May 2, 2018: EPA Head Facing Multiple Investigations - Trump Wrote His Own Medical Report

 

5/2/18: Another day in Trumpistan. In what is almost surely a record for any cabinet member in history, E.P.A. Administrator Pruitt faces eleven investigations. 

Pruitt testified recently in front of Congress. He maintained he didn’t know about any of the ridiculous spending, or pretty much anything else illegal that was happening at his agency. At times you had to wonder if Pruitt realized he ran the E.P.A. or if he thought he was a male stripper or a bronco buster. 

Former E.P.A. deputy chief of staff Kevin Chmielewski was blunt. He called his boss a “bald-faced liar.” Chmielewski, a Trump appointee, assured a reporter, “100 percent,” he was forced out after questioning Pruitt’s lavish spending. He was threatened by the head of Pruitt’s abnormally large security detail, Pasquale “Nino” Perrotta. With investigative storm clouds gathering, Perrotta suddenly decided to resign his post. 

Also leaving on the spur of the moment was Albert Kelly, Pruitt’s choice to head the E.P.A. Superfund cleanup program. 

Kelly had zero experience working on environmental issues and had never dealt with matters related to toxic waste. He did have banking experience in Oklahoma, from whence he and Pruitt came. Kelly had even earned a lifetime ban from the financial industry as a result of shady dealings and once helped Pruitt get a sweet deal on the purchase of a home. The seller was a former lobbyist, who took $100,000 less for the property than he had previously paid. The “buyer” was a shell company. This obscured the fact Pruitt was going to be the person who lived in the house and the person who got a special deal from a lobbyist.

 

Meanwhile, a Moroccan news agency revealed that a second lobbyist helped arrange an expensive trip to Morocco, by Pruitt and a few of his buds – including that second lobbyist, Richard Smotkin. Why exactly did the head of the E.P.A. need to fly – first class – to Morocco? No one knows. 

According to news reports out of Morocco, Pruitt stayed at the luxurious Hotel Sofitel Marrakech while he was visiting. 

Taxpayers footed the bill for Pruitt's trips.

 

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Trump wrote his own medical report. 

A SECOND TRUMP DOCTOR is in the news. Harold Bornstein, Trump’s personal physician for 36 years, recently told NBC that in February 2017, after he revealed that Trump was taking a prescription medicine for hair growth, his office was raided by Trump goons. Leading the raid was Keith Schiller, longtime Trump bodyguard, and at that time Director of Oval Office Operations. That made him a paid employee of the federal government. 

Schiller was joined by a top lawyer from the Trump Organization and another “large man” Bornstein didn’t recognize.  

Not only did Schiller demand Bornstein hand over medical records, without providing documents required before such a transfer could take place, he seized the originals. By New York State law those would be property of the doctor. Bornstein says he felt, “raped, frightened and sad [emphasis added].” Schiller also demanded that a framed photo of Bornstein and Trump be removed from the wall. 

According to NBC News: “Bornstein said the original and only copy of Trump’s charts, including lab reports under Trump’s name as well as under the pseudonyms his office used for Trump, were taken.” 

Well, be honest now. Are you the least surprised Trump used pseudonyms at his doctor’s office?

 

Bornstein told a reporter that a letter he supposedly wrote in December 2015, certifying Trump’s health and fitness to be president, was in fact written by…Donald J. Trump. “He wrote it himself,” Dr. Bornstein said. 

At the time, news reports quoted Bornstein as saying, “If elected, Mr. Trump, I can state unequivocally, will be the healthiest individual ever elected to the presidency.”  Not just healthy! He’d be the healthiest ever! 

Trump had been mocking “low energy” Jeb Bush, and warning that Crooked Hillary lacked the “stamina” to do the job. 

So “Bornstein” gushed: 

Over the past 39 years, I am pleased to report that Mr Trump has had no significant medical problems. Mr Trump has had a recent complete medical examination that showed only positive results. Actually, his blood pressure, 110/65, and laboratory test results were astonishingly excellent.

 

Trump didn’t drink. Trump didn’t smoke. He’d never had cancer or required a knee or hip replacement. He had lost “at least fifteen pounds” in the last year. In other words, Trump was a stud. “His physical strength and stamina are extraordinary,” the letter writer added for emphasis.

 

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YOU MAY remember that Dr. Ronny Jackson also discussed Trump’s health in a televised meeting in January. Like Bornstein, Jackson laid it on with a trowel. Trump was in “excellent” health, both mentally and physically. “It is called genetics...” Jackson smiled broadly for reporters. “Some people have just great genes. I told the president that if he had a healthier diet over the last 20 years, he might live to be 200 years old.” Trump wasn’t just a stud currently. Jackson insisted he’d be a stud for a second term. 

Or a second century. 

Even the fact the president was sleeping only four or five hours a night didn’t trouble Dr. Jackson. Trump had “a very unique ability to just get up in the morning and reset” or “push the reset button,” which “has helped him with his stress level.” 

(I wondered at the time if Jackson had ever read any of the president’s early-morning rage-tweets.) 

Jackson noted that the president was 6' 3", which meant he was still growing at age 71. As Politico noted, Trump’s New York driver’s license lists his height at 6' 2," and at that height, and what Jackson said was Trump’s weight (239 pounds), the president would be officially obese.

 

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“The Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

 RUMOR HAS LEAKED that the House Freedom Caucus, a group of hard-right Republicans, is working on impeachment articles to get rid of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. 

Then Robert Mueller can be fired.  

Rosenstein was not dainty in response. “I can tell you there have been people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time,” he told reporters. “And I think they should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.” 

Let that sink in. 

Trump’s bootlickers in the House of Representatives would love to shut an investigation down – not because it’s taking too long – but before it’s too late to protect all the assorted crooks.