The Commentariat -- January 27, 2019

Afternoon Update:

Felicia Sonmez of the Washington Post: "President Trump will secure the U.S. border with Mexico 'with or without Congress,' acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney said Sunday, as negotiations over Trump's long-sought border wall begin anew. In an interview on 'Fox News Sunday,' Mulvaney declined to say whether Trump would accept less than the $5.7 billion in funding he has demanded for the wall. But he maintained that Trump is ready to use emergency powers to secure the border if Democrats continue to balk at his demands." ...

... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Mick Mulvaney on Sunday refused to rule out U.S. military action to address unrest in Venezuela, following a week where ... Donald Trump distanced the U.S. from the country's ruler, Nicolás Maduro, by recognizing an opposition figure as Venezuela's true leader."

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump early Sunday pushed questionable claims about Texas officials reviewing voter rolls to warn of 'rampant' voter fraud and advocate for 'Strong vote ID.' The president alleged that 58,000 noncitizens voted in Texas, and that 95,000 noncitizens registered to vote. His tweet was apparently spurred by a 'Fox & Friends' segment on the figures at about 8 a.m.... In fact, The Texas Tribune reported that the Texas secretary of state's office announced Friday it had flagged 95,000 registered voters who it said should be reviewed to determine whether they are U.S. citizens. Of that group, 58,000 cast a ballot in at least one election from 1996 to 2018, The Texas Tribune reported. The identified individuals provided some form of documentation when obtaining an identification card that showed they were not citizens, the news outlet reported. However, it's unclear how many are still not U.S. citizens, as some may have been naturalized."

Still Whining. Brett Samuels: "President Trump late Saturday railed against the indictment of Roger Stone, insisting that he did not work with his longtime confidant 'anywhere near the Election' and complaining that the focus should instead be on obstacles his campaign faced in 2016. In a series of tweets, Trump cited allegations in Stone's indictment that data was released during the 2016 campaign to damage then-Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The president suggested he was subject to similar campaigns, pointing to the so-called Steele dossier, which he dubbed a 'total phony conjob.' The dossier contained several salacious allegations, some of which were unverified, about Trump's relationship to Russia. The dossier was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, after the election. The president also argued via Twitter he was subjected to 'one sided Fake Media coverage (collusion with Crooked H?),' and 'bias by Facebook and many others.'"

Lauren King & Ali Dukakis of ABC News: "Roger Stone, following a pre-dawn arrest at his home in Florida and ahead of an arraignment in Washington on Tuesday, said that he would discuss cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, if asked.... 'Have you ever had any conversations with the president during the campaign or since the campaign about Russia or the Mueller investigation?' [George] Stephanopolous asked. 'None whatsoever,' he said. 'Categorically. ... Zero. Zero.'" Mrs. McC: Okay, case closed. Trump is off the hook. ...

... Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "In indictments and plea agreements unveiled over the last 20 months..., Robert S. Mueller III has shown over and over again that some of President Trump's closest friends and advisers have lied about Russia and related issues.... The remaining question -- for both Mueller's team, as it works on a final investigative report, and for the American people -- is why.... The deception by Trump advisers that has led to guilty pleas so far does have a common throughline: Much of it centers on their interactions about Russia.... Steve Hall, who retired from the CIA in 2015 after 30 years of running and managing Russia operations, said..., 'In my view, those lies -- what was lied about and under what condition the lies were told -- contribute to a counterintelligence pattern that has begun to emerge pointing to senior members of the Trump team being involved with the Russians.'..." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I get a kick out of the way some of Trump's defenders give him the benefit of the doubt by arguing that all of Trump's associates are all liars & generally untrustworthy.

Border Patrol Asked to Find Evidence for Trump's Oft-Repeated Horror Story. Dara Lind of Vox: "It's become a staple of ... Donald Trump's riffs on the horrors of the US-Mexico border...: Human traffickers gag women with tape so they can't even breathe before packing them into vans and driving them across the border illegally. But two weeks after Trump had started talking about tape-gagged women -- when a January 17 Washington Post article had questioned the claim — a top Border Patrol official had to email agents to ask if they had 'any information' that the claim was actually true. The email ... was sent as a 'request for information' by an assistant Border Patrol chief, apparently on behalf of the office of Customs and Border Protection commissioner Kevin McAleenan.... It asked agents to reply within less than two hours with 'any information (in any format) regarding claims of tape-gagged women -- and even linked to the Post article 'for further info.' Vox's source indicated that they and others in their sector hadn't heard anything that would back up Trump's claims, but wasn't sure if agents in other sectors had provided information. However, no one from the Trump administration has come forward to offer evidence for the claim, either before or after the internal Border Patrol email was sent.... It's extremely hard to prove that such things have never happened -- especially because the president has access to classified information that experts speaking to journalists do not."

Carl Hulse of the New York Times: "The toll exacted on government operations and federal employees by the record 35-day stalemate -- not to mention the political costs to those in the White House and on Capitol Hill -- was so punishing that it is giving momentum to a longstanding call to prohibit the government disruptions that have become a regular facet of Washington hardball.... Members of both parties said it was past time to enact legislation that would essentially mean the government would remain open at existing spending levels when an impasse such as the fight over the border wall was reached, rather than shuttering parts or all of the government." Both Sens. Rob Portman (R-Ohio) & Mark Warner (D-Va.) have introduced legislation that would prevent shutdowns. House "Speaker Nancy Pelosi also welcomed the idea on Friday, saying in a meeting with news columnists that she wanted to explore the possibility of legislation that would serve as a shutdown prevention act."

Ben Zimmer in Politico Magazine on the history of the term "ratfucking." Fascinating, to a words person. Thanks to unwashed for the link.

If you've missed all the news since Friday, here's a fairly accurate recap:

*****

The Trump Shutdown, Ctd.

On Friday, reporters used the word 'cave' to describe Trump's actions in over a dozen headlines, so often that Merriam-Webster reports a 1500 percent increase in searches for the word -- presumably, for its function as a verb. -- Matt Stieb of New York

Mike DeBonis of the Washington Post: "Trump's capitulation -- agreeing to reopen the federal government after a 35-day standoff without funding for a U.S.-Mexico border wall -- generated rave reviews for [Nancy] Pelosi from fellow Democrats and grudging respect from Republicans who watched as she kept an unruly party caucus united in the face of GOP divide-and-conquer tactics. Pelosi (D-Calif.) emerges from the shutdown as a stronger leader of her party -- and more popular with the public, by early measures -- as Democrats eye aggressive efforts to counter Trump's agenda through ambitious legislation and tough oversight. That suggests the shutdown might have been a strategic misstep for Trump, in addition to a tactical error.... Trump and White House officials appeared to fundamentally misjudge Pelosi's support among Democrats and her resolve to hold firm against border wall funding.... There appears to be little appetite on Capitol Hill for a reprise of the draining shutdown. Trump's Plan B -- declaring a national emergency and tapping military construction accounts to fund the wall -- has unnerved many Republicans and spurred Democrats to prepare for litigation that might not be settled before Trump's term is up."

Kevin Liptak, et al., of CNN: "As ... Donald Trump announced in the Rose Garden on Friday that his quixotic bid to secure more than $5 billion for a border wall would end with no money, he was met with applause from his Cabinet secretaries and senior aides. But the clapping belied a pervasive sense of defeat. Instead of emerging victorious, many of Trump's allies are walking away from a record-breaking government shutdown feeling outplayed, not least by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The President is now more unpopular than he was before the shutdown began, sacked with blame for the 35-day lapse in funding. Friday's announcement was an extraordinary comedown that left many in the White House and those who support Trump marveling at the futility of the preceding four weeks of brinkmanship. In the eyes of some aides and outside advisers, an entire fruitless month has passed that cannot be recouped.... 'Today is not a cave but a grave for Stephen Miller policies,' [a Trump] adviser said, acknowledging it's not clear at all that Trump is ready to make that kind of course correction."

Home Alone at the White House, Donnie Hosted Some of His Crazy Friends. Maggie Haberman & Annie Karni of the New York Times: "President Trump met last week with a delegation of hard-right activists led by Ginni Thomas, the wife of Justice Clarence Thomas, listening quietly as members of the group denounced transgender people and women serving in the military, according to three people with direct knowledge of the events. For 60 minutes Mr. Trump sat, saying little but appearing taken aback, the three people said, as the group also accused White House aides of blocking Trump supporters from getting jobs in the administration. It is unusual for the spouse of a sitting Supreme Court justice to have such a meeting with a president, and some close to Mr. Trump said it was inappropriate for Ms. Thomas to have asked to meet with the head of a different branch of government.... The meeting was arranged after months of delay, according to the three people. It came about after the Thomases had dinner with the president and the first lady, Melania Trump, the people said.... Others attending included Frank Gaffney..., who has advocated curtailing immigration and has repeatedly denounced Muslims, and Rosemary Jenks, who works for the anti-immigration group NumbersUSA...." Mrs. McC: "Taken aback"? These are your people, Von Clownschtick.

Joshua Partlow & David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "... on Jan. 18, about a dozen employees at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, N.Y., were ... fired because they are undocumented immigrants, according to interviews with the workers and their attorney. The fired workers are from Latin America. The sudden firings -- which were previously unreported -- follow last year's revelations of undocumented labor at a Trump club in New Jersey, where employees were subsequently dismissed. The firings show Trump's business was relying on undocumented workers even as the president demanded a border wall to keep out such immigrants.... In Westchester County, workers were told Trump's company had just audited their immigration documents -- the same ones they had submitted years earlier -- and found them to be fake.... The firings at the New York golf club -- which workers said eliminated about half of the club's wintertime staff -- follow a story in the New York Times last year that featured an undocumented worker at another Trump club in Bedminster, N.J. After that story, Trump's company fired undocumented workers at the Bedminster club, according to former workers there.... The firings highlight a stark tension between Trump's public stance on immigration and the private conduct of Trump's business."

Annie Karni & Maggie Haberman: "Jared Kushner ... was confident in his ability as a good-faith negotiator who could find a compromise to end the government shutdown.... Buoyed by his success in helping pass a criminal justice bill, Mr. Kushner ... agreed to take the lead when the president asked him to find a way to end the monthlong stalemate. But negotiating a broad immigration deal that would satisfy a president committed to a border wall as well as Democrats who have cast it as immoral proved to be more like Mr. Kushner's elusive goal of solving Middle East peace than passing a criminal justice overhaul that already had bipartisan support. For one, Mr. Kushner inaccurately believed that moderate rank-and-file Democrats were open to a compromise and had no issue funding a wall as part of a broader deal.... And Democratic leaders like Senator Chuck Schumer, party officials said, did not believe that Mr. Kushner had the power to circumvent Stephen Miller.... Mr. Trump, White House aides said, has been frustrated at everyone around him for not delivering a deal he can accept. And he has become wary of his son-in-law's advice on this issue, the aides said."

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Karen Yourish & Larry Buchanan of the New York Times: "During the 2016 presidential campaign and transition, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, a New York Times analysis has found. At least 10 other associates were told about interactions but did not have any themselves.... Among these contacts are more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter. Mr. Trump and his campaign repeatedly denied having such contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.The special counsel has also investigated connections between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released thousands of Democratic emails that were hacked by Russia before the election." The story includes a handy interactive chart & related charts laying out the who when where & lies. Mrs. McC: There's NO COLLUSION! and even if there was, there's nothing wrong with it. WITCH HUNT!!!

"Nancy"'s One-Two Punch. Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "Fresh off her decisive victory over ... Donald Trump in the fight to end the longest government shutdown in US history, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi released a scathing statement on the other damning news of the day: the arrest of the president's longtime adviser Roger Stone.

