The Commentariat -- August 23, 2018

Afternoon Update:

The Elf Strikes Back. Eileen Sullivan of the New York Times: "Jeff Sessions, the attorney general, pushed back against President Trump's recent attack on him -- namely that Mr. Sessions never took control of the Justice Department.... 'While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations,' Mr. Sessions said in a rare public statement released Thursday afternoon.... 'I put in an attorney general that never took control of the Justice Department,' Mr. Trump said in an interview with 'Fox & Friends' recorded on Wednesday and aired on Thursday morning. 'Jeff Sessions never took control of the Justice Department and it's a sort of an incredible thing.' He later asked: 'What kind of man is this.' Mr. Sessions appeared to answer that question: 'I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action,' he said in the statement." ...

... Steven Dennis of Bloomberg: "Two key Republican senators signaled to ... Donald Trump that he could replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the midterm elections in November, a move that would open the way for firing Robert Mueller or constraining his probe.... 'The president's entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that's qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,' Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who may be in line to head the Judiciary Committee next year, told reporters Thursday.... Graham warned against acting against Sessions before the election.... A year ago..., [Graham] warned Trump publicly that if he fired Sessions 'there will be holy hell to pay.' Senator Chuck Grassley, the current Judiciary chairman, also changed his position on Thursday, saying in an interview that he'd be able to make time for hearings for a new attorney general after saying in the past that the panel was too busy to tackle that explosive possibility." ...

... ** Jonathan Chait: "Trump wants to ban flipping because he is almost literally a mob boss.... Over the weekend [Trump] denounc[ed] President Nixon's lawyer John Dean as a 'rat.'... To gangsters, a rat is considered the worst kind of person because they pose the greatest danger to their ability to escape prosecution.... Trump ... has worked closely with Mafia figures throughout his business career. 'I know all about flipping, for 30, 40 years I've been watching flippers,' he tells Fox News. 'Everything's wonderful, and then they get ten years in jail and they flip on whoever the next-highest one is, or as high as you can go.' Trump's claim of expertise in his area is not some idle boast. He hired Roy Cohn, by that point a mob lawyer, worked closely with figures linked to the Russian-American mafia, Felix Sater and Michael Cohen, and made money in his properties attracting money launderers.... He also follows mafia practice of surrounding himself with associates chosen on the basis of loyalty rather than traditional qualifications.... [']The only reason I gave [Sessions] the job [is] I felt loyalty.' Trump cannot imagine that admitting he picked an attorney general solely out of the expectation of personal loyalty is a confession of an intent to corrupt law enforcement." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Chait's post is an elaboration -- and a very good one -- on what I wrote in the Comments section yesterday.

Kimon de Greef & Palko Karasz of the New York Times: "President Trump waded into South Africa’s proposal to seize land from white farmers, saying in a post on Twitter late Wednesday that he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to 'closely study' the 'the large scale killing of farmers' -- a claim disputed by official figures and the country's biggest farmer's group. Mr. Trump's comment ... came after the Fox News host Tucker Carlson presented a late-night program on South Africa, including land seizures and homicides, and described President Cyril Ramaphosa as 'a racist.' The tweet gives prominence to a false narrative pushed by some right-wing groups in South Africa that there have been numerous seizures of white-owned land and widespread killings of white farmers. Some of those groups have brought their claims to the United States on lobbying trips." The story goes into detail on the, you know, facts. More on this embarrassing story linked below. ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Trump has not had time to name an ambassador to South Africa, but the Trump administration apparently did have time to tell the U.S. embassy in Pretoria not to assist President Obama, except with security, during his recent visit there. Waiting for Trump to nominate Tucker for ambassador to South Africa since he's already done a teevee show on the country & seems to know all the white people.

As the Worms Turn

Allegra Kirkland of TPM: "Federal prosecutors granted immunity to tabloid publisher David Pecker as part of their investigation into Michael Cohen's hush money payments to women, the Wall Street Journal reported Thursday.... According to the Journal, neither Pecker nor AMI chief content officer Dylan Howard [Mrs. McC: who kept watch for anti-Trump stories so that Peter Pecker's pickled papers could head them off] will be charged in relation to the Cohen criminal investigation." ...

... Josh Marshall: "The latest news is that National Enquirer chief David Pecker also 'flipped' and agreed to cooperate in the Cohen/Trump case. This was pretty clear in the Cohen Information document, though it was not stated explicitly.... This seems like the least surprising thing in the world.... The Enquirer would troll for Trump-damaging stories, which there were obviously going to be a lot of, buy them and then sell them to Trump.... It was a specific, standing financial arrangement. The Enquirer would essentially act as a cut-out, buying stories on Trump's behalf without the seller of the story knowing what was happening.... The Enquirer was doing this as a company, with multiple employees involved.... There is potentially real legal jeopardy for him and AMI Media. And he may have more information to share than we yet realize." ...

... Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair: "Pecker's apparent decision to corroborate Cohen's account, and implicate Trump in a federal crime, is another vivid example of how isolated Trump is becoming as the walls close in and his former friends look for ways out. 'Holy shit, I thought Pecker would be the last one to turn,' a Trump friend told me when I brought up the news. Trump and Pecker have been close for years.... Pecker's friendship with Trump now seems to be over. According to a source close to A.M.I., Pecker and Trump haven't spoken in roughly eight months."

Alexander Nazaryan of Yahoo! News: "A bill that would have significantly bolstered the nation's defenses against electoral interference has been held up in the Senate at the behest of the White House, which opposed the proposed legislation, according to congressional sources. The Secure Elections Act, introduced by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., in December 2017, had co-sponsorship from two of the Senate's most prominent liberals, Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as from conservative stalwart Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and ... Susan Collins, R-Me.... A spokesperson for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell ... declined to say whether the majority leader ... was involved in efforts to hobble the Secure Elections Act.... The Trump administration has been unable to settle on how elections should be secured, and whom they should be secured against.... Lankford ... vowed to press on."

Adam Harris of the Atlantic has more on Betsy DeVos's excellent plan to arm teachers with guns purchased with federal dollars. "On Thursday, Senator Chris Murphy, a Democrat from Connecticut who became one of the most outspoken advocates for preventing gun violence after the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, introduced a bill to prevent the use of Title IV funds for the purpose of arming teachers."

CBS/AP: "A former government contractor who pleaded guilty to mailing a classified U.S. report to a news organization was sentenced to more than five years Thursday as part of a deal with prosecutors, who called it the longest sentence ever imposed for a federal crime involving leaks to the media. Reality Winner, 26, pleaded guilty in June to a single count of transmitting national security information. The former Air Force translator worked as a contractor at a National Security Agency's office in Augusta, Georgia, when she printed a classified report and left the building with it tucked into her pantyhose. Winner told the FBI she mailed the document to an online news outlet. In court Thursday, Winner apologized and acknowledged that what she did was wrong." ...

... Betsy Reed of the Intercept: "Reality Winner was sentenced today to 63 months in prison for disclosing a top-secret NSA document describing a hacking campaign directed by the Russian military against U.S. voting systems. On June 5, 2017, The Intercept published a story about the document. We did not know the identity of the source who had sent it to us. Shortly after we posted our story, we learned that Winner had been arrested two days earlier. After an internal review, we acknowledged shortcomings in our handling of the document. However, it soon became clear that the government had at its disposal, and had aggressively used, multiple methods to quickly hunt down Winner."

*****

Brett Samuels of the Hill: "President Trump on Thursday suggested that the practice of cooperating with prosecutors as part of a plea agreement 'ought to be illegal' after ... Michael Cohen said in a guilty plea that he violated campaign finance laws at Trump's direction. Trump told 'Fox & Friends' host Ainsley Earhardt that Cohen was able to secure a better deal because he used Trump's name." ...

     ... Mrs. McC: Somebody should tell Whineyface von Clownstick that about 97 percent of U.S. federal convictions are the result of plea bargains. The federal judiciary would grind to a halt if judges & juries had to hear 33 times as many cases as it does now. Then again, Trump could use his new law as an excuse to pack the judiciary with thousands of new nut-job federal judges. ...

