Happy New Year!

New Year, Same Songbook:  The year may be coming to an end but the crazy Trump train continues to hurdle down the tracks.  Tomorrow morning, a portion of the government will still be closed with 800,000 people either furloughed or working without pay.  As expected the Office of Personnel Management’s solution that cash strapped, unpaid workers try bartering with their landlords, offering up services like garbage hauling and random painting in lieu of rent payments, was greeted with more than a little bit of dismay.  To no one’s surprise Trump, who not too long ago insisted that he would own the shutdown, is casting blame on Democrats, most notably Speaker-to-be Nancy Pelosi, saying that her refusal to provide any wall funding comes from a concern than any concession on her part will jeopardize her winning the speakership vote. For their part Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and the rest of the Democrats, who successfully turned the midterms into an election over health care and pre-existing conditions have distanced themselves from earlier calls for the dissolution of the INS.  Their rebranded message is that they are all in on funding border security as long as money  is used for 21^st century solutions rather than  the equivalent of a Medieval wall.  To that end, while vacationing in Hawaii, Pelosi dispatched Congressman Hakeem Jeffries, the newest member of her House leadership contingent and a possible future speaker himself out on the talk show circuit to say that Democrats will provide funding for enhanced security, drones, and people, but no wall. Trump’s quixotic push for wall funding wasn’t helped yesterday after the LA Times published outgoing Chief of Staff John Kelly first post-Trump world interview.  In the interview Kelly reveals that Trump’s proposed border project "is not a wall" and that all plans for a concrete wall were abandoned long ago. Kelly goes on to say that Trump “still says ‘wall’ — oftentimes frankly he’ll say ‘barrier’ or ‘fencing,’ now he’s tended toward steel slats. But we left a solid concrete wall early on in the administration, when we asked people what they needed and where they needed it."  Despite Kelly’s comments, his replacement Budget Director/Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney hit the news show circuit yesterday pressing for wall funding. He attacked the Democrats for refusing to negotiate with Trump who he asserts has backed off of his $5 billion demand and is willing to accept some smaller number, probably somewhere around $2.5 billion as long as a portion of it can be used for a wall like structure.  Kellyanne Conway was out mostly attacking Nancy Pelosi for vacationing in Hawaii.  For their part Nancy and Chuck appear to have decided to let Trump stew in the White House, where he is hanging now that he has cancelled his plans to ring in the New Year at Mar a Lago.  At least for now they are refusing to negotiate in part because every time they think they’ve reached a workable compromise with VP Pence or another one of Trump’s designees, Trump, fearing the wrath of his right wing media advisors Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, moves the goal post and ups his demands. Senator Lindsey Graham, who was back to playing Trump buddy this weekend claims that there probably is a compromise that would result in Trump getting his full $5 billion in exchange for a resolution of the DACA (Deferred Action for Child Arrivals)  and TPS (Temporary Protected Status) problems, but that’s probably a pipedream, at least for now.  Expectations are that immediately after her speakership role is formalized, Speaker Pelosi will bring a clean funding resolution to a vote in the House, one that looks strikingly similar to the one previously passed unanimously in the Senate, tossing the responsibility for opening the government back to Senate Majority Leader McConnell and Trump.  Pelosi’s bill will probably include two adjustments, in all likelihood she’ll include a provision providing back-pay to all the government employees hurt by the shutdown and another reinstating the cost of living adjustment for government employees that Trump unceremoniously cancelled this week because while tax cuts for the rich are affordable, small wage increases for middle class workers not so much. Trump won’t be happy but at some point he will declare “victory” moving on to the next fight and with Nancy Pelosi now running the House, there will be many.  

Migrant Deaths:  Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen, who for some inexplicable reason still has a job, went on a site visit to the border to see where the two young Guatemalan children died. Following the Trump/Stephen Miller playbook she still hasn’t acknowledged that clampdowns at the border and the delayed processing of people seeking refugee status or the government’s treatment of migrants contributed to the environment that led to the children’s deaths.  She did however commit to making some changes in the way the “unprecedented surge” of “migrants, particularly children, “ who she said “are increasingly facing medical challenges and harboring illness caused by their long and dangerous journey" are treated.  For the record, there is no surge, the number of migrants crossing into the US from Mexico is down. For his part, during the same LA Times interview where he disparaged the Trump wall, departing Chief of Staff Kelly slammed former Attorney General Jeff Sessions saying that the controversial "zero tolerance" immigration policy that led border officials to separate children from their parents was Session’s “brainchild” and was not handed down from the White House.  As to migrant kids dying, Republican Congressman Peter King stood up for the INS, saying that it was “only two kids” adding kids die in housing projects all the time, what’s the big deal.  Oy.

Russian Front:  Rudy Giuliani continues to spout nonsensical comments most of which can be summarized as though “Trump may have committed a few crimes, they aren’t crimes because Trump did them and Hillary should be in jail anyway.”  For his part Special Counsel Mueller remains silent, continuing to let his actions speak louder than his words.  As to those actions, expectations are that Trump buddy Roger Stone will be indicted sometime very soon.  One interesting tidbit did emerge last week.  In his infamous dossier, Christopher Steele reported a trip made by one time Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen to Prague back in the summer of 2016, a trip that Cohen continues to deny.  Last week reporters from McClatchy DC, a reputable media outlet, published a story claiming that several intelligence agencies tracked one of Cohen’s phone pinging in the Prague area at that time. So far no other news outlets have confirmed the McClatchy story but if it is correct, it would suggest that Mueller has evidence that Trump sent Cohen to Europe to meet with a high-ranking Kremlin official, “ostensibly to discuss Russian concerns that their intrusion in the presidential campaign on Trump’s behalf might be exposed.”  The Daily Beast put it this way, if the facts of the story are true, then Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, the McClatchy reporters, are the next Woodward and Bernstein, if not their careers are toast. 

Wishing all a happy and healthy New Year full of good news, real facts, and some other nice things!     

Holiday Travel

Cadet Bone Spurs:  Trump couldn’t have been all that pleased that on the same day that he finally visited troops in a war zone, the NY Times printed a story about how he got his bone spurs, the ones that kept him out of being sent to fight in Viet Nam.  It turns out that one Queens, New York podiatrists wrote him an excuse letter, one where the bone spurs were fabricated in exchange for some favorable treatment by his landlord, Fred Trump, and that another podiatrist who frequently worked with the local draft board corroborated the diagnosis as a favor to his fellow foot buddy.  The letter and back up support were enough to convince the draft board that Trump wasn’t fit to serve. That a rich kid used connections to avoid going to Viet Nam isn’t all that shocking, he wasn’t alone in that respect, but it certainly explains why Trump can’t remember which of his feet had those “debilitating” spurs and more significantly confirms another one of the things that he was lying about during the 2016 campaign while saying that the late Senator McCain’s wasn’t a hero because he’d been captured by the Viet Cong.  That said, it’s nice that, with a perfectly coifed Melania in tow, Trump finally went to visit the troops.  Sadly, because just smiling for the cameras and interacting with soldiers wasn’t enough for him, Trump also delivered an inappropriate political speech, one where he attacked Democrats for failing to provide him with the funding for his wall and defended his decision to abruptly pull troops from Syria by saying that “we are no longer suckers, folks.”  He did affirm a commitment to staying in Iraq, noting that if he had to fix any messes resulting from his rash Syria decision, Iraq could be used as a launching pad.  To that end, Trump and his remaining advisors should probably have been just a wee bit more gracious to Iraqi officials.  For some inexplicable reason, contrary to usual practice, they made no arrangements for Trump to meet with Iraq’s president or anyone else of note during his brief stopover, a faux pas that left the Iraqis condemning him for violating their sovereignty.   Anyway, after saying that he was in no rush to replace Defense Secretary Mattis, the former general who is way more popular with the troops than he is, falsely claiming that he’d awarded the soldiers the first pay raise they’d received in ten years, and then signing a few MAGA hats, the admittedly skittish about being in a war zone Trump skadoodled out of harm’s way, heading to Germany and then back to Washington DC.  On the flight back, Trump posted a video that had been taken of him and Melania in Iraq, a video that included members of Seal Team 5, revealing their location and their identities to all, something that is classified but then again he gets to do things like that without punishment because he’s Trump and we’re not.     

