Conservative Charlie Sykes blasts ‘post-ethical’ Fox News for harboring Hannity while he retained Cohen
Never-the rich asshole Republican Charlie Sykes on MSNBC (image via screengrab).
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Never-the rich asshole conservative commentator Charlie Sykes on Monday blasted Fox News and their host Sean Hannity for failing to disclose to viewers that he was represented by the president’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen.
“Lordy, I hope there are tapes!” Sykes joked to MSNBC host Ali Velshi, echoing fired FBI Director James Comey’s off-the-cuff remark during his 2017 Senate hearing about his conversations with President some rich asshole.
“Look, Sean Hannity had no legal obligation to disclose his relationship with Michael Cohen,” the conservative radio host acknowledged, “but if there is anything remaining of journalistic ethics at Fox News, he certainly needed to disclose that fact when he was going on and on and on talking about Michael Cohen, the [FBI] raid on Michael Cohen and this entire, you know, legal proceeding here.”
“Are there any standards any longer?” Sykes mused. “We’ve talked a lot about being in a post-factual political world. You kind of wonder whether over there [at Fox News] you are in a post-ethical political world as well.”
Watch below, via MSNBC:
Watch Shep Smith’s awkward reaction after he’s blindsided by news that Hannity is Cohen’s secret client
Fox News host Shep Smith (Screenshot)
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During the beginning of Fox News host Shepard Smith’s show on Monday, news broke that his colleague Sean Hannity was a client of some rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen.
Smith at first had little to say about the revelation.
“Let’s turn to Bob Bianci now, a defense attorney and former prosecutor — and we’ll get to the part that I’m sure you’re curious about in a minute when I have a little bit more information,” Smith said.
The Fox News host later said that producers were trying to get in touch with Hannity.
“We’ll report on it when we know the rest of it. A lot of people know his number.”
Eventually, Smith obtained a statement from Hannity’s publicist.
“We just spoke with his publicist here at Fox News who says that he says they’ve been friends for a long time, he never denied that he he was his lawyer, that he did some legal work along the way, and that’s the extent of that,” Smith reported.
Watch video below:
‘Holy cannoli’: Internet explodes in shock after Hannity is outed as Michael Cohen’s client
Fox News host Sean Hannity. Image via screengrab.
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As soon as Bloomberg News revealed to the world that Fox News personality Sean Hannity is the rich asshole attorney Michael Cohen’s secret third client, Twitter had a field day of hot takes, outrage and hilarity.
“Holy cannoli,” CNN’s Manu Raju tweeted with a link to the news.
“Why doesn’t @FoxNews have a conflict of interest policy requiring Hannity to disclose his personal interest in the Cohen search when commenting on it?” former White House Office of Government Ethics director Walter Schaub mused.
Why doesn’t @FoxNews have a conflict of interest policy requiring Hannity to disclose his personal interest in the Cohen search when commenting on it? m.youtube.com/watch?v=vYa-61…
Vanity Fair special correspondent Joe Hagan, meanwhile, joked that “tonight’s episode of Hannity should be interesting.”
Check out more responses below:
To all the Trump pundits trying to say that Sean Hannity might have a TOALLY innocent reason for hiring Cohen, such as research on his show or to ask a simple question, JUST STOP. @seanhannity went out of his way to keep his name secret-you don't do that if there's no fire.
It's startling how so many pieces of Donald Trump's universe are colliding in court today. The sex allegations, the Russia investigation, the conservative media world — all the pieces seem to be somehow connected.
So Sean Hannity has been using his perch at Fox News to rail against the investigation into someone who he didn't disclose was his own lawyer. twitter.com/seanhannity/st…
A federal judge has forced Trump’s personal 'f*cker-upper' Michael Cohen to reveal the identity of his secret client — which turns out to be Trump jock-sniffing sycophant Sean Hannity bit.ly/2HD4nwu @FoxNews
Can anyone else hear @JimmyKimmel laughing in LA? I can hear him all the way from the east coast. Congrats, Sean Hannity! You made Jimmy’s day! #FireHannity
Sean Hannity is the mysterious third client that Michael Cohen fought to keep a secret
Fox News anchor Sean Hannity (left, via screngrab) and the rich asshole lawyer Michael Cohen (right, via Creative Commons).
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Despite trying to hide the identity of his clients, Bloomberg reported Monday that the president’s longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen represents Fox News personality Sean Hannity.
Before Hannity was revealed as Cohen’s third client, Bloomberg reported that he asked the attorney not to let his name be made public. Instead, Cohen’s lawyer Stephen Ryan handed the name of the client now known to be Hannity to U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood in Manhattan in a sealed envelope, promising to appeal if the judge ordered he and his client to disclose the name.
“At this point,” Ryan said during the hearing, “no one would want to be [associated] with the case in that way.”
Attorney Michael Cohen compared the rich asshole to a crime boss — long before Comey ever did
Michael Cohen (CBS/screen grab)
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President some rich asshole’s longtime personal attorney once compared him to a crime boss.
The Daily Beast on Monday highlighted a past interview with Michael Cohen, in which he called the rich asshole the “godfather of politics.”
“He is now the godfather of politics,” Cohen told ABC News in 2011. “Everybody wants to see him, everybody wants his endorsement.”
An ABC News article from 2011 also reported that some the rich asshole associates had nicknamed Cohen as “Tom” — a reference to Tom Hagen, the consigliore to Vito Corleone in the “Godfather” movies.
“It means that if somebody does something some rich asshole doesn’t like, I do everything in my power to resolve it to some rich asshole’s benefit,” Cohen told ABC News. “If you do something wrong, I’m going to come at you, grab you by the neck and I’m not going to let you go until I’m finished.”
Former FBI director James Comey compares the rich asshole to a mob boss in his new book.
Comey writes that his experiences with the rich asshole gave him “flashbacks to my earlier career as a prosecutor against the mob.”
“The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”
Federal agents recently raided the home and office of Cohen, reportedly seizing a trove documents. He has been under criminal investigation for months over his business dealings
the rich asshole's lawyers argue against FBI search of Michael Cohen's records in new filing
Washington (CNN)President some rich asshole's lawyers argued in a new court filing Sunday against the FBI search of Michael Cohen's records, and sided with the former the rich asshole Organization lawyer's legal team to make sure confidentiality to his legal clients hasn't been breached.
The President's attorneys called the federal searches of Cohen's home, office, hotel room and cellphones last Monday "an operation disquieting to lawyers, clients, citizens, and commentators alike."
The Sunday night filing places the President directly in opposition to the wishes of one of the most significant US attorney's offices in the Justice Department. Instead, the rich asshole backs his business colleague, who finds himself amid a months-long criminal investigation.
The filing marks the first time the President's legal representatives have waded into an ongoing criminal matter, an unusual but not unheard-of situation for past administrations.
the rich asshole's newly enlisted lawyers from the firm Spears & Imes in New York, who stepped into the case Friday, largely support the same stance as the President's longtime personal attorney, Cohen, who is asking a judge to prevent federal investigators from using information seized without his review.
