The Commentariat -- Dec. 20, 2018

Afternoon Update:

Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said Thursday that President Trump will not sign a stopgap spending bill over concerns about border security, a decision that increases the risk of a government shutdown.... In a minute-long statement on the driveway outside the West Wing, the Speaker said lawmakers would work on adding border security measures to the funding bill but did not specifically mention border-wall funding."

Judy Kurtz of the Hill: "Former President Obama did his best Santa Claus impression while making a surprise hospital visit at Children's National Health System in Washington." ...

Sarah Ferris & John Bresnahan of Politico: "The House Republican caucus was thrown into chaos Thursday as conservatives revolted against a funding bill that includes no new money for ... Donald Trump's border wall. On the brink of a Christmastime shutdown, House Speaker Paul Ryan is confronting resistance from rank-and-file Republicans, who have begun personally egging on Trump to force a shutdown over the wall. The odds of a shutdown rose dramatically Thursday as Freedom Caucus leaders Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan headed to the White House for a sit-down with Trump himself. Ryan and his deputies began making plans to put a funding bill on the floor that would deliver $5 billion to the border wall, in an attempt to make good on Trump's promise in the final days of a GOP-controlled Congress.... The issue erupted Thursday during a raucous closed-door meeting."

Laura Davison & Shobhana Chandra of Bloomberg News, via Yahoo! News: "The amount of offshore cash corporations are bringing back to the U.S. dropped sharply for a second straight quarter, falling short of the trillions of dollars ... Donald Trump had promised would result from his tax overhaul.... Trump has said, without specifying his source, that he expects more than $4 trillion to return to the U.S., which will help to create jobs and more investment." Thanks to PD Pepe for the link. Mrs. McC BTW: Trump's $4 trillion estimate, not surprisingly, does not make any sense. According to an expert the reporters cite, "The amount of cash accumulated offshore is probably closer to $2.5 trillion than $4 trillion." Even if the amount were $4 trillion, for various reasons, companies would not repatriate 100% of it. As it is, assuming the expert is right, there's not more than about $2.5 trillion out there to repatriate, and again, corporations will not bring 100% of that back into the U.S.

Bob Mueller, Take Note. Anna Massoglia of Open Secrets: "The Trump campaign funneled money to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA by routing funds through a secretive LLC that appears to be little more than a shell company, an investigation by the Center for Responsive Politics has found. While the Trump campaign stopped reporting payments to ad buyers alleged to have facilitated illegal coordination between the campaign and the NRA after the 2016 election cycle, Trump's 2020 campaign has continued to deploy the same individuals working for the firms at the center of the controversy through payments to Harris Sikes Media LLC ... a low-profile limited-liability company operating with no website or public-facing facade whatsoever. Facing the illegal coordination allegations are National Media, Red Eagle Media Group and American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG), closely tied consultancies that share staff, resources and adjacent storefronts in Alexandria, Va." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump does seem awfully fond of employing those secretive shell LLCs to get around campaign finance laws. (See Daniels, Stormy.)

Here's the New York Times story, by Charlie Savage, on William Barr's memo bitching about the Mueller investigation. "Separately, a Justice Department official said on Thursday that Matthew G. Whitaker, the acting attorney general, had met with ethics experts at the Justice Department and would not be recusing himself from the Mueller investigation." ...

... Jonathan Chait: "It's entirely possible indeed, it seems quite likely -- Trump was aware of the memo. The assertion by the Journal source that the memo 'played no role' in Trump's selection of Barr is therefore extremely hard to accept at face value. We know Trump is obsessed with finding an attorney general who will suppress the Mueller investigation. His candidate wrote a memo attacking Mueller, and submitted it to Trump's lawyer, who may or may not have informed others of the memo's existence. The worst-case scenario for Barr is that he opened a covert back channel to the administration and campaigned for the role of being Trump's Roy Cohn. The best-case scenario is that he merely created the appearance of impropriety. Barr, in this scenario, merely happens to be a fanatical proponent of executive power who expresses his passion for the issue by writing long memos in his spare time."

Daniel Burke of CNN: "In yet another blow to the Catholic Church in the United States, Illinois' attorney general says the state's six dioceses have failed to disclose accusations of sexual abuse against at least 500 priests and clergy members. Illinois' dioceses have released lists publicly identifying 185 clergy members who had been credibly accused of child sex abuse. But state Attorney General Lisa Madigan said preliminary findings in her investigation reveal that the church failed to disclose sexual abuse allegations against at least 500 additional priests and clergy members. In many cases, the accusations have 'not been adequately investigated by the dioceses or not investigated at all,' Madigan's office said in a statement Wednesday. What's more, the statement added, the church often failed to notify law enforcement authorities or the state's Department of Children and Family Services about the allegations."

I only read the Constitution for the articles. -- Ilya Shapiro, conservative lawyer

Funny, But. That should be "I read the Constitution only for the Articles." -- Mrs. Bea McCrabbie, liberal pedant

Scott Shane & Alan Blinder of the New York Times: "As Russia's online election machinations came to light last year, a group of Democratic tech experts decided to try out similarly deceptive tactics in the fiercely contested Alabama Senate race, according to people familiar with the effort and a report on its results. The secret project, carried out on Facebook and Twitter, was likely too small to have a significant effect on the race, in which the Democratic candidate it was designed to help, Doug Jones, edged out the Republican, Roy S. Moore. But it was a sign that American political operatives of both parties have paid close attention to the Russian methods, which some fear may come to taint elections in the United States.

*****

Elaine Cochrane of the New York Times: "Moving to head off a looming government shutdown, the Senate passed a stopgap spending bill on Wednesday night that would keep the government funded through Feb. 8 -- and would punt the impasse over a southern border wall to the new year and a divided Congress. The bill was expected to pass the House on Thursday and be sent to President Trump before the midnight Friday deadline, when funding would lapse for nine federal departments. The measure poses an uncomfortable political problem for Mr. Trump among his far-right supporters, even though it remained unclear if the president, who has been a volatile factor throughout the spending debate, would sign such a measure without the $5 billion he has demanded for a border wall.... Conservatives were already condemning the president's seeming capitulation on his signature campaign promise." ...

... Yes, But Not to Worry. Brent Griffiths of Politico: "Brian Kolfage, a 37-year-old Florida resident who was severely wounded in the Iraq war, has started a GoFundMe campaign to complete Trump's signature pledge. The campaign has raised over $2 million in the three days since it started, with an overall goal of $1 billion." Mrs. McC: Go for it, Kolfage. If citizens want to waste their money on a ridiculous project, it's no more ridiculous than my buying Christmas decorations. Wall construction will create jobs for Americans (definitely including some undocumented ones). It's true that somehow or other, the von Trump Family Grifters will take a cut, but we can blame that on the same fools who crowd-fund the wall.

Helene Cooper, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump is considering pulling 2,000 United States ground troops out of Syria in a move that would seek to describe the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday. 'We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,' the president said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning. He offered no details on his plans for the military mission in Syria.... A formal withdrawal announcement could come as early as Wednesday, administration officials said. But Pentagon officials were still trying to talk the president out of it, arguing that such a move would betray Kurdish allies who have fought alongside American troops in Syria and who could find themselves under attack in a military offensive now threatened by Turkey." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Update. New Lede: "President Trump has ordered a rapid withdrawal of all 2,000 United States ground troops from Syria within 30 days, declaring the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday." ...

... Joby Warrick & Souad Mekhennet of the Washington Post: "Even as the territory claimed by the Islamic State continues to shrink, the group remains a powerful and deadly force across large swaths of Syria and Iraq. In some regions, the Islamist militants appear to be gaining ground, reconstituting themselves as a brutal insurgency bent on killing local leaders and police officers and terrorizing populations, officials and analysts say.... For many security experts, the depiction of the Islamic State as 'defeated' -- as President Trump declared in a Twitter post Wednesday -- is not only inaccurate, but is also dangerously misleading. Despite its setbacks, the group maintains a formidable presence in Syria and Iraq, commanding cadres of fanatical, highly trained fighters believed to number in the thousands, including many who went into hiding after the fall of the group's self-declared caliphate." ...

... Karoun Demirjian, et al., of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Wednesday delivered a parting snub to one of his biggest congressional critics, as even his Republican allies laid into administration officials for the White House's surprise announcement that U.S. troops would be withdrawing from Syria because, as the president put it on Twitter, Islamic State forces there had been 'defeated.'... Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) ... [went] to the White House for a previously scheduled meeting with Trump where he planned to ask him about the Syria decision. Instead, while he was waiting, Trump canceled on him without explanation.... Corker was one of several lawmakers to express shock that Trump would 'wake up and make this kind of decision' to pull out of Syria 'with this little communication, with this little preparation.'... 'This is chaos. I can only imagine how it's playing in Syria,' said Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump confidant on some matters but a critic of the president on foreign policy. 'I have the same feeling about this as I did in Iraq: Over time, this is not going to play well.... Graham went to Defense Secretary Jim Mattis for answers on just what Trump's decision meant, later telling reporters that he might introduce a resolution condemning the decision. Meanwhile, over a lunch on Capitol Hill, other GOP senators excoriated Vice President Pence for supporting Trump's move." ...

... Josh Rogin of the Washington Post: "On Monday, the U.S. special representative for Syria engagement publicly pledged that the U.S. commitment to Syria would not waiver. The very next day, Trump reportedly decided to rapidly withdraw all U.S. troops there. Trump appears to be discarding his entire Syria and Iran strategy at a single stroke, giving up any and all U.S. influence in the region -- and disregarding the advice of his top national security officials. If he follows through, Trump's decision will have devastating and dangerous consequences for the United States, the region and the Syrian people.... Trump is now contradicting what all of his other top national security officials have been telling the world for months.... Trump is abandoning all of the partner forces the United States has been fighting with over the years. We've also spent billions of dollars building and supporting them." ...

... Barbara Starr, et al., of CNN: "The decision, a sharp reversal from previously stated US policy, surprised foreign allies and lawmakers, sparking rebukes, rebuttals and warnings of intensified congressional oversight, even as the White House said troops are already on their way home.... The President's decision flew in the face of policy statements by administration officials just days earlier and military statements about the threat of ISIS, highlighting the continuing dysfunction at the most senior levels of Trump's administration.... Many analysts said a withdrawal of ground forces will please US enemies by clearing the way in Syria for the Assad regime, Russia and Iran." Mrs. McC: And Turkey. ...

... Kori Schake in the Atlantic: "The Trump administration has unexpectedly decided to rapidly withdraw U.S. forces from Syria, where they have been fighting ISIS. This decision, which demonstrates that the president's National Security Strategy does not govern his policies, will have deleterious effects across the strategic waterfront: throwing Syria policy into chaos; rewarding Iranian regional destabilization and Russian intervention; alarming Kurdish forces and American allies fighting in the region, as well as countries to which jihadists might return; and calling into question America's commitment to stabilizing Iraq and Afghanistan. All of these priorities have been capriciously sacrificed by President Trump for no apparent reason other than that he campaigned on withdrawal and wants it to happen now. There has been no precipitating event to drive a policy change." ...

... Jeet Heer: "Withdrawing from Syria is not, on the face of it, an inherently bad or indefensible policy. But what is undeniably dangerous is the chaotic manner the policy is being executed and the mixed messages being sent to the world. The incoherence increases the chance of greater conflict, as Americ's friends and rivals will see the country as a fickle and untrustworthy actor on the world stage." ...

