BuzzFeed reports that the Trump gang was planning to bribe Putin with a $50 million dollar penthouse in the proposed Moscow tower building.

President Donald Trump’s company planned to give a $50 million penthouse at Trump Tower Moscow to Russian President Vladimir Putin as the company negotiated the luxury real estate development during the 2016 campaign, according to four people, one of them the originator of the plan.

…

The Trump Tower Moscow plan is at the heart of a new plea agreement by Cohen, who led the negotiations to bring a gleaming, 100-story building to the Russian capital. Cohen acknowledged in court that he had lied to Congress about the plan in order to protect Trump and his presidential

“I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign,” he assures us.

“There was a letter,” he says, and helpfully draws a rectangle in the air, in case we don’t know what a letter is.

ANYway, point is, Michael Cohen is a weak person, and not a very smart person.

… Read the rest

Oops.

Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s former lawyer, who pleaded guilty in August to breaking campaign finance laws, made a surprise appearance in a Manhattan courtroom on Thursday morning and pleaded guilty to a new criminal charge, the latest turn in the special counsel’s investigation of Mr. Trump and his inner circle.

At the court hearing, Mr. Cohen admitted to making false statements to Congress about his efforts to build a Trump Tower deal in Moscow during the 2016 presidential campaign. That real estate deal has been a focus of the special counsel investigation into whether the Trump campaign conspired with Russian operatives.

Oooops. That sounds big. Lawfare has posted the docs for us, and from what I’ve … Read the rest

In their talk with Trump yesterday Josh Dawsey and Philip Rucker asked him about the Mueller-Manafort breakup.

DAWSEY: People around you have told me you’re upset about the way he’s been treated. Are you planning to do anything to help him?

TRUMP: Let me go off the record because I don’t want to get in the middle of the whole thing.

[Trump speaks off the record.]

DAWSEY: Is there any version of that you’re willing to give us on the record in answer to that question?

TRUMP: I’d rather not. At some point, I’ll talk on the record about it. But I’d rather not.

[Trump speaks off the record.]

So it’s not likely that was an uncomplicated “no,” then. He’s … Read the rest

The Post had a conversation with Trump today; it went as well as you’d expect.

In a wide-ranging and sometimes discordant 20-minute interview with The Washington Post, Trump complained at length about Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome H. “Jay” Powell, whom he nominated earlier this year. When asked about declines on Wall Street and GM’s announcement that it was laying off 15 percent of its workforce, Trump responded by criticizing higher interest rates and other Fed policies, though he insisted that he is not worried about a recession.

“I’m doing deals, and I’m not being accommodated by the Fed,” Trump said. “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut, and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s

DTrump is having a tough day. Not as tough as those teargassed asylum-seekers had, but tough. Not one but two shoes hit the floor with a crash.

The first development came when special counsel Robert S. Mueller III asked a federal court to begin sentencing proceedings for Manafort, sentencing that was on hold while Manafort cooperated with Mueller’s team. According to the filing: “After signing the plea agreement, Manafort committed federal crimes by lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Special Counsel’s Office on a variety of subject matters, which constitute breaches of the agreement.”

That could be bad for Trump as well as for Manafort.

First, it’s unlikely that Mueller would be withdrawing Manafort’s plea agreement

Trump is fine with teargassing children (and of course adults).

Reporter to Trump tonight: What did you think of the images of women and children running, tear gas?
Trump: “I say, why are they there? First of all, the tear gas is a very minor form of the tear gas itself. It’s very safe.” (per WH pool) pic.twitter.com/FCXLVQ6jL8

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 27, 2018

… Read the rest

Trump has had a busy day not believing things he hasn’t read.

President Donald Trump on Monday dismissed a study produced by his own administration, involving 13 federal agencies and more than 300 leading climate scientists, warning of the potentially catastrophic impact of climate change.

Why, you ask?

“I don’t believe it,” Trump told reporters on Monday, adding that he had read “some” of the report.

The cover, maybe?

Anyway. There is more than one kind of not believing. There’s the kind that involves knowledge of the thing to be believed or not believed, and then there’s the other kind. You can count on Trump to practice always the other kind.

