Posts for Jan. 5th and 6th will appear by 10:00 PM PST tonight.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He complained at length about being found guilty of crimes. 

Trump posted two lengthy, emotional rants to his private social media network today. They once again returned to the familiar theme that Trump has been unfairly persecuted by a shadowy conspiracy of his enemies, and once again included a litany of vague threats of revenge.

It seems likely that the impetus for this outburst was yesterday's order by Judge Juan Marchan that Trump would be sentenced next Friday for the 34 felony charges he was found guilty of buy a New York jury in May.

The substance of Trump's complaint can be summed up in the first sentence of the first post: "I never falsified business records."

But in reality, he did.

It's worth pointing out how many people had to independently reach that conclusion for Trump to become the first ever president to be convicted of felonies. Not only did "evil and sinister prosecutors" have to bring charges, the randomly-assigned judge in the case had to agree that there was a legal basis from the evidence presented. A jury of Trump's New York state peers had to conclude that he was guilty of all 34 counts beyond any reasonable doubt. The same judge had to conclude that this verdict was legally valid. The New York Court of Appeals had to hear and reject all of Trump's post conviction legal arguments that he had not been given a fair trial. 

Trump was convicted not only on the basis of documentary evidence, but the testimony of Trump Organization employees including Michael Cohen, who had already been convicted and gone to prison for his role in some of the crimes that Trump was convicted of.

Why does this matter?

• The justice system in the United States does not stop working simply because a criminal thinks it is unfair that he was caught.

• Believing that the consequences of your own actions are the result of a shadowy conspiracy against you is not a sign of good mental health. 

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What did Donald Trump do today?

He attacked yet another ex-staffer he'd supposedly never heard of.

In September 2018, the New York Times published an anonymous editorial headlined "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration." The author described a White House staff dedicated to "thwarting Mr. Trump’s more misguided impulses," like his propensity for "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back." 

Today, the author of that piece revealed himself to be Miles Taylor, who was the chief of staff at the Department of Homeland Security until his resignation in November of last year.

Trump's reaction followed a now extremely well-worn formula for when a former employee criticizes him: he attacked Taylor, called for him to be fired from the (unrelated) job he now holds, and claimed—falsely, unless his memory is failing him—that he'd never heard of him.

The same pattern played out with a number of other ex-Trumpers, like:

• Russia probe target and senior foreign policy advisor George Papadopoulos (Trump's allies retroactively demoted him to "coffee boy")
  
  
• Trump's Apprentice co-star and advisor Omarosa Manigault, who Trump called a "dog" and a "wacky lowlife"
  
  
• his White House aide Cliff Sims, who Trump falsely said was a "gofer" he "hardly knew" and at the same time threatened with a lawsuit for divulging things a "gofer" would never know.

The list also includes far more senior staffers and appointees, like John Bolton (national security advisor and "a sick puppy"), John Kelly (chief of staff, "way over his head"), H.R. McMaster (national security advisor), Tom Bossert (Homeland Security secretary and Taylor's boss, "completely embarrassed himself"), Anthony Scaramucci (very briefly Trump's communications director, a "mental wreck"), Gary Cohn (National Economic Council director, "I could tell stories about him like you wouldn't believe"), James Mattis (secretary of defense, "the world's most overrated general"), Rex Tillerson (secretary of state, "dumb as a rock"), Michael Cohen (Trump's "fixer," but a "rat," according to Trump), Steve Bannon (Trump's chief political advisor who "lost his mind" and "has nothing to do with me or my presidency"), Jefferson Sessions (attorney general, a "total disaster"), Mary L. Trump (his "seldom-seen" niece, "a mess") and many, many others. 

Trump campaigned in 2016 on his ability to hire "the best and most serious people."

Why should I care about this?

• Either Trump is the most incompetent judge of character and ability ever, or the dozens of people all saying the same things after coming in close contact with him are correct.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He was "sarcastic" again.

This afternoon, Trump posted the following five-tweet rant. 

