The Washington Post
detailed the House GOP’s fight over the ObamaCare repeal and
replacement plan this week, rounding up the dramatic details of
leadership’s fight to win support for the measure.
At one point, the paper said, House Speaker Paul Ryan (Wis.) got down on one knee to plead with Rep. Don Young of Alaska – the longest-serving Republican in Congress -- to support the bill. (He was unsuccessful.)
The
moments highlighted by the Post during the Republican conference
negotiations show what a tough battle Ryan and his deputies faced in
whipping the vote.
But they also show the fierce support some offered
to leadership - like freshman Rep. Brian Mast of Florida, who lost both
legs in 2010 in Afghanistan and called on colleagues to unite behind
the bill as he and his Army colleagues had done on the battlefield.
At
another point, a Republican shouted, “Burn the ships” to Majority Whip
Steve Scalise, invoking the command a 16th century Spanish conquistador
gave his crew when they landed in Mexico.
The message was clear, the Post said –- the Republicans felt there was no turning back.
The
GOP was ultimately unable to coalesce around the party’s plan and Ryan
pulled the bill from the floor Friday, when it was clear it did not have
the votes to pass.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) on Sunday blamed the
American people for the decision of Senate Republicans not to grant
President Barack Obama's Supreme Court pick, Judge Merrick Garland, a
hearing.
"The tradition had been not to confirm vacancies in the middle of a presidential [election] year," McConnell told Meet the Press
host Chuck Todd. "You'd have to go back 80 years to find the last time
it happened... Everyone knew, including President Obama's former White
House counsel, that if the shoe had been on the other foot, [Democrats]
wouldn't have filled a Republican president's vacancy in the middle of a
presidential election."
"That's a rationale to vote against his confirmation," Todd argued.
"Why not put him up for a vote? Any senator can have a rationale to not
to vote for a confirmation. Why not put Merrick Garland on the floor and
if the rationale is, 'You know what? Too close to an election,' then
vote no?"
McConnell laughed defensively.
"Look, we litigated that last year," the Majority Leader stuttered.
"The American people decided that they wanted Donald Trump to make the
nomination, not Hillary Clinton."
McConnell argued that Democrats should focus on the issue at hand, the confirmation of Neil Gorsuch, Trump's Supreme Court pick.
"There's no rational reason, no basis for voting against Neil Gorsuch," McConnell opined.
"You say it's been litigated, the Garland situation," Todd replied.
"For a lot of Senate Democrats, they're not done litigating this... What
was wrong with allowing Merrick Garland to have an up or down vote?"
"I already told you!" McConnell exclaimed. "You don't fill Supreme Court vacancies in the middle of a presidential election."
"Should that be the policy going forward?" Todd interrupted. "Are you
prepared to pass a resolution that says in election years any Supreme
Court vacancy [will not be filled] and let it be a sense of the Senate
resolution, that says no Supreme Court nominations will be considered in
any even numbered year? Is that where we're headed?"
"That's an absurd question," McConnell complained. "We were right in
the middle of a presidential election year. Every body knew that either
side -- had the shoe been on the other foot -- wouldn't have filled it.
But that has nothing to do with what we're voting on this year."
Thus far, in the scandal-plagued, chaotic presidency of Donald
Trump, the chief executive’s son-in-law Jared Kushner has enjoyed a kind
of unsinkable “privileged status.”
According to Politico,
however, resentment is growing against Kushner in an already
factionalized and strife-torn White House. Hardline conservatives see
the moderate-minded, 36 year old Kushner as an obstacle to their agenda
and worry that Kushner ally Gary Cohn — a Democrat — will pressure
Kushner to steer the administration toward the middle.
Thus far,
Pres. Trump has tasked his daughter’s husband — a government neophyte
with no previous policy or legislative experience — with solving the
crisis in the Middle East and overseeing the U.S. relationships with
China, Canada and Mexico. On top of that ambitious portfolio, Kushner
and Cohn this week established the White House Office of American
Innovation, an initiative to modernize and streamline the operations of
the federal government.
“But Kushner’s status as the big-issue
guru has stoked resentment among his colleagues, who question whether
Kushner is capable of following through on his various commitments,”
wrote Politico’s Josh Dawsey, Kenneth P. Vogel and Alex Isenstadt. “And
some colleagues complain that his dabbling in myriad issues and his
tendency to walk in and out of meetings have complicated efforts to
instill more order and organization into the chaotic administration.
These people also say Kushner can be a shrewd self promoter, knowing how
to take credit — and shirk blame — whenever it suits him.”
“He’s saving the government and the Middle East at the same time,” one administration official quipped to Politico.
Kushner
is arguably the president’s closest adviser — the last person to speak
to him each day and also the administration’s hatchet man. During the
2016 campaign, it fell to Kushner to fire campaign managers Corey
Lewandowski and Paul Manafort. It was also Kushner who axed New Jersey
Gov. Chris Christie (R) from the Trump transition team.
Lewandowski
in particular is rumored to be pursuing a vendetta against Kushner,
planting anonymous stories about the president’s son-in-law with
conservative media outlets. Other campaign officials who didn’t get
hired by the administration are reportedly aligned with Lewandowski and
believe that Kushner is insufficiently conservative.
Far-right
radio host Mark Levin has attacked Kushner before, calling him “some
32-year-old, liberal Democrat kid out of New York.” Other
neoconservatives and Zionist Israel supporters said they had high hopes
for Kushner because he is an Orthodox Jew and the grandson of Holocaust
survivors, but thus far they say he has disappointed them.
A source told Politico that
“those hopes mostly have been supplanted by ‘deep concern that Jared is
not the person we thought he was — that this guy who is supposed to be
good at everything is totally out of his depth.’”
Kushner himself
remains breezily confident, telling associates not to fret over the
Russia investigation because it “isn’t going anywhere” and assuring
others that his father-in-law’s administration will get past its early
stumbles.
“But if it doesn’t,” Politico said, “allies and aides
say, one thing is clear: the president will surely find someone else to
take the blame. And Kushner will likely be delivering the bad news.”
Kushner
was the subject of Republican ire in the wake of the president’s failed
healthcare bill after he and the president’s daughter Ivanka Trump left Washington for
a ski-trip to Aspen, CO. This week it came out that the presidential
son-in-law is wanted for testimony in connection to an FBI investigation
of a bank implicated in Russian money laundering.
