Rudy's Stew

Giuliani Gumbo:  In odd interviews with CNN and FOX, Rudy Giuliani denied that Trump had attended the infamous Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya and her band of Russian spies and rambled something about “another meeting that has been leaked but hasn’t been in public yet. Going on to say “That was a meeting ― an alleged meeting ― three days before, according to Cohen ... he says there was a meeting with Donald Jr., with Jared Kushner, with Paul Manafort, with Gates and possibly two others, in which they ― out of the presence of the president ― discussed the meeting with the Russians. ... That meeting never, ever took place. It didn’t happen. It’s a figment of his imagination.”  Though what he was saying wasn’t entirely clear, it appears that Rudy was trying to get out ahead of an as yet unreleased assertion that various Trumpkins had attended a pre-meeting, one where they prepared for the meeting with the Russian spies.  Later Monday night he tried to walk back his curious statements by telling a Daily Beast Reporter that he was only discussing the second meeting because reporters from The New York Times reached out asking about it. That reporter was Maggie Haberman who at least for now says that she has nothing to say about that story or her sources.  As to Rudy’s denial that Trump had been at the Veselnitskaya meeting a very confused FOX commentator Melissa Francis, asked him “Why are you saying that the president wasn’t at the meeting?” “Who asked if he was there? No one asked if he was there.”  Adding,  “It’s different to say that meeting didn’t happen ... but to say he wasn’t there implies that it happened.” While it’s easy to dismiss Giuliani’s comments as the ramblings of a past his prime, crazy man, Rudy may just be crazy like a fox.  There’s some thought that Rick Gates, the Manafort associate who is now cooperating with Special Counsel Mueller, may have mentioned the second meeting to Mueller and his team and that Giuliani and Trump are aware of what Gates knows and what he may have told Mueller and think that leaking it out to the public in rambling bits and pieces will blunt the force of a more complete disclosure when and if it that disclosure happens.  As to collusion, though Trump has told us countless times that there was no collusion, Giuliani and former NJ Governor Chris Christie seem to be acknowledging that maybe, just maybe there was some collusion. The two are now saying that even if there was collusion it wouldn’t matter because collusion is not a crime, a theory that was earlier advanced by Jay Sekulow, the lawyer who used to act as Trump’s TV spokesman before Giuliani came on board. Giuliani also said that hacking is the crime and that Trump “didn’t hack,” something that no one disputes because in all likelihood Trump doesn’t even know how to log on to a computer.   For the record, Giuliani isn’t wrong when he says that collusion is not in the federal code, but most experts agree that any Trump cooperation with the Russians could be tied to multiple criminal violations of election law, computer hacking, false statements and wire fraud so collusion or not, Trump and Trump team canoodling with the Russians would be criminal conspiracy, a bigly problem for all concerned.       

Policy Pasta: During a press conference with Italy’s fawning Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte, whose far right coalition shares Trump’s hard line immigration views, Trump once again said that he would close down the government if he doesn’t get funding for his much coveted border wall.  He doubled down by slamming the broken immigration system, particularly highlighting the horror of chain migration, odd and possibly an indication of some problems with his in-laws given that current wife Melania’s family are amongst its beneficiaries.  To put it mildly, Senate Leader McConnell and House Speaker Ryan are less than pleased with his threats, they thought they he had signed off on their funding strategy last week when they walked through their plan to fund the government through a series of minibus spending bills, each one focused on a specific area of government.  At that time they had agreed to defer immigration and border security funding until after the midterms.  They, unlike Trump, recognize that bringing up immigration while so many of the separated children remain separated serves to keep his administration’s callous treatment of families in the spotlight, a problem that is likely to push some of those more moderate suburban voters over to the Democrats, offsetting any of the gains to be gotten by energizing Trump’s anti-immigrant base.  As to the 650 children which the government labeled as ineligible for reunification, an elegant way of saying that government officials screwed up and don’t know where their parents are, Judge Sabraw, the Republican appointed judge overseeing the separation mess, has mandated that the Department of Homeland Security turn over a list of the parents by Wednesday and is insisting that they continue to work on locating the so called missing, mostly deported, parents.  During the same news conference Trump responded to a question about Iran by saying that he would happily meet with Iran’s President Rouhani anytime with no conditions, another one of those foreign policy decisions that he forgot to discuss first with his advisors. Secretary of State Pompeo almost immediately contradicted him, or as he would say clarified Trump’s comments, by saying that Trump would be prepared to “sit down and have a conversation” with Rouhani only if the Iranians “demonstrate a commitment to make fundamental changes in how they treat their own people, reduce their malign behavior, and can agree that it’s worthwhile to enter in a nuclear agreement that actually prevents proliferation.”  In other words Pompeo set conditions for Trump’s unconditional meeting.  For their part the Iranians released a statement saying that Rouhani would be open for talks only if the U.S. “returns to the nuclear deal” and respects “the Iranian nation’s rights.” Also on the nuclear front, it appears that Trump’s good friend North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is beefing up his missile capabilities.  US intelligence officials told various news outlets that satellite photos taken in recent weeks, indicate that work is underway on at least one and possibly two liquid-fueled ICBMs on the outskirts of Pyongyang.  Nevertheless Trump, siting the release of the what may or may not be the remains of 50 US Korean War era US soldiers,  says that all is going well with his newest bud Kim Jong Un.

Fishy Tidbits: To no one’s surprise, Senator Rand Paul who earlier asserted that he had problems with Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh now plans to vote for him.  The only surprising thing about Paul’s decision is that he made it so soon, usually the attention grabbing Paul likes to hold out for a while longer.  West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin, one of the at risk red state Democrats up for reelection in November, met with Kavanaugh yesterday, making him the first Democrat to sit down with the Judge.  Manchin reports that he still hasn’t made his mind up about Kavanaugh and says that the two spoke in great detail about health care, an issue near and dear to Manchin who, if he decides to vote against Kavanaugh, is likely to justify his decision, not over Roe v Wade and reproductive rights, but over concerns that Kavanaugh would rule against the mandate to provide coverage to people with pre-existing conditions.  The conservative billionaire Koch Brothers aren’t all that pleased with Trump’s trade and immigration policies and his “excessive government spending” so though their donor network is still contributing millions to Republicans they have decided to withhold funding from Representative Kevin Cramer the Republican candidate running against North Dakota Democratic Senator Heidi Heitkamp.  They say that Cramer doesn’t do  enough to further Koch policy views to warrant their help.  They prefer Heitkamp in large part because she voted to roll back parts of the Dodd-Frank Act and deregulating banks is one of their priorities.  Trump isn’t all that happy, yesterday he tweeted "The globalist Koch Brothers, who have become a total joke in real Republican circles, are against Strong Borders and Powerful Trade, I never sought their support because I don’t need their money or bad ideas.”  The Kochs, who are among the biggest funders of climate science deniers, are far from heroes but if their failure to support a Republican in red state North Dakota helps keep North Dakota’s Senate seat blue, that’s a good thing.    

