Trump enters the stage

splinternews.com/just-the-presi … 1833303497

Is the country turning terribly wrong without any chance of stopping this, against a background that reflects a moral hiatus beyond good and evil?
And is that in itself an indication do to the overwhelming impact of science on daily life?

And now:

New Zealand: white Nationalism is not intentionally prescribed , but a silence to define it in terms of identity emboldened those, who by quoting Trump, who although politically is also appear naively, to use his constituancy’s vies as an expediency.

This tactic on the same day when he vetoes the congressional denial of his National Emergency.

Right wing resurgence can not be ruled out as an envisioned ideology of a Trumpish flavor, and the tactic of shifting blame on a pre-existing ideology to shift blame, will look bode badly for him, if there is a backlash, .

The way politics works, though, the fear of retribution will enhance the right wing to become more and more dramatic, as the judicial jaws of the Constitution will become in a conflicting position via a vid those who may form internal resistance.

The classic lines may become more dug in, and resort to denial and blame on the contrary groups.

The logical language is descending more toward hypocritical and avoidant
Shifts toward strengthening positions, every time a weakness is perceived.

People of the sort, constitutionally labeled as narcissists, ate more sensitive to displaying weakness, and the more their own constitution(with a small c) enables to overcome it, by more contrived, yet surprisingly well received naive interpretation.

And naivete is what his political core consists of, it has been pointed out. How large the white international agenda will become on basis of an agenda( the guy who murdered 47 people wrote testamentally, quoting Trump word by word, is evidentiary of at least some belief of colluding negative values into the world of public opinion.

As disparity grows, the hope that it will remain linearly contradictory is not as well founded, as one which views the hyperbolic incidence of such attacks as more fitting, judged by Charletville, and other flash points.

A free society when divided , is the vehicle through which to conquer. And such division is through which the symbol, or metaphore of power, is effected by the growing imagination of those who wish absolute corruptive power over all. Political reality, then uses induced but misaligned metaphore, to transpose and sustain political power through violence.

The republicans are to be blamed in their deliberate blindness to the lessons of history.

Were not the foolish separatists of pre-war days of the world wars of the 20 th century(Chamberlain and Wilson), give rise to the death of million lives lost? Did not McNamara admit in his memoirs the baselessness of the Vietnam war?

Can anybody learn anything? That the only admission that can be proclaimed, is that fear prevadrs, and those who value life should/ must believe in limits, as the good but ineffective president peanut farmer recommended, in order to salvage free enterprise, competition masking a severely insatiable need to possess, is at the bottom of it.

Regardless, it is a mistake to believe that the natural order of finance will bear out rationally a new breed of man: The trillionaire.

The best comic in the world can’t mask the underlying global contradiction, and the mimic of a language of hypocracy.

Now is the the time for all good men to come to the aid of their country. Don’t demonize Trump, because he is a wounded bird, caged by the immensity of structural change, that he may not pay the ultimate prizd5, for even the Dems, Ms. Pelosi, as well as Mueller, by this time know what really is going on. And selecting hate groups, becoming an unavoidable cathartic safety valve against something far greater, may develop, as a result, and should be another painful reminder of how not to let a run away train crash.

Stop it, before the obvious becomes a disgusting tally of hideous had be not s, wringing their hands and proclaiming innoscence.

Yet, still, self control can overcome displaying occasions of moral turpitude!

POLITICS
It’s Gonna Be Huge
The many towers that Trump never built

BRUCE HANDY
APRIL 2019 ISSUE

VASCO MOURÃO
Compiling a definitive list of what Donald Trump has not managed to accomplish, despite his self-proclaimed status as a master developer and dealmaker, is a task best left to a future historian. One project has recently made news: the skyscraper Trump sought to build in Moscow, a long-held dream he pursued throughout the 2016 campaign despite his repeated assurances that he had no business ventures in Russia. The nature of that potential deal, the vast sums of money behind it, the influence he brought to bear on the Russians and they on him—all of this is beginning to clarify, like a photographic print in the developing tray. The deal and the possible quid pro quos involved are a major focus of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

To hear more feature stories, see our full list or get the Audm iPhone app.

The Moscow tower, which at 100 stories would have been the tallest building in Europe, was but the latest attempt by Donald Trump to leave behind a skyline-altering legacy. His career is marked by plans for major projects that never came to pass—arguably to posterity’s benefit. Herewith, a quick summary of what never happened.

Trump Castle, Madison Avenue
Born: 1983. Died: 1984.
“Lunacy.” That was real-estate brokers’ contemporaneous description of Trump’s intended follow-up to his flagship Trump Tower, on Fifth Avenue in New York: a 60-story luxury residential complex, designed by the renowned if erratic Philip Johnson to mimic a medieval castle. The project included six cylindrical towers with crenellated tops, spires, and gold-leaf adornment, plus, at street level, a drawbridge and a moat. Announced in 1983 for a site on Madison Avenue between 59th and 60th Streets, it was to be called—inevitably—Trump Castle. Prudential Insurance had bought the land, on which sat an eight-story building, in 1981. The company then brought Trump into the project and gave him a 49 percent stake for free because, as a Prudential executive later explained, “his name had magic in it.” While Johnson’s castle design was, as architecture, a world away from Trump Tower’s black-glass slickness, Trump was enthusiastic. As “a source close to the developer”—probably Trump himself—told New York magazine, “After Donald did Trump Tower, there’s not a lot left for him to do in this business, so he just wants to do something great.”

Trump Castle (Johnson/Burgee Architects)
The partnership between the 37-year-old developer and the 77-year-old architect was not as unlikely as one might think, given their shared egotism and love of the limelight. “These guys are hot!” Trump told The New York Times, referring to Johnson and his partner, John Burgee, who had just goosed Manhattan’s skyline with the showy postmodernism of the AT&T building. Johnson returned the compliment, declaring, “Trump is mad and wonderful.”

No models or drawings of Johnson and Burgee’s design appear to have been made public at the time, though the architects’ campy, turreted office building at 33 Maiden Lane, in downtown Manhattan, hints at the glory that might have been Trump Castle. The project fell apart amid rising real-estate prices and increasing competition in the luxury-apartment market. Trump’s spokesman “John Barron”—most assuredly Trump himself—explained to New York that Trump Castle had become “just too expensive” and that the developer had grown impatient with the approvals process. Trump still got mileage out of the idea, buying a casino from Hilton Hotels and christening it Trump’s Castle in 1985. It filed for bankruptcy in 1992.

MORE STORIES

White Nationalism’s Deep American Roots

Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America
FRANKLIN FOER
World’s Tallest Building, East River
Born: 1984. Died: 1984.
Trump and Prudential gave up on Trump Castle in May 1984. Two months later, the Metropolitan Transit Authority unveiled development proposals for a site on Columbus Circle that it co-owned with New York City. One plan called for a 130-story tower—which at the time would have been the world’s tallest building, soaring 20 stories above Chicago’s Sears Tower. Headlines ensued, and if you were a brash young developer who had just lost the chance to build his own castle, you might have taken this as a slap in the face.

Two weeks after the MTA’s announcement, Trump snatched headlines back, declaring that he wanted to build an even taller world’s tallest building on land reclaimed from the East River, just south of the South Street Seaport. “New York City deserves to have the tallest and greatest building in the world,” Trump told the Times. “From the standpoints of light and air and density, this”—the East River site—“is the only location where that building could be built.” Trump’s vague proposal envisioned a combination of offices, a 40-story “luxury” hotel, and on top, 50 stories’ worth of “super luxury” apartments. In Trump’s mind, the “world’s tallest” designation was both a raison d’être and a shield: “I have not had one negative comment,” Trump would tell the Times. “If I had said 70 stories, 60 stories, everybody would have said, ‘Let’s block it.’ ”

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That remark about no negative comments? It didn’t hold. Two months after the announcement, Trump filed a $500 million libel suit against the Chicago Tribune and its architecture critic, Paul Gapp, over a critique that had dismissed Trump’s proposed building as “one of the silliest things anyone could inflict on New York.” The Tribune article was enlivened by an amusingly crude (or, from Trump’s perspective, “false and defamatory”) photo illustration of a drab, Lego-like skyscraper plunked down on the East River and listing toward Brooklyn, as if built on a raft. Trump’s complaint claimed that the bad publicity had “torpedoed” his plans—crediting the Chicago press with more influence than it typically wields in Manhattan. A year later, a judge dismissed the suit. In the end, the East River site was left to the fishes.

Two More World’s Tallest Buildings, Columbus Circle
Born: 1985. Died: 1985.
Columbus Circle (Murphy/Jahn Architects)
After declaring Columbus Circle all wrong for a 130-story tower built by someone else, Trump was back with two even loftier proposals for world’s tallest buildings on the same site, accompanied by renderings meant to dazzle the public’s eye (and perhaps preempt the Chicago Tribune’s art department). At 137 stories, the taller of the two buildings was a 10-sided telescoping tower designed by Eli Attia, the Israeli American architect arguably best known for his work on the Crystal Cathedral, in Southern California. At a widely covered May 1985 preview, New York City Mayor Edward Koch likened the Attia design to a “Flash Gordon building.” Whether this was intended as a compliment is unclear. In the Times, the architecture critic Paul Goldberger was not ambiguous: “It looks like storybook pictures of the Tower of Babel.” The second, smaller (135-story) design was by the German American architect Helmut Jahn, and what it lacked in height it compensated for with ostentation. It resembled a sky-high staircase made of glass. “It’s the Busby Berkeley building!” Koch proclaimed. “It looks like you could dance down the steps!” This was meant as a compliment.

Trump’s proposals lost out to one from a group headed by Mortimer B. Zuckerman (the owner of The Atlantic at the time). That design, by Moshe Safdie, topped out at about 70 stories. It, too, was never built, sidelined by the 1987 stock-market crash. Today, the site is home to the Lilliputian 55-story Time Warner Center.

Television City, Upper West Side
Born: 1985. Died: 1994.
“Make New York great again!” could have served as the slogan for the mixed-use project Trump announced in November 1985, only months after his Columbus Circle plans had been rejected. Trump’s most ambitious project ever called for half a dozen 76-story apartment towers, retail spaces, parks, and a new studio for NBC, which was then threatening to leave its longtime Rockefeller Center home. Thus the project’s name, Television City, which sounded dated even in the 1980s.

Television City (Murphy/Jahn Architects)
Television City was introduced (with a World of Tomorrow–style model) at a press conference that made national news. Its centerpiece was to be Trump’s fourth go at a world’s tallest building: a 150-story spire that would have cast a morning shadow all the way across the Hudson River to New Jersey. New York needed to be home to the world’s tallest building, Trump insisted. “This is to be a great monument, majestic,” he declared. “It shouldn’t be built in Denmark.”

Trump’s site was the old Penn Central rail yards, 77 dormant acres that stretched along the Hudson from 59th Street to 72nd Street—for years the city’s most extensive vacant lot and a graveyard for real-estate dreams, given the Upper West Side’s history of anti-growth activism. Trump had paid $115 million for the site in 1985. Again he called on Helmut Jahn, who designed both the spire and the residential towers. In interviews, Jahn likened the central tower to an obelisk, investing it with pharaonic, Trump-flattering splendor. Time magazine conceded that the overall plan had “a certain breathtaking screwball grandeur,” but one community activist, apparently irked by its grandiosity and its separation from the surrounding urban grid, dismissed it as “a veritable walled city.” To be fair, it had no moat or drawbridge.

Trump’s ambitions for Television City ran aground after he got into a fight with Ed Koch over tax abatements—a conflict that, given the two needily splenetic temperaments involved, exploded into a tabloid spectacle. Trump dismissed the mayor as a “moron” with “no talent and only moderate intelligence.” Koch refined his critique of Trump’s alleged greed to a memorable “Piggy, piggy, piggy.” Trump then lost his prospective anchor tenant when NBC decided that it would stay put in Rockefeller Center after all; generous tax breaks from the city helped. Television City’s final death rattle came in 1994, when Trump’s enormous debts forced him to sell the rail-yards property for about $20 million less than he had paid for it.

World’s Tallest Building, Wilshire Boulevard
Born: 1990. Died: 1992.
Wilshire Boulevard (Johnson Fain)
Just two weeks into the new decade, Trump announced his latest swing for the fences: a 125-story tower, yet again the world’s tallest, to replace the shuttered Ambassador Hotel, in Los Angeles. Trump, the public face of a group of investors, held a Saturday press conference at the Wilshire Boulevard site, joined by Mayor Tom Bradley and the local city-council member, neither of whom evinced much enthusiasm for Trump’s plan—a “world class” mix of apartments, retail and office space, and a new hotel. The Ambassador was most famously where Robert F. Kennedy had been assassinated, in 1968; as a Los Angeles Times columnist pointed out, the hotel bar, the scene of Trump’s press conference, was also where, in The Graduate, Dustin Hoffman’s Benjamin Braddock and Anne Bancroft’s Mrs. Robinson met for a drink before consummating their awkward, asymmetric, ultimately pathetic relationship.

Trump was soon feuding with Bradley (who decided the plan was “inappropriate for the area”). Another antagonist was the Los Angeles Unified School District, which hoped to build a high school on the site. With negotiations bogged down, Trump hired the L.A. architectural firm Johnson Fain and Pereira to provide a design. “Donald Trump used to call us the Die Hard guys,” Scott Johnson, a partner at the firm, later recalled, referring to its work on the flashy Century City office tower that had been used in the film. The design done for Trump looked like a display of Art Deco lipstick cases—it was later featured on the front page of the Los Angeles Times (and can still be found on the Chinese-language version of the firm’s website). But the school district had a powerful ally: Assemblywoman Maxine Waters, the future representative from California (and future target of derogatory presidential tweets), who helped find funding for the high school. Trump, fighting off creditors elsewhere, threw in the towel.

New York Stock Exchange Tower, Lower Manhattan
Born: 1996. Died: Circa 1998.
New York Stock Exchange (Richard C. Baehr)
In 1996, the New York Stock Exchange announced that it was considering a move from its historic (that is, outdated) building on Wall Street. Trump stepped in with a proposal for a record-setting 140-story headquarters on more or less the same East River site he had pitched for a world’s tallest building in 1984. But this time, the developer’s plan—with its painterly rendering of a beveled tower not unlike what was eventually built as One World Trade Center—barely stirred a breeze in the press. Perhaps Trump had as little credit with the media as he did with, well, creditors. His dream of erecting the world’s tallest building was, for all intents and purposes, dead. He would have to find another way to get his name into history books.

EMILY BUDER
Copyright © 2019 by The Atlantic Monthly Group. All Rights Reserved.

The Wall as metaphore.

The evolution of identity politics have come to encompass more then merely a literal factual assertion of re-establishing borders made out of wire, cement, steal ,it evolved to cement the idea of separatism and nationalism as a modal realignment of a previous status quo, of sentiment.

The identity of white nationalism is based on prescriptive and nominal perspectives on the ethnocentric cultural determinants of superior racial prototypes, where the transcendentilism of that preference cuts deep and last ing wounds begotten by other wars for resilience. The European 100 years war can be likened to the backwardly looked at wars of the 20 th century, based on hidden ideological premises, but that time span can more faintly be traced back to 1848, as movements for extending revolts against monarchical systems continued after 1776, and the revolt of colonies against the crown.

America has been culturally interpreted as the expositor of freedom, against the colonial suppression, and created the myth of freedom for all men.

But is this myth about to explode? Bringing with it even the intended declarations of the founding fathers as duplicitous?

Jefferson at al. owned men, slaves, who were below the stature in their opinion to possess rights, equally with their masters.The Constitution has been changed through revolution all through the succeeding times to follow, carrying public sentiment right along with it.

Can America be made great again, constitutionally? And how to achieve this resentment, how far back can it travel in time, reversing the counter flow if human rights, by how much blood shed in how many battlefields?

The boundaries of physical constructions have a deeper source of foundation , than would, or could estoppe it’s progression to human rights in general, where the result would certainly widen the gap between the jure and the facto perceptions of understanding. With that, the collusion may not be merely primal and political, but become subordinate to a dedifferentiated regression into the identity of corruptible reclaiming of titular possessions of the soul.

This is the struggle faced now, at a time when the significance of the wall is skipping away from metaphore into an effort to reclaim sentiment.

What is at stake is the struggle with the nuevoaristicratic repression of Capital.

All that is asked for at this point is the return of the rationality and control through limit the advance of remarking this sentiment through prescriptive precision.

The fake idiocy and foolhardiness does not really work long term, as Chaplin was far more worthy of applause, at a time when the contrary feelings predominates , due to the immense optimism that populism could be masked by the immense but short lived gains acquired, to anesthetize the whole world, from the recurring idea that absolute corruption can be avoided by limited power.
The anesthetic of remembering The Great Depression was hoped to be soon to be a thing of the past, dissipating any sense that it would not soon enough evaporate as merely another metaphore into the realm of the imagination.

Unless, unless this political theater is only a litmus test …which appears more likely every day, however with a base in the contrary. Then it is even more problematic and dangerous

As Russia report nears, Donald Trump taunts Robert Mueller
President Donald Trump

JOHN MOORE
DAVID JACKSON | USA TODAY | 1:16 pm EDT March 15, 2019

WASHINGTON – As the political world braces for news from special counsel Robert Mueller, President Donald Trump all but taunted the prosecutor Friday by saying his investigation is unnecessary.

“This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime,” Trump claimed in a series of tweets.

Trump charged there should have been no Mueller investigation — and therefore no Mueller report — “if” there was no crime when Mueller was appointed and “if” it was based on information collected by his political enemies. The Justice Department appointed the special counsel in 2017 after investigators developed strong evidence that Russia had sought to help Trump win the presidency obtained an array of clues that people in his campaign could have participated in that effort.

Mueller’s team has convicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, and other Trump associates on charges ranging from financial fraud to lying to investigators.

So, if there was knowingly & acknowledged to be “zero” crime when the Special Counsel was appointed, and if the appointment was made based on the Fake Dossier (paid for by Crooked Hillary) and now disgraced Andrew McCabe (he & all stated no crime), then the Special Counsel…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
…should never have been appointed and there should be no Mueller Report. This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime. Russian Collusion was nothing more than an excuse by the Democrats for losing an Election that they thought they were going to win…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
…THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 15, 2019
A federal appeals court in Washington and four district court judges have rejected challenges to Mueller’s appointment and his investigation.

Trump’s critique of the Mueller inquiry comes as two of the president’s former top aides – Flynn and deputy campaign manager Rick Gates – acknowledged in court papers this week that they continue to cooperate with the special counsel’s investigation.

Mueller report: What happens when Special Counsel Robert Mueller delivers his report?

Mueller report: Senate blocks resolution calling for public release of Mueller report after House voted 420-0

The president, his attorneys, and others expect Mueller to report something soon on his investigation into Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election by hacking the emails of Democratic Party officials and pushing fake news about Trump opponent Hillary Clinton.

Prosecutors are also looking into whether Trump sought to obstruct the investigation. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has testified that Trump implicitly encouraged him to provide false information to congressional investigators.

Trump has denied obstruction or collusion with the Russians, while denouncing the Mueller investigation as a hoax.

In transcripts released this week, two of the FBI officials involved in the early stages of the Russia investigation, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, told lawmakers that they didn’t know at the time Mueller was appointed whether the probe would prove collusion.

Strzok and Page, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages in 2016 and engaged in an extramarital affair, both said that’s not particularly unusual at that point in an investigation. Asked specifically whether the FBI had any evidence that Trump’s associates coordinated with the Russian government, Strzok said the answer was classified and would relate to an ongoing investigation.

“At the early stage of the investigation, there were a variety of things going on, and it was not clear to me what that represented, whether it was the activities of a group of individuals or something larger or more coordinated, or, in fact, nothing at all," Strzok said.

Months earlier, the Justice Department had persuaded a federal surveillance court that it had probable cause to believe “the Russian Government’s efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. Presidential election were being coordinated with [Carter] Page and perhaps other individuals associated with” Trump’s campaign.

Page is a former Trump advisor with extensive Russian contacts who came under government surveillance in 2016.

© Copyright Gannett 2019

‘It’s imperative for the rest of us to band together, rise up and fight back using facts, our words and the rule of law.’

Opinion
Trump’s media attacks are an abuse of power. We’re holding him to account
Wajahat Ali
Journalists and attorneys are partnering together in a new amended lawsuit filed by Pen America arguing Trump is violating the first amendment

Sun 17 Mar 2019 06.00 EDT Last modified on Sun 17 Mar 2019 06.02 EDT
As a recovering attorney and writer, I was often considered a failure in south Asian circles for not becoming a doctor. Now, I proudly represent two professions who offer the greatest resistance to Donald Trump’s continued assault on the first amendment.

Donald Trump tells a fake American story. We must tell the real one | Robert Reich

Journalists and attorneys are partnering together in a new amended lawsuit filed by Pen America arguing the president is abusing the machinery of the government to threaten and target journalists, neutralize critical media coverage and exact retribution in direct violation of the first amendment.

According to a blockbuster New Yorker article, Trump allegedly directed his former economic adviser Gary Cohn to pressure the Department of Justice to block a merger between CNN’s parent company, Time Warner, and AT&T in order to punish CNN for its critical news coverage of him and his administration. Much of these allegations were earlier cited by Pen America in its lawsuit against Trump for his targeted retaliation against media outlets for their coverage of him. One source claimed that the targeted merger actions by the president and Department of Justice were in fact about CNN: “This has become political … It’s all about CNN.”

