"President Donald Trump's former lawyer and fixer Michael Cohen will 'under no circumstances' accept a pardon from his former boss, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said Wednesday."

Politico reports:

Asked whether his client would seek a pardon from the president, Cohen's attorney Lanny Davis said... "His answer would be no, I do not want a pardon from this man.... Under no circumstances, since he came to the judgment after Mr. Trump's election to the presidency of the United States that his suitability is a serious risk to our country. And certainly after Helsinki, creates serious questions about his loyalty to our country."...

"Michael Cohen knows information that would be of interest to the special counsel, in my opinion, regarding both knowledge about a conspiracy to corrupt American democracy by the Russians and the failure to report that knowledge to the FBI," Davis said. "Donald Trump violated criminal law. He may not be able to be indicted. That's an unclear question, but there's no dispute here. He directed Michael Cohen to do something that was criminal. Michael did it and admitted to it."

There's a little slippage between the quote and the headline. Davis said Cohen would not seek a pardon, not that he wouldn't accept a pardon. But obviously, Cohen, working with Davis, does not have a strategy of pleasing Trump.

"Attorney Lisa Bloom Resigns as Advisor to Harvey Weinstein Amid Sexual Harassment Claims."

People Magazine reports.

“I have resigned as an advisor to Harvey Weinstein,” Bloom, 56, wrote on Twitter Saturday. “My understanding is that Mr. Weinstein and his board are moving toward an agreement.”

She did not say whether she plans to continue working with Weinstein on adapting her book about Trayvon Martin into a television show, which Bloom had planned to do through his company.

ADDED: The NYT writes that board members of the company, Harvey's brother Bob and Lance Maerov, confronted Bloom after Bloom said she was going to put out “photos of several of the accusers in very friendly poses with Harvey after his alleged misconduct," which Maerov said would "backfire as it suggests they are exculpatory or negate any harm done to them through alleged action."

Maerov also accused Bloom of having a conflict of interest: “You have a commercial relationship with TWC via a TV deal so how can you possibly provide impartial advice to Harvey or address this group with any credibility?”

A third of the board members have resigned, and the rest have "hired an outside law firm to investigate the allegations."

The Times also tells us:

Lanny Davis, another adviser to Mr. Weinstein, is also no longer representing him, according to a person familiar with the matter. Mr. Davis, a lawyer and crisis counselor who served as special counsel to President Bill Clinton, declined Saturday to discuss his departure. But he and Mr. Weinstein had disagreed over how to handle the sexual harassment allegations, with Mr. Davis advising a more conciliatory tone and approach than Mr. Weinstein seemed willing to adopt....

Lanny Davis. Why did he drop Weinstein? Too much connection back to the Clintons? I was surprised that I already had a Lanny Davis tag, and clicking back to old posts, I see that he was acting chair of the Clinton Foundation in 2015 when he was grilled by Chris Wallace on "Fox News Sunday" over a $2.35 million contribution to the Clinton Foundation by the chairman of Uranium One, "that uranium company that the Russians wanted to buy," which Davis brushed off as "not major, even by any definition." Wallace asked Davis:

Do you think it was a coincidence all these Canadian mining executives are giving millions to the foundation, that a company with close ties to Vladimir Putin's government in Russia is giving half a million dollar speech? Do you think that's a coincidence that's happening while the Russian company that wants to buy Uranium One has business before the State Department? Do you think that's a coincidence?

Sorry. I'm reminiscing about the 2016 presidential campaign... you know, the one about which there's been so much talk about "collusion" with the Russians.

"We become cynics because we desperately don’t want to be moralists, and because earnestness is boring, and because skepticism is a hard and elusive thing to master."

"American education, by and large, has become an education in cynicism: Our Founders were rank hypocrites. Our institutions are tools of elite coercion. Our economy perpetuates privilege. Our justice system is racist. Our foreign policy is rapacious. Cynicism gives us the comfort of knowing we won’t be fooled again because we never believed in anything in the first place.... This is the America that the Clintons seek to enlist in their latest presidential quest. I suspect many Democrats would jump at an opportunity not to participate in the exercise... But they will go along with it, mostly because liberals have demonized the Republican Party to the point that they have lost the capacity for self-disgust....  As for the rest of the country, Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy offers a test: How much can it swallow? John Podesta and the rest of Mrs. Clinton’s campaign team must be betting that, like a python devouring a goat, Americans will have ample time to digest Mrs. Clinton’s personal ethics..."

