Gates on the Hot Seat

Manafort’s Morass:  Yesterday Special Counsel Mueller’s prosecutors called Manafort’s one time crony and current nemesis Rick Gates, the witness that everyone was waiting for, to the stand.  Prosecutors started their questioning by establishing that Gates, like Manafort, was a crook and it turns out that he really was a crook.  As per his plea agreement, Gates admitted that he and Manafort had 15 unreported foreign bank accounts, that they had understated income to avoid taxes and then when cash started to run out, that they had overstated income to obtain bank loans.  Though Gates did a lot of their paperwork, he said that he committed all of their crimes in response to Manafort’s directions.  In anticipation of what is expected to be a tough cross examination by Manafort’s defense counsel, prosecutors had Gates “inoculate” himself by leading him through a series of questions that allowed him to come clean about his other criminal activities.  Specifically, proving that there is no honor among thieves, Gates admitted that he had embezzled a hundred thousand or so from Manafort by overstating his own expenses, an amount that Manafort might not have cared much about because it was probably then passed on to his Ukraine clients, a group fairly comfortable with the concept of financial finagling.  Gates  also admitted to a few other unrelated financial crimes that he’d committed over the years and even fessed up to missing one of his court ordered curfews.  It was also reported that Judge Ellis stuck to his form, holding prosecutors feet to the fire, pushing them to move faster, criticizing them for introducing irrelevant information and harping on them for being overly redundant.  Real fireworks are expected today during cross examination. Though little of this touches on Mueller’s Russian case against Trump and the Trumpkins, its becoming increasingly clear that Gates, who remained on the Trump team for months after Manafort was pushed out, knows and has in all likelihood shared a lot of other implicating tidbits of information with the Mueller team, information that his lawyers may have already seen during the discovery process and that they have probably shared with Trump’s lawyers by now.  This is just another one of those reasons that Trump, who by all accounts has been keeping close tabs on the Manafort trial, appears to be more unhinged than usual right now.  As to the Trump obstruction and collusion, or more accurately conspiracy, case, curiously Hope Hicks, Trump’s one time gal Friday and Communications Director, made an appearance over the weekend, joining Trump on his flight to his Ohio campaign rally.  Hicks’ appearance was a bit surprising since she too has spent some quality time with Mueller’s team, probably discussing among other things, the events surrounding the crafting of the deceptive statement concerning son Don Jr’s Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya.  While Trump’s team asserts that Hicks was just hitching a ride to Ohio, to an outsider and a prosecutor their meet-up looks a wee bit suspicious, leaving the impression that the two could be talking about things that they shouldn’t be talking about and maybe even trying to sync up their version of events surrounding the drafting of that statement.  In any case, Hicks should be very careful, as many as five current and former Trumpkins know what went on the night that the statement was drafted and they’ve already told their versions to Mueller’s team.  For his part, Don Jr seems to be getting antsy too.  Yesterday, during a phone interview with very conservative radio host Laura Ingraham, Don Jr’s phone line mysteriously disconnected after she asked him a question about the Trump Tower meeting.  He called back after a brief interlude and dodged the question by instead blaming the Democrats and the “fake news” cable channels for blowing the meeting out of proportion.  A chip off the old block?

Foreign Affairs:  Yesterday, as anticipated, the Trump administration re-imposed some sanctions on Iran, the rest are due to go into effect in November.   These are the sanctions that had been previously lifted by Obama following the signing of the Iran nuclear agreement, the one that Trump has effectively gutted. Though the other parties to the Iran agreement want to continue doing business with Iranian entities, the imposition of sanctions by the US makes it difficult if not impossible for many multinational corporations to continue to do business in Iran so the sanctions will further damage Iran’s already strained economy while also straining US relations with European and Asian allies who would have preferred that the US stayed in the Iran agreement, pressing for changes from within the group.  Secretary of State Pompeo insists that the US isn’t trying to push for regime change in Iran but that it would like to see  “enormous changes” in Iran, pretty much code words for regime change.  Likewise, neo-con extraordinaire national security advisor John Bolton happily reported that he sees signs that just the threat of the re-imposition of sanctions is having a devastating effect on Iran.  On the North Korean front, while Trump continues to be bullish about imminent denuclearization,  Pompeo has finally admitted that the two sides are miles apart and that not much is happening, besides the return of what may or may not have been the remains of 50 of the 250 soldiers whose remains the North Koreans had promised to return.  Though VP Pence showed up for a ceremony honoring those remains last week, the North Koreans have been known to return dog bones during prior “gestures” of conciliation, so genetic testing will be required before we’re sure that the remains belong to human soldiers.  Lastly, gadfly Senator Rand Paul is finishing up his solo mission to Russia.  Paul, the one Senator who seems happy with Trump’s Russian outreach spent some quality time with a number of Russian officials including former Ambassador Kislyak who continues to deny that the Russians had engaged in any election interference and has requested Paul’s help in getting that very nice girl Maria Butina, the NRA canoodler, part time grad student and full time agent of influence,  returned home to Moscow as soon as possible.  

Judicial Front:  The Kavanaugh Supreme Court confirmation process continues to move forward despite the fact that many of the documents requested by Judiciary Committee Chairman Grassley, a Republican, will not be available until late October.  Grassley has suddenly decided that he really doesn’t need those documents anyway.  Three red state Democrats including Senators Manchin (WV), Donnelly (IN) and Heitkamp (ND) have either met with or set meeting dates with Kavanaugh with Missouri’s Claire McCaskill expected to follow suit.   In the meantime, Democratic leadership continues to throw whatever they can in Kavanaugh’s way, right now they are focusing on what he may have known about the misdeeds of one time Judge Alex Kozinski who was forced into early retirement over sexual harassment accusations last year.  Kavanaugh had clerked for Kozinski and many of Kozinski’s accusers were fellow clerks. Also on the judicial front a number of Federal court judges have thrown a few impediments in the way of the Trump administration’s policies.  On Friday, one of those Federal judges, John Bates, ordered the administration to completely reinstate the DACA program but left time for a the government to appeal his decision.  Attorney General Sessions responded by saying that the judge had effectively "eviscerated" the legal authority of the executive branch and Congress, strongly suggesting that the administration would appeal the ruling.  Also on Friday, Federal court Judge Sabraw flatly rejected the government’s effort to outsource the responsibility for reuniting hundreds of migrant parents deported without their children to the ACLU saying the “government is “100 percent” responsible for the separation and the failure to reunite the migrant families, approximately 500 of those families remain apart.  And still another Federal judge ruled against an Indiana law that prohibited a transgender youth from using the bathroom of his choice.  Of course all of these judges were appointed well before Trump took office and though some of them were Republican appointees, it’s highly likely that Trump’s crop of mostly right wing appointees would rule differently, just another reason to be concerned about Judge Kavanaugh and many of Trump’s lower court picks. Elections have consequences!