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Cohen’s prepared testimony, in full

Michael Cohen, left, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer, pauses before speaking to the media as he departs after testifying before a closed door hearing of the Senate Intelligence Committee on Capitol Hill, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)

The prepared testimony of Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer:

Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, and Members of the Committee, thank you for inviting me here today.

I have asked this Committee to ensure that my family be protected from Presidential threats, and that the Committee be sensitive to the questions pertaining to ongoing investigations. Thank you for your help and for your understanding.

I am here under oath to correct the record, to answer the Committee’s questions truthfully, and to offer the American people what I know about President Trump.

I recognize that some of you may doubt and attack me on my credibility. It is for this reason that I have incorporated into this opening statement documents that are irrefutable, and demonstrate that the information you will hear is accurate and truthful.

Never in a million years did I imagine, when I accepted a job in 2007 to work for Donald Trump, that he would one day run for President, launch a campaign on a platform of hate and intolerance, and actually win. I regret the day I said “yes” to Mr. Trump. I regret all the help and support I gave him along the way.

I am ashamed of my own failings, and I publicly accepted responsibility for them by pleading guilty in the Southern District of New York.

I am ashamed of my weakness and misplaced loyalty – of the things I did for Mr. Trump in an effort to protect and promote him.

I am ashamed that I chose to take part in concealing Mr. Trump’s illicit acts rather than listening to my own conscience.

I am ashamed because I know what Mr. Trump is.

He is a racist.

He is a conman.

He is a cheat.

He was a presidential candidate who knew that Roger Stone was talking with Julian Assange about a WikiLeaks drop of Democratic National Committee emails.

I will explain each in a few moments.

I am providing the Committee today with several documents. These include:

— A copy of a check Mr. Trump wrote from his personal bank account – after he became president — to reimburse me for the hush money payments I made to cover up his affair with an adult film star and prevent damage to his campaign;

— Copies of financial statements for 2011 – 2013 that he gave to such institutions as Deutsche Bank;

— A copy of an article with Mr. Trump’s handwriting on it that reported on the auction of a portrait of himself – he arranged for the bidder ahead of time and then reimbursed the bidder from the account of his non-profit charitable foundation, with the picture now hanging in one of his country clubs; and

— Copies of letters I wrote at Mr. Trump’s direction that threatened his high school, colleges, and the College Board not to release his grades or SAT scores.

I hope my appearance here today, my guilty plea, and my work with law enforcement agencies are steps along a path of redemption that will restore faith in me and help this country understand our president better.

Before going further, I want to apologize to each of you and to Congress as a whole.

The last time I appeared before Congress, I came to protect Mr. Trump. Today, I’m here to tell the truth about Mr. Trump.

I lied to Congress about when Mr. Trump stopped negotiating the Moscow Tower project in Russia. I stated that we stopped negotiating in January 2016. That was false – our negotiations continued for months later during the campaign.

Mr. Trump did not directly tell me to lie to Congress. That’s not how he operates.

In conversations we had during the campaign, at the same time I was actively negotiating in Russia for him, he would look me in the eye and tell me there’s no business in Russia and then go out and lie to the American people by saying the same thing. In his way, he was telling me to lie.

There were at least a half-dozen times between the Iowa Caucus in January 2016 and the end of June when he would ask me “How’s it going in Russia?” – referring to the Moscow Tower project.

You need to know that Mr. Trump’s personal lawyers reviewed and edited my statement to Congress about the timing of the Moscow Tower negotiations before I gave it.

To be clear: Mr. Trump knew of and directed the Trump Moscow negotiations throughout the campaign and lied about it. He lied about it because he never expected to win the election. He also lied about it because he stood to make hundreds of millions of dollars on the Moscow real estate project.

And so I lied about it, too – because Mr. Trump had made clear to me, through his personal statements to me that we both knew were false and through his lies to the country, that he wanted me to lie. And he made it clear to me because his personal attorneys reviewed my statement before I gave it to Congress.

Over the past two years, I have been smeared as “a rat” by the President of the United States. The truth is much different, and let me take a brief moment to introduce myself.

My name is Michael Dean Cohen.

I am a blessed husband of 24 years and a father to an incredible daughter and son. When I married my wife, I promised her that I would love her, cherish her, and protect her. As my father said countless times throughout my childhood, “you my wife, and you my children, are the air that I breathe.” To my Laura, my Sami, and my Jake, there is nothing I wouldn’t do to protect you.

I have always tried to live a life of loyalty, friendship, generosity, and compassion – qualities my parents ingrained in my siblings and me since childhood. My father survived the Holocaust thanks to the compassion and selfless acts of others. He was helped by many who put themselves in harm’s way to do what they knew was right.

That is why my first instinct has always been to help those in need. Mom and Dad . I am sorry that I let you down.

