Joe diGenova, Hans Von Spakovsky and Washington Post’s Scott Allen joined WMAL on Monday!

Mornings on the Mall

Monday, May 7, 2018

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

5am – A/B/C A Fast-Food Problem: Where Have All the Teenagers Gone? (NY Times) — Since 2010, fast-food jobs have grown nearly twice as fast as employment over all, contributing to the economic recovery. But rapid growth has created new problems. Some say restaurants have grown faster than demand, causing a glut of competition that is another source of pressure on business owners. Restaurant owners are also worrying about increased immigration enforcement: Nearly 20 percent of workers are foreign-born. With unemployment at a 17-year low, businesses everywhere are struggling to find workers. Fast food is feeling the pinch acutely, especially as one important source of workers has dried up. In 2000, about 45 percent of those between 16 and 19 had a job — today it’s 30 percent. “We used to get overwhelmed with the number of people wanting summer jobs,” Mr. Miller said, adding that he now gets maybe a handful of such applications, at most. “I don’t know what teenagers do all summer.”

5am – D         Federal judge accuses Mueller’s team of lying, trying to target Trump: ‘C’mon man!’ (Fox News) — A federal judge on Friday harshly rebuked Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s team during a hearing for ex-Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort – suggesting they lied about the scope of the investigation, are seeking “unfettered power” and are more interested in bringing down the president. “You don’t really care about Mr. Manafort,” U.S. District Judge T.S. Ellis III told Mueller’s team. “You really care about what information Mr. Manafort can give you to lead you to Mr. Trump and an impeachment, or whatever.” Further, Ellis demanded to see the unredacted “scope memo,” a document outlining the scope of the special counsel’s Russia probe that congressional Republicans have also sought. The hearing, where Manafort’s team fought to dismiss an 18-count indictment on tax and bank fraud-related charges, took a confrontational turn as it was revealed that at least some of the information in the investigation derived from an earlier Justice Department probe – in the U.S. attorney’s office for the Eastern District of Virginia. Manafort’s attorneys argue the special counsel does not have the power to indict him on the charges they have brought – and seemed to find a sympathetic ear with Ellis. The Reagan-appointed judge asked Mueller’s team where they got the authority to indict Manafort on alleged crimes dating as far back as 2005.

5am – E         Rep. Devin Nunes says he’ll push to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt (Washington Times) –  The chairman of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence is pushing to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress this week for not complying with a subpoena. Rep. Devin Nunes, California Republican, sent a letter to the Justice Department requesting classified information for his committee’s investigation into abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and counterintelligence inquiries, including the targeting of Americans such as former Trump campaign official Carter Page, but the letter was ignored. After attempting to subpoena the classified information last week, Mr. Nunes discovered that the Justice Department will not comply. “We have to move quickly to hold the attorney general of the United States in contempt, and that’s what I want to press for this week,” Mr. Nunes told Fox News on Sunday. The next step will be going to court to try to enforce the committee’s subpoena. Sarah Isgur Flores, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said the DOJ sent a letter to Mr. Nunes on Thursday, which was the deadline for his subpoena. The letter, signed by Assistant Attorney General Stephen E. Boyd, said the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the White House and the FBI had evaluated the committee’s request and that the Justice Department determined that it couldn’t comply with a request for information about a specific individual. The letter also said the Justice Department is open to other ways to accommodate the committee’s inquiry.

 

6am – A         JOHN KERRY’S SHADOW DIPLOMACY: Kerry is quietly seeking to salvage Iran deal he helped craft (Boston Globe) — significant accomplishments as secretary of state took him to New York on a Sunday afternoon two weeks ago, where, more than a year after he left office, he engaged in some unusual shadow diplomacy with a top-ranking Iranian official. He sat down at the United Nations with Foreign Minister Javad Zarif to discuss ways of preserving the pact limiting Iran’s nuclear weapons program. It was the second time in about two months that the two had met to strategize over salvaging a deal they spent years negotiating during the Obama administration, according to a person briefed on the meetings. With the Iran deal facing its gravest threat since it was signed in 2015, Kerry has been on an aggressive yet stealthy mission to preserve it, using his deep lists of contacts gleaned during his time as the top US diplomat to try to apply pressure on the Trump administration from the outside. President Trump, who has consistently criticized the pact and campaigned in 2016 on scuttling it, faces a May 12 deadline to decide whether to continue abiding by its terms. Kerry also met last month with German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, and he’s been on the phone with top European Union official Federica Mogherini, according to the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to reveal the private meetings. Kerry has also met with French President Emmanuel Macron in both Paris and New York, conversing over the details of sanctions and regional nuclear threats in both French and English. The rare moves by a former secretary of state highlight the stakes for Kerry personally, as well as for other Obama-era diplomats who are dismayed by what they see as Trump’s disruptive approach to diplomacy, and who view the Iran nuclear deal as a factor for stability in the Middle East and for global nuclear nonproliferation. The pact, which came after a marathon negotiating session in Vienna that involved Iran and six world powers, lifted sanctions in return for Iran stopping its pursuit of nuclear weapons.

