The Washington Post offers tips on how to keep your EV battery running in frigid temperatures. The link at the end of this graf is supposed to be a "gift link" (from me, Marie Burns, the giftor!), meaning that non-subscribers can read the article. Hope it works: https://wapo.st/3u8Z705
Tuesday
Aug212018
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."
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Reader Comments (34)
Someone seems to have stumbled upon the coven this evening.
One can only imagine the heavy sigh of perverted relief among conservative circles when they found out an illegal immigrant allegedly murdered a fair-skinned white woman, Mollie Tibbetts, in Iowa.
What a coup! And right on time! They'll ride this story 'till the weekend and voilà! This week's Trumpentroubles can go under the rug and messaging reset starts on Sunday.
Kellyanne Conjob was surely glowing with this great news, Ivanka & Jared slapped high fives and giggled under the bed sheets together, Steve Bannon probably called Drump's cell 10 times to deliver the Breitbart news, but to no avail, Steven KKK Miller had a conference call circle jerk with his white pride bros and Bill Shine called Faux News to tell them to save the cute puppy segments for next week instead to cover for
the Trumpentantrum inevitably welling up from the dark corners of a demented brain.
That this absurd scenario is even remotely plausible proves we've truly got The Best People running the country.
With his grifter empire on the verge of collapse, his lawyer and campaign manager getting ready for long stretches of license plate manufacture and/or performances as songbirds singing the “What I Know About Russians” aria, what does the little dictator do? Addicts hit with bad news don’t confront it head on, they reach for the needle or the bottle or the pills.
Trump flies his fat ass (at our expense) to a rally in West Virginia to bask in the collective rage of the deplorables and droolers and white supremacists (“Ah...Home at last!”) and to soak in all their wonderful hate, to calm his shot nerves with the glorious sounds of imminent imprisonment of his enemies.
One would think, for a normal person in his shoes, that chants demanding someone be locked up might not be the sort of restorative tonic most needed at the moment, but this is Trump, for whom screams of outrage and giddy hatred are as mother’s milk.
May he suffer “humiliations galore” as Inigo Montoya says in “The Princess Bride”. And to paraphrase Miracle Max in the same movie, “Mueller’s on the job. Woo-hoo!”
Safari,
My very first thought on hearing about the news of that poor girl and the person arrested for her murder. The perfect outlet for the winger rage and hatred building around the imminent disclosure of the Glorious Leader’s high crimes and misdemeanors.
Rather than concern themselves with how their indolence and personal failings have helped propel the nation to this deplorable state, they can scream “Immigrants!! Kill them all! Get the torches, boys, let’s git ‘em!” Relief at last. Someone to blame for all our problems.
Foster Friess is still alive? Ithought women stoned him to death with aspirins years ago!
Gloria penned it! The coven has been exposed and it's only the beginning. The hunt for "all of them witches/warlocks" is finally resulting in rays of sunshine streaming down and opening up those dark clouds of impending storms.
Lanny Davis, Cohen's lawyer, said that Cohen has information for Mueller re: Trump––"he feels liberated and will talk truth to power." And after all this time isn't that special! One of the things that puzzles me is why Cohen committed another felony (lying to bank in order to get the money to pay off Stormy and McDougal) when Trump could have easily, I would think, given him the money outright or given the money to another party to give to Cohen. So Michael might have taken a bullet for his boss–-only I suspect in the leg–-but now is ready to throw him under the bus bigly.
@safari: You are right. Last night hopped over to Fox just to see how they were handling the BIG news and sure enough, there they were having a screaming fit over Mollie T's murderer ––immigrants! dirty, foul, beasts...I was intending to go back after a time to see if they would address the Cohen/Manafort news but got waylaid by the Mark Twain prize for David Letterman: Most of the comedians got a dig in about Trump and when Michelle Obama, via satellite, congratulated Dave, the audience applauded loudly and long and you could hear sighs of what I imagine were–-"Man, we didn't know how good we had it."
The feast of fools lorded over by the Lord of MisRule...will soon be tasting their just desserts and making those "yummy sounds."