The federal prosecutors -- operating out of Manhattan to investigate Cohen's business dealings and separately from special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation into possible Russian collusion -- have said they would use a different set of government lawyers to review the materials seized.
That walled-off group, called a "taint team," would look for possible breaches of confidentiality regarding Cohen's interactions with his legal clients, commonly called attorney-client privilege, and prevent the Manhattan prosecutors from seeing that material.
the rich asshole's lawyers say any rush to review the documents for privilege "makes clear that the taint team will not zealously protect the President's privilege."
The Department of Justice announced Friday that Cohen had been "under criminal investigation" for months in New York relating to his business dealings.
CNN reported Friday that the FBI seized recordings Cohen made of his conversations with a lawyer representing two women who had alleged affairs with the rich asshole, according to a source familiar with the matter. Cohen is under scrutiny in part for his role in seeking to suppress an alleged affair with porn star Stormy Daniels through a hush deal. The warrant sought information about that payment along with any information that connected Cohen with efforts to suppress the disclosure of the rich asshole's alleged affair with Playboy model Karen McDougal.
the rich asshole and Cohen's lawyers attempted to block federal prosecutors from using some of the records they obtained during the raid and filed a temporary restraining order.
Little is known about what was actually achieved by strikes on Syria
While President the rich asshole triumphantly declared "Mission Accomplished" on Twitter, it's unclear if the strikes were at all successful.
Nearly three days after the United States, France, and the United Kingdom joined forces to attack alleged chemical weapons facilities in Syria, little is known about the impact of the attack.
The three targets — associated with the government’s alleged research, development, and deployment of chemical weapons — were struck on Friday night in Syria, near Damascus and Homs, in response to a chemical weapons attack a week earlier that left scores of civilians dead.
President some rich asshole called Friday’s strikes “perfectly executed.”
The Russian military, meanwhile, claims to have struck down a majority of the missiles.
There have also been no reports on casualties or the extent of damage done to the facilities. Nor is there any indication that the strikes will deter the regime of President Bashar al-Assad from using chemical weapons against civilians again.
In April 2017, in response to images of another chemical weapons attack in the Syria, President the rich asshole ordered a missile strike on an airbase that resumed functioning just one day after the attack , and does not seem to have deterred other chemical attacks from taking place.
According to Human Rights Watch, chemical attacks — what President the rich asshole referred to as a “red line” — have been deployed dozens of times since 2013 by both state and non-state actors.
That red line has been crossed several times between the two chemical attacks in April 2017 and 2018 that triggered a U.S. military response.
Kori Schake, deputy director-general of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, told NPR’s Morning Edition on Monday that “this is a problem that you’re going to have to keep paying attention to, because every time Bashar al-Assad needs a battlefield victory that he can’t achieve by conventional forces, he employs chemical weapons to terrorize the rebels into submission.”
When asked if there was a more effective way to discourage Assad from using such weapons again, Schake replied, “Yes, you could take Bashar al-Assad out of power.” Failing that, she suggested that rather than strike at chemical weapons facilities, that the United States and it allies destroy Assad’s conventional weapons and military capabilities.
But that would imply that the rich asshole administration has a strategy Syria, or sees a role there for the United States beyond the defeat of the self-proclaimed Islamic State, which it does not.
While the generals surrounding the rich asshole had insisted that the United States will have to remain in Syria indefinitely, the president himself declared in March that U.S. troops will be out “very soon.”
This led to days of confused messaging, and little has been said to clarify where the United States currently stands.
French President Emmanuel Macron, however, on Sunday told a French television network that he had “convinced him that it’s necessary to be there…we also convinced him that the strikes had to be limited to chemical weapons capabilities.”
Another big unknown is how Russia will react to Friday’s strikes.
Russia’s response thus far has been a mixture of indignation and threatening posturings. It has called the chemical attack a hoax perpetrated by anti-Assad rebels and claimed to have shot 71 out of 105 missiles aimed at Syria in Friday’s strike out of the sky (a claim the Pentagon disputes).
Anatoly Antonov, the Russian ambassador to the United States, tweeted on Friday that “such actions will not be left without consequences.” He did not elaborate on what those consequences would be.
Statement by the Ambassador Antonov on the strikes on #Syria:
A pre-designed scenario is being implemented. Again, we are being threatened. We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences.
All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris.
On Sunday, Nikki Haley, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N. told CBS’s Face the Nation that additional Russian sanctions “will be coming down” on Monday and that they will be targeting “any sort of companies that were dealing with equipment related to Assad and chemical weapons use.”
On Monday, the White House walked back her statement and said that it has not yet made a decision on sanctions on Russia.
UPDATE: President the rich asshole has, reports The Washington Post, “put the brakes” on new sanctions against Russia. According to administration officials, it is “unlikely the rich asshole would approve any additional sanctions without another triggering event by Russia.”
Here’s how the Republican Party’s campaign against James Comey is undermining the rich asshole’s legitimacy as president
President some rich asshole shakes James Comey's hand (Photo: Screen capture)
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The Republican Party, in conjunction with the White House, has launched a full-throated attack against former FBI Director James Comey as he begins a tour for his new tell-all book. The commentary and allegations against Comey might draw skepticism against his book, however, it might also take down President some rich asshole along with it.
Senior White House counselor Kellyanne Conway flubbed Monday morning, saying, “this guy swung an election,” referring to Comey. She later claimed it was “sarcasm.” Yet, it seems the GOP does agree that Comey was critical in Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss. Why else would they be running a national campaign citing Democrats attacking Comey for doing exactly that?
In example after example, the RNC’s microsite quotes Democrats hitting Comey for announcing he was “reopening” the investigation into Clinton. The investigation was never closed, and unbeknownst to Americans, the rich asshole was already under his own investigation, which was not revealed until after the election.
“Maybe’s he’s not in the right job,” the RNC quotes House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) saying, Nov. 2016.
“I do not have confidence in him any longer,” said Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY), also that November.
Clinton called out Comey for “badly overstepped his bounds,” in Sept. 2017.
The president himself even praised the former FBI director.
“It took a lot of guts,” the rich asshole said in October 2017 of Comey’s decision to hold a press conference about the so-called reopening. “I have to give the FBI credit. That was so bad what happened originally.”
“It took guts for Director Comey to make the move that he made in light of the kind of opposition he had where they’re trying to protect her from criminal prosecution,” the rich asshole later repeated the sentiment.
“I was not his fan, but I’ll tell you what — what he did, he brought back his reputation,” the rich asshole continued, later telling him to “hang tough.”
By heralding these anti-Comey comments, the Republican Party is aligning itself with those who believe Comey should not have made the announcement ant that it impacted the 2016 election.