Honestly Pathological

Cohen Conniption: Rudy Giuliani was out in force this weekend.  The chief purpose of his multiple talk show appearances was to deliver the message that Trump’s former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen is a pathological liar and manipulator, a message that would have had far greater impact if Rudy hadn’t been on all the same talk shows in May spreading the word that Cohen was an honest and honorable lawyer.  Then again, at least in Trump land, consistency, like truth telling, is over rated.  Giuliani also announced the blatantly obvious, that Trump and Cohen’s joint defense agreement is over, something he did while attacking Cohen for violating attorney client privilege, a statement that was immediately destroyed by Cohen’s lawyer/PR guy Lanny Davis who called Giuliani confused, saying "He expressly waived attorney-client privilege last week and repeatedly and inaccurately -- as proven by the tape -- talked and talked about the recording, forfeiting all confidentiality." As to that Cohen-Trump tape, the one that was released last week, Giuliani now asserts that it was doctored and reports that the Trump team has hired a forensic expert to analyze it, a variation on Trump’s claim that he didn’t really say the things he said on the infamous Access Hollywood tape.  Last week’s biggest bombshell was Cohen’s assertion that Trump knew all about the Trump Tower meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya, the meeting that Donald Jr, Kushner, and Manafort attended because they hoped to get dirt on Hillary but instead got an earful about “adoptions,” code word for the Magnitsky Act sanctions, though in all likelihood they also got a promise of future assistance, the one that Trump appears to have taken up when he publicly called for the Russians to release Hillary’s emails.  If they haven’t already, there is no doubt that Special Counsel Mueller and his team are working hard to find some corroboration for Cohen’s assertion, something like another witness or two or detail about who exactly Don Jr called when he dialed a “private” number right before and again right after the Trump Tower meeting with the Russians took place.  For his part, Trump must be very concerned, he had an especially bad case of twitter mania on Sunday.  He attacked Mueller again, calling him out by saying that the two had a nasty and contentious relationship, possibly a reference to the years ago dispute that Mueller and one of Trump’s golf clubs had over fees, and then going on to attack him for being Comey’s bestie, for hiring only disreputable Democrats and for not investigating Democrats and their Russian collusion. Coincidentally, Mueller and Don Jr were seen waiting for their plane at different ends of the same Reagan National Airport gate on Friday as they both escaped a weekend in Washington D.C.  It’s worth noting that Don Jr was accompanied by a Secret Service agent while Mueller, the man who hopefully will someday save us from the Trump mess, appeared to be traveling alone. 

Electioneering: In an effort to appear to be concerned about Russian election interference in the 2018 midterms, Trump chaired an all hands on meeting of his National Security Council on Friday.  The meeting lasted for a whopping thirty minutes, an indication that the assembled Cabinet members and advisors were fast speakers, incredibly efficient, and had already safely secured the country’s election apparatus or, more likely, that Trump just wanted a good photo op and to be able to say that he was focusing on improving election security.  Following the meeting it was reported that, nothing has changed, there is still no plan to coordinate pushback against Russian, or any other, interference in the upcoming election. Providing further evidence, over the weekend New Hampshire’s Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen revealed that her office has been hit with a series of phishing attacks, the GRU’s favorite technique for breaking into office systems.   

The Real Enemy of the People: Trump also launched a series of tweet bombs at the “fake press,”  this time engaging in a war of word with AG Sulzberger, the publisher of the NY Times.  During a recent meeting that was supposed to be off the record Sulzberger had told Trump that his portrayal of the press as an enemy of the people is “dangerous and harmful” to the country going on to tell Trump that his “language was not just divisive but increasingly dangerous” and was contributing to a “rise in threats against journalists and will lead to violence.”  Apparently that message didn’t sit well with Trump who left the meeting convinced that the NY Times had admitted to spreading fake news so on Sunday he decided to go on the record, tweeting that he “will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the dying newspaper industry.”  Just to be fair he called out the Washington Post too, another victim of what he and his allies are now calling Trump Derangement Syndrome.

Economic Update: Taking a page from former Clinton Strategist, James Carville who famously coined the phrase “it’s the economy, stupid” to deliver the message that at the end of the day voters vote their pocketbooks, Trump went to the White House lawn to take a victory lap following the announcement that the GDP growth rate for the second quarter had reached 4.1%.  While the number is impressive, it’s just a quarterly number, we’ve been here before.  In fact the quarterly growth rate exceeded 4% three times during the  Obama administration and actually made it to 5.2% during the third quarter of 2014.  Many experts believe trade tensions have contributed to growth by “prompting foreign buyers to stock up on American products before their governments impose retaliatory tariffs,” citing as example the growth in soybean exports which have surged, rising more than 50 percent in May from a year earlier.  Annual GDP growth will probably come in somewhere around 3%, in and of itself a good number, but don’t expect to hear Trump or his economic advisor Larry Kudlow say that, until they have to.  For now the party line is that the 4% growth rate is sustainable because 4% sounds better than 3% especially in the lead up to an election, one that increasingly concerns Republican leadership fearful of losing their House majority and starting to grow concerned over their more secure Senate position as well. In another ploy to rile his base to show up to vote because the midterms are typically all about which party shows up in force,  Trump is going back to his old populist standby, so he’s threatening to shut down the government over immigration and wall funding.  On Sunday he tweeted “I would be willing to ‘shut down’ government if the Democrats do not give us the votes for Border Security, which includes the Wall! Must get rid of Lottery, Catch & Release etc. and finally go to system of Immigration based on MERIT! We need great people coming into our Country!” Don’t take Trump seriously on that one, Republican leadership doesn’t want a shutdown because while exploiting fears and hatred of immigrants might get Trump’s base to show up at their polling places,  shutting down the government in the run up to the midterm elections when your party controls the House, Senate and the presidency would be a bigly problem.  In any case Senate Majority Leader McConnell isn’t on board, he is totally focused on getting Brett Kavanaugh’s Supreme Court nomination through the Senate and a government shutdown would ruin his plans.  So just more Trump nonsense and another attempt to divert attention from Cohen, his tapes and the messy family reunification process, the one that still remains incomplete despite the administration’s assertion that they’ve done all they can do to fix the mess that they created in the first place.      

KABOOM

Nightmare Scenario:  The big news item of the day was going to be that Alan Weisselberg, Trump’s long term CFO and accountant, the most senior person in the Trump organization not named Trump, has been subpoenaed to testify in the criminal probe into his lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen but then someone, either Michael Cohen, Trump or Rudy Giuliani leaked that Cohen is prepared to tell prosecutors that Trump knew in advance about the infamous Trump Tower meeting between Don Jr, Manafort and Kushner and the Russian band of spies led by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya.  So now there are two competing really bigly things to discuss.  Going back to Weisselberg, his name was mentioned on the recently released tape of a meeting between Cohen and Trump, the meeting where the two of them discussed David Pecker’s National Enquirer “catch and kill” purchase of Playmate Karen McDougal’s tell-all story about her relationship with Trump when Cohen said that he would work out setting up a payment vehicle with Weisselberg to the extent that they decided to reimburse “David.”  Now it looks like Federal prosecutors want to talk with Weisselberg and it’s fair to assume they will ask him questions about far more than Trump’s payoffs to various and sundry girlfriends and at least according to talkative lawyer Michael Avenatti there are more girlfriends. He says that in addition to adult film star Stormy Daniels, he is representing three more women and that one of those three may well have been pregnant at the time that she received her payoff.  Weisselberg knows “anything and everything about the finances of the Trump Organization” so his being subpoenaed is the “ultimate nightmare scenario for Trump.”  At least it seemed to be the ultimate nightmare, now with information surfacing that Michael Cohen is prepared to tell Special Counsel Mueller that he knows for certain that Trump knew about the meeting with Veselnitskaya in advance of it taking place, Trump’s nightmare is biglier than big.  As to who leaked the Trump Tower meeting information, Cohen’s lawyer/PR guy Lanny Davis insists that it wasn’t Cohen.  To the extent that he’s correct that means that Trump or Giuliani leaked it because, fearing that Cohen was about to reveal his version of events to prosecutors, they wanted to get out ahead of him, an explanation that seems obtuse but nothing about this situation follows a straight line.  In any case, after Cohen’s allegation about the Trump Tower meeting was leaked, Giuliani went on CNN to say that Cohen is a “pathological liar,” adding “he’s been lying all week, he’s been lying for years.”  Kind of a weird comment since Trump hired Cohen, relied on him for years, has told us countless times that he hires only the best people and may in fact be the country’s most prolific liar.  As if all of this isn’t enough, yesterday the New York Times reported that Special Counsel Mueller is “scrutinizing” Trump’s tweets and public statements, focusing on things like his comments about former FBI Director Comey and Attorney General Sessions and pardons to determine if they were part of a program of obstruction of justice and if they reveal his corrupt intent. Giuliani has an explanation for that too, he says that “if you’re going to obstruct justice, you do it quietly and secretly, not in public.”  Has he met his client?   

