Spa Plans

Never Ending Story:  Despite former CIA Director John Brennan’s prediction Friday came and went without the release of Special Counsel Mueller’s report and without any of the additional indictments that he predicted would be forthcoming.  However, over the weekend it did become increasingly clear that Erik Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, should expect to see one soon.  Prince, the former SEAL and founder of the military government “services and security firm” Blackwater whose employees/mercenaries committed a few crimes against humanity during their stint in Iraq, recently gave an interview to Al Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan during which he admitted participating in a 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Don Jr, George Nader, the former advisor to the United Arab Emirates who is also a known pedophile, Stephen Miller and Joel Zamel, a former Israeli intelligence operative whose company Psy-Group specialized in social media manipulation.  Prince told Hasan that the subject of the meeting was Iran policy.  The problem for Prince is that he did not disclose any of this during his November 2017 testimony to the House Intelligence Committee, in fact he told them that he was not really all that involved in anything related to the Trump campaign, an assertion that no one, at least none of the Democrats believed given that Prince was known to have participated in an odd Trump related meeting in the Seychelles.  When Hasan pointed out the inconsistency between what he told Congress and what he said during their interview, Prince responded with a very Trumpian excuse, claiming that the House Intelligence Committees’ transcript of his testimony was inaccurate. On Sunday, Adam Schiff, the current chairman of the House Intel Committee, said that he’s convinced that Prince committed perjury the only question is whether Mueller thinks it was indictment worthy perjury.  Prince isn’t the only one involved in sketchy activities with the Trumps.  It turns out that Cindy Yang, the one-time owner of the “spa” that New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft liked to patronize for some of those “extra” services, who continues to own a chain of spas that provide similar services also runs a consulting business that has offered to sell Chinese clients access to Trump and his family at Mar a Lago. Her website includes, or at least until this weekend included, pictures of her hobnobbing at Mar a Lago with virtually every significant member of the Trump orbit including Trump, Don Jr and Eric, Cabinet members Wilbur Ross and Elaine Chao, who is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Sebastian Gorka and even Kellyanne Conway.  Late Sunday, Mother Jones correspondent David Corn and his team reported that Yang is connected to Chinese intelligence.  It wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that the Chinese possess some interesting photos of Yang’s most notable and important clients.  Last year the Chinese government awarded daughter Ivanka a trademark for Ivanka brand spa services, in light of the recent disclosures about Ms Yang, those trademarks take on added meaning.   As to Trump, he’s up to his usual crowd pleasing antics.  Last week during a visit to tornado ravaged Alabama, he signed a few Bibles, while promising that he’ll make sure that FEMA provides Alabama with A plus assistance, not that D minus assistance that was provided to Puerto Rico.  He called Apple CEO Tim Cook “Tim Apple” to his face on camera but then denied that he had, insisting that it was just more of that fake news, a variation of his claim that it wasn’t really his voice heard by just about everyone on the infamous Access Hollywood tape, the tape that should have tanked his election but didn’t because of the virtually simultaneous release of the DNC emails.

Democrats' Meltdown:  The Democrats hoped to put the imbroglio related to Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s “unintentional” because she didn’t know any better anti-Semitic remarks behind them with their resolution that condemned everything hateful, however that strategy doesn’t appear to be working all that well.  While, Omar moved on to a new target, slamming former president Obama as a “pretty face” who “got away with murder,” her good buddy left wing darling Representative Alexandria Cortez-Ocasio (AOC) spent part of her weekend tweeting out support for her “misunderstood” freshman colleague, going so far as to say that the two of them together with Michigan’s Rashida Tlaib and Massachusetts’s Ayanna Pressley are the left wings version of the Tea Party.  She then went on to call capitalism irredeemable and moderates “meh.”  One of those “meh” moderates Colorado Governor Hickenlooper may have shot himself in the foot when he refused to admit that he was a capitalist, instead saying that it is silly to define candidates as either socialist or capitalist, a surprisingly unprepared answer from someone who aspires to be president.  If he doesn’t up his game soon, he’ll be one of the early race dropouts.  For her part, Senator Elizabeth Warren, who is one of the more left wing presidential aspirants had a far more nuanced answer.  She refused to be labeled a socialist, saying instead that she believes in markets, “markets that work.”  Warren, who earlier proposed a wealth tax on super wealthy people went on to say that she thinks that the social media companies have gotten too big, and that she thinks that they should be broken up in a way that doesn’t disrupt service to consumers but does promote more competition.  Agree with her or not, her answers do appear to be thoughtful, nevertheless current polls put her in third place well behind Bernie Sanders, who doesn’t mind being called a socialist and who rarely adds any nuance to his positions, something that hasn’t hurt him to date, and Joe Biden, the moderate who hasn’t yet announced that he’s running even though everyone assumes that he is.  As to all that talk about anti-Semitism and socialism, Trump, another guy short of any nuance is now telling his supporters that Democrats hate Jews and Israel, and that despite his Charlottesville comment that there are “good people on both sides” that his party is the party of racial and religious tolerance.  He’s also latched on to the anti-socialist mantra, warning his supporters and those all important independents that a vote for Democrats is a vote for a Venezuela type disaster.  Suffice it to say, Nancy Pelosi has her hands full, herding her unruly, outspoken members continues to be akin to herding cats.  Last week, in addition to condemning all that hateful stuff, the Democratically controlled House passed HR 1, a wide ranging elections reform measure that would reshape campaign finance rules, impose new voter registration requirements that expand voter access and compel presidential candidates to release their personal tax returns.  The bill will be dead on arrival in the Senate where Senate Majority Leader McConnell is on record saying that he won’t take it up because, among other things he doesn’t want to see expanded voter access, in fact he’d rather more people stay home on election day because that rather than increased participation would benefit Republican candidates.  That should be a big story but instead we are mired in a battle over socialism, anti-Semitism and focusing on the handful of left wing Congressional newbies instead of important legislation and the interests of the much larger contingent of purple and in some cases red district new congresspeople who were far more responsible for tipping control of the House back to the Democrats.   

