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.