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biofunmy · 5 years ago

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NIDA Put A Pharma Lobbyist On A Drug Abuse Panel And Recovery Advocates Are Furious

Appointment of a former pharmaceutical lobbyist to the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s top advisory body has outraged recovery advocates, who see the industry as responsible for the nationwide overdose crisis that claimed more than 67,000 lives last year.

The appointment of Jessica Hulsey Nickel to NIDA’s National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse was announced last Thursday. Nickel, 43, is the head of the Washington DC-based Brimley Group lobbying firm and the nonprofit Addiction Policy Forum.

“I am so deeply honored to be a member of the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse and join such an established group of scientific experts and leaders,” Hulsey sent in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News. “Having been an advocate in this field for over 25 years, I am inspired by my fellow advisory council members who are dedicated to helping the tens of millions of families who are impacted by addiction and erasing the stigma associated with substance use disorders.”

From 2014 to 2017, Nickel was a registered lobbyist for Alkermes, makers of the addiction treatment drug, Vivitrol, which has attracted controversy over misleading marketing aimed at judges and jails. Her current nonprofit, the Addiction Policy Forum, receives controversial funding from an industry group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). The funding helps the group run an addiction recovery support effort and phone helpline.

Now her appointment to the NIDA panel has drawn criticism from drug use recovery advocates over her ties to industry funding and her links to a 2018 lobbying campaign led by PhRMA against Minnesota’s tax on opioid drugs.

“It’s disgusting. Why should the industry that created the problem have a seat on a drug abuse advisory panel,” Emily Walden of Fed Up!, a recovery advocate coalition that accepts no money from the pharmaceutical industry, told BuzzFeed News. Walden’s son died of an opioid overdose in 2012.

“People’s children might be alive if it weren’t for the industry pushing these drugs in the first place,” she said.

Drug overdose deaths have increased by more than four times between 1999 and 2017, according to the CDC, leading to over 400,000 fatalities due to opioids alone. The increase is widely tied to widespread prescriptions of opioid painkiller pills — now central to a massive court case against drug makers — that saw people turn to heroin and even more deadly fentanyl opioids as increased prescribing controls led the pill supply to dry up in the last five years.

Last November, Nickel became embroiled in Minnesota’s legislative fight over a state tax on opioids, offering to accompany PhRMA representatives who opposed the tax to a meeting with lawmakers. The opioid tax has since passed and has added about $21 million to Minnesota’s funding for drug recovery. The meeting ended up being cancelled, and Nickel told news outlets that she took no position on the bill, but recovery advocates saw her willingness to accompany pharmaceutical industry representatives in opposing the bill as a sign of mixed motives. “Sometimes our resistance to working with new partners is an old way of thinking,” she told the New York Times, in response to criticism of working with industry.

“Our lawmakers asked us who is this person flying in from Washington to tell us about recovery, and we told them not to meet with her, that she doesn’t represent the community,” addiction counselor Randy Anderson of Bold North Recovery and Consulting in Minneapolis told BuzzFeed News.

“They lobbied hard against the bill,” Anderson said. “It’s very disappointing that NIDA would put this person on advisory panel.”

Two weeks after the proposed November meeting, the Addiction Policy Forum received a multimillion dollar donation from PhRMA, “to fund state and local programs, as well as support for new public policies that help families and individuals impacted by the crisis.”

That funding, and its timing, drew another wave of criticism from recovery advocates.

“Why is PhRMA funding state and local programs through Addiction Policy Forum rather than through the states, counties and municipalities themselves,” asked Daniel Busch of FED UP! in a December blog post. “The answer is that pharmaceutical industry support for APF is dirt cheap compared to the money the pharmaceutical industry should be paying to fund state, county, and municipal programs.”

In April, Anderson traveled to Washington D.C. to protest Nickel’s testimony in Congress at a hearing.

In her biography sent to BuzzFeed News, Nickel noted that her parents both suffered from drug use disorders. She also serves on the board of directors for the DEA Educational Foundation and sits on the Recovery Ohio Advisory Council.

“Jessica receives no direct payment from the pharmaceutical industry,” Addiction Policy Forum chief of staff, Jay Ruais, told BuzzFeed News by email. Nickel received more than $189,000 in salary from the nonprofit in 2017, according to IRS tax forms, a year when its total revenue was $4.5 million. The group asked for an extension on filing its 2018 tax forms, which record the first year of PhRMA donations, so Nickel’s new salary will not be made public until November.

Recent complaints have also surfaced about around 20 job losses at the nonprofit over the last year. Ruais defended the moves, saying, “Our 24/7 helpline is staffed by a dedicated team of 12, including an addiction psychiatrist, a PhD clinical supervisor, and other specialists in the field. This is the largest team we have fielded on the helpline, having grown to meet the needs of those calling for help.”

As for NIDA, “The process for appointment to the National Advisory Council on Drug Abuse is extensive,” said institute chief of staff Jack Stein in a statement sent to BuzzFeed News. He added “we look for expertise in areas of science that are most relevant to the Institute’s mission—currently, there are several members with expertise related to the opioid crisis…because of the focus on this area of science.”

Current lobbyists are not allowed to serve on the council, Stein added, and members are required to fill out financial conflict of interest disclosure forms.

Chaired by NIDA director Nora Volkow, who received a “Pillars of Excellence” award from the Addiction Policy Forum in 2018, the advisory council has 17 members, most of them public health researchers or officials. The one pharmaceutical industry representative on the council is neuroscientist Christian Heidbreder, chief scientific officer of Indivior Inc., maker of the widely used opioid-addiction treatment Suboxone.

Indivior was indicted in April, “for engaging in an illicit nationwide scheme to increase prescriptions of Suboxone,” according to the Justice Department.

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theconservativebrief · 6 years ago

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‘The NRA has fallen into a public relations trap, and the Russians knew damn well what they were doing…’

Robert Mueller screen shot (NBC/Youtube)

(Greg Gordon and Peter Stone, McClatchy Washington Bureau) For months, the National Rifle Association has had a stock answer to queries about an investigation into whether Russian money was funneled to the gun rights group to aid Donald Trump’s presidential campaign.

The NRA, which spent $30 million-plus backing Trump’s bid, has heard nothing from the FBI or any other law enforcement agency, spokesman Andrew Arulanandam reiterated in an email the other day.

Legal experts, though, say there’s an easy explanation for that. They say it would be routine for Justice Department special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators, who are looking at the NRA’s funding as part of a broader inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. elections, to secretly gain access to the NRA’s tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service.

On the returns, the group was required to identify its so-called “dark money” donors — companies and wealthy individuals who financed $21 million of the group’s publicly disclosed pro-Trump spending, as well as its multimillion-dollar efforts to heighten voter turnout. The NRA’s nonprofit status allows it to shield those donors’ names from the public, but not the IRS.

A central question for Mueller’s office is whether any of the confidential donors’ names hold clues that could enable investigators to trace a donation camouflaged to hide its Russian origins — such as a shell company that might be the end point in a chain of offshore transactions.

It is illegal for foreign funds to be spent to influence U.S. elections.

Prosecutors’ requests to federal magistrates or judges for access to tax information are usually made “entirely in the background, with no notice to the subject of the investigation,” said David Axelrod, a Columbus, Ohio, lawyer who previously prosecuted cases for the Justice Department’s Tax Division.

The main focus of Mueller’s inquiry, as McClatchy reported in January, has been whether Alexander Torshin, deputy governor of Russia’s central bank and a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, arranged for Russian money to flow through the gun rights group to aid Trump, people familiar with the inquiry say.

Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon said in a statement to McClatchy that if investigators haven’t yet obtained a list of the NRA’s secret donors, it’s a vital step for determining if Russians “used shell companies as part of a scheme to influence the 2016 election.”

“Investigators must follow the money wherever it leads to understand the full story of Russia’s attack on our democracy,” said Wyden, a member of the Senate Intelligence Committee that is examining Russia’s election interference.

U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded Russia’s intervention was aimed at helping Trump defeat Democrat Hillary Clinton, whose outspoken advocacy for stricter gun control laws won the enmity of the NRA even as her criticism of Putin estranged the Kremlin.

The NRA’s general counsel, John Frazer, said in a flurry of letters with Wyden earlier this year that the group’s donations from Russia during the 2016 election cycle totaled $2,500, but did not reveal the extent to which the group traces the true origins of its $350 million in annual funding.

A spokesman for Mueller’s office has declined to comment on the NRA inquiry, which the sources described on condition of anonymity because it is confidential.

Still unclear is just how and why the nation’s leading gun rights lobby became entangled in Mueller’s sweeping investigation that has preoccupied the president and gripped the nation. The question is, did substantial Russian money find its way into the group’s coffers – and if so, to what extent were NRA officials or the group’s allies aware of it?

Steve Hall, a former chief of the CIA’s Russia operations, suspects that NRA board members and current and former officers may have been duped over several years into playing a role in a Kremlin-directed intelligence operation that eventually offered the potential for both a communication line to Trump’s team and a way to put money behind his campaign.

He said he suspects that current and former NRA leaders failed to recognize that the Kremlin saw their group as a tool for its “dangerous propaganda machine. … That’s the most innocent explanation: The NRA got snookered.”

Still, said Hall, who retired from the agency in 2015, the NRA-Russian connection bears close examination by Mueller.

“It’s just so insidious, and it sort of ticks all the boxes: connections to the current administration, major backer of then-candidate Trump, the Russians wanting to get in and manipulate our own political system.”

Torshin has drawn scrutiny in part because Spanish prosecutors accused him of money-laundering and also because he cultivated relationships with the NRA that nearly earned him a meeting with Trump.

He befriended then-NRA President David Keene beginning in 2011, became a lifetime member of the group and attended a string of NRA national conventions in the ensuing years. That led to Moscow visits by Keene and other NRA heavyweights in 2013 and 2015 to meet with a Russian gun rights group that Torshin was instrumental in forming and later with a deputy prime minister.

