Month: April 2017

Trump’s found the perfect villain to buck up the base

by digby

After much criticism, the NYT added “without citing evidence” to this headline

Adele Stan at the American Prospect observes that the Trump administration and it’s cult have found the perfect villains for their passion play:

As O’Reilly’s advertisers flee and Trump’s poll numbers plummet, each are seeking to stoke the energies of their fans the best way they know how: through the vilification of black women. In the Trump-Fox axis, all women are suspect, of course, but black women are even more so. There’s a special focus on the demonization of African American women in the political and media spheres.

Recent weeks have brought us the spectacle of White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer treating April Ryan, a reporter for American Urban Radio Networks, like a child, demanding at a press briefing that she not shake her head after she asked a question about the Russia scandal and the president’s sinking poll numbers. We saw O’Reilly mock U.S. Representative Maxine Waters’s hair style in a racialized way. We saw Fox News reporter Heather Childers misrepresent an appeal by former Attorney General Loretta Lynch—who called for resistance to Trump’s rollback of civil protections by citing the sacrifices made by civil rights protesters in decades past, including being on the receiving end of beatings and murder—as a call to violence. (Fact-checkers saw it differently.)

Tee up one of the right’s favorite villains: Susan Rice, Obama’s national security adviser. Ever since Trump, on March 4, alleged in a tweet that Barack Obama had “‘wiretapped’” his phones in Trump Tower during the presidential campaign, the White House and right-wing media have gone to great lengths to try to prove the claim. Because Rice had asked for the names of certain “U.S. persons” that NSA surveillance on foreign nationals had revealed them to be talking to—at a moment when the intelligence community was examining the possibility of foreign intervention in the presidential campaign—she is now said to have been spying on the Trump campaign, according to an April 4 report on The Daily Caller, the right-wing website helmed by Tucker Carlson. At issue is the reason she asked the names of certain U.S. persons to be “unmasked” to her, in the parlance of intelligence types.

Rice is perfect for the role for which she’s been drafted without consent. She’s a woman. She’s black. A black woman who, like Ryan and Lynch, has risen to the upper reaches of her profession. The worst kind of woman in their eyes.

If right wing media is any indication the Susan Rice accusations are going to severely impact the sales of viagra. They are so overstimulated I’m afraid they’re going to hurt themselves.
This is just what the doctor ordered to lift their spirits.

And lookee here:

Oh baby.

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Message: “he cares”


by digby

Trump just held a press conference with King Abdullah of Jordan and it was as horrifying as usual. After ignoring the subject at all his public events yesterday and going on and on about his “big win”, today he said he was upset about the little Syrian babies. (This from the guy who says “we have to take out the families.”) Obviously Javanka told him he needed to say he cared.

I don’t think he heard about this before the press conference but you can be sure he isn’t happy about it:

“In this case now, we have very limited options, and look, it’s concerning that the secretary of State … said that the future’s up to the people in Syria on what happens with Assad,” Rubio said on the radio show “AM Tampa Bay.” “In essence, [Tillerson was] almost nodding to the idea that Assad was gonna get to stay in some capacity.”
 
“I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a few days later we see this,” Rubio added during the interview, which was first reported by CNN.

In New York on Thursday, the US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley, condemned Assad’s history of human rights abuses against his own people. 

But she said Washington would focus on working with powers such as Turkey and Russia to seek a political settlement, rather than focusing on Assad. 

“You pick and choose your battles,” Haley told reporters.
“And when we’re looking at this, it’s about changing up priorities and our priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.”

