The GOP is now a bunch of despicable desperados

Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger said Monday that he has come under increasing pressure in recent days from fellow Republicans.

[...]

Raffensperger [...] and his wife, Tricia, have received death threats in recent days

[...]

Raffensperger expressed exasperation over a string of baseless allegations coming from Trump and his allies about the integrity of the Georgia results, including claims that Dominion Voting Systems, the Colorado-based manufacturer of Georgia’s voting machines, is a “leftist” company with ties to Venezuela that engineered thousands of Trump votes to be left out of the count.

[...]

The normally mild-mannered Raffensperger saved his harshest language for Rep. Douglas A. Collins (R-Ga.), who is leading the president’s efforts in Georgia and whom Raffensperger called a “liar” and a “charlatan.”

Collins has questioned Raffensperger’s handling of the vote and accused him of capitulating to Democrats by not backing allegations of voter fraud more strongly.

Raffensperger has said that every accusation of fraud will be thoroughly investigated, but that there is currently no credible evidence that fraud occurred on a broad enough scale to affect the outcome of the election.

[...]

The recount, Raffensperger said in the interview Monday, will “affirm” the results of the initial count. He said the hand-counted audit that began last week will also prove the accuracy of the Dominion machines; some counties have already reported that their hand recounts exactly match the machine tallies previously reported. Election officials in one county, Floyd, discovered about 2,600 eligible votes that were not included in the initial tallies because of a failure to upload them off a memory stick. The secretary of state’s office said those votes probably would have been discovered, but it called for the resignation of the county election director.

[...]

Raffensperger also said he spoke on Friday to [Lindsey] Graham, the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, who has echoed Trump’s unfounded claims about voting irregularities.

In their conversation, Graham questioned Raffensperger about the state’s signature-matching law and whether political bias could have prompted poll workers to accept ballots with nonmatching signatures, according to Raffensperger. Graham also asked whether Raffensperger had the power to toss all mail ballots in counties found to have higher rates of nonmatching signatures, Raffensperger said.

Raffensperger said he was stunned that Graham appeared to suggest that he find a way to toss legally cast ballots. Absent court intervention, Raffensperger doesn’t have the power to do what Graham suggested because counties administer elections in Georgia.

“It sure looked like he was wanting to go down that road,” Raffensperger said.

[...]

Graham said he contacted Raffensperger on his own and was not asked to do so by Trump.

“The main issue for me is: How do you protect the integrity of mail-in voting, and how does signature verification work?” he said.

“If he feels threatened by that conversation, he’s got a problem,” Graham added. “I actually thought it was a good conversation.”

[...]

On the same day that Graham spoke to Raffensperger about signature matching, a lawsuit was filed in federal court in Georgia challenging the way county election officials check signatures and allow voters a chance to fix ballots with errors.

The suit, filed by Atlanta lawyer and Trump supporter Lin Wood, seeks to block certification of Georgia’s election until all ballot envelopes are inspected.

Also that day, Trump tweeted about signature-matching in Georgia and criticized Raffensperger for his management of the state elections.

[...]

Raffensperger said he will vigorously fight the lawsuit, which would require the matching of ballot envelopes with ballots — potentially exposing individual voters’ choices.

[...]

The secretary of state also warned that the Republican attacks on Dominion voting machines could create issues for the state’s Republican U.S. senators, Loeffler and David Perdue, who face runoffs on Jan. 5 that will be administered using the same Dominion machines.

  WaPo

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

As they say, you can't make this shit up

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

Capitol Hill coronavirus

Five senior members of the Republican Party in the United States, including Senator Ted Cruz, have quarantined themselves fearing they were exposed to the virus at a conservative conference just outside Washington, DC.

There are also concerns that President Donald Trump could be exposed to the virus through contact with two of those legislators.

Matt Gaetz travelled with Trump on Air Force One on Monday. Doug Collins was with the president on Friday during a coronavirus briefing at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention headquarters.

  alJazeera

If he comes down with it, those two will be hearing about it.

Trump's incoming chief of staff, Mark Meadows, also went into self-quarantine on Monday after learning he may also have been exposed at the same conference.

[...]

Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar was the fifth politician to go into self-quarantine.

[...]

Trump has not been tested for the virus, White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham said on Monday evening.

