Tag: Trump

  • Even as his staff tried to discourage him

    From a few days ago, the Times on Donald’s desperate thrashings.

    Last month’s appointment of Robert S. Mueller III as a special counsel to investigate possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia enraged President Trump. Yet, at least initially, he holstered his Twitter finger and publicly said nothing.

    But behind the scenes, the president soon began entertaining the idea of firing Mr. Mueller even as his staff tried to discourage him from something they believed would turn a bad situation into a catastrophe…

    It’s a little bit like a psychological horror movie, those unhappy people cooped up with the lethal out-of-control manchild.

    [P]eople close to Mr. Trump say he is so volatile they cannot be sure that he will not change his mind about Mr. Mueller if he finds out anything to lead him to believe the investigation has been compromised. And his ability to endure a free-ranging investigation, directed by Mr. Mueller, that could raise questions about the legitimacy of his Electoral College victory, the topic that most provokes his rage, will be a critical test for a president who has continued on Twitter and elsewhere to flout the advice of his staff, friends and legal team.

    Because he’s so much smarter than they are.

    The president, when asked by the pool of reporters covering a midday meeting with Republican lawmakers at the White House whether he supported Mr. Mueller, gave no answer, even though he often uses such interactions to make headlines or shoot down stories he believes to be fake.

    That may have been by design, according to a person who spoke to Mr. Trump on Tuesday. The president was pleased by the ambiguity of his position on Mr. Mueller, and thinks the possibility of being fired will focus the veteran prosecutor on delivering what the president desires most: a blanket public exoneration.

    Yes, that should definitely work.

    Angered by reports in Breitbart News and other conservative news outlets that Mr. Mueller was close to Mr. Comey, Mr. Trump in recent days has repeatedly brought up the political and legal implications of firing someone he now views as incapable of an impartial investigation. He has told his staff, his visitors and his outside advisers that he was increasingly convinced that Mr. Mueller, like Mr. Comey, his successor as director of the F.B.I., was part of a “witch hunt” by partisans who wanted to see him weakened or forced from office.

    But while the president is deeply suspicious of Mr. Mueller, his anger is reserved for Mr. Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia inquiry, and especially for Mr. Comey. Mr. Trump was especially outraged by Mr. Comey’s admission last week that he had leaked a memo with details of his interactions with the president in hopes of spurring the appointment of a special counsel.

    That Mr. Comey, such a very bad man.

    While the president’s aides have sought to sow skepticism about Mr. Mueller, whom they interviewed about the possibility of returning to the F.B.I. job the day before he accepted his position as special counsel, few have advocated his termination, reflecting the recognition that Mr. Trump’s angry reactions to the congressional and F.B.I. investigations now underway are imperiling his presidency.

    The pushback also represented growing willingness among staff members to try to keep Mr. Trump from making damaging mistakes — an important internal change in a White House dominated by a president who often demands obeisance.

    For all the talk of how no one in the West Wing tells the president “no,” many people do — though often unsuccessfully.

    No, Donald, no, put the Twitter down, bad, nasty.

  • Trolling the troll

    This Post headline says it all:

    Trump said foreign leaders wouldn’t laugh at the U.S. Now they’re laughing at him.

    Literally. They’re literally holding him up for mockery.

    In Mexico, former president Vicente Fox posted a profane video on YouTube, mocking Trump’s taste for taco bowls (“they’re not even Mexican!”) and border walls (“Mexico will not pay”) that has been viewed nearly half a million times.

    In France, new President Emmanuel Macron unveiled a website titled “Make Our Planet Great Again” and invited U.S. scientists to move there, a week after Trump withdrew the United States from the Paris climate accord.

    And in Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who sparred with Trump in a testy phone call in February, this week treated a black-tie gala to a snarky impersonation of “The Donald,” referring to the Russia investigation and employing the president’s famous catchphrases.

    The Donald and I, we are winning and winning in the polls,” Turnbull said, prompting hearty laughter from fellow politicians. “Not the fake polls. They’re the ones we’re not winning in. We’re winning in the real polls. You know, the online polls.”

    Fox’s video is awesome.

    https://youtu.be/iYZKrn7Bbl8

    Perhaps the first to poke her thumb in his eye was Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Isabella Lovin, who in February posted a Facebook photo showing her signing a law surrounded by female aides — an image widely presumed as a retort to photos showing Trump signing executive orders flanked almost exclusively by men.

