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Trump-Russia

Review and Exposure

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This Wood Stork was drying its wings on my dock, but it looks like a dirty old man exposing himself to the swamp, doesn’t it?

Review and Exposure

Speaking of exposure, dirty old men and swamps in another context, Josh Marshall argues that the Biden campaign should commit now to exposing Trump’s cover-ups and corruption if Biden wins in November. Marshall says it needn’t necessarily involve prosecutions (another kettle of fish), but he argues that Biden should warn the administration now not to destroy any evidence and make it clear that wherever possible, all evidence of Trump’s cover-ups will be made public if Biden is elected. I think Marshall makes a good case. Here’s an excerpt:

Review and exposure is something we can and must insist on now. There is no tyranny or injustice in simply having your bad acts revealed. If Trump is driven from office, Trumpism won’t end in January 2021. We’ll still have a whole political party devoted to him and his politics. We will still have the machinery of government which it uses to govern through minority rule. But none of these obstacles to and targets of reform will be surmountable without accountability and exposure for the public catastrophe of the last four years. No standards of public service or resistance to public corruption and abuse can be restored without it.

Airing what happened is critical on the domestic front. It is even more critical on the international front. How many elements of our bilateral ties with other countries are based on corrupt acts or transactions? How many actions of state are based on corrupt bargains or betrayals. These relationships or the integrity of American foreign policy cannot be restored without such bad acts being revealed and expunged. We will not otherwise know if corrupt sources of personal or familial enrichment have been engineered to survive his presidency.

If Joe Biden wins the election in November he will immediately be confronted with a broken country and a host of public crises – a pandemic, a wrecked economy, a longterm need to restabilize a sputtering global order. There will be great pressure to turn on the page on the story and simply move on, if only for lack of time. So Biden’s supporters should begin insisting now on a commitment to an orderly process of clearing the executive stables of the dung of Trumpism. This should include, starting now, a warning to all those in power not to destroy any documents or records – in the broadest sense of the term – and that any officials will be held liable for destroying records and evidence which are all the property of the United States government and not any transient officeholder. It’s the one act that should ensure prosecution.

Trumpism has been an historic assault on our civic and democratic order. We cannot simply have it become a normal part of our history. A chief part of the President’s corruption has been abusing his powers to hide his wrongdoing. We can’t move forward without undoing those crimes and unwinding the lies.

“Restoring the soul of the nation” is part of Biden’s campaign pitch, and restoring behavioral norms is part of that. Review and exposure of Trump’s cover-ups would go a long way toward strengthening institutional traditions that the honor system failed to enforce.

One of the knocks on Biden early in the campaign was his instinct toward comity, but there’s reason to hope he wouldn’t insist on turning the page and letting bygones be bygones. His joint op-ed with Senator Warren on ferreting out corruption in the coronavirus relief package is one such sign.

Trump wasn’t the first corrupt president, and he’s certainly not the only one who dabbled in criminality, but he’s also engaged in wrongdoing that deserves to be exposed whether or not it violated the law. Because of the presidency’s unique powers, not every conceivable wrongdoing has been codified — for all their foresight, the Founders didn’t envision a federal government controlled by a low-rent Borgia clan empowered by spineless greedheads in pursuit of eternal minority rule.

Marshall notes the limitations of criminal investigations (see Mueller, Robert) and says Trump and Trumpsters should be criminally prosecuted where appropriate. But here he makes the case that public exposure is an effective remedy in its own right — that fear of public exposure and the resulting risk to enablers of voter sanction/public shame can and should be on the table. I think that’s true.

Open thread.

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Tuesday Evening Open Thread: The Way We Live Now

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I’m sure Cheryl and/or Adam will have serious, information-packed post about this later, but chroist jaysus, as the old folk used to say…

RECEIPTS:

Repubs: Hide the evidence, y’all!…

The Senate will incorporate the annual intelligence policy legislation into the National Defense Authorization Act — but only after stripping language from the intelligence bill that would have required presidential campaigns to report offers of foreign election help.

Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Tuesday that Senate Republicans forced the removal of the election reporting provision as a condition to include the intelligence bill on the must-pass defense policy legislation.

Earlier this month, the Senate Intelligence Committee approved an amendment on an 8-7 vote from Warner and GOP Sen. Susan Collins of Maine, which added a provision to the Intelligence Authorization Act requiring campaigns to notify federal authorities about offers of foreign election help.

That bill, however, was unlikely to get Senate floor time on its own, which is why it’s being included in the National Defense Authorization Act. The effort to strip the foreign election help provision from the intelligence bill was not a surprise, as acting Senate Intelligence Chairman Marco Rubio, a Florida Republican, predicted earlier this month it would be removed before the bill was on the floor, because of an objection from the Senate Rules Committee…


And when they go, is there any way we can bar them from returning?

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Donald Trump Doesn’t Read

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I keep seeing it mentioned that the Russian bounty information was presented in the Presidential daily briefing, as if that is some sort of gotcha. Now granted, if Trump were a NORMAL President, it would be a horrifying indictment. But Donald Trump doesn’t read. And I don’t mean he doesn’t read the PDB, I mean he doesn’t read ANYFUCKINGTHING. If you put a gun to his head and said name three books he’s spit out “The Art of the Deal” because that involves him, the bible because he knows the rubes love it, and then you’d have to shoot him because he couldn’t fucking name a third.

