Oreos Anyone?

Closing In:  As expected former White House counsel Don McGahn did not testify yesterday.  Instead Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler held an abbreviated “empty desk” hearing, one without McGahn but with his tag prominently displayed in front of an empty seat.  Nadler began the meeting by summarizing McGahn’s interactions with Trump, focusing on all those times that Trump tried to get McGahn to obstruct the Mueller investigation on his behalf and then went on to attack Trump for  calling McGahn a liar and intimidating him into staying away by threatening any work that his law firm Jones Day does or will ever do for Republican related entities or any Republican led government. Nadler also went after McGahn, reminding him forcefully that House subpoenas are not optional invitations, Nadler’s way of saying that he’s about to throw McGahn into that “Held in Contempt” club.  Republican Doug Collins, the Judiciary Committee’s ranking member, then loudly criticized everything that Nadler said, calling him out as being politically motivated, one of those criticisms that Republicans who held countless Benghazi hearings and are still calling for the locking up of Hillary Clinton have no problem throwing around despite the extreme irony of doing so.  After the meeting ended, the Judiciary Committee issued a few more subpoenas, these went to one time Trump Gal Friday/Communications Director Hope Hicks and to Annie Donaldson, who served as McGahn’s deputy in the White House counsel’s office.  Donaldson “figures prominently in the Mueller report,” she was responsible for taking the notes at McGahn’s meetings many of which were cited throughout the report.  Another fight with the White House about their appearances is now imminent.  McGahn’s failure to show up for his testimony may well have been the final straw for many of the Democrats who were on the fence about initiating impeachment proceedings.  More and more of them, including even a few of the more vulnerable purple district newbies are now leaning in that direction.   Texas Democratic Representative Sheila Jackson Lee said she will introduce a "Resolution of Investigation" this week, asking the full House to authorize an investigation intended to determine whether impeachment powers should be exercised, the thought being that opening the inquiry would help streamline investigations and strengthen their hand in the courts as they battle with Trump over information and testimony without necessarily leading to a full House vote to refer the matter to the Senate for a trial.  Speaker Pelosi who still isn’t ready to do talk impeachment is expected to hold a closed door session with Democrats this morning, an attempt to put the brakes on the most agitated among them, to get them all on one page, hers.  As to that one page thing, apparently the staff at the IRS and Secretary of the Treasury Steve Mnuchin need to spend a little more time coordinating their thoughts.  Someone at the IRS leaked a copy of a confidential internal legal memo to the Washington Post.  The memo which was written last fall says that the disclosure of presidential tax returns upon request of the House Ways and Means committee “is mandatory, requiring the Secretary to disclose returns, and return information, requested by the tax-writing Chairs.”   The memo contradicts the Trump administration’s justification for denying the Ways and Means Committee request for Trump’s tax returns.  Trump has refused to turn over his tax returns but has not invoked executive privilege and though the IRS draft says that invoking executive privilege would be an option for a president (the memo doesn’t explicitly name Trump), other experts say that the whole executive privilege thing wouldn’t apply to tax returns as it is only supposed to protect discussions related to policy and personal returns have nothing to do with policy.  Anyway, Mnuchin denied turning over the returns by arguing there is no legislative purpose for demanding them, a rationale that never made much sense and now appears even more questionable.  For their part, IRS officials now want us to believe that the memo which was labeled “Congressional Access to Returns and Return Information,” was just one of those draft documents written by a lawyer in the Office of Chief Counsel for his or her own amusement and that contrary to appearances it does not represent the agency’s “official position,” or at the very least wasn’t meant to be shared.  It’s fair to assume that a few of those IRS “jokesters” heads are now being used as bowling balls at the White House bowling alley that Melania recently had refurbished.   

Personnel:  Yesterday, Ben Carson the one time pediatric neurosurgeon who is still the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development proved again how ill suited he is for that position.  During a Congressional hearing Katie Porter, a freshman Congresswoman from California, asked him a question about disparity in REO rates.  Instead of replying he glared back at her with one of his “I have no idea what you are talking about” blank stares; she then asked him if he knew what REO stood for.  The hapless Carson responded by asking her if she was questioning him about Oreos.  His next attempts to explain the acronym were less amusing but equally pathetic.  For the record REO stands for “real estate owned,” a term used to refer to foreclosed properties owned by lending institutions such as banks and while that term might not make it into most people’s conversations it is a commonly used term in the housing finance arena and most certainly something that the Secretary of HUD should be familiar with, but apparently Carson has been too busy purchasing $31,000 office tables and $7000 dishwashers to get up to speed on housing finance terminology.  He does however have a sense of humor so later in the day he sent Congresswoman Porter some Oreo cookies.  Not to be outdone the company that makes Oreos tweeted that “REO stands for ‘Really Excellent OREO (cookie).’ Everyone knows that.”   In other personnel news, two members of the Trump staff announced their exits yesterday.  Legislative Affairs Director Shahira Knight who previously worked on the Trump tax plan is returning to an as yet undisclosed job in the private sector and Johnny DeStefano, a Trump fave who had run the White House personnel  office is leaving to advise Juul, the e-cigarette maker.  Though its looking like Trump’s whole Immigration Czar idea is up in the air, Kris Kobach, the former Kansas Secretary of State who hates immigrants as much as Trump does and who Trump had earlier tasked with finding all those non-existent fraudulent voters who voted for Hillary is in the running or at least was in the running.  Someone in the White House leaked the list of Kobach’s must haves, probably part of an effort to make sure that he isn’t offered the position.  The list includes things like access to an on call plane, weekly trips back to Kansas, walk in privileges to the Oval Office, being the face and only face of immigration policy and a guarantee that he will ultimately become the Secretary of Homeland Security.  Those last two are somewhat problematic.  Trump is his own face of immigration policy, a spot he shares sometimes with Stephen Miller, it’s not clear that either would relinquish that position, and Trump has already been advised that getting Kobach confirmed by the Senate into a cabinet position would be difficult if not impossible.  In any case it now looks like the czar position has been downsized and that Trump will instead fill it with Kenneth Cuccinelli, a former Virginia Attorney General who is also an immigration hard-liner but probably has fewer demands and anyway weekend trips back to Virginia are a whole lot easier than those trips back to Kansas.  Even Toto knows that.  One other thing, New York State just made it a little harder for Trump to pardon any of his compatriots who commit any New York laws by passing legislation closing what had been a loophole in state regulations.