6am – B         FBI Faced ‘Conundrum’ In Its Investigation Of Michael Flynn (Daily Caller) –  In late 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey was ready to shut down a counterintelligence investigation the bureau had open on Michael Flynn, the retired general who was set to serve as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser. Investigators “had not really substantiated anything particularly significant” in its investigation into Flynn’s possible links to foreign governments, Comey’s deputy, Andrew McCabe, told Congress late last year. But the case took on new life just days into Flynn’s White House tenure. As is now widely known, Flynn lied to two FBI agents during a Jan. 24, 2017 interview about his contacts several weeks earlier with Sergey Kislyak, the Russian ambassador at the time. Flynn, who resigned on Feb. 13, 2017, has since pleaded guilty in the special counsel’s Russia investigation to making false statements to the FBI.  But newly unredacted portions of a report from the House Intelligence Committee show that FBI leaders faced a “conundrum” about how to proceed with the Flynn investigation. The report cites testimony provided by both Comey and McCabe regarding Flynn. Comey testified in March 2017 “that he authorized the closure of the [counterintelligence] investigation into General Flynn by late December 2016,” according to the report. “However, the investigation was kept open due to the public discrepancy surrounding General Flynn’s communications with Ambassador Kislyak.” McCabe testified that he was not aware that the closure of the Flynn investigation was “imminent” as of late 2016. But he told House Intel in a Dec. 19, 2017 interview that the FBI “really had not substantiated anything particularly significant against General Flynn.” Flynn and three other Trump campaign associates — George Papadopoulos, Carter Page, and Paul Manafort — were subjects in the FBI’s counterintelligence probe at the time.

6am – C         A cockroach crawled into a Florida woman’s ear. It took nine days to get it out. (Washington Post) —  Katie Holley was jolted awake by a cold thing — what she had initially thought was a small piece of ice that somehow slid down her left ear. Disoriented, she rushed to the bathroom, grabbed a cotton swab and slowly stuck it inside her ear. And then Holley felt something move. It was like a “rhythmic” movement, she recalled, as if whatever that thing was was trying to burrow deeper into her ear canal. She pulled out the cotton swab and saw small, dark brown pieces that looked like legs. Cockroaches have been a nuisance in the Holley household since she and her husband, Jordan, bought their first home last year, she wrote in Self magazine this week. They thrive in warm and damp places, and that includes Florida, where the young couple live and where cockroaches called palmetto bugs are most common. Households in warm cities, such as New Orleans, Houston and Atlanta, report more problems with cockroaches than much of the country. A few weeks earlier, an exterminator sprayed every room inside the couple’s house in Melbourne, Fla., and Holley felt what turned out to be a very temporary sense of relief. That morning of April 14, around 1:45 a.m., Jordan Holley rushed to the bathroom to help his panicking wife, grabbed a flashlight and looked inside her ear. And there it was, a small part still visible from the outside as it stayed there, lodged in the middle of the ear canal. Jordan Holley managed to pull out a couple of legs using a pair of tweezers, but the intrepid bug had crawled too deep.

6am – D         INTERVIEW — HANS VON SPAKOVSKY —  former counsel to the assistant attorney general for civil rights in the Justice Department, former commissioner for the Federal Election Commission from 2006 to 2007 and senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation

• HANS VON SPAKOVSKY: Rudy Giuliani Is Right: Settlement With Stormy Daniels Didn’t Violate Campaign Finance Law
• ROSIE O’DONNELL BROKE FEC LAWS: Rosie O’Donnell made illegally over-sized campaign donations to at least five Democratic federal candidates, according to a Post analysis of campaign filings. The liberal comedian has regularly broken Federal Election Commission rules limiting the total any one person can give to an individual candidate at $2,700 per election. The limit applies separately to primaries, runoffs and general elections.

6am – E         2 F.B.I. Officials, Once Key Advisers to Comey, Leave the Bureau. (NY Times) — WASHINGTON — Two top F.B.I. aides who worked alongside the former director James B. Comey as he navigated one of the most politically tumultuous periods in the bureau’s history resigned on Friday. One of them, James A. Baker, was one of Mr. Comey’s closest confidants. He served as the F.B.I.’s top lawyer until December when he was reassigned as the new director, Christopher A. Wray, began installing his own advisers. Mr. Baker had been investigated by the Justice Department on suspicion of sharing classified information with reporters. He has not been charged. The other aide, Lisa Page, advised Mr. Comey while serving directly under his deputy, Andrew G. McCabe. She was assailed by conservatives after texts that she had exchanged with the agent overseeing the investigation into links between President Trump’s campaign and Russia were made public. In the messages, they expressed anti-Trump views but took aim at Hillary Clinton and other political figures as well. The decisions by Mr. Baker and Ms. Page to leave the bureau were unrelated. Mr. Baker said in a telephone interview that he would be joining the Brookings Institution to write for Lawfare, its blog focused on national security law.

