Month: March 2019

The other Mueller report

by digby

[T]he reporting requirements of the special counsel regulations have been exhaustively picked over. What must Mueller report to the attorney general? What may the attorney general do with the report? Will Congress and the public ever see it? The ins and outs of the special counsel report regulations played a significant role in Attorney General William Barr’s January confirmation hearings.

But we may be focusing on the wrong report. There may in fact be two Mueller reports. This is because from the very beginning, Mueller has worn two hats and borne two missions relating to the Russia investigation.

The most public and familiar one is as a criminal investigator under the special counsel regulations. But Mueller has also carried a second charge, as a counterintelligence expert, with a much broader charge to determine and report the scope of any interference and any links to the Trump campaign—what Trump himself might refer to as “collusion.”

In March 2017, then-FBI Director James Comey testified that the Russia investigation was commenced “as part of our counterintelligence mission . . . also includ[ing] an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.” Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s May 17, 2017 order appointing Mueller special counsel specifically and carefully incorporated this announced scope and mission.

From the start, then, Mueller has been conducting a counterintelligence investigation, while “also” assessing whether any crimes were committed. Not the other way around.

“The House and Senate intelligence committees are legally entitled to be given reports of significant intelligence and counterintelligence activities or failures. Mueller’s findings will certainly qualify.”

Comey and Rosenstein knew what they were doing. It is the mission of a criminal investigation to produce indictments and trials, which tell stories and render conclusions only imperfectly. Thanks to the special counsel regulations, there is also “a confidential report explaining the prosecution or declination decisions.” But what will go into this report and what the Congress and public may ultimately see is highly proscribed.

It is the central mission of a counterintelligence investigation, however, to produce . . . well, a report. These findings and conclusions are shared with the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), and relevant agencies of the 17-member intelligence community (CIA, NSA, DIA, etc.). The report may be honed into a formal IC “assessment” reflecting the consensus view of the 17 agencies. It was just such a report, “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections,” that on Jan. 7, 2017 was shared with incoming President Trump. Its disclosure brought into public view the Intelligence Community’s bombshell conclusion that Vladimir Putin had personally ordered an effort to discredit Hillary Clinton and to “help President-elect Trump’s election chances.”

Significantly, unlike a final criminal report, a Mueller counterintelligence report cannot be bottled up. By statute it must be shared with Congress. The House and Senate intelligence committees are legally entitled to be given reports, in writing, of significant intelligence and counterintelligence activities or failures. Mueller’s findings will certainly qualify.

Where matters are too delicate to share with all the members of the intelligence committees, statute and established practice provide that disclosure may be made to a smaller circle known as the “Gang of Eight:” the chair and ranking member of each intelligence committee, and the Democratic and Republican leaders of each chamber.

Already, these obligations have generated significant disclosures to Congress of Russia’s activities. In August 2016, then-CIA Director John Brennan briefed members of the Gang of Eight on the then-new signs of Russian interference and hacking. The explosive disclosure in the January 2017 IC assessment that Putin had ordered interference specifically to assist then-candidate Trump was also thanks to these provisions. And in May 2017, then-acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe informed the Gang of Eight that in the wake of Comey’s firing, the FBI had focused its counter-intelligence investigation on the president himself.

Mueller inherited this investigation just days later, and he inherited this reporting framework as well. Twenty-two months of relentless investigation have followed since.

The criminal side of the investigation has revealed bits and chunks of the investigation’s work: 34 individuals have been indicted or pleaded guilty, including six former Trump advisers. Lengthy speaking indictments, guilty pleas, trials and sentencing memoranda have publicly disclosed intermittent and unconnected swathes of Mueller’s investigative results. His final criminal report to Barr may tell us more, if we get to see it.

But it is Mueller’s counterintelligence report we should really be anticipating. Done well (and Mueller and his team seem to do everything well), it will provide a much richer, broader narrative description of Russia’s effort to interfere in 2016, the nature of any links or cooperation between the Russians and the Trump campaign, and whether Trump or his associates were witting or unwitting assets for the Russians (including by obstructing the investigation)—as well perhaps as conclusions for action.