From "Hillary’s Cynical Song of Self/The Clintons are counting on America to digest their ethical lapses the way a python swallows a goat," by Bret Stephens in The Wall Street Journal.

Stephens asks many good questions, but since I pounced on Lanny Davis's animal analogy yesterday — the rooster crowing and the sun rising supposedly explained away Hillary's "Clinton Cash" problems — I've got to take a closer look at that python devouring a goat. Davis's analogy was bad because it didn't do what he needed it to do: illustrate coincidence. Does Stephens's analogy function properly? He isn't saying Americans will be able to do the equivalent of slowly digesting the a goat, only imagining that Clinton's people must be hoping that will happen. But the slow digesting can only occur if the goat is swallowed. The python performs 2 tricks: swallowing the goat and digesting the goat. The swallowing must come first. Without the swallowing, the devastating evidence is preserved. 

I will not take one more step down the metaphorical path established in the previous paragraph. And to refresh your brain, I offer this story about a captive python named Houdini who swallowed a queen-size electric blanket (including the cord and control box). The blanket was there to keep the cold-blooded creature warm, and he was provided with rabbits to eat, but somehow he decided he'd have the blanket. (Oh, I always take the rabbit. Tonight, I'll try the blanket!) Was the python able to slowly digest the electric blanket? We'll never know, because the blanket was surgically removed. I'd like to think of a political predicament for which that could be an apt analogy.

Lanny Davis uses a bad analogy to push the "coincidence" talking point.

I've got to stay with that Lanny Davis interview for another post. The previous post is about his talking point that the Clinton Foundation is so huge that things that might seem big are actually small. The proportion point. There's also the coincidence point:

WALLACE: Do you think it was a coincidence all these Canadian mining executives are giving millions to the foundation, that a company with close ties to Vladimir Putin's government in Russia is giving half a million dollar speech? Do you think that's a coincidence that's happening while the Russian company that wants to buy Uranium One has business before the State Department? Do you think that's a coincidence? 

DAVIS: I don't use the word "coincidence". Of course, it's a coincidence but it's a false inference. It sounds like if two incidents occur side by side, like the rooster crows and then the sun rises, it's a coincidence that the sun rises after the rooster crows. The rooster doesn't cause the sun to rise.

It's not a coincidence that the rooster crows and then the sun rises. It's true that the rooster doesn't cause the sun to rise, but the sun rising causes the rooster to crow. The events are causally related. The mistake is over what caused what. It's not a coincidence!

I think Davis was striving to sound casual and folksy, what with that barnyard scenario, except that he sounds like an overbearing lawyer, not like somebody tapping into real, everyday life (with everyday people). Davis has no background on farms. His father was a dentist. Farms are just a useful source of American hokum. I'd watch out for nonfarmers using farm bullshit. (Other than the "bullshit" itself, which is a fully dead metaphor.)

"So yes, we made mistakes, as many organizations of our size do."

When really big organizations make mistakes, the rules are different. You can't expect them to attend to the sort of details that would get you in trouble in your puny little affairs.

The quote in the post title is from the acting chief executive of the Clinton Foundation. It reminded me of something I heard Lanny Davis say in an interview with Chris Wallace yesterday.

WALLACE: We know because of the reporting in Peter Schweizer's book of one major violation of this, a failure to disclose, and that is that Ian Telfer, who was chairman of Uranium One, that uranium company that the Russians wanted to buy, gave $2.35 million to the Clinton Foundation through his family's Fernwood Foundation, and yet that contribution, $2.35 million -- I mean, I know the Clintons have a lot of money, but that's not pocket change. That contribution was never reported. 

DAVIS: Look, we've known each other for a long time. You used the word "major". You're entitled to that adjective. 

WALLACE: You don't think $2.35 million is major? 

DAVIS: Let me finish, you're going to give me 30 seconds. $2.3 million out of $2 billion is not major, even by any definition. And moreover, there is, let's say not on this program to resolve, a fundamental dispute whether Mr. Telfer's $2.3 million was given to Clinton Foundation or another foundation based in Canada that was a fund for social -- 

WALLACE: In every other case, passed the money straight through to the foundation and what was reported. 

