Pizza and Day Trippers

Mueller v Barr:  More of Mueller’s formerly silent team members are becoming chatty, or at least are venting their frustrations about the way that Attorney General Barr is obfuscating their report. The Washington Post reports that some of those leaky Mueller investigators say that their findings on obstruction were “alarming and significant” and that the summaries that they crafted and provided to Barr were carefully written to accurately reveal both the extent of Trump’s obstruction as well as the questionable, though not criminal interactions that the Trump team had with all those Russians and that they had intended for those summaries to be shared with a wider audience.  In an attempt to push back on criticism, in particular the assertions that Barr is just another handpicked Trump tool, the Justice Department countered that all that criticism isn’t fair because they couldn’t release any of those summaries in part because the Mueller team had marked each of their pages with a warning that they might contain confidential grand jury information.  Those experienced in such matter say that’s a crock, that those so-called “6 e” warnings are boilerplate, routinely put on everything produced at Justice, kind of like warning that your candy bar might contain nuts even though it doesn’t.  They continue to promise that a version of the report suitable for public viewing will be available soon, Democrats in the House want to see the whole enchilada and Republicans just want the topic to die.  Separately in an attempt to defer the beginning of his jail term and maybe, just maybe get his jail time reduced, if not eliminated altogether, Trump’s former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen is now offering Democratic lawmakers more information that his lawyers say he recently discovered hidden in his files.  He is requesting their help and more time to separate out privileged and personal documents from those 14 million newly discovered files.  As to Mueller, it’s not clear if he ever managed to get his hands on Trump’s personal financial documents and tax returns but one thing is for certain, there is something about Trump’s returns that he wants kept hidden, so much so that he directed Senate Majority Leader McConnell to prioritize getting his handpicked nominee for chief counsel of the IRS, Michael Desmond, confirmed over the confirmation vote for Attorney General Barr. Although McConnell disregarded his instructions, Desmond, a California tax attorney who once advised the Trump Organization on a discrete tax matter was confirmed in February. He now stands between House Democrats and Trump’s very elusive tax returns and it’s fair to assume that he will do his best to prevent the release of those returns.  Two other sources of some of Trump’s financial information, Capital One Bank and Mazars USA, the accounting firm that prepared those frequently “exaggerated” statements of financial condition for Trump’s loan applications and that also was responsible for his and his company’s audits, have informed the House Oversight Committee that they will release any requested information once they are formally subpoenaed.  They say they want to cooperate but need those subpoenas to protect themselves from Trump.  Although most Republicans in the House and Senate insist that Democrats are way out of line in going after Trump’s financial information and tax returns, it appears that Senator Lindsey Graham disagrees, at least with regard to the tax returns.  Yesterday he said that everyone running for president in 2020, including Trump, should release their tax returns: “That's just my view, it’d be good for the country for, if you're running for president in 2020, to release your tax returns.”  It’s not clear that the highly mercurial Graham will stick with that position once he realizes that it could land him in Trump hot water or at the very least cause him to get dropped from Trump’s golf foursome. For the record Republicans had no problem when their party’s leadership obtained others tax returns as part of their Obama era investigation into charges that IRS officials were unfairly targeting conservative groups.

Legislative Front:  By a vote of 263 to 158, the House passed a revamped version of the Violence Against Women Act.  The usually uncontroversial reauthorization vote, hit a considerable amount of headwind this time around because the Act expanded provisions restricting gun sales to domestic abusers, a big no-no for the NRA who pushed back hard against the legislation, and expanded some protections to transgender people, a bigger no-no for VP Pence and other likeminded Republicans.  Thirty-three Republicans ignored threats from the NRA and the threats of eternal damnation from the religious wingnut coalition and voted with the Democratic majority in favor of the legislation.  The legislation now moves to the Senate where it will be pushed forward by Democrat Diane Feinstein and Republican Joni Ernst; however, it’s not clear that the Senate will sign off on those new “controversial” add-ons. By a vote of 247 to 175 the House joined the Senate by voting to end US participation in Yemen’s civil war, “denouncing the Saudi-led bombing campaign there as worsening an already dire humanitarian crisis.” It is expected that Trump who views any effort to stand between his administration and his good buddies in Saudi Arabia as a serious rebuke, will veto that legislation.

Human Resources:  Just a week or so ago Trump nominated Stephen Moore, who is not an economist but who has a history of failing to make his child support payments and who owes money to the IRS  to serve on the Federal Reserve Board.  At that time, Trump was criticized for nominating the worst possible candidate he could find but once again Trump has proved his critics wrong.  Yesterday he announced plans to nominate Herman Cain to fill another opening, the former Chief Executive of Godfather’s Pizza whose rather bizarre run for the presidency in 2012 was derailed after multiple accusations of sexual misconduct came to light, to join Moore on the Board.  Both dubious characters still need to be confirmed by the Senate but, sadly, its highly likely that one or possibly both of them will easily make it through the confirmation process.  Senator Doug Jones, the Alabama Democratic who beat out accused teen dater Judge Roy Moore to serve out the rest of former Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ term is up for reelection in 2020.  Yesterday, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, who is one of Trump’s most ardent supporters announced that he is considering moving north to Alabama where residency can be established in only one day to run for the Senate because Alabama really needs another race baiting, but possibly very popular candidate.