The Spanish prosecutors, who have cooperated with the FBI for years, say Torshin has a dark side. They have accused him of laundering money for the Russian mob, an allegation Torshin has denied.

Last month during a visit to Washington, chief Spanish prosecutor Jose Grinda spent several hours meeting with FBI officials, according to two people familiar with his itinerary. Both sources spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter.

Grinda also met with journalists at the Hudson Institute, where he revealed that a few months ago he provided the FBI with 33 audio recordings of Torshin, including one in which a since-convicted Russian money launderer called him “godfather,” according to Yahoo News.

On April 6, the Treasury Department included Torshin on a list of Russians sanctioned in response to the Kremlin-ordered invasion of eastern Ukraine, Moscow’s meddling in the 2016 elections and other aggressive actions. In light of all of the revelations about Torshin, the NRA re-evaluated its relationship with him. His NRA membership is now “frozen,” spokesman Arulanandam said.

Hall, who worked earlier as the CIA’s Moscow station chief, believes that Torshin’s involvement with the NRA was no accident. Nor were meetings between NRA representatives and Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin and even Sergei Rudov, manager of a far-right Russian religious foundation, he said.

It looks like the Kremlin was pulling the strings at every turn, in a country where that happens “to a degree that cannot even be dreamed of here,” Hall said. “Everybody knows the consequences of not doing what the Kremlin wants you to do.”

John Aquilino, a former NRA spokesman, also is baffled by the NRA’s outreach to Torshin and Moscow.

“The NRA has fallen into a public relations trap, and the Russians knew damn well what they were doing,” Aquilino said in a phone interview. “The NRA was naive and got hoodwinked.

“The NRA and the gun control issue is a perfect example of an issue that would fire up the populace and sow discord,” Aquilino said. He pointed to the fact that a Russian troll farm bought dozens of Facebook ads on gun rights as part of a 2016 social media blitz aimed at dividing Americans and helping Trump.

But Michael Carpenter, a senior Pentagon and National Security Council official specializing in Russia issues during the Obama administration, said a relationship between Russia and the NRA would be “mutually beneficial.”

Carpenter tweeted Monday that “NRA lawyers know how to use Google and were no doubt familiar with their contacts’ links to the Kremlin and to organized crime.”

The NRA, a flashpoint for controversy given its opposition to gun control legislation, has been resolute about protecting the anonymity of most of its donors to its lobbying arm, the Institute for Legislative Action. However, the institute has trumpeted pledges by some gun makers, such as Sturm, Ruger and Co.’s August 2016 commitment of $2 from each gun sale, with a goal to raise $4 million.

Where potential financial crimes are involved, neither the NRA nor any other group can protect the identities of large dark-money donors from investigators, even if the fortress-like IRS holds the records. Investigators need only show “a reasonable cause to believe” that the information sought is relevant to a federal crime — a lower threshold than that required for a search warrant.

FBI and IRS agents collaborating on follow-the-money investigations commonly use “secret subpoenas, tax orders and other investigative techniques to collect an extraordinary amount of financial information without their target even knowing that the investigation exists,” said one former senior federal prosecutor, who spoke on condition of anonymity due to sensitive relationships with investigators.

Michael Zeldin, a former senior Justice Department official who oversaw money-laundering investigations, said that “it would be basic blocking and tackling for the prosecutors to seek all relevant tax returns.”

If the tax filings identified a donor as a shell company, he said, the next step would be to “determine how difficult it will be to trace” the true source of the money.

Torshin’s enthusiastic overtures to the NRA energized a number of the group’s leaders to visit Russia. During a 2013 trip, Torshin introduced Keene and conservative operative Paul Erickson to his group, the Right to Bear Arms, and Maria Butina, a protege who headed the group. Butina soon enrolled as a graduate student in the United States, where she was awarded lifetime membership in the NRA and became a fixture at the group’s meetings.

In 2015, the Russians lavishly wined and dined a second NRA delegation that included high-dollar NRA fundraiser Joe Gregory and Pete Brownell, the head of a major U.S. firearms firm who later became the NRA’s president.

A meeting between the second delegation and Deputy Prime Minister Rogozin, who oversaw Russia’s defense and firearms industries, has drawn sharp criticism from Kremlin analysts because Rogozin had been placed under U.S. sanctions.

Ex-CIA Russia specialist Hall said he cannot fathom what the NRA officials hoped to obtain from Russia; Putin opposes arming his citizenry with more than hunting rifles.

Russia, though, may have had an agenda for its gun makers.

The NRA visit included a tour of the Russian firearms manufacturer Orsis, which also was placed under U.S. sanctions in 2014, perhaps to highlight Moscow’s hopes that victory by the right candidate could bring those curbs to an end.

**MORE COVERAGE OF THE NRA at LibertyHeadlines.com**

Carpenter, the former Obama administration official, said Moscow had also sought to lift earlier limits on Russian gun imports from companies including the iconic Kalashnikov. But easing the restrictions “obviously wasn’t in the interest of U.S. gun manufacturers,” he said.

“So Russia turned to the NRA and other gun enthusiasts to try to promote the issue,” he said. “At the time, Dmitry Rogozin was overseeing this effort.”

The Torshin-led mating dance between Moscow and the NRA culminated at the NRA’s convention in Louisville, Ky., in late May 2016, when Trump received an early endorsement from the pro-gun goliath.

Torshin tried unsuccessfully that week to arrange a personal meeting with Trump, but he did cadge a short chat with Donald Trump Jr., an avid hunter. Trump Jr.’s lawyer told McClatchy it was mostly just “small talk” about guns.

During that same time span, Erickson and Torshin each floated proposals with Trump campaign officials for a pre-election meeting between Putin and Trump, an idea that did not gain traction.

After the election, Torshin came to Washington in February 2017 to attend the annual National Prayer Breakfast, an event where he’d been a regular for more than a half dozen years, Erickson said.

Torshin also was feted at a four-hour Capitol Hill dinner organized by George O’Neill Jr., a Rockefeller heir. Attendees included Erickson and Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher of California, considered by some analysts to be Putin’s best friend in Washington.

Rohrabacher, in a phone interview last year, said that conservative American gun rights groups no longer look at Russia with Cold War angst, but rather “in friendly terms.” He remembered meeting Torshin in Moscow a few years earlier, calling him a “mover and shaker.”

Torshin’s 2017 visit to the U.S. would be his last for awhile. The sanctions bar him from entering the United States.

(Peter Stone is a McClatchy special correspondent. Michael Woodel contributed to this report.)

Original Source -> Mueller Team Likely Accessed NRA’s IRS Filings, Donors

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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How Trumps NASA Nominee Used a Nonprofit He Ran to Benefit Himself

Rep. James Bridenstine (R-Okla.) is a former Navy pilot with virtually no management experience in any large organization. But the Oklahoma Republican has been tapped by President Donald Trump to take over the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), a federal agency with a budget of $18.5 billion, 18,000 federal workers, and over 60,000 contract employees.

For this lack of technical experiencealong with a skepticism of climate change and opposition to LGBT rights Bridenstine has faced sharp criticism on the Hill. But another issue may soon end up complicating his nomination.

An investigation and review of public records by the Project On Government Oversight shows that, prior to his time in Congress, Bridenstine led a small non-profit organization into hefty financial losses. Some of the losses involved the use of the non-profits resources to benefit a company that Bridenstine simultaneously co-owned and in which hed invested substantial sums of his own money.

Bridenstine, whose bid to be NASAs next leader was advanced this week by Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), has vehemently denied mismanaging the non-profit: the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. His stake in the separate company, the Rocket Racing League, has been well known. But the fact that he was using the Museums resources to benefit that company has not previously been covered by the press and now raises red flags for tax law experts.

"This is a classic example of the use of a charity's assets for private benefit," said Marc Owens, an expert on tax law at the firm Loeb & Loeb and former head of the Internal Revenue Services's non-profit compliance division. "This could have jeopardized the Museum's status as a tax-exempt organization" under the IRS code since its resources were used to provide him a significant private benefit.

Evidence of Bridenstines self-dealing dates back to December 2008, when the Museum, under his leadership, put its own cash reserves on the line to bring the struggling Rocket Racing League a company set up to race rocket-powered aircraft before live audiences to an air show in Tulsa in 2010. It was the first and only air show the Museum ever organized. And though it was billed as a stop on the Leagues 2010 World Exhibition Tour, there was no tour beyond Tulsa.

The show was a boost for Rocket Racing League, which had, to that point, disappointed investors and struggled with technological mishaps. At the event, the Rocket Racing League would have more than one racer in the airone of whom was from Bridenstines own team. Using rocket-powered aircraft, pilots flew through virtual 3-D rings on an aerial race course that could be seen on a pilots display. The League aimed for a NASCAR-like experience for spectators.

But the air show was a financial loser for the Museum, costing it about $20,000 more than it generated, according to IRS filings. This, and other spending initiatives put the Museumwhich typically had annual revenues around $1 million$308,000 in debt in 2010. Two years earlier, it had run a surplus of $73,000.

A big chunk of the expenses associated with the air show are left undetailed by the Museum in its annual filing with the Internal Revenue Service. There were roughly $372,000 in payments related to the air show described only as other direct expenses.

On its 2010 annual filing with the IRS, the Museum checked no in response to a question whether it was a party to a business transaction with an entity owned by an officer of the non-profit. And when asked by the Project On Government Oversight whether Bridenstine directed payments to his rocket team or the League, the Museum did not respond.

The League itself no longer exists, having gone out of business in 2012, the year Bridenstine was elected to Congress.

