Trump’s Russia scandal keeps getting deeper: At this point, campaign collusion might be the least of his problems

Firing Comey didn't end the collusion inquiry — but Trump's clumsy cover-up and financial ties are his real problem

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By BOB CESCA

With every passing day and every passing derp, President Donald Trump makes his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia to hijack last year’s election seem almost secondary. Surely that’s not his intention; indeed, it’s exactly the opposite. But anyone, regardless of politics, who has observed Trump’s reactions to the deepening Russia story can plainly see that the 45th president is way out of his depth.

Anyone with even a remedial understanding of politics and public relations understands that Trump is bungling the White House reaction to the ongoing investigation, turning an already harrowing treason probe into a harrowing treason probe made far more toxic by an obvious coverup.

It’s still unclear exactly what’s wrong with the president that he continues to botch and fumble the political reaction to the widening Russia scandal. We should definitely rule out, with prejudice, any argument that the president is practicing “three-dimensional chess” — that is, the “crazy like a fox” theory suggesting that Trump is working his way through a twisty Machiavellian strategy that we mere mortals are incapable of understanding. There’s nothing like that going on here. Chances are, Trump is being perpetually stymied by a combination of his desperation to kill the Russia probe; his clinical delusions, in which he believes certain things are real that clearly aren’t; his political ignorance; and, of course, his erratic knee-jerk style of blurting out gibberish and lies without any message discipline or self-censorship.

As a result, we’re treated to events like last week when the president fired James Comey, the now-former FBI director who was deeply involved with investigating Trump’s links to Russia, followed by a shit show the likes of which we have rarely witnessed in presidential politics since 1974. As if the firing of Comey wasn’t suspicious enough, the White House at first tried to claim that this happened specifically because of the way Comey had handled Hillary Clinton email scandal. That was the line throughout the first 24 hours of the aftermath.

Then came the whiplash.

Contrary to everything the White House, along with Vice President Mike Pence, had said about Comey’s firing, Trump inexplicably confessed to NBC News’ Lester Holt that he had fired Comey because he wanted the Russian scandal to end — which, of course, screams out obstruction of justice. Trump said to Holt, “And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, ‘You know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story. It’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won.'”

That day White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders repeated Trump’s perhaps inadvertent confession, noting in the press room, “We want [the Trump-Russia matter] to come to its conclusion; we want it to come to its conclusion with integrity,” she said. “And we think that we’ve actually, by removing Director Comey, taken steps to make that happen.”

Making matters even worse, the president later hinted in a tweet that he might have secretly recorded his conversations with Comey, adding witness tampering and intimidation to the rap sheet. It’s worth noting that Trump attempted something similar just before the Senate testimony of former acting Attorney General Sally Yates: As a last-minute threat, Trump hinted that she might have leaked details about the Michael Flynn prong of the Trump-Russia fiasco to the press.

Consequently, Trump managed to open up an entirely new wing of the scandal, further blurring the distinctions between himself and Richard Nixon while deep in the belly of the Watergate crisis. Now everyone wants to know whether Trump has a Nixonian secret recording system in the White House — and if he does, there are more than a few senators, members of Congress and federal investigators who want copies of the recordings — immediately.

All in all, we have at least several actionable if not impeachable offenses from last week alone, and it all emerged from the attempted cover-up and firing of Comey — an action Trump didn’t have to take except to relieve the pressure valves on the Russia scandal. Why? Why is Trump so desperate to scramble the story?

If he is innocent, there’s no reason for the White House to have tripped over itself so spectacularly. In that case, Comey’s investigation would ultimately have reached that conclusion. So why try to kill off the investigation that could hypothetically exonerate Trump and his closest associates and put the whole thing to rest? Obviously because Trump and his closest associates are guilty.

But guilt over collusion doesn’t even need to be proved at this point. The investigation could be entirely blown up, by Trump or someone else, and we’d still be left with a massively suspicious cover-up when various high crimes have been committed.

