The Mueller report is more than 300 pages long. We've seen 101 words
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf
When people can't see things, conspiracy theories fester. That goes double for President Donald Trump's tax returns, which he's made clear he'll be keeping from public view, making many people wonder what he could be hiding.
The Justice Department is supposed to be scrubbing the Mueller report for release in some form to Congress. Redactions, cuts or edits will only feed frustration and lead to further conspiracy theories.
The American people are used to TMI, so the secrecy that keeps Robert Mueller's report from public view is extremely difficult to process, especially given the seriousness of questions Mueller was investigating, like foreign election interference, possible campaign collusion and obstruction of justice.
Mueller invested two years and employed scores of attorneys and investigators, and as of now, the public has seen 74 words from his full report. That jumps to 89 if you include the single footnote in Barr's summary and 101 if you count the title.
Those are the words and phrases inside quotation marks of the four-page summary Attorney General William Barr delivered to Congress.
The importance of the topline assessment that Mueller did not establish collusion cannot be overstated -- and it's good news for Trump. Mueller did not recommend any charges against the President and he didn't recommend any new charges against White House or campaign aides -- though of course, multiple Trump associates have already been convicted by Mueller's team, while others await trial or are still being investigated through regular Justice Department channels.
The special counsel punted on the issue of obstruction of justice, but we don't know exactly who he punted to -- Congress, for example, or the public -- only that the attorney general picked up the ball and ran with it.
What we do know
Even the quotes that have been released as part of Barr's summary leave a lot to the imagination.
For instance, read this main quote that makes clear Mueller did not establish that Trump or his aides conspired with Russia:
"'[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.'"
That brackets there suggest a lower-case "t" was capitalized to form a sentence, which suggests there is a first part of the sentence. Does the first part of that sentence say what the investigation did establish? Does it say that Trump campaign officials had contact with Russians and that they benefited from Russia's actions? Does it say that Russians took cues from Trump's public comments?
It doesn't really matter since we know all of those things to be true. But it shows how easy it is to go down the rabbit hole of questions when all we have is snippets of the truth.
None of the quotes from the Mueller's report in Barr's summary are complete sentences.
... "while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him."
... "the evidence does not establish that the President was involved in an underlying crime related to Russian election interference" ...
Oh, to know what comes at the beginning of those sentences.
Quotes from Mueller aren't the only ones that raise tantalizing questions. Here are some of Barr's words about Mueller's report, the second part of which Barr says, "addresses a number of actions by the President most of which have been the subject of public reporting that the Special Counsel investigated as potentially raising obstruction-of-justice concerns."
Most is different than all. Which actions by the President that Mueller investigated haven't been the subject of public reporting?
There is so much left between the known lines of what we've now learned is a more than 300-page report Mueller delivered to the Department of Justice.
Barr has said he's currently scrubbing what Mueller delivered in order to remove classified information or information that can't be released because it was from a grand jury investigation.
Of course, Trump could, theoretically, just declare all the classified information open to the public. Trump has said he'd have no problem with the report, which he still hasn't seen, being made public.
"It's up to the attorney general, but it wouldn't bother me at all," he said Monday.
Previous reports were made public
What if we only knew from the FBI's investigation of Hillary Clinton's email that she was not going to be prosecuted and not James Comey's assessment that she had been reckless with classified information?
What if Bill Clinton's attorney general had been able to issue a four-page memo instead of Ken Starr issuing his report?
That's the question Monica Lewinsky used a four-letter word to eloquently muse about on Twitter this week. Her life would certainly have been different.
Starr's report is still easily available on the Internet, or even as a book, which you can buy in paperback for $15.73. It's 498 pages.
The only other special counsel to operate under similar DOJ guidelines as Mueller was Jack Danforth, who in 1999 investigated allegations of a government cover-up of the deadly federal government standoff at the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas, in 1993. He posted his findings on the Internet in their entirety, but he did so with the blessing of then-Attorney General Janet Reno.
The 9/11 commission report was another government work that was published for all to read, although the redacted final portion -- 28 pages -- led to years of conspiracy theories before most of it was released publicly in 2016.
Not all government reports see the light of day. A report from Watergate special prosecutor Leon Jaworski wasn't ultimately released until 44 years after it was first delivered to Congress. Not that it mattered in that case since the secret tapes the Watergate special prosecutor subpoenaed had long been public.
At least this much of Mueller's investigation has been displayed in full public view: five people sentenced to prison, one person convicted at trial, seven people pleaded guilty, 37 people and entities charged, 199 overall criminal counts.
March 29, 2019
Barr should resign
Why William Barr should resign in protest over Trump's Obamacare move
By Stephen I. Vladeck
In an unexpected move on Monday night, the Justice Department notified the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals that it is supporting a complete invalidation of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It now believes not only that three provisions of that statute are unconstitutional, but that, as a result, the entire law, including dozens of provisions having nothing to do with the offending sections, should be thrown out as well.
What is especially galling about the move is that it was apparently ordered by the White House over the objections of Attorney General William Barr, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. If Barr cares at all about the long-term institutional credibility of the Justice Department, he should resign in protest.
Throughout American history, the Justice Department has assumed an ethical and legal responsibility to defend the constitutionality of federal statutes so long as reasonable grounds exist for doing so. Even if the current President or attorney general finds a federal law distasteful or unwise, the government is still obliged to defend the validity of the law in court.
As then-Attorney General William French Smith wrote in 1981, "the Department appropriately refuses to defend an act of Congress only in the rare case when the statute either infringes on the constitutional power of the Executive or when prior precedent overwhelmingly indicates that the statute is invalid."
Defending all statutes capable of reasonable defense shows proper respect to the legislative branch and is one of the most significant ways in which the Justice Department is more than just another arm for achieving the incumbent President's partisan policy priorities.
It's because of this obligation that heads turned last year when the Trump administration announced that it would not defend the constitutionality of some of the key provisions of Obamacare, including the individual mandate and the guarantee of coverage for pre-existing conditions, after Congress zeroed out the penalty for failure to comply with the mandate in its controversial 2017 tax bill. The Trump administration chose to support, rather than defend against, a challenge to those provisions by a group of states. But as troubling as that decision was at the time, what happened on Monday was much, much worse.
To make a long story short, the district court hearing the states' lawsuit ruled last December not only that these provisions of the ACA were unconstitutional, but that, as a result, the entire statute -- including provisions wholly unrelated to the contested sections -- must be discarded. The Trump administration had argued in the district court that the rest of the statute (everything from the major expansion of Medicaid to the provision of funds for opioid and HIV programs) could still be applied despite the offending provisions, but Dallas federal district judge Reed O'Connor disagreed.
On Monday, the Justice Department signaled to the Fifth Circuit, which will soon hear the appeal from the district court's ruling, that it now endorses the district court's reasoning in its entirety -- and that it agrees that the entire statute, and not just the putatively unconstitutional provisions, must be invalidated. According to widespread reports, this decision was made by senior White House advisers without taking to heart the concerns of White House staff, counsel, and top lawyers who did not believe the decision to be justified. Such a move is incredibly significant -- and deeply alarming -- for at least three independent reasons.
First, as unusual as it is for the government to change its litigating position from one administration to the next, it's virtually unheard of for the government to so fundamentally change its position within the same administration. Presumably, there should be a truly compelling reason for such a change. Here, though, the legal argument the government is relying on -- that the offending provisions render the entire law invalid -- has been so thoroughly debunked by experts from across the political spectrum that it's impossible to imagine what the legal justification for the change could be.
Second, part and parcel of the Justice Department's obligation to defend the constitutionality of federal statutes is the obligation to defend as much of the statute as can reasonably be saved. Even if the Justice Department properly concluded that there is no reasonable basis for defending the provisions of the ACA that the district court invalidated (which is itself a deeply contested premise), defending the district court's conclusion that the entire statute must therefore fall is a different matter altogether.
Third, all of this would be troubling enough if the Justice Department had insisted on such an unprecedented litigation shift, and if the decision was made collectively by senior policymakers and lawyers. That's what happened in 2011, when the Obama administration controversially shifted position on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act only after Attorney General Eric Holder reached a legal conclusion about why that statute could no longer be defended (one the Supreme Court subsequently endorsed).
Here, in contrast, the change in litigating position to argue that the entire ACA must be thrown out was made solely by political advisers, and over the express objections of all of the key legal advisers, including the attorney general and the White House counsel. As opposed to changing positions because the Justice Department changed its view as to whether the law could be defended, the shift here was solely to serve the White House's political agenda and nothing more.
There are any number of formal and informal legal doctrines that presume that the Justice Department acts in good faith when litigating on behalf of the federal government. The more that it looks like the government's litigating position reflects nothing more than the political whims of the White House, the less credibility the Justice Department will have going forward in all litigation -- not just in high-profile cases like the dispute over the ACA.
No one would argue that the attorney general can overrule the President. But when the President demands that the Justice Department take an unreasonable litigating position for partisan political purposes, an attorney general who cares about the Justice Department's long-term credibility can refuse and be fired (such as then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who refused to defend the first iteration of President Trump's travel ban), or he can -- and should -- resign.
By Stephen I. Vladeck
In an unexpected move on Monday night, the Justice Department notified the Fifth Circuit US Court of Appeals that it is supporting a complete invalidation of the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare). It now believes not only that three provisions of that statute are unconstitutional, but that, as a result, the entire law, including dozens of provisions having nothing to do with the offending sections, should be thrown out as well.
What is especially galling about the move is that it was apparently ordered by the White House over the objections of Attorney General William Barr, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, and White House Counsel Pat Cipollone. If Barr cares at all about the long-term institutional credibility of the Justice Department, he should resign in protest.
Throughout American history, the Justice Department has assumed an ethical and legal responsibility to defend the constitutionality of federal statutes so long as reasonable grounds exist for doing so. Even if the current President or attorney general finds a federal law distasteful or unwise, the government is still obliged to defend the validity of the law in court.
As then-Attorney General William French Smith wrote in 1981, "the Department appropriately refuses to defend an act of Congress only in the rare case when the statute either infringes on the constitutional power of the Executive or when prior precedent overwhelmingly indicates that the statute is invalid."
Defending all statutes capable of reasonable defense shows proper respect to the legislative branch and is one of the most significant ways in which the Justice Department is more than just another arm for achieving the incumbent President's partisan policy priorities.
It's because of this obligation that heads turned last year when the Trump administration announced that it would not defend the constitutionality of some of the key provisions of Obamacare, including the individual mandate and the guarantee of coverage for pre-existing conditions, after Congress zeroed out the penalty for failure to comply with the mandate in its controversial 2017 tax bill. The Trump administration chose to support, rather than defend against, a challenge to those provisions by a group of states. But as troubling as that decision was at the time, what happened on Monday was much, much worse.
To make a long story short, the district court hearing the states' lawsuit ruled last December not only that these provisions of the ACA were unconstitutional, but that, as a result, the entire statute -- including provisions wholly unrelated to the contested sections -- must be discarded. The Trump administration had argued in the district court that the rest of the statute (everything from the major expansion of Medicaid to the provision of funds for opioid and HIV programs) could still be applied despite the offending provisions, but Dallas federal district judge Reed O'Connor disagreed.
On Monday, the Justice Department signaled to the Fifth Circuit, which will soon hear the appeal from the district court's ruling, that it now endorses the district court's reasoning in its entirety -- and that it agrees that the entire statute, and not just the putatively unconstitutional provisions, must be invalidated. According to widespread reports, this decision was made by senior White House advisers without taking to heart the concerns of White House staff, counsel, and top lawyers who did not believe the decision to be justified. Such a move is incredibly significant -- and deeply alarming -- for at least three independent reasons.
First, as unusual as it is for the government to change its litigating position from one administration to the next, it's virtually unheard of for the government to so fundamentally change its position within the same administration. Presumably, there should be a truly compelling reason for such a change. Here, though, the legal argument the government is relying on -- that the offending provisions render the entire law invalid -- has been so thoroughly debunked by experts from across the political spectrum that it's impossible to imagine what the legal justification for the change could be.
Second, part and parcel of the Justice Department's obligation to defend the constitutionality of federal statutes is the obligation to defend as much of the statute as can reasonably be saved. Even if the Justice Department properly concluded that there is no reasonable basis for defending the provisions of the ACA that the district court invalidated (which is itself a deeply contested premise), defending the district court's conclusion that the entire statute must therefore fall is a different matter altogether.
Third, all of this would be troubling enough if the Justice Department had insisted on such an unprecedented litigation shift, and if the decision was made collectively by senior policymakers and lawyers. That's what happened in 2011, when the Obama administration controversially shifted position on the constitutionality of the Defense of Marriage Act only after Attorney General Eric Holder reached a legal conclusion about why that statute could no longer be defended (one the Supreme Court subsequently endorsed).
Here, in contrast, the change in litigating position to argue that the entire ACA must be thrown out was made solely by political advisers, and over the express objections of all of the key legal advisers, including the attorney general and the White House counsel. As opposed to changing positions because the Justice Department changed its view as to whether the law could be defended, the shift here was solely to serve the White House's political agenda and nothing more.
There are any number of formal and informal legal doctrines that presume that the Justice Department acts in good faith when litigating on behalf of the federal government. The more that it looks like the government's litigating position reflects nothing more than the political whims of the White House, the less credibility the Justice Department will have going forward in all litigation -- not just in high-profile cases like the dispute over the ACA.
No one would argue that the attorney general can overrule the President. But when the President demands that the Justice Department take an unreasonable litigating position for partisan political purposes, an attorney general who cares about the Justice Department's long-term credibility can refuse and be fired (such as then-Acting Attorney General Sally Yates, who refused to defend the first iteration of President Trump's travel ban), or he can -- and should -- resign.
Exaggerate his wealth
How Trump used unusual financial documents to exaggerate his wealth, hide some of his debts
David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell
When Donald Trump wanted to make a good impression - on a lender, a business partner, or a journalist - he sometimes sent them official-looking documents called "Statements of Financial Condition."
These documents sometimes ran up to 20 pages. They were full of numbers, laying out Trump's properties, debts and multibillion-dollar net worth.
But, for someone trying to get a true picture of Trump's net worth, the documents were deeply flawed. Some simply omitted properties that carried big debts. Some assets were overvalued. And some key numbers were wrong.
For instance, Trump's financial statement for 2011 said he had 55 home lots to sell at his golf course in southern California. Those lots would sell for $3 million or more, the statement said.
But Trump had only 31 lots zoned and ready for sale at the course, according to city records. He claimed credit for 24 lots - and at least $72 million in future revenue - he didn't have.
He also claimed his Virginia vineyard had 2,000 acres, when it really has about 1,200. He said Trump Tower has 68 stories. It has 58.
Now, investigators on Capitol Hill and in New York are homing in on these unusual documents in an apparent attempt to determine whether Trump's familiar habit of bragging about his wealth ever crossed a line into fraud.
The statements are at the center of at least two of the inquiries that continue to follow Trump, unaffected by the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. On Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said it had requested 10 years of these statements from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA.
And earlier this month, the New York state Department of Financial Services subpoenaed records from Trump's longtime insurer, Aon. A person familiar with that subpoena, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said "a key component" was questions about whether Trump had given Aon these documents in an effort to lower his insurance premiums.
Both inquiries stemmed from testimony last month by Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, who told Congress that Trump had used these statements to inflate his wealth - and then sent them to his lenders and his insurers.
"Mr. Trump is a cheat," Cohen said, in describing what the statements showed.
Cohen told Congress that statements were given to Deutsche Bank, as Trump sought a loan to buy the NFL's Buffalo Bills. Since then, Deutsche Bank and another Trump lender have also received subpoenas, from the New York State attorney general.
The statements may additionally draw the interest of the House Financial Services Committee, which is scrutinizing Deutsche. A committee spokesman declined to comment.
The White House declined to comment for this report.
The Trump Organization also declined to comment about the statements or answer questions about specific errors the statements contained. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president's sons who are running his business, noted on social media that Cohen has provided false testimony about other topics.
Mazars USA, the accounting firm, issued a brief statement Wednesday after the House Oversight letter became public, saying that it "believes strongly in the ethical and professional rules and regulations that govern our industry, our work and our client interactions." It declined to comment further about Trump.
