The Trump thread: All things Donald

[Athos_131]

Mueller simply could not find sufficient evidence of conspiracy to indict him.

We don't know that unless the report is released.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump is treating the Russia investigation as settled. Most Americans don’t agree with his conclusions.

There is a philosophy in politics that mirrors the well-known legal aphorism “possession is nine-tenths of the law": It’s much harder to dislodge an established political belief than it is to win a debate at the outset.

President Trump is aware of this. For nearly two years, he has been working to establish the idea that there was no collusion between his 2016 campaign and Russia, repeating that mantra over and over again. With the conclusion of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of that question and the release of a letter from Attorney General William P. Barr indicating that Mueller didn’t establish that the campaign coordinated with the Russian government, Trump has worked to make his position even more concrete.

“There was no collusion with Russia,” Trump said Sunday while returning to Washington from his private club in Florida. “There was no obstruction, and — none whatsoever. And it was a complete and total exoneration.”

Barr’s letter didn’t make the claim that there was no obstruction of justice, explicitly quoting Mueller in noting that Trump wasn’t exonerated on that charge. But one political play here seems straightforward: establish in the public consciousness what Mueller’s report says, making it harder for political opponents to undercut that position when and if the full Mueller report is made public.

There’s just one problem with that effort. Americans aren’t completely sold.

In two polls released Wednesday, from CBS and CNN, Americans were asked their views about the conclusion of the Mueller inquiry.

CNN and its polling partner SSRS asked people how they understood Mueller’s findings, based on reporting about Barr’s letter. About 4 in 10 think Trump was exonerated of collusion. More than half, though, think Mueller simply couldn’t prove the point.

CBS’s poll added a layer of nuance. A plurality of respondents said that it was too soon to say whether Trump had been cleared of illegal activity “in the Russia matter” — which could certainly be interpreted to include the question of obstruction of justice. Nearly 6 in 10 respondents either said that it was too soon to say or that Trump hadn’t been cleared.

What’s more, the CBS poll found that, on the central issue of improper contact between Trump’s team and Russia, most Americans thought something untoward was somewhat likely to have happened.

This, too, is open to a wide range of interpretations: Does it, for example, include former national security adviser Michael T. Flynn’s conversations with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in December 2016? But the top line is clear: A third of Americans say it’s very likely that there were improper contacts.

That said, another element of Trump’s rhetoric has taken hold: that the investigation itself was motivated by politics. According to CBS, more than half of Americans think the investigation of possible collusion was politically motivated, powered by a majority of independents and three-quarters of Republicans holding that position.

For Trump, that’s an advantage, a bit of nine-tenths ownership that will serve him well. If Americans are prone to thinking that the investigation was political in nature, it might mean that any further revelations about what Mueller found will be treated with skepticism.

Of course, we’ll also note that Trump’s presentation of what Mueller determined has already gained a solid foothold — among Republicans. Although a fifth told CBS that it’s too soon to determine whether Trump has been fully cleared, three-quarters told CNN that they think he has been exonerated.

Over the weekend, before Barr’s letter was published, Fox News Channel presented a poll suggesting that most people didn’t think anything in the Mueller report was very likely to change their minds about Trump.

It’s still not entirely clear how accurate that self-assessment was, either.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

A Mueller mystery: How Trump dodged a special counsel interview — and a subpoena fight

It was March 2018, nearly 10 months into his Russia investigation, when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, a man of few words, raised the stakes dramatically in a meeting with President Trump’s lawyers: If the president did not sit down voluntarily for an interview, he could face a subpoena.

In the months that followed, Mueller never explicitly threatened to issue a subpoena as his office pursued a presidential interview, a sit-down for which the special counsel was pushing as late as December.

But with that prospect hanging over them, Trump’s legal advisers conducted a quiet, multipronged pressure campaign to avert such an action and keep the president from coming face-to-face with federal investigators — fearful he would perjure himself.

At one point last summer, when a lull in talks had the president’s attorneys worried that Mueller was seriously contemplating a subpoena, White House lawyer Emmet Flood wrote a memo laying out the legal arguments for protecting the president’s executive privilege. He sent the document to Mueller’s office and to the deputy for top Justice Department official Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversaw the probe, according to two people familiar with Flood’s outreach.

Meanwhile, the Trump lawyers sent a steady stream of documents and witnesses to the special counsel, chipping away at Mueller’s justification for needing an interview with the president.

In the end, the decision not to subpoena the president is one of the lingering mysteries of Mueller’s 22-month investigation, which concluded last week when he filed a report numbering more than 300 pages.

The special counsel did not find a conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia, but — in an unusual move — failed to come to a decision about whether Trump obstructed justice, according to a summary of the Mueller report released by Attorney General William P. Barr.

An interview with the president would have been pivotal to helping assess whether the president had corrupt intent, a key element of such a charge, legal experts said.

It is an open question whether a subpoena would have survived the court challenge that Trump’s lawyers say they would have mounted. The Supreme Court has never issued definitive guidance on issuing a subpoena to a president, but had Mueller pursued one, the courts could have established a precedent for future presidents.

In assessing whether to pursue such a high-stakes move, the special counsel was not operating with complete autonomy. That was a contrast with predecessors such as Kenneth Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton and had broad leeway under the now-expired independent counsel statute.

But Mueller was supervised by Rosenstein, a Trump appointee. The special counsel, Rosenstein noted in one letter to a Republican senator, “remains accountable like every other subordinate.”

Rosenstein himself was under intense political pressure: Trump mused about firing the onetime George W. Bush appointee and former U.S. attorney for Maryland, whom he derided at one point as “the Democrat from Baltimore.” And House conservatives threatened to impeach Rosenstein, accusing him of withholding information about the Russia probe.

Internal Justice Department discussions about whether to subpoena the president — including Rosenstein’s views on such an action — remain tightly held.

In the final months of the probe, there was upheaval in the department’s leadership. Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who had recused himself from the investigation. Sessions was replaced temporarily by his former chief of staff, Matthew G. Whitaker, who was publicly critical of the special counsel before joining the department.

A month before Mueller submitted his report, Barr was confirmed as attorney general. He had questioned Mueller’s ­obstruction-of-justice inquiry in a June 2018 memo to Rosenstein months before his appointment, writing that “Mueller should not be permitted to demand that the President submit to interrogation about alleged obstruction.”

If Mueller wanted to push for a subpoena, he did not force the issue with Justice Department leaders. Barr told lawmakers last week that no decision the special counsel wanted to take was vetoed during the investigation.

The Justice Department and the special counsel’s office declined to comment.

More answers could be revealed in Mueller’s full report, which House Democrats are pushing Barr to release.

What is known is that the president’s lawyers now believe keeping their client from sitting down with investigators was their greatest victory.

“The president would not have helped his case had he gone in,” said Mark Corallo, a former spokesman for Trump’s legal team. “No lawyer worth his salt would let that happen.”

Weighing a legal showdown
The president was initially inclined to sit for an interview with Mueller. He thought he could deliver a convincing performance and put a swift end to the probe.

Negotiations between the sides began around Thanksgiving 2017, and an interview was scheduled for January 2018, according to a person close to the legal team and a former senior administration official.

But John Dowd, then the president’s lead attorney, canceled the session. He had argued against it because he feared Trump could misspeak or even lie. And a practice session with the president further convinced Dowd that the president could be a problematic interviewee, these people said.

White House officials declined to comment.

Over the next 12 months, Mueller tried repeatedly to reschedule the interview, to no avail.

Trump continued to state publicly that he would be glad to sit for an interview — he believed being seen as willing to talk with prosecutors showed “strength,” according to a former administration official with direct knowledge of his thinking. But the president came to agree with his lawyers that doing so would be too risky, especially after former national security adviser Michael Flynn pleaded guilty in December 2017 to lying to the FBI, current and former White House aides said.

Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani said that some of what Trump’s legal advisers were hearing from Mueller “raised our suspicion that this is a trap, rather than a search for more information.”

As the standoff continued, Mueller’s team discussed at length the idea of issuing a subpoena, if necessary, to compel Trump to sit for an interview, according to a person familiar with the matter who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe internal conversations.

The discussions — which included Mueller, his top deputy James Quarles, and prosecutors Michael Dreeben and Aaron Zebley — centered both on whether a subpoena was legally feasible and what the costs of such a move might be to the overall investigation, the person said.

A fight over a presidential subpoena would have been likely to set legal precedent.

Under President Richard M. Nixon, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that investigators could subpoena evidence from a sitting president and ordered Nixon to turn over materials including secret recordings made in the Oval Office. That ruling did not, however, address testimony by the president.

When Starr was independent counsel, he issued a subpoena to Clinton ordering the president to testify before a grand jury about his relationship with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. Clinton’s team considered challenging the subpoena in court but instead decided that it would be politically damaging to be seen as fighting the investigation. Clinton’s lawyers agreed that he would voluntarily sit for an interview, and Starr withdrew the subpoena — leaving open the question of whether a president can be compelled to give testimony.

Robert W. Ray, a former independent counsel now in private practice at Thompson & Knight, said Mueller’s team would have had to weigh whether a subpoena could survive the court challenge that was all but certain to come from the Trump White House.

The Supreme Court has never issued definitive guidance on the question, but in a previous independent counsel investigation, of Mike Espy, an agriculture secretary in the Clinton administration, an appellate court offered some clarity on the bounds of how the White House could fight a subpoena by citing presidential privilege.

On the basis of the precedent from that case — which was focused on documents, rather than an interview — Mueller would have had to demonstrate both a need to subpoena Trump to advance his investigation and show that he could not get the information he sought in any other way, Ray said.

Another major factor was time: Mueller had to consider the likelihood that such a move would bog the investigation down in a lengthy legal battle.

“That’s a major fight, and you have to decide whether, in the country’s best interests, it’s worth it,” Ray said.

Mueller broached the topic during a tense meeting on March 5, 2018, at the special counsel offices in Southwest Washington, as Trump’s attorneys maintained that the president had no obligation to talk to investigators.

The special counsel noted there was an option if Trump declined: He could be subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury, as The Washington Post previously reported.

Dowd erupted angrily.

“You’re screwing with the work of the president of the United States,” he told Mueller, according to two people briefed on the discussion.

After that meeting, the special counsel team changed its approach: trying to coax Trump to sit for an interview voluntarily.

Prosecutors hoped the president would agree to meet, mindful that they could not explicitly threaten a subpoena unless they were prepared to issue one, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Still, the Trump’s legal advisers felt after the March meeting that a subpoena threat hung over the president.

