The Commentariat -- December 2, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "President Emmanuel Macron returned to France on Sunday from a summit meeting in Argentina to find his country in turmoil after a day of violent protests, surveying the destruction for himself even as his government weighed declaring a state of emergency. A third weekend of nationwide protests by the 'Yellow Vests' movement, largely made up of working-class people angry about a planned increase in fuel taxes, left burned cars and smashed store windows in several of the wealthiest neighborhoods of Paris. Broken glass and empty tear gas canisters fired by the police littered Paris, where hundreds of vandals joined the ranks of the protesters. One person died in the unrest this weekend, bringing to three the number of casualties on the margins of the demonstrations over the last three weeks. More than 260 people were wounded nationwide, at least 133 of them in Paris, according to the prefecture of police. Some were bystanders caught in the fray who needed treatment after exposure to tear gas. About 412 people were arrested nationwide. The interior minister, Christophe Castaner, said on Sunday that the government might declare a state of emergency." ...

... Angelique Chrisafis of the Guardian: "The French president, Emmanuel Macron, will hold an emergency meeting of senior ministers on Sunday after central Paris saw its worst unrest in a decade on Saturday. Thousands of masked protesters fought running battles with police, set fire to cars, banks and houses and burned makeshift barricades on the edges of demonstrations against fuel tax rises. On Sunday morning, Paris authorities hired extra trucks to begin removing the carcasses of burnt cars on from the scorched pavements of some of Paris's most expensive streets, amid graffiti calling for Macron to resign. Piles of teargas canisters littered broken pavements in front of rows of shattered shopfronts and smashed windows, as TV channels showed non-stop footage of central Paris in flames during Saturday's events."

CBS News: "Vice Adm. Scott Stearney, who oversaw U.S. naval forces in the Middle East, was found dead Saturday in his residence in Bahrain, officials said. Defense officials told CBS News they are calling it an 'apparent suicide.' Stearney was the commander of the U.S. Navy's Bahrain-based 5th Fleet. Rear Adm. Paul Schlise, the deputy commander of the 5th Fleet, has assumed command, the Navy said in a statement."

David Halbfinger & Isabel Kershner of the New York Times: "The Israeli police recommended on Sunday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu be indicted on bribery, fraud and other charges, accusing him of trading regulatory favors for fawning news coverage, in what is potentially the most damaging of a series of corruption cases against him. It was the third time this year that the police have urged that Mr. Netanyahu face criminal prosecution. And it dealt another blow to his teetering governing coalition, which narrowly averted collapse last month and is clinging to a one-vote majority in Parliament while edging closer to calling early elections. Mr. Netanyahu, who ... continues to dominate all potential challengers in opinion polls, now must await the decision of the attorney general, whom he appointed, on whether to indict him in all three cases. That may take months, and Mr. Netanyahu could well win another term as prime minister before he is formally charged...."

Ben Kamisar of NBC News: "New York Democrat Jerry Nadler, the incoming chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, said Sunday that new revelations from one of President Trump's allies amount to proof that Russia had 'leverage' over Trump during the 2016 presidential campaign.... 'The fact that he was lying to the American people about doing business in Russia and the Kremlin knew he was lying gave the Kremlin a hold over him,' Nadler said. 'One question we have now is, does the Kremlin still have a hold over him because of other lies that they know about?'" ...

... Kris Schneider of ABC News: "The leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee [Adam Schiff] said Sunday on 'This Week' that there is now a witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation..., Donald Trump's former attorney Michael Cohen, who he said confirms that 'the president and his business are compromised.'"

Kyle Cheney of Politico (Nov. 30): "The top Democrats on the House Judiciary and Oversight committees said Friday they spoke with acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker, who pledged to follow 'all the regulations, policies and procedures' that govern special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. Reps. Jerry Nadler and Elijah Cummings, the likely incoming chairmen of Judiciary and Oversight, respectively, say Whitaker also committed to testifying before their panels in January, when Democrats will take control of the House."

John Bowden of the Hill: "President Trump's attorney, Rudy Giuliani, took aim at special counsel Robert Mueller in an interview airing Sunday, criticizing what he called 'unethical' tactics by prosecutors in Mueller's office after former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. In an interview with AM 970 in New York, Giuliani accused Mueller of crossing a line by 'intimidating' Trump's allies into saying 'what he believes [is] his version of the truth.' 'They obviously exerted a lot of pressure on him. Mr. Cohen unfortunately has a history of significant lies in the past,' Giuliani told host John Catsimatidis...."

Oliver Laughland of the Guardian: "Roger Stone ... has said he has not discussed a potential pardon with the president should he be implicated in special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Mueller's investigation appears laser-focused on Stone's possible ties to WikiLeaks amid mounting evidence that Stone and another Trump ally, the conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, may have been aware of the organisation's plans to publish stolen emails from the Clinton campaign long before they were released. Speaking to ABCs This Week on Sunday, Stone again denied ties to WikiLeaks and its founder Julian Assange, and insisted he had not discussed a pardon with Trump. 'There's no circumstance under which I would testify against the president because I'd have to bear false witness against him,' Stone said. 'I'd have to make things up. And I'm not going to do that. I've had no discussion regarding a pardon.'"

Roey Hadar of ABC News: "Former FBI Director James Comey wrote on Twitter that he will testify privately before a House panel Monday on the condition that he will be able to speak freely afterward and that a public transcript will be released within 24 hours. 'Hard to protect my rights without being in contempt, which I don't believe in. So [I] will sit in the dark, but Republicans agree I'm free to talk when done and transcript released in 24 hours. This is the closest I can get to public testimony,' Comey wrote on Twitter Sunday morning.... Comey had filed suit in federal court Thursday to block the subpoena requiring him to testify behind closed doors to the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees, instead preferring to testify publicly. In the lawsuit, the former FBI director condemned the process as being powered by 'a poisonous combination of presidential tweets and the selective leaking that has become standard practice' for Republican lawmakers."

"Trump's Book Club." Katie Rogers of the New York Times Is So Mean: "President Trump, a leader who is not exactly a man of letters -- at least not beyond those on his CAPS LOCK keyboard -- has been using his Twitter account to promote a slew of books that he regards as 'incredible,' 'terrific' and 'great originals.' At least six books, presumably in the running to line the conspiracy theory section of the future Trump presidential library, have titles like 'Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump' and 'The Russia Hoax.' The authors are supporters like Jeanine Pirro, a longtime friend whose book 'Liars, Leakers, and Liberals: The Case Against the Anti-Trump Conspiracy,' has, according to the president, aptly explained 'the phony Witch Hunt.' Most of the titles given an Oprah's-book-club-like stamp by the president have authors who mirror his view that there are forces within the government intent on bringing him down. And some contain their share of Trump-friendly declarations that do not necessarily track with the truth: 'The Russia collusion investigation is over,' Ms. Pirro wrote in her book. (It's not.)"

*****

Jacey Fortin of the New York Times: President George H.W. "Bush, who died at home in Houston, will soon be taken to Washington. President Trump ... said that the plane that is known as Air Force One when the president is aboard will transport Mr. Bush's coffin. Mr. Trump said it was 'a special tribute that he deserves very much.' Republican and Democratic leaders of the Senate and the House of Representatives announced that a bicameral arrival ceremony for Mr. Bush will be held at the United States Capitol in Washington on Monday at 5 p.m. Mr. Bush will lie in state in the Rotunda with his coffin on display for public viewing until Wednesday morning.... Mr. Bush will also be honored with a state funeral at the National Cathedral in Washington. The White House confirmed that Mr. Trump will attend.... Mr. Trump has directed national flags to be displayed at half-staff for 30 days beginning on the day Mr. Bush died. He declared Wednesday a national day of mourning.... In a separate executive order, Mr. Trump said that 'all executive department and agencies' of the federal government should be closed on Wednesday as a sign of respect for the former president. On Thursday, Mr. Bush will be laid to rest on the grounds of his presidential library and museum at Texas A&M University. He will be buried in a family plot behind the library alongside his wife, Barbara, who died in April after 73 years of marriage; and a daughter, Robin, who died at age 3 in 1953...."

President Bill Clinton, in a Washington Post op-ed, remembers President George H.W. Bush & shares the note Bush left for him in the Oval Office on the day of Clinton's first inauguration.

Jeet Heer: "Because of the moment of his death, Bush's passing seems like more than the demise of one man. It truly is the end of a political tradition." Mrs. McC: Heer writes a tough, but I think accurate, obituary.

Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "The contrast couldn't be more striking. President George H.W. Bush was a war hero, an internationalist who played a consequential role in maintaining the post-war world order. In domestic politics, he is remembered as a pillar of the Republican establishment, a pragmatist who pined for a 'kinder, gentler nation.'... Donald J. Trump represents a starkly different strain of Republicanism, and a rejection of nearly all of Bush's values. And as Trump played global statesman at the G-20 summit here against the backdrop of a former president's passing, many world leaders clearly missed the predictability of the Bush years and the America he represented.... Trump told reporters [in Buenos Aires] that he spoke with both George W. Bush and his one-time rival, Jeb Bush, on Saturday to extend his condolences. The president ignored a shouted question from a reporter asking whether he regrets any of his past criticism of the Bushes."

David Lynch of the Washington Post: "... President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping ... met for roughly 2½ hours at the sidelines of the Group of 20 leaders' summit, longer than anticipated. Larry Kudlow, director of the National Economic Council, said the talks went 'very well,' and the White House planned to release a statement late Saturday night, according to a pool report. China's state-run Xinhua news agency reported that the two sides had agreed that 'no additional tariffs will be imposed after January 1,' the day U.S. tariffs on $200 billion of Chinese goods are scheduled to increase from 10 percent to 25 percent. 'Negotiations between the two sides will continue,' it added."

Glenn Thrush of the New York Times: "President Trump announced his intention late Saturday to quickly withdraw the United States from the North American Free Trade Agreement, a move intended to force House Democrats to enact a revised version of the pact despite concerns that it fails to protect American workers.... If no deal can be reached, both versions of the treaty would be void, which would result in far more restrictive trade that could have a severe impact on industry and agriculture in all three nations, economists have warned."

American Exceptionalism. Rebecca Leber of Mother Jones: "It is telling that on two of the most contentious topics at the Buenos Aires Group of 20 meeting, the United States eventually joined 19 other world leaders on trade, but when it comes to climate change, President Donald Trump remained firmly alone in his belief that it is a hoax.... On climate ... Trump was the only holdout." --s

Trump Jumps a Low Bar. Philip Rucker, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump managed to spend two days in the company of world leaders he has long antagonized without any visible eruptions. There were no feuds, or at least none publicly detected, as Air Force One took off from Buenos Aires on Saturday night. Trump signed on to a statement of principles with the other leaders at the Group of 20 summit, the kind of document he refused to endorse at a summit in Canada a few months earlier. He made nice with the European leader he most regularly trashes, German Chancellor Angela Merkel. And the biggest diplomatic faux pas to occur here did not even involve the gaffe-prone American president. It was the autocratic bro-shake between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. A president who prides himself on being the ultimate disrupter on the global stage instead played the part of reluctant diplomat..., at the risk of making himself something of a non-factor.... Thomas Wright, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said, 'The worry was that things could unravel, so there was a retraction of ambition from the other democratic leaders. They are worried about him creating a fuss over attempts to forge cooperation, which means these summits now are just gatherings of the leaders without a real agenda. That's the function of Trump.'"

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd. -- Liars' Edition.