Whether the Rocket Racing League was or was not paid directly by the Museum would be relevant to report, Owens said. He added that not enough is known to say whether the Museum correctly answered the question. Regardless, the expenditures on the event itself appeared to be "a misuse of the charity's assets." since the event was organized to benefit his company, Owens said.

Bridenstine was pushed out of the Museum in August 2010, just months after the air show. His tenure as its executive director proved controversial when he ran for Congress in 2012, with some members of the Museums board publicly critical of him for his handling of the books.

The finances and certainly the financial reporting were arguably the worst they had been in recent years, board member and former petroleum executive Jim Bertelsmeyer told The Tulsa World. While I respect Jims service to our Country as an aviator, I cant imagine how he is qualified to run a Congressional District if, in my judgment, he cant effectively manage our Air and Space Museum.

In a statement, the chairman of the Museums board came to Bridenstines defense, praising the air show event and saying he was not terminated but voluntarily resignedin order to follow his orders in the Navy Reserve.

Bridenstines congressional communications director said, The concerns you have raised were used as a line of political attacks during the 2012 election cycle, and were fully refuted by the Tulsa Air and Space Museum and Planetarium Board.

Bridenstine, however, left the Museum at the same time as two employees hed hiredthe financial controller and the director of marketing. Unlike Bridenstine, they were not members of the Navy Reserve. A source familiar with Bridenstines departure, who requested anonymity out of fear of angering Bridenstine, said that the board effectively requested their resignation.

A MOVE TO THE D.C.

Bridenstine was elected to the House of Representatives in November 2012. He brought with him the Museums former director of marketing, who is now one of his top congressional staffers and who would move over to NASA if he is confirmed.

Bridenstine was tapped to head NASA in the fall of 2017. And with NASAs Acting Administrators looming retirement at the end of the month, pressure is building for someone to take NASAs reins.

But the agency faces especially sensitive challenges regarding its spending, its watchdog wrote in November 2017, making it vital that the next administrator has a strong track record in running large organizations. And staff on the Senate Commerce Committee, which has jurisdiction over NASA, have asked Museum to provide information on its financial relationship with the League. So far, the Museum has been unresponsive.

What is publicly known is that Bridenstines relationship with the League dates back to 2006, when, according to the Greater Tulsa Reporter, he first bought shares in the privately-held company at a severely-discounted rate when he was still a Navy pilot. Bridenstine also assembled one of the leagues half-dozen teams, naming it after himself: Bridenstine Rocket Racing.

In a July 2008 article, before he started working at the Museum, The New York Times wrote that Bridenstine was drawn to the challenge of a new kind of flying and what he saw as the financial opportunities of being involved with a sport from its inception.

He told The Tulsa World that he sold four houses he owned in California and a ranchette in Nevada to raise the money to buy shares in the League. And he didnt let go of them when he turned his attention to Congress. In 2012, as a candidate for the House, Bridenstine listed his ownership in the League as between $50,001 and $100,000, according to his financial disclosure form.

But the company was struggling financially. While the League brought in millions of dollars in venture capital, year after year, it had to delay plans to start exhibitions and races.

After attracting $5.5 million in investments in July 2009, it was under severe pressure to show substantial progress in its operations. That November, Bridenstine met with the Leagues CEO to convince him to have an event in Tulsa, according to The Tulsa World. In February 2010, the Tulsa Museum announced it would partner with the League for the first exhibition flight of two rocket racers flying at the same time.

The goal, according to Space.com, was to "build up the league's fan base, in addition to perfecting operations and technologies, before the league's official launch in 2012."

Instead of officially launching in 2012, however, it filed for dissolution.

UNDER SCRUTINY

During a November 2017 Senate hearing on his nomination, Bridenstine was asked about the financial losses detailed in the Museums annual IRS filings.

He gave various answers. To Sen. Gary Peters (D-Mich.), he said, there was a noncash loss from the depreciation of capital assets. And from a document based on that, [my political opponents] tried to accuse me of having lost money for the Museum, which is absolutely not the case. An analysis done by congressional staff and obtained by POGO shows, in fact, the Museum ran large financial deficits under Bridenstine.

At the same hearing, Bridenstine gave Senator Bill Nelson (D-Florida), a different response: We had a number of big, big projects that we were investing in. And yes, we had cash reserves to do that.

Some of those projects, according to Bridenstine, included an effort to acquire a retiring space shuttle for the City of Tulsa that would be at the Tulsa Air and Space Museum. That effort failed.

The other big project, he said, was the 2010 air show.

Additional scrutiny over his past managerial record, could complicate Bridenstines nomination prospects. He has an array of backers, from former Speaker of the House and space aficionado Newt Gingrich to the conservative Family Research Council. But even his supporters have raised red flags about his resume.

In an 2017 email exchange between Gingrich and NASA consultant Charles Millerwhich was obtained by POGO but first reported by PoliticoMiller told Gingrich: Assuming we get Bridenstine for Admin (fingers crossed), we are going to need a NASA Deputy Administrator that has Bridenstines back, and who has skills/strengths that offsets Bridenstines weaknesses.

Miller wrote that Bridenstine does not have significant knowledge and experience with how NASA works or Deep technical knowledge in aerospace systems.

Bridenstine has little of either, Miller wrote.

Read more: https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-trumps-nasa-nominee-used-a-nonprofit-he-ran-to-benefit-himself

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everettwilkinson · 7 years ago

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WHITE HOUSE ‘squeezes’ Jeff Flake — No new timetable for health care vote — SECRET SERVICE v. Jay Sekulow — BIDEN’s new book — CAITLIN HAYDEN welcomes a daughter — B’DAY: Kayla Tausche

Good Monday morning. SIREN — ALEX ISENSTADT: “White House squeezes Jeff Flake”: “The White House has met with at least three actual or prospective primary challengers to Arizona Sen. Jeff Flake in recent weeks, a reflection of Donald Trump’s strained relations with the senator and the latest sign of the president’s willingness to play hardball with lawmakers who cross him — even Republican incumbents. Flake, a longtime Trump critic who refused to endorse the president during the 2016 campaign, is one of a handful of undecided Republican votes on the Obamacare repeal effort. He’s also one of the most vulnerable Republicans up for reelection in 2018.

“Since taking office, Trump has spoken with Arizona state Treasurer Jeff DeWit, a top official on his 2016 campaign, on at least two occasions, according to two sources familiar with the talks. Since June, White House officials have also had discussions with former state Sen. Kelli Ward, who has announced her bid, and former Arizona GOP Chairman Robert Graham, who like DeWit is exploring a campaign.” http://politi.co/2tid77g

Story Continued Below

— IF TRUMP BACKS a challenger to Flake, it will be a big, big deal. The White House merely meeting with candidates is certain to raise ire in the Senate Republican Conference. Loyalty is a big deal in the Senate. The NRSC vociferously tries to head off primary challenges, and senators often bristle when outsiders try to displace one of their own. Despite apparent ideological differences with the White House, Flake is a pretty popular senator. We can’t imagine Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) will be happy with this. Bottom line: Trump needs McConnell in order to get virtually anything done in Congress. And this is sure to get him riled up. BUT, BUT, BUT … The Trump team has threatened and ultimately abandoned primary challenges in the past.

IMPORTANT READ — MCCAIN COULD BE OUT FOR TWO WEEKS — “McCain’s Surgery May Be More Serious Than Thought, Experts Say,” by NYT’s Denise Grady and Robert Pear: “The condition for which Senator John McCain had surgery on Friday may be more serious than initial descriptions have implied, and it may delay his return to Washington by at least a week or two, medical experts said on Sunday. …

“The statement from Mr. McCain’s office said a two-inch blood clot was removed from ‘above his left eye’ during a “minimally invasive craniotomy with an eyebrow incision” at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in Phoenix, ‘following a routine annual physical.’ … A craniotomy is an opening of the skull, and an eyebrow incision would be used to reach a clot in or near the left frontal lobes of the brain, neurosurgeons who were not involved in Mr. McCain’s care said. …

“But many questions have been left unanswered, including whether Mr. McCain had symptoms that prompted doctors to look for the clot. In June, his somewhat confused questioning of James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, led to concerns about his mental status, which he later jokingly dismissed by saying he had stayed up too late watching baseball the night before. ‘Usually, a blood clot like this is discovered when patients have symptoms, whether it’s a seizure or headaches or weakness or speech difficulties,’ Dr. Baxi said. ‘Generally, it’s not found on a routine physical because doctors would not know to look for it.’” http://nyti.ms/2u0Rs0A

— A TWO-WEEK MCCAIN ABSENCE would put a vote during the first week of August. That’s a long time for this bill to linger. This timeline means the House would likely be forced back into session in August if the Senate passes its bill when McCain returns.

BY THE WAY … The Congressional Budget Office will not release a budgetary score of the healthcare bill today. Burgess and SMK say it could come Tuesday.

**SUBSCRIBE to Playbook: http://politi.co/2lQswbh

BURGESS EVERETT and SEUNG MIN KIM: “Obamacare repeal bill plunges into new uncertainty”: “Republicans’ long-held plans to repeal Obamacare are again in serious doubt, with no clear timetable for a Senate vote following the surprise news that John McCain will be out as he recovers from surgery. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) shelved a vote planned for this week following the disclosure of McCain’s procedure, which leaves the GOP clearly short of support to advance the bill. McConnell’s office could give no new schedule for the vote, and most on Capitol Hill are waiting for a pathology report to assess how long it will be before McCain returns after undergoing surgery to remove a blood clot above his eye.