“The whole exercise was premised on the idea that that was a legal option they could pursue, and we were never absolutely sure until the end that they would not,” said one Trump adviser ­familiar with the legal negotiations.

That threat governed the president’s legal strategy in the months that would follow.

Doubts about prevailing
Trump’s lawyers left the distinct public impression that they were not an equal match for Mueller, a venerated former FBI director. Dowd and Ty Cobb, another legal adviser to Trump, were overheard by a reporter discussing over lunch at a popular Washington steakhouse how much they would cooperate with Mueller. Giuliani developed a habit of misspeaking in meandering television interviews.

But behind the scenes, Trump’s legal advisers had a quiet weapon: a husband-and-wife pair of criminal lawyers, Jane and Martin Raskin, who brought rigor and regimen to the team when they came aboard in April 2018.

While Giuliani and attorney Jay Sekulow managed the public relations strategy, the Raskins did most of the lawyering from a temporary office they set up in Washington. They declined to comment.

Giuliani said that roughly 80 percent of the Trump team’s interactions with the special counsel’s office were handled by Jane Raskin, who has known both Mueller and Quarles for years. She knew Mueller from her time as a federal prosecutor in Boston, while her husband had worked with Quarles.

She communicated mostly by email, developing a written record that Trump’s attorneys intended to use as evidence of their cooperation and responsiveness if they ended up in court fighting a subpoena.

Martin Raskin, meanwhile, did a great deal of the writing and editing of legal arguments, including a “counter report” defending the president that Giuliani said has been prepared but may never be released.

Central to the Trump strategy — developed first by Cobb and Dowd and later carried out by Giuliani, Sekulow and the Raskins, as well as Flood, who from his White House perch represented the office of the presidency — was to cooperate fully with every request for documents and witnesses from Mueller, including Trump’s written answers to some questions.

Their goal: to satisfy Mueller’s hunt for information to the extent that the special counsel would not have legal standing to subpoena the president’s oral testimony.

“We allowed them to question everybody, and they turned over every document they were asked for: 1.4 million documents,” Giuliani said.“We had what you would call unprecedented cooperation.”

Trump’s lawyers, citing the independent counsel investigation of Espy, argued that to justify a subpoena of Trump, Mueller needed to prove that he could not get the information in any way other than by asking the president.

“No matter what question they would say they wanted to ask, I felt confident we could turn it over and say, ‘You already have the answer to it,’ ” Giuliani said. “If they said, ‘Why did you fire Comey?’ I’d give them five interviews, and particularly the Lester Holt tape, where he goes into great detail as to his reasons.”

Giuliani was referring to Trump’s May 2017 interview with the “NBC Nightly News” anchor in which the president said he was thinking about “this Russia thing” when he fired James B. Comey as FBI director, one of the actions Mueller was investigating as possible obstruction of justice.

All the while, Giuliani said, the legal team was not convinced that it would have prevailed in court. “Honestly, I don’t know who would have won,” he said. “I think our argument got better as time went on. But I don’t know if we would have won.”

They never gave up asking'
As Mueller’s lawyers quietly labored, a political storm was raging around them.

Trump, his lawyers and his allies in Congress routinely attacked Mueller and his investigators as compromised and corrupt. The president repeatedly urged an end to the probe, which he condemned as a “witch hunt,” a “fraud” and a “hoax” that was wasting taxpayer money.

Rosenstein urged lawmakers to respect the confidential work of the special counsel, saying in a June 2018 letter to Sen. Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa), then the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that the probe would comply with all laws and Justice Department policies.

But Rosenstein also noted that Mueller was not an entirely independent actor — and that his work was being closely supervised.

“Under the terms of his appointment, both by statute and by regulation, Special Counsel Mueller remains accountable like every other subordinate Department official,” Rosenstein wrote.

[In secret memo, Trump’s lawyers argued he has complete power over Justice investigations and could not have committed obstruction]

A few months later, Flood sent his memo on the scope of executive privilege. While it made broad arguments, the document could have been construed to pertain to Mueller’s push to interview the president, according to someone with knowledge of the contents.

Notably, Flood sent the memo not just to Mueller’s office, but also to Rosenstein by way of his top deputy, Edward O’Callaghan.

Flood declined to comment.

As each month passed without a subpoena, the president’s attorneys increasingly doubted that Mueller would seek to obtain one, according to people with knowledge of internal discussions.

Mueller’s team kept insisting it needed to interview the president — but never followed through with an actual demand.

Mueller and Quarles would stress that they needed to know Trump’s intentions when he fired Comey and took other actions that could have thwarted the Russia investigation. Jane Raskin would respond by pressing them for a legal justification for seeking to interview the president, according to a person familiar with the negotiations.

The president’s team asked, “What evidence have you obtained that justifies you interviewing the president?” according the person, who added that Mueller’s office was “never able to articulate a compelling case. They never gave up asking, but they had no good answer for that question.”

In the absence of an interview, Trump’s attorneys offered Mueller a substitute: The president would provide answers to a set of questions about Russia and the campaign, submitted in writing. But, citing executive privilege, they refused to provide answers to questions pertaining to the president’s time in office — questions that went to the heart of the special counsel’s inquiry into possible obstruction of justice.

However, the process of compiling answers dragged. Trump’s lawyers found it difficult to get the president to focus on drafting the submission, according to people familiar with the sessions.Trump’s meetings with his lawyers were frequently interrupted by phone calls and other White House business.

Finally, in late November 2018, the lawyers sent Trump’s answers to Mueller.

In December, Mueller’s team made one more request for an interview with the president.

And in January, the special counsel’s office contacted Trump’s lawyers to ask some ­follow-up questions, according to people familiar with the request.

But Trump’s lawyers again declined.They neither agreed to an interview nor answered the additional questions.

Two months later, Mueller submitted his report without having spoken to the president. The investigation was over.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

How Donald Trump inflated his net worth to lenders and investors

When Donald Trump wanted to make a good impression — on a lender, a business partner, or a journalist — he sometimes sent them official-looking documents called “Statements of Financial Condition.”

These documents sometimes ran up to 20 pages. They were full of numbers, laying out Trump’s properties, debts and multibillion-dollar net worth.

But, for someone trying to get a true picture of Trump’s net worth, the documents were deeply flawed. Some simply omitted properties that carried big debts. Some assets were overvalued. And some key numbers were wrong.

TRUMP’S ‘STATEMENTS OF FINANCIAL CONDITION’

See the full documents here

2011 statement
2012 statement
2013 statement
For instance, Trump’s financial statement for 2011 said he had 55 home lots to sell at his golf course in Southern California. Those lots would sell for $3 million or more, the statement said.

But Trump had only 31 lots zoned and ready for sale at the course, according to city records. He claimed credit for 24 lots — and at least $72 million in future revenue — he didn’t have.

He also claimed his Virginia vineyard had 2,000 acres, when it really has about 1,200. He said Trump Tower has 68 stories. It has 58.

Now, investigators on Capitol Hill and in New York are homing in on these unusual documents in an apparent attempt to determine whether Trump’s familiar habit of bragging about his wealth ever crossed a line into fraud.

The statements are at the center of at least two of the inquiries that continue to follow Trump, unaffected by the end of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation. On Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said it had requested 10 years of these statements from Trump’s accounting firm, Mazars USA.

And earlier this month, the New York state Department of Financial Services subpoenaed records from Trump’s longtime insurer, Aon. A person familiar with that subpoena, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said “a key component” was questions about whether Trump had given Aon these documents in an effort to lower his insurance premiums.

Both inquiries stemmed from testimony last month by Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen, who told Congress that Trump had used these statements to inflate his wealth — and then sent them to his lenders and his insurers.

“Mr. Trump is a cheat,” Cohen said, in describing what the statements showed.

Cohen told Congress that statements were given to Deutsche Bank, as Trump sought a loan to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. Since then, Deutsche Bank and another Trump lender have also received subpoenas, from the New York State attorney general.

The statements may additionally draw the interest of the House Financial Services Committee, which is scrutinizing Deutsche. A committee spokesman declined to comment.

The White House declined to comment for this report.

The Trump Organization also declined to comment about the statements or answer questions about specific errors the statements contained. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president’s sons who are running his business, noted on social media that Cohen has provided false testimony about other topics.

Mazars USA, the accounting firm, issued a brief statement Wednesday after the House Oversight letter became public, saying that it “believes strongly in the ethical and professional rules and regulations that govern our industry, our work and our client interactions.” It declined to comment further about Trump.

The Washington Post reviewed copies of these documents for 2002, 2004, 2011, 2012 and 2013 — obtaining them from court files, from people who received them from Trump’s company, and from Cohen. Cohen also provided copies of documents from 2011, 2012 and 2013 to Congress.

Since the 1980s, Trump has defined himself by his wealth, but he has often avoided providing proof to back up his boasts or provided documents that inflated the real values. As president, Trump has declined to release his tax returns, unlike every president since Jimmy Carter.

Trump is far from the first real estate developer to inflate his projects or wealth. But there are laws against defrauding insurers and lenders with false information. Financial and legal experts said it’s unclear at this point whether Trump will face any legal consequences. They said it depends on whether Trump intended to mislead or whether the misstatements caused anyone to give him a financial benefit.

“How much would [the errors] impact an investor?” said Kyle Welch, an assistant professor of accountancy at George Washington University. “If it’s systematic and it’s across the board, and it’s all in one direction, that’s where you have a problem.”

Welch said Trump could be protected by disclaimers that his own accountants added to the statements, warning readers that they weren’t seeing the full picture. And in an odd way, Welch said, Trump could be helped by the sheer scale of the exaggerations. They were so far off from reality, Welch wondered whether any real bank or insurer could have been fooled.

Welch said he’d never seen a document stretch so far past the normal conventions of accounting.

“It’s humorous,” Welch said. “It’s a humorous financial statement.”

Investigators for the New York State Department of Financial Services, which sent subpoenas to Aon, and the New York State attorney general — who subpoenaed Deutsche Bank — declined to comment. Aon and Deutsche Bank also declined to comment, beyond saying they plan to cooperate with investigators.

The story of Trump’s “statements of financial condition” — in essence, sales brochures for Trump the man, given out by Trump the company — goes back to the early 1980s, according to past testimony from Trump’s accountants and staffers.

In 2007, a Trump lawyer named Michelle Lokey said she had sent these statements out to Trump’s lenders, for projects in Chicago and Las Vegas, because Trump had personally guaranteed those loans. That meant that if Trump’s company defaulted on its obligations, the lenders could come after Trump’s personal assets.

“Therefore they’d want information on his net worth?” an attorney asked Lokey.

“I assume,” she said.

