I am starting this at 9:18 pm tonight, which means it will have to be less link-heavy and detailed than normal. Because oh my god, there is just TOO MUCH going on and it is nearly impossible to keep track of it all while also maintaining a full-time job and, occasionally, eating, sleeping, and making eye contact with other human beings. Needless to say, there are likely a gazillion typos.
TIMELINE RECAP OF THE WEEK OF TRUMP: Even by 2017 standards, this week was bananas. As Alexandra Petri put it in her truly brilliant column this week, “Merely watching this, you are now 600 years old. (Have you written this before? Hundreds of years have passed since Tuesday. You have no memory of the Time Before.) It is as though all of your involuntary muscle functions now require conscious effort.”
Monday: We started the week off with a bang. First, at the press conference, Sean Spicer refused to actually deny that Trump records conversations in the Oval Office or other parts of the White House. Then during what has become the Witching Hour, we got our first Major Bombshell of the week: Trump revealed highly classified information to the Russian ambassador and foreign secretary while boasting of his access to the “best intelligence” during a highly unusual Oval Office meeting last week. This was described as revealing “more information than we have shared with our own allies.” After scrambling for a few hours, the White House finally sent out National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster to make a lawyerly statement from the White House lawn (taking no questions) saying that the story “as reported” is false and that Trump never revealed any “sources or methods.” But of course, that’s not what the Washington Post report alleged. Trump apparently revealed details about an ISIS plot and, most damagingly, included the name of the city where the intelligence was gathered. “The identification of the location was seen as particularly problematic, officials said, because Russia could use that detail to help identify the U.S. ally or intelligence capability involved. Officials said the capability could be useful for other purposes, possibly providing intelligence on Russia’s presence in Syria. Moscow would be keenly interested in identifying that source and perhaps disrupting it.” This is a HUGE deal. But to the surprise of exactly no one left alive today, congressional Republicans largely shrugged it off, saying that Trump has the right to “declassify” any information and share it with anyone he wants, at any time. (Chait wrote a great column about why, since so much the president can do is technically legal, impeachment is the only actual check.)
Tuesday: After McMaster and another aide had spent Monday night calling the reporting “false,” Trump predictably sawed off the branch they had crawled out on, tweeting out that he had in fact shared information with the Russians but that he had an “absolute right” to do it and it was no big deal. McMaster, appearing before the press, had to switch tactics, against denying a report that wasn’t made but this time saying that the disclosure was “wholly appropriate” and then seeming to insist that Trump was too much of an idiot to have done any harm: “[T]he president wasn’t even aware where this information came from.” Then news broke that Israeli intelligence was the source of the highly secret information Trump had spilled to Russia -- which happens to be the #1 supporter of Syria, one of Israel’s most committed foes. The Wall Street Journal has since reported that the Israeli source has been “described by multiple U.S. officials as the most valuable source of information on external plotting by Islamic State. . . . All the officials agreed that the president’s impromptu revelation had shaken career intelligence officers’ confidence in Mr. Trump’s ability to keep secrets and exacerbated long-standing tensions between him and the intelligence community.” Israeli officials described Trump’s breach as their “worst fears confirmed.”
We chewed on that stuff for a few hours before 5:00 rolled around, and boy howdy, was it a doozy this time: The New York Times reported that Trump had personally asked then-FBI Director James Comey to shut down the investigation into Michael Flynn, and that Comey had recorded his thoughts about the request in a contemporaneous memo. The memo “was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation.” It is pretty hard to come up with a clearer example of obstruction of justice. Trump even seemed to have the requisite “corrupt” intent, when he asked the others present for the meeting to leave the room before making the request of Comey. Setting aside any possible coordination with Russia’s hacking of the election, the threat contained in the memo is itself the serious crime, the smoking gun. Also, many people have said that maybe there’s not enough evidence to prove a criminal charge of obstruction of justice, but remember that impeachment is a political event for political offenses: As I understand the impeachment proceeding to work, the Senate would not be required to find that the exact elements of a criminal statute had been met in order to convict. (If anyone knows how the mechanics of an impeachment trial works -- who lays out the charges, who spells out the “jury” instructions, etc -- please fill me in!) (Also, can you believe that was only two days ago??) Brian Beutler, commenting on Trump’s threat last week to disclose “tapes” of his conversations with Comey, writes how Trump has sealed his own fate: “But even if Trump has recordings of his conversations with Comey, and they vindicate Trump—as he coyly suggests in his tweet—it is small solace because he will have recorded himself using his power to fire Comey as leverage to discourage an FBI investigation. That is, he will have gathered evidence against himself, documenting his attempt to obstruct justice.”
Wednesday: Wednesday’s 5pm Witching Hour was just Too Much. Bullet points are necessary to recap what we learned:
- That Flynn and Manafort are the formal “subjects” of criminal investigations by the FBI and multiple subpoenas
- That Trump and his associates had at least 18 separate contacts with Russian officials during the last months of the 2016 campaign
- That Flynn appears to have personally intervened to stop an action against ISIS that Turkey opposed, after being paid by Turkey. (This one is bananas and has gotten almost no attention.)
