Agent Trumpsky

Maggie and Friends:  Well, now we know why Trump has been even crankier than usual lately.  Yesterday the New York Times published a lengthy article detailing the ways that Trump has waged war against the various investigations into him, his campaign and his administration.  The article wasn’t a surprise to Trump, the NY Times had run its contents past the White House communications department days before it was published so he knew it was coming, thus the even higher than normal number of twitter rampages.  Though Trump would prefer that everyone, or at least his base, believe otherwise, the article was fact based and not “fake news.”  Among other things, the authors, including Trump’s on again, off again favorite Maggie Haberman, detail the lying that took place in January 2017 when then Acting Attorney General Sally Yates informed the administration that then national security adviser Michael Flynn had lied to the FBI about his conversations with the Russians about sanctions relief.  It describes how Trump and then Press Secretary Sean Spicer came up with their fictionalized account of Flynn’s dismissal, a version that was so deceptive that the White House Counsel’s office felt compelled to write a memo expressing their concern about the White House staff “peddling misleading information in public.” Obviously that memo never gained much traction. Much of the contents of the article aren’t new, we’ve lived the events in real time, but seeing the elements of Trump’s disinformation campaign detailed in one place from the spin around the firing of former FBI Director Comey to the demonization of Mueller, his investigation and his team, the ongoing intimidation of former Attorney General Sessions, the evolution of Devon Nunes into a White House tool/spy,  and the hiring of “America’s Mayor” Rudy Giuliani as a duplicitous mouthpiece, among other things, makes it clear that it’s not our imagination, we really are living through a long nightmare, one that is far from over.  The NY Times makes that clear by detailing one of Trump’s most recent strategies, the hiring of Matt Whitaker to serve as Acting Attorney General, an appointment that made no sense given Whitaker’s lack of qualifications and work experience; generally the fraudulently marketing of toilets for the well-endowed would have been a disqualifying resume item.  As suspected, Trump expected Whitaker to  “jump on a few grenades” for him, most notably he asked him to interfere with the Southern District of New York’s investigation into former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen actions and all of those other things related to the Trump Crime family empire.  Specifically, Trump wanted Whitaker to get Geoffrey Berman, the head of the SDNY, who was recused from all of those problematic investigations to “unrecuse” himself, and was quite angry with Whitaker when he explained that was something that couldn’t be done.  Trump found that particularly galling since he had selected Berman, a former partner from the same Greenberg Traurig law firm that used to be Giuliani’s home with the expectation that he, unlike the SDNY’s prior head Preet Bharara, would be a “team” player.  Notably, during his recent appearance in front of the House Judiciary Committee Whitaker denied that Trump had ever pressured him to interfere with the Mueller investigation but tried somewhat unsuccessfully to avoid answering any questions about being pressured to interfere with the SDNY.  Whitaker who is no longer the Acting AG but is still bouncing around the Justice Department, has lots of explaining to do.  As to Trump, Fox News’ senior judicial analyst and frequent Trump fan Judge Andrew Napolitano said that Trump’s direction to Whitaker to get Berman to “unrecuse” himself was “an attempt to obstruct justice.”

McCabe’s Revenge:  Former Acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe continues to give book tour interviews and the things that he’s been saying are boosting sales, his book “The Threat” is selling like hot cakes, it has already bumped Michele Obama’s “Becoming” from its number one perch on Amazon’s best seller list.   McCabe’s tell all is relatively brief, which may be one of the reasons that he failed to include any mention of the time that he told the “Gang of Eight” Congressional leaders about opening a counter investigation into Trump.  That group included Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, then Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, Chair of the House Intel Committee Devon Nunes and Chair of the Senate Intel Committee Richard Burr in addition to their Democratic counterparts Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Mark Warner and Adam Schiff.   McCabe disclosed this prized nugget yesterday morning in response to a question from NBC’s Savannah Guthrie.  He also told her that “no one objected, not on legal grounds, not on constitutional grounds and not based on the facts." Asked about this later in the day, McConnell who has been doing his best to pretend that he doesn’t know anything about any of Trump’s bad acts because he’s been loving the judges and the tax cut, had his spokesperson respond that he can’t comment because as a matter of principle, as if he has any principles, he never discusses the things that he learns during those Gang of Eight intel briefings. There’s no point in even bothering to ask Devon Nunes about any of this because everyone already knows what he did after he learned about the counter intelligence investigation into Trump, he ran to the White House to keep his exalted leader in the loop. For his part McCabe is still talking, last night he dropped another bombshell.  After CNN’s Anderson Cooper asked him "Do you still believe the President could be a Russian asset," McCabe responded "I think it's possible. I think that's why we started our investigation, and I'm really anxious to see where (special counsel Robert) Mueller concludes that." White House spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, whose husband routinely tweets Trump out, said that she wouldn’t dignify McCabe’s assertion with any response.  However, she did call him a “liar and a leaker.”  That leaker part is particularly funny given that Conway is known to be the leakiest person in the White House.

Flynn Flamming and Other Things:  Yesterday was so chock full of duplicitousness that it would have been easy to miss that the Elijah Cummings Chaired House Oversight Committee released a report detailing how former national security advisor Michael Flynn and a few others within the White House, together with a group of retired US generals and admirals had pushed a plan to build dozens of nuclear-power reactors in Saudi Arabia, for the money because it’s always for the money.  The plan included appointing Trump’s good friend Tom Barrack who also headed up all of those questionable inauguration fund raising and expenditure activities to oversee the project.  The Committee is now launching a formal investigation into the possible transfer of sensitive nuclear technology to Saudi Arabia, noting that despite the fact that Flynn is long gone from government the discussions “appear to be ongoing.”  In other news, it turns out that Judge Amy Berman Jackson was just about as upset with Roger Stone’s Instagram posting of a picture of her with a target next to her head as you would have expected her to be.  She’s commanded him to appear in her court tomorrow.  If he’s lucky she will just expand his gag order to cover all of his utterances and social media activities, alternatively she might decide to just rescind his bail.  Who knows, maybe he’ll soon share a cell with one time Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.  Separately the Washington Post reports that Director of National Security Dan Coats’ days in the Trump administration may be numbered.  Apparently Trump is very unhappy with Coats due to his propensity to tell the truth about things like North Korea’s nuclear ambitions and ISIS.  In particular Trump is disturbed that Coats places honesty over loyalty.