Comey’s original Clinton memo released, cites possible violations
BY JOHN SOLOMON - 01/04/18 07:01 PM EST
Ex-FBI Director James Comey’s original statement closing out the probe into Hillary Clinton's use of a private email server was edited by subordinates to remove five separate references to terms like “grossly negligent” and to delete mention of evidence supporting felony and misdemeanor violations, according to copies of the full document.
Comey also originally concluded that it was “reasonably likely” that Clinton’s nonsecure private server was accessed or hacked by hostile actors, though there was no evidence to prove it. But that passage was also changed to the much weaker “possible,” the memos show.
The full draft and edits were released on the website of Senate Homeland and Government Affairs Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (R-Wis.), providing the most complete public accounting to date of Comey’s draft and the subsequent edits.
The draft, released in full for the first time on Thursday, offers new details on the FBI's Clinton investigation and controversial conclusion.
The Hill was first to report late last year that Comey originally concluded Clinton was “grossly negligent” — the statutory term supporting felony mishandling of classified information — when she and her aides transmitted 110 emails containing classified information through her non-secure server but that subordinates edited the term to the lesser “extremely careless.”
The full draft, with edits, leaves little doubt that Comey originally wrote on May 2, 2016, that there was evidence that Clinton and top aides may have violated both felony and misdemeanor statutes, though he did not believe he could prove intent before a jury.
“Although there is evidence of potential violations of the statute proscribing gross negligence in the handling of classified information and of the statute proscribing misdemeanor mishandling, my judgment is that no reasonable prosecutor would bring such a case,” Comey originally penned.
That passage, however, was edited to remove the references to “gross negligence” and “misdemeanor mishandling,” leaving a much more generic reference to “potential violations of the statutes.”
The FBI has told Congress the edits were made by subordinates to Comey and then accepted by the then-director before he made his final announcement July 5, 2016, that he would not pursue criminal charges against Clinton.
Johnson recently sent a letter to new FBI Director Christopher Wray demanding to know why such significant edits were made to Comey’s draft and whether they were part of an effort by FBI subordinates to politically protect Clinton from a harsher assessment during the 2016 election.
“The edits to Director Comey’s public statement, made months prior to the conclusion of the FBI’s investigation of Secretary Clinton’s conduct, had a significant impact on the FBI’s public evaluation of the implications of her actions,” Johnson wrote, noting recently released text messages show some senior FBI officials involved in the case harbored political hatred for some rich asshole or preference for Clinton.
“This effort, seen in light of the personal animus toward then-candidate the rich asshole by senior agents leading the Clinton investigation and their apparent desire to create an ‘insurance policy’ against some rich asshole’s election, raise profound questions about the FBI’s role and possible interference in the 2016 presidential election,” Johnson wrote.
One edit that concerned Johnson was a decision to delete from Comey’s original draft a reference to the FBI working on a joint assessment with the intelligence community about possible national security damage from the classified information that passed through Clinton’s non-secure email servers.
“We have done extensive work with the assistance of our colleagues elsewhere in the Intelligence Community to understand what indications there might be of compromise by hostile actors in connection with the private email operation,” Comey originally wrote.
The reference to the rest of the intelligence community was edited out, the memos show.
Johnson now wants to know whether other intelligence agencies had assessments of damage that differed or were more negative than that of the FBI.
Johnson also demanded the FBI provide him the “editing comments” in the margins of the Comey memo that were redacted before Congress was given the document, so lawmakers can better understand the intent of some of the changes that were made.
The full document shows that when Comey first sent to his top deputies the draft statement May 2, 2016, announcing Clinton wouldn't face criminal charges, he imagined it would be part of an austere news conference where he took no questions from reporters. That event did not happen until two months later.
"I’ve been trying to imagine what it would look like if I decided to do an FBI only press event to close out our work and hand the matter to [the Justice Department]," Comey wrote. "To help shape our discussions of whether that, or something different, makes sense, I have spent some time crafting what I would say, which follows. In my imagination, I don’t see me taking any questions."
Read Comey's draft as released by Johnson below.
BY JONATHAN EASLEY - 01/04/18 02:00 PM EST
Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon on Wednesday was about to issue a statement praising some rich asshole, Jr. and disputing his quotes in a book from Michael Wolff, but the statement was spiked after President the rich asshole went nuclear on his former chief strategist.
Multiple sources with knowledge of the situation say that Bannon’s aides sought to impress upon him the need to put out a statement quickly. The aides had crafted a statement, which was pending Bannon’s approval, when the White House beat him to the punch.
In the unreleased statement, Bannon had planned to call the rich asshole, Jr. a patriot and dispute the account in author Michael Wolff’s book, in which Bannon described the rich asshole, Jr. as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic” for setting up a 2016 meeting at the rich asshole Tower with a Russian lawyer.
Bannon and his allies did not see a need to release the statement once the rich asshole accused his former top campaign aide of having “lost his mind.” They believe the president’s statement effectively ended the relationship between the two men.
“He was literally just about to respond but backed off when the White House issued the statement,” said one source.
Bannon had a lengthy window to respond after the book excerpt was first released early Wednesday morning. It was a missed opportunity for Bannon, as the statement might have been enough to salvage his relationship with the president, those close to the Breitbart News chairman say.
The White House did not respond to early requests for comment about the Wolff excerpt, giving Bannon time to get ahead of the story and offer his own version of events. the rich asshole waited several hours before torching Bannon and even the rich asshole Jr. did not tweet about Bannon’s quotes in the book until after his father had weighed in.
During that time, several other of the rich asshole’s current or former aides and advisers disputed quotes or anecdotes in the book.
In the unreleased statement, Bannon would have called the rich asshole, Jr. a “patriot” and say that he doesn’t believe that he committed treason, according to a description from those familiar with it.
Bannon would have also disputed Wolff’s account by saying he had been taken out of context — that he doesn’t believe the rich asshole, Jr. intentionally did anything wrong and that he only meant to convey his frustration that the rich asshole, Jr., a political novice, had created a mess for his father.
But Bannon waited too long and his relationship with the rich asshole now appears beyond repair, although those close to him believe the two can reconcile at some point.
“It’s a family fight, they always get back together,” said one source in Bannon World. “Although this one could take some time.”
At present, the political future for Bannon looks bleak.
It is hard to see how his effort to primary incumbent Republican incumbents can gain momentum if Bannon is unable to position himself as the standard bearer of the rich asshole’s agenda. Several candidates Bannon has backed or met with about running in GOP primary elections have backed away from him.
And the Washington Post has reported that the wealthy conservative donors Bob and Rebekah Mercer are furious with Bannon and choking him off financially. Rebekah Mercer owns the majority stake in Breitbart News, Bannon’s flagship conservative publication.
Those close to Bannon insist that he is unfazed, even if they are dispirited by the turn of events.
“He’s not worried about it,” one ally said. “He was just on the radio last night.”
In that interview, Bannon largely avoided discussing the controversy but described the rich asshole as “a great man.”
"You know I support him day in and day out,” Bannon said.
Speaking at the White House on Thursday, the rich asshole continued to downplay his relationship with Bannon, saying that the two don’t talk.
“He called me a great man last night," the rich asshole said. "So he obviously changed his tune pretty quick.”
Now, the rich asshole and his allies are looking at ways to discredit Wolff, alleging that he misquoted them, made-up scenes and broke agreements that events he attended and information he was given would remain off the record.
A personal lawyer for the president has threatened to sue Bannon, Wolff and the book’s publisher and demanding that the book release be cancelled.
There could be more efforts like that from others in the rich asshole’s orbit.
“We are going to tie him up in litigation for years, until he’s spent more on legal fees than he makes on the book,” said one person quoted in the book.
TAGS SOME RICH ASSHOLE
Here are 10 more new takeaways from Michael Wolff’s White House book ‘Fire and Fury’
January 4, 2018
Alexander Nazaryan
Posted with permission from Newsweek
The complex relationship between Donald J. Trump and the conservative media outlets—including Breitbart News and Fox News—that minted him as a candidate and sold him as an acceptable alternative to establishment Republicans is detailed in a third excerpt from journalist Michael Wolff’s forthcoming book, Fire and Fury.
Wolff gained unprecedented access to the West Wing to write the book, and the excerpt, published in British GQ, follows similarly astonishing selections published in New York magazine, The Guardian and The Hollywood Reporter. Fire and Fury will be published Friday, four days earlier than had been planned, following attempts by Trump’s lawyer to halt its publication.
Below are some of the key revelations from the British GQ excerpt:
1. After being deposed as Fox News chairman, Roger E. Ailes courted Stephen K. Bannon, then the chief White House political strategist, with the idea of starting a new conservative network, one that was expected to also attract some of the brightest lights at Fox News. “With [Bill] O’Reilly and [Sean] Hannity on board,” Wolff writes, “there could be television riches fuelled by, into the foreseeable future, a new Trump-inspired era of right-wing passion and hegemony.”
2. Ailes had a falling out with Trump, “piqued by the constant reports that Trump was bad-mouthing him,” according to Wolff. “Men who demand the most loyalty tend to be the least loyal pricks,” Ailes is reported to have complained. He died last May.
3. Trump was obsessed with how he was covered in the mainstream media, even as he routinely derided The New York Times, CNN and other outlets. “Much of the president’s daily conversation was a repetitive rundown of what various anchors and hosts had said about him,” Wolff wrote. (Trump has said that reports he watches several hours of television daily are untrue.)
4. Trump is a “conventional misogynist,” Wolff reported, but he is trusting of women in the workplace: “Women, according to Trump, were simply more loyal and trustworthy than men.” The women who work with him, however, are subject to a sexism they must simply endure, according to Wolff.
5. Wolff said Kellyanne Conway, the White House senior adviser, frequently maligned Trump in private—even as she defended him ferociously on television. “She seemed to regard Trump as a figure of exhausting exaggeration or even absurdity.... She illustrated her opinion of her boss with a whole series of facial expressions: eyes rolling, mouth agape, head snapping back.” Conway’s visceral distaste for her boss has previously been reported elsewhere.
6. Hope Hicks, now the White House communications director, was rumored to have an “on-and-off romantic relationship” with Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey R. Lewandowski. (The rumor has circulated around Washington, and in media, for some time, but without any sourcing to support the claim.) “You’re the best piece of tail he’ll ever have,” Trump reportedly told Hicks of Lewandowski.
Wolff in addition calls Hicks, who is from Connecticut, “a kind of Stepford factotum, as absolutely dedicated to and tolerant of Mr Trump as anyone who had ever worked for him.” Before joining the Trump campaign, Hicks was a model.
7. Tucker Carlson, the Fox News host, was once considered for the White House press secretary job. So was conservative pundit Laura Ingraham, now also at Fox News. Wolff reported that when the job was finally offered to longtime Republican operative Sean Spicer, he wondered, “If I do this, will I ever be able to work again?”
8. Trump was fixated on coverage from New York Times reporter—and New York tabloid veteran—Maggie Haberman, who produced detailed but critical stories of life inside the West Wing. “Beyond acknowledging that Trump was a boy from Queens yet in awe of the Times, nobody in the West Wing could explain why he and Hicks would so often turn to Haberman for what would so reliably be a mocking and hurtful portrayal,” Wolff wrote, noting that while Trump called Haberman “mean and horrible,” he regularly sought her attention.
9. Jared Kushner and Bannon had their own press operations, often at odds with each other in the leaks they offered to friendly outlets. Bannon’s communication director, Alexandra Preate, was described as “a witty conservative socialite partial to champagne” who was close to Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire conservative activist. Mercer had reportedly been a generous sponsor of Bannon’s political activities, and of Breitbart News, but she distanced herself from Bannon in a statement on Thursday.
10. Trump “had one of the most dysfunctional communication operations in modern White House history,” Wolff wrote. The press shop is now led by Hicks, the communications director, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the press secretary, who has denounced Wolff’s book as "some trash from an author no one has ever heard of before today."
One of the more alarming anecdotes in “Fire and Fury,” Michael Wolff’s incendiary new book about some rich asshole’s White House, involves the firing of James Comey, former director of the F.B.I. It’s not the rich asshole’s motives that are scary; Wolff reports that Ivanka the rich asshole and Jared Kushner were “increasingly panicked” and “frenzied” about what Comey would find if he looked into the family finances, which is incriminating but unsurprising. The terrifying part is how, in Wolff’s telling, the rich asshole sneaked around his aides, some of whom thought they’d contained him.
“For most of the day, almost no one would know that he had decided to take matters into his own hands,” Wolff writes. “In presidential annals, the firing of F.B.I. director James Comey may be the most consequential move ever made by a modern president acting entirely on his own.” Now imagine the rich asshole taking the same approach toward ordering the bombing of North Korea.
Wolff’s scabrous book comes out on Friday — the publication date was moved up amid a media furor — but I was able to get an advance copy. It’s already a consequential work, having precipitated a furious rift between the president and his former chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who told Wolff that the meeting some rich asshole Jr. brokered with Russians in the hope of getting dirt on Hillary Clinton was “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” On Thursday the president’s lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Wolff’s publisher, Henry Holt, demanding that it stop publication, claiming, among other things, defamation and invasion of privacy. This move would be fascistic if it weren’t so farcical. (While some have raised questions about Wolff’s methods, Axios reports that he has many hours of interviews recorded.)
There are lots of arresting details in the book. We learn that the administration holds special animus for what it calls “D.O.J. women,” or women who work in the Justice Department. Wolff writes that after the white supremacist mayhem in Charlottesville, Va., the rich asshole privately rationalized “why someone would be a member of the K.K.K.” The book recounts that after the political purge in Saudi Arabia, the rich asshole boasted that he and Kushner engineered a coup: “We’ve put our man on top!”
But most of all, the book confirms what is already widely understood — not just that the rich asshole is entirely unfit for the presidency, but that everyone around him knows it. One thread running through “Fire and Fury” is the way relatives, opportunists and officials try to manipulate and manage the president, and how they often fail. As Wolff wrote in a Hollywood Reporter essay based on the book, over the past year, the people around the rich asshole, “all — 100 percent — came to believe he was incapable of functioning in his job.”
