26 August 2018

STAR STATUS REPORT

Ok, here is the story of me brief but brilliant career on cable news.
The question y'all asked yesterday: What did they bleep out? The answer: 
 "A vital ingredient in the deliberations of both sides of the Agnew discussion, was what's in the national interest. But I don't believe this president gives a shit about the national interest."

They bleeped that and rushed me out the door without so much as a "Thank you." No mention of the book, not even a t-shirt. I am firing my agent.

Morning Joe:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjsUzWUsMSs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EjsUzWUsMSs

Was also on:

"The Beat," at 6pm same day:MSNBC

Also on Sunday morning on MSNBC,  "Alex Witt," 9 ayem,   http://us.wildmoka.com/c/clip/aP4MWn   

Bumped off CNN Sunday afternoon by reason of MCCain death. Same with
Lawrence O'Donnell.

Will stay in touch.

For autographed pictures, check with my former agent.

A bientot.


22 August 2018

SLEEPLESS IN MONTAUK

 I need a rest, so this will be very short. Time.com posted another piece. Why do I not just tell em No, I am tired?  You know why: every time I get a piece in the mag, I sell another book, which means I am working for about 18 cents an hour, before taxes.

Here is the latest post on Time.com.  I took another shot at clown Rudy, but they wisely edited him out of this one, cause he had nothing to say at all, not even anything that was laughable.

But my new favorite, spineless Paul Ryan got a mention, along with some other notable Republican worms.  Here it is:

http://time.com/5374971/michael-cohen-donald-trump/

Nite, nite.

20 August 2018

FROM FAKE NEWS TO FAKE LAW

Trump's Ministry of Truth never rests. There is too much to lie about.

So when the NYTimes revealed that White House Counsel Don McGahn sat for 30 hours of interviews with the Mueller team without inviting Trump's lawyers to attend, Trump and his brain damaged legal spokesman came up with a unique positive spin.

Trump tweeted, "See, I have nothing to worry about, no collusion, so everything he says will positive for me. I could have stopped him but I have nothing to hide."

The Trump "lemons to lemonade" tweet was followed by media appearances by clown Rudy, who gave us an inside look at the legal background of the President's tweet. The former United States Attorney for the prestigious Southern District of New York told the press that Trump could have stopped McGahn from speaking to Mueller by invoking his "Executive Privilege" or his "Attorney-Client Privilege" but he did neither because "he wants the truth to come out. He has nothing to hide."

But Rudy is, once more, full of shit. Trump had NO RIGHT to stop McGahn on either basis.  There is no Executive Privilege on criminal investigations such as this one, and there is no Attorney-Client relationship between White House Counsel and the President. Hence, no attorney client privilege. None. Rudy just made it up, and the press interrogators, to their disgrace, did not call him on it.

Bottom line, the loop tightens. And this President and his team grow more frantic by the day.  So far, there seem to be no limits on what they will do or say to escape the tightening noose. We'll see.

Pardon time?  Will spineless Paul Ryan and the maleavolent Mitch McConnel ever live up to their oaths of office, which, by the way, did not promise allegiance to the President, but to the Constitution?

Doubtful.

In any event, if you want more details on the above, see my piece published today on Time.com/

 http://time.com/5372208/mcgahn-trump-mueller-white-house/


Have a drink. That's what I'm doing.

A bientot.


17 August 2018

MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY


"I don't like being pushed around and now they're beginning to learn it." 
Donald Trump

If you recall President Donald Trump uttering those words on August 16, 2018, when he withdrew the security clearance of John Brennan, the former CIA Director, (and threatened to do the same to a raft of other named former government employees who are publicly critical of his policies and deportment,) then you misremember.

Those words were indeed spoken by Donald Trump, but it was in 1985. He was speaking to the New York Post, explaining why he had just filed a federal lawsuit seeking 105 million dollars from a small law firm that had the temerity to represent tenants who lived in a rent controlled building that Trump wished to demolish.

Trump amplified the bullying message by boasting to the Post,
"The rich have a very low threshold for pain!"

It was classic Donald Trump, the devoted adherent to the teachings of his infamous attack-dog lawyer, Roy Cohn. Trump has never forgotten or forsaken the lessons he learned from Roy before he was exposed as a thief and a perjurer, and disbarred. 

Trump's lawsuit was a classic ugly power play.  He assumed that because he had a lot more money than his adversaries, he had power over them, and he could use that power to bludgeon the lawyers into abandoning or selling out their clients. In Trumpworld, a win by any means is a win.

