Side Effects

The Korea Conundrum:  Last night  Secretary of State Pompeo dined with Kim Yong Choi, North Korea’s former military intelligence chief, who arrived from Pyongyang to negotiate the agenda for the upcoming on again, off again meeting between Trump and North Korea leader Kim Jong Un. Kim Yong Choi is on the US sanctions list and ordinarily wouldn’t be allowed to visit the US, however the US lifted those restrictions given the importance of figuring out the topics for the upcoming meeting.  Pompeo and Kim Yong Choi plan to continue their conversation today, a good thing because they have lots to discuss. Odds are that Kim Yong Choi knows what North Korea is willing to put on the table which puts him far ahead of Pompeo.  Reports are that the Trump administration is at internal odds over what they would be willing to negotiate.  Though Trump has stated time and again that immediate denuclearization is his goal, no decision has been made over whether or not he would be willing to allow the North Koreans to pursue civilian use of their nuclear capability or whether he would be willing to sign off on an incremental approach to the elimination of North Korea’s nukes.  In discussions with some allies, the Trump team has also said that they want to see the elimination of North Korea’s chemical and biological weapons.  And then there is the whole discussion of missile capability and whether or not the elimination of both long range and short range missiles should be required.  If all of these issues sound familiar it’s because they are, they are the same issues that the Obama administration faced when they negotiated the nuclear deal with Iran, the deal that Trump subsequently rejected because of its lack of comprehensiveness.  As to the North Koreans, their definition of denuclearization calls for the US to remove its nuclear capability from the Korean peninsula, something that’s not going to happen.  Bottom line, Trump and has team really should get their ducks in order before Trump meets with Kim Jung Un.  Sadly, they probably won’t, though he excels at heated rhetoric, details and preparation aren’t among Trump’s strongpoints.

The Investigations:  Yesterday, we all got an update on the status of the review of the documents and tapes seized from Trump fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s office.  Judge Kimba Wood wants the review process to be accelerated and has made it clear to Cohen’s lawyers that despite their pushback and stalling tactics she expects the review of the remaining “millions” of files to be completed by June 15.  We also learned that of the one million files reviewed to date only 250 were determined to contain privileged information, that the FBI has sent a few of Cohen’s blackberry’s to Quantico for their analysis and that the FBI has a team playing puzzle master with the documents that Cohen shredded before the FBI raid.  Whatever he shredded, Cohen should be concerned, apparently the FBI is very good at putting shredded paper back together.  Moreover, the fact that any documents were shredded justifies the FBI’s decision to raid Cohen’s premises in the first place.  Judge Wood also threw shade at Stormy Daniel’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti.  Apparently she isn’t all that fond of his talk show appearances and though she said that he has the right to advocate in public she doesn’t want him in her court room.  Avenatti responded by telling anyone who would listen that he’s absolutely positive that Cohen retained tapes of some of his conversations with Trump and that some of those conversations were about the Stormy Daniels case.  He wants them made available immediately if not sooner.  We also learned yesterday that Andrew McCabe, the former Acting Director of the FBI was another one of those guys who memorialized his thoughts in contemporaneous notes.  Among other things his records describe his conversations with Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein about the firing of former FBI Director Comey.  McCabe’s notes say that Trump wanted Rosenstein to mention his dismay over the Russia investigation in the Comey dismissal letter, the one that Rosenstein drafted at Trump’s request.  Ultimately the Russia related language was deleted from the final draft but McCabe’s notes and earlier versions of the letter live on, in Special Counsel Mueller’s office and are now filed under O for obstruction..  

Other News:  Though Trump gave himself an A plus for his handling of last year’s hurricanes, we’ve known for a while that at least with regard to Puerto Rico, he probably didn’t deserve anything higher than a D.  Now by virtue of a recently released Harvard University study, we know that things were even worse in Puerto Rico than anyone imagined.  The Harvard study concludes that 4,645 people died as a result of the hurricane, far more than the 64 deaths earlier reported and cited by Trump and Puerto Rico’s governor days after the storm.  Harvard’s higher mortality numbers include thousands of people who died later from storm related trauma and the failure to obtain the kind of medical treatment, including dialysis and diabetes care, that became unavailable in Puerto Rico during the days, weeks and months following the storms.  To be fair, many of Puerto Rico’s problems were and continue to be attributable to local government mismanagement but that said, many are also due to Trump’s failure to adequately allocate resources to the largely Democratic island full of US citizens who he seems to have forgotten are really US citizens.  On Tuesday it was reported that Arkady Babchenko, one of those Russian journalists who regularly reports on Putin’s corruption, had been killed in Ukraine by a Kremlin directed assassination team.  Yesterday we learned that Babchenko is alive.  Apparently, though he really was a target of another one of those Russian hit squads, with the help of Ukrainian officials, he managed to escape the hit, instead faking his death as part of a sting operation to catch the killers.  Though one of the attempted murders, a local for hire hitman, was captured, another, the person more directly involved with the Kremlin escaped.  As to Babchenko so far he is just fine and he hopes to stay that way. His wife, however,  is reported to be somewhat livid.  Apparently, she was kept in the dark about the sting and had already started mourning. Putin called the whole thing out as another one of those silly charades.  Trump had nothing to say about the Kremlin attempt on Babchenko’s life and little to say to Roseanne Barr about her racist tirade, the one that she blamed on Ambien, a side effect that Sanofi the company that manufactures the sleeping pill wants you to know is not associated with their drug.  However,  Trump is fairly upset with Disney’s Bob Iger.  Specifically he tweeted “Bob Iger of ABC called Valerie Jarrett to let her know that ‘ABC does not tolerate comments like those’ made by Roseanne Barr. Gee, he never called President Donald J. Trump to apologize for the HORRIBLE statements made and said about me on ABC. Maybe I just didn’t get the call?”  Just another ordinary day in the Trump centric world.

Hamburgers

Racial Politics:  Yesterday while Starbucks stores across the country were preparing to close for racial bias training, Roseanne Barr decided to weigh in on race relations in America with a few tweets of her own.  She attacked George Soros, the Hungarian born Jewish financier, by calling the WWII survivor a Nazi, she attacked Chelsea Clinton, suggesting that she was married to one of “that Nazi” Soros’ nephews, and then capped off her tirade by going after former Obama aide Valerie Jarett by comparing her to an ape.  No one, least of all ABC, should have been all that surprised by Barr’s tweets, they were totally in character.  Still it is commendable that ABC management reacted swiftly, mostly to the Jarett tweet, by ditching Roseanne and her highly rated program, the one they revived in an effort to appeal to Trump’s base.  Stations rebroadcasting old Roseanne episodes followed suit.   As to that base, though Trump remained silent, refusing to answer questions about Barr’s anti-Semitic and racist tweets, a number of his supporters, including  current and former Fox pundits  Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, weighed in against Barr’s rants and in support of ABC’s action. For his part Trump Jr expressed his approval of Barr and her views by retweeting out her tweets early in the day.  Taking a page from his father’s book, he later called reports of his retweets “fake news” even though they weren’t.  For his part Trump Sr flew off to Tennessee to a political rally in support of Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn, the Republican candidate running to replace retiring Senator Corker in the upcoming 2018 election.  He stuck to his usual themes and lies.  He attacked the Russia investigation calling “Spygate” the worst scandal ever,  bragged about his much coveted Mexico wall, saying that in the end they will pay for it, a statement that was quickly slapped back by Mexico President Pena Nieto who tweeted in real time  “NO. Mexico will NEVER pay for a wall. Not now, not ever.”   He attacked Blackburn’s Democratic opponent, former Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen by saying that he “never heard of this guy, who is he? Who is he?” before then saying that “he's an absolute, total tool of Chuck -- of Chuck Schumer. He's a tool of Chuck Schumer and of course the MS-13 lover Nancy Pelosi." In other domestic news, Missouri Governor Greitens, who has been accused of some really outrageous sexually improprieties, finally announced that he will be stepping down shortly, news that is making Republicans everywhere much happier.  They are hoping to knock out Missouri’s Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill, one of the more vulnerable Democrats up for reelection in the fall, and the overhang from the Greitens scandal was making their job more difficult.       