Other Items:   Former Fox official Bill Shine resigned his Communications Director spot on Friday.  The White House released a statement saying that he was moving over to work on the 2020 campaign but the truth is he was forced out because Trump didn’t think he was doing a good job.  He wasn’t but that’s largely because Trump acts as his own communication director and then blames others for his own missteps. New Yorker Magazine’s recent article on the too close ties between the White House and Fox and the fact that Shine, who was booted out of Fox due to his failure to do anything about the company’s sexual harassment issues and was still receiving very large payments from the network didn’t help.  As to Fox, the Democratic National Committee announced that they will not invite the network to host any of their debates because of the too close ties between Fox and the Trump White House.  Lastly, the White House provided a preview of the 2020 budget outline that Trump plans to present to Congress.  He wants $8.6 billion in wall funding, billions more for military spending, and major cuts in domestic spending to offset the ballooning federal deficit, a result of the tax cuts.  That proposal will be dead on arrival.             

Culture of Integrity?

An Otherwise Blameless Life:  TS Ellis III, the District Court judge who presided over former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s Virginia case has never been all that sympathetic to Special Counsel Mueller’s case or his prosecutors.  Despite the overwhelming evidence that Manafort was a career fraudster Ellis weighed in several times during Manafort’s trial, suggesting that he had been targeted by prosecutors solely to get him to roll on Trump and his alleged Russia connections and even called out one of the prosecutors who dared to show some tears during an especially frustrating moment.  That said, all but one member of the jury had no problem understanding that Manafort was a career criminal and even that one holdout found him guilty of eight counts of tax and bank fraud.  Under federal sentencing guidelines Judge Ellis could have sent Manafort to jail for up to twenty-five years, however citing Manafort’s “otherwise blameless life,”  Ellis decided that forty-seven months, less the time that he has already spent in jail and any “good behavior” time he earns while incarcerated would be sufficient. To put that into perspective last July a Texas judge sentenced a woman to serve five years in jail for voting illegally. In the Texas Judge’s “defense” that woman was Black rather than privileged and white.  As to the blameless life part, apparently a career spent committing fraud, failing to pay millions in taxes and doing dirty work for odious dictators isn’t all that tarnishing especially if you are a Washington insider.  Oddly enough, though he gifted Manafort a rather short sentence, even Judge Ellis was surprised that Manafort showed so little remorse.  Anyway, four years in jail isn’t much of a prize for anyone, especially for a 69 year old guy with gout and high blood pressure who had to be wheeled into court. Manafort’s sentencing woes aren’t over yet, next week he is due in front of Amy Berman Jackson, his Washington DC judge, the judge who is also overseeing the Roger Stone case and who has already slammed him for reneging on his plea deal with Mueller’s team.  Additionally, he could still face additional charges in New York.  Taking a page from the Trump book, upon exiting the court one of Manafort’s lawyers reminded the waiting press that Manafort had not been found guilty of Russian collusion, true, but then again the Virginia case was about bank fraud, and Judge Ellis had expressly forbidden any references to that Russian stuff during the trial.  Yesterday during what he said might well be his last speech on the job, an indication that Mueller could drop his report soon, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein ended his remarks by saying “in the spirit of promoting a culture of integrity, I want to leave you with the wisdom of this ancient proverb: if you desire to know a person’s character, consider his friends." Interesting words from the man who served as Mueller’s boss for most of the investigation and who presumably knows more than we’ll ever know about the Trump crime family. Michael Cohen, another one of Trump’s one time friends with a somewhat tarnished reputation, is now suing the Trump Organization saying that it owes him $1.9 million in reimbursement for the costs that he’s incurred defending himself for the crimes that he committed while serving as Trump’s lawyer/fixer.  He is accusing the company of breaking a contract to cover his legal defense fees, fees they stopped paying once he began cooperating with federal prosecutors.

Anti-Everything:  The House finally voted on its much disputed anti-Semitism resolution but not before turning it into an anti-everything plus the kitchen sink resolution.  Ultimately the resolution passed easily by a final vote of  407 to 23, with 23 Republicans voting no, and all Democrats, including Ilhan Omar whose remarks led to the resolution in the first place, voting yes.  Steve King, the Iowa Republican who has been called out for his history of hate and his recent comments defending white nationalists, voted present because though he would have preferred to vote against the resolution even he knew that wouldn’t be a good idea.  House Republican Chair Liz Cheney, the frighteningly ambitious daughter of former VP Cheney, voted against the resolution calling it a “sham put forward by Democrats to avoid condemning one of their own and denouncing vile anti-Semitism,” going on to say that “while I stand whole heartedly against discrimination outlined in this resolution, the language before the House today did not address the issue that is front and center."  Nice words, but what she really meant to say was that she didn’t want to vote for a resolution that also condemns white supremacists and anti-Muslim acts because that might not go over well with her current and future constituents but does appreciate the opportunity to slam Democrats and Omar.  As to the resolution, it’s good that it finally passed even though it’s depressing that it became so controversial.  Resolution or not, I am guessing that we’ll be hearing more from Omar, she still hasn’t apologized for her remarks and it’s not clear that she has any regrets, in fact she may view all the added attention as a plus. 

