Trump Faces A Looming Indictment In The Sordid Stormy Daniels Case

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

Stormy!

A criminal indictment against former President Trump now seems almost inevitable, though not guaranteed. That it comes in the Stormy Daniels hush money case is almost surreal, especially given that Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg seemed to have abandoned the investigation upon taking office.

Trump has been invited to testify before the Manhattan grand jury investigating his hush money payment to Stormy Daniels in the waning days of the 2016 president campaign, a Trump lawyer confirmed to the AP.

The on-the-record confirmation followed the initial scoop by the NYT last evening, which characterized the move as “the strongest indication yet that prosecutors are nearing an indictment of the former president.”

“Such offers almost always indicate an indictment is close; it would be unusual for the district attorney, Alvin L. Bragg, to notify a potential defendant without ultimately seeking charges against him,” the NYT reported.

The defense offered to the AP by Trump attorney Joseph Tacopina was almost desultory: “It’s just another example of them weaponizing the justice system against him. And it’s sort of unfair.”

Trump would be insane to accept Bragg’s invitation to testify, but Trump’s lawyers will likely make a last-minute argument to Bragg not to indict.

Reaction To The Looming Trump Indictment

It would be the first-ever indictment of a former president, but more amazingly it would be the first indictment of Donald Trump, after a lifetime of living on the edge and skating from accountability.

To put it another way: After a presidency whose corruption is rivaled only by Richard Nixon’s and Warren Harding’s, Trump’s first comeuppance will be for trying to cover up a sordid personal matter before he even became president?

“That the Stormy Daniels case may be the one to produce a Trump indictment is a nice call back by the writers,” a bemused Aaron Rupar noted. “I had almost forgotten about the 2018 season.”

I share this sentiment from Chris Hayes:

A closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of Bragg’s case:

Another Secret Hearing In Mar-A-Lago Case

Special Counsel Jack Smith is trying to force Trump attorney Evan Corcoran to answer more questions in front of the DC federal grand jury investigating the classified documents case. Chief U.S. District Judge Beryl Howell held a closed-door hearing Thursday because of grand jury secrecy rules. Nothing was made public about it. But based on leaks and reporting around the case, here’s what’s known:

  • Smith is invoking the crime-fraud exception to overcome Trump’s attorney-client privilege and secure additional testimony from Corcoran, according to the Guardian. “[P]rosecutors argued that they had reason to believe that legal advice to Trump from his lawyer Evan Corcoran was used by Trump to obstruct the classified-marked documents investigation,” the Guardian reported.
  • The hearing lasted three hours, according to CNN.
  • Howell did not immediately rule on DOJ’s motion to compel Corcoran’s testimony and ordered additional briefings from both sides, multiple outlets reported.
  • CNN spotted Trump attorneys John Rowley, Jim Trusty and Corcoran at the courthouse, along with Jay Bratt, a top Justice Department official who has been on the Mar-a-Lago case from the beginning and is now part of Smith’s team.

Peter Navarro: Menace Or Fool?

Trump White House official Peter Navarro must return hundreds of emails from his time in government that he kept on a personal ProtonMail account and refused to return to the National Archives, federal judge in DC has ordered in a “brutal” opinion.

Navarro still faces criminal contempt of Congress charges for defying subpoenas from the Jan. 6 committee. No trial date has been set.

Proud Boys Trial Hits A Snag

The feds inadvertently disclosed classified information to Proud Boys defense counsel and now want to try to claw it back, delaying the long-running seditious conspiracy trial in DC.

Jenna Ellis Is A Piece Of Work

After stipulating to making repeated misrepresentations as part of Trump’s 2020 Big Lie and agreeing to public censure in attorney disciplinary proceedings in Colorado, former Trump lawyer Jenna Ellis is out there claiming anyone who accuses her of lying is … lying.

The Vast Influence Of Leonard Leo

Leonard Leo, a key architect of the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority, is now the chairman of Teneo, a group that aims to influence all aspects of American politics and culture.

