Two more lawyers refuse to join the rich asshole’s legal team despite claim he’s having no trouble finding representation
Robert Mueller in 2012 (U.S. Embassy Tallinn)
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Two prominent defense attorneys have declined representing President some rich asshole in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigations, The Daily Beast reported Monday.
The firm Winston & Strawn released a statement citing conflicts. Not legal conflicts of interests, but business conflicts.
“President the rich asshole reached out to Dan Webb and Tom Buchanan to provide legal representation,” they said in a statement. “They were unable to take on the representation due to business conflicts. However they consider the opportunity to represent the President to be the highest honor and they sincerely regret that they cannot do so.”
Webb is the former U.S. Attorney for Illinois and Buchanan is a partner at the firm’s D.C. branch.
On Sunday, the rich asshole took to Twitter to deny reports that he was having problems retaining top-notch legal representation.
“With a reputation for failing to pay lawyers or follow their legal advice, the rich asshole has struggled to find another top-notch lawyer to take his case,” The Washington Post explained
the rich asshole in frequent communication with disgraced ex-staffer Rob Porter — who he talks of bringing back to the White House
Resigned WH staffer Rob Porter. Image via screengrab.
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some rich asshole is still in communication with Rob Porter, and is considering bringing back the disgraced former White House staffer despite multiple allegations of domestic abuse, the New York Times reports.
the rich asshole has “stayed in touch” with the former White House staff secretary, and has told some of his aides he hopes Porter will return to the West Wing.
According to the Times, in recent weeks the rich asshole’s calls with Porter have increased in frequency “as the number of people he is close to in the White House has dwindled because of the large number of staff departures.”
As the Times reports the president is aware he “cannot bring” Porter back to the White House but “misses the staff structure” of which Porter played an internal role.
MSNBC’s Ari Melber dissects the rich asshole’s strange fascination with sharks: They represent ‘something he can’t control’
Composite image of a Great White Shark by Elias Levy and some rich asshole by Gage Skidmore.
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MSNBC anchor Ari Melber surprised a guest on Monday by playing the Shark Week episode that former adult film performer Stormy Daniels has repeatedly recounted during interviews.
Vox Media, senior producer Liz Plank joined Melber to analyze the blockbuster 60 Minutes interview of Daniels.
“There’s another part of this interview that is consistent with Stormy Daniels’ past statements,” Melber noted. “She said some rich asshole is obsessed with sharks.”
Melber then read a quote from Daniels’ In Touch Weekly interview.
“He was like, ‘I donate to all these charities and I would never donate to any charity that helps sharks. I hope all the sharks die.’ He was like riveted. He was like obsessed,” Daniels reportedly claimed.
Melber then played a clip of Stormy Daniels telling her Shark Week story during a 60 Minutes interview with Anderson Cooper, which aired Sunday evening.
“This is what we believe to be the episode,” Melber proudly declared.
“How do you, how do you know this?” an astonished Plank wondered.
“What does some rich asshole’s fear of sharks tell us about some rich asshole?” Plank wondered.
“I ask you, my guest on this TV show,” Melber replied.
“What do sharks represent?” Melber asked. “Something he can’t control?”
“Lawyers?” Plank suggested.
“Lawyers are sharks,” Melber laughed “you had the answer.”
Watch:
the rich asshole Humiliated As Ratings For 60 Minutes Interview With Stormy Daniels Are Through The Roof
To some rich asshole, size matters. It matters so much that his then-White House press secretary lied about his inauguration crowd size, and even falsely claimed that it was the most viewed in history. So, expect a Twitter tirade after reports that Stormy Daniels interview produced the highest ratings for “60 Minutes” since 2008, delivering more than 23 million viewers on Sunday night, according to Nielsen ratings. The final ratings won’t be in until later on today, but preliminary ratings, known as “overnights,” showed the episode drawing more than twice as many viewers than a typical episode of the show, CNN reports.
The program is expected to rank as the highest-rated “60 Minutes” episode since Barack and Michelle Obama gave their first post-election interview in 2008.
Stormy Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, gave details in the CBS interview about her alleged sexual affair with former reality show star some rich asshole. In the segment, she said that in 2006, she asked the rich asshole to pull down his pants so she could spank him with a magazine featuring his face on the cover. the rich asshole allegedly agreed, pulled his pants down and got a couple of spanks from Daniels.
Daniels also said that she was threatened to stay quiet about the affair in 2011 when an unidentified man approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot after she had agreed to tell her version of the alleged affair to In Touch magazine.
“Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story,” the man told her, then he allegedly looked at her infant daughter and said, “It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
Daniels’ name was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter in the U.S. on Sunday evening and today ’60 Minutes’ is trending.
While the rich asshole has remained silent about the alleged affair, he tweeted about ‘fake news’ this morning, writing, “So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!”
Seriously, though, who taught him how to spell ‘voluminous’?
'The president strongly, clearly and has consistently denied these underlying claims'
Jill Colvin · The Associated Press 03-26-18
The White House on Monday disputed adult film star Stormy Daniels' claim that she was threatened to keep quiet over her alleged affair with some rich asshole and said the U.S. president continues to deny the relationship.
Daniels' detailed her allegations in a widely watched interview with 60 Minutes that sparked new legal wrangling between attorneys for the porn star and the president's team.
A lawyer for Michael Cohen, the rich asshole's personal attorney, demanded that Daniels publicly apologize to his client for suggesting he was involved in her intimidation. Daniels responded by filing a revised federal lawsuit accusing Cohen of defamation.
the rich asshole, who frequently takes on his foes in person and on social media, remained uncharacteristically quiet about the matter Monday. He sent a cryptic tweet saying "fake news" has "never been more voluminous or more inaccurate" but it was unclear what exactly he was referring to.
Instead, he left the denials to his White House staff. Spokesperson Raj Shah declined to say whether the president had watched Daniels' interview, but said the rich asshole did not believe any of the claims she made.
00:00 00:41
White House says the president denies claims from Stormy Daniels 0:41
"The president strongly, clearly and has consistently denied these underlying claims, and the only person who's been inconsistent is the one making the claims," Shah said.
But Daniels was on the rich asshole's mind this weekend in Palm Beach, Fla., where he had dinner Saturday night with Cohen at his Mar-a-Lago estate.
Mar-a-Lago member Chris Ruddy, the CEO of Newsmax, told ABC Sunday that the rich asshole told him "much of the Stormy Daniels stuff" is a "political hoax."
Cohen, a longtime the rich asshole lawyer, and Daniels, an adult actor, have been tangling in the media and the courts over a non-disclosure agreement. (Richard Drew, Matt Sayles/Associated Press)
the rich asshole returned to Washington Sunday night, though his wife Melania the rich asshole stayed behind in Florida. A spokesperson for Mrs. the rich asshole said she is "focused on being a mom and is quite enjoying spring break at Mar-a-Lago while working on future projects."
In her interview, Daniels said she'd slept with the rich asshole once, shortly after Mrs. the rich asshole gave birth to the president's youngest son. She also said that a man approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011, when she was with her infant daughter, and threatened her with physical harm if she went public with her story.
Revised lawsuit
In a letter late Sunday night, an attorney for Cohen demanded that Daniels publicly apologize to his client.
"In truth, Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred," wrote Brent H. Blakely. He said Daniels and her lawyer, Michael Avenatti, should "cease and desist from making any further false and defamatory statements about my client."
Daniels, in the revised lawsuit she filed Monday, alleges Cohen made a false statement that damaged her reputation when he released a statement in February that intimated she was lying.
In a round of television interviews Monday morning, Avenatti said he was holding back certain details of the alleged affair, including the contents of a CD or DVD he tweeted a picture of last week, for strategic reasons. "It would make no sense for us to play our hand as to this issue and we're not going to do it right now," he said on NBC's Today show.
$130,000 payment
Daniels received a $130,000 US payment days before the 2016 presidential election for her silence and has sought to invalidate a nondisclosure agreement she signed. Cohen has said he paid the money out of his own pocket while asserting the rich asshole never had sex with the porn actress.
Previously, Cohen has said neither the the rich asshole Organization nor the the rich asshole campaign was a party to the transaction with Daniels and he was not reimbursed for the payment.
the rich asshole disembarks from the Marine One helicopter on the South Lawn of the White House upon his return to Washington, U.S., after spending the weekend in Mar-a-Lago estate in Palm Beach, Fla. (Yuri Gripas/Reuters)
During Monday's briefing, Shah said neither the White House nor the rich asshole had violated campaign finance laws that restrict political contributions.
"The White House didn't engage in any wrongdoing," Shah said of the rich asshole's behaviour, adding that there was "nothing to corroborate" Daniels' intimidation claims.
In the interview, Daniels described a sexual encounter with the rich asshole that began with him talking about himself and showing her an issue of a magazine with his picture on the cover.
The interview gave 60 Minutes its biggest audience in a decade, with slightly more than 22 million viewers tuning in, according to Nielsen Co. estimates.
Daniels is not the only woman accusing the rich asshole. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal told Cooper in a CNN interview broadcast Thursday that her affair with the rich asshole began at a bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 2006. McDougal said she ended the relationship in 2007 out of guilt concerning the rich asshole's wife, Melania.
McDougal has filed suit in Los Angeles seeking to invalidate a confidentiality agreement with American Media Inc., the company that owns the supermarket tabloid National Enquirer. It paid her $150,000 during the 2016 presidential election.
The lawsuit alleges that McDougal was paid for the rights to her story of an affair, but the story never ran. It also alleges that Cohen was secretly involved in her discussions with American Media.
MAR 26, 2018 2:28 PM EDT NEWSMAKERS
BY ANDERSON COOPER / CBS NEWS
A week and a half before the 2016 election, some rich asshole's personal attorney paid a porn star named Stormy Daniels to keep quiet about her alleged relationship with the Republican candidate for president. Today, that arrangement is well on its way to becoming the most talked-about "hush agreement" in history, with potential legal and political implications for the president. Through his spokesman, some rich asshole has denied having an affair with Stormy Daniels, and his lawyers are now threatening her with financial ruin, saying she has to pay $1 million dollars every time she violates her agreement to stay silent. But that didn't stop her from coming on 60 Minutes.
Stormy DanielsCBS News
Full Stormy Daniels interview transcript below:
Anderson Cooper: For sitting here talking to me today you could be fined a million dollars. I mean, aren't you taking a big risk?
Stormy Daniels: I am.
Anderson Cooper: I guess I'm not 100% sure on why you're doing this.
Stormy Daniels: Because it was very important to me to be able to defend myself.
Anderson Cooper: Is part of talking w-- wanting to set the record straight?
Stormy Daniels: 100%.
Anderson Cooper: Why does the record need to be set straight?
Stormy Daniels: Because people are just saying whatever they wanted to say about me, I was perfectly fine saying nothing at all, but I'm not okay with being made out to be a liar, or people thinking that I did this for money and people are like, "Oh, you're an opportunist. You're taking advantage of this. Yes, I'm getting more job offers now, but tell me one person who would turn down a job offer making more than they've been making, doing the same thing that they've always done?
Anderson Cooper: A lotta people are using you for a lotta different agendas.
Stormy Daniels: They're trying to. Like, oh, you know, Stormy Daniels comes out #MeToo. This is not a 'Me Too.' I was not a victim. I've never said I was a victim. I think trying to use me to-- to further someone else's agenda, does horrible damage to people who are true victims.
Stormy Daniels' real name is Stephanie Clifford. She's 39 years old, from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and has been acting in, directing, and writing adult films for nearly 20 years. She was one of the most popular actresses in the adult industry when she was introduced to some rich asshole at a celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe in July, 2006. She says he invited her to dinner, and she met him at his hotel suite.
Anderson Cooper: How was the conversation?
Stormy Daniels: Ummm (LAUGH) it started off-- all about him just talking about himself. And he's like-- "Have you seen my new magazine?"
