#has affair with Corey lewandowski

[republicansaredomesticterrorists]

WTF is wrong with these RepubliKKKlan assholes!

[itsmythang]

Republican Governor Kristi Noem engaged in years-long affair with Trump adviser Corey Lewandowski, according to multiple sources

The affair has been an open secret in political circles.

BREAKING: MAGA Governor Kristi Noem is embroiled in a seedy scandal as it's revealed that she has been having an extramarital affair with top Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski — who is also married and is an alleged sexual predator.

The stunning revelation was first reported in The Daily Mail, which spoke to several source who attested that the sordid clandestine affair has been going on for years, since at least 2019.

Noem, the Governor of South Dakota and a rising star in the increasingly fascist Republican Party, has been floated as a possible running mate for Trump in 2024.

Ironically, Noem loves to claim that she is a strong supporter of "family values." Meanwhile she has been cheating on her husband with the utterly vile Lewandowski — perhaps because she thinks it will help her career.

On top of that, Noem is an avid supporter of "traditional marriage," which is really just a euphemism for bigotry against homosexual couples. She has said that it's a "a special, God-given union between one man and one woman." The hypocrisy is enough to make you sick.

Lewandowski has been aggressively lobbying to get Noem selected as Trump's vice presidential candidate. Now, we know why...

"He may not be very smart, but it takes big balls to lobby to have your mistress named one of the most powerful people in the country," said one Republican operative.

"Every time someone said something about how Kristi would be a savior to the conservative movement, someone else would say, 'Right, the savior that's f*cking Corey Lewandowski,'" revealed one Trump administration employee.

The Daily Mail was able to uncover mountains of evidence of the affair. There have been dozens of trips that "mixed business and pleasure," flights on donor planes, and luxury resort visits where others witnessed them being intimate.

On one occasion, the two were so affectionate that Noem was mistaken for Lewandowski's wife.

Lewandowski, a consummate creep, is married to a 9/11 widow and has four children. He has had other affairs in the past, including allegedly with campaign press secretary Hope Hicks.

As usual, the party of family values is anything but.

~Via: Occupy Democrats

[dankusner]

Witness for the Prostitution: HOPE HICKS

Nick at Nelson: Cable unit is filming kids show

There's an element of child's play at this year's Byron Nelson Classic.

Nickelodeon Games and Sports, a unit of the children's cable network, has assigned camera crews to film a half-hour show about two youngsters who will follow two professional golfers during Sunday's final round.

The show will air in the fall.

"We're following what's happening in the tournament through the eyes of two regular kids," said Jay Schmalholz, executive producer and creative director.

Hope Hicks, a 13-year-old from Greenwich, Conn., and Ben Andrews, a 12-year-old from Southport, Conn., arrived at the Four Seasons Resort on Tuesday.

Each of them will pick a partner by Saturday, then hang with him through 18 holes on Sunday.

Ben, an avid golfer, knows just what he's looking for: "a sense of humor, a sense of pride, someone who's into the game, someone who can teach me different things about golf."

After working on the practice green with Chris DiMarco and Scott McCarron, Hope said the golfers were open to the idea.

"They've been great," she said.

Hope Hicks has made a career out of being the only subtle person in the Trump administration. 

Hope Hicks Breaks Down On The Witness Stand As She Buries Trump During Her Testimony

A stunning moment during today's trial

Hope Hicks, a former top aide to former U.S. President Donald Trump, testifies during Trump's criminal trial before Justice Juan Merchan on charges that he falsified business records to conceal money paid to silence porn star Stormy Daniels in 2016, in Manhattan state court in New York City, U.S. May 3, 2024 in this courtroom sketch. REUTERS/Jane Rosenberg

Hope Hicks broke down on the witness stand today after testifying about a conversation she had with Donald Trump, in which Trump told her that Michael Cohen paid Stormy Daniels to keep the bad story out of the press and that Cohen paid with his own money out of the goodness of his heart.

When asked if she believed that, Hicks said that she didn't because she felt there was no chance Cohen would spend that much of his own money just to help out Trump.

Hicks then began to cry on the stand and the judge took a break.

Hope Hicks Testifies In Trump Trial

Ron Filipkowski

Hicks broke down likely knowing that her testimony is a significant blow to Donald Trump's defense during this trial, in which his team has argued that Trump was not aware of the payments made by Cohen.

According to a MeidasTouch source in the courtroom during this stunning exchange, this was "the closest thing to a Perry Mason moment there is in a white collar case!"

Our source added, "She just sunk him and realizes it."

The prosecution next called Trump's former close aide and former White House Communications Director Hope Hicks to the stand.

She said that she has not spoken to Trump since September 2022.

Unlike other Trump-adjacent people, Hicks says she hired her own attorney.

She said that she has no current connection or association with Trump.

Hicks testified that she met Trump because of her association with Ivanka to help her market her various businesses.

She then ended up working for Trump Org starting in 2014 working in PR for the company.

She says that despite the fact that it is a big company with a lot of executives, everyone reports directly to Trump and he is involved in every aspect of the business.

Hicks said that when Trump ran for president she became the Press Secretary for the campaign.

She said she spoke to Trump every day in that role and he was involved in every decision. Hicks testified that she knew Enquirer publisher David Pecker from her previous employment before she went to work for Trump Org, and that she knew him to be a friend of Trump.

Hicks said she recalled one phone call between Trump and Pecker where Trump congratulated him on the Ben Carson smear story on medical malpractice, and told him it was "Pulitzer worthy."

Hicks said she first learned of the Access Hollywood tape when she received an email on October 2, 2016, from the Washington Post seeking comment.

Hicks said she immediately forwarded the email to senior people in the campaign.

Hicks was asked her reaction to the tape and she said she was "very concerned."

Hicks says she went to tell Trump about it because he doesn’t use email.

She said his first reaction to it was, “that doesn’t sound like something I would say.”

She said that she was with Trump when he first watched the video of it.

She said he knew it was bad for him politically but said it was “locker room talk.”

The prosecutor then established with Hicks that the campaign went into crisis mode as Republican leaders in the House and Senate began to condemn and distance themselves from Trump.

Hicks said when they first got the press inquiry from the WSJ about Karen McDougal, she forwarded it to Jared Kushner because he was tight with Rupert Murdoch and they were hoping he could stall the story.

She then drafted a statement denying everything.

Hicks also testified that the only person with access to post from Trump’s social media accounts was Dan Scavino, and he was only allowed to do that with Trump’s prior approval.

Cohen then sent Hicks several text messages after the WSJ story broke.

She responded that she thought it was a poorly written article and wouldn't get much traction.

Cohen said he agreed and didn't think anyone would believe the story, but if it did get traction he had the signed statement from Stormy denying an affair ready to go.

Hicks responded, "Keep praying!!!" that it would get no traction.

Hicks said that Trump then wanted her to get David Pecker's number because he wanted to call him, so she asked Cohen for it.

Hicks said that Trump was worried about how Melania would react to the story, so he asked Hicks to make sure no newspapers were delivered to their residence the next morning.

She was then asked if Trump was concerned how it would hurt his campaign.

Hicks said he was constantly asking her, "How's it playing?" with the public.

Hicks testified that Trump told her that Michael Cohen paid Stormy to keep it out of the press and that Cohen paid with his own money.

When asked if she believed that she said that she didn't because there is no way Cohen would spend that much of his own money just to help out Trump.

Trump told her that it was better that they were having to deal with the story in 2018 then right before the election, which was the critical piece of testimony the state was looking for.

Hicks then began to cry and the judge took a break.

She never once looked in Trump's direction during her testimony.

On cross-examination from Trump's lawyer Bove, Hicks testified that Cohen was not a part of the Trump campaign but tried to "insert himself" into it on a regular basis.

She said he was just supposed to handle Trump's personal affairs, but he considered himself "a fixer" so he would get involved in areas where he wasn't needed.

She joked that he was only a fixer because most of the time he was fixing something that he broke.

Throughout her testimony on direct examinations with the prosecutor, Hicks referred to Trump as "Mister Trump."

That eventually changed on cross when Bove continued to refer to him as "President Trump." Hicks then testified about how much Trump respects Melania and values her opinion and that is why he was so afraid of her finding out about McDougal and Stormy.

This duality of Hicks' testimony highlighted the main points of both sides.

The prosecution focusing with Hicks on Trump's constant worry about how it would affect the campaign before the election, and the defense trying to deflect that away to suggest his main focus was on Melania.

Hope Against Hope

Hope Hicks is kidding herself if she thinks that her tenure in the Trump White House will be judged only for harmless, situational untruths.

February 28, 2018

Presidents are in the habit of lying—often with bloody consequences.

The Bay of Pigs, the Gulf of Tonkin, Watergate, Iran-Contra, “mushroom clouds,” and “weapons of mass destruction”—these are just a few of the postwar greatest hits.

But, in terms of frequency and of the almost joyful abandonment of integrity as a demand of the office, Donald Trump is singular.

He starts lying in the morning, tweeting while watching Fox News, and he keeps at it until his head hits the pillow at night.

He lies to slander and seduce, he lies to profit, and he sometimes lies, it seems, just because.

His capacity for falsehood is so heroic that we struggle to keep count of the daily instances.

(After one year of the Trump Presidency, the Washington Post put the average at 5.9 falsehoods per day, a total of 2,140.)

One consequence of this aspect of Trump’s character—oftentimes, it seems to be the very core of his character—is that lying defines the culture of his Administration just as it did his family business.

Hope Hicks has now announced that she is resigning as Trump’s communications director.

This comes just one day after she told the House Intelligence Committee, in a nine-hour closed-door session, that she was occasionally given to telling “white lies.”

In the moral universe of the Trump White House, her sin could not have been the lying; it could only be the admission.

Michael Flynn. Paul Manafort. Sean Spicer. Anthony Scaramucci. Steve Bannon. Sebastian Gorka. Omarosa Manigault-Newman.

Next to these now-departed characters, Hope Hicks was a decidedly recessive cast member, almost a cipher by her own design.

She was known among White House reporters to answer calls, texts, and e-mails––a courtesy that is hardly a universal in politics––though she almost never allowed herself to be quoted.

When she appeared on television, it was inadvertent, as if she had mistakenly stepped into the frame.

When she was written about, reporters invariably leaned on stock phrases about her appearance, her outfits, her loyalty and access to Trump, her ability to read his moods, her stint as a model, and her upbringing in Greenwich, Connecticut.

As a communications director, she was, when it came to the subject of Hope Hicks, uncommunicative.

The words she used to describe her feelings upon resigning were that she had “no words.”

Hicks, however, is kidding herself if she thinks that her tenure will be judged only for harmless, situational untruths.

The white lie is a phrase that goes back to the sixteenth century, at least. “Shakespeare’s World,” a collaboration between the Oxford English Dictionary and the Folger Shakespeare Library, reports that, in 1567, one Ralph Adderly wrote of his brother-in-law, “I do assure you he is unsuspected of any untruth or other notable crime (except a white lie) which is taken for a Small fault in these parts.”

The President’s daily communications are a tangle of falsehoods, defamations, and tall tales, and Hicks was his facilitator, his defender, his explainer.

That line of work goes far beyond the scope of “white lies.”

Sissela Bok, in “Lying: Moral Choice in Public and Private Life,” writes that white lies are “the most common and the most trivial forms that duplicity can take.”

They are lies “not meant to injure anyone.”

The Administration’s penchant for deception is injurious in many ways, not least because it devalues truth as a value in public discourse.

