The Problem With Pompeo

Joe Romm at Think Progress gives us the file on Trump's pick for Secretary of State to replace the humiliated Rex Tillerson, current CIA Director Mike Pompeo, who as a Kansas GOP congressman was one of the most odious people in politics today and the Republican party's number one climate denier.

In just four election cycles, 2010 through 2016, Pompeo received: $335,000 from Koch Industries employees (including $92,000 just from the Koch family); $69,000 from the Koch Industries PAC; $417,175 from Americans for Prosperity (which is the right-wing advocacy group founded by the Koch brothers); plus another $87,532 from “Other outside groups heavily funded by the Kochs.” 

That’s over $900,000 to buy one Congressman. No surprise, then, that Pompeo, who was a Tea Party member, is also a major denier of climate science. Pompeo described President Obama’s effort to cut carbon pollution at home (through the Clean Power Plan) and abroad (through the Paris climate deal) as a “perverse fixation on achieving his economically harmful environmental agenda” and as “worshiping a radical environmental agenda.” 

He called the Paris Climate Accord a “costly burden” in 2015, adding that “Congress must also do all in our power to fight against this damaging climate change proposal and pursue policies that support American energy, create new jobs, and power our economy.”
In reality, the Paris Climate Accord is hardly radical given that 200 nations unanimously agreed it is vital for preserving a livable climate. Indeed, it remains an incredible deal for America, since it would avert numerous catastrophic climate impacts on this country, while requiring us to merely continue reducing carbon dioxide emissions at the pace we have been in recent years. 

During his confirmation hearings for CIA director, Pompeo dodged all questionsabout climate change, saying “Frankly, as the director of CIA, I would prefer today not to get into the details of the climate debate and science.”

But the State Department plays a direct and key role in climate change — not just in international climate negotiations, but also in international aid and development, including choices about which energy sources developing countries should choose — so, such non-answers given as by Pompeo previously should not fly this time around.

You'd think so, and I'm sure Senate Dems will have some appropriately tough questions.  But keep in mind he's already been confirmed as CIA head, so there's nothing to make me think he'll be blocked for SecState.

Also, Pompeo is a screaming anti-LGBTQ bigot who will almost certainly rescind Obama-era passport gender indication guidelines for transgender Americans, so Senate Dems could in fact do something to stop him if they can stand together and convince some Republicans to do the same.

We'll see.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

This morning we don't know who yet is the winner in PA-18, Democrat Conor Lamb has a lead of six hundred and change, but over a thousand absentee ballots and thousands of provisional ballots have to be counted still, and Republican Rick Saccone is talking about filing for a recount.  But even if Saccone does end up coming from behind to win, the damage to the GOP last night is done.  There's no way the race should be this close in a district that Trump won by 19 points in November 2016 and Republicans now know they are in mortal peril come this November. Vox's Dylan Scott:

When you take a step back and look at the 2018 race for the House, you realize: There are more than 110 Republican-held House districts that Trump won by less than he won in the district where the Republican House candidate just effectively tied with the Democrat.

Strategists and election analysts on Twitter couldn’t quite agree on exactly how many districts — 114? 118? 119? — but the number is, by all accounts, greater than 110. A few months ago, you wouldn’t have heard Democratic operatives, even at their most optimistic, describe the 2018 battleground as that big. (As of last month, Democrats had just expanded their battleground map to 101 seats.)

There are the districts Hillary Clinton won, of course, but there are also the suburban, classically Republican districts where Trump has soured the electorate, and those white working-class districts with Obama-Trump voters.

This comes with plenty of caveats. This was a special election. Republican incumbents are going to be stronger than Republicans in an open seat like the Pennsylvania 18th. Conor Lamb was a particularly strong Democratic candidate, and Rick Saccone might have been an unusually weak Republican nominee.

But still: Democrats need 24 seats to reclaim the House majority. If Tuesday night is any guide, it looks like they will have a lot of opportunities to get them.

Think about what this means. In an average year maybe 5-10% of House seats are even in play, 95%+ of incumbents keep the seat in their own party every two years.  That usually means 20-40 seats are in play, and maybe half of those are toss-ups at most.  Districts are drawn that way for a reason.  Republicans have had the gerrymandering advantage recently nationally, but Democrats have done it too in some of the states they control.  They're designed to keep 90% of incumbents in power (and in the Senate, holding elections every six years accomplishes the same result).

But this time around even given the GOP's massive gerrymandering advantage in dozens of states, more than 110 GOP districts now have to be considered on the board for Democratic pickups.  That's more than 25% of the entire House in play and all of it red-to-blue.  Yes, there are districts where I expect Republicans to win a blue seat here or there (there are a couple of open Democratic seats in Minnesota and Nevada in rural Trump areas and New Hampshire's seat always seems to switch every couple of years) but Dems could pick up dozens in November.  Dozens.

By the way, Trump's visit to the district over the weekend just ended up reminding people what he did to their health care.

Public Policy Polling conducted a telephone exit poll election survey of voters who cast ballots in Pennsylvania’s 18th Congressional District special election yesterday. Voters who voted in the contest were asked about the role of health care in their decision. 

The exit poll shows that health care was a top priority issue to voters in this district and that voters believed Democrat Conor Lamb’s views were more in step with theirs. 

In 2016, voters in this district backed Donald Trump by 20 points, but last night they backed a Democrat for Congress in a referendum on the health care plans of the Republican Congress: 

-Health care was a top issue to voters. Health care was ranked as a top issue for 52% of voters (15% saying it was the most important issue and another 37% saying it was very important). Only 19% said it was not that important or not important at all. 

- Conor Lamb won big especially among voters for whom health care was a top priority. Among voters who said health care was the most important issue for them, Lamb beat Rick Saccone 64-36 and among the broader group of voters who said it was either the most important or a very important issue Lamb beat Saccone 62-38. 

- On health care, voters said Lamb better reflected their views by 7 points (45% to 38%) over Saccone. With independents, that gap widened to 16 points with 50% saying Lamb’s health care views were more in line with theirs to only 34% for Saccone. 