Whether Conway was being sarcastic or not, the RNC is standing with those Democrats.The move thus calls into question the legitimacy of the rich asshole’s 2016 win on his own merits.
The 70 must-see lines in James Comey's ABC interview
(CNN)On Sunday night, James Comey told his side of the story.
The former -- and fired -- FBI director sat down with ABC's George Stephanopoulos Sunday night to talk about his deep concerns about President some rich asshole and to recount a number of now-famous/infamous episodes between the two men. (Comey has written a book about his experiences titled "A Higher Loyalty.")
ABC released the transcript of the entire five-hour(!) interview; I went through it to pluck out the lines from Comey that you absolutely shouldn't miss. They're below.
1. "I liken President the rich asshole in the book to a forest fire. Going to do tremendous damage. Going to damage those important norms. But a forest fire gives healthy things a chance to grow that had no chance before that fire."
Comey's logic here is intriguing but he's really talking about a controlled burn -- one in which the fire is managed. The consequences of a raging wildfire that no one is able to manage are, I think, a little different.
2. "So all of us have to constantly be involved and call it out when we see the truth endangered, when we see lying."
Remember that in his first year in office, the rich asshole said more than 2,000 things that were either partly or totally untrue. And his pace has not slowed since then.
3. "The title [of the book] comes from a bizarre conversation I had with the President in dinner at the White House in January of last year, where he asked for my loyalty personally as the FBI director."
the rich asshole has denied he ever asked for Comey's loyalty -- including on Twitter on Sunday! Tweeted the rich asshole: "I never asked Comey for Personal Loyalty. I hardly even knew this guy. Just another of his many lies. His "memos" are self serving and FAKE!"
4. "Well, that's why I was never going to write a book. It always felt like an exercise in ego."
That's what they all say! (Did I mention I wrote a book?)
5. "President Clinton's pardon of Marc Rich took my breath away. Th-- the notion that the president of the United States would pardon a fugitive without asking the prosecutors or the investigators, 'What do you think,' was shocking to me."
Clinton's pardon of Rich, which you can read more about here, was shocking to lots of people. The New York Times editorial board described it as a "shocking abuse of presidential power."
6. "I thought David Petraeus should've been prosecuted not just for the mishandling of the classified information, but also for lying to the FBI because lying is -- strikes at the heart of our rule of law in this country."
Interesting to note here that Comey wanted to go further against Petraeus than the then Attorney General Eric Holder did. (Petraeus was charged -- and convicted -- only with mishandling classified information.)
7. "I've gone through 50 years of cases. I don't know of a case where anyone has ever been prosecuted for just being careless, even extremely careless."
Comey acknowledges here that from the start of the Hillary Clinton email investigation, he strongly suspected there wouldn't be charges brought against her. That will be fodder for the rich asshole who will say the former FBI director had prejudged the case before even seeing it.
8. "If you issue a one liner from the Obama Justice Department about one of the two candidates for president of the United States, in this case the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, and say, 'We're done here,' in the absence of any kind of transparency, corrosive doubt creeps in that the system is rigged somehow."
This is Comey's explanation for why he delivered extended public remarks about the end of the Clinton investigation. And, yes, that noise you hear is Democrats collectively rolling their eyes at his explanation.
9. "It really did surprise me. He's a very smart man and a lawyer. And so it surprised me. He shouldn't have done it."
Comey here scolds then-President Obama for saying publicly he didn't believe Clinton had done anything wrong with her email server setup. (Here's more on exactly what Obama said on the investigation.)
10. "Classified information came into the possession of the US intelligence community in the early part of 2016 that indicated there was material out there that raised the question of whether [Attorney General] Loretta Lynch was controlling me and the FBI and keeping the Clinton campaign informed about our investigation."
Wait, what????
11. "And so whether or not it was true, the fact that it would be out there and allow people to argue that something terrible was going on in this investigation cut in favor of more transparency."
Comey says the investigation into whether Lynch was purposely controlling what the FBI said and found on the investigation wasn't true. But he is very vague about the whole thing -- likely because the information remains classified.
12. "My staff convinced me that that's just going to confuse all kinds of people, if you start talking about statutes and what the words mean. What's a colloquial way to explain it? And elsewhere in my statement I had said, 'Extremely careless.'"
In his original draft on Clinton's email, Comey used the words "gross negligence" to describe her behavior. Here he explains why he changed it. (the rich asshole has insisted the change was because Comey was going easy on Clinton.)
13. "This wasn't your ordinary bureaucrat who just mishandles one document. This was something more than that. But not something that anybody would prosecute."
To Comey's mind, Clinton's private email server was in the grey area between a very serious crime and a regular old mistake. Which made it hard to handle especially given her position.
14."In late July [2016], the FBI got information that there was somebody who had had -- was a foreign policy advisor named [George] Papadopoulos to the rich asshole campaign."
This is an important note. the rich asshole -- and some other Republicans -- insist that the entire FBI investigation into his campaign and Russia was premised on the dossier put together by Christopher Steele. It wasn't. It began with Papadopoulos looking for the dirt the Russians allegedly had on Clinton.
15. "The investigation was triggered entirely separately from the Steele dossier."
Again, important. And counter to the rich asshole narrative.
16. "I discovered President the rich asshole wouldn't even do it privately, and I don't know why that is."
Comey suggests here that the rich asshole won't bash Russian President Vladimir Putin in private, which he finds baffling.
17. "I remember saying that I'm a little bit tired of being the independent voice on things."
[Eye roll emoji]
18. "All of us were operating in a world where the polls were showing that some rich asshole had no chance."
For those who say law enforcement is totally blind to politics, I give you this sentence from James Comey.
19. "Speaking is really bad; concealing is catastrophic. If you conceal the fact that you have restarted the Hillary Clinton email investigation, not in some silly way but in a very, very important way that may lead to a different conclusion, what will happen to the institutions of justice when that comes out?"
Comey's deliberations on whether to let the public know about the re-opening of the Clinton email investigation is totally fascinating. The issue many people will take with it is that he had no way of knowing whether the emails found on Anthony Weiner's laptop were duplicates of emails the FBI had already seen. So why announce something that may not be news at all? (Turns out there was nothing new on Weiner's laptop.)
20. "I would so much rather Anthony Weiner had never had a laptop."
So would Anthony Weiner.
21. "Speaking is going to have some impact, potentially. But concealing is going to destroy the institutions that I love."
Comey critics will argue that he is greatly exaggerating the impact of waiting and seeing what was on Weiner's laptop before speaking publicly. Greatly.
22. "If I ever start considering whose political fortunes will be affected by a decision, we're done."
But, you just said that you and everyone else were operating under the assumption that Clinton was going to win!
23. "Cause I was operating in a world where Hillary Clinton was going to beat some rich asshole."
But, but, but [head explodes]
24. "It sucked."
James Comey on being James Comey in the final days of the 2016 campaign.