The statements were prepared by Trump’s longtime accountants, a firm now called Mazars. In other contexts — such as when one of Trump’s companies was seeking to secure a federal contract — this firm prepared rigorously audited financial statements.

This was a different sort of job.

When compiling these statements of financial condition, those accountants have said they did not verify or audit the figures in the statements. Instead, when Trump provided them data, they wrote it down without checking to see whether it was accurate.

“In the compilation process, it is not the role of the accountant to assess the values,” said Gerald J. Rosenblum, one of the accountants. “The role is to accept those values and move them forward.”

An attorney asked: Do the values have to be logical?

“The value per se does not have to be logical,” Rosenblum said. He and Lokey were deposed as part of a lawsuit in which Trump sued a New York Times reporter for allegedly lowballing his net worth. Trump’s suit against the reporter was later dismissed.

In 2014, Trump used the same accounting firm to prepare financial information for his most expensive development project in decades, his $200 million transformation of the historic Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington into a Trump International Hotel.

But in that case, Mazars vouched for the accuracy of the information, writing that the firm “is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of these financial statements” using industry standard accounting rules. This was a formal audit of finances related just to Trump’s D.C. hotel, rather than a summation of all of his assets based on Trump’s own estimates.

The statements Cohen provided to The Post — and to Congress — begin in 2011. Two of them are 20-page “Statements of Financial Condition” signed by Trump’s accountants.

In his testimony to Congress, Cohen said these statements included Trump’s self-appraisals of his buildings’ value — which aimed to impress, instead of aiming for reality. Cohen said Trump would take real measures of value, such as the amount of money his tenants paid in rent, and simply inflate it until he got a number he liked.

“If you’re going off of your rent roll, you go by the gross rent roll times a multiple,” Cohen said. “And you make up the multiple.”

The documents begin with two-page disclaimers, warning of various ways in which the statements don’t follow normal accounting rules. The accountants note that Trump is the source of many buildings’ valuations — and that, contrary to normal accounting rules, he had inflated them by counting future income that wasn’t guaranteed.

The accountants also note that Trump had told them to simply omit two of his major hotels, in Chicago and Las Vegas. Both buildings were carrying mortgages. That omission means that some of Trump’s actual debt load was hidden from anyone reading the statement.

“Users of this financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump” if they had more information, the statement concludes.

Legal experts interviewed by The Post said that sort of broad disclaimer might shield Trump from allegations that he misled his lenders and insurers. After all, his own accountants told readers they weren’t getting the full story.

“The transparent disclaimers — even if frustrating — typically wipe out a basis” for bringing charges of fraud, said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private attorney at Dickinson Wright.

In 2012, Trump’s statement said he owned a 2,000-acre vineyard in Virginia. But land records in Virginia show the Trump family owns about 1,200 acres. The Trump winery’s own website says 1,300 acres.

In 2011, the statements said that Trump’s Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, N.Y., was “zoned for nine luxurious homes.” In the statement, Trump said those homes would yield significant cash flow as he built them and sold them. That led him to value the property at $261 million — far more than the roughly $20 million value assigned by local assessors.

At the time, Trump had received preliminary “conceptual approval” to build homes on the site. But local officials said he never finished the last step in the approval process to build the homes or sell the lots.

None of the homes was built.

The 2013 statement that Cohen provided — and which he said was also given to Deutsche Bank, in pursuit of a loan to buy the Bills — is different from the other two.

It is just two pages long, with a slightly different title: “Summary of Net Worth.” It does not include the usual disclaimer from Trump’s accountants, so readers aren’t told that the debts from Trump’s Chicago and Las Vegas hotels are missing.

This document also includes a new “asset” that wasn’t there before.

It says that Trump’s brand value — his name, essentially — was worth $4 billion, and that it ought to be counted among his assets as if it were a building or a resort. With his brand included, Trump’s net worth jumped from $4.6 billion to $8.6 billion.

For Trump, the Bills would have been a financial prize far larger than any he had won in the recent past: Bids were expected to be around $1 billion.

In public, Trump had bragged that he was ready to pay $1 billion in cash. But privately, one of his lieutenants told a business contact that they were struggling with the bid.

“We are looking at the Bills but Allen and I are having trouble making the numbers work!!!” wrote Ron Lieberman, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, in an email to a contact in the New York City parks department. “Allen” likely meant Allen Weisselberg, Trump’s longtime chief financial officer.

Lieberman’s email was released this year in response to a public-records request from a nonprofit group, NYC Park Advocates. Lieberman and Weisselberg did not respond to requests for comment this week.

Whatever Trump sent to Deutsche Bank, it seems to have been enough: The New York Times reported that Deutsche Bank agreed to vouch for Trump’s bid for the Bills, citing an unnamed executive. But Trump lost a bidding war, and somebody else bought the team.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

What Trump’s blatant wealth inflation portends

Back in the summer of 2017, President Trump told the New York Times that his red line in the Russia investigation would be if special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began looking into his personal finances. “I think that’s a violation,” he said. “Look, this is about Russia.”

The Mueller probe has now ended, apparently without any criminal charges against Trump, including involving his finances. But the red line Trump drew is now being breached elsewhere, on multiple fronts.

And the question remains: Will his penchant for hyperbole and playing by his own rules ultimately catch up with him?

The Washington Post’s David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O’Connell are out with a must-read story on the unorthodox financial statements Trump has provided lenders and business partners in recent years. We already knew that these “Statements of Financial Condition” appeared to contain the kind of Trumpian wealth-inflation we’ve come to expect. But the big takeaway here is that some of the claims are flat-out wrong or leave out key information. And perhaps not coincidentally, they appear to err in one direction: toward Trump being wealthier and more financially stable than he actually was.

A few examples of the false claims:

Trump listed 55 home lots for sale at his golf course in Southern California, even though only 31 were zoned and ready for sale. The 24 nonexistent lots were valued at $3 million a piece, or $72 million.
He claimed his Virginia vineyard has 2,000 acres, when it in fact has about 1,200.
He omitted his hotels in Chicago and Las Vegas, which just happen to carry mortgages that would have added significantly to his debts.
He said an estate he owned in Westchester County, N.Y., was “zoned for nine luxurious homes” and estimated the value of the property, once the homes were built, would be $261 million. The lots were valued at just about $20 million by local assessors, however. Trump never built homes on them.
The first thing we can say is that it quickly becomes clear how Trump has inflated his wealth. On just two items, Trump appears to have exaggerated his actual assets by more than $300 million. Even if you accept that Trump is worth in the $8 billion-to-$10 billion range, that’s a good 3 percent to 4 percent he’s plucked out of thin air and layered on top, using just a couple of developments. The $4 billion value he has unilaterally placed on his personal brand is one thing, but at least that’s obviously rank speculation. These are actual assets.

The real question, as it has been for months on collusion and obstruction of justice, is when this kind of thing departs an ethical gray area and bleeds over into actual illegal activity. It’s not illegal to inflate your wealth in your public statements, but it can be illegal to do so to obtain something from a financial institution.

Former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified to Congress last month that Trump had indeed inflated his wealth to these institutions, and he submitted the documents described here. At least two investigative entities ― the Democratic-controlled House Oversight Committee and the New York State Department of Financial Services — are now probing just that. House Financial Services Committee Chairwoman Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) also said this week that Trump’s main lender in recent years, Deutsche Bank, has turned over documents concerning Trump to her.

As with Mueller on collusion and obstruction, though, proving Trump’s guilt could be difficult. And that appears especially so given that the “Statements of Financial Condition” carried extensive disclaimers. The accountants who wrote them noted that these weren’t traditional financial statements, acknowledged the exclusions of the hotels and wrote, “We have not audited or reviewed the accompanying financial statement.” They freely admitted that Trump was the source of some of the valuations and added, “Users of this financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump.”

That seems pretty ironclad. But as Fahrenthold and O’Connell write, such disclaimers are not provided in at least one case: a 2013 document laying out Trump’s finances. That document is missing the debts related to the hotels, but it doesn’t disclose that those properties are omitted. Thus, even someone reading the entire document could easily have gotten a mistaken impression about Trump’s actual financial status.

This document is briefer than the others and carries a different title: “Summary of Net Worth.” Trump submitted it to Deutsche Bank when he applied for a loan to buy the NFL’s Buffalo Bills. And while the New York Times has reported that Deutsche Bank vouched for Trump’s failed $1 billion bid to buy the Bills, it also reported that the bank didn’t buy Trump’s own claims of his net worth. One source told the Times that the bank would generally take Trump’s estimates and reduce them by 70 percent.

And that’s a key element here: Proving a crime on this kind of thing depends upon evidence that Trump intended to mislead and evidence that his distortions actually helped him obtain a financial benefit he wouldn’t have otherwise received. In other words, if Deutsche Bank didn’t actually believe it, it may not qualify.

But even if the pieces of a crime don’t fit on these documents, the fact that Trump was submitting misleading estimates with not just exaggerations but outright falsehoods to lenders is conspicuous. Why even venture into that kind of dicey territory?

Trump’s similar ventures into the gray areas of collusion and obstruction don’t appear to have cost him. We’ll apparently find out whether a similar approach to his finances may. And judging by the way he transferred his father’s wealth to himself, which the Times has deemed to be in some cases “outright fraud,” it’s hardly out of the question.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

“SHE WAS NOT INVOLVED”: E-MAILS SHOW IVANKA’S LAWYER ASKED FOR CHANGES TO MICHAEL COHEN’S CONGRESSIONAL TESTIMONY

Not terribly long into Michael Cohen’s public testimony before Congress last month—after he referred to President Donald Trump as a cheat, racist, and con man, but before he showed the Oversight Committee financial documents that he said proved his former boss manipulated his assets in order to deceive banks and insurance companies—Cohen took a moment to apologize. When he last appeared on Capitol Hill, Cohen had lied about a Moscow real-estate project Trump pursued while seeking the Republican presidential nomination. To align with Trump’s denials of any business dealings with Russia, Cohen told Congress that his negotiations ended before February, 2016, when in fact they had stretched well into June.

“The last time I appeared before Congress, I came to protect Mr. Trump,” he said. “Today, I’m here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump.”

Cohen, who has been sentenced to three years in prison, also made another explosive claim. President Trump, he said, had spoken in “code” to prompt Cohen to lie about the Moscow project. Moreover, Cohen said, his false testimony was coordinated with the president’s attorneys. “Trump’s personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it,” he said in his prepared remarks. At the time, Cohen had a joint defense agreement with the president, so the document was reviewed by Trump’s attorney, Jay Sekulow, as well as Abbe Lowell, the lawyer representing Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. According to Cohen, neither attorney raised objections to the document, which included his false statement about the Moscow project.