The indictment of Roger Stone makes clear that there was a deliberate, coordinated attempt by top Trump campaign officials to influence the 2016 election and subvert the will of the American people. It is staggering that the President has chosen to surround himself with people who violated the integrity of our democracy and lied to the FBI and Congress about it.

In the face of 37 indictments, the President's continued actions to undermine the Special Counsel investigation raise the questions: what does Putin have on the President, politically, personally or financially? Why has the Trump Administration continued to discuss pulling the U.S. out of NATO, which would be a massive victory for Putin?

Lying to Congress and witness tampering constitute grave crimes. All who commit these illegal acts should be held accountable to the fullest extent of the law.; We cannot allow any effort to intimidate witnesses or prevent them from appearing before Congress.

The Special Counsel investigation is working, and the House will continue to exercise our constitutional oversight responsibility and ensure that the Special Counsel investigation can continue free from interference from the White House. -- Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House

Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel: "[I]n spite of the fact that [Roger] Stone has been rat-fucking for almost a half century, and in spite of the fact that Stone was willing to risk major prison time as part of a cover-up, Stone utterly fucked himself by keeping incriminating materials around and leaking them out via journalists. If Ronald Reagan is rolling in his grave today because the Air Traffic Controllers showed that by working collectively they could be more powerful than a President, then Richard Nixon is rolling in his grave today that a guy still branded with his face failed the cover-up so much worse than Nixon himself[.]" --s

Peter Zeidenberg in the Daily Beast: "... [Roger] Stone should begin getting his affairs in order. Barring a presidential pardon (always the wild-card possibility with a POTUS like Trump) Stone will be convicted and receive a very substantial prison sentence. This is as close to a slam-dunk case as a prosecutor will ever bring.... Do not expect to see special counsel Robert Mueller make any attempt to flip Stone and have him cooperate.... Stone is too untrustworthy for a prosecutor to ever rely upon. He has told so many documented lies, and bragged so often about his dirty tricks, that he simply has too much baggage to deal with even if here to want to cooperate -- which seems unlikely in any event.... Stone has nothing to sell that Mueller would be interested in buying." ...

... Julian Sanchez in a New York Times op-ed: "... the true target of Friday's F.B.I. actions [against Roger Stone] was not Mr. Stone himself, but his electronic devices.... Reports ... noted that federal agents were 'seen carting hard drives and other evidence from Mr. Stone;s apartment in Harlem, and his recording studio in South Florida was also raided.' The F.B.I., in other words, was executing search warrants, not just arrest warrants.... [According to the indictment,] in a text exchange between Mr. Stone and a 'supporter involved with the Trump Campaign,' Mr. Mueller pointedly quotes Mr. Stone's request to 'talk on a secure line -- got WhatsApp?'... Though it's not directly relevant to his alleged false statements, the special counsel is taking pains to establish that Mr. Stone made a habit of moving sensitive conversations to encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp -- meaning that, unlike ordinary emails, the messages could not be obtained directly from the service provider. The clear implication is that any truly incriminating communications would have been conducted in encrypted form -- and thus could be obtained only directly from Mr. Stone's own phones and laptops." ...

... Roger Stone, the Missing Link. James Risen of the Intercept: "Since his name first surfaced in connection with the Trump-Russia inquiry, Stone has behaved in public like a clown, reveling in his cheap celebrity while also taunting Mueller and the press.... But the indictment shows that Stone has some serious legal problems, and that his role as a possible link between the Trump circle and the cyber-assault on the Democratic Party and Hillary Clinton's campaign can't be laughed off or easily dismissed.... If the indictment is borne out, Stone's actions come very close to making him the key missing link in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative.... While the charges against Stone don't deal with the underlying question of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, the Stone indictment still brings Mueller's probe closer than ever before to the heart of the matter." ...

... Adam Davidson of the New Yorker: "A frequent guest on InfoWars and other fringe conspiracy-media outlets, [Roger] Stone has presented himself as somewhat desperately trying to foster communication between Trump and [ WikiLeaks' Julian] Assange. But the e-mails in the indictment show that Stone may have played a crucial role in the election, intervening with both the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks to influence the timing of key events.... One must still allow [that Trump] was, somehow, an innocent dupe surrounded by scheming scoundrels[.]"

... Betsy Woodruff of the Daily Beast reproduces some of the e-mail exchanges between Roger Stone & Randy Credico (Person 2). Extremely scatological. "Stone and Credico's relationship ... has found its way into the investigation of the century. And it highlights one of the most amusing realities of the special counsel's into Russian meddling in the 2016 election: Mueller, a notoriously serious and straight-faced law man, has spent a huge amount of time dealing with clowns.... A few days before his indictment, he texted The Daily Beast to say he would expose monstrous misconduct by Mueller's team if indicted." ...

... Abigail Tracy of Vanity Fair: "... Stone was not indicted on charges of collusion or conspiracy. Rather, as Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani noted, he was indicted for process crimes. Which invites the question: could Mueller not find an underlying crime?... Glenn Kirschner, a former federal prosecutor..., specifically highlighted text messages from [Randy] Credico -- identified as 'Person 2' in the court filing -- to Stone on or around October 1, 2016..., that stated, 'Big news Wednesday ... now pretend u don-t know me .. Hillary's campaign will die this week.' Kirschner called that clear evidence of a conspiracy. 'Really, in 15 words, we can see collusion; we can see the cover-up; we can see the conspiracy; and we can see that the whole point of this is to kill Hillary's campaign in a way that relies on stolen information to do it,' Kirschner said. '... you can prove the case with those 15 words.' 'The Stone indictment is yet another indictment of a person close to Trump working with the Kremlin,' said Neal Katyal, a top Justice official in the Obama administration. 'Either Trump was in on it, or he goes down as the most clueless boss and president in the 242-year history of the Republic.'"

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: The argument popular among -- and giving comfort to -- Trump supporters is that Mueller is mostly charging Trump factotums with "process crimes": lying to investigators, obstructing justice, etc. In my view, that's pretty cold comfort. First, there's no reason to think Mueller has packed up his indictment machine. But more important, these "process crimes" all raise the question of why. If there were no underlying crime, there would be no reason to lie or obstruct justice or commit perjury or tamper with witnesses. These "process crimes" all are pointers to underlying crimes. Mueller could not have charged these process crimes if he didn't know pretty much what his targets were trying to hide; that is, what the "big" crimes of conspiracy, election fraud, hacking, etc. ...

     ... Remarks by Adam Davidson, Neal Katyal & others suggest that if Mueller never directly fingers Trump, Trump's only viable defense will be, "I had no idea what-all was going on right under my nose." Watching the Trump Crime Family in action really is like watching an episode of "Law & Order" where prosecutor Jack McCoy is trying to reel in the big-fish mob boss when the only solid evidence he has is against wise guys like Biscuits & Books (Biscotti & Libretti).

** Spencer Ackerman of The Daily Beast: "The new leadership on the House intelligence committee is eager to revive the panel's probe into the connections between Donald Trump's camp and Russia, an urgency underscored by the latest indictment of a Trump associate accused of lying to its investigation. But three weeks into the Democratic-controlled Congress, House Republicans haven't taken a critical step necessary for the committee to begin any work at all. The House Republican leadership has yet to name the intelligence committee's Republican membership for the new Congress, with the exception of retaining Devin Nunes as ranking Republican. Without doing so, the committee is stalled -- no hearings, no internal business meetings...(This Republican intransigence was first noted by The Rachel Maddow Show.) It's not clear what the holdup is." --s

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Rod Nordland & Mujib Mashal of the New York Times: The United States and the Taliban are closing in on a deal to end America's longest war after six days of some of the most serious Afghan peace negotiations to date wrapped up on Saturday. The talks in Doha, Qatar, lasted much longer than planned and longer than any previous attempt to end the 17-year conflict, and both sides publicly reported progress -- a rarity. The chief American negotiator, Zalmay Khalilzad, said on Twitter that the talks were 'more productive than they have been in the past' and he hoped they would resume shortly.... 'We have a number of issues left to work out. Nothing is agreed until everything is agreed, and "everything" must include an intra-Afghan dialogue and comprehensive cease-fire,' he said." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is the first time I can recall something like good news coming out of the Trump administration. Any other "good news" I can remember has been fake. If negotiations proceed successfully, please, Allah, don't let Trump put his thumb on them.

Marco Rubio, Venezuelan Revolutionary. Peter Baker & Edward Wong of the New York Times: "... Senator Marco Rubio ... has become a lead policy architect and de facto spokesman in a daring and risky campaign involving the United States in the unrest that is now gripping Venezuela. Through sheer force of will and a concerted effort to engage and educate President Trump, Mr. Rubio has made himself, in effect, a virtual secretary of state for Latin America, driving administration strategy and articulating it to the region from the Senate floor, as he did the other day, and every television camera he can find. Perhaps no other individual outside Venezuela has been more critical in challenging President Nicolás Maduro."

** Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Amanda Arnold of New York: "In the past three days, about 1,000 writers, editors, and other media workers lost their jobs — a number that will continue to increase over the next week. On Wednesday evening, Verizon (which owns HuffPost, Yahoo, and AOL) announced it would be laying of seven percent of its staff; not long after that, The Wall Street Journal reported that BuzzFeed would cut soon cut 15 percent of its staff. Earlier that day, Gannett Co., which owns more than 1,000 daily and weekly newspapers across the country, had cut approximately 400 jobs -- a devastating blow to small newsrooms and the local communities that depend on them.... Many are laying the blame on Facebook and Google, which monopolize digital ad growth, as well as poor decisions on the management level. 'This isn't happening because of market inefficiencies or consumer preferences or social value,' HuffPost senior reporter Zach Carter tweeted. 'It's happening because two very large companies have taken the advertising revenue that journalism outlets rely on and replaced it with nothing.'"

Public Service Announcement:

... "Ah, Ah, Ah, Ah, Stayin' Alive, Stayin' Alive." Alex Horton of the Washington Post: When Cross Scott of Arizona came across an unconscious woman, he had no training in CPR, but he did remember that episode of "The Office." While others called 911, Scott "crawled onto the woman and began compressions while singing the [Bee Gees'] song aloud, he told the [Arizona Daily] Star.... The woman ... awoke after a minute and threw up, according to the Star. She was then taken to a hospital."

Beyond the Beltway

Arizona. Yvonne Sanchez of the Arizona Republic: "Kelli Ward, the bomb-throwing conservative former state senator and loyalist to ... Donald Trump, upended the race to lead the Arizona Republican Party by beating the establishment favorite and incumbent GOP chairman, Jonathan Lines. In doing so, Republicans from across the state on Saturday chose a more right-wing vision headed into the 2020 election cycle where Arizona is poised to reach battleground status. The election [of Ward] could have far-reaching implications for how the party messages to voters and how it spends money on races."

Florida. Mark Stern of Slate: "... a Florida ethics probe into [Andrew] Gillum's [D] conduct as Tallahassee mayor has made his political future cloudier than it once appeared. On Friday, that investigation took a new, serious turn, when a state commission found probable cause that Gillum violated ethics laws by accepting gifts from lobbyists. This latest development, reported in the Tallahassee Democrat, should not be confused with the FBI probe into corruption in Tallahassee, which looks to be uninterested in Gillum. But it's still a blow to his political ambitions -- a splotch on his record that arises from alleged conduct that might be generously described as unseemly. Until now, Gillum has waved away criticisms of his behavior as a partisan smear campaign. Friday's decision undermines that defense, giving future opponents legitimate grist to attack his character.... Throughout the campaign, he insisted that he paid his share of the lavish excursions and never accepted gifts from lobbyists. That narrative is now almost impossible to believe."