... Alex Shephard of the New Republic: "Trump bombed his softball interview on Fox News.... '... what [Cohen] did, and they weren't taken out of campaign finance -- that's a much bigger thing, did they come out of the campaign? They didn't come out of the campaign,' Trump said about payments to Stormy Daniels. Trump seems to think that the fact that the money used to silence Daniels didn't come directly from his presidential campaign exonerates him. It does not. Cohen has said that the payment to Trump's former mistress were made using personal funds for the purpose of evading federal election law, which requires candidates to report expenses to the Federal Election Commission.... Just because campaign funds weren't used doesn't mean that this wasn't a campaign expenditure, in other words. Using personal money is still a crime, and Trump appears to have just admitted to committing a crime." ...

... The Ever-Evolving Lies of Donald Trump. Jordan Fabian of the Hill: "President Trump on Wednesday falsely claimed that hush money payments arranged by his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, did not break the law and [falsely] denied he had knowledge of them at the time. 'My first question when I heard about it was, "did they come out of the campaign?" Because that could be a little dicey. But they didn't come out of the campaign and that's big,' Trump said during an interview with 'Fox & Friends' host Ainsley Earhardt. 'It's not even a campaign violation,' added Trump.... The president ... [said] he found out about the arrangements 'later on.'... But that claim has been undercut by a secret recording Cohen released last month that contains a conversation with Trump about how they would purchase the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal.... He also asserted they did not break the law because 'they weren't taken out of campaign finance,' an apparent reference to his campaign's bank account, and were paid for with personal funds. But what Cohen described is known as an in-kind contribution on behalf of the Trump campaign. The amount of the payments exceeded contribution limits and went unreported at the time, according to prosecutors." ...

     ... The related story, by Glenn Kessler, documents the history of the series of lies Trump & his associates told about the payments of hush-money to McDougal & Daniels and contrasts these lies with the facts that later came to light. ...

... Rebecca O'Brien, et al., of the Wall Street Journal: "... David Pecker, the chairman of American Media Inc., which publishes the National Enquirer, provided prosecutors with details about payments Mr. Cohen arranged with women who alleged sexual encounters with President Trump, including Mr. Trump's knowledge of the deals.... American Media executives were involved in both hush-money deals that formed the basis of Mr. Cohen's guilty plea to campaign-finance violations, prosecutors said on Tuesday." Emphasis added. ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: I could not access this firewalled WSJ story until I tried opening it in a private window, a trick I learned from contributor Whyte O. The story is about what caused Cohen to flip on Trump, & is worth a read if you can access it. (Right-click on your mouse/pad & click on "Open in a private window" [or the equivalent for your browser]). ...

... Feliciz Sonmez of the Washington Post: "In April, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One he did not know Cohen had paid Daniels to prevent her from revealing details of the alleged affair. Trump also said he did not know where Cohen had gotten the money to make the payment.... White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Wednesday it was 'ridiculous' to accuse President Trump of lying after he reversed course on whether he knew about a $130,000 payment by his personal attorney, Michael Cohen, to adult-film star Stormy Daniels in the days before the 2016 election. 'I think that's a ridiculous accusation,' Sanders said when asked whether the president had lied to the American people. 'The president in this matter has done nothing wrong, and there are no charges against him.'..." ...

... Tal Axelrod of the Hill: "Fox News Host Ainsley Earhardt said Wednesday night on the network's 'Hannity' that President Trump told her he was considering a pardon for his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. 'I think he feels bad for Manafort. They were friends, he didn't work for him very long, worked for him for basically one hundred days,' she said. Earhardt had an ... interview with the president, which will air Thursday morning on 'Fox & Friends.'" ...

... John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Wednesday praised his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort as a 'brave man,' saying that he 'refused to break' during the prosecution that led to convictions Tuesday on eight tax- and bank-fraud charges in federal court. In a series of tweets, Trump sought to contrast Manafort's posture with that of Michael Cohen.... 'I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,' Trump wrote. '"Justice" took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to "break." A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!'... 'Such respect for a brave man!' Trump added in a tweet that is certain to raise speculation about whether the president might pardon Manafort at some point.... 'If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen!' Trump said on Twitter.... 'Michael Cohen plead [sic.] guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime,' Trump wrote. 'President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!' Trump did not spell out what he was referring to regarding Obama.... Trump also accused Cohen of having made up 'stories in order to get a deal.'" (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Grumpy Trumpy Had a Sad. Maggie Haberman & Katie Rogers of the New York Times: "In the hours after two of President Trump's former advisers delivered his administration potentially grave legal setbacks, the mood inside the White House was grim, a return to a trench-warfare mentality.... This time, advisers noticed that the president, a man who has in the past relished the idea of leading his troops into political battle, seemed subdued. He appeared to realize the serious nature of what had just taken place, and yet his relative calm -- contrasted with his more typical lashing out when he is anxious -- unnerved some of his aides. 'We started with collusion,' the president mused, according to several people who witnessed Mr. Trump's somber mood. 'How did we end up here?'... On Air Force One on Tuesday night on the way back from a rally in West Virginia, Mr. Trump ... groused over the optics of the rally, telling a person close to him that the crowd seemed flat and that some chairs were empty." ...

... Michael Kruse of Politico Magazine: Trump "has called himself a 'great loyalty freak.' He has said he values loyalty 'above everything else -- more than brains, more than drive.' And one of his greatest strengths, at least of a certain sort, always has been his ability to engender unwavering, slavish, even sycophantic allegiance. But it's also been so brutally, consistently one-sided, and the Cohen flip brings to the fore the fragility of Trump's transactional brand of loyalty and potentially its ultimate incompatibility with the presidency.... And Trump's long span of quiet about Cohen was so out of character it suggested even he understands the reality of his legal jeopardy.... And then ... he started tweeting (and talking). Evidently unable to restrain himself, he urged his nearly 54 million followers in a sad bleat of a tweet to not hire Cohen, as if this were a moment for a Yelp-like review of an attorney. He impugned his truthfulness as well as his fortitude, and he dubiously concluded that Cohen's admitted campaign finance violations allegedly committed in concert with the president himself 'are not a crime.' 'He is unraveling,' [former Trump Organization executive vice president Barbara] Res said." ...

... Sarah Ellison, et al., of the Washington Post have a story on how in August 2015 "David Pecker and Michael Cohen hatched a plan to help" suppress negative stories about Donald Trump. ...

     ... Jim Rutenberg & Rebecca Ruiz of the New York Times have a drier account of the same, but it also contains great detail. ...

... William Rashbaum of the New York Times: "The court filing in the case of Mr. Cohen ... indicates for the first time that others at Mr. Trump's company had a role in the financial arrangements used to silence women who claimed that they had affairs with him, after the hush money payments were made. Two senior Trump Organization executives had involvement in the financial arrangements, according to the 22-page court filing. Separately, one or more members of the 2016 Trump campaign were cited as having worked to identify stories about Mr. Trump's romantic entanglements 'so they could be purchased and their publication avoided,' the filing said. Mr. Cohen, the filing said, 'coordinated with one or more members of the campaign, including through meetings and phone calls,' about the nature and timing of the payments, which were made to influence the election.... Several current and former prosecutors and criminal defense lawyers said that if the officials at the Trump Organization were aware of what the payments were for, they could possibly be criminally culpable. And they said that if the $420,000 in payments to Mr. Cohen, which were recorded as legal expenses, were written off as a tax deduction, as would be the general practice, it could lead to criminal tax charges." ...

... Another Mystery from the Plea Deal. Christina Wilkie of CNBC: "Buried in the legal documents released Tuesday as part of Cohen's guilty plea on eight felony counts, there was a new, previously unreported payment Cohen made in 2016 to help Trump: $50,000 for work that prosecutors say Cohen 'solicited from a technology company during and in connection with the campaign.' The documents do not identify which tech company Cohen paid the money to, or what, exactly, the company did for him. But the mere existence of the previously unknown payment suggests that Cohen may have been doing more for Trump, and for the Trump campaign, than simply paying off women. Furthermore, the way that Cohen reported the $50,000 expense to the Trump Organization in January 2017 suggests the money may not have been paid out through traditional financial channels.... The Trump Organization would later say that the $50,000 was a 'payment for tech services.' However, prosecutors say the $50,000 'was in fact related to work Cohen had solicited from a technology company during and in connection with the campaign.'" ...

     ... Rachel Maddow notes that the Steele dossier claims that Cohen went to Prague to meet with Kremlin officials to discuss how to pay for Russian hacking services. Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said Wednesday that Cohen had never been to Prague. ...