“Privately, Republicans said the delay could be as little as a week as McCain recovers in Arizona, though others worried it could stretch for several weeks and jeopardize the entire repeal effort. … Whether the bill would advance even if McCain were in Washington is another question altogether, as the Arizona senator is one of more than half a dozen undecided Republicans, any one of whom could tank the bill.” http://politi.co/2uxiYFX

DOH! — “How the White House and Republicans underestimated Obamacare repeal,” by Nancy Cook and Burgess Everett: “The Trump transition team and other Republican leaders presumed that Congress would scrap Obamacare by President’s Day weekend in late February, according to three former Republican congressional aides and two current ones familiar with the administration’s efforts. Republican leaders last fall planned a quick strike on the law in a series of meetings and phone calls, hoping to simply revive a 2015 repeal bill that Obama vetoed. Few in the administration or Republican leadership expected the effort to stretch into the summer months, with another delay announced this weekend, eating into valuable time for lawmakers to tackle tax reform, nominations or spending bills.

“‘It’s easier to rage against the machine when you’re not in control of the machine, No. 1. And the perception that we are in control of the machine is inaccurate,’ said Sen. Tim Scott (R-S.C.). ‘Needing 50 out of 52 members on the same page in the Senate? I think that is not being in control of the machine.’” http://politi.co/2v97w0v

— ANOTHER KEY QUOTE IN NANCY AND BURGESS’S STORY: Sen. David Perdue (R-Ga.): “I would have much preferred to start off with tax. But that wasn’t my decision. Tax is the heavy lift here. It’s not going to be easier than health care. And we’ve been doing this for seven months.”

A GOOD REMINDER: tax reform is going to be hard. Really hard.

NUMBERS DU JOUR: 9 LEGISLATIVE DAYS until the planned August recess. Still lingering: Obamacare repeal and replace, executive branch nominations and the debt ceiling. 53 LEGISLATIVE DAYS left in 2017, per the House’s calendar.

****** A message from the National Retail Federation: {Video} Small business owners work hard to build their businesses and turn their dreams into realities. Under the House-proposed Border Adjustment Tax, they are at risk to lost it all. Watch Vivian’s story. ******

TOUGH JOB – “Meet Obamacare repeal’s top salesman: Sen. John Cornyn faces his toughest task yet as the GOP’s whip,” by Seung Min Kim and Burgess Everett: “Senate Republicans are in a grumpy mood these days. Then there’s John Cornyn, who’s almost unfailingly optimistic about the GOP’s chances of passing its Obamacare repeal bill despite the increasingly long odds. ‘I mean, if you’re going to be in a leadership role, you don’t have the luxury of public hand-wringing,’ Cornyn, the Senate majority whip, said in a recent interview in his Capitol office. Whether he’s wringing his hands in private is another matter, but the Texas Republican is facing his toughest test yet in his 4 1/2 years as chief vote-counter for the Senate GOP: rounding up 50 votes to dismantle Obamacare. …

“Though Cornyn keeps a literal whip on his desk, his style isn’t heavy-handed; it’s more gentle pushing and information-dispensing, senators say. Cornyn acknowledges: ‘If you try to strong-arm a senator, they’re just as likely to push back or punch back.’ … In the POLITICO interview, Cornyn also essentially ruled out any bipartisan health care fixes with Democrats even if the GOP’s repeal effort fails, saying problems with Obamacare are too big to solve without major structural changes.” http://politi.co/2vsiKMV

— FRED BARNES in the WSJ: “Republicans Aren’t Team Players: GOP Senators who defect from ObamaCare repeal will hurt themselves, their party and the country” http://on.wsj.com/2t75hcg

BREAK IN — “Burglary at Heller’s Las Vegas office investigated,” by the Las Vegas Sun’s Ricardo Torres-Cortez: “Metro Police say they are investigating a Sunday morning burglary at U.S. Sen. Dean Heller’s southwest Las Vegas office. Officers were dispatched about 9 a.m. to Heller’s local office … Metro Lt. Patricia Spencer on Sunday night confirmed that ‘entry did occur’ at Heller’s office, but only said that the investigation was ongoing. Further details were not immediately available.” http://bit.ly/2u09oZ7

JARED WATCH — “Fate of Kushner’s security clearance could ultimately lie with Trump,” by Austin Wright and Josh Dawsey: “Kushner’s actions — including initially failing to disclose meetings with Russian officials — would be more than enough to cost most federal employees their security clearances, according to people familiar with the security-clearance process. … Not having a security clearance would hobble him from doing large swaths of his job. On many days, he receives classified briefings, according to a senior administration official — and he is often in the room with his father-in-law for sensitive decisions about classified issues. …

“Jamie Gorelick, a lawyer for Kushner, said her client had ‘prematurely’ filed the first security clearance application form but has since done everything possible to be accurate and transparent with his meetings. … Omitting facts from a security questionnaire could be disqualifying if it was part of a deliberate effort to conceal them, according to federal guidelines; an inadvertent omission would not be so costly. Similarly, making ‘prompt, good-faith efforts’ to correct the omission can mitigate security concerns.” http://politi.co/2thrgRW

FACT CHECK — “U.S. Secret Service rejects suggestion it vetted Trump son’s meeting,” by Reuters’ Arshad Mohammed and Howard Schneider: “The U.S. Secret Service on Sunday denied a suggestion from President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer that it had vetted a meeting between the president’s son and Russian nationals during the 2016 campaign. … In an emailed response to questions about [Jay] Sekulow’s comments, Secret Service spokesman Mason Brayman said the younger Trump was not under Secret Service protection at the time of the meeting, which included Trump’s son and two senior campaign officials. ‘Donald Trump, Jr. was not a protectee of the USSS in June, 2016. Thus we would not have screened anyone he was meeting with at that time,’ the statement said.” http://reut.rs/2tvSM9O

THE COST OF WAR — “President Trump’s Air War Kills 12 Civilians Per Day,” by Samuel Oakford in The Daily Beast: “Civilian casualties from the U.S.-led war against the so-called Islamic State are on pace to double under President Donald Trump, according to an Airwars investigation for The Daily Beast. Airwars researchers estimate that at least 2,300 civilians likely died from Coalition strikes overseen by the Obama White House—roughly 80 each month in Iraq and Syria. As of July 13, more than 2,200 additional civilians appear to have been killed by Coalition raids since Trump was inaugurated—upwards of 360 per month, or 12 or more civilians killed for every single day of his administration.” http://thebea.st/2upNNMq

MIDDLE EASTERN PALACE INTRIGUE — “UAE orchestrated hacking of Qatari government sites, sparking regional upheaval, according to U.S. intelligence officials,” by WaPo’s Karen DeYoung and Ellen Nakashima: “The United Arab Emirates orchestrated the hacking of Qatari government news and social media sites in order to post incendiary false quotes attributed to Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim Bin Hamad al-Thani, in late May that sparked the ongoing upheaval between Qatar and its neighbors, according to U.S. intelligence officials. Officials became aware last week that newly analyzed information gathered by U.S. intelligence agencies confirmed that on May 23, senior members of the UAE government discussed the plan and its implementation. The officials said it remains unclear whether the UAE carried out the hacks itself or contracted to have them done. … In a statement released in Washington by its ambassador, Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE said the Post story was ‘false.’” http://wapo.st/2t5IEVV

POLLS DU JOUR — “Americans Feel Good About the Economy, Not So Good About Trump,” by Bloomberg’s John McCormick: “Just 40 percent of Americans approve of the job he is doing in the White House, and 55 percent now view him unfavorably, up 12 points since December. Worse, even more — 61 percent — say the nation is headed down the wrong path, also up 12 points since December. … And despite his assurances that he and congressional Republicans will repeal Obamacare and replace it with a ‘beautiful’ new health care bill, 64 percent of Americans say they disapprove of his handling of the issue. That’s especially significant because health care topped unemployment, terrorism and immigration as the issue poll respondents chose as the most important challenge facing the nation right now.” https://bloom.bg/2vtqezb

–“Iowa Poll: As independents sour on Trump, disapproval rating tops 50%,” by Des Moines Register’s Jason Noble: “Self-identified independents have turned against Trump, with 59 percent now saying they disapprove of the job he’s doing compared with 35 percent who approve. In an Iowa Poll five months ago, his disapproval rating among independents was 50 percent, 9 percentage points lower than now.” http://dmreg.co/2vsnHoY

TRUMP’S MONDAY — The President will have lunch with Vice President Pence and then will meet with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson. Later in the day, he will take part in a “Made in America product showcase.”

THE JUICE …

— NYT: “Joe Biden’s New Book to Be Released in November,” by Concepcion de Leon: “On Monday, Flatiron Books revealed that the acquisition, which was first announced in April as part of a joint deal with Mr. Biden’s wife, Jill Biden (details about her book have yet to be given), would be titled ‘Promise Me, Dad: A Year of Hope, Hardship, and Purpose’ and be released on Nov. 14. In it, Mr. Biden will reflect on that painful year and the challenges he faced fulfilling his political duties while mourning the death of his son. …

“This fall Mr. Biden will also embark on a tour, traveling to 19 cities across the country, starting with New York on Nov. 13, to host panel discussions with local leaders. (The events will be overseen by Creative Artists Agency, which represents Mr. Biden.) He hopes to start conversations that go beyond ‘the 24-hour news cycle and 140-character arguments,’ a statement said. Tickets, which go on sale July 28, will include a copy of his book.” http://nyti.ms/2u0paDl

— THE BLUE DOGS, a group of conservative Democrats, gathered more than 250 people at the Greenbrier in West Virginia this weekend. Up for discussion: planning for 2018 and candidate recruitment. Rep. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), who is in charge of the PAC, and Rep. Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) headed up the weekend. House Minority Whip Steny Hoyer and Rep. Linda Sanchez (D-Calif.), both non-Blue Dog members, were special guests.

SPOTTED: Ryan Guthrie, Katreice Banks, Libby Greer, Dan Turton, Jeff Murray, Jay Vroom, Chris Long, Norberto Salinas, Jesse Price, Lee Friedman, Angela Reimer, Gordon Taylor, Matt Sulkala, David Burns, former Reps. Dennis Cardoza (D-Calif.) and Allen Boyd (D-Fla.), Kelley Williams and Jen McPhillips.

