Since the whistle was blown on Trump denying aid to Ukraine unless it "investigated" his political opponents in the U.S., his position has been that there was no quid pro quo. Yesterday, his White House chief of staff Mike Mulvaney admitted there was, and added a sneering "get over it" for good measure. This was, apparently, not in the script, and he was soon made to walk back the remarks. But everyone saw them...

It was the first time the White House acknowledged a link between the withheld aid and probes that Trump sought. Some Republicans were deeply concerned by Mulvaney's comments.

"You don't hold up foreign aid that we had previously appropriated for a political initiative," said GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. "Period."

Republican Rep. Francis Rooney of Florida called Mulvaney's acknowledgment about withholding Ukraine aid "troubling," saying it is "not a good thing" to do that in connection "with threatening foreign leaders."

The Doral is a Miami resort one would expect to be sparsely occupied in June, an hour's drive from the beaches in the sticky Florida summer. Moreover, it's failing to meet its financial expectations. Fortunately, it's just been picked by U.S. President Donald Trump to host next year's G7 summit of the world's most powerful leaders, guaranteeing a full house. Its owner, U.S. President Donald Trump, must be delighted!

Trump leans into corruption, writes Bess Levin:

Pressed about the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in hosting a massive government event that attracts worldwide attention at one of Trump’s for-profit clubs, Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney initially tried to claim that the administration had looked at other locations and none of them worked because some places have higher altitudes and because June is apparently a notoriously difficult month to plan an event. “There’s plenty of other good places in this country to hold a large event, there’s no question about it,” Mulvaney told reporters, pretending like the White House wasn’t always going to pick the president’s own resort.

Doral's income droped 69% in two years. Why do you think he's using his position to put funnel business and attention to Doral?https://t.co/ph7CJQhgbr

— Citizens for Ethics (@CREWcrew) October 18, 2019

Read the rest

The New York Times reports that John Bolton, Trump's former national security advisor, might turn out to be the loudest whistle of all in the case of Rudy Giuliani's demented efforts to get Ukrainian officials to help Trump win a second term as President.

Mr. Bolton got into a tense exchange on July 10 with Gordon D. Sondland, the Trump donor turned ambassador to the European Union, who was working with Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal lawyer, to press Ukraine to investigate Democrats, according to three people who heard the testimony. ... “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Mr. Bolton, a Yale-trained lawyer, told Ms. Hill to tell White House lawyers, according to two people at the deposition. ... It was not the first time Mr. Bolton expressed grave concerns to Ms. Hill about the campaign being run by Mr. Giuliani. “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” Ms. Hill quoted Mr. Bolton as saying during an earlier conversation.

Giuliani is already being investigated, Xeni Jardin writes. So the appearance of this particularly sharp quote in the press suggests witnesses (such as Bolton) turning on Trump and his clique to avoid any possibility of getting caught up in it.

The funny part is that everyone just assumes it's about Trump's corrupt efforts to get foreign governments to thumb the 2020 election scales for him, but then it'll turn out to literally involve Rudy trucking cash by the kiloton out of Kiev's finest jellie labs. Read the rest

When Elizabeth Warren inaugurated the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, one of her prime targets was subprime/payday/predatory lenders; and the lenders' lobbyists went on an all-out blitz, eventually prevailing under Trump's CFPB boss Mick Mulvaney. Read the rest

Mark Corbett has settled with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau -- founded by Elizabeth Warren and then gutted by Trump appointee and awful person Mick Mulvaney, now the White House Chief of Staff -- over the complaints that he ran an illegal loan-sharking operation that swindled veterans out of their pensions for a decade.

He has been fined $1. Read the rest

Mick Mulvaney (previously) is a terrible human being -- as Trump's head for the financial watchdog, he's gutted the agency and allowed crooked lenders and dirty banks to get away with ripping off Americans -- so he knows one when he sees one. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is Elizabeth Warren's gift that keeps on giving -- one of the most effective US government agencies, handing out real punishment to banks that break the law, fighting loan-sharks that prey on poor people, and maintaining a database of vetted consumer complaints against banks that have ripped them off. Read the rest

Wells Fargo defrauded 800,000 car loan borrowers, forcing 274,000 of them into bankruptcy and stealing ("wrongfully repossessing") 25,000 cars; they also ripped off mortgage borrowers by failing to send them their paperwork until after the deadline for filing it and then fining them for not filing it on time. Read the rest

Following reports this week that Mick Mulvaney, Trump's new chief of the Consumer Finance Protection Board had stopped all activity related to probing the Equifax breach in which the sensitive financial data of virtually every adult American was stolen, 32 Democratic senators have written to Mulvaney demanding that he account for himself. Read the rest

Mick Mulvaney, the former loan-shark lobbyist who killed plans to regulate payday lenders after being appointed chief of the Consumer Finance Protection Board, has effective abandoned the agency's efforts to punish Equifax for leaking the sensitive personal and financial information of at least 145,500,000 Americans. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, founded by Elizabeth Warren prior to her career as a senator, was once the gem of the US political system, a consistently effective force for punishing finance industry wrongdoing, until Trump let Wall Street robber barons loose on it, under the direction of a lawyer who represented loan sharks before going to work for the Trump administration. Read the rest

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is a rare gem in the US financial regulatory apparatus, a regulator that actually tackles fraud and criminality by monied, powerful financial institutions, exacts meaningful penalties from them, and forces them to stop. They're one of the only things standing between you and highway robbery. Read the rest

Trump, his deal-making skills having failed him, simply ordered his party Thursday night to pass his unappetizing Obamacare replacement plan, or else. And the "else" is Obamacare, forever and ever and ever. Read the rest

As Xeni wrote, yesterday's vote to de-fund the NSA's warrantless dragnet surveillance came within a whisker of passing. 205 Reps voted in favor of asserting innocent Americans' right not to be spied upon; 217 voted against, and 12 abstained -- enough to have carried the day. Who were these heroes and villains and absentees? Here are their names from the full roll call.

If you live in the district of a Congresscritter who voted in favor of defunding the NSA, please call her or him and say thank you. If your Congresscritter voted in favor of you being spied upon at all times and in every way forever, call that person up and do some shouting. The anti-NSA side was thoroughly bipartisan. There are undoubtably some "no" voters who can be persuaded to switch to a yes if they think that their constituents really care about it. We are so close.

Same goes for abstainers -- if those 12 had bothered to show up for work yesterday and voted with the Constitution they've sworn to uphold, the day would have been carried.

Click through the jump to see the full lists, courtesy of Techdirt. Read the rest

Mulvaney on Bomb Disposal is a WWII-era cartoon drawn by and for Navy bomb-disposal experts. Warning: lots of racial stereotyping, especially of Axis powers.

Link

(Thanks, James!)

Read the rest