;)
The Commentariat -- August 25, 2018
Late Morning Update:
Noam Scheiber of the New York Times: "A federal district judge in Washington struck down most of the key provisions of three executive orders that President Trump signed in late May that would have made it easier to fire federal employees. The ruling, issued early Saturday, is a blow to Republican efforts to rein in public-sector labor unions, which states like Wisconsin have aggressively curtailed in recent years. In June, the Supreme Court dealt public-sector unions a major blow by ending mandatory union fees for government workers nationwide.... The complaint said that the president lacks the authority to override federal law on these questions, and the judge in the case, Ketanji Brown Jackson, agreed, writing that most of the key provisions of the executive orders 'conflict with congressional intent in a manner that cannot be sustained.'"
Philip Bump of the Washington Post on "the three illegal acts that may have helped Trump with the presidency.... [1] The hush money [to Karen McDougal & Stormy Daniels].... [2] The hackers. Last month, special counsel Robert S. Mueller III obtained an indictment against 12 Russians believed to work for the country's Main Intelligence Directorate, or GRU.... [3] The trolls. In February, Mueller's team obtained indictments against 13 Russians who worked for an organization called the Internet Research Agency.... We ... do not yet have a full picture of two other key points of contact between the Trump campaign and Russian actors.... What became more clear this week is Trump's campaign was aided by many more surreptitious acts violating federal law than we realized -- and President Trump himself is now clearly implicated in aiding at least one."
Chico Harlan & Amanda Ferguson of the Washington Post: "Pope Francis said Saturday that the 'failure of ecclesiastical authorities' to address sexual abuse has 'rightly given rise to outrage,' his first acknowledgment during his trip to Ireland of the traumas here that have radically diminished the Roman Catholic clergy's once-towering authority. In an address at Dublin Castle, Francis described the 'repellent crimes' and the failure to deal with them as 'a source of pain and shame for the Catholic community.' But he did not discuss concrete changes in laws or transparency or address the question of the Vatican's complicity in the abuse cases."
*****
Mark Landler & Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "President Trump said on Friday that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to skip a planned trip to North Korea, abruptly canceling the next round of negotiations on the country's nuclear program in his first public acknowledgment that his diplomatic overture to the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, had run into trouble.... In his tweets on Friday afternoon, Mr. Trump said the nuclear negotiations had been hampered by a lack of support from China, which he attributed to its increasingly rancorous trade dispute with the United States.... Lower-level trade negotiations between Washington and Beijing ended on Thursday with few signs of progress, raising the odds of additional American tariffs on Chinese goods. Mr. Trump also met with legislators to discuss a new law aimed at curbing Chinese investment.
When Loonytoons Meet. Asawin Suebsaeng & Will Sommer of the Daily Beast: "On Thursday..., Donald Trump posed for an Oval Office photo with one of the leading promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which claims that top Democrats are part of a global pedophile cult ... [and] that Trump and the military are engaged in a high-stakes shadow war against ... [the] cult.... YouTube conspiracy theorist Lionel Lebron was in the White House for an event on Thursday, according to a video Lebron posted online. During the visit, Lebron and his wife posed for a smiling picture with Trump in the Oval Office.... Lebron claimed to have received a 'special guided tour of the White House' before posing for pictures with Trump." Lebron said he didn't discuss the anti-cult operation with Trump because, "I think we all know he knows about it." ...
... Jeet Heer: "The two possibilities are that either someone in the White House set up the meeting to help bolster QAnon or that White House security is so lax that a dubious character like LeBron could easily push his way into a photo-op. Neither possibility is reassuring."
As the Worms Turn, Ctd.
