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You are here: Home / Archives for Politics / Trumpery / Trump Crime Cartel

Trump Crime Cartel

Late Night Open Thread: Good for Luke Skywalker

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The whistleblower’s under federal protection because of rabid MAGAts, but Daddy’s Liddle’ Pwincess wants the world to know how very normal’n’basic her life is…

Gotta agree, I personally can’t wait until Jarvanka and all their adult kin are in prison or in exile, may the Goddess of Consequences permit.

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Bad To Worse Open Thread

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A missive from our President:

Like every American, I deserve to meet my accuser, especially when this accuser, the so-called “Whistleblower,” represented a perfect conversation with a foreign leader in a totally inaccurate and fraudulent way. Then Schiff made up what I actually said by lying to Congress……

His lies were made in perhaps the most blatant and sinister manner ever seen in the great Chamber. He wrote down and read terrible things, then said it was from the mouth of the President of the United States. I want Schiff questioned at the highest level for Fraud & Treason…..

In addition, I want to meet not only my accuser, who presented SECOND & THIRD HAND INFORMATION, but also the person who illegally gave this information, which was largely incorrect, to the “Whistleblower.” Was this person SPYING on the U.S. President? Big Consequences!

And

These Radical Left, Do Nothing Democrats, are doing great harm to our Country. They are lying & cheating like never before in our Country’s history in order to destabilize the United States of America & it’s upcoming 2020 Election. They & the Fake News Media are Dangerous & Bad!

James Risen overheard Jay Sekulow, the President’s personal lawyer who probably will have to be Rudy’s cleanup brigade, in a green room. They’ve lost control of the narrative, and they’re frightened.

“I’m going on CBS at 8,” he said. “I’m going to see the president at 10. We’ve got to get on top of this thing. I think we can, but we have got to get on top of this.”

A moment or two later, Sekulow added: “He’s going all around town, stirring things up. It’s not helpful.”

A political science professor at UMass Amherst:

https://twitter.com/profmusgrave/status/1178450990376390662

Bad To Worse Open ThreadPost + Comments

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Slowly At First, And Then Suddenly

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Moral bankruptcy:


Even if this weren’t bullshite, how would Trump know about it? Look at the body language: This is the sorry little sidekick attempting to swagger with the big dogs on the playground at recess. But with global consequences…

Penny-ante autocracy-wannabes…

Saturday Morning Open Thread: Slowly At First, And Then SuddenlyPost + Comments

Whistleblower Inquiry Open Thread: How Fast Can Bill Barr Tap Dance?

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Not quite fast enough this time, I’m hoping! He was invaluable when it came to covering up Iran-Contra, and he did yeoman service during the Great Clenis Hunt, but he was younger then. And “we” were more naive about just how irretrievably corrupt the GOP had become…


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Trump Crime Cartel Open Thread: A Single Interlocking Scandal of Infinite Chapters

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… These records indicate that attorneys representing Trump and Manafort respectively had at least nine conversations relating to this effort, beginning in the early days of the Trump administration, and lasting until as recently as May of this year. Through these deliberations carried on by his attorneys, Manafort exhorted the White House to press Ukrainian officials to investigate and discredit individuals, both in the US and in Ukraine, who he believed had published damning information about his political consulting work in the Ukraine. A person who participated in the joint defense agreement between President Trump and others under investigation by Special Counsel Robert Mueller, including Manafort, allowed me to review extensive handwritten notes that memorialized conversations relating to Manafort and Ukraine between Manafort’s and Trump’s legal teams, including Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani…

From 2004 to 2014, Manafort had advised President Viktor Yanukovych, who advocated that his country sever ties with the United States and other Western nations, and align itself more closely with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. After Yanukovych fled the country in disgrace in 2014, a ledger was recovered from the burned-out ruins of his Party of Regions. Its records showed that Yanukovych and his political allies had made some $12.7 million in secret cash payments to Manafort. The disclosure led directly to Manafort’s resignation in August 2016 as chairman of the Trump presidential campaign…