The Russian Front:  While Trump was rallying in Tennessee, the NY Times reported that his nemesis Special Counsel Mueller is focusing on Trump’s efforts to convince Attorney General Sessions to “unrecuse” from the Russia investigation.  Based on interviews with a number of former and current Trump staffers, the people who are always willing to talk off the record to anyone and everyone from the press, the NY Times reports that in March 2017 while working on one of the iterations of the Muslim travel ban Sessions flew down to Mar a Lago because he needed immediate input from Trump who was so upset with him over his recusal from the Russia investigation that he wouldn’t return his calls.  Once he arrived  at what Trump likes to call his Winter White House, Sessions couldn’t get Trump to focus on the travel ban because all Trump wanted to do was press him to change his mind about his recusal from anything having to do with the Russia investigation.  Sessions, who had recused himself in the first place after being told by Justice officials that he had to recuse himself because of his involvement in the Trump campaign and his meeting with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, the one that he had forgotten to mention to the Senate during his confirmation hearing, stood firm, staying recused essentially because he had no choice. Despite their failure to say much if anything publicly, the NY Times reports that Republican leaders in the Senate have made it clear to Trump that he has to stop directing aides to fire Sessions.  As far as they are concerned, Trump is stuck with Sessions, if he tries to replace him the Senators have told him that they won’t confirm a replacement. For the most part Republicans have also ignored or stayed quiet about Trump’s “Spygate” claims.  However, yesterday Trey Gowdy, who together with Trump toady Devon Nunes participated in last week’s inappropriate document “reveal” meeting with the FBI and Justice said that he saw nothing in the meeting that would lead him to believe that the FBI acted inappropriately by asking an informant to assist in their investigation of the activities of Trump campaign aides Page, Papadopoulos and Clovis.  He said "I am even more convinced that the FBI did exactly what my fellow citizens would want them to do when they got the information they got.”  He went on to say that at least for now Trump is not a subject of the investigation.  He said this on Fox News, the station that serves as Trump’s official mouthpiece.  Gowdy, Chairman of the House Oversight Committee, is another one of those Republicans not seeking reelection in November.  Despite Gowdy’s report that he saw nothing inappropriate, Rudy Giuliani insists that Trump will not sit for an interview with Mueller unless he, Rudy and the rest of the Trump legal team get to look at the evidence that Gowdy, Nunes and the Gang of Eight got to see last week.      

Hold the Fries:  Political turmoil in Italy drove the stock markets down yesterday.  The drop was due to concerns that when an Italian government is finally formed it will be made up of “euroskeptic” parties, increasing the chance that Italy withdraws from the Euro currency something that would be very destabilizing for the currency, for the rest of Europe and the markets.  Adding to market turbulence, the Trump administration ramped up the trade war with China by announcing tariffs on $50 billion worth of goods and by placing limitations on investments in high tech industries.  The China news was surprising because just last week Treasury Secretary Mnuchin announced that the trade war was on hold and because, despite Congressional pushback,  Trump continues to press for the easing of sanctions on ZTE, the Chinese telecom company that has a history of stealing intellectual property, creating phones that spy on users and doing business with North Korea and Iran.  Commerce Secretary Wilbur Mills is on his way to China for trade discussions making it possible that the tariff announcement is part of a bargaining strategy but that theory didn’t stop the markets from slumping. Regardless of what happens, Ivanka Trump and her businesses are coming out ahead, more of her patents have been approved by the Chinese government because she’s Ivanka and you are not. As to North Korea, the march towards the June 12 Summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un continues even though the two sides remain miles apart on a definition of denuclearization, a chasm that was highlighted by yesterday’s report that a recent CIA analysis of North Korea’s intentions concluded that Kim Jong Un has no intention of giving up his nukes but would be willing to permit the opening of a US hamburger outpost in Pyongyang.  Extra toppings for all.          

Amber Alert

Maybe Yes, Maybe No:  The Singapore Summit between Trump and Kim Jong Un appears to be on again, at least for now.  Although Trump cited Kim’s nasty comments about Pence as well as the other hostile statements emanating from the hermit kingdom as the primary reason that he had sent the “Dear John” letter pulling out of the summit, it’s likely that  Trump’s decision was based more on the fact that the North Koreans had stood up a US advance team, leaving them twiddling their thumbs in Singapore for three days.  Regardless of the reason, Trump’s decision to pull out sent South Korean President Moon, who has staked his reputation on advancing peace with his North Korean neighbors, into panic mode.  His efforts to revive summit preparation appears to be working so much so that over the weekend Trump sent teams to both Singapore and North Korea to discuss logistics and to lay the groundwork for points of discussion.  They appear to be trying to come up with a definition of denuclearization that would work for both sides, which could represent an admission by Trump that complete denuclearization is probably really off the table.  A senior North Korean intelligence officer is on his way to Washington for further discussions and the US has delayed the implementation of a new round of sanctions against North Korean interests that had been announced.  For his part, although he’s still remaining coy about plans and timetables, Trump seems more motivated than ever to proceed with the summit.  Although he still has his eye on that Nobel prize, he’s appears to be equally focused on coming up with a publicly acceptable excuse for deferring or indefinitely postponing any sit down with his nemesis, Special Counsel Mueller.  To that end, the loquacious Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s current spokesperson, again made it clear that it would be inappropriate for Trump to spend any time preparing for or sitting with Mueller, especially if that time interfered with his Korean preparation, to the extent he really plans to do any, or more importantly his time on the greens.  With regard to that problematic Russia thing, Trump continued his tweet attack again harping on what he is still calling “Spygate,” again asserting that the Obama administration inserted a spy into his campaign, a move that he says, makes Watergate look like a blip on the radar screen and delegitimizes the basis for the whole Mueller investigation.  In one tweet he went so far as to say that “With Spies, or ‘Informants’ as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign, even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or ‘Justice’ contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?”  Of course, the FBI did alert him early in the campaign, warning him to look out for Russian’s bearing campaign gifts and requesting that his campaign call in immediately if any of those wily Boris or Natashas showed up at the Trump Tower entrance.  As we know, instead of barring their entrance and calling the Feds, the Trumpsters welcomed them in. Maybe one or more Trumpsters failed to realize that a Natalia counted as a Natasha?   In what may be an admission that Trump’s team did collude, Giuliani is now saying that efforts to discredit the Mueller investigation, including the “Spygate” accusations are part of a public relations campaign aimed at staving off impeachment.  He told CNN’s State of the Union that “because eventually the decision here is going to be impeach or not impeach” its important to get out there and convince Trump’s base and anyone else who’s on the fence that the investigation is just another one of those Obama-Hillary plots to delegitimize Trump’s election victory.  Trump and his team hope that turning the election into a referendum on impeachment will energize Republican voters who might otherwise stay home to show up and vote for Republican candidates in November. For their part, Democratic leadership is trying to downplay that narrative because their best shot at achieving a “blue wave” in November relies on Democratic voter enthusiasm outweighing Republican impeachment fears.  Republicans lost another incumbent this weekend when Virginia Republican Tom Garrett, a Freedom Caucus member, pulled out of his race saying that as everyone who knows him knows he is an alcoholic who needs to get his life in order.  To retake Congress, Democrats will need all the help they can get, various polls show that the Republican “impeachment strategy” is working, the likelihood of a huge Democratic wave may be vaporating.   