For
the past several decades, members of the GOP have mapped the
ideological range found within their party onto a fairly straightforward
spectrum—one that runs from “moderate” to “conservative.” The
formulation was simplistic, of course, but it provided a useful
shorthand in assessing politicians, and in explaining one’s own
political orientation.
A small-government culture warrior in
Arizona would be situated on the far-right end of the spectrum; a
pro-choice Chamber of Commerce type in Massachusetts might place himself
on the other end. And across the country, there were millions of
people—from officeholders to ordinary Republican voters—who identified
somewhere between those two poles.
But with the rise of Donald
Trump—and his spectrum-bending brand of populist nationalism—many
longtime Republicans are now struggling to figure out where they fit in
this fast-shifting philosophical landscape. In recent weeks, two
prominent Republicans have told me they are sincerely struggling to
explain where they fall on the ideological spectrum these days. It’s not
that they’ve changed their beliefs; it’s that the old taxonomy has
become incoherent.
For
example, does being an outspoken Trump critic make you a “moderate”
RINO? Does it matter whether you’re criticizing him for an overly
austere healthcare bill, or for reckless infrastructure spending plan?
And who owns the “far right” now—is it “constitutional conservatives”
like Ted Cruz, or “alt-right” white supremacists like Richard Spencer?
When
I raised these questions on a Twitter earlier this week, I was swamped
with hundreds of responses and dozens of emails from longtime
Republicans who described feeling like they are lost inside their own
homes.
Some, like Jordan Team from Washington, D.C., related how
their attempts at explaining their personal politics have devolved into a
kind of absurdist comedy:
I've always identified as a more moderate R - even "establishment
Republican", if you will. I usually always use "moderate" or
"Establishment" when saying I'm a Republican to separate myself from
more hard-line Tea Party Freedom Caucus conservatives.
These days, however, I feel like it requires even further explanation
to separate myself from the nationalism/populism that Trump & team
espouse, since they're all now technically Republicans. Usually it's
something super catchy & brief along the lines of: "I'm a moderate
Republican - or at least, have been one, not really sure that that means
anymore - but I don't support Trump or populism - I'm traditionally
conservative" And even that doesn't always get the point across. I
think the easiest when trying to have a conversation with someone is a
two step process. Step 1: "I'm a Republican but don't like Trump," and
then if the convo keeps going/they know politics/they're interested,
there's step 2: "I'm more moderate/establishment than Tea Party/Freedom
Caucus".
Other people, meanwhile, shared more tragic
testimonials. “I feel honestly like a part of my identity was stolen,”
wrote Alycia Kuehne, a conservative Christian from Dallas, Texas.But
virtually everyone who wrote to me shared a common complaint: The
traditional “Left ↔ Right” spectrum used to describe and categorize
Republicans has become obsolete in the age of Trump. The question now is
what to replace it with.
To provoke interesting answers, I asked
people who wrote to me to imagine the Republican voter who is furthest
from themselves—be it ideologically, philosophically, or
attitudinally—and then to answer the question: What is the most
meaningful difference between you and that person?
The proposed
spectrums that emerged from their responses—some of which I’ve included
below—are not meant to be peer-reviewed by political scientists. But
they offer new, and potentially more useful, ways to map the emerging
fault lines that now divide the American right.
LIBERTARIAN ↔ AUTHORITARIAN: One
of the most common responses I received from Republicans argued that
the party could be divided between authoritarians (who tend to gravitate
toward Trump) and libertarians (who are generally repelled by his
strong-man instincts). In an email that was typical of several I
received, Aaron L. M. Goodwin, from California, wrote:
I grew up in a pretty conservative household. We were home-schooled
Mormons. We listened to conservative talk radio. I was the only 10 year
old I knew of who loved to watch C-Span. These days I feel completely
alienated from the GOP. But, I don't feel like I'm the one who sold out.
So where does that leave me?
I believe the conservative/liberal spectrum has been overtaken by one
for democratic/authoritarian ... Most of the Republicans I still feel
some kinship with are from a multitude of ideologies, but they share an
ideology based on classical liberal democracy. We all share a
deep-seeded suspicion of rule by power, and I believe, are closer to the
original intent of our founding documents.
GRIEVANCE-MOTIVATED ↔ PHILOSOPHICALLY MOTIVATED: Liz
Mair, a libertarian-leaning GOP strategist, wrote that she’s been
convinced after “300 gazillion conversations with all sorts of
conservatives”—including a range of lawmakers, writers, pundits,
candidates, and grassroots-level activists—that the biggest division
within the party is one that separates Fox News-a-holics driven by
tribal grievance from people who have some kind of philosophically
rooted belief system:
I honestly think the split in
conservatism comes more down to philosophy versus identity politics than
anything. Are you opposed to things on philosophical or tribal grounds?
Are you a believer of a member of our clan? (Said in the Scottish
sense) ...
I bet if you polled Trump primary
voters and asked them what was the bigger problem—insufficiently limited
government or transgender Muslim feminists being celebrated at the
Oscars, a big majority would say the latter.
ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT ↔ ESTABLISHMENT: The
outsider/insider trope is well-worn in contemporary conservative
politics—so much so that you could argue the terms have lost their
meaning. But based on the emails I received, many Republicans (on both
ends of the spectrum) still view the party through that lens. On one end
are people who respect existing political institutions, and believe in
conforming to their norms and using the system to advance their agenda.
On other end of this spectrum are people who believe the establishment
is hopelessly corrupt and ineffectual, and that it should be
circumvented whenever possible. The
flaw in this formulation, it seems to me, is that virtually every
Republican who has entered Congress over the past eight years started
out on the anti-establishment end of the spectrum, and then
slid—involuntarily, perhaps, but inevitably—toward the establishment
end. That’s because, as Stephen Spiker from Virginia emailed, once you
run for office and win, you necessarily become a part of the system, an
insider:
I see many colleagues in the party taken in by the "establishment vs
anti-establishment" spectrum. Essentially populism, as the
anti-establishment folks are "burn it down" because they don't feel
represented and want a fighter. That lead to Dave Brat winning in 2014,
and Trump winning in 2016.
Now that its Trump vs Brat, you're going to see the inherent decay in
this school of thought: the anti-establishment crowd turning on their
former heroes like Dave Brat (as they turned on Cantor previously). He's
in Congress, he's an insider, he's standing in the way, etc.