... Anton Troianovski of the Washington Post: "Russian President Vladimir Putin praised President Trump's decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria, describing the American presence there as illegitimate and the Islamic State as largely defeated on the ground. Putin told journalists at his annual year-end news conference that the Islamic State has suffered 'serious blows' in Syria. 'On this, Donald is right. I agree with him,' Putin said.... Moments after Putin's statement, Trump tweeted about his decision to withdraw troops. He noted the presence of Russian, Iranian and Syrian forces, also enemies of the Islamic State, and said the United States was doing their work for them. 'Time for others to finally fight,'he said in a follow up tweet." ...

... Martin Chulov & Andrew Roth of the Guardian: "The Kurdish-led force that has led the ground war against Islamic State in Syria has condemned the White House's surprise decision to withdraw US troops from the country and claimed it will spark a revival of the terror group. The Syrian Democratic Forces, a group of Kurdish and Arab units raised by Washington specifically to fight Isis, said the Trump administration's move would have 'dangerous implications for international stability'. The planned US pullout was announced as Turkey was preparing to send its military into Syria to confront Kurdish militias that it says threaten its sovereignty. The US-backed Kurds are drawn from the same Kurdish groups -- a point that has caused friction between Ankara and Washington throughout the four-year campaign against Isis.... On Wednesday morning, days after speaking by phone with the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Trump tweeted: 'We have defeated Isis in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency' -- a claim at odds with his own administration's assessments."

... Mrs. McCrabbie: If you're wondering why Trump suddenly decided, against the advice of the Pentagon & his own national security team, to pretend ISIS in Syria has been defeated so the U.S. should withdraw all troops, look no further than the collapse of the Great Wall of Trump. (Also too, Putin must be all smiles.) ...

     ... Update. Sen. Claire McCaskill, who is on the Armed Services Committee, appeared on Rachel Maddow's show, & agreed with me that Trump had pulled this stunt out of his hat to change the subject from his capituation on the Great Wall. ...

     ... Update 2. Mrs. McCrabbie: I'll have to amend my own earlier "analysis." It can't be a coincidence that Trump made this decision the day before Putin's annual press conference & just days after he spoke with Erdogan. Yeah, Putin is grinning ear-to-ear. And so is Erdogan. This is another of Trump's installment payments for his initiation into the International Thugs Club. ...

... Brett Samuels of the Hill: "House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) on Wednesday criticized President Trump's decision to pull U.S. troops out of Syria, and raised concerns that the timing of the announcement coincided with new developments in the legal proceedings for former national security adviser Michael Flynn.... 'All Americans should be concerned that this hasty announcement was made on the day after sentencing in criminal proceedings began against the President's former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn, who admitted that he was a registered foreign agent for a country with clear interests in the Syrian conflict.'... Flynn has admitted he failed to register as a foreign agent for the Turkish government as part of a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller." ...

... Wait, wait, more goodies for Putin ...

... This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Saleha Mohsin & Daniel Flatley of Bloomberg News: "The Trump administration is ready to remove sanctions on Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska's aluminum company, United Co. Rusal, after reaching an agreement to significantly reduce his ownership stake. Deripaska will remain under U.S. sanctions and his property will remain blocked, but Treasury intends to remove financial restrictions on Rusal, En+ Group Plc and JSC EuroSibEnergo. The move will take effect in 30 days unless Congress blocks the action, the Treasury Department said in a statement Wednesday.... The Treasury secretary highlighted that Deripaska, not the companies, was the intended target of U.S. sanctions imposed in April on associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin over Moscow's interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer, joined by Sherrod Brown of Ohio and Robert Menendez of New Jersey, the top-ranking Democrats respectively on the Banking and Foreign Relations committees, said the decision 'raises key questions that the administration will need to answer about whether the structural and governance changes made by these companies are sufficient to ensure that Deripaska is no longer in the driver's seat.'" ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "If Deripaska sounds like a familiar name, that's because he reportedly paid former Trump campaign chairman and convicted felon Paul Manafort to help Vladimir Putin by lobbying for 'Putin-friendly oligarchs in Ukraine, and for pro-Russian governments in Georgia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, from 2006 through at least 2009.'" Mrs. McC: Deripaska is close to Putin. ...

... BUT. Matthew Choi of Politico: "The Trump administration rolled out a new spate of sanctions on Russian entities on Wednesday, targeting the country's hacking in international organizations and the two Russian nationals who allegedly carried out an assassination attempt on a former KGB spy in the United Kingdom last March. The sanctions focus on agents of Russia's main foreign military intelligence body, the GRU, and a Russian digital propaganda and disinformation company, the Internet Research Agency. Both organizations have been the subject of past sanctions for interfering in the 2016 elections, but Wednesday's action expands the list of targeted individuals."

Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III asked the House Intelligence Committee on Friday for an official transcript of Trump adviser Roger Stone's testimony, according to people familiar with the request, a sign that prosecutors could be moving to charge him with a crime. It is the first time Mueller has formally asked the committee to turn over material the panel has gathered in its investigation of Russian interference of the 2016 campaign.... The move suggests that the special counsel is moving to finalize his months-long investigation of Stone -- a key part of Mueller's inquiry into whether anyone in President Trump's orbit coordinated with the Russians.... Securing an official transcript from the committee would be a necessary step before pursuing an indictment that Stone allegedly lied to lawmakers, legal experts said."

Dan Mangan of CNBC: "Someone on Wednesday filed a document saying something in connection with a criminal case against ... Donald Trump's former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen. But who filed it and what it says are a mystery. The document, which is sealed from public view, was 'placed in vault' at U.S. District Court in Manhattan, according to a docket entry."

** Sadie Gurman & Aruna Viswanatha of the Wall Street Journal: "William Barr, President Trump's choice for attorney general, sent an unsolicited memo earlier this year [firewalled] to the Justice Department that excoriated special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into potential obstruction of justice by Mr. Trump, saying it is based on a 'fatally misconceived' theory that would cause lasting damage to the presidency and the executive branch. The 20-page document, which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, provides the first in-depth look at Mr. Barr's views on the special counsel's Russia investigation, which he would likely oversee if confirmed. In the memo, Mr. Barr ... wrote he was concerned about the part of Mr. Mueller's probe that, according to news reports in the Journal and elsewhere, has explored whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice in asking then-FBI director James Comey to drop an investigation into former national security adviser Mike Flynn's contacts with Russia, and by later firing Mr. Comey. Mr. Barr's memo, dated June 8 and sent to Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, argues that, based on the facts as he understands them, the president was acting well within his executive-branch authority.... Mr. Barr's memo is peppered with strongly worded phrases about the peril he sees in Mr. Mueller's reading of the law, as he understood it. He described Mr. Mueller's approach as 'grossly irresponsible' with 'potentially disastrous implications' for the executive branch. He also wrote: 'Mueller should not be permitted to demand that the President submit to interrogation about alleged obstruction.'" Mrs. McC: The WSJ accidentally allowed me to open this page in a private window. Don't expect to do the same unless you're a WSJ subscriber. ...

     ... Update. Yen Nee Lee of CNBC summarizes the WSJ report on Barr's memo. ...

Rebecca Ballhaus & Joe Palazzolo of the Wall Street Journal: "Sworn statements by President Trump dating back several decades indicate he has a deep understanding of campaign-finance laws [firewalled], legal experts say, which could be critical if investigators ever pursue a case against him over his alleged direction of hush-money payments in the 2016 campaign. Mr. Trump's statements were made as part of a 2000 regulatory investigation into his casino company and in 1988 testimony for a government-integrity commission. They contrast with the portrayal by some of the president's allies that he is a political novice with little understanding of campaign-finance laws and therefore couldn't be charged with violating them. In 2000, the Federal Election Commission investigated allegations that Trump Hotels & Casinos violated the law related to a fundraising event for a Senate candidate. Mr. Trump's sworn affidavit 'indicates that Trump had a very thorough understanding of federal campaign finance law, especially regarding what he could and could not legally do when raising money for a federal candidate,' said Brett Kappel, an election-law lawyer...."

Chris Sommerfeldt & Theresa Braine of the New York Daily News: "President Trump signed a 'bulls[hi]t' letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign, Rudy Giuliani conceded Tuesday -- just two days after the former New York mayor claimed the missive had not been signed. Giuliani refused to acknowledge he told CNN's Dana Bash on camera Sunday that Trump didn't put his John Hancock on the Oct. 28, 2015 letter. 'I don't think I said nobody signed it,' Giuliani told the Daily News, even though he literally told Bash 'no one signed' the letter. In a stunning contradiction, Giuliani told The News that 'of course' Trump signed it. 'How could you send it but nobody signed it?' he said.... Giuliani claimed the letter was 'bulls[hi]t' because it didn't go anywhere. 'That was the end of it,' Giuliani said. 'It means nothing but an expression of interest that means very little unless it goes to a contract and it never did.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Dana Milbank: "The 'fool' has been a dramatic fixture at least since Shakespeare scribbled, and [Rudy] Giuliani is the fool for our time. Occasionally he speaks accidental truths, but mostly he plays the clown. He's America's crazy uncle...." Milbank reprises some of Giuliani's greatest hits.

Samatha Vinograd, a member of President Obama's National Security Council, writes an op-ed in Politico Magazine about the extent of Michael Flynn's criminality. (Also linked yesterday.) ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: What caught my attention in Vinograd's essay was this: "National security advisers are supposed to have one customer: the president of the United States. It's disturbing that President Trump doesn't seem bothered that his top aide on foreign policy was serving other [foreign] clients." Actually, I find it quite likely that Flynn -- at least in regard to Russia -- was serving one customer: Donald Trump. Flynn may have lied about & and omitted disclosing his relationship with Turkey to cover his own ass, but his lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russia were surely on orders from Trump. One day Bob Mueller will let us know. ...

... Marcy Wheeler: "By yesterday morning, [Judge] Emmet Sullivan probably became one of the few people outside Mueller's team and his DOJ supervisors that understands the activities that Trump and his associates, including Flynn, engaged in from 2015 to 2017. He understands not just the significance of Flynn's lies, but also how those lies tied to graft and conspiracy with foreign countries -- countries including, but not limited to, Russia. It should gravely worry the Trump people that Sullivan's comments about whether Flynn's behavior was treasonous came from someone who just read about what the Mueller investigation has discovered.... By filing a [false] registration [i.e., foreign agent's statement] in March 2017 specifically denying what all the [Turkey] co-conspirators knew -- that Flynn Intelligence Group was actually working for Turkey..., it prevented the public and the government from assessing the import of Flynn's actions in trying to force DOJ to deem [Fethullah] Gulen a terrorist who could be extradited to Turkey. And frankly, so long as Flynn continued to hide that detail, it made him susceptible to pressure if not blackmail from Turkey."