Like Sean Spicer, Kellyanne Conway, and Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Hicks, even in her camera- and microphone-shy way, spent years being loyal to Trump and his mendacities.

She was always prepared to do his bidding, including when there was an ugliness to the bidding:

She pushed back hard against the Pope when he dared to criticize the President’s hopes to wall off Mexico.

She cast her lot with him and stayed with him as the injuries he inflicted multiplied. A

well-reported Politico profile of Hicks portrayed her loyalty as eerily absolute:

“Colleagues described Hicks as someone who communicates with Trump in a similar way to his daughter Ivanka––she can express her disagreements to the president privately, but ultimately supports his decisions unquestioningly.”

It is not entirely clear why Hicks is resigning.

Maggie Haberman, of the Times, tweeted that the “white lies” moment was not the reason.

It could be that Hicks is just worn out from being by Trump’s side for nearly three years.

She hardly distinguished herself while trying to cover for Rob Porter, a former White House aide whose two ex-wives accused him of assault.

She is said to have been involved romantically with Porter.

Perhaps we will hear from Hope Hicks in a more unguarded way in the future.

The pattern has been that, once these aides lose their White House passes and get some distance from the tumult of Pennsylvania Avenue, they begin to reveal their sense of despair about the place, if not their shame.

Everyone hates everyone; everyone has it out for the rest.

Just today the President tweeted that his Attorney General was “disgraceful.”

“Take everything you’ve heard and multiply it by fifty,” Reince Priebus is quoted as saying in a new chapter of “The Gatekeepers,” a book on White House chiefs of staff, by Chris Whipple.

Trump has created a poisonous culture in his Administration that is not only doing great damage to the country but is also destroying itself.

Jared Kushner, his son-in-law and senior adviser, is known by foreign leaders to be so hungry for business and open to influence that he’s been denied the security clearances that a President’s emissary would need.

Now the Times has revealed that he has taken tens of millions of dollars in loans from financial interests that only recently came to do White House business with him.

The Oval Office used to be described as a chaotic “Grand Central Station,” mobbed with warring satraps hustling for the President’s fleeting attentions.

One after another, they have headed for, or they have been shown, the door.

Perhaps Hope Hicks will retain her sense of discretion long after she leaves the White House.

In any case, it is hard to agree that her deceptions were merely occasional or, as she put it to the House members, “white lies”; the self-deception required to serve Donald Trump with such unquestioning devotion, to be his voice, knowing what she must know, has proved anything but harmless.

Hope Hicks’s White Lies and Smizing Eyes

If you are going to tell Congress that working as the communications director for the Trump White House involved telling only “white lies,” you’d better come with your game face on.

It is often mentioned that Hope Hicks, the departing White House communications director, used to model, a fact that seems of little relevance to her political life.

But it does perhaps help to explain the photo of Hicks, taken by Chip Somodevilla, of Getty, that has been circulating since Tuesday.

Arriving at the Capitol to testify before the House Intelligence Committee, Hicks, dressed in a wide-lapel navy-blue coat, turned her contoured face toward the camera and gave a perfect, ten-out-of-ten smize.

“Smizing”—smiling with your eyes—is a neologism that Tyra Banks, the host of “America’s Next Top Model,” coined to teach the show’s contestants how to hold a viewer’s attention.

To smile without smizing is merely to gesture emptily toward an expression, like a school kid holding a grin for a class picture, or a politician who has already shaken fifty hands and must now shake a fifty-first.

But to smize without smiling is to create a frisson of mystery, a hint of some secret mental calculus at work behind the mask of the face.

Hope Hicks Resigns from the Trump White House

What did the public know about Hope Hicks, the young White House aide who within five years went from helping Ivanka Trump’s fashion line with P.R. to working as Donald Trump’s campaign press secretary to serving as the White House communications director?

She didn’t give interviews, and was a quiet presence in a loud White House.

The fifth person to serve as communications director under Trump, she held the job for a hundred and ninety-six days—longer than any of her predecessors—before her decision to resign became public, on Wednesday.

Sean Spicer 

Michael Dubke

Sean Spicer 

Anthony Scaramucci 

Hope Hicks

Bill Shine

Stephanie Grisham

Hicks was a trusted member of Trump’s team.

Trump’s political circle is divided between people who are family and people who are not, and Hicks was one of the longtime Trump loyalists who appeared to be almost family.

Writing for GQ in 2016 about Hicks’s role on the Trump campaign, Olivia Nuzzi described how the young aide was “summoned in critical moments of confusion to play instigator and score-settler.”

Nuzzi gave an example: “It was her job to facilitate Trump’s rebuke of the Pope after His Holiness questioned the Christianity of anybody who would build a border wall.”

After Trump took office, Hicks’s name rarely appeared in the frequent reports of internal backbiting and power struggles in the White House.

She developed a reputation as a true Trump insider, someone the President not only relied on but trusted.

GQ named her the most powerful person in Washington.

“Hope is feared and revered in the West Wing,” the White House counsellor Kellyanne Conway told the magazine.

And yet, while she projected an above-the-fray aura, Hicks was herself at the center of several major scandals.

That her exit isn’t being received as the departure of a scandal-tainted aide but as the surprise exit of a trusted and competent Presidential adviser has more to do with the context of this White House than it does the objective facts of her record.

She was reportedly involved in the drafting of a misleading statement that Donald Trump, Jr., initially gave to the press, last July, in response to questions about his election-season meeting in Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer.

That statement is now reportedly of interest to the special counsel, Robert Mueller.

(Hicks’s lawyer has denied that she was involved in creating the statement.)

More recently, Hicks apparently was also behind a statement that the White House put out, in the name of John Kelly, the chief of staff, defending the staff secretary, Robert Porter, after Porter’s ex-wives came forward with accusations of domestic violence.

Hicks was reportedly in a relationship with Porter, who resigned soon after the allegations emerged.

Maggie Haberman, the Times reporter who broke the news of Hicks’s resignation, tweeted that Hicks’s decision was not related to her private testimony on Tuesday before the House Intelligence Committee.

According to the Times, Hicks told the committee that her job sometimes required her to tell white lies but that she had never lied about matters related to the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election.

What else did she tell the committee?

Of what interest might she be to the special counsel’s investigation?

And how might she navigate these issues now that she is no longer in the White House?

That, the public still doesn’t know.

Trump's Hope

During the 11th day of the criminal trial in the case N.Y. v. Trump, former Trump campaign and White House communications director testified that Michael Cohen, Trump's ex-lawyer, would often frustrate campaign staff and do things that were not helpful.

On the witness stand, Hicks testified that Cohen "used to like to call himself Mr. Fix It, but it was only because he first broke it."

Hicks testified under subpoena for the prosecution.

She praised the former president at times, and got choked up when Trump's attorney asked her about her time working for the Trump Organization.

Cohen is a central player and could be the star witness for Manhattan District Attorney Bragg's case against the former president that he falsified business records connected to a payment made to adult film actress Stormy Daniels to quiet her claims alleging an illicit affair with Trump in the early 2000s.

Trump paid a $9,000 fine for violating the judge's gag order ruling Friday, but there are still four more alleged violations that Judge Juan Merchan has yet to rule on.

Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski had an on-and-off affair 

Wolff adds on top of this revelation that after Lewandowski was fired as campaign manager in the summer of 2016, Hicks was upset by its coverage — and Trump wasn't having it:

"Trump, who otherwise seemed to treat Hicks in a protective and even paternal way, looked up and said, 'Why? You've already done enough for him. You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have,' sending Hicks running from the room."

What we know about Hope Hicks, SMU grad and Donald Trump’s secretive press secretary

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump's press secretary, 27-year-old Hope Hicks, was on the campaign trail in Iowa in January.(File Photo / The Associated Press)

Jun 20, 2016

Donald Trump's press secretary hasn't shared much information about herself, and she's rarely, if ever, available for comment.

But this week, the public learned more about Hope Hicks when GQ and Marie Claire magazines published pieces about the Southern Methodist University alum.

Since her graduation from SMU's Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences in 2010, Hicks, 27, has skyrocketed to the top of the Trump universe.

The Connecticut native comes from a family of well-connected public relations experts.

Hicks routinely declines interview requests, unlike Trump spokeswoman Katrina Pierson, whose social media presence rivals that of Trump himself.

However, Hicks sat down for an on-the-record Q&A with Rebecca Nelson of Marie Claire, mostly about life on the campaign trail and how other women can get involved in politics.

Olivia Nuzzi, of GQ, was able to secure time to talk with Donald Trump about Hicks, in front of her, but Hicks declined to speak for herself.

Here's what we learned:

A model beginning

Hicks got her start in public relations working not for Trump, but for his daughter Ivanka.

Ivanka was expanding her clothing line in 2012 and Hicks was plucked from a New York PR firm to help.

She did some modeling as well, GQ reports, appearing in an Ivanka Trump collection mint-colored dress with a black clutch and heels.

The gig at Ivanka's is how Hicks entered The Donald's orbit.

"I thought Hope was outstanding," Trump told GQ. In October 2014 she officially joined his team.

Hicks also was a cover girl for a Gossip Girl spin off series titled The It Girl.

Part gatekeeper, part instigator

Trump campaign communications manager Hope Hicks steps off a plane in January in Muscatine, Iowa.(File Photo / The Associated Press)

Hicks, who has been in the job for a year and a half, was not expected to be Trump's press secretary for long.

She's now outlasted some of the Trump campaign's most public figures, including campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, whom Trump fired Monday.

Hicks' primary job is keeping the media under control.

But at moments during the campaign she has been called upon to clarify Trump's stance on issues.

The GQ piece touches on Hicks' role in settling Trump's stance on abortion, which he'd changed four times in three days.

Hicks laid it out plainly: "He will change the law through his judicial appointments and allow the states to protect the unborn."

Most of the time though, Hicks does not respond to requests for comment.

It is a level of inaction that has been memorialized in the most 2016 way possible, a Twitter bot that tweets only one thing:

Keeping up with the news

Hicks receives about 250 media requests per day in her inbox.

She and other staff members make sure that Trump is kept in the loop on what is being reported by printing out Google News results for "Donald J. Trump," GQ reports.

Trump marks up the articles with circles, arrows and annotations, and then they are "scanned and emailed to the journalist or person quoted who has drawn Trump's attention, under the subject line 'From the office of Donald J. Trump.'"

The GQ article describes Hicks as being irked by reporters' questions and not responding.

"She's seemingly unaware that they might just be vetting a potential United States president," Nuzzi writes.

Hicks also handles the growing list of media outlets that that campaign has banned from covering its events.

A source who has been with Trump and Hicks told GQ that the banning system is simple.

He reads something that he doesn't like and yells to her, "This guy's banned! He's banned for a while."

A misquote

Hicks was not always as precise with her words.

GQ reports her high school yearbook quote, "The future belongs to those who believe in the power of their dreams," was attributed to Jimmy Buffett.

In actuality, it is a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt.

Does Trump want her in the White House?

"Oh, yeah, sure," Trump told GQ. "In either capacity, either there, or she'll stay here, but uh, I think she wants to go there."

SMU Wunderkind Tapped as White House Communications Director: Everything You Need to Know About Hope Hicks

Hope Hicks, President Donald Trump’s longtime aide and a graduate of Southern Methodist University, was named interim White House director of communications on Wednesday.

The 28-year-old is expected to temporarily fill the role which was left vacant after Anthony Scaramucci was fired at the end of July.

Hicks joined the Trump administration as White House director of strategic communications.

