Mornings on the Mall

Monday, February 17, 2020

Hosts: Mary Walter and Vince Coglianese

Executive Producer: Heather Hunter

Joe diGenova, Lt. Tony Shaffer, Craig Shirley, and Andrew McCarthy joined WMAL on Monday!

5am – A/B/C/D/E BEST OF SHOW

6am – A/B/C LEGAL NEWS:

• McCABE OFF THE HOOK: In addition, there are growing indications that the Justice Department had lost confidence in the U.S. attorney who was overseeing the probe, Jesse Liu. As I noted this week, while Liu was once seen as a rising Trump administration star, she was quietly edged out of her post last month, and the White House just pulled her nomination to fill an important Treasury Department post. There have been rumblings that the McCabe investigation was botched. Kamil Shields, a prosecutor who reportedly grew frustrated by her supervisors’ inordinate delays in making decisions about the McCabe probe, ultimately left the Justice Department to take a private-practice job. Another prosecutor, David Kent, quit last summer as DOJ dithered over the decision on whether to prosecute. Things became so drawn out that the investigating grand jury’s term lapsed. Meanwhile, the Justice Department endorsed Liu’s aggressive decision to bring a thin, politically fraught false-statements case against former Obama White House counsel Greg Craig, in connection with lobbying for a foreign country — the sort of crime that is rarely prosecuted. Craig was swiftly acquitted. Reportedly, Liu advocated charging McCabe, but the DOJ may have harbored doubts about her judgment.
• DOJ TAPS OUTSIDE PROSECUTOR TO REVIEW FLYNN CASE: A senior Justice Department official told Fox News on Friday that Jeff Jensen, the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri, has been assigned to Flynn’s case. Jensen will be working hand-in-hand with the lead prosecutor of Flynn case, Brandon Van Grack, according to the official.
• VINDMAN OFF THE HOOK: Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy made the announcement at an event just days after President Donald Trump said he imagined the military would “take a look at” whether Vindman should face disciplinary action for the “horrible things” he told House investigators about the president’s phone call with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky last July.

6am – D         TELEMUNDO Reporter Stumps KLOBUCHAR, STEYER By Simply Asking Who The President Of Mexico Is…

• KLOBUCHAR Doesn’t Know: The full Telemundo interview w/ Klobuchar is tougher. Good on Guadalupe Venegas for pressing. GV: Do you, I’m sorry to ask this, but do you know who he is? Do you know his name? AK: Yeah, yeah— I know that he is the Mexican president. GV: But can you tell me his name? AK: No.
• VENEGAS kicks her one more time…     ALEX THOMPSON: Here’s the end: GV: just one final question. How do you plan to win the support of the Hispanic vote in NV and the whole southwest if you can’t tell me who the president of Mexico is?….. AK: Because my heart is with the people of this country and my heart is with immigrants…
• STEYER Doesn’t Know  ALEX THOMPSON: Steyer at least knew that AMLO was head of Mexico City’s govt. but his interview isn’t much better GV: I’m asking b/c I feel like a lot of the times, this is our neighbor to the south and a lot of ppl don’t even know his name. So you know? You know his name? TS: I forget
• BUTTIGIEG Knows:  when Pete tells him who the Mexican president it, Venegas just goes: “you’re the only one whose been able to tell me that today.”

6am – E         ‘Forced To Make At-Large Arrests’: Trump Admin Deploying Border Patrol Tactical Units To Sanctuary Cities Across The Country. (Daily Caller) – The Trump administration is deploying an elite unit of the Border Patrol, including 100 Customs and Border Protection (CBP) officers, to assist Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) apprehend illegal aliens in sanctuary cities. Members of the Border Patrol Tactical Unit (BORTAC) will be helping ICE officers arrest illegal aliens living at large in sanctuary cities, a spokesman for Customs and Border Protection, Lawrence Payne, confirmed to the Daily Caller News Foundation on Saturday. BORTAC officers — considered the SWAT team of the Border Patrol — are specially trained for high-risk operations and typically execute operations against violent targets.

6am – F         RECLINING CHAIR ON A PLANE DRAMA:

• A viral video has sparked a conversation online about the etiquette involved in reclining one’s airline seat.  The clip with more than 2 million views showed a man punching and pushing the back of the reclined seat of another passenger on an American Airlines flight. In a statement, the airline said it was “looking into the issue.  The safety and comfort of our customers and team members is our top priority.” Wendy Williams, the recliner, says the airline defended the man who punched her seat and handed her a “passenger disturbance notice” when she refused to stop filming on her cellphone.
• American Airlines passenger in seat recliner controversy wants to press charges, flight attendant fired

7am – A/B/C INTERVIEW – JOE DIGENOVA – legal analyst and former U.S. Attorney to the District of Columbia – discussed McCabe, Vindman, Flynn and the Anonymous author.

7am – D         INTERVIEW – LT COL TONY SHAFFER – a CIA trained former senior intelligence officer and president of the London Center for Policy Research – discussed the Taliban deal.

• US, Taliban reach truce agreement calling for ‘reduction in violence.’ American and Taliban officials have agreed Friday to sign a truce agreement that will see a seven-day “reduction in violence” in Afghanistan, in addition to possible U.S. troop withdrawals. A source familiar with the discussions told Fox News that the U.S. is hoping to sign the agreement by the end of the month in Doha, Qatar, where special envoy for Afghanistan Zalmay Khalilzad and Taliban representatives have been meeting. The agreement, according to a senior U.S. official who spoke to reporters Friday, calls for a “very specific” stoppage of violence and covers the entire country, including Afghan forces. A Taliban official familiar with the deal said the withdrawal of foreign troops would start gradually and would be phased over 18 months. The developments come as U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Mark Esper met Friday in Munich with Afghanistan’s President Ashraf Ghani. They spoke on the sidelines of an international security forum in Munich.