Death Count: While Trump was traveling we learned about the death of another migrant child who died while in US custody over the Christmas holiday.  The child, a young Guatemalan boy, had spent the last six days of his life being moved to at least four immigration facilities.  Though it’s not clear what caused the tragic death, it is clear that neither the border patrol, the INS or the Department of Health and Human services are equipped to handle the mess that changes in US policy have caused at the border.  Current INS facilities are at capacity, not because of increases in migrants crossing the border but because more migrants are being detained.  Additionally, to the extent that spaces are available they are usually in facilities that don’t have the ability or expertise to take care of children.  As usual Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen, who still has a job mostly because no one else is available to replace her, blamed that child’s death on his father’s decision to flea violence in his homeland because that’s her answer to everything. That said, even she knows a public relations nightmare when she sees one, so she announced plans to transfer in some medical personnel from the Coast Guard so that children can be “assessed” as soon as they enter the US.  Nielsen isn’t the only seriously underqualified Trump official who is lucky to be gainfully employed.  Yesterday the Wall Street Journal filled us in on another one of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker’s disqualifications.  It turns out that Whitaker has long been claiming that he had been awarded  Academic All American status for his combined University of Iowa football playing and academic prowess.  Unfortunately for him, a spokesperson for CoSIDA,  the awarding organization confirms that he never achieved that status.  While his claim might not seem like a big deal, the Department of Justice is a stickler about truth telling on application forms.  Applicants making similar false claims are typically disqualified before they get in the door.  However, it’s unlikely that Whitaker’s boss, Cadet Bone Spurs, is all that concerned about those fabrications, after all Whitaker’s promotion to Mueller supervisor was based on more pressing things like his willingness to provide Trump’s lawyers with inside information about the status of the Russian investigation and maybe, just maybe, a promise to squash inconvenient indictments and other such things.

Beading:  The government funding stalemate lives on with no end in sight. Trump continues to insist that he won’t sign any spending bill that doesn’t provide him with all the funding he wants for a wall that has morphed from a cement structure paid for by Mexico to a slatted fence funded by the new NAFTA but first paid for by US taxpayers.   Christmas Eve, home alone in the White House, Trump tweeted “I am in the Oval Office & just gave out a 115 mile long contract for another large section of the Wall in Texas,” adding that he had plans to visit the construction site in January.  The only problem with that is that though repairs on a much smaller stretch of existing structures are ongoing, no one knows what he is talking about, moreover he doesn’t even have the authority to sign “wall contracts,” that’s something done by Border Patrol and the US Army Corp of Engineers upon the authorization of Congress.  Throwing shade at all things “wall,” soon to be Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi noted that even if the wall is now a “beaded curtain” she’s not passing any legislation to fund it.   

Wall Shtick

Trump Shutdown:  The partial government shutdown went into effect at midnight on Friday after the Senate failed to pass the House’s version of a funding bill, the one with $5 billion of wall funding. As expected Senate Majority Leader McConnell couldn’t get anywhere near the votes needed to pass a bill that included Trump’s billions, so he threw his arms up in frustration, sent the Senate home and told Trump that the only way to resolve the funding stalemate was for him to negotiate directly with Democratic leadership.  In response Trump held a White House negotiating session with his usual crowd of rightwing cronies but without Nancy and Chuck.  Alabama Senator Shelby, the Chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee, tried to broker a deal, with input from VP Pence and son- in-law Kushner who is now Trump’s go to legislative aide as a result of his criminal justice reform success, but he too gave up once he realized that there was no point in trying to get between Trump, who remains captive to the demands of his rightwing Cable TV bosses, and the Schumer-Pelosi duo.  Though Trump continues to assert that the shutdown is due to Nancy and Chuck’s intransigence, few outside of his most dedicated base are buying his narrative largely because the video of him saying that he’d be happy to take responsibility for the shutdown is playing on a continuous loop alongside the NORAD tape of  Santa and his sled.  It now appears that Trump has lowered his $5 billion demand, but still wants more than the $1.3 billion that Schumer and Pelosi are willing to deliver.  The Democratic duo might consider a very modest increase in funding but only if it the all the funds are allocated for items other than the wall or as it is now called the “slatted steel fence.”  It doesn’t help Trump’s position that his new Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney made fun of his wall shtick back in 2015, when he said "The fence doesn't solve the problem. Is it necessary to have one, sure? Would it help? Sure. But to just say build the darn fence and have that be the end of an immigration discussion is absurd and almost childish for someone running for president to take that simplistic of [a] view." Former Governor Christie whose decision to  turn down the Chief of Staff spot is looking more and more brilliant, pointed out that Trump is just a grumpy old men, a Waspy alta cocker (Yiddish for old fart),  too set in his ways to change and departing Senator Bob Corker called the shutdown a made up fight as he summoned the “daycare staff.” Nor does it help that Democrats keep pointing out that most of last year’s border security funds haven’t been spent, that most of the fentanyl making it across the border comes hidden in vehicles legally crossing through official checkpoints, and that efforts to curtail illegal drug traffic would benefit far more from  funds for sophisticated scanning equipment and more trained border agents at the checkpoints than the construction of the Trump slat wall.  With Congress closed, there is no chance that anything will be resolved until Thursday and it remains quite possible that the government will remain partially shuttered until January when soon to be Speaker Pelosi takes control of the House.

