memeorandum: Playbook scoop: Lobbyist married to Pruitt's ex-landlord speaks out as EPA administrator's troubles deepen (Daniel Lippman/Politico)

9:10 AM ET, April 6, 2018

Top Items:

Job Changes for E.P.A. Officials Who Questioned Scott Pruitt — WASHINGTON — At least five officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, four of them high-ranking, were reassigned or demoted, or requested new jobs in the past year after they raised concerns about the spending and management …

Daniel Lippman / Politico:

Playbook scoop: Lobbyist married to Pruitt's ex-landlord speaks out as EPA administrator's troubles deepen — FIRST IN PLAYBOOK ... STEVE HART SPEAKS — the lobbyist who is married to EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt's former landlord: “Williams & Jensen has always been committed …

Discussion: New York Times, Talking Points Memo, BuzzFeed and Raw Story, more at Mediagazer »

Ryan Cooper / The Week:

Scott Pruitt is too corrupt to be corrupted — EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt is in hot water over a condo. It turns out that in 2017 he stayed for several months in a room co-owned by the wife of a bigshot energy lobbyist, and at one point met with a representative of that firm in his EPA office while he was staying there.

Discussion: Daily Kos, Earther, New Republic, Talking Points Memo, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, ThinkProgress and Media Matters for America

CNN:

Trump floated replacing Sessions with Pruitt this week despite scandals — (CNN)President Donald Trump floated replacing Attorney General Jeff Sessions with Scott Pruitt as recently as this week, even as the scandal-ridden head of the Environmental Protection Agency has faced a growing list …

Discussion: Washington Post, New York Magazine, The Week, Raw Story, USA Today, Washington Press, Breitbart, RedState, Talking Points Memo, New York Times, IJR, Washington Monthly, Mediaite, Media Matters for America, Political Wire, Daily Kos, The Hill and CNBC

Julianna Goldman / CBS News:
Scott Pruitt asked to use sirens in D.C. traffic and was told no for non-emergency

Discussion: Salon, HuffPost, The Daily Beast, Talking Points Memo, Washington Post and Mother Jones

Wall Street Journal:
Trump's Pruitt Test

Discussion: Mother Jones

Andrew Restuccia / Politico:
Pruitt fell behind on payments for his $50-a-night condo rental

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Washington Post, Associated Press, The Week, New York Times and Mediaite

McClatchy Washington Bureau:

Mueller probe tracking down Trump business partners, with Cohen a focus of queries — WASHINGTON — Special Counsel Robert Mueller's investigators this week questioned an associate of the Trump Organization who was involved in overseas deals with President Donald Trump's company in recent years.

Discussion: Raw Story and The Week

Josh Gerstein / Politico:

Mueller moved to seize bank accounts in Manafort probe — Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office moved to seize bank accounts at three different financial institutions last year just one day before former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort was indicted, prosecutors disclosed in a court filing Thursday.

Discussion: Bloomberg, The Daily Caller, CNN, The Week and Raw Story

The Daily Beast:
Mueller Probe Now Includes Trump's Business Associates

Discussion: Politico and The Daily Beast

Greg Jaffe / Washington Post:

For Trump and his generals, ‘victory’ has different meanings … President Trump's pronouncement that he would be pulling troops out of Syria “very soon” has laid bare a major source of tension between the president and his generals. — Trump has made winning on the battlefields of Iraq …

Discussion: New York Magazine

Associated Press:

Trump wants out of Syria, but don't say ‘timeline’ — WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump has spoken: He wants U.S. troops and civilians out of Syria by the fall. But don't call it a “timeline.” — Wary of charges of hypocrisy for publicly telegraphing military strategy …

Discussion: CNN and New York Magazine

Gordon G. Chang / The Daily Beast:

Trump's Right to Say He's Not Launching a Trade War With China. He's Doing Something Bigger. … Hours ago, President Trump, acting under the authority of Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974, instructed U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to consider the imposition of tariffs on $100 billion of Chinese goods.

Discussion: Bloomberg, New York Magazine and New York Times

Washington Post: Trump seeks additional tariffs on $100 billion of Chinese goods in escalation of trade confrontation

New York Times:
Trump Doubles Down on Potential Trade War With China

Discussion: CNNMoney, FiveThirtyEight, The Week, VICE News, The Guardian, Vox, Reuters and NPR

Chloe Aiello / CNBC:
Trump proposes $100 billion in additional tariffs on Chinese products

Discussion: The Week and Townhall

Axios:
Trump fires next shot in China trade war

Discussion: Politico, Bloomberg, One America News Network and The Guardian

Josh Constine / TechCrunch:

Facebook retracted Zuckerberg's messages from recipients' inboxes — Facebook says it was for security, but is it a breach of user trust? — You can't remove Facebook messages from the inboxes of people you sent them to, but Facebook did that for Mark Zuckerberg and other executives.

Discussion: Gizmodo, ValueWalk, 9to5Mac, BGR, AOL, Engadget and The Guardian, more at Techmeme »

Tom Warren / The Verge: Facebook secretly deleted messages Mark Zuckerberg sent on Messenger

YouTube:

Republican Trey Gowdy Was Known For Being Hyperpartisan — Until Trump (HBO) … South Carolina Republican Trey Gowdy is retiring from Congress an unhappy man. He's even counting the number of trips to the airport he has left until he can leave DC for good.

Discussion: Political Wire

Alayna Treene / Axios: Trey Gowdy says being in Congress was largely a waste of time

Pierre Thomas / ABC News:

Mueller has evidence that Trump supporter's meeting with Putin ally may not have been a chance encounter: Sources — Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained evidence that calls into question Congressional testimony given by Trump supporter and Blackwater founder Erik Prince last year …

Discussion: Political Wire and Raw Story

Daily Mail:

Saudi crown prince says Jared Kushner handed him U.S. intelligence — Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman bragged of receiving classified US intelligence from Jared Kushner and using it as part of a purge of ‘corrupt’ princes and businessmen, DailyMail.com can disclose.

