Month: August 2018

Mikey’s got a problem and so does his former boss

by digby

Trump may think this means he’s off the hook because it’s not about him but, of course, it actually is:

The legal pressures facing Michael Cohen are growing in a wide-ranging investigation of his personal business affairs and his work on behalf of his former client, President Trump.

In previously unreported developments, federal prosecutors in New York are examining whether Mr. Cohen committed tax fraud, people familiar with the investigation said.

Federal authorities are assessing whether Mr. Cohen’s income from his taxi-medallion business was underreported in federal tax returns, one of the people said. That income included hundreds of thousands of dollars received in cash and other payments over the last five years, the person said.

Prosecutors also are looking into whether any bank employees improperly allowed Mr. Cohen to obtain loans for which he didn’t provide adequate documentation, people familiar with the matter said. In particular, federal investigators are looking closely at Mr. Cohen’s relationship with Sterling National Bank—which provided financing for Mr. Cohen’s taxi-medallion business—including whether Mr. Cohen inflated the value of any of his assets as collateral for loans, according to people familiar with the matter.

Convictions for federal tax- and bank-fraud may carry potentially significant prison sentences, which could put additional pressure on Mr. Cohen to cooperate with prosecutors if he is charged with those crimes, according to former federal prosecutors.

I’m guessing Cohen knows exactly how much trouble he’s in, which explains why he’s so anxious to help out Mr Mueller.

Trump has a lot to worry about …

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Manafort’s recurring nightmare

by digby

On MSNBC this morning former DOJ official Chuck Rosenberg characterized prosecuting cases before the judge in the Manafort case as torture. This was not because the judge is unfair or won’t come to the right conclusion but because he has an obnoxious personality. In other words nobody should assume that Mueller is in trouble because of this judge’s anatics. He always does this.

This article by Christian Farias in New York Magazine explains that this first trial isn’t the big show anyway:

Don’t get distracted by the shiny objects and fashion bills. Instead, focus on the most remarkable aspect of the Manafort trial thus far: the reaction from President Trump, as well as what will come next.

Ponder for a moment that the president of the United States, on the day prosecutors representing the United States were in court making their case against Manafort, ordered the country’s top prosecutor, Jeff Sessions, to shut the whole thing down. Or that Trump went to bat for his disgraced former campaign chief, likening Manafort favorably to mob boss Al Capone and suggesting that the prosecution his own government brought against Manafort is malicious and rotten to the core. If that’s not improper interference with an ongoing law enforcement and judicial matter, I don’t know what is.

There’s undoubtedly something at the heart of Paul Manafort’s legal troubles that unsettles the president. As if there’s something the two of them know that could implicate the bigger fish in high crimes or malfeasance of some kind. Manafort did a lot for his client, the unlikely presidential candidate, than most people like to give him credit for. Could Manafort, who lived well beyond his means and yet worked for the campaign for no money, be sticking to his guns and bleeding money defending himself because he expects Trump to reciprocate? And maybe, with the stroke of a pen, absolve him like he did Joe Arpaio?

To understand how far Manafort is willing to go for Trump, look at the far more interesting court activity happening across the Potomac. In Washington, D.C., Manafort stands accused of conspiring to defraud the U.S. government, of failure to register as a foreign lobbyist, and of obstruction of justice, among other charges — and that alongside a mysterious co-defendant, Konstantin Kilimnik. Earlier this year, Mueller disclosed in court documents that this wingman possessed “ties to Russian intelligence service,” which persisted during the presidential campaign. That case is still on schedule to go to trial in September, despite Manafort’s best efforts to delay it.

But there’s more. Just as jury selection was underway in Alexandria on Tuesday, the chief judge of the federal courthouse in Washington issued a 92-page ruling ordering an aide for Roger Stone, the irreverent Trump confidant and longtime Manafort pal, to testify before a grand jury. The decision was categorical, the third affirming the authority and legality of the special counsel investigation. But this one came with a bit of extra oomph. U.S. Chief Judge Beryl Howell, its author, may also be overseeing the secret grand-jury proceedings unfolding in the nation’s capital — a task that would place her at the center of nearly every pre-prosecution aspect of every public case so far initiated by the special counsel. More than anyone, she’d know that the Mueller probe is no hoax.