The Washington Post reviewed copies of these documents for 2002, 2004, 2011, 2012 and 2013 - obtaining them from court files, from people who received them from Trump's company, and from Cohen. Cohen also provided copies of documents from 2011, 2012 and 2013 to Congress.
Since the 1980s, Trump has defined himself by his wealth, but he has often avoided providing proof to back up his boasts or provided documents that inflated the real values. As president, Trump has declined to release his tax returns, unlike every president since Jimmy Carter.
Trump is far from the first real estate developer to inflate his projects or wealth. But there are laws against defrauding insurers and lenders with false information. Financial and legal experts said it's unclear at this point whether Trump will face any legal consequences. They said it depends on whether Trump intended to mislead or whether the misstatements caused anyone to give him a financial benefit.
"How much would [the errors] impact an investor?" said Kyle Welch, an assistant professor of accountancy at George Washington University. "If it's systematic and it's across the board, and it's all in one direction, that's where you have a problem."
Welch said Trump could be protected by disclaimers that his own accountants added to the statements, warning readers that they weren't seeing the full picture. And in an odd way, Welch said, Trump could be helped by the sheer scale of the exaggerations. They were so far off from reality, Welch wondered whether any real bank or insurer could have been fooled.
Welch said he'd never seen a document stretch so far past the normal conventions of accounting.
"It's humorous," Welch said. "It's a humorous financial statement."
Investigators for the New York State Department of Financial Services, which sent subpoenas to Aon, and the New York State attorney general - who subpoenaed Deutsche Bank - declined to comment. Aon and Deutsche Bank also declined to comment, beyond saying they plan to cooperate with investigators.
The story of Trump's "statements of financial condition" - in essence, sales brochures for Trump the man, given out by Trump the company - goes back to the early 1980s, according to past testimony from Trump's accountants and staffers.
In 2007, a Trump lawyer named Michelle Lokey said she had sent these statements out to Trump's lenders, for projects in Chicago and Las Vegas, because Trump had personally guaranteed those loans. That meant that if Trump's company defaulted on its obligations, the lenders could come after Trump's personal assets.
"Therefore they'd want information on his net worth?" an attorney asked Lokey.
"I assume," she said.
The statements were prepared by Trump's longtime accountants, a firm now called Mazars. In other contexts - such as when one of Trump's companies was seeking to secure a federal contract - this firm prepared rigorously audited financial statements.
This was a different sort of job.
When compiling these statements of financial condition, those accountants have said they did not verify or audit the figures in the statements. Instead, when Trump provided them data, they wrote it down without checking to see whether it was accurate.
"In the compilation process, it is not the role of the accountant to assess the values," said Gerald Rosenblum, one of the accountants. "The role is to accept those values and move them forward."
An attorney asked: Do the values have to be logical?
"The value per se does not have to be logical," Rosenblum said. He and Lokey were deposed as part of a lawsuit in which Trump sued a New York Times reporter for allegedly lowballing his net worth. Trump's suit against the reporter was later dismissed.
In 2014, Trump used the same accounting firm to prepare financial information for his most expensive development project in decades, his $200 million transformation of the historic Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington into a Trump International Hotel.
But in that case, Mazars vouched for the accuracy of the information, writing that the firm "is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of these financial statements" using industry standard accounting rules. This was a formal audit of finances related just to Trump's D.C. hotel, rather than a summation of all of his assets based on Trump's own estimates.
The statements Cohen provided to The Post - and to Congress - begin in 2011. Two of them are 20-page "Statements of Financial Condition" signed by Trump's accountants.
In his testimony to Congress, Cohen said these statements included Trump's self-appraisals of his buildings' value - which aimed to impress, instead of aiming for reality. Cohen said Trump would take real measures of value, such as the amount of money his tenants paid in rent, and simply inflate it until he got a number he liked.
"If you're going off of your rent roll, you go by the gross rent roll times a multiple," Cohen said. "And you make up the multiple."
The documents begin with two-page disclaimers, warning of various ways in which the statements don't follow normal accounting rules. The accountants note that Trump is the source of many buildings' valuations - and that, contrary to normal accounting rules, he had inflated them by counting future income that wasn't guaranteed.
The accountants also note that Trump had told them to simply omit two of his major hotels, in Chicago and Las Vegas. Both buildings were carrying mortgages. That omission means that some of Trump's actual debt load was hidden from anyone reading the statement.
"Users of this financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump" if they had more information, the statement concludes.
Legal experts interviewed by The Post said that sort of broad disclaimer might shield Trump from allegations that he misled his lenders and insurers. After all, his own accountants told readers they weren't getting the full story.
"The transparent disclaimers - even if frustrating - typically wipe out a basis" for bringing charges of fraud, said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private attorney at Dickinson Wright.
In 2012, Trump's statement said he owned a 2,000-acre vineyard in Virginia. But land records in Virginia show the Trump family owns about 1,200 acres. The Trump winery's own website says 1,300 acres.
In 2011, the statements said that Trump's Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York, was "zoned for nine luxurious homes." In the statement, Trump said those homes would yield significant cash flow as he built them and sold them. That led him to value the property at $261 million - far more than the roughly $20 million value assigned by local assessors.
At the time, Trump had received preliminary "conceptual approval" to build homes on the site. But local officials said he never finished the last step in the approval process to build the homes or sell the lots.
None of the homes was built.
The 2013 statement that Cohen provided - and which he said was also given to Deutsche Bank, in pursuit of a loan to buy the Bills - is different from the other two.
It is just two pages long, with a slightly different title: "Summary of Net Worth." It does not include the usual disclaimer from Trump's accountants, so readers aren't told that the debts from Trump's Chicago and Las Vegas hotels are missing.
This document also includes a new "asset" that wasn't there before.
It says that Trump's brand value - his name, essentially - was worth $4 billion, and that it ought to be counted among his assets as if it were a building or a resort. With his brand included, Trump's net worth jumped from $4.6 billion to $8.6 billion.
For Trump, the Bills would have been a financial prize far larger than any he had won in the recent past: Bids were expected to be around $1 billion.
In public, Trump had bragged that he was ready to pay $1 billion in cash. But privately, one of his lieutenants told a business contact that they were struggling with the bid.
"We are looking at the Bills but Allen and I are having trouble making the numbers work!!!" wrote Ron Lieberman, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, in an email to a contact in the New York City parks department. "Allen" likely meant Allen Weisselberg, Trump's longtime chief financial officer.
Lieberman's email was released this year in response to a public-records request from a nonprofit group, NYC Park Advocates. Lieberman and Weisselberg did not respond to requests for comment this week.
Whatever Trump sent to Deutsche Bank, it seems to have been enough: The New York Times reported that Deutsche Bank agreed to vouch for Trump's bid for the Bills, citing an unnamed executive. But Trump lost a bidding war, and somebody else bought the team.
David A. Fahrenthold and Jonathan O'Connell
When Donald Trump wanted to make a good impression - on a lender, a business partner, or a journalist - he sometimes sent them official-looking documents called "Statements of Financial Condition."
These documents sometimes ran up to 20 pages. They were full of numbers, laying out Trump's properties, debts and multibillion-dollar net worth.
But, for someone trying to get a true picture of Trump's net worth, the documents were deeply flawed. Some simply omitted properties that carried big debts. Some assets were overvalued. And some key numbers were wrong.
For instance, Trump's financial statement for 2011 said he had 55 home lots to sell at his golf course in southern California. Those lots would sell for $3 million or more, the statement said.
But Trump had only 31 lots zoned and ready for sale at the course, according to city records. He claimed credit for 24 lots - and at least $72 million in future revenue - he didn't have.
He also claimed his Virginia vineyard had 2,000 acres, when it really has about 1,200. He said Trump Tower has 68 stories. It has 58.
Now, investigators on Capitol Hill and in New York are homing in on these unusual documents in an apparent attempt to determine whether Trump's familiar habit of bragging about his wealth ever crossed a line into fraud.
The statements are at the center of at least two of the inquiries that continue to follow Trump, unaffected by the end of Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigation. On Wednesday, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform said it had requested 10 years of these statements from Trump's accounting firm, Mazars USA.
And earlier this month, the New York state Department of Financial Services subpoenaed records from Trump's longtime insurer, Aon. A person familiar with that subpoena, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to describe an ongoing investigation, said "a key component" was questions about whether Trump had given Aon these documents in an effort to lower his insurance premiums.
Both inquiries stemmed from testimony last month by Trump's former lawyer Michael Cohen, who told Congress that Trump had used these statements to inflate his wealth - and then sent them to his lenders and his insurers.
"Mr. Trump is a cheat," Cohen said, in describing what the statements showed.
Cohen told Congress that statements were given to Deutsche Bank, as Trump sought a loan to buy the NFL's Buffalo Bills. Since then, Deutsche Bank and another Trump lender have also received subpoenas, from the New York State attorney general.
The statements may additionally draw the interest of the House Financial Services Committee, which is scrutinizing Deutsche. A committee spokesman declined to comment.
The White House declined to comment for this report.
The Trump Organization also declined to comment about the statements or answer questions about specific errors the statements contained. Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump, the president's sons who are running his business, noted on social media that Cohen has provided false testimony about other topics.
Mazars USA, the accounting firm, issued a brief statement Wednesday after the House Oversight letter became public, saying that it "believes strongly in the ethical and professional rules and regulations that govern our industry, our work and our client interactions." It declined to comment further about Trump.
The Washington Post reviewed copies of these documents for 2002, 2004, 2011, 2012 and 2013 - obtaining them from court files, from people who received them from Trump's company, and from Cohen. Cohen also provided copies of documents from 2011, 2012 and 2013 to Congress.
Since the 1980s, Trump has defined himself by his wealth, but he has often avoided providing proof to back up his boasts or provided documents that inflated the real values. As president, Trump has declined to release his tax returns, unlike every president since Jimmy Carter.
Trump is far from the first real estate developer to inflate his projects or wealth. But there are laws against defrauding insurers and lenders with false information. Financial and legal experts said it's unclear at this point whether Trump will face any legal consequences. They said it depends on whether Trump intended to mislead or whether the misstatements caused anyone to give him a financial benefit.
"How much would [the errors] impact an investor?" said Kyle Welch, an assistant professor of accountancy at George Washington University. "If it's systematic and it's across the board, and it's all in one direction, that's where you have a problem."
Welch said Trump could be protected by disclaimers that his own accountants added to the statements, warning readers that they weren't seeing the full picture. And in an odd way, Welch said, Trump could be helped by the sheer scale of the exaggerations. They were so far off from reality, Welch wondered whether any real bank or insurer could have been fooled.
Welch said he'd never seen a document stretch so far past the normal conventions of accounting.
"It's humorous," Welch said. "It's a humorous financial statement."
Investigators for the New York State Department of Financial Services, which sent subpoenas to Aon, and the New York State attorney general - who subpoenaed Deutsche Bank - declined to comment. Aon and Deutsche Bank also declined to comment, beyond saying they plan to cooperate with investigators.
The story of Trump's "statements of financial condition" - in essence, sales brochures for Trump the man, given out by Trump the company - goes back to the early 1980s, according to past testimony from Trump's accountants and staffers.
In 2007, a Trump lawyer named Michelle Lokey said she had sent these statements out to Trump's lenders, for projects in Chicago and Las Vegas, because Trump had personally guaranteed those loans. That meant that if Trump's company defaulted on its obligations, the lenders could come after Trump's personal assets.
"Therefore they'd want information on his net worth?" an attorney asked Lokey.
"I assume," she said.
The statements were prepared by Trump's longtime accountants, a firm now called Mazars. In other contexts - such as when one of Trump's companies was seeking to secure a federal contract - this firm prepared rigorously audited financial statements.
This was a different sort of job.
When compiling these statements of financial condition, those accountants have said they did not verify or audit the figures in the statements. Instead, when Trump provided them data, they wrote it down without checking to see whether it was accurate.
"In the compilation process, it is not the role of the accountant to assess the values," said Gerald Rosenblum, one of the accountants. "The role is to accept those values and move them forward."
An attorney asked: Do the values have to be logical?
"The value per se does not have to be logical," Rosenblum said. He and Lokey were deposed as part of a lawsuit in which Trump sued a New York Times reporter for allegedly lowballing his net worth. Trump's suit against the reporter was later dismissed.
In 2014, Trump used the same accounting firm to prepare financial information for his most expensive development project in decades, his $200 million transformation of the historic Old Post Office Pavilion in downtown Washington into a Trump International Hotel.
But in that case, Mazars vouched for the accuracy of the information, writing that the firm "is responsible for the preparation and fair presentation of these financial statements" using industry standard accounting rules. This was a formal audit of finances related just to Trump's D.C. hotel, rather than a summation of all of his assets based on Trump's own estimates.
The statements Cohen provided to The Post - and to Congress - begin in 2011. Two of them are 20-page "Statements of Financial Condition" signed by Trump's accountants.
In his testimony to Congress, Cohen said these statements included Trump's self-appraisals of his buildings' value - which aimed to impress, instead of aiming for reality. Cohen said Trump would take real measures of value, such as the amount of money his tenants paid in rent, and simply inflate it until he got a number he liked.
"If you're going off of your rent roll, you go by the gross rent roll times a multiple," Cohen said. "And you make up the multiple."
The documents begin with two-page disclaimers, warning of various ways in which the statements don't follow normal accounting rules. The accountants note that Trump is the source of many buildings' valuations - and that, contrary to normal accounting rules, he had inflated them by counting future income that wasn't guaranteed.
The accountants also note that Trump had told them to simply omit two of his major hotels, in Chicago and Las Vegas. Both buildings were carrying mortgages. That omission means that some of Trump's actual debt load was hidden from anyone reading the statement.
"Users of this financial statement should recognize that they might reach different conclusions about the financial condition of Donald J. Trump" if they had more information, the statement concludes.
Legal experts interviewed by The Post said that sort of broad disclaimer might shield Trump from allegations that he misled his lenders and insurers. After all, his own accountants told readers they weren't getting the full story.
"The transparent disclaimers - even if frustrating - typically wipe out a basis" for bringing charges of fraud, said Jacob Frenkel, a former federal prosecutor who is now a private attorney at Dickinson Wright.
In 2012, Trump's statement said he owned a 2,000-acre vineyard in Virginia. But land records in Virginia show the Trump family owns about 1,200 acres. The Trump winery's own website says 1,300 acres.
In 2011, the statements said that Trump's Seven Springs estate in Westchester County, New York, was "zoned for nine luxurious homes." In the statement, Trump said those homes would yield significant cash flow as he built them and sold them. That led him to value the property at $261 million - far more than the roughly $20 million value assigned by local assessors.
At the time, Trump had received preliminary "conceptual approval" to build homes on the site. But local officials said he never finished the last step in the approval process to build the homes or sell the lots.
None of the homes was built.
The 2013 statement that Cohen provided - and which he said was also given to Deutsche Bank, in pursuit of a loan to buy the Bills - is different from the other two.
It is just two pages long, with a slightly different title: "Summary of Net Worth." It does not include the usual disclaimer from Trump's accountants, so readers aren't told that the debts from Trump's Chicago and Las Vegas hotels are missing.
This document also includes a new "asset" that wasn't there before.
It says that Trump's brand value - his name, essentially - was worth $4 billion, and that it ought to be counted among his assets as if it were a building or a resort. With his brand included, Trump's net worth jumped from $4.6 billion to $8.6 billion.
For Trump, the Bills would have been a financial prize far larger than any he had won in the recent past: Bids were expected to be around $1 billion.
In public, Trump had bragged that he was ready to pay $1 billion in cash. But privately, one of his lieutenants told a business contact that they were struggling with the bid.
"We are looking at the Bills but Allen and I are having trouble making the numbers work!!!" wrote Ron Lieberman, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization, in an email to a contact in the New York City parks department. "Allen" likely meant Allen Weisselberg, Trump's longtime chief financial officer.
Lieberman's email was released this year in response to a public-records request from a nonprofit group, NYC Park Advocates. Lieberman and Weisselberg did not respond to requests for comment this week.
Whatever Trump sent to Deutsche Bank, it seems to have been enough: The New York Times reported that Deutsche Bank agreed to vouch for Trump's bid for the Bills, citing an unnamed executive. But Trump lost a bidding war, and somebody else bought the team.