Other News:  Ohio Senator Sherrod Brown, the one Democrat who consistently wins in what is increasingly viewed as Trump country and who had hinted that he was going to run for president announced that he won’t be running.  Expectations are that he pulled himself out of contention because he expects that former VP Joe Biden is about to announce his run in the “moderate” lane.  Similar comments were made earlier in the week when that other moderate potential candidate, former NY Mayor and real billionaire Mike Bloomberg, announced that he wasn’t running.  It’s quite possible that they know something that we are only guessing at.  In a move reminiscent of Nixon, possibly because everything these days in reminiscent of Nixon,  Customs and Border Protection has compiled a list of the 59 mostly American reporters, attorneys and activists who annoy them the most, and by annoy, think provide really good coverage of what’s been happening on the Mexican border.  They have been subjecting those individuals to extra, time consuming scrutiny and have even arrested around 21 of them when they try to cross the border at San Diego checkpoints.  Retaliation?  Separately, though Republican leaders have told Trump that he should pull his emergency declaration, he is instead doubling down, threatening Republican Senators who plan to vote for the resolution condemning the faux emergency with punishment and where relevant, primary challenges.     

Reverse Agnew

Bagman:  Spiro Agnew got into bigly trouble and was ultimately forced out of office for accepting payoffs from favor seekers while serving as Richard Nixon’s Vice President, a practice he brought with him from his days as the Governor of Maryland.  (If you haven’t already, check out Rachel Maddow’s brilliant, funny and very topical pod cast series on his downfall.)  Agnew actually received bags of cash while he was physically in the White House.  As far as we know no one has delivered any bags of cash to Trump’s Oval Office, however we now know for certain that he’s been pulling a reverse Agnew.  While conducting his daily duties, the things he does when he isn’t busy watching Fox News and tweeting, he also wrote numerous checks to lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen, reimbursing him for the hush payment that he made to adult film star Stormy Daniels. During last week’s testimony to the Oversight Committee Cohen stated that Trump promised at least one of those checks would be forthcoming when the two met in the Oval Office shortly after the inauguration. Last week  Cohen brought one of the checks with him to corroborate his testimony. Although he’s still missing a few hard copies, he’s now dug up seven more of them.  All together seven of the checks were for $35,000, one was for $70,000.  Six were signed by Trump after he took office, the other two were signed by son Don Jr and Trump organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. Yesterday during his return trip to the House Intelligence Committee Cohen brought evidence corroborating another one of his claims.  That evidence came in the form of marked-up drafts of the testimony that he delivered last year when he claimed that the negotiations for Trump Tower Moscow had ended well before they really ended, the statement that resulted in his perjury conviction.  Those drafts appear to substantiate Cohen’s claims that the Trump legal team was aware of what he planned to say and in fact had edited his statement. Notably at least one of those changes benefited Trump’s “honey” Ivanka, making it appear that she was less involved in the Moscow project than she really was, an indication that her lawyer Abbe Lowell saw and commented on the testimony.  Trump attorney Jay Sekulow’s previous statement that Cohen was lying when he testified that “attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false" doesn’t hold up well. He may have been technically right in that the Trump lawyers left the glaringly false Moscow negotiations part intact, but the drafts show that they clearly were involved in the drafting process and signed off on the final text. The party line now is that they were relying on information provided by their clients, more or less an admission that they were lied to. Cohen may have made at least one misleading comment during last week’s testimony when he said that he had no interest in getting a Trump pardon.  Apparently early on, when his joint defense agreement with Trump was still in place, he did direct his then lawyer to let the Trump team know that he was interested in talking about a pardon but those days are long behind him, once he “turned” and started cooperating with federal prosecutors he says he “changed his mind,” his current representative/lawyer Lanny Davis’ explanation for last week’s statement.  As to that whole pardon thing, all the facts behind it are still somewhat murky.  Yesterday ABC News reported that two lawyers who represented themselves as having ties to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s current lawyer/fixer, approached Cohen after his office was raided but before he decided to plead guilty, it appears that they were dangling a delayed pardon, one that they said they could help him with through their relationship with Giuliani. That appears to be one of the things that is still being investigated by the Southern District of New York prosecutors.  Giuliani’s comments on the subject are, as expected, somewhat vague to say the least. With regard to liars and lying, when asked by Quinnipiac University pollsters whom they believe more, 50 percent of the voters surveyed picked Cohen while 35 percent chose Trump.  As to Trump, Bloomberg News has caught him, or at least Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders in another bigly lie. Despite her assertion that he wasn’t involved in the planning of the inauguration, Bloomberg reports that Trump micromanaged the process, focusing on things like whether or not the Rockettes would show up as planned (they did), the selection of table cloths to cover what he viewed as tacky leather table tops and the costs of all inaugural services.  In an effort to extricate himself from any of the controversies and possible illegalities surounding the inauguration, Tom Barrack, the billionaire Trump supporter who served as Chair of the Inauguration festivities and financing, is now being very forthcoming with investigators.

