Individual 1

Liars Lie:  Newsflash, former campaign manager Paul Manafort is a bigly liar, he lied to the Feds and then lied about his lies.  On Friday, Mueller’s team released their report to the judge presiding over Manafort’s Washington DC case.  Although significant sections of the report were heavily redacted, indicating that the Russian investigation remains ongoing, the bottom line is that Manafort wasn’t much of a cooperator. Mueller’s team has electronic evidence that Manafort lied about his contacts with his business associate Konstantin Kilimnik, the Russian Ukrainian “consultant” who is also a former KGB agent except that no one is a “former” agent which means that he is still an agent for the GRU, the successor to the KGB.  Although no one expects Kilimnik to turn himself in anytime soon, Mueller indicted him earlier in the year.  Manafort also lied about his communication with the White House, communication that continued even after he’d been indicted.  Manafort spoke directly with an unnamed senior White House official and also directed someone to speak with the White House on his behalf.  Despite fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen’s very public assertions that he was fully cooperating with prosecutors in New York and Washington and his lawyer’s request that his cooperation earn him a get out of jail free card, it turns out that Cohen only cooperated some of the time.  He provided Southern District of New York (SDNY) attorneys with enough useful information for them to conclude that Trump, A/K/A Individual 1, directed the payments made to adult film star Stormy Daniels and Playmate Karen McDougal and that the intent of those payments was to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election, a violation of campaign finance laws.  However, because Cohen, who may have been seeking to protect family members from prosecution and/or mob retribution, wasn’t forthcoming about a number of his other crimes, crimes that involved his taxi business and bank fraud, the SDNY recommended that he receive only a modest sentencing reduction.  As a result Cohen is likely to be sentenced to somewhere around four years in jail.  Mueller’s Washington DC based lawyers were more satisfied with Cohen’s cooperation on things related to Trump, Russia and obstruction.  He told them that Russian outreach to Trump began in 2015 when a Russian connected Olympic wrestler contacted him with an offer to connect Trump with important Russian government officials who could provide political and business “synergy.”  Cohen didn’t follow-up with that offer because he was already working with another team of Russians on the Moscow Tower project, a project that would have provided the Trump with hundreds of million dollars in revenues, which likely explains why Trump had Cohen working on it well into the campaign. Cohen also revealed that he coordinated his congressional testimony and public statements where he deceptively represented that the work on Trump Tower had ceased when it was still ongoing, with senior White House officials which explains why others in the Trump orbit gave similar testimony during their visits to Congress. Suffice it to say, those individuals, including Individual 1’s number 1 son are more than a little nervous right about now.  Mueller recommended that any sentence that Cohen receives for lying to Congress be served concurrently with his much longer SDNY sentence.  As to Trump, he’s either lying or delusional or both.  He celebrated the release of the Manafort and Cohen reports, asserting that they prove that he’s innocent, there was no collusion, that the prosecutors are all Hillary Clinton loving Democrats and that the whole Mueller investigation is nothing but a witch hunt.  Apparently, he doesn’t understand or refuses to acknowledge that he is Individual 1 and that the only reason that he hasn’t been indicted is because he is currently serving as president and current practice at the Justice Department, based on in-house opinions rather than the Constitution, is that sitting presidents can’t be indicted. That said, since the statute of limitations on the campaign finance crimes exceeds Trump’s current term, he could be indicted upon leaving office, assuming he doesn’t win reelection.  Apparently, the SDNY lawyers are currently researching how to do that.  Impeachment was a top topic this weekend too. The overall conclusion is that though a lot of Democrats will want to push forward as soon as they take over, the more prudent want more than Trump’s campaign payoffs of paramours, they are awaiting the conclusion of Mueller’s investigation.   