** Jonathan Swan of Axios: "Michael Cohen told lawmakers last year, in sworn testimony, that he didn't know whether then-candidate Donald Trump had foreknowledge of the 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Russians, three sources with knowledge of Cohen's testimony tell Axios....And Cohen still doesn't know whether Trump knew about the infamous meeting, according to Cohen's lawyer, Lanny Davis. 'Nothing has changed,' he told Axios. Reports last month said Cohen was willing to assert to special counsel Robert Mueller that Trump did know about the meeting in advance.... This information about what Cohen told Congress about Trump -- reported here for the first time -- colors in the gaps of a statement Tuesday by Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman Richard Burr and Vice Chair Sen. Mark Warner that got buried under the Cohen-Manafort news avalanche." In the statement, the Senators wrote that 'the Committee inquired of Mr. Cohen's legal team as to whether Mr. Cohen stood by his testimony. They responded that he did stand by his testimony." Davis said he could not address the erroneous stories when they surfaced because of the "sensitivity" of the "criminal investigation."

... Rosalind Helderman, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Lanny Davis, an attorney and spokesman for Cohen, went on a media blitz in the wake of Cohen's guilty plea, repeatedly floating the idea that Cohen is willing to be a witness against Trump and his associates in state and federal investigations.... New York's state tax-collecting agency took Davis up on that. On Wednesday, a spokesman for the agency said it had issued a subpoena to Cohen for information related to an investigation of Trump's charitable foundation. Cohen immediately responded by personally calling the agency to see how he could help, according to an official in Democratic Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo's administration familiar with his call.... Potentially more significant, Davis repeatedly said Cohen would be willing to assist special counsel Robert S. Mueller III in his investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to influence the election and suggested that Cohen may be able to tell Mueller that Trump had advance knowledge of the hacking of Democratic emails." ...

... David Klepper of the AP: "Investigators in New York state have issued a subpoena to Michael Cohen as part of their probe into the Trump Foundation, an official with Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration confirmed to The Associated Press Wednesday. The subpoena was issued after Cohen's attorney said his client has information of interest to both state and federal prosecutors. As Trump's longtime lawyer and self-described 'fixer,' Cohen could potentially be a significant source of information for state investigators looking into whether Trump or his charity broke state law or lied about their tax liability.... If evidence of alleged crimes is found, the matter could be referred to state Attorney General Barbara Underwood, who could pursue criminal charges and seek the release of Trump's tax returns. Anyone charged with a state crime in relation to the investigation could not be cleared by a presidential pardon." ...

... Leaky Don McGahn. Shannon Pettypiece of Bloomberg: "... Donald Trump didn't consult his campaign finance lawyer Don McGahn about hush-money payments that were made days before the election and are now the center of a criminal case, a person familiar with the matter said. The absence of McGahn, who is now White House counsel, could be a key piece of evidence in any criminal prosecution, according to the person close to McGahn. Prosecutors could argue it shows Trump knew the payments were illegal and hid them. But Trump's lawyers could counter that it's a sign Trump didn't realize they were related to the campaign." Mrs. McC: I wonder if McGahn has a staff member whose job title is to "Official Leaker." ...

... ** Peter Doocy, et al., of Fox "News": "Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team was one holdout juror away from convicting Paul Manafort on all 18 counts of bank and tax fraud, juror Paula Duncan told Fox News in an exclusive interview Wednesday. 'It was one person who kept the verdict from being guilty on all 18 counts,' Duncan, 52, said.... Duncan described herself as an avid supporter of President Trump, but said she was moved by four full boxes of exhibits provided by Mueller-s team -- though she was skeptical about prosecutors' motives in the financial crimes case." In a photo of Duncan accompanying the story, she is wearing a MAGA cap. and she says she'll be voting for Trump in 2020. She was not the holdout. ...

... Burgess Everett & Nolan McCaskill of Politico: "Twenty-four hours after one of the most damaging days for Donald Trump's presidency, the Republican wall of support around him shows no signs of crumbling. Though some GOP senators expressed discomfort with the the plea deal reached by Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and the guilty verdict rendered on former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, there has been no seismic shift in the GOP after a bombshell Tuesday. Some Republicans attacked Cohen as not credible, some said Manafort's conviction has nothing to do with Trump and others still said the matter doesn't fall in their purview as senators. Moreover, the president still enjoys strong support among most Republican elected officials, a significant achievement given the rising prospects that Senate Republicans could be the backstop against an impeachment trial in the Senate if Democrats win the House." ...

... Eric Gueller & Martin Matishak of Politico: "A bipartisan bill meant to secure future U.S. elections against foreign meddling suffered a major setback Wednesday after Republicans pulled support from the measure. A dispute& over the Secure Elections Act boiled down to whether Congress should compel more states to use paper-based audits -- a safeguard that election integrity advocates say would help ensure vote tallies weren't tampered with or altered.... The Rules Committee announcement did not say when the rescheduled markup would take place." --safari ...

... Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "[W]e are in a situation where the constitutional responsibility of Congress is to step up to the plate and do something.... But congressional Republicans don't care.... The key thing to remember about the Russia investigation is it exists not because it's the only aspect of Trump's conduct worth investigating, but because it's the only worthwhile investigation that congressional Republicans were willing to pursue.... Rather than look into [Trump's other potential wrongdoings], congressional Republicans are whistling past the graveyard and have plunged the country into a constant state of constitutional crisis." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: "It's Tuesday afternoon.... News is breaking that could prove existential for [Trump's] presidency. But his social media feed hardly records the magnitude of the developments.... Trump's carefully curated feed is a reflection of the ideological chasm that's dividing the media and splintering society. Tuesday offered vivid evidence of the way in which right-wing media insulates Trump, and his most devoted supporters, from blunt assessments of his administration.... Alongside a Daily Caller story about Cohen were laudatory posts about Trump, from the president's defense of free speech to his status as 'the most feminist president.' TheBlaze gave prominence to Trump's attacks on ESPN for not 'defending our anthem,' foregrounding the president's grievances with NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police violence." Read on. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Guardian editors: "Mr Trump is a self-aggrandising liar whose desire for riches, infamy and adoration appears insatiable. The father of the US constitution, James Madison, once said that if men were angels they would not need government. But what if government itself is possessed by a character like Mr Trump? That is the threat the work of the special counsel Robert Mueller has been uncovering.... US institutions were not designed to protect the public from a leader like Mr Trump. Principled politicians, judges and lawyers are needed to dig deep in the face of much resistance.... Mr Mueller needs to be shielded to prove that the system can work as well as it did then." --safari

Stephen Brown of the New York Daily News: "President Trump's tough talk about protesters is evidence he 'authorized and condoned' a harsh crackdown by his bodyguard and other staff during a 2015 campaign event in Manhattan, a judge ruled Tuesday. Bronx Supreme Court Justice Fernando Tapia ruled that Trump should remain a defendant in a suit brought by four Mexican protesters over a rowdy rally outside of Trump Tower. One of the protesters, Efrain Galicia, charged that Trump's bodyguard at the time, Keith Schiller, tore a sign out of his hands reading 'Trump: Make America Racist Again.' Schiller then smacked Galicia in the face when he tried to grab it back, the suit says. Much of the confrontation outside of Trump Tower in September 2015 was caught on video."

White Nationalist International Cooperation. Kate Lyons of the Guardian: "Donald Trump has asked his secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to 'closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures' and the killing of farmers there. Trump posted a quote from Fox News on Twitter alleging the South African government was 'seizing land from white farmers'. The president's tweet and his direction to his secretary of state seem to have been prompted by a segment on Fox News on Wednesday night." --safari ...

... How Fox "News" (and White Nationalists) Now Run U.S. Foreign Policy. Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: In his tweet, Trump "quoted Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, who earlier Wednesday had railed against plans by South Africa's ruling party to pursue constitutional changes allowing the government to redistribute land without compensation. The measure is designed to redress racial inequalities that have persisted nearly a quarter-century after the end of apartheid in 1994. The episode represented a case study in how the president runs his administration. The apparent basis of Trump's directions to the nation's top diplomat were accusations leveled by Fox -- accusations that echo talking points used by white-nationalist groups, including an organization that has referred to 'the so-called apartheid' and the 'so-called "historical injustices of the past."'... Daniel Dale, a correspondent for the Toronto Star, observed that Trump's tweet Wednesday marked the first time he had used the word 'Africa' on the social media platform since becoming president -- [and it was] 'to express support for white people[.]'..." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Also a good time to remember Akhilleus's commentary of a few days ago on the Amateur-in-Chief.