The people that know me and know the history of our Country say that I am  the hardest working President in history. I don’t know about that, but I am a hard worker and have probably gotten more done in the first 3 1/2 years than any President in history. The Fake News hates it! I work from early in the morning until late at night, haven’t left the White House in many months (except to launch Hospital Ship Comfort) in order to take care of Trade Deals, Military Rebuilding etc., and then I read a phony story in the failing @nytimes about my work........schedule and eating habits, written by a third rate reporter who knows nothing about me. I will often be in the Oval Office late into the night & read & see that I am angrily eating a hamburger & Diet Coke in my bedroom. People with me are always stunned. Anything to demean! When will all of the “reporters” who have received Noble Prizes for their work on Russia, Russia, Russia, only to have been proven totally wrong (and, in fact, it was the other side who committed the crimes), be turning back their cherished “Nobles” so that they can be given........to the REAL REPORTERS & JOURNALISTS who got it right. I can give the Committee a very comprehensive list. When will the Noble Committee DEMAND the Prizes back, especially since they were gotten under fraud? The reporters and Lamestream Media knew the truth all along........Lawsuits should be brought against all, including the Fake News Organizations, to rectify this terrible injustice. For all of the great lawyers out there, do we have any takers? When will the Noble Committee Act? Better be fast!

Trump's work habits are pretty well established at this point, as is the difficulty he has in controlling his temper. His confusion about the "Noble" prizes—he probably meant Pulitzer, not Nobel—won for covering his scandals attracted more mockery today, prompting him to declare for the second time in three days that a mental lapse was "sarcasm." (But he also deleted those tweets.)

Trump has been the subject of several Pulitzers. In 2019, the New York Times won for its exposé of the Trump family's tax evasion schemes that allowed him to illegally inherit the equivalent of $400 million free of taxes. That same year, the Wall Street Journal won for their investigation into Trump's payment of hush money to at least two women he had extramarital affairs with, for which Trump's then-lawyer Michael Cohen went to prison. And in 2017, David Farenthold of the Washington Post won a Pulitzer for exposing Trump's failure to follow through on flashy promises to make charitable donations. (Trump was eventually forced to pay a $2,000,000 fine and shut down his fraudulent "charity," which he was using as an illegal tax shelter and campaign slush fund.)

Trump hasn't refuted any of those Pulitzer prizewinning stories, but the one that may bother him the most is the 2018 prize won jointly by the New York Times and the Washington Post for their investigations into Russia's interference in the 2016 election. 

Last week, the Republican-led Senate Intelligence Committee voted unanimously to endorse the intelligence services' "clear and coherent" report that the Putin regime's "historically unprecedented" and ultimately successful efforts to sabotage the election on Trump's behalf.

It's not clear if Trump is reacting to that report, or if he genuinely thinks at this point that Russia's attempts to get him elected have somehow been disproven.

Why should I care about this?

• Presidents who can't control their temper can't do the job.

• Insisting that things didn't happen doesn't change reality.

• Even by Trump's standards, this is a pretty sorry display.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about DACA.

DACA is the government program that gives certain children, brought illegally to the United States by their parents, the lowest priority for deportation. It also allows people given this designation—many of whom do not remember their native country, or speak its language—the ability to work legally, get driver's licenses, and otherwise lead a relatively normal life.

Today, Trump tweeted this:

It's true that some DACA recipients are "no longer very young," although it's not clear why Trump thinks this matters. Every other part of this is false—in particular the part about "some" being "tough, hardened criminals." This is a callback to the first days of his 2016 campaign, when he said that Mexican immigrants were rapists and drug dealers. 

By definition, DACA recipients cannot have been convicted of a felony, or a "significant misdemeanor" (including charges related to domestic violence, sexual abuse or exploitation, unlawful possession or use of a firearm, drug sales, burglary, or drunk driving). Three minor misdemeanors (like, for example, public intoxication or littering) also completely disqualify an applicant, and even one can result in a DACA recipient's status being revoked.

Trump himself is "no angel," having been credibly accused of felonies ranging from sexual assault to tax fraud, which would likely result in his being discretionarily excluded from DACA participation if the Department of Homeland Security were aware of the accusations. Among the people in his orbit who would also be barred from DACA by virtue of being "tough, hardened criminals" include:

• Paul Manafort, Trump's campaign manager (convicted of 17 felonies)
• Michael Cohen, Trump's personal lawyer and "fixer" (convicted of campaign finance violations related to Trump's attempts to pay hush money to his sexual partners, and of making false statements to the U.S. Senate)
• Rick Gates, Trump's campaign co-chair (convicted on two felony counts of making false statements and conspiracy against the United States)
• George Papadopoulos, Trump's campaign national security advisor and Russia contact (convicted of one felony count of making false statements)
• Michael Flynn, Trump's disgraced national security advisor and campaign surrogate (convicted of making false statements during the Russia investigation)