25. "The honest answer is I screwed up a couple of things, but in the main, I think given what I knew at the time, these were the decisions that were best calculated to preserve the values of the institutions."
[narrator voice] He doesn't really think he screwed up much of anything.
26. "I'm glad for a lotta reasons I don't have a time machine."
Strong disagree. Having a time machine would rule.
27. "I-- never going to run for office."
An interesting pledge to make by Comey -- and sort of out of the blue. I had been wondering if this whole experience might actually push him to run for office -- or at least make him more interested in the prospect.
28. "What did it cost me? Well, (SIGH)."
Story of my life -- especially the "(SIGH)"
29. "But this was-- their sense that given the variety of sources and methods we had, we had this nailed."
This is Comey on the intelligence on Russia's meddling in the 2016 election. "We had this nailed."
30. "President Obama has a great poker face."
Coming soon to a world poker event near you....
31. "But I read it as, 'You poor bastard.'"
What Comey believed Obama was conveying to him in advance of a sitdown with the incoming president to talk about the more salacious details in the Steele dossier.
32. "And even though I did not intend to jam some rich asshole with this, my thinking was, given his approach to the world, he may think I'm pulling a J. Edgar Hoover and assume that I'm trying to dangle this over him to get leverage on him."
Knowing the rich asshole, that is exactly what he was thinking.
33. "My impression was he looked exactly like he did on television, except he looked shorter to me than he did on television, but otherwise exactly the same."
Of all the things Comey said in this interview, taking a shot at the rich asshole's height is probably the thing that upsets the president the most.
Of all the things Comey said in this interview, taking a shot at the rich asshole's height is probably the thing that upsets the president the most.
34. "I stared at it pretty closely and my reaction was, 'It most take a heck of a lot of time in the morning, but it's impressively coifed.'"
Well, I can die happy. The "What does Comey think of the rich asshole's hair?" question has been answered.
35. "I shook his hand I made a note to check the size and it seemed like he had average-sized hands."
"I buy a slightly smaller than large glove," some rich asshole.
36. "I came to conclude that a lot of times what he said was just kind of pleasantries to begin a conversation, so I don't know whether he really thought I had handled it well."
This is correct. the rich asshole, in person and one on one, is hugely solicitous. To a fault.
37. "I did not go into the business about -- people peeing on each other, I just thought it was a weird enough experience for me to be talking to the incoming president of the United States about prostitutes in a hotel in Moscow."
"People peeing on each other." Holy moly.
38. "He was very defensive and started to launch into-- for reasons that I don't understand, started going into the list of people who had accused him of touching them improperly, sexual assault and how he hadn't done this, he hadn't done that, he hadn't done that."
This is the rich asshole's first reaction to the Comey briefing on the Russia hotel allegations. His first one!
39. "I don't know whether the -- the-- current president of the United States was with prostitutes peeing on each other in Moscow in 2013. It's possible, but I don't know."
I mean, it is impossible to overestimate the seriousness of this statement. The former FBI Director isn't able to say, conclusively, that the president wasn't involved with prostitutes in Russia.
40. "Remember, that was what I worried about is that he would think I was pulling a J. Edgar Hoover, to come in there and jam him by raising the prospect of salacious, compromising material."
"Pulling a J. Edgar Hoover" is a phrase I could get used to using more often.
41. "Another reason you know it's not true is I'm a germaphobe. There's no way I'd let people pee on each other around me."
Comey quoting the rich asshole. And I thought urine was sterile but apparently it isn't?
42. "And I just remember thinking, 'Everything's gone mad.'"
So say we all.
43. "You would think that you would notice me, this giraffe standing at the end of the room."
Comey on Comey: "This giraffe."
44. "Isn't he master of television, this is disastrous."
This is Comey on the rich asshole handshake. And, yes. And yes.
WASHINGTON, DC - JANUARY 22: U.S. President some rich asshole (C) shakes hands with James Comey, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), during an Inaugural Law Enforcement Officers and First Responders Reception in the Blue Room of the White House on January 22, 2017 in Washington, DC. the rich asshole today mocked protesters who gathered for large demonstrations across the U.S. and the world on Saturday to signal discontent with his leadership, but later offered a more conciliatory tone, saying he recognized such marches as a "hallmark of our democracy." (Photo by Andrew Harrer/Pool/Getty Images)
45. "So I extend my hand and he grabs my hand and he pulls in and back."
This is the classic the rich asshole handshake move. The tug and pull. I believe he's patented it.
46. "He was going for the hug, going for the hug."
I would not have guessed some rich asshole was a hugger.
47. "I'm not an unusually strong person but I work out."
Same.
48. "And so the whole world saw him kiss me."
This took an unexpected turn.
49. "It was to make me a friend of ours."
All I can think of is "Donnie Brasco."
50. "He said, 'I expect loyalty, I need loyalty.'"
the rich asshole says he never said any such thing. Someone is not telling the truth.
51. "We just stared at each other and then he went on eating."
Sounds like every date I went on in high school.
52. "It was him talking almost the entire time, which I've discovered is something he frequently does."
A little bit of monologuing never hurt anyone, right?
53. "On and on and on and on. Everyone agrees, everyone agrees, I did this, the-- I never assaulted these women, I never made fun of a reporter."
The rich asshole presidency, in three sentences.
54. "He is someone who is -- for whom the truth is not a high value."
I actually think the rich asshole thinks he is telling the truth. Because he repeats it to himself enough times that he becomes convinced that whatever he says is the truth no matter what the actual facts bear out.
55. "So what kind of marriage to what kind of man does your wife think there's only a 99 percent chance you didn't do that?"
If the rich asshole wasn't already pissed off about this Comey sitdown (he was!) then this would make him crazy. Comey offering judgment on the state of his marriage? Rough.
56. "I'm not a comedian but I occasionally say something that's funny that people chuckle with each other."
Same.
57. "The president was talking about something that had happened during an airing of an interview he did with Bill O'Reilly on Fox."
"I don't get to watch much television. Primarily because of documents. I'm reading documents. A lot." -- some rich asshole
58. "I think it's possible. I don't know. These are more words I never thought I'd utter about a president of the United States, but it's possible."
This is Comey's response to a Stephanopoulos' question about whether the Russians might actually have something on the rich asshole. His inability to say "absolutely not" is -- and should be -- stunning.
59. "If he didn't know he was doing something improper, why did he kick out the attorney general and the vice president of the United States and the leaders of the intelligence community?"
This is a very good question from Comey about the Feb. 14 Oval office meeting between he and the rich asshole in which the president allegedly asked the FBI director to see a way to end the investigation in former national security adviser Michael Flynn. Why kick everyone else out if the conversation was totally innocuous and above board?
60. "It's certainly some evidence of obstruction of justice."
A big accusation here from Comey in regards that Feb. 14 meeting...
61. "Wow, the world s-- continues to go crazy."
A variation on a theme.
62. "She somehow got the FBI police to go down and get it, scanned it, e-mailed it to me."
