BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER,
& CROOKED MEDIA

Monday, July 2nd, 2018

—Alan Dershowitz, who is unhappy that people on Martha's Vineyard aren't being nice to him because he has defended Trump

JUSTICE IS BLINDLY LOYAL

President Trump has interviewed four potential Supreme Court justices and will interview more this week, ahead of a formal nomination early this month.

His two leading candidates are reportedly Brett Kavanaugh, a 53-year-old judge on the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, and Amy Barrett, a 46-year-old judge whom Trump appointed to the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last year.

Both are on Trump’s list of 25 judges the conservative Federalist Society and Heritage Foundation pre-approved during the election. In other words, they are considered safe bets by people who want to overturn Roe v. Wade, pare back voting rights, and eliminate environmental and economic regulations.

Barrett is relatively inexperienced, but some conservatives believe that—because a handful of Democrats already voted to confirm her to a lower court, and because she is a woman—her confirmation fight would be easier on Republicans, even though she is anti-choice. On the other hand, her positions on both Roe v. Wade and the Affordable Care Act are unusually clear for a potential Supreme Court nominee, which would make her a political liability for vulnerable Republicans.

Kavanaugh has a more typical profile for a GOP SCOTUS nominee in some ways, but is controversial in others. He rose to prominence as a Republican operative, and Democrats were broadly opposed to confirming him to the circuit court when President George W. Bush nominated him. He was a principal author of The Starr Report who reportedly once called Hillary Clinton a “bitch.” He’s also argued that presidents should be exempt from criminal and civil complaints. Trump must hate that!

Whether any of these pre-approved judges can be confirmed to the Supreme Court will likely turn on whether Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can unify Republicans. For the time being, the Senate’s only pro-choice Republicans are being pretty cagey. Over the weekend, Sen. Susan Collins (R-ME) said she would oppose nominees who were openly hostile to Roe v. Wade, but also suggested that as long as Trump nominates someone who hasn’t created an anti-Roe paper trail, she will vote to confirm. For instance, on CNN, she claimed to believe Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Neil Gorsuch both believe Roe is “settled law,” which means she is either fooling herself, or trying to fool the rest of us. Either way, this is gearing up to be a huge political fight with Collins at the center of it.

IT'S COHEN DOWN

President Trump’s former lawyer/fixer Michael Cohen says that in determining whether he will cooperate with federal prosecutors, he will prioritize his wife, children, and country over all other considerations, including (perhaps?) his loyalty to Trump. All that’s left for him to do is hire a skywriter to spell out “PARDON MC?” over Mar-a-Lago. (Spelling out the name costs more.)

Cohen also revealed to ABC that his new lawyer will soon terminate his joint defense agreement with Trump’s attorneys, suggesting their interests as subjects of criminal investigations no longer align—i.e. that Cohen might soon flip on the bossman.

He reluctantly declined to say whether Trump directed a $130,000 hush money payment to Stormy Daniels, or knew of a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower between his son Donald Trump, Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and multiple Russian agents promising dirt on Hillary Clinton, which could be a signal to prosecutors that he has special knowledge on both issues.

Cohen might also be sending a signal to Trump: Pardon me now, or I’m going to crack. After all, if he wanted to cooperate with prosecutors, he could communicate that to them directly. But Cohen has exposure for violations of New York state laws, which a presidential pardon wouldn’t cover. That’s why it looks more like he’s laying groundwork to tell prosecutors what he knows.

Leaked Trump administration draft legislation calls for America to abandon World Trade Organization rules, and would give President Trump extraordinary and unilateral power to set tariffs on a country-by-country basis. That would make it a nonstarter in Congress, but it’s also called the “United States Fair and Reciprocal Tariff Act” (the FART Act, if you will) so maybe just an unintended release, you know? Embarrassing.

Hundreds of thousands of people around the country joined Families Belong Together marches this weekend to protest the Trump administration’s family detention and separation policies at the border. Tomorrow’s Pod Save America episode features interviews with Ady Barkan, Sen. Kamala Harris (D-CA), Mayor Eric Garcetti (D), and more from the Los Angeles March.

The Department of Health and Human Services is refusing to provide updated statistics on the number of separated children that have been reunited with their families, in case you were wondering why those marches were needed.

Disgraced RNC Finance Chair Elliott Broidy has stopped making payments to his former mistress pursuant to a hush-money agreement Michael Cohen orchestrated, and Michael Avenatti, whose client, Stormy Daniels, got $130,000 in hush money from Donald Trump, is encouraging the mistress to break her silence.

In the fall, the Supreme Court will hear a case about whether the double jeopardy clause of the Fifth Amendment allows states and the federal government to try the same person separately for the same offenses. “If the court overrules its prior precedent, it could make it more difficult for a state to try someone who has been pardoned by the federal government if trial proceedings had already begun for the federal offense," said University of Texas Law School professor Stephen Vladeck. Michael Cohen, set your Google alert now.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt avoids emailing in order to avoid creating a “paper trail,” but he does send fawning snail mail to—you guessed it—executives in the oil and gas industries. Meanwhile, a former top aide to Pruitt told investigators that Pruitt asked her to get his wife a job that paid over $200,000 at the Republican Attorney Generals Association. She responded that it would be unethical. HOW IS HE STILL THERE? HOW HOW HOW. (Sorry. Just hit us again.)

This weekend, a man pulled a gun on people protesting against Trump’s “zero tolerance” policy in Huntsville, AL, while yelling “womp, womp” over prayers being delivered to the crowd.

LeBron James scored a four-year, $153.3 million contract with the Los Angeles Lakers, and GOP Congressman Devin Nunes found a new way to roll out the welcome mat…

Maine Governor Paul LePage says he will veto funding for the state’s voter-approved expansion of Medicaid. Overturning the veto would require a two-thirds vote in each chamber of the state’s legislature, and Republicans in the Maine state House have committed to standing with LePage to block the expansion.

Meanwhile, in Kentucky, Republican Governor Matt Bevin is canceling Medicaid’s dental and vision benefits for nearly 500,000 people across the state after a judge blocked his administration from imposing work requirements on Medicaid recipients.

On Lovett or Leave It: Guy Branum, Taz Ahmed, and Adam Lustick join Jon to discuss Anthony Kennedy, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Marco Rubio’s tweets, and the hearty genes of Ashkenazi jurists. Plus, Lovett has a hot take on fireworks.

Listen →

“A way of monetizing poor people”: How private equity firms make money offering loans to cash-strapped Americans

Mariner Finance, a company owned by a private equity fund that former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner controls, mails checks to Americans in need of cash, who become trapped in loans with exorbitant fees and unaffordable interest rates if they cash the checks. This kind of predatory lending is why Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand’s (D-NY) proposed public option to bring basic banking functions to America’s post offices is so necessary.

Read →

On Sunday, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, known as AMLO—a leftist candidate who promised to end corruption, reduce violence, and address Mexico’s endemic poverty—won a landslide victory in the race to become Mexico’s next president. AMLO campaigned on a platform that emphasized the need for social change in Mexico, including increasing support for farmers, the elderly, and Mexico’s young people, by offering increased pension and educational grants. His election follows an incredibly violent campaign season in the country, resulting in the deaths of at least 136 politicians.

Twitter won’t shut up about this video of a woman who tried to hand-feed a shark, but got dragged into the water instead. What did you think was going to happen here, exactly, ma’am? A good rule of thumb is don’t feed sharks by hand while IN THE FUCKING WATER if you like having thumbs.

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