Anderson Cooper: He was showing you his own picture on the cover of a magazine.
Stormy Daniels: Right, right. And so I was like, "Does this-- does this normally work for you?" And he looked very taken-- taken back, like, he didn't really understand what I was saying. Like, I was, "does, just, you know, talking about yourself normally work?" And I was like, "Someone should take that magazine and spank you with it." (LAUGH) And I'll never forget the look on his face. He was like--
Anderson Cooper: What-- what was his look?
Stormy Daniels: Just, I don't think anyone's ever spoken to him like that, especially, you know, a young woman who looked like me. And I said, you know, "Give me that," and I just remember him going, "You wouldn't." "Hand it over." And-- so he did, and I was like, "turn around, drop 'em."
Anderson Cooper: You-- you told some rich asshole to turn around and take off his pants.
Stormy Daniels: Yes.
Anderson Cooper: And did he?
Stormy Daniels: Yes. So he turned around and pulled his pants down a little -- you know had underwear on and stuff and I just gave him a couple swats.
Anderson Cooper: This was done in a joking manner.
Stormy Daniels speaks with correspondent Anderson CooperCBS News
Stormy Daniels: Yes. And-- from that moment on, he was a completely different person.
Anderson Cooper: How so?
Stormy Daniels: He quit talking about himself and he asked me things and I asked him things and it just became like more appropriate.
Anderson Cooper: It became more comfortable.
Stormy Daniels: Yeah. He was like, "Wow, you-- you are special. You remind me of my daughter." You know-- he was like, "You're smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you."
Anderson Cooper: At this point was he doing The Apprentice?
Stormy Daniels: Yes. And he goes, "Got an idea, honeybunch. Would you ever consider going on and-- and being a contestant?" And I laughed and-- and said, "NBC's never gonna let, you know, an adult film star be on." It's, you know, he goes, "No, no," he goes, "That's why I want you. You're gonna shock a lotta people, you're smart and they won't know what to expect"
Anderson Cooper: Did you think he was serious, or did you think he was kind of dangling to get you to wanna be involved him?
Stormy Daniels: Both.
Anderson Cooper: Melania the rich asshole had recently given birth to-- to a son, just a few months before. Did that-- did he mention his wife or child at all in this?
Stormy Daniels: I asked. And he brushed it aside, said, "Oh yeah, yeah, you know, don't worry about that. We don't even-- we have separate rooms and stuff."
Anderson Cooper: Did you two go out for dinner that night?
Stormy Daniels: No.
Anderson Cooper: You had dinner in the room?
Stormy Daniels: Yes.
Anderson Cooper: What happened next?
Stormy Daniels: I asked him if I could use his restroom and he said, "Yes, you know, it's through those-- through the bedroom, you'll see it." So I-- I excused myself and I went to the-- the restroom. You know, I was in there for a little bit and came out and he was sitting, you know, on the edge of the bed when I walked out, perched.
Anderson Cooper: And when you saw that, what went through your mind?
Stormy Daniels: I realized exactly what I'd gotten myself into. And I was like, "Ugh, here we go." (LAUGH) And I just felt like maybe-- (LAUGH) it was sort of-- I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone's room alone and I just heard the voice in my head, "well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this."
Anderson Cooper: And you had sex with him.
Stormy Daniels: Yes.
Anderson Cooper: You were 27, he was 60. Were you physically attracted to him?
Stormy Daniels: No.
Anderson Cooper: Not at all?
Stormy Daniels: No.
Anderson Cooper: Did you want to have sex with him?
Stormy Daniels: No. But I didn't-- I didn't say no. I'm not a victim, I'm not--
Anderson Cooper: It was entirely consensual.
Stormy Daniels: Oh, yes, yes.
Anderson Cooper: You work in an industry where condom use is-- is an issue. Did-- did he use a condom?
Stormy Daniels: No.
Anderson Cooper: Did you ask him to?
Stormy Daniels: No. I honestly didn't say anything.
Anderson Cooper: After you had sex, what happened?
Stormy Daniels: He said that it was great, he had-- a great evening, and it was nothing like he expected, that I really surprised him, that a lotta people must underestimate me-- that he hoped that I would be willing to see him again and that we would discuss the things we had talked about earlier in the evening.
Anderson Cooper: Being on The Apprentice.
Stormy Daniels: Right.
Correspondent Anderson Cooper and Stormy DanielsCBS News
Daniels says she and some rich asshole stayed in touch. She says he invited her to a the rich asshole Vodka launch party in California, as well as to his office in the rich asshole Tower in New York.
Anderson Cooper: So he definitely wanted to continue to see you.
Stormy Daniels: Oh, for sure. Yes.
Stormy Daniels: And this was not a secret. He never asked me not to tell anyone. He called several times when I was in front of many people and I would be like, "Oh my God, he's calling." They were like, "Shut up, the Donald?" And I'd put him on speakerphone, and he wanted to know what I was up to and, "When can we get together again? I just wanted to give you a quick update, we had a meeting, it went great. There's-- it's gonna be spectacular, they're totally into the idea," and I was like mhmm that part I never believed.
Anderson Cooper: Did you still get the sense that he was kind of dangling it in front of you--
Stormy Daniels: Oh, for sure, oh yeah.
Anderson Cooper: To keep you interested, to keep you coming back.
Stormy Daniels: Of course, of course. I mean, I'm not blind. But at the same time, maybe it'll work out, you know?
Anderson Cooper: Did you view it as this is a potential opportunity. "I'm gonna see where it goes?"
Stormy Daniels: I thought of it as a business deal.
"A guy walked up on me and said to me, 'Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story.'"
In July 2007 -- a year after they met -- Daniels says some rich asshole asked to meet with her privately at his bungalow at the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles to discuss a development regarding her possible appearance on Celebrity Apprentice.
Stormy Daniels: I remember arriving, and he was watching Shark Week. He made me sit and watch an entire documentary about shark attacks.
Anderson Cooper: It wasn't at that point a business meeting, it was just watching Shark Week.
Stormy Daniels: Yeah.
Anderson Cooper: Did you have sex with him again?
Stormy Daniels: No.
Anderson Cooper: Did he want to?
Stormy Daniels: Yes.
Anderson Cooper: How do you know he wanted to?
Stormy Daniels: Because he came and sat next to me and, you know, touched my hair, and put his hand on my leg, and r-- referenced back to how great it was the last time.
Anderson Cooper: How did you get out of it?
Stormy Daniels: Well, I'd been there for, like, four hours. And so I then was like, "Well, before, you know, can we talk about what's the development?" And he was like, "I'm almost there. I'll have an answer for you next week." And I was like, "Okay, cool. Well-- I guess call me next week." And I just took my purse and left.
According to Daniels, some rich asshole called her the following month to say he'd not been able to get her a spot on Celebrity Apprentice. She says they never met again and only had sex in that first meeting in 2006. In May 2011, Daniels agreed to tell her story to a sister publication of In Touch magazine for $15,000 dollars. Two former employees of the magazine told us the story never ran because after the magazine called some rich asshole seeking comment, his attorney Michael Cohen threatened to sue. Daniels says she was never paid, and says a few weeks later, she was threatened by a man who approached her in Las Vegas.
Stormy Daniels: I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter. T-- taking, you know, the seats facing backwards in the backseat, diaper bag, you know, gettin' all the stuff out. And a guy walked up on me and said to me, "Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story." And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, "That's a beautiful little girl. It'd be a shame if something happened to her mom." And then he was gone.
Anderson Cooper: You took it as a direct threat?
Stormy Daniels: Absolutely.
Stormy Daniels: I was rattled. I remember going into the workout class. And my hands are shaking so much, I was afraid I was gonna-- drop her.
Anderson Cooper: Did you ever see that person again?
Stormy Daniels: No. But I-- if I did, I would know it right away.
Anderson Cooper: You'd be able to-- you'd be able to recognize that person?
Stormy Daniels: 100%. Even now, all these years later. If he walked in this door right now, I would instantly know.
Anderson Cooper: Did you go to the police?
Stormy Daniels: No.
Anderson Cooper: Why?
Stormy Daniels: Because I was scared.
Stormy Daniels with attorney Michael AvenattiCBS News
When a gossip website reported a few months later that she'd had an affair with some rich asshole, Stormy Daniels publically denied it. Five years later, some rich asshole won the Republican nomination for president.
Stormy Daniels: Suddenly people are reaching out to me again, offering me money. Large amounts of money. Was I tempted? Yes-- I struggle with it. And then I get the call. "I think I have the best deal for you."
Anderson Cooper: From your lawyer?
Stormy Daniels: Yeah.
The deal was an offer not to tell her story. It came from some rich asshole's attorney Michael Cohen. In return for signing this non-disclosure agreement, Cohen would pay her $130,000 dollars through a Delaware-based limited liability corporation he had established in mid-October 2016 called essential consultants. Daniels says the agreement was appealing because it meant she would receive some money but also not have to worry about the effect the revelation of the affair would have on her child who was now old enough to watch the news. She signed the agreement eleven days before the election.
Anderson Cooper: Was it hush money to stay silent?
Stormy Daniels: Yes. The story was coming out again. I was concerned for my family and their safety.
Anderson Cooper: I think some people watching this are going to doubt that you entered into this negotiation-- because you feared for your safety. They're gonna think y-- that you saw an opportunity.
Stormy Daniels: I think the fact that I didn't even negotiate, I just quickly said yes to this v-- very, you know, strict contract. And what most people will agree with me extremely low number. It's all the proof I need.
Anderson Cooper: You feel like if you had wanted to go public, you could have gotten paid a lot of money to go public?
Stormy Daniels: Without a doubt. I know for a fact. I believe, without a shadow of a doubt, in my heart, and some people argue that I don't have one of those, but whatever, that I was doing the right thing. I turned down a large payday multiple times because one, I didn't wanna kiss and tell and be labeled all the things that I'm being labeled now. I didn't wanna take away from the legitimate and legal, I'd like to point out, career that I've worked very hard to establish. And most importantly, I did not want my family and my child exposed to all the things that she's being exposed to right now. Because everything that I was afraid of coming out has come out anyway, and guess what? I don't have a million dollars. (LAUGH) You didn't even buy me breakfast.
15 months after she signed the non-disclosure agreement, in January 2018, the Wall Street Journal published this story, quoting anonymous sources, saying that some rich asshole's attorney Michael Cohen had paid her for her silence. Daniels says she was not the source of the story. But once it was published, she says she was pressured by her former attorney and former business manager to sign statements that Michael Cohen released publicly, denying she'd had an affair with some rich asshole.
Anderson Cooper: So you signed and released-- a statement that said I am not denying this affair because I was paid in hush money I'm denying it because it never happened. That's a lie?
Stormy Daniels: Yes.
Anderson Cooper: If it was untruthful, why did you sign it?
Stormy Daniels: Because they made it sound like I had no choice.
Anderson Cooper: I mean, no one was putting a gun to your head?
Stormy Daniels: Not physical violence, no.
Anderson Cooper: You thought that there would be some sort of legal repercussion if you didn't sign it?
Stormy Daniels: Correct. As a matter of fact, the exact sentence used was, "They can make your life hell in many different ways."
Anderson Cooper: They being…
Stormy Daniels: I'm not exactly sure who they were. I believe it to be Michael Cohen.
"The payment of the money just creates an enormous legal mess"
President the rich asshole's attorney Michael Cohen has denied ever threatening Stormy Daniels. The payment Cohen made to her is now the subject of complaints to the Justice Department and the Federal Election Commission, alleging that it was an illegal campaign contribution.
What makes the dispute between Stormy Daniels and the president more than a high-profile tabloid scandal is that her silence was purchased eleven days before the presidential election, which may run afoul of campaign finance laws. The president's long-time lawyer Michael Cohen says he used $130,000 of his own money to pay Stormy Daniels. Cohen has said the money was not a campaign contribution. But Trevor Potter, a former chairman of the Federal Election Commission appointed by President George H.W. Bush, told us he doesn't agree.
