What's The Real 2024 Subtext?

A CNN op-ed from Julian Zelizer, a Princeton history professor, from last Friday asks some productive questions about Trump's so-far highly successful 2024 candidacy:

Following Trump’s strong showing in the New Hampshire primary, which has effectively knocked his final opponent — former UN Ambassador Nikki Haley — out of the race, some of his critics continue to search for slivers of good news.

They point to the fact that despite “almost” being an incumbent, he didn’t receive a share of the vote on par with what previous incumbents have encountered in primary contests. Incumbents usually bring to the table unequaled name recognition, fund-raising capacity and the benefit of looking presidential as they run for reelection. Trump has most of this, with his supporters holding on to the memory of him in the Oval Office, and with many of his backers believing he literally won the presidency in 2020, yet Haley pulled a decent part of the electorate away from him.

The ambiguity of Trump's quasi-incumbent status is generally acknowledged, not least by Joe Biden himself over the weekend:

While giving an economic speech to voters in South Carolina, Biden stated, “Did you see what he recently said about. . . he wants to see the economy crash this year? A Sitting President.”

Prof Zelizer come close to the point when he notes that many of Trump's backers believe he literally won the election. On the other hand, I think it's more accurate to say they'll sign on to the idea that the election was "stolen". The connotation of the word goes far beyond any literal definition of a property crime; definition 3 for "steal" in this on line dictionary is "to take or gain insidiously or artfully", as in "he stole her heart" or "she stole the spotlight".

Wikipedia continues to characterize Trump's insistence that the 2020 election was "stolen" as a "conspiracy theory":

As of June 2021, Trump has continued to echo the conspiracy theory that the election was "stolen"; particularly focusing on the efforts of Arizona Senate Republicans to audit the results of the election in Maricopa County and on a lawsuit disputing the results of the election in Georgia.

But even absent proof of electoral fraud sufficient to overturn ballot results, the use of the word "stolen" outside a specific legal context isn't a conspiracy theory; it's no more of a big lie than to claim an umpire is blind or someone can't organize a two-car funeral, when after all, if we check the facts, he quite possibly can, and for that matter, the umpire can see perfecly well.

The fact is that since 2020, the American public has seen a sequence of stories from establishment opinionmakers that have been, at minimum, hinky, ranging from COVID and its multifold subsidiary embargoes that have proven unnecessary and destructive; to George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, and "mostly peaceful protests"; to January 6 and the many unanswered questions about government provocateurs, deliberately withheld National Guard troops, and mysteriously unexploded pipe bombs.

If there was an effort to conceal from the public the simple question of whether Joe Biden was actually capable of performing in the chief executive role, the metaphorical use of the word "stolen" is entirely appropriate. Biden's increasingly visible struggle just to handle the basics of his job -- for whatever reason -- is a major 2024 issue:

The most pressing political challenge confronting President Joe Biden as he drifts uncontested toward renomination is that which he can do the least about: voters’ profound misgivings about his age and fitness to serve another full term.

Yet what’s striking, and to his allies increasingly unnerving, is Biden’s unwillingness even to try to fully address questions about his capacity to run for reelection next year, when he’ll turn 82.

There's been a mostly unexpressed misgiving over the past four years that Biden was misrepresented, both as a capable executive and as a unifying figure, in the 2020 election, with the outcome "stolen" in the metaphorical sense beyond any need to prove specific electoral fraud. Nor can this misgiving be dismissed as just a conspiracy theory; thre's a significant feeling of discomfort about Biden's occupancy in the White House that 's reflected in a desire, if not to reverse the 2020 election outright, at least to do it over.

This is what's behind the ambiguity in Trump's status as a quasi-incumbent, a sense that if he wasn't duly elected in 2020, by all indications, he should have been, and the 2024 election will be a do-over.

By The Way, Where Is The DC Circuit Court?

Remember this?

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit heard oral arguments Jan. 9 on Trump's broad claim of presidential immunity in the federal election interference case brought by special counsel Jack Smith[.]

This in turn happened because Trump's lawers filed an appeal to the DC Circuit on the basis that a US president is immune from prosecution for official acts while in office. Smith filed a plea with the US Supreme Court asking it to rule immediately on the issue, but the court declined to hear the case before the appeals court ruled. This was generally felt to be a threat to Smith's schedule to begin Trump's January 6 trial on March 4, the day before the Super Tuesday primaries:

The ruling is a scheduling win for Trump and his lawyers, who have sought repeatedly to delay the criminal cases against him as he campaigns to reclaim the White House in 2024. It averts a swift ruling from the nation’s highest court that could have definitively turned aside his claims of immunity, and it further throws into doubt the possibility of the landmark trial proceeding as scheduled on March 4.