Election Insecurity:  Assuming he doesn’t flee on the next flight to Moscow, Trump plans to chair a National Security Council meeting on election security today.  The session is supposed to include a discussion of possible Russian interference in November’s midterm elections.  So Trump, who regularly calls the Mueller investigation a witch hunt, who has stated that he believes Putin’s denials over the assessment and “red warning light”  concerns of his hand-picked Director of National Intelligence and who earlier this week tweeted his belief that the Russians might interfere in the 2018 midterms but only to “boost” the chances of Democrats is chairing a meeting on election security, how very comforting.   Trump’s chairman role won’t make Missouri’s Senator Claire McCaskill, one of the most vulnerable Democratic senators up for reelection, very happy.  Last week a Microsoft official disclosed that the company was aware that the Russians, most likely the same crowd of GRU officers who Mueller recently indicted for hacking the DNC server and John Podesta’s emails, were up to their old tricks and have been trying to hack into the servers of three Democratic candidates, and contrary to Trump’s statement they were not trying to boost any of their chances.  Yesterday, the Daily Beast reported and Senator McCaskill confirmed that her office systems were among those targeted.  The timeline of the attempted hack into McCaskill’s server dovetails a little two closely with one of Trump’s visits to McCaskill’s home state, one where he loudly hammered home the importance of voting her out of the Senate in order to increase the too slim for him Republican majority.  As to Republican majorities, to the extent that they manage to maintain control of the House, Congressman Jim Jordan, the former wrestling coach who may well have ignored his wrestlers’ complaints about sexual abuse by their team doctor and the guy who has initiated impeachment proceedings against Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein announced his plans to seek the House Speaker position being vacated by the retiring Speaker Paul Ryan.  Jordan has the unqualified support of his cronies in the Freedom Caucus and would probably be Trump’s choice because what could be better than having a really loyal flunky run the House.  That said, Jordan is unlikely to succeed Ryan. He would have to line up behind Nancy Pelosi or another Democrat, to the extent that the Democrats win, or Kevin McCarthy or Steve Scalise to the extent that the Republican maintain control.  As to the impeachment of Rod Rosenstein, Jordan’s efforts seem to be falling flat with a critical mass of his Republican colleagues.   Paul Ryan came out forcefully against impeaching Rosenstein today and  Mark Walker, the head of the Conservative Republican Study Group said that he is opposed to the push from members of the House Freedom Caucus to impeach Rosenstein.

Soldiers and Kids:  Late last night it was reported that a US plane was on its way to North Korea to pick up the remains of 55 US soldiers killed during the Korean War.  A positive gesture on the part of the North Koreans and one that allows Trump to fulfill the promise he keeps on insisting that he made during conversations with the parents of those soldiers, conversations that he never had because those parents are either setting longevity records or long gone from the earth.  Still the gesture is appreciated.  Yesterday was also the deadline for the reunification of the families separated at the Mexican border.  The good news is that many have been reunited, the bad news is that around 700 hundred kids remain separated and it’s not clear that they will ever make it back to their parents or families.

Impeachment Misdirection

Clean Up:  Even Donald Trump can’t fool some of his people all of the time.  Responding to desperate pleas from Republican leaders concerned that his tariff policy and Putin bromance are putting House and Senate majorities as well as their leadership positions in jeopardy, Trump spent part of yesterday trying to clean up his mess.  First,  he sent National Security Advisor Bolton out to announce that his second date with Putin, the date that Putin hadn’t yet agreed to, will be delayed.  Specifically Bolton said Trump “believes that the next bilateral meeting with President Putin should take place after the Russia witch hunt is over, so we’ve agreed that it will be after the first of the year."  It’s not entirely clear that Mueller’s “witch hunt” will be finished by next year, however postponing the Putin meeting removes the specter of another dreadful Helsinki like performance in the run up to the mid-term elections.   Later in the day Trump attempted to dispel fears about the escalating trade war by announcing that he and European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker had agreed to turn down the heat on their trade dispute, suggesting that they would push off further tariffs while they “talk through” their differences. Though he may have temporarily  calmed the waters with regard to his planned Putin meeting and European tariffs, Trump did nothing to ratchet down his war with the “fake media.”  Furious about the release of one of Michael Cohen’s tapes, the one where he was overheard conversing with his former lawyer/fixer about the payment made to squelch one time girlfriend Karen McDougal’s tell-all story, Trump ignored a CNN reporter’s questions about his reaction to the tape release and then arranged for her to be punished for having the nerve to do her job.  The reporter,  Kaitlan Collins, who had asked the questions while acting as the designated pool reporter during a photo op before the Juncker-Trump meeting was banned from attending a follow-up press availability in the Rose Garden.   A videotape of Collins’ “offensive” questioning showed that she hadn’t done or said anything inappropriate unless of course you consider the fact that she was asking questions about Cohen and was employed by CNN “inappropriate.”  As to CNN, apparently Trump hates them so much that he grew irate when he realized that Melania had her TV turned to CNN rather than Fox on their most recent flight home from Europe.  When asked about that, Melania’s spokesperson reported that she gets to watch whatever she wants.  Makes you wonder if that is another one of those things included in the post-nup agreement that she is rumored to have signed after the Access Hollywood tape fiasco.    

Pompeo Pomposity:  While Trump was trying to sweep up his mess ,  Secretary of State Pompeo was being grilled by  members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  For the most part the smirking Pompeo was evasive and combative.  When asked if he knew what had been discussed during the Trump’s private meeting with Putin, Pompeo said that he knew all he needed to know, leaving the impression that he, like the rest of us, had learned most of what he knows about the meeting from the Russian press.  He asserted that US policy remains the same as it was before the meeting and that’s all that matters.  Curiously while he said that no sanctions against Russia would be lifted, he mentioned that Putin and Trump had discussed the possibility of a business to business exchange between the two countries, something that would be difficult to implement given that many of Putin’s oligarchs are sanctioned.  With regard to Ukraine, he said that nothing had changed, that the two leaders had agreed to disagree.  Curiously, he also said that Trump had pushed Putin on election interference something that no one really believes given Trump’s controversial statement during the Helsinki press conference, the one where he said that he believed Putin over his own intelligence agencies.   Pompeo also said that the government never had any plans to turnover any diplomats to the Kremlin for Russian grilling or at least no plans that he was aware of.  Finally, when asked if Trump had read anyone in the Defense Department into what he had agreed to during his Putin meeting, Pompeo pretty much admitted that he had no idea, saying that was a question that should be posed to one of the Generals.  Its worth noting that on Monday, after US General Joseph Votel, America’s top military commander in the Middle East, said that he had reservations about working with the Russians in Syria and had received no specific direction to cooperate with them,  Igor Konashenkov, a Russian spokesman rebuked him by saying that General Votel had “discredited” his “supreme commander-in-chief” Trump by failing to abide by Trump’s official position, a position that may or may not be known by the Russians but most certainly was never communicated to General Votel.  Democratic Senator Kaine did some trolling of his own, he read a  Buzzfeed article, one that detailed the chaos created at the Pentagon when it is kept out of the loop by the White House. Kaine read a list of headlines included within the article from news stories about the Pentagon being caught off guard by White House defense announcements on subjects from the cancelled Korean exercises to the changes in policies with regard to DACA recipients in the military and transgender soldiers. Kaine called the headlines “instructive.” Pompeo did not respond.  It wasn’t just Democrats giving Pompeo a hard time, several Republicans including Committee Chair Senator Corker called out Pompeo, and by extension Trump, saying to Pompeo “You come before a group of senators today who are filled with serious doubts about this White House and its conduct of American foreign policy,” Adding “It appears that in a ‘ready, fire, aim’ fashion, the White House is waking up every morning and making it up as they go.”  As to one of those made up strategies, Pompeo also refused to reveal much about his North Korea negotiations, the ones that aren’t proceeding as planned.  As to those DACA recipients serving in the military, in a positive move the House Appropriations Committee voted to bar funds from being used to deport any of them.    

