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Wow! That’s all you can say for starters after seeing Nunberg’s media meltdown blitz yesterday afternoon. He spent a lot of time claiming to be the ‘first to ever do this’ and, it’s true, it’s hard to think of anyone who has more needlessly incriminated himself than Nunberg yesterday-though Trump’s interview with Lester Holt-‘I fired Comey because of Russia’-springs to mind.
Actually the first word that sprung to mind for many of Nunberg’s own friends after watching his meltdown was WTF?!
“Rarely, if ever, has a political operative acted so brazenly when facing the very real prospect of being tossed in jail. Nunberg seemed not to care about how the chips would fall. But several of his friends told The Daily Beast they were concerned that he was putting himself in severe legal jeopardy by going on multiple live cable-news programs Monday afternoon.”
This actually became a major topic of conversation later in the evening and Erin Burnett went as far as telling him to his face during her own interview with him that ‘I smell alcohol on your breath.
“We talked earlier about what people in the White House were saying about you ― talking about whether you were drinking or on drugs or whatever had happened today,” she said. “Talking to you, I have smelled alcohol on your breath.”
“Nunberg said he had not had a drink and had only taken his medication ― antidepressants ― earlier Monday.”
At this point maybe his friends are trying to throw him a lifeline-he was so drunk you can’t hold his words and actions against him. But it certainly is tough to think of someone trying harder to put themselves into severe legal jeopardy.
He said a lot of things that potentially incriminate not just himself but Roger Stone-who he’s claims he’s desperately trying to defend-as well as Donald Trump-for whom Nunberg professes to hold in low regard. Back to the DailyBeast:
“Sam Nunberg, an early political adviser to Donald Trump, had a very public meltdown on Monday afternoon, repeatedly daring special counsel Robert Mueller to greenlight his arrest and insinuating that his old boss, the president, did indeed do “something” wrong during the campaign.”
“You know [Trump] knew about it,” Nunberg said at one point during an interview with CNN, of the infamous Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and a Russian lawyer. “He was talking about it a week before…I don’t know why he went around trying to hide it.”
Sometimes it’s not clear what Nunberg is saying exactly-his comments were so loaded. Interestingly, Nunberg-like his buddy Steve Bannon-is quite convinced that Donald Jr took the Kremlin operatives up to meet Trump after the meeting. And is Nunberg saying that he himself heard Trump talking about the Trump Tower Russia meeting a week prior to it?
While he seems to want to protect Roger Stone, is saying that he wants to protect him the best way to protect him? Is saying he won’t comply with Mueller’s subpoena and hand over his emails, texts, etc. because doing so would enable Mueller to get Stone on perjury really helpful to Stone? It’s as if you’re telling the police you are welcome to search anywhere for the dead body but the closet.
He simply won’t let Mueller see his communications with Stone and Bannon because he exchanges dozens of emails with them every day. Again, not the best way to put investigators off of the scent.
Daring the Special Counsel to arrest you is not necessarily the best way to escape being arrested either. And despite Nunberg’s desire to be different, to do things that ‘no one else has ever done’ refusing to comply with a Special Prosecutor has been done before.
"I'm definitely the first person to ever do this, right?" Nunberg asked.
No. When Susan McDougal refused to testify to a grand jury during the Whitewater investigation, she spent 18 months in jail https://t.co/qqcwgxo3E7
— Tim Mak (@timkmak) March 5, 2018
So what motivated Nunberg’s meltdown? Here’s a bit of a timeline of events:
“Starting Monday morning, Nunberg began calling several close associates that he was flatly refusing, at this time, to cooperate with Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. Three Nunberg friends said they walked away from those conversations fearful that he was “drinking again” and was about to embark on a personal tailspin. They didn’t know it would play out on daytime TV.”
“I think it would be funny if they arrested me,” Nunberg told MSNBC’s Katy Tur on Monday during a freewheeling interview that ended with the former Trump aide asking, “What do you think Mueller is gonna do to me?”
He thinks it would be funny. Well so do I and probably a lot of people but…
What’s interesting, though, is Tur told Chris Hayes last night that he had told her he would comply with the subpoena the previous night at 11 PM. So what changed in the meantime? Did someone get to him? If so, who?
And if someone got to him then it’s quite plausible that someone was Roger Stone. After all, he claimed to want to protect Stone from being charged with perjury-though saying you won’t comply to protect someone from being charged for perjury is a bad was of protecting them from being charged with perjury.
So one theory is Stone got to him-or someone else possibly, though Stone seems quite plausible and it probably wasn’t Trump or his friends as there wasn’t much in the meltdown that would help Trump and much that potentially could hurt him.
Rick Wilson is partial to this theory.
I only caught the very tail end of that that Nunberg interview, but that was bonkers even by today's standards.
And if you didn't smell Roger Stone all over that prank, I can't help you.
— Rick Wilson (@TheRickWilson) March 5, 2018
Another was: Nunberg was drunk as noted above.
Another is he was actually lashing out at Donald Trump.
