We begin today’s roundup with Matt Steib’s analysis at New York magazine of the revelation that President Trump overruled national security concerns to grant his son-in-law a top level security clearance:
Perhaps the strangest result of the report was a comment from Peter Mirijanian, a spokesman on behalf of Kushner’s lawyer, Abbe D. Lowell. Mirijanian said: “In 2018, White House and security clearance officials affirmed that Mr. Kushner’s security clearance was handled in the regular process with no pressure from anyone. That was conveyed to the media at the time, and new stories, if accurate, do not change what was affirmed at the time.” It’s unclear if a spokesperson for a lawyer for a billionaire describing how truth on a matter does not evolve with the presentation of new details is a snippet from Kafka or Borges or Orwell, or just a moment on a soon-to-be-forgotten Thursday in the Trump era.
At The New York Times, Timothy Egan calls out House Republicans for failing to conduct their oversight duties:
[I]f Michael D. Cohen’s description of a president who morphed into “the worst version of himself” was not news, certainly the way Republicans took the baton from the ex-loyalist was. They have now become Trump’s fixer, doing his dirty work, issuing threats and ditching long-held principles like so many empty beer bottles thrown from a car. [...]
Did one Republican stand up and decry Cohen’s litany of presidential lies? They blasted Cohen the liar, but not the man he lied for. Did one Republican decry the $35,000 check — proof, as Cohen said, that “The president of the United States thus wrote a personal check for the payment of hush money as part of a criminal scheme to violate campaign finance laws”?