Furthermore, if the investigations of  the campaign collusion and the resulting cover-up are abandoned tomorrow, there’s still the third chunk of this mess that could bring down the administration: Trump’s alleged links to Russian money laundering, whether that means Trump’s laundering money for Russian plutocrats or the plutocrats’ laundering money for him. Toss into the mix the widespread rumors (unsubstantiated for now) about Russian loans having been used for Trump’s campaign war chest.

Toward the end of last week, we heard from Trump’s outside counselors, the Washington law firm of Morgan Lewis, which issued a letter confirming that Trump has various links to Russian money. It’s worth mentioning here that Morgan Lewis was voted “Russia Law Firm of the Year.” Yes, really. Jesus, is anyone in the White House paying attention to its spin? Nevertheless, the letter confirms several above-board links between Trump and Russian cash. But come on; it’s not like a review of Trump’s tax returns would show glaring evidence of money laundering or other malfeasance. We also have to assume that Trump has established an entire roster of shell corporations and fronts over the years. Are all these offshore accounts and corporate entities reflected in his stupid 1040s? Certainly not.

By the way, Morgan Lewis did, in fact, confirm one of the “loony” conspiracy theories you might have heard on Rachel Maddow’s show and elsewhere. It turns out that Trump stumbled into a $54 million windfall when he sold his colossal Florida estate to Dmitry Rybolovlev, the Russian “Fertilizer King,” for $95 million — a house Trump had purchased for $41 million. It’s important to note that Rybolovlev allegedly laundered a considerable amount of his personal fortune through the Bank of Cyprus, the bank that previously employed Wilbur Ross, Trump’s secretary of commerce. If you think everything about that transaction was on the level, I have some robot insurance to sell you.

Trump should be terrified. No one knows for sure whether he is, but he should be. Charges of collusion are very much alive and he knows it. But the thing is, those collusion charges could evaporate tomorrow and we’d still be left with two more scandals: the cover-up and the dubious financial links to Russian oligarchs. Those could be more than enough to summarily boot him out of the Oval Office and into a federal penitentiary where orange could be the new orange.

Trump stupidly thought he could use and abuse the power of the presidency to wiggle out of this predicament, but it’s the unstoppable wiggling that’s getting him into more and more trouble. For a guy who everyone says is so media savvy, Donald Trump is even more incompetent at cleaning up his own messes than he is at being president.

Dutch Documentary Part II: Blood on Trump and Kushner's Hands from Deals with Africa War Zone Diamond Mines

Lev Leviev's diamond empire stretches from Angola to Moscow, London and Amsterdam.

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By Steven Rosenfeld

The Trump family’s business partners have blood on their hands owing to deals with notorious diamond brokers who operate mines in wartorn Africa and own jewelry stores in London, Moscow and Amsterdam.

That's the premise in Part Two of a documentary series by the Dutch TV network Zembla, The Dubious Friends of Donald Trump: King of Diamonds. It shows how the U.S. president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, have apparent partnerships with an Israeli billionaire who is tied to “trading in blood diamonds,” as the film's description notes, and how this relationship overlaps with power circles in Russia reaching President Vladimir Putin and Russian oligarchs.

“In the second part of our program about Donald Trump’s controversial friends, we will set our sights on the Israeli billionaire Lev Leviev, who is controversial because he is suspected of trading in blood diamonds,” says the documentary's YouTube summary. “He is one of the world’s biggest diamond traders and owns prestigious stores in New York and Moscow, but he is also the owner of Siebel, the Netherlands’ biggest jewelry chain. Leviev has ties with Russian president Putin, U.S. president Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner. Trump, however, claims he hardly knows this ‘King of Diamonds.’ Zembla investigates Lev Leviev’s business empire.”

The first part of the documentary series focused on Trump’s ties to Russian mobsters and oligarchs. That eye-opening report showed how Trump nurtured deals with oligarchs seeking to get their riches out of Russia and revealed how Trump signed off on international money-laundering schemes, including one set up by the law firm of ex-New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani. In the second part, we see how Trump is willing to make deals with anyone who can offer him a return, regardless of the suffering involved. The documentary also shines a light on Kushner’s relationships, which blend business, politics and religion. 