Comey formally found out he was fired because his assistant scanned him a copy of the letter that the White House had dropped off at the Bureau. So, so weird.
63. "[John Kelly] was very emotional and said he had seen the news and that he intended to resign because he wouldn't work for people who would treat someone like me in such a dishonorable way and that he was going to quit."
[Narrator voice] He didn't quit.
64. "I actually gave thought to renting a convertible and driving almost 3,000 miles, something I've never done."
I would totally watch that reality show.
65. "I took a bottle of red wine out of my suitcase that I was bringing back from California, a California pinot noir, and I drank red wine from a paper coffee cup and just looked out at the lights of the country I love so much as we flew home."
This was the alternative ending of "The Great Gatsby," I believe.
66. "One of the orders that was issued is I was never to be allowed back on FBI property, like I had killed somebody."
This does deem overly harsh for a former director.
67. "My sense of him, maybe it's unfair to him, was that he was over matched for the job."
That "thud" you just heard was Comey pushing Attorney General Jeff Sessions under the bus.
68. "I don't think he's medically unfit to be president. I think he's morally unfit to be president."
This will be the lasting and lingering quote of this interview and maybe of the entire Comey book rollout.
69. "A person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they're pieces of meat, who lies constantly about matters big and small and insists the American people believe it, that person's not fit to be president of the United States, on moral grounds."
While the quote directly above -- #68 -- will get most of the attention, this one is , to my mind, more damaging. Comey is saying the rich asshole is amoral, that he lacks any basic moral structure at all. Which is a very dangerous thing for the leader of a country.
70. "I don't follow [the rich asshole] on Twitter, but I'm sure [a tweetstorm is] going to come."
Oh, it came alright! "Comey drafted the Crooked Hillary exoneration long before he talked to her (lied in Congress to Senator G), then based his decisions on her poll numbers," the rich asshole tweeted at 8:25 am ET Monday. "Disgruntled, he, McCabe, and the others, committed many crimes!"
the rich asshole is such an unhinged president because he operates using nothing but his animal instincts
President some rich asshole (Screenshot)
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In the last few weeks President the rich asshole has replaced both his secretary of state and his national security advisor. Each move came amid reports that he was acting on instinct. This is a matter of no little significance. A lot is riding on his gut — nothing less than the possibility of war. Both of his new hires are said to be hawks eager for war with both Iran and North Korea. As a headline in Slate announced: “It’s Time to Panic.”
some rich asshole himself seems convinced he can wisely rely on his gut when making decisions. But is he right? He’s almost certainly wrong, as I’ll show in a moment. But why would he believe it?
Like most people he tells himself a seductive story that confirms his assumptions. His story, I’d guess, goes something like this. I am a billionaire. I have been wildly successful. My whole life the bien pensant have been telling me that I’m going about things all wrong and yet look where I am? I’m in the White House and they’re not. So I must know what I’m doing. And I’ve accomplished everything in life by going with my gut.
One problem with this way of thinking is that we know for a fact that even highly successful people who have a history of going with their gut often fall flat on their faces. We don’t have to go back far in history for an example. Remember George W. Bush? He too thought he could rely on his gut when making decisions. What do you think he told himself when millions started marching against the Iraq War? I suspect it was the same story some rich asshole is probably telling himself now. That’s the problem with gut thinking of this sort. It’s the all-purpose excuse for doing whatever you want to do whether it’s likely to succeed or fail.
To be sure, presidents like Barack Obama who primarily rely on reason make errors as well. The questions a president faces are almost always the really hard ones — the easy ones get settled lower down the chain of command — so decision making usually comes down to judgment calls involving multiple variables, incomplete information, and best-guesses about future outcomes. But we almost certainly have more to fear from those who use their gut than their higher order cognitive thinking skills.
One reason is obvious and it has to do specifically with the presidency. There is simply no job like it. And that means that the experience a person brings to the Oval Office is unlikely in most cases to be of much help except in discrete situations where there’s a match between the current challenge being faced and some previous challenge, as sometimes happens. One thinks of Dwight Eisenhower making a war or peace call. Given his experience as the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe in World War II Ike had the requisite experience when deciding how to end the Korean War and set defense spending for the United States afterwards. Critics questioned his decisions. He rightly told them he knew more about war than they did. Game. Set. Match.
some rich asshole alas is no Eisenhower. His field of experience is limited to two realms: The real estate business and reality TV. And neither is a likely source of the kind of experience needed to conduct foreign affairs (like deciding whether it’s wise to meet with the leader of a country that has threatened to wipe out yours in a nuclear war).
It is possible for someone lacking experience to compensate for that. One way is by reading books. But all indications are that some rich asshole is not a reader. Friends have speculated that he’s not even read the bestsellers he’s credited with writing. Unlike George W. Bush, the rich asshole doesn’t read history books, a source of invaluable knowledge for a man in his position. Nor does he read biographies of past presidents. When asked why he doesn’t read history books or biographies he has said that he doesn’t have the time. He’s too busy. (Is it just because I’m a historian that I find this appalling?)
There is another way to compensate for limited experience and that’s to rely on others who possess the requisite expertise. But here again the rich asshole seems disinclined to avail himself of this source of ready knowledge. The President’s Daily Brief is prepared to give the president the best intelligence estimates of the government’s top experts. some rich asshole has reportedly blown them off frequently. As he explained on MSNBC during the campaign: “My primary consultant is myself and I have a good instinct for this stuff.” By “this stuff” some rich asshole was referring to foreign policy.
But it gets worse. Almost certainly when the rich asshole hails his gut he has in mind something else besides experience. And that’s his animal instincts. That’s the feeling he gets when he decides on the spot it’s time to clobber somebody, say something outrageous, or take a bold risk. As his own aides have confessed, the rich asshole doesn’t know when he wakes up in the morning what he plans to do that day. He just does it.
In a way his is the Malcolm Gladwell presidency. Gladwell argues in his bestseller Blink that people are often better off trusting their instincts rather than reason. This is not as crazy as it may sound. This is because our unconscious brain works faster than our conscious brain. A rich social science literature built around the insights of German psychologist Gerd Gigerenzer and others confirms that our unconscious brain can be helpful in a variety of situations from catching a baseball to deciding when to duck so a flying rock misses your head.
But is this a prudent approach in politics? There are many reasons to doubt it, as even Gladwell sorta acknowledges in his book in a chapter on Warren Harding, the only chapter dealing with politics. In Gladwell’s telling, voters picked Harding because he looked like a president.* As Gladwell admits, this was a mistake. Harding wasn’t cut out to be our chief executive as experience quickly showed. When given conflicting advice by different experts he expressed bewilderment. When making appointments he installed incompetent and corrupt people in high positions of authority. And I haven’t even mentioned his having sex with a lover in a White House closet.