As many people that know me best would say, I am the person they would call at 3AM if they needed help. I proudly remember being the emergency contact for many of my children’s friends when they were growing up because their parents knew that I would drop everything and care for them as if they were my own.

Yet, last fall I pled guilty in federal court to felonies for the benefit of, at the direction of, and in coordination with Individual #1.

For the record: Individual #1 is President Donald J. Trump.

It is painful to admit that I was motivated by ambition at times. It is even more painful to admit that many times I ignored my conscience and acted loyal to a man when I should not have. Sitting here today, it seems unbelievable that I was so mesmerized by Donald Trump that I was willing to do things for him that I knew were absolutely wrong.

For that reason, I have come here to apologize to my family, to the government, and to the American people.

Accordingly, let me now tell you about Mr. Trump.

I got to know him very well, working very closely with him for more than 10 years, as his Executive Vice President and Special Counsel and then personal attorney when he became President. When I first met Mr. Trump, he was a successful entrepreneur, a real estate giant, and an icon. Being around Mr. Trump was intoxicating. When you were in his presence, you felt like you were involved in something greater than yourself — that you were somehow changing the world.

I wound up touting the Trump narrative for over a decade. That was my job. Always stay on message. Always defend. It monopolized my life. At first, I worked mostly on real estate developments and other business transactions. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Trump brought me into his personal life and private dealings. Over time, I saw his true character revealed.

Mr. Trump is an enigma. He is complicated, as am I. He has both good and bad, as do we all. But the bad far outweighs the good, and since taking office, he has become the worst version of himself. He is capable of behaving kindly, but he is not kind. He is capable of committing acts of generosity, but he is not generous. He is capable of being loyal, but he is fundamentally disloyal.

Donald Trump is a man who ran for office to make his brand great, not to make our country great. He had no desire or intention to lead this nation – only to market himself and to build his wealth and power. Mr. Trump would often say, this campaign was going to be the “greatest infomercial in political history.”

He never expected to win the primary. He never expected to win the general election. The campaign – for him – was always a marketing opportunity.

I knew early on in my work for Mr. Trump that he would direct me to lie to further his business interests. I am ashamed to say, that when it was for a real estate mogul in the private sector, I considered it trivial. As the President, I consider it significant and dangerous.

But in the mix, lying for Mr. Trump was normalized, and no one around him questioned it. In fairness, no one around him today questions it, either. A lot of people have asked me about whether Mr. Trump knew about the release of the hacked Democratic National Committee emails ahead of time. The answer is yes.

As I earlier stated, Mr. Trump knew from Roger Stone in advance about the WikiLeaks drop of emails. In July 2016, days before the Democratic convention, I was in Mr. Trump’s office when his secretary announced that Roger Stone was on the phone. Mr. Trump put Mr. Stone on the speakerphone. Mr. Stone told Mr. Trump that he had just gotten off the phone with Julian Assange and that Mr. Assange told Mr. Stone that, within a couple of days, there would be a massive dump of emails that would damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

Mr. Trump responded by stating to the effect of “wouldn’t that be great.”

Mr. Trump is a racist. The country has seen Mr. Trump court white supremacists and bigots. You have heard him call poorer countries “shitholes.”

In private, he is even worse.

He once asked me if I could name a country run by a black person that wasn’t a “shithole.” This was when Barack Obama was President of the United States.

While we were once driving through a struggling neighborhood in Chicago, he commented that only black people could live that way.

And, he told me that black people would never vote for him because they were too stupid.

And yet I continued to work for him.

Mr. Trump is a cheat.

As previously stated, I’m giving the Committee today three years of President Trump’s financial statements, from 2011-2013, which he gave to Deutsche Bank to inquire about a loan to buy the Buffalo Bills and to Forbes. These are Exhibits 1a, 1b, and 1c to my testimony.

It was my experience that Mr. Trump inflated his total assets when it served his purposes, such as trying to be listed among the wealthiest people in Forbes, and deflated his assets to reduce his real estate taxes.

I am sharing with you two newspaper articles, side by side, that are examples of Mr. Trump inflating and deflating his assets, as I said, to suit his financial interests. These are Exhibit 2 to my testimony.

As I noted, I’m giving the Committee today an article he wrote on, and sent me, that reported on an auction of a portrait of Mr. Trump. This is Exhibit 3A to my testimony.

Mr. Trump directed me to find a straw bidder to purchase a portrait of him that was being auctioned at an Art Hamptons Event. The objective was to ensure that his portrait, which was going to be auctioned last, would go for the highest price of any portrait that afternoon. The portrait was purchased by the fake bidder for $60,000. Mr. Trump directed the Trump Foundation, which is supposed to be a charitable organization, to repay the fake bidder, despite keeping the art for himself. Please see Exhibit 3B to my testimony.