“The scope of the Special Counsel’s power falls well within the boundaries the Constitution permits, as the Special Counsel is supervised by an official who is himself accountable to the elected President,” wrote Howell. She also gave Mueller a boost last year in a similar, pre-indictment dispute with a Manafort lawyer who was wanted for testimony before the grand jury.

This is all tough news for Manafort. For months now, he has mounted similar Hail Marys attempting to delegitimize the Mueller probe. Both Ellis and U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson have rejected separate motions to dismiss the two active cases against him. So far, all Manafort’s efforts have been for naught, as has his bid to stand trial at liberty rather than behind bars. On Tuesday, the U.S. Court of Appeals District of Columbia Circuit affirmed Jackson’s order to revoke Manafort’s home detention over allegations that he was tampering with witnesses — a new crime that, if proved, would only add to his legal woes. So there’s little doubt he’ll sit in jail through the duration of both trials.

We’re not done. Jackson this week sided with a special counsel request to not allow Manafort’s lawyers to game the clock on the Washington trial involving Kilimnik, which for months has been set for September. All along, Mueller’s team has been doing its due diligence — turning over certain pretrial materials to the defense in good faith, hoping the other side will do the same as the two adversaries prepare their cases-in-chief. But Manafort’s side hasn’t turned over anything. “The defense has made no showing whatsoever for its requested four-week extension, and to grant it would unfairly prejudice the government,” Mueller’s lawyers charged in a court filing that accused Manafort’s legal team of “gamesmanship.” Jackson ruled later that same day that she’s “opposed” to any attempts to delay the Washington trial.

That’s where the real action will be, and where talk of election interference and Russian conspiracy may be inevitable. With Manafort hanging on by the skin of his teeth, and Mueller refusing to make it any easier for him, patience through all these trials and tribulations may just be the price he has to pay as he hopes that maybe, just maybe, President Trump will throw him a lifeline.

Stay tuned …

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Golf to rally ready

by digby

Thanks Stephen, I needed that.

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Trump focuses the Democratic mind

by digby

However you feel about the Democratic party, this is good news. Job one: put up a big Trump roadblock.

The Democratic Party Has Entered Its No Bullsh*t Phase

Two years ago, at the annual gathering of progressive activists dubbed Netroots Nation, then-presidential candidate Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) was interrupted repeatedly by hecklers upset that his platform was so seemingly skimpy on racial justice. The incident left Sanders piqued and confused. He had, after all, been invited there to speak.

But he didn’t have it nearly as bad as former Governor Martin O’Malley. That same year, the Maryland Democrat boofed a question about Black Lives Matter. “White lives matter,” he pleaded, having clearly not been briefed by staff. “All lives matter.” His hecklers came up on the stage and literally took the microphone.

That was Netroots Nation then: less a conference than a public airing of political grievances.

Two years, later, at this year’s confab in New Orleans, there were no proxy wars over microphones or walks outs when headliners like Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) spoke. It was, instead, bizarrely civil and very much mission-oriented around a burning, almost existential, desire to win back power.

“All the chips are on the table,” said Gov. Jay Inslee (D-WA) during his Netroots panel. “We have never had a greater opportunity to enhance progressive values.”

Later in the panel a middle-aged woman stood up to ask the governor a question. Only, as is often the case in these confabs, she prefaced it with a bit of biography. “I’m actually from Virginia,” she proclaimed. “And I can tell you, [Inslee] is correct. The number of people in Virginia, when I was out helping the campaign this last year who said, ‘I don’t care who is running for the Democrats, if he has the D, I’m voting,’ the number of people who said that was crazy.”

The notion that a political party is bound together by a hunger for electoral success may seem painfully obvious. Winning elections, after all, is their primary point of existence.

But those even remotely familiar with the Democratic id know that this hasn’t always the case. The party’s various factions are often in a perpetual state of annoyance with one another, over everything from ideology to strategy. ‘Dems in disarray’ may be an overused trope. But, like many tropes, it has an element of truth to it.