According to Wolff, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin and Reince Priebus, the former chief of staff, called the rich asshole an “idiot.” (So did the media mogul Rupert Murdoch, owner of Fox News, though he used an obscenity first.) the rich asshole’s chief economic adviser, Gary Cohn, compares his boss’s intelligence to excrement. The national security adviser, H. R. McMaster, thinks he’s a “dope.” It has already been reported that Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called the rich asshole a “moron,” which he has pointedly refused to deny.
And yet these people continue to either prop up or defend this sick travesty of a presidency. Wolff takes a few stabs at the motives of the rich asshole insiders. Ivanka the rich asshole apparently nurtured the ghastly dream of following her father into the presidency. Others, Wolff writes, told themselves that they could help protect America from the president they serve: The “mess that might do serious damage to the nation, and, by association, to your own brand, might be transcended if you were seen as the person, by dint of competence and professional behavior, taking control of it.”
This is a delusion as wild, in its own way, as the rich asshole’s claim that the “Access Hollywood” tape was faked. Some of the military men trying to steady American foreign policy amid the rich asshole’s whims and tantrums might be doing something quietly decent, sacrificing their reputations for the greater good. But most members of the rich asshole’s campaign and administration are simply traitors. They are willing, out of some complex mix of ambition, resentment, cynicism and rationalization, to endanger all of our lives — all of our children’s lives — by refusing to tell the country what they know about the senescent fool who boasts of the size of his “nuclear button” on Twitter.
Maybe, at the moment, people in the rich asshole orbit feel complacent because a year has passed without any epic disaster, unless you count an estimated 1,000 or so deaths in Puerto Rico, which they probably don’t. There’s an old joke, recently cited by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo, that describes where we are right now: A guy falls from a 50-story building. As he flies by the 25th floor, someone asks how it’s going. “So far, so good!” he says.
Eventually, we’ll hit the ground, and assuming America survives, there should be a reckoning to dwarf the defenestration of Harvey Weinstein and his fellow ogres. the rich asshole, Wolff’s reporting shows, has no executive function, no ability to process information or weigh consequences. Expecting him to act in the country’s interest is like demanding that your cat do the dishes. His enablers have no such excuse.
the rich asshole's Voter Suppression Scheme Dies a Sad, Lonely Death
No one wanted to play with the rich asshole and Kris Kobach so they took their ball and went home to cry.
Last night, the rich asshole administration, as quietly as possible, dissolved its "Commission on Election Integrity". The reason? The mean ol' states wouldn't give them the information they wanted:
The commission, of course, existed solely for the purpose of justifying the next wave of massive voter suppression laws the right needs to hold on to their stolen power. Everyone knew it and the person heading the commission, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, was so over the top about his intentions, he might as well have been twirling his mustache while tying a polling booth to the train tracks.
But a funny thing happened on the way to rigging the midterm elections: Almost every state, including Republican controlled states, flatly refused to give Kobach the information he needed to justify his phony voter fraud claims.
It turns out that the Constitution has this weird "separation of powers" that lets the states control their own elections. Crazy, right? That means each state has its own Secretary of State, the person in charge of those elections, and each one of those Secretaries has their own career ambitions. Allowing Kris Kobach to fabricate "massive voter fraud" in their state would instantly end those careers. Who's going to vote for a Secretary of State who allowed a million (fictional) illegal immigrants to vote? No one is going to fall on their sword for some rich asshole and Kris Kobach.
Also, there's the simple issue of a number of state constitutions prohibiting the release of the information Kobach was demanding....including Kobach's own state of Kansas. So Kobach couldn't even give himself all of the information he was demanding from himself. If the irony were any richer, it would be trying to buy an election.
Thank you, separation of powers. In a country where elections are controlled entirely by the central government, Kris Kobach would have already declared the 2018 midterms over and the Republican Party the undisputed winners. It's almost like the Founding Fathers built a robust system designed to resist exactly this kind of tampering. Imagine that.
Kobach is undeterred and has vowed to continue the fight to steal the vote from as many people as possible:
Translation: We'll be back and next time, we're going to be less screamingly obvious about how we're going to disenfranchise millions of minority voters.
History will list Kobach as one of the main architects of the New Jim Crow Era and the faster we sweep him and his kind out of power, the better.
There are 306 days left to the 2018 elections.
the rich asshole calls out ‘Sloppy Steve’ on Twitter and denies he gave any access to Michael Wolff
(Photo: stock_photo_world / Shutterstock.com)
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President some rich asshole took to Twitter late Thursday to proclaim that he never gave any access to Michael Wolff for his book which hits stores Friday.
Wolff was able to conduct over 200 interviews with those in the White House and close to the rich asshole by sitting on couches in the West Wing and at a hotel across the street.
“I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book!” the rich asshole tweeted. “I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” An apparent reference to Steve Bannon.
The latest attack is part of a long and very public breakup between the previous allies.
the rich asshole’s tweet could be an attempt at a pre-emptive strike to justify litigation. If the rich asshole authorized the White House staff to speak to Wolff, non-disclosure agreements he requires the staff to sign, wouldn’t be valid because he gave consent. the rich asshole has sent cease and desist letters to both Wolf and Bannon while the White House has gone in full attack mode. the rich asshole is threatening a libel lawsuit, but in all of his threats for libel, the rich asshole has never once actually sued.
DON'T MISS STORIES. FOLLOW RAW STORY!
President some rich asshole took to Twitter late Thursday to proclaim that he never gave any access to Michael Wolff for his book which hits stores Friday.
Wolff was able to conduct over 200 interviews with those in the White House and close to the rich asshole by sitting on couches in the West Wing and at a hotel across the street.
“I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book!” the rich asshole tweeted. “I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don’t exist. Look at this guy’s past and watch what happens to him and Sloppy Steve!” An apparent reference to Steve Bannon.
The latest attack is part of a long and very public breakup between the previous allies.
the rich asshole’s tweet could be an attempt at a pre-emptive strike to justify litigation. If the rich asshole authorized the White House staff to speak to Wolff, non-disclosure agreements he requires the staff to sign, wouldn’t be valid because he gave consent. the rich asshole has sent cease and desist letters to both Wolf and Bannon while the White House has gone in full attack mode. the rich asshole is threatening a libel lawsuit, but in all of his threats for libel, the rich asshole has never once actually sued.
the rich asshole apologist admits the rich asshole Tower meeting wasn’t about ‘adoption’ — and then walks it back after commercial break
CNN analyst Jack Kingston. Image via screengrab.
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Pro-the rich asshole Republican Jack Kingston admitted during a panel Thursday night that he didn’t believe the infamous 2016 the rich asshole Tower meeting was about “Russian adoption” — only to walk the claim back after the program went to commercial break.
“You don’t actually believe they were meeting for an adoption program?” host Anderson Cooper asked him. “Let’s just be real.”
“I will agree with you,” Kingston conceded — but that concession appeared to have been momentary.
Shortly after breaking for commercial, Kingston seemed to change his mind.
“I think that really was his understanding of the meeting at that time,” Kingston said, referencing President some rich asshole’s initial statement about the meeting between his son, son-in-law and campaign chairman and a group of Russians being about adoption.
“The president of the United States really believed the meeting was about adoption, even though anyone who knows anything about Russia knows that ‘adoption’ is a code word about sanctions,” Cooper responded. “Even if you think it’s about adoption, you know it’s not about adoption, you know it’s about sanctions, so why say it’s about adoption?”
“I don’t think adoptions is use used synonymously with sanctions,” Kingston said while tripping over his words.
“Yeah, it is,” Cooper quipped.
Watch the before-and-after below, via CNN.
Part 1, before the commercial break:
Part 2, after the break:
the rich asshole’s threat to sue Bannon is ‘stupid,’ legal expert says — here’s why
January 4, 2018
Graham Lanktree
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Threats of “imminent” legal action against former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon from President Donald Trump’s lawyers could have unintended consequences that would hurt the Trump administration, says a national security lawyer.
The letter to Bannon followed the release on Wednesday of new excerpts from an upcoming book about the Trump presidency by author Martin Wolff. Among other things, Bannon is quoted in the book calling Donald Trump Jr.’s meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower in June 2016 “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.” Trump Jr. met with the lawyer after being promised dirt on his father's presidential rival, Hillary Clinton.
In a statement late Wednesday, Trump’s lawyer Charles J. Harder, of the firm Harder Mirell & Abrams, said a legal notice has been sent to Bannon accusing him of “defamation by libel and slander, and breach of his written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement.”
“Legal action is imminent,” Harder’s statement reads.
But the threat of legal action against Bannon “is stupid,” Bradley Moss, a partner at the Washington, D.C. law office of Mark S. Zaid, said in a tweet on Wednesday, before listing the consequences pursuing this case would have for the president.
“One, it keeps the story alive and gives Bannon more media oxygen,” Moss writes. “Two, the [non-disclosure agreement] doesn’t apply to anything that happened once Bannon became a federal employee. Three, do you really want to risk litigation here and subsequent risk of discovery? Really?”
Well this is stupid.
One, it keeps the story alive and gives Bannon more media oxygen.
Two, the NDA doesn’t apply to anything that happened once Bannon became a federal employee.
Three, do you really want to risk litigation here and subsequent risk of discovery? Really? twitter.com/jtsantucci/sta…
One, it keeps the story alive and gives Bannon more media oxygen.
Two, the NDA doesn’t apply to anything that happened once Bannon became a federal employee.
Three, do you really want to risk litigation here and subsequent risk of discovery? Really? twitter.com/jtsantucci/sta…
In the pre-trial legal procedure of discovery, by law, each party in a lawsuit is able to obtain evidence from the other by requesting documents or depositions. The process could make public yet more information the Trump administration would rather keep private.
Trump was “furious” and “disgusted” by Bannon’s accusations against his eldest son Trump Jr., said White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders during a press briefing Wednesday. She called Bannon’s claims “completely false.”
Bannon left the White House in August after Chief of Staff John Kelly replaced Reince Priebus. Bannon immediately returned to head the hard-right website Breitbart News, which he left in 2016 to become CEO of the Trump campaign.
Last October Bannon declared “war on the Republican establishment” and said he would target at least 15 incumbent congressional Republicans with hard-right challengers in upcoming elections. Bannon’s campaigning for Alabama Senate contender Roy Moore backfired in December when Moore lost to Democrat Doug Jones.
In a statement Wednesday following the publications of excerpts from the book, Trump said Bannon has “lost his mind” and that his former top advisor “has nothing to do with me or my presidency.”
In October Trump called Bannon “a friend of mine” and reports said the two continued to speak over the phone.
But Trump’s statement amounted to a complete break with Bannon, who has been seen to lead the nationalist, populist movement that makes up Trump’s base.
“Steve doesn’t represent my base—he’s only in it for himself,” Trump said.
The New York Times By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT 01-04-2018
WASHINGTON — President the rich asshole gave firm instructions in March to the White House’s top lawyer: stop the attorney general, Jeff Sessions, from recusing himself in the Justice Department’s investigation into whether some rich asshole’s associates had helped a Russian campaign to disrupt the 2016 election.
Public pressure was building for Mr. Sessions, who had been a senior member of the rich asshole campaign, to step aside. But the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, carried out the president’s orders and lobbied Mr. Sessions to remain in charge of the inquiry, according to two people with knowledge of the episode.
Mr. McGahn was unsuccessful, and the president erupted in anger in front of numerous White House officials, saying he needed his attorney general to protect him. some rich asshole said he had expected his top law enforcement official to safeguard him the way he believed Robert F. Kennedy, as attorney general, had done for his brother John F. Kennedy and Eric H. Holder Jr. had for Barack Obama.
some rich asshole then asked, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” He was referring to his former personal lawyer and fixer, who had been Senator Joseph R. McCarthy’s top aide during the investigations into communist activity in the 1950s and died in 1986.
The lobbying of Mr. Sessions is one of several previously unreported episodes that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has learned about as he investigates whether some rich asshole obstructed the F.B.I.’s Russia inquiry. The events occurred during a two-month period — from when Mr. Sessions recused himself in March until the appointment of Mr. Mueller in May — when some rich asshole believed he was losing control over the investigation.
Among the other episodes, some rich asshole described the Russia investigation as “fabricated and politically motivated” in a letter that he intended to send to the F.B.I. director at the time, James B. Comey, but that White House aides stopped him from sending. Mr. Mueller has also substantiated claims that Mr. Comey made in a series of memos describing troubling interactions with the president before he was fired in May.
The special counsel has received handwritten notes from some rich asshole’s former chief of staff, Reince Priebus, showing that some rich asshole talked to Mr. Priebus about how he had called Mr. Comey to urge him to say publicly that he was not under investigation. The president’s determination to fire Mr. Comey even led one White House lawyer to take the extraordinary step of misleading some rich asshole about whether he had the authority to remove him.
The New York Times has also learned that four days before Mr. Comey was fired, one of Mr. Sessions’s aides asked a congressional staff member whether he had damaging information about Mr. Comey, part of an apparent effort to undermine the F.B.I. director. It was not clear whether Mr. Mueller’s investigators knew about this incident.
Mr. Mueller has also been examining a false statement that the president dictated on Air Force One in July in response to an article in The Times about a meeting that the rich asshole campaign officials had with Russians in 2016. A new book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the the rich asshole White House,” by Michael Wolff, says that the president’s lawyers believed that the statement was “an explicit attempt to throw sand into the investigation’s gears,” and that it led one of some rich asshole’s spokesmen to quit because he believed it was obstruction of justice.
Ty Cobb, the White House lawyer dealing with the special counsel’s investigation, declined to comment.
some rich asshole’s lawyers have said the president has fully cooperated with the investigation, and they have expressed confidence that the inquiry will soon be coming to a close. They said that they believed the president would be exonerated, and that they hoped to have that conclusion made public.
Legal experts said that of the two primary issues Mr. Mueller appears to be investigating — whether some rich asshole obstructed justice while in office and whether there was collusion between the the rich asshole campaign and Russia — there is currently a larger body of public evidence tying the president to a possible crime of obstruction.
But the experts are divided about whether the accumulated evidence is enough for Mr. Mueller to bring an obstruction case. They said it could be difficult to prove that the president, who has broad authority over the executive branch, including the hiring and firing of officials, had corrupt intentions when he took actions like ousting the F.B.I. director. Some experts said the case would be stronger if there was evidence that the president had told witnesses to lie under oath.