And it should come as no surprise that one of my more common responsibilities was that Mr. Trump directed me to call business owners, many of whom were small businesses, that were owed money for their services and told them no payment or a reduced payment would be coming. When I advised Mr. Trump of my success, he actually reveled in it.

And yet, I continued to work for him.

Mr. Trump is a conman.

He asked me to pay off an adult film star with whom he had an affair, and to lie to his wife about it, which I did. Lying to the First Lady is one of my biggest regrets. She is a kind, good person. I respect her greatly – and she did not deserve that.

I am giving the Committee today a copy of the $130,000 wire transfer from me to Ms. Clifford’s attorney during the closing days of the presidential campaign that was demanded by Ms. Clifford to maintain her silence about her affair with Mr. Trump. This is Exhibit 4 to my testimony.

Mr. Trump directed me to use my own personal funds from a Home Equity Line of Credit to avoid any money being traced back to him that could negatively impact his campaign. I did that, too – without bothering to consider whether that was improper, much less whether it was the right thing to do or how it would impact me, my family, or the public.

I am going to jail in part because of my decision to help Mr. Trump hide that payment from the American people before they voted a few days later.

As Exhibit 5 to my testimony shows, I am providing a copy of a $35,000 check that President Trump personally signed from his personal bank account on August 1, 2017 – when he was President of the United States – pursuant to the cover-up, which was the basis of my guilty plea, to reimburse me – the word used by Mr. Trump’s TV lawyer — for the illegal hush money I paid on his behalf. This $35,000 check was one of 11 check installments that was paid throughout the year – while he was President.

The President of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws. You can find the details of that scheme, directed by Mr. Trump, in the pleadings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.

So picture this scene – in February 2017, one month into his presidency, I’m visiting President Trump in the Oval Office for the first time. It’s truly awe-inspiring, he’s showing me around and pointing to different paintings, and he says to me something to the effect of . Don’t worry, Michael, your January and February reimbursement checks are coming. They were Fed-Exed from New York and it takes a while for that to get through the White House system. As he promised, I received the first check for the reimbursement of $70,000 not long thereafter.

When I say conman, I’m talking about a man who declares himself brilliant but directed me to threaten his high school, his colleges, and the College Board to never release his grades or SAT scores.

As I mentioned, I’m giving the Committee today copies of a letter I sent at Mr. Trump’s direction threatening these schools with civil and criminal actions if Mr. Trump’s grades or SAT scores were ever disclosed without his permission. These are Exhibit 6.

The irony wasn’t lost on me at the time that Mr. Trump in 2011 had strongly criticized President Obama for not releasing his grades. As you can see in Exhibit 7, Mr. Trump declared “Let him show his records” after calling President Obama “a terrible student.”

The sad fact is that I never heard Mr. Trump say anything in private that led me to believe he loved our nation or wanted to make it better. In fact, he did the opposite.

When telling me in 2008 that he was cutting employees’ salaries in half – including mine – he showed me what he claimed was a $10 million IRS tax refund, and he said that he could not believe how stupid the government was for giving “someone like him” that much money back.

During the campaign, Mr. Trump said he did not consider Vietnam Veteran, and Prisoner of War, Senator John McCain to be “a hero” because he likes people who weren’t captured. At the same time, Mr. Trump tasked me to handle the negative press surrounding his medical deferment from the Vietnam draft.

Mr. Trump claimed it was because of a bone spur, but when I asked for medical records, he gave me none and said there was no surgery. He told me not to answer the specific questions by reporters but rather offer simply the fact that he received a medical deferment.

He finished the conversation with the following comment. “You think I’m stupid, I wasn’t going to Vietnam.”

I find it ironic, President Trump, that you are in Vietnam right now.

And yet, I continued to work for him.

Questions have been raised about whether I know of direct evidence that Mr. Trump or his campaign colluded with Russia. I do not. I want to be clear. But, I have my suspicions.

Sometime in the summer of 2017, I read all over the media that there had been a meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016 involving Don Jr. and others from the campaign with Russians, including a representative of the Russian government, and an email setting up the meeting with the subject line, “Dirt on Hillary Clinton.” Something clicked in my mind. I remember being in the room with Mr. Trump, probably in early June 2016, when something peculiar happened. Don Jr. came into the room and walked behind his father’s desk – which in itself was unusual. People didn’t just walk behind Mr. Trump’s desk to talk to him. I recalled Don Jr. leaning over to his father and speaking in a low voice, which I could clearly hear, and saying: “The meeting is all set.” I remember Mr. Trump saying, “Ok good . let me know.”

What struck me as I looked back and thought about that exchange between Don Jr. and his father was, first, that Mr. Trump had frequently told me and others that his son Don Jr. had the worst judgment of anyone in the world. And also, that Don Jr. would never set up any meeting of any significance alone – and certainly not without checking with his father.