Ryan Koronowski of ThinkProgress put together a handy timeline of Trump denying the Russer business interests he just admitted to. --s

Sharon LaFraniere of the New York Times: "If the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has proved anything in his 18-month-long investigation -- besides how intensely Russia meddled in an American presidential election -- it is that Mr. Trump surrounded himself throughout 2016 and early 2017 with people to whom lying seemed to be second nature.... [The] people surrounding Mr. Trump -- including some White House and cabinet officials -- ... contribute to a culture of bending, if not outright breaking, the truth, and whose leading exemplar is Mr. Trump himself.... For decades, such behavior was relatively free of consequence for those who aligned with Mr. Trump.... But in Mr. Mueller, those in Mr. Trump's orbit now confront a big-league adversary with little tolerance for what one top White House adviser once called 'alternative facts.'" ...

... Eric Tucker of the AP: "A pattern of deception by advisers to ... Donald Trump, aimed at covering up Russia-related contacts during the 2016 campaign and transition period, has unraveled bit by bit in criminal cases brought by ... Robert Mueller. The lies to the FBI and to Congress, including by Trump's former fixer and his national security adviser, have raised new questions about Trump's connections to Russia, revealed key details about the special counsel's findings and painted a portrait of aides eager to protect the president and the administration by concealing communications they presumably recognized as problematic. The false statements cut to the heart of Mueller's mission to untangle ties between the Trump campaign and Russia and to establish whether they colluded to sway the election. They concern some of the central questions of the investigation, including why the incoming Trump administration discouraged Russia from retaliating over sanctions imposed for election hacking; who knew what when about illegally obtained Democratic emails; and how plans for a Trump Tower in Moscow came together and fell apart." ...

... Thanks, Devin! David Lurie of Slate: "... prosecutions for lying to Congress are rarely brought.... Until very recently, lying before the House Intelligence Committee during its Russia investigation has seemed, even by generally lax congressional standards, likely to be nonconsequential.... Yet that will soon change. Incoming Democratic House Intelligence Committee Chair Adam Schiff has made it clear that one of the first items on the new majority's agenda next year will be to forward ... transcripts [of testimony and interviews] to the special counsel.... The irony of this new situation is that, as Susan Hennessey has observed, outgoing House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, Rep. Mike Conaway (who purportedly led the Russia inquiry after Nunes’ quasi-recusal), lead interrogator Trey Gowdy, and the other GOP members of the committee may ... have all but openly encouraged its witnesses to deny any and all potential wrongdoing, regardless of the plausibility of their denials.... As a result, some witnesses affiliated with Trump and his campaign may have been lulled into thinking they could lie with particular impunity." ...

... James Risen of The Intercept: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on Donald Trump, and as one shoe after another drops in the Trump-Russia investigation, the pressure sometimes prompts the president to inadvertently blurt out the truth. Or at least as close to the truth as a serial liar like Trump can get.... Faced with Cohen's admissions in court on Thursday, Trump ... quickly switched gears and effectively confirmed what Cohen had said. 'There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?' Trump's comments ... reveal that he had much deeper connections to Russia in the midst of the campaign than he has ever previously acknowledged. It suggests that Trump will lie about his Russian connections until he realizes he can no longer get away with it, and then will quite casually admit that he has been lying all along." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

** Marcy Wheeler of Emptywheel: "If there's a conspiracy to obstruct Mueller's investigation, I'm fairly certain the Trump Organization was one of the players in it.... It made me realize something has been missing from every analysis of the indictment question I've seen: whether you can indict a sitting President's eponymous corporate entities.... [I]t was the entity that signed the Letter of Intent, would be the entity that would obtain funding, and would be the entity that would profit. But the Trump Organization did not get elected the President of the United States (and while the claims are thin fictions, Trump has claimed to separate himself from the Organization and Foundation). So none of the Constitutional claims about indicting a sitting President, it seems to me, would apply.... With Trump, a pardon won't go far enough: he may well be facing the criminal indictment and possible financial ruin of his corporate person...." --s

Sophie Tatum, et al., of CNN: "Defense Secretary James Mattis said Saturday that Russia attempted to interfere in the US midterm elections last month. '(Putin) tried again to muck around in our elections this last month, and we are seeing a continued effort along those lines,' Mattis said, speaking at the Reagan National Defense Forum at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, California. Mattis said the relationship between the United States and Russia has 'no doubt' worsened amid Russia's continued efforts to intervene in the US electoral process.Mattis said he didn't know if the threat from Russia had increased, but he said Russian President Vladimir Putin has 'continued efforts to try to subvert democratic processes that must be defended[.]'" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: How odd that Trump did not mention this as a reason for cancelling his meeting with Putin.

TrumpCare. Robert Pear of the New York Times: "Older Americans have been flocking to Medicare's private plans, which promise predictable costs and extra benefits. But the private Medicare Advantage plans have also been getting an unpublicized boost from the Trump administration, which has in the last few weeks extolled the virtues of the private plans in emails sent to millions of beneficiaries. Medicare's annual open enrollment period closes on Friday. Administration officials predict that almost 37 percent of the 60 million Medicare beneficiaries will be in Medicare Advantage plans next year, up from 28 percent five years ago. The officials deny that they are steering patients to private plans, but the subject lines of recent emails read almost like advertisements. 'Get more benefits for your money,' says a message dated Oct. 25. 'See if you can save money with Medicare Advantage,' said another sent a week later." Mrs. McC: It won't be long till we see Trump doing one of those 3 am infomercials.

Amy Sorkin of the Atlantic: "... a day after U.S. Border Patrol agents fired tear gas at a crowd of Central American migrants, as some tried to rush across the border from Tijuana, [President Trump] boasted about the incident at a rally. 'Frankly, if we didn't show them strength and a strong border,' he said, 'you would have hundreds of thousands of people pouring into our country.' Strength is a display, in other words, meant to demoralize the vulnerable. 'We are doing a job,' Trump added. 'We're doing what's right.' He was wrong on both counts. It is not a President's job to try to renounce a law that promises even undocumented people already in this country an opportunity to apply for asylum, as Trump did, until a federal district court temporarily stopped him. And it is not right to approach the issue of immigration, as Trump has done, with an indifference to human tragedy, cavalier threats to use lethal force and to close the border, and a zeal to divide.... A fair approach would begin with recognizing that a person seeking asylum has a right to be heard, as an individual, by immigration authorities." ...

... Kim Barker, et al., of the New York Times: Juan "Sanchez has built an empire on the back of a crisis. His organization, Southwest Key Programs, now houses more migrant children than any other in the nation. Casting himself as a social-justice warrior, he calls himself El Presidente, a title inscribed outside his office and on the government contracts that helped make him rich. Southwest Key has collected $1.7 billion in federal grants in the past decade, including $626 million in the past year alone. But as it has grown, tripling its revenue in three years, the organization has left a record of sloppy management and possible financial improprieties.... It has stockpiled tens of millions of taxpayer dollars with little government oversight and possibly engaged in self-dealing with top executives.... Though Southwest Key is, on paper, a charity, no one has benefited more than Mr. Sanchez, now 71. Serving as chief executive, he was paid $1.5 million last year -- more than twice what his counterpart at the far larger American Red Cross made."

Eric Schmitt of the New York Times: "The admiral overseeing American naval operations in the Middle East and Southwest Asia was found dead in Bahrain on Saturday, the Navy said. The officer, Vice Adm. Scott A. Stearney, was found in his residence in Bahrain, Adm. John M. Richardson, the chief of naval operations, said in a statement, noting that no foul play was suspected. The Naval Criminal Investigative Service and the Bahraini Ministry of Interior are cooperating on the investigation, Admiral Richardson said."

Damian Paletta & Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "Congressional negotiators and White House officials are discussing a one-week budget bill that would delay a partial government shutdown while Washington prepares for the state funeral of former president George H.W. Bush, according to several people briefed on the talks. On Saturday, President Trump weighed in, too, saying he'd possibly sign a two-week funding extension while the Bush memorials took place, according to an Associated Press report. A final decision has not been made but could come as soon as Sunday, when Trump returns to Washington. Funding for parts of the federal government is set to expire at midnight Dec. 7, but Congress is deadlocked over Trump's demand for $5 billion in funding for a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border."

Lyin' Ryan: Big Spender. Jonathan Chait: "[Paul] Ryan has devoted his career to passing policies that would increase the national debt. Under the Bush administration, he supported every one of the debt-financed measures that turned the surplus the administration inherited into the trillion-dollar annual deficit it bequeathed its successor: tax cuts, a Medicare prescription-drug benefit, wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and a large security buildup, all financed by debt.... Under the Obama administration, Ryan opposed the deficit-reducing health-care reform that has led to falling health-care inflation, and foiled efforts by President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner to craft a bipartisan deal to reduce the debt.... When Ryan has had to share power, he has blocked compromise to reduce the debt. When he has not had to share power, he has supported laws to increase it." --s ...

... Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Paul Ryan is heading out of Congress the way he served: with a blizzard of false statements about substantive matters of public policy. That started with Thursday's bizarre exit interview with the Washington Post's Paul Kane, in which Ryan claimed to regret congressional inaction on debt and immigration when he was, in fact, personally responsible for congressional inaction on debt and immigration. Now comes a tweet in which he offers the view that the policy vision that made him famous -- the Roadmap for America's Future -- has been enacted into law under the Trump administration.... Basically none of Ryan's policy goals were achieved, but rich people did get to pay less in taxes.... [Sheldon] Adelson personally reaped from Ryan's beloved TCJA [tax cut]. His company scored a tax windfall of $670 million in just one quarter[.]" --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Election 2018

Alaska. Becky Bohrer & Lisa Baumann of TPM: "Republican Bart LeBon has won an Alaska state House race by one vote after a ballot recount, officials said. Before Friday's recount, LeBon and Democrat Kathryn Dodge were tied with 2,661 votes apiece. Recount results showed LeBon with 2,663 votes while Dodge had 2,662 votes, after LeBon picked up two votes and Dodge picked up one, according to the Alaska Division of Elections.... If LeBon's win holds up, the GOP will control the House, Senate and governor's office. Dodge has five days to decide whether to appeal the outcome to the state Supreme Court." --s

North Carolina. Colin Kalmbacher of Law & Crime summarizes some of the mess in what appears to be a massive election fraud scheme on the part of the Republican Congressional candidate in North Carolina's 9th district. Voiding the election results altogether remains a possibility. ...

... AND There's This. Raleigh News & Observer Editors: Democrat Andy Penry resigned from the state's Board of Elections Saturday after a county Republican party chairman complained to Gov. Roy Cooper (D) of partisan tweets Penry wrote while serving on the board. "[Penry] said he didn't want the controversy over his Twitter posts to affect an investigation into voting irregularities in the 9th Congressional District race."

Racism, Alive and Well. Zak Cheney-Rice of New York: "Senator Tim Scott announced ;on Thursday that he would oppose the judicial nomination of Thomas Farr, who President Donald Trump had tapped to become a United States District Judge for the Eastern District of North Carolina.... His opposition -- paired with Arizona Senator Jeff Flake's -- effectively killed Farr's bid.... Farr's abysmal record on black voting rights is well-documented.... It should surprise no one that none of this was disqualifying for the Senate GOP. On the contrary, the vast majority still backed Farr's nomination, with only a handful besides Scott and Flake signaling their reservations in light of his record.... That Farr came up short attests to Tim Scott's brief flirtation with morals, as his party's only black senator. But that may not matter in 2019, when Republicans control two more senate seats and Trump can re-nominate." --s

Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress compiles 10 important facts you might have missed from the government's climate change report --s ...

