The Blacklist Declassified

 

🇷🇺 Trump/Russia 2017-2018 🇺🇸

 
This bibliography starts on 27-Jul-2017

With Tweets, Retweets, links to articles and excerpts, I’ve tried to document this national soap opera/tragedy we’re living through. The resources at the beginning are a mixed bag of timelines and documents and I provide a clickable cast of characters (Russians, mostly).

What does this have to do with The Blacklist? A lot, actually. Russian mob figures, spies and apparatchiks. Semion Mogilevich, the Smart Don, reminds me of Red, though Red is a lot nicer and much better-looking.

Featured are drawings (she calls them “maps”) by @Jzikah, and “Mueller, She Wrote” is the best podcast I’ve ever come across. The three women who do it are comedians, though they’re all super smart and A.J. (the lead) has a PhD and is a Veteran.

Caution: You may enjoy this feature a bit more if you’re of the liberal persuasion. This is the single place on this blog where *there are politics* though I tend to stick with MSM, specialized sources (ex-Intel Community, altGov, and reputable sleuths) and other people I’ve learned to trust.

🇷🇺 Press Here For Index to all Trump/Ukraine/Russia Files

 
(Reverse Chronological]
 
⭕ 31 Dec 2018

🐣 RT @BFriedmanDC McRaven oversaw the raid to kill Bin Laden. Mattis was the most beloved Marine general in a generation. McChrystal led Joint Special Operations Command. ¤ What they’re saying about President Trump is quite remarkable.
https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1079801912415924225/photo/1

🌀 https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1079964316969955328/photo/1
// Fireworks

NYMag, Heather Hurlburt: Trump Ended 2018 by Rewarding Putin for Another Year of Bad Behavior http://nym.ag/2GMqQdu

NBC, Ken Dilanian: Trump and Russia: What to expect from Mueller in 2019 http://nbcnews.to/2QfrsYE
// Chuck Rosenberg, Daniel Goldman; One ex-federal prosecutor said he is beginning to believe conspiracy with Russian election meddling is not the most serious crime Mueller is investigating.

⭕ 30 Dec 2018

WaPo: Is Russia about to invade Ukraine again? That may depend on Trump. http://wapo.st/2F38ouL

⭕ 29 Dec 2018

TrumpRussia: Who is Victor Boyarkin? http://bit.ly/2BsZ0yb

⭕ 28 Dec 2018

DailyBeast, Matt Miller and Mimi Rocah: Trump’s Most Blatant Assault Yet on the Rule of Law http://thebea.st/2CE5uLy Trump pushing acting AG Matthew Whitaker on “why more wasn’t being done to control” the Southern District of New York prosecutors
// There have been questionable moves before. But the president’s reported lashing-out at his acting attorney general is truly problematic.

Bloomberg: Syrian Army Advances as Russia, Allies Position for U.S. Pullout http://bloom.bg/2rXwLCp
● Kremlin welcomes regime’s move into Manbij after Turkey threat
● Kurds turned to Assad forces after U.S. announced withdrawal

RollingStone, Ryan Bort: 10 Key Ways House Democrats Plan to Investigate the Trump Administration http://bit.ly/2AkpiSB
// Things are about to go from worse to much worse for the president

WaPo Editorial: As long as Matthew Whitaker is in place, the Russia investigation is in danger http://wapo.st/2EVlYkL

NYT: Departing House Republicans Try to Keep Investigation Into F.B.I. Alive http://nyti.ms/2EUCHnx

BusinessInsider, Grace Panetta: Here are all the ongoing investigations and lawsuits involving Trump and his businesses http://read.bi/2Ro12si

● Nearly every corner of President Donald Trump’s political, business, and charitable activities are the subject of some form of investigation as 2018 comes to a close.
● The probes that have received the most media coverage are special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election and the campaign finance violations to which Michael Cohen pleaded guilty in New York.
● Trump’s charity also faces civil action from New York state.
● And the president faces a lawsuit accusing him of illegally profiting off his presidency.

CNN: House Republicans wrap their investigation into FBI’s handling of Clinton and Russia probes http://cnn.it/2Q7aRX6

🐣 RT @JeremyHerb NEW: Gowdy and Goodlatte have sent a letter to AG Whitaker, IG Horowtiz and McConnell summarizing their investigation into FBI/DOJ and concerns about the handling of the Clinton and Trump/Russia probes. Full letter is here http://bit.ly/2CEW7uU

WaPo: How Russia’s military intelligence agency became the covert muscle in Putin’s duels with the West http://wapo.st/2RocGn2

PasteMag, Jacob Weindling: A Year of Trump and Russia: The 75 Stories That Defined the Mueller Investigation in 2018 http://bit.ly/2QWN1SU

Haaretz, Chemi Shalev: If Trump Is Beholden to Russia, Israel Faces Dire Danger in Syria http://bit.ly/2Ss4rUk
// The dynamics of deterioration are familiar: In 1970 the IAF shot down five Soviet jet fighters under disturbingly similar circumstances

TheGuardian, Tom McCarthy: Mueller closes in: what will the Trump-Russia inquiry deliver in 2019? http://bit.ly/2Tlc7YL
// The special counsel investigation into Russian meddling and possible collusion is notoriously leak-proof but it could soon touch Trump directly or members of his family

⭕ 27 Dec 2018

DailyBeast, Kevin Poulson: Special Counsel Robert Mueller Seized Russian Trolls’ ‘Nude Selfies’ http://thebea.st/2ERKcvd
// The special counsel turned over reams of material from the email and social media accounts of accused Russian trolls.

NYT, Elizabeth Drew: The Inevitability of Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2BJ440s
// Even Republicans may be deciding that the president has become too great a burden to their party or too great a danger to the country.

Slate, Michael Politi: Michael Cohen’s Cellphone Was Reportedly Near Prague at Time of Alleged Russia Meeting http://bit.ly/2GLF26D

NBC: Giuliani: Trump won’t give Mueller any more written answers http://nbcnews.to/2GJ20vk
// The president’s lawyer said Thursday that his client is “not answering any more questions from these people.”

Haaretz: Ex-Mossad Head: Russia Decided Trump Was Their Best Candidate, and Ran Him for President http://bit.ly/2GFKyrq
// Russia chose the most advantageous candidate and used cyber bots to catapult Trump to the position of U.S. president, Tamir Pardo says

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Report Puts Michael Cohen in Prague and Trump-Russia Collusion on the Table http://nym.ag/2SqvxLI

RollingStone, Peter Wade: Cell Phone Records Show Michael Cohen Was Near Prague When Alleged Meeting with Russia Took Place http://bit.ly/2QRay7Y
// Electronic eavesdropping also recorded a phone call between Russians discussing the Trump lawyer’s visit to the city

ChicagoTrib/McClatchy, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon: Cell signal traced to ex-Trump lawyer Michael Cohen outside Prague around time of alleged Russian meeting http://bit.ly/2CCGIva

TheWeek: Trump’s political problems are hurting Sean Hannity’s ratings and helping boost MSNBC to No. 1 http://bit.ly/2QRhr97

🐣 Interesting summary of Trump visit …
Tweet Link: https://twitter.com/CurrentTimeTv/status/1078181171819937792
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1078190072841805824/photo/1
// Translated from Russian “U.S. President Donald Trump with his wife and advisor Bolton suddenly flew in Christmas for three hours at the U.S. airbase in Iraq. At the meeting Trump used the word suckers, and the military made a lot of selfies with the President:“

⭕ 26 Dec 2018

NBC, Jane Timm: President Donald Trump’s 10 biggest falsehoods of 2018 http://nbcnews.to/2GT6tLR
// NBC News spent 2018 fact checking Trump’s claims on tariffs, immigration, health insurance, taxes, aviation safety, foiled terrorists, jobs, and more.

TheHill: Acting AG incorrectly claimed ‘Academic All-American’ honors on resume: report http://bit.ly/2SwiQyN

NBC: Trump to American troops in Iraq: U.S. no longer ‘the suckers of the world’ http://nbcnews.to/2EP0cOA
// The president’s surprise visit on Wednesday marked his first journey to an active combat zone since taking office.

America shouldn’t be doing the fighting for every nation on earth, not being reimbursed in many cases at all. If they want us to do the fighting, they also have to pay a price,” Trump said. “And sometimes that’s also a monetary price, so we’re not the suckers of the world. We’re no longer the suckers, folks. And people aren’t looking at us as suckers.”

NYT: Trump Makes Surprise Visit to American Troops in Iraq http://nyti.ms/2QWtylp

“We’re no longer the suckers, folks,” the president said, adding, “Our presence in Syria was not open-ended, and it was never intended to be permanent. Eight years ago, we went there for three months, and we never left.”

“We’re spread out all over the world,” the president added. “We’re in countries that most people have never even heard about. And, frankly, it’s ridiculous.”

Mr. Trump, who left the White House late Christmas night, said he had harbored some safety concerns about the trip.

“I had concerns for the institution of the presidency because — not for myself, personally,” he said. “I had concerns for the first lady, I will tell you. But if you would have seen what we had to go through, with the darkened plane, with all windows closed, with no lights on whatsoever, anywhere — pitch black. I’ve never seen it. I’ve been in many airplanes — all types and shapes and sizes. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

NYT: Syria Faces Brittle Future, Dominated by Russia and Iran http://nyti.ms/2CBXudG

NYT Editorial: Trump Imperils the Planet http://nyti.ms/2QTg9dZ
// Endangered species, climate change — the administration is taking the country, and the world, backward.

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV repeatedly asserts:
“We are at war with the United States.”
On a state TV show by ‘Channel One,’ Russian MP Andrey Svintsov reiterates this common POV: “We are at war. We may not be using conventional weapons, but we are using intellectual and info-weapons.”

🐣 RT @marwanbishara A diplomatic blunder that epitomizes the strategic blunder called US Middle East policy; ‘US occupation is over’: Iraqi leaders slam Trump visit
⋙ Al-Jazeera: Iraqi leaders denounce Trump visit to US troops http://bit.ly/2BFVXBY
// 📋 civilians killed in Iraq; Political and militia leaders condemn President Trump’s unannounced visit to US troops as a blow to Iraq’s sovereignty.

FBI Most Wanted: RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE IN 2016 U.S. ELECTIONS http://bit.ly/2QP9Rfg

🐣 RT @RichardEngel While Trump visits US troops in Iraq, Syrian Kurds worry they’ll be wiped out next door after withdrawal of US forces. There’s talk among Kurdish leaders I heard today of an impending Genocide.

🐣 RT @RVAwonk oh. my. god. Trump posted a video to his Twitter account after leaving Iraq — and in doing so, he gave up the location and identities of SEAL Time Five members who are deployed on a covert special ops mission.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JimLaPorta Quick hit: Video posted to President @realDonaldTrump Twitter account reveals covert U.S. Navy SEAL deployment during #Iraq visit #Trump

🐣 RT @jimsciutto Words from the US President to troops in Iraq as US service-members fight and die battling ISIS, the Taliban, Al Qaeda & more: “We are spread out all over the world. We are in countries most people haven’t even heard about. Frankly, it’s ridiculous.”

🐣 RT @NormEisen On the other hand,Trump managed on one short trip to lie about the troops’ pay increase, to lead them to violate the rule against political activity by signing his campaign gear, & to expose the identity of Navy SEALs, perhaps endangering their lives. I’d say its a wash at best.

Newsweek: Donald Trump Twitter Account Video Reveals Covert U.S. Navy SEAL Deployment During Iraq Visit http://bit.ly/2BJhz07

CNBC: Saudi Arabia clarifies Trump tweet: No new Saudi pledges to rebuild Syria http://cnb.cx/2VddcTR
● President Donald Trump tweeted on Monday that Saudi Arabia has agreed to spend the “necessary money” to help rebuild Syria.
● The tweet briefly raised questions about whether the White House has secured new commitments from the kingdom.
● An official at the Saudi embassy in Washington confirmed the kingdom has not made any major new financial pledges since August.

MilitaryTimes/AP: As US troops leave Syria, the Syrian government must step in, Russia says http://bit.ly/2ShnQXY

WaPo, Paul Farhi: The end of the Mueller investigation is near! No, really. Anytime now. http://wapo.st/2TfWCRL

Newsweek: Russia Tells U.S. Not to Interfere in Saudi Crown Prince MBS Becoming King, Despite Khashoggi Killing http://bit.ly/2QRggqh

Politico: Russia tests hypersonic missile system http://politi.co/2VcX8By
// Test comes amid growing regional tensions.

NYT, David Leonhardt: Trump’s Big, Beautiful List of Scandals http://nyti.ms/2ESPK9w
// They rank #4 on the newsletter’s countdown of the year’s most significant stories.

MiamiHerald: Dave Barry’s Year in Review 2018: More Trump, tweets, Russia http://hrld.us/2QQbiKH

⭕ 🎅🏼🎄🌟 25 Dec 2018 🌟🎄🎅🏼

DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: The Putin Regime Is Forcing Russia’s Best and Brightest Into Exile http://thebea.st/2EScLIS
// The hammer of oppression falls hard on women and men who dare to speak out against the Kremlin and its policies.

NYT, Andrew Kramer: Selling Real Estate in Russia? Are You Crazy? http://nyti.ms/2AkhGzl

WaPo: Economic growth is slowing around the world, feeding a financial sell-off http://wapo.st/2TaTDK5
// Political turmoil in nations with leading economies — epitomized by the partial shutdown of the U.S. government and street protests in France — is further feeding investor anxiety.

DailyBeast, Kimberly Dozier: Russia Is Running an Actual Contest to Troll the World http://thebea.st/2ELxr5x
// Moscow is switching from covert to overt means to influence Americans and others, helped by a U.S. president who has set an example and given it cover.

🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 This is unreal!
Russia’s top headline story is that chemical weapons have arrived near Donetsk and Ukrainian military are getting ready to use them.
Each day the lies get more bold to justify Russia’s long planned invasion meanwhile Russia has been militarily preparing for awhile
https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1077538766347292672/photo/1-3

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin “Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster.”

🐣 RT @TheHill Secretary of Defense James Mattis: “To all you lads and lasses holding the line in 2018 – on land, at sea, or in the air – thanks for keeping the faith. Merry Christmas, and may God hold you safe.” http://hill.cm/OE8Aek6 

🐣 RT @JoeNBC “For unto us a Child is born,
Unto us a Son is given.
And His name will be called
Wonderful, Counselor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace.” ~ Isaiah 9:6-7

🐣 RT @tribelaw “To see the Earth as it truly is,” said the astronaut, quoting the poet, “small and blue and beautiful in that eternal silence where it floats, is to see ourselves as riders on the Earth together”

🐣 RT @BillKrisol Are you still a believer in Trump? Because at seven it’s marginal, right?

🐣 RT @CBSNews During a Christmas Eve call to children, President Trump asked a 7-year-old: “Are you still a believer in Santa? Because at 7, it’s marginal, right?” https://cbsn.ws/2SjC0rJ 

⭕ ❄️🎄⛄️ 24 Dec 2018 ⛄️🎄❄️

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump is incompetent, impulsive and amoral. Heaven help us all. http://wapo.st/2EHSB4u

NYT, Tom Friedman: Time for G.O.P. to Threaten to Fire Trump http://nyti.ms/2RiKYbi
// Republican leaders need to mount an intervention.

🐣 RT @McFaul This means that the Trump administration never had one NSC meeting to discuss Operation Inherent Resolve. Shocking.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ John_Hudson A government source confirms to me that McGurk never briefed or talked to President Trump — he was never asked to. Does that make the president look better or worse that he didn’t interact with his top diplomat to the anti-ISIS coalition?
📌 https://twitter.com/John_Hudson/status/1077285493069496320

◕ 🐣 RT @BrianDawson ❌ Reagan / Bush explode deficits & debt
✅ Clinton leaves surplus
❌ Bush cuts taxes, explodes deficits
✅ Obama reduces record deficits by 2/3 at fastest pace
❌ Trump tax cuts explode deficits again
Fox “News” and Deplorables are dangers to national security.
#GOPTaxScam
https://twitter.com/BryanDawsonUSA/status/1077332169910038528/photo/1
// Chart: Deficits over time

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Please, can we have no more winning for the rest of the year?

WaPo/AP: Where do the investigations related to Trump stand? http://wapo.st/2RdJP4Y

CNBC: Macron slams Trump on Syria: ‘An ally should be dependable’ http://cnb.cx/2Q1aL2X
● French President Emmanuel Macron chastised his American counterpart, calling out President Donald Trump’s shock decision to withdraw all U.S. troops from Syria.
● Trump first made the announcement via Twitter last Wednesday in a move that blindsided lawmakers and officials and drew strong opposition from Republicans and Democrats alike.
● “I very deeply regret the decision made on Syria,” Macron said while at a press conference in Chad.

WaPo: Markets stage one of worst Christmas Eves ever, closing down more than 600 points as Trump blames Fed for stock losses in a tweet http://wapo.st/2ReIGtH

TheAtlantic, Scott Nover: President Trump’s Nightmare Before Christmas http://bit.ly/2PXNbEh
// His chief of staff insists that the recent tumult in Washington—a government shutdown, troop withdrawals—is all going according to plan. But Trump lacks many more high-profile defenders.

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz The tide has turned. Expect that every move Trump makes will be another self inflicted wound. It will be death by a thousand cuts and his bleeding will not stop, as ours has not for the past two painful years.

NYT: ‘America Is Respected Again!’ Trump Tweets as Allies Question His Leadership http://nyti.ms/2EK1PgI ‘All Alone’ in the White House, a Christmas Eve Twitter Storm

WaPo, Paul Waldman: This is what we were afraid of http://wapo.st/2GD2VND

NYT, Michael Tomasky: The Steady Bedlam of the Trump White House http://nyti.ms/2GBuoiR
// Making sense of the never-ending turnover in the administration.

🐣 RT @nytimes John Roberts is now the swing vote at the Supreme Court’s ideological center, making him the most powerful chief justice in 80 years. But that power comes at a turbulent time for the court.
⋙ NYT, Adam Liptak: John Roberts is now the swing vote at the Supreme Court’s ideological center, making him the most powerful chief justice in 80 years. http://nyti.ms/
// But that power comes at a turbulent time for the court.

⭕ 23 Dec 2018

NYT: Trump, Angry Over Mattis’s Rebuke, Removes Him 2 Months Early http://nyti.ms/2PYxM6X

🐣 RT @kurteichenwald After this week of insanity, anyone who does not accept the president is mentally unbalanced & putting our nation in danger is too ignorant to join the discussion. ¤ And any GOP politician who knows better but defends the indefensible out of fear for their jobs deserves ignominy.

🐣 RT @MitchellReports .@JoshNBCNews @ckubeNBC report Trump had @secPompeo call #Mattis today to say he’s out by end of year instead of staying to insure smooth transition. Means Trump will have acting heads at DOD, DOJ, EPA & Chief of Staff. No replacement for Zinke. No Deputy at DHS, HUD, VA or SBA

🐣 RT @swkoti I’m 72 years old. I’ve survived the Fight to end the Vietnam war, Nixon, the AIDS epidemic, the wars for civil and gay rights, the deaths of my parents and sister…and now I sit with tears in my eyes mourning the destruction of the nation that is my home. Damn you Donald Trump

🐣📊 RT @evansiegfried Active duty military approval ratings:
Mattis- 84% and just 4% disapproval
Trump- 44% approval
Trump approval with military women- 26%
Trump approval with military minorities- 29%
https://twitter.com/evansiegfried/status/1076884157668773888/photo/1
MilitaryTimes: Support for Trump is fading among active-duty troops, new poll shows http://bit.ly/2rQMGlN
// 10/15/2018

USAToday, Tom Nichols: After James Mattis resigned, Trump’s America is slinking off the world stage http://bit.ly/2AfDTP5

TheIntercept, Billie Winner-Davis: My Daughter Reality Winner Faced Severe Punishment, But Key Figures in the Trump-Russia Scandal Are Getting Off Easy http://bit.ly/2EKG6px

WaPo: Trump forces Mattis out two months early, names Shanahan acting defense secretary http://wapo.st/2EIZyCr

President Trump, who aides said has been frustrated by news coverage of Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’s scathing resignation letter, abruptly announced Sunday that he was removing Mattis two months before his planned departure and installing Patrick Shanahan as acting defense secretary.

Shanahan, a former Boeing executive who has been Mattis’s deputy at the Pentagon, will assume the top job on an acting capacity beginning Jan. 1, Trump said.

🐣 RT @gtconway3d This is a good New Year’s resolution for everyone.
⋙ 🐣 RT @walterdellinger For years I would glance at & dismiss @JRubinBogger, @MaxBoot & @BillKristol because I was a progressive & they were not. Now I read them w/ great care. But they didn’t get smart just w/ Trump. My ’19 resolution: read people I think I disagree w/ and think about what they say,

🐣 RT @maggieNYT “This is who this president is. So why are we surprised that he’s upending everything? That’s who he is, that’s who people voted for,” Christie says on ABC of every-few-weeks declarations that this is the beginning of an unraveling for Trump.

🐣 RT @kelly2277 💥 #TrumpRussia Researchers💥Excellent tool to research Trump Staffers With Ethics Waivers‼️James Burnham, legal counsel for Trump received an ethics waiver because he worked for a Saudi terrorist while at Jones Day. He’s now at the DOJ‼️
⋙ 💾 ProPublica: Database: Trump Town ~ Track White House Staff, Cabinet Members and Political Appointees Across the Government http://bit.ly/2TaYb3r
// by Derek Kravitz, Al Shaw, Claire Perlman and Alex Mierjeski, March 7, 2018, Updated December 20, 2018

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz You have the most dangerous imaginable president: a malign moron who believes he knows best. Pray that there is someone somewhere in the White House who can keep Trump from taking the world down with him as seeks to save himself. I’m not hopeful.

⭕ 22 Dec 2018

🐣 RT @RichardEngel Spoke to a professor with deep connections into Kurdish leadership in Syria. I asked him about the mood there after Trump announcement, his answer sent
chills: ¤ Hurt, betrayed, and angry. ¤ They’ll all be dead soon…

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Looks like “Putin’s Chef” & Mueller defendant Yevgeny Prigozhin is at the heart of a dispute in the Mueller case, trying to access discovery from the government through a corporate co-defendant, even though he hasn’t submitted himself to the jurisdiction of US courts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @big_case New filing in United States v. Concord Management and Consulting, LLC: Leave to File Document http://bit.ly/2T7cjdI

WaPo Editorial: The last lines of defense against Trump http://wapo.st/2LuVG9e

Newsweek: Donald Trump, Increasingly Isolated and Angry, Is Retreating to Watch More TV Than Ever: Report http://bit.ly/2Sil054

🐣 I just realized “I alone can fix it” has two meanings. Increasingly, it means “I – alone – can fix it.” Terrifying.

🐣 RT @GovHowardDean 25th amendment. This man is a lunatic
⋙ 🐣 RT @unreal When President Obama ingloriously fired Jim Mattis, I gave him a second chance. Some thought I shouldn’t, I thought I should. Interesting relationship-but I also gave all of the resources that he never really had. Allies are very important-but not when they take advantage of U.S.

🐣 RT @McFaul That you do not know who Brett McGurk is underscores how little you personally were involved in defeating ISIS.
🐣 RT @Philip_Eliot The President says he does not know his government’s pointman on the anti-ISIS coalition.
🐣 RT @StevenTDennis Trump says he doesn’t know the guy who was coordinating the global coalition to defeat ISIS for his administration.
🐣 RT @brhodes In addition to the fact that Brett McGurk did more than any person to build the coalition that fought ISIS, the fact that you don’t even know who your counter ISIS coordinator is proves you are an incompetent, dangerous and narcissistic fraud.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Brett McGurk, who I do not know, was appointed by President Obama in 2015. Was supposed to leave in February but he just resigned prior to leaving. Grandstander? The Fake News is making such a big deal about this nothing event!

🐣 RT @peterbakernyt As tumultuous as events have been so far, Trump’s first two years may ultimately look calm compared to what lies ahead. ¤ “It’s entirely possible it gets worse, not better,” says GOP strategist. @maggieNYT
⋙ NYT: For Trump, ‘a War Every Day,’ Waged Increasingly Alone http://nyti.ms/2T5R1x0
// At the midpoint of his term, the president has grown more sure of his own judgment and more isolated from anyone else’s than at any point since he took office.

🐣 RT @brhodes A lot of credit for that essential diplomatic work should go to Brett McGurk who worked around the clock for years.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rcallimarchi Actually when @realDonaldTrump became president, half the territorial caliphate had been wiped out under a policy begun by the Obama administration. Hard part was brokering the alliances that created the mosaic of local armed groups, which did the heavy lifting of battling ISIS
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @real […] When I became President, ISIS was going wild. Now ISIS is largely defeated and other local countries, including Turkey, should be able to easily take care of whatever remains. We’re coming home!

TheAtlantic, Jeffrey Goldberg: Mattis Always Understood Trump’s Severe Defects http://bit.ly/2RaPvMZ
// And his resignation means he knows that the president will never change.

DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman and Kimberly Dozier: Bolton’s Hawkish Syria Plan Backfired, Pushing Trump to Get Out http://thebea.st/2Q0WEek
// The national security adviser expanded U.S. goals in Syria to challenge Iran. But Trump wasn’t on board, senior officials say, and Turkey took an opportunity to push the U.S. out.

TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: You Can’t Serve Both Trump and America http://bit.ly/2GDe8xL
// The departure of Jim Mattis is proof that you cannot have it all.

🐣 RT @JoeNBC Republican senators and House members not actively cheering for Russia, Iran and ISIS must push Trump to back down on his retreat from Syria. Too much is at stake to reinvent ISIS and turn the region over to our adversaries in Russia and Iran.
🐣 RT @amyklobuchar Like the Mattis resignation, this was sadly predictable. Chaos is not a foreign policy doctrine that works with the rest of the world or for America: U.S. envoy to coalition fighting ISIS resigns in protest of Trump’s Syria decision
⋙ WaPo: U.S. envoy to coalition fighting ISIS resigns in protest of Trump’s Syria decision http://wapo.st/2UZjOFz

Stars&Stripes: Iran expected to expand its reach across the Middle East amid US exit plan http://bit.ly/2Rclnki

⭕ 21 Dec 2018
🚫=Recorded but not retweeted

ForeignPolicy, Michael Hirsh: How Russian Money Helped Save Trump’s Business http://bit.ly/2V2YmQ0
// After his financial disasters two decades ago, no U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in.

WaPo: Democrats prepare to investigate Trump from every angle http://wapo.st/2rTaYLX

TheAtlantic, Thomas Wright: Trump, Unchecked http://bit.ly/2GAqh6u
// With Mattis gone, the president is now free to indulge his most visceral instincts.

NYT: As Markets Tumble, Tech Stocks Hit a Rare and Ominous Milestone http://nyti.ms/2R9bGTT so much winning
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1076536643333603328/photo/1

NYT: Reliable Allies Refuse to Defend a President Content With Chaos http://nyti.ms/2GO2119

NYT Editorial: Shutdown? More Like a Breakdown http://nyti.ms/2CtIqPf

This is what happens when the nation’s chief executive holds a leadership philosophy akin to that of the Petyr Baelish character on “Game of Thrones” — namely, that “chaos is a ladder.” For most people, uncertainty and disorder are scary, unsettling forces to be avoided. But for Mr. Trump, they are cherished friends and strategic assets, in part specifically because other people are so anxious to avoid them. The president clearly believes that throwing everyone else off balance gives him an edge — that is, if he can make the turmoil fierce enough, those around him will give up and give in.

… [R]evving up the wall fight allows Mr. Trump to divert attention from so much of the other drama threatening to swallow him up.

Even by Trumpian standards, the president has been enduring a bumpy patch. This week alone, Wall Street had its worst stretch in a decade; the Trump Foundation agreed to close up shop following accusations of “a shocking pattern of illegality”; the Supreme Court declined to allow enforcement of Mr. Trump’s planned asylum ban, with Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg casting her vote shortly before undergoing surgery for lung cancer; and a backlash erupted over Mr. Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria and Afghanistan.

This move proved too much for Defense Secretary Jim Mattis, who tendered his resignation on Thursday with a letter widely received as a rebuke to the president’s approach to foreign policy and national security. …

And, of course, hovering above it all, the president’s legal troubles keep mounting as the Russia investigation churns on.

Faced with all that, who wouldn’t rather throw himself into a fight — maybe even shut down parts of the government — over a border wall? At least with his wall, Mr. Trump gets to pretend that he is still in control, even as his administration sinks further and further into the swamp.

RollingStone, Matt Taibbi: We Know How Trump’s War Game Ends http://bit.ly/2rZwnU9
// Nothing unites our political class like the threat of ending our never-ending war

RollingStone, Ryan Bort: Why the Resignation of James Mattis Is Especially Concerning http://bit.ly/2EG2dwp
// The departure of the retired general in Trump’s White House is yielding fear on both sides of the aisle

USAToday Editorial: James Mattis exits, along with the guardrails for Donald Trump’s foreign policy http://bit.ly/2EDqxPC

TheGuardian, Tom McCarthy: With Jim Mattis gone, has the last proverbial adult left the White House? http://bit.ly/2V3zGa8
// Defense secretary was the last of a four-person group to balance the president’s more mercurial tendencies and analysts are alarmed http://bit.ly/

ForeignPolicy, Lara Seligman: With Mattis Gone, Is Trump Unleashed? http://bit.ly/2SeGb7X
// The defense secretary once restrained him, but now the president has free rein over U.S. foreign policy.

TheWeek: 5 things James Mattis prevented Trump from doing http://bit.ly/2EK38wD
1. Killing Assad.
2. Pulling out of Afghanistan.
3. Sending active-duty troops to the border [vs National Guard]
4. Torturing people.
5. 5. Pulling out of Korea.

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: The lure of chaos is leading Britain straight into the abyss http://wapo.st/2Lv7lFe

WaPo, Jim Hoagland: Mattis endured a lot. Here’s why this was the last straw. http://wapo.st/2LuZyaf

WaPo, Dana Milbank: It’s official. We lost the Cold War. http://wapo.st/2GwhDGa

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss When you’ve lost Chomsky, comrades.
⋙ Kurdistan24, Wladimir van Wilgenburg: Noam Chomsky says US should stay in Syria to protect the Kurds http://bit.ly/2RcAev4

🐣 RT @EvelynMFarkas Yup.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JMLudes Pretty sure I just heard @EvelynNFarkas on @MSNBC warn us that Mattis kept Trump from heading down road of withdrawing United States from NATO last summer. I gasped.

🐣🎅🏼 RT @altNOAA The Storm Prediction Center in Norman, OK just received a call from North Pole. Santa is worried about inclement weather over CONUS affecting flights delivering presents. He was assured SPC will remain staffed by employees without pay so Christmas can happen. #TrumpShutdown

🐣 RT @RepSwalwell “Hey bud, happy holidays. I know we never talk politics, but I don’t think I’ve ever been this concerned for our national security as I am with the resignation of General Mattis.” ¤ *From a Marine I grew up with.

🐣 I think it looks ominous for this shutdown. Trump can’t cave with Rush and Coulter snarling at him. And Pelosi and Schumer can’t cave to xenophobia & racism. King Solomon, where are you?

PoliticusUSA/Reuters, Jan Strupczewski: Exit of trusted Mattis sparks concern among U.S. allies http://bit.ly/2SerL80 Former Belgian P.M.: “Mattis checked President Trump’s worst instincts…. His departure is bad news & makes it look like Putin’s plan is being delivered on”

📊 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Americans have a different view about indicting a sitting president http://wapo.st/2VaCu5k Quinnipiac poll: Voters say 71/21%,(incl 49/38% GOP) that a president should be subject to being charged with a crime while in office, rather than afer leaving office

🐣 RT @GovJohnDean I suspected Erdogan fingerprints on this. Question is, what does trump get in return? Watch for new Trump hotel in Istanbul.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GregJaffe Why did U.S. troops still need to be in Syria if ISIS is defeated? Erdogan asked Trump. “You know what? It’s yours,” Trump replied. “I’m leaving.” Via @karendeyoung1 @missy_ryan @jdawsey1
⋙⋙ WaPo: A tumultuous week began with a phone call between Trump and the Turkish president http://wapo.st/2rSAGk0

🐣 RT @Hardball “The last week has been one for the history books” @HardballChris on the chaos in Washington #Hardball
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Chris Matthews: Donald Trump’s mercurial instincts plunged DC into chaos http://on.msnbc.com/2SloBiZ

🐣 Hitler let the Russians destroy Berlin while he hid in a bunker. In the end he declared the German people hadn’t been “worthy” of him.

NYT: Trump Policy Gyrations Threaten Fragile Republican Coalition http://nyti.ms/2EGPrOx

🐣 RT @JohnWDean WOW. Howell Raines (former ex editor of the New York Times on Chris Hayes show) says he reads the Mattis letter as a historic document written by a military scholar indicating that Donald Trump is a treasonous president, not to mention totally “unhinged.”

Bloomberg: Russian Euphoria at Trump’s Retreats Tinged With Doubts, Concerns http://bloom.bg/2rOfECZ
● Delight at victories tempered by Syria, Afghanistan worries
● Kremlin long pressed for U.S. withdrawals declared by Trump

Politico, Eliana Johnson and Burgess Everett: Trump sees dangerous cracks in Hill GOP support http://politi.co/2SYWHcm
// A series of recent events is alienating congressional allies Trump would need in an impeachment fight.

🐣 RT @EricHolder This is why the need for an independent DOJ and an independent AG are so critical. This behavior threatens the rule of law. Those appropriately now at DOJ must be strong and understand their duty to the people and to the Constitution.
🐣 RT @tribelaw More obstruction of justice to celebrate the Solstice 🎉? @CNN
🐣 RT @Neal_Katyal Words fail me. The President is having conversations w/the Acting AG he installed (w/out Senate confirmation) about a criminal case in which he is directly implicated. Compare U.S. Constit., Art. II “he shall take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed”
🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff The President of the United States should not be discussing any criminal case in which he has been implicated with the Acting Attorney General. ¤ This is wrong, unethical and eviscerates post-Watergate policy. Whitaker should not need an ethics opinion to know this is inexcusable.
🐣 RT @SallyQYates This shouldn’t get lost in the avalanche of crazy. The wall we need is between DOJ and the White House. The foundation of our democracy- the rule of law- depends on it.
⋙ CNN: Laura Jarrett and Pamela Brown: Trump has been venting his frustrations about SDNY at Whitaker since explosive Cohen revelations http://cnn.it/2QJXFMN

President Donald Trump has at least twice in the past few weeks vented to his acting attorney general, angered by federal prosecutors who referenced the President’s actions in crimes his former lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.

Trump pressed Whitaker on why more wasn’t being done to control prosecutors in New York who brought the charges in the first place, suggesting they were going rogue.

🐣 RT @davidaxelrod I got a note from a young service member after Mattis quit: “This is a terrible day for the military and for U.S. national security interests. Mattis wasn’t fired or pushed out. He resigned because he could no longer stand by this insane moron who is now our Commander-in-Chief.”

🐣 Vox: Matt Yglesias: There never were any “adults in the room” http://bit.ly/2PQ3dQJ
// The only real grown-ups in American politics are in the resistance.

🐣 RT @LauraLitvan A Chuck Schumer spokesman says the minority leader told Mike Pence, Mick Mulvaney and Jared Kushner at a private meeting that any proposal for a border wall can’t pass the Senate. The Democrats aren’t making fresh offers.

🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Well, we’re shutting down, folks!

🐣 RT @JakeTapper Former Defense Secy Hagel.: Trump is not fit to be commander-in-chief https://cnn.it/2QNB2r1 Chuck Hagel on @TheLeadCNN

🐣 RT @tribelaw No, this isn’t “treason,” as a technical legal matter. But it’s a disgusting betrayal of our country, our troops in Syria, our veterans, the Kurds we’re leaving to the mercy of the Turks under Erdogan, and all who gave their lives fighting ISIS. And for what? For whose benefit?
⋙ 🐣 RT @desiderioDC NEW: Corker revealed today that the U.S. military was planning a “major clearing operation” targeting ISIS in the Euphrates River Valley in six weeks—one that won’t take place anymore after Trump’s abrupt Syria withdrawal order
⋙⋙ DailyBeast, Andrew Desiderio: Trump’s Abrupt Syria Withdrawal Thwarted ‘Major’ Operation Targeting ISIS, Sen. Bob Corker Says http://thebea.st/2CtCYvW
// The Foreign Relations chairman said the U.S. was weeks away from launching a ‘major clearing operation’ in the Euphrates River Valley when Trump decided to withdraw from Syria.

TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Trump Administration’s Lowest Point Yet http://bit.ly/2LBV16h
// Even by the standards of a president who has stumbled from crisis to crisis, the current moment has peril broader and deeper than perhaps ever before.

🐣 RT @CFR_org The U.S. withdrawal from Syria removes the main obstacle to a Turkish campaign to eradicate Syrian Kurdish forces and could lead to a more dangerous phase of Syria’s civil war, writes @stevenacook
⋙ CFR, Steven Cook: Syria’s Changing Power Grid: What Turkey Wants http://on.cfr.org/2ByfSmj
// The U.S. withdrawal from Syria removes the main obstacle to a Turkish campaign to eradicate Syrian Kurdish forces and could lead to a more dangerous phase of Syria’s civil war.

🐣 RT @kyledcheney BREAKING: The FBI *deputy director* is directly rebuffing a GOP request to vet/redact witness transcripts by Christmas Eve — a deadline he says is not possible without risking classified info. ¤ He, not too subtly, notes the “legal requirement” they have not to disclose such info
Text Block: https://twitter.com/kyledcheney/status/1076238562062974976/photo/1

🐣 RT @Acosta Trump “hates” the Mattis resignation letter, I’m told. But he “hates” the coverage of the letter even more as he doesn’t like the suggestion that Mattis, as well as other senior members of the admin, exist as a check on his go it alone impulses.

📋 MotherJones, Kevin Drum: Obamacare Continues to Be Working Fine http://bit.ly/2rS7sBL it’s likely that net enrollment this year will end up down by 1-2 percent or so

MilitaryTimes, Tara Copp: Mattis is out, and Blackwater is back: ‘We are coming’ http://bit.ly/2BDkiIG Is the war in Afghanistan — and possibly elsewhere ― about to be privatized? //➔ wow, will Trump get his own SS?

DailyBeast: Fox News Calls Out Trump for ‘Flipping a 180’ on Shutdown Blame http://thebea.st/2T4V5hc
// After saying he was ‘not going to blame’ Democrats for a shutdown, that’s exactly what Trump is trying to do today. Fox News isn’t going to let him.

TheHill, Gregory Wallance: Why the US is losing the information war to Russia http://bit.ly/2EJ7PXE

CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump unleashed: Mattis exit paves way for global chaos http://cnn.it/2QKiBDC

🐣 RT @MollyMcKew So. Just gonna say. Keep an eye on Ukraine over the coming weeks. ¤ Maybe two.

🐣 RT @JoeNBC “Congress is going to have to step in and provide oversight over what increasingly looks like a rogue presidency.” ~Gen Barry McCaffrey

WaPo, Max Boot: Jim Mattis didn’t believe in betraying allies. That’s why he had to resign. http://wapo.st/2RbGoeW

DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Jim Mattis Was the Only Thing Keeping Trump’s Insane Clown Posse in Check http://thebea.st/2LxVciA
// Steady, thoughtful, and respected, Mattis was America’s insurance policy against Trump’s idiocy. If you’re not nervous, you’re not paying attention.

🐣 RT @AliVelshi Folks, ALL of this news happened in JUST the last 7 days: Velshi & Ruhle 💽 https://twitter.com/AliVelshi/status/1076204608341659649/photo/1
// “Jaw-dropping week”

🐣 RT @profcarroll Ever since the Cambridge Analytica cataclysm, the Mercers have gone silent, cut funding, and hope to be forgotten. Good luck with that. #TrumpResign
⋙ CNBC: Billionaire megadonor Robert Mercer cuts back on support for GOP after being scrutinized for backing Trump http://cnb.cx/2EIT8E7
● Republican megadonor Robert Mercer was one of President Trump’s biggest backers in 2016. Yet people close to Mercer say he’s “disappeared” and he’s no longer playing as big a role in supporting the Republican Party as he used to.
● “He’s out,” said a former associate of Mercer. “He’s not going to play any major role going forward.”

WaPo, Walter Shaub, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen: In a normal administration, Whitaker would listen to government ethics experts http://wapo.st/2Ctmfc3
// Why the acting attorney general should be recused from the Russia investigation.

AP: Trump call with Turkish leader led to US pullout from Syria http://bit.ly/2LtdZvy

✅ Politifact: Donald Trump claims Russia is ‘not happy’ U.S. troops are leaving Syria. That isn’t true http://bit.ly/2RbiaBn

Haaretz, Amos Harel [ISR]: Syria Pullout: Israel Left With False Russian Promises and a Volatile U.S. President http://bit.ly/2EKbjJA
// Trump pulls rug from under his own generals ■ An Israeli expert on Russia lays out Putin’s strategic reasoning in Syria

NPR, Bill Chappell: How Is The World Reacting To Trump’s Decision To Withdraw From Syria? http://n.pr/2Sg0qlI

DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Russia Gloats: ‘Trump Is Ours Again’ http://thebea.st/2GyZ0RX
// If Moscow was happy about the Syria pullout, it’s ecstatic about Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ resignation.

ForeignPolicy, Michael Hirsh: How Russian Money Helped Save Trump’s Business http://bit.ly/2V2YmQ0
// After his financial disasters two decades ago, no U.S. bank would touch him. Then foreign money began flowing in.

LATimes, Seth Hettena: To unravel the Trump/Russia affair, don’t follow the money, follow the lies http://lat.ms/2EJ5fRG

WaPo: Trump’s decision to withdraw from Syria marks a win for Putin http://wapo.st/2A9Kg6A

WaPo, Paul Waldman: Why the Russia scandal will define the next two years of Trump’s presidency http://wapo.st/2QJayGR

NYT: Glee in Russia Over Trump’s Foreign Policy Largess http://nyti.ms/2EDryav

USAToday: Donald Trump disputes departing Defense Secretary Jim Mattis over Russia, China http://bit.ly/2EEhBth

Politico: Trump claims to be tough on Russia after Mattis resignation http://politi.co/2By90W4

Vox, Alex Finley: Trump got the National Enquirer to bury his secrets. Did he do the same with Putin? http://bit.ly/2EAeToy
// Enquiring minds want to know.

🐣 RT @HillaryClinton Actions have consequences, and whether we’re in Syria or not, the people who want to harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous. Playing into Russia & Iran’s hands is foolish. This President is putting our national security at grave risk.

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind How to overthrow a democracy:
1. select malleable candidate
2. offer bribe (Trump Tower Moscow)
3. collude to install puppet regime
4. demand repayment (lifting sanctions, withdrawals and alienate democracies)
5. hold kompromat over puppet to maintain influence

🐣 RT @george_capen ICYMI, buried amongst all the news, Putin said that US forces in Japan are complicating the relationship between Japan and Russia, negatively affecting the prospects of signing a peace treaty. You know where this is headed…

🐣 RT @NBCPolitics Sen. Graham calls for congressional hearings on Syria troop withdrawal: ¤ “It is imperative Congress hold hearings on withdrawal decision in Syria — and potentially Afghanistan — to understand implications to our national security … Need answers now.”

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Brian Kilmeade just called out Trump to Sarah Sanders on Syria: ¤ “Sarah, he’s giving Russia a big win. Vladimir Putin praised him. He’s also doing exactly what he criticized President Obama for doing. He said President Obama was the founder of ISIS. He just refounded ISIS.” 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1076115452932304896/photo/1

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Surely Mueller will let us escape for the holiday without a round of indictments today, right? Right??
⋙ 🐣 That was what I asked 🎅🏼 for for Christmas🎄‼️

🐣 RT @Joyce_Karam Erdogan Confirms Everything that White House Denied:
• Trump discussed Syria Withdrawal w him on 14th
• Trump asked him to take care of ISIS when US leaves Syria (Foreign country)
• Turkey appreciates gesture but is waiting, delays offensive vs Kurds
⋙ TheNational [UAE]: Trump decided to leave Syria after call with Erdogan, says US defence official http://bit.ly/2BzUM6T
// US Envoy for Syria cancelled his trip to New York to follow meetings in Washington

🐣 Ending the filibuster would end our system of law making as we know it. With every change of the party in power, all legislation of the prior congress could be overturned by a vote of 1. It would sow utter chaos, an endless roller-coaster.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Fox is ALL-IN on pressuring Mitch McConnell to end the filibuster, and just WATCH how fast the bot army turns every MAGA and clickservative into a cheerleader for it.
⋙ 🐣 Here’s where (hopefully) McConnell’s dismay over Mattis firing may kick in. May.
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Special Counsel Is Bearing Down on Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2Rdkl7M
// The longtime Trump adviser appears to have asked an associate to obtain anti-Clinton emails from WikiLeaks during the 2016 campaign.

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Who’s going to step up?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @malinowski He’s burning down the house now. Years from now, the only thing that will matter, the one thing people will remember, is who helped to put the fire out.
⋙ 🐣 I can think of one person. You may know her.

🚫🐣 RT @kelly2277 💥BREAKING NEWS💥 NOW- a Russian missile frigate is moving in the direction of the Azov Sea about 1.5 nautical miles off the coast in the area of the town of Feodosia.
⋙ TheMoscowTimes Russian Warship en Route to Azov Sea From Crimea, Witness Says http://bit.ly/2LtEO2D
// A Russian missile frigate is moving in the direction of the Azov Sea from Crimea, a Reuters witness said on Friday.
↥ ↧
🚫🐣 RT @kelly2277 ⚠️It is absolutely imperative that Marina Gross, the translator at the #Helsinki meetings, be subpoenaed immediately so we can begin Trump’s impeachment proceedings! This is a national security emergency 🚨

WaPo: Trump orders major military withdrawal from Afghanistan as Mattis departs http://wapo.st/2PUlkFg

RawStory, Travis Gettys: ‘Republicans are truly scared for America’: Trump’s starting to lose his GOP support http://bit.ly/2rQ1P76

🚫🐣 RT @kelly2277 💥Helsinki💥 Putin asked Trump to deliver on his promise to pull out of Syria- and he just did. What else did Trump agree to do for Putin in the secret meetings⁉️ I’ll tell you… Trump agreed to stand down as Russia invades Ukraine this week…

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz When Mitch McConnell and The Wall Street Journal fiercely criticize Trump. you know he has crossed a new line. With Mattis gone, who will stand between Trump and a full embrace of Putin, authoritarianism and a total rejection of America’s allies?

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz We are in uncharted territory. Trump is more unmoored than ever and he continues to unravel. He is fully willing to put the world at mortal risk in a futile attempt to save face and prove his power.

💙 Axios, Mike Allen and Jim VanDeHei: Pre-Christmas Trump: Rebuked, rampaging http://bit.ly/2Gzt53W “Thursday was one of the most remarkable days, tucked inside one of the most remarkable weeks, capping one of the most remarkable months in modern presidential history”

🐣 RT @Politico Trump’s moves on a border wall and military operations stun the political establishment, cost him a defense secretary — and trigger ‘one of the most chaotic weeks that we’ve ever seen in American government’
⋙ 🐣 Politico, Andrew Restuccia: Trump stuffs political grenades in Washington’s Christmas stocking http://politi.co/2T2EUki
// The president’s moves on a border wall and military operations stun the political establishment, cost him a defense secretary — and trigger ‘one

🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Since the Cold War, it has proved ever more difficult to generate popular support for U.S. foreign policy, writes Gideon Rose. And so each president has come into office promising to do less abroad—only to be dragged by events into doing more.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Gideon Rose: The Fourth Founding http://fam.ag/2PRnYLN
// alt subtitle: The United States can found a new world order after Trump; The United States and the Liberal Order

🐣 RT @IlvesToomas Today, more than ever, this from Ronald Reagan (said when he was a Democrat) is true: “Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

TheHill: Lindsey Graham: “To the president, you won the election, you beat me and many others, you have the right to make this decision, but the Congress has the duty to hold you accountable.” http://hill.cm/8I1Yp6j 

⭕ 20 Dec 2018

WaPo, Catherine Rampell: AFTER SHOCK ~ A recession is coming. Trump will make it so much worse. http://wapo.st/2RcVTmL

 BuzzFeedNews, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold: Russian Agents Sought Secret US Treasury Records On Clinton Backers During 2016 Campaign http://bit.ly/2EEkMB6
// Whistleblowers said the Americans were exchanging messages with unsecure Gmail accounts set up by their Russian counterparts as the US election heated up.

USAToday: Exclusive: Watch opening scene of ‘The Blacklist,’ as Red shows amateurs how to rob a bank http://bit.ly/2AcCsky

VanityFair, Joe Pompeo: “The Broad Outline of What Steele Was Writing Is Unquestionably True”: BuzzFeed Wins Its Dossier Suit, and Ben Smith Takes a Victory Lap http://bit.ly/2QHwqT2

FiveThirtyEight, Perry Bacon: Mattis Leaving Might Be The Most Important Trump Administration Exit Yet http://53eig.ht/2AenJ8u

TheHill, Seth Frantzman: Russia, Iran and Turkey will step into vacuum US leaves in Syria http://bit.ly/2Rh7pxs

WSJ: Democrats Criticize Barr Over Mueller Memo; Nomination Proceeds http://on.wsj.com/2T4x5Le
// Graham says written opinion shouldn’t affect Barr’s confirmation as attorney general

🐣 RT @20committee Make no mistake what happened today. The US military’s finest general of his generation, whom historians will compare to Grant, Marshall, & Ike, threw in the towel over Trump’s basic lack of patriotism & decency. You will tell your grandkids about this day, my fellow Americans.

NYT, Mark Landler: After Mattis’s Resignation, a President Unbound http://nyti.ms/2A9e0QS

NYT: Mattis’s Resignation Creates New Cracks Between G.O.P. Lawmakers and Trump http://nyti.ms/2rRcUVe

In perhaps the most surprising response, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the usually circumspect majority leader, issued a cutting and lengthy statement, saying: “It’s essential that the United States maintain and strengthen the post-World War II alliances that have been carefully built by leaders in both parties. We must also maintain a cleareyed understanding of our friends and foes, and recognize that nations like Russia are among the latter.”

He continued: “So I was sorry to learn that Secretary Mattis, who shares those clear principles, will soon depart the administration. But I am particularly distressed that he is resigning due to sharp differences with the president on these and other key aspects of America’s global leadership.”

🐣 RT @kasie This statement from @senatemajldr is probably the strongest statement he has ever made in opposition to President Trump. This is a serious signal that the winds may be shifting https://twitter.com/kasie/status/1075945554683797504/photo/1

NYT: Mattis’s Resignation Creates New Cracks Between G.O.P. Lawmakers and Trump http://nyti.ms/2rRcUVe

🐣 RT @MSNBC Rep. Jerry Nadler: “If the framers had wanted to make the president immune from indictment, they would have said so in the Constitution.”

RollCall: Ahead of Shutdown, GOP Senator Steve Daines (MT) Floats ‘Nuclear’ Option to Build Trump’s Border Wall http://bit.ly/2LuvwU5
// Sen. Steve Daines pitched rules change after House GOP voted to amend spending stopgap

DailyBeast: ‘Fox & Friends’ Slams Trump on Syria Withdrawal: Only a Child Would Think ISIS Is Defeated http://thebea.st/2EBS83I
// Host Brian Kilmeade unleashed again on the president on his favorite morning show—and, judging by his tweets, Trump was not happy.

DailyBeast, Scott Bixby: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis’ Resignation Message to Trump Is Basically ‘F*** This’ http://thebea.st/2GwYsfx
// The Pentagon chief quit after Trump announced plans to withdraw troops from Syria and just before he ordered a drawdown in Afghanistan.

DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: Mattis’ Message to the World: Trump Is Out of Control http://thebea.st/2T3Si7N
// That was more than a letter of resignation provided today by Defense Secretary James Mattis, it was a bright red line in American history.

DailyBeast, David Lurie: William Barr Agrees With Trump’s Lawyers: Firing Comey Wasn’t Obstruction of Justice http://thebea.st/2CsUeBt
// alt title: Trump’s AG Pick Sounds Like He Would Fire Mueller; Trump’s nominee made a case to the Justice Department that the president couldn’t have broken the law—and that the special counsel could be fired for looking into it.

DailyBeast, David Lurie: William Barr Agrees With Trump’s Lawyers: Firing Comey Wasn’t Obstruction of Justice http://thebea.st/2CsUeBt
// Trump’s nominee made a case to the Justice Department that the president couldn’t have broken the law—and that the special counsel could be fired for looking into it.

DailyBeast: Report: Man Behind Border Wall GoFundMe Ran Fake News Websites http://thebea.st/2T0wV7y

🐣 RT @jengriffingNYC A senior US defense official tells me they have never seen the morale in meetings at the Pentagon worse than they have in the past few days, following announcement that President Trump is withdrawing from Syria, drawing down in Afghanistan.

🐣 RT @andylassner Trump knows Mueller is closing in fast. So now, he’s gonna bring down the whole fucking thing with him. Brace yourselves.

🐣 RT @jakesNYT Amazing detail by @helenecooper: His resignation already written, Mr. Mattis made a last attempt to convince Mr. Trump to change his mind on Syria. Rebuffed, the retired 4-star Marine general asked aides hand out 50 copies of the letter at the Pentagon.
⋙ NYT: Jim Mattis, Defense Secretary, Resigns in Rebuke of Trump’s Worldview http://nyti.ms/2T2Ar14

🐣 RT @DanRather Some thoughts on this fraught moment for our nation…#Courage #WhatUnitesUs https://twitter.com/DanRather/status/1075965707546816512/photo/1

🐣 RT @WSJ Take an early look at the front page of The Wall Street Journal http://www.wsj.com https://twitter.com/WSJ/status/1075986736738652160/photo/1

🐣 RT @colbertlateshow On #LSSC tonight: From our Late Show family to yours, we wish you “A Very Special Counsel Christmas.”
💽 https://twitter.com/colbertlateshow/status/1075873684315885568/photo/1
// Trump steals Christmas and uses presents to build a wall

VanityFair, Bess Levin: Wilbur Ross Isn’t Even Pretending to Follow the Law Anymore http://bit.ly/2CqAPB3
// Being accused of “serious criminal violation[s]” doesn’t scare this Trump official!

🐣 RT @Charlie_Savage Updating story. Here’s the DOJ letter telling Congress that Whitaker was advised by ethics officials to recuse from the Mueller probe but decided not to. http://bit.ly/2Gz7Jni https://twitter.com/charlie_savage/status/1075958001364856833/photo/1

Politico [EU]: How Mattis tried to contain Trump http://politi.co/2V0Zaor
// The Defense secretary tried to steady the president without saying ‘no.’

🐣 RT @NancyPelosi General Mattis was a comfort to many who were concerned about the path the Trump Admin would choose to take. His resignation letter is defined by statements of principle — principles that drove him to leave the Administration. All of us should be concerned at this time.

🐣 RT @rabrowne75 Defense officials tell me Mattis went to the White House to discuss Syria & that he was livid after reading reports that Turkey’s Defense Minister threatened to kill US-backed Kurds & put them in ditches once the US withdrew. He was incensed at this notion of betrayal of an ally

🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Read my statement on acting AG Whitaker’s refusal to recuse himself from overseeing the work of Special Counsel Robert Mueller, despite numerous objections from senior ethics officials: https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1075845038922452992/photo/1

NYT, Charlie Savage: A Memo and a Recusal Decision Underscore Potential Threats to the Mueller Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2BxZhyJ

🐣 Iow, Thursday https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1075937121758822400/photo/1
// NYT front page

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSecy It has not gotten one tenth as bad as it will. ¤ You will remember the first two years of Trump’s “Presidency” as a calm period. ¤ Be mentally prepared.

WaPo: This time, the United States is betraying more than just the Kurds, allies say http://wapo.st/2PStQEB

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Today is the day that Never Trumpers warned was coming. Markets crashing, indictments piling up, a President losing his grip; allies horrified, enemies celebrating, government in chaos, and Mattis quitting in protest. ¤ And it’s going to get worse.
🐣 RT @PhilipRucker Leon Panetta tells us Jim Mattis’ resignation is a national security risk. “We’re in a constant state of chaos right now in this country…While it may satisfy [Trump’s] need for attention, it’s raising hell with the country.”
⋙ WaPo: ‘A tailspin’: Under siege, Trump propels the government and markets into crisis http://wapo.st/2PVkrMJ

🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s sudden pullout of US troops from Syria with no input from DOD or DOS would devastate the Kurds — Erdogan of Turkey’s wet dream. Flynn’s sometime client. Did Erdogan tell Trump to do this? O what a tangled web Trump’s interests weave. Emonumentally tangled. @JRubinBlogger

🐣 RT @MittRomney The foreign policy described by Gen. Mattis today has, for nearly 3/4 century, kept us from global war, empowered our economy, helped billions escape from poverty & opened freedom’s door around the world. His service, vision & character were a blessing. He will be greatly missed.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Okay, Republicans. How much longer are you going to let this farcical “presidency” continue? At a time of such political, economic, and geo-strategic turbulence—both nationally and globally—are you waiting for a catastrophe to happen before acting? Disaster looms!

🐣 RT @RichardEngel A sr military official told me US special forces troops distraught, upset, morally disturbed by having to tell their kurdish allies in Syria that, because of orders, their promises of defense won’t be kept.

🐣 RT @RichardEngel Im told kurds in syria seriously considering releasing their isis prisoners, because a hopeless man/woman sees hope in only raising awareness.

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Barr gave the memo to Flood and Giuliani was aware of it. It’s 100% clear now why he was picked as AG, and he has to recuse from the Mueller probe.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhouse New w/@sgurman: Giuliani was aware of Barr’s memo on the Mueller investigation before the @WSJ report, but hadn’t read it. Barr told Trump after he was tapped that there “may be some issues that come up in confirmation” related to his comments on Mueller.
⋙⋙ WSJ: Schumer Says Mueller Memo Disqualifies Barr From Attorney General Job http://on.wsj.com/2T4x5Le
// Graham, the incoming chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, says written opinion shouldn’t affect Barr’s confirmation

🐣 RT @SethAbramson (THREAD) Tonight’s NBC News report claiming Mueller is almost done with his investigation is false. This thread explains why. Please RETWEET if you’d like our media to stop publishing anonymously sourced stories of this sort that clearly do not use Mueller or his team as sources.
📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1075904536877912064

🐣 RT @brhodes Trump’s entire natsec team has turned over, his decision-making has become more erratic, his domestic policy running room is foreclosed with a Dem House, the economy is slowing down and investigations are closing in. A very dangerous two years of US foreign policy ahead.

🐣 RT @NancyPelosi General Mattis was a comfort to many who were concerned about the path the Trump Admin would choose to take. His resignation letter is defined by statements of principle — principles that drove him to leave the Administration. All of us should be concerned at this time.

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: The Year in Trump Freakouts http://bit.ly/2BtG3dI
// Jim Mattis is out, the President is leaving Syria without consulting anyone, and that’s just this week in crises of the President’s own making.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYer Glasser Trump Freakouts 12-20-2018

🐣 RT @elianayjohnson “Officials said Mr. Mattis went to the White House on Thursday afternoon in a last attempt to convince Mr. Trump to keep American troops in Syria. He was rebuffed, and told the president that he was resigning as a result” via @helenecooper –
⋙ NYT: Defense Secretary Jim Mattis Resigns, Rebuking Trump’s Worldview http://nyti.ms/2T2Ar14

🌀 https://twitter.com/ClaymoreKwaram1/status/1075889628740227077/photo/1
// Titanic breaking up

TPM, Tierney Sneed: READ: William Barr’s Memo Bashing Robert Mueller’s Obstruction Probe http://bit.ly/2LA09b3

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Now We Know Trump Picked William Barr to Shut Down Mueller’s Investigation http://nym.ag/2A8WFHZ

🐣 RT @NBCNews JUST IN: White House has ordered the Pentagon to draw up plans for a troop withdrawal from Afghanistan, 2 defense officials and a person briefed on the matter tell @NBCNews.
⋙ NBC: Trump administration is weighing Afghan troop withdrawal http://nbcnews.to/2SeoLZ4
// The White House has asked the Pentagon to look into multiple options, including a complete withdrawal, the officials said.

🐣 RT @ABC NEW: Sen. Marco Rubio on Mattis resignation letter: “It makes it abundantly clear that we are headed towards a series of grave policy errors which will endanger our nation, damage our alliances & empower our adversaries.” http://abcn.ws/2J0gebC 

🐣 RT @RobReiner All the adult rats are leaving the infantile sinking ship. We have been invaded by and are being occupied by a hostile enemy. We have a childish moronic mentally unstable malignant narcissist POTUS who is committing Treason in front of our eyes. GOP, STEP THE FUCK UP!

🐣 RT @mitchellreports Military men like Gen. John Allen, USMC (Ret) did not like the President’s tweeted video invoking the fallen troops in Syria to justify withdrawal. I can’t imagine Jim #Mattis appreciated it either

🐣 RT @tribelaw The sails and propellers are coming off the ship of state. We’re in full meltdown mode. There are no lifeboats. It’s time for the captain to find some face-saving way to turn the controls over to others before the remaining crew resigns and the surviving passengers drown.

🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Mattis’s letter of resignation is a carefully-worded but clear repudiation of the @realDonaldTrump approach of appeasing autocrats and flaying our allies. ¤ Read it here. http://bit.ly/2ED2GAk

💥 🐣 RT @JoeNBC “Send lawyers, guns and money. The shit has hit the fan.”

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Old Marines never die, but they do resign after the President ignores their advice, betrays our allies, rewards our enemies, and puts the nation’s security at risk. Turn out the lights when Mattis leaves; we will not see his like again while Trump remains in office.
🐣 RT @BillKristol Never been more alarmed for the nation since coming to D.C. over three decades ago.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real General Jim Mattis will be retiring, with distinction, at the end of February, after having served my Administration as Secretary of Defense for the past two years. During Jim’s tenure, tremendous progress has been made, especially with respect to the purchase of new fighting….

🐣 Col Jack Jacobs: Mattis “would stay on his post until relieved.” On @TheBeatWithAri

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I feel like Mattis was our last bastion of relative sanity in this administration.

🐣 RT @tribelaw General Mattis’s resignation as Secretary of Defense on the basis of principle — in the wake of Putin’s wet kiss for Trump’s anti-American treachery — is enormously important. It’s hard to imagine GOP Senators, however supine, not starting to peel off. Trump will soon be alone.

💙💙 🐣 RT @KatyTur Mattis’ resignation letter makes it clear. ¤ “My views on treating allies with respect and also being clear eyed about both malign actors and strategic competitors are strongly held and informed by over four decades of immersion in these issues.”
Letter: https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/1075885816113704961/photo/1-2

🐣 My son, who is in Army National Guard and served in Iraq near Mosul a year ago, says the soldiers love Mattis.

YahooNews: Mattis quits as defense secretary, citing differences with Trump http://yhoo.it/2Rcw0nk includes full transcript of Mattis resignation letter

WaPo: Mattis to step down as defense secretary over differences with Trump http://wapo.st/2rNwstZ

WaPo: Ex-Senate Intelligence Committee aide sentenced to two months in leak probe http://wapo.st/2QMeJBR

WaPo: Trump is leaving 50,000 Syrian civilians to die http://wapo.st/2Lw9WOY

WaPo: Ethics officials said Whitaker should recuse from the Mueller probe, but his advisers told him not to, officials say http://wapo.st/2GyBvIS

WaPo, Philip Bump: The Trump Tower meeting gets another intriguing layer http://wapo.st/2ExWDMJ

Al-Jazeera: Syria battle against ISIL far from over, despite US pull-out plan http://bit.ly/2EFYSyf
// by Ali Younes, Trevor Aaronson & Murtaza Hussain, Despite assurances from Trump that ISIL is defeated, US raids against group in eastern Syria have intensified recently.

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec Hot Tub Crime Machine Matt Whitaker *was* told by DOJ to recuse himself. So he replaced the officials.
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller This is turning into an enormous scandal. Ethics officials told Whitaker they would recommend recusal, so he set up a different group of officials (probably political appointees, but unclear) to make a different recommendation. What in the hell is going on at DOJ?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @LauraAJarrett Short story: Whitaker is not recusing from overseeing Mueller. But what happened to get to this point is messy – here’s the backstory…
⋙⋙⋙ CNN: Whitaker chose not to recuse from overseeing Mueller probe, but ethics official considered it a ‘close call’ http://cnn.it/2GzSRVC

🐣 RT @JenGriffinFNC I am told that CENTCOM, in particular, Gen Joe Votel, the head of US Central Command, feels “punched in the gut” by the decision to withdraw troops from Syria. US military commanders were “shocked” by the President’s decision, but now are making plans to withdraw.

🐣 RT @DelWilbur BREAKING. senior DOJ official: Whitaker has not recused from Mueller probe. After extensive review by senior officials, he did not seek formal ruling from ethics office. BUT a senior doj ethics official said it was a “close call” and he should recuse in an “abundance of caution.”

🐣 RT @brianklaas Putin’s main foreign policy goals:
✓ Splinter NATO from within
✓ Weaken the transatlantic alliance
✓ Get the US out of Syria
✓ Weaken the US by creating political chaos
Trump is the best investment Putin ever made.

🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Instead of $5 billion for “beautiful see-through steel slat” cage for America, I as an American would happily authorize $1.5 billion as a buyout to POTUS if he leaves now before more advantage is given to our enemies, creating a world where Americans will be ground into the dust.

Bloomberg: Mueller to Save Trump for Later as Prosecutor Readies Next Steps http://bloom.bg/2GynGtW
● Special counsel not rushing to delve into ‘Individual-1’
● Trump’s role may be specified only in Mueller’s final report

🐣 RT @BillBrowder Trump’s inexplicable decision to abruptly withdraw U.S. troops from Syria is the single largest gift to Putin that Putin has received since Trump became president. A major and unrecoverable strategic blunder by the US
⋙ WaPo, Karen DeYoung: Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. troops from Syria startles aides and allies http://wapo.st/2Cpltg6

🐣 The humanitarian reason we stay in Afghanistan is fear of backlash against women (Biden’s view). The humanitarian reason for staying in Syria is fear of backlash against the Kurds. Yes, Bush acted wrongly in going in, but that does not diminish the real moral quandary that faces us now.

🐣 If only Congress has the ability to declare war, shouldn’t they have the final say in disengaging from one? Yeah, I know, it’s not a “declared war.” There hasn’t been a “declared war” since WW2. Still …

WaPo (11/29/2018): THE SWAMP BUILDERS ~ How Stone and Manafort helped create the mess Trump promised to clean up http://wapo.st/2CpDdIz
// 11/29/2018; 2nd of 3-part series ‘All The Best People’

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Chris Steele and his business partner Chris Burrows posted this about an hour ago.🎄
⋙ 🐣 RT @OrbisBIOfficial Seasons greetings from all at @OrbisBIOfficial
https://twitter.com/OrbisBIOfficial/status/1075711174887530496/photo/1

🐣 RT @WashingtonExaminer President Trump’s decision to withdraw U.S. forces from Syria is finding approval from Russia, which partnered with Iran to provide military support to Syrian dictator Bashar Assad.
⋙ 🐣 WashingtonExaminer, Joel Gehrke: Russia blesses US troop withdrawal from Syria http://washex.am/2LqS88d

DailyBeast, JuliaDavis: Russia Thinks Trump’s Syria Pullout Is Too Good to Be True http://thebea.st/2Lt32u5
// Moscow’s state-controlled media treat Trump as delusional. Putin, with condescending charity, says maybe he helped a little to defeat ISIS, but doubts the U.S. will ever get out.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] Trump’s rapid foreign policy shifts are alarming. If Putin, Erdogan, MBS, get President Trump or his family on the phone or in meeting, they immediately get what they want. In a more hasty way in Syria, he’s doing exactly what he & GOP ridiculed Obama for in Iraq

🐣 RT @SykesCharlie Trump’s week so far: caved on Wall, Foundation shut down, Flynn conspiracy collapses; Moscow Project letter surfaces, stock mkt drops, NK says no Nuke deal, Stone indictment looms … and to change narrative he bugs out of Syria, betrays Kurds, hands huge win to Russia and Iran.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan This wrong-headed decision is but one example of how dangerous it is for our national security to be controlled by Mr. Trump’s impulsive and self-satisfying “gut.” He is surrendering America’s role on the world stage. Republicans who make excuses for him enable these actions.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real After historic victories against ISIS, it’s time to bring our great young people home!

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Remember that the day Trump announced Barr, he said he was “my first choice since day one.” Well now we know why. The WH had been told over the summer that Barr thought Mueller’s obstruction probe was inappropriate.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joycewhitevance It appears Barr campaigned for the AG job by insuring Trump knew he’d end the Mueller investigation. The memo was fishy enough – no one sends a 20 pager to DOJ for giggles. Barr believes Trump is above the law & that’s disqualifying for someone nominated for AG.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Very odd that this sentence, which is maybe the biggest piece of news in the WSJ story on Barr’s memo, wasn’t in the original version that posted at 10:19 last night and now shows up in graf 23 as if it is no big deal. It is a huge deal.
https://twitter.com/matthewamiller/status/1075757044710473728/photo/1

🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Mueller should go after the Helsinki notes — Syria sure seems like a payoff

🐣 RT @ArmyTimes Trump’s Syria withdrawal flies in the face of statements from top military and national security leaders https://trib.al/b4mwDo2 

🐣 RT @starsandstripes Turkey and Iran are wasting little time as a new race for influence gets underway in Syria
⋙ StarsAndStripes: Trump’s ‘green light’ to Erdogan on Syria leaves dilemma on Iran http://bit.ly/2LqxcxU

🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs “There is an idea behind Trump’s foreign policy (‘America first’) but not a concept of geopolitics—a plan or set of priorities based on calculation and reflection.”
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Eliot A. Cohen: America’s Long Goodbye http://fam.ag/2EwuZj0
// The Real Crisis of the Trump Era

🐣 RT @shawncarrie Is ISIS “defeated” in Syria and Iraq? ¤ This map, prepared by The Institute for @TheStudyofWar — and published just a day before Trump announced plans for full withdrawal — suggests otherwise. http://bit.ly/2PQgw3o 

🐣 RT @vvanwilgenburg Senior Kurdish politician: “Trump sudden decision to withdraw from #Syria, is an immoral & shameful decision which betrays US allies in the region. An expected move however the timing is dangerous as #ISIS remains a threat & also strengthens Erdogan’s plan to attack”

AP: US ally in Syria says pullout will aid IS, Putin disagrees http://bit.ly/2GvBENd

The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces said in a strongly worded statement laced with bitterness that a premature U.S. pullout before IS is defeated would have dangerous repercussions including a resurgence of the extremist group and a destabilizing effect on the entire region.

NYT: Vladimir Putin Calls U.S. Withdrawal From Syria ‘the Right Decision’ http://nyti.ms/2LwMKR2

🔄 🐣 For Middle East perspective on Trump’s precipitous move on Syria, check out this Twitter list I set up for my son when he was deployed outside Mosul: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/iraq-syria

WaPo, Jacqueline Alemany: Power Up: It’s Trump versus ‘My generals’ on Syria http://wapo.st/2rNs0Lx

MiddleEastEye: US announces withdrawal from Syria as Trump declares Islamic State defeated http://bit.ly/2UX0KaQ
// White House says some troops have already left, even with expected Turkish offensive against US forces’ pro-Kurdish allies looming

🐣 Even if Trump were to reverse course on Syria, even today, he would have already done grave damage to our position in Syria, our alliances there and, once again, to our international standing. Tweets have consequences. @Morning_Joe

🐣 Trump is not – and never has been – a “deal-maker.” He’s an extortionist and a con man. If his threats don’t work, he folds – then declares he won anyway. @Morning_Joe

🐣 RT @SteveRattner So Donald, did the fake news just make up Putin’s statement praising the US withdrawal?
🐣 RT @JonahGoldberg Russia and Turkey have publicly welcomed your retreat. Also, why will they have to fight ISIS if they’ve been totally defeated?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….Russia, Iran, Syria & many others are not happy about the U.S. leaving, despite what the Fake News says, because now they will have to fight ISIS and others, who they hate, without us. I am building by far the most powerful military in the world. ISIS hits us they are doomed!

🐣 RT @kilmeade We didnt win anything..they are still there!!
// Brian Kilmeade is a host of Fox&Friends
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Getting out of Syria was no surprise. I’ve been campaigning on it for years, and six months ago, when I very publicly wanted to do it, I agreed to stay longer. Russia, Iran, Syria & others are the local enemy of ISIS. We were doing there work. Time to come home & rebuild. #MAGA

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Exactly right: “The extent to which Republicans are distancing themselves from the White House is a poor sign for a future where even more of the administration is under investigation. The signs of a collapse are here. The question is what pushes everything over the brink.”
Slate, Jamelle Bouie: Republican Leadership Is Slowly Backing Away From Trump http://bit.ly/2RaE6N7
// Trump’s popularity with voters is only one part of the picture. Leaders within the GOP are clearly hedging their bets as 2020 approaches.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Here’s a lesson for media covering Trump summits, announcements, policies, etc. ¤ Everything is a lie. Everything is a con. There is no there, there. The claims never hold. He is always either mendacious or credulous, and puts his ego before American interests every single time.
🐣 RT @christinawilkie NEW: North Korea says it won’t denuclearize unless the US removes its troops and nuclear umbrella from South Korea and Japan. DPRK also accused the US and Trump of misleading the world about what was agreed to at the Singapore talks last summer.
⋙ AP, Kim Tong-Hyung: N. Korea says it won’t denuclearize unless US removes threat http://bit.ly/2R7OZiD

TheIndependent [UK] (12/15/2018): As Kurdish fighters move on last Isis-controlled town in Syria, Turkey threatens attack http://ind.pn/2SayShz
// 12/15/2018, Syria’s main Kurdish parties called Turkey’s warnings a ‘declaration of war’

⭕ 19 Dec 2018

WaPo, EJ Dionne: The strangest and most revealing week of the Trump presidency http://wapo.st/2BuCq7d

Over just a few days, his sheer thuggishness, venality and corruption were laid bare. But it was also a time for Trumpian good deeds that allowed us a glimpse at how he might have governed if he had been shrewder — and had a genuine interest in the good that government can do.

WaPo, Victoria Nuland: In a single tweet, Trump destroys U.S. policy in the Middle East http://wapo.st/2PRP4m1

WSJ Editorial: Trump’s Syria-Iran Retreat http://on.wsj.com/2UYgL0d “Mission accomplished? Not so fast.”
// Islamic State isn’t defeated, and the mullahs are delighted.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Mueller asked for Stone’s testimony transcripts last Friday; a classic Three Sticks finishing move. He gets everything on someone, then charges them with lying to Congress in an attempt to flip them. Hang on to your Nixon tattoos!

🐣 RT @NormOrnstein No one knows better than @DavidCornDC the web of ties between Donald Trump and Russia; no one has contributed more to our understanding. His latest piece is a must read.
⋙ MotherJones: Remember the Big Story in the Russia Scandal: Donald Trump Betrayed America http://bit.ly/2R0B6TF
// In the flurry of new developments—and disinformation—it’s easy to lose sight of this essential and proven fact.