If you wanted Trump to know something, you have to have whoever his current Grima Wormtongue is whisper it to him, someone on Fox and Friends talk about it, or stage a beauty pageant. Have some bottle blonde with fake cans come up the lectern for a Q&A in a bikini and say “My name is Destiny and I am from Southern California and I like long walks on the beach, Uggs, have a star tattoo on my ankle, and I think it is outrageous that Putin is paying the Taliban to kill American soldiers.”

Even then he might not give a shit, but at least he might have potentially processed the information.

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The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

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The President, Republican members of the House and the Senate, Fox News personalities and talking heads, the President’s surrogates on other broadcast and cable news shows, the conservative social, digital, and news media, and the President’s campaign officials and surrogates have been calling for the release of the email that former Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (AP-NSA) Susan Rice sent to herself in January 2017 as a memorialization of the meeting about what the FBI’s counterintelligence officials had been discovering about LTG (ret) Flynn and his activities before he joined the President’s 2016 campaign, during the campaign, and during the transition.

This was purposefully conflated with unmasking by Congressman Nunes as part of his agitprop that President  Obama and his senior officials spied on the President’s campaign, including seeking to unmask LTG (ret) Flynn in signals intelligence collected on foreign targets. When the Trump administration declassified and released Rice’s email to herself, they only declassified and released part of it. Which, of course, led to screaming and yelling about coverups and conspiracies. Dr. Rice has long requested they declassify the whole email, as well as the transcripts of LTG (ret) Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak, as well as other Russian officials, and officials from other countries. Earlier today the Trump administration declassified and released the remainder of Dr. Rice’s email and no surprises at all, there’s nothing untoward at all in it.

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be

As can be clearly seen from reading the email, no one involved did anything untoward, unethical, and/or illegal. As was the case with the unmasking conspiracy theory, there is no there there.

Here is Dr. Rice’s statement from this afternoon:

The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 1 The Susan Rice Email: There Is No There There, There Never Was, and There Never Will Be 2

And while Republican elected officials* and their surrogates are trying to spin this as evidence of illegality, it isn’t. And the most amusing part of today is that Senator Graham hung his tuchas way, way, way, way out over the edge this morning expecting to turn this into a scandal that he could weaponize on behalf of the President’s, as well as his own, reelection chances.

Ooopsie!!!!!

To quickly summarize:

  1. Dr. Rice’s email to herself memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting with President Obama, VP Biden, FBI Director Comey, herself, and several others clearly indicates that nothing untoward, unethical, and/or illegal took place. Rather, President Obama made it very clear that everything was to be done by the book.
  2. The release of the entire email further undercuts the Congressman Devin Nunes created agitprop and conspiracy theory that President Obama ordered the FBI to spy on the President’s 2016 campaign and he knows this because the evidence is being covered up in Dr. Rice’s email to herself, which is classified.
  3. That email is now declassified and released and once again Congressman Nunes is unmasked as a none too bright, conspiracy mongering fabulist.
  4. The declassification and release of Dr. Rice’s entire email memorializing the 5 JAN 2017 meeting undercuts Senator Graham’s plans for a Senate Judiciary Committee investigation to get to the bottom of these allegations, because the declassified email shows those allegations to be complete bullshit.

Open thread

* Obligatory:

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The Black PSYOP IX: The Unmasking of Obamagate

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When SARS-CoV2 and COVID-19 began to sweep across the globe, and became the focus in news coverage and reporting, the Black PSYOP that the President, his campaign, his elected Republican surrogates in the House and Senate, his other surrogates, and Fox News and the rest of the conservative and right wing news, digital, and social media had been pushing against Vice President Biden to excuse and justify the actions that the President was impeached for got shelved for a while. At least in terms of an attempt to promote it day to day. But now that the President has declared victory against SARS-CoV2  and COVID-19 in an attempt to reopen the US it has been reinvigorated in an attempt to change the subject.

Since Mother’s Day on Sunday, the President has been tweeting and shouting about something he calls Obamagate. This isn’t actually anything new. Back in 2017, in an attempt to divert attention from him, his campaign, and a number of his senior campaign staff and political appointees involvement with or connections to Russia, the President and his surrogates argued that President Obama had ordered the FBI to spy on his campaign. This included wildly inaccurate accusations, because the people making them didn’t understand what they were talking about or were acting as if they did, that the Obama administration spying went beyond having the FBI wiretap the campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Specifically that Assistant to the President-National Security Advisor (APNSA) Susan Rice asked the National Security Agency (NSA) to unmask the names of Trump campaign and transition officials as part of President Obama’s and his co-conspirators nefarious plot to prevent the President from being elected. These accusations are back, but they still make no factual sense.

Acting Director of National Intelligence and Ambassador to Germany (previously a noted Internet troll and shitposter) Richard Grenell declassified and released three pages of unmasking requests made by Obama administration senior personnel between 30 NOV 2016 and 12 JAN 2017.