SPORTS BLINK — HELP ON THE WAY — WAPO: “Nationals acquire Sean Doolittle and Ryan Madson from Athletics in exchange for Blake Treinen, two others,” by Chelsea Janes: “For months, a deal to repair the Washington Nationals’ broken bullpen seemed inevitable, and Sunday, after months of frustration and speculation, they finally made one. The Nationals acquired right-hander Ryan Madson and left-hander Sean Doolittle from the Oakland Athletics in exchange for Blake Treinen, left-handed pitching prospect Jesus Luzardo, and 2016 second-round pick Sheldon Neuse. The move immediately adds two experienced relievers to the Nationals’ bullpen for the rest of this season and at least all of next, though the team will have a club option for Doolittle in 2019 and 2020, too. In other words, this is not just a patch — it is a legitimate upgrade around which the Nationals can build next season, too.” http://wapo.st/2uqoda0

PHOTO DU JOUR: President Donald Trump turns to the clubhouse crowd as he arrives to enter his presidential viewing stand on July 16 during the U.S. Women’s Open Golf tournament at Trump National Golf Club in Bedminster, New Jersey. | Carolyn Kaster/AP Photo

SUSAN GLASSER’S THE GLOBAL POLITICO – “Don’t Compare Trump to Nixon. It’s Unfair to Nixon”: “Are we watching Watergate the rerun? … [I]nevitably, the magazine articles and essays, radio talk shows and book lists all mention a single remarkable work: Elizabeth Drew’s Washington Journal. Drew, at the time the New Yorker’s Washington correspondent and host of a weekly interview show on PBS, wrote the journal as a real-time diary of how the American political world handled the spiraling investigations of 1973 and 1974 … [I]f anything, Drew has come to believe that the Trump investigation could yield even more serious abuse of power or failure to execute the office than the years’ worth of Nixon probes. What’s more, the Russia scandal, she says, ‘is in many ways more complicated than Watergate was.’” http://politi.co/2vt7Fev … Transcript http://politi.co/2u0np9g … Subscribe http://apple.co/2kJ9q1U

POLITICO HEALTH CARE GURU DAN DIAMOND has two major policy stories looking at the key drivers of health care costs and focuses on how big hospitals are increasingly being run like big businesses.

— “How hospitals got richer off Obamacare”: “The Affordable Care Act drove billions of dollars in new revenue to hospitals while cutting their charity care spending and protecting their valuable tax exemptions — and not necessarily making their communities healthier, a POLITICO investigation reveals. And while Sen. Chuck Grassley led the battle to crack down on not-for-profit hospitals ahead of Obamacare negotiations, local leaders have since suffered repeated defeats and no one in Washington has stepped forward to pick up the fight.” http://politi.co/2v8KG95

— “How Cleveland Clinic gets healthier while its neighbors stay sick”: “The Cleveland Clinic has brought patients, pride and revenue to this Midwestern city — but also stirred up tensions, as residents ask if the world-renowned Clinic is doing enough to save its local neighborhood, where many residents are poor, in ill health and worried about the gunshots they hear every night.” http://politi.co/2vtmEVD

WHAT MIKE FLYNN IS UP TO THESE DAYS – “Flynn returns to hometown, surfing in respite from scandal,” by AP’s Michelle R. Smith in Middletown, Rhode Island, and Jennifer McDermott in Providence: “Former national security adviser Michael Flynn, at the center of multiple probes into Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential election, seeks sanctuary from the swirling eddy of news coverage in the beach town where he grew up surfing and skateboarding, one of nine siblings crammed into a 1,200-square foot house. Middletown is his refuge and the ocean is his therapy, and he’s spent recent weeks here surfing and figuring out his path forward, according to friends and family members. …

“‘Have you seen that in the news? They talk about Mike as a traitor? The thought of that is absolutely insane to me,’ said older brother Jack. … Thomas A. Heaney Jr., a retired Army colonel who has known Flynn since they were 9 years old, said Flynn has been doing well and has begun work again as a consultant after shutting down his old firm. … Middletown could even become his permanent base, Heaney said. Flynn and his wife, Lori, who started dating as high school sophomores, grew up here and have deep family ties in the area.” With a great pic of Flynn surfing http://bit.ly/2vtfwZn

DATA DU JOUR — “South Carolina May Prove a Microcosm of U.S. Election Hacking Efforts,” by WSJ’s Alexa Corse: “To understand the scale of the hacking attempts against election systems in the 2016 presidential election, consider South Carolina. On Election Day alone, there were nearly 150,000 attempts to penetrate the state’s voter-registration system, according to a postelection report by the South Carolina State Election Commission. And South Carolina wasn’t even a competitive state. … In harder-fought Illinois, for instance, hackers were hitting the State Board of Elections ‘5 times per second, 24 hours per day’ from late June until Aug. 12, 2016, when the attacks ceased for unknown reasons, according to an Aug. 26, 2016, report by the state’s computer staff. Hackers ultimately accessed approximately 90,000 voter records.” http://on.wsj.com/2uyPzLG

DEEP DIVE – NATHAN HELLER in The New Yorker, “Mark as Read: What do we learn when our private e-mail becomes public?”: “Not long after the Enron Corporation imploded amid revelations of accounting fraud, in 2001, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seized the e-mail folders of a hundred and fifty one mostly high-ranking employees … The Enron archive came to comprise hundreds of thousands of messages, and remains one of the country’s largest private e-mail corpora turned public. … Only six per cent of the e-mails … had any greeting at all; most began in medias res. The employees most likely to use a friendly greeting were women not in positions of authority, followed by men in subservient positions. Powerful men were the most likely just to open an e-mail window and start typing. In some cases, an e-mail would simply be addressed ‘Guys.’” http://bit.ly/2upINYh

****** A message from the National Retail Federation: The overwhelming majority of retailers are small businesses, with more than 98% of all retail companies employing fewer than 50 people. While small in size, their voices are loud and clear when fighting to be heard on decisions and policies that impact their businesses and the customers they serve every day. Hear more industry stories on NRF’s Retail Gets Real podcast. ******

VALLEY TALK — “Google San Jose: Can the search giant prevent traffic, housing woes?” by San Jose Mercury News’ Ethan Baron: “Google will be traveling a razor’s edge of love and hate all the way to its planned new 20,000-worker San Jose campus as it brings jobs and star power to a city that needs both while delivering extra helpings of the ills that have sparked public ire against Silicon Valley’s big technology companies. The potential downsides to Google’s planned campus in the heart of downtown check all the boxes on the list of Bay Area horrors: escalating traffic, overburdened transit systems, skyrocketing housing costs, displacement of lower-income people.” http://bayareane.ws/2uyJfDH

ON THE WSJ OP-ED PAGE: “Why Europeans Oppose the Russia Sanctions Bill,” by Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference http://on.wsj.com/2vsVy0I

MEDIAWATCH — OOPS — “Dow Jones Inadvertently Exposed Some Customers’ Information,” by WSJ’s Robert McMillan: “An error by Dow Jones & Co. in configuring a cloud-computing service left addresses and other information about subscribers to some of its products, including The Wall Street Journal, exposed to possible unauthorized access. About 2.2 million subscribers’ records were affected, a Dow Jones spokesman said. Some of the records included customer names, usernames, email and physical addresses, and the last 4 digits of credit-card numbers, although some records were missing parts of that information … The exposed data was discovered by UpGuard Inc., a cybersecurity firm, which said they notified Dow Jones of the leak on June 5.” http://on.wsj.com/2uyztSl

FLAGGING FOR SPICER AND SANDERS — ABC NEWS TO LAUNCH A W.H. BRIEFING AFTER-SHOW — Per Morning Media’s Hadas Gold: “The new live digital show, launching today, is called ‘The Briefing Room,’ and will cover the ‘White House press briefings and the latest political reporting from Washington,’ the network announced. Following the briefings (when they actually happen), correspondents like Jonathan Karl, Cecilia Vega, Mary Bruce and Rick Klein will cover the “news and announcements from the press conference with a play-by-play rundown of the topics discussed from the podium and context on the current political climate.’”

— @PhilipRucker: “We saw President Trump & family watching @jessebwatters’s Fox show on jumbo TV aboard Air Force One tonight en route home from Bedminster.”

— “Top Republicans Aren’t Signing Up For Trump’s War With The Media,” by BuzzFeed’s Alexis Levinson: “While Trump spews bile and a narrative-hungry Twitter machine looks for evidence of a trend, Republican lawmakers on Capitol Hill are emphatically not on board with the president’s attacks and are, indeed, openly supportive of the free American press.” http://bzfd.it/2uqk0mP

–EMILY SCHULTHEIS has been named a 2017-18 Robert Bosch Foundation fellow and has arrived in Berlin, where she will be working on a year-long reporting project on populism and elections in Europe. She is a CBS News, National Journal and Politico alum and most recently covered the French elections. http://bit.ly/2u0OwBb

SPOTTED: Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and her husband on last night’s 8 p.m. American Airlines Boston to DC shuttle seated in the exit row.

TRANSITIONS — Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) has hired senior staff to prepare for his 2018 re-election campaign. Keren Dongo, a Kaine aide and deputy state director for Hillary’s 2016 Virginia campaign, will be campaign manager. Ian Sams, a Hillary and DNC alum and recent comms director for Tom Perriello’s Virginia governor campaign, will be comms director. Jenny Nadicksbernd, Kaine’s PAC director and longtime finance aide, will be finance director. Jess Reid, a DNC alum and Hillary’s 2016 Virginia digital director, will be digital director. Megan Apper, a BuzzFeed, Maggie Hassan and American Bridge alum, will be research director.