🐣 RT @APDiploWriter From yesterday’s briefing with @StateDeputySPOX re northeast #Syria: ¤ ” … as you know US forces are present in the campaign to ensure the enduring defeat of ISIS. We’ve made significant progress recently in the campaign, but the job is not yet done.”
💽 DeptOfState: Department Press Briefing – December 18, 2018 http://bit.ly/2QIP116

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH [Ron Klain:] “[A]t this point in time I would trust the Grinch with my Christmas presents than trust Rudy Giuliani with the truth…This is an entire spy novel of corruption, of collusion, of conspiracy, and I think all the pieces are coming together now”- @RonaldKlain w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1075511296659984384/photo/1

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance These are sanctions Congress voted, on a bipartisan basis, to impose & that Trump dragged his feet on, missing the deadline by months. Now, they simply go away like magic, for the Oligarch Paul Manafort is rumored to have been deeply in debt to.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand The Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) has notified Congress of its intention to terminate the sanctions imposed on Oleg Deripaska’s companies… http://bit.ly/2Cn8AU7

🐣 RT @EricGarland WHAT? Facebook ALSO handed Facebook data to China’s Huawei AND Russian intel? Just last year? NO WAY!
⋙ DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Facebook Put User Data Within Kremlin’s Grasp Last Year http://thebea.st/2SaMuJX
// Yandex, the country’s largest tech company, got special access to info from Mark Zuckerberg’s company.

🐣 RT @Stop_Trump20 Wait for it……. 🤣🤣🤣
🌀 https://twitter.com/Stop_Trump20/status/1075538817426300929/photo/1
// Pop goes the weasel

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen BREAKING: A federal judge ruled in favor of BuzzFeed in the defamation suit about the Trump-Russia dossier. A Russian tech executive who was mentioned in the dossier lost his defamation suit against BuzzFeed. More details coming soon. Here’s the backstory:
⋙ CNN: Russian tech exec sues Buzzfeed for publishing unverified Trump dossier http://cnnmon.ie/2A5b2gs

🐣 RT @JakeTapper Sr. Admin. official tells me re Syria withdrawal: “Senior officials across the Administration agree that the President’s decision-by-tweet will recklessly put American and allied lives in danger around the world, take the pressure off of ISIS allowing them to reconstitute, and…
… 2/ “… hand a strategic victory to our Syrian, Iranian, and Russian adversaries. It’s a mistake of colossal proportions and the President fails to see how it will endanger our country.”

🐣 RT @SimonKuestenmacher The Histomap of #religion by John Sparks from 1952 is an outstanding piece of scholarship. Very interesting to read through the whole piece. You might want to go to the link to read in high-res. I’m impressed by such research. Source:
◕ History of Religion chart: http://bit.ly/2UYVfZ7

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss Who says there’s no such thing as American exceptionalism? What other country could, in the space of a few hours, make a global terrorist organization, a genocdial dictator, a regional adversary and a historical geopolitical enemy all happy at the same time?

🐣 RT @MarcoRubio Netanyahu said of Syria retreat “we will make sure Israel’s security is preserved & we will defend ourselves from this arena.” ¤ Translation: #Israel will now have to step up attacks inside #Syria even if it results in a new war with Hezbollah & potentially #Iran.
⋙ 🐣 Then we will get dragged into war with Iran to support Israel ➔ Netanyahu’s long plan.

🐣 RT @brianklaas This video proclaiming that ISIS is defeated is going to haunt Donald Trump at some point because they are not defeated and it’s dangerous hubris to proclaim otherwise.
🐣 RT @mitchellreports A new strategy: President tweets White House produced video tonight on his sudden withdrawal from Syria bypassing the press – after blindsiding Pentagon State Dept and GOP Congress with his tweeted policy reversal announcement this morning
💽 Tweet link w video: https://twitter.com/mitchellreports/status/1075537805844078593
⋙ 🐣 He’s doubling down. He can’t be reasoned with. Time for resignations?

Al-Monitor, Laura Rozen: US diplomats shaken by Trump decision to exit Syria http://bit.ly/2PN0Eig

🐣 RT @jaketapper Breaking — Buzzfeed wins defamation suit brought over publishing of the Steele dossier

RawStory: WATCH: Four-star general believes Trump ‘ceded the battlefield’ in Syria — for arms sale deal with Turkey http://bit.ly/2R5BPmp on @DeadlineWH

🐣 RT @DavidAxelrod How much of this is just his wanting to change the subject?
⋙ Axios, Mike Allen and Haley Britzky: Trump calls it quits on Syria http://bit.ly/2EyvWaQ

WaPo: Mueller seeks Roger Stone’s testimony to House intelligence panel, suggesting special counsel is near end of probe of Trump adviser http://wapo.st/2UYRClX

TheGuardian: Syria withdrawal: Republican opposition to Trump’s plan grows – as it happened http://bit.ly/2Bt2tvD
● Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham condemn president’s move
● Trump’s announcement took allies and advisers by surprise

AtlanticCouncil: Frederic Hof: Trump’s Syria Decision Poses More Questions Than Answers http://bit.ly/2Scl9H2

TheAtlantic, Krishnadev Calamur: Trump Wanted Out of Syria. It’s Finally Happening. http://bit.ly/2SckENa
// The announcement is in stark contrast to recent remarks by senior U.S. officials on the presence of troops.

BusinessInsider: Trump outright ignored Pentagon, State Department Syria policy in a big win for Putin http://read.bi/2rLrX35

Politico: Republicans rip Trump’s surprise Syria withdrawal in meeting with Pence http://politi.co/2UW4Z6C
// By David Brown, Gregory Hellman and Burgess Everett; GOP senators told the vice president they were outraged by Trump’s move.

ForeignPolicy, Laura Seligman and Michael Hirsh: Trump’s ‘Stunning’ About-Face on Syria http://bit.ly/2SYW7uW
// Bowing to Turkey, the U.S. president moves to withdraw all troops.

🐣 RT @JimSciutto Today, President Trump handed two substantial victories to Russia: withdrawing US troops from Syria and lifting sanctions on two Russian firms run by friends of Putin. Russia has clearly gained. Question for the WH: what has the US gained?

🐣 RT @IraqiSecurity [Hadar Sumeri] Trump’s withdrawal of US forces from Syria could easily lead to the disintegration of the SDF/YPG either due to lack of morale or the Turks seizing their opportunity and I can’t even fathom how excited Da’ish leadership must be at the prospect of that happening.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Ben Sasse: “Eight days ago the Administration called a hypothetical pullout ‘reckless.’ Today, we’re leaving. The President’s generals have no idea where this weak decision came from ,,, A lot of American allies will be slaughtered if this retreat is implemented.”

🐣 RT @aroseblush
🇷🇺 First Syria This Morning. Now Lifting Sanctions on Russian Companies. Is Trump a Russian Agent, Folks? ¤ 🇷🇺 😵 Trump’s Treasury lifts sanctions on Russian companies targeted over 2016 election inference 🇷🇺

🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger Michael Flynn learned that incorporating crackpot Trumpers’ conspiracy theories in your legal brief can get you jailed.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: A wild day in court defies expectations for Flynn — and Trump http://wapo.st/2Bt4nfF
⋙⋙ 🐣 If not for Judge Sullivan, Flynn would have been on Fox & Friends this morning denigrating the FBI. Now he (and to some extent, Trump) have got to tone it way down. Brilliant move!

🐣 RT @joshtpm Emblematic of the Trump Era. Is no warning withdrawal from Syria impulsive effort to upend a bad news cycle, Trump getting irritable, favor to Putin, late shift of mood against foreign intervention? We have no idea.

WaPo: Trump administration plans to pull U.S. troops out of Syria immediately, officials say http://wapo.st/2EzraKb

🐣 Aren’t @JRubinBlogger ¤ @RonaldKlain and @tribelaw a bit loopy today?
(Love em all, but … )

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Why not indict the Trump Organization? http://wapo.st/2R5aAZk

🐣 RT @SenShumer You’re going to want to make sure your friends see this: ¤ Senators Booker, Coons, and Flake just asked for the Senate’s unanimous consent to pass a bill protecting the Mueller investigation from President Trump. ¤ But they didn’t get it. ¤ Because @SenateMajLdr McConnell objected.

🐣 RT @BenSasse “The President’s generals have no idea where this weak decision came from: They believe the high-fiving winners today are Iran, ISIS, and Hezbollah. The losers are Israel, humanitarian victims, and U.S. intelligence gathering.”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/BenSasse/status/1075488087050981376/photo/1

🐣 RT @seungminkim .@SenBobCorker tells reporters his planned meeting with President Trump was cancelled WHILE he was sitting at the White House waiting for Trump. ¤ This is a committee chairman of the President’s own party, on a day with significant international news.

🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump Tower Istanbul + Trump Tower Moscow + Trump’s greed = incentive for Trump & Flynn to betray the USA by prematurely saying we’ve defeated ISIS to justify sudden pullout from Syria = giving “aid & comfort to our enemies” (ISIS) = Art III definition of “treason.” @RonaldKlain
⋙ 🐣 Also hypothetical

🐣 RT @tribelaw Maybe Judge Emett Sullivan casually used the word “treason” because the redacted material suggested that Flynn was working with Trump to help Turkey and Russia carve up Syria, which would give “aid and comfort” to ISIS, our ENEMY. Note Trump’s sudden withdrawal from Syria today.
⋙ 🐣 Pretty hypothetical

📊 Vox: Quinnipiac Poll: Joe Biden and Bernie Sanders are both way more popular than Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2SYN90V Fav/Unfav%: Biden 53/23%, Sanders 44/42%, 24/20%, Harris 20/22%, Warren 30/37%, Booker 22/26%, Bloomberg 22/32%, Gillibrand 14/17%, S Brown 12/9%
// Biden, in particular, is popular with everyone.

WaPo Editorial: This is not the way to leave Syria http://wapo.st/2UWnaJj

WaPo, Josh Rogin: Trump undermines his entire national security team on Syria http://wapo.st/2Sc5qI0

🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc On the same day @realDonaldTrump orders rapid troop withdrawal from Syria, @USTreasury lifts sanctions on #Deripaska’s companies (after making him forfeit some of his control). Almost feels like someone’s got a sudden and desperate need to appease the Kremlin? #ActiveMeasures

🐣 RT @TomJChicago More Khashoggi fallout. The sudden withdrawal of US troops from Syria is all about Erdogan having Trump & Kush by the gonads over JK’s murder. Erdogan want’s the US out of Syria bc he just launched an offensive against the Syrian Kurds our 2k soldiers have worked w/ against ISIS

🐣 RT @jwgop Understand some people I admire were angry Judge Sullivan intervened with Gen Flynn. They felt, with prosecution/defense in agreement, fairly straightforward matter. But what Flynn did was an outrage & the Judge was right: Flynn sold out America & tried to blame FBI. #Outrage

WashingtonExaminer, Joel Gehrke: UK rejects Trump’s claim that ISIS is defeated in Syria: ‘The threat is very much alive’ http://washex.am/2BvSSEs

WaPo, Max Boot: Trump’s surprise Syria pullout is a giant Christmas gift to our enemies http://wapo.st/2EATs6K

Forbes, Steve Denning: How Russia Is Still Running Interference For Trump http://bit.ly/2Gtk38I

TheGuardian: Russia may have nuclear arms in Crimea, hacked EU cables warn http://bit.ly/2Cnpi5z
// Diplomatic messages describe annexed area of Ukraine as ‘hot zone’ and Trump as ‘bully’

NYT: Hacked European Cables Reveal a World of Anxiety About Trump, Russia and Iran http://nyti.ms/2UTwo9n

🐣 RT @mkraju CORKER told me GOP senators are giving Pence an “earful” about Syria in lunch right now. ¤ “It doesn’t feel to me there was any interagency process” in deciding to pull out. ¤ “I’m not sure even the principles knew,” referring to agency heads, adding Trump just “woke up” and did it

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Interesting: “VTB Bank or another non-SDN assignee approved by OFAC will take ownership of a block of Deripaska’s shares in En+ pledged as collateral…the Swiss company Glencore will swap shares in Rusal for a direct ownership interest in En+.” [Treasury to McConnell: http://bit.ly/2Cn8AU ]
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Manafort’s boss Deripaska wins. After 8 months of delaying sanctions Deripaska’s company Rusal is taken off the sanctions list. This story started in April in Russian press and predictably ended this way
⋙ 🐣 RT @WSJ The U.S. Treasury Department is removing Russian aluminum giant Rusal from the sanctions list
⋙⋙ WSJ: U.S. Levies Fresh Sanctions Against Russian Agents for Election Interference http://on.wsj.com/2Ezcvyj
// U.S. Treasury also cites Russian government interference in elections worldwide

WaPo, Eugene Scott: Not even Trump supporters believe the president on Russia anymore http://wapo.st/2BveAbw

🐣 RT @BenjaminTau At Lawfare, @benjaminwittes and @qjurecic write that Judge Sullivan’s behavior in the Flynn sentencing yesterday amounted to a “grossly inappropriate rant” that bullied Flynn out of a decision he wanted to make.
⋙ LawfareBlog, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: The Former National Security Advisor’s Sentencing Hearing: Flynncompetent Judging http://bit.ly/2EtreLr “What had begun as a laudable effort debunk conspiracy theories ended as rank judicial bullying”

🐣 RT @LizSly White House today: “Five years ago, ISIS was a very powerful and dangerous force in the Middle East & now the United States has defeated the territorial caliphate. ¤ State Dept yesty: “We’ve made significant progress recently in the (ISIS) campaign -but the job is not yet done”

🐣 RT @Lawrence The legal definition of treason turns on the legal definition of the word “enemies” in the Constitution. Courts have interpreted enemy to mean an enemy declared by Congress in a Declaration of War. We haven’t had a Declaration of War (or a treason conviction) since WW2.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nyyjack @Lawrence Doesn’t the part “…or in adhering…” make Trump a traitor? Article III, Section 3, Constitution of the United States: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 The first time American troops are moved on orders from the Kremlin? Putin needs more war and remembers what US forces did last time. With them gone, a new bloodbath & control of all Syria.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BretStephensNYT A gift to Iran, Hezbollah, and Putin. And a shameful betrayal of our Kurdish allies without whom we wouldn’t have defeated ISIS. Another day in the Trump White House.
⋙⋙ NYT: Trump Considering Full Withdrawal of U.S. Troops From Syria http://nyti.ms/2rJuzye

MotherJones, David Corn: Remember the Big Story in the Russia Scandal: Donald Trump Betrayed America http://bit.ly/2R0B6TF
// In the flurry of new developments—and disinformation—it’s easy to lose sight of this essential and proven fact.

🐣 RT @pdmcleod As you’d expect, Lindsey Graham is extremely unhappy with Trump’s decision to pull troops out of Syria. Asked what the impact of that will be he says “disaster.”

🐣 RT @BryanDawsonUSA The Trumps dissolve their bogus Trump Foundation amid NY Attorney General investigation. ¤ Meanwhile, the A-rated Clinton Foundation, which Trump maligned, continues to help millions of people around the world. ¤ @ClintonFdn @HillaryClinton #PenceKnew #LyinMikey 💽 https://twitter.com/BryanDawsonUSA/status/1075214607214612480/photo/1
// informative comparison between Trump and Clinton Foundations

🐣 RT @NormEisen This giveaway to Russia must be evaluated in the context of the emerging evidence of Trump’s quid pro quo with Putin. Trump & his team clearly asked for and got Russian business and election help. Did he & they signal policy concessions in exchange–& is this another example?
🐣 RT @leahmcelrath Assad, Putin, Erdogan, and Rouhani are smiling. ¤ This is a major concession to Russia, Turkey, and Iran. In return for…nothing. ¤ May any and all gods protect the Syrians living in besieged areas.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Planning is underway for a “full” and “rapid” withdrawal of US troops from Syria, decision made by President Trump, a US defense official tells @barbarastarrcnn
⋙⋙ 🐣 Shorter Trump: ‘Forget ISIS. Screw the Kurds. I need a distraction.’

⭕ 18 Dec 2018

Bloomberg, Marc Champion: The Political Flashpoints to Watch in 2019 http://bloom.bg/2POxlMc
// It looks like the coming year will be an even rougher ride.

CNN: Trump signed letter of intent for Trump Tower Moscow project despite Giuliani insisting he didn’t http://cnn.it/2CmRllA

Newsweek: Trump Wants to ‘Destroy the EU’ and Doesn’t Understand ‘Fact-based Arguments’: Officials http://bit.ly/2S5aa21

Vox: Trump’s social media conspiracy theory, briefly debunked http://bit.ly/2BtrdUp
// The president wants you to believe Twitter is out to get him. There’s no evidence that’s true.

WaPo, Dana Milbank: Michael Flynn’s judge just struck a potent blow for the rule of law http://wapo.st/2GsTkJ8

🐣 RT @TheDemCoalition New York attorney general Barbara Underwood accused the Trump Foundation of “a shocking pattern of illegality.” #TrumpCrimeFamily
⋙ NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Crooked Foundation Dissolves, But Investigation Continues http://nym.ag/2Gtew1Q

FiveThirtyEight, Seth Masket: How We View Our Reality Shapes Our Politics. But Facts Still Matter. http://53eig.ht/2LqOICi

Vox, Andrew Prokop: Judge rakes Michael Flynn over the coals in sentencing hearing http://bit.ly/2A4j8FU
// Things went so poorly for Flynn that he asked for the sentencing to be delayed.

🐣 RT @McFaul There is only one rational, patriotic reaction to new revelations of comprehensive Russian interference in our 2016 presidential election: Putin is the enemy of American democracy. Our president must stop with the appeasement gestures and deter, not embrace, Putin.

🐣 RT @leahmcelrath I might be fantasizing, but I like to think Judge Sullivan was sending a message to Trump as much as to Flynn with his introducing the word TREASON into the mainstream.

🐣 RT @SteveScmidtSES Sadly, or maybe deservedly, I feel like the bill for the most incompetent, ignorant, vile, cruel and corrupt President in American history is going to come due in 2019. It feels like a year of chaos and danger is looming. This will not end without consequences for our country
⋙ 🐣 RT @stengel Welcome to the Trump Economy. Dow is a 1000 points lower than when White House got its tax bill passed last year. Individual-1 likes unpredictability; Wall Street doesn’t.
⋙⋙ CNBC: The stock market is on pace for its worst December since the Great Depression http://cnb.cx/2GpJkQP

CNN: Court orders company to comply with special counsel subpoena in mystery grand jury appeal http://cnn.it/2Br30yi

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump backers just had their anti-Mueller hopes and dreams dashed http://wapo.st/2LpWe0m

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Looks like all the guesses were wrong – sealed litigation in the DC Circuit appears to be about Mueller’s grand jury, but it centers in a company owned by a foreign country that didn’t want to comply with a
🐣 RT @ZoeTillman NEW: Remember that mystery grand jury subpoena case argued last week in the DC Circuit? A decision is out, and it’s public, sort of — it’s about a company (unnamed) owned by a country (unnamed). Court upheld the denial of a motion to quash the subpoena [link to Scribt doc]
Text Block: https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1075151045146357761/photo/1

Bloomberg, Joshua Green: Russia’s Voter Suppression Operation Echoed Trump Campaign Tactics http://bloom.bg/2PHzMQN
// The report prepared for Congress has eerie similarities to the president’s 2016 social media strategy.

Politico, Caitlin Oprysko: Trump slams tech giants for ‘bias’ following reports Russians weaponized them to his benefit http://politi.co/2QGyxGM

EmptyWheel, MarcyWheeler: The Dossier Is Not the Measure of the Trump-Russia Conspiracy http://bit.ly/2UTA6Q2

CFR, Benn Steil and Benjamin Della Rocca: Trump’s Trade War With China Makes Russia Great Again http://on.cfr.org/2Es4Lyh
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1075162741172776961/photo/1

HuffPo, Lee Moran: CNN’s Chris Cuomo Spots ‘Uncanny’ Similarity Of Trump And Russian Bot Messages http://bit.ly/2A72MMH
// “Sound familiar? Of course, it does. You were hearing the same exact thing from then-candidate Donald Trump.”

CBSNews: Russia rejects damning reports on pro-Trump election meddling http://cbsn.ws/2SXjpBA

🐣 Judge Sullivan is essentially pre-empting Flynn – and Trump by extension – from continuing with their “The FBI was mean to me” b.s.

NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Yes, Russian Trolls Helped Elect Trump http://nyti.ms/2Clj8ml
// Social media lies have real-world consequences.

WaPo Editorial: Russia’s support for Trump’s election is no longer disputable http://wapo.st/2zZmfPx

📊 TheIndependent [UK]: CNN Poll: Trump supporters turning on president over Mueller investigation into Russia ties http://ind.pn/2SWfNj4
// Seventy-two per cent of supporters believe president has been dishonest about probe into 2016 election

BusinessInsider, Sonam Sheth: The 20 biggest Trump-Russia bombshells of 2018 http://read.bi/2rI8boW

Reuters: Factbox: Guilty pleas, indictments abound in Trump-Russia probe http://reut.rs/2CiZs2w

VanityFair, Eric Lutz: Trump’s War on Mueller Got a Boost from Russia http://bit.ly/2GnUaa6
// Once again, the G.O.P. and Moscow find a common cause: smearing the special counsel.

📊 USAToday/Suffolk University Poll: Most Americans don’t believe Trump’s denials, setting a rocky landscape ahead http://bit.ly/2SXWDcD Just over a third of those surveyed express even “some” trust in Trump’s version of events. Nearly six in 10 have little or none.

WaPo, Greg Sargent: Russia ran a disinformation campaign against Mueller. It sounds just like Trump’s. http://wapo.st/2Ev7iI3

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: It’s undeniable: Trump and the Russians are locked at the hip http://wapo.st/2PJv0Ck

HuffPo: Jon Meacham: Trump May Be Committing ‘Definition Of Treason’ Right Now http://bit.ly/2GtV3OF
// The presidential historian said on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” that “it’s quite possible” Trump is “a witting or at least partially witting agent of a foreign power.”

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES The whole vile lot of them has sold our country out. Everybody in service to this criminal and corrupt regime that has sundered America, betrayed our ideals, lied and stolen from the American people, undermined the rule of law and attacked our institutions has sold out America.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JesseRodriguez Judge to Flynn: “Arguably, you sold your country out. The court is going to consider all that.”

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: A Surge in Foreign-Influence Prosecutions http://bit.ly/2A6WPzl
// Authorities indict two former associates of Michael Flynn for acting as illegal agents of the Turkish government in the United States.

≣ HillReporter: BREAKING: James Comey’s Transcript From Yesterday’s House Interview Released http://bit.ly/2A4OIU9

🐣 RT @GlennKesslerWP For the umpteenth time, the Russia investigation did not start with the Steele dossier. It was opened because a Trump campaign official disclosed to a foreign diplomat he knew the Russians had Clinton emails.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Michael Isikoff was the first to report Dossier allegations and now seriously doubts the Dossier claims. The whole Russian Collusion thing was a HOAX, but who is going to restore the good name of so many people whose reputations have been destroyed?

DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Mueller Ready to Pounce on Trumpworld Concessions to Moscow http://thebea.st/2BuFX5u
// New court filings by Mueller’s office could answer a central question of the Russia investigation: What did the Kremlin hope to get from its political machinations?

🐣 RT @SteveRattner First, Mr. Secretary, volatility is still within normal range. Second, market’s biggest fear is global slowdown, caused in part by Trump’s erratic policies, particularly trade war.
⋙ 🐣 RT @bpolitics BREAKING: U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin in a Bloomberg News interview blamed volatility in equity markets partly on high-speed trading and the effect of the Volcker Rule, adding that he planned to conduct an inter-agency review of market structure
⋙⋙ Bloomberg: Mnuchin Blames Volcker Rule, High-Speed Trading for Volatility http://bloom.bg/2BqvDvn

DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Betsy Woodruff: Erik Prince’s Russian Connection Trawled Trumpland for ‘Boss’ Putin http://thebea.st/2yaC2Jy
// In the days after the 2016 election, a well-connected Moscow executive started pitching Trump associates on a bold plan for renewed U.S.-Russian cooperation.

🐣 RT @mhmck The World Economic Forum in Davos is a gathering of kleptocrats. ¤ From the Putin-Kremlin crime syndicate: sanctioned individuals Oleg Deripaska, Viktor Vekselberg, Andrei Kostin. ¤ From the Trump crime syndicate: Trump, Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump, Stephen Mnuchin, Wilbur Ross.

WaPo, Jonathan Capehart: Is Mueller’s investigation nearing the ‘worst-case scenario’? Garrett Graff thinks so. http://wapo.st/2GpTKAg

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s power slips away, as Flynn faces possible jail time http://wapo.st/2S5T7Nq

WaPo: Michael Flynn’s sentencing delayed after judge tells the ex-Trump adviser he may not avoid prison time http://wapo.st/2GqJyap

NYT: Trump Foundation to Close Amid Lawsuit Accusing It of ‘Willful Self-Dealing’ http://nyti.ms/2R5Qs9c

NYT: Judge Postpones Sentencing of Michael Flynn After Harshly Rebuking Him http://nyti.ms/2UTh0tk

⭕ 17 Dec 2018

ForeignAffairs, Denis McDonough: Can Congress Stop the Forever War? http://fam.ag/2AfatR5
// The Constitution Demands Oversight, and the American People Deserve It

NYT, Paul Krugman: Conservatism’s Monstrous Endgame http://nyti.ms/2PJahP7
// Apparatchiks are corroding the foundations of democracy.

🐣 RT @NicolleDWallace Former National Equirer editor claims the tabloid has unpublished ‘embarrassing’ and ‘criminal’ stories on Trump family
⋙ RawStory, Bob Brigham: Former National Equirer editor claims the tabloid has unpublished ‘embarrassing’ and ‘criminal’ stories on Trump family http://bit.ly/2Lnzyh4 Jerry George spent over a quarter century working for the publication, which is owned by American Media, Inc. and David Pecker.

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The Russians set up hotlines that encouraged people to discuss sexual or personal problems, raising the possibility they could use the information later to blackmail people. Through deceit, the IRA recruited many Americans to take various political actions

🐣 RT @MollyJongFast She hit every single infowars conspiracy theory talking point—
✔️Hillary Clinton
✔️leaking
✔️FISA abuse
⋙ 🐣 RT @PressSec Republicans should stand up to Comey and his tremendous corruption – from the fake Hillary Clinton investigation, to lying and leaking, to FISA abuse, and a list too long to name. The President did the country a service by firing him and exposing him for the shameless fraud he is

💙 WaPo: Russian disinformation teams targeted Robert S. Mueller III, says report prepared for Senate http://wapo.st/2PKw1do

MSNBC: Russian disinformation during 2016 was worse than you thought http://on.msnbc.com/2BoX1tL
// Two independent reports detail Russia’s extensive use of social media to manipulate American voters. NBC’s Ken Dilanian and former FBI Special Agent Clint Watts join Ali Velshi to talk about the Russian strategy.

USAToday, William Cummings: Senate reports find millions of social media posts by Russians aimed at helping Trump, GOP http://bit.ly/2S77DVk

Politico: Pelosi tries to buy Mueller time http://politi.co/2QCsX8x
// ‘We must wait to see the entire picture and then engage the American people about how we go forward,’ the incoming House speaker told POLITICO.

WaPo, Patti Davis: A child occupies the White House — and the world knows it http://wapo.st/2PKwQCM “Globally, the United States has lost its power, its aura of seriousness and decisiveness that once made autocrats hesitate before crossing us.”

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Americans grow weary of the Trump turmoil http://wapo.st/2A402zH
(Partial transcript of Chris Wallace interview on Fox News Sunday)
// link: as on Fox News on Sunday

WaPo: Comey lambastes GOP over Trump’s continued attacks on FBI: ‘Stand up and speak the truth’ http://wapo.st/2GlAS5e

WaPo: Michael Flynn’s business partner charged with illegally lobbying for Turkey http://wapo.st/2PJmEdG
↥ ↧ // Bijan Kian
🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote I have a space beans feeling that Pence is connected to the Bijan Kian and Emin Alptekin via GSA transition emails from Flynn, that Pence knew Flynn Jr. was on the transition & approved a request for security clearance, & Pence is the one fighting the Mueller subpoena.

NYT: Russian 2016 Influence Operation Targeted African-Americans on Social Media http://nyti.ms2SZz7fJ/
// caption: Yevgeny Prigozhin, left, and the Russian leader Vladimir V. Putin, center, at a dinner in 2011. Mr. Prigozhin was indicted by American prosecutors for his involvement in interfering in the 2016 presidential election

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 James Comey: “This is the President of the United States calling a witness who is cooperating with his own Justice Department a ‘rat.’ Say that again to yourself at home and remind yourself where we have ended up.” Via ABC.
💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1074772689582215168/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @atrupar COMEY blasts House Republicans following his testimony: “Someone has to stand up to the fear of Fox News, fear of their base, fear of mean tweets, stand up for the values of this country & not slink away to retirement. Stand up and speak the truth.”
💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1074765330868768771/photo/1
// FoxNews video
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @CNN Former FBI Director James Comey calls on the GOP to stand up against President Trump: “Republicans used to understand that the actions of a president matter, that words of a president matter, the rule of law matters and the truth matters. Where are those Republicans today?” 💽 https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1074766769003397122/photo/1

BBC, Anthony Zurcher: Trump Russia: Six potential legal problems for the president http://bbc.in/2LlNIiH

💙💙 NYT: These 3 Democrats Will Finally Have the Power to Investigate the White House. How Far Will They Go? http://nyti.ms/2PITfjY Incoming House chairs: Reps Jerrold Nadler (Judiciary), Adam Schiff (Intelligence) and Elijah Cummings (Oversight and Government Reform)
// In two weeks, congressional Democrats will return to Washington with the authority to investigate a White House that is suspected of foreign collusion, conflicts of interest and mismanagement of the federal government.

NYT, Karen Yourish and Jerry Buchanan: Trump Still Makes Money From His Properties. ~ Is This Constitutional? http://nyti.ms/2GnlOnM

🔄 🔆 This❗️⋙ WIRED, Garrett Graff: A Complete Guide to All 17 (Known) Trump and Russia Investigations http://bit.ly/2QEPamb

⭕ 16 Dec 2018

Forbes, Steve Denning: Mueller Exposes Putin’s Hold Over Trump http://bit.ly/2LnD9LX

WaPo, Walter Dellinger: Should we be able to indict a sitting president? Consider Spiro Agnew. http://wapo.st/2S1jbZX

🐣 RT @amervoices You need to watch this video. It’s just the beginning…
💽 https://twitter.com/amervoices/status/1074464333151780864/photo/1
// Donny Deutsch on what’s in store for Trump

🐣 RT @EdCNN A chilling thought from @brianstelter tonight: Russian misinformation isn’t something social media companies can likely stop— it’s a chronic disease afflicting our online lives… that can only be managed, and not cured.

🐣 RT @RepAdamShiff Trump has sought to draw a red line around his business and make it off limits to investigation. But his business was trying to curry favor with the Kremlin, and we can’t ignore that. ¤ If there is any financial compromise, it would be negligent not to investigate and expose it.
💽 https://twitter.com/RepAdamSchiff/status/1074387772310462467/photo/1

TheAtlantic, Jake Sullivan: What Donald Trump and Dick Cheney Got Wrong About America http://bit.ly/2R08jhR
// Jan-Feb 2018; We allowed an important idea—American exceptionalism—­to be hijacked and misused. Now we need to rescue that idea and let it guide America at home and abroad.

🐣 RT @danpfeiffer The modern Republican Party is about billionaire funded racial demagoguery to appear populist while enacting a corporatist agenda
⋙ 🐣 RT @kasie BOB CORKER on primarying Trump: “We’ve got to remember what the Republican Party is about.”
… “Is it important for someone to get out there and at least remind people…what the Republican Party has been for generations…”

🐣 RT @danielgoldman The criminal law analogy to collusion is NOT conspiracy to hack – its conspiracy to defraud the US, as Mueller laid out quite clearly in the July GRU indictment. We’d all appreciate it if Giuliani would stick to his consulting biz and leave the law to the rest of us.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Giuliani again shifts the goal posts. “If Roger Stone gave anyone a heads up” about the WikiLeaks disclosures, “that’s not a crime.”
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @atrupar ABC: “Did Roger Stone give the president a heads up on WikiLeaks’ leaks concerning Clinton & the DNC?” ¤ 🚨GIULIANI: “No he didn’t… uh, *I don’t believe so*. But again, if he did, it’s not a crime.”🚨 💽 https://twitter.com/atrupar/status/1074337327974100993/photo/1

CNN: Silicon Valley may have done ‘bare minimum’ to help Russia investigation, Senate Intel Committee told http://cnn.it/2rDI8PJ

WaPo, Roxanne Roberts: Robert Mueller is the most unknowable man in Washington http://wapo.st/2EnPFd6 “All this for a man who seldom speaks and is rarely seen. He is omnipresent and absent, inescapable but elusive, the invisible yang to Trump’s gold-plated yin.”

🐣 RT @NormOrnstein I am SO waiting for the Justice IG report on Giuliani’s campaign contacts with NY FBI. Talk about collusion!
⋙ 🐣 RT @jljacobson I do believe @RudyGiuliani does not understand the intertubes or the fact that everything he says is searchable.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @JuddLegum GIULIANI, today: Trump paid Stormy Daniels because he “was very concerned about how this was going to affect his marriage” ¤ GIULIANI, 5/3/18: “Imagine if that came out of October 15, 2016, in the middle of the last debate with Clinton…Cohen made it go away. He did his job”
🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite Trump’s lack of knowledge about criminal justice is mind boggling. Prosecutors obtain “search warrants” from federal judges by showing probable cause, in compliance with the 4th Amendment, as they did to search Cohen. Trump only sees rats & witch hunts in cases where he’s at risk
🐣 RT @NormEisen I never imagined that I would see a president adopt the language of mafiosos—though since the “Don” was rumored to do business with them I can’t say I am surprised.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew: THEY. HAD. A. WARRANT.
🐣 RT @Lawrence This use of the word rat was invented by criminals to describe a criminal who tells the truth.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Remember, Michael Cohen only became a “Rat” after the FBI did something which was absolutely unthinkable & unheard of until the Witch Hunt was illegally started. They BROKE INTO AN ATTORNEY’S OFFICE! Why didn’t they break into the DNC to get the Server, or Crooked’s office?

🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC If I heard him right, Rudy Giuliani just said on @FoxNews that prosecutors are going through Trump’s business records going back to 1982.

🐣 RT @tribelaw If the evidence bears this out as now seems likely, it will form part of an impeachable pattern of corrupt deception that helped a hostile foreign power catapult a compromised moron into the U.S. presidency. @RepAdamSchiff @RepJerryNadler @RepSwalwell @RepRaskin @SenatorDurbin

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews “What is clear is that all of the messaging clearly sought to benefit the Republican Party — and specifically Donald Trump,” the report says. #Russia #disinformation
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews A report prepared for the Senate found that #Russia’s disinformation campaign used every major social media platform to deliver words, images & videos tailored to voters’ interests to help elect Trump—and worked even harder to support him while in office.
💙💙 WaPo: New report on Russian disinformation, prepared for the Senate, shows the operation’s scale and sweep http://wapo.st/2ULowXg
// The report, a draft of which was obtained by The Washington Post, is the first to analyze the millions of posts provided by major technology firms to the Senate Intelligence Committee.

MotherJones: Trump Threatens to Sue “Saturday Night Live” over “It’s a Wonderful Life” Parody http://bit.ly/2UPlYar
// He’s not laughing.

🐣 RT @NewYorker The Republican Partyy has a chance to redeem itself in 2020—by launching a primary challenge to President Trump: http://nyer.cm/mxg0QqW 

TheAtlantic, Peter Beinart: The New Authoritarians Are Waging War on Women http://bit.ly/2ChLcY5
// Jan-Feb issue; Donald Trump’s ideological cousins around the world want to reverse the feminist gains of recent decades.

⭕ 15 Dec 2018

TheIndependent [UK]: As Kurdish fighters move on last Isis-controlled town in Syria, Turkey threatens attack http://ind.pn/2SayShz
// Syria’s main Kurdish parties called Turkey’s warnings a ‘declaration of war’

DailyBeast, Amy Knight: Maria Butina’s Boss Alexander Torshin: The Kremlin’s No-Longer-Secret Weapon http://thebea.st/2QYXRXU
// In addition to advocating gun rights, Torshin wanted to strengthen the Russian criminal code to include forced castration for pedophiles and life sentences for drug dealers.

CNN, Z Byron Wolf and Joyce Tseng: Impeachment 101: Here’s how it would work (if it actually happened) http://cnn.it/2SRwL22

TheHill: Prosecutors fear for Russian agent’s safety: report http://bit.ly/2PKdkXm

TIME, Edward Felsenthal: 2018 Person of the Year: The Choice http://bit.ly/2BmMTSf
TIME, Karl Vick: The GUARDIANS and the WAR ON TRUTH http://bit.ly/2SSE21U
TIME: The Short List: PERSON OF THE YEAR http://bit.ly/2BmMTSf
Runners-Up:
2 Donald Trump by Molly Ball http://bit.ly/2zYPm5C
3 Robert Mueller by Brian Bennett and Tessa Berenson http://bit.ly/2A0lt4R

NPR, Carrie Johnson: A Head-Spinning Week In The Mueller Probe Produces A Sentence And A Plea http://BCNews: http://n.pr/2LmhmEz

ThinkProgress, Josh Israel: At a reported cost of $25 million, Mueller probe has paid for itself http://bit.ly/2QCj8HF
// Paul Manafort effectively has paid for the Russia investigation.

NYPost: Trump slams media and Mueller probe in latest tweetstorm http://nyp.st/2GmYPcn

NYT: The Special Counsel Is Fighting a Witness in Court. Who Is It? http://nyti.ms/2CeYSCW

Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 82: Far from Winding Down, Mueller’s Probe Feels Energized http://politi.co/2S4DKov
// A slew of plea deals, Trump pals turned witnesses, and new investigations seem to defy predictions the special counsel will wrap up soon.

🐣 RT @IndivisibleNet What will Trump do? ¤ Updated images from Google Earth taken in November shows the large-scale military base is being equipped with T-64 and T-62M tanks as well as thousands of military trucks, artillery systems and tankers
https://twitter.com/IndivisibleNet/status/1074085159220142080/photo/1
⋙ TheExpress: World War 3: Satellite images show HUNDREDS of Russian tanks massing on Ukraine border http://bit.ly/2ErmOor
// HUNDREDS of Russian tanks look poised for a mass invasion of Ukraine as tensions over Crimea threaten to boil over.

🐣 RT @CREWcrew Maybe it’s a coincidence that so many individuals connected to Russia spent millions on Trump properties. ¤ Maybe.
🌀 https://twitter.com/CREWcrew/status/1074084211601096704/photo/1

🐣 RT @NealKatyal Trump talking about dishonesty, when career federal prosecutors have clearly caught him lying, is a bit rich.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Never in the history of our Country has the “press” been more dishonest than it is today. Stories that should be good, are bad. Stories that should be bad, are horrible. Many stories, like with the REAL story on Russia, Clinton & the DNC, seldom get reported. Too bad!

🐣 RT @Airvooocht Criminal charges per administration since 1970:
TRUMP: +100 (so far)
OBAMA: 0
GWB: 16
CLINTON: 2
GHWB: 1
REAGAN: 26
CARTER: 1
FORD: 1
NIXON: 76
If you’re counting:
R’s: 220
D’s: 3

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian agent Maria Butina claimed she had a “signed cooperation agreement” with the NRA. The NRA would not confirm whether or not it had entered into a cooperation agreement with Butina’s group.
⋙ MotherJones: Maria Butina Claimed to Have a “Signed Cooperation Agreement” With the National Rifle Association http://bit.ly/2PEH8V2
// The confessed Russian agent told an Israeli audience in 2013 that she had a deal with the NRA.

TheGuardian, Tom McCarthy: As Mueller’s inquiry deepens, is the net closing in on Trump? http://bit.ly/2QWTOeF
// Experts say testimony from Michael Cohen to prosecutors has the ‘potential to be devastating’ for the embattled president

The list of legal crises that Trump, his family and associates need to worry about seemed to explode in the last week. Major developments included:
● Federal prosecutors investigating Trump’s inaugural committee, a non-profit, for alleged wrongdoing that could include improper foreign contributions, pay-for-play or illegal payments to pop-up firms, the Wall Street Journal reported.
● Prosecutors revealing a non-prosecution agreement with the media company AMI, which admitted paying, “in concert with the [Trump] campaign”, the former Playboy model Karen McDougal for her story of an affair with Trump (which Trump denies).
● The significant expansion of Trump’s alleged role in the hush payments scheme, for which Cohen was convicted of multiple felonies, with NBC News placing Trump in a meeting with AMI’s chief, David Pecker, to discuss the payments and his campaign (plus a separate conversation which Cohen recorded).
● The spy Maria Butina becoming the first Russian to plead guilty to attempting to tamper in the 2016 election. In her plea, she described how she infiltrated the National Rifle Association and the Republican party to try to cultivate “influential Americans” – unnamed, as yet – and the Trump campaign.
● Lawyers for the former adviser Michael Flynn filing a sentencing memo touting his cooperation with Mueller in 19 meetings “totaling approximately 62 hours and 45 minutes”. In a heavily redacted document earlier this month, Mueller described Flynn’s extensive cooperation in as-yet secret investigations.

NationalReview, Mona Charen: The Collusion Scenario http://bit.ly/2GkDmkl

🐣 RT @jeffzeleny Trump’s life under legal microscope. A smart @StCollinson analysis: Even if all investigations stopped now and he was cleared of wrongdoing, Trump would still be remembered for presiding over one of the most scandal-ridden presidencies of modern time.
⋙ CNN, Stephen Collinson: His worst nightmare: Trump’s life under a legal microscope http://cnn.it/2ElZhoC

⭕ 14 Dec 2018

WaPo: The Partisan Warrior http://wapo.st/2UIgrTj
// How Michael Flynn morphed from storied officer to purveyor of conspiracy theories;
Part of Series “All the Best People” ~ Others (so far): Don Jr, Stone, Manafort

TIME, Ryan Beckwith: Here’s What Robert Mueller Has Uncovered So Far, in His Own Words http://bit.ly/2QTTtJB key findings with quotes from court filings

NYT: Welcome to Брайтон Бич, Brooklyn http://nyti.ms/2PDC4Aj
// Brighton Beach is the grumpy neighbor of Coney Island and home to a population of Soviet exiles. And if you don’t get it, well, your loss.

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian propaganda portrayed Trump’s election victory as Putin’s triumph. However, the “triumph” has been short-lived because, as it turned out, the president of the US is limited in his ability to pursue the policy that Putin would have expected from him.
🐣 RT @peterjukes Kasparov: Russia Increasingly Losing Its Standing On World Stage “So far, this policy has been counterproductive,” Kasparov said, adding that Putin’s “tactical victories turn into strategic defeats.”
⋙ RFE/RL: Kasparov: Russia Increasingly Losing Its Standing On World Stage http://bit.ly/2GgZGv3

NYT, Frank Bruni: Michael Cohen Got Wise. Will America? http://nyti.ms/2Bp7NAm
// His sad journey is an extreme version of the country’s.

ForeignAffairs, Peter Dickinson: Can the West Prevent the Slow Strangulation of Ukraine? http://fam.ag/2A2Gc7U
// Creeping Russian Aggression Cannot Go Unchecked

WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: What Other Groups Have Been Infiltrated by Russian Agents? http://bit.ly/2QWnLvk

🐣 RT @CNNBreakingNews: Robert Mueller’s team continues to be interested in interviewing the President, sources tell CNN https://cnn.it/2QVVTaL 

RawStory: CNN: Mueller asks to interview Trump in-person because written responses were ‘not enough’: report https://tinyurl.com/y9jaeuzn

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote It appears Mueller is still looking to interview Trump about obstruction, and that might be what the secret subpoena battle in the DC court today was all about, but I’m tired of trump supporters calling it a perjury trap. That’s like calling my short skirt a rape trap. #stopit

DailyBeast, Matt Wilstein: Lindsey Graham on Fox: I’m Fine With Trump ‘Lying About Sex’ http://thebea.st/2BiN54Z
// The GOP senator also misled his Fox News interviewer regarding the degree to which he felt the same way about President Bill Clinton.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: All the things Trump didn’t count on http://wapo.st/2rC0twL ‘Trump will be entirely overwhelmed when the closet full of shoes starts dropping‘

🐣 RT @tribelaw .@neal_katyal is surely right. But Republicans aren’t the only ones who need to beware self-delusion. It’s not just Trump who’s in serious trouble. The whole country is in for a rough ride. There’s no smooth way out of this — impeachment or no impeachment, indictment or not.

CNN: The Weekly Standard, a conservative magazine critical of Trump, to shutter after 23 years http://cnn.it/2SMyjdO

NationalReview, David French: Republicans, Don’t Fool Yourselves — Donald Trump Is in Serious Trouble http://bit.ly/2PD52QT “[T]he best available evidence indicates that Trump’s commitments to Stormy Daniels didn’t exist “irrespective” of his campaign but rather because of his campaign”

RawStory, Noor Al-Sibai: House Intel Dem Rep. Jackie Speier (D-CA) accuses Trump of being ‘bought by Putin’ and lays out her case in devastating detail http://bit.ly/2Qx2JUU

📊 WaPo, Glenn Kessler and Scott Clement: Trump routinely says things that aren’t true. Few Americans believe him. http://wapo.st/2QSkJYZ
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1073716728998359040/photo/1
// Take the quiz to see how your fact-checking skills stack up against

Politico: Reporters shooed away as mystery Mueller subpoena fight rages on http://politi.co/2BjfoQO
// A clerk at the courthouse took the extraordinary measure of shutting down the entire fifth floor, where the hearing was taking place.

🐣 RT @equalandallied1 Mueller has been masterful at unfurling what will likely be the largest scale and most complex investigation ever undertaken in human history. All —w/o even a hint of ego. ¤ The irony is sublime. The Trump family is not getting out of this, nor are any other American traitors.

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Trump will be gone soon enough, and good riddance. But the energy generated to stop him must flow from negative to positive, to build up. If not, Trump will just be the first symptom of the terrible disease of populism and extremism.

CNBC, Christine Wilkie: The Trump inaugural committee’s fundraising was a mess from the start, but a new investigation could finally provide some answers http://cnb.cx/2S2iXBQ

🐣 RT @senorrinhatch NEW: Hatch on Comments He Made Earlier This Week about Accusations Against President Trump: “At a time when faith in so many of our institutions is at an all-time low, I regret speaking imprudently.”
Full statement here –> http://bit.ly/2ElcC0v

🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump is so outmatched by @RepAdamSchiff that it’s not even a fair fight. I knew when he was my con law student that he was dynamite, and now it’s obvious to the world. Read this spot-on profile by another superb former student of mine, @JeffreyToobin:
(⋙ 🐣 Is “con law” how you learn to take down cons?)
⋙ NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: Adam Schiff’s Plans to Obliterate Trump’s Red Line http://bit.ly/2EmDQ76
// With the Democrats controlling the House, Schiff’s congressional investigation will follow the money.

Salon, Thom Hartmann: With an impeachable Trump and Pence, are you ready for President Pelosi? http://bit.ly/2QR5QGC
// The twists and turns of a major federal investigation could land us with a very different kind of president

🐣 RT @amyfiscus The 302 calls it a collusion investigation :)
https://twitter.com/amyfiscus/status/1073678169650159622/photo/1

🐣 RT @djrothkopf Mueller, the SDNY, the NY Attorney General, various other state attorneys general, the House Dems and others are coming for Trump. So, however, it seems is the market. Want to bet which will erode his GOP support more?

🐣 RT @brhodes Even though the writing has been on the wall for a while, it’s strange to confront the stark reality that we live in a country where the highest leadership has been presiding over multiple criminal enterprises.

🐣 RT @bradheath Mueller’s office has responded to claims by Gen. Flynn’s lawyers that the FBI might have tricked him into lying to them. Basically, prosecutors say that by the time agents talked to him, he’d been lying to everybody for two weeks.
📌 Thread w docs https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1073669313394020353
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @johnson_carrie JUST IN from special counsel, urging the judge to reject Michael Flynn’s efforts to “minimize the seriousness” of his lies to the FBI: “Nothing about the way the interview was arranged or conducted caused the defendant to make false statements to the FBI on January 24. ”
⋙ 🐣 RT @johnson_carrie The special counsel says Flynn first lied two weeks before the FBI interview, when he talked to the media, incoming VP Pence, and other members of the presidential transition team. And he repeated those lies to the FBI.

ChicagoTrib/WaPo, Marc Fisher: Revelations about hush money, Russian interference renew debate over legitimacy of Trump’s election http://trib.in/2GgoK5r

In the past week, the legitimacy debate has swelled with each new court filing in cases stemming from the investigations into Trump’s 2016 campaign.

“Trump is both a cause of and a reflection of a breakdown in norms, so it’s not surprising that you see attacks on his legitimacy” – Rick Hasen, a professor at the University of California at Irvine’s law school and author of the Election Law Blog

Bloomberg, By Evgenia Pismennaya and Ilya Arkhipov: The Butina 11: Meet the Russians ‘Handpicked’ for Trump Event http://bloom.bg/2SLuIww
● Lawyer, ex-Kremlin aides among Russians tapped for 2017 visit
● Butina worked as undeclared agent in U.S., agrees to cooperate

A Moscow real-estate executive. Two former staffers in Vladimir Putin’s administration. A Siberian mayor with dreams of cloning woolly mammoths.

“People in the list are handpicked” by Butina and the official “and are VERY influential in Russia,” she wrote in a November 2016 email cited by prosecutors. “They are coming to establish a back channel of communication.”

Bloomberg, By Evgenia Pismennaya and Ilya Arkhipov: The Butina 11: Meet the Russians ‘Handpicked’ for Trump Event http://bloom.bg/2SLuIww

Deadline: Michael Cohen: Donald Trump “Lying” About Russia, Knew Hush-Money Payments To Women Were “Wrong” http://bit.ly/2PCPQmI Cohen: “There’s a system here; he doesn’t understand the system. And it’s sad because the country has never been more divisive.”

💙💙 Vox, Murray Waas: Exclusive: Paul Manafort advised White House on how to attack and discredit investigation of President Trump http://bit.ly/2PCPrRe
// We now have details as to how the indicted former campaign manager worked with the president to undermine federal law enforcement.

WaPo, Greg Sargent: Michael Cohen just dealt another big blow to Trump’s hush-money defense http://wapo.st/2PDs0aC

WaPo, Philip Bump: The evidence that Trump broke campaign finance laws http://wapo.st/2QPLYUa

🐣 RT @PhilipRucker “Nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump. He directed me to make the payments, he directed me to become involved in these matters. He knows the truth. I know the truth. Others know the truth.” — Michael Cohen
⋙ ABCNews: “The gentleman that is sitting now in the Oval Office, 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is not the Donald Trump that I remember from Trump Tower,” Michael Cohen tells @ABC. ¤ “I think the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be.” https://abcn.ws/2EwGpEq 
💽 https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1073569201988792320//photo/1

🐣 RT @benjaminwittes In case what’s missing from your life is a rigorous analysis of what has been validated and disproven in the “Steele Dossier”–and what remains neither at this stage–@segrant39 and Chuck Rosenberg have you covered…
⋙ 💙💙 LawfareBlog, By Sarah Grant, Chuck Rosenberg: The Steele Dossier: A Retrospective http://bit.ly/2QyduX0

WaPo, Phil Rucker and John Wagner: Trump’s falsehoods on hush-money payments are ‘coming home to roost’ http://wapo.st/2SHSZnc “The evolving strategy on the hush-money allegations is textbook Trump: Tell one version of events until it falls apart, then tell a new version…”

🐣 RT @AaronBlake It only possibly changed the result of the election and arguably the course of American history.
🐣 RT @samstein “Nobody got killed, nobody got robbed… This was not a big crime,” Giuliani told The Daily Beast, re alleged violations of campaign finance law.
⋙ DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng, Maxwell Tani and Lloyd Grove: How Jared Kushner Replaced Michael Cohen as Trump’s National Enquirer Connection http://thebea.st/
// The president’s son-in-law grew tight with David Pecker during the early months of the administration.

🐣 RT @tribelaw This is the definitive demolition by @thetrevorpotter, @neal_katyal, and @gtconway3d of the shifting (and shifty) Trump defense: SDNY has proof that Trump was the ringleader of a conspiracy to use campaign finance violations to win the presidency by fraud and deceit. That’s yuge.
🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “The campaign finance violations here are among the most important ever in the history of this nation — given the razor-thin win by Trump and the timing of the crimes, they very well may have swung a presidential election.”
WaPo, George Conway III: Trump’s claim that he didn’t violate campaign finance law is weak — and dangerous http://wapo.st/2Lf0WxC //➔ George Conway is the husband of KellyAnne Conway, counselor to the president
// The case against the president would be far stronger than the case against John Edwards

DailyJournal/AP: AP FACT CHECK: Trump falsely claims Flynn didn’t lie to FBI http://bit.ly/2SN4klT

⭕ 13 Dec 2018

💙💙 🐣 RT @DeadllineWH What is going to put him in jail eventually… destroy anything he’s ever built, and his children, is a 30 year dishonest criminal enterprise. One thing will take him out of the presidency, the other will ruin him forever…”- @DonnyDeutsch w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1072973071215149057/photo/1

Esquire, Charles Pierce: ‘We’ Did Not Miss the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism. You Did. http://bit.ly/2A9ZNU3
// The New York Times plays itself—but offers a useful window into how establishment media has enabled all this.

Haaretz, Adrian Hennigan: This Excellent Watergate Documentary Is a Guide to Ousting a Madman President http://bit.ly/2Evg8GD
// Charles Ferguson’s documentary ‘Watergate – Or: How We Learned to Stop an Out of Control President’ is neither too simplistic or too wonky, and at its best grips like a labyrinthine thriller
● Justice Department ties Trump to criminal activity, but can a president be prosecuted?
● Trump-Russia probe: Everything you need to know as impeachment talk heats up
● ‘Mortal Engines’: Peter Jackson’s pet project offers the most creative action we’ve seen all year

Bloomberg, Noah Feldman: Trump’s Already Tweeting His Post-Presidency Defense http://bloom.bg/2EkKRoM He has three ideas for fighting a campaign-finance indictment.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1073747473758330880/photo/1

1. Trump didn’t direct Cohen to commit the violations, because Cohen was Trump’s lawyer and devised the payoff structure on his behalf.
2. The payoffs weren’t campaign related — and if they were, the violations were mild enough to be civil violations, not criminal acts.
3. Cohen’s criminal guilty plea to the campaign violations shouldn’t indicate that the acts were really criminal. Because Cohen was going to prison anyway, he threw in the campaign violation plea as a favor to prosecutors.

WaPo: Pelosi says she expects House Ways and Means Committee will ‘take the first steps’ toward obtaining Trump’s tax returns http://wapo.st/2Liiqct to be chaired by Rep. Richard E. Neal (D-MA)

DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Get Ready for Mueller’s Phase Two: The Middle East Connection http://thebea.st/2zZ6DeR
// The ‘Russia investigation’ is set to go global. In court filings due to drop in 2019, prosecutors will unveil Middle Eastern countries’ attempts to influence U.S. politics.

PRI, Matthew Bell: Trump’s business history with Russia is a long and colorful one http://bit.ly/2QvuGfz

Slate, Ben Mathis-Lilley: Report: Flynn Proposed Sanctions Relief Deal to Russia While Working for Trump Campaign http://bit.ly/2PCrrhl Trump campaign officials could be on the hook for participation in a criminal conspiracy
// If high-level Trump campaign officials knew about Russia’s sabotage operation against Clinton and approved Flynn’s efforts to float a sanctions deal to Russia at the same time, they could be on the hook for participation in a criminal conspiracy

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Maria Butina’s Defiant Plea and Yet Another Russian Ploy http://bit.ly/2S0FOh8
// The onetime graduate student admits to being a foreign agent who sought to establish back channels to Republicans through the NRA.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Russia, Russia, Russia http://wapo.st/2QA3uwx “Maria Butina’s guilty plea raises the question: Do we really know the full extent of Russian entanglements?”

“What is so significant about Butina is that she pulls the curtain back on Russia’s larger objectives,” says Max Bergmann of the Moscow Project. “Her influence efforts started before the Trump campaign existed and formed a distinct and separate line of effort. Her goal was to move the Republican Party away from its 70-year-plus history of being hawkish toward Russia. To do so, she built ties to one of the most powerful interest group on the right: the NRA.”

He continues, “So at the same time the Russians were backing Trump, they were also seeking to influence the NRA and the Republican Party with the stated goal of shifting U.S. policy.”

He concludes, “This demonstrates that Russia launched a multifaceted political assault in the U.S., and support for Trump was only the biggest part of the assault.”

ChicagoSunTimes, Mona Charen: Collusion with Russia is possible, Trump fans. Deal with it http://bit.ly/2UIuDLX

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ THREAD: Some thoughts on Butina from a CI perspective and the bad choices she has made:
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Russian media labels #Butina’s plea “The Deal with the Devil: Butina Gives Up #Russia to America.”📌 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1073278195531743237

🐣 RT @tribelaw Anyone who conspires to commit campaign crimes in order to help win the presidency cannot later claim the benefit of a shield from criminal prosecution obviously designed only for presidents who won legitimately. Any other DOJ rule or policy would cut the heart out of democracy.

🐣 RT @matthewamiller So Donald Trump’s private business, campaign, transition, inaugural committee, and White House are all under criminal investigation. Very legal and very cool.

NBC: Trump was in the room during hush money discussions with tabloid publisher http://nbcnews.to/2QwJTwS
// A source confirmed to NBC News that Trump was the “other member of the campaign” present when Michael Cohen and David Pecker agreed to silence women.

🐣 To anyone who watches @maddow, the details of the WSJ report on issues with the handling of Trump’s innaugural are old news.

WSJ: Trump Inauguration Spending Under Criminal Investigation by Federal Prosecutors http://on.wsj.com/2PArvhp
// Probe looking into whether committee misspent funds and top donors gave money in exchange for access to the administration

The criminal probe by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which is in its early stages, also is examining whether some of the committee’s top donors gave money in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, policy concessions or to influence official administration positions, some of the people said.

Giving money in exchange for political favors could run afoul of federal corruption laws. Diverting funds from the organization, which was registered as a nonprofit, could also violate federal law.

The investigation represents another potential legal threat to people who are or were in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Their business dealings and activities during and since the campaign have led to a number of indictments and guilty pleas. Many of the president’s biggest campaign backers were involved in the inaugural fund.

The investigation partly arises out of materials seized in the federal probe of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s business dealings, according to people familiar with the matter.

The committee was headed by Thomas Barrack Jr., a real-estate developer and longtime friend of Mr. Trump. There is no sign the investigation is targeting Mr. Barrack, and he hasn’t been approached by investigators since he was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller’s office last year, according to a person familiar with the matter.

Mr. Mueller has also probed whether any foreign money flowed to the inaugural fund, which is prohibited from accepting foreign funds. In August, the U.S. attorney’s office in Washington, on a referral from Mr. Mueller, obtained a guilty plea from a Washington consultant who admitted he used a U.S. citizen to serve as a “straw purchaser” so that a “prominent Ukraine oligarch” could attend the inauguration. The names were never disclosed.

🐣 RT @green_footballs Sean Hannity deleting hundreds of tweets. I’m starting to get that old rats/sinking ship feeling again.

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance This is world class Con Man-Speak. It’s got it all – Sweet Lies, grifting, Misdirection & picking your pocket all in one tweet. Anyone who believes this is the living definition of PT Barnum’s phrase #ASuckerIsBornEveryMinute
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I often stated, “One way or the other, Mexico is going to pay for the Wall.” This has never changed. Our new deal with Mexico (and Canada), the USMCA, is so much better than the old, very costly & anti-USA NAFTA deal, that just by the money we save, MEXICO IS PAYING FOR THE WALL!

MotherJones, David Corn and Dan Friedman: Did Michael Flynn Try to Strike a Grand Bargain With Moscow as It Attacked the 2016 Election? http://bit.ly/2Lgy2xo
// His associates say he claimed he was in contact with the Russian ambassador during the campaign.

WaPo, Asha Rangappa: Mueller should try to indict Trump. It would guarantee his report goes public. http://wapo.st/2ElL7UK
// The attorney general would have to tell Congress about denying a request to prosecute the president.

🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood “Butina said she acted ‘under direction of’ a Russian official. ‘Butina sought to establish unofficial lines of communication with Americans having power and influence over US politics,’ prosecutor said in court”
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood Maria Butina admits to engaging in conspiracy against US – CNNPolitics
🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ If the FBI had evidence that Butina was acting at the direction and control of the Russian government (and her plea reveals they did), it makes her an agent of a foreign power & a legit target for a FISA…if there was one, anyone talking to her would have been captured on it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Alleged Russian spy Maria #Butina admitted in federal court Thursday morning to engaging in a conspiracy against the United States.

CNN: Alleged Russian spy Maria Butina pleads guilty to engaging in conspiracy against US http://cnn.it/2UGlYtr

🐣 RT @20committee [John Schindler] “The president either secretly colluded with the Kremlin to win the White House, an act of high treason without precedent in American history, or he is the victim of an insidious smear of Russian origin designed to destroy him and his administration.”
⋙ TheSpectatorUS, John Schindler: Is the Cohen-in-Prague mystery about to be revealed at last? http://bit.ly/2PB20wh
// Trump’s fixer has always denied a meeting took place

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Has anyone thought to tell @realDonaldTrump that he has the right to remain silent?

🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Checking in after being somewhat disengaged the past few days. Let me get this straight: The GOP defense seems to be that Cohen, who pled guilty, pled to things that are not in fact crimes. And Flynn, who also pled guilty, pled guilty to lies the FBI tricked him into telling. Ok.

NYT: John Kerry: Forget Trump. We All Must Act on Climate Change. http://nyti.ms/2EtBXX4
// If we fail, it won’t be just the president’s fault.

NYT: Trump Says Cohen Failed Him as His Lawyer and Blames Him for Campaign Finance Violations http://nyti.ms/2ErpiUB

⭕ 12 Dec 2018

NBC: Incoming New York attorney general plans wide-ranging investigations of Trump and family http://nbcnews.to/2R2SCX4
// Just-elected Letitia James, who takes office next month, tells NBC she will probe real estate deals, Trump Tower meeting, emoluments, Trump Foundation and more.

BrennanCenter, Daniel Goldman: Trump Likely Won’t Be Charged While in Office http://bit.ly/2PDEE9B
// But there’s now strong evidence he defrauded voters while seeking the presidency

Axios: Timeline: Every big move in the Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Euh3H9

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Increasingly, it looks like Trump’s circumstances may fall beyond the DOJ policy against indicting a POTUS. If Mueller asks to indict & is rebuked, a report goes to the Hill-to both parties. Fascinating @neal_katyal thread plays out all the implications.
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal THREAD RE INDICTING PRESIDENT. Trump’s defenses to campaign finance vio crumbling rapidly, partic after AMI admission. I predict the only thing he has left is idea sitting President can’t be indicted. This thread fleshes out aspects of that, expands on NYT 📌 https://twitter.com/neal_katyal/status/1072959290548387840

TheHill: Fox’s Napolitano: We learned today that prosecutors have evidence Trump committed a felony http://bit.ly/2UEDmyU

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Two women were paid to keep quiet before the election. Cohen paid one, AMI paid the other. Cohen and AMI now admit the payments were intended to influence the election. Trump still claiming (1) the affairs didn’t happen and (2) the payments weren’t linked to the campaign.

WaPo, Josh Barrett: Cohen’s sentencing clears a path for Congress to uncover the truth http://wapo.st/2EsdLEj

NYT, Marty Lederman: Would Indicting Trump Be Constitutional? http://nyti.ms/2QNALU4
// Yes, it would be. But that question is a distraction from the principal objective of the Russia investigation.

NYT: Tabloid Publisher’s Deal in Hush-Money Inquiry Adds to Trump’s Danger http://nyti.ms/2QUfzvS
// AMI, publisher of The National Enquirer

NYT Editorial: ‘His Dirty Deeds’ http://nyti.ms/2QKy7hZ
// Michael Cohen said President Trump led him into darkness. The courts brought him into the light.

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “What is going to put him in jail eventually… destroy anything he’s ever built – and his children – is a 30 year dishonest criminal enterprise. One thing will take him out of the presidency, the other thing will ruin him forever.” [Donny Deutsch]
💽 https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1072996433186324480/photo/1

NYT, Frank Bruni: The Most Powerful Reject in the World http://nyti.ms/2SDHoWm “Careerists who would normally pine for top jobs with a president assess his temper, behold his tweets, recall the mortifications of Jeff Sessions and Rex Tillerson, and run for the hills.”
// Is there anyone who wants to hang with Donald Trump?

🐣 RT @NealKatyal This is quite important. One by one, the career DOJ prosecutors are removing possible Trump defenses. Now it isn’t just Cohen, but also AMI, saying these hush money payments were made to influence the 2016 Presidential election, and knock out the so-called “Edwards defense” [Link]

🐣 Instead of coming together to fight the dire threat of climate change, the Western alliance is fragmenting Into nationalism. Can’t people see how this ends? Read a history book.

🐣 RT @KenDelanian Wow: The National Enquirer’s parent company has admitted to prosecutors that it made the $150,000 payment in “concert with” the Trump campaign “in order to ensure that the woman did not publicize damaging allegations about the candidate before the 2016 presidential election.”

Salon, Igor Derysh: Maria Butina’s boyfriend claimed he set up Trump-Russia NRA “conduit” as campaign funds flowed http://bit.ly/2PyB3tq
// Republican operative Paul Erickson claimed in an email he’d set up a private Russia-GOP channel through the NRA

NBC: Cohen gets 3 years, says Trump’s ‘dirty deeds’ led him to ‘choose darkness’ http://nbcnews.to/2EubUiz
// Cohen had pleaded guilty to nine federal charges of tax evasion, violating campaign finance laws, lying to banks and to Congress.

Politico, Jesus Rodrigues: How the Migrant Caravan Built Its Own Democracy http://politi.co/2RVpgay
// Trump called the caravan ‘lawless.’ But on the road to Tijuana, the migrants were electing officials, voting on routes and building a public safety council.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand and RussellBerman: Michael Cohen Pays the Price for His ‘Blind Loyalty’ to Trump http://bit.ly/2RVXuuu
// The sentencing ended a saga that began with a dramatic FBI raid and led Cohen to implicate the president in criminal misconduct.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Pelosi puts an ignorant, irrational president in his place http://wapo.st/2LhcXmw Pelosi “did what the media has not done — interject, fact-check to [Trump’s] face and refuse to allow him to operate in a parallel reality”

WIRED, Garrett Graf (May): The Untold Story of Robert Mueller’s Time in the Vietnam War http://bit.ly/2QRmw0s
// 5/15/2018

🐣 RT @AaronBlake So now two parties to Trump’s hush-money payments have implicated him in campaign finance violations: Cohen and AMI. ¤ Big question now is what Weisselberg, who has immunity and who Cohen has said he consulted, has said.
⋙ WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s chief skeleton-locator got immunity. What does it mean? http://wapo.st/2BgsI8z

WaPo: Michael Cohen sentenced to three years in prison for crimes committed while working for Trump http://wapo.st/2Eq0cVT

NYT: Michael Cohen Sentenced to 3 Years After Implicating Trump in Hush-Money Scandal http://nyti.ms/2rxLFyZ

⭕ 11 Dec 2018

BBC (12/11): Russia-Trump: Who’s who in the drama to end all dramas? http://bbc.in/2DNFzCL //➔ how’d I miss this? Trump-Russia re-imagined as a tv series!

Politico, Philip Shenon: How Trump’s Next Attorney General Could Derail the Mueller Probe http://politi.co/2Qu9aIa
// In 1992, William Barr recommended pardons that some saw as a cover-up to protect the president. Critics fear more of the same if he’s confirmed.

Slate, Jed Shugerman: The Single Fatal Flaw in the Legal Argument Against Indicting a Sitting President http://bit.ly/2zRLALa
// Should a president be above the law because of the statute of limitations?

Observer, John Schindler (2017): Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate http://bit.ly/2Ef7vih Chekist, provokatsiya, konspiratsiya, kompromat, dezinformatsiya, aktivniyye meropriyatiya, kombinatsiya, mokroye delo
// 3/28/2017, It’s International Talk Like a Chekist Day—here’s a quick primer on kombinatsiya, konspiratsiya and more

WaPo, Shawn Boburg and Anu Narayanswamy: Trump has blasted Mueller’s team for political donations. But attorney general nominee William P. Barr has given more than $500,000. http://wapo.st/2PtcHRL

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Is that why the Russian gov has conducted 6 consular visits to Butina, passed 4 diplomatic notes to State about her case, and had Lavrov personally speak to Pompeo twice about her prosecution? (The official Kremlin Twitter account changed its avatar to a picture of her, too.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @maxseddon Putin on Butina: “She’s facing 15 years in prison. For what? When I heard that something was happening to her […] I started by asking all our secret service chiefs: who is she? Nobody knew anything about her!”

WaPo: Gap continues to widen between Trump and intelligence community on key issues http://wapo.st/2RSppeG

VoiceOfAmerica: Mueller Probe Points to Numerous Links Between Trump Associates, Russia http://bit.ly/2L9vwcd “If the [Moscow] project was completed, the Company could have received hundreds of millions of dollars from Russian sources in licensing fees and other revenues”

HillReporter, Ed and Brian Krassenstein: The Fall Of Trump Tower Moscow And Rise Of The Rosneft Deal http://bit.ly/2SAZOXE

🐣 RT @keithboykin The Trump administration paid @AccentureFed $13.6 million this year to begin hiring 7,500 border agents. But after 10 months, Accenture has processed only two accepted job offers. https://www.
https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1072494755215486977/photo/1

WaPo: Time’s Person of the Year: ‘Guardians’ of the truth, including slain journalist Jamal Khashoggi http://wapo.st/2B7IQZW

ForeignAffairs, Richard Haass: How a World Order Ends http://fam.ag/2L9Vs7r “The good news is that it is far from inevitable that the world will eventually arrive at a catastrophe; the bad news is that it is far from certain that it will not.”
// Jan-Feb 2019 issue; And What Comes in Its Wake

🐣 RT @IgnatiusPost Timely explanation by @petermshane of how the Mueller grand jury could ask the chief judge in DC to appoint another prosecutor if Trump & Co. try to fire Mueller.
⋙ Slate, Peter Shane: Even if Trump Tries to Fire Mueller, He Can’t Fire the Grand Jury http://bit.ly/2B7ofFe

⭕ 10 Dec 2018

BrennanCenter, Andrew Cohen : The Simple Truth About Trump and 2016 http://bit.ly/2USICPc
// New evidence makes clear: Trump’s team broke the law to hide the truth about the election, diminishing the voting rights of the rest of us

Bloomberg, Jonathan Bernstein: Impeachment Is Getting More Likely http://bloom.bg/2S632Cy
// There are still plenty of unknowns. But the president’s attempts to conceal his conduct are ominous.

TheObserver, John Schindler: President Trump Really May Go to Jail—For the Rest of His Life http://bit.ly/2rCEd5H

WarOnTheRocks, Hal Brands and Francis Gavin: The Historical Profession is Committing Slow-Motion Suicide http://bit.ly/2QqsBlf American college students are abandoning the study of history

WaPo, Max Boot: Our long national nightmare is just beginning http://wapo.st/2QKqTdD “What we are left with is a president who defrauded the American people to win office — and who is now protected by the immunity that his office confers.”

HuffPo, Robert Kuttner: Donald Trump And Robert Mueller: The End Game http://bit.ly/2GcnYGz

MSNBC, @TheLastWord: Laurence Tribe: Trump can be indicted for federal crimes http://on.msnbc.com/2rt11os
// Trump might think that he has immunity from prosecution, but Laurence Tribe explains there’s nothing in the Constitution that prevents the indictment of a sitting president.

NYT: After Ayers Turns Down Chief of Staff Job, Trump Is Left Without a Plan B http://nyti.ms/2zS34XT “‘Why would anybody want to be Donald Trump’s chief of staff unless you want to steal the office supplies before they shut the place down?’”

NYT, Paul Krugman: The G.O.P. Goes Full Authoritarian http://nyti.ms/2SG0HOC
// Only Trump’s flamboyant awfulness stands in the way of his party’s power grab

CNN: GOP shrugs at Trump’s involvement in Cohen crimes http://cnn.it/2Px9sJ5

🐣 RT @HRC [HumanRightsCampaign] Mike Pence probably doesn’t want you to watch this video about his suspicious relationship with Michael Flynn. ¤ Learn more about the #RealMikePence: http://RealMikePence.org
💽 https://twitter.com/HRC/status/1072203511985774593/photo/1

TPM: Ex-Acting Solicitor General Neal Katyal: Trump Knows His Future Is ‘Behind Bars’ If No Deal http://bit.ly/2Qo1Cqh

🐣 RT @EricHolder Constitution does not anticipate allowing a president who used fraud to obtain the office to remain in power. Executive branch paralysis during the criminal process is not a compelling argument- consider 25th Amendment. A sitting president can be indicted.
[link: BostonGlobe] Tweet Link: https://twitter.com/EricHolder/status/1072337361424539649
// BostonGlobe has a paywall

RawStory: ‘The bottom is going to fall out’: White House reporter says Republicans are privately discussing abandoning Trump http://bit.ly/2EoXiks

TheHill: Ethics watchdog CREW sues FBI over leak to Giuliani http://bit.ly/2GaAFBI //➔ this was Guiliani’s promised “October surprise” – acc to AJ at @MuellerSheWrote, this was the Weiner laptop which anti-HRC agents were holding and sprung for maximum effect

🐣 RT @TheContemptor Tucker: “Two women approached Donald Trump and threatened to ruin his career and humiliate his family if he doesn’t give them money… Trump caves to it and he directs Michael Cohen to pay the ransom. Now more than two years later Trump is a felon for doing this.” 💽 Fox clip: https://twitter.com/TheContemptor/status/1072299833015312385/photo/1

🐣 Russian Embassy blaming Ukraine for provocations, demands US condemn Ukraine. Russia has been massing military at border for weeks. Will they strike while Trump is distracted?
⋙ 🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA We call Washington 🇺🇸not to turn a blind eye on active preparations of Ukrainian armed forces and extreme right squads along the contact line in Donbass, which may lead to a bloody scenario
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/RusEmbUSA/status/1072330777965277186/photo/1

🐣 RT @Travis_Tritten Lindsey Graham on #Syria withdrawal situation just now in Senate subway: ‘This is chaos’

CNN, Jim Acosta: Trump concerned about being impeached, sees it as a ‘real possibility,’ source says http://cnn.it/2C2fxd0 //➔ payback time for Individual1, courtesy of Jim Acosta

🐣 RT @TheRickSilson Don’t cry for me, says Butina
The truth is, I never left you
All through my wild days, my spy existence
The deal I’ve cut now
Helps the Resistance

WaPo: We are former senators. The Senate has long stood in defense of democracy — and must again. http://wapo.st/2QoFSuv Bipartisan:
Text Block:https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1072326551210024960 /photo/1

Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Evan Bayh (D-Ind.), Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), Bill Bradley (D-N.J.), Richard Bryan (D-Nev.), Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), Max Cleland (D-Ga.), William Cohen (R-Maine), Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), Al D’Amato (R-N.Y.), John C. Danforth (R-Mo.), Tom Daschle (D-S.D.), Dennis DeConcini (D-Ariz.), Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), David Durenberger (R-Minn.), Russ Feingold (D-Wis.), Wyche Fowler (D-Ga.), Bob Graham (D-Fla.), Chuck Hagel (R-Neb.), Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), Gary Hart (D-Colo.), Bennett Johnston (D-La.), Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), John Kerry (D-Mass.), Paul Kirk (D-Mass.), Mary Landrieu (D-La.), Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.), Blanche Lincoln (D-Ark.), Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.), Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), Sam Nunn (D-Ga.), Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), David Pryor (D-Ark.), Don Riegle (D-Mich.), Chuck Robb (D-Va.), Jay Rockefeller (D-W.Va.), Jim Sasser (D-Tenn.), Alan Simpson (R-Wyo.), Mark Udall (D-Colo.), John W. Warner (R-Va.), Lowell Weicker (I-Conn.), Tim Wirth (D-Colo.)

