More Trumpkins?!?

The New York Front:  The investigation of Michael Cohen’s activities on behalf of Trump got even weirder yesterday after The New Yorker published another one of Ronan Farrow’s articles about men behaving badly.  The subject of the article was a statement made by a former Trump doorman named Dino Sajudin who was paid $30,000 by the David Pecker owned American Media, the owner of the National Enquirer, for a story about a Trump paternity claim. Following the publication of the Farrow piece,  Sajudin confirmed the story by saying that “while working at Trump World Tower I was instructed not to criticize President Trump's former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump which produced a child.”  The allegation is that this was another “catch and kill” action by Trump’s good friend Pecker, likely done in consultation with Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen who seems to have been in control of an endless pool of money set aside to keep stories about Trump’s bad behavior out of the press in the run up to the election.  For the record, although various news outlets, including The New Yorker, have approached the woman in question, she denies that Trump is the father of her now grown up child.  Although the possibility of another Trump child running amok is scary in and of itself, what makes this story interesting and of concern to investigators is the financial payment and how it ties into the  payments made to adult movie star Stormy Daniels and Playboy model Karen McDougal.  McDougal’s $150,000 payment also came from David Pecker’s American Media.  No one, especially the FBI, believes that Pecker, whose company has been experiencing financial stress, made these payments out of his own pocket. Whoever made the payments, and that who is probably Cohen on behalf of Trump, they probably represented violations of campaign finance laws.  The Michael Cohen story gained even more traction last night after it was reported that Cohen has a habit of taping conversations and has been known to play back some of those “tapes” to prove disputed conversations had really taken place.  Apparently, those recordings, to the extent that they exist and they probably do, are now in the hands of the FBI and may have been part of what the agents were seeking in the first place when they raided Cohen’s office and residences.  Furthermore, Stormy Daniels lawyer, the now famous and very talkative Michael Avenatti, disclosed last night that he had just been informed that Cohen will be filing a motion to temporarily stop Stormy Daniel’s defamation case and that the grounds for that motion are going to be that it is his intention to plead the Fifth Amendment against self-incrimination if the case goes forward." In other words Cohen doesn’t want to admit in court that he made payments on behalf of Trump to keep information about Trump’s infidelities, infidelities that no one really cared about, out of the news in the run up to the election.       

The Mueller Update:  Yesterday NBC reported that Trump’s legal team has ended negotiations with Special Counsel Mueller about the terms of a Trump interview because Trump, who now may actually be listening to his lawyers’ advice, has decided not to spend any time with Mueller.  NBC reports that though negotiations had gotten further along than anyone realized, they are now off “with prospects for a presidential interview drastically dimmed” by the raid of Michael Cohen’s office and homes.  The expectation is that Mueller will now move forward with his first report, one that will address obstruction of justice. To that end NBC reports that Mueller will focus on Trump’s  “intent to fire former FBI Director James Comey; his role in the crafting of a misleading public statement on the nature of a June 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son and Russians; Trump’s dangling of pardons before grand jury witnesses who might testify against him; and pressuring Attorney General Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.” To the extent that NBC is correct about Trump’s decision not to speak with Mueller, it is expected that this chapter of the Mueller report will be out sooner, rather than later, perhaps as early as May. Of course the completion of that “chapter” assumes that Trump doesn’t do anything to upend the Mueller investigation before then, a fairly big assumption.  While Trump considers whether or not he could actually get away with firing some combination of Mueller, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein or Attorney General Sessions, his spin masters have been going after Mueller and Rosenstein by relentlessly attacking their credentials and their motivation and, in the case of Rosenstein, claiming that he should recuse himself and move aside to allow a more Trump friendly person, whoever that might be, take over the supervision of what will then become a substantially shrunk investigation.  Check out Fox News if you want to get a feel for their talking points, or should I say “attack strategy.”

The War Zones:  Despite tweeting that a bombing raid on Syria was imminent, Trump still hasn’t taken action, probably because Secretary of Defense Mattis is sitting on his trigger finger. Apparently, Mattis wasn’t on board in the first place and isn’t all that happy with Trump’s twitter threats and promises to attack.  Mattis remains concerned that too aggressive an action, and it’s hard to think that bombing raids aren’t aggressive, will result in a wider conflict with Russia, who is more or less in control of Assad’s Syria. At this point Trump’s threats have probably backed Mattis into a corner, some action will take place, but Mattis wants more time to plan and also wants to work with France’s Macron and the UK’s May, both of whom are now reported to be on board.  On the other front, the one against Jeff Bezos and Amazon, last night Trump announced that he is creating a task force to examine the Post Office and its business practices, focusing specifically on such things as how package rates for companies such as Amazon are set.  Specifically Trump announced that “The USPS is on an unsustainable financial path and must be restructured to prevent a taxpayer-funded bailout.” He’s put the frequently obsequious Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin who probably sends all of his mail by personal courier  in charge of the task force. Trump wants Mnuchin to consider reducing service to rural areas, one of those things that should go over really well with his base.  In any case, like the ill-fated commission that looked into non-existent voter fraud this task force could just be another one of those pointless exercises designed to help Trump vent his frustrations.  As to those frustrations, they are expected to grow even more this week.  Former FBI Director Comey starts his speaking tour and snippets of his book have already appeared in the press.  CNN describes the book as “nothing less than the most devastating, contemporaneous takedown of a sitting president in modern history.” And that was one of the nicest things said so far.  If Trump wants to hear nicer things, he should turn on the Senate confirmation hearing for Secretary of State nominee Mike Pompeo.  Yesterday while being questioned by a group of somewhat suspicious Senators, most but not all of them Democrats, Pompeo refused to say much if anything about the Russia investigation because though he acknowledges they meddled, he knows too much as CIA director and anything he says might really piss off his master if he airs it in public.  When asked if he would step down in protest if Trump fired Mueller, Pompeo said he would not because his continued presence as Secretary of State would be more important than ever if such a thing were to happen.  He’s probably right about that given all of the uncertainty in the world, but still it’s hard warm up to Pompeo.  He will probably be confirmed shortly.   For now Trump may be seeking an end to another one of his wars, the one against the Trans Pacific Partnership.  It turns out that it might be easier to win points in the trade war with China if you are part of a coalition, even if it’s one that you promised your base that you would never consider joining.