Trump talk: HOW MUCH for that inauguration?

[PerkingFaintly]

We can start whole new threads for less than $26,000,000.

This one only cost 23p I found down the back of the sofa:
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/3171217-Trump-Talk-or-Lift-every-voice-and-sing?pg=1

Kyle Griffin
@kylegriffin1
Melania Trump has parted ways with adviser Stephanie Winston Wolkoff after news broke about Wolkoff’s firm reaping $26,000,000 in payments to help plan Trump’s inauguration, NYT reports.
www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/us/politics/melania-trump-inauguration-adviser.html

So he turned up after all...

Sam Nunmberg was before Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s grand jury for most of today. He arrived at 9:30 am and hasn’t left yet.
🤷‍♂️
So much for not cooperating.
twitter.com/delwilber/status/972218437777969152?s=21

A stone-faced Sam Nunberg leaves his grand jury testimony and refuses to answer questions, shakes his head when asked for comment. He escapes to a waiting white car, which zooms away
twitter.com/mkraju/status/972227137154486273?s=21

A white car? Station wagon type perchance?

www.theguardian.com/world/2018/mar/09/marine-le-pen-under-pressure-to-unite-front-national

Doesn't it warm the heart when neo-Nazis unite across borders?

www.thedailybeast.com/trump-dined-with-fox-news-seb-gorka-and-jesse-watters-at-the-white-house-this-week/?via=twitter_page&__twitter_impression=true

The president was joined for dinner in the White House residence by Fox News personalities, including host Jesse Watters and Gorka, a former White House official and aide to former chief strategist Steve Bannon. According to a White House official and two other sources familiar with the meeting, President Trump invited Gorka and Watters because “he couldn’t get enough of them on TV,” as one source put it, and wanted to confab with them about what he’d seen on Fox News, politics, gossip, and his administration.

On Thursday night, Watters tweeted out an image of a menu—which includes a dessert of milk chocolate mousse—signed by Donald J. Trump, reading, “To Jesse[,] You are great!”

“It was so lit,” another source added, referring to the Trump-Gorka-Watters summit. The source said the president joked that he “missed” Gorka.

View image on Twitter
View image on Twitter

Jesse Watters
✔
@JesseBWatters
3:25 AM - Mar 9, 2018
5,663
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Gorka, Watters, and White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders did not respond to requests for comment.

Gorka’s return to the White House, and his new episode of facetime with President Trump, comes months after he was booted from the administration, a week after the ouster of his boss Bannon, by Chief of Staff John Kelly. The Wall Street Journal noted on Friday that in recent weeks, Trump loyalists such as Corey Lewandowski, Trump fired first 2016 campaign manager, and Gorka have “had West Wing meetings with Mr. Trump.”

To his detractors, Gorka, currently a Fox News contributor, is an academic fraud, an anti-Muslim zealot, and even an ally to Nazi and fascist sympathizers who never should have set foot on White House grounds.

To President Trump and Gorka’s legion of conservative admirers, he is a fan-favorite. Trump continues to see Gorka often on Fox, often on Hannity, and to tell associates how much of a kick he gets out of watching Gorka on cable news.

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PHARMA BRO DOWN
Martin Shkreli Weeps in Court, Gets Sentenced to 7 Years in Prison: ‘I Took Down’ Myself
After defrauding investors and causing turmoil in the pharmaceutical and financial worlds, ‘Pharmo Bro’ Shkreli is headed behind bars for the long run.
Julia Arciga
JULIA ARCIGA
03.09.18 2:01 PM ET
If karma does indeed exist, it showed little mercy towards Martin Shkreli on Friday.

Moments before he was sentenced to seven years in prison in U.S. District Court in New York, Shkreli broke down in tears and asked for “your honor's mercy” in court. “I was never motivated by money. I was trying to grow my stature and reputation,” he said. “There is no government conspiracy to take down Martin Shkreli. I took down Martin Shkreli with my disgraceful and shameful actions.”

Judge Kiyo Matsumoto gave him a box of tissues during his tear-filled remarks.

The notorious 34-year-old ex-exec, often referred to as “Pharma Bro” or “The Most Hated Man in America,” was sentenced for defrauding investors of his hedge funds and for manipulating the stock of his pharmaceutical company, Retrophin.

The prosecution argued that Shkreli lied about how much money he raised for his hedge fund to lure investors, and failed to inform them when he incurred massive losses after a bad stock bet. After losing all of his investors’ money, he borrowed money from other investors or took stock and cash from his own drug company to pay them back. They asked for Shkreli to be sentenced for 15 years.