    Last month, five Nordic leaders reenacted a photo of Trump where on his visit to Saudi Arabia he put his hands on a glowing globe, except they substituted a soccer ball in place of the orb.

    “Who rules the world? Riyadh vs Bergen,” Norway Prime Minister Erna Solberg wrote in a caption on social media, saying that she and her colleagues were signaling support for “sustainability goals.”

    For Trump, things have gotten so bad that he is now being trolled by those he has gone out of his way to praise, such as Putin, who on Thursday said with a straight face that he would offer asylum to former FBI director James B. Comey. Last month, Trump fired Comey, who was overseeing an investigation into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials.

    Ah well I don’t think Putin is trolling Trump with that, I think he’s trolling us, the way Lavrov did with that joke about the Comey firing.

  • But Rosenstein told him to!

    Don’s matutinal eruptions:

    Ah yes his Very Powerful Social Media – with which he is putting himself in legal jeopardy day after day. Clever fellow.

    Yep. Rosenstein rocked up and said to Trump: “Fire Comey! Immediately! That’s an order!” Plus Don seems to have forgotten that he told Lester Holt and us that it was his decision, totally his decision.

    https://youtu.be/gNXEWtbLaD0

    “My decision.” Said with emphasis.

  • The legal jeopardy increases by the day

    A rough day in Donnylvania.

    A heightened sense of unease gripped the White House on Thursday, as President Trump lashed out at reports that he’s under scrutiny for obstructing justice, aides repeatedly deflected questions about the probe, and Vice President Pence acknowledged hiring a private lawyer to handle fallout from investigations into Russian election meddling.

    …

    A defiant Trump at multiple points Thursday expressed his frustration with reports about that development, tweeting that he is the subject of “the single greatest WITCH HUNT in American political history,” and one that he said is being led by “some very bad and conflicted people.”

    Defiant like a three-year-old who wants that god damn package of candy in the grocery store right now god damn it.

    Trump, who only a day earlier had called for a more civil tone in Washington after a shooting at a Republican congressional baseball practice in Alexandria, Va., fired off several more tweets in the afternoon voicing disbelief that he was under scrutiny while his “crooked” Democratic opponent in last year’s election, Hillary Clinton, escaped prosecution in relation to her use of a private email server while secretary of state.

    It’s so typical of Don, telling everyone to be nicer while carrying on being just as revoltingly nasty as ever himself. His ego is the 8th wonder of the world.

    Before the day ended, the White House was hit with the latest in a series of cascading headlines relating to the Russian probe: a Post story reporting that Mueller is investigating the finances and business dealings of Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-law and adviser.

    “The legal jeopardy increases by the day,” said one informal Trump adviser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss conversations with White House aides more freely. “If you’re a White House staffer, you’re trying to do your best to keep your head low and do your job.”

    And, I suspect, wondering if you should leave tomorrow or today.

    Sen. John Cornyn (Tex.), the second-ranking Senate Republican, said he retains confidence in Mueller and that he’s seen nothing so far that would amount to obstruction by Trump. His assessment, Cornyn said, includes the testimony last week by Comey, who said he presumed he was fired because of Trump’s concerns about the FBI’s handling of the Russian probe.

    “I think based on what he said then, there doesn’t appear to be any there there,” Cornyn said. “Director Mueller’s got extensive staff and authorities to investigate further. But based on what we know now, I don’t see any basis.”

    Why? Why does he not see “any basis” in that entrapment din-dins for two? Why does he not see “any basis” in Trump’s insistence on emptying the Oval Office before leaning on Comey to drop the investigation of Flynn? Why?

  • “The deep state spear”

    Newt Gingrich is getting in on the act too, NPR points out.

    There has been an effort on the right to try to undermine Mueller to de-legitimize his potential findings…:

    I find that shocking. I keep being shocked by these people. I suppose it’s naïve, but I can’t help it.

    … even though some of the same people just a month earlier had been praising the former FBI director for his esteem:

    Why Newt, you hypocritical piece of crap you.

    Mueller’s investigative team has expanded in recent weeks. The National Law Journal reported on June 9 that Mueller has brought Deputy Solicitor General Michael Dreeben onto the team on a part-time basis. Reporter Tony Mauro noted the addition of Dreeben may signal that “Mueller may be seeking advice on complex areas of criminal law, including what constitutes obstruction of justice.” At the end of May, the chief of the Justice Department’s Fraud Section, Andrew Weissman, also joined the team, NPR’s Carrie Johnson reported at the time.

