Mobsters and Presidents

Caterwauling: The Khashoggi affair may finally be catching up with the Trump administration.  Yesterday in a Wall Street Journal Op-Ed Secretary of State Pompeo called out critics for “caterwauling” (screeching) over Saudi Arabia’s “human rights” violations and for piling on with the media to disrupt the Trump administration’s efforts to rebuild the US-Saudi Arabia partnership, the relationship that he says was inappropriately diminished during the Obama days as a result of that administration’s preference for Iran, his way of shifting the focus to Obama and the Iran nuclear deal. Neither his choice of words nor his accusations went over all that well with the Senate not even with the crowd that agreed with his Obama slam. Their frustration grew after they learned that CIA Director Gina Haspel was omitted from the squad that the administration sent to the Senate to provide a closed door update about the Khashoggi murder.  When asked why Haspel had been excluded, the always smirking Pompeo sidestepped the question by saying that he was there and that’s all that matters. When asked about Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Laden’s involvement in the Khashoggi murder scheme, Defense Secretary Mattis said that there was no “smoking gun” but said nothing about a “smoking” buzz saw.  Angry over Haspel’s omission, Pompeo’s diss, and Mattis’ failure to be more forthcoming, a bipartisan group of Senators voted 63 to 37 to forward to the floor legislation limiting presidential war powers in Yemen where Saudi Arabia’s actions, with US air support and lots of US weaponry has resulted in a mind numbing humanitarian crisis.  It’s not clear that the legislation will pass, some of the Republican Senators may have voted yes just to compel the White House to send Haspel to their chambers so that they can hear her conclusions about the Khashoggi murder.  Senator Lindsey Graham, who is frequently one of Trump’s biggest supporters is really exorcised about Saudi Arabia’s actions and Trump’s deceptions.  His decision to push the legislation forward was a particularly notable slap at his sometime golfing buddy.  Graham also insists that he’s not going to vote for any of end of year legislation until he hears from Haspel and he appears to mean it.  He is not alone.  

Mueller Morass:  With the midterms finally over, Trump is no longer pretending to tolerate the Mueller investigation.  Yesterday he retweeted a meme depicting all of his “enemies,” including Comey, the Clintons, Rosenstein, Mueller, and a host of other “criminals” behind bars. When asked about Rosenstein later in the day he doubled down saying that Rosenstein was a criminal because he was responsible for the appointment of Mueller. He also refused to rule out a future Paul Manafort pardon saying instead that Manafort has been unfairly treated by that McCarthy like Mueller team. Then late last night, he tweeted  “So much happening with the now discredited Witch Hunt. This total Hoax will be studied for years!”  He’s right about that, it will be studied for years, maybe the course will be entitled “Mobsters and Presidents,” however given this week’s plot twists it may take more than one semester to cover the subject matter.   Manafort’s decision to agree to a plea agreement while still cozying up to Trump, combined with his lawyers’ decision to continue sharing information about their discussions with the Special Counsel team with Trump’s legal team, could be worthy of its own special section.  Though it might not be worth the headache, Mueller could subpoena both Manafort’s legal team and the ever talkative Giuliani to learn more about what the two teams discussed since the attorney client privilege protection might not apply to a good part of those conspiring conversations.  All told, Trump has entered into joint defense agreements with upwards of thirty other individuals, including conspiracy theorist James Corsi who may well have been the link between Roger Stone and WikiLeaks’s Julian Assange.  In addition to dissing Mueller and his team, yesterday Trump let it be known through one or more selective leaks that in his carefully crafted written response, the one he claims he wrote but was really written by his lawyers, he told Mueller that he didn’t know about Don Jr’s Trump Tower meeting before it took place and that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks.  Of course both assertions included that all important qualifier:  “as far as I can remember.”  To the extent that Mueller has obtained phone records he probably knows whether or not Don Jr called Trump before the Trump tower meeting, however, it’s unlikely that he has any tapes of what they actually discussed.  As to Stone, last night the Washington Post reported that Trump and Stone had regular late night phone calls during the 2016 campaign.  Of course both of them assert those calls focused on rain forecasts and other such things, and never touched on anything related to WikiLeaks or the Podesta emails.   

Back Bones:  Senator Jeff Flake may finally have found his back bone.  Together with his Democratic co-sponsors he tried to force a unanimous voice on Mueller protecting legislation yesterday.  However, that effort failed after Republican Senator Mike Lee voted it down, arguing that it violated constitutional principles or at least his constitutional principles. In response, Flake is holding firm on his promise to hold up Republican judicial nominations and as a result the Senate Judiciary Committee cancelled a Thursday hearing on judicial nominees.  Unfortunately the nomination of one of the Republican’s more despicable judicial candidates made it through a procedural vote yesterday with the help of a tie breaking vote from VP Pence.  That nominee, Thomas Farr, served as counsel to the North Carolina Republican party and was instrumental in helping them implement a partisan gerrymandered map that intentionally disenfranchised African American voters, a map that was subsequently struck down in the courts, the courts that Farr will join if he gets voted in.  Farr’s fate now hangs in the hands of the Republican’s sole Black Senator, South Carolina’s Tim Scott, who voted for Farr’s nomination to proceed to the final vote but who says that he is still “researching” and has not made his final decision on whether to vote with the rest of his Republican colleagues or whether to vote against a man who has made a career out of disenfranchising Black voters.  It’s hard to understand why that’s a tough call for him, but for some reason it is. On the Democratic side, Nancy Pelosi is one step closer to becoming Speaker of the House. With no one running against her she won the Democratic caucus vote.  She still needs to win over a few more of those “never Nancy” Democratic representatives before the January vote for Speaker, something that she is expected to do because who are they going to vote for, if not her, Republican Kevin McCarthy? Unlikely. Democrats also voted their two other 70 plus year-old Representatives, Steny Hoyer and Jim Clyburn into their number two and three spots but added one relatively youthful newcomer, 48 year-old New York Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, to the fifth most powerful leadership role.  Jeffries is viewed as a possible future Speaker.