Of course, any Mueller counterintelligence report will be heavily freighted with classified information. A non-classified summary is typically provided, but the full report and underlying evidence will remain highly sensitive. How the Intelligence Committees may choose to share critical aspects of the report with their Judiciary Committee counterparts and beyond will not be trivial.

Still, neither the special counsel regulations nor Attorney General Barr’s discretion will keep Mueller’s counterintelligence findings from Congress. The intelligence community knows its obligations. Mueller’s second report, larded surely with detailed findings and counterintelligence conclusions, will make its way to the Gang of Eight and the intelligence committees.

And then, the final inexorable chapter of Mueller’s Russia investigation—congressional consideration of the implications for the Trump presidency—may begin.

This is the first I’ve heard of this but it makes sense. McCabe has made a big deal of saying that the existing counter-intelligence investigation was expanded to include the president. If this rule is correct, it’s entirely possible that this will be the method by which Mueller gets the information to the public.

Who knows?

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Rich people cheating to get their kids into college? Say it ain’t so.

by digby

So the big story today is that rich people, including Hollywood actresses, paid people off to get their kids into college. I’m shocked.

They were kind of dumb. The real rich people do it legally:

I would like to express my gratitude to Jared Kushner for reviving interest in my 2006 book, “The Price of Admission.” I have never met or spoken with him, and it’s rare in this life to find such a selfless benefactor. Of course, I doubt he became Donald Trump’s son-in-law and consiglieremerely to boost my lagging sales, but still, I’m thankful.

My book exposed a grubby secret of American higher education: that the rich buy their under-achieving children’s way into elite universities with massive, tax-deductible donations. It reported that New Jersey real estate developer Charles Kushner had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard University in 1998, not long before his son Jared was admitted to the prestigious Ivy League school. At the time, Harvard accepted about one of every nine applicants. (Nowadays, it only takes one out of twenty.)

I also quoted administrators at Jared’s high school, who described him as a less than stellar student and expressed dismay at Harvard’s decision.

“There was no way anybody in the administrative office of the school thought he would on the merits get into Harvard,” a former official at The Frisch School in Paramus, New Jersey, told me. “His GPA did not warrant it, his SAT scores did not warrant it. We thought for sure, there was no way this was going to happen. Then, lo and behold, Jared was accepted. It was a little bit disappointing because there were at the time other kids we thought should really get in on the merits, and they did not.”

Risa Heller, a spokeswoman for Kushner Companies, said in an email Thursday that “the allegation” that Charles Kushner’s gift to Harvard was related to Jared’s admission “is and always has been false.” His parents, Charles and Seryl Kushner, “are enormously generous and have donated over 100 million dollars to universities, hospitals and other charitable causes. Jared Kushner was an excellent student in high school and graduated from Harvard with honors.” (About 90 percent of Jared’s 2003 class at Harvard also graduated with honors.)

My Kushner discoveries were an offshoot of my research for a chapter on Harvard donors. Somebody had slipped me a document I had long coveted: the membership list of Harvard’s Committee on University Resources. The university wooed more than 400 of its biggest givers and most promising prospects by putting them on this committee and inviting them to campus periodically to be wined, dined, and subjected to lectures by eminent professors.

My idea was to figure out how many children of these corporate titans, oil barons, money managers, lawyers, high-tech consultants and old-money heirs had gone to Harvard. A disproportionate tally might suggest that the university eased its standards for the offspring of wealthy backers.

I began working through the list, poring over “Who’s Who in America” and Harvard class reunion reports for family information. Charles and Seryl Kushner were both on the committee. I had never heard of them, but their joint presence struck me as a sign that Harvard’s fundraising machine held the couple in especially fond regard.

The clips showed that Charles Kushner’s empire encompassed 25,000 New Jersey apartments, along with extensive office, industrial and retail space and undeveloped land. Unlike most of his fellow committee members, though, Kushner was not a Harvard man. He had graduated from New York University. This eliminated the sentimental tug of the alma mater as a reason for him to give to Harvard, leaving another likely explanation: his children.

