Krugman: "Did China Just Bribe Trump?"

For today, I had wanted to write about two situations involving the Trump administration that sound awfully much like bribery and/or extortion.   One involves China, the other Qatar.    Then I discovered that New York Times op-ed columnist Paul Krugman has done just that in his article for Friday, May 18, 2018;   and he has condensed and summarized it so well that I'm going to use large chunks of it and add a few thoughts of my own.   Parts in quotes will be Krugman's.

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"Did the president of the United States just betray the nation's security in return for a bribe from the Chinese government?

"Don't say that this suggestion is ridiculous:   Given everything we know about Donald Trump, it's well within the bounds of possibility, even plausibility.

"Don't say there's no proof:  We're not talking about a court of law, where the accused are presumed innocent until proved guilty.   Where the behavior of high officials is concerned, . . . [t]hey're supposed to avoid situations in which there is even a hint that their actions might be motivated by personal gain.

"Oh, and don't say that it doesn't matter one way or the other, because the Republicans who control Congress won't do anything about it.   That in itself is a key part of the story:  An entire political party -- a party that has historically wrapped itself in the flag and questioned the patriotism of its opponents -- has become entirely complaisant in the possibility of raw corruption, even if it involves payoffs from hostile foreign powers.

"The story so far:   In the past few years ZTE, a Chinese electronics company that, among other things, makes cheap smartphones, has gotten into repeated trouble with the U.S. government.   Many of its products contain U.S. technology -- technology that, by law, must not be exported to embargoed nations, including North Korea and Iran.   But ZTE was circumventing the ban.

"Initially, the company was fined $1.2 billion.   Then, when it became clear that the company had rewarded rather than punished the executives involved, the Commerce Department forbade U.S. technology companies from selling components to ZTE for the next seven years.

"And two weeks ago the Pentagon banned sales of ZTE phones on military bases, following warnings from intelligence agencies that the Chinese government may be using the company's products to conduct espionage.

"All of which made it very strange indeed to see Trump suddenly declare that he was working with President Xi of China to help save ZTE -- "Too many jobs in China lost" -- and that he was ordering the Commerce Department to make it happen.

"It's possible that Trump was just trying to offer an olive branch amid what looks like a possible trade war.   But why choose such a flagrant example of Chinese misbehavior?

"Which was why many eyes turned to Indonesia, where a Chinese state-owned company just announced a big investment in a project in which the Trump Organization has a substantial stake. . . . "

[Note:   This is not some insignificant project.   It involves a theme park and a resort with two luxury hotels and golf courses that will bear the Trump name and will be managed by the Trump organization.   Trump's financial disclosure lists royalties from this company as between $1 million and $10 million.  What's relevant here is that now the Chinese government is said to be making a big investment in the project.   What's suspicious about this deal is the timing of Trump's abrupt reversal of the U.S. position on the ZTE smartphones and the Chinese government's investment in a major resort that the Trump organization will manage.   The Indonesian developer now says that he has not yet accepted the Chinese money;  but that seemed to be a defensive response to the bad publicity.]

Back to Krugman:  ". . .  Was there a quid pro quo?   We may never know.   But this wasn't the first time the Trump administration made a peculiar foreign policy move that seems associated with Trump family business interests.   Last year the administration, bizarrely, backed a Saudi blockade of Qatar, a Middle Eastern nation that also happens to be the site of a major U.S. military base.   Why?

"Well, the move came shortly after the Qataris refused to invest $500 million in 666 Fifth Avenue, a troubled property owned by the family of Jared Kuishner, the president's son-in-law.

"And now it looks as if Qatar may be about to make a deal on 666 Fifth Avenue after all.   I wonder why?

"Step back from the details and consider the general picture.   High officials have the power to reward or punish both businesses and other governments, so that undue influence is always a problem . . . .

"But the problem becomes vastly worse if interested parties can simply funnel money to officials through their business holdings -- and Trump and his family, by failing to divest from their international business dealings, have basically hung a sign out declaring themselves open to bribery (and also set the standards for the rest of the administration). . .

". . .  Corporations can be shamed or sued.  But if Xi Jinping or Vladimir Putin make payoffs to U.S. politicians, who's going to stop them?