The accounts of the episodes are based on documents reviewed by The Times, as well as interviews with White House officials and others briefed on the investigation. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because they did not want to be identified discussing a continuing investigation.
Regardless of whether Mr. Mueller believes there is enough evidence to make a case against the president, some rich asshole’s belief that his attorney general should protect him provides an important window into how he governs. Presidents have had close relationships with their attorneys general, but some rich asshole’s obsession with loyalty is particularly unusual, especially given the Justice Department’s investigation into him and his associates.
A Lawyer’s Gambit
It was late February when Mr. Sessions decided to take the advice of career Justice Department lawyers and recuse himself from the Russia investigation.
The pressure to make that decision public grew days later when The Washington Post reported that Mr. Sessions had met during the presidential campaign with Russia’s ambassador to the United States. The disclosure raised questions about whether Mr. Sessions had misled Congress weeks earlier during his confirmation hearing, when he told lawmakers he had not met with Russians during the campaign.
Unaware that Mr. Sessions had already decided to step aside from the inquiry, Democrats began calling for Mr. Sessions to recuse himself — and some rich asshole told Mr. McGahn to begin a lobbying campaign to stop him.
Mr. McGahn’s argument to Mr. Sessions that day was twofold: that he did not need to step aside from the inquiry until it was further along, and that recusing himself would not stop Democrats from saying he had lied. After Mr. Sessions told Mr. McGahn that career Justice Department officials had said he should step aside, Mr. McGahn said he understood and backed down.
some rich asshole’s frustrations with the inquiry erupted again about three weeks later, when Mr. Comey said publicly for the first time that the Justice Department and the F.B.I. were conducting an investigation into links between some rich asshole’s campaign and Russia. Mr. Comey had told some rich asshole in private that he was not personally under investigation, yet Mr. Comey infuriated some rich asshole by refusing to answer a question about that at the hearing where he spoke publicly.
After that hearing, some rich asshole began to discuss openly with White House officials his desire to fire Mr. Comey. This unnerved some inside the White House counsel’s office, and even led one of Mr. McGahn’s deputies to mislead the president about his authority to fire the F.B.I. director.
The lawyer, Uttam Dhillon, was convinced that if Mr. Comey was fired, the rich asshole presidency could be imperiled, because it would force the Justice Department to open an investigation into whether some rich asshole was trying to derail the Russia investigation.
Longstanding analysis of presidential power says that the president, as the head of the executive branch, does not need grounds to fire the F.B.I. director. Mr. Dhillon, a veteran Justice Department lawyer before joining the rich asshole White House, assigned a junior lawyer to examine this issue. That lawyer determined that the F.B.I. director was no different than any other employee in the executive branch, and that there was nothing prohibiting the president from firing him.
But Mr. Dhillon, who had earlier told some rich asshole that he needed cause to fire Mr. Comey, never corrected the record, withholding the conclusions of his research.
Stephen I. Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas School of Law, called the incident “extraordinary,” adding that he could not think of a similar one that occurred in past administrations.
“This shows that the president’s lawyers don’t trust giving him all the facts because they fear he will make a decision that is not best suited for him,” Mr. Vladeck said.
Searching for Dirt
The attempts to stop some rich asshole from firing Mr. Comey were successful until May 3, when the F.B.I. director once again testified on Capitol Hill. He spent much of the time describing a series of decisions he had made during the bureau’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s personal email account.
Once again, Mr. Comey refused to answer questions from lawmakers about whether some rich asshole was under investigation.
White House aides gave updates to some rich asshole throughout, informing him of Mr. Comey’s refusal to publicly clear him. some rich asshole unloaded on Mr. Sessions, who was at the White House that day. He criticized him for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, questioned his loyalty, and said he wanted to get rid of Mr. Comey. He repeated the refrain that the attorneys general for Mr. Kennedy and Mr. Obama had protected the White House.
In an interview with The Times last month, some rich asshole said he believed that Mr. Holder had protected Mr. Obama.
“When you look at the I.R.S. scandal, when you look at the guns for whatever, when you look at all of the tremendous, aah, real problems they had, not made-up problems like Russian collusion, these were real problems,” some rich asshole said. “When you look at the things that they did, and Holder protected the president. And I have great respect for that, I’ll be honest.”
Two days after Mr. Comey’s testimony, an aide to Mr. Sessions approached a Capitol Hill staff member asking whether the staffer had any derogatory information about the F.B.I. director. The attorney general wanted one negative article a day in the news media about Mr. Comey, according to a person with knowledge of the meeting.
A Justice Department spokeswoman said the incident did not occur. “This did not happen and would not happen,” said the spokeswoman, Sarah Isgur Flores. “Plain and simple.”
Earlier that day, Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, had pulled one of Mr. McGahn’s deputies aside after a meeting at the Justice Department. Mr. Rosenstein told the aide that top White House and Justice Department lawyers needed to discuss Mr. Comey’s future. It is unclear whether this conversation was related to the effort to dig up dirt on Mr. Comey.
some rich asshole spent the next weekend at his country club in Bedminster, N.J., where he watched a recording of Mr. Comey’s testimony, stewed about the F.B.I. director and discussed the possibility of dismissing him with his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and his senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller. He had decided he would fire Mr. Comey, and asked Mr. Miller to help put together a letter the president intended to send to Mr. Comey.
In interviews with The Times, White House officials have said the letter contained no references to Russia or the F.B.I.’s investigation. According to two people who have read it, however, the letter’s first sentence said the Russia investigation had been “fabricated and politically motivated.”
On Monday, May 8, some rich asshole met with Mr. Sessions and Mr. Rosenstein to discuss firing Mr. Comey, and Mr. Rosenstein agreed to write his own memo outlining why Mr. Comey should be fired. Before writing it, he took a copy of the letter that some rich asshole and Mr. Miller had drafted during the weekend in Bedminster.
The president fired Mr. Comey the following day.
A week later, The Times reported that some rich asshole had asked Mr. Comey in February to shut down the federal investigation into Michael T. Flynn, who at the time was the national security adviser. The following day, Mr. Rosenstein announced that he had appointed Mr. Mueller as special counsel.
Once again, some rich asshole erupted at Mr. Sessions upon hearing the news. In an Oval Office meeting, the president said the attorney general had been disloyal for recusing himself from the Russia investigation, and he told Mr. Sessions to resign.
Mr. Sessions sent his resignation letter to the president the following day. But some rich asshole rejected it, sending it back with a handwritten note at the top.
“Not accepted,” the note said.
Excerpts of Michael Wolff's forthcoming book "Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole's White House" that portray a decidedly unflattering view of President the rich asshole and much of his White House have roiled Washington, D.C., in the first week of 2018.
But even before the book's official release on Jan. 9, some are calling into question the authenticity of assertions in some of those excerpts.
Wolff, known for his fiery accusations about subjects in publications like Vanity Fair and New York magazine, wrote in a description of the book published in New York magazine Wednesday that he had interviewed more than 200 people for the book, and was given extensive access for months. According to a report in Thursday morning, Wolff recorded dozens of hours of those conversations. Those recordings may back up much of what Wolff has written.
Still, some of the excerpts published in advance are under scrutiny.
After some rich asshole won the presidency, for instance, Wolff describes an exchange in which some rich asshole appears to not know who former Speaker of the House John Boehner is.
Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chief who has since died, reportedly suggested to some rich asshole that he select Boehner as his chief of staff.
"Who's that?" the president-elect asked the day after the election, according to Wolff.
But some pointed out that some rich asshole played golf with Boehner at his New Jersey course in 2013, and referenced him on Twitter long before the 2016 election in tweets such as this one:
Congratulations to @SpeakerBoehner on standing strong and tying government shutdown to defunding ObamaCare.
Others suggested some rich asshole could have been mocking Boehner in some fashion, not questioning his identity.
Some pundits also questioned how Wolff could possibly know what had transpired at a meeting involving Bannon and Ailes. Axios' Mike Allen said Wolff hosted a small dinner at his home, and that's how he knew. That small dinner — and the content of the conversation — was confirmed by Janice Min, strategist at Eldridge Industries and part owner of the Hollywood Reporter who says she was at the dinner.
Another excerpt of Wolff's book claims Fox News personality Sean Hannity expressed his willingness to let the president review questions in advance before interviewing him at an Air National Guard base in Pennsylvania last October, according to the Hollywood Reporter. Hannity, through a spokesperson, flat-out denied that he ever provided any questions in advance.
Wolff also says in the book, according to the Guardian, that one of some rich asshole's outside advisers and a close friend, billionaire Thomas Barrack Jr., said of the president, "He's not only crazy, he's stupid."
However, Barrack denied ever having made the comment. "The quote attributed to me by Michael Wolff is completely and utterly false," Barrack said in a statement to CBS News. "I have never been interviewed by Michael Wolff, nor did I give him any quotes, nor did he attempt to verify this totally false comment with me. It is clear to anyone who knows me those are not my words, and they are wholly inconsistent with how I talk and feel about the President who is my longtime friend and for whom I have inordinate respect."
The British publication the Independent claimed Wolff's book says former British Prime Minister Tony Blair warned the rich asshole son-in-law Jared Kushner during the campaign that British spies could have the campaign under surveillance. Blair has since denied the report, calling it a "complete fabrication" through his spokesperson.
An excerpt published in the New Yorker also describes some rich asshole as dismayed on Election Night by his unexpected victory over Hillary Clinton. Anthony Scaramucci, who was communications director for less than two weeks, disagreed with that claim and the claim that some rich asshole didn't know who Boehner was, although Scaramucci was not reported to be present when those events transpired.
White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders dismissed much of Wolff's book on Wednesday, saying "95 percent" of the interviews were granted by former chief strategist Steve Bannon, whom some rich asshole disavowed publicly on Wednesday.
"Steve Bannon has nothing to do with me or my presidency. When he was fired, he not only lost his job, he lost his mind," the president said in a strongly worded statement.
BY MAX GREENWOOD - 01/04/18 03:23 PM EST
The rich asshole administration is suspending security assistance to Pakistan amid frustration with Islamabad’s failure to combat terrorist networks operating in the country, the State Department announced Thursday.
Heather Nauert, a spokeswoman for the department, said at a press briefing that the U.S. would freeze military equipment deliveries and transfers of security-related funds to Pakistan. She said the administration is still working out the dollar amounts of the cuts.
The U.S. will also freeze reimbursements to the Pakistani government for money spent on conducting counterterrorism operations, Nauert said.
“Until the Pakistani government takes decisive action against groups, including the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani Network, we consider them to be destabilizing the region and also targeting personnel,” Nauert said.
Nauert said that there “may be some exceptions that are made on a case-by-case basis if determined to be critical to national security interests.”
The announcement came two days after the rich asshole railed against U.S. assistance to Pakistan, saying that Washington gives the country "billions of dollars" and gets "nothing" in return.
It also came days after U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley confirmed that the U.S. would withhold $255 million in aid from Pakistan amid frustration over its failure to fight terrorist groups.
The U.S. has provided more than $33 billion in assistance to Pakistan since 2002.
Frustration with Islamabad’s failure to confront terrorist groups operating within Pakistan is not unique to the the rich asshole administration but the move to cut security aid to the country on Thursday signals a new effort to pressure Pakistan to do more to combat militant groups operating in the region.
Earlier on Thursday, the State Department announced that it had added Pakistan to a “special watch list” for severe violations of religious freedom amid concerns about the country’s treatment of religious minorities.
- This report was updated at 3:50 p.m.
BY REID WILSON - 01/04/18 08:53 AM EST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions will roll back an Obama-era policy that gave states leeway to allow marijuana for recreational purposes.
The Justice Department on Thursday afternoon released a memo announcing that the so-called Cole memo — which ordered U.S. attorneys in states where marijuana has been legalized to deprioritize prosecution of marijuana-related cases — would be rescinded effective immediately.
"Previous nationwide guidance specific to marijuana enforcement is unnecessary and is rescinded, effective immediately," the memo reads.
Two sources with knowledge of the decision confirmed to The Hill early Thursday that Sessions planned on ending the policy authored in 2013 by then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole.
The Associated Press first reported the decision.
Sessions, a vocal critic of marijuana legalization, has hinted for months that he would move to crack down on the growing cannabis market.
Sessions, since taking over as head of the Justice Department, has appeared to show a harder line on marijuana. In May, the attorney general sent a letter to congressional leaders requesting they get rid of an amendment in the department’s budget that blocks the Justice Department from using federal money to prevent states "from implementing their own State laws that authorize the use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana."
Opponents of legal marijuana on Thursday celebrated the long-awaited action.
“It’s pretty clear that the federal policy is going to be that U.S. attorneys will have discretion and the industry can no longer hide behind the Cole memo and say that they’re protected,” said Kevin Sabet, who worked in Obama’s Office of National Drug Control Policy and now runs the anti-legalization group Smart Approaches to Marijuana. “There is an unknown here because we don’t know how this is going to be implemented.”
The move is likely to put the federal government in conflict with states where marijuana is legal for recreational use. California on Monday became the sixth state to legalize recreational marijuana. Massachusetts and Maine are set to join those states later this year.
“It’s really the beginning of the story, not the end,” Sabet said.
Legalization has led to a booming marijuana business in some states, where wealthy growers and even hedge funds have invested millions of dollars in production and sales. Some industry analysts peg the North American cannabis market at $10 billion in annual sales.
Mallory Shelbourne contributed to this report, which was updated at 1:58 p.m.
January 4, 2018
Zachary Fryer-Biggs
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump’s legal team has handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller business documents that include details about Trump’s effort to build a hotel in Moscow, his campaign’s communications with WikiLeaks and Trump Tower meeting when some of his senior campaign staffers sought to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Russian lawyer, according to a report by CNN.
Also given to congressional investigators, the documents cover the years 2015 through 2017 and include records of conversations by employees of Trump's business but no financial records, according to CNN’s sources.
Given to investigators in 2017, the documents also include internal communications about Trump’s April 2016 campaign speech on foreign policy and about an October 2016 speech Donald Trump Jr. delivered to a group in Paris that is closely tied to the Kremlin. Trump Jr. received $50,000 for the speech.