Other instances support that the president limits media access when journalists cover news in ways he dislikes. At the US and North Korea summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, Trump praised, elevated and normalized Kim Jong-un, who starves and kills his own people. While he fawned over North Korea’s dictator, Trump blocked media access after a reporter asked a question about his former attorney Michael Cohen’s damning testimony before Congress.

The last two years should frighten anyone who cares about an independent free press.

The last two years should frighten anyone who cares about an independent free press. Lies are now “alternative facts”, according to Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. At one time, “fake news” or “hoax” were terms reserved for outlandish National Enquirer covers about Elvis playing Yahtzee with Bigfoot. Now Trump uses them for any news or evidence critical of him or his administration.

Trump is taking cues from Big Brother and 1984, a novel he most assuredly has not read. In an address to a veterans association, Trump assured them “what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening”. His attorney, Rudy Giuliani, continuing his slide towards ignominy, supports Trump’s disinformation by suggesting “truth isn’t truth”.

The Republican party in 2019 told Americans to reject the evidence of their eyes and ears. It might be Trump’s final, most essential command.

That warning by George Orwell might seem like dystopian hyperbole, but recall that Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, tweeted a digitally altered video falsely appearing to show the CNN reporter Jim Acosta assaulting an intern during a press conference. This literal “fake news” was created by the conspiracy-peddling outfit Infowars, whose founder Alex Jones said the Sandy Hook elementary school massacre of 20 children was a hoax.

Months later, Sanders’ tweet is still up there. She has yet to apologize for it.

Trump Inc’s utter contempt for facts and decency is only matched by its disregard for the rule of law and loathing of the free press. Trump himself has repeatedly vilified the New York Times as “the ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE!”. The president, who has uttered more than 8,000 false statements in the past two years, has the audacity and shamelessness to declare the “press has never been more dishonest than it is today”.

Trump has unpredictably emerged as a fickle, thin-skinned narcissist whose tiny fingers tweet perpetual victimhood, bile and hate against critics and enemies, real or imagined, even though he occupies the greatest seat of power and privilege.

For writers and journalists, however, his authoritarian impulses create a uniquely hostile climate for individuals simply trying their best to do their job of reporting the news. The BBC’s Ron Skeans was attacked by a Trump supporter at a rally in El Paso, Texas, after Trump whined about “fake news” and negative media coverage. Rachael Pacella, a reporter who survived the tragic Capital Gazette mass shooting that claimed five lives, tweeted that Trump’s continued attacks on journalists make her fear for her life. At a Montana campaign rally, Trump praised the state’s congressman, Greg Gianforte, for physically assaulting a Guardian journalist. “Any guy who can do a body slam – he’s my guy,” Trump said.

Donald Trump looks on as Greg Gianforte speaks during a campaign rally in Missoula, Montana, on 18 October 2018. Photograph: Carolyn Kaster/AP
In 2016, I happened to be the only journalist covering a Trump rally in Maine a few weeks before the election. I also happened to be one of the darkest people in one of the whitest states in America. For the first time in my career, several respected colleagues from multiple outlets texted and messaged me to “be careful” and “be safe”.

Fast forward to 2018, Trump is now president, and the United States was added to the list of most dangerous countries for journalists. According to Reporters Without Borders, 63 professional journalists were killed doing their jobs last year, a 15% increase since 2017. Most notably, the Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi was murdered and dismembered in the Saudi Arabian consulate in Turkey – a killing widely believed to have been ordered by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Trump has shamefully ignored his own intelligence communities and US allies in failing to condemn Prince Mohammed. Instead, Trump acts as Prince Mohammed’s defense counsel, going so far as to praise the incompetent King Joffrey of the Middle East.

If the president of the United States of America, the global figurehead and messenger for freedom and liberty, is abusing his powers to pressure and threaten his critics with impunity, why would authoritarian leaders not take it as a sign to bludgeon their own critics?

If Fox News and the rightwing media ecosystem has now fully transformed into state TV and propaganda, abdicating all pretenses of journalistic ethics and professionalism, then what is the responsibility for the rest of us who are at least attempting to be fair, thorough and truthful?

When an administration blatantly fails to protect a free press and instead willfully and maliciously abuses its power to threaten writers, journalists and critics, then it’s imperative for the rest of us to band together, rise up and fight back using facts, our words and the rule of law.

I hope people support Pen America’s lawsuit, or at the very least, continue supporting and encouraging journalists, writers and lawyers who are attempting, in the best way we can, to resist by simply doing what we know how to do best: our jobs.

Unfortunately for Trump, he has gone after individuals who always get the last word
© 2019 Guardian News & Media

Donald Trump Is Out of His Mind, Again

David Boddiger
Today 2:25pm
Filed to:DONALD TRUMP
null
Photo: Carolyn Kaster (AP)
It’s become a ritual for President Donald Trump to rant on Twitter on weekends. He usually tweets so much nonsense that there’s no point in covering it all anymore. However, this weekend, Trump is acting particularly crazy, and he even made a rare appearance at church on Sunday morning.

One thing that seems to be bothering him is that Fox News pulled one of his favorite TV shows on Saturday night. Probably still stewing over the fact that Jeanine Pirro was unable to spew her usual weekly bile on Fox, Trump turned on Saturday Night Live (or “S&L,” as DonJ calls it), seemingly unaware that it was a rerun of a Christmas episode from last year.

In the episode, Weekend Update featured a segment on Trump’s former fixer, Michael Cohen, turning state’s evidence. This was back when Trump was first referred to publicly as “Individual-1” in campaign finance violations Cohen was charged with in the cover-up of Trump’s extramarital affairs with a porn star and a Playboy model. Maybe that’s why Melania dragged him to church. Who knows.

The president was so perturbed he threatened to sic the Federal Election Commission on NBC. “There must be Collusion with the Democrats and, of course, Russia! Such one sided media coverage, most of it Fake News,” Trump tweeted, erroneously referring to a satire show as a news outlet.

I’ve already written in another post about Trump’s tantrum regarding Pirro’s show, but it’s worth noting that his response to that issue was spread out over three tweets. Those responses essentially defended Islamophobia, racism, and misogyny.

“The losers all want what you have, don’t give it to them,” Trump tweeted.

“Be strong & prosper, be weak & die! Stay true…to the people that got you there. Keep fighting for Tucker, and fight hard for @JudgeJeanine.”

But his greatest scorn this weekend was reserved for the late Republican Sen. John McCain. Citing former independent counsel Ken Starr, who helped billionaire Jeffrey Epstein dodge a long prison term for sexually trafficking and abusing underage girls, Trump falsely accused McCain of “Spreading the fake and totally discredited Dossier.” Trump also criticized McCain’s no vote on GOP legislation to repeal the Affordable Care Act in 2017.

That was Saturday. Meghan McCain responded by pointing out how much Trump is loathed.

“No one will ever love you the way they loved my father,” she tweeted. “I wish I had been given more Saturday’s with him. Maybe spend yours with your family instead of on twitter obsessing over mine?”

The next day, Trump doubled down on his attacks against the late senator, who died last August of brain cancer.

As The Washington Post noted, there’s a lot going on in this tweet, but the main thing is that it contains three glaring lies.

Per the Post:

The tweet contained three errors. McCain, a member of the Naval Academy’s class of 1958, graduated fifth from last in his class. The senator was not made aware of the Steele dossier until Nov. 18, 2016 — after Trump had won the election. And there is no evidence that McCain gave the dossier to the media.

Former McCain aide David Kramer, a Russia expert, testified in a deposition in the BuzzFeed libel case in Florida that he gave the dossier to the media in December 2016. McCain himself gave the dossier to the FBI, but there is no evidence that he gave it to the media.

Appearing on ABC’s This Week on Sunday, Democratic Sen. Chris Coons defended McCain, who isn’t here to defend himself.

“Sen. McCain conveyed that report out of a sense of duty, and he is someone who lived his entire life with a sense of honor and duty to our country,” Coons told host George Stephanopoulos. Coons called on Trump to apologize for his comments.

Meanwhile, finally taking a break from Twitter, Trump and the first lady attended Sunday service at St. John’s Episcopal Church, about two blocks from the White House. Trump made the journey in his motorcade.

© 2018 Gizmodo Media Group

As End Nears To Mueller Era, D.C. Lawyers Fear Lasting Politicization Of Justice
March 15, 201911:28 AM ET
Carrie Johnson 2016 square
CARRIE JOHNSON

Twitter

Kevin Downing, Paul Manafort’s attorney, leaves federal court after Manafort’s sentencing hearing in Washington on Wednesday.
Cliff Owen/AP
Updated at 3:45 p.m. ET

Members of Washington’s elite legal community decried the “increasing politicization” of the justice system at a particularly sensitive time: as the special counsel probe of Russian election interference edges toward a conclusion.

Abbe David Lowell, a veteran of high-profile cases who has defended members of Congress and Cabinet officials, lamented that public confidence in the FBI, the Justice Department and the rule of law itself has waned, even as he offered praise for Robert Mueller, the man leading the Russia investigation.

“I don’t know of a special counsel who’s done it better,” Lowell said at an event with other top lawyers on Thursday evening.

He added that he also has “great confidence in the career public servants” and the new team, led by Attorney General William Barr, at the Justice Department.

Top Mueller Prosecutor Stepping Down In Latest Clue Russia Inquiry May Be Ending
LAW
Top Mueller Prosecutor Stepping Down In Latest Clue Russia Inquiry May Be Ending
Lowell, who is representing President Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, said Mueller had conducted the nearly 2-year-old investigation with great integrity.

But Lowell also said he worried that no matter what the special counsel determines soon, those findings will be filtered through the political lens of lawmakers in the “big white dome” down the street from the Justice Department.

Members of Congress have battled over the Justice Department and FBI since not long after Mueller’s appointment, accusing it of conspiracies and cover-ups. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., renewed his call this week for a second special counsel to look into what he called the department’s transgressions.

Paul Manafort Sentenced To 3.5 More Years In Prison; New State Indictment Announced
POLITICS
Paul Manafort Sentenced To 3.5 More Years In Prison; New State Indictment Announced
Lawyers look in the mirror

Lowell and other panelists agreed that defense lawyers themselves also can contribute to the unhealthy and polarized environment.

Their comments followed only hours after an attorney for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort erroneously said that two judges handling his cases had found there was “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russia.

What the judges said was that because Manafort’s cases hadn’t involved allegations about collusion, they couldn’t opine about it one way or another.

The remarks, however, triggered an immediate and public reaction: In a chaotic scene outside the federal courthouse Wednesday, lawyer Kevin Downing was shouted down by protesters, who said he was lying.

Bill Christeson, a self-described activist on democracy and climate issues who’s become a familiar figure at many Mueller-related court proceedings, later posted an explanation on Twitter.

Bill Christeson
@BillChristeson
I yelled, “That’s not what she said!” and, “You aren’t lawyers you are liars.” I revere lawyers – dictators target them. And I know the mic’s are not for me. Downey lied. I used my first amendment rights. I do not apologize. But, I also do not anticipate ever doing that again.

12.4K
8:27 PM - Mar 14, 2019
Twitter Ads info and privacy
3,651 people are talking about this
Back at the lawyers’ event, which took place at the Cosmos Club, longtime former prosecutor Mary Patrice Brown advised the audience to stay tuned, since she said Judge Amy Berman Jackson, who presided over the Manafort case, may yet respond to Downing’s remarks with some action.

Jason Maloni, a spokesman for Manafort and his legal team, told NPR in an email that “anyone triggered by Downing’s comments should go back and review this case.”

Maloni continued: " ‘Russian collusion’ certainly seemed to be lurking in the background in both cases against Manafort. But when offered the opportunity to substantiate their claims and present evidence, the office of special counsel offered none. Jackson is correct — Russian collusion was not before the court in D.C. That’s because no charges made by the O.S.C. related to collusion with Russian officials."

A history of political attacks

Spiro T. Agnew (center) pleaded no contest to a charge of income tax evasion — after attacks against the judicial system. Agnew resigned from the vice presidency.
AP
The strategy of attacking the Justice Department or the system itself is hardly new, said panelist Peter Messitte, a federal judge in Maryland who was appointed to the bench by President Bill Clinton.

Messitte pointed out that former Vice President Spiro Agnew launched blistering verbal assaults against prosecutors while he was under investigation on allegations of bribery and other crimes in the Nixon era.

All the same, Messitte said, in 34 years on the bench at the state and federal level, “I have never really seen a case of partisan prosecution.”

Andrew McCabe, Ex-FBI Deputy, Describes ‘Remarkable’ Number Of Trump-Russia Contacts
NATIONAL SECURITY
Andrew McCabe, Ex-FBI Deputy, Describes ‘Remarkable’ Number Of Trump-Russia Contacts
Robert S. Bennett, who famously defended President Clinton in the sexual harassment case brought by Paula Jones, told the audience in D.C. that he is still angry that independent counsel Robert Fiske was deposed by a panel of judges in favor of Kenneth Starr, whose sometimes salacious final report on Clinton provoked a significant backlash.

Bennett’s remarks drew heavy laughter from the crowd.

The event was sponsored by the law firm Searby LLP and American University’s Washington College of Law.

© 2019 npr

On morning Joe, this morning, discussion swirled around comparing Trump to Mussolini, as a blind fascist follower , rather then am innovator like Hitler, it was a guaff, just like playing around with the Orwellian 1984 notion of Big Brother. But then, all that in reference to the wider concern with the protection of the Constitutional right of the freedom of the press.

In one of his tweets today, Trump appears to cozy up to Fox News, while demonizing the mainline media, reminiscent of the way propaganda was controlled in Germany prior to the outbreak of the Second World War.
Such allusions skirt the even more serious matter of the expanding role of technical intrusion into privacy, and the equally sensitive role which the increase of personal data basis have in the protection of autonomy.

In discussions of objectivity, surveillance, as a mode of establishing an emergent objectivity, places such quasi contractual social agreement , more into the level of assumption, rather then a valid socially validated program.

That brings to the forefront the question of, whether that premise, of technological assumption of heretofore human construction of objectivity has been concurrently been simulteniousy validated?

If so, do such assumptions denote any need for further discussions about such matters?

And may be, necessity for such can be hidden ipso facto, for ‘National Security’ and other such vaguely defined reasons, with having minimal reference to public say or opinion?

It least, such arguments may be understood to lay above and beyond the public’s awareness and capacity to understand.

Maybe the whole political structure , including that of the Mueller Investigation, Pelosi’s reticence for impeachment, Republican silent stand by, even the Judiciarie’s doubtful impartiality; may be interpreted in this light.


Dan Father’s view of Trump’s use of Twitter, as political propaganda:

DAN RATHER: The answer is, not very well. Look, we have to deal with reality. This is a whole new age. And the president has the strongest, the most powerful platform for propaganda that humans have ever had. No president has ever had this kind of reach, the combination of television, radio, the internet, social media, tweets.

STELTER: He does love twitter, that’s his one tech savviness.

RATHER: With all respect, I don’t think his age, 72, is an excuse for not keeping up. He’s basically anti-science. When you talk about what he says about climate change, that’s in a wider context of actually this administration led by the president is downgrading science at the very time we need to be leaping forward, keeping up with science. They’re cutting research and that sort of thing.

But, you know, with Twitter, much of the time, not all the time, much of the time, I sense the public has a sense that they’re facing a manure spreader in a windstorm. It just keeps coming and coming and coming at you. It’s ridiculous but it’s unrelenting. And he understands the value of that. But for the rest of us, and for the public at large, it’s time to take a deep breath, say to yourself, stay steady. Keep in mind that this is a tremendous tool for propaganda. See it in that context and do the best we can.

And here is the REAL political reality in the United States:

Poll: Half of Americans say Trump is victim of a ‘witch hunt’ as trust in Mueller erodes
SUSAN PAGE AND DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY | USA TODAY | 35 minutes ago

After almost two years, Mueller’s Russia investigation status can be confusing. Here’s an overview of the central question, and what we know.
HANNAH GABER SALETAN, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Amid signs that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference may be near its conclusion, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds that trust in Mueller has eroded and half of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt.”

Support for the House of Representatives to seriously consider impeaching the president has dropped since last October by 10 percentage points, to 28 percent.

Despite that, the survey shows a nation that remains skeptical of Trump’s honesty and deeply divided by his leadership. A 52 percent majority say they have little or no trust in the president’s denials that his 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow in the election that put him in the Oval Office.

That number does reflect an improvement from previous polls. One year ago, 57 percent had little or no trust in his denials; in December, 59 percent did.

Twenty-eight percent say they have a lot of trust in former FBI director Mueller’s investigation to be fair and accurate. That’s the lowest level to date and down 5 points since December.

In comparison, 30 percent express a lot of trust in Trump’s denials, the highest to date.

President Donald Trump has been relentless in attacking Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Mueller indicted 34 people, including Russian intelligence operatives and some of Trump’s closest aides and advisers. The indictments detailed the eagerness of the Trump campaign to benefit from a sophisticated Russian effort to influence the 2016 election but have not accused the president’s aides of participating in that operation. Last week, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in federal prison for financial crimes.

The poll’s findings set the stage for a ferocious partisan battle when Mueller submits his report to Attorney General William Barr. The president’s cascade of criticism of those pursuing him has fortified his support and raised questions about his investigators.

More: Did Trump keep promises to insulate himself from his business? Only he knows

Trump tweets about Mueller
That campaign continued this weekend.

“What the Democrats have done in trying to steal a Presidential Election, first at the ‘ballot box’ and then, after that failed, with the ‘Insurance Policy,’ is the biggest Scandal in the history of our Country!” Trump declared in a tweet Sunday night.

Friday, Trump tweeted that “there should be no” report from Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 to investigate how Moscow tried to influence the presidential election and whether Team Trump cooperated.

“This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime,” Trump wrote Sunday, adding in a follow-up tweet, “THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!”

Fifty percent say they agree with Trump’s assertion that the special counsel’s investigation is a “witch hunt” and that he has been subjected to more investigations than previous presidents because of politics; 47 percent disagree. Just 3 percent don’t have an opinion.

There is, unsurprisingly, a stark partisan divide on that question: 86 percent of Republicans but just 14 percent of Democrats say Trump is the victim of a “witch hunt.” Among independents, 54 percent say he is; 42 percent say he isn’t.

The president’s success in persuading half of the electorate that he’s been subjected to unprecedented scrutiny is notable, says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center.

"Even among people who said they had ‘some’ trust in the Mueller investigation, half agreed with President Trump’s witch hunt allegation,” he says.

More: What happens when special counsel Robert Mueller delivers his report?

“Trump, he gets badgered every single day,” says Robert Lynch, 62, of Selden, New York, a Republican who describes himself as a “100 percent” supporter of the president. Mueller’s report is “going to say no collusion, absolutely none,” he predicts.

Annette Lantos Tillemann-Dick, 66, an innkeeper from Denver and a Democrat, disagrees, saying evidence of collusion by Trump’s campaign is obvious: “You don’t need a report to see it. It’s in our face.”

Lynch and Tillemann-Dick were among those surveyed. The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cellphone Wednesday through Sunday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

“I hope that illegal collusion makes it very difficult for the Republicans to continue to defend undefendable behavior on the part of the person who is sitting in the chief executive’s office,” Tillemann-Dick says. “And I hope that it would lead to him being removed from office.” (Tillemann-Dick, who was called randomly in the survey, happens to be the daughter of the late congressman Tom Lantos, D-Calif.)

A shift on impeachment
Support for impeaching Trump has cooled, the poll shows, in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that she opposed the idea unless there was bipartisan support for it. Among Democrats, 41 percent say Pelosi’s comments had some or a lot of impact on their opinion about impeachment, about equal to the 42 percent who say they had no impact.

Pelosi’s argument that trying to remove Trump from office would divide the nation apparently flipped the public’s expectations of what Congress will do. Last fall, the poll found that a 54 percent-32 percent majority said a new Democratic majority in the House was likely to seriously consider impeachment.

Now, by 46 percent-41 percent, those surveyed predict that the House won’t.

“If he doesn’t get impeached, it’s not like it’s going to be the end of the world because 2020 is not super-far away,” says Calvin Crawford, 18, a political independent and a senior at University High School in Spokane, Washington, who was polled. “I think Trump is probably going to lose if a candidate comes out and starts to propose things that people actually want.”

Overall, Americans by 62 percent-28 percent say the House shouldn’t seriously consider impeaching Trump, compared with 54 percent-39 percent last October. While a 53 percent majority of Democrats support impeachment, just 6 percent of Republicans do.

Gloria Davy, 65, a Democrat from Tucson, says it would bring her “great joy” for Democrats to push for impeachment, but she worries about the upheaval that could follow.

“I can’t imagine what would happen to the stock market,” the Arizona retiree says. “So it’s probably best not to impeach him and to just have him run for his second term and lose. That would be the safest thing for our economy.”

She is eager to see Mueller’s report. “I’ll read it cover to cover,” she says.

Release the report?
As Mueller’s inquiry winds down, the debate over what to do about the confidential report he is required to submit to the Justice Department is heating up. Last Thursday, the House unanimously passed a resolution calling for public release of the report, but Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., blocked passage of the nonbinding measure in the Senate.

The poll found overwhelming and bipartisan support for releasing the report, whatever it finds. In all, 82 percent say it is important to them that the report be made public; 62 percent call that “very important.”

