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• Trump may be in Hanoi, but his
mind might have been on his former lawyer Michael Cohen's public testimony
in Washington on
Wednesday. During a hearing of the House Oversight
Committee, Cohen accused the president of lying, criminality and racism — and
hinted there was more to be made public. Here are more details from The Post’s coverage:
“The man who once derived his identity from making President
Trump’s problems go away turned on his former boss in stunning fashion
Wednesday, alleging to Congress how the commander in chief manipulated
financial records, paid to cover up extramarital affairs and reacted with
glee when he learned in advance that the WikiLeaks anti-secrecy organization
would release emails damaging to his political opponent.
“Michael Cohen, Trump’s former fixer and personal lawyer, cast
the president as a mendacious and petty racist who enlisted those around him
in a culture of deceit. In testimony before the House Oversight Committee,
Cohen revealed how, in his view, Trump broke the law even as president, and
he suggested ominously that federal prosecutors in Manhattan remain
interested in a case that involves the president.
“’Is there any other wrongdoing or illegal act that you are
aware of regarding Donald Trump that we haven’t yet discussed today?’ Rep.
Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.) asked.
“’Yes, and again, those are part of the investigation that is
currently being looked at by the Southern District of New York,’ Cohen
responded.”
• The Post’s E.J. Dionne Jr. notes the
contrast between the summit in Hanoi and the remarks made by
Cohen in Washington:
“Only President Trump could use his encounter with North
Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to reinforce some of the worst things his former
lawyer Michael Cohen said about him in congressional testimony on Wednesday.
“Nothing Trump does should surprise us anymore, yet it was
still shocking that the man who holds an office once associated with the
words ‘leader of the free world’ would refer to a murderous dictator as 'my
friend.' It’s clear by now that Trump feels closest to autocrats and is
uneasy with truly democratic leaders, as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel,
among others, has learned.”
• There was a further escalation
of the India-Pakistan standoff we wrote about yesterday: Pakistan
shot down at least one Indian Air Force jet on Wednesday (Pakistan says it
downed two planes), and India confirmed one of its pilots had gone missing.
Then the Pakistani government released a video of an Indian Air Force officer
it claimed was the missing pilot.
An expert told The Post’s Alex Horton
that they believed the release of the video violated the norms outlined for
prisoners in the Geneva Convention.
“Here, [there was] no military necessity to release the video,
and presumably it was released with the intent to humiliate the captive and,
thus, the state of India, and, thus, Pakistan is in violation of Article 13”
of the convention, Rachel E. VanLandingham, a military justice expert at
Southwestern Law School, told The Post.
• Many in Israel expect Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to be indicted on Thursday, a move that would
rock the country’s political system with just over a
month to go before parliamentary elections. Chaim Levinson of Haaretz
writes about how the prime minister’s party is preparing for the news:
“The Likud party fears it could lose five Knesset seats once
Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit announces his decision to indict Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pending a hearing. Party members worry that
people will turn away not necessarily because of the charges themselves, but
because of the uncertainty the announcement will create about Netanyahu’s
political future.
"Likud has been preparing for this day for a long time,
and has numerous video clips and text messages ready to explain its position.
Over the past several months, the campaign has tested the effectiveness of
several slogans, including ‘house of cards,’ ‘rigged cases,’ ‘bribery without
money’ and ‘political persecution.’”
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Elizaveta
Peskova attends a meeting of bloggers organized by the Russian Parliament in
2017. (Dmitry Dukhanin/AP)
A stiletto in the
door
European Union lawmakers are devoting tremendous energy to
combating Russian efforts to subvert their political systems. And so finding the daughter of
one of President Vladimir Putin’s top aides in their midst has come as something of a surprise.
Elizaveta Peskova, 21, the Instagram-famous daughter of Putin
spokesman Dmitry Peskov, is interning in the office of a far-right French
member of the European Parliament, Aymeric Chauprade, the lawmaker confirmed.
Peskova’s father has been a key shaper of Putin’s public image during nearly
the entirety of his 19-year presidency.
The arrangement has
raised alarm among some members of the parliament, who said they feared the
security consequences of her presence in their institution.
But Chauprade dismissed “conspiratorial Russophobia” among fellow lawmakers
who have condemned his decision to hire Peskova.
No European Parliament intern has access to confidential
documents, nor does Chauprade himself, according to a spokeswoman for the European
Parliament, Marjory van den Broeke. The European Parliament does not require
its members’ interns to be E.U. citizens, nor does it conduct security or
background checks beyond any done by a lawmaker, van den Broeke said.
Peskova, who often uses her Frenchified name of Lisa as she
documents her luxe life on social media, is among the best known of the
Kremlin children. Her Instagram account,
with more than 82,000 followers, is a paean to the escapades available to
Russian elite: fittings at exclusive Moscow boutiques; hugs
with her father in front of Le Bristol, a Parisian temple to glamour;
traditional lezginka dancing and partying alongside Chechen strongman Ramzan
Kadyrov in Chechnya.
But Peskova is hardly alone among children of the Kremlin
elite who have made lives for themselves in countries that have issued
sanctions against their parents’ cohort. And she has found herself entangled in controversy
before. She has spoken out against same-sex couples adopting
children. She faced allegations of plagiarizing parts of an article on
education she wrote for Forbes Russia. And she was mocked for visiting a
Crimean shipyard in a designer dress to promote “patriotic business.”
Chauprade said this latest controversy has been hard for his
intern.
“Being raised in the Western world and at the same time being
a Russian citizen, the way Russia is perceived in the world, this is
difficult,” he said. — Michael
Birnbaum and Amie Ferris-Rotman
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For more on the tensions between Pakistan and India, the
Guardian looks at the lack of international players poised to smooth over the
situation. Meanwhile, The Post’s Jason Rezaian shines a light on the
international importance of Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, a
column in the New York Times examines a growing opposition to Egyptian
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi and Americas Quarterly take stock of
Ecuadorian President Lenín Moreno’s first two years in office.
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