Castles Behind Bars

No Testimony for You:  Trump did not stand in the way of then White House Don McGahn testifying before Special Counsel Mueller largely because his lawyers at that time advised him that cooperating with the Russia investigation was the best way to make it go away.  To a certain extent that strategy paid off, thought the investigation went on longer than Trump had hoped it would he escaped indictment when Mueller concluded that despite all of Trump and his team’s questionable behavior there wasn’t enough evidence to prove Trump had conspired with the Russians and passed on making any judgement on obstruction, well at least passed that one off to Congress.  However now, having either read the Mueller report, or more likely having learned about its damning contents from watching Fox, Trump is really, really regretting the decision to let McGahn testify, he never expected that McGahn would engage in so much truth telling and gut spilling about all his “bat sh-t crazy” demands.  So, though the damage has already been done, Trump is now doing all he can to prevent McGahn from appearing before the House Judiciary Committee.  Last night Trump told the Washington Post that he is opposed to current and former White House aides providing testimony to congressional panels and that as far as he is concerned complying with congressional requests was unnecessary since the White House had already cooperated with the Mueller probe.  “There is no reason to go any further, and especially in Congress where it’s very partisan — obviously very partisan.”  If Trump sticks with his statement to the Washington Post and exerts executive privilege, McGahn, who has already been subpoenaed, will be forced to choose between  honoring Trump’s “privilege” or being held in contempt of Congress.  It’s worth noting that having already allowed McGahn and all those other Trumpkins to speak with Mueller’s team, its not clear that Trump’s privilege claim will hold in the courts but that’s probably not the point, the strategy is to delay any testimony beyond the 2020 election.  Trump isn’t just standing in the way of McGahn, he’s also doing his best to prevent the sharing of any of his financial information.  On Monday, the newest set of lawyers hired by Trump and the Trump Organization filed suit against Elijah Cummings, the chairman of the House Oversight Committee, to block the subpoena for all those years of financial records from several Trump entities that Cummings is trying to get his hands on.  They claim that the subpoena for records from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA, “lacks any legitimate legislative purpose, is an abuse of power, and is just another example of overreach by the president's political opponents."  Additionally, last night Treasury Secretary Mnuchin, who has got to know that he only gets to stay in the Trump cabinet by  keeping Trump’s tax returns hidden from public view, again delayed a decision on whether to turn over those returns to Congress, saying that the Treasury and Justice Departments needed until May 6 to assess the legality of what he called the “unprecedented” request.  Keeping tax returns under lock and key must be contagious, VP Pence who shared his before the election has caught the avoidance flu, since assuming office, he’s kept his secret too, something that really is unprecedented.  The bottom line is that Trump who is reported to be fuming about the contents of the Mueller report, all the things that his staff and former staff revealed about his irrational ways and the way that the press, including some parts of Fox, have been covering the story is no longer interested in cooperating with Congress about anything.  He’s also not all that interested in spending any more time with the press than he has to so he’s not going to this year’s White House Correspondent dinner, which isn’t surprising, he didn’t go last year either.  However, now he’s not letting anyone from the White House attend, yesterday he directed everyone, including the usual attendees from the White House press office, to cancel their tuxedos and Rent the Runway orders, they’re staying home too.    

Human Resources:  Jared Kushner, who hasn’t achieved Middle East peace yet, kind of put his foot in his mouth yesterday.  Speaking at a Time 100 event the usually camera shy Kushner, dismissed Russia’s 2016 election interference as a “couple of Facebook ads” and said the investigation of it was far more damaging to the country than anything the Russians did.  It’s well worth mentioning that Facebook estimates that those “couple” of Russian ads and social media posts reached 126 million Americans, about 10 million fewer than actually voted in the 2016 election, and that the Russians hacked accounts of the Democratic National Committee and leaked damaging information about Hillary Clinton at times that really, really mattered.  In response to those comments Shepard Smith of Fox News scorched Kushner for diminishing the Russian attack and for being “disingenuous and deceptive.”  More of Stephen Moore’s comments about women and their roles have come to light.  In 2014 he expressed his views on equal pay writing in the National Review that “the crisis is in America today isn’t about women’s wages; it’s about men’s wages.” He questioned “What are the implications of a society in which women earn more than men?” answering rhetorically “We don’t really know, but it could be disruptive to family stability. If men aren’t the breadwinners, will women regard them as economically expendable?”  No comment about that yet from the hand wringing Senator Susan Collins or for that matter from any of the other Republican female Senators, or male ones with wives and daughters who work.  For now Moore is still Trump’s Federal Reserve Board pick.  Things are going about as well as expected at the Department of Interior, moments after coal industry lobbyist David Bernhardt was confirmed by the Senate as the new Secretary the Interior Department’s Inspector General opened an investigation into his canoodling with people in his industry.  The Inspector General is now also looking into whether six other of the Department’s political appointees were involved in Interior actions dealing with their former employers, including a conservative Texas think-tank and the National Rifle Association. Though we haven’t heard about her for a while, Trump is expected to formally nominate Kelly Craft, the wife of a billionaire coal industry executive to serve as UN Ambassador, the slot that’s been empty since Nikki Haley jumped ship, part of her effort to distance herself from the Trump train.   The really underqualified Craft, who currently serves as Ambassador to Canada, is likely to make it through her confirmation hearings largely because Senator Mitch McConnell of coal friendly state Kentucky is all in on her nomination but the hearings aren’t expected to be pretty.  As to Mitch McConnell, no one thinks that it is much of a coincidence that after he lobbied for the lifting of sanctions against Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska, Rusal, Deripaska’s company announced a $200 million investment in Kentucky.  Michael Cohen is due to start his prison sentence on May 6.  Though going away isn’t a good thing, the Daily Beast reports that the former Trump fixer/lawyer is going to one of the nicer “joints.”   He’ll be joining the Jersey Shore’s Michael Sorrentino A/K/A The Situation and Fyre Festival “flim-flammer” Billy McFarland at the Federal Correctional Institution Otisville which is located just an hour outside of NYC.  The facility is also known as the castle behind bars for its relatively cushy, by incarceration standards, accommodations.   For the record, Paul Manafort has already been transferred to his new home away from home, a minimum security prison near Scranton, Pennsylvania. On the Republican political front, Maryland Governor Larry Hogan is still considering primarying Trump and Andy McKeon, Iowa’s longest-serving Republican legislator announced that he will be joining the Democratic Party because Trump is "a poor example for the nation and particularly for our children." That matters because Iowa is a swing state that Trump won in 2016.