    Justice Department policy is that a sitting president cannot be indicted by a grand jury, the Post also reported Wednesday. Any findings by the department’s investigation would be referred to Congress, where lawmakers would determine whether to impeach the president.

    If he doesn’t resign first.

  • Conflicted

    Of course Don has tweeted.

    Sadly for him, it’s obstruction of justice even if the investigation turns up nothing in the end. The point of an investigation is to find out, so obstruction of that investigation is obstruction no matter what the findings are.

    How ironic it would be if he turns out to be spotlessly clean on the Russia matter but did for himself with the obstruction…but of course that’s why “It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup” became a saying.

    The Times

    Mr. Mueller has requested interviews with three current or former senior intelligence officials, according to a person briefed on the investigation. The move suggests he is examining whether the president sought their help in trying to get James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, to end an investigation into Michael T. Flynn, the former national security adviser.

    The special counsel is also seeking documents from the National Security Agency relating to the intelligence agency’s interactions with the White House on the Russia investigation.

    Together, the requests from Mr. Mueller suggest new scrutiny on whether the president tried to influence the Russia investigation through conversations he had with Mr. Comey, whom he ultimately fired, or with other officials.

    It turns out that firing the head of the FBI and then saying on national tv that you did it to abort an investigation into your own activities might backfire.

    The president’s tweet Thursday morning suggests he remains dismissive of the investigation. Mr. Trump reportedly considered firing Mr. Mueller as special counsel, but was talked out of it by aides who worried about the consequences of taking such an action.

    Christopher Ruddy, a longtime friend of Mr. Trump’s, had said publicly that Mr. Trump was considering terminating Mr. Mueller. Mr. Ruddy said the president believed that Mr. Mueller had conflicts of interest that should have made him ineligible to lead the investigation.

    Mr. Ruddy said, in a PBS interview, that Mr. Mueller’s previous law firm represents some members of Mr. Trump’s family. And he revealed that Mr. Trump had interviewed Mr. Mueller to replace Mr. Comey as F.B.I. director the day before Mr. Mueller was selected to serve as special counsel.

    The tweet from Mr. Trump on Thursday suggests that he still believes Mr. Mueller has conflicts of interest that undermine his ability to lead the Russia inquiry.

    And that he doesn’t know what “conflicted” means.

  • A widening probe

    There it is.

    The special counsel overseeing the investigation into Russia’s role in the 2016 election is interviewing senior intelligence officials as part of a widening probe that now includes an examination of whether President Trump attempted to obstruct justice, officials said.

    The move by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to investigate Trump’s conduct marks a major turning point in the nearly year-old FBI investigation, which until recently focused on Russian meddling during the presidential campaign and on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Investigators have also been looking for any evidence of possible financial crimes among Trump associates, officials said.

    But Trump tried to put the arm on Comey so now that’s being investigated. Ironic, isn’t it. If he hadn’t done that, maybe the investigation would have proceeded without ever looking at him.

    Trump had received private assurances from then-FBI Director James B. Comey starting in January that he was not personally under investigation. Officials say that changed shortly after Comey’s firing.

    Five people briefed on the requests, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said Daniel Coats, the current director of national intelligence, Mike Rogers, head of the National Security Agency, and Rogers’s recently departed deputy, Richard Ledgett, agreed to be interviewed by Mueller’s investigators as early as this week. The investigation has been cloaked in secrecy, and it is unclear how many others have been questioned by the FBI.

    At least we know he doesn’t get infinite leeway.

    The White House now refers all questions about the Russia investigation to Trump’s personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz. “The FBI leak of information regarding the president is outrageous, inexcusable and illegal,” said Mark Corallo, a spokesman for Kasowitz.

    Meh. He works for us, and he keeps snapping his fingers in our face. I say we have a right to know about this.

    The obstruction-of-justice investigation of the president began days after Comey was fired on May 9, according to people familiar with the matter. Mueller’s office has now taken up that work, and the preliminary interviews scheduled with intelligence officials indicate his team is actively pursuing potential witnesses inside and outside the government.

    The interviews suggest Mueller sees the question of attempted obstruction of justice as more than just a “he said, he said” dispute between the president and the fired FBI director, an official said.

    I would hope so. It should be a very big deal indeed.