Amber Alert:  The other big story of the weekend focused on the 1475 immigrant kids who appear to be missing.   For the most part, that number reflects unaccompanied minors who crossed the Mexican-US border illegally, were scooped up by INS and delivered to the Department of Health and Human services who then placed them in foster homes before losing track of them.   It’s likely that most of those children are okay, possibly with relatives who are avoiding prying government eyes but it’s also likely that some of them are being mistreated, trafficked, or worse.  In any case, the report that they are missing from the system has raised quite a few eyebrows particularly as it follows recent news that Homeland Security is now separating minors from the parents at the border.  Many of those being separated are families, primarily mothers and children presenting themselves as refugees seeking protection from violence at home. For the most part these are women and children coming from countries other than Mexico.  In an attempt to deflect criticism for the implementation of this policy, Trump again lashed out at his predecessor and the Democrats with the curious all-encompassing tweet:  “Put pressure on the Democrats to end the horrible law that separates children from there parents once they cross the Border into the U.S. Catch and Release, Lottery and Chain must also go with it and we MUST continue building the WALL! DEMOCRATS ARE PROTECTING MS-13 THUGS.” No where in his tweet does he mention that under his direction Attorney General Sessions announced a "zero tolerance" approach to illegal border crossings last month by saying "If you are smuggling a child then we will prosecute you, and that child will be separated from you as required by law" a policy that the Kirstjen Nielsen led Homeland Security Department is  now following.  It’s not that Trump cares much about the separation of children from mothers, he just didn’t anticipate that  videos of young children being pulled from their mother’s arms might go viral.  As to efforts to blame Obama and the Democrats, the law that Trump appears to be referencing bans the incarceration of immigrant children. During the Obama era, to avoid violating that law, mothers with children were released under their own recognizance. Sessions and by extension Trump have concluded that such a policy is too lenient because it “encourages illegal immigration” so their solution is the separation of children from moms.  And now they are facing the consequences of their callousness, at least until Trump comes up with a new more outrageous diversion.

Notable Lying:  Before plans for the Singapore Summit got back on track, or what appears to be back on track, the White House Communications team held an off the record meeting with reporters to discuss the ongoing efforts to revive the Summit.  Following the meeting, which was attended by representatives of a number of news outlets, the NY Times published a story quoting a statement made by one of the White House officials who spoke and since it was an off the record meeting they cited the source as off the record.  Apparently Trump wasn’t all that happy with what his official had to say so he lashed out at the NY Times by tweet attacking the “failing” paper for quoting a “‘a senior White House official,’ who doesn’t exist, as saying ‘even if the meeting were reinstated, holding it on June 12 would be impossible, given the lack of time and the amount of planning needed.’ WRONG AGAIN! Use real people, not phony sources.”  As to that “phony” report and source later in the day the White House released a transcript of the meeting including the so called questionable remark.  The bottom line, Trump lies, he lies all the time, so much so that it seems almost ordinary, accept that it’s not.  Sadly, it is effective.

Broken Promises

So Much for Singapore:  Those coins commemorating the now cancelled Singapore meeting between Kim Jong Un and Donald J Trump went on sale yesterday despite Trump’s announcement that the meeting was off.  In all likelihood no one from South Korea, least of all President Moon Jae-in, lined up to buy any. Neither  Moon nor Japan’s Prime Minister Abe were given a head’s up about Trump’s decision, nor did they receive an advance copy of Trump’s very plaintive letter to the Little Rocket Man,  they learned about it about the same time the rest of us did and neither of them are all that happy about Trump’s decision nor are they pleased at the way they were treated.  The White House said that Trump elected to keep them in the dark because he feared that his decision would be leaked by one or more members of his sieve like White House staff before he was ready to make his formal announcement.  As to the decision to pull from the summit, Trump blamed it on Kim Jong Un’s increasingly hostile remarks, particularly the one where he called VP Pence a “political dummy” for comparing North Korea to Libya.  It also didn’t help that a North Korean delegation had failed to show up for scheduled pre-summit preparatory meetings and that the two leaders appear to be miles apart on their definition of what exactly constitutes denuclearization.  Reports are that never having been all that enthusiastic about the summit in the first place and then growing increasingly concerned about the likelihood that it would either be cancelled by Kim Jong Un or go forward with a less than unsatisfactory outcome, Pence and security advisor John Bolton had lobbied for the cancellation.  Despite their concerns, Trump ended his letter with an offer to meet with the North Korean leader sometime in the future when and if he changes his mind and gets his act together.  Overnight a North Korean spokesperson responded with an uncharacteristically calm statement saying that the country is “still open to talks with the US at any time and by any means” and though a meeting at some future day is still possible concerns are that  Trump and his advisors, especially Bolton, may be once considering, or at the very least threatening, that bloody nose preemptive attack, the one that would result in the death of tens of thousands of South Koreans and US soldiers.  Chinese President Xi certainly doesn’t want to see any war take place, but he is probably happy to see any US led peace effort fizzle because that gives him an opportunity to reassert his regional influence.  South Korea’s Moon is most unhappy, he’s staked his reputation on achieving peace with North Korea  and is likely to continue to press for some agreement.  Going forward its highly likely that Trump will find regional partners less willing to cooperate with the harsh sanctions that helped bring North Korea to the bargaining table in the first place.  So much for Trump’s “art of the deal.”   

Unwelcome Participation:  Those other meetings, the ones between selected members  of Congress, the Justice Department and the FBI did go forward yesterday however, the cast of characters invited to participate remained in flux up until moments before the meetings began.  At the last minute Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi was invited to the first meeting, the one that was initially going to be limited to Trump’s Republican soulmates Devon Nunes and Trey Gowdy.  Ever strategic, she ceded her spot to Adam Schiff, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, the very articulate and outspoken former prosecutor who prides himself for being a thorn in Nunes’ and Trump’s sides.  As expected Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, FBI Director Wray and Director of National Intelligence Coats were also present to share the information, or at least some of the information that Nunes and Gowdy had requested. House Speaker Ryan who had earlier said that a longstanding commitment would keep him from participating in any of the “reveal” meetings showed up to this one instead of the later meeting of the Gang of Eight and then flew off to his all-important commitment, a Republican fundraiser. Chief of Staff Kelly and Trump’s newest lawyer, Emmet Flood showed up as well.  Since the purpose of the meeting was to review information pertinent to the investigation into Trump and his campaign’s activities, their presence was unexpected and inappropriate and raised quite a few eyebrows. They didn’t stay long, departing after Flood made a few remarks about how Trump respected the need to protect human intelligence and valued the importance of openness, and by that he meant the importance of Trump getting hold of information that he wasn’t supposed to see even if that meant revealing an FBI asset.  Following this meeting a second similar meeting with the Gang of Eight minus Ryan took place.  Kelly and Flood attended the start of that meeting as well so that Flood could once again deliver his suspect “openness” remarks.   After the meetings the Republicans stayed largely silent, though its likely that Nunes surreptitiously ran to Trump to reveal anything that he learned.  Schiff speaking on behalf of the Democratic attendees at both meetings said that as expected they saw nothing to indicate that the FBI had acted inappropriately or that they had “inserted” a spy into the Trump campaign.  He then added that “Emmet Flood's presence and statement at the outset of both meetings was completely inappropriate.  Although he did not participate in the meetings which followed, as the White House's attorney handling the Special Counsel's investigation, his involvement — in any capacity — was entirely improper, and I made this clear to him." He also said that Flood’s presence "only underscores what Rudy Giuliani said: the President's legal team expects to use information gleaned improperly from the Justice Department or the President's allies in Congress to their legal advantage."  That last part was in response to a statement that the inexplicably candid Giuliani made earlier in the day.  Senator Warner, the lead Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee reiterated Schiff’s observation by tweeting  "the President's Chief of Staff and his attorney in an ongoing criminal investigation into the President's campaign have no business showing up to a classified intelligence briefing."  As to the Mueller investigation, it continues to move along but, despite Giuliani’s assertions to the contrary, is nowhere near completed.  Late yesterday Mueller’s team submitted a court filing requesting that press requests to obtain copies related to FBI searches and surveillances in the Manafort case be denied because of the ongoing state of the investigation.  The filing said that “the “investigation is not a closed matter, but an ongoing criminal investigation with multiple lines of non-public inquiry….within the overall scope of the Special Counsel’s authority. Many aspects of the investigation are factually and legally interconnected: they involve overlapping courses of conduct, relationships, and events, and they rely on similar sources, methods, and techniques. The investigation is not complete and its details remain non-public.”  The last part of that statement  reflects language typically seen in a crime family investigation, something that should ring a bell with Giuliani whose reputation was built when he helped break up the New York mob.  No wonder he and Trump are so concerned.   Trump’s team is probably also concerned about news on the Roger Stone front.  Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that emails between Stone and Randy Credico, the eccentric radio host who is particularly close to WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange, reveal that Stone was trying to use Credico as a conduit to Assange to obtain any Hillary Clinton related emails.  Stone’s requests were very specific, he even detailed the dates that most interested him.   Although Credico denies that he forwarded Stone’s requests to Assange or to Assange’s lawyers, the emails do provide evidence of Stone’s efforts on behalf of Trump.  Credico, who previously invoked the Fifth Amendment in his House testimony says he is now willing to be more cooperative with investigators and to that end has already met with Democratic staff of the House Intelligence Committee. If he hasn’t already, he will certainly be meeting with Mueller very soon.