Other Trump-connected individuals whose criminal trials are ongoing or whose convictions haven't yet been finalized—which would be enough to prevent them from renewing DACA status, especially if they were incarcerated during their trial—include:

• Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, "associates" of Trump's current lawyer Rudy Giuliani who were involved in the Ukraine bribery scandal, currently facing charges related to illegally funneling foreign money to U.S. political campaigns
• Roger Stone, currently on trial for seven counts of witness tampering, obstruction of justice, and perjury related to his role as a conduit between the Trump campaign and Wikileaks, which Russia was using to illegally help Trump get elected

Trump's position on DACA has varied wildly during the course of his term, to the point that he has occasionally forgotten what it is entirely during negotiations with Congress about it. One political reality he appeared to forget today was that DACA recipients are much, much more popular than he is.

Why should I care about this?

• It's wrong to accuse people of crimes they have, by definition, not committed.

• Bigotry is as bigotry does.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got ready to throw Gordon Sondland under the bus.

Gordon Sondland is the U.S. Ambassador to the European Union. A former hotel developer with no political or diplomatic experience other than giving Trump $1 million in inaugural funds, Sondland played a role in the Trump-Ukraine scandal when he tried to help Ukrainian officials "navigate" Trump's demands for their interference in the upcoming American presidential election. 

Last month, Trump tweeted this about Sondland:

I would love to send Ambassador Sondland, a really good man and great American, to testify, but unfortunately he would be testifying before a totally compromised kangaroo court, where Republican’s rights have been taken away, and true facts are not allowed out for the public........to see. Importantly, Ambassador Sondland’s tweet, which few report, stated, “I believe you are incorrect about President Trump’s intentions. The President has been crystal clear: no quid pro quo’s of any kind.” That says it ALL!

Sondland later admitted that he had texted the "crystal clear" quote to Ukrainian ambassador Bill Taylor on Trump's specific orders. At the time, Trump's attempt to force Ukraine to "investigate" Joe Biden's family hadn't yet been made public, so trying to cover it up in advance means Trump knew what he was doing was wrong.

Earlier this week, fearing perjury charges after other witnesses' testimony contradicted his, Sondland amended his testimony. In the revised version, he said he "now recalled" telling Ukrainian officials that Trump would not released the desperately needed $400 million in military aid unless they made a "public statement" about Biden's family. As a Department of Homeland Security official testified, Trump "wanted nothing less than President Zelensky to go to a microphone and say 'investigations, Biden and Clinton.'" Zelensky had reluctantly made plans to appear on CNN and say just that when Congressional pressure forced the release of the withheld aid.

In short: Sondland was a Trump ally tasked to help Trump threaten Ukraine without the State Department or the national security community finding out about it. When they were caught, Sondland initially told Trump's version of the story, but then fessed up when he realized the legal jeopardy he was in.

Today, asked specifically about Sondland for the first time since he changed his testimony, Trump said, "I hardly knew the gentleman." This is in line with the White House's latest impeachment defense: that Sondland—along with Mick Mulvaney and Rudy Giuliani—took it on themselves to try to force Ukraine to help Trump in the 2020 elections without Trump knowing about it.

Abandoning underlings in order to save himself is a familiar move for Trump. He did it with his Giuliani's predecessor, Michael Cohen, who is serving a prison sentence for crimes where Trump was an unindicted co-conspirator. He tried to reinvent his own campaign surrogate and disgraced national security adviser Gen. Michael Flynn—also likely headed for prison—as an Obama holdover. (President Obama fired Flynn and warned Trump not to let him back into government.) And he's already made tentative steps to separate himself from other Ukraine scandal figures: he hesitated to say whether Rudy Giuliani was still his lawyer, and insisted in the face of copious evidence to the contrary that he didn't know Giuliani's now-indicted associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman.

Who cares?

• This isn't something an innocent person would do in this situation.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He claimed, in court, as clearly as he possibly could, that he is above all laws.

During the campaign, Trump famously declared that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue in New York. This was a claim about how popular he imagined himself to be, not a legal argument.