Sekulow issued a statement protesting Cohen’s assertions: “Today’s testimony by Michael Cohen that attorneys for the president edited or changed his statement to Congress to alter the duration of the Trump Tower Moscow negotiations is completely false.” But Cohen had communications detailing these alleged edits, some of which lawmakers requested in a closed-door hearing with the House Intelligence Committee the following week. One document, which I have reviewed, was an e-mail exchange between Cohen and his then attorney, Stephen Ryan, outlining changes that Ryan said Lowell had asked them to make in order to distance Ivanka from the Moscow deal. Attached to the e-mail were drafts he said were Lowell's suggested edits. The extent of Lowell’s involvement has not been previously reported.

“Abbe asks for us to affirmatively address in our statement on the 25th:

-[Ivanka] was not involved in the backs and forths with FS [Felix Sater] and MC [Michael Cohen]

-she did not know FS was involved in the possible project in that country

-she was not in any meetings or calls with people putting it together (esp. from that country)

-and maybe that, by then, MC knew she was at least skeptical about him.”

Ryan included his response to Lowell. “Yes, am developing the writing and shared it this am with MC to see if I have it right. MC will want me to do anything your client asks that is accurate, which is not really an issue—but it may be perceived as awkward to go as specific as your requests.” Ryan added that he was hoping to share a version “only with” Lowell that week. Later, in the e-mail chain, Ryan attached a document that he said had Lowell’s red-line edits included. A spokesman for Lowell declined to comment.

Ivanka said in an interview earlier this year that she knew “literally almost nothing” about the Trump-branded tower in Moscow and the negotiations surrounding it throughout the campaign. But Cohen, under oath, told Congress last month that he briefed the Trump family, including Ivanka, on the project on “approximately 10” occasions. In a December memo detailing Cohen’s cooperation as he pleaded guilty to lying to Congress, the special counsel’s office also noted that Cohen had “briefed family members” of Trump about the project. Initial documents suggest the Moscow tower would have included a “Spa by Ivanka Trump.” They also would have given Ivanka the power to approve “all interior design elements of the spa or fitness facilities.”

Ivanka, who then served as executive vice president of development and acquisition at the Trump Organization, had been involved in these sorts of decisions as part of her role. In November 2015, Ivanka forwarded Cohen an e-mail from a Russian weightlifter who said he could help arrange a meeting between Trump and Russian president Vladimir Putin to discuss real-estate opportunities in Russia. That same year, she e-mailed Cohen a suggestion for an architect who could work on the Moscow tower. (Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman for Lowell, said at the time that Ivanka was merely passing on an “unsolicited e-mail” from the weightlifter’s wife, and that Ivanka’s role in the project was limited to “reminding Mr. Cohen that, should an actual deal come to fruition . . . the project, like any other with the Trump name, conform with the highest design and architectural standards.”)

Cohen’s false testimony to Congress in 2017 ultimately did not include all of the provisos and caveats that Ryan said Lowell had asked for. They determined that Cohen going out of his way to be so specific about Ivanka's involvement would, in fact, have seemed awkward. Instead, Cohen’s commentary about Ivanka was boiled down to about one sentence.

Still, the revelation of Lowell’s involvement, as the e-mails suggest, in Cohen’s original testimony will likely be of interest to congressional investigators. After Cohen appeared before Congress for four marathon days last month, the House Judiciary Committee sent sweeping document requests to 81 individuals and organizations—many brought up by Cohen in his appearances—including Donald Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Jared Kushner, the Trump Organization, and its C.F.O., Allen Weisselberg. Ivanka herself was not asked for documents, though 52 individuals and organizations were asked for documents related to Ivanka or her businesses. Many, like former attorney general Jeff Sessions, former White House communications director Hope Hicks, and former Trump bodyguard Matthew Calamari, were asked for documents that could pertain to conversations between Ivanka and foreign governments. Cohen was also asked for documents related to Ivanka and any potential emolument violations, discussions with foreign governments, financial transactions with the Russian government or businesses, the Trump Tower Moscow project, and changes made to his initial congressional testimony.

Since his appearance on Capitol Hill, Cohen has continued to cooperate with Congress and investigators in the Southern District of New York and the New York Attorney General's office, who are pursuing a number of investigations that focus on Trump, his family, and their business, including the hush-money payments to women alleging affairs with Trump, matters related to the presidential inauguration, whether the Trump Organization inflated insurance claims in the past, and if the president offered Cohen a pardon.

The e-mail between Cohen and his attorney about his testimony sheds light on the potential new avenues for investigators to probe, as the country settles into a post-Mueller universe. One stunning feature of the saga so far is that, while the president and his family have remained unscathed, they’ve left a trail of wreckage in their wake. Paul Manafort is set to serve about six years in prison. Roger Stone awaits trial as Michael Flynn and Rick Gates anticipate their sentences. Cohen, of course, is set to report to serve his three-year sentence at the beginning of May. Equally stunning is the number of documents Trump’s former associates have saved, and how willing they’ve been to share those receipts with investigators.

#Resist

[Lois]

Mueller simply could not find sufficient evidence of conspiracy to indict him.

We don't know that unless the report is released.

#Resist

True, and the longer the report is delayed the more suspicious it looks.

[Katiebee]

 Muller was using the rule of law as his determination. If he had been using national security and intelligence criteria, the report would have condemned Trump. A court of law has higher criteria than does intelligence and national security concerns. One can be complicit with the Russians with out coordinating with them.

[psiberzerker]

Muller also passed on the evidence to other agencies (In NY, NJ, and others) to actually charge him with crimes.  As he has done his entire career, since the only ones that can Charge a sitting president in office are Congress.  That's how he gets convictions, he sends his findings to those who Can get those convictions.  

It's not over, just because the man that was hired to make all this go away says the report "Exonerated" the president.  Also, am I the only one that finds it odd that the report went to the White House to be redacted first?  Trump's team gets to Edit it before it goes to Congress?  (Who can remove, or impeach him.)  That's like Escobar designing his own prison.

[Athos_131]

Federal judge declares Trump’s push to open up Arctic and Atlantic oceans to oil and gas drilling illegal

A federal judge in Alaska declared late Friday that President Trump’s order revoking a sweeping ban on oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and Atlantic oceans is illegal, putting 128 million acres of federal waters off limits to energy exploration.

The decision by U.S. District Judge Sharon Gleason is the third legal setback this week to Trump’s energy and environmental policies. The judge, who was appointed to the federal bench by President Barack Obama in 2012, also blocked on Friday a land swap the Interior Department arranged that would pave the way for constructing a road through wilderness in a major National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska.

Earlier this week, U.S. District Judge Lewis T. Babcock, who was appointed by President Ronald Reagan, ruled that Interior’s Bureau of Land Management and U.S. Forest Service illegally approved two gas drilling plans in western Colorado. The judge said officials did not adequately analyze wildlife and climate impacts in their plans — which were challenged by a coalition of environmental groups — to drill 171 wells in North Fork Valley, which provides key habitat for elk and mule deer.

Trump’s rollbacks of Obama-era conservation policies have suffered nearly two dozen setbacks in federal court, largely on procedural grounds. While the administration is appealing many of these decisions and holds an advantage if the cases reach the Supreme Court, the rulings have slowed the president’s drive to expand fossil fuel production in the United States.

Earlier this month, for example, a federal judge halted drilling on more than 300,000 acres of oil and gas leases in Wyoming. Friday’s decision on offshore drilling could affect a five-year leasing plan the administration plans to issue in the summer, as well as block the six offshore lease sales it proposed to schedule in the Arctic Ocean starting as early as this year. Friday’s decision applies to 98 percent of the Arctic Ocean, as well as undersea canyons in the Atlantic spanning a total of 3.8 million acres, stretching from the Chesapeake Bay to New England.

“President Trump’s lawlessness is catching up with him,” Erik Grafe, the lead attorney from the environmental law organization Earthjustice who argued to reinstate Obama’s leasing withdrawals in the Arctic and Atlantic, said in an interview Saturday. “The judge’s ruling today shows that the president can not just trample on the constitution to do the bidding of his cronies in the fossil fuel industry at the expense of our oceans, wildlife, and climate.”

Industry officials, however, said the administration could forge ahead with its offshore drilling process as litigation continued. They also noted that the withdrawals did not cover the entire Eastern Seaboard.

“While we disagree with the decision, our nation still has a significant opportunity before us in the development of the next offshore leasing plan to truly embrace our nation’s energy potential and ensure American consumers and businesses continue to benefit from U.S. energy leadership,” said Erik Milito, vice president of upstream and industry operations for the American Petroleum Institute.

But Grafe noted that the five-year plan the administration plans to issue this year sets a schedule for lease sales, which is now barred in the areas designated by Obama.

“I think they’d have a hard time scheduling a lease sale in a place that’s now permanently off limits,” he said. “The law of the land of the land today is no drilling in most of the Arctic Ocean, and in these important areas in the Atlantic.

The Interior Department declined to comment Saturday.

In her Friday ruling, Gleason wrote that the law in which Congress gave the president authority over offshore drilling — the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act — expressly allows for leasing withdrawals but does not state that a subsequent president can revoke those withdrawals without congressional approval.

“As a result, the previous three withdrawals issued on January 27, 2015 and December 20, 2016 will remain in full force and effect unless and until revoked by Congress,” she wrote.

Dan Bryan, a spokesman for New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy (D) said Murphy welcomed the ruling and “will continue to do everything in his power to stop any drilling off of New Jersey’s precious coastline.”

“Governor Murphy has fought President Trump’s plan for offshore drilling since day one, calling it a disaster for New Jersey’s environment, economy, and coastal communities,” he said.

But Rebecca Logan, a spokeswoman for the Alaska Support Industry Alliance, said in an email that members of her oil and gas trade group did not see the decision as the final word.

“Anything done by administrative action can be undone by administrative action,” Logan said. “This question will work its way through the courts, and eventually I expect Judge Gleason’s decision will be reversed.”

In a separate decision earlier in the day, Gleason found that then-Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke did not provide sufficient justification for reversing the government’s stance on whether to allow a small, remote Alaska town to construct a road through the Izembek National Wildlife Refuge.

Residents of King Cove have argued for years that they need to bisect the refuge, which has been protected for decades and provides a critical rest stop for migratory waterfowl, for medical evacuations under rough weather.

In a statement Friday, local leaders there vowed to continue their fight.