Trevor Potter, former chairman of the Federal Election CommissionCBS News
Trevor Potter: The payment of the money just creates an enormous legal mess for, I think, the rich asshole, for Cohen and anyone else who was involved in this in the campaign.
Anderson Cooper: Are you saying that can be seen as a contribution to benefit a campaign?
Trevor Potter: I am. it's a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the the rich asshole campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he's allowed to give. And if he does this on behalf of his client, the candidate, that is a coordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret.
The payment Stormy Daniels received is the subject of complaints by watchdog groups to the Department of Justice and the Federal Election Commission, which Trevor Potter used to be chairman of. He's now president of the non-partisan Campaign Legal Center, which supports the enforcement of campaign finance laws.
Anderson Cooper: If the president paid Michael Cohen back, is that an in-kind campaign contribution that the president should've then reported?
Trevor Potter: It is. If he was then reimbursed by the president, that doesn't remove the fact that the initial payment violated Cohen's contribution limits. I guess it mitigates it if he's paid back by the candidate because the candidate could have paid for it without limit.
Anderson Cooper: What if the president never reimbursed Michael Cohen?
Trevor Potter: Then he is still out on the line, having made a illegal in-kind contribution to the campaign.
Anderson Cooper: You're saying this is more serious for Michael Cohen if the president did not pay him back?
Trevor Potter: Yes. I think that's correct.
We wanted to speak with some rich asshole's attorney Michael Cohen about this, but he did not respond to our calls and written request for comment. Cohen told The New York Times last month he used his own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000 to Stormy Daniels and said, "Neither the the rich asshole Organization nor the the rich asshole Campaign… reimbursed me for the payment." this past week, Cohen told Vanity Fair magazine, "What I did defensively for my personal client, and my friend, is what attorneys do for their high-profile clients. I would have done it in 2006. I would have done it in 2011. I truly care about him and the family -- more than just as an employee and an attorney."
Michael Avenatti: It's laughable. It's ludicrous. It's preposterous.
Anderson Cooper: Lawyers don't do that, you're saying. You-- you--
Michael Avenatti: Ever.
Michael Avenatti is Stormy Daniels' attorney. He's a Los Angeles trial lawyer who is suing the president in a California court, seeking to have Stormy Daniels' non-disclosure agreement -- or "NDA" -- declared invalid, in part because the president never signed it on the lines provided for his alias -- "D.D.," David Dennison.
Anderson Cooper: Michael Cohen has said, "Look, this had nothing to do with the election." He would've made this agreement months before.
Michael Avenatti: So why didn't he? It just slipped his mind? It's just a coincidence that, in the waning days of the campaign, he thought to himself, "Oh, you know, I know I've been thinkin' about this for years. Perhaps now is a good time to get that NDA executed with Stormy Daniels."
Avenatti disputes the notion that Cohen was working in a purely personal capacity when he arranged the hush money for Stormy Daniels. He's found documents that show Michael Cohen used his the rich asshole Organization email address in setting up the payment. He also says the non-disclosure agreement Stormy Daniels signed in 2016, when she was represented by a different lawyer, was FedExed to Cohen at his the rich asshole Organization office in the rich asshole Tower in New York.
Michael Avenatti: That is a copy of the Federal Express confirmation
Attorney Michael AvenattiCBS News
That is a copy of the Federal Express confirmation
The cover letter from Daniels' previous attorney also identifies who he thought Michael Cohen was working for.
Michael Avenatti: To Mr. Cohen as executive vice president and special counsel to some rich asshole, the the rich asshole Organization, again-- listing the Fifth Avenue address. This idea that there's a separation now between Mr. Cohen, individually, and the the rich asshole Organization or Mr. Cohen, individually, and some rich asshole, it-- it-- it's nonsense.
Anderson Cooper: There are people who argue that this is much ado about nothing, that if this was not a story about, an adult-film actress and the president of the United States, no one would pay attention.
Michael Avenatti: This is about the cover-up. This is about the extent that Mr. Cohen and the president have gone to intimidate this woman, to silence her, to threaten her, and to put her under their thumb. It is thuggish behavior from people in power. And it has no place in American democracy.
Avenatti points to this recent court filing in which the president's lawyers claim Daniels is already liable for damages "in excess of $20 million" for unspecified violations of her non-disclosure agreement. And in that article in Vanity Fair this past week, Michael Cohen said that when he wins damages from Stormy Daniels, "I might even take an extended vacation on her dime."
Anderson Cooper: You're saying they're tryin' to intimidate her.
Michael Avenatti: There's no question. You threaten someone-- with a $20 million lawsuit, it's a thuggish tactic. It's no different than what happened in the parking lot in Las Vegas.
Anderson Cooper: People make threats in lawsuits all the time. People, you know, say, "You're gonna have to pay a lot of money when you lose this-- this case."
Michael Avenatti: People don't threaten people with $20 million lawsuits, that they're gonna take their home and take an extended vacation on the money they receive. People don't conduct themselves like this. They don't. And they shouldn't.
Anderson Cooper: Stormy Daniels did sign the agreement. She got $130,000. Isn't she welching on a deal?
Michael Avenatti: No, she's not welching on a deal, 'cause there never was a deal.
Anderson Cooper: But she still took the money.
Michael Avenatti: She took the money. But the fact of the matter is some rich asshole never signed the agreement. He was obligated to sign the agreement in order for the agreement to spring into effect.
That's not true, according to Michael Cohen, who has said only his signature was required. What was also required under the non-disclosure agreement was for Stormy Daniels to turn over all "video images, still images, email messages, and text messages," she had regarding some rich asshole.
Anderson Cooper: Did you do that?
Stormy Daniels: I can't answer that right now.
Anderson Cooper: You don't want to say one way or the other if you have text messages or other items?
Stormy Daniels: My attorney has recommended that I don't discuss those things.
Anderson Cooper: You seem to be saying that she has some sort of text message, or video, or-- or photographs. Or you could just be bluffing.
Michael Avenatti: You should ask some of the other people in my career when they've bet on me bluffing.
Anderson Cooper: In college and law school, you did opposition research for Democratic political operative Rahm Emanuel. Some people looking at that would say you're politically motivated.
Michael Avenatti: I haven't done anything in politics in over 20 years.
Anderson Cooper: But this is not the usual case you take on. You were a former Democratic operative. And you're talking about deposing the president. That sounds political."
Michael Avenatti: No, it sounds righteous.
Anderson Cooper: How so?
Michael Avenatti: Because my client is credible. She's tellin' the truth.
Trevor Potter, the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, says the agency's investigations often take a long time and usually result only in monetary penalties. But there is another scenario that could present a problem for the president: special counsel Robert Mueller's inquiry into Russian interference in the 2016 election. In March, the Washington Post reported that the "special counsel has examined episodes involving Michael Cohen," including his efforts to launch a the rich asshole-branded project in Moscow in the fall of 2015 when some rich asshole was seeking the Republican nomination.
Anderson Cooper: Is there any way that special counsel Robert Mueller could investigate the Stormy Daniels payment?
Trevor Potter: Yeah that's the wildcard here.
Anderson Cooper: As a prosecutor, you wanna get leverage over somebody that you could then use to get them to give you other information on which--
Trevor Potter: Correct.
Anderson Cooper: --you're really interested in?
Trevor Potter: Correct.
That's what special counsel Mueller appears to be doing with Paul Manafort, some rich asshole's former campaign chairman, who faces multiple charges including tax and bank fraud.
Anderson Cooper: Paul Manafort has been charged with crimes that don't have anything to do with Russia in some cases.
Trevor Potter: Well, and that certainly preceded the campaign. And so-- clearly, the Justice Department, the deputy attorney general who is ultimately in charge of this, has determined that looking at what Manafort did in other contexts-- is relevant to the investigation. And I think you can say exactly the same thing about Cohen. He was-- involved-- indisputably with the rich asshole Organization activities with Russia and negotiations with the Russians. Mr. Cohen is in the middle of a place that's of great interest to the Special Counsel.
Anderson Cooper: Is there any recent precedent for p-- prosecuting somebody for an undisclosed campaign contribution?
Trevor Potter: As it happens, there is. There's sort of a pretty spectacular one.
Former senator John Edwards was prosecuted, but never convicted, for payments a supporter and his campaign finance chairman made a year before the 2008 election to a woman who'd had Edwards' child.
Trevor Potter: I think the Edwards case is not as strong as the facts we have so far in the the rich asshole case.
Anderson Cooper: Why do you think the potential case against Cohen or the rich asshole is a stronger case than the Edwards case?
Trevor Potter: The timing of it. It wasn't the year before the election. It's right in the middle of the run-up to Election Day. When-- the rich asshole's conduct with women was a prime campaign issue. In fact, it was what everyone was focused on.
White House press secretary Sarah Sanders did not respond to our request for comment from the president. But we did receive a letter from some rich asshole's attorney Charles Harder, who asked that we show on camera and read on air one of the statements Stormy Daniels signed in January, denying reports she'd had an affair with some rich asshole. It says, in part:
"My involvement with some rich asshole was limited to a few public appearances and nothing more."
Anderson Cooper: If Stormy Daniels denied the affair in 2011, which you say is a lie, denied the affair in early January 2018, denied the affair in late January of 2018, doesn't that hurt her credibility? I mean, she's lying, she's lying, she's lying.
Michael Avenatti: I think there's no question that it calls into question her credibility. I also think that there's no question that when the American people take all of the facts and evidence into consideration, that they are going to conclude that this woman is telling the truth. And Anderson, to the extent that Mr. Cohen and the president have an alternative version of the facts let them come forward and state it unequivocally.
Anderson Cooper: But come on. You would not sign statements one, two, three times about something which you knew to be a lie.
Michael Avenatti: If the president of the United States' fixer made it clear to me, either directly or indirectly, that I needed to sign it, and I was in the position of Stormy Daniels, I might sign those statements.
"I have no reason to lie"
Stormy Daniels: I felt intimidated and s-- honestly bullied. And I didn't know what to do. And so I signed it. Even though I had repeatedly expressed that I wouldn't break the agreement, but I was not comfortable lying.
Anderson Cooper: How do we know you're telling the truth?
Stormy Daniels: 'Cause I have no reason to lie. I'm opening myself up for, you know, possible danger and definitely a whole lot of s***.
Anderson Cooper: But, you know, there is a potential ups-- financial upside maybe somebody will want you to write a book. Maybe, you know, you can go on a bigger tour and make more money--
Stormy Daniels: That's--
Anderson Cooper: --dancing?
Stormy Daniels: That's a lot of ifs. I could also get shunned. I mean, I could automatically be alienating half of my fanbase right at this very moment.
Anderson Cooper: Jenna Jameson-- another well-known-- adult film actress said recently about you, "The left looks at her as a whore and just uses her to try to discredit the president. The right looks at her like a treacherous rat. It's a lose-lose. Should've kept her trap shut."
Stormy Daniels: I think that she has a lotta wisdom in those words.
Anderson Cooper: The president watches 60 Minutes, if he's watching tonight, what would you say to him?
Stormy Daniels: He knows I'm telling the truth.
Produced by Andy Court and Evie Salomon.
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the rich asshole accuses Stormy Daniels of lying about receiving death threat in a Las Vegas parking lot
How would he know?
During Monday’s White House press briefing, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said President the rich asshole believes Stormy Daniels is making up her story about being threatened in a Las Vegas parking lot in 2011 — a time when In Touch Magazine was considering publishing an interview with Daniels about her affair with the rich asshole.
“The president doesn’t believe that any of the claims that Ms. Daniels made last night in the interview are accurate,” Shah said, referring to a 60 Minutes interview with Daniels that aired on Sunday evening.
