Retribution Execution, Con't

There's a lot to cover today as Trump has gone completely off the rails, and there's little doubt now that the remaining Justice Department investigation into the Mueller probe itself is going to be used to put a lot of Trump's enemies, perceived and real, in jail.

Trump administration officials investigating the government’s response to Russia’s election interference in 2016 appear to be hunting for a basis to accuse Obama-era intelligence officials of hiding evidence or manipulating analysis about Moscow’s covert operation, according to people familiar with aspects of the inquiry.

Since his election, President Trump has attacked the intelligence agencies that concluded that Russia secretly tried to help him win, fostering a narrative that they sought to delegitimize his victory. He has long promoted the investigation by John H. Durham, the prosecutor examining their actions, as a potential pathway to proving that a deep-state cabal conspired against him.

Questions asked by Mr. Durham, who was assigned by Attorney General William P. Barr to scrutinize the early actions of law enforcement and intelligence officials struggling to understand the scope of Russia’s scheme, suggest that Mr. Durham may have come to view with suspicion several clashes between analysts at different intelligence agencies over who could see each other’s highly sensitive secrets, the people said.

Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result — and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said.

But officials from the F.B.I. and the National Security Agency have told Mr. Durham and his investigators that such an interpretation is wrong and based on a misunderstanding of how the intelligence community functions, the people said. National security officials are typically cautious about sharing their most delicate information, like source identities, even with other agencies inside the executive branch.

Mr. Durham’s questioning is certain to add to accusations that Mr. Trump is using the Justice Department to go after his perceived enemies, like Mr. Brennan, who has been an outspoken critic of the president. Mr. Barr, who is overseeing the investigation, has come under attack in recent days over senior Justice Department officials’ intervention to lighten a prison sentencing recommendation by lower-level prosecutors for Mr. Trump’s longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr.

A spokesman for Mr. Durham did not respond to phone and email inquiries. The C.I.A. and the National Security Agency declined to comment. The people familiar with aspects of Mr. Durham’s investigation spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive topic.

The indictments of Trump's enemies are coming.  Barr at this point is begging Trump to stop tweeting about them so that he can get them rolled out without it being too obvious.

In an exclusive interview, Attorney General Bill Barr told ABC News on Thursday that President Donald Trump "has never asked me to do anything in a criminal case” but should stop tweeting about the Justice Department because his tweets “make it impossible for me to do my job.”
Barr’s comments are a rare break with a president who the attorney general has aligned himself with and fiercely defended. But it also puts Barr in line with many of Trump’s supporters on Capitol Hill who say they support the president but wish he’d cut back on his tweets.

“I think it’s time to stop the tweeting about Department of Justice criminal cases,” Barr told ABC News Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas.
When asked if he was prepared for the consequences of criticizing the president – his boss – Barr said “of course” because his job is to run the Justice Department and make decisions on “what I think is the right thing to do.”

But Trump won't be contained, and everyone knows the game is up anyway.  He'll never stop tweeting.  He doesn't care. The consiglieri is warning the boss that the feds will notice, and the boss keeps on buying yachts and cars and fur coats and telling everybody at the butcher shop that the guys who tried to prosecute him are gonna get whacked anyway.

He's openly making quid pro quo threats against NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo and laughing at him openly on Twitter.

President Donald Trump appeared Thursday to link his administration's policies toward New York to a demand that the state drop investigations and lawsuits related to his administration as well as his personal business and finances.

Hours before New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo was set to meet the president at the White House, Trump tweeted that Cuomo “must understand” that National Security far exceeds politics,” a reference to his administration’s recent decision to halt New York’s access to the Global Entry and other “trusted traveler” programs that allow New Yorkers faster border crossings and shorter airport lines.

Trump continued, “New York must stop all of its unnecessary lawsuits & harrassment, start cleaning itself up, and lowering taxes.”
Trump’s invocation of “lawsuits & harrassment” was a reference to the state’s numerous lawsuits against his administration and also against Trump’s business, which is based in New York.

That prompted Rep. Val Demings (D-Fla.), one of the House managers who prosecuted Trump’s impeachment in the Senate, to accuse the president of “expanding his abuse of power to blackmailing U.S. states (threatening millions of people he supposedly works for). In this case, he's holding New York state hostage to try to stop investigations into his prior tax fraud.”

State attorney general Letitia James has subpoenaed for Trump’s financial records, and the state is pursuing multiple inquiries about the Trump Organization’s business practices. James also just secured a $2 million settlement from Trump’s now-defunct charitable foundation, which was accused of numerous violations of misuse of funds.

The settlement prompted a sharp rebuke from Trump, who tweeted on Nov. 7 that James’ suit against the foundation was for “political purposes.”

“When you stop violating the rights and liberties of all New Yorkers, we will stand down,” James said Thursday, responding to Trump’s tweet. “Until then, we have a duty and responsibility to defend the Constitution and the rule of law. BTW, I file the lawsuits, not the Governor.”

Much more after the jump.  It's been a while since I've split a post up like this, but the lawlessness is coming at breathtaking speed.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

The SDNY federal investigation into Michael Cohen, Donald Trump, and hush money payments made to Stormy Daniels was ended this week by Attorney General Bill Barr, not because there wasn't evidence against Trump, but because there was.  So much so in fact that federal prosecutors were seriously considering indicting Trump, and that Bill Barr's first major act as Attorney General five months ago was to spike the case.