Must Read

WaPo:

A group of conservative ColoradoCatholics has spent millions of dollars to buy mobile app tracking data that identified priests who used gay dating and hookup apps and then shared it with bishops around the country.

Michigan Poised To Repeal Decades-Old Abortion Ban

The Michigan Senate on Wednesday approved a House-passed bill to repeal a 1930s-era law that banned abortion in all cases except when the woman’s life was in danger. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer (D) is expected to sign the repeal soon.

Remember George Santos?

The New York Republican congressman and serial fabulist allegedly masterminded a 2017 ATM fraud, his former roommate tells the feds.

A Rare Dash Of Business News In Morning Memo

The financial troubles of Silicon Valley Bank, a small institution but a big tech and start-up lender, has caused a global run on bank stocks.

Thank You!

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Keep It In Perspective

I try to end Morning Memo on either a humorous note or with a reminder that there is so much more to life than politics. That perspective reset is usually a nod to the vastness of nature or of the cosmos, a gentle nudge to remember the larger touchstones around us.

This super-smart thread is a perfect ending for this week:

Have a good weekend!

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How A Lobbyist-Created Obamacare Loophole Enabled A Multibillion-Dollar Christian Health Care Cash Grab

Posted on by John Light

This article first appeared at ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Joe Guarino rescued an entire industry with help from what some called “divine” intervention.

A little-known lobbyist from Virginia, Guarino was hired in 2007 by the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries, the trade association for nonprofit alternatives to medical insurance founded on Christian principles. Health care sharing ministries take fees from members, which are then used to pay other members’ health bills.

At the time, the industry had been tainted by a scandal involving one of the largest ministries in the country, the Christian Brotherhood Newsletter, based outside Canton, Ohio. State authorities won $14 million in civil judgments against two of its top leaders for enriching themselves instead of paying the medical bills of its members. A ProPublica investigation last month revealed that many of the Brotherhood’s executives, including Daniel J. Beers, were involved years later in the launch of a second scandal-plagued ministry, Liberty HealthShare.

The Washington-based alliance was looking to Guarino to repair the industry’s reputation and pass laws to fend off a looming movement to regulate the business. The lobbying effort is an example of how the ministries have quietly worked over the years to shield themselves from consumer protection laws and preempt government oversight.

Guarino decided to launch a state-by-state campaign to pass so-called safe harbor laws that exempt health care sharing ministries from insurance regulation. The carve-outs were justified, the alliance argued, because ministries don’t set prices and coverage based on risk calculations or pool people’s money, as insurance companies do. In the United States, many of the rules for health insurance are set by the states in which companies operate.

Guarino met with lawmakers in Virginia, Arkansas and Idaho. “Most of the time I was hiring local lobbyists, training them, and then they got the bill passed for us,” Guarino explained.

Although it did not attract much attention, the campaign was a remarkable success. By 2008, 15 states had passed safe harbor laws. Then, a new threat emerged. In 2009, President Barack Obama proposed his sweeping reform of the health care system. Central to the law was a provision referred to as the “individual mandate,” which required that every American obtain health insurance or face a fine. The mandate presented a direct threat to health care sharing ministries: If members were forced to buy insurance, they would likely leave en masse.

Although Guarino was embarrassingly outgunned by the health insurance lobby, he was determined to slip some version of a safe harbor carve-out into whatever the Democratic-controlled Congress handed the president. “I went and saw 150 congressional staffers during that time,” Guarino said.

The turning point came when Guarino reached out to a GOP state legislator he knew in Iowa and asked if she could put him in touch with Republican Chuck Grassley, the state’s longtime senator who wielded power as a member of the Senate Finance Committee. The lawmaker had known Grassley’s family since childhood and agreed to set up a meeting. “Lo and behold, that happened,” Guarino said. “As a Christian, I look at this and say, ‘Oh, this is God’s way of orchestrating things.’”