To enhance the assault, Trump' charged that the lawyers' persistent legal defense of their clients' rights was a violation of the criminal statute designed to reign in the mob, The Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, known a RICO. The  Trump legal complaint was all bluster, no substance. There was no allegation that the defendant lawyers had used the courts corruptly, no allegation they were complicit with a faithless court employee. But Trump's claim was so outlandish on its face, in both monetary scope and criminal threat, so inflammatory, that it prompted, for a brief time, the law firm's bank to freeze its account! Ouch!  

No  surprise: the bankers and the firm's stunned partners learned of the existence of the lawsuit by reading about it in New York Post!  More Trump-Cohn shtick.

But Trump misjudged his adversaries. The lawyers that Trump attacked could not match his wealth, but they had other values The Donald lacked. They had a sense of loyalty to their clients, and they had the guts to resist the bully. And that's what they did. I was pleased to be asked to represent them, pleased when the trial court and the appellate court, in quick succession, dismissed the Trump claim as being totally without merit, and I was pleased again when Trump submitted to our demand that he pay our clients' legal fees, pursuant to a court rule sanctioning frivolous litigation.

The real estate tyro is now President, and has much greater power than just being rich, but he plays by the same rule book as before. But the Constitution and its Article III judicial system remains devoted to real facts, the rule of law, and as a result is a staunch defense against this President's misconduct, even as the nation's legislative branch seems, for the moment, to have abandoned its Constitutional responsibilities.

 As the pressure from the Mueller inquiry mounts, so does the volubility of the President's frantic tweet storm and his erratic conduct. At what point the cracks in the pressure-containment vessel will bust wide open remains to be seen. And the consequences of that breach are as yet unknowable. (While I cannot even begin to grasp the core of the Trump/Amerosa connection and I have not read her book, I believe she nailed it with the title: Unhinged.)

Meanwhile, I expect the judicial system will continue to do its job, despite the shameful efforts of the leadership of the other two branches of our government to frustrate that result.

Amen.

............................

N.B.  Yup, readers of The Client Decides may recognize the description of the 1985 lawsuit. The facts are right out of my chapter entitled, "Trumping Trump."

15 August 2018

MANAFORT: MAN OF THE SWAMP


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This is not about picking on somebody who is down. This is about the flag of the United States of America, the Republic for which it stands, one nation, indivisible, with justice for all. This is about the soul of our nation. No, not "under God", but under the Constitution, the hallowed document containing those 229-year-old compromises that have resulted in the election of the current colluding (And what's wrong with that?) tweetmeister in the White House.

I will be brief. The media have outlined the unrebutted proof that Mr. Manafort defrauded the Internal Revenue Service, (i.e., those of us without offshore bank accounts in coded names), defrauded banks that loaned him money, put unreported income in overseas bank accounts that supported an absurdly lavish lifestyle, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. Scores of witnesses, hundreds of pages of indisputable and undisputed documents, with no countervailing evidence. NONE.

There is only one theoretically possible avenue for a not-guilty verdict: a combination of Trumpist malevolence toward the prosecution, mixed in with  misunderstanding of a crusty trial judge's acerbic comments during the prosecution case. (The judge  didn't get a chance to show equal crust during the defense case, because the defense had none and produced none.)

Bear in mind, please, there is a second trial scheduled a few months down the line: that one in Washington D.C., and the issue there is Manafort's failure to register as an agent of the Putin-supported former leader of Ukraine. The fact that there are two trials is the result of calculated defense cynicism: media reports indicate Mueller offered to blend the first trial into the second, but defense lawyers figured the jury in Northern Virginia would likely be more "conservative" and therefore more favorable to Manafort than the jury they would likely get in D.C., and rejected the offer.  The calculation will be tested by this jury verdict. If it goes against Manafort, he is burnt toast.

If there is a hung jury on the first trial, his cynical defense strategy will have proved to be successful, but he is pissing against the wind: Mueller will retry this case, and Mueller will win in the second trial in D.C.  In either or both events, Manafort is done, and a presidential pardon is the only way he will avoid spending the rest of his life in an orange jump suit --assuming he can avoid indictment by New York State prosecutors for bank fraud, Martin Act violations, and jay-walking.

Nah, I have no confidential informants or tape recording of conversations with jurors or presidents: Just a disregard for alternative facts, and a confidence our system still works despite current challenges.

Unless ... .

A bientot.

02 August 2018

ALARM BELLS AT THE WHITE HOUSE


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I keep using the word "scary" in describing the Trump administration, but it continues to fit.  And then some.

There appears now to be two main thrusts to the Mueller inquiry:

1.  It well established the Russians interfered in the 2016 election, and twelve Russian individuals have been indicted so far. Mueller is now working on the question of what, if anything, did Trump campaign team members know or do in that regard. This has become known as the "Collusion" inquiry.