Since taking office, Trump has leaned heavily on the assumption that a president can't be criminally prosecuted while in office—not something that has been tested in court, but a longstanding DOJ directive. (Trump has been implicated in any number of crimes, including as an unindicted co-conspirator in the crimes for which his former lawyer, Michael Cohen, is now in prison.)

Today, his lawyer argued in a federal court that, as president, Trump is not only immune from prosecution for any crime—including specifically murdering someone in cold blood—but that he cannot even be investigated for any crime while in office. In fact, attorney William Consovoy argued, even third parties—in this case, the accounting firm that did Trump's taxes—cannot be approached for evidence related to any presidential crime whatsoever, no matter how serious.

Why should I care?

• Only someone who wants to be a dictator would try to claim the powers of a dictator.

• No matter how badly Trump may need for it to be true, the president is not above the law.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He spent the weekend fighting with the ghost of John McCain. 

Trump spent much of his attention this weekend on Twitter, where he repeatedly attacked the late Sen. John McCain. Yesterday, he accused McCain of "spreading" the "fake and totally discredited" Steele dossier, the 2016 document that identified many of the links between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump also blamed McCain for Trump's failure to repeal the Affordable Care Act.

After McCain's daughter Meghan fired back, Trump referred to McCain as "'last in his class (Annapolis) McCain" and retweeted a conservative Twitter account claiming that "millions of Americans... hated McCain."

None of this is true.

Parts of the Steele dossier, which was originally commissioned by a conservative newspaper, remain unproven, but virtually nothing in it has been "discredited," and a great deal of it has been confirmed. 

McCain was not last in his class at Annapolis, but came to prominence as a result of spending almost six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, where he survived torture. (Trump, a high school athlete and an avid golfer to this day, claimed that he had bone spurs as a way of avoiding the draft.) 

And in spite of Trump's insistence that it was "proven" that McCain tried to have the Steele dossier publicized before the election—which he certainly could have done—in reality, McCain only referred it to the FBI after Election Day.

Trump, who demands absolute personal loyalty and is easily enraged when it isn't given to him, has never forgiven McCain for the senator's criticism of him.

It's not clear what, if anything, provoked Trump to lash out at a man who has been dead for six months. But there may be a method to Trump's madness. In a recent meeting with oil industry lobbyists, an Interior Department official praised Trump's ability to distract Americans from things they might otherwise object to, like opening up huge portions of the U.S. territorial waters to oil drilling. 

Why is this something I should care about?

• Uncontrollable anger at a dead man is not a sign of good mental health.

• Shouting that false things are true doesn't make them true.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He made a reasonable point about Michael Cohen.

Trump spent most of the calendar day en route to Vietnam, but left marching orders for surrogates to attack his former "fixer" Michael Cohen. Cohen is testifying before three Congressional committees this week about his knowledge of Trump's criminal behavior before and since being elected.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders summarized the Trump stance on the revelations Cohen is expected to make tomorrow at a public hearing before the House Oversight Committee. In a statement, Sanders said:

Disgraced felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for lying to Congress and making other false statement. Sadly, he will go before Congress this week and we can expect more of the same. It’s laughable that anyone would take a convicted liar like Cohen at his word, and pathetic to see him given yet another opportunity to spread his lies.

Sanders' characterization of Michael Cohen as a liar and a felon is correct. He was convicted of lying to Congress in order to help hide Trump's secret business ties to Russian oligarchs, and also on campaign finance charges related to his role in concealing the hush money he funneled to women Trump had sexual affairs with.

Why should anyone care about this?

• Even by Trump standards, attacking someone's truthfulness in testifying about the crimes he committed on your behalf because he committed crimes on your behalf is pretty absurd.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He finally admitted to working with Russia on a Moscow hotel project all through the 2016 campaign.

Trump sent his "TV lawyer" Rudy Giuliani to NBC's Meet the Press to make a huge admission: that he had been trying to make a deal to build a luxury residential tower in Moscow as late as "October or November" of 2016.

This is significant for two reasons. First, it is difficult to count the number of times, before and after being elected, Trump has categorically denied having any business interest in Russia.

In turn, that means that Russia was aware the whole time that Trump was lying to voters and, potentially, to law enforcement, giving the Putin regime even more blackmail leverage over Trump. Voters would have had good reason to be worried if they'd known about the deal: it would have been worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Trump.

