Retribution Execution, Con't

The Trump Justice Department under Jeff Sessions didn't just illegally investigate journalists from CNN, the NY Times, and the Washington Post in 2017, they illegally seized phone records and metadata from House Intelligence Committee Democrats, including ranking member and now chairman Rep. Adam Schiff and his family., and Bill Barr continued the investigation when he took over.

As the Justice Department investigated who was behind leaks of classified information early in the Trump administration, it took a highly unusual step: Prosecutors subpoenaed Apple for data from the accounts of at least two Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee, aides and family members. One was a minor.

All told, the records of at least a dozen people tied to the committee were seized in 2017 and early 2018, including those of Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, then the panel’s top Democrat and now its chairman, according to committee officials and two other people briefed on the inquiry. Representative Eric Swalwell of California said in an interview Thursday night that he had also been notified that his data had been subpoenaed.

Prosecutors, under the beleaguered attorney general, Jeff Sessions, were hunting for the sources behind news media reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russia. Ultimately, the data and other evidence did not tie the committee to the leaks, and investigators debated whether they had hit a dead end and some even discussed closing the inquiry.

But William P. Barr revived languishing leak investigations after he became attorney general a year later. He moved a trusted prosecutor from New Jersey with little relevant experience to the main Justice Department to work on the Schiff-related case and about a half-dozen others, according to three people with knowledge of his work who did not want to be identified discussing federal investigations.

The zeal in the Trump administration’s efforts to hunt leakers led to the extraordinary step of subpoenaing communications metadata from members of Congress — a nearly unheard-of move outside of corruption investigations. While Justice Department leak investigations are routine, current and former congressional officials familiar with the inquiry said they could not recall an instance in which the records of lawmakers had been seized as part of one.

Moreover, just as it did in investigating news organizations, the Justice Department secured a gag order on Apple that expired this year, according to a person familiar with the inquiry, so lawmakers did not know they were being investigated until Apple informed them last month.

Prosecutors also eventually secured subpoenas for reporters’ records to try to identify their confidential sources, a move that department policy allows only after all other avenues of inquiry are exhausted.

The subpoenas remained secret until the Justice Department disclosed them in recent weeks to the news organizations — The Washington Post, The New York Times and CNN — revelations that set off criticism that the government was intruding on press freedoms.

The gag orders and records seizures show how aggressively the Trump administration pursued the inquiries while Mr. Trump declared war on the news media and perceived enemies whom he routinely accused of disclosing damaging information about him, including Mr. Schiff and James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director whom prosecutors focused on in the leak inquiry involving Times records.

 

Straight up Watergate abuses, covered up by Sessions and Barr for years, and it's barely in the top ten of reasons why Trump should be in prison right now. He wanted to lock up reporters and Democrats and directed the Justice Department to make it happen. Trump didn't just have an enemies' list, he used it.

Hearings, of course, but we'll see what else happens.

Retribution Execution, Con't

So turns out the Trump Regime went directly after the phone records of Washington Post reporters over the Russian collusion story back in 2017 in order to smoke out the Post's national security sources.

The Trump Justice Department secretly seized the phone records of three Washington Post reporters who covered the federal investigation into ties between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign, the newspaper said Friday.

The disclosure sets up a new clash between the federal government and news organizations and advocates for press freedom, who regard the seizures of reporters’ records as incursions into constitutionally protected newsgathering activity. Similar actions have occurred only rarely over the past decade, including a seizure of phone records of Associated Press reporters and editors over a 2012 story that revealed a foiled bomb plot.

In a statement published by the newspaper, Cameron Barr, the Post’s acting executive editor, said: “We are deeply troubled by this use of government power to seek access to the communications of journalists. The Department of Justice should immediately make clear its reasons for this intrusion into the activities of reporters doing their jobs, an activity protected under the First Amendment.”

The action is presumably aimed at identifying the reporters’ sources in national security stories published in the early months of Trump’s administration, as federal investigators scrutinized whether his 2016 campaign had coordinated with the Kremlin to sway the election.

The records’ seizure was approved by Justice Department leadership last year. The reporters — Ellen Nakashima, Greg Miller and Adam Entous, who has since left the Post — were notified in letters dated May 3 that the Justice Department had obtained records for their home, work or cellphone numbers.

The records sought cover the period of April 15, 2017, to July 31, 2017, according to the newspaper. Justice Department guidelines for media leak investigations mandate that such actions are to be taken only when other avenues for obtaining the information have been exhausted, and that the affected reporters are to be notified unless it’s determined that it would impede the investigation or interfere with national security.

“While rare, the Department follows the established procedures within its media guidelines policy when seeking legal process to obtain telephone toll records and non-content email records from media members as part of a criminal investigation into the unauthorized disclosure of classified information,” department spokesman Marc Raimondi said in a statement.

“The targets of these investigations are not the news media recipients but rather those with access to the national defense information who provided it to the media and thus failed to protect it as lawfully required,” he added.

Bruce Brown, the executive director of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, said it “raises serious First Amendment concerns” for the government to obtain records of journalists’ communications.

“It is imperative that the new Justice Department leadership explain exactly when prosecutors seized these records, why it is only now notifying the Post, and on what basis the Justice Department decided to forgo the presumption of advance notification under its own guidelines when the investigation apparently involves reporting over three years in the past,” Brown said in a statement.

 

That's actually quite true,  AG Merrick Garland needs to explain whey this happened. 

 

On the other hand, we pretty much know why this happened, because Trump ordered it. We're only finding out now because making this public 3 years ago would have completely turned the press against Trump, even FOX.

So let's start there, shall we?

Deportation Nation, Con't

I have a pretty good idea now why Trump's Acting ICE Director only lasted two weeks before quitting on Wednesday, and it has everything to do with Stephen Miller putting kids in cages.

After a scathing new report from the Justice Department's watchdog blamed top department officials for being the "driving force" behind the Trump administration's 2018 migrant family separation policy, former Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein issued a statement of regret Thursday and current DOJ official Gene Hamilton blamed the president for the policy.

In interviews with the DOJ Office of Inspector General in the lead-up to the report, Gene Hamilton, known as a close ally of White House adviser Stephen Miller, said the decision to separate families, a policy known as "zero tolerance" that lasted two months in 2018 before it was terminated by executive order, ultimately rested with President Donald Trump and then-Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen.

"If Secretary Nielsen and DHS did not want to refer people with minors, with children, then we wouldn't have prosecuted them because they wouldn't have referred them. And ultimately that decision would be between Secretary Nielsen and the president," Hamilton told the Office of Inspector General, according to the report.

"The Attorney General was aware of White House desires for further action related to combatting illegal immigration, imminent and ongoing actions by the Department of Homeland Security, and he perceived a need to take quick action," Hamilton told the Inspector General.

In response to the report, Rosenstein, who left the department in May 2019, said in a statement to NBC News: "Since leaving the department, I have often asked myself what we should have done differently, and no issue has dominated my thinking more than the zero tolerance immigration policy. It was a failed policy that never should have been proposed or implemented. I wish we all had done better."