The Black PSYOP: The Unmasking of Obamagate

The Black PSYOP: The Unmasking of Obamagate 1

The Black PSYOP: The Unmasking of Obamagate 2

Despite the breathless reporting by tweet that “SCOOP @CBSNews  obtains @RichardGrenell notification to congress declassified “unmasking list” Flynn between late 2016 and January 2017 – Read 3 pages provided by NSA here”, you’ll notice the following statement at the top of the first document Grenell declassified (emphasis mine):

Each individual was an authorized recipient of the original report and the unmasking was approved through NSA’s standard process, which includes a review of the justification for the request.

And:

In this case 16 authorized individuals requested unmaskings for REDACTED # of different NSA intelligence reports for select identified principles. While the principles are identified below, we cannot confirm they saw the unmasked information.

In short: everything was done in accordance with the law and regulations within normal channels.

But it goes beyond this, because the people requesting the unmasking, from APNSA Susan Rice to Ambassador to the UN Samantha Power to VP Biden had NO WAY TO KNOW WHO THE UNIDENTIFIED AMERICAN OR AMERICANS WHOSE NAMES WERE REDACTED IN THE INTELLIGENCE REPORTS THEY WERE READING ABOUT CONTACTS WITH RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT PERSONNEL, INCLUDING AMBASSADOR KISLYAK WHO WAS RUSSIA’S PRIMARY INTELLIGENCE HANDLER IN DC AS WELL AS RUSSIA’s AMBASSADOR TO THE UN AND OFFICIALS OF OTHER GOVERNMENTS, WHEN THEY MADE THE UNMASKING REQUESTS! WHICH IS WHY THEY MADE THE REQUESTS BECAUSE WITHOUT KNOWING WHO WAS TALKING TO KISLYAK, OTHER RUSSIAN OFFICIALS, AND OFFICIALS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES IT WAS IMPOSSIBLE TO KNOW WHETHER WHAT HAD BEEN COLLECTED ON THE COMMUNICATIONS – THE TRANSCRIPTS OF THE COMMUNICATIONS – REALLY POSED POTENTIAL THREATS TO THE UNITED STATES THAT AMERICANS WERE INVOLVED IN!!!! It was NOT UNTIL any of these Obama administration officials got the unmasking reports from the National Security Agency that they would have known that LTG (ret) Flynn was the unidentified American citizen speaking with Russian Ambassador Kislyak, or any other official of a foreign government, Russian or otherwise, because that information was redacted in the original reports they were being briefed on. The whole point is to minimize the risk that any American citizen could have their privacy intruded upon by including their names if they are incidentally collected on because we are collecting on the foreign national that they are either speaking with or who mentions them in communication with a third party.

This reality, however, is not the point of what Grenell has done. Grenell’s objective is to use the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the Republican majority US Senate, as well as the President’s twitter feed, Fox News, other presidential surrogates, and other news networks to launder the story that Vice President Biden was involved in the plot to both prevent the President’s election and then to destroy his presidency. See!!!! His name is right there on the last line of page 3! Since the declassification of this information by Grenell, Senators Grassley and Johnson have publicly released the documentation and proceeded to act like they do not know and understand how unmasking works. They have been joined by Senator Paul who held a press conference about it this afternoon heavy on innuendo and accusation and very short on actual facts. And AG Barr has indicated that US Attorney John Durham will now include these unmasking requests in his review of the investigations into the Trump 2016 campaign and Russia.

What these gentlemen are obfuscating, or, perhaps, are really too ignorant and uninformed to understand, is that when these 16 officials, including VP Biden made these requests THEY DID NOT KNOW WHO “US INDIVIDUAL 1” was in the intelligence, which is why they asked for the unmasking. Simply, they had no way to know if it was LTG (ret) Flynn, Jared Kushner, Senator Grassley, Senator Johnson, any of the five other Republican senators and one Republican representative who spent Independence Day 2018 visiting Putin in Moscow, Senator Paul who hand carried a communique from the President to Putin in August 2018 (and don’t get me started how far outside of normal and usual that was!!!), your great aunt Petunia, or the ever loving blue eyed Thing who was talking to officials of foreign governments, Russian or otherwise. All they knew is that a US citizen was in contact with senior officials of foreign governments, including the Russian ambassadors to the US and to the UN, and the discussions were about how Russia should respond to recent US actions against Russia, how Russia should vote in an upcoming UN Security Council vote the US had called about Israel, as well as other matters that have yet to be revealed and reported on*., but that based on the dates in the materials Grenell released, were collected and reported by the National Security Agency in late November and early December 2016, which was well before Flynn’s calls with Ambassador Kislyak and Russia’s ambassador to the UN. The US citizen in all of those calls was LTG (ret) Flynn. And then there were the reports that indicated an American citizen was discussing being paid to organize and facilitate the kidnapping legal US resident Fethullah Gulen and illegally extraditing and rendering him back to Turkey so that Erdogan could execute him. That was also LTG (ret) Flynn.