- Voters were less likely to support Saccone because of the Republican health care agenda. Saccone’s support of the Republican health care agenda made 41% of voters less likely to vote for him and only 28% more likely to support him. 

-Voters in this heavily Republican district disapproved of the Republican efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act by 14 points (53% to 39%).

It's 2010 only in reverse, and the loss of Obamacare is going to decapitate Republicans in November. The GOP knows it.  Look for more Republicans to head for the exits this month.

StupidiNews!

• Democrat Conor Lamb has a lead of fewer than700 votes in last night's special election in Pennsylvania, Republican Rick Saccone says he won't concede as absentee votes are uncounted. 
• World-famous theoretical physicist and cosmologist Dr. Steven Hawking has died at the age of 76, the scientist and author made the universe accessible to millions through his work.
• German lawmakers have elected Angela Merkel to a fourth term as chancellor, but she faces a much weaker political position than before with a fragile coalition that could fracture at any time.
• Russia says it will not respond to an ultimatum from UK PM Theresa May without samples of the nerve agent supposedly used in last week's attack on an ex-Russian spy living in Britain.
• The Justice Department continue to oppose the AT&T/TimeWarner merger, saying it will raise cable bills and cost consumers nearly $450 million more each year.

He Only Hires The Best People

And speaking of personnel changes in the White House, Donald Trump sees people on TV he thinks are knowledgeable, he wants them in the White House. With Gary Cohn departing from the Trump regime in the wake of Trump's tariff disaster, the job of Chief Economic Adviser may end up going to America's worst economic pundit, Larry Kudlow.

Larry Kudlow is the leading contender to head President Donald Trump's National Economic Council and would take the job if offered it, CNBC's Jim Cramer reported Monday.

Trump has not formally offered the job, but Kudlow is a leading choice of not only Trump but also some of his advisors to replace Gary Cohn as the president's top economic advisor. A White House official, who declined to be named, confirmed to CNBC that Kudlow is on the list of candidates but said the administration did not have personnel announcements to make.

Kudlow declined to comment.

Kudlow, a CNBC senior contributor and longtime on-air personality, helped to craft economic policy during the Reagan administration. Cramer worked with Kudlow on the CNBC show "Kudlow and Cramer."

Cohn announced his resignation as head of the National Economic Council last week after he lost his battle to block the Trump administration's move to levy tariffs on steel and aluminum. Kudlow advocates for free trade and generally opposes tariffs. He expressed his disappointment with Cohn's departure.

Kudlow informally advised Trump on taxes and other issues during his 2016 run for the presidency.

I've spent close to ten years pointing out how wrong Larry Kudlow has been on the economy.  Now he may be advising Trump on how to run it.  If you somehow thought we were going to escape a brutal recession before, with Kudlow whispering in Trump's ear, we're headed there even faster.

Terminus Mortuus Est Rex

The Trump regime spring cleaning dirtying continues, and this one's big: Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is out, with CIA Director Mike Pompeo taking over.

President Trump has ousted Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and plans to nominate CIA Director Mike Pompeo to replace him as the nation’s top diplomat, orchestrating a major change to his national security team amid delicate negotiations with North Korea, White House officials said Tuesday.

Trump last Friday asked Tillerson to step aside, and the embattled diplomat cut short his trip to Africa on Monday to return to Washington.

Pompeo will replace him at the State Department, and Gina Haspel — the deputy director at the CIA — will succeed him at the CIA, becoming the first woman to run the spy agency, if confirmed.

In a statement issued to The Washington Post, Trump praised both Pompeo and Haspel.

“I am proud to nominate the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Mike Pompeo, to be our new Secretary of State,” Trump said. “Mike graduated first in his class at West Point, served with distinction in the U.S. Army, and graduated with Honors from Harvard Law School. He went on to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives with a proven record of working across the aisle.”

The president continued, “Gina Haspel, the Deputy Director of the CIA, will be nominated to replace Director Pompeo and she will be the CIA’s first-ever female director, a historic milestone. Mike and Gina have worked together for more than a year, and have developed a great mutual respect.”

Trump also had words of praise for Tillerson: “Finally, I want to thank Rex Tillerson for his service. A great deal has been accomplished over the last fourteen months, and I wish him and his family well.”

The president — who has long clashed will Tillerson, who he believes is “too establishment” in his thinking — felt it was important to make the change now, as he prepares for talks with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as well as upcoming trade negotiations, three White House officials said.

Two things:  Trump definitely now feels he is unfettered and can do whatever the hell he wants to right now.  He's not wrong, nobody's going to try to stop him.  House Republicans surely proved that yesterday.  Trump says he told Rex on Friday that his services would no longer be required, Tillerson says that he was never told, but this announcement came just hours after Tillerson remarked that the State Department believed Russia was "clearly" behind the chemical weapon attack in Britain last week that put ex-Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter in the hospital.

The second is that the odds of US military action against Syria and North Korea just went skyward.  Bringing in the CIA head as your new chief diplomat is not even pretending peace was ever on the table.  The only question now is the timeframe.

War is definitely coming.  In his own thoroughly corrupt but predictable way, Tillerson was the last holdout for diplomacy.  It's all swamp monsters now, and they're packing thermite and Everclear.

StupidiNews!

• Voters in Pennsylvania go to the polls today to elect a new representative in a toss-up race between Democrat Conor Lamb and Republican Rick Saccone.
• Donald Trump will be in California today visiting prototypes for a border wall in San Diego and a fundraiser in Los Angeles, heavy protests are expected at both locations.
• British PM Theresa May has given Russian President Vladimir Putin until midnight tonight to explain the use of a Russian nerve agent in an attack on an ex-Russian spy on British soil.
• China's Communist Party is centralizing power in Beijing, giving President Xi Jinping even more control over the state and rolling back reforms instituted 30 years ago.
• NY Gov. Andrew Cuomo says the state will commit $1.4 billion to solar, wind, and hydroelectric power to replace the state's Indian Point nuclear power plant closing in 2021.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

As I long suspected would happen (as the GOP wants to get to the campaign trail for 2018 midterms as soon as possible) Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee are now closing up the investigation into Trump and Russia and will undoubtedly find no evidence that anything was wrong.