Enjoy the holiday weekend!

Gaslighting

Spygate:  With things heating up on the Mueller front, Trump, abetted by his band of Congressional enablers and legal eagle Rudy Giuliani, is implementing and ramping up  his counterattack strategy.  That strategy involves attacking the “deep state” intelligence agencies, going after the Justice Department and decrying the illegitimacy of the Mueller investigation particularly Mueller’s  team of so called Hillary loving Democrats.  He’s also making full use of his branding skills and to that end has managed to turn the FBI’s use of a long time source, the one asked to figure out why Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis were having so much interaction with known Russian agents, into what he is now calling “Spygate,” the “biggest political scandal in history.” Sadly, the new catchword, a clever combination of spy and gate, the word that’s been attached to every scandal since Watergate, is now trending on twitter and is being used by journalists online, in print and on the air.  Sometime today, Chief of Staff Kelly and Congressmen Nunes and Gowdy will be sitting down with Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, FBI Director Wray and Director of National Intelligence Coats for a show and tell session where the Congressmen hope to see the highly confidential information about the “spy” that Trump claims was embedded in his campaign. As instructed by Trump, that information share was supposed to be limited to the two Republicans,  Nunes and Gowdy.  However after a day of uproar, initially from Democrats who were being intentionally excluded from the session and then from a group of Republican Senators, the White House agreed that there would be a second show and tell meeting after the Memorial Day weekend, a schedule that would have given Nunes and Gowdy plenty of time to leak out a twisted version of whatever they get to review, the White House caved, that second session will also take place today. Unlike the first session, the second one will include the Gang of Eight, the usual bipartisan complement of Senate and House leaders who typically are included in “top secret” intelligence briefings.  That expanded group includes Senators McConnell, Schumer, Burr and Warner and Representatives Pelosi, and Schiff.  House Speaker Ryan does not plan to attend because of a pre-existing, long term commitment, possibly a job interview for his next position, one as a highly paid lobbyist.  Not surprisingly, his decision to skip the meeting is raising lots of eyebrows across Washington because few can imagine what’s more important than attending the intel meeting and many more including Senators Grassley and Graham would really love a seat at the table.  Expectations are that despite Trump’s instructions the FBI team will do their best to limit what they share during the meetings in order to protect the investigation as much as they can.  And because, few really believe that the FBI did anything wrong in the first place, that Nunes and Gowdy will be sorely disappointed with what they get to see.  To that end Gowdy has already started complaining. Still as a result of these meetings Trump and his legal team are likely to get a view of some information that they shouldn’t be privy to during an active investigation. That said, Trump may have overplayed his hand, he probably didn’t expect the pushback that he received from Senate Republicans, most of whom have remained largely silent about his obstructive actions up until now.  Jeff Flake, one of the few Senate Republicans who has been speaking out won’t be in attendance at either of the meetings because he is not a member of the Gang of Eight but he continues to say what’s on his mind.  Yesterday, in a speech at Harvard he gave his boldest speech yet, calling Trump out by warning law school grads that “Our presidency has been debased by a figure who has a seemingly bottomless appetite for destruction and division and only a passing familiarity with how the Constitution works.”  It’s nice that Flake is speaking up, sadly he is on his way out of the Senate and despite his distaste for all things Trump, his remarks, though welcome, can’t cover for the fact that with the exception of immigration he voted in favor of Trump’s legislative agenda.  As to Giuliani, though he claims that he hasn’t spoken with Trump in weeks, the two remain in cahoots, the beneficiaries of some kind of Vulcan mind meld.  Giuliani has taken to defending Trump, not by claiming that Trump and his team are innocent of any campaign wrong doing, but instead by insisting that it was okay for them to take meetings with Russians and any other foreigners offering up information about Hillary because that’s something that anyone would do and because if they got anything at all out of any of those meetings, it was a gift and accepting “unsolicited” gifts from foreigners is alright. None of that is all that Kosher, but Giuliani figures if he says stuff like that enough, Trump’s base will buy in because after all he’s American’s Mayor, or at least he was.  Sadly enough, Trump and Giuliani’s disinformation campaign seems to be working.  CBS reports that a large swath of Americans believe that the Mueller investigation is politically motivated and aren’t even aware that a number of Trump associated individuals have been indicted and/or pleaded guilty to campaign related criminal activities.  Giuliani also reports that Trump will sit down for that off again on again interview with Mueller at some undetermined future date.  The current plan calls for Trump’s legal team to try to limit Mueller’s questions to a predetermined approved list, something that Mueller probably won’t sign off on.  Trump would then sit for the interview, but plead the Fifth whenever possible, something that is legally permissible but would ordinarily constitute political suicide.  However, Trump and Giuliani believe that he will be able to emerge unscathed because by then they will have so destroyed the legitimacy of the investigation and Mueller that no one will care.  Suffice it to say, Mueller has his work cut out for him and may want to consider hiring his own PR expert.        

