Re: Politics
Posted: Thu May 03, 2018 11:13 pm
WASHINGTON (AP) — Rudy Giuliani may have added to the legal headaches of his new law client and old friend, President Donald Trump, when he drew a link Thursday between a hush money payment to a porn actress and the potential fallout if her allegations of a tryst with Trump had gone public before the 2016 election.
Giuliani, the former New York City mayor and U.S. attorney, said in a series of interviews that Trump reimbursed his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, for a secret $130,000 payment to adult-film star Stormy Daniels in October 2016. Trump himself acknowledged the reimbursement in tweets Thursday morning after previously denying he knew about the payment.
Both Trump and Giuliani insisted that the reimbursement was made from Trump’s personal funds and that the initial payment had nothing to do with the campaign. But then Giuliani made the link himself, telling “Fox & Friends”: “Imagine if that came out on Oct. 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Hillary Clinton.”
Several experts in campaign finance law, who already had raised questions about the payment, said the case that the payment violated federal law had only grown stronger.
“I can say that Giuliani has done Trump no favors, especially this morning when he suggested Trump’s motive was campaign-related. That’s a huge deal,” Richard Hasen, an election law expert at the University of California at Irvine, wrote in an email.
Trevor Potter, president of the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said Giuliani’s statement that the payment kept Daniels’ allegation from the public “is an admission that the confidentiality agreement and the timing of the payment influenced the 2016 elections.”
The payment was not reported by the Trump campaign, and if it were to be counted as a contribution, it would vastly exceed the $2,700-per-election limit. If the money could be construed as a loan from Trump, it would still have to be reported but would not be subject to any limits, Hasen said.
Watchdog groups had previously filed complaints about the payment with the Federal Election Commission, the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department. There can be both civil and criminal penalties if investigators determine that the campaign or Cohen intended to keep the payment secret.
But this is not an easy standard to prove in court, said Jan Baran, a longtime elections and ethics lawyer. Prosecutors failed to get a conviction against Democratic Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina on charges that he received illegal contributions and falsified documents to pay for the silence of his pregnant mistress as he campaigned for president in 2008.
“If anything, the facts surrounding Mr. Edwards were arguably more campaign-related than what is happening today,” Baran said.
Questions swirled Thursday about why Giuliani and Trump decided to acknowledge that the president had reimbursed Cohen.
Norm Eisen, who served as an ethics lawyer in the Obama White House and now chairs the left-leaning Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics, which has repeatedly challenged Trump, said it might have to do with the fact that Cohen is under criminal investigation in New York. FBI agents raided his home and office several weeks ago seeking records about the nondisclosure agreement.
“I think the other intention here apparently was to tear the Band-Aid off and to get out in public whatever Cohen might offer should he choose to cooperate,” Eisen speculated.
Former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican, embraced a similar possible explanation.
“You know, there’s an old saying in the law: ‘Hang a lantern on your problems.’ So he comes in, he knows that there’s been different stories being told about this payment and how it was made,” Christie, a friend of Trump’s, told ABC News. “So the fact is that Rudy has to go out there now and clean it up. That’s what lawyers get hired to do. So he goes out there and he puts it out rather than having some reporter give breaking news that the president reimbursed it.”
Baran, however, offered caution about drawing too many conclusions.
“We are dependent on what facts we know today and, as we know with President Trump, facts can change on a daily, if not hourly, basis,” he said.
( WHAT A TRAGEDY THIS ADMINISTRATION HAS PROVEN TO BE. WE HAVE A BUNCH OF AMATEURS RUNNING THIS COUNTRY. WE'RE IN CHAOS. TRUMP AND HIS BAND OF MISFITS ARE AN EMBARRASSMENT. A BUNCH OF LIARS, CHEATERS, JUST PLAIN DESTRUCTIVE; YET, 40% OF THE COUNTRY IS OK WITH IT - GO FIGURE
) https://www.apnews.com/f84d92ab647142b0 ... Trump-woes
Trump’s new ‘Stormy’ story clashes with earlier statements
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump insisted Thursday his reimbursement of a 2016 hush payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels had nothing to do with his election campaign. But the surprise revelation of the president’s payment clashed with his past statements, created new legal headaches and stunned many in the West Wing.
White House aides were blindsided when Trump’s recently added attorney, Rudy Giuliani, said Wednesday night that the president had repaid Michael Cohen for $130,000 that was given to Daniels to keep her quiet before the 2016 election about her allegations of an affair with Trump. Giuliani’s revelation, which seemed to contradict Trump’s past statements, came as the president’s newly configured outside legal team pursued his defense, apparently with zero coordination with the West Wing.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said she first learned that Trump had repaid the hush money from Giuliani’s interview on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity.” Staffers’ phones began to buzz within moments. Deputy press secretary Hogan Gidley, who had pre-taped an interview with Fox News earlier Wednesday evening, was suddenly summoned to return for a live interview.
While Giuliani said the payment to Daniels was “going to turn out to be perfectly legal,” legal experts said the new information raised a number of questions, including whether the money represented repayment of an undisclosed loan or could be seen as reimbursement for a campaign expenditure. Either could be legally problematic.