Tangled Web, Ctd. Carrie Levine of the Center for Public Integrity: "An aide to National Security Adviser John Bolton sought to schedule a meeting for him with a Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk during Bolton's official trip to Ukraine last August, according to new disclosure filings.... The August meeting ultimately did not take place, and it's unclear why Bolton's aide sought it. But Bolton and Pinchuk have financial ties dating to before Bolton joined the Trump administration: Pinchuk's foundation had paid Bolton a combined $115,000 for his participation in two panel discussions -- one during September 2017 and the other in February 2018, according to Bolton's federal personal financial disclosure.... A steel magnate, Pinchuk has also drawn notice in the U.S. for his relationship with Trump. The New York Times reported in April that the ... Special Counsel's Office ... was investigating a $150,000 donation Pinchuk made in September 2015 to Trump's foundation. Early in his presidential campaign, Trump deemed Pinchuk a 'very, very special man, a special entrepreneur.' The payment was in exchange for a 20-minute appearance Trump made via video to a conference in Kiev, according to the Times, which reported scrutiny of the payment was part of a broader examination of foreign money flowing to Trump and his associates." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

There's a New Day Dawning, but It Will Be a Nightmare for Trump. Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan of Politico: "Incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings on Wednesday sent more than 50 letters to multiple agencies and departments as well as the Trump Organization and Trump's personal attorneys requesting documents on a series of scandals that have plagued the White House. The Maryland Democrat is asking for more information on the administration's handling of hurricanes Irma and Maria, Trump's controversial family separation policy at the border, the White House decision to revoke the security clearances of high ranking former officials who became Trump critics, and more. While the documents are not subpoenas, Cummings' letters lay the groundwork for a much more aggressive oversight of the executive branch in the next two years." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Zoe Tillman of BuzzFeed News: "A federal judge on Wednesday dismissed a defamation lawsuit against BuzzFeed News over the publication of a dossier in January 2017 that alleged several years of links between Russia and then-president-elect Donald Trump. A Cypriot businessman, Aleksej Gubarev, was named in the dossier, and his name wasn't redacted in the version originally published by BuzzFeed. Gubarev sued shortly after the article came out, claiming he was defamed by having his name included. US District Judge Ursula Ungaro in Florida found that BuzzFeed News was shielded against defamation claims because the dossier was the subject of official proceedings -- both Trump and then-president Barack Obama had been briefed on it, according to reporting at the time, and the FBI investigated allegations in the documents. The judge concluded that BuzzFeed News was protected by what's known as the 'fair report' privilege."

The von Trump Family Grifters. Charles Blow has a good question: "How can a family that can't run a charity run a country?" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie has the answer: They can't, but they use the same corrupt, lying, cheating, unlawful tactics to run the country as they used to run the charity.

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve announced a widely expected quarter-point increase in its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday, and signaled that it plans to continue raising rates next year. The Fed emphasized the strength of economic growth in a statement released after a two-day meeting of its policymaking committee. It said firms keep adding jobs and consumers keep spending money. The statement made no mention of recent turbulence in financial markets." (Also linked yesterday.)

Judge Sullivan Is on a Roll. Ted Hesson of Politico: "A federal judge on Wednesday struck down most of a Trump administration policy that turned away asylum seekers who claimed to suffer domestic violence or gang violence. U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan ruled that policies blocking the alleged victims from obtaining 'credible fear' of return to their home country -- the first step in an asylum claim -- violates federal immigration law. The decision bars the Trump administration from rapidly deporting such asylum seekers and represents another legal setback in ... Donald Trump's battle to discourage migrants from trekking to the U.S.-Mexico border.... Sullivan called the new standards 'arbitrary' and 'capricious,' and ruled that they violated federal regulatory law in addition to immigration statutes.... The Justice Department on Tuesday swiftly filed a motion to stay a broad application of the ruling while it decides whether to appeal the order." ...

... Emily Birnbaum of the Hill: "The White House on Wednesday night slammed a judge's ruling from earlier in the day blocking President Trump's asylum ban, calling it 'the latest example of judicial activism.' 'Today, a court has, once again, overridden and undermined United States immigration law,' White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement." Mrs. McC: That's so odd, because when a federal judge struck down the Affordable Care Act on a convoluted excuse that legal experts on left & right agreed -- besides being downright nutty -- took "judicial activism" to a whole new level, Trump was jubilant.

Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "A federal judge Wednesday rejected a request from the Trump administration to dismiss a lawsuit challenging its addition of a question regarding citizenship to the 2020 census. U.S. District Court Judge George J. Hazel's ruling paves the way for a trial in January to determine if the question is constitutional."

Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "Even before he participates in his first public meeting on Thursday, Bernard McNamee, the newest member of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), is facing multiple calls for his recusal from cases related to the resilience of the electric power grid. Environmental and public interest groups believe McNamee's past work on President Donald Trump's coal and nuclear bailout proposals disqualify him from voting on those issues when they come before FERC." --s

Criminal Justice Reform as a Racist Project. Katie Zezima & Sean Sullivan of the Washington Post: "The criminal justice bill headed to President Trump by week's end is the culmination of a major pivot by the Republican Party from the punitive, law-and-order stance of the 1980s to policies that include cutting prison sentences for some offenders. The political and ideological shift comes as crime rates have dropped, the opioid crisis has ravaged the country and prison populations, after reaching record highs, are on the decline.... [The change] also has a financial component: Republicans said revising the criminal justice system will save money by moving people convicted of low-level offenses out of prison and into programs that will help reduce the recidivism rate.... Many Republicans have also embraced treating drug addiction as a public health issue rather than one for the criminal justice system, with a realization that authorities cannot arrest their way out of the opioid epidemic.... One difference between now and the 1980s is that the opioid epidemic has primarily affected white, rural communities, though the rates of overdose death are now skyrocketing among African Americans due to fentanyl."

Beyond the Beltway

Kansas. Kate Riga of TPM: "When the Kansas state government reconvenes in January, three of its formerly Republican members will report as freshly minted Democrats. The two state senators and one state representative, all women, cited varying sources of their discontent within the GOP. State Sen. Barbara Bollier started the trend last week, as first reported by the Kansas City Star.... Her fellow state Sen. Dinah Sykes followed her lead Wednesday, also citing complaints with being a moderate trying to operate in an increasingly partisan Republican party.... State Rep. Stephanie Clayton jumped on the bandwagon too, citing a specific issue: education." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Michigan. Josh Israel of ThinkProgress: "After Republicans lost their hold on key political positions in Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Kentucky in the 2018 Blue Wave, lame duck legislative Republicans have drawn national attention for their efforts to strip power from the newly elected Democrats.... But it appears [in Michigan] their effort to strip Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson (D) of her powers may have been a bridge too far for the state's House. A bill to take away campaign finance oversight from the new Secretary of State ... passed the Senate earlier this month.... State Rep. Aaron Miller (R) said Wednesday that the House Elections and Ethics Committee, which he chairs, would not consider the bill during the lame duck session, due to 'lack of support.' That likely means the bill is dead[.]" --s

Way Beyond

Brazil Targets Foot. Shoots. Reuters in the Guardian: "Brazil has failed to replace nearly one third of the thousands of Cuban doctors who exited the country after a diplomatic spat..., the health ministry has said. Brazil's president-elect, Jair Bolsonaro, had criticized Cuba's involvement in a government healthcare program, saying that Cuban doctors were being used as 'slave labor' because Havana took 75% of their salaries. In response, Cuba's government pulled out of the cooperation agreement ... leaving more than 8,000 doctor positions vacant.... The money the [Cubans] doctors earned in Brazil under the program was considered good by Cuban standards, even after the government took its portion. Bolsonaro ... has ... said that he would take all action 'within the rule of law and democracy' to oppose the governments of Venezuela and Cuba." --s

The Commentariat -- December 19, 2018

Late Morning/Afternoon Update:

Binyamin Appelbaum of the New York Times: "The Federal Reserve announced a widely expected quarter-point increase in its benchmark interest rate on Wednesday, and signaled that it plans to continue raising rates next year. The Fed emphasized the strength of economic growth in a statement released after a two-day meeting of its policymaking committee. It said firms keep adding jobs and consumers keep spending money. The statement made no mention of recent turbulence in financial markets."

Mitch and Donnie Blink. Burgess Everett, et al., of Politico: "Mitch McConnell moved to bail out Congress and ... Donald Trump from an intractable shutdown impasse, preparing on Wednesday to fund the government into early February and avoid a funding lapse right before the holidays. The Senate majority leader will introduce a bill that funds the government through Feb. 8 after a longer-term offer was rejected by congressional Democrats on Tuesday amid a continuing battle between Trump and congressional Democrats over his border wall. With Trump softening his demands for $5 billion for the wall in the waning days of the GOP Congress, McConnell is working to avoid a political blunder four days before Christmas. It has been a week of about-faces for the White House that have induced whiplash on Capitol Hill. Though Trump declared he would be 'proud' to shut down the government if he doesn't get the wall funding he is demanding, it now appears he is willing to sign a short-term funding measure."

Chris Sommerfeldt & Theresa Braine of the New York Daily News: "President Trump signed a "bulls[hi]t" letter of intent to build a Trump Tower in Moscow during the 2016 campaign, Rudy Giuliani conceded Tuesday -- just two days after the former New York mayor claimed the missive had not been signed. Giuliani refused to acknowledge he told CNN's Dana Bash on camera Sunday that Trump didn't put his John Hancock on the Oct. 28, 2015 letter. 'I don't think I said nobody signed it,' Giuliani told the Daily News, even though he literally told Bash 'no one signed' the letter. In a stunning contradiction, Giuliani told The News that 'of course' Trump signed it. 'How could you send it but nobody signed it?' he said.... Giuliani claimed the letter was 'bulls[hi]t' because it didn't go anywhere. 'That was the end of it,' Giuliani said. 'It means nothing but an expression of interest that means very little unless it goes to a contract and it never did.'"

Samatha Vinograd, a member of President Obama's National Security Council, writes an op-ed in Politico Magazine about the extent of Michael Flynn's criminality. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: What caught my attention in Vinograd's essay was this: "National security advisers are supposed to have one customer: the president of the United States. It's disturbing that President Trump doesn't seem bothered that his top aide on foreign policy was serving other [foreign] clients." Actually, I find it quite likely that Flynn -- at least in regard to Russia -- was serving one customer: Donald Trump. Flynn may have lied about & and omitted disclosing his relationship with Turkey to cover his own ass, but his lies to the FBI about his contacts with Russia were surely on orders from Trump. One day Bob Mueller will let us know.

Tangled Web, Ctd. Carrie Levine of the Center for Public Integrity: "An aide to National Security Adviser John Bolton sought to schedule a meeting for him with a Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk during Bolton's official trip to Ukraine last August, according to new disclosure filings.... The August meeting ultimately did not take place, and it's unclear why Bolton's aide sought it. But Bolton and Pinchuk have financial ties dating to before Bolton joined the Trump administration: Pinchuk's foundation had paid Bolton a combined $115,000 for his participation in two panel discussions -- one during September 2017 and the other in February 2018, according to Bolton's federal personal financial disclosure.... A steel magnate, Pinchuk has also drawn notice in the U.S. for his relationship with Trump. The New York Times reported in April that the ... Special Counsel's Office ... was investigating a $150,000 donation Pinchuk made in September 2015 to Trump's foundation. Early in his presidential campaign, Trump deemed Pinchuk a 'very, very special man, a special entrepreneur.' The payment was in exchange for a 20-minute appearance Trump made via video to a conference in Kiev, according to the Times, which reported scrutiny of the payment was part of a broader examination of foreign money flowing to Trump and his associates."

There's a New Day Dawning, but It Will Be a Nightmare for Trump. Rachel Bade & John Bresnahan of Politico: "Incoming House Oversight and Government Reform Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings on Wednesday sent more than 50 letters to multiple agencies and departments as well as the Trump Organization and Trump's personal attorneys requesting documents on a series of scandals that have plagued the White House. The Maryland Democrat is asking for more information on the administration's handling of hurricanes Irma and Maria, Trump's controversial family separation policy at the border, the White House decision to revoke the security clearances of high ranking former officials who became Trump critics, and more. While the documents are not subpoenas, Cummings' letters lay the groundwork for a much more aggressive oversight of the executive branch in the next two years."