But the Trump era seems to have, at least momentarily, convinced Democrats to put grievances with party leadership over things like communication strategies and policy priorities on the backburner.

The agenda at Netroots was filled instead with strategy sessions geared towards getting out from under Trumpism: hyper-localized organizing of youth voters; elevating black women’s groups; using peer-to-peer texting; optimizing earned media, tips on bird-dogging and building small donor fundraising networks; protecting campaigns from getting “rat**ked” and securing them from foreign infiltrators; utilizing digital tools to turn out voters; and so on.

There is a lot to fight about within the Democratic coalition and I have little doubt that there will be plenty of them going forward. But for the moment everyone is rowing in the same direction which shows strategic maturity. Thank God.

As Jason Robards famously said in All The President’s Men :

Nothing’s riding on this except the, uh, first amendment to the Constitution, freedom of the press, and maybe the future of the country.

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Steven Miller large and in charge

by digby

I’m not in favor of withdrawing citizenship from anyone. But if we do it, I hope they start with Steven Miller. He really is a malevolent piece of work who should be sent back to his shithole planet: 

The Trump administration is expected to issue a proposal in coming weeks that would make it harder for legal immigrants to become citizens or get green cards if they have ever used a range of popular public welfare programs, including Obamacare, four sources with knowledge of the plan told NBC News. 

The move, which would not need Congressional approval, is part of White House senior adviser Stephen Miller’s plan to limit the number of migrants who obtain legal status in the U.S. each year. 

Details of the rulemaking proposal are still being finalized, but based on a recent draft seen last week and described to NBC News, immigrants living legally in the U.S. who have ever used or whose household members have ever used Obamacare, children’s health insurance, food stamps and other benefits could be hindered from obtaining legal status in the U.S. 

Immigration lawyers and advocates and public health researchers say it would be the biggest change to the legal immigration system in decades and estimate that more than 20 million immigrants could be affected. They say it would fall particularly hard on immigrants working jobs that don’t pay enough to support their families.

This is  a sickening attempt to gin up the base for November and create even more division in this country for entirely cynical reasons. Also, Miller, Sessions and Trump are xenophobic monsters.

America needs immigrants. They are the backbone of our culture. Immigration is what keeps us dynamic, growing and changing. These disgusting racists want to stop that and in the process they are destroying the country.

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Trump’s base isn’t quite as secure as he thinks

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

This past week-end, President Donald Trump tweeted a confession to the world that his top campaign operatives, Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner had knowingly met with emissaries of the Russian government to receive information on his opponent, which he characterized as perfectly legal and common, while also insisting that he knew nothing about it. In a previous era this would be a shocking development that would likely lead to impeachment. Regardless of the legality (and plenty of experts say that it is indeed illegal) it is certainly unethical and unpatriotic. There have been other cases in which campaigns were given stolen information a they went to the authorities with the information, they didn’t respond “I love it” and then gather the campaign’s top guns to hear the pitch. (The one exception that we know of is that paragon of virtue Richard Nixon’s “Chenault Affair” — of course)

Trump is obviously very agitated. That tweet and dozens more, along with his increasingly unhinged rally appearances over the past few weeks show a man who is under pressure and not handling it well. And that chaos is starting to catch up with him in a way he doesn’t seem to expect or understand.

Annie Karni of Politico reported this week that the president and his advisers now believe that his famous campaign statement that he could shoot someone on 5th Avenue is pretty much true:

[T]he experience of Charlottesville, as well as his ability to recover from any short-term crisis, has been empowering for Trump and his allies. Three former aides said the takeaway from Charlottesville is the nihilistic notion that nothing matters except for how things play.“The lesson of the Trump presidency is that no short-term crisis matters long term,” said one former White House official who worked in the administration last year during the racial crisis…

Even Trump’s critics admit that it had little effect in the short term. At this point, it is conventional wisdom among them that no single event will ever seal his fate — and that the only impact they might have on him, politically, is in the aggregate.

