;)
The Commentariat -- December 1, 2018
Afternoon Update:
Mary Sheridan of the Washington Post: "A leftist leader vowing to launch a 'radical transformation' of Mexico and improve the lives of the poor was sworn in as president on Saturday, opening an uncertain era in a country with deep economic and security ties with the United States. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, 65, known as AMLO, took office as potentially the most powerful Mexican president in decades. Not only did he take 53 percent of the vote in a three-way race, but his party cinched a majority in both houses of Congress and gained control of numerous state legislatures. 'Today we don't only begin a new government, today we begin a change of our political regime,' he said in a speech moments after the swearing-in ceremony. 'Starting from now, we will carry out a peaceful, steady political transformation. But it will also be profound and radical.' López Obrador is the first leftist president since Mexico transitioned from a one-party authoritarian state to full democracy in 2000. He has promised to increase benefits for the poor, young and elderly -- all while maintaining budget discipline. He has vowed to fight corruption and slash perks for senior officials, even declining to occupy Los Pinos, the Mexican White House. The estate will instead be turned into a public park, set to open Saturday."
James Risen of The Intercept: "Special counsel Robert Mueller is closing in on Donald Trump, and as one shoe after another drops in the Trump-Russia investigation, the pressure sometimes prompts the president to inadvertently blurt out the truth. Or at least as close to the truth as a serial liar like Trump can get.... Faced with Cohen's admissions in court on Thursday, Trump ... quickly switched gears and effectively confirmed what Cohen had said. 'There was a good chance that I wouldn't have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?' Trump's comments ... reveal that he had much deeper connections to Russia in the midst of the campaign than he has ever previously acknowledged. It suggests that Trump will lie about his Russian connections until he realizes he can no longer get away with it, and then will quite casually admit that he has been lying all along." --s
Juan Cole gives a class on Israeli oppression of Palestinians: "CNN has fired contributor Marc Lamont Hill for a speech he gave on Palestinian rights at the UN. The speech can be found here.... CNN would have been under special pressure to fire Hill because he is a prominent African-American intellectual with a following in his own community, and the Israeli Ministry of Strategic Affairs (the propaganda arm of the Likud government) is worried about the boycott and sanctions movement spreading among American minorities who might sympathize with the oppressed Palestinians.... One way that the Israeli right wing gets away with these atrocities [against the Palestinians] is to use techniques of blackballing, smearing, and propaganda to marginalize any voices they don't like.... And they've been remarkably successful in marginalizing anyone who takes them on." --s
Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "Paul Ryan is heading out of Congress the way he served: with a blizzard of false statements about substantive matters of public policy. That started with Thursday's bizarre exit interview with the Washington Post's Paul Kane, in which Ryan claimed to regret congressional inaction on debt and immigration when he was, in fact, personally responsible for congressional inaction on debt and immigration. Now comes a tweet in which he offers the view that the policy vision that made him famous -- the Roadmap for America's Future -- has been enacted into law under the Trump administration.... Basically none of Ryan's policy goals were achieved, but rich people did get to pay less in taxes.... [Sheldon] Adelson personally reaped from Ryan's beloved TCJA [tax cut]. His company scored a tax windfall of $670 million in just one quarter[.]" --s
The Daily Beast: "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent 'at least 11' text messages to a top adviser, who supervised the team that murdered Jamal Khashoggi, within hours of the journalist's death, according to a secret CIA report revealed by The Wall Street Journal. The messages were sent in the hours before and after Khasoggi's October killing." --s
*****
Adam Nagourney of the New York Times: "George Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, who steered the nation through a tumultuous period in world affairs but was denied a second term after support for his presidency collapsed under the weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs, died on Friday. He was 94. His death, which was announced by his office, came less than eight months after that of his wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush.... Mr. Bush, a Republican, was a transitional figure in the White House, where he served from 1989 to 1993, capping a career of more than 40 years in public service. A decorated Navy pilot who was shot down in the Pacific in 1944, he was the last of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office.... The elder Mr. Bush entered the White House with one of the most impressive résumés of any president. He had been a two-term congressman from Texas, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president, under Ronald Reagan." ...