It will eventually turn on Trump as well, as he falls short on goal
after goal. When it happens (as in, before or after Trump is out of
office) is always dependent on having the right person run at the right
time on the right message, but it will happen.
Most notable about the anti-establishment position is that there's no
consistent end game or policy goal. It exists for the sake of itself.
That's what frustrates folks who actually have firm ideological stances.
ABSOLUTISTS ↔ DEALMAKERS: Many of the
most high-profile intra-party battles in recent years have been fought
not over ideas, but tactics and a willingness to compromise. While
Republicans in Washington were essentially unanimous in their opposition
to President Obama’s agenda, they differed—at least at first—over
whether they should cut deals at the legislative bargaining table, or,
say, shut the government down until they got exactly what they wanted.
The absolutists largely won out during the Obama presidency—but what
about now?
On one end of this spectrum are people like the Freedom
Caucus purists from whom it is all but impossible to extract
concessions; on the other are the dealmakers who will compromise
virtually anything to get some kind of legislation passed. Several Republicans who wrote to me were, I think, circling this idea, which my colleague Conor Friedersdorf recently articulated:
Do populist Republicans want a federal government where politicians
stand on principle and refuse to compromise? Or do they want a
pragmatist to make fabulous deals?
… Is a GOP House member more likely to be punished in a primary for
thwarting a Donald Trump deal … or compromising to make a deal happen?
Were I the political consultant for an ambitious primary candidate in a
safe Republican district, I can imagine a successful challenge
regardless of what course the incumbent chose, voters having been primed
to respond to either critique.
OPEN/TOLERANT ↔ NATIVIST/RACIST: This
is the probably the most provocative construct that was proposed, but it
was also a popular one. For many Trump-averse Republicans, one of the
biggest perceived differences between themselves and hardcore Trump fans
is attitudes toward racial minorities and foreign immigrants. The
alt-right dominates one end of the spectrum—and they place themselves on
the polar opposite end.
Granted, this spectrum was not proposed
to me by any Trump supporters, and no doubt many of them would strongly
disagree with this categorization. But there’s no question it’s one of
the defining debates inside the party right now. Evan McMullin, a
conservative who ran for president last year under the #NeverTrump
banner, was quoted saying that racism is the single biggest problem with the party today.
* * *
This
is, of course, by no means a comprehensive list of the divisions within
the GOP. For example, one of the most talked-about conflicts to emerge
in the past year has been between “nationalism” and “globalism.” But
despite efforts by Steve Bannon and other Trump advisers to frame the
ideological debate that way, very few GOP voters—at least none who wrote
to me—identify as “globalists.” Instead, these new spectrums represent a
few of the ways in which Republicans—eager to escape the disorder and
confusion of the Trump era—are categorizing themselves and each other.
If it turns out that Donald Trump’s campaign did, indeed, work with
the Russians to defeat Hillary Clinton in last fall’s presidential
election, a majority of the country – 53 percent – thinks the president
should resign.
According to the explosive new poll from Public Policy Polling (PPP),
which debuted Wednesday night on MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow Show, the
American people said – by a 14-point margin – that Trump should step
down if there was collusion.
Another result revealed on Maddow’s program found that a plurality of
the country believes Trump’s campaign did, in fact, work with Russia to
swing the 2016 election in his favor.
If you’re keeping score at home: The American people think both that
Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia and that the president should
resign as a result.
While there is endless political polling released on a weekly basis
asking about hypothetical scenarios, what should be terrifying to the
White House is that the explosive Russia scandal is just one more
investigation or one more small piece of evidence away from making the
questions posed in the PPP survey a reality.
At that point, the president will have to face a country that doesn’t
just believe he isn’t doing a good job, as polls repeatedly suggest,
but also that he should no longer have the job at all.
Former Labor Secretary Tom Perez, who took over as the chair of the
Democratic National Committee in late February following Hillary's
stunning November defeat, has asked for his entire staff to submit their resignation letters by no later than April 15th.
Of course, the move comes after a series of scandals plagued the DNC
throughout the 2016 election cycle, including rather undeniable evidence
that former Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz intentionally undermined the
campaign of Bernie Sanders while her replacement, Donna Brazile,
seemingly did the same by passing Hillary's team debate questions in
advance of Town Hall discussions with Bernie.
According to NBC, Tom Perez decided to clean house at the DNC shortly after taking over the leadership role from Donna Brazile and will use the mass firing as an opportunity to restructure how the party will be run going forward.
Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez has launched
a major reshuffling of the party's organization that has been stung by
recent crisis — and the DNC has requested the resignation letters of all
current staffers be submitted by next month.
Party staff routinely see major turnover with a new boss and staffers
were alerted earlier to expect such a move. However, the mass
resignation letters will give Perez a chance to completely remake the
DNC's headquarters from scratch. Staffing had already reached unusual
lows following a round of layoffs in December.
Immediately after Perez' election in late February, an
adviser to outgoing DNC Interim Chair Donna Brazile, Leah Daughtry,
asked every employee to submit a letter of resignation dated April 15, according to multiple sources familiar with the party's internal working.
A committee advising Perez on his transition is now interviewing
staff and others as part of a top-to-bottom review process to help
decide not only who will stay and who will go, but how the party should
be structured in the future.
Back in late February, Perez appeared on Meet the Press to tell Chuck Todd that he would look to implement a "culture change" at the DNC before comparing his own party to a busted plane traveling at 20,000 feet.
Perez has spent his first weeks on the job in "active listening
mode," hearing from Democrats in Washington and in small group meetings
across the country before making any big moves.
"What we're trying to do is culture change," he told NBC News
between stops of a listening tour in Michigan Friday. "We're repairing a
plane at 20,000 feet. You can't land the plane, shut it down, and close
it until further notice."
"If your goal is you have to please everyone then you end up pleasing no one," he added.
We're still awaiting confirmation from Rachel Maddow that this mass
firing came after the discovery that the DNC was infiltrated by Russian
spies coordinating with the Trump campaign.
Conservative pundits have a history of racist disparagement of black women. Cenk Uygur, host of The Young Turks, breaks it down.
"Fox News host Bill O'Reilly said Tuesday he "didn't hear a word" Rep.
Maxine Waters (D-Calif.) said during recent comments on the House floor
because he was focused on "the James Brown wig."
