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Month: August 2018

Cohen wasn’t just a hanger on. He was deep inside the campaign.

Published by digby on August 22, 2018
Cohen wasn’t just a hanger on. He was deep inside the campaign.
by digby
Omarosa’s latest tape isn’t all that. But it’s still worth seeing:

“The first thing the President is going to say is that ‘Michael Cohen had nothing to do with the campaign, he was just a coffee boy, he wasn’t involved,’” Manigault Newman said, referencing dismissive comments Trump has made about former campaign associates accused of wrongdoing like George Papadopolous and former chairman Paul Manafort. 

“The reason I wanted to share this with you is to, first of all, show you that he was in fact involved with the campaign,” she continued. “Not only was he involved, he organized this particular trip to Cleveland, he spoke at this event, and as you can see, he’s horsing around after, kind of, on the plane and he sat and met with the President during that trip.”

Yes, Cohen was definitely involved with the campaign. He was paying off porn stars and playmates two at a time to keep them quiet. But he was deep inside the campaign in many ways …

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The GOP is a sewer of criminality, up and down the line

Published by digby on August 22, 2018

The GOP is a sewer of criminality, up and down the line

by digby

I always knew Duncan Hunter was an asshole. So was his father. It was obvious just listening to him talk. His father, from whom he inherited his congressional seat was too. So it comes as no surprise that he’s also a criminal. This San Diego super-patriot warhawk even ripped off veterans. Of course.

The 47-page indictment unsealed Tuesday alleges, their own personal family accounts were either very low or overdrawn. The extremely detailed allegations paint the picture of a member of Congress raising money from donors and boldly using it for himself and his family to live outside their means. At one point, prosecutors allege Hunter told his campaign treasurer that the rules preventing exactly such a scenario were “silly.”

“The Hunters knew that many of their desired purchases could be paid by using campaign funds,” the indictment reads. Hunter did not respond to a request by The Washington Post for comment.

What’s perhaps most galling in the indictment is how the Hunters are alleged to have covered up their purchases: often, by claiming they were for charities, such as veterans’ organizations. Hunter is a Marine Corps veteran who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. Here are 10 of the most stunning allegations from the indictment that give politicians a bad name:

1. When Hunter and his wife chatted with each other about how they were able to get cash from the campaign to spend on daily life, they allegedly said “it was great.”

2. Margaret Hunter allegedly spent $200 on tennis shoes at Dick’s Sporting Goods, which she then claimed as being for an annual dove hunting event for wounded warriors.

3. When Hunter told his wife he needed to “buy my Hawaii shorts,” but he was out of money, she allegedly told him to buy them from a golf pro shop so he could claim they were actually golf balls for wounded warriors.

4. When the water utility company threatened to turn off their water, Margaret Hunter allegedly spent $300 in campaign funds to pay the bill.

5. Margaret Hunter allegedly spent $152 on makeup at Nordstrom and told the campaign it was “gift basket items for the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Diego.”

6. Another $394 from Macy’s was listed as “gift baskets for local organizations.”

7. In an attempt to justify spending campaign funds on a family trip to Italy, Hunter asked a naval base there for a tour. When officials said they couldn’t do it then, Hunter said, “Tell the Navy to go f— themselves.”

8. They allegedly described the payment of their family dental bills as a charitable contribution to “Smiles for Life.”

9. Margaret Hunter allegedly bought plane tickets for her mother and her mother’s boyfriend to go to Warsaw. She told the campaign it was for events in New Orleans and Kentucky.

10. Hunter allegedly used campaign funds to go a personal ski trip to Lake Tahoe when his family bank account had a negative balance and his personal bank account had $35. (He withdrew $20 from his personal bank account while there, the indictment alleges.)

Hunter was the second elected official to endorse Trump. The first? Chris Collins who recently had to stop out of his re-election campaign after being indicted for insider trading.

Only the best people, only the best.

Update: Lol. Duncan Hunter Sr is blaming Rod Rosentein and the “witch hunt” for this indictment.

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Why Trump voters don’t care if their leader is a criminal

Published by digby on August 22, 2018

Why Trump voters don’t care if their leader is a criminal

by digby

Peter Beinert makes a nice observation about the parallel universe’s in which the American people dwell these days:

On Wednesday morning, the lead story on FoxNews.com was not Michael Cohen’s admission that Donald Trump had instructed him to violate campaign-finance laws by paying hush money to two of Trump’s mistresses. It was the alleged murder of a white Iowa woman, Mollie Tibbetts, by an undocumented Latino immigrant, Cristhian Rivera.

