News From the Swamp

Swamp Report:  Yesterday Geoffrey Berman, Trump’s handpicked Federal Attorney for the Southern District of New York, announced the indictment of Representative Chris Collins, an upstate New York Republican and Trump’s first Congressional endorser, on insider trading charges.  Collins, who has a net worth estimated to be around $79 million, served on the board of Innate Therapeutics, an Australian biotech firm whose shares were lightly traded in the US.  While attending a White House event, Collins received an email informing him that the company’s signature multiple sclerosis drug had failed a key drug trial.  Collins, who couldn’t sell his own “restricted” board shares, immediately called his son to alert him that the stock was about to take a dive.  Actually, he called him seven times because he couldn’t get through on the first six attempts.  A review of the videotape of the White House event show Collins furiously dialing his phone right there amongst the crowd on the White House lawn.   Immediately after he received his dad’s call, Collins’ son called several other family members including his soon to be in-laws.  They all dumped their shares avoiding more than $700,000 in losses.  Ironically, since he couldn’t sell his own shares Collins incurred a loss far in excess of the amount that his friends and family illegally averted.  Collins is also being accused of lying to investigators about the call he made to his son.  Last night he once again appeared on camera, this time at a news conference to proclaim his innocence and call the charges “meritless.”  At least for now, he intends to continue his run for reelection, and though the indictment may complicate his plans, his district is largely Republican so he stands a good chance of winning because what’s a little insider trading got to do with anything?  Curiously, at least five other members of Congress and former Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price owned shares in Innate as well, not all that surprising since Collins was known to share tips with his colleagues and has bragged about making them wealthy.  None of the other politicians have been indicted at least so far, it’s possible that they incurred losses or sold out of their shares well before the company’s drug trial results were in, although Price’s activities may still be under investigation.  No comments, yet, from the White House, however Speaker Ryan has kicked Collins off the House Energy and Commerce Committee.   

Manafort’s Morass:  The Manafort trial continued yesterday.  Rick Gates spent a little more time on the stand and as a result of defense counsel questioning we now know that he had as many as four affairs, encounters that he may have financed with some of the money that he embezzled from Manafort.  Fortunately, we don’t know any of the sordid details nor do we know whether or not the prosecutors already knew about those dalliances.  Defense counsel wants us to believe that Gates violated his plea agreement by hiding his affairs from Mueller’s team, proof in their minds and they hope in the jury’s minds that he is even more of a cad and liar than previously known.  For the record, Manafort isn’t all that innocent on the playboy front either, however, at least for now, it doesn’t appear that the jury has been told about his womanizing past.  And of course, in the time of Trump, its hard to believe that this is even an issue. Yesterday also included some convincing and damning testimony from the IRS and an FBI forensic accountant. The IRS agent reported that Manafort failed to report about $16 million in income between 2010 and 2014.  For their part defense attorneys countered that the unreported income amount, and thus the unpaid taxes, were overstated because they don’t reflect what was embezzled by Gates, kind of a desperate assertion.  Reports are that Judge Ellis continued his odd interjections and also continued to rush things along by saying that the jury didn’t need to see all of the prosecution’s exhibits because they’d have more time for review during their deliberations, an unusual approach to say the least.  It will be interesting to see if Judge Ellis continues weighing in against the prosecutors when the defense presents it’s case.  In any event, prosecutors still have a few more witnesses to call and though Gates may not have been the best witness, experts say the other testimony was compelling and that the case against Manafort remains strong.  

Trump on the Hot Seat:  It’s highly unlikely that Trump’s lawyers will ever sign off on him sitting down with Mueller and his team for fairly obvious reasons:  they know he will say things he shouldn’t say and they know he will lie.  Nevertheless, Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow continue to insist that Trump really wants to meet with Mueller and that the problem is Mueller, his unfair demands and that whole perjury trap thing.  According to Giuliani, Trump’s lawyers have rejected conditions set by Mueller’s team and have instead countered by telling Mueller that any questions about the firing of Comey or the Flynn affair would be verboten, a ridiculous request since both subjects are key to Mueller’s obstruction investigation.  Giuliani is also insisting that any interview, to the extent it takes place, would have to occur before September 1 so as to avoid interfering with the November elections, he’s even gone so far as to insist that the whole investigation is subject to the same deadline, an assertion that is just totally false.  Working the public relations angle, last night Giuliani told Fox’s Sean Hannity that Mueller's case "isn’t going to fizzle. It's going to blow up on them." Adding "There's a lot more to what they did that nobody knows about yet ... a lot more to the obstruction of justice, to the collusion, to the fake dossier." Giuliani’s bluster aside, though it’s unlikely that Mueller would do anything during the sixty day run up to the election, Trump is not on the ballot and there is no formal rule preventing taking any action during that period, it’s just an unofficial practice, one that we and Hillary Clinton know has been broken before.  Anyway, no one has heard from Mueller because the Special Counsel doesn’t talk to the press and though Giuliani argues that Trump can’t be forced to testify, his view is not the one that matters.  Mueller might very well decide to stop negotiating with Trump’s lawyers, to the extent that he really has been, and go with a subpoena, leaving it up to Trump to decide if he wants to tell the public that he is afraid to testify and leaving it to the court, the Supreme Court that is, not the court of public opinion, to decide if he has to. 

Russia, Russia, Russia: Eccentric Senator Rand Paul has been having a terrific time in Russia and reports that while  there he has hand delivered a letter from Trump to his BFF Vlad.  Though Paul insists that he delivered the letter at Trump’s behest, Trump’s aides insist that the letter was written at Paul’s insistence and that it was given to him to make him feel useful.  Hmmm.  Whatever the reason for the letter, Putin is probably a bit less happy today.  Yesterday, the State Department announced the imposition of more sanctions under a chemical and biological warfare law in retaliation for the London poisoning of former Russian agent Skripal and his daughter.  The new sanctions were announced following a somewhat delayed determination by Secretary of State Pompeo that Russia violated international law when it poisoned the two in March. The decision may also have been made to help Trump with his claim that, despite the “witch hunt” Mueller investigation, his administration has been tough on Moscow in practice and has hit hard when needed.