Federal prosecutors' decision to end an investigation into hush money payments to women claiming affairs with Donald Trump relied at least in part on long-standing Justice Department policy that a sitting president cannot be charged with a crime, a person familiar with the matter said Thursday.

The Justice Department told a federal judge on Monday that it had "effectively concluded" its investigation into efforts to silence the women in the final months of the 2016 campaign, but did not explain why it had done so. Prosecutors have said the payoffs violated a federal law that restricts campaign donations.

A person familiar with the case, who was not authorized to discuss it publicly, said it was unclear whether prosecutors made a determination that they had sufficient evidence to bring a case against Trump or anyone other than his former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, who pleaded guilty last year. But the Justice Department's opinion that a president cannot be indicted factored into the decision to end the probe, the person said.

Federal prosecutors had repeatedly placed Trump at the center of the effort to silence pornographic actress Stormy Daniels and former Playboy model Karen McDougal during the chaotic run-up to the 2016 election. Last year, they alleged in a court filing that Cohen had orchestrated illegal hush-money payments "in coordination with and at the direction of" Trump. And it revealed in unsealed court records on Friday that Trump participated in phone calls about the payments to Daniels.  

The investigation died screaming once Barr took over five months ago. Follow-up visits to the Trump Organization that were scheduled for late February never happened after Barr was sworn in. There's no other possible conclusion but that Barr committed massive obstruction of justice by interfering directly with an investigation into Donald Trump.

The decision by the FBI to unseal the investigation documents once the case ended is proof enough of this.

Donald Trump was repeatedly kept apprised of a scheme to keep adult film star Stormy Daniels silent just before the 2016 election about her alleged affair with the real estate mogul, court documents unsealed on Thursday show.

From start to finish, Trump was in regular contact with his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, who arranged the payment. In October, Trump was brought in on a conference call with his longtime communications adviser, Hope Hicks, to discuss efforts to purchase and kill Daniels’ story. Over the coming weeks, Trump had numerous phone calls with Cohen as he went back and forth with Daniels’ attorney. And days before the November election, after The Wall Street Journal published a story detailing a similar hush-payment Cohen also made during the campaign to Playboy model Karen McDougal, Cohen texted “he’s pissed,” an apparent reference to Trump.

The fresh details are contained in several applications for search warrants in the Southern District of New York in which FBI special agents described the evidence law enforcement had obtained showing that Cohen’s $130,000 payoff to Daniels constituted an illegal campaign contribution to Trump’s presidential campaign.

The newly unredacted portions of the applications show the FBI special agents detailing how the hush-money agreement was made — and how Cohen appeared to keep Trump in the know about the deal every step of the way. Cohen is now serving three years in prison for a series of campaign finance, tax fraud and lying charges.

Several media organizations, including POLITICO, obtained the documents through a federal judge’s order tied to the Cohen case. Among the items also released on Thursday is a letter sent earlier this week by Audrey Strauss, the lead U.S. attorney in New York on the Cohen case, notifying the judge that the government’s probe had concluded into who else might be criminally liable for the campaign finance violations to which the former Trump campaign lawyer has already pleaded guilty, as well as whether anyone else gave false statements or obstructed justice.

In other words, the FBI blatantly came clean with its documents to show that they had Trump dead to rights, but they were stopped from above.  The documents also prove former Trump aide Hope Hicks lied to Congress under oath about being involved in the conversations between Cohen and Trump about the hush money payouts.

Negotiations over the hush-money deal to silence Daniels appeared to begin in earnest just after The Washington Post in early October 2016 revealed the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Trump can be heard bragging about sexually assaulting women. In the days after that video’s release, Cohen began communicating with Daniels’ attorney, Keith Davidson, according to the FBI’s review of Cohen’s phone records, iCloud and email accounts.

“I believe that at least some of these communications concerned the need to prevent [Daniels] from going public, particularly in the wake of the Access Hollywood story,” an FBI special agent wrote in a search-warrant application.

On Oct. 8, 2016, the day the tape was released, Hicks, then the Trump campaign press secretary, called Cohen. Sixteen seconds later, Trump himself was dialed into the call, which continued for over four minutes. It was the first call Cohen had received or made to Hicks in at least several weeks, and Cohen and Trump had spoken only about once a month prior to that, according to the FBI. Cohen and Hicks spoke again for about two minutes after the call with Trump ended.

Over the next few weeks, Cohen worked to flesh out a deal with Davidson and American Media, Inc., the parent organization of the National Enquirer. The plan was to have AMI purchase and bury the story, a practice known as “catch and kill,” and Cohen would then reimburse AMI for their expenses. Cohen and Davidson worked on the arrangements with Dylan Howard, the chief content officer at AMI.

But again, nothing will happen because Bill Barr has ended the investigation.  Nobody will be prosecuted.  Nobody will be charged.  Well, except Cohen, who is taking the fall for his boss, "Individual-1".

The most corrupt White House in history rolls on.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Hope Less Edition

As expected, today's closed-door testimony before the House Judiciary Committee by former Trump regime adviser Hope Hicks was a bust as she refused to answer questions about her time at the White House, claiming immunity via executive privilege.

House Democrats erupted Wednesday at what they said was the White House’s repeated interference in their interview with Hope Hicks, a longtime confidante of President Donald Trump who was a central witness in special counsel Robert Mueller’s obstruction of justice investigation.

Several House Judiciary Committee members exiting the closed-door interview said a White House lawyer repeatedly claimed Hicks had blanket immunity from discussing her time in the White House. They said she wouldn’t answer questions as basic as where she sat in the West Wing or whether she told the truth to Mueller.