There’s a reason instinct doesn’t work very well in politics. Our animal instincts evolved to help us survive in small communities made up of people we actually know. In the modern world political questions involve settling differences between millions and billions of people who are strangers. There is little reason to believe that instincts that evolved to shape our survival in a hunter gatherer community would be useful in helping us triumph in a complicated world consisting of nation states.
The problem is that our brain doesn’t send a red flare up to warn us when an instinctive action is inappropriate. Indeed, it tricks us into thinking that when we act on instinct we can trust ourselves no matter the context. That is because at the moment when we are going with our instincts we feel good about it. It is not until we see the results that we can make a proper assessment. And by then we may have become so invested in our decision that we may be more inclined to justify our action rather than reevaluate it no matter how badly things turned out. As psychologists have shown, literally hundreds of biases warp our ability to see things clearly, among them partisanship, which particularly afflicts the ability of human beings engaged in political debates to see the world as it is and not as we wish it to be. This is dangerous. Seeing things as they are is essential in politics.
As it happens, the rich asshole’s animal instincts have been flagrantly failing him. Consider the ability to size up people, which is surely one of the most basic animal instincts there is. You cannot get far in life if you place your trust repeatedly in people who don’t deserve it. But judging by the turnover in the White House staff the past 14 months this is not a skill the rich asshole can claim with elan. He has repeatedly put people in powerful positions who have turned out to be duds or worse, including his first National Security Advisor, first Chief of Staff, and first, second and third Communications Directors. (Yes, there have already been three of them, one lasting just ten days.)
Another animal instinct has repeatedly undermined his authority and that’s his resort to bullying. Like animals studied by primatologist Frans de Waal, the rich asshole resorts to bullying almost daily. In the real estate business bullying probably worked for him, because in that line of work there are always new projects involving new people you haven’t dealt with before. This explains why the rich asshole as a builder was able to get away with cheating Polish workers out of their pay and blocking black applicants from his apartments – and yes, he did both. But bullying doesn’t work very well in democratic politics. There are only so many important people in politics you can bully before you run out of easy marks. Eventually, in a closed universe like politics, the people you’ve bullied accumulate to the point where you can no longer escape them. In the end it’s a losing strategy.
So is lying, which the rich asshole does almost every time he opens his mouth. the rich asshole often lies even when we know he’s lying. Lying is instinctive with him, as it is, we have to acknowledge, with everybody. We all lie. But the rich asshole seems not to calculate in advance the cost of lying. This is unusual in a politician. Most usually quickly learn that while you can lie to the American people from time to time and suffer few consequences, you must not lie to other politicians. Do that and they won’t want to do deals with you in the future because they won’t be able to trust you. the rich asshole, though, hasn’t seemed to figure this out. His failure is sabotaging his ability to cut deals with Congress.
The question isn’t whether the rich asshole is going to continue to go with his instincts or not. We know now he is. Rather, the question is whether his supporters will. It was because they went with their instincts that they fell for a candidate who appealed to their tribal identity and demonization of outsiders. But will they continue to do so? On this question rests the fate of the republic.
*For the Record: Harding owed his election to multiple factors, most importantly that he was a Republican. That he was also handsome was probably of little significance, especially since political campaigns did not play out on television as they do now.
Rick Shenkman is the publisher of the History News Network and the author of Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics (Basic Books, January 2016). You can follow him on Twitter. He blogs at stoneagebrain.
This article was originally published at History News Network
Here’s another stunning Watergate parallel for President the rich asshole
some rich asshole and Richard Nixon (Composition / RawStory)
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President some rich asshole is responding to the raid on the office of his attorney, Michael Cohen, by making arguments reminiscent of another Republican president with whom he probably doesn’t want to be associated — President Richard Nixon.
This article was originally published at Salon
On an immediate level, this may seem like a simple case of the rich asshole and Cohen grasping at straws to conceal whatever they feel might be legally damaging to them in Cohen’s documents. It is unlikely that the presiding judge will allow them to effectively transform the search warrant into a subpoena — which is what the pair are essentially requesting, when they ask to be able to go through the documents to remove anything that might be protected by attorney/client privilege.
But there is an aspect of this that is positively Nixonian in nature. When Nixon was ordered by special prosecutor Archibald Cox to turn over tapes of secret recordings he had made of White House conversations, the president refused. When the U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that Nixon had to comply with Cox’s request, the president attempted to craft a deal with Attorney General Elliot Richardson that would allow him to review what was in the tapes first, summarize their contents to a federal judge and then allow Sen. John Stennis (who, despite being a Democrat from Mississippi, was not unsympathetic to Nixon) to listen to the recordings and independently verify that Nixon had not left anything important out of them.
The Nixon camp had claimed this was to protect matters of interest to national security. But although Richardson agreed to the compromise, Cox did not, and Nixon ordered him fired. What followed was the “Saturday night massacre”: Richardson resigned instead of following through on the unconstitutional order; Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus likewise resigned instead of doing so, so the job of firing Cox was ultimately left to U. S. Solicitor General Robert Bork — whose actions served as the argument against his confirmation to the Supreme Court 14 years later.
Which brings us to 2018. Both Nixon and the rich asshole have said they should have the right to review documents seized in order to investigate potential criminal activity, and cited legal rights that may not apply to their situations. For Nixon, it was executive privilege; for the rich asshole and Cohen, it is attorney-client privilege. The courts found that Nixon’s argument was invalid, and they’re now looking at the rich asshole’s claims.
When Nixon was invoking his privilege, the former president was trying to hide something — a so-called “smoking gun” in which Nixon was heard asking his officials to try to convince the CIA to request that the FBI stop investigating the Watergate burglary on the grounds of national security (that just happened to be the same logic Nixon used to try to keep the tapes from Cox).
Special prosecutor Leon Jaworski concluded that, by doing this, Nixon had entered into a criminal conspiracy to obstruct justice.
We don’t know what Michael Cohen has. Maybe the information could pertain to the payment made to porn star Stormy Daniels to cover up her alleged affair with the rich asshole — or to other women with whom the president may have been romantically involved. It also could pertain to the ongoing probe into possible collusion between the the rich asshole campaign and Russian government officials. Or both.
Nixon was convinced that the investigation into his actions was politically motivated — or, at the very least, that the accusation of partisan bias was enough for Republicans to discredit it. Just as Nixon claimed that the Watergate scandal had been cooked up by his political enemies, Cohen’s court filing argued that “the appointment of a Special Master will protect the integrity of the Government’s investigation from the toxic partisan politics of the day and attacks on the impartiality of the Justice Department and USAO.”
A legal filing from the firm McDermott, Will & Emery also mentioned that “as the Court is surely aware, there is a growing public debate about whether criminal and congressional investigations by the government are being undertaken impartially, free of any political bias or partisan motivation.”
One thing is clear, though. Presidents like Nixon and the rich asshole don’t ask to cherry pick what the people investigating them can see because they fear it will make themselves look too good. The fact that this request is even being made strongly suggests that the rich asshole and Cohen know they will find themselves in big trouble. The only question is what the trouble will be and why.