The White House directed a request for comment to Trump’s lawyer for the Russia inquiry, Ty Cobb, who declined to comment to Newsweek.
Cobb told Newsweek in December that Trump is cooperating fully with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is running the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible cooperation with the Trump campaign.
“The president understands we have a great deal of respect for Mueller, and the president has been determined to handle this in a transparent, collaborative way with the special counsel,” he said.
While various officials from the Trump orbit have been interviewed by Mueller’s team, Trump has been hesitant to cooperate regarding his business dealings.
In a July interview with The New York Times, Trump said any probe into his financial dealings would cross a red line.
“I think that’s a violation,” he said. “Look, this is about Russia.”
Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, sued Mueller on Wednesday, arguing that the special counsel violated the law by bringing charges against him. It is a civil suit that aims to limit Mueller’s power.
“The appointment order in effect purports to grant Mr. Mueller carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across while investigating, no matter how remote from the specific matter identified as the subject of the appointment order,” the lawsuit said.
Justice Department officials scoffed at the lawsuit, calling it frivolous.
Manafort was charged in October with money laundering, as was a close business associate, Rick Gates.
Democrat on defunct voting commission says Kobach lied about why it dissolved
The commissioner who sued the group calls Kobach's claim "balderdash."
Maine Secretary of State Matt Dunlap (D) had strong words for Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R) on Thursday after Kobach tried to lay blame for the failure of President the rich asshole’s Election Integrity Commission at the feet of Dunlap and three other Democratic commissioners.
“[It’s a] bunch of balderdash,” Dunlap told ThinkProgress in an interview.
Since the rich asshole announced Wednesday that he was dissolving the commission he created to investigate his false claim that widespread voter fraud cost him the popular vote in 2016, he and his advisors have assigned blame to everyone other than themselves.
On Twitter, the rich asshole said Democratic elections officials who refused to provide the President’s Advisory Commission on Election Integrity with voter data led to its demise. A White House advisor said it was unable to operate transparently. And Kobach, the commission’s vice-chair, claimed that Democrats on the panel jeopardized their opportunity to be involved in setting federal voting policy.
“Anyone on the left needs to realize that by throwing the food in the air, they just lost a seat at the table,” Kobach told Politico, likely referring to over a dozen lawsuits against the group by Democrats and voting advocates, including one by a Democratic commissioner against his own commission.
Dunlap, the commissioner who sued the group in November, said Thursday that Kobach’s attempt to lay blame on him is nonsense.
“He said we were stonewalling,” Dunlap said. “I was asking for very basic information. I wasn’t asking for all the inner workings of the commission. I wanted to know what our reference documents were, what are our communications like, who are we talking to, what are we saying to each other, what’s our schedule? And I couldn’t get that information at all, under any circumstances, and that’s why we pursued the lawsuit.”
On December 22, a federal judge ruled in Dunlap’s favor, ordering Kobach to give the Democrat more access to the panel’s records. Dunlap says he is still awaiting the documents.
“The Federal Advisory Committee Act is quite clear that this is supposed to be a transparent, open process that welcomes perspectives from across the political spectrum, and we weren’t doing any of that,” Dunlap said. “When I filed the suit, [Kobach] said the suit was baseless. Well, the federal judge disagreed.”
After the December order, Dunlap said he suspected that Kobach would choose to terminate the commission rather than involve the four Democrats.
Since disbanding the commission he created in May 2017 to substantiate his false claim that 3 to 5 million people illegally voted in November 2016, the rich asshole has continued to perpetuate the myth of voter fraud. On Twitter, he wrote that only a voter ID law would protect American elections, when research shows that they actually suppress minority voters who are more likely to vote for Democrats.
Dunlap said his comments underscore why the commission’s investigation was so important — to prove that a federal voter ID is unnecessary.
the rich asshole administration to delay Obama rule combating housing segregation
The change will be announced on Friday.
The rich asshole administration is delaying an Obama-era rule that bolstered enforcement of the Fair Housing Act, a decades-old law intended to combat segregation in neighborhoods across the country. While the delay doesn’t eliminate the rule entirely, housing advocates say it indicates, at the very least, an attempt by federal officials to weaken hard-fought housing protections.
The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is planning to push back the deadline for cities to analyze and address issues of segregation and improve conditions for people of color by several years, to October 2020, according to a HUD memo obtained by ThinkProgress and set for release on Friday.
“At a minimum this is a precursor to significantly watering down the assessment tool which is a template that jurisdictions use to complete their assessment of fair housing,” said Thomas Silverstein, counsel in the Fair Housing & Community Development Project at the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights Under Laws. “This is such a significant delay.”
Some communities seeking HUD grant funding have been required to complete comprehensive neighborhood segregation analyses required in the Obama-era rules since October 2016. Deadlines for cities and towns to complete those analyses have been rolling out since on a staggered basis, depending on the date of the grant they were seeking.
With a number of assessments due starting this April, cities and towns will not have to abide by the Obama-era rule when completing their analyses until 2020.
The agency’s current disdain for neighborhood desegregation policies reflects comments HUD Secretary Ben Carson has made in the past. Carson characterized the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and other government-led attempts to integrate neighborhoods, including the Obama-era rule that was introduced in 2015, as a failed “social experiment.”
“These government-engineered attempts to legislate racial equality create consequences that often make matters worse,” Carson wrote in a Washington Times op-ed in 2015. “There are reasonable ways to use housing policy to enhance the opportunities available to lower-income citizens, but based on the history of failed socialist experiments in this country, entrusting the government to get it right can prove downright dangerous.”
The Fair Housing Act was created with the intent of unraveling decades of racial segregation in neighborhoods across the country and banning housing discrimination. It eventually led to the passage of the Housing and Community Development Act in 1974, which increased federal funding for the revitalization of cities, subsidized housing for the poor, and improved housing options available to black Americans.
Following the passage of the Fair Housing Act, HUD required communities seeking federal funds to promise the agency they were actively working to desegregate housing. But that was only enforced for a couple of years in a handful of places, before President Richard Nixon stepped in and replaced the department’s secretary who was leading the enforcement.
Such standards became law in 1974. Still, despite the fact that the American housing market remains segregated, HUD seldomly enforced it, according Silverstein.
Under the Fair Housing Act, communities are required to send HUD an analysis that describes the hurdles residents of color face and what actions local officials are taking to combat segregation. But local leaders often sent in largely inaccurate data, while HUD neglected to verify whether the information was correct.
The Obama administration gave HUD officials more power in 2015 by allowing the agency to withhold money from communities not abiding by the Fair Housing Act and working to break down segregated neighborhoods by creating the so-called Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing Act.
The rule created more structure, clarity, and guidance for grant-seeking cities and towns undertaking their analyses, complete with more data and robust community engagement, according to Silverstein. The analysis requires communities to identify racially- or ethnically-concentrated areas of poverty and disparities in access to opportunity and housing. It also requires communities to show the factors contributing to the segregation and create a plan to address those problems, he said.
A number of cities have already gone through the analysis process and implemented policy changes as a result, including New Orleans — which passed new inclusionary housing standards, and the Philadelphia Housing Authority— which adopted small area fair market rents for the housing choice voucher program, previously known as Section 8.
Silverstein fears the the rich asshole administration’s delay will impact HUD’s monitoring of the analyses, which improved after the implementation of the rule, prompting cities to once again, do a less thorough job obtaining accurate segregation data. It could also disincentivize key community stakeholders from sparking robust conversations and gathering accurate information for the analysis since the delay shows the Obama rule may be on its last leg, he said.
the rich asshole flip-flopped in more ways than one.
On Thursday, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked if President the rich asshole agrees with Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to rescind Obama-era federal guidance discouraging prosecutors from prosecuting certain marijuana cases in states where it is legal.
Sanders indicated that the rich asshole does in fact agree with Sessions’ move to restore federal power — one that threatens to throw the country’s $20 billion legal cannabis market into chaos.
“The president believes in enforcing federal law. That would be his top priority, regardless of what the topic is, whether it’s marijuana or whether it’s immigration.” Sanders said. “The president’s position hasn’t changed, but he does strongly believe that we have to enforce federal law.”
But Sanders’ claim is false — the rich asshole’s position has indeed changed, and in more ways than one.
During an interview with a Colorado TV station in the summer of 2016, then-candidate the rich asshole said that as president, he would not use federal power to shut down the sale of recreational cannabis in states like Colorado.
“I wouldn’t do that, no,” the rich asshole said, asked if he’d support the federal government intervening. “I think it’s up to the states, yeah. I’m a states person. I think it should be up to the states, absolutely.”
Had to ask @realDonaldTrump about #marijuana in light of his alliance with @GovChristie:#9NEWS #COpolitics
Not only does the rich asshole’s support for the DOJ’s power grab contradict his 2016 comments about thinking marijuana laws are best left “up to the states” — his decision to allow Sessions to move forward with the new policy also violates the promise he made not to interfere with states’ rights.
While a number of Republican members of Congress have already publicly criticized Sessions’ move, it’s unclear to what extent it will affect day-to-day life in states that have relaxed marijuana laws — a group that includes the entire West Coast, where marijuana can now be purchased legally at commercial storefronts from southern California all the way up to northern Washington.
During the press briefing, Sanders tried to downplay the significance of the DOJ’s policy change, which she said “simply gives prosecutors the tools to take on large-scale distributors and enforce federal law.”
That remains to be seen. But what isn’t up for debate is that the rich asshole has flip-flopped, and that the position he’s now taking is less unpopular than the one he articulated in the summer of 2016 — a recent poll indicates 64 percent of Americans support legalizing marijuana, including more than half of Republicans.
some rich asshole finally forced to hand over his business documents to special counsel Robert Mueller
Zachary Fryer-Biggs
Posted with permission from Newsweek
President Donald Trump’s legal team has handed over to Special Counsel Robert Mueller business documents that include details about Trump’s effort to build a hotel in Moscow, his campaign’s communications with WikiLeaks and Trump Tower meeting when some of his senior campaign staffers sought to get dirt on Hillary Clinton from a Russian lawyer, according to a report by CNN.
Also given to congressional investigators, the documents cover the years 2015 through 2017 and include records of conversations by employees of Trump's business but no financial records, according to CNN’s sources.
Given to investigators in 2017, the documents also include internal communications about Trump’s April 2016 campaign speech on foreign policy and about an October 2016 speech Donald Trump Jr. delivered to a group in Paris that is closely tied to the Kremlin. Trump Jr. received $50,000 for the speech.
The White House directed a request for comment to Trump’s lawyer for the Russia inquiry, Ty Cobb, who declined to comment to Newsweek.
Cobb told Newsweek in December that Trump is cooperating fully with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is running the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible cooperation with the Trump campaign.
“The president understands we have a great deal of respect for Mueller, and the president has been determined to handle this in a transparent, collaborative way with the special counsel,” he said.
While various officials from the Trump orbit have been interviewed by Mueller’s team, Trump has been hesitant to cooperate regarding his business dealings.
In a July interview with The New York Times, Trump said any probe into his financial dealings would cross a red line.
“I think that’s a violation,” he said. “Look, this is about Russia.”
Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, sued Mueller on Wednesday, arguing that the special counsel violated the law by bringing charges against him. It is a civil suit that aims to limit Mueller’s power.
“The appointment order in effect purports to grant Mr. Mueller carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across while investigating, no matter how remote from the specific matter identified as the subject of the appointment order,” the lawsuit said.
Justice Department officials scoffed at the lawsuit, calling it frivolous.
Manafort was charged in October with money laundering, as was a close business associate, Rick Gates.
Also given to congressional investigators, the documents cover the years 2015 through 2017 and include records of conversations by employees of Trump's business but no financial records, according to CNN’s sources.
Given to investigators in 2017, the documents also include internal communications about Trump’s April 2016 campaign speech on foreign policy and about an October 2016 speech Donald Trump Jr. delivered to a group in Paris that is closely tied to the Kremlin. Trump Jr. received $50,000 for the speech.
The White House directed a request for comment to Trump’s lawyer for the Russia inquiry, Ty Cobb, who declined to comment to Newsweek.
Cobb told Newsweek in December that Trump is cooperating fully with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is running the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and possible cooperation with the Trump campaign.
“The president understands we have a great deal of respect for Mueller, and the president has been determined to handle this in a transparent, collaborative way with the special counsel,” he said.
While various officials from the Trump orbit have been interviewed by Mueller’s team, Trump has been hesitant to cooperate regarding his business dealings.
In a July interview with The New York Times, Trump said any probe into his financial dealings would cross a red line.
“I think that’s a violation,” he said. “Look, this is about Russia.”
Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, sued Mueller on Wednesday, arguing that the special counsel violated the law by bringing charges against him. It is a civil suit that aims to limit Mueller’s power.
“The appointment order in effect purports to grant Mr. Mueller carte blanche to investigate and pursue criminal charges in connection with anything he stumbles across while investigating, no matter how remote from the specific matter identified as the subject of the appointment order,” the lawsuit said.
Justice Department officials scoffed at the lawsuit, calling it frivolous.
Manafort was charged in October with money laundering, as was a close business associate, Rick Gates.
‘Where’s my Roy Cohn?’ Furious the rich asshole ordered lawyer to make Sessions ‘protect’ him from Russia probe
some rich asshole (Photo: Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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President some rich asshole pulled out all the stops last year when Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from anything dealing with the Russia investigation.
A report from the New York Times cited two sources that revealed the president told his lawyers they had to stop Sessions from recusing himself. In wake of the announcement from Sessions, the president was reportedly irate and considering ways he could get rid of Sessions.
White House counsel Don McGahn took over the responsibility and talked to Sessions about staying involved in the investigation. It didn’t work. White House aides confirmed that the rich asshole blew up at McGhan, saying, that “he needed his attorney general to protect him.”
the rich asshole then demanded, “Where’s my Roy Cohn?” His personal lawyer and notorious “the rich asshole fixer,” who also has a history as a red-baiting lawyer who worked for Sen. Joe McCarthy in the 1950s.
Mueller’s investigators did know about the White House incident and the “lobbying” of Sessions.
The report also revealed that just four days prior to former FBI Director James Comey being fired, one of Sessions’ aides asked a congressional staffer whether there was damaging information about Comey that existed. It was assumed that this request was in efforts to find evidence that could undermine Comey.