Giuliani insisted Trump didn’t know the specifics of Cohen’s arrangement with Daniels until recently, telling “Fox & Friends” on Thursday that the president didn’t know all the details until “maybe 10 days ago.” Giuliani told The New York Times that Trump had repaid Cohen $35,000 a month “out of his personal family account” after the campaign was over. He said Cohen received $460,000 or $470,000 in all for expenses related to Trump.
But no debt to Cohen was listed on Trump’s personal financial disclosure form, which was certified on June 16, 2017. Asked if Trump had filed a fraudulent form, Sanders said: “I don’t know............”
https://www.apnews.com/8a48ef57cc8c42da ... statements
The former New York mayor said in an interview that a payment made on the president’s behalf to Stormy Daniels prevented damaging information from emerging during the 2016 election.
Rudy Giuliani, who joined President Trump’s personal legal team last week, told Fox News on Thursday that the Trump attorney Michael Cohen had arranged a payment to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels in order to prevent allegations of an affair from coming out in the closing days of the 2016 election.
The former New York City mayor’s explanation for the $130,000 payment to Daniels suggests the deal likely ran afoul of campaign-finance laws.
On Thursday morning, Trump tweeted that Cohen “received a monthly retainer, not from the campaign and having nothing to do with the campaign … used to stop the false and extortionist accusations made by her about an affair despite already having signed a detailed letter admitting that there was no affair.” “Money from the campaign, or campaign contributions, played no roll [sic] in this transaction,” the president insisted.
( LIAR, LIAR, PANTS ON FIRE
)That statement, legal experts said, appears to confirm that the payment was a campaign expenditure. “This is good circumstantial evidence this was campaign-related,” said Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California, Irvine. “Giuliani did Trump no favors.”
( GOTTA LOVE IT
)https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... dy/559577/
(CNN)On Wednesday night, in the unlikeliest of places -- the cozy conservative comfort of Sean Hannity's show on Fox News -- the web of stories constructed by President Donald Trump and those around him to explain a $130,000 hush payment to porn star Stormy Daniels came tumbling down.
It was in that setting that former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, who is now a legal adviser to Trump, acknowledged that the President had repaid attorney/fixer Michael Cohen the $130,000 that Cohen had directed to Daniels via a shell company just 11 days before the election to ensure she remained silent about an alleged sexual liaison she and Trump had in the mid 2000s.
"The President repaid it,'' said Giuliani. And, with those four words, Giuliani turned months and months of explanations and excuses about the Cohen payment on their head.
The stories pile one on top of the other so let's break them out -- starting with Trump.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/politics ... index.html
A press staffer at the Environmental Protection Agency attempted to distract from his boss’s troubles by planting stories that would reflect poorly on the secretary of the interior.
As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a seemingly endless stream of scandal, his team is scrambling to divert the spotlight to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. And the White House isn’t happy about it.
In the last week, a member of Pruitt’s press team, Michael Abboud, has been shopping negative stories about Zinke to multiple outlets, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the efforts, as well as correspondence reviewed by The Atlantic.
“This did not happen, and it’s categorically false,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.
The stories were shopped with the intention of “taking the heat off of Pruitt,” the sources said, in the aftermath of the EPA chief’s punishing congressional hearing last week. They both added, however, that most reporters felt the story was not solid enough to run. On Thursday, Patrick Howley of Big League Politics published a piece on the allegations; he did not respond to request for comment as to his sources.
As Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt faces a seemingly endless stream of scandal, his team is scrambling to divert the spotlight to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke. And the White House isn’t happy about it.
In the last week, a member of Pruitt’s press team, Michael Abboud, has been shopping negative stories about Zinke to multiple outlets, according to two sources with direct knowledge of the efforts, as well as correspondence reviewed by The Atlantic.
“This did not happen, and it’s categorically false,” EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox said.
The stories were shopped with the intention of “taking the heat off of Pruitt,” the sources said, in the aftermath of the EPA chief’s punishing congressional hearing last week. They both added, however, that most reporters felt the story was not solid enough to run. On Thursday, Patrick Howley of Big League Politics published a piece on the allegations; he did not respond to request for comment as to his sources............
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ks/559607/
(CNN)After being interviewed by special counsel investigators on Wednesday, former aide to Donald Trump's presidential campaign Michael Caputo told CNN that Robert Mueller's team is "focused on Russia collusion."
"It's clear they are still really focused on Russia collusion," Caputo said, adding, "They know more about the Trump campaign than anyone who ever worked there."
Caputo, who advised the Trump campaign on communications in 2016, has long insisted he has no information about collusion between Trump's team and Russia. He spoke with Senate intelligence investigators on Tuesday for their Russia probe and outlined the differences between Congress' inquiries and the special counsel's.
"The Senate and the House are net fishing," Caputo said. "The special counsel is spearfishing. They know what they are aiming at and are deadly accurate."
Caputo lived and worked in Russia in the 1990s and later did business with Russian companies, including Gazprom, the Kremlin-controlled energy giant. As a Republican consultant, Caputo worked with Trump adviser Roger Stone and Paul Manafort, the former campaign chairman. He denies any wrongdoing regarding Russia. Caputo is a longtime ally of Stone's, a close associate of Trump who has come under scrutiny in the Russian investigation because of Stone's contacts with WikiLeaks during the campaign.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/02/politics ... index.html
Washington (CNN)White House press secretary Sarah Sanders sought to defend President Donald Trump's credibility -- and her own -- during a lively press briefing Thursday.