    Officials said one of the exchanges of potential interest to Mueller took place on March 22, less than a week after Coats was confirmed by the Senate to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official.

    Coats was attending a briefing at the White House with officials from several other government agencies. When the briefing ended, as The Washington Post previously reported, Trump asked everyone to leave the room except for Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo.

    Coats told associates that Trump had asked him whether Coats could intervene with Comey to get the bureau to back off its focus on former national security adviser Michael Flynn in its Russia probe, according to officials. Coats later told lawmakers that he never felt pressured to intervene.

    A day or two after the March 22 meeting, Trump telephoned Coats and Rogers to separately ask them to issue public statements denying the existence of any evidence of coordination between his campaign and the Russian government.

    Coats and Rogers refused to comply with the president’s requests, officials said.

    Again, he emptied the room – so he knew what he was doing was not ok.

    Investigators will also look for any statements the president may have made publicly and privately to people outside the government about his reasons for firing Comey and his concerns about the Russia probe and other related investigations, people familiar with the matter said.

    Well there’s the one he made to Lester Holt on national tv.

  • Amazing, miraculous, resplendent, stupefying

    No automatic alt text available.

  • No need to hire a lawyer yet

    It’s tricky, having a private lawyer working out of the White House.

    Marc E. Kasowitz, a New York civil litigator who represented President Trump for 15 years in business and boasts of being called the toughest lawyer on Wall Street, has suddenly become the field marshal for a White House under siege. He is a personal lawyer for the president, not a government employee, but he has been talking about establishing an office in the White House complex where he can run his legal defense.

    His visits to the White House have raised questions about the blurry line between public and private interests for a president facing legal issues. In recent days, Mr. Kasowitz has advised White House aides to discuss the inquiry into Russia’s interference in last year’s election as little as possible, two people involved said. He told aides gathered in one meeting who had asked whether it was time to hire private lawyers that it was not yet necessary, according to another person with direct knowledge.

    Such conversations between a private lawyer for the president and the government employees who work for his client are highly unusual, according to veterans of previous administrations. Mr. Kasowitz bypassed the White House Counsel’s Office in having these discussions, according to one person familiar with the talks, who, like others, requested anonymity to discuss internal matters. And concerns about Mr. Kasowitz’s role led at least two prominent Washington lawyers to turn down offers to join the White House staff.

    He’s representing Trump, so WH aides shouldn’t be consulting him about anything, because his advice won’t necessarily be in their interests.

    Mr. Kasowitz has been central to Mr. Trump’s recent legal battles, helping his client keep divorce records sealed and representing him in the Trump University fraud lawsuit, in which Mr. Trump ultimately agreed to pay $25 million to settle claims from former students that the institution had cheated them out of tuition money.

    In the final weeks of the presidential campaign, Mr. Kasowitz threatened to sue The New York Times for libel on Mr. Trump’s behalf over a story in which two women accused Mr. Trump of inappropriate touching years earlier. No lawsuit has been filed. A decade earlier, however, Mr. Kasowitz followed through on a similar threat, suing Timothy O’Brien, a Trump biographer and former reporter and editor for The Times, for libel and alleging that he had understated Mr. Trump’s net worth. That suit was dismissed by a New Jersey Superior Court judge.

    He almost sounds more like an enforcer than a lawyer.

    As for Mr. Kasowitz’s conversations with presidential aides, the White House Counsel’s Office typically supervises such discussions to make sure the aides understand their rights and do not feel pressured to help a lawyer who does not represent their interests, legal experts said. The counsel’s involvement is all the more critical in this case, they said, because many of the aides — potential witnesses in the government’s inquiry — do not currently have personal lawyers.

    Mr. Kasowitz’s advice to administration staff may benefit the president more than the aides themselves, the experts said. The conversations he has with aides could shape their testimony before Mr. Mueller has a chance to interview them, should they be called as witnesses.

    Staff are expendable. The Prince must be protected.

    Partly because of concerns that Mr. Kasowitz is undermining the White House Counsel’s Office, at least two veteran Washington lawyers — Emmet Flood, a partner at Williams & Connolly, and William A. Burck, a partner at Quinn Emanuel — rejected offers to join the counsel’s office to help represent the administration in the Russia inquiry, according to people familiar with the hiring discussions, although they may yet represent individual White House officials.

