We begin today’s roundup with Margaret Hartmann and her take on the latest revelations that the president’s attorney apparently sold access to the president for millions of dollars:
One GOP strategist described his pitch to CNN: “I don’t know who’s been representing you, but you should fire them all. I’m the guy you should hire. I’m closest to the president. I’m his personal lawyer.”
It’s unclear how true this was even before Cohen was excluded from the White House. While he reportedly spoke to Trump several times per day during the transition, one source said Trump “never talked to Cohen about substantive matters” that corporations might be interested in.
Statements from several of Cohen’s clients suggest they pieced this together, but not before paying him millions of dollars.
Here is Paul Waldman’s analysis at The Week:
The truth is that Trump has indeed changed the culture of corruption in Washington, in two main ways.
First, he has made it significantly worse. There have been no alterations to the usual paths for the wealthy and powerful to exercise influence; instead, Trump has greased the wheels. If you're in the administration and you aren't someone who used to represent the corporations you're now regulating (and you'll return to after your stint in "public" service), then at the very least you're ideologically devoted to the principle of enhancing corporate power. [...]
The second way Trump has changed the culture of corruption has been to make sure that he and his are the ones wetting their beaks. I'm reminded of something Adam Serwer wrote after former Washington mayor Marion Barry died: While he was widely (and correctly) viewed as a deeply corrupt figure, "Barry didn't bring corruption to D.C. He changed who benefited from it." Likewise, Trump has enabled his people to benefit from the corruption that already existed. Some of the hottest influence-peddlers in town are now not those who understand Capitol Hill or the way agencies operate, but those who have a personal connection to Trump.
Over at The Daily Beast, Lachlan Markay, Asawin Suebsaeng and Sam Stein discuss the fact that Cohen was “shadow lobbying”:
The opacity of the arrangement is the heart of the issue. Ethicists say that the advocacy practiced by President Trump’s longtime right-hand man and fixer speaks to a phenomenon that good government groups call “shadow lobbying.” It’s the practice of influencing policy and policymakers through activity informal enough to fall short of the legal definition of “lobbying.” An army of consultants, government relations executives, and “political intelligence” professionals earn tens, perhaps hundreds, of millions of dollars each year through such soft advocacy, and none of its activities are disclosed to the public.
“If it is accurate that Cohen touted his sway over Trump and offered to influence the Trump administration on matters that affect the business interests of Novartis, and these companies in turn made payments to Cohen for such services, that crosses the line into lobbying,” said Craig Holman, government affairs lobbyist for the group Public Citizen. “Since Cohen is not a registered lobbyist and has not disclosed the payment-for-services, he would likely be in violation of LDA if the payments came from domestic sources, or in violation of FARA if the payments came from foreign sources.”
The New York Times editorial board:
“Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Jr. said in 2008. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”
The golf writer James Dodson said last year that during a visit to a Trump golf course in 2013, Eric told him of his family company’s financing: “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” […]
Russians and cash — they’ve been a part of Mr. Trump’s life for years, and now they’re elements of the investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Moscow to corrupt American democracy. Mr. Trump’s affection toward the Russian president has led many to ask, “What does Putin have on Trump?” Maybe the ledgers will tell.
Speaking of Russia, The Washington Post explains how Trump is failing to protect us from another Russian election attack:
THE OBAMA administration was slow and ineffective in its response to Russian election interference in 2016. But it is now on President Trump and his team to prepare for a new round of Kremlin cyberattacks — and this White House, too, are falling short. That was the upshot of a bipartisan report on Russian election interference that the Senate Intelligence Committee released Tuesday, the first in a series that promises to provide a fairer picture of the Russian threat than what the highly partisan House Intelligence Committee offered following its brief and slanted investigation.
Senate investigators underscored that Kremlin agents targeted at least 18 states’ election systems in 2016 — and probably more. In at least six of those states, the Russians tried to penetrate voting-related websites, and some of those attempts worked. “In a small number of states, these cyberactors were in a position to, at a minimum, alter or delete voter registration data,” the committee concluded. The panel found no evidence that registration information — or, for that matter, vote tallies — were changed. But the Russians may be more aggressive next time.
On a final note, don’t miss this very important piece by John Nichols at The Nation on this week’s Ohio gerrymandering victory:
Ohio is a swing state. It voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016. It sends one Democrat and one Republican to the US Senate. It has a pattern of electing Democratic and Republican governors—often in closely contested races. And, yet, Ohio’s congressional delegation currently includes 12 Republicans and just four Democrats. [...]
On Tuesday, Ohio voters approved a radical rewrite of the rules, which was promoted by the League of Women Voters and other good-government groups, and forced onto the ballot via pressure on legislators to come up with a plan to end gerrymandering.