Dog Cages:  Yesterday Homeland Security Secretary Nielsen testified before the House Committee on Homeland Security.  Suffice it to say, it wasn’t one of her better moments.  Among other things she insisted that the cages used to house migrant and asylum seeking children weren’t cages, instead she engaged in doublespeak calling them areas “carved out for the safety and protection of those who remain there while they’re being processed.” When asked how the cages differ from the cages you put your dogs in, Nielsen responded that they were “larger, it has facilities, it provides room to sit, to stand, to lay down.”  The querying Congresswoman glared back, responding that her dog’s crate did too.  Nielsen who repeatedly refused to answer any yes or no question with a simple yes or no, also claimed that “there was no parent who has been deported to my knowledge without multiple opportunities to take their children with them.” Following the hearing, the administration admitted to the ACLU that it had identified 471 parents who were removed from the US without their children and “without being given the opportunity to elect or waive reunification.” It’s fair to say that Nielsen is either a liar, woefully incompetent or both.

Other News:  Yesterday the Senate confirmed Chad Readler to serve on the US Court of Appeals for the 6^th District by a vote of 52 to 47, Arizona’s Democratic Senator Sinema did not vote since she’s currently on her New Zealand Triathlon vacation.  While serving in the Justice Department’s Civil Division,  instead of defending the Affordable Care Act, Readler filed a brief in support of a lawsuit filed by several  Republican Attorneys General aimed at gutting it and the pre-existing coverage requirement.  Only Senator Susan Collins crossed the aisle to join all the Democratic Senators in voting against Readler’s nomination; so much for consistency from Senator Lisa Murkowski.  The Democrats are still tied up in knots over Congresswoman Ilhan and her anti-Semitic comments.   Apparently we’ve gotten to a place where hate speech is tolerable as long as it hides behind disapproval of Israeli politics and targets Jews.

 

Before the Ides of March

Hamburgers Anyone? On Monday while serving another college football team, this time the division championship winning North Dakota State Bison, some of those fast food “hamberders” that he loves so much, Trump mocked the Green New Deal, saying that if it was ever implemented hamburgers would be permanently banned from the US diet.  He also told the players and the assembled press that he would cooperate with House investigators because he always does.  Of course he also called the investigation out as the biggest witch hunt ever, reminding everyone present that there was NO COLLUSION.  That period of cooperation lasted about as long as a fast food burger stays warm.  Yesterday, White House counsel Pat Cipollone said that though he’d be happy to have the White House Chief Security Officer brief Oversight Committee members on the processes for security clearance reviews as soon as the two of them return from their latest hamburger run, he would not authorize the release of the information that the House Oversight Committee had requested calling those requests “unprecedented and extraordinarily intrusive.”  By that Cipollone probably means that their release, particularly the release of the letters to the files written by former Chief of Staff Kelly and former White House Counsel McGahn, would reveal that the “processes” don’t apply to family.  It turns out that it wasn’t just Jared who got special treatment, Ivanka did too, based on three sources CNN reports that she got her top security clearance over the objections of the FBI and White House advisors because her daddy wanted her to have it.   The White House’s refusal to provide the security clearance information increases the chance that Committee Chair Elijah Cummings will subpoena the documents, setting up what will likely be a protracted battle for the information. As to that report about Ivanka, Press Secretary Sarah Sanders refused to comment because the White House doesn’t comment on anything related to security clearances, especially information provided by anonymous sources, even when those sources are people that she knows (Kellyanne?). Relying on a 1924 law that gives chairmen of House and Senate tax-writing committees broad powers to demand the tax returns of White House officials Congressional Democrats are carefully laying the groundwork to go after ten years of Trump’s tax returns, something that will likely provoke a fight, this time with Treasury Secretary Mnuchin who knows that his days will be numbered if he doesn’t fight back hard. It’s not just Congressional Democratic causing Trump agita right now, New York State regulators are looking into the possibility that the Trump organization marked up the value of its properties in order to obtain favorable terms on insurance policies, a subject broached by Congresswoman Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) during last week’s Michael Cohen testimony and then followed up on by Rachel Maddow on one of her nightly segments.  They have subpoenaed Aon, the London based financial services company, an insurance provider for the Trump organization.  Aon’s officials say that they will cooperate with the New York regulators. AOC’s Green New Deal may have flaws, but whether she wrote them or not, her questions were spot on.  