There are a half-dozen takeaways from Part II, said James S. Henry, a corporate lawyer-turned-financial investigative reporter who has written lengthy exposés of Trump’s Russian connections and is featured in the film.

“I think the real news and interest in Part Two involves the exposure of apparent Trump partner Leviev's reported deep involvement in (a) trafficking in Angolan blood diamonds by way of his special arrangement with Eduardo dos Santos and family, the country's long-time dictator and chief kleptocrat; (b) Leviev's close ties to Putin; (c) Leviev's extensive business dealings with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner; (d) the extensive financial support that both Leviev and Kushner have given to extremist Israel settlers—support that appears to be inconsistent with the role that Kushner has apparently been given by the Trump administration with respect to the peace process; and (e) Leviev's alleged extensive use of non-transparent Dutch and other offshore holding companies to facilitate all these dodgy practices,” Henry wrote in an email to AlterNet.

Sander Rietveld, the documentary’s lead reporter, said Part Two is relevant for American audiences and lawmakers because it raises questions about Trump’s business relationships that can only be answered by examining his tax returns. Congressional Democrats have said Trump’s returns must be fully released before any consideration of federal tax reform.

“I think this is an excellent example of why President Trump needs to disclose his tax returns,” Rietveld said in an email. “Only when he does so, we'll know if and how he was engaged in a business deal with Lev Leviev [beyond the public relations materials shown in the film]. Given the extensive business empire of Leviev, Trump and he could have been together in real estate in the U.S., in Russia or in Eastern Europe. Or in some kind of diamond operation. According to well-established experts and investigators these kinds of operations in Africa and specifically in Angola are related to severe human rights abuses committed by security firms hired by mining companies.”

The film also examines the business circles Kushner travels in, showing overlapping ties between conservative Jewish groups and clerics and politically powerful Russians and Israelis, including Putin and Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The overlap of business and ideology and politics is another takeaway from this story,” Rietveld said. “Jared Kushner, the president's man for the Middle East, and Leviev's company AFI USA not only made a multimillion-dollar deal; they also seem to share a political view on Israel and the Palestinian territories. Both of them have been active in supporting settlements on the West Bank, which according to international law are illegal. And both of them have a very good relationship with the current, very right-wing Israeli government, and more personally with Bibi Netanyahu.”

The Dutch documentary series raises questions one can only hope congressional investigators and the FBI will take up and provide answers to. Viewing these programs makes it clear that Trump’s business empire and family fortune is based on deals with extremely unsavory characters, some of which could violate U.S. laws if fully scrutinized. In the meantime, one can only wonder how Trump’s sordid past will shape White House policies today and tomorrow.

New Hampshire Republican Who Founded Woman-Hating Site Makes Outrageous Statements Validating Rape

The state's Republican governor calls for his resignation.

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By Kali Holloway

Robert Fisher is the founder of the Red Pill, an online subreddit for men who are sick of women complaining about rape, harassment and sexism. As a vocal participant in the group, he’s written at length about how feminism makes life hard for nice guys like him who see women as sex objects and make rape jokes.

Fisher is also a Republican lawmaker representing Belknap County District 9 in the New Hampshire state legislature. For years, no one knew the two were one and the same, until an investigation by the Daily Beast’s Bonnie Bacarisse uncovered the truth. Now the state is considering whether or not to oust Fisher, and he has promised to fight removal every step of the way.

Founded by Fisher nearly five years ago, the Red Pill has since grown to become a safe space for men’s rights activists (MRA), special snowflakes who think women are basically the worst. Under the username Pk_atheist (a reference to his being a lapsed Christian “preacher’s kid”), Fisher has cultivated a community of more than 200,000 MRAs, making the Red Pill one of the most popular sites in the manosphere. To be “red pilled”—a term that’s also wildly popular with the angry white guys in white supremacist alt-right circles—is to be awakened to the reality that women are greedy, manipulative sluts; feminism is the enemy; and rape gets a bad rap. Fisher, who was reelected in November, has consistently helped push these fringe ideas as a frequent contributor to the site.