6am – F         SPORTS NEWS:

• NATS: Scherzer fans 15, Nationals score 2 in 9th to beat Phils 5-4. (WTOP) — Max Scherzer struck out 15 in only 6 1/3 innings, and the Washington Nationals then rallied for two runs in the ninth to beat the Philadelphia Phillies 5-4 Sunday.
• CAPS: Penguins-Capitals Game 5: Washington wins, 6-3, and Caps have two chances to clinch series (Washington Post) Game 5: Washington Capitals 6, Pittsburgh Penguins 3 / Series: Capitals lead 3-2
• Next game: Monday, 7 p.m. ET, PPG Paints Arena
• Washington Capitals one win away from ending playoff curse (NBC Washington) — Could the curse finally be coming to an end? The Washington Capitals defeated the Pittsburgh Penguins 6-3 on Saturday night to take a 3-2 series lead, putting the two-time defending Stanley Cup champs on the brink of playoff elimination and putting the Capitals on the brink of ending a curse that has plagued them for over two decades. The Penguins are 9-1 all-time against the Capitals in the playoffs, including winning the past seven encounters dating back to 1995. Most recently, the Capitals have been shown the door in consecutive seasons in the second round by the Penguins, this  despite the Capitals owning a superior regular season record. This time, the Capitals might actually prove their worth.
• NHL TELLS PLAYER TO STOP LICKING OPPONENTS: For the second time this postseason Boston Bruins forward Brad Marchand was caught licking the face of an opposing player. The latest incident happened during the Bruins’ 4-3 overtime loss to the Tampa Bay Lightning on Friday night when he was involved in an altercation with Ryan Callahan following a low-bridge hit that resulted in Marchand … well … licking him.

 

7am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia

• Trump won’t testify in ‘bad faith’ Mueller probe: DiGenova
• Federal judge harshly rebukes Mueller team during a hearing for Manafort, suggests they lied about scope of investigation, are seeking “unfettered power” and more interested in bringing down POTUS
• Alan Dershowitz: John Kerry would be violating the Logan Act if it was enforced
• Giuliani: ‘Nobody Seems to Care’ That Kerry is ‘Violating the Logan Act’
• Rep. Devin Nunes says he’ll push to hold Jeff Sessions in contempt
• 2 F.B.I. Officials, Once Key Advisers to Comey, Leave the Bureau

7am – D         JOHN MCCAIN NEWS:

• McCain planning his funeral: NY TIMES: At His Ranch, John McCain Shares Memories and Regrets With Friends:  As he battles brain cancer and the debilitating side effects of his aggressive treatment, Mr. McCain himself is reckoning with his history and the future, as he and a stream of friends share memories and say what needs to be said.
• McCain doesn’t want Trump at funeral, friends tell White House
• John McCain regrets choosing Sarah Palin as 2008 running mate over Joe Lieberman

7am – E         FARTBOX, UMORON, IFRTD; All 1,524 license plates denied by the DMV in 2017. LYNCHBURG, Va. (WSET) — In Virginia, when you buy a new car, you have the option of paying for a personalized license plate. But, just because you request something, doesn’t mean it’s going to be allowed. The DMV has shared a list of all of the personalized plate requests that were rejected in 2017. In total, 1,524 of them were denied.

 

8am – A         SNL JOKES ABOUT STORMY AND KANYE:

• Stormy Daniels tells SNL’s Trump to resign in surprise appearance: “A storm’s a comin’”
• Kanye West Gives Emoji-Filled Response To ‘SNL’ Spoof On ‘A Quiet Place’

8am – B/C     INTERVIEW — SCOTT ALLEN – Sports reporter, Washington Post – reported on the latest about the Nats and Caps.

8am – D         JOHN KERRY’S SHADOW DIPLOMACY: Kerry is quietly seeking to salvage Iran deal he helped craft

8am – E         TRUMP TWEETS TODAY:

• Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: The 13 Angry Democrats in charge of the Russian Witch Hunt are starting to find out that there is a Court System in place that actually protects people from injustice…and just wait ‘till the Courts get to see your unrevealed Conflicts of Interest!
• Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: The Russia Witch Hunt is rapidly losing credibility. House Intelligence Committee found No Collusion, Coordination or anything else with Russia. So now the Probe says OK, what else is there? How about Obstruction for a made up, phony crime.There is no O, it’s called Fighting Back
• Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: My highly respected nominee for CIA Director, Gina Haspel, has come under fire because she was too tough on Terrorists. Think of that, in these very dangerous times, we have the most qualified person, a woman, who Democrats want OUT because she is too tough on terror. Win Gina!
• Donald J. Trump @realDonaldTrump: To the great people of West Virginia we have, together, a really great chance to keep making a big difference. Problem is, Don Blankenship, currently running for Senate, can’t win the General Election in your State…No way! Remember Alabama. Vote Rep. Jenkins or A.G. Morrisey!