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.