The House Intelligence Committee has concluded its interviews for the investigation into possible collusion between President Donald Trump's campaign operation and Russia, a move that signals the beginning of the end for the panel's Russia probe, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

Rep. Mike Conaway, the Texas Republican leading the Russia investigation, is expected to announce Monday that the committee has concluded its interviews and will now be moving onto writing a final report summarizing its findings. 

The decision is expected to be met with sharp criticism from Democrats, who have said there are still scores of witnesses the committee should call, and argue that Republicans have failed to use subpoenas to obtain documents and require witnesses to answer questions that are central to the investigation. 

The committee is widely expected to issue two competing reports: one from Republicans that concludes no evidence of collusion was found, and another from Democrats that argues a case for collusion, as well as spells out all the avenues the committee did not investigate. 

Monday's expected announcement is likely to further inflame the partisanship that's consumed the House Intelligence Committee for the better part of a year, amid fights over Chairman Devin Nunes' role in the investigation and more recently over competing memos about alleged surveillance abuses at the FBI during the Obama administration. 

In another sign of the partisan tensions, the committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff of California, had not been told as of midafternoon Monday that Republicans planned to end the witness interview portion of the Russia investigation, according to a Democratic source. Conaway and Schiff do plan to speak on Monday, another source said. 

A spokeswoman for Conaway declined comment.

The last thing House Republicans want right now is an investigation going into September or October.  They want their final report written and out of the way as quickly as they can so that Mueller can be fired and the outrage that generates will be long forgotten by voters come November.

They want Mueller gone, the investigation gone, and stories like this to go away.

One of the Arab world's top spies and a shadowy conduit to Vladimir Putin's Kremlin were present at a meeting in the Seychelles being probed by Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, DailyMail.com can disclose. 

The meeting between Erik Prince, the Trump donor and billionaire Blackwater founder whose sister is education secretary Betsy DeVos, and Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian banker close to the Kremlin, was convened by the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohamed bin Zayed, who is the de factor joint ruler of the United Arab Emirates. 

But DailyMail.com can disclose that also present were bin Zayed's spy chief and a Palestinian seen as the crown prince's personal conduit to Putin's Kremlin. 

The two men - Hamad al Mazroie, the de facto head of the UAE intelligence service, and Mohammed Dahlan, a bin Zayed adviser who is fluent in Russian - were never named by Prince when he testified to the House intelligence committee about the meeting. 

It emerged last month that George Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman and Middle East expert with ties to the Trump administration was present.

Nader is now co-operating with Mueller after being stopped as he entered the U.S. in January and being served with a subpoena. 

The identities of the two newly-named attendees at the meeting were confirmed to DailyMail.com by a source close to bin Zayed, and a Kuwaiti lawmaker with access to intelligence on the UAE. 

The source close to bin Zayed said: 'Hamad supervises all these things. Those guys supervise major secret operations.'

Ending the House Intelligence Committee investigation is the first step in creating enough cover to fire Mueller.  Besides, come November, we're probably going to have not one but two wars to worry about.

The United States is "prepared to act if we must" to stop indiscriminate bombing of civilians in Syria, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley warned Monday as she circulated a new draft resolution demanding an immediate cease fire. 

Addressing the Security Council 16 days after it passed a resolution demanding a cease fire that largely has failed to stop the bombing or allow humanitarian access, Haley compared the situation on Monday to last year when the United States launched airstrikes against a Syrian military base after a deadly chemical weapons attack. 

"When the international community consistently fails to act, there are times when states are compelled to take their own action," Haley said. 

This is one of those times, she added.

"We warn any nation determined to impose its will through chemical attacks and inhuman suffering, but most especially the outlaw Syrian regime, the United States remains prepared to act if we must," she said. "It is not a path we prefer. But it is a path we have demonstrated we will take, and we are prepared to take again."

No doubt our good Russian friends want us to do just that.

The Blue Wave Rises, Con't

Greg Sargent at the Washington Post argues (correctly) that the fact tomorrow's PA-18 special election is even close in a district that Trump won by 20 points just 16 months ago is a screamingly loud alarm signaling just how bad of a midterm the GOP is facing this fall.

In the race’s final days, much of the GOP’s messaging appears focused not so much on the Trump/GOP tax cuts, or even on Trump’s tariffs, but rather on immigration, crime and Nancy Pelosi. An outside group allied with the House GOP recently launched spots slamming Democrat Conor Lamb as a “Pelosi liberal” and for allegedly supporting “sanctuary cities and amnesty for illegals.” The National Republican Congressional Committee has recently released ads that slam Lamb, a former prosecutor, as soft on gun traffickers. A super PAC allied with Trump has an ad that mentions the tax cuts but talks more about “Pelosi liberals.” 

A Democratic strategist working with the Lamb campaign who tracks ad buy information tells me that these ads represent the main spending on the GOP side in the closing days. Indeed, last week, Dave Weigel and Josh Kraushaar both reported Republicans had previously aired ads touting the tax cuts but cycled them out of the messaging, because, as Kraushaar put it, they were “barely moving the needle in the district’s working-class confines.” 

The reason the downplaying of Trump’s tax plan — and the emphasis instead on hot-button issues such as immigration — matter can be found in the makeup of this district. This is a place where Trump’s claim that his tax cuts are good for working people should carry weight. Trump won it by 20 points, and it has many of the sort of working-class white voters who apparently looked to Trump as an economic savior. But it turns out that this fact may explain why the tax cuts are not sufficiently resonating. 

This is what we saw in Virginia when Ralph Northam won last November.  The initial GOP messaging of "Trump taking credit for the Obama economy failed, so they went to the foghorn racism that worked for Trump in 2016.  It failed miserably and the Democrats came within a whisker of winning back the state assembly.