[...]

The president, who flew back to Washington, DC after weekend golfing at his Florida resort and having dinner with Brazil's president, has spent weeks dismissing the seriousness of the threat.

But after an emergency meeting with administration staff, he told journalists on Monday that he would propose "very substantial" economic measures to Congress on Tuesday.

These will include tax relief and aid for workers in the gig economy who worry about calling in sick to ensure they are "not going to miss a pay cheque" and "don't get penalised for something that's not their fault".

[...]

On Monday, the Dow Jones closed 7.8 percent lower in the worst session since 2008.

[...]

Stories of new cases flooded in across the country - from a Washington, DC church rector to the head of New York's ports authority, while some stores ran out of hand sanitiser and masks.

Since the epidemic began, Trump has veered between defending his government from accusations of incompetence to accusing Democrats and the media of exaggerating the outbreak in an attempt to hurt his standing.

He'll go straight to accusing them of spreading the virus intentionally to hurt his standing any day now.

UPDATE 3/12:

Freak out

Ever since the coronavirus exploded outside of China at the end of January, Donald Trump has treated the public health crisis as a media war that he could win with the right messaging. But with cases now documented in 34 states and markets plunging, Republicans close to Trump fear his rosy assessments are fundamentally detached from reality in ways that will make the epidemic worse.

[...]

The problem is that the crisis fits into his preexisting and deeply held worldview—that the media is always searching for a story to bring him down. Covid-19 is merely the latest instance, and he’s reacting in familiar ways. “So much FAKE NEWS!” Trump tweeted this morning. “He wants Justice to open investigations of the media for market manipulation,” a source close to the White House told me.

  Vanity Fair

He's absolutely batshit crazy.

“He’s very frustrated he doesn’t have a good team around him,” a former White House official said. On Friday he forced out acting chief of staff Mick Mulvaney and replaced him with former House Freedom Caucus chair Mark Meadows. Trump thought the virus was “getting beyond Mick,” a person briefed on the internal discussions said. Trump has also complained that economic adviser Larry Kudlow is not doing enough to calm jittery markets. Last week Kudlow refused Trump’s request that Kudlow hold an on-camera press briefing, sources said. “Larry didn’t want to have to take questions about coronavirus,” a person close to Kudlow told me. “Larry’s not a doctor. How can he answer questions about something he doesn’t know?

Trump can. So why does he need somebody else to do it?

Trump found a willing surrogate in Kellyanne Conway, but Conway’s dubious claim on Friday that the virus “is being contained” only made the P.R. situation worse.

Kellyanne will whore out for anything he wants.

A source said Trump was pleased with ratings for the Fox News town hall last Thursday, but he was furious with how he looked on television. “Trump said afterwards that the lighting was bad,” a source briefed on the conversation said. “He said, ‘We need Bill Shine back in here. Bill would never allow this.’”

The only lighting that would make him look good is none.

Trump’s press conference on Friday at the CDC was a Trumpian classic, heavy on braggadocio and almost entirely lacking a sense of the seriousness of the crisis. “I like this stuff. I really get it,” Trump told reporters, his face partly hidden under a red “Keep America Great” hat. “People are surprised that I understand it. Every one of these doctors say, ‘How do you know so much about this?’ Maybe I have a natural ability. Maybe I should’ve done that instead of running for president.”

[...]

By now many of the president’s advisers are numb to this kind of performance. “There’s very little that fazes anyone now,” a former official said. But one person who spoke to the president over the weekend saw the press conference as an ominous sign. “He’s just now waking up to the fact that this is bad, and he doesn’t know how to respond.”

As Trump pushes a nothing-to-see-here message in public, sources said he’s privately terrified about getting the virus. “Donald is a famous germaphobe," [...] a prominent Republican said.

[...]

Last week Trump told aides he’s afraid journalists will try to purposefully contract coronavirus to give it to him on Air Force One, a person close to the administration told me.

Batshit. Guess where he's going to be getting it from? Republican lackies at the CPAC shindig.

The source also said Trump has asked the Secret Service to set up a screening program and bar anyone who has a cough from the White House grounds. “He’s definitely melting down over this,” the source said.

