Trump Timeline ... Trumpocalypse

[Michael Scally MD]

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the former New York mayor and recent addition to President Trump’s legal team, has a warning for special counsel Robert S. Mueller III: Steer clear of Ivanka Trump.

In his freewheeling interview Wednesday night with Fox News Channel’s Sean Hannity, Giuliani said the country would “turn” on Mueller if he went after the president’s eldest daughter, who is also a White House adviser, as part of his investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia.

“Ivanka Trump? I think I would get on my charger and go ride into their offices with a lance, if they go after Ivanka,” Giuliani said. “Now if they do do Ivanka, which I don’t think they will, the whole country will turn on them. If they go after her, the whole country will turn on them. They’re going after his daughter?”

Giuliani was responding to a recent Politico story that explored why Mueller has yet to call Ivanka Trump as a witness, given her proximity to some key events he appears to be investigating. Politico described it as a signal of a“don’t-poke-the-bear-until-you-have-to” strategy.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

You know it’s gotten bad when the President is required to do damage control for his lawyer, but that’s exactly what happened this morning, when Donald Trump https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-offers-explanation-on-twitter-about-how-he-reimbursed-his-lawyer-to-hush-porn-star/2018/05/03/8e649b10-4eba-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html (took to Twitter)to explain himself, after Rudy Giuliani https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/giuliani-trump-repaid-lawyer-cohen-for-stormy-daniels-settlement/2018/05/02/526cde54-4e76-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html?utm_term=.18cf35e9d3db (admitted) on Fox News that Trump repaid $130,000 in hush money to Stormy Daniels. In suspiciously non-capitalized prose, Trump (or his ghost-tweeter) basically confirmed the story, and said it was no biggie.

But Giuliani’s other admission — delivered during his interview with Sean Hannity on Wednesday night — may be more important and damning. Giuliani conceded in an offhand way that Trump fired former FBI director James B. Comey because Comey failed to do Trump’s bidding and publicly declare that Trump was not under investigation. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/giuliani-trump-repaid-lawyer-cohen-for-stormy-daniels-settlement/2018/05/02/526cde54-4e76-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html?utm_term=.84ce340d1b69 (Here’s what Giuliani said):

“He fired Comey because Comey would not, among other things, say that he wasn’t a target of the investigation,” Giuliani said. “He’s entitled to that. Hillary Clinton got that, and he couldn’t get that. So he fired him, and he said, ‘I’m free of this guy.'”

In saying this, Giuliani appears to have thought that he was exonerating Trump. Giuliani was saying Trump didn’t fire Comey to obstruct the investigation into Trump campaign collusion with Russian sabotage of our election, but rather because Comey didn’t publicly clear him, which Giuliani believes Trump was “entitled to.”

But this undercuts the leading public rationale that Trump offered for firing Comey. The White House has cited Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation as the fake pretext for the firing. But now Trump’s own lawyer has confirmed on national television that the rationale was directly related to the Russia investigation.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

The vast and mighty chorus of the GOP faithful, in nonstop rehearsals throughout the presidential campaign with their rousing renditions of “Lock her up! Lock her up!,” has succumbed to a mass outbreak of laryngitis.

It is not possible that their fervor to hound accused government figures suspected of wrongdoing could have waned. No, their ardor was indomitable, racing manically far ahead of any actual charges levied, trials conducted, sentences passed. Their demand for clean government was unyielding; you could see it in their glinting eyes and hear it in their burning, fervent chants as they demanded jail for the investigated.

They had no time for counter-narratives, such as “witch hunt,” as they already had their witch clearly in sight, and demanded the sequence of sentence, trial, indictment. After all, she had been called “extremely reckless!” What more evidence of illegal action could a patriot possibly need?

Now, as President Trump burns through lawyers like an unregulated coal oven and changes his story by the hour — about such small concerns as concealed financial and personal dealings potentially reaching from Trump’s hidden tax returns and campaign staffers all the way to a hostile foreign power and back through unexplained hush money paid to a porn star — it is such a shame that the GOP’s righteous vocal talents are laid low. Stilled by mysterious circumstances, they are no doubt as frustrated by this as the rest of us.

How they must long to return to the cathartic chants demanding preemptive punishment. How they must pine to insist that Trump be hauled out from behind the chief executive’s desk and hurled into the dungeon! If only their vocal cords hadn’t given out just as they were so desperately needed.

Are they complicit? We may never know, as they too have lawyered up and informed us that they have the right to remain silent.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Critics of President Trump, including me, have regularly compared him to authoritarian rulers such as https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/the-european-unions-next-democracy-task-begins-at-home/2018/04/30/1093c82c-4c95-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html?utm_term=.14fa13eaa321 (Viktor Orban) and Vladimir Putin. But a more apt comparison may be with Jordan Belfort or Frank Abagnale. Who? you ask.