"The main answer is supposed to be congressional oversight, which used to mean something. . . .  But today's Republicans have made it clear that they won't hold Trump accountable for anything, even if it borders on treason.

"All of which is to say that Trump's corruption is only a symptom of a bigger problem:   a G.O.P. that will do anything, even betray the nation, in its pursuit of partisan advantage."

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Note 1:   In a vote on Friday, the House Appropriations Committee voted to keep intact that ban on companies doing business with ZTE.  So, at least they've done that;  but will the Senate follow suit?

Note 2:   I want to elaborate on the situation with Qatar --  the timing of the Saudi blockade, the loan refusal, and now what looks like a possible reversal of the loan decision after the head of the Qatari government visited President Trump in the Oval Office.

But it's a long and involved story, so I'll save it for a separate post for tomorrow.

Ralph

Trump finally acknowledges Stormy payment

President Trump had to file his annual financial report as a federal office-holder for 2017, and he did finally list, in a footnote, a payment to Michael Cohen of "between $100,001 and $250,000" -- "for expenses."   This is being assumed to be the $130,000 re-payment for the hush money Cohen paid to Stormy Daniels.

Trump was in a bind here, trapped by his conflicting lies.   He had said he knew nothing about the payment nor where Cohen got the money.   But his loose-cannon lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, blabbed on tv about the payment but insisted that it was not a campaign contribution because it was to "protect the family" from the unfavorable publicity and would have been paid even if he were not in an election campaign.   Problem:    it was paid about 10 days before the election for something that allegedly happened 10 years ago.    Why would it come up now, except for the campaign?

Anyway, the footnote acknowledged that Cohen incurred the expense in 2016 and that Trump reimbursed him for it in 2017 -- to justify that he did not include it on his 2016 financial disclosure form but did on the 2017 form.

The whole case is getting so complex, with new news several times a day.  And none of it is good news for Trump.   Rather than trying to explain all those different moving parts, let me just say that the noose around Trump is getting tighter and coming closer to evidence of possible financial crimes.   With all the millions coming in to Michael Cohen -- supposedly for access to Trump for the donors -- where did the money go?

But here's the over-arching question.   Trump, in his tweets and campaign rally rants, talks a lot about the witch hunt.   And his so-called lawyer Giuliani goes on TV and blathers all over the airwaves.   And what does he talk about?

"You can't indict a sitting president."  But why is Giuliani focusing so much on that if he's confident that Trump has done nothing to be indicted for? 

Let's look at the question anyway, because I do believe that Trump is indictable.  Giuliani claims that Mueller told him that they can't indict a sitting president, but if you parse what actually was said, according to witnesses in the meeting, Mueller didn't say that.   There was some discussion about it, apparently, and one of his assistants finally said that "We follow the policies of the Justice Department," or something like that.

Neal Katyal, former Solicitor General in the Justice Department, says that the Constitution is vague about the question.   The Watergate case, to some people's thinking, led to the conclusion that you can't indict a sitting president.

Katyal puts it in a different context.   He says (1) there are possibly exceptions depending on the seriousness of the crime.   The Constitution is not specific, and it's never really been tested in the courts.   And (2) he says that it's not just a matter of can you or cant' you indict.   The fact is, even if the answer is that you can't indict a sitting president, the other part of that sentence is that "the remedy is impeachment."    It's not just yes or no about indictment.   It's more a question of is the proper course (1) indictment or (2) impeachment.

But even with all that, Katyal personally thinks that there are some cases the seriousness of which would make indictment appropriate.    My words, not his, but it seems to me that murder would be one example.    Or gross corruption that was likely to continue if the president is not stopped immediately.

Interesting times.   We may find this question tested and answered by the courts.

Ralph

Senate Intel committee confirms Russia's attempt to swing election to Trump

Unlike the House Intelligence Committee's investigation of Russia's influence on our 2016 election -- which its Republican chairman David Nunes has turned into a back-channel means of leaking secret Justice Department documents to the White House -- the Senate Intelligence Committee continues a serious investigation.