DAVIS: As I said, we do not think that was a contribution to the foundation. But if it was, $2.3 million divided by $2 billion, the amount of money the foundation collected over all the years -- to me, $2.3 million divided by $2 billion is not what Chris Wallace call[s] major. 

WALLACE: That's what I call major. May not be what Lanny Davis calls major.

DAVIS: I agree. We have a right to disagree on the word "major."

It depends on what the meaning of "major" is! Davis is perseverating about the meaning of "major," which is absurd for 2 reasons: 1. Legalistic quibbling about the meaning of a word is quintessentially Clintonesque, reminding us of a notorious instance of lying while preserving an argument that it's not really lying, not if you think about it the right way, and 2. He's calling attention to the fabulous wealth within which the Clintons swim.  

$2.3 million? That's nothing... nothing, to them... maybe to you. Peon.

He went on the show to help the Clintons! How is that helping? I guess it's the best he had, and now I see the Foundation's CEO using the same talking point. They must have brainstormed to get to that horrible talking point. I'd love to see what got rejected.

This morning on "Fox News Sunday," Hillary Clinton's surrogates failed her badly.

Earlier today, I said that "Lanny Davis (on 'Fox News Sunday') was the definition of flop sweat," and now I have the transcript. You need the video [HERE] to get the full effect of Davis's agitation and aggression, which is heightened by his blindingly white, fake-looking teeth. Davis was combative and insulting, and resorted to assertions like: "Hillary Clinton today is the most popular politician in the country. And you're discussing a non-scandal, nothing illegal, full access. And it's all politics."

Also on the show to defend Hillary was Neera Tanden, president of the Center for American Progress. Like Davis, she let the stress show and it undercut her arguments (especially as Kimberley Strassel, sitting right next to her, kept giving her the stink eye and undercutting her with quick surgical strikes):

WALLACE: [T]he rules were pretty clear, your e-mails should be preserved.... You think that's with keeping of the spirit if you don't turn these over while you're secretary of state, you don't turn them over when you leave as secretary of state? You don't turn them over until two years after you leave, and it's only after the State Department lawyers confront you?

TANDEN: OK, that's also faster than any previous secretary of state passed over the e-mails... So, I'm saying that now we'll be able to see, turned over, taking the act of actually turning over the e-mails to the public. I think let's, you know, I know it's hard to imagine, but let's take a breath, she what are in those e-mails and then decide.

STRASSEL: Well, the e-mails she's chosen to give to the State Department.

TANDEN: Well, just to be clear about this. If a cabinet secretary today was using private and public e-mail, right, and the other cabinet secretary, they're making the decision when they decide to use public e-mail, right? So, that's the decision they're making. There's no private -- there's no public record of their private e-mail.

STRASSEL: Which is exactly why the Obama administration said use your government e-mail –

TANDEN: Where appropriate –

STRASSEL: -- because these e-mails belong to the public. They don't belong to them.

TANDEN: Exactly. And she's turning them over. So, that's what we'll see.

STRASSEL: The ones she chose to turn in.

Strassel ruled that exchange.

Wallace then turned to George Will and asks him "How big a deal is this?"

GEORGE WILL: It's big because it is axiomatic that the worst political scandals are those that reinforce a pre-existing negative perception... The Clintons come trailing clouds of entitlement and concealment, and legalistic, Jesuitical reasoning, the kind of people who could find a loophole in a stop sign. The -- her obvious motive was to conceal. You conceal in order to control. And that's what makes this literally, strictly speaking, Orwellian. In George Orwell's novel "Nineteen Eighty-Four", Oceania's regime, the totalitarian regime had an axiom, "He who controls the past controls the future. And he who controls the present controls the past." This is a way of controlling what we will know about the history of our country and it is deeply sinister.

Tanden attempts damage control and it's quite painful (though funny):

TANDEN: Orwell, sinister, I mean, why don't we ask her, instead of attacking and deriding. See the e-mail and then make judgment.

STRASSEL: Why do you think she did it?

WALLACE: But don't you agree that there's a problem –

TANDEN: This is unbelievable to me, Orwellian. We can all use these words –

WALLACE: -- when the e-mails we're going to see, these 55,000 pages, are only what she and her lawyers decided to turn over.

TANDEN: Again, they're the public e-mails. She has e-mails I'm sure about the bridesmaids dresses. Do we have a right to see those e-mails? She has friends like me that said, how is my sister doing? Do we have the right to see those?