… Katherine Charlet has been named the inaugural director of the Washington-based Technology and International Affairs Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Charlet has spent the past decade at DoD and the White House and most recently was the principal director and acting deputy assistant secretary of defense for cyber policy. http://ceip.org/2upmdyI

WELCOME TO THE WORLD – OBAMA ALUMNI: Caitlin Hayden, an Obama NSC alumna who now works at Edelman, and Erlingur Erlingsson, deputy chief of mission at the Embassy of Iceland in DC, email friends and family: “On July 15, 2017 at 9:14 p.m., Erlingur and I were thrilled to welcome Sophie Ásta Erlingsson to the world, weighing 6 pounds and 9 ounces. … Sophie’s middle name was chosen in honor of Erlingur’s mother, whom we lost to cancer a year ago. Our hope is that we can raise Sophie to be the same kind of fearless, generous, loving woman that Ásta was and that my mother, Ramona, is.” Pics http://bit.ly/2vsegWo … http://bit.ly/2theR0l … http://bit.ly/2thrjNG

OUT AND ABOUT — SPOTTED on Saturday night at Obama alum Zaina Javaid’s 30th birthday party at a backyard in Bloomingdale: Amb. Pete Selfridge and Parita Shah, Mike Brush, Tim Hartz, Kaitlin Gaughran, Maju Varghese, Michael Donovan, Rachel Ruskin, Peter Velz, Desiree Barnes, Alex Evans, Jennifer Close, Elizabeth Pan, Morgan Finkelstein, Andy Estrada, Kate Berner, Charlie Fromstein, Alice Muglia, Hannah Orenstein, Bailey Cox, Kenny Thompson and Jeremy Slevin.

BIRTHDAY OF THE DAY: Kayla Tausche, CNBC Washington correspondent. How she’s celebrating: “Close friends, a glass of bourbon, and my balcony on the actual day. My husband and I will celebrate with a long weekend on Maryland’s Eastern Shore.” Read her Playbook Plus Q&A: http://politi.co/2uuquk4

BIRTHDAYS: Catherine Frazier, senior comms adviser for Sen. Cruz … Katie Zezima, who covers “drugs, guns, gambling & vice,” for WaPo, per her Twitter … former U.S. Treasurer Rosie Rios … Seth Bringman is 36 … David L. Wade … Reuters’ Mike Stone … Politico’s Caitlin O’Connell, Jessica Cuellar, Collin Greene and William Hackney … German Chancellor Angela Merkel is 63 … Kyle Dropp, co-founder and chief research officer at Morning Consult, is 31 … Opal Vadhan of HRC HQ (hat tip: Nick Merrill) … coach Kathy Kemper, a Washington fixture who hosts all sorts of gatherings with admin. officials, lawmakers and diplomats (h/t Juliet Eilperin) … Stacy Helen Schusterman (h/t Jewish Insider) … Axios’ Caitlin Owens … Eeda Wallbank … Ben Deutsch … Jon Graham … Cathie Levine Isay … Jon Monger … Jonathan Lee … Laura MacInnis … Rep. Katherine M. Clark (D-Mass.) is 54 … Matt Berger, senior adviser for strategic comms at Hillel International …

… Anna Bross, senior director of comms at The Atlantic … Andy Barr … Steve Spinner, founder and CEO of RevUp, the campaign fundraising software firm … Mercury’s Caitlin Klevorick … Ben Shannon, a manager in the health care practice at Burson-Marsteller in D.C. who formerly held multiple roles at HHS in the Obama Administration and worked on President Obama’s reelection campaign (h/ts Fabien Levy and Ben Chang) … Politico Europe’s Lawrence Wakefield … Dan Comstock is 33 … David Vandivier … Dani Simons … Shannan Butler Adler … Ben Softy … Sara Clinton Lowenstine … Steph Anderson … Cat Gross … Carter Baer … David A. Steinberg … Annabel Ascher … Myrna Lim … Shell’s Marnie Funk … Chris Buki, senior LA in House T&I Chairman Bill Shuster’s personal office, is 28 (h/t Walt Roberts) … Caroline Koss … Suzy Wagner … Nicole Tarbet … Bashir Rostom … Lizzie Cooper … Evi Wareka … Susan Kennedy … Rich Judge … Tony Sheehen (h/ts Teresa Vilmain)

SUBSCRIBE to the Playbook family: POLITICO Playbook http://politi.co/1M75UbX … New York Playbook http://politi.co/1ON8bqW … Florida Playbook http://politi.co/1OypFe9 … New Jersey Playbook http://politi.co/1HLKltF … Massachusetts Playbook http://politi.co/1Nhtq5v … Illinois Playbook http://politi.co/1N7u5sb … California Playbook http://politi.co/2bLvcPl … Brussels Playbook http://politi.co/1FZeLcw … All our political and policy tipsheets http://politi.co/1M75UbX

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nancy-astorga · 7 years ago

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The new face of Trump’s legal team has never done anything like this — and allies think he’s the perfect fit

When Jay Sekulow found himself backed into a corner during a heated interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday, he pulled out his inner Trump.

The host of “Fox News Sunday” was pressing Sekulow on President Donald Trump’s Friday tweet, in which Trump wrote: “I am under investigation.”

Wallace and Sekulow, a big time conservative lawyer who is quickly becoming the face of Trump’s legal team, went back and forth on the issue. Sekulow, while trying to explain why Trump wasn’t personally under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, found himself saying that Trump was under investigation. Twice.

“You’ve now said that he is being investigated,” Wallace said.

“No, Chris,” Sekulow replied. “Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand: We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States.”

“Sir, you’ve just said two times that he’s being investigated,” Wallace said.

As the president has done on many occasions, Sekulow then doubled- and tripled-down on his point even while his rhetoric from just moments before contradicted it. Trump was not under investigation, he reiterated time and time again.

And he became more forceful in each answer.

“I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works,” Sekulow said.

“If in fact it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigated for taking an action that an agency told him to take,” he continued, referring to Trump’s firing of James Comey as FBI director, which reportedly sparked the investigation into Trump. “So that is protected under the Constitution.”

By the time the testy exchange reached the question of whether Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller, Sekulow had turned his ire onto Wallace himself.

“Here’s what you’re trying to do, Chris,” Sekulow said.

“Now you’re reading minds again,” Wallace replied.

“No, Chris, I deal with fact and law,” Sekulow said. “You’re asking me to read people’s minds.”

It was the most notable moment from Sekulow’s wild tour across four of the five Sunday shows on his second week of appearing on such programs to defend his newest client, the president of the United States.

Without much fanfare or even notification, Sekulow had appeared on TV as a member of the legal team defending Trump from the increasingly pointed investigation into whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russian officials in the 2016 presidential election and, more recently, whether Trump himself committed obstruction of justice in his firing of Comey.

The recent addition to Trump’s legal team, which also includes his private attorney Marc Kasowitz and former US Attorney John Dowd, an expert in white-collar criminal law, happens to be the only member who has experience litigating before the Supreme Court. His record in those cases is eight wins and four losses.

But although that experience comes with an impressive record of victories, Sekulow has no experience in anything similar to the kind of battle that Trump is now facing.

Those who know Sekulow, however, aren’t surprised that he’s taking on Trump’s battle. And even though he has no experience in white-collar crime, some say he is the perfect choice to be the face of the president’s legal team.

Still, Sekulow is a controversial figure in his own right.

Through a spokesperson, Sekulow, in addition to anyone from the American Center for Law and Justice legal organization he heads, declined to comment for this story.

Who is he?

Jay Alan Sekulow, 61, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

A seminal moment for Sekulow happened in college, when the Jewish New Yorker underwent a spiritual awakening and found Jesus. It would become the starter for his involvement with the non-profit organization Jews for Jesus, which led him to his first battle in front of the Supreme Court. And, later, to his partnership with televangelist Pat Robertson and his crusade for causes important to the religious right.

But before he found himself arguing constitutional law before the nation’s highest court, Sekulow was an Atlanta-based tax attorney who ran his own law firm almost as soon as he left college.

Jeffrey Cohen, an Atlanta tax attorney, worked at Sekulow’s firm in the early 1980s. It wasn’t a fruitful partnership, as Cohen sued Sekulow after he failed to pay Cohen a promised year-end $20,000 bonus after an eight-month stint at the firm. Cohen won the suit, and he told Business Insider the jury gave him everything he wanted “plus attorney’s fees.” In 1991, he described the experience at Sekulow’s firm as “an eight-month nightmare.”

Cohen said he’s only spoken to Sekulow one time over the past three decades — a 10-second “cordial” exchange in the Atlanta airport. Although he sued Sekulow, Cohen said the two “never had a bad relationship” during his stint at the firm.

“We weren’t what I would call friends, we weren’t butting heads either,” he said.

Cohen described the young Sekulow as “fantastically successful.”

“One thing I’ll never forget about him was that given that he was younger than me,” Cohen said. “And I was young.”

He continued: “His law firm was very new, he hadn’t been practicing law a long time at all. Yet he was mind-numbingly successful at bringing in new clients, a number of clients. … He was very charming and an excellent business generator.”

The Atlanta tax attorney admitted to seeing some of the clips of Sekulow on TV defending Trump, expressing little surprise.

“This is a man who’s had his own television show, radio show, been in the public eye and he is very comfortable, evidently, in front of the camera, behind a microphone,” he said. “And I am not surprised at all that he is that smooth and eloquent as he was back then. He was a prodigy in terms of being impressive and charming and never at a loss for words. I compliment him highly from that standpoint.”

Things came to a quick crash for Sekulow from his early days in Atlanta. In 1986, after he and his associates were sued for fraud and securities violations related to a development project, Sekulow declared bankruptcy. Later that year, he signed on as general counsel for Jews for Jesus.