... Robin McKie of the Guardian: "For 24 years the annual UN climate conference [convening in Katowice, Poland on Sunday] has served up a reliable diet of rhetoric, backroom talks and dramatic last-minute deals aimed at halting global warming. But this year's will be a grimmer affair -- by far. As recent reports have made clear, the world may no longer be hovering at the edge of destruction but has probably staggered beyond a crucial point of no return. Climate catastrophe is now looking inevitable. We have simply left it too late to hold rising global temperatures to under 1.5C and so prevent a future of drowned coasts, ruined coral reefs, spreading deserts and melted glaciers." --s

Sarah Jones of New York: "The Fight for 15 movement to raise minimum wages directly led to a collective $68 billion raise for 22 million low-wage workers in both the public and private sectors. That's the conclusion of new analysis published by the National Employment Law Center, which backs a higher minimum wage.... Opponents of minimum wage increases -- like the D.C. restaurateurs who campaigned against higher wages for tipped workers -- typically argue that extra expenses will force fire workers or even close, harming employers and employees alike. More research is necessary, but right now there's no conclusive proof that a higher minimum wage leads to significant job losses." --s

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Juan Cole gives a class on Israeli oppression of Palestinians: "CNN has fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for a speech he gave on Palestinian rights at the UN. The speech can be found here.... CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.... One way that the Israeli right wing gets away with these atrocities [against the Palestinians] is to use techniques of blackballing, smearing, and propaganda to marginalize any voices they don't like.... And they've been remarkably successful in marginalizing anyone who takes them on." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Claudia Koerner of BuzzFeed News: "Fox Broadcasting Company and National Geographic are investigating astrophysicist and Cosmos host Neil deGrasse Tyson after three women came forward with allegations of sexual misconduct." The article details the accusations. ...

... Elizabeth Harris of the New York Times: "In a lengthy Facebook post on Saturday, the well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson disputed accounts that he had behaved inappropriately with three women, a day after the broadcasters of his show 'Cosmos' said they were investigating his conduct."

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona. Adam Peck of ThinkProgress: "Until last week, Republican State Rep. David Stringer was the chair of the Arizona House Sentencing and Recidivism Reform committee, having been re-elected to his seat last month. But on Friday, Stringer unceremoniously resigned his position amid a growing scandal involving racist remarks he made following a lecture at Arizona State University.... Stringer has been a racist for much longer than the past week. In June, during a local Republican Men's Forum, he called immigration 'an existential threat,' and remarked that there 'aren't enough white kids to go around,' in Arizona's public school system." --s

Illinois. Don't Drink the Water. E. A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "Widespread, deadly contaminants are rampant in groundwater near coal ash dumping sites in Illinois, according to an in-depth new report published Wednesday. The report, authored by the Environmental Integrity Project, Earthjustice, Prairie Rivers Network, and the Sierra Club, found that groundwater near 90 percent of reporting Illinois coal ash sites contain toxic pollutants like arsenic, cobalt, and lithium. That number accounts for 22 of 24 total dumping sites with available data." Check the map on p. 9 of the linked report [pdf] to see affected locations. --s

Oklahoma Fundamentalists. Lindsay Gibbs of ThinkProgress: "Oklahoma's state senate is considering a bill that would criminalize all abortions in the state, without exception, 'in any circumstance.' Senate Bill 13 was filed Thursday by Joseph Silk, a republican state senator in Oklahoma who has been relentless in his pursuit to outlaw all abortions in his home state.... The bill sets forth harsh punishments for any woman who has a successful abortion -- it states that 'any abortion procedure that results in the death of an unborn child is subject to the same laws governing homicide, manslaughter, justifiable homicide, and excusable homicide.'" --s

Way Beyond

France. Alissa Rubin of the New York Times: "A third week of anti-government protests intensified in violence on Saturday, as demonstrators burned cars, smashed windows and confronted riot police firing tear gas in the heart of Paris in the most serious crisis of President Emmanuel Macron's administration. The 'Yellow Vest' protests -- spurred by an increase in the gasoline tax, and named for the roadside safety vests worn by the demonstrators -- have emerged as a spontaneous outcry over declining living standards. Diffuse, seemingly leaderless and organized over the internet, they have drawn deepening and widespread support around the country, where other demonstrations were held on Saturday. Many were peaceful though others were violent, as in the town of Le Puy-en-Velay, where protesters briefly set fire to a local prefecture."

Mexico. Mary Sheridan of the Washington Post: "A leftist leader vowing to launch a 'radical transformation' of Mexico and improve the lives of the poor was sworn in as president on Saturday, opening an uncertain era in a country with deep economic and security ties with the United States. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 65, known as AMLO, took office as potentially the most powerful Mexican president in decades. Not only did he take 53 percent of the vote in a three-way race, but his party cinched a majority in both houses of Congress and gained control of numerous state legislatures. 'Today we don't only begin a new government, today we begin a change of our political regime,' he said in a speech moments after the swearing-in ceremony. 'Starting from now, we will carry out a peaceful, steady political transformation. But it will also be profound and radical.' López Obrador is the first leftist president since Mexico transitioned from a one-party authoritarian state to full democracy in 2000. He has promised to increase benefits for the poor, young and elderly -- all while maintaining budget discipline. He has vowed to fight corruption and slash perks for senior officials, even declining to occupy Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. The estate will instead be turned into a public park, set to open Saturday." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The Commentariat -- December 1, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Mary Sheridan of the Washington Post: "A leftist leader vowing to launch a 'radical transformation' of Mexico and improve the lives of the poor was sworn in as president on Saturday, opening an uncertain era in a country with deep economic and security ties with the United States. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 65, known as AMLO, took office as potentially the most powerful Mexican president in decades. Not only did he take 53 percent of the vote in a three-way race, but his party cinched a majority in both houses of Congress and gained control of numerous state legislatures. 'Today we don't only begin a new government, today we begin a change of our political regime,' he said in a speech moments after the swearing-in ceremony. 'Starting from now, we will carry out a peaceful, steady political transformation. But it will also be profound and radical.' López Obrador is the first leftist president since Mexico transitioned from a one-party authoritarian state to full democracy in 2000. He has promised to increase benefits for the poor, young and elderly -- all while maintaining budget discipline. He has vowed to fight corruption and slash perks for senior officials, even declining to occupy Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. The estate will instead be turned into a public park, set to open Saturday."

James Risen of The Intercept: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on Donald Trump, and as one shoe after another drops in the Trump-Russia investigation, the pressure sometimes prompts the president to inadvertently blurt out the truth. Or at least as close to the truth as a serial liar like Trump can get.... Faced with Cohen's admissions in court on Thursday, Trump ... quickly switched gears and effectively confirmed what Cohen had said. 'There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?' Trump's comments ... reveal that he had much deeper connections to Russia in the midst of the campaign than he has ever previously acknowledged. It suggests that Trump will lie about his Russian connections until he realizes he can no longer get away with it, and then will quite casually admit that he has been lying all along." --s

Juan Cole gives a class on Israeli oppression of Palestinians: "CNN has fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for a speech he gave on Palestinian rights at the UN. The speech can be found here.... CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.... One way that the Israeli right wing gets away with these atrocities [against the Palestinians] is to use techniques of blackballing, smearing, and propaganda to marginalize any voices they don't like.... And they've been remarkably successful in marginalizing anyone who takes them on." --s

Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Paul Ryan is heading out of Congress the way he served: with a blizzard of false statements about substantive matters of public policy. That started with Thursday's bizarre exit interview with the Washington Post's Paul Kane, in which Ryan claimed to regret congressional inaction on debt and immigration when he was, in fact, personally responsible for congressional inaction on debt and immigration. Now comes a tweet in which he offers the view that the policy vision that made him famous -- the Roadmap for America's Future -- has been enacted into law under the Trump administration.... Basically none of Ryan's policy goals were achieved, but rich people did get to pay less in taxes.... [Sheldon] Adelson personally reaped from Ryan's beloved TCJA [tax cut]. His company scored a tax windfall of $670 million in just one quarter[.]" --s

The Daily Beast: "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent 'at least 11' text messages to a top adviser, who supervised the team that murdered Jamal Khashoggi, within hours of the journalist's death, according to a secret CIA report revealed by The Wall Street Journal. The messages were sent in the hours before and after Khasoggi's October killing." --s

*****

Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "George Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, who steered the nation through a tumultuous period in world affairs but was denied a second term after support for his presidency collapsed under the weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs, died on Friday. He was 94. His death, which was announced by his office, came less than eight months after that of his wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush.... Mr. Bush, a Republican, was a transitional figure in the White House, where he served from 1989 to 1993, capping a career of more than 40 years in public service. A decorated Navy pilot who was shot down in the Pacific in 1944, he was the last of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office.... The elder Mr. Bush entered the White House with one of the most impressive résumés of any president. He had been a two-term congressman from Texas, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president, under Ronald Reagan." ...

... The Washington Post's obituary of President Bush, by Karen Tumulty, is here. ...

... Class Acts in the Age of the Oaf. President Obama visited President Bush in Houston earlier this week. President & Michelle Obama's statement on President Bush's passing is here.

... Here's a good photo essay in the Washington Post, featuring the photographs of the Bushes' personal photographer David Valdez, who also served as White House photographer.

Trump Goes to Argentina

Mark Landler & Peter Baker of the New York Times: "For Mr. Trump, his first day at the summit meeting of the Group of 20 industrialized nations in Buenos Aires was a window into his idiosyncratic statecraft after nearly two years in office. His 'America First' foreign policy has not become 'America Alone' exactly, but it has left him with a strange patchwork of partners at these global gatherings.... He didn't sit down with two of his favorite strongmen. He downgraded a meeting with one ally and postponed one with another. He exchanged icy smiles with the prime minister of Canada, who had threatened to skip the signing of a new trade agreement with the United States and Mexico because of lingering bitterness over steel tariffs. And [he] was preoccupied by legal clouds back home, tweeting angrily that there was nothing illicit about his business ventures in Russia, a day after his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the extent and duration of those dealings."

Trump "diplomacy": Dementia, absent-mindedness, or just an asshole. Take your pick. --s

Peter Baker: "President Trump and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts ... signed a new agreement governing hundreds of billions of dollars in trade among the neighbors that underpins their economies. Meeting for the first time since the revised North American Free Trade Agreement was sealed, Mr. Trump, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed the results as a boon for workers, businesses and the environment, even as they alluded to the harsh talks that had preceded this day. 'We worked hard on this agreement,' Mr. Trump said.... 'It's been long and hard. We've taken a lot of barbs and a little abuse, and we got there. It's great for all of our countries.' Mr. Trump did not say that he was the one who had dished out most of the barbs and much of the abuse, but he insisted that he had come out of the process with a stronger relationship with the two leaders.... [The agreement] still requires the approval of Congress." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "After a March 2018 visit to Mar-a-Lago..., [Michael] Cohen returned to New York believing that his former boss would protect him if he faced any charges for sticking to his story about the 2016 payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, according to one source with knowledge. Trump was also at Mar-a-Lago at the time of Cohen's visit. Another source said that after the April 2018 FBI raid on Cohen's office and home, people close to the President assured Cohen that Trump would take care of him. And Cohen believed that meant that the President would offer him a pardon if he stayed on message.... 'The President of the United States never indicated anything to Michael, or anyone else, about getting a pardon,' said Rudy Giuliani.... Following the raid on Cohen's home and office, Cohen's attorneys had a legal defense agreement with Trump and his attorneys. During this time, there was a steady flow of communication between the two sides, according to two sources familiar with the matter. At first, publicly, Trump seemed very supportive of his former attorney.... But in the days that followed the raid..., Trump started to distance himself from Cohen. And when Trump appeared on 'Fox and Friends' two weeks after the raids and said that Cohen only did a 'tiny, tiny little fraction' of his legal work, Cohen knew the game had changed. According to one source, Cohen knew that things had changed and he acted to protect his family -- and himself." ...

... Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Lawyers for ... Michael Cohen argued Friday that their client should not go to prison for the criminal charges to which he has pleaded guilty, and unequivocally linked much of his wrongdoing to his desire to protect and support President Trump. In a late-night court filing, lawyers for the onetime Trump loyalist wrote that their client was a changed man who was eager to share his knowledge with law enforcement and mindful that he would have to 'begin his life virtually anew.' Their filing detailed what they said was Cohen's already extensive cooperation, including seven voluntary interviews with the team of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, as well as meetings with federal prosecutors in New York, representatives of the New York State Attorney General's office and officials with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which are conducting wide ranging probes into Trump's campaign and his family foundation." ...

... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "... Michael Cohen said Friday he was in 'close and regular contact' with Trump's White House staff and legal team when he prepared a statement for Congress that he now says falsely downplayed Trump's effort to land a Trump Tower Moscow deal during the 2016 presidential campaign. In a filing seeking a lenient sentence, Cohen's attorneys say his false statement to Congress -- which Cohen pleaded guilty to on Thursday -- was based on Trump and his team's efforts to 'portray contact with Russian representatives' by Trump, his campaign or his company 'as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016.'... Rudy Giuliani[, in criticizing Cohen as a 'proven liar,'] said Trump had been 'open and transparent' about his efforts to build a Trump Tower Moscow. In fact, Trump had long sought a deal to build in Russia but as his campaign gained traction, he downplayed his business relationships there and repeatedly insisted he had nothing to do with Russia, a denial he underscored repeatedly after the discovery of Russia efforts to interfere in the election." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Zapotosky & Cheney cover the same filing with different emphases. Their reporting suggests the filing does not specifically say, "Trump (or his lawyers) told me to lie." Maybe that's because it was all (completely unwarranted!) inference on Cohen's part; maybe it's because Mueller told Cohen's lawyers to tone down the filing. ...

... Justin Miller of the Daily Beast: In the filing, Cohen's lawyers say Cohen "told Donald Trump about a phone call to the Kremlin asking for the Russian government's help to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016 ... while Trump was running for president." ...

... ** A Kremlin Kover-up. Aaron Rupar, now of Vox: "Michael Cohen's plea deal for making false statements to Congress ... also indicates that the Kremlin helped in the cover-up. In August 2017, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that he received an email from Cohen ... in January 2016. Cohen's email asked for help with a development project in Russia. Peskov said he never responded to Cohen's query.... Peskov's account of what happened matched Cohen's.... But according to the plea agreement Cohen agreed to in federal court on Thursday, it turns out both he and Peskov were lying.... In sum, Cohen emailed Peskov about a development project and got a response that led to a string of phone calls. But as Trump's contacts with Russia came under increased scrutiny in the summer of 2017 [and as Trump continued to deny he had any interest in Russia], both Cohen and the Kremlin decided to lie about it, pretending they'd never successfully connected. The episode illustrates one way the Kremlin has blackmail material over the president." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: We now know that Trump & Putin will lie for each other, and tell their minions to do the same. These are not the sort of white lies common to diplomacy, the courtesies that rival world leaders & ambassadors will show one another in furtherance of common interests & peaceful relations. Rather, Trump's, Cohen's and Peskov's lies about Trump Tower Moscow are lies about facts, and the Kremlin has a file on them. We wonder what-all else is in that file.

Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "... Donald Trump attempted to downplay the stunning admission by his former personal attorney that he had lied to Congress about efforts to develop a Trump Tower project in Moscow well into the presidential election, insisting in a pair of tweets Friday morning that his business dealings were 'very legal and very cool.'... The tweets marked the second time since Michael Cohen entered his guilty plea Thursday morning that Trump has sharply departed from long-standing denials that he had any financial ties to Russia.... The remarks undercut his previous and very public statements claiming he had 'nothing to do with Russia.'" ...

... Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "The tweets echoed what one of Mr. Trump's personal lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said a day earlier about the prospective Russia deal.... The president's answers [to questions posed by the special counsel], submitted to the special counsel this month, have not been made public. But Mr. Cohen's latest version of events raised questions about whether Mr. Trump had been truthful with Mr. Mueller's team. ...

... Jeet Heer: "These tweets are a strange attempt to re-write history.... Trump's new tweet confirms Cohen's latest testimony. What Trump needs to explains is why his 'very legal' and 'very cool' project was previously lied about by both himself and others." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "During the 2016 campaign, and for years after, Donald Trump insisted that he had no dealings with Russia whatsoever. He also assured the public that we could take his word on this, and there was no need to look at his tax returns. But yesterday's confession in open court by Michael Cohen shows that Trump was attempting to do business in Russia during the campaign, with high-level officials from the same government that was interceding on Trump's behalf. The new Trump line is that this is all okay and that we knew about it the whole time: 'Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail...' [Donald Trump, in a tweet early this morning]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

John Kovensky in TPM: "Donald Trump met at least twice with a Russian-Ukrainian oligarch and current Rudy Giuliani client over a Trump Moscow franchising deal in the late 2000s, the oligarch told TPM. Pavel Fuchs..., a Moscow real estate developer who recently hired Rudy Giuliani for an 'investment project' related to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, said that he met with Trump in New York City in 2006 and in Palm Beach in 2008. Fuch's claims fill in more of the picture of Trump's long-running interest in developing a Moscow project and illustrate how some of the same characters continue to reappear in dealings with those in Trump's orbit. The deal -- potentially very legal and very cool -- would have seen Fuchs buy a Trump franchise for a Moscow skyscraper, similar to other deals that the Trump Organization has concluded in Azerbaijan, Dubai, Turkey, India, and elsewhere."

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "... Robert Mueller's office is considering retrying former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on a slew of federal charges that resulted in a hung jury over the summer. At a hearing in federal court Friday morning, prosecutors said they are also weighing leveling new criminal charges for Manafort, contending that he obstructed justice and committed additional federal crimes since entering a plea agreement with the special counsel in September.... Prosecutors will file a more detailed explanation of what they believe Manafort lied about to investigators on Dec. 7. Manafort's defense team will then have until January to reply, leading to a likely late January hearing on the matter." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ellen Nakashima & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has referred cases to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election after witnesses questioned in the panel's own Russia probe were suspected of lying, the committee chairman said Friday. 'We have made referrals from our committee to the special counsel for prosecution,' Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said at a national security conference in Austin. 'In a lot of those cases, those might be tied to lying to us.'"

Philip Ewing of NPR: "Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony to Congress about his family's real estate negotiations with powerful Russians does not comport with the new version laid out by Donald Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen, official transcripts show. Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result 'at the end' of 2014. 'But not in 2015 or 2016?' Trump Jr. was asked. 'Certainly not '16,' he said. 'There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.' Trump's account contrasts with the new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in a guilty plea in federal court. In that new version, Cohen says the discussions with at least one Russian government official and others in Moscow continued through June 2016, well into Trump's presidential campaign.... Cohen said in his guilty plea that he had briefed Trump's family members about his talks, although the court documents don't specify which ones." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Gail Collins: "Watergate was way easier than this. Really, Richard Nixon might have been attempting to undermine the nation's legal system, but at least he wasn't negotiating to build, say, a hotel in Hanoi at the same time. You'd think that after almost half a century we could at least expect an improved quality of criminals. But it does appear that Donald Trump is surrounded by minions who would have been totally incapable of pulling off a small-bore burglary without creating a constitutional crisis."

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Akhilleus suggested in yesterday's Comments that we're coming up on schadenfreude time. After extensive research, I've discovered the schadenfreude dance and the appropriate outfits to wear when dancing it. (When Conan asks the name of the dance, sounds like the dancer in the segment mispronounces "schadenfreude," but the guy is German so what does he know.) The schadenfreude looks hard to learn, so here's a lesson to get you started. I'm wriggling into my bondage pants right now:

Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "'You're not going to believe this... Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States,' James Evans, an F.T.C. lawyer, wrote to colleagues in an email on Oct. 24, 2017. The emails were part of a trove of files the trade commission made public on Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents about its investigation into the company, World Patent Marketing. Mr. Whitaker sat on its advisory board.... Long before most Americans had heard of Mr. Whitaker, the Federal Trade Commission had been scrutinizing his connections to World Patent Marketing. The company had promised investors lucrative patent agreements but instead brazenly ripped them off, according to the agency. Its investigation prompted a federal judge to shut down the firm in March 2017, and it was later fined nearly $26 million." ...

... Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Months after joining the advisory board of a Miami-based patent company in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker began fielding angry complaints from customers that they were being defrauded, including from a client who showed up at his Iowa office to appeal to him personally for help, records show. Yet Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years -- even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show. Internal Federal Trade Commission documents released Friday in response to a public records request reveal the extent of Whitaker's support for World Patent Marketing, even amid a barrage of warnings about the company's behavior.... Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney, did little to assist the [FTC] investigation [of the company]. He never answered a subpoena, even after he was working in the DOJ, & as the Bloomberg reporters note in the story linked below, he did not return FTC phone calls. And bad news for Whitaker: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) is on the case. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Greg Farrell, et al., of Bloomberg: "New documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission suggest that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the agency's investigators as he was stepping into his role last year as Justice Department chief of staff.... Whitaker ... asserted that he 'never emailed or wrote to consumers' in his consulting role. That statement to James Evans of the FTC appears to be inaccurate. Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau.... Whitaker threatened the customer, writing: 'I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your "group" are doing.'... At the time, the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an 'invention promotion scheme' that it accused of 'bilking millions of dollars from consumers.' The emails also convey FTC investigators's shock in October 2017 when -- in the latter stages of their investigation -- Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Aaron Davis & Ilana Marcus of the Washington Post: "A review of hundreds of public comments by acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker shows that while he has primarily functioned as a defender of President Trump, he has also criticized the president on numerous occasions, sometimes harshly, while working as a commentator on radio and television. Whitaker has repeatedly suggested that Trump plays with the truth. He has said Trump should release his tax returns and was 'self-serving' in the way he fired FBI Director James B. Comey. Whitaker said during the run-up to the 2016 election that neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton was a very good option for the presidency. 'I mean, both these candidates are unlikable,' he said. The critique of the president by Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who rose to prominence over the past four years as the head of a conservative nonprofit group, has often come in unguarded moments, and sometimes late into on-air discussions."

Sheryl Stolberg & Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "... tensions [between Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke & Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Az.)] exploded on Friday into one of the more remarkable public feuds in recent Washington history -- a brutal exchange that began with Mr. Grijalva calling on Mr. Zinke to resign, followed by Mr. Zinke calling Mr. Grijalva a drunkard who had used taxpayer 'hush money' to cover up misbehavior, and Mr. Grijalva telling Mr. Zinke to, in effect, bring it on. 'It's hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,' Mr. Zinke wrote on Twitter, in a message that left many in the Capitol slack-jawed. 'This is coming from a man who used nearly $50,000 in tax dollars as hush money to cover up his drunken and hostile behavior. He should resign and pay back the taxpayer for the hush money and the tens of thousands of dollars he forced my department to spend investigating unfounded allegations.'... The 'hush money' reference was to a 2015 agreement between Mr. Grijalva and a former House employee who had accused him of overseeing a hostile work environment and frequently being drunk. The employee had threatened to file a lawsuit, and was paid $48,395 in severance.... Even by the combative and vituperatively partisan standards of President Trump's Washington, the Zinke tweet was a startling breach of decorum and of the norms that usually govern relationships between senior government officials -- particularly a cabinet secretary and a member of a congressional committee overseeing his department." ...

"Zinke responds to ethics criticism by calling Democratic lawmaker a drunk." Ben Lefebvre of Politico: Zinke made "other unproven allegations against Grijalva, who is set to chair the Natural Resources Committee after Democrats take control of the chamber in January.... Grijalva [wrote] on Twitter: 'The allegations against Secretary Zinke are credible and serious. Instead of addressing the substantive issues raised in this morning's op-ed, he's resorting to personal attacks.' Environmental groups opposed to Zinke's policies immediately denounced Zinke's slam at the lawmaker. 'Delete your account. And resign,' the Sierra Club's Twitter account replied to Zinke.... Zinke's allegations against Grijalva echo those first reported in the Washington Times last year, which alleged that the Democrat had paid a former aide $48,000 to settle allegations of misconduct. The complaint was never taken to Capitol Hill's workplace misconduct adjudicators at the Office of Compliance.... Part of one investigation into Zinke also centers on his years-long plan to open a microbrewery in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. Whitefish residents told POLITICO earlier this year Zinke was a regular sight at the Bulldog Saloon, the Spotted Bear Spirits distillery and The Lodge at Whitefish Lake for drinks." ...