More: What happens after Mueller delivers his report? Congress braces for battles

A look at former FBI director Robert Mueller
Assessments of Mueller have become less positive and more partisan during his investigation. In June 2017, before he had brought any indictments or won any convictions, 30 percent viewed him favorably and 16 percent unfavorably, a net positive rating of 14 points. Twenty percent had never heard of him, and 33 percent weren’t sure what they thought.

In the new poll, 33 percent view him favorably and 31 percent unfavorably. That net positive rating of 2 points is his narrowest to date. As recently as last October, he had a net positive rating of 17 points, 42 percent-25 percent.

Few Americans expect the conclusion of the special counsel’s investigation is going to settle the controversies surrounding the president.

House committees controlled by Democrats launched a series of inquiries into Trump, his administration, his business practices and his family. Views of those investigations are narrowly divided: 49 percent say Democrats are doing the right thing by pursuing the investigations aggressively; 46 percent say they are going too far.

“Now we’re going after Ivanka, so there will be more and more and more,” said Davy, the Democrat from Arizona, “and he can’t veto it.”

Lynch, the avid Trump supporter from Long Island, says Mueller’s report will clear Trump and should recommend another investigation to follow into his 2016 opponent. "It should say, ‘OK, now we’re going after Hillary.’ "

© Copyright Gannett 2019

George Conway, husband of Trump advisor Kellyanne Conway, has an urgent warning about the president’s mental health
John Harwood | @johnjharwood
Published 7 Hours Ago Updated 5 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
Kellyanne Conway’s husband, George Conway, was once seemingly on his way to a top role in the Trump administration.
Now he has become one of the president’s most outspoken critics, even as his wife holds a key role in the White House.
On Monday, George Conway tweeted warnings about the president’s mental health. Kellyanne Conway responded: “No, I don’t share those concerns.”
Kellyanne Conway, senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives on stage with U.S. President Donald Trump during the White House State Leadership Day conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018.
Al Drago | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Kellyanne Conway, senior advisor to U.S. President Donald Trump, arrives on stage with U.S. President Donald Trump during the White House State Leadership Day conference in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday, Oct. 23, 2018.
At first, it looked like a package deal: Kellyanne Conway would join President Donald Trump’s White House staff, her husband, George, the new administration’s Justice Department.

The former happened, but the latter did not. And now, in a Washington spectacle unseen since the wife of Richard Nixon’s attorney general sounded alarms about Watergate, the spouse of a top presidential advisor is issuing urgent public warnings about Trump’s mental health.

As the Trump administration got underway, media reports placed George Conway in line to head the Justice Department’s civil division. But then Trump rocked the agency by firing FBI Director James Comey in May 2017, and within weeks George Conway withdrew as a candidate to remain a private lawyer.

Conway started publicly criticizing Trump days later. “Sad,” he tweeted, invoking the familiar Trump lament, that the president had complicated the legal defense of his travel ban with impolitic comments.

Soon afterward he sought to soften the impact. “I still ‘VERY, VERY STRONGLY’” support Trump, he assured Twitter followers, “and of course, my wonderful wife.”

By the spring of 2018, Conway’s tone had changed. After Trump called the appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller unconstitutional, Conway wrote a Lawfare article rebutting that “meritless legal position.”

That summer, he ripped the president more sharply. As journalists scrutinized Trump’s dubious assertions, White House disarray and diplomacy with Russia, Conway publicly mused about the fate of a business executive behaving similarly.

“What if a CEO routinely made false and misleading statements about himself, the company, and results, and public attacked business partners, company ‘divisions’ (w/scare quotes!), employees, and analysts, and kowtowed to a dangerous competitor?” Conway tweeted.

Kellyanne Conway bristles at questions about her husband’s words as unrelated to her White House work. Trump accuses George Conway of seeking attention.

Washington cynics dismiss his stance for a different reason. While she retains Trump’s favor through unyielding public advocacy, they reason, he courts the president’s foes with an eye toward life after the administration.

But recent days make it more difficult to ignore the substance of what Conway says about the most powerful man in the world. Last week, Conway questioned Trump’s mental fitness while excoriating him for false claims about federal Judge Amy Berman Jackson.

“Have we ever seen this degree of brazen, pathological mendacity in American public life?” Conway tweeted. “Whether or not impeachment is in order, a serious inquiry needs to be made about this man’s condition of mind.”

Over the weekend, the embattled president launched a scattershot volley of attacks against General Motors, “Radical Left Democrats,” “the Fake News Media” and the late GOP Sen. John McCain. Trump retweeted mugshots, circulated by a well-known conspiracy theorist, of MS-13 gang members facing murder charges.

“His condition is getting worse,” Conway tweeted.

Monday he got more specific. Conway circulated medical criteria for Narcissistic Personality Disorder.

“Don’t assume that the things he says and does are part of a rational plan or strategy, because they seldom are,” Conway tweeted. “Consider them as a product of his pathologies, and they make perfect sense.”

Others have raised such concerns. In his unsuccessful 2016 GOP presidential campaign, Sen. Ted Cruz called Trump an “utterly amoral … pathological liar.”

Some mental health professionals that year publicly called Trump psychologically unwell. After Comey’s firing, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein mentioned the Constitution’s 25th Amendment outlining procedures for removing a president on grounds of incapacity, according to former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe.

Rosenstein later said publicly he doesn’t believe any basis exists for invoking the 25th Amendment and never advocated that. Conway on Monday raised the issue anew.

“All Americans should be thinking seriously now about Trump’s mental condition and psychological state, including and especially the media, Congress – and the Vice President and Cabinet,” Conway tweeted.

If his wife thinks seriously about it, she doesn’t show it.

“No, I don’t share those concerns,” Kellyanne Conway told reporters at the White House on Monday.

© 2019 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal

Paranoia ~ utilized?~ crazy as a fox?

TheHill

ADMINISTRATION
March 19, 2019 - 08:33 AM EDT
Trump blasts ‘fake news media’ as ‘absolute enemy’ in latest attack on press

President Trump on Tuesday said that “Fake News” is the “absolute Enemy” of the people and country as he renewed his attacks on the media.

Trump lashed out at the “Fake News Media” as “dishonest” and “corrupt,” lamenting that “there has never been a time like this in American History.”

“Very exciting but also, very sad!” he tweeted. “Fake News is the absolute Enemy of the People and our Country itself!”

It’s unclear what specifically triggered Tuesday morning’s barb toward the press, but Trump, who regularly derides coverage of his administration he considers unfavorable as “fake news,” has accused the news media of blaming him for last week’s deadly shootings at a pair of mosques in New Zealand.

Some U.S. media coverage has focused on the suspected gunman’s manifesto, which called Trump a “symbol of renewed white identity,” and some pundits have argued the president has stoked white nationalist fervor worldwide.

The president over the weekend lashed out at the media on multiple occasions.

He targeted “Saturday Night Live” after the sketch comedy show aired a rerun that included an opening that imagined the world if he never became president, suggesting the program should face consequences for its jokes at his expense.

In the same tweet on Sunday, he called it “hard to believe” he won the presidency with “such one sided media coverage.”

Later Sunday, Trump chastised a trio of Fox News anchors, suggesting they should work at competitor CNN instead. The message appeared to come after one of the individuals anchored a segment that highlighted economic concerns in parts of the Midwest.

The president routinely labels NBC, CNN and The Washington Post as “fake news” and has called The New York Times an “enemy of the people.” He has rarely targeted Fox News in his attacks.

Updated at 8:52 a.m.

More in Administration
Conway hits back at Trump: Just guaranteed millions will learn about ‘malignant narcissism’
Trump fires back at George Conway, calling him a loser
State Department blocks reporters from Pompeo briefing with faith-based media: report

Deutsche Bank loaned over $2 billion to Trump: report

©2019 Capitol Hill Publishing Corp., a subsidiary of News Communications, Inc.

Deceptive tactics:-Stonewalling:

House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler wrote to the White House last month demanding information about President Donald Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to fund the construction of a southern border wall.

Yet Nadler’s Feb. 22 deadline came and went with no response. Not only did the Democratic congressman not receive the documents he wanted, he didn’t even receive a customary letter back from the White House acknowledging his request.

And yet:

Poll: Half of Americans say Trump is victim of a ‘witch hunt’ as trust in Mueller erodes
SUSAN PAGE AND DEBORAH BARFIELD BERRY | USA TODAY | 13 hours ago

According to a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University poll, Americans’ trust in Robert Mueller’s investigation is decreasing.
USA TODAY
WASHINGTON – Amid signs that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian election interference may be near its conclusion, a new USA TODAY/Suffolk University Poll finds that trust in Mueller has eroded and half of Americans agree with President Donald Trump’s contention that he has been the victim of a “witch hunt.”

Support for the House of Representatives to seriously consider impeaching the president has dropped since last October by 10 percentage points, to 28 percent.

Despite that, the survey shows a nation that remains skeptical of Trump’s honesty and deeply divided by his leadership. A 52 percent majority say they have little or no trust in the president’s denials that his 2016 campaign colluded with Moscow in the election that put him in the Oval Office.

That number does reflect an improvement from previous polls. One year ago, 57 percent had little or no trust in his denials; in December, 59 percent did.

Twenty-eight percent say they have a lot of trust in former FBI director Mueller’s investigation to be fair and accurate. That’s the lowest level to date and down 5 points since December.

In comparison, 30 percent express a lot of trust in Trump’s denials, the highest to date.

President Donald Trump has been relentless in attacking Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Mueller indicted 34 people, including Russian intelligence operatives and some of Trump’s closest aides and advisers. The indictments detailed the eagerness of the Trump campaign to benefit from a sophisticated Russian effort to influence the 2016 election but have not accused the president’s aides of participating in that operation. Last week, Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, was sentenced to a total of 7.5 years in federal prison for financial crimes.

The poll’s findings set the stage for a ferocious partisan battle when Mueller submits his report to Attorney General William Barr. The president’s cascade of criticism of those pursuing him has fortified his support and raised questions about his investigators.

More: Did Trump keep promises to insulate himself from his business? Only he knows

Trump tweets about Mueller
That campaign continued this weekend.

“What the Democrats have done in trying to steal a Presidential Election, first at the ‘ballot box’ and then, after that failed, with the ‘Insurance Policy,’ is the biggest Scandal in the history of our Country!” Trump declared in a tweet Sunday night.

Friday, Trump tweeted that “there should be no” report from Mueller, who was appointed in May 2017 to investigate how Moscow tried to influence the presidential election and whether Team Trump cooperated.

“This was an illegal & conflicted investigation in search of a crime,” Trump wrote Sunday, adding in a follow-up tweet, “THIS SHOULD NEVER HAPPEN TO A PRESIDENT AGAIN!”

Fifty percent say they agree with Trump’s assertion that the special counsel’s investigation is a “witch hunt” and that he has been subjected to more investigations than previous presidents because of politics; 47 percent disagree. Just 3 percent don’t have an opinion.

There is, unsurprisingly, a stark partisan divide on that question: 86 percent of Republicans but just 14 percent of Democrats say Trump is the victim of a “witch hunt.” Among independents, 54 percent say he is; 42 percent say he isn’t.

The president’s success in persuading half of the electorate that he’s been subjected to unprecedented scrutiny is notable, says David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk Political Research Center.

"Even among people who said they had ‘some’ trust in the Mueller investigation, half agreed with President Trump’s witch hunt allegation,” he says.

More: What happens when special counsel Robert Mueller delivers his report?

“Trump, he gets badgered every single day,” says Robert Lynch, 62, of Selden, New York, a Republican who describes himself as a “100 percent” supporter of the president. Mueller’s report is “going to say no collusion, absolutely none,” he predicts.

Annette Lantos Tillemann-Dick, 66, an innkeeper from Denver and a Democrat, disagrees, saying evidence of collusion by Trump’s campaign is obvious: “You don’t need a report to see it. It’s in our face.”

Lynch and Tillemann-Dick were among those surveyed. The poll of 1,000 registered voters, taken by landline and cellphone Wednesday through Sunday, has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percentage points.

“I hope that illegal collusion makes it very difficult for the Republicans to continue to defend undefendable behavior on the part of the person who is sitting in the chief executive’s office,” Tillemann-Dick says. “And I hope that it would lead to him being removed from office.” (Tillemann-Dick, who was called randomly in the survey, happens to be the daughter of the late congressman Tom Lantos, D-Calif.)

A shift on impeachment
Support for impeaching Trump has cooled, the poll shows, in the wake of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s declaration that she opposed the idea unless there was bipartisan support for it. Among Democrats, 41 percent say Pelosi’s comments had some or a lot of impact on their opinion about impeachment, about equal to the 42 percent who say they had no impact.

Pelosi’s argument that trying to remove Trump from office would divide the nation apparently flipped the public’s expectations of what Congress will do. Last fall, the poll found that a 54 percent-32 percent majority said a new Democratic majority in the House was likely to seriously consider impeachment.

Now, by 46 percent-41 percent, those surveyed predict that the House won’t.

“If he doesn’t get impeached, it’s not like it’s going to be the end of the world because 2020 is not super-far away,” says Calvin Crawford, 18, a political independent and a senior at University High School in Spokane, Washington, who was polled. “I think Trump is probably going to lose if a candidate comes out and starts to propose things that people actually want.”

Overall, Americans by 62 percent-28 percent say the House shouldn’t seriously consider impeaching Trump, compared with 54 percent-39 percent last October. While a 53 percent majority of Democrats support impeachment, just 6 percent of Republicans do.

Gloria Davy, 65, a Democrat from Tucson, says it would bring her “great joy” for Democrats to push for impeachment, but she worries about the upheaval that could follow.

“I can’t imagine what would happen to the stock market,” the Arizona retiree says. “So it’s probably best not to impeach him and to just have him run for his second term and lose. That would be the safest thing for our economy.”

She is eager to see Mueller’s report. “I’ll read it cover to cover,” she says.

Release the report?
As Mueller’s inquiry winds down, the debate over what to do about the confidential report he is required to submit to the Justice Department is heating up. Last Thursday, the House unanimously passed a resolution calling for public release of the report, but Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., blocked passage of the nonbinding measure in the Senate.

The poll found overwhelming and bipartisan support for releasing the report, whatever it finds. In all, 82 percent say it is important to them that the report be made public; 62 percent call that “very important.”

More: What happens after Mueller delivers his report? Congress braces for battles

Assessments of Mueller have become less positive and more partisan during his investigation. In June 2017, before he had brought any indictments or won any convictions, 30 percent viewed him favorably and 16 percent unfavorably, a net positive rating of 14 points. Twenty percent had never heard of him, and 33 percent weren’t sure what they thought.

In the new poll, 33 percent view him favorably and 31 percent unfavorably. That net positive rating of 2 points is his narrowest to date. As recently as last October, he had a net positive rating of 17 points, 42 percent-25 percent.

Few Americans expect the conclusion of the special counsel’s investigation is going to settle the controversies surrounding the president.

House committees controlled by Democrats launched a series of inquiries into Trump, his administration, his business practices and his family. Views of those investigations are narrowly divided: 49 percent say Democrats are doing the right thing by pursuing the investigations aggressively; 46 percent say they are going too far.

“Now we’re going after Ivanka, so there will be more and more and more,” said Davy, the Democrat from Arizona, “and he can’t veto it.”

Lynch, the avid Trump supporter from Long Island, says Mueller’s report will clear Trump and should recommend another investigation to follow into his 2016 opponent. "It should say, ‘OK, now we’re going after Hillary.’ "

© Copyright Gannett 2019

Perhaps this theatre of tests, the litmus between social processing of wjat goes between socialism and capitalism, so as that this U.S. political microcosm can mirror wjat.goes on an evolving new world order

How? Because, no one wants to communicate another hidden policy assumption floating around, that surmises the assumption of a nuclear war had not Trump been elected.

This logic, corresponds to the contradictory understanding of his constituency, who take this in faithfully.

Whereas this contradiction is mirrored in the potentially vastly larger scope of national-international conflict.

For this reason , the stalemate , even with perhaps the coming of the publication of the Mueller report.

And most grass roots sources have never experienced major contradiction as politically nearing absolute so they can not entail it.

So they create a hyper real image, enters the under rated actor, who can be foreseen to cause trouble, as ma y artists have.

Better to have him join, especially a bankrupt and ego laden exemplar of vanity.

Enters Trump unto the unenviable stage.

Surprising pollimg

Donald Trump
“The economy is just so damn strong right now and by all historic precedent the incumbent should run away with it,” said Donald Luskin, chief investment officer of TrendMacrolytics, a research firm whose model correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 win when most opinion polls did not. | Evan Vucci/AP Photo

2020 ELECTIONS

How Trump is on track for a 2020 landslide
Economic models point to a Trump blowout in 2020. But a faltering economy or giant scandal could change everything.

By BEN WHITE and STEVEN SHEPARD 03/21/2019 05:02 AM EDT
President Donald Trump has a low approval rating. He is engaging in bitter Twitter wars and facing metastasizing investigations.

But if the election were held today, he’d likely ride to a second term in a huge landslide, according to multiple economic models with strong track records of picking presidential winners and losses.

Credit a strong U.S. economy featuring low unemployment, rising wages and low gas prices — along with the historic advantage held by incumbent presidents.

While Trump appears to be in a much stronger position than his approval rating and conventional Beltway wisdom might suggest, he also could wind up in trouble if the economy slows markedly between now and next fall, as many analysts predict it will.

And other legal bombshells could explode the current scenario. Trump’s party managed to lose the House in 2018 despite a strong economy. So the models could wind up wrong this time around.

Despite all these caveats, Trump looks surprisingly good if the old James Carville maxim coined in 1992 — “the economy, stupid” — holds true in 2020.

“The economy is just so damn strong right now and by all historic precedent the incumbent should run away with it,” said Donald Luskin, chief investment officer of TrendMacrolytics, a research firm whose model correctly predicted Trump’s 2016 win when most opinion polls did not. “I just don’t see how the blue wall could resist all that.”

Models maintained by economists and market strategists like Luskin tend to ignore election polls and personal characteristics of candidates. Instead, they begin with historical trends and then build in key economic data including growth rates, wages, unemployment, inflation and gas prices to predict voting behavior and election outcomes.

Yale economist Ray Fair, who pioneered this kind of modeling, also shows Trump winning by a fair margin in 2020 based on the economy and the advantage of incumbency.

“Even if you have a mediocre but not great economy — and that’s more or less consensus for between now and the election — that has a Trump victory and by a not-trivial margin,” winning 54 percent of the popular vote to 46 for the Democrat, he said. Fair’s model also predicted a Trump win in 2016 though it missed on Trump’s share of the popular vote.

Still, Luskin, Fair and other analysts who use economic data and voting history to make predictions also note that a sharp decline in growth and an increase in the unemployment rate by next fall could alter Trump’s fortunes.

O’Rourke’s sprint out of the gate leaves Democratic field gasping
By DAVID SIDERS and CHRISTOPHER CADELAGO
“It would have to slow a lot to still be not pretty good,” Luskin said, adding that what really matters is the pace of change. Even if overall numbers remain fairly strong, a sharp move in the wrong direction could alter voting behavior.

Luskin’s current model — which looks at GDP growth, gas prices, inflation, disposable income, tax burden and payrolls — has Trump winning by a blowout margin of 294 electoral votes.

The White House remains confident that the GOP tax cut will support growth of 3 percent both this year and next, keeping job and wage gains strong. That’s much higher than consensus forecasts from the Federal Reserve and major banks that generally see a global slowdown led by Europe and China, coupled with the fading impact of U.S. tax cuts pushing U.S. growth closer to 2 percent this year with job gains slowing.

But Trump may have one major ally in his quest to make sure the numbers don’t go much lower than this: the Fed, which recently stopped its campaign of interest rate hikes. And on Wednesday the central bank said it foresees no more rate hikes this year.

The moves followed months of Trump bashing the Fed for raising rates too much and stomping on his economy, though Chairman Jerome Powell has said repeatedly that politics plays no role in the bank’s decision.

Whatever the case, a much more gentle Fed could slide a floor beneath any decline in Trump’s economy and boost his reelection chances significantly.

Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics and a regular Trump critic, has been road-testing a dozen different economic models for the 2020 race. At this point, Trump wins in all 12 — and quite comfortably in most of them. The Moody’s models look at economic trends at the state level.

“If the election were held today, Trump would win according to the models and pretty handily,” Zandi said. “In three or four of them it would be pretty close. He’s got low gas prices, low unemployment and a lot of other political variables at his back. The only exception is his popularity, which matters a lot. If that falls off a cliff it would make a big difference.” The Moody’s models look at economic trends at the state level and incorporate some political variables including a president’s approval rating.

The Moody’s approach performed well in recent presidential elections, but missed the 2016 result in part because it did not account for a potential drop in Democratic turnout in key swing states. Zandi is trying to correct for that now before rolling out a new model sometime this summer

Klobuchar’s ‘senator next door’ strategy collides with Betomania
By ELENA SCHNEIDER
Trump has already upended many of the rules of presidential politics. His party suffered a drubbing in last year’s midterm elections despite the strong economy, and the yawning gap between how voters view the president and the nation’s economic standing is growing even larger: Presidents typically just aren’t this unpopular when the economic engine is humming along.

Trump this week seized on a new CNN poll that showed more than seven in 10 Americans, or 71 percent, view the U.S. economy as “very good” or “somewhat good.” That was higher than CNN has measured at any point since a CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll in Feb. 2001 found 80 percent thought the economy was that robust.

