You’re going to want to give this a look. You probably saw that Chairman Jerry Nadler released a mountain of document requests this morning to 81 different people, corporations and institutions tied to President Trump.
But what are they about? What are they looking for? And specifically what can we glean about what they’re investigating from these requests? Our team went through them all and broke them down into a series of investigatory buckets. Stuff about Comey and his firing; stuff about efforts to push out Jeff Sessions; pardons; Russia collusion; Russian financing of Trump and the Trump Org and a few other categories. It really gives you a sense of where this is going and who is tied to which investigation. Start here.
I like to keep you up to date when I read a book I think is worth your time. I’m now reading Marc Morris’s The Norman Conquest, which is very good. I recommend it. At the simplest level it’s just a good read on a subject of immense historical importance and one with sufficient drama to allow a good writer to keep the reader engaged. But what I really like about it is how Morris approaches a comparatively ancient period with the uncertainty of our knowledge not simply addressed or hinted at but made part of the story itself.
History is always open to interpretation. What is happening today right in front of our eyes is open to a vast degree of interpretation. But for most of the past what we know is inherently suspect and limited. Think of our knowledge of the distant past like a rope bridge stretching across a great chasm. The bridge probably gets you to the other side. But almost every step is a potential weak link that can bring the whole thing down. We have this documentary source or chronicle, this history that was written three or four generations later, a few coins that have very limited information but are firmly tied to a specific date, letters that were written by people who may or may not have known what they were talking about. From these shards of information historians weave together what happened by weighing relative reliability, the character of the sources, how close they are in time to the events in question, how reliably they have been passed down to the present day – all to create a reliable chronology of events. Read More
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has an army of critics who want to silence anyone in mainstream American politics (which includes anyone elected to Congress) who is critical of Israel. Many of those critics are driven by or leverage hostility to Muslims, as evidenced just yesterday with this bigoted poster at a West Virginia GOP event tying her to 9/11. But it is also true that she routinely uses words or phrases charged with deep anti-Semitic histories.
I just noticed this. Stone’s book that got Judge Jackson so upset – see below – isn’t about to be released. A big chunk of it has already been released. Some examples here.
So the release of Roger Stone’s book attacking the DOJ and the Mueller probe isn’t “imminent”. A big chunk is already published… just a few examples here https://t.co/EA99e7fYoD via @TPM pic.twitter.com/vMVytFPncB
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) March 2, 2019
Despite being under a court-imposed gag order, Roger Stone apparently has a new book coming out. Awesome! And the judge in his case ain’t happy.
Lynne Patton is the Trump family party planner who Trump appointed to one of the highest positions at the Department of Housing and Urban Development and had that notorious cameo appearance as Donald Trump’s black friend at the Michael Cohen hearing on Wednesday. It turns out she was slated to be part of a new reality TV show about black Republicans from the makers of the Real Housewives series.
Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA), who is on the oversight committee, says he wants John Kelly to come before the committee to discuss Trump’s order to issue Jared Kushner the highest level security clearance over the recommendations of security officials. He also wants the committee to get the memo Kelly wrote to memorialize what happened.
Trumpers have constructed a perfect logical defense or rather shield for President Trump. He cannot be indicted. And the Justice Department cannot share potentially damaging information about someone it has chosen not to indict. Ergo, RIP Mueller Report. Josh Kovensky has more.
Tomorrow at 3:30 PM eastern we’re holding an Inside Briefing on voting rights, the on-going court fight over the 2020 Census and various and sundry Trump administration abuses. We’ll be speaking with Dale Ho, Director of the ACLU’s Voting Rights Project. TPM’s Tierney Sneed, who covers these issues for us, will also join us for the Q&A If you’re an Inside member, you should have received an invitation email.
Michael Cohen is going to back for more testimony on March 6th. On March 14th, Felix Sater will testify before the House Intelligence committee in open session. Josh Kovensky talked to Sater on the phone earlier today.
This is, frankly, a critical hearing.
To refresh your memory, here’s one look at Sater’s background I wrote way back in February 2017. Here’s another on Cohen/Sater and the Trump/Russia money channel. Here’s another on the same topic. What happened to the “peace plan” dossier that Cohen hand delivered to Mike Flynn at the White House. Sater is at the center of that too. Finally, Sater is a critical piece of the puzzle in trying to understand what US law enforcement and intelligence knew when about Trump’s business ties with Russia, Ukraine and ex-Soviet organized crime figures.