It is unknown whether special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are privy to the White House request of the congressional aides. However, they certainly are now.
Mueller has received handwritten notes from former chief of staff Reince Priebus that showed the rich asshole had called Comey to urge the former director to say publicly that the FBI wasn’t investigating him. The fear over the rich asshole’s determination to fire Comey prompted one White House lawyer to lie to the president to try to prevent the firing.
Veteran Justice Department lawyer Uttam Dhillon assigned a staffer to look into whether Comey could be fired and the lawyer determined the FBI was the same as any other staffer in the government. Dhillon reportedly told the rich asshole that a reason would be needed
After attacks by some rich asshole — Steve Bannon is finding himself with fewer friends
Former chief White House Strategist Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in National Harbor, Maryland. (Gage Skidmore/Flickr)
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Following his brutal disavowal by President some rich asshole, former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon’s dream of spearheading a new U.S. political movement appears in tatters while the Republican establishment he challenged is feeling more secure.
the rich asshole turned on Bannon over his comments to the author of a book highly critical of the president and his family. The White House followed up on Thursday by suggesting that Bannon be ousted from his influential perch as chief executive of the hard-right news site Breitbart News.
Bannon appeared to have few close friends left among the more conservative factions of the Republican Party, which swiftly proclaimed their loyalty to the rich asshole following the breakup.
“I don’t know anyone in the conservative movement that’s supporting Steve over some rich asshole right now in this,” Christopher Ruddy, a close the rich asshole ally and chief executive of the conservative Newsmax site, told Reuters.
Mike Cernovich, a leading social-media voice of the so-called white supremacy movement that Bannon helped energize on the rich asshole’s behalf, had no doubt about which of the two men had more popular support. “The base will stay with the rich asshole.”
Reader comments on Breitbart’s site seemed overwhelmingly supportive of the president compared with Bannon. The Wall Street Journal reported late on Thursday that the site’s board was considering letting him go.
Bannon’s representatives did not respond to requests for comment.
Last year, media outlets as diverse as Time magazine and the comedy show “Saturday Night Live” portrayed Bannon, the rich asshole’s election campaign strategist, as the power behind the president, an unshaven, shabbily dressed Svengali bending the Republican Party to his economic nationalist agenda.
But Bannon’s star had been tumbling long before this week’s flap over criticism Bannon leveled at the rich asshole’s family in Michael Wolff’s new book on the White House.
In August, Bannon was fired amid a power struggle in the West Wing, forcing his return to Breitbart.
His reputation as a political mastermind then took a hit after Republicans lost a U.S. Senate seat in Alabama they had long held when the Bannon-backed Roy Moore, who was accused of improper conduct with teenage girls, fell to Democrat Doug Jones.
After leaving the White House, Bannon proclaimed his loyalty to the rich asshole and vowed to wage an insurrection against the Republican establishment, especially Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, whom he accused of stalling the rich asshole’s policy agenda.
But last month, on the heels of Moore’s loss in Alabama, McConnell helped steer an overhaul of the U.S. tax code through Congress, earning praise from the rich asshole and depriving Bannon of his argument that the Republican-controlled Congress had not produced results.
‘GREATLY DIMINISHED’
the rich asshole turned on Bannon on Wednesday, saying he had “lost his mind” when he lost his job as chief strategist. He said Bannon did not represent the rich asshole’s political base and had exaggerated his influence even when he was at the White House.
Following the rich asshole’s attack, some of the candidates who had aligned themselves with Bannon’s movement began stepping away, including Arizona U.S. Senate hopeful Kelli Ward and New York congressional candidate Michael Grimm, who called the attacks against the rich asshole’s family “baseless.”
Bannon’s influence, Ruddy said, had always stemmed from the belief that he was close to the rich asshole.
“He’s greatly diminished,” he said. “What Steve forgets is the base is all about some rich asshole. It’s not about Steve Bannon.”
Josh Holmes, a former top aide to McConnell, said Bannon had been on a “self-interested mission” to play kingmaker inside the Republican Party.
“I think that’s over. … A leader without followers is just a guy taking a walk,” Holmes said.
A friend of Bannon, former the rich asshole adviser Sam Nunberg, said he doubted Bannon’s relationship with the rich asshole could be fully repaired. But he added that Bannon would retain some sway over the rich asshole’s supporters, particularly on issues such as immigration.
“This is not the end of the world, particularly with this president,” Nunberg said.
the rich asshole is known for casting associates out of the fold, but also for bringing them back, particularly if there are common political interests or common enemies.
The president did appear to be in a slightly forgiving mood on Thursday, noting that Bannon had praised him the night before on a radio show.
“I don’t know, he called me a great man last night,” the rich asshole told reporters, “so you know, he obviously changed his tune pretty quick.”
(Reporting by James Oliphant and Jeff Mason; Additional reporting by John Whitesides; Written by James Oliphant; Editing by Kieran Murray and Peter Cooney)
Republicans aren’t happy about Jeff Sessions’ decision to crack down on marijuana
It's a states' rights issue, they argue.
A number of Republican lawmakers were visibly incensed on Thursday, following a report by the Associated Press that claimed Attorney General Jeff Sessions is considering rescinding an Obama-era policy allowing marijuana legalization to move forward in several states.
The so-called Cole Memo — written by former Deputy Attorney General James M. Cole in 2013 — carved out protections for pro-legalization states from anti-marijuana federal authorities who sought to crack down on cannabis-use. As ThinkProgress reported earlier on Thursday, that policy essentially meant that authorities’ hands were tied, so long as officials kept their legalized marijuana from broaching state lines.
Sources who spoke to the Associated Press, however, stated that Sessions sought to “let federal prosecutors where pot is legal decide how aggressively to enforce federal marijuana law” — a direct contradiction of President the rich asshole’s earlier promise of leaving the issue up to states.
Shortly after the AP report was published, Republican legislators began reacting with contempt.
“.@realDonaldTrump had it right. This must be left up to the states,” Colorado Sen. Cory Gardner (R) tweeted. “This reported action directly contradicts what Attorney General Sessions told me prior to his confirmation. With no prior notice to Congress, the Justice Department has trampled on the will of the voters in CO and other states. I am prepared to take all steps necessary, including holding DOJ nominees, until the Attorney General lives up to the commitment he made to me prior to his confirmation.”
This reported action directly contradicts what Attorney General Sessions told me prior to his confirmation. With no prior notice to Congress, the Justice Department has trampled on the will of the voters in CO and other states.
Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R) also weighed in on Thursday, stating in a Facebook post that she had “repeatedly discouraged Attorney General Sessions from taking this action.”
“Alaskans are waking up to media reports that the US Department of Justice is withdrawing the ‘Cole Memorandum,’ an Obama era policy statement that the federal government will respect state marijuana laws like Alaska’s,” she wrote. “My office can confirm that we received notification from the Justice Department this morning that they intended to withdraw the ‘Cole Memorandum.’ Over the past year I repeatedly discouraged Attorney General Sessions from taking this action and asked that he work with the states and Congress if he feels changes are necessary. Today’s announcement is disruptive to state regulatory regimes and regrettable.”
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) issued a statement as well, but was more muted in his response.
“I continue to believe that this is a states’ rights issue, and the federal government has better things to focus on,” he said, according to Reason criminal justice reporter CJ Ciaramella.
Statement from @RandPaul on Sessions rescinding Obama-era marijuana guidance to U.S. Attorneys: "I continue to believe that this is a states’ rights issue, and the federal government has better things to focus on."
Most Republicans publicly opposed to Sessions’ decision appeared to object to the infringement on states’ rights more than anything else.
“Attorney General Sessions needs to read the Commerce Clause found in Article 1, Section 8, Clause 3 of the U.S. Constitution that limits the power of the federal government to regulate interstate and not intrastate commerce,” Rep. Mike Coffman (R-CO) wrote in a statement. “The decision that was made to legalize marijuana in Colorado was made by the voters of Colorado and only applies within the boundaries of our state. Colorado had every right to legalize marijuana and I will do everything I can to protect that right against the power of an overreaching federal government.”
Sessions has long vowed to crack down on marijuana, claiming in March last year that it was only “slightly less awful than heroin.” During a Senate hearing in April 2016, the then-Alabama senator argued that “good people” did not smoke marijuana, adding, “This drug is dangerous, you cannot play with it, it is not funny, it’s not something to laugh about.”
As the AP noted this week, the rich asshole’s personal views on marijuana are still unclear. He has stated repeatedly in the past, however, that cannabis legalization should be left up to the states and not infringed upon by the federal government.
“I really believe we should leave it up to the states,” he said during a campaign rally in October 2015, according to PolitiFact. “It should be a state situation. […] But I believe that the legalization of marijuana — other than for medical because I think medical, you know I know people that are very, very sick and for whatever reason the marijuana really helps them… but in terms of marijuana and legalization, I think that should be a state issue, state-by-state.”
the rich asshole repeated those sentiments later on the campaign trail.
“I wouldn’t [use federal power to hamper legalization of recreational marijuana], no,” he said during a July 2016 interview with Colorado’s KUSA-TV. “…I think it’s up to the states, yeah. I’m a states person. I think it should be up to the states, absolutely.”
Free association game produces hilarious results when Sean Spicer is asked about Omarosa
Omarosa and Sean Spicer (Photo: Screen captures)
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In a hilarious word association game with S.E. Cupp, former press secretary Sean Spicer was asked to give a one-word description from a list of people
The first was Omarosa Manigault-Newman. “Person,” was all he would answer. Cupp rolled her eyes, but all Spicer could do is grin.
Omarosa wasn’t the only person to which Spicer refused to give an actual answer.
When asked about Melissa McCarthy, who played Spicer during “Saturday Night Live” skits that reportedly bothered President some rich asshole, all Spicer could say was “she took Miami.”
He described Kellyanne Conway as a “strategist,” while saying Anthony Scaramucci was “interesting.”
Mercers publicly disavow Bannon after quietly speaking with Peter Thiel about creating a conservative news network
Peter Thiel (Wikimedia Commons) and Robert and Rebekah Mercer (YouTube / Screengrab)
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Billionaire GOP megadoner Rebekah Mercer on Thursday issued a rare rebuke of onetime chief White House strategist Steve Bannon, who was formerly a major beneficiary of the Mercer family’s sprawling investments.
“I support President [Donald] the rich asshole and the platform upon which he was elected,” Mercer said in a statement, the Washington Post reports. “My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements.”
SCOOP: The Mercers split from Steve Bannon was so complete — & so bitter — that they cut off funding for Bannon's private security detail. More juicy details TK as we update our story. nytimes.com/2018/01/04/us/…
Mercer’s decision to publicly distance her family from Bannon comes amid a firestorm of headlines generated by the forthcoming Michael Wolff book, “Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House.” In that book, Bannon made a number of explosive comments about the rich asshole, his family and his administration, prompting the White House to issue a statement calling the president’s former top aide “crazy.”
Mercer said she still supports—and will retain her minority stake in—Breitbart News, the conservative website that propelled Bannon to the forefront of American politics. According to the Wall Street Journal, Breitbart’s board is likewise considering ousting the site’s executive chairman.
This is not the first time a member of the Mercer family has moved to publicly disavow Bannon. Rebekah Mercer obtained her minority stake in Breitbart News back in November, after she purchased it from her father, Robert Mercer. That decision came after BuzzFeed published a detailed account linking Bannon, Breitbart and far-right agent provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos to white nationalists.
“I have great respect for Mr. Bannon, and from time to time I do discuss politics with him,” Robert Mercer wrote in a letter to his colleagues explaining his decision to sell his stake in Breitbart to his daughters. “However, I make my own decisions with respect to whom I support politically. Those decisions do not always align with Mr. Bannon’s.”
On the surface, the Mercer machine’s slow disavowal of Bannon appears prompted by isolated and unpredictable incidents: BuzzFeed’s exposé, Wolff’s “Fire and Fury.” But as Wolff reports in his forthcoming book, the Mercer’s public distancing from Bannon comes as billionaire venture capitalist Peter Thiel is reportedly mulling the creation of a conservative news network—and discussing that idea with the Mercers. Thiel and the Mercers were major donors to the rich asshole’s presidential campaign. Similarly, Thiel and Rebekah Mercer both served on the rich asshole’s transition team following the election
According to two sources, Thiel—who sits on the board of Facebook—has been looking into creating a media organization to rival Fox News since that network’s former chairman Roger Ailes died in May 2017.
“The plan, according to Wolff, was that Thiel — a rare tech mogul who openly supported the rich asshole — would pay for the network. Ailes would come along and bring loyal Fox News talent Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly, who was forced out at Fox last year following reports about settlements he had reached with multiple women.… One person close to Thiel said he was not aware of his plans to create a news network, and was surprised when asked about the plan. That person noted that Thiel had said in private conversations that media companies were traditionally bad investments.”
But it wouldn’t be the first time Thiel made an investment in an attempt to shape the media landscape. In May 2016, Forbes reported that Thiel secretly bankrolled Hulk Hogan’s lawsuit against the now-defunct Gawker in retaliation for the website having outed him as gay in 2007. That lawsuit eventually crippled the cult website and forced it into bankruptcy; the Paypal cofounder later declared his decision to fund Gawker’s demise, “one of my greater philanthropic things that I’ve done.”
In November 2017, Thiel filed a motion in the bankruptcy court of the Southern District of New York, arguing the court is unfairly excluding him from the sale of Gawker. The court filing makes clear Thiel’s interest in purchasing the now-defunct website, insisting he’s the “most able and logical purchaser.”
Meanwhile, the Mercers have donated to a number of conservative research organizations that fund and produce digital and printed media, including the Media Research Center (which runs the conservative websites CNSNEws.com and Newsbusters), the Government Accountability Institute (which produces the Clinton Cash series and has links to Breitbart), and of course, Breitbart itself.
In November, it was also reported that Robert Mercer has donated to James O’Keefe’s Project Veritas, a shady activist organization known for deceptively editing videos that target progressive organizations. Breitbart often hypes videos published by Project Veritas and O’Keefe.
Watch Sean Spicer try to wiggle his way out of admitting he lied to the public for some rich asshole
SE Cupp and Sean Spicer (Photo: Screen capture)
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In an interview with Headline News (HLN) host S.E. Cupp, former press secretary Sean Spicer tried to defend his credibility, despite spending months lying from the White House podium.