Spinning Doors:  It looks like Trump’s reading skills really are frozen at the Pat The Bunny level.  Though he was fairly annoyed that General Mattis contradicted the retirement version of his departure, Trump failed to comprehend that Mattis’ “I Quit” letter included a really stern rebuke of all things Trumpian.  However, after a few days of watching cable TV, he finally got the message that he had been seriously dissed, so yesterday Trump accelerated Mattis’ departure by two months, telling the respected former General to clear his medals out of the White House locker by year end.  Actually the feckless Trump didn’t notify Mattis directly, instead he sent current toady of choice, Secretary of State Pompeo to deliver the “get out now” message.  Once the ball drops on New Year’s Eve, Defense, like Justice and the EPA will become the third cabinet level department headed by an Acting Secretary and that doesn’t count the still unconfirmed UN Ambassadorship, a position that will be downgraded once Nikki Haley checks out next week.  At least for the time being Deputy Secretary of Defense Patrick Shanahan will be the acting Defense Secretary.  Shanahan is a former Boeing executive who had been focusing on the establishment of another one of Trump’s obsessions, the creation of an independent space force, an assignment that had earned him some Trump face time. As to Mattis, expectations are that his departure will trigger an exodus at Defense, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that Brett McGurk, the highly respected US Envoy responsible for coordinating the fight against ISIS, announced his resignation over the weekend.  McGurk had been planning to leave in February but, like Mattis, was so stunned and disheartened by Trump’s decision to immediately withdraw US troops from Syria that he accelerated his plans.  McGurk who served under both Bush and Obama is credited with deftly knitting together the international coalition against ISIS, he had recently reassured allies that the US was fully committed to maintaining its force in Syria so he felt personally betrayed by Trump’s decision. As to that Syria decision, its been confirmed that Trump unilaterally decided to immediately withdraw US troops after Turkey’s President Erdogan told him that he was about to launch an attack against our allies, the Syrian Kurds.  Instead of pushing back against Erdogan’s plans, Trump shocked both his advisors and Erdogan by saying that the Syrian mess was now fully Erdogan’s responsibility. Erdogan was so gleeful about Trump’s unexpected concession that he promised to take care of eliminating the remaining ISIS fighters and maybe just maybe hold off on slaughtering the Kurds, at least for a week or two.  For the record, although Trump insists that ISIS is mostly vanquished, estimates are that about 20,000 fighters remain in the region.  As to McGurk, Trump shrugged off his resignation, claiming that he was just another Obama plant with no discernable function who he had never met, a Trumpian version of good riddance that says a whole lot more about Trump’s isolation and ignorance than McGurk’s accomplishments.  Though Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell still has his job, the word at the White House is that Trump is so angry about the Fed’s recent interest rate hike, particularly the impact that rising rates has on his real estate holdings, that he asked aides if he could send Powell out the door with Mattis. Much to his disappointment Trump was told that he lacks the power to fire Powell over policy differences and that kicking him out would cause even more market turmoil. Treasury Secretary Mnuchin was so concerned about Trump’s musing that he tweeted assurances from his Cabo San Lucas, Mexico lounge chair that Powell’s job was safe, following up with calls to banking chiefs intending to assure them that Trump was just venting but instead freaking them out further by asking whether or not they had enough liquidity on hand to withstand more extreme market dips. Already on the talk show circuit to defend Trump’s government shutdown, Chief of Staff Mulvaney, another one of those guys with “acting” in front of his title, reinforced the  message that Powell was safe, at least for now.  With all the attention on Defense and the Fed,  HUD Deputy Secretary Pam Patenaude decision to jump ship escaped notice. Patenaude’s departure is a bigly problem because with her clueless boss HUD Secretary Ben Carson knowing nothing about housing, she had been running the department.  Acting Attorney General Whitaker remains in place at Justice, overseeing the dependable Rod Rosenstein who is in turn supervising Special Counsel Mueller, but he is finding that being on the Trump team isn’t all rainbows and lollipops.  Apparently Trump reamed him out for failing to stop the Southern District of New York prosecutors from including his transgressions in their Michael Cohen sentencing report. Not even an All Day Sucker will calm Whitaker’s nerves once he lands on soon to be House Judiciary Chairman Nadler’s hot seat.    

Yikes:  In a split decision, the Supreme Court refused to allow the Trump administration to immediately enforce a new policy of denying asylum to those who illegally cross into the US from Mexico.  Chief Justice John Roberts joined with the court’s liberal wing in the five to four decision. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, a member of that wing, managed to get her vote counted even though she is in the midst of  another heath crisis, on Friday it was reported that she had a lobe of one of her lungs removed after two lesions that were “accidentally” discovered during recent scans of her broken ribs tested cancerous.  Though she is still recuperating at NYC’s Sloan Kettering cancer center, her PR team reported that she is already working from her hospital bed. She may be thinking about the case of the “secret” foreign government-owned corporation that is fighting a Mueller subpoena.  On Sunday Justice Roberts issued an order temporarily staying a contempt citation and financial penalties against the undisclosed firm, pending additional filings which are due by December 31. 

A Happy and Healthy Festivus to All, Especially RBG!

Raging Insanity

Shutting Down:  The wheels are coming off, in fact its not just the wheels, the axles are coming off too.  Yesterday, responding to brutal criticism from his right wing critic, most notably Rush Limbaugh, Trump threw the budget deal that he had agreed to out the window and announced that he wouldn’t sign any spending resolution that did not include at least $5 billion for his wall, a wall that he is now describing as a structure with big steel slats that will ultimately be paid for by nonexistent savings from the revised, but not yet Congressionally approved NAFTA trade agreement, which he, and only he calls the USMCA.  Responding to Trump’s demands, late yesterday House Republicans, led by the spineless outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan and the even more obsequious soon to be Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy passed a spending resolution that includes the $5 Billion.  Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s crowd, who had already passed a continuing resolution that didn’t include $5 billion for wall funding, is now due to vote again today, this time on the House plan, assuming that enough of them manage to get back to Washington from their holiday destinations.  Absent Democratic support, and there probably will be no Democratic support, the Senate will fall far short of the sixty votes needed for passage of the House version of the bill.  As a result, it is now expected that a partial shutdown of the  government will go into effect on Friday night.  Recognizing that Trump boarding Air Force One to Florida while cash strapped government employees downgrade their holiday menus from turkeys and hams to SpaghettiOs was probably not a good thing, last night Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted that Trump will defer traveling to Mar a Lago until a budget plan passes both houses.  If the undisciplined Trump sticks with that plan, he is likely to miss the Mar a Lago New Year’s ball because unless he backs off his wall funding demand, the government will close and may stay closed until Nancy Pelosi rides to the rescue in January and by rescue, think slaps Trump back to reality.

Mattis Out: Ordinarily a funding fight and an impending government shutdown would have been enough bad news for one day but not in the Trump universe so the day went further south after Defense Secretary Mattis’ afternoon visit to the White House.  After his last ditch effort to convince Trump to change his mind about withdrawing all US ground troops from Syria failed, Mattis handed Trump his letter of resignation, informing him that he’d stick around until February but only to help with a transition to whichever fool is willing to take on the position.  Reportedly the two then shared some very harsh words.  In an effort to make it seem like Mattis’ departure was his idea, Trump quickly sent out a tweet announcing that “General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February,” promising that a new Defense Secretary would be named shortly, which is Trumpspeak for holy crap, now I have to fill still another cabinet position,  finding someone, anyone wo never criticized me and will be willing to put up with my impetuous and irrational decision making.  Not to be outdone, General Mattis had the Pentagon release copies of his very pointed resignation letter in which he totally repudiated Trump’s world view saying “One core belief I have always held is that our strength as a nation is inextricably linked to the strength of our unique and comprehensive system of alliances and partnerships. While the US remains the indispensable nation in the free world, we cannot protect our interests or serve that role effectively without maintaining strong alliances and showing respect to those allies." The letter goes on to say that “It is clear that China and Russia, for example, want to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model—gaining veto authority over other nations’ economic, diplomatic, and security decisions—to promote their own interests at the expense of their neighbors, America and our allies. That is why we must use all the tools of American power to provide for the common defense.” With Chief of Staff Kelly on his way out and former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson long gone, Mattis had been viewed as the last sane and reliable influence over the increasingly unhinged Trump.  Even the usually silent McConnell appears concerned.  Last night he released a rare statement that saying “I believe it’s essential that the United States maintain and strengthen the post-World War II alliances that have been carefully built by leaders in both parties. We must also maintain a clear-eyed understanding of our friends and foes, and recognize that nations like Russia are among the latter.”  By McConnell standards, that was a primal scream.  As to primal screams, anyone and everyone with an equity position of any note is probably screaming too.  Stock markets already feeling the pain of rising interest rates, irrational tariff policies, expanding deficits, and the impending government shutdown are unlikely to find any solace in Mattis’s departure.  Neither are any of our allies who had looked to Mattis as a voice of reason.  Adding to concerns about Trump’s plans to immediate turnover Syria to the Russians, Turks and Iranians, late yesterday the administration revealed plans to start withdrawing troops from Afghanistan.  Putin hasn’t weighed in on the Afghan move but he did applaud Trump’s Syria decision. On the other hand Israel’s Netanyahu is far less pleased, his decision to place all their eggs in the Trump basket isn’t working out all that well, Israel may now be on its own when it comes to beating back Iran’s Syrian escapades.                  