Now, she holds the administration’s highest communications office.

She holds power over what members of the press get interviews with the president and helps shape his messaging.

Her new responsibilities as interim director of communications will be in addition to those as director of strategic communications.

According to the New York Times via a senior administration official, Hicks will help Trump find a more permanent person for the job.

As director of strategic communications, a newly created role, Hicks boasts the top White House salary of $179,700.

She had already made Forbes 30 Under 30 list — and her influence is growing.

Hicks served as press secretary during Trump’s campaign, and has long been a crucial part of his communications team.

The Hicks File

The 2016 presidential campaign was Hicks’ first endeavor in politics.

She became an important advisor to the Trump family during her time working at public relations firm Hiltzik Strategies, first working for Ivanka Trump’s fashion line, and later moving into other Trump ventures.

Hicks has remained close to the family including President Trump, Ivanka Trump, and Jared Kushner.

A native of Greenwich, Connecticut, Hicks graduated from SMU in 2010.

She played lacrosse throughout all four years of college, in the club lacrosse program which she helped start.

Other interesting facts about the young White House official?

She took dictation for Trump’s tweets during his campaign.

However, Hope Hicks herself has maintained an incredibly low-profile, spurring the creation of a parody account (which has now been suspended)

@HicksNoComment.

She signed a contract with Ford Models at a young age, starring in a Ralph Lauren campaign with her sister at age 11, gracing the cover of a Gossip Girl novel as a teenager, and appearing on the cover of Greenwich Magazine.

Hicks apparently foreshadowed her future in an interview with the publication, saying, “If the acting thing doesn’t work out, I could really see myself in politics. Who knows?”

Meet Donald Trump's 27-Year-Old Communications Director, Hope Hicks

There are few women in Donald Trump's inner circle.

You're probably already familiar with his campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, but what do you know about Hope Hicks?

The 27-year-old communications director may have kept a low-profile throughout Trump's campaign, but she played an integral role in his unprecedented rise.

As Trump tweets about the controversies du jour with abandon, delivers unscripted soliloquies at campaign stops, and is a near-constant presence on cable news, Hicks was behind the scenes, juggling the moving parts of the rapid news cycle.

In 2012, after a successful teen modeling career and graduating from Southern Methodist University, the Connecticut native got her first taste of the Trump life working on the hotel and golf divisions of his company for New York public relations firm Hiltzik Strategies.

The Trump Organization brought her in-house as the director of communications in 2014, and the following year, she got the surprise of a lifetime when The Donald asked her to join his budding campaign.

Here, in her first-ever interview in her current role, she shares what it's like to work for the unconventional candidate.

Marie Claire: Did you ever think you'd be this integral to a presidential campaign?

Hope Hicks: No, but it's funny—I was home for Easter, reading an article from when I was 11 or 12, talking about how my career as a model had taken off. It said, "If modeling doesn't work out for you, what would you do?" And I said, "Well, I'm not really sure, but I'm interested in politics."

We drove to the event with a police escort, and there were thousands of people in the parking lot. He was like a rock star.

MC: Tell us about a typical day on the campaign trail.

HH: In 2015, we were headquartered in New York City in Trump Tower. While we were there, we'd facilitate dozens of interview requests on a given day. He'll talk to anybody; he'll answer anything. Then at about 3 p.m., we'd leave and go somewhere to do a rally at night—typically one of the first three [primary] states: Iowa, New Hampshire, or South Carolina. I try to be in the office as much as possible to get the full experience working with volunteers, making phone calls, putting out signs—things that the communications director probably normally wouldn't do.

MC: Can you describe an especially crazy day?

HH: Last July, in Laconia, New Hampshire, when we got off the plane, there were hundreds of people pressed up against the fence with signs, waiting to see Mr. Trump. We had been campaigning for a couple of weeks at that point, but this was really the first stop where we all looked at each other and said, "There's something going on here." We drove to the event with a police escort, and there were thousands of people in the parking lot. He was like a rock star.

The pressure and the long hours—it's all relative to what Trump's putting in, which is everything.

MC: Do the long hours and constant travel take a toll?

HH: There was a moment [the week before] the New Hampshire primary when we were in the office and somebody wanted to go home at like 11:30 p.m. And the campaign manager said, "My boss [Trump] is working harder than you. That's not right. You need to stay and do what you're supposed to do." This is Mr. Trump's time away from his family, and frankly, it's his money. He's spent millions, and the thing we can do is work to the best of our ability as hard as possible. The pressure and the long hours—it's all relative to what he's putting in, which is everything.

MC: What advice would you give other women looking to get into politics?

HH: My dad always says that there's no substitute for hard work. If you work hard and you work for somebody who empowers you and challenges you, you'll be successful. Mr. Trump and Ivanka [Trump, his daughter] say that if you're passionate about what you do, you'll ultimately be successful, because you'll work so hard because you love it so much, and results will happen. And even if you're not successful, meaning you [don't] reach great levels of fame and fortune, but you're happy doing what you're doing, you'll be successful in that right. And I think that's very true.

There is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on. There is nothing like it.

MC: How well does TV mirror what goes on in a campaign?

HH: We get so many requests like, "We want behind-the-scenes access" or "We're going to show people what it's really like to be on the campaign with Donald Trump." But there is just no way that a camera or an episode or a documentary could capture what has gone on. There is nothing like it. And I would say 90 percent of that is the people you see and the things they say, and the way they react to Mr. Trump. It is the most unbelievable, awe-inspiring thing.

Trump campaign staffers get into public screaming match

There’s big drama between the top advisers at the Trump campaign.

Donald Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks and campaign manager Corey Lewandowski were seen having a public screaming match on the street in Manhattan on Wednesday night.

Onlookers were stunned to see Hicks, 27, hollering at Lewandowski, 42, in plain view of passersby on 61st Street near Park Avenue.

One witness told us, “Hope was screaming at Corey, ‘I am done with you!’ It was ugly, she was doubled over with her fists clenched. He stood there looking shocked with his hands on his head.”

Other sources insist the street showdown was about how to handle the announcement that seasoned political operative Paul Manafort would be taking an even larger role in Trump’s campaign, and how Lewandowski’s role would be defined going forward.

Another source told us, “It was a campaign-related disagreement. They were arguing how the announcement about Manafort taking more responsibility would be handled. There is an internal struggle to define what Corey’s role would be.”

A third source added, “It was a continuation of a discussion about when the announcement would go out. Corey wanted to wait until Thursday to give him a chance to talk to certain people first. Hicks was under pressure by others to make the announcement sooner.”

Either way, it is a sign of internal discord in the Trump campaign between the Lewandowski and the Manafort camps.

Hicks — who had previously defended Lewandowski over claims that he was involved in a physical altercation with a female reporter — declined to comment Thursday night. Lewandowski also didn’t comment.

Fire and Fury:

Trump Called SMU Grad Hope Hicks a "Piece of Tail"

Hope Hicks can now add "being objectified by the president of the United States" to the narrow list of accomplishments she's racked up as she's gone from SMU English major to White House communications director.

According to Michael Wolff's new presidential tell-all Fire and Fury, Hicks, a former model and Gossip Girl novelization cover star who caught Trump's eye while modeling for Ivanka Trump's clothing line, had on an on-again, off-again relationship with former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski.

Hicks and Lewandowski's liaison culminated in a Page Six-covered screaming match on 61st Street near Park Avenue and Manhattan in May 2016.

The next month, Trump fired Lewandowski.

In a moment of compassion, Hicks, who'd by then become one of Trump's closest, and tight-lipped, confidants, asked Trump how she could help Lewandowski.

"Why?" Trump replied, Wolff writes. "You've already done enough for him. You're the best piece of tail he'll ever have."

Hicks immediately fled the room after Trump's comments, according to Wolff, but it wasn't enough to stop her rise through the campaign's ranks.

When Trump dumped former communications director Anthony Scaramucci last summer, Hicks, who did not return a request to comment on the contents of the book, took over as his interim replacement.

In November, she took over the job full time.

Trump has disputed both the content of the book and Wolff's claim that he was granted extensive access to the White House in 2017.

"I authorized Zero access to White House (actually turned him down many times) for author of phony book! I never spoke to him for book. Full of lies, misrepresentations and sources that don't exist," the president tweeted last week.

Sarah Sanders, the White House press secretary, called the book a "complete fantasy," during a press conference Thursday, the day before Fire and Fury's release.

What Is Hope Hicks Crying About?

Imagine a trial scene at the end of a Mob movie, with a wood-panelled courtroom and a white-haired judge.

The old don at the defense table, surrounded by slick lawyers.

The striving prosecutors.

The armed security.

The sworn witnesses, one by one, pressed to stay loyal or turn rat.

That has pretty much been the scene on the fifteenth floor of the Manhattan Criminal Courthouse these past few weeks, during former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial.

On Friday, the former White House counsellor Hope Hicks took the stand.

Hicks got involved with the Trump campaign in its early days; she was already on the team in 2015, when Trump came down the Trump Tower escalator to announce that he was running for President, and she was still with him in 2021, when his supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol to try to keep him in office.

But Hicks has since kept her distance.

After his insurrection failed, Trump decamped for Florida.

Hicks stayed in Washington, where she runs her own communications consultancy.

Now she was testifying against Trump after being subpoenaed by the government.

In press reports about the Trump Administration, she’d often been written about as a kind of surrogate daughter to the President—according to other 2016 campaign aides, Hicks used to press Trump’s jackets and pants as he wore them.

When she walked into Judge Juan Merchan’s courtroom, she could have passed for Ivanka Trump’s sister: hair extravagantly done, back straight, arms down by her sides, handbag held loosely with just the ends of her fingers.

But, when she sat down in the witness stand, she didn’t look in her old boss’s direction.

“I’m really nervous,” she said, immediately reaching for a glass of water placed in front of her by a court officer.

The government wanted Hicks to testify because she’d had conversations with both Trump and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former attorney, about Karen McDougal and Stormy Daniels, women who say they had sex with Trump in the early years of his marriage to former First Lady Melania Trump.

As a top communications aide, Hicks helped shape the official campaign and White House response to articles about McDougal and Daniels that ran in the Wall Street Journal both before and after Trump was elected.

The Manhattan District Attorney, Alvin Bragg, believes that Trump and his allies paid off McDougal and Daniels in 2016 as part of an illegal conspiracy to influence the Presidential election.

Bragg’s office has charged Trump with falsifying business records when he allegedly paid Cohen back for paying off Daniels.

Trump maintains his innocence, and, in fact, has portrayed himself in many ways as the victim in this trial.

Several of the witnesses who may take the stand have themselves been investigated for—or convicted of—crimes.

But, in Hicks’s case, neither side suggested that she has done anything improper.

She gave the prosecutors exactly what they wanted when she was asked about Trump’s reaction to a 2018 Wall Street Journal article about his relationship with Daniels, an adult-film actress who says that she and Trump had sex, in 2006, in a suite on the top floor of Harrah’s Lake Tahoe.

“Mr. Trump’s opinion was it was better to be dealing with it now, and that it would have been bad to have that story come out before the election,” Hicks said.

(Trump’s lawyers have suggested to the jury that the former President was primarily concerned about how news articles about alleged affairs would affect his wife; prosecutors have argued that what he was really worried about was the election.)

Hicks also acknowledged that she had texted with Cohen about Daniels just a few days before Election Day in 2016.

Cohen told her that “if necessary,” he had a statement from Daniels “denying everything.”

