Stories from Slate

The Trumps Are Enriching Themselves With Taxpayer Money by Promoting Their Hotels

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 20:28:00 GMT

The Trumps’ desire to profit off the presidency was clear even before the family patriarch was sworn in. What remained less clear, however, was just how much money they’d be able to funnel into their own bank accounts and those of their business partners. A full accounting of their enrichment is currently impossible, but on Wednesday the Washington Post published a key data point:

The State Department spent more than $15,000 to book 19 rooms at the new Trump hotel in Vancouver when members of President Trump’s family headlined the grand opening of the tower in late February. … The department’s expenditures reflect a total of 56 nights booked at the Trump hotel in Vancouver. Four rooms were booked for seven nights, while the remaining rooms were booked for either one or two nights.

As the paper noted, those numbers, which the newspaper obtained via the Freedom of Information Act, represents “the first evidence of State Department expenditures at a Trump-branded property since President Trump took office in January.”

What separates this particular con from the rest of the president’s ongoing graft is that, as opposed to using the White House as a branding tool or pressuring domestic lobbyists and foreign diplomats to stay in his D.C. hotel, here we have the president lining his pockets with money provided by American taxpayers.

The Trumps banked this cash, perversely, because the president’s family—two adult sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, their spouses, and the president’s younger daughter, Tiffany—decided to drop by for the grand opening of a Trump-branded property. The $15,000 figure might not sound like all that much, but consider that this doesn’t include money spent by the Secret Service to house its personnel, who traveled to Canada to protect the Trumps. The Secret Service has a policy against disclosing the logistics of its security operations, but it stands to reason the agency’s hotel bill in Vancouver was many times higher than that of the State Department, since the latter normally plays only a support role on these kinds of trips. Earlier this year, for example, the two agencies together spent nearly $100,000 on lodging in Uruguay when Eric Trump made a pre-inauguration promotional trip to a Trump-branded property. The State Department’s portion of the bill was roughly $10,000, while the Secret Service was responsible for the rest. That’s money that taxpayers never would have had to spend if the Trumps had divested themselves of their conflict-rich business, or if Eric would have simply stayed home.

The president and his family don’t actually own the Vancouver hotel, but they make money off the licensing of the Trump name and from managing the property. According to the president’s most recent financial disclosure, he earned more than $5 million in royalties from the Vancouver hotel between Jan. 1, 2016, and April 15, 2017. For competitive reasons, businesses do their best to keep the specifics of such licensing deals private, but court records have shown that Trump has struck deals connected to similar properties in which his pay was tied to the project’s success. What’s good for Trump-Vancouver, then, is most likely good for the president—and certainly good for his business partners who do own the hotel. And that’s without factoring in the free (for the hotel) media attention Trump and co. got thanks to the unofficial-but-unmistakable imprimatur of the presidency that came via the presence of the president’s children, the State Department, and the Secret Service.

The Vancouver trip isn’t a one-off incident—it’s simply one of the first times we’ve been able to find a (partial) price tag for one of these trips. Don Jr. and Eric have made other jaunts abroad while accompanied by their Secret Service details, and likely State Department support staff, including to Dubai and Ireland. And the pair have nothing on their stepmother Melania, who spent the first months of the administration in Trump Tower in New York City surrounded by taxpayer-funded security, or their father, who spends his free time—and some of his definitely-not-free time—at his Mar-a-Lago club in Florida and at his other domestic commercial properties. Each of those moves almost certainly boosted the Trumps’ bank accounts thanks to the hotel fees, rentals, and leases Trump’s own government had to pay to keep their people close.

Members of the first family have long received Secret Service protection, which means taxpayers by necessity pay when one of them travels abroad. But what makes this Vancouver trip different is that it was designed for the benefit of the Trump Organization. This was a trip taken both literally and figuratively in Donald Trump’s name, and for Donald Trump’s personal profit. And yet it was taxpayers who were left to foot part of the bill.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Just How Close Was Donald Trump to Putting His Name on a Tower in Moscow?

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 10 Jul 2017 21:50:00 GMT

The New York Times published a juicy story this weekend about a meeting during the 2016 presidential campaign between Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and a lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, connected to the Kremlin. The meeting was arranged under the pretense that Veselnitskaya had damaging information about Hillary Clinton. The man who arranged the meeting, according to the Times and the Washington Post, was Emin Agalarov, a Russian pop star and real estate mogul whose Kremlin-connected family had sponsored the Trump-owned Miss Universe pageant in Russia in 2013.

The existence of the meeting is important because it represents the first public indication that important members of the Trump campaign team were open to accepting Russian help to win the election. But the Washington Post’s reporting also includes this secondary tidbit of interest:

After the pageant, the Agalarovs signed a preliminary deal with Trump to build a tower bearing his name in Moscow, though the deal has been on hold since Trump began running for president.

The first mention I can find of this deal in English-language media is from a Forbes interview from this past March, in which Emin Agalarov said that he and his father thought that teaming with Trump on a Trump Tower next door to one of the family’s own skyscrapers in Moscow “could be a really cool project to execute.” He claimed at the time that he and his dad had gone as far as to pick out a specific spot for the tower, and even signed a letter of intent with the Trump Organization at some unspecified point prior to Trump launching his campaign in the summer of 2015. “He ran for president, so we dropped the idea,” Agalarov said. “But if he hadn’t run we would probably be in the construction phase today.”

Is this true? It’s impossible to know without the paperwork being made public. Trump wrote a barely coherent tweet after returning from the Miss Universe pageant back in 2013 telling the Agalarovs that, “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next”—but that, of course, wouldn’t be the first or last time that Trump tweeted something that he had no intention of following through on. The Trump Organization has been quick to downplay its interest in Russian expansion. Following the Forbes article this spring, a company spokeswoman issued a statement that read: “The Trump Organization does not [have], and has never had, any properties in Russia, and the press’ fascination with this narrative is both misleading and fabricated." But obviously that statement is worded in a way that avoids addressing the actual question at hand, which is whether the Trump Organization ever had the intention to expand to Moscow. The company did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Slate on Monday.

Still, it’s no secret that Trump has long wanted to slap his name on the side of a Russian skyscraper. As the New York Times has reported, Trump considered several potential sites for a project in the 1980s, and even went as far as to announce plans to invest $250 million in two luxury buildings in Moscow nearly a decade later. Neither of those was ever built, but Trump’s interest in Russian real estate continued in the current century. Felix Sater, a Russian immigrant and longtime Trump business associate (as well as a convicted extortionist and U.S. government informant) told the Times earlier this year that in the mid-2000s, the Trump family’s perception of Moscow was: “nice, big city, great. Let’s do a deal here.”

That also lines up with remarks Trump and his eldest son, Donald Jr., made roughly a decade ago. In a 2007 deposition, Sr. listed Moscow among a handful of possible expansion cities for the Trump brand, and the following year, Jr. reportedly told a roomful of Manhattan real estate professionals that he had traveled to Russia a half-dozen times for business in the previous 18 months. “Given what I’ve seen in Russia’s real estate market as of late relative to some of the emerging markets, the country seems to have a lot more natural strength, especially in the high-end sector where people focus on price per square-meter,” he said. He added: “In Russia, I really prefer Moscow over all cities in the world.”

Given all that, even if the Trumps and the Agalarovs never came as close to actually breaking ground as Emin now claims, a partnership certainly seems plausible given their past dealings. In a world where Trump isn’t in the U.S. capital, his name might very well soon be on the side of a building in the Russian one.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

The Ethics Official Doing the Best Job of Holding Trump Accountable Is Quitting

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 06 Jul 2017 19:05:00 GMT

The head of the U.S. Office of Government Ethics announced Thursday that he is stepping down. In that position, Walter Shaub challenged Donald Trump over his and his administration’s myriad conflicts of interest. Shaub’s five-year term would have run through January 2018, making his departure a disappointing surprise for those who had watched him use a previously obscure federal post to publicly sound the alarm about Trump’s unethical practices.

Shaub informed the president of his decision via a short letter. While it didn’t give a specific reason for his decision to step down six months early, it’s not difficult to read between the lines given his past tangles with Trump and the president’s Republican defenders in Congress. “The great privilege and honor of my career has been to lead OGE’s staff and the community of ethics officials in the federal executive branch,” Shaub wrote. “They are committed to protecting the principle that public service is a public trust, requiring employees to place loyalty to the Constitution, the laws, and ethical principles above private gain.”

Shaub elaborated on his decision in an interview with the New York Times and the Washington Post, telling the papers that he was not pressured by the president or anyone else in the administration to step down. Instead, Shaub said he simply felt there was no reason to run out the clock given his agency’s lack of enforcement power. “There isn’t much more I could accomplish at the Office of Government Ethics, given the current situation,” he told the Times. “OGE’s recent experiences have made it clear that the ethics program needs to be strengthened.”

The announcement comes less than two weeks after the Justice Department’s compliance attorney, Hui Chen, left her post before her contract was up because she said she had no right to hold private companies to ethics standards that the White House itself was not meeting. Chen was more vocal about her reasons for leaving, but Shaub’s departure is far bigger news given how much he has sparred in public with the administration.

The soon-to-be former OGE chief proved to be a thorn in Trump’s side even before the inauguration. In late November, after Trump made another just-trust-me promise to fully separate himself from his business, Shaub took to his agency’s official Twitter account to underscore the emptiness of that pledge. “Only way to resolve these conflicts of interest is to divest. Good call!” Shaub wrote in faux-encouragement, knowing full well that Trump had no such plans. When Trump finally unveiled the lackluster details of his plan two months later, Shaub replaced sarcasm with sincerity and declared the plan “meaningless.”

In April, Slate named Shaub among the 80 people and institutions that had kept Trump in check during his first 100 days in office—and for good reason. OGE is an advisory agency with little enforcement power, yet Shaub somehow was still able to use his post to force the Trump administration to formally defend actions it would have rather ignored. In the process, he was able to notch small but tangible victories, like when he went toe to toe with the president’s lawyers over the administration’s plan to keep secret the internal ethics waivers it handed out to senior staff. More often, however, Shaub’s hands were more or less tied, given that his office ultimately reports to the president and since congressional Republicans made it clear that they were unhappy with Shaub’s efforts to hold Trump to the same ethics rules and norms past presidents at least pretended to follow.

Shaub’s next job will be at the Campaign Legal Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy group founded by Trevor Potter, who served as a GOP appointee to the Federal Election Commission and who is best known for helping Stephen Colbert set up the Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow super PAC. According to the Post, OGE chief of staff Shelley K. Finlayson will most likely take over as acting director once Shaub departs on July 19, though it’s always possible Trump could appoint another senior OGE official to serve as a placeholder until the Senate confirms his chosen permanent replacement. Regardless of who gets the job, though, the most that can be reasonably expected of the new director is that he or she picks up where Shaub left off. And that, sadly, means fighting a battle that is unwinnable unless the OGE is given more power—or until Congress is willing to step up to apply some pressure of its own.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

EPA Chief Scott Pruitt Wants to Enlist a “Red Team” to Sow Doubts About Climate Change

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 30 Jun 2017 21:55:00 GMT

Scott Pruitt is hatching a new plan to turn his personal and unreasonable denial of the accepted science on climate change into official federal policy: He’ll employ military tactics to review climate science to assess the “truth.” Or, as a new report in E&E News’ ClimateWire put it, Donald Trump’s EPA chief is “leading a formal initiative to challenge mainstream climate science:”

The program will use “red team, blue team” exercises to conduct an “at-length evaluation of U.S. climate science,” the official said, referring to a concept developed by the military to identify vulnerabilities in field operations. “The administrator believes that we will be able to recruit the best in the fields which study climate and will organize a specific process in which these individuals ... provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science," the source said.

“We are in fact very excited about this initiative,” the official added. “Climate science, like other fields of science, is constantly changing. A new, fresh and transparent evaluation is something everyone should support doing.”

This Red Team strategy has been gaining traction among conservatives in recent months, beginning with an April op-ed in the Wall Street Journal penned by New York University theoretical physicist Steven Koonin, which suggested that this method would provide a rigorous way to reassess the science that would allow for an answer that is “not preordained.” A trio of outspoken and outside-the-mainstream climate scientists then lent their own voices to the idea in March during a House hearing organized by Republicans to challenge the current climate consensus. By the start of this month, the message had reached its intended audience. “The American people need to have that type of honest, open discussion, and it’s something that we hope to help provide as part of our leadership,” Pruitt told Breitbart in reference to Koonin’s proposal. It seems he’s now ready to put that plan in motion.

So how would it work? Here’s how Koonin laid it out in his op-ed:

The focus would be a published scientific report meant to inform policy such as the U.N.’s Summary for Policymakers or the U.S. Government’s National Climate Assessment. A Red Team of scientists would write a critique of that document and a Blue Team would rebut that critique. Further exchanges of documents would ensue to the point of diminishing returns. A commission would coordinate and moderate the process and then hold hearings to highlight points of agreement and disagreement, as well as steps that might resolve the latter. The process would unfold in full public view: the initial report, the exchanged documents and the hearings.

At first blush, that sounds all well and good—what’s the harm? Koonin himself admits that it may result in a policy that suggests climate change is less serious than we thought, but it could also result in a mandate to take climate change more seriously. But that’s why it’s so dangerous: It sounds reasonable without actually being so. For one thing, there’s the issue of who Pruitt will pick to join the Red Team. As ClimateWire reported:

"The administrator believes that we will be able to recruit the best in the fields which study climate and will organize a specific process in which these individuals ... provide back-and-forth critique of specific new reports on climate science," the source said.

Should we trust the selection of a politician who has been steadfast in his refusal to accept scientific consensus and one whose career has been funded heavily by the petro-interests that benefit most from our carbon status quo? He’s already cleared his organization of academic scientists in an admitted attempt to clear the way for more industry representatives.

And anyway, the “honest, open discussion” Pruitt claims the American people deserve already exists. It’s called peer review—and it’s a process by which roughly 97 percent of published papers support the conclusion that climate change is real and that man is responsible for the majority of the recent warming.

Peer review isn’t perfect in practice, but when taken together all those papers paint a fair picture of the accepted scientific view on a matter. Sending in a Red Team of devil’s advocates would give the false impression—or, given the false balance that often finds its way into mainstream coverage of the issue, reinforce the false impression—that there are two equal sides to this debate.

There are not equal sides to the debate over climate change. Plenty of recent research suggests we have underestimated, not overestimated, the effects. And Pruitt’s strategy highlights something insidious to the Republican party and its understanding of science: For all the March of Science signs claiming that people want their evidence-based science “after peer review,” this is an excellent reminder of the fact that peer review, and this new form of peer review-plus, is an inherently conservative idea at its heart. As my colleague Dan Engber recently wrote, “The people making the rules right now are looking for excuses not to act. Calls for peer review will only help them.”

In a perfect world, a Red Team could help climate scientists get a better understanding of exactly how bad this is going to be, and how soon. But in Pruitt’s world, the strategy risks boiling away such nuance, which would conveniently allow Republicans and their like-minded industry allies to continue to pretend that man-made climate change remains an open question. And as long they can keep doing that, it frees them from the responsibility of actually finding solutions.

The Latest Kushner Scoop Shows Just How Difficult Robert Mueller’s Job Is

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 26 Jun 2017 17:49:00 GMT

The Washington Post kicked off the week with a long look at the latest shady-seeming financial dealings of the Trump clan: a $285 million loan Jared Kushner’s family business, Kushner Companies, received from Deutsche Bank the month before the 2016 election. The story adds more dots to an already crowded canvas of Trump-themed conflicts of interest and loose links with Russia, but doesn’t draw a line between any two of them in permanent marker. A quick rundown:

The loan came as the German bank was in the midst of negotiating settlements with the U.S. Justice Department over a mortgage fraud case, and with New York state regulators on charges related to an apparent Russian money-laundering scheme. (The bank agreed to pay a $7.2 billion federal penalty in December to settle the former, and a $425 million state fine the next month tied to the latter. The feds, however, are reportedly not done investigating the money-laundering case.)
Kushner did not list the Deutsche corporate loan—or his own personal guarantee of it—on the financial disclosure form he filed with the Office of Government Ethics after joining the Trump administration as a senior adviser.
The loan was part of a refinancing package for Kushner-owned retail space in the former New York Times building in Manhattan. Kushner Companies purchased said space in 2015 from a company called Africa-Israel Investments, the chairman of which was/is Lev Leviev, an Uzbek-born Israeli citizen and one of the world’s wealthiest men. (Nickname: King of Diamonds. Reason: His extensive diamond holdings in Africa, Israel, and Russia.)
Leviev told the New York Times in 2007, shortly after his company bought the property from its previous owner, that he was a “true friend” of Vladimir Putin. (His company now claims that statement was made in reference to Leviev’s belief that Putin “has been a ‘true friend’ to the Jewish people in Russia,” and that Leviev “does not have a personal relationship” with the Russian president.)
Leviev invited Trump in 2008 to a meeting at one of his New York properties, an invitation he says Trump accepted. The Russian press reported at the time that Leviev hoped to work with Trump on real estate deals in Moscow. (Leviev’s company told the Post that no such deals were ever finalized.)

So, yeah, there’s a lot going on in this story, and yet at the same it’s not clear what exactly is going on.

It’s pretty easy to make the case that the Deutsche Bank loan presents a conflict of interest. Kushner, the first son-in-law and powerful White House adviser, has an existing financial relationship with one of the world’s largest banks (as does Trump), which is said to be under investigation by Trump’s DOJ and which generally operates in a marketplace where U.S. regulations can dictate its bottom line. That’s a problem even if Kushner recuses himself from any Deutsch-related matters, as the White House is promising he will. (And the White House has a poor record on promise follow-through.) Still, such a conflict of interest can exist without it necessarily proving we have a quid pro quo situation.

The timing of the Deutsche loan certainly looks sketchy—but it’s not automatically damning. The Post doesn’t say the exact date it happened, only that it occurred “one month before Election Day.” A strict reading of that description dates the deal to Oct. 8, aka one day after the world heard Trump on tape bragging that one of the perks of being famous is that women let him “grab them by the pussy.” And the smart set saw Trump’s odds narrowing considerably even before that bombshell dropped. For example, his chances peaked in FiveThirtyEight’s polls-plus forecast at 45 percent on Sept. 26, the day of the first general election debate, and then fell by more than 10 points a week for the next two. The fact Trump looked like such a long shot when the deal was finalized makes the case that the loan was politically motivated by either party considerably more difficult to prove without further evidence.

Even Kushner’s failure to disclose the loan on his OGE form comes with an extenuating factor. Kushner’s lawyers told the Post that the agency’s own guidance didn’t technically require their client to disclose a loan like this one. Keeping it off his filing likely violated the spirit of the law, as one former OGE lawyer suggested it did to the Post, but Kushner appears to have an argument that he followed the letter of it. That doesn’t excuse this administration’s anti-transparency ways, of course, but it does provide ammunition to White House defenders, who already have plenty of practice defending Team Trump on technicalities.

None of this means this deal doesn’t deserve more scrutiny. It does, and I’m glad the Post and, one assumes, FBI special prosecutor Robert Mueller is giving it a closer look. But my larger point is that this story illustrates just how Herculean of a task Mueller has been given. He’s said to be currently looking into Kushner and his financial history as a part of a broader investigation into Russian meddling in the general election. Given all the overlaps in the interconnected worlds of high finance and real estate—and the size of both the Kushner Companies and the Trump Organization’s portfolios—he’ll have nearly endless avenues to go down looking for such links. That may be both a blessing and a curse, particularly when intent will be so difficult to prove in so many of these dealings.

Ultimately, Mueller reports to Trump’s DOJ, which means that if he does find the goods on Trump or one of his associates, he’ll almost certainly need the backing of Congress to take action. But as long as Republicans control the legislative branch, they won’t feel pressure to break with their president until their constituents turn on him first. That’s no guarantee in a world where Trump’s wrongdoing is obvious, but it becomes even more difficult to imagine in a world of tenuous ties and transactions that can be difficult to weave into an easy-to-understand narrative, if one exists at all.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Seven Months After Winning the General Election, Donald Trump Holds Another Campaign Rally

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 22 Jun 2017 03:45:00 GMT

CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa—Donald Trump stood on stage Wednesday night at a rally organized by his campaign staff that he claimed was not a campaign rally. The president called for congressional bipartisanship and then blasted the Democrats needed to make that happen. Later, he praised himself for not naming his predecessor by name, while naming his predecessor by name. “See how nice I am?” he said while trashing President Obama’s approach to Cuba. “I say the previous administration, as opposed to the Obama administration.” The crowd went wild.

The president’s approval rating is underwater. He is under-siege and his campaign is under FBI investigation back in Washington. But none of that seemed to matter to Trump or his supporters at the U.S. Cellular Center on Wednesday. The president appeared energized by a crowd that spent much of the night on its feet. Team Trump suggested before the speech that it would last only about 30 minutes; in the end the president was on stage for roughly 75. “You don't want me to leave,” Trump told the crowd near the end, one of the truer statements he made all night. “I don't want to leave either.”

Fittingly for a night full of so many contradictions, Trump’s rambling speech was both freewheeling and somehow (relatively!) focused. He ignored his teleprompter for long stretches, and yet remained on message, at least by his standards—the message being that everything is going absolutely according to his plan. He offered up his usual blend of misinformation, tangents, and braggadocio, but avoided the type of sound bite that can hijack a news cycle. At one point, he even showed some uncharacteristic restraint by shrugging off a chant of “Lock her up” that erupted from the crowd. If his supporters noticed the awkwardness of him ignoring such a request in an arena plastered with signs declaring “PROMISES MADE, PROMISES KEPT,” they didn’t show it.

Trump played the greatest hits from his campaign (bashing Obama, Hillary Clinton, the media), relived his surprise electoral win yet again, and touted Republicans victories in Georgia and South Carolina special elections. “These people are being driven crazy,” Trump said in reference to his critics. “Crazy. I mean, they have phony witch hunts going against me. They have everything going. All we do is win, win, win.”

In one of the more nonsensical moments of the night, Trump, who spent much of the campaign attacking Clinton for being too cozy with Goldman Sachs, sang the praises of Gary Cohn, the former Goldman exec who now works in his administration. “I love all people: rich or poor,” Trump said. “But in those particular positions, I just don't want a poor person, does that make sense?” Somehow, for this crowd, it apparently did.

Crooked Old Party

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 31 May 2017 18:10:12 GMT

Of the many conflicts of interest created by President Trump’s family business, none is more glaring than his continued ownership of the Trump International Hotel in Washington. The heavily panned faux-luxe establishment is the physical manifestation of Trump’s fledgling kleptocracy, a 263-room symbol of one man’s desire to squeeze every possible penny out of his presidency. Even if you ignore the myriad ways foreign governments are using the hotel to win favor with the president—and the constitutional questions that come with that—there remains a more straightforward problem: Trump’s dual roles as president and businessman mean he is now both landlord and tenant at a government-owned building only blocks from the White House.

Unlike most of Trump’s other apparent conflicts of interest, it appeared for a time like the issues with the D.C. hotel need not necessarily go to court or the Republican-controlled Congress to be settled. Instead, it seemed as though it could be decided relatively swiftly by the General Services Administration, the little-known federal agency that oversees the Old Post Office Pavilion that is the site of the hotel. Trump’s critics believed the decision should have been an easy one: The GSA lease Trump signed appears to bar any elected government official from being party to it, which would mean Trump violated it as soon as he took the oath of office. In March, however, the GSA came to the opposite conclusion—that the president was in compliance thanks to a convoluted restructuring of his business that means he ostensibly won’t receive any of the hotel profits until after he leaves office.

Who, then, is to blame for Trump’s ongoing and blatant exploitation of his public office in this case? The reasonable answer would be either the man doing the exploiting, Donald J. Trump; the man letting the exploiting happen, Timothy Horne, who took over as acting administrator at GSA at Trump’s direction shortly after the new president was sworn in; or some combination of the two. But the New York Times editorial board recently identified a different culprit: Denise Turner Roth, who led GSA during Trump’s presidential transition and who did not void his hotel lease before leaving that job upon Trump’s inauguration.

“Ms. Roth’s compliance was mystifying,” the Times editorial board wrote earlier this month. “She was an outgoing Obama appointee. What did she have to lose by calling to task the Trump administration?” The Times then answered its own question: “A few weeks after leaving the agency, Ms. Roth was named a senior adviser at WSP/USA, a global engineering and construction management firm whose projects include—surprise—government buildings.” The revolving-door accusation was clear: Roth gave the president a free pass in order to preserve her relationship with his administration.

There’s little evidence, however, to support that specific conclusion. It’s difficult to see Roth as the villain the Times has made her out to be.

The Times attacked Roth for failing to act against Trump, but her position—one also stated publicly by her agency at the time of the transition—is that she needed more information before she could say definitively whether Trump would be in violation of the lease once he was sworn in. By the time Trump finally shared that information about how his D.C hotel would be run during his presidency, Roth was already out of office and her successor—chosen by Trump—was in. (WSP/USA declined to make Roth available to the Times editorial board for comment before it published its piece, but she explained her stance to me and in an interview with the Washington Post after the editorial was published.)

“We had to be confident in how we were treating this in the hyperpolitical environment we were in,” she told me. “I thought that it was important that we had an opportunity to have the conversation with the Trump Organization about what his role would be [in the hotel] once he became president. There were a lot of elements at play, and it was important for the agency to do its due diligence.”

That might sound like a cop-out, but a closer look at the much-cited clause in the lease illustrates the difficult position Roth found herself in. Here it is in full:

No member or delegate to Congress, or elected official of the Government of the United States or the Government of the District of Columbia, shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom; provided, however, that this provision shall not be construed as extending to any Person who may be a shareholder or other beneficial owner of any publicly held corporation or other entity, if this Lease is for the general benefit of such corporation or other entity.

Most of the debate over that provision ends at the word therefrom; the Times editorial board, and the paper’s reporting staff—as well as Slate—tend to cut the sentence off after it. That snip would seem to make things straightforward: As soon as Trump was declared the winner of the election, it was obvious that he would become an “elected official of the Government of the United States” on Jan. 20 and thus seem to be in violation of the lease. When read in its entirety, though, the second half of the provision raises the possibility that Trump could have chosen to restructure his company in such a way whereby he would have remained in compliance with the lease. It was that possibility that Roth said she felt compelled to entertain.

“I think it’s important to understand that this was a legal contract and any action that we took, especially premature action, would have legal implications for the agency,” Roth said. “There was some question as to how the second part of that clause applied to the first: What was the structure of the organization and how would it change—and then how would this clause apply once it did?” Roth was long gone by the time the GSA got the answers to those questions. According to the agency, Trump didn’t formally notify the government that he had restructured the ownership of his hotel until Jan. 23 and didn’t finish providing the new organizational details until March 20—two full months after Roth had packed up her office.

Roth declined to tell me whether she agreed with the GSA ruling that came down after she left office, saying she didn’t feel comfortable answering without knowing the particulars of the discussion between agency staff and the Trump Organization. But Roth did make it clear that she continues to be bothered by the fact Trump did not divest in his hotel—a public position that cuts against the idea that she is eager to stay in the president’s good graces in order to protect her professional fortunes. “As a private citizen, it’s still difficult for me to believe you can have a clean separation if Trump is both owner and leasee,” she said. She also said she’d have preferred to have been the one to settle the lease question once and for all. “I was seriously frustrated,” she said. “The last thing I wanted to do was to leave loose ends for this organization. I was disappointed that we weren’t able to settle this.”

It’s unclear what Roth could have accomplished by weighing in prematurely. Unlike Acting Attorney General Sally Yates—who was fired after refusing to use her department to fight for the president’s travel ban—Roth wasn’t being asked to defend an executive order she believed to be unlawful. Unlike Office of Government Ethics chief Walter Shaub—who has used his perch to subtly scold the president’s flaunting of ethics norms—the agency Roth ran actually has enforcement power, which means that if she would have scolded Trump publicly, it may have created a legal headache for her agency later while also giving the president the chance to claim any final decision was politically motivated. Taking a moral stand like either of those two government employees did would have been cathartic for those many Americans fed up with Trump’s profiteering, but it would have been done on the basis of legally and factually incomplete information that could have jeopardized the ruling and muddied the waters of public opinion. If you’re looking to assign blame beyond Trump himself or the current GSA officials who are allowing him to keep his lease, there’s a far more obvious answer: Republicans in Congress who continue to look the other way.

The Most Money Lines From Hillary Clinton’s Surprisingly Good Wellesley Commencement Speech

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 26 May 2017 17:43:00 GMT

Hillary Clinton delivered the commencement address at Wellesley College on Friday. Her speech marked the third time she’s spoken at her alma mater’s commencement and came 48 years after she did so for the first time at her own graduation. The former first lady, U.S. senator, and Democratic presidential nominee never mentioned Donald Trump by name, but the president’s unspoken presence was impossible to miss in remarks that were funny, impassioned, and—fitting the occasion—exceedingly optimistic.

Clinton drew the loudest cheers from the assembled students when she delivered a history lesson on where things stood in the United States back when she addressed her own class at its graduation in 1969, the same year Richard Nixon was sworn in as president. The similarities to the present did not go unnoticed by the crowd:

I stayed up all night with my friends … writing and editing the speech. By the time we gathered in the academic quad, I was exhausted. My hair was a wreck. The mortarboard made it even worse. But I was pretty oblivious to all of that, because what my friends had asked me to do was to talk about our worries, and about our ability and responsibility to do something about them. We didn't trust government, authority figures—or really anyone over 30. In large part, thanks to years of heavy casualties, and dishonest statements about Vietnam, and deep differences over civil rights and poverty here at home, we were asking urgent questions about whether women, people of color, religious minorities, immigrants would ever be treated with dignity and respect. And by the way, we were furious about the past presidential election of a man whose presidency would eventually end in disgrace with his impeachment for obstruction of justice. After firing the person running the investigation into him at the department of justice.

You can watch the full address above (Clinton's speech starts at around the 51-minute mark), but a few other highlights:

“Chardonnay helped”

I couldn't think of any place I'd rather be this year than right here. You may have heard that things didn't exactly go the way I planned. But you know what? I'm doing OK. I've gotten to spend time with my family, especially my amazing grandchildren. I was going to give the entire commencement speech about them but was talked out of it. Long walks in the woods. Organizing my closets, right? I won't lie: Chardonnay helped a little too.

“A full-fledged assault on truth”

You are graduating at a time when there is a full-fledged assault on truth and reason. Just log on to social media for ten seconds. It will hit you right in the face. People denying science, concocting elaborate, hurtful conspiracies theories about child abuse rings operating out of pizza parlors. Drumming up rampant fear about undocumented immigrants, Muslims, minorities, the poor. Turning neighbor against neighbor and sowing division at a time when we desperately need unity. Some are even denying things we see with our own eyes. Like the size of crowds. And then defending themselves by talking about, quote-unquote, alternative facts.

“An attack of unimaginable cruelty”

Look at the budget that was just proposed in Washington. It is an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest, and hard working people who need a little help to gain or hang on to a decent middle class life. It grossly underfunds public education, mental health, and efforts even to combat the opioid epidemic. And in reversing our commitment to fight climate change, it puts the future of our nation and our world at risk. And to top it off, it was shrouded in a trillion-dollar mathematical lie. Let's call it what it is. It's a con. They don't even try to hide it. Why does all this matter? It matters because if our leaders lie about the problems we face, we'll never solve them. It matters because it undermines confidence in government as a whole, which in turn breeds more cynicism and anger. But it also matters because our country, like this college, was founded on the principles of the enlightenment. In particular, the belief that people, you and I, possess the capacity for reason and critical thinking. And that free and open debate is the lifeblood of a democracy.

“Don’t let anyone tell you …”

Don't let anyone tell you your voice doesn't matter. In the years to come, there will be trolls galore online and in person, eager to tell you that you don't have anything worthwhile to say or anything meaningful to contribute. They may even call you a nasty woman. Some may take a slightly more sophisticated approach and say your elite education means you are out of teach with real people. In other words, sit down and shut up. Now, in my experience, that’s the last thing you should ever tell a Wellesley graduate.

This isn’t the first time Clinton has taken a post-election swing at Trump. It’s a safe bet it won’t be the last.

Trump Is Not Even Pretending to Keep Promise to Donate All Hotel Profits From Foreign Governments

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 24 May 2017 19:58:00 GMT

Shortly before taking office, Donald Trump attempted to explain how he would, in his lawyer’s words, “completely isolate” himself from the management of the Trump Organization. The plan was all show and no substance, and did almost nothing to address the serious problems posed by Trump keeping his stake in the for-profit company that bears his name. But among the many empty promises, one flourish stood out: His vow to donate “all profits” derived from foreign governments doing business at his hotels to the U.S. Treasury. “This way,” his lawyer claimed at the prop-filled press conference, “it is the American people who will profit.”

As I explained then, there were several glaring holes in that pledge. You can define profits a number of different ways, which creates enough semantic space for Trump to pretend to drive a truck through. The Trump Organization—and by extension Donald J. Trump—would also still benefit mightily from the free buzz created by foreign governments holding lavish affairs at its establishments, and from foreign dignitaries drinking at its high-priced hotel bars and dining at his expensive hotel restaurants (as they have done frequently since Trump’s Electoral College victory). Furthermore, hotel fees are only a drop in the gold-plated bucket of the money Trump receives from foreign governments and the companies they control. The far bigger problem is the millions he receives in the form of things like rent from state-controlled entities, such as the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which will need to renegotiate its lease at Trump Tower during Trump’s first term.

As empty as Trump’s donation promise was, though, it is even more of a sham than it first appeared. According to a document provided to the House Oversight Committee earlier this month, the Trump Organization can’t be bothered to keep a good-faith accounting of the profits its hotels make off foreign governments. Or, as the company puts it in the glossy pamphlet it gave to the committee detailing its plans to separate out such profits, it would be “impractical” to keep tabs on each and every dollar it makes from those with ties to foreign governments. From the document, which was made public Wednesday by Elijah Cummings, the top Democrat on the oversight panel:

To fully and completely identify all patronage at our Properties by customer type is impractical in the service industry and putting forth a policy that requires all guests to identify themselves would impede upon personal privacy and diminish the guest experience of our brand. It is not the intention nor design of this policy for our Properties to attempt to identify individual travels who have not specifically identified themselves as being a representative of a foreign government entity on foreign government business.

Instead, the businesses will only track transactions where it is obvious that the bill is being paid directly by a foreign government, a foreign political party, a sovereign wealth fund, or a member of a royal family. The pamphlet makes clear Trump execs know full well that won’t flag all the relevant foreign cash. “Some may operate through state-owned and state-controlled entities in industries such as aerospace and defense, banking, finance, healthcare, energy and others, which may not be reasonably identifiable as foreign government entities, and therefore may not be included in our calculation of profit to be donated,” the document reads.

Translation: Trump hotels will leave it up to their paying customers to declare whether they are there on foreign-government business. The absurdity of letting foreign actors self-police is easy to see: If the goal is to grease the wheels with President Trump via his bank account, all a foreign official would need to do is keep his mouth shut at the check-in desk while he pays with a company credit card—even if that company is controlled by a foreign government. It’s no wonder this loophole didn’t earn a mention when Trump first unveiled his ethics plan in January, or when the Trump Organization disclosed in March that it wouldn’t be making its first Treasury donation until 2018 at the earliest.

So, does any of this impact Trump’s defense against charges that he is violating the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause? While it puts the lie to another one of Trump’s false displays of benevolence, it doesn’t actually change the legal defense he’s offered to date. Team Trump maintains that hotel fees—along with other money his companies make from doing business with foreign governments—don’t amount to emoluments, but instead are simply value-for-value exchanges. In that convenient constitutional reading, the donations in question are simply voluntary. Many legal scholars and ethics experts read the Emoluments Clause differently—and a group of them are currently challenging the president in court—but if the courts were to ultimately side with Trump on the matter—or to decide that the only constitutional remedy is political—then the fact he isn’t donating as much as he should will have little relevance. Conversely, if the courts were to decide any Trump business with foreign governments is an emoluments violation, then the president is in trouble regardless of how much or little effort his hotels put into their bookkeeping.

In the meantime, though, we have yet one more piece of evidence suggesting that, when it comes to his family business, there’s no reason to believe Trump has any plans to even live up to his side of a bargain he negotiated with himself.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Yes, Ivanka’s Saudi-Funded World Bank Project Is Hugely Hypocritical. No, It’s Not (Yet) Wrong.

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 22 May 2017 21:04:42 GMT

The World Bank announced this past weekend that Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates have pledged a combined $100 million toward a planned $1-billion fund aimed at helping female entrepreneurs around the world. The World Bank doesn’t plan on officially unveiling the specifics of the initiative until next month’s G20 summit in Hamburg, Germany. This recent light-on-details announcement, then, amounted to little more than an effort to drum up some good press for the donors, the bank, and the person who’s getting credit for coming up with the idea for the fund in the first place: Ivanka Trump.

Ivanka’s involvement with the fund drew heavy criticism when she first made it public last month. For starters, the project appears to share broad strokes with the Clinton Foundation. Except in this case instead of being the work of a presidential nominee’s spouse, it is said to have been hatched by a family member of the current president, one who also happens to hold a major role in the administration. In an alternate world where White House senior adviser Chelsea Clinton spent this past weekend touting her role in launching a fund that takes donations from foreign governments, many on the right would be screaming PAY-FOR-PLAY and LOCK-HER-UP. Trump, remember, had this to say last summer in regards to Saudi donations to Hillary and Bill Clinton’s family non-profit:

Saudi Arabia and many of the countries that gave vast amounts of money to the Clinton Foundation want women as slaves and to kill gays. Hillary must return all money from such countries!

Saudi Arabia’s involvement in this fund, meanwhile, is particularly notable given both the timing of the donation and how the Saudi government treats women at home. It’s funny how eager Saudi leaders are to cut a multimillion-dollar check to help women-owned businesses in the Middle East when they still severely restrict women’s rights at home, including their ability to drive and work. (Not “Ha! Ha!” funny, but SMDH funny.) The news also comes only days after the Saudis signed a $100-billion-plus arms deal with the United States, the final negotiations for which were reportedly hashed out by Ivanka’s husband, Jared Kushner. Toss in the Trump family’s well-documented history of using other people’s money to playact the role of benevolent billionaires, and it’s hard not to smell something odd wafting across the Atlantic.

It’s worth asking, however, whether in the alternative Clintonian timeline proposed above, conservatives would have been justified in their hypothetical collective freak-out and what that means for our current timeline. Based on the limited details we do have, I’m not so sure it would be fair to attack such a move were the shoe on the other foot—and I was reasonably troubled during the campaign by the potential conflicts of interest raised by the Clinton Foundation.

The issue is this: the similarities between the World Bank-run fund and the Clinton Foundation appear to be mostly superficial. According to the World Bank, Ivanka won’t have any control over how the money is doled out, and according to the White House, she won’t take an active role in soliciting the funds either. (The Clintons did both at their foundation.) Assuming both of those prove true, then what we have here isn’t the Ivanka Trump Foundation by another name but instead a World Bank initiative that has the support of the White House. This isn’t the first time that the bank has teamed up with a First Family to push a project near and dear to the White House’s heart either. Just last spring, for instance, the World Bank announced it would invest $2.5 billion over 5 years in education projects that benefit adolescent girls around the globe—news of which came at an event hosted by Michelle Obama’s Let Girls Learn initiative, which shared that same goal.

Two of Trump’s most vocal critics when it comes to his many conflicts of interest see things similarly in regards to this new fund. Norm Eisen, a former Obama ethics czar, and Richard Painter, a former George W. Bush ethics czar, both told NPR over the weekend that as long as the World Bank runs the new fund and the donations are properly vetted, there’s good reason to believe everything is above board—and these are not men who are willing to blindly trust Trump. “In my view foreign government donations to a fund run by a reputable international organization like the World Bank for a good cause are generally acceptable,” Eisen wrote in an email. Added Painter: “I don't see this fund as a big problem if she does not solicit [donations] and it is entirely World Bank run.”

Those are big ifs, obviously, and the Kushner-brokered arms deal in particular deserves further scrutiny. You certainly shouldn’t rule out the possibility that the Trump administration prioritized Ivanka’s brand, however subtly, at the expense of U.S. interests in order to secure the Saudi cash—such decisions, after all, were frustratingly baked into our diplomatic and political systems even before Trump arrived on the scene. But until there’s evidence that’s what happened here, it seems this is better seen simply as Trump and his family reversing how they view the Saudis and “pay-for-play” now that they’re the ones in power. Such hypocrisy has been a common occurrence in this administration, but at least this time the biggest winner of the about-face will likely be someone other than the Trumps. That doesn’t make everything right, exactly—but I’m not sure it makes it wrong either.

Know anything about a potential conflicts of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

The White House Is Fighting to Keep Its Ethics Waivers Secret

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 22 May 2017 16:07:12 GMT

The White House’s secretive approach to its handling of internal ethics has reached a farcical new place. The New York Times reported on Monday that the Trump administration is trying to indefinitely delay the Office of Government Ethics’ effort to force the White House to disclose any ethics waivers it has granted to the many former lobbyists now working in the administration:

… the White House, in a highly unusual move, sent a letter to Walter M. Shaub Jr., the head of the Office of Government Ethics, asking him to withdraw a request he had sent to every federal agency for copies of the waivers. In the letter, the administration challenged his legal authority to demand the information.

Dozens of former lobbyists and industry lawyers are working in the Trump administration, which has hired them at a much higher rate than the previous administration. Keeping the waivers confidential would make it impossible to know whether any such officials are violating federal ethics rules or have been given a pass to ignore them.

Trump signed an executive order in late January that barred lobbyists and lawyers hired as political appointees from working on “particular” government issues that involved former clients for two years. The president, however, reserved the right to issue a waiver to anyone he wanted—something President Obama did as well. But Obama automatically made any such decisions public, along with a detailed explanation of why they were made. Trump is doing all he can to keep the waivers he approves under wraps.

Shaub, who has been a thorn in Trump’s side since even before he took office, had set a June 1 deadline for the administration to turn over the documents. The OGE chief says he plans to make the waivers public if and when he gets his hands on them. “It is an extraordinary thing,” he told the Times about the requested delay. “I have never seen anything like it.”

The Trump administration’s argument for the delay is difficult to follow. In his letter to Shaub last Wednesday, Office of Management and Budget chief Mick Mulvaney asked for more time to address “legal questions regarding the scope of OGE’s authorities,” but never specified what those questions actually were. Then, in a statement provided to the Times on Sunday, OMB changed its tune to accuse Shaub of playing politics. “This request, in both its expansive scope and breathless timetable, demanded that we seek further legal guidance,” the statement read. “The very fact that this internal discussion was leaked implies that the data being sought is not being collected to satisfy our mutual high standard of ethics.”