But thus far Trump’s private concerns haven’t affected his public response. Pressure from the public health community is mounting on Trump to cancel his mass rallies, but Trump is pushing back. “He is going to resist until the very last minute,” a former West Wing official said. “He may take suggestions to stop shaking hands, but in terms of shutting stuff down, his position is: ‘No, I’m not going to do it.’”

We'll see what happens.

Republicans foiled again

Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) recessed the impeachment articles markup after 11 p.m., saying that the committee would reconvene to cast the impeachment votes Friday at 10 a.m.

[...]

The outraged Republicans wasted no time blasting Nadler for what they saw as a procedural cheap-shot — one designed solely to allow Democrats more time before the TV cameras on Friday.

“You chose not to consult the ranking member,” Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) said, looking at Nadler stunned.

Collins, then stepping off the dais in a huff, described the chairman's move as a sign that trust between him and Nadler has broken down.

[...]

Collins then rushed outside the hearing room to a bank of TV cameras to air his frustrations further.

[...]

"We weren't sure if they had more amendments, they wouldn't tell us that," said Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.). "And what the chairman's spirit was: we want to make sure we do this in the light of day. We don't want to vote on such an important article, or articles, that matter to the American people [and] to this president, in the late of night."

The move came after Republicans introduced one amendment after another in an effort to protest the articles of impeachment, dragging out the hearing 14 hours as Democrats voted down their efforts to scrub the two articles of impeachment they are seeking to pass, which charge Trump with abuse of power and obstruction of justice.

A Democratic aide, when asked for the reasoning of the sudden move, said they felt Republicans were trying to run out the clock so that the vote would happen with the least eyes on them.

“We felt like they wanted us to pass this in the middle of the night, so we felt the American people deserved to see this historic vote. And it should be passed in the daylight and not in the middle of the night,” the aide said.

[...]

Thursday’s postponement is not expected to alter the outcome of the debate: Judiciary Democrats are set to pass the two articles on Friday, sending them to the full House, where votes are likely to take place next Wednesday.

[...]

“Hard to convey how upset everyone is,” said one Republican Judiciary aide, adding that “people had flights booked.”

  The Hill

And they only have themselves to blame.

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

UPDATE:

For dragging it out with no defense.  It's not the "witch hunt" that's tiresome.  It's you.

UPDATE:

A different explanation:

UPDATE:  The votes...

OMB's after-the-fact rationale for withholding aid to Ukraine

The White House budget office asserts in a new legal memo that it withheld aid to Ukraine this summer -- an issue at the heart of Democrats' impeachment inquiry -- to "engage in a policy process."

"It was OMB's understanding that a brief period was needed, prior to the funds expiring, to engage in a policy process regarding those funds," Office of Management and Budget general counsel Mark Paoletta wrote in the memo dated Wednesday, provided to CNN by a senior administration official. "OMB took appropriate action, in light of a pending policy process, to ensure that funds were not obligated prematurely in a manner that could conflict with the President's foreign policy."

[...]

The White House has offered shifting and vague accounts of why the hold was implemented and what triggered Trump to ultimately change course and release the money.

Wednesday's memo stresses that the agency "has significant discretion in determining how and when funds are released" and states that it will often put temporary holds on money allocations signed into law.

[...]

Paoletta wrote the memo in response to an inquiry from the Government Accountability Office about why the US aid to Ukraine was delayed over the summer.

[...]

The memo states that while the OMB will notify Congress before delaying some allocations, the Ukraine aid amounted to a "programmatic delay" that did not require notification.

  CNN

Perhaps there was someone within President Trump’s administration who spent the period from July 12 to Sept. 11 assiduously working to determine that providing military and security aid to Ukraine didn’t “conflict with the President’s foreign policy,” as articulated in a legal memo from the Office of Management and Budget produced Wednesday. Perhaps this person or team of people were articulating benchmarks and seeking out information that would establish that the benchmarks had been met. Perhaps those people were working with senior officials within the U.S. government and within the administration of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to cross the proper T’s and dot each pertinent I.

If that was the case, though, no one who’s offered public testimony about the hold on aid was aware of it. And at no point before Wednesday was there any suggestion that such an extended, formal review was underway.

[...]

[One of two tranches of Congressionally appropriated aid], totaling $250 million, was finalized in May after defense officials certified that necessary safeguards against waste had been met. That aid was announced publicly June 18 in a news release.