“The people of King Cove deserve to have access to a higher level of care, especially when the unforgiving weather prevents them from traveling from their isolated community by air or boat,” said Aleutians East Borough Mayor Alvin D. Osterback. “This land exchange would have accomplished that.”

Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) also promised to continue pushing for building the road, which otherwise would be prohibited in a wilderness area. “I will never stop until this road is a reality and the nearly 1,000 residents of this isolated community have a lifeline for emergency medical care,” she said.

Opponents counter that the federal government has provided millions in funding to give town residents alternative forms of transport and warn that a road would fragment critical habitat. They also cite expert testimony that any road through the refuge would be impassable during snowstorms.

“Here, the Secretary’s failure to acknowledge the change in agency policy and his failure to provide a reasoned explanation for that change in policy are serious errors,” Gleason wrote.

All this winning by Donnie must be exhausting.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump plans U.S. aid cut to 3 Central American countries as fight widens over U.S.-bound migrants

MEXICO CITY —  President Trump plans to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to three Central American countries in retaliation for what he called their lack of help in reducing the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.

The move was one of Trump’s harshest yet as he escalates a confrontation with Mexico and Central America over a surge in irregular migration, largely involving children and families seeking asylum.

Trump has already warned that he could close the U.S.-Mexico border — or at least large stretches of it — in the coming week unless Mexico takes further steps to halt migrants heading north.

The State Department said in a statement Saturday that it would be “ending . . . foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle” — a region representing El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras — for the past two years. The aid affects nearly $500 million in 2018 funds and millions more left over from the prior fiscal year. The money was destined for Central America but hadn’t yet been spent.

Trump’s action was the culmination of a months-long battle in the U.S. government over the aid program, which grew substantially under the Obama administration and was intended to address the root causes of migration — violence, a lack of jobs and poverty.

Some Trump administration officials felt the program had failed to achieve enough results and in recent months have been looking into alternatives. But the president’s decision to cut off the remaining funds appeared to take many people by surprise. It came just a day after Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen signed what the department called a “historic” memorandum of cooperation on border security in Central America.

One former U.S. official said there was “chaos” in the State Department and embassies overseas as officials tried to figure out whether they had to cancel existing contracts, or simply not renew them. He spoke on the condition of anonymity because of diplomatic sensitivities.

The number of apprehensions along the U.S.-Mexico border has been soaring, with more than 76,000 migrants taken into custody in February, most from Central America. On Friday night, during a trip to Florida, Trump faulted governments in the region for the increase.

“I’ve ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras and El Salvador. No more money is going there anymore,” Trump told reporters. “We were giving them $500 million. We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us.”

Democratic officials, aid groups and former officials said Trump’s action could boomerang, by shrinking or eliminating some of the very programs keeping would-be migrants in Central America.

“Ironically, our goals of having people stay and thrive in El Salvador are very similar to the current administration’s,” said Ken Baker, chief executive of Glasswing International , which runs education, health and entrepreneurship programs in El Salvador and receives USAID funding. “Through our programs we’ve been able to provide opportunities and the belief that they [would-be migrants] can thrive here.”

“The key is to get to them before” they leave for the United States, he said. “When you’re talking about the problem at the border in the U.S., it’s already too late.”

Jim Nealon, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, said that Trump didn’t seem to understand the way the Central American aid program worked. The U.S. government doesn’t give the money to foreign governments, but rather “to programs designed and implemented by the U.S., with the cooperation of governments and civil society,” he said. Much of them are administered by nonprofit groups.

He also said Central American governments aren’t seeking to send their citizens to the United States. “To the contrary, they already cooperate with us in trying to deter migration. But they can’t prevent their citizens from leaving the country.”

Honduras, El Salvador and Guatemala are among the poorest countries in the hemisphere, and among the most violent in the world.

Over the past year, Trump has seized on the formation of giant caravans of U.S.-bound migrants as evidence that Mexico and Central America are doing little to discourage migration. On Saturday, he warned in a tweet that he would close the border unless Mexico used “its very strong immigration laws to stop the many thousands of people trying to get into the USA.”

Authorities in the region have said they are taking what measures they can under their laws. Mexico, for example, has offered thousands of temporary humanitarian visas to migrants permitting them to stay and work in the country.

Raul Lopez, vice minister of justice in El Salvador, said in an interview Friday that the flow of migrants from his country was actually slowing.

“We see that as proof that our investment — and the investment of the international community — in social issues is working,” he said. “U.S. assistance has had a positive impact in reducing migration from El Salvador, but we need more help to continue this fight.”

It was unclear whether Congress would try to block Trump’s decision to shift the Central American aid elsewhere. A delegation of congressional Democrats visiting El Salvador on Saturday called the administration’s move “counterproductive” and said they would “do everything in our power to push back on the president’s misguided approach to Central America.” The group included Rep. Eliot L. Engel (N.Y.), chairman of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs, and Rep. Jerrold Nadler (N.Y.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

While Congress appropriates the money spent by the U.S. government, the president has some wiggle room to reprogram funds, according to congressional staffers.

Adam Isaacson, a senior official at the Washington Office on Latin America, a research and advocacy group, said presidents have shied away from reprogramming money because it irritates lawmakers, who can retaliate by declining to fund key administration projects. “It’s just a strong, strong custom” in Congress, he said. “If you go against our will on this, we will get you in the next appropriations bill.”

Unauthorized crossings of the U.S. border have hit their highest level in a decade, although they are still well below the peak of 1.6 million in 2000. But the migrant flow has changed in character. While most migrants used to be Mexican men who could be easily deported, now they are asylum-seeking families who are entitled to protections under federal law.

Border Patrol agents have been overwhelmed in recent weeks by the arrival of large numbers of Central American families and children, many of whom are being quickly released into local communities because of a lack of detention space.

The announcement of the aid cutoff comes as a new caravan of about 2,000 Central Americans and Cubans is crossing Mexico. Trump has threatened to close the border in the coming week because of the rising flows of migrants.

Trump has also declared a national emergency to divert funds for construction of a giant border wall, but he is facing court challenges. Immigration analysts say a wall would do little to stop the flow of asylum seekers, who typically surrender to U.S. officials as soon as they cross the border to petition for relief.

This administration just can't stop shooting itself in the foot.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

What happened when ‘little pencil-necked Adam Schiff’ took an eraser to Trump and his enablers

Fresh off his non-exoneration from special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, the president of the United States took his tired, stale and pathetic act of grievance to Michigan. And, once again, he railed against elites, boasted about his intelligence and flaunted his wealth.

“They’re the elite. I’m not. Well, I have a better education than them,” said Trump, sounding like every insecure wanna-be know-it-all I’ve ever met at any age. “I’m smarter than them. I went to the best schools. They didn’t. Much more beautiful house. Much more beautiful apartment. Much more beautiful everything.” Trump’s tirade in Grand Rapids was almost the exact same thing he said in Duluth, Minn., in June 2018. That sound you hear is me in extended yawn.

That’s not to say there wasn’t new material. After all, what’s a bully if not a bestower of belittling nicknames for those perceived to be weak. The latest recipient of one of Trump’s sophomoric sobriquets is Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee.

“Little pencil-necked Adam Schiff. He’s got the smallest, thinnest neck I’ve ever seen,” Trump told his braying supporters on Thursday. “He is not a long-ball hitter, but I saw him today, ‘Well, we don’t really know, there still could have been some Russia collusion.’” The president went on to say, “Sick, sick. These are sick people and there has to be accountability because it is all lies and they know it’s lies.”

Hours earlier on Capitol Hill, sycophantic Republicans members of the Intelligence Committee also tried to use Attorney General William P. Barr’s glass-half-empty summary of the not-yet-released 300-page-plus Mueller report as a hammer as they called on Schiff to step down as committee chairman.

Schiff was having none of it. His five-minute response was blistering, with a recurring phrase said so often that it served as spikes on the road to redemption that the Republicans thought they were cruising down. Each time Schiff said, “You might think it’s okay,” he hit them and the president with specific facts that might not meet the high standard for criminal conspiracy, but they are certainly objectionable on moral, ethical and patriotic grounds.

My colleagues might think it’s okay that the Russians offered dirt on the Democratic candidate for president as part of what’s described as the Russian government’s effort to help the Trump campaign. You might think that’s okay.

My colleagues might think it’s okay that when that was offered to the son of the president, who had a pivotal role in the campaign, that the president’s son did not call the FBI; he did not adamantly refuse that foreign help — no, instead that son said that he would ‘love’ the help with the Russians.

You might think it’s okay that he took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that Paul Manafort, the campaign chair, someone with great experience running campaigns, also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law also took that meeting. You might think it’s okay that they concealed it from the public. You might think it’s okay that their only disappointment after that meeting was that the dirt they received on Hillary Clinton wasn’t better. You might think that’s okay.

You might think it’s okay that when it was discovered, a year later, that they then lied about that meeting and said that it was about adoptions. You might think that it’s okay that it was reported that the president helped dictate that lie. You might think that’s okay. I don’t.

You might think it’s okay that the campaign chairman of a presidential campaign would offer information about that campaign to a Russian oligarch in exchange for money or debt forgiveness. You might think that’s okay, I don’t.

You might think it’s okay that that campaign chairman offered polling data to someone linked to Russian intelligence. I don’t think that’s okay.

You might think it’s okay that the president himself called on Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, if they were listening. You might think it’s okay that later that day, in fact, the Russians attempted to hack a server affiliated with that campaign. I don’t think that’s okay.

You might think it’s okay that the president’s son-in-law sought to establish a secret back channel of communication with the Russians through a Russian diplomatic facility. I don’t think that’s okay.

You might think it’s okay that an associate of the president made direct contact with the GRU through Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks, that is considered a hostile intelligence agency. You might think it’s okay that a senior campaign official was instructed to reach that associate and find out what that hostile intelligence agency had to say in terms of dirt on his opponent.

You might think it’s okay that the national security adviser designate secretly conferred with the Russian ambassador about undermining U.S. sanctions, and you might think it’s okay that he lied about it to the FBI.

You might say that’s all okay, that’s just what you need to do to win. But I don’t think it’s okay. I don’t think it’s okay. I think it’s immoral, I think it’s unethical, I think it’s unpatriotic and, yes, I think it’s corrupt — and evidence of collusion.

Talk about a speaking indictment. Bravo to Schiff for keeping the focus where it belongs. Shame on the president and his followers (there is no Republican Party anymore, is there?) for thinking any of this is okay — or that we’ve forgotten what’s at stake.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

White House whistleblower says 25 security clearance denials were reversed during Trump administration

A White House whistleblower told lawmakers that more than two dozen denials for security clearances have been overturned during the Trump administration, calling Congress her “last hope” for addressing what she considers improper conduct that has left the nation’s secrets exposed.