Kansas. Jacey Fortin of the New York Times: "Three men who were convicted of plotting to blow up a Kansas apartment complex where Somali refugees lived have each been sentenced to at least 25 years in prison, the Justice Department said on Friday. 'The defendants in this case acted with clear premeditation in an attempt to kill innocent people on the basis of their religion and national origin,' Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting United States attorney general, said in a statement. 'That-s not just illegal -- it's morally repugnant.' During the trial last year in Wichita, Kan., prosecutors portrayed the men as aspiring domestic terrorists who were preparing to bomb the apartment complex in Garden City, Kan., which is home to a makeshift mosque and a community of Somali immigrants. The men, who called themselves 'the Crusaders,' were arrested about four weeks before Nov. 9, 2016, the date they had picked for the bombing." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks as if Matt Whitaker is not hoping for a new job in the Trump administration.

Pennsylvania. Jan Murphy & Charles Thompson of PennLive: State "House Republican leaders have called on state Rep. Brian Ellis to resign from office ... to take care of his family and address the sexual assault allegation that is the subject of a criminal investigation by the Dauphin County District Attorney. In their statement, House GOP leaders acknowledged a criminal investigation is taking place.... Ellis is accused of sexually assaulting a woman, who works at the state Capitol, following an encounter with her at a Harrisburg bar in October 2015.... The state's Victim Advocate Jennifer Storm, who is working with the woman, said on Friday that the woman was not voluntarily intoxicated the night of the alleged assault but rather incapacitated by a drug" --s

The Commentariat -- January 26, 2019

The Trump Shutdown, Agony of Defeat Edition.

Washington Post Editors: "President Trump's temper tantrum over Congress's refusal to fund a border wall paralyzed much of the government for five weeks, sapped the morale and wallets of hundreds of thousands of federal workers and low-wage contractors, left millions of Americans disgusted and dismayed, and diminished the United States in the eyes of the world. The impasse was proof of the president's stark incapacity for leadership, which he reconfirmed Friday by threatening to re-shutter the government in three weeks. In announcing his non-deal with Congress -- in fact, it is more cease-fire than solution -- Mr. Trump rehashed his tired and truth-free arguments, asserting against logic and evidence that building a massive new border wall, to supplement hundreds of miles of barriers already in place along high-trafficked segments of the border, would cause crime to plummet and drug trafficking to dry up." ...

... New York Times Editors: "What a debacle President rump's shutdown proved to be -- what a toddler's pageant of foot-stomping and incompetence, of vainglory and self-defeat. Mr. Trump tormented public servants and citizens and wounded the country, and, in conceding on Friday after holding the government hostage for 35 days, could claim to have achieved nothing. He succeeded only in exposing the emptiness of his bully's bravado, of his 'I alone can fix it' posturing. Once upon a time, Mr. Trump promised that Mexico would pay for a wall. He instead made all Americans pay for a partisan fantasy.... In his announcement, the president struggled to obscure his failure with yet another rambling infomercial about the glory of walls."

Donald Trump is smarting at all the reports that he "surrendered" or "blinked" or "caved" or was "defeated" or "waved the white flag" or made "a humiliation capitulation" or "got his ass kicked by a girl." (Okay, maybe nobody worded it quite like that.) Here's his Twitter response: "I wish people would read or listen to my words on the Border Wall. This was in no way a concession. It was taking care of millions of people who were getting badly hurt by the Shutdown with the understanding that in 21 days, if no deal is done, it's off to the races!"

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The Senate on Friday afternoon easily advanced a three-week funding bill to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the chamber by a voice vote. The House is expected to pass the funding bill later Friday and send it to Trump's desk for a signature. The Senate vote came a day after the chamber rejected two proposals that would have reopened the government. But the calculus changed on Friday as federal workers impacted by the shutdown missed their second paycheck and news of delays at major airports across the country dominated the headlines." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... New Lede: "Congress easily advanced a three-week funding bill on Friday to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the House by unanimous consent and the Senate by voice vote, marking an anticlimactic end to a shutdown that began 35 days ago. It's now headed to Trump's desk where he is expected to sign it later Friday." ...

... Sheryl Stolberg, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump agreed Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations proceeded over how to secure the nation's southwestern border, backing down after a monthlong standoff failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars for his long-promised wall. The decision paved the way for Congress to pass spending bills as soon as Friday that Mr. Trump will sign to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work for free for 35 days. The plan includes none of the money for the wall that he had demanded and was essentially the same approach that Mr. Trump rejected at the end of December, meaning he won nothing concrete during the impasse. But if Republicans and Democrats cannot reach agreement on wall money by the February deadline, he indicated that he was ready to renew the confrontation or declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.... The surprise announcement was a remarkable surrender for a president who made the wall his nonnegotiable condition for reopening the government." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Update: "The president&'s concession paved the way for the House and Senate to both pass a stopgap spending bill by voice vote. Mr. Trump was expected to sign it Friday evening to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: After the initial announcement, Trump devoted most of the rest of his speech to recounting fantastical horror stories about dangerous immigrants & coyotes binding & gagging the women they were trafficking across the border. He sounded like some joker telling scary, if slightly erotic, campfire stories. ...

     ... If you look at the 2:40 pm entry of yesterday's Daily Intelligencer (sadly, I can't find any way to isolate these posts), New York writers liveblog the speech. Funny.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks like all it takes is Bob Mueller to get the government up & running. According to the WSJ, Trump plans to announce this afternoon he will sign a three-week continuing resolution. I'd guess that is to distract us from today's release of the Stone indictment. The news remarks were scheduled for 1:30 pm ET, which has come & gone. ...

     ... Steve M. agrees: "... when there's really bad news for him in the Russia investigation -- arrests, indictments, law enforcement raids -- [Trump] really does seem desperate to alter the news cycle as quickly as possible. That's why I give Robert Mueller credit for the temporary reopening of the government (without a penny for the wall)[.]" ...

A lot of the conference wanted to end the shutdown by any means possible. Nothing is going to happen. This is surrender. I don't see how it becomes anything. It's just complete, total surrender. -- Republican Senator, too skeert to reveal his identity ...

... Burgess Everett & Andrew Restuccia of Politico: "... Donald Trump touted GOP unity for 33 days of a partial government shutdown. But by the 34th day, it was clearly gone -- and so was the shutdown by the end of the 35th. Senate Republicans had finally had it.... In recent days, the president has expressed frustration to allies about how the crisis was being covered on cable news, worrying that Democrats had won the upper hand, even before Friday&[s dramatic airport delays. But the erosion of Senate Republican support -- fueled by the increasingly damaged economy and worsening poll numbers -- perhaps more than anything is what pushed Trump to reverse course. On Thursday night, after the pair of failed Senate votes and a tense caucus meeting that demonstrated there could be a large GOP jailbreak if the shutdown dragged on, Trump and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) quietly agreed that it was time to find a way out.... Trump's public battle with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi also proved critical as he faced stubborn Democratic resistance no matter how he tried to split the party. Instead, he found himself on defense as Pelosi canceled his State of the Union address, infuriating the White House.... The president was particularly worried about federal law enforcement officials going without pay. Plus economists were beginning to lower their forecasts of growth because of the shutdown.... The White House also lacked a cohesive game plan and often appeared to seriously misjudge Democrats throughout the month-long stalemate." ...

... Here's the Washington Post's report on how Trump finally agreed to temporarily end the shutdown. "... when Trump stood alone in a bitter-cold White House Rose Garden on Friday afternoon to announce that the government was reopening with no money for the wall, he punctuated five weeks of miscalculation and mismanagement by him and his administration.... Trump, who fretted about the shutdown's impact on the economy and his personal popularity, cast about for blame and pointed fingers at his staff -- including Kushner -- for failing to resolve the impasse, according to aides." Mrs. McC: Because nothing is ever Trump's fault. ...

... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "For a president who believes in zero-sum politics and considers compromise a sign of weakness, it was a bruising setback, a retreat that underscored the limits of his ability to bull his way through the opposition in this new era of divided government." Baker delves into the deliberations that went on within the White House. "After watching Ms. Pelosi this week disinvite Mr. Trump from delivering the State of the Union address while the government remained closed, Mr. McConnell concluded that she would never cave and decided to come off the sidelines to try to end the standoff.... The president scheduled an announcement, and the scene in the Rose Garden was surreal. Cabinet officers and White House aides lined up and applauded when the president emerged from the Oval Office as if he were declaring victory.... And the president sounded as if he was doing just that, opening his remarks by saying that he was 'very proud to announce today that we have reached a deal to end the shutdown.' Only there was no deal, just a retreat."

AND the Winner Is.... Ezra Klein of Vox: "... in recent weeks, Speaker Pelosi proved a powerful foil to Trump, politically humiliating him in a way no other public figure has.... Pelosi held her caucus together easily and calmly, creating a united front that offered Trump few avenues of egress.... Pelosi correctly read Trump's personality and had the steel to act on that read.... Pelosi has long held that Trump is weak, easily confused, and easily baited. That informed her strategy. Along with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, she baited Trump into saying, while the cameras were rolling, 'I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government. I will take the mantle.' In interviews and meetings, she tweaked the president, calling the crisis 'the Trump shutdown' to Trump's face and suggesting the billionaire thought furloughed workers 'could just ask their father for more money.' She was betting that Trump would overreact rather than turn her into the aggressor, and he did.... She has enhanced her standing in her caucus, and he has diminished his standing inside his own. You don't hear many House Democrats these days grumbling about Pelosi's leadership. But you hear plenty of Republicans lamenting Trump's." ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: And let's not forget: Pelosi didn't defeat just Trump; she forced McConnell to cave, too.

Sam Stein of The Daily Beast: "Lawmakers have made notable progress on a deal to end the federal government shutdown five weeks after it first started, several Capitol Hill sources told The Daily Beast on Friday morning.... There will be no funding included in the deal for Trump's proposed wall along the southern border. Nor will the deal include a 'down-payment' as the president requested on Thursday. In exchange for those concessions, Democrats would agree to a nominal amount of money for border security but not a wall.... One Democratic Senate aide noted that the same deal had been discussed 'weeks ago' only to be shelved when the White House said it wouldn't support it. The biggest question mark remains how the president would stomach such a deal and, as importantly, who can sell him on it." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Ian Millhiser of ThinkProgress: "Ever since President Donald Trump shut down much of the government last month, [Speaker Nancy] Pelosi has delivered a consistent message to Trump -- 'my offer to you is this: nothing.[*]' On Friday, Trump took that offer.... Trump;s cave on Friday is absolute.... Republicans now know that they'll be the ones in the barrel if they shut down the government again. Speaker Pelosi holds all the cards in the upcoming negotiation.... Pelosi's victory over Trump highlights why Republicans spent the better part of the last two years demonizing her -- and why they and their super PACs spent lavishly on ads intended to convince members of Pelosi's caucus that she is too toxic to elect as speaker. She's good at what she does ... and she has not lost a step." --safari: *In all fairness, Nancy did actually offer the presidunce* $1. ...

... Thanks, Donald! Adam Green in a Roll Call opinion piece: "By shutting down the government, Donald Trump unintentionally gave Democrats the biggest gift possible: Unity.... As the new Democratic House began, Democrats were ripe for division. Nancy Pelosi's leadership was under siege in her own party, fracturing the Democratic Caucus. Meanwhile, there were clear divisions among incoming House freshmen.... Democrats who wanted to stab Pelosi in the back are now watching her outmaneuver Trump and get national praise for it -- creating no incentive other than to root her on.... As Donald Trump faces increased accountability and sees 2020 voters inspired by increased congressional consensus for big progressive ideas, he will have himself to thank."