He breaks it he owns it

by digby

Trump has blamed other people for his failures his whole life and he is sure that he’ll be able to blame any failures on health care on the Democrats. But most Americans aren’t that stupid:

When you have total control of the government people believe you have the means to make things happen. If he were the leader he says he is,he should be able to get his GOP in line to fix whatever problems exist. There are plenty of

Poll highlights:

The latest Kaiser Health Tracking Poll, conducted the week after House Republicans pulled the American Health Care Act (AHCA) from a vote, finds about two-thirds of the public (64 percent) says it is a “good thing” that Congress did not pass the bill. Majorities of Democrats (87 percent) and independents (63 percent) say it is a “good thing” the bill didn’t pass, compared to about half of Republicans (54 percent) who view it as a “bad thing.” For those who say Congress not passing the bill is a good thing, similar shares feel this way because they do not want the 2010 health care law repealed (31 percent, overall) as feel this way because while they support repeal efforts they had concerns about the AHCA (29 percent, overall).

The public spreads blame for the bill not passing across the board, with one-third saying Republicans in Congress are most to blame, along with about three in ten who say President Trump (28 percent) and about one-fourth who say Democrats in Congress (24 percent) are most to blame. When asked specifically about Republicans in Congress, the public spreads blame about equally across House Speaker Paul Ryan (27 percent) and the conservative Freedom Caucus (27 percent), with slightly fewer blaming moderate Republicans (22 percent). While about half of the public (55 percent) say the AHCA did not pass because it went too far in cutting existing programs, views vary by party, with majorities of Democrats (74 percent) and independents (57 percent) saying it didn’t pass because it went too far in cutting existing programs, compared to six in ten Republicans (58 percent) who say the AHCA did not pass mainly because it didn’t go far enough to end Obamacare.

Despite divided views towards the 2010 health law, three-fourths of the public think President Trump and his administration should do what they can to make the current health care law work – including a majority of Democrats and independents and half (51 percent) of Republicans. Large shares of Democrats (80 percent) and independents (65 percent), and one-third of Republicans (34 percent), also say that because President Trump and Republicans in Congress are in control of the government, they are now responsible for any problems with the ACA moving forward.
In addition, the public is increasingly wary of President Trump’s ability to deliver on his campaign promise of less expensive and better health care for all Americans – 37 percent say they are confident that President Trump will be able to deliver on this campaign promise, down from 47 percent three months ago.

There are divides among Republicans on who they blame for Congress not passing the AHCA as well as the next steps for President Trump and his administration. Compared to moderate and liberal Republicans, conservative Republicans are slightly more likely to place the blame for the AHCA not passing on House Speaker Paul Ryan and to say President Trump’s administration should do what they can to make the current health care law fail so they can replace it later.

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Trump’s real agenda is being implemented

by digby

I wrote about the parts of Trump’s administration that are working successfully to implement his agenda today for Salon. Unsurprisingly, they are all clustered around the military and the police:

It’s understandable that the chaos of the Trump administration and the dysfunctional House Republican caucus takes up all the political oxygen these days. But it’s important to not overlook the areas of the executive branch that are actually carrying out Donald Trump’s agenda.

Some departments, like the Environmental Protection Agency and the Department of Education, are still getting up to speed, but signs are that they’re going to do some serious damage. Others, like Dr. Ben Carson’s Department of Housing and Urban Development, are missing in action altogether so perhaps they’ll just die of benign neglect. The State Department still seems to be a mess, with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson so out of it that he’s now releasing press releases that might as well say “Do Not Disturb.” (After North Korea launched another intermediate-range missile Tillerson, simply said, “The U.S. has spoken enough about North Korea. We have no further comment.”)

On the other hand, there are some departments that are up and running with all cylinders firing. Department of Homeland Security staffers are working feverishly to seal the border and harass immigrants. They’re even starting to go after tourists, requiring them to hand over electronic devices and social-media passwords before being granted the privilege of coming here to spend their money. If all goes well, DHS should be able to completely destroy the travel industry within a year or so and ensure that foreign students and workers will go anywhere but the U.S. in the future.