The issue will now be decided by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, which has signaled it will act quickly to decide the case. Special counsel Jack Smith had cautioned that even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break.

Smith had pressed the Supreme Court to intervene, citing significant public interest in a prompt resolution to the case. The request to leapfrog the appeals court, which Smith himself acknowledged was “extraordinary,” also underscored prosecutors’ concerns that the fight over the issue could delay the start of Trump’s trial beyond next year’s presidential election.

But although the DC Circuit had indicated it would review the case quickly, three weeks after it heard oral arguments, there's been no decision. Even if it rules over the coming week, it will put the tentative March 4 start date for the trial just a little over four weeks away, giving Trump's attorneys grounds to have the trial postponed, epecially since Judge Chutkan was forced to reiterate that no pretrial work could take place while the case was on appeal. So what's going on?

[L]egal analyst Harry Litman was among many experts who had expected a decision by now.

"The delay in the D.C. circuit opinion on immunity is worrisome not just, and not even primarily, because of the passage of days," Litman said. "It’s more because it augurs a divided (Henderson writing separately?) or complicated rationale that could lead to additional delays."

Litman was referring to Republican-appointed judge Karen Henderson, who raised the possibility during oral arguments that the case could be sent back to the trial court to analyze whether Trump's actions could be considered official acts as president — which could impact his immunity claim and possibly delay the trial that's scheduled to start in early March.

In other words, the lawfare strategy of starting a Trump January 6 trial the day before the Super Tuesday primaries was always flawed, and opinions I've read in the past suggest the idea of implementing the plan with indictments in mid-2023, expecting trials to begin before the 2024 election, much less the primary season, was expecting too much from the legal system and never realistic. The whole stretegy should have been put in motion at least a year ahead of 2023 if the Democrats expected it to succeed.

Coverage of Smith's December plea to the Supreme Court, as we see in the links here, carried the implication that Smith was expected to start the trial before Super Tuesday. Although his ability to do this is now seriously in question, even if he's able to bring it off, that part of the plan has been overtaken by events, since Trump effectively put the nomination out of reach for any other candidate in Iowa and New Hampshire, making any later primaries moot.

But observers like Mr Litman had probably been in denial from the time the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. Even if the DC Circuit resoundingly rejects Trump's immunity appeal -- indeed, even if it had done so the day after the January 9 oral arguments -- Trump's attorneys would simply have resumed their appeals, both to the DC Circuit en banc and then to the Supreme Court. As Jack Smith himself pointed out above, "even a rapid appellate decision might not get to the Supreme Court in time for review and final word before the court’s traditional summer break".

Thus at this point the January 6 case under Judge Chutkan, unlikely to begin on March 4 as hoped, is now also unlikely even to get to trial before the November election, by the prosecution's own estimate. This is just one blow to the lawfare strategy, which had initially been to damage Trump's chances in the primaries and promote the nomination of a general-election candidate whom the Democrats might find easier to defeat.

But this leaves aside the problem of the Fulton County trial, whose appearance of legitimacy has been largely destroyed via salacious allegations whatever the eventual outcome for DA Willis. Even here, the likely collapse of these two trials is just a symptom of a bigger set of factors that's giving Trump an advantage in 2024, which I'll go into tomorrow.

Trump Is Already Changing Things

The results of the Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary, having effectively decided the Republican nomination, seem to have changed political calculations within days, if not hours. The potential Senate compromise on the border is dead, not just in the House but in the Senate:

"The great Republican compromise is: ‘We’re for two-thirds of Joe Biden’s open borders, we’ll let in 6 million instead of 9 million,'” scoffed [Sen] Cruz.

“This [legislation] makes utterly no sense,” said Cruz. “There’s a reason Republican leadership is like Charlie Brown with Lucy and the football. Over and over again they run for the football and over and over again, Lucy Schumer pulls it away and Republican leadership lands on their ass.”

According to The Hill:

While some congressional Republicans had been hoping for a piece of election-year legislation aimed at fixing immigration and border security problems, Republican front-runner former President Trump is opposed, which means Senate Republicans are growing more hesitant. Trump’s push to kill the border deal to deny President Biden a legislative win is upsetting members on both sides of the aisle as negotiators hope to wrap up work on an agreement within days.

