The Commentariat -- March 19, 2018
Late Morning/Afternoon Update:
Trump Sees Winger Lawyer on Fox "News," Hires Him. Maggie Haberman & Michael Schmidt of the New York Times: "President Trump has decided to hire the longtime Washington lawyer Joseph E. diGenova ... to bolster his legal team, according to three people told of the decision.... Mr. diGenova has endorsed the notion that a secretive group of F.B.I. agents concocted the Russia investigation as a way to keep Mr. Trump from becoming president. 'There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn't win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,' he said on Fox News in January.... Little evidence has emerged to support that theory.... On Saturday, Mr. Trump's personal lawyer, John Dowd, called on the Justice Department to end the special counsel investigation. Mr. Dowd said at the time that he was speaking for the president but later backtracked. According to two people briefed on the matter, he was in fact acting at the president's urging to call for an end to the inquiry." ...
... Mike Allen of Axios: "Axios has learned that special counsel Robert Mueller has focused on events since the election -- not during the campaign -- in his conversations with President Trump's lawyers. The top two topics that Mueller has expressed interest in so far: the firings of FBI director James Comey and national security adviser Michael Flynn. That suggests a focus on obstruction of justice while in office, rather than collusion with Russia during the campaign. But both sagas are interwoven with Russia: Trump himself has linked Comey's firing to Russia, and Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador during the transition.
"Pop Goes the Weasel."TM Akhilleus Louis Nelson of Politico: "... Donald Trump on Monday appeared to renew his attacks against the ongoing investigations into allegations that his campaign colluded with the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 election, labeling them collectively as 'a total WITCH HUNT with massive conflicts of interest!'" ...
... Greg Sargent sounds the alarm about Maggie Haberman's report (linked below), one of several we've read about "Trump unleashed." Sargent highlights Republicans' failure to take seriously Trump's attacks on Mueller. For instance, "Earlier this year, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) declared that there was no need for legislation to protect Mueller, because (he said) there is no effort 'on the part of the White House to undermine the special counsel,' so Mueller 'seems to need no protection.' Now that Trump himself has declared the Mueller probe illegitimate, there is no indication that McConnell's thinking has changed." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sorry, but I don't know why anyone would think Mitch would object to a power grab by a president in his own party. Justice Scalia's body had not reached room temperature when Mitch announced he would be stealing the nomination of a replacement appointment from President Obama. Mitch has pulled a lot of dirty stunts, but so far even Trump has not pulled one quite as egregious as denying a duly-elected president a fair shot at even getting a hearing (although I learned recently that it was Andy Card, Dubya's chief-of-staff, who demanded Harriet Meirs withdraw her nomination to the Court). Mitch & Don Donaldo use quite different tactics, but they're equally corrupt. ...
... March of the Lemmings. A Conspiracy of Many. Matt Ford of the New Republic adds, "... most Republicans said nothing. House Speaker Paul Ryan issued a tepid statement asserting that 'Mr. Mueller and his team should be able to do their job,' without mentioning Trump, while Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell made no public comment. Steve Scalise, the House Republicans' third-in-command, instead suggested that there are 'credibility concerns the Mueller investigation needs to address so they can dispel the fears that this is becoming a partisan witch hunt.'... Trump would bear ultimate responsibility for shutting down or curtailing the Russia investigation, of course. But if it happens, no one can say he acted alone."
Richard Wolf of USA Today: "The Supreme Court refused again Monday to decide whether the death penalty is unconstitutional. The action came in a case from Arizona in which lawyers asked the court to strike down both the state's capital punishment system and the nation's. The court's four liberal justices said Arizona's system, under which most defendants convicted of first-degree murder are eligible for the death penalty, may be unconstitutional. But they said the case was not ready for the high court's review."
A Diversion from The Tale of the Weasel & the Lemmings. Maybe you've forgotten this guy:
... Thanks to MAG for the lead. You can buy a copy of A Day in the Life of Marlon Bundo at BetterBundoBook.com, if only to annoy mike pence. ...
... Also to annoy mike pence & the Horse's Ass he rode in on, Jim Comey's book -- even tho it won't come out for a month -- is at the top of Amazon's best-seller list (thanks in large part to this weekend's Trumpertantrums). And mike pence's bunny book is not.