In a just-released preliminary report about the overall question, they conclude that:
"The Senate Intelligence Committee has determined that the U.S. intelligence community was correct in assessing that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election with the aim of helping then-candidate Donald Trump."

It's important that they made this finding public, because the Republican majority of the corrupted House Intelligence Committee some weeks ago released it's supposed "final report" (not joined by its Democratic members) saying that there was no collusion with the Russians.   And, of course, Trump has been quoting that loudly and often, as though it were the sacred gospel.

Although the Democrats on the House committee released their own rebuttal to the majority report, having the full committee in the Senate give their findings on this overall conclusion at least helps to balance Nunes' shenanigans.   Trump will probably denounce the Senate report, but that won't make him right.

In a joint statement by the Senate committee's chair, Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and it's vice chair, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA), they said:   "We see no reason to dispute the [intelligence community's] conclusions."   And Sen. Warner added that the committee's staff had found the intelligence community's assessment to be accurate and on point.  "The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton," Sen. Warner added.

As reported in the Washington Post by Karoun Demirjian, this is the second of four interim findings the Senate Intelligence committee has said it will address before tackling the more consequential question of whether Trump and his associates colluded with Russia to influence the election’s outcome.  An earlier report had addressed election security;  a comprehensive final report is expected this fall.

"Although the Senate Intelligence Committee has yet to weigh in on the collusion allegations, Burr and Warner have hinted for days that their panel’s interim findings on the intelligence community would depart from those reached by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee. 'I’m not sure that the House was required to substantiate every conclusion with facts,' Burr told reporters last week, promising the Senate panel would 'have the facts to show for' its conclusions.'

"Asked Wednesday about the discrepancy between the two panels’ conclusions, Rep. Devin P. Nunes (R-Calif.), the House Intelligence Committee’s chairman said, “That’s nice.” He declined to elaborate. . . . 

"House Democrats [on the House Intelligence Committee], who roundly disagreed with the House GOP’s findings, praised the Senate Intelligence Committee’s conclusions. Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.), the House intelligence panel’s ranking member, said in a statement that he 'fully concur[s] with the conclusion of the bipartisan leaders of the Senate Intelligence Committee that the [Intelligence Community Assessment's] determination that Russia sought to help the Trump campaign, hurt Hillary Clinton and sow discord in the United States is fully supported by the evidence.'

"On Wednesday, Senate Intelligence Committee members met in closed session to discuss their findings with former Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper Jr., former CIA director John Brennan, and former National Security Agency director Adm. Mike Rogers. None has wavered from the conclusions about Russian interference in the election, according to senators who were in the room. . . ."

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In the overall history of insider political shenanigans, Nunes' corrupt collusion with the Trump administration to leak and distort evidence and findings may not be the worst we've ever had.    But it is shameful and a serious breakdown in our system of checks and balances between the three branches of government.

The House and the Senate Intelligence Committees have been the least influenced by politics until now.  It has been with a sense of pride that our representatives have taken this government function seriously and generally remained impartial.

The Senate Intel Committee still seems to be operating in a mostly non-partisan way;  that's not true of the House Intel Committee.   Chairman Nunes supposedly was pressured to recuse himself from the investigation;   but he continued to exert control over subpoenas -- and he actually flipped into becoming Donald Trump's protector and spy.

It's one more example among an astonishing consistency:    everything and everybody that comes into Trump's orbit seems to become corrupted -- and often sooner rather than later.    Along with our Democratic ranking members (Schiff in the House and Warner in the Senate) the Republican chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee Richard Burr stands out as a rare exception.    I suspect that his vice chair Sen. Warner was a great help and encouragement to him to remain impartial and focus on the facts and the law.

Ralph

Ivanka called "Daddy's Little Ghoul" by NY paper for being all cheery smiles at embassy opening, as Israeli soldiers were killing dozens of Palestinian protesters.

President Trump's controversial, tone-deaf decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem had its official opening Monday to the delight of Netanyahu, the Israel First crowd, and their wealthy supporters from the U.S., like megadonor, casino boss, Sheldon Adelson.