Deadline Hijinks:  It’s deadline day, the day by which all of the remaining separated children are supposed to be reunited with their parents. The government represents that by the end of the day they will have met the court mandated reunification order.  However, to achieve that mandated requirement, officials are playing with numbers.  By the end of today they expect to reunite 1,637 parents with their children but have determined that another 914 of the parents are ineligible for reasons that aren’t always clear even to the government, officials admit that they are still evaluating those parents.  Of those parents, 463 have been deemed ineligible because they were deported before the Judge presiding over the reunifications put a halt to the deportation of anyone from the separated families.  At this point the government has no immediate plans to reunify those families. At first officials insisted that all of those parents had left willingly without their children, claiming that they had signed waivers agreeing to leave their children behind.  However, under pressure, officials now acknowledge that they have no evidence that  350 of the parents ever signed such a waiver and the ACLU says that it’s likely that many of the 103 parents who did sign waivers didn’t understand what they were signing or thought that signing the document was the only way that they would get their children back.  So much for meeting the Judge’s orders.  

Other News of Note:  Republican Congressmen Mark Meadows and the disgraced former wrestling coach Jim Jordan filed articles of impeachment against Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, Special Counsel Mueller’s boss.  They allege that he hasn’t responded to all of their document requests even though he has released far more highly sensitive documents than have ever been released in the past.  Meadows and Jordan, two of Trump’s most dedicated flunkies, do not have the full support of all of their Republican brethren, notably at least so far neither Speaker Ryan or even Trey Gowdy are on board, so its likely that at least for now the impeachment proceedings won’t go anywhere.  In any case, nothing will happen for a few more weeks since Congress is set to depart for a five week recess.  Still Meadows’ and Jordan’s action represents a significant escalation in the war to discredit Mueller and the whole Russian investigation, which they like Trump like to call the witch hunt. On another topic near and dear to Trump’s pocketbook, a Federal Judge in Maryland ruled that the emoluments lawsuit filed against him by the Attorneys General of Maryland and the District of Columbia can proceed.  The lawsuit alleges Trump is violating the Constitution by continuing to do business with foreign governments.  If the ruling stands, we should be able to get a look at some of those highly secret Trump business documents, and maybe, just maybe some of those tax returns, the ones that we haven’t been able to see because they are under continuous audit. Or so Trump says.       

1984 Calling

Orwellian:  Echoing George Orwell’s 1984, yesterday during a Kansas City speech to the Veterans of Foreign Wars  Trump told the audience that “much of what you are seeing and what you are reading is not what’s happening.”  He went on to slam the “fake media” particularly NBC and the really horrible CNN, comments that a VFW representative later apologized for, pointing out that the press has always been supportive of veterans.  Last night, after additional audio from one of Michael Cohen’s taped conversations with Trump was released by Lanny Davis, Cohen’s PR lawyer, it became clear why Trump delivered his “don’t believe anything that you hear that’s not from Fox” message.  The released tape, which Trump’s PR lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, had earlier told us fully exonerated Trump whatever that means, shows that Trump did know about the payment made to Karen McDougal, the playmate who says that she had a ten month affair with Trump. The tape reveals that Trump and Cohen discussed the possibility of reimbursing someone named David, probably AMI’s David Pecker, the Trump friend and owner of the National Enquirer, for his $150,000 “catch and kill” payment to McDougal for her story about her affair with Trump.  Though the tape doesn’t reveal if Trump or Cohen actually made a payment, Trump is overheard saying that they should consider it in case Pecker is ever “hit by a truck,” implying that if Pecker wasn’t around someone else at AMI could decide to release the story in the future.  The two also discussed having Alan Weisselberg, Trump’s long term accountant, open one of those special “accounts,” implying that Trump and Cohen had made similar payments before. It’s not clear that anything the two discussed will result in any legal trouble for Trump but the conversation was unseemly, betrays Trump’s assertion that he wasn’t involved with McDougal and may be a harbinger of bad things to come from the remaining eleven tapes.  It’s not just the tape of his implicating conversation with Cohen that Trump wants us all, or at least his base, to forget or not believe, he also wants us to forget what Putin said during last week’s Helsinki press conference, specifically Putin’s answer to a question posed by a Reuter’s reporter who asked “did you want President Trump to win the election and did you direct any of your officials to help him do that?”  Putin responded “Yes, I did. Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.–Russia relationship back to normal.”  In a truly Orwellian move, that response has been wiped from the official White House transcript of the press conference.  The efficient and thorough Kremlin has gone one step further, they went ahead and deleted both the reporter and the whole exchange from their version.  Having excised evidence that Putin was all-in for Trump during the last election, Trump is now willing to acknowledge that the Russians may well be planning to interfere in the upcoming mid-terms, only this time he wants us all to believe that the Kremlin will be supporting Democrats.  Yesterday he tweeted “I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!”  With polls, to the extent that they are to be believed, indicating that Americans were not all that impressed with Trump’s Helsinki behavior and also indicating that the much talked about Democratic wave may actually be coming in November, his worst fear given that Democratic control of the House would almost certainly result in the initiation of impeachment proceedings especially if Mueller concludes that there was obstruction and/or collusion, Trump appears to be laying the groundwork to claim that any election results that don’t go his way are fixed, His tweet is reminiscent of some of the things he said in the run up to the 2016 election when he thought that he was going to lose to Hillary.  Yesterday, Brian Kemp, the anti-immigrant far right candidate that he fully endorsed in Georgia won a run-off election becoming the state’s Republican nominee for Governor. Don’t expect to hear Trump claim that the run-off was fixed or influenced by the Russians.  Kemp will be facing Stacey Abrams, the Democratic nominee, a progressive who, if she wins, would be the first African American woman Governor. Talk about a stark contrast in philosophy and candidates.  To the extent that Abrams manages to win, far from a certainty, expect Trump to attribute her victory to Putin because in his mind that’s the only way that an African American woman could beat a guy who campaigns with a bus equipped with a few rifles in case he encounters any illegal immigrants on the campaign trail.  Really.    

Trump Trade War:  Well it doesn’t look like Trump’s tariff program is working out as planned.  Yesterday, just two days before he is due to visit Iowa, one of the red agricultural states hurt most by China’s retaliation against US imposed tariffs, the administration announced that it would provide up to $12 billion in emergency relief to farmers hurt by the Trump trade war.  The farmers have already lost around $13 billion so at best the relief will cover only a portion of the losses that they have incurred up until now.  Since the trade war doesn’t appear to be nearing an end more aid will be needed to make the farmers whole.  Farm groups and lawmakers, including many Republicans immediately criticized the move.  Tennessee’s Senator Corker, one of the soon to depart Republicans who has found his voice called the policy terrible, saying that it sends farmers to the poorhouse while we “borrow the money from other countries.”  Nebraska’s Senator Sasse, a frequent critic who is staying around, at least for a while, said  "this administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again" and Alaska’s Senator Murkowski wants to know how Trump could single out farmers for help when the manufacturing and energy industries are also affected.  She then asked “where do you draw the line?”  Apparently, the answer to that last question is that as long as money can be borrowed and/or taken  from health care or any environment related programs, there is no line.  Shortly after the farmer aid plan was announced first daughter Ivanka announced that she was closing down her fashion business because she is too busy in Washington doing whatever it is that she does in Washington to focus on shoes and dresses.  Her business which manufactured all of its products outside of the US was probably impacted by the tariffs although there had been some suggestion that her products might be exempted, a solution that even Ivanka recognized might be hard to justify.  It was also getting increasingly difficult, even for Ivanka, to attend more of those “manufacture in America” meetings while her products were all sourced elsewhere. Lastly, and probably most importantly, her business wasn’t doing all that well financially.   

