The Commentariat -- August 4, 2018
Mark Landler of the New York Times: "In the last five days, President Trump has thanked Kim Jong-un of North Korea for his 'nice letter,' reminisced about his 'great meeting' with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and offered to meet Iran's president, Hassan Rouhani, without any preconditions. During those same five days, the Treasury Department imposed sanctions on a Russian bank accused of helping North Korea with weapons-related activities. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo listed stringent preconditions for any engagement with Iran. And the administration's top intelligence and law enforcement officials vowed to combat Russian interference in the midterm elections, while Senate Republicans pushed a bill that would impose harsh new sanctions on Moscow. There is Mr. Trump's foreign policy, and then there is the foreign policy of the rest of the Trump administration, backed by the Republican Party. This week, the two were openly at odds with each other.... Nowhere were these differences more jarring than in how the Trump administration and Republicans responded to the latest concerns that the Russian government is plotting to interfere in the midterm elections.... On Thursday, the White House produced an array of top officials to dramatize the threat and explain the nation's countermeasures. The president was conspicuously absent.... Yet at a rally in Pennsylvania hours later, Mr. Trump dismissed the special counsel's investigation of Russian interference as a 'hoax' that was impeding his efforts to nurture a constructive relationship with the Russian president."
David Brunnstrum of Reuters: "Less than two months after a landmark U.S.-North Korea summit in Singapore, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo flew back to the city state on Friday and said North Korea's continued work on weapons programs was inconsistent with its leader's commitment to denuclearize." ...
... Michelle Nichols of Reuters: "North Korea has not stopped its nuclear and missile programs in violation of United Nations sanctions, according to a confidential U.N. report seen by Reuters on Friday. The six-month report by independent experts monitoring the implementation of U.N. sanctions was submitted to the Security Council North Korea sanctions committee late on Friday.... The U.N report said North Korea is cooperating militarily with Syria and has been trying to sell weapons to Yemen's Houthis."
Rachel Weiner, et al., of the Washington Post: "One of Paul Manafort's accountants testified Friday that she went along with falsifying his tax records because she was afraid to confront a longtime client. Cindy Laporta said that in 2015, Manafort's right-hand man, Rick Gates, told her his boss couldn't afford to pay his taxes. To ease that burden, she said, Gates instructed her to misrepresent $900,000 in income as a business loan.... Laporta, who testified after she was granted immunity, said 'I very much regret' the decision to go along with a plan that she estimated saved Manafort at least $400,000 in taxes.... She testified that she also helped Manafort obtain millions of dollars in loans fraudulently, including by representing rental property as a second home, sending a bank a loan-forgiveness letter she believed to be forged, and telling another bank that Manafort expected a $2.4 million payment when she had 'no idea' if that was true.... Earlier Friday, another of Manafort's accountants took the stand, and a prosecutor asked him who among Manafort's circle was in charge of financial decisions. The tax preparer, Philip Ayliff, replied decisively: 'Mr. Manafort.'... One 2011 email showed Ayliff asking Manafort whether he had any interest in a foreign bank account. Manafort responded that he did not." ...
... Josh Gerstein & Darren Samuelsohn of Politico: "An accountant for ... Paul Manafort admitted at Manafort’s tax- and bank-fraud trial Friday that she filed tax returns she thought contained false information and that she may have committed a crime in doing so. Cindy Laporta said she had a sense that what Manafort and his aide Rick Gates told her about money being transferred into their international political consulting business wasn't accurate.... The admission was the first time a witness has acknowledged knowing of potential wrongdoing during Manafort's trial...." ...