Justice Unglued:  Yesterday Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker announced that he has no plans to recuse himself from the Mueller investigation, claiming that he passed his Justice Department ethics review with flying colors.  That version of events sounded a bit dicey mostly because it was.  It turns out that the Justice Department’s Ethics gurus informed Whitaker that though an argument could be made that the derogatory and threatening statements that he had made about the Mueller investigation before joining the Justice Department were just opinions that he was entitled to express, those expressions create an appearance of bias and for that reason they recommended that he recuse himself from having anything to do with the Russia investigation.  Not liking that recommendation, Whitaker handpicked a group of advisors to provide him with a second opinion, to no one’s surprise they said that he could supervise Mueller.  As a result, Whitaker intends to be the final arbiter of decisions such as who Mueller can and cannot indict and whether or not Mueller’s final report, which NBC News reports will be ready by February although others doubt that is possible, will be released to Congress or locked in a vault somewhere away from prying public eyes.  At least that’s Whitaker’s plan, a plan that will in all likelihood subject him to withering interrogation by House Democrats including the soon to be chairs of the House Intelligence and Judiciary Committees, Adam Schiff and Jerome Nadler respectively, not to mention a call from Mueller himself who might decide to interview him as part of his obstruction investigation.  As to William Barr, Trump’s choice for the permanent Attorney General position, he is likely to face a rather raucous confirmation hearing early next year with lots of questions about the twenty page unsolicited memo that he submitted to the Justice Department earlier this year.  In that “treatise” he asserted that presidents, most specifically Trump, can fire anyone they want for any purpose, no matter how suspect without being questioned or prosecuted, essentially asserting that Trump’s decision to rid himself of officials including FBI heads who won’t lay off his cronies could never be an obstruction of justice. Today’s NY Times banner headlines shouts “Upheaval in Washington,” that’s an understatement.   

Damascus Two Step

Seriously Syrian:  To almost everyone’s surprise, that is everyone except perhaps Russia’s Putin and Turkey’s Erdogan, Trump woke up yesterday and decided that he had won the battle against ISIS and that it was time to pull US troops out of Syria.   He then shocked his advisors and generals by tweeting that he wanted the troops out immediately if not sooner. Trump’s tweet pronouncement came just as Syria special envoy James Jeffrey indicated that US policy was to stay in the country and followed a Tuesday statement by a senior State Department spokesmen that US forces were there “to ensure the enduring defeat of the Islamic State.  We’ve made significant progress recently in the campaign, but the job is not yet done.” To say that members of Congress were stunned is an understatement.  Senator Lindsey Graham said that “This is chaos. I can only imagine how it’s playing in Syria.”  Outgoing Senator Bob Corker, who is still the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations, was also outraged, saying that he’d never seen anything like this before.  He planned to take up his concern with Trump during a scheduled afternoon meeting at the White House but was left stewing in a waiting area when Trump abruptly canceled their tete a tete. The decision was so unanticipated that the White House press office referred questions about it to the Defense Department while the Defense Department referred questions to the White House.  The perception is that Hezbollah, Russia, Iran, Syria’s Assad and Turkey and to a certain degree ISIS are the winners here and that the US, our European allies, Israel and the Kurds, who have put their lives on the line and have been relying on the US staying put are all bigly losers. Notably,  Russia’s official news service praised Trump’s decision. No doubt Turkey’s Erdogan is more than pleased too, his defense minister responded by saying that Kurdish militants east of the Euphrates in Syria “will be buried in their ditches when the time comes.”  As to Trump, though his disdain about US involvement in Syria was no secret, it’s still not clear why he made this decision so abruptly, without and against the input of his advisors.  Some suggest that he is placating Erdogan in an effort to get him to stop talking about Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, others say that he’s doing this to make Putin happy and then there are those who say he wants to free up Defense spending to reallocate the money to his coveted wall, crazy but then little is sane about Trump’s decision making process. One thing’s for certain, he managed to divert the spotlight away from the various and sundry investigations into all things Trump, at least for a day.

Russia, Russia, Russia:  While Trump upends Middle East dynamics, his adversary in the US, Robert Mueller remains focused on his task.  Yesterday it was reported that he sent a letter to the House Intelligence Committee requesting the official transcripts of Roger Stone’s testimony.  Mueller has already obtained and analyzed unofficial copies but needs the official transcripts for his Grand Jury, the expectation is that he plans to move forward with the indictment of Roger Stone as soon as he gets his hands on the transcripts.  The House Intelligence Committee, still chaired by Trump toady Devon Nunes, is due to meet this week to “consider” Mueller’s request To date Nunes has refused to release any of the committee’s transcripts to Mueller so it’s not clear that he will cooperate.  Regardless of what’s decided now, incoming Chairman Adam Schiff will release everything Mueller needs in early January, assuming of course that Nunes doesn’t do something rash like flush transcripts down the toilet and/or wipe the committee’s servers.  In other Russia news, yesterday the Treasury Department announced plans to lift the sanctions against companies owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian oligarch/Putin crony who had been involved in some of Paul Manafort’s ventures, the guy that Manafort tried to make “whole” for unpaid debts by providing him with inside information about Trump’s plans.  Apparently, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin hadn’t meant to sanction Deripaska’s companies earlier in the year but was forced to after he “accidentally” told Congress that they would be punished.  To obtain the sanctions relief Deripaska plans to reduce his ownership interest in the companies, more smoke and mirrors than anything else but a solution that will get his companies the relief they’ve been seeking while at the same time easing pressure on international aluminum markets that had been squeezed as a result of Mnuchin’s gaffe.  Deripaska will remain on the list. To compensate for easing the sanctions against Deripaska’s aluminum empire, the  Treasury Department simultaneously announced additional sanctions on a number of other Russian individuals for their “continued disregard for international norms.”  Last weekend lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani asserted that Trump had never signed a letter of intent for his Moscow Trump Tower project.  Yesterday he had to walk back that assertion after CNN obtained a copy of the letter that Trump signed in October of 2015.  Guiliani told CNN "I was wrong if I said it” adding  "I probably meant to say there was never a deal, much less a signed one." He then went on to say that the letter wasn’t worth much because after all it had been drafted Michael Cohen.  On the Attorney General front, the Wall Street Journal reports that early in the year AG nominee William Barr sent an unsolicited memo to the Justice Department that “excoriated special counsel Robert Mueller’s inquiry into potential obstruction of justice” by Trump, saying it is based on a “fatally misconceived” theory that would cause lasting damage to the presidency and the executive branch.  Just another thing to be addressed at Barr’s upcoming Senate confirmation hearing. As to Mueller, yesterday Senate Majority Leader rebuffed another effort by departing Republican Senator Jeff Flake and Democrat Senator Chris Coons to vote on their Mueller protection bill.   

Other News:  Last night the Senate passed a continuing resolution funding the government until February, the House is expected to vote on the bill today, the bill does not include funding for Trump’s wall.  It’s not clear yet whether the “mercurial” Trump will agree to sign it, though golfing in Florida while government employees including his Secret Service entourage remain unpaid might be a step too far even for him. Over the opposition of some of his most conservative Senators most notably Arkansas’ Senator Tom Cotton,  Senate Majority Leader McConnell finally allowed The First Step criminal justice reform legislation to move forward on Tuesday.  The legislation, which was promoted by son-in-law Jared Kushner and was supported by a politically diverse group including the Koch Brothers, the ACLU, Democrats and most Republicans passed resoundingly.  The bill, which has Trump’s support largely because of Kushner’s efforts, now moves to the House where it is expected to also be approved.  Emmet Sullivan, the same judge who blew a hole in former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s hope for a get out of jail free card, dismissed Justice Department policies that made it harder for immigrants to claim asylum because of domestic violence or gang violence, finding the policies violated existing law.  And despite Trump’s protests and the markets gyrations, and by gyrations think downward moves, Fed Chairman Jerome Powell raised interest rates again, an indication that the Fed still believes that the economy is basically sound, and that growth will continue in 2019 and beyond, albeit at a slower rate than in 2018.  Let’s hope he’s right about the economy.  