On their face, the two stories have little in common. Fox is simply covering the Iowa murder because it distracts attention from a revelation that makes Trump look bad. But dig deeper and the two stories are deeply connected: They represent two competing notions of what corruption is.

Cohen’s admission highlights one of the enduring riddles of the Trump era. Trump’s supporters say they care about corruption. During the campaign, they cheered his vow to “drain the swamp” in Washington, D.C. When Morning Consult asked Americans in May 2016 to explain why they disliked Hillary Clinton, the second most common answer was that she was “corrupt.” And yet, Trump supporters appear largely unfazed by the mounting evidence that Trump is the least ethical president in modern American history. When asked last month whether they considered Trump corrupt, only 14 percent of Republicans said yes. Even Cohen’s allegation is unlikely to change that.

The answer may lie in how Trump and his supporters define corruption. In a forthcoming book entitled How Fascism Works, the Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley makes an intriguing claim. “Corruption, to the fascist politician,” he suggests, “is really about the corruption of purity rather than of the law. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk is intended to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of the traditional order.”

Fox’s decision to focus on the Iowa murder rather than Cohen’s guilty plea illustrates Stanley’s point. For many Fox viewers, I suspect, the network isn’t ignoring corruption so much as highlighting the kind that really matters. When Trump instructed Cohen to pay off women with whom he had affairs, he may have been violating the law. But he was upholding traditional gender and class hierarchies. Since time immemorial, powerful men have been cheating on their wives and using their power to evade the consequences.

The Iowa murder, by contrast, signifies the inversion—the corruption—of that “traditional order.” Throughout American history, few notions have been as sacrosanct as the belief that white women must be protected from nonwhite men. By allegedly murdering Tibbetts, Rivera did not merely violate the law. He did something more subversive: He violated America’s traditional racial and sexual norms.

He notes that Clinton being the first woman candidate for president was considered a corruption of the “traditional order” for these people. This explains their continued febrile excitement at the prospect of “locking her up.”

I think he’s right about this. Trump’s people are outraged that anyone but white men and the women who help them ensure the world is safe for patriarchy and white supremacy are given equal status and they are fighting with everything they have, egged on by a bunch of cynical, right wing media monsters desperate to keep their market share.

By the way, these “Real Americans” are also total hypocrites and completely devoid of principles. They spent years wearing their alleged morality and patriotism on their sleeves telling anyone who disagreed to “love it or leave it.” Now we have a depraved, ignorant, criminal in the White House and they love him. They are, in a word, deplorable.

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Beto FTW

Published by digby on August 22, 2018

Beto FTW

by digby

This viral video shows why Blue america backed Beto O’Rourke since his first bid for congress. He’s really good.

If that guy can beat the monster Ted Cruz it would restore my faith in humanity.
This is Blue America’s Take Back Texas page. You can donate to O’Rourke there.

Howie’s been writing about him a lot. If you have the time give them a read.

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The veil lifts?

Published by digby on August 22, 2018

The veil lifts?

by digby

These are all Trump voters so it’s not surprising that their bullshit detectors are lemons. But this stuff is just … well, to coin a phrase: “sad!”

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The president’s worst day yet. Will it change anything?

Published by digby on August 22, 2018

The president’s worst day yet. Will it change anything?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

Ever since Donald Trump glided down that golden escalator three years ago it has seemed as though each news cycle is more surreal than the last one. But every once in a while something happens that breaks through the dizzying cascade of crazy tweets, palace intrigue and incoherent, destructive policies. Yesterday was one of those times. Two separate, serious legal proceedings unfolded over the course of several hours, leaving the weirdly unfamiliar impression that something real and recognizable had happened.

What was already a very bad week, turned into a full-scale trainwreck for President Trump. At virtually the same moment, in New York Michael Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer, pleaded guilty to eight felonies and in Virginia Paul Manafort, his former campaign chairman, was found guilty of eight felonies.

In his allocution, Cohen told the court that in addition to his own criminal tax evasion, bank fraud and campaign finance violations,  his former employer Donald Trump had illegally directed him to pay hush money to adult film actress Stormy Daniels and Trump’s former mistress Karen McDougal to keep them quiet in the weeks before the 2016 election. (I should note that Trump is referred to as “Individual-1” in the document but it’s clear that it’s him, since the document states, “in or about January 2017, Cohen left the Company and began holding himself out as the “personal attorney” to Individual-1, who at that point had become the president of the United States.“)

The plea deal indicates that the prosecutors had plenty of corroborating evidence, including audio tapes, to convict Cohen should he have gone to trial. It doesn’t specify whether or not this corroborating evidence applies specifically to the president but one can assume there is something since we’ve already heard Trump and Cohen on tape in close proximity to the election talking about how to funnel hush money so it’s fair to conclude that they did not simply take Cohen’s word for it. And it’s clear now that rather than  the publisher of the National Enquirer paying McDougal off as an act of friendship toward Donald Trump by buying her story and then not running it (a so-called “catch and kill”) it was always a transactional arrangement whereby Trump would simply pass the money through the tabloid. It was even more unscrupulous than we knew.

Nobody knows exactly why Cohen didn’t sign a cooperation agreement. According to Vanity Fair, this plea deal came together very quickly so one could speculate that since Cohen’s lawyer Guy Petrillo used to be in charge of the criminal division in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York, a certain level of trust exists between the legal teams and they could be working together after the fact.  In any case, Cohen’s other lawyer Lanny Davis went on TV last night and made it clear that Cohen has a lot to say to any prosecutors who care to listen:

He also hinted broadly that Cohen could say that Trump had advance knowledge of  “hacking”, although it’s unclear which hacking he was talking about.  CNN’s Jeffrey Toobin pointed out that a Democratic House or the Special Prosecutor could give Cohen immunity without fear of jeopardizing prosecution now that he’s pleaded guilty adding, “that means Cohen would have to testify in grand jury and before Congress in public. We will hear more from Cohen.”

Meanwhile, down in Virginia a jury found Paul Manafort guilty of eight of the eighteen counts charged against him also having to do with tax evasion, bank fraud and failing to file foreign bank account reports. The jury deadlocked on ten counts but Manafort certainly can’t find anything to celebrate in that. He’s going to prison for years. Now he’s facing his second trial which will be held in Washington next month and will deal with lying to the FBI, money laundering and foreign lobbying. His lawyer yesterday said that he would be “evaluating all his options.”

This would explain why on his way to a rally in West Virginia, Trump had nothing to say about his former lawyer Michael Cohen but he couldn’t say enough good things about the man who has so far refused to cooperate, Paul Manafort:

You can’t help but wonder why he is being so very kind to Paul Manafort who, after all, isn’t being tried on any charges relating to the Trump campaign. One might even suspect that Manafort has some information Trump would like him to keep to himself in exchange for a pardon.

It was an exciting day and the news cycle was filled with predictions that this would shake loose Republican officials’ complacency once and for all. The president had been implicated in a felony and yet another pair of top associates were guilty of serious criminal behavior. Surely this would break the spell and members of the establishment would rise up and do their duty.

Maybe.

But we’ve been here before, haven’t we? Time after time, some outrage or incident would be expected to bring him down and yet he’s still in the most powerful office in the world, making mess after mess while his enfeebled party follows blindly. After all, it was only a few days ago that dozens of elder statesmen of the Intelligence Community and members of the military spoke out in unison to protest the president’s decision to revoke former CIA director John Brennan’s security clearance and a senator’s response was to back the president and call Brennan a “butthead.”

Last night, the right wing reaction on Fox News and social media was to say that even if Trump committed a little campaign finance felony or two, it’s no big deal since everybody breaks campaign finance laws. Paying hush money to porn stars and playmates to keep them quiet before an election is also standard operating procedure apparently.  And some supporters are downright excited that all this will help get out the vote:

Nonetheless, yesterday was likely Trump’s worst day in office (so far.) It certainly seemed so at his rally in West Virginia where he was distracted and enervated, whining about “elites” saying”I’m smarter than they are. I have many much more beautiful homes than they do. I have a better apartment at the top of Fifth Avenue. Why the hell are they ‘the elite?’ …To me, I’m insulted.”

On a day in which two more of Trump’s close associates found out they would be spending years in prison and the president himself is implicated in a federal crime, the crowd lustily cheered him up with a rousing round of “lock her up.”