I also knew that nothing went on in Trump world, especially the campaign, without Mr. Trump’s knowledge and approval. So, I concluded that Don Jr. was referring to that June 2016 Trump Tower meeting about dirt on Hillary with the Russian representative when he walked behind his dad’s desk that day — and that Mr. Trump knew that was the meeting Don Jr. was talking about when he said, “That’s good . let me know.”

Over the past year or so, I have done some real soul searching. I see now that my ambition and the intoxication of Trump power had much to do with the bad decisions I made.

To you, Chairman Cummings, Ranking Member Jordan, the other members of this Committee, and the other members of the House and Senate, I am sorry for my lies and for lying to Congress.

To our nation, I am sorry for actively working to hide from you the truth about Mr. Trump when you needed it most.

For those who question my motives for being here today, I understand. I have lied, but I am not a liar. I have done bad things, but I am not a bad man. I have fixed things, but I am no longer your “fixer,” Mr. Trump.

I am going to prison and have shattered the safety and security that I tried so hard to provide for my family. My testimony certainly does not diminish the pain I caused my family and friends – nothing can do that. And I have never asked for, nor would I accept, a pardon from President Trump.

And, by coming today, I have caused my family to be the target of personal, scurrilous attacks by the President and his lawyer – trying to intimidate me from appearing before this panel. Mr. Trump called me a “rat” for choosing to tell the truth – much like a mobster would do when one of his men decides to cooperate with the government.

As Exhibit 8 shows, I have provided the Committee with copies of Tweets that Mr. Trump posted, attacking me and my family – only someone burying his head in the sand would not recognize them for what they are: encouragement to someone to do harm to me and my family.

I never imagined that he would engage in vicious, false attacks on my family – and unleash his TV-lawyer to do the same. I hope this committee and all members of Congress on both sides of the aisle will make it clear: As a nation, we should not tolerate attempts to intimidate witnesses before Congress and attacks on family are out of bounds and not acceptable.

I wish to especially thank Speaker Pelosi for her statements in Exhibit 9 to protect this institution and me, and the Chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence Adam Schiff and Chairman Cummings for likewise defending this institution and my family against the attacks by Mr. Trump, and also the many Republicans who have admonished the President as well.

I am not a perfect man. I have done things I am not proud of, and I will live with the consequences of my actions for the rest of my life.

But today, I get to decide the example I set for my children and how I attempt to change how history will remember me. I may not be able to change the past, but I can do right by the American people here today.

Thank you for your attention. I am happy to answer the Committee’s questions.
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Copyright © 2019 Capitol Hill Blue

In New Jersey, the billboard that says it all

In New Jersey, this billboard says it all.

In New Jersey, a billboard calls Republican President Donald Trump “Our Leader The Idiot.”

New York activist Neil Harrison paid for the billboard in Union Township, a town of about 60,000 people about 12 miles (19 kilometers) west of New York City.

Harrison says he’s paying for the billboard to promote the documentary film he’s producing.

Township spokeswoman Natalie Pineiro says she returned to work this week to find “dozens” of voicemails from residents and were more than 100 comments on the town’s Facebook page.

Response is “overwhelmingly negative,” Pineiro says and adds she wasn’t sure how long the billboard will stay up.

OutFront Media rents space on the billboard but did respond to requests for comment.

Township officials sent out a tweet explaining the billboard is privately owned, so the township has no role in approving what is placed there. The tweet called the billboard “potentially offensive.”

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Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved

President’s insensitive remarks on Trump Tower fire

A firefighter looks out from the window of a fire damaged apartment in Trump Tower in New York on Saturday, April 7, 2018. The Fire Department says the blaze broke out on the 50th floor. (Craig Ruttle/Associated Press)

Typical uncompassionate response from president Donald Trump when a fire killed a resident in Trump Tower in Manhattan.

Trump tweeted:

Fire at Trump Tower is out. Very confined (well built building). Firemen (and women) did a great job. THANK YOU!

Not a word about one of his tenants dying.  No concern about firefighter injuries in battling the blaze or two civilians injured by falling debris.  Primarily, he offered praise for what he called a “well built building”  and thanks for protecting it, not lives.

New York fire commissioner Donald Nigro said the 50th floor apartment was “virtually entirely on fire.”

“It’s a well-built building,” Nigro said at a press conference.  “The building sure stood up quite wall.”

Firefighters reported smoke throughout tower and inspected Trump’s residence but did not say if it was damaged.

The Associated Press reports:

A raging fire that tore through a 50th-floor apartment at Trump Tower on Saturday killed a man inside and sent flames and thick, black smoke pouring from windows of the president’s namesake skyscraper.

