Progress in the Cohen case regarding seized documents

In a court filing on Tuesday evening, [U.S. District Judge Barbara Jones, who was appointed by Judge Kimba Wood as 'special master' to review the seized documents for privilege claims] said she had already turned over to prosecutors more than 290,000 seized items that were not marked privileged by Cohen or Trump.

She said that more than a million items from three seized phones had also been designated as not privileged by Cohen and Trump, and would be turned over to prosecutors Wednesday after a final review.

Cohen and Trump have made at least 252 claims of privilege, according to the filing.

  Raw Story

Of course, those 252 are the ones I want to see.

Jones, whose expenses are being split by Cohen and prosecutors, billed for $47,390 for work done from April 24 through April 30.

For most of the work, which comprised just shy of 70 hours, she billed at a rate of $700 per hour. No objection to her bill was raised by either side, Jones noted in her filing.

  CNBC

Nice work if you can get it.

Jones said materials have been broken into four categories:

• Privileged Materials
• Partially Privileged Materials
• Non-Privileged Materials
• Highly Personal Materials

Jones described "highly personal materials" as "medical records or similar materials."

Unless Cohen, Trump, or the Trump Organization mark the material as privileged or highly personal, she is releasing the material to prosecutors as soon as it is available.

So, she really didn't have to even look at more than 252 documents, so far. Good money.

At this point no final end date for the review has been detailed by the Special Master.

[...]

Cohen is due to appear in US District Court in Manhattan for a hearing [Wednesday].

[...]

Wednesday's court hearing is set to provide Judge Kimba Wood an update on evidence seized from Cohen that is being reviewed by Jones.

Another issue expected to be addressed is a pending request by Daniels' lawyer Michael Avenatti to be admitted to the case to argue on Daniels' behalf, along with another local lawyer who is already representing her.

Avenatti, who practices law in California, is not admitted to federal court in New York, and therefore needs a special waiver to be granted by Wood to speak for Daniels in that venue.

On Monday, the Wall Street Journal, in an article quoting unidentified sources, said that Avenatti has "slowed down prosecutors' efforts to discuss the nondisclosure agreement with Ms. Clifford's former lawyer." The article said Avenatti has not acted on multiple requests by prosecutors to have Clifford waive her attorney-client privilege to allow her ex-attorney Keith Davidson discuss their communication about the hush-money pact.

Avenatti scoffed at that claim Tuesday.

"I speak with the US Attorneys' Office regularly about the case and we enjoy an excellent relationship," Avenatti wrote in an email to CNBC.

"We are continuing to do our part as it relates to providing information necessary for their investigation — I wish others would do the same," Avenatti wrote.

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

There goes Greitens - is that the end of it?

And I feel like Trump's behavior emboldened Greitens to hold out as long as he did.  Sounds like the pressure from other national GOP crooks who might be brought down in an investigation of Greitens' finances may have persuaded him to step down.  Mr. Avenatti seems to think Trump will be stepping down, too, under investigation of his finances.  I wish I could believe it.  I keep looking at Temer in Brazil, who by all rights should be behind bars, and he's still in office.

Obstruction of Justice

[A Trump-Sessions March 2017] confrontation, which has not been previously reported, is being investigated by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as are the president’s public and private attacks on Mr. Sessions and efforts to get him to resign. Mr. Trump dwelled on the recusal for months, according to confidants and current and former administration officials who described his behavior toward the attorney general.

[...]

Investigators have pressed current and former White House officials about Mr. Trump’s treatment of Mr. Sessions and whether they believe the president was trying to impede the Russia investigation by pressuring him. The attorney general was also interviewed at length by Mr. Mueller’s investigators in January. And of the four dozen or so questions Mr. Mueller wants to ask Mr. Trump, eight relate to Mr. Sessions.

Mr. Giuliani said that he had not discussed Mr. Sessions’s recusal with Mr. Trump but that a request that Mr. Sessions reassert control over the Russia investigation would be within the bounds of the president’s authority.

“‘Unrecuse’ doesn’t say, ‘Bury the investigation.’ It says on the face of it: Take responsibility for it and handle it correctly,” Mr. Giuliani said on Tuesday evening.

A Justice Department spokeswoman declined to comment.

  NYT

Actually, it's asking Sessions to put himself in a legal noose because he's intimately involved in the Trump campaign, and should therefore be recused from having any legal authority over it. That's why he recused himself in the first place. The only other jackass who maintains authority over something he should be recused from is Devin Nunes, and to this day I don't know how they're allowing that to go on. Sessions may well be cooperating with Mueller to save his own hide.

To the president, no decision has proved more devastating during his time in office than Mr. Sessions’s recusal. In Mr. Trump’s view, Mr. Sessions, who had been one of his closest political allies and earliest prominent supporter in Washington, never would have appointed a special counsel, as the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, did last May after the president abruptly fired Mr. Comey.

[...]

Before the recusal, the president and his attorney general were friends, often sharing meals and talking on the phone. Today, they rarely speak outside of cabinet meetings, current and former White House officials and others briefed on their relationship said. They even flew separately in March from Washington to the same event in New Hampshire. Mr. Trump complains to friends about how much he would like to get rid of Mr. Sessions but has demurred under pressure from Senate Republicans who have indicated they would not confirm a new attorney general.

Interesting.

Mr. Trump immediately recognized the potential effect of a recusal. He had his White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, lobby Mr. Sessions to retain oversight of the inquiry.