That turns out to have been a mistake. Trump, who in 2018 had signed into law the bill allocating that funding, saw a news article about the impending release of the aid and slammed on the brakes.

[...]

On July 3, OMB halted a notification to Congress that aid was going out, the first hint that the assistance would be stopped. The hold was in place July 12 and messaged broadly in a meeting July 18.

[...]

After the hold was announced internally, there were repeated conversations within the administration where government agencies, including Defense, pushed for the aid to be released. During a meeting July 25 — the same day as Trump’s call with Zelensky — a number of staffers from various departments met and discussed the aid.

Each “endorsed the resumption of military aid, or they spoke of their own aid programs and indicated they wanted their programs to continue, as well,” according to Undersecretary of State David Hale. He later added that “the lone objection came from the — directly from the representative of OMB.”

[...]

To hold the aid, OMB had to go through a formal process involving the creation of a memo in which the hold was indicated in a footnote with a designated duration. Between July and Sept. 11, the hold was extended multiple times, requiring the issuance of different iterations of the document. One document, released in August, failed to update the end date for the hold properly, meaning that there was a period of about a week in which the aid technically wasn’t on hold at all.

[...]

[T]he hold became public Aug. 28.

[...]

Were the aid not allocated by the end of the fiscal year — Sept. 30 — OMB officials were concerned about a potential violation of a law called the Impoundment Control Act. The footnote therefore indicated that the Defense Department could continue to plan as though the aid was moving forward. Early iterations of the memo also indicated that the Pentagon agreed that the hold wouldn’t prevent it from getting all the money out the door by the end of the fiscal year. That provision was removed in the middle of August, when the Defense Department indicated that it no longer had that confidence.

That detail, which comes from Sandy’s testimony, seems to be obviously at odds with the Wednesday memo from OMB. The memo rationalized the hold in part by arguing that Defense had never planned on releasing security funds until September in the first place — a claim that’s hard to reconcile with the department’s sudden revocation of its confidence in getting the money out the door.

[...]

“Trump had made the decision [...] without an assessment of the reasoning or legal justification, according to two White House officials,” The Post’s Josh Dawsey, Carol D. Leonnig and Tom Hamburger reported.

  WaPo

What a surprise.

In early September, [OMB Director Mark Sandy] got a reason, receiving “an email that attributed the hold to the president’s concern about other countries not contributing more to Ukraine.”

That was one of three reasons offered in that time period.

Another came from Pence, who told Zelensky in a meeting Sept. 1 that the United States had “great concerns about issues of corruption.”

On that same day, though, Ambassador to the European Union Gordon Sondland spoke with Zelensky aide Andriy Yermak, telling Yermak that the hold would be lifted only once Ukraine agreed to undertake investigations that Trump sought that would benefit the president politically. This conversation was conveyed to other administration officials at the time.

[...]

On Sept. 10, Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) wrote to the acting director of national intelligence asking for a whistleblower complaint centered on Ukraine to be released to Congress as stipulated by law.

The next day, the aid was released.

Coincidence, of course.

And Republican Judiciary Committee minority leader has yet another excuse:

So, take your pick, I guess.

UPDATE:

Notes on the Judiciary impeachment hearing (taken in real time) - Part 2

After being interrupted and objected to for several minutes, Barry Berke, the Dems original presenter and Judiciary Committee lawyer, takes a seat of Nadler's counsel interrogator, and he's much better at that than presenting information.  He's hammering Castor with questions that are getting Castor in trouble.

Rather than throwing in the towel, Gaetz interrupts to stop the onslaught and give him a breather.  As they try to go on, other Republicans interrupt to save Castor, who's waaaaay out of his league.

Nadler is going to blow a gasket.

Rep. Doug Collins takes out Berke's attack on Castor on the Dems' witness Goldman.  He pounds the man mercilessly.  I thought Goldman would be able to block it better.

Things are seriously hot.  And Gaetz keeps shouting out whenever he feels like it.

Castor is so bizarre.  The Republican lawyer begins to question him, and he asks for time to talk.  She allows him, and he goes on a long, rambling, oddball spiel.  When she gets the floor again, she says Castor, you've been talking for 75 minutes here today, and I appreciate it.  He responds:  "My wife appreciates it, too.  She likes it when I do all the talking when she's not around."  And then gives a big weird grin.  WTF???