The Kids:  Tomorrow is the day that all of the children separated from their parents at the Mexico border are supposed to be reunited with their families.   So far the government has reunited or otherwise resolved cases for just under half of the 2,551 children ages five and older, reporting 1,187 reunifications "or other appropriate discharges." Those children were reunited with 879 parents who were still in immigration detention when the government was ordered to put the families back together. Unfortunately with somewhere around 460 of the parents deported prior to the court ordered freeze on deportations, the freeze that is supposed to stay in effect  until the families are put back together, it remains likely that many of the separated children will never make it back to their parents.  At best those children will end up with other families members or in “suitable” foster homes. Turns out that when you implement a callous, ill thought out strategy, one without any concern for its impact on affected children, you end up with a less that satisfactory outcome.  Who knew?

So Shakespearean

Much Ado About Very Little:  In response to Freedom of Information requests from several media organizations and breaking with years of tradition of never releasing anything related to any FISA warrant, over the weekend hundreds of pages related to the series of FISA warrant applications that authorized and reauthorized the surveillance of former Trump advisor and current odd ball Carter Page were released.  The heavily redacted material didn’t reveal much more than what had been disclosed in the warring memos written by the two factions of the House Intelligence Committee earlier this year though they pretty much bolstered the Democratic argument that the warrant was justified.   Essentially, though it remains hard to believe that the truly strange and continuously smirking Carter Page was much of a spy, the Russians did try hard to recruit him and may well have succeeded.  The FISA application identified him as “an agent of a foreign power” and said that the FBI believed that Page had been the “subject of targeted recruitment by the Russian Government” in an effort to “undermine and influence the outcome” of the 2016 election.  The Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, especially Chairman Devon Nunes, had made much ado about the fact that the FBI had obscured that they had relied on the “notorious” Steele dossier for the FISA application.  The released information clearly discloses that some of the information included in the FISA application came from Christopher Steele’s materials, but provides far more from other sources and despite Nunes’ assertion to the contrary makes it clear that the Steele Dossier was used and that it was paid for by people supporting an opposing candidate. On Sunday a few notable Republicans, including Congressman Gowdy and Senator Rubio acknowledged that the FISA warrant was justified, that Page was sketchy and had engaged in so many questionable meetings with Russian officials that the surveillance was appropriate.  However Senator Lindsey Graham stuck with the Trump party line calling the FISA warrant flawed because it was, according to him, based on that Steele Dossier “garbage.”  The Page warrant is like one of those Rorschach tests, the ink blots are either Russians in trench coats or innocent “Inspector Gadgets” with wings, your choice.  Personally, I buy into the Russians.  Trump, not so much, after a momentary hiatus, he’s back to calling the Mueller investigation a Democrat inspired witch hunt.  He’s also back to blaming the whole mess on the failure of the Obama administration to act against the Russians and has selectively forgotten that his campaign was told that the Russians were trying to make inroads into his campaign before the 2016 election took place.

The Intelligence Wars:  Senator Rand Paul is one of the few politicians who thinks that Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin is a good idea.  The iconoclastic senator also believes that the Helsinki summit was an overwhelming success so when he heard former CIA Director John Brennan call Trump’s cozying up to Putin and reports of some frightening concessions  treasonous he got really angry and decided to do something about it.  He responded by tweeting “Is John Brennan monetizing his security clearance? Is John Brennan making millions of dollars divulging secrets to the mainstream media with his attacks on @realDonaldTrump ?”  Adding “Today I will meet with the President and I will ask him to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance!”  When asked whether Trump was seriously considering revoking Brennan’s clearance, Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded that  the White House is seriously looking into it and was also considering stripping former FBI Director Comey, Former Acting Director McCabe, former National Security Advisor Rice, former Director of National Security Clapper, and former CIA Director Michael Hayden.  When asked about Obama and Biden, she said that they aren’t on the list, for now.   Trump is really furious that all of the targeted individuals have actually criticized him publicly and positively irate about what they’ve said about his Russian chumminess so he’s planning to punish them in the only way that he knows how, or at least the only way that he thinks he can get away with right now, by taking away their security clearance, that is taking away the clearances from those who still have them.  Comey and McCabe’s representatives pointed out that they no longer have security clearances.  Former CIA Director Hayden, a Republican, who was initially a Bush appointee responded by tweeting "I don't go back for classified briefings. Won’t have any effect on what I say or write."  In any case, beyond the vindictiveness of stripping critics of privileges, removing security clearance from former officials limits current officials from reaching out to them for advice and institutional memory but since none of that really matters to Trump, not a bigly problem.  As to criticizing them for “profiting” from their years of service, some of them have written books and appear regularly on “fake news” outlets like CNN and MSNBC, that’s really rich coming from Trump, the man who looks to profit from every activity he undertakes.

The Supremes:  Senator Paul is thoroughly enjoying his moment in the sun so much so that he’s also made it known that he’s considering opposing the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to serve on the Supreme Court.  Paul says that he is “honestly undecided. I am very concerned about his position on privacy and the Fourth Amendment. This is not a small deal for me. This is a big deal.”  Paul probably is truly concerned about Kavanaugh’s position, however he has a habit of holding out before caving so it’s highly likely that he will ultimately vote for Kavanaugh.  Kavanaugh’s road to the court did however hit another speed bump.  Some more of his earlier writings and speeches are now coming to light.  In one of them he questions the unanimous court ruling in the landmark US vs Nixon case, the one where the court ordered Nixon to deliver tape recordings and other subpoenaed materials to a federal district court.  It’s becoming clearer and clearer why Trump selected Kavanaugh as his nominee.  What could be better than a Justice who overturns Roe v Wade and rules that presidential powers are inviolate?  Democratic leader Schumer continues to try to slow walk Kavanaugh’s review process but at some point he will likely get overridden by the wily and scarily effective Mitch McConnell.  Yikes.  

     

Manafort and Cohen:  We’ll have to wait six more days for the start of Paul Manafort’s Virginia trial.  Yesterday, Judge Ellis, the somewhat cantankerous judge overseeing that case responded to his lawyers’ request that they needed lots more time to review the large number of documents that they had recently received from Mueller’s team.  Mueller’s team countered that Manafort was familiar with the documents because they were made up of information provided from his former partner Rick Gates who is now cooperating with prosecutors, and that as such Manafort’s team was well aware of their contents.  The judge was only a wee bit sympathetic to Manafort’s side, he granted them six more days, far less than the months of extra time they had requested.  As had been previously requested by Mueller’s team, the judge also granted immunity to five possible witnesses but contrary to usual practice required their names to be publicly disclosed.  Notably two of them are Manafort’s outside accountants and another two are from Federal Savings Bank, the small Chicago bank that made some of Manafort’s more questionable real estate loans.  Despite early assertions made by Fox TV pundit Tucker Carlson, Tony Podesta, the brother of Clinton’s campaign chairman John Podesta, who ran his own lobbying firm, another one of those firms with some questionable clients and questionable lobbying practices, did not appear on the list.  Jury selection for Manafort’s trial begins today.  Meantime, in New York, after Trump’s lawyers waived any client privilege, a total of twelve of Michael Cohen’s surreptitiously taped audio conversations were turned over to prosecutors. No indication yet as to what’s on those tapes but its reported that some of them involve conversations with people other than Trump. That said the subject of those calls was Trump. 