*****
Maggie Haberman of the New York Times: "For months, President Trump's legal advisers implored him to avoid so much as mentioning the name of Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, in his tweets, and to do nothing to provoke him or suggest his investigation is not proper. Ignoring that advice over the weekend as the decision of a president who ultimately trusts only his own instincts.... A dozen people close to Mr. Trump or the White House, including current and former aides and longtime friends, described him as newly emboldened to say what he really feels and to ignore the cautions of those around him. That self-confidence has led to a series of surprising comments and actions that have pushed the Trump presidency in an ever more tumultuous direction." ...
... Peter Baker of the New York Times: "President Trump appeared on Sunday to abandon a strategy of deferring to the special counsel examining Russia's interference in the 2016 presidential election, lashing out at what he characterized as a partisan investigation and raising questions about whether he might seek to shut it down.... Until this weekend he had largely heeded the advice of lawyers who counseled him not to directly attack Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, for fear of aggravating prosecutors....'Why does the Mueller team have 13 hardened Democrats, some big Crooked Hillary supporters, and Zero Republicans?' Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter on Sunday morning. 'Another Dem recently added...does anyone think this is fair? And yet, there is NO COLLUSION!' The attack on Mr. Mueller, a longtime Republican who was appointed F.B.I. director under a Republican president, George W. Bush, followed a statement by Mr. Trump's personal lawyer published Saturday calling on the Justice Department to end the special counsel investigation. Mr. Trump followed up that evening with a tweet arguing that 'the Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime.'" (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Andrew Desiderio, et al., of the Daily Beast: "On Saturday, Donald Trump did something he'd never done before, something his closest advisers had warned him not to do: He tweeted Robert Mueller's name. But what seemed like a frantic, even panicked, bit of late-night lashing-out is actually a sign of things to come.... The president, those close to him say, is determined to more directly confront the federal probe into his campaign's potential role in alleged Russian election interference.... Still, on Sunday, White House lawyer Ty Cobb blasted out a statement to reporters that simply assured, 'in response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the Administration, the White House yet again confirms that the President is not considering or discussing the firing of the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.'" ...
... Mrs. Bea McCrabbie: Sorry, Ty, I'm with digby: "... with Trump losing his mind the way he is, I wouldn't surprised to see him just fire off a tweet at 4am firing Mueller and that will be that." ...
... In an opinion piece by Jeff Toobin of the New Yorker, also linked yesterday, Toobin asserted that in a just-past-midnight Saturday Trumpentweet assailing Andy McCabe, "Every sentence is a lie." Glenn Kessler of the Washington Post corrects "a number of inaccurate and misleading statements" Trump made in his weekend tweets about the case. ...
... Firing McCabe Was a Test Run for Firing Mueller. David Frum of the Atlantic: "As former CIA Director Michael Hayden observed, under military justice, these interventions [in McCabe's FBI job] by the president would have required the dismissal of charges against an accused on grounds of undue command interference.... But in the hours since the McCabe firing, Trump's enablers in Congress and in conservative media have evinced no such concern.... All this matters even more urgently when you consider the McCabe firing as a road-test for Trump's method in an impending showdown with Robert Mueller.... The McCabe practice test yielded answers that have to be gratifying by the president as he ponders his next move to save himself, his family, and his administration from the workings of justice." ...
... Kyle Cheney of Politico: "Congressional Republicans sounded alarm Sunday over ... Donald Trump's increasing belligerence toward special counsel Robert Mueller, but they offered no hint about what actions they might take if Trump attempts to fire him.... Bipartisan legislation intended to block a unilateral move by Trump to remove Mueller has stalled in Congress for months, as Republicans and Democrats have worked to combine competing proposals, and even the sponsors of the legislation have described limited urgency to act." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Joanna Walters of the Guardian: "Donald Trump went on the offensive against fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe on Sunday, responding to reports McCabe kept memos of his conversations with Trump -- and has turned them over to special counsel Robert Mueller -- by claiming McCabe never took notes in meetings with the president. 'Spent very little time with Andrew McCabe,' Trump tweeted, 'but he never took notes when he was with me. I don't believe he made memos except to help his own agenda, probably at a later date. Same with lying James Comey. Can we call them Fake Memos?' The post came moments after Trump targeted Comey, the FBI director he fired last May.... Comey has also said he wrote memos concerning interactions with Trump. Trump tweeted: 'Wow, watch Comey lie under oath to Senator G[rassley] when asked "have you ever been an anonymous source ... or known someone else to be an anonymous source...?" He said strongly "never, no." He lied as shown clearly on @foxandfriends.' Trump was evidently watching his favourite Fox News show." (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... Graham Proposes Whitewash. Louis Nelson of Politico: "Sen. Lindsey Graham on Sunday said the Senate Judiciary Committee should hold a hearing on Attorney General Jeff Sessions' firing of deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, telling CNN's 'State of the Union' that the decision merits extra scrutiny 'to make sure it wasn't politically motivated.'" Mrs. McC: Yeah, I know it's hard to paint JeffBo any whiter. (Also linked yesterday.) ...
... ** Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post: "It is not simply a legal ploy when Republicans running interference for President Trump call the FBI 'corrupt' or when Trump's lawyer John Dowd calls to shut down the Russia investigation. When [Andrew McCabe,] a witness to conversations and interactions with Trump who has turned over information to the investigation, is fired, the danger goes beyond the investigation directly at hand. In one form or another, these are attacks on a vital pillar of democratic government -- the apolitical administration of justice.... Protect Democracy Executive Director Ian Bassin ... [says,] 'Trump has moved from autocratic rhetoric to autocratic action, as personally ordering the purging of civil servants who are insufficiently loyal is what autocrats do.'" Emphasis added.
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Read, especially, Rubin's last paragraph. I do think that McCabe's firing is more of a turning point than Trump's dismissal of Comey. The FBI director, after all, serves "at the pleasure of the president," & Trump was displeased. McCabe was a (high-level) civil servant, and he was not only fired but also harshly punished, more than likely for political reasons, by the highest-ranking person in the U.S. Justice Department. Despite Trump's foolish, incriminating tweets, the punishment -- which almost certainly exceeds the crime -- had the imprimatur of an orderly institutional process. ...
... AND Speaking of JeffBo, Looks as if He Lied Again about This Russia Thing. Karen Freifeld, et al., of Reuters: "U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions' testimony that he opposed a proposal for ... Donald Trump's 2016 campaign team to meet with Russians has been contradicted by three people who told Reuters they have spoken about the matter to investigators with Special Counsel Robert Mueller or congressional committees. Sessions testified before Congress in November 2017 that he 'pushed back' against the proposal made by former campaign adviser George Papadopoulos at a March 31, 2016 campaign meeting. Then a senator from Alabama, Sessions chaired the meeting as head of the Trump campaign's foreign policy team.... Although the accounts [the three people] provided to Reuters differed in certain respects, all three, who declined to be identified, said Sessions had expressed no objections to Papadopoulos' idea.... However, another meeting attendee, J.D. Gordon, who was the Trump campaign's director of national security, told media outlets including Reuters in November that Sessions strongly opposed Papadopoulos' proposal and said no one should speak of it again." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Sessions initially testified before a Senate committee that he knew of no one on the Trump campaign who had any contact with Russians. In later House testimony, he essentially said, "I forgot." AND J.D. Gordon too has a serious credibility problem. A reasonable person might conclude that all this is part of a Trumpian conspiracy to cover up, um, the Trump campaign's COLLUSION (Trump spelling, usually preceded by "NO") with Russia.
Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post: "In the early months of the administration, at the behest of now-President Trump, who was furious over leaks from within the White House, senior White House staff members were asked to, and did, sign nondisclosure agreements vowing not to reveal confidential information and exposing them to damages for any violation. Some balked at first but, pressed by then-Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and the White House Counsel's Office, ultimately complied, concluding that the agreements would likely not be enforceable in any event.... This confidentiality pledge would extend not only after an aide's White House service but also beyond the Trump presidency.... This is extraordinary.... Unlike employees of private enterprises such as the Trump Organization or Trump campaign, White House aides have First Amendment rights when it comes to their employer, the federal government.... I do have a copy of a draft, and it is a doozy. It would expose violators to penalties of $10 million, payable to the federal government, for each and any unauthorized revelation of 'confidential' information, defined as 'all nonpublic information I learn of or gain access to in the course of my official duties in the service of the United States Government on White House staff.'..." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Hilariously, at least ten current White House staff violate Trump's unconstitutional NDAs every day when they leak to the press. ...