The objective here is the same objective that it has always been since I first started writing about, delineating, and explaining the Black PSYOP the President and his surrogates are undertaking back in October 2019:

  1. Continue to dirty up VP Biden, which is an extension of the influence operation begun by Putin’s state controlled media in May 2014 to dirty him up in case he ran in 2016, to drive down VP Biden’s popularity to damage his chances of being elected president. This included getting Ukrainian President Zelensky to announce the opening of an investigation into Hunter Biden’s business activities in Ukraine, as well as the attempts to get China to do something similar, which is all intended to promote the suggestion that Vice President Biden misused his position to enrich his son.
  2. To get the US Federal charges dropped against Dmitro Firtash, so he could get back to Ukraine from his house arrest in Vienna and retake control of Ukraine’s petroleum industry on behalf of Putin’s objectives regarding Ukraine and the EU. This line of operation was how Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman got tied into the Rudy Giuliani’s scheme to get dirt on VP Biden from Zelensky, as well as their connection to Victoria Toensing and Joseph DiGenova, who are both Firtash’s attorneys and working with Giuliani.
  3. The ultimate goal here was to find an excuse to lift Russian sanctions, which Putin desperately wants and the President has been hellbent to do, for reasons that make no domestic political, national security, and/or geopolitical sense, but make a lot of sense as a payoff. This is only possible if the Mueller investigation, the FBI’s counterintelligence investigations into the 2016 Trump campaign and the Russians actions in that campaign, as well as the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence’s and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s assessments and reports on Russian interference in 2016 could be obfuscated and undermined.
  4. The drive to come up with a way to lift US sanctions on Russia and normalize relations ties everything together. Part of dirtying up VP Biden is the promotion of a bizarre and debunked conspiracy theory that it was not the Russians, on orders from Putin, interfering in the US 2016 election to elect Trump president; including failed and aborted attempts between the Russians and the President’s campaign to actually work together. Rather the Democratic National Committee, Secretary Clinton, many of her senior campaign staff, President Obama, Vice President Biden, APNSA Rice, Ambassador Power, former DNI Clapper, former FBI Director Comey, former DCI Brennan, former FBI Director and future Special Counsel Mueller, former AG Lynch, a number of senior Obama and Biden national security staffers, and the Ukrainian government actually conspired with the mainstream news media to keep the President from being elected in 2016. And when that failed to destroy his presidency with the creation of a fake scandal – that Putin wanted Trump to be president because he was angry at Secretary Clinton from something she did in 2011, that Putin had Russia interfere in the 2016 presidential election, that Putin is still interfering in American politics, that senior officials in the Trump 2016 campaign, as well as senior outside surrogates, were attempting to make contact with Russian officials and proxies to facilitate Putin’s influence operation to elect Trump president – in order to hide the truth, their crimes, and destroy the President and his administration. Because if the actual conspirators were the Obama administration, Secretary Clinton, her campaign, and the Ukrainians, then Russia is being punished for something it didn’t do. If you believe that, I also have a bridge to sell you…
  5. The last piece of this convoluted, conspiracy driven puzzle is the prosecution of LTG (ret) Flynn. Whatever Special Counsel Mueller’s team had actually collected on LTG (ret) Flynn’s was so damning and disturbing, that Judge Sullivan told him in open court at a sentencing hearing that he had “sold out his country” and all but accused him of committing treason! But in order for the Black PSYOP to work, LTG (ret) Flynn has to be an innocent, wrongly accused, and maliciously prosecuted patriot who loves the US and the President. This is why LTG (ret) Flynn fired his attorneys and replaced them with a conspiracist who used to be a legal contributor to Fox News. And it is why AG Barr has assigned two separate US Attorneys to look into it in order to undermine the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane counterintelligence investigation into the President’s 2016 campaign, Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation, and all the prosecutions, including Flynn’s, that resulted from it.

And this is why Acting DNI Grenell declassified these unmasking requests, gave them to AG Barr, and then released them to Senators Grassley, Johnson, and Paul. To launder this information – information that clearly demonstrates that nothing illegal, untoward, or even unusual was done by anyone in the Obama administration through the DOJ and the US Senate  – to both dirty up VP Biden to damage his campaign and to facilitate the other parts of the Black PSYOP ultimately leading to the lifting of US sanctions against Russia and normalization of US relations with Russia. Which the President once again discussed with Putin last week in a phone call about “the hoax”.

In May 2020, the President, AG Barr, Acting DNI Grenell, senior administration officials like Kellyanne Conway, a number of Republican senators, members of the Trump campaign, other surrogates for the President and his campaign, and a number of Fox News personalities are all actively promoting a Russian influence operation against the US targeting Americans to effect US politics and the outcome of the 2020 election. Someone should really be looking into this…

Open thread.

Update at 12:30 PM EDT

I’ve made some minor edits for clarity and added some links as in text citations. I also want to direct everyone to this twitter thread from Cheryl that she sent me late last night, which is applicable to the section with the *.

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Bring On the New Messiah

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Trump didn’t like an actual-factual professional at acting DNI, because he told the truth:

A senior U.S. intelligence official told lawmakers last week that Russia wants to see President Trump reelected, viewing his administration as more favorable to the Kremlin’s interests, according to people who were briefed on the comments.