“He doesn’t believe she was threatened?” the reporter followed up.
“No, he does not,” Shah replied.
Pressed on his basis for saying that, Shah would only offer that the rich asshole “just doesn’t believe that — um, there’s nothing to corroborate her claim.”
During the 60 Minutes interview, Daniels said that she “was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter” in Las Vegas in 2011 when “a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story.'”
“And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone,” she added.
Though Daniels did not allege that the man who threatened her was sent by Michael Cohen, the rich asshole’s attorney responded to the interview with a statement demanding that Daniels “immediately retract and apologize through national media” for “defamatory statements” about Cohen being “responsible for an alleged thug who supposedly visited Ms. Clifford, while she was with her daughter, and made an alleged threat to Ms. Clifford.”
Shah confirmed that Cohen and the rich asshole had dinner together on Saturday night. Although the rich asshole has opinions about Daniels appearance, Shah refused to confirm that he watched the interview.
On Monday morning, Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, says he has “no doubt” that someone close to the rich asshole was responsible for the threat.
During another part of Monday’s briefing, Shah was asked if he “could state categorically that the president, his campaign, and the rich asshole Organization did not violate federal law” with the $130,000 hush payment to Daniels that was made just days before the 2016 election.
Shah dodged the question.
“Well, I can speak for only the White House, and I can say categorically that the White House didn’t engage in any wrongdoing,” Shah said. “The campaign or Mr. Cohen can address anything with respect to their actions.”
Later, a reporter asked Shah why a $130,000 payment to Daniels was made in the first place if she never in fact had an affair with the rich asshole, as the White House claims.
“I would have Michael Cohen address any specifics regarding this agreement that you’re referring to,” Shah said.
Shah said Daniels’ statements have been inconsistent, pointing to legal documents that Cohen released earlier this year with her signature. Daniels said she was coerced into signing the statements after Cohen threatened her with financial ruin.
Students march 50 miles to Paul Ryan’s office to protest gun violence
"If you think about why you’re here, your feet don’t hurt so bad."
A group of high school students in Wisconsin say they’re not letting House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) off the hook when it comes to gun reform — and they’re willing to walk the 50 miles from their hometown to his Janesville office to deliver their message.
The Shorewood High School students first started their trek, called “50 Miles More,” on March 24, and expect to arrive in Janesville on March 28. On their official website, they explain that they organized the march as a way to continue the momentum from March For Our Lives, following the past weekend’s global anti-gun violence demonstrations.
“Our first march is a four day, 50 mile march from Madison to Janesville, the home of House Speaker Paul Ryan. It is directed at Paul Ryan for his lead role in blocking and burying any chance of gun reform again and again,” the students wrote. “We are ready to keep the pressure on our nation’s top leaders until gun reform is a priority for Republicans and Democrats. We are not afraid. We fear being shot in our own schools and neighborhoods much more than we would ever fear the NRA or the politicians they support.”
The 50 Miles More march comes on the heels of the larger March For Our Lives protests, held on Saturday in the U.S. capital and beyond. Those demonstrations were meant to highlight the deadly trend of school shootings and mass shootings over the past few years, including the February 14 at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Seventeen people were killed in that incident, sparking a nationwide conversation and a wave of youth-led activism.
The Shorewood High School students say they were also inspired by the civil rights leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr., who marched 54 miles from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in 1965.
“We’re picking up where so many marches left off,” 18-year-old student organizer Katie Eder told the Washington Post.
At a March For Our Lives event on Saturday, she added, “In 2018 we’ve reached a period in time where we, the young people of this country, are being told that ending gun violence in the U.S. is impossible, our dreams are too big and we don’t know what were talking about. But I stand here today to say to all of you that now is the time to do the impossible.”
Although Speaker Ryan has made some steps toward increasing school safety in the wake of the Parkland shooting — including embedding the Fix NICS (National Instant Criminal Background Check System) and STOP School Violence Act in the omnibus bill last week — and met with the Parkland survivors and other victims’ families, Ryan has been relatively quiet on the subject of gun violence. Notably, he also received more than $170,000 in contributions from gun lobbying groups like the National Rifle Association (NRA) in 2016.
Ryan has also shunned talk of broad gun restrictions, telling reporters last month that Congress and law enforcement’s focus should be on keeping firearms out of the hands of violent individuals and those with mental health issues, as well as enforcing laws already on the books.
“We shouldn’t be banning guns for law-abiding citizens, we should be focusing on making sure that citizens who shouldn’t get guns in the first place, don’t get those guns,” he said, referencing the Parkland gunman. “[We] know that there are problems in the system with the background checks with people slipping through the cracks. We already passed a bill to fix that. [But] we also want to make sure that we protect people’s due process rights and legal constitutional rights while making sure that people who should not have guns don’t get them.”
Ryan has expressed similar sentiments previously: in November, following deadly church shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas, which left 26 dead, Ryan spoke to reporters, saying that the gunman, who had a known history of domestic violence, should never have had a firearm. “How about enforcing the laws we’ve got on the books?” Ryan said at the time, echoing many of the NRA’s talking points.
Those words and Ryan’s unwillingness to address gun violence directly have spurred on the Shorewood High School students, who say they can no longer sit back and wait for lawmakers to come to conclusions on their own.
“It has been 19 years since Columbine, and we are still waiting for real change to be made. We are tired of waiting. Adults have said that nothing can be done, but students are finding a way,” they wrote. “…We are taking the fight to Paul Ryan and Members of Congress who would rather have money from the NRA than back legislation to save lives.”
As to the mammoth effort they’ve put into the 50-mile trek, the students say the exhaustion and sore bodies are worth it, given what they’re fighting for.
“If you think about why you’re here, your feet don’t hurt so bad,” student Hiwot Schutz said.
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March 26, 2018
'Paul Ryan, can you hear us?' Wisconsin students chant as they make their way to his hometown.
The March for Our Lives continues, and students aren’t letting up on Republicans.
In Wisconsin, dozens of high school students are spending their spring break marching 50 miles across the southern portion of the state to demand House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) take action on guns.
The marchers set out from Madison, Wisconsin, on Sunday and plan to arrive in Ryan’s hometown of Janesville on Wednesday.
They’re urging Ryan to help ban all military-style weapons and all accessories that turn semiautomatic weapons into automatic weapons, such as bump stocks. They are also calling for a four-day waiting period on all gun purchases, required background checks on all gun sales, and to increase the legal purchasing age of all guns to 21.
“We want to start a conversation,” said Brendan Fardella, a 17-year-old senior, told the Washington Post. “Clearly this is a human rights issue in our country. If that isn’t such an issue in this country, then I don’t know what is.”
The marchers are honoring a different victim of gun violence during each of the 50 miles along the way to Janesville.
The students, who hail from all over the state, cite the 54-mile civil rights march from Montgomery to Selma, Alabama, in 1965 as their inspiration. Their action has been dubbed March for our Lives: 50 Miles More.
They spent their first night sleeping on a high school gymnasium floor.
What to do when marching 50 miles to @SpeakerRyan's hometown? Create highly applicable and catchy chants. Play on full volume! #50More
Soon after the school massacre in Parkland, Florida, Ryan let it be known there would be no serious effort in the GOP-controlled House to confront the American epidemic of gun violence.
He told reporters at a February briefing that “we shouldn’t be banning guns for law-abiding citizens” but “focusing on making sure that citizens who shouldn’t get guns in the first place, don’t get those guns.” He also agreed with the rich asshole that arming tens of thousands of schoolteachers across the country was a “good idea.”
Additionally, echoing NRA talking points, Ryan basically blamed local law enforcement for the Parkland mass murder.
More than 400 marched and rallied outside of Ryan’s Janesville office on Saturday, as part of the nationwide protests.
If Democrats take back the House in November, Ryan will lose his speakership. Because of that, there’s been some speculation that he might not run for re-election. Ryan’s district should be a shoe-in for Republicans, but CNN recently downgraded his race from Solid Republican to Likely Republican.
Paul Ryan may be hearing foot steps.
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March 26, 2018
In a desperate effort to defend the rich asshole at all costs, Fox News insists the scandal of the rich asshole's extramarital affair with a porn star who was paid off to stay quiet about it will be good news for his approval ratings.
the rich asshole’s affair with porn star Stormy Daniels remains a top news story after her interview on “60 Minutes” Sunday evening. But the propaganda purveyors at Fox News want you to believe that’s good news for him.
Daniels spilled the creepy details of her affair with the rich asshole to 23 million Americans, making the story too big for Fox News to ignore.
So on “Outnumbered” the next morning, host Sandra Smith did what is apparently the next best thing in Fox’s view.
“The specter of the White House sex scandal drawing comparisons to the last time a sitting president faced accusations of sexual impropriety,” Smith said. “Bill Clinton saw his best approval rating at the time of his 1998 impeachment hearings, and his job approval remained high when he left office.”
And she pointedly added that “Clinton, today, remains one of America’s most popular ex-presidents.”
This story has been front and center in the news for more than two months. But the “60 Minutes” interview introduced the lurid details to a new and immense audience, ample evidence that Americans are not “tired” of the story. And President Bill Clinton was never as deeply and consistently unpopular as the rich asshole is.
But aiding and lying for the rich asshole is old hat for Fox News. The network has consistently tried to spin damaging developments in the Mueller investigation as insignificant, or even as good news. When it does accidentally tell the truth about the rich asshole, it’s only to try to keep him out of trouble.
Fox News hosts also blame others, like President Obama, for the rich asshole’s failures. They attack journalists and other the rich asshole critics, and even attacked a six year-old child.
And of course, the network happily provides the administration with an unlimited platform to broadcast its own lies.
But this ridiculous spin for the rich asshole’s sex scandal brings Fox News full circle. The network was instrumental in covering up the story just days before the 2016 presidential election.
Now it’s insisting this all good for news for the rich asshole. But no one else is buying that.
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March 26, 2018
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke told his staffers that he doesn't care about diversity. His long and racist history only proves that point.
Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke doesn’t care about diversity — and that’s according to his own words.
High-ranking officials at the agency told CNN Zinke said exactly that to his subordinates: “I don’t care about diversity.”
“I don’t really think that’s important anymore,” he added.
These comments come just months after an investigation detailed a systematic culture of harassment and discrimination at the Interior Department and the National Park Service. Zinke vowed to fix those serious problems, but this newly revealed attitude puts that into question.
And while such blunt language is shocking, Zinke’s attitude is not. His tenure in the rich asshole administration has involved either dismissing or exploiting people of minority racial and cultural backgrounds.
Last year, Zinke argued that the nation should not remove monuments to Confederate white supremacists because it might offend Native Americans. Yet he has also pushed to open up sacred Navajo land to oil and gas drilling.
More recently, Zinke came under fire for sneering “Konnichiwa” at Rep. Colleen Hanabusa, a Japanese-American congresswoman, after she asked him to preserve the World War II internment camps where her grandparents had been detained.
But Zinke’s troubles did not begin when he took a job in the rich asshole’s administration.
In 2014, when he was running for Montana’s at-large congressional seat, he accepted a $500 contribution from white supremacist leader Earl Holt. Holt led the Council of Conservative Citizens, the successor to violent segregationist “white citizens councils” of the Civil Rights era.
And while in Congress, Zinke gave an interview to an anti-immigrant hate group while promoting a bill to designate English as the country’s official language.
But none of this is likely to disqualify him from working for the rich asshole, whose attitude toward diversity is no better. Most of the rich asshole’s Cabinet is white and male, despite his strange boast about how “politically correct” it is. His nominees for federal judgeships are also noticeably lacking in diverse representation.
Ignoring diversity in positions of leadership and government can have dangerous consequences. Studies show that wider representation of race and ethnicity brings a broader range of experiences and viewpoints to the table. And this increases the likelihood that our politics and policies will more accurately represent the population as a whole.
