RUTHFULLY YOURS

President Donald Trump’s National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster has reportedly concluded that former Obama official Susan Rice did nothing wrong by unmasking the identities of Trump transition officials in conversations with Russian officials.

Two United States intelligence officials told Bloomberg’s Eli Lake that McMaster has concluded that Rice did nothing wrong.

That assertion is at odds with Trump’s thinking, as he repeatedly raised the Rice story during speeches and media interviews.

“I think the Susan Rice thing is a massive story,” Trump said in an interview with the New York Times, suggesting that it was possible that she may have committed a crime.

On April 12, Trump used the story to defend his accusations that the Obama administration was spying and leaking on his transition team in an interview with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo.
“When you look at Susan Rice and what’s going on and so many people are coming up to me and apologizing now,” Trump said. “They say, ‘You know, you were right when you said that.’”

When Bartiromo told Trump that Rice denied doing anything political, he dismissed it.

“Does anyone really believe that?” he said. “Nobody believes that, even the people that try to protect her in the news media.”House Intelligence Committee Chairman Rep. Devin Nunes continues to investigate the hundreds of unmasking requests from former Obama officials, including those of former deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes.

In Federalist 10, James Madison observes:

As long as the reason of man continues fallible, and he is at liberty to exercise it, different opinions will be formed.

Indeed. The ordinary business of life provides a good illustration of what Madison was talking about. And when we come to politics, it’s not just human fallibility that is at issue. There is also the operation of what Madison calls “self-love,” and “the diversity in the faculties of men, from which the rights of property originate.” It may be that “[t]he protection of these faculties is the first object of government,” as Madison argued, but the diversity of interests means that there will always be a diversity of opinions — i.e., conflict.

These are truisms, I know, and I utter them as a preliminary to mentioning something that puzzles me. Granted, people disagree about many things. Granted, too, that in the realm of politics our own interests propel us to applaud certain courses of action and deprecate others. Still, I have been amazed by the discrepancy of opinions about Donald Trump’s presidency.

It’s not, I hasten to add, the fact of the discrepancy that puzzles me, but its global, all-encompassing quality.

I think I first became fully conscious of this phenomenon in the aftermath of Trump’s inauguration speech. The speech that I heard seemed to be toto genere different from the speech that NeverTrumpers, on the Right as well as on the Left, heard. Writing for the Financial Times, I described the speech as “gracious but plain-speaking.” That did not go down well among the readers of FT.

Writing here at PJM, I listed some of the negative reactions to the speech. Typical was a column in the Chicago Tribune, which described it as “raw, angry and aggrieved,” “pugnacious in tone, pitch black in its color.”

Had we been listening to the same speech? Possibly, but the speech that we heard was different. I quoted a famous bit from The Tempest to illustrate the phenomenon. A few of the shipwrecked men are taking stock of their situation on Prospero’s enchanted island, and it soon becomes clear that the island appears very different to different characters:

ADRIAN: The air breathes upon us here most sweetly.

SEBASTIAN: As if it had lungs and rotten ones.

ANTONIO: Or as ’twere perfumed by a fen.

GONZALO: Here is everything advantageous to life.

ANTONIO: True; save means to live.

SEBASTIAN: Of that there’s none, or little.

GONZALO: How lush and lusty the grass looks! how green!

ANTONIO: The ground indeed is tawny.

SEBASTIAN: With an eye of green in’t.

ANTONIO: He misses not much.

SEBASTIAN: No; he doth but mistake the truth totally.

The question is, of course, who is right, the cheery Gonzalo or his shipmates?

Having once been an active and paid-up member of the anti-Trump brigade, I understand that there are many things to criticize about Donald Trump. I have on several occasions explained why I changed my mind. It boils down to two things: Hillary Clinton on the negative side of the equation, and Trump’s agenda on the positive side.

I think that Clinton would have been a disaster for the country. I would have voted for the Cairn terrier who lives across the street before voting for her. But the more I heard about what Trump wanted to do — about taxes, about immigration, about the U.S. military, about regulation, and about many other things — the more I liked it. CONTINUE AT SITE

The U.S. Senate approved several top Treasury officials on Thursday, giving the administration’s tax, regulatory and international financial diplomacy agendas a boost.

