Rosemary Woods Redux 🌻 🌻 🌻

🤫 🤫 🤫:  Trump was indicted again yesterday as was another member of his Mar a Lago staff.  The newest indictments are not related to January 6 and Trump’s attempt to steal the 2020 election, those are still imminent, rather they are about the classified documents that Trump took with him to Mar a Lago when he departed the White House. The newly indicted fellow is Mar a Lago employee Carlos De Oliveira, a club property manager whose responsibilities include conveniently timed pool drainage, the moving of “beautiful” document boxes and forwarding orders to erase incriminating security camera footage. In other words, De Oliveira is the Rosemary Woods of this episode of “Trump and His Crimes.”  The newest indictments include attempting to alter, destroy, mutilate, or conceal evidence; inducing someone else to do so, and a new count under the Espionage Act related to a classified national security document, the Iran war plans that Trump showed to visitors at his Bedminster, NJ club. Those are the war plans that Trump earlier claimed he was only kidding about showing.  It turns out that they exist, and that Special Counsel Jack has them.   Naturally, there’s an emoji involved, this time it’s the shush emoji 🤫.  While trying to get a surveillance video of the purloined documents being moved around Mar a Lago erased De Oliveira sent a text message to Yuscil Taveras, another Mar a Lago employee who oversaw the surveillance camera footage at the club. The text said 🤫 don’t tell anyone but the “boss wants the server deleted.”  Taveras who is referred to in the indictment as Trump Employee Number 4,  objected saying that “he did not know how to delete the server and did not think he had the right to do so.”  Although his legal expenses like De Oliveira’s are being paid by one of those Trump legal slush funds filled with money from gullible Trumpsters who delusionally believe they are funding his campaign, Taveras appears to be engaging in truth telling and at least so far hasn’t been indicted. None of this is good for Trump but then again nothing seems to stick to Trump so maybe it doesn’t matter but De Oliveira, like Walt Nauta, should be concerned because Trump’s Teflon goes only so far and though he would clearly pardon them, hopefully he’ll never get the chance.  As to those still imminent January 6^th related indictments, Trump’s legal team met with Special Counsel Jack Smith and his team yesterday, to make the traditional ditch argument against those charges. Reports are that the meeting was civil, but that Jack wasn’t persuaded so those charges will come soon as will those much-expected Fulton County Georgia charges which likely explains why barricades were erected around Fulton County’s court facilities yesterday. One more thing on the Trump front, his lawyers have asked Judge Aileen “Loose” Cannon to allow him to review classified documents related to his purloined documents case at one or more of his homes instead of in a secure facility. Not the best timing for that request.

Brain Freeze:  Count Mitch McConnell and Hunter Biden as two who had to be happy about the diversion provided by the newest Trump indictments. McConnell because though he insists that he’s fine, just suffering from a bout of dehydration, he froze while speaking in front of a group of reporters on Wednesday before being gently escorted away by Wyoming Senator John Barrasso, one of the Senators who is also a physician.  CNN’s resident neurosurgeon, Sanjay Gupta, said that it looked like McConnell may have had a TIA (transient ischemic attack).  Though we don’t know if McConnell followed up with a doctor whatever he experienced he snapped back to his usual cadaverous state, because reports are that he attended a reception later that night where he appeared to be okay although we have since learned that he’s been falling more than usual lately. Falling isn’t unusual for McConnell who has always been a faller, the result of the polio he suffered in his youth.  It’s the frequency of his falls, and his mind freeze that’s new.  Though he didn’t have a mini-stroke, Hunter Biden did hit a wall of his own on Wednesday.  His plea agreement was put on temporary hold after the Delaware Judge overseeing his case asked a few questions about what was included in the deal.  Unfortunately for Hunter, US Attorney David Weiss, the Trump appointee responsible for all things Hunter, disagreed with Hunter’s lawyers about whether Hunter’s plea agreement covered some possible FARA (Foreign Agent Registration Act) violations.  She sent the two teams back to clarify the terms of the deal. Most of cable TV’s legal pundits say that the plea agreement will survive with some minor drafting changes, adding that to the extent that Hunter engaged in any FARA violations his exposure has probably timed out but still the screw-up is optically awful.  Bad for Weiss, who has already been criticized by the right for not hanging Hunter out to dry and bad for Hunter’s doting father Joe because his Hunter problem just won’t and probably will never go away.

Soft Landing:  Some good news on the economic front, well maybe.  UPS has reached agreement with its workers, making it far more likely that our packages will reach their destinations and more importantly that the economy won’t suffer from a decline in commerce.  Also, recent economic reports indicate that the US economy is likely to experience a soft landing rather than that much-feared recession, particularly impressive given what’s going on in most of the rest of the world where high inflation and low economic growth continue to be problems.  However, everything isn’t rosy as Russia’s increasingly freaked out Putin announced last week that he won’t agree to rollover the deal that allows Ukraine’s grain to be shipped abroad.  That’s a problem on several fronts, for Ukraine but also for the rest of the world because Ukraine is, or was before the war, the world’s fourth largest exporter of corn and the fifth largest exporter of wheat.   Shutting down Ukraine’s agricultural exports effects everyone’s pocketbook but hits those developing countries that can least afford to have their food supplies cut or the cost of their food raised, the most.