Government prosecutors said that Shkreli “stole money for his personal benefit” and is solely motivated by “his own image.” They claimed that the defense had “babysat” him, saying “He is about to turn 35 years old. He's a man who needs to take responsibility for his actions."

Shkreli’s defense had proposed a 12 to 18 month sentence, claiming that he “investors eventually made money and said the jury erred by convicting Shkreli on some of the counts he faced.” Judge Matsumoto rejected those claims during the proceedings.

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His defense attorney, Ben Brafman, told the judge that, There are times I want to hug [Shkreli]...There are times when I want to punch him in the face." He added that Shkreli "cannot always control awkward, inappropriate behaviors."

Defense testimonials that spoke on behalf of a lesser sentence for Shkreli included letters from professionals “who vouched for his credentials as a self-made contributor to pharmaceutical advances.” Others vouched for him by appreciating his valuable social media presence, and claiming he had a “softer side” by adopting a cat he named “Trashy.”

"I really appreciate the social media output, which I see on par with some form of performance art," one woman wrote.

Shkreli’s schemes stretch long before his charges, however. The Pharma Bro is most famous for taking the 62-year old drug Daraprim, used to treat newborns HIV patients, and jacking up the price 5,000 percent while CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals in 2015. Price per pill went from $13.50 to $750 each.

Since then, Shkreli had basked in his own infamy. He bought a $2 million dollar and one-of-a-kind Wu-Tang Clan album, publicly bragged about how he owned a Picasso painting, and announced a bounty of $5,000 for any one of his 70,000 Facebook followers who could provide him samples of Hillary Clinton’s hair while she was on her book tour.

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But karma also came for Shkreli’s antics. The album and the painting were taken as part of $7.36m of assets seized by the courts, and his Facebook post about Clinton cost him his bail for “solicitation of assault.”

“He doesn’t have to apologize to me,” Matsumoto said, while revoking his bond in September. “He should apologize to the government, the Secret Service and Hillary Clinton.”

What’s next for Pharma Bro? Brafman said that he’ll be filing for appeal. But in the meantime, he’ll reside in prison—away from the stock schemes, pill prices, rap albums, and social media scandals that got him there in the first place.

www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/russian-spy-latest-updates-military-salisbury-nerve-agent-sergei-skripal-poisoning-porton-down-a8247191.html

www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/nra-sue-file-lawsuit-florida-gun-control-bill-buy-age-21-school-shooting-a8248841.html

shareblue.com/stormy-daniels-attorney-michael-avenatti-trump-lies-hush-money/

rantt.com/male-supremacy-groups-are-hate-groups-and-theyre-changing-american-politics-19a1cc306939

Maddow teaser; reports are that Mueller has obtained a letter written by Scrotus to Vladimir Putin. She hasn't said any more about contents. Bombshell or damp squib?

www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/politics/ct-trump-putin-invitiation-miss-universe-20180309-story.html

I think it's a bit of 'meh' unless there's more to it than meets the eye.

Stormy Daniels

Laura Walker 🍸 🦈
@LauraWalkerKC
Michael Avenatti - Stormy Daniels's attorney- says Michael Cohen does not appear to be licensed in Calif - where he filed the arbitration. Oh dear.

And

Comey friend warns Stormy Daniels saga could unravel years of Trump hush money payouts

www.rawstory.com/2018/03/comey-friend-warns-stormy-daniels-saga-unravel-years-trump-hush-money-payouts/#.WqLt4L85_ww.twitter

A friend of former FBI director James Comey predicted the Stormy Daniels scandal could open the floodgates for other women to talk about their past dealings with President Donald Trump.

Journalist Benjamin Wittes, editor-in-chief of Lawfare and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, told MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that the porn actress’ lawsuit against the president over an unsigned non-disclosure agreement could embolden others to come forward.

“The biggest implications, since this is already out there, is not whether Stormy Daniels will be able to talk,” Wittes said.

“The biggest implication is that there are presumably other such agreements,” he continued, “and the question is whether you create an environment in which everybody who has a nondisclosure agreement with the president feels free to come forward and say what that person, he or she, knows — and that would be, I would think, a problem for the president.”

Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson said the lawsuit puts Trump into an awkward position.

“Maybe he has a signed copy of the contract, but if he does, then he has to acknowledge that he signed the contract,” Robinson said. “So he’s sort of been twisted between there.”