Sure enough, his sons Jared and Joshua had both enrolled there.

Charles Kushner differed from his peers on the committee in another way; he had a criminal record. Five years after Jared entered Harvard, the elder Kushner pleaded guilty in 2004 to tax violations, illegal campaign donations, and retaliating against a witness. (As it happens, the prosecutor in the case was Chris Christie, recently ousted as the head of Trump’s transition team.) Charles Kushner had hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, who was cooperating with federal authorities. Kushner then had a videotape of the tryst sent to his sister. He was sentenced to two years in federal prison.

I completed my analysis, which justified my hunch. Of the 400-plus tycoons on Harvard’s list — which included people who were childless or too young to have college-age offspring — more than half had sent at least one child to the university.

I also decided that the Kushner-Harvard relationship deserved special attention. Although the university often heralded big gifts in press releases or a bulletin called — in a classic example of fundraising wit, “Re:sources” — a search of these outlets came up empty. Harvard didn’t seem eager to be publicly associated with Charles Kushner.

While looking into Kushner’s taxes, though, federal authorities had subpoenaed records of his charitable giving. I learned that in 1998, when Jared was attending The Frisch School and starting to look at colleges, his father had pledged $2.5 million to Harvard, to be paid in annual installments of $250,000. Charles Kushner also visited Neil Rudenstine, then Harvard president, and discussed funding a scholarship program for low- and middle-income students.

I phoned a Harvard official, with whom I was on friendly terms. First I asked whether the gift played any role in Jared’s admission. “You know we don’t comment on individual applicants,” he said. When I pressed further, he hung up. We haven’t spoken since.

At Harvard, Jared Kushner majored in government. Now the 35-year-old is poised to become the power behind the presidency. What he plans to do, and in what direction he and his father-in-law will lead the country, are far more important than his high school grades.

And now he’s bringing middle east peace. See? Happy ending.

Trump’s corruption is in plain sight, nearly every weekend

by digby

Trump’s pay-to-play scheme:

President Trump returned to the White House from his private resort in Florida on Sunday. In total, Trump has spent all or part of 42 weekend days at the resort since his inauguration — time during which his schedule is almost always kept completely private.

Shortly after Trump was inaugurated, this was novel. When Trump’s press team called a lid on the day on Feb. 18, 2017 — meaning that Trump would not be doing anything else publicly — he nonetheless later attended a fundraising gala being hosted at the resort. How Trump spent his time at Mar-a-Lago had attracted considerable attention a few days earlier when it was revealed that Trump and Prime Minister Shinzo Abe of Japan, then visiting Trump, had held an impromptu discussion about national security in the middle of the resort’s dining room.

Since then, though, Trump’s habit of simply dropping into Mar-a-Lago events barely warrants a mention. This weekend, he made another visit to a fundraiser at the club that wasn’t on his calendar. That’s just sort of how it goes.

It’s obviously useful for Mar-a-Lago to have Trump drop in at events on occasion — meaning that it’s indirectly valuable to Trump as well, given that he still owns the place. But it’s not Trump’s attendance at public fundraisers that really ought to raise eyebrows. It’s the rest of the time he spends chatting up whoever happens to be there. The time he spends greeting and schmoozing with the unidentified people who have paid him money to access the “winter White House.”

We got a vivid example of this over the weekend. Mother Jones magazine reported that a woman named Li Yang had been advertising her ability to get access to Trump — via Mar-a-Lago.

Yang, who founded the chain of massage parlors where New England Patriots owner Bob Kraft is alleged to have solicited a prostitute, started GY US Investments with her husband. The company’s now-removed website included a photo of Mar-a-Lago and promised “the opportunity to interact with the president, the Minister of Commerce” — presumably meaning Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross, who has visited Mar-a-Lago during his tenure — “and other political figures.”

This is precisely why open-government advocates push for information about who’s visiting the president and why. There are certainly meetings that the president takes which should not be made public. But meetings in which someone is making a pitch or seeking to leverage Trump’s power are ones where public accountability makes sense. Especially when, as in Yang’s case, that person has apparent ties to the Chinese government.

