Friday Follies

Mueller’s Moment:  The George H W Bush funeral ended with a flourish as 41 was transported to his final resting place in a train painted in the colors of Air Force One, or at least the current colors.  If Trump gets his way those colors and the paint design will be “trumped” up soon, assuming that he is still around to oversee the paint job.  What happens later this week and over the next few months could determine the future of his administration. Later today, Mueller is due to release two reports, the first concerns former campaign manager Paul Manafort and what he did and said to cause Mueller to throw out his plea agreement.  The second report concerns former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen; the Cohen report will include Mueller’s sentencing recommendation as well as details about what Cohen revealed to the prosecutors in exchange for his much hoped for really reduced sentence.  In both cases the devil is in the details and we will have to wait until the end of the day to learn whether or not Mueller is ready to go public with those details.  Given how little was revealed in the heavily redacted Flynn report that was released earlier in the week there is a good chance that we won’t get to see a lot of the more damning things that  Mueller knows, especially if he and his team aren’t ready to tip their hands to other “targets,” targets that might be related to Trump by blood or marriage. We also learned yesterday that Trump’s legal team is once again communicating with Mueller, possibly they are discussing some parts of the written response to questions that Trump recently provided to Mueller. There has also been a suggestion that given what he’s learned from Cohen, Mueller could be more aggressively pursuing answers to questions concerning subjects that Trump’s team had previously refused to address.  The Trump lawyers may now have concluded that it would be better to be more responsive.  As to the written response that was provided, although Trump asserted that he wrote the answers himself and that it only took him a few hours to gin up his responses, Rudy Giuliani says otherwise.  He told The Atlantic that it took months to come up with the answers and that as a result he hasn’t had time to prepare the detailed counter report to Mueller’s accusations, the report that he had claimed to be working on.  The Atlantic also reports that the Trump team, legal or otherwise, is not prepared to deal with the consequences of the Mueller investigation and any ensuing report because their client, Donald J Trump, is exceedingly difficult to pin down.  Separately it was reported that Brian Benczkowski, who was confirmed earlier this year as the head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, has recused himself from the Russia investigation.  Benczkowski had previously represented Alfa Bank, the Russian institution whose servers were in regular contact with Trump Tower’s servers during the 2016 campaign.  So far there is no news as to whether or not Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker has done the same, it’s not even clear that his ethics review has been completed, which may explain why Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein, who was seen noshing on latkes at the White House Chanukah party yesterday, still seems to be running the Mueller investigation.  As to the Maccabees, Trump who also put in a cameo at the party took the opportunity to say that anti-Semitism is a bad thing noting that “Throughout history, the Jewish people have suffered unthinkable repression and terrible violence, yet in the face of this hardship, the Jewish people have endured, overcome and thrived. Thrived like few, that I can tell you.”  He wrote that last part himself.  

The Revolving Door:  The much expected Trump team turnover has been stymied by the difficulty of finding people to fill open spots.  As a result it looks like Homeland Security Nielsen, who is doing her best to be as tough at the Mexican border as possible, and Chief of Staff Kelly, whose demise is frequently reported are safe at least for now.  Right now attention has shifted to the longevity of Labor Secretary Alex Acosta.  In the early 2000s, he was the Miami Federal Attorney responsible for negotiating an inexplicably sweet plea agreement with sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.  Epstein, a rich, politically connected financier, who “abused underaged girls on a near-industrial scale” only received a thirteen month sentence, much of which he served in his own home.  Last week the Miami Herald published a “blockbuster” multipart exposé about how the justice system failed Epstein’s victims.  For his role in the affair, the paper has labeled Acosta damaged goods going on to say that “he should realize it and move on. He does not deserve to be in the halls of power — he abused his power so tragically.”  It’s not clear that Trump, who admits having spent some quality time at Epstein’s lair, but only with consenting women not young girls, is all that concerned about Acosta’s involvement, but he might not be all that happy about the attention that the Miami Herald’s investigative reporters are shining on the sordid affair right now.  It’s worth noting that Trump isn’t the only one with Epstein connections, Bill Clinton and Alan Dershowitz, who represented Epstein and may or may not have taken advantage of his “largesse,” were also Epstein friends.  In other personnel news, Trump is expected to name Heather Nauert as his new UN Ambassador.  Nauert, the former Fox News anchor has no relevant experience other than her stint as Department of State press secretary, she once cited the D-Day invasion of Normandy against the Nazis as an example of the US’s strong relationship with Germany, but that’s part of her appeal. With Nikki Haley out of the picture, the UN Ambassador position will lose its cabinet level status.  Nauert will report directly to Secretary of State Pompeo, presumably following his directions at all time. Trump also appears to be close to selecting a new Attorney General.  He appears to have zeroed in on William Barr who served as Attorney General from 1991 to 1993.  Unlike Acting Attorney General Whitaker, Barr has real credentials.  However he is also an advocate of “sweeping presidential powers”  who has criticized aspects of the Russia investigation, suggesting that Mueller hired too many prosecutors who had donated to Democratic campaigns. Barr has also defended Trump’s calls for a new criminal investigation into Hillary Clinton over the uranium one mining deal the Obama administration approved when she was secretary of state.  In other words, he’s a perfect candidate for the guy who routinely tweet attacks Mueller and his “13 hardened Democrats” and who constantly calls for Hillary to be locked up.  One of those other guys who Trump would like to see locked up, former FBI Director Comey, will be testifying today in front of the lame duck House Judiciary Committee. Though his appearance will take place behind closed doors, pursuant to the agreement that he struck with the Committee, the text of his testimony will be released within 24 hours.

Other News:  It’s official, the Democrats really did achieve a net gain of 40 House seats.  That said, the election is not over yet, one House seat remains up in the air.  The shenanigans pulled in North Carolina’s 9^th District are even worse than initially imagined.  It appears that Republican candidate Mark Harris bankrolled the absentee ballot fraud that resulted in him first ousting the District’s incumbant Republican Congressman in the primary and then “winning” or at least temporarily winning the general election over Democratic candidate Dan McCready who has now withdran his concession.  Apparently Leslie McCrae Dowless, the guy who implemented the absentee ballot “harvesting” has been doing this for a while, he actually offered his services to Harris’ primary opponent, who turned him down and has been investigated in the past.  This story isn’t going away anytime soon.  In the meantime North Carolina is short one Congressperson. Elsewhere, it looks like Russian NRA hearthrob Maria Butina may be close to agreeing to a plea agreement with Federal prosecutors and it also looks like WikiLeaks Julian Assange, who was quietly indicted in the US earlier this year, is close to leaving Ecuador’s London embassy.  Could a not so voluntary trip to the US be in his immediate future?