New York Fire Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the cause of the blaze is not yet known but the apartment was “virtually entirely on fire” when firefighters arrived after 5:30 p.m.

Sixty-seven-year-old Todd Brassner, 67, who was in the apartment, was taken to a hospital and died a short time later.

Officials said four firefighters also suffered minor injuries. An investigation is ongoing.

Trump acted like he didn’t even care about the death or the other injuries.

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Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue

Why top lawyers avoid a deadbeat like Trump

There was a time when just about any criminal defense lawyer in America would salivate at the prospect of representing the president of the United States.

Then Donald Trump became president, a flamboyant, self-declared “outsider” who quickly ran afoul of the rules that are supposed to determine what the leader of the free world could and could not do.

Now, even lawyers avoid Trump.

Writes Paul F. Campos, law professor at the University of Colorado:

The reasons top firms and lawyers are giving for refusing to work for Trump include conflicts of interests with current clients, the possibility of alienating sources of future business, the president’s reluctance to follow legal advice, his tendency to ask lawyers to engage in what Ted Boutrous of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher referred to delicately as “questionable activities,” and his history of not paying his bills.

Yes, the president is a deadbeat who has stiffed thousands, including lawyers.

When it comes to Trump, lawyers say “the guy won’t pay,” reports Ari Melber of MSNBC.

He adds:

Not paying his bills is a major turnoff for most law firms because defending Trump in the Mueller investigation is going to cost millions of dollars. The Whitewater and Lewinsky scandals ran up $11.3 million in legal fees, which is almost $16 million in 2018 dollars, so this is far from a small sum of money that Trump is going to spend on legal defense for the Mueller investigation. No law firm is going to take Trump on as a client and risk not being paid.

USA Today reports more than 3,500 lawsuits where vendors hired by Trump for construction projects, lawyers hired to represent him, and others who said he would not pay what he owed.

“Trump could have settled it right off the bat, but they wanted to fight it out, that’s their M.O.” says Rod Hannah, a Plantation, Fla. the lawyer who represented the workers in a suit filed by 48 servers after Trump stiffed them for overtime pay on 20+hour days during a special event at one of his golf clubs.

The cases dragged on before the court ordered Trump to pay workers mays of up to $3,000 for one worker and an average of $800 each for others.

Colette Nelson, chief advocacy officer of the American Subcontractors Association, says Trump has bankrupted businesses with his ruthlessness.

“Real estate is a tough and aggressive business, but most business people don’t set out to make their money by breaking the companies that they do business with,” she says.

Campos says Trump’s actions and antics give him the hallmarks of a troublesome client and that, when coupled with a record of not paying adds to “the depths of misgivings Mr. Trump has raised.”

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Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue

John Kelly: The vanishing White House chief of staff

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly’s job included being the one who tells Donald Trump “no” or urges restraint when the rambunctious presidents gets out of line — a daily, sometimes hourly, routine.

No more. Kelly now gets the cold shoulder from Trump and keeps him out of Oval Office when he talks with world leaders or makes important decisions or takes off for the weekend to Mar-a-Logo.

Trump made a congratulatory phone call to Russian leader Vladimir Putin without Kelly on the line.

The president tapped John Bolton as his next national security adviser without Kelly in the room.

Last weekend, Trump went a Mar-a-Lago to stewing over immigration and trade. Kelly stayed at home.

Once empowered to bring order to a turbulent West Wing, Kelly has receded from view, his clout diminished, his word less trusted by staff and his guidance less tolerated by an increasingly go-it-alone president.

Emboldened in his job, Trump has rebelled against Kelly’s restrictions and mused about doing away with the chief of staff post entirely. It’s all leading White House staffers and Trump allies to believe that Kelly is working on borrowed time.

In recent weeks, Trump has governed at breakneck pace, ousting aides and issuing surprise policy announcements on Twitter, recreating the helter-skelter feel of his first months in office. Kelly’s allies maintain that his retreat is strategic. They suggest that the belief that Kelly was Trump’s savior was an overstated idea all along and that the chief of staff is now content to loosen the reins and allow an increasingly comfortable president to govern from his gut.

But those close to the president say that Trump has increasingly expressed fatigue at Kelly’s attempts to shackle him and that while Trump is not ready to fire Kelly, he has begun gradually freezing out his top aide.

Trump recently told one confidant that he was “tired of being told no” by Kelly and has instead chosen to simply not tell Kelly things at all, according to a person who was not authorized to publicly discuss private conversations and spoke on condition of anonymity.

In Trump’s West Wing, once the rumors begin that an aide’s exit is forthcoming, the “stink” on that staffer never leaves, according to one of the nearly dozen White House aides, former administration officials and outside advisers who spoke to The Associated Press under the same conditions.

As Kelly’s public profile and behind-the-scenes influence has faded, speculation has risen that chaos could return.