Cupp grilled Spicer during a Thursday interview, starting with his strive to retain his respectability on the national political stage.
“Did you lie on behalf of the president?” was Cupp’s first question. Spicer maintained that he didn’t. When he was specifically asked about the claim that no person has ever has the audience President some rich asshole’s inauguration had in history, Spicer pivoted back to the internet. What Spicer said, showing photos of the inauguration, was that it was the largest inauguration crowd in history. It was only later that he began to talk about the internet audience, unavailable in 2008 when Obama was inaugurated.
“We didn’t emphasize those points enough,” Spicer claimed. He said that he searched for information and couldn’t find any that were larger online audiences.
“the rich asshole didn’t have the most electoral college votes for a president since Reagan either, you have Google,” Cupp said next.
“Did I say that?” Spicer asked. Cupp confirmed it. Spicer tried to claim that it was correct in “context.” The raw numbers are that the rich asshole had 306 electoral votes. President Ronald Reagan had 525 and George W. Bush had 426 votes.
Spicer ultimately claimed that his job is not to stand at the podium and report what is happening but to speak on behalf of the president. So, when the rich asshole wanted him to say something, he said it.
Watch Cupp hammer him below:
Part 1:
Part 2:
CNN panel blasts ‘Sean Spicer’s redemption tour’: He didn’t make ‘honest mistakes’ — he lied
A CNN panel discussing Sean Spicer's tenure as press secretary. Image via screengrab.
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Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer appears to be on his “redemption tour” in the aftermath of Michael Wolff’s explosive exposé on the rich asshole campaign and administration — but CNN panelists aren’t convinced he deserves to be redeemed.
“There were times when I screwed up,” Spicer told HLN’s S.E. Cupp on Thursday, listing off his many mistakes from the press podium. “There’s no question about it.”
“When I screwed up, yeah, it felt really bad,” he said.
Given how much a press secretary says every day, month and week, “sure, they’re gonna screw up,” said Alice Stewart, Ted Cruz’s former presidential campaign communications director.
“I think what really hurt him more than anything is when, it wasn’t an honest mistake, it was pushing out information that wasn’t factually accurate,” she said. “That hurts him more long-term than making an ‘honest mistake.'”
“Here’s a defense of Sean Spicer,” host Jake Tapper said, playing the devil’s advocate. “Is the fault the salesman or the product? He had to defend things that President the rich asshole said that weren’t true!”
“But he chose to do that, right?” political analyst Kirsten Powers responded. “If you decide to work for somebody who’s going to make you go out there and say things that aren’t true, then I think you’re held accountable for that.”
9 / 28
The Washington Post
Rosalind Helderman 01-04-2018
Stephen K. Bannon's main financial backer is formally cutting ties with the former the rich asshole adviser.
In a new statement Thursday, billionaire conservative donor Rebekah Mercer said that she has not spoken to Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, in many months and that she continues to support President the rich asshole.
"I support President the rich asshole and the platform upon which he was elected," Mercer said. "My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements."
Mercer almost never speaks publicly, and her statement about her longtime ally represented an extraordinary rebuke. It comes in the wake of a new book by journalist Michael Wolff, "Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House," which includes incendiary comments by Bannon about the president he helped elect and about the rich asshole's family.
Mercer is arguably the most prominent former Bannon associate to disavow him in the wake of the book's publication. She said she remains committed in her support for Breitbart News, where she holds a minority stake and where Bannon serves as chairman.
People familiar with the conservative news website said discussions have begun at the organization about potentially removing him from the perch that propelled him to them forefront of national conservative politics.
A Bannon spokesperson declined to comment.
By Eli Watkins, CNN
Updated 6:15 PM ET, Thu January 4, 2018
Washington (CNN)Former White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Thursday he is troubled that former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has not denied the statements attributed to him in a recent book about the early days of President some rich asshole's tenure.
"While he may continue to say he's a supporter of the President and his agenda, what we didn't hear is a denial," Spicer said in a conversation on HLN's "SE Cupp Unfiltered."
He continued, "And that is what, as a PR person, troubles me. I mean, the first thing that you do when you're attacked with a falsehood is not only deny it but go out and really make a case for it."
Published adapted excerpts of the book by Michael Wolff say Bannon called the 2016 rich asshole Tower meeting between the rich asshole campaign officials and a Russian lawyer purportedly offering damaging information about Hillary Clinton "treasonous," among other statements the book attributes to him as denigrating the President and some rich asshole Jr.
CNN has not independently verified all the details in Wolff's book.
In response to the statements, the White House has slammed the book, and the rich asshole said in a statement that Bannon had "lost his mind."
Bannon reiterated his support for the rich asshole in a Breitbart radio show Wednesday.
"The President of the United States is a great man," he said. "You know, I support him day in and day out."
Like the White House has done officially, Spicer questioned the veracity of the book.
"There's a lot of the quotes that I know are attributed to myself and to other people that frankly never happened," Spicer said. "There is no question that the accuracy of this book is definitely in question."
But for the quotes attributed to Bannon, Spicer said the former the rich asshole adviser was out of line.
"You don't attack the President's family," Spicer said.
Regrets and defense of time in briefing room
His appearance with Cupp, a conservative commentator who has been critical of the rich asshole, came months after he left the White House, putting an end to his bombastic and controversial time as press secretary.
Spicer's appearances in the White House briefing room gained national attention, largely due to his numerous misstatements and altercations with the press.
Looking back on his time in the job, Spicer conceded he made mistakes but denied ever intentionally misleading the public or telling a lie on behalf of the rich asshole.
"I did my best every day to do what I could to communicate what the President's intentions were," Spicer said.
He volunteered the infamous time when he falsely claimed that Adolf Hitler "didn't even sink to using chemical weapons" as a moment he wished he could have done better.
"I screwed that up royally," Spicer said. "When I screwed up, yeah, it felt really bad."
Spicer apologized after the incident as well.
In the interview Thursday, Spicer said there had been times he made mistakes by speaking without knowing something, coming out too forcefully or not checking with the rich asshole.
Spicer also said he could have done a better job defending the audience size for the rich asshole's inauguration, but still maintained he did not mislead the public.
In his January 21, 2017, White House statement, Spicer attacked the media for accurate reporting and made several false claims about the inauguration, then left the briefing room without taking questions.
"We focused too much on the pictures," Spicer said, lamenting that he had not focused his statement at the time on the size of the total audience worldwide, including digital platforms.
Steve Bannon's future as executive chairman of the far-right website Breitbart has been thrown into question after excerpts published from a forthcoming book quoted Bannon making a number of incendiary comments about President the rich asshole and his administration.
A person familiar with the matter told CNN that there has been a "hard push" to convince Breitbart CEO Larry Solov and Susie Breitbart, the widow of website founder Andrew Breitbart, to fire Bannon.
Indeed, The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Breitbart's board members were debating whether or not to oust Bannon, and on Thursday afternoon Rebekah Mercer, the conservative mega-donor who owns a stake in Breitbart, publicly rebuked Bannon in a rare public statement.
"I support President the rich asshole and the platform upon which he was elected," Mercer said in the statement, which was provided to The Washington Post. "My family and I have not communicated with Steve Bannon in many months and have provided no financial support to his political agenda, nor do we support his recent actions and statements."
The New York Times reported the Mercers had even gone so far as to cut off funding for Bannon's private security detail.
Inside Breitbart staffers were left in the dark, people familiar with internal deliberations told CNN.
"Internally, we've been told nothing," one staffer told CNN. "Everything most in the company know about Steve Bannon's situation is coming from press accounts."
The pressure for Breitbart to sever ties with Bannon increased dramatically on Thursday.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked whether Breitbart should "part ways" with Bannon, to which she said, "I certainly think that is something they should look at and consider."
Earlier in the day, conservative news heavyweight Matt Drudge, who worked with Andrew Breitbart for years and who has taken shots at Bannon before, tweeted that Solov and Susie Breitbart "will take Breitbart into the fresh future." His website also linked to a story speculating about whether Bannon would survive, asking in his headline, "BREITBART SHAKE-UP?"
Bannon also drew criticism from Rush Limbaugh, who said on his radio show Thursday that Bannon was "the big leaker" during his time in the White House.
"When you've lost Drudge and you've lost Rush," said Larry O'Connor, a former Breitbart editor and friend of Andrew Breitbart's, "how do you run the website bearing Andrew Breitbart's name?"
Neither Bannon or a spokesperson for Breitbart provided comment about his future at Breitbart. The Breitbart spokesperson, who doubles as a Bannon spokesperson, also did not respond to requests for comment about whether funding for Bannon's private security detail had been cut off or whether Breitbart staffers had been left in the dark about Bannon's future at the company.
Bannon joined the rich asshole's presidential campaign as its CEO in summer 2016, and then served as the White House's chief strategist until leaving in August of last year and returning to Breitbart.
He drew the ire of the White House and his other allies this week when The Guardian revealed that author Michael Wolff quoted him in his book "Fire and Fury" as saying the rich asshole Tower meeting involving some rich asshole Jr., Jared Kushner, and a Russian lawyer during the 2016 campaign was "unpatriotic" and perhaps "treasonous."
the rich asshole responded by slamming Bannon in a fiery statement, saying Bannon had "lost his mind."
Before the rich asshole released his Wednesday statement, Bannon was almost finished crafting his own statement with his close advisers, a person familiar with the matter told CNN. In fact, Bannon was just "minutes away" from releasing the statement that would have, in part, said some of his comments were taken out of context.
But, as The Hill first reported, that plan was abandoned when the rich asshole released his statement and it became clear Bannon's planned effort would not be enough to salvage his relationship with the president.
Bannon instead avoided commenting at length on his feud with the rich asshole, only praising his former boss as a "great man" on Breitbart radio and saying he still supports the rich asshole agenda.
Sessions torched by lawmakers for marijuana move
BY CRISTINA MARCOS AND JORDAIN CARNEY - 01/04/18 04:06 PM EST
Attorney General Jeff Sessions is facing a barrage of criticism from both parties for ending a policy that gave states the flexibility to allow sales of recreational marijuana.
Republicans, primarily from states that have legalized marijuana, joined Democrats in slamming the decision and vowing to take action to pressure Sessions to reverse course.
Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.) took to the Senate floor to assert that Sessions had told him before his confirmation as attorney general that he didn’t plan to try to reverse his state’s policies legalizing marijuana.
"I would like to know from the attorney general what has changed,” Gardner said. “What has changed the president's mind? Why is some rich asshole thinking differently than what he promised the people of Colorado?”
The Obama administration’s Justice Department announced in 2013 that it would not sue to block states from legalizing marijuana. A memo authored by then-Deputy Attorney General James Cole ordered U.S. attorneys to give lower prioritization to prosecuting marijuana-related cases.
That policy once appeared likely to stand under the rich asshole, who said on the 2016 campaign trail that he would not seek to halt recreational marijuana sales in states that legalized it.
That policy once appeared likely to stand under the rich asshole, who said on the 2016 campaign trail that he would not seek to halt recreational marijuana sales in states that legalized it.
“I am a states person. I think it should be up to the states,” he said.
But expectations changed once the rich asshole picked Sessions, one of the most outspoken critics in Congress of Obama’s policy, to be the nation’s top law enforcement officer.
Sessions revoked the Obama-era guidance on Thursday, declaring a “return to the rule of law.”
“Today's memo on federal marijuana enforcement simply directs all U.S. Attorneys to use previously established prosecutorial principles that provide them all the necessary tools to disrupt criminal organizations, tackle the growing drug crisis, and thwart violent crime across our country," Sessions said in a statement.
Lawmakers seemed to be caught off guard by Sessions’s decision, and many of them expressed anger that their advice was ignored.
Gardner, who leads the Senate GOP campaign arm, said he would block all Justice Department nominees “until Attorney General Jeff Sessions lives up to the commitment that he made to me.”
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), a longtime proponent of legalizing marijuana, didn’t mince words, either.
“The attorney general of the United States has just delivered an extravagant holiday gift to the drug cartels,” Rohrabacher said in a blistering statement, warning that a crackdown on marijuana use would simply lead to more people turning to the black market.
“The attorney general of the United States has just delivered an extravagant holiday gift to the drug cartels,” Rohrabacher said in a blistering statement, warning that a crackdown on marijuana use would simply lead to more people turning to the black market.
The California Republican is the co-author of a provision with Rep. Earl Blumenauer (D-Ore.) in the most recent temporary government spending patch that would maintain a prohibition on the Justice Department using funds to stop implementation of state medical marijuana laws.
Blumenauer called Thursday’s move by Sessions “perhaps one of the stupidest decisions the Attorney General has made.”
Rohrabacher, who represents a district made competitive since Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton carried it in 2016, accused Sessions of hypocrisy for overriding states’ discretion and warned the decision could hurt the GOP’s electoral chances.
“How ironic that the attorney general has long championed states’ rights when it suits other parts of his agenda!” Rohrabacher said. “By taking this benighted minority position, he actually places Republicans’ electoral fortunes in jeopardy.”
Nearly two-thirds of Americans support legalizing marijuana, including 51 percent of Republicans, according to a Gallup poll released late last year.
California this week became the sixth state to legalize marijuana for recreational use, while Massachusetts and Maine are expected to do the same in the coming months.
Republican lawmakers say the fight isn’t about marijuana but states' rights, which they argue the rich asshole administration is violating with Thursday’s decision.
Rep. Carlos Curbelo, a centrist Republican from Southern Florida who similarly represents a district won by Clinton, said it’s “very disappointing for an Attorney General who supposedly respects the federalist model of our government to take such a drastic step ignoring states’ rights and the decisions of voters and state legislatures across the country.”
A third Republican who hails from a district won by Clinton, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), suggested that Sessions “needs to read” the Constitution’s commerce clause setting limits on the federal government’s ability to regular interstate commerce.
A third Republican who hails from a district won by Clinton, Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colo.), suggested that Sessions “needs to read” the Constitution’s commerce clause setting limits on the federal government’s ability to regular interstate commerce.
“Colorado had every right to legalize marijuana and I will do everything I can to protect that right against the power of an overreaching federal government.”
