Set your alarm: President Trump will hold a news conference in New Delhi at 6:30 am ET tomorrow.
Mulvaney Doesn’t Fly to India with Trump
“President Trump’s acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney did not travel with him to India as scheduled at the last minute, according to four people who say he has a cold and was advised not to go,” CNN reports.
“A senior administration official who briefed reporters Friday originally listed Mulvaney along with 11 others who were expected to travel with the President for his two-day visit to the world’s most populous democracy, but Mulvaney did not board Air Force One with the others Sunday.”
Trump’s Deep State Hit List
Jonathan Swan: “The Trump White House and its allies, over the past 18 months, assembled detailed lists of disloyal government officials to oust — and trusted pro-Trump people to replace them.”
“By the time President Trump instructed his 29-year-old former body man and new head of presidential personnel to rid his government of anti-Trump officials, he’d gathered reams of material to support his suspicions.”
National Security Adviser No Longer Advises
“When President Trump’s national security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, convenes meetings with top National Security Council officials at the White House, he sometimes opens by distributing printouts of Mr. Trump’s latest tweets on the subject at hand,” the New York Times reports.
“The gesture amounts to an implicit challenge for those present. Their job is to find ways of justifying, enacting or explaining Mr. Trump’s policy, not to advise the president on what it should be.”
“That is the reverse of what the National Security Council was created to do at the Cold War’s dawn — to inform and advise the president on national security decisions. But under Mr. O’Brien, the White House’s hostage negotiator when Mr. Trump chose him to succeed John Bolton in September, that dynamic has often been turned on its head.”
Trump’s Spy Chief Worked for Corrupt Foreign Politician
“President Trump’s new acting intelligence director, Richard Grenell, used to do consulting work on behalf of an Eastern European oligarch who is now a fugitive and was recently barred from entering the U.S. under anti-corruption sanctions imposed last month by the State Department,” ProPublica reports.
“In 2016, Grenell wrote several articles defending the oligarch, a Moldovan politician named Vladimir Plahotniuc, but did not disclose that he was being paid.”
“Grenell also did not register under the Foreign Agents Registration Act, which generally requires people to disclose work in the U.S. on behalf of foreign politicians.”
Grenell Begins Overhauling Intelligence Office
“Richard Grenell’s tenure as the nation’s top intelligence official may be short-lived, but he wasted no time this week starting to shape his team of advisers, ousting his office’s No. 2 official — a longtime intelligence officer — and bringing in an expert on Trump conspiracy theories to help lead the agency,” the New York Times reports.
“Mr. Grenell has also requested the intelligence behind the classified briefing last week before the House Intelligence Committee where officials told lawmakers that Russia was interfering in November’s presidential election and that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia favored President Trump’s re-election. The briefing later prompted Mr. Trump’s anger as he complained that Democrats would use it against him.”
Video Kills Lawmaker’s Appointment as Spy Chief
President Trump was close to nominating Rep. Chris Stewart (R-UT) as director of national intelligence, Bloomberg reports.
“But that idea was scrapped when Trump learned of a 2016 video clip in which Stewart said ‘Donald Trump does not represent Republican ideals, he is our Mussolini.'”
Trump Pledges to Continue Subsidies to Farmers
President Trump said that his administration would continue offering subsidies to farmers until various trade deals “fully kick in.”
He falsely claimed the aid would be “paid for out of the massive tariff money coming into the USA!”
Those tariffs are actually paid by U.S. consumers, not foreign countries.
New White House Personnel Chief Targets Never Trumpers
“Johnny McEntee called in White House liaisons from cabinet agencies for an introductory meeting Thursday, in which he asked them to identify political appointees across the U.S. government who are believed to be anti-Trump,” Axios reports.
“McEntee, a 29-year-old former body man to Trump who was fired in 2018 by then-Chief of Staff John Kelly but recently rehired — and promoted to head the presidential personnel office — foreshadowed sweeping personnel changes across government.”
How Stephen Miller Manipulates Trump
New Yorker: “Miller wasn’t so much channeling Trump as overtaking him. Inside the White House, he was known as a ‘walking encyclopedia’ on immigration, and the President’s political advisers, who acknowledged that campaigning on the issue had been the key to Trump’s victory in 2016, deferred to him as an expert. Those with reservations—like Rex Tillerson, the Secretary of State, and H. R. McMaster, the national-security adviser—had other responsibilities. Miller could outmaneuver them if he used the right interagency channels. He sent e-mail sparingly and avoided calling officials directly to issue orders, relaying his messages through intermediaries.”