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Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen admits to facilitating a $130,000 payment to Daniels shortly before the 2016 election, for which he reportedly expected to be repaid — and which could potentially violate federal election law.

“It would come down to a question of whether the payment to her was, in fact, a funding of his campaign or whether it was simply a private transaction between two people,” Wittes said. “Of course, you would have to have an enforcement mechanism that was viable for that.”

And

Lawrence O'Donnell
@Lawrence
Mr. President, why do you have a confidentiality agreement with Stormy Daniels that forbids her to reveal any of your "ALLEGED SEXUAL PARTNERS, ALLEGED SEXUAL ACTIONS OR ALLEGED SEXUAL CONDUCT, RELATED MATTERS OR PATERNITY INFORMATION"?

And

ABC News: "Trump has added yet another lawyer in his outside legal team — New York attorney Lawrence S. Rosen" — brought in by Michael Cohen to help deal with the Stormy Daniels agreement issues.

abcnews.go.com/Politics/trumps-legal-team-adds-pit-bull-nyc-lawyer/story?id=53624437

And

Stormy Daniels suit could back Trump into a corner
edition.cnn.com/2018/03/08/opinions/stormy-daniels-trump-lawsuit-could-be-trouble-rangappa-opinion/index.html

If Clifford is successful in her suit, making the NDA and the circumstances surrounding its creation public doesn't cause her any problems. But if she isn't, then the lawsuit itself could constitute a breach of the NDA on her part, which could expose her to legal liability -- which could include having to pay damages to the tune of $1 million.

How to respond to the lawsuit is a dicey proposition for both Donald Trump and his lawyer. In order to countersue Clifford for breach of contract, a court would have to examine who the parties to the contract were, including the person under the alias David Dennison.
The court would also have to inquire into what that person knew about the contract, and whether they were aware of and agreed to its terms: If David Dennison is the President, this means that, at the very least, the President would have to acknowledge that he was the party to the agreement and agreed to pay a settlement in order to force Clifford not to talk.

If the court finds that the NDA is not a valid agreement, then the fair result is that Clifford should not be enriched at the expense of Cohen or a third party. The problem is that for Cohen to recover his money, he would have to prove to the court that he made the payment to Daniels out of his own funds, as he has publicly stated.

If this is true, it could cause him professional problems, since lawyers cannot ethically pay third-party settlements from their own funds. And if it is not true, it could open a Pandora's box by opening up an inquiry into where the money came from: If the money trail leads to Trump's campaign funds, this would be illegal under campaign finance laws.

Ultimately, Clifford's suit could back the President into a corner. The Supreme Court's precedent in Clinton v. Jones held that the president does not have immunity from a civil lawsuit for acts performed before he assumed office. While that case was brought in federal court, the same rationale would likely apply to state court in a case like this.

If so, then the President, as the named defendant in Clifford's lawsuit, would be forced to respond to her complaint, and potentially deposed, which is the last thing Trump would want to do. (Remember that President Bill Clinton was caught lying in a deposition in a civil suit for sexual harassment by Paula Jones -- and perjury was one of the articles of impeachment brought against him.)

And choosing not to respond at all would result in a default judgment meaning that Clifford would win simply because her claims are not contested leaving her able to discuss her version of the story in detail with no legal consequences.

In short, the Clifford v. Trump lawsuit is a brewing storm for an administration already facing legal troubles elsewhere.

And

Payment to Stormy Daniels could be election law violation, say experts

www.nbcnews.com/politics/donald-trump/payment-stormy-daniels-could-be-election-law-violation-say-experts-n855336

And

Manu Raju
@mkraju
Michael Cohen has said Trump Organization was not a party to $130K payment to Stormy Daniels. But a newly disclosed email says he couldn’t effectuate payment bc office was closed. And email included his full title: “Executive Vice President and Special Counsel to Donald J. Trump”
“We assert it is not innocuous because if in fact the payment was being made personally by Attorney Cohen, he wouldn’t need the office open in order to effectuate the payment,” Stormy Daniels attorney @MichaelAvenatti told @andersoncooper

[By the by, Stormy Daniels is entertaining on twitter - she responds to those screeching at her with pretty good humour!]

Playbook scoop: Elizabeth Warren goes after Kushner Companies loans

www.politico.com/newsletters/playbook/2018/03/09/elizabeth-warren-jared-kushner-loans-253068

And

Dems demand information about Kushner loans

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) along with several other Democrats on Friday sent letters, obtained by Politico, to two companies demanding information about their business dealings with Jared Kushner.