... Justin Jouvenal, et al., of the Washington Post liveblogged the Manafort trial. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Matt Apuzzo, et al., of the New York Times: Paul "Manafort’s work running the campaign is the backdrop to his federal bank and tax fraud trial in Northern Virginia. Prosecutors are not addressing that work. But as they present evidence that he was growing desperate for money, the question of why Mr. Manafort, now 69, agreed to an unpaid job for Mr. Trump has become increasingly tantalizing.... By 2016, Mr. Manafort was broke..., so it was a peculiar time to volunteer his services to the Trump campaign.... There is evidence that Mr. Manafort saw Mr. Trump's campaign as a potential loss leader -- an upfront freebie that he could use to boost his stature and eventually parlay into more work for foreign clients.... A Trump victory would have positioned him for a triumphant and lucrative return to Washington lobbying.... At the F.B.I., agents began to wonder whether Mr. Manafort had something else in the works.... The F.B.I. began investigating whether Mr. Manafort, with his deep ties to the pro-Russia political movement in Ukraine, was involved in the Russian operation to interfere in the election."
Trump Campaign "Director of National Security" Dated Butina. Rosalind Helderman of the Washington Post: "Maria Butina, the Russian gun-rights activist who was charged last month with working as an unregistered agent of the Kremlin, socialized in the weeks before the 2016 election with a former Trump campaign aide who anticipated joining the presidential transition team, emails show, putting her in closer contact with President Trump's orbit than was previously known. Butina sought out interactions with J.D. Gordon, who [is now aged 50,] served for six months as the Trump campaign's director of national security before leaving in August 2016 and being offered a role in the nascent Trump transition effort, according to documents and testimony provided to the Senate Intelligence Committee and described to The Washington Post. The two exchanged several emails in September and October 2016, culminating in an invitation from Gordon to attend a concert by the rock band Styx in Washington. Gordon also invited Butina to attend his birthday party in late October of that year." Mrs. McC: So great "national security" there, Gordo.
The Company He Keeps. M.J. Lee & Sara Murray of CNN: "Kristin Davis, the woman famously known as the 'Manhattan Madam,' met with special counsel Robert Mueller's team for a voluntary interview on Wednesday, according to four sources familiar with the situation. Investigators appear to be interested in her ties to longtime Donald Trump adviser Roger Stone, whom she has known for a decade. Sources said investigators expressed interest in having Davis testify before a grand jury -- the latest indication that prosecutors are still aiming to build a case against Stone."
Jonathan O'Connell & David A. Fahrenthold of the Washington Post: "The General Services Administration granted a $534,000 rental credit to the Trump Organization's D.C. hotel for providing 'security, utilities and janitorial services' to support tours of the building's clock tower run by the National Park Service, federal officials said, an adjustment that contracting experts say illustrates the highly unusual arrangement between the company owned by President Trump and the federal government.... There is no evidence of any wrongdoing in the adjustment. But the decision to grant the rental credit highlights what critics call a challenging position for GSA officials in their dealings with the Trump Organization, now run ... Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump. Leasing experts said it's difficult to determine whether the government was justified in giving the Trumps a credit toward their rent...." ...
... David A. Fahrenthold & Jonathan O'Connell: "The general manager of the Trump International Hotel in Manhattan had a rare bit of good news to report to investors this spring: After two years of decline, revenue from room rentals went up 13 percent in the first three months of 2018. What caused the uptick at President Trump's flagship hotel in New York? One major factor: 'a last-minute visit to New York by the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia,' wrote general manager Prince A. Sanders in a May 15 letter, which was obtained by The Washington Post.... The previously unreported letter -- describing a five-day stay in March that was enough to boost the hotel's revenue for the entire quarter -- shows how little is known about the business that the president's company does with foreign officials.... Last week, a federal judge in Maryland gave the go-ahead to a lawsuit alleging that by accepting government business at his properties, Trump is violating the Constitution's 'emoluments clauses' -- dusty 18th-century measures meant to prevent presidents from putting their private bank accounts ahead of the public interest. If it stands, the ruling could force the company to provide new details about its relationships with foreign governments, states and even federal agencies." ...