The Pentagon is also going great guns (so to speak), getting its war on with renewed vigor. Defense officials insist that all the recent civilian carnage in Iraq, Yemen and elsewhere is not a result of new official rules of engagement. But people who study such things recognize that the attitude toward such behavior always flows from the top, and the president has made it clear that he wants to take the gloves off. He couldn’t even take a moment, during two public appearances on Tuesday, to condemn the gas attack that killed dozens of Syrian civilians, instead releasing a boorish statement blaming the administration of former President Barack Obama. But then, Trump has long believed that the use of such weapons was something “strong” leaders sometimes have to do.

Recall this startling comment from last July:

Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, “Oh, he’s using gas!” They go back, forth, it’s the same. And they were stabilized.

The U.S. hasn’t resorted to chemical attacks on children but you can imagine that the battlefield commanders assume they have a wide berth when their commander in chief is on record endorsing war crimes like torture, killing of families and mass summary execution.

And as I predicted would happen when Jeff Sessions was sworn in as attorney general, his Department of Justice is the one agency that seems to be functioning smoothly. As it’s turned out, his recusing himself from the Russia investigation has opened the political space for Sessions to concentrate on implementing the “law and order” agenda that had Trump’s crowds cheering at all those campaign rallies last year. Sessions isn’t wasting any time.

As The Washington Post reported on Monday, Sessions announced that prior agreements between local law enforcement agencies and the Justice Department are all under review so as to ensure that “these pacts do not work against the Trump administration’s goals of promoting officer safety and morale while fighting violent crime.” Protecting he civil rights of citizens is way down the list of his concerns.

Session has long been a critic of DOJ consent decrees and is skeptical that systemic racism in law enforcement exists at all. According to The Washington Post’s Sarah Posner, in a visit to St. Louis last week to speak before a police gathering, Sessions said:

Unfortunately, in recent years law enforcement as a whole has been unfairly maligned and blamed for the crime and unacceptable deeds of a few in their ranks. Amid this intense public scrutiny and criticism, morale has gone down, while the number in their ranks killed in the line of duty has gone up.

At another meeting in recent days, he told a group of police officers, “When you fight crime you have to fight it where it is, and you may have at some point an impact of a racial nature that we hate to see. But if it’s done properly it’s the right thing.”

An “impact of a racial nature” is an interesting way of describing the epidemic of unarmed African-Americans being gunned down by police officers.

It’s clear that Sessions’ intention is to do at the Justice Department what the president has already endorsed at the Department of Homeland Security: He’s going to let the police “take off the shackles.” Considering Sessions’ long history of racism it’s entirely predictable that he would take this action, but you might have thought he would wait longer than a month just to keep up appearances.

Next up is likely to be the overhaul of the civil rights division that a group of far-right vote-suppression activists, led by Trump transition team member and Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, requested in a letter sent to Sessions just last week. They see the division as rife with “ideological rot” from leftover Obama administration officials who have “jettisoned precepts like equal enforcement in favor of political and racialized dogmas.” These activists are basically arguing that Sessions must get rid of the career attorneys in the division and replace them with ideologues who believe that white people are the true victims of discrimination.

ABC News reported last month that Trump is expected to name his trusted lieutenant George Conway, husband of presidential counselor Kellyanne Conway, to head the civil rights division. He’s a corporate lawyer who has little experience with civil rights issues, but he’s a hard-core right-wing ideologue so these “law and order” Republicans should be pleased with the choice.

It’s interesting to note that the executive branch agencies that are working efficiently to enact the president’s agenda are all the police and military departments. Trump may not know what he’s doing in any larger sense, but by putting two generals and a hanging judge in charge of those departments, he has insured that his authoritarian nationalist agenda is being enacted with ruthless efficiency.

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Can’t “remove the ‘sex’ from ‘sexual orientation'”
by Tom Sullivan

Photo by Ludovic Bertron via Creative Commons.

“Federal law is catching up to public opinion,” Greg Nevins of Lambda Legal told reporters Tuesday after a federal appeals court in Chicago ruled that longstanding civil rights protections against job discrimination cover lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender employees.