Yet Trump’s approval rating in the poll — which is usually tied closely to the economy — is just 42 percent. And unlike during the late ’90s, when President Bill Clinton’s approval ratings surged ahead of his personal favorability amid major scandal, Trump’s favorable ratings (41 percent in the CNN poll) track closely with his job-approval rating.

Those low scores also apply to many attributes typically seen as desirable in presidents. Just 40 percent say Trump cares about people like them; 34 percent say he is honest and trustworthy; 41 percent say he can manage the government effectively; and 32 percent say he will unite the country, not divide it.

Moreover, even how Americans view the state of the country has become divorced from the economy. In the latest POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, only 36 percent of voters said the U.S. was headed in the right direction, compared with nearly two-thirds, 64 percent, who said it was off on the wrong track.

For the economic models to be correct, voters would have to shrug off much of what they dislike about Trump and decide the strength of the economy makes a change unwise.

Prominent Democrats know that while Trump might seem like a loose cannon faced with the threat of a devastating report from special counsel Robert Mueller, he will likely be a formidable opponent in 2020, especially if the economy remains close to where it is today.

“Despite the fact that Trump is a largely incompetent clown, Democrats should not be overly confident or sanguine that they can beat him,” said Dan Pfeiffer, a top aide to former President Barack Obama. “He is a slight favorite to win. But he barely won last time and it took a Black Swan series of events to make that happen. All Democrats have to do is flip 100,000 or so votes in three states to win and that’s a very doable thing.

The changing faces of Trump

youtu.be/lnrMpKqZtD0

youtu.be/_FLo14GMYos

And the early years:

youtu.be/rFGE3X6Yhj0

The New York Times

Months After John McCain’s Death, Trump Keeps Feud With Him Alive

President Trump continued his criticism of the late Senator John McCain during a speech at a tank plant in Lima, Ohio, on Wednesday.
IMAGE BY SARAH SILBIGER/THE NEW YORK TIMES
By Maggie Haberman, Annie Karni and Michael Tackett
March 20, 2019
LIMA, Ohio — It is an obsession he cannot seem to shake.

Senator John McCain of Arizona has been dead for seven months, but President Trump’s feud with him is very much alive, and in front of a military audience at a tank plant here in Lima, Ohio, on Wednesday, he took it to a new level.

He said he gave Mr. McCain “the funeral he wanted, and I didn’t get ‘thank you,’” exaggerating the role he played in honoring the senator’s death four days before his 82nd birthday.

He blamed him for “a war in the Middle East that McCain pushed so hard.” He said that “McCain didn’t get the job done for our great vets” and the Department of Veterans Affairs. And he was blunt in saying that his animosity toward Mr. McCain was not going to change.

“I have to be honest: I’ve never liked him much,” Mr. Trump said, about 10 minutes into a freewheeling speech that was ostensibly about the resurgence of manufacturing jobs. “Hasn’t been for me. I’ve really — probably never will.”

The long, antagonistic history between the president and Mr. McCain, in his youth a Navy pilot and prisoner of war celebrated for his bravery and later known as a maverick in the Republican Party, dates to the early days of the 2016 presidential campaign. Mr. Trump, who never served in the military, said Mr. McCain was not a war hero, adding, “I like people who weren’t captured.”

Mr. Trump was reacting to the senator’s accusation that he riled up “crazies” with inflammatory remarks about illegal immigration across the Mexican border. His attack on Mr. McCain, the party’s 2008 presidential candidate, horrified his own aides and led Republican leaders to denounce the outsider who was already disrupting their party. It also proved to be an early example of Mr. Trump’s ability to remain undamaged by any self-created controversy.

Now, months after Mr. McCain’s death in August, Mr. Trump suddenly cannot stop talking about his old adversary, outraging Mr. McCain’s supporters and creating another divide — if only temporary — between himself and congressional Republicans.

His attacks began over the weekend, when the president used his Twitter feed to berate Mr. McCain for his role in giving the F.B.I. a dossier of unverified information about Mr. Trump’s connections to Russia that was compiled by a former British spy — a dossier the F.B.I. already had. He brought up Mr. McCain’s vote against repealing the Affordable Care Act. He claimed that Mr. McCain, a former prisoner of war, was “last in his class” at the Naval Academy, when Mr. McCain actually graduated fifth from the bottom.

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On Tuesday, seated in the Oval Office next to President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, Mr. Trump told reporters that he was “never a fan” of Mr. McCain, and never would be. And on Wednesday, Mr. Trump reiterated all those reasons in a diatribe that was part of a week that Mr. Trump seems to have dedicated to airing personal feuds.

He has spent days criticizing George T. Conway III, the husband of Kellyanne Conway, one of his top advisers, who has been raising alarms about the president’s mental health and calling him unfit for office via his Twitter feed. On his way to Ohio, Mr. Trump called Mr. Conway a “whack job,” capping two days of back and forth with the spouse of one of his most loyal and longest-serving aides.

But his relentless fixation on Mr. McCain was more reminiscent of an election-year feud Mr. Trump escalated against a Gold Star father, Khizr Khan, who spoke at the Democratic National Convention, and, brandishing a pocket Constitution, challenged Mr. Trump for smearing the character of Muslims. Republicans once again denounced Mr. Trump when he continued to attack Mr. Khan and his wife, who Mr. Trump implied was forced against her will to stand silently by her husband’s side during the emotional speech.

The feud with Mr. McCain, however, has carried into his presidency, even after the man who was considered an elder statesman of the Senate learned he had brain cancer and eventually died.

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Planning his funeral, Mr. McCain made it clear that the president would not be welcome, leaving Mr. Trump to fume when his two immediate predecessors, Barack Obama and George W. Bush, eulogized Mr. McCain in a service at Washington National Cathedral. The president’s response was to stall on issuing any proclamation of praise, or ordering flags to be flown at half-staff to commemorate the senator’s death.

His posthumous attacks have been cheered at the president’s Make America Great rallies. But at the army tank plant in Lima, where Mr. Trump said a third of the work force is made up of veterans, the denunciations drew no cheers. And they once again resulted in rare criticism from Mr. Trump’s own party.

On Wednesday, Senator Johnny Isakson, Republican of Georgia, called out the president’s string of recent comments about Mr. McCain.

“It’s deplorable what he said,” Mr. Isakson said in an interview with Georgia Public Broadcasting’s “Political Rewind” radio show, adding, “It will be deplorable seven months from now if he says it again, and I will continue to speak out.”

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He joined Senator Mitt Romney, Republican of Utah, who had criticized the president on Tuesday. “I can’t understand why the President would, once again, disparage a man as exemplary as my friend John McCain: heroic, courageous, patriotic, honorable, self-effacing, self-sacrificing, empathetic, and driven by duty to family, country, and God,” Mr. Romney wrote on Twitter.

Other Republicans, like Senator Mitch McConnell, the majority leader, however, were more muted in responding to Mr. Trump’s latest attacks, choosing to emphasize their support for Mr. McCain rather than confront the president.

But at least one Democratic presidential candidate used the moment to demand change in the White House.

“This Vietnam vet was brought to tears when hearing the stories of the President going after John McCain this week, as well as the lack of focus on mental health for kids in this country,” Senator Amy Klobuchar, Democrat of Minnesota, wrote on Twitter, with a picture of her embracing a veteran.

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Mr. McCain’s family, meanwhile, responded in his stead.

“This is a new bizarre low,” Mr. McCain’s daughter, Meghan McCain, said on “The View” on Wednesday. “I will say attacking someone who isn’t here is a bizarre low. My dad’s not here, but I’m sure as hell here.”

She added: “I think if I had told my dad, ‘Seven months after you’re dead, you’re going to be dominating the news and all over Twitter,’ he would think it’s hilarious that our president was so jealous of him that he was dominating the news cycle in death as well.”

Mr. McCain’s widow, Cindy McCain, for her part, shared on Twitter a hateful message she received after Mr. Trump’s most recent attacks, in which the sender wished that Ms. McCain’s daughter “chokes to death.”

Mark Salter, Mr. McCain’s closest political adviser and a harsh critic of the president, said all of Mr. Trump’s personal attacks against critics were of a piece.

“The problem isn’t Trump’s disrespect to John and his family — it’s Trump,” he said. “He’s unfit for the office, and most members of Congress know he is. I hope this latest evidence of that convinces more people that he can’t be ignored.”

Maggie Haberman reported from Lima, and Annie Karni and Michael Tackett from Washington.

Can Trump Survive Mueller?
People predict the president will collapse under the stress of the Mueller investigation. But Trump has teetered on the brink before and never succumbed.

By MICHAEL KRUSE March 22, 2019

Michael Kruse is a senior staff writer for Politico.

“Well,” the newswoman said to Donald Trump, “you’re under a tremendous amount of pressure lately.”

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

It was April 6, 1990, and Paula Zahn on CBS actually had plenty of reasons to think Trump might be feeling anxious. It hadn’t been two months since the hyper-public, tabloid-tawdry revelation that his philandering had shattered his marriage to the mother of his first three children. He and his executives were grappling with the flawed, frantic opening of the newest, gaudiest, most expensive and most debt-bloated of his three casinos in Atlantic City. And reporters who covered money instead of celebrity had started to suss out the unsteadiness of Trump’s overall financial state.

“Both in your professional life and your personal life,” Zahn offered.

She asked how he was doing.

“I feel great,” Trump replied. “I’m doing well.”

Nearly three decades have passed. Even in Trump’s perma-perilous presidency, this is a juncture that pulses with risk. Newly empowered Democrats in Congress are ramping up multiple investigations, and talk of impeachment is impossible to avoid. Looming largest over this tumultuous battlefield, though, is the report special counsel Robert Mueller appears poised to submit to Attorney General William Barr—the culmination of nearly two years of labor and the subject of immeasurable speculation. While Trump often awards himself and his administration “A-plus” grades, many others question whether he will be able to sustain his rosy self-assessment once the details of Mueller’s findings become public.

A composite of Trump images from 1990s, in front of the Trump Taj Mahal, and pictured with both Marla Maples and Ivana Trump.
Trump in the ’90s: Amidst a period of highly-public personal philandering, Donald Trump—pictured bottom left with his first wife Ivana in 1989, the year he began his affair with his to-be second wife Marla Maples, pictured bottom right with their newborn daughter Tiffany in 1993—would open and drive into incredible amounts of debt multiple casinos in New Jersey’s Atlantic City, including the Trump Taj Mahal,.

Every flurry of tweets from the president—and last weekend’s two-day grievance bender against late-night comedy and cable news shows was a particularly strong example—begets new pronouncements that Trump is coming unglued from the strain. George Conway, husband of close Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway, hauled out the clinical definition of narcissistic personality disorder to make the case that Trump is not only unfit for office but becoming catastrophically worse. And psychiatrists are speaking with dire predictions about the potential for a deranged person with extraordinary powers to create global mayhem and destruction.

“He has very poor coping mechanisms when he is criticized or when he feels humiliated,” Bandy Lee, a forensic psychiatrist from Yale and the editor of The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump, the second edition of which is out this month, told me, “and at these points he generally goes into attack mode and he threatens others or tries to get revenge. The Mueller report is of a scale that is probably unlike what we have seen him undergo before.”

Story Continued Below

Worst-case scenario? “Obliterate observing eyes of his humiliation,” Lee said. Meaning? “Destroying the world. That, very quickly, becomes an avenue, a perceived solution … for individuals with his personality structure.”

Make what you will of such medical predictions, but the historical record tells a different story. The back-and-forth with Zahn is an instructive (and comforting?) reminder about overstating Trump’s fragility. The Trump campaign in 2015 and ’16 careened from kill shot to kill shot, of course, and just kept going, right to the White House—and that was not the first time he flashed his ability to mitigate calamity and deftly skirt what might have seemed like an inevitable comeuppance. Whether or not Trump could remain not only financially solvent but reputationally intact was an open question for the entirety of the first half of the 1990s. So many times, he could have been snuffed, stopped, rendered a relative footnote, his place in the history of this country limited to status as a gauche totem of a regrettable epoch of greed. That, needless to say, is not how the tale played out. Trump is many things. A developer. A promoter. A master media manipulator. A grown-old rich kid. The president of the United States. Above all else, though, he is a survivor.

“The ultimate survivor,” former Trump casino executive Jack O’Donnell told me recently.

Trump’s Manhattan Plaza Hotel, left, a luxury yacht, top right, and his 1989 airline Trump Shuttle, bottom left.
Trump’s Trophies: Trump had a tendency to spend on things he couldn’t afford—like his Manhattan Plaza Hotel, left, a luxury yacht, top right, and his 1989 airline Trump Shuttle, bottom left—mostly with borrowed money. | AP Images, AP Photo/Marty Lederhandler, JetPix/Wikimedia Commons

Pullquote reading: “I think he believes that the presidency is too big to fail, too powerful to be taken down. And I think that this is kind of something that he learned in the '90s.”
But it’s not just that Trump has survived that’s important to consider at this moment—it’s how he has done it. Armed with extraordinary audacity, constitutional sangfroid, a stomach for tumult, an acumen for recasting obvious losses into strange sorts of wins, and the prodigious safety net bequeathed by his wealthy, wily father, he has plowed past myriad hazards. And he did it by tying himself tightly to his bankers and lenders in New York and to gaming industry regulators in New Jersey—who let him live large until they couldn’t let him die without fatally wounding themselves. He effectively inhabited hosts, using them to get bigger and bigger in the ’80s until he was practically perversely invincible by the ’90s—not only “too big to fail,” as the late Wayne Barrett once told Susan Glasser and me, but “too big to jail.”

Perhaps his past escapes are the reason he appears oddly calm as most of the country leans forward, awaiting word of bombshells from Mueller. Over the weekend, when outsiders perceived mounting anxiety in Trump’s Twitter barrage, people who spoke to Trump by phone told reporters that “he seemed to be in good spirits.” The volume of tweets, they surmised, was just a product of too much time on his hands in the White House.

His bravado and bluster can’t mask, his critics say, the true jeopardy he faces. The stakes now are too high, the arena too large, the political currents too strong, for Trump to expect the same results. But if he does fail, pinned to account by the weight of evidence uncovered by Mueller, one thing is certain: It will be the first time.

Those who believe in the power of Trump’s survival skills to protect him from even this unprecedented threat draw an analogy between the Republican Party—its members of Congress and especially the Senate—and the institutions that have enabled him in the past.

“The banks were heavily invested in Trump, and they couldn’t have him go down,” former Trump campaign staffer Sam Nunberg told me, “and the Republican Party can’t have him go down.”

“I think he believes that the presidency is too big to fail, too powerful to be taken down,” O’Donnell added. “And I think that this is kind of something that he learned in the ‘90s, where the banks basically said to him, ‘You’re too big to fail, we have to back you.’ And they did it, time and time again, in Atlantic City.”

To be determined in the coming weeks and months: how well those lessons will hold up.

“This is a man who has lived dangerously for decades by flirting with the boundaries of propriety, legality and civility,” Trump biographer Tim O’Brien told me. “And he is now faced, after years and years of getting away with it, with consequences that are far beyond anything he’s encountered before. … The things that I think have allowed him to survive in the past will be of practical, personal use here in terms of him maintaining a stiff upper lip, if he’s able to.” But the more material applicability of the Machiavellian takeaways from his ‘90s scrapes? “I think they’re going to be absolutely of no use if the legal consequences are realized at their full magnitude.”

A composite photo of Trump pictured in 1987 above the section of the Upper West Side that would have become Trump City.
Trump the Builder: The New York real estate mogul, above in 1987, partnered with Hong Kong investors to develop buildings on the Upper West Side, below, that would have been Trump City but were later called Trump Place, until recently tenants voted to remove the president’s name. | Joe McNally/Getty Images, Oliver Morris/Getty Images

Others who know Trump well aren’t so sure.

“No matter what they do, he survives. No matter what they try, he survives,” longtime New York Democratic strategist Hank Sheinkopf told me. “Can Trump survive this? He absolutely can.”

In the middle of 1990, after all, he was more than $3 billion in the red. He had for years spent too much to buy too much, all with mostly borrowed money. The yacht, the airline, Manhattan’s Plaza Hotel. “Trophies,” he called them. And his casinos, first two, now three with the lurching launch of the Trump Taj Mahal, cannibalized each other. Even record rakes of cash weren’t enough to simply service all of Trump’s debt. On the horizon was the first of his six corporate bankruptcies.

“Trump is on his way down—and probably out,” business journalist Allan Sloan wrote that June in Newsday.

People didn’t stop at mere predictions. They also poked fun.

“I envision Donald Trump a year from now doing the ads for stomach-flatteners or ginsu knives on late-night TV. Or as a Worldwide Wrestling Federation commentator,” Gail Collins, then a columnist for the New York Daily News, told David Von Drehle, then a reporter for the Miami Herald.

Vanity Fair editor Tina Brown likened Trump to late-in-life Elvis. “He probably will wind up in that sort of Graceland, you know, wearing a diaper,” she told Steve Kroft of CBS News.

Spy, the puckish satirical magazine and inveterate needler of Trump, in its August 1990 issue took a tongue-in-cheek look at what they foresaw as a sad, middling future for a balding, paunchy Trump. Their crystal ball, though, was not all wrong. They anticipated a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing, and a rough version of reality television, too—and a public offering that would permit Trump to use money from shareholders to make money of his own (“Now YOU can own a piece of the Trump!”).

But beyond the smart set’s schadenfreude were Trump’s real-life results.

After weeks of negotiations, the cluster of 70-some-odd banks that had loaned him billions of dollars gave him an additional $65 million loan. It was the first in a yearslong sequence of bailouts and extensions and breathing-room reprieves. They had loaned him so much money, it was no longer only his problem—it was theirs. He all but dared them to take him down. “He has a good bit of leverage over the institutions,” a Harvard Business School finance professor told the Boston Globe at the time. “His adjusted net worth is minus several hundred million dollars, by my estimate, and he is alive only because his bankers are too red-faced to pull the plug on his life-support system,” the chairman of a money management firm wrote in the New York Post. “The most important thing,” an official in the office of one of his lenders said in The American Banker, “is to make Trump survive.”

A screenshot from the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape and Trump’s election acceptance speech.
Trump the Candidate: Despite a number of incidents that might have taken any other candidate down—including the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape, pictured above, in which he swaggered about sexual assault—Trump was elected president on Nov. 8, 2016 and delivered his acceptance speech, pictured below, in

A pull quote reading: “With Trump, you just think, ‘OK, this is it. This is it, you know?’ He’s bankrupt, people are laughing at him, he’s this, he’s that–but it’s never over for him.”
The banks over time clawed back a passel of Trump’s possessions (the yacht, the planes, the Plaza), but they didn’t take his casinos—because they didn’t want them. “The last thing they want to do is manage casinos,” an analyst from Moody’s Investors explained to the Associated Press. And the last thing the gaming officials and city leaders in New Jersey wanted was to have them close. The relationship was the same as with the banks back in New York. Desperate to prop up the flagging gaming industry, looking continually to the casinos to inject into the struggling seaside town at least the appearance of vitality and prosperity, they needed Trump as much as Trump needed them. A prerequisite to owning a casino in Atlantic City, understandably, was financial stability, and regulators could have stripped Trump of his—repeatedly—but of course didn’t. Trump’s casinos amounted to roughly a third of the market. “The whole economic development of the town,” said O’Donnell, “it was dependent on this. And so they just—they caved.”

Trump had managed to turn an apparent weakness into a significant advantage. The banks put him on an allowance … of $450,000 a month. The Trump Tower triplex was safe.

“The man is a Sherman tank in a Brioni suit,” New York Post gossip columnist and Trump pal Cindy Adams told USA Today.

“Hey, look, I had a cold spell from 1990 to ’91,” he said in 1994 in New York. “I was beat up in business and in my personal life. … But you learn that you’re either the toughest, meanest piece of shit in the world, or you just crawl into a corner, put your finger in your mouth, and say, ‘I want to go home.’” And Trump didn’t want to go home.

He wasn’t entirely in the clear, though, until 1995 and ’96, when his need for money finally superseded his desire for absolute control and he took his casinos public. He sat in his office and looked at O’Brien, then a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. He was “back,” he said. People bought stock in Trump and lost money in droves. Trump Hotels and Casino Resorts proved to be a good investment for just one person—Trump. “It was to get other people to get him out of that debt,” a former member of the Trump Organization told me. In addition to his selling of his stake in his foundation-laying Grand Hyatt and tens of millions of dollars of wrangled, well-timed loans from family trusts, it’s what saved Trump—along with a partnership with Hong Kong investors that turned his long-held plot of land on the Upper West Side that always cost him money into one that began to actually make him money. Construction on what would have been Trump City and now would be called Trump Place (and then wouldn’t) started in 1997. And two years later, in front of some of the buildings, Trump let the magician David Blaine get “buried alive” for a week in a plexiglass coffin. It was, said Blaine, a stunt famed illusionist Harry Houdini always wanted to do. For Trump, the publicity ploy made for an apt ode to the art of escape.

Trumpologists and culture critics frequently cite showman P.T. Barnum as Trump’s preeminent antecedent, but another, less noted inspiration was Houdini, the author of a forthcoming Houdini biography told me. “He always found—especially when it just seemed like it was over for him—he found some new chapter, and some new way to sort of get his success going again,” Joe Posnanski said. “He created this handcuff act, and the handcuff act becomes huge, and then that sort of runs its course. And then he comes up with the milk can, and the milk can sort of runs its course. And he comes up with the Chinese water torture cell, and that runs his course. And he starts hanging upside down and escaping from straitjackets.”