OMB’s adjectival complaints about Shaub’s request don’t hold much water. The reason it is “expansive” is because it needs to be: Trump has hired countless industry lawyers and former lobbyists across his administration, many of which he has attempted to keep off the public’s radar. The reason the request is “breathless” is because it should be: Every day those waivers remain secret is a day the American public has no way of knowing whether Trump appointees are following the law or breaking it to advance their own financial interests. Meanwhile, OGE’s authority to ask for such information from ethics officers at individual federal agencies is quite clear—indeed, making such requests is among the agency’s chief oversight powers. (There might be an argument to be made that the White House is not technically a federal agency and therefore not subject to such oversight, but Trump is attempting to stop the process across the entire federal government, not simply the office of the executive.)

As long as the White House continues to stonewall OGE—and Congress continues to sit on the sidelines—it’s not clear exactly what else Shaub and his agency can do to acquire this critical information other than continue to cry foul in public. As I’ve explained before, in a normal, non-Trump world, if the agency were to run into trouble getting what it wanted from an individual agency, the office would then turn to the president for help. In Trump World, though, the president seems quite content to ignore any and all ethics rules he finds inconvenient.

Know anything about a potential conflicts of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Trump Hotel Project Reportedly Benefited from Russian State-Run Bank

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 17 May 2017 16:02:00 GMT

The Wall Street Journal claimed on Wednesday to have found yet another link between Donald Trump and Russia, this one in the form of an apparent 2010 deal between a state-run bank and one of Trump’s old partners in a Toronto hotel tower:

Alexander Shnaider, a Russian-Canadian developer who built the 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower, put money into the project after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars from a separate asset sale that involved the Russian bank, whose full name is Vnesheconombank.

Mr. Shnaider sold his company’s share in a Ukrainian steelmaker for about $850 million in 2010, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence. According to two people with knowledge of the deal, the buyer, which hasn’t been identified publicly, was an entity acting for the Russian government. VEB initiated the purchase and provided the money, these people say.

After completing the deal, Shnaider and his business partner turned around and injected more money into the financially troubled Toronto project that bears Trump’s name. Shnaider’s lawyer told the Journal in April that about $15 million from the asset sale was used for the Canadian development. The next day, however, the lawyer attempted to walk that back, telling the paper that he was “not able to confirm that any funds” from the sale were used in Toronto. (The project’s financial troubles continue to this day: It entered insolvency proceedings in November, and a judge in March approved its sale to a California-based investment firm for about $220 million.)

The Trump Organization is attempting to shrug off the report by saying that Trump was not involved with the VEB deal and that the Trump company “merely licensed its brand and manages the hotel and residences.” But while it’s true the WSJ report isn’t the straightest line between the Kremlin and Trump, it’s one that should raise the eyebrows of those in the FBI and Congress who are investigating Trump’s ties to Russia—particularly given the president’s steadfast denial of said links. “I have nothing to do with Russia,” he declared in February. “To the best of my knowledge no person that I deal with does.”

That best of my knowledge hedge gives Trump some wiggle room, but that doesn’t change the fact that he appears to have benefited from the actions of a Russian bank with clear ties to the Russian government. At the time VEB financed the steelmaker deal, the chairman of VEB’s supervisory board was one Vladimir Putin. And, as the Journal notes, VEB “has long been viewed by Russian analysts as a vehicle for the Russian government to fund politically important projects, including the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.” Furthermore, one of the bank’s executives in New York was sentenced to prison last year after pleading guilty to conspiring to act in the United States as a Russian agent without alerting U.S. authorities. So, yeah, this isn’t exactly a good look for a president who is currently caught up in a swirl of troubling reports concerning his ties to Moscow.

Did a Voter ID Law Really Cost Clinton a Victory in Wisconsin?

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 10 May 2017 22:32:43 GMT

Six months after Election Day, pollsters, Democrats, and much of the press are still trying to figure out what went wrong. How did Donald Trump outperform the polls in enough swing states to swipe an electoral victory Hillary Clinton appeared to have safely in hand? On Tuesday, the Nation offered the latest theory in a never-ending string of them, this one focused on what was by some metrics the single biggest surprise of the election: Trump’s victory in Wisconsin, where he trailed in polls by an average of 6.5 points ahead of Nov. 8.

According to new research conducted by data science firm Civis Analytics for liberal super PAC Priorities USA, strict voter ID laws significantly depressed the turnout of black and Democratic-leaning voters in a number of states, chief among them the Badger State. “Wisconsin’s voter-ID law reduced turnout by 200,000 votes, according to the new analysis,” wrote the Nation’s Ari Berman. “Donald Trump won the state by only 22,748 votes.” The unstated but implicit conclusion here is that Hillary Clinton would have claimed Wisconsin’s 10 electoral votes if it weren’t for a state law requiring residents to present a driver's license or another form of government-issued ID to cast a nonprovisional ballot.

While Berman was careful to offer the necessary caveats—the study was conducted by progressives with a partisan interest, the analysis has not been peer-reviewed, etc.—such nuance didn’t make its way to social media.

But the Nation headline doesn’t say it all—not even close, as a number of political scientists and polling experts were quick to point out.

One of the first to arrive on the scene with a big bucket of cold water was Eitan Hersh, an assistant professor of political science at Yale University who has studied the effect of voter ID laws.

The most glaring problem with the report and how it’s being interpreted, Hersh told me by phone, is that the firm behind the analysis decided to operate at a surface level when it almost certainly had the data and expertise to dig much deeper. “Civis presents itself as a very sophisticated analytics shop,” Hersh said, “and yet the analysis they’re offering here is rather blunt.”

The group relied largely on state-by-state and county-by-county comparisons to reach its conclusions, but it could have—and Hersh maintains, should have—conducted a more granular analysis. Civis could have isolated communities that straddle the border between two states, for instance, or even used a comprehensive voter file to compare similar individuals that do and don’t live in states with new voter ID laws. Doing either would have allowed Civis to eliminate variables that may have ultimately skewed its findings. “It’s very weird to do an analysis the way they did when they presumably had a better way to do it,” Hersh said. “That’s a red flag that jumps out right away.”

Civis says it mostly limited itself to publicly available information so that its analysis was repeatable; Hersh counters that repeating a flawed analysis will just lead to the same flawed results. As the New York Times’ Nate Cohn pointed out on Twitter, and as Hersh echoed in his conversation with me, the absence of a detailed voter file-based analysis of the impact of voter ID laws—by Civis or anyone else for that matter—is in itself telling at this point. “I would in no way argue that these [voter ID] laws have no effect, but what we’ve found is that it’s a relatively small one,” Hersh said. Making things more complicated, he added, is that the effect of a voter ID law can be difficult to separate from that of other non-ID-based measures that disenfranchise the same types of people. “It’s just very unlikely that these voter ID laws by themselves would translate into the effect of 200,000 voters,” Hersh said.

Richard Hasen, an occasional Slate contributor and a professor of law and political science at the University of California–Irvine, voiced similar concerns about the Civis findings on his blog, pointing to a New York Times story published in the weeks after the election. Reporting from Milwaukee in late November, Times national correspondent Sabrina Tavernise cited Wisconsin’s voter ID law as one potential reason why turnout was down in the city’s poor and black neighborhoods. Tavernise, though, ultimately found a bounty of anecdotal evidence that black voters were simply far less excited to vote for Clinton in 2016 than they were to pull the lever for Barack Obama in 2008 and 2012. Here again it is difficult to offer a single explanation for depressed voter turnout: If a black man in Milwaukee decides it’s not worth jumping through hoops to cast a ballot, do we explain that by citing voter enthusiasm, the ID law, or both?

Most political scientists agree voter ID laws make it more difficult for some voters to cast a ballot on Election Day. There’s a lot more debate, however, over how much of an impact those laws have on turnout. But in the meantime, liberals should think twice about overstating the conclusions of a relatively superficial analysis like his one. Doing so risks shifting attention away from the reality that Republicans wrote these laws with the goal of disenfranchising minorities and other traditionally Democratic voters. That effort doesn’t have to swing an election for it to be shameful.

Top Democrat Demands Clarity on Kellyanne Conway’s Role With Her Polling Company

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 09 May 2017 19:07:00 GMT

The top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee is asking the D.C. consulting firm founded by Kellyanne Conway for more information about her current relationship with the company. The letter, sent Tuesday by the panel’s ranking member, Rep. Elijah Cummings, follows a Slate investigation earlier this year that uncovered evidence suggesting that Conway retained ownership of the Polling Company even after she took an official position in the White House as a counselor to the president.

"Based on public reports to date, it does not appear that Ms. Conway has divested her ownership interest in The Polling Company, raising questions about whether she has conflicts of interest on matters relating to the company's current, former, or prospective clients,” Cummings wrote to Brett Loyd, who took over as CEO of the firm after Conway officially stepped aside to follow Donald Trump to the White House in January.

As I explained in March, if Conway is taking an active role in White House decision-making that directly affects the fortunes of her firm’s clients, she may be committing a federal crime punishable with prison time. Under the basic criminal conflict of interest statute (18 U.S.C. § 208)—which doesn’t apply to the president but does apply to his staff—it is illegal for an executive branch employee to participate “personally and substantially” in any government matter that will affect his or her own financial interests. In effect, the law requires an administration employee to either sell her business or recuse herself from policy matters that directly impact that business. There’s no evidence that Conway has done either.

In reporting the original investigation, I found that neither the Polling Company nor the White House would say whether Conway still owned the firm. The company declined to comment at all on Conway’s relationship to the firm she founded, while the White House offered a vague statement suggesting that she was waiting to divest unnamed assets until the Office of Government Ethics gave her what is known as a certificate of divestiture, which would give her a tax break on the sale. (According to her financial disclosure form, which was filed with the White House while our investigation was ongoing but wasn’t made public by the federal government until the following week, Conway valued her ownership stake in the company at between $1 million and $5 million.)

During my digging, I found nothing to suggest that Conway had even begun what can be a monthslong process of obtaining a certificate from OGE. The same was true when Cummings checked with OGE in April—and when Slate made independent inquiries with OGE last week. According to the ethics office, officials there are not aware of any issues Conway has recused herself from since taking office—and have no way of knowing whether the White House has granted her an ethics waiver since the administration has decided to keep such waivers secret.

Cummings has asked Loyd for an in-person briefing with a company representative by May 26, and answers by May 22 to the following questions:

1.) Does Ms. Conway have any current ownership interest in The Polling Company? If so, please provide information on the type and scope of that ownership interest. If not, please provide the final dates on which she divested her ownership interests.

2.) Has Ms. Conway ever informed The Polling Company or any of its clients that she is recused from working on any matters that may affect their interests or that she has obtained a waiver of this requirement? If so, please provide all documents and communications referring or relating to Ms. Conway’s recusal or waiver.

3.) Since January 20, 2017, has Ms. Conway provided advice or any other service to The Polling Company or any of its clients on any matter? If so, please provide the name of the clients, the subject matter of the advice or other service, and the date of the advice or other service, along with all documents and communications referring or relating to the advice or service.

4.) Did Ms. Conway exercise any decision-making authority after January 20, 2017, with respect to any aspect of The Polling Company’s business, operations, or ownership? If so, please describe those actions and produce all documents and communications referring or relating to the exercise of this decision-making authority.

5.) Please provide a list of the Polling Company’s current clients.

6.) On what date was Ms. Conway designated as Director of The Polling Company? What responsibilities are associated with this title and role?

7) Does Ms. Conway continue to hold the position of Director? If not, on what date did she resign from this position?

8) What is Ms. Conway’s current title, if any, at The Polling Company, and what are her current authorities? Please all provide all communications between Ms. Conway or her representatives and The Polling Company concerning her current authorities.

Neither the Polling Company nor the White House immediately responded to my requests for comment after Cummings went public with his letter on Tuesday. If a court were to find Conway willingly violated that law, she could face up to five years in prison and $50,000 in fines for each offense.

You can read the original Slate investigation here.

Know anything about the Polling Company or any other potential conflicts of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Trump’s Tax Plan Would Offer a Huge, Government-Sponsored Gift to His Kids

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 21:21:12 GMT

The Trump administration unveiled its much-hyped tax reform plan on Wednesday. As my colleague Ben Mathis-Lilley points out, this turned out to be less an actual plan and more a one-page bullet-pointed list of proposals that the White House hasn’t really bothered to think through. That vagueness conveniently allowed Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin to plead ignorance when asked about the proposal’s real-world impact—not just on the average American, but also on Trump himself. “I can’t comment on the president’s tax situation since I don’t have access to that,” Mnuchin told reporters.

Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns, so Mnuchin is partially right: no one can say for certain what specific effect Trump’s plan would have on his own fortune. Yes, it stands to reason that Trump would benefit mightily if he succeeds in his quest to lower the top individual income tax rate, slash the tax rates for so-called pass-though corporations such as his Trump Organization, and/or eliminate the alternative minimum tax he’s paid in the past. Ultimately, though, we can’t put a number on just how much Trump stands to gain without seeing his tax returns. But—but! There is at least one proposal put forth on Wednesday for which we can begin to do the Trump-benefiting math: the elimination of the estate tax.

Under the current law, an individual can leave up to $5.45 million to their heirs (a married couple can leave up to $10.9 million) without being subject to the estate tax—anything above that is supposed to be taxed at 40 percent. In reality, though, when you factor in those initial deductions along with other available tax credits, most estimates peg the effective tax rate on wealthy estates—that is the rate actually paid to the government—at closer to 19 percent. Regardless, though, most Americans won’t ever have to worry about the tax. According to the Brookings Institution-backed Tax Policy Center, only a fraction of one percent of post-death estates end up paying the tax at all.

Trump, however, isn’t most Americans. He boasts that he’s worth more than $10 billion and counting, and even the most conservative independent experts put him safely above the estate-tax minimum. As Bloomberg noted this past December after crunching the numbers, if Trump’s net-worth is the $3 billion that the financial publication estimates it is—and assuming a baseline effective tax rate of 18.8 percent—his estate would save $564 million if the tax were repealed. And if he’s really worth the $10 billion he claims? His family would save $1.9 billion. We don’t need to see Trump’s tax returns, then, to know that his tax plan would be a big, government-sponsored gift to his already wealthy children.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Ivanka Trump Reportedly to Launch a Global Female Entrepreneurs Fund. How … Would That Work?

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:27:00 GMT

A crowd in Berlin booed Ivanka Trump Tuesday during a high-profile international summit on women’s entrepreneurship. But as cathartic as that was for her critics, the bigger story may have been what she told Axios’ Mike Allen on the sidelines that day. I say may because it’s difficult to make heads or tails of this short item Allen published Wednesday morning:

Ivanka Trump told me yesterday from Berlin that she has begun building a massive fund that will benefit female entrepreneurs around the globe. Both countries and companies will contribute to create a pool of capital to economically empower women. “The statistics and results prove that when you invest in women and girls, it benefits both developed and developing economies,” she said. “Women are an enormous untapped resource, critical to the growth of all countries.”

The report, along with a slightly more detailed follow-up from one of Allen’s colleagues, provides only the broadest of brush strokes: unnamed “government-linked investors in Canada, Germany and the Middle East” have already committed to contributing; the focus will be on “small and medium-sized companies;” and the fund will be managed by the World Bank. Or, at least, that’s according to Dina Powell, the former Goldman Sachs exec turned Ivanka adviser turned deputy national security adviser. The World Bank says details still need to be worked out. Ivanka Trump and World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, however, did co-publish a Financial Times op-ed earlier this week advocating for more investment in women, so it does sound like the two are on the same general page on this topic. (Fun fact: Trump’s FT byline described her as “the first daughter of the US” and made no mention of her official, albeit poorly defined, role in her father’s administration.)

I’ve asked the White House for additional details but have not heard back. Without the specifics, we’re left with only two things: speculation and questions. As Talking Point Memo’s Josh Marshall put it shortly after the original Allen item published, Ivanka’s projects “sounds a lot like the Clinton Foundation,” only in this case one led by the president’s daughter, who also has a role in the White House. Imagine how Fox News would react in an alternative universe where White House adviser Chelsea Clinton was taking an active role in soliciting money from corporations and foreign governments. As it happens, this initiative coincides with the Trump administration’s effort to cut U.S. funding for the State Department’s Office of Global Women’s Issues, meaning Ivanka’s move resembles a push to privatize the promotion of women’s rights around the world.

For now, though, we’re left with questions—a lot of them. We’ll update this post if we get answers.

Update, 3:39 p.m.: The Washington Post spoke with the World Bank and got some more info about this effort, which appears to be in the very early stages. According to unnamed bank officials, “almost no details of the plan have been agreed to,” not even the fund's name or its “specific mission.” No money has been raised, either. If the World Bank does agree to manage the fund, Ivanka would not be able to direct where the money went, according to the officials. She could, however, help raise money for it.

Update 6:00 p.m: Speaking on a background call with reporters this afternoon, a White House official told reporters that Ivanka would not fundraise for the still-unofficial fund. "She will not solicit funds," the official said, according to the Post. "This is not a White House fund. This is not something that she will have any authority over in any way."

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Donald Trump May Also Be Violating a Different Emoluments Clause

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 26 Apr 2017 19:00:45 GMT

Ethics watchdogs and good-government types were quick to sound the alarm over Donald Trump’s apparent violation of the Foreign Emoluments Clause. Even before Trump was sworn in, experts were warning that his continued ownership of his business empire meant that he’d be accepting payments from foreign governments in violation of the U.S. Constitution. These could come in the form of payments for hotel stays by foreign diplomats, lease payments for office space from foreign state-controlled businesses, or any number of other ways. The issue is at the center of the first—and to date, most high profile—legal challenge to the president’s continued ownership of his for-profit business.

It turns out, though, that Trump may also be violating a different emoluments clause, one that specifically bars him from receiving money or gifts above and beyond his mandated salary from governments right here at home. Via Article II (emphasis mine):

The President shall, at stated Times, receive for his Services, a Compensation, which shall neither be increased nor diminished during the Period for which he shall have been elected, and he shall not receive within that Period any other Emolument from the United States, or any of them.

The general possibility that Trump would run afoul of that clause earned a brief mention in the larger emoluments lawsuit filed by the Center for Ethics and Responsibility in Washington, or CREW, in January, but it has remained mostly an undeveloped afterthought. On Wednesday, however, an investigative report from Reuters uncovered the evidence needed to turn the question from the general to the specific:

Public pension funds in at least seven U.S. states have invested millions of dollars in an investment fund that owns a New York hotel and pays one of President Donald Trump's companies to run it, according to a Reuters review of public records. …

The Trump SoHo Hotel and Condominium in Manhattan is an upscale 46-story property owned by a Los Angeles investment group, the CIM Group, through one of its real estate funds. The possible problem for Trump lies in the fact that state- and city-run pension funds have invested in the CIM fund and pay it a few million dollars in quarterly fees to manage their investments in its portfolio, which includes the Trump SoHo, according to state investment records.

The payment flow chart is a little complicated—as is usually the case given the nesting doll of LLCs and trusts that make up the Trump Organization—but it boils down to this: State or city-run pension funds in California, New York, Texas, Arizona, Montana, Michigan, and Missouri pay millions of dollars per quarter to CIM, which then turns around and pays a portion of that money via a subsidiary to a pair of Trump-owned companies to manage, market, and operate the SoHo hotel. According to the most recent publicly available numbers, the Trump-owned businesses bring in an estimated $9 million a year from the CIM deal.

The Domestic Emoluments Clause differs from its foreign counterpart in at least two important ways beyond where the emolument is coming from. First, while the foreign clause covers all office holders, the domestic one is focused exclusively on the chief executive. Second, while the Constitution allows Congress to make exceptions for some foreign emoluments, there’s no such loophole for domestic ones. The rationale for including the domestic clause was to prevent a state—or even Congress—from buying a favor from the president. The fact the framers felt it necessary to include two different emoluments clauses should tell you how serious of a concern they thought this was. In this case, the fear would be that other states might invest in this fund—or some other one that also does business with Trump—in order to gain Trump’s favor, or even avoid his ire.

Still, this might not be an open-and-shut case. As with foreign emoluments, there is the question of standing for any legal challenge. And as we saw with the convoluted workaround Trump found to maintain his government lease for his D.C. hotel, it’s possible the president can carve out some wiggle room if he were to restructure his company in a way where he did not receive any of the cash while still in office. It will ultimately come down to how broadly a court is willing to interpret a clause with little precedent. As Brianne Gorod, chief counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, a Washington public advocacy law firm, put it to Reuters: “We’re in largely uncharted territory… given that past presidents have gone to great lengths to avoid the kinds of issues we’re now confronting.” Trump, however, appears content to sail headlong into them.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

State Department Removes Blog Post Promoting Trump’s Mar-a-Lago

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 25 Apr 2017 00:03:00 GMT

Update: The ShareAmerica blog post touting Mar-a-Lago has been taken down from the State Department-run website. "The intention of the article was to inform the public about where the President has been hosting world leaders," a short statement on the original page now reads. "We regret any misperception and have removed the post."

***

Original post, April 24, 2017, 3:17 p.m.: Donald Trump has done his best to rebrand his Mar-a-Lago club as the “Winter White House” in a not-so-subtle attempt to raise the stature of the private Palm Beach resort and possibly to offer an excuse for why he goes there so often. The president has spent seven of the 14 weekends he has been in office at the club, and he—and his staff—have made sure to use his preferred nomenclature whenever possible. But Trump’s rebranding effort has also gotten an unexpected and less-noticed push from elsewhere within the federal government: via the State Department’s foreign outreach program.

As spotted Monday by journalist Amy Westervelt, the Department-run news site ShareAmerica ran a story earlier this month that read an awful lot like a press release for the Trump-owned club. A snippet, which ran under the subhead “A dream deferred”:

Upon her death in 1973, [Marjorie Merriweather Post] willed the estate to the U.S. government, intending it to be used as a winter White House for the U.S. president to entertain visiting foreign dignitaries. Her plan didn’t work, however. Presidents Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter never used the property. And in 1981 the government returned the estate to the Post Foundation because it was costing too much money to maintain.

That opened the way for Trump, a real-estate magnate, to purchase the property in 1985. When he acquired the house, Trump also bought the decorations and furnishings that Post had collected over the years, preserving Mar-a-Lago’s style and taste. … Post’s dream of a winter White House came true with Trump’s election in 2016. Trump regularly works out of the house he maintains at Mar-a-Lago and uses the club to host foreign dignitaries.

The post was also reblogged on the website of the U.S. embassy in the United Kingdom and shared on the Facebook page of the U.S. Embassy in Albania. The fact that government-funded websites are promoting the president’s for-profit venture drew an immediate complaint from Norm Eisen, a former White House ethics czar under Obama and a frequent critic of the current president, as well as Rep. Mark Takano, a California Democrat:

ShareAmerica is run by the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs, and describes itself as a “platform for sharing compelling stories and images that spark discussion and debate on important topics like democracy, freedom of expression, innovation, entrepreneurship, education, and the role of civil society.” Its current homepage features a mishmash of stories, ranging from one on the donation of one of the world's largest private collections of insects to a U.S. university, to one on the global economic damage caused by counterfeit smartphones and pirated music. A request for comment from the bureau concerning the Mar-a-Lago story and the decision to publish it was not immediately returned.

It’s also not the first time that this administration has put out what amounts to a press release for a private entity with ties to a high-ranking official. Last month, the White House issued a release touting a new domestic investment by Exxon Mobil that borrowed heavily from the one put out by the oil company itself. Exxon was previously led by current secretary of state Rex Tillerson, who under an ethics agreement with the federal government has until May 2 to sell off his remaining shares in the company he used to run.

In the grand scheme of Trump-themed conflicts of interest, this appears to be a small one. The president, after all, continues to blur the line between his own personal interests and those of the United States—as do his eldest sons every time they travel the globe flanked by Secret Service details that double as government-sanctioned sales props for the family business. Nonetheless, the ShareAmerica post suggests that Trump’s ethics—or more specifically, lack thereof—are spreading out from the White House into other sectors of the government.

Know anything about a potential conflict of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Kellyanne Conway Told Americans to Go Buy Ivanka Trump Clothes and They Did

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 18 Apr 2017 19:40:31 GMT

Standing in the White House briefing room in February, Kellyanne Conway infamously turned an interview with Fox News into an infomercial for Ivanka Trump.

It was clear from the start that the PR stunt was a shameless violation of federal ethics rules that demanded punishment—or at least would have demanded one if the Trump administration were willing to enforce those rules. It was also something else, though: entirely successful.

Ivanka’s clothing brand is privately held, so it doesn’t have to make public its earnings or other financial info. (Trump stepped away from her business to take a job in the White House in March, but she still owns the company and will receive regular financial updates on it.) But the evidence that has emerged since Conway played the part of TV pitchwomen suggest Ivanka’s company is prospering—both generally from its association with her father’s presidency and, at least based on limited data, likely as a specific result of Conway’s comments and the ensuing controversy.

The G-III Apparel Group Ltd., which manufactures the Ivanka-branded clothes, recently announced that net sales for the collection grew by $17.9 million during the 12-month period that ended Jan. 31. The brand itself, meanwhile, claimed last month that that revenue was up 21 percent on the year, in large part thanks to its February sales, which company president Abigail Klem described as “some of the best performing weeks in the history of the brand.” (Remember: Conway made her comments on Feb. 9.) And then on Tuesday there was this nugget buried in an Associated Press report about separate concerns over China granting Ivanka preliminary approval of valuable trademarks. (Like father, like daughter.)

Data from Lyst, a massive fashion e-commerce platform, indicates some of this growth coincided with specific political events. The number of Ivanka Trump items sold through Lyst was 46 percent higher the month her father was elected president than in November 2015. Sales spiked 771 percent in February over the same month last year, after White House counselor Kellyanne Conway exhorted Fox viewers to "Go buy Ivanka's stuff." ... The bounce appears somewhat sustained. March sales on Lyst were up 262 percent over the same period last year.

The case that Conway was the cause of the spike is supported by an accompanying graph the AP ran with the story: Sales of Ivanka items were up 240 percent at Lyst from the previous year on Feb. 7, the day before President Trump complained on Twitter than Nordstrom was dropping his daughter’s brand from its stores. Sales from the previous year then jumped by 1,500 percent the day of Trump’s tweet, and then soared a staggering 10,700 percent the following day when Conway made her pitch on Fox News.

I asked Lyst to share the underlying data—that is, the number of items sold each month—but the company declined citing internal policy. It did, however, pass along some additional information that paints the type of picture you’d expect about who was filling their online shopping baskets with Ivanka apparel during this period. Lyst saw its largest February sales gains for Ivanka-branded products in states won by Donald Trump in the general election. The online retailer also reported sales of Ivanka items in 15 different states that Trump won that had not seen orders of a single Ivanka product from the site in the previous year.

As Lyst is only one site, it would be fair to take this information with a grain of salt, particularly given that the massive percentile increases suggest relatively small sample sets. But the general upward trend seems real. Online commerce tracker Slice Intelligence, for example, reported last month that U.S. sales of Ivanka products on Amazon were up 332 percent in January and February compared to a year prior.

As frustrating as it might be to see the Trumps benefit from such a brazen stunt, it shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. Given the relatively small market penetration of the Ivanka brand, Conway’s “free commercial” for it—and the ensuing media frenzy—always seemed more likely to attract the attention of new customers than to turn off existing ones. The Trumps aren’t actually the business experts they play on TV, but it’s clear they understand that, more often than not, there really is no such thing as bad press. In fact, it’s hard to think of any other family for which that old saw should be more of an article of faith by now.

Know anything about Trump administration conflicts of interest? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Surprise! Trump Continues to Raise Enormous Campaign Funds and Spend Them at His Companies.

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 17 Apr 2017 17:45:00 GMT

It didn’t take long for Donald Trump to begin using the presidency for profit. Even before he was sworn in, his eldest sons were travelling the globe flanked with Secret Service details that doubled as sales props for the family business. His wife, Melania, has remained behind in New York City, a decision that means the U.S. government is now almost certainly a paying tenant in a building owned by the president. His White House advisers have served as TV pitch-people for Trump-branded products on more than one occasion. And all the while, Trump himself has used every free moment he has—and some he doesn’t—to raise the profile of his family’s real estate portfolio, from his hotel in Washington, D.C., to his private club in Palm Beach, Florida.

But while it’s important to keep an eye on the long con Trump is playing, let’s not forget about the more straightforward grift he has been running ever since he first stepped off a Trump Tower escalator and onto the main political stage nearly two years ago. Via the Wall Street Journal:

The new reports, filed late Friday with the Federal Election Commission, showed that Mr. Trump’s campaign directed more than 6% of the $6.3 million it spent in the first three months of 2017 to the president’s companies, including $274,013 in rent to Trump Tower, $58,685 for lodging to the Trump International Golf Club in West Palm Beach, Fla., and $13,828 for facility rental and catering to the Trump International Hotel in Las Vegas.

This is just more of the same from Candidate Trump. During the 2016 election, his campaign and the Republican National Committee combined to send more than $14 million to Trump family-owned businesses and to reimburse the Trump family for travel. The latest FEC filings suggests the president has no intention of giving up the lucrative revenue stream for his family even now that he’s found other streams to tap from within the White House.

Trump has basically been fundraising non-stop since the summer of 2015. He held a series of victory-lap rallies in between winning the election and being sworn in, filed for reelection on Inauguration Day, and then returned to the campaign trail less than a month after taking office. All the while, his campaign has been bombarding supporters with fundraising emails. (For comparison, President Obama waited roughly two years before filing his FEC paperwork. He was still able to earn contributions on the big-dollar fundraising circuit at the start of his term, but his solicitations to small donors and fundraising efforts as a whole were more limited and less conspicuous than Trump’s.) By the Journal’s count, the Trump campaign brought in about $3.3 million over the first three months of 2017, nearly triple what Obama’s raised during the first quarter of his first term. Meanwhile, the Trump-led RNC brought in more than $41 million over that same time, more than double what the Obama-led Democratic National Committee saw in the first quarter of 2009.

More money means more opportunities for Trump to spread the wealth around among his inner circle. In addition to sending campaign cash to Trump companies, he also continues to cut checks to those owned by his friends. During the election, Trump's highest-paid vendor was a web-marketing firm owned by Brad Parscale, his campaign’s digital director. The Trump campaign paid Parscale's firm $73 million during the course of the campaign, and another $1.5 million during the first quarter of this year while Parscale was working for an outside group aligned with the president. Several Trump allies with official positions inside the White House saw payouts of their own this year. A company owned by Steve Bannon, for example, received nearly $30,000 for administrative work last quarter, and one founded by White House social media director Dan Scavino received $14,500 in consulting fees.

Trump made a big show of stepping down from the day-to-day operations of his businesses before Inauguration Day, but any firewall between him and the company that bears his name is nothing but a façade. The president may no longer have formal job responsibilities at the Trump Organization but he still retains the most important title there: owner. The line between Trump the businessman and Trump the candidate, meanwhile, may be even straighter.

The Trump White House Isn’t Even Pretending to Be Transparent Any More

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 14 Apr 2017 18:21:00 GMT

The Trump administration announced Friday that it will not voluntarily release the names of visitors to the White House, a reversal of the Obama administration’s practice of disclosing most visits roughly three months after they occurred. Via Time magazine:

White House communications director Michael Dubke said the decision … was due to “the grave national security risks and privacy concerns of the hundreds of thousands of visitors annually.” Instead, the Trump Administration is relying on a federal court ruling that most of the logs are “presidential records” and are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. …

Under the Trump Administration’s directive, logs of those entering the White House complex will be kept secret until at least five years after Trump leaves office—at which point they will first be eligible to be requested by the public, press and scholars. The White House did not say who would maintain custody of the records during his time in office.

Obama’s voluntary release of the visitors logs began in 2009—part of his promise to run “the most transparent administration in history,” which he didn’t exactly live up to—and the administration released roughly 6 million such records during his two terms in office. The logs, however, never gave a complete picture of who was coming and going at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. As Time points out, the White House Counsel’s office had the ability to unilaterally redact such records for any number or reasons, meaning they could—and often did—obscure visits from celebrities, big-dollar donors, and those under consideration for judicial nominations. (Senior White House staff, meanwhile, could circumvent the record-keeping process all together by simply meeting lobbyists at nearby coffee shops.)

Still, Trump’s decision doesn’t have to be entirely unique for it to be troubling, particularly given his White House’s obvious disdain for transparency (and general love of misinformation). Trump has called the press the “opposition party” and the “enemy of the people,” and his administration continues to avoid making important information public unless they have to—and, even then, they have gone out of their way to bury it in bureaucratic procedure. Add to that the obvious conflicts created by the president's personal business interests at home and abroad, and you have a recipe for kleptocracy of the kind we’ve already caught a distinct whiff of from this White House.

Last month, congressional Democrats introduced a bill—creatively named the “Making Access Records Available to Lead American Government Openness Act," or MAR-A-LAGO Act—that would require the disclosure of visitors at places where Trump “regularly conducts official business,” which would include the White House and the private club in Florida he owns and has frequently visited since taking office. Republicans, however, have shown no interest in taking up the matter. Meanwhile, as Politico discovered last month, no one is even bothering to keep a formal list of visitors to Mar-a-Lago.

Is It Normal for Cabinet Members to Get Their Own Ever-Expanding Security Detail?

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 11 Apr 2017 21:21:00 GMT

Is This Normal? is a Slate series that attempts to determine which controversial Trump World behaviors are outrageously unprecedented, which are outrageous but within the realm of what others have gotten away with, and which shouldn't be considered outrageous at all.

The Issue

The Washington Post reported last week that the Education Department is currently paying the U.S. Marshals Service nearly $1 million a month to protect Secretary Betsy DeVos, a significant step-up in security services for a Cabinet post that had previously relied on a small team of in-house civil servants for job. The New York Times reported on Monday that U.S. EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has requested around-the-clock protection, which would be a first for an EPA chief and could require hiring 10 additional full-time employees for the job.

Federal agencies don’t discuss the specifics of their internal security protocols for operational reasons, but these two reports provide anecdotal evidence that members of Trump’s Cabinet—not unlike the president and his family—are requiring unprecedented levels of security.

Is this normal?

The Precedent

It’s not unusual that senior Trump officials have their own security details. Top executive branch officials have had their own government-funded protection—ranging from an occasional escort for a public appearance to 24/7 personal security—since at least the 1970s. Typically, the safekeeping of a secretary is the responsibility of their own department’s internal enforcement or investigative division. The FBI, for instance, protects the attorney general, the U.S. Park Police covers the secretary of Interior, the EPA’s Office of Criminal Enforcement runs point for the EPA administrator, and so on. The fact that men and women with earpieces are shadowing some members of Trump’s Cabinet is not unusual. A better framing of our question, then, is not whether it is normal that U.S. taxpayers are footing the bill to keep DeVos, Pruitt, & co, safe, but whether that bill is abnormally large.

On this question, the specifics are frustratingly difficult to come by. The government typically tries to obscure those numbers in order to avoid tipping off a would-be assailant as to what to expect. And the internal divisions that provide the security have other responsibilities—the EPA officials that protect Pruitt, for example, are also tasked with investigating environmental crimes—so there is rarely one single line-item in the budget to compare from year to year.

The limited information we do have, though, suggests that the price of protecting Cabinet members and other senior government officials has been on the rise since well before Trump took office. The Government Accountability Office, at the urging of Congress, has investigated the cost of protecting executive branch officials several times over the years. The last time the GAO crunched the numbers was 2000 making the data more than a bit dated. Still, the trend at the time was hard to miss.

The annual combined totals of the ten departments the GAO surveyed in 1994 increased in each year of a three-year stretch, from $1.5 million in 1992 up to $2 million in the first nine months of fiscal 1994. The upward trend was even more pronounced six years later when the GAO cast its net wider: The 27 different agencies it surveyed then reported a 49-percent increase in costs for protecting senior officials over the preceding three years, from $19.1 million in 1997 to $28.5 million in 1999. And that was before 9/11 drastically accelerated the speed at which the nation’s security state expanded.

The Verdict

The fact that Trump’s Cabinet officials have their own personal security details is Normal, as is the fact that the level of security being provided to at least some Trump officials is above and beyond what was given to their respective predecessors.

None of that changes the infuriating reality that the Trump administration is spending money to beef up the protection of its own top officials as it simultaneously attempts to cut spending drastically for carrying out the important missions of those same governmental agencies. Even so, it’s worth remembering that money spent on the former is but a drop in the bucket compared to the latter. The Education Department, for example, will reportedly pay the U.S. Marshals nearly $8 million over an eight-month stretch this year to protect DeVos from threats and protestors. Trump, meanwhile, wants to cut the annual budget of the department Devos oversees by about $9 billion. So focusing your anger at DeVos’s security expenditures would be like saying Kevin Costner’s post-The Bodyguard career would have been totally fine if he had never made Draft Day, while completely ignoring the existence of Waterworld, The Postman, and all those other box-office flops he made. It just doesn’t make sense.

The White House Thinks This Chart Is Proof That Trump’s Team Is Better Than Obama’s. It Isn’t.

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 06 Apr 2017 22:10:00 GMT

Late this past Friday, the Trump administration began releasing financial disclosure forms for more than 100 of its highest-ranking officials. The White House’s preferred takeaway was easy to spot even before the documents had reached reporters’ inboxes. “I think it’s something that should be celebrated,” Sean Spicer said that afternoon in reference to the riches of the individuals who have followed the proudly wealthy Trump into government.

A second senior official sounded a similar note shortly thereafter. “I want to highlight the incredible complexity and the sophistication of the assets and the financial structures that this White House is going to present,” said the official, who briefed reporters ahead of the release on the condition he or she was not named. “These are incredibly successful individuals—very high net worth; very sophisticated, complex asset structures; numerous sub-LLCs, trusts and other items—all of which have to be worked through.” To drive the point home, the White House handed out a document consisting of two pie charts that compared how complex their filings were with the analogous initial filings of the Obama White House.

“The Office of Government Ethics prepared a report analyzing the sophistication of this incoming White House versus the preceding administration, and they created a fairly helpful document,” the official said. “And you can see how the complexity relates from the folks that were in the previous administration to the complexity that we’ve been dealing with here.”

The problem, however, is that that’s only one reading of what the numbers say. They also make a very different point—one that the White House might not want to boast about. Namely, these are the filings of a White House that has left its director-level hires with almost no employees to direct.

Yes, the percentage of Trump’s initial hires with complex filings (as defined by OGE) was indeed higher than it was for Obama. But that’s mainly a result of the fact that Trump has been so much slower to actually stock his administration, meaning there are fewer executive branch employees to file the forms in the first place. According to OGE, the Obama administration submitted a total of 228 employee reports by March 7 of 2009; the Trump administration had submitted only 63 by that same date this year. If you compare the number of filings in each broad category used by the OGE, you see a very different picture than the one painted by the White House last week.

The OGE deems a filing “simple” if most of the assets are common investments, such as stocks or mutual funds, and then works its way up from there. A “complicated” filing can involve any number of unique assets, from book deals and patents to stakes in private equity funds or trusts. It should hardly come as a surprise that Trump’s decision to start hiring at the top and then hit pause would mean that his filers are more likely to have multiple homes and a more sprawling portfolio than those hires who would come in further down the chain of command. It’s as if a company bragged about how well-off its workers were—while failing to fill any of the positions outside of the C-suite.

There’s another problem: By citing this chart as Exhibit A, the White House is conflating the complexity of someone’s finances with the amount of his or her fortune. (Given the nesting doll of LLCs and trusts that is the Trump Organization, it’s not a surprise that the Trump administration would conflate financial complexity with financial success.) Still, if this is the metric the White House is choosing to trumpet, you’d think they’d at least want it to hold up to basic scrutiny.

To be fair, the OGE report paints an incomplete picture of Trump’s hiring, or lack thereof. Trump’s report, and the analogous one for Obama’s White House, covers only the opening month and a half of each administration, which means it was already out-of-date by the time the White House circulated it to reporters. But other metrics raise similar concerns. According to the nonpartisan Center for Presidential Transition, which tracks more than 500 key executive branch positions that require Senate confirmation, Trump had sent in a total of only 38 nominees as of March 20. That figure put him well behind Obama’s pace—94 by the same point in his first term—though still ahead of George W. Bush’s 35. (Note: The disclosures released Friday also include a number of White House employees that don’t require confirmation, such as Spicer and Kellyanne Conway.)

You might wonder why Trump’s team would be boasting about their wealth and asset complexity at all. Not only does it point to this White House’s failure to hire adequately, but it’s a reminder of the extent to which Trump has stocked his White House with his rich friends and family, a habit for which he has faced scorching criticism. Above all, these proud pie charts show that the president and his team are still firmly convinced that their status in the top .1 percent is aspirational—proof, to the American people, that they must be good people with great ideas. Whether voters agree that the complex assets of the wealthy are an admirable sign of political-appointee character, however, only time will tell.

Meet the Shady Broker Jared Kushner Used to Facilitate a Luxury High-Rise With Trump’s Name on It

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 04 Apr 2017 21:46:00 GMT

Among the things we learned from the recent release of White House ethics filings is that Jared Kushner is retaining his stake in Trump Bay Street, a luxury rental high-rise building in Jersey City, New Jersey. The property represents one of the clearest overlaps of financial interests between President Trump and his son-in-law and senior adviser. The apartment complex was developed by Kushner’s family real-estate business, Kushner Companies, which pays the president’s Trump Organization for the right to slap the Trump name on it. (Trump and Kushner have plenty of other shared interests given Ivanka Trump’s stake in Trump companies.)

As has been well-covered by now, the Kushners financed the 50-story high-rise with the help of $50 million in loans obtained through a controversial government effort known as the EB-5 Immigrant Investor Program, which offers expedited two-year visas to foreign nationals who pony up at least $500,000 for qualified investments in the United States. The vast majority of such investors are Chinese; this development was no different. That fact drew plenty of deserved scrutiny—particularly given Trump’s tough talk about China during the campaign and the fact that, as president, he’ll now have a say in how the program operates moving forward. What has gotten less attention, however, is the man who made the Kushners’ EB-5 financing possible in the first place: Nicholas Mastroianni II, a Florida businessman who has also partnered with the Trump Organization on at least one other business deal.