Guarino told ProPublica that he and his clients got on the phone with Grassley. Together they crafted an amendment to Obamacare that exempted members of sharing ministries from having to obtain health insurance on religious grounds. Behind the scenes, Grassley got that carve-out into the Senate version of the bill, Guarino said. (Grassley did not return a request for comment.)

The passage of the Affordable Care Act was chaotic and, for ministries, that was fortuitous. The House version, which many Democrats preferred, didn’t include Guarino’s exemption. If the House bill prevailed in negotiations between the two chambers, ministries would be extinct.

But with the sudden death of Sen. Ted Kennedy, Democrats lost their filibuster-proof majority in the Senate and could not pass the House version. They were forced to go with the Senate bill that included the carve-out.

The exemption — just 200 words in a 900-page bill — survived tense negotiations between the chambers, going virtually unnoticed. Obama signed the ACA into law in March 2010.

“That’s our language right in the bill,” Guarino told ProPublica.

One friend told him that he’d just saved an entire industry. The larger Christian health share community hailed it as a miracle. “If you’re a person of faith, some of us might say it was kind of divine,” said Tony Meggs, then CEO of Medi-Share, one of the groups that formed the Alliance of Health Care Sharing Ministries.

Meggs estimates membership grew tenfold after 2014, when the individual mandate went into effect. Four years later, the alliance announced that about a million Americans belonged to its member ministries. Some bought into the ministries because they disliked Obama and associated him with the law. Others did it for economic reasons. The ministries offered cheaper plans than insurance sold on the ACA marketplace, which were expensive for anyone who did not qualify for subsidies or Medicaid. Many self-employed people and small business owners fell into this category.

“All of a sudden people started getting religion because they could save $700, $800 a month,” Meggs said.

Both Meggs and Guarino say they believe that most health care sharing ministries do right by their members and the insurance alternative can work when it’s under ethical management. But both acknowledge the industry has been vulnerable to abuse. “Obviously, that kind of growth is going to attract bad actors and people who look for opportunity to enrich themselves,” Meggs said.

One of the people who took advantage of the opportunity is Beers, the patriarch of the family that started Liberty HealthShare just as Obamacare’s individual mandate drove thousands of people to health care sharing ministries. The ProPublica investigation found that Beers acts as a shadow lord over an empire built with money from Liberty HealthShare. Some of the family grew rich while Liberty’s members were left with tens of millions of dollars in unpaid health bills.

Beers’ name does not appear on any official documents related to Liberty, and he denied involvement in family businesses that profited from the ministry. Attorneys representing Beers and members of his family also disputed ProPublica’s finding that they controlled or influenced the sharing ministry or did anything wrong. Liberty is now under new management that does not include Beers or his relatives.

For those in the ministry industry, however, Beers’ involvement has been an open secret for years.

Meggs told of a surprise encounter he had around 2014 with Liberty’s then-CEO, its vice president and Beers, all key figures in the Brotherhood. The group wanted to propose a partnership between Meggs’ ministry and Liberty, which was experiencing explosive growth

At the meeting, Beers was clearly in charge, Meggs remembers, so no matter what they were selling, he wasn’t buying.

Liberty, he said, looked too much like the Brotherhood.

Where Things Stand: Bill To Repeal 1930s-Era Abortion Ban Heads To Whitmer’s Desk

Posted on by Nicole LaFond

Back in April, before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade with its Dobbs ruling and before Politico reported on the leaked draft majority opinion overturning Roe, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer began preparing Michigan for the inevitable.

Continue reading “Where Things Stand: Bill To Repeal 1930s-Era Abortion Ban Heads To Whitmer’s Desk” →

Minnesota Lawmakers Tackle The Ripple Effects Of The Big Lie

Posted on by Kaila Philo

As Dominion aims to hold Fox News accountable for the lies the network helped spread about the voting machine company and a stolen 2020 election, lawmakers in the Minnesota state legislature are considering legislation that would tackle the issue of election misinformation head-on. 