- That the Trump transition knew Flynn was under investigation (for secretly working as an agent for Turkey) before hiring him as National Security Advisor. This one warrants a bit more of a discussion. Apparently Flynn told now-White House counsel Don McGahn (who, we can all agree, is truly terrible at his job) about this investigation on January 4, but was hired anyway. Recall that Pence was the head of the transition. Now recall that in March, after Flynn was fired, Pence went on TV and said explicitly that he first learned from news reports that day that Flynn had been an agent for Turkey. It’s pretty hard to believe Pence, the head of the transition, was never aware of Flynn’s revelation. But that’s what he wants us to think: It seems obvious that tonight’s NBC story, about how he has been kept out of the loop and in ignorance, comes straight from him.
- That GOP leadership talked (joked?) in a private meeting last summer that Trump was getting paid by Russia -- a meeting someone surreptitiously recorded and gave to the Washington Post. When asked about the comments, a spokesman for Paul Ryan flat out denied that they had ever been made. When the reporter then said that they were on tape, the spokesman immediately segued into claiming they were just “joking.” Chait has a good piece showing why we should take the “joke” at its word.
- And, oh yeah, that Acting AG Rosenstein finally named former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special prosecutor to lead a broad investigation into Russian interference in the election and any cooperation or collusion with Trump associates. Under the order, Mueller can only be fired by Rosenstein for cause, and is given broad deference to run the investigation the way he sees fit. This is truly excellent news -- even as it has given hacks in Congress like Lindsey Graham an excuse to say that Congress should get out of the way and get back to (I shit you not) investigating Hillary Clinton.
Thursday: Today we learned that Trump, after firing Flynn, reached out to him even knowing he was under investigation to tell him to “stay strong.” We also learned that Trump repeatedly pressed Comey to publicly declare that he was not under investigation, and that Comey became increasingly uncomfortable with Trump’s efforts to improperly contact him or influence him, forcing Comey to try to explain that the White House should not be contacting him directly. Benjamin Wittes discloses tonight that, in March, Comey (a friend of his) “described at least two incidents which he regarded as efforts on the part of the President personally to compromise him or implicate him with either shows of closeness or actual chumminess with the President.”
There’s probably more but I’m exhausted and moving on.
UNDER-THE-RADAR STORIES OF THE WEEK: A few very short summaries of stories you may have missed:
Travel Ban in Court: A 3-judge panel the 9th Circuit heard argument this week on Trump’s travel ban, as the DOJ tries to overturn the injunction of the second travel ban put in place by the Hawaii district court. (This follows last week’s argument, also about the second ban, before the full 13-member 4th Circuit.) Dahlia Lithwick recaps: “Looming over the entire argument yet again were Donald Trump’s endlessly damaging statements, tweets, and threats to the legitimacy of the 9th Circuit itself. As such, the Justice Department was forced to do battle not simply with the panel, the possibility that the executive order violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment as well as the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, and with the angry state of Hawaii, but also with Donald Trump’s unwavering belief that nothing he says will matter to a court.” Bottom line: The court seemed skeptical of the ban, but also looked for a way to rule more narrowly than the State of Hawaii may have wanted.
Trump Hires an Actual Fascist: Yesterday, reports circulated that Milwaukee Sheriff David Clarke would be taking a high position at the Department of Homeland Security. Please read this on why Clarke is so dangerous and insane and terrifying.
State Department Condemns Chechnyan Gays to Die: Chechnya is in the middle of a nightmarish campaign to torture and kill gays throughout the country. Buzzfeed reports that the United States is refusing to grant visas to those fleeing the torture. "We were informed there was no political will,” said the spokesperson, who asked her name be withheld because of security concerns. “They’re not going to provide visas. They’re going to support us in other ways, but not with visas."
House May Have to Vote Again on AHCA: “House Speaker Paul Ryan hasn’t yet sent the bill to the Senate because there’s a chance that parts of it may need to be redone, depending on how the Congressional Budget Office estimates its effects. House leaders want to make sure the bill conforms with Senate rules for reconciliation, a mechanism that allows Senate Republicans to pass the bill with a simple majority.” Hahahahahahaha.
White House Aims to End Student Loan Forgiveness, Other Crucial Education Funding: “Funding for college work-study programs would be cut in half, public-service loan forgiveness would end and hundreds of millions of dollars that public schools could use for mental health, advanced coursework and other services would vanish under a Trump administration plan to cut $10.6 billion from federal education initiatives, according to budget documents obtained by The Washington Post.” Recall that the GOP health care bill’s slashing of Medicaid would have dire consequences for special education programs that are funded directly through Medicaid and allow schools to pay for things like physical therapists, feeding tubes, and vision and hearing screenings.
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