President Trump seemed to hedge a bit on his months-long chant of “no obstruction, no collusion,” saying that the redacted Mueller report revealed “essentially no obstruction” during a bill signing, TPM reports.
Said Trump: “At the end of the testimony, no collusion. And essentially no obstruction.”
Members of President Trump’s inner circle are frustrated that the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee subpoenaed Donald Trump Jr., CNN reports.
“Those close to Trump are exasperated that Republican Sen. Richard Burr, in their minds, just handed Democrats a talking point. Multiple Republicans had coalesced around Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s talking point of ‘case closed’ in recent days, but now Democrats can argue that even members of the President’s own party don’t agree that all Russia inquiries should end immediately.”
“The subpoena was issued more than two weeks ago… and it compelled Trump Jr. to testify before the committee.”
White House acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney told CBS News that he was blindsided by the GOP-led Senate Intelligence Committee subpoena for Donald Trump Jr to appear.
Said Mulvaney: ‘To subpoena the President of the United States’ son and not at least get a heads up I thought was, let’s say, bad form.”
The Hill: Senate GOP grows frustrated with Trump chief of staff.
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Playbook: “Some extreme action — like launching impeachment proceedings against President Trump — is getting likelier by the day. It’s not overwhelmingly likely, but the vibe on Capitol Hill is getting worse: Democrats are angry that they are getting stonewalled. Republicans are angry that Democrats do not seem willing to let this go.”
“House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has handled the politics of impeachment well. She’s kept her foot hovering above the brake pedal, cognizant of the risk of immediate acceleration. She has kept her chairmen in line, kept her members mostly calm and her leadership on the same page. She even went to the White House with Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer to talk infrastructure, which showed Trump she’s not singularly consumed with oversight, but also interested in governing.”
“But the White House is doing practically everything it can to taunt Pelosi. Most administrations slow-walk document production; this White House is flat-out saying, ‘No, your oversight is overzealous, and we won’t participate in it.’ This is going to force Democrats to file lawsuits to obtain documents — lawsuits that even top Republicans privately concede Pelosi will win.”
“Trump seems to be daring Democrats to take the impeachment road. Talk people in his administration, and you’ll hear that all of this Hill saber-rattling is good for them. Impeachment is unpopular, they believe, and will help Trump in 2020.”
Tony Schwartz, the ghostwriter for Donald Trump’s bestselling book, The Art of the Deal, tweeted that he would be fine if the book was “taken out of print” or “recategorized as fiction” after the New York Times detailed Trump’s $1.2 billion in business losses from 1985 to 1994.
Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. denied to Fox Radio asking Michael Cohen to intervene in a case where someone reportedly claimed to possess racy “personal” photos that were potentially embarrassing to Falwell and his wife.
Falwell insisted that “no compromising or embarrassing photos” of himself existed.
He added: “While we have a long-standing friendship with Michael Cohen, we never engaged or paid Cohen to represent us in any legal or other professional capacity, and Cohen did not ever resolve any legal matter on our behalf.”
“The White House has asserted executive privilege over the Mueller report on Russian interference in the 2016 election, in its latest confrontation with Congress,” the Washington Post reports.
New York Times: “The assertion, Mr. Trump’s first use of the secrecy powers as president, came as the House Judiciary Committee is expected to vote Wednesday morning to recommend the House of Representatives hold Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for defying a subpoena for the same material.”
Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that President Trump is building his own case for impeachment by continuing to stonewall lawmakers in their demand for testimony and documents from the White House, Politico reports.
Said Pelosi: “He’s becoming self-impeachable in terms of some of the things he’s doing.”
She added: “Every single day, whether it’s obstruction, obstruction, obstruction, obstruction of having people come to the table with facts or ignoring subpoenas. Every single day, the president is making a case.”
President Trump said a New York Times report on his tax information and finances was based on “very old information,” tweeting that “almost all real estate developers” posted large losses in their tax returns, NBC News reports.
Said Trump: “You always wanted to show losses for tax purposes….almost all real estate developers did – and often re-negotiate with banks, it was sport. Additionally, the very old information put out is a highly inaccurate Fake News hit job!”
Former White House chief of staff John Kelly told Bloomberg that members of President Trump’s family serving on the White House staff needed to be ‘dealt with’ as he sought to implement a more orderly process in the West Wing.