Among the five senior Treasury officials given the green light are former Bear-Stearns chief economist David Malpass to represent the U.S. Treasury as its top financial diplomat; David Kautter as assistant secretary for tax policy; and Christopher Campbell, a former Republican Senate Finance Committee staffer, to be assistant secretary for financial institutions.

The Senate also approved Andrew Maloney as Treasury deputy undersecretary for legislative affairs and Brent McIntosh as the department’s general counsel.

Mr. Malpass, as Treasury’s undersecretary for international affairs, will act as the administration’s key advocate for dealing with sensitive issues such as exchange rates and cross-border rifts over financial regulation, including at the G-7 and G-20.

Mr. Kautter, a veteran accountant and lawyer, will head the team of experts who are helping shape and analyze the details of the tax bill that Republicans want to push through Congress this year. He will also oversee the administration’s efforts to lighten the burden of tax regulations. Earlier this year, Treasury listed eight Obama-era tax regulations it was considering changing or ending. Those include a rule limiting companies from using internal cross-border debt to lower their tax bills.

Mr. Campbell would play a critical role coordinating and advancing the administration’s regulatory agenda, including easing or rolling back provisions of the 2010 Dodd-Frank law, as well as its plans for a major rewrite of the U.S. tax code.

A former senior official in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations, Mr. Malpass has long been critical of global trade agreements and multilateral financial institutions that represent the backbone of world economic diplomacy.

Former colleagues say that while Mr. Malpass might try to downsize the role that the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and other international institutions play, he will still use Washington’s dominant power within them to advance its interests.

Espousing an “America First” policy platform, the administration is pushing multilateral institutions to operate more efficiently and speak more vocally against imbalances in the global economy, such as those caused by capital controls and currency interventions.

Mr. Malpass will take office at a delicate time for U.S. diplomatic relations, both economic and strategic. The administration’s threats to levy higher tariffs, ignore some World Trade Organization rulings, and focus on what administration officials have called “economic nationalism,” has fueled worries Washington could spark a trade war, including among longtime allies. While Mr. Malpass is considered more of an internationalist than some key administration officials, he too has been sharply critical of many of the international institutions he will now have to engage to leverage U.S. power.

Mr. Malpass faced a relatively smooth nomination through the Senate, though two lawmakers voted against his approval out of the finance committee. Sens. Sherrod Brown (D., Ohio) objected to his views on financial regulations enacted by Congress in the wake of the 2008 crisis while Robert Menendez, (D., N.J.), expressed concerns about his statements in the lead-up to the recession.

Barack and Michelle Obama have snapped up the 1920s brick house they were renting in the posh Washington, D.C., neighborhood of Kalorama for $8.1 million.

The former president and his family plan to spend at least another two-and -a-half-years in the nation’s capital, said Kevin Lewis, spokesman to the Obamas.

“It made sense for them to buy a home rather than continuing to rent,” Mr. Lewis said in an email confirming the purchase.

The Obamas have been living in the 8,200-square-foot home since leaving the White House in January. Mr. Obama, 55, has said in the past that the family intends to stay in Washington, D.C., until their youngest daughter, Sasha, finishes school.

The house was renovated in 2011, includes up to nine bedrooms, eight-and-a-half bathrooms, a finished basement with room for staff, an oversized terrace and formal gardens, according to a former listing with Washington Fine Properties. There’s also a two-car garage plus ample parking for a Secret Service detail in a gated courtyard that can fit eight to 10 cars.

The sellers, Joe Lockhart, Glover Park Group co-founder, and his wife, Giovanna Gray Lockhart, the Washington editor of Glamour, bought the home in 2014 for $5.3 million, according to property records.

Kalorama is a popular spot for D.C. elite. Mr. Obama’s neighbors include top adviser to President Donald Trump Jared Kushner and his wife, Mr. Trump’s daughter Ivanka Trump, as well as Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.

The Washington Post first reported the sale.

Imran Awan was arrested at Dulles International Airport July 24, while attempting to board a flight to Pakistan. For more than a decade the congressional staffer had worked under top House Democrats, and he had just been accused by the FBI of bank fraud.

It was a dramatic moment in a saga that started in February, when Capitol Police confirmed an investigation into Mr. Awan and his family on separate accusations of government theft. The details are tantalizing: The family all worked for top Democrats, were paid huge sums, and had access to sensitive congressional data, even while having ties to Pakistan.