. . . Trump had been the sleeping giant in the background of talks, but his wins in Iowa and New Hampshire, coupled with his recent remarks calling for Republicans to oppose any border compromise, have complicated the path forward for the Senate.

Trump's view, as he's now in a position to weigh in as the likely nominee, has carried great influence in the House:

Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) said in a Friday letter to his colleagues that Senate legislation addressing the border and aid to Ukraine and other countries would have been “dead on arrival” in the House, if reports about its terms are true.

The letter follows separate signals from House leadership aides and conservatives in the House and Senate that the supplemental package has no future in the House, even if approved by the Senate.

. . . Former President Trump’s wins in the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary and his opposition to the border deal is a big part of the problem: Trump sees the package as not going far enough. He’s also said to want to use the border issue against President Biden in November.

The evidence of Trump's political strength has begun to disturb the Obama camp:

Insiders snitched that tensions between the two presidents recently exploded after irate Obama rushed to a secret meeting and confronted Biden about his fading chances to fend off surging Republican candidate Donald Trump in the upcoming November election.

"Obama read Joe the riot act," spilled a Beltway insider to the National Enquirer. "He told him to up his game or step aside for a candidate who can win the race."

. . . In desperation, sources said Obama bellowed at bumbling Biden to go on the attack — and make sure trusted aides are constantly by his side on the campaign trail to keep them from committing the disastrous gaffes that have defined his presidency.

His surrogate David Axelrod is ramping up his warnings:

On Thursday’s broadcast of NPR’s “Here and Now,” former Obama adviser David Axelrod stated that President Joe Biden does have to be “very aggressive” in addressing the “crisis” on the border and that he needs “real action steps, quickly, about how to stem the flow of immigrants. Because that is one of the symbols to people that things are out of control.”

It appears that the White House has at least been making minor adjustments in response:

National Security Council Senior Director for Transborder Issues Katie Tobin will leave the White House amid mounting criticism of the administration's border security policies.

Tobin has held the post for roughly three years and plans to return to Chicago to spend time with family, The Hill reported, citing White House foreign policy spokesman John Kirby.

"To spend more time with family" has always been code for for saying you've been fired. But this is nothing but a token move; he only meaningful change would be to fire Secretary Mayorkas. And there's no sign of a newly aggresssive stance from Joe himself; instead, Gavin Newsom is campaigning for him as a surrogate in South Carolina:

Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-CA) hit the campaign trail for President Joe Biden in South Carolina on Wednesday and Thursday, where he vouched for Biden’s mental fitness.

. . . As Politico California Bureau Chief Christopher Cadelago wrote, at an event in Allendale, South Carolina, Mayor James L. Cohen raised concerns to Newsom “about the ‘narrative’ that Biden is not mentally fit to stand for reelection.”

Cadelago later shared a video of Newsom’s answer to X. After stammering for a few seconds, Newsom vouched for Biden’s fitness for office, noting he and Biden have spent plenty of time together in recent years.

For now, though, it looks like Joe himself is checked out and not likely to take much interest in his campaign, while Trump is beginning to show savvy and initiative we didn't see in his first term.

Trump Asserts Control

Via Breitbart News,

The donor class began to cut off all future funding of former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s campaign after she lost the critical Republican primary in New Hampshire, multiple advisers to political megadonors told the Washington Post Wednesday.

The desertions represent the beginning of the end for Haley’s ability to remain in the race. Haley was the donor class’s choice candidate to block former President Donald Trump, but after his historic victories in Iowa and New Hampshire, Haley’s financial backers apparently see the writing on the wall.

The writing n the wall was from Trump himself:

"When I ran for Office and won, I noticed that the losing Candidate's 'Donors' would immediately come to me, and want to 'help out.'"

"This is standard in Politics, but no longer with me. Anybody that makes a 'Contribution' to Birdbrain, from this moment forth, will be permanently barred from the MAGA camp," Trump declared. "We don’t want them, and will not accept them, because we Put America First, and ALWAYS WILL!"

The word seems to be out that if you ever might consider getting on the Trump train, you'd better do it now, because that train is leaving the station. It appears that message has been delivered to Congress as well:

Inside a special closed-door Republican meeting on Wednesday, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., cast doubt on an emerging deal to tighten immigration laws, citing GOP opposition to its provisions and telling senators that linking the two measures could also sink Ukraine aid.

