The NY Times notes that Trump for some reason brought his whole damn family with him for what should have been an official visit but instead was more like “Let’s everybody go to Disneyland three decades late.” They were everywhere – on the balcony, mugging for the camera at the dinner, stuffing their faces while chatting with various odds and ends of the royal household.

They were also present on Tuesday at Mr. Trump’s news conference with the British prime minister, Theresa May, seated in the second row, in front of some of the president’s senior government advisers. The president has also said that his children would join him on a tour on Tuesday of the Churchill War Rooms, and

Jennifer Rubin on Whitaker’s delaying tactics:

“This is outrageous,” said constitutional scholar Larry Tribe. “Whitaker seems to think he is entitled to dictate the terms on which he is invited to testify. He is not. It is anti-constitutional for a member of the Article II branch, not to mention an unconfirmed acting officer whose initial appointment was of dubious legality, to insist that he will not appear to give testimony properly sought by the Article I branch, acting through a duly constituted committee of the U.S. House of Representatives, unless that Article I committee first sacrifice one of its statutory and constitutional prerogatives.”

In other words they’re allowed to subpoena him, and he doesn’t get to refuse to testify … Read the rest

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner traveling during the Trump shutdown means Secret Service agents who are not currently receiving paychecks missed Christmas with their families so they could escort wealthy nepotists with no conception of public service. https://t.co/n2Elabfb5g

— Walter Shaub (@waltshaub) December 26, 2018

I looked for confirmation that Secret Service agents protecting Princess Ivanka and Princeling Jared are unpaid and couldn’t find any, but if that’s true…oy.

oh. my. god. Trump posted a video to his Twitter account after leaving Iraq — and in doing so, he gave up the location and identities of SEAL Time Five members who are deployed on a covert special ops mission. https://t.co/yUy8XrWMYX

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) December 26, 2018

Wo.

What next … Read the rest

Via Talking Points Memo:

The Securities and Exchange Commission late last year dropped its inquiry into a financial company that a month earlier had given White House adviser Jared Kushner’s family real estate firm a $180 million loan.

While there’s no evidence that Kushner or any other Trump administration official had a role in the agency’s decision to drop the inquiry into Apollo Global Management, the timing has once again raised potential conflict-of-interest questions about Kushner’s family business and his role as an adviser to his father-in-law, President Donald Trump.

That is, there’s no evidence that outsiders are aware of, so far, that we know of – but that doesn’t rule out the existence of evidence known to a … Read the rest

This is outrageous.

NBC News asked Ivanka Trump if she believes the women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault.

Trump replied, “I think it’s a pretty inappropriate question to ask a daughter, if she believes the accusers of her father, when he’s affirmatively stated that there’s no truth to it. I don’t think that’s a question you would ask many other daughters.”

What a fucking imbecilic thing to say. Of course journalists would be unlikely to ask other daughters that question, because other daughters are not high officials in their father’s presidential administrations. She’s got massive illegitimate power, because she is her father’s daughter, so no she fucking does not get to pull the Pained Daughter … Read the rest

Batshit crazy.

Ivanka Trump is leading the US delegation to the 2018 Winter Olympics closing ceremony, and the trip has thus far proved to be an exercise in diplomacy for the first daughter and senior adviser to the President.

…

Trump met privately with the South Korean President to brief him on economic sanctions against North Korea that the White House released Friday.

This is insane. https://t.co/EClYBOliQH

— Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) February 25, 2018

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin announced that Ivanka Trump briefed South Korean President Moon about the new NK sanctions.

Asked if she had the appropriate security clearance, Mnuchin said, “She has the appropriate access to brief the president.”

— Zachary Cohen (@ZcohenCNN) February 23, 2018

The

How graceful our new royal family is. Don 1 goes to visit survivors of the school shooting and grins like a partying frat boy for the cameras. Don 2 goes to peddle Luxury Properties in India and rejoices at the smiling faces of The Poor.

Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son, is in India this week to promote his family’s real estate empire and more than $1 billion worth of luxury Trump Tower projects in four cities, but he still had time to praise India’s poor for their smiles.

“I don’t mean to be glib about it, but you can see the poorest of the poor and there is still a smile on a face,” Trump said Tuesday 

This again.

The president’s eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., is making what has been dubbed an unofficial visit to India to promote his family’s real estate projects. But he’s also planning to deliver a foreign policy speech on Indo-Pacific relations at an event with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Princess Ivanka sat in on that meeting with Abe at Trump Tower in November 2016, and she “sat in” for Daddy at the G20. Prince Jared is working to solve the slight problem in Israel/Palestine. Now Crown Prince Don 2 is giving a foreign policy speech in company with the Indian PM. They might as well invite random people off the street to do it. These people have no relevant … Read the rest

Interesting. Julia Ioffe at the Atlantic reports that Don Trump Junior had a correspondence with Wikileaks.

The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.

Much of the time Don Two ignored them, but not all the time.

According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference

Junior’s mean tweet about Halloween candy and socialism backfired, because roughly 30 thousand people found witty ways to tell Junior what a nasty little swine he is. Twitter dogpiles are bad, but the Trumps are dogpiling the whole damn world.

Take 80% of her candy and give it to the top 1% of trick or treaters. You know like your dads' tax plan.

— Monteqzuma (@monteqzuma) November 1, 2017

Fill her bucket with old candy left by her great-grandfather, then explain that she has more because she's smarter than all the other kids. https://t.co/0lbhHYyFe4

— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) November 1, 2017

Good prep for when Mueller takes half her family and gives it to prison. Makes her costume

Ivanka Trump has a secret nickname among White House staffers.