Shocking Patterns of Illegality

Sentencing Cinema:  Yesterday, was supposed to be sentencing day for former national security advisor Michael Flynn. He was hoping to get off with a slap on the wrist in exchange for pleading guilty to lying, a realistic expectation given that Special Counsel Mueller’s team had recommended leniency.  Unfortunately for Flynn things didn’t work out as planned.  Judge Emmet Sullivan made it clear that he was less than pleased with Flynn and his attorney’s shenanigans.  He was particularly enraged by their claims that Flynn had been bamboozled into lying to the FBI so he began the sentencing hearing by asking Flynn whether he stood by his guilty plea, Flynn said he did and also confirmed that he hadn’t needed a lawyer to know that lying to the FBI was against the law.  By having Flynn admit that he was fully aware of the consequences of lying to the FBI and that he had been treated appropriately by the FBI, Judge Sullivan sent a strong statement to conspiracy theorists everywhere, including the crowd at Fox and the White House, all of whom had convinced themselves that Flynn was going to pull his guilty plea and/or the judge would toss it out due to FBI “malfeasance” that he was wasn’t buying into their nonsense. Judge Sullivan, who unlike the rest of us, has seen the unredacted version of Mueller’s sentencing report, is fully aware of all of the crimes that Flynn has committed.  To say that he was displeased by Flynn’s criminality and pre-sentencing antics would be an understatement.  He told Flynn that “arguably you sold your country out” and said the he couldn’t “hide my disgust, my disdain” for his criminal offenses.  At one point he even implied that Flynn had put the interests of Turkey and Russia ahead of the US and therefore had committed treason, though he walked that back later.  Then, after saying that though he would take Flynn’s service to the country and his cooperation into account, he would also factor in aggravating factors in deciding his sentence, he asked Flynn if he wanted to postpone the sentencing so that he could get “full credit for his cooperation,” the judge’s way of saying that if he were to sentence Flynn now, he’d be inclined to give him some time in the slammer but if Flynn continues to cooperate and stops with the “I was mistreated nonsense,” he’d be more likely to let him off with that highly coveted slap on the wrist.  Flynn wisely opted for a delay and as a result his sentencing was pushed off for 90 days.  Trump who had wished “nice guy” Flynn good luck earlier in the morning couldn’t have been all that pleased with the way the hearing ended.  The same can be said of Fox’s “Judge” Jeanine Pirro who had railed against the FBI and it’s treatment of Flynn while at the same time expressing her confidence that the wise and competent Judge Sullivan would throw the case out altogether.  Oops, so much for her judicial judgement.  Curiously, we still don’t know why Flynn lied about his meetings with Russia Ambassador Kislyak in the first place or why Trump still thinks he’s such a nice guy.    

Trump Piggy Bank:  Last year the Washington Post reported that the Trump Foundation wasn’t all that charitable, unless of course you consider a $7 payment to the Boy Scouts a significant act of charity.  For the most part the Foundation’s money which mostly came from outside donors was used to pay off legal settlements for Trump’s private business and for making illegal political donations to the Trump campaign and to politicians like Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi who after receiving her “gift” almost immediately dropped the state’s participation in a lawsuit against Trump University, the scam school that did little more than bilk people out of their money.  Barbara Underwood, New York State’s Acting Attorney General accused the foundation of “functioning as little more than a checkbook to serve Mr. Trump’s business and political interests,” and of engaging in a “shocking pattern of illegality.” Yesterday the Foundation agreed to dissolve and give away its remaining $1.7 million of assets under court supervision.  In addition to shuttering the foundation, the Attorney General’s office is pursuing a lawsuit that would bar Trump, Don Jr, Ivanka and Eric from serving on the board of other charitable institutions for ten years and is also seeking payment of millions in restitution  and penalties. Think about it, Underwood doesn’t trust Trump to run a two bit charity, but he still gets to run the country and Ivanka still gets to run around pretending to be his important aide. Notably Underwood’s investigation benefited bigly from assistance from Trump’s CFO Allen Weisselberg, who together with the Trump kids was on the Foundation’s board, although unlike the kids, he didn’t know he was on the board in part because the Foundation never had any board meetings.  Anyway, the cooperative Weisselberg continues to serve as the Trump business CFO.  Awkward.

Other News:  Trump and Congress are still trying to come to terms on a funding accord to avoid a partial government shutdown on Friday.  Trump has signaled that he might give up on his demand to get $5 billion in wall funding included in any funding resolution.  According to Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders, who held a rare but incredibly brief news conference yesterday, Trump has asked cabinet members to check their coffers for any extra cash; apparently he hopes to divert money that would otherwise go to military spending, food programs or other such things to the wall, a strategy that might not be all that legal, or ever get implemented but would allow Trump to declare victory. At the press conference which took place after Judge Sullivan lambasted Flynn and knocked down the unsubstantiated claims that he had been inappropriately treated by the FBI, Sanders stuck with the Flynn as victim assertion because she’s Sarah and that’s what she does.  She also refused to answer any questions about the Trump Foundation.  In other news, Arizona’s  Senator Jon Kyl who stepped in to fill the John McCain slot is, as expected, stepping down.  Arizona’s Governor Ducey announced that he is appointing Martha McSally, who recently lost her bid to fill the seat of retiring  Senator Jeff Flake to Democrat Kyrsten Sinema, to replace Kyl until 2020, the end of the McCain term.  His announcement wasn’t all that surprising since, as intended, McSally’s way too cute November “golden retriever” concession speech was an effective pitch for the job.  Ducey plans to hold off McSally’s swearing in until January allowing Sinema who actually earned her seat the old fashioned way to assume the senior senator position.  Lastly, yesterday we learned that the secret case percolating through the courts, the one that was thought to be related to a possible Trump or Pence subpoena has nothing to do with either of them, instead it appears to be a subpoena for some financial records from a sovereign government owned corporation.  Tea leaf readers, who haven’t been all that right so far, think that the corporation is mostly likely a Chinese, Russian, or Saudi owned bank.  In any case the courts have ruled in Mueller’s favor, he will be getting that subpoena and maybe, just maybe some interesting Trump or Kushner bank records are on their way.

Trolls and Turkeys

Trolls Trolling:  Last February, Special Counsel Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals and Yevgeniy Prighozhin, the oligarch known as Putin’s chef,  for conducting what they called “information warfare against the US” and what Mueller called federal crimes and US political interference.   Those thirteen “trolls” are employees of the St. Petersburg based owned Internet Research Agency (IRA) which is controlled by Prighozhin.  Yesterday, the Senate Intelligence Committee which, unlike its House counterpart, has managed to do its work on a bipartisan basis, released two reports detailing some of the Russians’ most nefarious and manipulative actions.  Among other things the trolls likened Trump to Jesus while vilifying Hillary Clinton as demonic. They energized conservative voters over immigration and gun rights and “sowed  distrust” in the electoral process to suppress the vote of certain Democratic leaning demographic groups most notably targeting African-Americans, convincing a significant enough number that Hillary Clinton didn’t deserve their vote. It’s probably not a coincidence that during the campaign when Trump bragged about how well his message was going over in the African community, he didn’t always claim that he was getting more Black votes, instead he frequently said that he was convincing a number of Black people to refrain from voting for Hillary, going on to say if that meant that they just stayed home, that was fine with him. At the end of the day, though few African Americans voted for Trump enough of the typically Democratic voter group stayed home to affect the election. The Russian trolls maximized the impact of their messages by using a number of social media platforms including FaceBook, Twitter,  Instagram, Reddit, Google+, Vine, Gab, Meetup Pinterest, Tumblr and others.  Despite the indictments and belated efforts by the major social media companies to curb their activities, the wily Russian trolls are still at it, most recently they’ve targeted Mueller and his investigation.  Given his constant Mueller tweet attacks, we know that the trolls’ activities continue to be just fine by Trump.