There is evidence that his numerous crises are finally starting to take that toll. According to a new poll by Priorities USA, Garin-Hart-Yang Research Group, and Global Strategy Group three recent “crises” have stuck, sharply driving down voters’ opinions of his temperament and truthfulness to their lowest ratings in the eleven tracking polls they’ve done of the Trump presidency:

Donald Trump’s dealings with Vladimir Putin, his handling of immigration and the separation of children from their families, and the impact of his trade war have stuck with voters in a way nothing else has since the beginning of his presidency.

It would seem that the Trump team’s “nothing matters” rationale may not be playing as well as they thought. After 18 months of Trump’s antics it’s become obvious that in every area Trump’s character flaws are producing crises. Even some of his own supporters have begun to balk:

Among the 37% of Trump voters who do not strongly approve of him, just 52% want to elect Republicans to help him pass his policies. Large shares of these weak Trump voters express an unfavorable reaction to Trump’s temperament and leadership style (53%), his dealings with Russia and Vladimir Putin (48%), and his truthfulness in the things that he says (47%).  By 35% to 27% they express more doubts than confidence about whether Trump has the integrity and honesty a president should have (34% say they feel somewhere in between).

These impressions of Trump’s competence, integrity and truthfulness seem to be directly related to these three recent crises and they are affecting people’s attitudes about other issues. By a 56 percent to 31 percent margin voters don’t like what they’ve heard about the trade war. And that is spilling over into impressions of Trump’s allegedly brilliant economic stewardship. Only 35 percent said Trump’s economic policies are good for them, with the same number approving of the tax bill. Only  22 percent say that things are changing for the better economically.

An astonishing 64 percent say the cost of health care is getting worse and they know who to thank.

More and more are saying they want the congress to check his power:

By 51% to 37%, voters say they would rather see more Democrats elected to Congress to be a check and balance on Trump than more Republicans elected to Congress to help Trump pass his policies and programs.  Notably, voters who backed Trump in 2016 are far less eager to elect Republicans to help Trump (75%) than Clinton voters are to elect Democrats to be a check on Trump (94%).  This reflects the fact that Clinton voters are far more likely to strongly disapprove of Trump’s performance (83%) than Trump voters are to voice strong approval (63%).

This leads to an interesting strategic insight. Democrats running for office in the upcoming midterms don’t have to emphasize the Russia investigation or even immigration and trade if they are in red or swing districts. Trump’s incompetence and cruelty are already being taken into account, leaving the field open for candidates to focus on the bread and butter issues. Noxious Trumpism is baked in to people’s impressions of his policies now and Republicans who are associated with him (pretty much all of them) are tainted as well.

Tonight we have one of those bell weather special elections for the fall in an Ohio district that Trump won by double digits in 2016 and which has voted Republican for 30 years. The GOP has had all hands on deck for the past couple of weeks but the last thing they needed was the president coming to town and holding one of his obnoxious rallies. A big part of this district is composed of those suburban, white women who really loathe him. He insisted on showing up anyway, assured that his magic touch would bring his legions of followers to the polls. Naturally, it’s almost the anniversary of the atrocity in Charlottesville so he had to tweet a racist rant about Ohio’s basketball hero LeBron James, just to ensure that his appearance was as pernicious as possible.

As of Election Day, Democrat Danny O’Connor and Republican Troy Balderson are tied, and reporting this week says the Democrats are surging. If O’Connor pulls it off, it’s going to be hard to say that Trump’s disruptive behavior “played well.” In fact the signs are that people are now paying close attention and don’t like what they see one little bit.

Working people need a #MeToo movement
by Tom Sullivan

(Mark Dixon/ Flickr)

Extreme poverty is receding worldwide. Good news. The bad news is extreme inequality is on the rise as well. So while people may get off the bottom rung of society’s ladder, they have nowhere to climb, Axios reports.

With China’s economy booming, lifting 900 million out of poverty since 1990. The World Bank adds that while two-thirds of the world lived on less than $5.50 per day 20 years ago, today less than half that do.

But while Europe remains the least unequal place to live, Axios notes the World Inequality Report calculates that the 7 million richest people on the planet collected “13.8% of all economic growth since 1980.” Social mobility is falling. The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) estimates in the United States, to take a country at random, it would take a family in the bottom 10% of incomes five generations to move into the middle class.