"I love her.
Maxine Waters should have her own sitcom," "The O'Reilly Factor" host
joked on "Fox & Friends" when asked about the longtime congresswoman
questioning the patriotism of President Trump's supporters in a speech
on Monday.
"People get angry with Maxine Waters. I want more of it," he said.
O'Reilly
was then shown a clip of Waters saying Trump supporters "turned a blind
eye to the destruction" the president was "about to cause the
country.””*
"Don't
allow these right-wing talking heads, these dishonorable people to
intimidate you or scare you. Be who you are, do what you do."
Democratic Congresswoman Maxine Waters delivered an epic smackdown of
Fox News and Bill O’Reilly on Tuesday night, following O’Reilly’s
racist attack against the representative on Tuesday’s edition of Fox & Friends.
The controversy started this morning when O’Reilly was asked to
respond to a clip of Waters speaking on the floor of the House of
Representatives, and he said this: “I didn’t hear a word she said. I was
looking at the James Brown wig.”
While O’Reilly faced bipartisan outrage after making the comments and
eventually was forced to apologize, Waters seemed unfazed when she
appeared on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes and issued a brutal takedown of O’Reilly and Fox News as a whole.
Video:
Waters said to women everywhere:
Don’t allow these right-wing talking heads, these dishonorable
people to intimidate you or scare you. Be who you are, do what you do.
And let us get on with discussing the real issues of this country. Bill
O’Reilly and Roger Ailes have no credibility. They have been sued by
women. They have had to pay millions out in fines for harassment and
other kinds of things, and so we know about that checkered past.
After that epic takedown of Fox, Waters showed that she had no
intention of dwelling on it and said, “I’m not going to be put down, I’m
not going to go anywhere – I’m going to stay on the issues.”
Waters said it’s more important to get to the bottom of Trump’s ties to Russia.
“We have a president of the United States who’s wrapped his arms
around Putin and Russia and the Kremlin, and I believe that if we do
credible investigations…that they will find that there was collusion,”
she said.
The Democratic congresswoman went to lay out some of the ways the
president is already damaging the United States’ reputation around the
world and hurting the American people.
“This president has come into this office, he’s disrespected our
allies across the world. He has tried to dismantle comprehensive health
care for everybody under Obamacare. This is a president who won’t even
show his taxes,” she said.
The attacks on her, Waters concluded, are used by the president and his supporters to distract from the real issues.
“When you talk about them, when you pin them down, when you’re able
to unveil all that they’re doing, they’ll try to shut you down. I am not
going anywhere. I’m going to stay on message,” Waters said. “I’m going
to fight for the people of this country. I’m going to fight for
comprehensive health care. And I don’t care what Bill O’Reilly or Ailes
or Trump or any of them, we have a responsibility as elected officials
to do good public policy in the best interest of all the people.”
Instead of stooping to the level of those waging racist attacks
against her, Waters handled the controversy with grace and urged the
media and the American people to stay focused on the issues.
As former First Lady Michelle Obama famously said, “When they go low, we go high.”
In the face of despicable attacks on Tuesday, Maxine Waters went high.
Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, could not have been clearer in his questioning of FBI director James Comey last week.
NUNES:
Director Comey, I remain extremely concerned about the widespread
illegal leaks that you just referenced in your — in your testimony. Just
for the record though, I wanna get this on the record.
Does the
unauthorized disclosure of classified information to the press violate
18 USC 793, a section of the Espionage Act that criminalizes improperly
accessing handling or transmitting national defense information?
COMEY: Yes
NUNES:
Would an unauthorized disclosure of FISA-derived information to the
press violate 18 USC 798, a section of the Espionage Act that
criminalizes the disclosure of information concerning the communication
and intelligence activities of the United States?
COMEY: Yes, in addition to being a breach of our trust with the FISA Court that oversees our use of those authorities.
NUNES: Thank you, Director
The next day, Nunes made an unannounced late-night visit to the White House and spoke with unidentified official (but possibly a former Nunes staffer) about FISA-derived information. Nunes then spoke to reporters and
said that he had “confirmed that on numerous occasions, the
intelligence community incidentally collected information about U.S.
citizens involved in the Trump transition.
Nunes explained:
"Details
about U.S. persons associated with the incoming administration, details
with little or no apparent foreign intelligence value, were widely
disseminated in intelligence community reporting.”
Trump
proceeded to claim vindication for his baseless claim that President
Obama wiretapped Trump Tower. Nunes’ statement most definitely did not
confirm Trump’s claim, but that was hardly the biggest problem with
Nunes' charge.
The Washington Postnoted that, "Nunes’s statements
appear to center on surveillance approved by the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Court, a secretive panel that authorizes the interception
of communications of known or suspected agents of foreign powers — such
as ambassadors — or terrorism suspects."
In other words, if Nunes
wasn’t making up the whole story, he made an unauthorized disclosure of
FISA-derived classified information in violation of the Espionage
Act—exactly what he criticized others for doing.
Nunes’
folly epitomizes the ongoing collapse of the Trump administration’s
efforts to defend itself from the ongoing FBI investigation of possible
collusion between Trump’s entourage and Russian government officials
during the 2016 presidential campaign.
After Nunes sabotaged the
strategy of House Republican to investigate the leaks, not the
accumulating evidence, Trump was reduced to demanding that Congress
investigate Hillary Clinton’s ties to a Russian uranium deal, which are
not the subject of an FBI investigation.
That didn’t work either. When former Acting Attorney General Sally Yates indicated her desire to testify on Tuesday to the Intelligence Committee about
how former NSC adviser Michael Flynn dissembled on his pre-inauguration
meetings with Russian officials, Nunes abruptly canceled the previously
scheduled hearing.
Nunes has disqualified himself as the leader
of the Intelligence Committee’s investigation, said ranking minority
member Rep. Adam Schiff. On Monday night, he called on Nunes to “recuse himself from any further involvement in the Russia investigation” and all “oversight matters pertaining to any incidental collection of the Trump transition."
Nunes
dismissed Schiff’s call and House Speaker Paul Ryan said Nunes would
continue as chairman, though its hard to see why the Republicans would
want him to.
Nunes implicated himself in a possible violation of
the law, destroyed the Republican’s preferred line of defense, and
implicitly admitted that the administration has no rebuttal to Yates
testimony.