To Justice Department officials close to Mr. Sessions, the request by the president made through Mr. McGahn was inappropriate, particularly because it was clear to them that Mr. Sessions had to step aside. After Mr. Sessions told Mr. McGahn that he would follow the Justice Department lawyers’ advice to recuse himself from all matters related to the election, Mr. McGahn backed down.

[...]

Justice Department guidelines on recusal are in place to prevent the sort of political meddling the president tried to engage in, [experts] said.

[...]

In July, [Trump] told The New York Times that he never would have nominated Mr. Sessions if he had known that Mr. Sessions would not oversee the Russia investigation. Two days later, a Washington Post report about Mr. Sessions’s campaign discussions with Russia’s ambassador sent Mr. Trump into another rage. Aboard Marine One that Saturday, the president told his chief of staff, Reince Priebus, to get Mr. Sessions to resign by the end of the weekend, according to a person briefed on the conversation.

Unnerved and convinced the president wanted to install a new attorney general who could oversee the Russia investigation, Mr. Priebus called Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff at the time, Jody Hunt, who said that the president would have to ask Mr. Sessions himself to resign. Unsure how to proceed, Mr. Priebus simply waited out the president, who never called Mr. Sessions but did attack him that week on Twitter.

Days later, Mr. Priebus was out as chief of staff. The special counsel has told the president’s lawyers that he wants to ask Mr. Trump about those discussions with Mr. Priebus and why he publicly criticized Mr. Sessions.

Mr. Trump brought up the recusal again with associates later last year, expressing a desire for Mr. Sessions to reassert control over an investigation that has since resulted in the indictment of his former campaign chairman and guilty pleas by two other campaign aides and his former national security adviser.

The most disgusting man on earth and his torch carriers in Nashville

I bet most of the people in that crowd think of themselves as Christians.

His 2020 campaign is going to be even worse than his 2016 one.  All the Nazis will be out in force.

♪♫ Rocket Man ♪♫

But honestly, America's true rulers - corporations - would much prefer the burger joint.  The capitalist interest is much stronger here than the nuclear worry. So, it's a win either way.

Any bets...

...on whether he'll bring up the Roseanne cancellation at his campaign rally in Nashville?

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

UPDATE 5/30:  I would have lost the bet.

The president also did not address the incident during a campaign appearance in Tennessee late Tuesday.

  The Hill

I guess he didn't watch Fox News or CNN before the rally.

UPDATE:

Apparently, he's made it to a TV.



Now why didn't I guess that it would be about HIM?

That's gonna cost ABC some bucks

Unless, of course, the advertisers were pulling out already.

ABC canceled its hit sitcom "Roseanne" on Tuesday after the show's biggest star, Roseanne Barr, went on a racist Twitter rant.

"Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values, and we have decided to cancel her show," ABC Entertainment president Channing Dungey said in a statement.

Disney CEO Bob Iger added on Twitter that "There was only one thing to do here, and that was the right thing."

The cancellation stunned Hollywood. The revival of "Roseanne" premiered to huge ratings just three months ago. Pre-production was already underway on a second season, which was scheduled for Tuesdays at 8 p.m. this fall.

  CNN Money

Also...

Barr's talent agency, ICM Partners, dropped her following her tweets.

[...]

Barr went on A tweetstorm Tuesday morning, attacking Valerie Jarrett, Chelsea Clinton and George Soros.

ABC went silent for several hours while deciding what to do. By late morning on the West Coast, executives had decided to boot the reboot.

When asked why ABC ultimately decided to cancel the show, a Disney source said, "It's a question of right and wrong. And it's a question of our company's values."

Reactions to the decision were overwhelming and largely positive.

Maybe it takes a while for the Magaheads to get the info from Fox. Waiting for the "Unfair!" tweet when His Lordship sees this.

About 18 million live viewers watched the premiere episode in March.

[...]

Later, the show saw its audience come back down to earth, but its finale still nabbed roughly 10 million live viewers, a huge achievement for ABC.

[...]

President Trump praised the debut saying, "Over 18 million people! And it was about us!" The President also called Barr to congratulate her.

"Us". Everything is about him.

Actress Emma Kenney, who played Roseanne's granddaughter on the reboot, tweeted that she was in the process of quitting the show when she found out that it had been canceled.

About an hour and a half before the cancellation was announced one of the show's consulting producers, Wanda Sykes, said she was done with the show. "I will not be returning to @RoseanneOnABC," Sykes tweeted.

What was Wanda Sykes doing on a production that featured Roseanne Barr?

ABC was not entirely surprised by Tuesday's rant. After all, Barr is notorious for tweeting about pro-Trump conspiracy theories and other controversial topics.

[...]

But even by her low standards, Tuesday's remarks were egregious.

In one of the tweets, she wrote, "Muslim brotherhood & planet of the apes had a baby=vj."

[...]

So bad that it isn't even actually a joke.

Sara Gilbert, who plays Barr's daughter on the ABC sitcom, tweeted that Barr's comments are "abhorrent and do not reflect the beliefs of our cast and crew or anyone associated with our show."

Except for the STAR.

There's a bunch of actors who thought they were back in the money:

Hope they had some good contracts.

And...who's that token little black girl?

UPDATE:



I was thinking something very like that.



UPDATE 6/3:

TPM is reporting that ABC is considering the idea of dumping Roseanne but keeping the show. 

Incurious press

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

I'm not a puppet; you're the puppet

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

"I'm President!"

Jesus, he may be out there too far to get back.



As you can see, that tweet was posted 10 minutes ago.  Two hours ago, he was whinging on Twitter and then claimed he had to focus on presidential matters.  I asked for a bet that he'd be whinging again first thing in the morning.  It didn't take him that long!