🐣 RT @ JohnBrennan Whenever you send out such inane tweets, I take great solace in knowing that you realize how much trouble you are in & how impossible it will be for you to escape American justice. Mostly, I am relieved that you will never have the opportunity to run for public office again.
🐣 RT @CREWcrew Actually, Mr. President, campaign contributions can lead to criminal charges. Jared Kushner’s dad even went to prison for illegal campaign contributions. You should ask Chris Christie about it, he’s the one who locked him up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real ….which it was not (but even if it was, it is only a CIVIL CASE, like Obama’s [?] – but it was done correctly by a lawyer and there would not even be a fine. Lawyer’s liability if he made a mistake, not me). Cohen just trying to get his sentence reduced. WITCH HUNT! [2]
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @tribelaw This tweet is itself a SMOKING GUN: Saying it was wrong to call his payments a “campaign contribution” implies he’s known all along that he wanted to make a campaign “expenditure” while hiding it from voters by funneling it off the books by contributing to a shell company
⋙🐣 RT @real “Democrats can’t find a Smocking Gun tying the Trump campaign to Russia after James Comey’s testimony. No Smocking Gun…No Collusion.” @FoxNews That’s because there was NO COLLUSION. So now the Dems go to a simple private transaction, wrongly call it a campaign contribution,… [1]

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote It’s always been my theory that Putin funded trump through the NRA using Torshin and Butina. We now know NRA and the trump campaign illegally coordinated ad buys, and now Torshin has “gone walkies”. Can’t wait for the indictments that emerge from the Butina cooperation.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “The central bank declined to elaborate on its one-sentence statement Friday. Torshin did not immediately respond to attempts to reach him.”
⋙⋙ Bloomberg (Nov): NRA-Linked Russia Central Banker Retires http://bloom.bg/2rtb7FT
// 11/30/2018

● Bank of Russia says Deputy Governor Alexander Torshin retired
● Accused Russian spy linked to Torshin close to deal with U.S.

NationalReview, David French: Republicans Must Reject ‘Russia Hoax’ Conspiracies and Examine the Evidence http://bit.ly/2UuBatA “The Trump team has surrounded the truth of its dealings with Russia with a bodyguard of lies”

The Trump team has surrounded the truth of its dealings with Russia with a bodyguard of lies. Not a single American should find that acceptable or excusable. Let’s find the truth and confront it fearlessly. No other approach will provide the justice and transparency America needs.

CNN, Z Byron Wolf: Trump’s biggest Mueller problem isn’t Russia. At least not yet. http://cnn.it/2SCCB7B

WaPo, Philip Bump: It’s not just the number of Trump-Russia contacts. It’s the timing. http://wapo.st/2QKpdAW
● Timeline: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1072317099694002176/photo/1

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Maria Butina Agrees to Cooperate With U.S. http://thebea.st/2EpyAjN
// Butina has inked an agreement with prosecutors and becomes the first Russian since the 2016 election to confess to a crime connected to efforts to influence American politics.

CNBC: Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina sets stage for pleading guilty after accusations she plotted to infiltrate NRA http://cnb.cx/2Szyd9g

● Alleged Russian agent Maria Butina wants to change her not guilty plea in a pending criminal case, setting the stage for her to plead guilty soon, a court filing Monday shows.
● Butina, who is charged with conspiracy and failing to register as a foreign agent, and federal prosecutors filed a joint motion in U.S. District Court in Washington to ask a judge to set a date for a change-of-plea hearing as soon as possible. Both sides noted they are available for such a hearing in the next several days.
● Butina, who remains in custody, was arrested in July. She is a accused of plotting with her former boss to infiltrate American political organizations, including the National Rifle Association, to promote Russia’s agenda.

TheHill: NYT’s Krugman: US, Russia and Saudi Arabia are ‘new axis of evil’ http://bit.ly/2RWl8qw //➔ hey, I Tweeted this first

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Everybody Says Mueller Is Almost Done. What If He Isn’t? http://nym.ag/2B6myb5

USAToday, Chris Truax: Trump-Mueller showdown will be a historic test of America’s institutions and rule of law http://bit.ly/2RNUbpa

Axios: House Intelligence Dems will look into Trump-Russia — and these 4 other things http://bit.ly/2rueX1q authoritarianism, Saudi Arabia, China, North Korea
// Rep. Adam Schiff reveals the issues his panel could investigate in the next Congress.

🐣 RT @BruceBartlett If we accept the idea that a sitting president may not be indicted for anything–the line Trump’s lawyers are peddling–we have truly crossed the line from democracy to authoritarianism. Like Caesar crossing the Rubicon. No going back.

WaPo, James Downie: Democrats should investigate the Kushner-MBS connection http://wapo.st/2rsWG4N

WaPo, EJ Dionne: Are Republicans abandoning democracy? http://wapo.st/2C026Ko

📔 TheSternFacts, Grant Sterns (2017): How One Man Influenced The Republican Party’s Transformation Into The Grand Old Putin Party http://bit.ly/2tsJE6F
// 5/25/2017, Part 1 of a 10 part series: the Grand Old Putin Party

These are the Chapters of the Grand Old Putin Party:
1. Prologue — Link: http://bit.ly/2tsJE6F
2. Putin’s Propagandist Eerily Predicted Trump’s Relationship With General Flynn and Dana Rohrabacher Last Year
3. Putin’s Favorite Congressman Secretly Met With Paul Manafort After The FBI Warned Russian Agents Were Recruiting Him
4. The GOP’s Favorite Russian Professor Spent Decades Building Conservative Ties To Moscow
5. American University In Moscow: Linked To Russian State, But Fake Like TrumpU
6. Here’s Lozansky Introducing Republicans To The Father Of Russian Foreign Intelligence — And Putin’s Mentor
7. Soviet Human Rights Activists Believed Lozansky Worked With Russian Intelligence
8. From Orange Revolution To “Stars And Stripes Revolution”
9. Opinion: Edward Lozansky’s Russia Lobby Compromised The Republican Party
10. Opinion: Without Ed Lozansky, Trump-Russia Could Not Have Happened

WaPo, Glenn Kessler: Meet the Bottomless Pinocchio, a new rating for a false claim repeated over and over again http://wapo.st/2UvJkBN

⭕ 9 Dec 2018

NYMag, Chas Danner: How Totally Screwed Is Trump? Commentary and Analysis of the Cohen and Manafort Filings http://nym.ag/2C25k00

WaPo, Robby Mook: The sad truth about Russian election interference http://wapo.st/2EnW1tW Robby Mook, a CNN political commentator, was Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign manager.

🐣 RT @juliettekayyem Stories this weekend lead to unmistakeable conclusion that Kushner is compromised (debt) and immoral (“weather the storm” re Saudis), but also that he’s in deep trouble. Both IC and LE communities are making that clear. ¤ Kushner is going to have one hell of a week. #No1inlaw 1/
📌 https://twitter.com/juliettekayyem/status/1071877072354713600

🐣 RT @carolecadwalla This is RT boosting Russia’s Spetsnaz or special forces. They’re controlled by GRU – who attacked US elections & killed British citizen. You know who RT also boosts? Nigel Farage. Taking back control for who, Nigel?

🐣 RT @BobMcKercher Just finished reading Bill Browder’s “Red Notice”. I’ve read a lot of books on history and politics but this is the most remarkable of them all. An extraordinary front row view on the kleptocracy that runs modern Russia. Be grateful Russia didn’t get its wish to lead Interpol!

Newsweek: James Comey Compares Trump to a Mob Boss, Suggests He Could Be An ‘Unindicted Co-Conspirator’ in Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2Pt7XeM

🔊NPR, Lulu Garcia-Navarro: Investigative Journalist Jason Leopold (Buzzfeed) Breaks Down His Reporting On Trump And Russia http://n.pr/2zPDNgY

NBC, Allan Smith: Michael Cohen filings renew discussion of Trump’s impeachment http://nbcnews.to/2QHVkBn
// “The president was at the center of a massive fraud — several massive frauds against the American people,” Democratic Rep. Jerrold Nadler said.

TheGuardian, Erin Durkin: Trump ‘at center of massive fraud against Americans’, top Democrat says http://bit.ly/2EnR4kH
● Incoming House chair Nadler promises investigations
● Payments to women ‘would be impeachable offenses’

💽 CNN: Bernstein: Trump led a ‘criminal conspiracy’ http://cnn.it/2C1anh6
// Carl Bernstein has described the Nixon years as a “criminal presidency.” So Brian Stelter asks him if the same term applies to President Trump. “I don’t think we know completely yet,” Bernstein says. But “I think it’s very obvious that there has been a criminal conspiracy led by the president of the United States to obstruct justice. It’s hard to see otherwise in the filings that have been made public thus far.”

LATimes, Virginia Heffernan: Early on, Trump-Russia obsessives were marginalized; they’re prophets now http://lat.ms/2EowhNY //➔ @DavidCornDC, @FranklinFoer, @mnnurse10, @pithywidow, @morgfair, @fredriksewell
// David Corn (@DavidCornDC), Franklin Foer (@FranklinFoer), Marc Murphy (@mnnurse10 ), Karen Schwartz (@pithywidow), Morgan Fairchild @morgfair), Rufus Sewell (@fredriksewell)

[David] Corn says he felt “lonely,” even as his stories about about the Russia affair gained traction. Others who reported early about curious Trump connections in Moscow — Franklin Foer in Slate, for example — have said the same thing.

But they’re not lonely now. And this is mostly because even while some media organizations sidelined, or cautiously framed, the Trump-Russia story, a much more important group of commenters were far less timid. Let’s give a round of retweets for the concerned citizens of the United States.

From all quarters, these citizens have kept the Trump-Russia story front and center for the electorate, and provided analysis and even scoops that clarify and help to remedy the global catastrophe that is Trump’s presidency.

Among the most effective are Marc Murphy (@mnnurse10 ), who retweets articles about the corruption of the president and Mueller’s heroism, and Karen Schwartz (@pithywidow), a novelist and single mother in New York state who studies the indictments coming out of the Russia investigation as if they were the Talmud. She is a genius at details and prophecy.

Far-flung celebrities also have joined in, from soap-opera delight Morgan Fairchild to Shakespearean heartthrob Rufus Sewell.

🐣 RT @9Moyle https://twitter.com/9Moyle/status/1071972506221903872/photo/1
// “We wish you a Mueller Christmas”
⋙ 🐣 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1072000965706952704/photo/1
// colorized by me

WaPo, Rosalind S. Helderman and Tom Hamburger: Coincidence or coordination? http://wapo.st/2QkQo5X
// Russians approached at least 14 people in Trump’s orbit during the campaign and presidential transition.

TheHill: Ex-fed prosecutor: ‘It’s clear’ Trump will be indicted on charges of violating campaign finance law http://bit.ly/2Ux0P4I Fox News contributor Andrew McCarthy said that “it’s clear” President Trump is the target of an SDNY investigation and that he will be indicted..

Newsweek, Jason Lemon: Trump ‘Concerned’ for ‘First Time In His Life,’ Watergate Journalist Carl Bernstein Says Impeachment Hearings Look Likely http://bit.ly/2B8pdkC

🐣 RT @politico A conspiracy theorist who says he’s being threatened with indictment by Robert Mueller has filed a lawsuit accusing the special counsel of constitutional violations and leaking grand jury secrets
⋙ Politico, Josh Gerstein: Conspiracy theorist sues Mueller alleging illegal leaks and surveillance http://politi.co/2C0NTgk
// Jerome Corsi’s new suit against Mueller also accuses the special prosecutor of trying to badger Corsi into giving false testimony that he served as a conduit between Wikileaks found Julian Assange and Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to then-candidate Donald Trump.

🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Reports that 4 Russian Air Forces Il-76MDs from Taganrog have transported Russian airborne troops from Anapa into Dzhankoi in Crimea. This combined w all the other military movements, Russian media propaganda of an imminent attack by Ukraine, and social media op is a big red flag [link]
Tweetlink: https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1071982046657085441

TheIntercept, James Risen: Is There Anything Trump, Cohen, and Manafort Didn’t Lie About? http://bit.ly/2EbZoTF

TheAtlantic, Elizabeth Goitein: What the President Could Do If He Declares a State of Emergency http://bit.ly/2QoI710 //➔ omg, don’t put ideas in his head!
// From seizing control of the internet to declaring martial law, President Trump may legally do all kinds of extraordinary things.

TheGuardian, Jonathan Watts and Glenn Doherty: US and Russia ally with Saudi Arabia to water down climate pledge http://bit.ly/2B3j0WV //➔ what is this, the new Axis powers?
// Move shocks delegates at UN conference as ministers fly in for final week of climate talks

🐣 RT @nycsouthpaw On Friday evening, federal prosecutors for the first time said the president had directed illegal hush money payments to women who claimed to be his mistresses. By Sunday, the chiefs of staff of both POTUS and his VP had tendered their resignations. It felt like a quiet weekend.

🐣 RT @JoyceVanceWhite Where can you cheat & it’s okay? Not at the Olympics, not playing kickball at school, only if you’re a candidate running for president of the United States who wins & you committed fraud against the American people to help you get there.
⋙ 🐣 Wouldn’t that apply to every GOP candidate since Nixon? Nixon: negotiation w NVietnam to stall peace talks; Reagan: Iran hostages; Bush: shenanigans in FL. None of them can win honestly, so they cheat.

🐣 RT @RWPUSA It’s resignation and plea bargain time. The sooner the better.
⋙ USAToday, Paul Zeidenberg: Mueller is close to answering Russia collusion question that could end Trump’s presidency http://bit.ly/2RPbR3G
// Mueller says Cohen gave him useful information on matters ‘core’ to his investigation. That core is collusion between the campaign, Trump and Russia.

🐣 RT @KasieDC WATCH: James Comey recalls his conversation with President Trump about Mike Flynn during an event with @NicolleDWallace ¤ “Obviously it’s evidence of obstruction of justice” 💽 https://twitter.com/KasieDC/status/1071941138389422080/photo/1

🐣 RT @EdKrassen It turns out that the Steele Dossier is actually a crystal ball that is correctly predicting exactly what Mueller finds. ¤ Maybe Christopher Steele, who was known as one of the best intelligence officers in the world, actually is one of the best intelligence officers in the world!

🐣 RT @Benjamin05055 A 36-year old turning down an offer to be White House Chief of Staff is about as a decisive a vote of no confidence as you can find in our system.
⋙ 🐣 RT @nick_ayers Thank you @realDonaldTrump, @VP, and my great colleagues for the honor to serve our Nation at The White House. I will be departing at the end of the year but will work with the #MAGA team to advance the cause. 🇺🇸 #Georgia

WaPo: Russians interacted with at least 14 Trump associates during the campaign and transition http://wapo.st/2RNG03o

Axios, Jim VandeHei: What we now know about Trump and Russia http://bit.ly/2PuyB6X

● We now know several Russian officials reached out to a half-dozen Republicans very close to Trump and his campaign, including his eldest son, his closest adviser, his lawyer and his campaign manager. We now know they took the meetings, often enthusiastically, during and after the campaign.

● We now know Russia offered in those chats campaign assistance — “synergy,” they called it. We now know no one around Trump alerted the FBI of this effort to subvert our elections.

● We now know that 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted for hacking the DNC and systematically releasing material for the purpose of hurting the Clinton campaign via WikiLeaks.

● We know that Trump associates Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi attempted — successfully, in some instances — to get in touch with WikiLeaks and that they are under investigation for whether they had advance knowledge about the email dumps.

● We now know Donald Trump Jr. and others took a meeting with Russians promising dirt on Hillary Clinton. We now know Don Jr., when approached with the promise of dirt, wrote: “If it’s what you say I love it especially later in the summer.”

● We now know Trump was negotiating a Trump property in Moscow during the presidential campaign — and hid this from the public and lied about it. We now know Mueller believes, based on his court filing, the “Moscow Project was a lucrative business opportunity that sought, and likely required, the assistance of the Russian government.”

● We now know every arm of the U.S. intelligence community concluded Russia sought to systematically influence the election outcome. We now know this was an unanimous conclusion, save one dissent: Trump.

● We now know Trump officials continued talking with the Russians during the post-election transition. We now know Jared Kushner and Jeff Sessions failed to initially disclose any contacts with Russians on their government forms.

● We now know Jared Kushner suggested a secret backchannel with the Russians, which had it happened, would have been free of U.S. eavesdropping.

● We now know Trump soured on FBI director James Comey, Attorney General Jeff Sessions and White House counsel Don McGahn in part over their handling of the probe.

● We now know Paul Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016, lied about his Russia contacts, was indicted and is going to jail.

● We now know Flynn lied about his Russian contacts, was fired and pleaded guilty, after agreeing to become a key witness in the investigation.

● We now know Cohen lied about his Russian contacts, was indicted and then flipped to become a key witness against Trump.

Crooks&Liars: National Review Writer Stuns Fox & Friends By Revealing Trump Will Likely Be Indicted http://bit.ly/2L654Qv Andrew McCarthy

🐣 RT @Delavegalaw Proof that Individual-1 directed Michael Cohen to commit a felony would, if Individual-1 were prosecuted, increase Individual-1’s sentencing guidelines by at least 2 levels, and possibly more, depending on the number of other people involved.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Disagree common claim President cannot be indicted. If Cohen memo is true, Trump committed a crime to win Presidency. This logic, anyone can commit a crime as long as they win the office = nonsense. Indictments should proceed, Supreme Court should decide
⋙ LawfareBlog, Walter Dellinger (Jun): Indicting a President Is Not Foreclosed: The Complex History http://bit.ly/2Ealiqq
// 6/12/2018

⭕ 8 Dec 2018

Vox, Sean Illing: Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia go back 3 decades http://bit.ly/2PFg8VF
// Journalist Craig Unger talks Russia, Trump, and “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history.”

CNN, Julian Zelizer: Will the Republican Party turn on Trump? http://cnn.it/2G9NrAr

DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Betsy Woodruff: Comey Says FBI Looked Into Possible ‘Connection’ Between Four Trump Campaign Associates and Russia in 2016 http://thebea.st/2Eb5ROP
// [In testimony,] the former FBI director, who was fired by the president, also revealed that he is a ‘potential witness’ in the possible obstruction of justice investigation by Robert Mueller.

“We opened investigations on four Americans to see if there was any connection between those four Americans and the Russian interference effort. And those four Americans did not include the candidate.” ¤ ¤ Later in the interview, Comey said the FBI suspected those four Americans may have helped the Russians meddle in the election.

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin What we see more clearly now than ever is a classic Russian intelligence operation to compromise and control a corrupt politician by financial and other means to benefit Moscow. It’ll take months or years for America to come to terms with it, but that politician is our president.

TheAtlantic, Ken White: Manafort, Cohen, and Individual 1 Are in Grave Danger http://bit.ly2PruUPv/
// Robert Mueller is closing in on the president and all his men.

Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 81: Mueller Plays Truth or Consequences http://politi.co/2zQgGmh
// In a slew of filings, the special counsel and Justice Department prosecutors slap (and praise) the witnesses who are making their case against Trump.

VICE, Greg Walters: Mueller just pulled some of his key findings out of Trump’s grasp http://bit.ly/2RNE0bw

🐣 RT @TrumpsTaxes Not to be overlooked and impossible to overstate: ¤ If not for his position as President of the United States, Donald J. Trump would have been indicted on two felony charges yesterday. ¤ So let’s make sure everyone knows it.

🐣 RT @tribelaw Rep. Nadler: “One was collusion with the Russians. One was obstruction of justice and all that entails. And now you have a third — that the president was at the center of a massive fraud against the American people.”
💙💙 ⋙ NYT, Peter Baker and Nicholas Fandos: Prosecutors’ Narrative Is Clear: Trump Defrauded Voters. But What Does It Mean? http://nyti.ms/2Ptzgpt

In the narrative that the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and New York prosecutors are building, Mr. Trump continued to secretly seek to do business in Russia deep into his presidential campaign even as Russian agents made more efforts to influence him. At the same time, in this account he ordered hush payments to two women to suppress stories of impropriety in violation of campaign finance law.

The prosecutors made clear in a sentencing memo filed on Friday that they viewed efforts by Mr. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, to squelch the stories as nothing less than a perversion of a democratic election — and by extension they effectively accused the president of defrauding voters, questioning the legitimacy of his victory.

“While many Americans who desired a particular outcome to the election knocked on doors, toiled at phone banks or found any number of other legal ways to make their voices heard, Cohen sought to influence the election from the shadows,” the prosecutors wrote.

“He did so by orchestrating secret and illegal payments to silence two women who otherwise would have made public their alleged extramarital affairs with Individual-1,” they continued. “In the process, Cohen deceived the voting public by hiding alleged facts that he believed would have had a substantial effect on the election.”

… The framers of the Constitution specifically envisioned impeachment as a remedy for removing a president who obtained office through corrupt means, and legal scholars have long concluded that the threshold of “high crimes and misdemeanors” does not necessarily require a statutory crime.

If the campaign finance case as laid out by prosecutors is true, Mr. Nadler said, Mr. Trump would be likely to meet the criteria for an impeachable offense, and he said he would instruct his committee to investigate when he takes over in January.

But he added that did not necessarily mean that the committee should vote to impeach Mr. Trump. “Is it serious enough to justify impeachment?” he asked. “That is another question.”

🐣 RT @tribelaw Quid pro quo? Maybe even worse: What Jared seems to have given MbS wasn’t his to give. And it appears to have led to ghoulish consequences in MbS’s blood-stained hands. Jared must be held accountable to justice.
⋙ 🐣 RT @dcpoll In Oct 2017, SoftBank, whose CEO has deep ties to the Saudi govt & Prince MBS, lent $57M to Jared Kushner’s family business for its troubled Jersey City project – the SAME month Jared took an unannounced trip to Riyadh & divulged classified intel to MBS.

USAToday, Harry Litman: Cohen memos cast dark shadow: Trump hid scandals to win, coddled Russia to make money http://bit.ly/2G7xWZM

WaPo, David Von Drehle: All the Trumpians’ lies have one thing in common http://wapo.st/2QiGamJ

Politico, Josh Gerstein and Darren Samuelson: Takeaways from a frenetic week of Mueller filings http://politi.co/2G7xkn8
// The special counsel left a series of public hints that prosecutors are closing in on President Donald Trump and his inner circle.

CNN, Stephen Collinson: Trump tries to change the story, but Russia cloud darkens http://cnn.it/2BYYOaw

Axios, Mike Allen: When Russia approached, Trump officials gladly obliged http://bit.ly/2QEBkzE

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Unconvincing defense. The affair happened in 2006 and Trump waited until months before the election to keep it quiet. If it were about his business and family, why wait 10 years? ¤ (HINT: It was about benefiting his campaign)
⋙ 🐣 RT @rossgarber I expect Trump/Rudy will say Cohen is lying, but that even if Trump authorized hush payments, they were not to further his campaign, but to protect his business and family. So no campaign finance violation. (Successful John Edwards defense.)

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Comey: @petestrzok “helped draft my letter to Congress that Hillary Clinton blames for her defeat…he also was one of the handful of people in the entire world” who knew about the Russia probe—“and didn’t tell a soul. It’s hard to reconcile that with his being on Team Clinton.”
Text: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1071600139293392896/photo/1

🐣 RT @MaxBoot Putin and Trump are both promoting the violent protests against Macron. This is the risk of being a centrist leader today: you will incur the wrath of the Illiberal International. My latest in @PostOpinions:
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: In France and online, extremists put centrism to the torch http://wapo.st/2zZ2gk7

CNN: Former Nixon WH lawyer: Congress will have ‘little choice’ but to begin impeachment proceedings http://cnn.it/2UrmQSx

AP, Michael Balsamo: Whether a president can be prosecuted remains in dispute http://bit.ly/2Usl0AV “The payments to Daniels and McDougal were made in 2016, meaning the statute of limitations would run out in 2021”

Legal scholars have said that based on the Justice Department’s guidance, it would appear that Trump could be charged for wrongdoing during the campaign or as president once he leaves office, but likely not before that.

Blackman said the statute of limitations for a campaign finance law violation — like the one Cohen pleaded guilty to — would be five years. The payments to Daniels and McDougal were made in 2016, meaning the statute of limitations would run out in 2021.

NYMag, Eric Levitz: Trump 2020 Shaping Up to Be a Campaign to Stay Out of Prison http://nym.ag/2QE1uCw

WaPo, Robert Costa and Phil Rucker: ‘Siege warfare’: Republican anxiety spikes as Trump faces growing legal and political perils http://wapo.st/2PsGEBc

Facing the dawn of his third year in office and his bid for reelection, Trump is stepping into a political hailstorm. Democrats are preparing to seize control of the House in January with subpoena power to investigate corruption. Global markets are reeling from his trade war. The United States is isolated from its traditional partners. The investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III into Russian interference is intensifying. And court filings Friday in a separate federal case implicated Trump in a felony.

🐣 RT @Delavegalaw Agree entirely w/@BarbMcQuade. If a contract is procured by fraud, it may be declared void. As Barb notes, if a person gains citizenship thru fraud, he/she is stripped of that status. Where a president has been elected thru his own fraud, he should be stripped of the presidency.
⋙ 🐣 RT @essenviews Trump should be stripped of the presidency because Mueller filing shows he ‘procured it by fraud’ a former US Attorney says
⋙⋙ 🐣 RawStory Trump should be stripped of presidency because Mueller filing shows he ‘procured it by fraud’: ex-US Attorney http://bit.ly/2rqf1PE

DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay, Erin Banco and Asawin Suebsaeng: Michael Cohen Was Paid More Than $4 Million by Promising Access to Trump, Prosecutors Say http://thebea.st/2En3Zn3
// And The Daily Beast can reveal Cohen made previously unreported overtures about business deals to a politically connected individual.

DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Mueller Implicates Trump Administration Officials With New Filings Against Manafort and Cohen http://thebea.st/2RFHCvP
// The president’s ex-fixer and former campaign chairman are accused of different crimes, but they have something in common: White House contacts.

CNN, Nathan Hodge: Trump brand now toxic in Putin’s Kremlin http://cnn.it/2BZqyvK

Simple denial (“I did not have sexual relations with that woman” “Totally clears the President”) is the most primitive defense mechanism and the most blatant form of lie. Discouraging that so many news orgs made it into a headline.

PBS: How new details about Cohen and Manafort could shape the Russia investigation http://to.pbs.org/2EaiWYz

CBC [CA]: These key lines from Mueller’s court filing on Cohen reveal more about his Trump-Russia probe http://bit.ly/2Unk6pg
// 6 quotes from Mueller filing on Cohen sentencing drop hints about where his investigation is heading

WaPo, Devlin Barrett and Matt Zapotosky: Mueller flashes some cards in Russia probe, but hides his hand http://wapo.st/2rr2wU6

WaPo, Marcy Wheeler: Mueller has already issued most of his report, one indictment at a time http://wapo.st/2RKGVBL
// Each court filing contains far more detail than it really needs. The special counsel is speaking through the docket.

NYT, Bob Bauer: Is Mueller Building an Expansive Obstruction Case? http://nyti.ms/2L5zgeH
// The sentencing memos suggest the possibility that Trump and perhaps others were involved in a series of lies from Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.

≣ MotherJones: We Now Know What James Comey Told Congress Last Week. Read the Transcript. http://bit.ly/2PsSAmw
// tags: James Comey testimony James Comey transcript; The former FBI director called the hearing “a desperate attempt” to slow those investigating Trump.

JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman and Andy Wright: Mueller’s Roadmap: Major Takeaways from Cohen and Manafort Filings http://bit.ly/2QOisON

🐣 RT @renato_mariotti Given that Trump spoke with Barr about representing him in the Mueller investigation, Barr may have to recuse himself from overseeing Mueller if he is confirmed.
⋙ 🐣 RT @michaelIsakoff Exclusive: Before Trump tapped Bill Barr to be his new AG, he reached out to him for another job: his defense lawyer. @SkullduggeryPod @YahooNews @dklaidman

🐣 RT @RWPUSA Resignation in exchange for leniency. It’s time for prosecutors to have those discussions with @realDonaldTrump.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gtconway3d A terrific account of a situation similar to the scenario @walterdellinger posits, although without the immunity overlay—Spiro Agnew’s plea bargain and resignation—can be found here: http://bit.ly/2MweTaW 
🐣 RT @MaxBoot What if Trump resigns on Jan 19 and allows Pence to be president for a day so he can pardon Trump? Since a self-pardon might not stand up to judicial review
⋙ 🐣 RT @walterdellinger Remember: If Trump is not re-elected, at noon on Jan 20, 2021 Air Force One turns into a pumpkin. And with it any supposed “immunity” from indictment expires as well leaving him fully subject to prosecution for any crimes for which the limitations period has not expired
📌 https://twitter.com/walterdellinger/status/1071206183057395712

🐣 RT @gtconway3d A terrific account of a situation similar to the scenario @walterdellinger posits, although without the immunity overlay—Spiro Agnew’s plea bargain and resignation—can be found here: http://bit.ly/2MweTaW 
⋙ 🐣 RT @walterdellinger And — as I elaborate in a forthcoming article — if he has committed any crimes, he will have to plea bargain while he is still president: his resignation in exchange for total leniency. If he stays until the end, he loses that great bargaining chip.

🐣 RT @PreetBharara The brilliant and dedicated professional “kids” of the SDNY are among our best hopes for survival of the rule of law. We should be thanking them for their public service, not attacking them for doing their jobs.
⋙ 🐣 RT @GreggJarrett Look at the four attorneys who signed the Cohen sentencing memo under Robert Khuzami’s name. Griswold, Maimin, McKay and Roos. They’re all kids. No real experience. They don’t know anything about the law. They don’t understand the Federal Campaign Election Act.

🐣 RT @brianklaas Good morning! The Department of Justice says that the President of the United States orchestrated a criminal conspiracy. That criminal conspiracy may have been decisive in helping him become president.
⋙ WaPo, Brian Klaas: The Mueller investigation has been a series of drips. It’s about to turn into a flood. http://wapo.st/2Em7bz0

⭕ 7 Dec 2018

WIRED, Garrett Graff: Manafort and Cohen Sentencing Documents Put Donald Trump in Spotlight http://bit.ly/2QLdD8U

WaPo, Philip Allen Lacovara: Yes, Trump could be indicted. The ‘Nixon tapes’ case proves it. http://wapo.st/2zMNNY3 Lacovara, a former U.S. deputy solicitor general in the Justice Department, served as counsel to Watergate special prosecutors Archibald Cox and Leon Jaworski

◕ Politico: The Mueller indictments so far: Lies, trolls and hacks http://politi.co/2EbBWWR
// At least 33 people and three companies have been charged so far as a result of the special counsel’s investigation into 2016 election tampering.

NYT, Oliver Nachtwey: It Doesn’t Matter Who Replaces Merkel. Germany Is Broken. http://nyti.ms/2rqKDVr Mr. Nachtwey is the author of “Germany’s Hidden Crisis: Social Decline in the Heart of Europe.”
// The erosion of the country’s postwar order has created a populace open to messages and movements previously banished to the fringes.

🐣 RT @harrylitman And perhaps even more surprising from this corner, let me say that I share @benjaminwittes view
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Ok, folks, I know Barr has said some bad stuff, but let me express the perhaps unpopular view that say that this would be a very decent outcome. Barr was a very fine AG. He knows and values the department’s traditions and supervised at least two special prosecutor investigations.

🐣 RT @TimOBrien “Pro tip: It’s not a good idea to be in touch with a suspected Russian intelligence asset when you’re being prosecuted by seasoned federal law enforcement officials probing your role in Russian efforts to sabotage a presidential election.”
⋙ Bloomberg, Timothy O’Brien: Mueller Weaves Trump, Manafort and Cohen Ever Closer http://bloom.bg/2EkCiva
// Three sentencing memos paint unflattering portraits of the president’s former campaign chairman and personal lawyer. 

🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump’s most important lies are not spin, or misleading statements. They are the complete inversion of truth, an Orwellian assertion that the truth is what he says. The documents directly implicate Trump in directing multiple criminal conspiracies. A tweet doesn’t change that.
⋙ NBC: Court filings present Trump as key figure in multiple federal investigations http://nbcnews.to/2L5qzkl
// Yet Trump tweets: “Totally clears the President. Thank you!”

🐣 RT @RichardHaass In an instant Europe has gone from being the most stable region in the world to anything but. Paris is burning, the Merkel era is ending, Italy is playing a dangerous game of chicken with the EU, Russia is carving up Ukraine, and the UK is consumed by Brexit. History is resuming.

🐣 RT @bjcreigh Trump is hanging his legal hopes on a Mueller counter report that will be written by Rudy Giuliani. ¤ Rudy. ¤ The Clem Kadiddlehopper of Counselors. ¤ The Clouseau of Cybersecurity. ¤ I can’t wait.

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Loretta Lynch’s brief Tarmac meeting with Bill Clinton sent the GOP into a frenzy, so surely, there will be intense outrage that the son-in-law of a president, who is under investigation along with him, invited the AG heading the investigation to fly with him on Marine 1.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Tierney_Megan Print pooler all star @cam_joseph spotted Matt Whitaker boarding Marine 1 with Kushner.

AP: Prosecutors: Illegal hush-money paid at Trump’s ‘direction’ http://bit.ly/2PrIimT

🐣 RT @gtconway3d Except for that little part where the US Attorney’s Office says that you directed and coordinated with Cohen to commit two felonies. Other than that, totally scot-free.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Totally clears the President. Thank you!

🐣 RT @tribelaw Here’s the 12/7 SDNY memo nailing Trump as a felon who directed a criminal conspiracy to steal the 2016 election. This isn’t Mueller; it’s the US Attorney for Manhattan, untainted by Trump’s hail of attacks. Read especially pgs 11-13 & 23. Devastating:
≣ ⋙ DocumentCloud: http://bit.ly/2QoWvq8

🐣 RT @adamgoldmanNYT well @JasonLeopold and @a_cormier_ have the story about Cohen’s contact with a Russian in 2015.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/adamgoldmanNYT/status/1071211969569546240/photo/1
⋙ BuzzFeedNews, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold (Jun): Ivanka Trump Was In Contact With A Russian Who Offered A Trump-Putin Meeting http://bit.ly/2B3oQYa
// 6/6/3018, Her contact, a Russian Olympic weightlifter, said a meeting between Trump and Putin could expedite a Trump tower in Moscow.

WaPo, Paul Waldman: The latest filings show that nobody can save Trump now http://wapo.st/2G6HpRe

LawfareBlog, Victoria Clark, Mikhaila Fogel, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: ‘Totally Clears the President’? What Those Cohen and Manafort Filings Really Say http://bit.ly/2QhPZ4e

NYT, Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder and Norman Eisen: Is This the Beginning of the End for Trump? http://nyti.ms/2RDsTBS
// Sentencing memos reveal damning evidence about collusion and campaign finance violations.

BuzzFeedNews, Chris Geidner: 5 Big Things That Robert Mueller Just Told Us About The Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2Suk8K8
// The sentencing memo that special counsel Robert Mueller filed in Michael Cohen’s case said a lot about his ongoing Russia investigation.

🐣 RT @Comey Today wasn’t a search for truth, but a desperate attempt to find anything that can be used to attack the institutions of justice investigating this president. They came up empty today but will try again. In the long run, it’ll make no difference because facts are stubborn things.

RollingStone, Tessa Stuart, Ryan Bort and Andy Kroll: It’s Mueller Time: Making Sense of the Latest Russia Investigation Dump http://bit.ly/2REtRxD
// An incredible day of news about Michael Cohen, Paul Manafort and President Trump

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: The Department of Justice Calls Donald Trump a Felon http://nym.ag/2RHGw2U

🐣 RT @11thHour .@frankfigliuzzi1: “We saw an effort directed by Putin himself, ‘Get next to this candidate, get him compromised, & let’s get our man in this Oval Office.'” Watch more: https://on.msnbc.com/2AZxx67  #11MSNBC #11thHour
💽 https://twitter.com/11thHour/status/1071260871052156928/photo/1

🐣 RT @MollyMcKew A reminder tonight as Kilimnik is endlessly described as “with ties to Russian intelligence” — there’s no such thing as former GRU. ¤ Kilimnik *is* Russian intelligence

🐣 RT @TheLeadCNN “The President’s attacks on the Justice Department broadly and the FBI are something that no matter what political party you’re in, you should find deeply troubling and continue to speak out about and not become numb to attacks on the rule of law” says former FBI director @Comey
💽 https://twitter.com/TheLeadCNN/status/1071160394775851008/photo/1

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Rex Tillerson on Trump: ‘Undisciplined, doesn’t like to read’ and tries to do illegal things http://wapo.st/2B5QTX0

DailyBeast, Max Bergmann and Sam Berger: Mueller Is Telling Us: He’s Got Trump on Collusion http://thebea.st/2Pruf0r
// The special counsel is connecting the dots and it doesn’t paint a pretty picture for Trump.

WIRED, Garrett Graff: The Mueller Investigation Nears the Worst Case Scenario http://bit.ly/2QLdD8U

StarTrib: Illegal hush-money paid at President Donald Trump’s “direction” to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, federal prosecutors say. http://strib.mn/2rqucZa 
https://twitter.com/StarTribune/status/1071252779879026688/photo/1
// photos of two women

NBC: Michael Cohen assisted Mueller’s office with info about contacts between Trump aides and Russia http://nbcnews.to/2QhdgTO
// But federal prosecutors still recommended a stiff prison sentence for Cohen, citing his “extensive” criminal conduct.

CNN: Prosecutors: Michael Cohen acted at Trump’s direction when he broke the law http://cnn.it/2rpX8jZ

YahooNews: James Comey questioned by House Republicans about Trump-Russia, Clinton email probes http://yhoo.it/2RIB4wJ

TPM, Allegra Kirkland: Mueller Filing Shows Cohen Was Key To Trump Campaign’s Russia Contacts http://bit.ly/2UoFfzn

Esquire, Jack Holmes: Trump Melted Down Twice in 12 Hours as Robert Mueller’s Next Drop Loomed http://bit.ly/2rp0bZI
// “He doth protest too much” just doesn’t do it justice anymore.

AP: US: Trump lawyer met Russian offering ‘political synergy’ http://bit.ly/2RIr0E1

TheGuardian: Cohen spoke with Russian to set up Trump-Putin meeting, Mueller reveals http://bit.ly/2E9wVOs
// Trump implicated in campaign finance law violations as prosecutors allege he directed lawyer to pay off two women ; As it happened: Mueller’s filings on Cohen and Manafort

💙💙 WaPo: New Mueller filing says Trump’s ex-lawyer Michael Cohen was in touch with a Russian seeking ‘political synergy’ with campaign http://wapo.st/2QHvKfN

💙💙 WaPo: Court filings directly implicate Trump in efforts to buy women’s silence, reveal new contact between inner circle and Russian http://wapo.st/2SANmqO

💙💙 NYT: Prosecutors Say Trump Directed Illegal Payments During Campaign http://nyti.ms/2rqYHhN

🐣 RT @mkraju People who have been convicted or pleaded guilty since Trump became POTUS
— Trump’s personal attorney
— Trump’s former campaign chairman
— Trump’s former WH national security adviser
— Trump’s former campaign adviser
— Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman

🐣 RT @tribelaw WOW: The Dec 7 filing in SDNY on Michael Cohen’s sentencing charges that President Trump (aka “Individual 1”) directed a criminal conspiracy with his attorney Cohen to violate the federal election laws in order to increase his odds of winning the presidency by deceiving voters.

TheGuardian, George Monbiot: How US billionaires are fuelling the hard-right cause in Britain http://bit.ly/2L3Qzga

⭕ 6 Dec 2018

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg privately boasted in 2017 that, because of his relationship with Michael Cohen and others, he had the pull needed to help achieve the sanctions relief the Kremlin was craving, Bloomberg reports.
⋙ Bloomberg: Putin’s ‘American’ Oligarch Privately Boasted of Trump Ties. Then He Lost Billions http://bloom.bg/2GaJ1tc
// A chance New York encounter between onetime Trump lawyer Michael Cohen and a relative of Viktor Vekselberg has cost the Russian dearly.

🐣 RT @AmericanOversight NEW: We obtained records related to Assistant AG Brian Benczkowski, who previously represented the Russian entity Alfa Bank, that show he’s been recused from the Mueller investigation:
⋙ AmericanOversight: Assistant Attorney General with Ties to Russian Bank Recused from Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2zLHfJx

AP: Ecuador: Enough UK guarantees for Assange to leave embassy http://bit.ly/2RDfDNq

Politico: Congress looks to usurp Trump’s foreign policy powers http://politi.co/2SAegPO
// Senators are furious after the Khashoggi killing and are eager to challenge the president.

PoliticusUSA, Leo Vidal: Opinion: Mueller Hints That Mike Pence May Be Indicted Soon http://bit.ly/2E76Nnm //➔ interesting, but I’ll believe it when I see it

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen Tomorrow will be another big day in the Mueller investigation. Newsy filings are expected in two cases: Manafort (what he lied about) and Cohen (how he helped). Papadopoulos will be released from prison in Wisconsin. (And Comey has a closed-door interview on the Hill, too.)

🐣 RT @AaronBlake What William Barr has said:
1) More Clinton probes needed
2) Uranium One more worthy of investigation than collusion
3) Comey firing was AOK
4) Mueller team’s donations are too left-leaning
5) It’s okay for presidents to request specific investigations
⋙ WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s new top AG pick has urged more Clinton probes and played down both Russia collusion and obstruction http://wapo.st/2AVC4q5

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Andrew McCabe, who was targeted by Trump relentlessly until Sessions fired him earlier this year just days before he was set to retire/eligible to receive a pension, opened an obstruction of justice investigation into Trump after Comey’s firing, per @CNN.
⋙ CNN, Pamela Brown and Jeremy Herb: Inside the frantic decision to open a Trump obstruction probe before Mueller got the job http://cnn.it/2REcoFC

TheAtlantic, Elaina Plott: The White House Has No Plan for Confronting the Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2FZ8XrA
// Nervous aides expect the president to lead the way, tweet up a storm—and, Rudy Giuliani promises, fight back.

DailyBeast: Senate Intelligence Committee Grilled Steve Bannon About Cambridge Analytica http://thebea.st/2Eh2S8h
// The notorious ‘psychographic’ data firm remains of interest to Senate investigators—as does the former Trump strategist.

Vice, Greg Walters and Alex Lubben: Here are the key Trump team lies Mueller’s unveiled in court http://bit.ly/2KYOP7M
// by person

TPM, Nicole Lafond: Trump’s Latest Russia Probe Critique: ‘It’s Called Presidential Harassment!’ http://bit.ly/2BUYjOI

NBC: Here’s another example of how Trump’s business presents a clear conflict of interest http://nbcnews.to/2zNOXmj
// First Read is your briefing from “Meet the Press” and the NBC Political Unit on the day’s most important political stories and why they matter.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Giuliani: The Dog Ate My Counter-Report to Mueller http://nym.ag/2G1h5YJ

Newsweek, Daniel Moritz-Rabson: Giuliani Says Trump’s Written Responses to Mueller Were ‘A Nightmare,’ Contradicting President’s Claim He Did it ‘Very Easily’ http://bit.ly/2SwN5FC

Bloomberg, Ilya Arkhipov and Henry Meyer: Kremlin Sours on Trump After Putin Snubs http://bloom.bg/2BUpVU7
● Ties ‘far worse’ than if Clinton had won, Russia lawmaker says
● Russia likely to toughen policies amid arms-control standoff

YahooFinance, Rick Newman: Trump shows the perils of a businessman-president http://yhoo.it/2FYWXq2

TIME, Ryan Beckwith: How Trump Changes His Story on the Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2BVjhNe

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The Mueller investigation has gotten closer to Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2UkV8a1 (Prokop’s summaries are always solid, well-sourced and useful)
// What we know — and still don’t know — about the special counsel probe and the president.

🔊NYT: Is Trump a Traitor? http://nyti.ms/2RzJ6aV Ross Douthat, Michelle Goldberg and David Leonhardt with Lawfare’s on NYT’s “The Argument” podcast

TheGuardian: Trump aide’s appearances on RT channel are focus for Russia inquiry http://bit.ly/2QD16UF
// Ted Malloch, a Trump campaign adviser, has been questioned about his relationship with the Kremlin-controlled broadcaster

WaPo: Trump’s new top AG pick has urged more Clinton probes and played down both Russia collusion and obstruction http://wapo.st/2G0i7E7
// Former attorney general William Barr has emerged as Trump’s top pick to be the nominee for the full-time AG job, The Washington Post is reporting.

Bloomberg, David Voreacos: Prepare for More Thrills From Mueller’s Russia Investigation http://bloom.bg/2AXfRb5
// The ride isn’t over yet.

NPR, Nina Totenberg: This Supreme Court Case Could Impact The Mueller Probe And Boost Trump’s Pardon Power http://n.pr/2ATSgrT

⭕ 5 Dec 2018

WaPo, Max Boot: An Israeli tech firm is selling spy software to dictators, betraying the country’s ideals http://wapo.st/2SkX3hA

🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs The confrontation in the Sea of Azov represents an escalation in Moscow’s destabilization efforts in Ukraine, and what happens next will depend in large part on how the West responds to an undisguised act of aggression, writes Peter Dickinson.
⋙ ForeignAffairs, Peter Dickinson: Can the West Prevent the Slow Strangulation of Ukraine? http://fam.ag/2A2Gc7U
// Creeping Russian Aggression Cannot Go Unchecked

TheSternFacts, Patrick Simpson: Curt Weldon: Putin’s First Congressman http://bit.ly/2C0culn

VoiceOfAmerica: Top Senate Democrat Warns Trump Not to Lift Sanctions Against Russian Billionaire http://bit.ly/2G1o2sU
// Sen Robert Menendez, Oleg Deripaska

🔊 Slate’s Trumpcast Podcast, Virginia Heffernan: Those ’80s Moments That Politicized Trump http://bit.ly/2UmvVw3
// We explore why the Trump-Russia story goes back decades.

Esquire, Charles Pierce: Michael Flynn Has Been Singing the Full Score of a German Opera http://bit.ly/2AUJrOD
// Robert Mueller is clearly immortalizing his work against any White House shenanigans.

DailyBeast: Samantha Bee Destroys Sean Hannity’s Mueller Lies http://thebea.st/2RDI1Po
//. ‘What Hannity is talking about is lying to federal investigators and it is a crime,’ the ‘Full Frontal’ host said.

VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: As the Mueller Fire Nears, Trump Ponders Jettisoning His Loyal V.P. http://bit.ly/2UkobKV
// “They’re Beginning to Think About Whether Mike Pence Should Be Running Again”

NYT, Petro Poroshenko: Putin Must Be Punished http://nyti.ms/2zJlRoi Mr. Poroshenko is the president of Ukraine
// Russia can’t be allowed to get away with its brazen aggression against Ukraine. The West needs to act.

WaPo, Randall Eliason: Michael Flynn is only the latest shoe to drop. We know others are coming. http://wapo.st/2EeSHBb

TheGuardian: EU raises funds to fight ‘disinformation war’ with Russia http://bit.ly/2Ef6ZBF
// European commission to help member states recognise work of Kremlin ‘troll factories’

Bloomberg, Timothy O’Brien: Mueller’s Flynn Memo Should Worry Kushner and Trump http://bloom.bg/2QApmqr
// The former national security adviser provided information about interactions between the presidential transition team and Russian officials.

WIRED, Garrett Graff: 14 Questions Robert Mueller Knows the Answer To http://bit.ly/2zIfTUi

WaPo, Greg Sargent: Mueller’s new Michael Flynn memo strengthens obstruction case against Trump http://wapo.st/2FYiYoY

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco: Feds Target Butina’s GOP Boyfriend as Foreign Agent http://thebea.st/2rogYwg
// Paul Erickson served as accused Kremlin spy Maria Butina’s guide as she penetrated the American conservative movement. Now he’s under investigation as a Russian agent, too.

TheGuardian, Warren Murray: Wednesday briefing: Flynn a big help on Trump-Russia, says Mueller http://bit.ly/2QbBSxk
// Special counsel argues against jail term for lying to FBI … government due to publish full Brexit legal advice … and is tutoring for your children worth it?

⭕ 4 Dec 2018

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Mueller’s Sentencing Memo for Flynn Doubles as a Warning to Manafort http://bit.ly/2RwEqCY
// A heavily redacted document cites the former national-security adviser’s “substantial” cooperation as a reason for him to avoid jail. Trump’s former campaign chief may not be so lucky.

ForeignPolicy, Robbie Gramer and Lara Seligman: Trump and NATO Show Rare Unity in Confronting Russia’s Arms Treaty Violation http://bit.ly/2KVx3lZ
// NATO backs U.S. assertion that Moscow is violating a key Cold War-era arms treaty.

Newsweek, Cristina Maza: Donald Trump ‘Listened Carefully’ When Vladimir Putin Explained Russian Version of Events in Ukraine, Russian Media Says http://bit.ly/2BQx2wy

USAToday, Adam Schiff: Trump is compromised. What else is he hiding and who else knows about it? http://bit.ly/2rksIQ7

TheGuardian, Rebecca Solnit: Trump’s countless scams are finally catching up to him http://bit.ly/2E3pQP9
// The daily news drip can make it difficult to recognize the immense scale of the president’s legal troubles

NBC, Mimi Rocah and Harry Litman: Michael Cohen’s Trump Tower revelation could implicate Trump in a bribery scheme involving Russia http://nbcnews.to/2PlxxSQ
// Trump’s concealment of his efforts to build a Trump Tower in Moscow raise a series of serious questions.

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq The level of redactions suggests rumors that Mueller is about done are far from reality.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ShannonBream BREAKING – Notable from Mueller sentencing memo on Flynn: Flynn has “assisted with several ongoing investigations” (including criminal), participated in 19 interviews with Mueller team, provided documents and communications.

Law.com, Ellis Kim: Mueller Trumpets Flynn’s Help, Says Don’t Lock Him Up http://bit.ly/2zIHF37
// Special counsel prosecutors said the former Trump national security adviser has provided “substantial assistance.”

TheAtlantic, Harry Litman: Michael Flynn’s Worse Than a Liar http://bit.ly/2SvxJkn
// The word “lie” has lost its power in the Trump era. Try replacing it with “fraud.”

🐣 RT @matthewamiller One byproduct of this filing, intentional or not, is the information is now in the custody of a judge, not just housed in the executive branch. Even if Mueller is fired, it doesn’t disappear — can all be unsealed and made public.

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Flynn ratted out Trump. He told all. ¤ That’s your headline.

🐣 RT @hsu_spencer Flynn has cooperated with at least 3 investigations, including the SCO investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election. Two are redacted, including a criminal investigation not handled by the Mueller team. He participated in 19 interviews with SCO/DOJ prosecutors.
Cover page: https://twitter.com/hsu_spencer/status/1070132095199182848/photo/1

≣ 💙💙 Lawfare: Document: Special Counsel Files Flynn Sentencing Memo http://bit.ly/2FZOjHM

CNBC: Special counsel Robert Mueller files sentencing memo for former Trump national security advisor Michael Flynn http://cnb.cx/2rkybGE

🐣 RT @SethAbramson (OPEN THREAD) Once Special Counsel Robert Mueller files his sentencing memo in the Michael Flynn case, I’ll begin live-tweeting information about and analysis of the memo in this thread. I hope you’ll follow along and share this link with any others you think might be interested.
📌 https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1070104187130822656

🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 🔥 There’s an ongoing secret fight between Mueller and someone who is fighting a grand jury #subpoena. A Trump-appointed judge recused.🤔
My best guess is that the grand jury subpoenaed @realDonaldTrump and/or his business, and Trump is fighting it. Hearing will be Dec 14.🧐
⋙ 🐣 RT @dsamuelsohn NEW – More behind-the-scenes jockeying from Mueller in the mystery grand jury subpoena fight we’ve been following that’s headed for a closed-door oral argument in the US Court of Appeals DC Circuit on Dec. 14.
Docs: https://twitter.com/dsamuelsohn/status/1069712896798666752/photo/1-2

Slate: Matthew Whitaker Hasn’t Obstructed Mueller Yet. Maybe He Remembers What Happened to Nixon’s Crooked Lawyers. http://bit.ly/2rn0ep7

DailyBeast: Roger Stone Invokes Fifth Amendment, Declines Senate Document Request http://thebea.st/2QaWB4l

TheAtlantic, David Graham: Three Trump Lieutenants, Three Different Approaches to Mueller http://bit.ly/2zItV8x
// The special counsel is expected to file documents about three of the biggest players in the Russia probe this week, highlighting their divergent legal strategies.

Politico: New White House counsel to arrive as Democrats, Mueller close in http://politi.co/2SvbHP4
// After a two-month delay, the conservative legal activist Pat Cipollone assumes will start his job on Monday, according to two sources.

ABCNews: New court filings due this week could offer ‘road map’ to Mueller probe’s next steps http://abcn.ws/2Phahp9

TheAtlantic, Mikhaila Fogel and Benjamin Wittes: Mueller Is Laying Siege to the Trump Presidency http://bit.ly/2SvcfV5
// It won’t be a single news event that takes down the president.

TheAtlantic, Nicolas Fairweather (1932): Hitler and Hitlerism: Germany Under the Nazis http://bit.ly/2ASKrT5
// The Führer’s early goals included physical education, a return to rural life, health care for all — and foreboding plans for the Jews.

BusinessInsider: Mueller is about to drop major new details about 3 of the most important players in the Russia probe http://read.bi/2SrqhqM
// Mueller office will file new court documents on Manafort, Cohen, Flynn

● The special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has reportedly told defense lawyers it is “tying up loose ends” in the Russia investigation, signaling that the ongoing probe is coming to a close.
● This week, prosecutors are also scheduled to file several new documents in court about some of the most important players in the investigation: former national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, and former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen.
● All three men have pleaded guilty and have been cooperating with prosecutors.
● The upcoming court filings will contain intriguing new details about the nature of their cooperation and where the Russia investigation is ultimately headed.

Salon/Alternet, Matthew Chapman: Former deputy special counsel: Robert Mueller’s probe “will likely ensnare the president’s family” http://bit.ly/2E1MAzn
// “Trump was hoping to do business in Russia, and doing so would require the approval of Putin”

CNN, Stephen Collinson and Marshall Cohen: Mueller may be poised to lift the lid of his investigation http://cnn.it/2rsa0Xb

⭕ 3 Dec 2018

Alternet, Cody Fenwick: ‘Mueller has promised to lay it all out’: Former federal prosecutor explains why this will be a landmark week for the Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2ATQPtk
// Three separate events will give Mueller opportunities to drop bombshells.

JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Perjury Chart: Trump Associates’ Lies, False, or Misleading Statements on Russia to Federal Authorities http://bit.ly/2riRfoN

NationalInterest, Dov Zakheim: Trump’s Mueller Worries Were On Display at the G20 http://bit.ly/2Pfry24

CommonDreams, Bill Blum: 5 Reasons Trump Won’t Fire Mueller http://bit.ly/2RwWzAw
// Despite all you’ve heard about the commander-in-chief’s unfettered authority to discharge any member of the executive branch with impunity, Mueller isn’t going anywhere any time soon

1. Trump lacks unilateral authority to remove Mueller.
2. Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker may lack the legal authority to remove Mueller.
3. Whitaker may defy expectations and refuse to fire Mueller.
4. Mueller can contest his firing.
5. Trump is deathly afraid of impeachment

RollingStone, Ryan Bort: Trump Kicks Off the Week With Some Light Witness Tampering http://bit.ly/2EdrC1d
// The president praised Roger Stone for refusing to testify against him and bashed Michael Cohen for cooperating

NYT, Timothy Snyder: The Cowardly Face of Authoritarianism http://nyti.ms/2G8cZhg

People need truth, which a cult of personality destroys. Theories of democracy, from the ancient Greeks through the Enlightenment to today, take for granted that the world around us yields to understanding. We pursue the facts alongside our fellow citizens. But in a cult of personality, truth is replaced by belief, and we believe what the leader wishes us to believe. The face replaces the mind.

The transition from democracy to personality cult begins with a leader who is willing to lie all the time, in order to discredit the truth as such. The transition is complete when people can no longer distinguish between truth and feeling.

🐣 RT @SenBlumenthal Lying to Congress is a federal crime & the Judiciary Committee must determine if facts were deliberately omitted or misstated to mislead & prevent us from getting to the truth. Chairman Grassley, we must have Donald Trump Jr. & other key witnesses re-appear before the Committee.
Text Block: https://twitter.com/SenBlumenthal/status/1069687227259723776/photo/1

WaPo, Deanna Paul: Trump’s latest tweets cross clear lines, experts say: Obstruction of justice and witness tampering http://wapo.st/2Phw8Nm

NYT, Michael Weiser: Why Michael Cohen, Trump’s Fixer, Confessed to It All http://nyti.ms/2UeqI9E

🐣 RT @MiekeEoyang Criminal statutes for this news cycle:
18 USC 1512 -witness tampering
15 USC 78dd-1 -FCPA
18 USC 1503 -obstruction of justice
18 USC 1505 -obstruction of Congressional proceedings
18 USC 371 -conspiracy to obstruct
18 USC 1622 -suborning perjury
18 USC 1001 -false statements

Politico, Asha Rangappa: Trump’s Moscow Deal Is Exactly What the Framers Worried About http://politi.co/2Q8uinc
// Self-dealing and foreign influence were their biggest fears for the presidency.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff And what about the terrible, completely related to Trump things, like lying to Congress to hide your business’s efforts to get Kremlin help on the Trump Tower Moscow deal, or his illegal payment of hush money during the campaign? What should he get for that?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “Michael Cohen asks judge for no Prison Time.” You mean he can do all of the TERRIBLE, unrelated to Trump, things having to do with fraud, big loans, Taxis, etc., and not serve a long prison term? He makes up stories to get a GREAT & ALREADY reduced deal for himself, and get…..
… ….his wife and father-in-law (who has the money?) off Scott Free. He lied for this outcome and should, in my opinion, serve a full and complete sentence.

JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Perjury Chart: Trump Associates’ Lies, False, or Misleading Statements on Russia to Federal Authorities http://bit.ly/2riRfoN

Newsweek: Donald Trump Is ‘Compromised’ Just as Michael Flynn Was, Rep. Adam Schiff Says After Michael Cohen’s Russia Revelations http://bit.ly/2U9aAWV

ChicagoSunTimes, Linda Chavez: As if we did not know: Trump’s love affair with Putin was all about the money http://bit.ly/2BQdW9Y

PBS/AP: AP fact check: Trump’s claims on Russia probe, Michael Cohen http://to.pbs.org/2QcG8Nc

TheAtlantic, Andrew Kragie: House Democrats Shift Their Focus From Collusion to Leverage http://bit.ly/2KQ9P0n
// Michael Cohen’s guilty plea has raised the specter that Russia had compromising information on President Trump related to his business dealings during the campaign.

ChicagoTrib, Noah Feldman: Commentary: How Michael Cohen’s guilty plea clearly links Trump to Russia http://trib.in/2zFUj2M

WaPo Factchecker, Meg Kelly: The president’s misleading statements on Trump Tower Moscow: A timeline http://wapo.st/2AN9c3d

USAToday: Putin trip to Washington to meet with President Trump is now ‘out of question,’ Kremlin says http://bit.ly/2G14nZV

Axios: Mueller spokesman says Manafort memo will be made public http://bit.ly/2riaNtl

TheGuardian, Jill Abramson: The Mueller investigation is closing in on Trump http://bit.ly/2KRdf3a
// What a catalogue of rogues – and what a tantalizing pile of clues. Surely we will soon know where all this leads

Salon, Bob Cesca: Here’s how Trump’s proposed Moscow project is even dirtier than it looks http://bit.ly/2RxfTh3
// Just another real estate deal, you say? Not quite: Trump’s deal with a Kremlin-owned bank was blatantly illegal

NBC, Ken Dilanian and Tom Winter: Think President Trump seems rattled now? There may be more to come http://nbcnews.to/2rjMafV
// Analysis: A series of court filings in the next few weeks may shed light on what Mueller has learned from people who were once in Trump’s inner circle.

VanityFair, TA Frank: Is This It?: A Trump-Hater’s Guide to Mueller Skepticism http://bit.ly/2SqV6vo “Even if the special counsel presents one hell of a report, Democrats must ask: was it worth it?” [duh, yes]
// Mueller’s comportment suggests a man who’s fallen prey to the same state of mind that warped Ken Starr—namely disgust over the people you’re investigating and a desire to justify the sunk capital. Even if the special counsel presents one hell of a report, Democrats must ask: was it worth it?

YahooNews, Michael Isikoff: Mueller preparing endgame for Russia investigation http://yhoo.it/2ALq9Lr

TheWeek, Matthew Walther: The crisis Mueller is sowing http://bit.ly/2U9dj2o

TheHill: Harvard CAPS/Harris Poll: 61% say Trump should sign measure protecting Mueller to avert government shutdown http://bit.ly/2DYDZgB

TheHill: Corsi files complaint with DOJ alleging misconduct in Mueller probe http://bit.ly/2QtsBjF

Newsweek, Christina Zhao: Fox News Panelist Says Mueller ‘Might Have Something’ and ‘Things Are Starting to Seem a Little Weird’ http://bit.ly/2KPFlff

LawfareBlog, Benjamin Wittes: What a Judge Should Ask Mueller About Trump’s Tweets http://bit.ly/2BOWItz

NBC, Allan Smith: Trump hailed Roger Stone for standing up to Mueller. Some legal experts said that’s tampering. http://nbcnews.to/2Eci4Uk
// The president spoke out after his former associate said that he would never testify against him.

Axios, Garrett Graff: Mueller’s breadcrumbs suggest he has the goods http://bit.ly/2DYgg04

CNN, Elie Honig: Mueller is about to have his say — in a big way http://cnn.it/2QfO9B6

WaPo, Greg Sargent: After the latest Mueller news, these corrupt Trump moves look much worse http://wapo.st/2KSJ7Em

USAToday, Peter Zeidenberg: Mueller is building a conspiracy case that’s likely to ensnare Trump and his family http://bit.ly/2U9bbaU

🐣 RT @jonathanchait Gee, do you think maybe he got some bad news from his lawyers this morning? https://twitter.com/jonathanchait/status/1069622793657085953/photo/1
// four Trump tweets

AP: DC, Md. officials ready with subpoenas in Trump hotel case http://bit.ly/2rj9TNx

🐣 RT @RonaldKlain Hey, look: Our President is using his “executive time” to live tweet a showing of Godfather 2.
🐣 RT @gtconway3d File under “18 U.S.C. §§ 1503, 1512”
⋙ 🐣 RT @neal_katyal George is right. This is genuinely looking like witness tampering. DOJ (at least with a nonfake AG) prosecutes cases like these all the time. The fact it’s done out in the open is no defense. Trump is genuinely melting down, and no good lawyer can represent him under these circs
🐣 RT @KenDilanian Even for the president, this is new territory. Will we see it quoted in a future report on obstruction and witness tampering?
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Stone, essentially stating that he will not be forced by a rogue and out of control prosecutor to make up lies and stories about “President Trump.” Nice to know that some people still have “guts!”

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 To a large degree, Trump reached the W.H. without a thorough vetting. His taxes, his biz deals, and his mob ties received little scrutiny in 2016. His admin’s scandals have been mostly ignored by Republicans. Now Dems have an opportun­ity to remedy this.
⋙ MotherJones, David Corn: Which Investigations Will the Dems Launch First http://bit.ly/2Eccxgw
// Jan-Feb issue, They will have plenty of targets to choose from come January.

CNN, Josh Campbell: Mr. President, if you’re attacking the FBI, you’re losing http://cnn.it/2zzJ1NC

🐣 RT @RichardHaass There is a pattern to the foreign policy of @realDonaldTrump. We have seen it w N Korea, NAFTA, and now China. He creates a sense of crisis, compromises, and both claims he accomplished more than he did and deserves credit for having defused the crisis that he largely created.

⭕ 2 Dec 2018

🐣 RT @craigunger If anyone doesn’t understand what Putin is getting from Trump, here’s a big part of it. Fiddling while Rome burns, he does nothing as Russia threatens Ukraine.
⋙ 🐣 RT @anders_aslund Needless to say, the clueless Trump administration has not said a word about this. Does the US administration actually exist under Trump?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Ukraine’s Pres Poroshenko says that Russia has around 80,000 Russian troops, 1400 artillery and missile systems, 900 tanks, 2300 armored vehicles, about 500 airplanes and 300 helicopters around occupied Donbass and Crimea. All week Putin has been escalating w words and actions
📌 https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1069324100492058625

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Apparently, Putin wasn’t satisfied with his little #G20Summit2018 chat, because today #Russia’s state media is still roasting Trump: he is “clumsy,” “morose,” “defensive,” “brought dissonance to the #G20Summit,” “wasn’t prepared for a meeting with Putin,” “had nothing to say.” ©

MotherJones, Mark Follman: The Mueller Investigation Grows More Ominous for Trump and His Inner Circle http://bit.ly/2FX986N
// Revelations from Michael Cohen’s latest plea deal bode badly for Trump world.

WaPo: Cohen’s guilty plea suggests Russia has ‘leverage’ over Trump, top Democrat says http://wapo.st/2FVKR0O Senator Mark Warner (D-VA)

🐣 RT @olgaNYC1211 Just a reminder.. ¤ Russia looks like it’s preparing for war against Ukraine and the Trump regime as well as Republicans delayed the damaging sanctions package which was supposed to go in effect in Sept/Oct until next year.
This will have a devastating effect not just for Ukraine

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 “Trump hid from voters one of the most significant conflicts of interest in the modern history of U.S. political campaigns.”
⋙ MotherJones: Here’s Evidence of Collusion: Trump’s Lawyer Discussed Business Deal With Putin’s Office http://bit.ly/2UehQAO
// 11/29/2018, Michael Cohen pleads guilty to lying to Congress and reveals that Trump’s company hooked up with Moscow.

PoliticusUSA: Timeline Shows Trump Pals Lying About Colluding With Wikileaks http://bit.ly/2U73nqe

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson When Roger goes on national television and lies about not being in contact with the Trump legal and political team, he’s hoping you won’t ask about the cutout Trump uses to reach him these days. ¤ Yes, I informed the Mueller team. You’re welcome!

🐣 RT @StratSentinel #Ukraine President Petro Poroshenko said #Russia has deployed “more than 80,000 troops, 1,400 artillery and multiple rocket launch systems, 900 tanks, 2,300 armored combat vehicles, 500 aircraft and 300 helicopters” along their common border.
⋙ Stars&Stripes/AP: Ukraine cites massive buildup of Russian forces along border http://bit.ly/2Q56Ret

CNN, Marshall Cohen and Tal Yellin: How Trump Tower Moscow fits into Russian interference ~ Timeline http://cnn.it/2AT0q3V

DailyBeast, Julia Davis: Putin’s Media Roasts Trump: Russia ‘Should Spit’ on Him and the United States http://thebea.st/2U4gx7v
// The on-again-off-again non-meeting with Putin at the G20 was played for laughs in the Kremlin’s official media—but with an angry edge.

⭕ 1 Dec 2018

Salon, Lucian Truscott: Get ready for Mueller’s end game http://bit.ly/2DXSWzp
// Mueller signaled this week that he’s ready. Is Trump?

Slate, Dahlia Lithwick: This Was the Week the Mueller Probe Switched from ‘What If’ to ‘What Else’ http://bit.ly/2Pf1S5J
// Real-world conspiracies don’t unravel neatly. But this is a week we’ll look back on.

Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 80: Mueller Crashes Trump’s Liars Club http://politi.co/2zA6RJi
// The special counsel continues to expose the one talent shared by all the president’s men: They just can’t seem to tell the truth.

NYT: Mueller Exposes the Culture of Lying That Surrounds Trump http://nyti.ms/2reBTBA

DisinfoPortal [EU]: Kremlin Watch Briefing: The EU has to start taking pro-Kremlin disinformation seriously http://bit.ly/2RAa4za
// undated

JustSecurity, Bob Bauer and Ryan Goodman: Yes, Collusion: The Legal Significance of the New Mueller Revelations http://bit.ly/2FQr8zx

Bloomberg, Shannon Pettypiece: Trump World’s Russian Entanglement Captured by One Day in June http://bloom.bg/2BKfdiW
● Talks about building a Moscow tower, dishing dirt on Clinton
● A day in 2016 is a window into the contacts Mueller is probing

TheGuardian, Tom McCarthy: ‘Mueller knows a lot’: Manafort and Cohen moves put Trump in line of fire http://bit.ly/2zAreWI
// The striking subtext of the ‘bombshell’ week was the realization of just how much evidence the special counsel has collected

PBS: Trump aides caught in web of deception over Russia contacts http://to.pbs.org/2zBoCaQ

TIME: Defense Secretary Mattis Accuses Russian President Putin of Trying to ‘Subvert Democratic Processes’ http://bit.ly/2DVG251

Politico, Kyle Cheney: Cohen claims ‘regular contact’ with Trump legal team when crafting false statement to Congress http://politi.co/2DVxKdq
// The president’s former personal lawyer seeks leniency in a new court filing amid cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller.

BuzzfeedNews: Michael Cohen Says He Bravely Turned On Trump So Doesn’t Deserve Jail Time http://bit.ly/2Q77UL3
// Cohen plans to “re-point his internal compass true north toward a productive, ethical and thoroughly law abiding life,” according to his lawyers.

AP, Eric Tucker: Trump aides caught in web of deception over Russia contacts http://bit.ly/2reyDGv

LawfareBlog, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes: There’s a Lot Going On in Michael Cohen’s Sentencing Memo http://bit.ly/2SpXsuM

NYT, Quinta Jurecic: Robert Mueller Is No Match for Fox News http://nyti.ms/2StCpYn
// The evidence from the special counsel’s investigation is already damning, but it must contend with a haze of lies, confusion and “alternative facts.”

WaPo, Dan Balz: Mueller’s probe has produced a rogues’ gallery of liars http://wapo.st/2AHGdOb

DailyBeast, Justin Miller: Cohen: Trump Knew I Called Kremlin for Help With Trump Tower Moscow http://thebea.st/2Rt3wCr
// The president downplays his knowledge of the project, but his ex-fixer says he knew a lot—and that a cover-up before Congress was crafted while talking to Trump’s lawyers.

🐣 RT @renato_mariotti THREAD: What does Michael Cohen’s sentencing submission tell us about his cooperation against Trump and the potential involvement of others in his criminal conduct? (Short answer: A lot more than you might expect)
📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1068786624606101504

DailyBeast, Justin Miller: Cohen: Trump Knew I Called Kremlin for Help With Trump Tower Moscow http://thebea.st/2Rt3wCr
// The president downplays his knowledge of the project, but his ex-fixer says he knew a lot—and that a cover-up before Congress was crafted while talking to Trump’s lawyers.

TheGuardian, Yanis Varoufakis and David Adler: We shouldn’t rush to save the liberal order. We should remake it http://bit.ly/2AH35NK
// The UN security council, the IMF, the World Bank and the ILO were conceived as agencies of change – they can be again

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Adam Nagourney: George Bush, 41st President, Dies at 94 http://nyti.ms/2Q7skDp

⭕ 30 Nov 2018

💙💙 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show: Lifting Russian sanctions key to Trump deal exposed by Cohen http://on.msnbc.com/2Q6szP3
// Rachel Maddow shows how the Trump Organization’s continued pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow deal into the 2016 campaign, exposed by Michael Cohen this week, explains Donald Trump’s soft stance on sanctioning Russian entities, including the bank that would finance the Trump Tower deal.

Slate, David Lurie: How Devin Nunes Helped Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2PeBOaW
// The House Intelligence Committee chair may have unintentionally assisted the special counsel in building cases against Trump associates.

TheIntercept, James Risen: Donald Trump’s Lies Are Giving Way to the Truth http://bit.ly/2Qubi1D

MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show: Lifting Russian sanctions key to Trump deal exposed by Cohen http://on.msnbc.com/2Q6szP3
// Rachel Maddow shows how the Trump Organization’s continued pursuit of a Trump Tower Moscow deal into the 2016 campaign, exposed by Michael Cohen this week, explains Donald Trump’s soft stance on sanctioning Russian entities, including the bank that would finance the Trump Tower deal.

WaPo: Senate Intelligence Committee has referred cases of suspected lying to Mueller http://wapo.st/2zAnjsL

DailyBeast, Matt Lewis: Conservatives, Prepare Yourself Now for What Mueller May Find http://thebea.st/2QphLv1
// How we react in the aftermath of the special counsel’s findings will determine the future of the Republican Party and, possibly, the country.

🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger If you believe Cohen, then [sic] Russians knew Trump was lying and Trump knew that they knew. That’s leverage.
⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Was Trump compromised? Is he still? http://wapo.st/2DSnsei

NYT, Katie Rogers: Trump’s Book Club: A President Who Doesn’t Read Promotes the Books That Promote Him http://nyti.ms/2zz2YUX

BuzzFeedNews, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold (May): Trump Moscow: The Definitive Story Of How Trump’s Team Worked The Russian Deal During The Campaign http://bit.ly/2Q6PnhR
// 5/17/2018, On the day of the third Republican presidential debate, Trump personally signed the letter of intent.

RFE/RL: Trump Defends His Russian Business Efforts As ‘Very Legal & Very Cool’ http://bit.ly/2DToNBq

WaPo, Aaron Blake and Colby Itkowitz: Trump has flouted the rules before. But his dealing in Russia is a new level of brazenness. http://wapo.st/2SkXT9v

AP, Chad Day: Mueller is back – and so are questions about Trump, Russia http://bit.ly/2AG9QQ3

NBC: Lawyer: Cohen’s statements do not contradict Trump Jr. on Russia deals http://nbcnews.to/2Q9mz8B
// “I have no concerns about Donald Trump Jr.’s information,” said his attorney, Alan Futerfas. “He was open, straightforward, forthright and honest.”

WeeklyStandard, Stephen Hayes: How Trump’s Lies About Russia Were Exposed http://tws.io/2Q60ckl
// Not by his critics but by his closest advisers.

NYT, Bret Stephens: Scent of the Russians http://nyti.ms/2RthKU0
// There’s a connection between Cohen’s guilty plea and Ukraine’s desperate plight.

NBC: Trump, Russia spar over why he ditched Putin meeting http://nbcnews.to/2SogstI
// Earlier, a Russian official had expressed skepticism with the U.S. explanation that the situation in Ukraine had driven the president’s decision, not “the domestic political situation in the U.S.”

NYT: Whitaker’s Ascent at Justice Dept. Surprised Investigators of Firm Accused of Fraud http://nyti.ms/2AFufVh

NYT: Dodging Friends, Chased by Legal Troubles, Trump Navigates G-20 http://nyti.ms/2DUTLcn

CNN: Cohen believed Trump would pardon him, but then things changed http://cnn.it/2zBm2lv

Bloomberg: Russia’s Peskov Shares 2016 Emails From Ex-Trump Lawyer Cohen http://bloom.bg/2U1no1p

🐣 RT @djrithkopf This G20 represents an astonishing turnabout in America’s international fortunes. Our president sits on its periphery, a shattered and despised figure for most, friend only to the small clique of autocrats and murder[er]s defiling it with their presence.
LATimes, David Rothkopf: The G-20 will showcase a rogue President Trump and a no longer ‘indispensable’ U.S. http://lat.ms/2DTXSp1

DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: There’s No Right to Jail a President in the Constitution Because The Founders Never Imagined a Crook Like Trump http://thebea.st/2zyjt3E
// Is this what the presidency of this republic is supposed to be: the safe haven of a scoundrel, a witness protection program for a liar and lawbreaker?

🐣 RT @NBCPolitics Cohen plea deal thrusts years of Trump Tower Moscow ambitions back into the spotlight.
⋙ NBC: Scuttled Trump Tower Moscow project back in limelight after Cohen guilty plea http://nbcnews.to/2reQr4v
// Trump associate and convicted felon Felix Sater told NBC News that he discussed a plan with Cohen to give a penthouse in the proposed Moscow skyscraper to Putin.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Some things are a hard, long path with a lot of false starts, twists, turns, and resistance. ¤ And then it just all starts rolling and you wonder how you ever thought it couldn’t happen.

Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump once said he had “no dealings with Russia.” Now he claims “everybody knew” about them. http://bit.ly/2SjMfvy
// Trump has dramatically moved the goalposts about his contacts with Russia. Here are the receipts.

🐣 RT @KaivanShroff Trump nervously watching his bosses at #G20
https://twitter.com/KaivanShroff/status/1068652920239996929/photo/1
// tags: Trump watching Putin and MBS and Putin

FiveThirtyEight, Perry Bacon: The Two (Or Three) Senators To Watch In 2019 http://bit.ly/2BKL17f “Collins-Gardner-Murkowski-Romney … is the coalition I’m watching in 2019”

🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “This is a man who has no value system…he’s infantile” and “worships dictators, and murderers” ¤ “That this man is a patriot, I’m sorry, I don’t buy it” – Ret. Colonel Ralph Peters 💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1068649097593319424/photo/1

🐣 RT @20committee I’m gonna enjoy watching Trump’s gaggle of idiots go to jail. But I’m really gonna enjoy all the asset forfeiture.
⋙ 🐣 RT @FrankEichmann @20committee I have high hopes that asset forfeiture is in Trump’s future. ¤ Question: By not completely separating himself from TrumpOrg in Jan/17 did Trump increase the likelihood that he could lose more assets?

CNBC, Tucker Higgins: Russians tease Trump for canceling his G-20 meeting with Putin, blame US politics, not Ukraine http://cnb.cx/2U2PYzA
● Senior Russian officials publicly chided U.S. President Donald Trump following his announcement on Thursday that he would no longer meet with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin during the G-20 summit of world leaders in Argentina.
● Officials questioned Trump’s justification for scrapping the meeting at the last minute and dismissed the notion that the diplomatic development would be a setback for Russia.
● In the federal assembly, Russia’s legislature, top foreign policy lawmakers accused Trump of conducting “Twitter anti-diplomacy” and said that the forgone meeting is a lost opportunity “not for Putin, but for Trump.”

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Lied About His Very Legal and Very Cool Russia Deals for No Reason http://nym.ag/2FQpzBU

Vox, Aaron Rupar: Trump once said he had “no dealings with Russia.” Now he claims “everybody knew” about them. http://bit.ly/2P9vVM0

Vox, Alex Ward: Michael Cohen’s guilty plea proves the House GOP’s Russia investigation was a sham http://bit.ly/2E7tdW9
// Republicans didn’t have all the facts. They ended the probe anyway.

WaPo: ‘Very legal & very cool’: Trump dismisses criticism of his 2016 business project in Russia http://wapo.st/2SkmbQZ

Vox, Aaron Rupar: Michael Cohen’s plea deal shows that Russia did have something on Trump http://bit.ly/2Q2g0Es
// Putin’s spokesperson knew Cohen lied to Congress — and helped him cover it up.

TheGuardian, David Smith: Trump calls Russia deal ‘legal and cool’ as Mueller inquiry gathers momentum http://bit.ly/2E3u8Ha
// Michael Cohen’s confession casts the president himself as a pivotal figure in Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling

BBC, Anthony Zurcher: Trump-Russia: Five big things Mueller is looking at http://bit.ly/2ANk8ht

CNN, Stephen Collinson: Mueller starts to piece together Russia puzzle in most significant move yet http://cnn.it/2SnGcGC

WSJ: Matthew Whitaker Knew of Fraud Allegations at Company He Advised http://on.wsj.com/2FRBjnM
// Documents show now-acting U.S. attorney general regularly emailed with firm’s CEO

WSJ: Mueller Bores Into Trump Adviser Roger Stone’s Ties to WikiLeaks http://on.wsj.com/2RrZGK6
// Special counsel’s probe into possible collusion with Russia concentrates on 2016 leaks of Clinton emails

🔄 NYT: Robert Mueller and His Prosecutors: Who They Are and What They’ve Done http://nyti.ms/2SlolzT

Observer, John Schindler: As Trump Panic-Tweets, Putin Cracks His Whip and Shows Him Who’s Boss http://bit.ly/2FPsoD7

Reuters: World leaders set to convene Argentina summit clouded by disputes http://reut.rs/2KLEwUo

⭕ 29 Nov 2018

WaPo: THE SWAMP BUILDERS ~ How Stone and Manafort helped create the mess Trump promised to clean up http://wapo.st/2CpDdIz
// 2nd of 3-part series ‘All The Best People’

NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: The Legal Perils That Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea Poses for Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2DVQeL9

WaPo, Marc Fisher: Trump borrows his rhetoric — and his view of power — from the mob http://wapo.st/2FTeAHH

WaPo, Philip Bump: Why there’s reason to question Trump’s answers to Mueller — and what that means legally http://wapo.st/2U6l2OE

RawStory, Noor al-Sibai: ‘Most of the GOP leadership has been compromised’ by Russian money: Trump biographer http://bit.ly/2SsQ4Pp

Craig Unger, author of House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, wrote in a Reddit AMA that one of the biggest surprise in his book is how Trump has been compromised “for decades.”

In the 90’s, Unger wrote, Russians began sending money to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), a longtime congressman who later became House Majority Leader. He also suggested that the mafia was sending money to other Republicans as well.

“I believe most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by” Russian money, the author added. “The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee run by Mitch McConnell got millions from [Soviet-born businessman] Leonard Blavatnik.”

“As for the endgame,” Unger concluded, “I think it is already [beginning] to unravel.”

TheGuardian, Richard Wolffe: After Cohen’s guilty plea, the threads of Trump Inc are fraying http://bit.ly/2KLBXlB

NYT: Trump Denies Business Dealings With Russia. His Former Lawyer Contradicts Him. http://nyti.ms/2TUPDih
// For years, the president has denied that he had any business interests in Russia during the 2016 election. His former personal lawyer now says otherwise.

🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff
This is a good point that is often missed:
Much of the staff — even the political appointees — have no idea the depths of the depravity they’re dealing with.
I would expect to see much of the hostility towards the media to change as staff realizes the media was right.

🐣 RT @visionsurreal THREAD: ¤ Randy Credico, as many of us know, went a little berserk on Twitter last night and deleted his account. ¤ What did Credico mean when he said to @realDonaldTrump that Roger Stone “confided in me about your depraved sexual behavior”? /1 ¤ h/t ¤ @LeslieMPozsonyi 📌 https://twitter.com/visionsurreal/status/1068333729863614464
… So, are there any hints from Credico’s previous tweets that might clue us in as to what he meant by learning from Stone about ¤ @realDonaldTrump’s “depraved sexual behavior”? ¤ Yes. ¤ 3 days ago, Credico referred to Trump as a “child abuser” and “sex abuser.” /5 ¤ h/t @WSM_97

So, are there any hints from Credico's previous tweets that might clue us in as to what he meant by learning from Stone about @realDonaldTrump's "depraved sexual behavior"?

Yes.

3 days ago, Credico referred to Trump as a "child abuser" and "sex abuser." 👀 /5

h/t @WSM_97 pic.twitter.com/KzjpFvbXHV

— Devin Nunes' Mom's Son Devin (@visionsurreal) November 30, 2018

… Also, on 9/9/18, referring to his dog in a manner that made you realize Credico’s really talking about a certain “orange” haired “flim flam freak,” Credico churned out another possible clue: ¤ “Racist child molester” ¤ And then topped it off w/ ¤ “is toast jagoff.”/6

Also, on 9/9/18, referring to his dog in a manner that made you realize Credico's really talking about a certain "orange" haired "flim flam freak," Credico churned out another possible clue:

"Racist child molester"

And then topped it off w/ @realDonaldTrump "is toast jagoff."/6 pic.twitter.com/xZLy4IZE46

— Devin Nunes' Mom's Son Devin (@visionsurreal) November 30, 2018

… So, point blank, is ¤ @realDonaldTrump ¤ a “child molester” as Randy Credico insinuates, and do Roger and Randy have knowledge to support that Trump molested children? ¤ We’re aware that Putin may have “kompromat” on Trump–some financial and some sexual–so what do we make of this?/7
↥ ↧
⋙ 🐣 MiamiHerald: Perversion of Justice [Series] ~ A decade before #MeToo, a multimillionaire sex offender from Florida got the ultimate break. http://hrld.us/2E86R6U
// He was over 50. They were little girls. Their stories were almost identical. The evidence was substantial.

Jeffrey Epstein had a little black book filled with the names and personal phone numbers of some of the world’s wealthiest and most influential people, from Bill Clinton and Donald Trump to actors, actresses, scientists and business tycoons. ¤ A money manager for the super-rich, Epstein had two private jets, the largest single residence in Manhattan, an island in the Caribbean, a ranch in New Mexico and a waterfront estate in Florida. ¤ But Epstein also had an obsession. ¤ For years, Epstein lured an endless stream of teenage girls to his Palm Beach mansion, offering to pay them for massages. Instead, police say, for years he coerced middle and high school girls into engaging in sex acts with him and others.

🐣 RT @jmclaughlinSAIS One of the most notable things learned today is that Russia knew all along when Trump was lying during the campaign in denying financial or other dealings with Moscow. The seeds of blackmail. More to wonder about re what was said during that private meeting w/Putin in Helsinki.

🐣 RT @TheHill President Trump: “I was running my business while I was campaigning. There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, which case I would have gone back into the business. And why should I lose lots of opportunities?” http://hill.cm/wGHJwEH 
💽 https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1068422128272318464/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 “I have nothing to do with Russia!”

WaPo: Charles Krauthammer: The enduring miracle of the American Constitution http://wapo.st/2P51CpP from his upcoming posthumously published book

🐣 RT @JohnWDean Historian Arthur Schlesinger Jr. observed: “Politics in a democracy is ultimately an educational process, an adventure in persuasion and consent. Every president stands in Theodore Roosevelt’s bully pulpit.” Trump is a bully without a pulpit, and unpersuasive. No consent, please.

🐣 RT @ProudResister The most prophetic 2 minutes and 44 seconds in American history is: ¤ @HillaryClinton warning us about @realDonaldTrump’s ties to Russia… ¤ …8 days BEFORE the 2016 election. 💽 https://twitter.com/ProudResister/status/1068341735216959488/photo/1

💙💙 LawFareBlog (Benjamin Wittes & crew): How to Read Michael Cohen’s Latest Plea and Its Revelations About the Trump Organization http://bit.ly/2DVwoiK
// By Mikhaila Fogel, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn, Benjamin Wittes

In August 2017, … Cohen submitted a letter to the House and Senate committees regarding the Moscow Project, stating that the project was “abandoned” in January 2016 and that he did not discuss it extensively within the Trump Organization. Cohen said he had discussed the project with Trump only three times. He further stated that he never planned to travel to Russia for the Moscow Project nor planned to ask Trump to travel there. And, Cohen told Congress, though he had reached out to “the Press Secretary for the President of Russia” regarding the proposal, he did “not recall” receiving any response.

But these statements were all false, Cohen has now admitted. What actually happened, according to the criminal information, is remarkable.

📋 🐣 RT @amervoices Since 1965
Democrats (25 years in power):
3 indictments
1 conviction
1 prison sentence.
Republicans (28 years in power):
120 indictments
89 convictions
34 prison sentences.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff What Trump says: If Democrats play tough I will declassify “devastating documents.” ¤ What he means: If Democrats do legitimate oversight I will burn sources and allies by selectively declassifying info so my legal team can misrepresent it to the public. ¤ Why he’s doing it: Fear.

🐣 RT @XSovietNews Dmitri Peskov, who discussed Trump Tower Moscow with Michael Cohen, says Moscow is ready for contact with Trump. Helpful!
⋙ Reuters: Kremlin spokesman says Moscow ready for contact with Trump: RIA http://reut.rs/2Smoe71
// 11/29/2018, The Kremlin regrets U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to cancel a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Argentina and said Moscow is ready for contact with Trump, RIA news agency cited spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying on Friday. ¤ Trump on Thursday said he was cancelling a planned meeting with Putin at the G20 summit, citing the crisis in Ukraine.

🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri NEW: @NicolleDWallace reports AG Rod Rosenstein appears to be still overseeing Mueller probe… ¤ “I’m told that Matt Whitaker as of this moment has not involved himself yet in any of the machinations of the Special Counsel Probe”
… “The charge brought against Michael Cohen today” has “Special Counsel Mueller’s signature on it, that went through the same office that all of the indictments” have gone through, “that’s the Deputy AG’s office” – @NicolleDWallace
⋙ 🐣 Is it technically possible for DAG Rosenstein to himself file an objection regarding the legitimacy of Whitaker’s appointment?

🐣 RT @NormEisen Friends, no coincidence that the Cohen deal implicating Trump personally in Russia contacts during campaign is announced just AFTER Mueller locked Trump in on collusion in writing–& just BEFORE Trump will be face to face with Putin. As I have said all along: Bob loves surprises

🐣 RT @TheHill Pelosi says Dems will demand language to protect Mueller in spending bill http://hill.cm/4D3ZY8b 

TheHill: CNN’s Gloria Borger: Source close to Cohen says he has ‘the goods’ http://bit.ly/2TSW31c

“And so this clearly goes beyond the Trump Tower Moscow … although that is crucial and important,” Borger said on CNN. “But if Michael Cohen is talking, and we know how close he was to Trump at certain points, how loyal he has been to Donald Trump, and we also know the things that were being asked in the grand jury.”

“I think Michael Cohen, who was the man who said he would take a bullet for the president, has now become Brutus to the president,” Borger said. “Because he has this need now to – his people say – tell the truth and come clean and is no longer in the business of protecting Donald Trump, which is what he did for all those years.” 

RawStory: Former FBI agent Asha Rangappa tells CNN Trump’s lies show Russia has kompromat over president: ‘This is a national security issue’ http://bit.ly/

NYMag, Frank Rich: Mueller’s Steady Stream of Russia Revelations Is Driving Trump Crazy http://nym.ag/2P9IZRB

NBC, Jonathan Allen: Trump’s new Russia deal defense: Just business as usual http://nbcnews.to/2TWvsjM
// Analysis: The president’s take on his financial ties to Russia has changed, from “we’ve stayed away” to “there would have been nothing wrong” with pursuing a project.

WaPo: Cohen’s plea deal renews scrutiny of Republicans’ Trump-Russia report http://wapo.st/2QuKm1K

Michael Cohen’s admission Thursday that he lied to Congress has revived scrutiny of a controversial investigative report, written earlier this year by President Trump’s Republican allies on the House Intelligence Committee, that concluded there was no evidence of a link between Trump or his associates and the Russians who sought to swing the 2016 election in his favor.

The stunning development has emboldened Democrats who have long contended that others loyal to the president — Cohen was Trump’s personal attorney for many years — also lied to lawmakers, prompting new demands that those witnesses be called back to Capitol Hill for further questioning.

USAToday: Michael Cohen, Donald Trump and Russia: Prosecutors document series of lies by president’s former fixer http://bit.ly/2AxDXZS

USAToday, Chris Truax: A web of lies and deceit: The Trump-Russia plot thickens with Michael Cohen guilty plea http://bit.ly/2FR9mME

TheAtlantic, Conor Friedersdorf: Donald Trump Gave Russia Leverage Over His Presidency http://bit.ly/2P4Swtb
// A foreign adversary has possessed potentially damaging information about the president for an extended period of time.

NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Trump Is Compromised by Russia http://nyti.ms/2BIxmO1
// Michael Cohen’s latest plea is proof.

Politico, Andrew Restuccia and Gabby Orr: Mueller stalks Trump abroad — again http://politi.co/2Sl1dkV
// White House aides hope the G-20 summit will showcase the president’s deal-making skills. But Mueller’s latest move threatens to overshadow any achievements.

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec
♪ Here comes Mueller Clause,
Here comes Mueller Clause
Right down Mueller Clause Lane!
He doesn’t care about tweets or excuses he’ll indict you all the same!
See those handcuffs jingle-jangle all is merry & bright!
So sign your deal or die in jail bc Mueller Clause comes tn! ♪

NYT: How a Trump Lawyer, a Felon and a Russian General Chased a Moscow Tower Deal http://nyti.ms/2KHlw9G

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump won’t go down without a fight http://wapo.st/2AyBfDy

WaPo Editorial: Trump’s denials about his business ties in Russia are not credible http://wapo.st/2FQSOV2

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Both the collusion and obstruction cases get stronger http://wapo.st/2zzdtHT

🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus Investigators have emails from late 2015 and early January 2016 in which Cohen communicated with or copied Don Jr. and Ivanka and discussed the Trump Tower Moscow project. Ivanka at one point recommended an architect.
⋙ WSJ: Cohen Says Trump Stayed Involved in Moscow Tower Project During Campaign http://on.wsj.com/2Sjdsic
// Former fixer contradicts president as he pleads guilty on charge brought by Mueller team

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Trump claims its perfectly fine to do business while he was running for President. No Mr President, it’s not fine to do business in & with a foreign power (Russia) who is helping elect you via cyber attacks on American officials, fake social media & shady business deals

RawStory: Russia ‘rejects’ Trump plan to cancel Argentina meeting and will summon president to meet Putin: report http://bit.ly/2AyGbIo

NYRB, Bernard E. Harcourt: How Trump Fuels the Fascist Right http://bit.ly/2ACs1pC

🐣 RT @matthewamiller So during the summer of 2016, Trump tried to cut a business deal with Russia while publicly attacking NATO and praising Putin, asking Russia to hack his opponent’s emails, and while his son and senior staffers met in secret with Russian government intermediaries.

🐣 RT @gregolear Ivanka sat on Putin’s fucking throne when she was in Moscow. OF COURSE she knew about the deal.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Multiple sources have confirmed to Yahoo News that Ivanka and Don Jr. were also on the Trump Tower Moscow project. ¤ One source familiar with the investigation told Yahoo News that Mueller has asked about Ivanka and Don Jr.’s work on the project.
⋙⋙ YahooNews: Mueller eyes Ivanka and Don Jr.’s work on Trump Tower Moscow http://yahoo.it/2E2s5U1

🐣 RT @allinwithchris .@neal_katyal: “I think we very well could look back on this day…as the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency” #inners
💽 https://twitter.com/allinwithchris/status/1068314477538496513/photo/1

🐣 RT @emptywheel Ferfucksake. ¤ Rudy’s bitching that Mueller made it hard for Trump to compare stories with his handler?
⋙ 🐣 RT @nytmike Guiliani attacks Mueller in statement: “It is hardly coincidental that the Special Counsel once again files a charge just as the President is leaving for a meeting with world leaders.. [Mueller] did the very same thing as the President was leaving for a world summit in Helsinki.”

TPM, Josh Marshall: They All Lied. They’re All Guilty. http://bit.ly/2zwEUSG

WaPo: ‘Individual 1’: Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2Aw4Tcg

🐣 RT @MollyMcKew I’ve said it before and I will say it again. If we’re serious about fighting corruption, illicit foreign influence, mass scale money laundering/kleptocracy, and several lanes connecting to hybrid warfare — Mueller’s taskforce will become a permanent thing.

TheHill: Wall Street Journal accidentally identifies Russian President as ‘Vladimir Trump’ http://bit.ly/2FMISvV

🐣 RT @MelissaJPeltier Look, you “No collusion!” die hards.
Putin orders Congressmen to come bend their knees to him on July 4, Sept. 11, Memorial Day. Unquestioning, they go.
Putin’s showing off. Humiliating America on the world stage.
Now, he’s publicly ordering Trump to kiss the ring.
Trump must.
⋙ 🐣 RT @pacelattin Wait, so Trump canceled the meeting with Putin and Russia just said, “nope, you are coming?” ¤ Lol

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump should be freaked out right about now http://wapo.st/2SiYxEr

🔄🐣 If you love #TrumpRussia, you may want to check out my “Investigators” Twitter list to see tweets by: Intel Community vets & alt-, investigative reporters, bloggers & podcasters and independent researchers ~ and subjects & targets
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/lists/investigators ¤ @MuellerSheWrote

🐣 RT @20committee Shorter Peskov: I said we’re gonna talk, BITCH! ¤ (In case there was any doubt who’s the top in this relationship.)
⋙ 🐣 RT @Jerusalem_Post BREAKING Russia rejects Trump’s canceled meeting, Kremlin ready for contact http://dlvr.it/QsRJl7 

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 🔥🔥BREAKING🔥🔥 ¤ From MSNBC: Snoop DAG Rod Rosenstein is still overseeing the Mueller investigation and Whitaker hasn’t taken over the machinations according to @nytmike from the NYT. #what

🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri “Donald Trump has been owned by the Russians for the long term, Donald Trump has been owned by Vladimir Putin” ¤ “This is just the tip of the iceberg” – Friend of Michael Cohen @DonnyDeutsch
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1068284434430849024/photo/1

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen The Kremlin was caught in an apparent lie about Michael Cohen. Putin spox Dmitry Peskov acknowledged today that his office called Cohen in 2016 to discuss Trump Tower Moscow. But Peskov said last year they never replied to Cohen because “we do not react to such business topics.”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/MarshallCohen/status/1068201119267069952/photo/1

TheHill: Pelosi threatens to demand Mueller protection language in spending bill http://bit.ly/2Qqqfll

≣ Vox: Read the plea documents from Michael Cohen http://bit.ly/2DRIJEK
// Trump’s longtime lawyer has pleaded guilty to lying to Congress.
⋙ GoogleDocs: Michael Cohen Guilty Plea [Document] http://bit.ly/2DTlHO110p

🐣 RT @ProudResister 3 DOMINOES IN 1 DAY:
Domino #1: Michael Cohen pleads guilty and proves Trump had dealings w/ Russia during and after campaign.
Domino #2: Deutsche Bank—which has loaned Trump $2.5 billion since 1998—raided in money laundering probe.
Domino #3: Trump tax attorney raided by FBI.

🐣 RT @ProudResister CURRENT MOOD. 😎
💽 https://twitter.com/ProudResister/status/1068259765803921408/photo/1
// funny Mueller dancing

WaPo, Rosalind Helderman and Tom Hamburger: ‘We will be in Moscow’: The story of Trump’s 30-year quest to expand his brand to Russia http://wapo.st/2r9LbPq

TheAtlantic, Ken White: Three Remarkable Things About Michael Cohen’s Plea http://bit.ly/2Rmj0rT
// These developments would, under normal circumstances, end a presidency.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Michael Cohen Takes Mueller Inside the Trump Organization http://bit.ly/2Qpoc12
// The president’s former personal lawyer admitted lying to Congress about efforts in 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

🐣 RT @Bill_Maxwell_ What #Mueller is showing is how Russia was dangling this “dream deal” that Trump had been hopeful of for years leading up to the campaign and up to the point of Trump winning the nomination and changing the RNC official position on Russia and Ukraine. ¤ “Quid pro quo!” ¤ #TrumpRussia
Photo TTowerMoscow: https://twitter.com/Bill_Maxwell_/status/1068212007692713984/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Also: promise of relief from Magnitsky sanctions

🐣 RT @JeffreyToobin How Michael Cohen’s plea explains @realDonaldTrump ‘s behavior in 2016. His motive was always money. My @NewYorker column. http://bit.ly/
⋙ NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: The Legal Perils That Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea Poses for Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2DVQeL9

Bloomberg, Timothy O’Brien: Deutsche Bank’s Troubles Are Donald Trump’s Troubles http://bloom.bg/2SmBdWD
// The president has a long-standing business relationship and conflict of interest with a German banking giant often mired in scandal.

🐣 RT @DearAuntCrabby The last 24 hours:
Deutsche Bank raided
Feds raid Trump Tax Attorney
Cohen pleading guilty lying to Congress
Cohen implicates Trump in Russia Hotel
Manafort & Stone busted
Trump abruptly leaves tree lighting
Corsi admitted he & Stone lied to Congress
Trump cancels Putin meeting

JustSecurity, Kate Brannen and Ryan Goodman: Major Takeaways from Michael Cohen’s Plea on Trump Moscow Project http://bit.ly/2Qpm9tS

🐣 RT @mmurraypolitics While today’s Cohen plea is evidence that the Trump business empire was seeking deals with Russia well into June 2016, it is just ONE part of how Russia and its connection to Trump influenced the 2016 presidential race. ¤ Some of the other parts….
📌 https://twitter.com/mmurraypolitics/status/1068228379718094848?s=20

🐣 RT @David_Hemond No coincidence of course. Everyone is now playing hardball (for a change) but nothing is truly accomplished until we get the nut job out of power. There’s no clear way to do that as long as Republicans obstruct and back him. Still, the jig is up as far as Trump hiding who he is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Of course it could be a coincidence that days after Trump finally submitted his written answers to Mueller, at the same time: 1) Deutsche Bank was raided, 2) Burke’s Chicago offices were raided and papered, and 3) Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying about Trump Tower Moscow.

NBC: Senate committees scouring testimony for misleading statements in Russia probe http://nbcnews.to/2ShyAVZ
// “This is a reason people shouldn’t lie when they’re in front of a congressional investigation,” said GOP senator Richard Burr.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Sounds like someone is having a meltdown. For foreign adversaries this is a good time for them to be aggressive while America is in turmoil
⋙ 🐣 RT @John_Hudson AP: ABOARD AIR FORCE ONE — White House: Formal meetings with Turkey, S Korea canceled; Trump will instead speak informally with leaders at G-20.

DailyBeast: Rudy Giuliani Tries to Distance Trump From Trump Tower Moscow: ‘This Was Cohen’s Deal’ http://thebea.st/2QlefSr
// The president told Mueller he abandoned the proposal by mid-2016 and didn’t know when Cohen ditched it, according to Trump’s lawyer.

NYT: Trump’s Recall of Moscow Deal Matches Cohen’s, President’s Lawyers Say http://nyti.ms/2Ro7fRI

Bloomberg, Shannon Pettypiece , Chris Strohm , and Justin Sink: What Cohen’s Plea Deal Means for Trump, His Business and Mueller http://bloom.bg/2E2Zv4T

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump should be freaked out right about now https://tinyurl.com/y9g9mhc6

TheAtlantic, David Graham: Is WikiLeaks a Russian Front? https://tinyurl.com/ybhznbxb
// The idea that the putative transparency group served as a connection between Moscow and the president’s associates is starting to become clearer.

NYT: Michael Cohen Admits Talks for Trump Over Moscow Tower Occurred Well Into Campaign https://tinyurl.com/y7wdehfp

MSNBC, TheBeat: Cohen guilty plea alleges Trump family involved in Russian outreach [Video] https://tinyurl.com/y83nbgux

Michael Cohen has pleaded guilty to lying about his work on Trump Tower in Moscow. Chief Legal Correspondent Ari Melber breaks down the filing, noting it goes further in alleging Trump’s family members were “in the loop” and knew about high-level outreach to the Russian Government. Melber also notes: “Mueller has worked expertly on a parallel track with Congress because he’s now using the misstatements that people have made to Congress to buttress the Russian side of the collusion investigation”

Politico: Democrats press the case for Trump-Russia ‘collusion’ http://politi.co/2P6uJZS
// A flurry of new reports has Democrats calling the case for coordination between the 2016 Trump campaign and the Kremlin stronger than ever.

CNBC: Trump cancels G-20 meeting with Putin, citing Ukraine crisis; decision follows Michael Cohen guilty plea in Russia probe http://cnb.cx/2P7De6U
● Trump cancels his meeting with Vladimir Putin at the G-20 summit in Argentina, an hour after he told reporters he would probably meet with the Russian president.
● Trump blamed the cancellation on the failure of Russia to return ship and sailors seized from Ukraine.
● The announcement came shortly after Trump told reporters he would probably meet with Putin — and hours after his ex-lawyer Michael Cohen pleaded guilty to lying to Congress about the president’s involvement in an aborted real estate deal in Moscow.

NBC: Democrats pounce after Cohen admits he lied to Congress about Trump Tower project in Russia http://nbcnews.to/2DSbfpW
// Some Republicans, meanwhile, said Cohen’s guilty plea doesn’t prove collusion between Russia and President Trump. .

RawStory: Giuliani loses it after Cohen flips again: ‘That son of a b*tch should have been disbarred’ http://bit.ly/2reyaEl

🐣 RT @tparti Trump repeatedly says Cohen is lying, but then adds: “Even if he was right, it doesn’t matter because I was allowed to do whatever I wanted during the campaign.”

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Federal prosecutors will tell you there’s no such thing as coincidence. German prosecutors raided Deutsche Bank just ahead of the Cohen plea hearing this morning in federal court in Manhattan.
⋙ 🐣 RT @keithboykin Trump reportedly owes between $175 million to $300 million to Deutsche Bank US. The loans were given to him despite his record of at least six bankruptcy filings. The bank even sued him for failure to repay loans. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has subpoenaed the bank’s records.
⋙⋙ NPR: Deutsche Bank Offices Are Raided In Money Laundering Probe http://BCNews: http://n.pr/2rbq4Mv

💙 WaPo, Manuel Roig-Franzia: THE SWAMP BUILDERS ~ How Stone and Manafort helped create the mess Trump promised to clean up [Interactive] http://wapo.st/2Qq1wxx

💙💙 WaPo: Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer, pleads guilty to lying to Congress about Moscow project http://wapo.st/2DS04O0

💙💙 NYT: Michael Cohen Admits Talks for Trump Over Moscow Tower Occurred Well Into Campaign http://nyti.ms/2RnxSq9

VOA: Ukrainian President Seeks NATO Support in Russia Dispute http://bit.ly/2BEFBL3

AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson (11/1): Russia Understands Ukraine’s Geopolitical Importance but Does the West? http://bit.ly/2TTZWD7
// 11/1/2018

Reuters: Russia blocks Ukrainian Azov Sea ports: minister http://reut.rs/2BD3na3
// Two Ukrainian Azov Sea ports, Berdyansk and Mariupol, are effectively under blockade by Russia as vessels are being barred from leaving and entering, Ukraine’s infrastructure minister, Volodymyr Omelyan, said on Thursday.

⭕ 28 Nov 2018

🐣 RT @RVAwonk “How many people has anyone associated with the antifa movement killed? Zero.”-former FBI agent/domestic terrorism expert Michael German.
💽 https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1067935923076308992/photo/1

AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson (11/1): Russia Understands Ukraine’s Geopolitical Importance but Does the West? http://bit.ly/2TTZWD7
// 11/1/2018

Politico, Alex Finley: Did Someone Plant a Story Tying Paul Manafort to Julian Assange? http://politi.co/2Ax5ZEK

Luke Harding and Dan Collyns, the reporters behind the Guardian story, do not name their sources, although they claim to have multiple, and they write that they have seen an internal document from Ecuador’s intelligence service listing “Paul Manaford [sic]” as a visitor to the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

While the immediate reaction to the story was a collective “Wow!”, it is fair to take a step back and remain wary. Rather than being the bombshell smoking gun that directly connects the Trump campaign to WikiLeaks, perhaps the report is something else entirely: a disinformation campaign. Is it possible someone planted this story as a means to discredit the journalists?

A number of parties in the Trump-Russia circus have an interest in discrediting the media. Russian President Vladimir Putin has solidified his power in Russia by systematically quashing the free press and controlling the message through friendly media outlets, including the likes of RT and Sputnik. Trump, too, has consistently shouted “Fake News!” at any story he doesn’t like and has made it a theme of late to refer to the media as “the enemy of the people,” a term that has been used by dictators throughout time, including to devastating effect by Joseph Stalin.

Harding is likely a major target for anyone wrapped up in Russia’s intelligence operation against the West’s democratic institutions. He has written a book about the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia—literally titled Collusion, as well as numerous articles related to the case, including about the Steele Dossier, Russia’s plans to help rescue Assange from London and spirit him away to Moscow, Russia’s novichok poisoning operation against Sergei Skripal, and a slew of other “Russia-is-up-to-no-good” stories.

… [I]f, for example, the sources lied to Harding and Collyns (or if the sources themselves were lied to and thus thought they were being truthful in their statements to the journalists), or if the Ecuadorian intelligence document is a fake, the most logical explanation is that it is an attempt to make Harding look bad. This, in turn, would call into question any of Harding’s past reporting …

I find it hard to believe Harding would not go to great lengths to confirm his story. He must know he is a target for disinformation. But that is not to say it could not happen.

As of this writing, no other news outlet has confirmed the Guardian’s story about Manafort meeting Assange. So is it fake or is it real? If it is real and others confirm it, it would be damning, and many people have an interest in trying to discredit it. On the other hand, if someone managed to dupe Harding and his colleague, it would mean someone was ready to put a lot of effort into discrediting the journalists in order to sow doubt about a wide swath of reporting. In either case, someone has already primed a large audience to dismiss this Manafort-Assange story and any other information that might tie the Trump campaign to Russia. That implies more bad news is coming for Trump and Manafort.

One thing seems clear: Someone is feeling the heat.

🐣 RT @CaroleCadwalla Oh here, they are! All the gang. Hanging with main man, Ted Malloch. Or as Mueller knows him “Overseas Individual 1”. Not to be confused with “Organisation 1” (Wikileaks). From whom he was tasked with getting the hacked Russian emails for Trump ¤ @brexit_sham) https://twitter.com/carolecadwalla/status/1067930667999207424/photo/1

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Can anyone confirm in Trump bolted from the Christmas tree around the same time Credico started tweeting at him. ¤ Anyone?
⋙ 🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Seems to fit.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @Credico2016 [Replying to @real] Rodger Stone has confided in me that he has material on you that will put you in prison for the rest of your life and if there’s reincarnation for the next 6000 years of your life.. stay tuned
… Rodger Stone has told me stuff about you that leads me to believe that everything in the steele dossier is true in particular the golden showers
… What Roger Stone is confided in me about your depraved sexual behavior and your venal economic crimes is enough to put you in prison and then orange jumpsuit to match your hair for the rest of your fat life

🐣 RT @JackmanRadio @AbbyMartin of @EmpireFiles just put out her fantastic interview with epic political comedian @Credico2016! So many juicy tid-bits about Roger Stone, @wikileaks, The 2016 Election and much more! #WednesdayWisdom
Tweetlink https://twitter.com/JackmanRadio/status/1067956341812150272
⋙ 💽 https://youtu.be/PCCEeK0cofs

🐣 RT @ScottMStedman Here it is, folks. We had to redact portions of the letter as to not give away any details about the Papadopoulos confidant. It’s real, and federal authorities are investigating thoroughly.
Letter: https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1067922111027539968/photo/1
// Dec 2016 deal with Russians “set for life”
↥ ↧
BusinessInsider: Investigators are probing a letter that claims George Papadopoulos said he was pursuing a lucrative Russian business deal for himself and Trump after the election http://read.bi/2Rm2rfT

A Democratic source on the House Intelligence Committee confirmed to INSIDER that the letter was sent to ranking member Adam Schiff’s office earlier this month from someone who claims to have been close to Papadopoulos in late 2016 and early 2017. Two US officials also told The Atlantic that federal authorities are investigating the letter and taking its claims “very seriously.”

🐣 RT @ #Russia’s state media: ¤ “The White House made it clear that it does not intend to condemn Russia for the situation in the #KerchStrait.” ¤ #Ukraine
📌 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1067865980888596480

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews The Russians are getting lazy: instead of coming up with their own anti-Mueller agitprop, state TV is simply translating and re-broadcasting clips from Fox News.

💙💙 DailyBeast, Kelly Weill: Jerome Corsi Told Roger Stone Wikileaks Had Dirt on Hillary’s Health. Then the Attacks Started. http://thebea.st/2QsPDqA
// Two days after the conspiracy theorist told the dirty trickster to go after Clinton’s fitness, one of their fellow Infowars contributors did just that.

DailyBeast, Erin Banco: Team Trump Had Many Ties to Israeli Intel Firm in Mueller’s Crosshairs http://thebea.st/2PYNu6O
// The company promised to use social media manipulation to get Trump elected. And several members of Trump’s inner circle were very, very interested

NYT, Ken White: Why Did Manafort Cooperate With Trump Over Mueller? http://nyti.ms/2DNYQTU
// Lawyers for Manafort and Trump engaged in a brazen violation of criminal defense norms. The move could pay off, or it could blow up spectacularly.

NYT, Cristian Farias: What Is Robert Mueller Thinking? http://nyti.ms/2SgGX3Z
// Paul Manafort may be after a pardon from President Trump, but his alleged lying to investigators may deliver far more than he bargained for.

WaPo, Harry Litman: The stunning implications of the Manafort-Trump pipeline http://wapo.st/2QmF5cM

WaPo Editorial: The Mueller investigation keeps offering important revelations. It must continue. http://wapo.st/2Ayyjqx

WaPo: Trump on Rod Rosenstein: ‘He should have never picked a special counsel’ http://wapo.st/2BE1CK0

🐣 RT @JoycewhiteVance 1/3 New reporting shows that Trump made late night calls to Roger Stone from blocked numbers during the campaign, around the time Russia was harvesting DNC emails and Wikileaks was making them public. This interests me because…
📌 https://twitter.com/JoyceWhiteVance/status/1067968133460303872
… 2/3 it’s always been hard to buy Stone’s claim he never told Trump about his communications with Wikileaks. Trump constantly “loved” Wikileaks in public speeches & Stone, the ultimate sycophant, wouldn’t have been able to resist sharing his insider knowledge…
… 3/3 if he in fact, wasn’t the source of Trump’s knowledge in the 1st place. Trump’s written answers to Mueller reportedly deny advance knowledge of WikiLeaks plans. That will be hard to maintain given Trump’s public shout outs, Stone’s involvement & new reports of their calls.
⋙ WaPo: Trump’s night-owl calls to Roger Stone in 2016 draw scrutiny in Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2KGakdy

ABCNews: Mueller asked Trump about 2016 RNC platform change regarding Ukraine: Sources http://abcn.ws/2U08RTI

💙💙 WSJ: Manafort Lied About Business Dealings, Mueller’s Team Believes http://on.wsj.com/2rbsnzd
// Statements, which the former Trump aide describes as truthful, led the special counsel to end his plea agreement

Politico Mag, Renato Mariotti: Mueller’s Targets Are Blowing Up Their Deals. He’ll Make Them Pay. http://politi.co/2FMCbtM
// The evidence is on the special counsel’s side.

VoiceOfAmerica: Possible Resolution Appears Near in Russian Agent Case http://bit.ly/2DOCemc
// Maria Butina

WaPo, Kenneth Roth: The Saudi crown prince should fear the long reach of justice http://wapo.st/2E3rRfm

🐣 RT @20committee “Seth Rich was murdered by Hillary’s death squad because he gave Assange stolen DNC emails” — utter BS which you’ve heard many times from Trumpers and FNC — was written by the SVR’s #deza squad, as I told you eons ago.
⋙ Observer, John Schindler (2017): The Kremlin-White House Lie Machine Spins Out of Control http://bit.ly/2SlLRNn
// 8/8/2017, Moving on from DNC staffer Seth Rich, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster is the next victim

AP: Kremlin says it expects Putin-Trump meeting to go ahead http://bit.ly/2SgwZ2x

WaPo, Alexander Vershbow: Will Trump let Russia take the Azov Sea? http://wapo.st/2P9RA6O

NYPost: Donald Trump threatens to declassify ‘devastating’ docs about Dems http://nyp.st/2r9Yv6k

Politico: Trump suggests, without evidence, that Mueller is encouraging witnesses to lie in Russia probe http://politi.co/2KFGtSx

💙💙 TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand and Scott Stedman: Papadopoulos’s Russia Ties Continue to Intrigue http://bit.ly/2KFimmN
// The former foreign policy advisor to the Trump campaign boasted of a Russia business deal even after the election, according to a new letter under review.

WaPo, Deanna Paul: How Mueller can use the Manafort plea to get around the White House — if he wants http://wapo.st/2E3KCPF

🐣 RT @CaroleCadwalla NEW: Mueller’s Trump-Russia investigation about to explode on @nigel_farage’s doorstep. A leak from a draft legal doc indicates his associate Ted Malloch was told by key Trump advisor, Roger Stone, to “get to Assange” & “get the pending Wikileaks” emails
⋙ TheGuardian: Trump adviser sought WikiLeaks emails via Farage ally, Mueller document alleges http://bit.ly/2QqSGjh
// Ted Malloch was allegedly passed request to get advanced copies of emails stolen from Trump’s opponents by Russian hackers

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 We have a lot to be worried because Trump will not act. Currently there are reports of Russia blocking entry and exit around the Sea of Azov as well as military movement along Ukraine’s border

DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Sensing Defeat, Trump Cries ‘Witch Hunt’ http://thebea.st/2BEucei
// A princeling who’s literally lived in a golden tower for most of his adult life is not good with stress. And there’s a lot of stress on him now, and much more coming.

💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast, Will Sommer: Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi Pushed Seth Rich Lie After Privately Admitting Hackers Stole DNC Emails http://thebea.st/2AvXhqn

🐣 RT @JakeTapper In the midst of Special Counsel Mueller pressuring Manafort, the president brazenly sends a signal to him:
⋙ 💙💙 NewYorkPost: Trump says pardon for Paul Manafort still a possibility http://nyp.st/2KFEb5S

🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson Corsi’s confidential draft court documents were “anonymously” sent to @realDonaldTrump’s lawyer 2 weeks ago. Trump’s ringer for Acting AG, Matt Whitaker, started 3 weeks ago.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RebeccaBallhaus New: Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow two weeks ago received an anonymously sent packet of court papers relating to Corsi that included the draft plea document. The legal team notified the DOJ—and complained that Trump was named in the draft.
⋙⋙ WSJ: Jerome Corsi Says Roger Stone Sought ‘Cover Story’ for 2016 Tweet http://on.wsj.com/2FNhVrW
// Former ally says Trump adviser asked for his help to create ‘alternative explanation’ for tweet foreshadowing 2016 release of Clinton emails

🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC The conversations that Manafort’s lawyers had with Trump’s lawyers are not privileged, legal experts tell me. So in theory, Mueller could haul them all before the grand jury and make them testify under oath about them. Whether he will do that is another matter

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Jeff Flake says oversight of Mueller probe was given to Matthew Whitaker, “somebody who is in an acting capacity, somebody who has not been confirmed by the Senate. Should we here in the Senate be okay with that? I would argue no, we can’t be.” (via ABC) 💽 https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1067841804165361664/photo/1

DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng and Scott Bixby: Trump and Jerome Corsi Have a Defense Agreement, Giuliani Says http://thebea.st/2FM7Rj1
// The president and the birther are on the same side—and it’s not the first time either.

Bloomberg: Trump Feels No Urgency to Choose New Attorney General, Sources Say http://bloom.bg/2QoNY5D

🐣 RT @joshscampbell Exclusive: Trump told special counsel Robert Mueller in writing that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, nor was he told about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son, campaign officials and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton
🐣 RT @TravisAllen02 BREAKING: Trump told Special Counsel Bob Mueller he didn’t know about his son meeting with a Russian lawyer in Trump Tower & Roger Stone didn’t tell him about WikiLeaks. ¤ We got him! ¤ Two counts of lying to the FBI right there!
🐣 RT @BradMossEsq Whoa. ¤ Whoa. ¤ Trump drew a line in the sand. ¤ He had better hope Mueller doesn’t have something that contradicts these denials or that’s all she wrote.
⋙ 🐣 RT @amandawgolden CNN Exclusive: President Trump told Mueller in writing that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, nor was he told about the 2016 Trump Tower meeting between his son, campaign officials and a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Hillary Clinton
🐣 RT @KFILE NEW: Donald Trump told Robert Mueller in writing that Roger Stone did not tell him about WikiLeaks, nor was he told about the 2016 Trump Tower, according to two sources familiar with the matter.
⋙ 💙💙 CNN: Exclusive: Two key answers from Trump to Mueller http://cnn.it/2RmwLqw
⋙⋙🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote How odd it’s the same story Corsi and Stone are telling. I wonder if this is one of the many lies from Manafort. Wouldn’t be surprised. It’s like a RICO Pardon Circle Jerk up in here.

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec This is a great find. ¤ Manafort didn’t realize who you followed on Twitter was public, so he ended up leaking info, including his mistress’s ID (as well as membership in a Manhattan swinger’s club.) ¤ Manafort’s mistress was in London at time of an alleged Assange meeting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @z3dster Can’t confirm she was there with Manafort but can confirm that Manafort’s mistress was in London February 2015! ¤ These tweets are from her food blog:
https://twitter.com/z3dster/status/1067670259891621888/photo/1

🐣 RT @McFaul Our post-truth world, summarized in one soundbite.
⋙ 🐣 RT @rebeccaballhaus Trump tells @PhilipRucker @jdawsey1 of the Fed: “They’re making a mistake because I have a gut and my gut tells me more sometimes than anybody else’s brain can ever tell me.”

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind So far this morning, Trump has retweeted this and a tweet from a VP parody account, and threatened the largest US automaker again. Happy Wednesday!
https://twitter.com/Amy_Siskind/status/1067795311870001154/photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw HELLO!! Even defenders of an “absolute” & “unbounded” pardon power admit (as they must) that OFFERING a pardon IN EXCHANGE for a big favor to POTUS would be a federal crime (BRIBERY) and an impeachable offense. Manafort’s pipeline from Mueller to Trump was one HUGE favor. QED.

🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump’s America Alone foreign policy is simultaneously emboldening despots while alienating America’s long-standing allies. It creates riskier gambits from autocrats (like Putin in Ukraine or the Saudis with Khashoggi) right as Trump is splintering the transatlantic alliance.

NYT: Trump’s Lawyer Raised Prospect of Pardons for Flynn and Manafort http://nyti.ms/2r6ZEvu

🐣 RT @Billbrowder Putin and Trump will apparently “continue their discussion from Helsinki” at the G20 in Argentina….hmmm….doesn’t bode well for me, @McFaul and the 10 other Americans who worked on the Magnitsky Act
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimsciutto New: President Trump will discuss security and regional issues with Vladimir Putin when they meet this week at G20 in Argentina, national security adviser John Bolton said at WH briefing. “I think it will be a continuation of their discussion in Helsinki,” he said.

CNBC: Putin says Ukraine provoked Russia into ship seizure as part of a ‘dirty game’ http://cnb.cx/2ArcvNa
● Ukraine is responsible for instigating a dispute with Russia in which the federation seized several Ukrainian ships in the Black Sea, Russian President Vladimir Putin said Wednesday.
● Russia ramped up its dispute with Ukraine on Sunday when it seized three Ukrainian navy vessels and their crew members in the Kerch Strait.
● Ukraine said the incident was an “act of aggression,” while Russia said the ships had entered its territorial waters illegally, an allegation Putin repeated.

🐣 RT @20committee How different does US history, 2010-present, look when you accept that WikiLeaks is a Kremlin spy front rather than the independent “privacy organization” it unctuously claims to be? ¤ We’re about to find out c/o Bob Mueller & Friends. ¤ PS people should have listened. 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/1067759488948682752

≣ Vox, Sean Illing: How fascism works http://bit.ly/2SnrqzF transcript of interview with Yale philosopher Jason Stanley on his new book

🐣 RT @BrennanCenter “John Roberts, for all his many faults and biases, is not going to play Trump’s dirty game,” argues Brennan Center fellow @JustADCohen.
⋙ BrennanCenter: Trump vs. John Roberts http://bit.ly/2FMreIE
// 11/26/2018, A showdown is coming between the president and the Court. And the Chief Justice isn’t going to play Trump’s dirty game.

⭕ 27 Nov 2018

🐣 RT @gelles NEW: .@carlbernstein reports Mueller’s team has been investigating a 2017 meeting between Manafort and Ecuador’s president in Quito in 2017, and has specifically asked if Wikileaks or Julian Assange were discussed in the meeting.

Newsweek, Robert Reich: Trump is Violating the Three Basic Principles of the Rule of Law http://bit.ly/2RmNKZQ

Vox, Matt Yglesias: Trump’s Washington Post interview shows a presidency that’s beyond satire http://bit.ly/2zuCsM6
// Go from the gut, and bring a rake.

📊 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Manafort’s plea deal collapse isn’t the biggest development in Mueller’s probe http://wapo.st/2Qpnf93 a new poll conducted by Hart Research for the nonpartisan group Law Works found that 76% of voters want Mueller to be allowed to finish his work

Newsweek: Donald Trump Says the EU Was Set Up in Order to Hurt the United States http://bit.ly/2E2jFf4

WashingtonTimes, Guy Taylor and Ben Wolfgang: ‘Zero-sum game’: Russian aggression tests Trump, U.S. power http://bit.ly/2r9vckr “Russia under Mr. Putin fears encirclement and seeks to undermine U.S. power in the world”

Politico: Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows vying to defend Trump on key committees http://politi.co/2P68AuH
// The Freedom Caucus leaders are running for positions on the Judiciary and Oversight panels.

🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Tonight on @TheLastWord I said Manafort might be a double agent.- trying to work for Mueller and Turmp while really only caring about himself. On @11thHour @FrankFigliuzzi1 just said Manafort was a triple agent. I forgot about his work for Russia. Frank is right.

🐣 RT @_JakubJanda TOLD YOU: ¤ Sigmar Gabriel basically is another Schroeder, e.g. traitor working for Russian interests. ¤ When we were pointing out his work for Russian interest when he was the German Foreign Minister, almost nobody believed us. ¤ @20committee @edwardlucas
⋙ DerTagesSpiegel: Sigmar Gabriel beteiligt sich an Beraterfirma http://bit.ly/2FOmh1V
// Sozialdemokraten aus Österreich und Deutschland gründen ein Unternehmen in Berlin. Beteiligt sind auch Sigmar Gabriel und Werner Faymann

🐣 RT @juliaioffe Spokesman for Vladimir Putin says he doesn’t know what it would take for Russia to return Ukrainian ships and sailors captured in the #KerchStrait. [link, Russian)

NYT: Trump Lobs Insults at Special Counsel One Day After Prosecutors Say Manafort Lied http://nyti.ms/2FJ8d9O

NYT, Harry Litman: What Was Paul Manafort Thinking? http://nyti.ms/2SbSmlI
// There’s no good explanation for why he lied to Mueller.

[Manafort] will proceed directly to sentencing, in connection with which Mr. Mueller will provide the court with detailed proof of Mr. Manafort’s lies during the aborted cooperation period.

That means evidence of the truthful answers to the questions lied about. Considering that Mr. Manafort’s cooperation almost certainly had to involve the highest targets and most important evidence, that memorandum will be a treasure trove of as-yet-unknown fruits of Mr. Mueller’s investigation, particularly into the possible connection of the campaign with Russian meddling in the election. …

[T]he memorandum may be filed under seal, but even so, it operates as a hedge against the possibility that Mr. Mueller’s report might eventually be bottled up at the Department of Justice, for example under the order of Acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker. It will ultimately be for the court, not Mr. Whitaker, to unseal the document.

🐣 RT @justinjm1 Mueller appears to have caught Manafort and Trump conspiring—in real time 📌 https://mobile.twitter.com/justinjm1/status/1067617514593705984
// numbers in tweets are dates

🐣 RT @Will_Bunch Bombshell report on Manafort, Assange – if confirmed – puts an end to Trump’s 2 years of all-caps ‘NO COLLUSION’ lie and new pressure on House Dems to take bolder action. The legitimacy of U.S. democracy might not hold out until 2020’s election. My column
⋙ PhillyInquirer, Will Bunch: Could Paul Manafort, Julian Assange bombshell be the beginning of the end for Trump? http://bit.ly/2ztyL9N

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw Mueller draft doc connects Stone-Corsi plot to Trump campaign and Donald J Trump by name: ¤ Says Corsi “understood [Stone] to be in regular contact with senior members of the Trump Campaign, including…Donald J. Trump” with goal to get docs “relevant to the presidential campaign”
Text Block: https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1067608266946035713/photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw Dangling the prospect of a presidential pardon in return for a co-conspirator’s pretending to flip so as to become the president’s secret eyes and ears in the office of the special counsel investigating the president is blatant obstruction of justice and witness tampering.

WaPo, Dana Milbank: The truth is finally catching up with Trump http://wapo.st/2zu858F “It is too late to undo much of the damage caused by Trump’s deceptions. But recent days give hope that, though limping and bedraggled, the truth still is the truth.”

🐣 RT @renato_mariotti THREAD: What does today’s news that Manafort’s attorneys briefed Trump’s attorneys about what he told Mueller after he agreed to cooperate tell us? 📌 https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1067596208825348096
⋙ ≣ WaPo: Draft Jerome Corsi statement of offense [Document] http://wapo.st/2zs3nbK
// A document prepared by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s team as part of plea talks with conservative author Jerome Corsi allege that he alerted longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone in early August 2016 that WikiLeaks planned to release material damaging to Hillary Clinton.

DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade and Mimi Rocah: The Worst Thing Manafort Could Do Is Lie to Mueller. So Why Did He Do It? http://thebea.st/2BDg0SD
// As a cooperator, Trump’s ex-campaign chairman was dangerous to other targets. As a liar, he could be utterly destructive.

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Erin Banco: Manafort’s Lawyers Look Nervous, Veteran Attorneys Say http://thebea.st/2RkNE4U
// His lawyers said he ‘believes’ he’s been ‘truthful’ in response to Mueller’s allegation of repeated lying.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote 1/ What did we learn today? We learned that mueller has evidence that Stone, who was communicating with Trump, asked Corsi to ask WikiLeaks what they had. We also know Corsi sent Malloch (@peterjukes and I were just talking about him) to find out what Wiki [got from] GRU. 📌 https://twitter.com/MuellerSheWrote/status/1067610070844813312
… 2/ Then we learned that a week later, Corsi told Stone Wiki had dirt on HRC that they were releasing in October 2016. So we have a direct link between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin, and Mueller has proof. (He wouldn’t ask without it)
… 3/ Then we learned Manafort’s plea agreement blew up because he was feeding intel from the Mueller investigation to Trump. We were wondering why Manafort didn’t signal his plea agreement by ending his Joint Defense Agreement. This is why. Seems like obstruction.
… 4/ Now we wonder why Stone or Corsi haven’t been indicted. Is Whitaker blocking, or was Mueller delaying the Manafort sentencing filing to wait for Trump’s answers to come in to see if they match? I think both. And if we Stone indictments get blocked,
… 5/ We could get a full explanation in the Manafort sentencing document likely coming in December. Whitaker can’t block that. And we would eventually learn Whitaker blocked it. More obstruction…
… 6/ And finally, don’t forget! Was Manafort promised a pardon in exchange for the intel swap? It’s only Tuesday, folks. If you’re not listening, it’s a good time to start! #beans

🐣 RT @tribelaw My sense has been that Mueller cut Manafort loose on learning that the similarity of his lies and Trump’s was no coincidence but a result of illicit cooperation between them and part of a scheme in which Manafort would later be pardoned. I note that @maddow had a similar thought

💙💙 WaPo: Corsi provided early alert to Stone about WikiLeaks release, according to draft special counsel document http://wapo.st/2BC0AxP

💙💙 NYT: Manafort’s Lawyer Said to Brief Trump Attorneys on What He Told Mueller http://nyti.ms/2E1Rvkv

🐣 RT @DrDenaGrayson 👇BINGO👇 ¤ Mueller easily nailed Paul Manafort for LYING after he cut his plea deal (yet kept his cooperation agreement with @realDonaldTrump), which is why Trump is FREAKING OUT. ¤ Trump just gave his written answers to Mueller that likely were coordinated with Manafort’s LIES. 🤣
⋙ 🐣 RT @BrianStelter “If I were Trump, I would be unnerved that Mueller’s office knows enough about the facts of this case to say ‘you’re lying.’ How do they know that? Who told them? What documents do they have? What tapes do they have? THAT has gotta be unnerving” — @JeffreyToobin 💽 https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1067229148249186305/photo/1

NBC: Mueller has emails from Stone pal Corsi about WikiLeaks Dem email dump http://nbcnews.to/2DZSP7v //➔ Corsi scrubbed those emails ~ or thought he had!
// “Word is (Julian Assange) plans 2 more dumps…Impact planned to be very damaging,” Jerome Corsi said in email to Stone, say draft court documents.

🐣 RT @tribelaw Why are people just *assuming* Manafort is pardon-proof vis-a-vis state charges for the conduct he’s charged with in federal court? Gamble v. U.S., to be argued in SCOTUS this Dec. 5, urges the Court to end that weird “separate sovereigns” exception to the double jeopardy ban.

USAToday: Russia inquiry: House Democrats aim to unmask Trump Jr.’s blocked call http://usat.ly/2TO577L

CNBC, Kevin Breuninger: Trump suggests he has inside information on the Russia probe, hours after Mueller said former campaign chief Manafort violated plea deal http://cnb.cx/2DPEjyn
● President Donald Trump fumes against special counsel Robert Mueller in a tweet storm, claiming his probe of Russian interference is “ruining lives.”
● Trump’s attack echoes the salvos against the investigation recently launched by right-wing conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi, who claimed a day earlier that he has rejected a plea deal offered by Mueller.
● The attacks also highlight lingering questions about the possibility of Trump granting pardons to some of the special counsel’s targets — a notion the president’s own lawyer appeared to entertain Tuesday.

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The past 24 hours in Trump-Russia news, explained http://bit.ly/2P6jK2x
// New developments about Mueller, Manafort, and Corsi.

WaPo: President Trump’s full Washington Post interview transcript, annotated http://wapo.st/2Q0t39u
// President Trump sat for an interview Tuesday with The Washington Post’s Philip Rucker and Josh Dawsey. Below is the full transcript, with key segments highlighted for fact-checking and analysis.

💙💙 CNN: Stone’s efforts to seek WikiLeaks documents detailed in draft Mueller document http://cnn.it/2rgZXEh
// by By Sara Murray and Katelyn Polantz

By August 2, 2016, Corsi was emailing Stone to predict that WikiLeaks had more document dumps in the works. Stone has said he spoke with Trump the following day, August 3.

In the summer of 2016, Stone allegedly asked Corsi to get in touch with WikiLeaks “about materials it possessed relevant to the presidential campaign that had not already been released,” according to the draft filing. “Get to [Assange],” Stone wrote on July 25, 2016, three days after Wikileaks dumped thousands of Democratic National Committee emails. According to the documents, Stone directed Corsi to get in touch with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, was blasting publicly the documents stolen in the Russian hack, and “get the pending [Wikileaks] emails.”

Corsi then passed that request on to Ted Malloch, a London-based consultant. Malloch said he spoke to the FBI this year and said was asked specifically if he had visited the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. He had not, he said. Stone also said he has never met Assange.

“Word is friend in embassy plans 2 more dumps. One shortly after I’m back. 2nd in Oct. Impact planned to be very damaging,” Corsi wrote, according to the draft document. “Time to let more than [the Clinton Campaign chairman] to be exposed as in bed w enemy if they are not ready to drop HRC [Hillary Rodham Clinton]. That appears to be the game hackers are now about. Would not hurt to start suggesting HRC old, memory bad, has stroke — neither he nor she well. I expect that much of next dump focus, setting stage for Foundation debacle.”

🐣 RT @camanpour #BREAK Ukraine’s President @poroshenko tells me that “based on our intelligence information, including those we received from our NATO sources,” Russia is concentrating large numbers of troops along the Ukrainian border. “We have all the evidence of that,” he says. 💽 https://twitter.com/camanpour/status/1067498129384124416/photo/1

🐣 RT @sarahkendzior Exactly. He’s not stupid; he’s arrogant because he’s been able to commit crimes with impunity for decades. Instead of facing scrutiny he was rewarded by dictators, mafiosos, and the GOP. His dirty history was known yet he was treated like a regular campaign manager by the media.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndreaChalupa When everyone was laughing at Manafort for being so corrupt and stupid, then what does that make us, having allowed him to run a major presidential campaign?

CNN, Carl Bernstein and Devan Cole: Mueller investigating 2017 meeting between Manafort and Ecuador’s President http://cnn.it/2FTXXvs

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s weakness begets Russian aggression http://wapo.st/2AoZnZ4

🐣 RT @20committee Nothing happens in & around Ecuador’s London embassy that UK CI doesn’t know about — and what they know, USG knows. #FVEY 101. ¤ Not even counting all their own intel which Ecuador has been sharing on Assange, whom they despise and can’t wait to hand over to HMG. ¤ Get it yet?

WaPo, Paul Waldman: It looks like a big day for collusion. No wonder Trump is raging. http://wapo.st/2Armcva

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw VERY BIG Scoop: “Manafort held secret talks with Assange”
A meeting occurred around March 2016.
late Feb: Manafort pitches Trump to join campaign
Manafort long time friend Roger Stone recommends hiring Manafort
late March: Trump officially hires Manafort
🐣 RT @MalcolmNance BOOM: Here it is. CONSPIRACY AGAINST THE UNITED STATES. The Direct Bridge to the Trump campaign was a Russia-Wikileaks-Trump expressway. #LockHimUp
🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Wow This is a major revelation, OMG – Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy | US news | The Guardian
🐣 RT @20committee Paulie Walnuts is so, so screwed. So are Stinky Rapey & Cheeto Jesus. ¤ I’m sure there a LOTS of legit reasons to secretly visit the Kremlin’s favorite “privacy advocate” and not sign the embassy guest log. Especially when you’re Trump’s campaign manager.
🔥 ⋙ 💙💙 TheGuardian: Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy, sources say http://bit.ly/2TQTRaH
// Trump ally met WikiLeaks founder months before emails hacked by Russia were published

🐣 RT @real The Phony Witch Hunt continues, but Mueller and his gang of Angry Dems are only looking at one side, not the other. Wait until it comes out how horribly & viciously they are treating people, ruining lives for them refusing to lie. Mueller is a conflicted prosecutor gone rogue….
… …The Fake News Media builds Bob Mueller up as a Saint, when in actuality he is the exact opposite. He is doing TREMENDOUS damage to our Criminal Justice System, where he is only looking at one side and not the other. Heroes will come of this, and it won’t be Mueller and his…
… ….terrible Gang of Angry Democrats. Look at their past, and look where they come from. The now $30,000,000 Witch Hunt continues and they’ve got nothing but ruined lives. Where is the Server? Let these terrible people go back to the Clinton Foundation and “Justice” Department!

🔆 This❗️⋙ BBC, Anisa Subedar: The godfather of fake news [Interactive] http://bbc.in/2DMg1VV
// Meet one of the world’s most prolific writers of disinformation

⭕ 26 Nov 2018

WaPo, Paul Waldman: The list of Trump associates indicted, convicted or pleading guilty could be about to grow longer http://wapo.st/2Qgc5n5 Jerome Corsi, author of “Where’s the Birth Certificate?: The Case that Barack Obama is Not Eligible to Be President,” may be next

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Russia’s latest attack on the Ukrainians is a warning to the West http://wapo.st/2zvljSD

🔄💙💙 RFE/RL: Ukraine-Russia Crisis Live Blog http://bit.ly/2BzqEKg

BBC, Jonah Fisher: Why Ukraine-Russia sea clash is fraught with risk http://bbc.in/2zreama

Brookings/Project-Syndicate, Kemal Derviş and Caroline Conroy: Nationalists of the world, unite? http://brook.gs/2AsdFbz //➔ Steve Bannon does Europe

🐣 RT @RichardEngel From a top former military official I know on Ukraine. Sobering. “Definitely Putin probing. He thinks POTUS is pretty distracted and between holidays and Mueller, might be a good time for a further land grab. This could get VERY ugly.”

Newsweek: Russian Military Is Preparing for ‘Worst-case Scenario’ as Donald Trump Considers Leaving Nuclear Treaty http://bit.ly/2TOiAw4

TheWeek: Canada condemns ‘Russian aggression’ toward Ukraine amid Black Sea standoff. Trump threatens NATO. http://bit.ly/2DVOS3y

NYT: Russia-Ukraine Fight Over Narrow Sea Passage Risks Wider War http://nyti.ms/2FHHSch

NPR: Russia’s Seizure Of Ukrainian Ships Is An ‘Outrageous Violation,’ Haley Says At U.N. http://n.pr/2PXQiB9

NBC, Allan Smith: Trump offers advice to Mueller on what he should include in final report http://nbcnews.to/2Kyrx8B
// The president wondered in a tweet if the special counsel would write a “preamble” to his report detailing what Trump alleges are conflicts of interest.

TIME, Jim Stavridis: President Trump Could Help Stop a War Between Russia and Ukraine — But Only If He Will Stand Up to Putin http://bit.ly/2DN8KVW Admiral Stavridis (Ret.) was the 16th Supreme Allied Commander at NATO

Vox, Alex Ward: Russia just openly attacked Ukraine. That could mean their war will get worse. http://bit.ly/2DMOKmg
// Why attacks on Ukrainian ships amount to the greatest — and scariest — escalation in years.

DefenseNews/AP, Joe Gould: US lawmakers urge Trump to arm Ukraine, break silence on Russian blockade http://bit.ly/2KywRZy Eliot Engel (D-NY), Jim Inhofe (R-OK), Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Rob Portman (R-OH)

WaPo: The same day tensions with Russia mount, Trump lashes out at Putin’s rivals over money http://wapo.st/2BzYQ8C

TheHill: Trump on Ukraine-Russia conflict: ‘We don’t like what’s happening either way’ http://bit.ly/2TNRUM8 “either way”?

StarTrib: Trump fails to single out Russia in Ukraine spat http://strib.mn/2TMlly5

🐣 RT @AngrierWHStaff Guys, for everyone pushing the “OMG Manafort is expecting a pardon” line, you’re probably right, but you’re also missing something: ¤ Mueller doesn’t need Manafort any more than he needed the answers to Trump’s questions. ¤ He. Already. Has. The. Answers.

🐣 RT @tribelaw More likely: He’s been led to believe Trump will pardon him (more witness tampering!) or he’s scared to death of what Putin might do to him or his family if he spills the truth @matthewamiller @chrislhayes @Lawrence
⋙ 🐣 RT @matthewamiller Manafort is either an incredibly stupid criminal or he’s protecting some secret so big that he’s willing to spend the rest of his life in jail to keep the world from discovering it.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @ZoeTillman NEW: Special counsel’s office claims Paul Manafort lied to the FBI and to Mueller’s office “on a variety of subject matters” after signing a plea deal, in breach of the agreement. Manafort disputes that characterization. More soon.
Document: https://twitter.com/ZoeTillman/status/1067205775355990017/photo/1-2
⋙⋙⋙ DocCloud, Mueller: Manafort Status Report http://bit.ly/2QkBsUx

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Mueller Just Guaranteed He Can Issue a Public Report http://bit.ly/2znKnLi

NYT: Manafort Breached Plea Deal by Repeatedly Lying, Mueller Says http://nyti.ms/2r8aBNg

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Jerome Corsi tells me that Mueller has offered him a plea deal on one count of perjury, but that he’s not going to take it because it would require him to sign a statement saying he knowingly and willfully lied, which he still denies. And much more. Story to come.

━━━━━━━▼ Ukraine escalation live @12:01am
🐣 RT @hthjones Just waking up? Here’s what you’ve missed
-Ukraine say Russia opened fire 16 times, and in 9 cases “used weapons prohibited by the Minsk Agreements”
-USAF RQ-4 Global Hawk drone tracked over Black Sea early this morning
-Canada calls “on Russia to immediately de-escalate”

🐣 RT @majaEUspox Escalating tensions in the Azov Sea and Kerch Strait have. We expect Russia to restore freedom of passage at the Kerch strait and urge all to act with utmost restraint to de-escalate the situation immediately

🐣 RT @Liveuamap General Staff of Ukraine: all armed forces units are on combat alert following decision of NSDC https://liveuamap.com/en/2018/26-november-general-staff-of-ukraine-all-armed-forces-units … #Ukraine
https://twitter.com/Liveuamap/status/1066943713232994309/photo/1

🐣 RT @loogunda 08:16 #Horlivka: They have shot enough – the internet goes down. Feniks [=RU-run ‘DNR’ mobile operator] don’t let me down at least now
💥🐣 RT @loogunda 08:10 SW #Horlivka: A couple of ka-booms
💥🐣 RT @loogunda 07:29 #Donetsk: I can hear them [=ka-booms] too. Somewhere close to the #railway station

━━━━━━━▲

⭕ 25 Nov 2018

NYT: Ukraine, After Naval Clash With Russia, Considers Martial Law http://nyti.ms/2r4jyY9

RFE/RL: Kyiv Says Russia Attacked Ukrainian Navy Ships, Seized Three In Black Sea http://bit.ly/2FIPZp3

🐣 RT @ Ray_net_ua Poroshenko said that he supports the introduction of martial law throughout Ukraine. Tomorrow the Verkhovna Rada will consider the decision to introduce martial law in closed mode. ¤ The Law on the EAP restricts the rights of Ukrainian citizens and cancels elections of the president and Rada-

🐣 RT @IanBrzezinski This is not a provocation but military aggression by Russia against Ukraine. Putin is testing the West’s resolve. The West’s response should include sectoral economic sanctions and transfer of more lethal assistance to Ukraine – including anti-ship missiles.

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_mag Putin has been waging war on Ukraine for four-and-a-half years but this attack is still a watershed moment. Russia is no longer trying to hide its aggression. Instead, it is attempting to justify it
⋙ 🐣 RT @AndreaChalupa The difference is that these are not “little green men without insignia” or “Russian-backed rebels.” This is Russia, out in the open, attacking Ukraine. They’re not even trying to hide it anymore.

🐣 The “Party Line” iow b.s.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Dpol_un [Dmitry Polyanskiy] We asked for emergency #UNSC meeting tomorrow at 11.00 to discuss dangerous #Ukraine provocations in the sea of #Azov and #Kerch Strait near #Crimea threatening international peace and security

🐣 RT @chessninja Ding. As we said in 2008 after Putin invaded Georgia, and 2014 when he invaded Ukraine. The West could have defended them both at almost no cost because Putin would never have risked military confrontation with NATO. But eventually he may get bold & desperate enough to want that.
⋙ 🐣 RT @gkhelash Without Western commitment to strengthening the perimeter of fledgeling democracies along Russia’s (Baltics, Ukraine, Georgia), Russia will take us down one by one. Strengthening only NATO partners consolidates the dividing line and helps to form a Russian zone of influence. 📌 https://twitter.com/gkhelash/status/1066829032589795328

WaPo: In the United States, right-wing violence is on the rise http://wapo.st/2By7O6b

Salon, Talia Lavin: How the Russian concept of “info-noise” can help American outlets cover Trump http://bit.ly/2BvyQLh
// Substantive policy changes can — and should — be kept separate from statements that are merely inflammatory

TheHill: Haley: UN Security Council to hold emergency meeting on Ukraine-Russia tensions http://bit.ly/2FFFDGl

Politico: Gowdy: Avoid ‘carnival’ by taping Comey interview for public to see http://politi.co/2TJ85u6

NYT, Ben Rhodes and Jake Sullivan: A Chance to Repair America’s Image Abroad http://nyti.ms/2P0yMqv
// Democrats can use their new power in the House to check the Trump administration’s recklessness and advance their own foreign policies.

TheGuardian, David Taylor: ‘He has moved incredibly quickly’: Mueller nears Trump endgame http://bit.ly/2KvFXXd
// A new urgency surrounds the Russia investigation, with Donald Trump Jr and longtime Trump ally Roger Stone in legal peril

🐣 RT @RichardHaass Timing may not be everything, but it can be a lot. While this statement by Potus would be unwelcome any day, it is especially unfortunate today given new Russian military action against Ukraine as it signals Putin he has little to worry about from a divided distracted West.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Europe has to pay their fair share for Military Protection. The European Union, for many years, has taken advantage of us on Trade, and then they don’t live up to their Military commitment through NATO. Things must change fast!

RusEmbUSA November 21: Russia is warning everyone that the responsibility for possible further aggravation of the situation in the Azov Sea-Kerch water area lies with Ukraine and the states that support its provocative actions 
⋙ Foreign Ministry statement http://bit.ly/2THM9zk

🐣 RT @20committee No, because there was never any “Guns of August situation” even in 1914. WW1 came because major powers (Russia, Austria-Hungary) consciously chose war, with pushing from others (Germany, UK). There was no “misunderstanding” at all. That’s ahistorical BS.
[⋙⋙ XXCommittee: That Terrible Tuchman Woman http://bit.ly/2KwpwcZ%5D
🐣 RT @20committee 3 basic things to keep in mind:
1. NATO is still vastly stronger than Russia militarily (and every way).
2. Putin fears the steep domestic costs of any serious war.
3. Russia, however, has lots of nukes and is willing to use them tactically as NATO will not.
#KerchStrait
⋙ 🐣 RT @bumgarls But don’t we risk a Guns of August situation where things spiral out of control?

🐣 RT @nolanwpeterson This is the most dangerous moment I’ve seen in Ukraine in years. ¤ Tonight, a war that many people in America can only imagine thanks to Hollywood movies, teeters on the razor thin edge of becoming real. ¤ Tonight in Ukraine we go to sleep not knowing what tomorrow will bring.

🐣 RT @CindyOtis_ We still need a lot of info about Russia’s attack on Ukraine, but it is not going out on a limb to say Moscow is absolutely taking advantage of a weakened US under Trump, a distracted EU, and a war weary NATO. It knows it can push past previous red lines with zero consequences.

🐣 RT @brianklaas International security crisis in Ukraine; US firing tear gas into Mexico; a chemical weapons attack in Syria; up to a million people in re-education camps in China; make or break moment for Brexit; brazen murder from the Saudis. Lots of dangerous threads all while Trump unravels.

🐣 RT @SamanthaJPower Very significant new aggression by Russia. Ukraine calling now for emergency meeting of UNSC.
⋙ ChristopherJM Ukrainian Navy Commander Ihor Voronchenko says his crews and vessels near the Kerch Strait are on combat alert and ready for possible assault. This is an intense and I believe unprecedented situation in the waters near the strait and Sea of Azov.

🐣 Perhaps those soldiers at the border could be redeployed to bolster Ukraine whose naval vessels just got attacked by Russia. Trump? He’s tweeting that NATO owes us money.

🐣 RT @RVAwonk Remember when Paul Manafort lobbied on behalf of the Trump campaign to remove a provision from the GOP platform that would have provided lethal defensive weapons to Ukraine? You know, weapons meant to serve as a deterrent to Russian aggression? Now is a good time to remember that

🐣 RT @BrianKlaas There is a worrying international security crisis brewing in Ukraine and President Trump is watching Fox News to see who praises him and then is tweeting his favorite quotes. [link]

🐣 RT @RikardJozwiak NATO spokesperson: “NATO fully supports #Ukraine’s sovereignty and its territorial integrity, including its navigational rights in its territorial waters. We call on #Russia to ensure unhindered access to Ukrainian ports in the #AzovSea , in accordance with international law.”

🐣 RT @juliaioffe H[N?]ow’s a great time to do this if you’re Putin: the British government is a snake eating (and vomiting up) its own tail, and Trump, especially post-Khashoggi Trump (which is everyday Trump), is unlikely to say anything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Annie_FR Serious escalation happening today off the coast of Crimea. Russia says Ukrainian Navy unlawfully entered its waters. Ukraine says its boats were attacked and fired at by Russians.

BBC: Russia ‘fires on and seizes Ukraine ships’ http://bbc.in/2r4BAcP @cnn @FoxNews @ABC @CBSNews @PBS @NBCNews @MSNBC @JoeNBC @sruhle @AliVelshi @MeetThePress @chucktodd @AriMelber @hardball @chrislhayes @MaddowBlog
@maddow @TheLastWord @Lawrence @11thHour

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s media reports that Russian combat aircraft are being deployed to the area of Kerch Strait, which connects the Sea of Azov & the Black Sea. The Kremlin blames the U.S. for creating a “provocation,” which is in reality another step in Russia’s escalation against #Ukraine.

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Escalating levels of madness on #Russia’s state TV, as a gaggle of “experts” and officials blames @Billbrowder and Western intelligence agencies for a number of deaths, including Sergei Magnitsky and Alexander Perepilichny – and for giving cancer to South America’s presidents. 📌 https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1066736228865720322

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Putin has been telling Russians they are at war with the US & NATO for years, recently expanding the propaganda to include the EU. Big bosses need big enemies, real or not.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MarkHertling Ukraine. A sovereign nation. One of our partners. A place where US soldiers have contributed to their security. A nation that has been brave in standing up to repeated Russian incursions. I know how the US SHOULD react to this. Will we?
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @nolanwpeterson Russia has blocked the Kerch Strait to all civilian shipping traffic, effectively blockading a key trade route for Ukraine. ¤ Ukraine’s Foreign Ministry says Russia has crossed a “red line.”