Mark Berman of the Washington Post: "FBI Director Christopher A. Wray decried the government shutdown's impact on the bureau's employees in a video message released amid rising anxiety among thousands of agents and other personnel who have spent more than a month working without pay. In the unusual video message, Wray also offered a seeming apology for why the FBI's top officials were not publicly arguing for their employees, suggesting that they have not spoken out because of the repeated political criticisms of the bureau from President Trump and others in recent years. 'You know better than most that we've been thrust into the political spotlight more than we would have liked over the past few years,' Wray said in the message, which was directed to FBI staff. 'And the last thing this organization needs now is its leadership to wade into the middle of a full-on political dispute.'... 'Making some people stay home when they don't want to, and making others show up without pay, it';s mind-boggling, it's shortsighted and it's unfair,' Wray said. 'It takes a lot to get me angry, but I'm about as angry as I've been in a long, long time.'" Mrs. McC: This is pretty remarkable.

Jeff Stein & Danielle Paquette of the Washington Post: "At least 14,000 unpaid workers in the Internal Revenue Service division that includes tax processing and call centers did not show up for work this week despite orders to do so, according to two House aides, posing a challenge to the Trump administration's ability to minimize the damage from the government shutdown. The Trump administration ordered more than 30,000 employees back to work unpaid to prepare for tax filing season, which is set to begin next week. But of the 26,000 workers called back to the IRS division that includes the tax processing centers and call centers, about 9,00 workers could not be reached and about 5,000 more claimed a hardship exemption, IRS officials have told members of Congress, according to aides...."

Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "Significant flight delays were rippling across the Northeast on Friday because of a shortage of air traffic controllers as a result of the government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Federal officials temporarily restricted flights Friday into and out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, another example of the toll the partial government shutdown -- in its 35th day -- is having on the nation's airports." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Henry Grabar of Slate: "The revolt of the unpaid federal workers may have begun on Friday morning in Monroe, Louisiana, where two flights were canceled because TSA workers didn't arrive to open the checkpoint. American Airlines 3243 to Dallas-Fort Worth and Delta Airlines 3942 to Atlanta, both scheduled to depart at 6 a.m., became the first U.S. flights to be canceled during the government shutdown because of a shortage of TSA workers. Security screeners missed their second paycheck on Friday, and call-out rates have surged to between 7 and 10 percent, causing intermittent delays." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Sarah Jones of New York: "Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told New York on Friday afternoon that she 'just finished' recording a video message to members urging them to get to the offices of their congressional representatives until the shutdown is resolved. 'We're mobilizing immediately,' Nelson said. Asked if this meant that flight attendants will not be going to work, she responded, 'Showing up to work for what? If air traffic controllers can't do their jobs, we can't do ours.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The use of entrance fees to keep national parks open, along with a sudden decision to bring back department employees to work on offshore drilling and related tasks, have come under fire from House Democrats and environmental groups -- they argue Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other officials may be breaking the law. And lawmakers are looking to flex their new power once the government reopens.... At the heart of complaints lobbed at several of the Interior Department&'s shutdown decisions is the Antideficiency Act, which specifies that only 'cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property' merit the ongoing unpaid labor of federal employees in a shutdown scenario." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Kyla Mandel of ThinkProgress: "The National Park Service is losing an estimated $400,000 per day in entrance fees as the partial government shutdown drags on into its 35th day, according to figures compiled by the National Parks Conservation Association. That means, so far, the Parks Service has lost an estimated $14 million in entrance fees alone." --s

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "The wall of Donald Trump's campaign and presidency has always operated both as a discrete proposal -- an actual structure to be built under his leadership -- and as a symbol with a clear meaning. Whether praised by its supporters or condemned by its opponents, the wall is a stand-in for the larger promise of broad racial (and religious) exclusion and domination. It's no surprise, then, that some Americans use 'Build the wall' as a racist chant, much like the way they invoke the president's name. And it's also why, despite the pain and distress of the extended government shutdown, Democrats are right to resist any deal with the White House that includes funding for its construction." (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is Bouie's "debut column" at the NYT. He is one of the best thinkers on the SOTU around, so I'm thrilled he got the Big Job.

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Daily Beast art.Mark Mazzetti, et al., of the New York Times: "The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, revealed on Friday the most direct link yet between parallel efforts by the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks to damage Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election using Democratic Party material stolen by Russians. A top Trump campaign official dispatched Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to President Trump, to get information from WikiLeaks about the thousands of hacked Democratic emails, according to an indictment. The effort began weeks after Democratic officials publicly accused Russian intelligence operatives of the theft, which was part of Moscow's broad campaign to sabotage the 2016 presidential race.... On Friday, the day that Mr. Stone stood on the steps of a courthouse and pledged his enduring loyalty to the president, Mr. Trump bashed the investigation that had led armed federal agents to his friend's house in the morning darkness. 'Greatest Witch Hunt in the History of our Country!' he wrote on Twitter. 'NO COLLUSION!'" ...

... What About All This, Mr. Trump? New York Times Editors: "In his indictment of the Trump torpedo Roger Stone, the special counsel Robert Mueller noted that on June 14, 2016, the Democratic National Committee announced 'that it had been hacked by Russian government actors.' According to the indictment, unsealed Friday, Mr. Stone participated in and helped conceal an effort by the Trump campaign to cooperate with WikiLeaks in publicizing thousands of emails stolen from the Clinton campaign, which was done to devastating political effect.... [If Mr. Trump thought there was no relationship between Russia and WikiLeaks,] why did Mr. Trump say, five days after the first WikiLeaks release, 'Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing....' ... And if Mr. Trump's first F.B.I. intelligence briefing on Aug. 17, 2016, included a warning about Russian espionage, as NBC News reported in 2017, why didn't Mr. Trump or anyone else in the campaign tell the agents about the meeting or the suspicious release of emails?... Mr. Trump's former adviser Steve Bannon told the author Michael Wolff that he thought the Trump Tower meeting was 'treasonous.' Yet he had no problem cooperating with WikiLeaks, according to the indictment. He is apparently the 'high-ranking Trump Campaign official' who asked Mr. Stone on Oct. 4, 2016, about future WikiLeaks releases. Three days later, after the first stolen emails from Mrs. Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, were released, one of Mr. Bannon's associates texted Mr. Stone, 'well done.'&"

In his Friday morning "NO COLLUSION" tweet, Donald Trump, suggesting some sort of dark conspiracy between Mueller & CNN, asks, "Who alerted CNN to be there?" Here's the answer. It's about journalism. ...

... Jeremy Herb of CNN: "The rare, dramatic video from CNN Friday capturing the early morning FBI raid of ... Roger Stone's Florida home was the product of good instincts, some key clues, more than a year of observing comings at the DC federal courthouse and the special counsel's office -- and a little luck on the timing. CNN producer David Shortell and photojournalist Gilbert De La Rosa were outside Stone's home Friday morning to witness the FBI approaching Stone's door to arrest him on a seven-count indictment that special counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury approved a day earlier. They were there staking out Stone because there was just enough evidence lurking in the special counsel's activity over the past week that CNN's team covering the Mueller investigation placed a bet that Stone could be arrested as early as Friday." ...

... The Daily Beast: "Special Counsel Robert Mueller told a federal judge he was concerned Roger Stone might destroy or tamper with evidence, if not flee, ahead of his arrest on Friday morning.... Federal agents also raided his apartment in New York and a recording studio in Florida, where they were reportedly seen carting away hard drives and evidence." --s

Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller is writing these indictments like chapters in a good mystery novel. New clues keep arising & so does provocative foreshadowing. The identities of certain characters are masked. Of course, as any experienced mystery reader knows, you have to look out for red herrings, too. But I believe that in the end, we'll find out whodunit, & the who will be He Trump.

So this comes up in the Roger Stone indictment:

... On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 [Randy Credico] that Person 2 should do a 'Frank Pentangeli' before HPSCI [House Intelligence Committee] in order to avoid contradicting STONE's testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know. -- Roger Stone indictment ...

... The Mystery in the Passive Voice. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "There is no smoking gun in the indictment when it comes to the Trump campaign[s culpability, and for most of the campaign, Stone was an informal Trump adviser -- not actually serving on the campaign.... The most significant reference to members of the campaign, though, could be this: 'After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.' The words 'was directed' loom large here. Who did the directing?... Though we can't say for sure, it seems entirely possible this is Trump. He ... would seem to be the person who would have the authority to direct a 'senior Trump Campaign official' -- though it's possible another senior aide could also do so.... In many ways, this feels like another 'speaking indictment.' There's a hint of something possible to come." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As we learned from Brian Schwartz of CNBC (story linked below), the unnamed "senior campaign official" is Steve Bannon, assuming Schwartz's sources are right. And Steve Bannon reported to Trump. While it's not impossible that, say, Jared Kushner or Donnie Jr. was the person who "directed" Bannon, normally "directing" an employee is the job for the employee's boss, in this case, Donald Trump, not a more-or-less co-equal employee. As for the identity of the "director," one pundit on MSNBC noted there was a clue to be found in Mueller's naming scheme. People are named & numbered as "Individual 1" & "Person 2." And candidates are named as "Candidate 1." Obviously, had Mueller used the active voice & identified the "director" as "Candidate 1," there would be no question as to who that candidate was. The fact that the "director" doesn't get a label, therefore, suggests he is Trump. ...

     ... Matt Ford of the New Republic: "What is clear, at least from Mueller's perspective, is that the ['senior Trump Campaign] official['] didn't contact Stone of their own volition; he or she 'was directed' by someone higher in the campaign food chain to pursue it. That small turn of phrase carries serious implications for ... Donald Trump and his inner circle. It suggests that not only did Trump campaign officials try to coordinate with WikiLeaks through Stone, but that the effort came from the campaign's highest ranks."

** Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "[R]unning through Mueller's indictment of Stone and his charges against Russian hackers last July is the makings of a case that there was, in fact, coordination.... In short, Mueller said on Friday, Trump, or his most senior aides, ordered a trusted associate to bring them into the loop on the fruits of what they knew to be a Russian government hack of American victims -- and on the schedule for its publication. Trump's team could then shape their campaign tactics around this calendar. And last July, Mueller hinted at evidence of coordination in the other direction. His indictment of the Russian hackers said they attempted 'for the first time' to break into email accounts used by Clinton's personal office 'after hours' on 27 July 2016.... That day, at an event in Florida, Trump urged Russia to search for the approximately 30,000 emails[.]" --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A fer-instance Swaine doesn't mention: "[Shortly after] October 4, 2016..., STONE received an email from the high-ranking Trump Campaign official [Steve Bannon] asking about the status of future releases by Organization 1." The indictment makes clear the Trump campaign was deeply & continuously seeking WikiLeaks dirt. Since there was no question at the time that the dirt (1) was illegally obtained & (2) came via Russian hacks, it is impossible to accept the lie that was "NO COLLUSION." The high-ranking campaign official" & his "director" are implicated. ...

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, there's the "Godfather" 1 horsehead-in-the-bed email. From the indictment: "On or about April 9, 2018, STONE wrote in an email to Person 2 [Randy Credico], 'You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.' STONE also said he would 'take that dog away from you,' referring to Person 2's dog. On or about the same day, STONE wrote to Person 2, 'I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].'" So mobby. ...

     ... Here's all you'll ever want to know about Bianca, the adorable little dog Stone threatened to kidnap or snuff. (Also linked yesterday.)