“This is more of a populist district than it is a conservative district,” Mike Mikus, a Democratic strategist from southwestern Pennsylvania who ran a previous race in that district, told me today, referring to the leanings of voters in steel and coal country in places such as Washington, Westmoreland and Greene counties, which Trump carried in 2016 by 61-36, 64-33 and 70-28, respectively. Those are huge margins, a reminder that this district is mostly deep, deep, deep Trump country. 

Still, Mikus argued to me that the district is more “economically diverse” than is commonly understood, with a large chunk of the more educated voters coming from the suburbs of Pittsburgh in Allegheny County. But this, too, highlights something important. Republicans hope that the tax plan will also stanch losses among college-educated and suburban white voters who might stomach Trump’s excesses and vote their bottom lines instead. Yet it seems clear that Lamb will do well in those areas, perhaps mirroring places such as Virginia, where Trump’s sexist, racist and xenophobic provocations are shifting white suburban voters toward Democrats and supercharging turnout among them to boot. 

And if anything, Trump and Republicans are doubling down on those cultural provocations. In addition to the ads referenced above, Trump’s rally in Moon Township over the weekend featured full-blown race-baiting and authoritarian appeals, with brutal attacks on the media and on a prominent African American congresswoman as “a very low IQ individual.” This, apparently, is what is necessary to excite Trump country and get those Trump and GOP voters out — even amid this awesome Trump economy. 

To be clear, Saccone could still win. But if Lamb keeps it close, it will still show that the Trump/GOP tax cuts aren’t enough to get educated suburban white voters to put aside their distaste with Trump in the numbers Republicans need. What’s more, this race is shaping up as a referendum on whether Republicans can hold Trump’s blue-collar white base, including the disaffected union Democrats who defected in 2016, in Trump-like numbers. But Mikus suggested to me that Lamb, who has campaigned on a pro-labor message, may be showing how Democrats can begin to reverse that trend, because even in Trump country, he’s “bringing some of those voters home.”

If so, this will show that candidates matter, to be sure. But it will also show that Trump’s agenda — which is basically Orthodox Ryanism overlaid with reckless protectionism in the form of the tariffs, plus a lot of bombast — isn’t enough to prevent good Democratic candidates from bringing back some of those voters. And that could have an impact on Democratic chances of winning the House this fall, since that turns in part on whether they can put some of these more working-class districts in play.

I still remained convinced that for the Dems to put more districts like PA-18 in play, Democrats need to try to get back 2012 Obama voters that dropped out in 2016, not the ones who voted for Trump.  But keep in mind if a district that Trump won by 20 points is competitive now, then there is no truly safe district for the GOP in November.

Not a one.

And they know it.

Oh, and one last thing:  Monmouth University has Lamb up by six in their final poll in the race today.

Here's hoping that holds up for tomorrow.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

As I've said before, there's three aspects to the Mueller investigation into the Trump regime, the Russian conspiracy to collude with Trump's team in order to affect the 2016 election, the long-time money laundering through Trump's international holdings, and the obstruction of justice to cover up evidence of the first two parts of the story.

It was a very busy weekend on the Mueller front, we've got four for your today.  Since Trump and his compatriots are terrible liars, the obstruction of justice investigation is proceeding faster than the other two sections of the probe, and the theory from Bloomberg News this morning is that Mueller will sit on any charges against Trump and/or his family until the rest of the investigation is completed.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice is said to be close to completion, but he may set it aside while he finishes other key parts of his probe, such as possible collusion and the hacking of Democrats, according to current and former U.S. officials.

That’s because Mueller may calculate that if he tries to bring charges in the obstruction case -- the part that may hit closest to Trump personally -- witnesses may become less cooperative in other parts of the probe, or the president may move to shut it down altogether.

The revelation is a peek into Muller’s calculations as he proceeds with his many-headed probe, while pressure builds from the president’s advisers and other Republicans to show progress or wrap it up.

The obstruction portion of the probe could likely be completed after several key outstanding interviews, including with the president and his son, Donald Trump Jr. The president’s lawyers have been negotiating with Mueller’s team over such an encounter since late last year. But even if Trump testifies in the coming weeks, Mueller may make a strategic calculation to keep his findings on obstruction secret, according to the current and former U.S. officials, who discussed the strategy on condition of anonymity.

Any clear outcome of the obstruction inquiry could be used against Mueller: Filing charges against Trump or his family could prompt the president to take action to fire him. Publicly clearing Trump of obstruction charges -- as the president’s lawyers have requested -- could be used by his allies to build pressure for the broader investigation to be shut down.

Other key matters under investigation by Mueller’s team, with its 17 career prosecutors, include whether Trump or any of his associates helped Russia meddle in the 2016 campaign. Mueller is also expected to indict some of those responsible for hacking the Democratic National Committee before the election and publicly leaking stolen material in an effort to hurt Democrat Hillary Clinton.

The timing for whether -- and when -- to interview Trump or his family members is one of the most sensitive decisions Mueller faces at this stage of his investigation. The special counsel’s office declined to comment for this story.

This is a weird story, which heavily implies that Mueller has more than enough to start charging the President and his inner circle with obstruction of justice, but the second Mueller makes a move either way on it, the fear is that Trump will fire Mueller.

I'm assuming the story is to inform people to hold on and to expect Mueller's team to go dark again after a relative whirlwind of action over the last several weeks.  It's also a reminder that the investigation in total is far, far from over.

Connect the dots in public reporting on Trump’s financial dealings, and a business model comes to light, one based on association with crooks, money launderers — and lots of Russians.

Take Trump’s Panama tower. The project’s lead broker, Alexandre Henrique Ventura Nogueira, was a criminal; in 2009, he admitted to money laundering and was arrested for fraud and forgery in other projects. He fled the country.

All-cash deals for condos — a red flag for money laundering — were commonplace at Trump Panama. Convicted drug-money launderer Colombian David Helmut Murcia Guzmán bought 10 condos. Suspected Russian money launderers Andrey Bogdanov and Ivan Kazanikov bought a dozen others. A former financial crimes prosecutor in Panama, Mauricio Ceballos, called Trump Ocean Club Panama “a vehicle for money laundering.”