Fortune profiled Mastroianni back in 2014, detailing what the magazine billed as the “tangled past of the hottest money-raiser in America’s visa-for-sale program.” The piece does not mention Kushner or Trump. But reading it now, the portrait the authors paint of Mastroianni seems, well, more than a little Trumpian in a very unflattering way:

A squarely built 50-year-old with a Long Island accent, Mastroianni has a long history of legal problems, failed ventures, and unpaid debts—which have continued even as his professional fortunes have turned sharply upward—leaving a legacy of conflicts, judgments, and entanglements.

A few of the lowlights that Fortune found: Mastroianni’s legal trouble began in his 20s, when he was arrested four times for felony possession of a controlled substance. (He pleaded no contest each time and received a suspended sentence and probation all four times.) In 1989, he founded a company that specialized in government-funded work soundproofing homes and businesses near airports. By 2000, however, that business had gone into receivership, and banks had foreclosed on his office properties and two homes. Two years later, he was ordered to pay out $1.1 million in a related lawsuit. In 2003, he filed for bankruptcy, during which a court-appointed trustee accused him of “knowingly and fraudulently” lying about his assets. He was also the subject of a U.S. Department of Labor lawsuit that same year accusing him of illegally withholding several hundred thousand dollars in required employer pension-fund contributions and instead using the money for his own personal and business expenses. (The government won a default judgment and Mastroianni eventually paid $75,000 in restitution as part of a negotiated partial settlement.)

Mastroianni then relocated from Rhode Island to Florida, where his business dealings didn’t get any less shady. As Fortune put it, “virtually every one of the dozen or so projects [Mastroianni’s new construction company] launched over the past decade has faced delays, lawsuits or construction problems.” Most remain unfinished. One involved a building collapse that killed two workers and seriously injured several others. (The company never faced criminal charges or regulatory fines, though they did settle a number of civil lawsuits.)

Mastroianni’s fortunes, though, began to turn around when he discovered the EB-5 program. He launched a new business called the U.S. Immigration Fund, which acts as a government-approved middleman between foreign investors seeking visas and U.S. developers. All told, the company claimed to have raised more than $1 billion in EB-5 money during its first five years. Fittingly (at least for our purposes) is that Mastroianni’s first EB-5 project was a $144-million mixed-use project in Jupiter, Florida, known as Habourside Place. The development officially opened in December 2014. The following summer, Mastroianni announced a partnership between the development and a nearby golf course. Its name? Trump National Golf Club Jupiter.

Know anything about Mastroianni or any other Trump business partner? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Newly Revealed Document Shows Trump’s Companies Can Still Pay Him Whenever He Wants

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 03 Apr 2017 15:30:00 GMT

Donald Trump made a big show of stepping away from his family business when he became president, but that façade of separation won’t prevent him from receiving a company check whenever he pleases.

That previously unknown arrangement is the result of a late addition to the existing structure of the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which was first spotted by ProPublica. The change, which quietly went into effect last month, stipulates that the trust “shall distribute net income or principal to Donald J. Trump at his request” or whenever his eldest son and longtime attorney—the two named trustees—“deem appropriate.” The original trust document designated Trump as its “exclusive beneficiary” but did not specify how or when Trump could access his money.

Put simply, the tweak means the president can now dip into his corporate bank accounts for any profits made by the hundreds of companies he owns, or even gain access to the underlying assets themselves. Furthermore, any money that Trump does take for himself won’t be public since both the trust and the Trump Organization are privately held—and because Trump continues to refuse to release his tax returns. The president won’t be required to file another financial disclosure form until May 2018, but that filing doesn’t actually require him to list his profits.

The revelation is the latest illustration of the emptiness of the president’s promise to “completely isolat[e]” himself from his business empire. The arrangement will make it possible for Trump to keep close tabs on the financial fortunes of his company despite his claim that he will be kept out of the loop. And it also makes it even more painfully obvious that Trump is still the one with the final say over what happens to the business empire that bears his name. As Steven Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, put it to ProPublica: “For tax purposes, it’s as if the trust doesn’t exist at all. It’s just an entity on paper, nothing more.”

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Could Democrats and Trump Work Together on Health Care?

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 23:51:28 GMT

The American Health Care Act was pronounced DOA on Friday afternoon, a remarkable defeat for President Trump and a major victory for the American public as a whole. Donald Trump, though, has never been one to accept losing easily—or all that coherently. “I’ve been saying for years that the best thing is to let Obamacare explode and then go make a deal with the Democrats and have one unified deal,” the president told the Washington Post, describing an alternate reality in which he had not campaigned on the promise of immediately repealing and replacing the law. “And they will come to us; we won’t have to come to them.”

That is, um, unlikely.

First off, Trump’s Plan B—which he is now claiming has been Plan A all along—is built on the premise that Democrats will have no other choice than to do as he says once Obamacare goes up in flames. But there’s plenty of reason to doubt that will be the law’s fate. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the market for individual coverage is currently stable in most of the country, and with it the overall health care market as well. Yes, Obamacare has its problems, but most are confined to the state and local level and, at least as of Monday, don’t appear to be enough to cause the full-on nationwide death spiral Trump claims is imminent and unavoidable. (Slate’s Jordan Weissmann will have a deeper dive into this later.) As long as Obamacare is still alive and kicking, it’s hard to imagine that Democrats will go along with the GOP efforts to kill it. Bernie Sanders and other progressives, after all, are already dreaming of expanding the social safety net via universal Medicare. (Considering that Republicans control both branches of Congress and the White House, it’s safe to say that these efforts are more political posturing than actual plausible policy proposals for the foreseeable future.)

If Trump were the cold-hearted vengeful type (completely hypothetically, of course), the president could work with Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price to sabotage Obamacare in the hopes of nudging it over the edge. With the status quo shattered, Democrats might then be willing to help Republicans pick up the pieces for the sake of their constituents. But it’s inconceivable that they’d simply cede to Trump and House Speaker Paul Ryan’s demands given the party’s fundamentally different policy goals when it comes to health care. More likely, they would try to lay the blame for any successful Obamacare sabotage at the feet of the saboteurs—not necessarily that hard of a sell considering the GOP is currently in power and would be the ones holding the bag. So “forcing” Democrats to the table does not seem like a likely outcome.

One way or the other, then, the president and GOP leaders would need to offer Democrats a few “socialism”-flavored carrots instead of simply threatening them with “death to Obamacare” sticks. Following Friday’s ACHA collapse, some Washington insiders have been willing to suspend disbelief and suggest that might actually happen. “With #ACHA dead,” Jay Carney, Obama’s former spokesman, tweeted Friday, “both parties can now come together around market-based healthcare reform that greatly expands coverage [and] reduces costs.” Similarly, the current White House press secretary suggested Monday that Trump was more open to Democratic input than his Friday’s comments suggested, saying the president was “absolutely” willing to work with Democrats and that a number had already reached out with ideas. “We’ll look to see where we’ll get the votes,” Sean Spicer told reporters.

The White House better prepare itself for a long search. Remember: The ACHA would have ended insurance for an estimated 24 million people, and yet some GOP lawmakers—and many conservative pundits—felt it didn’t go far enough. The House Freedom Caucus saw the ACHA as Obamacare Lite, so just imagine how they’d react to a version that included input from actual liberals instead of simply “moderate” Republicans.

Support from more centrist Republicans, meanwhile, was hardly assured for the GOP-authored bill. Defections would likely come fast and furious as soon as the legislation includes the type of compromises needed to win over Democrats. After all, the idea that Democratic policies are doing more harm than good to the nation’s health care system was more or less a plank in the GOP party platform for the past seven years. In order to even bring a compromise bill to the House floor, then, Ryan would possibly need to break the Hastert Rule, which is the GOP governing procedure that normally prevents a speaker from holding a vote on a bill without the support of a majority of his caucus. Given the political wounds he suffered during the ACHA debate, it’s unclear if Ryan could survive the damage breaking the rule would inflict to him and his Speakership. More importantly, it’s even less clear why he’d even be willing to help pass a bill that is more popular among the opposing party than with his own.

In any event, Spicer seemed to give away the game in his Monday press conference by suggesting that Trump isn’t willing to take repeal off the table—the very thing Spicer also conceded was what had stopped Democrats from coming to the table in the first place. “I think some of the Democrats … early on in the process said that they wanted nothing to do with this process, there was no way that they would engage in any discussion to repeal,” Spicer said. “So I think it’s a two-way street.”

If we take Spicer at his word, then any new proposal offered by the president will be premised on repeal of the main functions of Obamacare. It’s hard to see how a) that is a compromise or b) why it would work this time around when it didn’t the last time. Spicer attempted to elide this later in the press conference when he was asked about Democratic opposition to repeal in the context of compromise and said: “That doesn’t mean we need the entire Democratic Caucus. That means we need some responsible Democrats who want to sit down and have a discussion about how to do that.” Under Spicer’s apparent definition, “responsible Democrats” are ones that would support repeal, e.g., unicorns.

So is health care reform dead for the remainder of Trump’s term? We’ll have to wait and see. Part of the reason for its Friday collapse was Trump’s ultimatum to House conservatives that his bill get a vote or no deal gets a vote, but it’s still too soon to say that wasn’t just empty bluster on the part of a president known for it. In fact, the Washington Post reported on Monday that Ryan is already telling Republican donors that his party will be taking another bite at the apple. (This, again, presumably would be without the support of Democrats, who would have no motivation to offer such unless it was truly bipartisan, and thus poisonous to conservatives.)

There’s also plenty of time left on the clock for Trump. It took Democrats more than a year to put the Affordable Care Act on Obama’s desk for him to sign it into law. It’s also plausible that at some point down the road Obamacare’s existing problems could worsen enough to where Democrats from the states hit hardest could feel enough pressure from home to consider an alternative. For now, though, Trump’s promise of the potential for a bipartisan deal would seem to be missing a key ingredient: bipartisanship.

Carl Icahn Is Apparently Profiting Enormously From His Role as an Adviser to Donald Trump

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 27 Mar 2017 16:44:00 GMT

Trump administration conflicts of interest come in many forms. There are those created directly by the president himself, those raised by his family members both inside and outside the White House, and those posed by his most senior advisers, such as Kellyanne Conway. But the New York Times on Monday highlighted yet one more area of concern: Trump’s informal, unpaid advisers—specifically billionaire investor Carl Icahn.

During his presidential transition, Trump named Icahn as a special adviser on regulatory matters and has kept him on in that role this year. “His help on the strangling regulations that our country is faced with will be invaluable,” Trump said in a December statement lauding Icahn, who was an early supporter of Trump’s unlikely presidential campaign and has an estimated net worth of $16.6 billion. It appears that, in his new role, Icahn has already proved to be a valuable asset to himself. Among the red flags spotted by the Times:

Icahn has aggressively pushed for the Environmental Protection Agency to rework an otherwise obscure rule on how corn-based ethanol is mixed into gasoline. He pressed Scott Pruitt on the matter during an interview with Pruitt for his current job as EPA chief, later raised the matter with one of Trump’s top economic advisers, and ultimately talked about it with the president himself during a phone call last month. Of note here is that Icahn is the majority owner of CVR Energy, a Texas oil refiner that has claimed to have spent $205.9 million last year to comply with the rule and that desperately wants to see it scrapped. Since Trump was elected, CVR’s stock price is up about 50 percent.
Icahn has weighed in on who should be the new head of the Securities and Exchange Commission. Icahn’s investment portfolio includes major stakes in several companies that have recently found themselves in the commission’s crosshairs, including CVR and Herbalife, as well as a number of other business ventures in highly regulated industries.
Icahn has pushed a global mining company he helps run, Freeport-McMoRan, to be more aggressive in its fight with Indonesia over one of the company’s contracts to mine gold and copper in Southeast Asia. Icahn says he hasn’t intervened with the White House directly on the matter. However, the company has asked for help from the State Department, Commerce Department, and the White House, according to its CEO.
Despite the president’s current regulatory freeze, his administration allowed a new IRS rule to go into effect in late January that would give qualifying oil and gas companies a corporate tax break. Icahn cited the rule as a major reason he first invested in CVR several years ago and appears well-positioned to benefit from the change.

All that understandably has Democrats and like-minded watchdog groups furious. “This is a mile out of bounds by any standard,” Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse told the Times. “Were the shoe on the other foot, Republicans would be having fits about any Obama relationship like this.” Whitehouse and several of his fellow Democrats are sending a letter to the Office of Government Ethics and the Justice Department this week to object to Icahn’s ongoing roles. The OGE, however, can’t do much more than ask nicely that the White House behave, and the DOJ ultimately reports to President Trump—so, yeah, good luck with that.

The defense put forward by Icahn and the White House, meanwhile, is that there is nothing to see here because Icahn’s role is technically an informal and unpaid one, which they claim means he is not subject to the same ethics laws as official staff. “I’m not making any policy, I am only giving my opinion,” Icahn told the Times. “He is simply a private citizen whose opinion the president respects and whom the president speaks with time to time,” White House spokeswoman Kelly Love added.

That, though, should do nothing to allay anyone’s concerns. It’s become standard operating procedure for this White House to use vague descriptions of individual staff responsibilities to shield them from serious ethics questions. The Trump administration intentionally avoids publicly defining roles and policy portfolios, and then turns around and claims advisers can’t have conflicts of interest. Again: The unofficial White House ethics plan is not to have one.

Trump Says He Never Promised to Quickly Repeal Obamacare. Here’s a Bunch of Times He Promised Exactly That.

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 21:45:00 GMT

Republican leaders in the House pulled their plan to repeal and replace Obamacare from the floor on Friday afternoon once it became clear that it did not have the votes needed to pass. Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Donald Trump suggested that this was simply all part of his plan. “You've all heard my speeches,” he said. “I never said ‘repeal it and replace it within 64 days.’ I have a long time. But I want to have a great health care bill and plan—and we will and it will happen.”

Hmm. That doesn’t sound quite right.

Here is a small sampling of all the times Donald Trump promised that repealing and replacing Obamacare would be a quick and relatively painless lift, one that he would get to right away.

Jan. 24, 2015, in a speech at the Iowa Freedom Summit:

“Somebody has to repeal and replace Obamacare. And they have to do it fast and not just talk about it.”

Feb. 9, 2016, on Twitter:

Feb. 22, 2016, at a campaign rally:

“Obamacare is going to be repealed and replaced. … You’re going to end up with great health care for a fraction of the price and that’s gonna take place immediately after we go in. Okay? Immediately. Fast. Quick.”

March 3, 2016, on his campaign website (on a page that has since been deleted):

“On day one of the Trump Administration, we will ask Congress to immediately deliver a full repeal of Obamacare.”

Oct. 27, via the Detroit News:

“Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing Obamacare. What a mess,” Trump told an enthusiastic crowd of thousands at the SeaGate Convention Center in downtown Toledo, his second of three Thursday rallies in Ohio.

Nov. 1, via Politico:

“When we win on Nov. 8 and elect a Republican Congress, we will be able to immediately repeal and replace Obamacare. We have to do it,” Trump said Tuesday afternoon in an address on the Affordable Care Act in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania.

“I will ask Congress to convene a special session so we can repeal and replace,” he continued. “And it will be such an honor for me, for you and for everybody in this country because Obamacare has to be replaced. And we will do it, and we will do it very, very quickly. It is a catastrophe.”

Nov. 7, via Roll Call:

“Real change begins with immediately repealing and replacing the disaster known as Obamacare,” Trump told a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during his final campaign rally on Monday evening. “It has just been announced that the residents of Michigan are going to experience a massive, double-digit premium hike, like you wouldn’t believe. It’s not going to matter that much, honestly, because we’re going to terminate it. You’re not going to have to worry about it, OK? Don’t worry.”

Jan. 10, via the New York Times:

President-elect Donald J. Trump demanded on Tuesday that Congress immediately repeal the Affordable Care Act and pass another health law quickly. His remarks put Republicans in the nearly impossible position of having only weeks to replace a health law that took nearly two years to pass.

“We have to get to business,” Mr. Trump told The New York Times in a telephone interview. “Obamacare has been a catastrophic event.” Mr. Trump appeared to be unclear both about the timing of already scheduled votes in Congress and about the difficulty of his demand — a repeal vote “probably some time next week” and a replacement “very quickly or simultaneously, very shortly thereafter.”

Jan. 11, via Politico:

The president-elect, addressing reporters at a news conference in New York, said his administration will submit a plan to repeal and replace the law, known as Obamacare, “almost simultaneously, shortly thereafter” his pick for secretary of Health and Human Services, Rep. Tom Price, is confirmed.

“It will be repeal and replace,” Trump said. “It will be essentially simultaneously. It will be various segments, you understand, but will most likely be on the same day or the same week, but probably the same day. Could be the same hour.”

I guess in the president's defense, he's right: He never said 64 days.

Is Kellyanne Conway Breaking the Law?

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 24 Mar 2017 19:20:33 GMT

Last month, Kellyanne Conway famously turned an interview from the White House into an infomercial for Ivanka Trump. “This is just a wonderful line,” the presidential adviser said of the clothing brand that bears the name of the president’s eldest daughter. “I own some of it. I fully—I’m going to just give it a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”

Ethics watchdogs and good-government types were aghast with this blatant violation of federal ethics rules. Even Republicans who had repeatedly ignored concerns about the many glaring conflicts of interest posed by the president’s business empire felt compelled to weigh in. “That was wrong, wrong, wrong, over the line, [and] unacceptable,” House Oversight Chairman Jason Chaffetz said.

Chaffetz joined his Democratic counterpart on the oversight panel, Maryland Rep. Elijah Cummings, in asking the Office of Government Ethics to investigate. Agency Director Walter Shaub Jr. concluded that Conway’s actions appeared so outrageous as to warrant formal punishment from the president. To the surprise of no one, the Trump administration shrugged.

Conway ultimately got away with openly flouting federal ethics rules on national television without so much as a slap on the wrist. But as remarkably brazen as her actions were, they may be dwarfed by a much larger and more serious conflict of interest: The available evidence suggests that more than two months since starting work at the White House, Conway still hasn’t sold the D.C. consulting firm she founded in 1995—named, plainly, the Polling Company—that boasts of such high-profile past clients as Boeing, the National Rifle Association, and even the federal government. If Conway is taking an active role in White House decision-making that directly impacts the fortunes of her firm’s clients, it would pose a far larger problem than her unapologetic Ivanka endorsement did: It could be a federal crime punishable with prison time.

That if is worth considering given the stakes, the available facts, and the Trump administration’s silence on the matter. Conway appears to be in a position to use her public office to directly advance the interests of her private business. A company or advocacy group would be able to pay the Polling Company for consulting advice while knowing the firm’s owner is in turn giving her own advice to the president. Quid meet Quo. That would be more than just a violation of the type of federal rule blatantly ignored during the Ivanka episode, which is supposed to come with professional consequences ranging from a reprimand to removal; it would be a violation of federal law. Under the basic criminal conflict of interest statute (18 U.S.C. § 208)—which doesn’t apply to the president but does apply to his staff—it is illegal for an executive branch employee to participate “personally and substantially” in any government matter that will affect his or her own financial interests. If a court were to find Conway willingly violated that law, she could face up to five years in prison and $50,000 in fines for each offense. Prosecutions under the law are relatively rare though that can be explained, at least in part, by the reality that most executive branch employees at least pretend to follow it.

According the Polling Company’s website, Conway “resigned” as president and CEO “effective January 20^th, 2017,” and was replaced by Brett Loyd, who had previously served as the firm’s director of political services. “We wish Kellyanne the best of luck in all of her future endeavors,” the company’s statement at the time read. After struggling to find public information on the firm, Slate reached out to the Polling Company to find out where the business was incorporated. Loyd responded to Slate’s initial query three weeks ago, telling us it is a Virginia company. But then he suddenly stopped answering emails and phone calls when asked about Conway’s current connection to the firm he now runs.

The White House was helpful only in comparison. In a statement provided to Slate in response to repeated questions about Conway and her company, a White House spokeswoman appeared to confirm that Conway does indeed still own the company but went on to suggest that she is waiting to sell it until the Office of Government Ethics grants her what is known as a certificate of divestiture:

Kellyanne Conway resigned from the company and has had no management responsibility since before she was sworn in as Counselor to The President. Mrs. Conway, who has signed the Ethics Pledge, has been working with the Office of the White House Counsel to ensure she is fully compliant with her legal and ethical obligations in connection with her former company and her duties in the White House. While she is in the process of divesting her assets, like all White House employees in a similar situation, this process requires submission of ethics documentation to the Office of Government Ethics to obtain a Certificate of Divestiture from OGE prior to selling the asset. As is the case for many other employees, this process is still underway.

The White House declined to discuss the matter further, responding to a detailed set of follow-up questions with a one-line email last week: “The statement sufficiently covers these areas.”

The problem, however, is that it doesn’t. For starters, there is no current record of Conway or the White House even beginning what can be a months-long process of obtaining a certificate from OGE. (The certificates provide recipients with a tax break on the profits they make from such sales, which can ease the financial pain of playing by the rules.) “OGE is at liberty to speak on what is available and received at OGE and we have not received any documents regarding Kellyanne Conway,” a representative for the agency’s compliance division told Slate on Wednesday in response to a formal request, as allowed under federal law, to review any certificates of divestiture or ethics waivers issued to Conway.

The absence of paperwork matters: A government employee seeking a certificate of divestiture must first commit in writing to sell the asset even if his or her request is denied. Until Conway puts pen to paper, she won’t be bound to follow through and sell her company. (On Thursday, Slate asked the White House why Conway hadn’t submitted the paperwork yet, but there was no response as of publication time.)

Furthermore, remarks Conway has made since taking her job as counselor to the president raise additional questions about her intentions. In an interview with Politico last month, Conway explicitly cited her declining to sell the company for a big sum as evidence of her loyalty to President Trump. “He knows I had a huge offer to sell my firm,” she said then. “He knows I walked away from millions.” It’s unclear why such a sale would preclude Conway from taking her new job. The White House declined to elaborate, but one reading might be that the big-dollar offer Conway received was contingent on her remaining with the firm full-time instead of following Trump to the West Wing. Counterfactuals aside, though, that still wouldn't explain whether or not she actually intends to sell it now for a smaller sum, or the current delay in beginning that potential process.

Conway, then, appears to be taking a page out of her boss’s book. Trump made a big show of stepping away from the day-to-day operations of the Trump Organization before taking office, but he nonetheless maintains his ownership stake in the for-profit company he built. The difference is that there is a federal criminal statute that would make it illegal for Conway to exert influence on issues that impact her private clients. (Trump is likely violating the Emoluments Clause of the Constitution, but that’s another story.)

Robert Weissman, president of the D.C. watchdog nonprofit Public Citizen, told Slate that if Conway does actually still own the Polling Company, it would be incredibly problematic. “On its face,” he said, “it is an invitation for profound corruption.” The law, he explained, is clear: An administration employee either needs to sell her business or recuse herself from policy matters that directly impact that business. “But the latter can’t really even apply here since you have a senior adviser to the president who has input on effectively everything,” Weissman said. (The White House declined multiple times to say whether Conway has recused herself from any policy decisions since Trump took office.)

This wouldn’t be the first time that Conway’s ownership of the Polling Company has raised legal questions, either. During the 2016 campaign, while Conway was serving as both the head of her polling firm and as Trump’s campaign manager, her company received roughly one-quarter of $1 million from a Trump-friendly super PAC run by Rebekah Mercer. According to a formal complaint filed by the Campaign Legal Center currently pending before the Federal Election Commission, that was a violation of the election law that bars coordination between campaigns and super PACs. The CLC argues that the cash represented an illegal in-kind contribution to Trump since, in effect, Mercer’s PAC was paying part of Conway’s campaign salary.

The Polling Company is privately held, which will make it difficult if not impossible to independently confirm if Conway ultimately sells her business or not, and the firm appears happy to have it that way. Paperwork filed in Virginia currently lists the company’s registered agent—essentially its point of contact for any legal issues—as the CT Corporation, a third-party company that fills the same role for thousands of other businesses in the United States. (Disclosure: CT Corp. serves the same function for The Slate Group.) The corporation, which is the subsidiary of a multinational company based in the Netherlands, told Slate that it was not authorized to discuss the ownership of the Polling Company or provide any related information.

Meanwhile, Conway’s firm is required to submit annual reports to the Virginia State Corporation Commission, but those filings mandate only a list of the company’s principal officers and directors, not its owners. As part of its most recent report, the company informed the commission on Feb. 14, 2017 that Loyd had indeed taken over for Conway as CEO, but the form still named Conway as its director. As far as the commission is concerned, the information was current as of the date they received it, which was more than three weeks after Conway joined Trump in the White House. (“It would be considered to be accurate as of the time of signing/submitting the document,” an agency representative confirmed to Slate.)

The Polling Company declined to provide Slate with a list of its current clients, but a quick look at past ones touted on its website makes it easy to see the problem: Boeing, for example, is one of the largest defense contractors in the nation—and learned early just how important it is to stay on Trump’s good side after the president took to Twitter to complain about the costs of a new Air Force One. Altria and American Express operate in two of the more heavily regulated industries in the country, giving them added incentive to find a friend with the president’s ear such as Conway. And Major League Baseball enjoys an antitrust exemption that it is desperate to preserve.

Slate contacted each of the roughly two-dozen companies listed on the Polling Company’s website as clients it has done business with in the past two decades. Roughly half of them including Boeing, American Express, MLB, and the NRA, did not respond to questions about past and current dealings with the firm. Among those that did respond, most described their relationship with the firm as fleeting. A representative for the North Carolina–based supermarket chain Harris Teeter, for example, said it worked with Conway’s company “back in 2006 or 2007” but that it is not a current client.

Other groups described longer relationships with Conway’s company. An Altria spokesperson said the tobacco giant worked with the firm “during the late 1990s to 2001” but no longer does. The Susan B. Anthony List said the anti-abortion group has “frequently” worked with the Polling Company, most recently in January shortly before Trump was sworn in, but has no current projects with the firm. And a spokesperson for the American Road and Transportation Builders Association, which voiced support for Trump’s campaign promise to spend billions on the nation’s roads, told Slate that the firm has “done some good work for us” but did not respond to a follow-up about whether they’re currently working with the company now that Conway is in the White House.

Compared to the big-dollar conflicts created by President Trump’s own business empire—or those of his wealthy son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who also serves as a White House adviser—those that might be posed by Conway retaining ownership of her firm seem almost quaint. According to a copy of the firm’s contract with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission reviewed by Slate, for instance, the government paid the firm $22,610 to conduct a total of four focus groups a decade ago.

It might be hard to imagine a five-figure consulting deal shaping federal policy. But we don’t know who is paying the Polling Company, or how much. The point of the bribery, graft, and conflicts of interest statute in question is to police any potential conflict. The president is said to have a tendency to make decisions based on the last person he talked to. Conway’s office is right in the West Wing. A major corporation wouldn’t need to pay the Polling Company to explicitly deliver its message to the president; simply knowing where your money is coming from could be enough to influence your thinking, which is why the laws are clear on this topic.

It’s also why Conway and the White House need to be clear as well. If she plans to sell her company, she should commit publicly to doing so. Step one would be for Conway to actually request a certificate of divestiture from OGE as the White House implied she was in the process of doing. If she isn’t going to sell, the White House should explain how she could possibly retain ownership of the company and avoid breaking the law, offer a running disclosure on all of the Polling Company’s clients, and all of the issues from which she is recusing herself. Anything short of that and Conway might as well reprise her role as a pitchwoman for Trump goods and services—that, at least, she was doing out in the open.

Know anything about the Polling Company or any other potential conflicts of interest in the Trump administration? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

GSA Gives Trump the A-OK to Benefit but Not Benefit From His D.C. Hotel

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 23 Mar 2017 21:33:00 GMT

The federal agency that oversees Donald Trump’s lease for his luxury hotel in Washington decided Thursday that his serving as president doesn’t violate the terms of the agreement that bars government officials from making money off the property.

In a letter sent Thursday, a General Service Administration official informed the Trump Organization that everything is a-OK as far as the agency is concerned. “I have determined that Tenant is in full compliance with Section 37.19 and, accordingly, the Lease is valid and in full force and effect,” wrote the GSA contracting officer.

The aforementioned section of the lease reads:

No member or delegate to Congress, or elected official of the Government of the United States or the Government of the District of Columbia, shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease or to any benefit that may arise therefrom.

Given Trump has refused to divest himself of his financial interest in the hotel—as well as the rest of his business empire—many experts read that clause as a deal-breaker. Trump clearly became an elected federal official when he was sworn in as president. Others, meanwhile, argued that the future-looking phrase “shall be admitted” might give Trump the wiggle room he was looking for, since he had already been admitted prior to becoming president. But ultimately the GSA—whose director, by the way, was recently appointed by Trump himself—focused its reasoning on the “any benefit” portion of the clause.

The GSA’s rationale is a bit complicated, in no small part because of the Russian nesting doll of LLCs, holding companies, and financial trusts used by the Trump family to do business. But the short version is that Trump appears to have put the agency’s mind at ease by restructuring things in a way so his share of any hotel profits won’t be paid out to him while he’s in office, and will instead remain with the Delaware-based LLC the Trump Organization created for the property. “In other words,” the letter from the GSA explains, “during his term in office, the President will not receive any distributions from the Trust that would have been generated from the hotel.”

That conclusion requires both a narrow reading of the clause in question and a strict reading of the organizational structure of the Trump Organization. Donald J. Trump, after all, clearly still benefits—financially and otherwise—from the success of his D.C. hotel regardless of whether he actually cashes checks from the company while in office. Still, the GSA decision removes the most obvious challenge to the president’s continued ownership of the D.C. hotel. Democrats very well may continue to make some noise about the lease in Congress, but there isn’t much they can do as long as they remain in the minority.

Trump and his hotel, however, aren’t in the clear yet. The hotel is still the subject of a pair of legal challenges, the first from an ethics watchdog that claims Trump is violating the U.S Constitution by accepting money from foreign government officials who stay at the hotel, and a second from a D.C. restaurant that is arguing that Trump’s ongoing ownership of the hotel—along with its in-house dining options—puts them at an unfair business disadvantage in D.C. Unless a court acts, though, Donald J. Trump will remain both landlord and tenant at the federally owned Old Post Office building a few blocks from the White House.

More Evidence That the Trumps’ Ethics Plan Is Not to Have One

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 22 Mar 2017 17:27:00 GMT

When it comes to addressing conflicts of interest, Donald Trump’s plan has always been not to have a plan—or at least not one with enough specificity to actually matter. Prior to the election, he promised to solve the problem by creating a blind trust that was by definition not blind. After the election, he made a big show of walling himself off from his business empire without actually taking the steps needed to do it. And now, Forbes’ Dan Alexander provides yet one more piece of evidence that the Trumps DGAF.*

In the course of reporting on a story about the Trump family’s friends and business partners, Alexander spoke with Eric Trump in his office at Trump Tower:

One minute, he promises to never talk about the business with his father while he serves in the White House. Less than two minutes later, he says he will update his father on the company's financials “probably quarterly.”

If we take Eric at his word, the much-hyped firewall between the president and the business that bears his name will swing wide open around four times a year. (Trump’s lawyers had previously claimed the president would “sharply limit his information rights,” but provided few specifics.) Another reading of probably quarterly, though, is that Eric Trump hadn’t bothered to even think about how, when, and how often he’ll update his father until Alexander asked him. That’s troubling in its own way, since not deciding is a decision of its own, and it’s these type of nondecision decisions that have largely allowed the Trumps to continue to do whatever they want without being accountable to the American public.

Consider their much-hyped promise to give the Treasury Department any profits the Trump Organization makes from foreign government officials staying at one of its hotels, a decision Trump’s lawyers suggested was made out of an abundance of caution as not to violate the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause. Noticeably absent from the January announcement were the details, and when the Trump Organization finally began to provide them this week, it became clear that it won’t be actually making any such donations until 2018 at the earliest. Given what we’ve seen so far, Treasury officials probably shouldn’t hold their breath. Similarly, the company claims to have a comprehensive vetting process in place for any business dealings—and yet it won’t say what that process is or explain why it didn’t stop the company from selling a $16 million Park Avenue penthouse to a woman with ties to Chinese military intelligence, as Mother Jones discovered.

This isn’t limited to the Trump Organization. Earlier this week, Politico reported that Ivanka Trump now has her own West Wing office and “is in the process of a obtaining security clearance.” That same day, the New York Times reported on her continued influence over the Ivanka Trump brand and vague attempts to steer clear of ethics violations. So now Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, are both officially advising the president from offices inside the White House while retaining stakes in their own companies. Under federal law, it is illegal for either to participate “personally and substantially” in any government matter that will affect their own financial interests. The White House, however, has avoided saying what areas of policy each is involved in and which ones they will recuse themselves from. That raises plenty of big questions, but it simultaneously prevents the public from learning the more important answers.

This all, then, leaves two options: Either the Trumps really haven’t bothered to think this stuff through in any detail—or they did, and quickly realized the American public wouldn’t like the results.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

*Correction, March 23, 2017: This post originally misstated that a Forbes article by Dan Alexander appeared in Fortune.

Ethics Chief to White House: Not Punishing Kellyanne Conway Risks Undermining the Entire Ethics Program

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 23:23:00 GMT

The ongoing spat between the White House and the Office of Government Ethics over what to do with Kellyanne Conway continued Thursday with the federal agency once again making clear its concern over the Trump administration’s nonreaction to what in the eyes of pretty much everyone else was a clear violation of federal ethics rules.

“Not taking disciplinary action against a senior official under such circumstances risks undermining the ethics program,” OGE Director Walter Shaub Jr. wrote to the White House of its decision to give Conway a pass.

A refresher for those who need it. Standing in the White House last month, Kellyanne Conway had this to say about the clothing brand that bears the name of the president’s eldest daughter: “I own some of it. I fully—I’m going to just give it a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”

OGE then investigated at the request of the bipartisan leaders of the House Oversight Committee, and found the same thing that most other experts did: A White House employee misusing her public position in a clear violation of federal ethics rules. Shaub concluded Conway’s actions were so outrageous as to warrant formal punishment from the president. To the surprise of no one, the Trump administration simply shrugged off the advice. In a response sent to OGE last week, a White House ethics officer claimed the comments in question were made in a “light, off-hand manner” and “without nefarious motive.” Conway, the White House concluded, “acted inadvertently and is highly unlikely to do so again.”

As long as the White House continues to stonewall—and Congress continues to sit on the sidelines—it’s not clear exactly what else the OGE can do. As I’ve explained before, normally, if the agency’s initial recommendation is ignored, the office then follows up by informing the president himself. In this case, though, Trump is already well aware of what happened—and he clearly doesn’t have a problem with it. Given what we’ve seen during the first few months of his presidency, it’s clear Trump has little use for the ethics program.

President Trump’s Latest Legal Challenger: A D.C. Wine Bar

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 09 Mar 2017 19:11:00 GMT

The owners of an upscale Washington restaurant have become the latest to sue Donald Trump. Their claim: The president’s ongoing affiliation and ownership of the Trump International Hotel in D.C.—along with its in-house dining options—have put them at an unfair business disadvantage when competing for customers. Khalid Pitts and Diane Gross, who own Cork Wine Bar and the Cork Market & Tasting Room, aren’t asking the D.C. Superior Court for money to compensate for their alleged lost business. Instead, they’re asking the court to force Trump to remedy the situation himself by either fully divesting from his hotel, shuttering it while he is in office—or, dramatically, resigning as president of the United States.

Trump’s D.C. hotel has long served as Exhibit A for those worried about the glaring conflicts of interest created by President Trump’s sprawling financial interests. It was cited in the federal lawsuit claiming Trump is violating the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause by accepting money from foreign governments and has similarly been the subject of a formal complaint from watchdogs who believe Trump’s continued ownership of the hotel violates the government lease that dictates no government official benefit from it. This new suit, however, is unique for two reasons: 1) It was filed in local court citing local law, and 2) the plaintiffs seem more likely to get an actual hearing on the matter.

While many ethics experts agree that Trump is violating the Emoluments Clause, the federal lawsuit over that ultimately faces a separate challenge: the question of standing. In order to sue someone, plaintiffs generally need to prove that they were specifically harmed by the alleged wrongdoing in question. As I’ve explained before, that’s no easy task for the ethics watchdog—Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW—behind the federal suit. The plaintiffs in the D.C. lawsuit, though, seem to have a somewhat clearer path to court since they have a more direct claim of financial harm.

Proving Trump is associated with the hotel shouldn’t be a difficult lift. While the president stepped down from running the day-to-day operations of his company before being sworn in, he never actually divested himself of his financial interests in his company. He’s also visited the D.C. hotel as president—including during inauguration weekend—and his own White House spokesman has plugged the establishment in his official government capacity at least once. And, of course, there’s the simple matter that his last name is prominently displayed in big block letters on the hotel’s signage.

The more difficult task, however, will be proving Trump and his new hotel are the root of Cork’s problems. As the Washington Post notes, the two establishments, which are about a mile-and-a-half away from the Trump hotel, face plenty of more local competition as well. “Pitts and Gross were trailblazers when they opened on 14th Street among pawnshops and vacant storefronts in 2008,” the paper explains. “Since then, more than two dozen restaurants have opened nearby.” There’s also the issue of size: The two Cork establishments combined have only roughly half the square-footage of the Trump hotel’s main ballroom.

For its part, the Trump Organization was quick to dismiss the suit, with lawyer Alan Garten calling it a “wild publicity stunt completely lacking in legal merit.” That’ll be for the courts to decide, though it is not unreasonable to think that the lawsuit may drum up some more business for Cork in the meantime. Nordstrom, for example, got plenty of free press and goodwill from progressives for doing far less. Meanwhile, another possible incentive for taking the president to court might be the owners’ politics. As the Associated Press notes, in addition to being a restaurateur, Pitts is also a politician. He ran in 2014 as an independent for a seat on the D.C. City Council. Prior to his run, he’d been registered as a Democrat, and he has previously worked for the Service Employees International Union and the Sierra Club. Gross, meanwhile, is a lawyer who previously worked for then-Sen. Barbara Mikulski, a Maryland Democrat.* None of that, though, proves this suit is more about politics than about the bottom line.

The complaint blames the president directly, claiming Trump and his associates have created the perception that spending money at the Trump hotel would come with perks for the politically minded. That, the plaintiffs contend, is costing them in the form of lost tabs from lobbyists, fundraisers, and other political players. “There is a reason that the senior staff hang out in the lobby bar at the [Trump] hotel,” a D.C.-based lobbyist quoted anonymously in the complaint says. “They are seeing who spends time and money there and who books large parties there and large blocks of rooms for delegations.” The unnamed lobbyist concluded: “Point is, someone is paying attention to the person who orders the $1,000 bottle of wine.”

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

*Correction, March 9, 2017: A previous version of this post conflated the work histories of both Pitts and Gross.

No, Trump Is Not Starting an Escort Service in China on International Women’s Day

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 08 Mar 2017 18:07:00 GMT

The Associated Press reported on Wednesday that China has granted preliminary approval for more than three-dozen new Trump trademarks in the country. Many of the 38 marks align with the Trump Organization’s existing business around the globe: There are ones for golf clubs, hotels, restaurants, and real estate companies. But there is another one, though, that was getting special attention on International Women’s Day from the president’s critics: A trademark for a class of business known as “social escort and concierge services.” Is that what it sounds like? Sen. Richard Blumenthal assumed so.

While it might seem like the most Trumptastic thing of all time to trademark a new Chinese escort service on International Women’s Day, that is almost certainly not what is actually happening. For one, Trump applied for the trademark nearly a year ago, and the preliminary approval was announced several days ago. More important, though, is how Chinese IP law works. While Beijing has taken steps to tighten its trademark laws to bring them closer to those in the West in recent years, it still operates largely on a first-come-first-serve basis. This means that large corporations are well-served to file defensive trademarks simply to protect their name from being attached to a product or service they might not want to be connected to (such as, perhaps, an escort service).

“Here, you generally have to be using the mark in connection with the covered products to obtain a registration,” William Cannon, a partner who specializes in intellectual property at the law firm Parker Poe, told me in an email. “Everywhere else, you don't, so you see a lot of defensive registrations aiming to shield brands from possible infringement. That's all he's doing.” Cannon added that filing defensive trademarks can be smart business for large corporations, particularly in big markets where counterfeiting and piracy is common.

Put another way, Trump had the choice of either trademarking a Trump escort service in China or risking someone else doing the same thing and then actually launching that service. Such fears aren’t unfounded. As the Washington Post discovered last May, an Australia-based company had already tried to capitalize on the Trump name by launching Trump International Escorts, which has no affiliation with the Trump Organization and ultimately changed its name under legal pressure. “As a company we zealously protect Mr. Trump's valuable name, brand, and trademarks,” Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten told the paper at the time. “Unfortunately, as the brand has grown in popularity around the world, there are more and more people who have tried to trade off his name.”

The likely defensive nature of Trump’s trademarks aside, the larger development remains troubling even without escorts involved. Dan Plane, the director of the Hong Kong consulting firm Simone IP Services, told the AP that he had never seen so many applications approved so easily. “For all these marks to sail through so quickly and cleanly, with no similar marks, no identical marks, no issues with specifications—boy, it's weird,” he said.

As I explained last month after China gave Trump his long-desired trademark for construction services, the fact that the president had a legitimate claim to these trademarks doesn’t mean the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause doesn’t apply. As long as Trump owns his business, China is in a position to use trademarks as bargaining chips in matters of state, and the president will know he is negotiating with a foreign power that has the ability to directly help or harm his own personal financial fortunes. This conflict is precisely what the Emoluments Clause was intended to prevent. Less than three months into his presidency, it’s already clear President Trump is willing to use his public office for his personal gain. It would seem the only thing left to haggle over is the price.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

White House Issues Corporate Press Release on Behalf of Exxon Mobil

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 06 Mar 2017 22:53:00 GMT

A few things that happened Monday:

Former Exxon Mobil chairman and CEO—and current secretary of state—Rex Tillerson was scheduled to meet with President Trump in Washington at 1:35 p.m. EST, according to a schedule provided to reporters.
Current Exxon Mobil chairman and CEO Darren Woods used a keynote address at an energy conference in Houston to tout his company’s Growing the Gulf initiative, described as a $20 billion investment in nearly a dozen projects in Louisiana and Texas. According to the conference agenda, Woods took the stage between 3:10 p.m. EST and 3:40 p.m. EST.*
Exxon Mobil issued a 400-odd-word press release about its Gulf Coast initiative at 3:10 p.m. EST.
The White House issued a 350-odd-word press release congratulating the company on its announcement—and touting it as an evidence of the president delivering on his “promise to bring back jobs to America.” That statement went out at 3:43 p.m. EST and Trump then tweeted it out at 4:19 p.m.

