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Presented by U.S. Chamber of Commerce: Playbook is POLITICO's must-read briefing on what's driving the day Feb 08, 2019 View in browser
By Anna Palmer, Jake Sherman, Daniel Lippman, Eli Okun and Garrett Ross

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DINGELL SERVICES ... Monday: Visitation at the Ford Community and Performing Arts Center in Dearborn, Mich., from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. Tuesday: Mass at Sacred Heart in Dearborn at 11 a.m. There will be a service in D.C. as well, and he will be buried at Arlington National.

-- REP. DEBBIE DINGELL (D-MICH.) on Facebook: "To all our friends. My heart is broken. My true love is gone. The tears are flowing pretty freely as I miss the man that made me whole. One can know it is coming, but nothing prepares you for the hole in your heart. He was my one and only true love. Know he loved everyone of you And was proud to call you friend." The post

ABOUT THE CAMP DAVID SUMMIT... ELIANA JOHNSON sends along this explanation from Hogan Gidley about MICK MULVANEY'S Camp David summit: "Camp David is a perfect setting for the Chief of Staff to rekindle some old friendships, forge new ones, and have a free exchange of thoughts and ideas between Americas policy makers, regardless of political Party." Reps. John Yarmuth (D-Ky.) and Henry Cuellar (D-Texas) are among the Dems going to Camp David.

THE INVESTIGATIONS ... ANDREW DESIDERIO and DARREN SAMUELSOHN: "Whitaker says he never interfered in Mueller probe": "Whitaker's long-awaited testimony was dramatic on multiple fronts. He stood his ground insisting he would not 'talk about my private conversations with the president of the United States' - citing the possibility that the president would invoke executive privilege to shield the contents of those discussions.

"But he also conceded to the Democrat-led panel that 'at no time has the White House asked for, nor have I provided, any promises or commitments concerning the special counsel's investigation or any other investigation.' ... It appeared that Whitaker was also trying to run out the clock before he officially leaves his post." POLITICO

-- WHITAKER told CHAIRMAN JERRY NADLER (D-N.Y.) his five minutes were up when he got a question he didn't particularly appreciate. The video

CAITLIN OPRYSKO: "GOP border security negotiator: Chances of another shutdown are 'nil or next to nil'": "Asked in an interview on Fox News' 'Fox & Friends' about the odds of another partial shutdown over President Donald Trump's demands for border wall money, Tennessee Rep. Chuck Fleischmann answered that they were 'nil, or next to nil.' 'In this situation there is no appetite on either side of the aisle and I think in either chamber for another partial government shutdown,' Fleischmann told host Steve Doocy." POLITICO

-- ON THE OTHER HAND ... BLOOMBERG'S JENNIFER JACOBS (@JenniferJJacobs): "'We're on the verge of a government shutdown again,' Trump spokesman Hogan Gidley told reporters this morning. 'Because Democrats won't come to the table and have a conversation about securing the country.'"

-- CNN'S PHIL MATTINGLY (@Phil_Mattingly): "Members of the House Freedom Caucus met yesterday at the White House with President Trump about border security funding, a source tells @sarahcwestwood."

STORY OF THE DAY -- WAPO'S JOSHUA PARTLOW, NICK MIROFF and DAVID FAHRENTHOLD in Santa Teresa de Cajon, Costa Rica: "'My whole town practically lived there': From Costa Rica to New Jersey, a pipeline of illegal workers for Trump goes back years": "The Washington Post spoke with 16 men and women from Costa Rica and other Latin American countries, including six in Santa Teresa de Cajon, who said they were employed at the Trump National Golf Club Bedminster. All of them said they worked for Trump without legal status - and that their managers knew. ...

"The brightly painted homes that line the road in Santa Teresa de Cajon, many paid for by wages earned 4,000 miles away, are the fruits of a long-running pipeline of illegal workers to the president's course, one that carried far more than a few unauthorized employees who slipped through the cracks." WaPo

Happy Friday afternoon. BIG CONGRATS to Nahal Toosi, who was nominated for a National Magazine Award for her reporting on Rohingya refugees and the Obama administration's Myanmar policy. The POLITICO Magazine story from March

MORE YEARBOOKS ... "Mississippi Lieutenant Governor Was Member Of College Fraternity Under Fire For Racism," by HuffPost's Amanda Terkel: Tate "Reeves, who is running for governor in this fall's election, was in Kappa Alpha Order at Millsaps College in Jackson, Mississippi. A 1993 yearbook lists him as a freshman that year, and he was featured as a Kappa Alpha member starting in the 1994 yearbook. The fraternity, which is still active at Millsaps, looks to Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee as its spiritual leader." HuffPost

A message from U.S. Chamber of Commerce:

A new HHS proposal would import foreign drug pricing policies that block access to life-saving drugs, inhibit R&D necessary to discover new drugs, and threaten our nation's free-market health care system. Tell HHS: Protect America's free-market healthcare system!