“We’re watching obstruction of justice in action,” said Rep. Ted Lieu (D-Calif.).

“It’s a farce,” added Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), who said Hicks at one point tried to answer a question about an episode involving former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski only to be cut off by the White House counsel.

“She made clear she wouldn’t answer a single question about her time unless the White House counsel told her it was okay,” an exasperated Rep. Ted Deutch (D-Fla.) said in an interview. “She couldn’t even characterize her testimony to the special counsel.”

Deutch added that the White House was not formally asserting executive privilege to block Hicks from answering certain questions; rather, the lawyer was referring to White House Counsel Pat Cipollone’s Tuesday letter claiming that Hicks was “absolutely immune” from discussing her tenure in the Trump administration.

Lieu said the White House lawyers were “making crap up” to block Hicks from testifying. He said she answered some questions about her time on the Trump campaign that provided new information, but he declined to characterize her comments.

Jayapal said lawyers even objected to Hicks discussing episodes that occurred after she left the White House — and that Hicks went along with it.

“She is making a choice to follow along with all the claims of absolute immunity,” Jayapal said, adding, “Basically, she can say her name.”

Judiciary Committee Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-N.Y.) took a more forgiving tone, saying Hicks did answer some questions and said a transcript of her testimony released in the next few days would reveal what she said. 

My guess will be it's not much, but what did Jerry Nadler and the Democrats on the committee expect?  Remember that "absolute immunity" means whatever at least five Supreme Court justices decide it means.

On the other side, Nancy Pelosi outright said today that censure of Trump is not going to happen.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially shut the door on censuring President Donald Trump Wednesday but plans to view a minimally redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report this week, her latest attempt to juggle the competing impeachment factions within her caucus.

Pelosi initially rejected an offer from Attorney General William Barr in April to view the less-redacted report, rebuffing Barr’s demands that only top congressional leaders have that access. The speaker’s course reversal on the report comes days after key House panels secured agreements to give more lawmakers access to the evidence underpinning the special counsel’s conclusions.

“We will be having access to a less redacted version of the Mueller report,” Pelosi said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Wednesday morning. “I accepted that because I’m afraid — I really don’t trust the attorney general of the United States.”

Pelosi told reporters she has made the request with the Department of Justice to view the report. A Democratic aide later confirmed that is expected to happen this week.

The California Democrat remained firm in her opposition to opening an impeachment inquiry into Trump right now but quashed the notion of censure — a less severe reprimand for public officials. Pelosi’s censure comments are significant because she is leaving the House with one option if they want to punish Trump — impeachment.

“I think censure is just a way out. If you want to go, you gotta go,” she said. “If the goods are there, you must impeach. Censure is nice, but it is not commensurate with the violations of the Constitution should we decide that’s the way to go.”

So, impeachment or nothing.

Your guess as to which one happens.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Former White House communications director Hope Hicks is now cooperating with House Judiciary Democrats in Rep. Jerry Nadler's wide-ranging investigation of the Trump regime.

Hope Hicks, the former White House communications director and long-time confidante of President Donald Trump, plans to turn over documents to the House Judiciary Committee as part of its investigation into potential obstruction of justice. 

Rep. Jerry Nadler, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, sent Hicks a detailed letter earlier this month, asking for documents on a wide-range of topics, including over former national security adviser Michael Flynn's false statements to the FBI, the firing of then-FBI Director James Comey, Trump's involvement in a hush-money scheme to silence stories about his alleged affairs and the drafting of a misleading 2017 statement to the media about Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 meeting in Trump Tower with Russians. 

The request included documents from "any personal or work diary, journal or other book containing notes, a record or a description of daily events" about Trump, the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization and the executive office of the President. 

Hicks and other current administration officials have agreed to provide documents to the committee, according to Nadler's spokesman Daniel Schwarz. Hicks' attorney declined to comment. 

The development comes amid a growing fight between House Democrats and the White House over a range of investigations -- after the White House has ignored a number of deadlines set by Democratic chairmen, who now wield subpoena power. The White House has not yet provided information to Nadler, a Democrat from New York, as part of his investigation -- despite a deadline this past Monday.
Hicks' cooperation comes in stark contrast to former White House chief of staff John Kelly, who is facing an array of questions from the House Oversight Committee over his role in the White House security clearance process. Kelly is allowing the White House counsel's office to respond to the Democrats' demands for information, but Hicks appears to be interacting directly with the House Judiciary Committee. 

While she has agreed to cooperate, it's unclear how much information Hicks will ultimately provide the committee. 

Last year, Hicks testified behind closed doors before the House Intelligence Committee, but she did not answer all of the questions from Democrats, who at the time were in the minority. 

One of the Trump campaign's earliest hires, Hicks in 2018 was willing to answer questions about the 2016 campaign and some questions about the Trump transition, but she would not address questions about her time in the White House. Democrats on the committee had urged their Republican colleagues to subpoena Hicks to answer their questions. Now in the majority, House Intelligence Chairman Adam Schiff, a California Democrat, has indicated he also is interested in getting additional information from Hicks, too. 

Nadler had set a Monday deadline for 81 individuals and entities to provide information to the panel as part of his investigation into possible abuses of power, corruption and obstruction of justice. Republicans contended that few -- only eight -- complied by Monday's deadline. But Democratic aides said far more witnesses had agreed to provide information in the coming days -- and Hicks is just one such example. 