Guardian: "Donald Trump on Tuesday night launched yet another attack on NFL players who have knelt during the national anthem, although the numbers suggest his criticism may be off the mark.... In the latest round of preseason game just one player -- the Miami Dolphins' Albert Wilson -- knelt during the national anthem. That means 0.06% of the NFL's 1,664 players knelt during the most recent action, although that percentage is actually smaller as teams are allowed larger rosters during preseason. A small number of players protested by staying in the tunnel during the anthem or raising their fists." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

At his rally in West Virginia Tuesday, Trump confirmed that he had threatened to leave NATO if other countries didn't contribute more money to support the international defense organization. The Atlantic Council has transcribed his baby talk remarks on how he conducts international diplomacy here.

Ben Judah, in The Atlantic, explains the ways that Washington is turning into Moscow. --safari

Erica Green of the New York Times: "The Education Department is considering whether to allow states to use federal funding to purchase guns for educators, according to multiple people with knowledge of the plan." The headline fingers Betsy DeVos.

#Resistance. Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "Environmental groups caught the Department of the Interior trying to sell off part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, despite a pledge by Secretary Ryan Zinke never to put public lands up for sale. After massive backlash from environmental groups and the public, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) late Friday canceled all plans to sell off the land.... In a March 3, 2017 speech, only days after getting sworn in as secretary, Zinke promised Interior staffers: 'You can hear it from my lips. We will not sell or transfer public land.'... But then last Wednesday, the Trump administration released its management plans ... that placed a priority on energy development and included the plan to sell off the 1,610 acres of public lands." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

All the Best People, Ctd.

Rebekah Entrelago of ThinkProgress: "Kathy Kraninger, currently the associate director for general government programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has no background in financial regulation or consumer protection. However, in Trump administration fashion, she is the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a position she herself has admitted she is unqualified to hold, and one she may be granted regardless, if the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs votes to confirm her on Thursday.... Currently, the position is being held in acting capacity by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Nahal Toosi of Politico: "Two top House Democrats are slamming Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for giving a new position to Brian Hook, a Trump administration appointee suspected of engaging in political retaliation against career staffers at the State Department. The lawmakers, Reps. Eliot Engel of New York and Elijah Cummings of Maryland are also demanding more information on what Pompeo has done, if anything, to punish Hook and others involved in the alleged retaliation. Those others include Mari Stull, a wine-blogger-turned-appointee alleged to have, among other things, sifted through career staffers' social media accounts for signs of disloyalty to President Donald Trump [and is still on the payroll].... Hook was involved last year in discussions about sidelining Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, a career civil servant who specialized in Iran and was a member of the policy planning staff [and pushing out any "Obama holdovers"]." --safari

Aaron Davis of the Washington Post: "A conservative commentator who was lauded by President Trump this week as 'wonderful' and who has argued that past sexual indiscretions should have no bearing on Trump's presidency was fired from Arizona State University four years ago for making sexually explicit comments and gestures toward women, according to documents and a university official. An internal investigation by the university concluded that Paris Dennard, a surrogate during the campaign and now a member of the President's Commission on White House Fellowships, told a recent college graduate who worked for him that he wanted to have sex with her. He 'pretended to unzip his pants in her presence, tried to get her to sit on his lap, and made masturbatory gestures,' according to a university report obtained by The Washington Post.... Dennard, a CNN political commentator, opinion contributor to the Hill, and regular guest on NPR's 'Here & Now,' was working at the time as events director for ASU's McCain Institute for International Leadership.... Shortly after The Post published this article Wednesday night, a CNN spokeswoman said the network was suspending Dennard while it reviews the allegations."

2018 Elections

Natasha Korecki & Quint Forgey of Politico: "On Tuesday, authorities charged a man who they said is an undocumented immigrant in the slaying of 20-year-old Mollie Tibbetts, and within hours the tragedy emerged as a polarizing wedge issue -- just in time for the fall campaign homestretch.... The White House followed up Wednesday by releasing an emotional video of direct-to-camera stories from families of victims of violence committed by undocumented immigrants.... For Republicans, the Tibbetts case has a complicating factor. Cristhian Rivera, the 24-year-old Mexican national facing charges, had worked for years on Yarrabee Farms, owned by the Lang Family, including Craig Lang, a Republican who in June narrowly lost a primary bid for state agriculture secretary. Lang is a previous president of the Iowa Farm Bureau.... The [Des Moines] Register also reported that Rivera's attorney filed a court document Wednesday asserting that Rivera was working legally in Iowa." --safari

Senate Race. Texas. U.S. Senate candidate Rep. Beto O'Rourke (D-Texas) addresses a question about NFL protests. Thanks to Keith H. for the lead:

... Wow! Let's see how O'Rourke's opponent, Sen. Ted Cruz, responds to that moving, compassionate defense of civil rights activists:

     ... What a sniveling, disningenuous creep. O'Rourke is within 3 or 4 points of catching Cruz, & he's been an excellent fundraiser.

Congressional Race. Jermaine Ong of KGTV San Diego: "Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-CA) told 10News that he's innocent of accusations of campaign funding misuse one day after he and his wife Margaret were indicted by a federal grand jury.... 'This is modern politics and modern media mixed in with law enforcement that has a political agenda. That's the new Department of Justice.... This is the Democrats' arm of law enforcement, that's what's happening right now. It's happening with Trump, it's happening with me. We're going to fight through it and win and the people get to vote in November ... I think they've used every dirty trick in the book, so it'll go to court when they want it to.... They can try to have a political agenda as our law enforcement, as a U.S. government ... as we've seen with [former FBI agent Peter] Strzok, and with the FBI and DOJ have been doing. Let them expose themselves for what they are: a politically motivated group of folks.'" Mrs. McC: The U.S. attorney who brought charges against Hunter & his wife is a Trump appointee.

Leaky Brett Kavanaugh. Tom Hamburger, et al., of the Washington Post: "During independent counsel Kenneth W. Starr's tumultuous investigation of President Bill Clinton in the 1990s, there were loud objections and even lawsuits filed over the fact that information meant to be kept secret was being leaked to the press by Starr's staff. Among those guiding the journalists and authors was a young lawyer named Brett M. Kavanaugh.... Interview with those who dealt with Kavanaugh at the time and documents relating to his confirmation show the nominee to be a savvy Washington source.... Now Senate Democrats are exploring whether Kavanaugh crossed a line in his private communications with outsiders and revealed grand-jury testimony related to Foster';s suicide or other matters then under scrutiny in Starr's wide-ranging investigation of Bill and Hillary Clinton. This week, Senate Democrats contacted an author who said Kavanaugh was offered as a confidential source by Starr's deputies, and the lawmakers were part of a successful effort to persuade a judge to order the release later this week of a sealed 1999 report into alleged grand-jury leaks by Starr's office."

Sheera Frenkel & Jonathan Martin of the New York Times: "The Democratic National Committee said Wednesday that it was alerted to an attempted hack of its voter database this week and that it had notified law enforcement. The effort to target the Democratic Party's voter file, known as Votebuilder, was not successful, and a party official said the identities of the culprits were unclear.... This week's attempt was aggressive, two officials briefed on it said. The hackers set up a fake page that mimicked the party's login page for its voter-registration website, a tactic that could gather names, passwords and other credentials of those using the voter database. The hackers also may have sent emails to people within the national committee to try to trick them into using the fake page, a tactic known as 'spearphishing,' the officials said. The Federal Bureau of Investigation is looking into the incident, one of the officials said." ...

     ... Update. Ellen Nakashima of the Washington Post: "Whoops. What the Democratic National Committee this week thought was an attempted hack of its valuable voter file turned out to be a security test organized by a state party, unbeknownst to the national organization."

