“A full analysis of the economic effects of the House tax bill isn’t available yet, according to a Congressional Budget Office document released on Monday. It’s not clear if such an estimate will be ready before the House votes later this week,” the Wall Street Journal reports.
New York Times: Haste on tax measures may leave a trail of loopholes.
The Atlantic has private messages between Donald Trump Jr. and Wikileaks.
“The messages… were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between Wikileaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. The messages show Wikileaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. Wikileaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States…”
“Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from Wikileaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests.”
The Daily Beast reports that no one seems to know what Omarosa Manigault does in the White House.
After the abrupt end to our day in March, I called a Republican source in constant contact with the White House and asked what they thought Omarosa’s job entailed. “No clue,” the source said. I told the source about our whirlwind of a morning.
“Wait, Hope [Hicks] let you follow [Omarosa] around?” the source asked. No, I hadn’t spoken with Hope, who now serves formally as the White House communications director. “So Sean [Spicer] let you?” Ditto. “Christ,” the source said. “No one in the comms department knew a random reporter was walking around the West Wing. This is why people think we’re a shit show.”
Former U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was fired by President Trump earlier this year, joins Chris Riback to discuss the unfolding Russia investigation and how special counsel Robert Muller might try to flip a witness.
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A fifth woman accused Alabama U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) of making sexual or romantic advances toward her when she was 16 years old, the New York Times reports.
Said Beverly Young Nelson: “I tried fighting him off, while yelling at him to stop, but instead of stopping, he began squeezing my neck attempting to force my head onto his crotch.”
She added: “I continued to struggle. I was determined that I was not going to allow him to force me to have sex with him. I was terrified. He was also trying to pull my shirt off. I thought that he was going to rape me. I was twisting and struggling and begging him to stop. I had tears running down my face.”
Nelson said that Moore warned her that “no one will believe you” if she told anyone about the encounter.
“Seven of the 16 jurors and alternates in the trial of Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ) raised their hands when U.S. District Judge William Walls on Monday morning asked whether they’d heard or read anything about the case, prompting the judge to take them into his chambers individually to get more details,” the Newark Star Ledger reports.
“The inquiry came after defense attorneys in the trial noted that widespread news coverage of an excused juror’s public statements may have tainted the remaining members of the panel.”
Update: Jurors told the judge that they “are unable to reach a unanimous decision in the case and asked for guidance,” according to the Newark Star Ledger.
Alabama Republican Party Chairman Terry Lathan told the Alabama Political Reporter “that she has not even heard of any GOP elected official or candidate that is even considering running as a write-in candidate against U.S. Senate candidate Roy Moore (R), and Lathan warned GOP officials and candidates not to endorse Doug Jones (D) or a write-in campaign.”
Said Latham: “It would be a serious error for any current elected GOP official or candidate to publicly endorse another party’s candidate, an independent, a third party or a write in candidate in a general election as well. I have heard of no GOP elected official or candidate that is even considering this option.”
“One of President Trump’s most controversial judicial nominees did not disclose on publicly available congressional documents that he is married to a senior lawyer in the White House Counsel’s Office,” the New York Times reports.
“The nominee, Brett Talley, is awaiting a Senate confirmation vote that could come as early as Monday to become a federal district judge in Alabama. He is married to Ann Donaldson, the chief of staff to the White House counsel, Donald McGahn.”
“I hope they spend $100 million trying to win the South.”
— Former Mississippi Gov. Haley Barbour (R), quoted by Politico, on Democrats seeing opportunity in the South.
“Roslyn Corrigan was sixteen years old when she got a chance to meet George H.W. Bush, excited to be introduced to a former president having grown up dreaming of going into politics,” Time reports.
“But Corrigan was crushed by her encounter: Bush, then 79 years old, groped her buttocks at a November 2003 event in The Woodlands, Texas, office of the Central Intelligence Agency where Corrigan’s father gathered with fellow intelligence officers and family members to meet Bush, Corrigan said. Corrigan is the sixth woman since Oct. 24 to accuse Bush publicly of grabbing her buttocks without consent.”
“Kansas runs one of the most secretive state governments in the nation, and its secrecy permeates nearly every aspect of service, the Kansas City Star found in a months-long investigation.”
“From the governor’s office to state agencies, from police departments to business relationships to health care, on the floors of the House and Senate, a veil has descended over the years and through administrations on both sides of the political aisle.”
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) said that Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore (R) should leave the race, Politico reports.
Said McConnell: “I think he should step aside. I believe the women, yes.”
“An Alabama woman is expected to disclose allegations of sexual assault against Roy Moore during a press conference today in New York,” the Birmingham News reports.
“New York Attorney Gloria Allred is holding a press conference at 2:30 p.m. EST with the new accuser, whose name hasn’t been made public. The woman alleges that Moore, Alabama’s Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, assaulted her when she was a minor.”
“I think it demonstrates to Mr. Putin that Donald Trump can be played by foreign leaders who are going to appeal to his ego and try to play upon his insecurities, which is very, very worrisome from a national security standpoint.”
— Former CIA Director John Brennan, quoted by the Washington Post, on not confronting Russian president Vladimir Putin over his election interference.
New York Times: “At $25 million and counting, Gov. Andrew Cuomo (D) sits atop the largest tower of campaign contributions of any Democratic politician in America, but this monument to his prodigious fund-raising strength also reveals one of his greatest vulnerabilities, especially if he harbors presidential ambitions. He has virtually no small donors.”
“Since the beginning of 2015, Mr. Cuomo has raised more than 99 percent of his campaign money from donations larger than $1,000 and nearly 99.9 percent of his funds from donors who gave at least $200, according to an analysis by The New York Times. At one point last year, Mr. Cuomo went six months without reporting a single individual donor who gave less than $200.”
Frank Rich: “The idea that the pre-Trump GOP will make a post-Trump comeback to vanquish these forces is laughable. Old-line Establishment Republicans in the Senate and the House, even very conservative ones like Flake, are engaging in self-deportation, as Mitt Romney might say, rather than face a firing squad in the primaries. The Trumpists will with time expunge the rest, including Paul Ryan (whom Bannon has dismissed as ‘a limp-dick motherfucker who was born in a petri dish at the Heritage Foundation,’ according to Joshua Green in The Devil’s Bargain).”
“It’s a replay of the purge of the 1960s, when the reinvented GOP shaped by Goldwater, Nixon, and the ‘southern strategy‘ shoved aside the likes of Nelson Rockefeller and George Romney. Given that 89 percent of Republicans voted for Trump in November and that 80 percent of today’s GOP voters reliably give Trump favorable approval ratings no matter what he has said or done since, that means only a fifth of those Americans identifying as Republicans are (possibly) Never Trumpers.”
“The remains of Establishment Republicanism are at best a Potemkin village. It’s too little, too late for ‘the Republican renovation project’ floated in October by the former George W. Bush speechwriter and passionate Never Trumper Michael Gerson, who imagined that John Kasich, Flake, Ben Sasse, and the like would dream up ‘a compelling alternative to the Bannon appeal.’ History will show that feckless Establishment Republicans repeatedly missed their chance to take back or renovate their party by being too cowardly, too cynical, or too inept to confront Trumpism as it fanned the flames of racial backlash under Palin, the tea party, and finally Trump during the Obama years.”
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.