... MEANWHILE, the Kids Are All Right. Charles Bagli & Kate Kelly of the New York Times: "In a deal that eases the financial pressure on the Kushner Companies, Brookfield Asset Management said on Friday that it had taken a 99-year lease on 666 Fifth Avenue, the troubled Midtown tower owned by the family of Donald Trump's son-in-law. Jared Kushner ... paid a record-setting $1. billion for the building in 2007, and it has been a drag on his family's real estate company ever since. The deal, in which Brookfield paid the rent for the entire 99-year term upfront, helps remove the family's biggest financial headache: a $1.4 billion mortgage on the office portion of the tower that was due in February next year. The Kushners have spent more than two years on an international search for new partners or fresh financing that stretched from the Middle East to China." ...
... Alice Driver, in a CNN opinion piece: "According to Ivanka Trump in a recent interview with Axios, the issue of family separation 'was a low point' during her tenure as assistant to and daughter of the President. She discussed family separation in the past tense, as if it was over, further reinforcing her father's message that he has ended family separation. That implication does not reflect reality, because family separation continues.... Ivanka Trump waited a full month after her father declared an end to immigrant family separation to voice her disagreement with the policy and has not taken any action aside from tweeting to thank her father for ending family separation at the border.... If Ivanka Trump did care about migrant children separated from their parents, she could do more than call it a 'low point.'... Individual citizens have done far more to help migrant children separated from their parents than any member of the Trump administration." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: Loved the way she called it "a low point for me," as if the important thing were how Ivanka felt about it, not the devastation to thousands of children & their loved ones. Now we're all supposed to have a sad for Ivanka & forget about the kids because This Immigration Thing is so over except in Ivanka's wounded memory. Anyhow, the whole reunion thing is going very well. ...>
... Annie Correal of the New York Times: "Eight children are expected to get on a plane in New York on Tuesday, headed to Guatemala. There, they will be reunited with their parents who were deported ahead of them, after being separated by the Trump administration at the southern border. Their flight was arranged by ... ICE, but the reunion effort for children ... has fallen to volunteers, activists and lawyers around the country who have scoured birth certificate registries in Central America, passed names to elected officials and coordinated with groups there who have run radio ads to find parents who might be in Guatemala&'s remote mountain villages.... The government was supposed to submit a plan to a federal judge in California on Thursday to reunite the families, but instead it told the A.C.L.U. to come up with its own plan, urging the group to use its 'considerable resources and their network of law firms, N.G.O.s, volunteers and others' to accomplish the task, in a court filing that a lawyer for the A.C.L.U., Lee Gelernt, called 'remarkable.' U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw held a hearing with both parties on Friday and said, 'This responsibility is 100 percent on the government.'" ...
... Jacob Soboroff & Julia Ainsley of NBC News: "The federal judge overseeing the court-ordered reunification of the 2,551 migrant children separated from their parents at the border blasted the Trump administration Friday for lacking a plan to reunify the remaining 572 children in its custody with their parents and the slow pace of progress. In a Thursday night status report filing, the Trump administration said only 13 of the parents had been located by the American Civil Liberties Union, which U.S. District Judge Dana Sabraw of the Southern District of California called 'unacceptable at this point.'" ...
... Matthew Haag of the New York Times: "Two youth care workers at Arizona shelters for migrant children have been charged with sexually assaulting immigrant teenagers, according to court records. They are the latest claims of abuse at government-contracted shelters that have a key role in the Trump administration's hard-line immigration crackdown. On Tuesday, the police in Phoenix arrested Fernando Magaz Negrete, 32, on charges of sexual abuse and child molestation after he was seen kissing and fondling a 14-year-old girl in June, the authorities said. That arrest came a day after federal prosecutors detailed their case against another youth worker, Levian D. Pacheco, 25, who is H.I.V. positive and is accused of groping six teenage boys and performing oral sex on two others at a detention center from late August 2016 through July 2017."