Cohen’s Catastrophe:  Fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s problems mount daily.  Yesterday, a respected BBC journalist reported that after the inauguration Cohen, who is not a registered lobbyist, received a $400,000 payment from senior members of Ukraine’s government.  In exchange Cohen managed to arrange a meeting between Trump and Ukraine’s president Petro Poroshenko.  Poroshenko had been eager to meet with Trump in order to improve his country’s relationship with the guy that he didn’t think would win.  He was concerned that reports that Ukraine was cooperating with the Mueller investigation into former campaign Manafort’s nefarious relationship with Ukraine’s prior Russian influenced government would taint his relationship with the new administration as well as his ability to obtain the military equipment that he wanted. When Ukraine’s ambassador failed to obtain a meeting with Trump, he reached out to Cohen for assistance. After the Cohen arranged meeting with Trump took place, Poroshenko was so pleased that he directed the Ukrainian Anti-corruption officials responsible for investigating Russian era corruption to stop assisting Mueller.  Giuliani didn’t deny that the meeting took place, because it did take place, instead he said  "Payments can be proved pretty easily, so it would be silly to deny it if it happened," pretty much a Trumpian version of “whatever.” Ukraine officials deny the veracity of the BBC report, however it’s worth noting that Stormy Daniels lawyer Michael Avenatti earlier reported that payments from Ukraine were revealed on Michael Cohen’s suspicious activity reports, the banking reports that also revealed the now confirmed payments from ATT and Novartis.  Regarding payments, though Hope Hicks didn’t receive any from Ukraine she is receiving assistance with her legal bills .  The Republican National Committee paid $450,000 to the law firm representing her in the Russian probe.  Son in law Kushner has also been racking up legal expenses but his expenditures, which come out of his own pocket, may have paid off. Yesterday it was announced that his top secret security clearance has been restored.  His lawyer, Abby Lowell, possibly the most respected and able counsel hired by anyone associated with Trump, also reports that Kushner has had two rather lengthy meetings with Mueller including one seven hour session in April.  Lowell asserts that those meetings went really well and that Kushner is “probably” just a witness, and that he is “probably” not going to be indicted.

The Cabinet Chronicles: On Monday Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen proved that her earlier threats to resign were just an overreaction to being bullied by her exalted leader Trump.  Apparently, she wants to keep her job so much so that when she was asked about Russian election interference during her testimony before Congress earlier in the week she responded to a question about the 2016 election by saying that though she believed that the Russians had tried to meddle she had seen no evidence that they had weighed in on Trump’s side.  Her response raised quite a few eyebrows since virtually all of the intelligence agencies and the Senate Intelligence Committee have already gone on record saying that the Kremlin’s activities favored Trump.  After her remark the Department of Homeland Security released a statement clarifying that she might have misspoke.  CIA Head Mike Pompeo was asked a similar question during his testimony, he hemmed and hawed but finally spoke the truth, admitting in sotte voce that Vladimir preferred Trump over Hillary.  He then went on to assert that the US was doing all it could to protect the US election process from future Russian interference defending the Trump administration's "enormous efforts to push back against Russia," which he claimed were "light-years better than what was done in the previous administration," words carefully chosen because Trump loves to hear that he is doing things better than Obama.

Other Stuff: Despite his efforts to stop them, a group of more moderate Republicans are close to obtaining the votes needed for a discharge petition that will force House Speaker Paul Ryan to call a vote on DACA legislation something that he absolutely doesn’t want to do.  One day after the EPA refused to admit certain members of the press to a hearing on pollution they did it again.  This time they also excluded officials from Flint, Michigan from attending a session on tainted water, because why would anyone want to hear about the experience suffered by the people of Flint? Through it all Scott Pruitt is still the head of the EPA. Sarah Huckabee Sanders says that the White House is looking into why the press was excluded, again.  Sure they are.              

Teachers Rock

Singapore or Bust:  Question of the day, what happens to those special coins minted to commemorate the Singapore summit meeting between Trump and Kim Jong Un if it never happens? Yesterday, during a press conference with South Korea leader Moon Jae-in, Trump warned that the summit might not happen or might not happen on schedule.  During the press conference Trump and Moon lavished praise on each other, with Trump talking about his long term and wonderful relationship with Moon and South Korea, particularly ironic since Moon only recently assumed his position and Trump routinely criticizes trade with South Korea and the size of US military expenditures in the country.  For his part Moon, returned the flattery in spades, giving Trump full credit for pushing North Korea to the table.  Despite their chumminess, they are not on the same page with regard to the planned Singapore summit.  Trump, who has woken up to the reality that things might not work out well with North Korea, appears to be losing some of his enthusiasm, and in typical Trump fashion is already assigning blame in case things don’t work out. His target this time is China’s President Xi, who he criticized by suggesting that he must have said something to Kim Jong Un during their recent surprise meeting that caused the North Korean leader to change his attitude about the prospects for satisfactory negotiations with the US. For his part, despite North Korea’s recent pullback,  Moon continue to push for the summit to take place so much so that his spokesman asserts that there is a 99% chance it will move forward.  US experts put that probability closer to 50%.

Mueller Time:  Following their remarks, Trump and Moon took a few questions from the press.  As usual, the US reporters took the opportunity to lob a few questions in about domestic policy and the Mueller investigation.  Trump made it clear that he wasn’t all that interested in entertaining those questions, particularly one about whether or not he still has faith in Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein by waving off the questioner and refusing to answer, hardly a vote of confidence in Rosenstein.  Insiders report that Trump had hoped that he would have the opportunity to rid himself of Rosenstein over the weekend by forcing him to resign or to commit a “fireable” offense. He was somewhat surprised and very disappointed that Rosenstein, together with FBI Director Wray, agreed to accommodate his demands to investigate the “spying” on his campaign team, something he is now calling Spygate, and that other more ridiculous demand to share key documents about aspects of the investigation with his Republican enablers.  As to the sharing of those documents, as agreed over the weekend, Chief of Staff Kelly has arranged for a “reveal” meeting to take place later this week.  As of now only Republicans are invited to attend the meeting so while Congressmen Nunes and Gowdy will be shown all or at least some of the secret stuff that they want to see, their Democratic colleagues will have to read about it in the press after the information gets leaked, something that will probably happen almost immediately.  The fact that no Democrats will be included in the meeting breaks with usual practice but then again nothing is usual anymore. At her daily news conference,  Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded to a question about why Democrats were being excluded by dismissively saying that Democrats weren’t invited because they hadn’t asked to see the confidential information and if you don’t ask, you don’t get to participate.  Sanders was on a roll, when asked why reporters from CNN and the Associated Press  were physically blocked from attending an EPA summit where EPA Director Scott Pruitt was speaking on harmful chemicals in water, she said that she couldn’t comment.  When pushed further by a reporter from NBC as to whether it was ever okay to selectively block press from such an event she said “I’m not going to weigh into random hypotheticals that may or may not exist, I don’t know any information about this specific incident.”  Her cavalier and dismissive attitude towards the press must really impress her boss who, shortly after the 2016 election, told Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes that he bashes the press to "demean" and "discredit" reporters so that the public will not believe "negative stories" about him.  Sadly, that strategy seems to be working out well for him.  As to Mueller, lawyer/advisor Giuliani who earlier asserted that Mueller promised to end the investigation into obstruction in September, is now saying that Trump will only agree to sit down with Mueller’s team if Mueller takes all questions about obstruction off the table.  Giuliani appears to be taking a page from the Trump press manipulation handbook.  He keeps asserting that Trump really wants to meet with Mueller and that he’s reserving time in his summer schedule, time that would otherwise be spent on the golf course, to prepare for questions, while proposing  impossible conditions and advising Trump to never sit down with Mueller.  While that interview tango goes on, lawyer/fixer Cohen’s problems continue to grow.  Yesterday, Cohen’s business partner Evegeny Friedman, the “taxi king” who had been indicted last year on New York state charges for failing to pay $5 million in transit surcharges between 2012 and 2015 reached a plea agreement with prosecutors that will allow him to avoid what could have been substantial jail time.  In exchange, Friedman has agreed to cooperate with Federal and New York State prosecutors.  And by cooperate, think spill his guts about everything he knows about Cohen.  This is a bigly problem for Cohen and could be the event that causes him to turn on Trump.