After learning of that analysis, which was provided to House lawmakers in a classified hearing, Trump grew angry at his acting director of national intelligence, Joseph Maguire, in the Oval Office, seeing Maguire and his staff as disloyal for speaking to Congress about Russia’s perceived preference. The intelligence official’s analysis and Trump’s furious response ­ruined Maguire’s chances of becoming the permanent intelligence chief, according to people familiar with the matter who, like others, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

So instead we get another clown, Richard Grennell, Ambassador to Germany and FoxNews asslicker for Trump. This guy is so qualified that he’s going to be acting DNI and keep his current job. I’m not surprised by that because incompetent managers like Trump like having one or two “go to” guys for everything, because figuring out who’s in charge of what is too difficult for them.

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Stone Sentencing! Plus, Debate Hot Takes Part Trois

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TPM is live-blogging the Roger Stone sentencing here. I hope Judge Berman Jackson throws the book at Ft. Lauderdale’s most enthusiastic Batman villain cosplayer, but she’s made some noises about sentencing guidelines that could be interpreted as not encouraging? Hard to tell. Anyhoo, I’ll pop back in with the final word when available unless someone beats me to it.

ETA: Sentence: 40 months, $20K fine.

Meanwhile, if you’re up for another debate hot take, mine is below the fold…

show full post on front page

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Breaking rocks in the hot sun…

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It sucks that so many criminals associated with the 2016 election heist either evaded punishment altogether or got absurdly light sentences. That includes Trump, who remains in office despite the House Dems making an airtight case against him on two articles of impeachment.

We can and must work toward extracting a political toll on Trump and his Republican enablers in the upcoming election, and impeachment was an important part of that. But the lack of accountability under the law is disturbing regardless. Looks like Roger Stone may not be so lucky. Via TPM:

In a court filing Monday evening, prosecutors recommended to a federal judge that former Trump associate Roger Stone serves seven to nine years in prison for lying to Congress and witness tampering during the Russia probe.

“Roger Stone obstructed Congress’ investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election, lied under oath, and tampered with a witness,” prosecutors wrote in the filing. “And when his crimes were revealed by the indictment in this case, he displayed contempt for this Court and the rule of law. For that, he should be punished in accord with the advisory Guidelines.”

Prosecutors argued in the filing that given how “Stone’s actions were not a one-off mistake” and that his false statements were not “made in the heat of the moment,” a prison sentence of  87 to 108 months — which is equivalent to around seven to nine years — is “appropriate.”

Not sure that’s enough time considering the gravity of the offense, but it’s not nothing either. Stone has tried the patience of Judge Amy Berman Jackson a thousand times with his bizarre antics during the trial. I hope it comes back to bite him on the ass later this month and that the perp walk is televised.

PS: I looked up Stone’s age to figure out if 7-9 years would amount to a life sentence in his case and was surprised to learn he’s 67. Since he looks like an indifferently drawn cartoon villain, it’s hard to guess his age from his appearance, but I figured he was pushing 80 because he’s been a boil on the butt of American democracy since I was a small child. Stone must have been a ratfuck prodigy.

ETA: I’ve been avoiding Trump’s Twitter feed for health reasons, but he weighed in on Stone’s sentence recommendation during the wee hours this morning:

This is a horrible and very unfair situation. The real crimes were on the other side, as nothing happens to them. Cannot allow this miscarriage of justice!

Trump also retweeted some wingnut who said the proposed sentence would be “an unhinged miscarriage of justice.”

ETA2: Velveeta Voldemort gets mad, and Barr scurries to make it go away.

Out-fucking-rageous.

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No recollection…

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In the “Lumpy rug” thread below, valued commenter Sab pointed out that one reason GOP senators are so reluctant to hear from John Bolton and other witnesses in Trump’s impeachment trial is that they’ve got their own dirt to conceal. Right on cue, The Tampa Bay Times published a story about a conversation Trump had with Lev Parnas about Florida Senator Rick Scott.

The story is based on the 80-plus minute recording where Trump was heard making a thuggish-sounding order to “take out” a U.S. ambassador. At the same event, Trump also talked to Parnas about then-Governor Rick Scott, who was running against a long-time incumbent Democrat for the senate seat:

About halfway through the recording, Parnas mentioned he lived in Florida, prompting Trump to ask how Scott, then Florida’s governor, was faring in his U.S. Senate campaign.

“Rick Scott’s good,” said Parnas, who was indicted in October on charges that he and his business partner, Igor Fruman, steered hundreds of thousands of dollars in illegal campaign contributions from foreign donors. Both are now key figures in Trump’s impeachment proceedings.

“Is he going to win?” Trump asks.

Parnas responded: “It’s going to be close, but I think we’re going to pull it out.”

He repeatedly referred to Scott’s election effort as “we,” suggesting an intimacy or involvement with the campaign. Parnas also told Trump: “We’re doing a fundraiser” for Scott in May and mentioned having lunch with former Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, now one of Trump’s impeachment defense lawyers.

The article reviews the federal indictment of Parnas and fellow Giuliani-adjacent goon Fruman for illegally dropping hundreds of thousands of foreign-sourced dollars on Republican candidates. It recounts how the pair also contributed heavily as individuals and through their company to Scott and the current GOP governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis.

Coincidentally, DeSantis also had “no recollection” of meeting Parnas when the feds scooped Rudy’s pals up. DeSantis donated the funds he received from the pair to charity, as did Scott in the wake of the indictment. The article notes recent WSJ reporting that indicates Parnas turned over texts between himself and DeSantis to the House Democrats. I mean, who among us hasn’t carried on text conversations with complete strangers, right?