Giuliani's role in the army of defense lawyers working for Trump is to help him "get ahead of the story" by admitting things Trump has previously denied when it is clear the truth will come out regardless. In the past year, he's appeared on TV to blunt the impact of several serious revelations. He has helped Trump back down from countless "no collusion" tweets by saying that "collusion" doesn't refer to any specific criminal act, and he recently suggested that whatever "collusion" may have happened must have been done by campaign officials without Trump's knowledge. Last May, he admitted that Trump had paid hush money to Stormy Daniels via Michael Cohen to conceal their sexual affair. 

In the same interview, Giuliani admitted that Trump "might have" discussed with Cohen his testimony in front of Congress before Cohen gave it. Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the Trump Tower Moscow deal in order to avoid exposing Trump's lies on the subject.

Why does this matter?

• Some people who voted for Trump might not have done so if they'd known he was lying about being in business with the Putin regime.

• Eventually telling a version of the truth after you've been caught isn't the same thing as telling the truth the first time.

• Honest public officials don't seek nine-figure bribes, or let it look like they're open to them.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He used mob language to describe the criminal conspiracy he's suspected of being part of.

Trump has spent almost all day so far on Twitter, including one tweet attacking the FBI for executing a search warrant.

Trump is using the word "rat" the way that criminals do, to describe a member of a gang or conspiracy who informs on others. And while it's unheard of for a president to talk like a mob boss in public, Trump isn't wrong: Cohen has openly accused Trump of ordering him to commit felonies in his efforts to keep the American public from finding out about his extramarital affairs with porn stars.

But it is not "unthinkable & unheard of" for the FBI to execute a search warrant on a suspected criminal, even if that criminal is a lawyer. This kind of "breaking into" the offices and homes of criminal suspects happens every day at every level of law enforcement in the United States.

The turn to mob language is part of a new strategy. Trump has been edging closer and closer to admitting that he committed the crimes he's suspected of, while downplaying their seriousness, or his personal responsibility. For example, his surrogates have taken to chiding the special counsel for convicting Trump's associates of "process crimes" (like lying to the FBI or Congress).

Trump's lead lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, has taken a prominent role in this process. Last week, he insisted that Trump's attempts to illegally pay hush money to his mistresses were "not a big crime," in that “nobody got killed, nobody got robbed." This morning, Giuliani said that collusion with Russia is "not a crime" but that regardless any such collusion "was over with before the election."

"Collusion" is not a crime, but conspiring with a foreign power to influence an election is, whether it is "over with" by Election Day or not.

So what?

• It's bad if the President of the United States is talking and acting like a mob boss.

• In a democracy, the president is not above the law.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He came up with an interesting new justification for his border wall.

Trump, who was presumably preoccupied with the sentencing of his "fixer" and campaign finance co-conspirator Michael Cohen, took a leisurely approach to his office duties today, even by his standards. But he still found time to tweet out a novel suggestion about why Congress should fund his border wall.

Trump was apparently referring to a shooting in Strasbourg last night in which a gunman opened fire on a crowd at that city's Christmas Market, killing two and injuring 12 others. The shooter, who escaped the scene, is thought to be Chérif Chekatt, a lifelong criminal.

Taking Trump's tweet at face value, he seems to believe that "terror" in France would have been averted if that country had more "border security." 

Chekatt was born and raised in France.

Trump appears to have been trying to have the last word with "Chuck [Schumer] and Nancy [Pelosi]" after a photo opportunity with them on the subject of his border wall went disastrously wrong for him yesterday.

Why does this matter?

• It's really important that presidents sound coherent.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about what is and isn't a crime.

Since Democrats won control of the House, Trump's tweets have become noticeably more defensive, often explicitly taking on the tone of a criminal defendant. That was on display in this morning's Twitter offering:

“Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun...No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,.......which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s - but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT!

While many commentators had fun with Trump's search for a "smocking" gun, the real issue here is Trump's legal analysis. Last week, in issuing a sentencing recommendation for Trump's "fixer" Michael Cohen, prosecutors in the Southern District of New York said that Cohen had "acted in coordination with and at the direction of" Trump. The list of crimes that Trump has been implicated in by his own Justice Department, strictly because of his attempts to hide his extramarital affairs with hush money, include:

• making contributions in another person's name. Trump did this by "laundering" his hush money payment to porn actress Stormy Daniels through Cohen. (52 U.S. Code § 30122)

• failure to report contributions. Trump is entitled to pay as much hush money to sex partners as he likes with his own money, but if he does that to influence the election, it is a self-contribution and must be reported, which he never did. (52 U.S. Code § 30104, (a)(6)(b)(i))

• soliciting illegal contributions. According to federal prosecutors, Trump ordered Cohen to pay Daniels an amount in excess of the limit that Cohen could make as an individual contribution to Trump's campaign. (52 U.S. Code § 30116) It is illegal under any number of federal statues to induce someone to commit a criminal act.