During an April 20, 2018, meeting at the Justice Department, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions, Rosenstein, Hamilton and others met with Nielsen, says the report. There, according to notes from Hamilton, "the Attorney General and the Deputy Attorney General both expressed a willingness to prosecute adults in family units if DHS made the decision to start referring such individuals for prosecution."

Sessions refused to be interviewed by the Inspector General and could not be reached for comment. The White House referred NBC News to the Justice Department for comment.

NBC News previously reported on a draft version of the report in October.

The report, published Thursday by the Justice Department's Inspector General more than two years after the policy ended, pieces together decisions made by high-ranking Trump administration officials that led to the separation of more than 3,000 migrant families.

"We concluded that the Department’s single-minded focus on increasing immigration prosecutions came at the expense of careful and appropriate consideration of the impact of family unit prosecutions and child separations," the Inspector General's report said.

 

Last Call For The Final Sessions

Amber Phillips at the Washington Post details the embarrassing and complete destruction of Jefferson Beauregard Sessions III's political career at the singular hands of Donald Trump, and I couldn't be happier to see the Trump Touch Theory in full effect: everything the man touches transforms into dust.

If there was one establishment figure in Washington who understood Trumpism, it was Jeff Sessions. But Sessions is also the Washington figure who most clearly paid a political price for not seeming loyal enough to President Trump.

The longtime senator from Alabama, like Trump, leaned hard on anti-immigrant policies. It made him something of an outsider in traditional Washington politics, but Trump and Sessions worked together to change that.

Sessions was the first senator to endorse Trump, choosing him over other candidates like his Senate colleague Ted Cruz (R-Tex.).

Trump was just a few months into his campaign when Sessions stood with him onstage, giving the candidate a boost of legitimacy from Washington. When Trump won the White House, Sessions was rewarded by being chosen as Trump’s attorney general. And Sessions in return tried to relentlessly hammer home the two men’s tough-on-immigration rhetoric and policies.

But the relationship went wrong over the question of loyalty, or rather the president’s perception of loyalty. Sessions lost a runoff in Alabama on Tuesday in an attempt to return to his old Senate seat, and Trump was cheering his loss on from Washington, after insulting Sessions or urging voters to ditch him nearly every step of the way. Former Auburn University football coach Tommy Tuberville won the nomination and will try to unseat Democrats’ most vulnerable senator in November, Doug Jones.

Trump has been humiliating Sessions for years, actually, even while Sessions was still his attorney general. The president seemed to view the prominent Cabinet position as one designed to protect him rather than to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer. Perhaps Trump was helped along by the fact that his attorney general was such a close political ally. Or perhaps Trump views key aspects of government as a means to the end of supporting him — a pattern we’ve seen since.

Trump felt he needed the most protection from the Department of Justice on an FBI investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and any ties to his campaign — and he believed Sessions wasn’t there for him. Sessions had recused himself from overseeing the investigation because he played such a prominent role in the Trump campaign and had visited with the Russian ambassador during it.

Shortly after that, Trump fired the FBI director, and shortly after that, Sessions’s No. 2 appointed a special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, to take on the investigation. Trump uttered an expletive when he found out, according to Mueller’s report.

The Mueller report says Trump immediately turned his anger to Sessions. Trump later told the New York Times, “Sessions should have never recused himself, and if he was going to recuse himself, he should have told me before he took the job and I would have picked somebody else.” 

And the president spent more than a year insulting Sessions on Twitter, even making Sessions’s former Republican colleagues in the Senate uncomfortable with the public humiliation, before firing him and then doing what he could to make sure Sessions never came back to Washington.

Sessions will be back as a lobbyist emeritus I'm sure, but his political career has ended with all the ignominy he deserved.  He could have kept his Senate seat for another two terms, I'm sure.  Now? He'll be lucky to end up on a sinecure masthead somewhere if not retiring.

Donald Trump destroyed him, and Sessions allowed it to happen.

Retribution Execution, Con't

Defense Secretary Mark Esper doesn't have the balls to resign after the catastrophe of Trump saying he'll use the military against Americans on US soil on Monday, but apparently he's at least going to complain about the knife Trump put in his back.

Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said Wednesday that he does not support using active duty troops to quell the large-scale protests across the United States triggered by the death of George Floyd and those forces should only be used in a law enforcement role as a last resort, comments that came after President Donald Trump recently threatened to deploy the military to enforce order. 

Esper's attempt to distance himself from Trump's view on using the military to restore order went over poorly at the White House, where he was already viewed to be on shaky ground, multiple people familiar with the matter said. 

"The option to use active duty forces in a law enforcement role should only be used as a matter of last resort, and only in the most urgent and dire of situations. We are not in one of those situations now. I do not support invoking the Insurrection Act," Esper said during a briefing at the Pentagon. 

Esper also addressed the killing of Floyd, calling it a "horrible crime" and said "racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it." 

"The officers on the scene that day should be held accountable for his murder. It is a tragedy that we have seen repeat itself too many times. With great sympathy, I want to extend the deepest of condolences to the family and friends of George Floyd from me and the Department. Racism is real in America, and we must all do our very best to recognize it, to confront it, and to eradicate it," he said.

It's going to be a moot point anyway.  As with Jeff Sessions and Jim Mattis, Trump will simply replace a cabinet member with somebody who will obey him, and Mitch McConnell will rubber stamp the transaction.

Trump and other top officials, including national security adviser Robert O'Brien, are "not happy" with Esper after his Wednesday remarks, three people familiar with the White House's thinking said. 

In the press conference, Esper also distanced himself from a maligned photo-op outside St. John's Church. 

One White House official said aides there did not get a heads up about the content of Esper's remarks, including most notably Esper's decision to publicly break with the President on the use of the military to address unrest in US cities.

The countdown until Esper is replaced begins in earnest, which may slow down Trump for a moment, but as soon as he finds somebody willing to carry out his orders as Acting SecDef, things could get ugly in a New York minute. Look at the havoc Richard Grenell wreaked as Acting DNI in just a couple of months.

Don't feel bad for Esper, however.  He made the decision to work for Donald Trump, and that makes you just as morally repugnant as Trump is, if not more so.

That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein is now expected to leave the Justice Department to make way for the expected confirmation of Attorney General William Barr.

Rosenstein has communicated to President Donald Trump and White House officials his plan to depart the administration around the time William Barr, Trump's nominee for attorney general, would take office following a Senate confirmation.

Sources told ABC News Rosenstein wants to ensure a smooth transition to his successor and would accommodate the needs of Barr, should he be confirmed.

Rosenstein apparently had long been thinking he would serve about two years, and there was no indication that he was being forced out at this moment by the president.

Upon the termination of Attorney General Jeff Sessions, speculation mounted that Rosenstein would depart shortly thereafter, yet he's remained in his post as Matt Whitaker has served as acting Attorney General since late November.

Rosenstein oversaw special counsel Robert Mueller's probe for more than a year, after Sessions had recused from the matter over his role in Trump's presidential campaign.

Like other senior leaders within the Justice Department, Rosenstein became a frequent target of Trump's on Twitter, with the president recently re-posting an image of Rosenstein and others behind bars.

