Sometimes the importance, import and context of a story is only revealed by subsequent events. The Michael Cohen ‘peace plan’ story from early February is one of those cases. As Allegra Kirkland explains here, back in early February, Cohen and mafia-linked Trump Organization associate Felix Sater met at the Loews Regency hotel in Manhattan with Andrii Artemenko, a Trumpish, pro-Russian Ukrainian parliamentarian to discuss a ‘peace plan’ for Ukraine. The story emerged in mid February and received a decent amount of attention. But key facts look quite different after what we learned during the consequential month of May. Read More

In this new piece, Allegra Kirkland gives us an overview and some choice details of the wild world of Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s ‘personal lawyer’ and longtime Trump Organization operative – the side business with Ukrainian emigre taxi barons, the casino boats, the ethanol business in Ukraine. Cohen turns out to be a major player in the New York City taxi business. One of his erstwhile business partners is Simon Garber, a Ukrainian emigre with a long record of run-ins with the law and dominant figure in the NYC taxi world, as well as Chicago and New Orleans, and (formerly) Moscow. Here’s the time Cohen, allegedly waited until Garber was away on a business trip to ride out to Garber’s New Jersey country horse farm estate and “manipulate” Garber’s wife into signing a new contract in Cohen’s taxi contract dispute with Garber.

Let me expand on what I said below about President Trump’s climate decision being driven by emotion and rage. Read More

Off to a solid first day of our Prime subscription drive. Thank you! Are you planning to sign up? Stop right now. Actually stop. Take out your wallet and credit card and click this link. Not tomorrow or this evening. Just stop right now and check it off the list. I’m the same way. I keep putting things off that I want to do. If you’re a regular reader, we need you to become a subscriber. It takes two minutes. Thank you.

The President’s decision on Paris is terrible, in some ways all the more so because it was almost certainly driven not by any strategy or ideological goal but emotion and hurt feelings of the moment. If Angela Merkel hadn’t criticized him after the summit, it might have turned out differently. President Trump is entirely capable of being a policy changeling in cases where his own ego injury and Russia are not in the balance. Read More

Today is June 1st. It’s the first day of our annual Prime membership sign-up drive. If you’ve been planning on signing up, please ignore everything below and just click here and sign up right now. It’s cheap, awesome and important.

If you need to know more about why we’re doing this and why it’s so important, get the full story after the jump. Read More

Professor Allan Lichtman predicted Trump’s election and now he’s predicting Trump’s impeachment. And he’s taking TPM Reader’s questions in The Hive at 1 PM this afternoon. Get your questions in now and join us at 1 pm!

Trump budget chief suggested horrendous CBO score of Trumpcare may be part of anti-Trump meddling by ‘deep state’. Really.

If you’re a fan of Tressie McMillan Cottom (and if you’re not, you should be), be sure to listen to the Episode 17 of The Josh Marshall Show podcast. Tressie and I talk about for-profit higher ed, academia and more. Listen here!

The title of this post is, I confess, rather dramatic and declarative. I’ve written elsewhere about possible ‘innocent explanations’ of the Trump/Russia story, particularly Donald Trump’s role in it. I will leave that all-encompassing question aside for the moment. Here I’m talking about Jared Kushner’s attempt to set up a secure line of communication to Moscow, as well as meeting with the head of that government-backed Russian bank. Read More