In one exchange cited by Bacarisse, members debated whether or not it would be creepy for a 40-year-old man to demand to see the “boobs” of a 15-year-old girl. “In my opinion, no,” Fisher wrote. “It’s evolutionarily advantageous and perfectly natural. Obviously I would never advocate breaking the law, but just because there’s a law doesn’t mean 15-year-old girls were always considered out of bounds.”

Fisher also claims to be quite the ladies’ man, once writing he had a “soft harem,” meaning he was juggling multiple women who were unaware they were one of many. “[Women have] absolutely done this to themselves,” Fisher wrote in another post. “I feel zero regret or shame pumping and dumping.”

Fisher was most prolific on the topic of “rape hysteria,” promoting the idea that women frequently make up rape accusations, because who doesn’t want to have one's sexual history and character assailed for the sake of attention?

“I’m going to say it—rape isn’t an absolute bad, because the rapist I think probably likes it a lot,” Fisher declared in one post. “I think he’d say it’s quite good, really.”

Fisher urged Red Pill members to document all sexual encounters with women to safeguard against being falsely accused of rape. He suggested they include the warning, “By entering, you consent to being video and audio taped.” Fisher claimed to have put the policy into practice in his own home.

“[S]tatistically I’m overdue for a false rape allegation,” Fisher once wrote. “You can’t have sex with this many women without getting one.”

Oddly, Fisher had a hard time getting anywhere with women. He decided this was for reasons that had nothing to do with him, obviously. Bacarisse notes that the lawmaker, “complained that girls were ghosting on him and standing him up,” among other things:

He aired grievances about the character of women: They were uninteresting, immature, unintelligent, lacked depth, and were entitled. He bemoaned that dating was easier for women. He felt it was unjust that women get a free ride, believing “a pair of boobs grants [them] equal footing with somebody bringing intelligence or a personality.” Over time, Fisher’s writing became increasingly hostile. He decided that existing seduction and pickup forums were overly “feminized,” complaining about “white knights” and their misdirected admonitions about “creepy” behavior (which he believed works as a dating strategy).

Though Fisher initially feigned ignorance about the site or its origins after Bacarisse’s investigation, he later admitted to his role in the site. Last Tuesday, the House Legislative Administration Committee held a hearing to determine the course of action following revelations about Fisher’s e-trail of misogyny.

Debra Altschiller, a New Hampshire Democratic Representative who has written about rape culture and works with a survivor advocacy group, spoke at the meeting.

"I am here today to not only assert that Rep. Fisher not only contributes to that rape culture that we experience here in the House, but he is a purveyor of rape culture in our state and in our nation," Altschiller said, according to NPR. "It is our responsibility to work with vigilance in this body to eradicate this vile scourge from our ranks and from our state."

New Hampshire’s Republican governor Chris Sununu has previously called for Fisher’s resignation. “Representative Fisher's comments are horrendous and repulsive and his resignation is certainly in order," Sununu declared in a statement.

Fisher has responded by painting himself a victim of a leftist campaign that has taken his words out of context. (As if there’s a context that could cast any of his words in a better light.)

"A lot of convenient reporting, to play into partisan politics, and I'm disappointed that's where it's gone," he said in his defense at the hearing, which he left before it concluded. "But I'm more than happy to get back to work and concentrate on what matters, not wasting everyone's time on this."

A Daily Beast followup found that as of a couple weeks ago, Fisher has continued to post on and moderate the site. The report points to “an alias that appears to belong to him—under the username redpillschool—[that] regularly champions misogynistic views.”

"I'm disappointed that this sort of attack has replaced real news, but it strengthens my position and resolve that fighting for equal rights is more important today than ever," Fisher said in a statement that takes a page right out of Meninist-in-Chief Donald Trump’s playbook. "Here's my message to the public: I am not disappearing. I will continue to stand strong for men's rights and the rights of all."