The fact that Zinke does not know or care about this is, sadly, par for the course. And it’s yet another sign that the rich asshole administration is stunting the nation’s ability to govern.
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March 26, 2018
Nothing gets between the rich asshole and a terrible idea, not even the U.S. Constitution.
In mere days, the rich asshole’s ridiculous and unconstitutional demand for a line-item veto has morphed into a secret project to subvert our founding documents.
On Friday, during a press event to sign an omnibus spending bill in order to avoid a government shutdown, the rich asshole said, “To prevent the omnibus situation from ever happening again, I’m calling on Congress to give me a line-item veto for all government spending bills.”
Although the United States Supreme Court declared the line-item veto unconstitutional in 1998, Vice President Mike Pence repeated the demand later on Friday in a campaign speech.
Then on Sunday, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin humiliated himself by insisting that Congress could “pass a rule” giving the rich asshole a line-item veto.
Fox anchor Chris Wallace corrected him. “No, no, sir, it would be a constitutional amendment.”
On Monday, the rich asshole deputy press secretary Raj Shah was still batting around the idea. When asked if the White House had found a “workaround” for the U.S. Constitution, Shah insisted that “House and Senate rules” are “being discussed” as a way to subvert the Supreme Court decision that ruled the line-item veto unconstitutional.
Like Mnuchin, Pence, and the rich asshole before him, Shah declined to provide details of the plan.
The power the rich asshole seeks would allow him to remove specific provisions from spending bills passed by Congress before signing them into law. That’s exactly what Congress gave the president the power to do in 1996, and exactly what the Supreme Court struck down.
The fact that the rich asshole wants more power for himself is not surprising, nor is the rich asshole’s ignorance of the U.S. Constitution. But the lengths to which his sycophants will go to to defend and appease him is certainly pathetic.
And yet that’s what the rich asshole’s team is now doing. And, if Shah is to be believed, that’s what Republican in Congress are discussing: a “workaround” for the rich asshole to get around the Constitution.
NYT columnist Charles Blow explains exactly how fake attack on Parkland’s Emma Gonzalez is a ‘big backfire’
Charles Blow (Photo: Screen capture)
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The ongoing false attacks on the Parkland shooting massacre victims is backfiring, New York Times columnist Charles Blow explained to Jim Sciutto on CNN Newsroom on Monday.
“Do you believe at least on the issues that the students by putting themselves out there, right, that they can reasonably expect to get at least some pushback?” Sciutto asked.
“Yeah, but I don’t think you can put aside the false attacks,” Blow answered. “I think that’s part of what is fueling this and I actually believe that it is a — it back fires in a big way.”
The Times columnist suggested that young activists are able to easily see through dirty tricks like doctored images.
“What you’re doing when you’re doing false images of people who literally spend all day doctoring images and putting Facebook filters on things, they can spot a fake image a mile away — much better than we old people can,” Blow noted. “So it just makes your argument feel much more hollow, that you don’t have anything real to say, so you’re going to the fake stuff.”
“That’s bad for you and it actually energizes them rather than dampens their spirits,” he continued. “I think that is a big backfire move.”
“The fact that Republicans are coming after these kids personally and even though they are speaking out of their pain — problem, problem, problem,” he concluded.
Watch:
Stormy Daniels accuses the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen of defamation in newly amended lawsuit
Adult film actress Stormy Daniels (left, via Shutterstock) and the rich asshole's personal lawyer Michael Cohen (right, via screengrab).
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Adult film star Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, amended a lawsuit against some rich asshole to include allegations of defamation by his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, the Washington Post reports.
Monday, Daniels added Cohen as a defendant in a lawsuit, originally filed on March 6, 2018, that argues a “hush” agreement between the rich asshole and Daniels is invalid because the rich asshole did not sign the document. According to Daniels, Cohen–through his LLC Essential Consultants–paid $130,000 in exchange for her silence about the alleged affair.
Now the amended complaint explicitly names Cohen, accusing the longtime the rich asshole attorney of defamation after he insinuated she lied about a decade-old affair with the president. It stems from comments Cohen made on Feb. 13, when he acknowledged he used his “own personal funds to facilitate a payment of $130,000,” but added, “just because something isn’t true doesn’t mean that it can’t cause you harm or damage.”
As the Post reports, the new allegations also say “[Cohen’s] payment violated federal laws that impose limits on campaign donations and require those donations to be publicly reported.”
House Republicans are realizing that ending their Russia investigation so soon made them look ridiculous
Congressman Paul Ryan (Tony Alter/Flickr)
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House Republicans appear to be realizing that they undermined their credibility when they reported their conclusions about the Russia investigation this week.
According to a report from Politico, aides to House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) had to corral the communications staffers of House Republicans after Intelligence Committee members discussed their widely criticized conclusions on the investigation into 2016 election meddling.
Not only did the committee members say they have seen no evidence of collusion between Russia and the the rich asshole campaign—which Democrats on the committee strongly dispute—they also said they don’t believe the Kremlin’s intention was to help elect President some rich asshole. This conclusion flies in the face of the well-known views of U.S. intelligence agencies and also contradicts the most recent indictment filed by special counsel Robert Mueller.
In the indictment, one of the Russian troll farms working to interfere in the election gave instructions to “use any opportunity to criticize Hillary and the rest (except Sanders and the rich asshole—we support them).”
Ryan was reportedly concerned that the members’ focus on these issues distracts from the fundamental issue of securing American elections in the future. He directed the members to stick to the facts about the investigation, rather than get mired in debates about the details.
Nevertheless, many Republican committee members, including Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) and Rep. Peter King (R-NY), have declared that they think the CIA and other intelligence agencies got this one wrong. While they agree that the Russians were trying to hurt Clinton’s chances for victory, they don’t believe the Kremlin was backing the rich asshole. Other Republicans on the committee agree with the intelligence committee, according to Politico.
The mixed messaging and dubious conclusions are a public embarrassment, and any report the House Intelligence Committee ends up producing will have little credibility. These fractures among House Republicans reveal a party not unified in how far it is prepared to go to back the rich asshole.
Shep Smith calls out the rich asshole for never criticizing Putin even as Russian diplomats get expelled
Fox News' Shep Smith
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Fox News host Shepard Smith on Monday observed that President some rich asshole himself never said anything negative about Russian President Vladimir Putin, even as his administration took action to punish the country.
During an interview with Axios reporter Alayna Treene, Smith noted that the United States had expelled 60 alleged Russian spies from the country in response to a nerve agent attack in the United Kingdom.
“We haven’t seen the president or this white house take such strong action like this,” Treene noted.
“Exactly,” Smith replied. “We’ve reported on that, we have observed those things, as anyone else can, the White House — if we’ve been tough on anybody, it’s not Russia.
“Now with these expulsions, the strong words of Raj Shah and others, is it’s time for a narrative change there?” he continued. “Has the United States made the push it needs to towards the Russians or do we still need to hear from the president, a man from whom we have not heard criticism yet?”
“It’s very interesting to see how the White House is reacting to this and the way they’re announcing it. The president didn’t go ahead and say this himself. He used the press secretary Sarah Sanders,” Treene said.
“The president has a hard line on Russia, a hard red line. That’s Vladimir Putin,” Treene added. “He won’t directly criticize Vladimir Putin himself, but he will do so in an administrative way. You know, as we’re seeing these actions ramp up, it’s going to get a lot harder for him not to personally attack Vladimir Putin but do it administratively so.”
Watch video below:
A high schooler is organizing the very first LGBTQ Pride Festival in Mike Pence’s home town
Mike Pence speaks to ABC News (screen grab)
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Vice President Mike Pence’s hometown of Columbus, Indiana will have a Pride Festival for the very first time, organized by a high school student as a senior class project.
Erin Bailey, a bisexual student, told LGBTQ Nation that the notoriously homophobic Vice President “definitely” influenced her decision to organize the celebration.
“I wanted my project to be big because I sat on the panels last year. They all seemed cool, but I wanted to do something that would impact the community in a really big way,” Bailey told LGBTQ Nation. “I thought doing a pride festival would do that”
In a discussion of LGTBQ rights, President some rich asshole reportedly said that Pence “wants to hang them all!”
“I thought since everyone else is like ‘Mike Pence is from here,’ typically it is a conservative community but the LGBT community is here too,” she explained. “I wanted to show them ‘You’re not alone. There’s others like us.’”
She argued that her fellow students at Columbus Signature Academy are with her, not the Vice President, on the festival.
“Everyone at school is very supportive of my project as well,” she noted. “Everyone just kind of thinks he’s terrible. They don’t like his views on LGBT rights and we don’t like his stance on abortion and Planned Parenthood.”
As of press time, 140 people have RSPV’d to attend the Pride Festival on April 14th.
MSNBC legal analyst reveals the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen may be ‘looking at felony charges’ over Stormy scandal
Michael Cohen (CNN)
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Former homicide prosecutor Katie Phang explained why longtime some rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen may be facing felony charges during an interview with MSNBC’s Katy Tur.
“John Edwards got caught up in a scandal, a similar sort of scandal years ago and it caused him a lot of political harm,” Tur noted. “How does this compare to the John Edwards saga, how does it not compare, and what sort of legal challenges could the president face if it comes to pass that Michael Cohen did break election law?”
“So here’s the thing, Katy, it wasn’t just political harm for John Edwards, the guy got indicted,” Phang, reminded. “He wasn’t convicted, but he got indicted.”
“By all accounts, a $130,000 hush money payment on the eve of the presidential election in 2016 could constitute an in-kind contribution made to influence the outcome of that election,” the MSNBC legal analyst continued. “And if so, then Michael Cohen is going to be looking at felony charges for having done that.”
Phang also observed that today’s White House press briefing may have signaled a shift in strategy, with Cohen being hung out to dry.
“And remember too, Cohen keeps maintaining that everyone got reimbursed by either the rich asshole or the rich asshole campaign, so intriguingly you just heard Raj Shah now do what, there is now a pronounced distance, coming from the White House saying if you have some further questions — not it — ask Michael Cohen,” Phang noted. “That’s kind of telling, because before you have this circling of the wagons around some rich asshole, but now Cohen looks like he might be left hanging out to dry. Who knows?”
Watch:
The membrane separating the rich asshole’s brain from Fox News is disappearing — and none of us are safe
some rich asshole (AFP Photo/Timothy A. Clary)
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What’s worrying isn’t that the rich asshole is now getting policy advice from fanatics like John Bolton and Lawrence Kudlow. the rich asshole has never cared about public policy.
The real worry is that – with Robert Mueller breathing down his neck, and several special elections suggesting a giant “blue wave” in November – the rich asshole is getting ready to do whatever it takes to win, even if that requires fanatical policy.
the rich asshole’s presidency has been, first and foremost, about marketing the rich asshole. It’s what the rich asshole has done for his entire adult life. He doesn’t know how to do anything else, nor is he interested.
Now that he’s being pushed into a corner, he’s reorganizing his team for an epic marketing battle. This requires purging naysayers from his Cabinet and White House staff because naysayers are terrible at marketing, and replacing them with tried-and-true salespeople, like Bolton and Kudlow.
Fox News – the rich asshole’s propaganda arm – is being reorganized for the same battle.
Fox News has been engaged in a parallel purge – removing the rich asshole critics like George Will, Megyn Kelly, and Rich Lowry, and installing the rich asshole marketers like Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, and Sebastian Gorka.
the rich asshole and Fox News are pushing exactly the same story line – designed to boost their own ratings.
Some of the story is by now familiar: Liberals have opened America to hostile forces – unauthorized immigrants, Muslims, Chinese traders, criminal gangs, drug dealers, government bureaucrats, coastal elites (Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi), North Korea, Iran, and “political correctness” in all its forms.