Said Kelly: “They were an influence that has to be dealt with. By no means do I mean Mrs. Trump — the first lady’s a wonderful person.”
“Kelly’s remarks pointed to his long-running and low-simmering frustration with the role of the president’s daughter, Ivanka Trump, and her husband, Jared Kushner, in the White House.”
“Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin addressed a group of top donors backing President Trump’s reelection Tuesday evening, making an unusual political appearance at a gathering that included industry executives his agency is tasked with regulating,” the Washington Post reports.
“Mnuchin’s attendance at the kickoff event for the Trump Victory Committee came a day after he rejected a request from House Democrats for Trump’s tax returns and as the Dow Jones industrial average fell sharply amid a trade standoff between the United States and China.”
“Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors didn’t want former FBI Director James Comey’s memos released because they feared that President Trump and other witnesses could change their stories after reading Comey’s version of events, according to an argument they made in a January 2018 sealed court hearing,” CNN reports.
“The newly released record gives a rare glimpse into the Mueller team’s concerns at a time the special prosecutors were publicly silent about their work — and before redacted versions of Comey’s memos were made public.”
Ten years of tax information obtained by the New York Times “paints a different, and far bleaker, picture of President Trump’s deal-making abilities and financial condition” than was previously known.
“The data — printouts from Mr. Trump’s official Internal Revenue Service tax transcripts, with the figures from his federal tax form, the 1040, for the years 1985 to 1994 — represents the fullest and most detailed look to date at the president’s taxes, information he has kept from public view. Though the information does not cover the tax years at the center of an escalating battle between the Trump administration and Congress, it traces the most tumultuous chapter in a long business career — an era of fevered acquisition and spectacular collapse.”
“The numbers show that in 1985, Mr. Trump reported losses of $46.1 million from his core businesses — largely casinos, hotels and retail space in apartment buildings. They continued to lose money every year, totaling $1.17 billion in losses for the decade.”
“In fact, year after year, Mr. Trump appears to have lost more money than nearly any other individual American taxpayer.”
New York Times: 5 takeaways from 10 years of Trump’s tax figures.
James Risen: “Through his unrelenting efforts to obstruct the Trump-Russia investigation since its inception, President Trump has inflicted a slow-motion Saturday Night Massacre on the American people, a constitutional nightmare that has lasted two years instead of one night.”
“And it is still going on, despite the fact that special counsel Robert Mueller has completed his investigation. Trump now has a willing lackey in Attorney General William Barr, who is aiding and abetting the president’s ongoing efforts to control the Justice Department and corrupt the country’s system of checks and balances.”
“Months before evangelical leader Jerry Falwell Jr.’s game-changing presidential endorsement of Donald Trump in 2016, Falwell asked Trump fixer Michael Cohen for a personal favor,” Cohen said in a recorded conversation reviewed by Reuters.
“Falwell, president of Liberty University, one of the world’s largest Christian universities, said someone had come into possession of what Cohen described as racy ‘personal’ photographs — the sort that would typically be kept ‘between husband and wife.'”
Said Cohen, without divulging specifics: “I actually have one of the photos. It’s terrible.”
“As the standoff over President Trump’s federal tax returns deepens in Washington, New York State lawmakers say they intend to advance a bill on Wednesday to allow congressional committees to see Mr. Trump’s New York State returns,” the New York Times reports.
“State Senator Brad Hoylman, a Manhattan Democrat, confirmed on Tuesday that the State Senate has enough votes to ensure passage of a bill… The State Assembly has been slower to embrace the bill. ”
“A tax return from New York — where the president has the headquarters of his business empire and a home in Trump Tower — could contain much of the same financial information as a federal return, which Mr. Trump has steadfastly refused to release.”
“Trump is goading us to impeach him. That’s what he’s doing. Every single day, he’s just like taunting, taunting, taunting because he knows that it would be very divisive in the country, but he doesn’t really care. He just wants to solidify his base.”
— Speaker Nancy Pelosi, quoted by CNN.
More than 650 former federal prosecutors have signed onto a statement asserting that if the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel did not prohibit a sitting president from being indicted, President Trump would be charged with obstruction of justice, Axios reports.
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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