Tricia Newbold, a longtime White House security adviser, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that she and her colleagues issued “dozens” of denials for security clearance applications that were later approved despite their concerns about blackmail, foreign influence or other red flags, according to panel documents released Monday.

Newbold, an 18-year veteran of the security clearance process who has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, said she warned her superiors that clearances “were not always adjudicated in the best interest of national security” — and was retaliated against for doing so.

Newbold’s allegations intensify pressure on the White House over its handling of security clearances, a controversy that burst into public view last year with the revelation that dozens of staffers had temporary approvals to access sensitive government information while they awaited clearance approval.

Among them was presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner, who President Trump ultimately demanded be granted a permanent top-secret clearance, despite the concerns of intelligence officials.

Newbold alleged that 25 individuals were given clearances or access to national security information since 2018 despite concerns about ties to foreign influence, conflicts of interests, questionable or criminal conduct, financial problems, or drug abuse.

That group includes “two current senior White House officials,” according to documents released by the House Oversight Committee.

The panel did not identify the senior White House officials but asked the White House to immediately provide documents related to the security clearances of nine officials, including Kushner, the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump and national security adviser John Bolton.

Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (D-Md.), the committee chairman, said in a letter to the White House Counsel’s Office that his panel would vote on Tuesday to subpoena Carl Kline, who served as personnel security director at the White House during the first two years of the administration — the committee’s first compulsory move aimed at the White House.

Newbold alleged that Kline, then her direct manager, overruled her clearance denials and then retaliated against her when she objected.

Cummings vowed more subpoenas would follow if the White House were not to cooperate with his panel’s investigation.

“The Committee has given the White House every possible opportunity to cooperate with this investigation, but you have declined,” Cummings wrote in the Monday letter to White House counsel Pat Cipollone. “Your actions are now preventing the committee from obtaining the information it needs to fulfill its constitutional responsibilities.”

The White House declined to comment, saying it does not comment on security clearances. An attorney for Kushner and Ivanka Trump referred questions to the White House. A Pentagon spokesman declined to comment on behalf of Kline, who now works at the Defense Department, and referred questions to the White House.

In a letter to the committee, Robert Driscoll, an attorney for Kline, said Kline is willing to voluntarily testify but said his testimony may be constrained by executive privilege issues.

“Neither Carl nor I are worried about the merits of this inquiry, as facts always win out in the end,” Driscoll said in a statement.

In a statement, Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), the top Republican on the House Oversight Committee, accused Cummings of politicizing an issue that should be bipartisan.

“Chairman Cummings’ investigation is not about restoring integrity to the security clearance process, it is an excuse to go fishing through the personal files of dedicated public servants,” Jordan said.

Republicans said Cummings “cherry-picked” excerpts of the closed-door interview with Newbold, which they said GOP members were unable to attend because they were only told about it the previous afternoon.

In a memo sent to panel members Monday afternoon, the committee’s Republican staff characterized Newbold as a disgruntled employee with limited knowledge of how security clearance decisions were actually made.

The memo also said Newbold testified that of the 25 clearance decisions she made that were overruled, only four or five had been originally denied for “very serious reasons.”

Newbold did not respond to a request for comment.

In her interview with the House Oversight Committee, Newbold said that she felt compelled to come forward.

“I would not be doing a service to myself, my country, or my children if I sat back knowing that the issues that we have could impact national security,” she told the committee, according to a panel document summarizing her allegations.

She said she had previously lodged concerns with numerous White House officials, including Kline; his immediate supervisor, Chief Operations Officer Samuel Price; the White House Counsel’s Office; assistant to the president Marcia Kelly; and Chief Security Officer Crede Bailey.

Newbold added: “I feel that right now this is my last hope to really bring the integrity back into our office.”

She told the panel that she knew her denials of security clearances could be overruled. But she said she was concerned about a lack of documentation that went into those decisions and that they were made “without memorializing the risks they were accepting.”

In the case of one top White House official, described as “Official 1” in committee documents, Newbold said that she and another employee denied the official a security clearance after a background investigation revealed “significant disqualifying factors,” including foreign influence, outside business interests and personal conduct.

But Kline overruled their determination. In his decision, he “failed to address all of the disqualifying concerns listed by Ms. Newbold and the first-line adjudicator,” according to a committee summary of her response.

Instead, Kline merely note that Official 1’s activities “occurred prior to Federal service,” according to the panel.

NBC News previously reported that Kline overruled a decision by two career White House security specialists to deny Kushner a clearance.

When Official 1 applied for an even higher level of clearance, Newbold said that another agency contacted her to determine “how we rendered a favorable adjudication,” an inquiry she said reflected the agency’s “serious concerns.”

The agency was not identified in committee documents. The CIA is the agency responsible for granting White House officials access to government information classified above top secret.

“CIA does not comment on individual security clearances,” agency spokesman Timothy L. Barrett said.

Newbold also accused Kline of telling her to, in effect, stand down on concerns about another senior White House official, described as “Official 2.”

She said that a first-line reviewer wrote a 14-page memo describing factors that would disqualify Official 2 from receiving a clearance, including foreign influence and outside activities.

But when Newbold told Kline of her plan to agree with her colleague on the matter, Kline “instructed Ms. Newbold, ‘do not touch’ the case.”

Kline later approved the security clearance, she said.

Newbold also accused Kline of trying to get her to change her recommendation for a security clearance denial for a “high-profile official at the National Security Council” described as “Official 3,” with whom she said Kline was in daily contact on the phone.

Kline “called me in his office and asked me to change the recommendation. I said I absolutely would not,” according to her testimony.

Newbold also told Kline that he shouldn’t be talking with the individual trying to get the clearance because it was “unprofessional” and “it was opening up the door to hinder him from making a fair, unbiased recommendation.”

“Official 3” never received a security clearance and is no longer at the White House, according to the House committee.

Concerns about the White House security clearance process came to a head in February 2018 after the revelation that staff secretary Rob Porter had access to highly classified material after his two ex-wives had told the FBI that he abused them.

In the wake of the scandal, then-Chief of Staff John F. Kelly sought to overhaul the clearance process and revoked the ability of staffers to operate under interim clearances.

That downgraded Kushner’s access from “Top Secret/SCI” level to the “Secret” level, a far lower level of access to classified information, The Washington Post previously reported.

[Security clearances downgraded for Kushner and other White House officials]

However, Trump demanded Kelly give Kushner a top-secret security clearance — a move that made Kelly so uncomfortable that he documented the request in writing, according to current and former administration officials.

In her interview with the House Oversight Committee, Newbold complimented Kelly, who she said was “very receptive and understanding” of her concerns.

Newbold expressed fear in coming forward, telling the panel, “I’m terrified of going back. I know that this will not be perceived in favor of my intentions, which is to bring back the integrity of the office.”

She said she has already faced retaliation for declining to issue security clearances and challenging her superiors as they sought to implement changes to the clearance process that she disagreed with during the Trump administration.

Newbold said she was suspended without pay for 14 days in late January despite “no prior formal disciplinary action” in her nearly two-decade tenure. And when she returned, she was removed from her position as a “second-level adjudicator” on security clearances and was no longer a direct supervisor.

The committee in its Monday memo revealed that it has spoken with other whistleblowers about the security clearance process. For now, however, the individuals were too afraid about the “risk to their careers to come forward publicly,” the panel wrote.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump’s approach to the migrant crisis might not get him the results he wants

President Trump is doubling down on his harsh stances on immigration that won him the support of many followers during his 2016 presidential run. But his next move might not produce the results he is aiming for — and could ultimately alienate voters he might need to stay in office.

The Washington Post reported:

Trump plans to slash hundreds of millions of dollars in aid to three Central American countries in retaliation for what he called their lack of help in reducing the flow of migrants to the U.S. border.

The move was one of Trump’s harshest yet as he escalates a confrontation with Mexico and Central America over a surge in irregular migration, largely involving children and families seeking asylum.

Trump told reporters Friday:

“I’ve ended payments to Guatemala, to Honduras and El Salvador. No more money is going there anymore. We were giving them $500 million. We were paying them tremendous amounts of money, and we’re not paying them anymore because they haven’t done a thing for us.”

To be clear, funds from the United States do not go to foreign governments. Jim Nealon, a former U.S. ambassador to Honduras, told The Post that they go “to programs designed and implemented by the United States, with the cooperation of governments and civil society."

And some — even from Trump world — say the funding of such programs is working. Last month, Kevin McAleenan, the commission of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, told lawmakers:

“We need to continue to support the governments in Central America to improve economic opportunities to address poverty and hunger and to improve governance and security.”

But the president has suffered some backlash from those within his base who contend that he has not delivered on much of his hard-line immigration policy, particularly getting Mexico to pay for a wall along the southern U.S. border. Perhaps part of this effort is to remind those who voted for him that he aims to deliver. His approach has attracted much criticism, however.

Some critics, and even Trump supporters, say that more individuals could be harmed than helped by the president’s decision. Those coming to the United States from El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras seeking asylum — including minors — are fleeing domestic violence, poverty and gang violence.

This is not the first time the president has threatened to cut aid to a country. He threatened to end foreign aid to Pakistan in 2018 after accusing Islamabad of harboring terrorists.

The president and his surrogates have implied that terrorists could be sneaking into caravans leaving Central America hoping to get into the United States.

Both moves have sparked pushback, with some who are deeply familiar with the issue. They warn that Trump’s approach to those fleeing Latin America could actually make the crisis worse.

Sen. Kamala D. Harris (D-Calif.) represents one of the states where many immigrants from Central America are settling. Harris, who hopes to replace Trump in the Oval Office, took to social media to dismiss Trump’s proposal. She tweeted:

“Refugees are fleeing violence and oppression in Central America. We can help get to the root of these problems by making smart investments to provide humanitarian relief, and spur economic & civil reforms. Gutting these programs is not the answer.”

Columnist Will Bunch wrote in the Philadelphia Inquirer:

“Those who actually do know how the program works point out the obvious, that ending aid will probably make violence and deprivation even worse in Honduras, Guatemala and El Salvador, which means we’ll be seeing even more of their citizens making the dangerous trek north — certainly by next spring. It will increase the very thing that Trump claims he’s trying to stop.”

This approach to immigration might win Trump points with those already on his team who want to see a decrease in immigration — including the legal kind — to the United States. But if there really is a crisis at the border as Trump claims, his approach could lead to it worsening — not improving. And that is not likely to get anyone in Washington the results they want.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Trump has made 9,451 false or misleading claims over 801 days

It was only 200 days ago, on his 601st day in office, that President Trump exceeded 5,000 false or misleading claims.

