It sounds like the White House doctor ‘hesitated’ before agreeing to run the Department of Veterans Affairs. That sounds like a moment of lucidity. I suspect this nomination won’t even get to nomination hearings.
Trump: If only the US-Mexico border could be as good as the barbwire, hyper-militarized DMZ between North and South Korea!!! pic.twitter.com/QPMBDwxJ4e
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 30, 2018
Yesterday morning, we published a scoop by Alice Ollstein: Congressional Democrats, she reported, are demanding an investigation into Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke’s order last summer to reassign dozens of top-level DOI career employees. His choice of who to reassign, Democrats allege, may have been racially discriminatory, in addition to being politically motivated. Government investigators are also currently looking into whether these reassignments may have broken laws protecting civil servants.
Alice’s reporting is part of TPM’s longterm focus on how the Trump administration treats civil servants, and whether the administration is choosing who to fire and reassign with political objectives in mind. That would be illegal.
Thinking big picture, why does this story matter? In a Prime post, Alice digs into one reason: If investigators uphold Zinke’s decision to reassign and marginalize DOI employees, one whistleblower told her, it could give the green light for a government-wide purge.
This is pretty good: Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker has been trying to block two state legislative special elections that he’s afraid the GOP might lose. Walker says giving people full representation is a waste of money. He was so determined not to hold the elections that he was even willing to change state law to make it easier.
Now, Allegra Kirkland reports, the whole plan seems to have imploded, after a Democratic group led by Eric Holder sued. And Walker is lashing out.
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.
Follow me. Read More
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.