Meanwhile, Parnas’s attorney, Joseph Bondy, is tweeting out photos of his client with various GOP bigwigs and encouraging Republican senators to vote for witnesses and a fair trial. Here’s one from this morning:

Parnas, the Forrest Gump of Republican corruption, seems to have a lot of receipts. So yeah, good point, Sab. Any guesses on which Republican will get the next attack of amnesia?

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“If right doesn’t matter, we’re lost…”

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Here’s the end of Rep. Schiff’s brilliant closing remarks from last night’s impeachment trial:

At around the same time Schiff was reminding senators of their duty to protect this nation, Donald Trump pinned this bizarre, nonsensical picture to the top of his Twitter feed:

Our politics are cynical and debased and vicious and stupid. Otherwise, a crude, petty, demented crook like Trump would not be president. But as awful as things are, Americans like Adam Schiff are still rising to the occasion. As long as they do, there’s hope for better days.

Schiff’s entire 8-minute summary is here and well worth a listen if you missed it last night.

PS: Don’t forget to call your senators, especially if they’re Republicans: (202) 224-3121.

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Lobbest thou thy human hand grenade in the direction of thine foe…

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Here’s the stuff I’ve looked forward to the most: House Manager Schiff rubbing the assembled Republican senators’ noses in Trump and Giuliani’s Ukraine/DNC/Soros crackpottery:

I think Trump sincerely believes this bullshit since he’s dumb and aggrieved and he admires Putin. The Ukraine conspiracy theory is therefore irresistible since it suggests that Trump did TOO win fair and square without a boost from Putin and conveniently exculpates the latter so maybe they can hang out and swap tales of crushing underlings and bond over their shared impulse to aggressively bend scowling women to their iron will or whatever.

Giuliani may be a believer too, or perhaps he merely sensed the massive opportunities for graft in the Ukraine shakedown scheme. Regardless, most Senate Republicans know it’s all a load of bullshit. So the least they can do is sit there and squirm through every agonizing and embarrassing account of how Russia-driven propaganda informs U.S. foreign policy thanks to their party’s idiot president.

Open thread.

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Leaving it all on the field

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In a series of arcane rituals in a building that still has “cloak rooms,” Nancy Pelosi handed over the articles of impeachment to Mitch McConnell. She’s done her job by investigating and putting all the facts and testimony she was able to obtain in the face of unprecedented and unlawful obstruction on the table. Pelosi honored her obligation to the U.S. Constitution.

Now McConnell will do the opposite, ignoring his Constitutional obligations and doing everything in his power to bury and obfuscate the extraordinarily damning evidence against Trump and keep new evidence from being considered in the Senate trial, even as more material that exposes the scale of Trump’s criminality and corruption spills into public view in the media.

Since the deeply corrupt and cynical McConnell controls the process now, our best hope is to extract the highest possible political price from Republicans for shielding the administration’s criminal activities. Will we get witnesses? Not if McConnell can prevent it, but the strain is showing:

The House Managers will be reading the charges aloud in the Senate any minute now. Pelosi is under no illusions about what will happen next, so she’s leaving it all on the field and calling the whole corrupt bunch out:

Good for her. I’m represented by two corrupt Republican shit-stains in the U.S. Senate, but despite the futility of appealing to their nonexistent sense of duty, I plan to do so anyway. I also plan to convert my disgust for the sleazy, corrupt criminals who’ve captured our government into inspiration to kick them out at every level. That’s how regular people like us can leave it all on the field.

Open thread.

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The Parnas Document Dump

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I was distracted last night with the debate and cooking dinner and arguing with my husband about the thermostat and having a glass or five of red wine because I was COLD, so I first started trying to make sense of the Parnas document dump this morning. I confess I am still agog. This take by Charlie Pierce makes sense to me:

As it turns out, Marie Yovanovich was even braver than she looked in front of the House Intelligence Committee. And, as it turns out, Speaker Nancy Pelosi really knows what she’s doing. At the end of the day on Tuesday, just as the Democratic presidential candidates were taking the stage in Des Moines and the president* was taking the stage in Milwaukee, the House Democrats unleashed the hounds. They dumped a whole truckload of ugly from the files of Lev Parnas, Rudy Giuliani’s great and good “associate” and, apparently, one of the great sleazebags of the western world.

Also released were a bunch of texts from a Trumper in Connecticut named Robert Hyde. He was in touch with Parnas, and there were text messages between the two in which Hyde seemed to indicate that, at the very least, Yovanovich was being monitored—which, I will grant you, sounds a bit grandiose coming from a landscaper from Connecticut. Nevertheless, this stuff is positively ominous.

Jesus Tap-Dancing Christ! The ambassador’s account of being told to hop on the next plane for “security reasons” always seemed like a strange and unexplained facet of the hatchet job on Yovanovich’s reputation. This certainly puts an even more chilling spin on Trump’s “she’s gonna go through some things” comments on the “perfect call.”