... The Washington Post's obituary of President Bush, by Karen Tumulty, is here. ...
... Class Acts in the Age of the Oaf. President Obama visited President Bush in Houston earlier this week. President & Michelle Obama's statement on President Bush's passing is here.
... Here's a good photo essay in the Washington Post, featuring the photographs of the Bushes' personal photographer David Valdez, who also served as White House photographer.
Trump Goes to Argentina
Mark Landler & Peter Baker of the New York Times: "For Mr. Trump, his first day at the summit meeting of the Group of 20 industrialized nations in Buenos Aires was a window into his idiosyncratic statecraft after nearly two years in office. His 'America First' foreign policy has not become 'America Alone' exactly, but it has left him with a strange patchwork of partners at these global gatherings.... He didn't sit down with two of his favorite strongmen. He downgraded a meeting with one ally and postponed one with another. He exchanged icy smiles with the prime minister of Canada, who had threatened to skip the signing of a new trade agreement with the United States and Mexico because of lingering bitterness over steel tariffs. And [he] was preoccupied by legal clouds back home, tweeting angrily that there was nothing illicit about his business ventures in Russia, a day after his former lawyer Michael D. Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the extent and duration of those dealings."
Trump "diplomacy": Dementia, absent-mindedness, or just an asshole. Take your pick. --s
Peter Baker: "President Trump and his Mexican and Canadian counterparts ... signed a new agreement governing hundreds of billions of dollars in trade among the neighbors that underpins their economies. Meeting for the first time since the revised North American Free Trade Agreement was sealed, Mr. Trump, President Enrique Peña Nieto of Mexico and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau hailed the results as a boon for workers, businesses and the environment, even as they alluded to the harsh talks that had preceded this day. 'We worked hard on this agreement,' Mr. Trump said.... 'It's been long and hard. We've taken a lot of barbs and a little abuse, and we got there. It's great for all of our countries.' Mr. Trump did not say that he was the one who had dished out most of the barbs and much of the abuse, but he insisted that he had come out of the process with a stronger relationship with the two leaders.... [The agreement] still requires the approval of Congress." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
This Russia Thing, Etc., Ctd.
Pamela Brown, et al., of CNN: "After a March 2018 visit to Mar-a-Lago..., [Michael] Cohen returned to New York believing that his former boss would protect him if he faced any charges for sticking to his story about the 2016 payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, according to one source with knowledge. Trump was also at Mar-a-Lago at the time of Cohen's visit. Another source said that after the April 2018 FBI raid on Cohen's office and home, people close to the President assured Cohen that Trump would take care of him. And Cohen believed that meant that the President would offer him a pardon if he stayed on message.... 'The President of the United States never indicated anything to Michael, or anyone else, about getting a pardon,' said Rudy Giuliani.... Following the raid on Cohen's home and office, Cohen's attorneys had a legal defense agreement with Trump and his attorneys. During this time, there was a steady flow of communication between the two sides, according to two sources familiar with the matter. At first, publicly, Trump seemed very supportive of his former attorney.... But in the days that followed the raid..., Trump started to distance himself from Cohen. And when Trump appeared on 'Fox and Friends' two weeks after the raids and said that Cohen only did a 'tiny, tiny little fraction' of his legal work, Cohen knew the game had changed. According to one source, Cohen knew that things had changed and he acted to protect his family -- and himself." ...
... Matt Zapotosky of the Washington Post: "Lawyers for ... Michael Cohen argued Friday that their client should not go to prison for the criminal charges to which he has pleaded guilty, and unequivocally linked much of his wrongdoing to his desire to protect and support President Trump. In a late-night court filing, lawyers for the onetime Trump loyalist wrote that their client was a changed man who was eager to share his knowledge with law enforcement and mindful that he would have to 'begin his life virtually anew.' Their filing detailed what they said was Cohen's already extensive cooperation, including seven voluntary interviews with the team of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, as well as meetings with federal prosecutors in New York, representatives of the New York State Attorney General's office and officials with the New York State Department of Taxation and Finance, which are conducting wide ranging probes into Trump's campaign and his family foundation." ...
... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "... Michael Cohen said Friday he was in 'close and regular contact' with Trump's White House staff and legal team when he prepared a statement for Congress that he now says falsely downplayed Trump's effort to land a Trump Tower Moscow deal during the 2016 presidential campaign. In a filing seeking a lenient sentence, Cohen's attorneys say his false statement to Congress -- which Cohen pleaded guilty to on Thursday -- was based on Trump and his team's efforts to 'portray contact with Russian representatives' by Trump, his campaign or his company 'as having effectively terminated before the Iowa caucuses of February 1, 2016.'... Rudy Giuliani[, in criticizing Cohen as a 'proven liar,'] said Trump had been 'open and transparent' about his efforts to build a Trump Tower Moscow. In fact, Trump had long sought a deal to build in Russia but as his campaign gained traction, he downplayed his business relationships there and repeatedly insisted he had nothing to do with Russia, a denial he underscored repeatedly after the discovery of Russia efforts to interfere in the election." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Zapotosky & Cheney cover the same filing with different emphases. Their reporting suggests the filing does not specifically say, "Trump (or his lawyers) told me to lie." Maybe that's because it was all (completely unwarranted!) inference on Cohen's part; maybe it's because Mueller told Cohen's lawyers to tone down the filing. ...
... Justin Miller of the Daily Beast: In the filing, Cohen's lawyers say Cohen "told Donald Trump about a phone call to the Kremlin asking for the Russian government's help to build a Trump Tower in Moscow in 2016 ... while Trump was running for president." ...
... ** A Kremlin Kover-up. Aaron Rupar, now of Vox: "Michael Cohen's plea deal for making false statements to Congress ... also indicates that the Kremlin helped in the cover-up. In August 2017, Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov confirmed that he received an email from Cohen ... in January 2016. Cohen's email asked for help with a development project in Russia. Peskov said he never responded to Cohen's query.... Peskov's account of what happened matched Cohen's.... But according to the plea agreement Cohen agreed to in federal court on Thursday, it turns out both he and Peskov were lying.... In sum, Cohen emailed Peskov about a development project and got a response that led to a string of phone calls. But as Trump's contacts with Russia came under increased scrutiny in the summer of 2017 [and as Trump continued to deny he had any interest in Russia], both Cohen and the Kremlin decided to lie about it, pretending they'd never successfully connected. The episode illustrates one way the Kremlin has blackmail material over the president." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: We now know that Trump & Putin will lie for each other, and tell their minions to do the same. These are not the sort of white lies common to diplomacy, the courtesies that rival world leaders & ambassadors will show one another in furtherance of common interests & peaceful relations. Rather, Trump's, Cohen's and Peskov's lies about Trump Tower Moscow are lies about facts, and the Kremlin has a file on them. We wonder what-all else is in that file.
Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "... Donald Trump attempted to downplay the stunning admission by his former personal attorney that he had lied to Congress about efforts to develop a Trump Tower project in Moscow well into the presidential election, insisting in a pair of tweets Friday morning that his business dealings were 'very legal and very cool.'... The tweets marked the second time since Michael Cohen entered his guilty plea Thursday morning that Trump has sharply departed from long-standing denials that he had any financial ties to Russia.... The remarks undercut his previous and very public statements claiming he had 'nothing to do with Russia.'" ...
... Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "The tweets echoed what one of Mr. Trump's personal lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said a day earlier about the prospective Russia deal.... The president's answers [to questions posed by the special counsel], submitted to the special counsel this month, have not been made public. But Mr. Cohen's latest version of events raised questions about whether Mr. Trump had been truthful with Mr. Mueller's team. ...
... Jeet Heer: "These tweets are a strange attempt to re-write history.... Trump's new tweet confirms Cohen's latest testimony. What Trump needs to explains is why his 'very legal' and 'very cool' project was previously lied about by both himself and others." ...
