Good morning.
Friday in Whitewater will be cloudy, with snow falling in the late afternoon, and a high of twenty-seven. Sunrise is 7:20 AM and sunset 4:50 PM, for 9h 29m 57s of daytime. The moon is a waxing gibbous with 89.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
Today is the eight hundredth day.
On this day in 1803, Pres. Jefferson requests funding for what would become the Lewis and Clark expedition.
Recommended for reading in full:
Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier report President Trump Directed His Attorney Michael Cohen To Lie To Congress About The Moscow Tower Project (“Trump received 10 personal updates from Michael Cohen and encouraged a planned meeting with Vladimir Putin”):
President Donald Trump directed his longtime attorney Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about negotiations to build a Trump Tower in Moscow, according to two federal law enforcement officials involved in an investigation of the matter.
Trump also supported a plan, set up by Cohen, to visit Russia during the presidential campaign, in order to personally meet President Vladimir Putin and jump-start the tower negotiations. “Make it happen,” the sources said Trump told Cohen.
And even as Trump told the public he had no business deals with Russia, the sources said Trump and his children Ivanka and Donald Trump Jr. received regular, detailed updates about the real estate development from Cohen, whom they put in charge of the project.
Update: But see In a rare move, Mueller’s office denies BuzzFeed report that Trump told Cohen to lie about Moscow project.
Mikhaila Fogel, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, and Benjamin Wittes assess this news in The Latest Revelation From BuzzFeed News: Trump Reportedly Directed Cohen to Lie to Congress:
First, the criminality alleged in this story is—if true—unsubtle and unambiguous, directly related to the president’s conduct as president, and concerning matters of great import.
This story is the first direct allegation of a crime by Trump involving L’Affaire Russe for which the president cannot claim that his actions were authorized by the Article II powers of the presidency. There is an active debate about the degree to which the obstruction statutes can or cannot be applied to facially valid exercises of presidential authority—like, for example, firing the FBI director or directing the conduct of an investigation. There is no debate, by contrast, about whether the president can obstruct justice in his conduct outside of his authorities as president.
Eric Mack explains How to see the last ‘super blood wolf moon’ lunar eclipse for 18 years:
Starting at around 7:34 p.m. PT or 10:34 p.m. ET Sunday, a partial eclipse will begin, with the full eclipse starting a little over an hour later. You can safely look at the blood moon from anywhere skies are clear enough, unlike solar eclipses that require special eye protection in most cases. The main event lasts about an hour.
If skies don’t cooperate or you can’t be bothered to step outside for some reason to see it for yourself, you can catch the livestream from the Virtual Telescope Project in Rome below. There’s also a handful of other eclipses still to come in 2019.
So…Was Amy Klobuchar laying in the weeds when she got Barr to agree, and then confirm in a follow-up question, that suborning perjury is felonious obstruction of justice? She certainly phrased the question in a manner that, as we just found out, is directly applicable to Trump. That was a very focused question. Maybe she posed it by accident…or perhaps not.
And…Did Barr have any hint that it might be asked? He clearly had his answer thought out in advance, as he answered with no hemming, no hawing, and no equivocation. Barr left rather little wiggle-room.
I am not disabused of my notion that Barr may be a Trojan Horse invading Trump-land, yet.
Yes, indeed – she played this well either way – understated and matter-of-fact. If she approached this as a coincidence, that was the right approach. If she knew what was coming from about Cohen, then she deserves even more plaudits.
Barr, too, may have known what was coming (about Trump suborning perjury while in office).
Your notion is still standing strong.