From Director Fartin’ Scorscuzzy

From Daily Beast:

When President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani appeared on cable news programs last week, he deflected questions about his work in Ukraine and instead hammered home one talking point over and over again: The State Department knew he was trying to dig up dirt on 2020 presidential candidate Joe Biden and his son Hunter.

Giuliani waved his phone on air, flashing text messages between himself and State Department representatives and saying it was the department that connected him to a close adviser to Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. Giuliani’s on-air appearances threw the department into a tizzy, forcing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to try to put a lid on the crisis of confidence bubbling up under him, according to three senior U.S. officials. For Pompeo, solving the problem meant finding someone to blame—and there was only one individual who fit the mold, according to those same sources: Kurt Volker, former U.S. representative for Ukraine negotiations.

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King of the Bungle

From NBC News:

WASHINGTON — Republicans tried to take away Rep. Steve King’s platform — but he just won’t stop talking.

…snip…

“What if we went back through all the family trees and just pulled those people out that were products of rape and incest? Would there be any population of the world left if we did that?” King said in remarks supporting abortion bans that do not make exceptions for cases of rape and incest, according to video posted online by The Des Moines Register.

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Junior folds like one of his father’s cheap suits

From THE HILL:

Donald Trump Jr. has struck a last-minute deal to comply with a subpoena from the Senate Intelligence Committee.

The two sides have been at odds over the length and scope of the interview, raising questions about whether Trump Jr. would defy the subpoena and be held in contempt of Congress.

According to the terms of the deal, Trump Jr. will sit for an interview sometime in mid-June for between two and four hours, with the scope limited to five or six topics pertaining to his communications with Russian officials.

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Something stinks in Nebraska!

From SPLINTER:

This week, what began as an innocent Facebook like ended with Ari Kohen, an associate professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, filing a complaint with the Office of Congressional Ethics against Republican Rep. Jeff Fortenberry’s Chief of Staff for threatening him over the phone.

It all started when Kohen liked a Facebook post featuring a hilariously defaced campaign sign in which Fortenberry was given googly eyes and his name changed to “Fartenberry.” Kohen was one of 130 people who liked the post.

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Looking for lies in the White House is like looking for a needle in a needlestack

From THE HILL:

Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) said Thursday that President Trump should use lie-detector tests to find out which senior administration official authored an anonymous op-ed in The New York Times this week blasting the president.

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Duncan his toe in the grifter pool

(CNN) Republican Congressman Duncan Hunter and his wife, Margaret, routinely — and illegally — used campaign funds to pay personal bills big and small, from luxury vacations to kids’ school lunches and delinquent family dentistry bills, according to a stinging 47-page indictment unsealed Tuesday.

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Rep. Cam’s Dad (R-Swamp)

From CNBC:

Rep. Chris Collins‘ son and his son’s fiancee bought shares of an Australian biotech company just days before dumping the shares after the New York Republican allegedly tipped his son off about a failed clinical drug trial in a phone call from the White House lawn, the Securities and Exchange Commission said in a complaint.

Collins’ son, Cameron Collins, and the son’s accountant fiancee, Lauren Zarsky, had purchased the stock of Innate Immunotherapeutics in June 2017 because they believed — mistakenly, it turned out — that the trial of the company’s multiple sclerosis treatment would yield positive results, the SEC said in its complaint.

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