As far as the Mueller probe goes, Rosenstein is no longer Mueller's boss anyway with the summary firing of Jeff Sessions, acting AG Matt Whitaker is. Whitaker hasn't so far chosen to interfere overtly in the Mueller probe yet, that may be up to William Barr after he's confirmed by the Senate GOP.

Still, it looks like to me with the Mueller probe and his expected report coming in the next several weeks, Rosenstein realized that he's not going to be able to stay past Barr's confirmation.  Of course, the part about the Trump regime not forcing him out is probably a lie too.

What effect this will have on the Mueller probe, we may not know for a while.

The Adults In The Room Are Grounded

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is out of time and Donald Trump is out of patience as it appears Kelly is the next regime staffer staked out on the tracks for the careening Trump train to run over on the way off the cliff.

John Kelly is expected to resign as White House chief of staff in the coming days, two sources familiar with the situation unfolding in the West Wing tell CNN. 

Seventeen months in, Kelly and President Donald Trump have reached a stalemate in their relationship and it is no longer seen as tenable by either party. Though Trump asked Kelly over the summer to stay on as chief of staff for two more years, the two have stopped speaking in recent days. 

Trump is actively discussing a replacement plan, though a person involved in the process said nothing is final right now and ultimately nothing is final until Trump announces it. Potential replacements include Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, who is still seen as a leading contender. 

The expected departure would end a tumultuous tenure for Kelly, who was brought on to bring order to the White House but whose time as chief of staff has often been marked by the same infighting and controversy that has largely defined Trump's presidency from its beginning. Many of the storms in which Kelly became embroiled were by his own making. 

CNN reported last month that Trump was considering potential replacements for several senior positions in his administration as part of a post-midterms staff shakeup. 

News of Kelly's imminent departure was first reported by Axios.

Yes, Kelly has been "fired" before, so many times it feels like he should be managing the Yankees in the 80's, so who knows if this one actually sticks.  Still, it feels like this time is the one where Trump actually does tell Kelly to hit the bricks.

Of course, Trump is also expected to announce replacements for UN Ambassador and Attorney General today as well, along with new WH legal counsel Pat Cipollone replacing Don McGahn starting Monday, so we'll see if the new "adults" fare better than the old ones.

Spoilers: they won't.

Last Call For That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

With Acting AG Matt Whitaker's woes piling up, and Special Counsel Robert Muller freely in his endgame phase, the Trump regime is reportedly looking to an old hand to solve Trump's legal problems.

Former attorney general William P. Barr is President Trump’s leading candidate to be nominated to lead the Justice Department — a choice that could be made in coming days as the agency presses forward with a probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.

Barr, 68, a well-respected Republican lawyer who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, has emerged as a favorite candidate of a number of Trump administration officials, including senior lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, these people said. Two people familiar with the discussions said the president has told advisers in recent days that he plans to nominate Barr.

One person familiar with the discussions cautioned that while Barr is the leading candidate, the decision is not final and the president could decide to pick someone else.

Another person familiar with the discussions said Barr is “a really serious contender and possibly the front-runner” for the job but stressed it was impossible to predict Trump’s pick definitively until it was announced publicly.

That person said those advising the president viewed Barr as someone who knows the department well and is a good manager. Barr, this person said, also had a bluntness that is likely to resonate with the president.

Barr declined to comment.

Those familiar with the discussions said Barr, having already been attorney general, doesn’t feel a particular ambition for the position, but does feel a sense of duty to take it if offered.

It's no surprise then that Barr's name came up in the wake of the death of the President that he served.  I'm sure the Bush 41 camp was in contact with the Trump regime and Barr emerged as a "Hey, why don't we ask him?" kind of thing.  Also, it doesn't hurt that Barr backed up Trump's firing of James Comey 19 months ago and publicly congratulated Jeff Sessions on a "job well done" after his summary firing by Trump...oh, and did I mention that he too wants to "Lock Her Up?"

“There is nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation,” said William P. Barr, who ran the Justice Department under President George Bush. “Although an investigation shouldn’t be launched just because a president wants it, the ultimate question is whether the matter warrants investigation.”

Mr. Barr said he sees more basis for investigating the uranium deal than any supposed collusion between Mr. Trump and Russia. “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” he said.

As usual, somebody is leading Donny by the nose and putting this out there so Trump thinks he thought of it, and Barr is connected enough to know how the game works.  We'll see if Trump taps Barr, and how quickly he'll be praised for a "serious, Presidential move" to "right a shaky ship" at the DoJ.

Will Barr be the hatchetman for Mueller?  Does that even matter now that Mueller is well into the endgame?  We'll see.

The Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

As the Mueller probe reaches the endgame stages it's important to note that so far, we haven't seen Acting AG Matt Whitaker play too much of a role.  He hasn't issued any directives about the Mueller investigation specifically, and if Trump is saving Whitaker for a strike against Mueller, it's already looking like Mueller has already made arrangements that Whitaker can't really stop.

But that doesn't mean Whitaker's surprise appointment isn't in real trouble, and we're learning now just how much of a problem he may end up being for the Trump regime.

New documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission suggest that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the agency’s investigators as he was stepping into his role last year as Justice Department chief of staff.

After several attempts to reach Whitaker about the Miami company where he was on the advisory board, the FTC investigator emailed his colleagues to relay that he finally reached Whitaker, who was willing to cooperate and asserted that he “never emailed or wrote to consumers” in his consulting role.

That statement to James Evans of the FTC appears to be inaccurate. Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau. In the letter, which was included in the FTC’s disclosure and reported previously by the news media, Whitaker threatened the customer, writing: “I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your ’group’ are doing.”

In the letter, Whitaker noted that he was a former U.S. attorney in Iowa and that he was aware that the customer had complained to the company’s chief executive officer, Scott Cooper, in the past. “I am familiar with your background and your history with Scott,” Whitaker wrote. “Understand that we take threats like this quite seriously.”

President Donald Trump appointed Whitaker acting attorney general after asking Jeff Sessions to step down. That appointment, outside the usual chain of succession, is now being challenged in several court cases.

The documents, produced Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, contain internal correspondence among FTC investigators, who are frustrated at being unable to reach Whitaker at several points during 2017.

They show repeated attempts by the FTC to contact Whitaker during 2017, when the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an “invention promotion scheme” that it accused of “bilking millions of dollars from consumers.”

They also show how shocked the FTC investigators were in October 2017 when -- in the latter stages of their investigation -- Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Evans, who works for the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote on Oct. 24, 2017. "Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States."

Whitaker has been on the FTC's hit list for a while thanks to his patent troll company that apparently bilked consumers out of millions.  He's dirty as hell, but he still ended up as Jeff Sessions's chief of staff, now Acting AG.  And now it seems he lied to investigators.

Whitaker too is going to jail at some point.  The whole Trump regime is crashing down.

That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

It's not longer a question of "if" Donald Trump will order the Justice Department to go after his enemies, but when Acting AG Matt Whitaker will do it.

President Trump told the White House counsel in the spring that he wanted to order the Justice Department to prosecute two of his political adversaries: his 2016 challenger, Hillary Clinton, and the former F.B.I. director James B. Comey, according to two people familiar with the conversation.