Now, on his 801st day, the count stands at 9,451, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes and tracks every suspect statement the president utters. That’s a pace of 22 fishy claims a day over the past 200 days, a steep climb from the average of nearly 5.9 false or misleading claims a day in Trump’s first year in office.

Of course, not every day yields 22 claims. The president’s tally expands when he’s giving a speech, usually at a campaign rally. At such events, he runs through many of his favorite lines, such as that he passed the biggest tax cut in history, that his U.S.-Mexico border wall is already being built and that the U.S. economy today is the best in history. All three of those claims are on The Fact Checker’s list of Bottomless Pinocchios.

At a rally in Grand Rapids, Mich., on March 28, for instance, Trump made 64 claims that ended up in the database. Many have been previously covered in our fact checks, but here are some fresh statements that are worthy of attention.

“They [Hillary Clinton] had a tiny, little crowd, and I had I’d like to say more, but I can’t have more than this because every seat is gone, and outside you have 25,000 people. And I remember leaving, and I said so she’s got 500 people, and I had 32,000 people including the people outside. So she’s here at prime time 7:30, I’m here at 1 in the morning. She has 500 or 600 people, I have 32,000.”

As usual, Trump inflates the number of people attending one of his rallies. The Detroit Free Press reported that night that DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids, where Trump held a midnight rally, has a capacity of 4,200, far less than the 32,000 he claimed. Clinton held her rally the same day at nearby Grand Valley State University; it was described as a “capacity crowd” at a venue that holds 4,100 people.

“I support the Great Lakes. Always have. … And I’m going to get, in honor of my friends, full funding of $300 million for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, which you have been trying to get for over 30 years. So we will get it done. It’s time. It’s time. It’s time.”

Trump is being very misleading here. His administration has continually tried to eliminate or reduce funding for the Great Lakes Restoration Initiative, a program for restoring the ecosystem of the Great Lakes that started under the Obama administration in 2010. Federal funding ranged from nearly $300 million to $450 million a year under Obama. Trump’s 2018 budget request would have zeroed out all funding — the administration wanted “responsibility for funding local environmental efforts and programs to state and local entities” — and his 2020 budget would have cut it by 90 percent. Notwithstanding Trump’s proposed cuts, Congress appropriated nearly $300 million in 2019.

“They [Great Lakes] are beautiful. They are big, very deep, record deepness, right?”

Lake Superior is 1,332 feet deep, but it is not even the deepest freshwater lake in the United States. The deepest is Crater Lake, a volcanic crater in southern Oregon, with the deepest measured depth at 1,949 feet. Lake Tahoe and Lake Chelan are also deeper than Lake Superior, so it ranks fourth in the United States. Lake Baikal in southern Russia is the world’s deepest lake. It is an estimated 5,387 feet deep. Lake Baikal is also the world’s largest freshwater lake in terms of volume. Worldwide, Crater Lake ranks ninth, and Lake Superior does not even make the top 20; it is the 37th-deepest lake in the world.

“In the last two years, we’ve embarked on an unprecedented economic revival. Unprecedented.”

By just about every metric, Trump inherited a thriving economy that was doing far better than he claimed on the campaign trail. He frequently said the unemployment rate was 42 percent, when it was actually 5 percent — a number he embraced once he took the oath of office.

“In Texas, you heard we won the case [on the Affordable Care Act]; now it has to be appealed, and then we will go to the United States Supreme Court.”

The Trump administration originally did not seek a sweeping repeal of the Affordable Care Act. It simply asked that the court nullify provisions that protected people with preexisting health conditions. So the court ruled beyond the administration’s position. But Trump now declares that is a win. The refusal to defend the law was a flip-flop from Trump’s pledge to retain protections for people with preexisting health conditions. Few legal experts think the ruling will survive the appeal process.

“The deductibles and Obamacare are so high, on average $7,000. You don’t get to use it unless a really great tragedy hits, and then you don’t really want it because you don’t give a damn about your deductible, right?”

Deductibles vary according to the type of plan people buy. Trump appears to be referring to “Bronze plan” deductibles, which are $6,258 when prescription drugs and medical spending are in the deductible; the deductibles for Silver, Gold and Platinum plans are much lower. Silver plans are the most common choice in the marketplace and have equivalent deductibles of $4,375. The Affordable Care Act included subsidies that helped keep premiums low for most people on the exchanges. Trump eliminated cost-sharing reduction payments that compensate insurance companies for offering mandatory discounts on out-of-pocket spending to lower-income customers. Ironically, that led to even bigger premium subsidies as companies increased premiums to make up for the loss of income.

“Remember this because it’s very important, and I’m speaking now for the Republican Party: We will always protect patients with preexisting conditions, always.”

The House and Senate GOP plans backed by Trump probably would have resulted in higher costs for people with preexisting conditions in some states, according to the Congressional Budget Office. As noted above, the Trump administration did not defend the Affordable Care Act against a lawsuit that would end protection for preexisting conditions.

“The Democrats are now advancing an extreme $100 trillion government takeover called the Green New Deal.”

The estimate Trump is citing comes from a Republican-aligned think tank; it’s actually $93 trillion, and it factors in things that are not in the resolution, such as building high-speed rail at a scale at which air travel becomes unnecessary.

“I love campaigning against the Green New Deal. I want [Democrats] to make that a big part of their platform. No more airplanes, no more cows. One car per family. … And we had a problem because when they didn’t want the airplanes, they were saying, ‘Well, how do you get to Europe?’ ”

In reality, the Green New Deal resolution has no teeth and wouldn’t become law if it passed. So these claims are based on a retracted FAQ about a nonbinding resolution. In these documents, proponents of the Green New Deal mused about ending air travel. As problematic as those lines were, none made it into the resolution. High-speed rail would become an airplane alternative for some travelers under the terms of the Green New Deal, but it wouldn’t end commercial air travel. Travelers who prefer flights over high-speed rail would still have a choice. As for cows, Trump is referring to a line in the FAQ intended to be an ironic reference to the effect of cow emissions.

“We lost 1 in 4 auto manufacturing jobs over the last few decades.”

This statement lacks context. The auto and auto parts manufacturing sectors reached a peak of 1.3 million jobs in June 2000. The number of jobs decreased by more than half, to 623,000, in June 2009, the end of the Great Recession. The number of jobs now tops 1 million, but much of that growth predates Trump. Only about 55,000 auto and auto parts jobs have been created since he took office, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

“We lost over the last six, seven years with Mexico $100 million. Before NAFTA, we made $40 [billion] to $50 billion.”

Trump frequently exaggerates the size of trade deficits — with Mexico, it was $78 billion in 2018, $69 billion in 2017 and $62 billion in 2016. Countries do not “lose” money on trade deficits. A trade deficit simply means that people in one country are buying more goods from another country than people in the second country are buying from the first country. Trade deficits are also affected by macroeconomic factors, such as currencies, economic growth, and savings and investment rates.

As for the trade deficit with Mexico before the North American Free Trade Agreement, the United States ran trade deficits in goods (Trump’s preferred metric) with Mexico five out of the 10 years before the North American Free Trade Agreement took effect, according to the Census Bureau. In the years when the United States ran a goods surplus, it was never more than $5 billion and usually about $1 billion to $2 billion. But what matters is not the deficit or surplus but rather the level of trade between the two countries. Cross-border trade in goods was about $100 billion in 1994, compared with more than $500 billion in 2018. According to the Commerce Department, U.S. exports of goods and services to Mexico supported an estimated 1.2 million jobs in 2015 (the latest data available).

“Last month alone, more than 76,000 illegal immigrants arrived at our borders to be apprehended. We have to apprehend them. Do you know what a great job — I mean seriously think of that, 76,000 people, many of which are rough people.”

Trump says there are 76,000 “illegal immigrants,” but almost 53,000 of the total are family units, unaccompanied children or “inadmissibles” who present themselves at the border seeking asylum. It’s a different situation from that of the mostly single men who tried to cross the border in large numbers in the early 2000s. Under Trump, the Customs and Border Protection agency has been releasing a combined total, but the “inadmissibles” — who numbered 9,653 in February — are not part of the apprehensions. Inadmissibles include “individuals encountered at ports of entry who are seeking lawful admission into the United States but are determined to be inadmissible, individuals presenting themselves to seek humanitarian protection under our laws, and individuals who withdraw an application for admission and return to their countries of origin within a short timeframe.”

#Resist

[Athos_131]

A little oversight uncovers a lot of lawlessness

With a Democratic House majority in place, we see more clearly than ever how Republican docility enabled President Trump’s lawlessness for the first two years of his presidency. When “normal” congressional behavior appears to check the executive branch — e.g. oversight hearings, subpoenas, use of the bully pulpit — we see the degree to which congressional Republicans have been tied at the hip to Trump and his attacks on the rule of law.

We learn, for example, just how irrational, reckless and politicized the security clearance process became. The Post reports:

Tricia Newbold, a longtime White House security adviser, told the House Oversight and Reform Committee that she and her colleagues issued “dozens” of denials for security clearance applications that were later approved despite their concerns about blackmail, foreign influence or other red flags, according to panel documents released Monday.

Newbold, an 18-year veteran of the security clearance process who has served under both Republican and Democratic presidents, said she warned her superiors that clearances “were not always adjudicated in the best interest of national security” — and was retaliated against for doing so.

All of this should have come out a long time ago, but Republicans had no interest in overseeing whether Trump was putting national security at risk.

Not that this news is surprising. We already knew about Rob Porter, the now-former White House staff secretary who was allowed to keep his clearance despite allegations of spousal abuse. We’ve seen how Trump puts personal, familial and financial interests above those of the nation’s, be it self-enrichment during his presidency from his properties, his excessive deference to the Saudis or the pursuit of riches in Moscow during the campaign.

We also know that he has since his campaign surrounded himself with future convicts (e.g. Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Michael Cohen) and empowered advisers who were ethically compromised (e.g. Scott Pruitt, Tom Price, Brock Long, Ryan Zinke) and incompetent (e.g. his children). The result is erratic and highly personalized governance conducted at the whim of an ignorant narcissist. This is precisely how authoritarian regimes around the world operate.

The mechanism for stopping such conduct generally rests with Congress. But with former House speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell all in on partisan loyalty, Trump’s whims went unchecked.