CNN reports:

“We conclude today that discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation is a form of sex discrimination,” Judge Diane Wood wrote for the 7th Circuit Court of Appeals.

The ruling is a victory for Kimberly Hively, who sued Ivy Tech Community College, arguing that the school violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when it denied her employment.

“Any discomfort, disapproval, or job decision based on the fact that the complainant — woman or man — dresses differently, speaks differently, or dates or marries a same-sex partner, is a reaction purely and simply based on sex,” Wood wrote.
“That means that it falls within Title VII’s prohibition against sex discrimination, if it affects employment in one of the specified ways,” Wood added.

The three dissenting judges argued that “sexual-orientation discrimination is a distinct form of discrimination and is not synonymous with sex discrimination” and that courts have interpreted Title VII on that basis for decades.

But in her majority opinion, Wood writes:

It would require considerable calisthenics to remove the “sex” from “sexual orientation.” The effort to do so has led to confusing and contradictory results, as our panel opinion illustrated so well.

The Chicago Tribune adds:

The Chicago ruling followed a so-called en banc hearing of all the judges in the appeals court, with eight agreeing that the civil rights law prohibits discrimination because of sexual orientation, and three dissenting. The vote is notable because the 7th Circuit is considered a relatively conservative appeals court. Eight out of the 11 judges were appointed by Republican presidents.

The U.S. Senate is debating elevating Judge Neil Gorsuch to the U.S. Supreme Court. This is a decision that could wind up in his lap.

The Washington Post reports:

The ruling echoes those of a number of lower courts, which have also concluded that discrimination against gays is a prohibited form of sex stereotyping. It conflicts, however, with others, including a ruling last month by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit in Atlanta, which interpreted Title VII of the Civil Rights Act more narrowly and found that sexual orientation is not a protected class under that law.

A split in the circuits could set up a clash before the Supreme Court.

And so we return now to the Democrats’ filibuster of Gorsuch in the Senate and Republican majority leader Mitch McConnell’s threat to end the filibuster rule, about which Sen. John McCain of Arizona says, “Benjamin Franklin is somewhere turning over in his grave … Why have a bicameral system?”

When you’re a star you can do anything

by digby

via GIPHY
And so he did:

Tuesday’s “Equal Pay Day” — which highlights the wage disparity between men and women — is the perfect time to draw more attention to the president’s action, activists say.

On March 27, Trump revoked the 2014 Fair Pay and Safe Workplaces order then-President Barack Obama put in place to ensure that companies with federal contracts comply with 14 labor and civil rights laws. The Fair Pay order was put in place after a 2010 Government Accountability Office investigation showed that companies with rampant violations were being awarded millions in federal contracts.

In an attempt to keep the worst violators from receiving taxpayer dollars, the Fair Pay order included two rules that impacted women workers: paycheck transparency and a ban on forced arbitration clauses for sexual harassment, sexual assault or discrimination claims.

He’s got to look out for his boys, amirite?

Frosting on the cake: The White House declared April to be National Sexual Assault Awareness month.

Yeah, we’re aware.

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He was against it before he was for it

by digby

Child victims of poison gas attack in Syria today

“Saddam Hussein throws a little gas, everyone goes crazy, ‘oh he’s using gas!’ They go back, forth, it’s the same. And they were stabilized.”  — Psycho Donald Trump December, 2015

There was a horrible gas attack against civilians, including children, in Syria today and despite two public appearances, the president didn’t have word to say about it. He undoubtedly admires Assad’s “strength and stamina” and willingness to “take out the families” to get the job done.

The White House and Sean Spicer did release a statement condemning the attack — and blamed it all on Barack Obama for failing to follow through on his threat to intervene militarily if Assad used chemical weapons.

But, as usual, the White House is full of shit.