The media largely has ignored the affair, the ho-hum coverage summed up by a New York Times piece suggesting it may be nothing more than an “overblown Washington story, typical of midsummer.” But even without evidence of espionage or blackmail, this ought to be an enormous scandal.

Because based on what we already know, the Awan story is—at the very least—a tale of massive government incompetence that seemingly allowed a family of accused swindlers to bilk federal taxpayers out of millions and even put national secrets at risk. In a more accountable world, House Democrats would be forced to step down.

Mr. Awan, 37, began working for House Democrats as an IT staffer in 2004. By the next year, he was working for future Democratic National Committee head Debbie Wasserman Schultz. Over time he would add his wife, two brothers, a brother’s wife and a friend to the payroll—and at handsome sums. One brother, Jamal, hired in 2014 reportedly at age 20, was paid $160,000. That’s in line with what a chief of staff makes—about four times the average Capitol Hill staffer. No Democrat appears to have investigated these huge numbers or been asked to account for them.

According to an analysis by the Daily Caller’s Luke Rosiak, who has owned this story, the family has collected $5 million since 2003 and “appeared at one time or another on an estimated 80 House Democrats’ payrolls.” Yet Mr. Rosiak interviewed House staffers who claim most of the family were “ghost” employees and didn’t come to work. Only in government does nobody notice when staffers fail to show up.

The family was plenty busy elsewhere. A litany of court documents accuse them of bankruptcy fraud, life-insurance fraud, tax fraud and extortion. Abid Awan, a brother, ran up more than $1 million in debts on a failed car dealership he somehow operated while supposedly working full time on the Hill. One document ties the family to a loan from a man stripped of his Maryland medical license after false billing. Capitol Police are investigating allegations of procurement fraud and theft. The brothers filed false financial-disclosure forms, with Imran Awan claiming his wife had no income, even as she worked as a fellow House IT staffer. CONTINUE AT SITE

The Russia election probe aside, President Trump has so far avoided any major foreign-policy mistakes. But he will commit an Obama -sized blunder if he overrules the advice of his generals who want a modest surge of forces and a new strategy in Afghanistan.

Mr. Trump had by all accounts agreed weeks ago to the Pentagon’s request for an additional 3,000-5,000 troops plus more aggressive use of air power and other assets. But he’s having second thoughts as he indulges his isolationist instincts fanned by aide Stephen Bannon. Mr. Trump’s decision will determine whether he’ll repeat Mr. Obama’s catastrophic 2011 withdrawal from Iraq, and it will echo among allies and adversaries for the rest of his Presidency.

Mr. Trump—like all Americans—is understandably frustrated that the Afghan war still isn’t won after 16 years and 2,400 American lives lost. Barack Obama undermined his own 2009 surge of troops with a fixed exit date, and then tried to time the departure of all U.S. troops to his own White House exit.

This told the Taliban to wait the U.S. out, and the insurgents have since regained much ground they lost during the surge. Mr. Obama recognized his mistake enough to keep 8,400 troops in the country, but he limited their duties mainly to training and pursuing Islamic State enclaves. We’re told there are only about a dozen F-16s in the country, and the Afghan military lacks crucial close-air support during Taliban engagements.

Mr. Trump has given his field commanders more freedom, and they can now pursue Taliban fighters. But the Afghan forces are still losing ground in much of the country and need more support. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s plan would inject U.S. advisers with Afghan battalions to assist on the battlefield.

The U.S. could also deploy some Apache attack helicopters to blunt Taliban advances, and close-air support and air evacuation assistance would give Afghan forces a dose of confidence. They’re certainly willing to fight, having lost 2,531 soldiers through May 8 this year alone, with 4,238 wounded. The U.S. has lost 10 soldiers in Afghanistan this year.

Mr. Mattis also needs a strategy for Pakistan, which provides a refuge for the Taliban and lethal Haqqani network. This may require cross-border U.S. military raids, ideally with Pakistani cooperation, but alone if necessary. Mr. Trump could help by naming an ambassador to Islamabad, and perhaps a special envoy like former General David Petraeus to all of the main regional players.

Mr. Trump is fond of saying around the White House that Afghanistan is “the graveyard of empires,” which might be relevant if the U.S. were running an empire. The U.S. is there at the request of a legitimate elected government and a population that doesn’t like the Taliban. A Trump troop mini-surge would be a crucial political signal to the Afghan government and regional players that we aren’t bugging out.