The Trump Family Is So Screwed. Tom Winter of NBC News: "The longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, Allen Weisselberg, was given immunity by federal prosecutors in New York during the course of the Michael Cohen investigation, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The news was first reported Friday by The Wall Street Journal. Weisselberg is 'Executive 1' on page 17 of the criminal information filed by prosecutors in the Michael Cohen case.... Weisselberg, 70, began working for the Trump Organization as an accountant in the 1970s, when ... Donald Trump's father Fred ran the company. Weisselberg was also treasurer of The Donald J. Trump Foundation, the president's charitable organization, which has been sued by the New York attorney general for alleged violations of state law." Thanks to MAG for the lead. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "... Weisselberg ... becom[es] the latest figure close to President Trump to cooperate with investigators in exchange for leniency for himself. Weisselberg follows Michael Flynn, Rick Gates, George Papadopoulos, David Pecker and, of course, [Michael] Cohen. But the latest news is potentially even bigger than its predecessors. And that's because none of these other figures can likely hold a candle to Weisselberg when it comes to knowing about any skeletons in Trump's closet.... How much Weisselberg actually knew the specific details of [the McDougal & Daniels hush-money] arrangement[s] isn't clear. But the fact that there was reason to subpoena him and make him cut an immunity deal is big. That means he personally had potential criminal liability, and he had to give something of real value to get out of that." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Natasha Bertrand of the Atlantic: "The significance of [Allen Weisselberg's] flip, paired with [Michael] Cohen's recent plea deal, cannot be overstated: It took slightly more than a year for two of the president's longest-serving employees, considered by many to be the last who would ever turn on him, to cooperate with federal investigators -- and, in Cohen's case, directly implicate Trump in a crime. But the news also marked a turning point in the legal assault on Trumpworld: SDNY prosecutors may now pose a more immediate threat to the president than Special Counsel Robert Mueller does.... Taken together, SDNY seems to be homing in on Trump.... The SDNY investigation has prompted comparisons to a mob roll-up -- of the kind, ironically, that Trump's personal lawyer Rudy Giuliani oversaw in the 1980s while he was a prosecutor in New York." ...
... Aaron Keller of Law & Crime: "Law&Crime Founder Dan Abrams tweeted that Weisselberg's deal is 'with the Southern District of NY, not Mueller's team and is likely confined to Cohen/hush payments.' Abrams believes it is likely 'not some broader deep dive into President Trump's finances.'... [But] several opinion leaders and experts [said] ... Weisselberg's decision to 'flip' carries broader implications." ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Dan Goldman, formerly an SDNY prosecutor, said on MSNBC last night that Weisselberg's & Pecker's immunity deals were granted on a "compulsion" basis; that is, prosecutors compelled them to testify about specific matters & granted them immunity from prosecution on any of their admissions related to those rounds of questioning. That suggested that their immunity deals are indeed limited, as Abrams guessed. No link. ...
... Mimi Rocah & Elie Honig in the Daily Beast: Cohen, Pecker & Weissenberg: all these former President's men "work for the feds now.... We now know from the charging document (called an Information) to which [Michael] Cohen pleaded guilty, that several other people, identified but not named, were involved in [the hush-money] scheme. The Information identifies a 'Chairman of a Media Company,' and Executive-1 and Executive-2 of what is clearly the Trump Organization, as participating in this scheme. Based on reporting and the facts in the Information, it's clear that the media chairman is David Pecker< of American Media, Inc. (the National Enquirer), a longtime ally of Trump, and that Executive-1 is Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization. And we now know, based on further reporting, that both of those men received some kind of immunity deal in exchange for their cooperation.... It seems unlikely that the Southern District of New York needed to immunize these two witness just to charge Cohen.... At least some of the individuals and entities who should be concerned: Executive-2 of the Trump Organization, the Trump Organization, and possibly 'one or more members of the campaign' who coordinated with Cohen.... This must have many people, including Trump, very concerned." ...
... Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "The news of Weisselberg's and Pecker's immunity deals comes amid Trump's recent remarks lashing out at so-called 'flippers.' In an interview that aired Thursday, the president suggested that 'flipping' -- that is, cooperating with law enforcement in exchange for leniency --; should even be 'outlawed.'"