It makes Posnanski think of Trump.

“With Trump, you just think, ‘OK, this is it. This is totally it, you know?’” he said. “He’s bankrupt, people are laughing at him, he’s this, he’s that—but it’s never over for him.”

“Trump,” said Sheinkopf, the Democratic strategist, “is incessantly pulling Houdini acts.”

Recall all the “gaffes” that were to have torpedoed his indelicate, unorthodox 2016 presidential bid—peaking, of course, with the “Access Hollywood” tape revealed in early October in which he swaggered about sexual assault.


Those who predict Trump will ultimately fall don’t disagree that he has benefited from well-placed safety nets before. This time is different, they insist, because his high-wire act is being performed at unprecedented heights.

A composite image of Robert Mueller, Roger Stone and Michael Cohen
Under Investigation: An investigation run by Robert Mueller, left, has hung over Trump’s presidency for nearly two years and led to the arrest of multiple of the president’s associates, including his former attorney Michael Cohen, top right, and his long-time advisor Roger Stone, bottom right. | Zach Gibson/Bloomberg via Getty Images, Alex Wong/Getty Images, ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP/Getty Images

Pullquote reading: “This is a man who has lived dangerously for decades by flirting with the boundaries of propriety, legality and civility. And he is now faced … with consequences that are far beyond anything he’s encountered before."
“Significantly higher,” O’Brien said. “He’s been on a financial tightrope, and a familial tightrope, but he’s never been on a legal tightrope like this one. Not even close. This is fundamentally new because of the legal consequences, and those legal consequences don’t end with the filing of the Mueller report. He still has issues that are still very serious in the Southern District of New York; in some ways, they may be more serious than the Mueller investigation in terms of potential consequences and how far they dig into his world.”

Bandy Lee is worried. The forensic psychiatrist from Yale has studied thousands of people with the mental disorders she perceives Trump has. Their behavior, untreated, had predictable and unpleasant results. She foresees a similar unraveling for Trump, albeit with a wild card she has never encountered in any of her patients: the awesome power of the commander in chief.

“Under stress, we can see the limits of one’s ability to cope, and we can see that the president has reached his limits fairly rapidly, in terms of not being able to sit with the advancing special counsel’s investigation. You can see there is a heightening of activity and creation of crises, distractions, if you will, in order to distract both themselves as well as the public away from the bad news he is continuing to receive,” Lee said.

“He has very poor coping mechanisms when he is criticized or when he feels humiliated,” she continued, “and at these points, he generally goes into attack mode, and he threatens others or tries to get revenge.”

Our conversation took place before Trump resurrected his feud with the late John McCain, but I couldn’t help thinking of Lee’s warning as I listened to the president on Wednesday belabor his grudge before a crowd of workers who were expecting some good news on the economy, not a hit job on a war hero. Maybe this, just like the days of name-calling with George Conway, really are the signs of a mind in turmoil.

Trump is pictured leaving the White House.
Trump the Survivor: President Trump departs the White House earlier this year, while talk of his impeachment by a newly-Democratic House is impossible to avoid. He’s teetered on the brink before and never succumbed. Will he be able to do it again? | Win McNamee/Getty Images

And yet—and this is just the reality of the record—Trump shrewdly, bullheadedly, even blithely pushed past crises in the ‘90s that would have felled almost anybody else. And then, perhaps convinced of his own invincibility, he blew through a litany of accepted social and political checkpoints on his way to the Oval Office and his high-backed chair behind the Resolute desk.

“Pressure,” Trump said in an extended interview in Playboy in 1990, “doesn’t upset my sleep. … I like throwing balls into the air—and I dream like a baby.”

That same year, on June 14, he turned 44. The next day, he missed about $45 million in debt payments for his casino called Trump Castle. “He is absolutely on knife’s edge,” James Grant, the editor of Grant’s Interest Rate Observer, told Newsday. The day after that, Trump had a party. More than a thousand employees in Atlantic City showed up at the bash on the boardwalk, according to news reports. “We love you, Donald!” they cried. He was presented with a chocolate cupcake, a 12-page birthday card and an 8-foot-by-10-foot portrait of himself.

“Nobody wants to write the positives,” Trump told the cheering crowd. “Over the years, I’ve surprised a lot of people. The largest surprise is yet to come.”

© 2019 POLITICO

Space

NASA rocket becomes Boeing’s latest headache as Trump demands moon mission
By Christian Davenport, Joel Achenbach

March 22, 2019 at 8:39 AM

Boeing senior executives arrived at NASA headquarters two weeks ago for what they knew would be a tense meeting. The rocket they’ve been building for NASA was behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget. Worse yet, there was no way it was going to be ready for a scheduled maiden launch in June 2020.

One estimate had the rocket launch as late as November 2021, and NASA’s leaders were furious, according to people who spoke on the condition of anonymity to be candid about sensitive negotiations. President Trump and Vice President Pence wanted NASA to pull off something big and bold with human spaceflight before the 2020 election: sending a crewless capsule around the moon in a precursor to an eventual return of American astronauts to the lunar surface.

But the latest delays would push the flight well past the election.

“We’re not doing this,” a dismayed NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told the Boeing team. “We’re going to create an alternative solution. All options are on the table.”

This meeting, reported here for the first time, is the backstory to Bridenstine’s March 13 bombshell dropped during testimony before the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. He said that although NASA still steadfastly supports the massive rocket, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), the agency would consider sidelining it and instead using commercially available rockets for the mission known as Exploration Mission-1 (EM-1).

Bridenstine’s comments at the Senate hearing touched off a political maelstrom — angering Sen. Richard C. Shelby (R-Ala.), the chairman of the appropriations committee and SLS’s chief benefactor. Critics say the latest machinations are yet another example of how political pressures have sustained the lucrative rocket program for years, as it has maintained Congressional support no matter how high the costs or lengthy the delays.

In the space world, Bridenstine’s announcement set off shock waves. It not only signaled a potentially radical change in NASA’s plans to return to the moon, but was a major blow to NASA’s flagship rocket program and its main contractor, Boeing. The announcement came as the company has been under scrutiny for the way it has handled the crashes of two of its commercial airplanes that killed 346 people.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said that although NASA still steadfastly supports the massive rocket, known as the Space Launch System (SLS), the agency would consider sidelining it and instead using commercially available rockets for the mission. (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)
Bridenstine’s announcement prompted critics of the program to question whether NASA truly needs a government-owned heavy-lift rocket. The private sector is already producing such rockets. And although they are not as powerful as the SLS, they’re cheaper to fly, with reusable boosters.

Trump’s latest budget request states that a commercial rocket, not the SLS as previously planned, would be used to send a robotic probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa.

The request also says commercial rockets would be used to put up a new outpost in lunar orbit, called the Gateway. Bridenstine testified last week that commercial rockets also could send astronauts to the Gateway — another presumed SLS function. And NASA has abandoned a much-derided mission to haul an asteroid to lunar orbit to be inspected by astronauts launched via the SLS.

“This is a rocket that has been looking for a mission,” said Lori Garver, who served as NASA’s deputy administrator under President Barack Obama.

For years, Boeing has long faced criticism for its handling of the program. Last year, a report from the NASA inspector general was withering in its criticism of the company, saying it already has spent $5.3 billion and is expected to burn through the remaining money by early this year, three years too soon, without delivering a single rocket stage. The report said problems at Boeing have led to a 2½-year delay and $4 billion in cost overruns.

“Boeing officials have consistently underestimated the scope of the work to be performed and thus the size and skills of the workforce required,” the report stated.

John Shannon, Boeing’s SLS program manager, said the company acknowledges widespread problems but recently has shown progress.

“We’re late and I completely own that, but we are dialed in now and the team is producing extremely well,” Shannon said. “I have high confidence that we’re going to come out with an amazing capability by the end of the year, and I can’t wait to get to that point.”

Related: Companies in the cosmos: The new space race

In 2017, the agency’s watchdog reported in an audit that NASA had spent more than $15 billion on SLS, Orion, and the ground systems needed between 2012 and 2016. And it estimated that the total would reach up to $23 billion.

Construction of the rocket and the Orion spacecraft is spread out so that every state has jobs connected to the program. In all, SLS supports about 25,000 jobs nationwide, with a total economic impact of $4.7 billion, according to NASA.

That has helped the rocket win support among members of Congress, but also has fueled critics who have dubbed it the “Senate Launch System.” In addition to primary contractor Boeing, key contractors are Aerojet Rocketdyne, Northrop Grumman and the United Launch Alliance.

No state has benefited more than Shelby’s state, Alabama, home to NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville. The program has created about 13,000 jobs and has pumped $2.4 billion into the state’s economy.

So when the NASA administrator floated the idea of sidelining the rocket, Shelby released a statement saying: “While I agree that the delay in the SLS launch schedule is unacceptable, I firmly believe that SLS should launch the Orion.”

Privately, his aides angrily chastised NASA officials.

The next day, Bridenstine reiterated his support for the SLS program in a blog post, saying the agency is “committed to building and flying SLS.” The day after that, he tweeted: “Good news: The @NASA and Boeing teams are working overtime to accelerate the launch schedule of @NASA_SLS.”

‘Over budget … and unexecutable’

The SLS was born in the ashes of an earlier rocket program. Called Constellation, the program emerged under President George W. Bush and would send Americans back to the moon, and eventually to Mars. One element of the plan was the creation of a new, heavy-lift rocket, the Ares V, a modern successor to the Saturn V. It would hurl a new capsule, Orion, to the moon.

When Obama entered office, the Constellation program was struggling, and administration officials called it “over budget, behind schedule, off course and ‘unexecutable.’ ”

Obama killed Constellation in 2010, and directed NASA to aim for an asteroid and Mars instead of the moon. But the move once again angered Shelby, whose state is home to the Marshall Spaceflight Center, where much of the work on Constellation would have been based.

"The president’s proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human spaceflight,” he said at the time. “If this budget is enacted, NASA will no longer be an agency of innovation and hard science. It will be an agency of pipe dreams and fairy talks.”

Although the administration terminated the moon plan, it found it politically impossible to kill all of the projects already pouring billions of dollars into coffers of major aerospace contractors.

“The president’s proposed NASA budget begins the death march for the future of U.S. human spaceflight,” Shelby said at the time.

A quartet of powerful senators who have NASA space bases in their states — Shelby, Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Tex.) — protected the heavy-lift rocket as well as the Orion capsule. They pushed through legislation mandating construction of a heavy-lift rocket and even dictating how it would be designed, including the use of legacy space shuttle hardware.

Related: The White House is in such a hurry to get to the moon that NASA is considering sidelining its major rocket to make it happen

With Constellation’s moon mission canceled, the precise purpose — the actual destinations — of the SLS and Orion became murky. The SLS clearly existed to launch Orion. But to where?

Throughout this process, the big rocket and Orion have crawled toward completion. NASA has been spending more than $3 billion a year on SLS and Orion. Both programs have faced delays.

Solid rocket boosters for the Space Launch System will be stacked at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral. (Mike Brown/Reuters)
The SLS has taken so long to build that it arguably is technologically obsolete, industry officials say. Much of the hardware is derived from the space shuttle, developed in the 1970s.

Meanwhile, a vibrant commercial launch industry, with Boeing, Lockheed and Northrop Grumman, is facing competition from relatively new entrants such as SpaceX, founded by Elon Musk, and Blue Origin, founded by Jeffrey P. Bezos (who owns The Washington Post). SpaceX has disrupted the launch industry by building largely reusable rockets and selling them at a discount: $62 million for its Falcon 9 and as low as $90 million for its Falcon Heavy.

By contrast, NASA officials have said that each launch of the SLS, a far more powerful rocket, would cost about $1 billion.

Garver, the former NASA deputy administrator, said that, if nothing else, these programs have delivered jobs to aerospace companies and NASA centers.

“Given that the purpose was to employ people and keep existing contracts going — they have delivered,” she said in an email.

Deep space aspirations

Since he was narrowly confirmed as NASA administrator a year ago, Bridenstine has been a steadfast supporter of SLS, a commitment he reiterated at the Senate hearing last week. He praised SLS and said it remains “a critical capability” for the U.S. space program.

The SLS is supposed to be the backbone of NASA’s deep space aspirations. But it still hasn’t flown, and the Trump administration is in a hurry to get to the moon.

At the Senate hearing last week, Bridenstine said NASA wanted to stick to its plan to launch no later than June 2020.

“Sir, if we tell you and others that we’re going to launch in June of 2020 around the moon … I think it can be done. We as an agency need to consider all options to accomplish that objective," he said.

To meet the 2020 timeline, Bridenstine said the agency was looking at changing the mission profile, bypassing SLS for a pair of commercial rockets. Instead of launching Orion on a trajectory straight to the moon, it would look at the possibility of flying it to orbit the Earth. Then, on a second commercial rocket, NASA would launch a propulsion module. The Orion spacecraft would dock with it, and the propulsion module would shoot Orion to the moon.

Bridenstine’s blog post calls that option “not optimum or sustainable” and says having two rockets involved “adds complexity and risk that is undesirable.”

Boeing has said it is examining how to speed up work on SLS, including bypassing a months-long test program for the rocket’s first stage that was to occur at the Stennis Space Center and shipping it directly to the Kennedy Space Center.

Earlier this month, Jody Singer, the director of the Marshall Space Flight Center, acknowledged that the program was having challenges and that its maiden launch would need to be delayed, according to SpaceNews.

That didn’t faze Shelby, who introduced Singer at the luncheon.

“As chairman of the appropriations committee, I have more than a passing interest in what NASA does," he said, according to the news site. "And I have a little parochial interest, too, in what they do in Huntsville, Alabama. Jody, you keep doing what you’re doing. We’ll keep funding you.”

Christian Davenport covers the defense and space industries for The Washington Post’s Financial desk. He joined The Post in 2000 and has served as an editor on the Metro desk and as a reporter covering military affairs. He is the author of “The Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos” (PublicAffairs, 2018).

Joel Achenbach covers science and politics for the National desk. He has been a staff writer for The Post since 1990.

© 1996-2019 The Washington Post

AP NEWS

The Latest: Trump lawyers want early look at Mueller report
33 minutes ago

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation (all times local):

6:40 p.m.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers want an early look at special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings before they are made public.

That’s according to Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s attorney. He says Trump’s legal team hasn’t received any assurances that they’ll get the early look they want, though.

Mueller notified Attorney General William Barr on Friday that he had concluded his probe of Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Donald Trump’s campaign.

Now, Barr will review the findings and determine how much to make public.


6:38 p.m.

Special counsel Robert Mueller will be concluding his government service in the “coming days.”

That’s according to special counsel spokesman Peter Carr.

Carr says in a statement that a “small number” of the office’s staff will remain “to assist in closing the operations of the office.” He did not provide a specific timeline for when that might occur. As of Friday, 11 prosecutors were still employed by the special counsel’s office.

The statement comes just hours after Mueller turned in his confidential report closing his probe of Russian election interference and possible coordination with Donald Trump’s campaign.


6:35 p.m.

House Intelligence Committee chairman Adam Schiff says his panel will issue subpoenas if special counsel Robert Mueller’s report — and its underlying evidence — are not released to Congress for further review.

The California Democrat said on CNN that Congress needs to know “and so does the country.”

He said he’s willing to subpoena Mueller as well as Attorney General William Barr, if needed, to push for disclosure.

House Democrats now see the Mueller investigation as a starting point for their own probes of President Donald Trump and Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Mueller delivered his final report to Barr on Friday.


6:15 p.m.

One top Republican, Sen. Chuck Grassley of Iowa, says the findings of the special counsel’s Russia investigation must be made public to end the “speculation and innuendo” that hangs over President Donald Trump’s administration.

The former Judiciary Committee chairman says while it’s clear the Russians “tried to meddle in our democratic processes,” he still hasn’t seen any evidence of collusion.

Grassley says Attorney General William Barr Attorney General must provide the findings from special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to Congress and the American people “to finally put an end to the speculation and innuendo that has loomed over this administration since its earliest days.”


5:58 p.m.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is not recommending any further indictments in the Russia investigation.

That’s according to a Justice Department official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the person wasn’t authorized to speak publicly about the confidential recommendation.

Mueller notified Attorney General William Barr on Friday that he had concluded his probe of Russian election interference and any possible coordination with Donald Trump’s campaign.

—By Eric Tucker


5:57 p.m.

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Lindsey Graham expects that he and the panel’s top Democrat, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, will be briefed “in the coming days” about special counsel Robert Mueller’s report.

The South Carolina Republican says he was notified by the Justice Department that Mueller’s report has been turned over and that Attorney General William Barr “will pursue as much transparency as possible.”

Graham says he expects to be “more thoroughly” briefed. He says he believed it was important for Mueller to do his job “without interference, and that has been accomplished.”


5:55 p.m.

Attorney General William Barr says the Justice Department did not block special counsel Robert Mueller from taking any action during his Russia investigation.

Barr is required to disclose to Congress any instance in which he or Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein decided an action Mueller proposed should not be pursued.

Barr said in his letter to members of Congress on Friday that “there were no such instances during the Special Counsel’s investigation.”

The attorney general notified four key lawmakers that he may update them over the weekend.


5:50 p.m.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell says he welcomes news that special counsel Robert Mueller has completed his investigation into Russia’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 elections.

McConnell says he and other Republicans have long believed that Russia poses a significant threat to American interests, adding that he hopes Mueller’s report will “help inform and improve our efforts to protect our democracy.”

The Kentucky Republican says he hopes that Attorney General William Barr, who received Mueller’s report on Friday, will “provide as much information as possible” on the findings, “with as much openness and transparency as possible.”

Georgia Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said he expects the Justice Department to release the report to the committee without delay “and to the maximum extent permitted by law.”


5:40 p.m.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer say it’s “imperative” to make the full report from Special Counsel Robert Mueller public.

The top congressional Democrats say, “The American people have a right to the truth.”

In a joint statement, they say Attorney Gneral William Barr must not give President Donald Trump his lawyers or staff any “sneak preview” of the findings or evidence.

“The White House must not be allowed to interfere in decisions about what parts of those findings or evidence are made public,” they say.

__

5:39 p.m.

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee says Congress should receive the full report from special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

New York Democrat Jerrold Nadler says in a statement that “We look forward to getting the full Mueller report and related materials.” He adds that “transparency and the public interest demand nothing less” because the public needs to have faith in the rule of law.

Attorney General William Barr wrote in a letter to Nadler and other committee chairmen that Mueller had finished his investigation and delivered his report to Barr. The attorney general said he would update Congress as soon as this weekend, but it wasn’t clear now much of the report would be shared with lawmakers or with the public.

__

5:38 p.m.

Democratic presidential candidates are demanding that Attorney General William Barr make Robert Mueller’s report on Russia public.

Minutes after Barr notified members of Congress Friday that Mueller had delivered his report, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts tweeted that the attorney general should “release the Mueller report to the American public. Now.”

Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey tweeted that the report “should be made public immediately.”

The Trump administration’s handling of Mueller’s report foretells big fights to come, from the presidential campaign trail to, in all likelihood, the federal courts.

__

5:25 p.m.

President Donald Trump’s lawyers say they are “pleased” that special counsel Robert Mueller has delivered his report on the Russia investigation.

Rudy Giuliani and Jay Sekulow issued their joint statement within minutes of Attorney General William Barr’s letter to key members of Congress confirming the delivery and suggesting he could update lawmakers as soon as this weekend.

They say: “We’re pleased that the Office of Special Counsel has delivered its report to the Attorney General pursuant to the regulations. Attorney General Barr will determine the appropriate next steps.”

Mueller’s report, still confidential, sets the stage for big public fights to come, including in all likelihood, in federal court. It’s not clear how much of the report will become public or provided to Congress.

__

5:20 p.m.

Responding to the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report, the White House says the next steps are “up to Attorney General (William) Barr.”

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders says “we look forward to the process taking its course.”

She adds, “The White House has not received or been briefed on the Special Counsel’s report.”

For 22 months, Mueller has probed allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election and other potential misdeeds by those in President Donald Trump’s orbit.

Barr has said he will provide updates on Mueller’s still-confidential findings to Congress as soon as this weekend.

__

5:15 p.m.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s report concluding the Russia investigation was delivered by a security officer early Friday afternoon to the office of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

That’s according to Justice Department spokeswoman Kerri Kupec. It was then delivered within minutes to Attorney General William Barr.

The White House was notified around 4:35-4:40 p.m. that the Justice Department had received the report.

The letter was scheduled to be delivered at 5 p.m. to staff members on Capitol Hill.

Rosenstein was expected to call Mueller on Friday to thank him for his work in the last two years.

__

5:07 p.m.

Attorney General William Barr says he could update Congress as early as this weekend about special counsel Robert Mueller’s findings in the Russia investigation.

The Justice Department confirmed late Friday that Barr received Mueller’s final report. The report concludes Mueller’s nearly two-year-long investigation of Russian election interference and possible coordination with President Donald Trump’s campaign.

__

5:03 p.m.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has concluded his investigation into Russian election interference and possible coordination with associates of President Donald Trump.

The Justice Department says Mueller delivered his final report Friday to Attorney General William Barr, who is reviewing it.

Mueller’s report, still confidential, sets the stage for big public fights to come. The next steps are up to Trump’s attorney general, to Congress and, in all likelihood, federal courts.

It’s not clear how much of the report will become public or provided to Congress. Barr has said he will write his own report summarizing Mueller’s findings.