The lawyer, Donald F. McGahn II, rebuffed the president, saying that he had no authority to order a prosecution. Mr. McGahn said that while he could request an investigation, that too could prompt accusations of abuse of power. To underscore his point, Mr. McGahn had White House lawyers write a memo for Mr. Trump warning that if he asked law enforcement to investigate his rivals, he could face a range of consequences, including possible impeachment.

The encounter was one of the most blatant examples yet of how Mr. Trump views the typically independent Justice Department as a tool to be wielded against his political enemies. It took on additional significance in recent weeks when Mr. McGahn left the White House and Mr. Trump appointed a relatively inexperienced political loyalist, Matthew G. Whitaker, as the acting attorney general.

It is unclear whether Mr. Trump read Mr. McGahn’s memo or whether he pursued the prosecutions further. But the president has continued to privately discuss the matter, including the possible appointment of a second special counsel to investigate both Mrs. Clinton and Mr. Comey, according to two people who have spoken to Mr. Trump about the issue. He has also repeatedly expressed disappointment in the F.B.I. director, Christopher A. Wray, for failing to more aggressively investigate Mrs. Clinton, calling him weak, one of the people said.

A White House spokesman declined to comment. A spokeswoman for the F.B.I. declined to comment on the president’s criticism of Mr. Wray, whom he appointed last year after firing Mr. Comey.

“Mr. McGahn will not comment on his legal advice to the president,” said Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck. “Like any client, the president is entitled to confidentiality. Mr. McGahn would point out, though, that the president never, to his knowledge, ordered that anyone prosecute Hillary Clinton or James Comey.”

But McGahn and Jeff Sessions are no longer there to tell him no, are they?

The closer Mueller gets to his indictments, the closer Trump comes to ordering the DoJ to start going after his enemies.  Again, who will stop him?  Mitch McConnell?  Lindsey Graham?  Please.

It's only a matter of time.

The End Of The Session(s), Con't

As widely expected, Attorney General Jeff Sessions is resigning at request of Donald Trump, just hours after Trump earlier today at a press conference said that he'd rather discuss that prospect at another time.  Apparently that "other time" was on Twitter this afternoon.

Jeff Sessions resigned from his role as attorney general at President Donald Trump’s request on Wednesday.

Sessions was an early supporter of Trump’s campaign and one of the first people nominated to his Cabinet. But the president grew publicly frustrated with Sessions’ leadership of the Justice Department, specifically his March 2017 decision to recuse himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and alleged coordination with the Trump campaign. Shortly afterward, in May 2017, deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided to appoint Robert Mueller as special counsel to lead the FBI’s Russia investigation ― a decision that also angered Trump.

Trump’s frustration with Sessions became undeniable in late May of this year, when Trump tweeted that he wished he hadn’t named Sessions as head of the Justice Department.

The president’s remarks came a day after The New York Times reported that he’d asked Sessions to reverse his recusal from the Russia probe shortly after the attorney general announced it. Trump later pushed back, claiming that Sessions never told him he planned to recuse himself.

So at this point, we see what happens.  I told you two months ago this was coming. Sessions will be replaced by his Chief of Staff, Matthew Whitaker, as acting AG, which automatically means Rod Rosenstein is no longer overseeing the Mueller probe because Sessions was recused.  Whitaker apparently has no such qualms and is now in charge.

If you have any doubt as to what's about to happen, before becoming Sessions's Chief of Staff, Whitaker authored this CNN piece saying Rosenstein should rein in Mueller.

Any investigation into President Trump's finances or the finances of his family would require Mueller to return to Rod Rosenstein for additional authority under Mueller's appointment as special counsel. 

If he were to continue to investigate the financial relationships without a broadened scope in his appointment, then this would raise serious concerns that the special counsel's investigation was a mere witch hunt. If Mueller is indeed going down this path, Rosenstein should act to ensure the investigation is within its jurisdiction and within the authority of the original directive.

've prosecuted several financial crimes at the federal level and I've also defended plenty in my private practice. From this unique vantage point, I can understand how a motivated prosecutor, in a broad investigation into the financial affairs of high-profile individuals, can become overzealous toward the targets of such probes -- with calamitous results. While no one is above the law, in situations such as this, any seasoned prosecutor must use discretion both judiciously and expertly. 

It is time for Rosenstein, who is the acting attorney general for the purposes of this investigation, to order Mueller to limit the scope of his investigation to the four corners of the order appointing him special counsel. 

If he doesn't, then Mueller's investigation will eventually start to look like a political fishing expedition. This would not only be out of character for a respected figure like Mueller, but also could be damaging to the President of the United States and his family -- and by extension, to the country.

Expect Whitaker to move very quickly on reining in Mueller.  There's no need to fire Rosenstein with Sessions resigning, he can do with Mueller whatever he wants.

That hammer will fall quickly and Mueller knew it was coming.  He has made preparations.  We're about to find out what they are.  Worst case scenario,the new Democratic House majority subpoenas Mueller's materials and continues from there.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

It is indeed, finally, after 18 months, almost Mueller Time.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is expected to issue findings on core aspects of his Russia probe soon after the November midterm elections as he faces intensifying pressure to produce more indictments or shut down his investigation, according to two U.S. officials.

Specifically, Mueller is close to rendering judgment on two of the most explosive aspects of his inquiry: whether there were clear incidents of collusion between Russia and Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign, and whether the president took any actions that constitute obstruction of justice, according to one of the officials, who asked not to be identified speaking about the investigation.

That doesn’t necessarily mean Mueller’s findings would be made public if he doesn’t secure unsealed indictments. The regulations governing Mueller’s probe stipulate that he can present his findings only to his boss, who is currently Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. The regulations give a special counsel’s supervisor some discretion in deciding what is relayed to Congress and what is publicly released.

The question of timing is critical. Mueller’s work won’t be concluded ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections, when Democrats hope to take control of the House and end Trump’s one-party hold on Washington.

But this timeline also raises questions about the future of the probe itself. Trump has signaled he may replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the election, a move that could bring in a new boss for Mueller. Rosenstein also might resign or be fired by Trump after the election.

Rosenstein has made it clear that he wants Mueller to wrap up the investigation as expeditiously as possible, another U.S. official said. The officials gave no indications about the details of Mueller’s conclusions. Mueller’s office declined to comment for this story.

Here's what I expect to happen between midterm elections and January, and very little of it depends on whether or not Democrats prevail in those elections in less than 3 weeks:

• The Trump regime "leaks" that the Mueller report completely exonerates Trump before the report is even delivered to Rosenstein. 
• Rosenstein determines that the report will not be released publicly, otherwise Trump immediately has the excuse to fire him OR Sessions quits and his replacement orders Rosenstein not to release the report.
• Either way the report is leaked immediately and Trump/Sessions's replacement fires Rosenstein as a result.  Mueller is also "done" because his report has been delivered.
• Trump rolls out the pardon train to fix any issues resulting from possible indictments by Mueller.
• Kavanaugh is the fifth vote on SCOTUS to let him get away with it. 

All this has to happen before Democrats take control of the House in January.   Remember, SCOTUS stepped in on Bush v Gore on December 12, 2000, only five weeks after the 2000 election, and just five days after the second Florida recount, so they can move relatively quickly on such a vital Constitutional question if necessary.

