Weird Medicine

Judicial Gamesmanship:  It’s still not clear who “leaked” the list of 49 questions or topics that Special Counsel Mueller wants to “discuss” with Trump but now we do know that Jay Sekulow, Trump’s current lead lawyer for the Russia investigation, is the person who produced the list in the first place.  He did that in March after Trump’s lawyers met with Mueller and his team.  Apparently that meeting was less than pleasant.  It’s reported that in addition to walking through the types of questions he would ask during an interview, Mueller told Trump’s lawyers that he would subpoena Trump to appear before the grand jury if he doesn’t agree to an interview.  John Dowd, who was still on board the Trump team at that point, pushed back hard, challenging Mueller’s right to subpoena a sitting president.  Of all Trump’s lawyers, Dowd is the one who most consistently resisted the idea of Trump ever sitting down with Mueller.  Dowd left the Trump team after that meeting, partially because of his concerns that Trump would go ahead with the Mueller interview and possibly because by then Mueller knew that Dowd had dangled pardons in front of some Trumpkins, including former security advisor Flynn.   In any case, Trump, who when asked by reporters,  still asserts that he’d be happy to sit down with Mueller has had a change of heart, mostly because of the raid on Michael Cohen’s office and homes.  Though negotiations continue between Rudy Giuliani and Mueller, the Trump legal team is considering doing anything and everything they can to delay or even avoid any interview, and may decide to fight in court.  They would likely lose, but there is a good chance they could delay the investigation, giving Trump more time to argue his case in the court of public opinion.  Part of that strategy continues to involve attacking the credibility and actions of the intelligence community, particularly the FBI, and the Justice Department.  It’s thought that Mueller would not have threatened a subpoena without signoff from Justice, which means Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is on board.  To that end, it’s not surprising that Rosenstein has become a lightening rod for criticism from Trump’s most ardent Congressional supporters.  Yesterday during a presentation at the Washington DC Newseum, Rosenstein pushed back against his critics and attackers, saying that he’s well aware that they’ve already drafted articles of impeachment as part of their effort to get him out.  He wants to make it clear that he will not “change his behavior in the face of threats” and went on to say that by now they should know that the “Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”  By the way he says he’s not all that picky about how his name is pronounced, long “e” or long “i”  whatever, he’ll answer to both.  As to Flynn, yesterday evening it was reported that Mueller and Flynn’s lawyers are not yet ready to proceed to his sentencing and have requested another extension, this one for sixty days.  They told the judge that they need more time due to the “ongoing status of the investigation” which likely means that Mueller is still extracting information from Flynn and others and that more indictments will be coming in the not so distant future.

The Pruitt Problem:  EPA’s Scott Pruitt is continuing to do his best to upend environmental protection but not with out some pushback from some states.  Yesterday, led by the State of California, eighteen states announced a lawsuit against the  EPA over its recent rollback of Obama-era vehicle emissions and fuel economy standards.  The EPA had decided at the beginning of April that the standards were “not appropriate and should be revised.” The lawsuit alleges that the EPA acted “arbitrarily and capriciously” in overturning the previous administration’s decision.  Around the same time that the lawsuit was announced, two of Pruitt’s homeboys announced plans to leave their EPA posts. Albert Kelly, the guy responsible for superfund clean-up who was previously banned from the banking industry, is on his way out, as is  Pasquale Perotta, Pruitt’s head of security, the guy who Pruitt blamed for telling him to fly first class and for “overspending” on the newly constructed, expensive and unnecessary, EPA cone of silence, but who was really following Pruitt’s orders.

The Wacky Doctor:  Before Rear Admiral Ronny Jackson went in front of the cameras to tell America that Trump was in perfect physical condition due to his superior genes, Trump’s other doctor, the slightly wacky New York gastroenterologist Harold Bornstein produced a letter saying that if elected Trump would be the “healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”  Bornstein is now speaking out,  he’s just a little bit hurt over the way he’s been treated over the past year and now admits that he didn’t write that glowing letter, it was dictated to him by Trump.  Apparently, Bornstein really angered Trump when he told everyone who would listen that the hair challenged  candidate used the drug Propecia to forestall baldness.  In February 2017, in punishment for that breach of medical ethics, Trump sent his former bodyguard Keith Schiller, Alan Garten, one of his many lawyers, and an unnamed third person to raid Bornstein’s office in order seize all of Trump’s medical files as well as the picture of Trump and Bornstein that was hanging prominently on his wall.  Bornstein who had served as Trump’s physician for more than thirty years reported feeling “raped” by the experience.  A few things are odd about this, first though patients are entitled to copies of their files, they aren’t entitled to seize the originals.  Second, Schiller at that time was a government employee, no government employee, or anyone else for that matter, should be able to seize documents without proper documentation.  Third, when Rear Admiral  Jackson presented his medical report to the press, he said that it was based on his own assessment of recent tests because he had never seen Trump’s prior medical reports which makes one wonder what was in the “seized” reports and why they were never shared with Jackson.  Lastly, the rough treatment and thuggish behavior exhibited by Schiller lends more credence to Stormy Daniels’ assertion that she too was threatened by a Trump and/or Michael Cohen surrogate enforcer.  Once a thug, always a thug.

Seriously:  Before she was Trump’s go to communications guru and campaign and polling wizard, Kellyanne Conway was an ardent anti-abortion activist.   She’s still at it, Axios reports that she went to see Trump on Friday to try to ensure he follows through on his campaign promises to end federal funding for Planned Parenthood so long as the organization continues providing abortion services.   Her briefing materials included information about the "prayer and protest" rallies that ran two weekends ago at more than 140 Planned Parenthood locations throughout the country, where activists, mostly likely members of Trump’s base, called on Trump to stop taxpayer funding of abortion businesses.  Her closeness to Trump may payoff, he is now seriously weighing cutting off all Title X money to Planned Parenthood. Still no comment from Trump about the $1.6 million payment that his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen facilitated for the former Republican Finance Chair Elliot Broidy in order to help “his” Playboy playmate paramour finance her abortion, probably because that seemed reasonable to Trump.