... Let's not forget this now-infamous NDA. The President & the Porn Star, Ctd. Amy Sorkin of the New Yorker: "... the Clifford case is not only singularly revealing of the President's character and his operations but also a likely harbinger of major troubles ahead. This Trump crisis, as is the case with so many others, is largely self-inflicted, and involves the usual heedless scramble of denials.... The Trump team's response to the Clifford debacle seems to have been driven by the President's vanity, temper, and resentment. All of those have also been on display in his larger response to Mueller's investigation.... With Trump, it can be hard to tell bad will from bad lawyering. He regularly demands that his subordinates operate in accordance with what he thinks the law ought to be, rather than what it is." ...
Bernard Condon of the AP: "When the Kushner Cos. bought three apartment buildings in a gentrifying neighborhood of Queens in 2015, most of the tenants were protected by special rules that prevent developers from pushing them out, raising rents and turning a tidy profit. But that's exactly what the company then run by Jared Kushner did, and with remarkable speed. Two years later, it sold all three buildings for $60 million, nearly 50 percent more than it paid.... The Kushner Cos. routinely filed false paperwork with the city declaring it had zero rent-regulated tenants in dozens of buildings it owned across the city when, in fact, it had hundreds.... While none of the documents during a three-year period when Kushner was CEO bore his personal signature, they provide a window into the ethics of the business empire he ran.... For the three Queens buildings in the borough's Astoria neighborhood, the Kushner Cos. checked a box on construction permit applications in 2015 that indicated the buildings had zero rent-regulated tenants. Tax records filed a few months later showed the company inherited as many as 94 rent-regulated units from the previous owner." Thanks to Ken W. for the link. See also his commentary below. ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: In case you're willing to believe that all these false applications were accidental oversights by a careless Kushner Co. subcontractor, I'll remind you that Donald Trump did the same thing to tenants of buildings he bought with intentions of tearing it down. For years, he made life a living hell for his tenants. After multiple lawsuits, Trump settled with the tenants who sued, & the building is still standing. In fairness to evil landlords Trump & Kushner, the battles between rent-controlled tenants & building owners in NYC are legendary. These are hardly isolated cases.
Nadja Popovich, et al., of the New York Times: The Trump administration "has often targeted environmental rules it sees as overly burdensome to the fossil fuel industry, including major Obama-era policies aimed at fighting climate change. To date, the Trump administration has sought to reverse more than 60 environmental rules, according to a New York Times analysis.... The process of rolling back the regulations has not been smooth, in part because the administration has tried to bypass the formal rulemaking process in some cases.... Courts are now being asked to intervene to get agencies to follow the process. Regulations have often been reversed as a direct response to petitions from oil, coal and gas companies and other industry groups...." The article includes "details for each policy targeted by the administration so far -- including who lobbied to get the regulations changed." Mrs. McC: And yeah, it's disgusting.
Eric Schmitt & Thomas Gibbons-Neff of the New York Times: "The Trump administration is furiously trying to fend off a bipartisan effort in Congress to halt American military support to the deadly Saudi-led bombing campaign in Yemen as the kingdom's influential young crown prince, Mohammed bin Salman, arrives in Washington this week for talks with President Trump. Even as the State Department weighs approval of more than $1 billion in new arms to the Saudis, lawmakers are pushing for a resolution that they say would prevent Washington from giving the Saudis 'a blank check' in the conflict. The United Nations says 10,000 civilians have been killed and 40,000 wounded in the fighting, exacerbating one of the world's worst humanitarian crises."
Trump Decides Not to Execute Every Drug Dealer. Dan Diamond of Politico: "... Donald Trump's plan to fight the opioid epidemic will call for the death penalty in some cases, White House officials said Sunday, scaling back the administration's plan to punish drug dealers. 'The Department of Justice will seek the death penalty against drug traffickers when appropriate under current law,' said Andrew Bremberg, the White House's director of the Domestic Policy Council. White House officials referred follow-up questions to DOJ. An earlier version of the plan, obtained by Politico last week, would have called for the death penalty in some cases involving drug dealers, too. Trump will announce his opioid plan on his visit to New Hampshire on Monday."
If you like gossip, Olivia Nuzzi of New York writes a profile of Hope Hicks in the style of Michael Wolff.