Kate Riga of TPM: "When the Kansas state government reconvenes in January, three of its formerly Republican members will report as freshly minted Democrats. The two state senators and one state representative, all women, cited varying sources of their discontent within the GOP. State Sen. Barbara Bollier started the trend last week, as first reported by the Kansas City Star.... Her fellow state Sen. Dinah Sykes followed her lead Wednesday, also citing complaints with being a moderate trying to operate in an increasingly partisan Republican party.... State Rep. Stephanie Clayton jumped on the bandwagon too, citing a specific issue: education."

Helene Cooper, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump is considering pulling 2,000 United States ground troops out of Syria in a move that would seek to describe the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday. 'We have defeated ISIS in Syria, my only reason for being there during the Trump Presidency,' the president said in a Twitter post on Wednesday morning. He offered no details on his plans for the military mission in Syria.... A formal withdrawal announcement could come as early as Wednesday, administration officials said. But Pentagon officials were still trying to talk the president out of it, arguing that such a move would betray Kurdish allies who have fought alongside American troops in Syria and who could find themselves under attack in a military offensive now threatened by Turkey." ...

     ... Update. New Lede: "President Trump has ordered a rapid withdrawal of all 2,000 United States ground troops from Syria within 30 days, declaring the four-year American-led war against the Islamic State as largely won, officials said Wednesday."

*****

Trumpty-Dumpty Blinks, Likely to Fall off Wall. Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Tuesday retreated from his demand that Congress give him $5 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, backing down amid acrimonious GOP infighting that left him with few options four days ahead of a partial government shutdown. The news, delivered by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in an interview on Fox News, represented a major shift from Trump's declaration last week that he would be 'proud' to shut down the government to get the money he wanted for his border wall. Democrats, who will reclaim the majority in the House just weeks from now, have consistently refused to give Trump anywhere near the $5 billion he wants." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... The story has been updated with new developments: "But Democrats immediately rejected Republicans' follow-up offer.... The new border funding offer from Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) calls on Congress to pass a $1.6 billion homeland security spending bill that was crafted earlier this year in a bipartisan Senate compromise.... Congress would also reprogram $1 billion in unspent funds that Trump could use on his immigration policies. Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-W.Va.), who oversees the panel in charge of homeland security funding, said the reprogrammed money would not be able to be used for a physical wall but could be spent on other border security measures. Sen. Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) told McConnell Tuesday that Democrats would not accept the deal, and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) criticized the plan to reprogram the funds. 'Leader Schumer and I have said that we cannot support the offer they made of a billion-dollar slush fund for the president to implement his very wrong immigration policies,' Pelosi said. 'So that won't happen.'"

This Russia Thing, Etc. Ctd.

Axios: "During ... Michael Flynn's sentencing hearing in D.C. on Tuesday, Judge Emmet Sullivan blasted Flynn from the bench after he confirmed his guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Trump's inauguration, telling him, 'Arguably, this undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out.'" ...

... Update. Spencer Hsu, et al., of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Tuesday postponed the sentencing for Michael Flynn after he lambasted President Trump's former national security adviser for trying to undermine his own country and said he could not guarantee he would spare Flynn from prison. The stunning development means that Flynn will have to be sentenced at a later date, when he can possibly convince a judge more thoroughly of how his cooperation has benefited law enforcement. Flynn's attorneys asked for the delay after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan accused Flynn of acting as 'an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States' -- an allegation he later walked back. Sullivan granted the request and asked for a status report in 90 days, though he said he was 'not making any promises' that he would view the matter differently in three months." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Ryan Reilly of the Huffington Post: "'I'm not hiding my disgust, my disdain for this criminal offense,' U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan in Washington told [Michael] Flynn.... Sullivan had Flynn admit, once again, that he had lied to the FBI and was pleading guilty because he was guilty. He gave Flynn ample opportunity to back out of his guilty plea, discussed with the prosecution the variety of other crimes Flynn could have faced, and said Flynn's criminal exposure would have been 'significant' had be been charged with the other offenses.... He then asked the government whether undermining U.S. sanctions against Russia for their interference in the 2016 election could be considered treason, a suggestion the government didn't want to weigh in on. (Soon after, the judge said he did not mean to suggest Flynn committed treason.) ...

... Jonathan Chait: "Donald Trump and his allies have spent two years spinning elaborate conspiracy theories about an alleged deep state conspiracy to frame the president and his campaign for imagined crimes revolving around cooperation with Russia. The most recent iteration of these theories have centered around Michael Flynn..., who has already pleaded guilty to federal charges. Flynn, Trump's supporters claim, had done nothing wrong and was trapped into telling an inconsequential lie to FBI agents desperate to use him against Trump. Flynn's sentencing hearing today showed that this theory, like every previous exculpatory theory devised on Trump's behalf, is an absurd fantasy.... What makes [Judge Emmet Sullivan's tongue-lashing] so devastating is that conservatives have held out Sullivan as the judicial hero who would vindicate their theories.... Flynn was not set up. He was charged for committing serious crimes. And he is probably going to escape prison because the crimes committed by the people he worked with and for are even more serious." ...

... Ken White in the Atlantic: "Flynn and his lawyers faced the same problem that has bedeviled Trump and Michael Cohen and Michael Avenatti and Paul Manafort and several other figures in this circus we call life after 2016: a muscular public relations strategy is often a terrible litigation strategy. Time and again, these players have heard their public statements quoted back at them in court to undermine their legal positions. But Flynn's error was even more grievous -- he incorporated media spin into a sentencing brief.... The Flynn-as-Deep-State-victim narrative was pleasing to Trump partisans and Mueller foes, but suicidally provocative to a federal judge at sentencing.... Flynn's sentencing arguments effectively told Sullivan that Flynn saw himself as a victim, rather than a contrite wrongdoer."

John Wagner & Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "President Trump lashed out Tuesday morning at threats from many directions, taking aim at the special counsel's Russia inquiry, the Federal Reserve, social media companies and undocumented immigrants in tweets that spanned more than two hours. Trump's Twitter tirade -- which included some false and questionable claims -- comes as he faces increasing peril from the investigation of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and remains in a standoff with Democrats in Congress over funding for his long-promised southern border wall that could prompt a partial government shutdown at midnight Friday. Trump touched on both battles in his tweets -- writing at one point that 'the whole Russian Witch Hunt is a Fraud and a Hoax which should be ended immediately' -- as well as several other events from recent days. He also took a shot at 'Crooked Hillary,' a reference to Hillary Clinton...."

Another Giuliani "Misstatement." Kate Sullivan of CNN: "A newly obtained document shows ... Donald Trump signed a letter of intent to move forward with negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Russia, despite his attorney Rudy Giuliani claiming on Sunday the document was never signed.... The letter is dated October 28, 2015, and bears the President's signature.... '... There was a letter of intent to go forward, but no one signed it,' Giuliani told [CNN's Dana] Bash. The non-binding document is also signed by Andrey Rozov, owner of I.C. Expert Investment Co., the Russian firm that would have been responsible for developing the property.... The project, which was ultimately scrapped, would've given Trump's company a $4 million upfront fee, no upfront costs, a percentage of the sales and control over marketing and design. The deal also included an opportunity to name the hotel spa after Trump's daughter Ivanka.... While the potential Trump Tower Moscow deal was on the table, then-candidate Trump was speaking positively about working with Russian President Vladimir Putin and minimizing Russia's aggressive military moves around the world.... In 2017, [Michael] Cohen told congressional committees ... that Trump had signed the letter. Donald Trump Jr. also testified to Congress that his father signed the letter of intent."

Darren Samuelsohn & Josh Gerstein of Politico: "A federal appeals court on Tuesday ordered a mystery corporation owned by a foreign country to comply with a subpoena that appears to be from special counsel Robert Mueller. The three-page opinion released by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit is the latest twist in an opaque dispute that Politico and other media outlets have tied to Mueller's probe into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. The ruling offers the intriguing detail that the entity fighting the Mueller subpoena is a foreign government-owned company, not a specific individual, as many experts had speculated."

The von Trump Family Grifters, Ctd.

Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "The Donald J. Trump Foundation will close and give away all its remaining funds amid a lawsuit accusing the charity and the Trump family of using it illegally for self-dealing and political gain, the New York attorney general's office announced Tuesday. The attorney general, Barbara Underwood, accused the foundation of 'a shocking pattern of illegality' that was 'willful and repeated' and included unlawfully coordinating with Mr. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... David Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "The shuttering comes after The Washington Post documented apparent lapses at the foundation. Trump used the charity's money to pay legal settlements for his private business, to purchase art for one of his clubs and to make a prohibited political donation.... In a court filing in New York, [New York AG Barbara] Underwood said that the foundation's remaining $1.75 million will be distributed to other charities approved by her office and a state judge.... The attorney general's investigation turned up evidence that Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump and Ivanka Trump -- all listed as officers of the charity -- had never held a board meeting.... Trump gave away oversize checks from the foundation at campaign events in the key early-voting states of Iowa and New Hampshire, pausing his campaign rallies to donate to local veterans' groups. Federal law prohibits charities from participating in political campaigns. As president, Trump has called repeatedly for that law to be repealed. Underwood has asked the Internal Revenue Service and the Federal Election Commission to investigate whether the Trump charity broke tax laws." ...

... Tim O'Brien of Bloomberg adds more examples of Trump's egregious misuse of funds that were supposed to be donated to worthy causes.

... Matt Ford of the New Republic: Underwood's "office is still pursuing more than $2 million in restitution from Trump and restrictions on his family's involvement in non-profit organizations in the state.... You'd be hard-pressed to find an aspect of the president's life that isn't marked by grifting.... Ironically, some of these schemes likely would have gone unnoticed if Trump had never run for president." ...

... Nancy LeTourneau of the Washington Monthly: "While I don't usually pay a lot of attention to what Donny Deutsch has to say, he is exactly the kind of person who knows the world Trump traveled in with his business dealings. So it might be worth hearing him out on this one: 'What is going to put him in jail eventually ... destroy anything he's ever built, and his children, is a 30 year dishonest criminal enterprise. One thing will take him out of the presidency, the other will ruin him forever.... The political incentive for every U.S. Attorney in New York or Virginia to do this ... this guy showed up and tried to undo what 250 years of people have been dying for in this country -- who we are, what we stand for. So there is a moral imperative, rule of law, what our grandfathers died for -- democracy -- he single-handedly is the first guy in our lifetime to try to undo that. He's going to pay for that for the rest of his life as they pick apart his criminal enterprise. This is the very, very beginning of the story.'"

Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair: "Donald Trump plans to head to Mar-a-Lago for a 16-day Christmas vacation starting Friday -- and West Wing officials, remembering previous sojourns, are on edge at the prospect of the president spending two weeks unsupervised. As the Robert Mueller loop tightens around the president, his erratic behavior is causing alarm among his most senior staff. 'The staff is fed up he's acting like a nut. They can't get him to stop tweeting,' a former official said."