@safari & @Akhilleus: And, as you might expect, Trump already used Mollie Tibbetts' murder in his campaign speech last night & the White House reiterated his comments in a tweet. Of course, Trump didn't actually name Tibbetts because as an individual, she has no meaning to him. She's a prop. He called her "that incredible, beautiful young woman.” (Hey, he didn't say "white.")
Trump's motto: If you don't have the facts, argue an anecdote. If you don't have an anecdote, make one up.
Can't wait to see the Republican response. Bill Clinton lied about an affair. Trump lied and bribed about two affairs.
Trump plans to murder about 1400 people.
Just another day in the new world.
Marie,
I scanned that Bloomberg article a few days ago, the one you link referring to Trump's many anecdotal inventions (i.e., lies). My favorite part of that piece was the reference to that professor, Robert Rowland, who teaches presidential rhetoric at Kansas University.
Yikes!
A guy who teaches presidential rhetoric must be going at it hammer and tong every day for the last year and a half trying to keep up with this brand new form of rhetorical diarrhea, Trump Speak, which requires the rhetor to master the art of bullshit on the fly, whole cloth inventions, and the blithe ignoring of truth or logic when making something which might resemble an argument (at least to the poorly educated and those blinded by ideology poisoning) but is actually merely a flat statement demanding belief at face value.
Students just out of college and entering grad school in the fall could do worse than to work up a doctoral thesis on Trump Speak.
They may start drinking heavily before it's finished, but they'll be mining virgin territory.
I didn't realize that Flynn, Manafort and Cohen were witches.
@PD Pepe writes, "One of the things that puzzles me is why Cohen committed another felony (lying to bank in order to get the money to pay off Stormy and McDougal) when Trump could have easily, I would think, given him the money outright or given the money to another party to give to Cohen."
That was part of the cover-up. Cohen's fakey Delaware LLC paid Daniels with the loan money he received based on false statements to the lender. (He did not pay McDougal, tho there was at one time an agreement for him to do so; instead the National Enquirer's parent company paid her & was not reimbursed, at least according to the prosecutors' "Information.") Cohen sent the money to Daniels' then-attorney Keith Davidson, describing it on the check as a "retainer." Trump's company later repaid Cohen a "grossed-up" amount of $420,000 (which included $50K for unrelated "tech services") in monthly payments of invoices Cohen submitted for "services rendered" under a "retainer agreement."
@ Marie
The White Nationalist party, formerly GOP, is just too predictable. I came across this gem after writing my previous post, and seems I forgot to include an anecdote about The Newt slithering out from under a rock somewhere:
"Former Speaker Newt Gingrich emailed Axios' Mike Allen to make sure that we'd be covering this story, which Fox News led with on air and online Tuesday evening, ahead of the Cohen-Manafort news. His take: "If Mollie Tibbetts is a household name by October, Democrats will be in deep trouble."
https://www.axios.com/2018-midterm-elections-mollie-tibbetts-republicans-8a33d987-7157-41ec-b1c3-49544a51237c.html
I'm sure Mollie Tibbetts' parents are going to be thrilled to have their daughter show up as a star in GOP campaign ads, complete with the scary over-voice and the streaming photos of MS-13 gang members. Somewhere in America, in some soiled, dark hole, a wing-nut witch doctor is already splicing the video together, Mercer and Koch fronting the chum for the shark frenzy.
That Trump would be impeached on a campaign finance violation is beyond absurd, despite the blaring sirens from prosecutors and his direct implication.
Besides, the TrumpenRepublicans have a perfect defense: who REALLY knows where campaign financing funds come from? $130,000, that's nothing! With Citizens' "United", the rise of super PACs, and the overall indifference of the IRS to following campaign money anyway, Republicans can legitimately claim, "look, the system is so opaque and corrupt, no one knows who is paying how much for what. Not our fault! And look over at Hillary!!! Set up a special investigation into her and you'll find globalist money galore. Witch Hunt."
