the press about the investigation into the Clinton Foundation.  In reality, though McCabe may well have committed an offense, the process behind his dismissal was unusual and was most definitely accelerated because a vengeful Trump wants to do all he can to diminish the value of McCabe’s testimony to Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia investigation, particularly his testimony about what former FBI Director Comey told him about Trump conversations, like the time that Trump asked him to lay off former security advisor Michael Flynn or the time Trump asked him for his loyalty. Because he was fired on Friday, just two days before his retirement would have gone into effect, McCabe will lose the pension benefits that he had earned during his otherwise distinguished twenty-one year career at the FBI, or at least Trump wants him to lose those benefits.  A few Democratic Congressman have offered to retain McCabe for two days, a strategy that might help him retain his pension.  Trump the guy who’d  previously pardoned the racist and abusive Sheriff Joe Arpaio for far worse crimes had been relentlessly lobbing lethal tweets at McCabe for months, some of those tweets had called for him to be fired so Friday night’s action, was less than shocking but still it was ugly and made uglier by Trump’s tweet celebrating McCabe’s dismissal, “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI. A great day for Democracy.  Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy.  He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”  It’s unlikely that any of those FBI agents were happy to see a colleague lose his pension and though Comey may be a bit sanctimonious, deceitfulness is not one of his character flaws, but Trump has made his point, cross him and you will suffer, bigly.  As to Sessions, the man that Trump dismissively calls Mr. Magoo, for him this was a desperation play.  He is trying hard to cling on to his attorney general position and no doubt hopes that kowtowing to another one of Trump’s demands will help extend his tenure.  McCabe isn’t going away quietly, Friday night he released a statement defending himself against the inspector general’s report, asserting that he had acted appropriately and within the boundaries of his job and calling his firing out for what it was, a meanspirited political move by Trump to discredit him in an effort to impugn the credibility of the Mueller investigation and by Saturday he let it be known that he, like Comey, had memorialized his Trump interactions in contemporaneous memos, memos already in Mueller’s hands.  As the weekend progressed, an emboldened and frenzied Trump continued his tweet tirade only this time, in addition to attacking McCabe, he attacked Mueller and his investigation, calling out all of Mueller’s team for being Hillary loving Democrats, an accusation that plays well with the Trump base.  Trump lawyer, John Dowd also went after Mueller, calling for him to end his “baseless” investigation, although his comments were scaled back when some of Trump’s other lawyers realized what he had done.  It goes without saying that Democrats are outraged by Trump’s increasingly hostile tweets against Mueller and his involvement in and celebration of the McCabe dismissal. Former members of the intelligence services are as well, James Comey, whose book tour begins shortly, tweeted “the American people will hear my story very soon…. and they can judge for themselves who is honorable and who is not.” Former CIA Director John Brennan said “When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history.”  This time around a few Republicans, including Senators Graham, Rubio, McCain and Flake and Congressman Trey Gowdy, also chimed in, questioning Trump’s tweets, warning that firing Mueller would backfire.  Sadly, they remain in the minority and Republican leadership remains largely silent.  It’s not clear what happens next, but suffice it to say, if it involves the dismissal of Mueller, and given Trump’s increasingly unhinged tweets, it probably will, it won’t be pretty.  

