The Times had a story overnight about how President Trump pushed Mitch McConnell to fast track his nomination for the Chief Counsel of the IRS in the early months of this year, an obviously key position in any fight over securing the President’s taxes. What I was more interested in was the information a bit further down in the article that notes that Michael J. Desmond is actually a one time Trump tax lawyer and long time colleague of William Nelson and Sheri Dillon, Trump’s long time tax attorneys and the folks who put together his purported non-blind blind trust. Remember the press conference with the glued together stacks of papers? Read More
Overnight we had a number of new stories shedding new light on what should have been obvious from the moment Bill Barr released his letter. Let me start by just pointing out a few key articles. While we’re seeing new information come out about the Mueller report, we should also note the continued credulousness of a lot of the DC press corps in evaluating Barr’s motives and aims in this whole drama. Read More
New Nadler letter presses Barr on reports he mischaracterized Mueller findings and failed to release summaries intended for easy public release.
Notably, Nadler also wants to see communications between the Special Counsel’s Office and Barr’s DOJ to see if Barr is accurately portraying those interactions.
oh, new report says Barr fudged the details about collusion too … pic.twitter.com/hnHIUrUe9n
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 4, 2019
NBC has now added some additional information: “Mueller team members say [the report] includes detailed accounts of Trump campaign contacts with Russia. While Mueller found no coordination or criminal conspiracy, the official said, some team members say his findings paint a picture of a campaign whose members were manipulated by a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation. Some of that information may be classified, the official said, so it’s not clear whether it will be released in a few weeks when Barr makes public a redacted version of the Mueller report.”
I’ll leave this to a further discussion tomorrow. But the Post has now followed up on the Times story with more detail. Their sources say the authors of the Report specifically wrote section summaries that could be quickly or immediately made public. But here’s something to note. The Times story appears based largely on sources close to Barr. The Post story seems mainly based on sources close to the Special Counsel’s Office. More on this tomorrow.
Six GOP state legislators in Georgia are sponsoring a proposed law that would set up an “ethics board” for journalists in the state and exact civil penalties if journalists or news organizations failed to turn over photos, audio or video of recordings of interview subjects.
The law also appears to create a framework for investigating journalists and empowering litigants to sue journalists if they don’t hand over work copy from interviews.
Ways and Means Chair demands six year of the President’s tax returns, personal returns in addition to returns of various Trump entities.
This story here gives you a good sense of how Trumpism, domestic white supremacist activity and revanchist anti-Semitic politics in Poland and other parts of Europe are all part of one common story. This story of racist and anti-Semitic graffiti at a Democratic party headquarters in Oklahoma too.