Erica Orden of CNN: "The New York State Attorney General's Office is poised to pursue a criminal probe of Michael Cohen's potential state tax law violations, having sought a criminal referral on the matter from the state Department of Taxation and Finance, according to a person familiar with the matter. Attorney General Barbara Underwood's office sought the referral in recent days, following the criminal charges brought against ... Donald Trump's former personal attorney by federal prosecutors in the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York, this person said.... The state tax department also subpoenaed Cohen earlier this week as part of a probe pertaining to the Trump Foundation...."
"No Collusion." Catherine Rampell of the Washington Post: "Trump and surrogates have argued that his former lawyer's and his campaign chairman’s near-simultaneous legal losses don't imperil the president himself. After all, none of the charges that Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort were convicted of this week involved Russian connections to Trump's 2016 campaign. Quoth the president: 'And what's come out of Manafort? No collusion. What's come out of Michael Cohen? No collusion.' As for the Cohen crimes that did directly implicate Trump -- the campaign finance violations -- the president and his people have argued that these are not actually crimes. After all, they're so rarely prosecuted! [But] there's plenty of precedent for prosecuting [tax crimes]. And the Cohen filings this week raise serious new questions about whether Trump has criminal tax-fraud exposure.... 'The reason to go through the shenanigans of making this transaction [-- the hush-money payment to Stephanie Clifford --] look like legal expenses, to me, is to make something not deductible look deductible,' said Johnson Ware." ...
... Even the Doorman Has Turned on Trump. of CNN: "A former Trump World Tower doorman who says he has knowledge of an alleged affair ... Donald Trump had with an ex-housekeeper, which resulted in a child, is now able to talk about a contract he entered with American Media Inc. that had prohibited him from discussing the matter with anyone, according to his attorney. On Friday, Marc Held -- the attorney for Dino Sajudin, the former doorman -- said his client had been released from his contract with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, 'recently' after back-and-forth discussions with AMI. CNN has exclusively obtained a copy of the 'source agreement' between Sajudin and AMI, which is owned by David Pecker. The contract appears to have been signed on Nov. 15, 2015, and states that AMI has exclusive rights to Sajudin's story but does not mention the details of the story itself beyond saying, 'Source shall provide AMI with information regarding Donald Trump's illegitimate child...'.... Sajudin's allegation that Trump fathered a child out of wedlock has not been independently confirmed by any of the outlets that have investigated the story." Mrs. McC: The saddest part: they may be another little Trumpie Toddler out there. Poor kid.
William Saletan of Slate: Donald Trump is also bent out over Jeff Sessions' failure to "protect" him & to "take control of" the DOJ & "this Russia thing," and over Michael Cohen's flip. But on obstruction, White House counsel Don McGahn may have given the Mueller team everything it needs. By detailing to prosecutors Trump's actions & remarks on several matters, McGahn likely exposed Trump's "criminal intent" to obstruct the investigation, whether McGahn thinks so or not. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I think Trump's public statements, including many of his tweets, are strong evidence of his "criminal intent" to impede the investigation. Why incessantly knock Mueller's team & DOJ brass for conducting a "witch hunt" if your intent is not to delegitimize, stifle or end the "witch hunt"?
Chris Sommerfeldt of the New York Daily News: Rudy Giuliani "-- famous for coaxing New York mobsters into spilling the beans on their bosses -- took a slight jab at President Trump on Friday over his claim that the longstanding legal tactic of 'flipping' ought to be 'outlawed.' 'The President is not a lawyer,' Giuliani told the Daily News. In an unusual rebuttal of his own boss, the New York mayor-turned-top Trump attorney suggested the President might not have had a full grasp of what he was talking about when he went on Fox News on Wednesday and proposed outlawing witness cooperation agreements. 'I don't think he's against the idea of cooperation,' Giuliani, 74, said. 'He's against the idea of getting people to lie.' 'I'm not troubled by his comments,' Giuliani added."