Offshore Wind
U.S. Offshore Wind a $70 Billion Opportunity for Supply Chain
BY MAREX
The U.S.'s burgeoning offshore wind industry, projected to generate nearly 20GW of power in seven East Coast states by 2030, presents a nearly $70 billion CAPEX revenue opportunity to businesses in the U.S. offshore wind supply chain.
That's according to a new white paper by the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind (SIOW) with analysis by the Renewables Consulting Group. Among key industry components required for such a utility-scale build-out of U.S. offshore wind include:
• More than 1,700 offshore wind turbines and towers $29.6 billion
• More than 1,750 offshore wind turbine and substation foundations $16.2 billion
• More than 5,000 miles of power export, upland and array cables $10.3 billion
• More than 60 onshore and offshore substations $ 6.8 billion
• A wide range of marine support, insurance and project management activities $ 5.3 billion
In addition to the 1.6GW of offshore wind farms already contracted to supply power, contracts are expected to be signed for approximately 17GW of additional projects as a result of state commitments in the period 2020-2030. This brings the total forecast amount of contracted offshore wind power between 2020 and 2030 to 18.6GW. The study details these rising state commitments through 2030: New York, 7.7GW (9GW by 2035), New Jersey, 3.5GW, Massachusetts, 3.2GW, Connecticut, 2GW, Maryland, 1.2GW, Rhode Island, 1GW, and Virginia, 12 megawatts.
"America's offshore wind industry is taking off, and what people see now is just the tip of the iceberg," said Stephanie McClellan, study author and Director of SIOW, at the University of Delaware.
Randall Luthi, President of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), said: "NOIA has long advocated for all-of-the-above energy and new offshore energy growth in America. Our members look forward to participating in the massive opportunity presented by offshore wind.”
The first U.S. offshore wind farm was commissioned off Block Island, Rhode Island (30MW) by Deepwater Wind in 2016. Gulf Island Fabrication constructed the foundations for the five turbines at the wind farm, and Bill Blanchard, Senior Vice President, Business Development, said: "Five foundations down, 1,750 more to go. That's the kind of business opportunity the offshore energy industry can get excited about."
MHI Vestas Offshore Wind plans to install 84 of its new 9.5MW turbines in Massachusetts' 800MW Vineyard Wind project, which will be America's first utility-scale offshore wind farm.
Bids in the December 2018 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's auction for new offshore wind Massachusetts leases reached a record $405 million.
BY MAREX
The U.S.'s burgeoning offshore wind industry, projected to generate nearly 20GW of power in seven East Coast states by 2030, presents a nearly $70 billion CAPEX revenue opportunity to businesses in the U.S. offshore wind supply chain.
That's according to a new white paper by the Special Initiative on Offshore Wind (SIOW) with analysis by the Renewables Consulting Group. Among key industry components required for such a utility-scale build-out of U.S. offshore wind include:
• More than 1,700 offshore wind turbines and towers $29.6 billion
• More than 1,750 offshore wind turbine and substation foundations $16.2 billion
• More than 5,000 miles of power export, upland and array cables $10.3 billion
• More than 60 onshore and offshore substations $ 6.8 billion
• A wide range of marine support, insurance and project management activities $ 5.3 billion
In addition to the 1.6GW of offshore wind farms already contracted to supply power, contracts are expected to be signed for approximately 17GW of additional projects as a result of state commitments in the period 2020-2030. This brings the total forecast amount of contracted offshore wind power between 2020 and 2030 to 18.6GW. The study details these rising state commitments through 2030: New York, 7.7GW (9GW by 2035), New Jersey, 3.5GW, Massachusetts, 3.2GW, Connecticut, 2GW, Maryland, 1.2GW, Rhode Island, 1GW, and Virginia, 12 megawatts.
"America's offshore wind industry is taking off, and what people see now is just the tip of the iceberg," said Stephanie McClellan, study author and Director of SIOW, at the University of Delaware.
Randall Luthi, President of the National Ocean Industries Association (NOIA), said: "NOIA has long advocated for all-of-the-above energy and new offshore energy growth in America. Our members look forward to participating in the massive opportunity presented by offshore wind.”
The first U.S. offshore wind farm was commissioned off Block Island, Rhode Island (30MW) by Deepwater Wind in 2016. Gulf Island Fabrication constructed the foundations for the five turbines at the wind farm, and Bill Blanchard, Senior Vice President, Business Development, said: "Five foundations down, 1,750 more to go. That's the kind of business opportunity the offshore energy industry can get excited about."
MHI Vestas Offshore Wind plans to install 84 of its new 9.5MW turbines in Massachusetts' 800MW Vineyard Wind project, which will be America's first utility-scale offshore wind farm.
Bids in the December 2018 Bureau of Ocean Energy Management's auction for new offshore wind Massachusetts leases reached a record $405 million.
M104
The striking spiral galaxy M104 is famous for its nearly edge-on profile featuring a broad ring of obscuring dust lanes. Seen in silhouette against an extensive central bulge of stars, the swath of cosmic dust lends a broad brimmed hat-like appearance to the galaxy suggesting a more popular moniker, The Sombrero Galaxy. Hubble Space Telescope data have been used to to create this sharp view of the well-known galaxy. The processing results in a natural color appearance and preserves details often lost in overwhelming glare of M104's bright central bulge when viewed with smaller ground-based telescopes. Also known as NGC 4594, the Sombrero galaxy can be seen across the spectrum and is host to a central supermassive black hole. About 50,000 light-years across and 28 million light-years away, M104 is one of the largest galaxies at the southern edge of the Virgo Galaxy Cluster.
Dismiss Mueller's intelligence findings....
Intel Republicans dismiss Mueller's intelligence findings before seeing them
By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO
House Intelligence Committee Republicans concluded a year ago that the Trump campaign exercised “poor judgment,” “took ill-considered actions” and at times acted “inconsistent with U.S. national security interests.”
But on Thursday they said they don’t need to see special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to know that no one in President Donald Trump’s orbit was compromised by Russia — even unwittingly.
In interviews with POLITICO, committee Republicans acknowledged they had no insight into the substance of Mueller’s report beyond Attorney General William Barr’s sparse four-page summary, in which he wrote that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in 2016.
“We’ve seen the four-page synopsis. Do you think there would be issues of counterintelligence that would not be highlighted?” said Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah.) “He would not have been so definitive … if there had been any ambiguity.”
Mueller’s investigation was spawned as the continuation of a counterintelligence inquiry that was first revealed to the public by then-FBI Director James Comey in March 2017. However, it remains unclear whether Mueller’s report — which is more than 300 pages in length, according to a Justice Department official — even includes so-called “counterintelligence” findings.
But the same GOP lawmakers who criticized the Trump campaign a year earlier signed a letter Thursday calling the suggestion that any Trump associates were compromised “demonstrably false.”
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who served on the intelligence committee during its GOP-led Russia investigation, said Barr’s summary effectively ruled out any counterintelligence concerns.
“If there had been collusion at the counterintelligence level, then certainly he couldn’t have said there was no collusion,” he said. Notably, Barr's summary doesn't mention “collusion” — which is not a legal term — but indicates that Mueller did not find evidence to “establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
A year earlier, the Republican report on the Intelligence Committee's 2017 investigation recommended that the intelligence community “should immediately inform U.S. presidential candidates when it discovers a legitimate counterintelligence threat to the campaign, and promptly notify Congress.”
If Mueller’s report includes a section on counterintelligence, the House and Senate intelligence panels would almost certainly be briefed on its findings, lawmakers said. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has vowed for months to look into whether Mueller’s report would show that Russia had leverage over Trump or his associates during the campaign and Trump’s presidency, and he told POLITICO this week that he hoped for — but had not yet been promised — a briefing from the intelligence community.
Barr's four-page letter is silent on any counterintelligence findings or any characterization of the evidence Mueller gathered, but Schiff said the Justice Department has a “statutory obligation” to brief the committee on such findings.
Mueller's findings on the subject could reveal whether any Americans, wittingly or unwittingly, aided Russian efforts to interfere in the election, even if their actions never rose to a criminal level. And it's an area Congress — particularly the House Intelligence Committee — must continue to pursue, Democratic lawmakers and aides insisted Thursday.
“We have a president who has yet to release his tax returns. We have a president who did not fully divest from his own business interests. We have a president who insisted on meeting alone with Vladimir Putin without any representatives from the US government there,” said a House Democratic staffer during a briefing for reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday. “When you take that together, it raises a lot of questions about what is motivating this president’s foreign policy. As we continue down the road and providing oversight over the executive branch, those are potential counterintelligence indicators of real risk that our foreign policy is not designed to be in our national interest but to be in the president’s personal interest.”
It’s also unclear whether Mueller examined the issues surrounding Trump Tower Moscow, an attempted real estate deal in the Russian capital that has become a focus of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation. Trump publicly denied conducting any business in Russia during the campaign — and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen initially told Congress that Trump ceased his effort to build Trump Tower Moscow in January 2016. Cohen later pleaded guilty to lying about that exchange. Rather, Cohen said, he helped lead Trump Tower Moscow efforts as late as June 2016.
“Moscow Trump Tower is more of an issue of compromise than it was of conspiracy, and so I would expect that would be a part of the counterintelligence findings,” Schiff said in a recent interview. “But they might not even be in the report at all.”
Nevertheless, all nine committee Republicans said Thursday that they didn’t need to wait for such a briefing to conclude that Schiff’s assertions were “demonstrably false.” In a letter, the GOP lawmakers called for Schiff to resign as chairman over his rhetoric.
“The findings of the special counsel conclusively refute your past and present assertions,” they wrote.
Republicans, in their own report cataloging Trump campaign contacts with Russians during the 2016 election, highlighted what they said amounted to “poor judgment and ill-considered actions” by both Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
“For example, the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between members of the Trump campaign and a Russian lawyer … demonstrated poor judgment,” the Republicans wrote last year when they closed their investigation.
“The committee also found that the Trump campaign’s periodic praise for and communications with Wikileaks — a hostile foreign organization — to be highly objectionable and inconsistent with U.S. national security interests.”
Asked about their certainty about the contents of Mueller’s report, Stewart pointed to the GOP’s report a year earlier and suggested they would have discovered anything questionable.
“I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Mr. Mueller’s going to find something that we saw not a whiff of,” he said.
Reminded that Mueller discovered evidence that Trump sought to build a Trump Tower Moscow up until June 2016 — information that was not unearthed by the committee — Stewart said it was irrelevant. “It has nothing to do with collusion and conspiracy,” he said.
Democrats on the intelligence committee said Republicans are simply parroting Trump, who has declared Barr’s four-page summary a “total exoneration.”
“I think it’s anything but,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). Himes said Mueller’s findings may not have amounted to a crime but his counterintelligence findings “could be of very real interest to the committee.”
House Democratic staff who briefed reporters Thursday noted that Trump and his associates would be innocent of a crime if they didn’t assist the Russian conspiracy — but that’s not where the analysis ends.
“If they knew about it, they are subject to compromise by the Russians who know that they know about it,” a House Democratic source said.
By KYLE CHENEY and ANDREW DESIDERIO
House Intelligence Committee Republicans concluded a year ago that the Trump campaign exercised “poor judgment,” “took ill-considered actions” and at times acted “inconsistent with U.S. national security interests.”
But on Thursday they said they don’t need to see special counsel Robert Mueller’s report to know that no one in President Donald Trump’s orbit was compromised by Russia — even unwittingly.
In interviews with POLITICO, committee Republicans acknowledged they had no insight into the substance of Mueller’s report beyond Attorney General William Barr’s sparse four-page summary, in which he wrote that Mueller was unable to establish that the Trump campaign “conspired or coordinated with the Russian government” in 2016.
“We’ve seen the four-page synopsis. Do you think there would be issues of counterintelligence that would not be highlighted?” said Rep. Chris Stewart (R-Utah.) “He would not have been so definitive … if there had been any ambiguity.”
Mueller’s investigation was spawned as the continuation of a counterintelligence inquiry that was first revealed to the public by then-FBI Director James Comey in March 2017. However, it remains unclear whether Mueller’s report — which is more than 300 pages in length, according to a Justice Department official — even includes so-called “counterintelligence” findings.
But the same GOP lawmakers who criticized the Trump campaign a year earlier signed a letter Thursday calling the suggestion that any Trump associates were compromised “demonstrably false.”
Rep. Peter King (R-N.Y.), who served on the intelligence committee during its GOP-led Russia investigation, said Barr’s summary effectively ruled out any counterintelligence concerns.
“If there had been collusion at the counterintelligence level, then certainly he couldn’t have said there was no collusion,” he said. Notably, Barr's summary doesn't mention “collusion” — which is not a legal term — but indicates that Mueller did not find evidence to “establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.”
A year earlier, the Republican report on the Intelligence Committee's 2017 investigation recommended that the intelligence community “should immediately inform U.S. presidential candidates when it discovers a legitimate counterintelligence threat to the campaign, and promptly notify Congress.”
If Mueller’s report includes a section on counterintelligence, the House and Senate intelligence panels would almost certainly be briefed on its findings, lawmakers said. Intelligence Committee Chairman Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) has vowed for months to look into whether Mueller’s report would show that Russia had leverage over Trump or his associates during the campaign and Trump’s presidency, and he told POLITICO this week that he hoped for — but had not yet been promised — a briefing from the intelligence community.
Barr's four-page letter is silent on any counterintelligence findings or any characterization of the evidence Mueller gathered, but Schiff said the Justice Department has a “statutory obligation” to brief the committee on such findings.
Mueller's findings on the subject could reveal whether any Americans, wittingly or unwittingly, aided Russian efforts to interfere in the election, even if their actions never rose to a criminal level. And it's an area Congress — particularly the House Intelligence Committee — must continue to pursue, Democratic lawmakers and aides insisted Thursday.
“We have a president who has yet to release his tax returns. We have a president who did not fully divest from his own business interests. We have a president who insisted on meeting alone with Vladimir Putin without any representatives from the US government there,” said a House Democratic staffer during a briefing for reporters on Capitol Hill Thursday. “When you take that together, it raises a lot of questions about what is motivating this president’s foreign policy. As we continue down the road and providing oversight over the executive branch, those are potential counterintelligence indicators of real risk that our foreign policy is not designed to be in our national interest but to be in the president’s personal interest.”
It’s also unclear whether Mueller examined the issues surrounding Trump Tower Moscow, an attempted real estate deal in the Russian capital that has become a focus of the House Intelligence Committee’s investigation. Trump publicly denied conducting any business in Russia during the campaign — and his former personal lawyer Michael Cohen initially told Congress that Trump ceased his effort to build Trump Tower Moscow in January 2016. Cohen later pleaded guilty to lying about that exchange. Rather, Cohen said, he helped lead Trump Tower Moscow efforts as late as June 2016.
“Moscow Trump Tower is more of an issue of compromise than it was of conspiracy, and so I would expect that would be a part of the counterintelligence findings,” Schiff said in a recent interview. “But they might not even be in the report at all.”
Nevertheless, all nine committee Republicans said Thursday that they didn’t need to wait for such a briefing to conclude that Schiff’s assertions were “demonstrably false.” In a letter, the GOP lawmakers called for Schiff to resign as chairman over his rhetoric.
“The findings of the special counsel conclusively refute your past and present assertions,” they wrote.
Republicans, in their own report cataloging Trump campaign contacts with Russians during the 2016 election, highlighted what they said amounted to “poor judgment and ill-considered actions” by both Trump’s and Hillary Clinton’s campaigns.
“For example, the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between members of the Trump campaign and a Russian lawyer … demonstrated poor judgment,” the Republicans wrote last year when they closed their investigation.
“The committee also found that the Trump campaign’s periodic praise for and communications with Wikileaks — a hostile foreign organization — to be highly objectionable and inconsistent with U.S. national security interests.”
Asked about their certainty about the contents of Mueller’s report, Stewart pointed to the GOP’s report a year earlier and suggested they would have discovered anything questionable.
“I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely that Mr. Mueller’s going to find something that we saw not a whiff of,” he said.
Reminded that Mueller discovered evidence that Trump sought to build a Trump Tower Moscow up until June 2016 — information that was not unearthed by the committee — Stewart said it was irrelevant. “It has nothing to do with collusion and conspiracy,” he said.
Democrats on the intelligence committee said Republicans are simply parroting Trump, who has declared Barr’s four-page summary a “total exoneration.”
