Tribbles

Oops He Did it Again:  Trump may have pulled another implicating “Lester Holt” move. Echoing his inadvertent admission that he fired former FBI Director Comey to make the Russia investigation go away, when asked about his decision to appoint the extremely underqualified Matt Whitaker as the Acting Attorney General during his rambling Daily Caller interview, Trump shifted abruptly to the Mueller investigation saying “its something that never should have been brought  It’s an illegal investigation.” Thursday morning he continued that chain of thought combining all of his usual Mueller damning talking points into a particularly off the wall, fact challenged  tweet tirade:  “The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. These are Angry People, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller, who worked for Obama for 8 years. They won't even look at all of the bad acts and crimes on the other side. A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!"  It’s highly likely that Trump’s twitter outburst reflects his increasing panic that the proverbial sh-t is about to hit the fan, that he knows that more indictments are imminent, possibly because Whitaker is now keeping him totally in the Mueller loop.  Moreover, he’s fresh off three days of long meetings with his own lawyers, meetings where his team has been trying to get his input and signoff on what’s supposed to be his written response to a series of questions posed by Mueller, the response that is supposed to help him avoid sitting down for a Q and A session with the “highly conflicted” Mueller. Though there are no reports that any of the participating lawyers have yet committed hari kari it’s fair to assume that those three days of meetings with the increasingly irate and unhinged Trump were torturous.  As to the written response, plans to deliver it to Mueller have been pushed off a bit, if not forever, and Rudy Giuliani who has been strangely quiet for a while now has emerged from wherever he was hiding to tell the Washington Post that "There are some (questions) that create more issues for us legally than others," adding that some are "unnecessary and others possible traps, we might consider some as irrelevant,” his way of saying that despite their collective skills Trump’s crackerjack legal team can’t figure out how to get Trump out of the hole that he continues to dig himself into.  While the Trump team has been wrestling with Mueller’s questions, some snippets from recent court files provide indications that Mueller and his team are still pressing ahead.  In one recent filing they requested permission to delay providing  sentencing recommendations for Rick Gates and Paul Manafort, in the case of Gates they reported that he was still providing them with information.  As to Manafort, it’s not clear that he’s still being all that cooperative, but the Mueller team is still pressing him for more information too.  Majority Leader McConnell continues to resist efforts to bring Mueller protection legislation up for a vote.  Senator Flake is holding firm on his threat to hold up Trump’s judicial nominees until such legislation is passed but so far he’s the only Republican who’s taking that position.  The ever disappointing Senator Susan Collins says that she supports the legislation but won’t join Flake’s judiciary obstruction plan.  A number of other Republican Senators including John Cornyn are pushing Trump to nominate a permanent Attorney General, one with real credentials, who will promise to leave Mueller alone so that they can avoid pursuing Mueller protecting legislation. Word is that Trump has approached a number of Bush era attorneys but that so far no one has shown much interest in his offer likely because those who care about their reputations know that the Senate will expect whoever is selected to promise to leave Mueller alone during any confirmation process at the same time that  Trump will press his nominee to disrupt the investigation.  Mueller also make some progress in the courts on Thursday when a Federal judge appointed by Trump upheld an indictment against the Russian troll farm accused of meddling in the 2016 election.

Midterm Magic:  The Democratic House wave continues to grow.  Though vote tallies still aren’t finalized it’s looking more and more likely that Orange County, California the former Reagan Republican stronghold, has turned completely blue.  The last remaining Republican Congressman in New England, Bruce Poliquin, has lost his seat to Democrat and former Marine Jared Golden. Given the trend, Maine’s Susan Collins should be getting very nervous about her 2020 reelection prospects.  The state of play in Florida remains uniquely Floridian.  Broward, Palm Beach and Hillsborough (Tampa) counties all had problems submitting updated vote tallies to State officials.  Broward missed the deadline by two minutes because their submission took too long to upload into the computer system, Palm Beach stuck with Saturday’s tallies after their antiquated machinery kept overheating and Hillsborough officials, uncomfortable when their newest tallies dropped some votes stuck with their original count.  Despite, or maybe because of all of the vote count confusion, the Senate race between incumbent Nelson and outgoing Governor Scott is headed to an unprecedented statewide manual recount and though the gap in votes between Democratic Tallahassee Mayor Gillum and Republican DeSantis remains outside the threshold that would mandate a hand recount, Gillum hasn’t re-conceded.  He’s holding out until all outstanding votes are counted and all signature issues and legal disputes are resolved.  To that end, in a reference to the number of lawyers that are litigating the election, Mark Walker, the US District Court Judge who is overseeing all of the cases, said that he “feels a little bit like Capt. Kirk in the episode where the Tribbles multiply."  

Arabian Nightmare:  The Saudis most recent official explanation for the murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is that the murder part was an accident, they only meant to snatch him for rendition back to Saudi Arabia where they could then dismember him away from probing eyes.  Following yesterday’s announcement that the Saudis are pursuing charges against everyone involved in the “incident” except that is for Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, the US State Department announced sanctions against 17 Saudis none of whom are named Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS).  At the same time it was revealed that in an effort to get the Turkish government to stop releasing more evidence that would further implicate MBS in the murder, the Trump administration has been giving serious consideration to delivering Turkish Cleric Fethullah Gulen, a US permanent resident who resides in Pennsylvania, to the Turks.  Trump officials have actually asked the FBI, Homeland Security and the Justice Department to review Gulen’s green card for irregularities that could be used to justify his rendition.  Turkey’s President Erdogan, who considers Gulen to be his number one foe, has wanted the cleric returned to Turkey for some time.  He previously pressed the Obama administration to hand him over but after reviewing Erdogan’s request they refused. At one point some Turkish businessmen acting on behalf of their government tried to hire former national security advisor Michael Flynn to kidnap Gulen to force him back to Turkey. Ironically if Erdogan ever manages to get Gulen back into Turkey, he will end up getting some form of the Khashoggi treatment.  Career State Department officials who are irate that the Trump squad would even consider such a move most likely leaked the plans to squelch them. Just another subplot in the continuing saga of Trump’s America.