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.