“I think it’s anything but,” said Rep. Jim Himes (D-Conn.). Himes said Mueller’s findings may not have amounted to a crime but his counterintelligence findings “could be of very real interest to the committee.”
House Democratic staff who briefed reporters Thursday noted that Trump and his associates would be innocent of a crime if they didn’t assist the Russian conspiracy — but that’s not where the analysis ends.
“If they knew about it, they are subject to compromise by the Russians who know that they know about it,” a House Democratic source said.
Lost another Obamacare legal battle
Trump administration suffers another Obamacare blow in court
By PAUL DEMKO
The Trump administration has lost another Obamacare legal battle — its second this week — just as the president has revived his drive to destroy and replace the 2010 health law.
A federal judge ruled late Thursday in Washington that the administration’s efforts to expand the availability of health plans that don’t meet the coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act is a deliberate and illegal “end run“ around the federal health care law. The ruling addressed insurance known as “Association Health Plans,” which cost less than many Obamacare plans but can also provide fewer health benefits.
The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, comes just one day after another federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s embrace of work requirements for people on Medicaid, concluding that those new rules in Kentucky and Arkansas violate the program’s primary goal of delivering health care coverage to low-income Americans.
Medicaid work requirements and expanding coverage options outside Obamacare rules have been linchpins of the Trump administration’s approach to health care. The president and top officials have argued that such changes are necessary to bring relief to Americans who are suffering under the stringent rules and costs of the ACA. Several other Trump health policies are facing legal challenges.
The legal setbacks also come as Trump has made a high-stakes gamble by vowing another effort to dismantle Obamacare, which he called “an absolute disaster.“ The administration roiled the health care industry earlier this week by siding with a federal judge who ruled in December that the entire ACA, which was enacted nearly a decade ago, is unconstitutional and must be tossed. That was a reversal of the Department of Justice’s earlier position, that only a portion of the law should be struck.
“You watch, we are going to be the party of great health care,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “The Democrats have let you down. They’ve really let you down. Obamacare doesn’t work.“
The Trump administration’s moves infuriated many Republican lawmakers, still smarting from failed repeal efforts in 2017. They would prefer to attack Democrats for efforts to pass “Medicare for All," which they deride as socialized medicine that will eliminate all private insurance coverage.
Democrats won control of the House in 2018 in large part by pillorying Republicans for trying to jettison a law that has provided coverage to an estimated 20 million Americans, even though the GOP couldn’t reach agreement on what should come next.
The Trump administration’s efforts to expand the availability of association health plans sparked a lawsuit by 11 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, who argued that the regulations violated federal law and must be scrapped.
“We are pleased that the District Court saw past the Trump Administration’s transparent effort to sabotage our health care system and gut these critical consumer protections in the service of its own partisan agenda,” New York Attorney General Tish James, one of the parties to the suit, said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear if the administration would appeal.
By PAUL DEMKO
The Trump administration has lost another Obamacare legal battle — its second this week — just as the president has revived his drive to destroy and replace the 2010 health law.
A federal judge ruled late Thursday in Washington that the administration’s efforts to expand the availability of health plans that don’t meet the coverage rules of the Affordable Care Act is a deliberate and illegal “end run“ around the federal health care law. The ruling addressed insurance known as “Association Health Plans,” which cost less than many Obamacare plans but can also provide fewer health benefits.
The ruling by U.S. District Court Judge John Bates, a George W. Bush appointee, comes just one day after another federal judge rejected the Trump administration’s embrace of work requirements for people on Medicaid, concluding that those new rules in Kentucky and Arkansas violate the program’s primary goal of delivering health care coverage to low-income Americans.
Medicaid work requirements and expanding coverage options outside Obamacare rules have been linchpins of the Trump administration’s approach to health care. The president and top officials have argued that such changes are necessary to bring relief to Americans who are suffering under the stringent rules and costs of the ACA. Several other Trump health policies are facing legal challenges.
The legal setbacks also come as Trump has made a high-stakes gamble by vowing another effort to dismantle Obamacare, which he called “an absolute disaster.“ The administration roiled the health care industry earlier this week by siding with a federal judge who ruled in December that the entire ACA, which was enacted nearly a decade ago, is unconstitutional and must be tossed. That was a reversal of the Department of Justice’s earlier position, that only a portion of the law should be struck.
“You watch, we are going to be the party of great health care,” Trump told reporters on Wednesday. “The Democrats have let you down. They’ve really let you down. Obamacare doesn’t work.“
The Trump administration’s moves infuriated many Republican lawmakers, still smarting from failed repeal efforts in 2017. They would prefer to attack Democrats for efforts to pass “Medicare for All," which they deride as socialized medicine that will eliminate all private insurance coverage.
Democrats won control of the House in 2018 in large part by pillorying Republicans for trying to jettison a law that has provided coverage to an estimated 20 million Americans, even though the GOP couldn’t reach agreement on what should come next.
The Trump administration’s efforts to expand the availability of association health plans sparked a lawsuit by 11 Democratic-led states and the District of Columbia, who argued that the regulations violated federal law and must be scrapped.
“We are pleased that the District Court saw past the Trump Administration’s transparent effort to sabotage our health care system and gut these critical consumer protections in the service of its own partisan agenda,” New York Attorney General Tish James, one of the parties to the suit, said in a statement.
It was not immediately clear if the administration would appeal.
Health care scared....
McConnell to Trump: Health care’s all yours
The Senate majority leader signaled in an interview that he’s more interested in taking on Democrats than jumping into a divisive debate within his own party.
By BURGESS EVERETT
Mitch McConnell has no intention of leading President Donald Trump’s campaign to transform the GOP into the “party of health care.”
“I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker,” McConnell said in a brief interview Thursday, adding, “I am focusing on stopping the ‘Democrats’ Medicare for none’ scheme.”
The Senate majority leader spent untold weeks and months on the party’s health care quagmire in 2017, when the GOP controlled both the House and the Senate and still failed to repeal Obamacare. The episode caused endless headaches for Republicans as their replacement plan fell apart first, followed by the so-called “skinny” plan they slapped together at the last minute.
Now in divided government, with the Senate majority up for grabs next year and McConnell himself running for reelection, another divisive debate over health care is the last thing McConnell needs. But that’s exactly where Trump is taking Republicans after his administration endorsed a wholesale obliteration of the law in the courts earlier this week.
So the Kentucky Republican and his members are putting the onus on the president to figure out the next steps.
McConnell’s clear reluctance toward trying to draft a sweeping health care bill in the Senate reflects his political instincts: that it’s better to focus on perceived Democratic weaknesses — the left’s push on “Medicare for All” — than to struggle to unify his own party on a plan almost certain to be rebuffed by Senate Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he’s eager to move forward on a new health care debate, but he’s not detecting the same enthusiasm in the leadership suites: “I’m not sensing a whole lot.”
While the GOP leader has endorsed efforts to protect pre-existing conditions, McConnell told his caucus on Wednesday he will stick to a message of asking the administration for a plan and focusing on making Democratic measures unpopular, according to attendees.
Soon after, Senate Republicans from across the caucus adopted a similar mantra: Let’s see what the White House proposes.
“The leader is sort of anxious to see what the president and his team put forward in terms of a proposal,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s top deputy. “The good news for us is the Democrat alternative, the so-called Medicare for All plan, the government-run program, is very, very unpopular.”
Marc Short, a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence, said Wednesday on television that the White House will submit a plan to Congress. But Republicans acknowledge that there is essentially no chance that House Democrats will want anything to do with it.
Trump is unbowed.
“The Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare!” Trump tweeted on Thursday afternoon. “Moving forward in Courts and Legislatively!”
Privately, Republicans have been baffled all week about the latest tango with Obamacare, but they’ve tried their best not to be at odds with the president’s unwelcome push.
Asked about the prospects of moving forward with a new vision for health care as requested by the president, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) grinned knowingly, but demurred.
“You can’t quote a smile,” he said.
In fact, simply passing a new health care bill in the Senate before the 2020 election appears nearly impossible. And there may be no need to, since court action appears months away.
Neither chamber is moving forward on a budget that would allow Republicans to skirt the Senate filibuster through the “reconciliation” technique they used in 2017. And there won’t be 60 votes for a comprehensive plan because Democrats won’t cooperate with GOP efforts to replace Obamacare.
Even introducing sweeping legislation could be a political liability for Senate Republicans up for reelection, who would then be forced either to endorse or oppose it. That’s got Republicans embracing a wait-and-see stance to test how serious the president really is about his latest legislative push.
“We were all a little surprised, [McConnell] included,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close ally of the majority leader. “We know that Ms. Pelosi is going to be a challenge. But it would be even more problematic if we were crosswise with the White House. So that’s why we need to be coordinating.”
Still, Trump’s backing of a lawsuit seeking to dismantle all of Obamacare and come up with a new plan has been welcomed by Republicans who want to promote their own agenda rather than issue takedowns of Democrats’ ideas. And in a new Senate with a handful of senators who didn’t experience the debacle of 2017, some want to start anew.
“I’ve been out there on health care more aggressively than anyone. … We need to see what President Trump means. He’s throwing a lot of stuff out there,” said freshman Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). He added: “We need to do something other than just talk about repealing it.”
While they wait, some committee chairmen are beginning work on targeted health care reforms.
Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said whatever they produce on lowering drug costs and medical bills will not resemble the effort from two years ago to craft a wholesale replacement of the Affordable Care Act.
But that is likely not going to be enough for Trump. The question Republican have now: What is?
“The president’s entitled to his opinions, so I don’t begrudge him that,” Cornyn said. “But what they need to do now is tell us what their plans are.”
The Senate majority leader signaled in an interview that he’s more interested in taking on Democrats than jumping into a divisive debate within his own party.
By BURGESS EVERETT
Mitch McConnell has no intention of leading President Donald Trump’s campaign to transform the GOP into the “party of health care.”
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| Mitch McConnell |
“I look forward to seeing what the president is proposing and what he can work out with the speaker,” McConnell said in a brief interview Thursday, adding, “I am focusing on stopping the ‘Democrats’ Medicare for none’ scheme.”
The Senate majority leader spent untold weeks and months on the party’s health care quagmire in 2017, when the GOP controlled both the House and the Senate and still failed to repeal Obamacare. The episode caused endless headaches for Republicans as their replacement plan fell apart first, followed by the so-called “skinny” plan they slapped together at the last minute.
Now in divided government, with the Senate majority up for grabs next year and McConnell himself running for reelection, another divisive debate over health care is the last thing McConnell needs. But that’s exactly where Trump is taking Republicans after his administration endorsed a wholesale obliteration of the law in the courts earlier this week.
So the Kentucky Republican and his members are putting the onus on the president to figure out the next steps.
McConnell’s clear reluctance toward trying to draft a sweeping health care bill in the Senate reflects his political instincts: that it’s better to focus on perceived Democratic weaknesses — the left’s push on “Medicare for All” — than to struggle to unify his own party on a plan almost certain to be rebuffed by Senate Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.).
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-Wis.) said he’s eager to move forward on a new health care debate, but he’s not detecting the same enthusiasm in the leadership suites: “I’m not sensing a whole lot.”
While the GOP leader has endorsed efforts to protect pre-existing conditions, McConnell told his caucus on Wednesday he will stick to a message of asking the administration for a plan and focusing on making Democratic measures unpopular, according to attendees.
Soon after, Senate Republicans from across the caucus adopted a similar mantra: Let’s see what the White House proposes.
“The leader is sort of anxious to see what the president and his team put forward in terms of a proposal,” said Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), McConnell’s top deputy. “The good news for us is the Democrat alternative, the so-called Medicare for All plan, the government-run program, is very, very unpopular.”
Marc Short, a top aide to Vice President Mike Pence, said Wednesday on television that the White House will submit a plan to Congress. But Republicans acknowledge that there is essentially no chance that House Democrats will want anything to do with it.
Trump is unbowed.
“The Republican Party will become the Party of Great HealthCare!” Trump tweeted on Thursday afternoon. “Moving forward in Courts and Legislatively!”
Privately, Republicans have been baffled all week about the latest tango with Obamacare, but they’ve tried their best not to be at odds with the president’s unwelcome push.
Asked about the prospects of moving forward with a new vision for health care as requested by the president, Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) grinned knowingly, but demurred.
“You can’t quote a smile,” he said.
In fact, simply passing a new health care bill in the Senate before the 2020 election appears nearly impossible. And there may be no need to, since court action appears months away.
Neither chamber is moving forward on a budget that would allow Republicans to skirt the Senate filibuster through the “reconciliation” technique they used in 2017. And there won’t be 60 votes for a comprehensive plan because Democrats won’t cooperate with GOP efforts to replace Obamacare.
Even introducing sweeping legislation could be a political liability for Senate Republicans up for reelection, who would then be forced either to endorse or oppose it. That’s got Republicans embracing a wait-and-see stance to test how serious the president really is about his latest legislative push.
“We were all a little surprised, [McConnell] included,” said Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas), a close ally of the majority leader. “We know that Ms. Pelosi is going to be a challenge. But it would be even more problematic if we were crosswise with the White House. So that’s why we need to be coordinating.”
Still, Trump’s backing of a lawsuit seeking to dismantle all of Obamacare and come up with a new plan has been welcomed by Republicans who want to promote their own agenda rather than issue takedowns of Democrats’ ideas. And in a new Senate with a handful of senators who didn’t experience the debacle of 2017, some want to start anew.
“I’ve been out there on health care more aggressively than anyone. … We need to see what President Trump means. He’s throwing a lot of stuff out there,” said freshman Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.). He added: “We need to do something other than just talk about repealing it.”
While they wait, some committee chairmen are beginning work on targeted health care reforms.
Finance Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and Health, Education, Labor and Pensions Committee Chairman Lamar Alexander (R-Tenn.) said whatever they produce on lowering drug costs and medical bills will not resemble the effort from two years ago to craft a wholesale replacement of the Affordable Care Act.
But that is likely not going to be enough for Trump. The question Republican have now: What is?
“The president’s entitled to his opinions, so I don’t begrudge him that,” Cornyn said. “But what they need to do now is tell us what their plans are.”
Spends millions on GOP-connected consultants
Key Trump health official spends millions on GOP-connected consultants
Seema Verma employs a team of private consultants who write her speeches, polish her brand and travel with her across the country.
By ADAM CANCRYN and DAN DIAMOND
The Trump appointee who oversees Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare quietly directed millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts to Republican communications consultants during her tenure atop the agency — including hiring one well-connected GOP media adviser to bolster her public profile.
The communications subcontracts approved by CMS Administrator Seema Verma — routed through a larger federal contract and described to POLITICO by three individuals with firsthand knowledge of the agreements — represent a sharp break from precedent at the agency. Those deals, managed by Verma’s deputies, came in some cases over the objections of CMS staffers, who raised concerns about her push to use federal funds on GOP consultants and to amplify coverage of Verma’s own work. CMS has its own large communications shop, including about two dozen people who handle the press.
Verma, a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence, has become a lightning rod for pushing work requirements in Medicaid and spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally unwind pieces of Obamacare. She previously worked as a consultant to conservative states seeking to reshape health care programs for the poor.
Her agency’s use of outside contracts and subcontracts is legal, but experts and current officials say it is not transparent and raises ethical questions.
“Outsourcing communications work to private contractors puts the agency's ability to protect ‘potentially market-moving’ information from premature disclosure at considerable risk,” said Andy Schneider, a Medicaid expert who worked at CMS during the Obama administration and is now a researcher at Georgetown University.
And whether the issue was Medicare, Medicaid or Obamacare, prior heads of the agency were often quoted, profiled and in the news, so current officials said they’re puzzled why so much work is being outsourced.
“The head of Obamacare doesn't need outside consultants to get reporters to talk to her,” said one CMS official, who asked for anonymity. “The job pitches itself.”
The subcontracts are part of a $2.25 million contract administered by Porter Novelli, an international public relations firm that performs a wide variety of government services. CMS’ new top communications official Tom Corry confirmed the arrangement. Two other individuals said CMS also spent at least $1 million on earlier contracts with GOP communications consultants.
One subcontract is with Pam Stevens, a longtime GOP media adviser who specializes in setting up profiles of Republican women. A second subcontract is with Marcus Barlow, whom Verma worked with in Indiana and considered hiring as a top communications official in 2017 before he was blocked by the White House.
