1) Mike Flynn, President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, has told the Federal Bureau of Investigation and congressional officials investigating the Trump campaign’s potential ties to Russia that he is willing to be interviewed in exchange for a grant of immunity from prosecution, according to officials with knowledge of the matter.
When you are given immunity, that means you probably committed a crime. --- Michael Flynn in the fall of 2016.
2) Less than a week after suffering a stinging defeat on health care legislation, President Donald Trump shook up his West Wing staff on Thursday, dispatching one of his top aides to shore up an outside political group that the White House believes failed to support Trump’s agenda at a critical juncture.
3) If her devotion explains how Manigault wound up in Trump’s White House as the highest-ranking African American in the West Wing, it is far less easy to explain exactly what she’s doing there. Some African American political insiders already have concluded that she is ineffective, and she is routinely derided on social media as simply providing cover for a president deeply unpopular with African Americans. Some black Republicans were particularly critical of the Trump administration’s handling of the HBCU initiative, which included a White House meeting with the school officials that some viewed as little more than a photo op for the president …
Armstrong Williams, another longtime Republican strategist and close adviser to [Ben] Carson, said Manigault’s influence goes beyond “the so-called black agenda.†He said Manigault has input on press secretary Sean Spicer’s daily briefings and that “she carries a lot of weight†with candidates seeking ambassadorships.
4) Jared Kushner, son-in-law and senior adviser to President Donald Trump, has been dispatched by the White House to discuss criminal justice reform issues with key senators, BuzzFeed News has learned. Kushner met with Sens. Chuck Grassley and Dick Durbin on Capitol Hill Thursday.
Let’s just stop for a second and consider the fact that the person described by himself as “first among equals†in the White House has been given the lead on U.S. relations with Canada, Mexico, China and the Middle East, has also been asked to run a White House Office of American Innovation, and will now also apparently be running point on improving the criminal justice system. This is a person whose prior background suggests no particular competence in any of these areas of government. His only qualification for White House service appears to be that he married well.
5) Secretary of State Rex Tillerson takes a private elevator to his palatial office on the seventh floor of the State Department building, where sightings of him are rare on the floors below.
On many days, he blocks out several hours on his schedule as “reading time,†when he is cloistered in his office poring over the memos he prefers ahead of in-person meetings.
Most of his interactions are with an insular circle of political aides who are new to the State Department. Many career diplomats say they still have not met him, and some have been instructed not to speak to him directly — or even make eye contact.
On his first three foreign trips, Tillerson skipped visits with State Department employees and their families, embassy stops that were standard morale-boosters under other secretaries of state.
Nothing to see here, just someone whose primary job in government is to talk to other people being averse to … talking to other people.