Hicks isn't the only former White House official who is cooperating with the House Judiciary Committee. Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon, for instance, has already provided the committee with several thousands of pages of documents.

It's those early meetings with the Russians in 2016 that are the key to this whole mess.  Hicks was right in the center of dealing with Trump's communications.  She knows everything, frankly.

She's going to have a lot to say, I'd imagine.

Russian to Judgment, Con't

Three developments overnight in the ongoing Trump/Russia investigation, the first is a follow-up to yesterday's story involving a secret meeting in the Seychelles between Blackwater founder Erik Prince, brother to now Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, and Russian investors, brokered by a UAE adviser to Moscow named George Nader.  

Turns out that Robert Mueller knows all about that meeting because Nader is cooperating with Mueller's team, and that means there was far more to this January 2017 meeting than just a friendly chat.  We now know what that additional info is and what Nader is providing: it was a secret attempt at a backchannel between Trump and Putin and Nader was a witness to it all.

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter.

In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations.

A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

George Nader, a Lebanese American businessman who helped organize and attended the Seychelles meeting, has testified on the matter before a grand jury gathering evidence about discussions between the Trump transition team and emissaries of the Kremlin, as part of Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to interfere with the 2016 election.

Nader began cooperating with Mueller after he arrived at Dulles International Airport in mid-January and was stopped, served with a subpoena and questioned by the FBI, these people said. He has met numerous times with investigators. 

Last year, Prince told lawmakers — and the news media — that his Seychelles meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of a Russian government-controlled wealth fund, was an unplanned, unimportant encounter that came about by chance because he happened to be at a luxury hotel in the Indian Ocean island nation with officials from the United Arab Emirates.
In his statements, Prince has specifically denied reporting by The Washington Post that said the Seychelles meeting, which took place about a week before Trump’s inauguration, was described by U.S., European and Arab officials as part of an effort to establish a back-channel line of communication between Moscow and the incoming administration.

It also means that Prince lied to Congress straight up about the meeting when he testified.  Perjury is the kind of thing that puts you in federal prison.  Remember, Republicans impeached and attempted to remove Bill Clinton from office over his perjury.  We'll see what happens to Prince, but at this point, assume Robert Mueller has a nice box for him to live in for a while.

Speaking of testimony to Congress, we now know more about what outgoing White House Communications Director Hope Hicks had to say to Congress herself last week, and it too is a major development: the women who arguably had the closest working relationship with Trump and the classified data he had access to testified that she had her email hacked.

A day before she resigned as White House communications director, Hope Hicks told the House Intelligence Committee last week that one of her email accounts was hacked, according to people who were present for her testimony in the panel's Russia probe.

Under relatively routine questioning from Rep. Jim Himes, D-Conn., about her correspondence, Hicks indicated that she could no longer access two accounts: one she used as a member of President Donald Trump's campaign team and the other a personal account, according to four people who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the closed meeting of the Intelligence Committee was supposed to remain private.

Hicks, who portrayed herself as not savvy in matters of technology, told lawmakers that one of the accounts was hacked, according to two sources who were in the room. It is unclear if Hicks was referring to the campaign or the personal account.

Her assertion of a hack raises the questions of who might have compromised her account, as well as when, why and what information could have been obtained. But there was no indication from any of the sources that those questions were pursued by the committee, which had limited leverage over Hicks because she was appearing voluntarily and was not under a subpoena for her testimony or records.

It is standard practice for lawmakers to ask witnesses about phone numbers and email accounts. But it is uncommon, according to people familiar with the committee process, for a witness to tell lawmakers that he or she no longer has access to past accounts.

Of course Hicks's email would be a prime target for spies.  Someone sure has access to it that should not, but then again that's kind of a running theme with this regime, isn't it?

And that brings us to story number three, information that certain people should and should not have access to, as we discover that Donald Trump absolutely likes to grill Mueller's witnesses about what they've told Mueller, which is, you know, indicative of obstruction of justice.

The special counsel in the Russia investigation has learned of two conversations in recent months in which President Trump asked key witnesses about matters they discussed with investigators, according to three people familiar with the encounters.

In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said Mr. McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. McGahn never released a statement and later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed, the people said.

In the other episode, Mr. Trump asked his former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, how his interview had gone with the special counsel’s investigators and whether they had been “nice,” according to two people familiar with the discussion.

The episodes demonstrate that even as the special counsel investigation appears to be intensifying, the president has ignored his lawyers’ advice to avoid doing anything publicly or privately that could create the appearance of interfering with it.

The White House did not respond to several requests for comment. Mr. Priebus and Mr. McGahn declined to comment through their lawyer, William A. Burck.

Remember that Don McGahn is still at the White House as legal counsel, while Reince is long-gone as White House Chief of Staff, but the point is openly asking witnesses what they told the feds about the thing you're being investigated for is such a mind-bogglingly stupid thing to do that it should be illegal because it is.

Just so.  Stay tuned guys, the sheer velocity of these new leaks along with the confirmation of leaks from previous stories means things are reaching a critical mass.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Robert Mueller continues to be a very busy man in 2018 as his investigation of the Trump regime reaches critical mass.  We're getting almost daily stories now of Mueller's activities both hitting the pavement to interview witnesses and in the courtroom cutting plea deals with Trump's possible co-conspirators in exchange for cooperation.  

