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Month: April 2018

Hannity’s Stormy Monday

Published by digby on April 17, 2018

Hannity’s Stormy Monday

by digby


I wrote about Sean’s big day for Salon this morning:

I think everyone knew the Michael Cohen hearing on Monday would make news. It was anticipated that Judge Kimba Wood would decide whether or not the president would be granted a restraining order against his own Department of Justice, preventing them from searching the documents and other items seized from his attorney’s office and homes last week. And we knew that Stormy Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti, would attend, so there was sure to be a ton of press and wall-to-wall coverage.

Wood had said on Friday that she wanted to know how many clients Cohen represented, and who they were, before making a determination as to whether or not the search was improper. When Cohen’s attorneys said they didn’t have that information, she told them to make sure their client was in court on Monday, prepared to answer the question. Everyone was eager to hear the answer.

But nothing prepared us for the news that Cohen only represents three clients: President Trump, deputy Republican National Committee Finance chair Elliott Broidy — and Fox News host Sean Hannity. Nobody saw that one coming.

Since all the lawyers had been told Friday that this question was on the agenda for Monday’s hearing, there was no reason for those who actually knew the answer to be surprised that it was asked. In fact, Cohen’s lawyers argued that they were prepared to immediately appeal any decision to reveal the third client’s name, since he was adamant about not wanting to be publicly identified. The judge was unmoved and demanded the name. They gave it. There was no appeal.

Since Sean Hannity had clearly told Cohen that he didn’t want his name to be public, it seemed odd that he didn’t have a prepared statement ready just in case. He had to know there was at least a 50-50 chance he’d be revealed. Instead, Hannity dribbled out explanations on his radio show, on Twitter and through statements over the course of the day, asserting that he had never paid Cohen or put him on retainer and that there was no third party involved. Likely Hannity was trying to reassure his wife that he didn’t have a “Stormy” issue.

The Fox host is now claiming that he saw Cohen as a pal he consulted on a casual basis about some innocuous real estate matters. Nonetheless, he definitely considered it to be an attorney-client relationship, demanding that the appropriate privilege be recognized and all communications be off-limits to government agents.

Hannity seems to want it both ways, but that’s not really going to work. He can probably claim that his communications with Cohen are privileged, but he also needs to explain why, if their consultations were so trivial, he hasn’t simply admitted it and waived the privilege. He’s within his legal rights to assert that privilege, of course, but making a federal case involving the president out of an apparent trifle doesn’t seem too smart.

Moreover, this is a man who is worth more than $80 million. Hannity owns a private jet, which he lent to his old friend Newt Gingrich during the 2016 campaign so the former speaker could go meet with Trump in Indiana to be vetted for the vice presidency. It seems unlikely that a man of such means would consult a thuggish fixer such as Cohen for routine legal advice when he can clearly afford any top-drawer attorney he wants.


No, it’s obvious that Hannity is claiming attorney-client privilege over something he doesn’t want people to know about. Whatever it is, if government prosecutors weren’t suspicious before, you can bet this amateurish legal move ensures they are now.

None of this would even have come up, if Trump’s lawyers had not objected to the Department of Justice’s “taint team” process, which is used routinely in cases where there are issues of attorney-client privilege. If Hannity isn’t implicated in any crime, the taint team would have looked at his communications and realized there was nothing there that the FBI and prosecutors working on Cohen’s case even needed to know about.

But Trump and his people believe the FBI and the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of New York are all part of a “deep state” conspiracy and cannot be trusted. Indeed, the president’s lawyers demanded that the president be allowed to personally review all the documents, prompting the judge to ask if he really had the time for such a project. (He actually does, but it might mean forgoing some golf, tweeting and “executive time,” so that’s probably out.) As Salon’s Matthew Rozsa pointed out, that gambit didn’t work for Richard Nixon and it’s unlikely to work for Trump either.

Judge Wood did not accede to the request to review the documents, but despite her stated “faith in the Southern District U.S. Attorney’s Office that their integrity is unimpeachable,” she is considering appointing a “special master” to play some role in the process, perhaps to show that she understands the president’s concerns. (Personally, I think every government legal official involved in these Trump cases should learn from James Comey’s mistakes and just play it by the book.)

