Thanks for that. I probably should have written “WH counsel under Trump” instead of “Trump’s WH counsel.”
No, you said it properly. But lots of folks don’t know the difference. I’m sure @smithsb does, but I just wanted to make it clear that Cippollone never had any obligation to work on behalf of Trump the person himself.
In fact, he had a duty to protect the Office of the Presidency and not let it become tainted. Let’s just say he was a miserable failure at his job.
Trump of course thought the entire Justice Department was his lawyer, so it may not work out so well for Trump.
Pretty much everyone Trump hired had a duty to do something other than suck his dick, and failed.
No argument from me.
“Oh, but the guardrails!! The guardrails will hold!!”
What bullshit.
Isn’t that usually the US Marshall Service’s bag?
I’m not going to get too excited about Cippollone testifying until I see that the transcript contains anything besides…
“I take the 5th”
“5th!!”
“Fiftharooni”
“That would be the 5th, Bob”
Donno, but you may be right. I can think of a number of people that will probably need to go into the witness projection program, and I think that is US Marshall.
Nitpick: Marshal. One L. (Yeah, I didn’t realize it, either, until sometime in my 50s, I think.)
And while we’re nitpicking: Cipollone. One P.
Appreciated. 
It seems somewhat likely that Trump had James Comey specially audited by the IRS.
The IRS determined that they owed Comey money. 
“SURE, Clinton,Obama, Biden has found a new way to STEAL from the federal government and pay kickbacks to the MOST CORRUPT EVIL FBI director EVER!!. Saintly J. Edgar Hoover must be rolling in his grave!”
More seriously, I am reminded of when Charles Lindbergh* was accused in 1932 of ripping off the government, and cheating on his taxes. He made copies of his returns, an brought them to a press conference, offering them to reporters. He explained that he’d calculated his taxes… and then added 10%.
“And no, I’m not expecting any refunds”.
When all you want to do is steal, you can’t comprehend anyone being honest.
*Who I know was far from perfect.
Thanks for the belly laugh.
Or variations on:
“I don’t recall that”
“I don’t remember having that meeting”
“My memory is not clear on what Mr. Trump might have said or not said at any time during that month”
This made my day. Thanks!
For that matter, when is Trump’s eons-long IRS audit going to wrap up, so he can finally freely discuss his taxes?
Just kidding. I know he never will.
And Comey’s colleague Andrew McCabe, too. The type of audit each was subjected to happens very rarely; the odds I’ve seen mentioned are “1 in 30,000.” But for two DOJ men who both happened to be on Trump’s Enemies List, the odds of these audits happening by chance (not by malfeasance) would be–the product of the odds of just one of them? So 1 in 900,000,000?
With the population of the USA being about 329,000,000 of course (and that’s counting minors).
So if this were to be investigated fairly–by an outside agency, not by the IRS itself–I suspect that in due time we’d be experiencing some schadenfreude for the Trump-appointed IRS head (still in office) or perhaps for ex-Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, or for other higher-ups at the IRS.
And maybe for all of them.
Nixon’s ordering IRS audits of his foes was a factor in his downfall. I earnestly hope it will be for Trump, as well.
Alas I am bound by the statisticians code to correct innumeracy where ever I find it even it was done in the service of good.
Your calculation would be correct if those two people were identified specifically a priori as the only potential targets but they are two among a multitude of people who Trump has a grudge against. For example if instead of Comey and McCabe it had been Hunter Biden and Alexander Vindman, that also would have set off the same alarm bells. So in order to properly compute how unlikely it is you would have to calculate how likely it would be that any two or more of Trumps enemies list would be audited. Which would inflate the probability by a factor of about (N^2)/2 where N is the number of Trump enemies at least as significant as McCabe and Comey,
Even with this additional factor its going to be pretty unlikely so your general point probably holds, but miscalculation is used all the time by those trying to lie with statistics (Republicans in particular) and we need to be better than that.
Incidentally,
–BINGO–
“Uses the IRS to punish political enemies”, was the last entry I needed along with “commits voter fraud”, “spends too much time playing golf”, “Engages in Paedophilia”, and “mandates what teachers can teach” to get 5 in a row on my Republicans do the things they falsely accused Democrats of doing BINGO card.