Sanders was asked repeatedly about Trump's changing story on the circumstances around a $130,000 hush money payment made to porn actress Stormy Daniels by the President's attorney Michael Cohen over an alleged affair. Trump has denied the affair and previously told reporters he didn't know about the payment. Trump's new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told Fox News Wednesday that Trump had reimbursed Cohen for the payment and Thursday morning the President tweeted the money came from the retainer he paid Cohen.
"This was information that the President didn't know at the time but eventually learned," Sanders said about the President's Air Force One claim he didn't know about the payment.
"We give the very best information that we have at the time. I do that every single day," Sanders said when answering a question on why Americans should trust anything the White House says when often it turns out to be untrue.
CNN's Jim Acosta pressed Sanders on whether she was kept in the dark regarding Trump's reimbursement to Cohen. Sanders would not directly respond, only reiterating that she gave the press "the best information that I had."
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/politics ... index.html
(CNN)In the wake of Rudy Giuliani's statements about the hush payment made to Stormy Daniels, outgoing Republican Rep. Charlie Dent called for congressional oversight hearings into the matter, suggesting that it would be hypocritical not to hold them.
"I think there is certainly a role for Congress," the Pennsylvania Republican said on CNN's "Newsroom" on Thursday.
"Let's put the shoe on the other foot," Dent said. "If a Democratic president had paid off a porn star to keep quiet while he was president, I suspect we'd have oversight hearings, and I suspect there should be some oversight hearings to get to the bottom of this."
"If a Democratic president had done this, we'd be waving a bloody shirt right now," he said of his Republican House colleagues.
On Wednesday night, Giuliani, a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, disclosed that the President had paid back the $130,000 his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, had used to pay for Daniels' silence about an alleged affair. Trump had previously said he was unaware of the payment to the adult film star. On Thursday morning, Trump denied that any of his campaign money was used to reimburse Cohen and said the lawyer was paid via retainer.
https://www.cnn.com/2018/05/03/politics ... index.html
China's aggressive efforts to become a tech superpower have long worried many American business leaders, and now are fueling trade tensions with the United States. But experts say the US government needs to come up with a smarter response.
President Donald Trump is sending his top economic advisers to China this week for talks about the trade dispute in which the two countries have threatened to slap tariffs on tens of billions of dollars of each other's exports.
The US government says it's taking action against China over policies that have enabled Chinese firms to unfairly get their hands on sensitive technology from American companies. At the heart of the concerns is "Made in China 2025," Beijing's plan to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into industries like robotics, electric cars and computing with the aim of becoming a global leader in those areas...........
http://money.cnn.com/2018/05/02/technol ... index.html
Dick’s Sporting Goods has reportedly retained several lobbyists to urge lawmakers to take action on gun control, months after restricting gun sales in its stores.
The sporting-goods chain is working with three lobbyists from the Glover Park Group to take on the topic, Bloomberg reported Thursday, citing a disclosure form filed late last month.
The move comes after Dick’s announced in the wake of the mass shooting at a Parkland, Fla., high school in February that it would stop selling assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines.
The chain also said it would no longer sell guns to anyone under the age of 21 and later announced it would destroy some of the guns or accessories left in stock.
A spokesman for Dick’s declined to comment to Bloomberg for its report, and Glover Park didn’t respond to the outlet's requests for comment.
Dick’s CEO Edward Stack vowed to take action on gun violence in the wake of the Feb. 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida, which left 17 students and faculty dead.
"Based on what's happened, and looking at those kids and those parents, it moved us all unimaginably and to think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, we need to do something," Stack said during a February interview on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
However, Bloomberg noted that it’s unusual for retailers to hire lobbyists on topics like guns, which could alienate some potential customers.
Several other retailers also chose to place restrictions on or entirely eliminate the selling of firearms after the Parkland shooting, including Walmart.
http://thehill.com/business-a-lobbying/ ... un-control
Here we go again.
The Trump administration, bent on rolling back safeguards that keep Americans safe and protect consumers, is accelerating its reckless deregulatory push to undo vehicle standards at the behest of the automakers.
It’s déjà vu. I am reminded of my time as administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) under President Jimmy Carter. At every turn we were met by automakers which — incorrectly — claimed that incorporating safety features like seatbelts and airbags was too costly.
Their most recent target: fuel economy and greenhouse gas emission standards for vehicles, known as clean car standards. Today’s program is the result of a historic 2011 agreement between automakers and the Obama administration. It would nearly double fuel economy by 2025 and reduce 6 billion metric tons of climate pollution over the lifetime of new vehicles sold between model years 2017 and 2025.
Since the agreement took effect, the standards have saved consumers money, protected public health and led to impressive reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.
Though monumental, the Obama-era clean car standards weren’t without precedent. As NHTSA administrator, I issued the country’s first fuel economy standards. These standards have been saving gas and saving consumers money since 1978 — 1.5 trillion gallons and $4 trillion. It’s gratifying to see what the industry can achieve.