Damian Carrington of the Guardian: "A newly discovered blind and burrowing amphibian is to be officially named Dermophis donaldtrumpi,in recognition of the US president's climate change denial. The name was chosen by the boss of EnviroBuild, a sustainable building materials company, who paid $25,000 (£19,800) at an auction for the right. The small legless creature was found in Panama and EnviroBuild's Aidan Bell said its ability to bury its head in the ground matched Donald Trump's approach to global warming." --s

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Trump administration on Tuesday issued a new rule banning bump stocks, the attachments that enable semiautomatic rifles to fire in sustained, rapid bursts and that a gunman used to massacre 58 people and wound hundreds of others at a Las Vegas concert in October 2017. The new regulation, which had been expected, would ban the sale or possession of the devices under a new interpretation of existing law. Americans who own bump stocks would have 90 days to destroy their devices or to turn them in to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Justice Department said A.T.F. would post destruction instructions on its website." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Stuart Leavenworth & Franco Ordoñez of McClatchy DC: "... Donald Trump, who campaigned on a pledge to keep federal lands in federal hands, is now considering candidates for Interior secretary who have advocated transferring vast swaths of federal property to states, and even to private interests. These include U.S. Rep. Raul Labrador of Idaho, who met with White House officials Saturday about the job, and U.S. Sen. Dean Heller, who has left open the possibility he'd take a Cabinet position with Trump." --s

Nick Miroff of the Washington Post: "Democratic lawmakers who came to the Border Patrol station [in Lordsburg, N.M.,] Tuesday vowing to investigate the death of a 7-year-old migrant girl emerged from their tour with a litany of accusations but few solutions for helping the agency manage the surge of families that has left agents overwhelmed. The congressional delegation, led by members of the House Hispanic Caucus, described a facility jam-packed with families, lacking sufficient medical care and poorly equipped to care for children. 'The only reason this facility is still open as it is now is because these cameras can't get in,' Rep. Al Green (D-Tex.) told reporters who had to wait outside the station, nearly 90 miles north of the border along Interstate 10. Green said he saw scores of children 'stacked' in holding cells and huddled in foil blankets on concrete floors, alongside toilets lacking privacy screens." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Lordsburg is a forlorn little town 135 miles from El Paso as the crow (or helicopter) flies. That's at least an hour by medevac helicopter, assuming a medevac pilot, team & bird are immediately available in Lordsburg. Housing migrants -- some of whom certainly will have severe medical problems after a long journey -- in a locale more than a 100 miles away from a general-services hospital seems downright stupid. ...

... John Stanton of BuzzFeed News: "A young girl who was in the custody of US Customs and Border Protection went into cardiac arrest in November at a hospital in El Paso where she was resuscitated, a US Customs and Border Protection official told members of Congress on Tuesday. The incident occurred in the same CBP sector where a 7-year-old Guatemalan asylum seeker, Jakelin Caal, fell ill earlier this month. Caal was airlifted to El Paso, but died in the early hours of Dec. 8.

Annie Rose Ramos & Dennis Romero of NBC: "Two teenagers who were staying at a migrant center in central Tijuana, Mexico, were killed in an attempted robbery, a law enforcement official said late Tuesday. Jorge Alberto Álvarez Mendoza, deputy attorney general in the state of Baja California, said the two boys, estimated to be ages 16 and 17, were stabbed and strangled Saturday. Their bodies were found shortly after 7 p.m., he said.... Tijuana saw a record number of homicides, 1,744, last year and was seeing a similarly bloody one this year, experts say."

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "The Senate overwhelmingly approved on Tuesday the most substantial changes in a generation to the tough-on-crime prison and sentencing laws that ballooned the federal prison population and created a criminal justice system that many conservatives and liberals view as costly and unfair. The First Step Act would expand job training and other programming aimed at reducing recidivism rates among federal prisoners. It also expands early-release programs and modifies sentencing laws, including mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders, to more equitably punish drug offenders. But the legislation falls short of benchmarks set by a more expansive overhaul proposed in Congress during Barack Obama's presidency and of the kinds of changes sought by some liberal and conservative activists targeting mass incarceration. House leaders have pledged to pass the measure this week, and President Trump, whose support resuscitated a yearslong overhaul effort last month, said he would sign the bill."

David Dayen of The Intercept: "[Elizabeth] Warren introduced legislation on Tuesday with Rep. Jan Schakowsky, D-Ill., that would create an Office of Drug Manufacturing within the Department of Health and Human Services. That office would have the authority to manufacture generic versions of any drug for which the U.S. government has licensed a patent, whenever there is little or no competition, critical shortages, or exorbitant prices.... Last month, [Bernie] Sanders and Rep. Ro Khanna, D-Calif., released their own bill to tackle high drug prices, which would require the government to identify any excessively priced drugs (relative to an international index of list prices) and grant a license to private companies to provide competition with a generic version. The two bills from Warren and Sanders ... are actually complementary efforts.... And they reflect a broader attack on the industry from multiple angles." --s

Alex Isenstadt & James Arkin of Politico: "Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has appointed GOP Rep. Martha McSally to the Senate seat being vacated by GOP Sen. Jon Kyl -- tapping McSally as the Republican contender in a 2020 special election that will be among the most competitive Senate races in the country that year. McSally, who lost a race for Arizona's other Senate seat to Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in 2018, will be competing to serve out the rest of the term won by the late Sen. John McCain, who passed away earlier this year. Kyl was originally appointed to fill McCain's seat, but he will be stepping down at the end of the year to return to the private sector." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Brett Kavanaugh's Amazing Get-out-of-Jail Card. Ann Marimow & Robert Barnes of the Washington Post: "The judicial council reviewing dozens of claims against Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh has dismissed the complaints that coincided with his contentious nomination battle. 'The allegations contained in the complaints are serious,' said the order from a Colorado-based appeals court, but must be dropped because ethics rules for the judiciary do not extend as high as the Supreme Court. The 83 claims filed by lawyers, doctors, professors and other concerned citizens accuse Kavanaugh of making false statements during his Senate confirmation hearings, displaying a lack of judicial temperament, making inappropriate partisan statements and treating members of the Senate Judiciary Committee with disrespect, according to the 10-page order from the Judicial Council of the 10th Circuit. The judiciary has the authority to investigate and discipline federal judges, the order says, but 'the power only to resolve complaints concerning the conduct of covered judges.'" ...

... Serial Liar Gets Supreme Whitewash. Tucker Higgins of CNBC: "Federal judges reviewing complaints lodged against Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh said Tuesday that the allegations against the former federal appeals court judge are 'serious' but that they must dismiss them without determining their merits because of Kavanaugh's October confirmation by the U.S. Senate.... In the order [Timothy] Tymkovich said that most of the complaints include allegations of false statements under oath during Kavanaugh's D.C. Circuit confirmation hearings in 2004 and 2006 as well as during his Supreme Court confirmation hearings earlier this year.... Tymkovich, a George W. Bush appointee, declined to recuse himself from the probe into Kavanaugh after a complaint was filed requesting that he do so. The complaint, Tymkovich said in a separate order, alleged that Kavanaugh advocated for Tymkovich's confirmation." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Now we know how to avoid the consequences of our bad acts: become a Supreme Court justice. Anyhow, thanks, Susan Collins & all you immoral GOP Senators! Let's add here that the 10th Circuit ruling doesn't make a lot of sense. Kavanaugh committed these bad acts before he became a justice; that is, while he did not enjoy Supreme Immunity. Furthermore, he committed them during the course of "applying for Supreme Immunity." A South Dakota man travels to North Dakota -- where the age of consent is 18 -- & while in North Dakota commits statutory rape by having sex with a 17-year-old girl. Then the man goes home to South Dakota where the age of consent is 16. North Dakota can still find him guilty of violating its law; there's no South Dakota immunity.

Election 2020. Alex Isenstadt of Politico: "President Donald Trump is planning to roll out an unprecedented structure for his 2020 reelection, a streamlined organization that incorporates the Republican National Committee and the president's campaign into a single entity. It's a stark expression of Trump's stranglehold over the Republican Party: Traditionally, a presidential reelection committee has worked in tandem with the national party committee, not subsumed it. Under the plan ... the Trump reelection campaign and the RNC will merge their field and fundraising programs into a joint outfit dubbed Trump Victory. The two teams will also share office space rather than operate out of separate buildings, as has been custom.... RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel called it 'the biggest, most efficient and unified campaign operation in American history.'" --safari: I assume they'll all be on a strict diet of Trump steaks and Trump water in the basement of Trump tower.

Gabriel Dance, et al., of the New York Times: "For years, Facebook gave some of the world's largest technology companies more intrusive access to users' personal data than it has disclosed, effectively exempting those business partners from its usual privacy rules, according to internal records and interviews.... The records ... underscore how personal data has become the most prized commodity of the digital age, traded on a vast scale by some of the most powerful companies in Silicon Valley and beyond.... The documents, as well as interviews with about 50 former employees of Facebook and its corporate partners, reveal that Facebook allowed certain companies access to data despite [its claims it provided its users with privacy] protections. They also raise questions about whether Facebook ran afoul of a 2011 consent agreement with the Federal Trade Commission that barred the social network from sharing user data without explicit permission."

Annals of "Journalism," Ha Ha Ha

Adam Raymond of New York: "Fox News host Tucker Carlson has lost at least six advertisers in the five days since he disparaged immigrants by saying they're making the U.S. 'poor and dirtier,' but on Monday's show, he showed no contrition for his bigotry.... He went on to explain what he meant when he said immigrants make the U.S. 'dirtier': They litter and Carlson is, apparently, an environmentalist now.... Fox News is defending Carlson in his time of need. In statement, a spokesperson said: 'It is a shame that left-wing advocacy groups, under the guise of being supposed "media watchdogs," weaponize social media against companies in an effort to stifle free speech.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Perhaps we should tell Fox "News" that U.S. courts have never interpreted the First Amendment guarantee of "free speech" to mean "advertisers must pay for it." ...

     ... Update. Sapna Maheshwari of the New York Times: "By Tuesday, 11 companies -- including IHOP and TD Ameritrade -- said they would stop advertising on his prime-time show, 'Tucker Carlson Tonight.'"

Jason Schwartz of Politico: "One was ousted from NPR amid allegations of sexual harassment. The other left Fox News shortly after writing a column widely panned as racist and anti-gay. Now they've been recruited to help launch a digital news startup with the stated goal of restoring faith in media. Another former Fox News executive, Ken LaCorte, has enlisted former NPR news boss Michael Oreskes and former Fox News executive editor John Moody to join him in creating LaCorte News, which he said will be a truly 'fair and balanced' alternative in these polarized times." Mrs. McCrabbie: They should call the new site "RASH," for Racist, Anti-gay, Sexual Harassers.

Beyond the Beltway

Nevada. Olivia Exstrum of Mother Jones: "Nevada is officially the first state in US history with a majority-female legislature.... Only 38 percent of Nevada seats were held by women before the midterm election." --s ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: The 2008 election put women in the majority in New Hampshire's state Senate.

Ohio. Cashing a Paycheck While Black. Shannon Houser of WOIO-TV Cleveland: "A Cleveland man says he was racially profiled at a local branch [of Huntington bank] when they called the cops on him for trying to cash a [pay]check.... He was asked for two forms of ID, which both he and bank employees confirm he provided. The bank says McCowns also provided a fingerprint, per bank policy for non-Huntington customers who wish to cash checks.... Tellers told him they couldn't cash [the check].... As he was leaving the bank, employees called 911 on him. McCowns was handcuffed and put in the back of a Brooklyn Police cruiser. Minutes after being arrested, police were able to get in contact with McCowns employer who confirmed the check was real and that McCowns is an employee."

Way Beyond

David Sanger & Steven Erlanger of the New York Times: "Hackers infiltrated the European Union's diplomatic communications network for years, downloading thousands of cables that reveal concerns about an unpredictable Trump administration and struggles to deal with Russia and China and the risk that Iran would revive its nuclear program.... The techniques that the hackers deployed over a three-year period resembled those long used by an elite unit of China's People's Liberation Army. The cables were copied from the secure network and posted to an open internet site that the hackers set up in the course of their attack, according to Area 1, the firm that discovered the breach.... The cyberintruders also infiltrated the networks of the United Nations, the A.F.L.-C.I.O., and ministries of foreign affairs and finance worldwide."