Sex, Lies and Videotape

All That Jazz:  Okay, there’s been no videotape so far but there’s sex, a madam and plenty of lies and, after Trump’s sniveling Helsinki performance, who amongst us doubts that Putin has at least one videotape of something very salacious.  As far as the sex goes, we’ve known for awhile that the FBI seized a number of “tapes” when they raided lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen’s homes and office, now we know that on at least one of those tapes Cohen and Trump discussed payments made by AMI, the company that owns the National Enquirer, to Karen McDougal, the Playmate who says that she had a ten month affair with Trump shortly after youngest son Barron was born, a relationship that Trump still denies.  At no time during the 90 second snippet does Cohen or Trump actually admit to reimbursing AMI but they do discuss the possibility of buying McDougal’s story to further quash it, even discussing the best payment method.  It’s not entirely clear who released the tape, some think it was another warning shot from Michael Cohen but most believe it was someone from the Trump team with few if anyone thinking it came from the FBI or the Justice Department.  Regardless of how it was released, Rudy Giuliani says that the tape exonerates Trump because he doesn’t disclose actually making any payment.  Giuliani goes on to say that at least with regard to this tape, Trump is waiving any privilege, allowing it to be released into the hands of federal prosecutors.  In any case, if you believe adult film star Stormy Daniels’ lawyer Michael Avenatti, there are many other tapes out there and he wants them all released.  Avenatti may be a press seeking showboat but so far he hasn’t been wrong about much so there probably are many other tapes and we probably will get to hear quite a few of them at some point.  For his part Trump again tweet attacked the illegal raid, which was not illegal, of Cohen’s facilities and then went on to attack Cohen’s illegal taping of their conversation, again not illegal although probably unethical but then again who’s to say what’s ethical when your client is Donald Trump?  It’s not entirely clear what the Giuliani/Trump legal team strategy is with regard to Cohen and his tapes or whether or not there really is a strategy but strategy or not, the Trump team does seem to be concerned about what else Cohen has and Cohen, who met with Trump nemesis Al Sharpton late last week, seems on the verge of spilling his guts.  While the tape ado was playing out in the press we learned that Kristen Davis, known to the public as the  Manhattan Madam from her involvement in former NY Governor Eliot Spitzer’s prostitution debacle, has been subpoenaed by Special Counsel Mueller.  The Mueller team is interested in learning more about what Davis knows about Trump’s long term associate Roger Stone and don’t appear to be focusing on her prior profession.  Davis is a long-time confidante of Stone’s, he advised her on her campaign when she ran for NY Governor on the Anti-Prohibition Party ticket and he is the godfather to her son and no, I am not making any of this up, so it’s not farfetched to think that she knows some interesting things about Stone and his interaction with Guccifer 2.0 and/or WikiLeaks.  As to Trump and Putin, much if not all of what the two of them discussed during their two hour plus private meeting is not known, or at least, isn’t known to any of Trump’s advisors or the US military but the Kremlin continues to leak out their version of the meeting.  In addition to walking back the suggestion that he’d agreed to send over a few government officials, anti-Putin financier Bill Browder and former Ambassador McCaul, the White House has now also said that Trump did not agree to supporting a Ukraine referendum on the annexation of Crimea, a referendum that no doubt would have been manipulated by Putin, who has already proven his skills at election “meddling.”  Much to the surprise of US military officials the Kremlin has also revealed that the two leaders discussed and that Trump possibly agreed to coordinate military activities more closely in Syria, that’s another thing that may get walked back in the next few days, assuming that Trump ever gets around to telling our military exactly what was discussed and what, if anything and it probably was something, that he agreed to.

Walking Back and Lashing Out:  Trump is back to tweeting that the whole investigation into Russia’s election interference is just a witch hunt, negating last week’s scripted statement that he did believe his intelligence agencies and their conclusions.  Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats is trying to atone for the frank and off the cuff remarks he made during his unauthorized interview with NBC’s Andrea Mitchell last week.  He says that his “awkward response” to being told that Trump has invited Putin for another meeting, this one in Washington in the fall right before the midterm elections, wasn’t meant to be critical or disrespectful, he was just a little bit surprised.  Coats is probably skating on thin ice, it’s not clear that Trump would actually fire him but he probably has been sidelined, a problem for Coats and anyone else who thinks that Trump should be getting his intelligence information updates from US officials with actual expertise, but not much of a problem for Trump who prefers to get his daily intelligence briefing from one or members of the Fox television network.  It also looks like Ambassador Jon Huntsman doesn’t plan to leave Moscow anytime soon.  In response to a call by the Salt Lake Tribune, a paper owned by his brother, that he should resign his ambassadorship in protest to Trump’s Helsinki performance, Huntsman, a former governor of Utah, says that he plans to stick it out.  In a letter to the paper he said that he is “charged with representing our country’s interests, which in the case of Russia are complex and often little understood.  Representatives of our foreign service, civil service, military and intelligence services have neither the time nor inclination to obsess over politics, though the issues of the day are felt by all.”  Significantly, he didn’t mention Trump directly in his letter but did leave the distinct impression that he was sticking it out in order to prevent further damage to the extent that’s possible.  For his part Secretary of State Pompeo is all in Putin coming to Washington.  He says that another meeting between Trump and Putin would be  “all to the good.”  Pompeo will be requested to further explain his position and relay just what was discussed in Helsinki, to the extent that he knows, this week when he is scheduled to appear before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.  He will have much to discuss.  Despite Trump’s public assertions that all is going well with the denuclearization of North Korea, things aren’t working out as planned but are working out the way most experts anticipated and Axios reports that his inner circle says that he is well aware that North Korea hasn’t lived up to his expectations and is very frustrated about that.  Another topic that is likely to be on the table when Pompeo testifies is Iran. On Sunday, Pompeo delivered a “scathing” speech on Iran, accusing Tehran's ruling ayatollahs of spreading violence across the Middle East and lining their own pockets with ill-gotten gains at the expense of ordinary Iranians.  He alleged that Iran’s Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, maintains a personal off-the-books hedge fund worth $95 billion, that is untaxed and used as a "slush fund" by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Crops. Trump followed up late last night in an all caps tweet directed at Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS!  Though Trumps tweet was thought to be in response to a Sunday warning from Rouhani that any conflict with Iran would be the “mother of all wars,” it may also reflect a calculated decision by Trump and his team to shift attention from his failed outreach to North Korea and criticism and bad polling about his bromance with Putin.  Warmongering with Iran.  What could go wrong?   

Going Rogue in Aspen

Speed Dating:  Vlad and Don had a great time on their first formal date so much so that to almost everyone’s surprise Trump has invited Putin to come to Washington in autumn to meet the family.   As to what was discussed on their Helsinki date, Trump’s still not telling though a few clues have leaked out from the Kremlin because those Russian guys can be oh so talkative when it suits their purposes.  If they are to be believed, in addition to discussing the extension of a nuclear treaty or two, a Syria solution, and the offer from Putin to send his GRU agents to Washington to help with the Mueller investigation in exchange for former Ambassador McFaul, Bill Browder, the “irritating” investor behind the Magnitsky Act sanctions, and a few other of those Americans he hates, Putin told a number of Russian diplomats that he informed Trump that he’d like to hold a “referendum” to help resolve the conflict in eastern Ukraine, the one caused by his annexation of Crimea, but agreed not to disclose that plan publicly so Trump  could consider it without any input from his advisors or any pushback from Congress. So far no word from Trump on Putin’s referendum idea but following general uproar and a 98 to 0 Senate vote on a resolution opposing the sending of US officials to be interrogated by Russian officials, Sarah Huckabee Sanders released a statement saying that although it was “a proposal that was made in sincerity by President Putin,” Trump “disagrees with it,” so it looks like, absent any poison dipped darts, McFaul and Browder, are in the clear.  As to the Autumn visit, Putin hasn’t committed yet.  Russia’s Ambassador says that Putin is open to coming, but wants to see some progress on the open issues that the two leaders discussed before he books his flights.  Regarding those open issues, Democrats Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell tried to get the House Intelligence committee to subpoena Marina Gross, the US translator who sat in on the Trump-Putin meeting to provide closed door testimony on what was said during the private tete-a-tete, but their plans were quashed by Trump toady, Devon Nunes who, as Committee Chairperson, is the one in control of the committee’s subpoena powers. Similar discussions are ongoing in the Senate but at least to date, no decision has been made there because of concerns that subpoenaing a translator would set a bad precedent.  Trump aligning himself with the Kremlin, not a problem, subpoenaing a translator, a step too far?