... Jonathan Chait: "During the 2016 campaign, and for years after, Donald Trump insisted that he had no dealings with Russia whatsoever. He also assured the public that we could take his word on this, and there was no need to look at his tax returns. But yesterday's confession in open court by Michael Cohen shows that Trump was attempting to do business in Russia during the campaign, with high-level officials from the same government that was interceding on Trump's behalf. The new Trump line is that this is all okay and that we knew about it the whole time: 'Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail...' [Donald Trump, in a tweet early this morning]" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
John Kovensky in TPM: "Donald Trump met at least twice with a Russian-Ukrainian oligarch and current Rudy Giuliani client over a Trump Moscow franchising deal in the late 2000s, the oligarch told TPM. Pavel Fuchs..., a Moscow real estate developer who recently hired Rudy Giuliani for an 'investment project' related to the Ukrainian city of Kharkiv, said that he met with Trump in New York City in 2006 and in Palm Beach in 2008. Fuch's claims fill in more of the picture of Trump's long-running interest in developing a Moscow project and illustrate how some of the same characters continue to reappear in dealings with those in Trump's orbit. The deal -- potentially very legal and very cool -- would have seen Fuchs buy a Trump franchise for a Moscow skyscraper, similar to other deals that the Trump Organization has concluded in Azerbaijan, Dubai, Turkey, India, and elsewhere."
Kyle Cheney of Politico: "... Robert Mueller's office is considering retrying former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on a slew of federal charges that resulted in a hung jury over the summer. At a hearing in federal court Friday morning, prosecutors said they are also weighing leveling new criminal charges for Manafort, contending that he obstructed justice and committed additional federal crimes since entering a plea agreement with the special counsel in September.... Prosecutors will file a more detailed explanation of what they believe Manafort lied about to investigators on Dec. 7. Manafort's defense team will then have until January to reply, leading to a likely late January hearing on the matter." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Ellen Nakashima & Shane Harris of the Washington Post: "The Senate Intelligence Committee has referred cases to the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election after witnesses questioned in the panel's own Russia probe were suspected of lying, the committee chairman said Friday. 'We have made referrals from our committee to the special counsel for prosecution,' Chairman Sen. Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said at a national security conference in Austin. 'In a lot of those cases, those might be tied to lying to us.'"
Philip Ewing of NPR: "Donald Trump Jr.'s testimony to Congress about his family's real estate negotiations with powerful Russians does not comport with the new version laid out by Donald Trump's ex-attorney Michael Cohen, official transcripts show. Trump Jr. told the Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2017 that although there had been negotiations surrounding a prospective Trump Tower in Moscow, they concluded without result 'at the end' of 2014. 'But not in 2015 or 2016?' Trump Jr. was asked. 'Certainly not '16,' he said. 'There was never a definitive end to it. It just died of deal fatigue.' Trump's account contrasts with the new version of events given by Cohen on Thursday in a guilty plea in federal court. In that new version, Cohen says the discussions with at least one Russian government official and others in Moscow continued through June 2016, well into Trump's presidential campaign.... Cohen said in his guilty plea that he had briefed Trump's family members about his talks, although the court documents don't specify which ones." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Gail Collins: "Watergate was way easier than this. Really, Richard Nixon might have been attempting to undermine the nation's legal system, but at least he wasn't negotiating to build, say, a hotel in Hanoi at the same time. You'd think that after almost half a century we could at least expect an improved quality of criminals. But it does appear that Donald Trump is surrounded by minions who would have been totally incapable of pulling off a small-bore burglary without creating a constitutional crisis."
Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Akhilleus suggested in yesterday's Comments that we're coming up on schadenfreude time. After extensive research, I've discovered the schadenfreude dance and the appropriate outfits to wear when dancing it. (When Conan asks the name of the dance, sounds like the dancer in the segment mispronounces "schadenfreude," but the guy is German so what does he know.) The schadenfreude looks hard to learn, so here's a lesson to get you started. I'm wriggling into my bondage pants right now:
Charlie Savage, et al., of the New York Times: "'You're not going to believe this... Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States,' James Evans, an F.T.C. lawyer, wrote to colleagues in an email on Oct. 24, 2017. The emails were part of a trove of files the trade commission made public on Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests for documents about its investigation into the company, World Patent Marketing. Mr. Whitaker sat on its advisory board.... Long before most Americans had heard of Mr. Whitaker, the Federal Trade Commission had been scrutinizing his connections to World Patent Marketing. The company had promised investors lucrative patent agreements but instead brazenly ripped them off, according to the agency. Its investigation prompted a federal judge to shut down the firm in March 2017, and it was later fined nearly $26 million." ...