    Other noted criminal defense lawyers have similarly rejected offers to join Mr. Trump’s private legal team because of a range of uncertainties, including how much control Mr. Kasowitz exercises over his client, whether their advice would be secondary to his and whether Mr. Trump would pay legal bills. Besides Mr. Kasowitz, Mr. Trump’s personal legal team includes his partner, Michael J. Bowe, and Jay Sekulow, a Washington lawyer who specializes in free speech and religious liberties.

    Emphasis added. It’s either funny or horrifying the way that’s slipped in there as if it’s just normal. Will the billionaire pay his lawyers? Hmmm, there’s no telling.

    Under ethics rules, Mr. Kasowitz cannot interview any official who has hired a lawyer without that lawyer’s permission, meaning it would be in his interest if administration aides did not hire their own lawyers, experts said. “It is probably easier for him to represent Trump if he doesn’t have to deal with a bunch of other lawyers,” Ms. Sherburne said, adding that she believed it was inappropriate for Mr. Kasowitz to discourage aides from hiring their own counsel.

    Richard Painter, the White House ethics lawyer under President George W. Bush who now teaches at the University of Minnesota’s law school, said that in a worst-case scenario, a staff member might listen to Mr. Kasowitz’s advice and “end up thrown under the bus.”

    They are underlings. The Prince must be protected.

    Kushner, of course, has his own lawyer.

  • The poison fruit

    Trump is thinking about firing the special counsel. Well of course he is, he’s Trump. But everyone around him is advising him not to. That means he will.

    Newt Gingrich agrees with Trump though.

    “I think Congress should now intervene and they should abolish the independent counsel,” the former House speaker said. “Because Comey makes so clear that it’s the poison fruit of a deliberate manipulation by the FBI director leaking to The New York Times, deliberately set up this particular situation. It’s very sick.”

    Yeah, boy, that crazy Commie weirdo flake FBI director, that’s scary stuff man.

    Adam Schiff urges time-thrift.

    Schiff later told CNN’s Anderson Cooper he wouldn’t be surprised if Trump was considering ousting Mueller.

    “You have to hope that common sense would prevail,” Schiff said. “But it wouldn’t surprise me at all, even though it would be absolutely astonishing were he (Trump) to entertain this. The echoes of Watergate are getting louder and louder.”

    House Speaker Paul Ryan, however, did say he would be “surprised” if Trump fired Mueller.
    “I think he should let Bob Mueller do his job, do his job independently, and do his job quickly, because I think that that’s what he would want to have happen,” Ryan told conservative commentator Guy Benson.

    Unless of course he doesn’t want Mueller to find what there is to find.

  • Kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss kiss

    Now people are laughing at Trump for holding a Kiss the Ring or Perhaps the Ass ceremony at his first “Cabinet Meeting” today.

    Donald Trump opened a cabinet meeting Monday by bragging about the “record-setting pace” of his legislation, which is his fantasy as opposed to fact. Then things got weird, as Trump invited members to introduce themselves. They knew what to do.

    Watch the full 11-minute video

    Tell him he’s awesome. Did I guess right?

    The cabinet responded with appalling enthusiasm, viz: “we thank you for the opportunity and the blessing that you’ve given us to serve your agenda”; “great honor to serve you”; “my hat’s off to you”; “privilege of my life”; “thank you, great honor”.

    Oh god oh god oh god it’s so embarrassing.

    Chuck Schumer added his bit.

    Smirnoff added its.

  • Entanglements

    Then there’s that lawsuit filed today by the AGs of Maryland and DC:

    The attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia have announced they’ve filed suit against President Donald Trump, alleging he violated the Constitution by retaining ties to a sprawling global business empire.

    District of Columbia Attorney General Karl Racine and Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh made the announcement at a jointly held news conference in Washington, confirming the suit has been filed in federal court in Maryland. Frosh and Racine cited Trump’s leases, properties and other business “entanglements” around the world as the reason for the suit, saying those posed a conflict of interest under a clause of the Constitution.

    “The president’s conflicts of interest threaten our democracy,” Frosh told journalists. “We cannot treat the president’s ongoing violations of the Constitution and his disregard of the rights of the American people as the new acceptable status quo.”

    The RNC attempted to brush it off with the usual lies:

    A spokeswoman for the Republican National Committee says a lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump by the attorneys general of Maryland and the District of Columbia “is absurd.”

    Lindsay Jancek said Monday that Trump has been committed to “complete transparency and compliance with the law.” She says the lawsuit represents “the kind of partisan grandstanding voters across the country have come to despise.”