However, ever since the 1970s, when consumer and health advocates began pushing for improved emissions standards, automakers have tried to thwart those attempts. It took more than 25 years for fuel economy standards to be updated, in no small part because of the automakers’ sabotage.
So here we are again. Just days after the 2016 election, automakers asked then President-elect Donald Trump to review the clean car standards. After multiple meetings with auto executives, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Scott Pruitt announced plans to roll back the clean car standards. According to a review from the Environmental Defense Fund, that decision relies not on an EPA analysis of the standards but on 63 citations from the auto industry. Pruitt’s decision makes no mention of climate change — which was one of the key underlying rationales for the standards when they were issued.
Now, NHTSA and the EPA will begin to disassemble the clean car standards. It’s easy to predict what scare tactics they might use. In the 1990s, when Congress was considering improving fuel economy, the U.S. Department of Transportation claimed that greater fuel economy would produce less safe vehicles, a claim that belied the facts.
In reality, the vast majority of improvements to fuel economy came from improvements in technology, not by making vehicles that are less crashworthy. Nevertheless, efforts to torpedo improved fuel economy standards were successful for years.
Pruitt recently hinted in public comments that the administration would turn to refuted claims that fuel-efficient vehicles are less safe, don’t be fooled. Improved economy and improved safety are achievable together. Automakers have done it before. Now, they are producing the most technologically advanced and cleanest cars in history. Vehicle prices have stayed relatively flat, and automakers have seen profits boom.
A 2016 technical assessment by the EPA, NHTSA and the California Air Resources Board shows that automakers are meeting the standards more affordably and faster than predicted. According to an analysis by the Consumer Federation of America, many models already exceed the current Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) requirements.
The Obama standards push automakers to innovate and set mile-per-gallon targets based on vehicle size and not a fleet-wide average. This means that improved fuel economy will continue to come not only from improved technology in engines but also from advancements in metal alloys and composite materials that make modern cars stronger, safer and more fuel-efficient. This attack would be just the latest from an administration that misleads the public with no compunction.
The truth is that this administration isn’t pursuing regulatory rollbacks to help the American people. It is furiously undoing important safeguards at the behest of corporations and their friends who fill the highest posts in the Trump administration.
Automobiles on the road today demonstrate that increased safety and better fuel economy are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they are compatible and what the public wants.
Automakers should go forward, not backward. They should embrace the words of Robert B. Alexander, Ford’s then-vice president for car product development, which I often repeated to auto executives during my time as NHTSA administrator. In a 1977 speech sponsored by the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, he said, “The lion’s share of the burden of meeting these stringent standards and mandates will fall on the shoulders of the engineers. In fact, I like to call this the ‘age of the engineer’ — and I, for one, couldn’t be happier.” This statement is as true today was it was then.
http://thehill.com/opinion/energy-envir ... andards-in
GUANTANAMO BAY NAVY BASE, CUBA
President Donald Trump's incendiary remarks about military justice stirred a dramatic exchange in a hearing Thursday for the accused conspirators of the 9/11 attacks, with defense lawyers arguing that the commander-in-chief exerted unlawful influence.
At issue are Trump's remarks on Twitter and in person about the decision to give no prison time to Army deserter Bowe Bergdahl and to urge the death penalty on a man who had not yet been charged for driving a van through a New York City bike path, killing eight people.
An attorney for alleged 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheik Mohammed urged the judge, Army Col. James Pohl, to remove the death penalty from consideration, if not dismiss the case altogether.
Prosecutor Bob Swann countered that that some people don't really pay attention to Trump's commentary and that the jury of U.S. military officers will decide the case based on other issues.
But defense attorney David Nevin said the military jury will understand that, in the instance of the New York City attack, "The commander-in-chief is telling them the result that he wants here, that is a death penalty."
The judge himself — the longest serving military judge in the Army — appeared to take particular offense over Trump's criticism of the sentence rendered by another military judge in the Bergdahl case. "The President of the United States, the commander-in-chief, feels necessary to criticize a colonel of the United States Army for a decision that we all know he's empowered to make," Pohl said.
One episode that defense lawyers cast as unlawful influence involved the president saying after 29-year-old Sayfullo Saipov rammed his vehicle Oct. 31 into the lower Manhattan bike path that he had changed his mind about sending the Uzbek immigrant to Guantánamo and favored a federal trial instead because he'd get swifter justice in civilian court. Trump also tweeted that the Uzbek should get the death penalty............
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation- ... Row1_card1
WASHINGTON
A private investment firm led by Energy Secretary Rick Perry’s son has notified the Securities and Exchange Commission that it’s seeking investors for a new energy fund, raising concerns about the potential for private businesses run by the offspring of high-ranking government officials to benefit from their parents’ policy decisions without the public being aware.
Griffin Perry is one of three owners of Dallas-based Grey Rock Energy Partners, which runs pooled investment funds that take stakes in active U.S. oil and natural gas drilling projects on behalf of wealthy investors who can meet a hefty minimum investment threshhold.
On April 19, the SEC published Grey Rock’s latest regulatory filing, which created Grey Rock Energy Fund III-B. It marked the first new fund the group is offering since Griffin Perry’s father became President Donald Trump’s energy secretary, and comes amid escalating concerns about conflicts of interest in the Trump administration.