Sheera Frenkel & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified multiple new influence campaigns that were aimed at misleading people around the world, with the company finding and removing 652 fake accounts, pages and groups that were trying to sow misinformation. The activity originated in Iran and Russia, Facebook said. Unlike past influence operations on the social network, which largely targeted Americans, the fake accounts, pages and groups were this time also aimed at people in Latin America, Britain and the Middle East, the company said. Some of the activity was still focused on Americans, but the campaigns were not specifically intended to disrupt the midterm elections in the United States, said FireEye, a cybersecurity firm that worked with Facebook on investigating the fake pages and accounts." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Beyond the Beltway

Voter Suppression by Any Means. Kira Lerner of ThinkProgress: "A majority-black county in rural Georgia announced a plan last week to close seven of its nine polling places ahead of the November election, claiming the polls cannot continue to operate because they are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.... Republican lawmakers and election administrators in Randolph County are not the first to use the ... ADA, intended to protect the nation's disabled communities, as a pretext to disenfranchise minority voters.... Jim Tucker, an attorney and member of the Native American Voting Rights Coalition, said he learned earlier this year that the Department of Justice's Disability Rights Section is targeting at least three largely Native American counties, where facilities used as polling locations often lack ... ADA-required features. In several counties, the Justice Department has threatened enforcement actions if local governments do not either spend large sums of money to modernize polling locations or shutter them altogether." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Way Beyond

Benjamin Haas of the Guardian: "North Korea is continuing to develop its nuclear weapons programme, according to a report by the UN atomic watchdog, raising questions over the country's commitment to denuclearisation. In one of the most specific reports on Pyongyang's recent nuclear activities, the International Atomic Energy Agency observed actions consistent with the enrichment of uranium and construction at the country's main nuclear site." --safari (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

The Commentariat -- August 22, 2018

Late Morning Update:

John Wagner of the Washington Post: "President Trump on Wednesday praised his former campaign chairman Paul Manafort as a 'brave man,' saying that he 'refused to break' during the prosecution that led to convictions Tuesday on eight tax- and bank-fraud charges in federal court. In a series of tweets, Trump sought to contrast Manafort's posture with that of Michael Cohen.... 'I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family,' Trump wrote. '"Justice" took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to "break." A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!'... 'Such respect for a brave man!' Trump added in a tweet that is certain to raise speculation about whether the president might pardon Manafort at some point.... 'If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don't retain the services of Michael Cohen!' Trump said on Twitter.... 'Michael Cohen plead [sic.] guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime,' Trump wrote. 'President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!' Trump did not spell out what he was referring to regarding Obama.... In his tweets, Trump also accused Cohen of having made up 'stories in order to get a deal.'"

Matthew Yglesias of Vox: "[W]e are in a situation where the constitutional responsibility of Congress is to step up to the plate and do something.... But congressional Republicans don't care.... The key thing to remember about the Russia investigation is it exists not because it's the only aspect of Trump's conduct worth investigating, but because it's the only worthwhile investigation that congressional Republicans were willing to pursue.... Rather than look into [Trump's other potential wrongdoings], congressional Republicans are whistling past the graveyard and have plunged the country into a constant state of constitutional crisis." --safari

Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: "It's Tuesday afternoon.... News is breaking that could prove existential for [Trump's] presidency. But his social media feed hardly records the magnitude of the developments.... Trump's carefully curated feed is a reflection of the ideological chasm that's dividing the media and splintering society. Tuesday offered vivid evidence of the way in which right-wing media insulates Trump, and his most devoted supporters, from blunt assessments of his administration.... Alongside a Daily Caller story about Cohen were laudatory posts about Trump, from the president's defense of free speech to his status as 'the most feminist president.' TheBlaze gave prominence to Trump’s attacks on ESPN for not 'defending our anthem,' foregrounding the president's grievances with NFL players who kneel during the national anthem to protest police violence." Read on.

#Resistance. Mark Hand of ThinkProgress: "Environmental groups caught the Department of the Interior trying to sell off part of the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Utah, despite a pledge by Secretary Ryan Zinke never to put public lands up for sale. After massive backlash from environmental groups and the public, the Interior Department's Bureau of Land Management (BLM) late Friday canceled all plans to sell off the land.... In a March 3, 2017 speech, only days after getting sworn in as secretary, Zinke promised Interior staffers: 'You can hear it from my lips. We will not sell or transfer public land.'... But then last Wednesday, the Trump administration released its management plans ... that placed a priority on energy development and included the plan to sell off the 1,610 acres of public lands." --safari

"The Best People, Ctd." Rebekah Entrelago of ThinkProgress: "Kathy Kraninger, currently the associate director for general government programs at the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), has no background in financial regulation or consumer protection. However, in Trump administration fashion, she is the nominee to run the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), a position she herself has admitted she is unqualified to hold, and one she may be granted regardless, if the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs votes to confirm her on Thursday.... Currently, the position is being held in acting capacity by OMB Director Mick Mulvaney." --safari

Voter Suppression by Any Means. Kira Lerner of ThinkProgress: "A majority-black county in rural Georgia announced a plan last week to close seven of its nine polling places ahead of the November election, claiming the polls cannot continue to operate because they are not compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act.... Republican lawmakers and election administrators in Randolph County are not the first to use the ... ADA, intended to protect the nation's disabled communities, as a pretext to disenfranchise minority voters.... Jim Tucker, an attorney and member of the Native American Voting Rights Coalition, said he learned earlier this year that the Department of Justice's Disability Rights Section is targeting at least three largely Native American counties, where facilities used as polling locations often lack ... ADA-required features. In several counties, the Justice Department has threatened enforcement actions if local governments do not either spend large sums of money to modernize polling locations or shutter them altogether."

Benjamin Haas of the Guardian: "North Korea is continuing to develop its nuclear weapons programme, according to a report by the UN atomic watchdog, raising questions over the country's commitment to denuclearisation. In one of the most specific reports on Pyongyang's recent nuclear activities, the International Atomic Energy Agency observed actions consistent with the enrichment of uranium and construction at the country's main nuclear site." --safari

Guardian: "Donald Trump on Tuesday night launched yet another attack on NFL players who have knelt during the national anthem, although the numbers suggest his criticism may be off the mark.... In the latest round of preseason game just one player -- the Miami Dolphins' Albert Wilson -- knelt during the national anthem. That means 0.06% of the NFL's 1,664 players knelt during the most recent action, although that percentage is actually smaller as teams are allowed larger rosters during preseason. A small number of players protested by staying in the tunnel during the anthem or raising their fists." --safari

Sheera Frenkel & Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times: "Facebook said on Tuesday that it had identified multiple new< influence campaigns that were aimed at misleading people around the world, with the company finding and removing 652 fake accounts, pages and groups that were trying to sow misinformation. The activity originated in Iran and Russia, Facebook said. Unlike past influence operations on the social network, which largely targeted Americans, the fake accounts, pages and groups were this time also aimed at people in Latin America, Britain and the Middle East, the company said. Some of the activity was still focused on Americans, but the campaigns were not specifically intende to disrupt the midterm elections in the United States, said FireEye, a cybersecurity firm that worked with Facebook on investigating the fake pages and accounts."

*****

Zeke Miller, et al., of the AP: "... Donald Trump confronted one of the most perilous moments of his presidency Tuesday after two onetime members of his inner circle simultaneously were labeled 'guilty' of criminal charges. Although Trump largely ignored the jarring back-to-back blows at a campaign rally in West Virginia, questions mounted about his possible legal exposure and political future. In a split screen for the history books, Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort was convicted of financial crimes at nearly the same moment Trump's former personal attorney Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to a series of felonies.... But for all that, Trump spent more than an hour at a rally in Charleston on Tuesday night painting a rosy view of his accomplishments in office, ticking off developments on trade, taxes, North Korea and even his plans for a Space Force.... The crowd in West Virginia loudly chanted Trump's campaign staples 'Drain the swamp!' and 'Lock her up!' despite the fresh corruption convictions and looming prison sentences for his former advisers."

Mark Landler, et al., of the New York Times: "In two courtrooms 200 miles apart on Tuesday, President Trump's almost daily attempts to dismiss the criminal investigations that have engulfed his White House all but collapsed. Mr. Trump has long mocked the investigations as 'rigged witch hunts,' pursued by Democrats and abetted by a dishonest news media. But even the president's staunchest defenders acknowledged privately that the legal setbacks he suffered within minutes of each other could open fissures among Republicans on Capitol Hill and expose Mr. Trump to the possibility of impeachment."

** William Rashbaum, et al., of the New York Times: "Michael D. Cohen, President Trump's former fixer, pleaded guilty on Tuesday to breaking campaign finance laws and other charges. He made the extraordinary admission that he arranged payments to two women 'at the direction of the candidate,' referring to Mr. Trump, to secure their silence about affair they said they had with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments were 'for the principal purpose of influencing the election' for president in 2016 Mr. Cohen also pleaded guilty to multiple counts of tax evasion and bank fraud, bringing to a close a monthslong investigation by Manhattan federal prosecutors who examined his personal business dealings and his role in helping to arrange financial deals with women connected to Mr. Trump." (An earlier version of this story was linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

     ... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Teevee lawyers are describing Trump as "an unindicted co-conspirator." ...