    Trump has been committed to complete transparency? Really? Even though he has never released his tax returns? Even though during the campaign he said he would eventually, but then when he got in he said no he wouldn’t? Come on. A lie that blatant would make a statue blush.

    White House press secretary Sean Spicer says it’s “not hard to conclude that partisan politics may be one of the motivations” in the lawsuit filed against President Donald Trump. He says the Trump administration will continue to move to dismiss the lawsuit in the normal course of business.

    Of course it’s not hard to conclude that, and it’s probably even true, but that does nothing to erase the facts about Don’s self-dealing and conflicts of interest and furtiveness.

  • 9th Circuit to President Liar: Nope

    Oh dear, poor Lying Don, another harsh blow. 9th Circuit says a big no to Don’s Excellent Travel Ban.

    Another federal court has ruled against President Donald Trump’s revised executive order limiting travel from six predominately Muslim countries — and like other courts, used his tweets against him.

    The ruling from a three-judge panel of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals is yet another stinging loss from a court that similarly refused to reinstate Trump’s original executive order on travel in February.

    “We conclude that the President, in issuing the Executive Order, exceeded the scope of the authority delegated to him by Congress,” the three judges, all appointed by President Bill Clinton, wrote. “(I)mmigration, even for the President, is not a one-person show.”

    The judges cited Trump’s latest tweets in the travel ban saga.

    “That’s right, we need a TRAVEL BAN for certain DANGEROUS countries, not some politically correct term that won’t help us protect our people!” Trump tweeted on June 5.

    Everybody warned him about that tweet. He doesn’t listen very well, does he.

    They also cited White House press secretary Sean Spicer’s confirmation that the President’s tweets are “considered official statements by the President of the United States.”

    Sad.

  • When backed into a corner, lie like a rug

    Amber Phillips notes there’s this pattern President Liar has of throwing out criminal accusations whenever the heat gets too close to his bum.

    We know that James B. Comey is a leaker. It’s doubtful that he’s a criminal; legal experts have said that even though the former FBI director shared his memos of conversations with President Trump with the media, if the information wasn’t classified, that probably wasn’t a crime.

    Do we know that Comey is a leaker? I don’t feel as if I know that. He shared his own notes with a friend with a request to read portions to the Times. The notes were typed on a fed machine on fed time, true, but is that by itself really enough to qualify them as a leak if he shares them? Especially when the conversation they record was forced on him in the first place? When he would have avoided the conversation if he could have?

    At any rate, Trump’s response was that tweet we saw yesterday:

    Trump just basically accused the FBI director he fired of leaking classified information, days after Comey testified under oath to Congress that the president might have interfered in an FBI investigation.

    In hindsight, this tweet probably shouldn’t have been surprising: When the president feels threatened, his go-to move is to accuse his opponent of doing something illegal and offer no evidence to back it up. Conspiracy theorists can and will pick this up and run with it, people can choose to believe which narrative they want, and the waters are sufficiently muddied.

    And Trump, I would think, has opened himself to a libel suit.

    But soon, Trump could regret this tweet. Congress might be calling the president’s bluff — if that’s what it is — by asking the White House to turn over tapes of Trump’s conversations with Comey (if they exist) and other evidence of their conversations. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) even invited Trump to testify before Congress. (“One hundred percent,” Trump said Friday when asked in a news conference if he’d testify under oath if asked.)

    The problem for Trump is that Comey is a largely credible witness, and his testimony under oath was detailed and shocking.

    Unlike Comey, Trump has offered no proof. And he appears to be going out of his way to create another story line: Comey is a leaker (true), and maybe even leaked more than we know about and it might be illegal (there is no evidence for this).

    I don’t think Comey has offered any “proof” either, unless the legal definition is more relaxed than I realized. He’s offered evidence. We all learned at the start of his that an agent’s contemporaneous notes are considered admissible evidence in court, but evidence isn’t the same as proof. I think the actual claim should be that Comey has offered evidence while Trump has not. The nature of the evidence though is surely different when the agent in question is defending himself as well as his agency, the country, etc. I don’t for a second think Comey lied, but if I were Trump’s lawyer I’m sure I would point out that it’s certainly possible that he did, and that he had a motive.

    Trump does this so often that reporters call him out in news stories for it. “It has long been his practice to stir up new controversies to deflect attention from a damaging news cycle,” The Washington Post’s White House team wrote about the wiretapping tweet.

