You Will Anyway: Leaky, Leaky

Thursday, July 13, 2017

Leaky, Leaky

[Trump's] lawyers, people familiar with the internal discussions say, are reminding White House aides and the president that the stakes are higher now that a special counsel and Congress are scrutinizing their every move, that small indiscretions could turn into bigger issues, and that they have to follow rules they don't like.

[...]

They have tried to block Trump's warring band of aides from joining meetings with his lawyers, warning that they could become witnesses or be forced to hire lawyers if they attend.

[...]

Trump wants many people in the room for meetings and will sometimes ask lawyers for advice about people they do not represent, two West Wing aides said. At the same time, most West Wing aides don't have lawyers yet and have sometimes asked lawyers not representing them for guidance.

[...]

The lawyers -- particularly Kasowitz -- have been taken aback by the infighting in the West Wing, people familiar with their thinking say. And they have been frustrated that they often learn about big developments just before they happen, as they did on Saturday with the New York Times story on Trump Jr.'s meeting with a person he believed to be a Russian government attorney.

Trump's lawyers had no idea the story was posting until that afternoon — and learned of the president’s role in crafting Donald Jr.’s first statement on Air Force One only after a subsequent piece was published on Tuesday posted.

[...]

What has frustrated Kasowitz and the team, people familiar with the matter say, is Trump's family always being there and giving their own advice.

[...]

Being on Trump’s legal team has been a thankless job because the president assumes his lawyers can automatically make problems go away. The frustration that Trump is now expressing toward Kasowitz is quite similar to his ongoing irritations with the White House’s top attorney, Don McGahn. For the past several months, Trump has been irritated that McGahn could not make the investigations into the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia disappear.

Politico

Trump obviously doesn't understand the difference between a federal investigation by a special prosecutor and one of his hundreds of personal lawsuits.

The obvious lesson here for aides and staff is: lawyer up, on your own.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

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"It takes only a bit of knowledge of history to realize how dangerous it is to think that the people who run the country know what they are doing." -- Howard Zinn

"It’s not about not having something to hide; it’s about having something to lose. What we lose when we’re under observation is our humanity...Rights are inherent to our nature, they’re not granted by governments, they’re guaranteed by governments. They’re protected by governments." -- Edward Snowden

"Terrorism is the willingness to kill large numbers of people for some presumably good cause.” -- Howard Zinn

"What we have is a foreign policy which is essentially a marketing strategy for selling weapons." -- Jill Stein

"We should always remember that the danger to societies from security services is not that they will spontaneously decide to embrace [Stasi style] mustache twirling and jackboots to bear us bodily into dark places, but that the slowly shifting foundation of policy will make it such that mustaches and jackboots are discovered to prove an operational advantage toward a necessary purpose.” ~ Edward Snowden

"America: just a nation of two hundred million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns and no qualms about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable." ~ Hunter S. Thompson

"Let me issue and control a nation's money and I care not who writes the laws." ~ Mayer Rothschild

"News is what somebody does not want you to print. All the rest is advertising." ~ LACUNA

"What matters in journalism isn't politics, which are as universal and inescapable as breathing. What matters -- along with a fundamentally adversarial attitude toward government, without which "journalism" is simply public relations -- is integrity, transparency, evidence, coherence, and principle. These are the principles on which we should evaluate the quality of journalism, and their absence is why some journalists are so desperate to get you to focus on something else." ~ Barry Eisler

"There is no inverse relationship between freedom and security. Less of one does not lead to more of the other. People with no rights are not safe from terrorist attack." ~ Molly Ivins

"The brain of our species is, as we know, made up largely of potassium, phosphorus, propaganda, and politics, with the result that how not to understand what should be clearer is becoming easier and easier for all of us." ~ James Thurber

"The highest patriotism is not a blind acceptance of official policy, but a love of one's country deep enough to call her to a higher plane....When you hold up your arm and swear to uphold the Constitution, you don’t say, 'Except in wartime.'" -- George McGovern

"I’ll believe that corporations are people when Texas executes one." ~ Bill Moyers

"When did hope become a political dynamic? Hope is right below wishful thinking and right above performing a rain dance on the scale of activity." ~ Rich Hall

Life, as Explained in "Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead"

GUILDENSTERN: What a fine persecution---to be kept intrigued without ever quite being enlightened.

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ROSENCRANTZ : The only thing that makes it bearable is the irrational belief that somebody interesting will come on in a minute.

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GUILDENSTERN: But for God's sake what are we supposed to do?!

PLAYER: Relax. Respond. That's what people do. You can't go through life questioning your situation at every turn.

GUILDENSTERN: But we don't know what's going on, or what to do with ourselves. We don't know how to act.

PLAYER: Act natural. You know why you're here at least.

GUILDENSTERN: We only know what we're told, and that's little enough. And for all we know it isn't even true.

PLAYER: For all anyone knows, nothing is. Everything has to be taken on trust; truth is only that which is taken to be true. It's the currency of living. There may be nothing behind it, but it doesn't make any difference so long as it is honoured. One acts on assumptions.

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GUILDENSTERN : We act on scraps of information... sifting half-remembered directions that we can hardly separate from instinct.

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PLAYER: Life is a gamble, at terrible odds-if it was a bet you wouldn't take it.