White House aides reportedly refer to Ivanka Trump as “princess royal” behind her back, and it’s definitely not meant to be a compliment.

The president’s daughter apparently gained the nickname after the G-20 summit, during which at one point she sat in for her father, Vanity Fair reports.

Ivanka Trump has little to no political experience and was not elected to office, so many questioned what qualifications she had to act on the president’s behalf in such a formal, international setting.

Note the distancing move of “many questioned.” Obviously she has absolutely no qualifications to substitute for the president. Of course neither does he, but unfortunately he got elected … Read the rest

Jared Kushner thinks it was all no big deal…but people who know something about Russian intelligence operations all think it was a very typical overture.

Yesterday, Kushner insisted, “I did not read or recall this e-mail exchange before it was shown to me by my lawyers.” Whether or not that’s true, he attended the meeting. According to Kushner’s account of the meeting, it was uneventful. He got there late, some Russians he never heard of were discussing adoption policy, and he quickly messaged his assistant to call him so he had an excuse to bail. Longtime intelligence officials have a more jaundiced view. Michael Hayden, the former head of the National Security Agency, told me that he was convinced

Waaaaaait a second.

I’m not sure I’m reading this right.

The Guardian has a big investigative multi-author story on Russian money-laundering and Trumps and lawsuits and all that.

A Guardian investigation has established a series of overlapping ties and relationships involving alleged Russian money laundering, New York real estate deals and members of Trump’s inner circle. They include a 2015 sale of part of the old New York Times building in Manhattan involving Kushner and a billionaire real estate tycoon and diamond mogul, Lev Leviev.

Go on.

Leviev, a global tycoon known as the “king of diamonds”, was a business partner of the Russian-owned company Prevezon Holdings that was at the center of a multimillion-dollar lawsuit launched in New York.

The ABCs of ethics: it’s not ethical to have a government job with huge decision-making power over businesses and the economy they swim in, while also having businesses that can benefit or lose from your own decisions. Super basic, right? Not hard to understand?

CNBC reports:

Ivanka Trump or her trust received at least $12.6 million since early 2016 from her various business ventures and has an arrangement to guarantee her at least $1.5 million a year even as she serves in a top White House position, according to her first ethics disclosure made public late Friday.

The report was released alongside an updated filing by her husband, Jared Kushner, who is also serving as a top adviser

It’s Made in America Week at the White House.

Hahahahahaha I know. What about all those Made in China labels on Ivanka’s merchandise? I think we’re not supposed to ask.

President Donald Trump celebrated U.S.-made products on Monday, and in doing so he brought renewed attention to his own family’s production and sale of goods made overseas.

“We want to build, create and grow more products in our country using American labor, American goods, and American grit,” Trump said at a White House event touting products made in all 50 states, kicking off the administration’s “Made in America”-themed week.

“We are going to put that brand on our product because it means that it’s the best,” Trump added. He

Trump’s re-election campaign has been paying Junior’s legal bills.

About two weeks before the release of emails showing Donald Trump Jr. seeking opposition research from attorneys representing the Russian government, his father’s reelection campaign began paying the law firm now representing Trump Jr. in the ensuing political and legal fallout.

A new filing with the Federal Election Commission shows that President Trump’s reelection campaign paid $50,000 to the law offices of Alan Futerfas on June 26. That was around the time, Yahoo News reports, that the president’s legal team learned of a June 2016 email exchange in which Trump Jr., through an associate, solicited damaging information about 2016 election rival Hillary Clinton.

Isn’t that…illegal? Isn’t it illegal to … Read the rest

Now we’re up to eight (8) people at that convivial meeting in Trump Tower last year.

The revelation of additional participants comes as The Associated Press first reported Friday that a Russian-American lobbyist named Rinat Akhmetshin said he also attended the June 2016 meeting with Donald Trump Jr. CNN has reached out to Akhmetshin for comment.
So far acknowledged in attendance: Trump Jr., Kushner, Manafort, Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, Akhmetshin and publicist Rob Goldstone, who helped set up the meeting. A source familiar with the circumstances told CNN there were at least two other people in the room as well, a translator and a representative of the Russian family who had asked Goldstone to set up the meeting. The source

David Brooks (“not always wrong”) on the moral vacuum of Trumps:

The Donald Trump Jr. we see through the Russia scandal story is not malevolent: He seems to be simply oblivious to the idea that ethical concerns could possibly play a role in everyday life. When the Russian government offer came across his email, there doesn’t seem to have been a flicker of concern. Instead, he replied with that tone of simple bro glee that we remember from other scandals.

“Can you smell money?!?!?!?!” Jack Abramoff emailed a co-conspirator during his lobbying and casino fraud shenanigans. That’s the same tone as Don Jr.’s “I love it” when offered a chance to conspire with a hostile power. A person capable

Norman Eisen and Richard Painter discuss the “did he break the law” question.

The defense that this was a routine meeting to hear about opposition research is nonsense. As ethics lawyers, we have worked on political campaigns for decades and have never heard of an offer like this one. If we had, we would have insisted upon immediate notification of the F.B.I., and so would any normal campaign lawyer, official or even senior volunteer.

That is because of the enormous potential legal liability, both individually and for the campaign. The potential offenses committed by Donald Jr., his colleagues and brother-in-law who attended the meeting, and the campaign itself, include criminal or civil violations of campaign finance laws. These laws