7am – E         Angry former Seattle punk rocker sings to save the city’s trees. (KOMO News) – SEATTLE – A pioneering Seattle punk rocker is still angry after all these years. Just as she did back in the 1970s, she’s expressing her rage in song. Suzanne Grant has become a familiar face in City Council chambers, as she urges the councilmembers to update an ordinance protecting the city’s legacy of big trees. She notes these are the very trees city dwellers depend on to scrub carbon from the atmosphere. “It’s really important that we save the trees in our urban forest, if we want to save ourselves,” Grant said. Forty years ago, Grant was angry for a living. She sang in one of Seattle’s first punk bands, The Enemy. This week, she recaptured some of that punk rage with a new song called A Hole In The Sky. The title refers to what’s left when developers cut down the city’s grandest old trees, seemingly with the blessing of city leaders. The chorus goes: There’s a hole in the sky where the tree once was – somebody’s making money. Joined by a group of fellow tree activists, Grant belted out the tune at a council committee meeting. Laws protect exceptional trees, but the city grants exemptions to these! Grant was inspired, enraged really, by the removal of an exceptional tree – that’s a legal designation – from her Queen Anne neighborhood when she wasn’t there to object. “I came home and I was just so angry, I was so mad about it,” Grant said. “And after fighting for two years to save it.” The 90-year old tulip tree came down in December to make way for new homes. Grant and her fellow activists believe the city favors developers, who would rather remove exceptional trees than creatively build around them.

8am – A         INTERVIEW – CRAIG SHIRLEY – historian and author of the new book “Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother”

• TOPIC: For Presidents’ Day, we’ll reflect on the woman who created one of our greatest presidents
• ABOUT BOOK: Mary Ball Washington: The Untold Story of George Washington’s Mother: Mary’s influence on George was twofold. Though she raised her eldest son to become one of the world’s greatest leaders, Mary also tried many times to hold him back. While she passed down her strength and individuality to George, she also sought to protect him from the risks he needed to take to become a daring general and president. But it was this resistance itself which fanned the spark of George’s independence into a flame. The constant tug of war between the two throughout the early years helped define George’s character. In Mary Ball Washington, New York Times bestselling author Craig Shirley uncovers startling details about the inner workings of the Washington family. He vividly brings to life a resilient widow who singlehandedly raised six children and ran a large farm at a time when most women’s duties were relegated to household matters. Throughout, Shirley compares and contrasts mother and son, illuminating the qualities they shared and the differences that divided them. A significant contribution to American history, Mary Ball Washington is the definitive take on the relationship between George and Mary Washington, offering fresh insight into this extraordinary figure who would shape our nation—and the woman who shaped him.

8am – B/C     TRUMP VISITS NASCAR:

• NASCAR Fans Cheer Loudly as Air Force 1 Touches Down at Daytona
• Trump and Melania make spectacular arrival at Daytona 500 with Air Force One flyover
• President tells drivers to ‘start your engines,’ takes lap in ‘Beast’; race later postponed due to rain
• Trump greeted with applause, cheers from NASCAR fans upon arrival at Daytona 500
• Trump buzzing the entire Daytona 500 with Air Force One.
• The crowd at the DAYTONA500 welcomes President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump with chants of “Four More Years” and “USA!”
• Trump addressing the #Daytona500 audience pre-race to raucous applause -> “My fellow race fans, there is no greater thrill than to join you at the World Center of Racing for the 620nd second Daytona 500 — so exciting!”
• President Trump at DAYTONA500: “For 500, heart-pounding miles, these fierce competitors will chase the checkered flag, fight for the Harley J. Earl trophy and make their play for pure American glory and that is what it is pure American glory.”

8am – D         INTERVIEW – Andrew McCarthy is a contributing editor of National Review and author of “Ball of Collusion”

• DOJ drops probe into former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. “It is an absolute disgrace that they took two years and put my family through this experience,” McCabe said Friday.
• Andrew McCarthy: Why wasn’t Andrew McCabe charged? (By Andrew McCarthy | Fox News) — The Justice Department announced Friday that it is closing its investigation of Andrew McCabe, the FBI’s former deputy director, over his false statements to investigators probing an unauthorized leak that McCabe had orchestrated. McCabe was fired in March 2018, shortly after a blistering Justice Department inspector general (IG) report concluded that he repeatedly and blatantly lied — or, as the Bureau lexicon puts it, “lacked candor” — when questioned, including under oath. Why not indict McCabe on felony false-statements charges? That is the question being pressed by incensed Trump supporters. After all, the constitutional guarantee of equal justice under the law is supposed to mean that McCabe gets the same quality of justice afforded to the sad sacks pursued with unseemly zeal by McCabe’s FBI and Robert Mueller’s prosecutors. George Papadopoulos was convicted of making a trivial false statement about the date of a meeting. Roger Stone was convicted of obstruction long after the special counsel knew there was no Trump–Russia conspiracy, even though his meanderings did not impede the investigation in any meaningful way. And in the case of Michael Flynn’s false-statements conviction, as McCabe himself acknowledged to the House Intelligence Committee, even the agents who interviewed him did not believe he intentionally misled them. I emphasize Flynn’s intent because purported lack of intent is McCabe’s principal defense, too. Even McCabe himself, to say nothing of his lawyers and his apologists in the anti-Trump network of bureaucrats-turned-pundits, cannot deny that he made false statements to FBI agents and the IG. Rather, they argue that the 21-year senior law-enforcement official did not mean to lie, that he was too distracted by his high-level responsibilities to focus on anything as mundane as a leak — even though he seemed pretty damned focused on the leak while he was orchestrating it.