“I didn’t know what he was talking about, and I didn’t want to know,” Hicks said.

But she didn’t give the prosecutors everything they were looking for.

A few days ago, David Pecker, the former publisher of the National Enquirer—who purchased the rights to McDougal’s story about Trump in 2016 for a hundred and fifty thousand dollars, and who later entered into a coöperation agreement with the government—testified that, in March of 2018, after McDougal gave an interview to CNN’s Anderson Cooper, he’d spoken to both Hicks and White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders about McDougal’s hush-money contract.

“I explained to them, to the two of them, that—why I was going to extend her agreement,” Pecker said. “And both of them said that they thought that it was a good idea.”

When the senior counsel to the District Attorney Matthew Colangelo asked Hicks whether she had spoken to Pecker after McDougal spoke to CNN, her nervousness evaporated, revealing the seasoned communications aide beneath.

“I have no recollection of speaking to Mr. Pecker after that interview,” she said.

When asked about Cohen, who has also coöperated with the government and is expected to be the prosecution’s star witness, Hicks took a potshot.

“I used to say that he liked to call himself a ‘fixer’ or ‘Mr. Fix-It,’ and it was only because he first broke it,” she said.

For most of the time that Hicks was testifying, Trump was sitting in his now customary position at the defense table, slumped in his chair, eyes closed, seemingly semiconscious.

But, when Hicks made that crack about Cohen, his mouth broke out into a crooked little paternal smile.

It was left to Emil Bove, one of Trump’s attorneys, to cross-examine Hicks.

Bove, a former federal terrorism prosecutor, had displayed nothing but contempt for the previous witnesses.

“The things that I’ve shown you this morning raise some questions about how this phone was handled, right?” he asked Douglas Daus, a forensic computer analyst in the District Attorney’s office who handled cell phones that Cohen turned over, after grilling him on Friday morning.

“In many ways, we are just going to have to take Michael Cohen’s word for it, aren’t we?”

But, with Hicks, Bove was gentler.

“I think you said this morning that it ran a little bit like a family business while you were there?” he asked, at one point, referring to the Trump Organization.

Hicks said yes.

Bove also asked her about her early days there.

“Your initial title was the director of communications?” he asked.

She said yes.

“And that was a position that the Trump Organization created to bring you in, right?” he asked.

She said yes.

“And I think you said this morning that you focussed on real estate, hospitality, and entertainment—that was your portfolio there?” he said.

She turned her head to the side, and cast her eyes down.

“Sorry,” she said, her voice breaking.

A tissue appeared in her hand, and she dabbed her eyes.

“Could I just have a minute?” she asked.

The stenographer sitting a few feet from Hicks wrote “(Crying)” into the official record.

“Ms. Hicks, do you need a break?” Merchan asked.

“Yes, please,” she said. Merchan excused the jury, and then Hicks, her eyes red and puffy, came down from the stand and walked out of the courtroom, still avoiding Trump.

Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence

Agreement just before election required woman to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter say

Donald Trump with Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 photo uploaded to her Myspace.com account.

A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.

‘Trump Lawyer Arranged $130,000 Payment for Adult-Film Star’s Silence Agreement just before election required woman to keep quiet about an alleged sexual encounter with Trump in 2006, people familiar with the matter say

By Michael Rothfeld Updated Jan. 12, 2018 3:13 pm ET ind Joe Palazzolo

Donald Trump with Stephanie Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, in a 2006 photo uploaded to her Myspace.com account.

A lawyer for President Donald Trump arranged a $130,000 payment to a former adult-film star a month before the 2016 election as part of an agreement that precluded her from publicly discussing an alleged sexual encounter with Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

Michael Cohen, who spent nearly a decade as a top attorney at the Trump Organization, arranged payment to the woman, Stephanie Clifford, in October 2016 after her lawyer negotiated the nondisclosure agreement with Mr. Cohen, these people said.

Ms. Clifford, whose stage name is Stormy Daniels, has privately alleged the encounter with Mr. Trump took place after they met at a July 2006 celebrity golf tournament on the shore of Lake Tahoe, these people said.

Mr. Trump married Melania Trump in 2005.

Mr. Trump faced other allegations during his campaign of inappropriate behavior with women, and vehemently denied them.

In this matter, there is no allegation of a nonconsensual interaction.

“These are old, recycled reports, which were published and strongly denied prior to the election,” a White House official said, responding to the allegation of a sexual encounter involving Mr. Trump and Ms. Clifford.

The official declined to respond to questions about an agreement with Ms. Clifford.

It isn’t known whether Mr. Trump was aware of any agreement or payment involving her.

In a statement, Mr. Cohen didn’t address the $130,000 payment but said of the alleged sexual encounter that “President Trump once again vehemently denies any such occurrence as has Ms. Daniels.”

Mr. Cohen added in the statement, addressed to The Wall Street Journal:

“This is now the second time that you are raising outlandish allegations against my client. You have attempted to perpetuate this false narrative for over a year; a narrative that has been consistently Michael Cohen, Mr. Trump's personal attorney denied by all parties since at least

PHOTO: JONATHAN ERNST/REUTERS, 2011.”

The Journal previously reported that Ms. Clifford, 38 years old, had been in talks with ABC’s “Good Morning America” in the fall of 2016 about an appearance to discuss Mr. Trump, according to people familiar with the matter.

In that article, the Journal reported the company that owns the National Enquirer agreed to pay $150,000 to a former Playboy centerfold model three months before the election for her story of an affair a decade earlier with the Republican presidential nominee, which the tabloid newspaper didn't publish.

The company said she was paid to write fitness columns and appear on magazine covers.

Mr. Cohen also sent a two-paragraph statement by email addressed

“TO WHOM IT MAY CONCERN” and signed by “Stormy Daniels” denying that she had a “sexual and/or romantic affair” with Mr. Trump.

“Rumors that I have received hush money from Donald Trump are completely false,” the statement said.

Ms. Clifford didn’t respond to multiple emails seeking comment.

After the agreement, Ms. Clifford’s camp complained the payment wasn’t being made quickly enough and threatened to cancel the deal, some of the people familiar with the matter said.

The payment was made to Ms. Clifford through her lawyer in the matter, Keith Davidson, with funds sent to Mr. Davidson’s client-trust account at City National Bank in Los Angeles, according to the people.

“I previously represented Ms. Daniels,” Mr. Davidson said, referring to Ms. Clifford’s stage name. “Attorney-client privilege prohibits me from commenting on my clients’ legal matters.”

A spokeswoman for City National Bank declined to comment.

The agreement with Ms. Clifford came as the Trump campaign confronted allegations from numerous women who described unwanted sexual advances and alleged assaults by Mr. Trump.

In October 2016, the Washington Post published a videotape made, but never aired, by NBC’s “Access Hollywood” in which Mr. Trump spoke of groping women.

Mr. Trump denied all allegations of inappropriate sexual conduct and apologized at the time for his remarks on the tape, calling them locker-room banter.

Mr. Cohen worked at the Trump Organization from 2007 until after the election.

As Mr. Trump took office, Mr. Cohen said he would work in private practice and act as Mr. Trump’s personal attorney.

“I am the fix-it guy,” he said in an interview in January 2017 before Mr. Trump’s inauguration.

Ms. Clifford has appeared in about 150 adult films, and was considered among the industry's biggest stars when the then-27-year-old met Mr. Trump at the American Century Championship in 2006, held at Edgewood Tahoe golf course in Nevada.

Another adult-film star, Jessica Drake, later alleged in an October 2016 news conference that Mr. Trump kissed her and two other women without permission in a hotel suite after the same 2006 golf event.

“I did not sign [a nondisclosure agreement], nor have I received any money for coming forward,” Ms. Drake said this week in an emailed statement. “I spoke out because it was the right thing to do.”

A White House official responded to questions about Ms. Drake by referring toa previous statement by the Trump campaign, which called her account “totally false and ridiculous.”

Can You Believe What Michael Cohen Just Said at the Trump Trial?

The star witness in the former President’s criminal trial is also the most aggrieved and seemingly unreliable one.

After Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former lawyer and fixer, was released from prison, in 2020, he became very online.

He launched a podcast, “Mea Culpa,” with the goal of righting “the wrongs he perpetuated on behalf of his former boss,” according to the show’s description on Apple Podcasts.

Early episodes featured Rosie O’Donnell and Anthony Scaramucci discussing the cult of Trump; more recently, Cohen had brought on the Navy cryptologist turned cable-news commentator Malcolm Nance and the former Trump ghostwriter Tony Schwartz.

On TikTok, Cohen has posted gleefully about the prospect of the former President, who is currently on trial in Manhattan, going to prison.

(“Trump 2024? More like Trump twenty to twenty-four years,” he said during one of his nightly live streams.)

On X, Cohen has even started openly praising the current President.

“Thank you @POTUS @JoeBiden,” he wrote, in response to an interview that Biden did with CNN about the protests on college campuses. “There is no place in this country, or the world, for anti-semitism, racism or hate!”

He who once endeavored to own the libs has set out to court them.

Though this strategy has earned Cohen a decent audience on social media—more than six hundred thousand followers on X, and nearly three hundred thousand on TikTok, where his live-stream viewers have been sending him donations—it presents a problem for the prosecutors in Trump’s criminal trial, who are relying on Cohen as their star witness.

In 2018, Cohen pleaded guilty to tax evasion and campaign-finance violations, in connection with hush money that he paid to the adult-film actress Stormy Daniels before the 2016 Presidential election.

He has now testified that Trump expressly asked him to do this.

Basically, the case against the former President is riding on the willingness of a jury to believe the words of a notorious turncoat—a man who went from vowing to “take a bullet” for Trump to writing memoirs literally titled “Disloyal” and “Revenge.”

A man used to bluffing, bootlicking, and bullying for a living, who has also admitted to lying to Congress.

A man who has nothing left to lose by testifying against his old boss.

Back in 2019, there were lawyers in the Manhattan District Attorney’s office who were opposed to bringing the case against Trump on the ground that it would have to rely too heavily on Cohen, who was unreliable.

“He struck me as a somewhat feral creature,” one former prosecutor, who found Cohen credible, wrote.

The first month of Trump’s trial has been, in some ways, a long setup for Cohen’s testimony, with prosecutors calling other witnesses in the hope of corroborating in advance as much as they could of what would later come out of Cohen’s mouth.

Many of these witnesses could not resist taking shots at Cohen.

Hope Hicks, Trump’s former communications aide, said that Cohen was a “fixer” only in the sense that “he first broke it.”

Keith Davidson, Stormy Daniels’s former lawyer, referred to Cohen as a “pants-on-fire kind of guy.”

Even Cohen’s former First Republic banker, Gary Farro, acknowledged that Cohen was a difficult customer.

“Everything was urgent with Michael Cohen,” he said.

Cohen may have been “highly excitable,” as Davidson put it, but prosecutors need jurors to believe that he wasn’t so excitable that he then went rogue in covering up a scandal for the future President.

It doesn’t help that he always appears shifty, even on the witness stand—his eyebrows sit high on his face, making him look like a basset hound, and one brow naturally arches about an inch above the other.

On Monday, his first day on the stand, he wore a light-pink tie.

“He said to me, ‘This is a disaster, total disaster,’ ” Cohen told the court, describing Trump’s reaction to finding out that, in the aftermath of the “Access Hollywood” tape’s release, Daniels was shopping around a story about having sex with him in 2006.

“‘Women are going to hate me,’ ” Cohen continued, mimicking Trump’s intonation.