TRADE WARS -- TREASURY SECRETARY STEVEN MNUCHIN and U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE ROBERT LIGHTHIZER will travel to China next week with the official U.S. delegation to discuss trade issues Feb. 14 and 15, per a statement today from White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders. Deputy U.S. Trade Representative Jeffrey Gerrish will begin deputy-level negotiations Feb. 11.

ABC'S SOO RIN KIM, KATHERINE FAULDERS and MATTHEW MOSK: "Trump campaign paid legal fees to firm representing Jared Kushner": "The president's re-election campaign made two payments to the firm, Winston & Strawn LLP - $55,330 and $42,574. The expenditures were payments to Kushner's attorney Abbe Lowell for Kushner's legal fees, sources with knowledge of the payments told to ABC News. Lowell joined the firm in May 2018. ...

"One source familiar with the reimbursements told ABC News that near the end of 2018, the campaign covered legal expenses for several former senior staff members who had testified before congressional committees. The House intelligence committee had afforded each person who testified the chance to have a lawyer review a transcript of their testimony as part of a plan to eventually see the transcripts made public." ABC

THE NEW MAJORITY -- ARTHUR ALLEN: "Takano opens probe into Mar-a-Lago influence at VA": "In a letter to VA Secretary Robert Wilkie, [Rep. Mark] Takano requested extensive documents including all records of communication between the Mar-a-Lago members and their companies with current or former senior VA officials." POLITICO ... The original investigations from POLITICO and ProPublica

THE LATEST IN VENEZUELA -- NYT'S ANATOLY KURMANAEV and CLIFFORD KRAUSS in Caracas: "U.S. Sanctions Are Aimed at Venezuela's Oil. Its Citizens May Suffer First": "When President Trump slapped surprise oil sanctions on Venezuela aimed at toppling President Nicolás Maduro, exports plunged and banking froze as the effects hit harder and faster than expected.

"How ordinary Venezuelans will endure the magnitude of the American sanctions is still unknown. But in recent days it has become clear that Venezuela's state oil company, the main target of the sanctions as Mr. Maduro's bankroller, has found a few ways to survive, with some Russian help. If Mr. Maduro hangs on, many in Venezuela fear that the sanctions imposed last week will push the already suffering nation of about 30 million people into an even greater humanitarian catastrophe." NYT

BOOK WATCH -- WHAT ANDREW MCCABE IS UP TO ... "Rosenstein did not want to write memo justifying Comey firing - new book," by The Guardian's Jon Swaine: "Andrew McCabe writes in a new book ["The Threat: How the FBI Protects America in the Age of Terror and Trump"] that Rosenstein, who has publicly defended the memo, lamented that the president had directed him to rationalise Comey's dismissal ...

"In his sharpest criticism, McCabe writes that after firing Comey, Trump and the White House counsel, Don McGahn, acted like mobsters by in effect offering McCabe protection in return for loyalty. ... He is also sharply critical of Jeff Sessions, Trump's first attorney general, saying he had trouble focusing, frequently flew into red-faced rages and confused classified intelligence with things he had read in the media." The Guardian ... $20.99 pre-order on Amazon

ON THE WORLD STAGE -- NBC'S KEN DILANIAN (@KenDilanianNBC): "New: Saudi Minister of State for Foreign Affairs Adel al-Jubeir on Jamal Khashoggi: 'Mistakes happen. We acknowledge that this was a huge mistake.' Per @JoshNBCNews"

-- "Not just Oregon: Saudi students in at least 8 states, Canada vanish while facing criminal charges," by The Oregonian's Shane Dixon Kavanaugh: "There are likely more to be discovered. The Oregonian/OregonLive uncovered five examples in Oregon and began searching other states in late January. We've found similar cases in Montana, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Utah, Washington and Wisconsin. We also found two cases in Nova Scotia: Saudi students in two separate incidents skipped bail and disappeared after being accused of sexual assault. ...