This part of the story will likely end up being another sideshow, as far as the Trump presidency is concerned. But if anyone thought that Sean Hannity had any integrity, this ended it. Even Alan Dershowitz came down on him on his own show on Monday night:

Sean Hannity has always struck me as a Trump true believer. But he takes it to extremes at times, which makes you wonder. All of Trump’s supporters in the media, even those on Fox News, have had occasion to criticize him from time to time. Hannity has never shown even the slightest annoyance with the president, much less any substantive disagreement. Knowing that Hannity is involved with Trump’s notorious fixer, regarding something he doesn’t want the public to learn about, could certainly lead one to suspect that Hannity is unwilling to criticize Trump for approximately the same reason Trump is unwilling to criticize Vladimir Putin. Maybe that’s just how all these people operate.

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Stormy weather for Sean Hannity by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 17, 2018

Stormy weather for Sean Hannity
by Tom Sullivan


Sean Hannity (left) and Michael Cohen, via Twitter

A Politico headline writer after my own heart arranged pixels to say, “Trump After Dark: No Cohen of Silence edition.”

That headline, of course, appeared above reporting that Fox News anchor Sean Hannity is Michael Cohen’s mysterious “Client Number Three.” That information came out yesterday under judge Kimba Wood’s order in the Southern District of New York court in Manhattan. Henry Jackson writes:

It’s not clear what Cohen did for Hannity, though the Fox News host has been pretty dogged in backing Cohen of late. But as POLITICO’s Josh Gerstein and Lauren Nahimas report, the revelation came amid an already incredible showdown between Trump and his own justice department over access to files seized in the raids on Cohen’s home and office last week.

“Hannity’s connection to Cohen was revealed after the conservative commentator — one of Trump’s staunchest defenders — fiercely criticized federal officials for the raids, without disclosing his own connection … It was not immediately clear what sort of legal work Cohen did for Hannity. The conservative media figure, who seemed taken aback by the disclosure as he addressed it on his syndicated radio program Monday afternoon, eventually said most of the advice related to real estate.”

Stephen Colbert quickly observed that Cohen’s work for his other two clients involves buying silence from mistresses. Stormy Daniels, one of the women for whom Cohen arranged hush money on behalf of Donald Trump, was in court yesterday with her attorney Michael Avenatti. Upon the announcement of Hannity’s name, reports Quartz, much of the court burst into laughter. Avenatti did not:

Avenatti, who was sitting next to a Quartz reporter, wrote a message in large letters on an envelope and pointed it towards Daniels: “Now we know why Fox News have not been covering.” Daniels, the porn star embroiled in a legal dispute with Trump and Cohen, nodded swiftly.

* * * * * * * *

For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

He wasn’t joking

Published by digby on April 17, 2018

He wasn’t joking

by digby


Nobody puts Trumpie in the corner:

President Trump on Monday joked that new national security adviser John Bolton could lose his job if he receives “all the credit” for last week’s airstrikes on Syria.

Trump acknowledged Bolton, who was standing along the wall of a gym near Miami where the president was participating in a tax event. The crowd gave Bolton a raucous standing ovation.

“John, that’s pretty good. I didn’t expect that. I’m a little jealous,” Trump said. “Are you giving him all the credit? Uh oh, you know that means the end of his job.”

The president seemed to be thrilled with the missile strike on Syria, which came in response to a deadly chemical weapons attack the U.S. says was carried out by Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces.

“With way over 100 missiles shot in, they didn’t shoot one down,” Trump said. “Every single one hit its target.”

Bolton, who started his job on April 9, is Trump’s third national security adviser in just 15 months, part of a historic level of turnover on his senior staff.

The president is said to chafe when his aides receive what he feels is outsized attention.

Trump was reportedly angered by a Time magazine cover that dubbed his former chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, “the great manipulator.”

Bolton better watch his step…

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KellyAnne’s contrived concern tour

Published by digby on April 16, 2018

KellyAnne’s contrived concern tour

by digby

Charlie May at Salon slogged through KellyAnne Conway’s cable news appearances this morning. She was shocked by James Comey’s rudeness. I am quite sure she would never associate with such a coarse and ignorant man. Most of the pundits agree with her. it’s a terrible blight on our culture and civic life to have this crude man going on television and lowering the discourse.