Hungary. Bannon-style "Populism". Shaun Walker of the Guardian: "Hungary's beleaguered political opposition has vowed to keep up the pressure on the country's far-right prime minister, Viktor Orbán, after a week of protests in which thousands came on to the streets of Budapest.... The protests were triggered by a so-called 'slave law', passed amid chaotic scenes in the Hungarian parliament last Wednesday, which allows employers to force employees to work overtime, and lets them delay payment for up to three years. It was passed together with legislation that provides for greater government control over the court system, the latest move by Orbán's Fidesz party to capture independent state institutions." --s

Philippines. Hannah Ellis-Peterson of the Guardian: "The official death toll from Rodrigo Duterte's violent war on drugs in the Philippines has risen above 5,000 people, authorities have said.... A spokesman for the Philippine drug enforcement agency (PDEA), said that, according to official figures, between July 2016 and the end of November this year, 5,050 lives were lost, mostly at the hands of the police.... Last week, Chito Gascon, the chairman of the Philippine commission on human rights, said the toll could be as high as 27,000, though he emphasised that investigating the deaths was complex because police withheld records on anti-drug operations." --s

Syria. Reuters: "The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said on Wednesday that Islamic State militants had executed nearly 700 prisoners in nearly two months in eastern Syria.... The jihadists control a shrinking strip of land east of the Syria's Euphrates River around the town of Hajin, which U.S.-backed forces entered this month.... [A]t least 5,000 IS fighters remain holed up in the enclave, including many foreigners who appear ready to fight to the death." --s

The Commentariat -- December 18, 2018

Afternoon Update:

The Flynn sentencing is in recess till 12:30 pm ET. Pete Williams of NBC News is reporting that Judge Sullivan is conveying that he is not buying the recommendations for no jail time for Flynn. ...

... Axios: "During ... Michael Flynn's sentencing hearing in D.C. on Tuesday, Judge Emmet Sullivan blasted Flynn from the bench after he confirmed his guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. before Trump's inauguration, telling him, 'Arguably, this undermines everything this flag over here stands for. Arguably, you sold your country out.'" ...

... Update. Spencer Hsu, et al., of the Washington Post: "A federal judge on Tuesday postponed the sentencing for Michael Flynn after he lambasted President Trump's former national security adviser for trying to undermine his own country and said he could not guarantee he would spare Flynn from prison. The stunning development means that Flynn will have to be sentenced at a later date, when he can possibly convince a judge more thoroughly of how his cooperation has benefited law enforcement. Flynn's attorneys asked for the delay after U.S. District Judge Emmet G. Sullivan accused Flynn of acting as 'an unregistered agent of a foreign country, while serving as the national security adviser to the president of the United States' -- an allegation he later walked back. Sullivan granted the request and asked for a status report in 90 days, though he said he was 'not making any promises' that he would view the matter differently in three months."

Shane Goldmacher of the New York Times: "The Donald J. Trump Foundation will close and give away all its remaining funds amid a lawsuit accusing the charity and the Trump family of using it illegally for self-dealing and political gain, the New York attorney general's office announced Tuesday. The attorney general, Barbara Underwood, accused the foundation of 'a shocking pattern of illegality' that was 'willful and repeated' and included unlawfully coordinating with Mr. Trump's 2016 presidential campaign."

Charlie Savage of the New York Times: "The Trump administration on Tuesday issued a new rule banning bump stocks, the attachments that enable semiautomatic rifles to fire in sustained, rapid bursts and that a gunman used to massacre 58 people and wound hundreds of others at a Las Vegas concert in October 2017. The new regulation, which had been expected, would ban the sale or possession of the devices under a new interpretation of existing law. Americans who own bump stocks would have 90 days to destroy their devices or to turn them in to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The Justice Department said A.T.F. would post destruction instructions on its website."

Alex Isenstadt & James Arkin of Politico: "Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey has appointed GOP Rep. Martha McSally to the Senate seat being vacated by GOP Sen. Jon Kyl -- tapping McSally as the Republican contender in a 2020 special election that will be among the most competitive Senate races in the country that year. McSally, who lost a race for Arizona's other Senate seat to Democratic Rep. Kyrsten Sinema in 2018, will be competing to serve out the rest of the term won by the late Sen. John McCain, who passed away earlier this year. Kyl was originally appointed to fill McCain's seat, but he will be stepping down at the end of the year to return to the private sector."

Trumpty-Dumpty Blinks, Likely to Fall off Wall. Erica Werner of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Tuesday retreated from his demand that Congress give him $5 billion to build a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border, backing down amid acrimonious GOP infighting that left him with few options four days ahead of a partial government shutdown. The news, delivered by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders in an interview on Fox News, represented a major shift from Trump's declaration last week that he would be 'proud' to shut down the government to get the money he wanted for his border wall. Democrats, who will reclaim the majority in the House just weeks from now, have consistently refused to give Trump anywhere near the $5 billion he wants."

*****

This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.

Garrett Graff of Wired compiles what he calls "A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump & Russia Investigations.... After three weeks of back-to-back-to-back-to-back bombshells by federal prosecutors and special counsel Robert Mueller, it's increasingly clear that, as 2018 winds down, Donald Trump faces a legal assault unlike anything previously seen by any president-- at least 17 distinct court cases stemming from at least seven different sets of prosecutors and investigators. (That total does not count any congressional inquiries, nor does it include any other inquiries into other administration officials unrelated to Russia.)... More than two years in, the constellation of current investigations involves questions about foreign money and influence targeting the Trump campaign, transition, and White House from ... as many as a half-dozen countries. Prosecutors are studying nearly every aspect of how money flowed both in and out of Trump's interconnected enterprises, from his hotels to his company to his campaign to his inauguration. While President Trump once said that he'd see investigations into his business dealings as crossing a 'red line,' it appears that Trump himself obliterated that line, intermingling his business and campaign until it was impossible for prosecutors to untangle one without forensically examining the other." ...

... Timothy O'Brien of Bloomberg: "The breadth of investigations is so sweeping ... that few of the worlds Trump inhabits have escaped prosecutors' attention. The Trump Organization, the Trump Foundation, the Trump family, the Trump campaign, the Trump transition, the Trump inauguration, and the Trump White House are all being probed for wrongdoing.... Trump may emerge as a brazen grifter who, by aspiring to the White House like a wizened, soiled version of Icarus, flew beyond the boundaries of his own luck and abilities and delivered his business, children and well-being into the hands of prosecutors.... Trump ... had seen his previous presidential bids as free marketing opportunities and he likely was drawn to the 2016 campaign for the same reason." ...

... "The Grand Narrative." Steve Denning in Forbes: "Just over a week ago, on Friday December 7, the Special Counsel's Office ... for the first time outlined in a court filing the grand narrative of the Russia Probe. The court filing revealed what many had long suspected, that Trump and his family had used, or tried to use, his presidential candidacy, and then his presidency, to enhance their own wealth. We also learned finally what hold Russian President Vladimir Putin has over Trump.... Trump himself repeatedly stated since entering the presidential race in June 2015 that he had no business in Russia and no interactions with representatives of Russia. It now turns out that Putin knew what the American people didn't, namely that Donald Trump was throughout the 2016 presidential primary campaign secretly negotiating to build a huge and lucrative hotel in Moscow which required the personal support of Vladimir Putin. The fact that Putin knew about Trump's secret dealings, while the American people didn't, meant that if Trump didn't do what Russia wanted, Russia could expose Trump's lies and so bring him down. The filing revealed that Mueller's Office is now investigating the hypothesis that Donald Trump, his campaign, his organization and his associates participated in a massive election fraud, through five interlocking conspiracies -- arguably the worst set of crimes against the United States in its history." ...

... Erin Banco of the Daily Beast: "... three sources familiar with Mueller's probe told The Daily Beast that his team is now zeroing in on Trumpworld figures who may have attempted to shape the administration's foreign policy by offering to ease U.S. sanctions on Russia. The Special Counsel's Office is preparing court filings that are expected to detail Trump associates' conversations about sanctions relief -- and spell out how those offers and counter-proposals were characterized to top figures on the campaign and in the administration, those same sources said."

Giuliani Stumbles into Admitting Trump's Hush-Money Payments Were Illegal. Aaron Blake of the Washington Post: "Speaking with ABC's George Stephanopoulos, Giuliani sought to argue that Michael Cohen's hush-money payments made on President Trump's behalf can't be campaign finance violations if they served any kind of personal purpose. 'It has to be for the sole purpose,' Giuliani said. 'If there's another purpose, it's no longer a campaign contribution -- if there's a personal purpose.' He then suggested that the failed prosecution of John Edwards for a campaign finance violation bolstered his point[.]... In fact, the Edwards case itself disproves Giuliani's point.... The Trump team's denials on this have been steadily watered down over time. Eventually, Giuliani and Co. admitted to the payments but said they were personal.... But ... implicit in his comments [Sunday] ... is the idea that this wasn't solely personal but ... served a dual purpose that included the campaign. 'It's not a contribution if it's intended for a purpose in addition to the campaign purpose,' he said. 'In addition to the campaign purpose' means there was a campaign purpose. And when you look at actual federal election law, it suggests that Giuliani just conceded that this was a campaign finance violation that Trump has been implicated in." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Giuliani's argument doesn't make sense. Any time a politician pays hush money, there are bound to be people other than voters whom he wants to keep in the dark. Maybe his family & friends, maybe law enforcement, maybe the general public. ...

... Jonathan Chait: "In an interview yesterday, George Stephanopoulos asked ... Rudy Giuliani if Roger Stone ever gave Trump a 'heads-up' about forthcoming WikiLeaks email publications. 'No, he didn't, no,' he replied. But then Giuliani ... softened his denial -- 'I don't believe so' -- before immediately transitioning into a conditional defense of the very charge he had been asked to deny: 'But again, if Roger Stone gave anybody a heads-up about WikiLeaks' leaks, that's not a crime.... One the -- the crime, this is why this thing is so weird, strange. The crime is conspiracy to hack; collusion is not a crime; it doesn't exist.' If you understand the facts and the law in this case, this much should be clear: Trump is almost certainly guilty of both collusion and a crime. And Giuliani's backpedalling defense reveals that he is no longer confident Trump's denials will hold.... Giuliani's comments seem to indicate that he knows that Trump did have a heads-up from Stone, but does not know if Mueller will be able to prove it. Hence his competing impulses to deny the accusation but to prepare a fallback defense in case that denial becomes inoperable.... Giuliani's defense has retreated right up to the line where it crosses into a confession of guilt." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Craig Timberg, et al., of the Washington Post: "Months after President Trump took office, Russia's disinformation teams trained their sights on ... special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. Having worked to help get Trump into the White House, they now worked to neutralize the biggest threat to his staying there. The Russian operatives unloaded on Mueller through fake accounts on Facebook, Twitter and beyond, falsely claiming that the former FBI director was corrupt and that the allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were crackpot conspiracies. One post on Instagram -- which emerged as an especially potent weapon in the Russian social media arsenal -- claimed that Mueller had worked in the past with 'radical Islamic groups.'"