Why it matters: The request comes after Kushner was accused of self-dealing, based on revelations that his family business received substantial loans from investment firms whose top executives met with Kushner at the White House.

Show less
Details: Warren, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Mich.), Sen. Tom Carper (D-Del.) and Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.) sent two letters to Apollo Global Management and Citibank asking for:

A list of all the loans made to Kushner Companies, the dates the loans were offered, terms and conditions of the loans, and a description of the process used by Kushner Companies to obtain the loans.
A list of all the meetings between the two firms and Kushner, and various details, including date and time, about those meetings.
A list of all documents included in the loan process and whether any of the loans included foreign financing.

Ryan J. Reilly
@ryanjreilly
Fox & Friends has effectively replaced DOJ's Office of the Pardon Attorney
Attorney for the sailor Trump just pardoned tells me that grabbing Trump’s attention by going on Fox News was a major part of their strategy.

Matthew Miller
@matthewamiller
More Matthew Miller Retweeted Ryan J. Reilly
A president who ran on the idea that mishandling classified info was practically a capital crime pardoned someone convicted of it because his lawyer managed to appear on Fox and Friends. Good grief.

Trump's Latest Pardon Shows The Best Way To Get One: Go On Fox News

By comparing his case to Hillary Clinton's, a Navy sailor and his lawyer were able to grab Fox's attention — and the president's.

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/trump-pardon-kristian-saucier_us_5aa2e103e4b07047bec662d1

A former Navy sailor who pleaded guilty to a felony count of unauthorized possession and retention of national defense information for snapping photos on a nuclear attack submarine has received a pardon from President Donald Trump — and his attorney says Fox News deserves the credit.

The legal team for Kristian Saucier compared his case to the handling of the investigation into former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. That grabbed Trump’s interest, and it’s now paid off in the form of a presidential pardon, announced Friday.

Last week, Saucier appeared on “Fox & Friends,” a program that the president records and watches during his morning “executive time.” Trump frequently sends tweets that correspond with segments on the morning show.

Ronald Daigle, a lawyer hired to advocate for Saucier’s pardon, told HuffPost that Fox News played a key role in getting the case on Trump’s radar.

“Absolutely,” Daigle said when asked whether going on Fox News was a big part of their strategy. “They were big supporters of Kris right from the beginning. They supported Kris.”

In 2016, shortly after then-FBI Director James Comey announced the results of the Clinton email investigation, Saucier’s legal team began comparing the submariner’s case to Clinton’s. The Justice Department responded that Saucier was “grasping at highly imaginative and speculative straws,” but the case got Trump’s attention.

Saucier was sentenced to a year behind bars prior to the 2016 election ― a sentence he completed before his pardon. One reason that federal prosecutors likely handled the case the way they did: Saucier destroyed a laptop, a camera and the camera’s memory card shortly after he was interviewed by the FBI. Pieces of a laptop were later found in the woods near a Saucier family home. Prosecutors tend to treat suspects more harshly when they are accused of destroying evidence.

Since the election, Saucier’s team has “sent tons of marketing materials to the White House” and distributed press releases in an effort to “capture the president’s opinion,” Daigle said.

Saucier’s team was aiming for a “political” pardon rather than a pardon that goes through the normal process of the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, Daigle said. Saucier was not yet eligible to go through that lengthy procedure.

“I flipped the process around,” Daigle said. “We were doing something to try to capture the attention of the president. When we put the pardon in, we did a press release for that. When we heard back from the pardon office, we put a press release for that. Every step of the way, we’re trying to do what we can to be on the radar, and hopefully the president will hear us. We think he heard us more than once.”

Daigle believes that Trump simply ordered that a pardon be prepared for his signature and that the Justice Department had very little involvement. A Justice Department spokesman declined to comment on its role in the pardon.

Daigle’s pardon strategy isn’t going to work for defendants across the board, he said.

“It’s not going to happen in every case. It just happened because we had a set of circumstances that were truly unjust,” said Daigle, referring to his argument that his client was prosecuted where others who committed similar offenses weren’t.

Daigle said he and his client were “very excited” about the news. He said he hoped Saucier, who has a young child, would be able to get his military benefits back.

“This would make a huge difference to his family if he can get his benefits back,” Daigle said. “This is a very talented young man, and he couldn’t find a job coming out for anything, only as a garbage collector. Now he’ll be able to go after these licenses and stuff to have a nice career on the outside.”