Last week, ProPublica offered another example of the influence efforts that slosh around Trump while he’s at Mar-a-Lago. The nonprofit journalism site obtained a letter from a dentist friend of Trump’s recommending the establishment of an oversight committee at the Department of Veterans Affairs. The letter that ProPublica obtained includes a note written by Trump: “Send to David S. at VA” — a reference to former VA secretary David Shulkin.

The letter was written on Mar-a-Lago letterhead.

Mar-a-Lago’s influence at VA was the subject of reporting from ProPublica in 2018. Several Mar-a-Lago members had apparently been acting as a de facto review board for VA, including advocating for Shulkin to get the role in the first place and requesting regular conference calls to check in. That relationship is now the subject of an investigation by the Government Accountability Office.

Trump has spent all or part of 86 days at Mar-a-Lago since his inauguration, 11 percent of the days he’s been in office. Some of those days are his arrivals on a Friday evening — but who, if anyone, he meets with even on those evenings is unknown.

A quick perusal of Instagram’s geolocation page for Mar-a-Lago shows the ready access allowed when Trump visits the club. A photo posted on Sunday by a woman who identifies herself as the head of an advocacy organization shows a blurry-looking Trump and first lady at the club. The caption reads, “I said to our president: MIDDLE EASTERN WOMEN STAND WITH YOU PRESIDENT.” A later photo shows her posing with Trump’s attorney Rudolph W. Giuliani.

There are two ways in which the issue of access at Mar-a-Lago is additionally complicated.

The first is that Trump’s schedule is often free from interactions with possible critics. He engages the media when he’s boarding Marine One or at White House events, but his weekends are heavily spent with clients at his private properties and his public events are often ones centered on his reelection.

The other is that his trips to Mar-a-Lago aren’t free. He’s made 21 trips there as president, costing well over $60 million and likely generating nearly $400,000 in revenue for the resort. The resort that he owns. When one member of the National Security Council visited for two nights in March 2017, the government’s tab ran more than $1,000.

At one point in 2017, watchdog groups sued to obtain a list of visitors to Mar-a-Lago during Trump’s visits. After a legal fight, they obtained a list of the visitors logged at the resort for the first several months of Trump’s presidency.

It was 22 people long. All were members of Abe’s entourage.

Remember worryig about “normalization?” Yeah. It happened.

Sowing discord
by Tom Sullivan

A January 4, 2017 tweet from Sen. Bernie Sanders about the incoming Donald Trump administration resurfaced on Monday. Sanders reminded Trump voters he promised not to cut their Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid.

Millions of people voted for Mr. Trump believing that he would keep his word and not cut Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. pic.twitter.com/YhkuSUjbb4— Bernie Sanders (@SenSanders) January 4, 2017

And voilà:

The Trump administration’s annual budget proposal on Monday envisioned a series of cuts that contrasted with the president’s own words of support for both programs and people — including some groups that make up his political base. To help make way for more military and border spending, it would slash programs large and small, from Medicaid and Medicare — which President Trump as a candidate promised to protect — to safety nets for farmers.

Trump’s proposal cuts $845 billion in “waste, fraud and abuse” from Medicare for older Americans, cuts the sitting president deems necessary to offset the climbing deficits generated by two years of his tax cut for wealthier ones. Sanders responded with a series of tweets condemning “Trump’s budget cuts $1.5 trillion from Medicaid, $845 billion from Medicare and $25 billion from Social Security.”

With Democrats now in control of the House, Trump’s proposal is going nowhere. (Not that his budgets were less dead on arrival when the GOP held the majority.)

Naturally, the proposal includes another $8.6 billion for the president’s border wall/fence/barrier.

Slate’s Jim Newell wonders if the White House is not in on the joke. Presidents’ budget proposals are typical “statements of priorities” rather than direct guidance to Congress. Trump’s cuts to safety net programs to pay for increases in defense spending could be setting up the next government shutdown:

The White House’s only priority, though, is boosting military spending—and it would be more than pleased to see non-defense spending fall off of a cliff. In its new budget, defense spending would increase from $716 billion to $750 billion next year, while non-defense spending would fall from $620 billion to $567 billion. The cuts would come from food stamps, health care, the Environmental Protection Agency, and education, to name just a few.