Going Rogue:  Following Trump’s Helsinki press conference, the one where he said that he believed Putin more than his own  intelligence agencies, a number of pundits suggested that it was time for some US officials to resign in protest.  Apparently Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats has decided to stay put at least until he’s fired so he’s letting loose and telling it like it is.  Instead of resigning, he’s going rogue, talking truth to power, publicly.  Yesterday during a televised interview with MSNBC’s Andrea Mitchell at the widely attended  Aspen Security Forum, Coats once again made it clear that the Russians most certainly intervened in the 2016 elections, justifying his contradiction of Trump’s Helsinki statement by saying that he “had to clear the record.” He also questioned Trump’s decision to meet privately with Putin and admitted that he hadn’t been all that happy when he learned, after the fact, about Trump’s Oval Office meeting with Russia’s foreign minister Lavrov and former Ambassador Kislyak, the one where Trump shared the incredibly top secret Israeli information with the Russian duo right after he expressed his joy at having just rid himself of then FBI Director Comey.  During the interview, after Mitchell shared that her people had just texted her that Trump had invited Putin to meet with him in Washington, a rather stunned Coats didn’t try to hide his opinion, he responded “say that again, did I hear you,” and then adding “okaaaaay, that’s going to be special.”  At the same conference, during an interview with NBC’s Lester Holt, FBI Director Christopher Wray was a little more reserved but almost as candid.  When asked if rumors that he had threatened to resign were true he pretty much admitted that he had, saying “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I'll just leave it at that."  He also forcefully supported the Mueller investigation, making it clear that it is no witch hunt.  To be clear he added   "My view has not changed, which is that Russia attempted to interfere with the last election and that it continues to engage in malign influence operations to this day.”  While Wray and Coats were unusually forthcoming, Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen inspired no one with her response to a question about last year’s Charlottesville protests, she refused to denounce the white supremacist charged with murdering a woman and then when she was asked about Trump’s contention that “both sides” were to blame for the violence at the neo-Nazi rally last year, she said “I think what’s important about that conversation is, it’s not that one side is right and one side is wrong.” And though she acknowledged Russian election interference, she refused to say that the Russian’s had weighed in on Trump’s side.  While she was speaking in Aspen, other members of the administration provided the Federal Judge overseeing the reunification of the children that her department separated from their parents at the Mexico border with an update of the kids’ status.  To date 1,600 children have been approved for reunification with their parents, while about 900 still haven’t.  Of those 1600, only 364 have been returned to their families so far. Maybe Nielsen should spend less time at conferences and more time unwinding her mess.  Just saying.

Court News:  Ryan Bounds, one of Trump’s Federal Judge nominees was pulled from consideration after South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, the only African American Republican Senator, questioned his fitness to serve due to his trove of racist college writings.  The decision to pull Bounds nomination could have ramifications for the confirmation process for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh.  Republican leadership has been arguing that Democrats’ demands that all of Kavanaugh’s papers be made available for review before he’s put up for a vote are over the top and burdensome.   However, now that Bounds has been justifiably booted at the hands of a Republican over some dated college musings, Democrats’ demands appear more reasonable.   Then again, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell makes, and breaks, the rules as he sees fit.  Still with poll results indicating that Kavanaugh is the least popular judicial nominee since Robert Bork, the judge who never made it to the Supreme Court, Democrats are hoping to get his writings and to find one or more things to doom his nomination.  Stay tuned to Court TV.      

Putin's Sparrow

Lying and Spinning:  Last night the NY Times reported that after his election victory but before the inauguration Trump was provided with detailed, highly confidential evidence, some sourced from European allies, other pieces from one or more highly placed Russian officials, definitively proving that the Russians, directed by none other than Putin, interfered in the 2016 presidential election.  The paper reports that Trump grudgingly accepted that the intelligence he was shown was true, that is he accepted it for a few minutes, before he decided to reject and discredit it, perhaps because his campaign did collude but most certainly because he couldn’t stand the idea that his election victory was at all tainted. Regardless of what he knew before that meeting, he’s clearly known since then that the investigation into election meddling is no “witch hunt.”  So this week when he stood by Putin and said that the Russians didn’t interfere in the election because Putin “strongly” said they didn’t, and his word is worth so much more than US  intelligence, and again when he tried to walk back his statement by claiming that he inadvertently left out a “not,” he was lying and he knows it.  The scope of his lies continue to grow exponentially, yesterday when asked if the Russians were still meddling in the US election process and infrastructure, a huge concern for the upcoming midterms, he said no, they are not.  That despite last week’s warning from Director of National Intelligence Coats, the one-time Republican Senator and Congressman that he appointed to the position, that red lights are flashing, the nation is liable to a large scale cyber security attack.  Lacking a suitable explanation for that denial, Sarah Huckabee Sanders insisted that Trump hadn’t really said “no” to the correspondent asking that question, his “no” was related to something, anything else, a variation on the “double negative” excuse that he employed earlier in the week, the one that no one but his dedicated base and the Trump fearing members of Congress bought.  As to his two hour Helsinki private session with Putin, snippets of what was discussed and what Trump may have agreed to are starting to leak out from the Kremlin. Democrats continue to push their Republican colleagues to sign off on a subpoena of Trump’s interpreter so they can learn more about the discussion but we do know one thing, Trump is seriously  entertaining a proposal raised by Putin to interrogate Americans in exchange for assistance in the Mueller investigation into election interference. Among others, Moscow wants to “question” Michael McFaul, the Obama era US ambassador to Russia, and American-born financier Bill Browder, who is the man responsible for the passage of the Magnitsky Act sanctions that restrict Putin and his oligarch buddies from investing their ill-gained fortunes in the US and the other countries where similar laws have been passed. At least the Magnitsky Act is what most people call that legislation, Trump and Don Jr refer to it as that adoption thing.  Beyond the absurdity of thinking that Russia could or would “assist” in the investigation of its meddling in the US election, the fact that Trump would even consider turning over a former US ambassador for Russian interrogation is absurd.  As to Browder, Putin has already made his life miserable, the Russian government routinely harasses him and has tried to have him extradited back to Moscow countless times to try him for nonexistent crimes or worse and by worse think tortured to death a la Sergei Magnitsky, the man who inspired Browder’s campaign to get those sanctions passed in the first place.  Browder has said many times that he expects to be the recipient of one of Putin’s poison-tinged darts  one of these days.  The clueless Sanders, who really should know better, responded to a question about Trump’s intent by saying that Trump is “going to meet with his team and we'll let you know when we have an announcement on that." Later in the day, when asked a similar question, State Department spokesperson, another former Foxling, Heather Nauert let it be known that at the very least her bosses know that Putin’s suggestion is ridiculous.  She responded "The overall assertions that have come out of the Russian government are absolutely absurd, the fact that they want to question 11 American citizens and the assertions American citizens -- we do not stand by those assertions that the Russian government makes. The prosecutor general in Russia is well aware that the United States has rejected Russian allegations in this regard."  