     ... Update. Jonathan Chait: "The Russia scandal has provided us with relatively few Russia cultural references, but a proliferation of mafia references. The fact that Stone expressed himself this way is not mere color, nor is organized crime even a metaphor for the mindset and Trump and his inner circle. It is actually a reasonably literal description of the Trump organization. In the fall of 2017, a source close to the administration warned, 'this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration.' This turned out to be one of the most prescient descriptions of what was to come.... Mueller seems to be in the process of demonstrating that Trump's organization is not like an organized crime family, it actually is one." (Also linked yesterday.)

Martin Cizmar of RawStory: "Fox News host Sean Hannity appears to have acted on directives from emails between President Donald Trump's longtime political adviser Roger Stone and an intermediary who claimed to have communicated with WikiLeaks. On Twitter, author Kurt Eichenwald points out that, among the details in the indictment of Stone, is a passage about WikiLeaks' plan to leak emails suggesting Hillary Clinton was seriously ill and Sean Hannity's focus on Clinton's health in the following days." In Eichenwald's tweets. --s ...

     ... Hahahahaha. Mrs. McCrabbie: Much as it's nice to know Roger Stone made his court appearance in shackles, I would be even more pleased to see Hannity in chains & irons. There's no indication in the indictment that is about to happen. But anything is possible!

Sarah Sanders' interview with CNN's John Berman Friday morning did not go well:

     ... Aaron Rupar of Vox has more. Sarah really is a ridiculous person. ...

... Steve M.: "... at Fox & Friends, this isn't really an indictment at all, because Stone is charged with 'process crimes,' which totally aren't crimes at all. ('Just process crimes' has been a favorite right-wing talking point for a few months now.)... Steve Doocy shrieks 'Where is the Russia collusion?'... Dan Bongino says: '... this is another process crime, where the Mueller investigation -- the result of the investigation has produced the crime. As a resul of the investigation, we have this witness -- alleged witness tampering and failure to produce documents." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "The latest criticism of FBI tactics made by defenders of ... Donald Trump and/or his indicted former associates is that the Friday morning break-out-the-big-guns arrest of Roger Stone was a bridge too far. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham went so far as to say that Stone was being treated like Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Loera. The problem is, legal experts in a position to know how the FBI conducts its business say this is standard operating procedure." (Also linked yesterday.)

Roger Stone, just before he declared his innocence this afternoon, doing his best Richard Nixon imitation. (Roger must be aware that Nixon made the gesture after his resignation, at the moment he departed the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.)

Lucien Bruggeman & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Paul Manafort, the onetime campaign chairman for ... Donald Trump, made a rare court appearance in Washington, D.C., Friday morning to address allegations lodged by special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to federal investigators.... At the hearing, defense counsel and attorneys with the special counsel's office debated the merit of Mueller's allegation that Manafort lied to investigators after striking a plea deal with prosecutors in September. The alleged lies amounted to a breach of his plea agreement, prosecutors said.... If [Judge Amy] Jackson sides with Mueller and finds Manafort in breach of his plea deal, he could face up to 80 years in prison, though legal experts say he would likely receive something closer to seven years. Manafort is scheduled for sentencing on March 5 in the Washington case." (Also linked yesterday.)

Richard Wolffe of the Guardian: "Like Trump's favorite steaks, [Roger] Stone himself is now well and truly done. He appears to have lied to Congress about those contacts with the Trump campaign. And he botched his efforts to cover up the conspiracy by apparently asking his co-conspirators to lie for him.... He threatened to hurt [Randy] Credico's pet dog and told him to 'Prepare to die [expletive].' Instead of preparing to die, Stone's former friend told him 'you've opened yourself up to perjury charges like an idiot.'... The endless irony of Donald Trump and his brazen hacks is that they are so fantastically incompetent at deceiving the world about their own deception.... Not since Russian assassins left a trail of polonium across Europe have we seen such stupendously stupid puppets of Vladimir Putin." --s

Scott Shane of the New York Times: "A group of transparency advocates on Friday posted a mammoth collection of hacked and leaked documents from inside Russia, a release widely viewed as a sort of symbolic counterstrike against Russia's dissemination of hacked emails to influence the American presidential election in 2016. Most of the material, which sheds light on Russia's war in Ukraine as well as ties between the Kremlin and the Russian Orthodox Church, the business dealings of oligarchs and much more, had been released in Russia, Ukraine and elsewhere, sometimes on obscure websites. There were no immediate reports of new bombshells from the collection. But the sheer volume of the material -- 175 gigabytes -- and the technical challenges of searching it meant that its full impact may not be felt for some time.... The core files from the new collection, called 'The Dark Side of the Kremlin,' included 'hundreds of thousands of messages and files from Russian politicians, journalists, oligarchs, religious figures, and nationalists/terrorists in Ukraine,' said the group that posted it, Distributed Denial of Secrets, or DDoSecrets."

Margaret Talev, et al. of Bloomberg: "The American base at Al-Tanf, originally established as a southern foothold against Islamic State and a training ground for Syrian rebels, has become one of the main obstacles to the president's plan to leave. Israeli and some U.S. officials argue that a continued American presence there is critical to interrupting Iran's supply lines into Lebanon, where Hezbollah -- Iran's proxy and Israel's enemy -- has been building up its arsenal.... The debate over what to do with Al-Tanf reveals U.S. goals in Syria that go beyond the official rationale of defeating Islamic State -- complicating Trump's desire to exit....[Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu has repeatedly urged the U.S. to keep troops at Al-Tanf, according to several senior Israeli officials[.]" --s

Your Tax Dollars at Work. Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "In the administration's latest effort to help the coal industry, the Department of Energy (DOE) is providing up to $38 million in funding for research into improving the performance and reliability of the nation's existing coal-fired power plants.... 'This funding is in line with the Trump administration trying to do everything it can think of to throw a bone to the coal industry,' Jeremy Richardson... [of] the Union of Concerned Scientists told ThinkProgress. 'It's sort of like, let's throw spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks. Fortunately, nothing has stuck yet.'... And yet, more coal plants have shut down during President Donald Trump's first two years than during Barack Obama's entire first term as president." --s

"Capitalism is Awesome", Ctd. Kevin Poulsen of The Daily Beast: "Facebook's own internal studies showed that children as young as kindergarten age were unwittingly putting hundreds or even thousands of dollars on their parents' credit cards while playing games like Social Empires, Pocket God, and Angry Birds, newly released internal documents show. But Facebook officials elected not to put speed bumps in its payment process that would reduce the unintended charges, for fear it would also cut into legitimate grown-up purchases, the documents show. At the same time, the company routinely refused refund requests from sticker-shocked parents." --s

Joel Simon of the Guardian has a long read on the "Business of Kidnapping" --s

Amanda Holpuch of the Guardian: "A prominent 'conversion therapy' advocate, David Matheson, has come out as gay after spending what he said were decades of his life entrenched in homophobia.... Matheson told the Salt Lake Tribune's podcast Mormon Land that he was exposed to homophobia as a youth in the Mormon church.... Matheson said he knew his work had helped some people, but was certain he had hurt some people too." --s

Kari Sonde of Mother Jones: "Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, building on prior research, determined that from 2010 to 2015, firearm injuries amounted to $911 million in inpatient hospitalizations nationwide annually and that 9.5 percent of that cost, or $86 million, was from victims needing to return to the hospital." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Way Beyond the Beltway

Mexico. Jeff Ernst & Kirk Semple of the New York Times: "Mexico's new president has moved decisively to encourage migrants fleeing poverty and violence in Central America to stay and work in Mexico, making it easier for them to get visas and work permits and promoting investments and ambitious public works projects to create jobs. President Andrés Manuel López Obrador's policies are already proving to be a magnet for migrants, who are finding it harder to enter the United States given President Trump-s antipathy toward immigration. A migrant caravan heading to Mexico from Central America -- the largest ever -- has already swollen to over 12,000 people, with many saying they intend to remain in Mexico, at least for the time being."

Jon Henley & Mark Rice-Oxley of the Guardian: "Liberal values in Europe face a challenge 'not seen since the 1930s', leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections. The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was 'coming apart before our eyes'." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

The Commentariat -- January 25, 2019

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Jordain Carney of the Hill: "The Senate on Friday afternoon easily advanced a three-week funding bill to fully reopen the federal government hours after President Trump agreed to end the shutdown without securing money for a border wall. The funding legislation cleared the chamber by a voice vote. The House is expected to pass the funding bill later Friday and send it to Trump's desk for a signature. The Senate vote came a day after the chamber rejected two proposals that would have reopened the government. But the calculus changed on Friday as federal workers impacted by the shutdown missed their second paycheck and news of delays at major airports across the country dominated the headlines." ...

... Sheryl Stolberg, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump agreed Friday to reopen the federal government for three weeks while negotiations proceeded over how to secure the nation's southwestern border, backing down after a monthlong standoff failed to force Democrats to give him billions of dollars for his long-promised wall. The decision paved the way for Congress to pass spending bills as soon as Friday that Mr. Trump will sign to restore normal operations at a series of federal agencies until Feb. 15 and begin paying again the 800,000 federal workers who have been furloughed or forced to work for free for 35 days. The plan includes none of the money for the wall that he had demanded and was essentially the same approach that Mr. Trump rejected at the end of December, meaning he won nothing concrete during the impasse. But if Republicans and Democrats cannot reach agreement on wall money by the February deadline, he indicated that he was ready to renew the confrontation or declare a national emergency and bypass Congress altogether.... The surprise announcement was a remarkable surrender for a president who made the wall his nonnegotiable condition for reopening the government." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: After the initial announcement, Trump devoted most of the rest of his speech to recounting fantastical horror stories about dangerous immigrants & coyotes binding & gagging the women they were trafficking across the border. He sounded like some joker telling scary, if slightly erotic, campfire stories. ...

     ... If you look at the 2:40 pm entry of today's Daily Intelligencer (sadly, I can't find any way to isolate these posts), New York writers liveblog the speech. Funny.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Looks like all it takes is Bob Mueller to get the government up & running. According to the WSJ, Trump plans to announce this afternoon he will sign a three-week continuing resolution. I'd guess that is to distract us from today's release of the Stone indictment. The news remarks were scheduled for 1:30 pm ET, which has come & gone. ...

... Sam Stein of The Daily Beast: "Lawmakers have made notable progress on a deal to end the federal government shutdown five weeks after it first started, several Capitol Hill sources told The Daily Beast on Friday morning.... There will be no funding included in the deal for Trump's proposed wall along the southern border. Nor will the deal include a 'down-payment' as the president requested on Thursday. In exchange for those concessions, Democrats would agree to a nominal amount of money for border security but not a wall.... One Democratic Senate aide noted that the same deal had been discussed 'weeks ago' only to be shelved when the White House said it wouldn't support it. The biggest question mark remains how the president would stomach such a deal and, as importantly, who can sell him on it." --s

Patrick McGeehan of the New York Times: "Significant flight delays were rippling across the Northeast on Friday because of a shortage of air traffic controllers as a result of the government shutdown, according to the Federal Aviation Administration." ...

... Lori Aratani of the Washington Post: "Federal officials temporarily restricted flights Friday into and out of New York's LaGuardia Airport, another example of the toll the partial government shutdown -- in its 35th day -- is having on the nation's airports." ...

... Henry Grabar of Slate: "The revolt of the unpaid federal workers may have begun on Friday morning in Monroe, Louisiana, where two flights were canceled because TSA workers didn’t arrive to open the checkpoint. American Airlines 3243 to Dallas-Fort Worth and Delta Airlines 3942 to Atlanta, both scheduled to depart at 6 a.m., became the first U.S. flights to be canceled during the government shutdown because of a shortage of TSA workers. Security screeners missed their second paycheck on Friday, and call-out rates have surged to between 7 and 10 percent, causing intermittent delays." ...