Capitalism once advertised better than this. Which is why socialism is gaining newfound popularity, writes Michael Tomasky in the New York Times. Capitalism like this makes socialism more appealing to younger Americans:

You’ve seen the United States go from being a country that your parents — or if you’re 28, more likely your grandparents — described as a place where life got better for every succeeding generation to a place where for millions of people, quite possibly including you, that’s no longer true.

As that happened, you’ve seen the rich get richer, and you’ve perhaps noticed that the government’s main response to this has been to keep cutting their taxes (in fairness, President Barack Obama did raise the highest rate in 2013 to 39.6 percent from 35 percent, although for single filers, that rate didn’t kick in until earned income went above $400,000).

You witnessed the financial meltdown of 2008, caused by big banks betting against themselves. Capitalists might want to consider how all that looked to a young person who came from a working-class family and who probably knows someone who lost a job or even his house, while some of the bankers who helped create the mess walked away with golden parachutes, like that of Countrywide Financial’s Angelo Mozilo, which The Times valued at $88 million.

Soaring profits, tax repatriation holidays, and stock buybacks for a few. Decades of stagnant wages and gnawing financial insecurity for most. Even now, after decades of the U.S. government ignoring elite greed and lawlessness, the Paul Manaforts facing justice are only the tip of the iceberg, writes Catherine Rampell. They have had free rein (reign?) to pillage without fear of prosecution.

Tomasky continues:

I could go on like this for 20 paragraphs. Many more, in fact. But you get the idea. Back in the days when our economy just grew and grew, we had a government and a capitalist class that invested in our people and their future — in the Interstate highways, the community colleges, the scientific research, the generous federal grants for transportation and regional development.

A 28-year-old today — Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, to take one at random — has never seen that kind of corporate capitalism, only the more rapacious, post-Reagan kind. The kind many Democrats embraced in vying to complete for campaign funds from the deep-pocketed. No wonder the young are calling capitalism on the carpet.

At Netroots Nation in New Orleans on Saturday, Ocasio-Cortez called on Democrats to rededicate themselves as the party of working people and to the policies that from Franklin Delano Roosevelt to Lyndon Johnson built the world’s greatest middle class:

“These are not new ideas,” said Ocasio-Cortez. “We are picking up where we last left off, when we were last our most powerful, when we were our last greatest. It’s time to own that our party was the one of the Great Society, of the New Deal, of the Civil Rights Act. That’s our party. That’s who we are. It’s time for us to come home.”

Perhaps it is time working people abused by capitalism custom-formatted for oligarchs got a #MeToo movement. Want a raise? Me too. Job security? Me too. A raise, a fair share of the economic growth your labor creates? Me too. Health care that heals the sick instead of bankrupting them? Me too.

Tomasky advises a nervous capitalist class, “You want fewer socialists? Easy. Stop creating them.”

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

GOP self-ownership society

by digby

Trump’s cultists may have adopted a new definition of patriotism but hislawyers would like him to stop publicly confessing to crimes:

President Donald Trump has been urged to stop tweeting about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump’s top advisers and several Russians, a source familiar with discussions tells CNN.

The President was advised that his tweeting only gives oxygen to the topic, even if those around Trump do not believe there is any truly new development.

That’s what they say. But they most certainly are concerned that he tweeted a confession that his campaign knowingly conspired with emissaries of the Russian government — and believes there’s nothing wrong with it. Since he has the mind of a child they have to tell him something else. But they know very well that he once again shot himself in the foot because he couldn’t keep his big mouth shut.

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California on fire? It’s their own damned fault

by digby

Why do Californians hate Trump?

Because he says things like this:

As California wildfires claimed their seventh victim, Donald Trump finally weighed in on the tragedy with one of his most confounding tweets ever, blaming California for the blazes because it “diverts” water to the Pacific Ocean.

He also blamed the state’s “bad environmental laws” — the most protective in the nation — and trees. He called for a “tree clear to stop fire spreading.”

He failed to express condolences to the families of the victims, thank firefighters, or offer comfort to Californians afraid for their lives, homes and communities.

