Day: September 20, 2018

Briefings

Background Briefing: September 20, 2018

On By gram

 

Michael Cohen has Been Telling Mueller A Lot About Trump’s Dealings With Russia

We begin with the breaking news from ABC News that the special counsel Robert Mueller has been questioning Trump’s former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen extensively in interviews in Washington D.C. and New York and that Mueller has primarily been focusing on Trump’s dealings with Russia. Scott Horton, a Professor at Columbia Law School and a contributing editor at Harper’s in legal affairs and national security, joins us to discuss how Mueller has been wary of dealing with Cohen’s lawyer Lanny Davis since Davis represents prominent Russian oligarchs and organized crime figures. But apparently Cohen’s alleged visit to Prague to pay off Russian hackers involved in meddling in the 2016 campaign, which was first noted in the Steele dossier, has been part of the discussions. And since Cohen himself has ties to Russian and Ukrainian gangsters that preceded Trump’s ties to the Russian and Ukrainian mob, and Cohen first met Trump when he bought condos in Trump properties for his Russian and Ukrainian criminal clients, the combination of what Cohen knows about who funded the Trump Organization together with what the Chief Financial Officer of the Trump Organization knows and is telling Mueller, could prove fatal to Trump.

 

The Flimsy and Fatuous Excuses Trump and the GOP Offer for Why the FBI Can’t Investigate Kavanaugh

 

Leftists Can Be Both Idealists on Domestic Issues and Realists on Foreign Policy

Then finally we speak with Daniel Bessner, a Professor in American Foreign Policy at the University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies who has an article at The New York Times “What Does Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Think About the South China Sea? The rising left needs more foreign policy. Here’s how it can start”. We discuss the sweet spot in American politics the left has yet to discover in which you can be an idealist on domestic issues while being a realist on foreign policy.