ABCNews: Mueller report will be ‘devastating’ for the president http://abcn.ws/2TJpr9Z but “I still don’t think it’s going to make a criminal case,” Dershowitz said.

🐣 RT @BillKristol If I’m not mistaken, on Monday the special counsel will submit a report on Manafort’s cooperation. I’ve got to think things will move quickly after that…

TheGuardian, Carole Cadwalladr: Who is the real Nigel Farage… and why won’t he answer my questions? http://bit.ly/2TF7gCF
// Trump… Russian TV… key witnesses in Robert Mueller’s investigation. The jokey ‘bloke with a pint’ now has a network that spreads well beyond the UK. Our reporter has spent months on the trail of Mr Brexit…

⭕ 24 Nov 2018

ForeignAffairs, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay: The Committee to Save the World Order http://fam.ag/2OwAyDq
// Nov-Dec 20018 issue; America’s Allies Must Step Up as America Steps Down

TheAtlantic, Bradley Moss: Julian Assange Isn’t Worth It http://bit.ly/2R7TuGR
// If the U.S. government can prosecute the WikiLeaks editor for publishing classified material, then every media outlet is at risk.

BBC: British army chief: Russia ‘far bigger threat than IS’ http://bbc.in/2S9yeR5

WashingtonPress/AMJoy: Pulitzer journalist David Cay Johnston reveals the reason why Trump keeps getting played by Putin and the Saudi prince http://bit.ly/2TGPW04 “potent combination of greed and gullibility”
// “President Trump’s potent combination of greed and gullibility is one of the main reasons that his presidency is such a dangerous plight for America”

NYT Editorial: The New Radicalization of the Internet http://nyti.ms/2AghvEg
// Jihadists and right-wing extremists use remarkably similar social media strategies.

TheGuardian, Carole Cadwalladr: Parliament seizes cache of Facebook internal papers http://bit.ly/2DSXt7n
// Documents alleged to contain revelations on data and privacy controls that led to Cambridge Analytica scandal

DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Inside the Mystery of the Dead Russian Spy Chief http://thebea.st/2KtxhAo
// “Natural causes” can’t be ruled out. But those include stress, and there’s no doubt Gen. Korobov of the G(R)U was under a lot of that.

ProPublica: For “Documenting Hate: New American Nazis,” @ACInvestigates looked into neo-nazi group Atomwaffen Division—including the time one of its first recruits confessed to killing his roommates and tried to warn the FBI about the mounting neo-nazi threat. https://propub.li/2PFDE9D 
💽 ⋙ PBS FrontLine: Documenting Hate: New American Nazis [Video] http://to.pbs.org/2BvKdDa
// 11/20/2018, In the wake of the deadly anti-Semitic attack at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, FRONTLINE and ProPublica present a new investigation into white supremacist groups in America – in particular, a neo-Nazi group, Atomwaffen Division, that has actively recruited inside the U.S. military. Continuing FRONTLINE and ProPublica’s reporting on violent white supremacists in the U.S. (which has helped lead to multiple arrests), this joint investigation shows the group’s terrorist objectives and how it gained strength after the 2017 Charlottesville rally. [Watch the first documentary in this series, August 2018’s Documenting Hate: Charlottesville, online.]

LATimes, Paul Thornton: Trump fans, brace for a reckoning from Mueller http://lat.ms/2r2LDPi

TheGuardian, David Taylor: ‘America’s straightest arrow’: Robert Mueller silent as urgency mounts http://bit.ly/2PQujw3
// Amid concern over the future of his inquiry, the special counsel lauded for integrity has kept his customary low profile

⭕ 23 Nov 2018

TheAtlantic, Joshua Zoffer and Niall Ferguson: Mueller and a Blue House Could Bring Down Trump http://bit.ly/2KwATli
// But the president’s supporters won’t make it easy.

WaPo, Ray Madoff: We don’t know who was paying Matthew Whitaker, and that’s a problem http://wapo.st/2r1x2nc

💽 MSNBC, Brian Williams: A look back at how Mueller’s probe has shaped Trump’s presidency http://on.msnbc.com/2AtTgTx with Philip Rucker, Tamara Keith, Michael Steele, and Eugene Robinson
// Nearly 700 days into the Trump presidency, we take a look back and how Russia and the Mueller investigation have been a constant in the Trump White House with Philip Rucker, Tamara Keith, Michael Steele, and Eugene Robinson.

NewYorkPost, John Podhoretz: Why Trump will look back fondly on the Mueller probe http://nyp.st/2FRn7LB “given what’s about to happen to his administration in the newly Democratic House of Representatives”

Inquisitr, Jonathan Vankin: Trump-Appointed Judge Hands Donald Trump Bad News In Robert Mueller Russia Case, Rules ‘Collusion’ Is A Crime http://bit.ly/2r2Lifu
// A judge appointed last year by Donald Trump has rebuked Trump’s own argument that even if collusion with Russia took place, collusion itself is not a crime.

EurActive, Georgi Gortev: Experts lament underfunding of EU task force countering Russian disinformation http://bit.ly/2TIf4Uf

A year ago, 65 European security experts and parliamentarians from 21 countries signed a declaration explicitly blaming EU foreign affairs chief Federica Mogherini for not doing what she should do to name Russia “as the main source of hostile disinformation” and for not taking adequate counter-measures.

In particular, they called on Mogherini to triple the capacity of the EEAS East STRATCOM team and give it a budget in millions of euros, so it could start implementing its mandate as stipulated by the member states and the European Parliament.

📔 RAND: Report: What Deters and Why ~ Exploring Requirements for Effective Deterrence of Interstate Aggression http://bit.ly/2r3iy6n
● Recommendations: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1066243366646632448/photo/1
// Pdf: http://bit.ly/2QjcQvt 233p

● Assess the motives of potential aggressors and ease security concerns. In Europe, this could include avoiding deployment of the most provocative U.S. systems in or near Eastern Europe, thinning Russian and Baltic forces, and working on a successor to the Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty.
● Work to create a context hostile to aggression. In Europe, this could include engaging in efforts to strengthen the political foundations of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), reiterating commitments to Article V countries, and reinforcing the norm of nonaggression and a committed aggression response.
● Seek clarity in what the United States pledges to deter and in its reaction to aggression. In Europe, this could include reaffirming the Baltics’ Article V status and aggression response and outlining options in response to aggression (including military, political, and economic consequences).
● Take specific steps that reinforce successful deterrence criteria. In Europe, this could include promoting visits and statements of support from key U.S. leaders, strengthening and diversifying relationships with the Baltics, promoting investment from the United States and NATO and continued diplomacy, and strengthening communication and crisis management within NATO and between NATO and Russia.
● Deploy or support capabilities that signal the seriousness of U.S. commitment. In Europe, this could include working with NATO allies to fund new defensive capabilities, reinforcing existing NATO battalions in and around the Baltics, and investing in capabilities for successful combined arms operations in Europe (especially in ground force capabilities).

Law&Crime, Ronn Blitzer: Judge in Russia Case Says Collusion Could Be Enough for Criminal Charge http://bit.ly/2zk4jyE ‘…if campaign officials colluded w Russia in a way that was meant to impair, obstruct, or defeat the function of a govt agency, they could face charges…’

AP/Express-News Editorial Board: Mueller investigation should be protected http://bit.ly/2BtOLtv

TheHill: Senate Intel chair: Panel’s Russia probe will extend into 2019 http://bit.ly/2BupBew Chair Senator Richard Burr (R-NC) and ranking member Mark Warner (D-VA) agree the probe will continue, but disagree on the need for public hearings, which Warner favors

TheHill: Whitaker’s post provides ample tools to disrupt Mueller probe http://bit.ly/2QdKkLU

NewsMax: Experts: Whitaker Has Other Ways to Slow Mueller Probe http://nws.mx/2OZdee3 (note: the editor of NewsMax, Christopher Ruddy, is a confidante on Trump)

TheGuardian, Kathleen Hall Jamieson et al: Cyberwar, Network Propaganda review: did Russia or the right do most to help Trump? http://bit.ly/2DWFfBZ
// Kathleen Hall Jamieson and Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris and Hal Roberts seek to shed light on the 2016 election

WaPo: Stone associate Jerome Corsi is in plea negotiations with special counsel http://wapo.st/2R5s6t3

⭕ 22 Nov 2018

NYT: Saudis Want a U.S. Nuclear Deal. Can They Be Trusted Not to Build a Bomb? http://nyti.ms/2DJnODL

NYT, Alexander Baunov: What Drives the Russian State http://nyti.ms/2R8Hd4P
// To understand what makes Putin and his allies act the way they do, you need to look beyond the myths.

TheGuardian, Cass Mudde: How populism became the concept that defines our age http://bit.ly/2S5cQwr
// The spread of this idea reflects a deep and lasting change in the way we view ‘the people’ and ‘the elites’

🐣 RT @IrateMillenial BREAKING: White House Turkey refuses Presidential Pardon, is now cooperating with Special Counsel Robert Mueller. 😆

ArsTechnica: Study: It only takes a few seconds for bots to spread misinformation http://bit.ly/2TAy4nl
// Just six percent of bots on Twitter accounted for 31 percent of bad information.

🐣 RT @Comey Happy Thanksgiving. Got a subpoena from House Republicans. I’m still happy to sit in the light and answer all questions. But I will resist a “closed door” thing because I’ve seen enough of their selective leaking and distortion. Let’s have a hearing and invite everyone to see.

TheGuardian, Natalie Nougayrède: A new wave of dissidents in the east can turn back Europe’s populist tide http://bit.ly/2QdNMGh

⭕ 21 Nov 2018

DailyBeast, Barbara McQuade: Trump’s Direction to Prosecute Comey Could Complete the Obstruction of Justice Case http://thebea.st/2R8xkEy
// Any one of the president’s single acts against the FBI director could be written off by reasonable people, but adding on top a desire to lock him up should tip the scales.

MotherJones: The Difference Between Russiagate and Watergate: Nixon Didn’t Have Fox http://bit.ly/2zo57m4
// “It is an incredibly well-financed and a massive ‘get out the vote’ operation.”

CNN: US agency opens case file on potential Whitaker Hatch Act violations http://cnn.it/2Qi57h4

NBC/Reuters: Head of Russian spy agency accused of U.S. election hack, U.K. spy poisoning dies http://nbcnews.to/2FLprnk
// Igor Korobov, 62, who ran the spy agency since 2016, died on Wednesday after “a serious and long illness,” the Russian defense ministry said.

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 Head of Russia’s GRU spy agency is reported dead ‘after a long and serious illness’. ¤ Meanwhile reports surfaced last month that Putin was fuming over his failed Skripal operation. Prosecutor Karapetyan was also found dead in a helicopter crash last month

🐣 RT @JulieDavisNews The head of #Russia’s GRU spy agency is reported dead ‘after a long and serious illness.’ Igor Korobov was 63 years old.
↧
DailyBeast, Amy Knight (Aug): This Russian Spy Agency Is in the Middle of Everything http://thebea.st/2AZS11O
// 8/8/2018, Only a few years ago, the GRU looked like it might be dissolved. But Putin found new uses for it: covert war in Ukraine and ‘active measures’ that helped Trump get elected.

AP: Inside Trump’s refusal to testify in the Mueller probe http://bit.ly/2TwSNZj

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec This will trigger a criminal investigation referral by OSC. ¤ Accepting “campaign donations” for a defunct campaign without intent to use them for an election violates more than the Hatch Act.
⋙ TheHill: Federal investigators probing possible Whitaker Hatch Act violations http://bit.ly/2AbKQzM

🐣 RT @McFaul Excellent ! отлично !
⋙ 🐣 RT @JulieDavisNews Yesterday’s glee is replaced by rage, as #Russia’s state TV hosts blame the US for changing the likeliest outcome & “forcing” the majority of countries to vote against the Russian candidate, who they believe would have been otherwise elected as the new president of #Interpol.

💙💙 TheHill, Brent Budowsky: After midterms, Mueller prepares blockbuster moves http://bit.ly/2qWlGRy

HollywoodReporter: John Kerry Says Ex-Hockey Teammate Robert Mueller “Would Savage the Defense” http://bit.ly/2KpE8er “Trump better get a better lawyer than Rudy Giuliani.”

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman: House Intelligence Panel Hiring Money-Laundering Sleuths http://thebea.st/2OWVFuO
// One of President’s biggest foes is taking steps to chase the Trump-Russia money trail.

TheTelegraph [UK]: MI6 battling to stop Donald Trump releasing classified Russia probe documents http://bit.ly/2S4FyNS

Medium, Michael McFaul: Enabling Autocrats Is Not in the American National Interest http://bit.ly/2BqHef9

TheTelegraph, Bill Browder: Putin uses Interpol to hunt down enemies like me. Will the West stand by and do nothing? http://bit.ly/2zoaS3d

⭕ 20 Nov 2018

LATimes, Harry Litman: Mueller might soon bring charges that even Trump die-hards can’t trivialize http://lat.ms/2DCQqOS “it’s increasingly likely that the full contours of his inquiry will be known to the public by year’s end”

The upshot may be allegations of “collusion,” of the sort the president has long denied. The actual charges are likely to be one of three criminal conspiracies: violating federal election laws, violating computer laws, or soliciting or receiving something of value from a foreign government. Charges, in other words, that not even the most ardent Trump die-hard could trivialize. They bring with them the possibility that Mueller might opt to name President Trump himself as an unindicted co-conspirator.

TheTelegraph, Bill Browder: Putin uses Interpol to hunt down enemies like me. Will the West stand by and do nothing? http://bit.ly/2zoaS3d

NYT, Julian Barnes: Trump’s Statement on Saudi Arabia, Explained! http://nyti.ms/2DCDiJW
// The president makes the case for the crown prince: Iran, arms sales and oil.

NYT, Mark Mazzetti and Ben Hubbard: In Pardoning Saudi Arabia, Trump Gives Guidance to Autocrats http://nyti.ms/2PKyrxe

🐣 RT @benjaminwittes A while back, @PreetBharara suggested that we build a resource page for all the Mueller probe litigations. So we did:
🔄 ⋙ ≣ 💙💙 LawfareBlog: Litigation Documents Related to the Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2OVch6n

WaPo: Former Bush attorney general Alberto Gonzales rebukes Trump for reportedly seeking to prosecute Clinton, Comey http://wapo.st/2OY6SeG //➔ well, praise be

🐣 RT @MaxBoot The growing inequality and social dislocation of the Industrial Revolution gave rise to radical new ideologies such as Marxism, fascism and anarchism. The Information Revolution is just as destabilizing, leading to the rise of autocratic populists. Me:
⋙ WaPo, Max Boot: Democracy is in crisis around the world. Why? http://wapo.st/2Txut9y

🐣 RT @NBCNews JUST IN: South Korean Kim Jong Yang elected President of Interpol, beating Russian Alexander Prokopchuk.

🐣 RT @MaxBoot All you need to know about @realDonaldTrump is that he’s tougher on Adm. Bill McRaven than he is on Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman. Or Vladimir Putin. Or Kim Jong-un.

🐣 RT @AriMelber Trump attempting to order the prosecution of Clinton and Comey is the most significant legal scandal to hit the White House since the report that Trump tried to get Mueller fired. 📌 https://twitter.com/AriMelber/status/1065005883803889664

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote OMG OMG OMG! According to my super space beans, this is the action that kicks off the dominoes. HOLD ON TO YOUR TURKIES! #beans
⋙ AP: BREAKING: Lawyer: President Trump has turned over answers to written questions in the special counsel’s Russia investigation.

ABCNews: Trump submits written responses to special counsel Robert Mueller http://abcn.ws/2OV6n5g

SpectatorUSA, John Schindler: Mueller is coming – and Trump can do nothing to stop him http://bit.ly/2PGAxhN
// What exactly Trump seeks to hide, and how Russian it is, has fallen to Bob Mueller and his cadre of seasoned investigators to unravel

TheHill: Trump says lawyers will hand over responses to Mueller questions ‘today or soon’ http://bit.ly/2FzqaYC

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The drama over Trump answering Mueller’s questions, explained http://bit.ly/2qYr8Dy
// He’s delayed for months. Will he now answer a more limited set of questions, in writing?

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: Trump Wanted to Order Justice Dept. to Prosecute Comey and Clinton http://nyti.ms/2BmAjDR

LATimes, Harry Litman: Mueller might soon bring charges that even Trump die-hards can’t trivialize. http://lat.ms/2DCQqOS

WaPo, Philip Bump: With Saudi Arabia as with Russia, Trump’s view muffles his administration’s [sic] http://wapo.st/2PDDWxT //➔ I don’t know if the truncated title is a goof or a metaphor ~ time will tell

CNBC, Tucker Higgins: The legal challenges piling up against acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker could mean problems for special counsel Robert Mueller http://cnb.cx/2Trufkx
● Legal challenges against Matthew Whitaker’s appointment as acting attorney general have piled up in the two weeks since Trump forced out Jeff Sessions, including one case that’s already before the Supreme Court.
● If Whitaker is found to have been improperly appointed, the spillover effect could invalidate any official decisions he made while in his role – including decisions related to Mueller.
● The legal challenges, even if they are unlikely to succeed in court, could give Mueller some pause before he takes any major actions.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The unraveling is just beginning http://wapo.st/2S2OYcM

WaPo, Vladimir Kara-Murza: Putin is about to gain control of Interpol, the world’s main law enforcement organization http://wapo.st/2qUyasK Interpol is “the International Criminal Police Organization, the coordinating body for law enforcement from 192 countries”

🐣 RT @matthewamiller This is really important.
⋙ 🐣 RT @SenSchumer Did Matthew Whitaker share confidential information about Mueller’s investigation with President Trump? ¤ @TheJusticeDept Inspector General must investigate now. https://twitter.com/SenSchumer/status/1064897355231703040/photo/1-3

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Eerie Parallels Between Trump and the Watergate ‘Road Map’ http://bit.ly/2A7La2t
// Lawmakers thought Nixon’s gathering of inside information about the Watergate probe from DOJ was an impeachable offense.
↥ ↧
LawfareBlog, Jim Baker and Sarah Grant: What the Watergate ‘Road Map’ Reveals about Improper Contact between the White House and the Justice Department http://bit.ly/2qYhAbE
// 11/19/2019, Jim Baker is a Visiting Fellow at the Lawfare Institute, a Visiting Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, and a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School. He is also the former General Counsel of the FBI. The views expressed here are his own and not necessarily those of any current or former employer.

⭕ 19 Nov 2018

💽 NBC: Mueller controversy: Trump has repeatedly broken his oath of office. Now it’s up to Congress to hold him accountable. [Video]http://nbcnews.to/2FKK03h says Corey Brettschneider, the author of “The Oath and the Office: A Guide to the Constitution for Future Presidents.”

AmericanConservative, Bruce Fein: Whitaker is Unfit to be Attorney General, Acting or Otherwise http://bit.ly/2ToQE1T
// Beyond the unconstitutionality of his appointment, his views on judicial review and religious litmus tests should disqualify him.

HillReporter, Brian Krassenstein: The Trump/Russia Case Against Donald Trump Jr., Julian Assange and Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2PBDOPr Timeline

Bloomberg: Trump’s Business to Face Sharp Scrutiny Under House Democrats http://bloom.bg/2S53LDY
● New majority questions Trump’s financing, current involvement
● President has vowed GOP can play the investigation game better

CNN, Marshall Cohen: Fact-checking Trump’s latest claims about Whitaker and Mueller http://cnn.it/2S38MfX

Motherboard, Bruce Schneier and Henry Farrell: The Most Damaging Election Disinformation Campaign Came From Donald Trump, Not Russia http://bit.ly/2Q6hltf
// The Kremlin has been focused on undermining trust in American democracy and elections, but Donald Trump and the Republicans have done it better than Russia ever could.

DailyBeast: Bipartisan Group Calls on Trump to Oppose Russia’s Bid for Top Spot at Interpol http://thebea.st/2Q2VMtJ

WaPo, Nelson Cunningham: If Matthew Whitaker hinders the Mueller inquiry, would we even know? http://wapo.st/2BhNvcS Cunningham served as general counsel of the Senate Judiciary Committee and as general counsel of the White House Office of Administration under President Bill Clinton

CNN: Mueller argues Whitaker appointment has no impact in ongoing subpoena fight http://cnn.it/2KgwHWN

WaPo: Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team defends legitimacy of his appointment http://wapo.st/2A61ZLc
// The special counsel’s office was responding to an inquiry from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in a case brought by Andrew Miller, an associate of Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Trump.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: A Former FBI Lawyer Is Dropping Big Hints About Trump Obstructing Justice http://nym.ag/2BiSaLS

WashingtonExaminer: Russia opens criminal investigation into Putin foe Bill Browder http://washex.am/2OQpX2p

Khodorkovsky: Bill Browder And Mikhail Khodorkovsky Hold Press Conference On Kremlin Interpol Favourite http://bit.ly/2qVU27i

NYT: Book Offers Firsthand Account of a Venomous Den Inside the White House http://nyti.ms/2Tlpmcu
// Maggie Haberman; the new book “Team of Vipers,” is written by Cliff Sims, a former aide in the White House communications office, is to be published in January

⭕ 18 Nov 2018

TheHill: Top House Oversight Dem Elijah Cummings says he will do ‘anything and everything’ to make Mueller’s findings public http://bit.ly/2QTadO9 on CBS’s Face the Nation

TheHill: Senator Lindsey Graham urges McConnell to allow vote on bill to protect Mueller http://bit.ly/2qR4zR7 on NBC’s Meet the Press

MotherJones, Pema Levy: Trump Now Says He Didn’t Know Anything About Whitaker’s Anti-Mueller Comments http://bit.ly/2QYyKBv
// Not according to lots of other reporting.

Fortune: Trump Claims He Didn’t Know Matthew Whitaker’s Views on the Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2Q3oMkW

TheGuardian: Republicans and Democrats pressure Whitaker not to interfere in Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2QUbdBF

● Democrat Adam Schiff: Matthew Whitaker appointment is ‘unconstitutional’
● Republican Lindsey Graham: Shutting down inquiry would be a ‘disaster’ for the party

WaPo: Trump says he wouldn’t stop acting attorney general from curtailing Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2Tn4TnN

🐣 RT @tribelaw Working secretly with a foreign government to win the presidency. It’s not what brought Nixon down — but it would’ve if it had been uncovered at the time. Worse than Watergate. With Trump, the truth might emerge sooner. How will we react? It’s up to all of us.
⋙ MSNBC: Watergate brought down Richard Nixon. Another scandal – now revealed – shows how he won the White House. http://on.msnbc.com/
💙💙 // Tune in to @MSNBC tomorrow at 9 p.m. as @maddow explores ‘Betrayal: The Plot that Won the White House’ in a special report. https://on.msnbc.com/2K9ZNXA 

🐣 RT @BillBrowder Here’s the room where Putin will attempt his most audacious operation yet: to take over Interpol so he can expand his criminal tentacles to every corner of the globe
⋙ 🐣 RT @INTERPOL_HQ In a few short hours, delegates from around the world will fill this room for the opening ceremony of the 87th INTERPOL General Assembly. #INTERPOLGA

⭕ 17 Nov 2018

NewYorker, Jane Mayer (11/17): New Evidence Emerges of Steve Bannon and Cambridge Analytica’s Role in Brexit http://bit.ly/2FzRypb
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYer Mayer Bannon Brexit 11-17-2017

LawfareBlog, David Kris: Whitaker’s Appointment and Broader Risks at the Justice Department http://bit.ly/2BdWZG7

SaltLakeTrib: Paul Waldman: Trump’s battle to destroy the Mueller investigation is officially doomed http://bit.ly/2DLtpds

Bloomberg: Trump Says He Will Hand in Answers to Mueller Queries Next Week http://bloom.bg/2Q2dxJy
● Says not yet discussed if he’d sit for an in-person interview
● Said earlier he had finished writing responses to Mueller

💽 RCP/Hardball: Sen. Blumenthal: Mueller “Still Has A Good Deal Of Work To Do” [Video, transcript] http://bit.ly/2FsCN7v

Politico Mag, Jack Shafer: Week 78: Will the Left Get Its Revenge on Assange? http://politi.co/2DsVPbm
// A mysterious court filing hints the Wikileaks maestro, blamed by many for Hillary’s defeat, has already been secretly charged. But for what?

Axios, Jonathan Swan: Trump’s moment of truth http://bit.ly/2zezb3o “Trump has faced scant — if any — serious consequences for saying things that are not true. However, right now, in putting together his answers for the special counsel, that all changes.”

Law&Crime: Legal Expert Jonathan Turley Calls BS on Trump’s Claim He Answered Mueller’s Questions ‘Very Easily’ http://bit.ly/2qU5iRA

💽 MSNBC: Trump answers Mueller questions, could show closer to end of Russia probe [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/2Dwpd0C
// MSNBC’s Richard Lui speaks to national security attorney Mark Zaid and former prosecutor Karen DeSoto about reported Assange charges from DOJ. Plus why former Trump adviser George Papadopoulos is asking to delay serving sentence. What these developments say about Special Counsel Mueller’s timing on indictments.

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Robert Mueller Has More Questions for Longtime Roger Stone Acquaintance Randy Credico http://thebea.st/2FqIiDT
// Randy Credico, a lefty comedian and activist who has known Stone for decades, testified before Mueller’s grand jury in September, but his work with the Mueller probe is not done.

TheHill, Jonathan Turley: Mueller could turn easy Trump answers into difficult situation http://bit.ly/2RUHOY2

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ Organizations that steal and collect “dirt” on people and selectively leak them to maximize damage, encourage people to commit espionage in U.S. agencies, and knowingly further the goals of foreign military intelligence services aren’t news media.
⋙ NYT: How the Trump Administration Stepped Up Pursuit of WikiLeaks’s Assange http://nyti.ms/2zdQORa

⭕ 16 Nov 2018

DailyBeast, Erin Banco and Betsy Woodruff: Top Cheney Aide in Mueller’s Sights as Probe Expands http://thebea.st/2FuLf6t
// Mueller’s investigators have examined an array of operatives with ties to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and the UAE—including John Hannah, Dick Cheney’s former national security adviser.

🐣 RT @dklaidman .@gtconway3d was remarkably blunt-spoken and incisive in our interview. He was particularly disturbed by Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department. When we asked him whether he believed Trump was “fully stable,” he paused and the quietly said “no comment.”
🔊 🐣 RT @Isikoff In this clip from the new @SkullduggeryPod @gtconway3d explains why he formed #ChecksAndBalances and why conservatives like himself should not “stay silent” when they see core constitutional principles being violated– just because they like Trump’s judges.
Tweetlink: https://twitter.com/Isikoff/status/1063464638942244869

WaPo, Joshua Kurlantzick: Unfixable? http://wapo.st/2BdXEHD
// Several nations have tried to restore democracy after populist strongmen. It was never the same.

Reuters: Russians impersonating U.S. State Department aide in hacking campaign: researchers http://reut.rs/2FF2vpN

NBC: Alleged Russian operative Mariia Butina negotiating with prosecutors http://nbcnews.to/2QR82KP
// A document filed in federal court indicates prosecutors and Butina’s lawyers are working towards a plea agreement.

NYRB, Carole Cadwalladr: Why Britain Needs Its Own Mueller http://bit.ly/2KbAG6W

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance Made prediction that Assange will be indicted for Conspiracy to Defraud US on @Msnbc several times this summer. Also said next round of indictments will be assets in RU infowar: http://Wikileaks.org , Stone, Credico, poss Alex Nix & Cambridge Analytica & Natalya Veselnitskaya.

NYT: Prosecutors Have Prepared Indictment of Julian Assange, a Filing Reveals http://nyti.ms/2K9smEK
// by Charlie Savage and Michael Schmidt

⭕ 15 Nov 2018

USAToday, Noah Bookbinder, Richard Painter and Norman Eisen: Whitaker will break public trust and federal law if he controls Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Q44cAJ
// Whitaker must recuse from the Mueller investigation to make clear he will fulfill his oath to serve the Constitution and not Trump’s personal agenda.

🐣 RT @SethAbramson I think Roger Stone (and possibly Trump Jr., Jerome Corsi, and Randy Credico) will be indicted very soon. Meanwhile, Mueller will continue working on Manafort, who (a) is probably the person Trump says was “threatened” by Mueller, and (b) can *bury* Trump.
[…] (PS2) We know Manafort can bury Trump because Trump implied as much to multiple friends by telephone in January ’18, per an NBC News report. And we know Trump was (Giuliani implies, improbably, still *is*) in a defense agreement with Manafort. So Trump’s tweet on “threatening”…
[…] (PS3) …was likely a freakout prompted by learning from someone in Manafort’s camp that Mueller is “threatening” to increase Manafort’s prison sentence if he doesn’t tell the truth about everything Trump did. This would also explain Trump’s more-deranged-than-usual mood. /end

Esquire, Jack Holmes: Trump Just Blurted Out, Unprompted, That He Installed His Pet Attorney General Over the Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2DKhT20
// If you wait long enough, the president will tell you outright that he did the shady thing.

DailyBeast: Facebook Hired GOP Oppo-Research Firm to Link Protesters to George Soros: Report http://thebea.st/2qX4POJ

Bloomberg, Timothy O’Brien: Trump’s Attack on Mueller Is About One Thing: Fear http://bloom.bg/2zZqTvW
// Why would the president risk adding to Mueller’s obstruction inquiry? There are bigger things at stake for him.

WaPo: Julian Assange has been charged, prosecutors reveal in inadvertent court filing http://wapo.st/2PZ5pcB

🐣 RT @JulieDavisNews #Russia’s state TV mocks and taunts the U.S./Trump admin. ¤ State TV host Evgeny Popov says: ¤ “Slight amnesia occurred on Capitol Hill, in the United States – they were promising us draconian sanctions, but forgot to impose them. Imagine that!”© ¤ #Skripal

🐣 RT @CoryBooker Results of Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation so far:
☑️ 3 people sentenced to prison
☑️ 1 person convicted at trial
☑️ 6 people pleaded guilty
☑️ 35 people & entities charged
☑️ 191 criminal counts
We must pass our bipartisan bill to protect this investigation.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Mueller couldn’t tell the court who Manafort helped them roll and in what way without revealing info about an ongoing investigation. He just asked for ten day extension. That means the related indictments are likely not coming tomorrow. But by the 26th. #beans

🐣 RT @kelly2277 [VentureCapital, 3/29] Evidence to charge Trump w Treason is here. Konstantin Rykov’s confession on Facebook named Aleksander Kogan who worked w Joseph Chancellor at GSR. Rykov connected to Artem Klyushin Yulia Alferova & Emin Agalarov who were w Trump when Putin called
// 3/29/2018
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/kelly2277/status/979403917636395009?s=20

🐣 RT @MollyJongFast It’s not like Manafort was the president’s campaign manger.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ JamieOGrady BREAKING: Mueller asks court for ten-day delay in joint status update in Manafort case. This suggests Special Counsel expects Manfort’s cooperation to come to a head very, very soon.

🐣 RT @elechner Something will happen between now and the Monday after Thanksgiving that is so helpful to Manafort and Mueller being ready to sentence Manafort that, instead of the usual “wait 60 more days to sentence,” it’s only 10 days… ¤ Could be indictments of who knows how many…

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson I’m really excited to see how much we get to stress test our Republic in the next few months.

Slate, Mark Stern: The Justice Department’s Legal Defense of Matthew Whitaker’s Appointment ~ It’s laughable. http://bit.ly/2BaMHXw

🐣 RT @MarkWarner We need to recognize that the Special Counsel’s investigation is under serious threat of political interference from this President. Heck, it’s happening in front of our eyes. It’s time for Congress to pass bipartisan legislation to #ProtectMueller.
[4 Trump Tweets:] https://twitter.com/MarkWarner/status/1063097237201399808/photo/1
⇊ ⇊
🐣 RT @real The White House is running very smoothly and the results for our Nation are obviously very good. We are the envy of the world. But anytime I even think about making changes, the FAKE NEWS MEDIA goes crazy, always seeking to make us look as bad as possible! Very dishonest!
[…] The inner workings of the Mueller investigation are a total mess. They have found no collusion and have gone absolutely nuts. They are screaming and shouting at people, horribly threatening them to come up with the answers they want. They are a disgrace to our Nation and don’t…
[…] ….care how many lives the ruin. These are Angry People, including the highly conflicted Bob Mueller, who worked for Obama for 8 years. They won’t even look at all of the bad acts and crimes on the other side. A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!
[…] Universities will someday study what highly conflicted (and NOT Senate approved) Bob Mueller and his gang of Democrat thugs have done to destroy people. Why is he protecting Crooked Hillary, Comey, McCabe, Lisa Page & her lover, Peter S, and all of his friends on the other side?
[…] The only “Collusion” is that of the Democrats with Russia and many others. Why didn’t the FBI take the Server from the DNC? They still don’t have it. Check out how biased Facebook, Google and Twitter are in favor of the Democrats. That’s the real Collusion!

🐣 RT @joncoopertweets As Trump hears the footsteps of Lady Justice getting closer, he’ll become increasingly unstable and paranoid. Soon he’ll be afraid to trust even his closest aides & advisers, relying only on the few people he feels will always have his back, like Ivanka & Don Jr. Dangerous times.

🐣 RT @TonySchwartz Remember when he talked about hiring the best people? Most members of this administration are not simply mediocre, they are literally D-listers, losers, miscreants, fools and extremists — people like him. We have a government run by no-nothings.
… For nearly two years, I have believed that Mueller will ultimately detail a raft of high crimes and misdemeanors committed by the man whose name I no longer use. That day is very near. It will prompt the ultimate showdown about who we are as a nation. Will good triumph?

NYT: A Look Inside the Tactics of Definers, Facebook’s Attack Dog http://nyti.ms/2Ds2brk

Politico, Darren Samuelson: ‘Preparing for the worst’: Mueller anxiety pervades Trump world http://politi.co/2KdStKV
// Half a dozen people in contact with the White House and other Trump officials say a deep anxiety has started to set in.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: What Trump’s Latest Outburst About Mueller Could Mean http://bit.ly/2DofdWW
// The president was unusually specific in his attacks against the special counsel.

SoufanCenter: IntelBrief: Paris and the Prospects & Perils of a Post-American Order http://bit.ly/2B957HU “despite the anomalous presidency of Donald Trump … the United States continues to maintain resilient institutions and remains a leader in most areas that matter”

● As the recent World War I centenary tribute in Paris foreshadowed, the world order may be shifting, with the contours of a ‘Post-American Order’ slowly taking shape.
● The defining characteristic of a post-American world would be multipolarity, with revisionist powers like Russia and China growing more assertive, near-peer adversaries like Iran and North Korea gaining in relative strength, and traditional allies in Europe and Asia reconsidering their relationships with Washington amidst American retrenchment.
● Still, despite the anomalous presidency of Donald Trump, largely considered to be an outlier in terms of American grand strategic tradition, the United States continues to maintain resilient institutions and remains a leader in most areas that matter—military, economic, and technological.
● It is still premature to begin speaking of a ‘Post-American Order,’ although continued hegemony is no fait accompli. Likely the United States will rebound from its current morass to reclaim its role as the leading promoter of global stability and defender of human rights, democracy, and free markets.

Axios: Scoop: The millionaire funding the campaign to break up Facebook http://bit.ly/2qNEWAB David Magerman, a Pennsylvania philanthropist and former hedge fund executive

🐣 RT @renato_mariotti 1/ Journalists need to press Giuliani–does a refusal to answer the questions mean Trump is taking the Fifth as to those questions? ¤ Most likely Trump’s team will try to dodge the questions without formally taking the Fifth, which they can do until or unless Trump is subpoenaed
⋙ WaPo: U.S. judge refuses to toss out Mueller probe case against Russian firm owned by ‘Putin’s chef’ http://wapo.st/2qPZbhe plus update: Giuliani on status of Trump answering Mueller’s questions
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/renato_mariotti/status/1063208566335709185

🐣 RT @RussiaUN #Russia could not support amendments proposed by #US to the draft res. on combating glorification of Nazism.We are against proposals aimed at justifying the Nazis and their allies, denying the danger of spread of racist and xenophobic rhetoric and ideology. @mfa_russia @RusEmbUSA
// Huh?!
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @RussiaUN Today we are facing persistent attempts to falsify and rewrite #history for the sake of political and #geopolitical benefits. In some countries the glorification of Nazism has been elevated to the level of state policy.
https://twitter.com/RussiaUN/status/1063207117837017094/photo/1

🐣 RT @BrookingsFP Russia sees AI-driven disinformation campaigns as a low-cost way to compensate for its conventional military inferiority relative to the West, writes @apolyakova.
⋙ Brookings, Alina Polyakova: Weapons of the weak: Russia and AI-driven asymmetric warfare http://brook.gs/2ThtGcH

“Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. It comes with colossal opportunities, but also threats that are difficult to predict. Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.”[1] – Russian President Vladimir Putin, 2017.

“A people that no longer can believe anything cannot make up its mind. It is deprived not only of its capacity to act but also of its capacity to think and to judge. And with such a people you can then do what you please.”[2] – Hannah Arendt, 1978

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw The fix is in.
Senator McConnell, Nov 9, 2018:
#Whitaker “will be a very interim AG…I expect we’ll get a new nominee quickly.”
Senator Graham, Nov 15, 2018:
Whitaker and I “discussed sort of what he wants to do next year in terms of his legislative agenda.”

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Looks like the connection between Russia and Stone to get to the Trump campaign may be coming to a US court. So [sic] wonder Trump is so crazed. Coming from all sides.
WSJ: U.S. Is Optimistic It Will Prosecute Assange http://on.wsj.com/2DGPoCz
// Over the past year, U.S. prosecutors have discussed several types of charges they could potentially bring against the WikiLeaks founder

🐣 RT @MSNBC .@MaddowBlog: Last week, Mueller stopped reporting to Rosenstein and started reporting to Whitaker. Now, Pres. Trump claims to know about the “inner workings” of the probe.
⋙ MSNBC, Steve Benen: Trump claims to know about ‘the inner workings’ of Mueller’s probe http://on.msnbc.com/2Dpt1AH

🐣 RT @FranklinFoer In summation: Facebook– a dominant source of global news and information–pays to spread anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and shades the truth to avoid offending Republicans.

TheAtlantic, Alexis Madrigal: When the Tech Mythology Collapses http://bit.ly/2FmokKt
// The industry’s fall from grace may feel unprecedented, but we have a model for what happens when a beloved industry fails us.

🐣 RT @kelly2277 [Venture Capital) @Facebook hired Definers Public Affairs tied to American Rising an Alt Right group and Matt Whitaker to shift blame to Soros and others- AND @Redrum_of_Crows tied them to the Russian IP matrix‼️ cc @maddow @kenklippenstein
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @kenklippenstein To portray its critics as Soros-backed, Facebook hired a PR firm called Definers Public Affairs. ¤ That firm is headed by Joe Pounder, who also runs America Rising — a right-wing oppo group Trump’s Acting AG Matt Whitaker hired for “research” in 2015-16:
⋙ TYT (11/9): Secret Documents Could Shed Light on Whitaker’s Partisan Past http://bit.ly/2qQ1xfY
According to a 2017 report in the New York Times, America Rising used the Freedom of Information Act to request emails of EPA employees deemed critical of the president and then-EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt.
According to the IRS filings, FACT paid America Rising $144,000 in 2015 and $180,150 in 2016 for “research” services.
The tax records also show FACT hired Creative Response Concepts, or CRC, the public-relations firm that touched off controversy when it was reported that they helped push a conspiracy theory to rebut a sexual assault allegation regarding Trump’s Supreme Court nominee, Brett Kavanaugh. (TYT recently reported on CRC’s ties to Vice President Mike Pence.)
FACT paid CRC $133,324 in 2015 and $134,149 in 2016 for “public relations” services.
Although FACT’s connections to America Rising and CRC have been previously reported, TYT also found that the group’s ties with several Republican-dominated law firms show similar patterns.
⋙ 🐣 RT @kenklippenstein Definers and America Rising even list identical business addresses

Definers and America Rising even list identical business addresses pic.twitter.com/ZToZpAFqe0

— Ken Klippenstein (@kenklippenstein) November 15, 2018

⋙ 🐣 RT @kenklippenstein Here’s the bombshell NYT report about Facebook hiring a PR firm, Definers Public Affairs, to portray its critics as Soros-backed: [link to “Delay, Deny and Deflect” article below]
Text Block: https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1062882176960737288?s=20/photo/1

🐣 RT @ProudResister
Nixon: Witch Hunt
Trump: Witch Hunt

Nixon: I’m not a crook
Trump: Hillary is a crook

Nixon: Obstructed justice to cover up a conspiracy led by Americans to break into the DNC
Trump: Obstructed justice to cover up a conspiracy led by Russians to hack DNC & interfere in election

🐣 RT @CIASpygirl Dear Universe,
My morning’s been rough:
Put gym clothes on inside out & didn’t realize it until after class
Set off alarm
Spilled morning beverage (related: why I can’t have nice things)
Mtg cancelled last minute
So…what I’m saying is I really need some indictments today.
thx
⋙ RT @AshaRangappa_ I could use some indictments too — it’s my birthday! 🎊🎁🎉
⋙⋙ 🐣 All I want for🎅🏼Christmas🎅🏼 this year are 🎁Indictments🎁 😇

TheAtlantic, Richard Fontaine: Trump Gets NATO Backwards http://bit.ly/2Dn8w7y
// The U.S. defends Europe out of self-interest.

CNN: Trump-appointed judge upholds Mueller’s indictment against Russian troll farm http://cnn.it/2zUPqT4

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Tin Foil Hat Beans: what if Fox, Wiki, Drudge, etc… are dark because they conspired to disseminate the Russian-hacked emails and they’re under some kind of gag order or cooperation deal? Disclaimer: these are super duper space beans (theory)

≣💙💙DailyCaller: Full Transcript Of Trump’s Oval Office Interview With The Daily Caller http://bit.ly/2OHAn4s uh …

THE DAILY CALLER: Sure. Could you tell us where your thinking is currently on the attorney general position? I know you’re happy with Matthew Whitaker, do you have any names? Chris Christie —

POTUS: Matthew Whitaker is a very respected man. He’s — and he’s, very importantly, he’s respected within DOJ. I heard he got a very good decision, I haven’t seen it. Kellyanne, did I hear that?

WHITE HOUSE ADVISER KELLYANNE CONWAY: 20 pages.

POTUS: A 20-page?

THE DAILY CALLER: It just came out right before this, sir.

POTUS: Well, I heard it was a very strong opinion. Uh, which is good. But [Whitaker] is just somebody that’s very respected.

I knew him only as he pertained, you know, as he was with Jeff Sessions. And, you know, look, as far as I’m concerned this is an investigation that should have never been brought. It should have never been had.

It’s something that should have never been brought. It’s an illegal investigation. And you know, it’s very interesting because when you talk about not Senate confirmed, well, Mueller’s not Senate confirmed.

THE DAILY CALLER: Right.

POTUS: He’s heading this whole big thing, he’s not Senate confirmed.

So anyway, I have a lot of respect for Matt Whitaker, based primarily on reputation. And I think he’s really — I think a lot of people are starting to come out very much in favor of him during this period of time.

THE DAILY CALLER: What about who will eventually replace him, sir?

POTUS: Well, I’m looking at a lot of people. I have been called by so many people wanting that job. We have some great people. In the meantime, I think Matt’s going to do a fantastic job.

🐣 RT @CheriJacobus Roger Stone likely shared his WikiLeaks advance info with Ailes and that may be why both FOX News and WikiLeaks have gone dark on twitter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CheriJacobus “Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, and longtime confidant Roger Stone coordinated with Ailes to monitor and undermine the ousted Fox chief’s perceived adversaries.”
⋙⋙ Politico, Ben Schreckinger (2017): The Widening Blast Radius of the Fox News Scandal http://politi.co/2zegSeP
// The metastasizing Ailes affair is spilling over into the politics of New York, Virginia and the White House.
// 5/14/2017

🐣 RT @NormEisen In the face of these kinds of threats and lies by Trump, how does Mitch McConnell’s refusal to allow a vote on the Mueller protection bill differ from aiding and abetting obstruction of justice?

🐣 RT @20committee Two salient points missed by most because some people want you to miss them. ¤ 1. Team Mueller has been at work for 18 months. They are veteran investigators & prosecutors, this ain’t their first DC rodeo. ¤ 2. With #natsec crimes, DoJ’s gloves really come off. No soft touches.

🐣 RT @keithboykin Sounds like somebody in Trump’s circle is about to be indicted.
https://twitter.com/keithboykin/status/1063051227842404353/photo/1
// Trump’s a.m. tweets

NYT: Mueller Team Has ‘Gone Absolutely Nuts,’ Trump Says, Resuming Attacks on Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2OJ9nBv
// By Maggie Haberman, Michael S. Schmidt and Eileen Sullivan

President Trump on Thursday blasted the special counsel team, calling it a “disgrace” to the country in an early Twitter post and renewed previous attacks on the investigation, calling it, “A TOTAL WITCH HUNT LIKE NO OTHER IN AMERICAN HISTORY!

The fresh barrage comes after Mr. Trump spent the last three days meeting with his personal legal team, crafting answers to written questions from the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

⭕ 14 Nov 2018

Axios, Zachary Basu: The case against Mueller target Roger Stone http://bit.ly/2Th0SRO

DailyCaller: Full Transcript Of Trump’s Oval Office Interview With The Daily Caller http://bit.ly/2OHAn4s uh …

🐣 RT @StandUpRepublic Thank you @JeffFlake, @ChrisCoons, @ChuckGrassley, @SenatorCollins, @LindseyGrahamSC, and @SenThomTillis.
⋙ AP: Flake vows to oppose judges unless Mueller bill gets a vote http://bit.ly/2zUrBul

Slate, Walter Shaub: This Is the Saturday Night Massacre http://bit.ly/2DGHCs6
// It’s just happening in slow motion.

Slate, Jeremy Stahl: How Mueller Could Continue Investigating Trump Even if He Is Fired http://bit.ly/2OJKG80

CBC, Jonathon Gatehouse [CA]: After chummy summit in Helsinki, Putin and Trump appear headed for bickering in Buenos Aires http://bit.ly/2Foex6E (…?)

RFE/RL: Russia Says U.S. ‘Unpredictability’ Causing ‘Global Concern’ http://bit.ly/2B7NBUk

BusinessInsider: Trump attacked the legitimacy of the midterms the same way his own officials warned Russia would http://read.bi/2qMfRpG

CNN: Russia jammed GPS during major NATO military exercise with US troops http://cnn.it/2OJL5re

Reuters, Lincoln Mitchell: Opinion: Why Mueller’s Russia findings won’t matter http://reut.rs/2Q4pHSk “Trump has succeeded in making the Mueller investigation so partisan an issue that whatever Mueller has found … will have little effect other than reinforcing existing views”
// “among voters and lawmakers.”

Politico: Mueller delays sentencing for ex-Trump aide Gates over ongoing cooperation http://politi.co/2DnCUi1
// The delay stands in contrast to two other high-profile former Trump officials who are moving toward sentencing in the Mueller investigation.

WIRED, Garrett Graff: The Mueller Investigation May Be Safe Despite Matt Whitaker http://bit.ly/2qLGKKB

1. The investigation is quite far along.
2. It’s not like any of this took Mueller off guard.
3. There are lots of pieces of the case scattered across the US government.
4. The Justice Department runs on norms.
5. Congress has leverage.

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw In this episode, @matthewamiller says none of witnesses who’ve spoken to special counsel about obstruction have gone before grand jury. ¤ That supports @marty_lederman view that obstruction isn’t being investigated as crime but goes into Mueller report (e.g., as “abuse of power”).
⋙ 🐣 RT @SkullduggeryPod #ICYMI: Here’s a clip from last week’s @SkullduggeryPod where @Isikoff @dklaidman & Justice & Security Analyst @matthewamiller discuss the #MuellerProbe & the potential for the White House Administration to invoke #ExecutivePrivilege http://bit.ly/2B75yCE

VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “Insanity,” “Furious,” “On His Own”: Trump’s Post-Midterms Blues Are Vexing His Staff and Roiling the White House http://bit.ly/2zWkhOU
// He’s lashing out at aides and press and foreign leaders, and threatening to roll West Wing heads—but at least he didn’t get his hair wet at the Belleau Wood memorial.

Esquire: An Exhaustive Timeline of Our New Acting Attorney General’s Astoundingly Crooked Career http://bit.ly/2RP84mo
// Year by year, the onetime Iowa tight end descended into grifting and scamming. He’s a perfect match for his new boss.

NBC: Text messages show Roger Stone and friend discussing WikiLeaks plans http://nbcnews.to/2Q1csl4
// “Big news Wednesday … Hillary’s campaign will die this week,” Randy Credico appears to have texted Stone six days before WikiLeaks email dump.

The text messages obtained by NBC News appear to show that Stone and Credico exchanged messages about Assange having damaging information about Clinton at least as early as Aug. 27, 2016. The texts show that at 6:07 p.m. that day, Credico wrote to Stone, “Julian Assange has kryptonite on Hillary.”

NYT: Delay, Deny and Deflect: How Facebook’s Leaders Fought Through Crisis http://nyti.ms/2DFfRAn
// By Sheera Frenkel, Nicholas Confessore, Cecilia Kang, Matthew Rosenberg and Jack Nicas

WaPo, Max Boot: America will need years to clean up the toxins Trump has released http://wapo.st/2zTylZH

🐣 RT @PhilMattingly Flake: “I have informed the Majority Leader that I will not vote to advance any of the 21 judicial nominees pending in the Judiciary Committee, or vote to confirm the 32 judges awaiting a confirmation vote on the floor, until S. 2644 is brought to the full Senate for a vote.”
// To protect Mueller

WSJ: Mueller Probes Possible Witness Intimidation by Roger Stone http://on.wsj.com/2PWwpcQ
// Former Trump adviser angry that radio personality Randy Credico denies being WikiLeaks conduit

ActiveMeasuresDoc: Retired member of US intelligence community told us he heard in December 2015 from more than one foreign intelligence service that when @realDonaldTrump was in Moscow in 2013 he approached the Russians to intervene in 2016 election. His pitch: “We can help each other out.”

Politico: Morning Update http://politi.co/2qKXRvT

THE LIST OF THINGS ANGERING TRUMP — An incomplete tally: Markets are a mess; Growth appears to be slowing; Democrats now control the House and can investigate him; More House races continue to get called for Democrats and the GOP Senate performance looks less and less impressive; Rumors continue to swirl of potential Mueller indictments; Trump’s Paris trip was widely panned as a disaster; His replacement Attorney General is mired in controversy; CNN is suing over the ouster of its reporter and looks likely to win. Are we missing anything?

≣ WarOnTheRocks, Brian Katz: Intelligence and You: A Guide for Policymakers http://bit.ly/2Dj5YaB

📋 🐣 RT @FranTownsend @FBI reports 17% rise in hate crimes 2017 over 2016 as overall violent crime dropped by .2% 7175 hate crimes in 2017 3 of 5 hate crimes targeted race/ethnicity, 1 of 5 targeted religion. More than 4000 targeted people, more than 3000 targeted property

🐣 RT @chkbal We are a group of conservative and libertarian lawyers standing up for the rule of law. Our mission statement is here: http://bit.ly/2K1emwA 
https://twitter.com/chkbal/status/1062659994963853313/photo/1
↥ ↧
NYT: Conservative Lawyers Say Trump Has Undermined the Rule of Law http://nyti.ms/2Fns7Hh The group, called Checks and Balances, was organized by George T. Conway III, a conservative lawyer and the husband of President Trump’s counselor, Kellyanne Conway
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1062681602340413442/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Presented to meeting of The Federalist Society

The new group also includes Tom Ridge, a former governor of Pennsylvania and secretary of homeland security in the Bush administration; Peter D. Keisler, a former acting attorney general in the Bush administration; two prominent conservative law professors, Jonathan H. Adler and Orin S. Kerr; and Lori S. Meyer, a lawyer who is married to Eugene B. Meyer, the president of the Federalist Society.

“We believe in the rule of law, the power of truth, the independence of the criminal justice system, the imperative of individual rights and the necessity of civil discourse,” the group said in a statement. “We believe these principles apply regardless of the party or persons in power.”

WaPo: U.S. military edge has eroded to ‘a dangerous degree,’ study for Congress finds http://wapo.st/2K4pDMK “The U.S. has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report … by a bipartisan commission”

WaPo: U.S. military edge has eroded to ‘a dangerous degree,’ study for Congress finds http://wapo.st/2K4pDMK “The U.S. has lost its military edge to a dangerous degree and could potentially lose a war against China or Russia, according to a report … by a bipartisan commission”

⭕ 13 Nov 2018

NYMag, Eric Levitz: Don’t Get Donald Trump Started About France http://nym.ag/2zRaaes

AJC: Mueller investigation: Who is Roger Stone, what links him to Trump? http://on-ajc.com/2Prbe33 good backgrounder

ABCNews: Even if we did hack the DNC, they can’t sue us: Russia http://abcn.ws/2PtKVcs

Bloomberg: Congress Likely to Shelve New Russia Sanctions as Clock Runs Out http://bloom.bg/2K3C8bl
● Little evidence of broad Russian effort to disrupt midterms
● Any new interference by Kremlin could trigger lawmakers to act

Newsweek: Robert Mueller Wants Info on Donald Trump’s British Ally, Far-right Politician Nigel Farage, Says Russia Probe Target http://bit.ly/2OJ4jwX

TheHill: Russia pushes for court to throw out DNC lawsuit http://bit.ly/2OJ444W

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The many scandals of Trump’s new acting Attorney General Matt Whitaker, explained http://bit.ly/2qKMzrv
// His Mueller probe comments, his advisory role at a scam company, the dispute over his appointment’s legality, and more.

Politico: How Trump’s move to put a loyalist over Mueller is already backfiring http://politi.co/2RYXd9V
// Bipartisan criticism and legal maneuvering may limit Matthew Whitaker’s options as acting attorney general.

NBC: Trump could submit answers to Mueller’s questions on Russia this week http://nbcnews.to/2RQf4Q7
// President Donald Trump’s legal team is nearing completion of written answers to questions posed by special counsel Robert Mueller on Russia.

TheGuardian, Jon Swaine and Stephanie Kirchgaessner: Mueller seeking more details on Nigel Farage, key Russia inquiry target says http://bit.ly/2PZm5Rl

VOA, Jeff Seldin: Ex-Intel Officials Worry Trump Still Doing Russia’s Dirty Work http://bit.ly/2zR5JA8 (cited: Larry Pfeiffer, Dan Coats, Kirstjen Nielsen, Hal Bidlack, John Bolton, Steve Bucci, Mark Kelton, Graham Brookie, Daniel Hoffman, Dmitry Peskov, John Sipher, Hamilton68)

LATimes, Eli Stokols: Trump, stung by midterms and nervous about Mueller, retreats from traditional presidential duties http://lat.ms/2DlplzS

WaPo, Josh Dawsey and Phil Rucker: Five days of fury: Inside Trump’s Paris temper, election woes and staff upheaval http://wapo.st/2FoIGTj

Vox, Matt Yglesias: Democrats’ blue wave was much larger than early takes suggested http://bit.ly/2QEL75j
// With all votes counted, it’s a larger landslide than 1994 or 2010.

Spectator: Mr Cohen comes to Washington http://bit.ly/2TaV9g8 “There are rumors, too, of Trump mistresses paid to have abortions and kept quiet with non-disclosure agreements”
// Michael Cohen has given 80 hours of testimony to prosecutors, not 50, as hitherto reported. Clearly, Trump’s former lawyer has a lot to get off his chest

WaPo: The Cybersecurity 202: The U.S. was notably absent from a global cybersecurity pact. But American companies signed on. http://wapo.st/2RQeRMY

🐣 RT @lathamstaples -@FoxNews, no tweets in 4 days.
-@wikileaks, no tweets in 4 days.
-@jaredkushner deleted all tweets.
-@DRUDGE deleted all tweets.
-@RudyGiuliani, no tweets in 4 days.
-@NatEnquirer, no tweets in 3 days.
-@realDonaldTrump is in hiding, “rain”.

⭕ 12 Nov 2018

Project-Syndicate, Jeffrey Sachs: Trump’s Diminishing Power and Rising Rage http://bit.ly/2PPYEdS
// The coming months may be especially dangerous for America and the world. As US President Donald Trump’s political position weakens and the obstacles facing him grow, his mental instability will pose an ever-greater danger.

💽 NYT: Opinion | Operation Infektion: A three-part video series on Russian disinformation http://nyti.ms/2OHqSSV

WaPo, Adam Schiff: Matthew Whitaker, we’re watching you http://wapo.st/2JZk3LG

🐣 RT @PhillipeReines For those who don’t recognize the name Jerome Corsi, he was one of the rotten souls behind the “Swift Boat Veterans for Truth” smear against @JohnKerry in 2004. ¤ For that alone he deserves rot in jail. But if he takes Roger Stone down with him, which is imminent, all the better.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ KenDilanianNBC BREAKING: Roger Stone pal Jerome Corsi tells my colleague @annaschecter that Mueller’s investigators informed Corsi about a week ago he will be indicted for perjury. “When they have your emails and phone records…they’re very good at the perjury trap,” he says.

🔄🐣💙💙 RT @conspirator0 For the benefit of any and all wishing to better use Twitter’s search feature for your own investigative purposes, here is a Twitter search cheat sheet.
https://twitter.com/conspirator0/status/1062152485819674624/photo/1

WaPo, Neal Katyal: The rules are clear: Whitaker can’t supervise Mueller’s investigation http://wapo.st/2PXCg1q
// I wrote the special counsel regulations. We never would have imagined a situation like this.

📋 Axios: Democrats load “subpoena cannon” with 85+ Trump targets http://bit.ly/2zPJ9ry
⋙ Axios, Zachary Basu: Democratic hit list: At least 85 Trump investigation targets http://bit.ly/2PTGpUa

FranceDiplomatie [FR]: Cybersecurity: Paris Call of 12 November 2018 for Trust and Security in Cyberspace http://bit.ly/2PqPx3l

⭕ 11 Nov 2018 🇺🇸 Veterans Day

MSNBC: How Russia is responding to Democrats taking control of the House http://on.msnbc.com/2JZAWWv
// Former U.S. Ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul, MSNBC international analyst, says Russian media have an interesting take on Democrats winning back the House. ‘Our agent in the White House has failed us’

WSJ: Russia Demotes Dollar’s Role at Home, Taking a Swipe at U.S. http://on.wsj.com/2JWP82s
// To ease sanctions pressure, Moscow promotes use of ruble and other currencies in trade deals

⭕ 11 Nov 2018

Politico: Democrats vow to tighten the screws on Whitaker http://politi.co/2qFcCQS
// One leading House Democrat calls him a ‘hatchet man’ set on derailing the Russia investigation.

TheGuardian: Trump Whitaker pick may provoke constitutional crisis, Democrats say http://bit.ly/2z4nigo

WaPo: Hurricane Michael is looking even more violent on closer scrutiny http://wapo.st/2ROqrYF

TheAtlantic, Bob Bauer: An Open-and-Shut Violation of Campaign-Finance Law http://bit.ly/2PQe0hW
// The relevant law is favorable to candidates. But it appears Trump still managed to violate it.

Reuters: Democrats urge acting attorney general to step aside from Russia probe http://reut.rs/2Pm1tn0

NBC: Top Democrats say Matt Whitaker must offer ‘immediate recusal’ from Mueller probe http://nbcnews.to/2PmSh1y
// Democrats say Whitaker’s past comments “indicate a clear bias against the investigation that would cause a reasonable person to question his impartiality.”

Salon: Morning Joe says Sessions firing gives Mueller everything he needs to nail Trump for obstruction http://bit.ly/2OD8ni9
// Trump believes he is above the law, but Joe Scarborough wants to see Trump penalized for obstructing justice

WSJ: Congress Gears for Final-Stretch Fight Over Border Wall, Mueller Probe http://on.wsj.com/2FhzNeg
// Wild card is whether Trump will take a hard line and demand funding for a wall

ABCNews: ‘We could subpoena Mueller’ if the administration restricts Russia investigation: Incoming House Judiciary chairman http://abcn.ws/2PR4DOL Rep Jerrold Nadler

CNN: Schumer: Democrats could tie Mueller protection measure to must-pass legislation http://cnn.it/2qF3knZ

TheAtlantic, Edward-Isaac Dovere: Nancy Pelosi: Mueller Doesn’t Have to Indict Trump for Congress to Impeach Him http://bit.ly/2qHzjDS
// But the congresswoman says she isn’t planning to go down that road—yet.

⭕ 10 Nov 2018

TheHill, Jonathan Turley: How Trump can pull off ultimate trick to make Mueller disappear http://bit.ly/2DzvObk

Politico, Jack Shafer: Week 77: Mueller Gets a New Master http://politi.co/2T4SioY
// But Jeff Sessions’ temporary replacement will have his hands full trying to restrain the special counsel who has girded for this moment.

Patribotics (Louise Mensch): The Trump Russia Indictments: What To Expect http://bit.ly/2DfaZkv Chart by Clint Watts
● Trump rel w Russia: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1061526847924719617/photo/1
//➔ may be speculative, but I love the idea that Nancy Pelosi could become Acting President 😇
// Chart: Types of collaborators, agents, assets: What is Trump’s Relationship w Russia?
Natural Ally (Low), “Useful Idiot (High),” Compromised (Medium), Manchurian Candidate (Low)

TheObserver, John Schindler: Team Mueller is Holding ‘Dozens of Sealed Indictments,’ According to Intel Source http://bit.ly/2OCxxOe

⭕ 9 Nov 2018

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Trump campaigned to protect himself, not help Republicans http://wapo.st/2zLuHB1

HillReporter, Stassi Reid (11/9): Mueller ‘Ready to Indict’ Multiple individuals According to Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi http://bit.ly/2T4QA72

TheGuardian: Konstantin Kilimnik: elusive Russian with ties to Manafort faces fresh Mueller scrutiny http://bit.ly/2z1xu9K
// New details emerge about 48-year-old said to have ties to Russian intelligence, including the use of a private jet owned by an oligarch close to Putin

TheAtlantic, Benjamin Wittes: It’s Probably Too Late to Stop Mueller http://bit.ly/2FgL0vC
// The prospects for interference are dimmer than many imagine.

NYT: Matthew Whitaker: An Attack Dog With Ambition Beyond Protecting Trump http://nyti.ms/2DeaNSn

President Trump first noticed Matthew G. Whitaker on CNN in the summer of 2017 and liked what he saw — a partisan defender who insisted there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. So that July, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, interviewed Mr. Whitaker about joining the president’s team as a legal attack dog against the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

At that point, the White House passed, leaving Mr. Whitaker, 49, to continue his media tour, writing on CNN’s website that Mr. Mueller’s investigation — which he had once called “crazy” — had gone too far.

Fifteen months later, the attack dog is in charge. With little ceremony on Wednesday, Mr. Trump ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions and put Mr. Whitaker, Mr. Sessions’s chief of staff, in charge of the Justice Department — and Mr. Mueller’s Russia investigation.

People close to Mr. Trump believe that he sent Mr. Whitaker to the department in part to limit the fallout from the Mueller investigation, one presidential adviser said.

White House aides and other people close to Mr. Trump anticipate that Mr. Whitaker will rein in any report summarizing Mr. Mueller’s investigation and will not allow the president to be subpoenaed. …

Judging by Mr. Trump’s public comments, the closed-door charm offensive was working. In an October interview on “Fox & Friends,” Mr. Trump said: “I can tell you Matt Whitaker’s a great guy. I mean, I know Matt Whitaker.”

(On Friday, after reports surfaced that Mr. Whitaker had called courts “the inferior branch” of government and had been on the advisory board of a company that a federal judge shut down and fined nearly $26 million for cheating customers, Mr. Trump made a bizarre comment to reporters that he was not familiar with Mr. Whitaker. “I don’t know Matt Whitaker,” Mr. Trump said as he left for first leg of a weekend trip to Paris.)

By October of last year, Mr. Whitaker was telling people that he was working as a political commentator on CNN in order to get the attention of Mr. Trump, said John Q. Barrett, a professor at St. John’s University School of Law who met Mr. Whitaker during a television appearance last June.

His plan worked. Mr. Whitaker returned to the Justice Department in October 2017, having once again earned the support of Mr. Trump’s closest advisers inside the West Wing.

Colleagues described him as affable and said he quickly ingratiated himself with the staff in Mr. Sessions’s office and those elsewhere in the building. But that reputation shifted over time as some people began to view him as the eyes and ears of the White House, current and former Justice Department officials said.

CNN: Sessions realized too late that Whitaker was auditioning for his job http://cnn.it/2z3yt9o

WaPo: Trump distances himself from Whitaker amid scrutiny over past comments and business ties http://wapo.st/2OAQh0r

WaPo: ‘What a stupid question’: Trump demeans three black female reporters in three days http://wapo.st/2Qy3KYJ

WaPo Editorial: There is no way this man should be running the Justice Department http://wapo.st/2Ffw1lJ

First, there are Mr. Whitaker’s statements criticizing the Russia probe of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III. At the least, they require him to consult Justice Department ethics counsel about whether he can oversee the inquiry with a plausible appearance of evenhandedness. He will do immediate and lasting harm to the Justice Department’s reputation, and to the nation, if he assumes the role of president’s personal henchman and impedes the Mueller probe.

Finally, and fundamentally most damning, is Mr. Whitaker’s expressed hostility to Marbury v. Madison, a central case — the central case — in the American constitutional system. It established an indispensable principle: The courts decide what is and is not constitutional. Without Marbury, there would be no effective judicial check on the political branches, no matter how egregious their actions.

WSJ: Donald Trump Played Central Role in Hush Payoffs to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal http://on.wsj.com/2AZ69X1
// Federal prosecutors have gathered evidence of president’s participation in transactions that violated campaign-finance laws

🐣 Neal Katyal on @Morning_Joe: “This IS a Constitutional Crisis” re: Whitaker

🐣 RT @amyklobuchar “AG” Whitaker’s 2014 words when asked about worse SCOTUS cases: “There are so many..I would start with the idea of Marbury v. Madison..and the Supreme Court as the final arbiter..We’ll move forward from there—All New Deal cases that were expansive of the federal government…”

⭕ 8 Nov 2018

Politico: Mueller’s new boss immediately draws enemies http://politi.co2T4KhQT/
// Critics say Matthew Whitaker might intervene to protect the president, while newly emboldened Democrats pledge vigilance.

NYT, Neal Katyal and George Conway: Trump’s Appointment of the Acting Attorney General Is Unconstitutional http://nyti.ms/2PmwAP5
// The president is evading the requirement to seek the Senate’s advice and consent for the nation’s chief law enforcement officer and the person who will oversee the Mueller investigation.

AP: Indictments? Final report? White House braces for Mueller http://bit.ly/2AWk9R6

VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “The President Is Very Depressed”: With Don Jr. Facing Possible Indictment, and Endless House Investigations Forthcoming, No Wonder Trump Is in a Bad Mood http://bit.ly/2JQkK9Y

AlJazeera, Shafik Mandhai: Thousands demand Mueller protection after Trump fires Sessions http://bit.ly/2SWhVby
// Critics fear the US president is paving way to disrupt probe into Russian interference in 2016 presidential election.

LawfareBlog, Benjamin Wittes et al: Jeff Sessions’s Firing, Matthew Whitaker’s Rise and the Attorney General’s Role In the Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2T2KBzQ

Bloomberg, Chris Strohm and Steven T. Dennis: Mueller Gets a New Boss Who’s Blasted His Russia Investigation http://bloom.bg/2SVHEkp

● Acting Attorney General Whitaker could fire him or limit probe
● Whitaker would decide whether findings can be made public

TheAtlantic, Paul Rosenzweig: It Wouldn’t Be Easy for Whitaker to Shut Down the Trump Investigations http://bit.ly/2AThcB0
// The new acting attorney general is likely, at least initially, to move slowly.

GQ, Mattathias Schwartz: Robert Mueller, the Master Of Silence http://bit.ly/2SYPp97

NewYorker, John Cassidy: Trump’s Effort to Hobble the Mueller Investigation Must Be Stopped http://bit.ly/2RHlDV9

CNBC, Kevin Breuniger: Acting Attorney General Whitaker’s views on Mueller probe prompt calls for recusal from Democrats and legal experts http://cnb.cx/2Oyb0C3

● Newly appointed acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker’s past critiques of the Russia probe, which resurfaced in the wake of his appointment Wednesday, spurred immediate calls for his recusal.
● The Trump administration’s shake-up, which saw Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ resignation less than a day after Democrats won the House in the midterms, is also raising concerns about whether Whitaker’s appointment constitutes a potential obstruction of justice.
● But Whitaker has no intention of recusing himself, The Washington Post reported Thursday.

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff et al: Matthew Whitaker, Mueller’s New Boss, Said There Was ‘No Collusion’ With Russia http://thebea.st/2RHMlNi
// Betsy Woodruff, Maxwell Tani, Will Sommer; The new attorney general spent a few years in right-wing media repeatedly making that claim.

TheHill: Flake to try to force vote on bill protecting Mueller http://bit.ly/2ATMYxD

WaPo: McConnell says there isn’t ‘any chance’ Trump will stop Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2z2YuW6

Politico: Mueller power questioned in first post-Sessions court hearing http://politi.co/2AUi1tn
// Legal experts have serious doubts the case will shut down Mueller’s probe.

🐣 RT @SenFenstein The president has made abundantly clear that he’ll take any action he can to undermine the Mueller investigation. No one who lacks Senate confirmation should be placed in charge of this investigation, especially Matthew Whitaker who publicly criticized Mueller’s work last year.
FullStatement: https://twitter.com/SenFeinstein/status/1060293210273185793/photo/1

CNN: Trump reviewing his answers to Mueller as he changes who oversees the Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2ATkN1O

📔 Brookings, Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder and Norman Eisen (Aug): Presidential obstruction of justice: The case of Donald J. Trump, 2nd edition http://brook.gs/2D9DqAe
⋙ Brookings, Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder and Norman Eisen (Aug): Report: Presidential obstruction of justice: The case of Donald J. Trump, 2nd edition [pdf] http://brook.gs/2D9P2TO 177p
// 8/22/2018

WaPo: Trump’s acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, has no intention of recusing from Russia probe, associates say http://wapo.st/2JPtfSE

WaPo: Trump’s acting attorney general, Matt Whitaker, has no intention of recusing from Russia probe, associates say http://wapo.st/2JPtfSE

JustSecurity, Marty Lederman: Quick Primer on the Legality of Appointing Matthew Whitaker as “Acting” Attorney General, and Whitaker’s Power to Influence the Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2FaCb6l

⭕ 7 Nov 2018

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Has Found His Roy Cohn in Matt Whitaker http://nym.ag/2T2JJv1

WaPo: Sessions’s ouster throws future of special counsel probe into question http://wapo.st/2qBMCFS

WaPo: In Matthew Whitaker, Trump has a loyalist at the helm of the Justice Department http://wapo.st/2yWKEos

NYT, Charlie Savage: How Sessions’s Firing Could Affect the Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2D9ZhaE

NYT: With Sessions Firing, Trump Quickly Tests Democratic Resolve http://nyti.ms/2F9FFGn

NYT: How the House Fell: Republican Chaos and Democratic Focus http://nyti.ms/

🐣 RT @MittRomney I want to thank Jeff Sessions for his service to our country as Attorney General. Under Acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker, it is imperative that the important work of the Justice Department continues, and that the Mueller investigation proceeds to its conclusion unimpeded.
⋙ 🐣 Never thought I’d say this, @MittRomney, but I’m glad you’re going to be in the Senate. The GOP is in desperate need of a conscience.

WaPo: Washington in battle mode as Trump vows retaliation against Democratic probes http://wapo.st/2PheY7h
// Rucker Costa Dawsey

NYT: Jeff Sessions Is Forced Out as Attorney General as Trump Installs Loyalist http://nyti.ms/2DpRpCQ

🐣 RT @SenatorCollins It is imperative that the Administration not impede the Mueller investigation. I’m concerned Rod Rosenstein will no longer be overseeing the probe. Special Counsel Mueller must be allowed to complete his work without interference—regardless of who is AG.

NYT: Trump Installs a Critic of the Mueller Investigation to Oversee It http://nyti.ms/2JKBwXY

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Spencer Ackerman: House Intel Democrats’ New Mission: Protect Mueller, Use Subpoena Power http://thebea.st/2QrJ58q
// Firing Jeff Sessions could spark a ‘Wednesday Afternoon Massacre,’ one Democrat on the intelligence committee says.

PoliticusUSA: Ten Times Worse Than Nixon’: Historian Michael Beschloss Sounds The Alarm After Trump Fires Sessions http://bit.ly/2Qtivfi

🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ STEP DOWN FROM THE LEDGE (FOR NOW) THREAD. (Warning: This might be a SPOOL). OK, here are my thoughts on Whitaker taking over the Mueller investigation and why I think we need to see how things unfold before losing it. To be clear, I do NOT think this is an ideal situation. BUT:
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/AshaRangappa_/status/1060329761782857728

🐣 RT @shashj “Mr. Whitaker’s ascendance to the top of the Justice Department shows how much loyalty means to Mr. Trump. The president has long regarded Mr. Whitaker as his eyes and ears inside a department that he considers an enemy institution.”
⋙ NYT: Jeff Sessions Is Forced Out as Attorney General as Trump Installs Loyalist http://nyti.ms/2DpRpCQ

TheHill: Acting AG to take over oversight of Russia probe http://bit.ly/2PIYFzz

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Trump is saying that if the House of Representatives, the lower House of a co-equal branch of government executes its’ Article 1. Constitutional duty to exercise oversight over the Executive Branch that he will bring Govt. to a standstill and launch retributional investigations

🐣 RT @tedlieu Normally the President would elevate the Deputy AG to Acting AG until a nominee is confirmed. @realDonaldTrump is specifically bypassing Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein and putting supervision of the Mueller probe in the hands of Matthew Whitaker, a person biased against the probe.

🐣 RT @RepJerryNadler Read my statement on @realDonaldTrump’s firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions: https://twitter.com/RepJerryNadler/status/1060280428349874176/photo/1

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: What Sessions’s Resignation Means for Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2Qt0KfZ
// His temporary replacement, Matthew Whitaker, has expressed skepticism over the scope of the Russia investigation—which he’ll now oversee.

🐣 RT @20committee We all knew the Mueller inquiry was entering its decisive phase after the midterms. Trump is just crassly moving the timetable up. Mueller anticipated all this. Data has been shared. IC has backups of their stuff. Trump can’t make it stop altogether. But he appears to be trying.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Frank Figliuzzi, ex-FBI Assistant Director for Counterintel: “I think we are watching obstruction of justice play out right in plain sight.” @MSNBC
⋙ 🐣 RT @eriqgardner Our new acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker thinks Marbury v. Madison — which established the principle of judicial review — is one of the worst decisions in the Supreme Court’s history. SERIOUSLY.
● https://twitter.com/eriqgardner/status/1060276623428255754/photo/1

🐣 RT @BeschlossDC After Nixon had him fired in 1973 Saturday Night Massacre, the former Watergate special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, declared, “Whether ours shall be a government of laws and not of men is now for Congress and ultimately the American people”:
https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1060276249774489600/photo/1

🐣 RT @NancyPelosi Given his record of threats to undermine & weaken the Russia investigation, Matthew Whitaker should recuse himself from any involvement in Mueller’s investigation. Congress must take immediate action to protect the rule of law and integrity of the investigation. #FollowTheFacts

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec The President is obstructing the investigation into his own treason. ¤ Hard to imagine any moment more serious for the experiment of American self-government than the present.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PreetBharara It’s danger time

🐣 RT @NancyPelosi It is impossible to read Attorney General Sessions’ firing as anything other than another blatant attempt by @realDonaldTrump to undermine & end Special Counsel Mueller’s investigation.

