“Paul Manafort received a sentence totalling 90 months in prison after being ordered by a federal judge in Washington, D.C. to serve 43 months on top of the 47-month sentence the former Trump campaign chairman was given in Alexandria federal court last week,” the Washington Post reports.
“Judge Amy Berman Jackson pushed back on defense attorneys’ repeated assertions that he was mere collatoral damage in the special counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.”
Mike Allen outlines the case that Joe Biden is expected to make if he runs for president:
Axios has this excerpt from Kushner Inc. by Vicky Ward:
In early May 2017, an aide to Gary Cohn, who had an office on the second floor of the West Wing, noticed a document on his printer. It appeared to be a letter from Trump, firing Comey. It also appeared to have been sent to the wrong printer…
Trump was livid about the attention the FBI investigation was attracting, but to fire the head of the FBI while it was investigating him was an extraordinarily risky move. …
Cohn told his aide to take the letter straight to then-White House counsel Donald McGahn, who also had an office on the second floor of the White House (and whose printer it had clearly been meant for). Upon receiving it and realizing it had been printed in the wrong place, McGahn said, “Oh, f!@#!”
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First Read: “The jaw-dropping college admissions scandal that ensnared two Hollywood actresses and embarrassed some of the country’s top universities not only underscores the divide between the haves and have-nots.”
“It also plays into the hands of the Democratic presidential hopefuls who have made erasing this divide a central message in their campaigns.”
“But the story also might play with Trump voters who think college is rigged, although maybe for a different reason — affirmative action.”
“The nation is rightfully outraged after yesterday’s news, which exposed 1) how the wealthy have tried to take advantage of the system, and 2) how another American institution (higher education) has let us down.”
California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) “is putting a moratorium on the death penalty in California, sparing the lives of more than 700 death-row inmates,” the Sacramento Bee reports.
“Newsom plans to sign an executive order Wednesday morning granting reprieves to all 737 Californians awaiting executions – a quarter of the country’s death row inmates.”
“In throwing cold water on the idea of impeachment, Speaker Nancy Pelosi in some ways was simply offering a cleareyed assessment of the state of politics today in the nation’s hyperpolarized capital: There are not enough votes to convict and remove President Trump from office,” the New York Times reports.
“And yet in declaring that impeachment therefore is ‘just not worth it,’ Ms. Pelosi may also be setting a far-reaching new standard with implications long after Mr. Trump leaves office. By her reasoning, accusations of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, campaign finance violations and other offenses — even if proved — do not rise to a level requiring action by the House of Representatives.”
“All of which raise fundamental questions: If Mr. Trump has done what he is accused of doing, and that would not qualify as high crimes and misdemeanors, then what would?”
The Hill: GOP seizes on Pelosi’s position on impeachment.
“John Hickenlooper knows he knows you from somewhere. The former Colorado governor just doesn’t know if it’s really you,” CNN reports.
“Such is the life of a politician who suffers from prosopagnosia, or face blindness, a medical condition that makes it difficult — and often impossible — to recognize or remember people’s faces, even if someone with the ailment has met them a handful of times.”
A new Washington Post investigation finds that, despite mounting deaths and warnings, the Obama administration did not take extraordinary measures to confront an extraordinary crisis: the rapid rise of fentanyl.
“Between 2013 and 2017, more than 67,000 people died of synthetic-opioid-related overdoses — exceeding the number of U.S. military personnel killed during the Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan wars combined. The number of deaths, the vast majority from fentanyl, has risen sharply each year. If current trends continue, the annual death toll from fentanyl will soon approach those from guns or traffic accidents.”
Washington Post: Trump budget guts White House drug control office again.
“Beto O’Rourke is youthful and has little political record to run on. Joe Biden is older and has a decades-long history, featuring both successes and mistakes. O’Rourke brings a viral energy to his campaigns, while Biden, still figuring out how to harness social media, specializes in the traditional stemwinder,” the Washington Post reports.
“Both men are sending increasingly strong signals they will soon enter the presidential race — additions that would instantly reshape the Democratic primary debate. While left-leaning candidates have drawn the bulk of the attention so far, the popular former vice president and the charismatic former Texas congressman share one key characteristic: a more centrist brand of politics that could appeal to an untapped portion of the party electorate.”
Washington Post: “The White House is privately negotiating with Senate Republicans who want to rein in the emergency powers of President Trump and his successors — which could lead to the surprise defeat of a Democratic resolution rejecting Trump’s emergency declaration at the border. That would mark a dramatic change in fortunes for Trump, who had been on track for an embarrassing defeat later this week in the GOP-controlled Senate in a confrontation with Congress over Trump’s border wall.”