... Splinter has the court filing here. Update: The NYT has the filing here (pdf), and it's easier to read. They're both slow loaders. ...

... Devlin Barrett, et al., of the Washington Post: "... Michael Cohen pleaded guilty Tuesday in a Manhattan courthouse to eight violations of banking, tax and campaign finance laws, telling a federal judge that he worked to silence two women before the 2016 election at the direction of then-candidate Trump.... Cohen implicated the president directly. He told the court that he worked with Trump to pay off two women to keep their stories of alleged affairs with Trump from becoming public before Election Day.... Cohen told the court that 'in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,' he and the chief executive of a media company worked in the summer of 2016 to keep an individual from publicly disclosing information that could harm the candidate. And he said he worked 'in coordination' with the same candidate to make a payment to a second individual. The details he described matched payments made to former Playboy model Karen McDougal and adult-film star Stormy Daniels. Both have alleged that they had sexual encounters with Trump, which he has denied.... Cohen said Tuesday that Trump repaid him the money for the purpose of influencing the campaign." (An earlier version of this story was linked yesterday afternoon.) ...

... Josh Gerstein, et al., of Politico: "Cohen will be sentenced on Dec. 12. Until then, he is out on $500,000 bail, limited to only traveling within New York City, and to a few notable places, such as Washington, D.C." ...

... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: It's worth noting that -- conspiracies with Russians aside -- the now-convicted felon Michael Cohen has accused Donald Trump of engaging in a criminal act wherein he directly tampered with the 2016 election. to be sure, I'd have to ask originalists Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh, but that sounds to me like "high crimes & misdemeanors." ...

... Lanny to Bob: "Please Call." Isaac Stanley-Becker of the Washington Post: "... [Michael] Cohen's attorney, Lanny Davis, suggested on television -- and in an interview with The Washington Post late Tuesday -- that Cohen had knowledge 'of interest' to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and that his client was 'more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows.' Davis said that Cohen's knowledge reached beyond 'the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude' and included also the question of Trump's participation in a 'criminal conspiracy' to hack into the emails of Democratic officials during the 2016 election. On 'The Rachel Maddow Show,' Davis, who is a veteran of the Clinton White House, said his client had 'knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.'... Davis said he chose his words carefully so as not to violate attorney-client privilege by revealing the specifics of what Cohen had told him.' ...

... Matt Naham of Law & Crime: "This news is a big deal for Avenatti. Earlier Tuesday, Avenatti said that Tuesdays events will allow him to proceed in the civil case against Cohen in California. Daniels' civil case against Trump and Cohen's Essential Consultants, LLC was placed on hold by U.S. District Judge S. James Otero on April 27 following a series of joint FBI-SDNY raids on various Cohen residences and offices in New York City on April 9." ...

     ... Michael Avenatti said on MSNBC he knew "for a fact" that Cohen has been cooperating with prosecutors. ...

... Watch Rudy Spin! Benjamin Hart of New York: "... Rudy Giuliani said, 'There is no allegation of any wrongdoing against the president in the government's charges against Mr. Cohen. It is clear that as the prosecutor noted Mr. Cohen's actions reflect a pattern of lies and dishonesty over a significant period of time.' [Rudy's false assertion notwithstand,] Michael Cohen said in district court on Tuesday that he had committed campaign-finance violations at the direction of President Trump, an enormously significant disclosure that could spell major legal trouble for the president." ...

     ... Jonathan Chait: "... there may be a loophole upon which Giuliani can rest his case. Cohen's plea agreement does not actually name Donald Trump as the co-conspirator. Instead, it simply states that Cohen went to work as an attorney for 'Individual 1,' who 'became President of the United States.'... That Individual 1 could be anybody." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie BTW: Actually, as Giuliani carefully notes, "the government's charges" do not accuse "Individual 1" of crimes. Rather, it was Cohen, in his allocution, who said he committed crimes "at the direction of the candidate." Nonetheless, Cohen didn't just make up his remarks; prosecutors most likely had agreed to the wording. It seems likely to me they have some documentation to back up Cohen's assertions about Trump's "collusion" in the payments to Daniels & McDougal. Update: Some documentation is outlined in the filings (linked above). In the court proceeding, prosecutors outlined -- in general terms -- extensive documentation they had to corroborate Cohen's testimony. The filing also implicates other, unnamed campaign officials in the hush-money schemes. ...

... Richard Hasen in Slate: "If prosecutors have evidence such as text messages or recordings corroborating Cohen's statement implicating Trump, that would be more than enough for Trump to be charged with a crime.... Department of Justice guidance says that prosecutors cannot indict a sitting president. This has never been tested by the courts, though.... Assuming Cohen's story can be corroborated with documentary evidence, the campaign finance violations could count as impeachable offenses that the House of Representatives could consider in any articles of impeachment against Trump.... If Cohen's story is corroborated, Trump has committed a crime, one tha does not depend upon proof of Russian collusion or obstruction." ...

.. Eric Lach of the New Yorker: "The New Yorker's Jeffrey Toobin told me, soon after the hearing. 'Cohen directly implicated Trump as a co-conspirator in a felony.'... In May, Toobin wrote about the impeachment debate within the Democratic Party. The Party leadership was resistant to the idea, Toobin said, 'but that was before this direct implication of Trump in a crime.'" ...

... Adam Davidson of the New Yorker: "The President of the United States is now, formally, implicated in a criminal conspiracy to mislead the American public in order to influence an election. Were he not President, Donald Trump himself would almost certainly be facing charges. This news came in what must be considered the most damaging single hour of a deeply troubled Presidency.... Keeping these two matters separate Trump's private business and possible campaign collusion -- has been an obsession of Trump's.... The Cohen plea and the Manafort indictment establish that this separation is entirely artificial. Trump did not isolate his private business from his public run for office. He behaved the same, with the same sorts of people, using the same techniques to hide his actions." ...

... Bob Van Voris, et al., of Bloomberg: "'Michael Cohen took this step today so that his family can move on to the next chapter,' [Lanny] Davis[, one of Cohen's attorneys,] said in a statement. 'This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2 to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump. Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn't they be a crime for Donald Trump?'" ...

... Inae Oh of Mother Jones: "As Cohen appeared before a Manhattan courtroom Tuesday, Richard Burr (R-N.C.) and Mark Warner (D-Va.), the chair and vice-chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, told reporters that the committee had recently 'reengaged' Cohen concerning questions about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting involving Donald Trump Jr. and Trump campaign associates. 'We hope that today's developments and Mr. Cohen's plea agreement will not preclude his appearance before our Committee as needed for our ongoing investigation,' Burr said while reading from a prepared statement." ...

... Karen Yourish of the New York Times: "Mr. Cohen's account contradicted his own earlier statements about the payment, as well as those made by the president and other advisers. Those explanations have ranged from outright denial of the president's involvement to suggesting that Mr. Trump reimbursed Mr. Cohen but had no earlier knowledge of the payment." Yourish reviews the previous statements.

** Matt Zapotosky, et al., of the Washington Post: "A jury has found former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort guilty after a three-week trial on tax and bank fraud charges -- a major if not complete victory for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as he continues to investigate the president's associates. The jury convicted Manafort on eight of the 18 counts against him. The jury said it was deadlocked on the other 10. U.S. District Court Judge T.S. Ellis declared a mistrial on those other charges. Manafort was convicted on five counts of filing false tax returns, one count of not filing a required IRS form, and two bank fraud counts.... President Trump reacted to the verdict by denouncing Mueller's investigation. 'It doesn't involve me ... it's a very sad thing,' the president said after arriving in West Virginia for a political rally, adding that the Manafort case 'has nothing to do with' Russian interference in the 2016 election." (An earlier version of this story was linked yesterday afternoon.) Mrs. McC: Trump ignored shouted questions about Cohen's guilty plea.. ...