Trump administration studies seeking the death penalty for drug dealers

www.washingtonpost.com/national/trump-administration-studying-possibility-of-seeking-death-penalty-for-drug-dealers/2018/03/09/4d9cc994-23c3-11e8-94da-ebf9d112159c_story.html?utm_term=.e680b88ff5f3

The Trump administration is studying new policy that could allow prosecutors to seek the death penalty for drug dealers, according to people with knowledge of the discussions, a sign that the White House wants to make a strong statement in addressing the opioid crisis.

President Trump last week suggested executing drug dealers as a way to make a dent in opioid addiction. Opioids killed nearly 64,000 people in 2016, and the crisis is straining local health and emergency services.

People familiar with the discussions said that the president’s Domestic Policy Council and the Department of Justice are studying potential policy changes and that a final announcement could come within weeks. The White House has said one approach it might take is to make trafficking large quantities of fentanyl — a powerful synthetic opioid — a capital crime because even small amounts of the drug can be fatal. White House officials also are studying tougher noncapital penalties for large-scale dealers.

Trump said last week that the administration would soon roll out unspecified “strong” policies on opioids. White House officials said Trump has privately expressed interest in Singapore’s policy of executing drug dealers. [...]

What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump’s Obsession With Putin Began

His 2013 visit paved the way for a scandal that shook the world.

www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/russian-connection-what-happened-moscow-inside-story-trump-obsession-putin-david-corn-michael-isikoff/#b

It's worth watching the BBC documentary 'Putin: The New Tsar' on I player.

Scary though.

NC Democratic congressional candidate alleges Russian meddling:

"A Russian citizen purchased the defunct website from her 2016 campaign...and duplicated some images and text to make it look legitimate going forward and create confusion among voters."

www.wral.com/nc-congressional-candidate-alleges-russian-meddling/17404992/

www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/jennings-v-rodriguez/555224/?utm_source=atltw

A quarter-century ago, in 1994, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, on any given day, was holding somewhere around 5,500 immigrants in “immigration detention.”

For fiscal year 2017, Immigration and Customs Enforcement budget documents projected an average daily population in detention of roughly 31,000. That increase—nearly six-fold in 25 years—made the Enforcement and Removal Operations division of ICE roughly the 13th largest prison system in the country. On its busiest days in FY 2017, ICE housed a population well above that.

Paul McLeod
@pdmcleod
“Your father is looking down on you, he’s very proud,” Trump tells steel worker at his press conference.

“He’s still alive,” the guy responds.

Catching up on the thread. Just read this to DH. He said “perhaps Trump just meant his [steelworker’s] Dad is verrrry tall.”

Trump Spoke to a Russian Activist About Ending Sanctions—Just Weeks After Launching His Campaign

Here’s the video of their exchange.

www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/03/trump-spoke-to-a-russian-activist-about-ending-sanctions-just-weeks-after-launching-his-campaign/

While researching the strange story of two Russian gun aficionados who cultivated Donald Trump’s presidential campaign via the National Rifle Association, we came across a little-noticed but noteworthy episode concerning Trump and US sanctions against Russia. Sanctions have been a source of extraordinary conflict between the president and Congress and a matter of clear significance to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation.

Just a month after Trump announced his campaign for the White House, he spoke directly to Maria Butina, the protégé of the powerful Russian banking official and Putin ally Alexander Torshin. During a public question and answer session at FreedomFest, a libertarian convention in Las Vegas in July 2015, Butina asked Trump what he would do as president about “damaging” US sanctions. Trump suggested he would get rid of them.

“I am visiting from Russia,” Butina said into the mic.

“Ahhhhh, Putin!” Trump interjected, prompting laughter from the audience as he added a mocking riff about the current president: “Good friend of Obama, Putin. He likes Obama a lot. Go ahead.”

“My question will be about foreign politics,” Butina continued. “If you will be elected as president, what will be your foreign politics especially in the relationships with my country? And do you want to continue the politics of sanctions that are damaging of both economy [sic]? Or you have any other ideas?”

After going off on Obama and digressing into trade policy, Trump responded: “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin… I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK? And I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.”

Trump did not appear to know who Butina was. But Torshin claims to have met Trump three months prior and had a “jovial exchange” with him at the NRA annual convention in Nashville.