As contractors, Stevens and Barlow are paid between $185 and $200 per hour, said two individuals with knowledge of their contracts — a far higher pay rate than the majority of high-level government officials.
A third contract is with Nahigian Strategies, a firm run by a high-profile pair of brothers. Keith Nahigian consulted with several GOP presidential campaigns; Ken Nahigian briefly led President Donald Trump’s presidential transition team in 2017. Nahigian Strategies staff have supported and advised Verma on messaging strategy for nearly two years, including accompanying Verma to Denver on Tuesday for meetings with digital health experts and CMS staff. One individual familiar with the relationship said Nahigian Strategies was paid at least $2 million for its work with CMS over the past two years.
Stevens, Nahigian Strategies and Porter Novelli referred questions to CMS. Barlow declined to comment for this article.
In an interview with POLITICO, Verma’s newly installed communications director Corry couldn’t specify how much CMS had spent on GOP communications consultants, but stressed that he planned to cut them back now that the agency had personnel in place — after a slow start early in the Trump administration.
“Now that we’re fully staffed up, contractor resources are going to be used less than they were,” said Corry, who ran a health care consulting firm before joining CMS on March 4 to head its 200-person communications office. Their work includes running consumer-facing websites.
“We use our resources judiciously,” Corry said. “We’re not wasting the taxpayer dollar.”
While Corry said he wasn’t sure about overall spending on communications consultants, “it’s a small number compared to all the contracts we have,” he said.
Federal agencies are not required to proactively disclose arrangements with subcontractors, or even that those subcontractors exist — a gray area that gives them broad leeway to bring on individuals and outside firms under the cover of vague public contracts. For instance, public spending records describe the Porter Novelli contract simply as “strategic communications.”
But some career CMS staff have voiced their concerns to political appointees within the agency about routing taxpayer dollars to GOP consultants and helping a federal official like Verma improve her personal brand, said two individuals aware of those conversations. Oversight groups also have raised concerns, saying the behavior, as described to them by POLITICO, would appear to cross ethical lines.
"There are a host of ethical and contractual problems with appointees steering contracts to political allies and subcontractors, and possibly a violation of the ban on personal services contracts if the work is being performed at the direction of the appointee,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, told POLITICO. “Contracts are supposed to be above reproach, with complete impartiality, and without preferential treatment, and the HHS Inspector General should review this [Porter Novelli] contract and the activities under it to ensure they are proper."
In her two years leading CMS, Verma has drawn attention for regularly criticizing Obamacare — a law she administers — as well as trading Twitter barbs with Democratic lawmakers and mocking progressive ideas like “Medicare for All.” She also has battled with health experts, including the committee created to advise Congress on Medicaid, which broadly has warned the administration’s push to shrink government health programs will reverse coverage gains made under Obamacare.
Verma recently completed several interviews, arranged by Stevens, that focused on emphasizing her personal life and her role as a prominent Republican woman. The cover profile in this month’s AARP bulletin, which went to more than 24 million people, included a sidebar on Verma’s husband’s experience in the health system.
Consultants help shape CMS strategy
Before the Trump administration, communications consultants were used mostly for sweeping agency priorities, like raising awareness of Medicare open enrollment or encouraging sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act, five current and former officials said.
CMS’ current use of communications contractors has gone well beyond the norm, those five sources said, and comes at a time when Verma has made cuts elsewhere, such as reducing advertising for Obamacare enrollment by tens of millions of dollars. The outside consultants frequently handled Verma’s media calls, joined her on promotional trips and wrote her speeches.
Those functions historically were performed by career civil servants in the CMS Communications Office.
"We have no idea who some of these people are and why they're in meetings with the administrator," said one senior CMS official, who asked for anonymity. "They're not introduced … It's become a guessing game for us."
The GOP consultants also brought a political edge to the agency’s communications.
In a February 2018 incident, contractor Brett O'Donnell barred a Modern Healthcare reporter from a media call for refusing to alter a story that had rankled Verma. CMS officials walked back that threat within days and said a week later that Porter Novelli’s subcontract with O’Donnell, a longtime GOP consultant, would not be renewed. But CMS never provided any explanation of O’Donnell’s role or responsibilities. O’Donnell declined to comment for this article.
Corry said Porter Novelli handled finding consultants including O’Donnell, Barlow and Stevens and the finer details of their contracts. “We have no idea what they’re paid per hour,” he said.
Stevens — a former Condoleezza Rice aide who did two short stints in the Trump administration in 2017 — pitched Verma to media outlets like Fox News, CBS and NBC, as well as for events hosted by the Milken Institute and other organizations. Widely known for her extensive Rolodex, Stevens generally has avoided the health journalists who regularly cover CMS in favor of brokering conversations with media executives or lifestyle reporters, and shepherding Verma to after-hours networking events with prominent journalists.
She also came to CMS with a reputation for securing flattering profiles of Republican women, an effort she developed as a House GOP strategist and continues to cultivate as a consultant. “Proud to have made this great piece happen,” she posted on Facebook on Feb. 20, linking to a Glamour magazine article about Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) effort to recruit more Republican women to Congress.
Stevens has played a similar role securing opportunities for Verma to showcase her work within the administration. In recent weeks, her outreach led to Verma’s appearance on POLITICO’s “Women Rule” podcast, which profiles women leaders, and she worked on Verma’s appearance on a panel hosted by Woman’s Day magazine. (Verma’s interview at a POLITICO policy event last July predated Stevens’ involvement with CMS.)
CMS’ Corry said Stevens was used to book interviews for Verma but is being phased out. “Her time is getting less and less anyway,” he said. Corry also noted that he has his own network after 25 years in the field, including being friendly with the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section and other reporters, and could fill Stevens’ role.
Nahigian Strategies, a GOP-aligned public relations firm, has managed a wide variety of CMS communications functions for nearly two years. Its consultants have set up meetings and accompanied Verma around the nation to promote her key projects, like a March 2018 trip to a Las Vegas health technology conference to unveil Verma’s digital health initiatives aimed at giving patients easier access to their own medical records.
“Check out this op-ed placed in Recode on how the @RealDonaldTrump admin is leading in giving patients their health info,” the Nahigian Strategies Twitter account posted a week after the Las Vegas trip.
CMS’ Corry said the Nahigian Strategies team helped Verma with travel, planning and other logistical issues. “It’s pretty basic stuff,” he said.
Verma also relied on subcontracting to bring aboard longtime associate Barlow — after the White House blocked him from a permanent job leading CMS communications. Barlow, who served as a spokesperson for Verma's health care consulting firm in Indiana, had run afoul of the White House for writing a column critical of Trump, POLITICO reported at the time.
Nahigian Strategies hired Barlow instead in March 2017, which helped the firm strengthen its relationship with Verma. When Barlow left Nahigian Strategies in August 2018 to return to his own consulting firm, he continued to work for CMS under a separate subcontract that remains in effect, according to two individuals with knowledge of the arrangement.
Barlow helped write some of Verma’s most high-profile speeches, including a November 2017 address in which she signaled the Trump administration’s plan to require some Medicaid enrollees to work to keep their coverage for the first time — a controversial policy that a federal judge blocked for the second time on Wednesday.
“Believing that community engagement requirements do not support or promote the objectives of Medicaid is a tragic example of the soft bigotry of low expectations consistently espoused by the prior administration,” Verma said in the speech that Barlow helped write. “Those days are over.”
Advocates panned Verma’s remarks, contending she misrepresented the patients that she was appointed to serve. The speech “was rife with offensive rhetoric about the Medicaid program and individuals enrolled in it,” the National Women’s Law Center said.
Verma’s remarks also stunned Schneider, the former Obama appointee — who called them “reprehensible” at the time. But Schneider said he’s more surprised to learn that Verma and her staff don’t always write their own speeches, like CMS did when he worked there in 2016.
"I actually thought that her [Medicaid] speech was in her own voice," he said.
Seema Verma employs a team of private consultants who write her speeches, polish her brand and travel with her across the country.
By ADAM CANCRYN and DAN DIAMOND
The Trump appointee who oversees Medicare, Medicaid and Obamacare quietly directed millions of taxpayer dollars in contracts to Republican communications consultants during her tenure atop the agency — including hiring one well-connected GOP media adviser to bolster her public profile.
The communications subcontracts approved by CMS Administrator Seema Verma — routed through a larger federal contract and described to POLITICO by three individuals with firsthand knowledge of the agreements — represent a sharp break from precedent at the agency. Those deals, managed by Verma’s deputies, came in some cases over the objections of CMS staffers, who raised concerns about her push to use federal funds on GOP consultants and to amplify coverage of Verma’s own work. CMS has its own large communications shop, including about two dozen people who handle the press.
Verma, a close ally of Vice President Mike Pence, has become a lightning rod for pushing work requirements in Medicaid and spearheading the Trump administration’s efforts to unilaterally unwind pieces of Obamacare. She previously worked as a consultant to conservative states seeking to reshape health care programs for the poor.
Her agency’s use of outside contracts and subcontracts is legal, but experts and current officials say it is not transparent and raises ethical questions.
“Outsourcing communications work to private contractors puts the agency's ability to protect ‘potentially market-moving’ information from premature disclosure at considerable risk,” said Andy Schneider, a Medicaid expert who worked at CMS during the Obama administration and is now a researcher at Georgetown University.
And whether the issue was Medicare, Medicaid or Obamacare, prior heads of the agency were often quoted, profiled and in the news, so current officials said they’re puzzled why so much work is being outsourced.
“The head of Obamacare doesn't need outside consultants to get reporters to talk to her,” said one CMS official, who asked for anonymity. “The job pitches itself.”
The subcontracts are part of a $2.25 million contract administered by Porter Novelli, an international public relations firm that performs a wide variety of government services. CMS’ new top communications official Tom Corry confirmed the arrangement. Two other individuals said CMS also spent at least $1 million on earlier contracts with GOP communications consultants.
One subcontract is with Pam Stevens, a longtime GOP media adviser who specializes in setting up profiles of Republican women. A second subcontract is with Marcus Barlow, whom Verma worked with in Indiana and considered hiring as a top communications official in 2017 before he was blocked by the White House.
As contractors, Stevens and Barlow are paid between $185 and $200 per hour, said two individuals with knowledge of their contracts — a far higher pay rate than the majority of high-level government officials.
A third contract is with Nahigian Strategies, a firm run by a high-profile pair of brothers. Keith Nahigian consulted with several GOP presidential campaigns; Ken Nahigian briefly led President Donald Trump’s presidential transition team in 2017. Nahigian Strategies staff have supported and advised Verma on messaging strategy for nearly two years, including accompanying Verma to Denver on Tuesday for meetings with digital health experts and CMS staff. One individual familiar with the relationship said Nahigian Strategies was paid at least $2 million for its work with CMS over the past two years.
Stevens, Nahigian Strategies and Porter Novelli referred questions to CMS. Barlow declined to comment for this article.
In an interview with POLITICO, Verma’s newly installed communications director Corry couldn’t specify how much CMS had spent on GOP communications consultants, but stressed that he planned to cut them back now that the agency had personnel in place — after a slow start early in the Trump administration.
“Now that we’re fully staffed up, contractor resources are going to be used less than they were,” said Corry, who ran a health care consulting firm before joining CMS on March 4 to head its 200-person communications office. Their work includes running consumer-facing websites.
“We use our resources judiciously,” Corry said. “We’re not wasting the taxpayer dollar.”
While Corry said he wasn’t sure about overall spending on communications consultants, “it’s a small number compared to all the contracts we have,” he said.
Federal agencies are not required to proactively disclose arrangements with subcontractors, or even that those subcontractors exist — a gray area that gives them broad leeway to bring on individuals and outside firms under the cover of vague public contracts. For instance, public spending records describe the Porter Novelli contract simply as “strategic communications.”
But some career CMS staff have voiced their concerns to political appointees within the agency about routing taxpayer dollars to GOP consultants and helping a federal official like Verma improve her personal brand, said two individuals aware of those conversations. Oversight groups also have raised concerns, saying the behavior, as described to them by POLITICO, would appear to cross ethical lines.
"There are a host of ethical and contractual problems with appointees steering contracts to political allies and subcontractors, and possibly a violation of the ban on personal services contracts if the work is being performed at the direction of the appointee,” Scott Amey, general counsel of the Project on Government Oversight, told POLITICO. “Contracts are supposed to be above reproach, with complete impartiality, and without preferential treatment, and the HHS Inspector General should review this [Porter Novelli] contract and the activities under it to ensure they are proper."
In her two years leading CMS, Verma has drawn attention for regularly criticizing Obamacare — a law she administers — as well as trading Twitter barbs with Democratic lawmakers and mocking progressive ideas like “Medicare for All.” She also has battled with health experts, including the committee created to advise Congress on Medicaid, which broadly has warned the administration’s push to shrink government health programs will reverse coverage gains made under Obamacare.
Verma recently completed several interviews, arranged by Stevens, that focused on emphasizing her personal life and her role as a prominent Republican woman. The cover profile in this month’s AARP bulletin, which went to more than 24 million people, included a sidebar on Verma’s husband’s experience in the health system.
Consultants help shape CMS strategy
Before the Trump administration, communications consultants were used mostly for sweeping agency priorities, like raising awareness of Medicare open enrollment or encouraging sign-ups for the Affordable Care Act, five current and former officials said.
CMS’ current use of communications contractors has gone well beyond the norm, those five sources said, and comes at a time when Verma has made cuts elsewhere, such as reducing advertising for Obamacare enrollment by tens of millions of dollars. The outside consultants frequently handled Verma’s media calls, joined her on promotional trips and wrote her speeches.
Those functions historically were performed by career civil servants in the CMS Communications Office.
"We have no idea who some of these people are and why they're in meetings with the administrator," said one senior CMS official, who asked for anonymity. "They're not introduced … It's become a guessing game for us."
The GOP consultants also brought a political edge to the agency’s communications.
In a February 2018 incident, contractor Brett O'Donnell barred a Modern Healthcare reporter from a media call for refusing to alter a story that had rankled Verma. CMS officials walked back that threat within days and said a week later that Porter Novelli’s subcontract with O’Donnell, a longtime GOP consultant, would not be renewed. But CMS never provided any explanation of O’Donnell’s role or responsibilities. O’Donnell declined to comment for this article.
Corry said Porter Novelli handled finding consultants including O’Donnell, Barlow and Stevens and the finer details of their contracts. “We have no idea what they’re paid per hour,” he said.
Stevens — a former Condoleezza Rice aide who did two short stints in the Trump administration in 2017 — pitched Verma to media outlets like Fox News, CBS and NBC, as well as for events hosted by the Milken Institute and other organizations. Widely known for her extensive Rolodex, Stevens generally has avoided the health journalists who regularly cover CMS in favor of brokering conversations with media executives or lifestyle reporters, and shepherding Verma to after-hours networking events with prominent journalists.
She also came to CMS with a reputation for securing flattering profiles of Republican women, an effort she developed as a House GOP strategist and continues to cultivate as a consultant. “Proud to have made this great piece happen,” she posted on Facebook on Feb. 20, linking to a Glamour magazine article about Rep. Elise Stefanik’s (R-N.Y.) effort to recruit more Republican women to Congress.
Stevens has played a similar role securing opportunities for Verma to showcase her work within the administration. In recent weeks, her outreach led to Verma’s appearance on POLITICO’s “Women Rule” podcast, which profiles women leaders, and she worked on Verma’s appearance on a panel hosted by Woman’s Day magazine. (Verma’s interview at a POLITICO policy event last July predated Stevens’ involvement with CMS.)
CMS’ Corry said Stevens was used to book interviews for Verma but is being phased out. “Her time is getting less and less anyway,” he said. Corry also noted that he has his own network after 25 years in the field, including being friendly with the editor of The Wall Street Journal’s opinion section and other reporters, and could fill Stevens’ role.
Nahigian Strategies, a GOP-aligned public relations firm, has managed a wide variety of CMS communications functions for nearly two years. Its consultants have set up meetings and accompanied Verma around the nation to promote her key projects, like a March 2018 trip to a Las Vegas health technology conference to unveil Verma’s digital health initiatives aimed at giving patients easier access to their own medical records.