The following year, he won a 9-0 decision for the group at the Supreme Court, arguing in defense of Jews for Jesus’ right to hand pamphlets out at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was the first of 12 cases he’d argue before the Supreme Court over the next 21 years, almost all of which were similar in nature to the Jews for Jesus case.

In 1992, he joined forces with Robertson and became chief legal counsel for the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ), which was dubbed a conservative alternative to the American Civil Liberties Union. That organization has since expanded throughout the world to promote Christian and religious-right causes.

Sekulow has previously come under fire for reportedly using the ACLJ, where he is chief executive officer, and another legal nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), to build “a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia,” according to a 2005 story in Legal Times.

In 2011, a Tennessean investigation reported that the two non-profits paid out “$33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own” over a span of 13 years.

Both organizations have raked in millions of dollars.

The ACLJ, Bloomberg reported, pulled in more than $19 million in grants and contributions in 2015, the most recent year an IRS filing is available. Sekulow’s family members occupy many of the organization’s most important positions, including chief financial officer, chief executive officer, and director of major donors. Although Bloomberg found that the filing showed Sekulow received no salary from the ACLJ in 2015, the nonprofit transferred more than $5 million to a Washington law firm that Sekulow is a 50% owner of.

CASE, the other non-profit, raised more than $52 million in 2015, according to its filing. Bloomberg reported that four of Sekulow’s family members, including his wife and brother, serve on the CASE board of directors, and the organization transferred roughly $16 million to the ACLJ in addition to payments of about $1.2 million to Sekulow-owned businesses.

Michael McLachlan, a Colorado attorney who served as the state’s solicitor general in 1999, when he won a Supreme Court decision for the state over Sekulow in Hill v. Colorado, pointed to Sekulow’s money-making abilities as a cause for question during an interview with Business Insider.

“He’s kind of like what I would consider a legal Billy Sunday or Elmer Gantry,” McLachlan said, referencing the early 20th Century evangelist and his fictional 1920s evangelical peer who both made a great deal of money from their preaching. “He’s in the camp raiding the money.”

“These little old ladies mailing in their welfare checks to the 700 Club and to [Sekulow] … Hey, I mean I think that somebody needs to get a little handle on what he’s making millions and millions of dollars a year on television,” he said. “And, he’s a good lawyer, don’t misunderstand me, I’m not faulting him as being a good lawyer.”

McLachlan, who served a brief stint as a Democratic representative in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this decade, said there’s “no doubt that” Sekulow is “experienced in Supreme Court arguments,” but added that “he’s successful in my opinion more than he should be.”

“As far as the merits of what he does, he’s an extremely effective voice for the religious right,” he said. “And at the same time, he’s making millions and millions of dollars a year, really, fundraising through television. And it’s very unique. I would love to see his tax returns.”

Sekulow, who had influential roles as a Supreme Court adviser to President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, has mostly transitioned from Supreme Court litigator to television pundit in recent years. Sekulow is a frequent guest on Fox News host Sean Hannity’s program, and on a number of Christian broadcasting programs. He also hosts “Jay Sekulow Live!” along with his son, Jordan. The show is syndicated on satellite radio.

“Jay is a incredible lawyer, a gifted communicator,” Hannity told Business Insider in an email. “His track record with Supreme Court cases speaks for itself. He knows and understands the law, the Constitution and is a passionate articulate advocate for those he represents.”

“I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it”

David French, a longtime friend and former colleague of Sekulow’s at the ACLJ, told Business Insider that it makes perfect sense for Trump to bring on the attorney to his legal team.

Even though most onlookers are questioning why a lawyer with Sekulow’s background in fighting for legal causes of the religious right would fit into the picture in this instance, French, now a writer at The National Review, said it actually makes perfect sense, adding that onlookers are “missing” something big in their analysis.

“I’m hearing all these people say ‘oh, well, Jay is not a white-collar criminal defense lawyer,'” French said. “They totally misunderstand the nature of this proceeding. I don’t think the real issue is ‘will Donald Trump face a jury in the Southern District of New York or in DC.’ The really important issue is ‘is this a scandal that can threaten a presidency up to the potential of impeachment?’ That’s the real guts of this. And that’s a political question that is heavily influenced by legal arguments.”

“Jay’s a very, very good lawyer,” he continued. “But what he’s been spending years doing is making political arguments from a legal perspective. And he’s a master at it. So no, it doesn’t surprise me one bit that Trump would hire Jay or retain Jay for that purpose. And I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it and the strategic sense of it.”

French, who co-authored a 2014 book with Sekulow about the Islamic State terror group, called Sekulow a “very effective” and “very forceful public communicator.”

“Unfortunately, Trump has been ill-served by some of his spokesmen,” he said. “Now, Trump compounds a heck of a lot of his problems with his irresponsible and reckless tweeting and his own lack of discipline. I mean, arguably he’s right now sleeping in a bed that he has made through his own statements and his own actions. But, you know, if there’s one thing that he needs, it’s forceful and effective public advocates who can go into the court of public opinion and make a strong legal argument and put it in a way that people can and will understand.”

To French, it’s becoming clear that Sekulow is becoming the public face of Trump’s legal team.

“If you just judge Jay’s performance vs. some of the other legal spokespeople for Trump, I think Jay’s in his element,” French said.

McLachlan also said he too was not surprised to see Trump tap Sekulow to join the legal team.

“In fact, it’s in my opinion it really is par for the course as far as [Sekulow’s] career path,” he said. “And you know, President Trump’s close to Pat Robertson, he’s close to Liberty University, he’s close to the religious right.”

It’s clear too to McLachlan that Sekulow is going to be the face of Trump’s high-profile team. McLachlan thinks the president wanted it this way because Sekulow “has a huge following” and “is articulate.”

McLachlan pointed to Sekulow’s interview with Wallace.

“As you saw in the interview he did on television, the president tweeted ‘I am under investigation.’ Those are a series of unequivocal words,” McLachlan said. “And [then] Jay Sekulow got into his mealy mouth an explanation that made it sound as if he’s not really sure.”

SEE ALSO: Trump appears furious with his deputy attorney general after a wild 2 days — and ‘resignation is a real serious possibility’

Join the conversation about this story »

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alanafsmith · 7 years ago

Text

The new face of Trump's legal team has never done anything like this — and allies think he's the perfect fit

When Jay Sekulow found himself backed into a corner during a heated interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday, he pulled out his inner Trump.

The host of "Fox News Sunday" was pressing Sekulow on President Donald Trump's Friday tweet, in which Trump wrote: "I am under investigation."

Wallace and Sekulow, a big time conservative lawyer who is quickly becoming the face of Trump's legal team, went back and forth on the issue. Sekulow, while trying to explain why Trump wasn't personally under investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller, found himself saying that Trump was under investigation. Twice.

"You've now said that he is being investigated," Wallace said.

"No, Chris," Sekulow replied. "Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand: We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States."

"Sir, you've just said two times that he's being investigated," Wallace said.

And he became more forceful in each answer.

"I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works," Sekulow said.

"If in fact it was correct that the president was being investigated, he would be investigated for taking an action that an agency told him to take," he continued, referring to Trump's firing of James Comey as FBI director, which reportedly sparked the investigation into Trump. "So that is protected under the Constitution."

By the time the testy exchange reached the question of whether Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller, Sekulow had turned his ire onto Wallace himself.

"Here's what you're trying to do, Chris," Sekulow said.

"Now you're reading minds again," Wallace replied.

"No, Chris, I deal with fact and law," Sekulow said. "You're asking me to read people's minds."

It was the most notable moment from Sekulow's wild tour across four of the five Sunday shows on his second week of appearing on such programs to defend his newest client, the president of the United States.

The recent addition to Trump's legal team, which also includes his private attorney Marc Kasowitz and former US Attorney John Dowd, an expert in white-collar criminal law, happens to be the only member who has experience litigating before the Supreme Court. His record in those cases is eight wins and four losses.

But although that experience comes with an impressive record of victories, Sekulow has no experience in anything similar to the kind of battle that Trump is now facing.

Those who know Sekulow, however, aren't surprised that he's taking on Trump's battle. And even though he has no experience in white-collar crime, some say he is the perfect choice to be the face of the president's legal team.

Still, Sekulow is a controversial figure in his own right.

Through a spokesperson, Sekulow, in addition to anyone from the American Center for Law and Justice legal organization he heads, declined to comment for this story.

Who is he?

Jay Alan Sekulow, 61, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

But before he found himself arguing constitutional law before the nation's highest court, Sekulow was an Atlanta-based tax attorney who ran his own law firm almost as soon as he left college.

Jeffrey Cohen, an Atlanta tax attorney, worked at Sekulow's firm in the early 1980s. It wasn't a fruitful partnership, as Cohen sued Sekulow after he failed to pay Cohen a promised year-end $20,000 bonus after an eight-month stint at the firm. Cohen won the suit, and he told Business Insider the jury gave him everything he wanted "plus attorney's fees." In 1991, he described the experience at Sekulow's firm as "an eight-month nightmare."

Cohen said he's only spoken to Sekulow one time over the past three decades — a 10 second "cordial" exchange in the Atlanta airport. Although he sued Sekulow, Cohen said the two "never had a bad relationship" during his stint at the firm.

"We weren't what I would call friends, we weren't butting heads either," he said.

Cohen described the young Sekulow as "fantastically successful."

"One thing I'll never forget about him was that given that he was younger than me," Cohen said. "And I was young."

He continued: "His law firm was very new, he hadn't been practicing law a long time at all. Yet he was mind-numbingly successful at bringing in new clients, a number of clients. ... He was very charming and an excellent business generator."

The Atlanta tax attorney admitted to seeing some of the clips of Sekulow on TV defending Trump, expressing little surprise.

"This is a man who's had his own television show, radio show, been in the public eye and he is very comfortable, evidently, in front of the camera, behind a microphone," he said. "And I am not surprised at all that he is that smooth and eloquent as he was back then. He was a prodigy in terms of being impressive and charming and never at a loss for words. I compliment him highly from that standpoint."