As Colin Kahl, former national security adviser to Vice
President Joe Biden, said on Twitter on Monday “There are a lot of
things we still don’t know about Trump-Russia ties. But there are
actually a lot of things we DO know.”
Kahl listed 36 points of fact, none of which Nunes seems prepared to respond to, much less rebut.
In the understatement of the week, thePost’sAaron Blake said “Nunes isn’t very good at this.”
Last week’s health-care fiasco could end up
being a positive experience for President Trump if he learns a few
obvious lessons. Spoiler alert: He won’t.
The first thing that
should dawn on Trump is that the warring Republican factions in Congress
have multiple agendas, none of which remotely resembles his own. This
is why the bill that House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) was forced to withdraw on Friday — the abominable American Health Care Act — made such a cruel mockery of Trump’s expansive campaign promises.
A “populist” president who promised health insurance “for everybody” ended up supporting legislation that would have taken away coverage from 24 million
people. Many, if not most, of the victims would have been working-class
voters — the “forgotten Americans” Trump claimed to champion. Now that
he has time, maybe he will actually read the bill (or have someone
summarize it for him) and realize how truly awful it was.
You
don’t have to be a policy wonk to recognize that replacing income-based
subsidies with less generous across-the-board tax credits would mean a
net transfer of resources from poorer people to wealthier people. That’s
just fine with Ryan and the “mainstream” House Republicans who hung in
there with legislation that Ronald Reagan or even Barry Goldwater would
have considered extreme.
For members of the Freedom Caucus,
however, the bill didn’t go nearly far enough. They wanted to strip
away the requirement that health insurance policies cover eventualities
such as maternity, hospitalization, emergency care, mental illness —
basically, all the reasons anyone would need insurance in the first
place. These ultra-radicals believe health care is like any other
product and the free market should be allowed to work its magic. To
them, it’s irrelevant that the question is not who buys the latest
flat-screen television and who doesn’t, but who lives and who dies.
As Trump lobbied House Republicans to support the AHCA, according to The Post,
he kept asking aides, “Is this really a good bill?” They assured him it
was, but on some level, he must have known the truth was an emphatic
no. What happened to those fabled Trumpian instincts?
The
president let himself be convinced by Ryan that health care would be an
easy win. That should make him wary of going down another garden path
with a speaker who can’t even marshal his own chamber, let alone produce
important legislation with a chance of making it through the Senate.
Yet Trump seems ready to make the same mistake with tax reform.
Note to the president: If Ryan is saying “trust me on this one,” don’t.
The
same dynamic is shaping up. House Republicans will all agree on tax
cuts, just as they all agreed that the Affordable Care Act should be
repealed. The Freedom Caucus, which can only be emboldened by its recent
triumph, will make extreme demands. Ryan will accommodate many of them.
The end result will be legislation that is more about ideology than
policy. The wealthy will benefit enormously, the middle class hardly at
all, and the working class will suffer.
Such a bill could never
win 60 votes in the Senate. Only more modest changes that don’t balloon
the deficit qualify for the “reconciliation” process under which
Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) can pass legislation by simple
majority — and if just three Republicans balk, even such a limited bill
would fail.
Trump should wonder why someone on his staff isn’t
explaining all of this to him and trying to come up with an appropriate
strategy. Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and budget director Mick
Mulvaney were supposed to know how to get things done in Washington.
White House chief strategist Stephen K. Bannon reportedly tried to bully
Freedom Caucus members, who instead seem to have stiffened their
resolve. Advisers Jared Kushner and his wife, Trump’s daughter Ivanka,
went skiing.
Meanwhile, Trump’s approval, as measured by Gallup,
stood Monday at 36 percent — a stunning new low. The financial markets
seem a bit shaky as investors worry about the administration’s
competence. If this were a business, the chief executive would be
reading up on Chapter 11.
During the campaign, Trump
was nothing if not headstrong. Yet in office he has let others lead —
and is getting nowhere. He could still change course. He could get rid
of the sycophantic aides who spend so much time blaming each other. He
could focus on parts of his agenda, such as infrastructure, that have
popular support, including among Democrats.
But that would mean acknowledging his mistakes thus far. Don’t hold your breath.
A Monday night Don Lemon panel got heated over the continued
questions over whether or not Russia tampered with the US 2016
presidential election.
Republican Betsy McCaughey started by saying it is “shameful”
that the Democratic party is attempting “to taint, to smear Devin
Nunes … who has done something very import for this country, not just
for the Trump administration or the Republican party,” in his push to
apparently unmask the Washington establishment’s efforts to “undermine
the effectiveness of the Trump administration.”
Lemon asked her, “You have no problem with him going to the White House first ahead of his committee?”
CNN Political Commentator, Alice Stewart pointed out that in his
position, Nunes’ role “first and foremost is to notify your colleagues
in your committee, Democrats and Republicans.” Lemon clarified this is
“because the evidence doesn’t change no matter who you take it to.”
Ana Navarro noted that Nunes “actually apologized to his colleagues
in the committee for having sidestepped them and gone instead to
President Trump. Perception matters with this, and it matters because
we’re talking about something that is the pillar of our democracy.”
She argued, “if I were a Trump supporter — which clearly I’m not,
America, as you well know — I would want an investigation above the
board in every aspect so they can finally get this monkey off their
back.
Navarro explained that it’s time for Republicans to question
whether Nunes’ is able to conduct “a full and fair investigation because
Americans watching this are going to wonder if Republicans, who are in
charge, are capable of doing this and if they’re not, they’re going to
take it out in the ballot box.”
She added that Americans might not
necessarily take it out on Nunes, “but certainly against some
Republicans in very marginal, tight district races.”
She later went head to head with McCaughey, who claimed that foreign
governments attempting to influence US public opinion in an election is
nothing new, and that there’s a distinction between “tampering with an
election” and “interfering with public opinion.”
The latter is fine, according to McCaughey and somehow is different
than tampering with the results.
She argued that releasing the emails of
the Clinton campaign was not tampering with the election results
because it wasn’t messing directly with ballot boxes.
Lemon cut in, “How does that have nothing to do with tampering with the election?”
Donald, you said you could shake up Washington and make it work again. Instead, you’re the one who got worked over.Credit
Al Drago/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — Dear Donald,
We’ve known each other a long time, so I think I can be blunt.