The two statements had plenty more in common than simply the topic.

A snippet from the Exxon release:

ExxonMobil is strategically investing in new refining and chemical-manufacturing projects in the U.S. Gulf Coast region to expand its manufacturing and export capacity. The company’s Growing the Gulf expansion program, consists of 11 major chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Investments began in 2013 and are expected to continue through at least 2022.

And one from the White House release:

Exxon Mobil is strategically investing in new refining and chemical-manufacturing projects in the United States Gulf Coast region to expand its manufacturing and export capacity. The company’s Growing the Gulf program consists of 11 major chemical, refining, lubricant and liquefied natural gas projects at proposed new and existing facilities along the Texas and Louisiana coasts. Investments began in 2013 and are expected to continue through at least 2022.

As you can see, with the exception of a couple style issues (ExxonMobil becomes Exxon Mobil, and U.S. Gulf Coast becomes United States Gulf Coast) and one missing word (expansion), those two paragraphs mirror each other verbatim. Perhaps most important, however, is the last line shared by both: “Investments began in 2013 and are expected to continue through at least 2022.” In other words, the domestic investment the White House claims is evidence of Trump delivering on his campaign promises actually began under President Obama.

*Correction, March 6, 2017, at 6:01 p.m.: An earlier version of this post misstated the time Woods was scheduled to give his keynote address.

Michael Flynn Reportedly Lied to the FBI About His Russia Phone Call

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 23:22:00 GMT

Michael Flynn resigned this week as President Trump’s national security adviser after it became apparent that he had lied to Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about a conversation he had with a Russian diplomat about U.S. sanctions. Since such communication came before Trump was sworn in—and therefore before Flynn was officially on the job—it appeared to violate an obscure, centuries-old statue known as the Logan Act that bars private citizens from interfering in diplomatic matters. What seems to have cost Flynn his job, however, was not the communication itself but the embarrassment his attempted cover-up caused the White House.

It now appears Flynn may have lied to more than the White House about what he discussed with Ambassador Sergey I. Kislyak in a conversation that was captured on a routine wiretap of diplomats’ calls. The Washington Post reports:

Former national security adviser Michael Flynn denied to FBI agents in an interview last month that he had discussed U.S. sanctions against Russia with that country’s ambassador to the United States before President Trump took office, contradicting the contents of intercepted communications collected by intelligence agencies, current and former U.S. officials said.

Flynn never appeared to be in any real jeopardy of being punished under the Logan Act, and congressional Republicans have to date shown no interest in pursuing the matter any further. But lying to the FBI is a felony, and doing that is a bigger deal than violating a little-known statute from 1799. Theoretically, Flynn’s lie to the feds could open him up to criminal charges—which would be more than a touch ironic given Flynn’s penchant for leading “lock her up” chants directed at Hillary Clinton during the campaign.

Still, prosecution seems unlikely. The power to prosecute Flynn ultimately lies with the Justice Department, which is headed by Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who in turn reports to Trump. During his press conference on Thursday—during which he said a number of other crazed, baffling, and outrageous things—the president offered a strong, albeit not logically sound, defense of Flynn. “I don’t think he did anything wrong,” Trump said. “If anything, he did something right.”

Update, Feb. 16, 2017, at 10:50 p.m.: CNN is now reporting that the FBI is unlikely to pursue charges against Flynn, citing investigators who stated that Flynn was “cooperative and provided truthful answers. ... [T]hey don't believe he was intentionally misleading them.”

Emoluments in China

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 16 Feb 2017 21:18:02 GMT

China gave Donald Trump something this week that he’s been seeking for more than a decade: the rights to own his name in that country. The Chinese government announced Tuesday that it has awarded Trump a 10-year trademark on his last name for construction services, a development that the Associated Press described as a “surprise win” for our businessman-president. Previous attempts to wrest control of his naming rights from a Chinese man who had beat Trump to the punch in registering the name by two weeks repeatedly failed.

Trump’s reversal of fortunes raises a number of important questions, chief among them: Is China attempting to curry favor with Trump because he’s president? Would Trump have received his coveted trademark even if he weren’t president? Would we need to be asking these questions if the president had followed ethics experts’ advice and divested himself of his financial interests in his business empire? In short order: most likely, probably, and certainly not.

First, the backstory: Trump had spent years trying to get this particular trademark with no avail. According to the Washington Post, Trump’s last setback in the matter came in May 2015, when a court denied his then-newest challenge to the existing trademark held by a man named Dong Wei. Nearly one year later, in April 2016, Trump’s lawyers asked Chinese officials to reconsider their decision, which they did, ultimately voiding Dong’s trademark on Sept. 6. The bureau then formally announced Trump’s competing claim to the trademark on Nov. 13, which began a three-month–long bureaucratic process that was completed on Valentine’s Day with the formal awarding of Trump’s trademark for real-estate construction.

It’s important to note that China isn’t giving Trump something that he didn’t already have some claim to, or that he wasn’t likely to get before he became president. Dong only managed to snag the Trump name in the first place thanks to China’s first-come-first-serve trademark policy. In recent years, though, Beijing has taken steps to tighten its trademark laws and intellectual-property rights to bring them closer to those in the West. In December, for instance, the Supreme People’s Court ruled in favor of Michael Jordan in a dispute over a trademark for the Chinese word Qiaodan, which sounds like Jordan in Mandarin. The following month the high court issued guidelines for trademark cases that specifically bar the use of the names of public figures in areas including politics, economy, culture, and religion. It’s reasonable to believe, then, that Trump would have been granted this particular trademark even if he had never been elected president. But, of course, Trump was elected president.

If you overlay the timeline of Trump’s quest for the trademark with that of his political career, all those dots start to look like a straight line. Trump’s complaints fell on deaf ears for years before he launched his presidential campaign; China agreed to revisit the matter after he jumped in the race; trademark officials sided with him for the first time shortly before he was elected and then again days after he won the presidency; and finally, China officially awarded Trump’s trademark less than a month after he took the oath of office. None that proves causation, of course, but it creates the appearance of possible favor trading, something that could have been avoided altogether if Trump had left his business behind when he headed to Washington.

The trademark case also raises the related issue of the U.S. Constitution’s Emoluments Clause, which bars Trump from accepting “any present, Emolument, Office, or Title, of any kind whatever” from a foreign state. The aim of that language wasn’t to prevent bribery—which is, after all, explicitly barred elsewhere in the Constitution—but instead to prevent public officials from being influenced in more subtle ways. As conservative legal scholar David Post has put it, “accepting an emolument introduces an improper element—personal gain—into the decision-maker’s calculus, less obviously and overtly than in cases of actual bribery, but no less serious for that.”

It’s easy to spot areas where Trump’s worldview could have been shaped by his business in China. ThinkProgress editor Judd Legum pointed out Wednesday night, for example, that Trump went from questioning the United States’ “One China” policy to affirming it in the days before his trademark was finalized. To my eye, Legum may be oversimplifying the timeline a bit. Trump’s original comments on the matter came after he was already well on his way to getting his trademark, though it is conceivable China was willing to use the trademark as leverage by threatening to derail the process at the last second if Trump didn’t reverse himself. Regardless, Legum’s larger point about the appearance of conflict is a crucial one. As long as Trump is both businessman and president, his own financial interests will unavoidably hang over his presidential decisions.

This trademark decision isn’t a one-off event either. Donald Trump has 49 other trademark applications still pending in China, along with scores of current ones that will come up for renewal during the next four years. Regardless of whether Trump deserves those trademarks, China is now in a position to use each of them as bargaining chips in matters of state. The president, then, is negotiating with a foreign power that has the ability to directly help or harm his own personal financial fortunes. Both Trump and China know that—and they also know that Trump is already on record that he believes his naming rights rise to the level of geopolitical importance. Back in 2011, Trump wrote then–Commerce Secretary Gary Locke asking him to intervene on his behalf in his quest for an exclusive trademark in China. “My appeals lawyer said that while we should win the case 100%,” Trump wrote, “we won’t because the cards are stacked against Trump.” Now that he’s president, it’s clear they no longer are.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Ethics Office to White House: Punish Kellyanne Conway for Ivanka “Commercial”

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 14 Feb 2017 21:04:00 GMT

The federal agency tasked with teaching the Trump administration ethics has some advice for the White House: punish Kellyanne Conway for going on live television last week and telling Americans to buy items from Ivanka Trump’s clothing line.

“Under the present circumstances, there is strong reason to believe that Ms. Conway has violated the Standards of Conduct and that disciplinary action is warranted,” Walter Shaub Jr., director of the Office of Government Ethics, wrote to the White House in a letter dated Monday and released on Tuesday by Democrats on the House Oversight Committee.

The ethics agency itself doesn’t have any formal investigative powers, but it didn’t exactly need them to reach its verdict that all the available evidence suggests Conway violated federal rules designed to bar administrative employees from misusing their public position for the private gain of themselves or others. Conway was standing in the White House briefing room, with the White House seal behind her, while answering questions about White House policy, when she segued into what she herself called a “free commercial” for Ivanka’s clothing line.

Here’s how Shaub summed up the case against Conway in his letter to the White House’s internal ethics official:

On the morning of Thursday, February 9, 2017, the hosts of a news program interviewed Ms. Conway from the White House’s James S. Brady Briefing Room. She was unquestionably appearing in her official capacity. She used that interview, however, as an opportunity to market Ms. Trump’s products, stating, “ Go buy Ivanka’s stuff, is what I would tell you. I hate shopping, I’m going to go get some myself today.” Shortly thereafter, she added: “ This is just a wonderful line. I own some of it. I fully—I’m going to give a free commercial here. Go buy it today everybody, you can find it online.” As Ms. Conway made these statements, she appeared on screen in a tight frame between the official seal of the White House and the American flag.

These facts, if true, would establish a clear violation of the prohibition against misuse of position.

Shaub also noted that despite White House spokesman Sean Spicer’s vague claim that Conway had been “counseled” on the matter after the fact, the ethics office was never notified of “any disciplinary or other corrective action” taken against Conway. According to the federal government’s online guide for employees, the violation of ethics regulations can “lead to reprimand, suspension, demotion, or even removal, depending on the circumstances.”

Shaub gave the White House until Feb. 28 to report back with its own internal findings, but it’s not exactly clear what happens if the White House either ignores the request to investigate or decides Conway’s clear-cut violation of the rules was somehow not one. Normally, if the OGE’s initial recommendation is ignored, the office then follows up by informing the president himself. In this case, though, Trump is already well aware of what happened—and he clearly doesn’t have a problem with it.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

The White House Isn’t Even Pretending to Care About Ethics Rules Anymore

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 09 Feb 2017 15:25:00 GMT

Standing in the White House briefing room with a White House seal behind her, White House adviser Kellyanne Conway on Thursday told Fox News viewers to go buy items from Ivanka Trump’s clothing line.

“This is just a wonderful line,” Conway told Fox & Friends, one day after her boss complained on Twitter that Nordstrom had decided to stop carrying his daughter’s line in its department stores. “I own some of it. I fully—I’m going to just give it a free commercial here: Go buy it today, everybody. You can find it online.”

This wasn’t a slip of the tongue. Conway began her infomercial for Ivanka by pivoting from a conversation about Donald Trump’s policy goals with this segue: “You asked about Ivanka.” (A few minutes earlier one of the Fox News hosts mentioned that it was a topic he hoped to get to.)

Conway’s sales pitch appears to be a rather clear violation of ethics rules for administrative employees. Specifically, the one that reads:

An employee shall not use his public office for his own private gain, for the endorsement of any product, service or enterprise, or for the private gain of friends, relatives, or persons with whom the employee is affiliated in a nongovernmental capacity, including nonprofit organizations of which the employee is an officer or member, and persons with whom the employee has or seeks employment or business relations.

Conway isn’t the first White House staffer to tout a Trump-branded company from the White House. At one of his first official briefings, White House spokesman Sean Spicer declared that the new Trump hotel in Washington was “absolutely stunning,” and added: “I encourage you to go there if you haven’t been by.” Conway’s comments, though, went even further and were an explicit plug to actually purchase products that would financially benefit members of the Trump family.

Ivanka Trump, like her father, has said that she’s no longer involved in the day-to-day business operations of the Trump Organization and similarly has distanced herself from her eponymous fashion brand. But, like her father, her name nonetheless remains firmly and inextricably linked with both the family business and many of the things it sells. Conway barely bothered to draw a distinction between the Trump business and the Trump administration on Thursday. At one point during her promotional plug, she began to refer to Ivanka as “the most prominent woman in Donald Trump’s, you know” before catching herself. Ivanka is, Conway corrected herself, the “most prominent—she’s his daughter.”

Update, Feb. 9, 2017 at 12:55 p.m.: Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, the ethics watchdog that previously filed a lawsuit claiming President Trump violated the U.S. Constitution's emolument clause, has registered a formal complaint with the Office of Government Ethics over Conway’s comments. CREW claims Conway appears to have violated "the letter and the spirit" of White House ethics rules, the latest in a series of similar actions by the Trump team. The group is asking OGE to launch an investigation into the matter and to take disciplinary action against Conway if necessary. "We hope you will act not only to respond to this apparent violation, but to reverse this pattern," CREW wrote. According to the Department of Justice's online guide for government employees, the violation of ethics regulations “could lead to reprimand, suspension, demotion, or even removal, depending on the circumstances.”

Previously in Slate:

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Did Donald Trump’s Nordstrom Tweet Open Him Up to a Lawsuit?

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 19:11:00 GMT

What little pretense remained that Donald Trump would not use his position as president to help his children is now officially gone:

That message was then retweeted by the official @POTUS account operated by the White House communications team, giving Trump’s attack on the department store—one that can also be read as warning shot to any other company weighing whether to end its business relationship with his family—the imprimatur of the federal government. That, to use the president’s preferred language, is bad!

Nordstrom recently announced that it is dropping the Ivanka Trump clothing label from its physical and online stores, a decision the company claims was made solely on the basis of the brand’s recent performance. Ivanka Trump, like her father, has said that she’s no longer involved in the day-to-day business operations of the Trump Organization and similarly has distanced herself from her eponymous fashion brand. But, like her father, her name nonetheless remains firmly and inextricably linked with both the family business and many of the things it sells.

Ethics watchdogs who have long warned of the potential conflicts posed by the Trump family’s business interests were quick to cry foul on Wednesday. Importantly, they also saw it as a potential new opening to take Trump to court.

Currently, the most high-profile legal challenge to Donald Trump’s business empire concerns what is known as the Emoluments Clause in the U.S. Constitution, which bars U.S. officials from accepting payments from foreign governments. While many ethics experts agree that Trump is violating that law by accepting money from foreign diplomats who stay at his hotels and from state-run companies that lease office space in buildings he owns, the lawsuit ultimately faces a separate challenge: the question of standing.

In order to sue someone, plaintiffs generally need to prove that they were specifically harmed by the alleged wrongdoing in question. It is unclear, however, if the group behind the emoluments suit—the ethics watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, or CREW—will be able to check that box. The organization claims that since its mission is to investigate corruption, Trump’s actions represent a drain on resources that would otherwise be spent investigating the group’s usual areas of interest, such as campaign finance. There’s some precedent to support such a claim but not a lot, and courts tend to be skeptical of such broad assertions of standing outside of the context of civil rights violations.

Trump’s Nordstrom tweet might be a different story, though. Norm Eisen, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the Obama White House and who is working with CREW, suggested on Twitter that Trump’s comments gave Nordstrom standing to sue him under unfair competition laws, particularly California’s state law, which protects against any business practice deemed “unfair,” “unlawful” or “fraudulent.” While the president is generally shielded from lawsuits over his official conduct while in office, that blanket protection does not apply to his private or business conduct. Nordstrom, however, would need to be able to show it was harmed economically. More immediately, though, the company would have to decide if it’s worth the risk of further angering a president who has yet again made it clear that he’s willing to single out specific companies that dare cross him.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Donald Trump Has Found a Way to Make Money Directly Off of the U.S. Government

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 08 Feb 2017 16:50:00 GMT

Donald Trump is now a tenant in a government-owned building. Soon he may be the federal government’s landlord, as well.

The Department of Defense told CNN on Tuesday night that it is considering renting space in Trump Tower, the New York City high-rise that Donald Trump calls home and in which his wife, Melania, and son Barron have decided to remain for the time being. “In order to meet official mission requirements, the Department of Defense is working through appropriate channels and in accordance with all applicable legal requirements in order to acquire a limited amount of leased space in Trump Tower,” Lt. Col. JB Brindle, a Defense Department spokesman, said in a statement. “The space is necessary for the personnel and equipment who will support the POTUS at his residence in the building.”

The Pentagon has made similar arrangements in the past, including at the Chicago home of President Obama. Military support staff—including those in charge of the “nuclear football”—needs to stay close to the president regardless of where he travels, and it appears President Trump will be returning to his Manhattan home relatively often. The obvious difference in this case, though, is that President Trump owns Trump Tower, meaning he stands to profit directly from any lease in his building. The DOD may not be his only governmental tenant either.

Late last year, the Secret Service was reportedly considering renting out at least one floor at Trump Tower from which to run intelligence and surveillance operations while Trump is in office. Again, this isn’t entirely unique: The agency previously had to lease space near George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, and near Bill and Hillary Clinton’s home in Chappaqua, New York, for similar reasons. But once again the difference in this case is that the taxpayers’ rent checks would end up in a Trump bank account. (Estimates vary, but a single floor at Trump Tower is said to cost anywhere between $700,000 and $1.5 million a year. The Secret Service and the DOD, meanwhile, appear to be captive customers and would have little if any leverage given their dearth of alternative options.)

The problem—or opportunity, if you’re a Trump—doesn’t end there. The president’s security detail travels with him when he visits other properties his company owns or operates, including Mar-a-Lago, where he spent this past weekend and where he has suggested he’ll return again this coming one to play a round of golf with Japan’s prime minister. It stands to reason that the Secret Service needs to reserve its own space for agents and support staff, whether by paying for guest rooms at the private club or renting alternative space at the Palm Beach resort on a longer-term basis. Either would almost certainly contribute to the Trump Organization’s bottom line. (The agency refuses to discuss such logistics citing security concerns. “The Secret Service does not provide information related to our protective operations,” a spokesperson told Slate on Tuesday when asked about Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago.)

As we’ve already seen, the Trump family views the presidency as one big marketing opportunity. Donald Trump has done his best to rebrand Mar-a-Lago the “Winter White House,” not incidentally at the same time his club has doubled new membership fees. Eric Trump recently traveled to Uruguay to help sell luxury condos there that bear the family name, a sales pitch that was undoubtedly strengthened by the presence of Secret Service and diplomatic staff that made it difficult to separate Trump business from the Trump administration. And Melania Trump admitted in a lawsuit filed just this week that she views her time as first lady as “unique, once-in-a-lifetime” business opportunity.

That is all incredibly troubling. But what we’re seeing evidence of now is that Trump stands to profit not just indirectly from being in the White House, but also directly off U.S. taxpayers. All he has to do to make that happen is hop on Air Force One and head to a Trump-branded property. His customers, he knows, will have no other choice than to follow.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Why Melania Trump’s Own Lawyer Is Arguing She Would Have Made Millions Exploiting Her Role

Christina Cauterucci — Tue, 07 Feb 2017 23:03:00 GMT

On Monday, First Lady of the United States Melania Trump refiled a defamation suit against Mail Media, owner of the Daily Mail, over a story suggesting that she had once worked as an escort. Because she is undoubtedly a public figure, Melania will need to prove that the Daily Mail defamed her intentionally, or with reckless disregard for the truth, in order to secure a legal victory.

This high bar is so difficult to clear that you might wonder why Melania doesn’t simply write off the now-retracted allegations as the imprudent musings of a sleazy tabloid. The lawsuit itself gives one remarkable answer to this question: it claims the Daily Mail story harmed Melania’s “unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” to launch a new commercial brand as First Lady that would have made her millions on everything from clothes to jewelry to skin care products.

Plaintiff had the unique, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, as an extremely famous and well-known person, as well as a former professional model and brand spokesperson, and successful businesswoman, to launch a broad-based commercial brand in multiple product categories, each of which could have garnered multi-million dollar business relationships for a multi-year term during which Plaintiff is one of the most photographed women in the world.

Translation: The First Lady’s perks include highly lucrative business opportunities, and the Daily Mail chased away those opportunities by defaming Melania.

Ethics watchdogs and good-government types who have been sounding the alarm for months about conflicts of interest posed by the first family’s private business ventures see the suit as the latest red flag in a series of them.

“I don’t know why everybody is so surprised,” Norm Eisen, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the Obama White House, told Slate by email on Tuesday. Eisen is the board chair of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics (CREW), a watchdog group that has spearheaded a lawsuit targeting Trump’s conflicts of interest.

“The pleading just makes plain what a large group of bipartisan experts have been pointing out,” Eisen continued, “based on the behavior of the entire family. Above all, it’s paterfamilias: The Trumps are using the White House like the Kardashians used reality TV, to build and vastly expand their business enterprises.”

Richard Painter, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the George W. Bush White House and is vice board chair of CREW, voiced similar concerns. “The White House isn’t a marketing opportunity,” he told Slate by phone. “We’ve never seen this before. This would be a use of [Trump’s] office, the presidency, for private gain—that is corruption.” Painter added that Melania is effectively claiming ownership of something he believes she never had in the first place: the right to make money from the presidency. “She might as well sue them for taking away her ownership interest in the Brooklyn Bridge,” he said.

The White House did not respond to questions concerning Melania’s plans for her brand. Trump and his lawyers have previously shrugged off any and all ethical concerns about the obvious problems created by the president owning a sprawling global business empire that includes real estate properties and licensing deals. Their defense, to the extent they’ve offered one, is twofold: 1) the Trump Organization is charging a fair-market value for its products, and 2) the president has isolated himself from his company. Both of those claims are dubious at best—but even if we suspend disbelief, they don’t come close to addressing the underlying ethics problems themselves. If Melania were to pursue branding deals, it would only make the Trump defense weaker, since she would be using her position as First Lady—and, by extension, her husband’s office—to pursue private financial gain.

(In fact, she may already be doing that. On Inauguration Day, the White House website promoted Melania’s modeling and jewelry line, focusing in particular on branded jewelry she had previously sold on QVC. After the Washington Post wrote about it, the reference to “Melania™ Timepieces & Jewelry” disappeared, but her official biography remains bizarrely promotional.)

Melania’s lawsuit raises a second red flag. Her complaint requests $150 million in damages, a shockingly high sum—particularly for a defamation suit involving a public figure married to a public official. The suit asserts that this amount is appropriate because of the “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” Melania lost to profit off of her service as First Lady.

But it’s difficult to read these allegations without speculating that this suit might really be designed for a different purpose entirely: to bankrupt and destroy the Daily Mail. As our colleague Osita Nwanevu has noted, Melania is being represented by Charles Harder—who rose to fame as Hulk Hogan’s attorney in his own lawsuit against Gawker. Hogan’s suit, bankrolled by Trump adviser Peter Thiel, also asked for, and was awarded, mind-bogglingly high damages ($140 million), which ultimately bankrupted Gawker Media.

Harder has declared his intent to do the same to other media companies: “I think there needs to be a chilling effect on the irresponsible writers,” he told a GQ writer this fall. He may or may not believe that Melania lost $150 million in business opportunities because of the Daily Mail article, in other words, but he knows that this theory of damages allows Melania to request a sum that would devastate the tabloid. And given Harder’s professed interest in punishing the press, his sally against the Daily Mail could be a trial balloon for future attacks on more established and respected outlets like the New York Times.

Still, the most notable thing about Melania’s suit isn’t its thinly veiled effort to launch an assault on freedom of the press. It is that it’s so intent on doing so that it willingly embraces a grifter theory of the presidency—one that President Trump may soon have to fight in court. While the commander-in-chief insists, out of constitutional necessity, that he will not use the presidency to enrich himself, Melania has frankly acknowledged that she planned to make money off of her husband’s office. So long as it helps them take down a media outlet, the Trump family is apparently happy to drop the pretense that they’re not using the presidency to line their own pockets. Their shamelessness would make a Kardashian blush.

American Tax Dollars Are Already Helping Trump Make Money

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 06 Feb 2017 20:42:00 GMT

Early last month, two weeks before he’d watch his father be sworn in as president, Eric Trump traveled to a seaside town in Uruguay to help sell condos that bear his family’s name. The younger of President Trump’s two adult sons was accompanied by a Secret Service detail and joined on site by State Department staff, which together gave the business trip the unmistakable gloss of a diplomatic one. It also cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $100,000 in hotels alone.

That last detail—reported by the Washington Post on Friday—makes crystal clear that the federal government will be forced to spend money every time one of Trump’s adult sons heads out the door on business for a company owned by the president. President Trump’s conflicts, then, are more than just a massive ethical problem; they’re now a massive ethical problem that the American taxpayers are paying to help maintain.

According to records reviewed by the Post, the government’s hotel bill for the trip totaled $97,830—$88,320 for the Secret Service and another $9,510 for the embassy staff the State Department says provided unspecified “support” during the visit. It stands to reason that the security detail also incurred additional costs, though details remain scarce. The Secret Service, the State Department, the White House, and the Trump Organization all declined to provide key information about the trip to the Post, including basic details like how long Eric Trump was actually in the country. (Local press reports suggest his stay may have been as short as two nights.) This was not a one-off trip, either. Eric and his brother, Don Jr., are set to travel to Canada later this month for the grand opening of the new Trump International Hotel & Tower in Vancouver, British Columbia. Secret Service will almost certainly follow.

In some ways, this story is not unique. Members of the first family have long received Secret Service protection, which means taxpayers by necessity pay when one of them travels abroad. (The government pays for those doing the protecting but not the person being protected. The Trump Organization or its business partners, then, most likely covered Eric’s travel costs.) What makes this different, though, is that the purpose of Eric’s trip wasn’t simply for his own sake—but explicitly for the president’s as well. The trip, after all, was taken both literally and figuratively in his father’s name. The most infuriating part, then, is not what American taxpayers are losing, but what Trump is gaining.

Donald Trump made a big show before taking office about separating himself from his company, but it was just that: a show. According to documents made public late last week through a Freedom of Information Act request by ProPublica, we now know that the newly created Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust is for the “exclusive benefit” of one Donald J. Trump. The president will continue to receive reports on his company’s profits or losses while in office, and he also retains the right to fire either of his sons at any time despite his suggestion to the contrary.

The president doesn’t own the Uruguayan condo development, but he licensed his name to it and, according to his most recent financial disclosure, received somewhere between $100,000 and $1 million in royalties for doing so. For competitive reasons, businesses do their best to keep the specifics of such licensing deals private, but court records have shown that similar deals Trump has struck in the past were structured in such a way where his pay increased along with the building’s occupancy. The 26-story, Trump-branded apartment building in Uruguay is slated to be finished by late 2018, but its condos are already selling for between $550,000 and $8 million. According to the developer behind the project, the average unit price has climbed 30 to 35 percent in the past year. So that means the American taxpayers are shelling out upward of $100,000 so that their president’s company and its partners can make even more.

The Trump Organization has promised not to enter into any “new” foreign deals while its namesake is in the White House, but it is pushing forward with existing ones. Its partners, meanwhile, aren’t even pretending that they don’t benefit from being in business with the president. In interviews with the Associated Press last month, both the developer building the luxury high-rise in Uruguay and the company selling its units made that reality part of their actual sales pitches. “I have no doubt that it is going to be finished,” Talma Friedler, whose New Home Properties sells units in the building, told the AP shorty before Inauguration Day, “and even more so because he's going to be president of the United States.” And now he is.

Know anything about the Trump Organization? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

*Correction, Feb. 6, 2017: Due to a photo provider error, the photo caption on this post originally misspelled Punta del Este, Uruguay.

How Much Is Trump’s Name Actually Worth? No One Knows.

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 02 Feb 2017 16:38:00 GMT

Donald Trump has an inflated sense of self-worth, quite literally. In his first campaign financial disclosure—filed in the summer of 2015 and memorably accompanied by an all-caps declaration that he was worth “MORE THAN TEN BILLION DOLLARS”—he valued his brand alone at a staggering $3.3 billion. Few, if any, independent experts agreed, but no matter. Since Trump never released his tax returns, and Federal Election Commission disclosures such as the one he filed can be so vague as to be nearly worthless where the ultrarich are concerned, the best anyone could do was offer an educated guess, which Trump could then simply ignore.

The uncertainty about what Trump and his name are worth mattered during the campaign because it was that same value that Trump used to sell himself to voters as a uniquely successful businessman. But now that same uncertainty matters for a different and far greater reason: It creates an opportunity for companies or individuals to pay the president of the United States directly without Americans having any way of knowing what, exactly, they are paying for.

This loophole—or I suppose, this particular loophole given all the other ones—arrives in the form of a Trump licensing deal.

Trump already earns a sizeable chunk of change licensing his brand to manufacturers and real-estate developers who pay good money to slap his name on anything from wine bottles to condos to television game shows. In the past, the decision to go into business with Trump on such ventures was a straightforward one: Would having the Trump name on your product make you enough extra money to compensate for what you paid Trump to put his name on your product in the first place? But now that Trump’s in the Oval Office, that equation might involve a new variable: Does paying to use Trump’s name also buy you a favor from President Trump, whether in the form of access or a sweetheart deal?

Yes, that question now hangs over every interaction with the Trump family business, but what makes a licensing deal different from a more straightforward consumer interaction is that we generally know what it costs to spend a night at a Trump hotel or play a round at a Trump golf course. We have almost no idea what the Trump Organization charges for the Trump name, and that’s by design. Private businesses almost never reveal the specifics of such deals since doing so could cost them down the road.

“As soon as you release it, you’ve set the price, and every other company out there sees it,” said Tim Calkins, a marketing professor at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management. Once that happens, you’ve effectively put a cap on how much you can ask for when the next company approaches you with a similar idea. Given Trump’s steadfast refusal to sacrifice his financial interests in the name of his presidency—to say nothing of his family’s professed love of deal-making—there’s no reason to believe the Trump Organization will make public the specifics of any new licensing agreement it negotiates or existing ones it renegotiations while Trump is president. Tellingly, Trump’s lawyers have said nothing to suggest the “vigorous vetting” they’ve promised for any new domestic deals would include a disclosure component.

Making matters more complicated is that even if the details were to leak, it still might be difficult to determine if Trump’s sons were charging a fair-market value. It’s relatively simple to compare the rate of one five-star hotel to that of another, but it may be impossible to find a comparable name to Trump’s. Few if any brands can match Trump’s unique mix of sweeping name recognition and stark polarization. And then there’s the reality that Trump’s name is worth different amounts to different companies, which all have their own ways of arriving at a value. “Some might look at consumer perception—how positive is the brand compared to others in the space—while others are more focused on the financial metrics,” said Jonah Berger, a marketing professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School. There are ways to measure a specific brand value with market research, he told me, “but this isn’t a science.”

How, then, can we know if a company is paying a presidential premium to do business with Trump? And if they are, how can we know if they’re paying it because Trump’s brand is simply worth more now that he’s president (unseemly albeit not unethical), or if they’re hoping to grease the administration (unseemly and unethical)? We can’t, and that’s a problem since it gives Trump and his would-be business partner a built-in excuse if anyone were to suggest the Trump family is getting more for its name than it’s actually worth.

And remember: Trump says he’s no longer making the business decisions at Trump Tower, but he still holds a financial interest in his family company and—it should go without saying—in his actual name, which is what his company is selling in these deals. Trump has promised to be a silent partner in his business while he’s in the White House, but he’ll still be a partner. Any way you cut it, then, paying for the rights to the Trump brand means paying to go into business with Donald J. Trump, president of the United States.

Know anything about Trump’s licensing deals? DM Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com.

Trump’s Muslim Ban Is Harmful and Haphazard—but Is It Also Kleptocratic?

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 30 Jan 2017 17:33:00 GMT

Donald Trump’s immigration ban targeting Muslims is many things: alarming, un-American, inhumane, counterproductive, and likely unconstitutional for starters. But a closer look at the specific countries Trump chose to target raises a secondary concern as well: Did the president intentionally tailor the order to protect his and his family’s financial interests abroad?

That’s a question without a clear answer—ascribing motivation with certainty is no easy task—but it’s a nonetheless fair one to ask given Trump and his family have little to no known financial interests in any of the seven predominantly Muslim countries he selected: Syria, Iraq, Iran, Sudan, Somalia, Yemen, and Libya. Meanwhile, the same can’t be said for a number of other predominantly Muslim countries that one might assume would be included on the list given what we know about the stated (and twisted) logic behind Trump’s decision-making.

Among those heavily Muslim nations not directly affected by the travel ban: Turkey, where Trump has licensed his name to two luxury towers in Istanbul, as well as to a company that makes home furnishings; the United Arab Emirates, where Trump has his name on a Dubai golf resort and a luxury home development; Saudi Arabia, where the Trump Organization has several LLCs that were likely created as part of a potential hotel deal in Jeddah, the nation’s second-largest city; Egypt, where Trump has at least two companies in his portfolio that suggest he had business interests at one time; Azerbaijan, where Trump licensed his name to a hotel-condo tower that is currently under development; and Indonesia, where Trump Hotels have plans to open two properties.

Trump now claims that an executive order that clearly evolved from the Muslim ban he trumpeted on the campaign “is not a Muslim ban.” But even if we were to suspend disbelief, his stated goal—to “protect the American people from terrorist attacks by foreign nationals admitted to the United States”—is only a marginally more coherent explanation for his selections. No one from any of the seven countries his ban affects directly is known to have been responsible for a fatal terror attack on U.S. soil in the past two-plus decades. None. Zero. Zilch. And, once again, the same can’t be said for those nations that were left off it.

Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Egypt together accounted for 18 of the 19 hijackers responsible for 9/11, an attack the president specifically cited in his order imposing a travel ban that affects none of those three countries. According to data compiled by the Cato Institute, meanwhile, nationals from the trio have accounted for the overwhelming majority—94.1 percent—of all American deaths in terrorist attacks on U.S. soil committed by foreign-born individuals between 1975 and 2015. Also unaffected by Trump’s ban is Turkey, where the State Department last week began warning American visitors about “increased threats from terrorist groups.”

Still, it’s important to acknowledge that Trump did not pull the names of the seven countries on his banned list out of thin air. His order cites an existing visa law passed by Congress in December 2015 following the terror attack in San Bernardino, California. That legislation, the Visa Waiver Program Improvement and Terrorist Travel Prevention Act, restricted access to an established waiver program that allows citizens of 38 mostly European countries to visit the United States for 90 days or less without needing a visa. The 2015 law, which passed with bipartisan support despite the ACLU and others expressing concerns about it, barred individuals who might otherwise have qualified for the waiver if they had visited Iran, Iraq, Syria, or Sudan in the previous five years. Several months later, the Obama administration then broadened the list of countries to include Libya, Somalia, and Yemen. Put those together, and you get the seven unlucky nations on Trump’s list. Trump has now imposed far more draconian measures on those nations, yes, but he also isn’t alone in relying on seemingly arbitrary decision-making to single out some Muslim countries over others because of terrorism suspicions.

We simply have no way of knowing if Trump intentionally acted in his own financial interests in selecting some nations over others. But motivation aside, it is clear that Trump’s executive order does conveniently align with his own business interests. The president would have been able to avoid the appearance of such conflicts of interest if he had divested himself of his sprawling business empire, as ethics experts demanded. But he did not. And so less than two weeks into his presidency, his personal financial interests have already become intertwined with, and in many ways indistinguishable from, the foreign policy goals of his administration.

Previously in Slate:

***Follow Josh Voorhees on Twitter, or email him at josh.voorhees@slate.com***

Correction, Jan. 30, 2017: An earlier version of the infographic in this post wrongly identified Turkey as one of the countries from which terror suspects have killed Americans on U.S. soil between 1975 and 2015. According to the Cato Institute, a Turkish-born individual was implicated in a U.S. terror plot during that time period, but did not kill an American.

The First Week in Donald Trump’s Kleptocracy Was Very, Very Kleptocratic

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 27 Jan 2017 21:41:00 GMT

Ethics experts and good-government watchdogs spent months warning that Donald Trump would face a swirling mess of conflicts of interest once he took office. One week into his presidency, the full scope of that ethical catastrophe is already coming into focus.

In no particular order, the world learned this week that:

Trump replaced the head of the General Services Administration, the federal agency that effectively serves as the landlord for the new Trump hotel in Washington and has been asked to investigate whether Trump is now in violation of that lease.
Trump signed orders clearing the way for the disputed Keystone XL and Dakota Access oil pipelines to proceed. As recently as last summer, the president owned between $15,000 and $50,000 in stock in the company building the Dakota project, and its chief executive donated $100,000 to the Trump Victory Fund, a joint effort between Trump and the Republican Party. (Trump claims to have sold off his stock portfolio before the election, though he has not provided documentation proving he did.)
Trump signaled his intent to sign an order suspending the granting of visas to seven predominantly Muslim countries. Not on the list: Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Indonesia, Turkey, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Azerbaijan, aka predominantly Muslim countries where the Trump Organization has existing business interests.
Trump is pushing forward with his plans for a massive, privatization-heavy infrastructure bill that appears tailor-made for cronyism and self-dealing.
The Trump Organization hired a longtime Republican lawyer as its ethics adviser and a longtime Trump executive as its chief compliance counsel. Neither one of those familiar faces is likely to raise a stink in Trump Tower. Furthermore, both have a clear incentive to play nice since they’d put their jobs at risk if their oversight proves too costly to the company signing their paychecks.
The CEO of Trump Hotels is planning a massive domestic expansion, a decision that will significantly compound the conflicts of interests created by its existing portfolio.
The Trump-owned Mar-a-Lago resort in Palm Beach, Florida, doubled its initiation fee to $200,000 for new members after Trump was elected.
At least two of Trump’s wealthy foreign business partners got the VIP treatment during the inauguration weekend, including plenty of time with the new first family.
The American Chamber of Commerce in Canada, a business lobby focused on North American trade, made a sudden, last-second decision to move a scheduled event from the Vancouver home of a U.S. diplomat to the newest addition to the Trump Hotel family in the same city. (The Trump Organization does not own the Trump International Hotel & Tower Vancouver, but it makes money managing the property and cutting naming-rights deals.)

Trump and his allies continue to shrug off any and all criticism of the obvious overlapping interests of the president and his family’s sprawling business empire, in which he retains a major financial stake. Their defense, as much as they even bother to offer one, is that the appearance of such problems just comes with the territory of electing someone of Trump’s wealth, which voters were well aware of when they pulled the lever for him on Election Day. Americans, Team Trump contends, should simply trust the president to put the nation’s interest before his own because that’s what he says he’ll do.

Calling that argument unconvincing would be kind, but a week into Trump’s presidency it’s turned downright farcical. Take another look at that list. These developments aren’t the unfortunate but unavoidable byproduct of having a businessman in the Oval Office; they’re the result of that businessman and the company he built acting in their own self-interest. It’s not an accident that those interests align, either. President Trump is running the nation just as he ran his business: to maximize his own profits.

Previously in Slate:

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The Trump Organization Is Already Dreaming of Expanding, Big League

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 25 Jan 2017 19:38:00 GMT

The Trump Organization sounds like it has big plans for the next four years, beginning with a massive domestic expansion of its hotel-management company. Speaking at an industry conference this week, Trump Hotels CEO Eric Danziger suggested that he wants to see the company add more than 20 new hotels, which would roughly triple its existing portfolio.

“There are 26 major metropolitan areas in the U.S., and we’re in five,” Danziger said Tuesday at the Americas Lodging Investment Summit in Los Angeles, according to Bloomberg. “I don’t see any reason that we couldn’t be in all of them eventually.” Eventually is the keyword there since Danziger does not appear to have given a specific timeline for the expansion, but a spokesperson for Trump Hotels confirmed to Slate that the company sees “significant growth opportunity in the United States” for both its Trump brand and its new, lower-priced Scion one.

Those comments leave little doubt that the Trump-owned hotel company—and the Trump Organization—has no intention of standing down while its owner and namesake is in the White House. That will drive ethics watchdogs and the good-government crowd understandably crazy since they’ve already warned about the swirling mess of conflicts posed by Trump’s existing business interests, both at home and abroad. Those problems will only grow if the Trump family business—led by the president’s two adult sons—expands its footprint.

Following the election, Donald Trump originally promised that his company would swear off any new deals, foreign or domestic, while he was in office. That pledge, however, got a rewrite earlier this year to allow for new deals inside the United States. Trump’s lawyers say that any new domestic deals will need to survive a “vigorous vetting process” conducted by a new ethics adviser and an internal compliance officer. That sounds great, sure, but they haven’t provided the specifics about what that process would entail or said whether it would be made public. Given what we’ve seen from Trump and his business to date, there’s little reason to believe it will be.

According to separate reports on Wednesday, the Trump Organization has hired Bobby Burchfield, a longtime Republican lawyer who represented George W. Bush in the 2000 Florida recount, as the aforementioned ethics adviser, and George Sorial, who has represented the Trump Organization for the past decade, including in lawsuits against Trump University, as the chief compliance counsel. Both would presumably need to OK any future hotel expansions. But assuming they haven’t been granted set terms of employment by the company, both would have an incentive to give the green light since they could theoretically be fired if their oversight proves too costly to the company signing their paychecks. It is particularly hard to imagine Sorial, a longtime Trump employee, serving as an effective safeguard. Trump, meanwhile, has more or less ignored the entities that could provide actual independent oversight and input, like the Office of Government Ethics, which traditionally advises presidents on such matters.

Trump Hotels currently manages more than a half-dozen Trump-branded hotels in the United States, some of which it owns outright and some of which it only manages. According to the Bloomberg report, Danziger suggested that the Trump name—typically reserved for its luxury hotels—would only be used for expansion in major metropolises like Dallas and San Francisco, while the company would use the new Scion brand for properties in smaller cities. But either way, President Trump won’t exactly have to go out of his way to find them.

Even if the president follows through on his promise to stay out of his family business entirely, that promised firewall would still have plenty of holes in it. State and city officials who would need to sign off on construction permits, environmental reviews, and other paperwork will know that President Trump will almost certainly be aware of how that process plays out. And it’d be a similar situation for any other company that gets involved in construction and needs to negotiate with Trump execs. Given that, it remains an unavoidable reality that anyone doing business with the Trump Organization during the next four years will also be doing business with President Trump.

