Immoral, Unpatriotic, Unethical and Corrupt

Pencils or Pens: Yesterday all nine Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee signed a letter calling for Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff to resign his position as Chair of the committee and Republican Representative Mike Conaway laid into him for being “at the center of a well-orchestrated media campaign claiming among other things that the Trump campaign colluded with the Russian government”  In response, the somber and usually measured Schiff who admittedly has been one of Trump’s most outspoken critics, made it clear that he doesn’t regret for a moment anything he has said to date because he continues to believe that all of it was and still is more than justified.  He did that by delivering an impassioned speech where he listed each and every time that a member of the Trump campaign met with a Russian. His speech began as follows:  “My colleagues might think it’s OK that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. My colleagues might think it’s OK that when that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the son did not call the FBI, he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help — no, instead that son said he would ‘love’ the help with the Russians. You might think it was ok that he took that meeting. You might think it’s ok that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s ok that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s ok that they concealed it from the public. You might think it’s ok that their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think it’s OK. I don’t.” Given the number of Trump team contacts with Russians the speech went on for some time before ending with “You might say that’s all OK, that that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s OK. I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt, and evidence of collusion.”  If we survive the Trump era, Schiff’s speech will be remembered for its heroic eloquence, if we don’t make it out intact, Schiff will either go down as an enemy of the people or his very existence will be wiped from the history books. Later in the day, Trump, the person who would most like to see Schiff and his cohorts vanquished traveled to Michigan where he celebrated his “complete exoneration” at a rally.  During that speech Trump, hardly an Adonis, slammed “little pencil necked” Schiff while calling for the “sick” Democrats to “decide whether to stop defrauding the public with ridiculous bullsh-t, partisan investigations, or whether they will apologize to the American people."  The crowd who had broken out into an “AOC sucks” chant during preliminary remarks made by number one son Don Jr, ate it all up.  As to that whole complete exoneration thing, Democratic leadership is still trying to get the full Mueller report released so that they and the rest of us can get a better understanding of what the report says, one that goes beyond Attorney General Barr’s four page summary.  For his part, Barr who barely gave House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler the time of day during their Wednesday phone call, the one where he gave Nadler an estimate of the page length of the full report but little else, was seen dining with Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  Kind of guessing that Graham now knows far more about the content of the Mueller report than its page count.

More Smoke and Mirrors:  David Farenthold, the Washington Post reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for revealing just how uncharitable the Trump Foundation was by writing a series of articles that led the Attorney General of New York to investigate and ultimately force the shutting of the Foundation, has moved on to reporting on Trump’s finances. Yesterday he co-authored a Washington Post article revealing how Trump inflated his net worth to investors and lenders.  He reports that Trump exaggerated his holdings and their revenue potential in his financial presentations by, among other things, claiming that he had 55 home lots to sell at his golf course in Southern California saying that those lots would sell for $3 million or more, when he had only 31 lots zoned and ready for sale; that he  claimed his Virginia vineyard had 2,000 acres, when it really has about 1,200;  and, as previously reported that he claimed that his New York Trump Tower has 68 stories even though it has only 58.  It’s not clear how much of this crossed the line from  bragging to fraud because real estate developers are known to engage in some puffery and because in most, if not all of the cases cited, Trump’s information included disclaimers and was “presented” but not audited by his accountants but a number of authorities in New York are now on the case. The Mueller Report, or at least the Barr Summary, may be behind us but that only gives authorities more time to focus on Trump’s and Trump Inc’s financial chicanery.  Then again the whole enterprise seems to be coated in Teflon so don’t get your hopes up yet.    

Other News:  NBC reports that the letters that Trump received from North Korea Kim Jong un really were love letters, they flattered Trump’s ego so much that Trump’s advisors really were concerned that he would concede almost anything during their Hanoi summit.  In particular, Secretary of State Pompeo, national security advisor Bolton and Trump’s Korea experts had to spend extra time with him, part of an urgent effort to make sure that he didn’t sell South Korea and Japan down the river.  On the staffing front, Washington DC Federal Attorney Jessie Liu who had been tapped to replace Rachel Brand, the former Associate Attorney General who early on flew the coop to go to Walmart in order to get herself far from the Trump swamp, has pulled herself out of consideration.  Apparently she was once a member of a women lawyers professional group that criticized conservative Supreme Court Justice Alito and that supported women’s reproductive rights.  To be clear, she never affixed her name to anything that “radical” but her prior association was too much for Utah’s Senator Mike Lee so she’s now out of the picture.   Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen wants Congress to give her the authority to deport unaccompanied children and to hold families in detention longer.  She plans to say that the border emergency is worse than ever, and though the number of people seeking asylum is up, it’s not as high as it was in prior years and current levels reflect usual seasonal variations.  Additionally, bottle necks at legal border crossings created by Trump administration “metering” policies, has made the situation worse than it should be, creating great “photo ops” for those who want to claim that hordes are invading the country.  For his party Trump told his BFF Sean Hannity that he isn't going to “shoot at immigrants but that shooting would be very effective.”  At least with regard to the Special Olympics and the clean-up of the Great Lakes Trump has seen the light, or at least recognizes that some of his planned budget cuts were too politically damaging so he now says that it was never his idea to defund the Special Olympics and that he will restore the $300 million that he tried to cut from the budget for a very popular Great Lakes clean-up project.  Then again, he’s also promised great health care for all, a promise that has so freaked out Senate Majority Leader McConnell that he’s told Trump he’s on his own on that one, so those Michigan people expecting cleaner lakes shouldn’t take him too seriously.