Politics:  Yesterday, was primary day in Georgia, Texas and Kentucky.  On the Democratic front,  Stacey Abrams won the Democratic primary for Governor of Georgia. Though she faces an uphill battle, if she wins in the fall she will be the first African American woman to become a Governor.  Mainstream Democrats were happy to see their mainstream candidate, Lizzie Fletcher beat out Laura Moser, her Bernie supported and possibly too progressive for Texas rival in the Texas 7 District, a flippable district that the Democrats hope to take in November.  In a sign that the teacher rebellion continues to upend Republican politics, Jonathan Shell, the Republican leader in the Kentucky House who had been seen as a rising star in the party, lost his seat to Travis Brenda, a math teacher who made it clear that teachers aren’t going to sit on the sidelines silently while their pay stagnates and their budgets get cut.  On the legislative front, on a somewhat bipartisan vote, Congress passed legislation rolling back some of the Dodd-Frank bank regulations put into place after the last market meltdown. As to ZTE, the Chinese phone company that Trump wants to preserve in order to make his good buddy President Xi happy, the Senate Banking committee weighed in with their disapproval of his intentions by overwhelmingly approving an amendment to block him from easing sanctions on ZTE without first certifying to Congress that the company is complying with U.S. law.

Dealing With the Devil

Playing for Time:  Over the weekend Trump demanded an investigation into the “spying” on his campaign.  At the same time he weighed in on the dispute between the Justice Department and House Intelligence Chairman Nunes and his faction, the dispute about whether or not he and his cohorts should be provided access to highly classified information connected to the Russian investigation, information that they shouldn’t be allowed to see because of concerns that they will leak it, expose confidential sources and share it with Trump, who is one of the people who is being investigated.  Yesterday, following a “you better show up or else” command from the White House, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray met with Trump. As a result of the meeting, Rosenstein agreed to permit Congressional leadership, i.e. the Nunes contingent, to “review highly classified and other information” that they have requested.  It’s still not clear what information will be provided nor is it clear whether or not Democratic leadership will be invited to participate in the review.  As he promised on Sunday,  Rosenstein also added an investigation into any “irregularities” related to the FBI surveillance of the Trump team members who were hanging with Russians to the list of things that the Justice Department Inspector General is already reviewing. Rosenstein’s concessions, particularly his agreement to allow the review of confidential documents related to an ongoing investigation, one that is looking into Trump, is unprecedented.  At best he and Wray have decided to cooperate in order to protect their respective jobs, particularly Rosenstein’s, in order to give Mueller more time to complete his investigation.  At worst, he is further empowering Trump and providing him and his defense team with critical information that will help them thwart the investigation. For his part Trump “lawyer” Giuliani, asserts that Trump is just doing what a President ought to do and that he is not doing anything to subvert the investigation into his own activities which is of course preposterous hogwash, to put it mildly.  As to the confidential source who assisted the FBI by cozying up to Trump campaign aides Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Sam Clovis, his cover has already been burned.  His name is Stefan Halper, the Washington Post describes him as a “well-connected veteran of past GOP administrations who convened senior intelligence officials for seminars at the University of Cambridge in England.”  In that role he contacted the three Trump aides for brief talks and meetings on foreign policy in an attempt to figure out what they were up to.  In other words, contrary to Trump’s disingenuous accusation, he wasn’t inserted into the campaign but was helping the FBI do what they are supposed to do.  As to Rosenstein, his decision to cooperate with Trump is either a shrewd move that will allow the investigation to continue or a tragic concession to a bigly bully whose devilish demands can never be satisfied. Rosenstein is running out of space, at some point he is going to have to say NO to Trump’s demands. That’s when the Saturday Night-like massacre and quite possibly the demonstrations in the street will begin.

Leadership Intrigue:  Rosenstein isn’t the only one who may soon be shown the door.  House Speaker Ryan is also on thin ice. As a result of his announcement that he won’t be seeking reelection he appears to have lost the ability to round up Republican votes for key pieces of legislation.  Last week he couldn’t get his crowd to pass the important farm bill.  Because the bill included new work requirements for food stamp recipients, Democrats weren’t willing to vote for it, leaving Ryan reliant on getting the support from all Republican factions, something that he couldn’t achieve because of demands from the conservative Freedom caucus members who held up their support for the bill in an effort to force a vote on restrictive immigration legislation.  As to immigration legislation, the more moderate wing of the Republican party has also broken ranks with Ryan.  They are teaming with their Democratic colleagues in an attempt to force a vote on several immigration alternatives, in the hope that a more moderate plan will ultimately be passed.  For his part, Ryan doesn’t want to put anything forward that won’t win Trump’s approval.  Behind the scenes a number of Republicans are pushing for Ryan to step down from his post, allowing Kevin McCarthy, his likely successor to assume his position as Speaker.  However, even that plan is complicated.  Though he has a lot of Republican support, McCarthy doesn’t yet have all the votes he would need.  Nevertheless, Budget Director, Mick Mulvaney, himself a former Congressman, wants to see McCarthy’s election pushed forward in part because he’s ready to see Ryan go and in part because by a quirk of House rules calling for the election of a new Republican leader would mandate Democrats to also vote for their party leader. He figures that forcing the Democrats to voice support for Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, the Republican’s favorite punching bag, in the run up to the midterm elections would provide Republicans with a valuable anti-Democratic talking point.  That Mulvaney, already busy dismantling consumer protections and all that budget stuff, can always be counted on to find the time to come up with more nefarious plans.  As of now Ryan has no plans to stepdown early, but you never know.

The War Zone:  The North Korea summit remains up in the air, Trump has woken up to the realization that negotiating with North Koreans and the Little Rocket Man is likely to be difficult and that he might not be able to achieve that denuclearization outcome that he’s promised. South Korean President Moon Jae-in is due to meet with Trump today to discuss the summit.  Moon, the driving force behind talks with North Korea and the guy who would probably deserve a Nobel Prize if an agreement is achieved, is committed to seeing the summit go forward. Moon has some support from the White House trinket team, they have already produced commemorative coins, ones that prominently feature Trump’s name, and what good are coins without a summit?  Solving the trade impasse with China is also complicated.  Apparently, Trump’s trade team has been fighting in private and in public and the Chinese have been doing their best to exploit those divisions.  Overnight, the Secretary of Treasury Mnuchin faction announced that an agreement of sorts has been reached regarding ZTE, the sanctioned Chinese phone company, the one that does business with North Korea and Iran and produces phones that “spy” on users.  Apparently the Chinese have agreed that the company will make major management changes, in exchange the US will lift the sanctions imposed on the company.  In return the Chinese are supposed to lift tariffs on US farm products, although the White House insists that is not a quid pro quo, that President Xi is just removing those sanctions out of the goodness of his heart.  Yesterday, Secretary of State Pompeo weighed in on Iran in a much expected speech.  He didn’t provide much of a Plan B to replace the Iran agreement that Trump pulled out of earlier in the month,  but did demand that Iran  make sweeping changes, from dropping their nuclear program to pulling out of the Syrian civil war, or face severe economic sanctions.  Iran responded by saying that they knew all along that all that Trump really wants is regime change and that they aren’t interested.  One Iranian Revolutionary Guard commander called for the “people of Iran to deliver a strong punch to the mouth of the American Secretary of State and anyone who backs the US.”  British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson tried to be more diplomatic but stated the obvious: a "new jumbo Iran negotiation" would not be "very easy to achieve."  Diplomacy is complicated.

Gun Politics:  The responses to last week’s Santa Fe school shooting have been enlightening, and not in a good way.  Oliver North of Iran-Contra scandal fame, the NRA’s incoming president, has blamed the “youngsters who are steeped in a culture of violence” in which many young boys have “been on Ritalin” since early childhood.  He went on to say that “You are not going to fix it by taking away the rights of law-abiding citizens.”  In other words, guns have nothing to do with school shootings.  Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick also denied that school shootings have anything to do with guns. He blamed the tragedies on abortions and violent video games.  He also argued that schools have too many entrances and exits and that the elimination of doors would solve the whole shooting problem, because who cares about fire safety anyway. He also called for more guns saying “the best way to stop that person is with another person with a gun. But an even better way is four people with a gun to stop that person."  Sigh.