Previously in Slate:

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First Sign That Donald Trump Is Separating From His Business Trickles Out

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 23:01:52 GMT

Standing on stage at Trump Tower earlier this month, Donald Trump gestured to stacks of manila folders that had been arranged as props. “These papers,” he said then, “are just some of the many documents I've signed turning over complete and total control to my sons.”

The problem, however—or at least one problem among many—was that despite the suggestion that Trump would take all of the steps he promised to separate himself from the Trump Organization before he was sworn in this past Friday, his team did not provide any official documentation that he had actually done so prior to the inauguration. Furthermore, ProPublica reported several hours after Trump delivered his #AmericanCarnage address that officials in Florida, Delaware, and New York—three states where many of the his businesses are registered—had still not yet received the necessary filings.

On Monday, White House press secretary Sean Spicer then added to the intrigue by dodging a question about the documentation with a blanket just-trust-us response. “He has resigned from the company, as he said he would, before he took office,” Spicer said in a press briefing. “Don [Jr.] and Eric are fully in charge of the company. He's taken extraordinary steps to ensure that's happened.”

Now, though, we finally have our first evidence suggesting that Trump has indeed begun to deliver on his limited vow to formally separate himself from his business empire—albeit possibly later than he had suggested. The Miami Herald’s Nicholas Nehamas went digging through Florida public records and found a Trump Organization report declaring that Eric Trump has replaced his father as president of Trump International Hotels Management, one of a number of LLCs primarily owned by the family. That document was marked as “filed” on Monday, January 23, 2017, aka Day 4 of Trump’s presidency. It’s possible that there was a lag between the submission of the document and it entering the system, though that would still suggest that Trump and his team left things to the very last second.

Also on Monday afternoon, CNN published a signed 19-page letter from Trump declaring that he has resigned from the more than 400 entities listed therein. The letter was dated January 19, 2017—one day prior to the inauguration—but there is nothing on it to suggest that the necessary paperwork had been filed with state agencies that same day.

Assuming all the paperwork does check out, that still wouldn’t begin to address the far larger and more troubling issues concerning the interplay between the Trump Organization and the Trump administration. Even if Trump is no longer making the business decisions, he still holds a financial interest in his family company. A silent partner is still a partner, and you don’t have to be the one calling the shots to be the one making the money or navigating the conflict of interest.

Previously in Slate:

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Donald Trump Is Being Sued for Violating the Constitution. Here’s What You Need to Know.

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 23 Jan 2017 17:37:00 GMT

And we’re off. A Washington ethics watchdog filed a federal lawsuit on Monday claiming that Donald Trump has already violated the U.S. Constitution by allowing his hotels and other businesses to accept payments from foreign governments. “We did not want to get to this point,” Noah Bookbinder, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said in a statement. “It was our hope that President Trump would take the necessary steps to avoid violating the U.S. Constitution before he took office. He did not. His constitutional violations are immediate and serious, so we were forced to take legal action.”

The lawsuit is not a surprise: Good-government types have been loud and clear about fears that Trump would violate the so-called Emoluments Clause, which bars U.S. officials from accepting payments from foreign government, if he retained ownership of his sprawling business empire. The filing, however, marks the first concrete step taken to force Trump to actually address those concerns since he and his lawyers effectively shrugged them off at a press conference earlier this month. “No one would have thought when the Constitution was written that paying your hotel bill was an emolument,” Sheri Dillon, one of Trump’s lawyers, said at the time. She did not, however, offer any evidence to support that reading or address how it was possible for the larger plan she laid out at the press conference to “completely isolate” Trump from the Trump Organization given he retains an explicit financial and personal interest in its success.

The lawsuit does not seek monetary damages from the president but instead asks a federal court in New York to block Trump businesses from accepting money from foreign governments—and individuals or companies with ties to them—regardless of whether it comes in the form of payments for hotel stays, or golf course greens fees, or lease payments for commercial real estate in his office buildings, or loans for those same office buildings from banks. Trump has promised to take “all profits” from money paid to his hotels by foreign governments and donate it to the U.S. Treasury, though even if that plan fully addressed the emoluments concerns at the hotels—and it doesn’t—it still wouldn’t end concerns over other foreign payments.

CREW leans liberal, though on this particular issue it can claim bipartisanship. Richard Painter, who previously served as George W. Bush’s chief ethics lawyer and who joined CREW this December, is among those experts that have signed on to the suit. Other bold-faced legal names involved include: Norman Eisen, a former chief ethics lawyer in Obama’s White House; Harvard constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe; University of California–Irvine law school dean Erwin Chemerinsky; and Fordham University law professor Zephyr Teachout, who unsuccessfully ran for Congress this past year.

Still, Trump is not completely alone in his market-value reading of the Emolument Clause. In an academic paper published last week, University of Iowa law school professor Andy Grewal argued for a similarly narrow reading. He contends that a payment to a Trump-owned hotel would not be a violation because the cash would be going to a Trump corporate entity and not Trump personally. Grewal says that as a result there’s no problem with a foreign diplomat paying top dollar as long as he pays the same rate a regular tourist would. “He might subjectively hope that the president will view his patronage favorably, but subjective wishes cannot change the economic character of a transaction,” he wrote.

That’s a fight for another day, however. The most immediate hurdle facing the lawsuit isn’t the interpretation of the Emoluments Clause, which has been largely untested in court, but instead whether the group has the legal standing to challenge Trump in the first place. In order to sue someone, a plaintiff generally needs to prove that they were specifically harmed by the alleged wrongdoing in question. The group is attempting to check that box in a relatively creative way. It claims that since its mission is to investigate corruption, Trump’s actions represent a drain on resources that would otherwise be spent investigating its usual areas of interest, like campaign finance and the revolving door between K Street and the federal government. There’s some precedent to support such a claim, though it might be a stretch; the New York Times, for instance, notes that courts tend to be skeptical of such broad assertions of standing outside of the context of civil rights violations.

If the court does refuse to hear CREW’s case, though, it won’t be the end of the road. The American Civil Liberties Union says it is currently looking for hotels that compete against Trump properties for business and that would be willing to serve as plaintiffs in a similar case. While that would seem to be a better bet to make it to court, it relies on finding a business willing to risk angering a president who has made it clear he’s willing to single out corporations for public scolding and possibly even government retribution. The only other obvious option would be for Congress to take up the emoluments case itself. That, however, is unlikely as long as Trump is giving Republican leaders what they want.

Previously in Slate:

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Donald Trump’s Promise to Separate Himself From His Business Is Off to a Horrible Start

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 22:25:00 GMT

Donald Trump is officially the president of the United States of America. Now, then, is a good time to check in on his promise to “completely isolate” himself from the management of his family business before taking office. So how’d he do? Um, not well!

1. Trump was joined at the inauguration by his two sons Eric and Donald Jr. A president’s family members getting prime seats to his inauguration would normally be hardly noteworthy. These, though, aren’t normal times. Eric and Donald Jr., according to Trump himself, are now running the Trump family business, which the president himself retains a direct financial interest in. Trump might not be making management decisions at Trump Organization any more, but the company clearly benefits when its current and future business partners are reminded of the proximity to presidential power the company’s new top execs enjoy.

2. Standing on stage at Trump Tower last week, Donald Trump gestured to stacks of manila folders—purportedly full of legal documents related to his company—he had brought a long as props. “These papers are just some of the many documents I've signed turning over complete and total control to my sons,” he said then. Trump’s team rebuffed reporters who later asked for a peek inside those folders. But even if they did contain the necessary paperwork, that paperwork would still need to be filed to become official. As of Friday afternoon, that does not appear to have happened.

ProPublica asked officials in Florida, Delaware, and New York—three states were many of Trump’s businesses are registered—on Friday whether they had received the necessary filings. As of 3:15 p.m., the officials said they had not. ProPublica notes that there can be a day or two lag before documents are logged into the system in Florida, but that they are normally entered in the system in the other two states as soon as they are received. Either way, Trump and his legal team claimed everything had been finalized more than a week ago.

3. Trump, via a nesting doll of LLCs and financial trusts, remains the primary leaseholder for the Old Post Office Building in Washington, where the Trump International Hotel currently operates. Included in that 60-year government lease is a provision that states clearly that no "elected official" of the U.S. government "shall be admitted to any share or part of this Lease, or to any benefit that may arise therefrom." President Trump, then, appears to now be in clear violation of that provision, and Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a nonpartisan government watchdog, filed a formal complaint with the federal agency in charge of the lease moments after he was sworn in.

The swirling conflicts of interest between the Trump administration and the Trump Organization are only going to grow worse once Trump settles into the Oval Office.

A Running List of Donald Trump’s First Official Actions as President

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 20:59:00 GMT

Donald Trump was sworn in as the 45^th president of the United States at noon Friday, after which he delivered a short and sour inauguration speech. Then after seeing Barack and Michelle Obama off in an Air Force helicopter, it was on to an ornate room in the U.S. Capitol, where he posed for photos and took his first official actions as commander in chief. Below is an updating list of those actions and others that Trump takes on Day 1 of his administration.

Cabinet Nominations

Surrounded by family members, Vice President Mike Pence, and congressional leaders from both parties, Trump signed documents making his previously announced Cabinet nominations official. Many of his picks face fierce opposition from Senate Democrats, but Republicans have the votes to force through even the most controversial of picks with a party-line vote.

Mattis Waiver

Trump also signed a bill passed by Congress last week allowing retired Gen. James Mattis to serve as his secretary of defense. Existing federal law—crafted to preserve civilian control of the nation’s military—prevents former U.S. service members who have been out of uniform for less than seven years from holding the top Pentagon job. Congress, however, voted to grant Mattis a one-time exception so he can take the job assuming the Senate gives its final stamp of approval. (Mathis retired from the Marine Corps in 2013.)

A National Day of Patriotism

According to the (new) White House press secretary, Trump also signed a proclamation calling for a National Day of Patriotism. It was unclear when that day would be or what, exactly, it would entail. The president can declare a one-time federal holiday any time he likes by issuing an executive order to that effect. Congress, however, needs to sign off on the creation of any annual federal holidays.

Other

Trump’s team also took several actions on his behalf behind the scenes. The Department of Housing and Urban Development announced that it would indefinitely suspend an Obama-planned rate cut for mortgage insurance required for FHA-backed home loans. WhiteHouse.gov, meanwhile, got a face-lift to reflect the transfer of power. Obama’s version listed top issues such as “Civil Rights” and “Climate Change.” Trump’s site went in a more Trumpian direction on the Issues menu with ones like “America First Foreign Policy” and “Making Our Military Strong Again.” As my colleague Leon Neyfakh notes, the
"Standing Up For Our Law Enforcement Community" page puts Black Lives Matter on notice.

It is likely that more executive actions are in the works, though we’ll have to wait to see what those might entail. On Thursday, Trump promised supporters that on his first day in office he would “be signing some papers that will be very meaningful” and that would “get the show going.” His spokesman was similarly vague, saying that Trump is “still working through which ones he wants to deal with [Friday] versus Monday or Tuesday.”

This page has been updated.

The Obamas and Trumps Exchange an Awkward Greeting at the White House

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 20 Jan 2017 15:17:00 GMT

Tradition holds that the outgoing president and first lady receive the incoming president and first lady at the White House the morning of the inauguration. The two couples then get a moment to chat in private before heading to the inauguration together, one moment among many meant to represent and cement the peaceful transfer of power in this country. Reality, meanwhile, holds that moment in particular can often be an awkward affair. Friday’s certainly was.

“Mr. President-elect, how are you?” President Obama said before shaking the hand of a man who spent years attempting to delegitimize his presidency. “Good to see you. Congratulations.” The official photograph of the two couples was then delayed for a few moments as the Obamas tried to figure out what to do with a gift that the Trumps had brought along with them. “Hold on a sec,” the president said as he took the gift from his wife. “We will take care of protocol.”

Update, 10:26 a.m.: While Michelle Obama appeared surprised to receive the Trumps' gift, perhaps she shouldn't have been: She brought her own gift along for the departing first lady back in 2008.

Trump’s D.C. Hotel Has Reportedly Banned Reporters During Inauguration Week

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 18 Jan 2017 19:42:00 GMT

Well, this is fitting. The Trump International Hotel in Washington has reportedly barred reporters during inauguration week.

“Media is not allowed in this week in respect of the privacy of our guests,” Patricia Tang, the hotel’s director of sales and marketing, told Politico’s Daniel Lippman in an email on Wednesday. That comment came after Lippman says he attempted to enter the hotel earlier in the day to have breakfast but was denied entry and told that “media” were not allowed in.

I’ve contacted the hotel for comment on both the reporter’s story and the apparent media restriction, and will update if I hear back. But in the meantime the report reveals two ominous signs about what we can expect in a Trump administration. First, it’s a reminder that Donald Trump and his associates—both inside the government and out of it—have no interest in allowing reporters access unless it is on Trump’s terms. The president-elect has held one and only one press conference since Election Day—during which he refused to answer a question from CNN after it ran a story he did not like—and has instead remained more or less holed up in Trump-branded properties. His team, meanwhile, is openly flirting with the idea of removing the White House press corps from their workspace in the West Wing, where they’ve had desks for at least five decades, to a different federal building farther from Trump and his senior staff.

Second, the apparent ban further illustrates the absurdity of Trump’s announced plan to separate himself from his family business empire, of which the new D.C. hotel has become a pillar. Trump and his three adult children hold a 60-year lease on the property—the historic Post Office Pavilion—but the property itself is owned by the U.S. government. (It appears fairly clear that Trump will be in violation of that lease as soon as he is sworn in on Friday.) In short: A hotel operated by the president-elect on a property owned by U.S. taxpayers seems to have banned reporters from a business that now presents a clear way for individuals and businesses to curry favor with Trump. It’s unclear whether that decision came from Trump himself. But either way, it resembles the abuse of power we’ve come to expect from this incoming president.

Trump Promised to Do Five Things to Separate Himself From His Business. Here’s a Glaring Problem With Each.

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 11 Jan 2017 23:25:08 GMT

At long last, Donald Trump on Wednesday unveiled his plan to separate himself from his business interests while president, something he previously promised would be oh-so simple to do at the same time he was finding reasons to delay taking any clear action on the matter. Based on what Trump shared Wednesday, the plan wasn’t worth the wait.

Standing on stage at Trump Tower, a building he owns, and joined by his adult children, two of whom he says will run the family business in his stead, the next president of the United States let his lawyer do most of the talking for him. For roughly 15 minutes, Sheri Dillon described a plan that she promised would “completely isolate” Trump from the management of his family business. But it won’t.

Even if we assume everyone involved will follow the plan Dillon laid out to the letter—a rather large assumption when it comes to Trump—the steps she described came nowhere close to addressing the very real concerns raised by good government types and ethics watchdogs, many of whom wasted no time making their frustrations clear following the press conference. “His elaborate-looking scheme constitutes at best a Potemkin trust, to coin a semi-Russian phrase,” Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe told Slate. “Mr. Trump’s ill-advised course will precipitate scandal and corruption,” Norm Eisen, who served as the chief ethics lawyer for the Obama White House, told the Atlantic. “Donald Trump’s announcement today is a classic bait and switch,” added David Donnelly, head of the money-in-politics watchdog Every Voice.

My colleagues Jim Newell and Jamelle Bouie have offered their own unflattering assessments of Trump’s plan, but the specifics are worth a closer look. Trump’s plan can be broken down into five separate parts. Let’s take them in order.

Trump will pass control of his business to his sons.

The promise: Trump will turn over management of the Trump Organization to his two sons Donald Jr. and Eric and a longtime company executive, Allen Weisselberg. Trump’s daughter Ivanka will likewise have no further involvement in the company now that she’s moving to Washington, D.C., with her husband, Jared Kushner, who will serve as a senior adviser to the president.

The problem: Trump will still have an ownership stake in the company, and therefore has a clear financial interest in its success. Nothing that Trump’s legal team described Wednesday will change that. Furthermore, it’s difficult—if not impossible—to imagine a firewall between Trump and his two adult sons, both of whom served as high-profile political surrogates during the campaign and are often seen by their father’s side. If we were to assume a firewall moving forward, that still wouldn’t change the past, during which both Eric and Donald Jr. played prominent—and official—roles in their father’s presidential transition. And even if we believe that Trump and his sons—and Ivanka and Jared—are willing and able to live through the next four or eight years without talking politics or business, that can’t stop other actors—be they domestic investors or foreign leaders—from trying to curry favor with Eric or Donald Jr. as a way to get in the good graces of the president, or to simply create the appearance that they have.

The Trump Organization will hire watchdogs.

The promise: The Trump Organization will employ an ethics adviser who will need to sign off on any actions that raise potential conflicts of interest. Additionally, it will also hire a chief compliance counsel, who will be responsible for ensuring that the company does not take any action “that could be perceived as exploiting the Office of the Presidency.”

The problem: Dillon suggested that the adviser will be a “recognized expert in the field of government experts,” but made no mention of how, exactly, that person would be selected. It’s possible, and maybe even likely, that Trump Organization execs will have a say in who gets that job, as well as who fills the role as chief compliance counsel at their company. And unless these hires are given set terms, either of these Trump employees could theoretically be fired if their oversight proves too costly to the Trump Organization. Many of the most recognizable experts in the field of government ethics, meanwhile, have called on Trump to fully divest himself from his business and place his assets in a blind trust, which serves as a reminder that Trump is not one to follow advice he does not like.

No new foreign deals.

The promise: The Trump Organization will engage in no “new foreign deals” while Trump is president. The company will, however, still be free to engage in any new domestic deals that survive what Dillon promised would be a “vigorous vetting process.”

The problem: New is the key word when it comes to foreign deals. The Trump Organization is believed to already being doing business in about 20 countries, and it appears many of those deals will continue. Trump’s foreign business partners now have an incentive to play nice or risk the direct or indirect wrath of the Trump administration. And it’s unclear if a “new” deal with a current partner would be considered “new” at all. Meanwhile, domestic companies and potential investors will know that they are getting involved with a company that has direct ties to the White House, something they will be free to trumpet publicly. The fact Trump has made it clear he is eager to single out corporations for public praise or scolding compounds these concerns. Meanwhile, without more details, the promised vigorous vetting process amounts to little more than trust us.

Trump won’t look at detailed Trump Org financial reports.

The promise: Trump will no longer have access to detailed financial reports concerning his family’s individual business interests that include separate business-by-business accounting. Instead, he’ll receive broad information reflecting the company’s profits and losses as a whole.

The problem: Dillon suggested this move would “reinforce the wall” between Trump and the Trump Organization, but that wall will still have plenty of windows. The president will still know which companies are parts of the Trump family empire (and how could he forget when so many specifically feature his own name?). He’ll be able to continue to track their fortunes via the media, allowing him to weigh in indirectly when he wants, as he managed to do shortly after the election during a call with a British political leader by bringing up the issue of wind farms he believes will ruin the views of one of his Scottish golf courses.

Hotel profits from foreign governments will go straight to the Treasury.

The promise: The company will donate “all profits” from any money paid to his hotels by foreign governments to the U.S. Treasury.

The problem: Dillon described this move as one taken out of an abundance of caution to avoid complaints about Trump violating the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which bars elected officials from receiving payment from foreign governments. It’s a classic Trumpian flourish—he loves, after all, to use other people’s money to play the part of benevolent billionaire without being one—but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. His company still stands to gain when foreign governments hold lavish affairs at his hotels. More importantly, the hotel fees are only a drop in the bucket of the money Trump receives from foreign governments and the companies they control. The far bigger problem is the millions of dollars he receives in things like rent from state-controlled companies, such as the Industrial & Commercial Bank of China, which is set to renegotiate its lease agreement at Trump Tower during Trump’s first term. As Tribe put it to Slate, “Trump remains a walking, tweeting violation of the Emoluments Clause from the moment he takes office.”

And those are just the problems that arose from the specific parts of the Trump Organization the newly announced plan addressed. There are myriad other concerns that went unmentioned, such as the millions of dollars of debt from Trump’s businesses and other properties that are reportedly held by more than 150 different financial institutions, or the fact that it appears Trump could violate the government lease on his new Washington, D.C, hotel as soon as he’s sworn in.

After her 15-minute spiel, Dillon took no questions from the assembled media, who later failed to press the president-elect on any of the specifics when they had the chance, even as he gestured to the stacks of manila folders—purportedly full of legal documents related to his company—strategically positioned behind the podium as evidence of how serious he is about separating himself from the business empire that bears his name. Trump, however, couldn’t help himself in his closing remarks, which made it painfully obvious that he won’t forget about his family’s fortune while he is in the White House.

“I hope at the end of eight years I'll come back and say, ‘Oh, you did a good job,’ ” Trump said in reference to his sons and business successors. “Otherwise, if they do a bad job, I'll say, ‘You're fired.’ ” Those are hardly the words of a man with no say in how his family business will be run.

Watch Jeff Sessions’ Confirmation Hearing Live

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 14:28:00 GMT

Attorney general nominee Jeff Sessions will get a busy week of confirmation action underway Tuesday morning with an appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. As a sitting senator, Sessions has plenty of friends in the upper chamber. He’ll be introduced this morning by Maine’s Susan Collins, one of the few moderate Republicans in the Senate, and has also been endorsed by South Carolina’s Tim Scott, the sole black Republican in the chamber.

Still, that won’t take the sting off what will happen later in the day: New Jersey Democrat Cory Booker and Georgia Rep. John Lewis plan to make their opposition to Sessions known during their own appearances before the committee. According to the Senate historian, Booker will become the first sitting senator to testify against a colleague during a confirmation hearing. You can watch the action live above.

How to Bring Down a Cabinet Nominee

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 10 Jan 2017 11:00:00 GMT

The Senate on Tuesday will begin the work of vetting President-elect Donald Trump’s Cabinet, starting with eight separate confirmation hearings in a span of three days. The Republican-controlled chamber’s ambitious (albeit not unprecedented) schedule will lay the groundwork for up-or-down votes for each of the nominees in the coming weeks. Democrats have plenty to complain about when it comes to Trump’s handpicked team, but there’s little reason to believe they can actually derail any of his nominations.

The GOP currently holds 52 seats in the Senate, enough to force through any of the nominations simply by limiting defections from within their own ranks to fewer than three. They also have precedent working in their favor. In its history, the U.S. Senate has only ever formally rejected nine Cabinet-level nominees and has done so only once in the past half-century: John Tower, who was nominated by George H.W. Bush for secretary of defense in 1989, was doomed by allegations of his alcohol abuse and womanizing. (Nonetheless, Tower still came within three votes of confirmation.)

On the rare occasions that Cabinet-level picks have failed in recent decades, the nominations have been withdrawn before the Senate's up-or-down vote over questions about embarrassing or controversial details of their personal or professional lives. That’s theoretically still possible in a Trump administration, but it strains the imagination given the president-elect’s steadfast unwillingness to back down in the face of political norms or even public pressure. In administrations past, wounded nominees stepped aside rather than become a distraction. In Trump’s, distractions might be part of the plan.

Below is a list of the 10 most recent Cabinet-level nominations to fail, and why they went down, starting with the most recent. The administration or the transition team publicly announced each selection, but not all were formally nominated by the president or the president-elect. None ever got a full vote in the Senate.

Judd Gregg
Nominated by Barack Obama to be secretary of the Department of Commerce.
Withdrawn on Feb. 12, 2009.
Why: Gregg, then a Republican senator, unexpectedly bowed out of contention early in Obama’s first term citing “irresolvable conflicts” with the president over his economic stimulus plan. “I’m a fiscal conservative, as everybody knows, a fairly strong one,” Gregg explained at the time. “And it just became clear to me that it would be very difficult, day in and day out, to serve in this Cabinet or any Cabinet.” He added: “It was my mistake, obviously, to say yes.”

Tom Daschle
Nominated by Barack Obama to be secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services.
Withdrawn on Feb. 9, 2009.
Why: Daschle’s nomination was withdrawn after he acknowledged that he had failed to pay roughly $140,000 in back taxes. The announcement came one day after Obama had suggested he’d stand behind the former Senate Democratic leader despite the criticism. Compounding Democrats problems, however, was the discovery that another Obama appointee for a non-Cabinet-level position had also failed to pay taxes.

Bill Richardson
Nominated by Barack Obama to be secretary of the Department of Commerce.
Withdrawn on Jan. 4, 2009.
Why: Richardson, then the governor of New Mexico, stepped aside amid an ongoing federal investigation into whether his administration unfairly awarded more than $1 million worth of state consulting contracts to a company run by one his donors. Richardson suggested that the investigation would have “forced an untenable delay” in his confirmation. Federal prosecutors later dropped the case after a yearlong investigation into the pay-for-play allegations.

Bernard Kerik
Nominated by George W. Bush for secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.
Withdrawn on Dec. 10, 2004.
Why: Kerik, a former New York City police commissioner, withdrew from contention amid concerns about the immigration status of one of his former housekeepers, as well as a related tax issue. Kerik had been seen at the time as perhaps the most vulnerable of Bush's second-term nominations given a post-NYPD track record that included a stint as interim minister of interior for the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq.

Linda Chavez
Nominated by George W. Bush for secretary of the Department of Labor.
Withdrawn on Jan. 9, 2001.
Why: Chavez, a conservative commentator, withdrew from consideration after it was discovered that she had previously given housing and money to an immigrant from Guatemala who was in the country illegally. Chavez maintained she was doing a good deed when she provided the shelter and cash to the women, while her critics suggested she was illegally employing the woman as a live-in housekeeper.

Hershel Gober
Nominated by Bill Clinton for secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs.
Withdrawn on Oct. 27, 1997.
Why: Gobel, then deputy secretary of the VA, withdrew after it became clear that his confirmation hearings would relive allegations that he had sexually harassed two women during a public reception in 1993 at the Vietnam Veteran's Memorial. An administrative complaint about the incident had been filed with the department, which found it unwarranted after investigating it twice. The first probe, however, was conducted by the agency’s then–general counsel, whom Gober would later marry, raising concerns about a possible conflict of interest in the case.

Anthony Lake
Nominated by Bill Clinton for director of the CIA.
Withdrawn on March 18, 1997.
Why: Lake called it quits after protracted confirmation hearings that focused on his time as National Security Adviser, a role in which, among other things, he failed to inform Congress that the White House had tacitly approved Iran's arming of Bosnian Muslims. According to the New York Times, Republicans in charge of his confirmation process planned to stall for at least another month in hopes that “some bombshell would explode in Mr. Lake’s face.” After learning that, Lake reportedly told Clinton that he was “not going to spend the next months being a dancing bear in a political circus.”

Bobby Ray Inman
Nominated by Bill Clinton to be secretary of defense.
Withdrawn on Jan. 19, 1994.
Why: Inman abruptly dropped out after complaining that his reputation was under attack and suggesting that New York Times columnist William Safire and Senate GOP leader Bob Dole were plotting against him. Safire had penned a column the previous month that described Inman as a “tax cheat” for not paying Social Security taxes for a housekeeper, but Inman nonetheless appeared on track for a relatively easy confirmation. “I did not want this job,” Inman declared in a rambling news conference announcing his decision to withdraw. “I'm at peace with myself.”

Kimba Wood
Nominated by Bill Clinton to be attorney general.
Withdrawn on Feb. 6, 1993.
Why: Wood, then a federal judge in New York, withdrew after the White House discovered that she had previously employed an undocumented immigrant as a child care provider—even though it did not appear to be illegal to do so at the time she did. The problem, as the Clinton administration saw it, was that the president’s first choice for the post, Zoe Baird, had been forced to drop out only weeks prior for similar reasons.

Zoë Baird
Nominated by Bill Clinton for attorney general.
Withdrawn on Jan. 22, 1993.
Why: Baird was on track to become the first ever female U.S. attorney general when her nomination was unexpectedly derailed by the revelation that she had hired a Peruvian couple to perform domestic tasks, despite knowing they could not work legally in United States. Baird and her husband also failed to pay Social Security taxes on the couples’ wages. Democrats were surprised by the public backlash, and Baird ultimately stepped down after a bipartisan group of senators announced they would oppose her confirmation.

Among the issues to have derailed a nomination, then, are the actual or alleged: failure to pay federal taxes, illegal employment of immigrants, involvement in a pay-for-play scheme, and sexual harassment of women. Democrats can hope to find similar skeletons in the closets of Trump’s nominees. It’s unclear, though, why that would matter to Republicans who rallied behind Trump knowing he’d bring similar ones to the White House himself.

ISIS Claims Responsibility for Berlin Attack, but German Police Aren’t So Sure

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 21:27:33 GMT

ISIS has claimed responsibility for the attack on a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday that killed a dozen people and injured roughly 50 others, many critically.

The Associated Press reports that the terror group released a statement via its Amaq news agency late Tuesday claiming that the driver of the truck that plowed into the crowd “is a soldier of the Islamic State and carried out the attack in response to calls for targeting citizens of the Crusader coalition.” Notably, however, the group offered no other details about the driver, nor did it specify whether it was claiming that he or she had been in direct contact with the group, or was simply sympathetic to it.

The statement came shortly after German officials released the sole suspect it had in connection with the attack, a 23-year-old asylum-seeker from Pakistan who was arrested about a mile-and-a-half from the scene of Monday’s carnage. Police announced that they did not have enough evidence to tie him to the attack.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel began the day Tuesday by saying that “we must assume at the current time that it was a terrorist attack,” but authorities investigating the incident seemed less certain of that at the end of the day than they did at its start, via the New York Times:

Peter Frank, the country’s federal prosecutor, insisted that while the similarities to last summer’s Bastille Day attack in Nice, France, led his office to suspect that the Berlin attack was motivated by terrorism, he was unable to produce any hard evidence. “We are investigating in all directions,” Mr. Frank said, explaining that he decided to start an investigation given the symbolism of the target and the timing, less than a week before Christmas Eve.

In the meantime, the investigation continues. “We have not limited ourselves to one suspect or one possible perpetrator,” Frank added. “But we can’t make a final assessment whether it is a terrorism-motivated attack, or whether it was a copycat act.”

The Many Problems with the Trump Kids’ Scheme to Sell Access to Their Father on Inauguration Weekend

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 19:17:46 GMT

Donald Trump’s adult sons have found yet another way to benefit from their father’s name. The Center for Public Integrity reports that a new nonprofit led by Don Jr. and Eric Trump is promising inauguration weekend-access to the next president of the United States in exchange for six- and seven-figure donations, which the group says it will then pass along to unnamed charities after it recoups the costs of staging the event at a Washington convention center.

According to a flier for the Jan. 21, 2017 event—attire: “Camouflage & Cufflinks”—ponying up $1 million will get you a “private reception and photo opportunity for 16 guests with President Donald J. Trump,” a “multi-day hunting and/or fishing excursion for 4 guests with Donald Trump, Jr. and/or Eric Trump,” and a host of other perks. The packages on offer get smaller from there, but those who spend $250,000 still get direct access to the president, albeit the reception and photo-op is limited to four people. Net proceeds, according to the flier, will be donated to unnamed “conservation” charities, which given the Trump sons’ big-game pastimes, and the family’s general disdain for climate science, presumably skew toward the hunting-and-fishing variety as opposed to groups like the Sierra Club.

Walter Kinzie, who runs the Texas event management company that was hired to stage the reception, told CPI that the brochure isn’t entirely accurate, though declined to specify what information on it was incorrect. He added that the participation of the Trump family is not confirmed, which will probably come as news to anyone who has already cut a six-figure-or-more check to organizers.

[Update 4:25 p.m.: A Trump spokeswoman now claims that the details in the report “are merely initial concepts that have not been approved or pursued by the Trump family,” and that Don Jr. and Eric “are not involved in any capacity.” The statement, however, did not address the fact that on the paperwork the non-profit submitted to the Texas secretary of state, Don Jr. and Eric are listed as two of the group’s four directors, which suggests they are involved in what could safely be called "some capacity."]

The CPI report has gotten plenty of coverage, and it’s rarely unwise to assume the worst of the Trumps. But, setting aside for a moment the uncertainty of whether or not the Trumps are actually confirmed, just how big of an ethical problem does this event pose for Trump?

On a fundamental level, this isn’t all that different from what happens any other day at political fundraisers around the country. The rich pay top-dollar to attend lavish events and, in exchange, are glad-handed by those who asked them to be there, and who take note that they were. Fundraisers featuring high-profile politicians are selling access, plain and simple. If they weren’t—if donors were being driven only by their altruism—they would simply mail in their checks, which would prevent a slice of the donation from being siphoned off to pay for the staging of the swanky affairs. And yet they don’t.

Even if the donor never specifically asks for a favor or raises a particular concern, he or she knows simply being in the same room with the guest of honor can create the appearance of access—often literally in the form of a framed photo of the two—which comes with its own perks in business and government. It’s this chicken-and-egg conundrum that underlies all political donations: Does a donor write a check to a politician (or a politician’s pet cause) because their interests overlap? Or do their interests align because the donor cuts that check? In our system, sadly, those questions are often unanswerable. (And, in this case, given the way the new non-profit is structured, we may never even know who cut the checks in the first place.)

Still, there is one reason this particular Trump scheme is particularly infuriating. The president-elect repeatedly claimed to be above this type of thing during the campaign, but brazenly engaged in it anyway, all while threatening to lock Hillary Clinton up for doing similar things at the Clinton Foundation.

Furthermore, this event only confirms that Trump and his family have no plans to change now that he’s been elected. What Eric and Don Jr. are doing, after all, is effectively the same as what their father has done via his own personal non-profit: solicit money from others so he can act like a benevolent billionaire without actually being one. We saw something similar earlier this month when the family tried to auction off 45 minutes of Ivanka’s time in exchange for a donation to Eric’s personal foundation, which would ostensibly then have been passed on to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital. Bidding reached $72,888 before it was called off, in part because the businessmen competing for it made it explicitly clear they hoped to gain inside information from Ivanka, who is likely to take a role in her father’s administration. Even still, Team Trump took a defiant tone. “Today, the only people that lost are the children of St. Jude,” Eric said in a statement, seeming never to consider that he could make up for that loss by donating his own money.

And finally, there’s the simple fact that this event—staged by Eric and Don. Jr, and featuring their father—makes even more of a mockery of the familial firewall the president-elect has vowed to install between his business empire and his administration. Trump still hasn’t detailed that plan—he was supposed to reveal all at a Dec. 15 press conference, which he canceled—but the one specific he returns to time and again is that he’ll turn over operations of the family business to his sons. Events like this one, however, make clear why that won’t work. For the Trumps, there is no difference between charity and politics, nor between politics and business.

German Police Release Sole Suspect in Custody in Connection With Deadly Berlin Truck Attack

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 20 Dec 2016 06:38:00 GMT

Update: German police on Tuesday released the sole suspect they had in custody in connection with Monday's deadly truck attack at a Berlin market. BBC News reports that police concluded that they do not have sufficient evidence to purse charges against the man, who was previously described as a 23-year-old asylum-seeker from Pakistan who came to Berlin this past February.

Earlier in the day, officials conceded that they were no longer positive that the man, who was arrested about a mile-and-a-half from the scene, was the driver of the truck, as was originally believed. "We have to entertain the theory that the detainee might possibly not have been the perpetrator," federal prosecutor Peter Frank told reporters at the time.

Original post, 9:33 a.m.: at German officials on Tuesday suggested that the truck attack that killed 12 people and injured another 48 the evening before is looking increasingly like a terrorist attack the more they learn. At the same time, however, officials also suggested that they are not positive the suspect they took into custody near the scene was the driver of the truck as they had once thought.

“We must assume at the current time that it was a terrorist attack,” German Chancellor Angela Merkel said during comments to the press, according to the New York Times. “I know that it would be particularly difficult for all of us to bear if it is confirmed that this deed was carried out by a person who sought protection and asylum in Germany.” That remark was in reference to the suspect that police arrested near the scene, said to be an a 23-year-old asylum-seeker from Pakistan who had arrived in Berlin in February of this year.

Police say the driver of the truck eventually fled on foot and that they later arrested their suspect about a mile-and-a-half from the crash site. On Tuesday, however, comments by Berlin’s chief of police, Klaus Kandt, suggested authorities have at least some doubt that their suspect was the driver. “We haven't been able to confirm it yet,” he told reporters at one point, and “it is actually not clear” he was the driver at another, according to reports.

According to German media, the man in question had already been on the police’s radar for minor crimes. A spokesman for Berlin’s office for refugee affairs told the Associated Press that police conducted a large-scale search overnight at a large shelter for asylum-seekers at Berlin’s now-defunct Tempelhof airport, but made no arrests.

Monday’s incident occurred at around 8 p.m. local time on Monday. A tractor-trailor truck jumped a sidewalk in Berlin and plowed into the popular market near the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church. According to witnesses, the truck did not slow down as it moved through the crowd. Of the four-dozen wounded, 18 are said to have been injured critically. Among the dead, authorities say, was a Polish man who was found with a gunshot wound in the passenger seat of the truck. Officials have suggested they consider that man a victim, not a perpetrator of the attack, and the Polish owner of the truck has said he believes it may have been hijacked, the AP reports.

If this was indeed a terrorist act, it mirrors a similar one that occurred in the French city of Nice in July, when a Tunisian man, who appeared to sympathize with ISIS, drove a cargo truck into a crowd of people celebrating Bastille Day, leaving 86 dead and nearly 500 injured. As my colleague Joshua Keating pointed out back in 2014, driving an automobile into a crowded public place has been endorsed by Inspire, the English-language online magazine published by al-Qaida, and is considered a low-cost method of carrying out attacks for would-be terrorists who do not have access to explosives.

Electoral College Updates: Trump Crosses 270

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 22:30:00 GMT

The Electoral College has long been but a mere formality. Was that the case again on Monday? Pretty much! While a handful of faithless electors did create some excitement, the ultimate outcome remained unchanged: Donald J. Trump will be the 45th president of the United States of America. Congress will vote to certify those results early next month, and then Trump will be sworn in on Jan. 20, 2017. Below are updates from the day's electoral action.

Trump’s Unfounded Claims of Widespread Voter Fraud Now Look Even More Absurd

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 19 Dec 2016 14:45:38 GMT

“Nothing at all, really.” “We only had one. It hasn’t been confirmed.” “We haven’t received any complaints to our office or any word of suspicious activity, and we would definitely hear it.”

That’s a sampling of what state officials who oversaw voting last month had to say to the New York Times when it asked how many credible reports of fraud they’ve received since the election. According to the paper, the overwhelming consensus from the election boards and secretaries of state across the country can be boiled down: “next to none.” In a total of 26 states (plus the District of Columbia), officials said they knew of zero credible allegations, while officials in another 8 states said they were aware of one, and only one, such claim. The closest thing to an outlier—other than Kansas, which did not respond to the Times—were states that reported a few dozen cases of possible fraud. Tennessee, for instance, counted 40 credible allegations, while Georgia said it had opened 25 inquiries into claims there. Those numbers, however, represent a fraction of a percent of the millions of votes that were cast in both states.

The totals may still change a few ticks as officials wrap up the postelection review process, but there’s no reason to believe the results will change significantly. Of course, there was never much reason to worry about this type of voter fraud in the first place. Academics, researchers, and other experts have been saying for years that voter fraud—whereby someone deliberately casts an illegal ballot—is effectively nonexistent. Here, for instance, is how University of California, Irvine law professor Richard Hasen summed things up in Slate back in October at a time when Donald Trump was warning that voters in “certain areas”(*wink, wink*) would cast multiple ballots for Hillary Clinton:

The truth is, though, that not only does zero evidence exist that this sort of fraud has taken place on any regular basis, but multiple voting simply cannot happen in any practical sense on a scale to influence a presidential election. To vote five, 10, or 15 times one would have to either register five, 10, or 15 times in different jurisdictions or with false names or go five, 10, or 15 times to polling places claiming to be someone else whose name is on the voter rolls, in the hopes that this person has not already voted and you would not get caught. And to do this on a scale for a presidential election, in a place such as Pennsylvania with millions of voters, you would need to pay tens of thousands of people, all without any way of verifying how they voted. What a stupid way to try to steal an election! That’s why in preparing my 2012 book, The Voting Wars, I could not find a single instance anywhere in the U.S. from the 1980s onward where massive impersonation fraud was used to try to steal an election. …

The only recent instance I’m aware of concerning such multiple voting concerned a staunch supporter of Republican Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker and other Wisconsin Republicans. This man registered and voted about a dozen times in a few elections in multiple jurisdictions. He was caught and literally pleaded insanity, because such a plan is literally insane.

That reality, sadly but unsurprisingly, did not stop our now president-elect from continuing to make his evidence-free claim in the lead up to Election Day, nor did it stop him from doing so again after it once it became clear he had lost the popular vote.

Such claims are about more than just Trump’s fragile ego (though they are about that as well). As my colleague Mark Joseph Stern has explained, Republicans have been peddling the myth of widespread voter fraud for going on two decades now as way to justify stringent voter ID measures and other draconian voting restrictions, the burdens of which fall disproportionately on minorities. And while some establishment Republicans were uncomfortable with just how far from reality Trump was willing to venture during his pre- and post-election fearmongering, his election makes it far more likely that they’ll get the crackdown on suffrage they’ve been clamoring for.

Tillerson Says One Thing With His Mouth and Another With His Money

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 15 Dec 2016 00:05:21 GMT

On Tuesday morning, Donald Trump named Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as his nominee for secretary of state. Five days before that, the president-elect tapped a climate change–denying Oklahoma attorney general to lead the Environmental Protection Agency. Trump has also reportedly settled on a climate change–denying Montana congressman to run his Interior Department and a climate change–denying former Texas governor to head up his Energy Department.

It is a dark time for the future of our planet. It’s tempting to see the selection of Tillerson—a man who says publicly that manmade global warming is indeed a real concern for the world—as a bright spot in that darkness. “Can a career oil man help save the planet?” wondered CNN. Compared to his fellow Cabinet appointees, “it’s possible that Tillerson would be a moderating voice,” suggested Mashable. “Tillerson’s position on climate change may be to the left of Trump's,” offered the Washington Post. All three of those reports couched their maybe-this-guy’s-a-moderate assessments in relative terms, which is necessary considering that the president-elect is soon to become the only world leader to deny the reality of climate change.

In the bleak lineup of full-on denialists who are about to take hold of our government, Tillerson has been painted as a possible, if unlikely, savior. He is not. There is no reason to be optimistic that Tillerson, a career employee of the world’s largest private oil company, will make the incoming Trump administration any more likely to address greenhouse gas emissions. None. Zero. Zilch.