Are financial crimes the kompromat (compromising evidence) that gives Russians leverage over him?

Panama is not an isolated instance — the business model started with his casinos.

The U.S. Bank Secrecy Act requires that the gambling industry (notorious for money laundering) keep strict records to detect and prevent “cleansing” of mobsters’ ill-gotten gains. The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, N.J., once paid a $10 million fine for willful violations of that act. It admitted doing it on purpose! What was the company hiding then?

Associations with criminals and Russians accelerated as the Trump Organization began licensing its name on hotel-condo projects.

Trump’s partners in its SoHo project in Manhattan, as in other deals, were crooks. Felix Sater, a Russian, had pleaded guilty to money laundering and stock manipulation and a stabbing with the stem of wine glass. The FBI considered partner Tamir Sapir part of a Russian mob. Financing for that hotel came from an Icelandic bank close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Three-fourths of the sales were all-cash.

At Trump Tower Toronto, the Trump Organization first partnered with Leib Waldman, who had fled the United States after pleading guilty to bankruptcy fraud and embezzlement. Then a Russian-born Canadian, Alex Shnaider, replaced Waldman. Shnaider had made fast money in the former Soviet Union and dealt with a Russian bank connected to Putin. Another foreign bank, accused previously of acting as a conduit for Russian money laundering, financed the project. The project incurred excessive construction costs — a trademark of money laundering — and went bankrupt while 400 other similar condo towers in Toronto succeeded.

In 2012, the Trump Organization partnered with a family referred to as “the Corleones of the Caspian, after the fictional Mafia family in “The Godfather” films,” to launch a hotel-condo project in Azerbaijan. Duffel bags of cash were used to pay contractors. Was money laundering during construction its real purpose? One thing’s for sure: No one who intended a luxury hotel to succeed would ever locate it on the wrong side of the tracks, where this one stood. It never opened.

With evidence of so many financial crimes, the Russians may not need the salacious acts recounted in the Steele dossier to compromise Trump. A few major felonies might do quite nicely.

Remember, it's not just Trump, his entire family is in on the business, and business is good.

Donald Trump Jr. has a previously undisclosed business relationship with a longtime hunting buddy who helped raise millions of dollars for his father’s 2016 presidential campaign and has had special access to top government officials since the election, records obtained by The Associated Press show. 

The president’s eldest son and Texas hedge fund manager Gentry Beach have been involved in business deals together dating back to the mid-2000s and recently formed a company — Future Venture LLC — despite past claims by both men that they were just friends, according to previously unreported court records and other documents obtained by AP. 

Beach last year met with top National Security Council officials to push a plan that would curb U.S. sanctions in Venezuela and open up business for U.S. companies in the oil-rich nation. 

Ethics experts said their financial entanglements raised questions about whether Beach’s access to government officials and advocacy for policy changes were made possible by the president’s son’s influence — and could also benefit the Trump family’s bottom line. 

“This feeds into the same concerns that we’ve had all along: The really fuzzy line between the presidency and the Trumps’ companies,” said Noah Bookbinder, who leads Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a public policy group. “Donald Trump Jr. sort of straddles that line all the time.” 

Last February, just as Trump Sr. was settling into office, Beach and an Iraqi-American businessman met with top officials at the National Security Council to present their plan for lightening U.S. sanctions in Venezuela in exchange for opening business opportunities for U.S. companies, according to a former U.S. official with direct knowledge of the proposal.

The Trumps are corrupt to the core.  It'll be easy to jump on the obstruction of justice and call it a day, but the real issue remains the repeated criminal violations of corruption and influence peddling.  If Mueller has to sit on an open-and-shut obstruction case to get to the slimy middle of this garbage mountain, then so be it.

And finally, let's not forget that the White House staff could be facing plenty of criminal liability for enabling the Trump regime.

If special counsel Robert S. Mueller III one day proves that someone on the 2016 Trump campaign colluded with Russia, a top White House spokesman may live to regret what he said Sunday. 

Appearing on ABC's “This Week,” deputy White House press secretary Raj Shah said President Trump would have been aware of any such collusion if it did occur. 

“There's been zero evidence, after a year of investigation, that we've seen of actual collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign,” Shah said. “The president, who would be aware of any types of efforts, has been pretty clear, understands and knows that there is no collusion. 

“And so, as he has said, this investigation is everything from a hoax to a witch hunt. It's not going to find any evidence of collusion.” 

Okay, but what if it does? Shah has just ruled out the idea that someone else could have colluded with Russia without Trump's knowledge. If we find out one day that someone within the campaign did collude, Shah's remarks suggest that Trump had to have known about it. There's no other way to read them.

They're crooks and they're stupid crooks.  And hey if the story gives Trump's people heartburn, well. We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime is backing away from the idea of raising the minimum age for purchasing firearms, but wants to arm teachers in all 50 states to "protect students".
• State media has remained silent on Donald Trump's proposal to meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un by May, leading some to speculate Pyongyang may change its mind on talks.
• An aircraft carrying 71 crashed on approach to Nepal's capital, Kathmandu on Monday, 17 people have been rescued so far but the fate of the rest of the passengers is uncertain.
• All five passengers aboard a helicopter that crashed into NYC's East River Sunday evening were killed, the pilot was able to escape the sinking craft and was rescued.
• The Forest Service has charged an Arizona man with starting a wildfire when his drone crashed last week in Coconino National Forest, the fire burned 300 acres before being contained.

Last Call For Betsy Flunks The Test

Trump Regime Education Secretary Betsy DeVos did not acquit herself well on 60 Minutes tonight when it came to defending the Trump approach to "school choice" in her home state of Michigan.

Lesley Stahl: Why take away money from that school that's not working, to bring them up to a level where they are-- that school is working?

Betsy DeVos: Well, we should be funding and investing in students, not in school-- school buildings, not in institutions, not in systems.

Lesley Stahl: Okay. But what about the kids who are back at the school that's not working? What about those kids?