Continue reading “Minnesota Lawmakers Tackle The Ripple Effects Of The Big Lie” →

Senate Democrats Razz Republicans For Their Ongoing Struggle To Coalesce Behind Policy Positions

Posted on by Kate Riga

While Senate Democrats spent Thursday eager to applaud the President’s budget, they were equally keen to exploit the contrast and poke at Republicans for their struggles to produce their own list of economic priorities.

Continue reading “Senate Democrats Razz Republicans For Their Ongoing Struggle To Coalesce Behind Policy Positions” →

House Dems Dare GOP To Show Their Hand On Budget Cuts

Posted on by Emine Yücel

House Republicans have been adamant for some time now that they will hold the debt limit hostage and let the government default on its debt unless they get the budget cuts they want — which have long included major cuts to social programs like Medicare and Social Security.

Continue reading “House Dems Dare GOP To Show Their Hand On Budget Cuts” →

The Tucker Carlson Origin Story: Beyond the Fish Sticks

Posted on by Josh Marshall

I mentioned last week that there is this ironic backstory to Tucker Carlson. Even as he is daily exposed in the non-Fox/Trump bubble universe as the epitome of the corruption of conservative media he also, a dozen years ago, had one of the most solid critiques of that same conservative media ecosystem. At CPAC of all places.

I was watching Chris Hayes’ show last night and he referenced the same video I embedded in that Deep Archeology post. He said it could serve as the origin story for the super villain version of Carlson we know today. I wanted to say a bit more about this.

I think I may have been introduced to Carlson once or twice years ago. I do not know him at all. But I’ve been observing him since the beginning of his career about a quarter century ago. In my post last week I said that while Carlson was always a conservative, “his younger incarnation held an air of ironic and quasi-urbane detachment from full wingnut intensity.”

Continue reading “The Tucker Carlson Origin Story: Beyond the Fish Sticks” →

Judge: Wohl And Burkman Violated Three Federal Civil Rights Laws With Racist Robocalls

Posted on by Kaila Philo

Far-right hoaxsters Jacob Wohl and Jack Burkman violated federal and state civil rights law with a plot using robocalls to suppress the Black vote during the 2020 election, a New York judge ruled Wednesday.

Continue reading “Judge: Wohl And Burkman Violated Three Federal Civil Rights Laws With Racist Robocalls” →

Why Hasn’t Fox News Settled With Dominion?

Posted on by David Kurtz

A lot of things happened. Here are some of the things. This is TPM’s Morning Memo.

A Fragile Business Model

I wanted to circle back to this Amanda Marcotte column from a few days ago. I’m mostly in agreement with Amanda, except in my view this doesn’t quite capture it:

In light of all this, I suspect the reason Murdoch and Fox News seem determined to stick this out is that they are just that worried about what impact an admission of wrongdoing would have on their reputation with their audience. The possibility of a jury ruling in their favor, which they could spin as a total exoneration of their tactics, is so important to them that they’re willing to take a big risk that the opposite could happen. A settlement, however, would remove all doubt about who was in the wrong. 

I would put a slightly different emphasis on it. Fox News viewers don’t care whether the network was “in the wrong.” If anything, they celebrate and reward Fox News’ transgressive behavior. If Fox News takes the case to trial and loses, it and its viewers can easily dismiss it as another rigged, liberal, stabbed-in-the-back setup by their foes. They will all be victims together of Dominion’s jihad against them.

But that doesn’t work if Fox News settles. It’s not the admission of wrongdoing that’s the issue: It’s the capitulation. That is harder to spin up into a made-up narrative of victimization and fighting the good fight.

How do I know this? Because there’s an almost perfect parallel in the Dominion lawsuit itself: Fox News’ call of Arizona for Biden on election night.

As long as Fox News remains in its self-created bubble of propaganda, misinformation, and uncritical reporting, its relationship with its viewers remains intact and the spin cycle can continue. If Fox News punctures that bubble, it risks its viewership and its entire business model. That’s what happened when the network projected a Biden win in Arizona. In fact, in Dominion’s convincing telling, the damage to Fox News’ reputation with its viewers over the Arizona call is what motivated Rupert et al. to launch the libelous attacks on Dominion.