“It’s not tenable for Kelly to remain in this position so weakened,” said Chris Whipple, author of “Gatekeepers,” a history of modern White House chiefs of staff. “More than any of his predecessors, Donald Trump needs an empowered chief of staff to tell him what he does not want to hear. Trump wants to run the White House like the 26th floor of Trump Tower, and it’s simply not going to work.”

Kelly was once a fixture at the president’s side, but Trump has now cut him out of a number of important decisions.

For months, Kelly made it a practice to listen in to many of the president’s calls, particularly with world leaders. While he is still on the line for some of those conversations, Kelly was not part of the call Trump made to Putin last month from the White House residence during which Trump ignored advisers’ advice against congratulating the Russian president on his re-election.

Although Kelly had agitated for the removal of outgoing national security adviser H.R. McMaster, he counseled Trump against hiring Bolton, a neo-conservative media commentator. Trump did it anyway, offering the job to Bolton in a one-on-one meeting in the Oval Office and telling his chief of staff about it later.

As Trump spent the Easter weekend at his Florida resort and tweeted about his tariffs plan, Kelly was out of state, though the men did consult by phone. While Kelly has fumed about the ethics questions swirling around Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, Trump was at least initially more supportive of Pruitt, telling him, “We’ve got your back.”

The president also has cast aside the constraints the retired four-star Marine general tried to place on Trump about whom he could see and speak to. Those restrictions led shunned advisers to try to undermine the chief of staff in the press and with Trump. For months, former campaign manager Corey Lewandowski was barred from the White House, only to return when Kelly was overruled by Trump, according to four White House aides and outside advisers.

Many in the West Wing believed that Kelly’s attempts to curtail Trump’s interactions with Lewandowski, as well as Trump allies such as David Bossie and Anthony Scaramucci, were always destined to fail and alienate the president, who has privately contemplated recreating the freewheeling nature of his campaign and Trump Tower office. Kelly also has clashed with Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who had his security clearance downgraded after a policy change written by the chief of staff.

Some White House aides contend that Kelly has been intentionally giving Trump more leeway to be himself and that Kelly recognizes that’s what Trump wants. But allies acknowledged Kelly’s receding power and said he’s trying to keep his head down and focus on policy, such as the plan to mobilize the National Guard along the U.S. border with Mexico.

The White House declined to make Kelly available for an interview. In public, Trump praises his chief of staff, telling Marines in California last month that Kelly probably “likes what you do better than what he does, but he’s doing a great job.”

The speculation surrounding Kelly echoes the treatment of his predecessor, Reince Priebus, who was the subject of months of questions about how long he would last on the job. Priebus eventually resigned under pressure.

Kelly also no longer commands the same respect among some quarters of the staff. His role came under harsh scrutiny this year over his handling of the controversy surrounding ousted White House aide Rob Porter, who was accused of domestic abuse.

Kelly’s shifting version of events elicited frustration from former communications director Hope Hicks, who had been dating Porter, and dismayed a number of West Wing staffers. That episode frustrated Trump, who still remains agitated about an interview that Kelly gave to Fox News months ago in which he suggested that Trump had “evolved” in his thinking about the need for a wall on the Mexican border.

Kelly, who took the job last July, had previously told confidants he hoped to be on the job for a year. One person familiar with his thinking said the chief of staff recently voiced doubt he would make it that far.

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Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue

Copyright © 2018 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.

Trump back to his old self-absorbed self

President Trump speaks during a news conference in Washington. (Susan Walsh/AP)

Batten down the hatches: The “old” Donald Trump is back and old problems are sure to emerge.

It’s President Trump returning to candidate Trump because that got him elected and he now feels sure it will keep him president.

With fewer advisers telling him to temper his tongue and tone down his claims, President Donald Trump is returning to the candidate who fired off claims without facts and promises he could never keep because that, he feels, put him the White House and will, he’s sure, will keep him there.

Those remaining in Trump’s revolving door White House says he’s brimming with confidence — more than they’ve seen at any time during his first 14 months in office.

“This is consistent with Trump’s populist movement that he was able to capture and lead in the last election,” said Ed Brookover, a former Trump campaign adviser, tells The Washington Post. “What his base wanted him to do most of all is to fight for them, and the more Trump demonstrates he’s on their side, the more popular he is with them.”

Trump, aides say, now feels “empowered” to do whatever he want and feels that without senior aides telling him that he “can’t do something,” he will accomplish his wish list.

“The president is now running the government like he did with his real estate and branding empire in New York,” says one aide.

Critics say Trump will have to remember that he is not the absolute boss of a private outfit like The Trump Organization and that he can’t simply declare bankruptcy and walk away from failures like he often did in his business dealings.