If you missed the study’s release, well, that

A day that will live in infamy.

A little girl from Honduras stares into the camera, her young features contorted in anguish. She’s barefoot, dusty, and clad only in a diaper and T-shirt. And she’s just had to run from clouds of choking tear gas fired across the border by U.S. agents.

A second photograph, which also circulated widely and rapidly on social media, shows an equally anguished woman frantically trying to drag the same child and a second toddler away from the gas as it spreads.

Tear gas – shot at people who were seeking asylum from violence in their home countries. Yes, I understand that no country can simply invite in all people who are fleeing violence … Read the rest

The Guardian says Mueller has been amazingly speedy.

Anne Milgram, a law professor at New York University and a former prosecutor and attorney general of New Jersey, said Mueller and his 17 lawyers had done “a terrific job”.

“Months have gone by – people think it’s a long time – it is not in criminal justice,” she said. “He has moved incredibly quickly, got a lot of cooperation agreements, charges, done an extraordinary job of running down Russian hacking of the election.”

Elizabeth de la Vega, a former federal prosecutor for the northern district of California, said: “Complex charges against nearly three dozen people [and] organizations in less than two years is unheard of. Federal investigations may go on

David Roth on Trump’s pre-helicopter shtick is a feast of word-deployment:

The wheedling honk of Trump’s voice and the uneasy tilt of his standing-on-a-hoverboard-for-the-first-time posture are constants, as is his customary air of triumphal huffiness…

It’s worthless, of course. Reporters shout something at Trump about a thing he said or did or his response to someone’s else response to something, and then he shouts that he did it because he felt like it or actually didn’t do it at all, or that the criticism of what he did is offensive and illegitimate, or that the question itself is. If he’s asked a question by a woman, he gets extra spicy….

This is more or less what Trump has always thought

News so new it’s not reported yet except on Twitter:

#BREAKING: NY Supreme Court throws out Trump’s motion to dismiss @NewYorkStateAG Underwood’s Trump Foundation lawsuit: https://t.co/J2WomSeQrs

As the AG’s lawsuit detailed, the Trump Foundation functioned as a personal piggy bank to serve Trump's business & political interests

— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) November 23, 2018

Scarpulla also finds that AG’s petition sufficiently alleges breach of fiduciary duty, as well as our claim that Trump intentionally used Foundation assets for his private interests knowing it might not be in the Foundation’s best interest.

She denies Trump request for discovery

— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) November 23, 2018

Here’s @NewYorkStateAG Underwood’s statement on this decision —> pic.twitter.com/9HFDa7rAJk

— Amy Spitalnick (@amyspitalnick) November 23,

He’s been working very hard today. Coal mining is a walk on the beach in comparison.

Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018

Mwah Saudi Arabia! Love ya, mean it! That whole thing with what’s his name, water under the bridge, or do I mean fingers, hahahahaha no but seriously thanks.

“‘Trump Imitation Syndrome’ is afflicting the president’s liberal enemies”

Thank you @MGoodwin_NYPost! https://t.co/KpmsrKCaBZ

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018

Great new book out, “Mad Politics: Keeping Your Sanity in a World Gone Crazy” by @RealDrGina Loudon.

Greg Sargent points out that Trump is not actually putting America first in clinging to Saudi Arabia while shrugging off the torture-murder of Jamal Khashoggi; he’s lying about US interests while putting his personal hatreds and prejudices first.

The bigger idea at stake here in Trump’s response is the notion that our commitment to international standards of human rights [is] to be jettisoned when they get in the way of our “interests.” It’s true that the United States has a long history of turning a blind eye to Saudi human rights abuses. But this does not preclude responding to this particular atrocity, and merely claiming Trump is revealing “the truth” about our previous realpolitik does not justify the current absence

AMERICA FIRST!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018

Oil prices getting lower. Great! Like a big Tax Cut for America and the World. Enjoy! $54, was just $82. Thank you to Saudi Arabia, but let’s go lower!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 21, 2018

… Read the rest

Wow.

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,