Matthew Rosenberg & Sheera Frenkel of the New York Times: "American and British lawmakers demanded on Sunday that Facebook explain how a political data firm with links to President Trump's 2016 campaign was able to harvest private information from more than 50 million Facebook profiles without the social network's alerting users. The backlash forced Facebook to once again defend the way it protects user data. Senator Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota, a Democratic member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, went so far as to press for Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's chief executive, to appear before the panel to explain what the social network knew about the misuse of its data 'to target political advertising and manipulate voters.'... Damian Collins, a Conservative lawmaker in Britain who is leading a parliamentary inquiry into fake news and Russian meddling in the country's referendum to leave the European Union, said this weekend that he, too, would call on Mr. Zuckerberg or another top executive to testify.... Jonathan Albright, research director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia University, wrote that the lack [of] oversight and transparency into what sort of data Facebook collected on its users meant that the company's platform could continue to be exploited." ...
... Jennifer Hansler of CNN: "Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey announced Saturday that her office is opening an investigation into Facebook and the data firm Cambridge Analytica, which has ties to the Trump campaign.... On Sunday afternoon, Sen. Ed Markey, a Democrat from the state, called for the two companies to testify before the Senate Commerce Committee." Mrs. McC: Healey also is a Democrat. ...
... Craig Timberg & Tony Romm of the Washington Post: "Two former federal officials who crafted the landmark consent decree governing how Facebook handles user privacy say the company may have violated that decree when it shared information from tens of millions of users with a data analysis firm that later worked for President Trump's 2016 campaign. Such a violation, if eventually confirmed by the Federal Trade Commission, could lead to many millions of dollars in fines against Facebook, said David Vladeck, who as the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection oversaw the investigation of alleged privacy violations by Facebook and the subsequent consent decree resolving the case in 2011. He left that position in 2012.... The FTC consent decree required that users be notified and that they explicitly give their permission before data about them is shared beyond the privacy settings they have established." ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: I suspect Trump's FTC is about to become Mark Zuckerberg's new BFF. Trump is required to nominate five commissioners, with no more than three from one party. He has nominated four commissions, three Republicans & one Democrat. The Senate has held a hearing, but I don't think it has yet confirmed these nominees. And in one secret way or another, millions of Zuckerbucks will find their ways into Trump's "Keep America Mine" 2020 campaign. ...
... Matt Rosoff of CNBC: "Facebook is facing an existential test, and its leadership is failing to address it. Facebook executives ... react to negative news with spin and attempts to bury it. Throughout the last year, every time bad news has broken, executives have downplayed its significance. Look at its public statements last year about how many people had seen Russian-bought election ads -- first it was 10 million, then it was 126 million. Top execs dodged Congress when it was asking questions about Russian interference. They are selling their shares at a record clip.... For more than a year now, Facebook has been deflecting stories about how its platform was used during the 2016 presidential election.... CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg has remained aloof throughout the whole sequence of events.... There's a growing sense that Facebook has become creepy instead of fun.... In the fourth quarter, for the first time ever, the number of people in North America who used Facebook every day dropped from the previous year." ...
... Martin Cizmar of the Raw Story: "... Cambridge Analytica is now trying to stop a new documentary from Britain's Channel 4 which features undercover interviews with people including CEO Alexander Nix, reports the Financial Times. According to FT, reporters posed as potential clients and secretly filmed the company's pitches. The documentary is slated to air this week."
Beyond the Beltway
Patricia Mazzei of the New York Times: "On the day an 11th grader named Nikolas Cruz told another student that he had a gun at home and was thinking of using it, two guidance counselors and a sheriff's deputy at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., concluded that he should be forcibly committed for psychiatric evaluation, according to mental health records obtained on Sunday by The New York Times. An involuntary commitment of that kind, under the authority of a Florida state law known as the Baker Act, could have kept Mr. Cruz from passing a background check required to buy a firearm." The story explains what happened to that request.
Eva Ruth Moravec & Meagan Flynn of the Washington Post: "Hours after Austin police made a public appeal Sunday regarding three deadly package explosions in the city this month, they were called to investigate yet another incident in a residential area that caused multiple injuries. Two men in their 20s were injured Sunday in an explosion on the 4800 block of Dawn Song Drive after a package bomb detonated as they passed on bicycles, said interim Austin Police Chief Brian Manley. Unlike the other explosions, which detonated after victims tried to pick up packages left at their homes, this package was left on the side of the road and was possibly triggered by a trip wire, Manley said."
Way Beyond
Neil MacFarquhar of the New York Times: "Russian voters gave President Vladimir V. Putin their resounding approval for a fourth term on Sunday, with preliminary results on state television showing him with more than 70 percent of the vote, even if the initial turnout estimate was less than the Kremlin had sought."
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