Today we learned that Donald Trump’s erstwhile lead Russia lawyer, John Dowd, was likely forced to step down rather opting to pursue new opportunities in the law, as originally claimed. That got me curious about Andrew J. Ekonomou, who is now apparently Trump’s new lead attorney since Dowd’s departure. Ekonomou does not appear to have ever worked at a major national law firm, ever worked in Washington, DC or even worked as a defense lawyer. What first attracted my attention was that in addition to being an attorney, Ekonomou is also a medieval historian who writes about the early medieval papacy and the Byzantine empire. As a lapsed PhD myself I thought, if nothing else, this is a great story of PhDs finding alternative career tracks outside the academy!
But Ekonomou’s story actually gets so much better. Read More
Here is Michael Cohen's lawyer and spokesman saying categorically that Cohen negotiated agreement w/o ever telling his client DJT anything abt it and made him a party to the agreement w/o any intention of telling him abt it or having him sign it. @MichaelAvenatti @renato_mariotti pic.twitter.com/xqNLvcx1uX
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 29, 2018
So who ratted out John Dowd and his offers or hints of offers of pardons to Trump’s top aides who found themselves in Robert Mueller’s crosshairs? I think we can make a pretty solid educated guess.
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Very good point about that van der Zwaan sentencing document from TPM Reader JO …
Beyond the connection to “Person A”, what seems most notable about the van der Zwaan pleading is that he refused to cooperate with Mueller. Unlike Gates, who agreed to cooperate with Mueller in exchange for lenience, van der Zwaan has simply pled guilty. This is why Mueller’s sentencing document is so harsh.
TPM Reader MS has a critique of my recent comments about Facebook, both on the podcast and the Editor’s Blog. I spoke of “sleaze” and a “if we can code it, we should totally do it” ethos. On “sleaze” he’s probably right because that’s just a loaded word and too imprecise in its meaning. On the latter point, I think we were actually talking about something similar or even the same thing. In any case, here’s MS’s take … Read More
It sounds wonky. But if you care about the 2020 redistricting, whether cities with growing population get their full representation in Congress or whether areas with large populations get their fair share of federal funds, you need to focus on President Trump’s and Wilbur Ross’s effort to skew the 2020 Census. Read about it here.
I’ve been publicly critical of Google and Amazon for their monopolistic and often (especially in Amazon’s case) predatory business practices. But neither seems to have a corporate culture with the same level of sleaze and ‘if we can code it, we should totally do it’ ethos as Facebook. They deserve all the reputational damage they’re now incurring. But this is especially rich. Read More
Don’t miss Allegra Kirkland’s look at the NRA’s admissions about foreign funding. It is a very heavily lawyered letter which concedes that the NRA does receive funding from foreign individuals and entities. They also note that they move money between various accounts “as permitted by law.” This pretty clearly would allow the NRA to take foreign money into its non-election related accounts and then take money from those accounts which could be used on US elections and use it for that. In other words, all money is fungible and they’re conceding the mechanism to operationalize that fungibility. Lots of questions remain. But these are pretty key admissions, given the questions about the NRA’s ties to Russia and chatter about Russian money moving through the NRA into the 2016 election.
Don’t miss our weekly Sum Ups on Health Care Policy and Voting Rights/Democracy.
I was away for a week when apparently thirty insane things happened. In this week’s episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast, David Taintor walks me through all the crazy stuff that happened and we hash it all out. Listen on iTunes, Google Play or right here at TPM.
A big, really important favor. These early episodes are critical for building an audience for this new effort. If you haven’t yet it would mean a great deal to me if you could subscribe to my new podcast on iTunes. No cost. No need even to listen (though you totally should). It’s just clicking a button and it helps us a lot. Just subscribing and if possible rating us is a huge, huge help. Thanks.