David Corn reports:

Throughout this episode, Trump tweeted up a storm about Syria. Repeatedly, he declared—occasionally in all-caps!—that Obama should not be messing around in Syria. He said there was no reason to attack Syria or take any action there. Let the Arab League deal with the problem. He was asserting that Obama should not respond to the chemical attacks—a policy certainly in sync with Assad (and his Russian patrons). Stay out of this, Trump demanded, and focus on domestic issues.

Now Trump is blaming Obama for not adopting a more forceful stance against Assad, even though Trump back then repeatedly proclaimed that Obama should ignore the conflict (and crimes against humanity) in Syria…

Trump’s response to the horrific Syrian attack follows this pattern: castigate Obama and hope people don’t bother to review Trump’s past positions. Such situational and brazen hypocrisy may be standard operating procedure for Trump. Yet it carries a greater sting when it concerns massacres and war crimes.

Indeed it does.

I’ll bet he asked around to see if we have any stockpiles of such gas. Just in case.

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Give the Freedom Caucus an inch and they’ll take you hostage

by digby

I’m not sure who in the White House is running the show on this new health care reboot, but it looks as though they think appeasing the Freedom Caucus in every way is the right negotiating tactic. They seem not to understand that for every concession to these nuts, they lose more mainstream conservatives. And the Freedom caucus is likely to tell him to shove it in the end anyway.

But hey, Trump is the greatest negotiator the world has ever known so who knows?

Attempts to reach a deal this week on health care are unraveling fast, with conservatives already blaming House Speaker Paul Ryan for blocking the White House bill, and leadership sources saying that’s nonsense and that the Freedom Caucus is making unreasonable demands that are losing net votes.

It’s a bad sign for Republicans ahead of Vice President Mike Pence’s visit to the Capitol tonight. From a senior Republican source:

While we haven’t picked up any votes yet, this concept is already showing signs of losing a ton of them.

The Freedom Caucus and conservative group perspective: The bill’s text is changing for the worse, and it no longer looks like some of the Obamacare regulations will be waived. Conservatives are growing doubtful that the White House and House leadership are willing to get rid of Obamacare’s ban on charging sick people higher premiums. Conservatives also want to know what leadership has to say about the “medical loss ratio,” or the Obamacare regulation limiting how much of insurers’ revenue can be profit.

They’re also not happy about the accusation that getting rid of the Obamacare ban on charging higher premiums would nullify its protections for pre-existing conditions.

A Freedom Caucus source: “We’ve never ever wanted to go after pre-existing conditions. That’s spin (well a lie) meant to undermine us. Pence said he supports our plan of reforming, and funding changes to high risk pools, specifically to deal with pre-existing conditions.”

House leadership perspective: Where the plan is heading will potentially lose more votes than it picks up. The Freedom Caucus, they say, is moving the goal posts again and trying to shift blame.

The FC’s protestations to the contrary, their “high risk pools” are bullshit. We had that before. It’s didn’t work because most people can’t afford to pay thousands of dollars a month in premiums.

But they thinks there’s some magic involved in all this that doesn’t require them to concede that … there’s no magic in this.

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How low can he go?

by digby

We know that there’s no depth to which Trump won’t sink to insult someone if he thinks he needs to. Look at what he said to his political rivals in the campaign.

I’m talking about his approval rating:

Just 34% of the public approve of the job President Trump is doing, as his support among Republicans and independents tumbles, according to the April IBD/TIPP poll. Fifty six percent disapprove of the job he’s doing. Approval ratings for a president haven’t been this low since President Bush’s last months in office.

Last month, 40% of independents approved of the job Trump is doing; just 29% approve today. Among Republicans, Trump’s job approval is 74%, which represents a 14-point decline from last month.

The latest IBD/TIPP poll was taken from March 24-30, and includes responses from 904 people across the country, giving it a margin of error of +/-3.3 percentage points. The national sample of adults had 34% Democrats, 30% Republicans and 36% Independents.