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All the president’s Goodfellas by @BloggersRUs

Published by Tom Sullivan on August 22, 2018

All the president’s Goodfellas
by Tom Sullivan

Tuesday’s blockbuster news cycle was like a Sharknado of Trump Goodfellas. Former Donald Trump “fixer” Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in Manhattan to eight counts, including two campaign finance violations meant to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential campaign. In the same hour in Virginia, former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort was convicted on eight counts of filing false tax returns, failure to report foreign assets, and bank fraud. Rep. Duncan Hunter (R-Calif.) and his wife, Margaret, were indicted in southern California for using a quarter-million dollars in campaign funds for personal expenses.

Rachel Maddow observed the first two sitting members of Congress to endorse Donald Trump have been indicted on corruption charges. (Republican Chris Collins of New York was arrested for insider trading on August 8.) Who’s No. 3, she asked?

Manafort is not done. The jury deadlocked on ten charges and the judge declared a mistrial. Prosecutors could elect to re-try those ten, plus Manafort faces trial in Washington, DC on seven other counts. That trial begins September 17.

But most damaging to the sitting president were Cohen’s statements in court about illegal campaign contributions (hush money payments) he made ahead of the presidential election to buy the silence of adult film star Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal. The New York Times reports:

[Cohen] told a judge in United States District Court in Manhattan that the payments to the women were made “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office,” implicating the president in a federal crime.

“I participated in this conduct, which on my part took place in Manhattan, for the principal purpose of influencing the election” for president in 2016, Mr. Cohen said.

Rick Hasen adds at Slate:

If prosecutors have evidence such as text messages or recordings corroborating Cohen’s statement implicating Trump, that would be more than enough for Trump to be charged with a crime. It is illegal to conspire with someone to make an excessive illegal contribution, and it is illegal for a candidate or campaign to accept an excessive illegal contribution. The same goes for the illegal corporate contributions. As Cohen’s attorney Lanny Davis asked: “If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

Of course, Department of Justice guidance says that prosecutors cannot indict a sitting president. This has never been tested by the courts, though. At the same time, President Trump is about to be given a hand-picked Supreme Court justice in Judge Brett Kavanaugh, who has indicated a desire to expand presidential power and a profound skepticism of investigations of the president.

A couple of tweets put a finer point on Hasen’s comments:

Throughout his term, Trump has bristled at the idea that his win with a minority of the popular vote was illegitimate. He claimed an unprecedented electoral college win he didn’t have and an unprecedented inauguration crowd photos clearly show wasn’t there. He alleged he would have won an outright if millions of imaginary illegal voters had not voted for Hillary Clinton. “No Collusion” will hang around Trump’s neck like an albatross. Trump had help from the Russians whether or not Robert Mueller can prove his campaign conspired with them. (TBD)

If approved in the Senate, the unindicted co-conspirator’s nominee to the Supreme Court could be with us until 2050. Kavanaugh’s vote could tip a court ruling in Trump’s favor should the question of indicting a sitting president come before it. Such a ruling would call the legitimacy of the sitting president even further into question, but also Supreme Court rulings for decades. There is no indication at this point Kavanaugh would recuse, just as there is no hint he will withdraw his name. Someone yesterday tweeted that may speak more about Kavanaugh than stacks of public records.

Bloomberg’s White House reporter Jennifer Jacobs tweeted last night:

One wonders what the “program” is. But Bannon is mistaken. November is not a referendum on impeachment. It is a referendum on the rule of law.

Update:

Hasen in a tweet throws cold water on any possibility the GOP will postpone Kavanaugh hearing: “McConnell would push Kavanaugh through even if the president were under indictment and impeached. This is #1 priority for him and R base.”

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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.

Calling Dr. Krugman by tristero

Published by digby on August 22, 2018

Calling Dr. Krugman 

by tristero

Dear Dr. Krugman,

On the (very) outside chance you’re reading this, could you please click on over here and give your opinion?

From what I understand, it appears that an outside analysis of Sanders’ Medicare-for-All proposal found that it would save people $2.1 trillion over a 10 year period. However the people who did the analysis didn’t like that result, so they buried the finding and then made stuff up to make Sanders’ plan look bad…but it isn’t.

