Country First

Cohen Chronicles:  Michael Cohen, Trump’s one time fixer/lawyer,  is either making a last ditch effort to get a pardon from Trump or really is close to turning on his mentor.  Yesterday, ABC released the audio portion of his interview with  George Stephanopoulos.  During the interview Cohen announced that he was putting his wife, children and the country before all, leaving the distinct impression that he was no longer willing to step between Trump and any of those bullets he previously said he would stop.  No one really believes that Cohen has suddenly developed a conscience or cares all that much about the country, but he does appear to care about himself, his wife and his kids.  Cohen’s new lawyer, former US Attorney Guy Petrillo, is due to officially come on board shortly, as soon as the review of all of those files and documents that the Feds grabbed from Cohen’s home and office are released, something that is expected to happen shortly. As Michael Avenatti, Stormy Daniel’s attention seeking but generally correct lawyer predicted, few of those files are protected by attorney client privilege.  Assuming that Trump doesn’t do something to bring Cohen back into the fold, Cohen is expected to drop his joint defense agreement with Trump and begin cooperating with the Feds.  The last two guys to follow a similar game plan, Michael Flynn and Rick Gates, turned against team Trump so expectations that Cohen is following suit are reasonable.  During his Stephanopoulos interview, Cohen declined to answer questions about what Trump knew about the infamous Trump Tower meeting with the Russians but left the distinct impression that he knows something damning about that meeting and much more about lots of other Russian and “women things.”   As to the interview, Cohen had been planning it for a while, as part of his plan to improve his tarnished image.  To that end, he got a new haircut and donned a spiffy new suit but at the last minute, under the advice of his new counsel, he stuck to the audio only format.  Camera or audio, signaling to the Feds that you are eager to cooperate via a network interview is unusual, but traditional went out the window a long time ago.  Just another chapter in the Trump reality saga, the saga with no end in sight.

Migrant Morass:  The number of kids separated from their parents is probably way higher than anyone knows.  Even Health and Humans Services Secretary Azar is concerned.  Though he spent the first weekend of the migrant crisis partying at his Dartmouth reunion, he has now hunkered down and has been spending long nights in his office, scouring files trying to figure out how many children are really under his care.  He’s also trying to figure out where they’ve been stashed.  To the extent that he is successful, at some point the government may figure out how many kids they’ve separated but the rest of us won’t get to know the total, yesterday a HHS spokesperson announced that the department will no longer be disclosing exactly how many children it is holding as a result of the Trump separation policy.  Apparently they’ve concluded that transparency is so overrated.  In addition to separating children from their parents at the border, the Trump administration has been cracking down on asylum seekers by detaining them for unconscionably long periods of time.  Last night, US District Judge James Boasberg,  ordered the government to immediately release or grant hearings to more than 1,000 asylum seekers who have been jailed for months or years without individualized case reviews. The Judge pointed out that ICE ignored its own policy, one that states that asylum applicants who establish a “credible fear” of persecution in their native country must be granted a court hearing within seven days or be released. The ruling came in a case filed by the ACLU on behalf of a Haitian teacher who has been held in detention for more than eighteen months even though his fears of returning to Haiti were determined to be credible. Before Trump took office and before he and Sessions started imposing their draconian standards, about 90% of those establishing credible fear were released pending asylum reviews, that number is now down below 10%, even lower in some parts of the country.  The judge’s ruling only applies to certain regions but is likely to have a larger impact, that is until the Trump administration appeals or tries to appeal.

Supreme Shuffle:  Yesterday’s Boasberg ruling highlights again why Trump and his team have been working so hard to stack the Federal courts with conservative judges and why they are working so hard to get the most conservative person possible onto the Supreme Court.  To that end Trump is planning to announce his Supreme Court nominee early next week.  Yesterday he interviewed four candidates, including Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh, Raymond Kethledge and Amul Thapar, all of them sitting Federal court judges.  Though Barrett has received a considerable amount of attention from those who believe that it would be harder for pro-choice Republican Senators Collins and Murkowski to vote against a fellow women, experts, to the extent they are to be believed, think that it is likely that neither Barrett or Thapar will be nominated for the Kennedy seat since, despite the fact that they’ve passed Federalist Society scrutiny, they are new to the courts and don’t have enough of a track record of delivering reliably conservative rulings.  Neither Trump nor his conservative benefactors want to run the risk of being “soutered,” a term that originates from the appointment of Justice David Souter to the Supreme Court by George H. W. Bush. Although a self-proclaimed conservative, once he ascended to the court, Souter revealed himself to be, horror of horrors, a liberal. Its highly unlikely that Trump’s team would make a similar mistake.  Though the Trump administration generally fails to get most things done right on their first or even fifth attempt, they seem to be atypically efficient when it comes to getting their guy onto the Supreme Court.  They succeeded with Gorsuch and are moving full steam ahead with Judge Kennedy’s appointment, so much so that yesterday it was reported that the White House staff has been reorganized to facilitate the mission.  As part of that reorganization, Raj Shah who has done such a good job twisting facts in his  Assistant Press Secretary position has been detailed to handle communication related to the court appointment.  

Trump Diplomacy:  Trump quickly reached out to Manuel Lopez Obrador, congratulating him for winning Mexico’s presidential election.  Lopez Obrador is a leftist and a populist but is also described as a pragmatist.  He responded by acknowledging the importance of improving relations with the US.  That said, he’s expected to push back at Trump, is not going to pay for the totally ridiculous wall and isn’t likely to do much to prevent migrants from crossing through Mexico to the US.  Trump may have met his match, at least with regard to posturing.  Trump has nothing nice to say to the members of NATO.  Yesterday he sent letters to the leaders of NATO allies, including Germany, Belgium, Norway and Canada, demanding that they increase their defense spending and threatening to alter the US global military presence if they do not.  Apparently the letter to Germany’s Angela Merkel was particularly harsh saying "continued German underspending on defense undermines the security of the alliance and provides validation for other allies that also do not plan to meet their military spending commitments, because others see you as a role model."  Trump also hinted that the US could alter its global military presence if NATO allies do not increase spending on their own defense.  Its not clear if Trump wrote the letters by himself or if they were dictated by his BFF Putin but regardless of who crafted the words, the theme comes straight from the Putin playbook.  As to Merkel, she managed to avoid another government crisis yesterday, holding her coalition government together by clamping down on asylum seekers seeking to settle in Germany.  Trump’s problems with all those “marauding hordes” of Mexicans and other Latin Americans pales in comparison to the problems facing Europe.  With wars, famines and climate change remaining a constant, the refugee crisis, is and is likely to continue to be a bigly problem.

Pruitt Nonsense:  Scott Pruitt is still running the EPA, but his problems continue to earn him more unfavorable, though sometimes humorous, press attention.  Apparently in addition to trying to buy used mattresses from the Trump organization and spending way too much money on unnecessary accoutrements like protective vests and cones of silence, Pruitt keeps at least two sets of appointment books, a scoured set that reveals only his most above board meetings and a second set that includes all of his meetings with industry heads seeking relaxation and elimination of all of those troublesome rules and regulations that limit them from polluting.  He even had his staff erase any record of his Rome dinner with the disgraced Cardinal Pell, a climate science denialist and known child abuser.  Falsifying government records is a bigly no no, unless of course you are Trump’s favorite Cabinet member.