Betsy DeVos: Well, in places where there have been-- where there is-- a lot of choice that's been introduced-- Florida, for example, the-- studies show that when there's a large number of students that opt to go to a different school or different schools, the traditional public schools actually-- the results get better, as well.

Lesley Stahl: Now, has that happened in Michigan? We're in Michigan. This is your home state.

Betsy DeVos: Michi--Yes, well, there's lots of great options and choices for students here.

Lesley Stahl: Have the public schools in Michigan gotten better?

Betsy DeVos: I don't know. Overall, I-- I can't say overall that they have all gotten better.

Lesley Stahl: The whole state is not doing well.

Betsy DeVos: Well, there are certainly lots of pockets where this-- the students are doing well and--

Lesley Stahl: No, but your argument that if you take funds away that the schools will get better, is not working in Michigan where you had a huge impact and influence over the direction of the school system here.

Betsy DeVos: I hesitate to talk about all schools in general because schools are made up of individual students attending them.

Lesley Stahl: The public schools here are doing worse than they did.

Betsy DeVos: Michigan schools need to do better. There is no doubt about it.

Lesley Stahl: Have you seen the really bad schools? Maybe try to figure out what they're doing?

Betsy DeVos: I have not-- I have not-- I have not intentionally visited schools that are underperforming.

Lesley Stahl: Maybe you should.

Betsy DeVos: Maybe I should. Yes.

DeVos is the only Cabinet secretary protected by a squad of U.S. Marshals because she's gotten death threats. She's frequently met by protesters who accuse her of pushing an elitist agenda.

She often manages to offend, as when she called historically black colleges and universities "pioneers" of "school choice" – as though they had a choice.

At this commencement speech at Bethune-Cookman University, students booed and turned their backs to her.

Lesley Stahl: Why have you become, people say, the most hated Cabinet secretary?

Betsy DeVos: I'm not so sure exactly how that happened. But I think there are a lot of really powerful forces allied against change.

Lesley Stahl: Does it hurt?

Betsy DeVos: Sometimes it does. Sometimes it does. Again, I think-- I think--

Lesley Stahl: Do you ever say--

Betsy DeVos: --I'm more misunderstood than anything.

Of all the Trump cabinet secretaries, DeVos is second only to Attorney General Jeff Sessions in the sheer amount of damage she's doing to the country, particularly to people of color.  Naturally if given a choice, people want to send their kids to the best schools, but all DeVos's plan is doing is taking money out of public schools and putting it in the pockets of "education reform" companies, opening charter schools across the country that are nothing but huge scams.

Oh, and there's the issue of DeVos's brother, Erik Prince, and his involvement in Trump's foreign fundraising and how DeVos ended up with this job when she's clearly unqualified for it.

There's no way DeVos should have this job, but she does.

Trump Cards, Con't

Trump's hour-plus long rally in Pennsylvania last night for GOP candidate Rick Saccone Donald Trump went as how all the other Trump rallies go here in the era of permanent cult of personality.

The trip was ostensibly an effort to help Republicans stave off a deflating defeat in a western Pennsylvania congressional district that President Trump won by 20 points.

And in a rally at Pittsburgh’s airport on Saturday evening, Mr. Trump did mention the Republican running in Tuesday’s special election, Rick Saccone, a handful of times. A good man, he called him.

But for almost all of his 75-minute performance in front of a raucous crowd packed into a hangar, it was in-his-element Trump, vintage 2016: rambling and fiery, boastful and jocular — the part of being president that he loves perhaps the most.

Ricocheting off the teleprompter, the president showed the kind of free-flowing attitude that his aides have said they expect to see this year. He ticked off what he said were his achievements — some coming just in recent days — on a laundry list of issues like North Korea, trade and the economy, and attacked his predecessors for their failures on the same.

He spoke admiringly of foreign laws imposing the death penalty on drug dealers, and seemed to brush aside the notion of due process as he spoke of American officers grabbing gang members “by the neck” and throwing them in the paddy wagon.

He derided past presidents as stiffs and lousy entertainers. He pummeled his favorite targets: Democrats and the “fake” news media. And, always the showman, he dropped a bit of news, revealing the slogan for his 2020 re-election campaign:

Keep America Great. With an exclamation mark, he said.

Trump loves running for president.  He hates actually having to do the job.

Steve M. argues (successfully, in my opinion) that if Clinton had won in 2016, Trump would have spent the last sixteen months on the trail for 2020.

The GOP/right-wing media complex would have gone into a stance of maximum resistance to Clinton -- or maybe just short of maximum. (Would Republicans in Congress have refused to certify her election? I think they'd have stopped just short of that.) She'd be the subject of multiple investigations and a lot of impeachment talk. Republicans might not want Trump as a figurehead, but he'd simply designate himself as the key player in this effort, and the media would lavish attention on his efforts.

He'd hold rally after rally. Hillary-hating Republicans would join him. Even non-Fox news organizations would be obsessed with Clinton's alleged misdeeds, while ignoring most other news. The Trump rallies would play unedited on cable. They'd ensure that Trump remained the most popular politician in America among Republican voters.

And since there'd never be a good reason to impeach Clinton, or 67 votes to convict her in the Senate, and since incumbents are routinely renominated even when they're struggling in the polls, it's likely that the 2020 election would have been a contest between the incumbent and the Republican base's favorite candidate, a man so fond if campaigning he'd be in the process of doing it nonstop for more than five years.

We could have had an electoral rerun in 2020. And given the likelihood that Clinton would have had four years of bad press, while Trump would have been, in an awful way, a media darling, I think he could have won outright the second time.

We'll never know if that would have been the case, but I honestly believe the urge by Trump voters to not just punish but to completely obliterate the Obama/Clinton coalition in 2020 would be, in this scenario, absolute.

And yes, our lovely media would have made sure that the Trump Show would be playing in 2020. 

Sunday Long Read: Chalk One Up For The Ladies

This week's Sunday Long Read takes us to the dimly-lit pool halls of San Francisco, where the game is nine-ball and the action is as smooth as the shots are glorious.  But the players here are all women, and the skill level is remarkable as they compete for a spot in the Vegas big time.