You know how you said at campaign rallies that you did not like being identified as a politician?
Don’t worry. No one will ever mistake you for a politician.
After this past week, they won’t even mistake you for a top-notch negotiator.
I
was born here. The first image in my memory bank is the Capitol, all
lit up at night. And my primary observation about Washington is this:
Unless you’re careful, you end up turning into what you started out
scorning.
And you, Donald, are getting a reputation as a sucker. And worse, a sucker who is a tool of the D.C. establishment.
Your
whole campaign was mocking your rivals and the D.C. elite, jawing about
how Americans had turned into losers, with our bad deals and open
borders and the Obamacare “disaster.”
And you were going to fly in on your gilded plane and fix all that in a snap.
You
mused that a good role model would be Ronald Reagan. As you saw it,
Reagan was a big, good-looking guy with a famous pompadour; he had also
been a Democrat and an entertainer. But Reagan had one key quality that
you don’t have: He knew what he didn’t know.
You
both resembled Macy’s Thanksgiving Day balloons, floating above the
nitty-gritty and focusing on a few big thoughts. But President Reagan
was confident enough to accept that he needed experts below, deftly
maneuvering the strings.
You’re
just careering around on your own, crashing into buildings and losing
altitude, growling at the cameras and spewing nasty conspiracy theories,
instead of offering a sunny smile, bipartisanship, optimism and
professionalism.
You
promised to get the best people around you in the White House, the best
of the best. In fact, “best” is one of your favorite words.
Instead,
you dragged that motley skeleton crew into the White House and let them
create a feuding, leaking, belligerent, conspiratorial, sycophantic
atmosphere. Instead of a smooth, classy operator like James Baker, you
have a Manichean anarchist in Steve Bannon.
You
knew the Republicans were full of hot air. They haven’t had to pass
anything in a long time, and they have no aptitude for governing. To
paraphrase an old Barney Frank line, asking the Republicans to govern is
like asking Frank to judge the Miss America contest — “If your heart’s
not in it, you don’t do a very good job.”
You
knew that Paul Ryan’s vaunted reputation as a policy wonk was fake
news. Republicans have been running on repealing and replacing Obamacare
for years and they never even bothered to come up with a valid
alternative.
And
neither did you, despite all your promises to replace Obamacare with
“something terrific” because you wanted everyone to be covered.
Instead,
you sold the D.O.A. bill the Irish undertaker gave you as though it
were a luxury condo, ignoring the fact that it was a cruel flimflam, a
huge tax cut for the rich disguised as a health care bill.
You were so
concerned with the “win” that you forgot your “forgotten” Americans, the
older, poorer people in rural areas who would be hurt by the bill.
As
The Times’s chief Washington correspondent Carl Hulse put it, the
G.O.P. falls into clover with a lock on the White House and both houses
of Congress, and what’s the first thing it does? Slip on a banana peel.
Incompetence Inc.
“They
tried to sweeten the deal at the end by offering a more expensive bill
with fewer health benefits, but alas, it wasn’t enough!” former Obama
speechwriter Jon Favreau slyly tweeted.
Despite
the best efforts of Bannon to act as though the whole fiasco was a
clever way to bury Ryan — a man he disdains as “the embodiment of the
‘globalist-corporatist’ Republican elite,” as Gabriel Sherman put it in New York magazine — it won’t work.
And
you can jump on the phone with The Times’s Maggie Haberman and The
Washington Post’s Robert Costa — ignoring that you’ve labeled them the
“fake media” — and act like you’re in control.
You can say that people
should have waited for “Phase 2” and “Phase 3” — whatever they would
have been — and that Obamacare is going to explode and that the
Democrats are going to get the blame. But it doesn’t work that way. You
own it now.
You’re all about flashy marketing so you didn’t notice that the bill was junk, so lame that even Republicans skittered away.
You
were humiliated right out of the chute by the establishment guys who
hooked you into their agenda — a massive transfer of wealth to rich
people — and drew you away from your own.
You
sold yourself as the businessman who could shake things up and make
Washington work again.
Instead, you got worked over by the Republican
leadership and the business community, who set you up to do their
bidding.
That’s why they’re putting up with all your craziness about Russia and wiretapping and unending lies and rattling our allies.
They’re
counting on you being a delusional dupe who didn’t even know what was
in the bill because you’re sitting around in a bathrobe getting your
information from wackadoodles on Fox News and then, as The Post
reported, peppering aides with the query, “Is this really a good bill?”
You got played.
It took W. years to smash everything. You’re way ahead of schedule.
And I can say you’re doing badly, because I’m a columnist, and you’re not. Say hello to everybody, O.K.?
A version of this op-ed appears in print on March 26, 2017, on Page SR9 of the New York edition with the headline: Donald, This I Will Tell You. Today's Paper|Subscribe
On November 4, Erik Prince used Breitbart to spread disinformation domestically. Mr. Trump rewarded him for it.
Information presently public and available confirms that Erik Prince, Rudy Giuliani, and Donald Trump conspired to intimidate FBI Director James Comey into interfering in, and thus directly affecting, the 2016 presidential election. This conspiracy was made possible with the assistance of officers in the New York Police Department and agents within the New York field office of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. All of the major actors in the conspiracy have already confessed to its particulars either in word or in deed; moreover, all of the major actors have publicly exhibited consciousness of guilt after the fact. This assessment has already been the subject of articles in news outlets on both sides of the political spectrum, but has not yet received substantial investigation by major media.
While a full summary of the Prince-Giuliani-Trump conspiracy would require a longer discourse, the actions of these men, along with multiple still-anonymous actors, can be summarized in five paragraphs. It will be for journalists with more resources than this writer to follow up on these leads—and, moreover, to see how this domestic conspiracy dovetails with the Trump-Russia controversy, though this too is briefly addressed below.
In addition to the paragraphs here, this article incorporates its three predecessors (I, II, III).