California wildfires are being magnified & made so much worse by the bad environmental laws which aren’t allowing massive amount of readily available water to be properly utilized. It is being diverted into the Pacific Ocean. Must also tree clear to stop fire spreading!

The tweet came just days after the Trump administration moved to scrap tough vehicle emissions standards — initially established by California. The move would clear the way for vehicles to pump an additional 600 million metric tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere by 2030. That’s the equivalent of the entire annual emissions of Canada.

It’s unclear what the president meant by water “diverted” into the Pacific. California allocates water among residents, agricultural and industrial use, and for wetlands and wildlife, including water mandated to protect endangered species. But state waters eventually drain into the ocean. As one tweeter responded: “Water running into the Pacific Ocean is called a river.” And firefighters haven’t complained of a lack of water for battling the blazes.

The tweet could be a muddled indication of support for a GOP battle in Washington for a larger water allocation to farmers, many of them Republican voters, in the drought-stricken state’s central valley. But it’s unclear how that would help staunch California fires. The scientific consensus is that fires are becoming more common because of climate change, which Trump once called a Chinese “hoax.”

Twitter users were stunned the president failed to express concern about people suffering in the fires. But most readers were stumped — or derisive. One responded: “Thanks, genius. Problem solved.”

He’s right, of course. Firefighters should use water to fight fires. And if the state were just desert nothing could burn. He’s a stable genius.

More here on how absurd this is.

The racism is a feature not a bug

by digby

I think this is an important piece of the Trump phenomenon that we are just beginning to fully appreciate:

The content of President Donald Trump’s dig at basketball superstar LeBron James might have been standard Trump fare — questioning the intelligence of a prominent African-American who has been critical of him — but the timing of the tweet made it stand out on Friday night.

The post landed almost exactly a year after the deadly clash between white nationalists and Black Lives Matter protesters in Charlottesville, Virginia, when the president refused to condemn white supremacists and neo-Nazis outright.

That moment temporarily left Trump on an island, abandoned by Republicans on the Hill and corporate executives who had previously played nice with the president on his business councils, and was a low-water mark of his presidency — one that, according to presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, “puts him in the dung heap of presidents who are completely insensitive of race in the United States.”

If that proves to be the case in the long run, a year out from Charlottesville tells a different story and is less clear cut. In fact, while Trump hasn’t changed, he’s no longer isolated, and his race and culture wars now pose one of the biggest challenges to Democrats plotting how to win back the House in 2018 and to take on Trump in 2020.

“The big picture is the fizzle,” said Bill Kristol, editor-at-large of the Weekly Standard and a prominent Never Trump conservative. “He’s not in good shape politically, but he’s not in worse shape. Charlottesville didn’t change his numbers. Everything has just become more the way it was.”

Indeed, the Republicans in Congress who distanced themselves from Trump during the height of the controversy last summer have since embraced the president on tax reform and his Supreme Court selection, Brett Kavanaugh. Many of the executives who walked away from Trump’s business councils have simply taken their hobnobbing behind closed doors: Now they quietly dine with the president at the White House, or with his daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner at their Kalorama mansion.

Trump’s poll numbers, while still hitting a ceiling below 50 percent, in the year since Charlottesville have climbed up to a high of 44 percent, according to a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll. Trump is in high demand as a campaign surrogate among Republican candidates. His supportive gang of Fox News hosts have become more ethno-nationalist in their rhetoric than they were a year ago.

Meanwhile, Trump himself is less constrained than he was after Charlottesville. At his campaign rallies and on Twitter, he has become more unadulterated in his critiques of what he calls the “fake news” media. The advisers who tried to serve as a check on his rash impulses have since left the administration and have been replaced with people more likely to let Trump set his own agenda. And, as he did on Friday, the president has continued to inflame racial tensions — something Democrats and Republicans alike see as fundamental to his power.

With Trump back on his annual working vacation at his Bedminster, New Jersey, country club — the same setting he was in during the Charlottesville crisis — the LeBron tweet served as a reminder that the president has done little to ameliorate that low-water mark of Charlottesville as one of the defining images of his presidency.

The upcoming election is going to show whether the administration’s view of this is correct. There is some evidence that there’s a cumulative effect.

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