It represents a marked shift for the top Senate Republican, who has been pushing hard for a bipartisan deal to pass the border legislation and foreign aid bill together through the Democratic-led Senate and the Republican-led House.

“When we started this, the border united us and Ukraine divided us,” McConnell told his fellow Republicans, according to a source familiar with his remarks. “The politics on this have changed.”

The shift comes as Donald Trump, who has pushed congressional GOP members to kill the deal, marches to the Republican presidential nomination and as hard-right Senate Republicans have grown increasingly pointed in their criticism of McConnell.

Trump’s desire to wield chaos at the border as a political weapon against President Joe Biden in a general election campaign is a factor in the ongoing congressional negotiations, with McConnell telling Republicans: “We don’t want to do anything to undermine him.”

Another source reported that McConnell referred to Trump as "the nominee".

NEWS from me & @bresreports in @PunchbowlNews PM:

MCCONNELL told a closed meeting of Senate Republicans Wed that the politics of the border has flipped for Rs and cast doubt on linking Ukraine and border.

“When we started this, the border united us and Ukraine divided us.”…

— Jake Sherman (@JakeSherman) January 24, 2024

The Hill reports,

Sen. Mitt Romney (R-Utah) called Trump’s opposition to a border security deal “appalling.”

“I think the border is a very important issue for Donald Trump,” Romney said. “And the fact that he would communicate to Republican senators and congresspeople that he doesn’t want us to solve the border problem because he wants to blame Biden for it is really appalling.”

Senate Republicans across the spectrum say that Trump’s growing political momentum and the heating up of election year politics is going to make it exceedingly difficult to get funding for Ukraine and a border security deal through the Senate and House and to President Biden’s desk.

But Romney is a lame duck who will be retiring at the end of this year, doubtless understanding his chances of renomination or reelection. Things are changing fast.

Bailing On "Birdbrain"

Reid Hoffman, the Democrat donor who also funded E Jean Carroll's defamation suit against Trump, donated $250,000 to a pro-Haley super PAC last year, but no longer plans to support her campaign.

Billionaire Reid Hoffman does not plan to give any more money to Nikki Haley’s presidential campaign after her loss in the New Hampshire Republican primary, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Hoffman is one of Haley’s first wealthy donors to start heading for the exit after she said Tuesday that she will remain in the GOP’s nomination contests against former President Donald Trump despite failing to beat him in New Hampshire or in the Iowa caucuses.

The person who told CNBC that Hoffman didn’t have immediate plans to help Haley again declined to be named in order to speak freely about the matter.

This is another factor that suggests to me that Democrats wanted to support a candidate who could take Trump out of the running in the primaries but would be easier to beat in the general election. Now that the outcome appears less and less likely, they're putting their money elsewhere. The lack of enthusiasm for Haley extends to Republican donors as well, according to the same CNBC link:

A Republican fundraiser told CNBC on Wednesday that three clients who each helped Haley raise up to $100,000 for her campaign are now opting out of further financial efforts for the former United Nations ambassador.

Other fundraisers said Wednesday said that while they plan to speak out publicly in support of Haley, they are not convinced that they will be able to raise much money for her campaign because of her 0-for-2 record so far.

Meanwhile, Trump as irreverent entertainer has returned, with a new nickname for Haley:

"Nikki 'Birdbrain' Haley is very bad for the Republican Party and, indeed, our Country. Her False Statements, Derogatory Comments, and Humiliating Public Loss, is demeaning to True American Patriots," Trump posted on Truth Social. "Her anger should be aimed at her Third Rate Political Consultants and, more importantly, Crooked Joe Biden and those that are destroying our Country - NOT THE PEOPLE WHO WILL SAVE IT."

Like many of his previous nicknames such as "Low Energy Jeb", this one looks likely to home in on its target with devastating effect, but it's worth noting that Trump didn't deploy it until she refused to withdraw from the race following her defeat. David Axelrod's reaction even before Trump called her "Birdbrain" is an indication of how much Democrat strategists actually fear him as an opponent in the general:

Democratic strategist David Axelrod denounced former President Trump’s New Hampshire victory speech Wednesday, calling it “improvisational” and saying the former president acted like a “jackass.”

Trump’s rambling victory monologue after a strong performance in the Granite State included repeated jabs at his chief rival, former United Nations Ambassador Nikki Haley, including mocking her own concession speech earlier in the evening and making fun of her dress.

. . . The strategist said in a CNN interview Wednesday that the Trump campaign isn’t able to contain its candidate.

