BY BRIAN BEUTLER & CROOKED MEDIA

Tuesday, November 20, 2018

—Nancy Pelosi, absolutely nailing the media’s Trump dependency

COVERUPS FOR SALE

One of the first actions of the Democratic House should be an investigation into the murder of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi, as well as President Trump’s efforts to help the Saudi government get away with the crime.

In a bizarre and deeply disturbing Tuesday statement, Trump pre-empted the CIA, which has concluded with high confidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) ordered operatives to kill and dismember Khashoggi, a U.S. resident and Saudi dissident, at the Turkish consulate in Istanbul several weeks ago.

Trump’s statement gives the greenlight to Saudi Arabia and other repressive regimes to hunt down and murder regime critics, knowing that the Trump administration can be bought off. In it, Trump:

• Downplayed the severity of the murder of a journalist by asserting that “Representatives of Saudi Arabia say that Jamal Khashoggi was an ‘enemy of the state’ and a member of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
• Hypes MBS’s ‘vigorous denial,’ and plays down the intelligence community’s confidence in the Crown Prince’s guilt: “Maybe he did, and maybe he didn’t!”
• Attributes his reluctance to sanction Saudi Arabia to the lie that the kingdom has agreed to spend $450 billion in the U.S.

From Brian: At a minimum, incoming House intelligence committee Chairman Adam Schiff should schedule an open hearing with CIA Director Gina Haspel and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, demand the intelligence community turn over all documents pertaining to Khashoggi’s murder, and work with other chairmen to access Trump’s personal and business tax records. We need to know what Trump knew, when he knew it, and whether Trump and Jared Kushner are acting like Saudi clients because they have personal financial interests in helping MBS get away with murder.

This past spring, President Trump asked then-White House Counsel Don McGahn why he had not ordered the Justice Department to prosecute Hillary Clinton and former FBI Director James Comey. McGahn reportedly demurred, arguing that it could be an impeachable abuse of power to order the Justice Department to prosecute anyone, but now we know that, behind the scenes, Trump tried to make good on his public threats to jail his enemies. In possibly related news, Trump’s attorneys submitted his answers to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s written questions today.

The House oversight committee will investigate Ivanka Trump’s use of private email to do government business when Democrats take over in January. Friendly reminder that the current oversight chairman is Trey “Benghazi” Gowdy, who used to pretend to care about emails quite a bit. He is fully empowered to begin that investigation right now, and the reporters he led around by the nose for years are free to ask him why he misled them.

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has asked the Justice Department’s internal watchdog to investigate whether acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker improperly breached Mueller’s investigation when he was Jeff Sessions’s chief of staff, or improperly communicated with the White House about the investigation at any time. Good.

Whatever mischief/corruption/crimes Whitaker has gotten himself mixed up in, a new filing from the special counsel’s office suggests Mueller believes his investigative authority remains intact for now.

In 2014, Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith (R-MS) posted a photo of herself and a notorious neo-Confederate wearing Confederate hats inside the home of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy. Her caption? “Mississippi history at its best!” Next week, she faces a run-off against Democrat Mike Espy, an African American former congressman. Several of her corporate donors have pulled their support for her and asked for their donations to be refunded. Vote her out.

A federal judge has ordered the Trump administration to temporarily halt implementation of its asylum ban, and may make the injunction permanent, ripping the administration for “impos[ing] a condition that Congress has expressly forbidden.” The rule was written to prohibit migrants and refugees who reach the border between official ports of entry from seeking asylum.

The Trump administration has officially come out in opposition to Russia’s bid to lead Interpol.

A gunman killed three people at a Chicago hospital on Wednesday, starting with his former fiance, Dr. Tamara O'Neal. An analysis by the pro-reform organization Everytown for Gun Safety has shown that the majority of mass shootings are tied to domestic violence.

CDC says throw away all your E-coli Romaine (again) and this time deep clean your fridge. From Brian: You should really be eating cruciferous greens anyhow.

A goat gave birth to a half-pig/half-human looking mutant triggering mild panic that Satan may have risen. W tried to warn us.

Confederate sympathizer Cindy Hyde-Smith will debate Mike Espy tonight, ahead of Tuesday’s Mississippi Senate runoff election.

The libertarian candidate who threw Georgia’s secretary of state election into a run-off, scheduled for December 4, has endorsed Democrat John Barrow over Republican Brad Raffensperger. Remember how Georgia’s outgoing secretary of state rigged his own gubernatorial election by disenfranchising hundreds of thousands of black voters in Georgia? Don’t let history repeat itself!

Pitch in → votesaveamerica.com/donate

How many years might air pollution be shaving off your life? Using global and U.S. data from the University of Chicago, the Washington Post created cool-but-kinda-depressing visualizations, which will hopefully accelerate efforts to reduce fine-particle emissions world-wide. The numbers “reflect what could be expected if people spend their entire lives breathing the average amount of pollution that was measured in their region during each year in the study. People can change the air, and in many places they have.”

Earlier this year, Seema Verma, President Trump’s director of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, approved a waiver allowing Arkansas to impose work requirements on beneficiaries of the state’s Medicaid expansion. Now, the state has made it extraordinarily difficult for beneficiaries to verify their employment status. In the state with the lowest Internet penetration in the country, Medicaid recipients can only report their work hours online, and on a website that shuts down for maintenance every day between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m. More than 12,000 people have been purged from the state’s Medicaid rolls, many of whom are compliant with the work requirements.

Read →

Are you constantly losing it?

If it’s about politics, take a number, but if you’re actually losing your stuff, Tile will change your life. Tile’s small Bluetooth trackers pair with an app connecting you to the world’s largest lost-and-found community, making it easy to find everything that matters. No more lost keys, wallet, dignity, etc. Stop losing it over losing it.

Hurry now for Tile's Early Black Friday Sale and get a FREE Echo Dot →

Ongoing litigation around the administration’s attempt to compromise the decennial Census with a citizenship question suggests Trump clearly believes that the Supreme Court is in his pocket and that at least four of the Supreme Court’s five conservatives are comfortable there.

Read →

What a Day will return on Monday. Happy Thanksgiving!

Did someone forward you this email? Sign up to get What A Day in your inbox!

Want to advertise with us? What are you waiting for?!