Here’s another bizarre fact in this thoroughly crazypants scenario: the Connecticut landscaper/hit-man purveyor was Baker Acted (involuntarily taken into custody by authorities under Florida law for a psych eval) at Trump’s Florida golf club last year. David Corn at MoJo:

According to an “incident/investigation” report filed by the Doral, Florida, police department, on May 16, 2019, an officer was dispatched to the Trump National Doral Miami to deal with a “male in distress fearing for his life.” That man was Hyde. The report noted that Hyde explained to the police officer that “he was in fear for his life, was set up and that a hit man was out to get him. Mr. Hyde spoke about e-mails he sent that may have placed his life in jeopardy. Mr. Hyde explained several times that he was paranoid that someone was out to get him.”

The report stated that Hyde cited “a variety of different names, contacts and provided information in reference to why he felt his life was in danger.” After being taken into custody by the police, according to the report, “Mr. Hyde continued to act paranoid telling us not to stop next to certain vehicles…[H]e explained that he was scared due to several painting workers and landscape workers trying to do harm to him because they weren’t working. Additionally Mr. Hyde explained that his computer was being hacked by Secret Service. And then went on to further explain that the secret service [sic] was arrival [sic] on the premises watching him.”

What in the wide world of fuck? It’s tempting, if only for the sake of one’s own sanity, to surmise Hyde is just a random nutbag who wasn’t really commissioned by the president’s personal attorney to at least surveil — if not actually harm — a U.S. ambassador abroad. But, as in the case of Rudy Giuliani’s henchmen, including Parnas, there are tons of photos of Hyde with Trump, Trump Jr., Eric Trump, Ivanka, Giuliani, etc. Hyde has also donated tens of thousands of dollars to Trump and other Republicans. It seems to be a pattern, no?

Anyhoo, even aside from the increasingly alarming and accumulating evidence that Trump is running the federal government for his personal and political benefit via mafia-style shakedowns and intimidation tactics, the Parnas document dump blows multiple absurd impeachment defenses right out of the water. Here’s an excerpt of Neal Katyal and Joshua A. Geltzer summarizing that aspect in The Post:

Americans who have been wondering why President Trump has taken the extraordinary step of trying to block every document from being released to Congress in his impeachment inquiry need wonder no longer. The new documents released Tuesday evening by the House Intelligence Committee were devastating to Trump’s continuing — if shifting — defense of his Ukraine extortion scandal, just days before his impeachment trial is likely to begin in the Senate. These new documents demolish at least three key defenses to which Trump and his allies have been clinging: that he was really fighting corruption when he pressured Ukraine on matters related to the Biden family; that Hunter Biden should be called as a witness at the Senate impeachment trial; and that there’s no need for a real, honest-to-goodness trial in the Senate.

They’re right, although the evidence the House Democrats cobbled together in the face of unprecedented obstruction suggested that weeks ago, and Trump’s enablers have been unmoved. Still, WTF, fellow citizens? The wily Pelosi — who will go down in history as one of the most effective and consequential Speakers of the House ever — will transmit the articles to the Senate today.

As MisterMix noted, Pelosi has already boxed McConnell in (boxed turtle?) on summary dismissal and witnesses — either he allows a trial with witnesses, or he presides over such a flagrant cover-up that it may cost him his gavel, which is certainly more precious to him than that son of a bitch Trump.

I’m speculating here, and maybe I’m totally wrong, but won’t people want to get to the bottom of this shit, even at least some Republican voters in red states? Perhaps not, but maybe?

In any case, can this latest Parnas business be raised in the trial? It’s material to Trump’s claims, as Katyal and Geltzer argue, so I don’t see why not. Also, I don’t know which shoes will drop off the centipede next, but is it possible the House Democrats have even more stuff under wraps? I’m still trying to wrap my head around it all, and it’s way too early for wine.

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Every accusation is a confession.

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Have we done this one yet? It’s all over Twitter, and it is amazeballs:

Here’s a transcript for those who wish to avoid the horror of watching Trump’s slimy meat-slab lips opening and closing like a beached blowfish as he frantically waves his stubby hands and the light gleams on the brassy cotton-candy comb-over:

Our president will start a war with Iran because he has absolutely no ability to negotiate. He’s weak, and he’s ineffective. We have a real problem in the White House. So, I believe that he will attack Iran sometime prior to the election because he thinks that’s the only way he can get elected. Isn’t it pathetic.

Yes, it is pathetic because this nine-year-old video is all the explanation we need for the assassination of the Iranian general earlier this week. It’s all projection — every fucking word of it. It always is:

  • During the Obama years, Trump used to complain about how lazy President Obama was. In office, Trump sits around on his lard ass live-tweeting Fox & Friends.
  • Trump lambasted Obama for squandering taxpayer money by occasionally golfing. Since taking office, Trump has spent more than the combined salaries of every president from George Washington to the present on golf trips to self-branded resorts — while praising himself annually for “donating” his salary.
  • Trump whines about Democrats spying on his campaign in 2016. His own campaign eagerly worked with a hostile foreign power to coordinate the distribution of stolen emails to smear Democrats.
  • Trump screams “witch hunt” about an exhaustively documented investigation led by a lifelong Republican who was appointed by a Trump appointee. Then he orders the DOJ to fan out worldwide and investigate alleged malfeasance that previous Trump-appointed officials have fruitlessly investigated multiple times, finding nothing.
  • Trump claims the DNC/Ukraine/Soros worked together to sandbag his campaign and calls critical op-eds from Ukrainians “election meddling.” Meanwhile, Trump’s goons place hit pieces against Biden in U.S. media outlets, and Trump used the power of his office to shake down a vulnerable ally for reelection assistance in the form of a phony investigation of Biden.

I could go on — Trump certainly does, daily demonstrating more capacity for projection than every cinema chain on the planet combined and multiplied by infinity. At this point, would it surprise anyone to learn that TRUMP was actually born in Kenya?

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Why Do The Investigations Seem To End Too Early?

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Something has bothered me since Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Let’s look at the letter appointing him special counsel:

  • Robert S. Mueller III is appointed to serve as Special Counsel…

Not Special Prosecutor, as he is often titled. Special Counsel.

  • any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump…

Based on these words, I expected a very different report from Mueller.

Mueller acted more as a prosecutor than an investigator. Perhaps I am getting this wrong; in internet parlance, IANAL, I am not a lawyer.

Mueller prosecuted cases against Paul Manafort and the the Internet Research Agency of St. Petersburg. His investigations supported Michael Cohen’s conviction and Michael Flynn’s guilty plea to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador. There are probably others, but that is not my point. His investigation seems to have been for the purpose of finding prosecutable crimes.

I expected that “any links and/or coordination between the Russian government and individuals associated with the campaign of President Donald Trump” would have included a great deal more than what was in the report.

There were a great many contacts between Russians and the Trump campaign, or near misses like Maria Butina, who got cozy with the NRA, which supported Trump. The Russians used hacked files from the Democratic National Committee to help Republicans beyond Trump.

The Republican platform was changed to weaken support for Ukraine; the Mueller report mentions this, but notes that Trump seems to have been unaware of the change. The person who seems to have been responsible for it, J. D. Gordon, also is connected to Carter Page, who has his own Russian connections. And then there is George Papadopoulos, also with Russian connections.

Perhaps some of these Russian connections, like Butina, can be said not to have been connected with the Trump campaign. The hacked files used against other candidates, again not related to the Trump campaign. Although the platform change may not have involved Trump, his campaign certainly was involved with it, and with those other folks with hinky Russian connections. But these were investigated cursorily, if at all.

I don’t understand how Mueller interpreted the charge and why. I would like to know more about that.

It seems to be difficult to report on connections to Russia without being accused of paranoia. Additionally, some popular voices have greatly exaggerated connections to Russia on the basis of inadequate information.

I do not believe Putin is minutely directing a campaign to destroy the United States. He does not work like that. He remains a KGB colonel with access to the power of a state. He is a tactician rather than a strategist. He wants Russia to be recognized as a great power. Russia is in a strange position internationally. Its nuclear arsenal is equivalent to that of the United States, but its economy is about the size of Texas’s, based primarily on extractive industries. A nuclear great power, but not much else.

The way for Russia to be a great power is to lessen the influence of other great powers. Hence a campaign to divide Americans and Europeans, internally and from each other.

The campaign is loosely run – more a matter of “Who will rid me of these turbulent adversaries?” than of detailed planning and late nights in the Kremlin. Thus, multiple Russian actors, backed by multiple oligarchs, show up in the Mueller Report and in other ways.

Trump always has something bad to say about America’s allies, but never about Vladimir Putin and other autocrats. The connections across the Republican Party to Russia are many, as far as we know now, largely through donations. The Dallas Morning News has had major articles on this means of influence (August 2017, December 2017, two in May 2018) . Why haven’t other news outlets joined the investigation? Why isn’t this mentioned as common knowledge when Tucker Carlson sides with Russia over Ukraine?

There are so many stories that need more investigation.

Trump’s history with Russia. 1987 seems to be a turning point. And, of course, the noteless meetings with Vladimir Putin, particularly in Helsinki in July 2018.

Devin Nunes’s midnight run to the White House

Kevin McCarthy’s comment about Putin paying Trump and Dana Rohrabacher. McCarthy received a campaign contribution from Rudy Giuliani’s associates Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, which he is returning. He is not the only one to receive money from them.

Parnas and Fruman are currently a focus of media attention. Parnas would like to testify to Congress, but there is little reason to believe anything he says until we understand better his connections to Giuliani and Trump and to people like Dmytro Firtash.

Eight Republican members of Congress spent the Fourth of July, 2018, in Moscow. They met with senior Russian officials. They are Richard Shelby (AL), Ron Johnson (WI), John Neely Kennedy (LA), Jerry Moran (KS), Steve Daines (MT), John Hoeven (ND), John Thune (SD) and Rep. Kay Granger (TX). Johnson and Kennedy have been extremely vocal lately in spreading the Russian propaganda meme that Ukraine, not Russia, hacked the campaigns in 2016.

And, oh yes, the US Intelligence Community report of January 2017 said that the Republican campaign was hacked too. We haven’t seen any more about that.

That’s the list I come up with over a day or two of thought. I’ll bet there’s more.

There is a throughline to all this: Russian interference in American politics. It’s a big story, to be sure, but one that we need to hear. Most of it was not covered in the Mueller investigation. The House Intelligence Committee hearings have been on a very small part of it. News organizations are working on parts of it. We need more.

Cross-posted to Nuclear Diner

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