The climate case for Tillerson is built on the perception that the engineer-turned-executive has softened the oil giant’s once-open hostility toward the accepted science that shows humans’ role in global warming. Notably, Tillerson has also voiced support for a federal carbon tax in the United States and for the Paris climate agreement that was negotiated last year. “At Exxon Mobil,” he said in a speech earlier this year, “we share the view that the risks of climate change are serious and warrant thoughtful action.”

Sure, it sounds good—it’s practically a relief amidst the horror. But it’s a mistake to judge Tillerson only by his words. For one, as researchers at Harvard and MIT have documented in great detail, his more specific comments on the topic tend to raise doubt about the science when there isn’t any. More telling, though, have been his actions.

In the decade-plus that Tillerson has been chairman and CEO of Exxon Mobil, the company has funneled roughly $7.25 million to federal candidates via its political action committee, according to a database kept by the Center for Responsive Politics. The vast majority of that cash—more than $6.5 million—went to Republicans, and not just any old Republicans. Recipients of Exxon checks include such anti-science all-stars as: Oklahoma Sen. James Inhofe, the chairman of the powerful Environment and Public Works Committee who authored a climate change–denying book titled The Greatest Hoax and once brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to try to make his case that the world had not warmed; Mississippi Sen. Roger Wicker, who against the odds actually once out-Inhofed James Inhofe during a climate vote two years ago; and Texas Rep. Joe Barton, the former chairman of the Energy and Commerce Committee, who has cited a biblical flood as evidence against manmade climate change (and once infamously apologized to the chairman of BP during congressional hearings on the Deepwater Horizon oil spill).

Tillerson may be striking a more climate-friendly tone in public than his predecessor did, but the company’s PAC expenditures suggest it’s little more than the political posturing of a man eager to present his company as a good corporate citizen to investors. During each of the six campaign cycles during which Tillerson has been CEO, Republican candidates have received roughly $9 out of every $10 spent by the company-sponsored PAC, roughly the same share they had been under the man Tillerson replaced, Lee Raymond (who memorably spoke out against the Kyoto Protocol that was a predecessor to the U.N. climate deal struck in Paris). Total political spending by Exxon’s PAC, meanwhile, has soared under Tillerson’s watch from less than $900,000 in 2004, the last full cycle under Raymond’s reign, to more than twice that in each of the past three election cycles. If Tillerson actually feels at odds with the Republicans he will soon join in the Cabinet, there is no evidence of this in his financial decisions.

Hillary Clinton, you may remember, was herself no stranger to donations from the oil-and-gas industry. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, industry employees gave her campaign nearly $800,000 during the last cycle, roughly $100,000 more than they sent to Trump (but still about a half-million less than they gave to Sen. Ted Cruz). The Democratic nominee was a particular favorite of Exxon Mobil employees, too: They gave Clinton more (about $80,000 total) than they did to any other presidential candidate. That money, however, came from individuals, not the oil giant’s wealthy PAC, which has avoided donating directly to presidential candidates in recent years. Tillerson, however, displayed no such restraint. He sent his own check to Jeb Bush, a man who managed to offer up a multipronged energy proposal on the stump without once mentioning manmade climate change.

Exxon’s GOP leanings are, of course, not an accident. As Steve Coll detailed in the New Yorker back in 2012, the company decides which lawmakers receive donations—and which do not—based specifically on how they vote on legislation that Exxon believes will most affect its bottom line. “We are a business-oriented [PAC],” an executive involved in political strategy told Coll at the time. “Now, when you apply that litmus, our [PAC] is rightly criticized—that we tend to give more money to Republicans than to Democrats—but it is a result of the approach we take, and not a desired result.” Put another way, Exxon Mobil doesn’t donate to Republicans because they are Republicans; it donates to Republicans because Republican priorities match their business priorities. There is no ambiguity in the Republican Party line when it comes to climate: The official party platform adopted at the 2016 GOP convention, for instance, states unequivocally that “environmental extremists” are working to “sustain the illusion of an environmental crisis.”

Denying climate change directly benefits Exxon’s business model. Investigative reporting from the Los Angeles Times has shown that even while Exxon was publicly denying the reality of climate change in the 1990s, they were factoring the melting rates of Arctic ice into their oil exploration plans. An open Arctic is profitable for them.

It is certainly possible, even likely, that Tillerson understands the threat climate change poses. His company was one of the first to do extensive research on climate change, as another series of investigative reporting from Inside Climate News found. Of course, rather than share this research with the public, Exxon continued to deny climate change publicly for decades, because it was more profitable for them to do so. Again, it seems that Tillerson and Exxon continuously favor pragmatism and profitability over morality. That is perhaps acceptable, if despicable, when you are running a private business. But it is an abhorrent quality for a public servant.

And what of the carbon tax that Tillerson claims to want so badly? As the Union of Concerned Scientists has documented, time and time again, Exxon-funded lawmakers in both the House and the Senate have actively worked to derail any progress on such a greenhouse gas-reducing mechanism, which is seen by many environmentalists and economists as the best way to put a price on carbon given its relative simplicity. Tillerson’s support for such a tax appears even more empty when you remember back to when he first proposed it: in 2009, when Democrats controlled both chambers and the President Obama–backed cap-and-trade bill had not yet died a slow death in the Senate. Tillerson’s backing would have been a potential world-changing event if it had come back in the 1990s when Al Gore was advocating for it and when Republicans had not yet closed their eyes and ears to the science. Instead, Tillerson could comfort himself knowing that his suggestion had no chance of overcoming a GOP filibuster in the Senate anytime in the foreseeable future, no small thanks to those lawmakers his company helped put there.

Even more troubling than the money Exxon Mobil continues to funnel to political candidates openly promising to stop the action Tillerson claims to want, is all the cash the company continues to send to those groups that traffic in the disinformation those very same politicians wrongly cite as evidence for their denial. Under Tillerson, for instance, Exxon Mobil continues to donate to several groups with a documented history of sowing unfounded doubt about climate science by spreading misinformation and publishing misleading policy analyses, including the likes of the American Legislative Exchange Council and the American Enterprise Institute. The company suggested to shareholders back in 2007 that such practices would stop. Clearly, they have not followed suit.

Maybe it’s preferable that our prospective secretary of state seems at least able to provide lip service to the idea that climate change is real. But the actions he has taken as CEO suggest that, if confirmed next year, he’s far more likely to say the right thing about climate as secretary, while doing the wrong one.

Are Those Daily Intelligence Briefings Really As Repetitive As Trump Says They Are?

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 19:28:00 GMT

Donald Trump has no interest in hearing the same thing twice—especially if it’s something he didn’t want to hear in the first place. In an interview with Fox News Sunday that aired over the weekend, the president-elect proudly proclaimed that he is receiving high-level intelligence briefings only once a week, instead of daily, as is tradition for incoming and sitting presidents. “You know, I’m a smart person,” Trump told Chris Wallace by way of explaining why he’s delegated the job of receiving the Presidential Daily Brief to Vice President-elect Mike Pence. “I don’t have to be told the same thing and the same words every single day for the next eight years.”

Setting aside what Trump is implying about the intelligence of the man he chose to be his second in command, his comments were somewhere between incredibly depressing and abjectly terrifying for those of us who would prefer the next leader of the free world not to actively avoid expert analysis, particularly on matters of national security and geopolitics. But is he right about the repetitiveness of the briefings?

First, some background. The daily brief—sometimes known as “the book” or “the daily book” in government parlance—is the compilation of high-level intelligence that is put together by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence for the president each day, and which is also shared with the president-elect. It contains classified information and analysis, both from hot spots around the globe and about national security threats at home. It is one of the most tightly controlled daily documents in the world; in some past administrations, only two or three people were allowed access to it. Trump’s decision to ignore the brief on most days is a remarkable decision by an incoming president—albeit not a completely unprecedented one (see: Nixon, Richard).

So what of Trump’s claim that the briefs are, well, too boring to be worth his time? Since the information is classified, it’s impossible to say for certain whether they are actually as repetitive as Trump appears to believe they are. Still, there is good reason to doubt Trump’s assessment (beyond the usual reasons to doubt any of Trump’s assessments).

David Priess, a former CIA official and author of The President's Book of Secrets, a detailed history of presidential intelligence briefings, told me that the presidential briefings are tailored to meet the needs and preferences of the sitting president. John F. Kennedy, for instance, preferred things kept short and sweet, which is why he requested and received a pocket-size bulletin—known then as the President’s Intelligence Checklist, or the “Pickle” for short—with the major intelligence takeaways for that day. Gerald Ford and George H.W. Bush preferred to be briefed in person on most days, and so they both received the information in face-to-face meetings with intelligence officers. Jimmy Carter liked to take notes right on the page, and so his briefs were printed out with lots of white space on the margins for him to write in. And Obama prefers a digital read, and so he gets a detailed brief on a secured iPad.

Indeed, it is the intended audience of the current briefs—President Obama, not President-elect Trump—that may explain why the ones Trump has seen are apparently too repetitive for his subjective tastes. “President Obama has been getting this for the past 7-and-a-half years—a lot of it is going to be running threads that go back days, months, or even years,” Priess explained. “And there might be some slight movements that might not mean much to [Trump] but could mean much more to the president who has been following that thread closely.” What Trump sees as a bug, then, is a feature in Obama’s world, according to Priess. By seeing how the intelligence on a topic changes in increments, Obama gets a more complete picture and has the chance to press those doing the briefing to explain the rationale behind any changes.

A second former intelligence officer who spoke on background went further in pushing back against Trump’s claim that little in the brief changes from one day to the next. “There are continuing themes but never the same briefing and always something different,” the former official said. The daily briefing, this person added, is by far the best, most easily digestible product the intelligence community produces, as well as the most interactive—assuming, of course, the briefee engages with the material and the briefer on a regular basis, something Trump has made clear he has little interest in doing.

Trump may feel differently about the briefings after he is sworn in. “When he’s president, he can get it in any format he wants—and if he doesn’t want repetition, there won’t be repetition,” said Priess, who interviewed every living former president for his book. Starting next month, then, President Trump could be reading briefs comprised entirely of 140-character bullet points if that’s what he wants. In that case, it would up to the individual briefers to make sure the most crucial information finds Trump even if Trump is trying to look the other way. “They’ll need to find a way to get through to him,” Priess said. “He seems to process information differently, but it’s the briefers’ job to figure out how to make sure the message he needs gets to him.”

Conveniently for Trump, if he continues to refuse the daily briefs as president, he’ll be making the job that much harder for the very same intelligence community he’s denigrated in the past. If the president’s briefers aren’t allowed to show their work, Trump will have an easier time simply dismissing out of hand any new information that he doesn’t like. “At its fundamental level, the briefing relationship has to be built on trust,” said Priess. “The briefer is bringing to the president sometimes uncomfortable truths—‘here is information that is inconvenient for you, that might show your policy isn’t working.’ The president needs to trust that this is the best interpretation of the available intelligence.” And that, more than how often Trump receives the briefs, is the real reason to be concerned.

Energy Department Rejects Trump’s Request to Name Staffers Who Worked to Address Climate Change

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 17:32:00 GMT

If Donald Trump wants to purge the Department of Energy of climate science–accepting employees, he’ll have to find another way to do it. The federal agency on Tuesday said it would not provide the president-elect’s team with the list it requested of staff and contractors who worked on domestic and international efforts to reduce carbon emissions during the Obama administration.

“We are going to respect the professional and scientific integrity and independence of our employees at our labs and across our department,” Energy spokesman Eben Burnham-Snyder told the Washington Post in a statement, which continued (emphasis his): “We will be forthcoming with all publically-available information with the transition team. We will not be providing any individual names to the transition team.”

The response follows last week’s disclosure that Trump’s transition team had sent a list of 74 questions to the department, which among other alarming things included a request for the names of employees involved in activities like the Paris climate talks and crafting President Obama’s greenhouse gas rules. The questionnaire set off alarm bells in Washington and raised the specter that Trump and his team were looking to push out those career civil servants who accept the scientific consensus about man-made global warming, which at science-centric agencies like the DOE is presumably most of them.

Still, the department’s refusal to comply with Trump’s request only does so much for those science-accepting employees who will soon find themselves working in a Trump administration. Trump will reportedly name Rick Perry as secretary of energy. Perry, like his future boss, has consistently denied the existence of climate change. In his 2010 book, Fed Up!, the former Texas governor dismissed efforts to address global warming as “hysteria” and described the accepted science as a “contrived phony mess.”

Perry, a man who infamously forgot the name of the Energy Department on a 2012 primary debate stage—oops!—when naming federal agencies he vowed to cut if elected, will join a list of Trump nominees that includes: EPA administrator nominee Scott Pruitt, the Oklahoma attorney general who has made it his life’s work to undercut the mission of the EPA, and secretary of state nominee Rex Tillerson, the CEO of Exxon-freaking-Mobil.

Is Trump Plotting to Purge the Federal Government of Anyone Who Accepts Climate Change? Maybe!

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 18:58:00 GMT

On Thursday, President-elect Donald Trump formally nominated Scott Pruitt to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, a rather terrifying turn of events for anyone who accepts the scientific consensus on man-made climate change. Pruitt doesn’t just deny that science—he also has real-world legal experience trying to turn that denial into actual governmental policy.

Things on the climate front, however, may be even worse than they seem. Via the Washington Post:

The Trump transition team has issued a list of 74 questions for the Energy Department, asking officials there to identify which department employees and contractors have worked on forging an international climate pact as well as domestic efforts to cut the nation’s carbon output.

The questionnaire requests a list of those individuals who have taken part in international climate talks over the past five years and “which programs within DOE are essential to meeting the goals of President Obama’s Climate Action Plan.”

While we obviously can’t know for sure why the Trump team is making that request, it raises the specter that they aren’t just looking to purge the federal government of political appointees who accept the realities of climate change, but also to do the same with the career civil servants who keep the departments running. “With some of these questions, it feels more like an inquisition than a question, in terms of going after career employees who have been here through Bush years to Clinton, and up to now,” one understandably concerned DOE employee told the Post. “All of a sudden you have questions that feel more like a congressional investigation than an actual probing of how the Department of Energy does its job.”

The questionnaire also hints at yet another way that the Trump administration may try to aid its friends in the fossil fuel industry. The transition team specifically requested details about how the Obama administration crafted its “social cost of carbon” metrics, which is what helps federal agencies weigh the costs to society of emitting CO₂ into the atmosphere. If the Trump administration were to change how that cost is calculated—or simply refuse to calculate it at all—it would swing the cost-benefit analysis performed by federal regulators in favor of short-term economic gains at the expense of long-term environmental harm.

Pruitt’s Plan to Make Climate Denialism Law

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 15:56:23 GMT

When President-elect Donald Trump sat down for an in-depth interview with the New York Times last month, there was a brief moment when it seemed possible, though unlikely, that he might acknowledge climate change is real. When he nominated Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday, those illusions flew out the window.

Pruitt, like Trump, denies the scientific consensus about manmade climate change. Unlike Trump, however, Pruitt has been unwavering in that denial and, more troubling still, has experience trying to let these misconceptions inform our laws.

The way he could do this is a bit technical. Despite Trump’s campaign promises, the incoming president won’t be able to unilaterally abolish the EPA, and rescinding the climate rules already in place would be an arduous process, thanks to lengthy public comment periods and other requirements that will allow environmental groups and their allies in state governments to try to preserve them. More importantly, though, the Clean Water Act and the Clean Air Act both mandate our right to, you guessed it, clean water and clean air. The EPA is essentially tasked with executing the actions necessary to ensure this. If Pruitt and Trump neuter the EPA, the federal government would still need to find another way to hold up the demands put forth by these two laws or face legal action.

But when these fundamental environmental rules were put on the books—in the 1970s—global warming wasn’t on legislatures’ radars. And this is where Pruitt’s appointment gets scary. The only reason the Clean Air Act is able to regulate greenhouse gases is thanks to a 2009 endangerment finding, in which the EPA showed that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases pose a risk to human health. It was thanks to this finding that the agency was able to claim the authority and legal responsibility to regulate GHGs under the Clean Air Act. Without it, there would be no new fuel economy rules for cars and trucks, Clean Power Plan for the nation’s power plants, or any other number of rules and regulations designed to curb U.S. emissions.

So, without the endangerment clause, the EPA wouldn’t even have the ability to regulate greenhouse gases. And consider this: If Pruitt had gotten his way four years ago, the EPA’s endangerment finding would be gone. In 2012, he joined with a dozen or so other conservative attorney generals to ask a federal court to strike it down. That challenge was rejected by the science-accepting D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals, but it’s hard to overstate just how much was at stake.

Now that he’s about to put in charge, he’ll get the chance to take an even bigger swing, this time from inside the EPA itself.

Fortunately, scrapping the endangerment finding would be a heavy lift even with Pruitt as EPA chief. While agencies are allowed to change their minds, they are required to offer a rational explanation for the reversal. As Harvard Law professor Jody Freeman has argued, that would be near-impossible for Pruitt when it comes to the endangerment finding, given that the courts were already won over once by the comprehensive scientific record that the finding was built on.

Nonetheless, the president-elect’s team appears undeterred. A leaked memo authored by the head of Trump’s energy transition team promises the endangerment finding will be “reconsidered and possibly revoked.” The document was authored before Pruitt was officially tapped to lead the EPA, but there’s no reason to believe he thinks any differently than its author.

Even if we assume Pruitt won’t succeed in revoking the endangerment finding, the fact the incoming Trump administration appears willing to even try is evidence of the dangers the next four years could hold. Trump, after all, has promised to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement and to scrap the EPA’s Clean Power Plan (which is currently being challenged in court by, yep, one Scott Pruitt). Trump may not consider himself bound by the pledges he made on the campaign trail. His selection of Pruitt, however, suggests that his science-denying bluster on climate is at least one exception.

The President of the United States Will Not Give Up His Apprentice Producing Credit or Paycheck

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 09 Dec 2016 00:34:00 GMT

Donald Trump isn’t ready to leave the world of reality television behind when he heads to Washington next month, via Variety:

Trump will remain an exec producer on NBC’s “Celebrity Apprentice,” which is returning Jan. 2 after a two-year hiatus with new host Arnold Schwarzenegger.

MGM confirmed to Variety that Trump has retained his EP credit on the series. … In the credit sequence, Trump’s name will air after that of “Apprentice” creator Mark Burnett and before Schwarzenegger, who is also an exec producer of the new incarnation along with Page Feldman and Eric Van Wagenen.

Trump Tower confirmed the news in a statement to the Hollywood Reporter. “Mr. Trump has a big stake in the show and conceived of it with Mark Burnett,” spokeswoman Hope Hicks said in a statement. “Additional details regarding his business interests will be shared December 15th.”

NBC made a big deal about cutting business ties with Trump back in 2015 after he launched his campaign with an anti-immigrant rant that became his mission statement. The network brass, it would seem, feels differently about being associated with xenophobic President-elect Trump than it did about being associated with xenophobic GOP candidate Trump.

The financial terms of the deal were not announced, but Variety reports that Trump’s per-episode fee is likely to be in “the low five-figures, at minimum,” and that it will be paid by way of MGM, which produces the show, and not NBC, which airs it. That, however, is a distinction without much difference, since Trump and the network’s financial interests will nonetheless be intertwined once again. Even if Trump were to donate his royalties from this season to charity—unlikely!—he’d still stand to benefit on the backend from franchise fees. Starting this January, what’s good for the Celebrity Apprentice will be good for Trump and good for NBC.

The network, of course, has a news division. NBC News infamously deferred to the network’s entertainment division over the Access Hollywood video, allowing it to get scooped by the Washington Post. Shortly after, Apprentice co-creator Mark Burnett faced pressure to release behind-the-scenes footage from his show, but ultimately did not citing legal concerns. At the time, Burnett spoke out against what he said was the “hatred, division, and misogyny” in Trump’s campaign. Now, he’s not only teaming back up with Trump on the new season, he’s also apparently giving the president-elect advice on how to stage his inauguration parade.

In the grand scheme of things, Trump’s reality-show royalties are small potatoes. The Trump family business empire will create far larger and more troubling conflicts of interest—both at home and abroad—than a TV credit ever could. But the simple fact that Trump is unwilling to give up this relatively small thing should make it clear that he’s never been serious about leaving his business outside the White House door.

Trump’s Pick to Lead the EPA Calls Himself a “Leading Advocate Against the EPA’s Activist Agenda”

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 21:08:28 GMT

Donald Trump has reportedly decided who he wants to lead the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency next year: Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt. Ruh-roh.

Pruitt’s name had been on Trump’s (anti-)environmental shortlist for some time. But the decision didn’t need to be surprising to be depressing. Pruitt has long used his perch as Oklahoma AG to serve as a loyal friend to the oil and gas industry in his home state. His selection should extinguish any remaining hope that President Trump, who will be the only world leader who openly and outright rejects fighting climate change, will somehow be convinced by his daughter (or Al Gore) to act in response to the scientific consensus.

Just as an Obamacare critic will soon be running HHS and an anti-public school activist leading the Department of Education, the EPA is going to be run by a man who proudly proclaims himself a “leading advocate against the EPA’s activist agenda.” Pruitt has been out in front in the conservative fight against President Obama’s Clean Power Plan, though it remains an open question if he’s leading the fight, or simply following orders from his friends in the fossil fuel industry.

A New York Times investigation in 2014 discovered that Pruitt was one of a number of conservative attorneys general who had joined what the paper described as a “secretive alliance” created by several of the nation’s top energy producers to pre-emptively fight Obama’s climate agenda. Among the report’s revelations: Pruitt submitted a three-page letter to the EPA and other federal agencies in 2011 on the economic hardship caused to the oil and gas industry by federal environmental rules—but in reality that letter was authored by lawyers from Oklahoma-based Devon Energy and passed along to the AG’s office by the company’s lobbyists.

The question is just how much damage Pruitt will be able to do at the EPA, which Trump suggested during the campaign he plans to do away with entirely. As Nives Dolsak and Aseem Prakash have previously explained in Slate, Trump can’t unilaterally abolish the agency, and rescinding its rules would be an arduous process, thanks to public comment periods and other bureaucratic hurdles. Still, as the New York Times’ Coral Davenport explains, “it would be possible for a legally experienced E.P.A. chief to substantially weaken, delay or slowly dismantle them.” Pruitt sounds like just the man for the job.

Clinton’s Popular Vote Keeps Edging Closer to Obama’s in 2012. But That’s a Misguided Comparison.

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 07 Dec 2016 00:22:00 GMT

Hillary Clinton’s popular vote total continues to inch ever closer to President Obama’s haul four years ago. According to the Cook Political Report’s vote tracker, last updated on Tuesday afternoon, Clinton is now within roughly 438,000 votes of 2012 Obama, and may yet match him when all the ballots are counted. Clinton’s advantage over Donald Trump, meanwhile, stands at more than 2.6 million and counting

None of that matters in terms of who will replace Obama in the Oval Office next year, of course. Barring a miracle, the Electoral College will vote later this month to send Trump to the White House. Still, popular vote totals are not-insignificant data points for the history books, and they’re worth exploring, as conservative pundit David Frum wrote Tuesday.

That’s probably true, but the emerging storyline—that Clinton performed as well as her Democratic nominee predecessor—is not exactly right. The number of eligible voters in the country grew by an estimated 10.7 million between 2012 and 2016, according to the Pew Research Center, and there were 6.9 million more presidential votes—and counting—cast this year than four years ago. There’s no perfect way to level the playing field between 2012 and 2016, but if we remove those additional votes from the equation, Clinton would be trailing Obama’s 2012 total by roughly 3.7 million votes today. (For the sake of simplicity, I’m assuming these 6.9 million additional votes were split between Hillary and Trump according to each candidate’s overall share.)

Another way to view Clinton’s performance relative to Obama’s is in plain percentages. Thanks to the nation’s shifting demographics, the 2016 electorate was ostensibly more favorable to Democrats than the 2012 electorate was. And yet Obama won 51.1 percent of the popular vote four years ago, while Clinton is currently sitting at 48.2 percent. To match Obama’s 2012 popular-vote total, Clinton would have needed to win only 48.5 percent of the 2016 votes counted so far; to match Obama’s 2012 popular-vote share, she would need about 4 million more votes than she has.

In the end, then, comparing Clinton’s 2016 total to Obama’s 2012 total shouldn’t make her or her party feel any better, since she won a significantly smaller share of the popular vote this year than the president did four years ago. Then again, using Trump’s performance as a comparison will likely only make them feel worse, since Clinton won a significantly larger share of the popular vote this year than the president-elect.

It’s Not Just Pizzagate. Son of Trump’s National Security Adviser Believes Other Vile Things Too.

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 20:02:00 GMT

On Sunday, Edgar Maddison Welch walked into a popular pizzeria in Washington, D.C., carrying an assault rifle and opened fire, according to police. His reason? Authorities say the 28-year-old man from North Carolina claims he was there to “self-investigate” a conspiracy theory that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of the back of the neighborhood restaurant.

First thing’s first: There is absolutely no credible evidence—zero—that Clinton or anyone else is running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. The establishment’s owner, James Alefantis, is friends with a few prominent Democrats and was a Clinton supporter, but as the New York Times reported last month, “he has never met her, does not sell or abuse children, and is not being investigated by law enforcement for any of these claims.”

That, however, hasn’t stopped the fact-free “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory from gaining purchase in the more extreme corners of the internet, and Alefantis and his employees have increasingly been the subject of harassment online and off in recent weeks, culminating in Sunday’s shooting. Thankfully, no one was physically injured during that incident, but the fact it happened at all would hopefully be enough to convince people to stop spreading the spurious story. Of course that’s not the world we live in these days.

Exhibit A: Michael G. Flynn, the son of retired Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, whom President-elect Donald Trump has tapped to be his national security adviser. Flynn Jr. sent this out after the attack:

Flynn subsequently retweeted a message from a Trump supporter suggesting that he was simply urging the news media to fully debunk the story, though he quickly abandoned any such pretense when he spent part of Sunday retweeting other Pizzagate peddlers. He also shared direct messages purportedly from CNN’s Jake Tapper, who appears to have admirably taken Flynn to task.* Tapper, according to the shared screenshots, privately told Flynn “spreading this nonsense is dangerous”; Flynn responded publicly by claiming Tapper was “trolling” his family.

Junior is more than just his father’s son. He’s also served as his dad’s chief of staff, an employee at his consulting firm, and an editor of his books. This is the man who will advise the man who will advise Donald Trump on issues of national security. What he thinks—and, sadly, what he tweets—matters. It’s worth noting, then, that his foray into Pizzagate was hardly an isolated trip into the land of dangerous speculation and hate.

The younger Flynn’s social feeds are a hot bed of conspiracy theories along with homophobic and/or racially charged missives, as CNN’s Andrew Kaczynski and Nathan McDermott documented on Monday:

Flynn frequently shares unfounded conspiracy theories, like ones claiming Hillary Clinton and President Obama would be tried for treason if Trump is elected. He also posted a unfounded story claiming hackers would release a video of former President Bill Clinton raping a teenage girl. In one post, he called alt-right social commentator Mike Cernovich, who frequently shares unfounded news stories, "a source I trust."

In a Facebook post from October, Flynn shared a fake news story claiming Obama flaunted an erection to female reporters in 2008. Flynn tweeted multiple times unfounded claims about Sen. Marco Rubio's "coke house, gayish dance troupe, and foam parties." These tweets included a baseless article about Rubio being a homosexual who lived in a drug house and went to "foam parties" where "mutual masturbation is an occasional component, generally beneath the cover of foam."

None of that is grounded in anything resembling reality. But it’s stuff Flynn Jr. thinks the world, and presumably his father, should know about.

The younger Flynn often peppers his Twitter timeline and Facebook page with references and links to InfoWars, an online clearinghouse of conspiracy theories, and CNN captured screenshots of since-deleted tweets from him that were racially charged. One replied to a Vox story about whites-only dating sites with this rejoinder in January 2016: "soooo African Americans can have B.E.T. but whites can't have their own dating site? Hmmm.” The other, posted the day after the 2012 Election Day, claimed that “the only reason minorities voted for [Barack Obama] is the color of his skin and NOT for the issues.”

The elder Flynn will not need Senate confirmation to become Trump’s national security adviser. Flynn Jr., according to CNN, already has a presidential transition email address. It seems both will fit in just fine with their new boss.

*Correction, Dec. 5, 2016: An earlier version of this post misspelled Tapper's first name.

Donald Trump Is Shocked His Working-Class Supporters Believed His B.S.

Josh Voorhees — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 22:17:00 GMT

Donald Trump on Thursday took a self-styled victory lap at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis, where the president-elect relived the controversial deal he recently brokered with the manufacturer’s parent company to prevent roughly a 1,000 jobs from moving to Mexico. Notably absent from his rambling remarks were details about what, exactly, he promised and/or threatened that persuaded United Technologies to change its mind.

The reason for that, as my colleague Henry Grabar has already explained, is that what happened in Indiana represents exactly the problem, not the solution, in America’s approach to corporate negotiation. Based on what has been made public about the negotiations, it appears Trump secured millions of dollars in state tax breaks for a massive corporation that will still send more than a thousand other Indiana jobs to Mexico. The less said about the specifics the better for Trump.

He did, however, offer fresh details on Thursday about why he claims he got involved with Carrier in the first place. Assuming they are true, they were remarkably candid (emphasis mine):

I'll never forget about a week ago I was watching the nightly news—I won't say which one because I don't want to give them credit because I don't like them much. I'll be honest, I don't like them, not even a little bit. But they were doing a story on Carrier and I say, “Wow, that's something, I want to see that.” And they had a gentleman worker, great guy, handsome guy, he was on, and it was like he didn't even know they were leaving. He said something to the effect, “No, we're not leaving because Donald Trump promised us that we're not leaving.” And I never thought I made that promise; not with Carrier—I made it for everybody else. I didn't make it really for Carrier, and I said, “What's he saying?”

He was such a believer, he was such a great guy. He said, “I've been with Donald Trump from the beginning and he made the statement that Carrier's not going anywhere, they're not leaving.” And I'm saying to myself, man. And then they played my statement, and I said, “Carrier will never leave.” But that was a euphemism. I was talking about Carrier like all other companies from here on in because they made the decision a year and a half ago. But he believed that that was—and I could understand it; I actually said [it]—when they played that I said I did make it but I didn't mean it quite that way. So now because of him, whoever that guy was, is he in the room, by any chance? That's your son? Stand up, you did a good job. … Well, your son is great.

First thing’s first: The next president of the United States might not know what the word euphemism means. More importantly, though, was that Trump now says that when he specifically promised during the campaign to use the threat of stiff tariffs to bring back the Carrier jobs, he wasn’t actually promising to bring back the Carrier jobs, nor did he even intend to try.

I’d guess Trump told this particular story—the closure was a done deal; I did the impossible!—to hype up the deal even more than he already has. In reality, though, contained in his one-man play was the admission that his pre-election bluster about the plant was just further proof of a PR/propaganda strategy he’s been talking openly about since the 1980s, and that he will now take with him to the White House: “I play to people’s fantasies.”

Federal Ethics Agency Spent the Afternoon Sarcastically Praising Donald Trump

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 21:14:58 GMT

The U.S. Office of Government Ethics, as its name suggests, interprets and advises federal officials on the ethics laws and rules designed to help keep them honest. “When government decisions are made free from conflicts of interest, the public can have greater confidence in the integrity of executive branch programs and operations,” its mission statement admirably declares. Given what likely awaits the agency in less than two months’ time, it understandably had some, um, thoughts on Donald Trump’s vague, predawn Twitter announcement that he will be “leaving his great business” to focus on the presidency.

Remarkably, those exclamation-filled tweets from a normally staid Twitter account don’t appear to be the result of a hack. “Like everyone else, we were excited this morning to read the President-elect’s twitter feed indicating he wants to be free of conflicts of interest,” agency spokesman Seth Jaffe said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon. He added: “We don’t know the details of their plan, but we are willing and eager to help them with it.”

Don’t expect Trump to take OGE up on its offer. For nearly a year now he has maintained that when he is president, he will place his financial assets in a “blind trust” that will be run by his children. As I’ve explained before, however, Trump’s take on a “blind trust” is conveniently neither inherently blind nor particularly trustworthy. In a real blind trust, an independent trustee—that is, not someone’s own children—takes over a public official’s portfolio, thereby allowing the official to operate without knowledge of where or how his money is invested, so that it can’t influence his decisions. Furthermore, Trump would almost certainly need to divest himself of his interest in his company and its properties since, even in an unlikely world where he and his adult kids could refrain from talking shop, he wouldn’t be able to forget where much of his cash comes from, given that he’s slapped his last name on so many of his projects.

Trump being Trump, however, he has steadfastly refused to acknowledge that reality, and his morning announcement—which was really just an announcement that a future announcement was in the works—doesn’t actually change anything. Barring a significant reversal, the Trump family’s business interests will become intertwined with, and in many ways indistinguishable from, U.S. policy as soon as he is sworn in next January. The OGE isn’t happy about that—quite rightly.

I’ve reached out to the agency to see if it would like to elaborate on its Twitter strategy or on Trump’s announcement in general, but I haven’t yet heard back. I suppose it’s possible that someone at OGE is optimistically taking Trump at his word that he’ll do the right thing, perhaps as a way to entice him to actually do the right thing in the end. Far more likely, however, they’re using sarcasm to point out that Trump is actively refusing to promise to take the necessary steps to avoid obvious conflicts of interest between the Trump administration and the for-profit Trump Organization. Regardless of whether OGE is being willfully naive or slyly sarcastic, it’s striking that a federal agency tasked with steering the White House around ethical problems feels Twitter is the best medium to convey its important advice to the incoming president of the United States of America. Sadly, they may be out of other options.

Update, 4:31 p.m.: More from Jaffe, who sent along this statement concerning the tweets specifically:

The tweets that OGE posted today were responding only to the public statement that the President-elect made on his Twitter feed about his plans regarding conflicts of interest. OGE’s tweets were not based on any information about the President-elect’s plans beyond what was shared on his Twitter feed. OGE is non-partisan and does not endorse any individual.

N.C. Officer Who Shot, Killed Keith Scott Won’t Face Charges

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 18:11:05 GMT

The North Carolina police officer who shot and killed Keith Lamont Scott earlier this year will not face charges in connection with Scott’s death, local authorities announced Wednesday. The Charlotte Observer with the details:

[District Attorney Andrew] said that evidence in the case shows that Scott stepped out of his SUV with a gun in his hand and ignored at least 10 commands from the five officers on the scene to drop it.

Murray said that Scott obtained the gun – which had been stolen in Gaston County – 18 days before the confrontation. One bullet was found in the chamber of the gun, the safety was off and Murray said Scott’s DNA was found on the grip and ammunition slide.

Scott (who was black) was shot and killed by Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police officer Brentley Vinson (who is also black) in September, an event that sparked several days of protests in the city, some of which turned violent. The unrest was fueled in large part by an assertion from Scott’s wife that he was unarmed at the time of the shooting, a claim that was initially backed up by several since-retracted reports from people on social media claiming to have witnessed the shooting firsthand. The police’s curious decision not to immediately release video of the deadly incident added to the confusion and anger. (The bodycam and dashcam footage ultimately did not clearly show whether Scott was armed.)

On Wednesday, Murray suggested the decision not to charge Vinson turned out to be a relatively easy one. He said he showed the case to more than a dozen veteran prosecutors, and not one believed there was enough evidence to move forward. According to police, Vinson and his fellow officers were staked out in the parking lot of Scott’s apartment complex looking for a suspect in an unrelated case. The officers then claim to have seen Scott rolling a joint in his car, something they were ready to ignore until they spotted him holding a semi-automatic pistol. It was only then, authorities say, that the officers decided to confront Scott. Vinson ended up firing four shots, three of which hit Scott.

It was never likely that Vinson would face charges. Our laws, maddening as they can be, give officers broad leeway to use lethal force, either when they fear their lives are in danger or when they are making an arrest. The Supreme Court cemented the scope of that authority in 1989’s Graham v. Connor, a case involving police officers that apparently mistook a diabetic who was behaving erratically due to his low blood sugar for a belligerent drunk. In short, according to the U.S. criminal justice system, it’s not whether the officer is objectively correct when he uses force; it’s whether he subjectively believed that he was right in the moment he did.

Nonetheless, an attorney for the Scott family said Wednesday’s announcement is not the end as far as they are concerned. “We still have concerns,” Charles Monnett said after the press conference, according to CNN. “We still have real questions about what decisions were made that day.”

Nancy Pelosi Is Still the Top Democrat in the House

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 30 Nov 2016 16:51:40 GMT

Nancy Pelosi will remain minority leader in the House:

Pelosi's victory was never really in doubt. The man she defeated, Ohio Rep. Tim Ryan, is a career back-bencher—as the Washington Post notes, he “literally sits in the last bench in the chamber”—which made his late run to lead House Democrats in the next Congress largely a symbolic gesture.

As Slate’s Jim Newell has explained, Pelosi is regarded by friends and enemies alike as both a skilled legislator and shrewd politician. Her problem, however, was that those skills haven't translated into national success for her party lately. Following an election in which Democrats lost the White House and failed to regain control of either chamber of Congress, the 76-year-old Pelosi became an easy target for those who believe her party failed to offer a compelling pitch to the white working class.

Democrats have controlled the House for only four years of what has been Pelosi's 14-year-and-counting run as leader of her caucus. But while their time in the minority has left many House Democrats frustrated, it wasn’t enough to deny her another two-year term.

Slate will have more analysis and reaction from Washington in a bit.

Trump Reportedly Set to Tap Goldman Sachs Alum as Treasury Secretary

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 23:27:32 GMT

The New York Times, citing sources close to the president-elect’s transition team, reports that Donald Trump is expected to announce Steven Mnuchin as his pick to lead the Department of Treasury, possibly as soon as Wednesday:

Mr. Mnuchin, 53, was the national finance chairman for Mr. Trump’s campaign. He began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he became a partner, before creating his own hedge fund, moving to the West Coast and entering the first rank of movie financiers by bankrolling hits like the “X-Men” franchise and “Avatar.” …

Mnuchin, the son of a Goldman Sachs partner, joined the firm after graduating from Yale University. He worked there for 17 years, rising to oversee trading in government securities and mortgage bonds. After leaving Goldman in 2002, he founded Dune Capital Management, a hedge fund named after the dunes near his beach house in the Hamptons.

In the gentle words of the Times, Mnuchin’s resume “fits uneasily with much of Mr. Trump’s campaign rhetoric” about Wall Street and the financial industry, which is true much the same way Trump’s own gilded, status quo-blessed life belies his anti-establishment posturing. Mnuchin has no government experience, but would become the third Goldman alumnus to lead Treasury, joining Henry Paulson Jr., who served under President George W. Bush, and Robert Rubin, who served under President Bill Clinton.

“It's hard to see Mnuchin cracking down on Wall Street,” Jeff Hauser, the director of the Revolving Door Project, a nonprofit that scrutinizes executive-branch appointments, told Politico this summer when Mnuchin’s name was first floated for the job. “Indeed, one imagines Mnuchin's banking agenda would be to rehabilitate Trump's reputation with Wall Street.”

In his public comments, Mnuchin hasn’t gone quite as far as Trump has when it comes to preaching the gospel of anti-regulation. In July, for instance, he suggested that Dodd-Frank “needs to be looked at.” Trump, meanwhile, has promised he’d repeal the 2010 law, which among myriad other things would shutter the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, an agency that was the brainchild of Elizabeth Warren. Trump is also on record calling for an indefinite moratorium for any new financial regulations until the economy shows “significant growth,” a threshold that his team has conveniently never defined.

Slate will have more on the news shortly, but for now you can browse Mnuchin’s IMDB page, which includes executive producer credits for such movies as Suicide Squad, Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, and The Intern.

North Dakota Police Want to Deny Standing Rock Protesters Food and Shelter

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 29 Nov 2016 20:55:00 GMT

North Dakota Gov. Jack Dalrymple on Monday ordered thousands of Native American and environmental activists to leave the federal property on which they’ve been protesting construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline for months. The evacuation order came days after the federal government set a Dec. 5 deadline for the protesters to clear out, but neither state nor federal officials had said how, exactly, they planned to get everyone to comply. It appears we now have the answer: by making them too cold and hungry to stay put. Via Reuters:

North Dakota law enforcement will begin to block supplies from reaching protesters at a camp near the construction site of an oil pipeline project in an effort to force demonstrators to vacate the area, officials said on Tuesday. … Supplies, including food and building materials, will be blocked from entering the main camp…, said Maxine Herr, a spokeswoman from the Morton County Sheriff's Department. …

The building materials intended for the site are a top priority because the camp is not zoned for permanent structures, Fong said. Propane tanks also will be blocked because they have been used in attacks against law enforcement, she said.

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the site, first set the deadline they stressed that protesters—who believe the pipeline endangers local indigenous communities and their sacred lands, and more broadly threatens the environment—would not be removed by force. The supply blockade is theoretically a more peaceful way to get protesters to depart as winter approaches, but it remains an open question how authorities would respond if anyone tries to deliver supplies against government orders. While the order went into effect immediately, as of Tuesday morning no cars or trucks carrying supplies had yet been turned back, according to the North Dakota Department of Emergency Services.

If completed, the pipeline would carry 570,000 barrels of Bakken Crude oil per day from the Dakotas to Illinois. But for that to happen, it first needs to cross the Missouri River. Originally, the plan was for the pipeline to cross the river just north of Bismarck, but that route was scrapped over concerns about possible drinking water contamination. The engineers then rerouted the project beneath a lake near the Standing Rock Indian Reservation instead. As Nives Dolsak and Aseem Prakash put it in Slate earlier this month, the message the government is sending is clear: “While the risk of water contamination is not acceptable for Bismarckians, it is OK for the Sioux Indians.”

Elsewhere in Slate:

The Glaring Flaw in the Left’s Faithless-Elector Hail Mary

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 28 Nov 2016 19:24:00 GMT

More than 4.6 million and counting. That’s how many signatures are on an it’s-not-over-even-when-it’s-almost-certainly-over Change.org petition urging members of this year’s Electoral College to hand the presidency to Hillary Clinton instead of President-elect Donald Trump:

On December 19, the Electors of the Electoral College will cast their ballots. If they all vote the way their states voted, Donald Trump will win. However, in 14 of the states in Trump's column, they can vote for Hillary Clinton without any legal penalty if they choose. We are calling on the 149 Electors in those states to ignore their states' votes and cast their ballots for Secretary Clinton.