“‘Guys may think it’s cool, but this is going to be a disaster for the campaign.’”

Cohen said that Trump instructed him to hammer out a deal to buy the rights to the story from Daniels and to delay payment for as long as possible:

“What he had said to me is ‘What I want you to do is just push it out as long as you can. Just get past the election, because, if I win, it has no relevance, I will be President. If I lose, I don’t even care.’ ”

These quotes sound like Trump.

But no other witness can corroborate them.

When it comes to these and other conversations between Cohen and his old boss, prosecutors can only offer jurors Cohen’s word.

To try to give them a sense of who they were listening to, the Assistant District Attorney Susan Hoffinger prompted Cohen to speak about his childhood on Long Island, as the son of Holocaust survivors, about the heady early days of his employment at the Trump Organization, and about his dismay in late 2016 when he found out that Trump had cut the size of his annual bonus.

“I was truly insulted, personally hurt by it,” Cohen said. “Didn’t understand it. Made no sense.”

Last week, when Stormy Daniels took the stand, Hoffinger struggled to control the actress’s testimony.

Judge Juan Merchan became frustrated with the amount of graphic detail that Daniels gave about her sexual encounter with Trump—missionary position, no condom—and Trump’s lawyers asked for a mistrial.

There was reason to expect that Cohen’s testimony would be equally dramatic: Trump’s lawyers had already complained to the judge about Cohen bashing the former President on TikTok while Trump himself is under a gag order that prohibits him from posting about Cohen and the other witnesses in the case.

But Cohen’s testimony on Monday was surprisingly subdued. He kept his answers to Hoffinger’s questions short and to the point, accepted her premises, and often looked to her for approval when he was done responding.

“Did you at times during your work for the Trump Organization, for Mr. Trump, bully people for him?” Hoffinger asked. “Yes, Ma’am,” Cohen said. “Why did you do that?” she asked, to which Cohen replied, “The only thing that was on my mind was to accomplish the task to make him happy.”

Online, Cohen may still be a feral creature, but in court he seemed thoroughly domesticated. (We have yet to see how he fares during cross-examination.)

Trump, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, spent much of the day with his eyes closed.

He has appeared to doze through many of his days in court, but he seemed especially determined to play it cool with his old lawyer on the stand.

He didn’t whisper much in his attorneys’ ears, or slap them on the arm to get their attention.

At times, he looked engrossed as he read through documents that he’d brought with him to the defense table.

(New York magazine’s Andrew Rice reported that the pages included the latest Times voter poll.)

His lawyers objected only sparingly as Cohen testified on Monday, and called for no sidebar conversations with the judge.

The Trump courtroom has become an unofficial venue for Trump World courtiers.

On Monday, Trump was accompanied to court by Senators J. D. Vance and Tommy Tuberville.

On Tuesday, North Dakota’s governor, Doug Burgum, the former Presidential hopeful Vivek Ramaswamy, and Representative Byron Donalds were all in attendance.

I wondered if, as they watched Cohen get questioned, they considered the possibility of their own future of apostasy.

Trump is always Trump, but his hangers-on are all a wrong turn or two from becoming Michael Cohens.

Earlier in the trial, Keith Davidson, Daniels’s former lawyer who worked with Cohen to arrange the hush-money payment, recalled talking to Cohen during the Presidential transition in late 2016.

Cohen had been dreaming of a big White House job, but he ultimately settled for the non-governmental title of personal attorney to the President.

“I thought he was gonna kill himself,” Davidson said, of Cohen.

On Monday, Hoffinger asked Cohen if he had been disappointed not to get the job of White House chief of staff.

“I didn’t believe the role was right for me or that I was even competent to be chief of staff,” he said. “But I wanted to at least be considered. It was more about my ego than anything.”

[truck-fump]

Governor Kristi Noem, “God-Fearing” Family Woman, and Corey Lewandowski, <b>Trump</b> ... - Vanity Fair

New Post has been published on https://www.google.com/url?rct=j&sa=t&url=https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2023/09/governor-kristi-noem-god-fearing-family-woman-and-corey-lewandowski-trump-creep-reportedly-had-yearslong-affair&ct=ga&cd=CAIyGjUzM2UwMTY5ZmFhZTIwMGQ6Y29tOmVuOlVT&usg=AOvVaw3uJawzhnG5ZLcanQgukrzK

Governor Kristi Noem, “God-Fearing” Family Woman, and Corey Lewandowski, Trump ... - Vanity Fair

The Daily Mail has published an explosive report that South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and Corey Lewandowski, a former Donald Trump aide, …

[scottguy]

Honestly, I wouldn't mind an affair if Republicans didn't pretend to own the moral high ground and be so perfect and hypocritically preach on 'family values' issues.

[sethshead]

More dispatches from the family values party.

It’s not drag queens or gay adoption that are undermining the sanctity of American marriage; self-righteous, hypocritical Republicans are doing the work there.

[pscottm]

EXCLUSIVE: Married South Dakota governor Kristi Noem and Trump advisor Corey Lewandowski have been having a years-long clandestine affair | Daily Mail Online

[wilwheaton]

Trump knows he’s not going to be impeached, and that is indeed a very, very bad thing. It gives him carte blanche: He can seek foreign assistance for his campaign in the next election (as he indicated to George Stephanopoulos he would do, and as Rudy Giuliani is openly doing in Ukraine); he can suppress testimony to Congress (Don McGahn, Corey Lewandowski, and others); he can disregard subpoenas, use the Justice Department as a club against his political enemies, hide potentially illicit financial affairs, cancel primaries, leave our election systems vulnerable and perhaps worse. It should come as a surprise to no one that Trump would try to collude with a foreign power to get dirt on a political opponent. First off, he’s done it before; and secondly, he’s Trump. This is only going to get worse. Pelosi’s egregious miscalculation could come back to haunt the Democrats (and our nation) in very serious ways, not just because the speaker has allowed the president to be above the law, but because Trump is now like an unleashed dog who knows that no matter who he bites or what he relieves himself on, there will be no consequences.

Pelosi gave Trump a blank check, and he’s cashing it every day

I’ve been patient, presuming Pelosi knows more and is smarter than I am about the politics of this moment.

But I’m out of patience. Trump is CLEARLY breaking the law and if his conduct is not impeachable, no president’s conduct ever will be.

Nancy Pelosi is failing to uphold her oath of office, and is failing America. 

[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

* * * *

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

December 4, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

While coronavirus continues to burn across the country, Trump is focusing instead on continuing to contest the election results and on the Pentagon.

The main story in the country continues to be the coronavirus. As of tonight, according to the New York Times, more than 14,441,700 people in the U.S. have been infected with the virus and at least 278,900 have died. Official daily death counts are well over 2000.

As several states continue to count votes from the November election, President-Elect Joe Biden’s popular vote margin over Trump is now more than 7 million. Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Georgia, Arizona, and Michigan, all states in which Trump contested the vote, have already certified their election results for Biden. In all six of those states, judges have ruled that Trump’s lawyers have provided no evidence of fraud. They have used words like “baseless,” “flimsy,” “obviously lacking,” “dangerous,” and “not credible.”

Trump’s obsession with winning an election he has clearly lost has brought into relief the struggle for control over the Republican Party. Trump is clearly trying to turn the party into a vehicle for loyalty to him and him alone. He has always turned on those who no longer serve his interests: Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions was one of the first elected Republicans to support Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy, giving it an air of legitimacy. He left the Senate to become Trump’s first Attorney General, only to have Trump turn against him when he recused himself from the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, because he had lied about his own contacts with Russians. Trump forced Sessions to resign, and when Sessions ran again for the Senate, endorsed his rival and attacked Sessions on Twitter. Sessions lost his primary.

Now Trump has turned on men who similarly sacrificed their careers for his. Three days ago, Trump’s loyalist Attorney General, William Barr, undercut Trump’s election fraud arguments when he said that he had not seen such fraud. This apparently so infuriated Trump that he is considering firing Barr. Then, this morning, Trump turned on loyalist Louis DeJoy at the head of the United States Postal Service, who removed mail sorting machines and changed USPS rules to slow mail-in ballots expected to be for Biden. Trump tweeted that the USPS “is responsible for tampering with hundreds of thousands of ballots” and thus stole the election from him. He called the USPS a “long time Democrat stronghold,” although DeJoy is a major Trump supporter and donor.

While Trump is talking about running again in 2024, his turning against his most loyal supporters in the Republican Party will not inspire others to rally to his banner. Instead, it may simply be that he’s keeping the idea of his candidacy alive because it keeps money flowing in. Since the election, he has raised more than $200 million in donations.

While he is fighting over the election results, Trump has done very little else except to replace civilian employees at the Pentagon with his own hand-picked loyalists. This is unusual in a lame duck period, when presidents usually try to smooth the transition to the next administration.

Far from trying to smooth that transition, Trump is making it as bumpy as possible. His appointee at the General Services Administration delayed the start of the transition for weeks. Now that Biden’s team finally has access to Trump’s people to learn about their planning for the rollout of the coronavirus vaccine, it turns out there hasn’t been much planning. Biden today noted that “There is no detailed plan that we’ve seen, anyway, as to how you get the vaccine out of a container, into an injection syringe, into somebody’s arm…. It's going to be very difficult for that to be done and it’s a very expensive proposition…. There’s a lot more that has to be done.”

Also disturbing is that the Trump administration has denied the Biden team access to U.S. intelligence agencies that are controlled by the Defense Department, including the National Security Agency (which is the nation’s largest U.S. intelligence service), the Defense Intelligence Agency, and other intelligence services with a global reach. The Biden folks have, though, been able to meet with their counterparts at the CIA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence.

The refusal of the Pentagon to meet with Biden’s people comes at a time when Trump has been shaking up personnel there. Immediately after the election, Trump fired his fourth Defense Secretary, Mark T. Esper, and replaced him with an acting secretary of defense, Christopher C. Miller. Miller, in turn, has presided over the installation of a number of Trump loyalists both in the Pentagon leadership and on the Defense Policy Board, a group of advisors who consult with the Defense Secretary on specific issues when asked. Pushed out were about a dozen advisers, including former Secretaries of State Madeleine Albright and Henry Kissinger, as well as former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor.

Today, there was another major purge at Defense, this time from the Defense Business Board, a nonpartisan group of about 20 volunteers from the business sector who are appointed to give business advice to Pentagon leaders. The White House threw nine people off the board—informing them with a terse email—including its chair, Michael Bayer. Trump replaced them with his former 2016 campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski, and that year’s deputy campaign manager, David Bossie, among other loyalists. Both Lewandowski and Bossie are outspoken Trump supporters who have led the fight to contest the election.

So has another Trump nominee for a Pentagon post, Scott O’Grady, who has endorsed the idea that Trump won by a landslide and that Trump should declare martial law. Trump has nominated him to become an assistant secretary of defense for international security affairs, overseeing operations in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

Exactly what Trump is doing with this packing of the Defense Department is unclear. There are, though, three major issues on the table right now that may or may not be involved, but are worth keeping in mind.

The first is that Trump is trying to remove many U.S. troops from around the world before he leaves office, and had gotten serious pushback on that from the people he has now purged from the Defense Department. Today, he ordered nearly all of about 700 U.S. troops out of Somalia, where they have been training local soldiers to hold ground against terrorists. They will not come home, though; they are being sent elsewhere in Africa.

There is also still hanging out there the administration’s sudden announcement of a $23 billion sale of arms to the United Arab Emirates, including a number of advanced F-35 fighter jets and Reaper drones. Lawmakers of both parties object to this sale, concerned about risks to Israel and that the UAE could transfer the technology to China and Russia. The Senate will vote next week on banning the sale.

