Month: March 2019

Only the best people

by digby

Not only is Stephen Moore nothing more than a wingnut welfare recipient and cable news celebrity,he’s also a tax cheat:

Stephen Moore, the conservative economist who President Trump intends to nominate for a seat on the Federal Reserve Board, owes the U.S. government more than $75,000 in unpaid taxes, Bloomberg reports.

Details: According to a January 2018 court filing by the federal government, Moore reportedly has not paid $75,328 in taxes incurred in 2014. Moore told the Guardian in a statement that he was “eager to reach an agreement” with authorities, but has been frustrated by the bureaucratic process. “For several years I have been working through a dispute with the IRS, attempting to be returned what my attorneys and accountant believe were tax overpayments of tens of thousands of dollars,” Moore said.

This makes no sense. But that’s par for the course for Moore, who has demonstrated over and over again that he actually knows little about economics.

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Trump moved on health care to get even with a dead man

by digby

I wrote this morning about Trump’s one consistent philosophy throughout his life: get even.

He insists on going after Democrats and the FBI for the Russia investigation, ensuring that it stays in the news even though it is not in his interest, especially since the cable nets are in the process of self-flagellation and are eager to give him as much good coverage as they can. This health care thing, equally self-destructive, is all about getting even with a dead man, John McCain:

House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) urged President Trump to hold off on pushing for a court-ordered destruction of the Affordable Care Act, advice the president ultimately ignored, according to a senior Republican official familiar with the conversation.

The unheeded counsel, which McCarthy recounted to fellow lawmakers in recent days, underscores the angst that has set in among Republicans now that Trump is pursuing the politically precarious strategy with no plan in hand to replace Barack Obama’s signature health-care law.

McCarthy has complained privately to donors that the GOP attempt to gut Obamacare — including its most popular provisions, such as protections for preexisting conditions — was the main reason the party lost at least House 40 seats in last year’s midterm elections.

Now, Republicans on both sides of the Capitol are worried that Trump is forcing them to confront a still volatile issue, with more potential to undercut the party than bolster it heading in the 2020 elections.

McCarthy’s misgivings were first reported by Axios. The official who described his caution to Trump to The Washington Post requested anonymity to share a private conversation.

Trump has put a brave face on the effort, proclaiming that Republicans will become “the party of health care” and promising a replacement that will be well-received by voters.

“If the Supreme Court rules that Obamacare is out, we’ll have a plan that is far better than Obamacare,” he told reporters Wednesday during an event in the Oval Office.

In a filing Monday in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit, the Justice Department argued that the ACA should be thrown out in its entirety, including provisions protecting those with preexisting health conditions and allowing young adults to stay on their parents’ health-care plans.

If the case reaches the Supreme Court, it’s unclear how it would fare: Five justices who preserved the ACA during a previous case are all still on the court.

But if the law is struck down, Republicans fret that the party will be blamed for more than 20 million people losing their health insurance — and they fear that crafting an alternative would prove unwieldy in a deeply divided Congress.

“We’re going to have to double down on the fact that we need to protect people with preexisting conditions, and we need to find alternatives that work,” said Sen. Joni Ernst (R-Iowa).

“It would be really hard,” she acknowledged.

During a closed-door lunch on Tuesday, Trump relayed to Senate Republicans that he had come up with a slogan — “Republicans are the party of health care” — on the short ride over from the White House to the Capitol, said people familiar with the gathering, who requested anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Trump told the Republicans that he “owned” the issues of the economy and border security, but the party is vulnerable on health care. He said he wanted to get a new plan during the election, according to those familiar with the gathering.

Trump’s strategy has hardly been universally embraced.

“It’s the dumbest thing I have ever heard,” said a senior GOP aide, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “It is the equivalent of punching yourself in the face repeatedly.”

Beyond policy concerns, Republicans on both sides of the Capitol were also baffled by Trump’s decision to step on a rare news cycle that casts him in a positive light.

He believes he wins when he wreaks vengeance on his enemies. That is his operating worldview. Read his books. Listen to his speeches from long before he ran for president. That’s what “lock her up!” is all about, after all this time.

He believes he needs to best John McCain in order to win the 2020 election. A dead man. Think about that.

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QOTD: Mr Kellyanne Conway

by digby

George Conway wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post. This is the conclusion:

Whether the Mueller report ever sees the light of day, there is one charge that can be resolved now. Americans should expect far more from a president than merely that he not be provably a criminal. They should expect a president to comport himself in accordance with the high duties of his office. As all presidents must, Trump swore an oath to preserve, protect and defend the Constitution, and to faithfully execute his office and the laws in accordance with the Constitution. That oath requires putting the national interests above his personal interests.