"In at least four of those cases, the Saudi government paid the defendant's bail and legal fees. Three surrendered their passports. Some have been tracked back to Saudi Arabia." Oregonian

MEDIAWATCH -- "Saudi Arabia Sought Vice's Help to Build a Media Empire," by WSJ's Rory Jones in Dubai, Benoit Faucon in London and Keach Hagey in New York: "The Saudi effort to control the narrative became more difficult after the Oct. 2 killing by Saudi operatives of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi sparked an international backlash. The talks with Vice about a business partnership are unlikely to move forward, according to the people familiar with the discussions.

"Vice said it was reviewing its deal with government-controlled Saudi Research and Marketing Group, or SRMG, to produce documentaries about Saudi society. But SRMG has already expanded the Saudi media footprint in several languages, including Farsi, the language of Iran, Saudi Arabia's rival. SRMG has an Arabic broadcast joint venture with Bloomberg LP and a news venture with the Independent, the U.K. online newspaper, to produce content in Arabic, Farsi, Turkish and Urdu." WSJ

-- BLOOMBERG'S CHRISTIAN BERTHELSEN and JENNIFER JACOBS: "National Enquirer's AMI Scrutinized Over Bezos Story, Sources Say"

WHOA ... WAPO'S ROBERT MCCARTNEY, JONATHAN O'CONNELL and PATRICIA SULLIVAN: "Facing opposition, Amazon reconsiders NY headquarters site, two officials say": "Key officials, including freshman U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.), whose district borders the proposed Amazon site, have rallied against the project. And opponents went door-to-door to warn people in Queens of looming rent hikes and displacement, much as Seattle experienced during the company's explosive growth there.

"No specific plans to abandon New York have been made. And it is possible that Amazon would try to use a threat to withdraw to put pressure on New York officials. But with a meeting of the state's Public Authorities Control Board and a third City Council hearing expected later this month, Amazon executives may be reaching an inflection point, the people said." WaPo

THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION -- "White House report tries to shift Trump health care rhetoric," by AP's Ricardo Alonso-Zaldivar: "A new report from the White House tries to shift the Trump administration's combative rhetoric on health care, suggesting changes to the Affordable Care Act under President Donald Trump do not fundamentally undermine the health law.

"The Council of Economic Advisers report, released Friday, says Obama-era subsidies that help low- and middle-income customers pay their premiums will help keep HealthCare.gov afloat even if some healthy people drop out or seek other coverage because of Trump's changes. Nearly 90 percent of customers get taxpayer-provided assistance." AP

-- WSJ'S TIMOTHY PUKO: "Interior Secretary Nominee Says He Will Balance Energy, Environment"

-- USA TODAY'S BRAD HEATH: "Trump picks golf club, Mar-a-Lago members as ambassadors": "Since he took office, Trump has appointed at least eight people who identified themselves as current or former members of his club to senior posts in his administration. USA TODAY identified five of those appointees in mid-2017, prompting criticism from ethics watchdogs that the selections blurred the boundary between his public duties and his private financial interests. Since then, Trump has appointed three other members as ambassadors in Europe and Africa. One has been confirmed by the Senate." USA Today

CNN'S DANA BASH and DAVID SHORTELL: "Kellyanne Conway describes for the first time alleged October 2018 assault": "Conway said she called 911, though the woman had left before local police arrived. After an investigation, Mary Elizabeth Inabinett was charged in November with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct. A trial is set for March in Maryland state court." CNN

VALLEY TALK -- DANIEL LIPPMAN in POLITICO Europe, "Microsoft to update Office Pro Plus after Dutch ministry questions privacy: The Netherlands' justice ministry was concerned popular programs were sending diagnostic data from Europe to the U.S. without adequate user controls."

TV TONIGHT -- Bob Costa sits down with BBC's Katty Kay, WaPo's Dan Balz, PBS' Amna Nawaz and NPR's Susan Davis on PBS' "Washington Week" at 8 p.m.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD -- Heather Plochman, lead associate for health policy and communications at Booz Allen Hamilton and a Burson-Marsteller alum, and Mark Sarne, commercial bank analytics senior manager at Capital One and an Accenture alum, welcomed Claire Rebecca Sarne.

A message from U.S. Chamber of Commerce:


A new HHS proposal would import alarming drug pricing policies from foreign governments, threatening America's free-market health care system and strong business environment. Learn more.

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