But there some other interesting moments as well:

In two Monday morning interviews on cable news, and wasting no time for rebuttal, Conway insisted — on Trump’s behalf — that Comey was “engaging in revisionist history” and that he “struggled to answer basic questions and he looked a little shaky.”

Here are five things we learned from her interviews on ABC’s “Good Morning America” and CNN’s “New Day.”

1. Does Conway believe Comey impacted the 2016 election?

“This guy swung an election,” she told ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, who also interviewed Comey. The stunning remark was thought of as a possible admission that Comey’s announcement about the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton, just days before the election, may have secured Trump’s victory.
[…]
However, Conway said her comment was sarcastic and should be interpreted as such, when taking context and tone into account. “I rolled my eyes and said ‘Really, this guy swung an election?’ It was sarcastic,” she said.

[…]
2. Conway claimed Comey was too focused on the length of Trump’s ties and the size of his hands

Ahead of the first meeting between Comey and Trump, which was a briefing in Trump Tower days before the inauguration with other top intelligence officials, Conway asserted that the former FBI head was too concerned with Trump’s hands and his obnoxiously long ties, which she said was “really gutter.”

She asserted that Comey instead should have focused on informing Trump about the Russian election interference. Comey did indeed write that he made mental notes about Trump’s hands and his ties, but the assertion that he was more concerned with that rather than Russia’s alleged election interference is dubious, at best, upon minimal scrutinization.

According to Comey, Trump and those with him were informed of Russia’s alleged efforts to meddle in the election, but they seemed hardly concerned about the potential gravity of the situation.

“The conversation, to my surprise, moved into a PR conversation about how the Trump team would position this and what they could say about this,” Comey said in the interview. “I don’t remember any questions about, ‘So what are they going to do next; how might we stop it? What’s the future look like? Because we’ll be custodians of the security of this country.’ There was none of that.”

3. Conway is quick to toss stones, but forgets she resides in a glass house

Conway told Stephanopoulos that Comey “gave a free political commercial” at the end of his interview, something she has done herself on two separate occasions. Conway was found to have violated the Hatch Act twice, “by advocating for and against candidates” in the Alabama special election in December. But Conway’s opinions on Comey have changed since December 2016.

As for Comey’s “free political commercial,” here’s what he told Stephanopoulos:

I think most likely, in a very important presidential election — the next presidential election, where I do hope people of all political stripes will realize what unites us is actually more important than what divides us. And that we have to choose a leader — I don’t care what party a leader’s from. We have to choose a leader who will embody the . . . values of this country. That’s how I hope it ends.

4. Conway muddies the waters over Michael Flynn

When asked if the president has any evidence to disprove Comey’s claim that Trump had asked him to stop investigating Flynn, the then-national security adviser, Conway asserted that in his testimony to Congress, Comey said no one had asked him to do so. This assertion is indeed not factual.

“The president has made very clear that he never asked anyone to interfere in an investigation,” Conway said. “And Jim Comey admitted that in testimony that nobody here had ever asked him to drop an investigation for political reasons, he admitted that before he was fired.”

She was quickly interrupted by Stephanopoulos for the second time, who said, “That is not correct either.”

5. “Revisionist history”

On CNN, Conway told Cuomo that the president believed the former FBI chief was “engaging in revisionist history” in his book. She added, “He loves to divert the spotlight to himself and be the center of power.” The assertion, regardless of the authenticity, was laughable, coming from the Trump administration of all places.

More at the link.

The media seems to be taking her line. Of course. At the end of the day, she’s a Villager and they stick together.

He can’t even say it in private

Published by digby on April 16, 2018

He can’t even say it in private

by digby

This is the creepiest moment of the full Comey interview in my opinion:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So connections between the Trump campaign and Russia had been corroborated by the time you left the F.B.I.?

JAMES COMEY: I think all I can say is that– the– the work was still underway, the investigation began because of inf– reliable information that George Papadopoulos was having conversations about obtaining information from the Russians. That’s probably as far as I can go at this point.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So where did the conversation go?

JAMES COMEY: The president was talking about something that had happened during an airing of a interview he did with Bill O’Reilly on Fox–

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Oh the Super Bowl interview —

JAMES COMEY: Yeah. The Super Bowl pre-game show where– and I hadn’t asked any questions about this, but the president was just talking about it, he had given an answer to Bill O’Reilly that had been much criticized across the political spectrum when he had said, in response to a question, that he respected Vladimir Putin and said, “That doesn’t mean I’m going to get along with him.”