There is also the effort by the White House to force the Pentagon to lease its airwave spectrum to a private company, Rivada Networks, to create a nationwide 5G network. Rivada is backed by major Republican figures, including operative Karl Rove, but established Pentagon officials have little interest in the project, pointing out that there is no proof that Rivada knows what it’s doing or that the plan would be legal. It’s also not clear that the use of this spectrum for private carriers wouldn’t impact its use for national security. The Defense Department spectrum the White House would like to lease to private investors is worth between $50 and $75 billion.

I always believe in following the money, and that’s especially true now as Trump’s years in the White House, which have given him access to huge sums, are drawing to a close.

—-

[FROM COMMENTS]

Scott M. Krasner

I waver between bewilderment and rage when reading these daily summaries. I can almost "understand" his more political moves - installing loyalists, withdrawing troops, even trying to sell access to the Defense Department's wavebands. I don't agree or condone these actions, but they're consistent with his approach to governance to date.

What's comprehensible is ignoring - in any and every way - the coronavirus and its impact. Unconscionable doesn't begin to describe his failure to acknowledge the deaths of 280,000 Americans, or to endorse any means of protecting each other as best possible. It's inhumane. It's devoid of empathy, morally vacuous, and ethically deplorable. It is unequivocally and unalterably wrong.

And yet 74,000,000 thought it acceptable to return him to office. McConnell has personally obstructed any efforts to extend relief for 8 months and counting. It's Hobbseian in its social brutishness. Even Hobbes might be appalled. And Republican leadership is mute.

I'm almost beyond shock. Since the beginning, many thought each of Trump's transgressions would be the last straw, yet nothing happened. The only apparent imposition of accountability is his having lost the election. Court losses haven't swayed him. Our perverse campaign finance laws have given him license to steal despite the misleading fine print. His Cabinet, always incompetent for the task, is asleep, silent, or in on the game. Each day goes by with no visible effort to limit his efforts to salt the earth in advance of his successor. And Republican leadership ignores or enables him to proceed unhindered.

He's unmoored. He's looking to preemptively pardon family and loyalists who are most likely would be criminally liable but haven't yet been charged. His most ardent supporters are almost insane (read Giuliani and Powell) or seditious (read Flynn and Lin Wood). And still the Republican party watches with bloodless faces and dead eyed stares, saying not a word.

What is one to think? How does one explain this to children? How can one reason with any family, friends, or acquaintances who somehow believe Trump is in the right, brought low only by a grand, silent conspiracy of wrong minded citizens and foreign actors?

Perhaps history can look upon Trump's reign of terror more dispassionately. Today, however, I and many others feel like we're helpless, our minds and sensibilities best represented by the visage of horror in Edvard Munch's The Scream.

*

Linda Mitchell

Hannah Arendt's book (based on her reporting for The New Yorker), "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil" encapsulates the issues TCinLA and the people who posted replies to it raise. I have read only bits of it but what she presents is a picture of evil that is stripped of glamour and that indicts everyone. As she says about Eichmann, "Except for an extraordinary diligence in looking out for his personal advancement, he had no motives at all." If you have access to JSTOR (you can read online for free but not download if you don't have access through a library) there is a great short article in The History Teacher (1981) that discusses Arendt and her book in clear and concise terms. https://www.jstor.org/stable/493684

Miller and most everyone else surrounding the Deranged Cheeto--including the criminal enablers in Congress--fit Arendt's description perfectly. They are not monsters. They are not (most of them) pathological narcissists. They are sterile, unoriginal, uncreative people who have decided that personal advancement through doing terrible things is fine with them. It is actually harder, in our modern world, to be a good person than to be an awful one. Empathy, emotional maturity, awareness, and wisdom all require effort on the part of the individual. One has to engage, one has to become self-aware, one has to be brutally honest with oneself. Evil simply requires reaching down to that lowest common denominator of the id: a desire for self-advancement by any means necessary.

This is why they all seem so petty, so puerile, so childish, so joyless. This is why their tantrums are so infantile. And this is why Biden and Harris seem, by contrast, so refreshingly mature, so willing to allow joy. Both have been radically affected by what Hegel referred to as the "slaughter-bench" of history. The subhumans surrounding the Unelected Ex-President have not got enough imagination to be affected by anything except their own hunger.

[LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN]

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[reading-writing-revolution]

August 20, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Sheesh. What a day.

It began last night, while I was writing last night’s letter, when shortly after midnight we learned that Alexei Navalny, outspoken critic of Vladimir Putin’s government, has apparently been poisoned. He collapsed in pain on an airplane after drinking tea at Russia’s Tomsk airport. The plane made an emergency landing, meeting medics who raced Navalny to the hospital, where he is gravely ill. The poisoning is a chilling reminder of Putin’s tactics just days after the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 election established that the Trump campaign invited his influence into our affairs.

Then, today, federal prosecutors in New York acting for a grand jury indicted Steve Bannon, Brian Kolfage, and two others for fraud and money laundering in connection with an online crowdfunding campaign that raised more than $25 million to build a wall on the U.S. southern border with Mexico. The men told donors to “We the People Build the Wall” that “100% of the funds raised… will be used in the execution of our mission and purpose,” and that “we’re a volunteer organization.” In fact, they allegedly pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars, routing the money through a shell company and false invoices.

The indictment quotes text messages between the men indicating they were quite deliberately running a scam. The messages highlight how the Republican system of fundraising from small donors, pioneered by direct-mail guru Richard Viguerie in the 1960s to fund Movement Conservatives rejected by traditional Republicans, now is used to funnel money from unsuspecting marks into the pockets of people who stoke rightwing outrage.

Bannon’s arrest means that two of Trump’s 2016 campaign chairs—Paul Manafort and Bannon-- have now been indicted and arrested on charges of fraud. The third, Corey Lewandowski, was also arrested on a misdemeanor battery charge against a reporter, but while video proved the reporter’s account was accurate, the charge was dropped. The campaign’s deputy chairman, Rick Gates, an associate of Manafort, was also charged with financial crimes and conspiracy, and was sentenced to 45 days in jail after agreeing to cooperate with investigators.

Trump immediately tried to distance himself from Bannon, saying he hadn’t “been dealing with him for a very long period of time.” Bannon was the chief executive of Trump’s 2016 campaign, replacing Manafort, and upon entering the White House, Trump named Bannon to a newly created position as “chief strategist” on a level with the chief of staff. So influential in the early administration was Bannon that Trump gave him a full seat on the “principals committee” of the National Security Council, while pushing the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of National Intelligence down to occasional attendees. Bannon left the White House after the Charlottesville Unite the Right rally highlighted the dangers of having an open white nationalist in the White House. Then-White House chief of staff John Kelly asked Bannon to leave. But at least for a while, Trump continued to call Bannon when Kelly was not around.

White House press secretary Kayleigh McEnany issued a statement saying Trump “has not been involved with Steve Bannon since the campaign and the early part of the Administration, and he does not know the people involved with this project.” In fact, supporters of the project include Donald Trump, Jr., his girlfriend Kimberly Guilfoyle, and anti-immigrant activist Kris Kobach. Last year, Kobach said Trump had given the effort his blessing, and there is a testimonial from Trump Jr. on their website. Trump Org spokeswoman Amanda Miller said Trump Jr. had given one speech at one of their events, and they used his words as a testimonial without his permission.

Bannon pleaded not guilty and was released on a $5 million bail bond secured with $1.75 million in cash. “This entire fiasco is to stop people who want to build the wall,” he told reporters as he left the federal courthouse.

The arrests set off a tweet storm from the president. Trump also called into the show of Fox News channel personality Sean Hannity tonight, claiming again that mail-in voting will create a fraudulent election and emphasizing—in unfortunate words about sending law enforcement to polling places—that he plans to deploy all the means he can to challenge the 2020 vote.

Today a federal judge rejected the argument of Trump’s lawyers that the subpoena of Manhattan district attorney Cyrus Vance, Jr. for eight years of Trump’s tax returns is “wildly overbroad.” Judge Victor Marrero upheld the subpoena. Trump’s lawyers immediately indicated they would appeal the decision.

Meanwhile, Trump has asked the Supreme Court to overturn a ruling last year by a federal appeals court that he may not block his critics on Twitter. The lower court said that since Trump uses the account for official announcements, he violates the First Amendment whenever he blocks someone and silences them. Today his lawyers argued that his account is his personal property and that he does not have to tolerate opposing views on it. Blocking critics would enable Trump to control what his followers see on his account, preventing visible pushback to his tweets. In effect, he could dominate the discourse in a public space.

Trump certainly has critics.

Deborah L Hughes, the director of the Susan B. Anthony museum, today rejected Trump’s pardon for Ms. Anthony, saying the pardon validated a legal process Anthony called an outrage.

Then, shortly before the Democratic National Convention kicked off tonight, more than 70 senior national security officials from the Republican Party released a letter announcing that they are supporting Biden in 2020. Their letter lists ten reasons Trump has “failed our country.” Donald Trump, they write, “is dangerously unfit to serve another term.”

Tonight was the night that former Vice President Joe Biden gave his acceptance speech in response to the Democratic Party’s nomination of him as their presidential candidate.

Tonight was Biden’s, as military families and former service people testified to his support for them, 13-year-old Brayden Harrington explained how Biden helped him deal with his own stutter (huge props for this young man taking on this assignment and executing it so well), Biden’s former rivals for the nomination talked of Biden’s kindness and decency, and, above all, Biden’s family emphasized again and again that for Biden, family and faith is everything. The picture was of a fundamentally decent and moral man, a striking contrast to his Republican rival.

The Democratic National Committee has pulled off an astonishing accomplishment with this, the nation’s first virtual political convention. It was tightly choreographed, inclusive, passionate, and fun, drawing in viewers with its variety and quick pace. It demonstrated professionalism, talent, and skill even without taking into account its content.

But the content was key. Rather than weakening the event, the lack of audience created an intimacy between speakers and viewers that lent a shining new authenticity to the voices the convention highlighted.

Biden is always a better speaker than people who know him for his gaffes expect, and tonight he hit it out of the park. On FNC, Chris Wallace noted that the Trump campaign’s attempt to convince voters Biden is mentally impaired backfired badly as he delivered “an enormously effective speech.”

Rather than simply outline his plan for his presidency, Biden also gave an impassioned plea for the nation, tying his love for it to his own life and values. He treated voters not as tools to be manipulated, but as people who can be trusted to choose their own future.

“America is at an inflection point,” he said. “A time of real peril, but of extraordinary possibilities. We can choose the path of becoming angrier, less hopeful, and more divided. A path of shadow and suspicion. Or we can choose a different path, and together, take this chance to heal, to be reborn, to unite. A path of hope and light. This is a life-changing election that will determine America’s future for a very long time. Character is on the ballot. Compassion is on the ballot. Decency, science, democracy. They are all on the ballot. Who we are as a nation. What we stand for. And most importantly, who we want to be. That’s all on the ballot. And the choice could not be clearer.”

