Actually it is the president who abandoned the DACA kids. He was offered a deal by Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) — money for the border wall in exchange for DACA relief — but senior policy adviser Stephen Miller and Chief of Staff John F. Kelly, along with Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) nixed it. Or does Trump not remember?
.. Whatever his intention, Trump is communicating to Congress and the entire world that his word is worthless, that when you think you have a deal, you really don’t.
What then are the Europeans, in discussion with the administration over his threatened exit from the Iran nuclear deal, the South Koreans, the North Koreans, our trading partners and just about everyone else on the planet supposed to think?
.. “With Bolton, [Joseph E.] diGenova and [Mike] Pompeo feeding Trump’s worst instincts, we’re entering incredibly dangerous times.”
(He could add to the list Peter Navarro, Cotton, the right-wing echo chamber and his favorite Fox News propagandists — all of whom egg on Trump without regard for the catastrophe that might await us if he followed their advice.)
.. Trump is never going to get better, and chances are he’ll get much worse. Everyone should act accordingly.
Trump has trouble finding attorneys as top Russia lawyer leaves legal team
President Trump, whose top attorney handling the Russia probe resigned Thursday, is struggling to find top-notch defense lawyers willing to represent him in the case, according to multiple Trump advisers familiar with the negotiations.
.. John Dowd, the president’s chief lawyer in handling the Mueller probe since last year, quit Thursday morning after several strategy disputes with the president, who ultimately lost confidence in the veteran lawyer
.. Dowd also had been negotiating the terms for the president to sit for an interview with Mueller’s team ..
.. The struggles are reminiscent of Trump’s difficulties in the spring of 2017 when the president was first seeking new attorneys to represent him in the Russia probe. He interviewed a half-dozen high-profile legal stars in the white-collar defense bar, including Flood, Brendan V. Sullivan Jr. and A.B. Culvahouse Jr.; all of them declined.
.. “These major law firms have spent millions of dollars on their image,” said one Trump adviser, who also spoke on the condition of anonymity. “It’s political. They are saying that representing this president is just too controversial.”
.. Aside from being controversial, aides said Trump has proved to be a difficult client, as Dowd learned firsthand.
.. Dowd complained to colleagues that Trump had ignored his advice and tweeted attacks on Mueller and other topics hours after Dowd and other advisers urged him not to
.. Dowd also said he was personally insulted by the president’s efforts to hire other lawyers. One person familiar with the dynamics said Trump frequently praised his legal team to their faces but criticized them when they were not around.
.. But privately, Dowd was “blindsided” when the president interviewed Flood and again when Trump announced he was adding conservative lawyer and attack-dog Joseph diGenova to the team last week.
.. One Trump adviser said the president berated Dowd for not doing enough to, in the president’s view, highlight corruption and political bias in the FBI to undercut the legitimacy of the Mueller probe. Trump told Dowd he wanted to tweet that the firing of deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe was another reason the Mueller probe should be shut down, the adviser said.
.. At 10 a.m. Thursday, Dowd resigned without consulting Trump ..
.. Aides said they were unsuccessful in asking him to hold off until they could confer with the president and prepare a statement.
.. A huge bone of contention between Trump and his team has been over testifying in front of Mueller’s team, these people said. Trump wants to do so, thinking he can talk his way out of it, while his lawyers are far more wary,
.. Dowd and Marc Kasowitz, Trump’s former lawyer whom he still occasionally consults, have told Trump he could damage himself by testifying. His chief White House counsel, Donald McGahn, also has chafed at Trump granting an interview and has criticized others on the team.
.. Trump has groused to friends and aides that he thinks his lawyers are weak and that his New York attorneys are tougher and better.
Earlier this month, Trump dubbed news reports of trouble on his legal team as inaccurate.
“The Failing New York Times purposely wrote a false story stating that I am unhappy with my legal team on the Russia case and am going to add another lawyer to help out,” Trump tweeted March 11. “Wrong. I am VERY happy with my lawyers, John Dowd, Ty Cobb and Jay Sekulow. They are doing a great job.”
.. Eight days later, the president hired diGenova, and Dowd is now off the team.
Who’s Worse — Trump Lawyers or Their Client?
I’ve been looking for somebody to admire in the White House. Should it be Don McGahn?
Up to you. He was formerly a member of the Federal Election Commission who hated campaign-finance reform so much he once tore up the F.E.C. rule book at a meeting and threw the shredded chunks at a Democrat. He lobbied Jeff Sessions not to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. He was an enabler on that immigrant travel ban.
I don’t understand how these busy lawyers have so much time to appear on TV.
Totally part of the job. Trump just hired Joe diGenova, who’s currently famous for having argued on Fox that a secret cabal of F.B.I. agents created the whole Russia investigation to “frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime.”
For a while it looked as if Kasowitz was fading away. But now he’s back! In court arguing that as a sitting president, Trump cannot be sued by a woman who says he molested her during his “Apprentice” days.
That would be Stormy Daniels?
Oh gosh no. This is Summer Zervos, who says Trump came on with an unnerving series of gropes, and then when she resisted claimed “that he did not believe that she had ever known love or been in love.”
.. So the worse the team gets, the better for the country?
Right now, Stormy’s lawyer is making mincemeat of Trump’s legal representation. For the sake of argument, let’s say the special prosecutor has assembled at least as strong a team as the stripper did.
Trump’s lawyers have turned over documents to Mueller with hopes of limiting interview scope
President Trump’s attorneys have provided the special counsel’s office with written descriptions that chronicle key moments under investigation in hopes of curtailing the scope of a presidential interview, according to two people familiar with the situation.
Trump’s legal team recently shared the documents in an effort to limit any session between the president and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III to a few select topics, the people said. The lawyers are worried that Trump, who has a penchant for making erroneous claims, would be vulnerable in an hours-long interview.
.. Trump has told aides he is “champing at the bit” to sit for an interview, according to one person. But his lawyers, who are carefully negotiating the terms of a sit-down, recognize the extraordinarily high stakes.
.. Behind the scenes, his lawyers are moving into what one adviser called “crunchtime” — reviewing the likely questions Mueller’s team will have for the president.
.. Special counsel investigators have told Trump’s lawyers that their main questions about the president fall into two simple categories, the two people said:
- “What did he do?” and
- “What was he thinking when he did it?”
.. Trump’s lawyers expect Mueller’s team to ask whether Trump knew about Flynn’s communications with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak during the presidential transition, for example, and what instructions, if any, the president gave Flynn about the contact, according to two advisers.
Trump said in February that he fired Flynn because he had misled Vice President Pence about his contact with Kislyak. He said he fired Comey because he had mishandled an investigation of Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
The records do not include Trump’s personal version of events but provide a narrative of the White House view, the people said. Trump’s lawyers hope the evidence eliminates the need to ask the president about some episodes.
.. diGenova served as an independent counsel who investigated whether former president George H.W. Bush’s staff looked at former president Bill Clinton’s passport files during the 1992 presidential campaign.
.. “Former US Attorney for the District of Columbia Joe diGenova will be joining our legal team later this week,”
DiGenova and Trump share the view that a faction inside the FBI sought to frame Trump.
.. In 1997, DiGenova wrote a column in the Wall Street Journal arguing that the Constitution allows for the indictment of a sitting president.
.. “The nation, in fact, could conceivably benefit from the indictment of a president,” he wrote in the column, which was published while Clinton was under investigation by an independent counsel. “It would teach the valuable civics lesson that no one is above the law.”