Trump himself is either willfully ignorant of the history behind past presidents' decisions to hold off on the move -- or he is stubbornly flaunting his ability to create even more chaos in a land and people who have little hope of ever being free, the Palestinians.

All three major Abrahamic religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) have major holy sites in Jerusalem, which is what makes it so fraught to have the city claimed by any one faction.    The partition into East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem was supposed to be a stop-gap measure decades ago, leaving the final decisions to be part of the peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinians.

But Israel has now asserted its control over the entire city, and this decision by Trump is an endorsement of that.   This act solidifies what has been becoming obvious since Trump's inauguration:   that the U.S. can no longer be an honest broker of peace in the Middle East, given its increasingly obvious tilt toward Israel. 

The Palestinians -- and their allies in the Arab world -- will not trust us.  Jared Kushner does nothing to dispel that notion -- in fact, he makes it worse, and then complicates it even more by his selectively cozying up to Saudi Arabia, as well as the Kushner family's complex financial dealings with Qatar.   The Saudis and Emiratis blockade of Qatar on land access complicates these complex relations, since our largest airbase in the region is in Qatar.

Trump was not in Jerusalem at the embassy-opening ceremony, but he spoke via satellite video to the happy crowd of (mostly white) people at the Embassy.   Ivanka and Jared were there, and each spoke.

Meanwhile, minutes away from this happy, celebritory event, Palestinians were kept out of the fenced off and heavily defended area in Gaza;  but about ten thousand gathered at the border to protest.  With little left to lose, some began throwing rocks as their only available weapons.   In what sounds like excessive show of force, Israeli soldiers returned their attacks with gun fire.   Over 50 Palestinians, including children, were shot and killed, while over 2,000 more were wounded.

NBC correspondent Richard Engle, reporting from Jerusalem, said it reminded him of the old British colonial times in India, where the British privileged rulers would be served their tea and crumpets, while starving Indian people were just outside the heavily guarded gates.

A White House spokesman rejected any idea that this was brought on by the provocation of the embassy decision.   He said that Hamas was behind it, stirring up trouble in order to make a "propaganda" spectacle.   The spokesman presented no evidence of that, and news reports sound like ordinary protests by a people who have been displaced, virtually enslaved in their own land, and forced to give up their homes to a superior power.

If you want to look for the roots of this particular, poorly timed decision, follow the money.    Look for the aging billionaire Sheldon Adelson toodling around the new embassy digs in his wheelchair looking like his entire casino empire just hit the jackpot.    Figure up how much money he and his ilk have given to politicians in Washington and to the Jewish-American organizations that promote an Israel First and Only "solution" to the mid-East conflict.

When you virtually imprison a whole people, as the Israelis do to the Palestinians in Gaza, there is little hope for them -- and they resort to rock throwing and other means of the powerless against the powerful.

It becomes even worse if this power differential is compounded by religious zeal and protection of holy sites.   The long-promised, two-state system, with Israel controlling West Jerusalem and Palestine controlling East Jerusalem, could have been one solution.   But now that Trump has endorsed Netanyahu's usurpation of the entire city for Israeli control, that -- and the whole peace process -- seems DOA. 

And yet, the cheery, white people from America (yes, Jared and Ivanka, I mean you) piped away in their faux optimism that this will help advance the peace process between Israel and Palestinians.   Obviously no one is listening to the ones on the other side of the barriers -- so they resorted to rock-throwing out of their hopeless desolation.

And the New York Daily News, noted for its provocative headlines, proclaimed, above Ivanka's front-page picture:  "Daddy's Little Ghoul."     Zinger !    It did seem quite ghoulish -- the contrast between blond, model-beautiful, vapid Ivanka speaking into a mic before well-dressed billionaires and powerful politicians -- and the darker-skinned, street-hardened, crowd of dissenters,  robbed of their land, largely without any means of livelihood, and limited in their ability to obtain necessary goods and supplies across Israel's borders.   Their voices were long ago muted, and now their access to their most holy site is in jeopardy.

All they had left were rocks to throw.   But the Israelis had guns -- and shot over 2000 of them, killing more than 50.   Meanwhile, the celebrating at the embassy went right on, with Americans and Israelis -- either oblivious or not caring.