The Senate’s 60-vote threshold has meant, even with Mitch McConnell as the Republicans’ majority leader, to pass budgets Republicans have had to balance boosts to defense spending against Democrats’ demand for safety net program increases. With Nancy Pelosi as speaker, Newell suggests, Republicans will have to engage again in bipartisan wrangling of the sort that sets Trump’s dentures on edge.

“If Trump proclaims that he won’t sign such a deal,” Newell concludes, “he’ll have cornered himself, and the country will again careen toward a government shutdown. In other words, it sounds exactly like the move that would appeal to him most.”

Trump loves sowing chaos to keep allies and opponents off balance. In question is whether he has the bandwidth to put energy behind it in the middle of a whirlwind of ongoing special counsel and House investigations into his campaign and his family business, plus just-announced investigations by the New York attorney general’s office into Trump Organization projects. Trump could be close to reacting like the Enterprise computer when asked to compute “to the last digit the value of pi.”

In the meantime, Democrats sick of years of Republican hectoring about Hillary Clinton’s email may have the chance to fire back with But his Medicare cuts.

Trump’s “golf championship” says everything about his odious character

by digby

Trump is the most famous and powerful man on earth. He has tens of millions of people who worship him like a god. But it’s not enough. It’s never enough. 

Donald Trump takes great pride in his golf game. Shinzo Abeand Tiger Woods and countless others can tell you about that. He once tweeted “I don’t cheat at golf” but added that Samuel L. Jackson does and “with his game he has no choice.” The president’s official USGA handicap index is listed as 2.8, though he seldom posts scores. Any visitor to the ornate men’s locker room at his club here, Trump International Golf Club, can see small rectangular brass plaques on his locker, recognizing him as the 1999, 2001 and 2009 club champion, and the 2012 and 2013 senior champion.

And now there’s a new plaque on his locker, screwed into its stained wood with two small Phillips head screws, to commemorate his latest title. It reads:

2018 MEN’S CLUB CHAMPION

President Trump’s locker at Trump International in West Palm Beach, Fla.

Yes, Trump was president of the United States for all of 2018.

Yes, Trump turned 72 last year, which would be an impressive age to win even a senior club championship.

But there the plaque is, identifying Trump as the reigning club champion at his spectacular Trump International course.

His most recent win brings Trump’s club-championship haul — all won at clubs bearing his name — to an even 20. That includes senior and super-senior titles, too.

But to be precise about it, the plaque on his locker is two letters short of accurate. Trump is not actually the men’s champion at the club. He’s the co-champion. While that distinction is not found on his locker, it is made elsewhere at the club.

As for Trump’s path to No. 20, it was not conventional.

Originally, a man named Ted Virtue, the 58-year-old CEO of a New York investment firm called MidOcean Partners, had the 2018 club championship title all to himself.
[…]
After Virtue won the championship, Trump ran into him at the club, according to multiple sources who recounted the story. Having some fun with him, Trump said something like, “The only reason you won is because I couldn’t play.” The president cited the demands of his job, although he was able to make 20 visits to the club in 2018, according to trumpgolfcount.com. Trump then proposed a nine-hole challenge match to Virtue, winner-takes-the-title.

You could say there wasn’t much in it for Virtue, and you could argue that this is not how these matters are typically, if ever, settled. But consider these factors:

1. Trump owns the course;

2. Trump is the president of the United States;

3. Trump is not your typical golfer.

Virtue said yes.

They played match play (each hole as its own contest) and straight up (no shots were given). As in nearly all amateur golf rounds, no rules official was on hand. Golf’s tradition calls for players to police themselves and, if necessary, one another.

Trump won.

In victory a magnanimous Trump said to Virtue something like, “This isn’t fair — we’ll be co-champions.”

See? He’s a totally generous guy, willing to share the “championship.”

His narcissistic neediness is a bottomless void.