This woman they've got as the Republican counsel inquisitor is a snoooooooooze.  Between her and Castor, you might think you're in a high school moot court.  They'd be better off if they let Collins keep snarling.

She brings up Professor Turley, and Castor immediately says, "Turley's no Trump supporter."  She says, "Right.  He's a Democrat."  That's not true.  (I actually yelled that at the TV.) He may be no Trump supporter, but he's not a Democrat.  He's a civil libertarian.

It certainly appears that way.

Now we're going to go to the five-minute rounds.

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

Trump now wants to dictate state representation

Tensions rose between President Trump and Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp (R) during a meeting at the White House on Sunday over who should be appointed to fill the seat being vacated by retiring Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.).

[...]

The reported disagreement centered around Trump advocating for Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.), the top Republican on the powerful House Judiciary Committee and one of his most vocal defenders in the lower chamber, while Kemp is said to be leaning toward business executive Kelly Loeffler to fill the position.

The meeting ended swiftly, with Trump alleging it could be risky to appoint Loeffler as she has less political experience than Collins, according to the Journal.

  The Hill

Risky to whom?  Sounds like another Trump threat to me.

A woman who might not lick his boots versus a man he already knows will.

Since when does the president of the US get to choose a state's representatives to Congress? Things have gone way off the rails in this country, folks.

“President Trump had a very nice meeting at the White House on Sunday with Gov. Kemp of Georgia,” White House press secretary Stephanie Grisham told the Journal in a statement. “They discussed many things including his potential appointment of a senator and the timing of the appointment. Various names were discussed. It was a very friendly meeting.”

Either she didn't write that, or she's started talking exactly like Trump.

Trump has intensified his lobbying for Collins to be appointed to the position in recent weeks. Collins, who is expected to play a leading role in pushing back against Democrats’ impeachment efforts, could be a key ally in voting against impeachment if it moves to the upper chamber if he’s appointed to replace Isakson.

I can't keep saying "unbelievable", but unbelievable.

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

UPDATE 12/4:  Kemp did not back down.

UPDATE 1/9/20:  She's back in the news.  And not in a good way.

GOP Doug Collins has a great idea

Have the federal government investigate a news source for a report unfavorable to the president.  Just what you'd expect from a representative democracy, no?

we are living in disturbing times.

GOP Rep. Doug Collins (Ga.) on Tuesday called for an investigation into CNN over the network's report that said the CIA pulled a high-level informant from Russia amid concerns that President Trump mishandled intelligence.

“To put this out at this time and to put it such a way that the CIA had to come out and respond to this is really a disturbing part,” Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, said on Fox News.

“I really question whose side CNN is on," the GOP congressman continued. "This is a problem we’re seeing. I think it needs to be investigated. With the CIA coming out like it has, I think it has to be something we look at."

Collins's call for an investigation came as the White House and CIA broadly denied CNN's report, and as new reporting emerged from other outlets that appeared to contradict key parts of the network's story.

CNN did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Hill on Tuesday.

CNN's report published the previous day was the first to detail efforts by the CIA to extract a top informant from Russia.

[...]

CNN reported that the source's removal was driven "in part" by concerns Trump and his administration could contribute to the source's exposure by mishandling classified intelligence.

But later reports published by The New York Times and The Washington Post contradicted part of CNN's story.

Former intelligence officials told the Times that there was no public evidence indicating that Trump directly endangered the informant. Other officials said the extraction stemmed from concerns about the media's scrutiny of the agency.

As news outlets reported more on topics such as the CIA's intelligence on Russian interference in the 2016 election, the agency reportedly revived an extraction plan for the top-level informant.

The move ultimately caused the CIA to lose a key source of its information about the Kremlin. The spy was key to the CIA's finding that Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Times reported.

[...]

CIA Director for Public Affairs Brittany Bramell said in a statement to CNN that its narrative for the story was "simply false."

"Misguided speculation that the President's handling of our nation's most sensitive intelligence — which he has access to each and every day — drove an alleged exfiltration operation is inaccurate," Bramell said.

  The Hill

Mueller testifies

Mr. Mueller seems somewhat unsteady, even nervous, which I wasn't expecting.