... Here's Rep. Grijalva's op-ed calling for Zinke's resignation, published in USA Today.

Niluksi Koswanage of Bloomberg News: "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who allegedly oversaw the team that killed U.S. columnist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after his death in October, Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing a highly classified CIA assessment report.... U.S. senators have demanded the White House be more forthcoming about intelligence gathered on Khashoggi's killing in Turkey, and demanded to know whether the crown prince knew about in advance or ordered it. The Wall Street Journal said it had reviewed excerpts of the Central Intelligence Agency's assessment, which included electronic intercepts and other information. The excerpts state that the CIA had 'medium-to-high' confidence that Prince Mohammad had personally targeted Khashoggi to the extent of 'probably ordering his death,' the Journal said. However, the assessment stated that there is no direct reporting of the crown prince actually issuing a kill order, Wall Street Journal said."

Because of Course It Did. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is preparing to take an important step toward future oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic shore, approving five requests from companies to conduct deafening seismic tests that could kill tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals. The planned Friday announcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, to issue 'incidental take' permits allowing companies to harm wildlife is likely to further antagonize a dozen governors in states along the Eastern Seaboard who strongly oppose the administration's proposal to expand federal oil and gas leases to the Atlantic. Federal leases could lead to exploratory drilling for the first time in more than a half-century." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors cited the involvement of a onetime top fund-raiser to President Trump on Friday in a scheme to launder millions of dollars into the country to help a flamboyant Malaysian financier end a Justice Department investigation. Elliott Broidy, a Los Angeles-based businessman who was a finance vice chairman of Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign and inauguration committees, was paid to lobby the Trump administration to try to end an investigation related to the embezzlement of billions of dollars from a Malaysian state-owned fund, according to court filings made public on Friday. The filings were released in connection with a guilty plea entered by George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee. Mr. Higginbotham admitted to conspiring to lie to banks about the source of tens of millions of dollars he funneled into the United States from the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who federal authorities say masterminded a scheme to loot the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad fund, also known as 1MDB." Mrs. McC: I've read three stories on this, & Vogel's is the first one I could understand. The others got into the weeds & buried the lede.

Election 2018, Ctd.

Georgia. Richard Fausset of the New York Times: Democrats see "... the runoff election next week for Georgia secretary of state [as] a crucial battle over minority voting rights.... Brian Kemp, the Republican who ran for governor while still serving as secretary of state, oversaw voting roll purges, registration suspensions, and an Election Day rife with problems -- all of which, critics said, were meant to suppress minority voting.... Many Democrats around the country ... believe that those tactics worked, and essentially cheated [Democrat Stacey] Abrams out of victory in an excruciatingly close race.... In TV ads, [the Democratic candidate John] Barrow leans on a fence in front of a bucolic Georgia landscape and declares, 'Yeah, I'm a Democrat, but I won't bite you.'... His Republican opponent, Brad Raffensperger, a State House member and a civil engineer, also lacks a certain bite: Even allies describe him as long on intelligence and short on charisma." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

North Carolina. Amy Gardner & Kirk Ross of the Washington Post: "Mounting evidence of fraud in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District could indefinitely delay the certification of a winner, as state election officials investigate whether hundreds of absentee ballots were illegally cast or destroyed. The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has no plans to certify Republican Mark Harris's 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready, according to an agenda of a board meeting scheduled for Friday morning. The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested.... Investigators are also scrutinizing unusually high numbers of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County, in both the general election and the May 8 primary, in which Harris defeated incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger (R) by 828 votes. In the primary, Harris won 96 percent of all absentee ballots in Bladen, a far higher percentage than his win in the county overall -- a statistic that this week is prompting fresh accusations of fraud." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So there is rampant voter fraud, after all. But it looks as if the fraudsters are Republicans.

Ken Belson of the New York Times: "The Kansas City Chiefs cut their star running back, Kareem Hunt, on Friday, shortly after the N.F.L. suspended him in response to the release of a video that showed Hunt knocking a woman down and kicking her at a hotel in February. Hunt is one of the most prominent players on a contending team to lose his job in the middle of a season because of an incident involving domestic violence. The video was recorded at the Metropolitan at the 9 hotel, in downtown Cleveland, where Hunt has an apartment. The police were called after the February incident, but no arrests were made and no charges were filed.... That a celebrity website, TMZ, was able to obtain a copy of the video [while the league & the team both claimed they could not] is bound to raise new questions about whether the league is doing enough to hold players accountable for their behavior off the field."

Once Again, New Mexico Gets No Respect. AP: "A District of Columbia clerk and a supervisor refused to accept a New Mexico man's state driver's license as he sought a marriage license because she and her supervisor believed New Mexico was a foreign country. Gavin Clarkson told the Las Cruces Sun-News it happened Nov. 20 at the District of Columbia Courts Marriage Bureau as he tried to apply for a marriage license.... [Clarkson said,] 'All the couples behind us waiting in line were laughing.'"

Beyond the Beltway

New York. A Very Caucasian Christmas. Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times: "... the Rockettes, whose performances are taken in by almost one million people every holiday season, are ... almost all white.... The Rockettes are the creation of someone named Russell Markert, who first brought them to the stage in St. Louis in 1925 and oversaw their direction at Radio City Music Hall from the early 1930s until his retirement in the early 1970s. His goal had been to build the most precise and uniform dance troupe in the world, and to that end he imposed height requirements.... Before his death, Markert acknowledged that he had forbidden a particular white dancer from tanning because he feared it would make her look 'like a colored girl.' In 1982, his successor, Violet Holmes, defended the long tradition of racial bias, arguing that the dancers needed to be 'mirror images' of each other and that 'one or two black girls would definitely distract.'... When the Rockettes were asked to dance at the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, some in the corps protested and voiced their displeasure. But in the Trump worldview, women dancing in bodysuits was surely what had once made American great. The show went on."

Texas. Sam Levine of the Huffington Post: "A Texas appeals court last week refused to overturn the conviction of a 39-year-old mother of four who has been sentenced to eight years in prison for illegal voting. She could also be deported. There's little dispute that Rosa Maria Ortega did in fact break the law. Ortega came to the United States from Mexico as a baby and was living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident. Although it's against the law for non-citizens to vote in Texas, Ortega registered to vote in 2002 as a Republican and then cast ballots multiple times over more than a decade. She tried to register again after moving in 2014, which is when state investigators noticed something was amiss. They arrested her in January 2016.... Throughout her trial, Ortega maintained that she had no idea she couldn't vote. She said she didn't know the difference between a U.S. citizen and a legal permanent resident. She was brought to the United States when she was very young and two of her brothers were born in the U.S.... Her entire family thought she was a citizen. 'She has a sixth-grade education. She didn't know she wasn't legal,' Ortega's lawyer told The New York Times in 2017.'" Thanks to MAG for the link. See also MAG's comment below.

The Commentariat -- Nov. 30, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts ... signed a new agreement governing hundreds of billions of dollars in trade among the neighbors that underpins their economies. Meeting for the first time since the revised North American Free Trade Agreement was sealed, Mr. Trump, President Enrique Peña Nieto ... and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed the results as a boon for workers, businesses and the environment, even as they alluded to the harsh talks that had preceded this day. 'We worked hard on this agreement,' Mr. Trump said.... 'It's been long and hard. We've taken a lot of barbs and a little abuse, and we got there. It's great for all of our countries.' Mr. Trump did not say that he was the one who had dished out most of the barbs and much of the abuse, but he insisted that he had come out of the process with a stronger relationship with the two leaders.... [The agreement] still requires the approval of Congress."

Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Special counsel Robert Mueller's office is considering retrying former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on a slew of federal charges that resulted in a hung jury over the summer. At a hearing in federal court Friday morning, prosecutors said they are also weighing leveling new criminal charges for Manafort, contending that he obstructed justice and committed additional federal crimes since entering a plea agreement with the special counsel in September.... Prosecutors will file a more detailed explanation of what they believe Manafort lied about to investigators on Dec. 7. Manafort's defense team will then have until January to reply, leading to a likely late January hearing on the matter."

Philip Ewing of NPR: "Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony to Congress about his family's real estate negotiations with powerful Russians does not comport with the new version laid out by Donald Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen, official transcripts show. Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result 'at the end' of 2014. 'But not in 2015 or 2016?' Trump Jr. was asked. 'Certainly not '16,' he said. 'There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.' Trump's account contrasts with the new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in a guilty plea in federal court. In that new version, Cohen says the discussions with at least one Russian government official and others in Moscow continued through June 2016, well into Trump's presidential campaign.... Cohen said in his guilty plea that he had briefed Trump's family members about his talks, although the court documents don't specify which ones."

Jonathan Chait: "During the 2016 campaign, and for years after, Donald Trump insisted that he had no dealings with Russia whatsoever. He also assured the public that we could take his word on this, and there was no need to look at his tax returns. But yesterday's confession in open court by Michael Cohen shows that Trump was attempting to do business in Russia during the campaign, with high-level officials from the same government that was interceding on Trump's behalf. The new Trump line is that this is all okay and that we knew about it the whole time: 'Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail...' [Donald Trump, in a tweet early this morning]

Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Akhilleus has suggested in today's Comments that we're coming up on schadenfreude time. After extensive research, I've discovered the schadenfreude dance and the appropriate outfits to wear when dancing it. (When Conan asks the name of the dance, sounds like the dancer in the segment mispronounces "schadenfreude," but the guy is German so what does he know.) The schadenfreude looks hard to learn, so here's a lesson to get you started. I'm wriggling into my bondage pants right now:

Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Months after joining the advisory board of a Miami-based patent company in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker began fielding angry complaints from customers that they were being defrauded, including from a client who showed up at his Iowa office to appeal to him personally for help, records show. Yet Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years -- even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show. Internal Federal Trade Commission documents released Friday in response to a public records request reveal the extent of Whitaker's support for World Patent Marketing, even amid a barrage of warnings about the company's behavior.... Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney, did little to assist the [FTC] investigation [of the company]. He never answered a subpoena, even after he was working in the DOJ, & as the Bloomberg reporters note in the story linked below, he did not return FTC phone calls. And bad news for Whitaker: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) is on the case. ...

... Greg Farrell, et al., of Bloomberg: "New documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission suggest that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the agency's investigators as he was stepping into his role last year as Justice Department chief of staff.... Whitaker ... asserted that he 'never emailed or wrote to consumers' in his consulting role. That statement to James Evans of the FTC appears to be inaccurate. Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau.... Whitaker threatened the customer, writing: 'I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your "group" are doing.'... At the time, the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an 'invention promotion scheme' that it accused of 'bilking millions of dollars from consumers.' The emails also convey FTC investigators's shock in October 2017 when -- in the latter stages of their investigation -- Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions."

Because of Course It Did. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is preparing to take an important step toward future oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic shore, approving five requests from companies to conduct deafening seismic tests that could kill tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals. The planned Friday announcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, to issue 'incidental take' permits allowing companies to harm wildlife is likely to further antagonize a dozen governors in states along the Eastern Seaboard who strongly oppose the administration's proposal to expand federal oil and gas leases to the Atlantic. Federal leases could lead to exploratory drilling for the first time in more than a half-century."

Election 2018, Ctd.

