In Russia News
Following up on Saturday’s story about McGahn giving Mueller 30 hours of interviews, the New York Times reported that 1) Trump’s lawyers do not know everything that McGahn told Muller; 2) McGahn was rattled by the Times story (September 2017) about Trump’s lawyers being overheard during lunch saying McGahn was hiding documents in a safe, and out of fear “he decided to try to demonstrate to Mr. Mueller that he and other White House lawyers had done nothing wrong.”
Tuesday afternoon, Cohen plead guilty to eight counts of financial crimes, and stated in court that Trump ordered him to commit crimes that violated campaign finance laws. Manafort was also given a guilty verdict on eight counts. Here is a graphic of who in Trump’s orbit has been charged with what so far.
This is seen as increasing the legal and political peril for Trump, in part because it is not about Mueller or the democrats or any other enemy. A jury of Manafort’s peers, and prosecutors in the Southern District of New York are leading this charge. White House aids are unclear how this will play and are struggling to develop a line of argument other than “The President has not been charged with any crime.” Trump also seemed at a bit of a loss Tuesday night, and could only talk about how Manafort was a good man.
On Wednesday Trump tweeted: “I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” – make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!”
Trump has also said on live TV interviews that “flipping” and working with the government prosecutors should be illegal. This drew comparisons between him and how mob bosses talk about law enforcement.
Everyone seems to agree that Cohen’s statement means that Trump committed a felony. Here is Andrew McCarthy: “it was illegal for Michael Cohen to make contributions exceeding $2,700 per election to a presidential candidate (including contributions coordinated with the candidate); and illegal for the candidate to accept contributions in excess of that amount. It was also illegal for corporations to contribute to candidates (including expenditures coordinated with the candidate), and for the candidate to accept such contributions. The latter illegality is relevant because Cohen formed corporations to transfer the hush money… It is also illegal to fail to report contributions and expenditures, and to conspire in or aid and abet another person’s excessive contributions.”
What this should mean politically is sliding into the familiar Trump era muddle (#Nothing Matters vs. #WhatAboutism). In the same piece where McCarthy admits Trump committed crimes, he also argues that those crimes are not serious enough to justify impeachment. Never Trump conservative Bret Stephens tweeted that Trump should resign on the same day the news broke. His New York Times editorial made the case for impeachment: “Pragmatists will rejoin that there’s no sense in advocating impeachment when the G.O.P. controls Congress. I’m sorry that so many congressional Republicans have lost their sense of moral principle and institutional self-respect, but that’s a reason to seek Democratic victories in the fall. The Constitution matters more than a tax cut. What the Constitution demands is the impeachment and removal from office of this lawless president.”
Trump himself does not seem to understand the ways in which what he and Cohen did were illegal. In an interview for Fox News on Wednesday he claimed that the money was not “from the campaign.” This does not get him off the hook for any of the charges listed above. Mathew Yglesias points out “the fact that the boss in question can’t even deny the allegations properly only underscores how strange the situation is.”
According to reporting: “We started with collusion,” the president mused, according to several people who witnessed Mr. Trump’s somber mood. “How did we end up here?” His aids and lawyers also have no plan on how to proceed: “The only option was to follow Mr. Trump’s lead.” But no one in the White House including Trump knows where this is headed. It’s the fog of (political and legal) war.
Ben Wittes sums up the mood: “It is the morning after a devastating defeat. Smoke is still rising from the field. The rubble has not yet been cleared. And the commanders are having trouble facing just how hopeless their position has become. They no longer know on how many fronts they are fighting, how many separate enemies they face, or to what extent those enemies are cooperating—one might say “colluding”—with one another. They know they are surrounded. They know the next push could come at any moment—or be days, weeks, or months off. But they know neither what the attack will look like nor from which side it will come.”
Just a day after it was revealed that David Pecker has been granted immunity by the Southern District of New York, the New York Times reports that Allen Weisselberg the CFO of the Trump Organization, has also been given immunity.
In other news
Trump abruptly canceled Pompeo’s trip to North Korea less than a day after Pompeo announced it, saying there will be no progress on denuclearization until Chinese-US relations are improved.
After watching a segment on Fox News Trump tweeted about a white genocide conspiracy theory that black South Africans are killing minority white farmers. The tweet directed Pompeo to use the State Department to investigate the situation. This was interpreted by white nationalists here and abroad as another sign that Trump supports their cause.
Thursday night the McCain family announced that McCain was stopping all treatment for his brain cancer. Friday morning the Washington Post published a piece that recounts Trump and McCain’s bad history, which including this new reporting: “Trump does not want to comment on McCain before he dies, White House officials said, and there was no effort to publish a statement Friday as many politicians released supportive comments on the ailing senator.”
Late that afternoon, McCain died. Here are the obituaries from The New York Times and The Washington Post.
Child-Separation Policy
New government documents add more detail about the missing parents:
- 412 already-deported parents with kids in US.
- Phone numbers provided by Trump administration for 38 are no good.
- 140 not reachable at numbers provided.
- No phone numbers for 41.
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Trump’s Job Approval: 41.90%