@Marie: thanks for clearing up the complicated Cohen set-ups. I find it at times, very confusing.
Here's a story (with video) that has nothing to do with witches, scams, collusions, etc. But it has to do with the environment which after the bad guys are put to bed we will still have our environment to take care of. This is about a crusade started by one woman in San Francisco who wanted to get rid of those styrofoam containers that are not recyclable. This is something I have been yummering about for years.
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/this-restaurant-takeout-service-swaps-styrofoam-for-sustainable
By now I would hope that most Americans will have come to understand what Republicans mean when they say: “Government ought to be run like a business”.
I'm reminded of that old movie, Lord of the Flies, except instead
of landing on a deserted island the immatures landed in Washington
D.C.
One line stands out. "We did everything the way grown-ups would
have---What went Wrong?"
Lies. Deceit. Rebellion. Thievery. Cheating. Killing.
What else can go wrong?
Last night I gave myself a respite from the tsunami of caterwauling and lies by the little dictator and his supporters on perhaps the most stunning day in American politics since Tricky Dick flew off in Marine One to the dustbin of history.
I watched a documentary about Fred Rogers on PBS, "It's You I Like". I cannot tell you the last time I felt so good about us as a species, especially in the Age of Trump when cupidity, timidity, racism, lies, treachery, dishonesty, and fecklessness are the ruling qualities jetted out like toxic fumes from the White House and the Confederate "leaders" in Washington.
Mister Rogers stood (and still stands) for everything Trump and his cronies and enablers do not: kindness, warmth, friendship, love, caring for others, the importance of every individual, being true to others, and most of all decency and humanity.
To see Fred Rogers interact with a wheelchair bound kid, to see how they are together, with an unforced understanding of each other's humanity, restores one's faith in the future of our world.
Not once did Fred jump up and, behind this little boy's back, make spastic gestures to ridicule him in order to get a cheap laugh from despicable people. Not once did he ask to see anyone's birth certificate, and not once did he rip off a mean or willfully ignorant rant about the intelligence of his non-white guests. In fact, in an amazing moment, he and a black cast member, François Clemmons (who played a singing police officer!), rest their feet in a wading pool and Mister Rogers grabs a towel and dries Clemmons' feet. In the early 70's it would have been hard to miss the significance of such a gesture. Can you, in your wildest imagination, picture Trump or Jeffbo or Stephen Miller doing such a thing?
I was just starting high school when the Mister Rogers show went national, but I got to watch it with nieces and nephews when they were younger. I was always impressed with the easy dignity and immense authenticity of the man.
I'm sure people like Fred Rogers are routinely made fun of by the little dictator and his drooling acolytes as insignificant and unimportant, but it is yet another sign of their impoverished, destitute souls. There is no comparison as to who is the bigger man (or a man at all), but if one wanted to give it a shot, as in those images that show the difference in size between the moon (tiny) and the sun (huge), you'd see only Fred Rogers on the page. Trump's image would appear only at the subatomic level. But since he doesn't believe in science, I guess he'd just disappear altogether.
All the better.
Thank you Mister Rogers! I would be your friend with pleasure.
Forrest,
I've made the same comparison often of late.
If only we could have that deus ex machina ending wherein a stable, rational adult lands on the island and restores order and civility and tells the murderous little brats where to get off.
Maybe that will be Mueller.
We keep saying, "That says it all," but there's always something to top it.
But this morning's entry in the that says it all contest has to be close to the top of the list.
A convicted fraudster and tax cheat is a "brave man."
Now there's a fine set of good old American values.
What an incredibly twisted piece of work is our Pretender!
He doesn't hide it though. Guess that makes him even braver.
(Resending this with an edit or two since the first time it didn't seem to have made the trip.)
We keep saying, "That says it all," but there's always something to top it.
This morning's entry in the that says it all contest, though, has to be close to the top of the list.
A convicted fraudster and tax cheat is a "brave man."
Now there's a fine set of good old American values.
What an incredibly twisted piece of work is our Pretender.
He doesn't hide it though.
