“I don’t like it,” He continued. “I’m a Wall Street guy and I’m more of a front-stabbing person, and I would rather people tell directly how I feel about them than this sort of nonsense.”
.. “Leaking is atrocious, it’s outrageous, it’s unpatriotic, it damages the president personally, it damages the institution of the presidency, and I don’t like it,” he told White House reporters on Tuesday morning.
The Deep State Hiding in Plain Sight
Mike Lofgren, a congressional staff member for 28 years, joins Bill Moyers to talk about what he calls Washington’s “Deep State,” in which elected and unelected figures collude to protect and serve powerful vested interests. “It is how we had deregulation, financialization of the economy, the Wall Street bust, the erosion or our civil liberties and perpetual war,” Lofgren tells Moyers.
- Wall Street provides second careers for people like David Patreus who went to a Wall Street Buyout firm as a second career.
- The vast majority of Generals seem to end up on the boards of the Military contractors.
- Silicon Valley has become part of the Surveillance State, voluntarily.
- What is the ideology: it is a form a corporatism, that steers clear of social issues, but the Washington Consensus
- deregulation,
- outsourcing,
- deindustrialization,
- financialization,
- american exceptionalism-boots on the ground everywhere, perpetual war
- Parts of the Deep State are fracturing
- Silicon Valley is protesting the NSA
- The Tea Party is protesting the Deep State
Liberals Shun Washington Attorney Representing Jared and Ivanka
she is a partner at WilmerHale, where lawyers charge up to $1,250 an hour and her corner office provides, according to the Washington Post, a “breathtaking” view of the capital. A graduate of Harvard (magna cum laude) and Harvard Law School (cum laude), the 67-year-old Gorelick is a credentialed member of the Washington establishment, of the cognitive elite, even, some might say, of the Deep State. Or at least she was until recently. Gorelick, the Post reports, has made a very bad boo-boo. Among the clients paying her exorbitant fees, you see, are Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner. And for this crime, the Post continues, her liberal friends have cast Gorelick out and formed a “No Jamies Club.”
.. These are, after all, the same well schooled, affluent, smooth-talking men and women who erupt in outrage at the slightest suggestion that a lawyer might decline to represent an unsavory client. What does it say about them that Javanka’s attorney is held to a different standard than Khalid Sheikh Mohammed’s?
.. it difficult to know whom I am annoyed by more. There are the liberals attacking Gorelick for representing the Kushners even as they, the hypocrites, take money from liberal bogeymen on Wall Street and in the oil industry and in authoritarian foreign governments
.. Don’t go after me, Gorelick is saying, I’m just paying the bills. Maybe she can build a new guesthouse with Kushner’s money.
.. these craven and cynical “longtime friends of Gorelick” who say one thing on the record and another thing off the record.
.. The Trumps, the lawyers, the lobbyists, the press — they deserve each other. Mark Leibovich’s book about the swamp was called This Town. I have an idea for a sequel. Working title: These People.
Marc Kasowitz, ‘Toughest of the Tough Guys,’ Stands Beside Trump
He is, for lack of a better comparison, the Donald Trump of lawyering.
.. A walk through Mr. Kasowitz’s office at Kasowitz Benson Torres in Midtown shows magazine covers and framed pictures of him. He’s quick to tell you about his latest accomplishment and never shies from publicity. The first paragraph of the online biography on his firm’s website, before mentioning any of his work, cites the dozens of media outlets that have written about him, and how they have described him as the “toughest lawyer on Wall Street,” an “uberlitigator” and “the toughest of the tough guys.”
.. In case you didn’t get the message, he likes a good fight, the nastier the better.
.. Mr. Kasowitz was largely responsible for helping Liggett settle the huge class action suits it faced over the health impact of tobacco
.. Mr. Kasowitz’s firm was on the other side of Mr. Icahn in a dispute over casinos. The client? Mr. Trump, along with his daughter Ivanka.
.. Mr. Kasowitz recently added Sberbank, a Russian state-controlled bank, as a client in a case that accused it of conspiring to take over a Russian granite company — and asserting that the conspiracy involved lieutenants of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia. The complaint called it a “textbook case of Russian corporate raiding.”
The big question in Washington is whether Mr. Kasowitz, who is not a criminal lawyer or a political hand, is the right person to be at Mr. Trump’s side. Some of Mr. Trump’s friends and advisers have privately raised questions about his hiring.
.. he does know about Mr. Trump — and he does know about the news media and the 24-hour news cycle.
.. He’s currently representing Bill O’Reilly
.. Mr. Kasowitz sent a letter to the paper threatening to sue over the publication of accusations from two women that Mr. Trump sexually harassed them.
.. Mr. Kasowitz’s law partner, David M. Friedman, was Mr. Trump’s pick for ambassador to Israel.
.. And another of Mr. Kasowitz’s partners — one of his newest — is Joseph I. Lieberman
.. “I don’t read much. Mostly I read contracts, but usually my lawyers do most of the work.”