Another Republican in a state that has legalized marijuana, Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, called Sessions’s decision “disruptive” and “regrettable,” noting that she repeatedly warned him against it.
But opponents of Sessions’s decision could face an uphill battle to getting it reversed through legislation. Lawmakers could insert a rider into a must-pass bill or try to bring up a stand-alone measure, but both actions would likely draw backlash from supporters and the rich asshole administration.
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.), considered a potential 2020 contender, said on Thursday that Congress should pass legislation aimed at protecting medical marijuana patients in states where it has been legalized from federal prosecution.
But any effort to pass the bill would likely struggle to get 60 votes in the Senate, where members of GOP leadership touted Sessions’s decision.
Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) acknowledged that Thursday's announcement is “a challenge for states like mine” but appeared skeptical that a legislative fix was a realistic option.
“I think we need to look at it, but I don't know if we have the votes,” he said.
FBI launches new Clinton Foundation investigation
BY JOHN SOLOMON - 01/04/18 08:35 PM EST
THE JUSTICE DEPARTMENT HAS LAUNCHED A NEW INQUIRY INTO WHETHER THE CLINTON FOUNDATION ENGAGED IN ANY PAY-TO-PLAY POLITICS OR OTHER ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES WHILE HILLARY CLINTON SERVED AS SECRETARY OF STATE, LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS AND A WITNESS TELLS THE HILL.
FBI AGENTS FROM LITTLE ROCK, ARK., WHERE THE FOUNDATION WAS STARTED, HAVE TAKEN THE LEAD IN THE INVESTIGATION AND HAVE INTERVIEWED AT LEAST ONE WITNESS IN THE LAST MONTH, AND LAW ENFORCEMENT OFFICIALS SAID ADDITIONAL ACTIVITIES ARE EXPECTED IN COMING WEEKS.
THE OFFICIALS, WHO SPOKE ONLY ON CONDITION OF ANONYMITY, SAID THE PROBE IS EXAMINING WHETHER THE CLINTONS PROMISED OR PERFORMED ANY POLICY FAVORS IN RETURN FOR LARGESSE TO THEIR CHARITABLE EFFORTS OR WHETHER DONORS MADE COMMITMENTS OF DONATIONS IN HOPES OF SECURING GOVERNMENT OUTCOMES.
The probe may also examine whether any tax-exempt assets were converted for personal or political use and whether the Foundation complied with applicable tax laws, the officials said.
One witness recently interviewed by the FBI described the session to The Hill as “extremely professional and unquestionably thorough” and focused on questions about whether donors to Clinton charitable efforts received any favorable treatment from the Obama administration on a policy decision previously highlighted in media reports.
The witness discussed his interview solely on the grounds of anonymity. He said the agents were from Little Rock and their questions focused on government decisions and discussions of donations to Clinton entities during the time Hillary Clinton led President Obama's State Department.
The FBI office in Little Rock referred a reporter Thursday to Washington headquarters, where officials declined any official comment.
Nick Merrill, a spokesman for Hillary Clinton, and Craig Minassian, a spokesman for the Foundation, did not immediately return calls or emails seeking comment Thursday evening. But the Foundation and Merrill have previously told The Hill that the Clintons never traded any government policy decisions for donations and that the continued focus on the issue was solely designed as a conservative distraction from President the rich asshole's Russia election probe.
Former Clinton White House aide Bruce Lindsey, who oversees the Foundation, also did not respond immediately to an email seeking comment.
The Wall Street Journal reported late last year that several FBI field offices, including the one in Little Rock, had been collecting information on the Clinton Foundation for more than a year. The report also said there had been pushback to the FBI from the Justice Department.
A renewed law enforcement focus follows a promise to Congress late last year from top the rich asshole Justice Department officials that law enforcement would revisit some of the investigations and legal issues closed during the Obama years that conservatives felt were given short shrift. It also follows months of relentless criticism on Twitter from President the rich asshole, who has repeatedly questioned why no criminal charges were ever filed against the “crooked” Clintons and their fund-raising machine.
For years, news media from the New York Times to The Daily Caller have reported countless stories on donations to the Clinton Foundation or speech fees that closely fell around the time of favorable decisions by Hillary Clinton's State Department. Conservative author Peter Schweizer chronicled the most famous of episodes in a book called Clinton Cash that gave ammunition to conservatives, including the rich asshole, to beat the drum for renewed investigation.
Several GOP members of Congress have recently urged Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a special counsel to look at the myriad of issues surrounding the Clintons. Justice officials sent a letter to Congress in November suggesting some of those issues were being re-examined, but Sessions later testified the appointment of a special prosecutor required a high legal bar that had not yet been met.
Officials also said the Justice Department was re-examining whether there are any unresolved issues from the closed case into Hillary Clinton's transmission of classified information through her personal email server. Former FBI Director James Comey in 2016 concluded Clinton was “extremely careless” in handling that classified information and that there was some evidence of legal violations but he declined to recommend charges on the grounds that he could not improve Clinton and her top aides intended to break the law.
His decision was roundly criticized by Republicans, and recent revelations that his statement was watered down by edits and that he made the decision before all witness interviews were finished have led to renewed criticism.
A senior law enforcement official said Justice was exploring whether any issues from that probe should be re-opened but cautioned the effort was not at the stage of a full investigation.
One challenge for any Clinton-era investigation is that the statute of limitations on most federal felonies is five years and Clinton left office in early 2013.
White House unloads on new book about the rich asshole administration
BY BEN KAMISAR - 01/04/18 02:49 PM EST
The White House is not pulling punches on a new book about the early days of President the rich asshole's administration.
At a White House press briefing Thursday, press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders railed against Michael Wolff's explosive new book, "Fire and Fury: Inside the rich asshole White House," calling it "sad," "pathetic" and full of mistakes.
"There are numerous mistakes but I'm not going to waste my time or the country’s time going page by page talking about a book that’s complete fantasy and full of tabloid gossip," Sanders said.
"It's sad, pathetic, and our administration's focus will be on moving the country forward.”
When asked for an example of a falsehood in the upcoming book, Sanders pointed to the accusation that the rich asshole did not know who former House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio) was when he was floated as a potential chief of staff.
"[That] is pretty ridiculous considering the majority of you have seen photos, and frankly some of you have even tweeted out, that the president not only knows him but has played golf with him, tweeted about him."
Quotes and anecdotes attributed to top campaign aides in the book have roiled Washington this week and prompted swift backlash from the White House.
Excerpts were first published Wednesday and paint the early days of the rich asshole's administration as chaotic. Statements depict the rich asshole as not expecting to win the presidency, clashing often with aides and even picking fights with White House housekeeping staff.
But the book's introduction contains a startling disclaimer, in which Wolff acknowledges that many statements are conflicting and even untrue. Wolff notes that certain accounts reflect "a version of events I believe to be true."
the rich asshole has responded in full force, threatening to sue the book's publisher if it hits shelves, and seeking to distance himself from sources in the book, including former chief strategist Stephen Bannon.
In one part of the book, Bannon describes a July 2016 meeting at the rich asshole Tower between some rich asshole Jr. and a Russian lawyer as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic.”
He also said he believed there was “zero” chance that the president was not aware of the meeting, which contradicts previous White House statements.
“They’re going to crack Don Jr. like an egg on national TV,” Bannon reportedly said.
the rich asshole's lawyers sent a cease-and-desist letter to Bannon on Wednesday just hours after the excerpt was published. the rich asshole attorney Charles Harder, claims that Bannon breached a non-disclosure agreement signed as part of working on the rich asshole’s campaign by interviewing with Wolff.
"On behalf of our clients, legal notice was issued today to Stephen K. Bannon, that his actions of communicating with author Michael Wolff regarding an upcoming book give rise to numerous legal claims including defamation by libel and slander, and breach of his written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement with our clients. Legal action is imminent," Harder said.
"Steve was rarely in a one-on-one meeting with me and only pretends to have had influence to fool a few people with no access and no clue, whom he helped write phony books," the rich asshole said.
"Steve pretends to be at war with the media, which he calls the opposition party, yet he spent his time at the White House leaking false information to the media to make himself seem far more important than he was," the president added.
On Thursday the rich asshole told reporters he doesn't even talk to Bannon anymore.
Sanders has similarly sought to distance the rich asshole from Bannon, who rose to one of the top spots in both the rich asshole's campaign and his White House before being fired in August of 2017.
"I’m not aware that they were ever particularly close," Sanders said Thursday of the rich asshole and Bannon.
"I don't think [Americans] really care about some trash that an author that no-one had ever heard of until today, or a fired employee, wants to peddle," she later added.
Sanders also suggested Breitbart News look at firing Bannon, who is the chairman of the conservative site.
“I certainly think that it's something they should look at and consider,” Sanders said at the press briefing when asked if Breitbart should consider cutting ties with Bannon.
Despite blowback from the White House and a cease-and-desist letter from the rich asshole's lawyers, publishers are seeing increased interest in the book.
the rich asshole's attorneys reportedly sent a letter demanding that Henry Holt & Company not publish the book and apologize to the president.
Instead, a spokesperson for the group announced Thursday afternoon that it would release the book even earlier than expected.
"Due to unprecedented demand, we are moving the on-sale date for all formats of 'Fire and Fury,' by Michael Wolff, to Friday, January 5, at 9 a.m. ET, from the current on-sale date of Tuesday, January 9," a spokesperson for Henry Holt told CNN.
Updated at 4:18 p.m.
This is why the rich asshole’s threat to sue Steve Bannon into silence could backfire disastrously
Let me explain to the president how legal precedents work.
On Wednesday, New York Magazine published excerpts from a book by Michael Wolff which, to put it mildly, do not paint some rich asshole in a favorable light. Among other things, the excerpts include several disparaging comments by former the rich asshole campaign executive and chief strategist Steve Bannon — at one point, Bannon refers to the rich asshole’s campaign as “the broke-dick campaign.”
the rich asshole responded to Wolff’s reporting with a pair of letters from his attorneys — one to Bannon and one to Wolff’s publishers — claiming that Wolff’s book gives “rise to numerous legal claims including defamation by libel and slander, and breach of [Bannon’s] written confidentiality and non-disparagement agreement with our clients.” The letter to the publisher also reportedly demands that they stop publication and apologize to the rich asshole.
If the rich asshole actually does pursue legal action — it is far from certain that he will; the rich asshole has a history of making empty lawsuit threats — he is unlikely to prevail. As the President of the United States, the rich asshole is the epitome of a public figure and his actions are almost always a matter of public concern. Accordingly, the rich asshole would have to overcome a very high legal bar to bring a defamation suit. Meanwhile, a confidentiality or non-disparagement agreement between the rich asshole and Bannon is likely to be unenforceable in this context.
the rich asshole’s threatened defamation suit would be controlled by the Supreme Court’s landmark decision in New York Times v. Sullivan, which established that individuals have broad freedom to speak about matters of public concern involving a public figure. As a general rule, a defamation suit by such an individual will not prevail unless the speaker made a false statement “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”
Though it is possible that Bannon breached this standard, it is very unlikely — defamation suits by public figures rarely prevail, and for good reason. Moreover, the case in favor of protecting speakers like Bannon and Wolff is especially strong when they speak about the president. The public’s interest in knowing how the president conducts himself in office — or whether the president is even fit to have that office — is massive. The president’s interest in suppressing disparaging speech against him is far less weighty.
Similar legal analysis would control the rich asshole’s efforts to enforce a confidentiality or non-disparagement agreement.
the rich asshole has historically required employees to sign very broad non-disclosure agreements. One such agreement permanently banned employees and former employees from disclosing “any Confidential information” or from disparaging “the Company, some rich asshole, any the rich asshole Company, any Family Member, or any Family Member Company or any asset any of the foregoing own, or product or service any of the foregoing offer.”
Assuming that Bannon signed a similarly broad agreement, that agreement would be unenforceable to the extent that the rich asshole wishes to keep Bannon from discussing information that Bannon learned or opinions that Bannon formed while Bannon was working in the White House. A series of Supreme Court decisions beginning with Pickering v. Board of Education establish that government employees have fairly broad First Amendment protections when they speak on matter of public concern.
The Roberts Court has shrunk these protections somewhat — at least for current government employees who engage in speech pursuant to their official duties. Bannon was also a political appointee, which means he has somewhat less protections and could have been fired by the rich asshole for making disparaging comments. But Bannon is no longer a government employee, so this is not a case about whether the rich asshole can fire Bannon, it is a case about whether Bannon can face legal sanctions for disparaging the rich asshole.
The answer to this question is almost certainly no. As Pickering explains, courts need to strike a balance between a public employee’s interest “in commenting upon matters of public concern and the interest of the State, as an employer, in promoting the efficiency of the public services it performs through its employees.” Here, Bannon’s interest in informing the public about America’s highest elected official is great, while the government will hardly provide its services more efficiently if former employees are forbidden from criticizing the president.
So the rich asshole can’t go after Bannon for discussing his interactions with the rich asshole while Bannon was a government employee, but what of Bannon’s statements about the campaign?
Here as well, it is unlikely that the rich asshole could enforce the non-disclosure agreement.
As a general rule, non-disclosure agreements are used to protect certain kinds of employer information — such as trade secrets or information about customers or clients — which an employee could learn while working for a company and then use to gain an unfair advantage while competing against that company. A presidential campaign, moreover, may have any number of legitimate trade secrets — such as algorithms for processing voter data or information about campaign donors — which could legitimately be protected by a non-disclosure agreement.
the rich asshole, however, isn’t accusing Bannon of disclosing how the the rich asshole campaign interpreted polling data in Wisconsin or how the campaign maintained its relationships with donors. He’s accusing Bannon of disclosing disparaging information against the rich asshole as a person. This is not the sort of information that is typically protected by a non-disclosure agreement.
In the past, the rich asshole’s non-disclosure agreements were governed by New York law. Assuming that the rich asshole’s suit against Bannon would also be brought in New York courts, the rich asshole could face another legal problem.
New York courts have held that non-disclosure agreements can be unenforceable if they violate “the public policy of the State of New York.” This is, admittedly, a vague standard. But it is broad enough that New York courts could conclude (and, indeed, are probably likely to include) that the public’s interest in being able to evaluate the fitness of the sitting president is so great that an agreement limiting the public’s ability to do so violates New York’s public policy.