And then O’Reilly responded, “But he’s a killer.” And the president responded, in substance, “But we’re killers, too. You think our country’s so innocent.” I forget the exact words, but that’s the gist of it. And that moral equivalence, between the people of our government and Putin’s thugs, had generated a lot of controversy.

And so the president was, as I said when I described the dinner, just in a monologue talking about how that was a great answer, what was he supposed to do, it was a hard question, he gave his best answer. And just going on and on and on. Basically we’re all agreeing with this if we don’t speak.

And having seen it happen during the dinner I thought, “I can’t let that happen,” ’cause I don’t think it was a hard question. I think the second part of his answer is terrible. And so he gave me an opening at some point by saying like, “Yeah, you agree it was a good answer–“

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: So the president wants you to say this was a good answer.

JAMES COMEY: Yeah. In fact, he was telling me it was a good answer and then said– gave me an opening by saying, “You think it was a great answer. You think it was a good answer.” And then he was starting to move on. And I jumped in and I said, “Mr. President, the first part of the answer was fine, not the second part. We’re not the kind of killers that Putin is.”

And when I said that, the weather changed in the room. And like a shadow crossed his face and his eyes got this strange, kinda hard look. And I thought in that moment, “I’ve just done something unusual maybe.” And then (SNAP) it passed and the meeting was over. And, “Thanks for coming in,” and– and Priebus walked me out. It was like–

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You had another mob flashback.

JAMES COMEY: Yeah, I did. Although in that moment I was thinking, “I just succeeded,” although I hadn’t intended to, in ending any personal relationship between me and the president by th– by interrupting him and also criticizing him to his face. And I went back and told my staff that it happened, and then I thought– and told them, “That’s not a bad thing, because it will help us keep a distance that we need to keep from him.”

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You– you saw it right there, and we talked about this earlier– why is President Trump so reluctant to call out Vladimir Putin?

JAMES COMEY: I don’t know. I’m struck by it and I’m struck by it both in public and in private. Because I can understand the arguments why the president of the United States might not want to criticize the leader of another country because there’s always good reasons to try and build better relationships, I suppose, even when that other leader is someone who is killing his own citizens and engaging in– in attacks against our country. But you would think that in private– talking to the F.B.I. director, whose job it is to thwart Russian attacks, you might acknowledge that this enemy of ours is an enemy of ours. But I never saw. And so I don’t know the reason. I really don’t.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: Do you think the Russians have something on Donald Trump?

JAMES COMEY: I think it’s possible. I don’t know. These are more words I never thought I’d utter about a president of the United States, but it’s possible.

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: That’s stunning. You can’t say for certain that the president of the United States is not compromised by the Russians?

JAMES COMEY: It is stunning and I wish I wasn’t saying it, but it’s just– it’s the truth. I cannot say that. It always struck me and still strikes me as unlikely, and I woulda been able to say with high confidence about any other president I dealt with, but I can’t. It’s possible.

And yes, Comey loves to portray himself as a saint. But as I’ve said before, I don’t think he’s a liar and this whole thing just grosses me out. Trump’s dominant gorilla behavior is grotesque. I can’t imagine why anyone would ever work for such a bullying imbecile.

But his unwillingness to say a word against Putin even in private with the director of the FBI is telling. So is the fact that he and his crew never once talked about how to thwart Russian interference in the future. He said the same thing to USA Today:

“At least in my experience, he won’t criticize Vladimir Putin even in private,” he said. “I can understand why a president…might not want to criticize publicly another leader” in the interests of forging a good relationship. “But privately? Sitting with the person in charge of countering the Russian threat in the United States? Privately not being willing to do that? That always struck me.”

Unless Trump is hiding something, it. makes. no. sense.

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Oh Sean, Sean, Sean …

Published by digby on April 16, 2018

Oh Sean, Sean, Sean …

by digby

I’m sure Sean Hannity is a true Trump believer. He is his most vociferous defender on cable news and is known to be a top adviser in Trump’s kitchen cabinet. But it sure could look like Trump has him wrapped around his finger for other reasons:

President Donald Trump’s personal attorney has been forced to reveal that another of his clients is Fox News host Sean Hannity. Lawyers for Michael Cohen argued in court on Monday that they could not identify Hannity because he asked that his name not be disclosed in connection with an FBI seizure of Cohen’s files. But Judge Kimba Wood made one of the lawyers identify him in open court. The hearing in a New York City courtroom stems from a surprise raid this month on Cohen’s home and office.