Two victims of the notorious FBI, according to the NRA.Jonathan Chait: "NRA spokesperson Dana Loesch informs her audience that the FBI is trying to pull the same tricks on Trump that they used to entrap the beloved Prohibition-era Chicago gang leader: 'They're trying to Al Capone the president. I mean, you remember. Capone didn't go down for murder.... He went in for tax fraud. Prosecutors didn't care how he went down as long as he went down.' You might wonder why Trump's supporters believe his legal defense is aided by analogizing him to a murderous criminal. Perhaps the answer is that Capone had several qualities that recommend him to the Republican grassroots base. He was a business owner -- or, in modern Republican lingo, a Job Creator. He was an avid Second Amendment enthusiast. And, most importantly, Capone, like Trump, was a victim of the deep state." Chait goes on to have more fun with Loesch's "logic." ...
... Lawrence Douglas & Alexander George in the Guardian: "If Trump shot Michael Cohen in broad daylight, here's what Republicans would say." Mrs. McC: Funny. In fact, I suspect the authors -- who are both Amherst College law professors -- got hold of Paul Ryan's pre-written talking points. Thanks to Ken W. for the link.
Josh Gerstein of Politico: "Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is shaving its estimate for the length of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort's upcoming trial, projecting that the prosecution case could be completed in as little as two weeks. 'The government anticipates that its case-in-chief will last approximately ten to twelve trial days,' prosecutors wrote in a filing Friday evening in U.S. District Court in Washington. Manafort is set to go on trial there beginning September 17 on charges of failing to register as a foreign agent, money laundering and obstruction of justice."
Julian Barnes & Matthew Rosenberg of the New York Times: "In 2016, American intelligence agencies delivered urgent and explicit warnings about Russia's intentions to try to tip the American presidential election -- and a detailed assessment of the operation afterward -- thanks in large part to informants close to President Vladimir V. Putin and in the Kremlin who provided crucial details. But two years later, the vital Kremlin informants have largely gone silent, leaving the C.I.A. and other spy agencies in the dark about precisely what Mr. Putin's intentions are for November's midterm elections, according to American officials familiar with the intelligence. The officials do not believe the sources have been compromised or killed. Instead, they have concluded they have gone to ground amid more aggressive counterintelligence by Moscow, including efforts to kill spies, like the poisoning in March in Britain of a former Russian intelligence officer that utilized a rare Russian-made nerve agent. Current and former officials also said the expulsion of American intelligence officers from Moscow has hurt collection efforts. And officials also raised the possibility that the outing of an F.B.I. informant under scrutiny by the House intelligence committee -- an examination encouraged by President Trump -- has had a chilling effect on intelligence collection." (Also linked yesterday.)
Paul Fontelo of Roll Call: Rep. "Duncan Hunter [R-Calif.] is Using Campaign Funds to Defend Himself Against ... Misusing Campaign Funds.... Hunter's legal defense is coming from the same campaign coffers he and his wife are accused of misusing, so far amounting to more than $600,000 for the lawyers.... Hunter's use of campaign funds for attorney fees is likely legal and permitted.... The Hunter campaign';s expenditures of $600,000 for the 2018 election dwarfs the campaign's previous payments for legal matters." Mrs. McC: Maybe we can rationalize this by positing that anybody who donates to Duncan there deserves to have his hard-earned money misused. AND Gloria makes an excellent point in today's Comments. ...
... There's Always More to the Story. We learned yesterday that Hunter went on the teevee to blame his wife for all the illegal campaign finance activity? (This was after he blamed the "political agenda" of "the Democrats' arm of law enforcement" for investigating him in the first place.) And there are those trysts with "Individuals 14, 15, and 18":
... Tina Nguyen of Vanity Fair: "They include thousands of dollars spent on a personal vacation with Individual 14 at a Tahoe ski resort; a $162.02 charge for 'a personal stay at the Liaison Capitol Hill hotel with Individual 14'; repeated trips to Individual 15's house; and a $32.27 Uber ride at 7:40 A.M., in Washington, D.C., from Individual 18's home to Duncan's office.... Whatever happened after Hunter threw his wife under the bus clearly did not bring the couple closer together: according to CNN, the two arrived at the courthouse separately, entered the courtroom separately, and 'sat four seats apart' during the hearing." Mrs. McC: If you read the complaint, which is here, there's much more because "Individual 14, Individual 15, Individual 16, Individual 17,? and ?Individual 18? lived in the Washington, DC. area and had personal relationships with DUNCAN HUNTER." The Liaison Hotel? ...