After that, well, that's the real question now, isn't it?

A Haley Bail-y Tale-y

The latest departure from the Trump regime is UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, who apparently blindsided everyone in the White House when she submitted her resignation last week, effective at the end of the year.

Haley discussed her resignation with Trump last week when she visited him at the White House, these sources said. Her news shocked a number of senior foreign policy officials in the Trump administration.

Background: Haley, the former governor of South Carolina, was easily confirmed four days after President Trump's inauguration in 2017.

She has overseen Trump's shift in dealing with the UN, including the U.S. exit from the UN Human Rights Council, which Haley called the organization's "greatest failure."

Worth noting: Haley wrote a public op-ed in September challenging the N.Y. Times' anonymous op-ed:

• "I don’t agree with the president on everything. When there is disagreement, there is a right way and a wrong way to address it. I pick up the phone and call him or meet with him in person."
• "Like my colleagues in the Cabinet and on the National Security Council, I have very open access to the president. He does not shut out his advisers, and he does not demand that everyone agree with him. I can talk to him most any time, and I frequently do."
• "If I disagree with something and believe it is important enough to raise with the president, I do it. And he listens."

Not anymore, he does.   And why would Haley up and leave?  Like most Trump regime officials, if you're not actually Trump, being openly corrupt still gets you busted.

Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley should be investigated to determine if she complied with ethics regulations when she accepted seven free flights for herself and her husband on luxury private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen, according to a request filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) with the State Department’s Inspector General.

Ambassador Haley’s 2017 public financial disclosure report listed her acceptance of gifts of seven free flights on private aircraft from three South Carolina businessmen for herself and her husband. Those flights were between New York, Washington, DC, and three cities in her home state of South Carolina, and appear to have been worth tens of thousands of dollars to her. In her financial disclosure report, Ambassador Haley asserted that each gifted flight qualified for an exception based on a personal relationship with the giver. The report, however, does not provide enough information to demonstrate that this exception was applicable to the flights. Whether the exception applies depends partly on whether the three businessmen were the only sources of the gifts; if business entities were sources of the gifts, the exception was inapplicable.

Federal ethics regulations prohibit employees from soliciting or accepting gifts given because of the employee’s official position. They also direct employees to consider declining otherwise permissible gifts if they believe a reasonable person would question their integrity or impartiality as a result of accepting the gifts. At a minimum, Ambassador Haley should have been conscious of the appearance concerns surrounding her acceptance of gifts of private luxury air travel at a time when her colleagues in the administration were making news with their own lavish air travel.

“By accepting gifts of luxury private flights, Ambassador Haley seems to be falling in line with other Trump administration officials who are reaping personal benefits from their public positions,” said CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder. “Our ethics laws are clearly written to prevent even the appearance of corruption and improper influence. We’re calling on the State Department’s inspector general to further investigate the nature of these gifts, determine whether they are in line with ethics rules, and ensure that employees like Ambassador Haley are fully trained on the application and importance of ethical standards.”

This CREW legal request came today, the same day Haley's resignation was announced, so there's about a 99% chance that we actually found the one person in the regime who still is capable of shame when it comes to ethics violations.

And if you believe that, well...

Haley joins a long list of corrupt Trump regime officials who overstayed their welcome by grifting on the public dime, of course the biggest violator is Trump himself, and he could not care less about that.

Here's my gut feeling:  Jeff Sessions is done as AG as soon as the midterms are over.  Trump will need a new AG.  My money is on Lindsey Graham.  Which means Graham's Senate seat will be open.  Both Haley and Graham are from SC.

It's not hard to be this cynical, but that's what is coming.  Graham becomes Trump's hatchet man, the Saturday Night Massacre happens, and Haley gets appointed to fill out Graham's term.

I hope I'm wrong, but to me, Haley's sudden resignation screams that this is in the works.

We'll know soon enough.

The Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

The Village media is desperately trying to redeem themselves after Monday's Rod Rosenstein "is he fired or isn't he" fiasco, and frankly they're not doing a very good job of it if this is the best they can do.

Rod J. Rosenstein’s departure seemed so certain this week that his boss’s chief of staff told colleagues that he had been tapped by the White House to take over as second-in-command of the Justice Department, while another official would supervise the special counsel probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election, people familiar with the matter said.

But by Monday afternoon, the succession plan had been scrapped. Rosenstein, who told the White House he was willing to quit if President Trump wouldn’t disparage him, would remain the deputy attorney general in advance of a high-stakes meeting on Thursday to discuss the future of his employment. The other officials, too, would go back to work, facing the prospect that in just days they could be leading the department through a historic crisis.

Inside the Justice Department on Tuesday, officials still struggled to understand the events that nearly produced a seismic upheaval in their leadership ranks — until it didn’t — and they braced for a potential repeat of that chaos later in the week.

Some officials said that Matt Whitaker, Attorney General Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff, had told people he would be taking over for Rosenstein — an indication that the deputy attorney general’s departure was all but certain — and were surprised when it was announced that Rosenstein would remain in his job. Sessions began telling people on Sunday that Rosenstein might be in trouble, according to people familiar with the matter. Others said they learned all the developments from news reports that evolved throughout the day.

The officials spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to reporters.

While it remained possible that Rosenstein could still resign or be fired imminently, people inside and outside the department said it seemed increasingly more likely that Rosenstein would stay in the job until after November’s elections and then depart, probably along with the attorney general. Two White House officials said Tuesday that Trump is unlikely to fire Rosenstein until after the midterms.

Forcing out the deputy attorney general in the next month could motivate Trump’s detractors to turn out for elections in which dozens of congressional seats are in play and Republicans are fearful they are at risk of losing control of the House. And those who have observed Trump and Rosenstein together or have been told of their interactions said the president seemed to hold Rosenstein in somewhat higher regard than he did Sessions.

“For all of the president’s bluster, I’m not sure he doesn’t have at least some grudging respect for Rod,” said James M. Trusty, a friend of Rosenstein and former Justice Department official who works in private practice at Ifrah Law.

 Breaking all this down,this is where the Washington Post is on Rosenstein:

1) We're just telling you what our sources told us, so it's not our fault if they burned us.

2) We're still carrying water for them because we need access to the White House.

3) Somebody talked Trump out of firing Rosenstein at the last minute, but we're not telling you who.

4) We don't know when Rosenstein is going to be fired, or who will replace him overseeing the Mueller investigation.

5) He's probably going to survive until after the election, but then all bets are off.

We'll see what happens on Thursday, but Rosenstein's days seem as numbered as Jeff Sessions's are, and that doesn't bode well for the Mueller investigation to ever be allowed to be completed.

The Greatest Coward In Modern Political History

The self-serving "anonymous" Trump regime official who penned this NY Times op-ed trying to be the hero and keep enabling Trump to do what Republicans want is my definition of the very problem in modern American politics today.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

To be clear, ours is not the popular “resistance” of the left. We want the administration to succeed and think that many of its policies have already made America safer and more prosperous.

But we believe our first duty is to this country, and the president continues to act in a manner that is detrimental to the health of our republic.

That is why many Trump appointees have vowed to do what we can to preserve our democratic institutions while thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses until he is out of office.