Flynn’s Follies:  The Russian trolls may be effective communicators and social influencers, their efforts really have impacted  Mueller’s popularity ratings, his approval figures hover around 45% even though around 60% of Americans now believe that Trump lies about everything.  That said, so far the trolls have done nothing to stop Mueller from pursuing his work.  Yesterday, his team indicted two more individuals, former national security advisor Michael Flynn’s business partner Bijan Kian and one of his Turkish associates, Ekim Alptekin.  In the run up to the 2016 election while Flynn was already advising Trump on national security issues, the three men worked on behalf of the Turkish government to “discredit and delegitimize” Fethullah Gulen, the Turkish cleric who Turkey’s President Erdogan blames for all the ills that have befallen him including the 2016 coup attempt against his government.  In addition to badmouthing Gulen, the three were also paid to plan and carryout the rendition of Gulen back to Turkey, a rendition that hasn’t happened, yet.  It’s worth noting that despite his claims to the contrary, reports are that Trump is still considering sending Gulen a US permanent resident back to Turkey, probably to get Erdogan to stop revealing all of the really upsetting details about the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s involvement.  Flynn’s cooperation on the Turkey investigation and his willingness to throw his colleagues under the bus in exchange for leniency is one of the reasons that Mueller has only charged him with lying to the FBI about his calls with Russian Ambassador Kislyak and their discussions about sanctions relief and a UN vote about Israeli West Bank settlements. Notice, I said one of the reasons, though there is no information available at this point to prove it, a number of former Federal prosecutors believe that Flynn must have given up even more information to Mueller to get such lenient treatment, their view is that Flynn is getting off way to easy given how involved he was in the Turkey project.  They surmise that he may also be providing Mueller with useful information about someone else, someone who is very senior, and that the someone else is likely Trump because only Trump and VP Pence are senior enough to warrant Flynn getting off so easy.  Flynn is due to be sentenced today and for some inexplicable reason last week his lawyers claimed that one of the reasons that he should be awarded a “get out of jail free” card is because  the FBI treated him unfairly by letting him sit for questions without counsel by his side, and that they backed him into what lawyer/fixer Rudy Giuliani and Trump like to call a “perjury trap” by asking particularly tricky questions.  That tricky question assertion was disproved yesterday after Mueller’s team released a somewhat redacted transcript of Flynn’s FBI interview.  That transcript, which was released at the direction of the judge overseeing Flynn’s case, reveals that he was treated with kid gloves by his FBI interviewers, one of whom was Peter Strzok, the FBI agent who later lost his job after his texts with his paramour revealed that he generally disliked Trump and almost every other politician imaginable. The FBI agents gave Flynn several opportunities to come clean about his conversations with Kislyak, they even “fed” him information about calls he conveniently forgot to mention.  Despite their spoon feeding Flynn continued to lie which is how he got into this mess in the first place and may be why the judge wanted the transcript in the public domain.  Though Mueller recommended that Flynn receive only the lightest of sentences, it’s possible that the  Judge may be annoyed enough with Flynn and his lawyer’s assertion that Flynn was unfairly “forced” to lie that he might actually sentence him to spend some time in the slammer.  Since Flynn’s lying is what ultimately led to former FBI Director Comey’s dismissal it’s fitting that yesterday the loquacious but usually tempered Comey finally lost it.  After sitting for another six hours of last ditch grilling by the Republican chaired House Judiciary and Oversight Committees who remain focused on Hillary Clinton’s emails and his “mishandling” of the Russia investigation, a “fiery and combative“ Comey spoke his mind.  He told the assembled reporters that he’d had enough, saying that “Somebody has to stand up and speak for the FBI. People who know better, including Republican members of this body, have to have the courage to stand up and speak the truth, not be cowed by mean tweets or fear of their base. There is a truth and they're not telling it. Their silence is shameful." He went on to call Trump a liar.  Later White House spokesman Sarah Huckabee Sanders responded by citing tremendous FBI corruption.  Of course she did.

Politics Unusual: A partial government closure remains on the horizon for Friday night as Trump is still insisting on getting $5 billion in wall funding included in the spending bill that must get passed to keep the government fully operational.  On the political front, Tennessee Senator Lamar Alexander announced that he won’t be seeking reelection when his term ends in 2020.  The 78 year old Alexander is a spring chicken by Senate standards and a moderate by Republican standards so his decision to jump ship is particularly notable.  His planned retirement should be concerning to Trump because Republicans tend to speak their mind when their political careers are no longer in jeopardy and there is a chance, albeit a small one, that Alexander’s new found freedom could result in him going rogue and that would represent a bigly problem for Trump as he looks to the Senate to protect him from those problematic House Democrats, the ones who are likely to start impeachment proceedings at some point next year.  

Seventeen and Counting

WTF:  Just when you thought that Obamacare was safe, limping along but safe, Reed O’Connor, a US District Court Judge in Texas ruled that it was unconstitutional.  His ruling came in response to a lawsuit filed by 18 Republican State Attorney Generals and 2 Republican governors. The judge “explained” that his decision was based on a provision included in the Tax Cut bill which essentially got rid of the individual mandate by eliminating the penalty for people who don’t acquire health insurance.  He concluded that absent the fine, the entirety of Obamacare is unconstitutional. Though the Trump administration tacitly supported the lawsuit by opting not to defend Obamacare, it has decided to leave the program in place for now pending the resolution of court challenges that are likely to make it all the way to the Supreme Court. It is highly likely, though not certain, that SCOTUS would uphold the constitutionality of Obamacare, though it’s also possible that the soon to be Democratic House, together with Democratic Senators and a few Republican ones, will pass some kind of “fix”  rendering the decision moot even before it makes it to the court’s docket.  On the political front, Judge O’Connor’s very partisan decision was conveniently timed, it spared Republicans from incurring additional mid-term election losses while at the same time adding confusion into the already fraught Obamacare sign-up process, a process with a Saturday deadline in states without their own exchanges. Due to the judge’s decision some people who had put off enrolling until the last minute probably gave up, assuming that the program was dead.  For his part, Trump who still doesn’t understand how insurance works and never really considers the long term impact of acting on his impulses, tweeted out “Wow, but not surprisingly, Obamacare was just ruled UNCONSTITUTIONAL by a highly respected judge in Texas. Great news for America!” He might as well have tweeted “oh goody 20 million Americans are about to lose their coverage and go broke or die!” Without intending to, Trump may have just paved the way for more Democratic victories in 2020 something that might not be much of a concern for him given his increasingly questionable future but should concern the rest of the party. Trump is also fixated on his wall, with his demands for more funding hardened in place by last week’s public put down by Nancy and Chuck. He continues to threaten a partial government shutdown if the government spending bill that must be passed by Friday night doesn’t include $5 billion of wall money.  He’s not going to get that money, Democrats are not going to waver, a significant number of Republicans aren’t all that into the wall either and a good number of those forty Republican members of Congress who lost their seats and have already turned over their offices to the incoming class of freshman Democrats aren’t interested in showing up for any late session votes, particularly one that interferes with their Christmas holiday.  It certainly doesn’t help that Trump sent his most strident and bombastic staff member Stephen Miller out to the Sunday morning talk shows to argue his case. If your holiday plans include visits to any Federally operated museums or other facilities, consider going to Florida instead but be aware that the price of Mar a Lago New Year’s Eve tickets have been hiked to $2500 or more.  For that price you’ll get to ring in the year with Trump who is heading off to Palm Beach on Friday for a sixteen day holiday, a vacation that will go forward whether or not the government remains open.   

