Month: May 2018

The Trump Administration opened the US- Israeli embassy in Jerusalem on Monday. Gazan protests left scores dead.

The White House continues to develop their plants to separate children from adults at the boarder with a plan to house children on military bases. The new tactic of separation is a change because the US “historically treated immigration violations as civil, rather than criminal, offenses, and thus parents have not typically been separated from their children when they enter the legal system.”

The first warning signs that the Trump-Kim summit may not happen or happen smoothly came on Tuesday, as North Korea threatened to pull out.

On the Cohen matter, we learn that the person who leaked his financial reports that Avanati revealed last week did so because two suspicious activity reports (SARs) have gone missing from the Treasury Departments records. This person revealed to Farrow of the New Yorker his reasons for leaking. Many have pointed out that his concern may not be justified because Mueller or others in the DOJ may have classified the two reports. 

From the New York Times: “President Trump’s financial disclosure, released on Wednesday, included for the first time repayment of more than $100,000 to his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, in 2017, raising questions about whether Mr. Trump’s sworn filing from a year ago improperly omitted the debt.”

Tillerson spoke at the Virginia Military Institute graduation: “If our leaders seek to conceal the truth or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom.”

In Russia News:

Buzzfeed News published what it billed as the ultimate summative story of the deal for a Trump tower in Moscow, that was ongoing during the 2016 election. First, Trump public praise of Putin was used to curry favor among Putins business associates for the deal; Cohen was coordinating with a GRU spy to make the deal happen; Cohen claims the deal died in January 2016, but in early 2016 he started communicating about it with an encrypted messaging system that erases all messages. The journalist Anthony Cormier did a Lawfare podcast with Wittes in which they discussed how apparent it was that Russia was desperate to get Trump and Trump surrogates into Russia during the campaign.  

The Senate Intelligence Committee released many documents in their second quarterly report, in which they agreed with the Intelligence Community report from 2016 that Russia interfered with the election to help Trump defeat Clinton. Here are seven main takeaways.

And here is David French arguing the fact that Trump’s team was so willing to accept Russian help it justifies the continued investigation.

The New York Times published an account of the early days of the Russia investigation, which was codenamed “Crossfire Hurricane.” We learn more about how unwilling the agents were to make it known before the 2016 election that four people of Trump’s campaign had Russia connections; and that the FBI used an informant to talk to Page and Popadopoulos.

That informant is the same that Nunes is trying to out, which the FBI says could endanger his life. Trump has used the story to continue his claim that the Obama Administration was spying on him.

Apparently the informant has been described enough by the media, particularly right wing websites, that he has been effectively outed. Wittes published a scathing rebuke of the White House and Congress for the role they played in this. The danger to the FBI is that it will lose credibility with future informants.

The Times reported on meetings between Don Jr and non-Russian foreign nationals who were seeking to help the Trump campaign, including Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and an Israeli, Joel Zamel, who specialized in social media manipulation was was paid $2 million after the election: “The plan involved using thousands of fake social media accounts to promote Mr. Trump’s candidacy on platforms like Facebook.” Mueller has one of Zamel’s computers.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.4%

Trump pulled the US out of the Iran Deal on Tuesday. Obama responded with a lengthy rebuttal on his Facebook page.

Kirstjen Nielson, Secretary of Homeland Security, threatened to resign after enduring one of Trump cabinet room tirades. He is upset that she is not doing more to close the boarder, including the policy to separate parents and children.

Two days before the tirade Session announced in a speech that all adults who illegally crossed with children would be separated. So far this policy does not include asylum seekers.

Gina Haspel had her confirmation hearing. She vowed not to restart the Bush-era enhanced interrogation program. John McCain released a statement that he will not vote for her because she could not say that the CIA torture was immoral. A White House aide mocked him for this, saying it does not matter because “he is dying anyway.”

Paul Campos of New York Magazine posits (for the first time I’ve heard of it) that Trump, not Elliot Broidy, was the one who impregnated a Playboy Bunny and had Michel Cohen pay her over a million dollars in hush money. This has not been confirmed, but the fact pattern is interesting.

