TPM has an interesting article about Trump’s shady fixer, Michael Cohen, who grew up ass-deep in Russian mobsters on Long Island. An excerpt (link to article here):
From the 70s through the 90s at least, the bosses of the Russian mafia in the U.S. literally ran their crime organization out of the El Caribe.
So Michael Cohen’s uncle Morton Levine’s social club was the headquarters of Russian organized crime in the U.S….
According to Levine, who is apparently still alive, all his nieces and nephews owned shares of the El Caribe and still do. Levine told the AP that Michael Cohen owned his stake in the club until Donald Trump was elected President when he “gave up his stake.”
Isn’t that fascinating? Of course, there’s lots of focus on Cohen now that the FBI has raided his office. But Cohen was a known Trump associate for ages, all the while owning a stake in the Russian mob’s US HQ.
We knew all about the Obamas’ interest rate on their Chicago home prior to the 2008 election. We heard plenty about the preacher at the Obamas’ church.
Reporters dig through records to unearth that shit. I can’t help but think crackerjack New York-area reporters overlooked a rather large story on Trump’s mobbed-up fixer during the run-up to the 2016 election.
nonynony
You can’t really blame them, though. There was an important story about e-mails that they so busy working on.
Jeffro
Comey to Colbert last night re: Trumpov “I’m like a breakup that he can’t get over”
WIN
Speaking of in plain sight: has anyone else seen reports that the Stormy Daniels sketch/thug might be none other than the Trump Org’s head of security? Truly the mind boggles…
Elizabelle
I know. Where was our fucking press?
schrodingers_cat
@Elizabelle: In Putin’s pocket. What kompromat does he have on the Vichy Times?
cope
Booman recaps a deep dive he took late last year that connected lots of dots between Putin and Trump. It’s pretty heady stuff and really infuriating that it isn’t gaining the traction it should.
lynn
Wait. 911 Rudy and Christie knew all about Cohen and Trump and both said nothing.
eclare
@schrodingers_cat: Inquiring minds want to know….
Waldo
I have a hunch that the feds Trump keeps pooping on aren’t going to let the press overlook anything from here on out.
Kay
That to me is the context- because these are facts. Whatever Trump did or didn’t do with the Russian government for the election, Donald Trump and his general orbit have extensive connections to Russian business, both legal and illegal.
That’s what should have been presented to voters because “Russian collusion!” doesn’t just spring up out of thin air- there’s a backstory. It’s a different narrative if you add in the pre-existing ($!) connections- much more like mundane corruption, much less like elaborate cloak and dagger spy stuff.
How many voters knew then or know that there is such a thing as “Russian organized crime” in the US? That there’s a specific geographic locus– that it’s centered in the area where Donald Trump and his various cronies operated, that the relationships exist apart from “collusion” on the election and goes back decades?
This is essential context. He might not have gotten away with waving everything away as a conspiracy theory if people had know that this network exists and that these people are part of it. That it’s actual deals- property, real estate, and money changing hands, and that was going on decades before Trump launched the birther campaign.
Elizabelle
@schrodingers_cat: That’s what I think.
I was not happy to see the FTF NYTimes get those Pulitzers. Commended for their work on Russian interference, when they could have paid more attention to their own fucking morning delivery area.
They chose not to tangle with Trump. I am not sure it is because they deemed him “unelectable.”
Actually, that is the press’s excuse; I hear it frequently. Although we Democrats did not fall for that, nor did a lot of our friends abroad. They saw the danger.
ETA: Unlike goddamned Comey too. Think of how official DC drinks its own KoolAid. They believed Bush’s lies about Iraq, too. Democratic voters? Not so much.
The FTF NYTimes did not accurately appraise the actual danger. They took down Hillary instead. And now it’s got more crowing, and more Pulitzers. Fuck them.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
IIRC from too many stories over the last two years, the Russians, both the KGB and the Russian Mob*, were interested in trump from the mid-eighties. Not unreasonable to think that long before anybody thought about the White House, ill-intentioned foreigners saw a publicity- and cash-hungry (and easily manipulated) hustler with lots of connections (through his actually competent father) as a useful idiot, if only to launder money and keep a hand in Wall St and the city gov’t in the financial capital of the decadent West.
* from what I’ve read the Russian mob existed in NYC (Brighton Beach? Is that the neighborhood?) even before the fall of the USSR, but exploded once the oligarchs started flourishing under Yeltsin. Is that right? I imagine the KGB had some use for shady cousins operating in NYC and other places around the world
brendancalling
@cope: I was just about to write the same. Here’s a link to the article, and it’s well worth the read.
TL/DR: Michael Cohen gets a visit from the right hand man of one of Putin’s favorite oligarchs.
JPL
@Elizabelle: The finalist deserved it more
http://www.pulitzer.org/finalists/amy-julia-harris-and-shoshana-walter-reveal-center-investigative-reporting
This is the type of story that MSM should cover and ignores because Trump creates so much chaos, and demands constant attention.
tobie
Given how much we suspected about Russian involvement in the Presidential campaign as it was happening, it’s shocking how little the press did to look into this. Eric Lichtblau’s article in the NYT exonerating Trump on the eve of the election represents one of the lowest points in American journalism…matched perhaps only by the NYT teaming up with Peter Schweitzer of Clinton cash fame to rake over every aspect of Clinton’s life.
Kay
@Elizabelle:
When I’m feeling generous I think they didn’t cover it because they believed it was “known”- that people had an understanding of Trump akin to the understanding that people in NYC have of Trump.
They didn’t though. This is literally “news” to most people. Betty’s title is perfect. He hid in plain sight.
I tell people who are going to testify that they have to tell the judge the story- because he or she doesn’t know. They get so familiar with their own story they feel as if it tells itself – he or she “should know” based on, I don’t know, mind reading, but it doesn’t. “Tell him, and then tell him again”. Every detail, even if they’ve been over it 500 times and it bores the hell out of them. Because he doesn’t know what they know. It’s a weird thing. “Well, THAT’S obvious!” No, not at all. NOT obvious. Trust me- he will assume nothing :) Voters are like that, too. They don’t know what they aren’t told.