Revolving Door:  The loser of the Chief of Staff Lottery is Budget Director Mick Mulvaney.  After former NJ Governor Chris Christie turned down the spot and it became clear that no one other than Jared Kushner was all that interested in what ordinarily would have been a highly coveted spot, Mulvaney agreed to sign on.  Mulvaney plans to also continue as Budget Director and at his request his Chief of Staff  title will be preceded by “Acting,” giving him the ability to save face when he is either dumped or chooses to leave.  As to Kushner, Trump was probably persuaded that appointing his son-in-law was a step too far once it was revealed that after Michael Cohen was forced out of the Trump orbit, Kushner had assumed responsibility for the relationship with National Enquirer’ David Pecker who has now admitted to squashing stories about Trump’s “women” problems to help his presidential prospects.  Scandal ridden Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke finally resigned but not before he hosted the Interior Department holiday party, one attended by as many lobbyists and future employers as he could squeeze into one ballroom. Zinke blamed his demise on Democrats and the press for all the attention they focused on his illegal and unethical activities.  Sadly, his anti-environment agenda will live on without him. Somehow or other Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen is still around perhaps because her most totally tone deaf statement ever thoroughly impressed Trump. In that statement, Nielsen blamed the death of seven year old Guatemalan Jakelin Gaal, who survived her difficult trip to the US only to die while in the custody of US Border control, on her father for putting her at risk by bringing her to the US, a conclusion shared by the oddly pated Stephen Miller who also blamed the young girl’s death on liberal judges.  

What Me Worry?  Trump had a really, really awful week.  Everything he ever touched is now being investigated including his campaign, his inauguration, his private businesses, his charitable foundation and his children.  To the extent that you have the stamina to read through the list, today’s Wired Magazine contains a summary of all 17 of the known Trump and Russia investigations. Though Trump may still hope to end or starve Special Counsel Mueller’s Russia investigation, a number of these cases are being pursued in other Federal or state jurisdictions so that absent a wholesale dismantling of the Justice Department it would be extremely difficult and politically impossible to stop them from proceeding. Moreover, there is little Trump can do to halt any of the state investigations particularly those going on in New York where the incoming Attorney General Letitia James has vowed “to make his life a nightmare.”  Nevertheless, Trump can win or at least try to win in the court of public opinion and though polls indicate that his popularity is down and that the majority of Americans believe he is a liar, his base and their Republican representatives remain inexplicably loyal.  To that end, he sent Rudy Giuliani out this weekend to spew an especially undecipherable mélange of word spaghetti which included, among others, an assertion that the campaign finance crimes that one time Trump lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, those payments he made at Trump’s direction, are insignificant, civil boo boos that really don’t matter; a reminder that Cohen is a convicted liar; an admission that though Trump lies too, his lies don’t count because lying all the time to the public is just fine, it’s lying under oath that’s the problem; and a repetition of the oft repeated “collusion is not a crime” but if any took place it was before the election so it doesn’t matter.  Giuliani may have also confirmed that Trump was still “discussing” the Moscow Trump Tower project in January 2016, several months longer than previously disclosed though his statement was so jumbled that it was hard to tell if he was sneaking in a new admission or just overcooking his pasta.  He also claimed that Michael Flynn who is due to be sentenced this week for lying about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak was tricked into his guilty plea and didn’t really lie, an assertion that is based on Flynn’s lawyers’ pre-sentencing statement that since Flynn voluntarily spoke to the FBI agents without any representation from the White House Counsel’s office he couldn’t have known that lying to the FBI wasn’t kosher, an absurd assertion given Flynn’s experience, prior position as head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and the number of Law & Order episodes that even he must have watched.  Though Giuliani didn’t mention coffee boy George Papadopoulos, he too wants us to believe that he was railroaded into his guilty plea.  Fresh out of the Federal penitentiary, Papadopoulos announced plans to run for Congress in 2020.  Those plans may have already hit a speed bump, apparently he is again under investigation by Congress and the FBI for some contacts with the Kremlin related to a letter that claims he said he was "doing a business deal with Russians which would result in large financial gains for himself and Mr. Trump."  Though it’s not clear that Russian Maria Butina who pleaded guilty to acting as an unregistered agent for Russia last week had any direct ties to Trump, she’s admitted that her responsibilities included getting close to conservatives, using the National Rifle Association as an entry point to a curiously receptive group of Republican party decision makers.  As part of her plea agreement she has promised to cooperate with Federal authorities.  One of the things that she is probably being queried about is who orchestrated her convenient selection out of a crowd to ask a question about Russian sanctions of Trump early in his campaign, a question that he seemed atypically prepared to coherently answer. And lastly, late yesterday, the Washington Post published an article summarizing a “sweeping” analysis prepared for the Senate Intelligence Committee that details how extensively the Russians used social networks including FaceBook, Twitter, and YouTube to advance Trump’s 2016 election prospects. The report is due to be officially released by the Senate this week. A particularly frantic Trump twitter storm is on the immediate horizon.    

Ryan's Coda

Piling On:  Due to Michael Cohen’s proclivity for taping clients we’ve known for some time that Trump was aware of the “hush” payments made to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal days before the 2016 election.  Yesterday we learned that those payments were part of a scheme that was hatched in 2015 during a meeting between Cohen, National Enquirer owner David Pecker and a “senior member” of the Trump campaign.  At that meeting Pecker asked what he could do to put the kabosh on any of Trump’s inconvenient women problems.  The senior member of the campaign present at that meeting was none other than Donald J Trump himself. That may explain why Trump’s explanations for the playmate/porn star payments are constantly changing; his currnet version is that the payments were made on the advice of his esteemed lawyer Michael Cohen and that given Cohen’s infinite wisdom and keen lawyering skills, the same skills he previously dissed when he said Cohen wasn’t really his lawyer, he had every reason to believe ion that they were legal. As to that whole violation of campaign finance laws thing, not a big deal because according to Trump, if violating that law is a problem than at least three dozen members of Congress belong in jail.  Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s current lawyer/fixer takes a slightly different route to the same conclusion, he said that the payments were just “a crime of interpretation,” adding who would charge any president with a crime of interpretation anyway?  For her part, last night spokesperson Kellyanne Conway spent almost forty minutes with CNN’s Chris Cuomo spewing lies and alternative truths in a thoroughly unconvincing and mind numbing attempt to distance Trump from the payment felony while her husband George refuted her argument by tweeting “Given that Trump has repeatedly lied about the Daniels and McDougal payments—and given that he lies about virtually everything else, to the point that his own former personal lawyer described him as a “f****ing liar”—why should we take his word over that of federal prosecutors?”  Since dissecting Trump’s campaign finance crimes wasn’t enough fodder for one day’s news quotient, yesterday afternoon the Wall Street Journal piled on reporting that Federal prosecutors in New York are investigating whether Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee misspent some of the $107 million it raised for inauguration activities, an amount that far exceeds the amount that was raised and spent on either of the Obama inaugurations.  Given that Trump’s festivities were kind of anemic in comparison to Obama’s it’s been suggested for some time that the money might have been spent inappropriately so the only thing surprising about this investigation is that it has taken so long to happen. Prosecutors are also examining whether some of the top donors gave money in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, again not that surprising giving the number of Trump associates who are now convicted felons and given earlier reports that Michael Cohen was selling himself as a consultant with access to Trump.  To be clear, giving money in exchange for political favors is not kosher and runs afoul of federal corruption laws and diverting funds from the inaugural committee which was registered as a nonprofit, could also violate federal law.  The WSJ reports that the Feds are basing part of their investigation on information obtained when they raided Michael Cohen’s office. One possibly incriminating piece of that evidence was a tape of a conversation with Stephanie Wolkoff, a former adviser to Melania, who worked as an event planner for parts of the inauguration. In the recording, she is heard expressing concern about how the inaugural committee was spending money.  Last night, the NY Times added to this story, reporting that prosecutors are also focusing on whether foreigners illegally “funneled donations” to the inaugural committee and a pro-Trump super PAC in the hopes of buying influence.  That part of the inquiry focuses on whether people from Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates used “straw donors” to disguise their donations; foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds are another one of those things prohibited by Federal laws.  Notably, the Inauguration committee was chaired by Trump friend Thomas Barrack, who is also the guy who introduced him to Paul Manafort.  Additionally, Manafort’s sidekick and Mueller cooperator Rick Gates was heavily involved in all of the committees functions. To say that this plot is thickening would be a gross understatement.