In Russia News (there’s a lot):

First, on Tuesday, Clifford’s lawyer Michael Avenatti released a report that disclosed Cohen’s financial records, which revealed that he received half a million dollars from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg. Then the New York Times confirmed the story, adding a list of other countries with business before the Trump administration that gave up to four million dollars to cohen. The payments extended from 2017 into early 2018.

AT&T is one of the companies, which gave $200,000 to Cohen. For context: “If AT&T paid a monthly fee of $50,000, Essential Consultants would have received more money in the year than AT&T’s highest paid lobbying firms, Mayer Brown and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld, which were paid $420,000 and $400,000 respectively. In 2017, AT&T paid 14 firms at least $200,000 to work Washington for the telecommunications giant.”

The Washington Post as a handy graphic of the payments of the players involved. The article notes that “if Avenatti’s representation is accurate, the graphic above is still incomplete.”

Until this week, the Cohen matter seemed separate from the Russia matter. Here is an explainer of how they might be connected, and why Cohen might be of interest to Mueller and why Cohen might start to provide Mueller information.

Here is what the companies are saying as of Wednesday. Also, Mueller’s team has spoken to at least two of them.

By midweek, however, the Cohen matter was being perceived as run of the mill access peddling, where Cohen was simply taking advantage of opportunities to help companies gain insight into Trump’s forming administration.

The threat by Nunes to hold Session in contempt is over documents that an important intelligence informant provided to Mueller. The Justice Department told the White House un-redacting the document and turning it over to the House would blow his cover and endanger lives. The White House has agreed so far.

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Trump’s Job Approval: 42.1%

On Monday evening the New York Times reported on  leaked questions Mueller wants to ask the President directly. Beyond the nature of the questions themselves, we learn that when Dowd received the questions from Muellers’ team it cemented his opinion that Trump should not sit for an interview, and when Trump pushed ahead with plans to do just that, he resigned. Here is a summary. 

Ben Wittes warns us that these are Trump’s lawyers’ interpretation of the questions–not the actual questions. It is not known who leaked them, except that whoever did was not a member of Trump’s legal team.

Here is Wittes on how Mueller and Trump’s lawyers are engaging in a game of chicken over the interview. It’s a useful primer in reading the tea leaves of the investigation. For Mueller, the interview may be a need-to-have or a nice-to-have depending on the strength or weakness of his evidence.

Freedom Caucus congressmen are leaking articles of impeachment against Rosenstein, prompting him to say publicly that the Justice Department “will not be extorted.” Trump is siding with Congress in the battle against Justice in the Russia investigation.

Rudy Giuliani went on Hannity and attempted to put an end to the Clifford case by admitting that Trump reimbursed Cohen his $130,000, therefore it cannot be a campaign finance violation. Problem is that Trump has already said he did not know about the payments; and Trump’s other lawyers and staff did not know Giuliani was going to say this on TV, and in facts did not know the payments had been made.

By Friday it seems clear there was no master strategy in Giuliani’s statements. Trump said he did not have his facts straight, one day after corroborating his statements in a tweet. 

Trump’s former doctor admitted this week that the letter attesting to Trump’s health during the campaign was dictated by Trump, and that Trump’s private security detail raided his office to take all of Trump’s medical records just weeks after Trump took office.

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Trump’s Job Approval Rating: 42.1%

Trump hosted Macron for a State Dinner. One of Macron’s goals was to shore up the Iran deal, and it is unclear if he succeeded. After his three day visit, Macron predicts Trump will pull the US out of the deal.  

A special election for a House seat in Arizona was won by the Republican, but only by 5 points. She had a 25 point pro-GOP advantage–a further sign of the Democrat’s strength for the midterm.

The Senate confirmed Pompeo for State, while Ronny Johnson dropped out for Veterans Affairs after myriad allegations about him surfaced. 

Michael Cohen pled the fifth this week, and a judge ordered the review of his documents to continue.

In Russia News:

Senate Judiciary Committee approved a bill the protect Mueller. 

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Trump’s Job Approval Rating: 40.4%