Nobody would hire Cohen to do some routine estate planning. Cohen has a specialty. He’s a fixer. And Fox News is run by sexist pigs. We know that.

One thing we know for sure now is that even if he wanted to, Hannity can’t cross Trump, can he? Trump knows …

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Only the best

Published by digby on April 16, 2018

Only the best

by digby

If you think Mike Pence might hire better people than Trump, think again:

Vice President Mike Pence’s pick for his national security advisor, Jon Lerner, has decided against joining Pence’s team. Lerner’s decision comes after Axios reported earlier tonight that President Trump had attempted to block Lerner’s appointment over his anti-Trump work for the Club for Growth during the 2016 campaign.

Or Haley either.

Jon Lerner was ‘t a national security policy guy for the Club for Growth. He was their pollster.

I’m sure he’s a nice guy. But at this level you should have some experience in national security.

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Pearl clutching 101

Published by digby on April 16, 2018
Pearl clutching 101
by digby
Courtesy of Colbert
I hate having to defend James Comey. I really hate it. I still think he’s a sanctimonious showboater and his holier-than-thou attitude still rubs me the wrong way. I will never understand his actions in 2016.  But watching the Villagers get on their high horses and condemn him for fighting Trump on his own terms is making me sick. Comey isn’t the first one to call Trump out for being what he is. He’s not “lowering the bar.” He’s not saying anything that millions of Americans don’t scream at the TV every single day, including many people who work in newsrooms.  It’s just that the Republicans used to say it then they all stopped and became his toadies in public. 
Here’s a brief list of what they used to say about him from the New York Times’ scathing editorial:

Republicans used to warn the nation about Mr. Trump openly, back when they thought they could still protect their party from him. Here’s a short sampling: “malignant clown,” “national disgrace,” “complete idiot,” “a sociopath, without a conscience or feelings of guilt, shame or remorse,”“graceless and divisive,” “predatory and reprehensible,” flawed “beyond mere moral shortcomings,” “unsound, uninformed, unhinged and unfit,” “a character and temperament unfit for the leader of the free world,” “A bigot. A misogynist. A fraud. A bully.” Some still say these sorts of things, albeit anonymously. Just last week, one of the president’s defenders in Congress told a conservative columnist, “It’s like Forrest Gump won the presidency, but an evil, really [expletive] stupid Forrest Gump.”

I’m no fan of Comey but I think he’s perfectly justified is saying what we all can see with our own eyes.

This double standard is going to get that orange miscreant elected again. They hamstring the other side with demands of propriety and Trump rolls right over them.

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Cohen, Stormy and his goombahs

Published by digby on April 16, 2018

Cohen, Stormy and his goombahs


by digby

I wrote about Trump and Cohen and the heap of trouble they’re facing for Salon this morning:

The weekend started off with a bang and ended with a whimper. In concert with U.S. allies, President Trump ordered a missile strike against Syria on Friday night, in retaliation for the apparent chemical attack on civilians in Douma earlier in the week. The precision strike was limited to some weapons facilities, and so far there are no reports of deaths on the ground, which is likely because the U.S. warned Russia and the Syrians in advance. Trump had tweeted to the world that he was planning to launch missile strikes, so it’s not as if anyone was surprised. (This is a good thing, although it certainly calls his “Pearl Harbor doctrine” into question.)

By Saturday night, Trump was tweeting out “Mission Accomplished,” with no apparent sense of irony whatsoever.

The White House made sure it was widely reported that Trump really wanted to teach Russia a lesson and had pushed hard for a major bombing campaign but was talked out of it by his Pentagon chief. Everyone is now supposed to believe that Trump is chomping at the bit to be tougher on Russia than even Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, but in the end Trump bowed to the defense secretary’s advice because he’s always restrained when he needs to be. (If you believe any of that, I’ve got some Trump steaks to sell you.)