This week is no different at Team Mueller is now looking at Trump's efforts to possibly obstruct justice by trying to get rid of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who was under attack by Trump on Twitter again in the last few days.  The Washington Post confirms this:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has been investigating a period of time last summer when President Trump seemed determined to drive Attorney General Jeff Sessions from his job, according to people familiar with the matter who said that a key area of interest for the inquiry is whether those efforts were part of a months-long pattern of attempted obstruction of justice.

In recent months, Mueller’s team has questioned witnesses in detail about Trump’s private comments and state of mind in late July and early August of last year, around the time he issued a series of tweets belittling his “beleaguered” attorney general, these people said. The thrust of the questions was to determine whether the president’s goal was to oust Sessions in order to pick a replacement who would exercise control over the investigation into possible coordination between Russia and Trump associates during the 2016 election, these people said.

The issue of Sessions’s tortured relationship with the president reared up again Wednesday morning when the president tweeted: “Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. ... Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!”

Sessions usually opts not to respond to such criticism, but in this case he did. Trump’s criticism faulted the attorney general for not more aggressively pursuing claims that the FBI and Justice Department may have misled a foreign surveillance court on a politically sensitive case in the waning days of the Obama administration. Sessions insisted in his statement that he had reacted appropriately by referring the matter to the department’s inspector general for a possible review of how the surveillance case was handled.

“As long as I am the Attorney General, I will continue to discharge my duties with integrity and honor, and this Department will continue to do its work in a fair and impartial manner according to the law and Constitution,’’ Sessions said in the statement.

It’s no secret in Washington that the relationship between the president and the attorney general has been badly broken for months. The president has repeatedly issued public broadsides, calling Sessions “weak” or criticizing his leadership of the Justice Department, despite the attorney general’s frequent proclamations of devotion to Trump’s agenda on immigration and crime.

Again, this is confirmation that Mueller is looking directly into obstruction of justice by Trump himself.  We've long suspected that facet to the probe, but this is the first time that such a leak is coming from Team Mueller, who has been famously tight-lipped about what they're up to.

They still are when it comes to specifics, the Rick Gates plea deal is a great example of that, but these more general leaks confirming what at this point are open secrets is a new tactic for Team Mueller, and I think it's an effort to bring pressure against Trump's inner circle.

Speaking of Trump's inner circle, it's coming apart at the seams.  Jared Kushner lost his top secret security clearance along with more than two dozen other White House aides. That's bad enough for Kushner, but today there's a new bombshell with his name on it as The New York Times lets us know that Jared is in dire legal trouble right now for the quid pro quo game.

Early last year, a private equity billionaire started paying regular visits to the White House.

Joshua Harris, a founder of Apollo Global Management, was advising Trump administration officials on infrastructure policy. During that period, he met on multiple occasions with Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, said three people familiar with the meetings. Among other things, the two men discussed a possible White House job for Mr. Harris.

The job never materialized, but in November, Apollo lent $184 million to Mr. Kushner’s family real estate firm, Kushner Companies. The loan was to refinance the mortgage on a Chicago skyscraper.

Even by the standards of Apollo, one of the world’s largest private equity firms, the previously unreported transaction with the Kushners was a big deal: It was triple the size of the average property loan made by Apollo’s real estate lending arm, securities filings show.

It was one of the largest loans Kushner Companies received last year. An even larger loan came from Citigroup, which lent the firm and one of its partners $325 million to help finance a group of office buildings in Brooklyn.

That loan was made in the spring of 2017, shortly after Mr. Kushner met in the White House with Citigroup’s chief executive, Michael L. Corbat, according to people briefed on the meeting. The two men talked about financial and trade policy and did not discuss Mr. Kushner’s family business, one person said.

There is little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplate sizable loans to his business, say government ethics experts.

“This is exactly why senior government officials, for as long back as I have any experience, don’t maintain any active outside business interests,” said Don Fox, the former acting director of the Office of Government Ethics during the Obama administration and, before that, a lawyer for the Air Force and Navy during Republican and Democratic administrations. “The appearance of conflicts of interest is simply too great.”

Jared Kushner is going to jail for a long time, guys.  If Mueller doesn't get him, NY AG Eric Schniederman will, and the state charges from New York won't be something Trump can pardon.

Oh, and White House Communications Director Hope Hicks is now leaving, the announcement coming a day after she apparently admitted to the House Intelligence Committee that she lied for Trump.

Hope Hicks, President Trump’s communications director and one of his longest-serving advisers, said Wednesday that she planned to leave the White House in the next few weeks.

Ms. Hicks, 29, a former model who joined Mr. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign without any experience in politics, became known as one of the few aides who understood Mr. Trump’s personality and style and could challenge the president to change his views.

Her title belied the extent of her power within the West Wing — after John F. Kelly was appointed White House chief of staff, she had more access to the Oval Office than almost any other staff member. Her own office, which she inherited after the departure of another Trump confidant, Keith Schiller, was just next door.

Most significantly, Mr. Trump felt a more personal comfort with Ms. Hicks than he has established with almost any of his other, newer advisers since coming to Washington. And for a politician who relies so heavily on what is familiar to him, her absence could be jarring.

Ms. Hicks said that she had “no words” to express her gratitude to the president, who responded with his own statement.

“Hope is outstanding and has done great work for the last three years,” Mr. Trump said. “She is as smart and thoughtful as they come, a truly great person. I will miss having her by my side, but when she approached me about pursuing other opportunities, I totally understood. I am sure we will work together again in the future.”