... Carol Leonnig, et al., of the Washington Post: "Months after joining the advisory board of a Miami-based patent company in 2014, Matthew G. Whitaker began fielding angry complaints from customers that they were being defrauded, including from a client who showed up at his Iowa office to appeal to him personally for help, records show. Yet Whitaker, now the acting attorney general, remained an active champion of World Patent Marketing for three years -- even expressing willingness to star in national television ads promoting the firm, the records show. Internal Federal Trade Commission documents released Friday in response to a public records request reveal the extent of Whitaker's support for World Patent Marketing, even amid a barrage of warnings about the company's behavior.... Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney, did little to assist the [FTC] investigation [of the company]. He never answered a subpoena, even after he was working in the DOJ, & as the Bloomberg reporters note in the story linked below, he did not return FTC phone calls. And bad news for Whitaker: Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) is on the case. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Greg Farrell, et al., of Bloomberg: "New documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission suggest that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the agency's investigators as he was stepping into his role last year as Justice Department chief of staff.... Whitaker ... asserted that he 'never emailed or wrote to consumers' in his consulting role. That statement to James Evans of the FTC appears to be inaccurate. Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau.... Whitaker threatened the customer, writing: 'I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your "group" are doing.'... At the time, the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an 'invention promotion scheme' that it accused of 'bilking millions of dollars from consumers.' The emails also convey FTC investigators's shock in October 2017 when -- in the latter stages of their investigation -- Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Aaron Davis & Ilana Marcus of the Washington Post: "A review of hundreds of public comments by acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker shows that while he has primarily functioned as a defender of President Trump, he has also criticized the president on numerous occasions, sometimes harshly, while working as a commentator on radio and television. Whitaker has repeatedly suggested that Trump plays with the truth. He has said Trump should release his tax returns and was 'self-serving' in the way he fired FBI Director James B. Comey. Whitaker said during the run-up to the 2016 election that neither Trump nor Hillary Clinton was a very good option for the presidency. 'I mean, both these candidates are unlikable,' he said. The critique of the president by Whitaker, a former U.S. attorney who rose to prominence over the past four years as the head of a conservative nonprofit group, has often come in unguarded moments, and sometimes late into on-air discussions."
Sheryl Stolberg & Coral Davenport of the New York Times: "... tensions [between Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke & Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-Az.)] exploded on Friday into one of the more remarkable public feuds in recent Washington history -- a brutal exchange that began with Mr. Grijalva calling on Mr. Zinke to resign, followed by Mr. Zinke calling Mr. Grijalva a drunkard who had used taxpayer 'hush money' to cover up misbehavior, and Mr. Grijalva telling Mr. Zinke to, in effect, bring it on. 'It's hard for him to think straight from the bottom of the bottle,' Mr. Zinke wrote on Twitter, in a message that left many in the Capitol slack-jawed. 'This is coming from a man who used nearly $50,000 in tax dollars as hush money to cover up his drunken and hostile behavior. He should resign and pay back the taxpayer for the hush money and the tens of thousands of dollars he forced my department to spend investigating unfounded allegations.'... The 'hush money' reference was to a 2015 agreement between Mr. Grijalva and a former House employee who had accused him of overseeing a hostile work environment and frequently being drunk. The employee had threatened to file a lawsuit, and was paid $48,395 in severance.... Even by the combative and vituperatively partisan standards of President Trump's Washington, the Zinke tweet was a startling breach of decorum and of the norms that usually govern relationships between senior government officials -- particularly a cabinet secretary and a member of a congressional committee overseeing his department." ...