... Oh, and Hunter complained on Fox "News" about his crappy $174,000 annual salary, which is of course a lot more than most Americans pull down. Well, yeah, that's not much when you've racked "up $37,000 in insufficient funds fees thanks to over 1,100 overdrafts." If you make only $174K, you might want to be more careful about managing your bank account.
Nicholas Fandos & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "Senator John McCain of Arizona, who has been battling brain cancer for more than a year, will no longer be treated for his condition, his family announced on Friday, a sign that the Republican war hero is most likely entering his final days." (Also linked yesterday.)
Election 2018
Maggie Astor of the New York Times: "The abuse already common in many women's everyday lives can be amplified in political campaigns, especially if the candidate is also a member of a minority group.... Harassment is not new for women in politics, or anywhere else -- and men face it too, especially if they are African-American or Jewish. But for women, the harassment is ubiquitous and frequently sexualized, and it has come to the fore this election cycle, partly because so many women are running and partly because more of them are discussing their experiences":
Congressional Race -- Special Election. John Wagner of the Washington Post: "Republican Troy Balderson was declared the winner Friday over Democrat Danny O'Connor in a closely contested special election in a central Ohio congressional district that Republicans have held for decades. After thousands of provisional and absentee ballots were counted, the Associated Press declared Balderson, a state senator, the winner of the Aug. 7 contest.... Balderson's narrow win came in a district that President Trump won by 11 percentage points in 2016 and that the GOP has held since 1983. Balderson received the endorsements of both Trump and Ohio Gov. John Kasich (R). Balderson and O'Connor will face off again Nov. 6, competing this time for a full two-year term in Congress."
Laurence Tribe in a Washington Post op-ed: The Founding Fathers would not have wanted Brett Kavanaugh's confirmation to continue. "The framers built the Constitution on the premise that men aren't angels, and they did not trust a president's nominees to the Supreme Court to be impartial in determining whether he should stay in office. At the Constitutional Convention, Virginia's George Mason thought judges 'surely' ought not preside over the impeachment trials of presidents to whom they owed their jobs; Connecticut's Roger Sherman agreed. So the framers came up with a solution: They assigned the impeachment power to the House and the power to try impeachments to the Senate.... As [the impeachment] storm and others rage, Trump has nominated an Article II maximalist to the Supreme Court -- a man who may well have been selected specifically for his antipathy to prosecution or even investigation of any sitting president. There is no need to hurry. The slowly mounting chorus of senators calling for a pause in Kavanaugh's confirmation would have resonated strongly with the framers. Their views cannot rule us from the grave, but the structure they created has served us well."
Michael Wilson of the New York Times: "Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, who ran the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention for eight years under President Obama, was arrested in Brooklyn on Friday morning on a sex abuse charge after an incident in October 2017, the police said. A 55-year-old woman came forward to the police in July and said that Dr. Frieden, described by the authorities as an acquaintance, grabbed her buttocks against her will nine months earlier, on Oct. 20, at his residence ... in Brooklyn Heights, the police said." (Also linked yesterday.)