People:  Michael Bloomberg formally announced that he will not be running for president, instead he plans to spend a couple of $100 million helping Democrats win the presidency and take back the Senate. His efforts and financial largesse will be directed towards candidates who share his views on gun control and protecting the environment.  As to the environment he threw a little shade at the Green New Deal particularly the social policy components of the plan, saying that since there is no chance that the plan would ever pass the Senate in its current form he’ll instead be redoubling his efforts on phasing out coal power plants and mitigating the impacts of climate change because  “Mother Nature does not wait on our political calendar, and neither can we." Oregon Senator Jeff Merkley, who helped bring the plight of the undocumented immigrant children held at detention centers and separated from their parents to the forefront last year also announced that he won’t be running in 2020, instead he plans to focus on getting reelected to the Senate, the threats to economic equality, the climate and the democratic system and fixing the “broken and dysfunctional Senate so it isn’t just a graveyard for good ideas.”  FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb, one of the few Trump appointees who seemed to take a regulatory job seriously, announced that that he’ll be leaving within the month because he hates the commute back to his family in Connecticut or for some other reason that he’d rather not share.  His resignation was a surprise to all but probably pleases purveyors of electric cigarettes as he was an outspoken opponent of teen vaping.  Senator Bernie Sanders, who is not a Democrat but does look a lot older than he did in 2016, signed a statement affirming that "I am a member of the Democratic Party. I will run a Democrat, accept the nomination of my party, and I will serve as a Democrat if elected" because if that’s what it takes to get elected, he’s all in. Michael Cohen will be back in front of the House Intelligence Committee today in another one of those closed door sessions and Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen will be on the hot seat in front of the House Homeland Security Committee where she is expected to be grilled about the child separation policy, the policy that she earlier testified didn’t exist. Don’t be surprised if Trump digs up his old Schitt nickname for House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff again soon.  Yesterday it was reported that Schiff’s committee has hired Daniel Goldman, a former US Attorney from the Southern District of New York who most recently worked as an NBC legal analyst. While at the SDNY, Goldman specialized in the prosecution of mob families, could a RICO case be in the offing?  As to criminal types, Roger Stone probably had a few sleepless moments last night.  Judge Amy Berman Jackson told him that the recent re-release of his book that calls special counsel Robert Mueller "crooked" isn't in line with her strict gag order on his case, she also can’t be all that pleased with his most recent Instagram posting.  Depending on how upset she really is he could end up in jail before the week is out.  And though he says that he has no inside information, former CIA Director John Brennan says that he thinks that some serious indictments will be handed down on Friday, the usual day for Mueller indictments.  He says that this Friday makes sense because he believes that the final indictments have to come before Mueller releases his report, the report that is expected shortly, and that next Friday is the Ides of March, a date that Mueller would want to avoid.  Sounds silly, but then again he was the chief spy so who knows?

International Front:  After Trump’s first meeting with Kim Jong un the North Korean’s started dissembling portions of an inter-ballistic missile test site.  At the time a number of military analysts said that it would be naïve to believe that the North Koreans were doing anything to the site that couldn’t easily be reversed.  It looks like they were correct.   US Military experts and South Korean intelligence report that the North Koreans are now in the process of putting the test site back together. Apparently, Kim is really pissed that his pen pal Trump walked away from Hanoi without lifting any sanctions.  As to those sanctions, national security advisor John Bolton who never really believed that anything good would come from the Hanoi meeting is now threatening that additional ones will be imposed.    

Boxers or Briefs

And So It Begins: The Jerry Nadler Chaired House Judiciary Committee launched its investigation into Trump’s abuses of power yesterday, sending requests for documents to eighty-one individuals and entities, twenty more than the sixty that Nadler had mentioned on Sunday.  The list of recipients includes such notables as one time Communications Director Hope Hicks, Trump Finance guy Alan Weisselberg, Michael Flynn Jr, one time assistant security advisor KT McFarland, Trump Organization personal assistant Rhona Graff and the cast of characters associated with the Trump Tower meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya (although she is not on the list possibly because she’s been separately indicted).  Jared Kushner,  Don Jr and Eric are on the list too but, so far, Ivanka is not, however her time may still come, more requests are expected.  The Committee is focusing on three main topics: obstruction of justice and cover-ups;  corruption in areas including violations of the Constitution's emoluments clause and other criminal misuses of official positions for personal gain; and abuses of power, such as attacking the press and misusing the presidential pardon power.  As to pardons, yesterday the Wall Street Journal reported that a lawyer for Trump’s one time fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen initiated a conversation with Trump’s lawyers about getting one right after his offices were raided by the FBI.  Cohen’s lawyer was told that the timing wasn’t right for a pardon but Rudy Giuliani left things open, dangling the possibility that one could be granted at a future date.  With his problems mounting, Cohen switched to new lawyers and turned on Trump, ruling out the possibility that he would ever be the beneficiary of one of those Trump “get out of jail free” cards but the mere dangling of a future pardon could become a problem for Rudy and Trump. Back to Nadler and the Judiciary Committee’s rocket launch, Trump said that he plans to cooperate with all the “requests” because he is “always cooperative”  but later in the day Press Secretary Sanders issued a statement reflective of Trump’s real views, she called Nadler’s investigation “disgraceful and abusive” adding that the Democrats have “embarked on this fishing expedition because they are terrified that their two-year false narrative of ‘Russia collusion’ is crumbling. Their intimidation and abuse of American citizens is shameful. Democrats are harassing the President to distract from their radical agenda of making American a socialist country, killing babies after they’re born, and pushing a ‘green new deal’ that would destroy jobs and bankrupt America. The American people deserve a Congress that works with the President to address serious issues like immigration, healthcare and infrastructure. The Democrats are more interested in pathetic political games and catering a radical, leftist base than on producing results for citizens. The Democrats are not after the truth, they are after the President.”  So much for cooperation. 