Trump's claim that such acts would be civil infractions—the equivalent of parking tickets—is wrong. Federal criminal penalties for all such acts exist (52 U.S. Code § 30109) and are routinely sought by prosecutors, when it can be shown that the candidates committing them did so knowingly and willfully.

Why is this bad?

• It's wrong to break the law in order to deceive voters.

• Presidents are not above the law.

• This is arguably the least serious indictable felony Trump is thought to have committed in an attempt to get elected.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He lied about what his ex-fixer's sentencing recommendation said about him.

Today was a busy day in the federal courts, with three separate sentencing recommendations being filed by federal prosecutors investigating the Trump-Russia affair. Two of them dealt with Trump's "fixer" Michael Cohen, and one with Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.

In what looks like an attempt to get out ahead of the bad news—or just engage in a little emotional self-care—Trump went on the Twitter offensive, spending most of the morning constructing a rambling series of attacks on the Mueller probe. But minutes after the reports were released, Trump tweeted this:

Totally clears the President. Thank you!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 7, 2018

In reality, the federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (unrelated to the Mueller investigation) argued for a stern sentence for Cohen in part because he committed crimes "in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1."

Trump is "Individual-1."

While the other two sentencing documents released today—the special counsel's reports on Cohen and Manafort—did not so directly accuse Trump of conspiring to commit crimes, they are damning of Trump all the same. They reveal that Manafort lied to conceal his meetings with Konstantin Kilimnik, a known Russian intelligence agent who was involved in the hacking of the DNC. (The e-mails stolen in that hack were used in a Russian propaganda attack against Hillary Clinton, which the Trump campaign seized on and amplified.)

The sentencing report for Cohen also shows that Russian agents reached out to Trump as early as 2015, offering "political synergy." This is one of a number of previously secret contacts between the Trump campaign and Russian agents during the campaign.

It's not clear if Trump genuinely believes the Mueller investigation is "clearing" him, or is simply hoping that someone else will.

Why is this bad?

• Because the federal government just accused a sitting president of having committed felonies in order to get elected.

• Asking citizens to accept an obvious lie rather than what is right in front of them is what authoritarians do.

What did Donald Trump do today?

Witness tampering.

Trump spent most of the morning on Twitter. He called for one potential witness against him, former "fixer" and Trump Organization vice-president Michael Cohen, to "serve a full and complete sentence." Then he lavished praise on another potential witness, Roger Stone, for having the "guts" not to cooperate with the Russia investigation.

As both Republican and Democratic lawyers immediately pointed out, this is textbook witness tampering, which is a federal crime. 

Specifically, it is a crime to use intimidation to cause a witness to refrain from offering testimony—for example, by publicly saying as the head of the executive branch that federal prosecutors under your employ should seek a "full and complete" sentence for defendants who would testify against you.

It is also a crime to "corruptly persuade" the testimony of a witness—especially in the context of a broader campaign to influence potential witnesses by hinting at leniency or pardons. Trump has pointedly refused to publicly rule out pardoning co-conspirators who could testify against him.

Trump also made the odd claim that Cohen was being prosecuted for crimes "unrelated to Trump." They are not.

Why should I care about this?

• Innocent people don't generally try to threaten or sweet-talk witnesses.

• Presidents are not above the law.

• A president who doesn't want special counsels using anti-Mafia tactics against him shouldn't behave like a Mafia boss.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He sent Rudy Giuliani out to accuse Robert Mueller of being a federal prosecutor.

Trump himself did nothing more job-related today than getting off a plane, after his brief but apparently very taxing trip to Argentina. Not only was his public schedule empty—even of golf—he also stayed off Twitter, except for a generic "Happy Hanukkah" tweet that was almost certainly written by a staffer.