As has been well covered by now, this is indeed theoretically possible. There is nothing in the U.S. Constitution or federal law requiring electors to cast their Electoral College votes for the candidate who won their state. Instead, there is only a hodge podge of state laws—and even in most of those states, violating such laws would cost so-called faithless electors little more than a few hundred dollars in fines or get them a slap on the wrist. So, yeah, anything’s possible.

However. There is no good reason—none, zip, zero, zilch—to believe enough electors in states that went for Trump on Election Day will go rogue on Dec. 19 and cast their ballots for Clinton. Even if you set aside electoral tradition and historical precedent, two biggies, there remains a massive political problem that many people have either lost sight of or never noticed in the first place: the electors that would need to flip their allegiances from Trump to Clinton wouldn’t just be ignoring the will of the voters who selected them, they’d also be explicitly breaking with their own political party.

Here’s a short refresher on how Americans elect our presidents: In November, we go to the polls to cast ballots for our preferred candidates. Our votes, however, aren’t technically for the candidates themselves, but instead used to select a predetermined group of electors put forward by each party in each state. So, for example, when Trump won Iowa on Election Day, he didn’t actually win my state’s half-dozen electoral votes. Instead, the six people chosen as elector candidates ahead of time by state Republicans were selected to take part in next month’s Electoral College (and the six people chosen as elector candidates ahead of time by state Democrats were not).

We’re not talking about just any old Republicans, either. As I pointed out this summer, most electors are party stalwarts in their home states, meaning bucking the system will cost them friends and almost certainly their political careers. Already, those rare would-be electors who even suggested it was possible they might not vote for their party’s nominee have resigned rather than suffer the consequences of voting their consciences next month. (You can get a more complete picture of the type of people we’re talking about from this Politico Magazine piece, but for example’s sake, the sampling of people set to cast Electoral College ballots for Trump include a host of state GOP chairmen, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, and … Donald Trump Jr.) As the past year frustratingly proved, GOP opposition to Trump effectively ended as soon as the words GOP nominee started appearing before his name. If party loyalists didn’t break with Trump before he won the election, why would they do so now?

That’s not to say that there isn’t a good argument against the Electoral College simply rubber-stamping the Election Day results. Chief ethics lawyers from the George W. Bush and the Obama administrations have made the case that electors should reject Trump if he continues to refuse to make a good faith effort to prevent the myriad conflicts of interest the for-profit Trump Organization will create—and already is creating—for the U.S. government. But for that Trump-averting fantasy to come to fruition, Republican electors specifically selected by the Republican Party to cast electoral ballots for the Republican nominee will need to do something their fellow Republican voters refused to do on Election Day: hold Trump accountable for his actions. It’s not happening, guys.

All That Stand Between Trump and Major Ethics Lapses Are Political Norms. Oh God.

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 18 Nov 2016 21:56:00 GMT

Donald Trump is still two months away from being sworn in, but already his incoming administration faces ethical concerns largely unparalleled in White House history. The Trump Organization will create a cluster of conflicts of interest for the Trump administration, both at home, where the for-profit company does business with the U.S. government, and abroad, where it does the same with foreign ones. The president-elect’s promise to avoid such ethical morasses by creating a “blind trust” run by his adult children does nothing to allay those concerns given it would be neither inherently blind nor particularly trustworthy.

While the unavoidable interplay between the company that bears Trump’s name and the country that he will soon lead has been the most obvious area of concern, it is hardly the only one. Trump is reportedly considering giving his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a job at the White House, a personnel decision that risks running afoul of anti-nepotism laws crafted to limit the influence family members have on the running of the U.S. government. Further “complicating” things: Jared is married to Ivanka, one of the Trump children expected to run the “blind trust” (who nonetheless sat in on her father’s official meeting with Japan’s prime minister on Thursday). There are also concerns about potential conflicts of interest created by those who helped get Trump elected—from Rudy Giuliani (business dealings in the Middle East) to Chris Christie (still shadowed by Bridgegate) to Paul Manafort (friend to foreign tyrants). And more broadly, there are serious fears about Trump’s desire to avoid public transparency by hampering the press from doing its constitutionally protected job.

The good news is that there is one person who is uniquely positioned to clean up this mess before the Trump family’s business interests become intertwined with, and in many ways indistinguishable from, U.S. policy. The bad news, however, is that in our system of government that person is Donald J. Trump.

There is no law that requires a president to divest himself of his financial interests before taking office. In modern times, presidents have simply done so to avoid conflicts of interest before they happen. (While most recent presidents have gone the actual blind-trust route, Obama was a notable exception: He placed the majority of his assets in run-of-the-mill index funds and Treasury notes, which he disclosed publicly and which had the added benefit of aligning his financial fortunes more directly with those of the nation.) Good government watchdog groups and ethics experts, then, can cry foul over Trump’s nonsensical interpretation of a “blind trust,” but they can’t actually stop him from implementing it. Likewise, the Constitution gives the president broad authority as chief executive to choose his own advisers, and Trump’s Mike Pence–led transition team believes it has already found a loophole that will allow Kushner to work at the White House.

Kushner’s case is particularly illustrative. In 1967, Congress passed a law barring public officials from hiring family members—including in-laws—to an agency or office they oversee. That move was in response to President John F. Kennedy’s selection of his brother, Robert F. Kennedy, as his attorney general earlier that decade. Theoretically, then, Trump can’t give Kushner a job in his White House. Theory and practice, however, often diverge when it comes to Trump. His team believes it can skirt the familial ban by having Kushner serve as an unpaid adviser, a position that would give the wealthy 35-year-old the responsibilities and access of a presidential adviser, just without the government paycheck. It’s unclear if such an arrangement would hold up in court, but it appears likely that Trump is willing to find out.

As the New York Times points out, Trump also has a second possible line of defense when it comes to Kushner: Hillary Clinton’s health care task force during her husband’s first term in office. In a 1993 case concerning the potential release of records of that panel’s internal workings, a U.S. district appeals court in D.C. ruled that Clinton was acting as a full-time government employee in her capacity as task force leader. While the court noted that, as first lady, Clinton had a unique role in her husband’s administration, it nonetheless created the legal possibility that the anti-nepotism rules don’t apply to the White House. Ironically, then, Trump’s best defense may be to cite the similarities between his situation and those of a political couple that he’s spent the past year accusing of widespread corruption.

Assuming Trump follows through with plans to place family members in top positions both in the Trump administration and the Trump Organization, he could find himself embroiled in legal battles down the road. The most likely would center on the so-called emoluments clause of the Constitution, which bars federal officials from accepting gifts or payments from foreign governments and which Trump would risk violating if the Trump Organization benefits financially from its dealing with businesses aligned with foreign governments.

Those legal challenges, however, would come after the fact, not before. Our form of government gives the sitting president broad leeway to act first and face the consequences later, if at all. Many of the ethics laws and conflict-of-interest statutes that apply to other executive branch employees and cabinet members do not apply to the president, but for those that still do—like ones against bribery and receiving benefits from foreign countries—enforcement would fall either to Congress, which is now controlled by Republicans currently celebrating Trump’s electoral victory, or to the Justice Department, which reports to the president and will probably be run by this guy. If either were to ultimately find evidence that Trump violated the law, he could face impeachment and possibly even criminal charges. But that would punish Trump for his actions, not prevent him from taking them in the first place. You’d think the threat of criminal charges would be enough to stop even a morally misguided president from breaking the law, but we’re not talking about just any morally misguided president here.

Unless the courts or Congress step in, the only things that can actually force Trump to act ethically in setting up his administration are political norms—and it’s no secret how he feels about those. He was the first presidential nominee from either party in four decades not to release his tax returns. (His given reason—that he was being audited—made no sense; his real one—that he was afraid of the political fallout—made much more.) And then there were all those other political customs and social mores that he routinely ignored during the campaign, from flaunting his wealth to attacking the family of a fallen U.S. soldier to creating a media black list to egging on his violent supporters.

Ultimately, Trump’s ethics problem is a political one for the time being—and we know how Trump deals with political problems: He ignores them. It’s possible that he will ultimately end up paying a price for his actions, but it should hardly be a surprise that Trump appears undeterred by that possibility. He has no reason to believe voters will hold him accountable for his actions. After all, they didn’t on Election Day.

Trump’s Transition Operation Is Just As Chaotic As His Campaign. Uh-Oh.

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 22:46:00 GMT

Donald Trump’s transition team remains stuck in transition. Here’s the latest example of the trouble the president-elect is having, via the New York Times:

President-elect Donald J. Trump’s transition operation plunged into disarray on Tuesday with the abrupt departure of Mike Rogers, who had handled national security matters, the second shake-up in less than a week on a team that has not yet begun to execute the daunting task of taking over the government. …

In another sign of disarray, a transition official said on Tuesday that Mr. Trump had removed a second senior defense and foreign policy official from his transition team, Matthew Freedman, who runs a Washington consulting firm that advises foreign governments and companies seeking to do business with the United States government.

Those departures came only days after Chris Christie was unexpectedly and unceremoniously demoted from atop the transition team and replaced by Vice President–elect Mike Pence. Rogers’ name had originally been floated for a high-level position within the Trump administration, but that ship appears to have sailed directly into a Jared Kushner–shaped iceberg. NBC News reports that Rogers was forced out as part of what one of its unnamed sources described as a “Stalinesque purge” of Christie allies from the transition team. If that’s true, Rogers’ and Freedman’s departures likely won’t be the last.

The transition-team turmoil would be concerning if the president-elect had past government experience to fall back on. Trump, of course, does not. More troubling still is the evidence that suggests he never spent much time prepping for what will be his first government job. Trump reportedly ignored his D.C.-area policy shop during the campaign to such a degree—up to and including failing to actually pay them for their service—that many of the experts who were ostensibly helping to plot out what a Trump administration would look like in practice quit en masse this summer. Concerns about Trump’s unpreparedness only grew louder this week when the Wall Street Journal reported that, during his meeting with President Obama after the election, Trump was surprised to learn just how big of a job being president actually will be.

On one level, Trump Team in Disarray is hardly a surprising headline after the tumult we’ve witnessed during the past year. Internal unrest and infighting were hallmarks of Trump’s campaign, regardless of whether it was being led by Corey Lewandowski, Paul Manafort, or Steve Bannon. In the end, of course, those internal problems didn’t stop Trump from winning the election. But the campaign is now over, and running for president is not the same thing as being president. Donald Trump seems to be learning that only now—with less than 70 days until he is sworn in.

Report: Donald Trump Wants His Adult Children to Have Top-Secret Clearance

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 15 Nov 2016 00:26:37 GMT

So much for that promised firewall between the for-profit Trump Organization and the coming Trump administration. Via CBS News:

President-elect Donald Trump is potentially seeking top secret security clearances for his children, sources tell CBS News.

The Trump team has asked the White House to explore the possibility of getting his children the top secret security clearances. Logistically, the children would need to be designated by the current White House as national security advisers to their father to receive top secret clearances. However, once Mr. Trump becomes president, he would be able to put in the request himself.

The necessary caveats: The CBS News report is based on unnamed “sources,” and the report says only that Trump is “potentially” seeking the clearances. Still, such a move would line up well with what we already know about Trump and his adult children, which is that they have represented the only constants in his inner circle during his brief career into politics.

Trump named Donald Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, as well as his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to his presidential transition team last week. That move further raised concerns about how Trump's global business empire will become a sprawling mess of conflicts of interest and ethical morasses for himself and, by extension, the United States once he's sworn in.

Trump maintained during the campaign that, if elected, he would place his financial assets in a “blind trust” that would be run by his children. As I’ve explained before, however, that’s not how a blind trust actually works. In a real blind trust, an independent trustee—that is, not someone’s own children—takes over a public official’s portfolio, thereby allowing the official to operate without knowledge of where or how his money is invested in order to avoid it influencing his decisions. Trump's already empty promise, then, will only become even emptier if he secures top-secret clearance for the same people who will be running his business empire once he takes office.

Where VoteCastr Went Wrong

Julia Turner — Fri, 11 Nov 2016 20:36:23 GMT

On Tuesday, Slate—in partnership with the data startup VoteCastr—published running estimates of which candidate was leading and by how much in seven battleground states. The real-time Election Day experiment did not go smoothly.

Technological problems prevented VoteCastr from providing us with those estimates for much of the morning, which made it impossible for Slate to present that information to readers as we had promised. Although we launched the day at 10:30 a.m. with VoteCastr’s estimates of the early vote split, it wasn’t until early afternoon that the turnout data started flowing in from polling places and our vote-tracking visualizations were updating correctly. Even then, there was enough lag time in the process that the information we displayed was updating more slowly than we would have liked—roughly every 30 minutes rather than minute by minute.

We knew presenting a stream of Election Day data would pose technical challenges. Nevertheless, we hoped our partnership with VoteCastr would provide Slate readers with insight into what was happening on the ground and how campaigns assessed turnout in real time. How did VoteCastr do on that front? Not great.

The most obvious way to assess VoteCastr’s performance is to judge its estimates against the actual election results. As you’ll see in the tables below, in most cases those estimates did not match reality when the polls closed. A direct comparison between the last VoteCastr estimates published on Slate and real-world vote totals isn’t entirely fair, however. The numbers presented on Slate portrayed VoteCastr’s assessment of the current state of the race at any given moment on Election Day, not a projection for the final outcome in each state. VoteCastr collected its final batch of field reports in the East Coast states it was tracking at 5 p.m. EST, two hours before polls started closing there, and pushed its final batch of data to us at 6:45 p.m. EST. Why stop in the early evening? VoteCastr says it opted to deploy more field workers for fewer hours rather than use fewer field workers for more hours. Given that one of the project’s goals was to show the public how a campaign boiler room operates, that makes some sense—campaigns are far less interested in the data that comes in toward the end of the day, because there isn’t much they can do with it in those last few hours. What campaigns do is gather robust data early in the day and use it to project both the current state of play and to make projections for the eventual result. Still, VoteCastr’s decision to pull its trackers is difficult to square with its promise of providing civilians with a “play-by-play” look at Election Day.

Voting in those final hours accounts for some of the gap between VoteCastr’s estimates on Slate and the real-life results. In presenting VoteCastr’s data on Slate, we made the editorial decision to show which candidate held the estimated lead in each state at a particular moment in time, not to project who would win once all votes had been cast. But VoteCastr also made end-of-day projections, which it provided to its other media partner, Vice. That set of numbers, like the ones we presented on Slate, also missed the mark in most of the states VoteCastr was tracking.

In the following table, you’ll see the last current vote split estimates that VoteCastr gave to Slate on Tuesday evening:

In this next table, we’ve compiled the final estimated projections that VoteCastr says it presented to Vice on Tuesday evening. These end-of-day numbers represent how VoteCastr believed the vote split would shake out if the trends it had observed up until that point continued until polls closed.

(VoteCastr also analyzed the vote in Colorado, where Hillary Clinton won by 2.9 percentage points and where VoteCastr estimated Clinton had a 2.7-point lead after counting a portion of ballots cast early. But since the majority of votes are cast by mail in the state, VoteCastr did not track real-time turnout there, so Slate did not include those estimates in our interactive.)

The leader in VoteCastr’s end-of-day projections went on to win in five of the seven states it was tracking on Election Day. Five of seven has a nice ring, but it’s difficult to see these results as a success. In only two of those battleground states were VoteCastr’s projected splits within 3 points of the final results. In three, by contrast, its projections were off by 8 points or more. The main takeaway from the numbers above, then, is that in more than half of the states VoteCastr was watching, what it believed it was seeing at 5 p.m. had little in common with how those races looked when they reached the finish line.

In Wisconsin, VoteCastr saw a comfortable 8-point lead for Clinton. In reality, Donald Trump pulled out a 1-point squeaker there. In Ohio and Iowa, VoteCastr saw dead heats. When the final votes had been counted, Trump had won those states by roughly 9 and 10 points, respectively. And in Florida, VoteCastr saw Clinton up by nearly 4 points, a larger margin than Barack Obama won the state with in both 2008 and 2012. In the end, Trump beat Clinton by a little more than 1 point. Meanwhile, even one of VoteCastr’s apparent successes came with an embarrassing footnote. Of all of its end-of-day estimates, VoteCastr was closest to the final results in Nevada. The company’s model for the state, though, had included Jill Stein despite the fact the Green Party nominee did not appear on the ballot there.

What went wrong? We’ve spoken with several members of the VoteCastr team during the past few days. While none were ready to draw any firm conclusions, they suggested they’d likely been felled by the same Clinton-favoring pre-election polls that caused so many of their fellow number-crunchers (as well as most journalists) to underestimate Trump’s chances. The VoteCastr model involved multiple moving parts, including tracking turnout in select precincts on the ground, then extrapolating those numbers to estimate turnout in areas they were not observing. But Ken Strasma, who served as the microtargeting chief for the 2008 Obama campaign, told us the morning after the election that although there might have been other contributing factors, he believed the difference between his team’s estimates and the actual results “could be entirely due to the polls overestimating Clinton’s support.”

That’s a simple answer to a complicated question, but it strikes us as generally credible. While VoteCastr carried out its own proprietary, large-sample polls, the team told us prior to the election that its numbers were generally tracking with public surveys. The VoteCastr team was up front about the fact that its estimates would only be as good as the models that made them, which would only be as good as the polling data they used. This isn’t Wednesday-morning quarterbacking: When we spoke to the team before Election Day, it said inaccurate polling was one of its biggest concerns.

If respondents weren’t being honest with the pollsters about who they were going to vote for—or if there were a late shift that occurred after the pollsters left the field—any poll-based projections would be doomed. In that regard, at least, VoteCastr has plenty of company. The New York Times’ Upshot, Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight, and every other major poll-based prognosticator saw Clinton as the clear favorite heading into Election Day, and at least one went as far as to suggest a Clinton victory was nearly inevitable—a far more concrete prediction than VoteCastr ever made on Election Day. “It’s not going to be VoteCastr that’s going to explain why everyone’s polling was off,” CEO Ken Smukler told us Thursday morning. “There are huge polling firms with egg on their face today.”

Complicating things, however, is that the accuracy of VoteCastr’s end-of-day projections didn’t all vary from pre-election polling in the same way. In Pennsylvania, VoteCastr’s projection (which saw Trump winning by 2.6 points) was closer to the final returns (Trump by 1.2 points) than an average of pre-election polling in that state (Clinton up 3.7 points). But VoteCastr’s projections were further from reality than the polls were in four of the other states it tracked (Ohio, Wisconsin, Iowa, and Florida), while it missed by roughly the same margin as the polls in the remaining two (Nevada and New Hampshire). It’s possible that the polling problems weren’t spread out uniformly across the nation. Poll respondents, for instance, could have been more honest in some states than others. Right now, all such theories are unproven. Regardless, it’s clear that there’s no specific, one-size-fits-all polling answer to explain the discrepancies between what VoteCastr thought it was seeing and what ultimately happened.

There are other potential reasons for error. VoteCastr’s project was premised on the idea that microtargeting and Election Day tracking could solve one of the biggest challenges faced by pollsters: figuring out how many people would actually show up to vote. By counting turnout at a preselected sampling of precincts on Election Day, VoteCastr believed it could make informed guesses about who was turning out in the rest of that state. That method might have failed to produce reliable results for any number of reasons, from problems with how the field workers collected the data, to a failure by the model to accurately predict which specific voters were the ones turning out. One potential reason for the latter: VoteCastr did not attempt to account for the reality that campaigns and their respective parties prioritize get-out-the-vote operations differently in different places in different elections.

Right now, there are many possible explanations for what happened on Tuesday, but the case remains unsolved. “Thirty-six hours doesn’t provide the right vantage point to assess this stuff,” Sasha Issenberg, the onetime Slate columnist and campaign data expert who helped found VoteCastr, told us on Thursday. He said the company remains committed to performing an empirically sound postmortem to figure out what happened but that it won’t be complete until states update their voter files, a process that can take months.

From the start, we’ve considered the VoteCastr project to be an experiment. It was based on two ideas: First, that there’s no sound reason to keep real-time information from voters on Election Day. Second, that the methodology used by campaigns could prove more valuable and accurate than exit polling in anticipating election results. In the end, VoteCastr wasn’t able to nail the election outcome. But the larger journalistic theory here—that voters who spend elections tracking public opinion polls and assessing analyses of early vote numbers can handle information about their fellow voters’ preferences on Election Day itself—remains intriguing. VoteCastr didn’t work perfectly this time. We still believe it was an experiment worth trying, and we remain open to presenting data to our readers on Election Days to come.

VoteCastr’s Final Vote Estimates in All the States We’re Tracking

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 09 Nov 2016 00:55:00 GMT

VoteCastr’s trackers have now submitted their final reports from the field in all seven states they were tracking today, so the numbers you see in our interactive shouldn’t change for the rest of the evening. For posterity, then, here are VoteCastr's final estimated vote totals in all seven states. We’ll be comparing these numbers to the official returns once they come in, at which point we’ll be able to draw some conclusions about this grand Election Day experiment.

***

See more of Slate's election coverage.

Despite Clinton’s Big Lead in Philadelphia, the Race in Pennsylvania Remains Close

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 23:38:44 GMT

VoteCastr’s models currently show a tight race in Pennsylvania, with Hillary Clinton leading Donald Trump by roughly 125,000 votes as of 6:25 p.m. EST. That’s good for less than a three-point lead for Clinton, 47.7 percent to 45.1 percent, in a state Barack Obama won by more than five points over Mitt Romney four years ago.

One reason Clinton’s advantage in the state hasn’t matched Obama’s (at least yet anyway) is that she’s not running up the score in Philadelphia nearly as much as Obama did in 2012. The VoteCastr models estimate she is netting roughly 330,000 votes in Philadelphia County, home to the city of the same name, which is the fifth largest in the nation and the largest in any swing state. By comparison, Obama beat Romney by nearly a half-million votes in Philadelphia County four years ago.

The Clinton campaign made Philadelphia a priority in the final days of the campaign. Clinton was joined by her husband, Bill, as well as President Obama and Michelle Obama for a Monday night rally there featuring Bruce Springsteen. She also caught a break when a local transit strike was settled earlier that same day, removing the risk that many of the city’s poorer voters wouldn’t be able to make it to the polls.

Still, while Clinton doesn’t seem to be matching Obama’s performance in Philadelphia, her advantage there is at least offsetting Trump’s in other, more rural parts of the country. The GOP nominee’s combined advantage in all 10 of his best counties is netting him less than an estimated 200,000 total votes over Clinton.

See more of Slate's election coverage.

Hillary Clinton Has to Like Where She Stands in Florida

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 21:27:00 GMT

After a few unexpected hiccups earlier today, our VoteCastr visualizations—which combine both early vote totals and live turnout data—are now up and running. So now’s a good time to take a look at where things stand in perhaps the most important state on the map this year: Florida.

The Sunshine State is essentially a must-win for Donald Trump. If Hillary Clinton were to win the 19 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have voted for the Democratic nominee in each of the past six presidential elections, she could clinch the presidency simply by claiming Florida’s 29 electoral votes. Right now, things are looking pretty good on that front. (Numbers current as of 4:12 p.m. EST.)

Again: VoteCastr is not saying Clinton will win Florida, only that she appears to be leading at this moment based on early voting and today’s estimated turnout, which has already exceeded the state’s 2012 vote total. It’s entirely possible that Trump could make up ground later in the day, particularly given that Florida’s traditionally conservative panhandle is in the Central time zone, and is therefore an hour behind the rest of the state. Still, Clinton’s camp is likely celebrating the fact that her estimated Florida vote total has already topped Obama’s total from 2012, when he beat Mitt Romney there by less than a percentage point.

One reason the Clinton campaign is likely optimistic about her chances in Florida is the strong showing of Hispanic voters in the state, which was evident during early voting. As the New York Times points out, Florida voters who indicated they were Hispanic on their voter registration forms cast as many early ballots this year as they cast total ballots in 2012, when they accounted for 12 percent of the Florida electorate. That enthusiasm seems to have continued on Election Day.

According to VoteCastr, Clinton currently holds a lead of 600,000-plus estimated votes in the five Florida counties that are predominantly nonwhite.

That advantage more than offsets Trump’s current advantage in predominantly white counties:

See more of Slate's election coverage.

Why VoteCastr’s Early Vote Numbers Look Different Than the Ones on Other Sites

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 19:19:00 GMT

As some astute readers have noticed, VoteCastr's estimated early vote totals do not add up to the totals released publicly by a number of states. In Nevada, the secretary of state has reported that 770,149 total ballots were cast early while VoteCastr has tracked only 593,893. In Colorado, the secretary of state had counted 1,852,029 votes as of Monday while VoteCastr has tracked 1,656,947. And in Florida, the secretary of state has reported a total of 6,511,712 early and mail-in ballots compared with 3,680,611 for VoteCastr.

What accounts for the difference? VoteCastr is able to apply its microtargeting model when it knows the identities of early voters. (I explained the ins and outs of that model here.) Because of the way early votes are reported—essentially, it’s a piecemeal process that happens at the county level—VoteCastr does not have specific voter identity information for every single early ballot. As a consequence, VoteCastr’s top-line numbers are going to be smaller than the ones you might find elsewhere. But, VoteCastr argues, its data are more robust.

The VoteCastr team believes using voter preference estimates allows it to make more specific forecasts about the early voting split. Most modelers sort returned ballots by party affiliation in those states where that information is available. There are several problems with sorting by party, the most obvious of which is that those models ignore the sizeable swath of voters who are unaffiliated with one of the major parties. Meanwhile, those slightly more advanced models that divvy up independent voters among candidates using broad demographic information—such as county or race—are making guesses based on far less information than VoteCastr has. Their advantage over the VoteCastr model, however, is that they have a larger sample to work with. VoteCastr believes a closer reading of a slightly smaller sample set is better than a broader reading of a larger one.

What about Jon Ralston, the longtime Nevada journalist, who effectively called his home state for Clinton last week after getting a look at partial early voting numbers? Ralston has more intimate knowledge of Nevada than pretty much any journalist working today, and his predictions very well may come true. One major difference between Ralston’s approach and VoteCastr’s is that he is making an explicit prediction about what will happen, while VoteCastr is focused on the present: not who will win, but who is leading now. As of 2:10 p.m. EST, VoteCastr has Hillary Clinton leading by 10,000 votes.

VoteCastr works with a third-party vendor to collect early voting data, which means there’s some lag time before specific voter identities make it into their system. As a result, VoteCastr has decided to stop tracking any additional early votes today and will instead focus its resources on tracking real-time turnout at polling stations.

One additional wrinkle in Nevada: VoteCastr made a mistake in its pre–Election Day polling by listing Jill Stein as an option, even though the Green Party candidate is not on the state ballot. The VoteCastr team believes Stein is unlikely to draw enough support to significantly affect their estimates, but the jury is still out on that. Consider that a specific example of how this is a real-time experiment, one that remains untested on this scale.

See more Slate coverage of the election.

Why Our VoteCastr Data Has Been Slow to Come in Today

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 19:00:02 GMT

Earlier today, we went live with VoteCastr’s early vote numbers from a set of seven battleground states. You can check out our analysis of the data from Colorado and look at the early-vote numbers from Florida, Iowa, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. VoteCastr is combining those early-vote tallies with turnout-based estimates of votes being cast on Election Day to assess which candidate is leading in each of these states at any particular moment. You can now see those figures update on Slate in real time as they come in.

We had originally planned on bringing you those real-time estimates early this morning. There have been two issues, however, in getting this experiment off the ground. The first is that while VoteCastr’s trackers have been (and continue to be) out in the field today, VoteCastr’s data team ran into technical difficulties that prevented us from presenting that data on Slate. The second is that our data visualizations were designed to show a combination of early-vote and live turnout data. The unexpected delay before we started receiving that live turnout data meant our visualizations showed only early vote totals, which remained largely static this morning. Now that real-time turnout data has started pouring in, our visualizations should continue to update in real time.

See more of Slate's election coverage.

What Do Campaigns Do With All Their Fancy Data on Election Day?

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 16:13:00 GMT

Slate is publishing real-time estimates of which candidate is leading at any given moment in seven battleground states, any of which could decide who is the next president of the United States. You can read more about why we’re doing that, and how we’re doing it. One of the main reasons is that the campaigns make their own such projections, and we don’t believe there’s any good reason they should have a monopoly on that kind of thing. The obvious question, then, is: What do the campaigns actually do with this information on Election Day?

The short answer is: not a lot. There aren’t many decisions a campaign can make during the final hours that will significantly affect the outcome of the race. As Sasha Issenberg explained in Slate this summer, campaigns can tinker at the margins on Election Day. They might react to early turnout numbers by redirecting get-out-the-vote phone calls or text messages, or choosing different media markets for TV or radio appearances. They can’t, however, make wide-scale changes to their game plans. It’s far too late to place a television buy, to launch a direct-mail program, or to recruit a new crop of volunteers.

Still, campaigns don’t go through the trouble of building models just so they can get a head start on writing their Election Day talking points (though that is certainly one of the perks). For campaigns, Election Day is less about the big decisions made at national headquarters than the smaller ones made in field offices around the country.

Those offices have the flexibility to tweak their get-out-the-vote operations if they see turnout is lagging in a specific area. They could potentially send volunteer canvassers to knock on doors in neighborhoods that seem to be underperforming, or send extra cars or buses to help people get to the polls. Later in the day, once the polls are almost closed, the campaigns can dispatch their comfort teams to polling locations with long lines, fortifying their supporters with water and pizzas in an effort to get them to stick around until they cast their ballots. Likewise, they will respond to reports of long lines by sending lawyers to do what they can to ensure the polls state open late enough for everyone to have their say.

Ultimately, though, if there were something a campaign could do to reverse lackluster turnout, they’d have done it to prevent that weak turnout from happening in the first place. After all, there is no day after Election Day for a campaign, and no reason to keep their powder dry.

See more of Slate’s election coverage.

VoteCastr Early Vote Estimate: Colorado Looking Very, Very Tight

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 15:43:00 GMT

This post has been updated with new data since it was originally published.

Slate’s VoteCastr project—which will provide real-time estimates of turnout in seven swing states on Election Day—will launch in earnest later this morning. But with early voting now over, VoteCastr has enough info to make its first estimates of where things stand in Colorado, a state where the vast majority of ballots are cast by mail (and where VoteCastr won’t have poll trackers in the field).

Based on the 1.66 million early votes VoteCastr has run through its model, Clinton leads Trump by 2.7 points, 46.3 percent to 43.6 percent. VoteCastr expects a total of 2.815 million total votes will be cast in the state by the end of the day, meaning the early votes we have so far represent 58.8 percent of the total expected vote. I want to be clear: VoteCastr isn’t predicting that Hillary Clinton will win Colorado, only that she currently has a higher projected share of known ballots cast than Donald Trump.

I’ve already explained in detail how VoteCastr makes its projections, but here is the background on how it treats early vote totals. Local officials collect and report information about who voted early in each state, and VoteCastr then compares that public info with its own private early voter files. To understand how this works in practice, consider my early ballot, which I cast in Iowa City last month. Though VoteCastr didn’t know who I voted for, it can make an educated guess by combining its extensive pre–Election Day polling with microtargeting models that take into consideration those things it does know about me: my age, race, and party registration. VoteCastr tells me the model believes there’s a 97 percent chance I voted for Clinton. (For what it’s worth, they were right.) When my name showed up on the list of people who voted early in the Hawkeye State, VoteCastr used that number to fill in the blank.

These voter preference estimates allow VoteCastr to make more specific forecasts about the early voting split than most other modelers, which simply sort returned ballots by party affiliation in those states where that information is available. According to the early voting information released Monday morning in Colorado, for instance, 652,380 registered Republicans had returned ballots compared to 645,020 registered Democrats who did the same—which, as the Denver Post noted, equated to a 7,360-vote Republican advantage. Those numbers, however, are ignoring a sizeable piece of the electoral puzzle: unaffiliated voters or those registered with a third party, which accounted for roughly 30 percent of returned ballots. That’s nearly a third of ballots—easily enough to swing the state—whose votes are ignored when you sort only by party.

The VoteCastr model, meanwhile, makes predictions for each and every ballot, regardless of party affiliation or lack thereof, and therefore can be far more accurate.

See more of Slate’s election coverage.

VoteCastr Early Vote Estimate: Clinton Leads in Florida

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 08 Nov 2016 15:19:01 GMT

We launched our collaboration with VoteCastr this morning with a look at the early vote out of Colorado, where Hillary Clinton is leading Donald Trump 46.3 percent to 43.6 percent based on VoteCastr's analysis of known ballots cast. We're now going to take a look at the early vote from six additional battleground states.

Before I get to the numbers, I want to be clear: VoteCastr isn’t predicting that Clinton or Trump will win any of these states. There are still plenty of votes left to be counted today. After I lay out how the early-vote numbers are looking, I’ll describe in detail how the VoteCastr methodology works, so you can evaluate these tallies for yourself. Also, keep in mind that these are not the absolute final early-vote numbers; the counts may change as the day progresses as VoteCastr processes more early-vote data. Check back on this page throughout the day for updated early-vote numbers.

Without further ado, here are VoteCastr’s early-vote estimates. Clinton is leading in five of the six states for which we have data, including Florida. Trump is ahead in Pennsylvania, though early votes in that state are extremely scarce.

Florida
2016 Early Vote: 3,685,667 early votes, 41.8 percent of total votes cast in 2012
Clinton: 1,780,573 early votes, 42.0 percent of Obama’s 2012 total vote total
Trump: 1,678,848 early votes, 40.3 percent of Romney’s 2012 total vote total
2012 Results: Obama won, 50.0 percent to 49.1 percent

Iowa
2016 Early Vote: 563,444 early votes, 35.6 percent of total votes cast in 2012
Clinton: 273,188 early votes, 33.2 percent of Obama’s 2012 total vote total
Trump: 244,739 early votes, 33.5 percent of Romney’s 2012 total vote total
2012: Obama won, 52.1 percent to 46.5 percent

Nevada
2016 Early Vote: 593,964 early votes, 58.5 percent of total votes cast in 2012
Clinton: 276,461 early votes, 52.0 percent of Obama’s 2012 total vote total
Trump: 269,255 early votes, 58.1 percent of Romney’s 2012 total vote total
2012: Obama won, 52.3 percent to 45.7 percent

Ohio
2016 Early Vote: 1,320,559 early votes, 23.7 percent of total votes cast in 2012
Clinton: 632,433 early votes, 22.4 percent of Obama’s 2012 total vote total
Trump: 579,916 early votes, 21.8 percent of Romney’s 2012 total vote total
2012: Obama won, 50.1 percent to 48.2 percent

Pennsylvania
2016 Early Vote: 199,167 early votes, 3.5 percent of total votes cast in 2012
Clinton 85,367 early votes, 2.8 percent of Obama’s 2012 total vote total
Trump: 99,286 early votes, 3.7 percent of Romney’s 2012 total vote total
2012: Obama won, 52.0 percent to 46.8 percent

Wisconsin
2016 Early Vote: 560,455 early votes, 18.3 percent of total votes cast in 2012
Clinton 295,302 early votes, 18.2 percent of Obama’s 2012 total vote total
Trump: 225,281 early votes, 16.0 percent of Romney’s 2012 total vote total
2012 Obama won, 52.8 percent to 46.1 percent

I’ve already explained in detail how VoteCastr makes its estimates, but here is the relevant portion about the how it treats the early vote totals: Local officials collect and report information about who voted early in each state, and VoteCastr then compares that public info with its own private early voter files. (As of this moment, VoteCastr has not yet made estimates for every early voter; they are still processing a large number of early votes in Florida, for instance.) To understand how this works in practice, consider my early ballot, which I cast in Iowa City last month. Though VoteCastr didn’t know who I voted for, it can make an educated guess by combining its extensive pre-Election Day polling with microtargeting models that take into consideration those things it does know about me: my age, race, and party registration. VoteCastr tells me the model believes there’s a 97 percent chance I voted for Clinton. (For what it’s worth, they were right.) When my name showed up on the list of people who voted early in the Hawkeye State, VoteCastr used that number to fill in the blank.

Using voter preference estimates allows VoteCastr to make more specific forecasts about the early voting split than most other modelers, which simply sort returned ballots by party affiliation in those states where that information is available. As Seth Masket, a political science professor at the University of Denver, has noted over on FiveThirtyEight, using party registration isn’t totally worthless, but it’s not the best proxy for electoral victory. Masket looked at the 12 states that both had early voting and reported the party registration of early voters in 2012, and found that early vote totals were positively but only loosely correlated with final election results. To put it more plainly, “knowing how a party is doing in early voting doesn’t tell you much about how it will do once all the votes are counted.” One obvious reason for that is that focusing only on party registration ignores a significant piece of the early vote puzzle: independents and those affiliated with third-parties, which in some states represent roughly a third of the electorate. Once VoteCastr has counted all the early votes, we’d expect their estimates to be far more accurate than those based exclusively on party registration.

It’s crucial to remember these estimates are in the present tense. Even if we were to assume the VoteCastr models are perfect (and we shouldn’t) they can’t tell us who will win a particular state, only who is winning that state at a specific moment in time—in this case, the night before Election Day. There are too many unknowns for us to say with confidence that what we think is happening in the present will continue to happen in the future. That goes double for early voters, since they’re unlikely to be a representative sample of the electorate.

Furthermore, estimates are only as good as the models that make them, which are only as good as the polling data they use. If there’s some sort of shy-voter effect, or respondents are being in any other way dishonest with the pollsters (or themselves) about who they are going to vote for, the above estimates could easily miss the mark. Likewise, if there was a late swing in the race, the VoteCastr polling could have missed it. As with all polling, some uncertainty is unavoidable.

See more of Slate’s election coverage.

Welcome to an Unprecedented Election Day Experiment

Josh Voorhees — Sat, 05 Nov 2016 10:00:00 GMT

Be sure to visit slate.com/votecastr for all VoteCastr estimates and analysis.

This Election Day will be different—regardless of how it ends. This time, for the first time, you won’t have to wait until the polls close to find out what happened while they were open. In partnership with the data startup VoteCastr, Slate will be publishing real-time projections of which candidate is winning at any given moment of the day in seven battleground states, any of which could decide who is the next president of the United States.

This, as you may have heard, is controversial. It will break a decadeslong journalistic tradition whereby media outlets obey a self-imposed embargo on voting information under the unproven theory that it might depress turnout on Election Day. But as our Editor-in-Chief Julia Turner put it this summer when she announced the VoteCastr partnership: “The role of journalists is to bring information to people, not to protect them from it.” For the first time, you’ll have access to the same kind of data that campaigns use to monitor voting activity and frame their thinking throughout Election Day. We teamed up with VoteCastr because we don’t think there’s any good reason the candidates and their teams should have a monopoly on that kind of information.

Why do we trust the VoteCastr team? Its staff is stocked with leading data experts from both sides of the aisle. Those staffers include Blaise Hazelwood, who served as the political director for the Republican National Committee and managed Election Day reporting for George W. Bush in 2004, and Ken Strasma, the chief of microtargeting for Barack Obama in 2008.

Here’s how the VoteCastr system operates. By combining proprietary, large-sample polls taken prior to Election Day with targeted, real-time tracking of voter turnout on Tuesday, VoteCastr will make rolling projections of how many ballots have been cast for each candidate in each of the states we’re tracking: Florida, Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. If you visit Slate at 11 a.m. EST on Tuesday, you’ll see projections for how many votes have been cast for Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in each of those states as of 11 a.m. (VoteCastr will also analyze the vote in Colorado, albeit using a different technique. More on that in a bit.)

It’s crucial to remember these projections are being made in real time. Even if we were to assume the VoteCastr models are perfect—and we won’t—they can’t tell us who will win a particular state, only who is winning that state at a specific moment in time and who might win if current trends continue. When it comes to who might win, the emphasis should be on might. There are too many unknowns for us to be able say with confidence that what we think is happening in the present will continue to happen in the future. It’s entirely possible, for instance, that Trump voters will be more likely to cast their ballots in the morning and that Clinton voters will be more likely to cast theirs in the evening—or vice versa. There just isn’t enough historical data to give us meaningful insight on that type of voter behavior. Over the course of the day, we expect Clinton’s and Trump’s respective shares of the total vote in each state to shift as turnout waxes in some areas and wanes in others.

Slate readers will be able to watch live as those vote totals update throughout Election Day. They’ll also be able to sort the data in a number of different ways. We’ll make it possible, for instance, to compare real-time turnout in Trump-leaning counties and Clinton-leaning counties, as well as to gauge turnout in counties grouped by age, income, and race. If our real-time trackers are seeing that turnout in Pennsylvania’s middle class or predominantly black counties has surpassed 2012 levels, you’ll know that. If turnout in Ohio counties that are predominantly white or lower class does the same, you’ll know that, too.

We also hope to use the VoteCastr model to bring some empiricism to all the anecdotes that pop up in the news on Election Day. If there’s rain in Cincinnati, a viral photo of long lines in Las Vegas, or an unplanned appearance by Tim Kaine in Philadelphia, we won’t have to speculate about whether those events will cause turnout to rise or fall. We’ll be able to look at the numbers and draw conclusions—albeit tentative ones—ourselves.

* * *

Here’s a longer description of how this whole thing works. The project can be broken down into two phases: what happens before Tuesday, and what happens on the day itself. In the lead-up to Election Day, VoteCastr conducted large-sample surveys in eight battleground states. Unlike a typical media poll that might ask hundreds of respondents dozens of questions, these surveys presented thousands of people with just a handful of queries each. The results were then run through predictive models to determine the probabilities of each voter in each of the eight states casting a ballot for Clinton, Trump, Gary Johnson, or Jill Stein. (VoteCastr did not include Evan McMullin in its models. The independent candidate is only on the ballot in two states we are tracking, Colorado and Iowa.)

The other piece of the pre–Election Day puzzle is early voting, which now accounts for an estimated 30 to 40 percent of the general election vote. Local officials collect and report information about who voted early in each state in advance of the election, and VoteCastr then compares that public info with its own private voter files. To understand how this works in practice, consider my early ballot, which I cast in Iowa City last week. Though VoteCastr doesn’t know who I voted for, it can make an educated guess based on the things it does know about me: my age, race, and party registration. Our friends at VoteCastr tell me the model believes there’s a 97 percent chance I voted for Clinton. When my name shows up on the list of people who voted early in the Hawkeye State, VoteCastr will use that number to fill in the blank. These voter preference estimates allow VoteCastr to make more specific forecasts about the early voting split than most other modelers, which simply sort returned ballots by party registration. (For what it’s worth, the model got it right in my case: I voted for Clinton.)