Georgia. Richard Fausset of the New York Times: Democrats see "... the runoff election next week for Georgia secretary of state [as] a crucial battle over minority voting rights.... Brian Kemp, the Republican who ran for governor while still serving as secretary of state, oversaw voting roll purges, registration suspensions, and an Election Day rife with problems -- all of which, critics said, were meant to suppress minority voting.... Many Democrats around the country ... believe that those tactics worked, and essentially cheated [Democrat Stacey] Abrams out of victory in an excruciatingly close race.... In TV ads, [the Democratic candidate John] Barrow leans on a fence in front of a bucolic Georgia landscape and declares, 'Yeah, I'm a Democrat, but I won't bite you.'... His Republican opponent, Brad Raffensperger, a State House member and a civil engineer, also lacks a certain bite: Even allies describe him as long on intelligence and short on charisma."

North Carolina. Amy Gardner & Kirk Ross of the Washington Post: "Mounting evidence of fraud in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District could indefinitely delay the certification of a winner, as state election officials investigate whether hundreds of absentee ballots were illegally cast or destroyed. The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has no plans to certify Republican Mark Harris's 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready, according to an agenda of a board meeting scheduled for Friday morning. The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested.... Investigators are also scrutinizing unusually high numbers of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County, in both the general election and the May 8 primary, in which Harris defeated incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger (R) by 828 votes. In the primary, Harris won 96 percent of all absentee ballots in Bladen, a far higher percentage than his win in the county overall -- a statistic that this week is prompting fresh accusations of fraud." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: So there is rampant voter fraud, after all. But it looks as if the fraudsters are Republicans.

Once Again, New Mexico Gets No Respect. AP: "A District of Columbia clerk and a supervisor refused to accept a New Mexico man's state driver's license as he sought a marriage license because she and her supervisor believed New Mexico was a foreign country. Gavin Clarkson told the Las Cruces Sun-News it happened Nov. 20 at the District of Columbia Courts Marriage Bureau as he tried to apply for a marriage license.... [Clarkson said,] 'All the couples behind us waiting in line were laughing.'"

For those of you who are not Latin scholars, Colbert explains the meaning of "pro bono":

*****

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

** Quid. Pro. Quo. Anthony Cormier & Jason Leopold of BuzzFeed News: "... Donald Trump's company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan. Two US law enforcement officials told BuzzFeed News that Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer at the time, discussed the idea with a representative of Dmitry Peskov, Putin's press secretary. The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital.... The revelation that representatives of the Trump Organization planned to forge direct financial links with the leader of a hostile nation at the height of the campaign raises fresh questions about President Trump's relationship with the Kremlin.... Two FBI agents with direct knowledge of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations told BuzzFeed News earlier this year that Cohen was in frequent contact with foreign individuals about the real estate venture -- and that some of these individuals had knowledge of or played a role in 2016 election meddling." ...

... digby: "There's a reason that the trump campaign was crawling with Russians from every direction. That's not normal. Trump's been lying about all of this. And Vladimir Putin knew all about it. In fact, they were clearly using the same talking points. You want kompromat? You don't need the pee tape. This is more than enough. This is one of the most stunning moments in American history and we now can see exactly why he was an obsequious toady toward his handler[.]" ...

... OR, as Rachel Maddow characterized the quid pro quo: Trump to Putin: "You give me America; I give you nice apartment." ...

... Emma Loop of BuzzFeed News: "A plan by Donald Trump's company to give Russian President Vladimir Putin a $50 million penthouse will be in the crosshairs of the House Intelligence Committee when Democrats take control of it in the new year, several members said.... Texas Rep. Joaquin Castro, a Democratic member of the committee, told BuzzFeed News on Thursday ... he believed the plan could have violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act. 'If this was an attempt to speed up the project or secure the project and make sure it got done, it could amount to bribery for an official of a foreign government and anyone who was part of that could be in violation of this federal statute,' he said. ...

... ** Benjamin Weiser, et al., of the New York Times: "Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, who pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws, made a surprise appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning and pleaded guilty to a new criminal charge.... At the court hearing, Mr. Cohen admitted to making false statements to Congress about his efforts to build a Trump Tower deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. That real estate deal has been a focus of the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian operatives. In written testimony to the Senate Intelligence Committee, Mr. Cohen played down the extent of his contact with the Kremlin about the potential project and made other false statements about the negotiations.... The new guilty plea in Federal District Court marks the first time the office of the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has charged Mr. Cohen." (Also linked yesterday.) The story has been updated & expanded, with Mark Mazzetti now the lead reporter. ...

... George Stephanopoulos, et al., of ABC News: "Special counsel Robert Mueller has reached a tentative deal with Michael Cohen.... Cohen appeared in federal court in Manhattan Thursday where he entered a guilty plea for misstatements to Congress...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Here's a reproduction of the "Criminal Information" filed in the Cohen case today, courtesy of Lawfare. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel deciphers Cohen's guilty plea: "... what [Cohen] testified to will implicate Trump and Don Jr directly. Here's what the information says Cohen lied to cover up: Cohen continued to pursue a Trump Tower Moscow deal for far longer than he testified he did, and briefed 'family' on it, which presumably includes Don Jr (who therefore lied to Congress about it)[.]... The plans continued after the campaign got information about emails and were specifically structured around Trump getting the nomination; they ended when the DNC hack was reported[.]... Cohen was in direct communication with Putin's press secretary] Dmitry Peskov's office; and Putin's office contacted Felix Sater [a former mobster &, um, business associate of Donald Trump].... And all this is just what Mueller wants us to know." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: As in the past, Trump's self-defense jumps from "It never happened" to "It's no big deal." Here "I have nothing to do with Russia" suddenly becomes, "It was a project everybody knew about":

... Jeff Toobin in the New Yorker: "Trump said that his Moscow deal was widely known when he was running for President (it wasn't), and that, as a private developer, he was entitled to make such deals.... It's true that Trump had the right to do business in Russia during the time when he was a candidate, but the public also had a right to know where his true financial interests lay. It would have been highly relevant to the public to learn that Trump was negotiating a business deal with Russia at the same time that he was proposing to change American policy toward that country.... Cohen's guilty plea indicates that voters were actively misled about Trump's interests. That is what is so important about Thursday morning's news -- it says that while Trump was running for President, he was doing his private business, not the public's business. Trump may believe that his interest is the national interest, but it wasn't true then, and it's not true now." ...

... Adam Davidson of the New Yorker: "Had the [Moscow Tower] project died in January, 2016, as Cohen originally claimed, it might have been a small story.... But we now know that it continued during the crucial months when Trump's Presidential campaign shifted from a long-shot joke to a serious effort. We now see that the leadership of the Trump Organization -- including Trump himself -- were aware of Cohen's efforts to make contact with Putin, and that the Kremlin shifted from indifference to enthusiasm as Trump's political fortunes grew. This increasing activity suddenly stopped -- for no clear reason -- just when Donald Trump, Jr., may have developed a far more direct relationship to the Kremlin in the Trump Tower meeting. At that point, it appears that Cohen was removed from his intermediary role and cancelled a planned trip to Moscow. Several current and former Trump Organization staffers have told me that Donald, Jr., and Ivanka did not especially like or trust Cohen." ...

The "No Collusion" Defense Is Dead. David Corn of Mother Jones: "More lying and more evidence of a significant Trump-Russia connection — that's the story behind Michael Cohen's latest guilty plea. And it shows that Donald Trump's company in 2016 was trying to collude with Russian President Vladimir Putin in order to develop a Trump business project in Moscow.... During this stretch, Trump the candidate often spoke positively about Putin and refused to criticize him -- and never publicly disclosed that he was attempting to negotiate a big deal in Russia that could not proceed if Putin's government opposed it. This meant that Trump hid from voters one of the most significant conflicts of interest in the modern history of US political campaigns.... The first memo in the infamous Steele dossier, which was written in June 2016, claimed that the Kremlin had attempted to cultivate and co-opt Trump in part by 'offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia.'... With this deal, Trump sent the message to Moscow -- at the same time its hackers were penetrating Democratic targets -- that he wanted to do business with Putin and Russia. Imagine how all this looked to Putin...." ...

... Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "... Mr. Trump's lawyers ... said Mr. Cohen's new account of the Trump Organization's abortive hotel project in Moscow essentially matches what Mr. Trump himself stated in written answers delivered to prosecutors just nine days ago. Mr. Cohen might have lied to the authorities about aspects of the deal, as the complaint charges, they said, but the president did not. 'The president said there was a proposal, it was discussed with Cohen, there was a nonbinding letter of intent and it didn't go beyond that,' said Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Mr. Trump's lawyers, who with others negotiated the president's responses to Mr. Mueller's questions for nearly a year. He said prosecutors did not raise certain details that Mr. Cohen now says he misled Congress about -- including how long the hotel project stayed alive -- and that the president did not volunteer those details.... Mr. Giuliani refused to disclose Mr. Mueller's precise questions to Mr. Trump about the deal or exactly how the president responded. He said only that Mr. Trump and the Trump Organization, his company, provided the prosecutors 'with every document about this from the beginning,' adding, 'That's the only reason they know about it.'" ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Someday we'll find out if Giuliani's assertion is true. It certainly is possible that Trump's response was vague enough to "essentially match" Cohen's assertions revealed in the "Criminal Information." But, as we know, Giuliani says stuff. ...

... Emily Fox of Vanity Fair: Michael Cohen's "guilty plea ... came together only in the last two weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. It was during that time frame that Trump submitted his written answers to questions from Mueller's team -- including, according to a previous New York Times report, an explicit question about the president's communication with Cohen about the Russian real-estate deal. Various outlets have reported that Cohen's admission sent panic through Trumpworld, but Rudy Giuliani ... insisted that the president's answers were collinear with the statements. (Giuliani, of course, has a history of staving off uncomfortable narratives.)... The special counsel's office has thousands of documents, e-mails, text messages, and electronic devices, along with dozens of hours of testimony and written statements from Cohen, Trump, and others involved. They knew enough to produce a guilty plea from Cohen." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Whether or not Mueller timed the "reveal" to coincide with Trump's previously-scheduled meeting with Putin, Fox's reporting suggests that what instigated the Cohen plea deal was Mueller's receipt of Trump's written responses to Mueller's queries. Did Trump's answer re: Trump Tower Moscow "essentially match" Cohen's plea, as Giuliani claims? The timing of the special counsel's negotiations with Cohen suggests to me the answer is "essentially, no."

... Josh Gerstein of Politico: "While Trump was not directly accused of any wrongdoing, the charge [against Michael Cohen] brings the president closer to an effort to obstruct probes into alleged contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.... In the new criminal charge unveiled Thursday, Cohen admitted that while he told the House and Senate Intelligence Committees last year that consideration of the proposed Moscow 'Trump Tower' project ceased by January 2016 -- around the time of the Iowa caucuses in the presidential race -- the business proposal remained under discussion through 'as late as approximately June 2016.' If the Moscow project in fact remained live through June 2016, it could have been a significant factor in the decision by various Trump aides and family members to attend [the infamous] June 7, 2016 'Trump Tower' meeting.... Speaking on the White House lawn on Thursday, Trump dismissed Cohen's latest admissions as fabrications. 'He's lying, very simply, to get a reduced sentence,' the president said, repeatedly calling Cohen 'weak.' However, Trump also defended the Moscow-focused real estate development drive as legitimate.... 'It was during the early part of '16 and I guess even before that. It lasted a short period of time. I didn't do the project. I decided not to do the project,' the president said. 'So, we're not talking about doing a project. We're talking about not doing a project.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Got that? He's not doing the project. Anyhow, Gerstein reports that Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) plans to bring Cohen back to testify before the House Intelligence Committee. "'It means that when the president was representing during the campaign that he had no business interest in Russia, that that wasn't true,' Schiff said of the deal." ...