Across the board, the poll has bad news for Trump.

He lost significant support among his strongest backers: white men (which dropped from 58% in March to 49% today), and rural America, which went from 56% to 41% today.

Just over a third (37%) rate Trump’s handling of the economy as “good” or “excellent,” which is down from 43% last month. Only a quarter of those polled give him top marks on his handling of health care.

And 35% now say that Trump is providing strong leadership for the country, compared with 49% who say it is weak.

Satisfaction with the direction of the country has also taken a sharp turn for the worse. It had climbed to 50% in February — the first time it had been that high in years — but is now back down to 39%.

“As his ambitious agenda encounters some obstacles in Congress, President Trump’s approval ratings have declined,” said Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica who directs the IBD/TIPP Poll. “For instance, the inability of Congress to pass the proposed health care bill has weighed down Americans’ approval of Trump’s overall performance as president.

“Also, some Americans had hoped that he and Congress would take up tax reform first, rather than wait for health care reform. The media’s persistently negative coverage of President Trump, especially regarding the ongoing Russian investigation, has also taken a toll on his approval numbers.”

Trump’s budget proposal gets a big thumbs down as well. When asked whether they support his overall plan to shift $54 billion from domestic programs to the military, 61% said they opposed this, while only 34% backed that plan.

The health bill he pushed along with House Speaker Paul Ryan — which Ryan pulled from the floor without a vote last week — doesn’t fare much better. Just 25% of those who’ve followed the story closely say the bill would improve the nation’s health care system. A bare majority of Republicans (52%) say it would.

On the specific features of the bill, the public gives only tepid support for what were supposed to be its biggest selling points — getting rid of the individual and employer mandates (51% and 53%, respectively). And an overwhelming 91% want to keep ObamaCare’s protections for those with pre-existing conditions.

But only 35% support the bill’s proposal to replace ObamaCare’s income-based subsidies with tax credits based on age.

The public also appears more upbeat about ObamaCare itself. Half of those following the story say ObamaCare is sustainable if left alone, while only 48% say it isn’t.

What’s more, 43% say they’d be less likely to vote to re-elect those representatives in Congress who voted to repeal ObamaCare. That compares with 30% who say a repeal vote would increase their support.

Russian Interference But No Obama Surveillance

Trump is also taking his lumps on the issue of Russian meddling with the election.

Of those following the story closely, 50% now say that the outcome of the election was “influenced by Russia.” When IBD asked this question in January, 50% said Russia didn’t influence the outcome.

The shift is largely due to changing views of independents. In January, 54% said Russia didn’t have any influence on the election. Now, 51% of independents think it did.

Trump also gets little support for his contention that President Obama surveilled Trump and his team before the inauguration. Just 38% say it’s likely that Obama did that, while 59% say it’s not likely.

Fewer than half (44%) believe Obama administration holdovers have been leaking classified information in order to undermine the current administration.

Update: The averages are all below 40% now

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/president_trump_job_approval-6179.html

http://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/trump-job-approval

Backchanneling the backchannel for General Flynn

by digby

If you’re interested in this Nunes-Flynn white house intrigue story, Josh Marshall has put together some facts that strike me as one plausible explanation for some of the weird behavior. He quotes from Eli Lake’s story yesterday about how the Trump administration found out that President Obama’s National Security adviser had asked that certain names of Americans mentioned in intercepts of foreign phone calls be unmasked and they turned out to be Trump transition officials. Lake pointed out that there was nothing unusual about an NSA doing such a thing but it’s turned into a wingnut witch hunt,the assumption being that Rice did this for political purposes and then leaked it to the press. (There is no evidence that she did this…)

This is a perfect way to tickle the right wing lizard brain — Susan Rice is an African American woman who was a member of the Obama administration and was part of the Benghazi nonsense. Let’s just say the wingnuts are all very overstimulated by all this and they’ve lost their minds.