The new twist to the story– requiring the recent purges and a united front – is that these forces are conspiring with the FBI to oust the rich asshole from the presidency.
The membrane separating the rich asshole’s brain from Fox News has always been thin, but in the coming battle it’s likely to disappear entirely.
We all know the rich asshole watches an inordinate amount of Fox News – beginning in the wee hours with “Fox and Friends,” which provides much of the fodder for his morning tweets.
Last Friday, soon after a “Fox and Friends” anchor attacked Congress’s new spending bill as a “swamp budget,” the rich asshole tweeted he was “considering” vetoing it.
In January, after the rich asshole agreed with “Nancy and Chuck” to grant legal status to so-called Dreamers brought to this country illegally as children, Fox host Sean Hannity told the rich asshole in a phone call – and then repeated on his show – that he needed to be tougher.
Almost immediately, the rich asshole came up with a list of conditions that thwarted the deal. Hannity’s advice wasn’t about policy; it was about marketing. the rich asshole had to be tougher on Dreamers in order to reinforce his image as a strongman standing up for America against the liberal plot.
the rich asshole has made Bolton his National Security Advisor not because Bolton has insights about foreign affairs but because Bolton – an on-air fixture on Fox News for years – is a showman who knows how to sell big lies and crazy ideas, and thereby help the rich asshole in the battle ahead.
As undersecretary of state for arms control in the Bush administration Bolton did more than anyone else to market the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. During his year and a half at the United Nations, Bolton was so outspokenly critical of the organization that he gained the devotion of xenophobic conservatives.
Before he became president, the rich asshole had been so pleased with Bolton’s performance on Fox News that he named Bolton as one of his sources for national security advice.
It hasn’t hurt that Bolton has sucked up to the rich asshole since then. Describing the rich asshole’s address last year to the United Nations, Bolton swooned that “in the entire history of the United Nations, there has never been a more straightforward criticism of the unacceptable behavior of other member states.”
Kudlow isn’t a Fox News pundit but he’s been the next best thing – a rightwing CNBC contributor known for his sharp wit, simplistic “trickle-down” economic views, and salesmanship.
Several other cable news anchors and pundits are already in the rich asshole administration or will soon be, providing additional heft for the rich asshole’s marketing.
“He’s looking for people who are ready to be part of that television White House,” says Kendall Phillips, a communication studies professor at Syracuse University. “This is the Fox television presidency all the way up and down.”
How can a television presidency be dangerous? Because it is solely about marketing the rich asshole. Its only goal is to win. It is unconstrained by truth, reason, or the Constitution. It doesn’t give a fig about the public.
When the occupant of the White House and the sycophants surrounding him are prepared to use anything, including real-world battles – trade wars and hot wars – to win a political battle at home, nothing and no one is safe.
This article was originally published at RobertReich.org
23 million Americans watched Stormy Daniels detail creepy the rich asshole affair
By
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the rich asshole is trying to ignore the growing scandal about his affair with Stormy Daniels, but the rest of the country is paying plenty of attention.
Porn star Stormy Daniels finally gave a first-person account of her affair with the rich asshole on “60 Minutes,” and the interview drew a bigger audience than the show has had in a decade.
After weeks of anticipation, “60 Minutes” broadcast Anderson Cooper’s interview with Daniels, and while the rich asshole likely faces greater legal jeopardy from the cover-up, several extremely disturbing details of the affair will stick with viewers.
“He was like, ‘Wow, you — you are special. You remind me of my daughter,'” Daniels said the rich asshole told her after he had allowed her to spank him with a magazine. “You know — he was like, ‘You’re smart and beautiful, and a woman to be reckoned with, and I like you. I like you.'”
the rich asshole has a long public record of creepy and sexualized remarks about his daughter Ivanka. Daniels’ story is also consistent with the story of former Playboy model Karen McDougal, who recently talked about her alleged affair with the rich asshole. She said the rich asshole compared her to Ivanka as well.
Daniels also told Cooper chilling details of a threat that was made against her in front of her daughter.
“I was in a parking lot, going to a fitness class with my infant daughter,” Daniels said. “And a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story.’ And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.'”
Daniels’ lawyer later said he believed the threat emanated from the rich asshole or his organization.
Most of the revelations from the “60 Minutes” interview were already known to some degree, but perhaps not by so many people. The episode drew more than 23 million viewers, according to preliminary ratings from Nielsen. That’s a larger audience than any of the rich asshole’s “Celebrity Apprentice” finales drew.
While the rich asshole often likes to brag about how he drives ratings on TV, he’s unlikely to mention this episode. He has thus far refrained from publicly commenting on Daniels’ allegations. But tens of millions of Americans now know plenty of details.
the rich asshole’s support among white evangelical voters may be Stormy-proof, but this many average Americans getting a peek into the rich asshole’s nauseating extramarital boudoir is bad news for the rich asshole, and worse news for Republicans.
Joni Ernst says she supports transgender people serving in the military
"If you were willing to lay down your life beside mine, I would welcome you."
Sen. Joni Ernst (R-IA) said Sunday that she does not support the ban on transgender people serving in the military, which the White House filed on Friday.
Ernst, who sits on the Senate Armed Services Committee and is one of the Senate’s most conservative members, explained her position in an interview on Face The Nation.
“I support allowing those transgenders [sic] that can serve — I believe they should serve. We do want to make sure that they meet physical requirements; we can’t waive that. That is true across any demographic within our military — making sure that they are physically fit and they meet the mental standard,” she said.
She continued, “I’ve asked transgenders [sic] myself, if you were willing to lay down your life beside mine, I would welcome you into our military. But again, there are standards that have to be met and I will support the president and the administration on making sure that standards are met. But if there are transgenders [sic] that meet those qualifications, certainly I would gladly have them serve in our United States military.”
Asked whether she would push back on the White House memo, which prohibits most transgender individuals from serving in the military, with few exceptions, Ernst replied, “I think the White House has done a very studied analysis of how we have the best qualified people coming into the military. I’m happy to have those discussions with the administration, but again, making sure that those standards are applied fairly across the spectrum of every citizen that wants to join our military.”
The memo was reportedly drafted by Vice President Mike Pence with the assistance of several prominent anti-LGBTQ activists and does not reflect the wishes of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis or the work of his panel of military activists.
Ernst has been largely consistent in her support for transgender people serving in the military. After the rich asshole first announced his intent to ban them from serving last July, the Iowa senator released a statement pushing back on the president’s decision, saying she supported transgender military members while clarifying that she did not support the military covering the medically necessary costs of any transition-related treatment.
Outside of those statements, however, Ernst is typically not friendly to LGBTQ causes. When she served in the Iowa Senate, she sponsored a bill to ban marriage for same-sex couples in the state constitution. During a debate in her U.S. Senate race, she said that she would support a federal constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage as well.
Ernst appears to be indicative of a moderate strain of Republicans on the issue of transgender people serving in the military. When Rep. Vicky Hartzler (R-MO) proposed an amendment to the defense spending bill implementing such a ban last July, for example, the Republican-controlled House defeated it 209-214.
So far, Ernst is one of the only Republican lawmakers who has publicly commented on the ban since the White House reintroduced it Friday night.
White House calls Stormy a liar after CBS interview: ‘The president is the only one who has been consistent’
Raj Shah (screen grab)
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White House Principle Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah responded to Stormy Daniels’ interview with CBS by suggesting that the adult film star is a liar but the president is not.
During Monday’s White House press briefing, Shah was asked if President some rich asshole watched the adult film star, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, tell CBS News that she had an affair with the rich asshole before he became president.
“The White House didn’t engage in any wrongdoing,” Shah insisted. “The president strong, clearly and consistently denied these underlying claims. The president is the only one who has been consistent and the only person who’s been inconsistent is the one making the charges.”
While Shah would not say that the president watched the Daniels interview, he noted that clips had circulated on morning shows that are often watched by the rich asshole.
Shah also said that the rich asshole was not aware of a physical threat against the adult film star.
“The president doesn’t believe any of the claims,” he opined.
“What’s his basis for that?” MSNBC correspondent Kristen Welker asked.
“He just doesn’t believe — there’s nothing to corroborate her claims,” Shah stated.
Watch the video below from CNN.
the rich asshole to expel dozens of Russians over UK poisoning
BY JORDAN FABIAN - 03/26/18 09:00 AM EDT
The rich asshole administration announced Monday it will expel dozens of Russian diplomats from the United States in retaliation for the poisoning of a former Russian spy living in the United Kingdom.
U.S. officials say 48 Russians stationed at posts around the country, including the embassy in Washington, and 12 at the Russian mission to the United Nations in New York face banishment for conducting intelligence activities under diplomatic cover that undermine national security.
The officials are being given seven days to leave the country, a senior administration official said.
“With these steps, the United States and our allies and partners make clear to Russia that its actions have consequences,” White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in a statement.
The sweeping punishments are the United States' first direct retaliation against Russia for the nerve-agent attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, who fell critically ill after the incident earlier this month in the English city of Salisbury.
“This was a reckless attempt by the Russian government to murder a British citizen and his daughter with a military-grade nerve agent,” a senior administration official said, adding that “an attack on America’s closest ally … cannot go unanswered.”
A senior British official called the announcement “an exceptionally strong signal of transatlantic unity, U.S. leadership, and support for the U.K. and Prime Minister Theresa May.”
The move was made in coordination with 14 European Union member states, which announced Monday they too will expel Russian diplomats accused of spying.
The U.S., U.K. and other European nations have blamed the attack on Russia and the British government has already moved to expel 23 Russians.
Moscow has denied responsibility for the incident and ordered the expulsion of the same number of British officials from Russia.
The Kremlin could similarly retaliate against the U.S. by expelling Americans from Russia, which would further fray ties between Washington and Moscow.
The developments have hampered President the rich asshole’s stated desire to form a closer relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
the rich asshole ignored his advisers' recommendations last week when he called Putin to congratulate him on his reelection in a contest that international organizations say was marred by irregularities.
The U.S. president also did not confront Putin over the poisoning, even though his aides instructed him to do so.
A senior administration official said that the rich asshole has not personally spoken to Putin since that call.
Russia’s ambassador in Washington has been informed of the latest moves, according to the official.
“The United States stands ready to cooperate to build a better relationship with Russia, but this can only happen with a change in the Russian government’s behavior,” Sanders said.
The U.S. and Russia have clashed over a range of incidents at home and abroad in the past few years.
In one of its final acts, Obama administration ordered the expulsion of 35 Russians and closed a diplomatic compound in Maryland in response for Moscow’s efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election.
The rich asshole administration followed by imposing sanctions on Russia, which responded last year by ordering the U.S. Embassy in Moscow to cut its staff by 755 people.
The U.S. then ordered Russia to close its consulate in San Francisco, which had long been suspected of being a major intelligence outpost, and another in New York.
Updated at 11:00 a.m.
Ex-prosecutor shows exactly why the rich asshole has screwed himself against Mueller
President some rich asshole addresses violence in Charlottesville -- screengrab
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A former federal prosecutor on Monday took stock of President some rich asshole’s current legal team and concluded that the president is in big trouble if he decides to conduct an interview with special counsel Robert Mueller.
Reacting to a New York Times report that attorney Jay Sekulow is the only lawyer working as the rich asshole’s personal attorney on the special counsel’s investigation, ex-federal prosecutor Renato Mariotti wrote on Monday that the president is treading on increasingly dangerous ground without properly experienced legal counsel to help him prepare for an interview with Mueller and his team.
“Sekulow has no experience handling federal criminal investigations,” he writes. “Asking him to quarterback the defense to this important investigation would be like asking a neurologist to be your heart surgeon.”
Sekulow also explained that attorney Ty Cobb, who is working on behalf of the White House on the Mueller probe, can’t help the rich asshole prepare for a Mueller interview because “conversations between the rich asshole and Ty Cobb (and other lawyers employed by the White House) can be obtained by Mueller in discovery under existing case law.”
