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Augment Chapter A regarding Lewandowski’s takedown of Rob Porter.

Augment regarding Lewandowski’s Russian exposure.

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/379090-whistleblower-cambridge-analytica-met-with-lewandowski-before-trump

A very interesting piece about Hope Hicks by Olivia Nuzzi

“When the administration began 13 months before, competition among some staffers had manifested as a struggle for real estate here; Omarosa Manigault, a perennial reality-TV contestant, had gone so far as to steal a room that had been designated for Anthony Scaramucci, “the Mooch,” a hedge-fund millionaire obsessed with astrology and the word fuck, because of its status-confirming glimpse of the Washington Monument. Both of them were eventually fired, along with a procession of others who failed to maneuver the chaotic status hierarchy President Trump seemed to cultivate out of boredom.”

A view of duck-tour buses circling the mall wasn’t needed for Hicks to know her standing. What her office lacked in flair it made up for in proximity. While others were left wondering what the president was thinking, Hicks could often hear him shouting, even with her door closed. “Hope!” he’d scream. “Hopey!” “Hopester!” “Get in here!”

Many requests were mundane. “He doesn’t write anything down,” one source close to the White House told me. “He doesn’t type, he dictates. ‘Take this down, take this down: Trump: richest man on Earth.’ ” A second source who meets regularly with the president told me that Hicks acted almost as an embodiment of the faculties the Trump lacked — like memory. “He’ll be talking, and then right in the middle he’ll be like, ‘Hope, what was that … thing?’ ” When the name of a senator or congressman or journalist came up, Trump would prompt Hicks to provide a history of their interactions, asking, “Do we like him?” “And she fucking remembers!” (Trump has said his own memory is “one of the greatest memories of all time.”) “She’s the only person he trusts,” the second source continued. “He doesn’t trust any men and never has. He doesn’t like men, you see. He has no male friends. I was just with one of them the other day, someone who’s described as one of his closest friends, and he doesn’t know him very well. But a small number of women, including his longtime assistant back in New York, he really listens to them — especially if he’s not banging them. Because, like a lot of men but more so, Trump really does compartmentalize the sex and the emotional part.”

So despite all the outward masculine bravado Trump prefers the company of women. This is probably true of a lot of American men today-whatever else ‘postmodern’ means we’re the era of post male bonding.

Very interesting profile of Corey Lewandowski as well-who had an affair with Hicks:

For as long as he’d been in politics, Lewandowski had been defined by two qualities: his ruthless pursuit of an enemy’s destruction and always having an enemy. This was true even when it was small ball; in New Hampshire, he once fucked over a local official by claiming that his fantasy-football league, with a grand prize of $200, was an illegal gambling ring. By the time Lewandowski was done, the official had lost his job and was the subject of a criminal probe.”

So maybe Lewandowski needs an enemy seeks out an enemy. In the campaign that was Paul Manafort.

Sam Nunberg, the screwy adviser you may recall from his recent decision to appear on live TV, possibly while drunk, to encourage special investigators to arrest him and to announce, in this publication, that Trump has a “fat ass,” today maintains that Lewandowski was to blame for getting him fired two months into the campaign (already, Nunberg had been fired and rehired, then fired and rehired again by Trump). Nunberg believes it was Lewandowski who leaked to the press racist social-media posts he’d made seven years prior, and that it was Lewandowski, in coordination with Hicks, who ignored Trump’s promise to keep the firing quiet (they released a statement labeling him a “low level” operative).

In response, Nunberg went nuclear, accusing Lewandowski and Hicks in court documents of having an affair, after Trump sued him for violating an NDA. It was intended to hurt Lewandowski more than Hicks, but the former didn’t seem to mind; he never made any effort to deny the accusation, and privately, he encouraged it. (Michael Wolff reported the affair as fact in Fire and Fury.)

For Lewandowski, there would be many more Nunbergs to deal with throughout the campaign, or people whom the president liked, for some reason, and who were thus a threat. This included Paul Manafort, a comically wicked creature of the Washington Establishment who made a career lobbying for foreign dictators, hired in April 2016 to help with delegates at the Republican convention. When Lewandowski was fired in late June — the result of a coup led by Trump’s children — Manafort became the campaign chairman. But Lewandowski refused to accede to his exile, and in the days leading up to the election, when Kellyanne Conway and Stephen Bannon were leading the campaign after Manafort had been fired, he made an unofficial return, traveling on the plane with the candidate.

He’d been there in the beginning, and he believed he was owed a big piece of what came next. “He didn’t really want any responsibility. He just wants to be able to be with the president and just do whatever he wants him to do,” a source who worked with Lewandowski and is close to the White House told me. “He’s been very focused, from day one, to get into the White House.”

Manafort who’s fingerprints are all over Russian collusion,  of course, is going to prison for 7 and a half years. For his part Lewandowski had a significant part in the Mueller Report-in June, 2017, Trump had a major role in the Mueller Report-after Don McGahn refused Trump tried to get Lewandowski to fire Muller-as if that’s a role that someone with no WH role could take.

UPDATE:

Again and again we’ve seen this hold-no one is ever gone. One of the many red herrings employed by Trump to deny he and Roger Stone colluded was the idea that Stone left the campaign back in August 2015. But, of course, in TrumpWorld what matters is not official roles and his relationship with Stone never diminished-from what both Stone has said and what Mueller uncovered-it’s clear that they were in regular communication during-and after-the campaign.

Same with Corey Lewandowski, Hope Hicks, et. al.