Beyond the Beltway
Some Good News. Victor Blackwell, et al., of CNN: "In a meeting that lasted less than 60 seconds, a Georgia elections board voted down a plan Friday to close seven of a majority-black county's nine polling places ahead of November's midterm elections. Critics had said the plan to consolidate polling places in Randolph County, Georgia, was a brazen attempt to suppress the black vote in Georgia's governor race, which pits former Georgia House minority leader Stacey Abrams, who is black, against Georgia Secretary of State Brian Kemp, who is white.The vote came amid widespread national criticism and days after the county terminated its contract with Mike Malone, the consultant who made the recommendation. Malone had argued that closing the polling stations would save the county money, and that some of the sites suggested for closure did not comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act. It's unclear whether the termination of Malone's contract impacted the vote." There are only two people on the Randolph County Board of Elections. (Also linked yesterday.)
News Lede
USA Today: "Roadways were virtually empty, stores closed, no buses are running and some buildings were boarded up as Honolulu prepared for the arrival of Lane, originally a hurricane but downgraded to a tropical storm Friday afternoon. The National Weather Service warned that even a tropical storm can bring maximum winds of 70 miles per hour and that the threat of flooding was still present through Saturday. 'We're not out of the woods yet,' Governor David Ige said at a press conference in Honolulu. The island of Oahu, home to 69 percent of Hawaii's population, has been preparing for days for the storm's slow, 5 mph approach."
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Reader Comments (7)
As outpourings of sympathy for the family of John McCain and recognitions of his service continue, the petulant child in the White House thus far can’t even find it in his withered little heart to mention McCain’s name. A disgrace as a man and an abysmal failure as a human being.
I am fine with Con Congress Critters using their donors hard earned for trips to Italy, strip clubs and Target. Spend away! $250k seems like they weren't even trying - IOKIYAR. I want Dems to spend their campaign contributions on getting (re)elected.
Excerpt from NYT's Roger Cohen "How Far America Has Fallen":
"The thing about all the shocking Trump revelations — Michael Cohen’s about violating campaign finance laws by paying hush money to two women in coordination with a “candidate for federal office” being the latest — is that they are already baked into Trump’s image. His supporters, and there are tens of millions of them, never had illusions. I’ve not met one, Babcox [a pastor Cohen was interviewing in Colorado] said, who did not have a pretty clear picture of Trump. They’ve known all along that he’s a needy narcissist, a womanizer, a lowlife, a liar, a braggart and a generally miserable human being. That’s why the “Access Hollywood” tape or the I-could-shoot-somebody-on-Fifth-Avenue boast did not kill his candidacy."
So then are we to conclude that it won't matter what nefarious doings might be revealed, including Russian collusion, to these followers? Cohen's point that these lovers of Trump signify the demise of American values but at the same time describes those ingrained values of that old western myth of self reliance, along with gun freedoms and libertarian sensibilities. He doesn't mention religion but I'm pretty sure that plays a part. Therefore nothing has really changed, has it? Trump is like a hard rain in the desert where certain bushes lie dormant until that rain brings them back to life.
Back in the day when Earl Warren was Chief Justice, he would ask, after an oral argument, "But is it fair?" I recall reading somewhere that Obama's characteristic question was, "Is that what we aspire to be as a country? Is that who we are?"
And that question hangs in the balance like a quivering web.
OR––"the age old question: Do elves have balls."
An impeachment trail may not result in removing Trump from office, but the trial would be highly entertaining. And it would probably cause a few low info voters to take an interest politics for a little while. The Republicans should be made to raise their hand and vote not guilty after listening to the mountain of misdeeds of Trump. For once they won't be able to just run away and say and do nothing. Can you imagine all the people who would race each other to get to the witness box to stick it to Trump? I doubt James Comey ever thought he might be on the same witness list as a pornstar.
I am reminded these days of the Berlin Wall. It seemed to be impregnable, and it was impossible to imagine it falling. Until all of a sudden - almost in a matter of weeks - it wasn’t and it did. Same thing with the Soviet Union. We may be seeing the beginning of something similar these days ...
https://www.newsweek.com/roger-stone-mueller-will-indict-donald-trump-jr-1090698
One can only hope...with the professional sleaze who just pointed the finger at him right behind him.