Despite the Syrian strike, with all its Pentagon-provided, video-game footage of fire and fury, the White House couldn’t black out the news of the forthcoming book by James Comey or the astonishing story unfolding around Trump’s personal lawyer and former Trump Organization executive Michael Cohen. When I say the weekend ended with a whimper, I’m referring to Trump’s petulant, puerile Twitter rant on Sunday:

He is obviously sincerely agitated about James Comey’s book but his unhinged tweets are also part of a coordinated response by the Republican party and are therefore to be expected. More interesting is the fact that he tweeted about the FBI raid on his lawyer Michael Cohen’s office, commenting for only the second time since his overwrought TV appearance with the joint chiefs on the day it happened. He was obviously watching his unofficial adviser Alan Dershowitz opine on television when he tweeted this:

I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that only the lawyers who have engaged in criminal conspiracies with him are nervous.

While Trump was ordering airstrikes on Syria last Friday, it’s fair to assume he had one eye on the TV. There were reports from the federal courtroom where Cohen’s lawyers were protesting the searches, and to everyone’s surprise, Trump had his own lawyers in the courtroom arguing — you guessed it! — that the warrants served on Cohen by federal prosecutors violated attorney-client privilege. Judge Kimba Wood was reportedly miffed that Cohen was not available in the courtroom to answer questions that his lawyers couldn’t.

Where was Cohen, anyway? Well, he was hanging around with his pals on the street, smoking cigars. I’m not kidding. This brilliant satire about Cohen’s day by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo says it all:

At any rate, Judge Wood has ordered Cohen to appear in court Monday.

In one of the three hearings held on Friday, prosecutors revealed that they’ve been investigating Cohen for months. Their filing added that the searches were meant to “seek evidence of crimes, many of which have nothing to do with his work as an attorney, but rather relate to Cohen’s own business dealings.” Those business dealings include suspected money laundering, bank fraud, wire fraud and nefarious criminal partnerships in the New York taxi industry. How all this fits into Trump’s business in the U.S. and overseas or with the Russia probe, if it does at all, remains to be seen. We do know that Cohen was in the middle of all of it.

What is becoming clearer every day is that Cohen seems to have made a lot of money, and I do mean a lot, in schemes arranging payoffs to women to keep them quiet. It appears to be a kind of side service he has provides to other clients, not just his patron, the president. It was also reported this week that Cohen had arranged for another woman who had an affair with a high-ranking Republican official to be paid more than a million dollars in hush money. The man, a wealthy Trump donor and confidant named Elliott Broidy, paid Cohen another quarter of a million on top of that. (Broidy is also entangled in the Russia probe, having participated in that mysterious meeting in the Seychelles, just before Trump’s inauguration.)

Furthermore, the woman involved in the Broidy case was represented by Keith Davidson, the same lawyer who represented Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, two women who allegedly had affairs with Trump and were paid to keep their mouths shut about it. There is some kind of remarkable racket going on here. On Sunday, The Wall Street Journal reported that Cohen also managed to shut down a story in US Magazine in 2013 about Donald Trump Jr.’s rumored affair with singer Aubrey O’Day, who had appeared with Don Jr. on “The Apprentice.” It’s all in the family.

If there’s one person in America who prepared the ground for this scandal, that would be Stormy Daniels’ attorney, Michael Avenatti. He is as smart and clever as Michael Cohen is — or rather, as Cohen evidently isn’t. Avenatti’s TV appearances and legal strategy in Daniels’ civil case have been perfectly calibrated for the Trump era of reality TV and gangster series. He tweets, he talks and he doles out information for maximum impact. He was in court on Friday and stood outside giving interviews while Cohen was being filmed hanging with his goombahs on the sidewalk. Trump evidently realizes that taking Avenatti’s bait would do him no good, but you can bet it’s driving him crazy.


Monday’s hearing promises to be quite a circus. Trump’s lawyers are demanding to see everything the feds seized before prosecutors can review it, to determine if any of the material violates attorney-client privilege. Cohen will be there, presumably in a more subdued, lawyerly suit than he wore on Friday.

Oh, and did I mention that Avenatti is bringing Stormy Daniels to court today? The only one missing will be Donald Trump himself, but you can be sure that he’ll be glued to the screen watching every move, even if he has to put Jim Comey on the DVR. This case goes straight to the heart of the Trump con — and maybe even his marriage.

