Weighing loyalties

The Mr. Fix It of the Trump administration, Michael Cohen, was known for telling reporters he “would take a bullet for the president.” But now, facing a federal investigation, President Donald Trump’s former lawyer has changed his tune.

Last Saturday, Cohen talked with George Stephanopoulos of ABC News in his first interview since the FBI searched his home in April as part of a federal investigation. During the off-camera interview, Cohen distanced himself from the president, refusing to criticize the Russia investigation and saying that he respects the FBI’s actions and “respects the process. ... I would not do or say anything that might be perceived as interfering with their professional review of the evidence and the facts.”

When Stephanopoulos asked whether Cohen still was loyal to Trump, Cohen responded, “To be crystal clear, my wife, my daughter, and my son, and this country have my first loyalty.”

It’s a new posture for the man nicknamed the “pit bull” of The Trump Organization, where Cohen served as vice president and was known for defending Trump. Cohen later followed his boss to the White House as the president’s personal lawyer.

In April, ABC News learned that federal prosecutors had been investigating Cohen for months for potential bank fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance law violations, and other crimes. The thrust of the investigation is whether he broke campaign finance laws in October 2016 by paying pornographic actress Stephanie Clifford (aka Stormy Daniels) $130,000 to quiet her about an alleged affair with Trump in 2006.

On April 9, the FBI raided Cohen’s office, home, and hotel room and carried off 4 million documents, including emails, tax and business records, and recorded phone conversations. Cohen’s legal team claimed that 12,000 of the seized documents were protected by attorney-client privilege.

So far, prosecutors have not actually charged Cohen with anything, but they would have needed probable cause of a crime for a judge to sign off on the search warrant. Special counsel Robert Mueller—who is heading up the investigation on possible Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election—referred Cohen’s case to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

Meanwhile, the gulf between Trump and his former lawyer is widening. The president’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, told Politico in May that Cohen was no longer representing Trump. In June, the president confirmed Cohen no longer was his lawyer, Business Insider reported.

Cohen also resigned his position as a deputy finance chairman for the Republican National Committee in June. In his resignation letter to the RNC he said that due to the investigations he did not have time to fulfill the duties of that position. He also hired Guy Petrillo as his lawyer and parted ways with his former legal team.

It remains to be seen how Trump will respond in the coming days—whether he ignores, condemns, or defends Cohen.

“I will not be a punching bag as part of anyone’s defense strategy,” Cohen told Stephanopoulos. “I am not a villain of this story, and I will not allow others to try to depict me that way.”

From left to right: Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting to discuss the farm bill Associated Press/Photo by Jacquelyn Martin

Farm bill to conference table

The House of Representatives and Senate have until Sept. 30 to iron out differences between their versions of the next five-year farm bill. Otherwise, U.S. agriculture policy will revert back to laws from 1938 and 1949.

Each chamber passed a version of the bill, known as the Agriculture Improvement Act of 2018, late last month. The House version, which passed 213-211 last without any Democratic votes, spends more in the short term, while the Senate version, which passed 86-11, aggravated conservatives by keeping farm subsidies intact. But the main showdown will be over a work requirement for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), better known as “food stamps,” which account for a whopping 80 percent of farm bill spending.

As it is, the U.S. Department of Agriculture requires “able-bodied” adult SNAP recipients to work 20 hours per week in order to receive full food stamp benefits. Those who don’t comply and aren’t exempt for some other reason, such as pregnancy or disability, face time limits—they’re allowed to receive only three months of food stamps every 36 months. But proposals by a pair of Republican legislators from Louisiana, Sen. John Kennedy and Rep. Garret Graves, would have limited it to one month of food stamps every three years.

The final version of the bill that passed the House, House Resolution 2, strikes benefits completely for nonexempt, able-bodied adults who do not log at least 20 hours of work each week. H.R. 2 also expands the definition of an able-bodied adult, requiring individuals up to age 59 (the previous cap was age 49) to work 20 hours a week starting in 2021, and 25 hours a week beginning in 2026. A poll conducted by the Heritage Foundation late last year found 92 percent of American voters think able-bodied adults should have to work (or spend an equivalent amount of time in a job-training program) in order to receive such assistance.

The Senate version of the bill does not contain any work requirements.

The House bill also limits the availability of state waivers that allow states to bypass the time limit altogether for areas with high unemployment. States may also use waivers when the work requirements are difficult to implement—it can be tricky to keep up with whether or not millions of adults are working the required 20 hours per week.

Thus, states love the waivers. Most have used them since the 2008 economic crisis, according to a 2016 audit report. A House Agriculture Committee aide told me one-third of the country is currently under waiver.

Opponents of the work requirement point to statistics that suggest most SNAP recipients already work, but in unstable jobs, and need the program especially in times of joblessness. (Fast food workers, for example, have a higher likelihood of having hours cut, or being laid off, than white-collar employees.)

The House version also contains a new provision to help job seekers: States must provide individualized case management for SNAP recipients. Some states have voluntarily offered this in the past, on a limited basis.

The next step for the bill is for a conference committee to devise a version both chambers of Congress can support. Conferees have not yet been announced, and legislators will return to Washington next week. —Laura Finch

From left to right: Sens. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.), Pat Roberts (R-Kan.), and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) during a Senate Agriculture Committee meeting to discuss the farm bill Associated Press/Photo by Jacquelyn Martin

Going Roe

Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine, said on Sunday she would not support any nominee for U.S. Supreme Court justice who wanted to overturn Roe v. Wade. As President Donald Trump prepares to choose a replacement for retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy, Collins’ statement puts the nominee’s confirmation in jeopardy in a Senate closely divided along party lines.

Collins said she would not accept such a nominee “because that would indicate an activist agenda.” She added, “That would mean to me that their judicial philosophy did not include a respect for established decisions, established law.”

Although the GOP needs only a simple majority vote in the Senate to confirm Trump’s nominee, it has no margin for error. If Collins were to vote against confirmation, it would leave 50 Republican senators, and one more defection could tip the chamber toward rejection.

Of those 50, Sen. John McCain of Arizona has been absent since December because of cancer treatments, and Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, said she wants the incoming justice to have the same mindset as Justice Kennedy.

Trump has narrowed down his list of candidates for the spot to six or fewer names, and Democrats seem prepared to oppose whomever the president nominates.

Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said last week, “Our Republican colleagues in the Senate should follow the rule they set in 2016: Not to consider a Supreme Court justice in an election year.” (Republicans in 2016 actually said they did not want to fill a Supreme Court vacancy during a “presidential election year.”) Schumer reportedly told Trump this week that he should nominate President Barack Obama’s pick to replace the late Justice Antonin Scalia, Merrick Garland, which according to the Senate minority leader could unify the country.

In 2016, President-elect Trump told CBS’s 60 Minutes he would appoint judges whom he considered “pro-life.” But White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said Monday that the president does not plan to ask any candidates about Roe.

“He’s not going to talk to judges about specific cases,” Sanders said. “He’s looking for individuals that have the right intellect, the right temperament, and that will uphold the Constitution.”

Trump plans to announce his pick on Monday. —Kyle Ziemnick