I think Michael Cohen's guilty plea also underscores the importance of something else. That is we believe other witnesses were untruthful before our committee. -- Rep. Adam Schiff, to reporters Thursday

... Tierney Sneed of TPM: "Michael Cohen's guilty plea Thursday in a Manhattan courthouse ... undercut what President Trump himself has claimed about his business dealings with Russia, particularly during the campaign.... 'COHEN discussed the status and progress of the Moscow Project with Individual 1 on more than the three occasions COHEN claimed to the Committee, and he briefed family members of Individual 1 within the Company about the project,' the [court] documents said, with 'Individual 1' being a reference to Trump. This contradicts what Trump has said publicly about his business dealings with Russia, which he claimed during the campaign were nonexistent. 'For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.' -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 26, 2016. He also said at a press conference the next day, 'I have nothing to do with Russia.'" ...

... Andrew Prokop of Vox: "Cohen's plea reveals Trump's business tried to work with the Russian government on a major real estate deal while Trump was running for president -- and Trump himself was well aware of it, while concealing it from the public. Specifically, Cohen now admits that the project was still active late into the presidential campaign and that he briefed Trump and Trump family members about it often. And for the first time, Cohen admits he had a detailed phone conversation with an assistant for ... Vladimir Putin's press secretary, in which he asked for the Russian government's help moving the project forward. He tried to conceal all of this from Congress." Prokov goes on to outline six takeaways from the court docs. ...

... Ken White in the Atlantic: "Michael Cohen's decision to plead guilty to lying to Congress on Thursday was remarkable for three reasons. The first was that Cohen walked into a Manhattan federal courtroom unannounced. He did it by surprise.... The second remarkable thing was that the plea happened at all.... Normally, federal prosecutors don't waste time with this sort of rubble-bouncing.... [But in case acting AG Matt Whitaker stymies and/or conceals Mueller's report,] Cohen's case lets Mueller ... tell a story, make a report.... The third remarkable thing about Cohen's plea was its substance. The president of the United States' personal lawyer admitted to lying to Congress about the president's business activities with a hostile foreign power, in order to support the president's story. In any rational era, that would be earthshaking.... Over the past two years, we've become accustomed to headlines like 'President's Campaign Manager Convicted of Fraud' and 'President's Personal Lawyer Paid for Adult Actress's Silence.' We're numb to it all. But these are the sorts of developments that would, under normal circumstances, end a presidency." ...

... Brett Samuels of the Hill: "... Rudy Giuliani on Thursday slammed Michael Cohen and special counsel Robert Mueller in the wake of a new plea agreement between the two parties, saying the timing of the announcement was meant to harm President Trump.... Giuliani ... said that Mueller timed Cohen's guilty plea to coincide with Trump's departure for the Group of 20 (G20) Summit in Argentina. He likened Thursday's announcement to when Mueller announced charges against a dozen Russian military officers days before the president met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Russia." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Matt Ford of the New Republic agrees in part with Giuliani: "The most surprising -- and perhaps most significant -- aspect of Cohen's plea deal may be its timing. It's the second time, for example, that the special counsel's office has made a major public move in the days ahead of a scheduled meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. In July, the Justice Department indicted twelve Russian intelligence operatives for election cyberattacks against the Democratic Party. Three days later, Trump stood next to Putin at a press conference in Helsinki and said he believed the Russian president's denials over the conclusions of U.S. intelligence agencies." See also stories about Trump's "abruptly" cancelling the Putin meeting, linked below. ...

... Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker was notified in advance that [Michael Cohen] would plead guilty Thursday to lying to Congress about a Moscow real estate project that Trump and his company pursued while he was running for president.... As acting attorney general, Whitaker is the nominal supervisor of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.... Justice Department policies and special-counsel regulations call for Whitaker to be notified of significant events.... Importantly, though, the regulations do not require the attorney general to approve such steps. The attorney general can request that the special counsel explain a step that is being taken and can conclude that an action is so unwarranted under established Departmental practices that it should not be pursued.' The attorney general is supposed to give 'great weight' to the special counsel's views, and at the end of the case Congress is supposed to be notified of any proposed action that was vetoed." ...

... Mike McIntire, et al., of the New York Times attempt a narrative account of Trump's long history of trying to nail down a real estate deal in Moscow: the story's headline: "How a Trump Lawyer, a Felon and a Russian General Chased a Moscow Deal." ...

... Hunter Walker of Yahoo! News: "... Robert Mueller's investigation into President Trump's efforts to build a skyscraper in Moscow has led him to ask questions about the role two of the president's children played in attempting to secure a Russian real estate deal, sources tell Yahoo News.... Multiple sources have confirmed to Yahoo News that the president's elder daughter, Ivanka, who is now a top White House adviser, and his eldest son, Don Jr., were also working to make Trump Tower Moscow a reality." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Several legal experts, commenting on MSNBC throughout Thursday evening, have noted that Trump's lies to the public, besides misleading the American voter during a presidential campaign, made Trump extremely vulnerable to Russian blackmail. As digby points out, the Russians had some serious kompromat on Trump: they could have exploded his candidacy, and later his presidency. Instead, Robert Mueller's team appears to be ferreting out the explosive evidence from Cohen & other sources. ...

     ... Update: Michelle Goldberg on blackmail vulnerability: "That's also why evidence of Trump's business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, 'Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA -- NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!' We still don't know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.... In a Jan. 11, 2017, news conference, Trump said that the 'closest I came to Russia' was in selling a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008. While we're just learning precisely how dishonest this was, Putin has known it all along.... Every day of the Trump presidency is a national security emergency. The question now is whether Senate Republicans, who could actually do something about it, will ever be moved to care." ...

... MEANWHILE. Carol Lee, et al., of NBC News: "Senate committees investigating Russia's interference in the 2016 election are combing through witness testimony for possible misleading or untruthful statements, according to three people familiar with the effort. The review of testimony to Senate intelligence and judiciary committees comes as ... Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Thursday to a charge ... that he lied to Congress to cover up efforts during the presidential campaign to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, said Thursday that the committee had made multiple criminal referrals to Mueller, but added 'we're not going to talk about any individuals.'... The committee's chairman, Sen. Richard Burr, R-N.C., had a stern warning Thursday for witnesses appearing before Congress. 'This is a reason people shouldn't lie when they're in front of a congressional investigation,' Burr said."

David Graham of the Atlantic: "Until recently, the connection between those Russian efforts [to undermine Hillary Clinton's campaign] and Trump allies has remained somewhat obscure and speculative But recent developments have started to flesh out the picture. Russia used WikiLeaks as a conduit -- witting or unwitting -- and WikiLeaks, in turn, appears to have been in touch with Trump allies. The key remaining questions are what WikiLeaks knew and what Trump himself knew.... While Russia's authoritarianism and suppression of free expression are at odds with WikiLeaks's stated principles, Raffi Khatchadourian noted in a 2017 New Yorker profile that [Julian] Assange has tended to view Russia as an important counterweight to American empire, and has perhaps thus tended to overlook its flaws.... Trump continues to deny that there were any connections between his campaign and Russia. By now, there's enough evidence to treat this as seriously as much of what he says -- which is to say, with the presumption it's hogwash. There is not at this point any public information that connects the president directly to Russian interference in the election, but the emerging evidence strongly suggests that Trump confidants were given forewarning about Russian moves designed to hurt Clinton and boost Trump -- and that WikiLeaks was the middle man that made all of it possible." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... And Another Thing. Mrs. McCrabbie: It is no coincidence that the people who initiated the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower NYC meeting had worked with Trump to try to get Trump Tower Moscow off the ground. As Hunter Walker reiterates in his post linked above, Mike Isikoff & David Corn of Yahoo! News, in their book Russian Roulette, "detailed a 2013 effort [to build a skyscraper in Moscow] that involved the Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov and his son Emin. According to the book, Don Jr. was 'in charge' of that project and Ivanka 'flew to Russia and scouted sites with Emin.' The Agalarovs ... helped arrange the infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. The Trump Organization registered the web address TrumpTowerMoscow.com in December 2012. A source familiar with the deal said this was in conjunction with the work being done with Agalarovs. Trump tweeted at Aras Agalarov about the deal on Nov. 11, 2013..., 'I had a great weekend with you and your family... You have done a FANTASTIC job. TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next.'"

... Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair: “'Trump was totally caught off guard by the Cohen plea,' [a former White House staffer] said. Indeed, Trump's erratic responses suggest he was surprised by the news. At first, his lawyer Rudy Giuliani released a blistering statement saying Cohen is 'a proven liar who is doing everything he can to get out of a long-term prison sentence for serious crimes of bank and tax fraud.' In comments he made to reporters before departing for the G20 summit in Argentina, Trump called Cohen 'weak' and accused him of 'making up a story.' But hours later, Giuliani changed tacks, telling The New York Times that Trump's sworn answers to Mueller matched Cohen's version of events. 'Why would the president come out and say Cohen lied?' the former staffer said.... Mueller now appears to be driving the West Wing agenda, with the principals in a reactive crouch...." ...

... AND here's a headline to rattle Trump: "Trump Emerges as a Central Subject of Mueller Probe." Carol Leonnig & Josh Dawsey of the Washington Post: "In two major developments this week, President Trump has been labeled in the parlance of criminal investigations as a major subject of interest, complete with an opaque legal code name: 'Individual 1.' New evidence from two separate fronts of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's investigation casts fresh doubts on Trump's version of key events involving Russia, signaling potential political and legal peril for the president. Investigators have now publicly cast Trump as a central figure of their probe into whether Trump's campaign conspired with the Russian government during the 2016 campaign. Together, the documents show investigators have evidence that Trump was in close contact with his lieutenants as they made outreach to both Russia and WikiLeaks -- and that they tried to conceal the extent of their activities.... The president also appears in the draft charging document for Trump ally Jerome Corsi, who allegedly told [Roger] Stone about WikiLeaks' plans to release damaging Democratic emails ... because he knew Stone was in 'regular contact' with Trump. The Washington Post reported this week that Trump spoke with Stone the day after he got the alert from Corsi."

Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "Ted Malloch, a London-based [American] academic close to [Nigel] Farage, was allegedly passed a request from a longtime Trump adviser [Roger Stone] to get advance copies of emails stolen from Trump's opponents by Russian hackers and later published by WikiLeaks. The allegation emerged in a draft legal document drawn up by Robert Mueller, the special prosecutor investigating Russia's interference in the 2016election and any collusion with Trump's campaign team.... [Malloch] was stopped and questioned by the FBI in March upon his arrival at a US airport and said his mobile phone was inspected by investigators. Mueller later subpoenaed him to appear before a grand jury considering the inquiry's findings.... Last year Glenn Simpson, a Washington-based investigator whose firm prepared the explosive Trump-Russia dossier in 2016, told congressional investigators: 'I think Ted Malloch is an important person in this whole picture.' Simpson urged authorities to examine the activities of Malloch and Farage, who has denied any involvement." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: It's worth remembering that long after U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia was behind the hacking of the DNC & John Podesta's e-mails, Donald Trump was insisting that the identities & backers of the hackers were was unknowable: a 400-pound man in his basement, China, etc. Yet throughout the period Trump was casting doubt on the conclusion of his own intelligence agencies, he had insider information -- via Roger Stone & perhaps others -- that the Russian government sponsored the hacking & distribution of the Democrats' correspondence.

Harry Litman in a Washington Post op-ed: "... when [Paul] Manafort entered into the cooperation agreement with the government, he ceased to have a common interest with other defendants, including the president, as a matter of law. As former U.S. attorney Chuck Rosenberg put it, having signed with the Yankees, he couldn't give scouting reports to the Red Sox.... The open pipeline between cooperator Manafort and suspect Trump may have been not only extraordinary but also criminal. On Manafort and [his lawyer Kevin] Downing’s end, there is a circumstantial case for obstruction of justice. What purpose other than an attempt to 'influence, obstruct, or impede' the investigation of the president can be discerned from Manafort’s service as a double agent? And on the Trump side, the communications emit a strong scent of illegal witness tampering (and possibly obstruction as well). Proving those charges would require a fight." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Giuliani: Bob Mueller Is So Mean. Chris Sommerfeldt of the New York Daily News: "Paul Manafort's lawyers shared confidential information about Robert Mueller's investigation with President Trump's legal team, Rudy Giuliani said Thursday -- a move experts say could be criminal.... A former federal prosecutor known for putting mobsters behind bars, Giuliani said he would 'love' to battle anyone in court over the matter.... 'They should be ashamed of themselves,' Giuliani said of Mueller's investigators. 'God damn it, the only reason this is happening is that there's different rules if you are Donald Trump.'"