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Tucker and Bubba the Love Sponge talkin’ about the ladies


by digby

 
Media Matters: 

Between 2006 and 2011, Tucker Carlson spent approximately an hour a week calling in to Bubba the Love Sponge, a popular shock jock radio program where he spoke with the hosts about a variety of cultural and political topics in sometimes-vulgar terms. During those conversations, Carlson diminished the actions of Warren Jeffs, then on the FBI’s “Ten Most Wanted Fugitives” list for his involvement in arranging illegal marriages between adults and underage girls, talked about sex and young girls, and defended statutory rape.

Carlson, who was hired by Fox News in 2009, also used sexist language to talk about women, including then-co-workers at NBC and public figures. He referred to Martha Stewart’s daughter Alexis Stewart as “cunty,” called journalist Arianna Huffington a “pig,” and labeled Britney Spears and Paris Hilton “the biggest white whores in America.” He also said that women enjoy being told to “be quiet and kind of do what you’re told” and that they are “extremely primitive.”

There’s more at the link. He’s quite a guy. We’ve known that for years. That he was regularly calling in to a shock jock show talking about “cunts” and “whores” — while going on TV and whining and sniveling about left wing immorality — doesn’t surprise me one bit. This is a person with a void where his soul should be.

By the way, here’s Tucker in other circumstances. But sure, yeah, he’s an honest broker with a useful platform:

here’s tucker’s perspective on child brides and rape when he can attack brown people. pic.twitter.com/RNv6NlI20S

— irony left name change guy (@hasanthehun) March 11, 2019

Tucker Carlson is a truly malevolent opportunist with clear fascist tendencies, in the mode of Orban and Bolsonaro. He moves back and forth, manipulating the moment to make himself fit.

Remember this?

Via Media Matters,  2007:

CARLSON: Let me — let me put it this way. Whether he’s gay or not actually is not our business, and I do think it’s indefensible that the newspaper in Idaho spent a year interviewing 300 people to answer the question, Is he gay? That’s none of your business. Having sex in a public men’s room is outrageous. It’s also really common. I’ve been bothered in men’s rooms. I think people who do –

SCARBOROUGH: Really?

CARLSON: Yeah, I have. You know what, Let me just say.

SCARBOROUGH: Wait, hold on a second. Dan, hold on a second. I don’t mean to take over, but have you been bothered in public restrooms, Dan? Because I know I haven’t.

CARLSON: I have. I’ve been bothered in Georgetown Park. When I was in high school.

ABRAMS: Really?

CARLSON: Yes.

SCARBOROUGH: Wow.

CARLSON: And let me just say, I think —

SCARBOROUGH: That’s something.

CARLSON: — people should knock that off. I’m not anti-gay in the slightest, but that’s really common, and the gay rights groups ought to disavow that kind of crap because, you know, that actually does bother people who didn’t ask for being bothered. So yeah, I think it’s outrageous that he did that.

[…]

SCARBOROUGH: Hey, Tucker?

CARLSON: You know what I mean? It’s insane!

SCARBOROUGH: Was he the guy in Georgetown, Tucker?

CARLSON: No, actually. I got that — my point is — let me just say —

ABRAMS: Tucker, what did you do, by the way? What did you do when he did that? We got to know.

CARLSON: I went back with someone I knew and grabbed the guy by the — you know, and grabbed him, and — and —

ABRAMS: And did what?

CARLSON: Hit him against the stall with his head, actually!

[laughter]

CARLSON: And then the cops came and arrested him. But let me say that I’m the least anti-gay right-winger you’ll ever meet —

[laughter]

CARLSON: — but I do think doing this in men’s rooms appears to be common. It’s totally wrong, and they should knock it off. I mean that. I think it’s — I can’t bring my son to the men’s room at the park where he plays soccer because of all these creepy guys hanging around in there. I actually think it’s a problem. I’m sorry.

