BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER
& CROOKED MEDIA

Wednesday, May 16, 2018

—Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-VT) bringing Scott Pruitt back down to Earth

DON JR., MASTERMIND

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley published 2,500-plus pages of documents stemming from the committee’s inquiry into the Trump campaign and Russian subversion of the 2016 election.

The documents are pretty damning! They include a transcript of the committee’s interview with Donald Trump Jr. regarding that wonderful June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and a handful of Russian spies as well as new details about the Trump team’s efforts to cover it up.

Junior admitted that his father helped craft the statement he issued lying to the public about the purpose of the meeting.  

He also told the committee that he accepted the meeting in part because, at the time, “there was no focus on Russian activities that there is today,” suggesting he didn’t realize that Russia was attempting to intervene in the election. By June 2016, Russian spies had already approached the campaign offering dirt on Hillary Clinton. Trump Jr. was so primed to accept dirt on Clinton from the Russians that, according to one of Russians in attendance, he began the meeting by saying: "So you have some information for us?"

Also, lying to a Senate committee is a crime. Put it on the list of crimes!

KIM JONG-UNCLEAR

North Korea is threatening to cancel a planned summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un, citing its distrust of Trump’s national security adviser, John Bolton, and his insistence that North Korea must commit to complete, verifiable, irreversible disarmament. Predictable twist!

Nonproliferation experts have speculated that Bolton has been publicly pushing a very hard line in the hope of sabotaging the diplomatic process, as he did in the last decade under George W. Bush. At a minimum, Bolton has been citing Libya’s former leader Muammar Qaddafi as an example of what denuclearization in North Korea might look like. About a decade after giving up his nuclear program, Qaddafi was deposed by NATO and killed in the streets by rebel fighters. So, ya know, maybe not the best way to describe things to Kim Jong-un?

Two reasons to think the summit will still happen: 

1. Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has suggested that the U.S. would be satisfied with much less than complete nuclear disarmament.
2. Trump is desperate to hold the summit and the North Koreans know it. Art of the Deal!

OH YEAH, ETHICS

The Office of Government Ethics effectively referred President Trump to the Justice Department for criminal investigation after Trump disclosed that he reimbursed Michael Cohen for making a hush money payment to Stormy Daniels. Wait a second… was Trump… lying about it the whole time?

OGE appears to have concluded that by disclosing the Cohen reimbursement, Trump revealed that he knew he owed Cohen money last year, yet failed to list that debt on his 2017 form. ProPublica wrote a helpful tweetstorm about the rest of the disclosure.

The Senate passed a resolution to restore net neutrality today, after the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission repealed it in late 2017. If the House were to take it up the resolution and pass it, Trump could still veto it, but Speaker Paul Ryan is expected to shelve it (of course), which makes it a GREAT campaign issue.

Michael Cohen personally solicited $1 million from the government of Qatar in 2016, in exchange for access to and advice about the Trump administration. Qatar reportedly declined, and then shit went downhill for them from there. The flood of Cohen disclosures in the past week began because a federal investigator was worried that someone or some people in the government were helping Cohen and Trump engage in a cover up by destroying official suspicious activity reports (SARs) connected to Cohen’s shady hush-money-and-bribery LLC (cool company!), and then started leaking.

The Senate Intelligence Committee has concluded that Russia interfered in the 2016 election to help Donald Trump (no shit) placing Senate Republicans in agreement with  U.S. intelligence community, and in opposition to House intelligence committee Republicans who made up some ridiculous nonsense. Reminder: Vote Nunes out.

Iowa’s Attorney General is refusing to defend the state’s new law banning abortions after the fetal heartbeat can be detected, saying he “could not zealously assert the state’s position because of his core belief that that statute, if upheld, would undermine rights and protections for women.” Fetal heartbeats are often detectable before women know they’re pregnant. Planned Parenthood and the ACLU have sued the state over the law.

Michigan State University reached a $500 million settlement with 332 women and girls who were sexually assaulted by Larry Nassar. Nassar’s abuse had been reported to Michigan State, where he served as a sports physician from 1997-2016, but the university nevertheless allowed him to continue treating patients.

North Carolina is the latest state to go “Red for Ed,” with thousands of educators striking for increased education funding and higher teacher pay. Teachers in West Virginia, Kentucky, Oklahoma, Arizona, and Colorado have already staged walkouts this year. If their experience is any indication, the labor action in North Carolina is likely to succeed.

Uber will no longer force its employees, drivers, and riders into arbitration and non-disclosure agreements if they are sexually harassed or assaulted. Previously, the company forced people to waive their rights to take their complaints to court.

The world’s oldest woman says she’s been miserable every day she’s been alive and that her age is a punishment from God. Hope you didn’t think this was some kind of feel-good story. Life is long and hard. That’s the upshot. Cool.

"When you are a public-facing Black person on the internet, let alone if you embody more than one marginalized identity on the internet, and you have the audacity to boldly be who you are, let alone talk about what's going on in the world, there are going to be people that are upset and threatened by it.”

—Franchesca Ramsey on dealing with online trolls

Listen to the rest of Franchesca’s interview on this week’s Keep It →

“These aren’t people. These are animals.”

—Donald Trump, speaking today on immigrants being deported during his sanctuary cities roundtable.

From Clint Smith: Before enslavement Africans were called “apes.” Before the Holocaust Jewish people were called “rats.” Before the Rwandan genocide Tutsis were called “cockroaches.” Calling undocumented people “animals” as the president just did is gravely serious. It’s not just an offensive word.

Relatedly, here’s footage of a man going on an unhinged racist rant, threatening to call ICE on two women speaking Spanish in a Manhattan cafe. A man whose office, conveniently, lists him as fluent in Spanish on their website.

Trump is the best thing that ever happened to the worst people in the country.

Can you imagine anything more exciting than the prospect of Michael Cohen’s entire Blackberry archive seeing the light of day? We can. Political leaders, activists, and celebs are about to turn up at the ACLU Conference in D.C. on June 10-12. Fend off FOMO and learn more here →

"If our leaders seek to conceal the truth, or we as people become accepting of alternative realities that are no longer grounded in facts, then we as American citizens are on a pathway to relinquishing our freedom."

—Former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, who worked for Donald Trump until he was fired in a humiliating fashion, and has done nothing since then to alert the public to Trump’s specific threat to truth, freedom, and democracy. You’re not wrong, Rex, you’re just an asshole.

Also, PAUL RYAN HEARS LAUREL.

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