The nearly two-year probe has shadowed Trump’s presidency and resulted in felony charges against 34 people including six people who served on Trump’s campaign.

Smart systems are poised to dominate the retail space by 2021 – meaning certain precautions have become necessary.

Hopes shifting as Republicans, Democrats wait for Mueller
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has been calling the Russia probe a witch hunt for two years. But now, Trump and his allies are starting to see it as something potentially very different:…

Now here is an abrupt, about face policy turnaround!!!

Trump will remove new North Korea-related sanctions because he ‘likes’ Kim Jong Un
Jacob Pramuk | @jacobpramuk
Published 5 Hours Ago Updated 3 Hours Ago
CNBC.com
President Donald Trump says he will remove new North Korea-related sanctions announced only on Thursday.
The White House says he made the sudden move because he “likes” North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.
The U.S. is pushing North Korea to abandon its nuclear and missile programs.
US President Donald Trump (R) gestures as he meets with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (L) at the start of their historic US-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
Saul Loeb | AFP | Getty Images
US President Donald Trump (R) gestures as he meets with North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un (L) at the start of their historic US-North Korea summit, at the Capella Hotel on Sentosa island in Singapore on June 12, 2018.
President Donald Trump said Friday that he would scrap action his administration took only a day earlier to crack down on companies accused of helping North Korea evade sanctions.

“It was announced today by the U.S. Treasury that additional large scale Sanctions would be added to those already existing Sanctions on North Korea,” the president tweeted on Friday, though the Treasury announcement he appeared to reference took place Thursday and did not involve “large scale” sanctions. “I have today ordered the withdrawal of those additional Sanctions!”

In explaining the president’s sudden announcement, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said, “President Trump likes Chairman Kim and he doesn’t think these sanctions will be necessary.” Trump’s tweet and the press secretary’s clarification of it sent waves of confusion throughout Washington, from the Pentagon to the White House itself.

On Thursday, Treasury designated two China-based shipping companies that it said has aided Pyongyang in circumventing U.S. and international sanctions. The U.S. and its allies have used those economic measures to push North Korea to dismantle its nuclear and missile programs.

Trump and North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un have met face to face twice, but left a summit in Vietnam last month without reaching a deal on denuclearization. Since the summit, reports have emerged of new activity at a North Korean missile research center and rocket site.

Trump’s surprise reversal Friday marks a departure from his administration’s messaging a day earlier. In a tweet Thursday after the Treasury’s announcement, White House National Security Advisor John Bolton said “everyone should take notice and review their own activities to ensure that they are not involved in North Korea’s sanctions evasion.”

Since exchanging explosive rhetoric with Kim during his first year in office, Trump has aimed to assuage his North Korean counterpart as he pushes for an agreement to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.

The president has also tried to tread carefully around China as he tries to reach a trade deal with Beijing and end a potentially devastating trade conflict. The U.S. has viewed getting Beijing to pull back its support for North Korea as crucial to getting the isolated regime to abandon its nuclear ambitions.

A Treasury Department spokesman did not immediately respond to a request to comment on the president’s tweet. The Pentagon referred all queries about it to the White House.

© 2019 CNBC LLC. All Rights Reserved. A Division of NBCUniversal

The New York Times

Mueller Delivers Report on Trump-Russia Investigation to Attorney General

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has conducted an extensive investigation into Russian efforts to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race. Here is the story of how it all started.

By Sharon LaFraniere and Katie Benner
March 22, 2019
WASHINGTON — The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, on Friday delivered a report on his inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election to Attorney General William P. Barr, the Justice Department said, bringing to a close an investigation that has consumed the nation and cast a shadow over President Trump for nearly two years.

Mr. Barr told congressional leaders in a letter that he may brief them on the special counsel’s “principal conclusions” as early as this weekend, a surprisingly fast turnaround for a report anticipated for months. The attorney general said he “remained committed to as much transparency as possible.”

In an apparent endorsement of an investigation that Mr. Trump has relentlessly attacked as a “witch hunt,” Mr. Barr said Justice Department officials never had to intervene to keep him from taking an inappropriate or unwarranted step. The department’s regulations would have required Mr. Barr to inform the leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary committees about any such interventions in his letter.

A senior Justice Department official said that Mr. Mueller would not recommend new indictments, a statement aimed at ending speculation that Mr. Trump or other key figures might be charged down the line. With department officials stressing that Mr. Mueller’s inquiry was over and his office closing, the question for both Mr. Trump’s critics and defenders was whether the prosecutors condemned the president’s behavior in their report, exonerated him — or neither. The president’s lawyers were already girding for a possible fight over whether they could assert executive privilege to keep parts of the report secret.

[What’s next? We break it down as well as the major moments in the case. And here’s the latest reaction to the news.]

Since Mr. Mueller’s appointment in May 2017, his team has focused on how Russian operatives sought to sway the outcome of the 2016 presidential race and whether anyone tied to the Trump campaign, wittingly or unwittingly, cooperated with them. While the inquiry, started months earlier by the F.B.I., unearthed a far-ranging Russian influence operation, no public evidence emerged that the president or his aides illegally assisted it.

Nonetheless, the damage to Mr. Trump and those in his circle has been extensive. A half-dozen former Trump aides were indicted or convicted of crimes, mostly for lying to federal investigators or Congress. Others remain under investigation in cases that Mr. Mueller’s office handed off to federal prosecutors in New York and elsewhere. Dozens of Russian intelligence officers or citizens, along with three Russian companies, were charged in cases that are likely to languish in court because the defendants cannot be extradited to the United States.

Republicans immediately seized upon the news that no more indictments are expected as a vindication of Mr. Trump and his campaign. Those reports “confirm what we’ve known all along: There was never any collusion with Russia,” Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana, the second-highest-ranking House Republican, said in a statement.

Image
The letter that William P. Barr, the attorney general, sent to Congress.
Democrats, including some of those hoping to supplant Mr. Trump in the White House in the 2020 election, insisted that Mr. Mueller’s full report be made public, including the underlying evidence. In a joint statement, Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California and Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the top Senate Democrat, warned Mr. Barr not to allow the White House a “sneak preview” of the document.

“The White House must not be allowed to interfere in decisions about what parts of those findings or evidence are made public,” they said.

Not since Watergate has a special prosecutor’s inquiry so mesmerized the American public. Polls have shown that most Americans want to know its findings, and the House unanimously passed a nonbinding resolution to publicize the report.

Mr. Barr’s letter said he would decide what to release after consulting with Mr. Mueller and Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who has overseen his investigation. Justice Department officials emphasized that the White House had been kept at a distance.

Only a handful of law enforcement officials have seen the report, said Kerri Kupec, a department spokeswoman.

Although a White House lawyer was notified that Mr. Mueller had delivered it to Mr. Barr, no White House official has seen the report or been briefed on it, according to Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary. “The next steps are up to Attorney General Barr, and we look forward to the process taking its course,” she said.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of the president’s personal lawyers, said he planned to remain in Washington over the weekend in part because Mr. Barr might update Congress on Mr. Mueller’s findings.

He sidestepped a question about whether the president’s lawyers were seeking to review the report before any of it becomes public. White House lawyers have been preparing for the possibility they may need to argue some material is protected by executive privilege, especially if the report discusses whether the president’s interactions with his top aides or legal advisers are evidence of obstruction of justice.

Mueller Has Delivered His Report. Here’s What We Already Know. More than two years of criminal indictments and steady revelations about Trump campaign contacts with Russians reveal the scope of the special counsel investigation.
Even though Mr. Mueller’s report is complete, some aspects of his inquiry remain active and may be overseen by the same prosecutors once they are reassigned to their old jobs in the Justice Department. For instance, recently filed court documents suggest that investigators are still examining why the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort turned over campaign polling data in 2016 to a Russian associate who prosecutors said was tied to Russian intelligence.

Mr. Mueller looked extensively at whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice to protect himself or his associates. But despite months of negotiations, prosecutors were unable to personally interview the president.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers insisted that he respond only to written questions from the special counsel. Even though under current Justice Department policy, a sitting president cannot be indicted, Mr. Trump’s lawyers worried that his responses in an oral interview could bring political repercussions, including impeachment, or put him in legal jeopardy once he is out of office.

Mr. Trump has helped make Mr. Mueller a household name, attacking his investigation an average of about twice a day as an unfair, politically motivated attempt to invalidate his election. He never forgave former Attorney General Jeff Sessions for recusing himself from the Russia inquiry, an action that cleared the way for his deputy, Mr. Rosenstein, to appoint Mr. Mueller.

Mr. Trump reiterated his attacks on the special counsel this week, saying Mr. Mueller decided “out of the blue” to write a report, ignoring that regulations require him to do so. But the president also said the report should be made public because of “tens of millions” of Americans would want to know what it contains.

“Let people see it,” Mr. Trump said. “There was no collusion. There was no obstruction. There was no nothing.”

In court, the evidence amassed by the Mueller team has held up. Every defendant who is not still awaiting trial either pleaded guilty or was convicted by a jury. Although no American has been charged with illegally plotting with the Russians to tilt the election, Mr. Mueller uncovered a web of lies by former Trump aides.

Five of them were found to have deceived federal investigators or Congress about their interactions with Russians during the campaign or the transition. They includes Mr. Manafort; Michael T. Flynn, the president’s first national security adviser; and Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer and longtime fixer. A sixth former adviser, Roger J. Stone Jr. is to stand trial in November on charges of lying to Congress.

Glimpses of the Mystery That Is the Mueller Investigation Here are some pieces of the jigsaw puzzle. The full picture is missing.
Those who know Mr. Mueller, a former F.B.I. director, had predicted a concise, legalistic report devoid of opinions — nothing like the 445-page treatise that Ken Starr, who investigated President Bill Clinton, produced in 1998. Operating under a now-defunct statute that governed independent counsels, Mr. Starr had far more leeway than Mr. Mueller to set his own investigative boundaries and to render judgments.

[Make sense of the people, issues and ideas shaping American politics with our newsletter.]

The regulations that governed Mr. Mueller, who is under the supervision of the Justice Department, only required him to explain his decisions to either seek or decline to seek criminal charges in a confidential report to the attorney general. The attorney general was then required to notify the leadership of the House and Senate judiciary committees.

Despite pledging transparency, Mr. Barr may be reluctant to release the part of Mr. Mueller’s report that may be of most interest: who the special counsel declined to prosecute and why, especially if Mr. Trump is on that list.

The department’s longstanding practice, with rare exceptions, is not to identify people who were merely investigative targets to avoid unfairly tainting their reputations, especially because they would have no chance to defend themselves in a court of law. Mr. Rosenstein, who has overseen Mr. Mueller’s work and may have a say in what is released, is a firm believer in that principle.

In a May 2017 letter that the president seized upon as justification for his decision to fire James B. Comey as F.B.I. director, Mr. Rosenstein severely criticized Mr. Comey for announcing during the previous year that Hillary Clinton, then a presidential candidate, would not be charged with a crime for mishandling classified information as secretary of state. Releasing “derogatory information about the subject of a declined criminal investigation,” Mr. Rosenstein wrote, is “a textbook example of what federal prosecutors and agents are taught not to do.”

Weighing that principle against the public’s right to know is even more fraught in the president’s case. If Mr. Mueller declined to pursue criminal charges against Mr. Trump, he might have been guided not by lack of evidence, but by the Justice Department’s legal opinions that a sitting president cannot be indicted. The department’s Office of Legal Counsel has repeatedly advised that the stigma and burden of being under prosecution would damage the president’s ability to lead.

Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York and the head of the House Judiciary Committee, has argued that the department’s view that presidents are protected from prosecution makes it all the more important for the public to see Mr. Mueller’s report.

“To maintain that a sitting president cannot be indicted, and then to withhold evidence of wrongdoing from Congress because the president cannot be charged, is to convert D.O.J. policy into the means for a cover-up,” he said before the House approved its nonbinding resolution to disclose the special counsel’s findings.

Some predict that any disclosures from Mr. Mueller’s report will satisfy neither Mr. Trump’s critics nor his defenders, especially given the public’s high expectations for answers. A Washington Post-Schar School poll in February illustrated the sharp divide in public opinion: It found that of those surveyed, most Republicans did not believe evidence of crimes that Mr. Mueller’s team had already proved in court, while most Democrats believed he had proved crimes that he had not even claimed.

Nicholas Fandos contributed reporting.

And now, what goes with the whole nine yards of cleaning out Washington’s political quagmire? And how will America get Great again? And will all these walled in scenarios meet the test of time for another two years?

lets see how this plays out now!!!

POLITICO

President Donald Trump gives the thumbs-up as he arrives on Air Force One on March 22 at Palm Beach International Airport, en route to Mar-a-Lago.

WHITE HOUSE

Trump faces Mueller report in Mar-a-Lago bubble
The president kicked off a weekend at Mar-a-Lago with a speech at a fundraising dinner but few words about special counsel Robert Mueller.

PALM BEACH, Florida – When the news finally broke that Robert Mueller had completed his investigation, President Donald Trump was cloistered in the safe space of his private club here, surrounded by senior aides and the diehard supporters who pay big bucks to catch a glimpse of him.

As Washington melted down over the long-awaited news 1,000 miles away, the fierce Trump defenders here girded for an epic battle.

“He seems to be able to deal with most of the stuff that most people can’t. I am convinced that he can weather anything he’s put through,” said Joyce Lewis Bass, a board member of the Boca Raton Regional Republican Club.

On Friday night, just feet from where Trump and his family were having dinner, local Republicans were holding a fundraising dinner. The logo for the event: a five-dollar bill featuring a MAGA-hat clad Abraham Lincoln.

Organizers had held out hope that Trump would make an appearance at the event, and White House officials initially signaled he wouldn’t attend, saying he planned to spend his night on Mar-a-Lago’s patio with First Lady Melania Trump, their son Barron, and Melania Trump’s parents.

Schumer: Attorney General Barr must make the full Mueller report public
CONGRESS

Congress demands full Mueller report ahead of huge partisan fight
By KYLE CHENEY

The president spoke to the cheering crowd for about two minutes, with the first lady standing beside him on stage, according to a video of his remarks obtained by POLITICO. He said nothing about the Mueller news. Instead, he thanked “the legendary Pam Bondi,” Florida’s former attorney general who was honored at the dinner, and marveled at the first lady’s poll numbers. The president also cracked a joke about the keynote speaker, Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.

“If Lindsey’s speaking, I want to come down here,” Trump said, “for two reasons. No. 1: he’s a great speaker. And No. 2, I know if I’m here, he’s not going to say anything bad about me.”

The dinner capped another whirlwind day for Trump. As they braced for the report throughout the day Friday, Trump and his team tried to convey an image of a president putting his head down and focusing on the job. Aides arranged a meeting with the leaders of five Caribbean countries, the president announced his pick to join the Federal Reserve and he bragged about the defeat of the Islamic State.

But Trump quickly overshadowed those efforts, issuing a confusing tweet that implied he was undoing North Korea sanctions that his administration had just put in place. The tweet caught many in the White House by surprise and the administration later tried to clarify, insisting he was referring instead to not-yet-imposed sanctions.

Trump’s Islamic State victory lap was also quickly undercut. At the end of the flight to Florida, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders entered Air Force One’s press cabin wielding a map. ISIS no longer holds any territory in Syria, she declared, without offering any other details. Trump later held up the same map, at one point displaying it upside down, boasting about his success in diminishing the terrorist group.

“So here is ISIS on Election Day. Here’s ISIS right now,” he said. The only problem: the graphic didn’t compare ISIS’s current territory to Election Day in 2016. According to photographs captured by reporters, it compared the territory to 2014, undercutting the president’s about turning things around immediately after taking office.

“You guys can have the map. Congratulations. You’ll spread it around,” Trump told reporters, handing them the document. Sanders quickly snatched up the paper.

Trump tried to project calm throughout the day, distancing himself from the image of a man about to suffer a political blow. On his arrival at the airport here, he delighted in the adoration of his supporters, signing a red “Make America Great Again” hat.

But there were more subtle signs that the White House — like all of Washington — had assumed crash position ahead of the transmittal of Mueller’s report to Attorney General Bill Barr, which happened at 5pm, shortly after a sudden blinding hailstorm tore through an already-anxious capital: White House counsel Pat Cipollone joined the president at Mar-a-Lago, according to a person familiar with the matter, as did Sanders, who doesn’t always travel with the president on weekend trips.

“We’ll see what happens,” Trump had said early in the day as he departed for his weekend in Florida. “There was no collusion. There was no obstruction,” he repeated once again. “Everybody knows it. It’s all a big hoax. It’s all a witch hunt.”

But he didn’t mention Mueller for the rest of the day. Though the president is often eager to field reporters’ questions, he ignored journalists as he sat alongside the Caribbean leaders, under two gold and crystal chandeliers. For once, it seemed, Trump felt he had nothing more to say. He was content to wait. By late evening, he had resisted tweeting once about Mueller or Russia.

Friday’s fundraising dinner was hosted by the Palm Beach County Republicans. Tickets for the fundraiser started at $375, with sponsorship packages going as high as $25,000.

By JOSH GERSTEIN
On Friday afternoon, a person helping to organize the dinner predicted Trump would attend, especially given that the event was held just feet from the room where Trump huddled with the Caribbean leaders. “We very much expect the president to come,” the person said. “It’s in his house.”

The mood at Mar-a-Lago Friday afternoon was low-key, despite the furor over the Mueller developments swirling in Washington. A nearby parking lot was packed with luxury cars, including a bright yellow Porsche and a chrome Rolls Royce. A woman in the parking lot sported a black fur coat in the nearly 75-degree weather.

Mueller’s actual conclusions remain under lock and key at the Justice Department. But supporters here seemed unfazed by the report’s imminent disclosure.

Asked if she’s certain the president can overcome the Mueller probe’s findings, Toni Holt Kramer, a Mar-a-Lago member and founder of the Trumpettes USA, a Trump fan club, said via email, “Positive!!!”

Marc Caputo and Anita Kumar contributed to this story.

© 2019 POLITICO LLC

Opinion, Analysis, Essays

Mueller report’s release to AG Barr is the end of the beginning for Trump, not the beginning of the end
Democrats are gearing up to fulfill their oversight responsibilities in a manner wholly consistent with what Republicans called for during the Obama years.

The fight continues.
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s 22-month-long investigation into the relationship between President Donald Trump’s campaign and Russia is finally over, bringing an end to this dramatic investigative chapter into the activities of the American president and those closest to him.

But the thing is, this was just chapter one. Anyone thinking or hoping that the completion of the Mueller report would be the finale of the story will be sorely disappointed.

Because the next chapter belongs to Attorney General William Barr and the new Democratic majority in the House as they fight for full access to the report and the underlying evidence used to compile it. And remember, while Mueller’s long-awaited report was submitted to the Justice Department on Friday, Barr has yet to determine what will be publicly revealed to Congress, if anything at all.

Because while the report itself is important, the next few chapters of this investigation belongs to Congress and the new Democratic majority in the House.

First, Congressional oversight committees will fight for possession of the Mueller report. Then, they will use the Mueller report as a blueprint to guide their investigations into every part of Donald Trump’s presidency including his foreign policy decisions, financial interests, political activities, and personal relationships.

Just three months ago, Sen. Lindsay Graham (R-SC), the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said that “some of it should be sanitized…I’ll trust Mr. Barr too work with us to get as much out as we can.” Trump’s lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, advocated for the president’s legal team to have the right to “correct it” before the report is made public or released to Congress.

Anything short of releasing the full, un-redacted report to Congress will presumably result in a high-stakes standoff between Congress and the executive branch. Should the attorney general fail to voluntarily produce the report, Congressional committees will subpoena the Justice Department for it. If the DOJ refuses to comply with the subpoena, a lawsuit will be filed and this could end up in the Supreme Court’s hands. Meanwhile, newly minted private citizen Robert Mueller will almost certainly be invited to testify at a congressional hearing to discuss his report’s findings.

Related
Mueller report and Trump-Russia investigation must push Congress to protect future special counsels
Withholding or sanitizing the Mueller report is a political loser for the president. Recent polls reveal that nearly 9 in ten Americans believe the full report should be made public. This is also a tough fight for Congressional Republicans given their past rhetoric about transparency and oversight during President Barack Obama’s time in office.

Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio, the ranking Republican on the Committee on Oversight and Reform, said this during a 2012 proceeding about getting documents from the Justice Department: “How can you ignore the facts when you don’t’ get the facts? That’s what this is all about…I just want to get the information…I think we’re right on target with this. We just want the information so we have the facts.”

At that same proceeding, former Rep. Trey Gowdy, R-S.C., then a member of the House Oversight Committee and now a Fox News contributor, opined that “the notion that you can withhold information and documents from Congress no matter whether you are the party in power or not in power is wrong. Respect for the rule of law must mean something, irrespective of the vicissitudes of political cycles.

VIEW THIS GRAPHIC ON NBCNEWS.COM
In fact, oversight Republicans’ fight with then Eric Holder’s Justice Department over the release of documents related to “Operation Fast and Furious” is instructive now. Following President Obama’s use of executive privilege to ignore a Congressional subpoena, Republicans filed a lawsuit in district court declaring, “The Attorney General’s conception of the reach of ‘Executive privilege,’ were it to be accepted, would cripple congressional oversight of Executive branch agencies, to the very detriment of the Nation and our constitutional structure.” U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson agreed, who is also the judge presiding over Roger Stone’s case, ruled against the Justice Department.