1. As reported by the New York Times, FBI Director James Comey released his now-infamous October 27th letter in substantial part because he had determined that “word of the new emails [found on Anthony Weiner’s computer]...was sure to leak out.” Comey worried that if the leak occurred at a time when the nature and evidentiary value of the “new” emails was unknown, he “risked being accused of misleading Congress and the public ahead of an election.” By October 27th, the FBI had had access to Weiner’s computer—which it originally received from NYPD—since October 3rd, during which interval the Bureau had both the time and IT know-how to determine that the “new” emails in its possession were in fact duplicate emails from accounts already revealed to the Bureau by Clinton, her aide Huma Abedin, and the State Department. However, when Comey was briefed on the case by agents from the New York field office on October 26th, he discovered that not only had this IT work not been done, but in fact no warrant to seize the full emails had been sought, no permission to read the emails had been requested from cooperating witnesses Weiner and Abedin, and indeed nothing but a summary of the emails’ “meta-data” (non-content header information) had been prepared by his agents. The result of this investigative nonfeasance was that Comey feared he would not be able to get a warrant for the emails and confirm them as duplicates prior to Election Day—a fact that would allow anti-Clinton elements within NYPD and the FBI, and Trump surrogates and advisers with sources in these organizations, to mischaracterize the “new” emails in a way that would swing the election to Trump. As long as the Clinton investigation remained open, Comey would not be able to respond to such misinformation; his only hope of keeping public discussion of the “new” emails within the sphere of reality was to use the cover of a prior promise to Congress to speak publicly about an ongoing investigation—and then close that investigation in short order.
2. The effort to intimidate Comey into publicly commenting on the Clinton case—a win-win scenario for Trump, as either a comment from Comey or silence from Comey (the latter coupled with inaccurate, Hatch Act-violative leaks by the FBI, NYPD, and/or the Trump campaign) would sink Clinton—began concurrent to Comey’s October 26th briefing on the Clinton case. In an October 25th Fox & Friendsappearance and an October 26th appearance on Fox News with Martha McCallum, Rudy Giuliani, one of Trump’s closest advisers, began teasing an October “surprise” which, Giuliani said, would turn the tide against Hillary Clinton. He refused to say what the forthcoming surprise would be, but he indicated that it would be coming in just a few days. Meanwhile, Erik Prince—the founder of Blackwater private security, one of Trump’s biggest donors, a conspiracy theorist who’d previously accused Huma Abedin of being a terrorist in the employ of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a man who blamed Clinton family friend and former Clinton Chief of Staff Leon Panetta for outing him as a CIA asset in 2009—was positioning himself to play an important role. Just as Giuliani had boasted on the Mark Larson radio program on October 28th that he had sources within the FBI—active agents—who had told him of virulent anti-Clinton sentiment in the New York field office and an internal rebellion against Comey’s July decision not to indict Clinton, Prince claimed to have sources within the Weiner investigation who were illegally leaking information to him. In Prince’s case, the sources were within NYPD, and the information he relayed from them to Breitbart News on November 4th—when it was not yet known that Comey, the next day, would reveal the “new” Clinton emails to be duplicates—turned out to be almost entirely false. The full extent of Prince’s lies on November 4th, all of which were Trump campaign disinformation delivered by an adviser and major donor to the campaign, are too numerous and spectacular to list here. Two brief quotes from Breitbart’s interview with Prince should suffice:
Prince
claimed he had insider knowledge of the investigation that could help
explain why FBI Director James Comey had to announce he was reopening
the investigation into Clinton’s email server last week....”[NYPD] found
a lot of other really damning criminal information [on Weiner’s
computer], including money laundering, including the fact that Hillary
went to this sex island with convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Bill
Clinton went there more than twenty times. Hillary Clinton went there at
least six times,” he said. “The amount of garbage that they found in
these emails, of criminal activity by Hillary, by her immediate circle,
and even by other Democratic members of Congress, was so disgusting they
gave it to the FBI, and they said, ‘We’re going to go public with this
if you don’t reopen the investigation and you don’t do the right thing
with timely indictments,’” Prince explained. “I believe—I know, and this
is from a very well-placed source of mine at One Police Plaza in New
York—the NYPD wanted to do a press conference announcing the warrants
and the additional arrests they were making in this investigation, and
they’ve gotten huge pushback, to the point of coercion, from the Justice
Department.”
Virtually all of this is untrue. Prince continued:
“So
NYPD first gets that computer. They see how disgusting it is. They keep
a copy of everything, and they pass a copy on to the FBI, which finally
pushes the FBI off their chairs, making Comey reopen that
investigation, which was indicated in the letter last week. The point
being, NYPD has all the information, and they will pursue justice within
their rights if the FBI doesn’t. There is all kinds of criminal
culpability through all the emails they’ve seen of that 650,000,
including money laundering, underage sex, pay-for-play, and, of course,
plenty of proof of inappropriate handling, sending/receiving of
classified information, up to Special Access Programs....The point
being, fortunately, it’s not just the FBI; five different offices are in
the hunt for justice, but the NYPD has it as well....From what I
understand, up to the commissioner or at least the chief level in NYPD,
they wanted to have a press conference, and DOJ, Washington people,
political appointees have been exerting all kinds of undue pressure on
them to back down....This kind of evil, this kind of true dirt on
Hillary Clinton—look, you don’t have to make any judgments. Just release
the emails. Just dump them. Let them out there. Let people see the
light of truth.”
Prince’s statements of November 4th—whether given with the knowledge that they were untrue or without any knowledge of their accuracy whatsoever—underscore the sort of disinformation Comey feared would be given to voters, and, more importantly, believed by voters, if he did not complete his investigation into the duplicate emails and announce his findings before Election Day. This alone explains his deviation from FBI protocol prohibiting discussion of open cases (and announcements regarding major investigations within two months of a general election).
3. It seems clear that Giuliani, who was the top surrogate for the Trump campaign and in near-daily contact with the candidate, acted under orders from Trump, and that Prince either acted under orders from Trump or Steve Bannon—well-known to Prince from their mutual association with, and financial investment in, Breitbart and its ownership, including Robert Mercer—and, moreover, that all those associated with the conspiracy were subsequently rewarded. Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy DeVos, was named Education Secretary by Trump, despite having no experience for the job other than advocating sporadically for charter schools in Michigan. Prince himself was named a shadow adviser to Trump, even though, by November 8th, the fact that his statements to Breitbart had been part of a domestic disinformation campaign was clear. Prince is so close to Trump that he appears to have been present at the election-night returns-watching party to which Trump invited only close friends and associates; Prince’s wife posted pictures of the event. Giuliani, originally assured a Cabinet position and then separated from the Trump team entirely—perhaps as punishment for his carelessness on Fox News—was then given a highly lucrative but substance-free position within the administration on the same day, January 12th, that the DOJ announced that the Inspector General would be investigating the sequence of events comprising the Prince-Giuliani-Trump conspiracy. Inspector General Horowitz noted that within his brief was investigation of the series of leaks that occurred between the NYPD, the FBI, and outside entities—including, we can surmise based on context, the Trump campaign.