Comey Memo Says Trump Asked Him to End Flynn Investigation

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By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT

President Trump asked the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, to shut down the federal investigation into Mr. Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, in an Oval Office meeting in February, according to a memo Mr. Comey wrote shortly after the meeting.

“I hope you can let this go,” the president told Mr. Comey, according to the memo.

The existence of Mr. Trump’s request is the clearest evidence that the president has tried to directly influence the Justice Department and F.B.I. investigation into links between Mr. Trump’s associates and Russia.

Mr. Comey wrote the memo detailing his conversation with the president immediately after the meeting, which took place the day after Mr. Flynn resigned, according to two people who read the memo. The memo was part of a paper trail Mr. Comey created documenting what he perceived as the president’s improper efforts to influence a continuing investigation. An F.B.I. agent’s contemporaneous notes are widely held up in court as credible evidence of conversations.

Mr. Comey shared the existence of the memo with senior F.B.I. officials and close associates. The New York Times has not viewed a copy of the memo, which is unclassified, but one of Mr. Comey’s associates read parts of the memo to a Times reporter.

“I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go,” Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey, according to the memo. “He is a good guy. I hope you can let this go.”

Mr. Trump told Mr. Comey that Mr. Flynn had done nothing wrong, according to the memo.

Mr. Comey did not say anything to Mr. Trump about curtailing the investigation, only replying: “I agree he is a good guy.”

In a statement, the White House denied the version of events in the memo.

“While the president has repeatedly expressed his view that General Flynn is a decent man who served and protected our country, the president has never asked Mr. Comey or anyone else to end any investigation, including any investigation involving General Flynn,” the statement said. “The president has the utmost respect for our law enforcement agencies, and all investigations. This is not a truthful or accurate portrayal of the conversation between the president and Mr. Comey.”

In testimony to the Senate last week, the acting F.B.I. director, Andrew G. McCabe, said, “There has been no effort to impede our investigation to date.”

Mr. McCabe was referring to the broad investigation into possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. The investigation into Mr. Flynn is separate.

A spokesman for the F.B.I. declined to comment.

Mr. Comey created similar memos — including some that are classified — about every phone call and meeting he had with the president, the two people said. It is unclear whether Mr. Comey told the Justice Department about the conversation or his memos.

Mr. Trump fired Mr. Comey last week. Trump administration officials have provided multiple, conflicting accounts of the reasoning behind Mr. Comey’s dismissal. Mr. Trump said in a television interview that one of the reasons was because he believed “this Russia thing” was a “made-up story.”

The Feb. 14 meeting took place just a day after Mr. Flynn was forced out of his job after it was revealed he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence about the nature of phone conversations he had had with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Despite the conversation between Mr. Trump and Mr. Comey, the investigation of Mr. Flynn has proceeded. In Virginia, a federal grand jury has issued subpoenas in recent weeks for records related to Mr. Flynn. Part of the Flynn investigation is centered on his financial ties to Russia and Turkey.

Mr. Comey had been in the Oval Office that day with other senior national security officials for a terrorism threat briefing. When the meeting ended, Mr. Trump told those present — including Mr. Pence and Attorney General Jeff Sessions — to leave the room except for Mr. Comey.

Alone in the Oval Office, Mr. Trump began the discussion by condemning leaks to the news media, saying that Mr. Comey should consider putting reporters in prison for publishing classified information, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

Mr. Trump then turned the discussion to Mr. Flynn.

After writing up a memo that outlined the meeting, Mr. Comey shared it with senior F.B.I. officials. Mr. Comey and his aides perceived Mr. Trump’s comments as an effort to influence the investigation, but they decided that they would try to keep the conversation secret — even from the F.B.I. agents working on the Russia investigation — so the details of the conversation would not affect the investigation.

Mr. Comey was known among his closest advisers to document conversations that he believed would later be called into question, according to two former confidants, who said Mr. Comey was uncomfortable at times with his relationship with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Comey’s recollection has been bolstered in the past by F.B.I. notes. In 2007, he told Congress about a now-famous showdown with senior White House officials over the Bush administration’s warrantless wiretapping program. The White House disputed Mr. Comey’s account, but the F.B.I. director at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, kept notes that backed up Mr. Comey’s story.