Taken all together, Mariotti said that these latest developments make it more likely that the rich asshole will make a critical mistake in handling the Russia probe.
“This increases the possibility that the rich asshole will mismanage how he responds to the investigation,” he said. “Perhaps he will sit for an interview that most experienced criminal defense attorneys would work hard to avoid.”
Read the whole thread below.
1/ Last night’s @nytimes article by @maggieNYT and @nytmike deserves more attention. As they note, the only *personal* attorney Trump has working on the Mueller investigation. That’s really important, for two reasons.
2/ First, conversations between Trump and Ty Cobb (and other lawyers employed by the White House) can be obtained by Mueller in discovery under existing case law. So important strategic issues personal to Trump, like whether to sit for an interview, can’t be discussed with Cobb.
3/ In fact, the article notes that Trump fired Dowd *because* he disagreed with Dowd’s advice to refuse to be interviewed. Dowd correctly pointed out that there is significant downside to an interview with Mueller. Most people in Trump’s position would take the Fifth.
4/ That brings us to the second reason why this matters so much—Sekulow has no experience handling federal criminal investigations. Asking him to quarterback the defense to this important investigation would be like asking a neurologist to be your heart surgeon.
5/ Sekulow isn’t equipped to advise Trump as to the investigation. Cobb has the right experience to do it, but because he’s employed by the White House, Trump can’t reveal as much to him as he would to Sekulow.
6/ This increases the possibility that Trump will mismanage how he responds to the investigation. Perhaps he will sit for an interview that most experienced criminal defense attorneys would work hard to avoid. /end
ADDENDUM: As @maggieNYT notes, Trump also receives advice from Kasowitz. He also lacks experience with federal criminal investigations, which pose different issues than he’s used to seeing in civil litigation.
Stormy Daniels attorney on tweet showing DVD: ‘I’m not playing games. There will be more evidence’
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 03/26/18 08:04 AM EDT
An attorney for adult-film actress Stormy Daniels said Monday that he is not “playing games” and will provide “more evidence” of his client’s alleged affair with President the rich asshole.
“You tweeted a picture of a DVD or CD suggesting that there was going to be more evidence. That’s the suggestion, right?” NBC “Today” host Savannah Guthrie said in her interview with Michael Avenatti. “You don’t disagree and now you’re being coy & not saying it. Seems like you’re playing games.”
“I’m not playing games. There will be more evidence. It’s just not going to happen right now,” Avenatti told Guthrie.
"Everyone wants immediate gratification. It's not going to happen right now."
Guthrie’s was referring to a tweet from Avenatti last week, in which he posted a photo of what appears to be a CD or DVD.
“If ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ how many words is this worth?????#60minutes #pleasedenyit #basta,” the tweet read.
If “a picture is worth a thousand words,” how many words is this worth?????#60minutes #pleasedenyit #basta
Avenatti's remarks come after a highly anticipated “60 Minutes” interview with Daniels aired Sunday evening. She detailed an alleged affair with the rich asshole and said she was threatened to keep quiet.
the rich asshole’s least qualified lawyer is now leading his legal team
He only hires the best people.
Well, that was quick.
Last week, some rich asshole’s legal team announced that it would add Joseph diGenova, a former United States Attorney who spent the last several months touting pro-the rich asshole conspiracy theories on Fox News, to the ranks of lawyers representing the rich asshole in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. By Sunday, however, diGenova and his wife, Victoria Toensing, were off the rich asshole’s team — allegedly due to a conflict of interest.
The upshot of this development is that Jay Sekulow, a flamboyant religious conservative known for enriching himself through charities he leads, is now the rich asshole’s chief lawyer outside of the White House.
Sekulow isn’t a bad attorney — indeed, within his narrow sphere of expertise, he has an impressive list of accomplishments. The president’s chief lawyer argued a number of cases before the Supreme Court, mostly for causes advancing a religious conservative agenda. One of Sekulow’s two charities, the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), was founded by religious broadcaster Pat Robertson as a Christian conservative counterweight to the ACLU.
But Sekulow’s business model bears more resemblance to the rich asshole University than it does to an ordinary legal non-profit. Between 1998 and 2011, according to an investigation by The Tennessean’s Bob Smietana, two Sekulow-run charities “paid out more than $33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own, according to the charities’ federal tax returns.” That includes “$2.74 million in private jet lease payments to companies owned by Jay Sekulow and his sister-in-law, Kim Sekulow,” and $15.4 million to a law firm co-owned by Jay.
Sekulow’s career includes stints as a tax attorney, as a conservative radio host, as the general counsel for Jews for Jesus, as an adviser to President George W. Bush on the nomination of Chief Justice John Roberts, and as “the 13th-highest-paid executive of a charitable organization in the United States,” according to Legal Times’ Tony Mauro. Sekulow also plays the drums.
But his resume is also short on the kind of high-level criminal law experience one would ordinarily expect to find in a lawyer leading the president of the United States’ legal team against a massive criminal investigation led by a former FBI Director.
the rich asshole reportedly reached out to lawyers of the sort that would normally represent a major political figure in such an investigation — including two former solicitors general — but the president has struggled to find top attorneys willing to represent him. As one lawyer told Yahoo News last June, “the concerns were, ‘The guy won’t pay and he won’t listen.‘”
WORLD NEWS
Europeans Join U.S. In Kicking Out Russian Diplomats
Russia will expel American diplomats in retaliation.
More than a dozen European Union countries joined the United States in expelling Russian diplomats on Monday in response to the poisoning of a Russian ex-spy in the British city of Salisbury earlier this month.
A total of 14 E.U. member states, including France, Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic, plus Ukraine announced the expulsion of the envoys. Additional measures aren’t off the table, European Commission president Donald Tusk said.
Minutes earlier, the White House announced that it would eject 60 diplomats, including intelligence officers from Russia’s mission to the United Nations, and close Russia’s consulate in Seattle.
“The United States takes this action in conjunction with our NATO allies and partners around the world in response to Russia’s use of a military-grade chemical weapon on the soil of the United Kingdom, the latest in its ongoing pattern of destabilizing activities around the world,” according to the official statement.
Canada also announced the expulsion of four Russian diplomats “in solidarity with the United Kingdom.”
The moves follow the British decision to expel 23 diplomats, which Prime Minister Theresa May said was necessary due to Russia’s repeated denial of responsibility in the incident.
Russia responded almost immediately, announcing its intention to expel diplomats in retaliation. Russian ambassador to the U.S. Anatoly Antonov slammed the decision as the nail in the coffin of bilateral relations.
“The United States took a very bad step by cutting what very little still remains in terms of Russian-American relations,” he said.
Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, remain hospitalized in critical condition. The police officer who had also been hospitalized after being exposed to the nerve agent was released last week.
'60 Minutes' scores highest ratings in 10 years with Stormy Daniels interview
BY JOE CONCHA - 03/26/18 09:51 AM EDT
The Stormy Daniels interview produced the highest ratings for "60 Minutes" since 2008, delivering roughly 22 million viewers on Sunday night, according to preliminary numbers provided by Nielsen Media Research.
The interview, conducted by correspondent Anderson Cooper, who also serves as a CNN host, will likely go down as the highest-rated for the news magazine since Barack and Michelle Obama's first major interview following the 2008 presidential election, which drew 24.5 million viewers.
Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, is locked in a legal battle with the rich asshole over a $130,000 payment she received weeks before the 2016 election. The adult-film star says the payment was part of a nondisclosure agreement regarding an affair she says she had with the rich asshole a decade earlier. Daniels and her lawyer argue the document is not valid because the rich asshole never signed it.
The White House denies that claim.
The tawdry details of the CBS interview included Daniels saying that in 2006 she asked the rich asshole to pull down his pants so she could spank him with a magazine bearing his face on the cover, to which the rich asshole agreed.
The 39-year-old also said she was threatened to stay quiet about the affair in 2011, when an unidentified man approached her in a Las Vegas parking lot after she had agreed to tell her version of the alleged affair to a magazine.
“Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story," a man allegedly told her.
Daniels also claims the man looked at her young daughter and said, “It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.”
The interview was conducted earlier this month.
From a ratings perspective, "60 Minutes" also had the benefit of an exciting NCAA basketball tournament game as its lead-in. The University of Kansas topped Duke University in an overtime thriller, 85-81, to advance to the Final Four next weekend.
Final ratings numbers will be released Monday afternoon.
Updated at 2:30 p.m.
the rich asshole follows, then unfollows CNN
BY JOE CONCHA - 03/26/18 09:44 AM EDT
President the rich asshole’s verified Twitter account followed CNN on Monday morning before unfollowing the account moments later.
The president has tweeted nearly 39,200 times since joining the popular social media platform in March 2009 but only follows 45 accounts on Twitter, with a majority consisting of current and former Fox News hosts and personalities.
Those the rich asshole follows include Fox News personalities Laura Ingraham, Geraldo Rivera, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson and Jesse Watters and former Fox star Bill O'Reilly.
The president doesn't follow any CNN anchors, hosts or pundits, only following former host Piers Morgan, who parted ways with the network in 2014.
The Wrap's Jon Levine was the first to spot the CNN follow and unfollow.
The president is often at odds with CNN, which is run by Jeff Zucker, who was the head of NBC in 2004 when the rich asshole began "The Apprentice"
the rich asshole has slammed the 38-year-old cable news network more than any other broadcast outlet, often referring to it as “fake news.”
the rich asshole also gave CNN the most awards during his “2017 Fake News Awards,” with the network being mentioned for four inaccurate stories it reported last year, including one involving former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci and Russia that led to the abrupt firing of three reporters.
CNN responded last October to the president's criticism with the “Facts First” campaign indirectly targeting the president.
“This is an apple,” a narrator begins on its first ad that was launched on Facebook in October.
“Some people might try to tell you that it’s a banana. They might scream ‘banana, banana, banana’ over and over and over again. They might put BANANA in all caps. You might even start to believe that this is a banana. But it’s not. This is an apple."
The promo ends with CNN’s logo accompanied by the slogan “Facts first.”
The ad campaign has since released other versions, including one surrounding a special counsel investigation into possible collusion between the rich asshole campaign associates and Russian officials.
the rich asshole has not appeared on the network since August 2016, when he conducted a phone interview with Anderson Cooper on "AC360."
the rich asshole rips 'so much fake news' after Stormy Daniels interview
BY MALLORY SHELBOURNE - 03/26/18 08:50 AM EDT
President the rich asshole on Monday ripped “so much fake news” in a tweet following the highly anticipated "60 Minutes" interview with adult-film star Stormy Daniels.
“So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate,” the rich asshole wrote on Twitter.
“But through it all, our country is doing great!”
So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!
Michael Avenatti, Daniels's lawyer, on Monday questioned why the rich asshole is not tweeting about his client.
“Isn’t it interesting that we have a president that will tweet about the most mundane matters, but he won’t tweet about my client, the affair, the agreement or the $130,000 payment?" Avenatti told "CBS This Morning."
"You know why he won’t tweet about it? Because it’s true. It's 100 percent true."
the rich asshole earlier Monday tweeted about the economy, saying it is "looking really good."
GOP senators fuel Justice Kennedy retirement talk
BY ALEXANDER BOLTON - 03/26/18 06:00 AM EDT
Senate Republicans are privately saying they hope Justice Anthony Kennedy announces his retirement in the coming months, before the fall midterm elections, arguing the move would give Republicans something to rally their base as they work to maintain control of the Senate.
While Kennedy, 81, has not directly signaled his plans for retirement, at least one senator has predicted it could come over the summer. Others maintain that confirming a conservative successor to Kennedy, who was nominated by Ronald Reagan in 1988, would be easier while Republicans control the Senate.