🐣 RT @chrislhayes Things can get very very bad, very quickly right now…particularly dangerous period we are entering.

🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Trump is really, really frightened of Mueller. That’s the only explanation for his behavior today.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff President Trump just removed Jeff Sessions. He wants an Attorney General to serve his interest, not the public. ¤ Mueller’s investigation and the independence of the DOJ must be protected. Whitaker and any nominee must commit to doing both. ¤ We will protect the rule of law.

🐣 RT @brhodes In just the last few days, look at how Trump has sought to use the US military, the Senate and DoJ for his own political purposes. This is an assault on how some of the most important institutions in our democracy are supposed to function.
⋙ 🐣 RT @maggieNYT Trump now suggesting he’ll use the US senate, which is theoretically a separate branch of the government, to conduct White House-friendly investigations.

🐣 RT @MarkWarner While the President may have the authority to replace the Attorney General, this must not be the first step in an attempt to impede, obstruct or end the Mueller investigation.

🐣 RT @moscow_project He must immediately issue a written order granting Mueller full independence and outlining that Mueller can update Congress and the public as he sees fit—just as acting AG Robert Bork did after Nixon’s Saturday Night Massacre. (8/9)
⋙ CAP, By Ben Olinsky and Sam Berger: Ensuring the Special Counsel’s Independence if Rosenstein Is Fired http://ampr.gs/2QnAu6R

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance New legal issue for prosecutor types to debate, if firing the FBI director is obstruction of justice can firing an attorney general, to put control of that investigation into the hands of one of your allies also constitute obstruction? Asking for a country.

🐣 RT @ericgeller DOJ still hasn’t notified staffers about Sessions. Employee tells me that they found out when their supervisor sent their office a link to Trump’s tweet. ¤ “There is no communication from leadership. … We are apparently expected to monitor Trump’s Twitter feed for his fiats.”

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Chuck Schumer: “Given his previous comments advocating defunding and imposing limitations on the Mueller investigation, Mr. Whitaker should recuse himself from its oversight for the duration of his time as acting attorney general.”

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Matt Whitaker Can’t Prevent Mueller from Unsealing Any Sealed Indictments http://bit.ly/2SPi8gC

TheNewRepublic, MarcyWheeler (10/30): If Trump Fires Mueller: How a Democratic-controlled House can salvage the Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2z0nRbb

🐣 RT @EricHolder Anyone who attempts to interfere with or obstruct the Mueller inquiry must be held accountable. This is a red line. We are a nation of laws and norms not subject to the self interested actions of one man.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Sessions firing is an immediate reset to undermine Mueller investigation and distract from GOP loss of the House. There’s a 2 month window from now until next Congress is seated. Rapid chess match coming between White House and Mueller investigation.

🐣 RT @matthewamiller The president should not be allowed to pick the person who oversees the investigation into himself. Both for that principle, and because Whitaker has written a blueprint for shutting the Mueller probe down, he should recuse himself.

🐣 RT @danpfeiffer Trump is ending the Mueller investigation right before our eyes and if you expect the Republicans to do anything about it you have been sleepwalking through the last two years

🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin President Trump is doing what every aspiring despot must do: purge law enforcement of independent officials and investigations. This is a dangerous moment for the republic. Americans committed to our shared freedom must set partisan differences aside to confront this menace now.

🐣 RT @brianklaas Here’s Trump’s handpicked Acting Attorney General suggesting an article that calls the Mueller investigation a “lynch mob.”
CNN, Matthew Whittaker (8/6/2017): Mueller’s investigation of Trump is going too far http://cnn.it/2STz8m3 //➔ author has just put in as temp replacement for Jeff Sessions
// 8/6/2017

🐣 RT @danpfeiffer If Trump asked for Sessions’ resignation that means he fired his Attorney General

🐣 🔆 This❗️⋙ RT @tribelaw Sessions was just forced out. His chief of staff will take over right now as acting AG. That displaces Rosenstein as Mueller’s supervisor. Matt Whitaker will supervise. He’ll likely be Trump’s puppet. A clever Wednesday afternoon massacre by Trump.

Adam Carter defense re: Computer Weekly article http://d3f.uk/duncan-campbell.html
http://bit.ly/2QpZIBC
// @with_integrity
⋙ ComputerWeekly (7/31): Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links http://bit.ly/2NZnQcw
// 7/31/2018, A British IT manager and former hacker from Darlington ran a disinformation campaign that duped former US intelligence agents and provided Donald Trump with manufactured “evidence” to deny that Russia interfered with the US election

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Donald Trump Jr. Expecting to Be Indicted by Mueller Soon http://nym.ag/2PJjURJ

WaPo, Max Boot: The battle with Trumpism is just beginning http://wapo.st/2OxPmxM

CNN, Mary Ilyushina and Angela Dewan: Russia gloomy on US relations after Democrats take House in midterms http://cnn.it/2OtGPvT

CNBC, Kevin Breuninger: Adam Schiff, one of Trump’s biggest critics on the Russia probe, is poised to take over a crucial House committee http://cnb.cx/2zxuXUb
● Rep. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, emerged on the national stage as the politically polarized group grappled over its probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
● Democrats were projected to take over the House in Tuesday’s midterm elections, likely elevating Schiff to the chairman spot in the intelligence panel.

Vox, Andrew Prokop: Trump’s free ride from Congress just ended http://bit.ly/2PIUCDh
// Investigations, legislative fights, impeachment? What Democrats’ House takeover could mean for Trump.

NewYorker, Adam Davidson: The Investigations Trump Will Face Now That Democrats Control the House http://bit.ly/2RESbyX

CNN: Democrats to use House majority to launch Trump investigations http://cnn.it/2OuvN9J (real ones)

🐣 ♫ Subpoena ~ The sweetest sound I’ve ever heard ♫
♫ Subpoena! I’ve just heard a word named Subpoena ♫
♫ And suddenly I’ve found ♫
♫ How wonderful a sound Can Beeeee! ♫
♫ Subpoena! Subpoena! Subpoena! Subpoena! Subpoenah! ♫
@RepCummings @RepAdamSchiff @RepJerryNadler

WaPo Editorial: A great day for democracy http://wapo.st/2F6fwYY

NYT, Frank Bruni: For Democrats — and America — a Sigh of Relief http://nyti.ms/2yYkcL4
// The party didn’t get everything it wanted. But it got what it and the country need.

 
⭕ 6 Nov 2018 #ElectionDay 🇺🇸

ForeignPolicy, Michael Hirsh: Victorious House Democrats Pledge to Probe Trump’s Foreign Policy http://bit.ly/2JNgpEv
// U.S. allies can expect extended hearings on Iran, Yemen, and many other key issues.

DailyBeast: Russian Oligarch Who Bought Trump Mansion Detained by Monaco Police http://thebea.st/2PFDkaj Dmitry Rybolovlev

Slate, John Reed: How Democrats Will Protect the Mueller Investigation if They Win the House http://bit.ly/2Ds6mEz

TheHill: Russian oligarch who bought mansion from Trump detained and questioned on corruption charges: report http://bit.ly/2PMuJT7

TheHill: Trump administration tells Congress Moscow has triggered new sanctions http://bit.ly/2yVLhhQ

⭕ 5 Nov 2018

CNN (11pm): Russian fighter jet intercepts US Navy plane http://cnn.it/2zy6zBw

WaPo, Karoun Demirjian: Contentious probe of FBI, Justice Dept. hangs in the balance as GOP weighs new leadership posts http://wapo.st/2Qn4f7Z

NYT: Trump’s Expected Meeting With Putin to Be Delayed http://nyti.ms/2AOjYYh

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: What the Watergate Road Map Might Say about a Mueller Road Map http://bit.ly/2qDlruJ

WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: The Mueller Race Will Resume After All the Votes Are Counted http://bit.ly/2OqHuht

WaPo, Randall Eliason: Buckle up. The Mueller investigation may once again take center stage. http://wapo.st/2OmwP7z

VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “I’m Very Worried About Don Jr.”: Forget the Midterms—West Wing Insiders Brace for the Mueller Storm http://bit.ly/2DoQF0X
// In the run-up to the election, Rudy Giuliani was made to shut up. But now, with Trump making excuses for possibly losing the House, officials are bracing for a legal assault.

⭕ 4 Nov 2018

Forbes: Trump’s Billionaire Buddy Victor Pinchuk Among Ukrainians Sanctioned By Russia http://bit.ly/2AMiuxO

NYT: Two Capitals, One Russian Oligarch: How Oleg Deripaska Is Trying to Escape U.S. Sanctions http://nyti.ms/2Pejnb1

Newsweek: Roger Stone, Under Reported Scrutiny from Robert Mueller, Changes Story on 2016 Election Again http://bit.ly/2SMkM6H

NYMag, Cristian Farias: Mueller’s Gone Quiet, But Expect Some Post-Midterms Surprises http://nym.ag/2D4zf8D

CNN: Mueller could soon roar back into the news http://cnn.it/2DlNDdI

CNN, Mary Ilyushina and Eliza Mackintosh: Kremlin: “Long and thorough meeting” expected between Trump, Putin at G20 http://cnn.it/2Qe8SRn

TheGuardian, Charles Kaiser: The Apprentice review: Trump, Putin and the subversion of US democracy http://bit.ly/2RC3ubn
// Greg Miller of the Washington Post proves one urgent thing: the Democrats must take the House on Tuesday

NYT/AP: Why It’s Still in Russia’s Interest to Mess With US Politics http://nyti.ms/2D0QY0I

⭕ 3 Nov 2018

ThinkProgress, Frank Dale: Trump signed secret waiver that could have major impact on the Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2Op7727
// Noel Francisco’s former employer represents Trump’s campaign in the Russia probe. He’s still next in line to oversee special counsel Robert Mueller.

Politico Mag, Jack Shafer: Week 76: Is Mueller About to Roll Out the Barrels? http://politi.co/2qs9t6X
// Now that the special prosecutor’s quiet period is nearly over, many Russia-scandal observers expect dramatic news from the long-silent investigation.

⭕ 2 Nov 2018

CcommonDreams, Daniel Goldman: Robert Mueller Is on the Ballot This Year, Too http://bit.ly/2AKA4Cg
// The midterms are about control of Congress — it will determine the future of the special counsel’s investigation, especially who will run it after Sessions and Rosenstein

NYMag, Brian Feldman: Jacob Wohl Demonstrates the Limits of the Right-Wing Misinformation System http://nym.ag/2qAmn2Z

BusinessInsider, Grace Panetta and Sonam Sheth: Mueller’s use of ‘speaking indictments’ could be a hugely damaging signal for Trump http://read.bi/2OmKE5P

ForeignPolicy, Elias Groll: How House Democrats Plan to Investigate Trump’s Russia Ties http://bit.ly/2RzBjcN
// Gains in the congressional election next week would give Democrats crucial subpoena power.

Politico: Next-in-line Mueller supervisor got White House ethics waiver in April http://politi.co/2AHp7B9
// Solicitor General Noel Francisco has been dogged by conflict of interest concerns related his potential role overseeing the the Mueller probe.

CREW: CREW Discovers Previously Undisclosed Ethics Waiver for Solicitor General Noel Francisco http://bit.ly/2OoVOHc re: @maddow
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @waltshaub DOJ is saying Noel Francisco would take over the investigation. DOJ is wrong unless the White House has secretly issued a waiver of Executive Order 13770, which bars Francisco from participating in the Mueller investigation due to Jones Day’s representation of the Tump campaign.
// 9/26/2018

WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: Trump deploys the fascist playbook for the midterms http://wapo.st/2P4LUzX

⭕ 1 Nov 2018

📔 TheInterpreter: KGB Training Manuals Revealed http://bit.ly/2EbYLcE
// KGB manuals, 8 manuals (4 previously published)

AtlanticCouncil, Peter Dickinson (11/1): Russia Understands Ukraine’s Geopolitical Importance but Does the West? http://bit.ly/2TTZWD7

WaPo, Carl Lozada: The eruption http://wapo.st/2zrKyo1
// Trump didn’t invent American bigotry. But new books argue that he released it – and he has no incentive to extinguish it.

And it wasn’t just the domestic political campaigns. The Russian cyberattack against the U.S. electoral system demonstrated Moscow’s keen understanding of America’s cultural and racial fault lines. In “Cyberwar,” her account of Russia’s impact on the 2016 contest, Jamieson emphasizes “the mutually reinforcing nature” of the Trump campaign’s themes and efforts by Russian trolls to heighten America’s social tensions. “With a focus on constituencies whom Donald Trump needed to mobilize,” Jamieson writes, “Russian messages stoked fears of the multicultural, multiracial, ecumenical culture that Clinton Democrats championed.”

The debate over whether the Russians tilted the election is not settled in these books: Jamieson offers a detailed and compelling case that they could have done so, particularly through the magnified impact of the hacked materials, while Sides, Tesler and Vavreck counter that the effect of online ads tends to be limited, and that the Russians simply added misleading and polarizing content into a political system that was already suffused with it. Less controversial should be the realization that the Russians exploited some of the best of America — its respect for free markets and free speech, its tradition of an open and competitive press, its communications technologies — to bring out some of its worst. And that their tactics were consistent with those of the Trump campaign.

For some Trump opponents, the investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller serves as a device in a Samuel Beckett-style drama: They wait and wait for Mueller’s report to appear, believing that it will justify their sacrifices, restore their hope, set everything right. But we already know what the response will be: “I don’t think there’s anything to it,” a Trump Woman tells Bradlee. “If they find something, they will have made it up.”

In “Cyberwar,” Jamieson concludes her dissection of Russia’s electoral attack by listing all the enablers who unwittingly helped make it happen. It’s basically everyone: the breathless news media, the credulous citizenry, the polarizing — and pusillanimous — elected officials in Washington. Bradlee ends “The Forgotten” warning that Trump is pushing us back to “the old separate-but-equal ethos.” He urges the Democratic Party to “develop more of a heartland sensibility” and nominate someone with “blue-collar cred.”

But the authors of “Identity Crisis” see no incentives for such a move. They argue that Democrats are likelier to win by advocating for racial and ethnic minorities than by trying to woo back white Obama supporters who flipped to Trump, while Republicans have had more success rallying their base over immigration and the national anthem rather than tax cuts or health care. The “centrality of identity,” they write, has become the defining feature of American life.

MSNBC, Rachel Maddow: Nixon documents could help Mueller see legal precedent for Trump [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/2JvMX5H
// Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney and FBI official, talks with Rachel Maddow about newly published legal documents could offer some guiding precedent for Robert Mueller’s next steps once his Trump Russia investigation is concluded.

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Roger Stone’s story just changed on Russia — again http://wapo.st/2PzoX79

≣ NYT: Read the Emails: The Trump Campaign and Roger Stone http://nyti.ms/2JB10qY
// Newly revealed messages show how the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr. sold himself to Trump campaign advisers as a potential conduit to WikiLeaks, which published thousands of emails in 2016 damaging to Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

NYT: Roger Stone Sold Himself to Trump’s Campaign as a WikiLeaks Pipeline. Was He? http://nyti.ms/2SBl0xv

When the WikiLeaks founder, Julian Assange, appeared on a video link from Europe a month before the 2016 presidential election and vaguely promised to release a flood of purloined documents related to the race, the head of Donald J. Trump’s campaign, Stephen K. Bannon, was interested.

He emailed the political operative Roger J. Stone Jr., who had been trying to reach him for days about what Mr. Assange might have in store. “What was that this morning???” Mr. Bannon asked on Oct. 4.

“A load every week going forward,” Mr. Stone replied, echoing Mr. Assange’s public vow to publish documents on a weekly basis until the Nov. 8 election.

The email exchange, not previously reported, underscores how Mr. Stone presented himself to Trump campaign officials: as a conduit of inside information from WikiLeaks, Russia’s chosen repository for documents hacked from Democratic computers.

Mr. Bannon and two other former senior campaign officials have detailed to prosecutors for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, how Mr. Stone created that impression, according to people familiar with their accounts. One of them told investigators that Mr. Stone not only seemed to predict WikiLeaks’s actions, but that he also took credit afterward for the timing of its disclosures that damaged Hillary Clinton’s candidacy.

But at the same time, the top tier of Mr. Trump’s campaign was deeply skeptical of Mr. Stone, who has made a career of merging fact and fiction and seems to prize attention over credibility.

Whether Mr. Stone was, in fact, a trusted intermediary to WikiLeaks — or simply a master of puffery that made him appear so — remains a paramount question for Mr. Mueller’s investigators, who are examining Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential race and whether any Trump associates conspired with Moscow’s effort.

Mr. Stone has repeatedly said that he had access only to Mr. Assange’s public statements and to secondhand information from journalists or other sources. If he implied that he had more direct sources, he has said, he was simply engaging in political hyperbole.

But some of his previous statements have proved false. Mr. Stone told The Washington Post this week that he never discussed WikiLeaks with Trump campaign officials. “There are no such communications and if Bannon says there are he would be dissembling,” he said.

Still, Mr. Bannon’s October 2016 email correspondence shows that the perception that Mr. Stone knew what WikiLeaks had in store for Mrs. Clinton spread to the highest levels of the Trump campaign. No evidence has emerged that Mr. Trump or his advisers alerted the authorities.

As the month began, Mr. Stone peppered Twitter with predictions of an October surprise from Mr. Assange, whipping up speculation in the American news media and beyond. Mr. Assange, too, had been hinting at coming bombshells.

Unable to reach Mr. Bannon, Mr. Stone communicated with Matthew Boyle, the Washington political editor of the far-right Breitbart News, which Mr. Bannon ran before joining Mr. Trump’s campaign.

“Assange — what’s he got?” Mr. Boyle asked Mr. Stone on Oct. 3. “Hope it’s good.”

“It is,” Mr. Stone replied.

A half-hour later, Mr. Boyle emailed Mr. Bannon, urging him to call Mr. Stone. Mr. Bannon replied, “I’ve got important stuff to worry about.”

Mr. Boyle continued to press: “Clearly he knows what Assange has.”

A Breitbart spokesman said in a statement, “Matt Boyle acted in his role as a journalist to attempt to uncover the story behind Roger Stone’s public claims.”

The next day, after Mr. Assange’s news conference via video link, Mr. Bannon followed up with his email to Mr. Stone. According to one person familiar with Mr. Bannon’s account to prosecutors, the exchange ended with Mr. Stone’s reply, in which he essentially repeated what Mr. Assange or his allies had already said publicly.

Three days later, on Oct. 7, Mr. Stone’s prediction of an October surprise came true when WikiLeaks unleashed a trove of emails hacked from the computer of John D. Podesta, Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman. The disclosure came just a half-hour after the publication of a recording in which Mr. Trump boasted of grabbing women’s genitals and was an apparent attempt to divert attention from that explosive story, which threatened to derail Mr. Trump’s chances of capturing the White House. […]

🎃 31 Oct 2018

CNN: Trump shocks with racist new ad days before midterms http://cnn.it/2OjohhM

Stars&Stripes: Pentagon deploying troops from 39 units to US-Mexico border http://bit.ly/2CTZqPq “‘We don’t do stunts in this department,’ Mattis told reporters at the Pentagon.” Maybe not, but it looks like they’ll be filming something:
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1057957399749894144/photo/1

Newsweek: Watergate Scandal: Grand Jury Was Ready to Hit Richard Nixon With 4 Criminal Charges, Newly Released Documents Reveal http://bit.ly/2Jxzlab

The charges, including bribery, conspiracy, obstruction of justice and obstruction of a criminal investigation, would have been for Nixon and his administration’s attempt to cover up the break-in and wiretapping of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at The Watergate Hotel in D.C.

The draft of the indictment from a Washington grand jury stated that “from on or about March 21, 1973…Richard M. Nixon unlawfully, willfully and knowingly did combine, conspire, confederate and agree together and with co-conspirators…to commit bribery…obstruct justice…and obstruct a criminal investigation.”

It further added that Nixon met with John Dean, Nixon’s White House counsel, and Harry [Bob] Haldeman, Nixon’s chief of staff, on or about March 21, 1973, in the White House and “instructed” them to pay approximately $120,000 to E. Howard Hunt Jr., a former CIA agent and organizer of the Watergate break-in. Hunt Jr. had made the initial demand for $120,000 for his role in the break-in of the DNC headquarters, according to the draft indictment.

That same day, March 21, 1973, Hunt Jr. received approximately $75,000 in cash from Nixon messengers to influence his testimony to criminal investigators, according to the draft indictment. The following day, Nixon aides told the president that Hunt Jr.’s “money problem had been taken care of.”

Facing three articles of impeachment in the House, Nixon announced his resignation during a live TV and radio broadcast from the Oval Office on the evening of August 8, 1974.

NBC, Barbara McQuade and Joyce Vance: New attacks on Mueller, coupled with rumors about Sessions and Rosenstein, highlight need for congressional protection http://nbcnews.to/2EWx4Xm
// Congress cannot leave something as important as the special counsel’s investigation unprotected.

ABCNews: Conspiracy theorist Jerome Corsi becomes key figure as Mueller builds case http://abcn.ws/2Q5lUAB

📔 LawfareBlog: The Watergate Road Map Unsealed http://bit.ly/2CU3MWP

The National Archives has released the famed—and long mysterious—Watergate “Road Map,” which Special Prosecutor sent to Congress in 1974. For background on the Road Map, and our litigation to get it released, see here and here. This only just happened, and I have not read the document yet. I’m sure that I will have things to say about it once I have had a chance to digest it, as, I suspect, will Stephen Bates and Jack Goldsmith. For now, the document itself is below; redactions, on initial inspection, seem relatively minor. And here is a trove of related material also available from the National Archive.

WaPo, Paul Waldman: After the midterms, it’ll be Mueller Time http://wapo.st/2EWgo2q

USAToday: Trump denies receiving subpoena as part of special counsel’s probe into Russia interference http://usat.ly/2RnlO7M

TASS [RU]: Lavrov confirms Putin, Trump set to discuss INF Treaty at Paris meeting http://bit.ly/2yI1lUa

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: How Roger Stone Could Implicate Trump for Colluding With Russia http://nym.ag/2EV4nKw

RollCall, Griffin Connolly: Beneath the Politics, House GOP Quietly Touts Legitimate Oversight of FBI, DOJ http://bit.ly/2Q8VkH2
// Judiciary and Oversight Committees’ probe of potential bias at DOJ, FBI has turned into political firestorm

Haaretz, Daniel Shapiro [IL]: Will Trump’s Two Years of Incomplete Middle East Progress Turn Into an Explosive Failure? It All Depends on the Midterms http://bit.ly/2Sy0ca6
//. Trump’s two year Mideast policy scorecard is a mixed picture: Partial success stories that each face deep challenges. Will the election results constrain the administration’s wilder policy instincts that could inflame the Mideast?

MarketWatch, Caroline Baum: Trump has teased his post-election blame game http://on.mktw.net/2OfB84B

Pravda [RU]: Putin and Trump will be looking for Xi Jinping in Paris http://bit.ly/2SAvjlF

It is worthy of note that the United States has not had a dialogue with China on nuclear weapons since 2008. China and the United States created a confidence-building mechanism in 2014 to exchange information about hostilities. In 2016, the United States proposed to expand the mechanism and include exchange of information about ballistic missile launches. However, China refused. If the dialogue in the direction of the tripartite INF Treaty takes place, it will be a breakthrough in the history of globalisation.

WSJ: Russian Internet Trolls Obsessed Over Trump—and a Canceled Comedy Show http://on.wsj.com/2yHEdFk
// Trolls tweeted about politics, but their other favorite subject was Comedy Central’s now-defunct @midnight

Politico Mag, Nelson Cunningham: Has Mueller Subpoenaed the President? http://politi.co/2EUfd3x
// A careful reading of court filings suggests the special counsel hasn’t been quiet. Far from it.

CNN: Exclusive: Trump blamed ex-counsel McGahn for Mueller investigation http://cnn.it/2zrUk9Z

TheHill: Trump faces Election Day deadline on Russia http://bit.ly/2yIE4Sh
// The Trump administration is facing an Election Day deadline to decide whether to impose a fresh round of sanctions on Moscow over the poisoning of an ex-Russian spy in Britain earlier this year.

🐣 ‘Incels (a portmanteau of involuntary celibates) are members of an online subculture who define themselves as unable to find a romantic or sexual partner despite desiring one…. The SPLC describes the subculture as “part of the online male supremacist ecosystem”’ – Wikipedia

DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Americans Are Easy Marks for Russian Trolls, According to New Data http://thebea.st/2Ohxk2F
// A Daily Beast analysis of Twitter data shows the Kremlin troll farm’s English-language propaganda is nine times more effective than its disinformation in Russian.

🐣 RT @pmakela1 #Russia is using the old #USSR tactics once again. Resettle ethnic Russians to take over recently acquired areas permanently. ¤ #Baltic states received this treatment from 1939 till 1990 and still suffer greatly from it. ¤ #Crimea #Ukraine #crimeaisukraine
⋙ UNIAN: Kremlin resettles to Crimea 108,000 Russian nationals to change demographics – Yelchenko http://bit.ly/2JwnZDy

🔊ProPublica: Rudy Giuliani’s Mystery Trips to Russia, Armenia and Ukraine — “Trump, Inc.” Podcast http://bit.ly/2AEsGs5
// We spent weeks investigating his work and clients in the former Soviet Union. We have so many questions.

⭕ 30 Oct 2018

DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng et al: Trump Has Remade the World in Steve King’s Image http://thebea.st/2PvWDCM
// by Asawin Suebsaeng, Gideon Resnick, Jackie Kucinich, Sam Stein; That King is setting foot in the White House, let alone getting a 75-minute window with the president, is almost unfathomable to those who have followed his career.

CNN: Steve Bannon interviewed by Mueller’s team for at least the third time http://cnn.it/2SxGlYJ

FoxNews: Trump dramatically expands US espionage spending amid threats from Russia, China and North Korea http://fxn.ws/2PCLLDm

The numbers underscored President Trump’s aggressive approach to information warfare, which has seen the Pentagon unveil a new cybersecurity strategy and the Justice Department launch a Cyber-Digital Task Force while pursuing a comprehensive crackdown on leakers.

DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay and Will Sommer: Inside the Crazy Cabal Trying to Smear Robert Mueller http://thebea.st/2RtANxb
// A Seth Rich conspiracy pusher and fringe online figures appear to be working behind the scenes

HillReporter: Special Counsel Alerts FBI Of Scheme To Pay Women To Accuse Mueller Of Sexual Assault http://bit.ly/2DeQ2a3
// tic toc

MarketWatch: Fox News’ Shep Smith debunks Trump’s migrant-caravan rhetoric: ‘There is no invasion’ http://mktw.net/2zi4Al3
● Map: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1057567054239277056/photo/1
// ⇈ map source link: MarketWatch (10/29): This map shows how far the migrant caravan is from the U.S. border http://mktw.net/2yHo4je

WSJ: NATO Exercise Sends Warning to Russia, Message to Members http://on.wsj.com/2CSdE3e
// Largest show of force since Cold War shows clout to Moscow, cost of security to 29 bloc members

💙💙 NYT: The Internet Will Be the Death of Us http://nyti.ms/2AADPd9
// It casts rogue grievances as legitimate obsessions and gives prejudices the shimmer of ideals.

🐣 RT @SethAbramson (MEGA-THREAD) A *major* mystery in the Trump-Russia investigation—what type of illegal election assistance Israeli intel-affiliated entities offered the Trump campaign after Trump Jr. accepted their help in August 2016—may have just been solved. I hope you’ll read on and retweet.
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1057454270788890625

🐣 RT @TheBeatWithAri Bombshell: Tape shows Roger Stone claiming he was “in touch” with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange before hacked emails were published:
💽 https://twitter.com/TheBeatWithAri/status/1057396299144855552/photo/1

NYT: Plot to Smear Mueller Unravels as F.B.I. Is Asked to Investigate http://nyti.ms/2yFFHjp

TheGuardian: FBI asked to investigate suspected double hoax against Mueller http://bit.ly/2DcyQlD
// FBI to investigate whether a hoaxer offered women money to make false allegations about special counsel investigating Russian election meddling

ABCNews: As special counsel closes in, Roger Stone suits up for legal battle http://abcn.ws/2DbViLz

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Mueller Wants the FBI to Look at a Scheme to Discredit Him http://bit.ly/2Ogzhw8
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1057344149375119360/photo/1
// The special counsel says a woman was offered money to fabricate sexual harassment claims.

The special counsel’s office confirmed that the scheme was brought to its attention by several journalists who were told about it by a woman alleging  that she herself had been offered roughly $20,000 by a man claiming to work for a GOP activist named Jack Burkman “to make accusations of sexual misconduct and workplace harassment against Robert Mueller.” The woman told journalists in an email, a copy of which I obtained, that she had worked for Mueller as a paralegal at the Pillsbury, Madison, and Sutro law firm in 1974, but that she “didn’t see” him much. “When I did see him, he was always very polite to me, and was never inappropriate,” the woman wrote. The firm has not returned a request for comment about whether the woman actually worked there.

Burkman, a conservative radio host, is known for spreading conspiracy theories. He launched his own private investigation into the murder of the DNC staffer Seth Rich, dangled uncorroborated claims of sexual harassment against a sitting member of Congress, and earlier this year offered $25,000 to FBI whistle-blowers for any information exposing wrongdoing during the 2016 election. He also promoted legislation that he authored—despite not being a member of Congress—that would ban gays from playing in the National Football League, and has hosted two fundraisers for Rick Gates—the former Trump campaign official who was indicted by Mueller late last year.

Axios, Joe Uchill: Study clarifies goals of Russia’s 2016 social media campaign http://bit.ly/2PsHbrc

The study, now under review for publication, was conducted by Darren Linvill and Patrick Warren of Clemson University, Brandon Boatwright of University of Tennessee-Knoxville, and Will Grant of Australia National University.

Forbes, Baker Institute: Trump’s Sanctions On Iran Just Handed A Big Victory To Russia http://bit.ly/2zaugQc

Newsweek: Trump Calls Mueller’s Russia Probe an ‘Illegal Investigation Totally’ but Says He’ll ‘Probably’ Answer Questions http://bit.ly/2Q33wIU

WSJ: Mueller Investigators Probe Roger Stone Conference Calls http://on.wsj.com/2OfKRHY
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1057239680201175041/photo/1
// Longtime Trump adviser spoke of WikiLeaks’ plans to release emails ahead of 2016 election

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigators are examining comments by Roger Stone—a longtime adviser to Donald Trump—about WikiLeaks during a series of conference calls he hosted in 2016, according to a witness in the probe and another person familiar with the matter.

In at least two August conference calls advertised online to the public and promoting himself as “the ultimate political insider,” Mr. Stone told callers about WikiLeaks’ plans to release information that he said would affect the 2016 presidential campaign before the election, according to people who listened to the sessions and recordings of one of the calls published online and reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.

⭕ 29 Oct 2018

ForeignPolicy, Ryan Costello and Sina Toossi: Mohammed bin Salman Is the Next Saddam Hussein http://bit.ly/2P1FyBo
// In the 1980s, the United States embraced a brutal Middle Eastern tyrant simply because he opposed Iran. Washington should not repeat the same mistake today.

CFR, Alex Grigsby: Unpacking The Competing Russian and U.S. Cyberspace Resolutions at the United Nations http://on.cfr.org/2AEdAmp

UNIAN: Kremlin calls upcoming Putin-Trump meeting “synchronization of positions” http://bit.ly/2JqDFrJ
// The presidents of the United States and Russia have a lot of issues that require exchanging views, Peskov said.

DefenseOne, Jeremy Bash and Simon Simakovsky: Four Perfectly Trump Reasons Why He Wants Out of the INF Treaty http://bit.ly/2SvbPyS

NYT: Meet the Would-Be House Committee Leaders Who Could Torment Trump http://nyti.ms/2OYXUD0 Expect subpoenas, must-see hearings and lots of investigations.
// If Democrats win control of the House, they will gain control of powerful committees that could put a check on Mr. Trump’s agenda. Expect subpoenas, must-see hearings and lots of investigations.

TheObserver, John Schindler: The Mystery of Donald Trump’s Secret Kremlin Ties Just Got a Lot Deeper http://bit.ly/2zdWSs4

🐣 RT @PaulKrugman It’s long past time to stop using the term “populist” for people like Bolsonaro or Trump. There’s nothing in their policies for the working class except racism and misogyny. White nationalist — or neo-fascist — is the right term
⋙ NYT: Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s Far-Right President-Elect, Turns Crisis Into Opportunity http://nyti.ms/2CMC0vk

🐣 RT @juliaioffe I have to say, I feel less safe as a journalist in America these days than I ever did in Russia. A lot less safe.

AP: Russian held as agent studied US groups’ cyberdefenses http://bit.ly/2EMReTy Maria Butina

BusinessInsider/Reuters: Mattis is trying to keep allies calm after Trump promised to ditch a landmark Cold War missile treaty http://read.bi/2qiU5K5

EUvsDisinfo: Commanding the Trolls http://bit.ly/2yzuH7i

Thanks to a series of journalistic investigations, many of which have been carried out by Russian reporters, it is already well known that employees at the so-called “troll factory” in St. Petersburg receive instructions about which messages they should push in social media and online debates.

Examples of such instructions have now been published in written form in the indictment from the U.S. Department of Justice, which charges a named employee at the “troll factory” with attempted meddling in the upcoming U.S. midterms elections.

The new documentation confirms and fleshes out the instruction system and the fact that the “troll factory” is still active. The evidence also showcases the “troll factory’s” activities as a strategic communications campaign with emphasis on target group awareness.

⭕ 28 Oct 2018

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind I implore members of our media to cover Trump as an authoritarian and stop amplifying his narratives. HIs goal is to undermine you, and expose you to danger. You must change the way you are covering him and not follow his shiny coins!

WaPo: Russian disinformation on Facebook targeted Ukraine well before the 2016 U.S. election http://wapo.st/2qi2PjA

Politico, Darren Samuelson: How a Democratic majority could undermine the Mueller probe http://politi.co/2SoEgyp “If history is any guide, an aggressive Congress and the Justice Department don’t always get along, especially when there’s an independent counsel involved”
// If Democrats retake the House, they want to aggressively open probes into issues the special counsel is also investigating.

If Democrats retake the House in the midterm elections, they’re prepared to use their newfound subpoena power to aggressively open probes into President Donald Trump’s finances and connections to Russia. But doing so — just as Mueller appears to be entering the final laps of his own probe — would create tensions between the special counsel and a newly crowned majority party replenished by scores of freshman lawmakers who rode into Capitol Hill on an anti-Trump wave.

TASS [RU]: Russia hopes US won’t disavow dialogues on cyber security, anti-terror fight – Lavrov http://bit.ly/2JnvtZ8 “US National Security Adviser Bolton confirmed that US leader Donald Trump wants to implement these agreements, Russia’s top diplomat said” [‼️]

⭕ 27 Oct 2018

BusinessInsider: Russia has allegedly been spreading far-right propaganda on Facebook to try and influence the US midterms — here it is http://read.bi/2D9Ig18

WaPo: Mail bomb suspect Cesar Sayoc made numerous references on Facebook to Russian associates and echoed pro-Kremlin views http://wapo.st/2yCN2Aj

TheIndependent [UK]: How CNN became Trumpworld’s most-hated TV network http://bit.ly/2EPbHaB
// President once enjoyed a cosy relationship with the network and praised their polls, but this rapidly deteriorated after they ran a story on the Trump-Russia dossier

⭕ 26 Oct 2018

FresnoBee/McClatchy: Judge denies Nunes access to secret depositions on Steele dossier http://bit.ly/2F0TSoQ
// and Grassley, per MSW

NYMag, Heather Hurlburt: Russia Violated an Arms Treaty. Trump Ditched It, Making the Nuclear Threat Even Worse. http://nym.ag/2zebIyS

WaPo, Dmitry Gorenburg: Here’s what the Russians think about the Trump administration’s decision to withdraw from a nuclear arms treaty http://wapo.st/2SukMYS

JustSecurity, Marty Lederman: The Constitutional Challenge to Special Counsel Mueller (Post No. 2): Is Mueller Even an Officer Subject to the Appointments Clause? http://bit.ly/2Pot6e3

Politico: Papadopoulos threatens to pull out of Mueller plea agreement http://politi.co/2PnBSJy

⭕ 25 Oct 2018

Vox, Alex Finley (10/25): How Russian money and influence slipped through cracks in the US legal system http://bit.ly/2P221Ov
// The 2010 Citizens United decision helped open the door to foreign influence in US elections.

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Maria Butina’s Legal Team Embraces Disinformation (with Help from Russia http://bit.ly/2yD9M3p

💽 MSNBC, Maddow Show: Sealed court documents suggest battle over Mueller’s authority [Video] http://on.msnbc.com/2JhZJ7S
// Josh Gerstein, reporter for Politico, talks with Rachel Maddow about hints in court records that someone is challenging the validity of a subpoena from Robert Mueller.

TheWeek: Mueller reportedly has evidence Roger Stone ally knew WikiLeaks had Clinton emails http://bit.ly/2yCXE2f

Salon, Bob Brigham: Ex-FBI Agent warns Robert Mueller could be indicting Trump associates http://bit.ly/2CHZT7a
// Former FBI Special Agent warns of indictments as President Donald Trump meets with Vladimir Vladimir Putin

Slate, John Reed: Mueller’s Probe Into Roger Stone’s WikiLeaks Ties Gets to the Heart of the “Collusion” Question http://bit.ly/2OV31nx

ForeignAffairs, Olga Oliker: Moscow’s Nuclear Enigma http://fam.ag/2OMFghz
// Nov-Dec issue; What Is Russia’s Arsenal Really For?

NYT, Mikhail Gorbachev: A New Nuclear Arms Race Has Begun http://nyti.ms/2Sl8y58
// President Trump says he plans to withdraw from a nonproliferation treaty that I signed with Ronald Reagan. It’s just the latest victim in the militarization of world affairs.

NBCChicago: Mueller Has Evidence Suggesting Stone Associate Knew Clinton Emails Would Be Leaked: Source http://bit.ly/2RfUisL
// Mueller’s investigators have reviewed messages to members of the Trump team in which Roger Stone and Jerome Corsi seem to take credit for the release of Democratic emails, said a person with direct knowledge of the emails

MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Text Messages Show Roger Stone Was Working to Get a Pardon for Julian Assange http://bit.ly/2yHOFwX
// Robert Mueller’s investigators have examined Stone’s efforts to neutralize possible criminal charges against the WikiLeaks founder.

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Mueller Had Learned by February 22 that Roger Stone Was Pushing an Assange Pardon in January http://bit.ly/2RiCH3D

CtrAmProg: A Mueller Investigation Refresher With Joyce Vance [podcast] http://ampr.gs/2CC4ckB
// Daniella Gibbs Leger, Ed Chung, Kyle Epstein, and Rachel Rosen

DailyBeast, Betsey Woodruff and Erin Banco: Saudi Spy Met With Team Trump About Taking Down Iran http://thebea.st/2JfxTsU
// Mueller’s investigators examined a series of meetings between an Israeli social media strategist, the general blamed for Jamal Khashoggi’s murder, and Trump adviser Michael Flynn.

HillReporter, Ed Krassenstein: Mueller Reportedly Has Evidence Showing Roger Stone Took Credit For Leaked, Hacked Emails http://bit.ly/2yzufpx

BusinessInsider, Sonan Sheth: Mueller reportedly has evidence that a Roger Stone associate knew Clinton campaign emails had been stolen and given to WikiLeaks http://read.bi/2EI2kJu

JustSecurity, Marty Lederman: The Constitutional Challenge to Robert Mueller’s Appointment: Introduction http://bit.ly/2ArWmbB

TheHill: Mueller has evidence hinting Roger Stone ally knew WikiLeaks had Clinton emails: report http://bit.ly/2Pp0KQW

Law&Crime, John Banzhaf: Why Mueller Could be Forced to Indict President Trump http://bit.ly/2PQAT1b

LawFareBlog, Stephen Bates: What To Expect When You’re Expecting a Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2SjmTib

NBC: Mueller has evidence suggesting Stone associate knew Clinton emails would be leaked http://nbcnews.to/2RfhwiL
// Mueller’s team is investigating whether Jerome Corsi knew stolen emails would be leaked and passed information about them to Trump associate Roger Stone.

BBC: Facebook fined £500,000 for Cambridge Analytica scandal http://bbc.in/2OOhjGI
● photo Zuckerberg: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1055370596874444800/photo/1

⭕ 24 Oct 2018

🐣 RT @TimOBrien That time that President Trump kept a copy of Hitler’s speeches by his bedside — and other things that make his embrace of “nationalism” so dangerous and troubling. My column today:
⋙ Bloomberg, Tim O’Brien: Trump Launches a Nationalist Salvo at the Midterms http://bloom.bg/2CEv43h
// The president’s brand of allegiance to country is steeped in uncomfortable, racially charged echoes.

Speaking at a political rally in Houston on Monday night, President Donald Trump revisited some of his familiar “America First” themes. “We’re taking care of ourselves, for a change,” he advised an enthusiastic crowd, before slamming “corrupt, power-hungry globalists.” Then he pushed ahead, putting a label on that thing that ails him: “They have a word, it sort of became old-fashioned, it’s called a nationalist. And I say, ‘Really, we’re not supposed to use that word.’ You know what I am? I’m a nationalist, okay? I’m a nationalist. Nothing wrong. Use that word. Use that word.”

With that, the president — who rarely offers unvarnished, accurate descriptions of what motivates him when he’s out on the hustings — provided a candid, calculated and honest self-assessment. Hold on to that moment, because authenticity is a scarce commodity in the Oval Office. Ponder that moment, too, because it represents Trump pandering to his political base by lobbing racially charged grenades into the midterm-election frenzy — and reveling in it.

… “Notes on Nationalism” by George Orwell: “By ‘nationalism’ I mean first of all the habit of assuming that human beings can be classified like insects and that whole blocks of millions and tens of millions of people can be confidently labeled ‘good’ or ‘bad.’”

The term “nationalism” also evokes the Nazis and Aryan supremacy, of course, something some Trump’s supporters dismissed as an unreasonable interpretation of what the president meant when he described himself as a member of the nationalist club. The Nazis’ “nationalism was about racial purity, it was about blood and soil,” said Steve Cortes, a commentator and Trump backer, on CNN. “American nationalism — which by the way defeated Nazism — American nationalism is about shared ideals. It’s about a Constitution.”

His first wife, Ivana, told her lawyer during their divorce that Trump kept a copy of Adolf Hitler’s collected speeches by his bedside in their Trump Tower triplex. When a reporter questioned Trump about the book in 1990, he balked and then said it was a gift. “If I had these speeches, and I am not saying that I do, I would never read them,” Trump also told the reporter. (Trump doesn’t read books, or much of anything else, so he may have been telling the truth when he said he didn’t read the Hitler collection.)

Trump routinely speaks of himself and family members as having superior intellect and success in life because they have “good genes,” a worldview he may have inherited from his father. His decision to take on the mantle of being a nationalist can only be understood in the broader context of electioneering and race-baiting. Trump and his administration have described the migrant caravan winding its way through Central America in the most sensational and fabricated of ways, saying that it’s essentially an army of misfits populated by terrorists and Middle Easterners.

For a nationalist hoping to shore up his base before the midterm elections, demonizing and lying about unwanted outsiders is a card to play, even if it’s a morally bankrupt move. For others around the country, having become better acquainted with the president and perhaps less shocked by him, it’s time to discover how well they know themselves — and whether they’re ready to counter the nationalism Trump will continue rolling out.

Politico: Mueller link seen in mystery grand jury appeal http://politi.co/2qbvN4v
// The special counsel appears to be locked in a dispute with a mystery grand jury witness, but much of the case is sealed.

Snopes/AP: Trump Adviser Bolton Says No Clarity on Further Sanctions on Russia http://bit.ly/2CDxTBI
// The U.S. imposed the latest Russian sanctions earlier this year in reaction to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Britain.

DefenseNews: Democrats demand answers about Trump plans to drop nuke treaty with Russia http://bit.ly/2O2MKrz

Reuters: Congress postpones questioning Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Trump, Russia probe http://reut.rs/2PVEWt9

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: George Papadopoulos Hopes to Fuel Republicans’ Suspicions About the Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2qhNiAt
// The former Trump campaign aide who has pleaded guilty will say in House testimony Thursday that the FBI and British intelligence worked to deter President Trump’s election effort.

NYT: When Trump Phones Friends, the Chinese and the Russians Listen and Learn http://nyti.ms/2SgCDm7

WaPo, Yochai Benkler: The Russians didn’t swing the 2016 election to Trump. But Fox News might have. http://wapo.st/2JcO8a5 “the fundamental driver of disinformation in American politics of the past three years has not been Russia, but Fox News”
// Blaming foreign influence is a cop-out. The most influential propaganda is homegrown.

NYT: Alexander Soros: The Hate That Is Consuming Us http://nyti.ms/2SfVqOn
// Bombs sent to my father, George Soros, and to former President Obama and Hillary Clinton are a result of our politics of demonizing opponents.

⭕ 23 Oct 2018

ViceNews, Greg Walters: How an ex-marijuana farmer became conservatives’ latest hope to take down Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2PgD94Y

Andrew Miller was growing pot in California just a few months ago. Next year, he hopes to take down special counsel Robert Mueller in the Supreme Court.

In August, Miller, a former aide to Republican provocateur Roger Stone, refused to answer a subpoena from Mueller, who’s leading the probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. That decision has put the 34-year-old Miller in contempt of court, but it’s also opened a pathway to attack the constitutionality of Mueller’s entire investigation.

Now, with the backing of a powerful Washington conservative legal group with a track record of targeting Democrats, Miller has positioned himself as the real-life avatar of a favored conservative argument: the special counsel never should’ve been appointed at all. And he’s hoping the high court’s rightward alignment, with the help of Brett Kavanaugh, will override the lower courts that have already dismissed the idea.

TPM, Kate Riga: Stone Inquiry Shows Mueller’s Suspicion That He Was Tied To Trump Campaign http://bit.ly/2JeEEv4

HuffPo: Former White House Lawyer Ty Cobb Says Mueller Probe Isn’t ‘A Witch Hunt’ http://bit.ly/2q98BUI
// That assessment pits Cobb against his former boss, President Donald Trump.

TheHill: FBI unable to find photos of Comey, Mueller ‘hugging and kissing’ as Trump claimed http://bit.ly/2AoO701

⭕ 22 Oct 2018

Salon, Keith Spencer: Team Mueller investigating GOP strategist Roger Stone: report http://bit.ly/2EFJkeP
// The strange relationship between Stone, Wikileaks, Assange and Russian hackers has Mueller’s eye

ABCNews: Targeted by Mueller, what did Trump confidante Roger Stone actually do? http://abcn.ws/2EHaMc0

Law&Crime: Mueller Reportedly Has Recordings of Roger Stone in His Possession http://bit.ly/2PYin76

Reuters: Trump lawyer: Manafort said nothing damaging in Mueller interviews http://reut.rs/2yWPL77

TheWeek, Matthew Walther: How the Mueller fairy tale ends http://bit.ly/2JdIV1R

CNN: Mueller drills down on Roger Stone’s WikiLeaks contacts http://cnn.it/2q5l5fU

🐣 Dear @jzikah, I posted your three amazing drawings on my blog. Let me know if this is not okay. Here’s the link: https://wp.me/PDKwi-6Kc The post is of resources on #TrumpRussia. The blog itself is about the tv series #TheBlacklist. I keep a number of fact-based backgrounders.

💽 MSNBC, Rachel Maddow Show: Trump team fails again to confront Russia on election intrusion http://on.msnbc.com/2q9eJME Interview w Rep. Adam Schiff
// Rep. Adam Schiff talks with Rachel Maddow about the recent indictment of another Russian for being part of an active campaign to interfere in the 2018 election, and the Trump administration’s failure to confront Russia when given the chance.

BuzzFeedNews: Meet The Woman Who Is Proudly Russia’s Troll-In-Chief http://bit.ly/2PNUm2K
// Maria Zakharova has revolutionized what it means to be a Russian diplomat — in real life and online. “She’s like Marmite: Some people love her and some people hate her.”

⭕ 21 Oct 2018

WaPo: Special counsel examines conflicting accounts as scrutiny of Roger Stone and WikiLeaks deepens http://wapo.st/2q4ngk1

⭕ 20 Oct 2018

🐣 RT @Comey The United States should be a shining light for the world, modeling a democracy that values truth, respects free press, protects human rights, and stands against murderers, oppression, and bigotry. Trump and the Republican Party are dimming that light.

LATimes, Virginia Heffernan: Something is desperately wrong when America is accused of covering up the killing of a dissident http://lat.ms/2CtaX8d //➔ on the courage of dissidents in authoritarian regimes: Kara-Murza, Nemtsov, Solzhenitsyn, Khashoggi

On Thursday, the twice-poisoned Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza looked in fine health as he accepted the Train Foundation Prize for Civil Courage in New York. The award honors “steadfast resistance to evil at great personal risk.”

Kara-Murza, a 37-year-old journalist and filmmaker, admitted he’d been physically weakened by attempts on his life in 2015 and 2017. He’s well aware that dissent can also be fatal. After all, in 2015, just before Kara-Murza was poisoned the first time, his mentor and fellow foe of Vladimir Putin, Boris Nemtsov, was shot and killed on a bridge just outside the Kremlin.

Great personal risk, indeed.

The Civil Courage Prize was inspired by another Russian dissident: Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Like Kara-Murza and Nemtsov, Solzhenitsyn, a novelist and historian, criticized the Russian — then Soviet — government. In 1945, he was condemned to eight years in a work camp for poking fun at Stalin in a personal letter.

When the collected works of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi are published, I hope my parents and other patriotic Americans will buy those books too.

Khashoggi, like Nemtsov, was evidently killed in cold blood by a distinctly un-American government willing to desecrate the canon of human rights to shore up a fragile tyranny.

NYT, Nicholas Kristof: Desperately Seeking Principled Republicans http://nyti.ms/2AkhPTW
// The party has lost its way, and it’s time to start over.

⭕ 19 Oct 2018

TPM, Tierney Sneed: Politico: Secret Grand Jury Legal Fight Appears Mueller Related http://bit.ly/2yxkuZe

WIRED, Garrett Graff (10/19): Russian Trolls Are Still Playing Both Sides—Even With the Mueller Probe http://bit.ly/2Aqg0Vx

TPM, Allegra Kirkland: Mueller Expected To Deliver Reports On Obstruction, Collusion After Midterms http://bit.ly/2Ao7ia9

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Did Michael Flynn Have a Back Channel to Email Hackers During the Campaign? http://nym.ag/2CwQdMD

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: A Defector From Conservatism With a Clear Vision of Trump’s Rise http://nym.ag/2Cu6eD6
// Max Boot, The Corrosion of Conservatism: Why I Left the Right

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Call CNN fake news? Check. Cast Paul Ryan as weak? Check. Call Mueller a Democrat conducting an unfair probe? Check. Allege widespread voter fraud? Check. The new criminal complaint lays out how the Russians’ messaging has copied Trump’s almost verbatim:
⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: DOJ Says Russian Trolls Are Interfering Online With the Midterms http://bit.ly/2yQ7Pjm  
// A criminal complaint filed Friday charges a Russian national, employed by a firm linked to Vladimir Putin and Russian intelligence, with helping direct interference in the 2018 midterm elections.  

NYT: U.S. to Tell Russia It Is Leaving Landmark I.N.F. Treaty http://nyti.ms/2Pd4KnB I.N.F. = the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty

The Trump administration is preparing to tell Russian leaders next week that it is planning to exit the landmark Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, in part to enable the United States to counter a Chinese arms buildup in the Pacific, according to American officials and foreign diplomats.

President Trump has been moving toward scrapping the three-decade-old treaty, which grew out of President Ronald Reagan’s historic meeting with Mikhail Gorbachev in 1986. While the treaty was seen as effective for years, Russia has been violating it at least since 2014 in an effort to menace other nations.

But the pact has also constrained the United States from deploying new weapons to respond to China’s efforts to cement a dominant position in the Western Pacific and to keep American naval forces at bay. Because China was not a signatory to the treaty, it has faced no limits on developing intermediate-range nuclear missiles, which can travel thousands of miles.

The White House said that no official decision had been made to leave the treaty, known as I.N.F., which at the time of its signing was considered a critical step in defusing Cold War tensions. But in the coming weeks, Mr. Trump is expected to sign off on the decision, which would mark the first time he has scrapped an arms control treaty, the American officials said.

Now that the treaty is largely in tatters, the question is whether the decision to leave it will accelerate the increasingly Cold War-like behavior among the three superpowers: the United States, Russia and China.

🐣 RT @ScotMStedman BREAKING: Russian media is reporting that all of Agalarov’s bank accounts in the US have been closed at the request of Mueller.
Tweet Link: https://twitter.com/ScottMStedman/status/1053452467197771776
⋙ rbc.ru: В США закрыли банковские счета Crocus Group Араза Агаларова http://bit.ly/2PH6bYo

Lawfare: Russian Electoral Interference: 2018 Midterms Edition http://bit.ly/2Pg71P6
// by “Russian Electoral Interference: 2018 Midterms Edition,” the latest from Victoria Clark, Mikhaila Fogel, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Matthew Kahn and Benjamin Wittes

DailyBeast, Adam Rawnsley: The Feds Have the Russian Troll Farm Receipts http://thebea.st/2Evygkw
// New indictment sheds light on Russian election meddlers secretive “Project Lakhta.”

TPM, Tierney Sneed: New Complaint Offers Details On How Russian Internet Trolls Were Financed http://bit.ly/2PNwM6p

TPM, Tierney Sneed: The Russian Trolls Mueller Indicted Pushed Social Posts Bashing Mueller http://bit.ly/2P9rqVH

WSJ: Mueller Probes WikiLeaks’ Contacts With Conservative Activists http://on.wsj.com/2R0CK3L
// Ties between the website and Roger Stone, Peter W. Smith get a closer look

Medium, Ryan Casey (2017: Mueller’s Art of War http://bit.ly/2P93odz
// 6/21/2017, “He who is prudent and lies in wait for an enemy who is not, will be victorious.” –– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

NBC: Russian woman charged with attempted meddling in upcoming U.S. midterms http://nbcnews.to/2NR6rCC
// Elena Khusyaynova works for a company owned by a Putin pal who has already been indicted by special counsel Robert Mueller’s team.

MotherJones: New Justice Department Case Shows Russia Is Now Attacking the Midterm Elections http://bit.ly/2PcNIpF
// Putin’s assault on America didn’t stop after the 2016 election—and it still favors Trump.

Politico, Darren Samuelson: Mueller report PSA: Prepare for disappointment http://politi.co/2CsC17u
// And be forewarned that the special counsel’s findings may never be made public.
⋙ 🐣 Seems inconsistent with Rosenstein’s statement in his WSJ interview that “at the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence.”

🐣 If Bill Clinton said ‘It’s better to be strong and wrong that weak and right,’ HE is wrong. This election has female virtues on one side running against Reckless Testosterone on the other. Let the Women Lead. Especially you, @MorningMika Jesus. @Morning_Joe

🐣 Dems are running a campaign of Persuasion. The GOP is running a campaign of Fear. Dems are the anti-Lunacy Party. If this looks “weak” to you, you’re missing the point & falling into the Trump mindset that Strength is the only virtue & what is needed is a Strongman @Morning_Joe

WaPo, Tom Toles: After not colluding with Russia, Trump is now not colluding with Saudi Arabia http://wapo.st/2Ai6vro

⭕ 18 Oct 2018

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Three big ideas to bolster democracy http://wapo.st/2CT17xm

TheHill: Mueller assembles team of cooperators in Russian probe http://bit.ly/2PgYviM

Salon: Historian Christopher Browning on the Trump regime: We’re “close to the point of no return” http://bit.ly/2CRhZET
// Scholar of the Nazi period explains why fake news may be a more powerful authoritarian tool than secret police

⭕ 17 Oct 2018

VanityFair, Abigail Tracy (10/17): It Looks Like Mueller May Have a November Surprise http://bit.ly/2PRvO91

BusinessInsider: Rosenstein is said to be pressuring Mueller to wrap up the Russia probe, but Mueller looks nowhere near finished http://read.bi/2ytQ0ab

Wonkette, Evan Hurst: Fusion GPS Founder Glenn Simpson Is Through With Republicans’ Bullsh*t http://bit.ly/2CoXzly

WSJ: In Interview, Rod Rosenstein Defends Mueller Probe as ‘Appropriate and Independent’ http://on.wsj.com/2QSpsX0 //➔ first explicit statement I’ve seen that findings will be made public
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1052819193639460864/photo/1
// In interview, deputy attorney general says investigation has revealed widespread Russian effort to meddle in 2016 election

In an expansive interview with The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday, Mr. Rosenstein offered a forceful defense of the inquiry, saying the public would have faith in its findings.

“People are entitled to be frustrated, I can accept that,” he said, in a nod to attacks on the probe from some conservatives and Republicans. “But at the end of the day, the public will have confidence that the cases we brought were warranted by the evidence, and that it was an appropriate use of resources.”
– – – – – –
“I try very hard to ignore media speculation about what we’re doing and focus instead on what we’re actually doing,” Mr. Rosenstein said. “We sit down every day and we work toward the goals of the department and try to ignore the inevitable attention in the media.”

Mr. Rosenstein declined to comment on a timetable for completion of the Mueller probe, but the special counsel’s office has taken some actions suggesting it could wrap up within several months, including holding negotiations with the White House about whether Mr. Trump would submit to questioning.

✅ AP FACT CHECK: Trump distorts migrant policy, Russia probe http://bit.ly/2RZ4tTE

Politico: Massive Twitter data release sheds light on Russia’s Trump strategy http://politi.co/2QXo5GC

Vox, Andrew Prokop: Will Mueller show his cards soon after the election? Here are 3 scenarios. http://bit.ly/2QZw5ah
// Many in the political world think that may be the time.

WaPo: Senior Treasury employee charged with leaking documents related to Russia probe http://wapo.st/2pX3HKn

Prosecutors charged Natalie Mayflower Sours Edwards with the unauthorized disclosure of suspicious activity reports and conspiracy. The charges were filed in federal court in New York but she is scheduled to make her first court appearance in Northern Virginia, officials said.

Edwards, 40, works as a senior adviser at the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network, often referred to as “FinCEN.”

⭕ 16 Oct 2018

MSNBC, Steve Benen (TRMS): Trump tries to move the goalposts on Russia scandal (again) http://on.msnbc.com/2OtFom3

CNN: Trump campaign spending doubles amid midterms, Russia inquiry http://cnn.it/2AfQXo1

WaPo: House Russia-probe witness invokes Fifth Amendment as Trump urges firing of DOJ official connected to dossier http://wapo.st/2pXTIVb

TheWeek: Robert Mueller will reportedly issue reports on Trump and Russian collusion, obstruction after midterms http://bit.ly/2EqXErt

⭕ 15 Oct 2018

Lawfare, by Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, Benjamin Wittes (10/15): Jaworski Road Map to be Mostly Unsealed http://bit.ly/2Q8n7XX

⭕ 14 Oct 2018

WaPo: 60 Minutes: Putin is ‘probably’ involved in assassinations, but ‘it’s not in our country,’ Trump says http://wapo.st/2yhYhOm Trump declined to say that he will not end the Russia investigation, although he said he does not intend to do so

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: This is why so many journalists are at risk today http://wapo.st/2Cfw51r Universal access to what they write makes journalists a threat to those in power

… In Russia, the authorities use a different tactic: They seek to drown accurate information in a flood of state-sponsored garbage, producing reams of contradictory stories designed to undermine the very notion of “truth.” …

🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc Sounds like Putin doesn’t think the dossier is a hoax.
⋙ TheSun, Patrick Knox [UK]: PUTIN’S ‘PLOT’ Vladimir Putin ‘ordered Salisbury novichok hitman to assassinate Brit spy behind Trump sex dossier’ http://bit.ly/2RPjBmv
// Alexander Mishkin, 39, was allegedly behind the failed hit on the double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Wiltshire… but it is now claimed he was linked to another mission to kill former MI6 officer Christopher Steele 

⭕ 13 Oct 2018

WIRED, Emily Dreyfuss: Robert Mueller Has Already Told You Everything You Need To Know http://bit.ly/2pQrtrg “I think that what people miss is that Robert Mueller has been writing the Mueller Report in public through all of these court filings.”

NYT, Peter Baker: Is Trump on a Collision Course With Impeachment? http://nyti.ms/2QQ8Krb
// Democrats are largely ducking the topic on the campaign trail, but few people in Washington doubt that it will be on the table if they win the House.

⭕ 11 Oct 2018

Politico: Trump lawyers working on answers to Mueller’s Russia conspiracy questions http://politi.co/2A6lftp

USAToday: Hillary Clinton to Donald Trump: ‘You asked Russia to hack me’ http://bit.ly/2IS1jgs

HuffPo: There’s More Evidence The Times Flubbed A Major Trump-Russia Story http://bit.ly/2yzaGgi (featuring @maddow coverage of NewYorker piece by Dexter Filkins)
// featuring Maddow coverage; A report in The New Yorker offers a chilling look at how things went so wrong.
[ ⋙ NYT (10/31/2016): Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia http://nyti.ms/2CcPjoz
// 10/31/2016, By Eric Lichtblau and Steven Lee Myers ]
⋙ NewYorker, Dexter Filkins: Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign? |http://bit.ly/2E7Hm6F
// 10/15/2018 issue [also under 10/8]
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYer Russian Bank Trump 10-15-2018 [dup]

CNN: GOP Senator Burr says there’s still ‘a lot of investigation left’ on Russia despite Trump comment to the contrary http://cnn.it/2NEeD99

RFE/RL: Top Corruption Investigator Shot Dead In Moscow Region http://bit.ly/2OSaenr She had a name. It was Yevgenia Shishkina. She was shot in the neck leaving her apartment building in the town of Arkhangelskoye, near the capital.

Politico: Trump: Nunes should get Medal of Freedom for Russia pushback http://politi.co/2CELGc6

Politico: Judge Ellis questions ‘highly unusual’ Manafort plea deal with Mueller http://politi.co/2Egorqx

Salon: Investigative reporter Craig Unger: “Trump has had contacts with the Russian mafia for 35 years” http://bit.ly/2OQrslk
// Author of “House of Trump, House of Putin” on the president’s long history with Russian oligarchs and murky money

⭕ 10 Oct 2018

WSJ: A Trio of Wealthy Russians Made an Enemy of Putin. Now They’re All Dead. http://on.wsj.com/2ydSERA
// Nikolai Glushkov, a close associate of the late oligarch Boris Berezovsky, was preparing to testify that Aeroflot was a corrupt instrument of Russian intelligence

WaPo: Trump talked with Jeff Sessions’s own chief of staff about replacing him as attorney general http://wapo.st/2IPW9BF Matthew Whitaker

Bloomberg: Ukraine Is Dangerously Close to a Religious War http://bloom.bg/2IP1Kbg
// To avoid bloodshed, all sides will have to act wisely.

WSJ: Late GOP Activist Peter W. Smith Met With Former Trump Adviser Michael Flynn in 2015, Sources Say http://on.wsj.com/2QJggUY (earned a 💥 from @benjaminwittes)
// New email and interviews indicate the Republican operative who sought to obtain Hillary Clinton’s emails had established a relationship with Mr. Flynn http://on.wsj.com/

Lawfare, Andrew Kent: Faithful Execution of the Office and Laws: New Research on the Original Meaning of Article II http://bit.ly/2yvy5PS

Newsweek: Trump-Russia Dossier Author Breaks Silence, Slams President’s ‘Distorted’ and ‘One-Sided’ Administration http://bit.ly/2E9RdbZ

SkyNews [UK]: Ex-MI6 spy takes veiled swipe at Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2yeGHuL

Sky News has seen the text of an email written by Mr Steele to the editor of Vanity Fair after he was chosen to feature on its list of the 100 most influential people in the media, politics, entertainment and finance.

The 54-year-old wrote: “In these strange and troubling times, it is hard to speak unpalatable truths to power, but I believe we all still have a duty to do so.

“I salute those on your list, and otherwise, who have had the courage to speak out over the last year, often at great personal cost.

“At a time when governance is so distorted and one-sided, as I believe it currently is in the United States, the media has a key role to play in holding it accountable.”

Mr Steele enters the at-times lighthearted list at number 38. He is the only named British national on the American-dominated countdown.

Topping the chart is Robert Mueller, a former FBI director who is leading a special inquiry into Russia.

Former first lady Michelle Obama is at number six, while singer Beyonce is at number eight.

Mr Trump did not make the list.

⭕ 9 Oct 2018

WaPo, Robert Kagan: Welcome to the jungle http://wapo.st/2yaQ1jq “welcome to the breakdown of the liberal world order the United States once upheld. You’re seeing just the beginning.”

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The past 48 hours in Mueller investigation news, explained http://bit.ly/2QHqPaP
// We’ve gotten news on Alfa Bank, Psy-Group, and Peter W. Smith — three long-simmering subplots of the Russia investigation.

CNBC: Trump campaign aide Rick Gates reportedly asked Israeli intel firm in 2016 to draft plans for social media influence campaign http://cnb.cx/2Pp07Um
One proposal from Psy-Group included using fake profiles to attack Senator Ted Cruz, a main opponent of Trump’s during the Republican primary, and influence 5,000 delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention.
Robert Mueller and his team of investigators have obtained these proposals and have questioned Psy-Group employees, according to The New York Times.
There is no evidence that the Trump campaign accepted and acted on the proposals, nor is there evidence that this is connected to Russia’s interference.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: While Mueller Stays Quiet, Suspicious Trump–Russia Clues Keep Popping Up http://nym.ag/2REK2LY

TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Suspended Animation in the Age of Trump http://bit.ly/2IJuUZo
// Before Donald Trump was elected, I reported on strange activity linking a Trump-campaign computer server to Moscow. A new report shows how much has changed since 2016—and how many questions still remain.

NYT: The Mueller Investigation Is Bigger Than Rod Rosenstein http://nyti.ms/2pKIWl6
// Even if he got fired, a replacement dead set on shutting down the investigation would find it nearly impossible to pull off.

.@jzikah sums up Active Measures https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1049682969932259329/photo/1
// drawing

⭕ 8 Oct 2018

NYT, David Farendhold: After selling off his father’s properties, Trump embraced unorthodox strategies to expand his empire http://nyti.ms/2PmZeeT

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: While Mueller Stays Quiet, Suspicious Trump–Russia Clues Keep Popping Up http://nym.ag/2REK2LY

TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Suspended Animation in the Age of Trump http://bit.ly/2IJuUZo
// Before Donald Trump was elected, I reported on strange activity linking a Trump-campaign computer server to Moscow. A new report shows how much has changed since 2016—and how many questions still remain.

📊 CNN Poll: Kavanaugh nomination has lowest public support since Bork http://cnn.it/2pH9Sly //➔ he’s also the only judge listed with a Net Unforvable rating
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1049598481936146433/photo/1

DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen and Spencer Ackerman: Researchers: No Evidence That Russia Is Messing With Campaign 2018—Yet http://thebea.st/2OJS5se
// By the first week of October 2016, Russia’s pawprints were all over the presidential race. Not this year, researchers say.

Politico, Darren Samuelson: Trump team’s contact with Mueller targets could taint findings http://politi.co/2C4HS2F
// Legal experts say the president’s lawyers may be pushing ethical boundaries by communicating with people involved in the Mueller probe.

🐣 RT @MaxBoot The GOP must suffer devastating defeats starting in Nov. It must pay a heavy price for its embrace of white nationalism & know-nothingism. Only if GOP is burned to the ground will there be a chance to build a reasonable center-right party out of ashes. Me:
⋙ WaPo: The dark side of American conservatism has taken over http://wapo.st/2zYTaUC
● Text Block: /photo/1 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1049421199439212550

Ryan’s retirement signals the final repudiation of an optimistic, inclusive brand of Reaganesque conservatism focused on enhancing economic opportunity at home and promoting democracy and free trade abroad. The Republican Party will now be defined by Trump’s dark, divisive vision, with his depiction of Democrats as America-hating, criminal-coddling traitors, his vilification of the press as the “enemy of the people,” and his ugly invective against Mexicans and Muslims. The extremism that many Republicans of goodwill had been trying to push to the fringe of their party is now its governing ideology.

That’s why I can no longer be a Republican, and in fact wish ill fortune on my former party. I am now convinced that the Republican Party must suffer repeated and devastating defeats beginning in November. It must pay a heavy price for its embrace of white nationalism and know-nothingism. Only if the GOP as it is currently constituted is burned to the ground will there be any chance to build a reasonable center-right party out of the ashes. But that will require undoing the work of decades, not just of the past two years.

Metro [UK]: Two bullets ‘found in body of pilot’ flying Putin prosecutor linked to Trump http://bit.ly/2zYxoAk
// Two bullets have been found in the body of a helicopter pilot who was carrying one of Vladimir Putin’s top prosecutors, it has been alleged.

NewYorker, Dexter Filkins: Was There a Connection Between a Russian Bank and the Trump Campaign? http://bit.ly/2E7Hm6F
// 10/15/2018 Issue, A team of computer scientists sifted through records of unusual Web traffic in search of answers.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYer Russian Bank Trump 10-15-2018

⭕ 7 Oct 2018

Politico.eu, Michał Broniatowski: Euro Council President Donald Tusk makes scathing attack on Russian influence http://politi.co/2zW87qu
// Council president says Russia will do ‘whatever it can’ to undermine European unity.

WSJ: GOP Operative Peter W Smith Secretly Raised at Least $100,000 in Search for Clinton Emails http://on.wsj.com/2E38BiP
// Opposition researcher’s efforts are of intense interest to investigators probing Russian election interference

⭕ 6 Oct 2018

WaPo, Deanna Paul: With Kavanaugh confirmed, impeachment could follow. Here’s how. http://wapo.st/2E1nBhe

Axios, Lauren Meier: U.S. trails behind Russia, China in organizing militarily in space http://bit.ly/2y4XYXs

Salon, Andrew O’Hehir: Interview: Pulitzer-winning reporter Greg Miller on Trump and Russia: We’ve all seen the smoking gun http://bit.ly/2QzuSGh on Greg Miller’s new book “The Apprentice”
// Washington Post reporter on Trump’s “subservience” to Vladimir Putin and the “subversion of American democracy”

WIRED, Brian Barrett: Don’t Buy the Trump Administration’s China Misdirection http://bit.ly/2zUCAoR

⭕ 5 Oct 2018

FresnoBee, Eric SwalWell: Nunes buried evidence on Russian meddling to protect Trump. I know because I’m on the committee http://bit.ly/2QAdNMt

ABCNews: Is Russia playing a double game in Mueller court battle? http://abcn.ws/2IGRfXy

DefenseNews, Willis Krumholz: The president must say no to ‘Fort Trump’ in Poland http://bit.ly/2pFYcQ5

FrezboBee, Eric Swalwell: Nunes buried evidence on Russian meddling to protect Trump. I know because I’m on the committee http://bit.ly/2QD9cJB

WaPo: Mike Pence and the Trump administration’s complicity in downplaying Russian election interference http://wapo.st/2QyX24h

CNBC: Justice Department charges 7 Russian hackers with targeting doping agencies, nuclear energy company http://cnb.cx/2BZAwgO
The Justice Department on Thursday said it has charged seven Russian intelligence officials with hacking doping agencies and other organizations.
The charges did not appear to be directly related to special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation of Russia’s interference and potential coordination with the Trump campaign during the 2016 presidential election.
Mueller’s probe has lodged charges against dozens of Russian nationals and Russian companies for violating U.S. laws in their alleged efforts to meddle in the election that put Trump in the White House.

⭕ 4 Oct 2018

🐣 RT @BillBrowder There are now two dead Russians who blew the whistle on Russian money laundering that was ultimately connected to Danske Bank: Sergei Magnitsky and Alexander Perepilichnyy. This money laundering was NOT a victimless crime.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillBrowder The Danske Bank money laundering scandal deepens. New information shows that they conducted ‘mirror trades’ to launder money for clients of a Russian company owned by Alexander Perepilichnyy, who died suddenly in Surrey in 2012
⋙⋙ FinancialTimes: Danske Bank memo shows how Russians moved money http://on.ft.com/2CsuPZM
// ‘Highly profitable’ mirror trades were used by clients to get money out of country
↥ ↧
DailyBeast, Nico Hines: Russian Official Linked to Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Trump Tower Lawyer, Is Dead http://thebea.st/2y1WPzD
// Russia’s Deputy Attorney General Saak Karapetyan was exposed this year for running a foreign recruitment operation with Natalia Veselnitskaya.

NYRB, Christopher R. Browning: The Suffocation of Democracy http://bit.ly/2O8INWU
// 10/25/2018 issue
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYRB Suffoc Democracy 10-25-2018

🐣 RT @anneapplebaum the @nytimes expose of the Trump family’s tax fraud leads me back to the question: Why weren’t they caught? Because, as I wrote before, rule of law has failed in America already. Trump’s presidency is not the cause, it is the result.
⋙ WaPo, Anne Appelnaum (Aug): Are you still sure there’s no need to worry? http://wapo.st/2O6QNIc
// 8/10/2010

Supposedly, “rule of law” is an important principle to any Western society, perhaps the most important principle. Belief in the judicial system is what makes contracts work and commerce possible; even-handed enforcement of the law is what separates rule-based democracy from whimsical autocracy. Listen closely as Manafort’s trial unfolds: Long before Trump got to Washington, and long before Manafort helped him get there, judicial and law enforcement institutions failed to stop them. Are you still sure that there is no need to worry?

🐣💙 RT @BillBrowder BREAKING: Saak Karapetyan, Deputy General Prosecutor of Russia, just died in a helicopter crash in Kostroma, Russia. He was official who signed documents prepared by Natalia Veselnitskaya sent to US DOJ to try exonerate Prevezon in US money laundering case

⭕ 3 Oct 2018

🔄💙💙 NYT: The Senate Should Not Confirm Kavanaugh ~ Signed, 1,000✛ Law Professors (and Counting) http://nyti.ms/2xZX26r //➔ up from 650✛ Wednesday afternoon @SenatorCollins @JeffFlake @lisamurkowski @SenSasse Why? #JudicialTemperament ¤ #Partisanship ¤ #Perjury ¤ #MeToo

CenterAmerProgress (CAP), James Lamond: The Origins of Russia’s Broad Political Assault on the United States http://ampr.gs/2O4TslF

CNBC: Putin says Trump should blame himself for high oil prices http://cnb.cx/2Nj50MZ

PBS: Putin says election meddling ‘nonsense’ risks poisoning U.S.-Russia relations http://to.pbs.org/2xYsmm9

BuzzFeedNews: This Ohio Woman’s Run-In With The FBI Gives Us A Window Into Robert Mueller’s Trump–Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2DUUYSH
// In 2016, Cassandra Ford renamed a Twitter account for the persona leaking hacked Democratic emails. That earned the FBI’s interest and a subpoena from special counsel Robert Mueller.