The same pattern is evident in Attorney General William P. Barr’s handling of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s report. As House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) writes, “The entire reason for appointing the special counsel was to protect the investigation from political influence. By offering us his version of events in lieu of the report, the attorney general, a recent political appointee, undermines the work and the integrity of his department. He also denies the public the transparency it deserves. We require the full report — the special counsel’s words, not the attorney general’s summary or a redacted version.” He continues:

We require the report, first, because Congress, not the attorney general, has a duty under the Constitution to determine whether wrongdoing has occurred. The special counsel declined to make a “traditional prosecutorial judgment” on the question of obstruction, but it is not the attorney general’s job to step in and substitute his judgment for the special counsel’s.

That responsibility falls to Congress — and specifically to the House Judiciary Committee — as it has in every similar investigation in modern history. The attorney general’s recent proposal to redact the special counsel’s report before we receive it is unprecedented. We require the evidence, not whatever remains after the report has been filtered by the president’s political appointee.

He might have added that it is also Congress’s duty to see whether legislation is needed to remedy existing flaws in our counterintelligence system or gaps in our laws, which confer no affirmative duty on campaigns to report foreign meddling.

Instead of acting on behalf of the American people, Barr is being the Roy Cohn the president has been waiting for. Barr abets disinformation and public confusion, delaying a proper reckoning of the president’s conduct.

If Republicans still held the majority in the House, it’s likely we would never see the Mueller report. As things are now, Nadler and his committee might have to resort to subpoenas and the courts to get the full, unredacted report. The report is the work product for the American people, not for Trump or Barr. To be blunt, we taxpayers paid for it and have every right to see it.

Whether it is security clearances, Russian meddling, foreign emoluments, nepotism mixed with conflicts of interest, politicization of the Justice Department, constant lying to the American public or use of the presidency to enrich the current Oval Office occupant, the administration is a study in corruption, the practice of bending public powers to private uses and engaging others to disregard their public obligations.

The first step is to remove the party that fails to uphold our democratic norms. That means throwing Republicans out of the majority in both houses and the White House. The second step is to reevaluate what laws and procedural rules must be changed (just as we did after Watergate). And the third step is a public reckoning for the enablers of this reign of lawlessness — including the Congress, right-wing think tanks, right-wing media and right-wing organizations that sacrificed intellectual and moral integrity for a lousy tax cut and some judges.

#Resist

[Katiebee]

The most damning part of this is that the Trump administration refuses to follow process, in this as in so many other aspects of governance.

[Athos_131]

Nearly everything Trump just said about Puerto Rico is wrong

President Trump’s antipathy toward the ongoing relief effort in Puerto Rico burst into full view on Tuesday morning.

Multiple news reports over the past few months have suggested that the president opposes spending more money on the island, including stories late last month that he’d specifically derided the amount being spent on recovery in a visit to Capitol Hill. Trump has long been criticized for his slow response to the damage caused by Hurricane Maria in the summer of 2017, and he has consistently tried to deflect blame for the storm’s aftermath, which left nearly 3,000 people dead.

On Monday, the Senate failed to pass legislation providing funding to bolster the food-stamp program on the island along with relief for floods in the Midwest. Last month, funding for food stamps ran out in Puerto Rico after Congress failed to reauthorize spending, a necessary step because Puerto Rico is a territory and not a state. Senate Democrats support a measure providing more support to Puerto Rico than Republicans — especially Trump — are willing to provide.

That failed vote triggered a pair of tweets from Trump that are sweeping in their misrepresentations of reality.

It’s probably simplest to walk through Trump’s claims as he presents them.

“Puerto Rico got 91 Billion Dollars for the hurricane”: Puerto Rico has not received $91 billion for hurricane recovery. So far, about $11 billion has been sent to the island. The $91 billion figure that Trump likes to use is a combination of $41 billion that’s been set aside for recovery combined with $50 billion expected to be spent over the life of the recovery effort in accordance with legislation passed in 1988. The full scope of the recovery could take several decades.

“more money than has ever been gotten for a hurricane before”: 2005′s Hurricane Katrina, for which recovery efforts continue, cost more than $120 billion.

On Monday evening, Trump compared the spending in Puerto Rico unfavorably to Texas and Florida, which were also hit by hurricanes in 2017. But, of course, the type and extent of the damage in each place was very different. Hurricane Harvey did enormous damage in Texas and on the Gulf Coast, but the damage was less extensive and severe than in Puerto Rico. The higher cost in Puerto Rico is mostly a function of the damage that was done.

“& all their local politicians do is complain & ask for more money.”: Trump’s obviously being hyperbolic to some extent here, but it’s also worth remembering that there’s an existing crisis on the island as a result of food-stamp payments being curtailed. In this moment, there’s an outcry for a specific form of relief that seems warranted.

“The pols are grossly incompetent, spend the money foolishly or corruptly”: This appears to be a central critique of Trump’s. He’s repeatedly complained that the funding going to the island was being wasted or spent to pay down that debt, without evidence. (He apparently became incensed by an article in the Wall Street Journal.)

This was Trump’s position from the outset. When the storm first hit, he tweeted that recovery would be hindered because Puerto Rico “was already suffering from broken infrastructure & massive debt” and that the billions of dollars “owed to Wall Street and the banks ... must be dealt with.” Trump always saw Puerto Rico’s government as questionable and wasteful and then apparently seized on that idea to rationalize his arguments that the island was receiving too much money.

“& only take from USA....”: This is Trump’s most revealing comment. Puerto Rico is “taking from the United States,” of which, of course, it’s a part. But Trump tips his hand here that he sees this island in the Atlantic Ocean as something separate and less American than the continental United States.

“The best thing that ever happened to Puerto Rico is President Donald J. Trump.”: In a Post-Kaiser Family Foundation poll conducted last year, more than half of Puerto Ricans said Trump had done a poor job in responding to the hurricane. Four in five said his job performance was at best “fair.”

Trump’s unstated argument here is probably akin to his argument about why black Americans should be pleased with his presidency: low unemployment rates.

“So many wonderful people, but with such bad Island leadership and with so much money wasted.”: In our poll, the local government on Puerto Rico received better marks than Trump, with a quarter of island residents saying the local response was “good” or better and only a third saying it was “poor.”

There’s no demonstrated evidence that any significant portion of funding has been wasted.

“Cannot continue to hurt our Farmers and States with these massive payments”: Here, again, Trump draws a contrast between the states and Puerto Rico. The latter is “hurting” the former by having been hit by a hurricane and therefore needing help from its government. It’s safe to assume that Trump wouldn’t make a similar claim about how the recovery spending sent to Texas after Hurricane Harvey was hurting, say, Pennsylvania.

It’s important to note that the expense of these natural disasters is linked to the warming climate. Climate change models suggest more wildfires, like those that ravaged California in 2017, and more powerful hurricanes with heavier precipitation, like Harvey. Trump is willfully ignoring a growing crisis that is poised to make disaster spending a more acute problem for the government.

“and so little appreciation!”: What Trump hears from Puerto Rican leaders is not praise for the job he’s doing, but increasingly insistent requests for needed aid. He tunes into cable news and sees criticism, not kudos. He sees coverage of Puerto Rico and hears about nearly 3,000 deaths, a figure he refuses to accept because it serves as a grim measurement of his handling of the crisis. Puerto Rico is a headache for Trump, and it’s hard not to assume that part of his opposition to additional funding for the island stems from the fact that he’s frustrated by it.

The aftermath of Hurricane Maria is precisely the sort of event that tests presidential leadership. Trump’s misleading or false tweets on Tuesday morning give a sense of how he feels he’s faring in that test.

This is what a failing leader looks like.  Racist, stupid and incompetent.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The White House whistleblower bombshell, and what it could mean

It wasn’t that long ago that Donald Trump ran for president making the case that Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server as secretary of state represented a grave national security threat and made her unfit for office.

Evidence is now mounting that he and his White House have taken plenty of their own shortcuts, with the kind of dire implications Trump warned about. And now a key figure is stepping forward to blow the whistle on it.

The Post’s Rachael Bade reports on a new White House whistleblower who alleges that the Trump administration has awarded 25 security clearances to people who had been denied those clearances by national security officials.

Tricia Newbold has served 18 years in the security clearance process, in both Democratic and Republican administrations. She says the denials had been issued for reasons including concerns about potential blackmail, foreign influence, conflicts of interest, questionable or criminal conduct, financial issues and drug abuse. That’s a range of denials that covers pretty much all the major reasons one might not get cleared. She alleges that the administration has looked past all of them. She even says she was told not to raise concerns and retaliated against when she did, by being demoted.

By itself, the accusation would be serious. But it also affirms a whole host of reporting, and there seem to be plenty of people raising the same red flag. The Washington Post and others reported recently that Trump demanded that then-White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly get a long-delayed clearance for Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. Kelly, a retired general, was reportedly so uncomfortable with the request that he memorialized it in a memo. The New York Times has reported that the then-White House counsel also wrote a memo to similar effect. Newbold has told the House Oversight Committee that another agency involved in the clearance process also complained. And the committee says other anonymous whistleblowers have come forward. In other words, there seem to be lots of people who could vouch for Newbold.

And this is merely the latest example of Trump and his administration flouting national security concerns with its day-to-day practices. To wit:

He blurted out a highly classified piece of information to Russian leaders that risked jeopardizing a key foreign policy alliance.
He has engaged in multiple highly secretive face-to-face meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin where even top national security officials were in the dark.
He kept Michael Flynn on as national security adviser for weeks despite warnings that Flynn could be susceptible to blackmail because he had lied to the White House.
He turned a dining room at Mar-a-Lago into an open-air situation room, strategizing about a North Korean missile launch with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
There have been reports that Trump has disregarded advice from security experts about his cellphone use and even that he has pressed forward with an unsecured phone we know the Russians and Chinese can listen in on.
Multiple top White House aides have reportedly used private email to discuss White House matters, both potentially flouting records laws and posing unnecessary security threats.
The hypocrisy side of it is one thing. This is a president, after all, who once said merely being negligent about email was disqualifying. He said Clinton was “putting all of America and our citizens in danger — great danger.” He added on Facebook that it was “a profound national security risk.”

But even setting that aside, the evidence of a fast-and-loose and even negligent approach to information security is building. One longtime national security aide has apparently thought it serious enough to go through the arduous process of being a public whistleblower, and she will apparently have some backup — both from other people and from documentation.

In many ways, the argument that Trump could be either a witting or unwitting asset of the Russians is missing the much less speculative potential national security threat. And we shouldn’t underestimate the importance of a named whistleblower stepping forward in this manner.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

And before we get a yellow wall of racist, inaccurate, goal-post moving bafflegab, whistleblowing is not illegal, and NDAs are not binding in this case.

#Resist