Good morning.

Tuesday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of twenty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:03 AM and sunset 5:13 PM, for 10h 09m 57s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.3% of its visible disk illuminated.

The Whitewater Common Council meets at 6:30 PM.

On this day in 1849, the University of Wisconsin opens: “the University of Wisconsin began with 20 students led by Professor John W. Sterling. The first class was organized as a preparatory school in the first department of the University: a department of science, literature, and the arts.”

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Maggie Haberman and Ben Protess report Trump Inaugural Committee Ordered to Hand Over Documents to Federal Investigators:

Escalating one of the investigations into President Trump’s inaugural committee, federal prosecutors ordered on Monday that its officials turn over documents about donors, finances and activities, according to two people familiar with the inquiry.

The subpoena seeks documents related to all of the committee’s donors and guests; any benefits handed out, including tickets and photo opportunities with the president; federal disclosure filings; vendors; contracts; and more, one of the people said.

The new requests expand an investigation prosecutors opened late last year amid a flurry of scrutiny of the inaugural committee. And they showed that the investigations surrounding Mr. Trump, once centered on potential ties to Russia during the 2016 presidential election, have spread far beyond the special counsel’s office to include virtually all aspects of his adult life: his business, his campaign, his inauguration and his presidency.

In the subpoena, investigators also showed interest in whether any foreigners illegally donated to the committee, as well as whether committee staff members knew that such donations were illegal, asking for documents laying out legal requirements for donations. Federal law prohibits foreign contributions to federal campaigns, political action committees and inaugural funds.

Robert Windrem and Ben Popken report Russia’s propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard:

The Russian propaganda machine that tried to influence the 2016 U.S. election is now promoting the presidential aspirations of a controversial Hawaii Democrat who earlier this month declared her intention to run for president in 2020.

An NBC News analysis of the main English-language news sites employed by Russia in its 2016 election meddling shows Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, who is set to make her formal announcement Saturday, has become a favorite of the sites Moscow used when it interfered in 2016.

Several experts who track websites and social media linked to the Kremlin have also seen what they believe may be the first stirrings of an upcoming Russian campaign of support for Gabbard.

Since Gabbard announced her intention to run on Jan. 11, there have been at least 20 Gabbard stories on three major Moscow-based English-language websites affiliated with or supportive of the Russian government: RT, the Russian-owned TV outlet; Sputnik News, a radio outlet; and Russia Insider, a blog that experts say closely follows the Kremlin line. The CIA has called RT and Sputnik part of “Russia’s state-run propaganda machine.”

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Good morning.

Monday in Whitewater will see morning showers with a high of forty-five.  Sunrise is 7:05 AM and sunset 5:12 PM, for 10h 07m 26s of daytime.  The moon is new with 0.1% of its visible disk illuminated.

Downtown Whitewater, Inc.’s board meets today at 5 PM.

On this day in 1863, the 1st Wisconsin Cavalry fights a skirmish at Batesville, Arkansas.

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Alexi McCammond and Jonathan Swan report Insider leaks Trump’s “Executive Time”-filled private schedules:

A White House source has leaked nearly every day of President Trump’s private schedule for the past three months.

Why it matters: This unusually voluminous leak gives us unprecedented visibility into how this president spends his days. The schedules, which cover nearly every working day since the midterms, show that Trump has spent around 60% of his scheduled time over the past 3 months in unstructured “Executive Time.”

• We’ve published every page of the leaked schedules in a piece that accompanies this item. To protect our source, we retyped the schedules in the same format that West Wing staff receives them.

What the schedules show: Trump, an early riser, usually spends the first 5 hours of the day in Executive Time. Each day’s schedule places Trump in “Location: Oval Office” from 8 to 11 a.m.

• But Trump, who often wakes before 6 a.m., is never in the Oval during those hours, according to six sources with direct knowledge.
• Instead, he spends his mornings in the residence, watching TV, reading the papers, and responding to what he sees and reads by phoning aides, members of Congress, friends, administration officials and informal advisers.

Jonathan Swan and Alexi McCammond also report How Trump’s schedule compares to past presidents:

President Trump’s time management — or lack thereof — is without recent historical precedent. To put our new reporting on his schedules in context, we spoke with former top aides to presidents Barack Obama, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton.

The big picture: The difference between Trump and his recent predecessors is eye-popping.

Trump has the least in common with George W. Bush.

• Bush’s calendar was tightly scheduled and booked out months ahead.
• Bush would wake around 5:15 a.m.; have coffee with his wife, Laura; read the newspapers; and get to the Oval Office by 6:45 a.m., per a former top aide who spoke anonymously to avoid offending Trump.

….

Barack Obama was similarly disciplined. But unlike Bush, he would sometimes stay up until 2 a.m. reading.

• His daily private schedule would typically have 6 meetings, as well as intelligence and economic briefings, according to Alyssa Mastromonaco, his deputy chief of staff for operations.
• Obama would usually get to the Oval Office around 9 a.m. and leave around 6 or 6:30 p.m. for dinner with the first lady and his daughters. He would have evening events around 3 nights a week and would travel domestically about 3 times a month, Mastromonaco said.

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Good morning.