Miriam Jordan of the New York Times: "A federal judge on Friday upheld his previous order to revive an Obama-era program that shields some 700,000 young immigrants from deportation, saying that the Trump administration had failed to justify eliminating it. Judge John D. Bates of the Federal District Court for the District of Columbia gave the government 20 days to appeal his decision. But his ruling could conflict with another decision on the program that a federal judge in Texas is expected to issue as early as next week.... [Trump's] decision to end the program has faced numerous legal challenges. Currently, the government must continue accepting applications to renew DACA status, if not new applications from those who meet the criteria to qualify. DACA recipients -- often called 'Dreamers' -- typically were brought to the United States illegally as children through no choice of their own." Bates is a Bush II appointee.
Trade Wars Are Easy to Win, Ctd. Keith Bradsher & Cao Li of the New York Times: "China threatened on Friday to tax an additional $60 billion a year worth of imports from the United States if the Trump administration imposes its own new levies on Chinese goods. The threat comes just two days after President Trump ordered his administration to consider increasing the rate of tariffs it has already proposed on $200 billion a year of Chinese goods -- everything from chemicals to handbags -- to 25 percent from 10 percent." (Also linked yesterday afternoon.) ...
... Mindy Finn, in a USA Today op-ed: "Even after warnings that tariffs would wreak havoc on the economy, Donald Trump has staked his presidency on a series of trade wars that are now coming home to roost. With economic ruin looming over American farmers -- a key constituency -- he refuses to change course. Instead, he's mulling a policy of clientelism, a $12 billion cash handout to the victims of his own bad ideas.... [Trump] expects that the allure of taxpayer-funded kickbacks will be enough to keep farmers from holding him accountable for his own corruption and failures.... Far from draining the swamp, Trump and his coterie of grifters, fraudsters and co-conspirators have filled it in entirely, dividing the land into personal fiefdoms to exploit.... Trump has built a clearly organized machine for largesse and corruption. It's a pyramid scheme of public fraud, and the president gleefully sits at its top, reaping the rewards and doling out the shares."
Eli Rosenberg of the Washington Post: "Maine Secretary of State Matthew Dunlap, one of the 11 members of the commission formed by President Trump to investigate supposed voter fraud, issued a scathing rebuke of the disbanded panel on Friday, accusing Vice Chair Kris Kobach and the White House of making false statements and saying that he had concluded that the panel had been set up to try to validate the president's baseless claims about fraudulent votes in the 2016 election. Dunlap, one of four Democrats on the panel, made the statements in a report he sent to the commission's two leaders -- Vice President Pence and Kobach, who is Kansas's secretary of state -- after reviewing more than 8,000 documents from the group's work, which he acquired only after a legal fight despite his participation on the panel. Before it was disbanded by Trump in January, the panel had never presented any findings or evidence of widespread voter fraud. But the White House claimed at the time that it had shut down the commission despite 'substantial evidence of voter fraud,' due to the mounting legal challenges it faced from states. Kobach, too, spoke around that time about how 'some people on the left were getting uncomfortable about how much we were finding out.'" ...
... Mrs. McCrabbie: More on that nice Kris Kobach linked under Beyond the Beltway.
** Eric Draitser in Counterpunch: "Trump is not the fascist threat, Trumpism is. Donald Trump, as both a president and human being, is concerned primarily with Donald Trump. To the extent that he has an ideology, it is one of individual success and narcissistic delusions. Loathsome though this human nematode may be, he as an individual does not represent a threat beyond the wide-ranging ramifications of his policies (climate denialism, racist application of immigration laws, etc.).... What Trump has done is cobble together an array of far right, reactionary political forces that are angry and beginning to get organized.... [When Trump is gone,] they'll be looking for their next leader, the next demagogue who, unlike Trump, will be a slick, photogenic, well-tailored and well-spoken ideologue. Not just a fascist, but a true believer.... What separates a typical political supporter and a cultist is faith; the cultist believes without question that truth is only that which bolsters, supports, or flatters the venerated and dear leader." Thanks to Whyte O. for the link.