Massacre Watch, Again

Weekend Escalation:  At first it looked like the story of the weekend was going to be that Donald Trump Jr had taken another questionable meeting when three months before the end of the 2016 campaign he sat down with George Nader who was acting as an emissary for the princes running Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.  Also in attendance at that meeting was an Israeli social media specialist named Joel Zamel who was there to pitch his company’s ability to engage in “social medial manipulation” on behalf of the campaign, an activity that would be financed by the two Gulf princes.  The tete-a-tete was set up by Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’ brother Erik Prince, the mercenary who founded Blackwater and who seems to show up in a lot of bizarre Trumpian meetings including the one in the Seychelles that was also attended by Nader.  In any case, though it doesn’t appear that Don Jr took these guys up on their offer, the meeting was significant for a number of reasons.  First, it shows a pattern, Don Jr, who also hosted the Natalia Veselnitskaya Trump Tower meeting, was open to meeting with anyone who could help with the campaign even if they were representing foreign countries, a bigly violation of campaign finance laws.  Second, Nader went on to be more involved with the Trump dynasty after this meeting and is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation and spilling his guts about all that involvement,  and lastly, Trump’s policies with regard to Saudi Arabia and the UAE appeared to have grown increasingly chummy, possibly in response to Nader’s effective lobbying on their behalf.  In and of itself the Prince, Nader, Zemel story fueled Trump Senior’s ire, he didn’t deny that the meeting took place and was accurately portrayed but instead lambasted Mueller for going outside of his “Russian focused” mission.  Then while Trump was tweet attacking Mueller for maligning his son for meeting with the questionable cast of foreign characters, the NY Times doubled down, publishing another story that really spun him out of control.  The second story shed more light on the FBI’s use of an informant during the campaign.  The NY Times reports that after the FBI had received reports that some of Trump’s aides were having an unusual amount of questionable interaction with Russian spies, they dispatched a London based American professor, someone who has helped the intelligence agencies in the past, to sidle up to them to see if he could figure out if they were up to anything nefarious.  The targeted aides included Carter Page, George Papadopolous and Sam Clovis, who at that time had some oversight responsibility for Page and Papadopolous.  Contrary to Trump’s assertion, the professor was not implanted into the campaign, nor was the campaign infiltrated. And most notably, the FBI kept its actions secret and did nothing to upend the Trump campaign, significant especially in comparison to then FBI Director Comey’s willingness to go public with details about the Hillary investigation, something that clearly upended her presidential aspirations.    Trump already fired up by the article implicating Don Jr for his questionable meeting went ballistic.  He spent much of Sunday tweet attacking the Mueller investigation with his usual “no collusion, no collaberation” rants and anti-Hillary, anti Comey diatribes but it was his last tweet, the one that said “I hereby demand, and will do so offically tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infilitrated or surveiled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration” that really raised eyebrows.  It’s unprecedented for presidents to command “their” Justice Departments to initiate investigations into their enemies, particularly if those enemies are investigating their campaign’s acitivities.  The beleagured Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein tried to diffuse Trump’s ire by requesting that the Department of Justice’s Inspector General expand its current investigation of the process that led to the Carter Page FISA warrant, an investigation that is already taking place only to placate Trump, to include the questions raised by Trump in his Sunday tweet. It’s not clear if Rosenstein’s attempt to satisfy Trump will work.  We could be in Watergate era Saturday Night Massacre territory. If Trump pushes for more action, Rosenstein could feel compelled to resign, if he isn’t fired first.  And its not just Trump who’s taking unprecedented actions, the Congressional trio of Devon Nunes,  Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows are also doing their best to disrupt the Mueller investigation by pushing Rosenstein and FBI Director Wray to share documents that shouldn’t be shared during an active investigation.  None of this is good and it keeps getting worse. As to that worse part, late in the week it was also revealed that Trump has held several meetings with Postmaster General Megan Brennan, none of which showed up on his published scheduled.  During those meetings he pressed her to raise Amazon’s shipping rates and was not happy when she explained that those rates had been agreed to through a normal contracting process, were subject to a long term contract and that they benefited the Post Office’s bottom line.  Given his tweet history, we all know that Trump could care little about the Post Office but does care a lot about Amazon’s CEO Jeff Bezos and wants to punish him because he is also the owner of his arch enemy, The Washington Post, the paper that disclosed this effort to pressure the Postmaster General, a story based on three sources.  Its worth noting that the last President who attempted to force a government agency to go after his enemies was Richard Nixon who pressed the IRS to invesigate a long ”enemies” list of Democrats and others who he hated, including officials from the LA Times and the Washington Post.   That misuse of powers made up one of his articles of impeachment.  To the extent that his investigation doesn’t get upended by Trump’s increasingly hostile actions, Mueller is carrying on.  Over the weekend, Roger Stone,  one of Trump’s oddest and most nefarious outside advisors, a guy who sports a large Nixon tatoo, told Meet the Press’s Chuck Todd that he expects to be indicted on “made up charges” soon and he might be right, at least with regard to the indictment.  Mueller has already subpoenaed two of his aides, but Stone hasn’t been called in for an inteview, a sign that he probably will be indicted.   As to the whole Mueller investigation, Rudy Giuliani, to the extent that he is to be believed, reports that Mueller has promised to complete the obstruction part of his investigation by September 1 and that he will publically release a report at that time, but then again, Giuliani keeps promising that Trump will sit down with Mueller at some future date, after he solves the North Korean problem, and that doesn’t appear to be happening anytime soon.  Giuliani also suggested that Trump’s team will produce their own report, one that disputes any and all of Mueller’s findings.   

Trade Wars and Other Hostilities:  Things aren’t progressing well on the China Trade War front. Unable to resolve much, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin told Fox News Sunday that “we’re putting the trade war on hold” which was his way of saying that we are delaying the implementation of tariffs but haven’t gotten anything significant from the Chinese in return beyond an amorphous promise to buy more US products.  Though, the farmers who were due to suffer the most are probably relieved, trade experts point out that by backing off Trump is following the path of those predecessors who he persistently criticized.  As to Trump’s promise to go easy on ZTE, the sanctioned Chinese telecom firm, Mnuchin contradicted him by saying that the US was not willing to revisit those penaltites, which had less to do with trade and more to do with ZTE’s theft of US intellectual property and other spy like activities.  Regarding North Korea,  Trump continues to try to salvage the on again, off again summit.  He’s been attempting to make nice to Kim Jong Un by reassuring him that when security advisor John Bolton said that the US wanted a Libya type outcome, he didn’t mean that he wanted to see regime change.  It’s been suggested that Trump would be willing to let Kim keep his nukes as long as he gets rid of some intercontinental missiles, especially the ones that could reach the US.  The ones that can reach Japan and South Korea, those he can keep.  Trump really wants to see something positive come out of the Korean Peninsual and by postive think a Nobel Prize for him and/or a boost in the upcoming mid term elections for the Republican party because those pesky Democrats are likely to initiate impeachment proceedings if they take over.   