Trump is keeping chief of staff John Kelly out of the hiring process of senior officials now, bringing on economic advisor Larry Kudlow and national security adviser John Bolton from Fox News.

Neither were vetted before Trump announced their appointments.

“It’s off the cuff decisions that have gotten us into trouble before and it will happen again,” worries one aide.  “How many more misfirings can we survive?”

Trump is not worried.  As he often does, he claims he, and only he, is the one who knows what to do.

Dana Milbank in a column where the headline — How Trump is transforming himself into the greatest president ever — had many readers wondering if the columnist had lost his mind.

Nope.  Milbank just rounded up many of the claims of Trump who says what he does is the greatest thing in the world.

For example:

“Nobody has been tougher on Russia than I have,”

“I am the least racist person you have ever interviewed.”

“Nobody knows more about trade than me.”

“Nobody respects women more than I do,”

“Nobody loves the Bible more than I do.”

“I have one of the great temperaments,”

“There’s nobody that’s done so much for equality as I have.”

The list goes on and one.

So does Trump.

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‘Friends with benefits’ made millions on Trump’s inaugural

When some complained about the costs of a lavish inaugural celebration by incoming president Donald Trump, he and the nonprofit group created to plan and run it, promised to cover the cost and raise “much, much more” for charity in late 2016.

The 58th Presidential Inaugural Committee raised a record $107 million, most of it from wealthy donors and corporations and spent about 95 percent of the funds to put on the most lavish collections of balls, events and celebrations in presidential history.

Five percent went to charity.  Pals of Trump and First Lady Melania got much, much more.

The largest single payment — $26 million — went to WIS Media Partners of Marina del Rey, Calif., a one-shot entity created in Dec. 2016 by Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a socialite known for planning Manhattan galas and associate of Vogue editor Anna Wintour.

Stephanie Winston Wolkoff (left) with first lady Melania Trump.

Ms. Wolkoff is also a friend of first lady Melania Trump and drops her name frequently when she wants something from others.  After the inaugural, the first lady brought Ms. Wolkoff into her White House office as “a senior adviser.”

Sources close to the inaugural committee says Mrs. Wolkoff received a direct payment of $1.26 million personally for her “services” to them.

Records also show the “team” that produced the TV “reality” show and Mark Burnett, also received large payments.  Trump insisted that team be used.

Trade show promoter Hargrove Inc. in Lanham, Md, received $25 million.  “Society Organizers” David Monn of New York, received $3.7 million.  Moon also produced “society events” and a state dinner during Barack Obama’s presidency.

According to The New York Times the committee spent $9.4 million on travel, $4.6 million on salaries, $500,000 on legal fees and $237,000 on fundraising.

One of the 208 employees of the inaugural committee was former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates, currently under indictment on multiple charges by the special counsel investigating the president, the White House and the campaign team.  Gates received $100,000 for his time on the inaugural operation.

And charity?  Around $5 million, which includes:

A million each for the American Red Cross, the Salvation Army and evangelical group Samaritan’s Purse for their work on hurricane relief in the Gulf Coast, Florida and Caribbean.

The White House Historical Association received $1 million and the “Vice President’s Residence Foundation, which decorates and furnishes the temporary home for VP Mike Pence at the U.S. Naval Observatory, received $750,000.

The tax return shows the committee with $2.8 million left and says it will donate whatever might be let “once remaining expenses were paid.”  That total was not released.

The inaugural costs paid by the committee with funds from donations do not include the more than $100,000 in security costs by the taxpayer for that one day or the expenses borne by the District of Columbia for traffic control and security.

(Our thanks to The New York Times for locating much of the information in this article.)

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Copyright © 2018 Capitol Hill Blue

Senate votes to shut down government

A bitter, partisan Senate failed in a late-night attempt Friday to stop a government shutdown scheduled to begin at midnight.

The vote fell way short of the 60 votes needed to send approve the latest “stopgap” spending bill to keep the government running through Feb. 16.

Final vote totals showed 45 Republicans and 5 Democrats voting to approve while 4 from the GOP side and 44 Democrats voted against.

The government is scheduled to shut down at 12:01 a.m. Saturday.

Sexual harassment in Congress and taxpayers foot the bill

Winsome Packer, and adviser to Democratic Rep. Alcee Hastings, lost her six-figure income, her job and her house after she accused her boss of sexual harassment in 2010.

In the end, we received a secret settlement of $220,000, paid out of taxpayer funds by the congressional Office of Compliance but lost her Virginia home while the case dragged on for four years.

She served as Hasting’s policy adviser before he arranged a foreign post in Vienna with a salary of $165,000.  The job, she said, came with strings: Hastings wanted to stay with her in her apartment when he came to Vienna to visit.

The case turned into a “he said, she said” with Hastings claiming he never asked to stay with her.