Yet virtually from the moment he took office, in his response to the Russia investigation, Trump has done precisely the opposite: Relentlessly attacked an attorney general, Mueller, the Justice Department — including suggesting that his own deputy attorney general should go to jail. Lied, to the point that his own lawyers wouldn’t dare let him speak to Mueller, lest he commit a crime. Been more concerned about touting his supposedly historic election victory than confronting an attack on our democracy by a hostile foreign power.

If the charge were unfitness for office, the verdict would already be in: guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

He was compromised by Russia with his lies about Trump Tower. Whether they acted on it is unknown. His behavior at the summits, toward NATO, toward Putin etc may just be because the President trusts the Russian president more than he trusts the US government to give him good advice — because he’s a psychologically damaged moron. That’s always been a good possibility.

And no matter what, Conway is absolutely right. He is unfit in every way. Let’s hope Barr’s whitewash doesn’t result in too many people losing sight of that in a race to prove they are “unbiased.” Trump deserves no benefit of the doubt on ANYTHING.

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We still don’t know about the money laundering

by digby

A new lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York by a bank from Kazakhstan alleges that Trump crony Felix Sater helped launder millions of dollars stolen from the bank and funnel them into real estate projects, some of which are suspected to have links to the president of the United States. I’m sure this is nothing to worry about because the Barr Letter has cleared the president of all wrongdoing and we no longer have to worry that a criminal is running the most powerful nation on earth.

Monday’s lawsuit alleges that Sater traveled to Russia around 2013 at Ilyas Khrapunov’s request in order to look for potential locations to invest the money stolen by Ablyazov. “Sater conspired with Ilyas to invest the stolen funds to develop a Trump Tower project in Russia,” the court documents read.

That same year, Sater’s former development company Bayrock helped Ilyas Khrapunov purchase three condos in Trump Tower SoHo and quickly resell the properties. It is unclear whether Trump knew about the origin of the funds at the time, but financial experts have long claimed that the money was likely laundered through Trump Tower.

Sater told Newsweek that he was not involved in Khrapunov’s purchase of Trump Tower condos, and that he had already left Bayrock before the purchase was complete.

Monday’s lawsuit, however, argued that Sater conspired with his former clients to launder money through a variety of real estate projects, including five in the U.S., and avoid asset freezing orders against Ablyazov and the Khrapunov family.

“Felix Sater is a notorious New York ‘businessman’ and two-time felon who, along with wanted criminals Mukhtar Ablyazov and Ilyas Khrapunov, and others known and unknown, participated in an international criminal conspiracy to launder and conceal at least $440 million that was stolen from the Plaintiffs in Kazakhstan, and to evade lawful asset freezing and receivership orders issued by the courts of the United Kingdom,” the lawsuit filed Monday reads.

“Sater helped Ablyazov, Khrapunov, and others launder tens of millions of dollars in those stolen funds into the United States, where they were invested in real estate and used to procure immigration status for Khrapunov’s sister,” the court documents continue. “Sater also tried to help them stash some of the stolen money overseas, including in real estate in Moscow. Sater then turned on his criminal confederates and stole at least $40 million of the money he had laundered into the United States for his own personal benefit and the benefit of his associate, Daniel Ridloff.”

Sater’s attorney Robert Wolf, however, argued that there was more to the story. He said the lawsuit against his client is revenge for ongoing arbitration between BTA and a company owned by Sater. Like Michael Cohen, Sater’s company Litco was hired by BTA to recuperate the funds stolen by Ablyazov.

“This is a cheap and desperate retaliation lawsuit by BTA and Almaty based on false allegations,” Wolf told Newsweek in an email. “Mr. Sater’s asset recovery company, Litco, sued them last October for failing to pay $10 million owed for assistance recovering over $50 million in assets. Their concealment from the court of that lawsuit against them and their concealment of their prior agreement with Litco will result in a prompt dismissal of this case.”

Sater told Newsweek that his company Litco was set up to assist BTA with asset recovery. The bank has been accused of paying Sater, a witness in their case against the Khrapunovs, $2.5 million. BTA’s lawyer, meanwhile, claims that Litco never disclosed that it was controlled by Sater.

“As usual, Mukhtar Ablyazov, Ilyas Khrapunov and the other defendants are now trying to distract attention from their own crimes with sideshows,” Schwartz told Newsweek. “The fact remains that they have no defense to the fraud and money laundering charges that have been leveled against them. But to be crystal clear, neither BTA Bank nor the City of Almaty did anything remotely wrong, and neither of them had any idea about Litco’s true owner.”

Documents viewed by Newsweek demonstrate that the arbitration case between the two parties is ongoing.