“Check out this op-ed placed in Recode on how the @RealDonaldTrump admin is leading in giving patients their health info,” the Nahigian Strategies Twitter account posted a week after the Las Vegas trip.
CMS’ Corry said the Nahigian Strategies team helped Verma with travel, planning and other logistical issues. “It’s pretty basic stuff,” he said.
Verma also relied on subcontracting to bring aboard longtime associate Barlow — after the White House blocked him from a permanent job leading CMS communications. Barlow, who served as a spokesperson for Verma's health care consulting firm in Indiana, had run afoul of the White House for writing a column critical of Trump, POLITICO reported at the time.
Nahigian Strategies hired Barlow instead in March 2017, which helped the firm strengthen its relationship with Verma. When Barlow left Nahigian Strategies in August 2018 to return to his own consulting firm, he continued to work for CMS under a separate subcontract that remains in effect, according to two individuals with knowledge of the arrangement.
Barlow helped write some of Verma’s most high-profile speeches, including a November 2017 address in which she signaled the Trump administration’s plan to require some Medicaid enrollees to work to keep their coverage for the first time — a controversial policy that a federal judge blocked for the second time on Wednesday.
“Believing that community engagement requirements do not support or promote the objectives of Medicaid is a tragic example of the soft bigotry of low expectations consistently espoused by the prior administration,” Verma said in the speech that Barlow helped write. “Those days are over.”
Advocates panned Verma’s remarks, contending she misrepresented the patients that she was appointed to serve. The speech “was rife with offensive rhetoric about the Medicaid program and individuals enrolled in it,” the National Women’s Law Center said.
Verma’s remarks also stunned Schneider, the former Obama appointee — who called them “reprehensible” at the time. But Schneider said he’s more surprised to learn that Verma and her staff don’t always write their own speeches, like CMS did when he worked there in 2016.
"I actually thought that her [Medicaid] speech was in her own voice," he said.
March 28, 2019
I'll punch the bully in the mouth....
Puerto Rico governor warns White House: 'If the bully gets close, I'll punch the bully in the mouth'
By Jim Acosta and Kevin Liptak
Tensions are escalating between President Donald Trump and Puerto Rico's governor over disaster relief efforts that have been slow in coming for the still-battered island after Hurricane Maria.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said he would not sit back and allow his officials to be bullied by the White House.
"If the bully gets close, I'll punch the bully in the mouth," Rosselló said. "It would be a mistake to confuse courtesy with courage."
Rosselló's top aides told CNN that during a tense encounter at the White House on Wednesday they were warned by senior White House officials that representatives for the US territory were pushing too hard to arrange a meeting aimed at discussing the island's dire situation with the President.
Despite their requests, Trump has declined to schedule a meeting with Rosselló to discuss recovery efforts that are ongoing nearly two years after the storm hit.
According to Puerto Rican officials, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, along with other senior officials, all but threatened the island's representatives during the meeting.
"You guys have to f***ing stop with the meeting request," one official said, according to the Puerto Rican officials.
"Your governor is f***ing things up," Navarro added, according to sources at the meeting.
A White House official denied that Puerto Rican officials were told to stop requesting a meeting with the President. And a spokesman said the administration would continue working with Rosselló and his aides on recovery efforts. But he stopped short of saying definitively the President would meet with the governor in the future.
"The White House recently helped set up important meetings between Governor Rossello and HUD and FEMA leadership. We understand that the governor is not visiting until later in April and we look forward to once again helping set up productive conversations with Administration leaders to discuss the island's recovery," the spokesman Judd Deere said.
The battle this week between the White House and Rosselló's office erupted after it was reported Trump told Republican senators on Capitol Hill that he questioned the wisdom of directing more storm relief aid to Puerto Rico, despite the fact that billions of dollars in funds have already by authorized by Congress.
In the closed door meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump went out of his way to point out the totals of disaster relief aid that has been distributed in the wake of a series of storms and hurricanes in 2017. It is a pet issue Trump has had for months -- mentioning Puerto Rico's finances and total disaster relief in negative terms repeatedly in meetings with lawmakers and staff as they've worked through iterations of the next disaster relief bill.
"The point was - are we spending the money wisely?" Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican said. "I have nothing against helping the people of Puerto Rico, but we have got to spend the money wisely."
Trump, senators said, then utilized a chart to showed the difference between what Puerto Rico has received compared to other hurricane-affect regions such as Texas and Florida. At one point, Trump noted that Puerto Rico has received more than $90 billion in aid.
While Congress has appropriated almost $20 billion in disaster funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, only a small fraction of that -- $1.5 billion -- is approved for actually spending. Legislation that would send more funds to the island as part of a larger disaster relief package has been tied up in the Senate.
White House officials did not deny Trump's remarks to Republican senators, and defended the administration's handling of disaster relief funds for the island.
"The Trump administration is committed to the complete recovery of Puerto Rico. The island has received unprecedented support and is on pace to receive tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
"However, the Trump administration will not put taxpayers on the hook to correct a decades old spending crisis that has left the island with deep-rooted economic problems," Deere added.
Rosselló said the President is working off of bad information provided by White House officials.
"It's unfortunate that we are having to hear this. These statements lack empathy, but more so they lack the true facts of the matter," Rosselló said in response to Trump's comments. "They're not aligned with the truth and reality, No. 1. And No. 2, I just think we have to end this battle of words and just recognize we're not his political adversaries, we're his citizens," the governor added.
Rosselló is in Washington to meet with lawmakers as part of a new push for statehood for Puerto Rico, a move the governor sees as necessary in order for the island to have the leverage it needs to expedite recovery money for the territory.
Trump has complained that Puerto Rico is wasting the money it has already received, an assertion that Rosselló insists is flat wrong.
"He treats us as second class citizens, that's for sure," he said. "And my consideration is I just want the opportunity to explain to him why the data and information he's getting is wrong. I don't think getting into a kicking and screaming match with the President does any good. I don't think anyone can beat the President in a kicking and screaming match. What I am aiming to do is make sure reason prevails, that empathy prevails, that equality prevails, and that we can have a discussion."
By Jim Acosta and Kevin Liptak
Tensions are escalating between President Donald Trump and Puerto Rico's governor over disaster relief efforts that have been slow in coming for the still-battered island after Hurricane Maria.
In an exclusive interview with CNN, Puerto Rico Gov. Ricardo Rosselló said he would not sit back and allow his officials to be bullied by the White House.
"If the bully gets close, I'll punch the bully in the mouth," Rosselló said. "It would be a mistake to confuse courtesy with courage."
Rosselló's top aides told CNN that during a tense encounter at the White House on Wednesday they were warned by senior White House officials that representatives for the US territory were pushing too hard to arrange a meeting aimed at discussing the island's dire situation with the President.
Despite their requests, Trump has declined to schedule a meeting with Rosselló to discuss recovery efforts that are ongoing nearly two years after the storm hit.
According to Puerto Rican officials, White House trade adviser Peter Navarro, along with other senior officials, all but threatened the island's representatives during the meeting.
"You guys have to f***ing stop with the meeting request," one official said, according to the Puerto Rican officials.
"Your governor is f***ing things up," Navarro added, according to sources at the meeting.
A White House official denied that Puerto Rican officials were told to stop requesting a meeting with the President. And a spokesman said the administration would continue working with Rosselló and his aides on recovery efforts. But he stopped short of saying definitively the President would meet with the governor in the future.
"The White House recently helped set up important meetings between Governor Rossello and HUD and FEMA leadership. We understand that the governor is not visiting until later in April and we look forward to once again helping set up productive conversations with Administration leaders to discuss the island's recovery," the spokesman Judd Deere said.
The battle this week between the White House and Rosselló's office erupted after it was reported Trump told Republican senators on Capitol Hill that he questioned the wisdom of directing more storm relief aid to Puerto Rico, despite the fact that billions of dollars in funds have already by authorized by Congress.
In the closed door meeting with Senate Republicans, Trump went out of his way to point out the totals of disaster relief aid that has been distributed in the wake of a series of storms and hurricanes in 2017. It is a pet issue Trump has had for months -- mentioning Puerto Rico's finances and total disaster relief in negative terms repeatedly in meetings with lawmakers and staff as they've worked through iterations of the next disaster relief bill.
"The point was - are we spending the money wisely?" Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican said. "I have nothing against helping the people of Puerto Rico, but we have got to spend the money wisely."
Trump, senators said, then utilized a chart to showed the difference between what Puerto Rico has received compared to other hurricane-affect regions such as Texas and Florida. At one point, Trump noted that Puerto Rico has received more than $90 billion in aid.
While Congress has appropriated almost $20 billion in disaster funds from the Department of Housing and Urban Development, only a small fraction of that -- $1.5 billion -- is approved for actually spending. Legislation that would send more funds to the island as part of a larger disaster relief package has been tied up in the Senate.
White House officials did not deny Trump's remarks to Republican senators, and defended the administration's handling of disaster relief funds for the island.
"The Trump administration is committed to the complete recovery of Puerto Rico. The island has received unprecedented support and is on pace to receive tens of billions of dollars from taxpayers," White House spokesman Judd Deere said in a statement.
"However, the Trump administration will not put taxpayers on the hook to correct a decades old spending crisis that has left the island with deep-rooted economic problems," Deere added.
Rosselló said the President is working off of bad information provided by White House officials.
"It's unfortunate that we are having to hear this. These statements lack empathy, but more so they lack the true facts of the matter," Rosselló said in response to Trump's comments. "They're not aligned with the truth and reality, No. 1. And No. 2, I just think we have to end this battle of words and just recognize we're not his political adversaries, we're his citizens," the governor added.
Rosselló is in Washington to meet with lawmakers as part of a new push for statehood for Puerto Rico, a move the governor sees as necessary in order for the island to have the leverage it needs to expedite recovery money for the territory.
Trump has complained that Puerto Rico is wasting the money it has already received, an assertion that Rosselló insists is flat wrong.
"He treats us as second class citizens, that's for sure," he said. "And my consideration is I just want the opportunity to explain to him why the data and information he's getting is wrong. I don't think getting into a kicking and screaming match with the President does any good. I don't think anyone can beat the President in a kicking and screaming match. What I am aiming to do is make sure reason prevails, that empathy prevails, that equality prevails, and that we can have a discussion."
Nail the fucker...
Jared Kushner interviewed by Senate Intelligence Committee
By Jeremy Herb, Manu Raju and Ted Barrett
President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner returned to the Senate Intelligence Committee for a closed door interview Thursday as part of the committee's Russia investigation.
Kushner was spotted leaving by a CNN camera and the interview was confirmed by a senator on the committee.
The first time Kushner appeared before the panel in 2017, he was interviewed by committee staff. The committee has wanted to re-interview witnesses central to the investigation. On Thursday, senators were sitting in on the interview.
Kushner's appearance comes just days after the attorney general released a summary of the special counsel's principal conclusion of the Russia investigation. The investigation, according to the letter from Attorney General William Barr, "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
An aide for Kushner declined to comment.
By Jeremy Herb, Manu Raju and Ted Barrett
President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner returned to the Senate Intelligence Committee for a closed door interview Thursday as part of the committee's Russia investigation.
Kushner was spotted leaving by a CNN camera and the interview was confirmed by a senator on the committee.
The first time Kushner appeared before the panel in 2017, he was interviewed by committee staff. The committee has wanted to re-interview witnesses central to the investigation. On Thursday, senators were sitting in on the interview.
Kushner's appearance comes just days after the attorney general released a summary of the special counsel's principal conclusion of the Russia investigation. The investigation, according to the letter from Attorney General William Barr, "did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities."
An aide for Kushner declined to comment.
Here we go again...
Congress Wants to Know Why the Incoming Interior Chief Is Keeping His Calendar Secret
David Bernhardt just prefers to update a Google doc.
REBECCA LEBER
The acting head of the Interior Department David Bernhardt says he has to carry a small card around to remind himself of the list of his former clients he should avoid, but the former oil and gas lobbyist insists that he does not need to keep a detailed daily calendar. “I have no legal obligation to personally maintain a calendar,” Bernhardt wrote in a letter to Congress in late February. “Further, no Agency guidance exists recommending that I create or retain one. I have not personally maintained a calendar for years, and I have no intention of suddenly doing so now.”
The fight over Bernhardt’s calendars signals one of the bigger controversies ahead in his tenure after his likely confirmation as Interior secretary. Environmentalists have charged Bernhardt, and his predecessor Ryan Zinke, of politicizing Freedom of Information Act responses, omitting calendar entries, and even stretching the boundaries of the Federal Records Act.
“It worries me a lot that that’s not being followed,” House Natural Resources chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) tells Mother Jones. The calendar “is the window into decision-making.”
Calendars of public officials can help reveal who is influencing the policy and provide some measure of accountability when certain special interests appear to have a particular hold over the decision-making. Scott Pruitt’s early calendars showed his close coordination with oil industry executives, for example, as his EPA decided to reverse regulations on methane emissions. It’s also become more common for officials to keep secret calendars.
Since Bernhardt was first confirmed as the deputy secretary in the summer of 2017, the public has had relatively few details about how he spends his days while running an agency responsible for a fifth of the nation’s landmass. Most of the calendars that Interior has made available lack descriptions about who he is meeting with and calling. Bernhardt has more than two-dozen former clients and a wider net of industry contacts from a career spent in the lobbying sector.
As I noted in my profile of Bernhardt:
Bernhardt’s understanding of the department’s workings and the allies he’s installed in key political posts enable him to steer its complex network of decentralized offices while leaving few fingerprints. His calendars often have little detail in them; the environmental group Western Values Project has noted how few of his emails turn up in their frequent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Interior. “Kind of amazing that he can do anything without leaving a paper trail behind him,” said Aaron Weiss, media director of Center for Western Priorities, another conservation group.
On the eve of David Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday to lead the Department of Interior, the House Natural Resources staff had 27,000 pages of internal documents that it had not yet processed or examined. Interior sent over the batch earlier this week in response to the committee’s repeated requests for more communications surrounding the acting secretary’s activities and decision-making, in an attempt to tease out how much of it has been influenced by his prior relationship with oil, gas, and mining industries.
“That’s a good example of what’s been a pattern under Zinke and now under Bernhardt, which is to basically make it very difficult for people to get information,” Grijalva said.
On Wednesday, Grijalva told Mother Jones that his staff is investigating the question of whether Bernhardt has circumvented maintaining an ongoing record of his day-to-day activities by relying on a Google Doc calendar for his detailed schedule that is overwritten each day. The matter is concerning for the chairman because it raises questions about whether Interior is breaking a federal records law in deleting his daily schedule and claiming it falls outside FOIA’s purview.
House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) pressed the question in a hearing earlier with an acting deputy FOIA director earlier this month.
“Is the calendar for the acting Secretary deleted at the end of each day, do you know that?” he asked. The deputy FOIA director Rachel Spector replied she didn’t but acknowledged “that the solicitors office in the department is working with the records officer in the department to determine what’s occurred there, and whether it’s consistent.”
Interior’s political appointees have exerted more control over the FOIA process in recent months. At the end of 2018, a political appointee who is a former Charles and David Koch adviser took charge of responding to and fielding requests. Then, at a House Natural Resources budget hearing on Wednesday, Grijalva pointed to a March 14 email from a senior Interior official, whose name was redacted, asking that “any correspondence being sent to any Senator as well as Representative Grijalva NOT be sent until you have further direction.” Grijalva noted the timing of the instructions was significant: The next day the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee publicly announced Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing date.
Democratic Senators plan to ask Bernhardt directly about his calendars in the Thursday hearing. Nonetheless, very little still stands in the way of his confirmation in the GOP-controlled chamber, after which Bernhardt will certainly face more questions from the Democratic House.
“Why go through all these machinations?” Grijalva asked. “Why deny me or the Senators information if there’s not something you’re hiding and something you’re concerned about?”
David Bernhardt just prefers to update a Google doc.
REBECCA LEBER
The acting head of the Interior Department David Bernhardt says he has to carry a small card around to remind himself of the list of his former clients he should avoid, but the former oil and gas lobbyist insists that he does not need to keep a detailed daily calendar. “I have no legal obligation to personally maintain a calendar,” Bernhardt wrote in a letter to Congress in late February. “Further, no Agency guidance exists recommending that I create or retain one. I have not personally maintained a calendar for years, and I have no intention of suddenly doing so now.”