Watchdog groups have two worries about situations like this. One is that existing investment rules allow for little public disclosure about private funds like Grey Rock, making possible conflicts of interest nearly impossible to spot. Neither the names of the investors nor their individual stakes are shared with the SEC, which requires just minimal information on the number of investors and sum of investment money under management.
The other concern is that conflict-of-interest rules for politicians extend only to spouses and young kids, not grown ones.
“The criminal conflict-of-interest statute draws a bright-line distinction between adult child and minor child,” said Walter Shaub, who until February 2017 ran the federal Office of Government Ethics............
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation- ... Row5_card1
Former FBI Director James Comey on Thursday rebuked Rudy Giuliani, a member of President Donald Trump's legal team, for referring to bureau officials as “stormtroopers,” saying U.S. leaders should be emulating federal law-enforcement officias “rather than comparing them to Nazis.”
During an interview Wednesday on Fox News, Giuliani blasted an FBI raid of the offices and home of Trump's longtime personal attorney, Michael Cohen. Giuliani framed the seizure of documents as a disproportionate action in the FBI investigation into Cohen‘s payment to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, who says she was paid to keep quiet about a sexual encounter with Trump.
Giuliani characterized the raids as “big stormtroopers coming in and breaking down his apartment and breaking down his office.” The remark appeared to reference a paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party — known as the Sturmabteilung, or Storm Detachment — that played a role in the rise of Adolf Hitler.
Comey pushed back against the remarks.
“I know the New York FBI. There are no ‘stormtroopers’ there; just a group of people devoted to the rule of law and the truth,” Comey tweeted. “Our country would be better off if our leaders tried to be like them, rather than comparing them to Nazis.”..........
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/ ... ani-566108
Longtime associates whose job was to clean up messes are suddenly in the spotlight making things worse for the president.
Looking the part has always mattered to President Donald Trump.
The president’s preference for people who look like they came from “central casting” has become a well-known part of how Trump makes personnel decisions. The president said as much when he nominated Ronny Jackson — the square-jawed White House physician with a full head of hair thick enough to hold a side part — to be secretary of Veterans Affairs.
But behind the scenes, there’s another set of characters who populate Trump’s world: loyal fixers who lie for Trump, and clean up his messes in the shadows, where their looks count less than their loyalty.
It’s a dichotomy that’s well-known in Trump’s inner circle. One former adviser described it succinctly:
“Central casting for ‘front porch’ jobs, trolls for the real work.”
But in recent weeks, there has been tension in the natural order of Trump’s world, because his not-made-for-prime-time “fixers” have been basking in the national spotlight where they don’t belong. And they’re doing something else very out of character for the aides picked solely for their loyalty and willingness to bend the rules: They’re falling out of line.
This week, it’s Harold Bornstein, Trump’s long-haired, leather-skinned New York physician, who told CNN that he allowed Trump to dictate a letter about his health that was released during the campaign under Bornstein’s name.
“People like Dr. Bornstein and others are certainly unique-looking,” said Sam Nunberg, a former Trump campaign aide. “The reason the president hires them, or uses them, is because generally they’re not going to be in the public eye. They’re yes men.”
The behind-the-scenes crew also includes Michael Cohen, Trump’s longtime lawyer and all-around fixer, who personally made payments to silence a porn actress who claims to have had an affair with his boss—but who has declined to join the president in attacking the FBI agents who recently raided his home and office, instead describing them as “professional.”
In the past, Trump’s fixers have always endured poor treatment from the boss they aim to please: They are used to being taken for granted enduring personal insults without too much talking back.
“Bornstein was useful to Trump because he would do whatever he was told,” said a second longtime Trump confidant. “He understood that the key to Trump was doing anything he ordered you to do. Cohen and Bornstein both met that criteria.
That was then.
Bornstein, who like Cohen, at one point harbored hopes of following his client to White House, burst out of the shadows, and out of line, when he told NBC News on Tuesday that longtime Trump bodyguard Keith Schiller (another critical behind-the-scenes fixer) and two other men raided his office to seize the president’s medical files.
The incident, which he believes was instigated by his admission to the New York Times that the president uses the hair regrowth drug Propecia, left him feeling “raped, frightened and sad,” he said.............
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/05/ ... ein-566006
The full transcript of Rubio’s tax policy remarks in an interview with the Economist are telling.
Frustrated with the media coverage of Sen. Marco Rubio’s (R-FL) viral critique of the Republican tax bill, Rubio’s office has published the rest of the senator’s comments, which are still a scathing critique of the law.
In newly published remarks, Rubio undercuts the true impact of the corporate tax cut, the central part of the Republican tax reform package, and seemingly questions his Republican colleagues’ dedication to helping the working class.
“I had no problem with cutting the corporate rate,” he said in the interview with the Economist. “I just felt that we could have cut it a lot, to 22 to 21, and use that extra point as a tax cut, but instead of for the multinationals, applied it to working families making $50,000 to $60,000 a year. ... And we did some of it, but the fact that we had to fight so hard to achieve it and the arguments that were used against it showed me how far we have to go.”