Her resignation came a day after she testified for eight hours before the House Intelligence Committee, telling the panel that in her job, she had occasionally been required to tell white lies but had never lied about anything connected to the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

Telling Congress that you lied for your boss is pretty much the end of your career, just so you know.  Trump apparently blew up at Hicks upon finding that out, and now she's leaving.

The president got angry at Hicks after learning she made the revelation Tuesday to the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russia’s meddling into the 2016 election, a Trump ally told CNN.

A livid Trump demanded to know “how she could be that stupid” to admit she lies for the president, the report said.

Hicks, who has been by Trump’s side since the start of his presidential campaign, then suddenly announced Wednesday she would resign.

For a guy who always prattles on about loyalty, the second your liability to Trump exceeds your usefulness, he cuts you to shreds and leaves you to bleed to death while he walks away.  No three people outside his immediate family have been closer to Trump than Kushner, Hicks, and Sessions.

Hicks is gone.  Kushner has been demoted to cabana boy and is in legal trouble so deep that he can't see the bottom.  Sessions is only still around because he knows where the bodies are buried and he controls the DoJ, but even Trump has his limits on that.


The Trump regime is now self-destructing in real time, and when it finally blows, it will be epic.

The General Needs To Go

Now that Steve Bannon is gone, the job of Donald Trump's enabler-in-chief has fallen to White House Chief of Staff John Kelly.  As Vox's Dylan Matthews reminds us, there are several reasons why Kelly should have been booted from the job months ago.

I can’t tell you the exact moment it became clear that retired Gen. John F. Kelly had to resign his position as White House chief of staff.

Perhaps it was in October, when he lied and smeared Rep. Frederica Wilson (D-FL). Kelly claimed that during a dedication ceremony for a new FBI office in Miami, a ceremony where he and others were focused on the heroism of the two slain FBI agents after whom the office was named, Wilson “stood up there in all of that and talked about how she was instrumental in getting the funding for that building.”

Video of the event confirmed that Kelly was lying — Wilson didn’t take credit for getting the funding. She graciously extended credit to her colleagues, including Republican Reps. Carlos Curbelo and Mario Díaz-Balart, and devoted much of her speech to honoring the two agents for whom the office was named. Kelly was lying to smear her for criticizing President Trump — indeed, for criticizing Trump’s treatment of a war widow.

Compounding the issue was White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders telling reporters it was ”highly inappropriate” to call Kelly on his lies — because he’s a retired general. It was a shocking statement, one that undermined norms of civilian control of and oversight over the military. Kelly should have at least told the press he disagreed with Sanders, that he does not believe he is above scrutiny because of his military record. He did not.

Or maybe his time was up when he praised Robert E. Lee, who committed treason to defend the institution of slavery and the subjugation of black Americans, as an “honorable” man and blamed the Civil War on a “lack of compromise.” Or perhaps it was when he decried some DREAMers who failed to secure protection from deportation (in some cases because they feared that if they told the federal government they were undocumented, they could be deported) as “too lazy to get off their asses.” It was a shocking insult to more than a million Americans, who have lived here almost all their lives and contributed time and again to their communities and their nation.

But it became extremely, abundantly clear that Kelly had to go when he went to bat for White House staff secretary Rob Porter.

Let's be perfectly clear about the Porter story: neither Rob Porter nor John Kelly are the victims here. Porter's ex-wives, Colbie Holderness and  Jennifer Willoughby, were beaten, terrorized, abused, and irreparably harmed by this monster.  They came forward to stop this brutish lout from being involved in our nation's executive branch.

John Kelly knew about it for months and promoted Porter anyway, as did White House Chief Legal Counsel Don McGahn.

Kelly knew all of this. Both Holderness and Willoughby were interviewed by the FBI in January 2017 as part of the hiring process for Porter, and White House counsel Don McGahn learned of the allegations the same month. McGahn took no action, nor did he take any action when the ex-girlfriend contacted him in November. The FBI told the White House about the abuse in June 2017, and by the fall it was clear the allegations were preventing Porter from getting a security clearance.

“When McGahn informed Kelly this fall about the reason for the security clearance holdup, he agreed that Porter should remain and said he was surprised to learn that the 40-year-old had ex-wives,” the Washington Post’s Josh Dawsey and Beth Reinhard report. “Kelly handed Porter more responsibilities to control the flow of information to the president.”

A few weeks ago, Kelly was informed by the FBI that they were recommending that Porter be denied full security clearance, and recommended the same about a number of other White House aides who, like Porter, had been working on interim clearances. “The White House chief-of-staff told confidants in recent weeks that he had decided to fire anyone who had been denied a clearance — but had yet to act on that plan before the Porter allegations were first reported this week,” Politico’s Eliana Johnson reports.

After all that, and even after the scandal broke in the news media, Kelly was still pushing within the White House to keep Porter on board. Axios’s Jonathan Swan reported that Kelly wanted Porter to “stay and fight.” Publicly, while Kelly said he was “shocked by the new allegations” and proclaimed, “There is no place for domestic violence in our society,” he reiterated, “I believe every individual deserves the right to defend their reputation.” When the scandal broke, he told the Daily Mail that Porter was “a man of true integrity and honor, and I can’t say enough good things about him.”

Again, these allegations against Porter were known from day one.  Not only was Porter hired, he was promoted to a sensitive position like White House Staff Secretary where he could read classified information without a security clearance.

And just think, there's dozens of other Trump staffers who should have security clearance but do not.

Just to top it all off, Porter was dating another member of Trump's staff, Hope Hicks. He was her boss.  And guess who Trump blames for this mess?

