The Week in Washington: Tough Times for Individual 1
Tough times for Individual 1! In case you missed it, that is how the President of the United States is referred to in his old friend Michael Cohen’s plea deal with the Mueller Russia probe, in court documents released on Thursday. Not to raise false hopes, but after the head-spinning developments of the past week, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin averred on Thursday night, “You know, today’s the first day I actually thought Donald Trump might not finish his term in office . . . I mean, I think this thing is enormous.”
This “thing”—or things, include the following: Cohen, Trump’s former fixer/attorney, who the president now refers to as “a very weak individual,” admitted to the Mueller investigators that he had lied about the Moscow Project—the Trump Organization’s fierce determination to realize their dream of a Russian Trump Tower. And—this one is fun!—according to The Washington Post, “Cohen’s Russian business associate, Felix Sater, told BuzzFeed News that he and Cohen plotted to give Russian President Vladimir Putin a supposed $50 million penthouse in Trump Tower Moscow to help lure oligarchs into the project.”
Cohen is not the only former associate wrestling with plea deals. The arrangement that the president’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, made with the Mueller team has just gone down the toilet, since Manafort has been caught in a web of lies, violating the original agreement. (All along, Manafort’s attorneys have allegedly been feeding Trump the inner workings of the Mueller probe, which, believe it or not, may not be illegal.) But wait, there’s more! On Tuesday, The Guardian newspaper reported that “Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort held secret talks with Julian Assange inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London, and visited around the time he joined Trump’s campaign . . . . Sources have said Manafort went to see Assange in 2013, 2015, and in spring 2016—during the period when he was made a key figure in Trump’s push for the White House.” Now what do you think Paul and Julian talked about—the fact that Assange was being visited in the embassy by his girlfriend at the time, Pam Anderson? (This is true!) Or the WikiLeaks documents that Assange could provide to damage Hillary Clinton’s campaign? Or maybe both?
After insisting for the last two years that he has had absolutely no dealings with Russia, the president suddenly tweeted at 2:00 a.m. on Friday: “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!’’
In other news that is dubiously legal and not at all cool: Last Sunday, U.S. Border Patrol agents teargassed asylum seekers at the border, including barefoot toddlers. On Monday, Melania silently cruised through an alley of bloodred Christmas trees, as imperious as Mrs. Waterford overseeing a row of arboreal handmaids. Don’t you hate it when your friends make friends and go off together and leave you in the cold? On Friday, at the G20 Conference in Argentina, Russian President Vladimir Putin, repeatedly accused of murdering journalists, high-fived it with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who Trump’s own CIA has said was responsible for the assassination of Washington Post columnist Jamal Khashoggi in October.
Yesterday, the president cancelled a planned press conference out of deference, he claimed, to the Bush family, since George H.W. Bush, 41st president and architect of the first Iraq war that killed over 100,000 people, had passed away Friday night. Well, maybe. But there are plenty of other reasons Individual 1 might not feel like taking questions right now.