The White House has repeatedly crossed lines that other administrations have been reluctant to cross when discussing politically charged criminal investigations. Mr. Trump has disparaged the continuing F.B.I. investigation as a hoax and called for an investigation into his political rivals. His representatives have taken the unusual step of declaring no need for a special prosecutor to investigate the president’s associates.

The Oval Office meeting occurred a little more than two weeks after Mr. Trump summoned Mr. Comey to the White House for a lengthy, one-on-one dinner in the residence. At that dinner, on Jan. 27, Mr. Trump asked Mr. Comey at least two times for a pledge of loyalty — which Mr. Comey declined, according to one of Mr. Comey’s associates.

In a Twitter post on Friday, Mr. Trump said that “James Comey better hope that there are no ‘tapes’ of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press!”

After the meeting, Mr. Comey’s associates did not believe there was any way to corroborate Mr. Trump’s statements. But Mr. Trump’s suggestion last week that he was keeping tapes has made them wonder whether there are tapes that back up Mr. Comey’s account.

The Jan. 27 dinner came a day after White House officials learned that Mr. Flynn had been interviewed by F.B.I. agents about his phone calls with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak. On Jan. 26, Acting Attorney General Sally Q. Yates told the White House counsel about the interview, and said Mr. Flynn could be subject to blackmail by the Russians because they knew he had lied about the content of the calls.

IF DONALD TRUMP WERE A C.E.O., HE’D PROBABLY BE FIRED TODAY

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By John Cassidy

Donald Trump has built his political career on his reputation as a successful businessman, so it seems fair to assess his recent performance as President as if he were a C.E.O. running U.S.A., Inc. The report card isn’t pretty. Indeed, if Trump were the chief executive of a public company, the firm’s non-executive directors probably would have been huddled in a crisis meeting on Tuesday morning, deciding whether to issue him a pink slip.

In such a corporate scenario, the board members would likely decide they had no choice but to oust Trump to protect the reputation of the company and prevent further damage. During the past week, he has twice messed up monumentally, doing grave harm to his own credibility and undermining the country’s reputation around the world. And these were just his latest mistakes. During his four months in the corner office, Trump has repeatedly shown that he is patently unsuited for the position he holds, and he has also demonstrated a chronic inability to change the way he operates.

It was bad enough when, this time last week, he fired one of the company’s most senior compliance employees, James Comey, and then went on television and contradicted the official version of the dismissal, which his deputy, Mike Pence, and others had stated publicly. Not for the first time since Trump took over, the firm’s public-relations department was left scrambling, and Pence was sorely embarrassed. Trump’s subsequent outbursts on Twitter, in which he appeared to threaten Comey, only made a bad situation worse. The entire episode confirmed the impression that Trump puts his own interests, and his personal grievances, ahead of his duties to the company.

But that wasn’t the nadir. On Monday we learned, courtesy of a blockbuster story in the Washington Post, of another big blunder on Trump’s part. The day after he canned Comey, Trump revealed some of the company’s trade secrets to senior executives from a key rival, Russia Corporation, which only last year did all it could to sabotage one of U.S.A., Inc.,’s key product launches. Just how much damage Trump’s indiscretions have inflicted on the company isn’t yet known. But it’s clear that he was guilty of a serious breach of trust, and another stunning error of judgment.

Since he was chosen as C.E.O., last November, it has been one thing after another. But, partly because stock in the company has risen despite it all, most of U.S.A., Inc.,’s senior executives and big shareholders have until now stayed loyal to Trump. On Monday, however, there were signs of dissension in the ranks, with some people in the company registering alarm at what is going on at the top.

“Obviously, they are in a downward spiral right now, and have got to figure out a way to come to grips with all that’s happening,” Bob Corker, who helps lead U.S.A., Inc.,’s Tennessee division, said after the Washington Post story appeared. “The chaos that is being created by the lack of discipline is creating . . . a worrisome environment.” Susan Collins, a widely respected company veteran from the firm’s Maine office, told reporters, “Can we have a crisis-free day? That is all I am asking.”