No Drought No More
It’s a fact. The reputation of the vaunted NY Times will never recover in full, not after the paper’s genuinely wretched journalism during the 2016 campaign. Nor should it. Between Judy Miller and Trump, I’d argue the Times has fundamentally betrayed its readership (and the country) twice now within a mere 13 years.
Jeffro
Btw one way to read Nikki Haley’s defiance about “ not getting confused” when it comes to Russian sanctions
Haley to Putin: you might own trump but you don’t own me
Cheryl Rofer
Not an excuse for organizations that are supposed to be seeking out the facts, but, having grown up in New Jersey’s Bergen County, I can kind of see why the Times overlooked the Mob connections.
Those kinds of connections are fairly frequent and almost part of the background noise. My brother had a friend whose father drove a garbage truck (yeah, we didn’t live in Donald Trump’s part of Queens), and we kids joked about his connections to the Mob. As I understood it in my kid mind, it was common knowledge among the grown-ups that all the garbage collection companies were run by the Mob.
Real estate is another area that’s always been infested. Trump was a fixture in New York news forever, and at some level everyone had to know that there must be Mob connections. But that was/is just how it was/is. Not news.
Again, not excusing the New York Times, just saying that fish may not notice the water.
Elizabelle
@Kay: Very true. It’s how Fox operates: tell and tell and tell and tell, although what they’re purveying is lies. But they insert them, through constant repetition.
Whereas: from the FTF NYTimes and others: fresh news morsels, all the time, but without putting it in context. In fact: here’s the truth, here’s a lie that some source gave us, and you decide. We can’t get over how objective we are!
The readers need the additional information to be able to make informed decisions, themselves. Tell us the larger story. Sucks that it takes more time, digging, discernment, and patience, but that’s the fucking press’s job.
24/7 is rotting a lot of brain cells. Not everything is a soundbite.
Also, I think it’s a problem there’s no institutional memory at a lot of papers. You see the young talent making ridiculous assumptions that someone who lived through the history — as opposed to skimmed it during class — wouldn’t make. They’re “reporting” through a veil of Republican framing, a lot of them.
LAO
@Jeffro: Apparently, the Russian media is reporting no new sanctions will be imposed by Trump Administration.
J R in WV
So on her third cup of coffee, Wife nodded off and poured the coffee on her foot. She going back to bed now, for a morning nap. So funny!
I’m going to join her, I think. Retirement is bliss. Naps when ever needed…!!!
Manyakitty
So, open thread, eh? I’m heading to LA the week of May 14, and I’m trying to schedule a tour of JPL. Apparently, that’s a hot ticket, because they’re booked until July. Anyone have a suggestion or an inside line? In the meantime, I’m refreshing the tour page to try catching a cancellation.
LAO
@Cheryl Rofer:
I totally agree.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
and even more: Haley to the NeverTrump elite and the skittish types waiting for someone else to clean up this mess
Kay
@Elizabelle:
I was amazed how the rap on Hillary was kind of handed down at the NYTimes like a treasured heirloom. Even people who were too young to have covered Clinton had this kind of ultra-cynical approach- “the wily Clinton’s don’t fool me!”
It’s an institutional “truth” at the NYTimes that the Clintons are evil :)
Bobby Thomson
None of this stuff was a secret. I blame the editors.
rikyrah
Let’s get the Starbucks cameras to show where she went up to the gentlemen and told them that they had to purchase something.
I haven’t really commented on the Starbucks thing.
I don’t do Starbucks because I don’t do coffee, and though I drink tea, I’m not paying $4 for tea. Period.
The only reason that I go to Starbucks is because of Peanut, who LOVES IT.
Peanut is 9 years old.
And, she already knows the Stabucks culture.
” Auntie, let’s go to Starbucks”
We get to Starbucks, and she orders whatever flavor drink that suits her. I want to leave, because, as usual, I haven’t ordered anything.
” Oh Auntie, let’s just sit for awhile, so that I can drink (insert ridiculous named drink). Can I have the Kindle (cause she knows Starbucks has free Wi-Fi)”
So, we sit while she drinks.
THAT is the Starbucks culture.
And, I have been in enough Starbucks to know that not everyone there has actually BOUGHT anything.
This entire scenario was bullshyt all the way around.
The people in the store say that the Manager never approached the men about buying anything. Yet, there’s the 9-1-1 tape stating the opposite.
She should have been fired from the get go.
YOU.DO.NOT.CALL.THE.POLICE.ON.BLACK.PEOPLE.UNLESS.YOU.ARE.READY.FOR.IT.TO.ESCALATE.INTO.SOMETHING.HORRIBLE.
Yes, THIS time, these gentlemen were educated professionals, and it ended with no physical harm coming to them.
But, WE.KNOW.THE.HISTORY.OF.THIS.COUNTRY.
Elmo
@Kay: I think that’s exactly right. “Everybody knows” Trump is a penny-ante grifter, a con man, a huckster, a serial bankrupt willing to lend his name to any quick-buck cheap-ass licensing scheme while he stiffs his vendors and covers it all up with a thick coat of gold paint. “Everybody knows” Trump has been running a full-service money laundering emporium for every thug, crook, and gangster east of the Danube. You can’t report on that like it’s “news.”
Kay
@Cheryl Rofer:
That’s where I’m leaning too. In my generous moments. There’s this kind of breezy assumption “oh, everyone knows NYC real estate is all mobbed up with Russians!”
I don’t think they do know. That’s very parochial and local info. I don’t think anyone in Wisconsin knew that. They think of him as The Apprentice Guy who owns golf courses.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yes, indeed. Brighton Beach, according to Wikipedia, is a.k.a Little Odessa. And there are other NYC neighborhoods that have strong flavors of particular SSRs.