"Zinke responds to ethics criticism by calling Democratic lawmaker a drunk." Ben Lefebvre of Politico: Zinke made "other unproven allegations against Grijalva, who is set to chair the Natural Resources Committee after Democrats take control of the chamber in January.... Grijalva [wrote] on Twitter: 'The allegations against Secretary Zinke are credible and serious. Instead of addressing the substantive issues raised in this morning's op-ed, he's resorting to personal attacks.' Environmental groups opposed to Zinke's policies immediately denounced Zinke's slam at the lawmaker. 'Delete your account. And resign,' the Sierra Club's Twitter account replied to Zinke.... Zinke's allegations against Grijalva echo those first reported in the Washington Times last year, which alleged that the Democrat had paid a former aide $48,000 to settle allegations of misconduct. The complaint was never taken to Capitol Hill's workplace misconduct adjudicators at the Office of Compliance.... Part of one investigation into Zinke also centers on his years-long plan to open a microbrewery in his hometown of Whitefish, Mont. Whitefish residents told POLITICO earlier this year Zinke was a regular sight at the Bulldog Saloon, the Spotted Bear Spirits distillery and The Lodge at Whitefish Lake for drinks." ...
... Here's Rep. Grijalva's op-ed calling for Zinke's resignation, published in USA Today.
Niluksi Koswanage of Bloomberg News: "Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman sent at least 11 messages to his closest adviser, who allegedly oversaw the team that killed U.S. columnist Jamal Khashoggi, in the hours before and after his death in October, Wall Street Journal reported Saturday, citing a highly classified CIA assessment report.... U.S. senators have demanded the White House be more forthcoming about intelligence gathered on Khashoggi's killing in Turkey, and demanded to know whether the crown prince knew about in advance or ordered it. The Wall Street Journal said it had reviewed excerpts of the Central Intelligence Agency's assessment, which included electronic intercepts and other information. The excerpts state that the CIA had 'medium-to-high' confidence that Prince Mohammad had personally targeted Khashoggi to the extent of 'probably ordering his death,' the Journal said. However, the assessment stated that there is no direct reporting of the crown prince actually issuing a kill order, Wall Street Journal said."
Because of Course It Did. Darryl Fears of the Washington Post: "The Trump administration is preparing to take an important step toward future oil and natural gas drilling off the Atlantic shore, approving five requests from companies to conduct deafening seismic tests that could kill tens of thousands of dolphins, whales and other marine animals. The planned Friday announcement by the National Marine Fisheries Service, a division of the Commerce Department, to issue 'incidental take' permits allowing companies to harm wildlife is likely to further antagonize a dozen governors in states along the Eastern Seaboard who strongly oppose the administration's proposal to expand federal oil and gas leases to the Atlantic. Federal leases could lead to exploratory drilling for the first time in more than a half-century." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Ken Vogel of the New York Times: "Federal prosecutors cited the involvement of a onetime top fund-raiser to President Trump on Friday in a scheme to launder millions of dollars into the country to help a flamboyant Malaysian financier end a Justice Department investigation. Elliott Broidy, a Los Angeles-based businessman who was a finance vice chairman of Mr. Trump's 2016 campaign and inauguration committees, was paid to lobby the Trump administration to try to end an investigation related to the embezzlement of billions of dollars from a Malaysian state-owned fund, according to court filings made public on Friday. The filings were released in connection with a guilty plea entered by George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee. Mr. Higginbotham admitted to conspiring to lie to banks about the source of tens of millions of dollars he funneled into the United States from the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who federal authorities say masterminded a scheme to loot the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad fund, also known as 1MDB." Mrs. McC: I've read three stories on this, & Vogel's is the first one I could understand. The others got into the weeds & buried the lede.
Election 2018, Ctd.