** Frank Rich: "The whole point of the incessant lying by Donald Trump and Manafort -- and the apparent lying of Stone and Corsi as well -- is ... to muddy as many waters as possible so any Mueller report will be drowned out by what Kellyanne Conway once labeled 'alternative facts.' Right now we only know bits and pieces of Mueller's findings.... But the thing about stories built on actual facts, as Mueller's will be, is that they tend to be powerful ... because they add up. People like solid crime stories. And so ... at least one such story is emerging loud and clear: the bridge that connects the Trump campaign to the trove of Democratic emails stolen by the Russians and publicized by WikiLeaks to sabotage the Clinton campaign. Two of the biggest sources for this story are Stone and Corsi themselves. The more they try to portray their WikiLeaks ties as innocent ... the more they poke holes in their own flimsy cover stories and incriminate the president. Not for nothing did Trump promote WikiLeaks' email cache at least 164 times in the last month of the 2016 campaign, in the calculation of the journalist Judd Legum. Everything adds up." Must read: Rich's commentary on two other topics: the racist Republican party & the Miami Herald's deep investigative report on now-Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta, and his sweetheart plea deal with serial child sex predator & pimp Jeffrey Epstein, a story which safari linked yesterday (and is re-linked below).

Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump on Thursday announced he would not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin as planned at the G-20 summit over tensions with Ukraine. The announcement, which came on Twitter, came roughly an hour after Trump told reporters the meeting would 'probably' go ahead as planned. 'Based on the fact that the ships and sailors have not been returned to Ukraine from Russia, I have decided it would be best for all parties concerned to cancel my previously scheduled meeting in Argentina with President Vladimir Putin,' Trump wrote ... en route to the Group of 20 summit." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A couple of hours after Trump tweeted he was cancelling the meeting with Putin, CNN reported that the White House had not notified the Kremlin about the cancellation. ...

     ... New York Times reporters link Trump's cancellation of the meeting to Michael Cohen's new plea: "The proceedings in Lower Manhattan appeared to have global repercussions. After Mr. Cohen's appearance in court, Mr. Trump abruptly canceled a planned meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia while both leaders are in Argentina. The president said he called off the meeting because of Russia's recent hostilities with Ukraine." This story also is linked above. ...

... Joshua Keating of Slate: "The Kremlin responded snippily to Thursday's announcement, saying that Putin would now have more time for 'useful meetings.'... The AP reported that Trump would also be calling off sit-down meetings with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey and President Moon Jae-in of South Korea. His talks with those leaders have been reduced to informal 'pull-asides' on the sidelines of the summit.... The additional cancellations of meetings with the leaders of Turkey and South Korea seems like an attempt to downplay the significance of the Russia announcement. It will also allow Trump to avoid what would be awkward conversations about his staunch backing of Saudi Arabia and the uneasy state of nuclear diplomacy with North Korea. Trump has also made a habit of skipping events and taking off early on previous foreign trips...." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Truth is, this is a very "low-energy," easily-distracted president* who has almost no interest in doing his job.

Maxime Schlee of Politico: French President "Emmanuel Macron told Argentine newspaper La Nacion that while the alliance between France and the U.S. is 'historic,' some of ... Donald Trump's recent decisions 'have been done to the detriment of his allies.'... Speaking from Buenos Aires, where he arrived Wednesday for the G20 summit, Macron warned against the risk of a 'tête-à-tête between China and the United States and a trade war that is destructive for everyone.'” (Also linked yesterday.)

"To Get Back at G.M., Trump Threatens to Punish Any American Who Buys an Electric Car." Bess Levin of Vanity Fair: "... the move [GM made to close five North American plants & lay off 15 percent of its salaried work force] was a logical decision that you might expect someone like Donald Trump, a self-described businessman who claims to know 'more about' money, taxes, trading, banking, and the economy than anyone, to understand. But, of course, Trump is only a businessman in so much as he played one on TV -- his real-life accomplishments are more along the lines of bankrupting a casino and receiving a lifetime allowance from his father, who had to bail him out on numerous occasions. Which is why ... Trump told a reporter that G.M. 'better damn well open a new plant there very quickly,' that the company is 'playing around with the wrong person,' and that [GM CEO Mary] Barra will have 'a problem' if she doesn't immediately open a new facility. And then on Tuesday, still foaming at the mouth, he came out with this: ['We are now looking at cutting all @GM subsidies, including for electric cars.']... Subsidies for G.M.-specific electric vehicles do not exist. Rather, there are industry-wide federal tax credits of up to $7,500 available for purchasers of U.S. electric cars.... In other words, getting rid of the subsidy in its current form would hurt both American consumers and other auto manufacturers."

** "All the Best People", Ctd. Julie Brown of The Miami Herald has a long investigative piece on how Trump's current Secretary of Labor Alexander Acosta covered up the sex crimes of Jeffrey Epstein and all his pervert friends: "The eccentric hedge fund manager [Epstein], whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show. Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life..., [but] a deal was struck -- an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein's crimes and the number of people involved. Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal -- called a non-prosecution agreement -- essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein's sex crimes.... This is the story of how Epstein ... was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Ha! Lone Black Senator Trips up Party of Racists. Catie Edmondson of the New York Times: "Tim Scott of South Carolina, the lone black Republican senator, said on Thursday that he would oppose the judicial nomination of Thomas A. Farr, a lawyer who defended a North Carolina voter identification law and a partisan gerrymander that a federal court said was drafted to suppress black votes 'with surgical precision.' Mr. Scott will join Senator Jeff Flake, Republican of Arizona, who has vowed to oppose every White House nominee unless the Senate votes on legislation to protect the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. With Democrats united against Mr. Farr, his nomination to a United States District Court appears doomed. Mr. Scott's decision marks the second time he has brought down a White House judicial nominee who was seen as insensitive or hostile to African-Americans. He had previously helped to sink the nomination of Ryan W. Bounds over his writings in college, which upbraided 'race-focused groups' on campus and 'race-think.' The Republican Party, Mr. Scott told reporters, is 'not doing a very good job of avoiding the obvious potholes on race in America.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: To prove Scott's assessment, "His fellow Senate Republicans, meanwhile, had shrugged off criticisms against Mr. Farr, with Senator Orrin G. Hatch, Republican of Utah and a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, calling them 'utterly false character assassination nonsense.'"

Mark Stern of Slate: "Welcome to the topsy-turvy world of civil asset forfeiture, also known as legalized theft. Every year, the federal and state governments obtain billions of dollars thanks to the work of prosecutors who expropriate property with some tenuous connection to a crime. Most states use the money to fund law enforcement, called policing for profit. Indiana also lets private attorneys file forfeiture claims against defendants, earning contingency fees and a share of the profit. That's what happened to [Tyson] Timbs -- so he sued, insisting that extreme forfeiture violates the Constitution. On Wednesday, the Supreme Court signaled that it agreed, with an unusual coalition of justices assailing the practice. A decision for Timbs could curb law enforcement abuses across the country, limiting one of the most scandalous components of our criminal justice system." Read on; the Constitutional arguments are interesting. (Also linked yesterday.)

Feliciz Sonmez of the Washington Post: "The head of a U.S. government agency has apologized to George Soros and his Open Society Foundations for the airing of a program that espoused conspiracy theories about Soros and called him a 'multimillionaire Jew.' In letters sent earlier this month, John F. Lansing, chief executive and director of the U.S. Agency for Global Media, voiced his personal apologies to Soros and OSF president Patrick Gaspard for the program, which he said had 'made several false and negative assertions' about the billionaire philanthropist and had furthered 'age-old tropes against the Jewish community.'... The 15-minute, Spanish-language segment was aired in May by Radio and Television Martí, which is overseen by the U.S. Agency for Global Media (USAGM) and its Office of Cuba Broadcasting. The Miami-based network broadcasts news and other programs promoting U.S. interests to audiences in Cuba. The program, which has since been taken offline, called Soros a 'nonpracticing Jew of flexible morals,' claimed that he was involved in 'clandestine operations that led to the dismantling of the Soviet Union' and described him as 'the architect of the financial collapse of 2008.'" There's more to the story. ...

... Capitalism Is Cutthroat. Nicholas Confessore & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "Sheryl Sandberg asked Facebook's communications staff to research George Soros's financial interests in the wake of his high-profile attacks on tech companies, according to three people with knowledge of her request, indicating that Facebook's second in command was directly involved in the social network's response to the liberal billionaire.... Ms. Sandberg ... requested an examination into why Mr. Soros had criticized the tech companies and whether he stood to gain financially from the attacks. Facebook later commissioned a campaign-style opposition research effort by Definers Public Affairs, a Republican-linked firm, which gathered and circulated to reporters public information about Mr. Soros's funding of American advocacy groups critical of Facebook. Those efforts, revealed this month in a New York Times investigation, set off a public relations debacle for Ms. Sandberg and for Facebook, which was accused of trafficking in anti-Semitic attacks against the billionaire. Facebook quickly fired Definers.... The revelation [that Sandberg asked for oppo research on Soros] complicates Ms. Sandberg's shifting explanations of her role in Facebook's decisions to hire Definers and go on the offensive against the social network's growing legion of critics." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I was getting ready to defend Sandberg on this. After all, if someone attacked you or your business, wouldn't you try to find out why? Wouldn't you try to find out if the person had a corrupt interest in attacking you? But then I read Soros' remarks about Facebook & Google -- the remarks that inspired Sandberg's request to investigate him. A transcript is here. Instead of going after Soros, Sandberg should have taken to heart his concerns. Sandberg responded to Soros' warnings about the dangers her company posed to the free market of ideas by commanding oppo research against him rather than by working with him to address the concerns he raised. This is not responsible stewardship of a monopoly; it's a creepy reaction to reasoned criticism.

#MeToo. James Stewart, et al., of the New York Times: "A trove of text messages details a plan by [Les] Moonves and a faded Hollywood manager [Marv Dauer] to bury a sexual assault allegation. Instead, the scheme helped sink the CBS chief, and may cost him $120 million." This is a long but easy read and a window into Moonves' seamy, creepy machinations. Don't think the story is a unique aberration; as Frank Rich writes in the post linked above, "... you will be sickened all over again by the quantity of sexual assault that not only took place in the highest echelons of American society but that was then successfully covered up by corporations, lawyers, and supposed law-enforcement authorities."

Way Beyond the Beltway

Luke Harding of the Guardian: "Police in Germany have raided the offices of Deutsche Bank in connection with the Panama Papers revelations and as part of an investigation into alleged money laundering. About 170 police officers, prosecutors and tax inspectors searched six Deutsche Bank officers in and around Frankfurt, the public prosecutor's office said." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

News Lede

NBC News: "A 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Alaska on Friday, the United States Geological Survey said, prompting authorities to declare a tsunami warning, which was later canceled. The quake hit about eight miles north of Anchorage. Videos posted to social media showed students taking shelter under desks and grocery store items knocked off shelves. Gov. Bill Walker said he issued a major declaration of disaster after the "major earthquake" and is in communication with the White House. 'There is major infrastructure damage across Anchorage,' according to a statement from the Anchorage Police Department. 'Many homes and buildings are damaged. Many roads and bridges are closed. Stay off the roads if you don't need to drive. Seek a safe shelter. Check on your surroundings and loved ones.'"