Renée Mata is a 4-foot-11 ball of irrepressible good vibes. She never stops grinning and stops talking only slightly more often. So when she takes a break from shooting pool one Saturday morning in mid-January to tell me, still smiling, that she’s “in a funk,” I honestly can’t tell if she’s joking.

Thirty-year-old Mata (Ren, to her friends) is one of 30 women at Billiard Palacade, a dark pool hall in Balboa Park, one of the last ungentrified neighborhoods in San Francisco, and there’s nowhere she’d rather be. But the funk is very real: she didn’t get much sleep last night because she didn’t get home from work—pouring beers and cooking hot dogs at another pool hall six miles uptown—until 2:30 a.m., and her shift had been so busy that she didn’t get much time to practice her game. That same day had begun with a 6:30 a.m. baking class at the City College of San Francisco, where she learned how to make pot de crème. Now it’s time to compete at the penultimate stop in what may be the most competitive regional women’s pool tour in the country.

“These girls are all my friends, but they’re also crazy good pool players,” Mata tells me, fresh off a streak of eight consecutive hugs with her competitors. “So if I’m not on top of my game because I didn’t get enough sleep or didn’t eat right or didn’t have a good practice session last night, I’m going to have a rough day.”

The event is the eighth stop in the West Coast Women’s Tour, a series with monthly events across Northern California. The tour focuses on nine-ball billiards, in which players must use the cue ball to strike the lowest-numbered of the nine balls on the table. Top performers will qualify for the annual American Poolplayers Association Championships in Las Vegas in August, and several of the regulars travel widely for bigger competitions. But the California tour is not just for elite players—the women at Billiard Palacade range in age from their teens to their 70s, and the spread of skill levels is at least as wide. A handicap system encourages women of all abilities to participate: the pro player who cofounded the event in 2007 has to win eight games to win a match, while newbies must win just five.

Mata falls somewhere in the middle. For the past five years, her life has revolved around pool. She quit her job managing a Bay Area Target store when she convinced the owner of her favorite pool hall to hire her, so she practices nearly every day at work. She plays in a team league as well as on the women’s tour. When she was a kid, her dad loved watching pool on TV, and she dreamed of playing professionally, too. But the only pool halls near their home were inappropriate for little girls—so she didn’t start playing regularly until she was 23, when her brother’s girlfriend asked her to join her team. She wasn’t very good, she admits, but her drive to improve was insatiable. “[My brother’s girlfriend] says she created a monster by inviting me to play,” Mata says. She’s not sure she wants to go pro, but she’s working toward bigger tournaments, like the one in Vegas. And while she has the talent to beat almost any player in Northern California, she’s inconsistent, so starting a tournament in a funk does not bode well.

Because pool is a mental game, the atmosphere during a tournament is generally silent but for the crash of cue balls striking the other nine. As the women twist cues together and run precision-shooting drills, Mata’s voice and laugh are among the few sounds that slice through the quiet. I hadn’t recognized her when I first spotted her across the room: during her shift two nights earlier, four piercings (two in her nose and two below her lip) had been her only facial adornment. Today, aware that a photographer is coming, she’s in full makeup, with dramatic cat-eye eyeliner and pink, glittery eye shadow that matches the highlights in her black hair. The second-shortest player in the tournament, she has to stand on tiptoe to make many of her shots, and she has found one of the few chairs in the room that will allow her feet to reach the floor when she sits down.

Two days earlier, Mata told me that she thinks of this particular tournament as more of a fun time than a competition—“This is my girls’ weekend, with no boyfriends or men at all”—but make no mistake: she is here for a prize. When the draw is announced and players move to their assigned tables, even the bubbliest player in the room goes mum, the smile suddenly gone from her face. She jams in a pair of white earbuds, turns on a playlist that ranges from Demi Lovato to Childish Gambino, and racks the balls into the diamond shape that begins a game of nine-ball. As the tournament begins, six 20-something men who have just walked in look crestfallen: the women are using all 15 tables, so there’s no room for them to play.

Women of all ages, from all walks of life play here, for the love of the game, for the challenge of competition, and just to prove a point.  But that doesn't always go over well with men in the sport, or at the halls, and even in 2018, billiards is still a "macho guy thing".

These women are looking to change that, and more power to them.

Chasing The Dropouts

A group of political scientists make the mathematical case in the NY Times that Democrats would be far better served winning back the more than four million Obama voters who stayed home in 2016 (rather than voting for Hillary or anyone) than the six million Obama voters who abandoned the Democrats for Trump.

Before the 2016 election, these voters were often identified as part of the “rising American electorate” by Democratic strategists who hoped that demographic shifts would be a boon to the party. But these shifts are meaningless if Democrats can’t get enough young people of color to the polls.

What do Obama-to-nonvoters prefer, policy-wise? Are they more similar to Obama-to-Clinton voters or to Obama-to-Trump voters? The answers to these questions have important implications for the future of Democratic Party politics, so we analyzed the preferences of all three groups of voters across a broad range of domestic policy areas, including support for a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants, abortion rights, E.P.A. regulation of carbon emissions, cuts in domestic spending, an increase in the minimum wage, and an end to mandatory minimums in criminal sentencing, as well as opposition to the repeal of the Affordable Care Act.

Two clear patterns emerged. First, it will come as no surprise that Obama-to-Trump voters adopt the most conservative positions. In fact, Obama-to-Trump voters express the most conservative views of any Obama voters in each of the seven areas examined in this analysis.

Second, the preferences of Obama-to-nonvoters are almost always closer to the preferences of Obama-to-Clinton voters than they are to Obama-to-Trump voters. For example, nearly three-quarters of Obama-to-Trump voters supported repeal of the A.C.A., while less than half of Obama-to-nonvoters did. The extremely high degree of support for repeal of the A.C.A. among Obama-to-Trump voters clearly played a role in the 2016 election and in the negative reaction to Mr. Obama among this group of voters more broadly. However, considering how strongly Obama-to-Clinton voters in particular favor the A.C.A., it is hard to imagine how Democrats could incorporate anti-A.C.A. voters into future Democratic coalitions.