See how Tanden is unwittingly making the argument against Clinton? It's quite obvious at this point that Clinton has reserved for herself the power to determine which of the mixed public and private emails will be called public and handed over. What's to stop her from putting anything she doesn't want us to see in the private category? Benghazi... bridesmaids... what's the difference?  Wallace drives this home:

WALLACE: No, but I'm saying to you that she sat there -- what if there's an e-mail about Benghazi and she gets –

TANDEN: And that's what the lawyers will see those, exactly.

WALLACE: Not if she didn't turn them over.

TANDEN: The State Department going to see those e-mails and any e-mail on Benghazi to a public e-mail, other people had documentation as well.

STRASSEL: So, you're saying the State Department is going to see her server?

TANDEN: No, I'm saying that –

(CROSSTALK)

WALLACE: What do you think bout the idea of allowing an independent person to go in as you heard Lanny Davis talk about to see her server?

TANDEN: So, I would just see what the e-mails we have are and make decisions on that. We have two years into a presidential cycle, why don't we actually get these e-mails out in the public and see if there's a -- we will have more public e-mails. We'll have more e-mails public than any secretaries of state in the history –

STRASSEL: Possibly none that actually matter?

TANDEN: No, not possibly none that actually matter.

WALLACE: Let me bring Juan in-- Juan.

JUAN WILLIAMS, FOX NEWS POLITICAL ANALYST: Well, I must say first of all, Hillary Clinton seems to me to be very entitled and privileged and she broke the rules. So, I don't think there are any questions. As to whether or not she broke the law, that's not clear.

WALLACE: I agree.

WILLIAMS: But I will say this, in terms of the politics of 2016, which is really what I think we're driving at here, is that Hillary Clinton scares Republicans to death. I think that's what we've seen. Initially Democrats, including the Obama White House this week, did not defend Hillary Clinton, because the Obama White House wanted to make it clear they had set a clear rules of the road for Hillary Clinton, and they backed off. There was radio silence. I was over there this week. Radio silence on this. But by the end of the week, with all of this talk of subpoenas on Benghazi, and then all of the stuff about, doesn't this remind you of how technical and Orwellian the Clintons are -- suddenly, the Democrats, and we see this with Neera this morning, have become more defensive. And I think the idea is, you know what? Republicans are feasting, they are in a frenzy. They think this is Watergate redux, and it's not.

WALLACE: OK. But you know sometimes when you feast, it's Thanksgiving.

Hillary Clinton "is one of the most finest, most upstanding, most honorable people — always trying to do the right thing."

Said Chuck Schumer on "Face the Nation," doing damage control on the Hillary email story. And, yes, he did say "most finest." That was the tell.

ADDED: If you're wondering why I'm not blogging more this morning, it's because I got side-tracked into watching the Sunday shows. I've got notes on various things I want to say, but I need the transcript to do it properly, since transcribing everything is difficult. But that Schumer line set off my urge to transcribe. Schumer, by the way, has been the best defender of Hillary Clinton this morning. He is able to maintain emotional control and keep that smile he always has on his face.

By contrast, Lanny Davis (on "Fox News Sunday") was the definition of flop sweat. Far from smiling, Davis bared his huge, overwhite, fake-looking teeth so aggressively I feared he might take a bite out of Chris Wallace. Davis swung wildly, attacking Wallace for interrupting and for misreporting, and that brought out the fighting spirit in the usually mild-mannered Wallace. More about how that played out when I get the transcript.

WaPo article "On IRS issue, senior White House aides were focused on shielding Obama" seems to be about throwing White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler under the bus.

Here's the article.

[White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler, White House Chief of Staff Denis McDonough, and other senior White House aides] agreed that it would be best not to share [news of an upcoming inspector general’s report on the Internal Revenue Service] with President Obama until the independent audit was completed and made public....

... Obama’s top aides were trying to shield him from any second-term scandal that might swamp his agenda or, worse, jeopardize his presidency....

But Ruemmler and McDonough’s careful plan for the IRS was upended on May 10, when Lois Lerner, a senior official at the agency, broke the news.... Senior White House officials were stunned to see the IRS trying to get ahead of its own story...

I don't know how much of this to believe, but the article strains to portray Ruemmler as narrowly legalistic:

Me too, says Lanny Davis...

... when everybody's talking about Bob Woodward.