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Comey: Trump’s “tremendous damage” by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on April 16, 2018

Comey: Trump’s “tremendous damage”
by Tom Sullivan

At the time of this writing, the rage tweets from Donald Trump about former FBI director James Comey have not yet re-started. But given Trump’s insistence that hitting back is “a way of life” for him, a bully’s life, we can expect that much consistency from him.

Comey’s ABC interview last night with George Stephanopoulos was irritating for another reason. The choppiness of the editing left no sense of flow to the interview and excised a lot of nuance that, thankfully, remains in the lengthy transcript.

As reported, Comey did indeed liken Trump’s style to that of a mafia family, a view taken from his early days as a prosecutor. His first meeting with Trump struck him in a similar way:

JAMES COMEY: There’s an expression in the Mafia– there’s a distinction between a friend of yours and a friend of ours. A friend of yours is someone on the outside of the family, a friend of ours, a “amica nostra” is the way they talked about it in Sicilian, is part of the Family, capital F.

And I think the reason it was coming into my head was I felt this effort to make us all– and maybe this wasn’t their intention, but it’s the way it felt to me, to make us all “amica nostra.” We’re all part of the messaging, we’re all part of the effort. The boss is at the head of the table and we’re going to figure out together how to do this. And I think that’s why it brought that strange memory back into my head.

A key section addresses Comey’s assessment of the president:

GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS: You write that President Trump is unethical, untethered to the truth. Is Donald Trump unfit to be president?

JAMES COMEY: Yes. But not in the way m– I often hear people talk about it. I don’t buy this stuff about him being mentally incompetent or early stages of dementia. He strikes me as a person of above average intelligence who’s tracking conversations and knows what’s going on. I don’t think he’s medically unfit to be president. I think he’s morally unfit to be president.

A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person’s not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds. And that’s not a policy statement. Again, I don’t care what your views are on guns or immigration or taxes.

There’s something more important than that that should unite all of us, and that is our president must embody respect and adhere to the values that are at the core of this country. The most important being truth. This president is not able to do that. He is morally unfit to be president.

Comey, however, does not believe Trump should be impeached. Not that the Mueller investigation might not turn up evidence of crimes, but that impeachment would “let the American people off the hook.” They elected him; they have a duty to un-elect him.

JAMES COMEY: Well, sure. Tha– I– I didn’t mean to say that I want them to stop doing their investigation or whatever flows from that. But in a way, as a citizen, I think we owe it to each other to get off the couch and think about what unites us. I think about the people who supported Trump, and continue to support Trump.

A lotta them come from families with a proud history of military service. And that’s a wonderful thing. What did their fathers and grandfathers fight and die for? Not for immigration policy. Not for a tax policy. Not for Supreme Court justice. They fought and died for a set of ideas. The rule of law. Freedom of speech. Freedom of religion. The truth.

That’s what they fought and died for. And at some point, we have to focus on that and make sure that whoever’s leading us embodies those and we judge that leader by their tether to those values. Then we’ll go back to fighting like cats and dogs about all the things we normally fight about.

Comey is perhaps, as critics charge, over-certain of his own rectitude even facing the consequences of his own misjudgments. He is also very focused on what is right and on the country’s values as he sees them. Perhaps naively so. “If Comey’s decision to release the letter on Oct. 28 was influenced by his interpretation of the polls,” Nate Silver tweeted on Friday, “that really ought to cut against his image as an honorable, principled decision-maker. Instead, he was just being expedient and trying to save his own hide.”

What failed in electing Trump was Americans abandoning the values Comey treasures. They embraced their baser selves rather than their better angels. Driven by fear, xenophobia, vulnerability, revenge, they elected someone unscrupulous to do their dirty work for them, a person whose actions they could disavow when the time comes and go back to admiring their white vinyl souls. Comey insists they not get away so cleanly. But in explaining how he expects them the find their way back, he launches into a Chauncey Gardiner-esque tale about forest fires bringing forth new growth after “tremendous damage.”

We should all live so long.

Jonathan Swann of Axios advises readers to keep their eyes on the ball and not be distracted by the Comey Show:

“The main game for Trump — and the reason his agitation levels went through the roof the last two weeks — is what happened to Michael Cohen. Trump allies are exponentially more worried about the [New York feds’] probe and the prospect of investigators poring over Trump’s business dealings than they are anything Comey is saying.”

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