“Key to quelling the GOP revolt is legislation drafted by Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) that tries to claw back some emergency powers to Congress and whether the White House endorses some version of it. That would give Republicans who are uneasy about the constitutionality of the Feb. 15 declaration — yet nervous about publicly rebuking Trump — some political cover to side with the president.”
Playbook: “It’s the middle of March — almost the end of the first quarter of 2019 — and here’s what President Trump has going on:
“The North Korea summit blew up. … Congressional Investigations are finally taking hold, and getting more serious. … The president’s party is turning on him on Capitol Hill. The White House is scrambling to convince Senate Republicans to stick by the president when it comes to his emergency declaration at the border.”
“Even more so, this White House does not appear to be driving for anything at the moment. Sure, divided government is tough — way tougher perhaps than the president’s advisers said in the wake of the election.”
“But here’s a thought exercise: What is the White House’s top proactive priority at this moment? And what do you see them doing — either publicly or privately — to achieve this?”
Paul Manafort “could see his prison term extended by 10 years Wednesday at his second sentencing for crimes prosecuted by special counsel Robert Mueller in the Russia investigation,” the Los Angeles Times reports.
“Manafort was sentenced last week to nearly four years in prison by U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III. The sentence was widely criticized as lenient since Manafort, 69, was convicted in August of eight charges of bank fraud and tax evasion after a trial in Alexandria, Va.”
A new Politico/Morning Consult poll shows that President Trump “has failed to build support for his emergency declaration in the face of congressional opposition, with the results essentially unchanged since he signed an order to reallocate military funds toward erecting a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border.”
“Only 38% of voters support the declaration, the poll shows, down 1 point over the past three weeks. In the new poll, 52% of voters are opposed to the declaration, up 1 point from last month.”
Politico: “O’Rourke isn’t just headed to Iowa for a one-off campaign appearance with a state Senate candidate. He is planning a multi-day trip with multiple appearances in the first-in-the-nation caucus state.”
“The White House’s proposed budget includes funding for a small children’s health program sought by one of President Donald Trump’s golfing buddies: Jack Nicklaus,” Politico reports.
“Nicklaus had lobbied Trump on the golf course in Florida, and he met with HHS Secretary Alex Azar and then-OMB Director Mick Mulvaney in Washington, D.C., to request funds, say two individuals with knowledge. Trump personally directed HHS to earmark the funds to help Nicklaus develop mobile children’s hospitals, one individual said.”
“In recent months, Pence has repeatedly found himself an even-tempered target for prominent Republicans needing to vent about Trump’s unorthodox style,” Politico reports.
Said Sen. John Thune (R-SD): “When he comes up here, unfortunately for him, he gets to be kind of the person that people take out some of their frustrations out on. But that’s a part of the job.”
“That has become more and more true of late. In multiple encounters with Republicans on Capitol Hill, on issues ranging from Syria to the government shutdown, Pence has swallowed his personal views, which have historically been far more in line with the GOP establishment than are Trump’s.”
“A federal grand jury is examining allegations of ballot fraud in a North Carolina congressional race, issuing subpoenas this month that represent the first public evidence that U.S. prosecutors are investigating the matter,” the Washington Post reports.
“Officials with the North Carolina State Board of Elections and a lawyer for former Republican congressional candidate Mark Harris confirmed Tuesday that they had received subpoenas from the Justice Department’s Public Integrity Section seeking all documents related to allegations of election fraud in the 9th congressional district.”
“I appreciate the energy when I got up here. Save it a little longer — I may need it in a few weeks.”
— Joe Biden, quoted by ABC News, welcomed to the International Association of Fire Fighters legislative conference with chants of “Run, Joe, Run!”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Political Job Hunt, Electoral Vote Map and the Political Dictionary.
Goddard spent more than a decade as managing director and chief operating officer of a prominent investment firm in New York City. Previously, he was a policy adviser to a U.S. Senator and Governor.
Goddard is also co-author of You Won - Now What? (Scribner, 1998), a political management book hailed by prominent journalists and politicians from both parties. In addition, Goddard's essays on politics and public policy have appeared in dozens of newspapers across the country.
Goddard earned degrees from Vassar College and Harvard University. He lives in New York with his wife and three sons.
Goddard is the owner of Goddard Media LLC.
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