Rubio who voted for the final package after winning a slightly more generous child tax credit, said there are a lot of “net positives” in the new tax bill; however, he repeatedly gave a harsh assessment of the biggest reform: the massive corporate tax cut.
The tax law gives corporations a huge permanent tax cut, lowering the rate from 35 percent to 21 percent, which Republicans argue will push corporations to invest more in the United States, raise wages, increase jobs, and unleash unprecedented economic growth. As Vox explained, there isn’t too much evidence to this effect, and workers would only receive a quarter or less of the benefits from tax cuts — and among those workers, it’s likely the higher earners who would benefit.
Originally, Republicans tried to bring the rate down even more, to 20 percent. Lessening that reduction by even a mere 1 percent, to have more revenue for other reforms like Rubio’s child tax credit, was a “massive” fight, Rubio said.
“We, at one point, proposed a corporate rate of 20.9 percent to be able to fully do what we wanted,” Rubio said. “We did the .9 just to show the absurdity of it. And it was a massive fight because at the end of the day there was still a lot of thinking on the right of center that if Apple is happy and the big corporations are happy, they are going to take the money they are saving and reinvest it back into American workers.”
Rubio argued that while there might be more investment because of the Republican reforms, it’s not because of the corporate tax cut, but because of a different provision in tax law that allows companies to write off their investments the year that they’re made (also known as full expensing).
The backstory of Rubio’s office publishing the entirety of the senator’s Economist interview is mostly an insider tale of reporting on Congress. In short, one of Rubio’s comments critiquing the tax bill in the Economist interview was picked up by multiple national outlets (including Vox). Rubio wrote an op-ed in National Review to clarify that he thought the tax bill was good on the whole and “helps workers,” which Politico described as him “walking back” his comments to the Economist. Rubio’s office claimed this was the senator’s position all along (Rubio called out Politico on Twitter for the article being written by an intern), and because Politico wouldn’t run a correction, it published the transcript of the tax portion of Rubio’s interview with the Economist.
All of that is kind of beside the point. What’s interesting is that this entire drama and the transcript of Rubio’s comments go just as far to dismantle the signature Republican legislative accomplishment in the past year as the original viral remark did.
The full transcript of Rubio’s interview with the Economist on the tax bill, as released by his office, is below:
RUBIO: We, at one point, proposed a corporate rate of 20.9% to be able to fully do what we wanted. We did the .9 just to show the absurdity of it. And it was a massive fight because at the end of the day there was still a lot of thinking on the right of center that if Apple is happy and the big corporations are happy, they are going to take the money they are saving and reinvest it back into American workers. When in fact they bought back shares — they’ll invest in automation and productivity that way – a few of them gave out bonuses in the short term, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that this was massively poured back into the American worker.
I still think there are a lot of net positives of tax reform, let there be no doubt. I do think a lot of small businesses will now expand and immediately invest. But that had less to do with the rate, and more to do with the immediate expensing component of it. It had more to do with that than it did with the corporate rate.
I was not a big a fan of slashing massively the taxes of multinational corporations who aren’t even American companies. We shouldn’t be discriminatory towards them, but we don’t have any special obligation towards them either. These are citizens of the world…
The problem is that growth as I said, if you’re a multinational corporation, you may be growing but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s helping Americans. Your shareholders are from all over the world, your customers are from all over the world, your supply chain, and your production chain may not even be in the United States. The idea that massive growth by some large entity that is a multinational footprint is going to somehow benefit Americans especially because they happen to be headquartered in the United States --
THE ECONOMIST: So you were unhappy with the tax reform because of the cuts to the corporate rate?
RUBIO: I had no problem with cutting the corporate rate. I had proposed a cut myself. I just felt that we could have cut it a lot, to 22 to 21, and use that extra point as a tax cut, but instead of for the multinationals, applied it to working families making $50,000 to $60,000 a year. It wouldn’t have changed their lives, but would have shown we care. And we did some of it, but the fact that we had to fight so hard to achieve it and the arguments that were used against it showed me how far we have to go.
https://www.vox.com/2018/5/3/17314984/m ... p-tax-bill
At 7 feet tall, 200 lbs. and 0% body fat, Donald John Trump is the healthiest president—indeed, head of state of any kind—ever. Oh, and he has huge hands.
A Memo On The President’s Health
By Drs. David Dennison, John Barron, and John Miller
This letter is to certify Donald Trump’s continued robust good health, genius-plus level intellect, and physical perfection. As America’s healthiest President (and many people are saying) the healthiest human being in the world, Mr. Trump is a golden Adonis, a specimen of masculinity so perfect that in the annals of medical science we have been unable to find anyone who can rival him.
At 7 feet tall, Mr. Trump is our tallest President, and at just 200 lbs, with body fat of 0%, he is undoubtedly the fittest President, or indeed sovereign or head or state of any kind, in world history. While Mr. Trump is 70 years old, we assess his physical condition to be that of a 25-year-old elite athlete. His dedication to triathlons, daily weight training, and heavy cardio leaves his cadre of former Navy SEAL physical trainers shaking and exhausted, awed by his sheer endurance and power. As one told us during the preparation of this report, “Mr. Trump could easily complete BUDS/S tomorrow, then do the SFAS course simultaneously with the USAF Pararescue program, and then pass SERE with flying colors.”