Unholy Alliance:  Around the same time that Nadler launched his ballistic missile,  The New Yorker launched a Molotov cocktail of its own, publishing an article by investigative reporter Jane Mayer entitled “The Making of the Fox News White House.”  That Fox and Trump have an unhealthy and unprecedented relationship is sadly not new news, after all these days many refer to Fox as the official Trump News station, the administration is littered with former Fox  people including one time Fox president Bill Shine who currently serves as Communication Director and not only is Sean Hannity one of Trump’s closest advisors, he’s crossed the line and now appears at Trump rallies as a special invited guest.  That said some of the details included in the article are still surprising.  Among other things Mayer reveals that Fox News reporter Diana Falzone uncovered the Stormy Daniels story before the 2016 election at a time that it could have influenced the election outcome but that her story was squashed at the direction of Fox owner Rupert Murdoch after she was specifically told that her reporting was good “But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.” The article also alleges that Trump ordered then Economic Advisor Gary Cohn and Chief of Staff Kelly to pressure the Justice Department into blocking AT&T’s purchase of Time Warner as retribution for the unfavorable news coverage that he gets from the Time Warner owned CNN.  Recognizing the impropriety of Trump’s demand, Cohn told Kelly not to call Justice, in fact he said “Don’t you f-cking dare call the Justice Department. We are not going to do business that way.” Ultimately Justice did try to interfere with the merger, at one point pressuring AT&T to agree to sell off CNN as a condition of approval and then going to court to prevent the merger all together.  Despite Trump and the Justice Department’s efforts, AT&T continues to prevail in the courts.   My favorite “reveal” concerns Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former Fox “The Five” pundit who is  Donald Jr’s current girlfriend.  Apparently to prepare for her show she frequently called David Townsend, a Fox viewer in Georgia who was active on the far right social media site Gab, for tips that she then passed off as real news.  Mayer reported that while some national security analysts have worried about foreign influences infiltrating Fox, “the reality is actually much dumber”…. “it was just a guy in his underwear in Georgia who had influence over Fox News! And Fox News influences” Trump!    

Odds and Ends:  Last week we learned that Trump granted top secret security clearance to Jared Kushner despite FBI concerns and over the objections of then Chief of Staff Kelly and White House Counsel McGahn. Because Trump hasn’t overridden the CIA, yet,  Kushner still doesn’t have the even higher “code word” (sensitive compartmented information) clearance that someone in charge of Middle East peace negotiations would ordinarily need.  Though Trump’s action goes against norms, there’s nothing illegal about him opting to ignore the FBI’s recommendation. What makes this story odd is that both Trump and Ivanka lied about it, Trump to the NY Times and Ivanka to ABC’s Abby Huntsman. Late Friday, we learned that the Kushner’s even lied to their lawyer, Abbe Lowell, after his office released three separate statements walking back his earlier assertions that his clients hadn’t received any special treatment. So far we don’t know who turned the NY Times onto this story in the first place. Maybe the anonymous Op-Ed writer who still hasn’t been outed is still active? Maybe it was someone at the CIA, who concluded that a good leak was the best way to make sure that Trump doesn’t grant “code word” clearance to Jared?  In any case, Kushner who visited his good friend Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman last weekend for a chat and maybe some secret swapping is still in charge of Middle East peace, a job further complicated by the upcoming Israeli elections and Prime Minister Netanyahu’s own impending indictment part of what he, taking a page from the Trump script, calls a witch hunt.

People Moves: One time Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, who is still due back in front of Congress to explain the misleading statements he made during his earlier testimony, resigned over the weekend.  He plans to stay in Washington because “that’s where the jobs are” which could mean that he’s about to end up at one of the Trump related campaign committees.  To no one’s surprise his replacement Attorney General Bill Barr has decided not to recuse himself from overseeing the Mueller investigation.  Neither Hillary Clinton nor former Obama Attorney General Eric Holder are running for president, or so they both said yesterday.  And, to the extent that anyone cares, HUD Secretary Ben Carson announced that he plans to leave at the end of Trump’s first, and let’s hope only, term.  Lastly, in response to a series of anti-Semitic statements made by newbie Congresswoman Ilhan Omar, who has herself been subject to some nasty anti-Muslim treatment in a poster hung in the West Virginia statehouse, Democratic leadership plans to introduce a resolution condemning anti-Semitism this week, an effort to counter Republican assertions that the Democratic party is turning into the anti-Israel party, a particularly ironic argument from the party of white Supremacist Steve King.

HickenWho?