Georgia. Richard Fausset of the New York Times: Democrats see "... the runoff election next week for Georgia secretary of state [as] a crucial battle over minority voting rights.... Brian Kemp, the Republican who ran for governor while still serving as secretary of state, oversaw voting roll purges, registration suspensions, and an Election Day rife with problems -- all of which, critics said, were meant to suppress minority voting.... Many Democrats around the country ... believe that those tactics worked, and essentially cheated [Democrat Stacey] Abrams out of victory in an excruciatingly close race.... In TV ads, [the Democratic candidate John] Barrow leans on a fence in front of a bucolic Georgia landscape and declares, 'Yeah, I'm a Democrat, but I won't bite you.'... His Republican opponent, Brad Raffensperger, a State House member and a civil engineer, also lacks a certain bite: Even allies describe him as long on intelligence and short on charisma." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
North Carolina. Amy Gardner & Kirk Ross of the Washington Post: "Mounting evidence of fraud in North Carolina's 9th Congressional District could indefinitely delay the certification of a winner, as state election officials investigate whether hundreds of absentee ballots were illegally cast or destroyed. The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has no plans to certify Republican Mark Harris's 905-vote victory over Democrat Dan McCready, according to an agenda of a board meeting scheduled for Friday morning. The board is collecting sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen and Robeson counties, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested.... Investigators are also scrutinizing unusually high numbers of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County, in both the general election and the May 8 primary, in which Harris defeated incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger (R) by 828 votes. In the primary, Harris won 96 percent of all absentee ballots in Bladen, a far higher percentage than his win in the county overall -- a statistic that this week is prompting fresh accusations of fraud." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: So there is rampant voter fraud, after all. But it looks as if the fraudsters are Republicans.
Ken Belson of the New York Times: "The Kansas City Chiefs cut their star running back, Kareem Hunt, on Friday, shortly after the N.F.L. suspended him in response to the release of a video that showed Hunt knocking a woman down and kicking her at a hotel in February. Hunt is one of the most prominent players on a contending team to lose his job in the middle of a season because of an incident involving domestic violence. The video was recorded at the Metropolitan at the 9 hotel, in downtown Cleveland, where Hunt has an apartment. The police were called after the February incident, but no arrests were made and no charges were filed.... That a celebrity website, TMZ, was able to obtain a copy of the video [while the league & the team both claimed they could not] is bound to raise new questions about whether the league is doing enough to hold players accountable for their behavior off the field."
Once Again, New Mexico Gets No Respect. AP: "A District of Columbia clerk and a supervisor refused to accept a New Mexico man's state driver's license as he sought a marriage license because she and her supervisor believed New Mexico was a foreign country. Gavin Clarkson told the Las Cruces Sun-News it happened Nov. 20 at the District of Columbia Courts Marriage Bureau as he tried to apply for a marriage license.... [Clarkson said,] 'All the couples behind us waiting in line were laughing.'"
Beyond the Beltway
New York. A Very Caucasian Christmas. Ginia Bellafante of the New York Times: "... the Rockettes, whose performances are taken in by almost one million people every holiday season, are ... almost all white.... The Rockettes are the creation of someone named Russell Markert, who first brought them to the stage in St. Louis in 1925 and oversaw their direction at Radio City Music Hall from the early 1930s until his retirement in the early 1970s. His goal had been to build the most precise and uniform dance troupe in the world, and to that end he imposed height requirements.... Before his death, Markert acknowledged that he had forbidden a particular white dancer from tanning because he feared it would make her look 'like a colored girl.' In 1982, his successor, Violet Holmes, defended the long tradition of racial bias, arguing that the dancers needed to be 'mirror images' of each other and that 'one or two black girls would definitely distract.'... When the Rockettes were asked to dance at the presidential inauguration of Donald Trump, some in the corps protested and voiced their displeasure. But in the Trump worldview, women dancing in bodysuits was surely what had once made American great. The show went on."
Texas. Sam Levine of the Huffington Post: "A Texas appeals court last week refused to overturn the conviction of a 39-year-old mother of four who has been sentenced to eight years in prison for illegal voting. She could also be deported. There's little dispute that Rosa Maria Ortega did in fact break the law. Ortega came to the United States from Mexico as a baby and was living in the U.S. as a legal permanent resident. Although it's against the law for non-citizens to vote in Texas, Ortega registered to vote in 2002 as a Republican and then cast ballots multiple times over more than a decade. She tried to register again after moving in 2014, which is when state investigators noticed something was amiss. They arrested her in January 2016.... Throughout her trial, Ortega maintained that she had no idea she couldn't vote. She said she didn't know the difference between a U.S. citizen and a legal permanent resident. She was brought to the United States when she was very young and two of her brothers were born in the U.S.... Her entire family thought she was a citizen. 'She has a sixth-grade education. She didn't know she wasn't legal,' Ortega's lawyer told The New York Times in 2017.'" Thanks to MAG for the link. See also MAG's comment below.
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