Another Trump ally, the president’s current lawyer and former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani, has also been accused of helping the Khrapunov family launder the money stolen from Kazakhstan. Giuliani’s former law firm had an office in the Central Asian country. It also helped set up a subsidiary of Bayrock in the Netherlands through which Ablyazov and the Khrapunovs allegedly funneled some of the stolen funds.

Both Giuliani and Sater were named in a criminal complaint filed in the Netherlands in October last year asking the government to investigate the company for money laundering.

Sater was set to testify before the House Intelligence Committee on Wednesday about his role pursuing the Trump Tower Moscow deal, but the hearing was canceled suddenly on Monday.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said that the testimony was postponed so that Congress can focus on obtaining information about the report issued Friday by special counsel Robert Mueller, who was investigating potential collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government to influence the 2016 presidential election. The report has not been made public or been given to Congress, but Attorney General William Barr sent Congress a short letter summarizing its findings.

The president’s lawyer is also suspected of money laundering.

This is all fine.

Here’s a NYT story about Trump’s relationship with Felix Sater. He was scheduled to speak before the Intelligence Committee and it’s been postponed. Stay tuned.

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“Vengeance Is Mine!” sayeth Dear Leader

by digby

Above the law, as if he were a king…

by digby

This piece by Peter Baker at the New York Times nicely captures one of the major democratic principles at stake in this dumpster fire of a presidency and how the Republicans are dealing with it:

After Watergate, it was unthinkable that a president would fire an F.B.I. director who was investigating him or his associates. Or force out an attorney general for failing to protect him from an investigation. Or dangle pardons before potential witnesses against him.

But the end of the inquiry by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, made clear that President Trump had successfully thrown out the unwritten rules that had bound other chief executives in the 45 years since President Richard M. Nixon resigned under fire, effectively expanding presidential power in a dramatic way.

Mr. Mueller’s decision to not take a position on whether Mr. Trump’s many norm-shattering interventions in the law enforcement system constituted obstruction of justice means that future occupants of the White House will feel entitled to take similar actions. More than perhaps any other outcome of the Mueller investigation, this may become its most enduring legacy.

To Mr. Trump and his allies, this is the correct result, a restoration of the rightful authority of a president over the executive branch as stipulated in the Constitution. Under the theory that Mr. Trump’s legal team advanced, the Justice Department and the F.B.I. work for the president and therefore a president can order investigations opened or closed, fire prosecutors, grant pardons or otherwise use his constitutional power even if it seems overtly self-interested or political.

It was that view that Attorney General William P. Barr embraced in a 19-page memo he drafted last year as a private citizen and sent unsolicited to the White House months before Mr. Trump appointed him to lead the Justice Department. And it was that same view that informed Mr. Barr’s decision on Sunday to make the ruling that Mr. Mueller would not and declare that Mr. Trump had not obstructed justice.

“I celebrate this, I salute this, I think it is a very good thing because the possibility of having the president investigated because of his exercise of his core constitutional powers was a very, very bad thing to have out there,” said David B. Rivkin Jr., a former Republican Justice Department official who has written on the topic. “It debilitates the government at all levels.”

To Mr. Trump’s critics, however, the development represents a dangerous degradation of the rule of law, handing a president almost complete leeway to thwart any effort by federal law enforcement authorities to scrutinize his actions almost as if he were a king.

It’s a mistake to assume these Republicans are operating in anything resembling good faith. If a Democrat were to perpetrate anything like what Trump has done they would be hysterically running around in circles decrying his imperious behavior. Remember, they impeached Bill Clinton for obstruction of justice — and his alleged crime was winking and nodding at his own secretary and asking his friend to get Lewinsky a better job. They are, as we speak, demanding a special counsel to investigate the Obama administration which hasn’t been in office since January 2017.

What they count on is the fact that Democrats, hewing to principle, will be on their side if a Democratic president tried to do any of what Donald Trump has done. Even in the Clinton case, which was an embarrassingly low, partisan act, the Democrats were prepared to censure Clinton and they went on television night after night condemning his behavior. They voted against impeachment because it was ridiculous to call what Clinton did a high crime or misdemeanor, but they were unsparing in their criticism. I think it’s clear that Republicans are not following that path.

The fact is that we have a bipartisan agreement that the president is not a king — when the president is a Democrat. We are polarized on the question of whether a Republican president is one. You can see the problem.

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Us love healthcare!
by Tom Sullivan

It’s like having a Bizarro in the White House:

“Let me tell you exactly what my message is: The Republican party will soon be known as the party of health care,” the president told reporters on Capitol Hill ahead of his meeting with Senate Republicans. “You watch.”

We watched.

Then in a legal filing Monday, and over the objections of key cabinet officials, the Trump administration backed a full repeal of the Affordable Care Act with no replacement in sight:

If the Justice Department’s position prevails, it would potentially eliminate health care for millions of people and cause disruption across the U.S. health-care system — from removing no-charge preventive services for older Americans on Medicare to voiding the expansion of Medicaid in most states. A court victory would fulfill Republican promises to undo a prized domestic accomplishment of the previous administration but leave no substitute in place.