The Stormy Chronicles:  The tale of Trump and the porn star continues to spiral out of control.  Friday morning Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniels attorney, revealed to Morning Joe’s Mika Brzezinski that Stormy had been physically threatened.  Though he didn’t provide any details about the timing of the threats or who had threatened her, he implied that the person or persons were associated with Trump, leaving the distinct impression that the threatening party was probably Trump’s lawyer and frequent fixer, Michael Cohen. On Sunday Avenatti later CNN's Jake Taper that some of the incidents against Stormy happened during the Trump presidency.  Avenatti also disclosed that he’d been approached by six more “Trump” women and that at least two of them had entered into “hush” agreements with Trump.  As of yet he has not taken any of these women on as clients because he wants to fully vet them to make sure that their accusations are “kosher.”  Although, no one from the Trump team commented on Avenatti’s accusations, the slippery complicit Sarah Huckabee Sanders sidestepped a question by just saying that threats against women are bad. Late Friday, Trump’s lawyers, including his most recent acquisition, Charles Harder, filed a motion to have the Stormy case moved from a California state court to a Federal court, a move that would benefit Trump.  Harder’s addition to the Trump legal team is notable and provides an indication that Trump is playing serious hardball with Stormy.  Harder represented Hulk Hogan in his successful case against Gawker, winning an award that put Gawker out of business.  He also represented Melania in her libel case against the Daily Mail, a case that resulted in an apology and a $2.9 million award.  With Harder on board, Trump is now seeking $20 million from Stormy, asserting that her non-disclosure agreement includes a provision that makes her liable for $1 million every time she breaches its terms.  Obviously, Stormy, who is paying her own attorney with money raised from a legal crowd funding website, does not have those kind of deep pockets.  Avenatti responded using Trump’s favorite media, tweeting with caps, “The fact that a sitting president is pursuing over $20M in bogus 'damages' against a private citizen, who is only trying to tell the public what really happened, is remarkable. Likely unprecedented in our history. We are NOT going away and we will NOT be intimidated.”  Stormy’s 60 Minutes interview is still scheduled to air on Sunday night, at that point we may learn whether Trump is trying to silence her because she has embarrassing pictures and correspondence or whether he fears that her interview will embolden other “Stormy” women to come forward or both. It’s not just the Stormys of the world that Trump is trying to keep silent.  Last night the Washington Post reported that all of Trump’s senior staff have been required to sign non-disclosure agreements, another attempt by Trump to prevent leaks and any more tell-all books.  Clearly the leaking has gone on anyway and in all likelihood there will also be some fairly critical books, and though it’s questionable that those agreements are legal, there will probably be more law suits.    

               

Data Manipulators:  Mueller is examining Cambridge Analytica, the data mining and analytical firm, financed in part by the ultra-conservative Mercer family, that was retained by Stephen Bannon and the Trump campaign team to help with the targeting and manipulation of potential voters during the 2016 election. Apparently Cambridge Analytica deceptively accessed and then used Facebook data to exploit the social data of 50 million Facebook users.  A significant number of the people working for Cambridge Analytica were London based foreign nationals, their involvement was quite possibly a violation of US election laws prohibiting foreign intervention in US elections.  Brad Parscale, Trump and Jared Kushner’s data guru and the recently appointed head of Trump’s 2020 reelection campaign worked closely with the Cambridge Analytica team. Without question, despite his assertions that he did nothing out of the norm, Parscale’s actions are now being carefully scrutinized by Mueller’s team. As is Kushner’s involvement, it can’t help him that shortly after the election he bragged about how under his watch the Trump team was able to keep their campaign expenses down through the efficient and innovative use of data analytics.  Mueller may conclude that innovative is just Trump speak  for criminal.  Facebook may not have intentionally cooperated with Cambridge Analytica but they don’t come out of this situation blameless, they appear to have been both lax in the way they shared their data and, once caught, unwilling to come completely clean about their actions. They’ve now banned Cambridge Analytica from Facebook, a little bit like closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. 

Other Stuff:  Here’s a shocker, the Russian election results are in and Putin is the winner, again.  Also, adding to the woes of the Kushner family, the Associated Press reports that while Jared Kushner was in charge, the company falsified reports about the number of rent stabilized tenants in its buildings in order to get permits to proceed with tenant disrupting upgrades that allowed the company to profitably sell the buildings for substantially higher prices.  Like the results of the Russian elections, this is neither good or shocking, however, it proves once again why Kushner and his family would have been far better off if he had stayed in New York, out of the Trump limelight and away from the probing eyes of the press and Mueller.