… Manafort and those around him took the very public efforts by Giuliani to press Ukraine to investigate Manafort’s accusers as a favorable signal that the president might still pardon him after the 2020 presidential election. Trump is famously transactional, and Manafort feared that the president might be leading him on, according to the person who was party to the joint defense agreement communications. Giuliani’s constant touting of the Ukraine issue proved “reassuring” to Manafort, albeit to “a limited degree,” according to this person…


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The Whistleblower Plays Hardball

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The law firm representing the whistleblower has put up a website. That website now contains

September 24, 2019 statement from the intelligence community whistleblower legal team

September 24, 2019, Letter from Andrew P. Bakaj, Attorney for Intelligence Community Whistleblower to Acting Director of National Intelligence

September 24, 2019, Letter from DNI OGC to Andrew P. Bakaj, Attorney for Intelligence Community Whistleblower

Presumably they will update as more documents are generated.

The story in these three documents:

We support the bi-partisan, unanimous resolution passed by the Senate regarding our client’s lawful whistleblower complaint and call upon the Acting Director of National Intelligence to transmit the complete disclosure to the two Intelligence Oversight Committees.

The letter to the DNI states that the whistleblower intends to contact the Congressional committees directly and asks for the guidance prescribed by law from the DNI.

The DNI’s letter, signed by the Office’s General Counsel, leans on the previously-stated fact that the complaint includes potentially privileged communications with people outside the Intelligence Community to delay thing. They are consulting with other government agencies.

And this just came across my Twitter feed.

To be continued.

Open thread. [Regrets to Watergirl – I have added a new category.]

 

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The Whistleblower Saga Bifurcates

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There are at least two things going on in what we might call the whistleblower saga. I got confused by them last night, so let me try to clarify them for myself and whomever else might be confused.

A whistleblower submitted a complaint to the Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), which the ICIG was then required by law to pass on to the Senate and House Intelligence Committees. Acting Director of National Intelligence Joseph Maguire intercepted the complaint and stonewalled when Adam Schiff, chair of the House Intelligence Committee subpoenaed the document and him to appear before the committee. (Lawfare) Later reports were that the complaint was against something that President Donald Trump did and that multiple actions were included in it.

More specifically, a telephone conversation that included a promise to a foreign leader was said to be part of it. Initial speculation centered around Vladimir Putin and possible sharing of information about agents inside Russia. Then we were told that the country involved was Ukraine and its new president, Volodymyr Zelensky.

There was a great scramble to find recent news about Trump’s interactions with Ukraine, and a timeline suggested that Trump had withheld aid that Congress had voted for Ukraine until Zelensky agreed to find (or manufacture) dirt on the business dealings of Joe Biden’s son, Hunter. And there seems to have been an additional $140 million that went to Ukraine later.

In a wild interview with Chris Cuomo, Rudy Giuliani, the President’s lawyer, admitted that he had asked Ukrainian officials to investigate the Bidens. Trump initially tweeted a number of contradictory things about his conversation with Zelensky. On Sunday, he admitted that he had asked Zelensky to look into the Bidens.

This is where the story bifurcates. On the one hand, we have the whistleblower complaint, about which we know little. The reports of a promise and multiple interactions seem not to fit with what Giuliani and Trump have admitted to. The Acting DNI continues to (probably illegally) stonewall Congress.

On the other, we have the admission of the President and his lawyer that they were engaged in strongarming the new president of Ukraine to help them with Trump’s re-election campaign. This is clearly a misuse of power, a high crime or misdemeanor, suitable for a charge in impeachment. This is what the news has been running with.

Both stories are important, and different from each other. Trump’s Ukraine blackmail/ extortion/ soliciting campaign assistance from a foreign country did not come directly from the whistleblower complaint. It came from Trump and Giuliani’s admissions in response to speculation about what that complaint contained. Trump has (sorta, in his confusing way) offered a transcript of the telephone conversation, maybe redacted.

That’s not enough. The stories have become separate, but they are related at a fundamental level that has to do with Trump’s corruption. Congress must continue to investigate the whistleblower complaint and include the Ukraine connection.

Trump loves to confuse things, and that’s what he’s doing now. We’ve got to keep things clear in our minds.