The fight over Bernhardt’s calendars signals one of the bigger controversies ahead in his tenure after his likely confirmation as Interior secretary. Environmentalists have charged Bernhardt, and his predecessor Ryan Zinke, of politicizing Freedom of Information Act responses, omitting calendar entries, and even stretching the boundaries of the Federal Records Act.
“It worries me a lot that that’s not being followed,” House Natural Resources chair Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) tells Mother Jones. The calendar “is the window into decision-making.”
Calendars of public officials can help reveal who is influencing the policy and provide some measure of accountability when certain special interests appear to have a particular hold over the decision-making. Scott Pruitt’s early calendars showed his close coordination with oil industry executives, for example, as his EPA decided to reverse regulations on methane emissions. It’s also become more common for officials to keep secret calendars.
Since Bernhardt was first confirmed as the deputy secretary in the summer of 2017, the public has had relatively few details about how he spends his days while running an agency responsible for a fifth of the nation’s landmass. Most of the calendars that Interior has made available lack descriptions about who he is meeting with and calling. Bernhardt has more than two-dozen former clients and a wider net of industry contacts from a career spent in the lobbying sector.
As I noted in my profile of Bernhardt:
Bernhardt’s understanding of the department’s workings and the allies he’s installed in key political posts enable him to steer its complex network of decentralized offices while leaving few fingerprints. His calendars often have little detail in them; the environmental group Western Values Project has noted how few of his emails turn up in their frequent Freedom of Information Act requests to the Interior. “Kind of amazing that he can do anything without leaving a paper trail behind him,” said Aaron Weiss, media director of Center for Western Priorities, another conservation group.
On the eve of David Bernhardt’s Senate confirmation hearing on Thursday to lead the Department of Interior, the House Natural Resources staff had 27,000 pages of internal documents that it had not yet processed or examined. Interior sent over the batch earlier this week in response to the committee’s repeated requests for more communications surrounding the acting secretary’s activities and decision-making, in an attempt to tease out how much of it has been influenced by his prior relationship with oil, gas, and mining industries.
“That’s a good example of what’s been a pattern under Zinke and now under Bernhardt, which is to basically make it very difficult for people to get information,” Grijalva said.
On Wednesday, Grijalva told Mother Jones that his staff is investigating the question of whether Bernhardt has circumvented maintaining an ongoing record of his day-to-day activities by relying on a Google Doc calendar for his detailed schedule that is overwritten each day. The matter is concerning for the chairman because it raises questions about whether Interior is breaking a federal records law in deleting his daily schedule and claiming it falls outside FOIA’s purview.
House Oversight Chair Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) pressed the question in a hearing earlier with an acting deputy FOIA director earlier this month.
“Is the calendar for the acting Secretary deleted at the end of each day, do you know that?” he asked. The deputy FOIA director Rachel Spector replied she didn’t but acknowledged “that the solicitors office in the department is working with the records officer in the department to determine what’s occurred there, and whether it’s consistent.”
Interior’s political appointees have exerted more control over the FOIA process in recent months. At the end of 2018, a political appointee who is a former Charles and David Koch adviser took charge of responding to and fielding requests. Then, at a House Natural Resources budget hearing on Wednesday, Grijalva pointed to a March 14 email from a senior Interior official, whose name was redacted, asking that “any correspondence being sent to any Senator as well as Representative Grijalva NOT be sent until you have further direction.” Grijalva noted the timing of the instructions was significant: The next day the Senate Energy and Natural Resources committee publicly announced Bernhardt’s confirmation hearing date.
Democratic Senators plan to ask Bernhardt directly about his calendars in the Thursday hearing. Nonetheless, very little still stands in the way of his confirmation in the GOP-controlled chamber, after which Bernhardt will certainly face more questions from the Democratic House.
“Why go through all these machinations?” Grijalva asked. “Why deny me or the Senators information if there’s not something you’re hiding and something you’re concerned about?”
Roundup Weed Killer
Man Awarded $80 Million in Lawsuit Linking Roundup Weed Killer to Cancer
A California man argued that Monsanto’s Roundup products played a role in his stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
A FEDERAL JURY ON Wednesday awarded a California man $80 million in damages after finding that a popular weed killer played a substantial role in his cancer.
Edwin Hardeman, 70, said he used Monsanto's Roundup products for more than 25 years and that it frequently got on his skin and face. He was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2015.
In the first phase of the trial last week, the six-person jury decided Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, played a significant role in Hardeman's cancer. On Wednesday, they further decided that Monsanto should be held liable for Hardeman's disease.
Bayer AG, Monstano's parent company, said it plans to appeal the verdict. Bayer shares fell over 12 percent after the jury's decision last week.
"We are disappointed with the jury's decision, but this verdict does not change the weight of over four decades of extensive science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide that support the safety of our glyphosate-based herbicides and that they are not carcinogenic," Bayer said in a statement.
The jury awarded Hardeman $5 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages.
"It is clear from Monsanto's actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup," Hardeman's attorneys said in a statement.
Hardeman's case is the first against Monsanto to be tried in federal court. Thousands of similar cases are pending at the federal and state level.
Bayer said that the verdict "has no impact on future cases and trials, as each one has its own factual and legal circumstances."
Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that glyphosate is safe when used properly, many cities and counties have taken their own steps to ban the chemical, including Los Angeles County last week.
A California man argued that Monsanto’s Roundup products played a role in his stage 3 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
By Cecelia Smith-Schoenwalder
A FEDERAL JURY ON Wednesday awarded a California man $80 million in damages after finding that a popular weed killer played a substantial role in his cancer.
Edwin Hardeman, 70, said he used Monsanto's Roundup products for more than 25 years and that it frequently got on his skin and face. He was diagnosed with stage 3 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma in 2015.
In the first phase of the trial last week, the six-person jury decided Roundup and its active ingredient, glyphosate, played a significant role in Hardeman's cancer. On Wednesday, they further decided that Monsanto should be held liable for Hardeman's disease.
Bayer AG, Monstano's parent company, said it plans to appeal the verdict. Bayer shares fell over 12 percent after the jury's decision last week.
"We are disappointed with the jury's decision, but this verdict does not change the weight of over four decades of extensive science and the conclusions of regulators worldwide that support the safety of our glyphosate-based herbicides and that they are not carcinogenic," Bayer said in a statement.
The jury awarded Hardeman $5 million in compensatory damages and $75 million in punitive damages.
"It is clear from Monsanto's actions that it does not care whether Roundup causes cancer, focusing instead on manipulating public opinion and undermining anyone who raises genuine and legitimate concerns about Roundup," Hardeman's attorneys said in a statement.
Hardeman's case is the first against Monsanto to be tried in federal court. Thousands of similar cases are pending at the federal and state level.
Bayer said that the verdict "has no impact on future cases and trials, as each one has its own factual and legal circumstances."
Although the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency says that glyphosate is safe when used properly, many cities and counties have taken their own steps to ban the chemical, including Los Angeles County last week.
More stupid shit...
Mission Shakti: Space debris warning after India destroys satellite
From BBC
The acting US defence secretary has warned that the testing of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons can create a "mess" in space after India destroyed one of its own satellites on Wednesday.
Patrick Shanahan said the US was still studying the Indian test, which Delhi insisted it carried out in low-earth orbit to not leave space debris.
India is the fourth country to have carried out an ASAT test.
China provoked international alarm with a similar test in 2007.
"My message would be: we all live in space, let's not make it a mess. Space should be a place where we can conduct business. Space is a place where people should have the freedom to operate," Mr Shanahan told reporters after India's test.
Debris from such tests can harm civilian and military satellite operations, and collide with other objects in space. But India said that it had intentionally carried out its 'Mission Shakti' test in the lower atmosphere - at an altitude of 300km (186 miles) - to ensure that there was no debris and that whatever was left would "decay and fall back onto the earth within weeks".
"That's why we did it at lower altitude, it will vanish in no time," G Satheesh Reddy, the chief of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation, told Reuters in an interview.
"The debris is moving right now. How much debris, we are trying to work out, but our calculations are it should be dying down within 45 days."
Some experts have cast doubt on the Indian claim, saying that the path of debris cannot be controlled. The US military is monitoring more than 250 pieces of debris from the Indian test, Reuters news agency quoted a Pentagon spokesman as saying. The US carried out its first ASAT test in 1959.
China's 2007 test - which destroyed a defunct weather satellite at an altitude of 865km - left a large debris cloud in orbit.
Nasa has also warned of the risk of debris following the Indian test.
"Some people like to test anti-satellite capabilities intentionally and create orbital debris fields that we today are still dealing with," the US space agency's chief Jim Bridenstine told Congress on Wednesday.
"And those same countries come to us for space situational awareness, because of the debris field that they themselves created," he said.
In 2012, the then head of the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said that while India had "all the building blocks" for an ASAT weapon it did not want to test the system by destroying a satellite "because of the risk of space debris affecting other satellites".
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the ASAT test in an unexpected national address on Wednesday, saying India had "established itself as a global space power".
Arms control advocates have expressed concern about the increasing militarisation of space. ASAT technology would allow India to take out the satellites of enemy powers in any conflict, and the test is likely to fuel the growing regional rivalry between India and China.
Pakistan, India's neighbour and rival, launched two satellites last year with the help of China.
India's foreign ministry characterised the test as peaceful and said it had "no intention of entering into an arms race in outer space".
The announcement has enraged opposition parties, which have accused Mr Modi of using the test as an electoral stunt. Indians will begin voting in national elections on 11 April.
The Election Commission has announced it will investigate whether Mr Modi breached election rules, saying it had received complaints.
From BBC
The acting US defence secretary has warned that the testing of anti-satellite (ASAT) weapons can create a "mess" in space after India destroyed one of its own satellites on Wednesday.
Patrick Shanahan said the US was still studying the Indian test, which Delhi insisted it carried out in low-earth orbit to not leave space debris.
India is the fourth country to have carried out an ASAT test.
China provoked international alarm with a similar test in 2007.
"My message would be: we all live in space, let's not make it a mess. Space should be a place where we can conduct business. Space is a place where people should have the freedom to operate," Mr Shanahan told reporters after India's test.
Debris from such tests can harm civilian and military satellite operations, and collide with other objects in space. But India said that it had intentionally carried out its 'Mission Shakti' test in the lower atmosphere - at an altitude of 300km (186 miles) - to ensure that there was no debris and that whatever was left would "decay and fall back onto the earth within weeks".
"That's why we did it at lower altitude, it will vanish in no time," G Satheesh Reddy, the chief of India's Defence Research and Development Organisation, told Reuters in an interview.
"The debris is moving right now. How much debris, we are trying to work out, but our calculations are it should be dying down within 45 days."
Some experts have cast doubt on the Indian claim, saying that the path of debris cannot be controlled. The US military is monitoring more than 250 pieces of debris from the Indian test, Reuters news agency quoted a Pentagon spokesman as saying. The US carried out its first ASAT test in 1959.
China's 2007 test - which destroyed a defunct weather satellite at an altitude of 865km - left a large debris cloud in orbit.
Nasa has also warned of the risk of debris following the Indian test.
"Some people like to test anti-satellite capabilities intentionally and create orbital debris fields that we today are still dealing with," the US space agency's chief Jim Bridenstine told Congress on Wednesday.
"And those same countries come to us for space situational awareness, because of the debris field that they themselves created," he said.
In 2012, the then head of the Indian Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) said that while India had "all the building blocks" for an ASAT weapon it did not want to test the system by destroying a satellite "because of the risk of space debris affecting other satellites".
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced the ASAT test in an unexpected national address on Wednesday, saying India had "established itself as a global space power".
Arms control advocates have expressed concern about the increasing militarisation of space. ASAT technology would allow India to take out the satellites of enemy powers in any conflict, and the test is likely to fuel the growing regional rivalry between India and China.
Pakistan, India's neighbour and rival, launched two satellites last year with the help of China.
India's foreign ministry characterised the test as peaceful and said it had "no intention of entering into an arms race in outer space".
The announcement has enraged opposition parties, which have accused Mr Modi of using the test as an electoral stunt. Indians will begin voting in national elections on 11 April.
The Election Commission has announced it will investigate whether Mr Modi breached election rules, saying it had received complaints.
300 pages or more..
Mueller report more than 300 pages, sources say
By Jeremy Herb and Laura Jarrett
Special counsel Robert Mueller's confidential report on the Russia investigation is more than 300 pages, according to a Justice Department official and a second source with knowledge of the matter.
The Justice Department official described the still-secret report as more than 300 pages, while a second official said it was between 300 and 400 pages, not including exhibits.
The page length had been a mystery in the days following the announcement that Mueller had concluded his work last Friday, as the Justice Department continually declined to comment on the page count but called it "comprehensive." Attorney General Bill Barr's four-page summary of Mueller's report provided only few details of how it is structured, describing it as "divided into two parts."
Even many members of Congress have been kept in the dark about the breadth of the report until recently.
A Justice official confirmed that Barr discussed the page length on a call with House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler on Wednesday. Nadler would only say the report was "very substantial" and less than 1,000 pages when asked by reporters.
Barr on Sunday released a four-page memo stating that Mueller's investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government before the election, but Democrats have demanded to see Mueller's full report and the underlying evidence.
A small team at the Justice Department is working on determining what portions of the report can be made public, after scrubbing it for grand jury and other material related to ongoing investigations.
The New York Times was first to report the number of pages in Mueller's report.
By Jeremy Herb and Laura Jarrett
Special counsel Robert Mueller's confidential report on the Russia investigation is more than 300 pages, according to a Justice Department official and a second source with knowledge of the matter.
The Justice Department official described the still-secret report as more than 300 pages, while a second official said it was between 300 and 400 pages, not including exhibits.
The page length had been a mystery in the days following the announcement that Mueller had concluded his work last Friday, as the Justice Department continually declined to comment on the page count but called it "comprehensive." Attorney General Bill Barr's four-page summary of Mueller's report provided only few details of how it is structured, describing it as "divided into two parts."
Even many members of Congress have been kept in the dark about the breadth of the report until recently.
A Justice official confirmed that Barr discussed the page length on a call with House Judiciary Chairman Rep. Jerry Nadler on Wednesday. Nadler would only say the report was "very substantial" and less than 1,000 pages when asked by reporters.
Barr on Sunday released a four-page memo stating that Mueller's investigation did not establish that the Trump campaign conspired with the Russian government before the election, but Democrats have demanded to see Mueller's full report and the underlying evidence.
A small team at the Justice Department is working on determining what portions of the report can be made public, after scrubbing it for grand jury and other material related to ongoing investigations.
The New York Times was first to report the number of pages in Mueller's report.
Scare the hell out of investors
Why Stephen Moore's plan for the Fed would 'scare the hell' out of investors
By Matt Egan
Stephen Moore wants the Federal Reserve to immediately slash interest rates -- a startling step that would likely reinforce Wall Street's fears that a recession is brewing.
Moore, the economist President Donald Trump has said he will nominate to the Fed, told The New York Times on Tuesday that the US central bank should reverse course and cut interest rates by half a percentage point right away.
Former Federal Reserve officials and economists told CNN Business that such a dramatic move would badly backfire by eroding confidence in the economy -- and perhaps the central bank itself.
"It would scare the hell out of the markets," Richard Fisher, former Dallas Federal Reserve president, said in an interview. "It would really put a dent in the perception of the independence of the Federal Reserve."
Ed Yardeni, the former chief economist at Deutsche Bank, called Moore's idea "radical" and risky because it would spook investors about what the Fed sees on the horizon.
"The first reaction would be, 'Boy the economy must be in really horrible shape. There must be some financial crisis they're trying to preempt,'" Yardeni said.
The Fed normally holds its fire on rate cuts until the economy is on the verge of or already in recession. Trump himself said last week on Twitter the "economy is great."
I don't think he has the economic or financial depth required of a Federal Reserve governor."
Sarah Bloom Raskin, an Obama-appointee who served on the Federal Reserve Board from 2010 to 2014, predicted that "markets would tank" if the Fed took Moore's advice and immediately cut rates even before waiting for the next meeting.
"That's the definition of poor monetary policy communication," Raskin told CNN Business.
'Trump was furious'
Moore did not respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to comment.
Moore, a former CNN analyst and Trump campaign adviser, told the Times on Tuesday that he was "really angry" about the Fed's "inexplicable" decision to raise interest rates in December.