“I guarantee you that they did not say, ‘Go on out there and act like a jackass and go after Nikki Haley in really personal and sexist ways, humiliate Tim Scott,’” Axelrod said. “That was the improvisational Trump.”

As I've been sayling, Trump's appeal is in his irrepressibility, something Axelrod implicitly acknowledges here. At the same time, both Democrats and NeverTrumpers seem to have become resigned to rhe fact that Haley is neither a credible alternative to Trump for the nomination nor a potentially beatable candidate in November, and both groups have begun to bail.

Do The Democrats Really Want To Run Against Trump?

Ever since I noted Andrew McCarthy's resuscitation of that meme last week at National Review Online, I've kept it in the back of my mind as I watch developments. NRO repeated it this morning in response to Trump's New Hampshire win:

The Democrats want Trump as their opponent in the belief that they can salvage Joe Biden’s prospects by making the race all about Trump, and last night showed, once again, that they are making a sensible, if cynical, calculation. That independents turned out in such large numbers to cast votes in the Republican primary simply to protest Trump was an early indication of how he could lose the middle in November.

Republican voters could have avoided giving Democrats what they wanted, but instead are putting all their chips on their riskiest electoral bet.

The first problem with this view is CNN's reporting of the New Hampshire exit polls:

Roughly 7 in 10 of the New Hampshire voters backing Trump said they were registered as Republicans. . . . Haley’s backers present a near mirror image: about 7 in 10 said they were registered as undeclared prior to Tuesday[.]

The question is how many Haley voters were effectively Democrats voting for her in order to improve her chances of becoming the nominee, especiallly with Biden off the ballot. Certainly television interviews found numerous voters who claimed to be such. According to a local source,

Nearly 4,000 New Hampshire Democrats changed their party affiliation to undeclared or Republican during the window from Sept. 14 to Oct. 7, indicating they may participate in the Republican primary.

With about 161,000 Haley votes total in last night's primary, this amounts to potentially 2% of all Haley voters being former registered Democrats intending outright to boost Haley's chances in the Republican primary and should be factored into Haley's vote total. In fact, Just the News reports exit polls showed about 6% of Tuesday’s GOP primary voters identified as Democrat. Nevertheless, with Trump winning about 54% of the Republican vote, he achieved a credible victory even with some Haley voters unlikely ro aupport any Republican in the general election.

A second problem with the idea that Democrats want Trump as the nominee is the Democrat donors who've supported Haley. According to Forbes,

Billionaire LinkedIn cofounder and Democratic donor Reid Hoffman gave $250,000 to support former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley’s GOP presidential primary campaign—joining a growing list of deep-pocketed donors supporting Haley, as many view her as the best alternative to former President Donald Trump, reports Sara Dorn.

Hoffman, a frequent Trump critic who has helped finance various efforts against the former president, recently donated $250,000 to the pro-Haley super PAC Stand For America Fund Inc., Hoffman’s political advisor Dmitri Mehlhorn told Forbes after the donation was first made public by the New York Times.

He is not the only monied Democratic donor getting behind Haley: JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon—who said he has been in contact with Haley, but stopped short of endorsing her and has not donated to her campaign—urged business leaders and “liberal Democrats” last week to support Haley as “a choice on the Republican side that might be better than Trump.”

NeverTrumpers also rely on outlier polls to promote Haley, including this morning at the NeverTrump Hot Air aggregator: Polls Suddenly Looking Different Now That Trump Sealed the Deal?

Yep. Susquehanna shows President Joe Biden beating Donald Trump by more than 7 points, at least if the election were held today.

In 2020 the election was decided by 1 point, and that was before the past 3 years of failures have driven Joe Biden’s approval rating into the toilet.

So what’s going on? Is this a bad poll? A biased poll? An outlier–even pollsters will tell you that 1 out of 5 polls are just wrong, and the margin of error is almost 4%.

But geez, that is a shocking poll.

The problem for the headline is that the poll was taken between January 15 and January 24, after Iowa but before New Hampshire, and thus before anyone could have asserted tht Trump "sealed the deal". The idea that Haley could do better than Trump against Biden is wishful thinking -- according to Slate, which certainly prefers Biden,

Exit polling in New Hampshire found that Trump won registered Republicans on Tuesday by fifty points. Strange things have happened in American politics recently, but the Republican Party awarding its nomination to someone who is losing its voters by 50 is not going to be one of them.