2.  The second major thrust of Mueller's team is to determine what, if anything, Trump or his minions have done to interfere with, or "obstruct" Mueller's criminal investigation.

This week, new "defenses" on both questions were offered up by the public utterances of the now-pathetic Rudy Giuliani, who appears to have crossed into1984-land where fiction is truth and facts are irrelevant. But that seems to be playing well to the Trump "base." While that base is substantially less than 50% of the U.S. population, it wields leverage over the Republican congresspersons who depend on it for their jobs.  But pressure cracks are beginning to show.

Recent developments have now pushed the Trump team to new extremes on both Mueller issues:

I. Collusion:

When Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen (whose integrity Rudy Giuliani lavishly praised two months ago) recently revealed that he had informed Trump the Russians were trying to set up that June, 2016 meeting in Trump Tower to talk about their work in trashing Hillary Clinton, Cohen's admission surprised no serious observers. Trump nevertheless consistently denied any knowledge of the meeting. That was a key element to his "No Collusion" defense.

The Cohen revelation was harmful to Trump on two levels: i) it makes Trump out to be a liar, (the number of his lies is in the thousands) but ii) more importantly, the Cohen statement cuts the heart out of the Trump collusion defense. Alarm bells in the White House signaled a need to ramp up defense levels.

A brief history:

Defense Level 1. A firm denial that any Trump campaign team member ever met with Russians.

Defense Level 2. This was the "oops" stage. When it became clear that, in fact, many members of the Trump campaign team did meet with the Russians (Sessions, Donald Jr., Flynn, Page, Gates, Papadopoulos, Manafort, etc.), Sessions recused himself and Trump & Co. moved to, "Okay, they met, but there was "No Collusion."
Rx: repeat every four hours till the patient is better, or Twitter account is cancelled.

Defense Level 3. The "No Collusion" construct suffered a major fracture when the failing New York Times revealed that Donald Jr., Jared Kushner, and Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort had secretly met with the Russians in Trump Tower. Prescription: Lie about what happened at the meeting. Have the president draft a statement saying the meeting was not about helping Trump win the election, it was about adoptions.

 Defense Level 4. A member of the Trump team suggested it was a bad idea to lie about the substance of the meeting because the email history would expose the lie. Prescription:  Trump's Director of Communications team suggested the emails can be suppressed. That plan was dropped when the pesky NYTimes said it had the emails and was going to publish them, and Donald Jr. said "Okay, I will publish them before your paper comes out tonight."

Defense Level 5. No serious person believed Trump did not know in advance about the Russia meeting. Steve Bannon, who knows the players, said there was "ZERO CHANCE" that Jr. didn't tell his father. He even thought that Junior likely brought the Russians up to meet his father. Nevertheless, the prescription remained: Deny, deny, deny that Trump knew of the meeting attended by his team.

Defense Level 6. Enter Michael Cohen, former lawyer to Donald Trump. Cohen was involved in hiding Trump's adulterous affairs and failed to cooperate with government document requests. That resulted in a search warrant and government seizure of lots of stuff, including his non-privileged conversations directly with Trump. The materials made public by Cohen reveal that Trump lied about his knowledge of pay-offs to paramours (boring stuff by now, except maybe to Melania). But then Cohen revealed that PRIOR TO THE RUSSIANS COMING TO TRUMP TOWER TO TALK ABOUT HELPING TRUMP'S CAMPAIGN, COHEN DISCUSSED THE PROPOSED MEETING WITH TRUMP!  Alarm bells in the White House:  now we are getting deeper into the collusion issue. The prescription, elevate to Defense Level 7.

 Defense Level 7. Re-enter from stage right the demented clown Rudy Giuliani. In May, he called Cohen an honest person. In July, he says Cohen is a dishonest person. Oh, boy, a credibility contest between Cohen and the man whose lie total since inauguration is well in excess of 3,000!

 Defense Level 8. But attacking Cohen's credibility may not be good enough. This may not be just a "He said, he said"  contest, because Cohen also revealed that others were in the room when he told Trump of the Russian offer to help. The others include Trump's son, and his son-in-law, and more.  Now there is a substantial risk that a team member, who was either at that meeting with Trump, or was told about it, (including Manafort, who will be extremely incentivized to flip if convicted in one or both of his criminal trials) decides not to risk being indicted for perjury or violating U.S Penal Code Section 1001 (false statement to public official) and will confirm that Cohen is telling the truth. That would prick Trump's "hoax" balloon, and the collusion case becomes a burning issue for Trump. Rx: move to Defense Level 9.