Tune out the horse race for at least six months

by digby

In case you are tempted to get as worked up about the Democratic Primary horse race as the cable news networks are, keep this in mind. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump is doing a day by day comparison of the race with past races and this is interesting:

603 DAYS UNTIL ELECTION 

2008 Democrats: Clinton led by 12.3 points. She led for another 337 days. 

2008 Republicans: Giuliani leads by 16.4 points. He led for another 300 days. 

2012 Republicans: Romney leads by 8.8 points. He led for another 162 days. 

2016 Democrats: Clinton led by 53.3 points. She led for the rest of the primary. 

2016 Republicans: Walker leads by 0.4 points. He led for another 0 days.

I’ll bet you didn’t even remember that Giuiani was the big GOP frontrunner for almost a year did you? Let’s just say that it’s way too early to know anything and leave it at that.

I don’t know about you, but I’m willing to let this unfold. There are a number of good candidates and a lot of issues are being tackled and debated. This is healthy. Conventional wisdom about who can “win” is never as stupid as it is at this point in an election cycle. Tune it out.

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QOTD: Mayor Pete

by digby

Pete Buttigieg calls Vice President Mike Pence “the cheerleader of the porn star presidency” and asks if Pence “stopped believing in scripture when he started believing in Donald Trump.” #CNNTownHallpic.twitter.com/BsbSLPEv67— Keith Boykin (@keithboykin) March 11, 2019

That is such a good line on so many levels. He knows Pence — he’s from South Bend — and he knows exactly where to neatly stick in the shiv. Bravo.

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Trump is worried about his mind

by digby

He knows this was weird:

First he told his business clients at Mar-a-lago over the weekend:

Republican donors in attendance called it one of Trump’s weirdest lies ever. On Friday night, under a tent erected over the pool at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida, President Trump claimed the media were spreading “fake news” when they said he called the CEO of Apple “Tim Apple.”

Trump told the donors that he actually said “Tim Cook Apple” really fast, and the “Cook” part of the sentence was soft. But all you heard from the “fake news,” he said, was “Tim Apple.”

Two donors who were there told me they couldn’t understand why the president would make such a claim given the whole thing is captured on video. Nobody cared, they said, and Tim Cook took it in good humor by changing his Twitter profile to Tim Apple.

“I just thought, why would you lie about that,” one of the donors told me. “It doesn’t even matter!”

Today he tweeted this:

At a recent round table meeting of business executives, & long after formally introducing Tim Cook of Apple, I quickly referred to Tim + Apple as Tim/Apple as an easy way to save time & words. The Fake News was disparagingly all over this, & it became yet another bad Trump story!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 11, 2019

Trump’s father suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease and I would guess he’s afraid he’s going to get it too. That’s understandable. This was an odd moment, although it just seems to be a funny slip of the tongue not a memory problem.

I would feel sorry for him for having to worry about this except for the fact that if the shoe were on the other foot he’d be relentlessly cruel to a political rival who made a similar slip.

Trump has had some other strange moments like this:

..

A busy person’s guide to possible smoking guns

by digby

Here’s a useful simple guide to potential “smoking guns” in a possible Mueller report from the editor of Lawfare. I’m not sure that’s all there is to it becaue there’s a bunch of stuff about other foreign influence that may be included in this thing if they went that deeply into it. But as far as the main points of the investigation to the extent we know about it, this is a good list of the main points of interest:

The ‘Moscow Project’

In November 2015, according to Mr. Mueller, Michael Cohen, then Mr. Trump’s lawyer, was put in touch with a Russian man who promised Mr. Cohen “political synergy” and “repeatedly proposed a meeting” between Mr. Trump and the Russian president, Vladimir Putin, to help with efforts to construct a Trump Tower Moscow. In January 2016, the office of a “high-level Russian official” — most likely, according to reports, of Mr. Putin’s spokesman Dmitri Peskov — reached out to Mr. Cohen about the project, and efforts on it continued at least into the summer of 2016.

How closely were Mr. Trump and his children involved in the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations, and over what period? How much did they know of or encourage Mr. Cohen’s contacts with the Russian government — including tentative plans for a meeting between Mr. Trump and Mr. Putin? How did the Trump family and campaign understand the connection between the “Moscow project” and Mr. Trump’s political ambitions?