—-

Notes:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/us/politics/republican-national-security-biden.html

Letter: https://www.defendingdemocracytogether.org/national-security/

https://susanb.org/news-and-updates/

Bannon: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/29/us/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-national-security-council.html

McConnell: https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2020/08/20/rnc-mitch-mcconnell-not-speaking-gop-convention/3403498001/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/during-a-summer-of-crisis-trump-chafes-against-criticism-and-new-controls/2017/08/31/8fb32d72-8d97-11e7-91d5-ab4e4bb76a3a_story.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/20/each-trumps-2016-campaign-managers-has-now-faced-criminal-charges/

indictment: https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/bannon-indictment/index.html

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/20/politics/bannon-build-the-wall-indictment/index.html

Trump on Hannity:

Andrew Lawrence @ndrew_lawrence

Trump says that on election day he's going to send law enforcement to polling locations 

August 21st 2020

4,139 Retweets5,311 Likes

Vance: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/20/nyregion/donald-trump-taxes-cyrus-vance.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/read-full-speech-joe-biden-s-remarks-2020-democratic-national-n1237620

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-supreme-court-ok-block-critics-twitter/

tweets: https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/biden-prepared-accept-democratic-nomination-president-furious-trump/story

© 2020 Heather Cox Richardson

548 Market Street PMB 72296, San Francisco, CA 94104

[omfgtrump]

A Beautiful Conversation

Come on people, why is everyone so apoplectic about the most recent scandal of The Don. You know, the Dog Whisperer, oops, I mean whistle blower thing. After all, he and his Pitbull pal, Rudy G, have been saying for months that getting intel and opposition research from a foreign government is like vaping, it’s just so cool.

Rumor has it the Rudy was miffed that he wasn’t included in the new Roy Cohn documentary entitled: “Where’s My Roy Cohn?” “It’s not fair”, he purportedly whined, “I have done so much for the president and Barr has the limelight. I mean come on, I’m almost as evil looking as Cohn and could play him in the biopic!”

Here’s what The Don had to say to ABC’s, George Stephanopoulos, a few weeks ago when  asked if he would take information from a foreign government:

“I think you might want to listen, there isn’t anything wrong with listening,” Trump continued. “If somebody called from a country, Norway, [and said] ‘we have information on your opponent’ — oh, I think I’d want to hear it.”

The issue of Rudy G. and his shenanigans with Ukraine, have been in the news for a while. After the whistle blower information leaked, he was interviewed by Chris Cuomo of CNN:

Chris Cuomo: Did you ask the Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden?

Rudy Giuliani: No. Actually, I didn’t …

Cuomo, 24 seconds later: So, you did ask Ukraine to look into Joe Biden?

Giuliani: Of course, I did.

Didn’t we have the Mueller report already prove that The Don and his immoral cronies would work with a foreign government to win an election? Oh that’s such old news. Russia, remember that?

So a whistle blower gives the inspector general for the intelligence community, Michael Atkinson (who was appointed by Trump) information that is of great concern.

The inspector general does a thorough review of the information and deems it to be legitimate and urgent.

Following protocol, he turns it over to the Acting Director of the DNI, Joseph Maguire, who is required by law to turn it over to congress and the DNI says, nah, not going to do that. (Update: As of last night he says he will. We will see.)

Startling, right? Not really. What is startling is that everyone who is in The Don’s administration, and the entire Republican Party, has decided that they will protect him at any cost. It’s like the political version of Handmaid’s Tale: In this version, the dystopian world is not women forced to procreate for a master race cult, but white men whose minds are controlled in a Manchurian Candidate manner; but instead of the evil doer being played by Angela Lansbury, it is played by The Don.

In the scandal of the week, The Don tries to bully the president of the Ukraine in to doing an investigation in to Joe Biden Jr.’s work in the Ukraine in order to bully Biden, who The Don fears will defeat him in the 2020 election. And it’s a total coincidence that the $250 million earmarked for Ukraine, money that helps shore up their military to protect Russia, is taken off the table leaving the Ukraine more vulnerable to Russia?

Take that, Ukraine. No one denies The Don. He asked you eight times to do his bidding. (I think the whistleblower got his information because by the 8th time The Don was screaming so loud you could hear him in the Starbucks down the street!)

And you didn’t give him the toy he wants? Well then, The Don will just shut down the playground and let The Russians bulldoze it. So exasperated, The Don declared a tariff on Ukrainian Paska, Borscht, and Varenyky.

BTW, do remember Paul Manafort- God, doesn’t he look sexy, a real beast in that orange jumpsuit or what? When he was The Don’s campaign manager and was responsible for modifying the Republican National Committee platform at the Republican convention to remove language to come to the defense of Ukraine.

When that happened everyone was: WTF? Weird? Something fishy going on here?

So we are back to Russia again. Sanctions and the Ukraine. Two intertwined plot lines.

What does Putin want from The Don? He wants sanctions lifted that were imposed on him for his appropriation of Crimea.

Remember Don Jr’s infamous “I’m loving it” Trump Tower meeting to get dirt on Clinton? That was about exchanging opposition research for the U.S. lifting sanctions. And there was Mike Flynn- soon to be on the cover of Behind Bars Magazine– and his shenanigans with Russia and sanctions.

If I sat down with a third-grader and relayed the facts I have laid out here, their response would be: How come the president loves Russia so much? Are we best friends with Russia? Does he owe them something? Yes, he does you smart 3rd grader. Me thinks when the truth is told he owes them a lot of money in the form of loans through Deutsche bank that were co-signed by rich Russians.

Now that the details of the whistle blower’s info is leaking, the great spin machine, that is The Don, is on the move. The Don is incensed that anyone thinks he did anything unsavory in his conversation with the Ukranian president. According to The Don, his conversation was appropriate and beautiful. (Most recently it was “perfect,” a perfect conversation.) As far as The Don is concerned, the word appropriate is an oxymoron. Now beautiful is a word that is Donesque. He has used it dozens of times to describe many things. Here are some of my favorites: Chocolate cake during air strikes, sleeping gas, Confederate statues, his temperament and beautiful clean coal. So when The Don says he had a beautiful conversation, well?

So once again, faced with another jaw dropping, egregious act of law breaking, what will the democrats do? (

Here’s my suggestion: When the Director of National Intelligence goes before congress to testify about the whistle blower affair, the head of the House Intelligence Committee, Adam Schiff, should hold up an orange jumpsuit and ask him if he is a small, medium, or large. Then, if he refuses to reveal the information the whistle blower provided, declare him in contempt of court and have the court authorities take him to jail. And after that, do the same for anyone who defies a subpoena or is in contempt of Congress. No more Corey Lewandowski nonsense.  Maybe then we can finally have the beautiful conversation we need and get the truth.

Exciting new development: Nancy Pelosi has finally started an official impeachment investigation. Finally, the democrats can start backpedaling and take our law breaking president to task!

    from WordPress https://ift.tt/2mFRqLK via IFTTT

[corrupcionenpr]

La petrolera venezolana CITGO y el gobierno de Puerto Rico comparten tres empresas consultoras en Washington, según los datos del registro de cabilderos del Senado estadounidense.

Cornerstone Government Affairs, VantageKnight y Avenue Strategies hacen labores de cabildeo tanto para CITGO, una subsidiaria de Petróleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), como para el gobierno de Ricardo Rosselló.

Cornerstone Government Affairs ha hecho cabildeo para CITGO desde 2014 y reportado ingresos y gastos de sobre $1 millón en esas gestiones. Cornerstone tiene desde marzo un contrato por $175,000 con la Administración de Asuntos Federales de Puerto Rico (PRFAA), el cual se extiende hasta el 30 de junio.

VantageKnight ha informado de ingresos y gastos de cabildeo por $840,000 a favor de CITGO entre julio de 2016 y marzo de 2017. Mientras, VantageKnight tiene desde el 30 de marzo un contrato de $250,000 con la Compañía de Fomento Industrial (PRIDCO), el cual vence el 30 de junio.

Avenue Strategies, por su parte, informó al Senado estadounidense que a través de VantageKnight tiene un contrato para cabildear a favor de CITGO. Por el momento solo aparece el registro oficial.

La relación de AvenueStrategies con clientes extranjeros habría sido una de las razones que provocó la salida de esa empresa de uno de sus fundadores, Corey Lewandowski, quien fue el primer director de campaña del ahora presidente de Estados Unidos, Donald Trump, y a quien el gobierno de Puerto Rico fue a buscar originalmente como cabildero.

CITGO, que funciona aquí como una compañía estadounidense con oficinas principales en Houston, Texas, ha estado tratando de evitar caer en las sanciones que ha impuesto el gobierno de Estados Unidos en contra del gobierno de Venezuela.

Junto a Lewandowski se fue de Avenue Strategies, otro de los empleados de esa firma, Carlos Julio Giménez, hijo del alcalde de Miami Dade, quien dijo entonces que “nunca personalmente va a representar los intereses (del presidente de Venezuela, Nicolás) Maduro”.

El gobernador Rosselló, quien es un crítico del gobierno de Maduro, ha salido en defensa del cabildeo Ortiz, muy cercano a su familia y quien sostiene que defiende a CITGO como empresa estadounidense, no como subsidiaria de Petróleos de Venezuela.

“Soy un crítico del gobierno de Venezuela. Manuel Ortiz es un profesional de primer nivel. Ha estado evaluado en Estados Unidos, dentro de su profesión, entre los mejores. Lo hemos contratado porque queremos lo mejor para Puerto Rico”, indicó Rosselló en abril a El Nuevo Día.

Ayer, el gobernador Rosselló se reunió con venezolanos residentes en Puerto Rico que le pidieron apoyo hacia la oposición política del presidente Maduro. Según La Fortaleza, en el grupo estuvieron Anabella Kogan, Luis Raúl Pericchi y José Antonio Maes.

[nprbooks]

“I'll get all the good stuff out of the way first,” says our critic Annalisa Quinn:

President Trump likes to eat cheeseburgers in bed; his hair is the result of scalp reduction surgery and deft, even architectural, styling; he has three TVs in his bedroom; his advisers speculate about whether or not he can read; Steve Bannon called Ivanka "dumb as a brick"; Trump called Sally Yates a "c***"; Hope Hicks and Corey Lewandowski had an affair that ended in a street fight; and Trump's inner circle walks around in a state of "queasy sheepishness, if not constant incredulity" at the president's behavior. You're welcome.

Want more? Of course you do.

-- Petra

[gavinmarshall]

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[dreaminginthedeepsouth]

LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

November 12, 2020

Heather Cox Richardson

Tonight, the major networks called Arizona for Joe Biden. This means Arizona has voted for a Democrat for president for the first time since 1996, when Ross Perot’s bid for the presidency siphoned off votes from Republican candidate Bob Dole and let Democratic candidate Bill Clinton clinch the state. Before that, the last time Arizona backed a Democrat was in 1948, when it went for Harry Truman.

Since the numbers in Biden’s column now make up an insurmountable margin for Trump to overcome, the Trump campaign is now saying that the computers in certain states switched votes from him to Biden. This has been thoroughly debunked. This afternoon, the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency in the Department of Homeland Security circulated a statement by the Elections Infrastructure Government Coordinating Council, a group of federal, state, and local officials, declaring that the 2020 election was “the most secure in American history” and that “there is no evidence” of tampering with any voting systems.

Perhaps more to the point, Trump has been telling people that he will announce a run for the 2024 presidency as soon as the vote is certified for Biden. This would keep money flowing into his pockets, as well as keeping him in the news. Sources have told Maggie Haberman at the New York Times that the president has no grand strategy other than to keep his supporters energized to follow him into whatever he does next, including, perhaps, launching a competitor to the Fox News Channel.

Meanwhile, the president is holed up in the White House, his public schedule empty, tweeting about how he has won an election that everyone knows he lost.