Ralph

Perils of regime change -- Fareed Zakaria

Here are some excerpts from journalist/pundit Fareed Zakaria weekly editorial in the Washington Post.

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"Jeb Bush said Donald Trump would be a “chaos president.” And this week, President Trump lived up to the billing, choosing to defy virtually the entire world, including America’s closest European allies, and raising tensions in the most unstable part of the globe, the Middle East.

"It is hard to understand the rationale behind Trump’s decision to withdraw from the Iran nuclear deal. If Iran is as dangerous and malign an actor as he says, surely it is best to have its nuclear program frozen at a pre-military level and monitored 24/7. . . .  

"If there is a strategy behind Trump’s move, it is probably regime change. His closest advisers have long championed regime change and have argued that the best approach toward Iran is a combination of sanctions, support for opposition groups and military intervention. . . .  Thus, three of Trump’s closest advisers [Pompao, Bolton, and Giuliani] have views on Iran that are so extreme that it is hard to think of anyone outside of Saudi Arabia or Israel who shares them.

"Iran is a repressive and anti-American regime that has spread its influence in the Middle East, often to America’s detriment. But it is also an ancient civilization, with centuries of power and influence in the region. The notion that the United States could solve all of its problems with Tehran by toppling the regime is fanciful. It has withstood U.S. pressure and sanctions for nearly four decades. And even if it were somehow possible to topple it, look around. The lesson of the past two decades in the Middle East is surely that regime change leads to chaos, war, refugee flows, sectarian strife and more. It opens a Pandora’s box in a land already rife with woes.

"Look beyond the Middle East at the record of regime change. Whether it was an unfriendly ruler such as Guatemala’s Jacobo Arbenz or a friendly one such as South Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem, regime change was followed by greater instability. Look at Iran itself, where a British-American-sponsored coup dislodged the elected government, which was one of the factors that led to and still legitimizes the Islamic republic. Consider also America’s heavy-handed intervention in the Cuban liberation movement at the turn of the 20th century, which left a legacy of anti-Americanism that the Cuban Communists exploit to this day. Misjudging and mishandling nationalism may be the central error in American foreign policy.

"By contrast, when the United States has helped open countries to capitalism, commerce and contact, these acids of modernity have almost always eaten away at the nastiest elements of dictatorships. For all its problems, China today is a much better and more responsible country than it was under Mao Zedong. People often point to President Ronald Reagan’s campaign against the Soviet Union as one in which pressure against an evil empire helped produce regime change. But they remember only half the story. Reagan did pressure the Soviets. But as soon as he found a reformer, in Mikhail Gorbachev, he embraced him, supported him and made concessions to him. So much so that he drew furious opposition from conservatives in the United States who called him “a useful idiot” who was helping the Soviet Union win the Cold War.

"Iran is a complicated country with a complicated regime. But it does have moderate elements within it that were clearly hoping the nuclear deal would be a path to integration and normalization with the world. Those forces do not have the dominant hand, but they do have power, not least because President Hassan Rouhani has popular backing. But Iran has always had a strong hard-line element that believed that America could never be trusted, that the Saudis were mortal foes, and that self-reliance, autarky and the spread of Shiite ideology was their only strategy for self-preservation. Trump has just proved them right."

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There are signs that Pompao -- and even John Bolton -- may be softening their stances somewhat on regime change.    Pompao in his confirmation hearings for Secretary of State answered a question, saying that he was not in favor of regime change.   Even John Bolton said this weekend that it's not the strategy we are pursuing in Iran.

Or it may simply be that these answers were tactical and of the moment.  

Honestly, so far I think Pompao is proving to be much better than our fears before he took over the State Department.   He seems more practical than ideologue -- especially in his dealings with Kim Jong Un and setting up the meeting with President Trump.   Or maybe it's the difference between being in Congress, as one voice among hundreds, and being the top diplomat who has to make our foreign policy work.

Unfortunately, Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, the more moderate, steady voice among the top foreign policy advisers, who used to be aligned with NSA adviser McMaster, is outnumbered.   But instead of Pompao and Bolton against Mattis, it's beginning to look like Pompao may be the bridge between the Marris/Bolton divide.