The Times is tight-lipped about the true identity of the author, but the smart money is on Vice Dictator Mike Pence (who would have the most to gain from the existence of such a piece under both Occam's Razor and cui bono plus the clout to get the NYT to agree to run it), Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats (who is smart enough to make the piece sound like Pence wrote it but is a total desk weenie coward with Senate connections and is from Indiana, close enough to Pence to serve as his proxy), or Attorney General Jeff Sessions (who has the least to lose by writing such a piece as he's on his way out, and is crafty enough to crib Pence's speech notes, and who also has Senate connections).

Long shot: Jim Mattis, who is also on the way out.

Whoever the author is, they're a complete and utter coward, however. LA Times columnist Jessica Roy sums it up very well.

The truth is, Republicans don't want Trump out of office. They're clearly pleased with this “two-track” arrangement. They're advancing the right-wing economic agenda that President Jeb Bush or Ted Cruz would have been championing while preserving their popularity with Trump's base.

If you're reading this, senior White House official, know this: You are not resisting Donald Trump. You are enabling him for your own benefit. That doesn't make you an unsung hero. It makes you a coward.

It's this that makes me believe it's one of these three people.  Trump had an afternoon-long Twitter screaming fit, demanding the NY Times reveal the author's identity for "national security" but I'm willing to bet I'm right on this.

Still, Trump has his "fake news witch hunt conspiracy" to rally the base, and the author can come forward when the time is right to be the hero and claim Trump's head (which is why I think it's Pence, if I had to hang my hat on one of the three).  If they play it right, they have a lot to gain, but remember, whoever they are, they're a manipulative coward. Adam Serwer in the Atlantic this morning:

The biggest open secret in Washington is that Donald Trump is unfit to be president. His staff knows it. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell knows it. House Speaker Paul Ryan knows it. Everyone who works for the president, including his attorneys, knows it. But they all want something, whether it’s upper-income tax cuts, starving the social safety net, or solidifying a right-wing federal judiciary. The Constitution provides for the removal of a president who is dangerously unfit, but those who have the power to remove him will not do so not out of respect for democracy, but because Trump is a means to get what they want. The officials who enable the Trump administration to maintain some veneer of normalcy, rather than resigning and loudly proclaiming that the president is unfit, are not “resisters.” They are enablers.

The anonymous Times op-ed writer is no different. While claiming that they and other officials are “thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses,” the op-ed provides few examples of this, and the author must know that the mere existence of their piece will only inflame those impulses. Already Trump has declared that “the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!” If the president ever decides to issue unconstitutional orders to the Justice Department or the Pentagon, he and his supporters will point to this op-ed and claim that drastic action was necessary to “protect democracy.”

As I have said time and time again, Trump is the symptom, the real problem has been the "gutless" Republican cowards enabling him, and whoever wrote that NYT op-ed is my Exhibits A through ZZ supporting that theory.

Bottom line:

The op-ed is an attempt to take out an insurance policy for the GOP and conservatism if and when things get much much worse. It's a very public hedge meant to preserve the reputation of the GOP's entire political and governing class.

— Chris Hayes (@chrislhayes) September 5, 2018

This is one of Trump's chief enablers covering the ass of the Republican party.  It's part of a larger plan going forward.  Part of that plan is for the writer to reveal themselves, and very soon. Count on that.

But for right now, they're buying time so that Brett Kavanaugh can be confirmed to the Supreme Court at record speed.  Once that's done, all bets are off.

The End Of The Session(s), Con't

Last week I talked about Donald Trump all but firing Attorney General Jeff Sessions, with both Sens. Lindsay Graham and Chuck Grassley giving Trump tacit permissions to fire him after the confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court was wrapped up. But it seems Trump's true cabinet -- FOX News hosts and right-wing pundit sites -- want Sessions's head on a pike now, and are telling Trump that he needs to make his move as soon as possible.

“It’s clear Jeff Sessions is more concerned with his career than the good of America. That said, it’s high time President Trump fires his ineffective Attorney General,” Eric Bolling, a close Trump friend and a former Fox News personality, told The Daily Beast on Monday. “I would NOT, however, fire [special counsel Robert] Mueller. For no other reason than political optics.”

He was hardly the only one calling for Sessions’ head for his alleged failure to protect Trump due to the attorney general’s recusal from the Russia probe. According to several people who speak regularly to Trump, the president still keeps polling his inner circle and allies for their take on what he should do about Sessions, all the while highlighting what he views as Sessions’ weaknesses, failings, and annoying qualities.

And nowhere is Trump’s fury on this better reflected and projected than on his preferred conservative media behemoth.

For her Labor Day weekend episode of Justice With Judge Jeanine, Fox News host Jeanine Pirro dedicated her opening monologue to personally and professionally trashing Trump’s attorney general as a witless “shill” and as a pathetic enabler of supposed “corruption by the Democrats.”

Her overarching message to Sessions was: Nobody likes you, nerd.

“What don’t you get? Have you no self-esteem, self-regard, self-respect? Where is your dignity? Why would you stay in a job where you’re not wanted?… And why do you continue to stay?” Pirro said in her lengthy “Opening Statement” on the program. “You’re so clueless you don’t even know you’re being used. You don’t even know you’re nothing but a shill. In fact, the only constituency that wants you is the ‘Deep State’… Are you proud of yourself?”

“Are you kidding? All of America knows the DOJ continues to be to be influenced by politics," she added. "You need to do one of two things: Resign immediately, because you are not wanted. Or put on your big boy pants and be a real attorney general.”

Pirro is a longtime friend and ally of Trump’s, and she had even been interviewedduring the Trump presidential transition for the job of deputy attorney general. The president watches her weekend show routinely, and Pirro stands in the same Trumpworld echelon as someone like Sean Hannity, another Fox star who doubles as a confidant and top outside adviser to Trump.

This seems to me to be a coordinated move in order to get Sessions to resign, by application of a hint fired out of railgun.  The plan of course is to neuter the Mueller probe, and make sure its conclusions never reach the light of day.  Rudy Giuliani gave away that game on Monday.

Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani said that the administration may claim executive privilege to block Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein from releasing Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report when the investigation is finished, according to a New Yorker report.

Giuliani claims that President Donald Trump’s original legal team—which has undergone many mutations since—cut a deal with Mueller that that the White House can object to public dissemination of information from the probe on the grounds of executive privilege.

When asked if the White House is likely to invoke this clause, Giuliani was frank: “I’m sure we will.”

And with Kavanaugh as the fifth vote on SCOTUS even if the Democrats with back the House, Trump then buries the report permanently, the GOP in Congress does nothing, and the investigation vanishes.

Greg Sargent says this is all part of the plan to bury the Mueller report.

Could this work? On Tuesday, I spoke to Andrew Kent, a professor at Fordham University School of Law. The short answer is: Probably not, but there are scenarios under which it could have some success, and a lot may turn on whether Democrats win back one or both chambers of Congress.

Under the special counsel regulations, Mueller is supposed to provide a “confidential” report explaining his conclusions to the attorney general — or, in this case, to Rosenstein, since Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself. Rosenstein, not Mueller, is then supposed to provide the chairmen and ranking members of the House and Senate judiciary committees with an “explanation” for the Justice Department’s decision to conclude the investigation.