Reuters: Global energy bosses send Trump a message: world needs Russian gas http://reut.rs/2QnsJgS

Haaretz: Russia Blasts ‘Dangerous’ U.S. Threat on Missiles as Trump NATO Envoy Walks Back Comments http://bit.ly/2QrIF1K
// The U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison clarified in a tweet that she was not talking about a preemptive strike against Russia

WaPo: Trump allies, offering no specifics, say former FBI official gives ‘explosive’ testimony in Russia probe http://wapo.st/2xWHTmw

TheMoscowProject: The Trump Corruption Story Is Also a Russia Story http://bit.ly/2ybZupU

⭕ 2 Oct 2018

DworkinReport: We just released a new report revealing Lindsey Graham’s Russia-linked donations http://bit.ly/2NtxGCT
// Len Blavatnik, Born Russia, US citizen, linked to Vekselberg

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Erik Prince’s Russian Connection Trawled Trumpland for ‘Boss’ Putin http://thebea.st/2yaC2Jy
// In the days after the 2016 election, a well-connected Moscow executive started pitching Trump associates on a bold plan for renewed U.S.-Russian cooperation. http://thebea.st/

WaPo, Philip Bump: The cover-up uncovered: How Team Trump tried to bury or confuse the Stormy Daniels story http://wapo.st/2OtYAyX with timeline

WaPo, Philip Rucker and Robert Costa: ‘The trauma for a man’: Male fury and fear rises in GOP in defense of Kavanaugh http://wapo.st/2OvQSo4 “This eruption of male resentment now seems likely to play a defining role in the midterm elections just five weeks away, contrasting with a burst of enthusiasm among women”

🐣 RT @marceldirsus This is noteworthy: “Russia must halt its covert development of a banned cruise missile system or the United States will seek to destroy it before it becomes operational, Washington’s envoy to NATO said on Tuesday.”
⋙ Reuters: U.S. would destroy banned Russian warheads if necessary: NATO envoy http://reut.rs/2DNUFJt

⭕ 1 Oct 2018

Politico: Roger Stone associate Randy Credico to plead 5th before Senate panel http://politi.co/2NgekkL Stone, a longtime Trump adviser, has said Credico was his intermediary to Assange and WikiLeaks.

🐣 RT @NorahODonnell What is Mueller zeroing in on? -@NorahODonnell ¤ “The many indictments that we’ve seen so far give us a lot of clues. Obviously he’s very very focused on the obstruction front. And his interest in these figures around Trump..are ways to get at that question” -@gregpmiller
💽 /https://twitter.com/NorahODonnell/status/1046736708782510080photo/1

⭕ 30 Sep 2018

NBC, Glenn Kirschner: As Kavanaugh accusations dominate the news cycle, Mueller’s investigation quietly builds momentum http://nbcnews.to/2RdVn5a
// Manafort’s cooperation should be an invaluable tool for Mueller as he continues to probe possible Russian interference — and American collusion.

TheHill: The Mueller investigation: Where it stands at the midterms http://bit.ly/2OtmhaE

⭕ 29 Sep 2018

TheGuardian, David Smith: Interview: Rob Goldstone on Trump: ‘I think he likes Russia because Russia liked him’ http://bit.ly/2OgtY47
// The pop publicist was catapulted into the spotlight by his email setting up the infamous Trump Tower meeting: ‘It’s a lot for a boy from Manchester’

⭕ 28 Sep 2018

WashingtonExaminer: House Intel votes to release Russia inquiry transcripts for Lynch, Yates, Cohen, Trump Jr., and others http://washex.am/2R9YFXi

Politico: Mueller defends authority, hearkens back to Garfield administration http://politi.co/2DDZLHX

Reuters: Lavrov notes Trump blamed China, not Russia, for U.S. election meddling http://reut.rs/2QfzFMQ

TheGuardian: Russian-US tycoon boasted of ‘active’ involvement in Trump election campaign http://bit.ly/2NPwhf7
// Exclusive: Simon Kukes was in contact with senior Kremlin official in 2016 while donating to Trump-supporting committee

🐣 RT @MaxBergman Want to know where Mueller is going? Read this story. Campaigns need money and this w/d be one way to get money to the Trump campaign… “To me this reads like an email exchange between a source and a handler, or a source and headquarters,” said Lindsay Moran, a fmr CIA officer.
⋙ NBC, Richard Engel et al: Big donor to Trump campaign made overture to top Russian official, boasting of connections http://nbcnews.to/2zC6NZL
// The businessman, who donated $273,000 in 2016, wanted a face-to-face meeting with a Russian official.

⭕ 27 Sep 2018

TheGuardian, Michael Lewis: ‘This guy doesn’t know anything’: the inside story of Trump’s shambolic transition team http://bit.ly/2xU6xE6 by the author of Moneyball and The Big Short
// Michael Lewis, author of Moneyball and The Big Short, reveals how Trump’s bungled presidential transition set the template for his time in the White House

Bloomberg: Russia Sanctions Unlikely to Pass Congress Before November http://bloom.bg/2QeryjB
● House is likely to go on recess through the mid-term elections
● Lawmakers urge Trump to hold Russia accountable for meddling

QuadCityTimes, David Ignatius: ‘Russia collusion’ claim doesn’t add up http://bit.ly/2DA2qmb

NYMag, Eric Levitz: White House Eyes Wingnut Critic of Russia Probe As Rosenstein’s Replacement http://nym.ag/2Qe1wNo

LATimes, Harry Litman: With or without Rod Rosenstein, the Russia probe will survive http://lat.ms/2ObwLeX

SLPostDispatch/WaPo, Kai Bird: Apprentice’ helps make Russian inquiry (somewhat) coherent http://bit.ly/2zzVQbh

MSN: Trump accusing China (not Russia) of election meddling http://bit.ly/2OWbkeG if GOP gets “a shellacking” in midterms, he can blame the Chinese

USAToday, Gabriel Schoenfeld: If Donald Trump fires Rod Rosenstein, how bad would that be for American democracy? http://usat.ly/2zAf5RW

CNN: US runs into opposition from Russia, China on North Korea sanctions http://cnn.it/2OoURmB

Politico: Mueller cooperator fears retribution from Russia http://politi.co/2In78SY Richard Pinedo

Politico: House Intel Committee tees up release of Russia probe transcripts http://politi.co/2Il0XyN

⭕ 26 Sep 2018

USAToday, Chris Truax: Protect Mueller and Rosenstein. It’s a ‘Profiles in Courage’ moment in American history. http://usat.ly/2IquoQ0

AP: China urges US to stop slander after Trump’s meddling claim http://bit.ly/2xH50kY

CNN: The Trump lawyers you don’t see are the ones driving dealings with Robert Mueller http://cnn.it/2NLTAXb

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff, Erin Banco: Revealed: What Erik Prince and Moscow’s Money Man Discussed in That Infamous Seychelles Meeting http://thebea.st/2Odv3K0
// Mueller’s team and Congressional investigators have looked into a meeting in the Seychelles between allies of Trump and Putin. Now we have the Russian read-out of what was said.

⭕ 25 Sep 2018

Politico (9/25): Ken Starr: Trump’s Defense Team Should Be ‘Very Concerned’ http://politi.co/2NUKWFF
// The former Whitewater prosecutor says that he understands Trump’s reluctance to cooperate with Mueller, but believes that the president has an obligation to do so.

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s notable ‘obstruction’ concession http://wapo.st/2N8Qnf1

“There was no collusion, there was no obstruction,” he said. “I mean, unless you call ‘obstruction’ the fact that I fight back. I do fight back. I really fight back. I mean, if you call that obstruction, that’s fine. But there’s no obstruction, there’s no collusion.”

WaPo, David Ignatius: A GOP spin on the Russia probe reads like a noir thriller — but doesn’t add up http://wapo.st/2IfWFIR

NYRB, Murray Waas: Mike Pence, Star Witness http://bit.ly/2NFiWGa

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: A Supreme Court Case Could Liberate Trump to Pardon His Associates http://bit.ly/2OQE74x
// Gamble v. United States isn’t related to the Russia investigation. But the outcome—which one senior Republican senator has tried to influence—could still have consequences for the probe.  

WaPo: ‘People actually laughed at a president’: At U.N. speech, Trump suffers the fate he always feared http://wapo.st/2DuTTAJ

Axios: EU, Russia and China reach payments deal to counter Trump’s Iran move http://bit.ly/2OQCmnX establishes a special payments system to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran

The U.K., Germany, France, Russia and China have agreed to establish a special payments system to circumvent U.S. sanctions on Iran stemming from President Trump’s unilateral withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, the Financial Times reports.

The big picture: The payments channel would be an alternative to SWIFT, the backbone of the global financial system that allows Iran to get paid for oil, pay for its imports and finance its activities abroad. The five countries involved in the agreement remain committed to doing business with Iran, which the International Atomic Energy Agency says is still complying with the terms of the nuclear deal. President Trump, meanwhile, has threatened that anyone doing business with Iran will not be able to do business with the U.S.

WaPo: Trump accused Germany of becoming ‘totally dependent’ on Russian energy at the U.N. The Germans just smirked. http://wapo.st/2NHIVfW

Yahoo: Fiona Hill, Trump’s top expert on Russia, is quietly shaping a tougher U.S. policy http://yhoo.it/2xBmGy2

⭕ 24 Sep 2018

NewYorker, Jane Mayer: How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump http://bit.ly/2HQWpkV
// 9/24/2018; Book by Kathleen Jamieson Hall; A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Gabe Sherman reports that the Rosenstein leak appears to have been a “smoke bomb” to knock Kavanaugh out of the news. “The strategy was to try and do something really big,” said a source familiar with Trump’s thinking.
⋙ VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “The Strategy Was to Try and Do Something Really Big”: Trump Wanted to Nuke Rosenstein to Save Kavanaugh’s Bacon http://bit.ly/2MX4zYs
// But Trump allies are privately imploring him to cut Kavanaugh loose to save Republicans’ electoral chances in the midterms.

🐣 RT @craigunger If Solicitor Gen. #NoelFrancisco replaces #Rosenstein, you think he has no conflicts? Think again. #Francisco’s firm is #JonesDay, and, as per #HouseofTrump, House of Putin, JonesDay “represents at least ten major corporations and orgs close to #Putin’s heart.”
https://twitter.com/craigunger/status/1044263114823356416/photo/1

CNBC, Jacob Pramuk: Former FBI Deputy Director McCabe worries Rosenstein exit would put Russia probe ‘at risk’ http://cnb.cx/2OVy7qY
● Former FBI No. 2 Andrew McCabe says Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein’s potential departure could jeopardize the Russia investigation.
● McCabe denies providing the information that fueled an explosive New York Times report about Rosenstein last week.
● Rosenstein oversees special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Politico, Kyle Cheney: Mueller pushed to discuss Trump dossier author http://politi.co/2pzF32j
// Prosecutors were responding to an indicted Russian company’s complaint that the special counsel ‘selectively’ targeted the firm while giving Steele a pass.

✅ FactCheck.org: Kavanaugh File: Executive Privilege http://bit.ly/2NqCQDC a review of his record

🐣 RT @BillKristol In light of the real threat to Rob Rosenstein and therefore to Robert Mueller, Republicans for the Rule of Law has a new ad up. We urge the Senate (that’s you, @SenateMajLdr) to pass the Special Counsel Independence and Integrity Act (S. 2644), voted out of committee 14-7, ASAP.
💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1044351473092624385/photo/1

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Sources tell Vanity Fair that Trump blamed Mitch McConnell and Chuck Grassley for agreeing to delay Dr. Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony until Thursday. “He thinks they look weak,” a Republican briefed on Trump’s thinking said.
VanityFair: “The Strategy Was to Try and Do Something Really Big”: Trump Wanted to Nuke Rosenstein to Save Kavanaugh’s Bacon http://bit.ly/2QQe8eO
// But Trump allies are privately imploring him to cut Kavanaugh loose to save Republicans’ electoral chances in the midterms.

🐣 RT @MSchwarz3 Statement from Andrew McCabe re: Rosenstein rumors:
https://twitter.com/MSchwartz3/status/1044249097824169984/photo/1

🐣 RT @davidfrum Nothing is true and everything is possible, as they say of Putin’s Russia

🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood WH @PressSec Sanders: “At request of Rod Rosenstein, he and President Trump had an extended conversation to discuss recent news stories. Because President is at UN General Assembly and has full schedule w/world leaders, they’ll meet Thursday when President returns to Washington”

DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay and Asawin Suebsaeng: Trump Lawyers Demand Mueller Probe ‘Time Out’ if Rosenstein is Ousted http://thebea.st/2Iavxer 🐣 RT @NateSilver538 p.s. the correct esoteric physics metaphor to use with Rosenstein is the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, not Schrödinger’s cat, insofar as the the reporting of the story has possibly affected the outcome.

“If in fact Rod Rosenstein does end up resigning today,” Trump attorney Jay Sekulow said on his radio program on Monday, “I think it clearly becomes necessary and appropriate…that there be a step back taken here, and a review, a review that has to be thorough and complete…and basically a time out on this inquiry.”

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand One big q if Rosenstein does leave is whether his firing/forced resignation would constitute obstruction. Trump has wanted to shut down the Mueller probe, but the Times story gave him a cover for firing Rosenstein that, on its face, is unrelated to Russia.
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: What Rosenstein’s Exit Would Mean for Mueller’s Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2xzAXeU
// The deputy attorney general is reportedly on his way out at the Justice Department, though the exact circumstances are unclear.

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind If the NYT had retracted their story over the weekend, after reporting based on a source INSIDE the room by WAPO and NBC News indicated Rosenstein was being sarcastic, Trump wouldn’t have a pretext to fire Rosenstein. Instead, NYT doubled-down.
🐾
🐣 RT @tedlieu If Rosenstein departs, Noel Francisco should not oversee the Special Counsel investigation. His previous firm Jones Day represents the @realDonaldTrump campaign in the Special Counsel investigation. This is a huge conflict of interest.
⋙ 🐣 RT @WalterShaub Michael, you quote a conservative watchdog group as stating that Noel Francisco would take over the investigation. However, Francisco could not do that without a waiver. He has a two-year recusal obligation from any particular matter in which Jones Day is representing a party.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @shearm BREAKING — Rod Rosenstein expected to leave his job as second in command at the Justice Department – and person in charge of Russia probe — after the NY Times revealed his discussions about taping the president and the use of 25th amendment to oust him.
⋙⋙⋙ NYT: Rod Rosenstein, Deputy Attorney General, Is Considering Resigning http://nyti.ms/2I9IdSC

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Under no circumstances should Rod Rosenstein resign. This would place the Mueller investigation in even greater jeopardy. Rosenstein should continue to do his job, protect the independence of the DOJ, and if the President intends to obstruct justice, force Trump to fire him.

🐣 RT @SethAbramson I first tweeted on Trump’s eventual firing of Rosenstein in June ’17. My position since then: Rosenstein *will* be fired, it’s only a matter of when. Now it *may* be happening, and just before the election—a surprise. It means Trump thinks the Russia probe is at DEFCON 2 for him.

🚫🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind No way to sugarcoat the serious danger we and our democracy are in at this moment. The only foreseeable way to check a train full steam ahead to authoritarian rule is by installing a check on Trump in the midterms. He will next take down the Mueller probe – the parts he can.
// incendiary, poss premature

🐣 RT @RonaldKlain I’m trying to decide if the Trump WH is bungling the handling of the Kavanaugh nomination to distract us from the Rosenstein firing, or if it is firing Rod to distract from the disaster of the Kavanaugh nomination.
// me, too

🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc As of today we can no longer rely on the Mueller investigation as the full and final word on the Russia Scandal. It is more important than ever that every American know what Trump and Putin did. All hands on deck. There is no time to wait. #ActiveMeasures

🐣 RT @RVAWonk Just a thought… but I wouldn’t rule out the possibility that the talk about Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein offering his resignation was a well placed WH leak designed to lay the groundwork for Trump firing him without it looking like obstruction.

💥 JustSecurity: BREAKING: “Rod Rosenstein has verbally resigned to Chief of Staff John Kelly in anticipation of being fired by President Trump, according to a source with direct knowledge.” via @axios

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom Attempted Collusion = Collusion, Failed Collusion = Collusion
⋙ 🐣 RT @juliaioffe “[Goldstone] acknowledged that the candidate’s son, Donald Trump Jr., came into the room anticipating — and very happy to accept — “opposition research” he believed was coming from the Russian government.”
⋙⋙ NBC: Rob Goldstone wishes he’d never set up that Trump Tower meeting with the Russians http://nbcnews.to/2xMEEgA
// Goldstone, who arranged the Trump Tower meeting at the request of a pop star, says Mueller’s team wanted to know about links between Trump and Russia.

JustSecurity, Norman Eisen and Ryan Goodman: We Have Nothing to Fear But FEAR Itself http://bit.ly/2Dox4i8
// Woodard’s book should not be relied on by those seeking to understand Mueller’s work

🐣 RT @NewYorker 80,000 votes in 3 states put Trump in the White House. Now a meticulous analysis of online activity during the campaign makes a powerful case that cyberattacks by Russian hackers and trolls were decisive: http://nyer.cm/KjFUQYp 

NewYorker, Jane Mayer: How Russia Helped Swing the Election for Trump http://nyer.cm/KjFUQYp 
// 10/1/2018 issue, A meticulous analysis of online activity during the 2016 campaign makes a powerful case that targeted cyberattacks by hackers and trolls were decisive.

TheHill: House panel signals Russia probe document dump before midterms http://bit.ly/2OMlQ8u

USAToday, Norman Eisen and Asha Rangappa: Robert Mueller is playing a long game on the Russia investigation, and it’s paying off http://usat.ly/2pzOxu5
// Mueller’s careful strategy is increasing the likelihood his report will see the light, and Rod Rosenstein and Jeff Sessions will keep their jobs.

⭕ 23 Sep 2018

ABCNews: Roger Stone sought contact with WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, email suggests http://abcn.ws/2ONOEgT

🐣 RT @kelly2277 💥BOOM💥 Artem Klyushin is also involved w the IRA Russian bots ‼️
⋙ 🐣 RT @kelly2277 Artem Klyushin is the key to the bot nets and their use is a[]trump sub domains 🔥 @mikefarb1
https://twitter.com/kelly2277/status/951346596087812097/photo/1

🐣 Trump may be a bull in a china shop, but Bannon wants to blow the place up.

⭕ 22 Sep 2018

Bloomberg: Deripaska’s Team Sees Major Progress in Talks to Lift Sanctions http://bloom.bg/2znEmif //➔ Say what?
● A new plan is under discussion with Treasury, people say
● But it’s still unclear if a formal agreement will be reached

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Rod Rosenstein Talk of Taping Trump Was Considered Serious By Lisa Page http://thebea.st/2O21LOo
// Two sources told The Daily Beast that FBI lawyer Lisa Page was present for Rod Rosenstein’s comments on secret recordings and did not believe he was joking or being sarcastic.

WaPo: Trump holds his fire as advisers urge him not to dismiss Rosenstein http://wapo.st/2OJIOwY “According to aides, Trump is likely to fire Sessions after the election anyway and removing Rosenstein now would only serve to hurt Republicans facing voters in a few weeks”

TheAtlantic, Dick Polman: Donald Trump Might Be the ‘Client From Hell’ http://bit.ly/2IckK3v “You’re dealing with someone who has no regard for the truth. He has never built a trustworthy relationship with a lawyer. You just don’t get a lot of the essential information.”
// The president doesn’t seem to understand what lawyers do—including the ones trying to defend the presidency.

TheGuardian: ‘Lingering stench’: Trump promises more firings at Justice and FBI http://bit.ly/2NzxTcI

💙💙 WaPo: How a British music publicist ended up in the middle of the Russia storm http://wapo.st/2MTWVOv (Rob Goldstone)

Politico: Trumpworld divided on Rosenstein — not whether to fire him, but when http://politi.co/2QSxFeQ
// The disagreement between his advisers in the West Wing and those on Fox News aren’t about whether he should, but about timing and stated justification.

YahooNews, Michael Isakoff: Publicist Rob Goldstone wonders if he was ‘patsy’ in Trump Tower meeting http://yhoo.it/2xLTUtU

WaPo: Former top White House official revises statement to special counsel about Flynn’s calls with Russian ambassador http://wapo.st/2zn3i9B K.T. McFarland

⭕ 21 Sep 2018

Vox, Alex Ward: Rosenstein is the only person between Trump and Mueller. He may soon be gone. http://bit.ly/2zp71DD
// Rosenstein’s ouster may now be imminent. That’s really bad news for Mueller’s Trump-Russia probe.

🐣 RT @jdawsey1 NEW tonight: White House pushed DOJ to issue a more forceful statement tonight. Trump has begun polling advisers if he should fire Rosenstein and saying he doesn’t trust him. W/@DevlinBarrett & @mattzap:
⋙ WaPo: McCabe memos say Rosenstein considered secretly recording Trump http://wapo.st/2MRaSg4

🐣 RT @EricBoehlert GOP’s plan for next week: fire Rosenstein to try to stop Mueller, while ramming thru an accused sexual attacker to Supreme Court. ¤ i’ve said this over and over folks, there’s nothing written anywhere that guarantees the U.S. gets a happy ending.

🐣 RT @juliehdavis Trump in apparent reference to Rosenstein story today: Just look at what is now being exposed in the Dept of Justice and the FBI. …You see what happened at the FBI — they’re all gone — but there’s a lingering stench, and we’re going to get rid of that too.”

🐣 RT @Rep!attGoetz Surprisingly measured statement by @RepMattGaetz
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1043284189037125632/photo/1
↥ ↧ reformatted
🐣 RT @jonathanswan A strikingly reserved statement on Rosenstein by @RepMattGaetz, who is one of Trump’s favorite members of Congress. A signal worth paying attention to.
https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1043279458202005504/photo/1

🐣 RT @JackieSchechner I’m not conspiratorial, but it’s awfully suspicious Rosenstein hit piece emerges on same day Trump’s forced to backtrack on FISA declassification order. Almost like when plan A to discredit DOJ failed, Trump allies moved to plan B, feeding convenient narrative to NYT.

🐣 RT @martylederman 1. A few thoughts on the Rosenstein story:
First, the Times headline and lede are surprisingly, and regrettably, far too credulous and unequivocal, asserting that RR in fact made serious suggestions about wearing a wire and moving toward use of the 25th. @adamgoldmanNYT @nytmike
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/marty_lederman/status/1043256080971776001
… 4. Whether he meant the comments seriously or was speaking facetiously doesn’t really matter now, however, because the leak has already served both of its evident purposes: (i) to further discredit anything Mueller/DOJ/FBI does in the eyes of the Trump base; and …
… 5. … to give Trump a facially plausible pretext to remove RR. And what happens if Trump does fire RR? Unless & until the Senate confirms a new DAG, *most* of RR’s duties/functions would be performed by PADAG Ed O’Callaghan. But *not* oversight of the Russia/SDNY investigations.

🐣 RT @ShimonPro Two different sources close to the WH are indicating the Rosenstein allegations could serve as a pretext to put the president back in a mood to fire the Deputy Attorney General. @Acosta
⋙ 🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey Firing Rosenstein is as good as firing Sessions or Mueller for the president’s purposes. Even if there would be a legitimate reason to fire him, it woul

🐣 RT @GlastnostGone Nothing to see here. Just 65 Russian tanks, 102 armoured vehicles, 41 pieces of artillery & 4 anti-aircraft systems seen by #OSCE in #Ukraine https://www.osce.org/special-monitoring-mission-to-ukraine/397055 …. All locations listed in my vid showing 1,000 pieces of Russian Hardware https://youtu.be/xuozzUWa5Gc  #Donbas #Donbass
https://twitter.com/GlasnostGone/status/1043246962999525378/photo/1

🐣 RT @HunterDK So the ppl with direct knowledge discount the story completely, the ppl with indirect knowledge have a different interpretation, and NYT goes with the second rather than the first. ¤ Bold and curious choice there.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KyleCheney Person in the room when Rosenstein discussed wearing a wire said: “I remember this meeting and remember the wire comment. The statement was sarcastic and was never discussed with any intention of recording a conversation with the president.”
… UPDATE: DOJ source says there are NO plans for Rosenstein to change anything about his supervision of the Mueller probe based on the NYT revelations.

🐣 RT @ezlusztig The stupidest and also most appropriate thing would be for a constitutional crisis to be precipitated by right-wing authoritarians running with an anonymously sourced NYT hit piece so just assume that’s what will happen.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 The same day Trump Jr. emailed “if it’s what you say I love it,” $3,300,000 began moving between two of the men who orchestrated the Trump Tower meeting: Aras Agalarov and Ike Kaveladze. Mueller is examining the transaction, BuzzFeed reports.
BuzzFeedNews: The Planners Of The Trump Tower Meeting Moved Millions, And Mueller Is Now Investigating http://bit.ly/2OIJ7bk
// Documents show suspicious transfers began six days before the controversial meeting.

NYT: In Reversal, Trump No Longer Demands Declassification of Russia Documents http://nyti.ms/2xGeZ9h

💙💙 NYT: Rosenstein Suggested Secretly Recording Trump and Discussed 25th Amendment http://nyti.ms/2zlKuaE

WaPo: Trump walks back his plan to declassify Russia probe documents http://wapo.st/2QSrtUb

🐣 RT @AFP #UPDATE Moscow and Beijing lash out Friday at Washington’s new anti-Russian sanctions that also target China for the first time, Beijing warning the US could ‘bear the consequences’
⋙ YahooNews: China, Russia warn US of consequences over sanctions http://yh2xHYUzK

‼️ 🐣 RT @TodayShow Rob Goldstone, the man behind the 2016 Trump Tower meeting, speaks out exclusively Monday on TODAY:
“I don’t know who wanted this meeting.” -Goldstone
“But it was a dirty offer.” – @CynthiaMcFadden
“Yes.” -Goldstone

TheWeek, William Falk: Closer to the truth http://bit.ly/2O5gjfU This is the editor’s letter in the current issue of The Week magazine.

🐣 .@ScottShaneNYT @MarkMazzettiNYT I really liked your article in the @NYTimes: The Plot to Subvert an Election ~ Unraveling the Russia Story http://nyti.ms/2NpLymt ⋙ The only factual issue I had was your referring to @ggreenwald as a “leftist.” He is truly in a class by himself.
Ygg
⭕ 20 Sep 2018

🐣 RT @20Committee OK, except Woodward is exculpatory on Trump’s Kremlin collusion only in a highly narrow and technical way, which makes perfect sense if you know Bob’s longstanding MO, which he’s been chugging at in DC for 45 years and counting. ¤ I shall elaborate….
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/20committee/status/1041427138208051201

ABCNews: Michael Cohen spoke to Mueller team for hours; asked about Russia, possible collusion, pardon: Sources http://abcn.ws/2xsSTrw

ABCNews/AP, Chad Day: AP Explains: Mueller’s legal actions not overlooked by Trump http://abcn.ws/2NtCRHG

NYDailyNews Editorial: Rage against the machine: Trump’s latest offensive in his war on the Russia investigation http://nydn.us/2QK3J4p

WashingtonMonthly, Nancy LeTourneau: Trump Should Be More Worried About the Brennan Dossier http://bit.ly/2popwlx

ThinkProgress: Trump admits Fox News hosts influenced his decision to declassify key Russia documents http://bit.ly/2PSvF4G //➔ Who at @FoxNews is setting our national security policy? It was Ailes. Who is it now? Shouldn’t they have to pass a background check?
// “The great Lou Dobbs, the great Sean Hannity, the wonderful great Jeanie Pirro.”

TheTimes [UK]: President Trump ‘was afraid of angering Russia’ http://bit.ly/2xpDM2a “Trump rejected Theresa May’s plea for US retaliation over the poisoning of the Skripals although she was “95 per cent certain” of Russian involvement, according to a new book“

Bloomberg, Chris Strohm: The FBI Is Quietly Asserting Its Independence From Trump http://bloom.bg/2Dfap83
● Bureau to push redactions in Trump’s declassification order
● White House would have to order FBI probe of Kavanaugh claims

NBC, Elena Holodny: Russia, China embrace uneasily, aim for ‘desirable world order’ http://nbcnews.to/2PNLlpU
// Moscow-Beijing relations are “showing dynamic growth,” according to Chinese leader Xi Jinping. He also described Vladimir Putin as a “close friend.”

Politico, Kyle Cheney: Democrats fear Trump ‘October Surprise’ document dump http://politi.co/2prmuNI they ‘fear a plan to taint special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing Russia probe, while simultaneously motivating Trump’s political base’
// Democrats worry that Trump and his allies are teeing up a series of document releases meant to gin up GOP voters before the midterms.

TIME: How Putin’s Oligarchs Got Inside the Trump Team http://ti.me/2QNEaiJ

USAToday, Cindy Otis: Ex-CIA analyst: Trump order on Russia documents abuses power, risks national security http://usat.ly/2xsF7Fh

NYT, Scott Shane and Mark Mazetti: The Plot to Subvert an Election ~ Unraveling the Russia Story So Far http://nyti.ms/2NpLymt #TrumpRussia
// For two years, Americans have tried to absorb the details of the 2016 attack: hacked emails, social media fraud, suspected spies — and President Trump’s claims that it’s all a hoax. The Times explores what we know and what it means.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYT Shane Subvert Election 9-20-2018
⇈ ⇊
NYT: A Timeline Showing the Full Scale of Russia’s Unprecedented Interference in the 2016 Election, and Its Aftermath http://nyti.ms/2MR2Vay See also article: NYT: The Plot to Subvert an Election ~ Unraveling the Russia Story So Far http://nyti.ms/2NpLymt #TrumpRussia

⭕ 19 Sep 2018

ABCNews/AP, Chad Day: AP Explains: Mueller’s legal actions not overlooked by Trump http://abcn.ws/2NtCRHG

TheHill: Comey: Mueller may be in ‘fourth quarter’ of Russia probe http://bit.ly/2OBxWkM

🐣 RT @krassenstein: BREAKING: ABC News is reporting that the Steele Dossier sat in a New York FBI field office for several months in late 2016. ¤ Meanwhile FBI agents in D.C. had already been investigating Trump Campaign/Russian connections for months prior. ¤ “Deep State Hoax” Narrative DEAD!
⋙ ABCNews: Trump ‘dossier’ stuck in New York, didn’t trigger Russia investigation, sources say http://abcn.ws/2xnMgH2

Newsweek: Vladimir Putin Whispered to Donald Trump About Deep State Conspiracies Ruining Their Friendship: Book http://bit.ly/2MOAxpy in “The Apprentice: Trump, Russia and the Subversion of American Democracy” by Greg Miller

AP: Trump: Declassified Russia probe papers expose ‘bad things http://bit.ly/2NTw3CO

Bloomberg: FBI, DOJ Plan Redactions Despite Trump’s Document Order http://bloom.bg/2NpPzHF

RCP/MSNBC: Hillary Clinton: Trump May Be A Witting Russian Tool; He Plays Checkers, Putin Playing Three-Dimensional Chess http://bit.ly/2pnyIa8

⭕ 18 Sep 2018

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand .@RepAdamSchiff says on @CNN that it was FBI Director Wray and Deputy AG Rosenstein who told him that the release of the Russia documents Trump wants declassified would be considered “a red line that must not be crossed as they may compromise sources and methods.”

NPR: Justice, Spy World Veterans Warn Of Consequences If Trump Releases Secret Docs http://n.pr/2OAv7An

🐣 RT @Susan_Hennessey Regarding Trump’s declassification order (or whatever it is), Democrats in the Gang of Eight are requesting an immediate briefing from DOJ, DNI, and FBI on the actual planned declassification process, proposed redactions, and Privacy Act compliance.
Text block: https://twitter.com/Susan_Hennessey/status/1042224513101062145/photo/1
⋙ DemLeader: [ Letter ] http://bit.ly/2pjmD5z

VOA: Trump Hints of More Declassifications in Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2PPmrqa “If I were a Russian with information useful to the US, Trump’s order would make me more nervous than before about my identity being kept secret, and thus less likely to share what I have … ”

TheRickWilson: So I’ve had a couple conversations this morning with some former and current IC people. ¤ The line crossed on this declassification-as-obstruction is redder than you can imagine.

NYT: Trump’s Growing Legal Team Has a Problem: It’s Operating Partly in the Dark http://nyti.ms/2xyqDTq

Politico: Trump-proof aspects of Manafort deal rankle lawyers http://politi.co/2MMypyV
// Robert Mueller seems to have built in safeguards to discourage the president from pardoning Manafort.

NYMag, Margaret Hartmann: Trump Declassifies Russia Probe Documents in Latest Attempt to Undermine Mueller http://nym.ag/2DiyuLg

The materials won’t immediately be made public. In a classic Trumpian move, the administration made the announcement before giving the Justice Department specific instructions about what it’s supposed to release, according to the Washington Post. The department responded with a statement saying it will review the information to ensure it doesn’t release anything that would put “national security interests” at risk.

“When the President issues such an order, it triggers a declassification review process that is conducted by various agencies within the intelligence community, in conjunction with the White House Counsel, to seek to ensure the safety of America’s national security interests,” the statement said. “The Department and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are already working with the Director of National Intelligence to comply with the President’s order.”

For months Trump’s allies in Congress have worked to supply documentation to back up the president’s insistence that the Russia probe is a “witch hunt,” while the Justice Department has fought to withhold information that might damage the ongoing probe. Representative Matt Gaetz, one of the leaders in this fight, offered a peek at the narrative Republicans will push.

“These documents will reveal to the American people some of the systemic corruption and bias that took place at the highest levels of the DOJ and FBI, including using the tools of our intelligence community for par­tisan political ends,” said Gaetz.

NBC: Are intel officials trying to slow Trump order to declassify Russia probe documents? http://nbcnews.to/2xnd4Hh
// Officials hope the declassification review will happen, but express private outrage Trump and allies want to spill secrets for apparent political purposes.

Esquire, Charles Pierce: The President* Just Declassified Intelligence Materials to Please the Fox News Crowd http://bit.ly/2ML3McP “This probably won’t end well for America”

Make no mistake. The material being released is cherry-picked in order to keep the rubes riled and to throw sand in the gears of the ongoing investigations. (The release also may be timed to take some of the heat off Brett Kavanaugh, but I think that’s a minor consideration. This is about the president*’s chestnuts being in the fire.) It is a release tailored to fit the specifications of the increasingly febrile presidential base. I’m surprised they didn’t have Sean Hannity or Alex Jones do the vetting.

WaPo: ‘Really bad things were happening’: Trump suggests that his declassifying Russia documents will expose FBI wrongdoing http://wapo.st/2QGqGFC

NYT: Trump Orders Russia Investigation Documents Be Declassified http://nyti.ms/2NRvklt

RollingStone, Ryan Bort: Trump Made His Most Desperate Move Yet to Discredit the Russia Investigation http://rol.st/2Dbf0Ib
// The president has ordered the release of a trove of top-secret material related to the long-running probe

💙 TheHill, Mark Penn: Time for sunshine on Trump-Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2xlbxBw  //➔ To keep an open mind, I’ve been trying to see “the other side” of #TrumpRussia that didn’t sound hysterical or conspiratorial; Mark Penn does pretty good here. An interesting read.

Reuters: Anti-Kremlin activist was probably poisoned: Berlin MD http://reut.rs/2Oy0V8V “Pyotr Verzilov, publisher of a Russian online news outlet and affiliated with the anti-Kremlin band Pussy Riot … was probably poisoned with a substance that has affected his nervous system”

⭕ 17 Sep 2018

LawFare, Suzanne Spaulding and Harvey Rishikof: How Putin Works to Weaken Faith in the Rule of Law and Our Justice System http://bit.ly/2prHzaM

TheAtlantic: Key Senate Republicans Express Support for Mueller Probe http://bit.ly/2NQHjzT 
// Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John Kennedy of Louisiana said on the Sunday shows that Mueller should be allowed to finish his investigation, as did Ken Starr and Chris Christie.

NBC: In stunning move, Trump declassifies documents related to Russia probe http://nbcnews.to/2QEOrh9
// The move covers about 20 pages of the warrant obtained to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page and FBI interviews.

🐣 RT @ChrisGeidner It’s declassification o’clock, per the president —> https://twitter.com/chrisgeidner/status/1041801231709229056/photo/1

🐣 RT @Countercheklist WikiLeaks is a GRU operation. Hostkey.ru is owned by P. Chayanov, who’s a RU hacker. He has access to the site’s SSL
https://twitter.com/counterchekist/status/858862125976047616/photo/1

🐣 RT @LincolnsBible
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/1021746621313212417

SkyNews [UK]: Leak reveals Julian Assange plan to escape Britain and flee to Russia http://bit.ly/2QCIaT8 //➔ he’s a Russian tool; has been for years
// Leak shows plans for the WikiLeaks founder to escape Britian and gain a visa to travel to Russia in 2010.

AP showed the documents to former WikiLeaks associates and verified non-public details such as bank accounts, telephone numbers or airline tickets to check the authenticity of the files.

Assange’s relationship with Russia is of interest to America, with the FBI claiming Russia’s military intelligence agency directly gave WikiLeaks stolen emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and other Democratic figures ahead of the 2016 US presidential election.

⭕ 16 Sep 2018

TheAtlantic, Hillary Clinton: American Democracy Is in Crisis http://bit.ly/2NPdfVg
// Our democratic institutions and traditions are under siege. We need to do everything we can to fight back.

LondonTimes: I was a fool to think we could reset relations with Russia, says Johnson http://bit.ly/2OlCECN //➔ did he try a red button?

⭕ 15 Sep 2018

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Paul Manafort’s Modus Operandi: Accuse the Female Politician of Crimes She Didn’t Commit, Then Dodge Sanctions http://bit.ly/2MADAlk

NYT, Helene Cooper: Fraying Ties With Trump Put Jim Mattis’s Fate in Doubt http://nyti.ms/2xdBfaU

Reuters: Manafort cooperation could energize Mueller probe: legal experts http://reut.rs/2xdswWm Randall Eliason, Jed Shugerman

TheGuardian, Tim McCarthy: Trump and ‘collusion’: what we know so far about Mueller’s Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2xaFZy8
// The special counsel has secured multiple indictments, and an agreement with Paul Manafort that could pose a threat to Trump

CNN, Kara Scannell and Marshall Cohen: Here’s how Paul Manafort might be helpful to the Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2xlpf7F

TheAtlantic, John Sipher: Trump’s Soviet Approach to Intelligence http://bit.ly/2D27SxT
// Stalin ignored his spies when their findings contradicted his assumptions. Now the president is making the same mistake.

WaPo: ‘Robert Mueller’s real quest here is for the truth’: How Paul Manafort’s plea brings the special counsel probe closer to its end game http://wapo.st/2CX6vjQ

NYT, Andrew Kramer: How a Ukrainian Hairdresser Became a Front for Paul Manafort http://nyti.ms/2OuAmBK NYT: Fraying Ties With Trump Put Mattis’s Fate in Doubt http://nyti.ms/2xdBfaU

🐣 RT @TheAtlantic: “Arthur Schlesinger Jr. asked in 1973: ‘If the Nixon White House escapes the legal consequences of its illegal behavior, why will future Presidents and their associates not suppose themselves entitled to do what the Nixon White House has done?’”
⋙ TheAtlantic, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr (Nov 1973): Dealing With an Out-of-Control President, in 1973 http://bit.ly/2p715ZT
// 11/1/1973, In the midst of the Watergate scandal, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. considered how Richard Nixon had abused the powers of the presidency—and how constitutional order could be restored.

⭕ 14 Sep 2018

🐣 RT @kenvogel NEW: People who worked with MANAFORT in Ukraine think his real value to MUELLER may be flipping on the oligarchs, the pols they funded & the Western firms/operatives who assisted them, including ones he recruited, like TONY PODESTA, MERCURY & @SKADDENARPS.
⋙ NYT, Kenneth Vogel: Manafort Plea Deal Casts New Scrutiny on Lobbyists He Recruited http://nyti.ms/2CZ1Qhx

LawfareBlog, by Stephen Bates, Jack Goldsmith, Benjamin Wittes (9/14): The Watergate ‘Road Map’ and the Coming Mueller Report http://bit.ly/2zsp3nl

📒 Manafort Superceding Criminal Information [pdf] http://on.wsj.com/2NhgtRR 76p
// more legible than ↧
⇈ ⇊
Lawfare: Document: Superseding Criminal Information Against Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2p7qe6R
// plus plea deal (17p) and Statement of Offenses (24p)

Lawfare: The Manafort Guilty Plea, the Mueller Investigation, and the President http://bit.ly/2NhgZPN
// By Victoria Clark, Mikhaila Fogel, Matthew Kahn, Susan Hennessey, Quinta Jurecic, Benjamin Wittes

WaPo: Manafort’s guilty plea exposes hardball tactics he used to thrive in Washington swamp http://wapo.st/2xaJmW0

NYT, Jill Lepore: The Hacking of America [multimedia] http://nyti.ms/2p8kBFt
// Political and technological disruption have fed off each other since the nation’s founding. Now they are dangerously out of whack.

NYT Editorial: Welcome to the President’s Rat Pack, Paul Manafort http://nyti.ms/2QCMty2
// The demand for justice once again outweighs the president’s demand for loyalty.

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Mueller Just Called Bullshit on Lobbying Powerhouse Mercury LLC http://thebea.st/2NecUfi
// The special counsel’s latest files says that employees of the firm knew that they were working for a foreign government, and not disclosing it.

MMFA: Sean Hannity reacts to Manafort plea deal by attacking the “cancer” growing in “every single intelligence agency” http://bit.ly/2OnbCLx
// Hannity: “These once great instituitions tonight are hanging in the balance”

🐣 RT @MarkWarner Today’s admission of criminal guilt by Paul Manafort clearly demonstrates that the President’s 2016 campaign manager conducted illegal activity in conspiracy with Russian-backed entities and was beholden to Kremlin-linked officials.

WaPo: ‘Bada bing bada boom’: Paul Manafort’s attempt to smear a jailed Ukrainian politician http://wapo.st/2Mwficd

Politico, Darren Samuelson: Manafort’s surrender shows Mueller probe’s overwhelming force http://politi.co/2NMGs3c
// A surprise guilty plea from Trump’s former campaign chairman shows that Mueller’s high-powered probe has been nearly impossible to resist.

🐣 RT @tribelaw Here’s the text of the plea deal that spells bad news for Roger Stone, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and, last but not least, Junior’s dad and his BFF Vlad. And it’s good news for beleaguered US taxpayers, for our national security, and for justice:
⋙ RawStory: Paul Manafort’s entire plea agreement with special counsel Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2NPsKfI

🐣 RT @craigunger In charging doc, note #Manafort’s use of #Lucicle as shell company for laundering $. Lucicle was in name of #IvanFursin, a key operative for Semion #Mogilevich who is the brains behind the RU Mafia, and whose operatives worked w Trump for more than 30 yrs. …

WaPo: Manafort’s guilty plea exposes hardball tactics he used to thrive in Washington swamp http://wapo.st/2xl4B6q

DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: Speed Read: ‘Obama Jews’ and Other Shocking Highlights From New Manafort Docs http://thebea.st/2NLOZ6l
// Special counsel Robert Mueller dropped fresh revelations about Paul Manafort ahead of the ex-Trump aide’s guilty plea in federal court Friday.

NewYorker, Adam Davidson: Parsing Paul Manafort’s Plea Agreement for How Much Dirt He Has on Trump http://bit.ly/2OnsIZK
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYkr Parsing Manafort 9-14-2018

Mueller gets another guilty plea and avoids a potential loss at trial, which serves to undercut Trump’s repeated argument that the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt.” Even if Mueller already knows everything that Manafort has to offer, it would be helpful to have another voice confirming details at some future criminal trial for some other defendant.

At a minimum, Manafort should be able to provide more information about the Trump Tower meeting, in June, 2016, in which Donald Trump, Jr., Manafort, and Jared Kushner sat down with the Kremlin-associated lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya and several others from the former Soviet Union. It is one of the more explicit moments in which senior members of the Trump campaign met with people close to the Kremlin to discuss working together to help elect Trump. Among the Trump team, Manafort would be, by far, the most experienced in dealing with emissaries from Russia and its allies, and the one most likely to understand the various agendas of those present. He surely knows what he told Trump, Jr., Trump himself, Kushner, and others, about the significance of the meeting. And, since Manafort has deep ties to many business and political associates of Vladimir Putin, he could well know about other possible connections between the Trump campaign and the Russian government.

🐣💙💙 RT @jennycohn1 In Sept. 2017, senator Bob Corker announced his surprise retirement. The next month, Jeff Flake followed suit, & Lindsey Graham warmed to Trump after a round of golf. All 3 were vocal Trump critics & all 3 had used Smartech—hacked by Russia—for emails. http://bit.ly/2Ou2k04
📌 Thread on SmartTech: https://mobile.twitter.com/jennycohn1/status/1040366239623786496

🐣 RT @kenolin1 We’ve become so accustomed to the bombastic nonsense from Trump & Sons, that sometimes we need to take a moment… breathe… and take stock of the situation: Robert Mueller is taking down the most despicable and corrupt group of individuals ever to occupy the White House.

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin If Manafort cooperates with investigators as he’s reportedly agreed to do, he’ll not only be a valuable source on potential Trump campaign conspiracy with Moscow, but also on the other criminal activities of Putin’s oligarchs in Europe and the US. That should worry Putin greatly.

TheHill: Mueller threat to Trump grows with Manafort deal http://bit.ly/2CX0e7H

🐣 RT @SecPompeo .@POTUS’ Executive Order made clear the U.S. won’t tolerate foreign interference in our democratic processes. Preserving the integrity of our elections is a matter of protecting sovereignty and national security. Any interference will be met with swift and painful consequences.
⋙ 🐣 Then why is Rick Perry in Moscow saying (on Russian TV) ‘the U.S. does not want to impose the #sanctions’ and ‘indicates they are not imminent’? per @JulieDavisNews.

WaPo, Greg Sargent: What can Paul Manafort tell Mueller? Adam Schiff offers some suggestions. http://wapo.st/2NNcUSQ

NYT, Noah Bookbinder, Barry Berke and Norm Eisen: Manafort Folds. Now What? http://nyti.ms/2Omc9NH
// His cooperation agreement with Robert Mueller is the start of a new chapter in the special counsel’s investigation.

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote One of the YUGE parts of Manafort’s cooperation agreement is that he won’t be brought up on any future charges. That means if he cooperates fully, he avoids superseding indictments for crimes of collusion. That’s tremendously big and tremendously wet. #ManafortPlea

DailyBeast, BetsyWoodruff: Paul Manafort Pleads Guilty, Will Cooperate With Special Counsel Mueller http://thebea.st/2MvCCqx
// As part of the deal, he must forfeit tens of millions in assets, including his apartment in Trump Tower.

NYT: Paul Manafort Agrees to Cooperate With Special Counsel; Pleads Guilty to Reduced Charges http://nyti.ms/2xbVZzO

WaPo, Philip Bump: Robert Mueller may have just eliminated one of Trump’s biggest complaints http://wapo.st/2MwEK17
// Trump likes to complain about the cost of the Mueller probe. It might just have paid for itself.

VanityFair, Emily Jane Fox: Michael Cohen Is the Latest Former Trump Ally to Talk to Mueller http://bit.ly/2OpPTml
// In the wake of Manafort’s plea deal, sources confirm that it is now common knowledge among Cohen’s inner circle that Trump’s former lawyer has been in contact with the special counsel’s office.

🐣 RT @NormEisen Friends, other than talking to @JRubinBlogger for this incisive analysis of today’s bombshell, I have been crashing down on my own in-depth Manafort plea assessment which will be coming in a bit. Bottom line:this is the worst news yet for Trump & he’s had a lot of bad news lately
⋙ 🐣 RT @JRubinBlogger That’s the news Trump never wanted to hear. The prospect of just such a deal is why his lawyers reportedly dangled the promise of a pardon in front of Manafort’s lawyers
⋙⋙ WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump can start panicking now: Manafort will cooperate with the special counsel http://wapo.st/2OnVsBo

🐣 RT @bradheath NEW: Manafort’s agreement with DOJ requires him to “cooperate fully, truthfully, completely, and forthrightly,” including participating in debriefings, providing all relevant documents, and testifying if the government asks him to.
Text block: https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1040662081450782720/photo/1

≣ Justice.gov: Manafort Plea Agreement [pdf] http://bit.ly/2CZiVb7 17p

TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: What Paul Manafort Knows http://bit.ly/2xb9cJk
// Paul Manafort’s decision to cooperate with Robert Mueller could clarify several of the biggest mysteries of the Russia investigation.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Manafort’s cooperation agreement is broad and requires him to provide complete and truthful information “in any and all matters” which the government deems relevant. He would be wise to do so, as Mueller’s team has already shown that it will not tolerate obstruction of justice.

EmptyWheel, Marcy Wheeler: Checkmate: The Manafort Cooperation Is Pardon Proof http://bit.ly/2NKpeDl
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1040677807528001536/photo/1

Here’s why this deal is pardon proof:
1. Mueller spent the hour and a half delay in arraignment doing … something. It’s possible Manafort even presented the key parts of testimony Mueller needs from him to the grand jury this morning.
2. The forfeiture in this plea is both criminal and civil, meaning DOJ will be able to get Manafort’s $46 million even with a pardon.
3. Some of the dismissed charges are financial ones that can be charged in various states.

Newsweek, Cristina Maza: Trump-Russia Investigation: Paul Manafort Guilty Plea Reveals Details of Foreign Influence on Campaign Chairman http://bit.ly/2CZmNJf

🐣 RT @JedShug Thread: A Pardon Won’t Save Manafort
Manafort is pleading guilty to only 2 charges (conspiracy against U.S. & witness tampering), but the criminal information today lists other crimes.
Mueller is preserving state prosecutions.
Last year, I wrote this:
⋙ Slate, Jed Shugerman (Nov 2017): Robert Mueller’s Brilliant Strategy for Outmaneuvering Trump Pardons http://bit.ly/2OlLmkB
// 11/23/2017, The president cannot save Paul Manafort.

🐣 RT @KenDilanian Alan Dershowitz on @MSNBC: Manafort cooperation is a “big win” for Mueller because “it opens doors that haven’t been opened before.” And it’s worrisome, he acknowledged, for @realDonaldTrump

🐣 RT @RVAwonk Paul Manafort was not a coffee boy.
He was not a low-level aide.
He was not some hanger-on.
He was the CHAIRMAN OF TRUMP’S CAMPAIGN.
… and he just pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States.
Take a moment to consider how profound and unprecedented this is.

🐣 RT @20Committee AHEM ===> “The possibility that Paul Manafort wound up at the heart of the Trump campaign not despite his deep Kremlin connections, rather because of them … may hold the key to the entire mystery about the president’s secret relationship with Russia.”
⋙ Observer, John Schindler (8/23): Now More Than Ever, Manafort Looks Like a Kremlin Agent http://bit.ly/2Mw6iDU
// 8/23/2018

WaPo, Paul Rosenzweig and Justin Florence: Trump cannot use a pardon to stop Manafort’s cooperation http://wapo.st/2Mxzv10

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Trump and Manafort have spent months sharing information about the Russia investigation. Now, Manafort has decided to help the government. Here’s a snapshot of what they could discuss (in addition to the Trump Tower meeting):
Text block: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1040637305508294657/photo/1
TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Paul Manafort’s Cooperation With Mueller Is the Biggest Blow Yet to Trump http://bit.ly/2x8iqWI
// The president and his former campaign chairman have spent months sharing information about the Russia investigation. Now Manafort has decided to help the government.

WaPo: Manafort will cooperate with Mueller as part of guilty plea, prosecutor says http://wapo.st/2x9LVro

🐣 RT @jimsciutto This is big:
Cooperation agmt includes:
– interviews & briefings with the special counsel
– turning over documents
– testifying in other proceedings
Also, Manafort has waived right to have lawyers representing him present at any interviews.

🐣 RT @KatiePhang ‼️ NEW: Here is the superseding information just filed this morning against #PaulManafort He will be in court at 11 am ET. ¤ The yet-unanswered question is will he be cooperating with the #MuellerInvestigation or not?…
⋙ ≣ Lawfare: Document: Superseding Criminal Information Against Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2p7qe6R

⭕ 13 Sep 2018

WaPo, Patrick Leahy: Brett Kavanaugh misled the Senate under oath. I cannot support his nomination. http://wapo.st/2NiwabK

WaPo: Russia is advancing on Ukraine again — and Ukraine isn’t going quietly http://wapo.st/2p7780p
// President Petro Poroshenko tells the Post how he wants the war to end.

TheAtlantic, David Frum: America’s Slide Toward Autocracy http://bit.ly/2xg93Uh
// Oct issue; Democracy has taken a beating under President Trump. Will the midterms make a difference?

NYT: U.S. Spies Rush to Protect Defectors After Skripal Poisoning http://nyti.ms/2Qti4C8

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen NEWS. Manafort and Mueller are close to a deal, my colleagues @evanperez and @kpolantz are reporting tonight. The deal would include charges in both DC and VA, where there was a mistrial on 10 counts. Unclear at this time if cooperation is on the table.
⋙ CNN: Paul Manafort and special counsel close to deal for guilty plea http://cnn.it/2OkoK49

JuliaDavisNews: Meanwhile in #Russia: ¤ Rick Perry says the U.S. does not want to impose the #sanctions and indicates they are not imminent. ¤ Perry: “Russian Energy Minister] Alexander Novak and I both agree that getting to that point where sanctions would be engaged is not where we want to go.”

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The big question about Manafort’s reported plea deal with Mueller: will he cooperate? http://bit.ly/2OlRSrw
// That is, will he flip on President Trump?

Politico, Josh Meyer: Alleged Russian spy Butina tried to score Trump meeting a year before government claimed http://politi.co/2NJHxIS in July 2015
// The early outreach illustrates Mariia Butina’s intent to cultivate Trump months before most were taking him seriously.

ABCNews: BREAKING: Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort has tentatively agreed to a plea deal with special counsel Robert Mueller that is expected to head off his upcoming trial, sources familiar with the negotiations tell @ABC News. https://abcn.ws/2Nc3VeG 

NYT, Michael Avenatti: The Case for Indicting the President http://nyti.ms/2Qyh7sm
// Justice Department lawyers have said a sitting president cannot be indicted. It’s time to test that proposition by bringing an indictment that can be reviewed by the Supreme Court.

DailyBeast, Kelly Weill: Michael Flynn To Appear At Far-Right Conference With Pizzagaters, Racist YouTube Stars http://thebea.st/2NaOVO4
// President Trump’s disgraced former national security adviser will be picking up an award from conspiracy-mongering outlet The Gateway Pundit.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: How Trump and Manafort Are Helping Each Other in the Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2xflgsl
// The two have a joint-defense agreement, which allows their legal teams to share information—and could help the president’s former campaign chairman angle for a pardon.

TheHill: Secretive Russian GRU tests Trump with brazen tactics http://bit.ly/2x9ZJlE

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Not even Republicans trust Trump on Russia http://wapo.st/2Okvyyq

DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: Russia Shows Us What Happens to ‘Enemies of the People’: Bloodied Heads, Murdered Reporters, Poisoned Dissidents http://thebea.st/2QrqwBK
// Under Putin, dozens of journalists have been murdered because of their work. He may not have ordered the killings, but he created the deadly atmosphere. Trump’s doing the same.

⭕ 12 Sep 2018

ForeignPolicy, Tarah Wheeler: In Cyberwar, There are No Rules http://bit.ly/2x8GU1V
// Why the world desperately needs digital Geneva Conventions.

AtlanticCouncil: Trump’s Election Meddling Sanctions Will Not Deter Russia http://bit.ly/2NdJhdU

AP: Russia: Pussy Riot activist treated for possible poisoning http://bit.ly/2N7Gi74

TheAtlantic, Thomas Wright: The Return to Great-Power Rivalry Was Inevitable http://bit.ly/2NbYnkc
// With neo-authoritarianism on the rise, the old assumptions undergirding a common set of Western values just won’t do.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “The harshest sanctions outlined in the order would be up to the president’s discretion…the order appears to be an effort to stave off bipartisan legislation that would mandate tough federal action.”
⋙ WaPo: Trump issues new order authorizing additional sanctions for interfering in upcoming U.S. elections http://wapo.st/2x73jNb

Newsweek: Fox News Host Sean Hannity Says Donald Trump Will Fire Robert Mueller After Hurricane Florence http://bit.ly/2MrRTIO

🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc As we have been saying things will likely get weirder and worse before they get better and normal. Hold on. #ActiveMeasures …

ABCNews: Manafort seeking plea deal with special counsel that would avoid cooperation ahead of second trial: Sources http://abcn.ws/2MpAGQf //➔ because of course he does

TheAtlantic, Anne Applebaum: A Warning From Europe: The Worst Is Yet to Come http://bit.ly/2NJIFwp
// Poland; Polarization. Conspiracy theories. Attacks on the free press. An obsession with loyalty. Recent events in the United States follow a pattern Europeans know all too well.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Atlntc Applebaum Worst to Come Oct 2018

Vox: Trump’s ties to the Russian mafia go back 3 decades http://bit.ly/2x7GVmf
// Journalist Craig Unger talks Russia, Trump, and “one of the greatest intelligence operations in history.”

🐣 RT @CabreraAngel In case you missed it, here is a link to the extraordinary panel on “Secrets, Presidents and Dissent” at the @ScharSchool @mvhaydencenter moderated by @NicolleDWallace http://ow.ly/Cm5830lMzdj via @cspan

🐣 RT @RVAwonk Buzzfeed has uncovered a “complex web of financial transactions among some of the [Trump Tower meeting] planners and participants who moved money from Russia and Switzerland to the British Virgin Islands, Bangkok, and a small office park in New Jersey.”
BuzzFeedNews, Anthony Cormier and Jason Leopold: A Series Of Suspicious Money Transfers Followed The Trump Tower Meeting http://bit.ly/2p2UorW
// Investigators are focused on two bursts of banking activity — one shortly after the June 2016 meeting, the other immediately after the presidential election.

Eleven days later [after the Trump Tower meeting] — on June 20, the day Trump fired campaign chief Corey Lewandowski and put Manafort in charge — Aras Agalarov used a company called Silver Valley Consulting to move millions that bankers flagged as suspicious.

Silver Valley’s only address is a post office box in the capital of the British Virgin Islands, a country seen as a haven for money laundering and tax evasion. On June 20, Silver Valley sent through its Zurich-based account at Societe Generale Suisse a wire transfer for a little more than $19.5 million to Agalarov’s account at Morgan Stanley in the US.

That same day, another entity controlled by Agalarov — ZAO Crocus International, an arm of his business empire — sent a wire transfer through Societe Generale Suisse for about $43,000 to the same Morgan Stanley account.

Swiss employees of the bank told their American colleagues that the account was closed in May 2017, but that “due to Swiss confidentiality laws the requested information cannot be provided.”

After Trump won, as people scrambled for jobs, influence, and riches, a chain reaction of bank transfers started among the Agalarovs and their associates.

Beginning 13 days after the election, the Agalarovs’ bank account in Russia made 19 separate wire transfers to a New Jersey personal checking account belonging to Emin Agalarov and two friends from high school. That checking account, held at TD Bank, had been opened in 2012. Bank examiners thought it was unusual that the account had never before received a Russian wire transfer and that its only deposit since the summer of 2015 was for $200, in January 2016.

The postelection transfers to the checking account were in large, round-dollar amounts ranging from $15,000 to $175,000. Between November 2016 and July 2017, the sum topped $1.2 million.

But what triggered alarms wasn’t just that activity in the account had jumped since Trump’s election. It was also how the checking account handled the money. While some of it went toward credit card bills, mortgage installments, and other run-of-the-mill payments, TD Bank officials also saw the checking account quickly pass funds to an account controlled by another participant in the Trump Tower meeting.

On Nov. 21, 2016, Emin Agalarov’s checking account received $165,000 from an account based in Russia belonging to his family. The following day, the account sent $107,000 to Corsy International, a company run by Kaveladze, the longtime Agalarov associate who attended the Trump Tower meeting.

Bankers noted that Kaveladze — who after the election pushed for an additional get-together with the Trumps and some of the original Tower meeting participants — had previously been investigated for money laundering.

⭕ 11 Sep 2018

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff 7/11): Inside Mueller’s New Army http://thebea.st/2QE6za7
// As the special counsel zeroes in on Russia’s onarsonists, he’s brought in a new crew of cyberspy fighters—and a straight-up street crime prosecutor, too.

VanityFair, Emily Jane Fox: “The Man Has to Take Responsibility”: Awaiting Sentencing, Cohen Grapples with Trump’s Good Luck http://bit.ly/2xoIMUs

CIR (Comm to Investigate Russia): Is Russian Money Behind Graham’s Growing Defense of Trump? http://bit.ly/2O9H6Vg

🐣 RT @IlvesToomas From Bob Woodward’s book: “Russia had privately warned Mattis that if there was a war in the Baltics, Russia would not hesitate to use tactical nuclear weapons against NATO”
⋙ StockSector: Five key takeaways from Bob Woodward’s book on Trump’s White House http://bit.ly/2x5ziNT

🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC The former NSA chief said he gave Trump detailed briefings on Russian hacking efforts, though Trump would tell him, “Mike, you know I’m in a different place.” Rogers added that he would reply, “Sir, this isn’t about politics, it isn’t about party…”
DailyBeast: Ex-NSA Boss Mike Rogers: I Wish Trump Had Pressed Putin on Election Meddling in Helsinki http://thebea.st/2NC37in

🐣 RT @realBobWoodward “I am convinced that people need to wake up and not kind of pretend this is just politics or this is partisan. … We are at a pivot point in history.” @nprfreshair

🐣 RT @AudreyLeigh86 Admiral Rodgers states that our #institutions are under attack and that the real treats to our democracy is from #distrust of institutions. #haydensecrets @ScharSchool @mvhaydencenter @GeorgeMasonU – at GMU – Founder’s Hall

🐣 Today’s @LincolnsBible thread on Trump’s mafia ties – and 9/11. I learn so much from his threads. If you liked @ActiveMeasures, know that’s just the tip of the iceberg. 📌 https://twitter.com/LincolnsBible/status/1039503481411760128

DailyBeast: Team Trump Warns Russia of ‘Total Economic Isolation’ Over Possible Syria Bloodbath http://thebea.st/2N74h6b
// The Russians are playing tough, but on this issue the Trump administration may play tougher.

🐣 RT @LauraAJarrett Statement from Strzok’s atty: “The term ‘media leak strategy’ in Mr. Strzok’s text refers to a Department-wide initiative to detect and stop leaks to the media. The President and his enablers are once again peddling unfounded conspiracy theories to mislead the American People.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real New Strzok-Page texts reveal “Media Leak Strategy.” @FoxNews So terrible, and NOTHING is being done at DOJ or FBI – but the world is watching, and they get it completely.

🐣 RT @ProudResister The FBI is not in “tatters.” ¤ The Media is not the “enemy.” ¤ The Probe is not a “witch hunt.” ¤ The President is just a paranoid criminal who is lashing out at the world b/c after getting away with breaking the law for his entire adult life, he now finds himself in legal jeopardy.

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq If Manafort simply pleads guilty alone, it could just be that he is running out of money and is banking on a pardon in 6-9 months. ¤ If his plea includes a cooperation agreement, though, all hell could break loose.

🐣 RT @jedshug @maddow is quoting from Woodward’s book, confirming @emptywheel: Trump knew directly about Flynn’s contacts with Russia about sanctions in Dec 2016. And Flynn lied to FBI about those contacts. @emptywheel suggests Mueller already has hard evidence, and it’s worse than Logan Act.

🔆 New ⋙ WaPo: Manafort in talks with prosecutors about possible plea, according to people familiar with the discussions http://wapo.st/2x6nJFv

FoxNews: Strzok-Page texts on ‘media leak strategy’ fuel Trump fury at DOJ: ‘NOTHING is being done’ http://fxn.ws/2oWYH82 //➔ newest brewing at Fox; for context, see: PolitiFact: [Today] The FBI, the Steele dossier and wiretapping, explained http://bit.ly/2oYc0oL

VICENews: Trump has to get tougher on Russia thanks to this obscure ’90s law http://bit.ly/2QhBdHb

NYMag, Cristian Farias: Why the Mueller Probe’s Papadopoulos Bombshell Fizzled http://nym.ag/2oWY0vs

USAToday: Donald Trump Jr. says he’s not afraid of going to jail in Russia investigation http://usat.ly/2oYLHyv

Alternet: Former CIA Head John Brennan Says Information In Trump-Russia Dossier ‘Was In Line With’ the Agency’s ‘Own Sources’: Bob Woodward http://bit.ly/2O8qFbK
// The Trump critic gave even more credence to the infamous dossier.

WaPo: On Sept. 11 anniversary, Trump launches fresh attacks on FBI and Justice Department with dubious allegation http://wapo.st/2CNEXgI

🐣 RT @DWNews With over 300,000 soldiers and 36,000 vehicles on the ground, Russia is staging its biggest military exercises since the end of the Cold War.
💽 https://twitter.com/dwnews/status/1039606001178095616/photo/1

🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Think we understand Mueller portfolio? First, go back to this from of last year, re fundamentalist Mormons connected to Turkish businessmen who hired Flynn (and who also have significant financial ties to Russian interests): /1
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1039658759205920768
⋙ ProPublica, Isaac Arnsdorf: Robert Mueller Subpoenas an Associate of the Man Who Hired Michael Flynn as a Lobbyist http://bit.ly/2p1pTlO
// 9/29/2017, The special counsel wanted to question a Turkish businessman with interests in Turkey, Russia and the U.S. — and ties to people with criminal records.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Then, check this out from @natecarlisle of @sltrib: /2
⋙ SLTrib, Nate Carlisle: The strange and winding fraud case against two Kingston brothers turns up ties to polygamy, Turkey, even the Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2MlbPNB
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @MollyMcKew Corruption begets corruption, and attracts the corrupt. A lot of stuff is going to spin out of the Russia investigation that will expose how much worse global corruption networks are than we think. /3

WSJ: Trump to Issue Order Allowing Sanctions on Foreigners Meddling in U.S. Elections http://on.wsj.com/2p1lyz2
● Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1039652607042744320/photo/1
// Executive order could come as soon as Wednesday

✅ PolitiFact: [New] The FBI, the Steele dossier and wiretapping, explained http://bit.ly/2oYc0oL background on Trump’s and Mark Meadows’ attacks on Bruce and Nellie Ohr and their connections to Fusion GPS and the Steele dossier

🐣 RT @RNicholasBurns Seventeen years ago, our #NATO allies invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty to defend us after the 9/11 attacks. They are still with us in Afghanistan today. As U.S. Ambassador to NATO that day, I felt the power of our alliance and will be forever grateful.

🐣 RT @craigunger Even today–9/11–@realDonaldTrump can’t stop going after someone who was on the frontlines fighting #SemionMogilevich–in this case, #LisaPage, former member of #Mueller’s team who had been a DOJ atty w FBI’s Budapest Task Force against #RussianMafia.
⋙🐣 RT @real New Strzok-Page texts reveal “Media Leak Strategy.” @FoxNews So terrible, and NOTHING is being done at DOJ or FBI – but the world is watching, and they get it completely.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Woodward P. 68 Trump told intel leaders, “I don’t believe in human sources.” ¤ “These are people who sold their souls and sold out their country.” ¤ John Brennan, CIA chief at the time, said he wouldn’t tell that to his employees, whose work relies almost entirely on human sources.
⋙ 🐣 Iow, for Trump it’s all about loyalty, not the sources’ credibility or our national security. Hmmm.

🐣 RT @McFaul Mr. President, please present evidence “showing collusion between the FBI & DOJ, the Hillary campaign, foreign spies & Russians…” Otherwise, for just one day, stop spreading disinformation about people serving out country at FBI & DOJ & allow Americans to unite. Just one day.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “We have found nothing to show collusion between President Trump & Russia, absolutely zero, but every day we get more documentation showing collusion between the FBI & DOJ, the Hillary campaign, foreign spies & Russians, incredible.” @SaraCarterDC @LouDobbs

CNN: Declassification of Russia investigation materials poses a risky gambit for GOP http://cnn.it/2Nwkr8J

NBC: U.S. officials suspect Russia in mystery ‘attacks’ on diplomats in Cuba, China http://nbcnews.to/2O6T95F
// The strong suspicion that Russia was behind the alleged attacks is backed by signals intelligence, meaning intercepted communications, say U.S. officials.

🐣 From “Fear”:
Mueller was not buying.
Dowd and Sekulow left the building.
“What do you think?” Sekulow asked.
“He ain’t testifying,” Dowd said. It had been a complete fantasy to think that Mueller would decline prosecution.

⭕ 10 Sep 2018

MSNBC, MaddowShow: Trump and allies aim to ruin career of key Russia investigator http://on.msnbc.com/2x24Nrg
// Rachel Maddow points out that Donald Trump and his Republican and media allies, in their effort to undermine the Trump Russia investigation are set to embark on blowing up another DoJ official’s career, this time targeting Bruce Ohr, an expert investigator of Russian organized crime.

NYT: Sessions’s Lawyer Defends His Account of Trump Campaign Meeting http://nyti.ms/2oXKLKS

TheIntellectualist: Lindsey Graham Received Campaign Donations From Firm Tied To Russian Oligarch http://bit.ly/2MjL2RK //➔ Story links to DallasNews article
⋙ DallasNews, Ruth May (5/8/2018): How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns http://bit.ly/2QmdaXF
// 5/8/2018, Editor’s note: This column originally published December 15, 2017 [sic]. New allegations about $500k in payments from a Russian oligarch made to Trump attorney Michael Cohen have placed it back in the news.

In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik’s political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.

Tags: Viktor Vekselberg Oleg Deripaska Blavatnik Paul Manafort
↥ ↧
⋙ ⋙ DallasNews, Ruth May (Jul 2017): GOP campaigns took $7.35 million from oligarch linked to Russia http://bit.ly/2vAMStx (original article published in 2017; updated 5/8/2018 to include payments to Michael Cohen
// July 2017, original article

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson: Documents Reveal Maria Butina Has Offered to Betray Her Lover (a GOP Operative) http://rol.st/
// In a new court filing, prosecutors say alleged Russian agent Maria Butina is willing to divulge new information on Paul Erickson’s “illegal activities”

RollingStone, Tessa Stuart (11/2/2016): A Timeline of the 23 October Surprises of the 2016 Election http://rol.st/2MivL3r //➔ a taste what’s to come?
// 11/2/2016, Rather than one October surprise, we got nearly two dozen this year

🐣 RT @McFaul I reviewed her book in 2006. Check out my take: WaPo: Vladimir the Terrible http://wapo.st/2Oa7rlZ
// 2/14/2006, review of PUTIN’S RUSSIA ~ Life in a Failing Democracy
⋙ 🐣 RT @titoinchito Thought on “Putin’s Russia” by the late Anna Politkovkaya?

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1211 An agent in the Russian embassy in Rome who had a role of obtaining NATO classified info was recruited by MI6. He decided to cooperate bec he believes that Putin is determined to get into a conflict w the West ¤ The threat from Putin needs to be addressed
⋙ TheExpress [UK]: Novichok Attack: Apollo… the agent groomed by MI6 http://bit.ly/2x3tvs7
// 9/9/2018

🐣 RT @craigunger Other reasons to be suspicious: 1300 Trump branded condos sold to shell companies; multiple mobsters(#Bogatin, #Ivankov) tied to #Mogilevich ran ops out of Trump bldgs, #Bayrock’s partnership w Trump; punishment of #LisaPage, #BruceOhr & others who investigated Mogi.@DLeonhardt
⋙ 🐣 RT @DLeonhardt Sons who brag about Russian money. A history of shady Russian deals. Paranoia about scrutiny of his businesses. And a harassment campaign against the government’s top experts in Russian crime. ¤ There really are a lot of reasons to worry about laundering.

⭕ 9 Sep 2018

🐣 RT @JMPSimor Our PM and Home Secretary have stated that Putin ordered the murder of people in Britain and that he wants to destroy the EU & the rules based international order. If they believe this then they must halt Brexit. A Government’s first responsibility is the security of its people.

NYT, David Leonhardt: The Urgent Question of Trump and Money Laundering http://nyti.ms/2MYribo
// How Bruce Ohr, President Trump’s latest Twitter target, fits a suspicious pattern of behavior on Russia.

[Trump] could make his life easier if only he treated Vladimir Putin the way he treats most people who cause problems — and cast Putin aside. Yet Trump can’t bring himself to do so.

This odd refusal is arguably the biggest reason to believe that Putin really does have leverage over Trump. Maybe it’s something shocking, like a sex tape or evidence of campaign collusion by Trump himself. Or maybe it’s the scandal that’s been staring us in the face all along: Illicit financial dealings — money laundering — between Trump’s business and Russia.

The latest reason to be suspicious is Trump’s attacks on a formerly obscure Justice Department official named Bruce Ohr. Trump has repeatedly criticized Ohr and called for him to be fired. Ohr’s sin is that he appears to have been marginally involved in inquiries into Trump’s Russian links. But Ohr fits a larger pattern. In his highly respected three-decade career in law enforcement, he has specialized in going after Russian organized crime.

It just so happens that most of the once-obscure bureaucrats whom Trump has tried to discredit also are experts in some combination of Russia, organized crime and money laundering.

It’s true of Andrew McCabe (the former deputy F.B.I. director whose firing Trump successfully lobbied for), Andrew Weissmann (the only official working for Robert Mueller whom Trump singles out publicly) and others. They are all Trump bogeymen — and all among “the Kremlin’s biggest adversaries in the U.S. government,” as Natasha Bertrand wrote in The Atlantic. Trump, she explained, seems to be trying to rid the government of experts in Russian organized crime.

Consider: The financially rickety Trump Organization, shunned by most mainstream banks, long relied on less scrupulous Russian investors. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. said a decade ago. “We have all the funding we need out of Russia,” Eric Trump reportedly said in 2013. And what was the rare major bank to work with Trump? Deutsche Bank, which has a history of illegal Russian money laundering.

Trump also had a habit of selling real estate to Russians in all-cash deals. Money launderers like such deals, because they can turn illegally earned cash into a legitimate asset, usually at an inflated price that rewards the seller for the risk. One especially dubious deal was Trump’s $95 million sale of a Palm Beach house to a Russian magnate in 2008 — during the housing bust, only four years after Trump had bought the house for $41 million.

For months, Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has been trying to get Congress to pay attention to the possibility of money laundering. He points out that Mueller’s mandate does not necessarily include a full investigation of Trump’s businesses. But those businesses could still have behaved in ways that give Putin, a hostile foreign leader, leverage over the president of the United States.

🔄◕ ECFR , Mark Galeotti [EU] (2016): Introduction: Putin’s hydra: Inside Russia’s intelligence services http://bit.ly/2NZWN1h
● People flowchart: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1038670500577402880/photo/1
// 5/11/2016, European Council on Foreign Relations
⋙ 📒 ECFR, Mark Galeotti [EU] (2016): Report: Putin’s Hydra: Inside Russia’s Intelligence Services [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NYjG5b 20p
● Overlaps: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1038671057698390016/photo/1
// May 2016, Full report

Far from being an all-powerful “spookocracy” that controls the Kremlin, Russia’s intelligence services are internally divided, distracted by bureaucratic turf wars, and often produce poor quality intelligence – ultimately threatening the interests of Vladimir Putin himself.

The agencies often replicate each others’ work, engaging in bloody competition rather than sharing intelligence. The need to please the Kremlin and deliver quick results leads to shoddy information gathering and analysis. Intelligence chiefs must shape and sugarcoat the facts to suit the president – or risk their jobs.

🔄 NYT: Russian Hacking and Influence in the U.S. Election http://nyti.ms/2NqFXeY
// compilation of Trump Russia stories #TrumpRussia

⭕ 8 Sep 2018

AlJazeera, James Reinl: Trump’s scandals: An unprecedented president http://bit.ly/2MVfHdb
// US president has faced multiple scandals since taking office, with the Mueller probe of chief concern.

⭕ 7 Sep 2018

Bloomberg: Former Nixon Aide Warns Kavanaugh Would Shield the White House http://bloom.bg/2CJuX8d

● Former White House counsel John Dean testifies before Senate committee
● He says Kavanaugh would weaken check on presidential power

VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: “Bob Is Not Afraid of Anything”: Inside the Mueller-Giuliani Chess Match http://bit.ly/2CHTGK4

💙💙 WaPo, John McLaughlin: Why so many former intelligence officers are speaking out http://wapo.st/2wUVwlw

Failure to warn is the ultimate sin in the intelligence world. It feels equally sinful in the world of citizenship.