If Barr and the Trump White House resist efforts by Congress to get the full report, history could repeat itself.

Related
AOC and Cohen remind Trump that Mueller isn’t the only investigator he needs to worry about
Once they’ve acquired the report, the real force of congressional oversight will be felt. Investigators will comb through every thread of evidence to create multiple lanes of oversight inquiries. Statements made to Mueller and his team will be cross-referenced with statements made to Congress during public hearings or depositions. Officials who have any inconsistencies in their testimonies will be called upon by Congress to address them under the threat of perjury. The Mueller report will effectively serve as the foundation of a forensic autopsy Congress will conduct examining every controversial decision the Trump administration has made.

In short, Democrats in Congress are gearing up to fulfill their oversight responsibilities in a manner entirely consistent with what Republicans called for during the Obama years. As House Republicans declared in 2010, “Congress is constitutionally obligated to provide thorough oversight of the Executive Branch. This obligation is recognized by scholars and the Courts and by the American public that expects its federal government to root out waste, fraud, abuse, mismanagement, and misconduct.”

Their words. Their standard. Now Trump will have to live with it.

Kurt Bardella

© 2019 NBC UNIVERSAL


Now what?

No new indictments, is this a positive sign to foreshadow a sign of political survival, with a clean ending of a stopped buck for Trump, hence forward?

The Guardian chimes in:

'How did the Mueller investigation manage to keep its secrets under wraps for two years?

My colleagues Oliver Laughland and Jon Swaine have a new article looking at the “leak-proof inquiry”:

Behind the walls of a nondescript concrete office building in south-west Washington DC, special counsel Robert Mueller has meticulously compiled one of the most important investigations in American history.

There have been 37 indictments or guilty pleas and 199 criminal charges. Five people, including some of Donald Trump’s closest former advisers, have been sent to prison.

And yet for all the political fallout, intrigue over Mueller’s prosecutorial strategy and obsession with the contents of his final report, the office of the special counsel has remained an almost sealed vessel.’


How in the world can things go back to some kind of ill defined normality, even after a public release of the Mueller Report, even as the supercharged political athmosphere grinds on and within its own ranks, produces newer and newer fashioned myth laden archetypes of anti constitutional severance, where perhaps the Supreme Court may turn out to be the final arbiter?

Can even they, produce some resemblance to clarity, in a starkly new world, where the very timbers which constitute the foundation , which served reverently and with absolute reference, tolling the faith and absolute allegiance of increasingly divided people?

Does an overly far reach from that into thus: the quagmire characterized as a swamp, become a politically brutal ball, seething in the language of animosity and division and contradiction hold up an outline with which the banner of oncoming generations may march forward in confidence?

Can a new internationalism arise out if a perplexing U.S. paradigm, which has served well as the blueprint for a clear manifest for the guarantee of human rights and transparently benevolent government with which it may cross over borders of faithful performance?

Can the 21st century live by a new motto, 'Beyond Truth and Fiction?

The ramifications are yet hidden, but what ideology could ever sustain a governance , before being uncovered for what it truly is?

None, the answer is always relentlessly compelling !


Boston.com

The Latest: House Democrats set group call on Mueller report
Associated Press AP, 9:43 AM

Attorney General William Barr leaves his home in McLean, Va., on Saturday morning, March 23, 2019. Special counsel Robert Mueller closed his long and contentious Russia investigation with no new charges, ending the probe that has cast a dark shadow over Donald Trump’s presidency. (AP Photo/Sait Serkan Gurbuz) —The Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Latest on special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation (all times local):

10:05 a.m.

House Democrats will gather by phone on Saturday as they wait for the Justice Department to send them details of what special counsel Robert Mueller has found in his investigation of Russian interference.

That’s according to a person familiar with the meeting. The person requested anonymity to discuss the private call.

Democrats planned the 3 p.m. conference call to discuss strategy and their next steps after they were notified Friday afternoon that Mueller had sent his completed report to Attorney General William Barr.

Barr said in a Friday letter to the House and Senate Judiciary committees that he would share Mueller’s “principal conclusions” with Congress as soon as Saturday.

— By Mary Clare Jalonick


10 a.m.

Attorney General William Barr has arrived at the Justice Department a day after receiving special counsel Robert Mueller’s final report on the Russia investigation.

Barr says he could notify Congress of Mueller’s “principal findings” as soon as Saturday. Mueller on Friday concluded his probe of Russian election interference and possible coordination with Donald Trump’s campaign.

The special counsel’s full report is confidential, but Barr says he will be deciding soon how much of it he will release to Congress and the public.


9:40 a.m.

President Donald Trump is on the golf course in Florida a day after special counsel Robert Mueller closed his 22-month-long Russia investigation with no new charges.

Mueller delivered his long-awaited report Friday to the Justice Department, which was expected to release the main findings as soon as Saturday.

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday that the next steps are up to the attorney general and the White House will let the process take its course. As of Friday evening, the White House had not received or been briefed on the report.

Even with the details still under wraps, the end of the probe without additional indictments by Mueller was welcome news to some in Trump’s orbit who had feared a final round of charges could ensnare more Trump associates, including members of the president’s family.


1:45 a.m.

Special counsel Robert Mueller closed his long and contentious Russia investigation with no new charges, ending the probe that has cast a dark shadow over Donald Trump’s presidency. The Justice Department was expected to release the main findings as soon as Saturday.

Even with the details still under wraps, the end Friday of the 22-month probe without additional indictments by Mueller was welcome news to some in Trump’s orbit who had feared a final round of charges could ensnare more Trump associates, including members of the president’s family.

For now, the report is accessible to only a handful of Justice Department officials while Attorney General William Barr prepared to release the “principal findings” soon.

TOPICS: Politics
©2019 Boston Globe Media Partners, LLC

U.S.
DEFENSE ATTORNEY SAYS DONALD TRUMP STILL FACING LEGAL WOES, WARNS SDNY INVESTIGATION ‘AIN’T A FISHING EXPEDITION’
By Donica Phifer On 3/23/19 at 9:12 PM EDT
Randy Zelin
Defense attorney Randy Zelin appears on MSNBC on March 23 to discuss the end of Robert Mueller’s investigation and the legal challenges remaining for President Donald Trump.
PHOTO: MSNBC

U.S. DONALD TRUMP MSNBC
As the reactions continue to pour in following the delivery of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on accusations that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia during the 2016 special election, one defense attorney was quick to caution those celebrating President Donald Trump’s alleged victory.

Appearing on MSNBC Saturday, criminal defense attorney Randy Zelin and MSNBC anchor Kendis Gibson discussed the report from Mueller and how Trump’s legal troubles may not be over, despite Mueller’s recommendation that no one else is indicted as a result of his investigation.

Zelin began by outlining the mandate from the special counsel’s office, saying the report is “limited to investigation into Russian influence into 2016 and related matters.”

“Which means that everything related to everything else is for someone else to do,” Zerlin added. “In the Southern District [of New York] are they interested in Russian interference or are they interested in things like campaign finance violations unrelated to Russia.”

Gibson responded to reference the president’s frequent calls of Mueller’s investigation being a fishing expedition, to which Zelin asked what Gibson would say about the SDNY investigation “which ain’t a fishing expedition.”

“You have Michael Cohen, who has already pleaded guilty, you have evidence of campaign finance violations, you have investigations into, now, Trump Organization business dealings, insurance fraud, tax fraud, all kinds of fraud which are unrelated to the Russia investigation,” Zelin said. “So how does the Mueller report extricate the president from his problems?”

Zelin later asked why Americans aren’t concerned about learning if Russa interfered in the 2016 presidential election saying, “we’ve lost sight of that.”

Zelin’s comments echo what other legal experts told Newsweek on Friday.

“I think that [the Mueller report] certainly is not the end-all, be-all for legal problems and ethics problems for the president,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington said. “There’s just a lot of really problematic conduct that is being investigated, and that’s not to say that what special counsel Mueller found is not going to be incredibly important…but there’s some danger to looking at whatever he produces as the definitive statement on whether or not this president did anything wrong.”

Speaking to MSNBC Saturday, New York Times justice reporter Katie Bennan said that while Trump and his family — including his children Eric Trump, Ivanka Trump and Donald Trump Jr. — haven’t shown themselves to be worried in public, the remaining investigations from Congress and the Southern District of New York cannot be discounted for their potential legal ramifications.

The Southern District of New York is currently investigating potential campaign violations and misuse of funds, an investigation that includes a recent subpoena for financial documents and donor records for Trump’s inauguration committee.

“I think we do have to look back at the investigation at SDNY, especially the ones that concern the Trump Organization, where the president’s children might be directly implicated,” Bennan said, adding that Michael Cohen’s testimony included statements that some of his actions were to protect Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr.

Gibson then asked Zelin if those with the last name of Trump should be worried.

“Hell yes,” Zelin replied.

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In an interview with Fox News which aired on Friday morning, hours before Mueller delivered his report, Trump expressed confusion that he was being investigated in other areas saying that his lawyers, “don’t even know what people are talking about.

© Copyright 2019 NEWSWEEK

MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said it is “startling” that there were no indictments following the conclusion of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Matthews questioned why there was no “interrogation” of President Trump following the announcement that Mueller submitted his report to the U.S. Attorney General on Friday.

“Why was there never an interrogation of this president?” Matthews asked. “We were told for weeks by experts, you cannot deal with an obstruction of justice charge or investigation without getting to motive. You cannot get to motive unless you hear it from the person himself who’s being targeted, a subject of the investigation.”

“How can they let Trump off the hook?” Matthews demanded.

“So far tonight we have no reason to believe Trump is going to be charged by rhetoric in the document itself, in the Mueller report, no he will not be charged with obstruction or collusion without ever having to sit down with the special counsel Mueller and answer his damn questions. How can that happen?” Matthews asked Friday night.

Matthews calls it “startling” that there will be no further indictments:

I haven’t seen MSNBC this upset since Election Night

Democracy Dies in Darkness
Partners
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© 1996-2017 The Washington Post

Politics

The battle over the Mueller report begins as Trump allies claim victory
By Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Josh Dawsey, Ashley Parker

March 23, 2019 at 6:53 PM

Congressional Democrats on March 22 demanded the release of all underlying evidence in the Russia investigation while Republicans pointed to findings to vindicate President Trump. (JM Rieger/The Washington Post)
The political showdown over the Russia investigation that could reshape the remainder of President Trump’s term began in earnest Saturday even before the special counsel’s conclusions were known to the public, as Trump allies claimed vindication while Democrats demanded transparency and vowed to intensify their own probes.

Trump and his attorneys and aides were clouded by uncertainty because they did not yet know the contents of the Robert S. Mueller III’s report, which Attorney General William P. Barr and a small coterie of Justice Department officials spent Saturday privately reviewing.

Ensconced for the weekend in Palm Beach, Fla., Trump exuded optimism while playing golf, lunching at the clubhouse and chatting with friends. At the urging of his advisers, he also exhibited uncharacteristic caution, refraining from publicly crowing that the “witch hunt” was over or declaring victory prematurely. Asked mid-Saturday to evaluate the president’s mood, White House spokesman Hogan Gidley said simply, “He’s good.”

The Trump team clung to hopeful signs — such as word from the Justice Department that there would be no more indictments from Mueller’s team — that the president could end up exonerated after a nearly two-year investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Related: [Attorney general is preparing a set of conclusions from Mueller report]

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III completed his report on whether Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia in 2016. Now the spotlight is on the attorney general. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
But there was also widespread recognition within the Trump orbit that the Mueller report could still contain damaging information for the president — and that his legal troubles are far from over, with separate investigations into Trump’s business, inaugural committee and conduct continuing apace in New York and on Capitol Hill.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, one of Trump’s personal attorneys, said he was in a “watch and wait” mode and had been urging the president to “keep your powder dry.”

“The information that has been revealed publicly, particularly no further indictments, has been helpful,” Giuliani said. But, he added, “until you read the report, you don’t know exactly what it entails. . . . My message is: We’ve all waited this long. Let’s just await the reading of what’s disclosed, and then we can have proper final reactions. There’s too much assuming going on, on the other side, and we shouldn’t fall into that trap.”

Still, the contours of the political battles ahead took form. The mood among Democrats was tense and urgent, with expectations running high that Mueller’s complete report could be explosive and spark a reckoning for Trump. Party leaders called for the report to be released in full, along with the underlying documents.

Americans “deserve the truth, to know the truth,” House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) said Saturday afternoon on a conference call with caucus members. “Transparency is the order of the day.”

Related: [Trump’s legal troubles are far from over even as Mueller probe ends]

Rank-and-file Democrats worried to House leaders that the Justice Department’s independence could be threatened, according to several aides involved in those talks, while Pelosi tried to fend off — for now, at least — calls within her party to seek Trump’s impeachment.

Attorney General William P. Barr departs his home Saturday morning in McLean, Va. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“I think that day will come,” Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.) told MSNBC’s Joy Reid on Saturday. “I don’t think he’s legitimate. I said it back at the end of the election. I still believe that today.”

On the campaign trail, Democratic presidential candidates called for full transparency from the Justice Department.

“We really need a full accounting of what happened,” Pete Buttigieg, mayor of South Bend, Ind., told a breakfast crowd in Greenville, S.C. He added, “It may well be the case that the only appropriate response is impeachment, but to me the most decisive way to put an end to Trumpism is for it to be defeated massively at the ballot box.”

Among Republicans, meanwhile, the calls for caution from Trump’s attorneys did not seem to reach the ears of his allies, who took a victory lap on the president’s behalf.

“This is a vindication for the president and his family that after one year, 10 months and six days the Mueller report is concluding something which we already knew, which is there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russians,” said Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s former campaign manager.

Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist, wrote in an email that the president would “weaponize Mueller report to bludgeon Democrats. Expect him to come ‘off the chain.’ ”

There was a defiant streak throughout conservative media. On Breitbart, headlines read “Leftists cope with Mueller report bust” and “MSNBC-onspiracy!” And on the Sirius radio program “Breitbart News Saturday,” upbeat tracks from the “Ghostbusters” and “Rocky” soundtracks played as a parade of Trump allies called in with commentary.

A feeling of relief set in among the many Trump associates who had spent hours being questioned by Mueller’s investigators, including former campaign official Michael Caputo.

“My family has lost everything and now we’re starting over, but I awoke today optimistic for us and for our nation,” Caputo said.

On Friday evening, after Mueller gave his report to Barr, Trump was at his Mar-a-Lago Club and in unusually good spirits, according to people who interacted with him. Cable news shows were abuzz with reports about the Mueller probe, but Trump was not seen watching much television. Rather, he sat at his usual table on the patio for dinner and to celebrate his son Barron’s 13th birthday with his wife, Melania, and Donald Trump Jr. and his girlfriend, Kimberly Guilfoyle.

Trump Jr., who had been vacationing at Mar-a-Lago all week with his children, was on a boat fishing when the Mueller news broke Friday. The president’s son, who had come under scrutiny for the 2016 meeting he arranged at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, responded by tweeting a picture of himself and his boys holding up the fish they caught and then retweeting pro-Trump reactions.

President Trump left the patio for about an hour Friday night to attend a Republican Party fundraising dinner in Mar-a-Lago’s ballroom, where the crowd chanted “Lock her up!” after one of the featured speakers, Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), called for an investigation of “both sides” — reflecting the desire of Trump supporters to go after Clinton, the defeated 2016 Democratic nominee.

Late in the evening, the president returned to the patio and appeared loose and upbeat, nodding and smiling as club members and other friends approached him at the table. Although nobody quite knew what the Mueller report said or what might happen next, people still cheered Trump. He in turn told several guests that he was proud of his accomplishments in office but did not speculate or engage in detailed discussion about the Mueller probe, according to people who were present.

At one point, White House lawyer Emmet Flood joined for a few minutes to talk with the president, as did Graham, who said he urged Trump to “listen to your lawyers.”

“He keeps saying he didn’t do anything with the Russians, and I said, ‘Well, there’s only one person that can really clear the air here, and that’s Mueller, and he’s been able to do his job and we’ll see here in a day or two what he found,’ ” Graham said in an interview Saturday.

Typically, Trump is accompanied by only a small staff entourage, sometimes with mid-level aides, on his weekend jaunts to Florida. But on Friday, several senior White House officials, including acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and press secretary Sarah Sanders, flew with him to Florida — in part so Trump would be surrounded by people he knows and trusts and therefore be less likely to do something rash, according to two people close to the president who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal internal details.

Trump agreed with his aides to be restrained in his public comments about the Mueller report until he gets a full briefing on its findings, which could occur as early as Sunday. Reminded that the president’s inclination has been to break the shackles his aides place on him by tweeting his feelings, one senior administration official replied, “The stakes are higher.”

On Saturday, Trump spent much of the day at the Trump International Golf Club in nearby West Palm Beach. Trump golfed and spent time with the musician Kid Rock, according to an administration official and the musician’s Instagram page, where he posted a picture posing with the president.

And there was a celebratory mood among the Trump fans — “my bridge people,” as the president calls them — who gathered near a bridge to cheer the presidential motorcade as it traveled to and from Mar-a-Lago, despite not knowing what the report says.

“I’m relieved that it’s finally out and it vindicates our president,” Paula Magnuson said. “Hopefully the Democrats will let it go now.”

Trump has told confidants he has not known Barr for long and that he cannot predict how the attorney general, who was sworn in only last month, will handle the situation. But the president also has said he is glad Barr is in charge and not former attorney general Jeff Sessions, and he has reiterated that his attorneys have told him Barr is fair, according to advisers who have spoken with him.

With little new information emerging Saturday, officials said Trump’s attorneys impressed upon the president to take a hands-off approach and to be patient with Barr — waiting for him to share Mueller’s conclusions on his own timetable and not to contact the attorney general or press for an update.

“He’s not going to engage a lot until he gets more information,” said David Bossie, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager.

That is the plan, but as those who work for him readily acknowledge, Trump rarely sticks to plans.

Meagan Flynn and Lori Rozsa in Palm Beach, David Weigel in Greenville and Colby Itkowitz in Washington contributed to this report.

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Philip Rucker is the White House Bureau Chief for The Washington Post. He previously has covered Congress, the Obama White House, and the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns. Rucker also is a Political Analyst for NBC News and MSNBC. He joined The Post in 2005 as a local news reporter.

Robert Costa is a national political reporter for The Washington Post. He covers the White House, Congress, and campaigns. He joined The Post in January 2014. He is also the moderator of PBS’s “Washington Week” and a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC.

Josh Dawsey is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. He joined the paper in 2017. He previously covered the White House for Politico, and New York City Hall and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie for the Wall Street Journal.

Ashley Parker is a White House reporter for The Washington Post. She joined The Post in 2017, after 11 years at the New York Times, where she covered the 2012 and 2016 presidential campaigns and Congress, among other things.

Attorney General William Barr
AMueller delivered his report to Barr on Friday, and Barr is expected to brief members of Congress on the report this weekend. | Win McNamee/Getty Images

CONGRESS

Congress waits another day for Mueller findings
The Justice Dept. said it would not transmit a summary of the special counsel’s findings Saturday, fueling Democrats’ urgent pleas to release the entire document.

By KYLE CHENEY, HEATHER CAYGLE, ANDREW DESIDERIO and JOSH GERSTEIN 03/23/2019 09:28 AM EDT
The public and members of Congress will be in the dark for at least one more day on special counsel Robert Mueller’s central conclusions about contacts between associates of President Donald Trump and Russia during the 2016 campaign.

The Justice Department informed Congress on Saturday afternoon that Attorney General William Barr would not provide findings to lawmakers until at least Sunday, officials at Justice and on Capitol Hill confirmed, prolonging rampant speculation about what might be in Mueller’s report and fueling Democrats’ increasingly urgent pleas to release the entire document.

However, Barr, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and their top aides were at Justice Department headquarters Saturday poring over Mueller’s submission and considering how to boil down the core conclusions into a summary that can be made public before officials embark on a review of the whole document, an official said.

Access to Mueller’s report has been limited to “very few” individuals, a Justice official said, in part out of concern about leaks of one of the most politically sensitive documents in modern American history.

Democrats huddled on Saturday to strategize about how to talk about the as-yet-unseen report and how to force the Justice Department to make it public — a possible drag-out legal fight that could consume Washington for months.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi hosted a conference call with House Democrats on Saturday afternoon to discuss the report’s impending arrival. According to multiple sources who participated in the call, Pelosi said she would reject an offer for a classified briefing on Mueller’s underlying findings, arguing that the evidence should be unclassified despite DOJ guidelines that state the department should not disclose damaging information about individuals who are not indicted.

House Democratic committee chairs repeatedly referred to Republicans’ efforts to disclose documents related to other former top officials who were not indicted, including Hillary Clinton and former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, when they controlled the House during the first two years of the Trump presidency.

Separately, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), a member of the Judiciary Committee, said Republicans’ efforts during that time period to force the public release of elements of the Russia probe — as well as the investigation of Clinton’s email server — had armed Democrats with an argument to require significant disclosure of the Mueller findings.

“Republicans have really shot themselves in the foot with what they approved,” Jayapal said. “They really undermined any argument Barr might want to make that there’s longstanding precedent.”

In a letter to lawmakers Saturday afternoon, Pelosi dismissed Barr’s plan to summarize the findings for the relevant committees as “insufficient” and said any briefings on the report should be unclassified so members are free to share the details publicly.