Fallout:  During last week’s Michael Cohen hearing and again during the weekend news shows, instead of denying that Trump had committed bad acts, Republicans spent most of their time attacking lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen for being a liar, a not totally illogical strategy given that Cohen is an admitted liar and because even they know that Trump has committed most if not all of the bad acts that were discussed during the hearing.  They also repeatedly brought up the subject of impeachment, asserting that the whole purpose of the hearing was to lay the groundwork to move forward on that front, to upend the “will of the people” through a devious attack on all things Trump.  Notably, Democrats didn’t broach the impeachment subject during the hearing, at least for now their strategy is to bombard the public with details of Trump’s fraudulent business practices, ethical failings, and propensity to lie in an effort to further damage his “brand” and to persuade some wavering Trump supporters that it’s time to hold him accountable for his misdeeds, a strategy that faces an uphill battle if polls are to be believed.   It’s not that Democrats aren’t also pursuing the election interference and Russian collusion issues, it’s just that with most of that investigation still behind closed doors, it’s a harder case to make right now.  Additionally to successfully impeach Trump, Democrats would have to convince a significant number of Republican legislators to move off of their “Trump as King” position  and right now that doesn’t seem all that possible.  That said, one Republican does appear to be concerned that the Democratic onslaught is denting the Trump armor, that Republican is none other than Donald J Trump himself.  Over the weekend he gave a two hour plus largely unscripted and wildly unhinged speech at the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) conference.  Sweating bullets, he hugged an American flag,  attacked Cohen, called Mueller’s team out for being devious Democrats, called again for Hillary to be locked up, mocked former Attorney General Sessions’ southern drawl while slamming him once again for recusing himself from the Russian investigation, among other insane things.  Ironically, though he trashed Cohen, Trump applauded the parts of his testimony that “proved” that there was no collusion.  Then before winding down, while again bragging about the “record” size of his inaugural crowd, he thanked the CPAC audience for staying put in their seats for his entire rant even though many had departed somewhere around the end of the first hour.  As to that Democratic onslaught, Jerry Nadler the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee announced over the weekend that his committee will be “issuing document requests to over 60 different people and individuals from the White House to the Department of Justice, Donald Trump Jr, Allen Weisselberg, to begin the investigations to present the case to the American people about obstruction of justice, corruption and abuse of power” and his House Intelligence Committee counterpart Adam Schiff minced no words telling CBS’s Face the Nation that he thinks “there is direct evidence” of Russian collusion.  Only time will tell if Schiff is right, but at least one pundit believes that his assertion cannot be ignored, after hearing Schiff’s assertion Harvard Law School’s Laurence Tribe tweeted  “If @RepAdamSchiff says there is direct evidence of Trump/Russia collusion, you can take that to the bank. Rep. Schiff NEVER overstates. He is the epitome of caution and precision. This is big.” Then again Tribe is no fan of Trump’s and also believes that a sitting president can be indicted. It’s not just Cohen and the various Congressional investigations that have Trump tied in knots right now, his failure to get any concessions from his North Korean buddy Kim Jong un has left him bereft and in search of someone to blame for his failure so late yesterday he tweeted “For the Democrats to interview in open hearings a convicted liar & fraudster, at the same time as the very important Nuclear Summit with North Korea, is perhaps a new low in American politics and may have contributed to the ‘walk,’ Never done when a president is overseas. Shame!”  To combat criticism of the Hanoi summit, Trump sent national security advisor John Bolton out on the talk show circuit, a curious choice given that it’s well known that Bolton has long questioned the value in trying to negotiate with the North Koreans. Unwilling to really defend Trump’s assertion that Kim Jong un wasn’t responsible for the death of US student Otto Warmbier, Bolton instead resorted to some double speak saying that even though Trump said he takes the North Korean leader at his word that doesn't mean he accepted Kim's word "as reality," it merely means that he “accepts that's what Kim Jong Un said.”  What?

2020:  Bernie Sanders was out on the campaign trail over the weekend, delivering a well-attended speech in his Brooklyn childhood home before moving on to Selma, Alabama for the commemoration of the Bloody Sunday marches where 600 civil rights workers led by current Congressman and Civil rights hero John Lewis were attacked by state and local lawman on the Edmund Pettus Bridge.  Sanders who did poorly with Black voters in 2016 is pulling out stories about the time he marched for civil rights in an effort to prove that he really is an advocate for racial equality, a task complicated by the fact that given that only 1.6% of his Vermont constituency is Black he hasn’t shown much interest since then. He was a bit upstaged in Selma, where competing candidate Senator Cory Booker appeared far more at ease and his one time and apparently forever nemesis Hilary Clinton was being honored.  Booker greeted Clinton with a warm bear hug, Sanders barely shook her hand.  This morning another Democratic candidate, former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper joined the fray, announcing that he too is running for president. Though Hickenlooper doesn’t yet have the name recognition of some of the other Democratic candidates, he should be taken seriously.  He’s got a good government and business track record, who doesn’t love a guy who established his business credentials by opening a successful beer brewery and who leads one of the first two states to legalize marijuana? Besides, once you hear his name, it’s kind of hard to forget it.  Hickenlooper joins Washington Governor Jay Inslee who formally announced his anticipated run last week.  Inslee is running as the environment candidate. Not sure if it’s a coincidence or not, but Washington was the other state that legalized recreational marijuana around the same time that Colorado did.   

Other News:  Senator Rand Paul announced over the weekend that he plans to vote against Trump’s emergency declaration because he “can’t vote to give extraconstitutional powers to the president.”  Though Paul has a reputation for going back and forth on issues, this is one he will probably stick with, he has consistently opposed executive overreach.  He joins Republican Senators Collins, Tillis, and Murkowski so unless one of them changes their mind or a Democrat crosses the aisle, the resolution opposing Trump’s emergency declaration will pass once its brought up for a vote in the Senate.  Unless he changes his mind, Trump will follow with a veto, one that neither chamber is likely to be able to override.  On the investigatory front, Roger Stone has some more explaining to do.  Apparently he is on the verge of publishing a book that among other things criticizes the Mueller investigation and  yesterday he posted on Instagram that he is being framed by Mueller.  Neither he nor his lawyers ever told Judge Amy Berman Jackson about the book, moreover the Instagram posting appears to violate her expanded gag order.  Separately, Michael Cohen is still talking with the House Intelligence Committee, he’ll be back in with them midweek, it’s reported that one of the “new” things that has peaked their interest relates to his last conversation with the White House, a conversation that took place after his office was raided, a conversation where a pardon may have been dangled.  Obstruction?