If Nunberg really does harbor such resentment toward Trump, maybe publicly speculating about Trump having had an arrangement with Russia and having known about the Trump Tower meeting is one final piece of revenge. Coming from someone who has been interviewed by Mueller’s team, that certainly carries some weight. Maybe he wanted to suggest Trump had done something wrong while sounding like he was defending him.
“Or maybe, like former chief White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon, Nunberg is truly frustrated by what Trump has done — including to him — and couldn’t help himself. And maybe he even felt that Trump needed some kind of bat-signal delivered through cable news about how much trouble he’s in.”
As Aaron Blake-author of above link-says, these theories need not be mutually exclusive.
UPDATE: McKay Coppins’ piece suggests the quite plausible theory that it was a mostly a stunt. Last night he was actually gloating to Coopins that ‘I pulled a Roger Stone.’
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/03/nunberg-interview/554921/
UPDATE:
Nunberg has announced he’s considering alcohol treatment.
Yesterday he dismissed the idea that he in any way needed alcohol treatment
UPDATE: He then decided it wasn’t a witch hunt at all-see chapter A
UPDATE: For months Nunberg like Bannon would insist that of course Don Jr told Trump about the Trump Tower Russia meeting. Then when Michael Cohen stated he heard a conversation between Trump and Jr prior to the meeting that sounded like it was about it Nunberg did a 180 and decided it didn’t happen-somehow Cohen’s agreement with him led him to change his mind.
However since then Nunberg’s become a regular fixture on cable news with commentary that’s unfavorable to ‘President Trump’; recently he stated what seems obvious: of course Trump doesn’t’ want to be impeached.
(Find link in other chapter Mike).
Was Nunberg in the Mueller Report-seen no news stories about this.
In any case, during Lawrence O’Donnell’s 10 PM show, news came that Nunberg would comply with the subpoena after all but that he ‘wouldn’t make it easy.’ But even there I don’t know that making it as hard as possible for a prosecutor is the best way to secure charitable treatment from him.
There are a few things Nunberg might want to remember about a Special Prosecutor’s powers:
Let’s recap for those who don’t recall: McDougal was a figure in the Whitewater investigation of former President Bill Clinton. Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr had prosecuted Susan McDougal, along with her former husband, Jim McDougal, for fraud and other charges in connection with the management of a savings-and-loan in Arkansas. After her conviction, Starr sought to call her before a grand jury to testify about the Clintons. She refused to answer questions. He moved to have the court supervising the grand jury hold her in civil contempt—and it did.
McDougal spent 18 months in jail on the contempt charges—the maximum allowed under the contempt statute—as the court sought to compel her testimony. But Starr wasn’t done. Civil contempt is about coercion, not punishment. After her civil contempt detention was finished, he sought and received a grand jury indictmentagainst McDougal for criminal contempt (criminal contempt is about punishment of the crime of contempt of court) and obstruction of justice as well. McDougal was eventually acquitted of the obstruction charge, while the jury deadlocked on the two contempt charges. But the acquittal and deadlock were not a reflection of any serious factual question about what had happened; rather, they were an example of pushback at Starr for perceived overreach. (Clinton eventually pardoned McDougal on his way out of office.)
The point is that federal prosecutors have robust powers to deal with recalcitrant witnesses, and special prosecutors in high-stakes matters involving the president of the United States have particular incentives not to tolerate contumacious conduct on the part of witnesses they subpoena. Nunberg may think it would be “funny if they arrested me.” We suspect he’ll find it less so if and when “they” actually do.
There are many Trump associates besides Nunberg whose communications are sought by the Special Counsel.
In addition to the president, the subpoena seeks documents that have anything to do with these current and former Trump associates:
- Steve Bannon, who left the White House as chief strategist in August.
- Michael Cohen, a personal lawyer for Trump who testified before congressional investigators in October.
- Rick Gates, Trump’s former deputy campaign manager, who pleaded guilty last month to conspiracy and lying to the FBI.
- Hope Hicks, who resigned last week as Trump’s communications director.
- Corey Lewandowski, Trump’s campaign manager until June 2016.
- Paul Manafort, a former Trump campaign manager and Gates’ business partner, who pleaded not guilty to money laundering, conspiracy and making false statements last week.
- Carter Page, a former Trump campaign aide.
- Keith Schiller, a former bodyguard for Trump who left as director of Oval Office operations in September.
- Roger Stone, a longtime Republican political operative and Trump campaign adviser who sources have told NBC News is the focus of investigators interested in his contacts with WikiLeaks during the campaign.
Once Hicks’ resignation takes effect in the next few weeks, Cohen will be the only person listed in the subpoena who hasn’t left the employment of Trump or of the White House.
Speaking of Cohen he had his own newsday yesterday. It turns out that-shockingly-when he claimed that he had paid the $130 grand to porn star Stormy Daniels out of his own money, he was: lying.
His claim never really passed the laugh test and now we have some evidence-he had delayed the payment to Daniels just before the election as he hadn’t heard from Trump and complained to friends in 2017 that Trump still hadn’t paid him back yet.
C’mon Michael-did you really think he’d pay you back? Is rank gullibility the way you’ve managed to stay his friend after so many years?