Discussion: POLITICUSUSA

CNN:

Lewandowski to Democrats: I'm not answering your ‘f—ing’ questions — EDITOR'S NOTE: This story contains language some people may find offensive. — (CNN)Corey Lewandowski had a blunt message for Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: He wasn't going to answer their “fucking” questions.

Discussion: Splinter, Raw Story, The Daily Caller and Mediaite

Madeleine Albright / New York Times:

Will We Stop Trump Before It's Too Late? — Fascism poses a more serious threat now than at any time since the end of World War II. — On April 28, 1945 — 73 years ago — Italians hung the corpse of their former dictator Benito Mussolini upside down next to a gas station in Milan.

Katherine Mangu-Ward / Hit & Run:

By Firing Kevin Williamson,The Atlantic Shows It Can't Handle Real Ideological Diversity — Kevin Williamson has been fired from The Atlantic. Since leaving National Review in March, the conservative writer has managed to produce just one column at his new perch, in which he declared the death of the libertarian moment.

David French / National Review:
On the Cowardly Firing of Kevin Williamson

Discussion: BPR, Betsy's Page, Daily Wire, Le·gal In·sur·rec· tion, American Greatness and alicublog

The Daily Beast:

Britain Pinpoints Secretive Russian Facility That Made Deadly Nerve Agent — Britain has identified the secretive Russian facility where it believes the deadly Novichok nerve agent, used in the attempted murders of former spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, was made.

Catherine Philp / The Times & The Sunday Times:
Salisbury poison 'made at Russia's Porton Down'

Discussion: Politico, AOL and The Guardian

Christina Farr / CNBC:

Facebook sent a doctor on a secret mission to ask hospitals to share patient data — Facebook was in talks with top hospitals and other medical groups as recently as last month about a proposal to share data about the social networks of their most vulnerable patients.

Discussion: Forbes, The Guardian, Gizmodo, The Verge, The Daily Caller, Engadget, Daily Caller News Foundation and Nextgov, more at Techmeme »

Peter Nicholas / Wall Street Journal:

What's Driving Trump's Attacks on Amazon? It's Personal — President's attacks on e-commerce company stem from its CEO Jeff Bezos's ownership of the Washington Post, which Trump says covers him unfairly, say people close to the White House — Early in President Donald Trump's term …

Juli Briskman / Washington Post:

Why I'm suing for my right to flip off the president — Juli Briskman is a marketing and public relations professional living in Sterling. — One sunny Saturday last fall, I hopped on my bike and headed out for a ride near my home in Virginia. President Trump decided to spend …

Discussion: Politico, thegellerlawgroup, The Root and BPR

Ken Sweet / Associated Press:

Mulvaney gives big pay bumps to his hires at consumer agency — NEW YORK (AP) — Mick Mulvaney, President Donald Trump's appointee to oversee the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, has given big pay raises to the deputies he has hired to help him run the bureau, according to salary records obtained by The Associated Press.

Discussion: New York Times and ThinkProgress

Luke O'Brien / HuffPost:

Trump's Most Influential White Nationalist Troll Is A Middlebury Grad Who Lives In Manhattan — Twitter troll “Ricky Vaughn” had a bigger influence on the 2016 election than NBC News and the Drudge Report. Here's who he really is. — Who is Ricky Vaughn?

Discussion: Splinter, VTDigger, Weekly Standard, Seven Days, Hullabaloo and Mother Jones

Joshua Partlow / Washington Post:

Mexican president rebukes Trump over border threats … VERACRUZ, Mexico — Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto delivered his most direct public rebuke of President Trump on Thursday afternoon, in a national address that characterized Mexico as willing to cooperate with the United States …

Discussion: Talking Points Memo, Townhall, The Daily Caller and Reuters

Kevin Collier / BuzzFeed:

These Messages Show Julian Assange Talked About Seeking Hacked Files From Guccifer 2.0 — DMs tie Assange to a Russia-linked hacker — and raise new questions about his Seth Rich conspiracy theory. — Twitter DMs obtained by BuzzFeed News show that in the summer of 2016 …

Discussion: The Gateway Pundit

David Wasserman / The Cook Political Report:

April House Overview: Ratings Changes in 13 Districts — The good news for Republicans is that President Trump's approval rating has, on balance, ticked up from 38 percent to 40 percent since January as attention has shifted from unpopular GOP proposals on healthcare and taxes to the economy, tariffs and Stormy Daniels.

Discussion: New York Times, CNN, Weekly Standard and POLITICUSUSA

BBC:

Park Geun-hye: South Korea's ex-leader jailed for 24 years for corruption — South Korea's former President Park Geun-hye has been sentenced to 24 years in jail after she was found guilty of abuse of power and coercion. — The verdict was broadcast live and represents the culmination …

Discussion: Political Wire and The Week

CNBC:

US sanctions several Russian officials and entities, including oligarch linked to former Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort — The Trump administration on Friday unveiled new actions against various Russian officials, oligarchs, businesses and agencies - freezing assets that are subject to U.S. jurisdiction.

Sarah McCammon / NPR:

‘Concerned’ Evangelicals Plan To Meet With Trump As Sex Scandals Swirl — As allegations continue to swirl about the president and a payout to a porn star to cover up a sexual encounter, evangelical leaders are organizing a sit down with President Trump in June, four sources with knowledge of the planned meeting tell NPR.

Discussion: Raw Story

Axios:

Trump skipping White House Correspondents dinner — White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders will take President Trump's place at the White House Correspondent's Association annual dinner.