The following year, he won a 9-0 decision for the group at the Supreme Court, arguing in defense of Jews for Jesus' right to hand pamphlets out at the Los Angeles International Airport. It was the first of 12 cases he'd argue before the Supreme Court over the next 21 years, almost all of which were similar in nature to the Jews for Jesus case.

Sekulow has previously come under fire for reportedly using the ACLJ, where he is chief executive officer, and another legal nonprofit, Christian Advocates Serving Evangelism (CASE), to build "a financial empire that generates millions of dollars a year and supports a lavish lifestyle — complete with multiple homes, chauffeur-driven cars, and a private jet that he once used to ferry Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia," according to a 2005 story in Legal Times.

In 2011, a Tennessean investigation reported that the two non-profits paid out "$33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own" over a span of 13 years.

Both organizations have raked in millions of dollars.

The ACLJ, Bloomberg reported, pulled in more than $19 million in grants and contributions in 2015, the most recent year an IRS filing is available. Sekulow's family members occupy many of the organization's most important positions, including chief financial officer, chief executive officer, and director of major donors. Although Bloomberg found that the filing showed Sekulow received no salary from the ACLJ in 2015, the nonprofit transferred more than $5 million to a Washington law firm that Sekulow is a 50% owner of.

CASE, the other non-profit, raised more than $52 million in 2015, according to its filing. Bloomberg reported that four of Sekulow's family members, including his wife and brother, serve on the CASE board of directors, and the organization transferred roughly $16 million to the ACLJ in addition to payments of about $1.2 million to Sekulow-owned businesses.

Michael McLachlan, a Colorado attorney who served as the state's solicitor general in 1999, when he won a Supreme Court decision for the state over Sekulow in Hill v. Colorado, pointed to Sekulow's money-making abilities as a cause for question during an interview with Business Insider.

"He's kind of like what I would consider a legal Billy Sunday or Elmer Gantry," McLachlan said, referencing the early 20th Century evangelist and his fictional 1920s evangelical peer who both made a great deal of money from their preaching. "He's in the camp raiding the money."

"These little old ladies mailing in their welfare checks to the 700 Club and to [Sekulow] ... Hey, I mean I think that somebody needs to get a little handle on what he's making millions and millions of dollars a year on television," he said. "And, he's a good lawyer, don't misunderstand me, I'm not faulting him as being a good lawyer."

McLachlan, who served a brief stint as a Democratic representative in the Colorado House of Representatives earlier this decade, said there's "no doubt that" Sekulow is "experienced in Supreme Court arguments," but added that "he's successful in my opinion more than he should be."

"As far as the merits of what he does, he's an extremely effective voice for the religious right," he said. "And at the same time, he's making millions and millions of dollars a year, really, fundraising through television. And it's very unique. I would love to see his tax returns."

Sekulow, who had influential roles as a Supreme Court adviser to President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, has mostly transitioned from Supreme Court litigator to television pundit in recent years. Sekulow is a frequent guest on Fox News host Sean Hannity's program, and on a number of Christian broadcasting programs. He also hosts "Jay Sekulow Live!" along with his son, Jordan. The show is syndicated on satellite radio.

"Jay is a incredible lawyer, a gifted communicator," Hannity told Business Insider in an email. "His track record with Supreme Court cases speaks for itself. He knows and understands the law, the Constitution and is a passionate articulate advocate for those he represents."

"I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it"

David French, a longtime friend and former colleague of Sekulow's at the ACLJ, told Business Insider that it makes perfect sense for Trump to bring on the attorney to his legal team.

Even though most onlookers are questioning why a lawyer with Sekulow's background in fighting for legal causes of the religious right would fit into the picture in this instance, French, now a writer at The National Review, said it actually makes perfect sense, adding that onlookers are "missing" something big in their analysis.

"I'm hearing all these people say 'oh, well, Jay is not a white-collar criminal defense lawyer,'" French said. "They totally misunderstand the nature of this proceeding. I don't think the real issue is 'will Donald Trump face a jury in the Southern District of New York or in DC.' The really important issue is 'is this a scandal that can threaten a presidency up to the potential of impeachment?' That's the real guts of this. And that's a political question that is heavily influenced by legal arguments."

"Jay's a very, very good lawyer," he continued. "But what he's been spending years doing is making political arguments from a legal perspective. And he's a master at it. So no, it doesn't surprise me one bit that Trump would hire Jay or retain Jay for that purpose. And I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it and the strategic sense of it."

French, who co-authored a 2014 book with Sekulow about the Islamic State terror group, called Sekulow a "very effective" and "very forceful public communicator."

"Unfortunately, Trump has been ill-served by some of his spokesmen," he said. "Now, Trump compounds a heck of a lot of his problems with his irresponsible and reckless tweeting and his own lack of discipline. I mean, arguably he's right now sleeping in a bed that he has made through his own statements and his own actions. But, you know, if there's one thing that he needs, it's forceful and effective public advocates who can go into the court of public opinion and make a strong legal argument and put it in a way that people can and will understand."

To French, it's becoming clear that Sekulow is becoming the public face of Trump's legal team.

"If you just judge Jay's performance vs. some of the other legal spokespeople for Trump, I think Jay's in his element," French said.

McLachlan also said he too was not surprised to see Trump tap Sekulow to join the legal team.

"In fact, it's in my opinion it really is par for the course as far as [Sekulow's] career path," he said. "And you know, President Trump's close to Pat Robertson, he's close to Liberty University, he's close to the religious right."

It's clear too to McLachlan that Sekulow is going to be the face of Trump's high-profile team. McLachlan thinks the president wanted it this way because Sekulow "has a huge following" and "is articulate."

McLachlan pointed to Sekulow's interview with Wallace.

"As you saw in the interview he did on television, the president tweeted 'I am under investigation.' Those are a series of unequivocal words," McLachlan said. "And [then] Jay Sekulow got into his mealy mouth an explanation that made it sound as if he's not really sure."

SEE ALSO: Trump appears furious with his deputy attorney general after a wild 2 days — and 'resignation is a real serious possibility'

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: 'Where is Sean?': Things got awkward when April Ryan asked Sarah Sanders why Spicer didn’t attend the WH briefing

from All About Law http://www.businessinsider.com/jay-sekulow-new-face-trump-legal-team-russia-2017-6

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nancy-astorga · 7 years ago

Text

The new face of Trump’s legal team has never done anything like this — and allies think he’s the perfect fit

When Jay Sekulow found himself backed into a corner during a heated interview with Fox News host Chris Wallace on Sunday, he pulled out his inner Trump.

The host of “Fox News Sunday” was pressing Sekulow on President Donald Trump’s Friday tweet, in which Trump wrote: “I am under investigation.”

“You’ve now said that he is being investigated,” Wallace said.

“No, Chris,” Sekulow replied. “Let me be crystal clear so you completely understand: We have not received nor are we aware of any investigation of the president of the United States.”

“Sir, you’ve just said two times that he’s being investigated,” Wallace said.

And he became more forceful in each answer.

“I just gave you the legal theory, Chris, of how the Constitution works,” Sekulow said.

By the time the testy exchange reached the question of whether Trump would fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein or Mueller, Sekulow had turned his ire onto Wallace himself.

“Here’s what you’re trying to do, Chris,” Sekulow said.

“Now you’re reading minds again,” Wallace replied.

“No, Chris, I deal with fact and law,” Sekulow said. “You’re asking me to read people’s minds.”

But although that experience comes with an impressive record of victories, Sekulow has no experience in anything similar to the kind of battle that Trump is now facing.

Still, Sekulow is a controversial figure in his own right.

Through a spokesperson, Sekulow, in addition to anyone from the American Center for Law and Justice legal organization he heads, declined to comment for this story.

Who is he?

Jay Alan Sekulow, 61, was born in Brooklyn, New York.

But before he found himself arguing constitutional law before the nation’s highest court, Sekulow was an Atlanta-based tax attorney who ran his own law firm almost as soon as he left college.

Cohen said he’s only spoken to Sekulow one time over the past three decades — a 10 second “cordial” exchange in the Atlanta airport. Although he sued Sekulow, Cohen said the two “never had a bad relationship” during his stint at the firm.

“We weren’t what I would call friends, we weren’t butting heads either,” he said.

Cohen described the young Sekulow as “fantastically successful.”

“One thing I’ll never forget about him was that given that he was younger than me,” Cohen said. “And I was young.”

The Atlanta tax attorney admitted to seeing some of the clips of Sekulow on TV defending Trump, expressing little surprise.

In 2011, a Tennessean investigation reported that the two non-profits paid out “$33 million to members of Sekulow’s family and businesses they own or co-own” over a span of 13 years.

Both organizations have raked in millions of dollars.

“I think people are missing the strategic intent behind it”

David French, a longtime friend and former colleague of Sekulow’s at the ACLJ, told Business Insider that it makes perfect sense for Trump to bring on the attorney to his legal team.

French, who co-authored a 2014 book with Sekulow about the Islamic State terror group, called Sekulow a “very effective” and “very forceful public communicator.”

To French, it’s becoming clear that Sekulow is becoming the public face of Trump’s legal team.

“If you just judge Jay’s performance vs. some of the other legal spokespeople for Trump, I think Jay’s in his element,” French said.

McLachlan also said he too was not surprised to see Trump tap Sekulow to join the legal team.

McLachlan pointed to Sekulow’s interview with Wallace.

SEE ALSO: Trump appears furious with his deputy attorney general after a wild 2 days — and ‘resignation is a real serious possibility’

Join the conversation about this story »

NOW WATCH: ‘Melania needs to get with the program’: Ian Bremmer explains the biggest takeaways from Trump’s first foreign trip

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