"I was furious -- and Trump was furious, too," Moore said. "Commodity prices were already falling dramatically."
Moore isn't alone. Wall Street tanked in part because of fears that the Fed was hastily raising borrowing costs to levels the US economy couldn't handle. The S&P 500 suffered its worst December since the Great Depression.
Rate cut odds on the rise
The Fed has since done a 180, going from very aggressive to very cautious. Central bank officials have signaled they won't raise interest rates until 2020, a sharp pivot from previous plans.
Moore told the Times he regretted saying in December that Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell should resign. But he doubled down on his call for the Fed to reverse course and slash rates.
And to Moore's point, an eventual rate cut is starting to get priced into the market. There is more than a 50-50 chance that the Fed will lower rates at its September meeting, according to the CME's FedWatch tool.
However, there is only an 8% chance of a quarter-point rate cut at the May 1 meeting. And investors are pricing in no chance that the Fed will take Moore's advice and slash rates by half a percentage point.
'Bomb thrower'
Last week, Trump announced on Twitter his intention to nominate the "very respected" Moore to join the Fed's board of governors.
"I have known Steve for a long time -- and have no doubt he will be an outstanding choice!" Trump tweeted.
Others, including conservatives, have expressed concern about the pick.
"Steve is a perfectly amiable guy, but he does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job," Greg Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard and chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, said in a blog post.
Moore's call for an immediate rate cut could cast further doubt about his candidacy to join the Fed.
"I don't think he has the economic or financial depth required of a Federal Reserve governor," Fisher told CNN Business. "Mr. Moore just needs to A.) be quiet and B.) seek a job elsewhere."
Yardeni cautioned Moore against "being a bomb thrower" before he's even been nominated to the notoriously deliberative Fed.
The ironic part about Moore's call for rate cuts is that it comes in the face of his strong support for Trump's tax cuts -- a policy he said would juice economic growth.
"You can't have it both ways," Yardeni said. "You can't say the economy will get a big boost from tax cuts and you need lower interest rates to stimulate demand."
But some members of Congress think Moore has the credentials.
"Stephen's a guy with great integrity and great intellectual capacity. ... I don't think he'd be politically swayed," Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told Politico.
The Fed's independence is crucial
Of course, if Moore does make it to the Federal Reserve, he would be just one of many voices. Out of the five current Fed governors, three were Trump appointees. His views would easily be outnumbered by Trump's other picks, many of whom have been applauded as strong selections.
"By and large, the nominations have been quite good," said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Mellon, an asset manager owned by BNY Mellon.
Reinhart, a former Federal Reserve official, said he won't be "panicked by diversity" being added to the Federal Reserve Board, referring to Moore's distinct views.
Reinhart cited Trump's elevation of Powell to the role of chairman as a positive.
However, Trump himself slammed Powell last year. Rumors that Trump would do the unthinkable -- fire Powell -- contributed to the plunge in stock prices in December.
Bigger picture, there is a risk that Trump's appointment of Moore and repeated attacks on the Fed diminish the belief that the central bank is a truly independent entity that can manage the economy without political influence.
And that's no small risk. The perception of Fed independence goes to the heart of investor confidence in the financial system.
Rate cuts aimed at meeting political needs could spark runaway inflation. Wall Street knows that allowing politicians to call the shots at the Fed is a recipe for disaster.
By Matt Egan
Stephen Moore wants the Federal Reserve to immediately slash interest rates -- a startling step that would likely reinforce Wall Street's fears that a recession is brewing.
Moore, the economist President Donald Trump has said he will nominate to the Fed, told The New York Times on Tuesday that the US central bank should reverse course and cut interest rates by half a percentage point right away.
Former Federal Reserve officials and economists told CNN Business that such a dramatic move would badly backfire by eroding confidence in the economy -- and perhaps the central bank itself.
"It would scare the hell out of the markets," Richard Fisher, former Dallas Federal Reserve president, said in an interview. "It would really put a dent in the perception of the independence of the Federal Reserve."
Ed Yardeni, the former chief economist at Deutsche Bank, called Moore's idea "radical" and risky because it would spook investors about what the Fed sees on the horizon.
"The first reaction would be, 'Boy the economy must be in really horrible shape. There must be some financial crisis they're trying to preempt,'" Yardeni said.
The Fed normally holds its fire on rate cuts until the economy is on the verge of or already in recession. Trump himself said last week on Twitter the "economy is great."
I don't think he has the economic or financial depth required of a Federal Reserve governor."
Sarah Bloom Raskin, an Obama-appointee who served on the Federal Reserve Board from 2010 to 2014, predicted that "markets would tank" if the Fed took Moore's advice and immediately cut rates even before waiting for the next meeting.
"That's the definition of poor monetary policy communication," Raskin told CNN Business.
'Trump was furious'
Moore did not respond to a request for comment. The White House declined to comment.
Moore, a former CNN analyst and Trump campaign adviser, told the Times on Tuesday that he was "really angry" about the Fed's "inexplicable" decision to raise interest rates in December.
"I was furious -- and Trump was furious, too," Moore said. "Commodity prices were already falling dramatically."
Moore isn't alone. Wall Street tanked in part because of fears that the Fed was hastily raising borrowing costs to levels the US economy couldn't handle. The S&P 500 suffered its worst December since the Great Depression.
Rate cut odds on the rise
The Fed has since done a 180, going from very aggressive to very cautious. Central bank officials have signaled they won't raise interest rates until 2020, a sharp pivot from previous plans.
Moore told the Times he regretted saying in December that Federal Reserve chief Jerome Powell should resign. But he doubled down on his call for the Fed to reverse course and slash rates.
And to Moore's point, an eventual rate cut is starting to get priced into the market. There is more than a 50-50 chance that the Fed will lower rates at its September meeting, according to the CME's FedWatch tool.
However, there is only an 8% chance of a quarter-point rate cut at the May 1 meeting. And investors are pricing in no chance that the Fed will take Moore's advice and slash rates by half a percentage point.
'Bomb thrower'
Last week, Trump announced on Twitter his intention to nominate the "very respected" Moore to join the Fed's board of governors.
"I have known Steve for a long time -- and have no doubt he will be an outstanding choice!" Trump tweeted.
Others, including conservatives, have expressed concern about the pick.
"Steve is a perfectly amiable guy, but he does not have the intellectual gravitas for this important job," Greg Mankiw, an economics professor at Harvard and chairman of the White House Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush, said in a blog post.
Moore's call for an immediate rate cut could cast further doubt about his candidacy to join the Fed.
"I don't think he has the economic or financial depth required of a Federal Reserve governor," Fisher told CNN Business. "Mr. Moore just needs to A.) be quiet and B.) seek a job elsewhere."
Yardeni cautioned Moore against "being a bomb thrower" before he's even been nominated to the notoriously deliberative Fed.
The ironic part about Moore's call for rate cuts is that it comes in the face of his strong support for Trump's tax cuts -- a policy he said would juice economic growth.
"You can't have it both ways," Yardeni said. "You can't say the economy will get a big boost from tax cuts and you need lower interest rates to stimulate demand."
But some members of Congress think Moore has the credentials.
"Stephen's a guy with great integrity and great intellectual capacity. ... I don't think he'd be politically swayed," Republican Senator Kevin Cramer told Politico.
The Fed's independence is crucial
Of course, if Moore does make it to the Federal Reserve, he would be just one of many voices. Out of the five current Fed governors, three were Trump appointees. His views would easily be outnumbered by Trump's other picks, many of whom have been applauded as strong selections.
"By and large, the nominations have been quite good," said Vincent Reinhart, chief economist at Mellon, an asset manager owned by BNY Mellon.
Reinhart, a former Federal Reserve official, said he won't be "panicked by diversity" being added to the Federal Reserve Board, referring to Moore's distinct views.
Reinhart cited Trump's elevation of Powell to the role of chairman as a positive.
However, Trump himself slammed Powell last year. Rumors that Trump would do the unthinkable -- fire Powell -- contributed to the plunge in stock prices in December.
Bigger picture, there is a risk that Trump's appointment of Moore and repeated attacks on the Fed diminish the belief that the central bank is a truly independent entity that can manage the economy without political influence.
And that's no small risk. The perception of Fed independence goes to the heart of investor confidence in the financial system.
Rate cuts aimed at meeting political needs could spark runaway inflation. Wall Street knows that allowing politicians to call the shots at the Fed is a recipe for disaster.
NY investigations
Cuomo: NY investigations of Trump will continue
By Rachel Silberstein
The many investigations of President Donald J. Trump, his associates, and his business dealings by multiple state and New York-based federal agencies will continue in the wake of reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that the president colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, citing the multiple indictments of Trump associates produced by the Mueller probe, said Tuesday that he did not think the report's findings would undermine local investigations.
Trump "is not out of the woods — there are many cases that are pending,"
Cuomo told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Tuesday. "It's been acknowledged that people (close to the president) have done criminal acts."
The president is being investigated by numerous state entities, including Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the state's attorney general, and the state Department of Taxation and Finance for civil and criminal offenses related to his businesses, his charitable foundation, and his presidential campaign.
Most recently, on March 11, Attorney General Letitia James' office subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank, which allegedly provided funds for Trump Organization projects. The latest inquiry came after Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified before a congressional committee that the president had inflated his assets to investors and the media, and understated them to tax authorities.
Last week, Trump characterized Cuomo and state authorities in his home state on Twitter as "presidential harassers."
The attorney general's office last year filed a civil lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation and its directors — Trump's three adult children — alleging a "pattern of persistent illegal conduct, occurring over more than a decade," including using the foundation for campaign purposes.
In December, the Trumps agreed to dissolve the organization, but James is still suing the first family for restitution.
The Department of Taxation and Finance, meanwhile, is seeking criminal charges related to the Trump foundation. It is also investigating various tax schemes uncovered by a New York Times investigation.
Meanwhile, the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., are looking into Trump for allegedly violating the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause, which prohibits someone in public office from accepting a gift or payment from a "King, Prince or foreign state."
By Rachel Silberstein
The many investigations of President Donald J. Trump, his associates, and his business dealings by multiple state and New York-based federal agencies will continue in the wake of reports that Special Counsel Robert Mueller did not find evidence that the president colluded with Russia to interfere with the 2016 presidential election.
Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, citing the multiple indictments of Trump associates produced by the Mueller probe, said Tuesday that he did not think the report's findings would undermine local investigations.
Trump "is not out of the woods — there are many cases that are pending,"
Cuomo told WNYC's Brian Lehrer on Tuesday. "It's been acknowledged that people (close to the president) have done criminal acts."
The president is being investigated by numerous state entities, including Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, the state's attorney general, and the state Department of Taxation and Finance for civil and criminal offenses related to his businesses, his charitable foundation, and his presidential campaign.
Most recently, on March 11, Attorney General Letitia James' office subpoenaed Deutsche Bank and Investors Bank, which allegedly provided funds for Trump Organization projects. The latest inquiry came after Trump attorney Michael Cohen testified before a congressional committee that the president had inflated his assets to investors and the media, and understated them to tax authorities.
Last week, Trump characterized Cuomo and state authorities in his home state on Twitter as "presidential harassers."
The attorney general's office last year filed a civil lawsuit against the Donald J. Trump Foundation and its directors — Trump's three adult children — alleging a "pattern of persistent illegal conduct, occurring over more than a decade," including using the foundation for campaign purposes.
In December, the Trumps agreed to dissolve the organization, but James is still suing the first family for restitution.
The Department of Taxation and Finance, meanwhile, is seeking criminal charges related to the Trump foundation. It is also investigating various tax schemes uncovered by a New York Times investigation.
Meanwhile, the attorneys general of Maryland and Washington, D.C., are looking into Trump for allegedly violating the U.S. Constitution's emoluments clause, which prohibits someone in public office from accepting a gift or payment from a "King, Prince or foreign state."
Star dimmed, so has to cause a ruckus to get some attention...
'A bunch of cowards:' Alex Jones filmed loudly berating patrons at Austin restaurant
By Julian Gill
Alex Jones surfaced again in Austin, where he regularly films his show Infowars.
This time, the right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist stirred up patrons at one of his favorite local restaurants, Lucy's Fried Chicken, where he was filmed calling them various names such as wimps, cowards, traitors and idiots.
"You're not an American," he said in the video, which was sent to EchoplexMedia.com. "You're a slob."
Throughout the video, Jones aggressively engaged with individual customers and spoke with employees trying to control the situation. At one point, he appeared to be coaxing a man to fight, but Jones claims the video doesn't show the whole story.
Addressing the incident in a recent Infowars episode, Jones said he had been eating at a local steakhouse with his wife and Joe Rogan, an MMA color commentator and comedian.
Jones said his wife wasn't satisfied with dinner, so they ended up stopping at Lucy's.
(*OK, so his fat wife couldn't get enough meat (or dick) so they have to go get more meat??)
"We've been going for many years," he said. "It's a great place."
He said they sat at a table inside when several people from the outside dining area approached him. He claimed they told him to "eat shit" and that "we're going to get you."
Jones said he tried to get a manager to stop them, but things eventually calmed down.
Later, Jones said customers were staring at him as he walked out to leave. In a video Jones took on his cellphone, the patrons can be heard chanting, "This is class war. Eat the rich and feed the poor."
The video sent to EchoplexMedia.com appears to start moments after that chant. That's when Jones started yelling.
"You're the one telling people to eat shit," he tells one man. "You ain't nothing boy."
He later shouted: "You guys are all pissed because you got extra chromosomes."
Regardless of who started the confrontation, some customers were simply trying to eat dinner. Instead, they watched a four-minute live Infowars episode.
"Can we just eat some fried [expletive] chicken?" one customer said in the video. "Can we do that?"
(* Not authors comment)
By Julian Gill
Alex Jones surfaced again in Austin, where he regularly films his show Infowars.
This time, the right-wing commentator and conspiracy theorist stirred up patrons at one of his favorite local restaurants, Lucy's Fried Chicken, where he was filmed calling them various names such as wimps, cowards, traitors and idiots.
"You're not an American," he said in the video, which was sent to EchoplexMedia.com. "You're a slob."
Throughout the video, Jones aggressively engaged with individual customers and spoke with employees trying to control the situation. At one point, he appeared to be coaxing a man to fight, but Jones claims the video doesn't show the whole story.
Addressing the incident in a recent Infowars episode, Jones said he had been eating at a local steakhouse with his wife and Joe Rogan, an MMA color commentator and comedian.
Jones said his wife wasn't satisfied with dinner, so they ended up stopping at Lucy's.
(*OK, so his fat wife couldn't get enough meat (or dick) so they have to go get more meat??)
"We've been going for many years," he said. "It's a great place."
He said they sat at a table inside when several people from the outside dining area approached him. He claimed they told him to "eat shit" and that "we're going to get you."
Jones said he tried to get a manager to stop them, but things eventually calmed down.
Later, Jones said customers were staring at him as he walked out to leave. In a video Jones took on his cellphone, the patrons can be heard chanting, "This is class war. Eat the rich and feed the poor."
The video sent to EchoplexMedia.com appears to start moments after that chant. That's when Jones started yelling.
"You're the one telling people to eat shit," he tells one man. "You ain't nothing boy."
He later shouted: "You guys are all pissed because you got extra chromosomes."
Regardless of who started the confrontation, some customers were simply trying to eat dinner. Instead, they watched a four-minute live Infowars episode.
"Can we just eat some fried [expletive] chicken?" one customer said in the video. "Can we do that?"
(* Not authors comment)
Messier 15
Messier 15 is a 13 billion year old relic of the early formative years of our galaxy, one of about 170 globular star clusters that still roam the halo of the Milky Way. About 200 light-years in diameter, it lies about 35,000 light years away toward the constellation Pegasus. But this realistic looking view of the ancient globular star cluster is not a photograph. Instead it's an animated gif image constructed from remarkably precise individual measurements of star positions, brightness, and color. The astronomically rich data set used was made by the sky-scanning Gaia satellite which also determined parallax distances for 1.3 billion Milky Way stars. In the animated gif, twinkling stars are M15's identified RR Lyrae stars. Plentiful in M15, RR Lyrae stars are evolved pulsating variable stars whose brightness and pulsation period, typically less than a day, are related.
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