We have another of those days where the rush of miscellaneous revelations tied to the Trump-Russia probe just keeps coming and the day won’t quit. The TPM Team has already covered the various stories emerging out of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s release of documents and interviews tied to the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. But a bunch more came late in the day.
Ronan Farrow reported on the source who revealed those Michael Cohen bank documents. It’s not just this person’s personal decision that is notable but the fact that he or she says two other reports have apparently been removed or hidden in the government SARs database. That’s why the person says they leaked the document — to call attention to these other missing reports. It’s really not clear where this lead in the story goes. Read More
In new government ethics filing, Trump forced to disclose Cohen payments he hid last year.
Julian Assange hacked the Ecuadorean Embassy’s computer network as his relationship with his host’s deteriorated.
When I start railing about Israel’s government — he’s “Netanyahoo” as far as I am concerned — some of my co-religionists chide me for singling out Israel and exempting Putin’s Russia or Xi Jinping’s China from my complaints. My usual reply is that as a Jew I feel morally complicit in what Israel’s government does; I don’t feel that way about what Putin or Xi does.
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You probably saw the news yesterday that just days before President Trump tweeted that he was intent on saving that sanctions-busting Chinese telecommunications company, China had agreed to loan $500 million to a major Trump-backed development in Indonesia. These kinds of situations are now basically commonplace in the Trump Era. But it is important to look at them from a macro- and a micro-perspective. The details are quite complex in the latter case. We are still digging into them. But I wanted to give you a first sense of what we’re finding, because they make Trump’s connection to the operation and potential profits look considerably tighter than what I’d been led to expect yesterday from early reports. Read More
From the outset, there was little reason to think that North Korea would agree to surrender its nuclear weapons and the infrastructure and labs required to build them. If we set aside the never-very-plausible idea that the Kims are madmen intent on prepping some secular apocalyptic nuclear confrontation with the U.S., a more prosaic, rational strategy becomes clear: build a credible nuclear deterrent, thus making military-backed regime change unthinkable. Then reach an accommodation with the U.S. from a position of strength and fundamental equality. Such an agreement might involve restrictions on nuclear weapons development, limits on numbers of warheads. But fundamentally it would mean accepting North Korea as a nuclear power. Read More
The Schlapps are one of the great power couples of the Trump Era. She’s a top communications staffer at the White House — Mercedes Schlapp. He’s the head of CPAC and a major pro-Trump talking head on CNN — Matt Schlapp. Both are longtime lobbyists and DC power players. They made a stir for making a great show of walking out of the White House Correspondents Dinner early on their way to hit the after parties, allegedly as a splashy protest over “elites” at the dinner and comedian Michelle Wolf. The two apparently tweeted their outrage from a limo on the way to the NBC afterparty. “It’s why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite,” wrote Mercedes Schlapp.
Now the two have garnered attention as the most conspicuous defenders of Kelly Sadler, the White House staffer who reportedly joked about John McCain’s terminal illness. Read More
Fox Host Jeanine Pirro says Donald Trump fulfilled biblical prophecy by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem.
Judge Jeanine: Trump fulfilled biblical prophecy by moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem. pic.twitter.com/iZOkj3b5OM
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) May 13, 2018