4. Both polling, poll analysis, and internet meta-data (see below) confirm that the Comey Letter was sufficient to hand Trump the 77,143 combined votes in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania that won him the election. We know from the statements made by Giuliani, and from numerous statements made by Trump on the campaign trail, that both men believed the Clinton email server case could be leveraged to ensure Clinton’s defeat in November. It turns out they were correct.
5. By the time Christopher Steele, the former head of MI6’s Russia desk, disseminated his research into Donald Trump’s ties with Russia to American journalists and the American intelligence community—something he did, tellingly, when he was no longer being paid for the work—he had come to believe, perThe Independent, that “there was a cover-up, that a cabal within the Bureau blocked a thorough inquiry into Mr. Trump, focusing instead on the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s emails.” Evidence substantiating this concern is legion: that the FBI had Steele’s memos as early as mid-summer of 2016, after the Clinton investigation was closed, but appeared to do no work on the case (which involved alleged treasonous conduct by the Republican nominee in collusion with a hostile foreign actor) between that time and Election Day; that FBI Director Comey was intimidated into revealing the status of the Clinton case on October 27th but would not, even in the face of numerous allegations of federal crimes against the president-elect, reveal anything about the Bureau’s investigation into that matter; or that the Clinton and Weiner investigators at NYPD and the FBI appear to have leaked repeatedly to the Trump campaign, yet there have been no leaks whatsoever regarding the FBI and CIA’s ongoing investigation into Trump’s ties with Russia. It is thus clear that better understanding the scope, purpose, and players of the domestic conspiracy to elect Donald Trump will also shed light on how the FBI and CIA managed to conduct little or no investigation of criminal allegations exponentially more serious than any of those leveled against Hillary Clinton.
Seth Abramson is an assistant professor at University of New Hampshire, a former public defender, and the author of six books, most recently Golden Age (BlazeVOX, 2017).
Democratic U.S. Rep. Mark Pocan (WI) told LGBTQ activist and Sirius
XM radio host Michelangelo Signorile that he has seen “damning evidence”
that shows collusion between Pres. Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the
Russian government in an effort to turn the election in Trump’s favor.
“There are things that I know,” Pocan said, according to Towleroad.com,
“just that I’ve read in classified reports that I’m sure will still
come out that will continue to be damning evidence when it comes to this
relationship between the Russians trying to influence our elections and
ultimately I think the Trump campaign’s potential coordination on it.”
Some of it is in the classified version of the report,” he said, “and some of that hasn’t come out yet.”
We’re almost hearing a chorus at this point, as Pocan’s words echo
recent statements from both Rep. Adam Schiff and Clinton Press Secretary
Brian Fallon.
It’s time to release the evidence to the public. Every hour that
Trump remains President is a grave threat to our national security and
to the planet.
republicans control the white house and both houses of congress.
they essentially campaigned on repeal of obamacare for eight solid
years and claimed their victory was a mandate to do just that.
obamacare includes some taxes (on high earners), so repeal by definition includes a tax cut.
and they're in a new president's first 100 days, historically the ideal time for passing new legislation.
... and they couldn't even get it though the house, where democrats
have effectively zero power, not even the filibuster power we have in
the senate.
this is truly an impressively epic demonstration of incompetence,
not only on donnie's part, but also on ryan and mcconnel and the entire
republican (non-)leadership.
The Republican National Committee (RNC) tried to conceal payments it
made during the 2016 election to a shadowy intelligence-gathering firm
for opposition research against Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.
Politico reported on Friday
that the RNC paid $41,500 to the Hamilton Trading Group, a
Virginia-based private company run by former CIA operatives. The agency
worked with a former Russian spy to hunt for information that would show
conflicts of interest between Clinton’s role as Secretary of State and
her interests as a private citizen and leader of the Clinton Foundation.
Observers in politics and intelligence noted that it would be odd for
the RNC to make payments to Hamilton Trading given that the group
specializes in matters pertaining to Russia.
“RNC officials and the president and co-founder of Hamilton Trading
Group, an ex-CIA officer named Ben Wickham, insisted the payments, which
eventually totaled $41,500, had nothing to do with Russia,” wrote
Politico’s Kenneth P. Vogel and Eli Stokols.
Wickham and the RNC initially claimed that the payments were in
return for building and security analyses of RNC headquarters in
Washington.
“But RNC officials now acknowledge that most of the cash — $34,100 — went towards intelligence-style reports
that sought to prove conflicts of interest between Democratic
presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State
and her family’s foundation,” Politico said.
HTG produced two dossiers, both of which attempted to make a case
that Clinton directed U.S. interventions in Bulgaria and Israel on
behalf of energy firms that donated to the Clinton Foundation, said
individuals familiar with the documents.
Wickham told Politico in a Thursday interview that he floated the
building inspection story because “any other work we may have done for
them” was covered under a nondisclosure agreement.
“I’m not denying that I wasn’t totally forthcoming, but I’m telling
you why,” Wickham told Politico.
“The security stuff that we did, which
is legitimate, was not covered by any kind of a confidentiality
agreement, so I can discuss that.”
Last June, when the RNC filed financial disclosures with the Federal
Elections Commission (FEC), a $3,400 payment to Hamilton attracted
attention because the firm is not known for building security
consultations, but rather for espionage work related to Russia.
“Adding to the intrigue are the firm’s intelligence connections in Russia, where it was known to perform background checks and provide security services for American officials and companies,” said Politico.
The job was handed to former KGB agent Gennady Vasilenko, who declined to comment on the matter.
Wickham denied that his firm looked into any connections
between the Trump campaign and the Russian government, saying he has
“never had any contact with … Trump or Manafort or their people.”
Politico said the RNC has produced documents detailing a list of
Clinton-related issues it tasked Hamilton Trading with researching.
“We certainly are not widely known, as we have always been a two- to
three-man company and have done little advertising,” Wickham said,
adding that the firm has done anti-terror security consultations for
Amtrak and the International Monetary Fund’s offices in Moscow.