Here’s a video of the exchange between Trump and Butina, which was posted at the time by a group calling itself LetsTalkNevada:

Oh, and that Peter Rabbit gif can fuck off - I’m sure my phone is running slower.

“TRUMP IS GOING FOR A CLEAN RESET”: FUMING IN THE WEST WING, TRUMP PREPARES TO DEFENESTRATE CUCK ALLIES AND GO FULL MAGA

The president will meet with potential chief-of-staff candidates at Mar-a-Lago next weekend. McMaster is likely next to go. Then Jivanka.

www.vanityfair.com/news/2018/03/trump-is-going-for-a-clean-reset

ven before he decided to launch a trade war and roll the nuclear dice by agreeing in the course of a West Wing afternoon to a risky sit-down with Kim Jong Un, Donald Trump was telling friends he was tired of being reined in. “I’m doing great, but I’m getting all these bad headlines,” Trump told a friend recently. A Republican in frequent contact with the White House told me Trump is “frustrated by all these people telling him what to do.”

With the departures of Hope Hicks and Gary Cohn, the Trump presidency is entering a new phase—one in which Trump is feeling liberated to act on his impulses. “Trump is in command. He’s been in the job more than a year now. He knows how the levers of power work. He doesn’t give a fuck,” the Republican said. Trump’s decision to circumvent the policy process and impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum reflects his emboldened desire to follow his impulses and defy his advisers. “It was like a fuck-you to Kelly,” a Trump friend said. “Trump is red-hot about Kelly trying to control him.”

According to five Republicans close to the White House, Trump has diagnosed the problem as having the wrong team around him and is looking to replace his senior staff in the coming weeks. “Trump is going for a clean reset, but he needs to do it in a way that’s systemic so it doesn’t look like it’s chaos,” one Republican said.

Sources said that the first officials to go will be Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom Trump has clashed with for months. On Tuesday, Trump met with John Bolton in the Oval Office. When he plans to visit Mar-a-Lago next weekend, Trump is expected to interview more candidates for both positions, according to two sources. “He’s going for a clean slate,” one source said. Cohn had been lobbying to replace Kelly as chief, two sources said, and quit when he didn’t get the job. “Trump laughed at Gary when he brought it up,” one outside adviser to the White House said. (The White House declined to comment.)

Next on the departure list are Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Trump remains fiercely loyal to his family, but various distractions have eroded their efficacy within the administration. Both have been sidelined without top-secret security clearances by Kelly, and sources expect them to be leaving at some point in the near future. One scenario being discussed is that Kushner would return to New York to oversee Trump’s 2020 re-election campaign with his ally Brad Parscale, who was hand-selected by the Trump family. One Trump friend referred to it as a “soft landing.” Ivanka will likely stay on longer, perhaps through the summer, before decamping home to New York to enroll the children in a Manhattan private school. Both are presumed to remain in close contact with Trump, who often places significant value on the opinions expressed outside his administration, anyway

[whole thing is interesting in a circus sort of way]

Peter Rabbit is extremely irritating and is clearly living by his maxim of "a good rabbit never gives up" as he's hopping on every single cunting page.

As has been noted on this thread:

Steve Bannon Is Done Wrecking the American Establishment. Now He Wants to Destroy Europe’s.

www.nytimes.com/2018/03/09/world/europe/horowitz-europe-populism.html

Kyle Cheney
@kyledcheney
NEW: House Intel Democrats are citing discrepancies between news reports/documents and the testimony of three Russia probe witnesses: PRINCE, PAGE and STONE.

It's about to become a moment of reckoning for the House Russia investigation:

"If you have enough balls to come to a congressional hearing and raise your hand saying you swear to tell the truth and it comes out that you're lying, then there should be consequences for that," Rep. Tom Rooney (R-Fla.), a top member of the committee, said in an interview.

BUT Republican committee members don't share the same sense of urgency as some Democrats do.

Aides say the panel will review witness transcripts once the interview phase is done (several GOP members of the panel hope Thursday’s interview of Corey Lewandowski is the last one.

ROGER CLEMENS’ attorney, who defended him successfully against charge that he lied to Congress, says proving the crime is challenging bc the lie must be “willful” and “material” to the investigation.

“I would almost pay money to defend that person against them," he says.

House Russia investigators eye witness honesty

Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee are scrutinizing whether some prominent Trump associates told them the truth, but Republicans show little interest in pursuing the issue.

www.politico.com/story/2018/03/08/erik-prince-house-russia-probe-trump-associates-448595