In saying no one is every gone you have to add except Steve Bannon of course. But his sin was totally throwing Trump, Kushner, and Don Jr, under the bus in that great book by Michael Wolff that Bannon in large part ghostwrote. That led to his excommunication. Any idea that he felt regret was dispelled by how much he dished to Wolff in the recently published sequel.

Basically as long as you remain loyal to Trump you never really leave.

As for Hope Hicks no doubt her stock with Trump skyrocketed after her outrageously evasive performance from yesterday.

Everything they’re doing right now suggests they’re running out the clock and are not interested in holding this illegitimate ‘President’ accountable-which I believe will be a huge historical if not political mistake-and Alan Litchman argues it will be a huge political mistake.

No wonder Trump is defending Pelosi:

The Dems earlier this week employed a supposed ‘new strategy’ of subpoenaing Lewandowski and Chris Christie as: they weren’t in the Russia House.

Dems investigating Trump have a new tactic to break his blockade

House Democrats hope to make an end run around Trump’s executive privilege by calling witnesses like Lewandowski and Christie.

This rests on the rather sad assumption that Trump’s use of EP is in any sense sincere. He’s already established the idea of (mis)using it for those no longer in the WH or for campaign work-do you really think he won’t claim it for Lewandowski and Christie?

Besides the fact that both of them are arch Trump loyalists and certainly aren’t going to testify for the Democrats unless their hand is completely forced.

Meet the new strategy same as the old strategy-toothless like the old strategy.

About the only positive sign from Pelosi recently is she ruled out just censuring Trump. 

“I think censure is just a way out. If you want to go, you gotta go,” she said. “If the goods are there, you must impeach. Censure is nice, but it is not commensurate with the violations of the Constitution should we decide that’s the way to go.”

No doubt this will be read positively to those Dems who insist we have to trust Pelosi and that she knows exactly what she’s doing-setting herself up as the reluctant impeacher-rather than an impeachment phobe deadset against impeaching him-as Trump himself clearly hopes.

Meanwhile though the goods are here. And I think it’s a mistake to read too much into it-there’s a good case that she’s just running out the clock and I won’t believe she’s not until clear action is taken.

And Pelosi’s announcement she will read the ‘less redacted Mueller Report’ is an ambiguous move.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi officially shut the door on censuring President Donald Trump Wednesday but plans to view a minimally redacted version of special counsel Robert Mueller’s report this week, her latest attempt to juggle the competing impeachment factions within her caucus.

Pelosi initially rejected an offer from Attorney General William Barr in April to view the less-redacted report, rebuffing Barr’s demands that only top congressional leaders have that access. The speaker’s course reversal on the report comes days after key House panels secured agreements to give more lawmakers access to the evidence underpinning the special counsel’s conclusions.

“We will be having access to a less redacted version of the Mueller report,” Pelosi said at a Christian Science Monitor breakfast Wednesday morning. “I accepted that because I’m afraid — I really don’t trust the attorney general of the United States.”

Pelosi told reporters she has made the request with the Department of Justice to view the report. A Democratic aide later confirmed that is expected to happen this week.

It’s ambiguous as on the one hand it represents a caving to Coverup AG Barr-are they still going to insist on seeing everything? And Pelosi will see it-will she read the whole thing? But we’ll never know what she saw so how does it advance things?

Pelosi keeps saying that if there is going to be impeachment they have to ‘bring the country along’ but reading a less redacted version but then doing nothing with the information does nothing to bring it along.

UPDATE: However there may be a silver lining to Hopes’ deeply obstructive appearance 

By defining privilege so absurdly broadly this may give the Dems a powerful argument in court.

Hope Hicks didn’t provide much information for Democrats in her testimony before the House Judiciary Committee — but she may have cracked the stone wall the White House has built around former staffers.

President Donald Trump’s former communications director — and perhaps his most trusted aide outside his family — claimed blanket immunity throughout her closed-door testimony, but Hicks still gave Democrats something in their legal battle against the White House, argued Margaret Carlson for The Daily Beast.

“Perhaps surprisingly, there’s no controlling legal authority defining the breadth of what aides can testify to,” Carlson wrote. “With all its limitations — in private, surrounded by lawyers, with a dry transcript to come days later — Hicks’ appearance gave Democrats, with no time to waste, a promising case to take to court to challenge the White House’s definition of immunity.”

Hicks refused to answer even the most basic questions about her service in the White House, which ended early last year, and House Democrats could use that to challenge her claims to immunity.

“Even under the broadest interpretation, immunity doesn’t extend to where you sit at work,” Carlson wrote. “(House Judiciary chairman Jerry) Nadler predicted after Hicks left, ‘We will destroy them in court.’”

“Her stilettos clicking down the marble halls of the Rayburn Building was the sound of the stone wall cracking,” she added, “from the inside out.”

Ok but there’s really no time. In an interview in January, 2019, Elijah Cummings had pointed out that the Dems had much less than two years-as Congress only actually meets a third of the time. Cummings argued ‘We can’t hit the ground running we have to hit the ground flying.’

Six months in it’s hard to argue that they’ve done anything like that. It’s hard to even say they hit it running much less flying or that they have hitting much of a stride now.

The Dem leaders’ words are one thing but their actions scream ‘Forget this and just win in 2020.’

 

UPDATE:

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/hope-hicks-told-congress-that-trump-was-serious-about-accepting-foreign-help-jerry-nadler/?utm_source=push_notifications

 

https://www.rawstory.com/2019/06/hope-hicks-called-trumps-plan-for-jeff-sessions-odd-but-white-house-lawyers-blocked-her-from-elaborating-why/?utm_source=push_notifications

 

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/house-judiciary-releases-hope-hicks-transcript

 

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/20/hope-hicks-trump-foreign-election-interference-1373017

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