I don’t have the economics background to go through this, but you do, so I’d like to know if this really is a case of mainstream conventional wisdom converging, as it often does, on a consensus based on hot air. Believe me, I wouldn’t waste your time on it except for the fact that if Sanders’ plan is reasonable and it really would lead to that much savings, then, by gum, that would be useful info to know going into November — and not to mention 2020.

Thanks, and sorry to bother you. Keep up your great work!

love,

tristero

h/t Atrios

Dispatch from Bizarroworld: Trump will bring back civility

Published by digby on August 21, 2018

Dispatch from Bizarroworld: Trump will bring back civility

by digby

That is not The Onion. It’s USA Today:

Now that President Donald Trump revoked ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance, what comes next? As incredible as it may sound, Trump could sue John Brennan to help bring some civility and integrity back to today’s poisoned political atmosphere. Ever since the 1960s, the pendulum of public debate among government officials has swung from responsible disagreement to unhinged hostility. The disconnection of fact from political discourse has been condemned by both Presidents Obama and Trump. Obama decried the untethering of political discussion from reason and fact:

“When it doesn’t matter what’s true and what’s not, that makes it all but impossible for us to make good decisions on behalf of future generations.”

Trump came to the same conclusion:

“We want fairness … You can’t say things that are false, knowingly false and be able to smile as money pours into your bank account.”

The fair solution

Top down censorship such as being implemented by the big social media platforms never works. It only breeds suspicion and further hostility — on both sides of the political divide. However, providing consequences for deliberate falsity by ex-government officials would and should swing the pendulum back towards fact.

The current mess started with the landmark 1964 Supreme Court case of New York Times v. Sullivan. The court decided that to inhibit self-censorship, they would make an exception to libel law for public officials. After that case, you could say anything about a public figure as long as it was not made with “actual malice” — knowingly false or with reckless disregard for the truth. In effect, public figures could rarely — if ever — win a libel case after that.

The problem is that was in the day of somewhat responsible big media. In the Internet age, anyone has access to publication, not subject to the old journalistic standards.

Trump v. Brennan is unique

Against this backdrop and in a hyper-partisan political atmosphere, John Brennan entered the fray, when he leveled his now infamous treason accusation, via Twitter and later on the NBC network, where he now is a contributor.

“Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors.’ It was nothing short of treasonous. … he is wholly in the pocket of Putin.”

Brennan, of course, is not the average internet troll. As former head of the CIA under Obama, Brennan’s accusation of treasonous activity carried an aura of validity, given his presumed expertise on the subject.

Unfortunately for Brennan, as satisfying as hurling a political dirty bomb might have been, there was no treason by any stretch of the imagination. Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution defines treason, and requires an “overt act” of either (i) waging war against the United States; or (ii) giving “aid and comfort” to an “enemy.” You may disagree with Trump’s approach, but nothing in his press conference was an “overt Act” under the legal definition. Likewise, although Russia often is hostile to U.S. interests, we are not at “war” with it, and it is not an “Enemy” under the legal definition. Even the Soviet Union in the Cold War did not meet the legal definition, which is why the Rosenbergs, who provided nuclear bomb plans to the Soviets, were convicted of espionage, not treason.

Brennan acted recklessly
Of all people, the ex-CIA director should know what treason is. That is why Brennan is special — he knowingly or recklessly made the false statement. Applying each of the libel criteria, it is evident that Brennan committed an actionable libel:

Did Brennan make a false statement? Yes.

Was Brennan’s accusation defamatory? Yes.

Were Brennan’s statements made with “actual malice”? Yes.
Even tough actual malice is difficult to prove, the case of John Brennan is particularly compelling. Indeed, his statements demonstrate that he had actual knowledge of the legal requirements of the crime of treason, and despite that, he leveled the false accusation, knowingly, or with reckless disregard for the truth.

So, can Trump sue Brennan?

In a word, yes. President Trump can sue Brennan for libel. A court or jury properly instructed could conclude that Brennan accused Trump of treason knowingly, or at least with reckless disregard for the truth. A Trump versus Brennan case with its compelling facts could provide the most interesting vehicle for to tether again the political discourse to reason and fact — a bipartisan issue if ever there was one.

No word on whether he should sue Crooked Hillary, Lyin’ Ted and the hundreds of others Trump defames n a daily basis.

You cannot make this shit up.

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