“Since Trump could rarely comprehend the full substance of his own Administration’s agenda on immigration, it fell to Miller to define what victory looked like.”
Collins Rejects Idea of Becoming Intelligence Chief
Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA) rejected the idea of becoming the director of national intelligence after President Trump said he could tap the congressman to the post and spare fellow Republican Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) of a formidable challenge, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reports.
Trump Stews Over McCabe But Is Wary of Barr
President Trump “was surprised and angered by the Justice Department’s decision not to charge Andrew McCabe with crimes, but the president is wary of acting against the former deputy FBI director out of concern he might push Attorney General William Barr to resign,” Bloomberg reports.
“The Justice Department gave the White House no advance notice of its decision on McCabe, meaning Trump found out along with the public when it was announced on Tuesday, three of the people said. That created fresh point of potential tension between Trump and Barr, who has publicly criticized Trump’s tweets about criminal cases DOJ is pursuing and has privately told associates he may quit.”
Trump Ousted Spy Chief After Election Briefing
“President Trump erupted at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office last week over what he perceived as disloyalty by Maguire’s staff, ruining his chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief,” the Washington Post reports.
“Maguire had been considered a leading candidate to be nominated for the DNI post, White House aides had said. But Trump’s opinion shifted last week, after he heard from a GOP ally that the intelligence official in charge of election security, who works for Maguire, gave a classified briefing last Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee on 2020 election security.”
“It’s unclear what the official, Shelby Pierson, specifically said at the briefing that angered Trump, But the president erroneously believed that she had given information exclusively to Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), the committee chairman, and it would be helpful to Democrats if released publicly.”
Schiff Warns Pardoning Stone Would Be Corrupt
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff said Roger Stone’s sentence was “justified” and warned that a presidential pardon in the case would be a “breathtaking act of corruption.”
Said Shiff: “Roger Stone was found guilty of lying to Congress and threatening a witness. He did it to cover up for Trump. His sentence is justified.”
He added: “It should go without saying, but to pardon Stone when his crimes were committed to protect Trump would be a breathtaking act of corruption.”
Rohrabacher Says He Offered Assange a Trump Pardon
Former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) confirmed to Yahoo News that “during a three-hour meeting at the Ecuadorian Embassy in August 2017, he told Julian Assange he would get President Trump to give him a pardon if he turned over information proving the Russians had not been the source of internal Democratic National Committee emails published by WikiLeaks.”
“Rohrabacher said that not only did talk of a Trump pardon take place during his meeting, but he also followed up by calling then White House chief of staff John Kelly to discuss the proposal. He did not, however, ever speak to Trump about it.”
What 11 Criminals Granted Clemency Had in Common
New York Times: “All 11 recipients had an inside connection or were promoted on Fox News. Some were vocal supporters of Mr. Trump, donated to his campaign or in one case had a son who weekended in the Hamptons with the president’s eldest son. Even three obscure women serving time on drug or fraud charges got on Mr. Trump’s radar screen through a personal connection.”
“While 14,000 clemency petitions sit unaddressed at the Justice Department’s Office of the Pardon Attorney, Mr. Trump eagerly granted relief to a former football team owner who hosted a pre-inauguration party, a onetime contestant on “Celebrity Apprentice” and an infamous investor championed both by Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, and by the billionaire who hosted a $10 million fund-raiser for Mr. Trump just last weekend.”
Top National Security Official Reassigned
“Deputy national security adviser Victoria Coates will be reassigned to become a senior adviser to Energy Secretary Dan Brouillette,” Axios reports.
“Coates has battled rumors that she is ‘Anonymous,’ the still-unknown Trump administration official that penned a New York Times op-ed and book critical of President Trump, though a senior White House administration official said that the administration ‘rejects’ those claims.”
Inside Roger Stone’s Relationship with Trump
Politico: “Stone and Trump have a history unlike anyone else around the president. They’ve known each other since Ronald Reagan’s 1980 White House campaign and maintained a rapport that includes Stone counseling Trump during four potential presidential runs and Trump hiring Stone as a lobbyist to represent his gambling, airline and hotel businesses. In his most recent book, Stone boasted that he knew about Trump’s 2016 plans more than two years before the formal campaign announcement.”
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