US Politics, March 2018: Why do people leave the White House for good?

Paging marcos, let's you and me go to this: http://fox8.com/2018/03/07/porn-star-stormy-daniels-to-appear-in-cleveland/

NB: Good work, machine generated news stories: "The porn star claims she had a sex with Trump years ago."

haha phil

one (1) sex

The Prince stuff is old news to Abramson-readers.

He's been under investigation by the Justice Dept since 2016 btw.

Abramson

noooooooope

Ah, the penny drops.

say what?

Someone dropped a penny on Trump from the top of the Empire State.

Gotta start somewhere.

https://frinkiac.com/img/S10E21/642891.jpg

racial polarization in texas:
–state is 39% hispanic, 42% white non-hispanic
–115/181 lawmakers are currently Republican. next session there will be at max 2 hispanic Rs, possibly 1 or 0
–66/181 lawmakers are currently Democratic. five are white non-hispanic

— chris hooks (@cd_hooks) March 7, 2018

Convenient.

Hope Hicks told the House Intelligence Committee last week that one of her email accounts was hacked, @NBCNews reports: https://t.co/lbdOwgQbaz

— Jenna Johnson (@wpjenna) March 7, 2018

BUT HER EM... um, oh, wait.

Fwiw, hacking claims also attended the furors around Anthony Weiner, David Petraeus, and Mark Sanford.

Odd fellow, this president.

NEW - via @nytmike and me, Mueller has learned of two instances where Trump spoke to witnesses about issues related to their appearances w investigators https://t.co/bo7pcLjkQE

— Maggie Haberman (@maggieNYT) March 7, 2018

In one episode, the president told an aide that the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, should issue a statement denying a New York Times article in January. The article said Mr. McGahn told investigators that the president once asked him to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. Mr. McGahn never released a statement and later had to remind the president that he had indeed asked Mr. McGahn to see that Mr. Mueller was dismissed, the people said.

Full story is even better:

Mr. Trump’s interactions with Mr. McGahn unfolded in the days after the Jan. 25 Times article, which said that Mr. McGahn threatened to quit last June after the president asked him to fire the special counsel. After the article was published, the White House staff secretary, Rob Porter, told Mr. McGahn that the president wanted him to release a statement saying that the story was not true, the people said.

Mr. Porter, who resigned last month amid a domestic abuse scandal, told Mr. McGahn the president had suggested he might “get rid of” Mr. McGahn if he chose not to challenge the article, the people briefed on the conversation said.

Mr. McGahn did not publicly deny the article, and the president later confronted him in the Oval Office in front of the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, according to the people.

The president said he had never ordered Mr. McGahn to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn replied that the president was wrong and that he had in fact asked Mr. McGahn in June to call the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, to tell him that the special counsel had a series of conflicts that disqualified him for overseeing the investigation and that he had to be dismissed. The president told Mr. McGahn that he did not remember the discussion that way.

Mr. Trump moved on, pointing out that Mr. McGahn had never told him that he was going to resign over the order to fire the special counsel. Mr. McGahn acknowledged that that was true but said that he had told senior White House officials at the time that he was going to quit.

It is not clear how the confrontation was resolved.

i rescreened mystic pizza a while back and mar-a-lago is in it (via lifestyle of the rich & famous)

― It's not delivery, it's Adorno! (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, March 7, 2018 11:29 AM (six hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I hope when this is all over that everyone can come together and agree to George Lucas the shit out of every cultural artifact that contains a non-pejorative mention or depiction of Trump. It's such a fucking bummer every time I hear his name in old tv shows and songs.

it's really disheartening and stressful when you're trying to unwind with some mindless 80s trash and Trump appears out of nowhere in some hitherto harmless idiom like some piece of unexploded cultural ordinance

Yes this...huh?

President Trump’s lawyer secretly obtained a restraining order last week to prevent Stormy Daniels from speaking out about her alleged affair with Trump https://t.co/tvhljhVQEf

— NYT Politics (@nytpolitics) March 7, 2018

does anyone even care about this (apart from melania)?

Less than 2/3 of Texas' population is eligible to vote. Most of that is due to age, but even among the voting-age population, more than 15% is ineligible due to lack of citizenship or criminal status.

does anyone even care about this (apart from melania)?

Whatever hemming and hawing the likes of Jerry Falwell Jr may do, there is a question of potential misuse of political funds depending on where the $130,000 ultimately came from.

also it shows how susceptible trump is to blackmail etc

i mean it was obvious to some of us for decades that he is a fuckin crook but others need more convincing

I'm amazed that Mueller's phalanx of attorneys can track of this. I imagine Mueller like James Mason in The Verdict, directing the teams.
"Okay, well, cancel all vacations, Smith. We're going to concentrate on obstruction of justice, hmm?"

https://youtu.be/S_o54V6y2bA?t=26m36s

Well I think for him and his team it's the fact that new material -- criminal or not -- keeps *happening,* as evidenced by Trump's muddling the other month mentioned above. And at such a high amount and with a wide profile.

Busy Wednesday here:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/b6a5fb8c-224b-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.229ad2d5e183

This builds on the story the other day re the Seychelles, thus:

Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has gathered evidence that a secret meeting in the Seychelles just before the inauguration of Donald Trump was an effort to establish a back-channel between the incoming administration and the Kremlin — apparently contradicting statements made to lawmakers by one of its participants, according to people familiar with the matter....