Which brings us to the part about how the rich asshole’s suit against Bannon could backfire.
the rich asshole is, to say the least, not a popular figure. And he has left many disgruntled employees in his wake. Many of these employees, however, are probably discouraged from speaking out against the rich asshole because they signed non-disclosure agreements in the past.
If the rich asshole actually does sue Bannon, the result is likely to be a legal precedent establishing that former the rich asshole employees (or, at least, a subset of them) are free to speak openly against the rich asshole. That could open the floodgates to a rush of new information about the rich asshole’s unfitness for the presidency.
the rich asshole-Bannon timeline: How their relationship unraveled
Leah Thomas
Posted with permission from Newsweek
Excerpts from journalist Michael Wolff's soon-to-publish tell-all book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House emerged on Wednesday with quotes from Steve Bannon calling some of Donald Trump Jr.'s actions "treasonous." In response, President Donald Trump released a statement to Bannon's alleged quotes, saying the former chief strategist " lost his mind" when he lost his job.
Bannon went from Breitbart enthusiast to Trump's trusted confidante to someone who has "lost his mind" in just a little over a year, and like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and even George Papadopoulos before him, has been pushed out of the White House and now disregarded completely. But what led to Bannon's fall?
In March of 2016, when Donald Trump had secured his position in the Republican primaries, Steve Bannon was reverberating praise for the ultra-conservative "politician" as executive chairman of Breitbart. Trump tapped Bannon to replace Paul Manafort as campaign chief executive, and his reported campaign strategy was to "let Trump be Trump."
After the shocking results on election night revealed Donald Trump as the new president of the United States, Trump rewarded Bannon with the vague title chief strategist and senior counsel–a decision he would have to defend to many who criticized Bannon's beliefs.
"I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time. If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him," Trump told reporters who questioned Bannon's white nationalist following on November 26, 2016.
In February, Bannon was dubbed "The Great Manipulator" and the "second most powerful man in the world" on the cover of Time magazine. Later that month, a campaign titled "postcards to President Bannon" was initiated, joking that the Breitbart native was the real head of state.
Two months later, Bannon was removed from the National Security Council.
"I am my own strategist," Trump told the New York Post in April. He then told the Wall Street Journal that Bannon was just "a guy who works for me."
After the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Trump defended Bannon by saying: "I like Mr. Bannon. He is a friend of mine ... He is a good man. He is not a racist. I can tell you that. He is a good person ... We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."
Three days later, it was announced that Bannon and White House chief of staff John Kelly had " mutually agreed" on Bannon's departure from the administration.
Trump tweeted in response, saying, "I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S"
After his departure, Trump and Bannon seemed to be on fine terms. Trump even responded to Bannon's criticism of Republican majority Congress by saying, "I know how he feels."
The potential rift is rumored to have begun after Roy Moore's Alabama Senate loss. Bannon and Trump fully backed the candidate, and Bannon went to campaign for the alleged child molester at a rally in the southern state.
After the loss, Donald Trump Jr. criticized Bannon in a presumably sarcastic tweet that said, "Thanks Steve. Keep up the great work."
Bannon went from Breitbart enthusiast to Trump's trusted confidante to someone who has "lost his mind" in just a little over a year, and like Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn and even George Papadopoulos before him, has been pushed out of the White House and now disregarded completely. But what led to Bannon's fall?
In March of 2016, when Donald Trump had secured his position in the Republican primaries, Steve Bannon was reverberating praise for the ultra-conservative "politician" as executive chairman of Breitbart. Trump tapped Bannon to replace Paul Manafort as campaign chief executive, and his reported campaign strategy was to "let Trump be Trump."
After the shocking results on election night revealed Donald Trump as the new president of the United States, Trump rewarded Bannon with the vague title chief strategist and senior counsel–a decision he would have to defend to many who criticized Bannon's beliefs.
"I’ve known Steve Bannon a long time. If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn’t even think about hiring him," Trump told reporters who questioned Bannon's white nationalist following on November 26, 2016.
In February, Bannon was dubbed "The Great Manipulator" and the "second most powerful man in the world" on the cover of Time magazine. Later that month, a campaign titled "postcards to President Bannon" was initiated, joking that the Breitbart native was the real head of state.
Two months later, Bannon was removed from the National Security Council.
"I am my own strategist," Trump told the New York Post in April. He then told the Wall Street Journal that Bannon was just "a guy who works for me."
After the white supremacist protests in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August, Trump defended Bannon by saying: "I like Mr. Bannon. He is a friend of mine ... He is a good man. He is not a racist. I can tell you that. He is a good person ... We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon."
Three days later, it was announced that Bannon and White House chief of staff John Kelly had " mutually agreed" on Bannon's departure from the administration.
Trump tweeted in response, saying, "I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S"
I want to thank Steve Bannon for his service. He came to the campaign during my run against Crooked Hillary Clinton - it was great! Thanks S
After his departure, Trump and Bannon seemed to be on fine terms. Trump even responded to Bannon's criticism of Republican majority Congress by saying, "I know how he feels."
The potential rift is rumored to have begun after Roy Moore's Alabama Senate loss. Bannon and Trump fully backed the candidate, and Bannon went to campaign for the alleged child molester at a rally in the southern state.
After the loss, Donald Trump Jr. criticized Bannon in a presumably sarcastic tweet that said, "Thanks Steve. Keep up the great work."
Thanks Steve. Keep up the great work. twitter.com/sahilkapur/sta…
During the White House press conference on Wednesday afternoon, Sarah Huckabee Sanders addressed a question regarding the "dramatic falling-out" between Trump and Bannon. Sanders said there were multiple factors at play, but Bannon’s attacks on Trump's children were “not a way to curry favor with the president.”
Bannon has also in the past been quick to criticize Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, saying they were "the railhead of all bad decisions" in a December interview with Vanity Fair.
the rich asshole lied about why his voter fraud inquisition failed
Another dishonest tweet from the president.
Eight months after President some rich asshole assembled a Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity to expose the largely non-existent phenomenon of “voter fraud” in American elections, the president abruptly disbanded the effort on Wednesday. He took to Twitter on Thursday morning to blame everyone but his own team for the complete failure of the effort.
At 6:02am, the rich asshole tweeted that the commission was foiled by those pesky blue states, who “refused to hand over data from the 2016 election,” because “they know that many people are voting illegally.”
This claim is false. According to a CNN survey in July, at least 44 states rejected at least some of the overly broad request sent to the states by the commission’s vice chair, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach (R). Many state governments cited state privacy laws in their responses. Some of the most vocal responses came from Republican officials in deeply red states.
“They can go jump in the Gulf of Mexico, and Mississippi is a great state to launch from,” said Mississippi’s Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann (R) said at the time, adding that “Mississippi residents should celebrate Independence Day and our state’s right to protect the privacy of our citizens by conducting our own electoral processes.”
Tom Schedler, Lousiana’s Republican Secretary of State, was similarly blunt. “You’re not going to play politics with Louisiana’s voter data, and if you are, then you can purchase the limited public information available by law, to any candidate running for office,” he told the commission. Arizona Secretary of State Michele Reagan, also a Republican, denounced the request as a “hastily organized experiment.” “And South Dakota’s Republican Secretary of State Shantel Krebs, through a spokesman, made clear that she would “not share voter information with the commission.”
Kobach, at the time, suggested CNN’s reporting was “fake news” and that just 14 states had rejected the request. But an analysis by The Nation confirmed the network’s findings.
Despite Kobach’s and the rich asshole’s frequent claims of widespread illegal voting and demands for voter ID laws to stop impersonation fraud, studies have found that such crimes are extremely rare — a person is more likely to be struck by lightning, fatally attacked by a shark, or hit the same roulette color 20 times in a row than to pretend to be another voter in order to cast a ballot.
By EDWARD-ISAAC DOVERE and BEN BAKER
A few months ago, Charlie Dent was taking a break from his usual work for Pennsylvania’s 15th District—home of Hershey, and of a Crayola factory, and many of the Keystone State constituents who voted for some rich asshole—and talking to a politician from India, a country whose rough-and-tumble politics includes literal fistfights in a legislature that makes the U.S. Congress look downright tame.
“Your system of government is brilliant,” the Indian lawmaker told Dent, laughing at the 24-7 circus American politics have become. “It would work far better [in India] than it works in your own country.”
Dent, a moderate Republican who’s become the go-to source for reporters looking for searing criticism of the GOP in the the rich asshole era, is one of a couple dozen members of Congress who have announced their retirements last year (not counting the ones who have gone down in sexual harassment scandals), with more likely coming amid an expected Democratic wave in the 2018 midterm elections. People retire every cycle. But this year’s group is a bumper crop of members wondering whether Congress is broken forever—even as they insist they love their own jobs.
The ferocity of the Gingrich Revolution, President Bill Clinton’s impeachment—even the Tea Party shutdown wars of 2011 and 2013 seem like the good old days to them now. Capitol Hill is an angry, scattered mess; each party is storing up grudges to get revenge for the next time it gets the chance; and the victories are always fleeting. When pressed, the departees will confess to deep concerns that flow from the rich asshole, the reaction to the rich asshole, and the politics that created and elected the rich asshole.
“I’ve never experienced as much anger and hatred as I did in the first few months of [2017],” says Representative John Duncan, an affable ultraconservative Republican from Knoxville, Tennessee, who is retiring after 30 years in the House.
“All the incentives are wrong now,” says Arizona Senator Jeff Flake, a onetime conservative star who is retiring after nearly two decades in the House and the Senate.
Several big committee chairs are leaving, too, because they’re term-limited by the GOP’s own rules, and don’t want to think about slinking back into the rank and file. They gush about the chance to spend more time with their grandchildren. House members in swing districts, meanwhile, talk with dread about having to defend their seats next year.
Republican Representative Frank LoBiondo of New Jersey, who came in with the Gingrich Revolution in 1994 and has been a target for House Democrats in pretty much every cycle since, decided it was worth hanging on to the chairmanship of the Aviation subcommittee, and to get on the Intelligence Committee. No longer. He’s not going to miss all the time in the car driving to barbecue after barbecue all through South Jersey on weekends, but his eyes sparkle when he talks about the 20 international trips he has made in the past eight years.
“If there had been different committees, I probably would have jumped off the Capitol dome a long time ago,” LoBiondo says. “I don’t know how some members do it.”
Years of deepening tribalism and dysfunction have taken their toll, which they gripe about while mostly blaming their political opponents, or the other chamber, or the media, though they talk up their friendships across the aisle and the long-forgotten bipartisan bills they’ve passed.
“It’s like the machinery of government is rusty and clanking along,” says Representative Lamar Smith. The Texas Republican makes a special point of blaming “the Mediacrats,” a conspiracy of Democratic and media elites to make his party look evil and dysfunctional.
I’ve never experienced as much anger and hatred as I did in the first few months of [2017],” says Rep. John Duncan, an affable ultraconservative Republican who is retiring after 30 years in the House.
The future of the job, they fear, is competing for who can flip out the most on YouTube videos, punctuated by fundraising calls and reading polls that show just how much Americans hate them. And most think the Trumpian era of base-playing politics is still closer to its beginning than its end.
And no one seems to have any real sense of what to do about it. Some blame reporters for sensationalizing the problems. They plead for more individual responsibility among their colleagues to lower the temperature. Fix the primary system. Don’t be so divided. The Senate should get rid of the filibuster—or the Senate should build the filibuster back up again. House leadership should land harder on members who vote against their bills—or be tougher on lawmakers who were never going to vote for the bills in the first place.
“The way you solve this problem,” Dent says, “is you marginalize the members who can’t get to yes on these basic matters of governance.” Put more bills on the floor, Dent says, and see what passes. “What I’ve often found here,” he said, “is they talk about the need for a majority of the majority to be there on a bill until they don’t.”
Bob Corker, the retiring senator from Tennessee, stresses that he is leaving for his own reasons, and despite his public fights with the rich asshole, says he was very comfortable with his chances for reelection. He cherishes his chairmanship of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and insists the Senate was broken years before the rich asshole. “There’s going to be additional glass-breaking,” he says. And until we have “a president committed to wanting strong bipartisan legislation,” very little will change.
Dent uses an optimistic line I heard from many of his fellow retiring members: “The pendulum will swing back.”
How? Why? No one could answer that question, beyond faith. “It ebbs and flows,” says Texas Democratic Representative Gene Green. Most acknowledged it looked more like a downward spiral.
I asked Flake if he thinks all the people who are rushing to run for Congress are nuts. He laughed.
“One of the problems with the internet is it creates a sense on the part of some people that it’s all just a referendum.” —Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.)
“It is a lot easier to enjoy your job when you’re a committee chairman and a member of the majority.” —Lamar Smith (R-Texas)
“I’ll miss least the people who have no discernible political principles. I’ll miss most the people who do.” —Jeb Hensarling (R-Texas)
“It seems that the Senate floor is rarely used for real debate, or even much speechifying, except for retirements.” —Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.)
“The Congress I came to was a very bipartisan, get-along place. People knew each other and tried to work together.” —Ileana Ros-Lehtinen(R-Fla.)
“The best advice I can give to any current or future member: Say what you believe after digging into the facts and consulting broadly.” —Sander Levin (D-Mich.)
“Bipartisan legislation doesn’t make the news because we’re not fussing and feuding and fighting.” —Ted Poe (R-Texas)
“What I will miss least is the current polarization and common refusal to listen to or respect others’ ideas. It is possible to find common ground.” —Sam Johnson (R-Texas)
“The rhetoric trickles down. It’s almost as though some of my Republican colleagues are auditioning for Fox News—what they say so much parrots what you hear.” —Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.)
“You win an election. At 8:05, the attacks start again.” —Frank LoBiondo (R-N.J.)
“If I was going to stay here, I wouldn’t want to stay here being defeated every day on the floor of the House.” —Gene Green (D-Texas)
“I wasn’t willing to give my voting card to leadership, and I wasn’t making fundraising calls. … It never did bother me that there was never going to be a portrait of me up in the Capitol.” —John Duncan (R-Tenn.)
“High praise these days: I go home to the grocery store, and they say, ‘Thank you for being sane.’” —Charlie Dent (R-Pa.)
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