More NATO Bashing:  In an interview with Fox’s Tucker Carlson Trump who last week claimed that the US maintains a strong commitment to NATO and that the organization is now in much better shape because of his efforts to push members to up their defense budgets, again slammed NATO this time by going after Article 5, NATO’s common defense provision, the one that requires all members to stand up for each other in the event that one of them is attacked, the provision that thus far has only been invoked in response to the 9-11 attack of the US.  When Carlson spoon fed him the question “Why should my son go to Montenegro to defend it from attack,”  Trump responded “I understand what you’re saying. I’ve asked the same question. Montenegro is a tiny country with very strong people ... They’re very aggressive people. They may get aggressive, and congratulations, you’re in world war three.” Montenegro, formerly part of Yugoslavia is NATO’s newest member and its membership is one of those things that throws Trump’s BFF Putin into a furious lather. At last year’s NATO meeting, Trump physically pushed Montenegro’s president out of the way in what then appeared to be a crass attempt to get into a better position for the group photo shot.  Now we know, his move was far less innocent, Trump was just trying to knock the poor fellow and his countrymen out of NATO all together.  Orders from his handler?

Maria, Maria, Maria:  The newest cast member of the Americans, Russian Red Sparrow Maria Butina, will definitely be spending more quality time inside of a Federal penitentiary.  Yesterday, after US prosecutors presented evidence that she had packed her bags and given her landlord notice that she and her boyfriend were vacating their apartment, a Federal judge agreed that she was a high risk for fleeing the country or at the very least for fleeing into a Russian limo and/or consulate. As to the 29 year old Butina’s “boyfriend,” referred to in federal documents as US person 1, he is 59 year old Paul Erikson, a Republican hanger on who was helping her push Russia’s interests to his many contacts.  It looks like Butina didn’t really like him all that much but found that he was useful because of who he knew in Republican organizations and the NRA.  While living with him, Butina was also offering to trade sex for a position in another one of those conservative organizations, a position that would have helped her win red stars and a new Black Sea dacha from  her handlers back in Moscow.   If he doesn’t have one already, Erikson should probably find himself a good lawyer, one with lots of experience negotiating with counterespionage prosecutors.  As to Maria, maybe one of the reasons that Putin wants to get his hands on Ambassador McFaul is so that he’ll have someone to offer up in exchange for his red sparrow.   

Grammar Lessons

Double Negative Defense:  Apparently Trump genuinely thought that he had done a bang up job in Helsinki, at least until harshly critical comments starting coming in from usually loyal press outlets, legislators and cronies, including the Wall Street Journal’s Editorial Board who called Trump’s performance at his press conference with Putin “a personal and national embarrassment,” and the usually fawning Newt Gingrich who called for Trump to “clarify his statements in Helsinki on our intelligence system and Putin,” saying that they were “the most serious mistake of his presidency and must be corrected – immediately.”  Initially, Trump was defiant, but in response to calls and comments from members of Congress, many of whom were encouraged to speak their mind by Chief of Staff Kelly, and upon the insistence of VP Pence and Secretary of State Pompeo that he needed to clean up his mess, he reluctantly agreed to “clarify” his Helsinki remarks.  During a scheduled meeting with a few members of Congress with dedicated daughter Ivanka across the table, he mustered up the energy to read from a hastily prepared script.  He said that contrary to what he’d said in Helsinki and what he’s been saying for months he does believe  the assessment of the United States’ intelligence agencies that Russia had interfered in the campaign, although he managed to slip in one of those unscripted “and it could have been others.”  He went on to say that he had misspoken in Helsinki only because he left the word “not” out of his statement, it should have been “I don’t see any reason why it WOULDN’T be Russia, sort of a double negative…. So you can put that in, and I think that probably clarifies things pretty good.”  Some, like Senators Rob Portman and Marco Rubio actually bought the “double negative” crap, but most found it laughable.  In an editorial entitled “Trump Says He Got Only One Word Wrong, Please Decide For Yourself” the New York Times printed Trump’s excuse alongside the entire text of his Helsinki statement, driving home the point that his idiocy went far behind a failure to include one “not.”  Even the Wall Street Journal didn’t buy his explanation, they noted that he “rarely admits mistakes, so it was good on Tuesday to see him reverse his claim of Monday that Russia may not have interfered in the 2016 U.S. election. The problem is that he still doesn’t seem to understand the nature of the adversary known as Vladimir Putin whom he wants to make his friend.”  They, like the rest of us, want to know who was the great brain trust who came up with the ridiculous “double negative” defense.  During the day the usually complicit Senate Majority Leader McConnell “suggested” that the Senate might move forward with new sanctions against Russia in response to Trump's Putin meeting and House Speaker Ryan said he’d be “more than happy” to consider more sanctions.  Senator Bob Corker, the Republican head of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, was so encouraged by the willingness of other Republicans to criticize Trump that he said that the “dam has finally broken.”  While his relief is probably premature, that dam seems to be rather strong and self- healing, after all it did right itself after Charlottesville, he did take advantage of the moment, managing to get the administration to commit to send Secretary of State Pompeo to testify before the Foreign Relations Committee to discuss the Helsinki meeting and to provide more information on where things really stand in North Korea. Minority Leader Schumer and a number of other Democrats want the US translator who attended the Trump-Putin meeting subpoenaed to appear before Congress.  As to Trump, a la Charlottesville he’s already started pulling back from those scripted remarks.  Last night he tweeted “The meeting between President Putin and myself was a great success, except in the Fake News Media!”  The Russian’s agree, Putin is already calling on Trump to start delivering on the promises he made during their two hour private session, the things that no one other than the two of them and their translators actually know he committed to.   

Manafort’s Mess:  Former Campaign Manager Paul Manafort remains defiant, though his refusal to cooperate may be catching up with him.  Yesterday, Judge Ellis, the judge overseeing his Virginia case denied his lawyers’ request for a change in venue.  Despite their assertion that there are too many Democrats living in Alexandria, Virginia for him to get a fair trial, the Judge ruled against moving to the more Republican, and presumably more Manafort friendly, Roanoke.  At the same time, Special Counsel Mueller’s team asked the judge to sign off on immunity for five unidentified witnesses to facilitate their testimony during Manafort’s upcoming trial which is still scheduled to begin next week unless the judge, who has a reputation for accelerating trial schedules rather than pushing them back, agrees to Manafort’s lawyers request to delay the trial for a few more months.  The judge is due to rule on that request shortly.  With virtually all of the judge’s rulings going against Manafort and Trump facing a few problems of his own, it may be time for Manafort to reconsider his position, that pardon that he seems to be staking his future on may be too much to hope for.

In Plain Sight:  Maria Butina’s woes are also increasing. Detained earlier in the week, she was formally indicted yesterday on two charges, conspiracy and acting as a foreign agent. She is alleged to have tried to infiltrate US political organizations, including the NRA and the Conservative group CPAC, on behalf of Alexander Torshin, a “high-ranking Russian official.” Her lawyer asserts that she’s no spy, just a stellar American University grad student, with a 4.0 CPA who also happens to be a very sociable pro-gun enthusiast.  If she is a spy, and she probably is, she never was very covert but was very busy, she’s been seen with the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre, Don Jr., and many other politicians and helped to organize the National Prayer breakfast.  She also arranged for current national security advisor John Bolton to speak to a Russian pro-gun group, remarkable considering that in Putin’s Russia few citizens are allowed to carry guns.  Butina even showed up at a July 2015 event in Las Vegas where she asked then citizen Trump what his policy toward Russia sanctions would be, if elected. The Daily Beast reports that she hosted a costume party for her birthday four days after Trump won and that some Trump campaign aides attended and that she openly bragged that she helped Trump’s campaign communicate with Russia.  While at American University Butina studied International Service with a concentration in, of all things, Cyber Policy.  As to cyber security, in the absence of guidance from the administration, the head of the nation’s largest electronic spy agency and the military’s cyberwarfare arm has directed the two organizations to coordinate actions to counter potential Russian interference in the 2018 midterm elections because someone has to fill that vacuum before Trump outsources those responsibilities to Putin.