“He’s a Republican, his wife’s a Republican, his kids are Republican. You’d think he'd want his successor to be appointed by a Republican president,” said one GOP senator who requested anonymity to speak candidly.
The lawmaker said a rumor had circulated months ago that Kennedy wasn’t hiring new clerks, raising chatter in the Senate that he would step down this summer. But speculation about an imminent departure has apparently died down some in recent weeks.
Kathy Arberg, a spokeswoman for the Supreme Court, did not respond to a query about Kennedy’s political affiliation or about the status of future clerks.
The GOP senator said it would help Republicans keep control of the Senate if Kennedy announced his retirement, reminding voters of the Senate’s importance in shaping the courts.
“The only reason we won the White House and kept the Senate was because of that open Supreme Court seat,” the lawmaker added, referring to the vacancy following Scalia's death.
Scalia died in February 2016, but Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell(R-Ky.) kept the seat vacant until after President Obama left office nearly a year later. That decision left Obama's nominee, Merrick Garland, in limbo for months.
Many conservatives said they put aside their reservations about the rich asshole and voted for him because they felt confident he would pick a conservative justice to replace Scalia. For his part, the rich asshole sought to reassure conservatives throughout his 2016 campaign that he would pick a nominee in the mold of Scalia, including releasing a list of potential nominees.
Now, Republicans are privately wondering if there could be another Supreme Court vacancy in a major election year where Democrats are viewed as enjoying stronger enthusiasm.
Sen. Dean Heller (Nev.), the chamber’s most vulnerable Republican up for reelection this year, told an audience in Las Vegas earlier this month that he expected Kennedy to retire “around sometime early summer.”
He expressed hope that it would “get our base a little motivated because right now they’re not very motivated,” according to an audio recording of the event first reported by Politico.
A separate GOP senator told The Hill that confirming another conservative justice to the court would give Senate Republican candidates another solid accomplishment to run on in the midterms.
“It would be helpful if he made this the cap of his career,” the lawmaker said of Kennedy. “It would be very helpful to appoint another Neil Gorsuch on the court for the next decade.”
A CNN–SSRS poll of registered voters nationwide last month found that Democrats are generally more enthusiastic about voting in midterm races. It found that 51 percent of the Democratic base described themselves as extremely or very enthusiastic about voting, while 41 percent of Republicans described themselves that way.
Republican senators worry that if Democrats take back the Senate in 2018 — which they view as a less than 50-50 proposition — Senate Democratic Leader Charles Schumer (N.Y.) could keep an open Supreme Court seat vacant until the end of the rich asshole’s first term, as payback for Garland.
Conservatives applauded the Senate confirmation of the rich asshole's pick of Gorsuch in April, which McConnell later ranked as the biggest accomplishment of his career.
Replacing Kennedy, however, could have a far bigger impact on the future direction of the court, as he has emerged as its most important swing vote after the retirement of former Justice Sandra Day O’Connor.
Kennedy sided with liberal justices — as well as Chief Justice John Roberts — in upholding the constitutionality of ObamaCare in 2015 and has written the majority opinions in four landmark decisions protecting LGBT rights.
But he also authored the landmark 2010 decision in Citizens United v. FEC, which substantially weakened campaign finance law and gave more power to outside advocacy groups.
Adding Gorsuch to the court didn’t change its ideological balance as much, given that Scalia had been a reliable conservative.
Senate Democrats must defend 26 seats in November, including 10 in states that the rich asshole carried over Hillary Clinton in 2016. Republicans only need to worry about nine seats.
Democratic sources, still angry over the treatment of Garland, say the GOP is right to fret.
Publicly, however, Republicans don’t want to appear to be putting pressure on Kennedy, who is widely respected.
“I would love to have a chance to replace Justice Kennedy on a Republican watch, but that’s up to him. He has the right to serve as long as he wants,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Senate Republican Whip John Cornyn (Texas), another member of the Judiciary Committee, said it “would be presumptuous of me to tell Justice Kennedy what to do.”
“He’s a smart guy. He’ll figure that out,” he added. “Obviously it’s easier to manage when we’re in control of the process as the majority.”
Here are the 5 biggest revelations from Stormy Daniels’ interview on ’60 Minutes’
Stormy Daniel on 60 Minutes (Screenshot)
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Stormy Daniels is not to be underestimated. A former candidate for Senate in Louisiana, the adult film star and director has proven one of the rich asshole’s most effective adversaries since speaking out about their affair in 2006.
Despite the president’s best attempts to keep her off the air, Daniels sat down with 60 Minutes’ Anderson Cooper to discuss her alleged tryst with the former reality TV star, the hush money the rich asshole’s lawyer paid, and the threats to which she and her daughter have been subjected.
Here are five of the wildest revelations from her promised interview, which likely won’t be the last:
A the rich asshole lackey physically threatened Daniels and her daughter.
It wasn’t the fear of breaking a non-disclosure agreement that kept Daniels quiet about her affair with some rich asshole. Going to a fitness class with her daughter one morning, Daniels told Anderson Cooper, “a guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story.’ And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.'”
the rich asshole had no remorse about cheating on his wife, and indicated he and Melania have separate bedrooms.
Cooper asked Daniels whether the rich asshole mentioned his wife Melania on that fateful night in 2006, given that she had just given birth to their first son, Barron. Daniels claims, “I asked. And he brushed it aside, said, ‘Oh yeah, yeah, you know, don’t worry about that. We don’t even…we have separate rooms and stuff.'”
Daniels accepted the $130,000 in hush money because she was scared.
Daniels told 60 Minutes that she had fielded several lucrative offers to tell her story during the 2016 election, but when the rich asshole’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen came to her with a $130,000 offer she accepted, partly because her lawyer informed her that “they can make your life hell in many different ways.”
Daniels was never attracted to the rich asshole.
“Ugh, here we go,” was her first thought when she reached the rich asshole’s room after the celebrity golf tournament where they met. Her thought process, she explained to Cooper, was, “I had it coming for making a bad decision for going to someone’s room alone and I just heard the voice in my head, ‘Well, you put yourself in a bad situation and bad things happen, so you deserve this.'”
Still, she stresses that the sex was consensual, and that she is “not a victim.”
The now president of the United States did not use protection.
This is the same man who once said that avoiding STDs was his own personal Vietnam. Enough said.
Alleged threats against Stormy Daniels are a startling reminder of the rich asshole’s mob ties
Ignored amidst all of his other scandals, the rich asshole's mob ties are as deep as they are unprecedented.
Who allegedly threatened Stormy Daniels and her infant daughter?
Daniels, an adult film actress who says she had an affair with some rich asshole in 2006, said in an interview with 60 Minutes Sunday night that an unknown man threatened her not to reveal any information about the rich asshole.
Daniels said she was threatened in 2011, the same time she had been in discussion with In Touch Magazine about revealing details of the alleged affair. “A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave the rich asshole alone. Forget the story,'” Daniels recalled Sunday. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”
Daniels doesn’t know the name of the man who threatened her, but said she would be able to recognize him “right away.” And as Daniels’ lawyer, Michael Avenatti, said on Monday, he has “no doubt” that the rich asshole’s lawyer Michael Cohen or one of the rich asshole’s close associates were behind the threat.
Stormy Daniels' attorney, @MichaelAvenatti, says he has "no doubt" Michael Cohen or someone close to Trump was responsible for threatening Stormy and her daughter in 2011.
The president, thus far, has refrained from directly commenting on the matter. On Monday, Deputy Press Secretary Raj Shah said the rich asshole “doesn’t believe that any of the claims that Ms. Daniels made last night in the interview are accurate” — including the claims of a threat.
But the rich asshole may not be in any position to judge Daniels’ accuracy, especially given his well-documented ties to organized crime figures, and the use of similar strong-arm intimidation tactics in the past.
Indeed, no president — or presidential candidate, for that matter — had as extensive a history of ties to mobsters and mafiosi as the rich asshole. As New York Magazine’s Jonathan Chait wrote, “the rich asshole’s Mafia connections are the sort of scandal that would have killed an ordinary candidacy but barely even register on the outsize scale of the rich asshole scandals.”
While much of it has been buried under a growing pile of scandals and controversy, revisiting the links between the rich asshole and the mob, both domestic and foreign, shows what kind of illicit friends he kept close.
Mobster’s paradise
One journalist, Pulitzer Prize winner David Cay Johnston, spent the past three decades cataloging the rich asshole’s seedy ties throughout his years as a developer in New York and New Jersey. In 2016, before the rich asshole’s election, Johnston provided a tour de force introduction into the rich asshole’s ties to the dons and lieutenants of the New York mafia.
the rich asshole “hired mobbed-up firms to erect the rich asshole Tower and his the rich asshole Plaza apartment building in Manhattan, including buying ostensibly overpriced concrete from a company controlled by mafia chieftains Anthony ‘Fat Tony’ Salerno and Paul Castellano,” Johnston wrote. And it wasn’t just business, either. the rich asshole “also probably met personally with Salerno at the townhouse of notorious New York fixer Roy Cohn.”
the rich asshole also routinely worked with individuals connected to the mob in Atlantic City. One of his associates, court records later revealed, was in turn an “associate of the Scarfo crime organization, serving as a financier of mob activities in South Jersey and Philadelphia,” the Washington Post wrote.
Nor, of course, was it only the American crime networks in close proximity to the rich asshole. From Azerbaijan to Iran to Russia, the rich asshole’s dealings — and his properties themselves — often played key roles in money laundering for organized crime and drug cartels.
One figure linked to the Russian mob, Felix Sater, has been a recent headache for the president, given reports on Sater’s willingness to cooperate with a probe into international money laundering networks.
All told, as Johnston found, “[n]o other candidate for the White House [in 2016 had] anything close to the rich asshole’s record of repeated social and business dealings with mobsters, swindlers, and other crooks.” the rich asshole’s mob ties were so extensive, and so concerning, that Australia eventually barred the rich asshole from opening a hotel casino in the country. As authorities wrote, “Atlantic City would be a dubious model for Sydney and in our judgment. The the rich asshole Mafia connections should exclude” the rich asshole from consideration.
That didn’t prevent the rich asshole from winning the presidency, of course — and from suddenly seeing accusations that his inner circle played a role in threatening the safety of a young mother and her child recently come to the fore. If anything, the rich asshole’s presidency has only served as another introduction to the tactics employed by the rich asshole himself and the business from which he refuses to divest.
Look at everything that’s played out at the rich asshole’s former property in Panama over the past two months, for instance. After the majority owner of the building attempted to terminate the the rich asshole Organization as the property manager, the rich asshole Organization security staff decided to scuffle with the property’s actual security staff, going so far as to allegedly grab one of the non-the rich asshole employees by the neck to wrestle them to the ground. All of this while they blocked the majority owner from his property units.
A few weeks later, a Panamanian judge who had ruled against the the rich asshole Organization said the rich asshole’s lawyers paid her a visit, leaving her “intimidated and threatened.”
It’s unclear whether the rich asshole has any plans to comment — or tweet — directly about Daniels’ allegations moving forward. But she’s not the only one over the past year who’s revealed physical threats relating to her relationship with the rich asshole. As Buzzfeed reported this week, a lawyer representing clients who stood to lose over a billion dollars due to the rich asshole’s business malfeasance received a threatening phone call of his own. (The lawyer just so happened to work for the same firm tasked with tracking down the assets of former Haitian dictatorsJean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier — including a the rich asshole Tower apartment.)
“I don’t know why you’re fucking with some rich asshole but if you keep fucking with some rich asshole, we know where you live and we’re going to your house for your wife and kids,” the caller allegedly said.
The caller was never identified, but suspicions about his ties to the rich asshole remain — as do the questions surrounding the president’s links to any number of notorious mob figures. After all, as another journalist chronicling the rich asshole’s mob ties told Johnston, “[the rich asshole] saw these mob guys as pathways to money — and Donald is all about money.”
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