The Women Problem:  Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti tends to suck up all the air in the room so it would have been easy to miss that the Summer Zervos case is making progress.  Zervos is the former Apprentice contestant who filed a lawsuit against Trump in January of last year.  She alleges that Trump defamed her by calling her a liar for claiming that he sexually assaulted her in 2007.  Last week a New York appeals court denied a motion by Trump's attorney, Marc Kasowitz, to stay her defamation case pending appeal, meaning that discovery can move forward as both parties await a ruling on the appeal.  Zervos’ lawyer, who is not Avenatti, has asked MGM, the company that holds the Apprentice tape archives, to turn over all documents, video or audio, that feature Zervos or Trump. The subpoena also seeks any recording in which Mr. Trump speaks of women “in any sexual or inappropriate manner.” Another subpoena seeks records from the Beverly Hills Hotel related to any stay by  Trump from 2005 through 2009 as well as documents related to his longtime bodyguard, Keith Schiller, his longtime assistant, Rhona Graff or Zervos.  This is about to get very interesting.

Bigger Than Watergate

One Year In:  To commemorate the one year anniversary of the Mueller investigation Trump took to twitter with some of his harshest language yet.  He congratulated America for now being in the second year of the “greatest Witch Hunt in American history,” he tweet screamed again that there was no collusion or obstruction and blamed the whole thing on those Democrats who had spent far more money than him on their losing campaign.  He then launched into his and his Republican enablers newest attack strategy by tweeting “Wow, word seems to be coming out that the Obama FBI ‘SPIED ON THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN WITH AN EMBEDDED INFORMANT.’”  To that end, Trump has thrown his support behind his favorite toady, House Intelligence Committee Chief Congressman Nunes, and  Freedom Caucus Republican Mark Meadows who are doing their best to force the FBI and the Justice Department to out an important source who has helped both the FBI and CIA on various investigations and who is thought to be a source for the Russian investigation.  FBI Director Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein are pushing back, trying to protect the name of the source both because of his value to their investigations and because revealing his name would deter other informants from assisting on current and future investigations and could even jeopardize lives.  The problem is that Trump’s allies and surrogates, including Rudy Giuliani and Kellyanne Conway, are putting increasing pressure on Justice and are once again threatening to go after Special Counsel Mueller, or more likely his boss Rosenstein.  As to the investigation itself, Trump and his acolytes continue to assert that its gone on too long, that one year is more than enough time to bring it to fruition.  Apparently they are only willing to take the Watergate analogy so far, none of them are willing to acknowledge that almost every other investigation, including the ones into Watergate, Benghazi, Bill Clinton and the Valerie Flame outing took far longer than one year.  As to the investigation, Mueller keeps plodding along. Late yesterday Reuters revealed that Jeffrey Yohai, former campaign manager Paul Manafort’s ex-son in law and former business partner cut a plea deal with Federal officials in California related to his misuse of construction funds and other bank related offenses.  That plea deal, which was cut in January, requires him to cooperate in other criminal cases, and by other criminal cases think the Mueller investigation.  Manafort had been very involved with his son-in-law’s real estate investments, possibly using them for some Ukrainian money laundering, it’s been suggested, though not confirmed, that Yohai may have been wearing a “wire” since January.  While continuing to attack the Mueller investigation, the loquacious and bombastic Rudy Giuliani has also been out telling everyone who’ll listen that he and Jay Sekulow have had conversations with Mueller and other members of the Mueller team and that Mueller has told them that he won’t indict Trump, not because he’s not guilty, but because he doesn’t have the power to indict a sitting president.  Since Mueller and his team don’t communicate to the press or the rest of us, we don’t know what they’ve actually told Giuliani and Sekulow but one thing is for certain, if you think your client is really innocent you don’t go around announcing that his get out of jail free card is tied to an inability to indict him.  As to the rules on indicting a sitting president, during the final months of the Bill Clinton administration the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel said in a memo that "the indictment or criminal prosecution of a sitting president would be unconstitutional." However, others including Neal Katyal, a former Obama era Solicitor General say that that rule is not set in stone and that Mueller could request an exception if he feels the evidence he uncovers is so compelling because presidents are like the rest of us and are supposed to be held accountable for their crimes.  As to any report that Mueller issues, Giuliani said that the administration looks forward to seeing it but will only accept its conclusions if it is fair, and by fair he means that it fully exonerates Trump,  otherwise they will rebut it, and by rebut think undermine, using all means that they have at hand.  Regarding those means, its also been reported that the previously banished Steve Bannon has resurfaced and is providing some advice on the subject so its fair to assume that the strategy is to throw mud and play as dirty as possible, something that Bannon is very good at.  Yesterday during his testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee, Christopher Wylie, the Cambridge Analytica “whistleblower” said that part of Bannon’s 2016 campaign strategy involved using social media to suppress the African American vote, another one of those things that might well have influenced the outcome of the election.  Also on the Russia front, Buzzfeed reports that the Trump Moscow tower project was alive far longer than was previously reported.  Lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen continued to work with Felix Sater, another one of those disreputable Trumpkins, on the project through the election.  Cohen, who had been communicating his progress to Trump, had hoped to finalize financial plans, including some involvement with sanctioned banks, had been meeting with some Russian characters who were later implicated in election meddling and had hoped to get Trump over to Russia for a big announcement during the run up to the election.  While this was going on, Trump continued to assure voters that he knew no Russians and was doing no business in Russia. Not related to Russia, but still troublesome for Trump, the talkative Stormy lawyer Michael Avenatti told MSNBC’s Morning Joe team that he is working closely with two other women who say that they received even larger hush payments from Trump, possibly in the run up to the election. Though he’s not yet ready to go public with details, he says that he’s very close to confirming the accuracy of their assertions and that he will be ready to provide more details soon.  He also poo-pooed but did not completely deny, stories that he and Anthony “the Mooch” Scaramucci, are pitching a cable TV show.  He said that at least for now, his focus is solely on his legal obligations.  His motives and possibly even his credibility could be on the verge of taking a major hit.

The Domestic Front:  After several Democrats, Including the influential senior Democratic Senator on the Intelligence Committee Mark Warner, decided to support her, Gina Haspel was confirmed to serve as CIA Director yesterday.  Warner reached his decision after Haspel wrote him a letter repudiating the CIA’s torture program, in it she wrote “With the benefit of hindsight and my experience as a senior agency leader, the enhanced interrogation program is not one the C.I.A. should have undertaken, the United States must be an example to the rest of the world, and I support that.”  During her testimony Haspel had hedged and hawed and had refused to repudiate the CIA’s post 9-11 torture program.  Trump is expected to announce a new rule that would effectively ban Planned Parenthood and similar organizations from providing abortion and related services under the same roof as operations funded by federal family-planning grants.   The new rule, is intended to force entities like Planned Parenthood to maintain physical and financial separation between taxpayer-backed operations and any related facilities that perform abortions, support the procedures or receive referrals about them.  Trump, who probably cares little about abortion, does care a lot about his anti-abortion base and is hopful that this measure will rally them to get out and vote during the mid-terms.  Kellyanne Conway and VP Pence who are both ardently oppose a woman’s right to choose must be thrilled; lying and spreading alternative facts for Trump is finally paying off for them bigly.

International Update: For those paying attention, Prince Charles will now be walking Megan Markle down the aisle on Saturday since her father who apparently violated some stuffy British rules by sitting for some unapproved photos, is unavailable due to emergency heart surgery or something like that.      On the trade front, Bloomberg reports that China has cancelled a huge amount of US soybean orders, shifting their purchases to Russia.  Yesterday though he did reaffirm the US commitment to NATO, Trump again warned NATO members that there would be consequences if they refused to up their contributions.  In particular he attacked Germany, sticking another pin in his Angela Merkel voodoo doll.  He then went on to shout about the ubiquity of German cars on American roads other than the road to Mar a Lago, where they will always be welcome. Trump’s comments came one day after  EU president, Donald Tusk, issuing a “searing criticism” of his foreign policy, saying America was acting with “capricious assertiveness” and is on a divergent track from Europe.  Somewhere in the Kremlin, Vladimir Putin is smiling.