 

Update: Profile of Michael Atkinson, the ICIG, “a straightshooter.”

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Friday Morning Open Thread: This Generation’s Version of ‘Trout Fishing in the Reflecting Pool’ Is Gonna Be LIT

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(Mike Luckovich via GoComics.com)
.

Friday Morning Open Thread: This Generation’s Version of ‘Trout Fishing in the Reflecting Pool’ Is Gonna Be LITPost + Comments

Another Whistleblower Update Open Thread: “Further Proof that Rudy Giuliani Is A Patriotic Mole”

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… Or maybe just a naked mole rat, which he resembles more and more. I’m guessing this will be the Media Village Idiot Hot Take by tomorrow…

ETA:

Another Whistleblower Update Open Thread: <em>“Further Proof that Rudy Giuliani Is A Patriotic Mole”</em>Post + Comments

What Can Be Done About the Whistleblower

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If AG Barr and the DNI continue to cover for Trump, what can be done? I really don’t know what you do when the executive Branch just chooses to ignore the legislative branch, particularly when the Judicial branch is feckless and corrupt.

I also wonder what it is going to finally take to get the Republicans to turn on Trump. The thing about this that surprises me is how well they have all been kept or stayed in line. Senators and congressmen have TREMENDOUS egos, and Trump has basically kept them in check through threats and intimidation, so I’d wager there are more than a few Republican Senators who would turn on Trump in a NY minute if they thing the tide has turned. It would not surprise me if useless cuck Lindsey Graham is just dying to fuck Trump over the moment he thinks it is safe to do so. Same with human simulation Ted Cruz, and many others.

The other thing is that the only thing holding Trump up is this line of Senators. If they abandon him, the entire facade is coming down. Guys like Trump are paper tigers (there’s a reason they call the show House of Cards)- they all are. They know what they have done, they know what happens to them if they lose absolute control, so they do whatever they can to maintain control because they understand the consequences. They’re equal parts sociopaths and adrenaline junkies, and enjoy the highwire act. But when the fall comes, it is quick and hard.

I mean, you don’t have to go to deep into the history books to find examples- what was it, four days for Nicolae Ceaușescu to be in total control to being strung up in public? I mean, it feels like a long time for the victims who suffered in silence for decades, but how long did it take from Epstein to go from leaving for a European vacation to hanging from a bedsheet in a NY jail?

I was thinking about this when looking at Netanyahu, another petty tyrant with a long history of criminal offenses that are kept at bay only as long as he is in power. I bet he is willing to do anything, including blowing up Israel, to maintain complete control. Because he knows the moment he is not longer in power, he is completely fucked and nothing will keep the prosecutors and his long list of political enemies away.

Back to the point- what can be done? I do think when Trump finally goes down, it’s going to be over in a blink of an eye and we won’t really comprehend how it happened for years after.

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Speculations Are Open

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We’ve all been wondering about the subject of the whistleblower complaint being withheld by Acting DNI Joseph Maguire from the House Select Intelligence Committee.

Tonight, Washington Post has a hint for us. Twitter is exploding with speculation, and why should they be the only ones?

From Adam Schiff’s letter to Maguire, it can be surmised that the incident that provoked the whistleblower’s concern had to do with someone in the White House.

From WaPo:

The whistleblower complaint that has triggered a tense showdown between the U.S. intelligence community and Congress involves President Trump’s communications with a foreign leader, according to two former U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

Trump’s interaction with the foreign leader included a “promise” that was regarded as so troubling that it prompted an official in the U.S. intelligence community to file a formal whistleblower complaint with the inspector general for the intelligence community, said the officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly.

What was the “promise”? And which foreign leader?

Have at it. Here are some tweets.

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Always Be Grifting Open Thread: #TrumpSharpies Are the New MAGA Hats

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Which happens first?

(a) Trump discovers Parscale is ripping off HIS campaign, noisily fires him; or
(b) Trump decides Parscale is getting too much attention from HIS media, ditto.


 
Fellow Repubs, of course, have already stolen the concept…

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