This explanation can be released publicly if the Justice Department official overseeing the probe decides it would be “in the public interest.” In this scenario, Rosenstein would have a great deal of discretion to decide how much to put in that report — he could keep it very brief, or supply a lot of detail.

Kent tells me the White House could try to override the regulations and stop the report’s release to Congress — or at least part of it — by claiming executive privilege covers certain information in it. Kent says most of the information in the report probably would not plausibly be covered by any such claim, but that Trump might try to assert that much of it is, anyway.

And should Rosenstein object, he's fired or replaced, and the new overseer of the Mueller probe refuses to release the report at all.  The only way it happens is if Congress subpoenas the report, which will never happen unless the Dems can take back the House or Senate in November.

It's possible then, very possible in fact, that Trump may not actually fire Robert Mueller, but simply erase the report.  Either way, Jeff Sessions will not be Attorney General in 2019, that's a 100% certainty at this point.

He may not be Attorney General by the end of the month.

Stay tuned.

Trump Cards, Con't

Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward's book on the Trump regime will be out next week, and the excerpts of it are heart-stopping.  Donald Trump is so singularly unfit for office that replacing the congressional supporters has to be our top priority in 2018 and if that's not enough, replacing Trump in 2020.

A near-constant subject of withering presidential attacks was Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Trump told Porter that Sessions was a “traitor” for recusing himself from overseeing the Russia investigation, Woodward writes. Mocking Sessions’s accent, Trump added, “This guy is mentally retarded. He’s this dumb Southerner. … He couldn’t even be a one-person country lawyer down in Alabama.”

At a dinner with Mattis and Gen. Joseph F. Dunford Jr., the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, among others, Trump lashed out at a vocal critic, Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). He falsely suggested that the former Navy pilot had been a coward for taking early release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Vietnam because of his father’s military rank and leaving others behind.

Mattis swiftly corrected his boss: “No, Mr. President, I think you’ve got it reversed.” The defense secretary explained that McCain, who died Aug. 25, had in fact turned down early release and was brutally tortured during his five years at the Hanoi Hilton.

“Oh, okay,” Trump replied, according to Woodward’s account.

With Trump’s rage and defiance impossible to contain, Cabinet members and other senior officials learned to act discreetly. Woodward describes an alliance among Trump’s traditionalists — including Mattis and Gary Cohn, the president’s former top economic adviser — to stymie what they considered dangerous acts.

“It felt like we were walking along the edge of the cliff perpetually,” Porter is quoted as saying. “Other times, we would fall over the edge, and an action would be taken.”

After Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad launched a chemical attack on civilians in April 2017, Trump called Mattis and said he wanted to assassinate the dictator. “Let’s fucking kill him! Let’s go in. Let’s kill the fucking lot of them,” Trump said, according to Woodward.

Mattis told the president that he would get right on it. But after hanging up the phone, he told a senior aide: “We’re not going to do any of that. We’re going to be much more measured.” The national security team developed options for the more conventional airstrike that Trump ultimately ordered.

I mean, Trump wanted to assassinate Bashar Al-Assad.  Mattis didn't do it.

One of them needs to resign before the week is out, and both of them should.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Three stories on the plate for today in Mueller investigation news, first up yes, Attorney General Jeff Sessions's days are indeed numbered, and no, congressional Republicans aren't going to do a thing about it as long as they get Kavanaugh confirmed first.

President Trump, who levied extraordinary public attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions in recent weeks, has privately revived the idea of firing him in conversations with his aides and personal lawyers this month, according to three people familiar with the discussions.

His attorneys concluded that they have persuaded him — for now — not to make such a move while the special-counsel investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign is ongoing, the people said.

But there is growing evidence that Senate Republicans, who have long cautioned Trump against firing Sessions, are now resigned to the prospect that he may do so after the November midterm elections — a sign that one of the last remaining walls of opposition to such a move is crumbling.

“We wish the best for him, but as any administration would show, Cabinet members seldom last the entire administration, and this is clearly not an exception,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said in an interview Tuesday.

“Nothing lasts forever,” Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.) told The Washington Post, describing the Trump-Sessions dynamic as “a toxic relationship.”

Added Sen. Bob Corker (R-Tenn.), a longtime defender of the attorney general: “My sense is the fix is in.”

Getting rid of Sessions means the Saturday Night Massacre and end of the Mueller probe is now all but assured, the only question is when.  It would be a nightmare if it happened before the midterms, but after, well.  And that brings us to story #2, that White House Counsel Don McGahn is also on his way out.

Top White House officials and sources close to White House counsel Don McGahn tell Axios that McGahn will step down this fall — after Brett Kavanaugh is confirmed to the Supreme Court, or after the midterms.

The big picture: That potentially puts a successor in charge of fielding a blizzard of requests or subpoenas for documents and testimony if Democrats win control of the House in the midterms. And if the White House winds up fighting special counsel Robert Mueller, an epic constitutional fight could lie ahead. 

• We're told that Trump has not formalized a successor.
• But McGahn has told a confidant he would like his successor to be Emmet Flood, a Clinton administration alumnus who joined the White House in May to deal with the Russia probe.
• Flood also served for two years during George W. Bush’s second term as his top lawyer handling congressional investigators.

A source familiar with Flood's thinking said: “The reason he can represent both Bill Clinton and Donald Trump is because he thinks these investigators come and basically put a target on their backs, trying to overturn every aspect of their lives searching for a crime."

Note that McGahn was the main reason Mueller wasn't immediately fired in June 2017.  If McGahn's departure comes in September or October instead of after the midterms, Trump may make his move on Sessions, Rosenstein, and Mueller sooner rather than later.  The Mueller investigation would have ended after just a month.

And that brings us to Story #3, a massive new Justice Department money laundering investigation, but the fugitive suspect has a whole hell of a lot of familiar Republicans on his defense team.

The U.S. Justice Department is investigating whether a fugitive Malaysian financier laundered tens of millions of dollars through two associates and used the funds to pay a U.S. legal team that includes former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie and a lawyer who represents President Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Jho Low, the Malaysian businessman, has been described in U.S. court filings as playing a central role in the alleged embezzlement of $4.5 billion from a Malaysian fund called 1Malaysia Development Bhd.

Malaysian authorities this week separately charged Mr. Low with money laundering in the case, which investigators suspect may be one of the biggest financial frauds in history. He has been moving around Hong Kong, Macau and mainland China in recent months, according to people with knowledge of his whereabouts.

Mr. Low was close to former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Rajak, who unexpectedly lost an election in May and was arrested last monthin Kuala Lumpur. Mr. Najib has pleaded not guilty to charges of money laundering and criminal breach of trust in connection with the 1MDB scandal.

The Justice Department, in July 2016 and last year, filed civil lawsuits in federal court in California seeking to recover assets from Mr. Low and others including mansions, artwork and a yacht allegedly bought with 1MDB funds. It is now pursuing a criminal investigation in which Mr. Low, who has U.S. assets, is a target, these people said.

Chris Christie, former US Attorney, defending the biggest money laundering case in US history, huh.