Scott Shane & Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "The Russian influence campaign on social media in the 2016 election made an extraordinary effort to target African-Americans, used an array of tactics to try to suppress turnout among Democratic voters and unleashed a blizzard of activity on Instagram that rivaled or exceeded its posts on Facebook, according to a report produced for the Senate Intelligence Committee.... Using Gmail accounts with American-sounding names, the Russians recruited and sometimes paid unwitting American activists of all races to stage rallies and spread content, but there was a disproportionate pursuit of African-Americans, it concludes.... The most popular of the Russian Instagram accounts was @blackstagram, with 303,663 followers. The Internet Research Agency also created a dozen websites disguised as African-American in origin, with names like blackmattersus.com, blacktivist.info, blacktolive.org and blacksoul.us. On YouTube, the largest share of Russian material covered the Black Lives Matter movement and police brutality, with channels called 'Don't Shoot' and 'BlackToLive.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Michelle Goldberg: "Even after controlling for variables like ideology, education, party identification and dislike of [Hillary] Clinton, [Ohio State researchers] found that believing a fake news story made people who voted for President Barack Obama in 2012 significantly less likely to vote for Clinton in 2016.... In an election decided by a rounding error -- fewer than 80,000 voters spread over three states -- Russian trolling easily could have made the difference." ...

... Steve M.: "Now, perhaps it would be rash to conclude that the Trump campaign colluded in this effort, but as Jennifer Palmieri reminds us, the campaign bragged about extremely similar vote suppression efforts in a Bloomberg story published in October 2016[.]... Funny how the Russians and the folks in the Trump campaign -- who, I'll remind you again, never colluded -- had precisely the same idea. Great minds think alike!" Mrs. McC: This is exactly what I was thinking when I read the stories about the Senate reports. I was imagining Donnie & Vlad's text message threads -- all lovey-dovey & conspiratorial, like two teenagers planning a tryst while the folks are away. (In fact, of course, Donnie & Vlad had cutouts doing the conspiring.)

Remember, Michael Cohen only became a 'Rat' after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE! Why didn't they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked's office? -- Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 16, 2018

... Mob Boss in the White House. Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: "They 'BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY'S OFFICE!' Trump raged over the weekend, even though law enforcement obtained a warrant to do so. Trump then suggested that authorities should instead have infiltrated Democratic headquarters to expose his opponent -- in an apparent endorsement of the sort of tactics employed by President Richard M. Nixon in 1972. No shortage of ink has been spilled on the president's bizarre Twitter locutions, from 'Smocking Gun' to 'very legal & very cool.' Typos, excessive capitalization, misnomers and dubious terminology have become occasions for the president's detractors to have a laugh at his expense. Yet, some saw in his language on Sunday something darker -- a window into his legal worldview, even perhaps an unwitting acknowledgment of the highly consequential role his former fixer is now playing in assembling possible evidence against him." ...

... Matt Zapotosky & Spencer Hsu of the Washington Post: "... Michael Flynn is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for lying to the FBI about his dealings with the Russian ambassador to the United States, a court proceeding that could become complicated by his attorneys' recent suggestion that he was duped by law enforcement.... In a Tuesday morning tweet, Trump wished Flynn 'good luck today in court.' 'Will be interesting to see what he has to say, despite tremendous pressure being put on him, about Russian Collusion in our great and, obviously, highly successful political campaign,' Trump wrote. 'There was no Collusion!'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Yes, this is how the POTUS* treats a retired general who betrayed the country multiple times for profit. The Don must be daft to think Flynn didn't "rat" on him, as Trump characterized cooperating with the government Sunday, or "sing," as Trump's consigliere Rudy put it the same day.

... Katelyn Polantz & Marshall Cohen of CNN: "Two former business associates of former national security adviser Michael Flynn were charged with trying to influence American politicians to seek the extradition of a Turkish cleric, according to an indictment filed in the Eastern District of Virginia. Bijan Rafiekian, also known as Bijan Kian, and a Dutch-Turkish businessman Kamil Alptekin, who also uses the first name Ekim, were charged with conspiracy and acting as an agent of a foreign government. Alptekin was also charged with making four false statements in a May 2017 FBI interview.... US authorities said the goal of the lobbying project was to press for the extradition of the Turkish cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999.... The alleged plot, the Justice Department said in a news release, involved using a company founded by Kian and Flynn to 'delegitimize the Turkish citizen in the eyes of the American public and United States politicians' to pave the way for his extradition. US authorities allege that high-level members of Turkey's government approved financing for the gambit...." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Marcy Wheeler: "While not explicitly stated, the reference to Mike Flynn throughout the indictment as Person A -- the only unindicted co-conspirator so identified -- makes it clear that the government believes that's what Flynn was doing, acting as an agent of Turkey. And the timeline for the conspiracy goes up to March 2017. One of Trump's top foreign policy advisors and, for almost a month, his National Security Advisor, was an agent of Turkey." Wheeler outlines why she thinks Mueller's prosecutors "were able to move towards sentencing without his testimony in court: because he may not need to give testimony in court. The government has secured other, more reliable witnesses for that testimony." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Aaron Blake: "Trump backers last week found their (latest) smoking gun in a supposedly vast law-enforcement conspiracy to take down President Trump: A judge asked for more information about Michael Flynn's guilty plea after Flynn's attorney implied his client had been tricked into lying.... Just two days later, the Flynn-as-innocent-dupe narrative suffered a major setback [with the indictment of Flynn's business partner].... The indictment ... implicates his own eponymous business in an illegal lobbying operation. The Flynn Intel Group is referred to as 'Company A' in the filing, and Flynn is referred to as 'Person A.'... In Flynn's plea, the government said his lies and omissions included 'falsely stating that [Flynn Intel Group] did not know whether or the extent to which the Republic of Turkey was involved in the Turkey project....' ... This isn't just about Flynn having lied about his contacts with Russia's ambassador; there is a pattern of behavior that suggests he wasn't just some heroic general who misspoke once or twice and has been railroaded. At the worst, it suggests someone who was doing quite a bit of double-dealing and saw the need to cover it up by lying repeatedly." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... CBS News: "Special counsel Robert Mueller released the January 2017 FBI memo that described the interview where former national security adviser Michael Flynn described his contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak. Flynn is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday for lying to the FBI about a conversation with Kislayk during the transition. After reviewing the filing, Judge Emmet Sullivan has ruled that the material is 'relevant' to Flynn's sentencing and has ordered the government to publish the interview, known as a '302,' to be publicly available." ...

... The New York Times story, by Sharon LaFraniere & Adam Goldman, is here. ...

... Alex Johnson of NBC News has reproduced the 302 here. ...

... ** Marcy Wheeler: "Last week, I suggested that Mike Flynn's cute trick of publicly releasing information from Andy McCabe's memo and Peter Strzok's 302 might backfire.... Boy oh boy was I right." Judge Sullivan ordered the government to release a redacted version of the FBI's report on the meeting with Flynn "it is unbelievably damning, in part because it shows the degree to which Flynn's lies served to protect Trump.... Flynn lied to hide Trump's involvement in all this (and, to an extent, the degree to which it involved specifically ignoring a heads up from Obama). Flynn lied to hide Trump's personal involvement in telling the Russians to hold off on responding to Obama's sanctions. And when the FBI investigated those lies, Trump fired the FBI Director to try to end that investigation.... This 302 also reveals that [Flynn] was quoting directly from the instructions KT McFarland had given him, relaying Trump's orders."

Most Sanctimonious Man in Washington Testifies Again. Karoun Demirjian of the Washington Post: "Former FBI director James B. Comey accused President Trump on Monday of trying 'to burn down the entire FBI' and charged that congressional Republicans were willing accomplices for failing to challenge him. 'The FBI's reputation has taken a big hit because the president with his acolytes has lied about it constantly,' Comey told reporters, following his second closed-door interview this month with House lawmakers running a politically divisive investigation into how federal law enforcement officials handled probes of the Trump campaign's alleged Russia ties and Hillary Clinton's emails. But Comey directed his vitriol not just at the GOP members of the House Judiciary and Oversight and Government Reform committees, but at all Republicans.... 'At some point, someone has to stand up and face the fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country and not slink away into retirement but stand up and speak the truth,' Comey said, without naming names. Comey ... flatly [refused] to take any personal responsibility for the reputation of the FBI having suffered under his stewardship." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Right message; wrong messenger.

Julian Barnes, et al., of the New York Times: "President Trump has long tried to explain away his legal troubles as the work of a 'deep state' of Obama supporters entrenched in the law-enforcement and national-security bureaucracies who are just out to get him. Now junior officials and others accused of wrongdoing are making the case that the same purported forces are illegitimately targeting them, too.... Alleging misconduct by law enforcement has long been a standard defense tactic, especially in white-collar cases, but the political cast of deep-state-style claims is new, said Samuel Buell, a Duke law professor and former federal prosecutor. He said it seemed to be aimed at getting conservative media attention in the hope that Mr. Trump will come across their case and intervene."

Carlos Tejada & Matt Phillips of the New York Times: "Stocks on Wall Street fell on Monday to a new 2018 low, as investors braced for a Federal Reserve decision on interest rates this week and health care stocks were roiled by a court decision about the Affordable Care Act.The S&P 500-stock index ended down 2.1 percent, sinking below levels reached during a steep decline in February. The index is now down 4.8 percent for the year. Should the market fail to rebound, the losses for 2018 could represent Wall Street's worst year since the financial crisis a decade ago. The selling spared few sectors, with tech companies, the health care industry, small businesses and blue-chip corporations all falling after survey data suggested some softening in the United States' outlook for growth." ...

... Craig Torres & Christopher Condon of Bloomberg: "President Donald Trump slammed the Federal Reserve on the eve of a pivotal policy meeting for 'even considering' another interest-rate increase, laying out arguments against a hike to savor the achievement of a strong U.S. economy.... The Federal Open Market Committee begins a two-day meeting in Washington on Tuesday and trading in interest rate futures indicate a greater than 70 percent chance of the panel's fourth hike this year. Analysts said that his latest attack make it extremely hard for Chairman Jerome Powell to pause this week, even if he wanted to." --s

Andrew Kaczynski of CNN: "Incoming White House acting-chief of staff Mick Mulvaney once said Donald Trump's past words and actions would disqualify him from becoming president in an 'ordinary universe.'... The Daily Beast on Friday reported that Mulvaney, then a congressman, called Trump 'a terrible human being' at a November 2016 congressional debate.In a 2016 Facebook post, Mulvaney similarly said he had learned throughout the 2016 campaign that Trump 'is not a very good person.' In all instances, Mulvaney said he was supporting Trump, but only because he believed Hillary Clinton would be a worse president."

Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post: "... it’s more important than ever [for the media] not to give falsehoods a megaphone.... Which brings us to Chris Cuomo's 39-minute interview on Thursday with Kellyanne Conway, President Trump's top dissembler. It should have been no surprise that Conway -- who coined the immortal phrase 'alternative facts' in early 2017 -- blithely spun her way through the interview.... Cuomo's CNN colleagues smacked him around, with Don Lemon leading the way.... So it's time (actually, well past time) for the mainstream media to enter the No Kellyanne Zone. And that goes far beyond banning her, or any particular adviser, from cable interview shows." Sullivan, as did Akhilleus last week, hammers the mainstream media for posting headlines that repeat Trump's lies without context.

Cheryl Wischhover of Vox: "On Sunday, White House senior adviser Stephen Miller appeared on Face the Nation.... But Miller's immigration stance wasn't the only thing with a hard line in that TV appearance[.]... The consensus was that Miller was using 'spray-on hair' and possibly that his hairdresser was part of the resistance, given the product's unsubtle results on his balding head." Wischhover goes on to explain everything you ever wanted to know about spray-on hair. ...

