Is Paris Burning?

Always Mueller:   Yesterday the Justice Department revealed plans to release the redacted version of the Mueller report on Thursday, a release suspiciously timed to coincide with the beginning of the Easter and Passover Holidays.  The White House has already been briefed “in broad strokes” about the report and appears to be concerned about what Barr intends to leave unredacted because the “good news is already out there.”  In particular, they are reported to be most concerned about what former White House Counsel Don McGahn told Mueller’s team about Trump’s “obstructive” actions during the thirty hours that he spent with them.  For his part Trump continues to insist that he’s been fully exonerated but his tweet screeching of things like “Mueller, and the A.G. based on Mueller findings (and great intelligence), have already ruled No Collusion, No Obstruction, These were crimes committed by Crooked Hillary, the DNC, Dirty Cops and others! INVESTIGATE THE INVESTIGATORS!” betrays his concern.  The Mueller report and what it does or doesn’t reveal is only part of what is bugging Trump right now.  In addition to all those migrants at the border, he is also very alarmed by the attempts to get hold of his financial information and in that regard he is right to be worried.  Yesterday, the House Intelligence and Financial Services Committees led by Adam Schiff and Maxine Waters respectively, issued subpoenas for records from Deutsche Bank and a number of other financial institutions seeking information regarding Trump’s business ventures.  The subpoena to Deutsche Bank has been characterized as “friendly.” It’s been reported that Deutsche has been cooperating with the committees for some time and is prepared to release an already agreed upon trove of documents.  The Elijah Cummings led House Oversight Committee is also into the friendly subpoena thing, at their request, Chairman Cummings plans to send one to Mazars USA, the accounting firm responsibility for preparing many of the financial statements that Trump and the Trump organization used for loan applications, the ones where he exaggerated the size and value of his assets.  Trump’s newest attorneys, William S. Consovoy and Stefan Passantino  are so concerned about what the Mazars’ files will reveal that they’ve preemptively put the firm “on notice,” threatening legal action if they comply with the House subpoena. Despite all of these worries, Trump found time to weigh in on the Notre Dame fire and Boeing’s 737 Max problem.  On the conflagration front, he tweet advised French fire fighters that “Perhaps flying water tankers could be used to put it out. Must act quickly!"  The French Civil Defense Department made it clear that they were not all that interested in taking advice from Trump, they responded in both French and English that “Hundreds of firemen of the Paris Fire Brigade are doing everything they can to bring the terrible #NotreDame fire under control. All means are being used, except for water-bombing aircrafts which, if used, could lead to the collapse of the entire structure of the cathedral.”  As to the 737 Max, Trump is all in on a name change, forget about fixing the equipment’s fatal  flaw, just call the plane something else and put it back in the air, that’s what he would do.

Prizes for All: Trump was so thrilled with the outcome of this year’s Masters’ Golf Tournament that he announced plans to award Tiger Woods the Presidential Medal of Freedom, because who can’t relate to a comeback by a great golfing buddy who cheated on his wife a few zillion times.  Unfortunately for Trump the Pulitzer Prize committee didn’t consult with him before announcing this year’s prizes.  If they had he probably would have nixed a number of this year’s awards starting with the one to the New York Times whose reporters received the explanatory reporting prize for their  18-month investigation into how Trump and his siblings avoided paying roughly half a billion dollars’ worth of taxes.  Similarly he probably would have put the kibosh on the  national reporting prize that the Wall Street Journal won for disclosing the clandestine “hush” payoffs made before the 2016 election to Trump’s playmate and adult film star honeys.  On a more serious note, the South Florida Sun Sentinel won the prize for public service, considered the most prestigious of the Pulitzers, for documenting the massacre of 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida and the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette won for Breaking News Reporting for its coverage of the shooting deaths of 11 people and the wounding of seven others at the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill.  Though both papers deserved their prizes it’s a sad commentary on the times that mass murder by lunatics with guns are so prevalent.

2020:  Bernie Sanders finally released ten years of tax returns, he’s a millionaire now and he wants you to know that you can be one too if you write a really good book that everyone rushes out to buy.  Kamala Harris out did him, over the weekend she released fifteen years of her returns.  She’s and her husband are millionaires too.   Former Massachusetts Governor William Weld, who was the VP candidate on the Libertarian ticket in 2020,  is also very wealthy, and prepared to spend some of his money on what will be a Quixotic run for the Republican nomination for president.  Still, if spending money yelling about and at Trump makes him happy, why not?