Perhaps the most worrying sign for Trump came from U.S.A., Inc.,’s corporate headquarters, in Washington, D.C., where Paul Ryan, the company’s head of product development, who is widely regarded as a key Trump ally, expressed concern about the latest turn of events. While not referring to Trump directly, Ryan said in a statement that “protecting our company’s secrets is paramount.”

To be sure, I am stretching the corporate analogy here—Ryan said “our country’s secrets,” not “our company’s secrets”—but it brings out an important point. Most major corporations wouldn’t put up with Trump-like behavior. They have well-established rules and procedures for dealing with a C.E.O. who has gone rogue. If a firm’s board of directors sees the boss acting erratically and seriously undermining the firm’s long-term interests, it can step in and find a replacement.  (At the very least, it can issue a reprimand and launch an internal inquiry to find out what has gone wrong.)

Politics doesn’t work like that, of course. More than sixty million Americans voted for Trump, and removing him from office would be a monumental undertaking. In light of Trump’s disclosures of classified information to Russia, some legal experts argued on Monday night that Congress could impeach him for violating his oath of office, in which he pledged to “faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States”—but that seems a long way off. Despite the latest statements from Ryan, Corker, and others, the G.O.P.’s leaders have come nowhere close to publicly supporting such a move.

On Tuesday morning, Trump took to Twitter and sought to defend himself. He didn’t deny that he had given classified information to the Russians. Instead, he pointed out that, as President, he has the right to declassify secrets, which is true. He also said he did it for “Humanitarian reasons, plus I want Russia to greatly step up their fight against isis & terrorism.”

This wasn’t how the Washington Post framed the story: the newspaper reported that Trump, in his meeting last Wednesday with Sergey Lavrov, Russia’s foreign minister, appeared to “be boasting about his inside knowledge of the looming threat.” Quoting an unnamed U.S. official who had knowledge of the exchange, the story quoted Trump as saying, “I get great intel. I have people brief me on great intel every day.” That is our President, and our C.E.O.

The costs of Trump's sabotage of Obamacare already are showing up in rate hikes

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By Michael Hiltzik

The easiest prediction to make about the healthcare business was that the efforts by Congress and the Trump administration to sabotage the Affordable Care Act would produce a flood of rate hikes by insurers for 2018.

We are now standing on the edge of the water. Early rate requests have come in from insurers in five states, according to ace ACA-tracker Charles Gaba, who calculates the weighted average rate request increase in those states at about 30% (that is, weighted for the enrollment of each insurer).

Many are blaming the doubt and confusion sown by Congress and the White House for one-third or more of their requested increases over 2017 rates.

“Uncertainty is already clearly leading to significantly higher rate hike requests than would otherwise be asked for,” Gaba observes.

It’s proper to note that some insurers, as well as Standard & Poor’s and the Congressional Budget Office, were seeing signs of stabilization in the individual market for 2018. Those projections are now getting reversed.

The Trump effect includes continued uncertainty about whether the feds will make cost sharing reduction payments. These are subsidies payable directly to insurers that cover deductibles and co-pays for approximately 6 million families with incomes below 250% of the poverty line.

House Republicans have sued to stop the payments on grounds that the Affordable Care Act provided for the subsidies but didn’t appropriate funds for them. Trump hasn’t said whether he will continue the Obama administration’s policy of paying them until and unless a court decisively rules against them. Instead, he’s even threatened to withhold them as a bargaining chip to force Democrats to negotiate an Obamacare repeal.

Another aspect of Trump policy that unnerves insurers is the indication that the administration will stop enforcing the individual mandate, which requires every American to have coverage — a linchpin of the ACA system because it balances the ACA’s mandate that insurers cover people with preexisting medical conditions without a surcharge.