Sunday in Whitewater will be sunny with a high of forty-one.  Sunrise is 7:06 AM and sunset 5:11 PM, for 10h 04m 57s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 1.4% of its visible disk illuminated.

February 3, 1959 is the day the music died: “Bad winter weather and a bus breakdown prompted rock-and-roll musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and the Big Bopper to rent a plane to continue on their “Winter Dance Party” tour. Icy roads and treacherous weather had nearly undermined their performances in Green Bay and Appleton that weekend, so after a show at the Surf Ballroom in Clear Lake, Iowa, on February 2, 1959, they boarded a four-seat airplane. The three performers and pilot Roger Peterson perished when the plane crashed about 1:00 AM on Monday, February 3rd.”

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 Kevin Sullivan reports Kamala Harris, daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants, defines herself simply as ‘American’:

Harris, 54, now a U.S. senator and 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, would be several firsts in the White House: the first woman, the first African American woman, the first Indian American and the first Asian American. The daughter of two immigrants — her father came from Jamaica — she would also be the second biracial president, after Barack Obama.

….

She said she has not spent much time dwelling on how to categorize herself.

“So much so,” she said, “that when I first ran for office that was one of the things that I struggled with, which is that you are forced through that process to define yourself in a way that you fit neatly into the compartment that other people have created.

“My point was: I am who I am. I’m good with it. You might need to figure it out, but I’m fine with it,” she said.

David Enrich, Jesse Drucker, and Ben Protess report Trump Sought a Loan During the 2016 Campaign. Deutsche Bank Said No:

Donald J. Trump was burning through cash.

It was early 2016, and he was lending tens of millions of dollars to his presidential campaign and had been spending large sums to expand the Trump Organization’s roster of high-end properties.

To finance his business’s growth, Mr. Trump turned to a longtime ally, Deutsche Bank, one of the few banks still willing to lend money to the man who has called himself “The King of Debt.”

Mr. Trump’s loan request, which has not been previously reported, set off a fight that reached the top of the German bank, according to three people familiar with the request. In the end, Deutsche Bank did something unexpected. It said no.

Senior officials at the bank, including its future chief executive, believed that Mr. Trump’s divisive candidacy made such a loan too risky, the people said. Among their concerns was that if Mr. Trump won the election and then defaulted, Deutsche Bank would have to choose between not collecting on the debt or seizing the assets of the president of the United States.

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Good morning.

Saturday in Whitewater will be mostly cloudy with a high of thirty-eight.  Sunrise is 7:07 AM and sunset 5:09 PM, for 10h 02m 31s of daytime.  The moon is a waning crescent with 4.8% of its visible disk illuminated.

On this day in 1905, professional baseball arrives for five Wisconsin cities with the formation of the Wisconsin State League.

Recommended for reading in full:

 Natasha Bertrand writes Russia Is Attacking the U.S. System From Within:

Last year, I detailed how Russia has figured out how to use the U.S. immigration courts and so-called “Red Notices” issued by Interpol to harass and even detain its enemies. But it doesn’t end there. Experts say Kremlin proxies have targeted their rivals and other disfavored individuals by exploiting U.S. courts to pursue bogus claims via “superficially legitimate lawsuits,” Anders Aslund, a resident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, said in a recent report.

When Mueller indicted Concord Management and Consulting in February 2018, along with two other corporate entities and 13 Russian nationals allegedly connected to the Internet Research Agency, it seemed highly unlikely that the indictment would result in a trial because Russians cannot be extradited to the United States. But Concord unexpectedly hired the well-connected American law firm, Reed Smith, to fight Mueller, arguing that the charges should be dropped because the special counsel was illegally appointed. The judge in the case, Dabney Friedrich, has twice refused to dismiss the case and recently lambasted Concord’s American  lawyers for submitting “unprofessional, inappropriate and ineffective” court filings, and the legal battle has raged on.

Now, according to the Mueller filing this week, unidentified actors working out of Russia appear to have weaponize[d] the U.S. discovery process to Concord’s benefit. Over 1,000 files on the website that hosted the leaked documents “match those produced in discovery,” the special counsel said.  The documents were published from a computer with a Russian IP address, according to Mueller, and whoever released them clearly “had access to at least some of the non-sensitive discovery produced by the government.” But forged documents were mixed in to the trove, too, apparently in an attempt to accuse Mueller of characterizing American websites and Facebook pages like Occupy Democrats as Russian disinformation operations.

….

Mueller, for his part, appears to have foreseen how the Russians connected to Concord Management (it is owned by Yevgeniy Prigozhin, often referred to as “Putin’s chef”) might try to exploit the legal process: In June 2018, he asked Judge Friedrich for a protective order that would prevent Concord’s lawyers from sharing any discovery documents with the Russians named in the troll farm indictment, as well as with other foreigners such as lawyers outside the U.S. If the data were to be distributed outside of American law firms, Mueller said, “foreign individuals may try to use that avenue as a way to obtain sensitive materials as part of an intelligence collection effort.” The hoax website aimed at discrediting his investigation largely failed, but seemed to prove Mueller’s prescience, beyond any doubt.

  The Night’s Sky for February 2019: