Monday Reading

As always, please go to the links for the full articles.

Has he tried Dewey, Cheatham and Howe?

As President Trump heads into one of the most critical phases of the special counsel’s investigation, his personal legal team has shrunk to essentially just one member, and he is struggling to find any top lawyers willing to represent him. 

Working for a president is usually seen as a dream job. But leading white-collar lawyers in Washington and New York have repeatedly spurned overtures to take over the defense of Mr. Trump, a mercurial client who often ignores his advisers’ guidance. In some cases, lawyers’ firms have blocked any talks, fearing a backlash that would hurt business. 

The president lost two lawyers in just the past four days, including one who had been on board for less than a week. 

Joseph diGenova, a longtime Washington lawyer who has pushed theories on Fox News that the F.B.I. made up evidence against Mr. Trump, left the team on Sunday. He had been hired last Monday, three days before the head of the president’s personal legal team, John Dowd, quit after determining that the president was not listening to his advice. Mr. Trump had also considered hiring Mr. diGenova’s wife, Victoria Toensing, but she will also not join the team. 

That leaves the president with just one personal lawyer who is working full time on the special counsel’s investigation as Mr. Trump is facing one of the most significant decisions related to it: whether to sit for an interview.

That lawyer, Jay Sekulow, is a conservative commentator who made his name on religious freedom cases. Mr. Sekulow is in talks with other lawyers about joining the team, although it is not clear how far those discussions have progressed. 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's A- Team against (heehee) lawyer / grifter Jay Sekulow. That's just not fair (and fittingly so!).

Yet another reason to loathe these hypocritical gargoyles:

Televangelist Frances Swaggart, the wife of Jimmy Swaggart, on Monday suggested that the students who participated in the March for Our Lives over the weekend were like ‘demonic’ Nazis and Adolf Hitler. 

During the Frances & Friends program, Swaggart reacted to an estimated 800,000 people who called for gun control by marching in Washington, D.C. over the weekend. 

“People have got to address the fact that kids today are being put in school where there’s no morals,” the television evangelist announced. “Because we’ve taken God out of the school. And there’s no resistance then to anything that Satan throws these kids’ way.” 

“Today’s gun control and confiscation rally was nothing new,” she added, reading from a paper provided by a fellow panelist. “Nazis and leftists have been using children for decades in their attempts to take guns away from law-abiding citizens.”

Bibi (Rump's Israeli cheerleader) been bad:

Israeli police questioned Benjamin Netanyahu on Monday over his alleged dealings with the country’s largest telecommunication company, a police spokesman said, one of three corruption cases weighing on the prime minister’s political future.  

It was the second time Netanyahu has been questioned in the investigation into allegations he awarded regulatory favours to Bezeq Telecom Israel in return for favourable coverage on a news site the company’s owner controls. [snip]

Two former Netanyahu confidants have agreed to turn state’s witness in the case. One is Shlomo Filber, the former director general of the Communications Ministry; the other is Nir Hefetz, a former Netanyahu spokesman.  

A nice, fitting honor:

The ashes of Professor Stephen Hawking will be interred next to the grave of Sir Isaac Newton at Westminster Abbey, it has been revealed. 

The renowned theoretical physicist's final resting place will also be near that of Charles Darwin, who was buried there in 1882. 

Prof Hawking, who had motor neurone disease, died on 14 March, aged 76, at his home in Cambridge.

That piece was found at Infidel 753's link round-up, which has dozens more places to visit. Check it out.