Revolving Door Update:  Trump still doesn’t have a Chief of Staff but his search may be reaching its climax.  Yesterday the Huffington Post reported and Sarah Huckabee Sanders confirmed, that Trump is seriously considering hiring son-in-law Jared Kushner.  Of course to do that job, Kushner, who is responsible for almost everything else would probably have to relinquish some of his other functions.  Given that the “life expectancy” of a Trump Chief of Staff is relatively short, in addition to all of the other problems associated with appointing Kushner, can you imagine what it would take to fire him?  One can envision that at some future date Trump would push Ivanka to divorce Kushner, using marital discord as an excuse for booting him out.  In any case Jared’s ascension is not yet a done deal, Axios reports that former New Jersey Chris Christie met with Trump last night and that he is also on the short list.  What a contrast, the guy who imprisoned Jared’s dad versus Jared.  Can we get tickets to the final playoff?   

Arabian Nights:  With everyone except Trump and Secretary of State Pompeo agreeing that Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the Senate finally responded by voting to end US participation in the Saudi-led war/humanitarian nightmare in Yemen and then unanimously approving a measure blaming the Crown Prince for the Khashoggi killing.   Unfortunately, in a rather despicable maneuver, Speaker Paul Ryan attached a provision slow tracking the Yemen legislation to the must pass House Farm bill effectively derailing the efforts to cut US support for the Yemen war.  The Yemen legislation will now be deferred to next year.  What a fitting coda to Paul Ryan’s already miserable term as Speaker.

Questionable Factoid:  Yesterday Casler Noel, a former Apprentice staffer, claimed that Trump is a “speed freak” who crushes up Adderall and snorts it to keep his motor running and to overcome his reading problems.  Noel says that he’s coming forward with this information now because he no longer feels constrained by his non disclosure agreement and anyway it makes for good material for his comedy routines.  For what it’s worth, one time Roseanne Barr husband, Tom Arnold who also competed on Celebrity Apprentice, confirms the story. It’s not really clear that either one of these guys is speaking the truth but the allegation would explain why Trump was snorting so much during the Hillary debates.         

Stocking Coal

Cohen Time:  For a number of years being Donald J Trump’s fixer and sometime lawyer was a pretty good gig for Michael Cohen, his income went up, he was seated at the best tables at hot restaurants and he traveled the world or at least to the parts that had been part of the former Soviet Union.  He probably was engaging in hyperbole when he said that he would take a bullet for his boss, but there is a good chance that he would have thrown himself in front of a slow moving car or offered to carry Ivanka over a puddle.  But times have changed, it turns out that when your LInkedIn bio includes a lot of shady business involvements and thuggish practices, being in close proximity to Trump world when prosecutors are seeking a crack in the Trump armor isn’t such a good thing.  Yesterday, despite his pleas for mercy and his assertion that though he now sees the light he had been caught up in the cult of Trump, Michael Cohen was sentenced to serve three years in a federal penitentiary for a series of crimes and was also hit with some significant financial penalties.  Though most of the crimes that got Cohen into trouble were associated with his own business involvements, the one getting the most attention relates to cult leader Trump since it turns out that paying off women to keep them quiet about their questionable entanglements with a candidate running for president shortly before his election with the intent of influencing the outcome of the election really is a violation of campaign finance laws; and, contrary to assertions made by Trump and his current fixer/lawyer Rudy Giuliani, that’s not a small civil matter, it’s a real crime. Former acting Solicitor General Neil Katyal insists that if Individual 1 wasn’t president he’d be indicted by now and Harvard professor Lawrence Tribe who believes that sitting presidents can be indicted says that he should be.  As to that whole intent thing, shortly after Cohen was sentenced those pesky Southern District of New York prosecutors announced that David Pecker’s American Media Inc. company had confirmed it by admitting to “coordinating a hush-money payment with Trump’s campaign to ensure that damaging allegations about Trump didn’t come out before Election Day 2016.”  It’s unlikely that prosecutors are finished yet, they now appear to be focused on who at Trump Inc. authorized the cover-up payments.  Though the idea of those payments was ginned up while Individual 1 was in charge, the payments were paid according to an installment plan that ran well into 2017 and fraudulently treated as legal expenses after the time that Trump had transferred day to day control of his business to his children so at least one of them is implicated too.  With Ivanka in Washington, Barron in day school and Tiffany who really doesn’t count at Georgetown, that leaves either Tweedledee Don Jr or Tweedledum Eric sharing bag holding duties with Individual 1. And don’t forget Chief Financial Officer Alan Weisselberg, like AMI’s David Pecker, he’s cooperating and he most certainly knows and is sharing all the details of the “payoff” plan, and perhaps a whole lot more with prosecutors.  Though AMI’s David Pecker is getting off scot free, he’s hardly innocent, he didn’t just use his company to influence the outcome of the 2016 election, he’s sitting on a trove of secret “chips” that he has probably used to influence other politicians.  As to Individual 1, Pecker called in one of those chips early in his administration by wrangling an invitation to a White House dinner where he hobnobbed with influential consultants in an effort to get approval to sell his publications in Saudi Arabia.  In all likelihood Federal prosecutors are digging through Pecker’s secret vault to see who, in addition to Trump, was a beneficiary of his story squelching  largesse.  For his part Trump should be very nervous right about now and indications are that despite Giuliani’s assertion that nothing that happened yesterday is relevant to him, he appears to be close to the edge.

Diversionary Tactics: When under pressure Trump goes into diversionary mode so he’s doing his best to turn his search for a new Chief of Staff into a season of Celebrity Apprentice while also holding firm on his threat to close down the government if he doesn’t get $5 billion for his wall.  On the Chief of Staff front, yesterday Congressman Mark Meadows who probably never was much of a front runner revealed that Trump wants him to stay put in the House because that’s where his advocacy for Trump can be most effective, or ineffective, depending on your view of his obnoxiously over the top behavior.  Likewise, two time presidential aspirant Rick Santorum, who no one ever thought was even in the running, announced that he’s taking himself out of consideration due to family obligations.  Oddly enough the current leading candidates include Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker because Trump likes hanging with him, former deputy campaign manager and big time Trump advocate Dave Bossie because he is totally obnoxious, and former Governor Christie who among this crowd is probably the most competent but who is also intensely disliked by Jared Kushner for his role in putting his father in jail. On the budgetary front, outgoing Speaker Paul Ryan is trying to get his caucus to vote on a plan that provides Trump’s $5 billion, he’s having a hard time getting enough members to sign on as many of those voted out of Congress have little interest in sticking around for votes when holiday plans beckon and there is no way that Nancy Pelosi who looks to have secured all the votes she’ll need to become Speaker in January by promising to step down within four years is going to let anyone from her crowd help him out.  That said, Ryan’s stuffing his bill full of Conservative plums and might manage to eke out something that he could pass even if it would fail in the Senate where some Democrats would need to sign on in order to insure passage.  If something doesn’t give soon, the government, or at least parts of the government will close down before Christmas. Holiday coal for all, but remember that is a good thing in Trumpland?