Defense Level 9. Clown Rudy calls the failing New York Times  and says, "Collusion? Who cares? COLLUSION IS NOT A CRIME!"  This bizarre statement is immediately supported by several Republican members of the House of Representatives! 

We need to unpack that remarkable contention. Giuliani & Co. are now selling to the public the proposition that if the candidate for President, or members of his campaign staff, cooperated in Russian interference of our election process, if the campaign knowingly received things of value from a foreign person or government, and not only didn't report it, but hid it and lied about it, that might be collusion (or depending on your choice of words, conspiracy, or misprision of felony, or felony accessory-after-the-fact,) but when the Trump team did it, it wasn't a crime. So the new defense is, "Well, it may be collusion, but is that wrong?"

That assertion is preposterous, and also avoids the question of a treasonous injury to our Democracy.

2. Obstruction of Justice: 

Defense Level 1. Charges of obstruction were first aired because of the Comey firing. First, Trump denied he asked Comey to go easy on Flynn, and denied he knew Flynn was under investigation for lying to the FBI. That was shown to be a lie.

Defense Level 2. Trump fired Comey and said it was because of his poor work on the Clinton email investigation.  That too was a lie. As he soon thereafter told the Russian Ambassador, he fired Comey because of "The Russia thing."

Defense Level 3. When it became clear from Trump's own statements, and those of his lawyer, that firing Comey was indeed related to "The Russia thing," Trump brought out Dershowitz to say on TV that the President cannot obstruct justice. That is to say, he can obstruct justice, but when he does it, it is not a crime. When pressed, The Dersh would mutter, "except if he did it corruptly," hoping the microphone did not pick it up. After a while, the networks, the Trump team, and Dersh's neighbors in Martha's Vineyard tired of Dersh, and he hasn't been heard from in a while.

Defense Level 4. Trump, under pressure of the Mueller inquiry, i) publicly humiliated Sessions for his recusal from the Russia inquiry, (though Sessions' recusal was required by DOJ guidelines); ii)issued an order to White House counsel McGahn to fire Mueller, but McGahn refused to obey the command, doubtless because he did not want to see his name in the caption of an obstruction indictment; iii) repeatedly made public statements that Republican Mueller was biased against him; and of course, iv) publicly called the Mueller inquiry a "a hoax," a witch hunt," "rigged," etc., etc.

Defense Level 5. The Trump team refused to agree to an interview with Mueller, thereby risking a subpoena. Giuliani tried to negotiate an interview if Mueller promised not to inquire about Obstruction of Justice. (How remarkable is that for what that says about the Trump team's concerns about that subject?) But of course Mueller said "Are you fucking kidding me? No deal." (My words, not his!)

Defense Level 6. Yesterday Trump added to the obstruction count against him by going on a tweet rampage, saying Sessions "should fire Rosenstein and Mueller!"

Defense Level 7. Giuliani takes to the airwaves, calls the NY Times, and goes public with a sales pitch that this is not obstruction. Giuliani says that while Trump has the undoubted power to fire Sessions, telling Sessions he should fire Mueller was not obstruction because Trump was just exercising his First Amendment Right to express an opinion!  Ya know, free speech, like when a person goes into a bank, points a gun at the teller, and says, "You should give me all the money in your drawer!"  No crime, no foul, just free speech.

Defense Level 8. The "free speech" defense was parroted by Huckabee Sanders. "Just an opinion," she says.  But in case you are skeptical, Giuliani proceeded to the next stage.

Defense Level 9. Rudy tells the TV audience that Trump is not guilty of obstruction of justice because his allegedly obstructive statements and conduct were public. To be guilty of criminal obstruction, says Rudy, you need to do the deed secretly! That may be the single most ridiculous thing Rudy has ever said in his life. Even in his addled state, he must know that is false. He knows it is false because no lawyer and few other sentient adults could fail to grasp the illogical nature of the claim. He is saying that if two people conspired to burn down the White House, but they did on an open Facebook account, or Twitter, or YouTube, it would not be criminal because the conspiracy was open to public view. Or if a terrorist publicly threatened to kill a physician if she performed a legal abortion, that is not a crime because it is "pasteurized" by the lack of secrecy.

And oh yeah, the settled law makes clear that Rudy is full of shit, because other defendants have made that claim and the courts, including the Second Circuit, have said the claim lacks merit.
........................

So much for Defense Level 9 on both the collusion and obstruction fronts. I can only guess what Level 10 will be. For sure, it will further demean our democratic ideals and mock the principles of our Constitution.