One of the things he is ignoring is the devastating spread of coronavirus through this country. Today more than 153,000 new cases were reported, with 66,000 people hospitalized. More than 10.4 million Americans have been infected with the coronavirus, and more than 242,000 have died.

While the White House election night watch party has turned into a superspreader event, today ensnaring former 2016 Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, most infections are now caused not by large public events but by small gatherings at home: dinner parties, carpools, playdates. These indoor events create “perfect conditions for a virus that can spread among people who are crowded into a poorly ventilated space,” write the doctors and public health officials at the PolicyLab of the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia. Cases are not only on the rise, but also more severe. Experts remind us that we should avoid spending more than 15 minutes within six feet of anyone outside our own household in any 24-hour period, and they beg people to stay home for the holidays this year.

President-Elect Joe Biden has been out of the news, working. His new chief of staff, Ronald Klain, told reporters that he has been speaking privately to Republicans, although he has not talked to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. While Republicans appear to want to keep up the public narrative that the results of the election are unclear, they are beginning to demand that Biden get access to the intelligence reports Trump is keeping from him. Shutting the president-elect out of intelligence reports hampers our national security not only with regard to foreign affairs, but also with regard to the coronavirus, leaving Biden out of the planning to roll out a vaccine, for example.

Among the phone calls Biden has had with world leaders was one today with Pope Francis. According to the call readout, the pope offered Biden blessings and congratulations; Biden thanked the pope for promoting the common bonds of humanity and said he hoped to work together on issues that touched on their shared belief “in the dignity and equality of all humankind.” He singled out “caring for the marginalized and the poor, addressing the crisis of climate change, and welcoming and integrating immigrants and refugees into our communities"—all areas in which the pope has called on global leaders to take action, and on which the Biden administration’s policies are expected to differ from its predecessor’s. Biden will be America’s second Catholic president. (John F. Kennedy, elected in 1960, was the first.)

Biden has announced policy teams to help with the transition. They are made up largely of volunteers who will review the different government agencies and make policy recommendations. The Biden-Harris team notes that the transition will prioritize “diversity of ideology and background; talent to address society’s most complex challenges; integrity and the highest ethical standards to serve the American people and not special interests; and transparency to garner trust at every stage.” The names on the transition teams are impressive ones. Stanford Law School Professor Pamela Karlan, who testified before the House Judiciary Committee during the impeachment hearings will be part of the team that reviews the Department of Justice for the transition.

Lara Seligman at Politico reported today that Biden has been reaching out to former Pentagon officials who retired or were fired in the past four years to talk about the transition and whether or not they might want to go back into the Defense Department. The Biden team is talking to former officials because the current ones are Trump loyalists and team members don’t think they will be particularly cooperative or, for that matter, very knowledgeable. Seligman says that Biden wants to create a bipartisan leadership team at the Defense Department. In a notable change from the past four years, Biden’s agency review team for the Pentagon is led by female defense policy experts.

Biden tweeted just once today, after six American National Guardsmen, along with a Czech and a French team member, died in a helicopter crash in Egypt during a peacekeeping mission. One American was wounded. While the current president apparently ignored the loss, using Twitter to spread false rumors about the election and to attack the Fox News Channel, Biden tweeted: “I extend my deep condolences to the loved ones of the peacekeepers, including 6 American service members, who died on Tiran Island, and wish a speedy recovery to the surviving American. I join all Americans in honoring their sacrifice, as I keep their loved ones in my prayers.”

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LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN

HEATHER COX RICHARDSON

[deniscollins]

AT&T Chief Says It Made a ‘Big Mistake’ Hiring Michael Cohen

If you were AT&T’s government affairs lobbying executive, what would you do if President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer offered you his consulting services for $50,000 a month to advise on regulatory matters, including a $85.4 billion merger with Tim Warner: (1) Accept the offer, (2) reject the offer? Why? What are the ethics underlying your decision?

Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T’s chief executive, said on Friday that the company had made a “big mistake” by hiring President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to provide advice on federal policy, including how the government might approach the telecommunications giant’s deal to buy Time Warner.

Mr. Stephenson also said that the company’s head of lobbying and external affairs, Bob Quinn, would be leaving the company.

“Our company has been in the headlines for all the wrong reasons these last few days and our reputation has been damaged,” Mr. Stephenson wrote in a memo to employees. “There is no other way to say it — AT&T hiring Michael Cohen as a political consultant was a big mistake.”

Mr. Stephenson’s note followed the revelation this week that the company had paid Mr. Cohen $600,000 to advise on the $85.4 billion merger with Time Warner and other regulatory matters.

Federal prosecutors are investigating Mr. Cohen’s business dealings, including a $130,000 payment he made to the adult film actress Stephanie Clifford, known professionally as Stormy Daniels, to buy her silence about an affair she says she had with Mr. Trump. The president has denied Ms. Clifford’s claims.

The payment to Ms. Clifford was the first known activity involving Essential Consultants, a company started by Mr. Cohen. It was through Essential Consultants that AT&T retained Mr. Cohen. Several other businesses, including the Swiss drugmaker Novartis and an American company linked to a Russian oligarch, also sent payments to Mr. Cohen’s company.

The Russian, Viktor Vekselberg, was stopped and questioned at an airport this year by investigators for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Although AT&T’s statements were meant to distance itself from Mr. Cohen and the arrangement on Friday, they also provided insight into how companies like AT&T operate in Washington during the Trump era.

Mr. Trump pledged during his campaign to shake up the Washington establishment — to “drain the swamp” — while railing against “the special interests, the lobbyists and the corrupt corporate media that have rigged the system against everyday Americans.” He also announced policies intended to clamp down on the revolving door between government and K Street, which is home to many of the capital’s lobbying firms.

But the anti-lobbying rhetoric and policies did not discourage some former Trump aides from seeking big paydays from the influence industry, where few of the established players had close connections to Mr. Trump or his inner circle.

Some Trump insiders, including Mr. Cohen and Corey Lewandowski, a former Trump campaign manager, positioned themselves as strategic advisers. Because they were offering insight — or political intelligence — on Mr. Trump and his team, and not overtly lobbying, they did not need to disclose their role with Congress and possibly the Justice Department.

AT&T fanned out to try to keep pace in this changing climate. Although the company has long retained a platoon of lobbyists with deep connections on both sides of the aisle, none of the firms they worked with were as close to Mr. Trump as Mr. Cohen.

The company said Mr. Cohen had approached it about being a consultant, and that he was among “several consultants” the company hired as Mr. Trump was assuming the presidency.

AT&T officials would not disclose the names of the other people and firms hired. But according to a person with ties to Mr. Trump’s campaign, AT&T approached other Trump associates about possibly retaining them as government affairs consultants or lobbyists. The person would speak only under the condition of anonymity because the talks were private.

Among Trump associates pitching AT&T was Mr. Lewandowski. AT&T said it was approached early in January 2017 by Avenue Strategies, a lobbying firm that Mr. Lewandowski helped found. AT&T said it did not pursue a contract with the firm, which Mr. Lewandowski left in the middle of 2017.

AT&T paid a total of $4.1 million in lobbying fees to nearly 30 firms through the first three months of this year, according to congressional lobbying filings. But none of those businesses, including top-tier law firms like Mayer Brown and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, have lobbyists who were as close to Mr. Trump as Mr. Cohen.

The filings show that the largest fees paid to those firms were around $35,000 a month — significantly less than the $50,000 a month that the company paid Mr. Cohen. It is possible that the firms were paid other fees by AT&T that were not expressly for lobbying and therefore were not disclosed.

Mr. Cohen had a similar arrangement with the giant drugmaker Novartis. The multinational company paid Essential Consultants $1.2 million for a yearlong contract to provide insights on the new administration’s approach to health care policy.

Novartis said its former chief executive, Joe Jimenez, hired Essential Consultants. Like Mr. Stephenson, Novartis’s current chief executive, Vasant Narasimhan, has distanced himself from Mr. Cohen, saying this week that he had no role in the decision to hire Mr. Cohen. The company has also said that hiring Mr. Cohen was a mistake.

Novartis said it discovered soon after signing the contract that Mr. Cohen could not provide the services he had promised and allowed the contract to expire.

Columbus Nova, the investment firm in New York whose biggest client is a company controlled by Mr. Vekselberg, the Russian oligarch questioned by Mr. Mueller, paid about $500,000 to Essential Consultants last year. A lawyer for Columbus Nova has described the money as a consulting fee that had nothing to do with Mr. Vekselberg.

Earlier this week, AT&T said that it had been contacted late last year about Mr. Cohen by Mr. Mueller’s team. AT&T said it had “cooperated fully” with the inquiries.

Novartis said this week that it had also spoken with special counsel’s team about the payments to Mr. Cohen. Novartis said that it had cooperated fully and considered its role in the matter closed.

For AT&T, the disclosure of its ties to Mr. Cohen comes at a critical moment. The company is defending its merger with Time Warner in federal court against the Justice Department’s efforts to block the deal.

It is unclear what services Mr. Cohen provided. Mr. Stephenson insisted in his memo that “everything we did was done according to the law and entirely legitimate” and that Mr. Cohen did not do any lobbying on behalf of AT&T. Nonetheless, Mr. Stephenson added, retaining Mr. Cohen “was a serious misjudgment.”

Time Warner was not aware of AT&T’s contract with Mr. Cohen, according to a person familiar with the company’s thinking. Within Time Warner this week, officials were surprised to learn about the contract with Essential Consultants.

Mr. Cohen did not respond to an interview request.

Many large corporations consider such strategic advice to be part of their government affairs program, complementing their overt lobbying efforts. AT&T’s contract with Mr. Cohen, for instance, called for him to advise the company on “corporate tax reform and the acquisition,” according to documents first obtained by The Washington Post.

But Mr. Stephenson said that with Mr. Cohen, “our Washington, D.C., team’s vetting process clearly failed, and I take responsibility for that.”

Mr. Stephenson said that Mr. Quinn, 57, who had led the Washington team, had decided to retire. But according to a person familiar with AT&T’s thinking, who was not authorized to speak publicly about the decision, he was pressured to leave because of the revelations of AT&T’s contract with Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Quinn began working at AT&T in the 1980s and is well connected in the political circles of both parties. But he, and the rest of the company, was surprised by the election results and had few connections to Mr. Trump’s circles.

AT&T’s vast lobbying team, which includes more than 100 people, and public policy staff members will now report to the company’s general counsel, David McAtee.

Mr. Quinn declined to comment.

Analysts said they did not expect the revelations about AT&T’s ties to Mr. Cohen to affect the government’s lawsuit to block the company’s merger with Time Warner.

AT&T and Time Warner had suggested before the trial that the Justice Department’s decision to block a merger of two companies that do not compete was influenced by presidential politics. Mr. Trump has been vocal in his disdain for coverage of his administration by CNN, which is owned by Time Warner.

But Judge Richard J. Leon of United States District Court in Washington has been strict about keeping politics out of the case, which focuses on antitrust law and whether the deal would violate competition policy and harm consumers.

Judge Leon is expected to deliver an opinion on the case by June 12.

”These revelations come at a critical point in the trial, but they are very unlikely to have any meaningful impact on the judge’s ruling,” said Gene Kimmelman, a former senior official for the antitrust division of the Justice Department and the president of the nonprofit Public Knowledge.

Sarah Huckabee Sanders, the White House press secretary, said on Friday that the government’s suit against AT&T proved that Mr. Trump could not be influenced by special interests.

“This is actually the definition of draining the swamp,” she said.