Ralph

Government of, by, and for the rich.

Atlanta Journal-Constitution columnist Jay Bookman wrote his Sunday column about the Republican tax cut and how it benefits corporations and the wealthy -- and one reward they have received for that gift to the rich.

It seems that House Speaker Paul Ryan has just led a retinue to Las Vegas to the Sands casino empire of mega-donor Sheldon Adelson, whom we already know has been gifted by President Trump with the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.    This is something Adelson has been lobbying for, a joint effort with Israeli leader Bibi Netanyahu.

Bookman says that the first quarter net income for the Sands "jumped a remarkable 179 percent.   Most of the gain came as a direct result of last year's huge corporate tax cut."   Adelson's company saved $670 million as a result of the tax cut -- with Adelson's personal income tax likely to have been reduced by tens of millions.

Ryan and Co. didn't make their pilgrimage just to hear him say "thank you."   They asked for a favor in return.   And they came away with a promise to contribute $30 million to the Conservative Leadership Fund superPac created to help keep Republicans in control of the House.

Meanwhile, these same Republican leaders, citing huge deficits in the budget [which result from the tax cuts they engineered for the likes of Edelson], now have to get to work cutting spending to "reduce the deficit," which they created -- in part as a pretext for cutting social spending.   Ryan's primary mission has always been, he admits, is "entitlement reform," his euphemism for cutting the entire social network, including Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security and others.

With the Big Three (M, M, and SS) always in his long-range sights, he's going after the food stamp program;  and Trump is demanding that $15 billion be cut from the already-passed budget bill that was for the Children's Health Insurance Program (CHIP) -- one of the few good things the just-passed budget left in.

Not only this, but Booker also says that, contrary to Republicans' promises about the tax bill, the tax cuts did not help the middle and working classes.   "The average weekly earnings for American workers declined slightly last month after adjusting for inflation;"  and the average American has seen no increase in wages according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

In addition, "the percentage of Americans without health insurance is climbing once again as a direct result of Republican efforts to undermine Obamacare.   Former Secretary of HHH, Tom Price, "now admits that the GOP move to end the individual mandate actually will harm the pool in the exchange market," because younger, healthier individuals will not purchase it.   Yes, we all knew that would be the result.    Where were you, Tom, when it was happening?

At the same time, HUD Secretary Ben Carson is proposing rent increases for subsidized housing, calling it an "incentive" for the poor to become more self-sufficient.   And, if all that isn't enough, muiltibillionaire Betsy DeVos, Secretary of Education, is undercutting the federal student aid program.

Bookman concludes:
"All this, in a country where the divide between rich and poor has reached historic levels and continues to worsen and where middle-income continues its decade-long stagnation.   It's just nuts."

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How do these people look themselves in the mirror?   It's one thing to be rich and greedy -- but also to lie and pretend what you're doing is really a boon for the middle class and working families, when you know it isn't?   That is cruel and despicable.

Ralph

Giuliani's law firm got rid of him. Trump should do the same.

There could be only one justification for keeping Rudy Giuliani on his legal team, and that would be a strategy to create as much public confusion as possible.   Every day, Rudy proves, not only that he "doesn't have all the facts straight," as Trump so benignly put it;   but, in truth, Giuliani is a disaster, creating more legal trouble for Trump -- every time he speaks.

The latest debacle concerns the AT-T payment to Michael Cohen of $600,000 in monthly payments in 2017, ostensibly for "insights" into the Trump administration's positions on telecom regulations, tax reform and other issues.  AT-T has acknowledged the payments.  They were interviewed by the Mueller investigators months ago, so they have nothing legal to hide and only their public reputation to consider at this point.

The AT-T CEO now says that paying Cohen was a "serious misjudgment."  The company's head of lobbying and external marketing will be leaving the company as a result.  But, here's the situation for AT-T when Trump won the election.   They were in negotiations on a merger with Time-Warner, which is opposed by the Justice Department on anti-trust grounds.   Also, on the campaign trail, Trump had been vociferously opposed to it.    As things have moved along to now, the Justice Department sued to stop the merger;   the case has been tried and the judge's verdict is awaited.