These neighborhoods are usually self-contained and rather provincial– the fact that Cohen worked his way into one is a tell that he made a serious effort to get into the local culture. And that he’s a thug.
zhena gogolia
I’m finally reading Jane Mayer’s article about Christopher Steele in the New Yorker, and this morning I just looked at my husband and said, “We have a crime family in the White House.” There’s no doubt about it.
rikyrah
@J R in WV:
third cup of coffee and still that sleepy?
she got up WAYYYY too soon…LOL
Kay
@Elmo:
I find it hysterical how things like money laundering are just taken as ordinary- “we all knew that!”
I get it, in a way. Money laundering is, after all, not “collusion specifically relating to the 2016 election” but isn’t that a little legalistic and NARROW? Are they drafting a criminal complaint or writing a news story?
I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think most voters knew all about money laundering. What a fucked up assumption to make!
LAO
@rikyrah: I’m a Starbucks regular — every morning in my neighborhood. I know every employees name and they know mine — I honestly feel like Norm on Cheers when I walk through the door. Moreover, every employee at that Starbucks is a POC and I can’t imagine what happened in Philly could happen at “my store.” I’m not willing to boycott and imperil their jobs because some white asshole in Philly has no fuck business managing a shop.
And, yes I agree the manager should have been fired. What a miserable excuse for a human being. I cannot fathom what life must be like for people that are so afraid all of the fucking time.
Just One More Canuck
@Jeffro: holy crap – it’s spot on
And “Matthew Calamari”? Seriously?
Gin & Tonic
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Yes, Brighton Beach, and you are correct on the timing, too. Emigration from the USSR was possible via Israel beginning in the 1970’s. While many, perhaps most of the emigrants of that time period were in fact Jews who were actually persecuted in the USSR and genuinely wanted to live in Israel, a small percentage were, let’s say, not particularly observant, and saw that exit visa as a goose laying a golden egg. Those basically transited Israel on their way to Brooklyn, and some of them became known as far more aggressive and ruthless than the established NYC mob.
Cheryl Rofer
@Kay: Yeah. We knew it in Bergen County, and I carried that with me in my travels. But people who haven’t lived in the New York area don’t, although folks around other big cities might have guessed.
Cheryl Rofer
@Cheryl Rofer: Something else we can learn from this election is how much white collar crime goes unnoticed and unpunished.
Jeffro
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: well, it’s great that she’s taking a hard line on Putin, but every Trumpov supporter from Pence on down can talk with Mueller under oath, and we’ll see how it all shakes out after that.
They own this, and they should all expect to answer for it
LAO
Un-Fucking-Believable:
But, yet, actually believable.
Nell
MattF
@Kay: Yes, well, if you’re from NYC, you’ve seen the row of ugly but strategically located ‘Trump’ housing developments on the West Side. They’re not meant to be lived in, just assessed at so-many-megabucks and traded.
Tony Jay
@Cheryl Rofer:
Well, yeah, but that’s what makes their total lack of interest in telling anyone about it so odd. However comfortable the ‘journalists’ at the NYT might have been with how Mobbed-Up anyone and everyone involved with the construction trade or civil utilities in NY is just assumed to be, the split second someone like Donald Trump made it onto the GOP Primary stage the whole vista changed. They couldn’t seriously have missed that. It was no longer just something everyone knew, it was big news that someone they would naturally assume to have Mob connections was a candidate for President. That’s not just News. That’s juicy, tasty Pulitzer Prize winning scandalous news that – everyone – would read about.
But they didn’t think it was a story worth publishing? I don’t think so.
rikyrah
@LAO:
Well, they would know…
Betty Cracker
@rikyrah: The idea of calling cops to enforce minimum purchase policies for businesses makes no sense. The men at Starbucks weren’t causing any trouble — they told the manager they were meeting someone there, which was 100% true, and Starbucks sells itself as a community meeting space. There was no reason to call the cops, and, maybe even more importantly, there was no reason for the cops to respond. It’s not the job of publicly funded law enforcement officers to ensure smooth table turnover at fucking Starbucks. There was no safety issue there.
MattF
@Tony Jay: Eh. Writing stories about the Russian mob in NYC is dangerous to life and limb and there’s a limited audience for it. I’d bet the mob has had change of heart about Trump– happy, at first, that ‘one of ours’ is succeeding, but then realizing that the USA is a very big country containing lots of people who are at least as dishonest, paranoid, and brutal as they are.
WaterGirl
I had to turn of Colbert in the first minute of the interview with Comey. Did Colbert fawn over Comey for the whole thing?
The opening question/comment where Comey said his wife wanted something good to come out of the whole clusterfuck (my word) so he wrote a book about having integrity. Fuck that! The guy put his own ego ahead of the rules and he gets to write a book as if he is the expert on integrity? I couldn’t hit delete fast enough.
Did it get better? (Haven’t read all the comments yet, waiting to be picked up for another cast change for my ankle.) Will go back and read until my ride gets here and then will check back when I return.
moonbat
@Kay: Exactly. Everyone in New York might be aware of how deeply the mob is into real estate and money laundering with Trump, but when you are running for PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES that is something EVERYONE in the country needs to know about you. It is not background noise; it’s a big effin deal!
germy
@MattF:
I was thinking the same thing. Although there are many examples of courageous, crusading journalists, there are also many reporters who value safety and doing what they’re told.
Easier to write about that, because what is the preacher going to do? Not as scary as the russian mob.
I’ve always suspected Dick Cheney got away with a ton of shit because more than a few reporters were scared of him. They knew he was willing to make their lives miserable if they displeased him.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@rikyrah: The escalation was a preposterous thing for a store manager to do. Every day, I write at B&N. And every day, I see people treating the store like the public library. They get a stack of magazines and read, sometimes licking their fingers to turn the page. Then they leave without returning the magazines to the shelf. The manager does not escalate! Because that’s not what you do in retail.
Of course, the people I see are white.
PJ
@Cheryl Rofer: White collar crime is endemic, and getting caught is baked in to the costs of doing business for most major institutions. Where there is money to be made, most major businesses are not going to let ethics or the law or fundamental decency stand in their way. The American Way is corrupt, and the MBA mentality of business leaders and consultants is, at best, completely amoral.
One of the problems with white collar crime is that, absent whistle-blowers with extensive documentation, it is extremely difficult for prosecutors to obtain sufficient reliable information to bring an indictment – “everyone knows so-and-so is mobbed up, or cooking the books, etc.” is not going to cut it. So we mostly find out about these things in any detail when a particular business or industry collapses, as with the mortgage/CDO/banking collapse of 2008. Local prosecutors could put more resources into investigating white collar crimes, but there is little call from the public to do so, and because politicians depend on campaign funds from these businesses (in New York, particularly from real estate and finance), there is a big disincentive not to look too closely.
I don’t think any of these bad behaviors are going to change until we start putting business leaders who engage in crimes in jail, but we all know that jail is just for poor people, most of whom are non-white, and, I’m guessing, who do not have MBAs.
Kay
@Tony Jay:
And I don’t either, in my less generous moments. Because it IS a good story, right? It has these crazy characters and huge sums of money and assorted decadent rich people and it’s NYC so they sure as shit would scoop up some corrupt local Democrats along with the Trumpsters. It’s bipartisan!
Yet. They wouldn’t go near it.
gene108
I am sorry, but the media had their priorities in order in 2016.
Figuring out the minutia of why Hillary had a private e-mail server, while Sec. of State, and how she used it and if she used it properly far out weights knowing whether or not her opponent is in over his head with ties to the Russian mob.
After all, having a private e-mail server, while Sec. of State, was not illegal, but maybe did not reflect sound judgement in not anticipating the shit storm it would create four years later, whereas working with the Russian mob is probably illegal, but… I can’t by ironic, sarcastic, whatever here…
Trump’s shit was there for any reporter, with even a minimal amount of drive to dig through court records.
The media let the country and world down in 2016.
rikyrah
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I know…the stories were there. It’s not like those of us on this side DIDN’T KNOW.
WE KNEW.
KNEW something was SUSPECT.
But, the MSM was too phucking LAZY to put together all the dots, and called us paranoid when WE did long before them.
Phuck ALL of them.
Manyakitty
@LAO: Jeebus, these douchebags have NO shame!
gvg
@LAO: In other words conmen or idiots. The names we need are of the 12 GOP proposing this stupidity. Not their fantasy bogiemen.
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@PJ: The NYC office of the FBI has a unit devoted to white collar crime. What happened there?
PJ
@gene108: We cannot count on “the media” to do anything in the public interest. The media has no legal duty to report the truth or to focus on issues vital to the public interest. Journalists will report on whatever their corporate bosses instruct them to.
We can and should expect our public servants in law enforcement and our elected officials to investigate criminal activity, particularly when it involves prospective elected officials, but, as we saw in 2016, Republicans are never going to do this when allowing the crime to remain hidden will benefit them (thank you, Mitch McConnell!)
Tony Jay
@MattF:
I bet it is, but the limited audience part of that explanation stopped being operative the moment Trump started campaigning for President. By the time he was actually the GOP nominee not reporting on it was… something else again.
These were actual affirmative decisions made by the editorial staff and owners of the NYT. It simply is not credible that Trump’s Mob links never came up as a potential line of reporting. They must have, but the NYT decided to keep them secret from the rest of the country. They did something similar for Bush before the 2004 Election. They have form.
gene108
@Kay:
Nah…
I think it is no one in the media took Trump seriously.
When he announced, they laughed him off.
When early 2015 polls showed him leading the Republican field, they laughed him off.
When he started winning primaries, they laughed him off.
When he secured the nomination, they cringed and figured maybe a back room deal would undermine him and he wouldn’t get the nomination.
When he got the nomination, they figured no one would take him seriously as a candidate, and Hillary would win.
When he won, they were like “oh shit! This is happening! WTF do we do?”
The media ignored their own polls, with regards to Trump’s chances in the primaries, they ignored election results in those primaries, and they ignored polls during the presidential campaign. Their hubris blinded them to anything other than Hillary winning, therefore they focused all their energy on taking her down a peg or three.
germy
Here’s one of the names Cohen’s team suggested:
Bart Schwartz, former assistant U.S. Attorney for Rudy Giuliani.
laura
@Betty Cracker: I may be off base on the Starbucks felony sitting while blackman.
While it is a disgrace and flat out racism in action, the police chief claimed that his officers did it “by the book.”
THIS is the tip of the iceberg of “religious liberty”. THIS is the end game. Police will enforce discrimination in private, public and semi-public settings if the owner/manager/person in charge finds you offensive by your very being and equal rights under the law is at best secondary to prejudice made law.
SiubhanDuinne
@Jeffro: @Just One More Canuck:
Here’s the paragraph that caught my attention:
James Grau is married to one of Trump’s older sisters, Elizabeth. The biographical info is very sketchy, in both senses of the word, but he’s apparently an executive something something in sports documentary films. Nothing about being one of Donald’s goons.
Just thought it was a curious tidbit.
Kay
@Tony Jay:
And if it’s a business decision, they cover what sells, well, something like 70% of people want it investigated according to poling. That’s a big number. They don’t draw any “red line” either- they don’t cordon off Trump’s business sleaze from his President sleaze. When they’re polled that say it all should be investigated.
In fact, the NYTimes SUPPLIED the “red line” concept. They fed it to Trump. They invented that concept, that there was some bright line investigators should not cross. That applies to NO OTHER politician.
I don’t think it matters. Investigators are obligated to refer criminality even if they stumble upon it so the “red line” is just more bullshit. Mueller can’t say “I found money laundering but I was looking for collusion so I’ll just ignore this crime and pretend I didn’t see it’. He has to refer. As we just saw, when he referred Cohen.
Steeplejack
@Cheryl Rofer:
Fix’d.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
The fact that Trump was even within sniffing distance of a major party nomination or winning the election shows how bankrupt the judicial system is in this country. He and his entire crew should have been in jail years ago. The news media gets lumped right in there. There’s nothing more useless in our country right now than a “journalist”.
eclare
@WaterGirl: Colbert did end up asking him why he went with the option that he KNEW would be bad in the short term in favor of an option that MIGHT or MIGHT NOT be bad in the long run. Colbert also said that as soon as the news broke about Comey re-opening the investigation, his wife called and said “that’s it, he’s just cost Clinton the election”. Colbert said he told his wife, no, that won’t happen, and then asked Comey “who was right?” Comey again pulled his “lordy I pray I didn’t influence the election” bullshit. But Colbert did not ask the question I most want asked, “once you decided to reveal the investigation into Clinton, why did you continue to conceal the investigation into Trump?”
Wish he had been the old Colbert…
ETA> Hope you and Henry continue to get better!
gvg
I blame the editors and owners actually.
I also have some blame for the readers. Frankly the problem is that selling fluff and entertainment has been consistently more profitable and people are clearly not willing to pay more for good reporting with context to explain what all of us don’t know about things outside our own lives. If we can’t solve that, then we can’t have a good news industry.
PJ
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): That same NYC office of the FBI that, two weeks before the election, reportedly was going to leak the “reopening” of the investigation into Clinton’s emails because duplicates were found on Weiner’s laptop, thus forcing Comey to make his announcement? The same NYC office that also told the NY Times that the FBI had found no collusion between Trump and the Russians? I think we know who those agents were rooting for. When we get a Democrat in the White House, there had better be a complete investigation of that office.
Humdog
@rikyrah: I saw a photo of a woman holding a sign saying “Legalize Black!” I am sorry to say there were at least four current stories out at the time the sign could have been a protest about. Sickening!
I truly do not comprehend how black people are able to continue to take this shit from whites without more of them blowing up violently about it. It would take white dudes about five seconds of such treatment before they would be crying about it or shooting someone over it.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@eclare: Has anyone asked that asshole the $64,000 question yet? Why talk about Hillary and not Donald? Anyone?
germy
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady):
Remember those old Maytag Washer repairman commercials?
Mnemosyne
We have some issues with the Russian mob out here in the Los Angeles area, too.
You know who used to prosecute them when he was a local DA? Rep. Adam Schiff. ?
MattF
@Tony Jay: In fact, by hiring Maggie Haberman, the NYT made it clear that their national Trump coverage would be informed by and based on the habits and traditions of Trump’s local NYC coverage. It’s certainly not positive, but it’s not serious either.
Humdog
@Betty Cracker: Even if police are supposed to enforce no trespassing laws (which in this case were bullshit), I cannot fathom how the men were held in custody for eight hours. There is no justification for such a “policy” On the part of the police for such an “infraction”.
eclare
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Not that I’m aware of…and it seems a pretty obvious question to ask
SiubhanDuinne
@gvg:
The names and signatures are affixed to the letter.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Steeplejack: just listening to the Obamabro interview with Adam Davidson, and he says about NYC (and Miami, and LA) something I’ve heard specifically about London: Officials, i.e. prosecutors, know that their cities’ real estate markets, and thus economies, are in no small part dependent on money laundering. I don’t pretend to know the ins and outs of it, but it makes me wonder if it isn’t one more lever Putin would work if he wanted to, sacrifice a couple of oligarchs to send the NY and Miami real estate markets into a tailspin, and thus fuck with the whole country.
He also says that one of the reasons the trumps have been able to stay below the radar is because their operations are relatively penny-ante: Trump Soho (branded and marketed, not built), Baku and Manila, not London and Tokyo. He says something about, they don’t even deal with top-tier oligarchs, which made me chuckle
Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady)
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: Terry Gross asked it yesterday on Fresh Air. Comey said that revealing one but not the other was a good illustration of how he followed FBI policy. I can’t remember what came after that because I rolled my eyes so hard they blocked my ears. The interview is available on line if you want to hear it.
hitchhiker
@Kay:
This is how I used to train people to make curriculum, and how I made curriculum, and how I actually taught students. You can’t believe how many times and how many ways something needs to be said/shown/modeled until people finally take it in.
On the board over one classroom, where I could see it at all times, was this message:
What’s obvious to you is obvious to you.
… meaning, it’s ONLY obvious to you. It’s NOT obvious to anybody else. Do your job.
Your comment also makes me understand that Fox is just that — a curriculum. It’s actually perfectly designed to fill up any given set of hours with a carefully constructed set of ideas based on “knowledgeable” and “experienced” and “listenable” teachers.
Tony Jay
@Kay:
Exactly. And they – still – won’t go near it. The last year has been one steadily increasing rumble of dropping shoes where Trump and links to Russia are concerned, but the newspaper of record in New York City has decided not to publish any stories on the links Trump had before he was President? That’s odd, isn’t it? Raises questions. Maybe someone should ask them about that. I mean, why not? That’s a story too, isn’t it?
gvg
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap: It’s not just the judicial system. And the reason is money. The anti tax anti big business con game has resulted in a lack of investigation resources to find and prosecute complicated money schemes which because they notice other people getting away with it. The lack of funding for the IRS to have a lot of real investigations of the real money is deliberate by rich people. So is the funding a reason courts are so backlogged all over the country. It’s deliberate. Anti government blabber covers for criminals getting away with stealing in fancy ways. And too many Americans who aren’t rich make themselves cats paws of the crooked rich.
eclare
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Yeah, Putin really owns London/UK at this point. I’m going to assassinate anyone I want on UK soil, and if you do anything about it, I’ll tank the London economy. Oh, and you’re welcome for Brexit!
Aimai
@Humdog: right! How does this even happen? totally immoral for the police to punitively restrain and imprison these men with no legitimate charges, for a non crime.
JPL
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): The FBI in Boston was bought off by Whitey and you have to wonder if something similar didn’t happen in NY.
MattF
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: It’d be edifying to analyze the cash flows in NYC real estate– separate the hot money condo market from the money spent by rich people who actually want to live in Manhattan. I’m sure that sort of analysis has been done, by the FBI, at least, and I’m sure it’s Top Secret.
Sab
@J R in WV: I thought this was funny, and called my husband up to read it to him. Woke him up from his nap. He was not happy. Retirement. Not always smooth.
Mnemosyne
@Humdog:
Apparently the DA was pissed about that and let the two men go with no charge and an apology.
But, yeah, how did two men quietly waiting in a Starbucks turn into an arrest? No one seems willing to answer that.
LAO
@JPL: I can’t believe I’m defending the FBI — but in all fairness, it was a single agent in Boston and his supervisor — not the entire Boston office.
Also the NY FBI Office at 26 Federal Plaza is huge — there are hundreds of agents in NYC. I doubt many are “compromised.” Again — I find this to be very painful.
FlipYrWhig
@gvg: There’s nothing entertaining about an exhaustive investigation of which computer is sending email to which other computer. There’s a lot that’s entertaining about mobsters and naked ladies. They’re kind of the cornerstones of American popular entertainment since the invention of cinema. And Big Media decided the former was obviously more in need of public attention than the latter. Bit of a curious decision, that.
Betty Cracker
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
The kind who deserve scare quotes, yes. But the real kind have never been more useful, and thank dog they still exist. Even at the NYT!
MattF
@Mnemosyne: Even though everyone knows the answer. I will say that the Starbuck’s CEO seemed genuinely appalled.
NCSteve
@nonynony: Those Clouds and Shadows weren’t going to cover themselves, you know.
JPL
@LAO: You have to wonder why they turned a blind eye to Trump’s dealings, but I understand your point.
Tilda Swintons Bald Cap
@Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Thanks.
PJ
@LAO: Somebody in the NY office was leaking anti-Clinton and pro-Trump garbage. We have no idea if it was one person or dozens, but we have heard nothing about any internal FBI investigation into those leaks.
Betty Cracker
@eclare, @Tilda Swintons Bald Cap & @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): I heard that Fresh Air interview as well, and Comey’s excuse for revealing the Clinton investigation without disclosing Trump’s was that a) everyone already knew about the email investigation, which had been going on for ages and in which Clinton herself was a principal, and b) the Trump investigation had just started and was at that point confined to a few Trump associates and not Trump himself. I don’t buy it, but that’s the story he told.
Elizabelle
@Cheryl Rofer:
Good to bear in mind. We could help in educating them, no?
MattF
@Betty Cracker: At least he allowed that this is something that looks bad, which is better than ‘we don’t discuss ongoing investigations, except about Hillary Clinton’.
LAO
@JPL: I don’t know if I’m just jaded but It’s not surprising to me that Trump wasn’t criminally investigated.
@PJ: I get everyone’s point, and I would like for the agents involved in the leaking to be exposed as well. All I’m pointing out is that the FBI (especially the NY office) is massive and highly compartmentalized. Most of the agents are assigned to specific units that investigate specific types of crimes, ie. there is a “healthcare fraud unit,” a Gambino Crime family unit — I’m quite sure (as a result of the compartmentalizing) senior staff knows which unit the leaks came from.
NotMax
While geographically accurate, regionally and culturally them’s fightin’ words, especially when it comes to Brooklyn (which was a separate city from NYC until almost the end of the 19th century). Brighton Beach may technically be on Long Island but it is not of Long Island. Weather reports, traffic reports, etc. refer to “Brooklyn, Queens and Long Island.”
Imagine there are similar locality idiosyncracies up your way.
Mnemosyne
@MattF:
I have a theory: I think the manager convinced herself that two guys sitting quietly were armed robbers who were waiting for their chance to spring. She thought she would be the hero when the guys were searched and their true identities were revealed.
Basically, she was living out the plot of an urban legend about the sharp-eyed white person who susses out the secret criminality of a clever robber who just happens to be Black, but there’s a reason those things are called “legends.” It’s because they don’t happen like that.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Interesting. I’m sure they also know which agents have social relationships with Rudy Giuliani and the goon who runs that ret’d agents group. For that matter, that shouldn’t be that hard for a curious reporter
hitchhiker
@MattF:
I live about a mile from sbux headquarters in Seattle & know a number of people who work in the corporate office, one of them being an admin in the very top circles. They’re genuinely appalled and very freaked out.
The decision to close 8000 stores and the entire corporate structure for 4 hours next month is one measure of how appalled and freaked out — it’s going to cost them millions of dollars, but more than that, it’s them admitting that they understand how bad this is, and that they did it.
I have zero faith that anything meaningful can happen in a 4 hour training, BUT the fact of the training itself — no matter what’s in it — as a corporate response to one stupid manager’s racism is kind of breathtaking.
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Brighton Beach is, of course, Brooklyn, but Cohen grew up in Lawrence, which, as you know, is most definitely Long Island.
Cheryl Rofer
@Elizabelle: I tweet at them regularly, fwiw, but they’re pretty resistant.
I just came across this long read on Michael Cohen’s Mob connections.
Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog
@Kay:
And yet, not regarded as “just how it is; ‘everybody knows'” for some reason.
I think I can accept “everybody knows” as a possible explanation for the NYT’s near-complete failure to do substantive reporting on Trump during the campaign … at least, it seems possible.
Odd that the same thinking didn’t apply at the Times to Clinton, though.
I still think they’re long overdue for some serious explaining.
rikyrah
Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz said the white employee who called the police on 2 innocent Black customers didn’t know they were going to be arrested. That’s BS. Back in 2015 a Starbucks employee called the police on another Black man & got him killed & Schultz met with his family pic.twitter.com/m8zZTIuSVO
— Tariq Nasheed (@tariqnasheed) April 18, 2018
Woodrowfan
we have a crime family in the White House. Unfortunately trump’s a mix of Sonny’s temper and Fredo’s brains.
Steeplejack
@Mnemosyne:
And who in their right mind would rob a high-traffic place like Starbucks?!
“Take the cash. Leave the croissants.”
Woodrowfan
@rikyrah: but that does not mean the manager of that store knew about the earlier incident. (not that the manger wasn’t a racist jerk, they are)
Woodrowfan
@hitchhiker: no, but shutting everything down sends a warning to managers “if you f up like this, we will throw you under the bus, let it run over you, then throw you under ANOTHER bus.”
Jim, Foolish Literalist
This fucker has six months left to hamstring McConnell if he wants to, especially if he gets fellow preening-peony Flake to do it with him. If this is the best we can get from him I’ll take it, but what a fucking weakling
Steeplejack
@Cheryl Rofer:
That article is hilarious (in a bad way)! Cohen is like an anthology of Law and Order episodes.
Kay
@MattF:
That’s it exactly- the perfect description.
Kay
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
This is going on with Rob Portman in Ohio too. I find it baffling. He seems to be supporting Sherrod Brown for Senate.
I know they work well together- they cooperate on things- but it’s odd. It’s like he’s trying to hit some pitch-perfect sweet spot of bipartisanship. It feels like bet-hedging, like if Trump goes down Portman won’t be tied to him.
NotMax
@Gin & Tonic
Was talking about referring to the location of the club (and the hotbed of mobsterdom) as being on Long Island, not about where he grew up.
So old can remember when Lawrence was still perceived of as WASP country. Also back to when Brighton Beach had become a crumbling enclave under a terminus of the El, complete with unpaved roads and rickety stilt houses on the marshland.
Gelfling 545
@rikyrah: I live in a city much smaller that Philly and I have a hard time imagining the police having time to actually arrest & process people for not ordering quickly enough in coffee shop. The fact that they actually arrested these men even after the person they said they were waiting for arrived and confirmed their statements tells me they knew it was a sketchy situation and hoped to get a little resisting arrest or something to justify the situation so it was maybe not quite so obvious racism. If the police commissioner is correct in that they followed procedure, they need some new procedures asap.
Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog
@Tilda Swintons Bald Cap:
Astonishingly, Steve Inskeep. Of all people.
He sounded as if he had prepared, too.
Not a first for NPR, but maybe a first-in-a-long-time …
eclare
@Steeplejack: It’s like stupid Sopranos.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Kay: I could see an old-school GOP type like Portman hoping Dems take care of trump and they can keep their hands clean with the rabble. I don’t know what game Corker is playing. I doubt he has any kind of Republican future, nothing that a grateful D president wouldn’t give him, and upper-second tier ambassadorship to a place with a nice climate and not too much paperwork. Rome, Madrid, I hear Copenhagen is lovely this time of year
Gin & Tonic
@NotMax: Well, since Betty used the words “grew up”, I naturally assumed she was referring to where he grew up. Silly me.
rikyrah
@zhena gogolia:
it’s never been in doubt for me.
the Russian stuff, in all its glory – IS THE ONLY THING THAT MADE SENSE.
Steeplejack
@eclare:
Short Bus Sopranos. We could probably get that greenlighted by Monday.
Uncle Cosmo
@Just One More Canuck: SQUID*!!….um, squirrel!!
(*NB: Same word in Greek. Note that before the rise of Rome, la Trinacria was peppered with Greek colonies. And just for the hell of it: Sicilian given names often differ from the Italian equivalents. When I was touring there >30 yrs ago I was told the local version of “Carlo” was “Calogero.” Some years later I discovered that the Greek word kalogeros means – wait for it –
lobster. Go figure…)
eclare
@Steeplejack: It’s gold, Jerry! Pure gold!
Brachiator
@gene108:
This is true, but it wasn’t just the media. Every dismissal you note was echoed by pundits, bloggers and commenters on various sites. Every single dismissal.
But also note that Trump supporters decided early on that he was their man, and rejected media concerns. And true believers always had Fox News and other conservative outlets to reinforce their hopes and dreams.
Also, there are a number of folks who cling to the idea that the media is only the NY Times, the Beltway press, NPR and designated cable stations. But in the run-up to the election, practically every newspaper in the US endorsed Hillary Clinton and warned of the dangers of a Trump presidency, including a number of conservative newspapers which had never endorsed a Democrat in their publication’s history.
And the media did not ignore their own polls. People fell in love with the polls that predicted a Clinton win and dismissed contrary polls as outliers.
But yeah, despite under-estimating Trump, too many journalists and pundits fell back on the lazy and stupid habits of reflexive Hillary bashing, and freely indulged their misogyny. On top of this you had all of the efforts to suppress votes, Russian interference etc.
PJ
@Steeplejack: The sad thing is, that for every shrewd but imbecilic corrupt businessman like Trump, there are several who are shrewd and smart and would never be caught anywhere close to the activity that Trump has engaged in or with the people he has associated with. And if Obama hadn’t made fun of Trump’s idiocy, there’s a good chance his narcissism wouldn’t have been triggered enough for him to run for President, and he never would have been investigated, and he could die a rich-enough, friendless gasbag in gauche luxury, respected by the American booboisie as a bold, successful entrepreneur (though the boobs may stand by him still, even after he’s indicted.)
Uncle Cosmo
@Gin & Tonic: FWIW I own a slim volume titled Political Jokes of Leningrad (early 1980s) in which one such involved a Soviet factory about to be visited by Western journalists that discovers it has no Jews on staff. So they tell one of the flunkies OK, just for the visit, we’ll provide you documents showing you’re a Jew. The visit goes well, but the employee in question doesn’t show up at the office the next day, or the next, or the next… & a week later when management sends someone to his apartment it’s vacant & the neighbors say, “Oh him! He emigrated to Israel last week! Who knew??”
Villago Delenda Est
Well, if you had a luscious nothingburger like “her emails!” distracting you, you’d overlook the filet mignon right in front of you, too!
efgoldman
@LAO:
These assholes are mostly “lawyers”, right?
Fred’s Law School & Seed Company?
They passed the bar, where, Bloom County?
Fair Economist
@Kay:
I think a lot of Republicans realize how corrupt and traitorous the top Republican leadership is, and are currently trying to do *just* enough to not support them that they personally won’t be targets when this all comes out. Gowdy in particular makes me think this.
Ghost of Joe Lieblings Dog
@Betty Cracker:
— Joe Liebling (the journalistic love of my life and the basis of my nym-de-blog)
He liked the first sort, and I don’t think he had much regard for the third.
JoeyJoeJoe Junior Shabadoo
@Just One More Canuck: for anybody really interested in Calamari related info, if you watch the season two finale of the Apprentice, you can see him freeze on tv when shithead asks him for his opinion on the two finalists
sheila in nc
@Fair Economist:
Gowdy actually strikes me as someone who is freaked out by the whole situation. He’s seen the evidence and there is nothing he wants so much as to get far, far away from it all while there is still time. He’s not even thinking about a future political career. He said as much, and I think he was telling the truth.
Kay
Dear God. We’re doomed. These massive egos are going to kill us all. Hopefully Stormy knows what the hell she’s doing. We should all be paying HER lawyer.
Brachiator
@Uncle Cosmo:
Love this joke. It’s got a lot of layers to it.
Very cool.
Sab
@Kay: You can pay her lawyer, She has a crowdfunding site up. I think Doug! posted it a couple of nights ago.
The Moar You Know
@MattF: Fuck him. I’ve worked for them. Their modus operandi is to come down on you like a ton of bricks for every perceived or imagined mistake and then give you zero help when you really need it. If the store manager called the cops it was because he/she was told to. Full stop.
That the company then threw said manager under the bus in front of the entire national media is just how they work. They know no one will ask for the manager’s side of the story.
Apologies for not sharing in the righteous outrage. I know how this company treats their employees and store management and it’s awful. Again: the manager called the cops because they were told to.
MCA1
@Cheryl Rofer: I think that’s all accurate and astute. Everyone sort of just accepts that in local politics in that area you’re likely to bump into mob world in some way, shape or form, so unless some particular corruption is laid bare no one gets overly concerned that you used to have lunch on occasion with some guy who was friends with a capo or something.
However, there are some differences with the Trump backstory and that of, say, Chris Christie or Peter King or whatever other NY/NJ pols out there who probably have some vague ties to people in and orbiting the organized crime world. For one, he was a businessman, not a politician, and in real estate to boot, and one who moved from an outer borough to Manhattan. Having sorta shady looking connections to mobsters in that trajectory is different from moving from village council to mayor to U.S. House member or something. Also, Trump Co. was open about reliance on Russian sources of funds and Russian clients/unit purchasers. Then throw in his modern day Roy Cohn fixer character, a guy with extensive ties to numerous shady industries notorious for being money-laundering hotspots, an ex-con Ukrainian immigrant father-in-law (or it may have been his brother’s Ukrainian immigrant f-i-l who had a criminal record), longstanding personal ties to Felix Sater and investments to and from the former USSR. I’m not from out East, but I also perceive there to be a qualitative difference between the Italian mob in 21st century America, which to my (limited) knowledge is significantly less attached to the Old World than half a century ago, and the Russian mafia in the U.S., which pretty clearly has a lot of ties to various friends and allies of Putin and his band of oligarchs. As you say, maybe that was all just part of the unnoticed landscape for New Yorkers.
But when that moves to a political campaign, or specifically the 2016 Trump campaign, and you then enter Manafort, the changing of the party platform on arms to Ukraine, and the complete inability of the candidate to say anything negative about Russia, it’s a different ballgame. It’s crazy to me that that stuff didn’t have someone at the Times thinking about laying it out to make it part of the tapestry of vetting reportage during the campaign. While those connections may have been background noise to New Yorkers, when it crossed into policy and a national political campaign and not the local business pages, it stopped being normal or unexceptional.
SiubhanDuinne
@Uncle Cosmo:
Ah HA! And lobster rhymes with mobster.
It’s starting to make sense now. It’s all coming together.
Yutsano
Since this is open thread: Menendez is a no on Pompeo. Delaware peeps (or those who can get a DE ZIP code) need to start working on Coons.
rikyrah
@Yutsano:
NO Democrat has ANY business voting for Pompeo.
NOT.A.ONE.
Uncle Cosmo
@Brachiator: Again FWIW (remember, early 80s) the first joke in the book was something on the order of –
And one more favorite:
/rimshot (same word in magyarul FTR)
(NB the Naval Ministry dated from the days of Austria-Hungary, which did have a coastline & navy, albeit the former [& usually the latter as well] confined to the Adriatic.)
Uncle Cosmo
@SiubhanDuinne: I thought of that but chose not to post it under the impression that yinz Jekylls would catch the drift.
Moreover, the German word for “lobster” is Hummer. Which (in English) rhymes with “bummer” & also with “dumber.” Which I guess is where we came in… (As the old swing song goes, Walk right in, walk right out…)
Calouste
@Uncle Cosmo: The fascist dictator of Hungary between the wars was an admiral.
Gin & Tonic
@Uncle Cosmo:
And so we come back around to Stormy Daniels, no?
It’s OK, I’ll show myself out.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
So end of the day Trump is nothing more that a hustler wanbe gangster with a big line of credit.