... "All the President's Crooks." New York Times Editors: "From the start of the Russia investigation, President Trump has been working to discredit the work and the integrity of the special counsel, Robert Mueller; praising men who are blatant grifters, cons and crooks; insisting that he's personally done nothing wrong; and reminding us that he hires only the best people. On Tuesday afternoon, the American public was treated to an astonishing split-screen moment involving two of those people.... Mr. Trump's own lawyer has now accused him, under oath, of committing a felony.... For a witch hunt, Mr. Mueller's investigation has already bagged a remarkable number of witches. Only the best witches, you might say." ...

... "The Alleged Co-Conspirator in the White House." Washington Post Editors: "... it is unclear whether ... the president will face any formal scrutiny or consequences. The Constitution largely assigns that job to Congress, and powerful Republican lawmakers have seemed more interested in covering for Mr. Trump than investigating him. Tuesday's events must bring that partisan abdication of public duty to an end Congress must open investigations into Mr. Trump's role in the crime Mr. Cohen has admitted to. It is far too soon to say where such inquiries would lead. But legislators cannot in good conscience ignore an alleged co-conspirator in the White House."

Gabriel Sherman of Vanity Fair: "Since news broke of [White House counsel Don] McGahn's extensive cooperation with Mueller, Trump has been lashing out on Twitter.... Privately, Trump blames his precarious position on the people who work for him. Trump's fury at Attorney General Jeff Sessions,already raging, has been stoked thanks to Sessions's refusal to resign after months of public abuse. 'You can't talk to Trump without him bringing up Sessions,' one adviser said. Trump's frustration with Sessions has even caused him to turn on Giuliani. Over the weekend, Trump blamed Giuliani for the entire Russia probe. According to a person to whom the conversation was described, Trump loudly said to [Giuliani]: 'It's your fault! I offered you attorney general, but you insisted on being secretary of state. Had I picked you none of this would be happening.'... Another theory for what's motivating Trump's increasingly unhinged tweets is that Mueller may be closing in on his son Don Jr." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Paul Waldman in the Washington Post: "The explanation [Trump & his team] are offering [as to why Trump won't sit for a special counsel interview] -- that such an interview would be a 'perjury trap' -- is simultaneously ridiculous and all but an admission that the president of the United States is guilty of something. But most of all it's disingenuous, because perjury charges are not what they're really afraid of.... A 'perjury trap' occurs when investigators ask a question knowing that the person being interviewed will respond with a lie. When it happens, it's usually because the suspect doesn't realize that the investigators know something critical.... [Trump's] lawyers have certainly seen what has happened when Trump has been deposed before.... In one case, he was forced 30 separate times to admit lies he had told.... Mueller won't indict Trump, but he'll likely lay out whatever evidence he finds of Trump's wrongdoing (and that of everyone else he has investigated) in some kind of final report.... The real danger ... Trump faces [is] not legal danger, but political danger. An interview with Mueller might not make impeachment and removal from office more likely (he has a firewall of Republican support in Congress to prevent that), but it will almost certainly make a defeat in 2020 more likely."

She [Natalia Veselnitskaya] didn't represent the Russian government. She's a private citizen. I don't even know if they knew she was Russian at the time. All they had was her name. ... They didn't know she was a representative of the Russian government. -- Rudolph W. Giuliani, appearing on NBC's "Meet the Press," August 19

... Veselnitskaya ... has insisted that she was not representing the Russian government in the meeting, but what's important is what Trump Jr. was told – that she was working on behalf of the Russian government. Moreover, it later emerged that she worked closely with a top Kremlin official, Yuri Y. Chaika, the prosecutor general, to block a Justice Department fraud case against a Russian company.... There's no way to spin the fact that Trump Jr. was told repeatedly that he was meeting with a representative of the Russian government. -- Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post

Luke Harding of the Guardian: "The former MI6 officer Christopher Steele has won a legal battle in the United States against three Russian oligarchs who sued him over allegations made in his dossier about the Trump campaign and its links with Moscow. The oligarchs -- Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven and German Khan -- claimed that Steele and his intelligence firm, Orbis, defamed them in the dossier, which was leaked and published in early 2017. The Russians own stakes in Moscow-based Alfa Bank. All are billionaires. On Monday, a judge in the District of Columbia, Anthony C Epstein, upheld a motion by Steele to have the oligarchs' case thrown out. Epstein did not determine whether the dossier -- which Donald Trump has repeatedly dismissed as 'fake' -- was 'accurate or not accurate'. But the judge concluded that it was covered by the US first amendment, which protects free speech. He ruled that the oligarchs had failed to prove a key part of their case: that Steele knew that some information in the dossier was inaccurate, and had acted 'with reckless disregard as to its falsity'." ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie Note: Perhaps not coincidentally, Khan is the father-in-law of Alex van der Zwaan, "who pleaded guilty ... to lying to investigators [about his communications with Manafort partner Rick Gates] in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia probe."

Jonathan Chait: "Trump's Craziest Climate Speech Ever Explains His New Dirty Energy Policy." Mrs. McC: You just have to read it. Here are the parts where Chait cites Trump's actual remarks: "Coal, Trump told his audience, is 'a tremendous form of energy in the sense that in a military way -- think of it -- coal is indestructible,' he declared....

You can blow up a pipeline, you can blow up the windmills. You know, the wind wheels, [mimics windmill noise, mimes shooting gun] 'Bing!' That's the end of that one. If the birds don't kill it first. The birds could kill it first. They kill so many birds. You look underneath some of those windmills, it's like a killing field, the birds. But uh, you know, that's what they were going to, they were going to windmills. And you know, don't worry about wind, when the wind doesn't blow, I said, 'What happens when the wind doesn't blow?' Well, then we have a problem. Okay good. They were putting him in areas where they didn't have much wind, too. And it's a subsidary [sic] -- you need subsidy for windmills. You need subsidy. Who wants to have energy where you need subsidy? So, uh, the coal is doing great. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

... Trump Admin Plans to Kill 1,400 Americans a Year. Lisa Friedman of the New York Times: "The Trump administration on Tuesday made public the details of its new pollution rules governing coal-burning power plants, and the fine print includes an acknowledgment that the plan would increase carbon emissions and lead to up to 1,400 premature deaths annually. The proposal, the Affordable Clean Energy rule, is a replacement for the Obama-era Clean Power Plan, which was an aggressive effort to speed up the closures of coal-burning plants, one of the main producers of greenhouse gases, by setting national targets for cutting carbon dioxide emissions and encouraging utilities to use cleaner energy sources like wind and solar." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

All the President's White Men. Robert Costa of the Washington Post: "The publisher of a website that serves as a platform for white nationalism was a guest last weekend at the home of President Trump's top economic adviser, Larry Kudlow. Peter Brimelow attended the gathering, a birthday bash for Kudlow, one day after a White House speechwriter was dismissed in the wake of revelations that he had spoken alongside Brimelow on a 2016 panel. Brimelow, 70, was once a well-connected figure in mainstream conservative circles, writing for Dow Jones and National Review. But over the past two decades, he has become a zealous promoter of white-identity politics on Vdare.com, the anti-immigration website that he founded in 1999.... Kudlow expressed regret when he was described details of Brimelow's promotion of white nationalists on Vdare.com.... Kudlow said that Brimelow's views on immigration and race are 'a side of Peter that I don't know, and I totally, utterly disagree with that point of view and have my whole life. I'm a civil rights Republican.'" ...

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: I guess we have to assume Kudlow does not stand around the White House watercooler sharing gossip. The White House fired the speechwriter Darren Beattie last week because of his association with Brimelow. One might think his dismissal was a subject of interest & comment among White House staff, even in a White House where turnover is remarkable.

All the President's Crooked Congressmen. Laura Jarrett & Maeve Reston of CNN: "Rep. Duncan Hunter and his wife, Margaret, were indicted Tuesday on charges related to the misuse of $250,000 worth of campaign funds for personal expenses and the filing of false campaign finance records. The charges of wire fraud, falsifying records, campaign finance violations and conspiracy were the culmination of a Department of Justice investigation that has stretched for more than a year, during which the Republican congressman from California has maintained his innocence....California's 50th District is a staunchly Republican district with many current and former military families....Hunter's Democratic challenger, Ammar Campa-Najjar, a former Department of Labor aide in the Obama administration, has repeatedly outraised him.... Hunter was a founding member of the 'Trump Caucus' in the House during the 2016 campaign, and alongside Rep. Chris Collins, was the first of two sitting congressmen to endorse Trump for President back in February 2016. Collins was indicted earlier this month on insider trader charges." ...