... Sarah Jones of New York: "Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, told New York on Friday afternoon that she 'just finished' recording a video message to members urging them to get to the offices of their congressional representatives until the shutdown is resolved. 'We're mobilizing immediately,' Nelson said. Asked if this meant that flight attendants will not be going to work, she responded, 'Showing up to work for what? If air traffic controllers can't do their jobs, we can't do ours.'"

E.A. Crunden of ThinkProgress: "The use of entrance fees to keep national parks open, along with a sudden decision to bring back department employees to work on offshore drilling and related tasks, have come under fire from House Democrats and environmental groups -- they argue Acting Interior Secretary David Bernhardt and other officials may be breaking the law. And lawmakers are looking to flex their new power once the government reopens.... At the heart of complaints lobbed at several of the Interior Department's shutdown decisions is the Antideficiency Act, which specifies that only 'cases of emergency involving the safety of human life or the protection of property' merit the ongoing unpaid labor of federal employees in a shutdown scenario." --s

Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times: "The wall of Donald Trump&'s campaign and presidency has always operated both as a discrete proposal — an actual structure to be built under his leadership -- and as a symbol with a clear meaning. Whether praised by its supporters or condemned by its opponents, the wall is a stand-in for the larger promise of broad racial (and religious) exclusion and domination. It's no surprise, then, that some Americans use 'Build the wall' as a racist chant, much like the way they invoke the president's name. And it's also why, despite the pain and distress of the extended government shutdown, Democrats are right to resist any deal with the White House that includes funding for its construction."

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: This is Bouie's "debut column" at the NYT. He is one of the best thinkers on the SOTU around. I'm thrilled he got the Big Job.

So this comes up in the Stone indictment:

... On multiple occasions, including on or about December 1, 2017, STONE told Person 2 [Randy Credico] that Person 2 should do a 'Frank Pentangeli' before HPSCI [House Intelligence Committee] in order to avoid contradicting STONE's testimony. Frank Pentangeli is a character in the film The Godfather: Part II, which both STONE and Person 2 had discussed, who testifies before a congressional committee and in that testimony claims not to know critical information that he does in fact know. -- Roger Stone indictment ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "There is no smoking gun in the indictment when it comes to the Trump campaign's culpability, and for most of the campaign, Stone was an informal Trump adviser -- not actually serving on the campaign.... The most significant reference to members of the campaign, though, could be this: 'After the July 22, 2016 release of stolen DNC emails by Organization 1, a senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact STONE about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton Campaign. STONE thereafter told the Trump Campaign about potential future releases of damaging material by Organization 1.' The words 'was directed' loom large here. Who did the directing?... Though we can't say for sure, it seems entirely possible this is Trump. He, after all, would seem to be the person who would have the authority to direct a 'senior Trump Campaign official' -- though it’s possible another senior aide could also do so.... In many ways, this feels like another 'speaking indictment.' There's a hint of something possible to come." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As we learned from Brian Schwartz of CNBC (story linked below), the unnamed "senior campaign official" is Steve Bannon, assuming Schwartz's sources are right. And Steve Bannon reported to Trump. While it's not impossible that, say, Jared Kushner or Donnie Jr. was the person who "directed" Bannon, normally "directing" an employee is the job for the employee's boss, in this case, Donald Trump, not a more-or-less co-equal employee. ...

** Jon Swaine of the Guardian: "[R]unning through Mueller's indictment of Stone and his charges against Russian hackers last July is the makings of a case that there was, in fact, coordination.... In short, Mueller said on Friday, Trump, or his most senior aides, ordered a trusted associate to bring them into the loop on the fruits of what they knew to be a Russian government hack of American victims -- and on the schedule for its publication. Trump's team could then shape their campaign tactics around this calendar. And last July, Mueller hinted at evidence of coordination in the other direction. His indictment of the Russian hackers said they attempted 'for the first time' to break into email accounts used by Clinton's personal office 'after hours' on 27 July 2016.... That day, at an event in Florida, Trump urged Russia to search for the approximately 30,000 emails[.]" --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Mueller is writing these indictments like chapters in a mystery novel. New clues keep arising & so does provocative foreshadowing. Of course, as any experienced mystery reader knows, you have to look out for red herrings, too. But I believe that in the end, we'll find out whodunit, & the who will be He Trump.

... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also too, there's the "Godfather" 1 horsehead-in-the-bed email. From the indictment: "On or about April 9, 2018, STONE wrote in an email to Person 2 [Randy Credico], 'You are a rat. A stoolie. You backstab your friends-run your mouth my lawyers are dying Rip you to shreds.' STONE also said he would 'take that dog away from you,' referring to Person 2's dog. On or about the same day, STONE wrote to Person 2, 'I am so ready. Let's get it on. Prepare to die [expletive].'" So mobby. ...

     ... Here's all you'll ever want to know about Bianca, the adorable dog Stone threatened to kidnap or snuff. ...

     ... Update. Jonathan Chait: "The Russia scandal has provided us with relatively few Russia cultural references, but a proliferation of mafia references. The fact that Stone expressed himself this way is not mere color, nor is organized crime even a metaphor for the mindset and Trump and his inner circle. It is actually a reasonably literal description of the Trump organization. In the fall of 2017, a source close to the administration warned, 'this investigation is a classic Gambino-style roll-up. You have to anticipate this roll-up will reach everyone in this administration.' This turned out to be one of the most prescient descriptions of what was to come.... Mueller seems to be in the process of demonstrating that Trump's organization is not like an organized crime family, it actually is one."

... Steve M.: "... at Fox & Friends, this isn't really an indictment at all, because Stone is charged with 'process crimes,' which totally aren't crimes at all. ('Just process crimes' has been a favorite right-wing talking point for a few months now.)... Steve Doocy shrieks 'Where is the Russia collusion?'... Dan Bongino says: '... this is another process crime, where the Mueller investigation -- the result of the investigation has produced the crime. As a result of the investigation, we have this witness -- alleged witness tampering and failure to produce documents." ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "The latest criticism of FBI tactics made by defenders of ... Donald Trump and/or his indicted former associates is that the ... break-out-the-big-guns arrest of Roger Stone was a bridge too far. Fox News personality Laura Ingraham went so far as to say that Stone was being treated like Mexican drug lord Joaquin 'El Chapo' Guzman Loera. The problem is, legal experts in a position to know how the FBI conducts its business say this is standard operating procedure."

Roger Stone, just before he declared his innocence this afternoon, doing his best Richard Nixon imitation. (Roger must be aware that Nixon made the gesture after his resignation, at the moment he departed the White House in disgrace on August 8, 1974.)

Lucien Bruggeman & Katherine Faulders of ABC News: "Paul Manafort, the onetime campaign chairman for ... Donald Trump, made a rare court appearance in Washington, D.C., Friday morning to address allegations lodged by special counsel Robert Mueller that he lied to federal investigators.... At the hearing, defense counsel and attorneys with the special counsel's office debated the merit of Mueller's allegation that Manafort lied to investigators after striking a plea deal with prosecutors in September. The alleged lies amounted to a breach of his plea agreement, prosecutors said.... If [Judge Amy] Jackson sides with Mueller and finds Manafort in breach of his plea deal, he could face up to 80 years in prison, though legal experts say he would likely receive something closer to seven years. Manafort is scheduled for sentencing on March 5 in the Washington case."

Kari Sonde of Mother Jones: "Researchers from the Stanford University School of Medicine, building on prior research, determined that from 2010 to 2015, firearm injuries amounted to $911 million in inpatient hospitalizations nationwide annually and that 9.5 percent of that cost, or $86 million, was from victims needing to return to the hospital." --s

Jon Henley & Mark Rice-Oxley of the Guardian: "Liberal values in Europe face a challenge 'not seen since the 1930s', leading intellectuals from 21 countries have said, as the UK lurches towards Brexit and nationalists look set to make sweeping gains in EU parliamentary elections. The group of 30 writers, historians and Nobel laureates declared in a manifesto published in several newspapers, including the Guardian, that Europe as an idea was 'coming apart before our eyes'." --s

*****

FBI agents arrested Roger Stone early this morning "after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation." Story linked below.

The Trump Shutdown, Month Two, Ctd.

Erica Werner, et al., of the Washington Post: "Senators on Thursday embarked on fresh behind-the-scenes negotiations to end the longest-ever government shutdown, and House Democrats struggled to finalize a new border security plan, after the failure of two competing Senate bills forced renewed efforts to find some other way out. It was unclear, though, whether any of the activity would yield a solution, as the fundamental dynamics that produced the shutdown remained unchanged: President Trump's demand for new funding for his U.S.-Mexico border wall, and Democrats' refusal to give it to him.... Speaking at the White House after the Senate blocked his proposed border solution and a competing Democratic plan, the president said that if Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) could come up with a 'reasonable agreement,' he would support it." Mrs. McC: Yes, President* Fickleface von Clownschtick has said that before.

Lesley Clark of McClatchy News: "Mitch McConnell is back at the center of talks to end the partial government shutdown, as his colleagues are hopeful the master negotiator's involvement may be the break that ends the longest government shutdown in U.S. history. The Senate majority leader and his Democratic counterpart, Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, met briefly in McConnell's Capitol office Thursday after Republican and Democratic efforts to end the stalemate died on the Senate floor. Schumer left McConnell's office with a smile, telling reporters 'We're talking.'... Democrats have blamed McConnell for the impasse, noting that he's refused to take up any House-passed legislation to re-open the government, even though much of it the House bill is modeled after legislation that cleared the Senate in December."

You Can Believe This. Eliana Johnson, et al., of Politico: "Now that the Senate has shot down ... Donald Trump's compromise offer to end the month-long government shutdown, White House officials aren't sure of their next move. But they do know one thing: they're losing, and they want to cut a deal. The president is weighing the idea of a three-week continuing resolution to fund the government, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) revealed Thursday afternoon, reviving a prospect the president has previously ruled out.... While the president has previously dangled the threat of a national emergency declaration, he now considers the move a 'last resort,' according to a source familiar with his thinking." ...

... AND/OR You Can Believe That. Priscilla Alvarez & Tammy Kupperman of CNN: "The White House is preparing a draft proclamation for ... Donald Trump to declare a national emergency along the southern border and has identified more than $7 billion in potential funds for his signature border wall should he go that route, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN. Trump has not ruled out using his authority to declare a national emergency and direct the Defense Department to construct a border wall as Congress and the White House fight over a deal to end the government shutdown. But while Trump's advisers remain divided on the issue, the White House has been moving forward with alternative plans that would bypass Congress. 'The massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency,' a draft of a presidential proclamation reads." ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: "The ... amount of aliens"? No. You could have an "amount" of water or of money but you have a "number" of individuals or "aliens." The larger point of course is that White House staff don't know what's going on, & that's because Trump changes his mind from moment to moment & speaks out of both sides of his mouth, sometimes in a single sentence or thought sequence. ...

... AND/OR The Other Thing. David Choi of Business Insider: "Trump pitched a new idea: a 'prorated down payment' for the wall. Democratic leaders were not interested. 'I don't know if he knows what he's talking about, do you?,' House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said to reporters on Thursday. Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska was equally puzzled...: 'I don't know what that means,' she said.... 'The way forward is clear to me: a three-week continuing resolution that includes a down payment on wall/barrier funding and priorities of Democrats for disaster relief, showing good faith from both sides,' [Sen. Lindsey] Graham [R-S.C.] said in a statement. 'I strongly urge my Democratic colleagues to work with the White House on a three-week CR that includes a down payment on wall/barrier funding consistent with [Department of Homeland Security] priorities.' But Democrats balked at the suggestion, including Pelosi, who told reporters it was 'not a reasonable agreement.'"