Back to AT-T hiring Michael Cohen.   According to New York Times reporting, AT-T has its own "platoon of lobbyists with deep connections to both sides of the aisle."   They paid $4.1 million in lobbying fees to nearly 3o firms through the first three months of this year.  But Michael Cohen had an advantage in the AT-T case:  "No one was as close to Mr. Trump as Mr. Cohen," and he had approached them about being a consultant.

So here's the situation, when Rudy spoke about Trump and the case on TV.

   1.  Trump repeatedly emphasized his opposition to the merger on the campaign trail, citing it as an example of "the swamp" in Washington.
   2.  AT-T says that Cohen did not do any lobbying for the money they paid him, and that the contract was a mistake that should never have been made.
   3.  Time-Warner says it was not aware of AT-T's contract with Cohen.
   4.  The Justice Department entered an anti-trust lawsuit to stop the merger on November 20, 2017,  well after Jeff Sessions had become Attorney General.
   5.  Kellyanne Conway said last year that the White House was not involved in the Justice Department's review of the anti-trust case.
   6.  AT-T and Time-Warner challenged Justice's calling it anti-trust, since the two companies do not currently compete.  That, apparently, is the issue on which the anti-trust lawsuit rests:   whether it can be considered anti-trust, since the merger supposedly does not reduce competition.
   7.  Some have suggested a political motivation since Time-Warner owns CNN, the television network that President Trump has most vociferously attacked.
   8.  The judge in the U.S. District Court trial, Richard J. Leon, has been strict in keeping politics out of the case, according to the New York Times, noting that the trial was focused on anti-trust laws, and "whether the merger would violate competition policies and harm consumers."
   9.  The trial of the lawsuit has been completed and the judge's decision is awaited.

So, Trump was opposed --  but all statements, if true, support the premise that he did not influence either the Justice Department or the trial and that it was conducted strictly as a non-political, anti-trust case.   That is exactly as it should be.   The president should not interfere or even discuss with the DoJ cases that are under consideration or investigation.

Now, let's look at what Rudy Giuliani has said, as reported by CBS News.

1.  After Trump had claimed to reporters that he didn't know anything about the $130,000 Cohen paid in hush money, Giuliani went on Sean Hannity's show and said that Trump reimbursed Cohen for the payment.

2.   Giuliani then embellished his story by saying that it definitely was not a campaign contribution, because the payment would have been paid anyway, whether or not Trump was running for president.   Actually, the hush money was to protect his family from embarrassment by a personal and false allegation.
     They had to deny it had anything to do with the campaign, because it would be an illegal campaign contribution.   But even then, Giuliani couldn't let it alone.   He said something like "It had nothing to do with the campaign . . . or at least that was not the main purpose."

3.   Now Giuliani has waded into the swamp again, this time on the AT-T/Time-Warner merger.   He told HuffPost that Trump "denied the merger" between AT-T and Time-Warner.   He added:   "Whatever lobbying was done [by Cohen] didn't reach the president. . . .  He did drain the swamp. . .  The president denied the merger.  They didn't get the result they wanted."

There are so many things wrong and legally-suspect with that.   First, as a fact, the case against the merger has not yet been decided.   A trial has been held but the judge has not yet given his decision.   So, it's not true that Trump "denied the merger."   It's not up to him.

Second, even if the merger is denied by the courts, it's not a decision the president can make.   So Rudy can't say -- but he did -- that:  "He denied the merger."

Third, Rudy admits that Cohen's scheme was to sell access to influence the president.   Even if "they didn't get the result they wanted," he's still saying that's what it was all about.   Why else would AT-T, despite it's own "platoon" of lobbyists, pay Michael Cohen -- with no credentials other than access to the president -- much more than they paid the real lobbyists?

So, in dissembling in order to protect the president, he throws Michael Cohen way, way under the bus.    That's not smart -- if Michael Cohen holds all the secrets to the possible financial crimes of Donald Trump.    If Trump abandons Cohen, why should Cohen then "take a bullet" for the president?

If Rudy keeps this up, watch for Cohen to flip and start talking.

Ralph