While Mueller is probing the circumstances of the Seychelles meeting, he is also more broadly examining apparent efforts by the Trump transition team to create a back-channel for secret talks between the new administration and the Kremlin. Mueller was appointed special counsel to investigate how Russia interfered in the 2016 election, whether any Americans assisted in such efforts, and any other related matters that arise in the course of his probe.

Investigators now suspect the Seychelles meeting may have been one of the first efforts to establish such a line of communications between the two governments, these people said. Nader’s account is considered key evidence — but not the only evidence — about what transpired in the Seychelles, according to people familiar with the matter.

Something new every day. Every. Single. Day. Almost damning, never exculpatory.

YOU'RE THE PUPPET!

i am ready for the part of the nightmare to be over

https://i.imgflip.com/iiwdr.jpg

He stormy Daniels thing is important because it’s a criminal violation of campaign finance laws on its face.

Also, for all his lies there are still people who believe him, or think his accusers are the liars. In this case, if he denies the contract she is free to tell her story (or whatever she intends to do), which will prove his involvement, and if he fights to enforce it he therefore validates it, which also admits culpability. Then there is the campaign finance stuff. Then there is also the test case effect that if she sues and wins, or evinces either of the aforementioned results, that allows/emboldens all of his other accusers to follow the same legal path and call his bluff.

Or as someone purporting to be a lawyer observed online:

This agreement is not invalid simply because Trump didn't sign it. The terms are clear, and she was paid the money as contemplated by the agreement. The fact that Trump didn't sign it is irrelevant because it was signed by his agent.

However, and this is the good part, all Trump needs to do to soundly beat this lawsuit is adopt the contract. If his lawyer had Trump's authority to execute the agreement, then all Trump has to do is acknowledge and adopt the contract, and it is 100% binding.

Stormy Daniels' lawyer knows this. But they also know that politically Trump cannot acknowledge or adopt this contract. This is win-win-win for them. Either (1) Trump refuses to adopt the contract, in which case she gets out of it and gets to sell her story to the networks, (2) Trump adopts the contract, and that in itself is a news story, or (3) she gets more money from Trump to drop the suit.

Edit: A few people are correctly pointing out that another issue for Trump is that asserting the contract was for his benefit may also have implications for an FEC violation.

trump's crimes only seem to be crimes insofar as congress feels that they are, so it seems odd that paying off stormy is a bigger deal than kellyanne c. violating the hatch act or jared endlessly forgetting to list all of his creditors or various emolumental actions

besides, we all know that money is free speech

The thing is, the Stormy stuff - that is state law, right? It has nothing to do with congress.

Some Republicans on the panel are dismissing the concerns that Prince may have lied to the committee about meeting with Nader.
"It's all bulls***," said Rep. Peter King, a New York Republican.

Well of course they're saying that, they're going to look like idiots if it turns out they glossed over something major. (Which is more likely than not, obv.)

Donald Trump, master negotiator. https://t.co/LqmPz22tno pic.twitter.com/KYtxMh2wBk

— Daniel W. Drezner (@dandrezner) March 8, 2018

I just wanted to point out what a garbage person Peter King is

u otm tho

More from the madhouse

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/us/politics/trump-white-house-advisers.html

Separate fun:

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/03/07/republicans-pennsylvania-special-election-445221

The thing is, the Stormy stuff - that is state law, right? It has nothing to do with congress.

― Josh in Chicago, Thursday, March 8, 2018 1:54 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

As caek has already suggested, no. The potential election law liability isn't the end of the story, either. It's evidence of a pattern of behavior involving extramarital sexual relations, legal arrangements to cover up same, and the potential for blackmail, all of which may relate to matters relevant to the special counsel investigation.

(as Maura said as well, I see)

The Master Negotiator digs are fun, but as already revealed in other areas, the real silver lining with this administration is that their cluelessness about or disinterest in following the rules makes it easier to stop or reverse many of their efforts.

xpost Yeah, but if there are settlements, or defamation damages or any stuff like that, that is going through the state. I'm not talking about Trump getting impeached for paying off a porn star. I'm talking about his humiliation, or Cohen getting disbarred, or fun stuff like that.

It's evidence of a pattern of behavior involving extramarital sexual relations, legal arrangements to cover up same, and the potential for blackmail, all of which may relate to matters relevant to the special counsel investigation.

Much as one might want it to be different, none of this makes a dime's worth of difference. Extramarital affairs don't qualify to undo a national election and 'the will of the people', nor does paying off the 'correspondent' of the affair to be quiet about it. Unless it can be proved that Trump was successfully blackmailed into committing a high crime or misdemeanor, then the potential for blackmail is similarly unavailing.

All this stuff can do is damage his reputation, which, if his reputation was susceptible to damage, would have been a heap of shit after the pussy grabbing video.

I'm talking about his humiliation

I hear that Trump talks a big game, but that he's really a half-termer in the sack.

Something I'd love to see a reporter ask Trump Org about:

1) Cohen formed EC LLC on Oct 17 2016
2) The contract provided for EC LLC to pay Stormy 30K by Oct 27 2016
3) Between Oct 17 & Oct 25, the Trump campaign made payments to Trump Org properties that add up to 29,999.72. pic.twitter.com/CMAxgl3Vn4

— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) March 8, 2018