“We are insisting that any briefings to any committees be unclassified so that members can speak freely about every aspect of the report and not be confined to what DOJ chooses to release publicly,” Pelosi wrote.

We’re hosting a live chat on Reddit with former federal investigators who worked on some of the biggest cases since Watergate and our senior reporter, Darren Samuelsohn. Join us on Monday, March 25 at noon ET.

Pelosi also reiterated that DOJ should release the report in its entirety and related documents, “even if DOJ chooses not to prosecute additional individuals.”

“Congress requires the full report and the underlying documents so that the Committees can proceed with their independent work, including oversight and legislating to address any issues the Mueller report may raise,” she wrote.

Democrats have also expressed concern that the Justice Department’s sifting of the report for public consumption could be influenced by the White House. Justice officials confirmed that they alerted the White House to the receipt of the report just before congressional leaders were notified Friday afternoon.

However, a Justice spokesperson insisted that the only information conveyed was the brief letter also sent to lawmakers. Officials have declined to say whether they plan to vet future disclosures from Mueller’s report with the White House, although such consultations over executive privilege issues are typical.

Asked Saturday whether Justice Department leaders were “plotting” with the White House to stage manage release of more information about Mueller’s probe, a Justice official who asked not to be named said: “No, that’s ridiculous.”

While they await answers, the leaders of House committees who oversee the Justice Department and intelligence community have signaled they’re prepared to unleash aggressive tactics to compel Barr to make the details of the report public.

“If the AG plays any games, we will subpoena the report, ask Mr. Mueller to testify, and take it all to court if necessary," said Rep. Sean Patrick Maloney (D-N.Y.), a member of the House Intelligence Committee, a comment echoed by committee Chairman Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) and House Judiciary Committee Chairman Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

That could include issuing a subpoena that could plunge the two branches of government into a protracted court fight — and potentially demanding that Mueller himself testify publicly after nearly two years of operating in virtual secrecy.

“We’re potentially looking at a classic collision of Congress’s constitutional authority to investigate with the preferences of the executive branch to, in this case, to potentially withhold information from Congress. That is an issue that will have to be decided by a court if that’s how it evolves,” said David Laufman, who ran the Justice Department’s counter-intelligence unit from 2014 to 2018 and had a key role overseeing both the Clinton and Russia investigations.

Schumer: Attorney General Barr must make the full Mueller report public
CONGRESS

Congress demands full Mueller report ahead of huge partisan fight

Republicans were circling the wagons around Trump, noting that Mueller did not drop new indictments as he wrapped up his nearly two-year-long probe. But Democrats cautioned that Mueller was not the end-all-be-all, noting that Congress is still investigating allegations of obstruction of justice and abuse of power on the president’s part, and that other federal and state entities are conducting probes into several aspects of the Trumpworld.

“It’s the end of the beginning, it’s not the beginning of the end,” said Sen. Chris Coons (D-Del.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee. “It’s important to remember that whatever is concluded by Robert Mueller doesn’t mean that the president and his core team are free of legal jeopardy from these other proceedings. And it’s important to remember that the Congress has a different scope of charge and responsibility than Special Counsel Mueller.”

But most lawmakers tempered their comments as they awaited word from Barr about what level of detail he intends to share with Congress and the public this weekend.

Barr’s decision carries enormous consequences for the Trump administration and the new Democratic House majority, which is wrestling with outspoken members eager to impeach Trump and is in the early stages of a crush of sensitive investigations of Trump and his administration. Democrats are also acutely aware of the dicey politics of probing a combative president.

Coloring the debate is the news that Mueller is not recommending any new indictments, a determination that has emboldened Trump, who has long claimed the investigation was a “witch hunt.” It’s unclear whether word that Mueller isn’t urging additional charges precludes the possibility that he obtained some indictments that remain sealed.

Mueller is also known to have referred or handed off responsibility for some matters to federal prosecutors in New York, Virginia and Washington, D.C., but the full extent and status of such spinoff probes has never been made public.

Announcement of the end of the Mueller probe, annotated
Announcement of the end of the Mueller probe, annotated

Republicans have emphasized that even though they, too, want much of the report to be public, Democrats seem to be demanding that the Justice Department reveal derogatory information about Mueller’s witnesses even if they’re not charged with a crime. Rosenstein has previously suggested the Justice Department would not take such a step, especially given the backlash after former FBI Director James Comey publicly disparaged Clinton in 2016 even while declining to recommend charges against her for her use of a private email server.

Democrats, though, say Mueller’s report may contain crucial counterintelligence information that shows links and alliances between Trump associates and Russian operatives, information that could be crucial to future efforts to protect American elections from foreign interference.

And they also have raised concerns that even if Mueller’s report found criminal wrongdoing by the president, a longstanding Justice Department policy against indicting sitting presidents could preclude the details from becoming public.

“To be clear, if the Special Counsel has reason to believe that the President has engaged in criminal or other serious misconduct, then the Justice Department has an obligation not to conceal such information,” Schiff, Nadler and other committee chairmen said in a late Friday statement. “The President must be subject to accountability and if the Justice Department is unable to do so, then the need to provide Congress with the relevant information is paramount.”

Trump spent much of the day golfing at Trump International Golf Club, just a few miles from Mar-a-Lago. He golfed with three other people, though the White House refused to identify his partners.

White House officials said the president was in a good mood. So far, Trump has not reacted publicly to the news that Mueller has completed his investigation. And aides said the White House has not yet been briefed on the contents of Mueller’s report.

White House officials remained largely in wait-and-see mode, even though they believe the final report will be a flop.

It was an unusually low-key response for a president known for indignant Twitter outbursts. But people close to the president predicted it wouldn’t last long.

Trump’s friends and advisers have also been privately assuring him that the report is going to be a flop and that he can spin the whole endeavor as a politically motivated waste of time. But it remains to be seen what the report might actually say — and if it’s worse than the president’s allies think, Trump could react with fury.

By Saturday afternoon, Trump had retreated back to Mar-a-Lago, his private club. He’s not expected to make any public appearances for the rest of the day.

As his client and the country awaited the Mueller report’s findings, Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani was seen on Saturday shopping at a downtown D.C. Brooks Brothers, according to an eyewitness.

© 2019 POLITICO LLC

Mueller report: Why so many of President Donald Trump’s aides lied to protect him in Russia investigations

BRAD HEATH AND KEVIN JOHNSON | USA TODAY | 17 hours ago

The conclusion of the Mueller investigation into whether Trump colluded with Russia in the election has been submitted. And, Mueller’s report will be governed by rules written in the wake of the Starr Report. We explain.

WASHINGTON – The first lie – the first one that was a crime, at least – came on the fourth day of Donald Trump’s presidency, in a White House office down the hall from Trump’s own.

That day, a pair of FBI agents came to question Trump’s top national security aide, Mike Flynn, about his dealings with the Russian government. Flynn gave the agents a tour of his new spot in the new administration, interrupted at one point as Trump and some movers walked past discussing where to hang art on the walls. Then Flynn took them back to his corner office and calmly lied to them about conversations with Russia’s ambassador.

Flynn, agents later wrote, “did not parse his words or hesitate.” He simply lied.

The exchange was the start of a remarkable succession of lies over nearly two years by some of Trump’s closest political associates, told to federal agents, Congress and the public that distanced the president and his campaign from an investigation into whether his campaign participated in Russian efforts to disrupt the election that put him in office.

Whatever else special counsel Robert Mueller’s now-concluded investigation may reveal, it has devoted considerable attention to the Trump associates whose lies to lawmakers and investigators deflected attention from connections between Russia and the president’s campaign, and to a central question hanging over many of the charges Mueller has filed: Why did they lie?

Mueller delivered his final report Friday to Attorney General William Barr, marking the end of an investigation that has loomed over the first two years of Trump’s presidency. The Justice Department has so far revealed none of the report’s conclusions, but over the past year and a half, prosecutors have sketched some of them in hundreds of pages of court filings.

Prosecutors have revealed that Trump’s campaign worked eagerly to benefit from a Russian intelligence operation that hacked his opponents’ emails and echoed them in phony social media campaigns, an effort the U.S. government later concluded was aimed in part at helping to deliver Trump the presidency. And investigators charged that a succession of top aides then lied to pretend they hadn’t.

Barr’s Letter: Read Attorney General Barr’s letter to Congress announcing end of Mueller’s Russia probe

Investigation Ends: Special counsel Robert Mueller delivers report marking end of investigation into Trump’s campaign, Russia

Mueller’s office accused seven people, all but one of them former aides or advisers to Trump, with making dozens of false statements during the Russia investigation.

The investigation has produced a deluge of falsehoods on subjects from the president’s business dealings in Moscow to a meeting his son and campaign chief attended in Trump Tower in 2016 with a Russian promising “dirt” on his political opponent. But lying to the public is usually not a crime, and Mueller’s investigators zeroed in on those directed to lawmakers and federal investigators.

Trump’s lawyers maintain that the lies reflect little more than a misguided impulse to protect themselves from things that weren’t crimes to begin with. “The thing about all these lies is that if they all just told the damn truth they probably wouldn’t have been in any trouble,” said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s lead attorney.

Prosecutors haven’t hinted at their answer, other than to reveal that it is one of the subjects they investigated.

But some of the people they have accused of lying have supplied answers of their own: One suggested he lied out of loyalty. Others appear to have been protecting the president. One, Michael Cohen, a former executive in Trump’s private business and his personal lawyer, said he lied because the president wanted him to.

“Everybody’s job at the Trump Organization is to protect Mr. Trump. Every day most of us knew we were coming in and we were going to lie for him on something and that became the norm,” Cohen said in sworn testimony to a House committee Feb. 27. “And that’s exactly what’s happening right now in this country and it’s exactly what’s happening here in government.”

Special counsel Robert Muller arrives at his office building, Thursday, March
23 months of Russia lies
Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI on Jan. 24, 2017, about conversations with Russia’s ambassador, including one in which he discussed rolling back sanctions the Obama administration had imposed in response to Moscow’s election-meddling.

Three days after that meeting, two FBI agents went looking for a young campaign aide, George Papadopoulos. They took him from his mother’s house in Chicago to the bureau’s office there, switched on a video camera, and warned him to tell the truth.

“The only way you’re getting in trouble today is if you lie to us,” one said, according to court records.

For two hours, the agents quizzed Papadopoulos on his interactions with a professor in London named Joseph Mifsud and other people Papadopoulos believed had ties to the Russian government. Eventually, Papadopoulos revealed that Mifsud told him in early 2016 that Moscow had gathered “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, in the form of “thousands of emails,” months before the government revealed that Russia’s military intelligence service had hacked Democratic political organizations. But Papadopoulos passed his encounter with Mifsud off as a “strange coincidence,” unrelated to his work for Trump.

He later admitted that wasn’t true; Mifsud approached him because of his role on the campaign.

Foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump’s election campaign, George Papadopoulos and his wife Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos leave a federal court in Washington after his sentencing on September 7, 2018.
Foreign policy advisor to President Donald Trump’s election campaign, George Papadopoulos and his wife Simona Mangiante Papadopoulos leave a federal court in Washington after his sentencing on September 7, 2018.

More lies by Trump associates followed.

That August, Michael Cohen lied in a written statement to two congressional committees about Trump’s efforts to construct a potentially lucrative high-rise in Moscow, telling them that they ended early in the campaign, when in fact those efforts continued until the point – almost six months later – when Trump had effectively secured the Republican presidential nomination. Cohen also tried to mislead members of Congress into thinking that Trump himself was uninvolved in the project.

A month after that, in September 2017, prosecutors allege that another Trump confidante, Roger Stone, lied to lawmakers about his efforts to gather information for the campaign about hacked emails that were being released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks. Prosecutors said someone in Trump’s campaign directed a senior campaign official to get in touch with Stone about any other “damaging information” the group might have on Clinton.

When lawmakers summoned one of Stone’s associates to testify, Stone suggested he, too, stick to the story, saying in a text message obtained by prosecutors: “Stonewall it. Plead the fifth. Anything to save the plan’ … Richard Nixon.”

Cohen, Flynn and Papadopoulos have pleaded guilty to making false statements. So has Manafort’s former deputy Rick Gates, and an attorney who worked with the pair, Alexander Van Der Zwaan. Stone, who has maintained his innocence, is scheduled to go on trial in November on charges of lying to Congress and obstruction of justice.

Late last year, Paul Manafort, the former chairman of Trump’s campaign, met with investigators and appeared twice before a grand jury. There, prosecutors alleged in court filings, he lied about his interactions with a business associate in Ukraine who U.S. authorities say is tied to Russian intelligence. Prosecutors say Manafort passed polling data to the foreign associate while running Trump’s campaign.

Prosecutors didn’t charge Manafort with lying, though a judge concluded that he had. Instead they sought to use his lies against him when he was sentenced for other crimes, including conspiracy and tax and bank fraud related to years of lobbying work he conducted in Ukraine.

The full consequence of all the lies remains to be seen.

The personal legal jeopardy for Trump’s associates is playing out in courtrooms from New York to Washington. It’s less clear the implications those lies have had on Mueller’s effort to understand the scope of the Russian government’s intelligence operation around the 2016 election, and how directly it was able to tap into Trump’s campaign, if at all.

David Laufman, who ran the Justice Department’s counter-intelligence unit from 2014 until early 2018, declined to comment on the cases Mueller filed, but said the urgency of finding and countering foreign intelligence operations should be obvious.

“It’s essential when a counterintelligence threat is discovered for the FBI and the Justice Department to be able to take appropriate investigative steps to get to the heart of the matter as quickly as possible,” he said. “If someone the FBI goes to interview is withholding information from the government, that’s a serious mater

‘Loyalty’ and ‘orders’
Trump has tried repeatedly to discredit Mueller’s investigation, savaging it as a political “witch hunt.” The FBI has confirmed that it investigated whether the president also tried to obstruct it, and Mueller’s office closely scrutinized the false statements of Trump aides.

Both Cohen and Flynn have agreed to cooperate with prosecutors and have provided information about the circumstances in which they lied.

“The obvious question on the obstruction theory is who, if anyone, is suggesting that they’d want to cover it up,” said Shanlon Wu, a former federal prosecutor who represented Gates until last year.

“Isn’t it a remarkable coincidence — why are they all lying?” said Robert Ray, a former independent counsel who investigated President Bill Clinton. “Politics is one of those spaces where loyalty is prized above most everything,” Ray said. “When you look at these cases, it’s like everyone understood that — down to the lowest staffer.”

Flynn has never revealed why he lied, and it’s puzzled those who know him.

Giuliani said it was “stupid perjury,” because Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and a retired general, should have known the government was monitoring his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. Giuliani also said it was “outrageous” that agents questioned Flynn without a lawyer and didn’t give him a chance to correct his false statements.

National Security Advisor Michael Flynn and President Donald Trump arrive at MacDill Air Force Base in Tampa, Florida to visit the U.S. Central Command and Specials Operations Command on Feb. 6, 2017.
MANDEL NGAN, AFP/GETTY IMAGES
Robert “Rocky” Kempenaar, one of Flynn’s longtime friends from Rhode Island, said he believes he lied to protect the president and his administration and that he did not decide to do it on his own.

“He’s a general,” Kempenaar said. “He was following orders from above him. Whether it was the president, I don’t know, but I kind of figured it out knowing Michael the way we do.”

Cohen, too, placed Trump squarely at the center of the obstruction investigation. In scathing testimony to the House Oversight Committee in early February, he said Trump had implicitly encouraged him to lie to lawmakers about plans to build a Trump Tower in Russia. And he testified that some of Trump’s lawyers reviewed and edited a false written statement before he delivered it to Congress in 2017.

“Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress, that’s not how he operates,” Cohen said. “In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me, there’s no Russian business, and then go on to lie to the American people by saying the same thing.

“In his way, he was telling me to lie.”

Cohen has not said when or where he had those conversations with Trump, but investigators revealed in warrant applications that they had extensively monitored both his communications and his location. He submitted documents to the House Intelligence Committee about his interactions with Trump’s lawyers.

Prosecutors have so far offered nothing to substantiate that account, though they confirmed to a judge last year that Cohen had given them information about the “circumstances of preparing and circulating,” his written statement to Congress, which they found both “relevant and truthful.”

Beyond that, Mueller’s office has offered only brief explanations for why they think Trump’s aides lied.

One of its top prosecutors, Andrew Weissmann, told a judge last year that the special counsel’s office thought Manafort had lied to investigators – after promising to cooperate – to “augment his chances for a pardon.”

And they said Papadopoulos was seeking a job with Trump’s National Security Council or elsewhere in the administration when he lied to the FBI, telling agents he was “trying to help the country and you guys, but I don’t want to jeopardize my career.”

Papadopoulos’ lawyer offered a clearer explanation last year before the former foreign policy aide was sentenced to 14 days in prison. He lied, Thomas Breen said, out of “misguided loyalty to his master.”

Contributing: Bart Jansen

© Copyright Gannett 2019

TheHill

ADMINISTRATION
March 24, 2019 - 06:00 AM EDT
Mueller’s end shifts focus to New York prosecutors

The end of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation is shifting the spotlight to federal prosecutors in President Trump’s hometown.

While all eyes this weekend are on the Department of Justice and Mueller’s conclusions, the completion of the special counsel’s report won’t finish all the investigations into Trump.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York (SDNY) is reportedly already carrying out a series of probes related to the president, including efforts focused on Trump’s inaugural committee.

It is also overseeing an investigation into potential campaign finance violations tied to the president.

Trump and his allies are well aware of the investigations and the dangers of the New York prosecutors.

The office is legendary for its ruthless and broad investigations and has shown a willingness to take on big names, from mafia bosses to celebrities and economic powerhouses.

Legal experts told The Hill that even as the Mueller probe ends, SDNY could pose an even greater threat to the president, his family and his businesses.

“That office has been very aggressive about going after high-profile targets,” said former federal prosecutor Kendall Coffey, who called the Manhattan attorney’s office “utterly fearless.”

“Anybody that might be in their bullseye ought to be mighty worried,” Coffey added.

Jonathan Turley, a professor at George Washington University Law School, said charges pursued by SDNY could have a statute of limitations extending beyond Trump’s term, meaning Trump could be indicted once he leaves office.

“If the president was found to be part of a criminal conspiracy or violation, it’s possible that they could proceed with charges after the election,” said Turley, an opinion contributor to The Hill.

The White House and Trump attorney Jay Sekulow did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Documents from the federal raids on former Trump attorney Michael Cohen released Tuesday indicated that federal prosecutors in New York are probing a potential campaign finance violation. Cohen has publicly implicated the president in the scheme to make payments to women alleging affairs with Trump, as have court filings from SDNY. Trump has denied any wrongdoing in the case.

The New York Times also reported Saturday that the Manhattan attorney’s office is conducting several investigations tied to the president, including one into his inaugural committee and two others linked to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

A spokesperson for SDNY declined The Hill’s request for comment.

A source close to Donald Trump Jr. dismissed any concerns over SDNY. Trump Jr. is overseeing the president’s personal businesses alongside his brother Eric and has faced scrutiny over a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign officials and a Russian lawyer.

Legal sources told The Hill that as Mueller’s probe wound down, it’s possible he handed evidence not relevant to the Russia probe to other U.S. attorney’s offices.

Mueller referred the Cohen investigation to SDNY after investigators on his team found evidence of crimes unrelated to Russian election interference, such as bank and wire fraud.

Coffey said that while Mueller had talented prosecutors on his team, his office lacked the longstanding structure and resources SDNY has in place. That could bolster any DOJ probes coming out of New York.

Several figures who were scrutinized as part of the Mueller probe have celebrated its conclusion, taking the lack of indictments issued as the investigation ended as a sign that they won’t be prosecuted as part of the Russia probe.

However, Mimi Rocah, a former assistant U.S. attorney for SDNY, said those figures could still face charges from other parts of the Justice Department.

She said that because some figures such as Trump Jr. never interviewed with Mueller before the investigation concluded, those individuals could be targets of an investigation rather than just witnesses.

The experts also noted that many of the witnesses in the Mueller probe are now facing congressional inquiries. Democrats, who took over the House in January, have launched several investigations into Trump and his businesses.

The House Judiciary Committee alone has requested documents from 81 figures, including Trump Jr. and White House senior adviser Jared Kushner, who is also Trump’s son-in-law.

“The congressional investigations remain a live torpedo in the water for any unindicted person,” Turley said.

Rocah said Mueller could hand over evidence that he uncovered in his probe to congressional investigations as long as it wasn’t part of a grand jury investigation and wasn’t classified.

Jill Wine-Banks, who worked as an attorney on the Watergate investigation, said investigations launched by the state of New York could prove to be a bigger threat than those coming out of the U.S. attorney’s office.

She said SDNY would have to follow the same Justice Department guidance Mueller did, which states a sitting president cannot be indicted. However, state prosecutors wouldn’t be held to the same standards.

The New York attorney general has personally targeted Trump before. The office last year sued the president over his foundation, demanding that it be dissolved and that he and his adult children be prevented from holding leadership roles at other charities, at least temporarily, over alleged “persistent illegality.”

And the Manhattan district attorney filed fraud charges against Manafort shortly after he was sentenced on federal charges. The maneuver was viewed by some as an attempt to stop Trump from potentially pardoning Manafort, as the president cannot pardon an individual for state charges.

“New York is his homebase and it’s where his corporation and foundation are,” Wine-Banks said of Trump, noting that the state and SDNY could also attempt to claim jurisdiction over the Trump inaugural committee and transition teams over their New York ties.

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