Attention to the Unseen

John Dean writes: There is one overarching similarity that Mr. Cohen and I share. He came to understand and reject Mr. Trump as I did Mr. Nixon. Mr. Nixon first called on me regarding Watergate some eight months after the arrests of his re-election committee operatives at the Watergate. We had 37 conversations, and when I felt I had his confidence, I tried but failed to get him to end the cover-up. The day I told Mr. Nixon there was…

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Natasha Bertrand writes: The frenzy over the reportedly imminent release of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s final report—a rumor shot down within days by the Justice Department—had barely subsided when House Democrats announced that they’d snagged the witness of the year to testify in public: President Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. His appearance on Wednesday before the House Oversight Committee was a day-long spectacle that didn’t disappoint—Cohen testified that Trump had foreknowledge of WikiLeaks’ plans to release embarrassing Democratic…

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The Washington Post reports: House investigators are demanding that the White House turn over documents related to the security clearances of top officials by Monday, an escalation of a fight between congressional Democrats and the Trump administration that could lead to subpoenas in the coming days. The move follows the revelation that President Trump interceded to give his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance despite concerns from intelligence and White House officials about Kushner’s contacts with foreign individuals and…

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Amy Hawthorne and Andrew Miller write: Consumed by domestic politics, exhausted by the Middle East, and complacent about the stability of Arab allies, Washington has stopped paying close attention to Egypt. But something alarming is happening in the most populous Arab country and a key U.S. security partner: President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi is moving Egypt closer toward totalitarianism than strongman Hosni Mubarak ever did and, in the process, laying the groundwork for more instability in a region that has already…

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The New York Times reports: President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said. Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he…

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Jeffrey Lewis writes: As President Trump flew to Hanoi this week, White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders had a surprise announcement: Trump and Kim would meet earlier than expected, at a dinner on the first evening. The late announcement led skeptics to describe the dinner as an attempt to overshadow Michael Cohen’s embarrassing testimony about his work for Trump. But the last-minute dinner raised unexpected challenges. The two sides apparently struggled over the menu, with the White House pressing for…

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