Loving Sully

Dueling Visions:  Yesterday was a day full of contrast. Air Force One, temporarily renamed Special Air Mission 41, was graciously provided by Trump to fly George H W Bush, his extended family and his service dog Sully from Texas to Washington DC.  A number of Republican congressional  “luminaries” including outgoing House Speaker Ryan and Majority Leader McConnell gave speeches upon his arrival at the US Capitol building.   They were joined by VP Pence who spoke in his role as president of the Senate. Pence was fairly impressive, incorporating as many biblical references as possible because that’s what he does best, he also included a touching vignette about how Bush sent his son a letter congratulating him on his first flight off of the deck of the USS George H W Bush.  Together with Melania, Trump who had spent much of his day inappropriately tweeting, paid his respects late last night; he will be attending tomorrow’s funeral services but has not been invited to speak, which is fine because it’s unlikely that any speech he would give would be all that appropriate giving the setting.  Lock her up just doesn’t go over all that well at funerals. As to his tweeting, Trump again attacked Mueller and his group of “liberal Democrats” saving a few really cutting remarks for his one time lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen.  Responding to Cohen’s lawyers request that Cohen receive as little jail time as possible, and by little they mean none, for his various crimes Trump tweeted “Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.' You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term?” adding “He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence."  His tweets weren’t all full of vitriol, he had nothing but nice things to say about his long term crony Roger Stone, applauding his “guts” after he told Sunday morning news audiences that “he would never testify against Trump” because to do so he “would have to make things up.”  Stone’s obvious pardon ploy combined with Trump’s tweet encouragement didn’t go over all that well with a number of attorney’s.  Kellyanne Conway’s very expressive husband George tweeted out  a reference to the specific federal statute which outlines the crime of witness tampering. A number of former Federal Attorneys joined him on that thought.  However, his tweet didn’t go over all that well with Trump son Eric who pointed out that Conway’s tweet disrespected wife Kellyanne.  Conway responded by retweeting a number of tweets that slammed Trump senior for disrespecting the country.  At least one pundit thinks that the Mueller investigation is close to reaching its conclusion.  Yahoo’s investigative journalist Michael Issakof, reports that Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are “tying up loose ends.”  He goes on to say that the three memos that Mueller’s team will be filing this week, the first concerning former national security adviser Michael Flynn, another  about former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the last concerning Michael Cohen are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation. Issakof suggests that to the extent that Mueller’s investigation is nearing its end the memos will be very forthcoming as he will no longer need to shroud his investigation in a protective cloak of confidentiality to insure its success.  Our first clues as to whether or not Issakof’s assessment is correct should come later today when Mueller’s Flynn sentencing report is released.

Other News: The Russia investigation isn’t Trump’s only legal headache.  Yesterday, the federal judge presiding over emoluments lawsuits filed by the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington DC  laid out a schedule for the beginning of the discovery process in the case concerning the Trump hotel in Washington DC. Both attorneys general say that they will begin sending out related subpoenas to the Trump organization and the trust that manages Trump’s investments immediately.  Though the administration has been trying to avoid letting CIA Director Gina Haspel speak about the CIA’s conclusions regarding the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, she will finally get a chance to talk about what she knows and presumably what they’ve been trying to keep quiet. The Senate forced the administration’s hand with its threats to cut off support for the civil war in Yemen. Haspel is due to meet with top leaders of the Senate‘s Armed Services Committee, Foreign Relations Committee and Intelligence Committee later today.  The New York Times reports that former campaign manager Paul Manafort, who was desperate for cash to pay back some of his Russian oligarch loans and also needed money to support his expensive life style, was busy pitching his services to a number of countries well into 2017.  He pitched his services to Ecuador, offering to use his Trump connections to help broker an energy deal with China.  Apparently Ecuador was more interested in enlisting his help in getting rid of their Julian Assange problem.  They offered to ship the WikiLeaks founder from their embassy in London to the US in exchange for some debt relief from Washington.  Ultimately the deal didn’t go anywhere.  Though a number of people in the intelligence community including Special Counsel Mueller would love to spend some quality time with Assange it’s hard to believe that anyone in the know in the Trump circle really wants Assange and his WikiLeaks secrets anywhere near Washington, then again Manafort desperately needed money because Ostrich vests don’t come cheap.  He probably wasn’t thinking about the longer term consequences of Assange dishing about Russians, Roger Stone and DNC emails. That Manafort, big into risk taking, not so smart about the consequences of his actions.