Republican opener Doug Collins landed a blow, which I'm sure will color all Trump and Republican (and Fox & Friends) commentary: He asked Mueller if collusion and conspiracy are synonymous.  Mueller said no.  Collins then read a statement from the report saying they are largely synonymous.  After some stuttering responses and seeming confusion on Mueller's part, he's forced to say he stands with the report.

The next Republican, John Ratcliffe, attacks aggressively, telling him he didn't perform his job, while constantly using the word "respectfully".  I wonder how long Mueller will stay in his seeming submissive posture with that kind of questioning.

The third Republican, James Sensenbrenner, repeats Ratcliffe's claim that he didn't perform his job.  What they're talking about is that the charge to the special counsel is that he is expected to write a report with a conclusion regarding prosecution or declination to prosecute.

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

Things are about to turn for Doug Collins

Rep. Doug Collins, the top Republican on the House Judiciary Committee, called Monday for Democrats to immediately bring special counsel Robert Mueller to the Capitol to testify on his still-secret report on Russian contacts with President Donald Trump's campaign — and whether Trump himself obstructed the probe.

"If you seek both transparency and for the American public to learn the full contours of the Special Counsel’s investigation, public testimony from Special Counsel Mueller himself is undoubtedly the best way to accomplish this goal," Collins wrote in a letter to the committee's chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.).

In a subsequent statement, Nadler agreed with Collins' call to bring Mueller to the Capitol but he said it wouldn't happen until May.

  Politico

"The civil war was bad."

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

In other Trump related sleaze today...

House Judiciary Chairman Jerrold Nadler told reporters Wednesday that former Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker “did not deny” that President Trump called him to discuss the Michael Cohen case and personnel decisions in the Southern District of New York.

  The Daily Beast

And that, my dears, is a big no-no. Sitting very near obstruction of justice, which is a favorite thing for Trump to do.

The two met because Nadler had asked Whitaker to clarify comments he made in front of the committee last month.

During that testimony, Nadler said publicly Whitaker refused to answer specific questions about whether he discussed Cohen’s case in the Southern District of New York with Trump and to what extent he had spoken about Cohen generally with Trump.

[...]

Following their closed-door meeting on Wednesday, Nadler said Whitaker was involved in conversations about the Southern District of New York and “whether to fire one or more U.S. attorneys.”

Whitaker doesn't want to go to prison for lying to Congress. I think we all knew that about him as well

Nadler also said that Whitaker was also involved in conversations about the recusal of U.S. attorney Geoffrey Berman and “whether the Southern District went too far in pursuing the campaign finance case in which the president was listed as Individual Number 1,” Nadler said.

My, my, my. As acting AG, did Whitaker not know how improper this all was? He does strike me as kind of stupid.

“We disagree with Representative Nadler’s characterization of the conversation,” said a DOJ official who was in the room.

That's not surprising.

“Consistent with his prior testimony, Mr. Whitaker said that he couldn’t discuss private conversations with the president … and that the president never directed him to do anything to affect that investigation.”

[...]

Another DOJ official briefed on the conversation said Whitaker responded to multiple questions by saying he couldn’t discuss his talks with Trump.

Is Jerry calling that non-denial? Or why did he say Whitaker did talk with Trump?

Only a few people were in the room: Nadler; the committee’s top Republican, Rep. Doug Collins; DOJ lawyers; and staff for Nadler and Collins. No transcript of the meeting was produced.

So we just get a he said - he said reading. Don't mind us. We're just the citizens of this country who want government to behave according to the law.

Collins concurred with the view the DOJ official shared.

[...]

“I think that is [Nadler’s] interpretation of what he said,” Collins continued, according to the paper. “Mr. Whitaker said he did not have conversations with the president about Cohen. ... If Mr. Nadler chooses to say by absence of what he didn’t say and that is how he is interpreting that, then Mr. Nadler will have to answer to that,” he continued.

[...]

“In fact, he said he never talked with the president about Mr. Cohen at all and no conversation with the Southern District of New York either,” Collins told reporters after the meeting, according to The Hill.

Am I supposed to believe a Republican these days?

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

UPDATE:



That's as open to interpretation as any of Whitaker's dodges.  This DOJ probably thinks there's such a thing as proper influence.