Fallout

Sweet Sixteen: Following the eight guilty verdicts for Paul Manafort and the eight guilty pleas by Michael Cohen, the collective geniuses in the White House must have sat down for one of their strategy sessions.  Judging by all the statements that emerged from Team Trump yesterday their chosen plan wasn’t all that surprising: Deny, Deflect, Lie, and Scream NO COLLUSION whenever possible.  With that in mind, Sarah Huckabee Sanders answered virtually every question posed to her yesterday by saying, Trump did nothing wrong, there are no charges against him, he didn’t lie, and any assertions that he did are just a “ridiculous accusation,” because you know, he never lies.  She characterized Michael Cohen’s plea deal as something that Cohen did because of his own business problems, something that had nothing to do with Trump.  As to Manafort, she said that the case doesn’t have anything to do with Trump, the campaign or the White House, adding that she was “not aware of any conversations regarding a Manafort pardon.”  For his part Trump made it clear that he respects his former Campaign Manager, even if he only worked for him for a minute and despises his former lawyer/fixer who worked for him for years by tweeting  “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family ‘Justice’ took a 12 year old tax case among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and unlike Michael Cohen he refused to ‘break’ – make-up stories in order to get a deal.  Such respect for a brave man!” That tweet which misrepresented the age of the tax crimes left the distinct impression that despite the political fallout it would trigger, a pardon could be coming for Paul Manafort, especially if he continues to maintain his stoic silence.  As to that pardon, yesterday in an interview that will air this morning on Fox and Friends, Trump mentioned to Ainsley Earhardt that he really is considering pardoning Manafort, at least that’s what she told Sean Hannity last night.  During the same interview, Trump laid the groundwork for that pardon by expressing great respect for Manafort, again pointing out that his former campaign manager had worked for Reagan, Dole and McCain, referring to his bank and tax fraud charges as something “every consultant, every lobbyist in Washington probably does.” As to Michael Cohen and those problematic “hush” payments to his Playmate girlfriend and adult film star honey, he said that he knew about the payments “later on” but not before they were made and insisted that they did not come from campaign funds, despite the fact that we’ve all heard his taped conversation with  Cohen, the one where he discusses one of those payments and despite the fact that any undisclosed payments from his personal or business accounts would have been a campaign finance violation.  Trump said all this in the calm, somewhat whiny voice he uses whenever he’s trying really hard to convince an interviewer that he’s being earnest and truthful. Trump also went with some false equivalency by bringing up campaign violations made by Obama, tweeting “Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!” later throwing some mud at Attorney General Sessions by saying that the reason Obama didn’t get into trouble for his “massive campaign violation” was that “he had a different attorney general, and they viewed it a lot different."  For the record, Trump was referring to a $375,000 fine levied by the Federal Election Commission against Obama's 2008 presidential campaign over violations, including missing filing deadlines for disclosing large donations during the final weeks of the campaign, reporting the wrong dates on certain contributions, and not returning donations that exceeded the campaign contribution maximum quickly enough.  Experts say that those violations while nothing to sneeze at are generally considered "technical paperwork errors” that “people who were trying to get it right make,” they don’t compare to efforts to make payoffs to hide stories that might influence an election outcome.  House Republicans were spared from commenting on Manafort and Cohen as they are still out on summer break, their less fortunate colleagues in the Senate are around, they outwardly shrugged saying that as long as there was no collusion they could live with whatever was going on, though many of them are fairly panicked about what the impact will be on the midterm elections.  A number of them, including Senators Graham and Cornyn said that a Manafort pardon would be a step too far, though they didn’t specify what they would do to prevent or deal with that step something they should plan for since Trump is clearly working himself up to something.  At 1:00 AM this morning he scream-tweeted NO COLLUSION-RIGGED WITCH HUNT, perhaps a sign of Trump explosions yet to come?  As to Democrats, they continue to fume and though they have little power, they are again pressing their position that the Brett Kavanaugh Supreme Court nomination should be put off until after the midterm elections.  Their argument, and it’s a good one even if it will go nowhere, is that Trump, who has pretty much been named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the Cohen case, shouldn’t be able to stack the Supreme Court with judges who might be called upon to rule on whether or not he can be forced to testify.      

Trumpian Tidbits:  One of the jurors in the Manafort case, a Republican who plans to vote for Trump again, told Fox News that the evidence against Manafort was overwhelming and that the only reason that they didn’t find him guilty on the other ten charges was because of one hold out.  CNBC reports that hidden among the reams of documents and papers taken from Michael Cohen’s home and offices was some evidence that he made a previously unreported payment of $50,000 to a tech company in connection with the 2016 campaign.  That payment “suggests that Cohen may have been doing more for Trump, and for the campaign that had been previously known.”  Cohen’s spokes lawyer, Lanny Davis, has suggested that Cohen could be helpful to the Mueller collusion investigation and though the $50,000 payment could turn out to be nothing significant, there have been some suggestions that it may represent a payment to someone or some groups perhaps Russian, perhaps not, involved in hacking and/or the spreading of election related disinformation. Separately, the Wall Street Journal reports that concerns about his wife’s exposure due to her involvement in his taxi business finances may have spurred Cohen to reach his plea deal, a fairly believable assertion since others have reported that she helped with his books and he’s been on record for some time saying that his family was his first priority. Yesterday, the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance issued a subpoena to Cohen as part of its continuing probe into whether the Trump Foundation violated NY tax laws.  With little else to do, Cohen immediately responded, saying he was available to talk whenever they had time on their schedule.   That could be a bigly problem for Trump and Trumpettes Ivanka, Don Jr and Eric, who are all involved with the Foundation, the not so “charitable” foundation that gave little to charity but did manage to allocate money towards campaign related efforts and the resolution of some Trump company disputes.   Lastly, the extended DeVos-Prince family continues to be up to their usual antics.  Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, who has been tasked with figuring out how to solve the problem of gun related school massacres but refuses to even think about anything related to gun  restrictions,  is considering redirecting money from the Education Department away from education programs to the purchasing of guns for teachers while her brother Erik Prince is again touting his plan to privatize the US war in Afghanistan.  With Trump growing increasingly frustrated by the Afghanistan morass, brother Erik’s proposal is being given more consideration, by Trump, but not by General Mattis who shudders at the thought of involving Erik, whose former company Blackwater engaged in some pretty nasty activities, in anything.