Meanwhile, a pair of legal experts sounded off on the rich asshole’s lawyers’ demands to review Cohen’s computers, and explained just why the rich asshole’s request was so odd.
First there was Professor Orin Kerr of the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.
First there was Professor Orin Kerr of the University of Southern California’s Gould School of Law.
2/ Cohen made a similar argument last week, and Trump has now intervened. I'm not aware of a client ever being able to conduct the first review of whether a lawyer's files are privileged. And for an obvious reason: If the files sought involve an alleged crime/fraud, the client
3/ will say that those e-mails are privileged. Trump in effect wants the warrant to be executed like a subpoena to him personally, in which he gets to decide what the government sees. But that's not how it's done: the point of using a search warrant is to block that. Trump's
3/ will say that those e-mails are privileged. Trump in effect wants the warrant to be executed like a subpoena to him personally, in which he gets to decide what the government sees. But that's not how it's done: the point of using a search warrant is to block that. Trump's
4/ argument is that as the client, he is uniquely situated to understand the documents and uniquely incentivized to respect the A/C privilege. But the law's goal here is to have a neutral assessment of what is privileged, not an incentivized one. Trump also relies on the Martha
7/ master's recommendations, and ultimately, on what the presiding judge thinks is correct. Anyway, that's my quick sense of things. Oh, and although I long ago read the cases on reviewing files in the A/c priv context, it has been a long time, and I'm not an expert on this.
8/ Also note that Trump is not claiming that his legal team will get the last word. He proposes that his team gets the first cut, and tells the government about what has been withheld; the government can challenge Trump's designation, and the court will decide. From the brief: pic.twitter.com/XpVb3mrUEY
8/ Also note that Trump is not claiming that his legal team will get the last word. He proposes that his team gets the first cut, and tells the government about what has been withheld; the government can challenge Trump's designation, and the court will decide. From the brief: pic.twitter.com/XpVb3mrUEY
9/ I see that @renato_mariotti is tweeting a thread on the same topic now, too. At least so far (#13) we're on the same page. Renato has more and more recent experience on this than I do, so check out his thread, too, if you've read so far here. twitter.com/renato_mariott…
Then there was former federal prosecutor and current candidate for Illinois Attorney General Renato Mariotti.
THREAD: What should we make of the filing by Trump’s lawyers demanding that Trump be permitted to review the documents seized by the government and remove any he believes are privileged? twitter.com/big_cases/stat…
2/ As a starting point, Cohen’s challenge to the search warrants is extraordinary, and Trump’s intervention into Cohen’s legal action is even more unusual. It’s not clear that Trump has the right to challenge the government’s review of documents seized from Cohen at this stage.
3/ Typically when the government executes a search warrant, the government uses a “taint team”—a group of lawyers walled off from the investigators—to deal with privilege issues. Taint teams often aren’t necessary but are required when a lawyer is involved.
6/ If Cohen had the ability to go through the documents and remove documents he didn’t want the prosecution to see, he could abuse that by removing documents that prove his guilt.
7/ The typical way that prosecutors obtain records in white collar cases is through subpoena, not search warrants. If the prosecutors sent Cohen a subpoena, he *could* have gone through the records on his own and removed some of them.
7/ The typical way that prosecutors obtain records in white collar cases is through subpoena, not search warrants. If the prosecutors sent Cohen a subpoena, he *could* have gone through the records on his own and removed some of them.
Cohen defies court order, refuses to release names of his clients
A dangerous game.
On Friday, a federal judge ordered Michael Cohen to turn over a list of his clients to the court by 10 a.m Monday morning. U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood said she would make the list public since the identities of clients, in most instances, are not protected by attorney-client privilege.
Cohen’s clientele became an issue after the government raided his home, hotel room, and office on April 9th. At the time, Cohen sought a temporary restraining order to prohibit the government from reviewing any of the documents, claiming attorney-client privilege.
This morning, Cohen responded to Judge Wood’s order with a letter filed with the court shortly before the 10 a.m. deadline, in which he declared that he would not provide the names of any clients that weren’t already publicly available.
Cohen said he worked at Estrin & Associates from 1991 to 1995, and had “numerous clients” during that time. From 1996 to 2006, Cohen said he worked in his own private legal practice, serving “hundreds of different clients.” Then, in 2006, Cohen joined Phillips Nizer LLP, where he represented about 15 clients. In all these cases, Cohen declined to disclose the identities of these clients, but claims that the materials seized by the government could include information from this time period.
From 2007 to 2017, Cohen said he only worked for some rich asshole and the the rich asshole organization.
From 2017 to 2018, Cohen said he was back in private practice and had only 10 clients. Seven of those were not legal clients and Cohen didn’t disclose their names. Two of the remaining three clients were some rich asshole and Elliot Broidy. Cohen’s relationship with Broidy was disclosed last week by the Wall Street Journal, which reported that Cohen helped negotiate a $1.6 million hush money agreement between Broidy, a top the rich asshole fundraiser, and a Playboy Playmate who he impregnated.
Cohen refused to reveal the identity of the third legal client because the client “directed Cohen not to reveal the identity publicly.” Cohen’s lawyer, Stephen Ryan, writes that this client’s matters “are responsive” to the search warrant, but it appears to be a typo. Ryan seems to have forgot to include the word “not.”
Ryan makes a feeble attempt to argue that the names of his clients are protected by attorney-client privilege. He cites a single case, Vingelli v. Drug Enforcement Agency, which states that names of clients are not protected unless there are “special circumstances.” Vingelli defines those circumstances as when a disclosure would implicate the client in a crime, or when it would be “tantamount to revealing a confidential communication.”
Without citing any case law, Ryan goes on to argue that Cohen’s case is the most “special” because “federal prosecutors have seized data and files of the personal attorney of the President of the United States.” He goes on to call the search of Cohen’s office the product of “the most highly politicized search warrant in the history of American jurisprudence.” Why would this prevent Cohen from disclosing the names of clients who are the not the president? Ryan does not explain.
The letter goes on to say that revealing the identities of Cohen’s clients would be “embarrassing” to them. This goes to the heart of the matter. Cohen has seemingly specialized in silencing women through threats and cash payments. Being included on a list of Cohen’s clientele is embarrassing. That doesn’t mean, however, that Cohen has a legal right to withhold the names.
Finally, Ryan argues that the court does not need the names of Cohen’s clients to make a decision on the temporary restraining order. This is not likely to be a compelling argument to Judge Wood, who has already ordered that Cohen release the names. Wood is already displeased with Cohen’s conduct, expressing frustration with his decision not to even show up at court on Friday.
Cohen decided to smoke cigars with his buddies instead.
The judge has ordered Cohen to appear in court with his lawyer at 2 p.m. today.
UPDATE (2:45 p.m.): Judge Woods rules that Cohen must disclose the name of his third client publicly now, arguing Cohen “has not met the standard for an exception to the notion that client identity…must be revealed.”