Revolving Door: Confirming rumors, Trump announced that he is nominating Bush era Attorney General William Barr to serve as his next Attorney General.  In comparison to current Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, Barr appears to be mainstream however he is very conservative and a believer that presidential power entitles presidents to do almost anything that they want.  He’s previously spoken out against the Mueller investigation although it’s worth noting that he and Mueller overlapped at the Justice Department and that they are mutual respectful.  Trump had previously tried to hire Barr to represent him on the Russia investigation and has been pursuing him for some time to become Attorney General.  Barr refused the offer to represent Trump saying that he was otherwise occupied and refused to consider the Attorney General spot because he thought it was inappropriate to accept that offer while Jeff Sessions was still serving.  Speaking off the record a number of Barr’s associates question why he would want to step into the AG spot at this time given Trump’s maniacal tendencies.  Some suggest he might be doing it to restore order and confidence at the Justice Department.  That said, he still has to go through a Senate confirmation process, one that is likely to question his statements about the Mueller investigation.  On Sunday, Neil Katyal who served as acting Solicitor General during part of Obama’s presidency tweeted that he recused himself from anything to do with any clients who had solicited him to serve as their lawyer and that it is his belief that Barr should do the same.  Undoubtably that will also be discussed during Barr’s confirmation hearing.  Chief of Staff Kelly and Trump’s relationship has been frayed for some  time, so it shouldn’t be all that surprising that his days in the White House are about to end.  The deal was that Kelly would announce his departure this week but Trump jumped the gun, announcing it on Friday perhaps in an effort to deflect attention away from the whole Individual 1 thing.  Trump had already started to tell people to take their questions straight to Nick Ayers, VP Pence’s Chief of Staff, who he planned on appointing to serve as Kelly’s replacement.  However, like many Trump plans, the Ayers hire didn’t work out as planned.  Apparently Ayers would only commit to stay on for a few months as he is anxious to get back to Georgia “for family reasons” but also because he wants to start laying the groundwork for his own political future, a future that might be hindered if he spends too much time with Trump though he most certainly did not say that.  Trump wants a longer term replacement and is now  reported to be considering a wide swath of candidates including a few like Treasury Secretary Mnuchin and Budget Director Mulvaney who say they don’t want the job and Tea Party Congressman Mark Meadows who might; he is also considering that that totally qualified for little Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker who Trump really likes because they’ve bonded so well. Regardless of who Trump selects for Chief of Staff or for any of the other openings likely to start cropping up in his cabinet, Senate Leader Mitch McConnell has made it clear that he can’t have any of his Republican Senators because he needs them all to keep on confirming right wing judges and fears that in the current climate he could lose even the safest Republican seat to a Democratic upstart. Some former Trump officials did some talking of their own last week.  One time Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pretty much confirmed that he thinks Trump is a moron, one who is willing to work outside the law; Trump responded by calling him “dumb as a rock” and very lazy, pretty funny from someone who spends most of his executive time watching cable TV and golfing.  Former FBI Director Comey also had a few things to say during his Congressional appearance last week, a closed door appearance he agreed to under the condition that transcripts be released within twenty-four hours.  Though Republicans mostly questioned him about their favorite subject, Clinton and her emails, he managed to get a few things off his chest too.  Most notably he revealed that the FBI Inspector General is currently investigating where Rudy Giuliani got the information that he publicly shared during the campaign about the status of the Hillary email investigation.  Comey believes that FBI agents in NY leaked that information to him.  Comey also revealed that he initially opened the Russia investigation after learning that four Trump team members had been speaking with Russians.

Conspiracy Theory or Truth?  Buzzfeed recently published a story about Jerry Falwell Jr and an investment he made together with a pool guy, yes a pool guy, in some cheap hostel facilities in Florida. Though the article is purportedly about some litigation, it doesn’t take much reading between the lines to figure out that it is really an intentionally vague story about why the very Christian Falwell endorsed the thrice married and not so angelic Trump during the 2016 election.  The claim is that Michael Cohen kind of forced Falwell’s hand by threatening to leak stories about his possibly unseemly relationship with the pool guy.  Those kind of stories would have caused Falwell and his Liberty University perch enormous harm.  Once Falwell was onboard the Trump train the rest of the evangelical community followed.  Not sure if this one is for real but it certainly explains a lot and given that Buzzfeed was the first to publish the so far mostly true Steele Dossier, who knows?