Obama-to-nonvoters are most similar to Obama-to-Clinton voters on the minimum wage, though the proposal draws strong majority support from Obama-to-Trump voters as well. Obama-to-Trump voters are most out of line with the Democratic coalition on issues relating to race and gender. They are less supportive of a path to citizenship, and a supermajority (64 percent) of Obama-to-Trump voters support deporting undocumented immigrants. At 72 percent, Obama-to-nonvoters are also far more in favor of abortion rights than Obama-to-Trump voters are (55 percent). Over all, Obama-to-nonvoters are quite close to the emerging Democratic consensus on issues of class, race, gender and the environment.

Democratic strategists should recognize that Obama-to-Trump voters do not represent the future of their party. Obama-to-Trump voters diverge from the Democratic Party on many core issues, and in any case they are not particularly loyal Democrats: Less than one third of Obama-to-Trump voters supported Democrats down-ballot in 2016, and only 37 percent identify as Democrats.

In stark contrast, Obama-to-nonvoters share the progressive policy priorities of Democrats, and they strongly identify with the Democratic Party. Four out of every five Obama-to-nonvoters identify as Democrats, and 83 percent reported they would have voted for a Democrat down-ballot. A similar share of Obama-to-nonvoters said that they would have voted for Mrs. Clinton had they turned out to vote. In short, while reclaiming some Obama-to-Trump voters would be a big help to Democratic prospects, re-energizing 2012 Obama voters who stayed home is a more plausible path for the party going forward.

Whether Democrats can mobilize these voters is an open question, however. Significantly, only 43 percent of Obama-to-nonvoters reported being contacted by a candidate in 2016, compared with 66 percent of Obama-to-Clinton voters. While analysts have focused on why many conservative voters switched to the Republican Party, a better question might be why a campaign that sought to energize young voters of color failed to do so. That’s the question that will decide the future of American politics.

Getting these voters to the polls on Election Day is the most important task for progressives. And given their outlook on the important issues of the day, Obama-to-nonvoters are also likely to be easier to mobilize after two years of a Trump presidency — never mind four.

Two observations here:  First, the "Obama dropouts" here are overwhelmingly voters of color.  More than a third of them are black, that represents 1.5 million voters, another 10 percent were Latino, another 450,000.

Second: these are the voters who were pushed out of the electorate by the GOP through Republican voter suppression efforts in states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, as well as Florida, North Carolina, Arizona, and more.  More than two dozen states enacted Republican voter ID laws between 2012 and 2016, and we now know that Russian election meddling through social media specifically targeted black voters in swing states to demoralize them.  The combination cost Clinton millions of votes and the presidency.

So yes, getting these younger voters back should be top priority rather than older, more conservative voters who left the Democrats over "identity politics" and showed their true colors by voting for Trump.  The Democrats don't need them.  They do need the younger voters who were by and large pushed out of the electorate.

It's Mueller TIme, Con't

Robert Mueller is closing in on Donald Trump, and we know this because the Trump regime is offering to make Mueller a completely ludicrous deal where Trump allows Mueller to interview him if Mueller does something, you know, completely reasonable and ends the investigation.

Attorneys for President Trump are reportedly considering asking special counsel Robert Mueller to set a hard end date for his investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election as one of the preconditions for an interview with president.

While Trump's lawyers remain split on the terms of such a deal, The Wall Street Journal reported Friday, they also want Mueller to agree to parameters on the scope of such an interview.

One idea being floated is that Mueller would agree to wrap up the probe within 60 days of interviewing Trump.

Conversations between Mueller and Trump’s attorneys are reportedly only just beginning. Trump has said he is "looking forward" to speaking with the special counsel's team, but his lawyers have repeatedly emphasized that he would only agree under certain conditions.

Legal experts interviewed by the Journal expressed skepticism Mueller would agree to the idea.

“You can’t put a timeline on these things,” said former federal prosecutor Peter Zeidenberg. “Someone could walk in the door on the day before their proposed deadline and say, ‘I’ve got some information that’s going to blow your minds.’ … [And] Mueller’s going to say, ‘Oh, too bad, the deadline’s tomorrow?’”

Nobody on earth thinks this is a reasonable deal in any way.  This is Trump's starting point for negotiations, then Mueller should hang up.  He's got more than enough on Trump anyway. So what sparked this "attempt" at cutting a deal?  My guess is the testimony of Sam Nunberg before a grand jury today which lasted several hours made Trump sweat bullets.

A former Trump campaign aide appeared for hours before a federal grand jury Friday, after he defiantly insisted in a series of news interviews just days earlier that he intended to defy a subpoena in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation.

Sam Nunberg spent more than six hours inside the federal courthouse in Washington. He declined to speak with journalists on the way in or out of the building, and it was not immediately clear what testimony he offered to the grand jury or what documents he provided.

His appearance marked a turnabout from extraordinary public statements Monday when Nunberg, in multiple interviews, balked at complying with a subpoena that sought his appearance before the grand jury as well as correspondence with other campaign officials. In doing so, he became the first witness in the Mueller probe to openly threaten to defy a subpoena.

But later that night, Nunberg, who initially suggested that he considered Mueller's document demands unreasonable, told The Associated Press he had relented and predicted he'd wind up complying after all.

"I'm going to end up cooperating with them," he said.

Nunberg said he worked for hours to produce the thousands of emails and other communications requested by Mueller, who is investigating whether Donald Trump's campaign improperly coordinated with Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

"I thought it was a teachable moment," he said of his 24 hours in the limelight.

Nunberg is Roger Stone's boy through and through, and my guess is that he gave up Stone lock, stock and two smoking barrels.  And if Roger Stone is now facing his turn in the dock, Trump has to be terrified.

Scared enough to start offering deals.  After all, if there's nothing to discuss with Mueller, and Trump did nothing, there's no reason to answer any of Mueller's questions.  Trump even offering that he's willing to negotiate means he knows things are going to get a lot worse and soon.

Stay tuned.