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!