But Trump's surrogate and "TV lawyer" Rudy Giuliani was dispatched to continue Trump's attack on Robert Mueller, in which Trump is an unindicted co-conspirator. Giuliani seemed to be trying to advance Trump's argument that Mueller was somehow abusing his authority by charging Trump associates with crimes when they lied to the FBI or, in Michael Cohen's case, Congress. 

Giuliani told a radio interviewer this morning that Mueller's team "obviously exerted a lot of pressure on him. Mr. Cohen unfortunately has a history of significant lies in the past."

Giuliani isn't wrong about Cohen's "history of significant lies": Cohen's role as Trump's "fixer" seems to have involved all manner of illegal and deceptive behavior, some of which he was already being prosecuted for. But as Giuliani—who made his name prosecuting organized crime using exactly the same techniques—presumably knows, it is not unethical for a prosecutor to bring charges when a known criminal lies under oath in an attempt to derail an investigation.

In getting his story straight with Trump's official line—that Cohen is lying if and only if he's implicating Trump in a crime—Giuliani is abandoning his initial version of events, which had Trump and Cohen largely agreeing about the timeline of events relating to Trump's attempt to build Trump Tower Moscow. 

So what?

• As a wise woman once said, "When you're attacking FBI agents because you're under criminal investigation, you're losing."

• It's okay to prosecute people for lying to Congress, because it's illegal to lie to Congress.

• People who are innocent of crimes don't generally have to change their stories about why they're innocent.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He stormed out in the middle of a photo opportunity with the President of Argentina.

Towards the end of his ultra-brief trip to the G20 summit in Buenos Aires, Trump appeared on stage for photographs with Argentina's president, Mauricio Macri. After smiling for the cameras and shaking Macri's hand, Trump abruptly turned and stalked offstage, ignoring Macri and a staffer who chased after him.

As the assembled press corps broke into surprised laughter, Trump can be heard saying "Get me out of here."

There are two possible explanations. One is that Trump simply got confused about his stage directions. If so, it's happening fairly often. Among other such "senior moments," Trump found himself similarly bewildered while traveling in Israel, Poland, and while trying to find the limousine that was parked directly in front of his exit from Air Force One.

The other is that he had another attack of the sudden camera-shyness that afflicted him a few days earlier, when he abruptly and without explanation left the White House Christmas tree lighting ceremony. Trump had apparently just received word of the Michael Cohen guilty plea that was announced the following morning, leading some to speculate that he was suffering from a panic attack.

Trump was scheduled to give a press conference right after the aborted photo op, but it was canceled—supposedly out of "respect" for the family of recently deceased President George H.W. Bush.

Who cares?

• It's bad if a President isn't up to performing simple tasks, regardless of whether the reason is mental, physical, or emotional exhaustion.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He went on the defensive after admitting he'd lied to voters about his Russia ties.

Reeling after a terrible news day in which he was forced to admit he lied to Republican primary voters about his ongoing business ties to Russia, Trump tried to mitigate the damage on Twitter. Addressing his now-unveiled 2016 plans to build Trump Tower Moscow, Trump characterized it this way:

Oh, I get it! I am a very good developer, happily living my life, when I see our Country going in the wrong direction (to put it mildly). Against all odds, I decide to run for President & continue to run my business-very legal & very cool, talked about it on the campaign trail... ....Lightly looked at doing a building somewhere in Russia. Put up zero money, zero guarantees and didn’t do the project. Witch Hunt!

Some of this is at least technically true. It was not illegal for Trump to seek out business in Putin's Russia, or even to repeatedly lie about whether he was doing that while running for president. (It probably would have been illegal if his proposed $50 million bribe of Vladimir Putin had happened—U.S. citizens aren't allowed to pay or even offer bribes to foreign governments—but prosecution seems unlikely on that point.)

And Trump's claim that he put up "zero money" is also true, at least as far as we know at the moment. The financing for what would have been a billion-dollar project was slated to come not from Trump (who was effectively blackballed from legitimate banks anyway), but from a Russian state-owned institution, VTB Bank.

VTB Bank was (and remains) under sanction by the United States, which would have put Trump's investment on legally shaky ground. But that didn't dissuade Trump from signing a letter of intent just two weeks after Putin's government guaranteed Trump's financing. Trump signed the letter the same day that he participated in the third Republican primary debate.

Whether pursuing the project for a full year after starting his presidential run, lining up financing from a U.S.-sanctioned bank, involving his adult children and a Trump Organization vice-president, and obtaining permission from Putin himself counts as "lightly looking" is a matter of opinion.