    In November, just weeks after Trump’s election, he claimed that the biggest voter fraud in U.S. history caused him to lose the popular vote. Seven months later, there’s no investigation of this, and there is no evidence for it.

    He’s a serial liar, who tells destructive lies about other people to protect or puff up himself. And he’s the president.

  • Act One scene 7

    So what might happen next? Don could fall a few more flights.

    but how much worse could this get? The chatter on the Sunday shows hinted at where we may be headed. Here are a few things to watch for:

    The tapes Trump hinted at turn out not to exist. On ABC’s “This Week,” Jay Sekulow, a member of Trump’s legal team, said Trump will make a decision very soon on whether to release the tapes he may have made of his conversations with then-FBI Director James B. Comey.  After the news broke that Trump may have demanded a “loyalty” pledge from Comey, the president tweeted that Comey had better hope he doesn’t have tapes of their conversations. Trump has since hinted he still might release them, and congressional investigators have demanded them.

    This state of play is utter lunacy in its current form — the White House has still not said whether these tapes exist, even as Trump hints they might still be coming, and we are so numb to Trump’s daily crazy at this point that we now oddly treat this as somewhat unremarkable. Maybe they do exist. But what happens if the White House, in response to those congressional demands, ultimately confirms that they don’t? Experts think the White House will have to come clean in some way. At that point, it would be confirmed that Trump invented the existence of these tapes to chill Comey from offering a full public accounting of the events leading up to his firing — which itself was a massive abuse of power, given that Trump allowed it was because of the FBI’s Russia probe — in the full knowledge that Comey was going to serve as a witness before long. What will Republicans say about that?

    Most of them? The usual – he’s new to the job, he’s still learning about the rules and norms, he ran as a mavericky rebel dude, he’s a CEO not a politician, but her emails, draining the swamp, but Comey and her emails, yadda yadda yadda.

    But what if he confirms they do exist, and produces them, and it can be determined they were not altered in any way? Well then, clearly, he’d be in deep shit, so it’s not going to happen.

    What, there’s no chance that Comey’s lying and Trump’s telling the truth? Correct: there’s no chance of that.

  • Viciousness is it?

    Aaron Blake collects some of Don’s viciousness in response to his children’s complaints about the viciousness of people who dislike Don:

    For the second time in a week, one of President Trump’s children took to the Fox News airwaves to complain about just how rough-and-tumble our political system is.

    A few days after Eric Trump decried the political left as “not even people” over its “hatred” and treatment of his father, Ivanka Trump went on “Fox and Friends” on Monday morning and decried the “viciousness” of Washington.

    “There’s a level of viciousness that I was not expecting,” she said. “I was not expecting the intensity of this experience.”

    I guess she must think that her loathsome bullying father has some sort of right to be vicious because he’s so rich, and thus that she has some sort of right to complain about “viciousness” in his critics because she too is so rich (thanks to her vicious father).

    In case you’ve blocked out everything that happened between June 2015 and November 2016 (which=understandable), here is a quick refresher of the things Donald Trump did as a candidate:

    He also attacked Alicia Machado on Twitter and alluded to a non-existent “sex tape.” He also repeatedly called Senator Warren “Pocahontas.” He also brushed off his “you can grab them by the pussy” boast by calling it “locker room talk” – as if it were normal for men to talk about women like that.

    He’s a bad, poisonous man, with a bad poisonous character. He’s malevolent and cruel and, yes Ivanka, vicious. Look to thine own nest and clear the excrescences therein.

  • Sweating, are ya, Don?

    Poor Donnie. Sad!

    He’s not at all worried about any of it. Not at all. He’s chill and happy and focused and at peak performance. Definitely.

  • The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen

    Unsurprisingly, Lyin’ Donnie is having a hard time finding top lawyers willing to take him on. Gee I wonder why.

    Top lawyers with at least four major law firms rebuffed White House overtures to represent President Trump in the Russia investigations, in part over concerns that the president would be unwilling to listen to their advice, according to five sources familiar with discussions about the matter.

    …

    The president’s chief lawyer now in charge of the case is Marc E. Kasowitz, a tough New York civil litigator who for years has aggressively represented Trump in multiple business and public relations disputes — often with threats of countersuits and menacing public statements — but who has little experience dealing with complex congressional and Justice Department investigations that are inevitably influenced by media coverage and public opinion.