In the unlikely event Haley secured the Republican nomination, she would lose much of the Republican base in the general election, while Trump would keep it but is continuing to win over key elements of the former Democrat base, including labor, Latins, Jews, and increasing numbers of African-Americans. Why would Democrats prefer Trump as an opponent when Haley would effectively be a repeat of Romney in 2012?

Kevin Morris Says He's Hunter's Attorney

Last Friday I posted on a bar complaint filed against Kevin Morris:

[I]f Mr. Morris has provided personal funds to an individual who has now been confirmed to be a client – or who would reasonably believe himself to be Mr. Morris’s client – Mr. Morris would have violated both the text of the Rules of Professional Conduct and the well-established norms of the legal profession.

. . . If Hunter Biden or a similarly situated person would reasonably anticipate that Mr. Morris was obligated to provide legal services, the alleged funding of the lifestyle of a client or potential client justifies the immediate opening of a misconduct investigation under Rule 1.8.5.

In that post, I raised the question of whether Morris is actually Hunter Biden's attorney -- he could potentially weasel his way out by saying he is in fact an attorney, but in Hunter's case, he's just acting as a friend, not as an attorney of record. But according to Just the News, Morris invoked attorney-client privilege 17 times in his deposition to the Comer committee last week:

According to the transcript of the testimony reviewed by Just the News, Morris said that he began representing Biden about one week after the December 2019 California fundraiser for his father, Joe Biden, who became president in 2020. The details surrounding this meeting were previously reported by Just the News.

Morris’ early representation of Hunter Biden allowed him to invoke the privilege frequently, to avoid answering questions about his first meeting with the first son, how he paid Hunter Biden’s other attorneys and about the planning for Hunter Biden’s defiant speech in front of the Capitol while avoiding complying with his first congressional subpoena.

Specifically, Morris attempted to invoke the privilege regarding his acquisition of one of Hunter Biden's companies after Joe Biden's inauguration. Additionally, he denied claims that he was motivated by political concerns to help the first son solve his tax issues and stay afloat during his father's campaign, which was indicated by evidence from the IRS whistleblowers last year.

. . According to the transcript, Morris claimed that his legal representation of Hunter Biden was “global and complete” and therefore argued that almost any detail of their relationship is off limits to congressional investigators. Yet despite this, Morris told the committee that he had not represented Hunter directly in the past three years.

The story indicates that Just the News was aware of the bar complaint:

America First Legal filed a complaint with the state bar against Morris for allegedly violating its Rules of Professional Conduct.

According to rule 1.8.5(a): “[a] lawyer shall not directly or indirectly pay or agree to pay, guarantee, or represent that the lawyer or lawyer’s law firm will pay the personal or business expenses of a prospective or existing client,’ according to the California Bar.

Yet, Morris confirmed to the committee that he loaned Hunter Biden millions of dollars from 2020 to 2024 that are recorded in promissory notes. Just the News reported in November that Morris had loaned at least $5 million to the younger Biden to cover his tax debts and living expenses.

The story also refrred to other answers Morris gave in the transcript that suggest the overall nature of his relationship with Hunter:

“Counsel, in my job I represent high-profile individuals. ... [H]igh-profile individuals have basically virtual corporations. And in those virtual corporations, they have all kinds of staff and assistants. You know, agents and managers ... publicists. You know, whatever. And what I do is I oversee ... sort of the squad. Sort of like a general counsel,” Morris told the committees.

“But I am involved in everything. I am involved in everything. And the same is with Hunter. If you check my retainer agreements, you’ll see that it’s not – it says all matters,” he continued.

Presumably it's his job to keep his clients out of trouble and away from bad publicity. Well, maybe somebody like Tom Hanks has that kind of uber-guardian angel who does this kind of work, but if Hunter is any sort of typical Kevin Morris client, he can't be working for Tom Hanks -- maybe he works for Alec Baldwin or Amber Heard instead. I'd love to hear whom else Kevin is working for this way.

That Morris shied away from questions on how he pays Hunter's other lawyers also suggests he is in fact paying Abbe Lowell, and this strongly suggests to me that Lowell has liens on Morris's properties to guarantee those payments. I can't imagine that Mrs Kevin, AKA Gaby Morgerman of the William Morris agency, is thrilled with this, and I suspect that marriage is on borrowed time due to Kevin's involvement with Hunter.

I'm continuing to think the Comer committee staff was working mainly to nail down Morris's version of events to be able to catch him in inconsistencies down the road. I wouldn't hire Kevin Morris to get me out of a speeding ticket, much less solve my tax, drug, or gun problems.