Mr. Trump has definitely, positively never, ever, ever had gonorrhea, herpes, syphilis, chlamydia, the French, Spanish, or English pox, crabs, genital lice, crotch-crickets, Bulgarian junk-rot, the Weeping Cobra, the Gift that Keeps On Giving, Studio 54 Stall Surprise, or Bangkok Fire-Dick. Mr. Trump’s noted fidelity to his wives should put to rest all of these scurrilous rumors. In fact, our laboratory research shows that contact with Mr. Trump’s magnificent body kills all forms of STDs, and also cures scrofula, vertigo, blindness, sleep apnea, and the Jimmy Leg.
Mr. Trump’s daily routine is a model of health, not only for a President but for any American. Each day, Mr. Trump makes America great for eight hours, performs 10 hours of cardio, including strenuous golf-cart riding, hand cardio (Tweeting), and reporter haranguing. He then makes vigorous love to Mrs. Trump for five hours, sleeps one hour and repeats the process.
Mr. Trump’s mental acuity transcends even the most aggressive projections for the far future of Singularity-level Artificial Intelligences. His ability to consume volumes of complex intelligence materials in minutes leaves his staff in constant awe. Mr. Trump often demands his briefers present the original intel source material to him untranslated, since his ability to speak 124 languages is unrivaled.
When testing Mr. Trump’s mental fitness, we discovered he had not only memorized the Code of Federal Regulations but could extemporaneously recite it in the form of a medieval French chanson de geste.
Mr. Trump’s astounding power to understand and rectify complex, multivariate regulatory problems would be a bright display of his status as the most intelligent President ever. Even knowing he was one of the most brilliant men in recorded history, his work on advanced string theory, quantum chromodynamics, and fusion containment is beyond our understanding as mere medical men. Far from deserving just the Nobel Peace Prize, it is our humble opinion that Mr. Trump deserves Nobel Prizes in Literature, Economics, Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, and Making America Great Again.
His eyesight is so keen he can spot the panty line on an adult film actress from a half-mile. Mr. Trump’s night vision is so acute he can read the text of a non-disclosure agreement printed in 4-point type in near-total darkness. The National Reconnaissance Office has asked the President to allow them to make a model of his eyes to develop the next generation of surveillance satellite optics.
Mr. Trump’s hearing is so acute that he can discern the faintest dog whistles and can detect any aspersions, insults, or questions regarding his character from miles away. In moments where Mr. Trump is seemingly unable to hear questions, his son-in-law Jared is happy to whisper in his ear, especially regarding his White House rivals.
Mr. Trump’s genes display qualities heretofore unknown to science. They are, to use a term of scientific art, bigly superior. Careful analysis reveals that Mr. Trump’s genetic sequences contain not only DNA and RNA, but also TNA, or Trump Nucleic Acids. TNA binds to gold leaf, golf greens, trophy wives, and self-regard. Although it is out of the purview of this report, we believe the only solution to the plague of Antifa Super-Soldiers threatening America is a clone army based on Mr. Trump’s gloriously perfect and unique genetic makeup.
His hands are so very large that other President’s hands are like those of tiny, tiny dolls by comparison. Believe us. We measured them with extraordinary scientific rigor. Our super-doctory scientific tests reveal that Mr. Trump’s hands are also very, very strong. The President can crush a titanium ingot like a marshmallow. He can palm bowling balls, and throw them over a mile without breaking a sweat. He has often carried weights heavier than any other President, ever.
Mr. Trump’s hair is thick, fast-growing, and retains its natural golden hue from his youth. His skin is that of a teenage farmgirl; smooth, taut, perfectly free of any wrinkles, moles, blemishes, wens, cystic formations, or signs of a lifetime of fast-food addiction, rough living, whoring, or long nights spent in the humid darkness of a low-rent Atlantic City casino.
Even for a man of Mr. Trump’s astounding health, constitution, physical perfection, and genetic gifts, life is not without challenges.
Mr. Trump’s body emits a thick musk of pure testosterone, causing men near him to become aggressive, and women to strip off their clothes and beg him to grab them by their reproductive organs. This powerful scent is a constant challenge to the Secret Service, as battalions of scantily-clad women wearing little but MAGA hats and thong panties throw themselves at the President, forming human pyramids to scale security fences and showing up in attorney Michael Cohen’s office demanding $130,000 payments.
Mr. Trump’s manhood is, as you will be unsurprised to learn, is the largest of any President, and in fact, larger than any mammalian penis outside that of the majestic blue whale. His genitals require a system of complex straps, buckles, pulleys, trusses, and velcro attachment points to contain them within his custom-fitted trousers.
As his very real physicians (who many people say are the best medical experts from the best schools ever, and totally not the pen names of an insecure man consumed by his petty vanities and insecurities) we certify the preceding to be really, really true.
Dr. David Dennison
Dr. John Barron
Dr. John Miller
https://www.thedailybeast.com/breaking- ... e?ref=home
“Wow,” he finally said.
Anderson Cooper was momentarily stunned speechless when a top GOP strategist insisted he had never heard President Donald Trump tell a lie.