Guess that makes him even braver, maybe the bravest of all.
Democrats may want to ratchet down talk of impeaching Fat Traitor Boy, at least until after the midterms. That’s exactly the kind of scary talk that sends Confederates to the polls in droves, the idea that blessed Saint Donald might be attacked and deposed by a party that lets black people vote.
If there is a blue wave in November and Democrats save Congress from the racists, liars, and layabouts, I would even consider laying off impeachment talk even then, otherwise we get president mikey and then give him two years in office to get ready for 2020.
Apologies for the double post.
Have often been told that patience is a virtue but always had a little trouble with sensible advice.
@Ken Winkes: I get where Trump is coming from on two levels. The first is the most obvious: "brave people," "good people" are those who do right by Donald Trump. That's Trump, Narcissist-in-Chief.
The other is cultural: Trump grew up & lived in a world where white-collar crime was not just acceptable, but a matter of course & even a matter of pride. The guy who came out on top, no matter what shady stuff he had to do to get there, was admirable. The Clintons, tho they came up through Arkansas politics, followed a similar -- if perhaps slightly less shady -- path. It was a realm where "connected" people did favors for each other. That became the basis of Bill Clinton's success, & he parlayed it into much bigger favors. It's the way politics works.
In that culture, omerta rules. You do these shady things, but you don't rat out your friends, partly because some of the shady stuff they might get caught doing, they did for you, too. Paul Manafort is a stand-up guy, because he hasn't ratted out Trump. The opposite is true for Cohen. He pretended he adhered to the honor code -- "I'd take a bullet for Mr. Trump" -- but the minute the Feds put his ass in a sling, he sang.
I think we're all -- to some extent -- part of the omerta culture. We read about it in books; we see it in the movies. If a friend tells you how he cheated on his taxes, you probably don't ring the IRS the next day. We gossip about people we don't like; we keep our mouths shut if we find out a friend is stepping out on his/her spouse. Often we go along to get along. We may sense or even acknowledge we're not doing the right thing, but we can come up with a boatload of rationales why it's better not to rock that boat.
But if we're sometimes conflicted by our failure to act, Trump is not at all conflicted by the honor code he expects his "friends of convenience" to follow with respect to him. Rather, he is offended by those who don't adhere to it. He regards Eric Holder as an AG far superior to Sessions, because he thinks Holder "protected" his president while Sessions is a weakling who stepped aside because of some silly law &, as a result, subjected Trump to scrutiny. To a great extent, the battles between Trump & Mueller and Trump and others are battles between conflicting honor codes. To Trump, there is "honor among thieves"; to some of his opponents, and that includes Mueller, there should be no thieves.
You nailed it, Bea. Thanks.
For a narcissist, self is the only standard, which is why for the Pretender loyalty works in only one direction.
Yeah, I get it, but I sure don't like it. I would go further and say I believe that everything that most would call virtue is similarly bent in the Pretenders' mind. Truth and Facts? What truth, what facts? Only those which serve self.
I will wonder to my dying day (as my grandmother used to say) how all those self-proclaimed Christians can support someone who so obviously and cavalierly jettisons all moral strictures, whose only commandment is self.
Marie,
I think you’re correct on all counts about Trump’s expectations as to how his co-conspirators should take the fall for him if one his schemes goes south.
But I also think his talk about Manafort being a good guy who got screwed by “12 Democrats” on a witch hunt (or however he describes the investigation into his collusion with a foreign power to steal an election) is prelude to a pardon. He can’t just come out and pardon Manafort without setting up a situation (poor, decent American hero railroaded by creeps) that won’t obviously look like obstruction of justice, which, of course, it would be.
Trump has always been a conniving crook. Those who, back around the time of the RNC convention in 2016, were predicting a shift to decent, law abiding, presidential behavior just weren’t paying attention, or just didn’t want to know.
Ken,
About those fundamentalist Christians who happily support Trump? I’m tempted to write them off as hypocrites. They’ve been led to believe, like most Republicans, that the only thing that matters is winning. So whatever it takes; unconstitutional voting rights abrogation, illegal gerrymandering, or collusion with American hating agents of the former Soviet Union, who would love nothing more than to piss on American graves.