Julie Davis of the New York Times: "A Democratic plan to reopen the government without money for President Trump's border wall failed in the Senate on Thursday, sending lawmakers back to the drawing board to forge a compromise that could end the stalemate and bring about a quic resolution to a partial shutdown now nearing its sixth week. A half dozen Republicans crossed the aisle to vote for the measure, but the tally still fell short of the 60 votes it needed to advance, 52-44. The defeated measure is similar to one the Senate approved unanimously in December, only to see Mr. Trump reject it and the House cancel a planned vote on it. Republican views in the Senate have shifted dramatically since then to reflect the president's." ...

... Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Thursday's votes on President Trump's and the Democrats' plans to end the month-long government shutdown were never going to succeed. But they sure seem to have reduced Trump's leverage. Six Republican senators wound up voting for the Democrats' plan to reopen the federal government through Feb. 8 without any wall funding. The measure still failed, falling eight votes shy of the required 60, but it got more votes (52-44) than Trump's own plan (50-47). And that's despite Republicans having six more senators. (On the GOP plan, only West Virginia's Joe Manchin III broke with the Democrats, while immigration hard-liners Mike Lee of Utah and Tom Cotton of Arkansas voted against the proposal.) The Republicans who voted against the GOP plan were Sens. Lamar Alexander (Tenn.), Susan Collins (Maine), Cory Gardner (Colo.), Johnny Isakson (Ga.), Lisa Murkowski (Alaska) and Mitt Romney (Utah).... Trump is demanding $5.7 billion in border wall funding or he won't reopen the government, but six GOP senators just served notice that they won't hold that line with him.... What [the vote] most definitely won't do is make [Democrats] feel as though they need to give in."

Mild-mannered Sen. Michael Bennet (D-Colo.) has had enough:

Mike Lillis of the Hill: "Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Thursday that House Democrats are not working behind the scenes to craft a counteroffer to President Trump's border wall demands as a strategy for ending the history-making partial shutdown. 'That's not true. That's not true. That's not true,' Pelosi said during a press briefing in the Capitol. Instead, the Speaker asserted that Democrats' strategic blueprint remains unchanged: The House will continue to pass spending bills already authored and endorsed by Republicans, while insisting that Trump reopen the government as the prerequisite for bringing Democrats to the negotiating table on his border wall. 'We are doing what we have been doing all along: working on our congressional responsibility to write bills, appropriations bills, to keep government open,' she said.... Pelosi declined to put a figure on the border security provisions to be included in the Department of Homeland Security bill, being spearheaded by Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-Miss.), who heads the Homeland Security Committee. But she emphasized that it will come in addition to other border-related funding already included in House-passed bills to fund other agencies with a hand in security, including the Treasury, Justice and State departments."

Sean Sullivan & Paul Kane of the Washington Post: "Republican senators clashed with one another and confronted Vice President Pence inside a private luncheon on Thursday, as anger hit a boiling point over the longest government shutdown in history. 'This is your fault,' Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) told Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) at one point, according to two Republicans who attended the lunch and witnessed the exchange. 'Are you suggesting I'm enjoying this?' McConnell snapped back, according to the people who attended the lunch.... The argument was one of several heated moments in a lunch that came just before the Senate voted on the opposing plans to end the shutdown offered by President Trump and Democrats. The outbursts highlighted the toll the shutdown has taken on Republican lawmakers, who are dealing with growing concerns from constituents and blame from Democrats, all while facing pressure from conservatives to stand with Trump in his demand for money to build a wall on the border with Mexico."

Greg Sargent: "Pundits can claim all they want that Pelosi is being 'as petty as Trump' [in disinviting him to deliver his SOTU address during his shutdown], as if this is all just a matter of interpersonal conduct. That objection is now irrelevant: What really matters is that Trump will not deliver the speech. He will not use this ceremony as a platform to browbeat Democrats or to spread gales of disinformation about the shutdown and about the wall fantasies driving it. He will not use its pomp and elevating power to, in effect, launder his profound bad faith and the resulting deep imbalance of the situation. Perhaps the only antidote to the false-equivalence fog machine is the reality of power -- the power of 'no.' I don't mean to overstate the long-term significance of this capitulation. Instead, my point is that it gets at the deeper problem we all face here: Trump and his GOP enablers are proceeding as if the 2018 elections never happened.... This is the whole reason for shutting down the government: To break the influence that the Democratic House has over whether Trump's wall will be funded, by threatening severe harm to the country until Democrats rubber stamp what he's demanding.... The true nature of the staggering malevolence driving Trump's misconduct here is also being obscured by a great deal of both-sides media coverage." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: As you know, this is nothing new. From Day 1 of the Obama presidency, Mitch McConnell & his ilk wanted to pretend a Democrat president did not exist, right down to deciding a Democratic president did not have the right to naming a Supreme Court nominee more than a year before the end of his administration.

Sheryl Stolberg of the New York Times outlines how Nancy Pelosi has "flummoxed" Donald Trump.

Sylvan Lane of the Hill: "Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross said Thursday that he was confused why thousands of federal workers, who've already missed one paycheck, are relying on food banks during the partial government shutdown. Ross said on CNBC's 'Squawk Box' that he didn't understand why some of the roughly 800,000 unpaid federal workers have flocked to food banks for meals instead of taking out loans against back pay guaranteed by a bill President Trump signed last week. 'I know they are and I don't really quite understand why,' said Ross, who's reportedly worth roughly $700 million.... Hundreds of banks and credit unions have offered low- or no-interest loans against back pay to federal workers who will not be paid until the shutdown ends. But thousands of those employees are still struggling to cover basic expenses, and furloughed federal contractors may no receive backpay at all." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

Wilbur Ross is @realDonaldTrump's Secretary of Commerce. Wilbur Ross is a billionaire. And this is billionaire Wilbur Ross saying he doesn't understand why federal workers not getting paid during the #TrumpShutdown don't just take out loans *to feed their families*. Unreal. -- Sen. Chuck Schumer, in a tweet Thursday ...

Is this a 'let them eat cake' kind of attitude, or call your father for money? -- Nancy Pelosi, during a news conference Thursday ...

... ** David Lynch & Damian Paletta of the Washington Post: "The Department of Commerce federal credit union is charging furloughed employees almost 9 percent interest on emergency loans to cover their missing paychecks, despite Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross saying Thursday that financial institutions were offering 'very, very low interest rate loans to bridge people over the gap.'... Two loan officers reached at the credit union telephone number confirmed the terms, which include interest rates 'as low as 8.99 percent.'... [Ross] described such loans as 'totally safe' for the lender. Since Congress has promised to pay employees for their time away from work, the loans effectively carry 'a 100 percent government guarantee,' Ross said." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Ross's last point is ludicrous, as I understand it. Personal loans typically require no collateral (like, um, your next paycheck). So unless the loan agreement included an automatic wage garnishment clause, there would be nothing forcing the borrower to pay back the loan once he got his back paychecks. And unless the federal government were a party to the loan, which there's no reason to think it would be, there's no government loan "guarantee" whatsoever. I could be wrong on this, but I don't think such loans work the way Ross seems to imagine they do. Moreover, these unpaid workers have to qualify for personal loans, & it should go without saying (to anyone who isn't Wilbur Ross) that people who live paycheck-to-paycheck may not have credit ratings that will get them the lowest-interest loans available. ...

... Mary Olmstead of Slate: "Ross was not alone Thursday in missing the mark on the shutdown's effects on workers. White House economic adviser Larry Kudlow told reporters that federal workers were 'volunteering' by coming to work without pay. When a reporter challenged Kudlow, he responded with frustration:... '... They honor us by their service.... Democrats have shut government down.... And they do it because of their love for the country and the office of the presidency and presumably their allegiance to President Trump...." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: "Volunteers" showing up for work without pay are doing so because they can be fired if they don't, not because of "their allegiance to President* Trump." Kudlow has come up with a whole new definition of "volunteer." Slaves would have been volunteers, too, under Kudlow's construction. ...

... Colby Itkowitz of the Washington Post runs down some of the tone-deaf remarks Donald Trump & his band of billionaires & nitwits have made about federal workers & contractors financially unprepared to go weeks or months without any income. "When he became president, [Trump] filled his Cabinet with fellow billionaires, almost assuring that they would not understand the struggles of the average American.... The overarching issue is that Trump has surrounded himself with people for whom it is incomprehensible that someone wouldn't have a pool of money to tide them over while they go weeks without pay. That most Americans depend on their ... wages to pay for housing, cars, child care and other expenses that are part of daily life.... According to Trump and his allies, anyone taking a job in public service should be prepared mentally and financially to lose their pay on the assumption that Washington can't do its job." ...

... AND Donald Trump thinks grocery stores should help foot the bill for his shutdown. Mrs. McC: Grocery chains, BTW, operate on a very low profit margin -- something like one or two percent.

Katie Galiato of Politico: "Gary Cohn, the former top economic adviser to ... Donald Trump, told MSNBC on Thursday that his former boss has 'got to get the government open' and allow a steady flow of immigrants into the U.S. to maintain economic growth. Cohn, a former executive at Goldman Sachs, was director of the National Economic Council until earlier this year, when he stepped down amid disagreements over the president's tariff policies.... 'We have over 7 million job openings. We have less than 7 million unemployed people in the United States,' he said on MSNBC. 'If we want to continue to grow our economy, there's only one way to do it -- allow immigrants into the country.' Cohn, who last week called the shutdown 'completely wrong' in an interview with The Boston Globe, added that negotiations should wait until the shutdown, now the longest in U.S. history and in its 34th day, is resolved." (Also linked yesterday.)

Matt Wilstein of the Daily Beast: "The last time he was on Stephen Colbert's Late Show, Michael Moore said that that only way to stop ... Donald Trump would be to 'put our bodies on the line.' On Thursday night, he had issued a new challenge, this one to the 800,000 federal workers who are either furloughed or working without pay during the government shutdown.... Asked by Colbert how this whole thing will end, Moore said there's an 'easy way' to end it. 'Federal workers, don't go to work without pay,' he said. 'And we, the people, we shouldn't be supporting anything that requires someone who's not paid working for us.' He went on to urge all Americans to stop taking flights and delay filing their tax paperwork to the IRS until the government reopens. 'Consult a lawyer first, don't listen to him,' Colbert warned viewers." Includes video.

Sam Blum of Popular Mechanics: "Speaking on Monday at an award ceremony in honor of Martin Luther King Jr., [Association of Flight Attendants union President Sara] Nelson suggested the collective power of furloughed workers and their allies could potentially signal the end of the longest government shutdown in the country's history: 'Almost a million workers are locked out or being forced to work without pay. Others are going to work when our workspace is increasingly unsafe. What is the Labor Movement waiting for? Go back with the Fierce Urgency of NOW to talk with your Locals and International unions about all workers joining together - To End this Shutdown with a General Strike....' Though the AFA does not represent employees impacted by the federal government's shutdown, Nelson advocated the cause for a general strike as a matter of solidarity, citing the 800,000 caught in the crosshairs as the deadlock continues...." (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: That's a pretty good idea. Federal employees can't strike, but members of private-sector unions can. If the flight attendants & pilots walked out for a few days, grounding almost all U.S. commercial flights, Trump & McConnell might get off their asses. It should not have to come to that, but most of what's going on in Right Wing World should not be happening now.