... CNN has the text of the Duncans' indictment here. ...

La Dolce Vita. Here's Duncan visiting Pompeii on his dimwit donors' dime. He also took the family to Florence, Rome & Positano. ... Amber Phillips of the Washington Post: "The allegations against Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), one of President Trump's first congressional supporters and the second of Trump's first supporters to be indicted this month, read like a caricature of a corrupt, greedy politician. Federal prosecutors allege that he and his wife stole $250,000 in campaign funds to do things like take their family to Italy (and buy a three-piece luggage set for it), buy their kids' school lunches, treat family and friends to hotel rooms and wine and golf, and fly a family member's pet to Washington, D.C., for vacation. All the while, the 47-page indictment unsealed Tuesday alleges, their own personal family accounts were either very low or overdrawn. The extremely detailed allegations paint the picture of a member of Congress raising money from donors and boldly using it for himself and his family to live outside their means.... What's perhaps most galling in the indictment is how the Hunters are alleged to have covered up their purchases: often, by claiming they were for charities, such as veteran's organizations." Phillips lists "10 of the most stunning allegations from the indictment that give politicians a bad name[.]"

     ... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hardly a coincidence that Trump's first two Congressional backers are also alleged criminals.

Primary Elections

Wyoming. Jeremy Peters of the New York Times: "Republicans in Wyoming on Tuesday brushed off President Trump's 11th-hour endorsement in their governor’s race and rejected his preferred candidate, Foster Friess, one of the country’s biggest donors to conservative causes and a financial supporter of the president's.... He was bested by Mark Gordon, the state treasurer.... Voters also renominated Senator John Barrasso, a 15-year Republican veteran of Wyoming politics, who easily survived after adapting his low-key style of politics to fit with the Trump era.... Representative Liz Cheney, the state's lone House member and a Republican, was also renominated on Tuesday."

Alaska. AP: "Former state Sen. Mike Dunleavy has won the Republican nomination for governor in Alaska. Dunleavy ... is expected to face Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, and former U.S. Sen. Mark Begich, a Democrat.... Alyse Galvin has won Alaska's Democratic primary for the U.S. House, becoming the first independent to represent the party in a general election.... She will face U.S. Rep. Don Young, the longest-serving member of the House. Young has served since 1973 and faced token opposition in the Republican primary." ...

... The Anchorage Daily News has full primary results here.

"Child's Play." River O'Connor in Politico Magazine: "It took me around 10 minutes to crash the upcoming midterm elections. Once I accessed the shockingly simple and vulnerable set of tables that make up the state election board’s database, I was able to shut down the website that would tally the votes, bringing the election to a screeching halt. The data were lost completely. And just like that, tens of thousands of votes vanished into thin air, throwing an entire election, and potentially control of the House or Senate — not to mention our already shaky confidence in the democratic process itself — into even more confusion, doubt, and finger-pointing. I'm 17. And I'm not even a very good hacker." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)

Burgess Everett of Politico: "As she faces a crush of ads urging her to reject the Supreme Court nominee for his conservative stance on abortion rights, [Sen. Susan] Collins [R-Maine] sounds increasingly positive on Kavanaugh's nomination. She refuses to say she's even leaning in favor of Kavanaugh, but on topics from health care to abortion to the special counsel the nominee placated her with his answers.... Collins' relative warmth toward Kavanaugh has Republicans on th precipice of confirming the Supreme Court nominee before the 2018 midterm elections." Mrs. McC: It's an odd thing, isn't it, how easily Collins can be "placated" on, well, all of her "principled" positions? Thanks, Maine voters! ...

... Amanda Marcotte in Salon on Brett Kavanaugh's 1998 memo re: interrogation of President Bill Clinton (see yesterday's Commentariat): "First of all, it's a picture-perfect distillation of the way that disgust and titillation are completely intertwined in the conservative mind and lay the groundwork for the right's sadistic approach to sexual matters.... On one hand, he decries Clinton for 'disgusting behavior' that he says 'disgraced his Office.' On the other hand, he wants to know every single detail, rendered in maximally graphic terms.... The other is that it offers yet more evidence that Kavanaugh is far from the fair-minded jurist Republicans are portraying and instead clearly seems to be a partisan hack of the worst sort.... Kavanaugh's interest in granular detail was more 'Penthouse Forum' than 'deposition.'... Kavanaugh's strong objections to the idea of executive privilege dried up the second the topic was something other than exposing the frequency of Oval Office ejaculations. As soon as 1999, Kavanaugh had switched to arguing that a court decision to release the Watergate tapes was 'an erroneous decision' because it 'took away the power of the president to control information in the executive branch.'... Kavanaugh and his allies would like to portray [his] history as an evolution in thought. The likelier explanation ... is that Kavanaugh's views on executive privilege depend not on the severity of the legal morass any president is involved in ... but on whether that president happens to be a Republican."

Another Home Run

By Akhilleus

This weekend I chatted with an old friend who got into a bit of "Remember when?" He and I have been friends for many years and at one time we played together in a very competitive amateur baseball league. The "remember when" bit coincides with a thought about the Trump Bed Making Medal [discussed in yesterday's Comments] and also his many claims to be the smartest man around and having graduated first in his class from Wharton (a claim he now says he never made, but, as usual with Trump, a quick internet search makes a liar out of him once again).

He's the best at everything. In fact, according to the little dictator, he was the best sportsman he's ever seen. He could have been a superb major league baseball player if he had decided to go that route. Likewise, even today, if he decided to go out on the PGA tour, he'd be among the best golfers in the world. I'm not sure they allow cheating on the PGA circuit though, which could be a problem for Trump, a well known cheater at golf.

So, lo those many years ago, I was pitching in a game and up to bat comes a guy we all had heard about. He had had a cup of coffee in the pros, the Pittsburgh Pirates, if I remember correctly. So I decided to go right at him. I was no Sandy Koufax, by any stretch, but I had thrown a couple of no hitters and the year before won a championship game with a one hitter. The guy hit my best pitch so hard the right fielder didn't even bother to move. He just looked over his shoulder as the ball rocketed into the ether. We still laugh about that today.

Around about the same time, my brother was playing in a ferociously competitive city basketball league. The guys in this league were crazy good, most were gym rats who ate, drank, and slept basketball. One night another team showed up with a ringer, a guy who had been a backup center for an NBA team for a few years. He wasn't much in the pros but he swatted these guys around like mosquitoes. He wiped the court with the biggest hot shots in that league.

The point here is that the best people you've ever played with, no matter how good, are light years beneath mediocre players at the pro level. The worst guy in major league baseball is so much better than anyone playing amateur ball, it isn't even funny.

Which brings me to the smartest, best, most competent man on the planet, by his own reckoning. When Trump goes up against guys like Putin and Kim, it's not even funny. These guys are pros. Trump throws them his best pitch and they clobber it. But here's the thing. It's one thing to have your opponent crush your best pitch, it's another thing to later claim that you struck the guy out, or at worst, battled him to a draw. Especially when everyone on the field and sitting in the stands watched that ball disappear over the fence. But Trump does this time and again.

And to extend the analogy a bit further, here's another difference. My brother and I and our teammates were all deeply entrenched in our sports. We were serious about it and we knew all the ins and outs. We knew what we had to do and how to do it, so when we got beat badly by someone of a much higher caliber, it wasn't because we were bumbling jamokes. We were just outclassed. And that's the thing. Trump IS a bumbling jamoke. He doesn't even come up to beginner level and yet he puts himself in a class with experienced, canny characters who eat and drink this stuff. On one hand it's funny and ridiculous, but it's also dangerous.

We have a guy who claims he was first in his class at Wharton, or at least, among the smartest there. But no one remembers him. My college didn't have a valedictorian, but I knew half a dozen people who graduated Summa and if you mentioned a few more I'm sure I would probably at least recognize the names. But Trump? At a relatively small class like the Wharton School, it seems highly unlikely that no one would recognize him as among the best or THE best.

But it's a waste of time to play that game. He's a bully, a liar, and a braggart. Which was fine as long as he was pretending to be a big shot on a reality TV show produced to make him look good. Who cares what he says? But when that bully and braggart is the president of the United States, it's much different.

So here we are, the US team, going up against other nations and our pitcher is a guy who doesn't even know the basics of the game, and doesn't care. And worse? He thinks he's the best player on the field.

Oh look, there goes another ball over the fence. Good hit, Bob!