Colbert Reviews the Week that Was:
Tim Dickinson of Rolling Stone: "The National Rifle Association warns that it is in grave financial jeopardy, according to a recent court filing obtained by Rolling Stone, and that it could soon 'be unable to exist... or pursue its advocacy mission.'... The gun group has been suing New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo and the state's financial regulators since May, claiming the NRA has been subject to a state-led 'blacklisting campaign' that has inflicted 'tens of millions of dollars in damages.' In the new document -- an amended complaint filed in U.S. District Court in late July -- the NRA says it cannot access financial services essential to its operations and is facing 'irrecoverable loss and irreparable harm.' Specifically, the NRA warns that it has lost insurance coverage -- endangering day-to-day operations.... Without general liability coverage, it adds, the 'NRA cannot maintain its physical premises, convene off-site meetings and events, operate educational programs ... or hold rallies, conventions and assemblies.' The complaint says the NRA's video streaming service and magazines may soon shut down." Mrs. McC: Boo-fucking-hoo. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Annals of "Journalism," Ctd. The debate about Sarah Jeong rages on. Aja Romano of Vox, who comes down on Jeong & the NYT's side, has a pretty good recap. But if Jeong "probably has an IQ of a million or so," as Kevin Drum asserts, wouldn't that make her smart enough to know that #CancelWhite People is not that humorous?
Beyond the Beltway
Kansas Gubernatorial Race. Sherman Smith of the Topeka Capital-Journal: "Kris Kobach's gubernatorial campaign employs three men identified as members of a white nationalist group by two political consultants who have worked with Republicans in Kansas. Kobach spokeswoman Danedri Herbert rejects the accusation as a baseless distraction from real news in the closing days of a contested GOP primary race. The consultants in early July independently named the three men, all in their early 20s, as members of American Heritage Initiative, a splinter of Identity Evropa, which the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as as a campus-based white supremacy group that builds community from shared racial identity. Kurtis Engel, Collin Gustin and Michael Pyles received $1,250 to $3,100 in payments from Kobach's campaign between June 8 and July 26, according to expense reports made public this week. Herbert said their role with the campaign is to walk in parades, deliver yard signs and knock on doors." Mrs. McC: I'm sure they're very good at walking in parades -- like the one in Charlottesville, Va." And of course this isn't "real news," because white nationalists are common in Kobach's milieu.
Meet Your Republican Party. Kate Riga of TPM: "Todd Kincannon, former executive director of the South Carolina Republican Party, has reportedly killed his dog due to his belief that he is Jesus Christ and needed to perform a sacrifice." Mrs. McC: The bulk of the story is a police report. I sure hope Jeff Sessions gets down there & defends Kincannon's religious freeeedom against those repressive local cops. I mean, you just can't get more Christian than Jesus Christ. (Also linked yesterday afternoon.)
Way Beyond
James Meek & Ali Dukakis of ABC News: "WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange's health is suffering, one of his lawyers says, in conditions she compared to 'solitary confinement' in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.... Even though she expressed fears about Assange's living conditions in the embassy, [attorney Jennifer] Robinson also said she's concerned about her client losing his protection from Ecuador, and possible extradition to the United States.... The Australian-born Assange, 47, has lived in Ecuador's Embassy since seeking refuge and asylum in 2012. But he ran afoul of his hosts when he publicly questioned the British government's assessment that the Kremlin was behind the nerve agent attack on a former Russian intelligence officer...." Mrs. McC: "Extradition to the United States" could be the best thing that's happened to Assange. Surely Trump will grant him a pardon & give him a presidential medal for his extraordinary contributions to the United Estates of Donald Trump.
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I seem to remember Donald getting all hot and bothered about crossing Red Lines if Mueller started peering into the Trump Orgs finances. That pique seems to be persisting. Matter of fact, that IRS audit must be breaking records now for the longest in history, otherwise he would have published them by now, riiiight?
