Brussels Sprouts

The World Order:  While we were sleeping Trump arrived in Brussels for the NATO summit.  While he was traveling, the Senate passed a largely symbolic, non-binding resolution expressing full support for the alliance, a not so subtle reminder to Trump that he shouldn’t do something rash, like pull out of NATO, a not so crazy concern given his ongoing stream of anti-NATO rhetoric and his general dislike for multilateral organizations, particularly those that don’t include Russia.  The measure passed by a vote of 92 to 2, with Republican gadfly Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky and one other Senator, Utah’s Mike Lee, voting in opposition.  For his part Trump hit the ground running, or at least running his mouth off, antagonizing allies and sticking with his disrupt the world order, America only theme.  He’s continued to hammer most of NATO’s members for failing to keep their defense budgets at required levels and for not paying their share of NATO’s budget. Though past presidents, including Obama have pressed NATO allies to raise their budgets and have to a certain extent got some results, including commitments for gradual increases, they’ve stuck to the facts, unlike Trump who seems to make them up on the fly.  Prior US leaders have also understood that NATO’s continued existence fosters regional and world stability and benefits the US. Trump won’t acknowledge that NATO stood up for us after we were attacked on 9-11 mostly because that fact doesn’t support his anti-NATO views. Trump’s newest anti-NATO soundbite involves attacking Germany as a captive of Russia for entering into a “massive” energy deal with Russia. That deal, which involves the building of a  new $11 billion pipeline to bring Russian gas across the Baltic Sea has raised concerns among other EU nations, however German Chancellor Merkel insists that the project is a private commercial venture not funded by German taxpayers. That said Trump continues to attack the arrangement saying “we’re supposed to be guarding against Russia and Germany goes out an pays billions and billions of dollars a year to Russia.” Trump, who wants nothing more than to play footsie with Russia and Putin, is implying that US payments to NATO are being used by Germany to fund the pipeline, a spurious allegation but one that seems to be the theme of his trip. It’s also worth noting that whenever Trump criticizes someone else, it’s usually because he’s done something similar but worse.  He will be meeting with Putin before he returns to the US.  Who knows, by the time he returns, maybe the US will be Russian’s captive, or worse?  As to that meeting with Putin, before leaving Trump said that “I have NATO, I have the UK which is in somewhat turmoil, and I have Putin. Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all.  Who would think?  Only Trump of course.

Kids Are Not All Right:  The Trump administration is failing miserably at reuniting the families separated at the border despite HHS Secretary Azar’s initial promise that putting them back together would be easy as pie and Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen’s initial assertion that they’d never been separated in the first place.  Despite a judge’s order to have all the “tender age” children returned to their parents by yesterday, the government says that it has only returned 38 of the children and given that only 4 had been returned by yesterday morning, it’s hard to believe that even than number has been achieved.  As to the remaining 64, HHS says that some of their parents have already been deported and are hard to find, that others have incomplete paperwork making it hard to verify that they are really the parents and that the rest have criminal records. As to that paperwork, the problem mostly originates with the government who took the required documents away from the parents when they crossed the border and is now making it difficult, if not impossible, for the parents to get their documents back.  Also, with regard to the assertion that some of the parents are “criminals” many of those allegations are false but by placing the burden of proof on the parents, the government gets to justify keeping them separated from their children.  Despite an appeal from the Justice Department to extend the deadlines for returning the children, Judge Sabraw, who set the deadlines in the first place, is providing no relief, he wants the children returned pronto, is only providing exceptions on a case by case basis and continues to insist that the rest of the “older” children be returned by his next deadline. He’s also said that the government should relax some of its return criteria, since those rules were originally set for unaccompanied minors not for children taken from their parents arms.  Moreover, he has told that ACLU  that he wants government officials to be held accountable to the extent that they don’t cooperate. When asked about the slow reunification process, Trump said that the solution is for people not to come to “our” country “illegally,” period, ignoring the fact that that many of those crossing the border seeking asylum are following the law.  Trump doesn’t like that law, so it doesn’t count.

Manafort, Flynn and Cohen:  Last week Paul Manafort’s lawyers requested a change in venue to a more “Republican” part of the state for his upcoming Virginia case and complained that the prison where he is being held is too far away from their offices making it burdensome for him to work with them on his case.  So far the Judge hasn’t agreed to the change of venue but yesterday, he did agree to move Manafort to a prison closer to home. Manafort has changed his mind, he doesn’t want to move and is now asking to stay put, claiming that the new location would be too dangerous. Mostly, Manafort just wants out and was hoping that the judge would let him return to his home. Since his gambit didn’t work, he’d rather stay where he is, perhaps because the new jail doesn’t have suitable VIP facilities.   Of more concern to Manafort is that the Virginia judge, like the judge in his Washington DC case, has denied his lawyers’ attempt to throw out boxes of business documents that prosecutors had gained in a raid of his storage unit last year. The judge found that the search didn't violate Manafort's rights.  Manafort's request to keep the evidence out of the trial was one of his last remaining attempts to avoid the full weight of the criminal case that prosecutors plan to bring against him when his trial on bank fraud and other financial crimes charges starts in two weeks. Still there has been no indication that Manafort is ready to flip.  Former security advisor Michael Flynn, who has already flipped, made a court appearance yesterday because his sentencing judge who has never met him, wanted to meet face to face. Prosecutors are still trying to push off Flynn’s sentencing which may be an indication that they might want him to testify on their behalf at a future date.  The cash strapped Flynn may or may not have a new job.  Yesterday, it was disclosed that he had joined Stonington Capital, a consulting firm with the kind of questionable international clients that got Flynn into trouble in the first place, as their Director of Strategy.  Flynn’s lawyers forced a backtrack, saying that the announcement of his new gig was a mistake even though his new role was already featured prominently on that company’s website.  Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer/fixer, and his newest lawyer, PR guru, Lanny Davis continue to hint that Cohen is on the verge of spilling his guts to prosecutors.  On Sunday Davis responded to a suggestion by Rudy Giuliani that Cohen should cooperate with prosecutors because the ”president had done nothing wrong with him” by tweeting back Did @rudygiuliani really say on Sunday shows that @michaelcohen212 should cooperate should cooperate with prosecutors and tell the truth? Seriously? Is that Trump and Giuliani definition of "truth"? Trump/Giuliani next to the word “truth” = oxymoron. Stay tuned. #thetruthmatters.   The Michael Cohen watch continues.