Belfort is the high-living Wall Street stockbroker who was convicted of fraud and subsequently had his life story dramatized by Martin Scorsese in “The Wolf of Wall Street.” Abagnale is the con artist who pretended to be a doctor and airline pilot, among other disguises. His life story was told by Steven Spielberg in “Catch Me If You Can.” That title appears ever-more-appropriate for the Donald Trump life story as more of the president’s scams come to light.

Just this week, Trump’s personal doctor, Harold Bornstein, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/05/02/harold-bornstein-exiled-from-trumpland-former-doctor-now-frightened-and-sad/?utm_term=.fa669ab417a4 (said)he did not write the glowing letter attesting to Trump’s “astonishingly excellent” health that was released under his signature on Dec. 4, 2015. “He dictated the whole letter,” Bornstein said. That will come as no shock to anyone familiar with Trump’s self-aggrandizement and ignorance of history, given that the letter https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2015/12/14/donald-trumps-doctor-has-come-down-with-a-case-of-trumpitis/?utm_term=.4b5c4776ae88 (claimed): “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”

...

Having gotten in the habit of lying regularly about matters big and small, Trump has set new records for mendacity while in office. The Post https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2018/05/01/president-trump-has-made-3001-false-or-misleading-claims-so-far/?utm_term=.33b09ffe0125 (reports) that he has made more than 3,000 false or misleading claims since the inauguration, and that his rate of deception has increased from 4.9 to 9 falsehoods a day.

Does any of this matter? From a political perspective, probably not. Voters knew what sort of huckster Trump was when they elected him. But it should give us pause to consider what it says about America, circa 2018, that so many of us are so ready to accept a Jordan Belfort or Frank Abagnale — a con man, in other words — as our leader.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Winning ...

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Last night, in the midst of a long, deeply incriminating interview, Rudy Giuliani called FBI agents “stormtroopers.” Here was the president’s lawyer, not an outside lobbyist, comparing federal law enforcement to Nazis directly, rather than indirectly. The Washington Post’s https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/giuliani-trump-repaid-lawyer-cohen-for-stormy-daniels-settlement/2018/05/02/526cde54-4e76-11e8-84a0-458a1aa9ac0a_story.html?utm_term=.acc807e313b3 (account) of Giuliani’s interview noted the remark in a single sentence, in the 30th paragraph of its story. The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Politico accounts of Giuliani’s interview did not even mention the stormtrooper remark at all.

No doubt the flurry of hair-on-fire legal jeopardy unleashed by Giuliani’s remarks helped bury the newsworthiness of his stormtrooper line. Still, the casualness with which the line was uttered and received does indicate something important about the way Republican thinking about law enforcement has evolved. The party’s respect for the rule of law is disintegrating before our eyes, and in its place is forming a Trumpian conviction that the law must be an instrument of reactionary power.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Winning ...

Over the opposition of lawyers for a company owned by President Donald J. Trump, State Supreme Court Judge Eileen Bransten ruled Thursday that a condominium on the Upper West Side could remove the bronze letters spelling out his name from its 46-story building.

The ruling opens the door for the 377 condo owners at 200 Riverside Boulevard to formally vote on whether to keep or remove the T-R-U-M-P letters that have adorned the building, between 69th and 70th Streets, for the past 19 years.

Reading a 12- page document from the bench, Judge Bransten repeatedly rejected, dismissed or found the Trump lawyers’ arguments to be unpersuasive and granted summary judgment to the condominium’s board.

The ruling came in response to a request in January by the board, asking the judge to declare that a licensing agreement between the building and DJT Holdings, one of Mr. Trump’s companies, that gave the condo the right to use the Trump name on its facade, did not require it to use the name.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Trump leads National Prayer Day event after saying he repaid lawyer for hush money to porn star.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

Feds tapped Trump lawyer Michael Cohen's phones

At least one phone call between a phone line associated with Cohen and the White House was intercepted, a source said.

Federal investigators have wiretapped the phone lines of Michael Cohen, the longtime personal lawyer for President Donald Trump who is under investigation for a payment he made to an adult film star who alleged she had an affair with Trump, according to two people with knowledge of the legal proceedings involving Cohen.

It is not clear how long the wiretap has been authorized, but NBC News has learned it was in place in the weeks leading up to the raids on Cohen's offices, hotel room, and home in early April, according to one person with direct knowledge.

At least one phone call between a phone line associated with Cohen and the White House was intercepted, the person said.

Previously, federal prosecutors in New York have said in court filings that they have conducted covert searches on multiple e-mail accounts maintained by Cohen.

Spokespeople for the U.S. Attorney's Office and the FBI in New York declined comment.

After the raid, members of Trump's legal team advised the president not to speak to Cohen, according to a person familiar with the discussion.

Two sources close to Trump's newest attorney, Rudolph Giuliani, say he learned that days after the raid the president had made a call to Cohen, and told Trump never to call again out of concern the call was being recorded by prosecutors.

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]

 

[Michael Scally MD]