Hope Hicks. 

All of these clowns need to go, starting with Trump.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

There have been a number of additional developments in the Russian collusion investigations of the Trump regime in the last 48 hours as the Republicans trying to place their thumbs on the scales of justice by attacking the FBI's credibility are discovering that trying to take on federal law enforcement when it comes to a leak war to the media is a pretty bad idea.

CNN dropped two major stories last night, first, the revelation that Donald Trump openly asked for the loyalty of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein as recently as December.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein visited the White House in December seeking President Donald Trump's help. The top Justice Department official in the Russia investigation wanted Trump's support in fighting off document demands from House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes. 

But the President had other priorities ahead of a key appearance by Rosenstein on the Hill, according to sources familiar with the meeting. Trump wanted to know where the special counsel's Russia investigation was heading. And he wanted to know whether Rosenstein was "on my team." 

The episode is the latest to come to light portraying a President whose inquiries sometimes cross a line that presidents traditionally have tried to avoid when dealing with the Justice Department, for which a measure of independence is key. The exchange could raise further questions about whether Trump was seeking to interfere in the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is looking into potential collusion by the Trump campaign with Russia and obstruction of justice by the White House. 

At the December meeting, the deputy attorney general appeared surprised by the President's questions, the sources said. He demurred on the direction of the Russia investigation, which Rosenstein has ultimate authority over now that his boss, Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has recused himself. And he responded awkwardly to the President's "team" request, the sources said. 

"Of course, we're all on your team, Mr. President," Rosenstein told Trump, the sources said. It is not clear what Trump meant or how Rosenstein interpreted the comment. 

Again, for Donald Trump to directly ask Rosenstein about the DoJ's investigation of Trump himself is a massive, massive red flag, and given that Trump fired former FBI Director James Comey, pressured former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe to quit, and pressured Attorney General Jeff Sessions about the investigation to the point where Sessions recused himself, the fact that Trump now pressured Rosenstein is a clear indication of intent to obstruct the investigation.

The other story from CNN also involves the FBI, and that's the development that the FBI agent who wrote James Comey's first draft of the letter re-opening the Clinton e-mail investigation weeks before the election was the same FBI agent, Peter Strzok, the Republicans say was somehow biased against Trump.

Emails obtained by CNN show the FBI agent at the center of a Capitol Hill storm played a key role in a controversial FBI decision that upended Hillary Clinton's campaign just days before the 2016 election: the letter to Congress by then-FBI Director James Comey announcing the bureau was investigating newly discovered Clinton emails. 

The new revelation about FBI agent Peter Strzok comes as Republicans accuse him of being sympathetic to Clinton while seeking to undermine Donald Trump during the heat of the 2016 campaign season. 

Strzok, who co-wrote what appears to be the first draft that formed the basis of the letter Comey sent to Congress, also supported reopening the Clinton investigation once the emails were discovered on disgraced former Rep. Anthony Weiner's laptop, according to a source familiar with Strzok's thinking. The day after Strzok sent his draft to his colleagues, Comey released the letter to Congress, reigniting the email controversy in the final days of the campaign. 

Strzok did, however, harbor reservations about Comey making a public announcement just days before the election and sent a text message to that effect, two sources said. And Strzok's text messages provided to Congress show him grappling with the fallout of making the letter public, according to a CNN review of his texts. 

So Strzok did what plenty of people do in their careers: perform their job as instructed despite the personal misgivings of the ethics of the action.  He thought it was obviously a move to hurt Clinton, but he did his job anyway. The notion that there's a massive "Deep State Obama/Clinton conspiracy" in the FBI doesn't hold water, considering that Comey's letter almost certainly helped win the election for Trump.

Meanwhile the NY Times got another story, this time on Robert Mueller's continuing hunt into the Trump regime's wrongdoing, as we learn Mueller's obstruction of justice investigation is focusing on Donald Trump's lies about his staff meeting with Russian nationals last summer.  That's not new in an of itself, but what is novel is Mueller's focus on Trump adviser Hope Hicks and the role she may have played in that obstruction.

The latest witness to be called for an interview about the episode was Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team before resigning in July. Mr. Corallo received an interview request last week from the special counsel and has agreed to the interview, according to three people with knowledge of the request.

Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call with Mr. Trump and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, according to the three people. Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said.

In a statement on Wednesday, a lawyer for Ms. Hicks strongly denied Mr. Corallo’s allegations.

“As most reporters know, it’s not my practice to comment in response to questions from the media. But this warrants a response,” said the lawyer, Robert P. Trout. “She never said that. And the idea that Hope Hicks ever suggested that emails or other documents would be concealed or destroyed is completely false.”

And thus we have Mueller's real sword of Damocles exposed: Trump's not the only person who can be charged with obstruction of justice, and everyone who's not Donald Trump has considerably fewer legal protections in case they are charged.

Accusations began flying that the botched response made an already bad situation worse. Ms. Hicks called Mr. Corallo, according to three people who relayed his version of events to The Times. She accused him of trafficking in conspiracy theories and drawing more attention to the story.

The conference call with the president, Mr. Corallo and Ms. Hicks took place the next morning, and what transpired on the call is a matter of dispute.

In Mr. Corallo’s account — which he provided contemporaneously to three colleagues who later gave it to The Times — he told both Mr. Trump and Ms. Hicks that the statement drafted aboard Air Force One would backfire because documents would eventually surface showing that the meeting had been set up for the Trump campaign to get political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians.