Seriously guys, as Progressives we should not be making fun of Stephen Miller for his spray-on hair, we should be making fun of Stephen Miller for his half-baked Nazi policies AND his spray-on hair pic.twitter.com/CXnNZjMyYo

— Zack Bornstein (@ZackBornstein) December 16, 2018

... Monday morning, Katie Rogers of the New York Times tweeted that "... Miller came to work with regular hair today." Some responses to Rogers' tweet are pretty hilarious.

Nick Schwellenback of The Daily Beast: "In April 2018, Tracey Valerio, the top official in charge of 'all agency contracting' at Immigration and Customs Enforcement, resigned. Within months, she was recruited as a paid expert witness in a lawsuit to defend ICE's biggest contractor -- a large, private prison and immigrant detention company known as the GEO Group. The lawsuit charged Florida-based GEO with violating minimum wage laws by paying the same immigrants now being locked up in record numbers by the Trump administration as little as $1 a day for menial work such as cleaning toilets.... Valerio ... not only went spinning through her agency's revolving door, she was accused of violating the law and an agency rule in the process.... Last year, as The Daily Beast first reported, Valerio's former boss Daniel Ragsdale left as ICE's deputy director to work as a GEO executive. In 2012, David Venturella -- formerly head of ICE's Enforcement and Removal Operations -- joined GEO as an executive vice president...[and so on.]" --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Seung Min Kim of the Washington Post: "The Senate’s sweeping overhaul of the criminal justice system cleared a major hurdle Monday, with an overwhelming majority helping to advance what probably will be one of President Trump's final bipartisan accomplishments from his first two years in office. Senators voted 82 to 12 to end debate on the First Step Act and steer the legislation to a final vote, probably scheduled for Tuesday. The bill would revise several sentencing laws, such as reducing the 'three strikes' penalty for drug felonies from life behind bars to 25 years and retroactively limiting the disparity in sentencing guidelines between crack and powder cocaine offenses. The latter would affect about 2,000 current federal inmates.... Before a final Senate vote, dozens of the bill's proponents will have to defeat 'legislative poison pills' that they say are designed to kill the bipartisan compromise that has been carefully negotiated among Democratic and GOP lawmakers, as well as the Trump administration."

** Clive Irving in The Daily Beast: "Even if Russia didn't succeed in swinging the election to Trump (and we can't be sure that it didn't), [mitch mcconnell] blocking a protest [by Obama and Joe Biden] at that critical moment [before the election] on partisan grounds approaches 9/11 levels of dereliction, and you have to wonder if all of this had not been shrewdly anticipated in Putin's playbook, the fruit of long and careful study of Republican tactics.... Over several decades the Republicans have partly created and expertly exploited a broken system that regularly gives them a majority in the Electoral College.... Now it is McConnell who, more than any other Republican, is the supreme technician of the system, quietly loading the courts with judges who pass his smell test. If there is a model for the McConnell method, it is the apparatchiks of the Soviet machine.... It's a form of power that doesn't advertise its power, and McConnell thrives at it. There is no ethical foundation. It is barren of moral underpinnings. Sooner or later a president would arrive who was as barren. Trump is that, with bells on." --s (Also linked yesterday.) ...

... Paul Krugman: Nancy "Pelosi was right about [Judge] Reed O'Connor's ruling [that the whole Affordable Care Act was unconstitutional] being a symptom of a 'monstrous endgame,' but the game in question isn't just about perpetuating the assault on health care, it's about assaulting democracy in general. And the current state of the endgame is probably just the beginning; the worst, I fear, is yet to come."

Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "When he takes control of the House Natural Resources Committee next month, Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-AZ) will have significantly greater powers to investigate the Trump administration's controversial decision to decimate the Bears Ears and Grand Staircase-Escalante national monuments [and] ... the committee intends to continue oversight of [outgoing Ryan] Zinke's policy decisions.... And even though Zinke is resigning, environmental and public interest groups are urging the inspector general and Justice Department to stay the course with their investigations into his alleged misconduct.... Sen. Lisa Murkowsi (R-AK), chair of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, is unlikely to order investigations into Zinke. The Republican senator has not conducted oversight of Zinke's conduct since he was sworn in as Interior secretary in March 2017. In fact, Murkowski said she was 'disappointed' to learn Zinke is stepping down." --s

Anna North of Vox: "Conservative Sen. Mike Lee is taking a lone stand against a Trump nominee, blocking her from joining the office that takes workplace complaints because of her support for LGBTQ rights.... Feldblum, who currently serves as one of the EEOC's five commissioners, was appointed to the commission by President Barack Obama in 2010 and nominated for another term this year by Trump.... [I]f the Senate doesn't confirm ... Feldblum and two others, by December 31, the EEOC will no longer have the quorum required to make major decisions.... [W]hat happens with her confirmation in the coming days could affect whether millions of Americans have the protections they need from harassment and discrimination in 2019." --s

Ian MIllhiser of ThinkProgress: "Four years ago, President Obama was in the White House and Democrats controlled a solid majority in the United States Senate.... Yet then-Senate Judiciary Chair Patrick Leahy (D-VT) insisted on giving Republicans the power to veto many of Obama's nominees.... Three years later, in a move that pretty much everyone on the planet who is not named 'Patrick Leahy' knew would inevitably play out, now-Senate Judiciary Chair Chuck Grassley (R-IA) has decided that Democrats who object to a Trump judicial nominee can go beat eggs.... Thanks to Leahy's refusal to see his Republican colleagues with open eyes, several federal judgeships remained open for years under President Obama, only to be swiftly filled by Trump. And two of those seats are on a court that will soon weigh in on the fate of Obamacare." --s

Joel Ebert of the Tennessean: "After roughly a quarter century in elected office, U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander will retire. The former Republican governor, who has served in the Senate since first being elected in 2002, said Monday that he will not seek a fourth term in the upper chamber." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Alexandra Stevenson & Sharon Tan of the New York Times: "Malaysia filed criminal charges against Goldman Sachs on Monday, accusing the giant Wall Street bank of making false and misleading statements. The charges are a rare international rebuke of an institution that has long represented the pinnacle of money and power. The 149-year-old investment bank already faces mounting pressure in the United States, where two former bankers face charges of bribery and money laundering related to its business in Malaysia. The Malaysian authorities also charged several individuals in connection with the multibillion-dollar international fraud scandal that ensnared Goldman and that led to the ouster of Malaysia's former prime minister, Najib Razak. The government said it would seek criminal fines in excess of $2.7 billion related to the charges.

Edmund Lee & Rachel Abrams of the New York Times: "The CBS Corporation, battered by scandal and facing a leadership vacuum,said its former chief executive, Leslie Moonves, misled the company about multiple allegations of sexual misconduct and tried to hide evidence as he made a frenzied attempt to save his legacy and reap a lucrative severance. He will be fired for cause and, as a result, not receive his $120 million exit payout."

Frank Dale of ThinkProgress: "The epidemic of U.S. gun violence has reached another gruesome milestone. 2017 was the deadliest year on record for firearms, as nearly 40,000 Americans were killed by a gun last year -- an average of 109 per day -- according to a CNN analysis that was confirmed by the Center for Disease Control (CDC). The totals for 2017 were a three percent increase over 2016, and mark a 38 percent rise over the past two decades." --s ...

... Annals of Journalism, Ctd. Marisa Fernandez of Axios: "For the first time, the United States is one of the world's deadliest countries for journalists after six reporters were killed in the line of duty in 2018, according to Reporters Without Borders' annual report.... The report states there is an 'unprecedented' level of worldwide hostility against members of the media, highlighting that the number of journalists killed while doing their jobs spiked 8% to 80 in 2018. In addition, 348 journalists are currently in prison across the globe, and 60 are being held hostage.... From the report: 'Amplified by social networks, which bear heavy responsibility in this regard, these expressions of hatred legitimize violence, thereby undermining journalism, and democracy itself, a bit more every day.'"

Andrew Wasley & Natalie Jones of the Guardian: "The Guardian's findings [of unethical chicken processing in the U.S.] have fuelled concerns that a post-Brexit trade deal with the US could see the UK flooded with chicken produced to lower welfare standards. This follows last year's transatlantic row over chlorinated chicken, which prompted political interventions in both countries. The records include hundreds of instances in which groups of chickens and turkeys were bludgeoned, suffocated, scalded, frozen or heated to death.... The USDA dictates rules for humane slaughter, but these only apply to 'livestock', which the US government considers separate from 'poultry'. There are 'good commercial practice' guidelines, but they are largely voluntary and not enforced. The USDA is not obliged to take any action against plants that violate these practices, other than writing up a report." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

** Georgia. Alan Judd of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution details how days for the November election, Governor-Elect Brian Kemp (R), who as Georgia's secretary of state had for more than a year (after having been warned) left personal voter information exposed online, falsely accused the Democratic Party of Georgia of trying to hack into the voter database in a failed attempt to steal the election." ...

... Charles Pierce has something to say about this.

Way Beyond

** Joanna Berendt & Marc Santora of the New York Times: "Backing down from a showdown with Brussels, Poland's government reversed its purge of the country's Supreme Court, as the president signed a law on Monday that will reinstate the judges who had been forced out of their jobs. It was a remarkable turnaround after months of Poland's top officials saying they would resist pressure to stop the overhaul of the judiciary. The ruling party, Law and Justice, had put tightening its grip on the courts at the center of its agenda, claiming that it was vital to rid the courts of corrupt judges and Communist-era vestiges. The European Union sees the changes Poland has made to its judiciary in the last three years as a violation of the bloc's core values, a threat to the rule of law and the end of judges acting as a check on political power. Last year, the union chastised Poland and took the first steps toward stripping the country of its voting rights in Brussels -- a penalty that has never been used against a member nation. Poland's concession on the Supreme Court is by no means the end of that conflict between the right-wing, nationalist Polish government and Brussels, but it represented a striking change in tone."

Juan Cole: "The decision of the Australian government of PM Scott Morrison to recognize 'West Jerusalem' as the capital of Israel but to hold off moving its embassy there until there is a peace settlement in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict might look on the face of it like a victory for Israel. It is quite the opposite, a sign of how even strong allies of Israel are increasingly constrained by rising Muslim powers.... Australia badly wants a free trade deal with its neighbor across the waters, Indonesia, which is the most populous Muslim country in the world, and where conservative Muslims are strong supporters of Palestinian rights.... That even an anti-immigrant, pro-Trump right winger like Scott Morrison felt he could not risk absolutely alienating Jakarta, and so was forced to craft a Jerusalem policy that satisfied no one but definitely disappointed the Likud, is a sign of the future." --s (Also linked yesterday.)

Ammar Kalia, et al. of the Guardian: "The domination of Facebook by Italy's two populist political leaders, Matteo Salvini and Luigi Di Maio, is revealed in previously unseen data that shows how they exploited video and live broadcasts to bypass the mainstream media and foment discord during the country's general election. The data, reviewed by the Guardian, reveals how the leaders massively expanded their reach with inflammatory and visually arresting posts earlier this year, eclipsing their main rival, the centre-left former prime minister Matteo Renzi, on Facebook.... There is growing academic interest in the relationship between social media and populist movements on both the left and right. Facebook and Twitter have transformed western democracies, enabling politicians to bypass traditional gatekeepers and communicate directly with their base." --s (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

News Lede

New York Times: "Penny Marshall, the nasal-voiced co-star of the slapstick sitcom 'Laverne & Shirley' and later the chronically self-deprecating director of hit films like 'Big' and 'A League of Their Own,' died on Monday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 76."