I’m not predicting Fox News will never settle this case. The risks the case poses to it financially are significant, and it’s legal position is not strong. But settling the case would be like the Arizona call all over again, and the Fox News business model, as revolting as it is, is still staggering from that blow.

TPM On TV

Mitch McConnell Hospitalized

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) was hospitalized last night in DC after taking a fall. The incident reportedly happened while he was attending a private event at the former Trump hotel in DC.

Your occasional reminder that that the current median age of senators is 65.3 years, in a body where Democrats cling to a two-vote majority.

Things Are Going To Get Worse Before They Get Better

CNN:

Republicans in the House are beginning to plot multiple probes into the 2021 Capitol attack, including looking into the Democratic-led select committee’s actions from the last Congress, the security failures from that day and potentially even the treatment of January 6 defendants, multiple sources familiar with the work tell CNN. 

Jenna Ellis Admits To Big Misrepresentin’

Trump attorney Jenna Ellis is the first of the former president’s lawyers to admit to professional misconduct arising from her role in his effort to overturn the results of the 2020 election.

Ellis was publicly censured Wednesday in disciplinary proceedings in Colorado. Ellis stipulated to the underlying facts and to the public rebuke:

While serving as a senior legal advisor to the then-President of the United States and as counsel for his reelection campaign, Jenna Lynn Ellis … repeatedly made misrepresentations on national television and on Twitter, undermining the American public’s confidence in the 2020 presidential election. The parties stipulate that Respondent’s misconduct warrants public censure, and the Presiding Disciplinary Judge … approves the parties’ stipulation.

Couldn’t Happen To Two Nicer Guys

Jack Burkman and Jacob Wohl, the bizarre conservative duo who already pleaded guilty in Ohio to launching a campaign of racist robocalls targeting Black voters in 2020, have now been found liable in a civil lawsuit arising from the same robocalls.

In a lengthy ruling Wednesday, a federal judge in New York found that Burkman and Wohl violated the federal Voting Rights Act, the Civil Rights Act, the Ku Klux Klan Act and New York civil rights laws.

The evidence was so overwhelming, the judge ruled in fully granting plaintiffs motion for summary judgment on liability, that no trial on liability will necessary.

Tantalizing

This case probably isn’t on your radar. It dates all the way back to the 2016 election, when an influential online troll tried to convince Hillary Clinton voters that they could cast their ballots by text message. No really. The alleged culprit was Douglass Mackey, who has been charged by the feds and is awaiting trial.

Yesterday, we learned for the first time when the court unsealed filings that prosecutors have a cooperating witness who was part of the alleged conspiracy and who they want to put on the stand at Mackey’s upcoming trial. The cooperator, according to prosecutors, continues to assist the government in other cases (and, they anticipate, future cases), so they want to make his real name known only to the court and defense counsel.

Schlapp Accuser Identifies Himself

The GOP political operative who accused CPAC honcho Matt Schlapp of groping him while he was working the Herschel Walker Senate campaign has come forward to identify himself publicly.

Carlton Huffman, 39, of North Carolina, did an interview with the Washington Post after a Virginia judge ruled Wednesday that Huffman could not proceed anonymously with his lawsuit against Schlapp and Schlapp’s wife Mercedes. The Schlapps deny Huffman’s allegations.

Today’s Top Story

Biden unveils his proposed budget, laying down his marker for budget negotiations with the new GOP House majority, which remains keen on forcing a government shutdown later this year.

Headline Of The Day

Esquire: Now We Have to Worry about Misogynistic Neo-Nazi Jihadist Satanists Infiltrating the Military?

The Post-Carbon Energy Transition

A couple of graphs that show real movement is happening toward the energy transition. As a non-expert I would put it like this: Enormous progress is being made (which is astounding since its been mostly voluntary in the absence of government action), but it continues to be not nearly enough progress nearly fast enough.

This is the kind of progress we needed in the 1990s, but we’re just getting there now in the 2020s. Time is not on our side.

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