Brian Faler of Politico: "The IRS is facing tax season amid the shutdown with new rules that could complicate filing for millions of Americans -- demand a potential shortage of workers to handle the returns -- raising the possibility of refund delays and angry taxpayers. As it prepares to accept 2018 filings beginning Monday, the administration has recalled tens of thousands of IRS employees, but there are already signs that some will be no-shows because they're facing the prospect of working without pay. An IRS union says some are taking advantage of rules allowing them to stay home if they face financial hardships. The public, meanwhile, will be filing for the first time under Republicans' sweeping tax overhaul, H.R. 1, and many will surely be confused by changes made as part of the biggest tax code rewrite in a generation. At the same time, even experts are unsure whether workers have had the correct amount of taxes withheld from their paychecks, which could mean that many people accustomed to receiving refunds may instead owe the IRS. 'The politicians are playing with dynamite if something goes wrong during filing season,' said former IRS Commissioner Larry Gibbs.... 'If you don't pay refunds to people who are expecting them on a timely basis, all hell breaks loose.'" (Also linked yesterday.)

Men get such hard-ons from putting their name on stuff. You guys don't grow up; it's like you need to pee on everything. -- Natalie Keener, character in the film "Up in the Air" (2009) accidentally explaining Donald Trump

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

** Mark Mazzetti of the New York Times: "Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump who has spent decades plying the dark arts of scandal-mongering and dirty tricks to help influence American political campaigns, was arrested early Friday after an indictment was unsealed in the special counsel investigation. Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel's office." Includes a copy of the grand-jury indictment. Mrs. McC: For a document replete with "on or about"s, the indictment is pretty easy reading. ...

     ... Brian Schwartz of CNBC: "Former White House chief strategist and Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon is the unidentified 'high-ranking Trump campaign official' in special counsel Robert Mueller's indictment of Roger Stone, CNBC has learned. The indictment released Friday said the campaign official reached out to Stone in October 2016, a month before ... Donald Trump was elected, 'about the status of future releases by Organization 1.' The unidentified organization clearly refers to WikiLeaks and Julian Assange.... A person with direct knowledge of the matter ... [said] that Bannon has spoken with Mueller's team, along with the Senate Intelligence Committee, about the exchange." ...

     ... Update: Suggestions others have made as to who the high-ranking official was: Rick Gates & Paul Manafort. ...

The FBI agents who arrested Roger Stone before sunrise this morning - like all the bureau's 35,000 employees - are not getting paid due to the shutdown. -- Jim Sciutto of CNN, in a tweet

"FBI. Open the Door!" Just another day in Trumpworld. Here's some footage of armed FBI personnel at Stone's Fort Lauderdale, Florida, home:

My first reaction is real simple: this has nothing to do with the President, and certainly nothing to do with the White House. -- Sarah Sanders, to CNN this morning

Right. -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie

Maggie Haberman, et al., of the New York Times: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has issued a subpoena to compel Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former lawyer, to appear before the panel next month to formally correct false testimony that he delivered last year about a proposed Trump Organization project in Moscow, one of his lawyers confirmed on Thursday. The subpoena was disclosed a day after Mr. Cohen pulled out of a public hearing scheduled for Feb. 7 before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, citing in a letter from his lawyer, Lanny J. Davis, verbal attacks by Mr. Trump."

Manuel Roig-Franzia & Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Over the past several months, author and conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi has emerged as one of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III's most vexing witnesses in his probe of Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. Corsi -- perhaps best known for promoting the false idea that former president Barack Obama was not born in the United States -- has released internal special counsel documents, fulminated against alleged plea-deal offers and published a hastily written e-book outlining his account of interactions with his onetime ally, the longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone, a subject of intense scrutiny in Mueller's probe. At the same time, Corsi says, he has been collecting what he describes as $15,000-a-month payments from Infowars, a website that has attacked the special counsel investigation as a deep-state conspiracy designed to topple President Trump. An attorney for Infowars confirmed that these payments continued for the past six months as severance since Corsi lost his post as the website's Washington bureau chief -- a job that Stone helped arrange, according to both Corsi and Stone.... Mueller's team appears to be exploring whether the payments were made to ensure that Corsi would offer investigators a version of events favorable to Stone, the person said."

** Laura Strickler, et al., of NBC News: "Jared Kushner's application for a top secret clearance was rejected by two career White House security specialists after an FBI background check raised concerns about potential foreign influence on him -- but their supervisor overruled the recommendation and approved the clearance, two sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. The official, Carl Kline, is a former Pentagon employee who was installed as director of the personnel security office in the Executive Office of the President in May 2017. Kushner's was one of at least 30 cases in which Kline overruled career security experts and approved a top secret clearance for incoming Trump officials despite unfavorable information, the two sources said. They said the number of rejections that were overruled was unprecedented -- it had happened only once in the three years preceding Kline's arrival." ...

... Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Rep. Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee, said on Thursday that his wide-ranging investigation into the White House's process for issuing security clearances 'explicitly covers' Jared Kushner, after [the NBC News report linked above] characterized the way the White House senior adviser obtained his clearance as unprecedented."

Marcy Wheeler, in a New Republic piece, explains how Trump gets his subordinates to lie for him. His suborning perjury is more nuanced than "directing" them to lie: "In this administration, the president doesn't need to order his subordinates to lie for him. It's a daily matter of course. Mueller's team seems to be wise to that, even if Congress and much of the media aren't quite there yet." Mrs. McC: It all sounds very mobby to me: "Yo, McGahn. You're gonna tell Mikey to do the thing about the thing. Right?" "Badda bing, badda boom, boss."

Andrew DeGrandpre, et al., of the Washington Post: "U.S. officials at the southern border will begin sending some asylum applicants back to Mexico on Friday as the Trump administration implements new measures preventing migrants from waiting in the United States while their cases are processed. The initiative, announced by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday night, follows high-level talks between the two governments late last year as U.S. border officials struggled to contend with waves of Central American migrants fleeing violence and poverty. It will be introduced in California, at the San Ysidro port of entry south of San Diego, and eventually expanded throughout the nearly 2,000-mile border, a DHS official said earlier Thursday.... Immigrant rights groups have opposed it, saying it violates U.S. and international asylum laws and could face court challenges. 'The president thinks he can do this unilaterally,' said Kevin Appleby [of] ... the Center for Migration Studies. 'But it's a blatant rejection of current law.'"

Kevin Breuninger & Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., has proposed a 'wealth tax' on some of the richest Americans. The new tax from Warren, who recently announced her bid to challenge President Donald Trump in 2020, would only apply to Americans with more than $50 million in assets." ...

... Jeff Stein & Christopher Ingraham of the Washington Post: "Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) will propose a new annual 'wealth tax' on Americans with more than $50 million in assets, according to an economist advising her on the plan, as Democratic leaders vie for increasingly aggressive solutions to the nation's soaring wealth inequality. Emmanuel Saez and Gabriel Zucman, two left-leaning economists at the University of California, Berkeley, have been advising Warren on a proposal to levy a 2 percent wealth tax on Americans with assets above $50 million, as well as a 3 percent wealth tax on those who have more than $1 billion, according to Saez.... The wealth tax would raise $2.75 trillion over a ten-year period from about 75,000 families, or less than 0.1 percent of U.S. households, Saez said." ...

... Hamilton Nolan of Splinter: "The economic inequality crisis in America is not rooted in income inequality — it is rooted in wealth inequality. To solve it, you can't just tax income; you have to forge into the new frontier of taxing wealth.... Most of the very richest people in America — the mega-billionaires, who represent the top tier of wealth that really stretches out the inequality figures -- are not rich because they get paid well each year from their job. They are rich because they own assets, most often financial assets like stock, or entire companies. Their earned income each year may be relatively trivial, but their wealth can grow hugely as stock prices increase. And since America does such a poor job of taxing capital gains and inheritances, wealth inequality grows and grows." ...

... Hmmm. Kevin Drum: "The 16th Amendment allows the federal government to levy direct income taxes, even if the income is derived from real or personal property, but a direct federal tax on property itself is still forbidden by the Constitution unless it's proportional to the population of each state -- which I'm sure is something Warren doesn't have in mind. But nobody seems to be mentioning this. Am I missing something?"

Alex Hern of the Guardian: "Facebook has settled a class action lawsuit that had accused it of allowing children to run up huge bills on their parents' credit cards as part of a concerted effort to maximise revenues. Court documents obtained by the US-based Center for Investigative Reporting, initially sealed as part of a lawsuit filed in 2012, revealed Facebook staffers discussing what to do with the 'whales', as they referred to the high-spending children, before deciding to refuse refunds. Internally, the company described the problem as one of 'friendly fraud', and one staffer, who was in charge of a project to increase the company's game revenues, said it was particularly bad with a few games, including 'PetVille, Happy Aquarium, Wild Ones, Barn Buddy and any Ninja game'. Those games allowed users to buy in-game advantages with real money. But the link was frequently unclear to parents and children. Younger children just didn't understand the concept, while older children and teens were unaware that their parents' credit cards were linked to the accounts until they had run up bills in the thousands of dollars."

Beyond the Beltway

Florida. Jeffrey Schweers of the Tallahassee Democrat: "Michael Ertel, the newly appointed [Florida] Secretary of State of Gov. Ron DeSantis, has resigned after photos emerged of him posing as a Hurricane Katrina victim in blackface at a private Halloween party 14 years ago. The photos obtained by the Tallahassee Democrat were shown to the Governor's Office on Thursday morning. Hours later it issued a statement. 'The governor accepted Secretary Ertel's resignation,' the Governor's Office said. At a news conference on hurricane relief in Marianna, DeSantis addressed the resignation. 'It's unfortunate. He's done a lot of good work,' he said, adding that he accepted the resignation because 'I don't want to get mired in side controversies.' The photo was taken in 2005, eight months after Ertel was appointed Seminole County supervisor of elections and two months after Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans. After the Democrat texted the photos to him last week, Ertel, 49, identified himself as the white man in blackface and red lipstick, wearing earrings and a New Orleans Saints bandanna, and falsies under a purple T-shirt that had 'Katrina Victim' written on it." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: A "side controversy"??? In case you were skeptical of charges that DeSantis was a racist, this should settle the matter. ...

Now, I'm not calling Mr. DeSantis a racist, I'm simply saying the racists believe he's a racist. -- Andrew Gillum, October 2018

Way Beyond

Venezuela. Ana Herrero & Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "The leader of Venezuela’s armed forces declared loyalty to President Nicolás Maduro on Thursday and said the opposition's effort to replace him with a transitional government amounted to an attempted coup. The pronouncement by the defense minister, Vladimir Padrino López, came a day after an opposition lawmaker proclaimed himself the country's rightful leader during nationwide protests and pleaded with the armed forces to abandon Mr. Maduro. The defense minister's declaration was a setback for the opposition leader, Juan Guaidó, whose claim to legitimacy has been backed by a number of countries, including the United States. In a further blow to the opposition, Russia warned the United States on Thursday against meddling in Venezuela, a longtime Kremlin ally that has received billions of dollars in Russian support.... [U.S.] Secretary of State Mike Pompeo ignored the admonitions and intensified the Trump administration's call for other countries to accept Mr. Guaidó and renounce Mr. Maduro."

Ukraine. Andrew Kramer of the New York Times: "Former President Viktor F. Yanukovych committed treason by inviting Russia to invade Ukraine and reverse a pro-Western revolution that ousted him from power, a court in Kiev ruled on Thursday, sentencing Mr. Yanukovych to 13 years in prison. The former president is a widely reviled figure in Ukraine for his over-the-top corruption -- he lived in a palace with a private zoo -- and because the police shot dozens of antigovernment demonstrators during an uprising in 2014. He has also been widely characterized in Ukraine and the West as pro-Russia -- and even as a puppet of the Russian president, Vladimir V. Putin. The court's ruling was the first to formally determine that Mr. Yanukovych was serving Russian interests while president of Ukraine.... Before his work on the 2016 Trump campaign, Paul J. Manafort was a political consultant for Mr. Yanukovych...."