We have a jury seated in the first trial of the Mueller Russia probe.
As we’ve seen today, Rudy Giuliani, like his boss, says a lot of dumb or unguarded things when he speaks off the cuff. Back on July 28th of 2016 had this to say on The Mike Gallagher Show.
Remarking that if the Russian government “could get into the DNC server and be in there for one year, which they were, the DNC server is a more modern server, much better protected than the old equipment that Hillary had hanging around in the garage at home.”
…“If they could get into that DNC server, they owned her server in Poughkeepsie,” Giuliani said, although the Clinton server was located in Chappaqua, New York. “And not only did they own it, you know, but so did the Russians, possibly the Israelis, maybe a couple of our other allies. And we do the same thing, so don’t get all upset.”
Here’s a Getty Images/AFP photo of journalists and others waiting to enter the Albert V. Bryan US Courthouse in Alexandria, Virginia for the beginning of the Paul Manafort trial today. Jury selection starts today. And there’s TPM’s Tierney Sneed, our DC Investigations Desk Reporter who’s been following the ins and outs of the Manafort case since the beginning!
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Grover Norquist and his friends at the Journal Oped page starting push this a few weeks ago: huge new tax cuts overwhelmingly for the wealthiest Americans by Presidential order. No Congress required. Can he do it? Who’s going to stop him?
Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg, the guy who just got subpoenaed in the Michael Cohen probe, was deep in the Trump University scam too. Allegra Kirkland reports.
The first trial to come out of special counsel Robert Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe starts tomorrow in the Eastern District of Virginia. There will be a day or two of jury selection, and then the trial itself will get underway.
Covering the trial from a courtroom in which electronics are banned will present an interesting set of challenges for reporters, including our own. Tierney Sneed and Caitlin MacNeal have a plan that will involve a hotel room, a deli, a pay phone, and some all-out sprints. Caitlin explains it here (Prime access).
Rudy Giuliani just went on Fox News and explained that actually he was denying that the pre-planning meeting took place. The walk back is just as convoluted as the original claims. So I’m going to just show you the video of what he said. Read More
Rudy Giuliani made two TV appearances this morning, one on Fox and one on CNN. Both are pretty convoluted and a bit hard to follow. So they’ve led to various interpretations. But there’s what I believe is one pretty big admission that is at least very new to me and I think a pretty big problem for Trump and Giuliani.
As I’ve mentioned a few times before, one of the oddities of Giuliani’s rolling defense of Trump in response to Cohen’s accusations is this: Giuliani says that the meeting where Trump allegedly learned about the Russia meeting never happened and he (Giuliani) has talked to the participants and they agree it never happened and Trump didn’t attend the meeting or know about the Russian offer. Now, there’s sort of a problem here. Cohen never said just what meeting he was referring to. And how can you be a witness to a meeting that never happened about what was said in that meeting? Read More
One of the things I have wanted for TPM for a very long time is a greater ability to visualize the story streams we focus on here at the site. This is a particular need for what we do precisely because we’re not a general interest publication. We’re focused on news about politics and political culture. But even within that purview, we tend to go deep and in a sustained way on a relatively few core stories we think are of particular importance and interest. Much of this you will recognize intuitively if you’re a core or longtime reader. I narrate some of these threads in my own commentary and analysis in the Editors’ Blog. But as the site has evolved over time that is not really sufficient. We’ve largely relied on these bigger pictures being clear in regular readers’ heads through repeat reading and immersion. But that’s not sufficient. Read More
Trump threatens “consequences” for families who cross border illegally, says “many are just using children for their own sinister purposes.”