Mr. Mueller estimated in a court filing that Trump Tower Moscow could have generated “hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues” — an unusually large profit for the Trump Organization. Why was the number so atypically high?

“Dirt” on Clinton

In spring 2016, according to the special counsel, a professor linked to the Russian government told the Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia had “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.” Around this time, the special counsel’s indictment of Russian military intelligence officials shows that the Russian government had hacked into networks and accounts belonging to the Democratic Party and the Clinton campaign, and would soon begin coordinating with WikiLeaks to disseminate the stolen information. In June, Donald Trump Jr. met with a Kremlin-linked lawyer at Trump Tower in New York in what seems to have been a failed effort to get similar “dirt.”

Who else in the campaign did Mr. Papadopoulos tell about his scoop, and how high did that knowledge go? Did Donald Trump Jr. inform his father of his plans before the meeting?

Roger Stone and WikiLeaks

Mr. Mueller’s indictment of the Trump adviser Roger Stone alleges that Mr. Stone worked throughout the summer of 2016 to get in touch with WikiLeaks and became aware of the organization’s plans to disclose hacked information. Mr. Cohen claimed in his testimony to Congress that he was in the room when Mr. Stone informed Mr. Trump that WikiLeaks was planning a “massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.”

Was Mr. Stone coordinating with the campaign in his efforts to get information from WikiLeaks? How much did Mr. Trump know about what Mr. Stone had found out? And who in the campaign, if anyone, might have been aware of separate efforts by the Republican operative Peter Smith to obtain additional Clinton emails from sources Mr. Smith believed were Russian hackers?

Flynn’s Promises to Moscow

The national security adviser Michael Flynn was fired just 24 days into his tenure over fallout from his transition-period contacts with the Russian ambassador at the time, Sergey Kislyak — a matter about which he later pleaded guilty to lying to federal investigators. When he promised Mr. Kislyak that Mr. Trump would lift sanctions on Russia imposed by the departing Obama administration, was Mr. Flynn freelancing or was he acting on the instructions of someone higher?

Russian Influence Operations

Almost every case that Mr. Mueller has filed has illuminated a different facet of what appears to be a systematic, long-running effort by the government of Russia to reach out to Mr. Trump’s world. It’s clear that the Kremlin was attempting to gain access and influence. Was it also out-and-out working to recruit agents within the Trump Organization and campaign?

On our side of the Atlantic, to what extent was that outreach welcomed and reciprocated by the Trump team, and to what extent was Mr. Trump a passive beneficiary? Did the Trump Organization and campaign understand and respond to those instances as manifestations of a systematic effort by the Russian government or as unrelated connections with unconnected Russians?

Obstruction of Justice

Mr. Mueller has also reportedly conducted an investigation into potential obstruction of justice by the president: possible interference with the special counsel’s efforts, and with the F.B.I.’s before that.

Mr. Barr, among others, has argued that action authorized by the Constitution — like dismissing the F.B.I. director — by definition cannot constitute obstruction. Will the report sidestep these tricky legal questions by showing efforts by Mr. Trump to derail the inquiry that fall plainly outside the scope of presidential authority? To what extent does the obstruction investigation overlap with the collusion investigation — meaning that the special counsel and the F.B.I. understood the president’s apparent efforts at obstruction as part of the troubling pattern of coordination with the Russian government that incited the investigation in the first place?

What proportion of the Mueller report becomes public will hinge on many factors: how much classified information and grand jury material shielded from public disclosure it has; how much of it is arguably protected by executive privilege; to what extent it details criminal conduct, and to what extent Mr. Barr may reasonably argue that the Justice Department has an interest in protecting the privacy of those who are innocent.

The Watergate “road map” first became available to the public in 2018, when a judge ordered it unsealed almost 45 years after it was handed over to Congress. The Starr Report, in contrast, was released within two days of its transmission to the legislature. With any luck, the time frame for release of the Mueller report will be closer to the latter than to the former.

Keep in mind that this doesn’t get anywhere near the Inaugural Committee graft, the hush money payments and the ongoing Trump Organization corruption.