UPDATE (2:53 p.m.): Cohen’s previously unnamed third client is right-wing radio host Sean Hannity, according to Cohen’s lawyer.
Will ‘The Comey Show’ needle and gall Trump into another meltdown this week?
James Comey and Donald Trump (Composite / RawStory)
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Former FBI Director James Comey might drive President Donald Trump into a meltdown, according to Axios founder Mike Allen.
In a Monday morning commentary, Allen noted that “The Trump Show” now seems to be going up against “The Comey Show,” highlighting the press tour the former FBI director is doing around his recent tell-all book. The book tour is expected to go on for at least five weeks, and will likely “needle and gall President Trump amid global, legal and political crises.”
Last week, promotions for Comey’s ABC News interview were played for days on cable news outlets. The clips included Comey talking about the alleged tape that Russians might have of an incident with prostitutes in the presidential suite where former President Barack Obama and his wife once slept. Excerpts from Comey’s book also include subtle digs at Trump’s appearance and hand size, which has been a point of contention with reporters in the past.
Comey also argued in the ABC News interview that Trump is “morally unfit to be president.” He also said Trump is a “person who sees moral equivalence in Charlottesville, who talks about and treats women like they’re pieces of meat, who lies constantly.” Allen noted, Comey will likely repeat these statements to stay on message for his book tour, which means the president will be hammered by the message over and over again. Trump generally doesn’t do well when he feels he is under siege.
Allen noted that Comey repeated nearly the same phrasing in a USA Today interview, in which he called Trump “someone who is able to see moral equivalence in Charlottesville or to speak and treat women like they’re pieces of meat and to lie constantly.”
During the ABC interview, Comey advised Americans that “impeaching and removing Donald Trump from office would let the American people off the hook … People in this country need to stand up and go to the voting booth and vote their values.”
Polling has revealed that Americans see the former FBI director as a more credible source than the president, despite the GOP misinformation campaign that is running alongside Comey’s tour.
The result could be more than a few Trump Twitter meltdowns or worse, result in the firing of many staffers, including special counsel Robert Mueller or deputy attorney general Rod Rosenstein.
Watchdog group reveals how the rich asshole enriched himself with presidential run
A new report finds the properties have received at least $15.1 million since 2015.
Political spending at President some rich asshole’s U.S. businesses has dramatically increased since he announced his run for office in 2015, according to a new report by government watchdog group Public Citizen first obtained by McClatchy.
During the rich asshole’s presidential campaign and the first 15 months of his presidency, according to the report, political groups and federal agencies have spent at least $15.1 million at the rich asshole properties. The rich asshole campaign itself spent the biggest amount — nearly 90 percent, or roughly $13.4 million.
The $15.1 million figure includes more than $717,000 from the Republican National Committee; $595,000 from the RNC and the rich asshole campaign’s joint fundraising committee; and $9,000 from the National Republican Senate Committee.
Two powerful political action committees — American First Action, a PAC dedicated to electing federal candidates who support the rich asshole’s agenda, and Great America Committee, Vice President Mike Pence’s group — spent $33,000 and $24,000 at the rich asshole properties, respectively.
The increased spending appears to be a direct result of the rich asshole’s newly found political capital. According to the report, political spending during 2013 and 2014 at the rich asshole properties was just less than $20,000.
And the $15.1 million number may not even represent the full amount of what these political groups have spent at the rich asshole properties or businesses. Groups like Public Citizen and Property of the People have resorted to gathering information through public records requests and Federal Election Commission data because there is no central place to find out just how much the current administration is spending at the rich asshole-owned properties.
The conflict of interest violations involving politics and the rich asshole properties are numerous and far reaching.
The rich asshole International Hotel in Washington, for example, served as the venue for a fundraiser for Mike Pence’s brother’s congressional race earlier this year.
The Kuwaiti embassy, which had previously hosted its independence day parties at the Four Seasons for 10 years in a row, made the decision to host their 2017 and 2018 receptions at the rich asshole’s D.C. hotel.
In June of 2017, the hotel raked in $270,000 from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia during their government officials’ stay at the hotel.
Since 2015, political groups and federal agencies have spent $498,149 at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s private club in West Palm Beach, Florida. The club doubled its membership fee to $200,000 following the rich asshole’s election.
In February, the rich asshole Organization announced it had donated all profits stemming from foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury. New updates to the Treasury Department website, however, notes that the department only received $96,506.55 in the month of February, suggesting the rich asshole Organization hadn’t entirely kept its promise.
Rather than divest from his businesses, the rich asshole has placed his assets into a “blind trust” consisting of his two sons, Eric and Donald Jr., who oversee the day-to-day operations of the rich asshole Organization. In spite of this, the rich asshole is “definitely still involved” in his hotel business. As ProPublica reported in 2017, a lawyer for the rich asshole Organization confirmed that the president has access to the trust and can pull money from it whenever he wants without disclosing it to the public.
Fox News legal analyst stuns anchor with warning on Michael Cohen: ‘This is dangerous for the president’
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Fox News legal analyst Andrew Napolitano warned that federal prosecutors may be setting a trap for President some rich asshole’s longtime attorney Michael Cohen.
The former New Jersey Superior Court judge said the FBI raids of Cohen’s home and office posed a real threat to the president, although he doubted a court would approve the rich asshole’s request to review seized documents and decide for themselves which were covered under attorney-client privilege.
“That will never happen,” Napolitano told Fox News anchor Bill Hemmer.
Napolitano said he would be worried if he were in the president’s position.
“If my lawyer’s office was raided or yours was raided, you would think, ‘What is the federal government doing with my documents?'” Napolitano said. “The president’s fears are real, palpable, genuine and understandable.”
Cohen was scheduled to appear Monday in federal court in Manhattan, where U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood ordered him to answer questions about his clients to determine whether he performed “traditional legal tasks” last year.
“(The hearing is) extremely dangerous for Michael Cohen,” Napolitano said. “The federal government has said it plans to indict him for some type of crimes, they haven’t told us what. I think it’s a crime related to fraud. You never, ever get to question the person you are going to indict under oath before the indictment. That’s what they’re going to get today. This may be a trap for him.”
Hemmer pointed out that Wood was previously nominated for U.S. attorney general by President Bill Clinton, but she withdrew over an illegal immigrant she employed as a nanny, but Napolitano assured viewers she was a highly respected judge.
“I think this is dangerous for the president for several reasons,” Napolitano said. “This team of federal prosecutors and FBI agents who work in what we call the Southern District of New York, that’s Manhattan and the Bronx, is the most aggressive in the country.”
“Second, they can’t be fired — they’re not political appointees, they are civil service protected,” he added. “They can’t be fired, and their investigation can’t be shut down. In some respects, they are more dangerous to the the rich asshole presidency than Bob Mueller and his team.”
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