Trump DNA

Security SNAFU: A few weeks ago Abby Huntsman, the former Fox and Friends panelist who is currently on ABC’s The View panel, interviewed Ivanka Trump. The first daughter granted the “exclusive” interview to brag about her newly announced international women’s initiative, selecting Huntsman with the expectation that she would conduct a “soft ball” interview, sticking to a script that would allow Ivanka to come off sounding like the wonderfully compassionate person that she pretends to be, a fair expectation given that Huntsman’s father is Trump’s Ambassador to Russia. For the most part, Huntsman played ball but she did stray off topic a few times asking questions about things that Ivanka didn’t really want to address like the separation of immigrant children at the border and the problems associated with her and her husband’s security clearances.  Ivanka did her best to remain vague about the child separation thing by sighing and saying some things are out of her control and then called the idea that her father had intervened to help with the Kushner family security clearances just more scurrilous rumor mongering.  She dismissed those stories as “anonymous leaks about there being issues but the president had no involvement pertaining to my clearance or my husband’s clearance  - zero.” Ivanka then went on to attribute the delays in the two getting their security clearances to a “back log.”  Like a good team player Huntsman didn’t press further, a failure that is now even more glaring because, if the NY Times is to be believed, and they probably should be, Ivanka was lying bigly, not all that surprising given that the propensity for deception resides deep within the Trump DNA.  Yesterday the Times reported that Trump directed then Chief of Staff Kelly to grant Jared a top secret security clearance over the objections of intelligence officials and White House Counsel Don McGahn, all of whom expressed concerns about his foreign contacts, complicated financials, and the possibility that he might be vulnerable to foreign influence.  It didn’t help Jared’s case that he had needed to update his security forms forty times or that he had failed to be all that forthcoming about how he had tried to establish a back channel to facilitate discussions with Russian officials.  Both McGahn and Kelly were so concerned about the Trump directive that they wrote contemporaneous memos to the files documenting Trump’s order. Ultimately Jared received the top security clearance because Trump gets what he wants  but the discovery of the Kelly and McGahn memos contradicts statements that Trump made to the Times during a January on the record, taped Oval Office interview during which Trump clearly lied when he said that he didn’t think he could override intelligence decisions on security clearance matters even if he wanted to and that he had “no role in his son-in-law receiving his clearance.”  When asked about this yesterday, Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders resorted to one of her standby excuses saying “We don’t comment on security clearances.” Isn’t nepotism grand?

Casting Call:  Trump’s one time fixer/lawyer Michael Cohen spent most of his day behind closed doors with Chairman Adam Schiff’s House Intelligence Committee.  They were so enthralled with what he had to say that they’ve invited to return next week.  Apparently, whatever he’s saying goes well beyond all of the things that he told the Oversight Committee during Tuesday’s marathon session.  Schiff also reported that he’s arranged for Felix Sater, the Russian-born one time business associate of Trump and Cohen’s who worked on the Moscow Trump Tower project to appear before a public hearing on March 14, promising that the Committee “is going to try to do as much as we can in the open” with Sater.   As to the Oversight Committee their work has only just begun, Chairman Elijah Cummings has directed his staff to invite almost all of the people that Cohen mentioned during his testimony for future appearances to discuss all things about Trump company financial finagling and adult film star payoffs before the committee.  That list includes such notables as Donald Trump Jr, Ivanka Trump and Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg, among others. To no one’s surprise the Republican members of the committee aren’t all that happy with any of this so two of them, Ranking Member Jim Jordan and Mark Meadows have sent a thirty page letter to Attorney General William Barr asking him to investigate Cohen for perjury and making false statements.  As to Mark Meadows, in an attempt to demonstrate that he’s not a racist even though he had a token Black woman stand behind him during Tuesday’s hearing, he very publicly approached his accuser Congresswoman Tlaib on the House floor yesterday and gave her a big hug.

Other News:  Andrew Wheeler, the former coal lobbyist was confirmed as the new EPA Administrator yesterday.  All of the Republican Senators except Susan Collins voted for his appointment.  All of the present Democrats including West Virginia’s Joe Manchin voted against him.  New Senator Kyrsten Sinema didn’t vote since she is on her way to New Zealand to compete in an ironman competition.  Before departing, the quirky and athletic Sinema said that she will publicly announce how she would have voted on anything she misses during her trip.  Presumably none of those votes would have been crucial decision makers. Republican Senator Lamar Alexander who is not running for reelection is pressing Trump to rescind his Emergency Declaration to avoid a Republican rebellion.  It’s not clear that a rebellion is really brewing but there are a number of other Republican senators who would rather not be forced to vote either way when the resolution against the declaration comes up for a vote in the Senate.  The House passed legislation requiring background checks for all gun purchasers, including those at gun shows and over the internet.  Unfortunately Senate Majority Leader McConnell is expected to shove that legislation into one of his already overstuffed drawers rather than bringing it up for a vote.  While most members of the House and Senate are relieved that Trump didn’t agree to any of  North Korea’s demands during his “failed” Hanoi summit, many are fuming over his announcement that he believes Kim Jong Un’s assertion that he’s not responsible for American student Otto Warmbier’s death.  Republicans and Democrats don’t agree on much these days, but most agree that Trump’s continued defense of tyrants is beyond peculiar.  Another  DNA malfunction?