    And is barely literate and is vulgar and crude, so probably not the best choice for the job.

    The lawyers and their firms cited a variety of factors in choosing not to take on the president as a client. Some, like Brendan Sullivan, said they had upcoming trials or existing commitments that would make it impossible for them to devote the necessary time and resources to Trump’s defense.

    Others mentioned potential conflicts with clients of their firms, such as financial institutions that have already received subpoenas relating to potential money-laundering issues that are part of the investigation.

    But a consistent theme, the sources said, was the concern about whether the president would accept the advice of his lawyers and refrain from public statements and tweets that have consistently undercut his position.

    “The concerns were, ‘The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen,’” said one lawyer close to the White House who is familiar with some of the discussions between the firms and the administration, as well as deliberations within the firms themselves.

    Other factors, the lawyer said, were that it would “kill recruitment” for the firms to be publicly associated with representing the polarizing president and jeopardize the firms’ relationships with other clients.

    Other than that…

  • Just to shoot the breeze

    Good god.

    CNN:

    “When I’ve been reading the stories of how the President has been contacting (former FBI Director) Jim Comey over time, felt a little bit like deja vu,” [Preet] Bharara said on ABC’s “This Week.”

    Trump invited Bharara to Trump Tower in New York a few weeks after the election, and Bharara said Trump asked him to stay on at the time.

    Bharara said Trump called him twice during the transition “ostensibly just to shoot the breeze.”

    “It was a little bit uncomfortable,” Bharara said. “But he was not the President. He was only the President-elect.”

    The former US attorney said Trump called him one more time — in March, after Trump had taken office.

    “I refused to return the call,” Bharara said.

    He said he talked to his team and reported the phone call to Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ chief of staff, saying it appeared Trump “was trying to cultivate some kind of relationship.”

    Bharara explained it was important for him to stay at “arm’s length” from the President given the then-US attorney’s jurisdiction over business interests, including the Trump Organization’s, in New York.

    He also argued that Trump knew such outreach was problematic.

    Bharara said 22 hours after he declined to return the call, he was asked to resign along with the other US attorneys.

    And when he didn’t he was fired.

    Holy crap. Is that corrupt enough for them? Is that blatantly mobster-like enough for them? Is that grotesquely sleazy and wrong and criminal enough for them? A few weeks into his “administration”?

  • When he tells you to do something, guess what?

    Don Junior carelessly confirmed the truth of what Comey testified, in his eagerness to sneer at and defame him.

    Donald Trump Jr. — the president’s eldest son — seemed to confirm Comey’s version of events in a Saturday interview on Fox News as he tried to emphasize the fact that his father did not directly order Comey to stop investigating Flynn.

    “When he tells you to do something, guess what? There’s no ambiguity in it, there’s no, ‘Hey, I’m hoping,’” Trump Jr. said.

    He says dogmatically, but of course he wouldn’t know what Trump does when it’s a matter of being president and wanting to bully the head of the FBI into closing an investigation while also wanting not to be impeached for obstruction of justice. Even Trump isn’t so stupid that he thinks it would be totally cool and acceptable to just order the head of the FBI to shut that whole thing down. Why else, as Comey said, did he empty the room? Why else was that dinner just the two of them? So Don 2’s deep experience of Daddy is not all that informative on this subject.

    “When he tells you to do something, guess what? There’s no ambiguity in it, there’s no, ‘Hey, I’m hoping,’” Trump Jr. said. “You and I are friends: ‘Hey, I hope this happens, but you’ve got to do your job.’ That’s what he told Comey. And for this guy, as a politician, to then go back and write a memo: ‘Oh, I felt threatened.’ He felt so threatened — but he didn’t do anything.”

    So he’s pretty much as disgusting as Daddy then. It’s not that Comey felt personally threatened, as in Trump was going to assault him – it’s that he was amazed and alarmed that Trump was trying to strong-arm him into shutting down an investigation. That’s an entirely reasonable reaction from the head of the FBI to such a request. It’s not something for Little Don Trump to sneer at on Fox News.

    Trump Jr. also said that Comey’s testimony “vindicated” the president and that everything in it was “basically ridiculous.”

    “I think he’s proven himself to be a liar in all of this. I think he’s proven himself to be a dishonest man of bad character,” Trump Jr. said.

    Projection again. Seems to be a family vice. I wonder why.

    The interviewer by the way is a family friend of the Trumps. All open and aboveboard.