BY PRIYANKA ARIBINDI, BRIAN BEUTLER

& CROOKED MEDIA

Monday, December 3, 2018

—Michelle Obama on ‘leaning in’

BITTER TWEET SYMPHONY

The president is acting very legal and very cool again, and just in time for Special Counsel Robert Mueller to push more information about the Trump-Russia conspiracy out to the public.

In a series of panicky morning tweets (the best kind) Trump harassed his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, for cooperating with Mueller—going so far as to target Cohen’s wife and father-in-law. On the flip side, as in “don’t flip please, because of our many crimes,” Trump heaped praise on his long-time adviser Roger Stone for refusing to testify against him.

A number of prominent legal experts noted that by encouraging Stone to keep his mouth shut, Trump may have engaged in witness tampering—a federal crime. He also may have bolstered Mueller’s case that Trump has engaged in a broader conspiracy to obstruct justice—also a federal crime!

Trump’s obstructiony behavior bears striking resemblance to conduct that the House of Representatives was poised to impeach Richard Nixon for during Watergate before he resigned. (Obviously, Nixon didn’t have Twitter. Lucky for him… and anyone who lived and died before it was invented.)

Trump also said Cohen should serve a “full and complete sentence,” for “things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc.” But he continues to dangle a pardon for his former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, who has been convicted of and plead guilty to fraud and tax crimes, suggesting he thinks the law should only apply to his enemies—another impeachable violation of his oath of office.

The last time Trump lashed out over the Mueller investigation like this was... a week ago. (You remember last week, don’t you?) It was just before Mueller revealed that Manafort had violated his plea agreement by lying and committing other crimes, and that Cohen had pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about Trump’s business entanglements with the Kremlin.

One suspects that today’s outburst is based on similar visibility into the Mueller investigation. Tomorrow, Mueller will file a memo detailing his position on the sentencing of Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn. That report will likely reveal new information about Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller and his broader misconduct. And on Friday, Mueller will file a similar document with the court detailing as-yet uncharged crimes Manafort committed both while he was supposedly cooperating with the special counsel, and before.

We will soon find out what is in these reports. What we know today: Trump is acting as though the revelations will be very bad news for him.

Republicans in Wisconsin and Michigan plan to strip their states’ governors and other executive offices of official powers, including the power to protect voting rights and elections, because Democrats won those offices in last month’s midterms. They follow in the footsteps of North Carolina Republicans, who took the same anti-democratic steps after losing the governorship there in 2016. It is an outrage and a fundamentally illegitimate abuse of power, which is why protesters flooded the capital in Wisconsin chanting “respect our votes” and “shame.” If you’re from Wisconsin, call your legislators about this → 608-266-9660 or 1-800-362-9472.

President George H.W. Bush died on Friday at the age of 94. He will lie in state inside the Capitol Rotunda, and his funeral will be held on Wednesday at the National Cathedral. In the wake of his death, lawmakers are considering a one to two week spending bill to pause negotiations and delay a government shutdown fight until after the funeral. For more on Bush’s complicated legacy, read Charlie Pierce and Josh Marshall →

President Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping agreed over the weekend to a temporary trade-war truce. It’s Christmas Eve in the trade trenches.

Donald Trump has spent 23 percent of his presidency golfing (usually at one of his own properties), costing taxpayers an estimated $83 million. Hopefully this year we can get that percentage even higher.

CIA Director Gina Haspel will brief senators from multiple committees on the murder of Jamal Khashoggi this week. Haspel can attest to her agency’s confidence that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder, but Trump has been corruptly helping the Saudis cover up their involvement. Senators from both parties had requested a briefing from her last week, but the Trump administration declined the request and sent Defense Secretary James Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo instead.

Former FBI Director James Comey agreed to testify in a private House Judiciary Committee hearing later this week, on the conditions that the committee make a transcript of his testimony available afterwards, and that he is free to discuss the interview publicly after it’s over. Finally, we’ll find out what makes this guy tick.

Neil deGrasse Tyson has denied three separate allegations of sexual misconduct, including one of rape. Fox Broadcasting and National Geographic, which air the astrophysicist’s show “Cosmos,” have opened an investigation of all claims.

After TMZ posted a video of rising NFL star Kareem Hunt shoving and kicking a woman on Friday, the Kansas City Chiefs released him and he was placed on the commissioner’s exempt list. Hunt had previously lied to the Chiefs’ management about the incident.

Tumblr will ban all adult content (read: porn) from the platform starting December 17, and the rest of the internet is not happy about it.

Priyanka Chopra and Nick Jonas got married in Jodhpur, India over the weekend and the photos and videos (from Priyanka:) are unreal in the best way possible/(from Brian:) look expensive.

In North Carolina’s ninth Congressional district, a suspicious mail-in absentee ballot pattern has raised concerns of fraud and may even force the state to call a new election. Republican candidate Mark Harris leads Democrat Dan McCready by just 905 votes, but Harris managed to win 61 percent of the mail-in vote in Bladen County—an area where Republicans requested only 19 percent of absentee ballots.

In North Carolina, an absentee ballot requires signatures from the voter as well as two witnesses. The collected ballots repeatedly list eight people as witnesses, all of whom are tied to Leslie McCrae Dowless, a man who was once convicted of felony fraud for paying people to collect and tamper with absentee ballots. According to the election board in Bladen County, many ballots arrived in “clumps,” and were taken by canvassers while they were still unsealed. Sources in North Carolina (and anyone with eyeballs) suspect fraud.

• Violent protests in France continued for a third week, after 36,000 people gathered to demonstrate as part of the “yellow vest” movement, leaving 92 people injured, and the Champs Élysées, the city’s most famous boulevard, in turmoil. The movement began in response to gas price increases, but has become a broader demonstration against the French government.

• Under President Trump, the cuts to aid the U.S. sends to Gaza have been so drastic and cruel that even the Israeli military privately urged the U.S. against it.

• Qatar will withdraw from OPEC, an organization of 14 nations that produce an estimated 44 percent of the global oil supply, to focus instead on natural gas after months of tensions with Saudi Arabia, which dominates the group.

Raccoons are straight up nuts.

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