“I ignored him at first, hoping he would see I wasn’t interested,” Packer told The Washington Post in an interview.

But he became more insistent, she says.  In a July 2008 trip to Kazakhstan, Packer received instructions to report to a hotel hospitality suite right after her plane landed at 4 a.m. and found Hastings waiting for her.

Reports The Post:

“I went up there, and the first thing he did was grab me and press himself up against me. Then he pressed his face against mine,” Packer said in an interview. “I reminded him that this was inappropriate. It was the first time I told him explicitly.”

Her lawsuit claims that the harassment continued over two years and that she reported numerous incidents to Hastings’s chief of staff, Fred Turner, asking him to intervene. In her lawsuit, she said Turner spoke with Hastings but the harassment continued. When she continued to complain, she said Turner retaliated against her by marginalizing her at work, including limiting travel and reassigning much of her work. Turner did not respond to requests for comment, but he previously denied to congressional investigators that he retaliated or that he received early reports of Packer’s complaints, according to a House Ethics Committee report.

Her case in 2010 went to the Office of Compliance, established by the Congressional Accountability Act as the place to take legislative branch employees to file workplace claims, including sexual harassment.

The office recommended mediation but Packer calls the meetings there as bullying sessions where House attorneys urged her to drop her claim or accept a low settlement.

“Their opening line to my attorney was, ‘I want you to know your client is a liar and an extortionist,’ ” Packer told the Post.

“It was shocking,” George Chuzi, her attorney, said. “They just unloaded on her. The verbal assaults on her integrity, the threats to expose her went on for 20 minutes. This was supposed to be a mediation meeting, mind you, where both sides came together to discuss a possible resolution. That is not what happened.”

The office offered $20,000 to $25,000 to settle with Packer.  She rejected the offer and filed a lawsuit in DC District Court against Hastings, his chief of staff and the commission.  Attorneys for Judicial Watch, pro-bono and said the House attorneys used “scorched-earth’s tactics.”

Hastings eventually admitted “crude barroom conversations” with Packer, talking about underwear and telling her he “had difficulty sleeping after sex.”

But things changed when Sen. Benjamin Cardin (D-MD) took over leadership of the commission.  He turned the case over to Senate lawyers.  The Senate Employment Counsel arranged Packer’s out of court settlement.

Packer is still out of work and lives with her sister in a rented duplex.

“I lost my career, I lost one-third of my pension.  Lost my security clearance and I lost many of my friends,” she told the Post.

(Article based on a story by The Washington Post.)

Dems, some GOP angry about Trump’s vulgar language

President Donald Trump claimed, in tweet Friday he “never said anything derogatory about Haitians other than Haiti is, obviously, a very poor and troubled country.  Never said ‘take ’em out.’ Made up by Dems.  I have a wonderful relationship with Haitians. Probably should record future meeting — unfortunately no trust.”

Republicans, however, joined Democrats in condemning Trump for his claims that Haiti, El Salvador and certain African countries are “shithole countries” and added: “Why do we need more Haitians?  Take them out.”

Sen. Richard J. Durbin (D-IL), who attended the meeting said Trump’s denial is a lie.  He said, in a written statement, Trump “said things that were hate-filled, vile and racist.”

“I cannot believe that in the history of the White House, in that Oval Office, any president has ever spoken the words that I personally heard our president speak yesterday,” Durbin added.

Republican Sen. Tim Scott of South Carolina said he was told by Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) told him that the words reportedly used by Trump were accurate.  Graham, in a statement Friday, said he spoke directly with Trump about the comments after the meeting and made it Trump now knows”how I feel.”

“The comment is incredibly disappointing,” Scott said after talking to Graham.

Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) said he heard about Trump’s language before it public and was not surprised about the president’s vulgarity

“I’m not surprised at the sentiment expressed — it’s consistent with what he’s said — but that he would do that knowing the fury it would cause” did astound him.

House Speaker Paul Ryan called Trump’s language “very unfortunate, unhelpful.”

Sen. John McCain called Trump’s comments something that goes against “the very idea of America.”

“People have come to this country from everywhere, and people from everywhere have made America great,” McCain said in a statement. “Our immigration policy should reflect that truth, and our elected officials, including our President, should respect it.”

Former vice president joe Biden said on Twitter:

It’s not how a president should speak. It’s not how a president should behave. Most of all, it’s not what a president should believe. We’re better than this.

Added former Secretary of State and Former First Lady Hillary Clinton in a tweat:

The anniversary of the devastating earthquake 8 years ago is a day to remember the tragedy, honor the resilient people of Haiti, & affirm America’s commitment to helping our neighbors. Instead, we‘re subjected to Trump’s ignorant, racist views of anyone who doesn’t look like him.

The Haitian government Friday condemned Trump’s comments as a “racist view of the Haitian community.”

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