The team of lawyers and consultants working for Mr. Low includes Mr. Christie, who briefly headed Mr. Trump’s presidential transition team; Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer Marc Kasowitz ; Bobby Burchfield, a lawyer who has served as the Trump Organization’s outside ethics adviser; and Ed Rogers, a Washington lobbyist with close ties to the Republican Party.

Mr. Christie is representing Mr. Low in the asset-forfeiture cases in California, a spokesman for the former governor said. “There has been no communication by Governor Christie with any other area of government on Mr. Low’s behalf,” the spokesman said, adding there has been “no inquiry made to him by the Department of Justice with regard to any other investigation regarding funding or otherwise."

A spokesman for Kasowitz Benson Torres, Mr. Kasowitz’s New York law firm, confirmed the firm represents Mr. Low in Justice Department matters. “Here, as with all of our clients, our job as attorneys is to represent and vindicate our clients’ interests; and here, as with all of our non-pro-bono clients, we are paid for the legal services we provide,” the spokesman said in a statement.

Nothing to do with Trump's money laundering, except for all the Republicans making sure the guy goes free.

Now that's interesting.  Put this all together and I see Trump, once Kavanaugh becomes the fifth vote he needs on SCOTUS, doing whatever he likes and going straight to authoritarianism.

Stay tuned.

The End of the Session(s), Con't

Donald Trump has definitely settled on Attorney General Jeff Sessions as the bad guy in all this after the worst week of his regime (so far at least) and Trump continued to attack Sessions over the weekend on the Tweeting machine.

President Trump lashed out again at Attorney General Jeff Sessions, saying he lets "real corruption" go untouched while special counsel Robert Mueller's team is "having a field day."

Trump appeared to be responding to an unusual statement by the attorney generals this week defending himself against the president’s attacks, with Sessions saying: "While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations."

The president shot back in a tweet Saturday morning that Sessions "doesn't understand what is happening" beneath him. The tweet reiterated the president's attack on the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election as politically motivated and a distraction from "real corruption."

The president also quoted Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., who said this week that he thinks the president may fire Sessions and appoint a new attorney general, though the senator said he hopes that won't happen until after the November midterms. 

Again, the goalposts here will be moved: Sessions is gone before the end of the year for sure, he may be gone before the end of the summer. Maybe he'll resign, maybe he'll be fired, but he won't be Attorney General in January, that much is clear.

Trump doesn't have much of a choice left.  The wall of secrecy that has protected him for thirty years of criminal activity is cracking.

The result has been a moment where Trump seems politically wounded, as friends turn and embarrassing revelations about his alleged affairs and his charity trickle out, uncontained. In coming months, certain cases could force Trump’s company to open its books about foreign government customers, or compel the president to testify about his relationships with ­women.

“The myth of Trump is now unraveling,” said Barbara Res, a Trump Organization executive from 1978 to 1996. “He’s becoming more obvious and people are starting to know what he’s like, and what he’s doing.”

Whether the president faces legal peril is not clear, but his presidency is at a precarious point. Recent polls suggest his repeated attacks on Mueller for leading a “witch hunt” have lost their effectiveness. And if the Democrats win a majority in at least one house of Congress in the midterm elections, now less than 10 weeks away, they would gain the power to investigate or even impeach.

“The whole reason he is freaking out is he can’t get rid of any of this,” said a longtime adviser to Trump, who, like others interviewed for this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss internal White House dynamics.

The president’s sense of betrayal came through last week when he derided cooperating witnesses as “flippers.” “Everything’s wonderful and then they get 10 years in jail and they — they flip on whoever the next highest one is, or as high as you can go,” he told Fox News. In contrast, he tweeted that his “brave” former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who was convicted last week of bank fraud and tax fraud, had “refused to ‘break.’ ”

Trump has also focused his ire on Attorney General Jeff Sessions, whom he has repeatedly and publicly attacked for his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. White House aides have explained to him that firing Sessions would not end the probe, but he remains livid, officials said, particularly after Sessions responded last week with a statement declaring that “the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

Again, in the end, Trump will try to save himself.  He will do whatever he thinks is necessary.

That is when we find out if we still have a Republic.

The End Of The Session(s)

If you're wondering what the congressional GOP response would be to this week's Michael Cohen/Paul Manafort bombshells, the answer is that Senate Republicans are signalling that they're fine with replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions in favor of someone who will end the Mueller probe once and for all.

Two key Republican senators signaled to President Donald Trump that he could replace Attorney General Jeff Sessions after the midterm elections in November, a move that would open the way for firing Robert Mueller or constraining his probe into Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

“The president’s entitled to an attorney general he has faith in, somebody that’s qualified for the job, and I think there will come a time, sooner rather than later, where it will be time to have a new face and a fresh voice at the Department of Justice,” Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who may be in line to head the Judiciary Committee next year, told reporters Thursday. “Clearly, Attorney General Sessions doesn’t have the confidence of the president.”

Senator Chuck Grassley, the current Judiciary chairman, also changed his position on Thursday, saying in an interview that he’d be able to make time for hearings for a new attorney general after saying in the past that the panel was too busy to tackle that explosive possibility.

Several other Republicans rejected the idea of replacing the attorney general, while Sessions defended his performance in a statement Thursday. He said “we have had unprecedented success at effectuating the President’s agenda” and added, “While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

In warning against ousting Sessions before the election, Graham called that possibility “a nonstarter” that “would create havoc” with Senate efforts to confirm Trump’s Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as well as with the midterm elections in November.

But his statement that such a move could come after the election represents a significant shift from Graham’s stance a year ago, when he warned Trump publicly that if he fired Sessions “there will be holy hell to pay.”

It's pretty clear what Graham and Grassley want: once Brett Kavanaugh has a lifetime appointment on the Supreme Court, it doesn't really matter what Trump does anymore as far as they're concerned.  Once Kavanaugh is sworn in, they'll have what they wanted: huge corporate tax cuts for the rich, two SCOTUS picks who will finish off the civil rights era for good, and an orange lightning rod to take all the blame.

It's all upside for them at this point.  Maybe getting rid of Sessions and firing Mueller is the excuse they need to bag him up and bring in Pence.  Maybe they're okay with him sticking around.  But once Kavanaugh is there, the damage becomes permanent and irreversible.  Trump will get free reign, because ultimately, it won't matter past that point.

Regardless, Jeff Sessions now must know that his time is up.  Trump may not be able to fire Sessions directly right now, but the point of the news that he's being shown the door after the elections may be to get him to resign now, which would be optimal for Trump, allowing him to go with a Saturday Night Massacre plan as soon as possible and get rid of Mueller almost immediately.

He may stick around to secure his legacy, he may have congressional Republicans whispering in his ear to go now before that legacy transforms into "the loser who failed to protect Dear Leader Trump" and he becomes GOP public enemy #1.  I don't know, honestly.

This morning, Trump went on a Twitter tirade that included this order for Sessions to investigate Trump's political opponents.

This is the real endgame now: Trump unleashed to indulge his autocratic impulses and the people who enabled him can walk away and rake in the spoils.  And should anyone try to stop him, well, it would be a shame if he let the white nationalist militias freely indulge their killing fantasies, wouldn't it?