RETAIL SAILS
Target’s Sales Growth Highest in More Than a Decade Target said same-store sales rose at the fastest rate in more than a decade, buoyed by efforts to improve locations and e-commerce capabilities as well as a booming economy.
Comparable sales at the company increased 6.5% in the quarter ended Aug. 4, helped by stronger traffic at retail stores. Total revenue climbed 6.9% to $17.78 billion. (…)
Earlier this month, Walmart Inc. said its quarterly sales rose at the fastest rate in over a decade. Some retailers have also been picking up market share from competitors like J.C. Penney Co. and Toys “R†Us Inc. that have closed locations.
Target said it expects same-store sales in the third quarter and rest of 2018 to be “in line with†comparable sales growth so far this year, 4.8%. (…)
La-Z-Boy Reports Jump in Sales
(…) La-Z-Boy said it was “encouraged†by the improvement in its retail operations as a key same-store sales metric for its La-Z-Boy Furniture Galleries network rose 3.1%. Meanwhile, in the wholesale segment, upholstery sales benefited in part from sales of more higher-priced items. (…)
Hmmm…
From the WSJ:
Manafort, Cohen and Trump A guilty plea and verdict raise the political stakes for the President.
The jury conviction of Paul Manafort and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen on Tuesday are a damaging commentary on the shady operators Donald Trump associated with in his private and political life. Whether they also pose a fatal threat to his Presidency is far from clear, however, and the evidence in both cases is unrelated to the Russian collusion claims that set these prosecutions in motion. (…)
Mr. Mueller threw 18 charges at Mr. Manafort, no doubt figuring that some would stick, and that a conviction might cause Mr. Manafort to cooperate against Mr. Trump. Mr. Manafort now faces up to 80 years in prison, so he certainly has incentive to cooperate. But the question is how much Mr. Manafort even knows about any Russian connections. Nothing that has emerged publicly in two years of FBI and Congressional probes has demonstrated Trump-Russia collusion in 2016.
Mr. Cohen’s guilty plea may pose a greater risk to Mr. Trump given the lawyer’s role in paying $130,000 to pornography actress Stephanie Clifford so she would keep silent about an alleged affair with Mr. Trump in 2006. Mr. Cohen first denied making the payments, and Mr. Trump publicly denied knowing about them, but Mr. Cohen now says they both knew. (…)
Mr. Trump’s biggest vulnerability appears to be whether the payments to Ms. Clifford violated campaign-finance law. Mr. Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign-finance charge, which prosecutors may have wanted to stipulate were criminal to hold against Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen told the court he paid Ms. Clifford at the request of “the candidate,†which has to mean Mr. Trump. (…)
We doubt Mr. Mueller will indict Mr. Trump as a sitting President, but the ultimate threat to Mr. Trump is political. Congress decides what is an impeachable offense, and if Democrats retake the House in November they will define “high crimes and misdemeanors.†The Cohen and Manafort convictions raise the stakes for Mr. Trump and his Presidency, but voters may want to see more than evidence about payments to a porn star to overturn the results of a presidential election.
Bloomberg:
Cohen’s Guilty Plea Puts Trump in a Perilous Spot The prospect of a criminal prosecution will loom over the rest of his presidency.
(…) This event is therefore unprecedented in U.S. history. Never before has someone pleaded guilty in open court and said he acted at the direction of the president. We are therefore entering into a new phase of the Trump presidency — one that will be complex and treacherous for the president and for the country.
When it became clear that Nixon was criminally liable for acts he had committed as part of the Watergate cover-up, Congress initiated impeachment proceedings. Nixon soon resigned rather than face impeachment. (…)
Although he won’t be charged while he’s president, Trump could be charged with a federal crime the moment he leaves office. The prospect of criminal prosecution is therefore almost certainly going to loom over the rest of Trump’s term.
The best possible scenario for Trump is that the crime could be seen as technical. If the suggestions by Trump’s current lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, are to be believed, Trump was funneling the payment to Daniels through Cohen. If this is true, Trump was making an unauthorized and illegal campaign contribution to his own campaign. That’s a crime, but maybe not an earth-shattering one, if you already support Trump. Congressional leaders could see it the same way.
We would be faced with the bizarre scenario of a president, the nation’s chief law enforcement officer, who has been directly implicated in a federal crime — and suffers no legal consequences, at least while he’s in office.
As for impeachment, is directing the federal criminal violation a “high crime and misdemeanor†under the Constitution? It took place before Trump was in office, and it’s possible to argue that the crime was therefore not “high†because it wasn’t committed by President Trump but by candidate Trump.
Yet Trump’s alleged crime was connected to the presidency: According to Cohen, he committed it in order to get elected. This could arguably make it a “high†crime — high because it is tied to the office that Trump now holds. In any case, the ultimate definition of what is a high crime will be made by Congress. (…)
But the bottom line is this: Can the country tolerate having a president who has been directly implicated in violating the law?
The FT:
Trump’s future will be settled by politics, not the law Despite so many scandals, the court of public opinion is the one that really matters
(…) the next best way to winkle the president out of office. The process is more political than legal. The constitution requires a bare majority of the House of Representatives to impeach. If the Democrats win the House in November’s midterm elections, this might happen. But the constitution then requires a two-thirds majority of the Senate for the president’s actual removal. This is much harder to envisage. Without it, Mr Trump could emulate his predecessors Andrew Johnson and Bill Clinton by governing on, impeached but intact. (…)
WaPo:
Despite Cohen’s claim, legal consequences unlikely for Trump while he holds office
(…) Democrats have been split on whether calling for Trump’s impeachment is politically astute before November. But Cohen’s plea could revise that calculation and pressure Democrats to promise to launch hearings should they win the House, which has the constitutional authority to initiate impeachment proceedings. (…)
“The combination of the Manafort conviction and the guilty plea by Michael Cohen creates a legal maelstrom for the president’s lawyers, who now have to do battle on two fronts, fending off unrelated charges that both involve individuals who were at one time close to the president,†said Robert Mintz, a former federal prosecutor who now works at the firm McCarter & English. (…)
ZeroHedge:
Cohen Willing To Tell Mueller About Trump’s “Conspiracy To Collude” With Russia
If there was any doubt whether Michael Cohen had flipped, despite statements that he was not cooperating with the government as part of his guilty plea and refusing to name the “candidate” who instructed him to violate campaign finance law, that was promptly dissolved in the following hours when Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis said that his client has “knowledge” about computer hacking and collusion, and is willing to speak with Special Counsel Robert Mueller about a “conspiracy to collude” with Russia during the 2016 presidential campaign. (…)
“Mr. Cohen has knowledge on certain subjects that should be of interest to the special counsel and is more than happy to tell the special counsel all that he knows,” Davis told MSNBC on Tuesday.
“Not just about the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude and corrupt the American democracy system in the 2016 election, which the Trump Tower meeting was all about, but also knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.†(…)