“White House counsel Don McGahn’s final day at the White House was Wednesday,” CNN reports.
“McGahn has been planning to leave the White House, but a source told CNN his departure was expedited after President Trump said Tuesday he had selected Patrick Cipolloneas his successor.”
The residents of a Manhattan condominium called “Trump Place” have voted to remove the president’s name from the tower’s facade, the latest in a string of properties that have distanced themselves from the Trump brand since Election Day 2016, the Washington Post reports.
“Michael Cohen and his attorney met Wednesday with a group of state and federal law enforcement officials investigating various aspects of President Trump’s family business and charitable organization,” CNN reports.
“The group, which included the federal prosecutors from the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York who charged Cohen in August and officials from the New York Attorney General’s office, met at the Midtown New York City office of Cohen’s attorney, Guy Petrillo.”
“At last count, Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke was the subject of 14 separate government investigations. (A new record!) But that number could soon be zero. That’s because Zinke just fired the Department of the Interior’s acting inspector general,” Outside reports.
“The news doesn’t stop there. Not only did Mary Kendall, the acting inspector general, not learn she was being replaced until The Hill broke the news this morning, but her replacement will likely be able to fill the role without needing to go through Senate confirmation.”
Washington Post: “Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards, a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, is charged with providing to a reporter suspicious financial activity reports on several people and entities, including the Russian Embassy and President Trump’s former campaign advisers Paul Manafort and Richard Gates.”
“The charges reflect the latest move in the Trump administration’s effort to root out leakers within the government.”
“I like the Saudis; they are very nice. I make a lot of money with them. They buy all sorts of my stuff — all kinds of toys from Trump. They pay me millions and hundreds of millions.”
— Donald Trump, quoted by CNN at a July 2015 campaign rally.
“For the record, I have no financial interests in Saudi Arabia (or Russia, for that matter). Any suggestion that I have is just more fake news (of which there is plenty)!”
— Trump, on Twitter yesterday.
“Since Donald Trump’s fortunes came surging back with the success of The Apprentice 14 years ago, his deals have often been scrutinized for the large number of his partners who have ventured to the very edges of the law, and sometimes beyond. Those associates have included accused money launderers, alleged funders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and a felon who slashed someone in the face with a broken margarita glass,” ProPublica reports.
“Trump and his company have typically countered by saying they were merely licensing his name on these real estate projects in exchange for a fee. They weren’t the developers or in any way responsible.”
“But an eight-month investigation by ProPublica and WNYC reveals that the post-millennium Trump business model is different from what has been previously reported. The Trumps were typically way more than mere licensors or bystanders in their often-troubled deals. They were deeply involved in these projects. They helped mislead investors and buyers — and they profited handsomely from it.”
“Patterns of deceptive practices occurred in a dozen deals across the globe, as the business expanded into international projects, and the Trumps often participated. One common pattern, visible in more than half of those transactions, was a tendency to misstate key sales numbers.”
President Trump denied as “totally false” former attorney Michael Cohen’s assertion that Trump coordinated a hush-money scheme to buy the silence of women who claimed to have had an affair with him, the AP reports.
Trump derided Cohen, who worked for Trump for a decade, as “a PR person who did small legal work,” and said it was “very sad” that Cohen had struck a deal to “achieve a lighter sentence.”
CNN anchor Brooke Baldwin told viewers that President Trump calling Stormy Daniels “horseface” was likely “a calculated move” to avoid responding to questions “over his own ties to the Saudis” amid questions about the disappearance of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, The Hill reports.
Said Baldwin: “Today as the president faces what one adviser calls the most consequential decision of his presidency, during his hours and hours and hours of executive time, the president of the United States decided to refer to a woman as a horseface… This appears to be a calculated move to get us talking about something else.”
Rep. Ryan Costello (R-PA) condemned President Trump after he attacked the appearance of adult film actress Stormy Daniels, calling her “horseface” in a tweet celebrating his victory against her in her defamation lawsuit, The Hill reports.
Said Costello: “To say this is unbecoming of any man, let alone the POTUS, is a vast understatement. And to say this enables teenage boys to feel they have a license to refer to girls with such names is obvious. It’s all very embarrassing.”
Costello is not running for re-election.
Vanity Fair: “Other than a few tweets and statements, Cohen has remained relatively quiet since pleading guilty, in August, to violating campaign laws by paying off women who claimed to have had affairs with Donald Trump at what he said, in open court, was the ‘direction’ of the then-candidate.”
“Behind the scenes, however, Robert Mueller’s special investigation into collusion and obstruction of justice continues apace. So does the Southern District’s probe into campaign-finance violations. Despite having no formal cooperation agreement with the government, Cohen has willingly assisted and provided information critical to several ongoing investigations… in a string of meetings that have exceeded more than 50 hours in sum.”
“A federal judge on Monday dismissed a lawsuit from adult film actress Stormy Daniels in which she claimed that President Trump defamed her when he suggested her allegation that she was threatened to stay quiet about their relationship was a lie,” the Washington Post reports.
“Federal District Judge S. James Otero had suggested during a late September hearing that he was skeptical of Daniels’s claim on First Amendment grounds. The ruling ordered Daniels, whose given name is Stephanie Clifford, to pay Trump’s legal fees.”
Anthony Lomangino, a recycling mogul, Trump campaign donor and Mar-a-Lago member, gave $150,000 to a legal defense fund set up for current and former Trump aides mired in special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, according to a new filing with the IRS, Politico reports.
President Trump denied that he offered Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) $1 million to take a test proving her Native American heritage, even though he did just that, The Hill reports.
Said Trump: “I didn’t say that. You’d better read it again.”
He must have forgotten the challenge is actually on video:
Daily Beast: “President Trump’s latest addition to White House decor is a kitschy fantasy painting that shows him relaxing with Republican presidents of the past—an update to a best-selling image commonly found in tourist gift shops and online galleries.”
“The artwork, ‘The Republican Club’ by Andy Thomas, could be seen in the background of a photo tweeted by 60 Minutes, which aired an interview with Trump on Sunday night.”
“It shows a slimmed-down Trump sandwiched between Presidents Eisenhower and Nixon, directly across from Abraham Lincoln. Teddy Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, and both Bushes are also in the imaginary scene.”
“President Trump is making overtures to Democrats about working together next year, a move that would mark a major shift in his approach to dealing with Congress but one that could prove necessary in order to secure big legislative achievements ahead of his reelection campaign in 2020,” The Hill reports.
“If Democrats take control of the House after the November midterms, Trump will have no choice but to reach across the aisle if he wants to check off campaign promises such as a massive infrastructure package.”
Taegan Goddard is the founder of Political Wire, one of the earliest and most influential political web sites. He also runs Wonk Wire, Political Job Hunt 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.
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