That’s the easy part. If everyone voted before Election Day, the final outcome would be pretty easy to predict even without a fancy model. The challenge for VoteCastr and other prognosticators is to figure out which voters will make the trip to their local polling stations and which will stay home. That’s where the day-of tracking comes in. VoteCastr will have hundreds of field workers stationed at preselected precincts around the country. Those field workers will be reporting official turnout numbers as they’re provided to them by poll workers throughout the day. By selecting a representative mix of precincts, VoteCastr will extrapolate the turnout in similar precincts that aren’t being tracked, in the same way it used large-sample polling to draw probabilistic conclusions about how I was going to cast my vote without surveying me directly.

Let’s assume there’s a particular precinct in Wisconsin in which pre–Election Day polling suggests voter preference for Clinton and Trump is split 50-50. If a field worker stationed there reports that 100 votes were cast in the first hour of voting, VoteCastr won’t simply assume that 50 of those votes were for Trump and 50 were for Clinton. The model will also factor in how likely it believes Clinton supporters in that precinct are to vote compared to Trump supporters. Let’s consider a simple hypothetical in which each of Trump’s likely voters in our Wisconsin precinct is more likely to vote than each of Clinton’s likely voters. If projected turnout is low, then we can assume the more-energized Trump supporters will vote in greater numbers than Clinton supporters. If turnout is high, then we can assume there will be more parity—that the high turnout is an indication that less-energized likely Clinton voters did show up to vote on Election Day.

VoteCastr’s projections will work a little differently in Colorado, where the vast majority of ballots are cast by mail ahead of Tuesday. On account of that, VoteCastr won’t be tracking real-time turnout in Colorado. Instead, it will rely on the same technique it used to sort the early vote in other states, making projections by comparing its private voter files—which include the poll-derived preference scores for each voter—with the public roll of who returned their ballots. That means the VoteCastr projections for Colorado won’t change throughout Election Day like they will for other states; the numbers we have in the morning will be the same ones we have all day.

* * *

That’s how the VoteCastr system will work in theory. It’s possible, however, that reality will introduce a few surprises. For starters, projections are only as good as the models that make them, which are only as good as the polling data they use. If there’s some sort of shy-voter effect, or respondents are being in any other way dishonest with the pollsters (or themselves) about who they are going to vote for, the projections could easily miss the mark. Likewise, there’s the possibility of a late swing in the race that VoteCastr polling misses. As with all polling, some uncertainty is unavoidable. (VoteCastr tells me its own polls have generally been in line with publicly available polls.)

There’s also the not-so-small issue of Clinton’s and Trump’s respective ground games, or lack thereof. The VoteCastr model relies heavily on 2012 voting to predict the likelihood of whether someone will vote in 2016. The consensus four years ago was that Obama’s get-out-the-vote operation was better than Mitt Romney’s, but only by a relatively slim margin. There’s good reason to believe that Clinton’s advantage over Trump will be considerably larger than that. If that turns out to be true, Clinton supporters may be more likely to vote than comparable Trump supporters simply because they’re more likely to get knocks on their doors on Election Day from campaign volunteers. The VoteCastr model can’t account for that.

Setting aside the model, there’s one more problem to consider: me. On Election Day, I will be doing my best to provide the context and analysis readers need to understand the VoteCastr data. But I’m only human, and I’m coming in with my own preconceptions. Based on what I’ve observed during the final months of this campaign, I believe Clinton is the favorite to win the general election. And so there is always a chance that I will (perhaps unconsciously) seek out patterns that confirm that prediction, or I will fail to spot evidence suggesting the opposite outcome. Conversely, now that I’ve acknowledged this bias, it’s possible I’ll overcompensate and swing too far the other way.

Ultimately, it’s best to think of this Slate-VoteCastr collaboration as a real-time Election Day experiment. The VoteCastr projections are based on vast amounts of data, but this specific model has never been tested on this scale. If it works as planned, it’ll provide us with fascinating insights into what’s happening on the ground on the final day of one of the most unpredictable campaigns in recent memory. It can also help us answer long-standing electoral mysteries, like whether certain kinds of voters go to the polls at different times of the day. And if all else fails, we’ll still be giving you a taste of how campaign insiders see Election Day and how they see you as voters. We think that’s a valuable exercise, and we’re excited to have you along for the ride.

Read VoteCastr’s official methodology documentation here.

What the Heck Polls: A Weekly Guide to the Trump-Clinton Numbers

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 18:47:11 GMT

The polls—so many polls. They will just keep coming between now and Election Day, making it easy to forget the golden rule of polling: Don’t get distracted by a single survey. With that in mind, Slate will be checking in once a week to see what’s changed—and what hasn’t—in the 2016 presidential polls.

Where Do the Polls Stand Today?

Everything is coming up Clinton. Here are the topline numbers from the most recent batch of head-to-head national polls completed in the past week and a half: Hillary Clinton leads Donald Trump by 12 points (Monmouth), 11 points (CBS News), 10 points (NBC News/Wall Street Journal), 9 points (NBC News/SurveyMonkey), 9 points (Bloomberg/Seltzer), 7 points (Fox News), 5 points (Politico/Morning Consult), 4 points (ABC News/Washington Post), and 4 points (Reuters/Ipsos), and the two are tied in the Trump-leaning and somewhat questionable Los Angeles Times/USC tracking poll.

And the national averages:

RealClearPolitics:

Head-to-head: Clinton +7.2 (Clinton 49.1 percent, Trump 41.9 percent)
Four-way race: Clinton + 7.1 (Clinton 46.0, Trump 38.9, Gary Johnson 6.4, Jill Stein 2.4)

Huffington Post:

Head-to-head: Clinton +8.2 points (Clinton 48.9 percent, Trump 40.7 percent)
Three-way race: Clinton + 6.7 points (Clinton 45.0, Trump 38.3, Johnson 6.8, other 3.8)

Depending on which average you prefer, Clinton’s lead has grown by as little as a tenth of a point (HuffPo three-way) or as much as 1.6 points (RCP four-way) in the past week, and by as little as three-tenths of a point (HuffPo three-way) or as much as 3.3 points (both RCP averages) in the past two. The latest national polling—combined with similarly great news for Clinton in battleground states—continues to drive Clinton’s odds of winning upwards in the numbers-centric forecasts to levels near or above their all-time highs. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight now gives Clinton a roughly 88 percent chance of victory in its polls-only forecast, the best odds its given her since Aug. 17, and the New York Times’ Upshot puts her chances at 92 percent, the highest they’ve been in that rolling forecast since it began at the start of June. The Princeton Election Consortium, meanwhile, pegs Clinton’s chances at a whopping 98 percent.

What’s Going On?

The most obvious suspect is the release of the Access Hollywood tape that featured Donald Trump boasting about sexually assaulting women, and then the cascade of women who came forward after the debate to accuse Donald Trump of sexually assaulting them. But it’s worth remembering that even before the Washington Post published the 2005 tape on the Friday before the second presidential debate, things were already going remarkably poorly for Trump.

A quick refresher: Trump spent the days immediately after unraveling at the first debate publicly feuding with a former Miss Universe over her weight, a needlessly cruel and frankly bizarre decision that played directly into the hands of the Clinton campaign. The New York Times then published a portion of Trump’s tax returns that showed he declared a loss of nearly $1 billion in 1995, which may have allowed him to avoid paying federal taxes for the better part of two decades. A couple days after that, New York officials announced that Trump’s charity broke the law in yet another sign in a string of them that the chief beneficiary of the Donald J. Trump Foundation has long been Donald J. Trump.

Then there was a Newsweek report suggesting Trump violated the Cuba embargo in the 1990s; Trump’s suggestion that the so-called Central Park Five were indeed guilty despite their convictions being vacated by the U.S. court system decades after Trump publicly called for their executions; and a few less important but still embarrassing revelations about Trump’s past. Again, that was all before the sexual assault allegations against the GOP nominee became the story of the moment.

How Should Trump Supporters Feel Today?

Depressed. The closest thing to good news for them is that Trump will have the chance to shake up the race during Wednesday’s final presidential debate, which will be moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace. Still, nothing Trump has said or done during the first two debates—let alone on the campaign trail—suggests he is capable of doing what he needs to during 90-minutes of prime-time television. The best he appears to have come up with is orchestrating stunt cameos from the ghosts of Clinton’s past. And even if he does turn in a strong performance, there’s little evidence to believe that it will matter.

How Should Clinton Supporters Feel Today?

How Do Things Look at the State Level?

More or less like they do at the national level: somewhere between great and really, really, really great for Clinton. Her path to 270 votes in the Electoral College is about as wide as it’s ever been. According to the Washington Post’s most recent survey of 15 battleground states, Clinton holds leads of 4 points or more among likely voters in states that add up to 304 electoral votes when you also divvy up the non-battleground states based on recent history.

Hillary’s most obvious path is probably winning the 19 states (plus the District of Columbia) that have voted for the Democratic nominee in each of the past six presidential elections, and then adding Florida’s 29 electoral votes to that haul. She’s currently up in the Sunshine State by roughly 3.6 points in both RCP averages. Similarly, FiveThirtyEight sees her with an edge in other potential “tipping point” states like North Carolina, Nevada, and Minnesota.

Things look even rosier for Clinton when you view things from the opposite angle. Pennsylvania is close to a must-win for Trump, but she leads there by roughly 7 points. And things are starting to look so bad for her opponent that it’s possible he could lose in recent GOP strongholds like Georgia and Arizona, as well as maybe even Utah, where Never-Trumper Evan McMullin’s Mormon appeal has turned a state Mitt Romney won by nearly 50 points into a tight three-way race.

The Clinton “Quid Pro Quo” Email Scandal Has Very Little to Do With Her

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 19 Oct 2016 15:15:00 GMT

Hillary Clinton’s latest email-related headache didn’t last long. The now-retired FBI official at the center of the “quid pro quo” controversy, which sparked to life on Monday, came forward on Tuesday to acknowledge that an offer to trade favors with a State Department counterpart originated with him—and that he quickly pulled the offer once he learned more.

In interviews with the Washington Post and the New York Times, Brian McCauley gave his version of events: In the spring of 2015, he had been trying for weeks to get someone at the State Department to approve his request to put two bureau employees back in the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, but was having no luck. So when Patrick F. Kennedy, an undersecretary at the State Department, called him up to talk about an unrelated matter, McCauley seized the opportunity. “He said: ‘Brian. Pat Kennedy. I need a favor,’” McCauley recalled to the Post. “I said: ‘Good, I need a favor. I need our people back in Baghdad.’ ” It was only then, said McCauley, that Kennedy explained what he wanted: the FBI to mark a particular email that had traveled through Clinton’s private email server as unclassified. More from the Times:

“I’m the one that threw that out there,” Mr. McCauley said of the offer. He said that he was concerned the two vacant posts posed a security risk at the embassy, and that the offer was typical of how federal agencies “help each other and work with each other.”

In that initial conversation, Mr. McCauley said, “it was a quid pro quo; I don’t deny it.” Mr. McCauley said he had quickly reversed himself, however, after calling another F.B.I. official and learning that the email in question involved the Benghazi attack — a political cudgel for Republicans against Mrs. Clinton.

At that point, Mr. McCauley said, he abandoned any thought of exchanging favors and called Mr. Kennedy immediately to tell him that he could not help. “It was off the table; the quid pro quo was not even close to being considered,” Mr. McCauley said.

The issue of potential favor-trading concerning the classification of Clinton’s emails first came to light on Monday when the FBI released its latest batch of files related to its since-completed investigation into whether Clinton and her aides mishandled sensitive government information that flowed through her private email server. The release—roughly 100 pages of summaries of interviews the FBI conducted during its probe—suggested there were strong disagreements between the FBI and the State Department last year over whether some of Clinton’s emails should be retroactively marked classified as the agencies prepared those messages for public consumption. It was the mention of a “quid pro quo” between Kennedy and McCauley—whose name had been redacted in the notes—that immediately drew the most attention, including accusations from Donald Trump and his fellow Republicans that the two agencies had colluded to protect Clinton. (“This is worse than Watergate,” said Trump.)

McCauley’s version of events lines up with the one offered by Kennedy, as well as with the general defense offered by the Obama administration—and the president himself—that this latest email-related frenzy was much ado about a rather run-of-the-mill inter-agency dynamic. The email in question—sent in November 2012 and concerning possible arrests related to the Benghazi attacks—was ultimately deemed classified by the FBI despite the State Department’s efforts, and a redacted version of it was released in May of last year. Neither Kennedy nor McCauley, then, got what they wanted. Furthermore, there’s never been any evidence that Clinton or her campaign was even aware of a discussion that took place between a career civil servant and an FBI employee, years after she left the State Department.

I wrote on Tuesday, before McCauley came forward, that what little we knew about this exchange over an email had little to do with Clinton herself. Now that McCauley and Kennedy have come forward, we know more—and there’s even less of a reason to suspect Clinton had any involvement in the entire affair.

Update Oct. 19, 12:31 p.m.: The Republican National Committee appears unconvinced by the new revelations and has formally requested that the State Department's inspector general launch an investigation into matter.

Is the Latest Hillary Clinton Email Scandal Really a Scandal?

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 18 Oct 2016 21:53:00 GMT

The FBI’s latest document dump concerning its since-completed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s email server has generated some rough headlines for the Democratic nominee (“Hillary Clinton’s email problems just came roaring back,” declared the Washington Post) and the usual hyperbole from her Republican opponent (“This is worse than Watergate,” blared Donald Trump). But just how bad is it?

A closer look at what we currently know suggests that we don’t know all that much—but what little we do know has little to do with Clinton herself. The new files—roughly 100 pages of summaries of interviews the FBI conducted during its probe into whether Clinton and her aides mishandled sensitive government information that flowed through her private email server—suggest there were strong disagreements between the FBI and the State Department last year over whether some of Clinton’s emails should be retroactively marked classified as the agencies prepared those messages for public release.

Inter-agency drama over such matters is relatively commonplace, but there was one particular instance that appeared more than a little unusual. According to the investigators’ notes, someone in the FBI (who’s name was redacted by the bureau) claimed that in 2015 a senior State Department official discussed a potential bargain whereby the FBI would help get one particular 2012 Benghazi-related email marked unclassified and would get a favor in return from the department for its trouble (emphasis mine):

[REDACTED] indicated he had been contacted by PATRICK [F.] KENNEDY, Undersecretary of State, who had asked for his assistance in altering the email's classification in exchange for a "quid pro quo." [REDACTED] advised that, in exchange for marking the email unclassified, STATE would reciprocate by allowing the FBI to place more Agents in countries where they are presently forbidden.

Given the swirl of pay-for-play accusations that have long surrounded the Clinton Foundation and the Hillary Clinton–run State Department, there aren’t many three-word phrases that Team Clinton dreads seeing in an official FBI file more than quid pro quo, I would imagine, even if this one concerns something that allegedly happened well after she left the Obama administration. Still, it’s worth taking a half step back. The files released by the FBI on Monday included summaries of interviews, not the transcripts themselves, and the notes aren’t always in the clearest prose. That above passage leaves it very unclear as to who used the words “quid pro quo” to describe what was discussed, as well as who originally broached the issue of agent deployment—the FBI official or Kennedy—and both agencies have since said that it was the now-retired FBI official who first brought the issue up.

For its part, the Obama administration says there is nothing to see here. “The allegation of any kind of quid pro quo is inaccurate and does not align with the facts,” State Department spokesman Mark Toner told reporters. “There was no quid pro quo.” Asked about the topic at a press conference on Tuesday, President Obama likewise suggested the controversy was the result of “overly broad characterizations of interactions between the State Department and the FBI that happen a lot, and happen between agencies.”

As the administration has pointed out: The email in question—sent in November 2012 and concerning possible arrests related to the Benghazi attacks—was ultimately deemed classified by the FBI despite the State Department’s efforts, and a redacted version of it was released in May of last year. Kennedy, then, didn’t get his way in the end and there’s nothing to suggest that State delivered on what would then have been all quo and no quid.

Furthermore, no evidence has emerged that Clinton or her campaign was even aware of Kennedy’s actions in the first place. Critics can point to the fact that he first served in the State Department under Bill Clinton and now serves as undersecretary in the Obama administration. But Kennedy also served in the same role during the last Bush administration under Secretary Condoleezza Rice.

That’s not to say that there’s not some legitimate questions to be asked—just that right now it’s Kennedy, not Clinton, who needs to do the answering. The FBI summaries paint Kennedy as aggressive in his attempts to ensure as few emails on Hillary’s private server as possible were deemed classified. According to the files, at one point Kennedy proposed using a little-known provision in the Freedom of Information Act to label the Benghazi email unclassified but nonetheless still exempt it from federal records laws. As the Associated Press notes, that provision is “intended to protect geological and geophysical information and data, including maps, concerning wells, and is the most rarely used FOIA exemption.” If Kennedy could have convinced the FBI to go along with that plan, it would have helped Clinton save some face while still effectively hiding the email from the American public. Even if Kennedy was working on his own, then, his interests clearly aligned with hers given she was—and, in many ways, still is—attempting to convince voters that she never put sensitive government information at risk.

Mike Pence Takes Donald Trump’s Side in His Public Disagreement With Mike Pence

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 16:39:00 GMT

Late Sunday night, as the second presidential debate was getting into full swing, word started circulating on Twitter: Mike Pence, it seemed, might pull himself from the GOP ticket.

Today it’s clear the swirling was for naught. Speaking to CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Monday morning, Pence called rumors that he had considered quiting “absolutely false” and promised to spend the next four weeks “campaigning shoulder to shoulder” with Trump. “It's the greatest honor of my life to have been nominated by my party to be the next vice president of the United States of America,” the Indiana governor added.

But the better evidence that Pence remains firmly on Team Trump—at least until the rest of the shoe department drops on it—was obvious during the remainder of the nearly 20-minute interview, as Pence repeatedly barreled over and through Camerota’s questions in order to deliver Trump Tower–approved talking points. He praised his running mate for apologizing at the start of the debate for his offensive 2005 Access Hollywood tape, dismissed Trump’s misogynistic braggadocio as “talk, not actions,” and spoke at length about the past allegations of sexual misconduct against Bill Clinton that Trump has now put at the center of his campaign.

And in case all that wasn’t enough to prove his loyalty to Trump at a time when several prominent Republicans have made it clear they’d rather Pence take Trump’s place atop the ticket, the VP nominee also returned to his reality-denying ways in order to effectively take Trump’s side in his very public disagreement with none other than Mike Pence himself.

On Sunday night, Trump was asked by moderator Martha Raddatz whether he agreed with the aggressive posture Pence had advocated the United States take toward Russia in Syria during the vice presidential debate. “He and I haven't spoken, and I disagree,” Trump responded. Asked about that remarkable statement on Monday, Pence tried to blame the whole thing on Raddatz, whom he said “misrepresented” his position when she quoted his response in her question to Trump. “You know the question that I got was about Aleppo, was about humanitarian aid,” Pence said of the VP debate query. He continued:

The question I had, and you can check the transcript, so can your viewers, was about the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo, and what we ought to do. Donald Trump's position, our position, has been that we need to establish safe zones and you need to be willing to use —you need to be willing to use resources and including military power to secure those safe zones to allow those people, including 100,000 children, to be able to evacuate. Last night [Raddatz] conflated that and referred to general provocation and involvement by the Russians in the Syrian regime and you know, Donald Trump's made it clear our policy is safe zones for people suffering in Syria.

Let’s go to the transcript. Here was the precise wording of the question that was posed to Pence last week:

Two hundred fifty thousand people, 100,000 of them children, are under siege in Aleppo, Syria. Bunker buster bombs, cluster munitions, and incendiary weapons are being dropped on them by Russian and Syrian militaries. Does the U.S. have a responsibility to protect civilians and prevent mass casualties on this scale, Governor Pence?

And here was the most relevant part of Pence’s response (emphasis mine):

I just have to tell you that the provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength. And if Russia chooses to be involved and continue—I should say, to be involved—in this barbaric attack on civilians in Aleppo, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike military targets of the Assad regime to prevent them from this humanitarian crisis that is taking place in Aleppo.

And here was Raddatz’s question to Trump (emphasis mine):

If you were president what would you do about Syria and the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo? And I want to remind you what your running mate said. He said provocations by Russia need to be met with American strength and that if Russia continues to be involved in air strikes along with the Syrian government forces of Assad, the United States of America should be prepared to use military force to strike the military targets of the Assad regime.

Pence, then, is right when he says his question and response were about the humanitarian crisis in Aleppo. The problem: So, too, was the question put to Trump on Sunday. Raddatz did not “misrepresent” Pence’s answer. He and Trump simply had different ones. (Maybe they should talk.)

As my colleague Joshua Keating pointed out, Pence’s original answer at his debate wouldn’t have been all the surprising if he were running with someone who hewed closer to Republican foreign policy orthodoxy, like Marco Rubio or Jeb Bush. But Pence is sharing a ticket with a man who has advocated partnering with Vladimir Putin to fight ISIS, believes America’s “Arab partners” on the ground in Syria are in fact members of ISIS, and has said Putin “has been a leader far more than our president [Obama] has been.” Pence is a Russia hawk flying alongside a Russia dove, and so his only option is to create so many clouds that voters can’t even see the sky. But given Trump’s general reliance on misdirection and outright mendacity during this campaign, there may be no better way for Pence to prove his loyalty than by doing what he just did—pretending a thing that happened didn’t.

Rudy Giuliani Yelling About “Semen on Her Dress” Was a Nice Way to End the Evening

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 10 Oct 2016 04:37:00 GMT

Rudy Giuliani spent Sunday morning playing the part of Donald Trump’s chosen defense attorney on network television. On Sunday night, he tried to play the part of Bill Clinton’s prosecutor on cable. The case he offered was … interesting.

In a postdebate interview in the spin room with MSNBC’s Chris Matthews, Giuliani repeatedly shrugged off questions about Trump’s Access Hollywood video—“Men say stupid things in locker rooms”—in order to talk about Clinton’s alleged sexual crimes. “How come he wasn’t prosecuted for raping Juanita Broaddrick?” Giuliani asked. “Or why wasn’t he prosecuted for taking advantage of an intern in the White House?”

Matthews responded by pointing out that there was no tape of Clinton saying he did those things, whereas there very much is tape of Trump bragging about grabbing women “by the pussy.” (Other counterpoints Matthews could have offered but didn’t include that: Hillary Clinton is running for president, not her husband, and for a law-and-order lover like Giuliani, it’s quite the leap to drop the word “allegedly” from Broaddrick’s serious accusations against the former president.)

Giuliani, though, had his response locked and loaded. “There was semen on her dress, which proved he lied to America!” he yelled in the spin room of a presidential debate, referring to Monica Lewinsky’s infamous blue dress. It was as fitting an ending to Sunday night as I can imagine.

Kaine’s Mistake Wasn’t Interrupting Pence. It Was When He Interrupted Him.

Josh Voorhees — Wed, 05 Oct 2016 16:39:00 GMT

As you either saw for yourself or have been told by now, Tim Kaine spent much of Tuesday night’s debate interrupting Mike Pence and moderator Elaine Quijano. By FiveThirtyEight’s count, the Virginia Democrat interjected more than 70 times in the 90-plus minute contest, about 30 times more than his opponent did. Kaine’s aggressive interrupting rubbed many viewers the wrong way and was no doubt a major reason why Pence was deemed to have “won” by a narrow plurality of respondents who took part in post-debate snap polls.

The bigger problem, though, was not that Kaine interjected as much as he did, but rather when he interjected. As Amy Davidson points out in the New Yorker, Kaine’s most counterproductive moment of the entire night was when he inadvertently “sabotaged Quijano’s effort to corner Pence on the contradictions and the blindness in his position on race and law enforcement.”

Elaine Quijano … was pressing Mike Pence on a question he had dodged—what would he, as a supporter of stop-and-frisk tactics, say to Tim Scott, the black Republican senator from South Carolina, who had spoken about being stopped multiple times by the police?—when Tim Kaine interrupted. …

Pence had just condemned Hillary Clinton for expressing concern about implicit biases on the part of the police and in society at large; he also said that he respected Scott and considered him a friend. How did he square that? The audience didn’t get to hear. By the time Kaine had said his interjected piece, which turned out to be a lengthy, prepackaged index of offensive things that Trump has said, Quijano had decided that it was time to move on to immigration.

This overeagerness was evident throughout the night, causing trouble for Kaine almost from the start. In one of the opening segments, Quijano pressed Pence to address the very real possibility that his running mate didn’t pay federal taxes for nearly two decades, a topic that likely had Clinton HQ cheering. “Mr. Trump said he ‘brilliantly’ used the laws to pay as little tax as legally possible,” Quijano said. “Does that seem fair to you?”

Pence was in no rush to answer that one, and thanks to Kaine he didn’t really have to. The Indiana Republican began his “answer” by reliving one of the canned clankers Kaine had offered moments before. (“First, let me say, I appreciated the ‘you’re hired,’ ‘you’re fired’ thing, senator. You use that a whole lot.”) Pence then simply continued off topic as though Trump’s tax returns were never mentioned in the first place. “I mean, the truth of the matter is, the policies of this administration—which Hillary Clinton and Sen. Kaine want to continue—have run this economy into a ditch,” he said.

At that point, Kaine decided he could hold his tongue no longer. The problem, however, was that he jumped in not to point out that Pence was ignoring the question, but instead to litigate an unrelated fight about the economy. “Fifteen million new jobs?” Kaine offered unprompted, a reference to the Obama administration’s rosy reading of the employment data. The two men then went back and forth a dozen or so times in rapid fire, with Kaine offering facts and Pence complaining that Kaine was using facts. (“Honestly, senator, you can roll out the numbers and the sunny side, but I got to tell you, people in Scranton know different.”)

It was only after Pence—with Kaine’s help—had effectively filibustered more than half of the time ostensibly allotted for his response that the Democrat finally remembered there was a conversation he and Team Clinton would much rather be having. “I am interested to hear whether he'll defend his running mate's not releasing taxes and not paying taxes,” Kaine said. The moderator jumped in to remind everyone that, yes, that was indeed the question she had asked. Pence then gave his short prepared defense (“His tax returns showed he went through a very difficult time, but he used the tax code just the way it's supposed to be used and he did it brilliantly”), Kaine responded with his own prepared attack (“It was a fight to avoid paying taxes so that he wouldn’t support the fight against terror”), and everyone moved on.

Later in the night, one of Kaine’s poorly timed interjections had the opposite effect. Instead of changing the topic in a way that helped Pence, Kaine accidentally kept the focus on a conversation that he clearly did not want to be having: Hillary Clinton’s email. Pence had just detoured a discussion of NATO and ISIS to cybersecurity, which he used to get in a quick mention of Clinton’s private email server. The moderator was ready to move on— “I'd like to ask you about Syria, governor”—when Pence got in one more passing email dig. Kaine, again, couldn’t control himself. Via the Washington Post’s transcript:

Quijano: I'd like to ask you about Syria, governor.

Pence: We could put cybersecurity first if we just make sure the next secretary of state doesn't have a private server.

(CROSSTALK)

Kaine: And all investigations concluded that not one reasonable prosecutor would take any additional step. You don't get to decide the rights and wrongs of this. We have a justice system that does that. And a Republican FBI director did an investigation and concluded that ...

(CROSSTALK)

Quijano: All right, we are moving on now. Two hundred fifty thousand people ...

Pence: If your son or my son handled classified information the way Hillary Clinton did ...

Quijano: ... one hundred thousand of them children—Governor...

Pence: ... they'd be court-martialed.

Kaine: That is absolutely false and you know that.

Pence: Absolutely true.

Kaine: And you know that, governor.

Quijano: Governor...

Pence: It's absolutely true.

Quijano: Gentlemen, please.

Kaine: Because the FBI did an investigation.

Quijano: Gentlemen.

Kaine: And they concluded that there was no reasonable prosecutor who would take it further. Sorry.

Quijano: Sen. Kaine, Gov. Pence, please.

Kaine: Syria.

Quijano: I want to turn now to Syria

The entire exchange would have lasted a fraction of the time if Kaine had simply kept his mouth shut. But he didn’t.

What the Heck Polls: A Weekly Guide to the Trump-Clinton Numbers

Josh Voorhees — Tue, 04 Oct 2016 17:00:00 GMT

Where Do the Polls Stand Today?

Hillary Clinton’s predicted post-debate bump has arrived. As of late Tuesday morning, we have the results of eight head-to-head national polls conducted entirely after last week’s debate, and Clinton is up in six of them. She leads Donald Trump by 7 points in Politico/Morning Consult, 6 points in both CBS News and CNN, 5 points in both YouGov/Economist and Fox News, and 4 points in Public Policy Polling. The only exceptions are a single-day survey taken by Gravis on the day immediately after the debate, which found the race knotted at 50 percent apiece, and the notably Trump-friendly Los Angeles Times/USC tracking poll, which has the GOP nominee up 4 points as of this past Sunday. Each of those surveys was factored into at least one of the two major polling averages, but not necessarily both:

RealClearPolitics:

Head-to-head: Clinton +3.8 (Clinton 48.1 percent, Trump 44.3 percent)
Four-way race: Clinton +3.7 (Clinton 44.3, Trump 40.6, Gary Johnson 7.4, Jill Stein 2.6)

Huffington Post:

Head-to-head: Clinton +6.0 points (Clinton 47.2 percent, Trump 41.2 percent)
Three-way race: Clinton +4.9 points (Clinton 43.5, Trump 38.6, Johnson 8.0, other 3.4)

Depending on which average you prefer, Clinton’s lead has grown by somewhere between seven-tenths of a point (HuffPo three-way) to as much as 2.1 points (RCP four-way) in the week since the debate. The new national polling—combined with similarly rosy numbers from post-debate surveys in battleground states—have driven Clinton’s odds of winning upward in the numbers-centric forecasts. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight now gives Clinton a roughly 73 percent chance of victory in its polls-only forecast and the New York Times’ Upshot has her odds at 79 percent. The former is up a whopping 17 points in the past seven days, while the latter is up 9 points. The Princeton Election Consortium, meanwhile, pegs Clinton’s chances at 90 percent, 5 points higher than it was on Friday.

What’s going on?

The debate seems like the most obvious cause, but it’s impossible to say how much of the change in the polls has to do with what happened on stage and what happened afterward. Trump was widely seen as last Monday night’s big loser, but things turned even worse for him in the days that followed as he failed to explain away his poor performance and wasted time needlessly (and cruelly) attacking the character and weight of a former Miss Universe.

How Should Trump Supporters Feel Today?

Somewhere between nervous and terrified. As poorly as Trump performed on the debate stage, and as poorly as he handled the crucial news cycle that followed immediately thereafter, the current poll numbers are likely lagging behind today’s reality on the ground. Most of the post-debate surveys were conducted at least partly before this weekend’s New York Times bombshell suggesting Trump may not have paid federal taxes for nearly two decades, Monday’s Associated Press report detailing allegations that Trump repeatedly sexually harassed women on the set of the Apprentice, and the news that the Trump Foundation had been ordered by New York authorities to stop raising money because it was raising money illegally. There’s still time for Trump to rebound, but it stands to reason his numbers are going to get worse in the near future. Also, there’s another debate on the horizon.

How Should Clinton Supporters Feel Today?

Pretty darn good. According to the rolling averages, their woman’s national lead is now either roughly equivalent to President Obama’s margin of victory in the 2012 popular vote (3.9 points) or a point or two higher than that, with five weeks to go to Election Day. The good news is likely to keep coming, too, as the remaining pre-debate polls in those aggregations are replaced by additional post-debate ones, most of which will have been conducted during the Trump paid no taxes news cycle that took over for the Trump bombed the debate one that preceded it. Also, there’s another debate on the horizon.

How Do Things Look at the State Level?

More or less like they do at the national level: good for Hillary. As Silver pointed out on Monday night, Hillary leads in 18 out of 20 post-debate polls in swing states, trailing in only one (Ohio), and is effectively tied in another (one of four Florida polls). Perhaps the best news for Clinton is in Pennsylvania, where the latest Franklin & Marshall survey has her with a 12-point lead on Trump in a two-way race and a 9-point lead in a four-way race, and the latest Quinnipiac poll has her with a 5-point lead in a two-way race and 4-point lead in a four-way. With those results taken into account, Clinton’s lead in the RCP state average is 3.5 points (four-way) or 4.6 points (two-way). The Keystone State, meanwhile, is pretty close to a must-win for Trump.

How Much Will Tuesday’s VP Debate Matter: Not a Lot? Or Not at All?

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 21:33:07 GMT

Indiana Gov. Mike Pence and Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine get their turn to face off in primetime on Tuesday during the first and only vice presidential debate of 2016. A record 84 million people tuned in to watch the top of their tickets, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, square off last week. But nobody expects there to be the same level of interest in a debate between two men whose biggest selling points during the veepstakes included their wallpaper-like ability to blend into the background.

The question, then, is how much will the VP debate actually matter: not a lot or not at all?

That’s not to dismiss Tuesday’s debate as unimportant in the grand scheme of things. One of the two men on stage will have a major role in the next administration and be a proverbial heartbeat away from the presidency in an administration of one of the oldest first-term presidents in history. The American public could gain valuable insights from seeing both men try to think on their feet, particularly given Trump has previously signaled that he may rewrite the job description of his veep to include much of the day-to-day running of the country. But past research has shown that there’s just no reason to believe what happens on stage in Virginia on Tuesday will significantly impact what happens in the voting booth come November. Heck, there’s little evidence to suggest that even a presidential debate can prove decisive in determining who becomes president.

In 2012, for example, Mitt Romney was widely considered to have trounced President Obama in the first head-to-head contest. But while Romney saw one of the largest post-debate polling bumps in modern history—roughly four points—Obama would eventually rebound and go on to win the election by roughly the same margin he had led in the pre-debate surveys. Signs point to similar short-term gains for Clinton after Trump unraveled on stage last week, but: a) we’re still waiting for that bump to fully materialize and b) even if it does, it will be impossible to separate what happened on stage from what happened in its aftermath and what happened prior. Furthermore, political scientists have previously taken a close look at those alleged game-changers from debates past—Richard Nixon’s sweating; Al Gore’s sighing—and didn’t find evidence that they mattered all that much. Given the increasingly polarized nature of the American electorate—along with voters’ strong views about both Trump and Clinton—it stands to reason that holds true today.

Vice presidential debates have been even less consequential affairs. John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate may have sealed his November fate, but her debate with Joe Biden—the only VP debate in the past 40 years to have a larger TV audience than a presidential debate the same year—may best be remembered for the relatively benign moment when she asked her opponent, “Hey, can I call you Joe?” Walter Mondale branding Bob Dole a “hatchet man” in 1976 or Lloyd Bentsen telling Dan Quayle that he was “no Jack Kennedy” in 1988 also made for memorable TV moments—but they also didn’t change many minds.* In 2012, Gallup analyzed voter preferences before and after the eight VP debates held between 1976 and 2008 (there was no VP debate in 1980) and found the undercards “had almost no influence.” Scholars say the same thing. In his 1996 book Do Campaigns Matter?, for instance, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Thomas Holbrook concluded “there is very little evidence that vice presidential debates do much at all to alter the political landscape.”

Voters appear to grasp this reality as well, at least implicitly. A recent ABC news poll, for example, found only 1 in 10 Americans said they thought Tuesday’s clash would have a major impact on their vote—less than half the 23 percent who said the same thing about the first presidential debate. The best case for why this VP debate will matter, meanwhile, is intrinsically wrapped up in an even more compelling reason to suspect it won’t: Asked by the ABC pollsters to identify Trump and Clinton’s running mates, 41 percent failed to name Pence and 46 percent failed to name Kaine. For many voters, then, Tuesday’s debate will be the first time they’ve paid significant attention to either on the campaign trail. But if history is any guide, it may also likely be the last time they do before Election Day.

*Correction, Oct. 3, 2015: This post originally mispelled Dan Quayle’s last name.

New York Orders Trump Foundation to Cease Fundraising Immediately Over Violation of State Law

Josh Voorhees — Mon, 03 Oct 2016 18:56:00 GMT

Donald Trump’s already bad start to the week just got a little bit worse. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman announced on Monday that his office has informed the Trump Foundation that it violated state law earlier this year, and ordered the nonprofit to cease its fundraising in New York immediately.

As the Washington Post’s first reported last week, the foundation appears to have been operating without the necessary paperwork to raise large sums of money in New York. Under state law, a New York–based charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year from the public must obtain a special kind of certification to do so. The AG’s office claims that “based on the information” the state has received, the New York–based Trump Foundation never filled out the necessary paperwork despite crossing that threshold. The state hasn’t cited specific examples of when and how Trump’s charity specifically violated the law, but the most obvious candidate is the roughly $1.7 million it claims it raised online earlier this year in conjunction with a veterans fundraiser Trump staged as counterprogramming to the GOP primary debate he skipped in January.

The AG’s office informed the Trump Foundation this past Friday that it has 15 days to file the missing paperwork. Failure to cease fundraising and submit the necessary paperwork “shall be deemed to be a continuing fraud upon the people of the state of New York,” according to the official letter the state sent to the nonprofit.

The Trump campaign responded to the news by simultaneously saying it would “cooperate fully” with authorities while also casting aspersions on the motivations of Schneiderman:

As I explained last week, this isn’t some inconsequential paperwork mistake. A charity that solicits more than $25,000 a year may undergo annual audits from independent accountants in New York. By not registering with the state charities bureau, Trump’s foundation was able to operate with far less oversight than it otherwise would have. As charity-tax experts told the Post, if the Trump Foundation would have filed the paperwork it was supposed to, outside accountants would have had a chance to check its books, as well as to examine explicitly whether the foundation had spent any money that benefited Trump or his businesses in violation of other statutes. In short, they’d have likely spotted any number of the red flags that the Post’s David Fahrenthold has uncovered through his dogged reporting into a foundation that Trump has apparently used to play the role of benevolent billionaire without actually being one.

What the Heck Polls: A Weekly Guide to the Trump-Clinton Numbers

Josh Voorhees — Fri, 30 Sep 2016 21:56:43 GMT

Where Do the Polls Stand Today?

Pretty much where they were this time last week. Hillary Clinton holds a narrow but relatively clear lead on Donald Trump. The available evidence, however, suggests that Clinton is likely to pick up a handful of points over the next couple days as we get the results from more surveys taken entirely after the first debate, which she won handily by pretty much everyone’s account but Trump’s. Add that to the news cycle that followed, during which her rival managed to spend attacking the character and weight of a former Miss Universe who last anyone checked is not on the ballot this November, and I’ll be eager to check back in with you all next week.

RealClearPolitics:

Head-to-head: Clinton +2.9 (Clinton 47.3 percent, Trump 44.4 percent)
Four-way race: Clinton + 2.9 (Clinton 43.9, Trump 41.0, Gary Johnson 7.2, Jill Stein 2.3)

Huffington Post:

Head-to-head: Clinton +4.6 points (Clinton 47.6 percent, Trump 43.0 percent)
Three-way race: Clinton + 3.4 points (Clinton 42.7, Trump 39.3, Johnson 8.0, other 3.6)

Depending on which average you go by, Clinton’s lead either slipped by a tenth of a point during the past seven days (RCP head-to-head) or climbed anywhere between five-tenths (HuffPo head-to-head) to seven-tenths of a point (HuffPo three-way). Those averages, however, are dominated by polls taken entirely before Monday’s debate. Most informed guesses, meanwhile, expect Clinton to extend her lead by somewhere around 2 to 5 points, based both on the results of snap polls that found the debate to be one of the more lop-sided affairs in modern history, and a small batch of recent state surveys that had similar good news for the Democratic nominee.

Already, the limited post-debate data we have has driven Clinton’s odds of winning upwards slightly in the numbers-centric forecasts. Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight now gives Clinton a roughly 67 percent chance of victory in its polls-only forecast and the Princeton Election Consortium pegs her chances at 85 percent. Both of those are up 5 points from where they were last week. The New York Times’ Upshot has been slower to react, but her odds in its forecast still climbed 2 points, to 75 percent, in the past seven days.

What’s going on?

We can’t say for certain that the debate swung the race in Clinton’s favor; even if her expected bump does materialize, we won’t know how much of that had to do with what happened on stage and what happened afterward. Still, the debates are one of the few set pieces of a campaign, and the on-stage action and the aftermath have been the political story of the week, making it a fair assumption that they will play a major role.

The early evidence is already there. Debate watchers surveyed by CNN/ORC called the contest for Hillary by a 35-point margin, with 62 percent saying she won compared with only 27 percent who said Donald did. That’s the third most-lopsided result in the survey’s history. The only larger margins of victory since 1984 were Romney’s 42-point defeat of Obama in the first 2012 debate and Bill Clinton’s 42-point win over George H.W. Bush in the second 1992 debate, which also featured Ross Perot. “Winning” is an admittedly amorphous concept when it comes to debates, but Clinton won by any definition I can come up with.

More important to the polling question: CNN’s debate polling has correlated relatively well with post-debate poll movement in elections past. As a result, Silver suggested earlier this week that Clinton could theoretically see a gain of about 3 to 5 points, which would be on the higher end of post-debate swings and is in line with the results we saw from state surveys in places like Florida, Michigan, and New Hampshire. If that happens, it would more than double her pre-debate advantage in the national averages and restore her lead to where it was in the middle of August during Trump’s post-convention controversy tour.

How Should Trump Supporters Feel Today?

Frustrated. On Monday, Trump unraveled during a primetime debate that was watched by more people than tuned in for the season finale of Seinfeld. On Tuesday, he and his team wasted valuable time complaining about his microphone and the moderator, which allowed the narrative to shift from Trump bombed to Trump bombed so hard that he’s had to make excuses. On Wednesday, the world learned that the reason the GOP nominee appeared so unprepared on Monday was because he apparently failed to pay attention during his Roger Ailes-led study sessions. And then on Thursday (and into Friday morning), Trump continued his ongoing feud with a former Miss Universe over her weight, a cruel and frankly bizarre decision that is reminiscent of how he devoted so much time and energy after the Democratic convention to attacking the Khan family.

How Should Clinton Supporters Feel Today?

Relieved. Clinton’s strong debate performance on Monday looks even stronger today. She was the one who brought up Alicia Machado (and the horrible things Trump allegedly said to her when she was Miss Universe) during the debate. In the moment, it was a forceful way for Clinton to highlight Trump’s history of misogyny. But in hindsight it was also rather plainly a trap she set to remind voters of his general inability to allow any slight, real or perceived, to pass without a nuclear response. At this rate, Trump will be forced to address Machado again at the next presidential debate—and nothing he has said over the past four days suggests that conversation will go any better than the first one.