The Daily 202: Rex Tillerson is just the latest Trump aide to speak out after getting fired

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The Daily 202: Rex Tillerson is just the latest Trump aide to speak out after getting fired

Here's some perspective from a former senior Hillary Clinton aide on the length of the special counsel investigation under President Clinton:  More perspective from FiveThirtyEight:

-- Background on the FBI's source: “Trump’s allies are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source,” Philip Rucker, Robert Costa, Carol D. Leonnig and Josh Dawsey report. “The effort reached new heights Thursday as Trump alleged that an informant had improperly spied on his 2016 campaign and predicted that the ensuing scandal would be ‘bigger than Watergate!’ The dispute pits Trump and the Republican chairman of the House Intelligence Committee against the Justice Department and intelligence agencies, whose leaders warn that publicly identifying the confidential source would put lives in danger and imperil other operations. The stakes are so high that the FBI has been working over the past two weeks to mitigate the potential damage if the source’s identity is revealed …[And] the bureau is taking steps to protect other live investigations that the person has worked on and is trying to lessen any danger to associates if the informant’s identity becomes known.”

• “Trump’s allies believe outing the source and revealing details about his or her work for the FBI could help them challenge the investigation and, potentially, provide cause for removing [Robert] Mueller or [Rod] Rosenstein."

-- A Canadian real estate firm said it is close to finalizing a deal to bail out the Manhattan office tower controlled by the family of Jared Kushner. Michael Kranish, Jonathan O'Connell and Karen DeYoung report: “The deal centers on 666 Fifth Ave., which … faces a deadline early next year for repayment of a $1.2 billion debt. The investor, Brookfield Asset Management, has a real estate arm that is partially owned by the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar.Brookfield said in a statement that ‘no Qatar-linked entity has any involvement in, investment in or even knowledge of this potential transaction' ... Brookfield officials said they planned to invest in the building through one of the firm’s investment funds rather than its real estate arm, which they said would prevent Qatari money from being invested in the project.”

-- On the same day as the third Republican debate in 2016, Trump signed a letter of intent to build the Trump World Tower Moscow. BuzzFeed News’s Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold report: “While fragments of the Trump Moscow venture have trickled out … this is the definitive story of the Moscow tower, told from a trove of emails, text messages, congressional testimony, architectural renderings, and other documents … as well as interviews with key players and investigators. The documents reveal a detailed and plausible plan, well-connected Russian counterparts, and an effort that extended from spearfishing with a Russian developer on a private island to planning for a mid-campaign trip to Moscow for the presidential candidate himself.

“Michael Cohen [and] Felix Sater, who helped negotiate deals around the world for Trump, led the effort. Whatever the significance of the negotiations to the election, the men took measures to keep the plans secret. Text messages often ended with a simple ‘call me.’ They communicated, at times, via Dust, a secure, encrypted messaging application. Sater once warned that they ‘gotta keep this quiet.'”

-- The Treasury Department’s inspector general is expanding a probe into leaked banking records related to Cohen following a New Yorker report alleging some records related to the president's longtime consigliere were mysteriously absent from a government database of suspicious transactions. Beth Reinhard and Emma Brown report: “Richard Delmar, counsel to the inspector general, said investigators will now explore questions raised by the New Yorker after receiving a request from Sen. Ron Wyden (Ore.) ... In a letter Thursday, Wyden sought more information about ‘reported alterations’ in the SAR database related to Cohen and Essential Consultants, including ‘possible removal or sequestration’ of SARs. He also asked that ‘policies and procedures related to access to and management of the database’ be reviewed. …

• “On Thursday, Treasury officials sought to tamp down concerns, saying in a statement that since 2009 FinCEN has had the ability to restrict access to sensitive SARS. ‘Under long-standing procedures, FinCEN will limit access to certain SARs when requested by law enforcement authorities in connection with an ongoing investigation,’ Treasury spokesman Steve Hudak said.
• “Five former government officials and experts on financial crime [said] access to reports on [Cohen] could have been restricted over concern they were particularly vulnerable to leaking. ... 'I would be cautious about reaching a conclusion that something nefarious was going on,' said Carlton Greene, a former chief counsel of FinCEN.”