Anyway, Marshall homes in on something in Lake’s report that’s quite interesting for all of us internet sleuths:

Read this paragraph, the third graf down in the story.

The National Security Council’s senior director for intelligence, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, was conducting the review, according to two U.S. officials who spoke with Bloomberg View on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it publicly. In February Cohen-Watnick discovered Rice’s multiple requests to unmask U.S. persons in intelligence reports that related to Trump transition activities. He brought this to the attention of the White House General Counsel’s office, who reviewed more of Rice’s requests and instructed him to end his own research into the unmasking policy.

What jumps out to me here is the last sentence. Cohen-Watnick, whose new boss, National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, was trying to fire him while all this was happening, took his ‘research’ to the White House Counsel’s Office. They reviewed what he had come up with, did some additional research on Rice’s requests and then “instructed him to end his own research.”

This is all very cryptic and it’s sort of a throwaway line in Lake’s story. It’s so spare you could read a number of possibilities into the sentence. Maybe the Counsel’s office said, ‘Wow, this is so big we need to take over this critical investigation you’ve started. Thank you so much for your work.’ But that does not seem like the most likely read.

I would suggest that a much more plausible read is that Cohen-Watnick brought his ‘research’ to the Counsel’s office, they looked at and basically said, ‘Knock it off.’

That would make sense on a few fronts.

As even Lake concedes, Rice’s alleged actions – if the report is accurate – were almost certainly legal. Most national security experts say they were not only legal but entirely proper. Moreover, the kind of snooping around that Cohen-Watnick was apparently doing could very plausibly be interpreted as an attempt to monitor or interfere with the on-going counter-intelligence probe of Trump associates’ ties to Russia. The White House Counsel’s job is to protect and look after the legal interests of the President. A good lawyer would likely want to shut that kind of freelancing down right away, especially if what Cohen-Watnick had found didn’t amount to anything that helped the President or the White House.

The paragraph above also says Cohen-Watnick was “conducting the review.” But what review was that? It’s not clear this ‘review’ was authorized by anyone and it’s fairly implausible that he just stumbled on this stuff in the first place ‘in the normal course of business’, as he and the White House claim. His review apparently began in February. So if it was authorized it was likely okayed by Mike Flynn – another red flag.

So did Cohen-Watnick get shut down by White House Counsel Donald McGahn?

The main reason this read makes sense to me is what happened subsequently.

Why did Cohen-Watnick and Michael Ellis, a junior lawyer who used to work for Chairman Nunes, call Nunes late in the evening and have him rush over to the White House to see the ‘smoking gun’ information that supposedly validated President Trump’s ‘Obama wiretapping’ tweets? Remember, this overnight cloak and dagger stunt was followed the next day by Nunes going and ‘briefing’ President Trump about the new information.

So the White House briefs Nunes in the middle of the night and then Nunes returns to the White House in the morning to brief Trump?

That never made sense.

But it makes perfect sense if Cohen-Watnick (Mike Flynn’s protege, remember) got shut down by McGahn and then decided to backchannel his findings to Trump supporters on the Hill in order to do an end run around his bosses. It also explains why Nunes had to see the documents at the White House (likely at Ellis’s or Cohen-Watnick’s desk) rather than on Capitol Hill or at a relevant intelligence agency. Showing him the material anywhere else would have required letting others know what they were doing. Of course, it also explains why Nunes would need to brief Trump: because Cohen-Watnick probably wasn’t allowed to do so directly.

There’s more at the link but this is the basic premise. I’m not sure how Ellis fits into this. He’s in the White House counsels office after all, so maybe this was actually some kind of McGahn gambit. Or not.

Click over to Talking Points Memo if you are looking for more info on this. Marshall is very good at connecting the dots.

Ryan Lizza also debunks the Susan Rice story at the New Yorker.

Also, Haaretz has a good profile of Cohen-Watnick. This White House … oy.

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