“The president’s never lied to me and I don’t think the president’s lied to the American people,” insisted former Trump campaign strategist David Urban on CNN’s “Anderson Copper 360” Wednesday. “I think the president is prone to hyperbole, yes, absolutely. Do I think he’s purposefully misleading the American people? No, I don’t.”
Cooper simply stared into the camera for seconds before responding: “Wow. Wow. Okay. I am not sure I believe ... that’s what you really believe ... Factually, he has said things which are not true, and which he obviously knows are not true.”
Urban stuck to his story even when Cooper pointed out findings by The Washington Post earlier this week that Trump has lied or misconstrued facts more than 3,000 times in 466 days — “6.5 false claims a day.” Cooper added: “You’re saying you’ve never heard the president say something which is demonstrably false and he knew was false?”
Urban laughed: “You’re asking me my opinion.”
Trump acknowledged Thursday that he had reimbursed his personal attorney Michael Cohen for a $130,000 payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels after insisting he knew nothing about it.
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/an ... fd2d24a7b1
Agents are “devoted to the rule of law,” the former FBI director said.
Rudy Giuliani lashed former FBI Director James Comey as a “sensitive little baby” Thursday after Comey defended the bureau’s agents after Giuliani called them “storm troopers,” The Washington Post reported.
Among a number of stunning comments by Giuliani in his Fox News interview Wednesday night, he compared FBI agents to Nazi storm troopers for raiding the office of President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen last month and collecting documents and computers. Agents, provided with court-issued warrants, were legally authorized to do so. Cohen is being investigated for bank fraud and possible campaign finance violations.
Comey tweeted Thursday that there are no “stormtroopers” in the FBI — “just a group of people devoted to the rule of law and the truth.” Comey said the country would be better off if “our leaders” tried to emulate them instead of “comparing them to Nazis.”
Giuliani, who just joined Trump’s legal team, responded to the tweet in an interview with The Washington Post, calling Comey a “sensitive little baby.”
He added, without offering details: “He should be sensitive, because he’s been caught lying over and over again.”
Bolstering his growing reputation as Trump’s new insult man, Giuliani on Fox also called Comey a “disgraceful liar” and “very perverted man” — again, without explaining what he was referring to.
In defending Trump on Fox, Giuliani appeared to support suspicions that the president fired Comey a year ago to short-circuit an investigation into possible collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign to swing the election in Trump’s favor.
Giuliani said the president “fired Comey because Comey would not — among other things — say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation.” So “he fired him and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy.’”
Giuliani has traditionally enjoyed strong ties with the FBI, both as a U.S. attorney and as New York City mayor. After Comey reopened the investigation into Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s emails just before the election, Giuliani indicated he learned that members of the bureau weren’t happy with the initial conclusion to not pursue her use of a private email server from both former and “active” agents.
Giuliani’s former law firm, then called Bracewell & Giuliani, was also general counsel to the FBI Agents Association, which represents 13,000 current and former agents. Giuliani left the firm in early 2016.
( TERRIFIC - ANOTHER MORON - ANOTHER LOOSE CANNON IN THE WHITE HOUSE - WHEN DOES IT ALL END
)https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/gi ... fd2d249c87
Fox News host Neil Cavuto on Thursday scolded President Trump for making contradictory statements about a payment to adult film star Stormy Daniels, calling the president’s habit of making inaccurate statements his “swamp.”
“Let me be clear, Mr. President. How can you drain the swamp if you’re the one that keeps muddying the waters? You didn’t know about the $130,000 payment to a porn star until you did,” Cavuto said.
“You said you knew nothing about your lawyer Michael Cohen handling this, until acknowledging today you were the guy behind the retainer payment that took care of this,” he continued. “You insist that money from the campaign or campaign contributions played no role in this transaction. Of that you’re sure. The thing is, not 24 hours ago, sir, you couldn’t recall any of this. And you seemed very sure.”
]“I’m not saying you’re a liar,” Cavuto added. “You’re a president, you’re busy. I’m having a devil of a time figuring out which news is fake. Let’s just say that your own words on lots of stuff gave me lots of pause."
Cavuto then ran through a long list of claims that Trump has made that have later been proven to be false or were inaccurate or unsubstantiated in the first place.
Among the items were Trump’s claims that Russians didn’t interfere in the 2016 election, that the new GOP tax law would cost him a “fortune” and that he had signed more bills at that point of his presidency than any of his predecessors.
“None of this makes what you say fake. Just calling out the press for being so, a bit of a stretch,” Cavuto said.
“But more oftentimes they’re using your own words to bash you. Your base probably might not care. But you should,” he continued. “I guess you’re too busy draining the swamp to ever stop and smell the stink you’re creating. That’s your doing. That’s your stink, Mr. President, that’s your swamp.”
Cavuto’s commentary came one day after Rudy Giuliani, a member of Trump's personal legal team, revealed on Fox News that Trump had reimbursed his longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen for a payment to Daniels despite Trump previously denying knowing about the payment.
Trump offered his explanation for the payment in a series of tweets early Thursday, saying that Cohen was reimbursed for the payment through a retainer.
http://thehill.com/homenews/media/38617 ... your-swamp