Lots of steam and bright red lights were tweeted high into the sky directing Mueller to the exact location of his deepest insecurities, where the proverbial bodies are buried and where the evidence of crimes reside.
Me thinks the Manafort trial is tying Donny's tubes in knots not because of "that Russer thing", he's convinced himself that one's a hoax, but because of all the dirty financial laundry being strewn about across his cherished MSM shows. Donny's losing his mind, but he remembers very well all of the financial ratfuking he's engaged in over the years and now he's seeing double.
It's likely not much coincidence that the same moment Manafort is getting outed by his accountants, paper pushers and former aides turned snitches, that Mueller has decided to put the big squeeze on Donald's "loyal aide" Michel Cohen, the Trump Org's financial bookkeeper (forgot his name), and professional sleaze Roger Stone.
Maybe the mirror image of Manafort's day of reckoning is a mere coincidence of Trump's turn in the barrel. I'd prefer to think Mueller and his team, experts at their trade and knowing the judicial system inside and out, canalized their disbelief at this pugnant oaf soiling the country and set about conducting this confluence of crooks to their dreaded and much deserved demise under the weight of the law.
Now that we have established two government entities or so it seems––we are witnessing the unprecedented ( a word by the way, that has been used ubiquitously of late) of a president saying the opposite of what the administration tells us is their policy. It's fun to watch, isn't it? Lots of laughs. Will the center still hold? Doesn't look like it. I don't know the number of lawsuits pending due to this crazy configuration but I bet it's unprecedented.
Yesterday an MSNBC reporter questioned Ms Schalp, the W.H. communications yap pup, about something Trump said at his recent rally that counteracted what Dan Coats had said the day before. Damn, if Ms Schalp did a doublespeak––"Of course, the President agrees with Coats, something, something...".but, but, the reporter said, "He....." at this point Schalp rushed ahead leaving the poor reporter open mouthed. What a Schalp slap in the face!
To hook on safari's "remember whens" –––remember when Trump told us North Korea was going to do what he wanted and later Pompeo said we shouldn't worry bout nothin cuz he be working with Kim to get things settled; here is what has taken place since then.
N.K. has not stopped its nuclear and missile program
They are cooperating with Syria
They are trying to sell weapons to Yemen's Houthis
And according to the Wall Street Journal report yesterday:
Russia is letting thousands of N.K, workers enter while issuing fresh work permits; actions U.S. officials say potentially violate sanctions aimed at cutting cash flow to Pyongyang.
But the biggie for me is the refugee problem. The fact (another word that has gone by the wayside) that 572 children are still without connections to parents and this government–-the one that has such nifty policies–-tells the judge it's now up to "others" like the ACLU to fix this–-in other words, wash their hands of it–-is––sorry, I have no word for it. Luckily the judge denounced that plan.
And the big question of the day: Why did Manafort work on the Trump campaign without pay? Intrigue persists.
Could this be related to the Pretender's tariff tiff with China?
http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fg-china-north-korea-sanctions-2018-story.html
Don't know much about international relations, family life is too complicated for me, but I'm thinking China might easily put its hands on more retaliatory measures than the obvious ones of tariffs and currency manipulation--like messing with the Pretender's pretend foreign policy, whose two purposes seem to be sucking up to Putin or alternately puffing himself up as some kind of tough-guy hero, in ways that would directly prick his ego and further undermine his role on the world stage.
Such a response would seem appropriately personal when dealing with the Pretender, I'm thinking.
From CNN:Spain and Portugal faced another exceptionally hot day Saturday as a heat wave that has killed three people in Spain threatened to raise temperatures to record levels. Temperatures will reach 45 degrees Celsius (113 degrees Fahrenheit).
Just some trivial, meaningless news in the world of Trump. We need to focus on making money. Clearly, $1billion is not enough.
I remember all the times it was considered a good idea to give BLM, Occupy, Women's March protesters their own private transport system to their places of protest, in order to avoid them being confronted by violent opponents. //