What the hell is he doing? Paul Krugman originally thought Republican objections to health care coverage was “cynical and strategic,” that they believed stoking fear of people’s fear of change might have some political advantage. Krugman has changed his mind on that:

The point is that it’s no longer possible to see any of this as part of a clever political strategy, even a nefariously cynical one. It has entered the realm of pathology instead. It’s now clear that Republicans just have a deep, unreasoning hatred of the idea that government policy may help some people get health care.

Why? The truth is that I don’t fully get it. Maybe it’s anger at the thought of anyone getting something they didn’t earn themselves, unless it’s an inheritance from daddy. Maybe it’s a sense that a lot of gratuitous suffering is or should be part of the human condition, or God’s plan, or something. I try to understand how others think, but in this case I really do find it hard.

Maybe after his months of Mueller-phobia, believing himself finally vindicated by his attorney general’s non-exoneration exoneration, the sitting president is in the mood to exact revenge on somebody. Or maybe Krugman is right. Perhaps Trumpish authoritarians simply believe they sit atop the social ladder by virtue of superior better genes. Survival of the richest. Those who can afford, do. Those who cannot, die, just as God intended.

He got no bounce (so far) but still has the cult

by digby

The first poll post-Barr Letter, from Morning Consult:

President Donald Trump’s net approval rating was 13 points underwater — the same as last week — in the first survey conducted after the release of a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings. 

48% of GOP voters said Mueller found Trump did not commit obstruction of justice, while 37% of all voters said he did not make a determination on that question. 

It’s not surprising that people are confused. But as usual Republicans are much more confused than everyone else.

Nonetheless:

82% say the report should be made public; 52% still believe Russia has compromising information on the president.

So basically, so far, he’s pleased his cult.

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Setting the narrative is job one

by digby

This week is starting to remind me of the 2000 presidential election. This is what I was thinking. /1— julianzelizer (@julianzelizer) March 26, 2019

This insight from Julian Zelizer is really sharp:

Julian Zelizer, co-author of Fault Lines: A History of the United States Since 1974, said the rollout of Mueller’s report — and attorney general William Barr’s brief summary of the findings — gave him a queasy feeling.

“This week is starting to remind me of the 2000 presidential election,” Zelizer tweeted. “This is what I was thinking.”

The historian said Republicans had declared victory before the results came in — just as they had during the Florida recount — and exploited structural weaknesses in the news media to establish a narrative.

“Republicans count on the national media to quickly repeat their conclusion,” Zelizer said. “Pack journalism gets to work.”

That allowed Republicans to insist Bush had won, even after legal challenges to restrictive Florida voting laws and paid GOP protesters pressured officials in Miami-Dade County to halt their recount.

“When serious concerns emerge about the results, Republicans stand by the initial declaration of victory,” Zelizer said.

Thus, Republicans complained that Democrats were trying to “steal” Bush’s election win by challenging the GOP’s arguments on which votes should be counted — and then they waited.

“Meanwhile, charge that Democrats are being ‘sore losers’ by asking legitimate questions about what is going on,” Zelizer said. “The GOP then tries to force an ending to the controversy by running out the clock”

Republicans in 2000 claimed a clear mandate, despite narrowly winning the election under highly questionable and unprecedented conditions, and Zelizer sees the same narrative playing out as Trump claims exoneration and Republicans try to block the public from seeing Mueller’s evidence against him.

“After the Supreme Court stops the Florida recount in December 2000, Republicans act like there is a clear mandate and national consensus about the results,” Zelizer said. “Never look back.”

“Does this all bring back some memories?” he added.

Yes it does.

I think the Democrats thought they had gotten in front of it with their call for the whole report and getting the whole House to vote for that. And in the end that will probably have been a smart move, particularly if the whole thing ends up in the courts under executive privilege. (Not that that would be determinative, but it sends a signal.)

But Barr wrote a very clever political document that gave the press the simple takeaway they wanted and allowed Trump to spin Barr’s conclusions as exoneration.

They won that round no doubt about it.

Special counsel Robert Mueller found that no one in the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government in 2016 — but Democrats are not ready to accept that finding https://t.co/ywnmPFjZ8X— CNN (@CNN) March 25, 2019

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They just share a love for borscht

by digby

Asked if there is an innocent explanation for why so many Trump associates were meeting with Russians, Rudy Giuliani replies "It wasn't that many," as a graphic showing 16 people flashes on the screen. pic.twitter.com/JBwp4Otcfh— Josh Campbell (@joshscampbell) March 26, 2019

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