According to his account, Ms. Hicks responded that the emails “will never get out” because only a few people had access to them. Mr. Corallo, who worked as a Justice Department spokesman during the George W. Bush administration, told colleagues he was alarmed not only by what Ms. Hicks had said — either she was being naïve or was suggesting that the emails could be withheld from investigators — but also that she had said it in front of the president without a lawyer on the phone and that the conversation could not be protected by attorney-client privilege.

Contacted on Wednesday, Mr. Corallo said he did not dispute any of the account shared by his colleagues but declined to elaborate further.

Even if Mr. Corallo is correct and Ms. Hicks was hinting at an attempt to conceal the emails, doing so would have been nearly impossible. Congress had requested records from Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s campaign chairman; Mr. Kushner; and other Trump campaign officials about meetings with Russians. And lawyers had already copied and stamped the emails for delivery to Capitol Hill.

Ahh, but the salient point with obstruction of justice is the attempt and intent to conceal information, not the success of the attempt itself.

Hope Hicks better lawyer up considerably.  No doubt she already has.  No doubt Mueller already knows of Corallo's statements about her as well, meaning this is a chin music message pitch fastball right at Trump's head.  We've known for some time that Hicks is effectively Trump's gatekeeper and personal assistant.  If she's being directly accused of obstruction, and Mueller has gotten to her...

Well, Trump's going to have some sleepless nights.

Stay tuned.

Hope And No Change With Trump

After the disaster that was Hurricane Scaramucci blew through the White House last month, it looks like long-time Trump loyalist Hope Hicks will be named as the Trump regime's new Minister of Propaganda.

President Donald Trump has struggled to find staff that will work with him. Famously, he blew through a communications director Anthony Scaramucci in less than two weeks. Perhaps that is why he’s decided to name longtime loyalist Hope Hicks to the post.

The Daily Caller cites a White House insider that revealed 28-year-old Hicks has accepted the position. The former model has stayed close to Trump’s side, though largely out of the spotlight. She has been doing “strategic communications” for Trump since entering the White House, according to her Twitter biography.

Hicks drew criticism in July after it was disclosed that her salary is equal to the senior-most aides in the White House, despite having little experience.

Hicks previously worked for Trump and was named among the top 30 under 30 by Forbes.

GQ's Olivia Nuzzi profiled Hicks last year, Trump's personal press secretary, who had zero political experience (like her boss!) and found herself thrust into the role, is extremely reclusive and has remained so while the professionals all have fallen by the wayside for not being sufficiently loyal to Dear Leader.

Hicks's big job in politics started—not that long ago—with a comparatively tiny gig in Trump Tower. In 2012, two years after she'd graduated from Southern Methodist, Hicks was working for a New York PR shop when she was dispatched to help one of the firm's major clients: Ivanka Trump.

At the time, Trump's daughter was expanding her fashion line, and Hicks was enlisted to pitch in—and even do a bit of modeling, appearing online in a practical mint-colored dress, black clutch, and heels, all from the Ivanka Trump collection.

Hicks grew close to Ivanka and began dressing like the heiress, who seemed worthy of the emulation. Ivanka was that rare female corporate leader who is also kind to other women, and she affected an air of competence that seemed to temper the boorishness of the Trump brand. Conveniently, as Hicks ingratiated herself to Ivanka, she won over The Donald as well—helped by the eager-to-please disposition she'd displayed since childhood.

In Greenwich, Connecticut, as a kid, she was an athlete and a model who—after appearing in a Ralph Lauren ad—told a local magazine she intended to be an actress. By high school she was swimming, rowing, and captaining the lacrosse team. (She'd go on to play on SMU's club team.) Kylie Burchell, Hicks's lacrosse coach, recalled her as one of the only players to abide by a no-alcohol policy. “I think the girls were annoyed at her a little bit,” she said. “She was trying to be a leader. She was showing by example what to do.” She wasn’t always so earnest, however. In her senior yearbook, she mistakenly attributed the words of Eleanor Roosevelt—“The future belongs to those who believe in the power of their dreams”—to Jimmy Buffett.

That Hicks, a pretty young lady from a tony town, would gravitate toward PR after college might have seemed obvious. Warranted or not, the PR Girl has become a kind of stereotype—the land-bound stewardess of the aughts. A profession thought to require little more than the ability to walk in a pair of Louboutins and harass people via e-mail. But the sorority-girl caricature wasn't what Hicks had in mind, or in her pedigree. In addition to her father, Paul, who directed PR at the NFL and now works for the D.C. power firm Glover Park Group, both of Hicks's grandfathers worked in public relations.

After meeting Matthew Hiltzik, a New York PR shark, in 2011, Hicks landed a job at his firm. It was here that she began working with Ivanka, putting her in the orbit of The Donald, who was quickly impressed. “I thought Hope was outstanding,” Trump told me, recalling his decision to tell Hiltzik that he was poaching Hicks to work for him. In Trump's telling, Hiltzik was powerless to deny him what he wanted. “I wouldn't say he was thrilled,” Trump told me, “but, you know, we give him a lot of business.” (Hiltzik says the parting was amicable all around.)

So Hicks joined the team at Trump Tower in October 2014, without any idea her new boss intended to become president. Or that she had just signed on to his campaign.

Now the "PR girl from Connecticut" is more than happy to manage Trump's messaging machine just a day after Trump sided with neo-Nazi white supremacists in Virginia.  And she's more than happy to still work for the man.

It tells you everything I need to know about her and the rest of Trump's employees.