Trump’s efforts to undermine the ACA date back to inauguration day, as the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities documents in its “Sabotage Watch.” On that day, Trump issued an executive order encouraging the Department of Health and Human Services to take an indulgent view of enforcing the individual mandate. A week later, the administration canceled an ad campaign and other outreach aimed at prompting holdouts to sign up for coverage before the deadline. Enrollments fell off a cliff.

Some insurers are being painfully direct about the Trump effect. Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Tennessee, which is moving into several counties abandoned by Humana, told the state’s insurance regulator in a May 9 letter that it would be raising rates in part because of the chaos in Washington:

“Given the potential negative effects of federal legislative and/or regulatory changes,” the letter says, “we believe it will be necessary to price-in those downside risks….These risks include but are not limited to the elimination of Cost Sharing Reduction subsidies (CSRs), the removal of the individual mandate and the collection of the health insurer tax.”

The tax referred to in the letter is a health insurer fee imposed by the ACA but suspended through this year. Next year it’s expected to bring in more than $14 billion, Insurers have been lobbying for years to get it revoked, and the Obamacare repeal bill passed by House Republicans last month does so, but doesn’t provide any funding to cover the gap.

Insurers in other states have pointed to the CSR uncertainty and other vacuums in Trump policy as grounds for portions of their rate hikes or reasons to pull out of the ACA individual exchanges altogether. Medica, the only insurer signed up to provide individual policies in Iowa next year, says it’s still pondering whether to do so barring “swift action by the state or Congress to provide stability to Iowa’s individual insurance market,” a Medica executive, Geoff Bartsh, told the Des Moines Register.

“Bartsh said Congress isn’t helping the situation by continuously arguing over how to change rules in midstream while insurers are trying to figure out their rates for 2018,” the paper reported. “When asked what advice he would have for current Medica customers in Iowa, Bartsh replied: ‘Call your elected officials.’”

In Pennsylvania, five insurers joined with the state insurance commissioner to warn Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price on April 26 that the market in that state is tottering because of federal inaction. “The most immediate drivers of instability are the weakening of the individual mandate, the uncertain status of funding for the cost sharing reductions and the absence of funding for overall market stabilization measures.”

Market stabilization measures mean the risk corridor provision of the ACA that was designed to subsidize insurers that acquired a customer base with an above-average level of risk; the program was undermined by congressional Republicans, who effectively cut its funding.

“The absence of certainty regarding market parameters and in particular those with direct financial consequence,” the insurers and commissioner continued, “magnify the risks of market participation in a way that issuers and regulators cannot ignore.”

Joe Swedish, the CEO of Anthem, a big insurer on the exchanges, has threatened to raise rates or pull out of some states if the CSR doubts aren’t resolved soon. “We plan to file preliminary 2018 rates with the assumption that the cost-sharing reductions will be funded," he said during the company's first-quarter earnings conference call. But “if we do not have certainty that CSRs will be funded for 2018 by early June, we will need to evaluate appropriate adjustments to our filing. … Those adjustments could include resubmitting higher rates increases or exiting certain individual ACA-compliant markets altogether.”

Despite these warnings, the Trump administration and congressional Republicans continue to pretend that the ills of the individual market are President Obama’s fault. Earlier Tuesday, Price remarked that “the failure of the individual marketplace under Obamacare is driving insurers out of counties and states at an alarming rate, leaving millions of Americans without choices for affordable health insurance.”

He showed no willingness to acknowledge that his own policies are responsible for a good part of those problems, and the failure of the White House and congressional GOP to take the matter in hand allows them to fester.

The Republican game plan long has been based on blaming any collapse of the individual market on the law itself and its implementation under the Obama administration. But there are clear signs that that won’t work. The tide of anger visible in town hall meetings held by Republicans who voted to repeal Obamacare in the House is evidence that they’re being held responsible. So, too, is the result of a Quinnipiac University opinion poll released in March, showing intense disapproval of the GOP repeal plan across all age groupings and all political categories except Republicans.

With control of both houses of Congress and the White House, the GOP is “it” on healthcare policy now. If the individual market collapses, they’ll get the blame.