Why does this matter?

• It's wrong for a presidential candidate to lie to voters about who is or isn't influencing them.

• It's incredibly stupid and dangerous for a presidential candidate to give a hostile foreign country leverage over him—even if it might be good for the candidate's private business.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted he'd lied to the American people about his business interests in Russia.

This morning, Michael Cohen, Trump's fixer and longtime Trump Organization executive, pleaded guilty to lying to Congress. Cohen admitted that he'd lied to protect Trump politically, by (falsely) saying that Trump wasn't seeking to do business in Russia during the campaign.

Since entering politics, Trump has insisted over and over again that he had no business interests in Russia.

Reacting to the Cohen plea, Trump was forced to admit this afternoon that he'd been pursuing a massive construction project in Moscow well into 2016, and that, notwithstanding his years of denials, that "everybody knew about it."

Specifically, as BuzzFeed News reported today, Trump was dealing directly with Dmitry Peskov, a Putin lieutenant. Trump wanted to give Putin a $50 million penthouse in the proposed Moscow Trump Tower, in the hopes of making the money back from other Russian oligarchs.

Voters knew none of this. Almost all of the 2016 Republican primaries had taken place by the time work finally stopped on the project. That fact raises national security concerns. By engaging in secret deals with Russian interests, and deliberately concealing them from voters, Trump gave the Putin regime leverage over him.

This may to some extent explain Trump's astonishing deference to Putin, even after he became president. And that in turn would explain Putin's willingness to go extraordinary lengths to make sure that Trump became president.

Why should I care about this?

• It's bad if a presidential candidate hands a hostile foreign power the tools to blackmail him with.

• It's wrong to lie to voters about things that would make them not vote for you if they knew the truth.

• The part where Trump tried to give Vladimir Putin a $50 million gift.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He got into a public pissing match with the adult film actress he cheated on his wife with.

Trump had no public events on his schedule today, which left him free to spend most of the day on Twitter. He made 20 tweets by 10:00 P.M. EDT. One of them was a riff on the news that one of Stormy Daniels' lawsuits against him had been dismissed.

Daniels, whom Trump voluntarily paid $130,000 to not discuss their sexual encounter, responded in kind:

The "letter" Trump is referring to is a statement Daniels made when her non-disclosure agreement with Trump was still in force. She first told In Touch magazine about her affair with Trump in 2011, long before his political career began. (Trump's "fixer" Michael Cohen has since pleaded guilty to campaign finance law violations in association with that hush money payment, which was made days before the 2016 election.)

Trump's threat of a countersuit is probably not giving Daniels much anxiety. Not only would he have to testify under oath in any civil suit, he almost never follows through on his threats to bring libel suits, and has never prevailed on the rare occasions he's actually gone to court.

Why should I care about this?

• Traditionally, most presidents have been able to get through the day without publicly calling their porn star ex-mistresses names.

• A president who had a reasonable, non-incriminating explanation for a mysterious six-figure payment to a porn star would have given it by now.

What did Donald Trump do today?

He admitted defeat to Stormy Daniels.

In court papers filed today, Trump promised not to attempt to enforce his nondisclosure agreement against Stormy Daniels, the porn actress who says she had sex with him shortly after the birth of his youngest son to his current wife. Trump had his "fixer" Michael Cohen use a shell company to pay Daniels $130,000 for her silence in the weeks before the 2016 election. The fact that both Cohen and Trump's businesses were illegally involved in funneling that money to Daniels means that Trump was part of a criminal conspiracy--as Cohen testified under oath when he pleaded guilty to related charges last month.

By giving Daniels what she wants--free rein to tell her story--Trump has apparently decided that the sordid details are less dangerous to him than undergoing a routine pre-trial deposition would be. Depositions are taken under oath. That means that Trump, who Cohen recorded directing the illegal shuffling of money, would have to choose between perjuring himself or invoking his Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination. 

Trump is on record as saying that only guilty people plead the Fifth, but his friends and legal team seem absolutely convinced that he would be unable to tell the truth under oath--and have repeatedly said so in public.

So what?

• It's bad if porn actors can successfully blackmail the president.

• Presidents who don't commit crimes in the process of trying to get elected are less vulnerable to this kind of manipulation.

• A president who is afraid of having to tell the truth under oath is unfit for the job.