They also use, as a primary rationale, the lie that if they don’t win at all costs, nasty atheists and Jesus haters will put them all in concentration camps and make religion illegal. What they really mean is, if they can’t ram their belief system down the throat of every American who doesn’t go along with them, then they’re being treated worse than Jews in Nazi Germany, so of COURSE they are happy to lie, cheat, and steal.
Never mind that the basic tenets of Christianity are strictly in conflict with the actions and beliefs of a crook like Trump as are the Ten Commandments they so dearly wish to install on every plot of public land in the country.
So, yeah. Hypocrites. No walking the walk for these guys. True believers like Kavanaugh were ready to take a pick axe to Bill Clinton for lying about a blowjob. But a pussy grabbing misogynistic pig who steps on the Constitution and gets help from our sworn enemy to steal an election? It’s all jake.
Just spotted this at Hullabaloo. It seems worth spreading.
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1032080665137881088
Might need to send a bit of money to Beto's campaign.
@Keith: thank you!! My boy Beto––this young man is so impressive; I have been following him since 2014. Here is someone who one can, if not completely turned off by politicians, believe is the real thing, the Mr. Rogers (and thanks to you Ak for your tribute to him) of politics.
https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1032080665137881088
I call that creepy voyeur KavaNO!
As for yesterday, I WISH it were a turning point but I am afraid it is not. So many times we say events are game-changers with the Evil Orange, but with so many morons (lookin’at you, West Virginny) he survives to tweet bile and muck every day. Thank goodness we have the brave repugnants to carry his water—talkin’ to you, Congress.
Ick, KavaNO—
The Pretender on Tibbett's killer:
“If he had not been in the country, she would be alive today,” Trump told cheering supporters. “Should’ve never happened …"
Wonder if it occurred to him that his truism applies to all who cause another's death, whether it be by gun or auto or....who number in the hundreds of thousands.
Naw, probably not.
But it would seem Mr. Logic says we gotta lota deporting to do. Maybe start with the guy who's bent on killing an estimated 1400 with unnecessary coal emissions.
And my nastiness likes the fact the alleged killer was apparently employed by a prominent Iowa Republican family.
Picking up on Jeanne's concerns, I am, as I've mentioned before, and as other RC'ers have suggested, concerned that a TrumpenImpeachment would open the door for the distinctly religioprickosia avatar, little mikey pence.
The accession of the little weasel pencey might, in many ways, surpass the horrors of TrumpenGraft because pence is not just about money (although he clearly doesn't mind the odd million or two in his back pocket). He's mostly about shoving Chrisitianist UnAmerican, anti-democratic bullshit down our throats, and if he gains the cachet of the Winger Who Survived the Lib'rul Hate Attack on the Glorious Leader, he could be a warped version of the House of York-Trump's Mikey III, minus the hump:
"Now is the summer of our disconnect made glorious autumn by the Fox lies and winger echo chamber hollers. And all the bullshit lib'rul clouds that once lour'd upon our House of Jesus lie now in the bosom of the deep internet buried."
Thinking of little mikey pence, I am mindful that Will once wished, in Timon of Athens, "Would thou wert clean enough to spit upon."
With Trump, it's the devil we know. pence?....
Willie Horton rides again. Newt has already said that they are going to really ride this horse hard all the way to 6 November.
My worst nightmare is m. pence assumes the rains (reigns) of
POTUS. We go back a hundred years. Interacial marriage, heh,
all youse browns and whites and blacks and yellows gotta get
over it and go back where you came from. I'm going back to
Scotland and try to find my ancestral family. Good luck with that.
And my same sex marriage, and thousands of others? Who knows?
WTF. And I don't even swear.
Forrest,
Right there with you, brother. And as one who does swear, I have no idea what I’d do if little mikey and his medieval mien made his way into the Oval Office. Maybe learn to swear in Esperanto.