[W]e would all love to be back in right-side-up world, where it would be unimaginable for a president to advocate jailing an election opponent, assail the Justice Department and the FBI, call a free press “the enemy of the people,” insult allies, and, most important, refuse to combat a well-documented covert foreign attack on U.S. elections — in the process weakening efforts by others to do so and encouraging Russia to keep it up.

All of us in intelligence have been shaped by careers assessing societies where free speech, democratic institutions and rule of law don’t exist or are under attack — places such as Russia and China. We have also seen how fragile democracy can be and how it can be eroded almost imperceptibly — consider Turkey and parts of Central Europe. So our senses are finely tuned to the classic warning signs: attacks on institutions, neutralization of opponents, cowed legislatures, publics numbed by repeated falsehoods.

All those are now visible here to various degrees. While others may say our democracy can’t erode that way, we know we’ve heard that before, somewhere else. The stakes are too high for complacency here.

NYT: Dmitry Rybolovlev, The Billionaire Who Bought Trump’s Mansion Faces Scrutiny in Monaco http://nyti.ms/2CBfpTV

🐣 RT @TrickFreee I’m calling it now. Dmitry Klyuev likely personally ordered the hits on ¤ Litvinkenko, Skripal, Magnitsky, Perepilichnyy, and Gorokhov. And possibly even Bereskovsky. Dmitry Klyuev is under the protection of the Kremlin.

🐣 RT @RadioFreeTom Your Friday Tweetstorm (rebooted).
Trumpers are mounting a lot of desperate defenses of the week’s bad news, with lots of shouting at the Never Trumpers (because we don’t matter) and anxiety about who wil be left on “the day after.”
This is because they know we’re right. /1
● There’s no more question about “who will be proved right.” The Never Trumpers were right, and our worst fears are playing out right now. Yes, the GOP got its judges. And no, the economy hasn’t collapsed. (yet). The rest is happening as we speak. /2
● By this I mean continuing attacks on our constitutional norms by the WH itself; a war on our IC and LE communities; the attempt to politicize the DoJ; even the shredding of the AG. (Karmic payback for Sessions, but wow.) /3
● Executive depts are functioning by default, aides are managing up (to put it gently) as they try to whack each other out; policies diverge between sensible stuff the bureaucrats can do, and exec orders that vary from stupid to cruel, and meant mostly as theater for the rubes. /4
● In foreign policy, the Russians are rightfully laughing at us; the Chinese and North Koreans have a free pass; we’re in a tariff war with our own allies; NATO has been dangerously undermined, Canada is bewildered and angry. Immense damage to US strength. /5
● The GOP as a party, meanwhile, is now a cult of personality, bereft of conservative ideals, except for one: That “conservatism” must be carried forward by unelected judges, which is totally not a conservative ideal. Veteran GOPers see what’s coming – and have wisely retired. /6
● All that’s left to see is just how badly the Trumpers got it wrong. It’s no longer a matter, for example, of *whether* collusion with Russia happened, it’s *how far it went and who knew*. Even if there were no more revelations, this alone is shocking. But there will be more. /7
● Elsewhere, POTUS is implicated in two felonies (at least two, for now) involving payouts to a porn star – forcing every GOPer who ever blathered about “character” and “integrity” and “you can’t trust a man if his wife can’t” to eat those words and swallow them dry, forever. /8
● It was unwise for Trump loyalists to double, triple, quadruple, and quintuple down on all this. They were warned: there is no better Trump. It will actually get *worse* from here, which most of them have assured themselves is impossible. And yet it will. And this scares them. /9
● In the end, it’s a false question about “who will be proved right.” Even with a honeymoon grace period, that debate should have ended after Helsinki. But it’s over now as we enter this time of national crisis. They know this. It’s why they’ll yell louder: It’s panic time. /10x

NBC: John Dean: If Kavanaugh’s confirmed, a president who shoots someone on Fifth Avenue can’t be prosecuted in office http://nbcnews.to/2M9obba
// The former Nixon White House counsel was among the witnesses called by Democrats to testify at the fourth and final day of the Supreme Court nominee’s confirmation hearings this week.

Bloomberg: DNC Lawyers Raise Prospect That Papadopoulos’s U.K. Contact May Be Dead http://bloom.bg/2wTnvS1

🐣 RT @DHSgov Breaking news from the @SecretService today regarding Russian hacking. https://go.usa.gov/xPa9n 
// Andrei Tyurin bank hacking

Vox: Nixon White House counsel: Trump doesn’t respect the rule of law http://bit.ly/2MW28KH
// John Dean says that’s the difference between the sitting president and Richard Nixon.

Bloomberg: Manafort Weighing Plea Deal to Avoid New Criminal Trial, Source Says http://bloom.bg/2MaLiSL

● Talks said to center on possible admissions, sentencing length
● Ex-Trump campaign chief was convicted in Virginia last month

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Pro-Trump commentator Scottie Nell Hughes has landed a full-time position as an anchor on the Russian propaganda network RT. Her multiyear deal was described as “lucrative.””It’s an honor and privilege to anchor RT America’s weeknight newscasts,” she said.
⋙ 🐣 To be fair, Larry King landed there and so did Ed Schulz.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Republicans Balk At Democrats’ Pledge to Snub Hackers http://bit.ly/2wSrMoy
// So far, only House Democrats have chosen to hold themselves publicly accountable for how they plan to handle any stolen documents that come their way.

Newsweek: John Dean: Under Brett Kavanaugh’s Recommendation, Trump Could Shoot Someone Dead and Not Be Prosecuted in Office http://bit.ly/2MVih30

🐣 RT @alfranken Everybody on the Republican side of the dais knows Kavanaugh’s nomination is purely to further the Republican agenda. Everybody’s in on it. It is maddening. So I wrote about it for USA Today.
⋙ USAToday: Kavanaugh Supreme Court hearings showcase Republican partisanship, hypocrisy: Al Franken http://usat.ly/2oQoQ8A

🐣 RT @SenFeinstein Brett Kavanaugh has said a president can’t be investigated or indicted and that a president can fire a special counsel at will. These views are especially troubling given Trump has been implicated in felonies.
⋙ JustSecurity (Jul): Setting the Record Straight: Brett Kavanaugh’s Views on Criminal Investigation of the President http://bit.ly/2oPRVkf
// 7/12/2018

CNN: “I don’t want to be set up with a perjury trap”: President Trump said he is concerned he could open himself up to perjury if he sits down with special counsel Robert Mueller for questioning, echoing the worries of his personal attorneys https://cnn.it/2Cua6px 

USAToday: Donald Trump says he will testify before Bob Mueller ‘under certain circumstances’ http://usat.ly/2wUZFVE

ApNews: The Latest: Trump aide Papadopoulos gets 14 days in prison http://bit.ly/2NUYRHW

⭕ 6 Sep 2018

NYT: Frustration and Finger-Pointing as G.O.P. Pulls Out of Deal Talks on Hacked Materials http://nyti.ms/2wSXCTa

House Republicans withdrew on Thursday from negotiations with Democrats over a pact that would have effectively barred both parties from using hacked or stolen material on the campaign trail this fall.

Leaders of the National Republican Congressional Committee, the campaign arm of House Republicans, and their counterparts at the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had labored for much of the summer over rules that would have governed the way the congressionally run committees and their candidates treated material like the thousands of pages of damaging Democratic documents stolen and leaked by Russian hackers in 2016.

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind This has a feel of a smoking gun – and Kamala is on it! ¤ Get that under oath. Nothing these people say is credible unless under oath (and even then, not always).
⋙ 🐣 RT @CaroleLenning Update:
– Kavanaugh acknowledges close friendship with Kasowitz atty Ed McNally
– White House and Kasowitz firm say McNally neither helped prep Kavaugh nor discussed Mueller probe with him

🐣 RT @secdef19 The nuclear football travels with the POTUS at all times, usually as close as the next room. In order to initiate a launch order, the order must be authenticated using the nuclear “biscuit” carried by POTUS and is then sent out through NMCC. This order can not be countermanded.

🐣 RT @MichaelAvenatti I sincerely hope (1) those four docs that were released this morning by Mr. Booker really were still confidential, so he can prove the GOP is lying and (2) that Ms. Harris discloses the evidence of the communications she suggested last night exists and then eviscerates Kavanaugh.

🐣 RT @matthewamiller If he won’t even answer in writing, it’s not because they’re worried he would lie in the room, the excuse they’ve been giving. It’s because they know truthful answers are incriminating.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonlamire NEW: President Trump will not answer questions, in person or in writing, about obstruction of justice. ¤ That declaration from Rudy Giuliani tonight is the most definitive rejection yet of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s efforts to interview the president
⋙⋙ AP: Giuliani to AP: Trump will not answer obstruction questions http://bit.ly/2QaFeNm

✅ factcheckdotorg Some Democrats have expressed concern that Kavanaugh was hand-picked by Trump to protect the president from Mueller’s criminal investigation. We look at the judge’s record on executive privilege.
⋙ FactCheck: Kavanaugh File: Executive Privilege http://bit.ly/2NqCQDC

NBC: Kavanaugh questioned on forcing Trump to answer in Russia probe http://nbcnews.to/2MWhnTA
// Brett Kavanaugh declined to answer if a sitting president could be forced to answer a subpoena or pardon himself, but praised the Supreme Court’s 1974 ruling requiring President Nixon to abide by a subpoena during Watergate.

WaPo: Conservative GOP members ask Trump to declassify documents related to Russia probe http://wapo.st/2wOCgVY

🐣 RT @gelles BREAKING: Russia has warned the US military twice in the last week that its forces, along with Syrian regime units, are prepared to attack in an area where dozens of US troops are located, according to several US defense officials. @barbarastarrcnn reports

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Putin’s ‘Friend’ Had Early Access to Trump’s Infamous Pro-Russia Speech http://thebea.st/2wMjWNU

⭕ 5 Sep 2018

NBC (9/5): Mueller subpoenas Jerome Corsi, birther and ex-Alex Jones associate http://nbcnews.to/2O9uWea
// 9/5/2018, A lawyer for the conspiracy theorist says he believes Corsi will be asked about his contacts with former Trump aide Roger Stone.

Slate, Jamelle Bouie: The Incapacitated President http://bit.ly/2MUNjrN
// Trump’s own aides don’t trust him to lead the country. Meanwhile, the only people who can stop this crisis pretend it doesn’t exist.

@cspan .@senkamalaharris asks if Judge Kavanaugh has discussed Mueller Investigation with anyone at Kasowitz Benson Torres law firm.
#Kavanaugh: “I would like to know the person you’re thinking of.”
Sen. Harris: “I think you’re thinking of someone and you don’t want to tell us.”
💽 https://twitter.com/cspan/status/1037514830490607617/photo/1

🐣 RT @TimOBrien Team Trump was so concerned abt Trump’s fitness that they pondered the 25th Amendment, but opted to avoid a “constitutional crisis.” Now these same unknowns and unelecteds run the country sans oversight. Isn’t that, by definition, a constitutional crisis?
🐣 RT @McFaul: Putin has banned me from traveling to Russia. His prosecutor general has suggested that they want to arrest me for crimes I allegedly committed while working at the White House. & people still ask, why are you a Russiaphobe? & btw, Im not a Russiaphobe. Im a Putin-phobe.

NYT, Anonymous (❗): I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration http://nyti.ms/2NQFL5z
// I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

The Times today is taking the rare step of publishing an anonymous Op-Ed essay. We have done so at the request of the author, a senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us and whose job would be jeopardized by its disclosure. We believe publishing this essay anonymously is the only way to deliver an important perspective to our readers. We invite you to submit a question about the essay or our vetting process here.

President Trump is facing a test to his presidency unlike any faced by a modern American leader.

It’s not just that the special counsel looms large. Or that the country is bitterly divided over Mr. Trump’s leadership. Or even that his party might well lose the House to an opposition hellbent on his downfall.

The dilemma — which he does not fully grasp — is that many of the senior officials in his own administration are working diligently from within to frustrate parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations.

I would know. I am one of them.

The root of the problem is the president’s amorality. Anyone who works with him knows he is not moored to any discernible first principles that guide his decision making.

Although he was elected as a Republican, the president shows little affinity for ideals long espoused by conservatives: free minds, free markets and free people. At best, he has invoked these ideals in scripted settings. At worst, he has attacked them outright.

Meetings with him veer off topic and off the rails, he engages in repetitive rants, and his impulsiveness results in half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions that have to be walked back.

“There is literally no telling whether he might change his mind from one minute to the next,” a top official complained to me recently, exasperated by an Oval Office meeting at which the president flip-flopped on a major policy decision he’d made only a week earlier.

The erratic behavior would be more concerning if it weren’t for unsung heroes in and around the White House. Some of his aides have been cast as villains by the media. But in private, they have gone to great lengths to keep bad decisions contained to the West Wing, though they are clearly not always successful.

It may be cold comfort in this chaotic era, but Americans should know that there are adults in the room. We fully recognize what is happening. And we are trying to do what’s right even when Donald Trump won’t.

The result is a two-track presidency.

Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations.

Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals.

On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin’s spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better — such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable.

This isn’t the work of the so-called deep state. It’s the work of the steady state.

Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president. But no one wanted to precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until — one way or another — it’s over.

The bigger concern is not what Mr. Trump has done to the presidency but rather what we as a nation have allowed him to do to us. We have sunk low with him and allowed our discourse to be stripped of civility.

Senator John McCain put it best in his farewell letter. All Americans should heed his words and break free of the tribalism trap, with the high aim of uniting through our shared values and love of this great nation.

We may no longer have Senator McCain. But we will always have his example — a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue. Mr. Trump may fear such honorable men, but we should revere them.

There is a quiet resistance within the administration of people choosing to put country first. But the real difference will be made by everyday citizens rising above politics, reaching across the aisle and resolving to shed the labels in favor of a single one: Americans.

Politico Mag, Molly McKew: Trump Is Russia’s Weapon—Not Its End State http://politi.co/2wN0q43 //➔ 9 Big Ideas That Explain Politics In 2018
// Sep-Oct 2018, The president is a useful disruption in a broader campaign by the Kremlin that we need to worry about.

🐣 RT @GlostnostGone Salisbury #Novichok poisoning: 2 Russians have been named as suspects by #UK police. Today in Parliament, Prime Minister May said suspects using names – Alexander Petrov & Ruslan Boshirov are officers of Russia’s Military Intelligence (GRU). https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-45421445 … #Skripal
⋙ BBC: Salisbury Novichok poisoning: Two Russian nationals named as suspects http://bbc.in/2Q78F2X

🐣 [To Avenatti and others] Okay. Here is the Email I sent to @MoveOn. I can’t think of another way to rally people very quickly any other way, though I’m sure others can think of some. @womensmarch @AMarch4OurLives #Resistance @Dems @DNC
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1037296418166325249/photo/1

The true inflection point for the future of the Mueller investigation (and much more) is likely going to be the Kavanaugh confirmation. If we wait to protest until after he is confirmed, it could be too late.

MoveOn is the only organization I know ready to seize the moment. You have hundreds of groups ready to protest if Mueller is fired. I’m suggesting that you use them pre-emptively to rally against Kavanaugh since Kavanaugh is all about giving the President unprecedented powers to not only fire Mueller (and others) but to endow himself with powers and impunity worthy of a tyrant.

I encourage you to think about it.

⭕ 4 Sep 2018

ForeignPolicy, Edward Joseph: How to Restart War in the Balkans http://bit.ly/2N73PVn
// The Trump administration will regret looking for simple solutions to Eastern Europe’s territorial disputes.

🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss Bob Woodward is no Omarosa. If Trump were not a sick and dangerous mess, he’d keep his flap shut. But he can’t. Because he is.
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidmaraniss I’ve watched close-hand how Bob Woodward works and have learned from him for 41years. He is a singularly meticulous gatherer of facts and documents and I would bet my life on his reliability. He is an American treasure

💙💙 NewYorker, Adam Davidson: Where Will the Trump Investigations Go Next? http://bit.ly/2Q3SIKN
See under Entire Articles: NYkr Trump Invstg 9-4-2018
Names Key People:
Ivanka
Don Jr
Allen Weisselberg – Accountant
Rhona Graff – Administrative Assistant
George Sorial – Executive VP
Michael Cohen – Personal Lawyer (“Fixer”)
Roy Cohn – Former Lawyer
Jason Greenblatt – Lead Lawyer
⋙ Fat Tony Salerno (Genovese)
⋙ Mammadov family
Keith Schiller – Bodyguard
Matthew Calamari – Bodyguard

NewYorker, Adam Davidson: Where Will the Trump Investigations Go Next? http://bit.ly/2Q3SIKN
See under Entire Articles: NYkr Trump Invstg 9-4-2018

🐣 RT @CindyOtis_ [Former CIA Agent on feelings of despair among the #Resistance, Left and Center]
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/CindyOtis_/status/1036981354486018048

Kavanaugh’s hearing started. As a political scientist/former intel officer, it’s hard to believe we’re here after all the evidence of corruption under this a[d]min. Cue the replies telling me this is how it is now in the US. And that’s actually what I want tweet about this AM. (1/)

There’s a serious danger to simply accepting what’s happening as the new normal. I can’t overstate it. To be honest, I think it gives some a feeling of intellectual superiority. THEY see what we’ve really turned into whereas the rest of us are naive for being outraged. (2/)

Not even two years in, and I’d wager a significant portion of the Left and Center are at this point mentally. And, as someone who covered authoritarian regimes for a time, that is terrifying. Authoritarian regimes don’t come to power on their own. (3/)

Sure, these regimes need their supporters. But they also need a large portion of their society to feel demoralized, like there’s nothing that can be done. And they need those voices who think they’re intellectually superior saying, “This is just the way it is now.” (4/)

In case I’m not being clear enough, those voices of acceptance ARE how authoritarian regimes come to power & stay. People who think this is over once Trump is out of office are wrong. This administration has broken norms and precedents that will have lasting consequences. (5/)

I know people are exhausted. Truly, I get it. I also understand why people think it will be easier in the short-term to just accept what’s happening & wait for a brighter day. But there will come a point where it gets MUCH harder to fix what’s been broken. (6/)

We’re not there yet, but we will be if the prevailing opinion is this is just the way things are. That’s how authoritarianism works. We’re not the first country to go through this. It’s an odd thing to take comfort in, I suppose, but use it as a guide. (7/)

Stay angry. Stay outraged. Take action. It’s not naive. It’s how we fix this. To be anything else simply enables authoritarianism. Shame on us for treating civic engagement as an option and politics as an impolite topic. We’re seeing the result. Let’s never go back. (8/8)

🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Republicans could have picked from a lot of conservative judges, but only Kavanaugh has taken a particular position on the prosecution of a sitting president…
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1037151487934255104/photo/1

WaPo, David Ignatius: Working with Russia on cybercrime is like hiring a burglar to protect the family jewels http://wapo.st/2wKoJPZ

Euromaidan: What the UK, Sweden & Baltics did to be “full-scale defenders” against Kremlin subversion http://bit.ly/2PAD7Bq

Reuters: Kremlin dismisses Trump warning on Syria’s Idlib http://reut.rs/2NQz9V3

⭕ 3 Sep 2018

NYT: Democrats, Eyeing a Majority, Prepare an Investigative Onslaught http://nyti.ms/2Q0eUW9
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1036819043003629573/photo/1

● House Oversight and Govt Reform: Elijah Cummings (MD)
● Intelligence: Adam B. Schiff (CA)
● Judiciary: Jerrold Nadler (NY)
● Financial Services: Maxine Waters (CA)
● Foreign Affairs: Eliot Engel (NY)
● Armed Services: Adam Smith (WA)
● Homeland Security: Bennie Thompson (MS)
● Veterans Affairs: Tim Walz – retiring (MN)
● Ways and Means: Richard Neal (MA)
● Budget: John Yarmouth (KY)
● Appropriations: Nita Lowey (NY)
● Small Business: Nydia Velázquez (NY)
● Education and the Workforce: Bobby Scott (VA)
● Energy and Commerce: Frank Pallone (NJ)
● Science, Space and Technology: Eddie Bernice Johnson (TX)
● Agriculture: Collin Peterson (MN)
● Natural Resources: Raúl Grijalva (AZ)
● Transportarion and Infrastructure: Peter DeFasio (OR)
● Ethics: Ted Deutch (FL)

🐣 RT @RBReich If Trump blocks Mueller from releasing his final report, Trump is guilty of 2 more impeachable offenses: obstruction of justice, and failure to faithfully execute the laws.
⋙ TheHill: Giuliani: Trump legal team may try to block Mueller from releasing final report http://bit.ly/2NcMVnv

Documentary: ACTIVE MEASURES https://www.activemeasures.com
// Release Date: 8/31/2018

Chronicles the most successful espionage operation in Russian history, the American presidential election of 2016. Filmmaker Jack Bryan exposes a 30-year history of covert political warfare devised by Vladmir Putin to disrupt, and ultimately control world events. In the process, the filmmakers follow a trail of money, real estate, mob connections, and on the record confessions to expose an insidious plot that leads directly back to The White House. With democracy hanging in the balance, ACTIVE MEASURES is essential viewing. Unraveling the true depth and scope of “the Russia story” as we have come to know it, this film a jarring reminder that some conspiracies hide in plain sight.

Original Interviews With:

Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State (2008–2013)
Toomás Hendrik Ilves, President of Estonia (2006–2016)
Mikheil Saakashvili, President of Georgia (2004 – 2013)
Senator John McCain, Senate Armed Services Committee
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, Senate Judiciary Committee
Congressman Eric Swalwell, House Intelligence Committee
Steven Hall, CIA Chief of Russia Operations (1985–2013)
Michael McFaul, U.S. Ambassador to Russia (2012–2014)
Nina Burleigh, Journalist and Newsweek Correspondent
Craig Unger, Journalist and Vanity Fair Contributing Editor
James Woolsey, Director of Central Intelligence (1993–1995)
John Mattes, Bernie Sanders Organizer, Investigative Journalist
Richard Fontaine, President, Center for New American Security
Michael Isikoff, Author, Russian Roulette
John Dean, White House Counsel to President Nixon (1970–1973)
Dr. Herb Lin, Director Cyber Policy and Security, Stanford University
Clint Watts, Former FBI Special Agent on Joint Terrorism Task Force
Evan McMullin, U.S. 2016 Presidential Candidate, CIA Operative (1999–2010)
Dr. Alina Polyakova, Brookings Institution, Foreign Policy Fellow, Center on the United States and Europe
John Podesta, Chair, Hillary for America, Founder, Center for American Progress
Jonathan Winer, Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for International Law Enforcement (1994–1999)
Jeremy Bash, CIA Chief of Staff (2009–2011), Pentagon Chief of Staff (2011–2013)
Ambassador Daniel Fried, Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs (2005–2009)
Scott Horton, International Law and Human Rights Attorney, Columbia Law School
Heather Conley, “Kremlin Playbook” Author, Center for Strategic and International Studies
Steven Pifer, U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine (1997–2000), U.S. Department of State (1978–2004)
Asha Rangappa, FBI Special Agent on Counterintelligence (2002 – 2005), Associate Dean of Yale Law
Molly McKew, Information Warfare Expert
Alexandra Chalupa, DNC Consultant

⭕ 2 Sep 2018

🐣 RT @RichardHaass One additional thought RE the memorial service for John McCain: it was an important foreign policy statement to the world, that the America they had long known and admired still exists. Acting in ways others respect and want to associate with is soft power at its most potent.

Brookings, Alina Polyakova and Spencer Phipps Boyer (Mar): The future of political warfare: Russia, the West, and the coming age of global digital competition http://brook.gs/2wDbL5W
⋙ Report [pdf] http://brook.gs/2ouzOQK 24p
// Mar 2018

ReportingProject: Dossier: Semion Mogilevich http://bit.ly/2wBG9OF

🔄📒≣ ReportingProject: Dossiers http://bit.ly/2wBG9OF

AZDailyStar: Star Opinion: Don’t replace McCain with a Trump supporter http://bit.ly/2NbcsO7 “It would dishonor McCain, and do an extreme disservice to the voters who elected him in 2016, to install a Trump supporter in McCain’s Senate seat.” @dougduce

Motherboard, Kim Zetter (Jul): Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States http://bit.ly/2LqL8HD
// 7/17/2018, Remote-access software and modems on election equipment ‘is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.’

⭕ 1 Sep 2018

🐣 RT @mitchellreports [To @real] FISA courts don’t hold hearings. They are secret courts – by degrees motion. Established by Congress.

TheIndependent [UK]: Belgian steel executive working for Russia’s richest man falls to his death from Moscow balcony http://ind.pn/2MFOFGy
// Police sources are ruling out foul play, but suspicions remain

A Belgian steel executive who worked for Russia’s richest man has been found dead on the pavement beneath his central Moscow home. 

According to police sources, Bruno Charles de Cooman, 61, an employee of Novolipetsk Steel (NLMK), returned to his ninth-floor apartment shortly before plunging to his death at approximately 3.50pm local time on Wednesday. He had left friends by the building entrance. They reportedly saw him fall out of a window. …

During the year-long period Mr De Cooman worked for the company,  Novolipetsk Steel recorded record earnings, helping to make its owner, Vladimir Lisin, Russia’s richest man. That title completed a remarkable journey for the oligarch, who started out as an electrical fitter in a Siberian coal mine in the 1970s. In addition to controlling one of the world’s largest steel companies, Mr Lisin, 62, also heads the country’s largest freight rail operator. 

Before his appointment as vice-president in 2017, Mr De Cooman worked as an academic, specialising in materials science and engineering. Novolipetsk Steel had created a new position for him, placing him in charge of research and development.

According to Mash, a Telegram media channel understood to work closely with Russian law enforcement, Mr De Cooman’s death is not being treated as suspicious. No one was with the executive at the time of his death, the publication claims. 

At the same time, it adds, the Belgian was sober and had not talked of suicide in the time leading up to the incident. 

AIST: Leading steel researcher and noted AIST member Dr. Bruno Charles De Cooman died Wednesday after he reportedly fell from a window in his Moscow apartment building. http://bit.ly/2N8Ed9P //➔ people fall out windows a lot in Russia

🐣 RT @schnee Alfa Bank in context
https://twitter.com/schnee/status/1035941703985897473/photo/1

🐣 RT @john_sipher Watch closely. Right out of the Kremlin playbook. Create a problem. Stoke it. Express outrage at those defending themselves, make accusations, pretend to be a victim, and then double down.
⋙ NYT: Ukrainian Separatist Leader Is Killed in Restaurant Bombing http://nyti.ms/

NYT: A Complex Web: The F.B.I., Russian Oligarchs, Bruce Ohr and the Trump Campaign http://nyti.ms/2LM1dXI “Between 2014 and 2016, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant”
// Kenneth Vogel and Matthew Rosenberg

In the estimation of American officials, Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with close ties to the Kremlin, has faced credible accusations of extortion, bribery and even murder.

They also thought he might make a good source.

Between 2014 and 2016, the F.B.I. and the Justice Department unsuccessfully tried to turn Mr. Deripaska into an informant. They signaled that they might provide help with his trouble in getting visas for the United States or even explore other steps to address his legal problems. In exchange, they were hoping for information on Russian organized crime and, later, on possible Russian aid to President Trump’s 2016 campaign, according to current and former officials and associates of Mr. Deripaska.

In one dramatic encounter, F.B.I. agents appeared unannounced and uninvited at a home Mr. Deripaska maintains in New York and pressed him on whether Paul Manafort, a former business partner of his who went on to become chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, had served as a link between the campaign and the Kremlin.

The attempt to flip Mr. Deripaska was part of a broader, clandestine American effort to gauge the possibility of gaining cooperation from roughly a half-dozen of Russia’s richest men, nearly all of whom, like Mr. Deripaska, depend on President Vladimir V. Putin to maintain their wealth, the officials said.

Two of the players in the effort were Bruce G. Ohr, the Justice Department official who has recently become a target of attacks by Mr. Trump, and Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled a dossier of purported links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

The systematic effort to win the cooperation of the oligarchs, which has not previously been revealed, does not appear to have scored any successes. And in Mr. Deripaska’s case, he told the American investigators that he disagreed with their theories about Russian organized crime and Kremlin collusion in the campaign, a person familiar with the exchanges said. The person added that Mr. Deripaska even notified the Kremlin about the American efforts to cultivate him.

Mr. Deripaska was the subject of many of the contacts between the two men between 2014 and 2016.

The outreach to Mr. Deripaska, who is so close to the Russian president that he has been called “Putin’s oligarch,” was not as much of a long shot as it might have appeared.

He had worked with the United States government in the past, including on a thwarted effort to rescue an F.B.I. agent captured in Iran, on which he reportedly spent as much as $25 million of his own money. And he had incentive to cooperate again in the run-up to the 2016 election, as he tried to win permission to travel more easily to the United States, where he has long sought more freedom to do business and greater acceptance as a global power broker.

[F]irst date on which the two [Ohr and Steele] discussed cultivating Mr. Deripaska: a meeting in Washington on Nov. 21, 2014, roughly seven months before Mr. Trump announced that he was running for president.

[The sources] also said they did not want Mr. Trump and his allies to use the program’s secrecy as a screen with which they could cherry-pick facts and present them, sheared of context, to undermine the special counsel’s investigation. That, too, they said they feared, would damage American security.

It was not only the F.B.I. that was concerned about Russian interference in the final months of the campaign. American spy agencies were sounding an alarm after months of intelligence reports about contacts between Trump associates and Russians, and Moscow’s hacking of Democratic Party emails. (American intelligence agencies would later conclude that the interefence was real and that Russia had acted to boost Mr. Trump’s candidacy.)

Mr. Deripaska, though, told the F.B.I. agents that while he had no love for Mr. Manafort, with whom he was in a bitter business dispute, he found their theories about his role on the campaign “preposterous.” He also disputed that there were any connections between the Trump campaign and Russia, according to the person familiar with the exchange.

This past April, the Treasury Department imposed potentially crippling sanctions against Mr. Deripaska and his mammoth aluminum company, saying he had profited from the “malign activities” of Russia around the world. In announcing the sanctions, the Trump administration cited accusations that Mr. Deripaska had been accused of extortion, racketeering, bribery, links to organized crime and even ordering the murder of a businessman.

Mr. Deripaska has denied the allegations, and his allies contend that the sanctions are punishment for refusing to play ball with the Americans.

Yet just as it was becoming clear that Mr. Deripaska would provide little help to the Americans, Mr. Steele was talking to Mr. Ohr about an entirely new issue: the dossier.

Over a breakfast in Washington, Mr. Steele said he believed that Russian intelligence had Mr. Trump “over a barrel,” according to a person familiar with the discussion. But the person said that it was more of a friendly heads-up, and that Mr. Steele had separately been in touch with an F.B.I. agent in a bid to get his work to investigators.

The research by that point was being funded by the Democratic National Committee and Mrs. Clinton’s campaign, and Mr. Steele believed that what he had found was damning enough that he needed to get it to American law enforcement.

F.B.I. agents would later meet with Mr. Steele to discuss his work. But former senior officials from the bureau and the Justice Department have said that the investigation into ties between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia was well underway by the time they got the dossier.

Nonetheless, Mr. Trump and his allies have seized on the fact that Mr. Ohr and Mr. Steele were in touch about elements of the dossier to attack the investigation into Russian election interference as a “rigged witch hunt.”

Mr. Trump and his allies have cast Mr. Steele’s research — and the serious consideration it was given by Mr. Ohr and the F.B.I. — as part of a plot by rogue officials and Mrs. Clinton’s allies to undermine Mr. Trump’s campaign and his presidency.

Among the documents produced to Congress by the Justice Department is an undated — and previously unreported — handwritten note jotted down by Mr. Ohr indicating that Mr. Deripaska and one of his London-based lawyers, Paul Hauser, were “almost ready to talk” to American government officials regarding the money that “Manafort stole.”

Last year, Mr. Ohr asked someone who communicated with Mr. Deripaska to urge the oligarch to “give up Manafort,” according to a person familiar with the exchange.

And Mr. Deripaska sought to engage with Congress.

The oligarch took out newspaper advertisements in the United States last year volunteering to testify in any congressional hearings examining his work with Mr. Manafort. The ads were in response to an Associated Press report that Mr. Manafort had secretly worked for Mr. Deripaska on a plan to “greatly benefit the Putin government” in the mid-2000s.

Mr. Deripaska deplored that assertion as “malicious” and a “lie,” and subsequently sued The A.P. for libel, though he later dropped the lawsuit without receiving a settlement or payment.

WaPo, Vladimir Kara-Murza: John McCain saw through Vladimir Putin better than anyone http://wapo.st/2oBm9Yp
// 8/27/2018

🔄≣💙 DocumentCloud: Papadopoulos Sentencing Memo http://bit.ly/2C66AkK

🐣 RT @DeptOfDefense “Senator John McCain, a man whose name alone provides a better description of a patriot than all the words in a dictionary’s definition – everything I love about America is resident in this man.” – #SecDef Mattis
● https://twitter.com/DeptofDefense/status/1035889107900219392/photo/1

🐣 RT @naretevduorp As an American Hero is laid to rest, an American Traitor lies in protest.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “You have a Fake Dossier, gathered by Steele, paid by the Clinton team to get information on Trump. The Dossier is Fake, nothing in it has been verified. It then filters into our American court system in order to spy on Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton’s political opponent……

Lawfare, Barbara McQuade: How President Trump’s Comments on ‘Flipping’ Witnesses Undermine Law Enforcement http://bit.ly/2wz8ftZ

⭕ 31 Aug 2018

🐣 RT @agenthades1 Fun! ¤ Lanny Wiles was the one who provided the seat to Vesilnitskaya at the McFaul hearing.
https://twitter.com/Agenthades1/status/1035705867243405312/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Agenthades1/status/1035705867243405312/photo/2

🐣 RT @ninaandtito I call MAJOR WTF on this @politico story. Susan Wiles, who is quoted, is married to Lanny Wiles.
⋙ Politico: ‘Something was weird’: Inside the Russian effort to bamboozle Florida http://politi.co/2PXn1TF
// 2/16/2018, The operation in the nation’s largest swing state was in a class by itself.
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/ninaandtito/status/964703637778780160

🐣 RT @leahmcelrath This assassination comes as Russia reportedly has been moving armaments from Siberia to near the Ukraine border. 💥💥
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1035568389127856128

🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Rachel Maddow on the finances around the Donald Trump inauguration: ‘It’s all so freaking shady!’
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1035707620001308678/photo/1
↥ ↧
NYT (Feb): Trump’s Inaugural Committee Paid $26 Million to Firm of First Lady’s Adviser http://nyti.ms/2wAhmK6
// 2/15/2018

KyivPost (1/21/2017): Taras Kuzio: Incompetence in Ukraine’s foreign policy represents threat to national security http://bit.ly/2N7Yw7l

… Ukrainian government officials tried to help Hillary Clinton and undermine Trump by publicly questioning his fitness for office. They also disseminated documents implicating a top Trump aide in corruption and suggested they were investigating the matter, only to back away after the election. And they helped Clinton’s allies research damaging information on Trump and his advisers.” (http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446). …
// can’t find this ⇈

NYT: She Gambled on Her Claim to Link Russians and Trump. She Is Losing http://nyti.ms/2oqL9Bp

🐣 RT @imthemadridista Deripaska has not only employed Manafort & Gates but also, Foreigner A, Konstantin Kilimink, Sam Patten’s business partner. ¤ Deripaska has hired other DC lobbying firms, including Endeavor Group, Haley Barbour/BGR Group & guess who? Yup, Robert “Bob” Dole.
⋙ RFE/RL (2017): White House Shrugs Off Report That Former Trump Aide Manafort Proposed Plan To Benefit Putin http://bit.ly/2C4ADt4
// 3/22/2018
● https://twitter.com/imthemadridista/status/1035606543549509639/photo/1

WaPo: American political consultant admits foreign money was funneled to Trump inaugural http://wapo.st/2LNZz7M

Politico.eu, Toomas Hendrik Ilves: John McCain’s European example http://politi.co/2wuKzXR
// The American was the greatest transatlanticist of the post-Cold-War era.

DailyBeast, Julia Davis: The Real Reason Russia Is Rooting for Republicans in the Midterms http://thebea.st/2LL4XJ4
//. State-controlled media joke about abetting Trump and believe his tough talk on sanctions is just a ploy. If the Republicans win the midterms, they say, he’ll come around.

🔄 📋 Investigators List: @kelly2277 @LuluLemew @WZRichard @ninaandtito @truthteller8889 @JamesFourM @BGHeaven @Redrum_of_Crows @patrickLSimpson @funder @grantstern @JuddLegum @RanttMedia @PoliticusSarah @ushadrons @LouiseMensch @TeaPainUSA @SethAbramson @pwnallthethings @benjaminwittes

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok In addition to funneling illegal money to Trump inauguration, Patten helped Yanuk aide Lovochkin get meetings to lobby Congress and helped him author op-ed arguing “Ukraine will be fine under President Trump” & should get along w/ its neighbors 😒 ie lobbying for Russian interests.
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1035637737943064577/photo/1
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1035637737943064577/photo/2

🐣 RT @AltCyberCommand Let Biden’s words echo throughout the halls of Washington: “[We] cannot stand the abuse of power… in whatever form. [We] love basic values: honesty, respect, giving hate no harbor, leaving no one behind and understanding we are part of something much bigger than ourselves.”

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok In addition to funneling illegal money to Trump inauguration, Patten helped Yanuk aide Lovochkin get meetings to lobby Congress and helped him author op-ed arguing “Ukraine will be fine under President Trump” & should get along w/ its neighbors 😒 ie lobbying for Russian interests.
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1035637737943064577/photo/1
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1035637737943064577/photo/2

WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s latest rally rant is much more alarming and dangerous than usual http://wapo.st/2wsLyaQ “Trump … lashed out at the FBI and the Justice Department, claiming that ‘people are angry’ and threatening to personally ‘get involved.’”

Today’s Democrat Party is held hostage by left-wing haters, angry mobs, deep-state radicals, establishment cronies and their fake-news allies,” Trump railed. “Our biggest obstacle and their greatest ally actually is the media.”

In case there is any doubt about what Trump meant by the “deep state” that is supposedly allied with the news media, Trump also lashed out at the FBI and the Justice Department, claiming that “people are angry” and threatening to personally “get involved.”

TheHill: NATO considers naming headquarters after McCain http://bit.ly/2osbDCF

🐣 RT @MSNBC In plea deal, Manafort-linked lobbyist admits he made a $50,000 donation through a straw donor to President Trump’s Inauguration Cmte. for a Russian and a Ukrainian, documents show, though they do not suggest the cmte. was aware of the straw purchase.
⋙ NBC, Ken Dilanian et al: Manafort-linked lobbyist W. Samuel Patten admits using straw donor to buy Trump inaugural tickets for Russian, Ukrainian http://nbcnews.to/2wxxzAt
// The operative pleaded guilty in court Friday and has agreed to cooperate with special counsel Robert Mueller.

🐣 RT @gelles Samuel Patten, a DC lobbyist who worked with an alleged Russian intelligence agent, has agreed to cooperate with the special counsel. He’s admitted to funneling foreign money to purchase tickets to the Trump inauguration. Mueller is probing the record $106.8 million raised.

🐣 Vox, Andrew Prokop (7/5): Why Trump’s inauguration money is a major part of Mueller’s Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2NqCeLw
// 7/5/2018, Russia-tied donations and oligarch connections have drawn Mueller’s interest.

TPM, Tierney Sneed: GOP Operative Who Pleaded Guilty To Foreign Lobbying Charge Also Aided Illegal Inauguration Ticket Purchase http://bit.ly/2NCxulG

The GOP operative who pleaded guilty Friday to failing to register his Ukrainian lobbying work in the U.S. also lied to the Senate Intelligence Committee, deleted documents that would have revealed those false statements and aided with an illegal straw purchase of tickets to President Trump’s inauguration for a Ukrainian oligarch, according to court documents.

Lobbyist Sam Patten is not being charged for that conduct, according to the statement of offense filed with his guilty plea to the foreign lobbying charge. The prosecution was handled by the U.S. Attorneys Office in D.C.; however, Patten’s plea agreement calls for cooperation with special counsel Robert Mueller and members of Mueller’s team were present at his plea hearing in D.C.’s federal courthouse.

🐣 RT @ShimonPro Significance of today: ¤ With Samuel Patten’s guilty plea we now have direct confirmation that foreign money was used to buy tickets to Donald Trump’s inauguration. Paid by foreigners through straw purchasers ¤ His cooperation with Mueller crucial now in that larger investigation

DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Republican Lobbyist Steered Foreign Money to Trump’s Inaugural Committee http://thebea.st/2N3NoZb
// Republican lobbyist Sam Patten, who previously worked with the Trump campaign’s data firm, is the latest to be nabbed in the Mueller probe.

WaPo: Washington consultant for Ukraine party pleads guilty to violating lobbyist disclosure law http://wapo.st/2Poi4lE

TheGuardian: Paul Manafort associate who worked with Cambridge Analytica charged http://bit.ly/2LJD4kB
Sam Patten charged under Foreign Agents Registration Act
Republican once worked with controversial consultancy

A Republican political consultant linked to Paul Manafort, who also once worked for Cambridge Analytica, has been charged with operating illegally in the US as an agent for pro-Russia politicians from Ukraine.

Sam Patten is accused of “willfully” acting as an agent for the Ukrainian political party Opposition Bloc between 2014 and this year, according to a filing to federal court in Washington DC on Friday.

Patten, 47, was charged with violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act (Fara) by failing to register with the US government as an agent for a foreign country.

The charge was brought by the US attorney’s office in the capital. The case was referred to that office by Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating Russian election interference, links between Trump aides and Moscow and potential obstruction of justice by the president.

US prosecutors said Patten’s company was paid $1m for advising Opposition Bloc and lobbying US politicians on its behalf. The funds were allegedly paid via an offshore account in Cyprus from a “prominent Ukraine oligarch” who is an Opposition Bloc member.

A page on Patten’s website that has since been removed said he “worked with one of London’s most innovative strategic communications companies to introduce new technologies and methodologies” during the 2014 US election.

During an interview last year with a British academic researcher, Patten said: “I’ve worked in Ukraine, Iraq, I’ve worked in deeply corrupt countries, and [the American] system isn’t very different.”

🐣 RT @ShimonPro !!!! Prosecutors say Samuel Patten sought tickets to Donald Trump’s presidential inauguration on behalf of a prominent Ukrainian oligarch. Patten acted as a “straw purchaser,” funneling the Ukrainian’s money secretly to the inauguration committee through a Cypriot bank account.

CNN: Ohr says Steele told him Russian intel believed they had Trump ‘over a barrel’ http://cnn.it/2wwK7Zb

≣ DocumentCloud: New filing in United States v. Patten: Information – Felony http://bit.ly/2Pm3lYs

This thread by @aliasvaughn really helped me understand why the @AP article yesterday about Bruce Ohr was so important https://twitter.com/aliasvaughn/status/1035562083503484930
↥ ↧
📌 Thread: 🐣 RT @aliasvaughn https://twitter.com/aliasvaughn/status/1035574743284572162
… 30.
20. This excellent AP story goes on asking an essential question: “Why does Trump risk so much politically by even threatening to pull the security clearances of an active DoJ official without any of the ordinary procedures for doing so?”
19. And guess who Firtash partnered with? PAUL MANAFORT and Semion Mogilevich. This is where the connection is essential… there’s HIGH likelihood that Gates and other Manafort witnesses KNOW what Firtash did with Manafort. You can rest damn well assured Mueller KNOWS all this.
18. AP correctly notes: “little attention was paid to what may well be the most interesting item on Page’s resume — her considerable experience prosecuting money laundering cases involving Russian organized crime.” Page worked with FBI task force in Budapest vs? DMITRY FIRTASH.
17. Based on the above and on the fact Ohr is a Mogilevich specialist who went after him BIG time, I’m sure you can see why Trump has PLENTY of reasons to want to discredit Ohr. Guess who ELSE Trump went after who worked with FBI task force on RU money laundering? LISA PAGE.
16. “Over the years, no fewer than 1,300 Trump-branded condos were sold in all cash purchases to anonymous shell companies—the two criteria that set off alarm bells among anti-money laundering authorities.” You don’t say? The only thing Trump is capable of actually loving? MONEY
15. “If one tracks Trump’s ties to Russia, the name Mogilevich pops up more than any single name, beginning in 1984 when alleged Mogilevich operative David Bogatin bought five condos in Trump Tower for $6 mln in cash.” And we know how Trump loves his laundered money.
14. AP truth: ” If the FBI’s investigations turn toward Trump’s ties to Russian organized crime, which is entirely foreseeable, Trump may be interested in trying to delegitimize those efforts as he has attempted with other aspects of special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.”
13. Ohr being an expert in international organized crime, like Steele, is the cherry on the cake. Trump is deeply involved with Russian mafia (see: Semion Mogilevich, whom Ohr faced off against). Mogilevich operatives have used Trump properties to launder millions of $$$.
12. All of the above literally DESTROYS Trump and the Trump lackey wagon conspiracy theory about the FBI being biased, or the Steele dossier being the reason why the Russia investigation started. And THIS is why Trump detests Ohr and knows he’s his sworn enemy.
11. Kindly note: once his Steele ties were brought to light, Ohr was REASSIGNED. So the FBI promptly acted even when, quite frankly, it wasn’t necessary. but, transparency and objectivity above all, so he was reassigned. And he provided Congress with new details re: reassignment.
10. Ohr told Congress he couldn’t vouch for the accuracy of Steele’s information (bc duh, he wasn’t there) BUT said he considers him a reliable FBI informant who delivered “credible and actionable intelligence, including his probe into corruption at FIFA”.
9. “The breakfast took place amid ongoing FBI concerns about Russian election interference and possible communication with Trump associates. By then RU hackers had penetrated Dem email accounts including Podesta’s and Papadopoulos had said Russians had “dirt” on HRC via emails.”
8. Ohr also told Congress that Steele said Carter Page had met with more senior Russian’ officials than he had acknowledged meeting with. (meantime, Page has been forced to acknowledge meeting with at least a couple of them.)
7. Naturally, Ohr can also testify that the FBI investigation was already WELL under way by the time FBI received Steele’s dossier. Ohr can also testify that despite being friends with Steele, he was NOT the original source of information from it. So Trump is freaking out.
6. Attacking them publicly is meant to discredit them as witnesses. It doesn’t matter that it won’t work as they will testify against him anyway, it’s witness tampering at a minimum. This influences public perception, on top of the previous point I made about obstruction.
5. Trump’s tactic is to intimidate witnesses and to eliminate anyone at DoJ (see: McCabe) who is a witness against him, so that fewer people with deep knowledge of the Russian investigation and of obstruction of justice remain there. In so doing, he is obstructing justice
4. An unnamed former Ru intelligence official said that Russian intelligence believed “they had Trump over a barrel”, that’s the quote that was reported. Steele and Ohr have known each other for over a decade. They shared interest in international organized crime.
3. So if Trump so much as THINKS of touching Bruce Ohr, that is direct obstruction of justice, and his tweets already constitute witness tampering. AND everyone in Congress who was present at the interview KNOWS that. Just so you know who to hold accountable.
2. These details pertain to a breakfast that happened on July 30, 2016. Ohr described the breakfast to CONGRESS this week in a private interview. And that’s how the GOP Trump lackeys went to tell Trump, he found out and decided he can’t have a witness at DoJ.
1. Bruce Ohr is the Justice Department lawyer who was told by Christopher Steele that Russian intelligence believed it had Trump “over a barrel”. Start seeing why Trump is going after him?
⋙ 🐣 RT @jjouvenal Sources say Justice Department lawyer was told Russian intelligence had “Trump over a barrel”
⋙⋙ AP sources: Lawyer was told Russia had ‘Trump over a barrel’ http://bit.ly/2wxzy7U

🐣 RT @leahmcelrath This assassination comes as Russia reportedly has been moving armaments from Siberia to near the Ukraine border.
⋙@NBCNewsWorld BREAKING: Explosion at cafe has killed Alexander Zakharchenko, the leader of Russian-backed separatists in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, separatist and Russian news agencies report.

Vox: A Paul Manafort and Cambridge Analytica associate just struck a plea deal http://bit.ly/2NC3u9D
// Mueller handed off the investigation into Sam Patten — but seems to still be interested in what he has to say.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand (Apr): A Suspected Russian Spy, With Curious Ties to Washington http://bit.ly/2NBrfP6
// 4/6/2018, A longtime Republican operative has been in contact with a suspected Russian intelligence agent for nearly two decades. What does it mean for Robert Mueller’s investigation?

🐣 Unreal: Both McCain and Aretha Franklin services, Ohr testimony leaks, Mueller plea deal drops, Pro-Russian head of Unkraine insurgency assassinated and Canadian trade deal falls through when CA finds out Trump insulted them … Next?
// Both Sessions and Rosenstein are at McCain service
↥ ↧
💥💥💥Things Exploding 💥💥💥 (Little things)

🐣 RT @anders_aslund The leader of the Russian-backed separatist Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine, Alexander Zakharchenko has been killed in an explosion in a cafe in the region’s capital, Interfax

Bloomberg: Manafort Ally Agrees to Cooperate With U.S. After Guilty Plea http://bloom.bg/2wyAubC

🐣 RT @ChadSDay DOJ official confirms case of DC lobbyist Sam Patten was a referral from special counsel Robert Mueller’s team
⋙ AP: DC lobbyist charged with failing to file as foreign agent http://bit.ly/2MHcyh6

AP, Jeff Horwitz and Maria Danilova (Jul): Russian charged with Trump’s ex-campaign chief is key figure http://bit.ly/2NBSRDL
// 7/2/2018

Medium, Nafeez Ahmed (2017): Inside the secret Trump lobby that wants to profit from the break-up of Iraq http://bit.ly/2PofaNB via @chrisinsilico
// A network tied to Cambridge Analytica, Islamist insurgents, ExxonMobil and Koch convinced Trump to let go of Iraqi unity
// 3/21/2017

🔆 This❗️⋙ AP sources: DOJ Lawyer Bruce Ohr was told Russia had ‘Trump over a barrel’ http://bit.ly/2wxzy7U
⋙ See under Entire Articles: AP Trump over Barrel 8-31-2018

🐣 RT @brianklaas If a ‘blue wave’ happens, Democrats should start working to transform broken norms into unbreakable laws. Protect special counsels. Require tax returns. Stronger anti-nepotism laws. And making clear that the president is not above the law. My column:
⋙ WaPo, Brian Klaas: http://wapo.st/

🐣 RT @TopRopeTravis JUST IN: Approval ratings of Trump among Republicans drops below 80% for the first time. ¤ Disapproval of Trump jumps to 60% among all voters. ¤ 63% approve of Mueller’s investigation, up 11%. ¤ And for the first time, more favor impeachment proceedings than disapprove.
● https://twitter.com/TopRopeTravis/status/1035495274423177217/photo/1
// chart: Approval, Support to Mueller, Impeachment
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @EricBoehlert Trump has a 3% approval rating among black voters.
🐣 RT @ABCPolitics 60% disapprove of Pres. Trump, numerically the highest of his presidency; 53% disapprove strongly, the first time more than half have said so in an @ABC News/WaPo poll.
⋙ ABCNews: Trouble for Trump: Disapproval at a high, 63% back Mueller, half favor impeachment http://abcn.ws/2C6bDls
↥ ↧
📊 WaPo/ABC Poll: 60 percent disapprove of Trump, while clear majorities back Mueller and Sessions http://wapo.st/2PTYe2M Only 36% approve, 24%strongly; 53% STRONGLY disapprove
● Trend in Approval: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035508618291040256/photo/1
● Trump approval sinks to record lows, views on economy slip and many see admin as corrupt
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035516193078239233/photo/1
● 63% support Mueller investigation. 53% believe Trump has tried to interfere with it (obstruction) https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035517156270780416/photo/1
● Two-thirds think case for trying Manafort was justified. Only 18% think he should be pardoned https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035518249331507200/photo/1
● Only 23% side with Trump is his battle with AG Sessions; 62% stand with Sessions https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035522208997601280/photo/1
● 61% say if Trump directed Cohen to pay hush money to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, it would be a crime https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035522624225460224/photo/1
● Almost half (49%) think Congress should begin impeachment hearings. 25% of those polled identified as Republican; in this poll, only 78% of them approve of Trump’s performance https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035524589307215872/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
Note: The WaPo/ABC Poll that came out today (http://wapo.st/2PTYe2M) is rated A+ by FiveThirtyEight’s pollster ratings http://53eig.ht/2MDDZYU Of major polls, only Monmouth also scores an A+, although several smaller polling operations do.

🐣 RT @McFaul Last week, many asked me about my take on oligarchs, privatization, etc in Yeltsin era. So I tracked down this PDF of a piece I wrote back in the 1995 on privatization in Russia. Tragically, holds up pretty well:
⋙ CambridgeUnivPress (World Politics), Michael McFaul (Jan 1995): State Power, Institutional Change and the Politics of Privatization in Russia [pdf] http://bit.ly/2LK4Bm1 35p
// Jan 1995

🐣 RT @lovetogive2 🤔#McGahn’s former law firm #JonesDay not only rep’d Russian companies like #Gazprom, they also rep’d #Diebold —#IndictedForWorldwideFraud, makers of known-to-be-#hackable #VotingMachines?
⋙ 🐣 RT @sprzyslp Yes McGahn is Koch lawyer[.] Jones Day’s biggest client is Diebold. Diebold is now ES&S easily hacked voting machines used by GOP to rig elections since early 90s. Then of course Diebold makes ATM software for Alfa Bank. Follow money law firms banks and oil.
// 7/2/2018

🐣 RT @Yascha_Mounk Need a reminder of the human cost of dictatorship? All these are journalists who criticized Putin–and died under mysterious circumstances
● https://twitter.com/Yascha_Mounk/status/886276943888429056/photo/1
// 7/15/2017, trail of dead Russians; bio: Lecturer @Harvard, Senior Fellow @NewAmerica, Columnist @Slate, Host of The Good Fight podcast. Defending liberal democracy against the illiberal international.

⭕ 30 Aug 2018

ForeignPolicy, Stephen Walt (8/30): Planning for the Post-Trump Wreckage http://bit.ly/2OkTL7R
// When the president eventually exits the White House, the rest of us will quickly have to make sense of the world he’s left behind.

Slate, Oona Hathaway: Bruce Ohr Is One of the DOJ’s Top Russia Crime Fighters Is that why the president wants him fired? http://bit.ly/2NDNUKG

Politico: Anticipation builds around Mueller as 60-day election window nears http://politi.co/2PNlLlT
// The cutoff is not a hard and fast rule, but some former prosecutors expect Mueller to bend over backward to avoid taking steps that might be construed as improper before the midterms.

WaPo, Michael Gerson: This is the new GOP: Angry and afraid http://wapo.st/2LIXgml “Republicans must pick their own point of principled resistance to a corrosive populism, if they have one at all.”
// authoritarianism

But Republican leaders need to prepare themselves. This compromise is likely to be temporary. Trump is not only making a challenge to the Republican establishment; he is also increasingly impatient with structures of democratic accountability. As Edward Luce argues in “The Retreat of Western Liberalism,” “the true populist loses patience with the rules of the democratic game.” He comes to view himself as the embodied voice of the people, and opponents as (in Trump’s words) “un-American” and “treasonous.”

… If the GOP narrowly retains control of the House, Trump and others will take it as the vindication of his whole approach to politics. The president will doubtlessly go further in targeting his enemies for investigation and other harm. He will doubtlessly attack the independence of the FBI and attempt to make it an instrument of his will. He will doubtlessly continue his vendetta against responsible journalism and increase his pressure on media companies that don’t please him. On a broad front, Trump’s lunacy will become operational.

The separation of powers does not work automatically, like a washing machine. Republicans must pick their own point of principled resistance to a corrosive populism, if they have one at all.

Republican leaders may dread it, but they will eventually be forced to identify that final area where they keep themselves — or find there is no one there.

WaPo, Ashley Parker: ‘Totally dishonest’: Trump asserts only he can be trusted over opponents and ‘fake news’ http://wapo.st/2wr94VG
// authoritarianism

“This is Trump at war — war with the elites; war with the permanent political class; war with the opposition party media, tech oligarchs, the Antifa anarchists,” Stephen K. Bannon, Trump’s former White House chief strategist, wrote in a text message. “This is the reason Trump is president — to take on the vested interests in this country for hard working Americans.”

At a rally later Thursday in Indiana, Trump took aim at the news media, describing them as “dishonest, terrible people” and telling the crowd, “When you get good ratings, you can say anything.”

“The widening circle of the parties that he’s accusing is predictable because I see Donald Trump as an authoritarian in the making or an authoritarian wannabe, and there’s always a transition process of this sort of leader asserting himself above all the authorities,” said Ruth Ben-Ghiat, a history professor at New York University who studies authoritarianism. “Every authoritarian leader eventually asserts himself as the only arbiter of truth.”

The spate of frenetic tweets also underscores both “a confidence and desperation” on the part of the president,” said Frank Sesno, a former CNN Washington bureau chief who is now the director of the School of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University. 

“Confidence that he is, in fact, the only reliable source,” Sesno said, “and desperation in that he is losing control of the narrative and needs to reassert his version of the truth.”

DailyBeast: Rudy Giuliani Is Putting Together a ‘Counter-Report’ to Question Robert Mueller’s ‘Legitimacy’ http://thebea.st/2N0xJKk
// It’s being done with the explicit blessing of Trump who is ‘happy’ that this is part of his legal team’s ‘strategy,’ the president’s lawyer says.

According to Giuliani, the bulk of the report will be divided into two sections. One section will seek to question the legitimacy of the Mueller probe generally by alleging “possible conflicts” of interest by federal law enforcement authorities. The other section will respond to more substantive allegations of Trump campaign collusion with Russian government agents to sway the 2016 election, and obstruction of justice allegations stemming from, among other things, the president’s firing of former FBI director James Comey.

WaPo: Former Nixon counsel John Dean to be witness opposed to Kavanaugh nomination to Supreme Court http://wapo.st/2LHb8h2

Democrats seeking to defeat the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh have recruited former Nixon White House counsel John Dean to testify during next week’s hearing on Capitol Hill, focusing on concerns about Kavanaugh’s views on presidential power and executive privilege.

In a telephone interview, Dean said he would focus on Kavanaugh’s views on executive power and his statements about the case, U.S. v. Nixon, in which the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon had to turn over secretly recorded White House tapes.

Kavanaugh’s view on the case is murky. He said in a 1999 panel discussion that “maybe Nixon was wrongly decided — heresy though it is to say so. Nixon took away the power of the president to control information in the executive branch . . . that was a huge step with implications to this day that most people do no fully appreciate.”

Dean also said he would focus on Kavanaugh’s 2009 Minnesota Law Review article, in which the federal appeals court judge wrote that a president is too busy to be distracted by civil suits and criminal investigation while in office. Kavanaugh’s view has come under scrutiny because he played the lead role in laying out the grounds for impeaching President Bill Clinton when he helped write a report to Congress for independent counsel Kenneth Starr.

Dean, who has said Trump is “more dangerous” than Nixon, said it is a “correct presumption” that he is opposed to Kavanaugh’s nomination. The hearings are slated to begin Tuesday, and Dean is scheduled to testify on Friday.

FBI.gov: The FBI Launches a Combating Foreign Influence Webpage http://bit.ly/2Pmm2Lv

NYT, Alex Whiting and Ryan Goodman: Will Trump Pardon Manafort? http://nyti.ms/2N5mKzd
// By speculating about it, the president and his surrogates have already acted improperly.

🐣 Semion Mogilevich bio https://twitter.com/Redrum_of_Crows/status/1035403015618850816/photo/1

💙💙 TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Trump’s Top Targets in the Russia Probe Are Experts in Organized Crime http://bit.ly/2LGGSTm
// Some of President Trump’s favorite targets in the Russia probe have spent their careers in the Justice Department and FBI investigating organized crime and money laundering, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

Bruce Ohr. Lisa Page. Andrew Weissmann. Andrew McCabe. President Donald Trump has relentlessly attacked these FBI and Justice Department officials as dishonest “Democrats” engaged in a partisan “witch hunt” led by the special counsel determined to tie his campaign to Russia. But Trump’s attacks have also served to highlight another thread among these officials and others who have investigated his campaign: their extensive experience in probing money laundering and organized crime, particularly as they pertain to Russia.

As Trump praised and defended Russian President Vladimir Putin along the campaign trail, financial analysts and money-laundering experts questioned whether the real-estate mogul had any financial incentives—including business ties or outstanding debt—to seek better relations with Moscow. Robert Mueller, the special counsel appointed in May 2017 to investigate a potential conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Moscow to defeat Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election, assembled a team with revealing expertise in fraud, racketeering, money laundering, and other financial crimes.

Trump’s fixation with seeing Ohr ousted from the Justice Department … could also be interpreted as an attack on someone with deep knowledge of the shady characters Trump and his cohort have been linked to, including Semion Mogilevich, the Russian mob boss, and Oleg Deripaska, a Russian aluminum magnate close to Putin who did business with Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. (Incidentally, another Manafort associate, the Ukrainian billionaire Dmitry Firtash, admitted that he only managed to be in business because Mogilevich allowed him to be, according to a leaked 2008 State Department cable.) Ohr was involved in banning Deripaska from the U.S. in 2006, due to his alleged ties to organized crime and fear that he would try to launder money into American real estate.

And then there’s Andy McCabe, the former deputy director of the FBI who spent more than a decade investigating Russian organized crime and served as a supervisory special agent of a task force that scrutinized Eurasian crime syndicates.

One member of Mueller’s team, meanwhile, has provoked more ire from the president’s allies than others: Andrew Weissmann, a seasoned prosecutor who oversaw cases against high-ranking organized criminals on Wall Street in the early 1990s and, later, against 30 people implicated in the Enron fraud scandal. Trump has also villainized the former Mueller team member Lisa Page, a trial attorney in the Justice Department’s organized-crime section whose cases centered on international organized crime and money laundering.

Mueller’s probe is first and foremost a counterintelligence investigation, and Trump famously declared last year that any examination of his personal finances would cross a “red line.” But Russia’s criminal syndicates have become increasingly intertwined with its intelligence services, blurring the line between Mafia dons and spies.

[Trump’s] links to Russian oligarchs and mobsters from the former Soviet Union have been documented: Millions of dollars from the former Soviet Union flowed into Trump’s developments and casinos throughout the 1990s, as the journalist Craig Unger has chronicled, as oligarchs looked for a place to hide their money in the West. The Trump Taj Mahal casino in Atlantic City, New Jersey, was once known as a hot spot for Brooklyn mobsters associated with the Russian Mafia, and quickly became the “favorite East Coast destination” of the top Russian mob boss Vyacheslav Ivankov …

By the early 2000s, a third of the buyers of Trump Tower’s most expensive condos were Russia-linked shell companies or individuals from the former Soviet Union—including Eduard Nektalov, a mob-connected diamond dealer from Uzbekistan, and David Bogatin, a Russian-émigré mobster who specialized in bootlegging gasoline. Bogatin’s brother was involved in an elaborate stock fraud with the top Russian mob boss Mogilevich, who himself is allied with Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov—another Russian mob leader who ran an entire gambling and money-laundering network out of Unit 63A in Trump Tower, just three floors below Trump’s own residence. (Tokhtakhounov was a VIP attendee at Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow just seven months after the gambling ring was busted by the FBI.) Trump’s own sons have boasted of the Trump Organization’s dependence on Russian money. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Donald Trump Jr. said in 2008. “We don’t rely on American banks,” Eric Trump reportedly told a golfing buddy in 2014. “We have all the funding we need out of Russia.”

Trump’s longtime personal lawyer, Michael Cohen—who pleaded guilty last week to tax fraud and campaign-finance violations, in which he implicated the president—once bragged that he was part of the Russian mob, according to The Wall Street Journal. Cohen’s uncle, with whom he was close, owned a Brooklyn catering hall called El Caribe, in which Cohen had a stake—a hall that “for decades was the scene of mob weddings and Christmas parties,” the Times reported, and housed the offices of “two of New York’s most notorious Russian mobsters.”

It is ironic, then, that Trump’s attacks have shone a bright light on the experts inside and outside the government who have been investigating him—individuals who share a deep expertise in organized crime, money laundering, fraud, and racketeering. Even Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of Fusion GPS, spent years as an investigative reporter at The Wall Street Journal digging into Russian organized crime. In a hearing before the House Intelligence Committee last year, Simpson explained that “real-estate deals” were a common Russian method of hiding and moving money. Asked whether Fusion had found “evidence” of corruption and illicit finance related to the purchase of Trump properties, Simpson replied that his firm had seen “patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering,” including “fast-turnover deals and deals where there seemed to have been efforts to disguise the identity of the buyer.”

It’s not just Trump Tower or Trump Taj Mahal. NBC News reported in November that Trump’s Panama hotel had organized-crime ties, and a Russian state-owned bank under U.S. sanctions, whose CEO met with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in December 2016, helped finance the construction of the president’s 65-story Trump International Hotel and Tower in Toronto.

“The Russian Mafia is essentially under the dominion of the Russian government and Russian intelligence services,” Simpson said in his congressional testimony. But Trump, continuing on the curious theme of defending Moscow while throwing U.S. intelligence officials under the bus, has, conveniently for Putin, persisted in making a spectacle of some of the Kremlin’s biggest adversaries in the U.S. government.

📊 Suffolk Univ/USAToday Poll (8/23-28) http://bit.ly/2Pjz8Ji
Trump approval/disapproval ⋙ 40/58%
Trust Mueller probe ⋙ 55%
Don’t trust Trump denial of collusion ⋙ 59%
Cohen plea raises ?s about Trump ⋙ 61%❗
Believe Russia meddled ⋙ 69%
Corruption worse under Trump ⋙ 57%

Fifty-eight percent of likely voters said they hold an unfavorable view of the president, compared to 52 percent in June, while his favorable rate has held steady at 40 percent since the early-summer poll. Trump’s job approval numbers tell a similar story, with 56 percent of voters either disapproving or strongly disapproving of his job performance, and 40 percent of voters saying they approve or strongly approve.

“Voters’ negative views of Trump have fluctuated over time, but his current troubles likely relate to the recent conviction of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and the guilty plea of former Trump attorney Michael Cohen,” said David Paleologos, director of the Suffolk University Political Research Center in Boston.

Bloomberg: Trump Interview Highlights: WTO, Sessions, Capital Gains Taxes http://bloom.bg/2N96GMK

● On pulling out of the World Trade Organization: “If they don’t shape up, I would withdraw from the WTO.”
● On the EU’s proposal to eliminate auto tariffs: “It’s not good enough.”
● On social media companies: “I mean, look the conservatives have been treated very unfairly.”
● On Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe: “I view it as an illegal investigation. I’m not saying anything, I’m just telling you this: You read the great scholars, the great legal- there should have never been a special counsel.”

Bloomberg: Sessions Is Safe at Least Until November Elections, Trump Says http://bloom.bg/2PWxDlE Mueller probe is ‘an illegal investigation,’ president says

● The attorney general has resisted Trump’s pressure to resign
● Mueller probe is ‘an illegal investigation,’ president says

“I view it differently. I view it as an illegal investigation” because “great scholars” have said that “there never should have been a special counsel,” the president said.

Trump has ridiculed Sessions, a former Republican senator and an early supporter of his presidential candidacy, as “weak” for failing to aggressively pursue Republican allegations of anti-Trump bias in the Justice Department and FBI. Trump has tried to no avail to pressure Sessions to quit, which would open the way to appointing a successor who could oust Mueller or rein in his inquiry.

Sessions’s inability to “control” his department was “a regrettable thing,” Trump said in an interview last week with Fox News, adding that the Justice Department seems “to go after a lot of Republicans.”

Sessions responded then in a defiant statement, saying, “While I am attorney general, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.”

NYT, Ken Jaworowski: Review: ‘Active Measures’ Looks at Links Between Trump and Russia http://nyti.ms/2MCyOZf Directed by Jack Bryan
Text block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035289265817772032/photo/1

Eager to make you uncomfortable, “Active Measures” piles on the ire as it outlines Russian efforts to manipulate world events, particularly the 2016 American presidential election.

This formidable film is sometimes zealous to a fault: The credits cite more than 200 sources of archival material, from The Washington Post to YouTube channels. It’s a lot to take in, as names and numbers zip by, yet missing some of its points may be healthy. To explore every moment is to risk overdosing on outrage.

“Is This the Documentary That Can Take Down Trump?” asks the headline of a recent article on the film in Vanity Fair. The answer: probably not. Much of what’s asserted here has already been reported elsewhere. Yet if, by the end, you’re angry about what you’ve seen — and you’re likely to be — Mr. Bryan will probably be pleased.

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The Michael Cohen, CNN, and Trump-Russia controversy, explained http://bit.ly/2PivMGD

Reuters: Trump seeks to backtrack on 2017 comments on Comey firing http://reut.rs/2wASOk2

DailyBeast, Lachlan Markay: Rudy Giuliani Is Putting Together a ‘Counter-Report’ to Question Robert Mueller’s ‘Legitimacy’ http://thebea.st/2N0xJKk
// It’s being done with the explicit blessing of Trump who is ‘happy’ that this is part of his legal team’s ‘strategy,’ the president’s lawyer says.

🐣 RT @matttglesias Really worth emphasizing that there’s a good (~25%) chance Republicans hold the House, gain a senate seat or two, replace McCain/Flake/Corker with Trump loyalists, Mueller gets fired, Manafort gets pardoned, and then that’s game over — the coverup worked.

CFR, Jonathan Masters (2017): U.S. Foreign Policy Powers: Congress and the President ~ Backgrounder http://on.cfr.org/2N4fYtu
// 3/2/2018, The separation of powers has spawned a great deal of debate over the roles of the president and Congress in foreign affairs, as well as over the limits on their respective authorities, explains this Backgrounder.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [ClintWatts] Here it comes, Trump suggesting to his followers anything negative toward him “may have been altered”. Fake audio, fake video will soon be a cover for getting away with anything.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real [fudged data … ]

🐣 RT @Acosta Imagine what life would be like if the only “trusted” news source is the government, mandating what’s reported and controlling what appears in internet search engine results. I’ve visited places like that. They are not the United States of America.

NBC, Ted Lieu and Kathleen Rice: Trump’s claim that campaign finance violations ‘are not a crime’ is an attack on the laws that protect democracy http://nbcnews.to/2Ny1OOo
// The president is undermining the safeguards that are designed specifically to prevent candidates from rigging elections.

🐣 RT @real Wow, Nellie Ohr, Bruce Ohr’s wife, is a Russia expert who is fluent in Russian. She worked for Fusion GPS where she was paid a lot. Collusion! Bruce was a boss at the Department of Justice and is, unbelievably, still there!
⋙ 🐣 Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Semion Mogilevich
Oh yeah ~ Didn’t he have something to do with
Semion Mogilevich?

🐣 RT @tribelaw Nearly 16 months after Trump confessed to Lester Holt that he’d fired Comey over “the Russia thing,” he suddenly claims that NBC had “fudged” the tape of Holt’s national interview❗This obvious lie is itself a confession that Trump now realizes the import of what he admitted.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks – with @NBCNews being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!

🐣 RT @NormOrnstein Who are you gonna believe, a legendary investigative reporter or a serial liar? How to decide, how to decide?
⋙ 🐣 RT @carlbernstein .@realdonaIdtrump- I have spent my life as a journalist bringing the truth to light, through administrations of both parties. No taunt will diminish my commitment to that mission, which is the essential role of a free press. @CNN stands by its story, and I stand by my reporting.

JustSecurity, Oona Hathaway: The President’s Personal Assault on Bruce Ohr—and its dangerous effects http://bit.ly/2wy2z2I

Ohr had a number of connections to Fusion GPS.  First and foremost, his wife, Nellie Ohr, is a Russian linguist who worked for Fusion GPS and, it appears, worked on the opposition research on Trump. But that was not Ohr’s only connection to Fusion GPS.  He knew both Simpson and Steele because they had traveled in similar professional circles—and had met at conferences on fighting organized crime over the years. Steele and Ohr had also worked together busting Russian corruption in FIFA (Steele reportedly used some of the same sources in compiling his dossier on Trump).  In his testimony before the House Intelligence Committee, Simpson testified that Steele had suggested that Simpson speak directly to Ohr about the information Fusion GPS had unearthed about Trump.

… House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif) publicly released a memo from “HPSCI Majority Staff” to the “HPSCI Majority Members” claiming that the Steele dossier was a key source for the FISA application to monitor former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The Nunes memo claimed, moreover, that the FISA application relied on the dossier without acknowledging its possible bias and inaccuracies. That claim, however, was later decisively proven wrong when, in an extraordinary turn of events, the application was released (in redacted form)—the first ever such release. That application made clear that the FBI put the political origins of the dossier in context in the application. What’s more, the dossier was one of many sources used by the FBI to support the application. Carter Page, moreover, was already subject to an earlier FISA warrant — which was very likely a strong basis for the 2016 warrant.

What we have, then, is an all out personal assault on an almost three-decade civil servant by the President of the United States and significant members of the Republican leadership. For years, Ohr has made major contributions to U.S. government efforts to fight Russian organized crime. In 2006, he was one of several government officials who played a role in revoking the visa of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and aluminum magnate, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin, and who has been tied to former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.  Craig Unger, who has published a book on Trump’s ties to Russian organized crime, also recently claimed in a tweet on August 28 that Trump is punishing Ohr because he investigated Semion Mogilevich and “wld know abt RU Mafia laundering $$ thru Trump condos, RU Mafia ties w Kremlin, & Mafia operations run from Trump Tower.”

TheHill: Trump rips CNN boss: ‘His ratings suck & AT&T should fire him’ http://bit.ly/2PgDpgL “When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!” he added. //➔ say whut?! #Unhinged

🐣 RT @MelissaRyan Per @mikeallen the GOP plans to derail next week’s Senate Intel hearing on foreign influence operations and their use of social media platforms with this conservative bias nonsense.
⋙ Axios: 1 big thing … Trump’s new fake news: fake social http://bit.ly/2C2zdzz

🐣 RT @chucktodd I miss the days when people muttered nutty conspiracy theories to themselves while meandering down a sidewalk. Now they share it on Twitter w/millions of followers and for some reason some folks amplify it. Treat these tweets the way you’d treat the sidewalk mumbler, look away
⋙ 🐣 “He is a loathesome, offensive brute. Yet I can’t look away.” – Seinfeld https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1035132925363281921/photo/1

⭕ 29 Aug 2018

VoxUkraine, Andreas Umland: Whom Does Crimea Belong to? http://bit.ly/2NagV3K
// Russia’s annexation of the Ukrainian Peninsula and the question of historical justice

🐣 RT @AdamRamsay Netanyahu is terrifying.
⋙ 🐣 RT @IsraelPM The weak crumble, are slaughtered and are erased from history while the strong, for good or for ill, survive. The strong are respected, and alliances are made with the strong, and in the end peace is made with the strong.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 Good lord. He sounds like a nazi.

WaPo, Max Boot: The West may be sleepwalking into another catastrophe http://wapo.st/2C9jvSW

🐣 RT @CNNCommunications Make no mistake, Mr. President, CNN does not lie. We report the news. And we report when people in power tell lies. CNN stands by our reporting and our reporters. There may be many fools in this story but @carlbernstein is not one of them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real CNN is being torn apart from within based on their being caught in a major lie and refusing to admit the mistake. Sloppy @carlbernstein, a man who lives in the past and thinks like a degenerate fool, making up story after story, is being laughed at all over the country! Fake News

Snopes/AP: CNN Stands by Story About Whether Trump Knew of Russian Meeting http://bit.ly/2MFfta4 Carl Bernstein and CNN breathe new life into the claim that Trump had prior knowledge of Trump Tower meeting //➔ no wonder Trump is furious
// CNN is sticking by a story casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s claim that he did not have prior knowledge of a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

Despite a key source backing off his assertion, CNN is sticking by a story casting doubt on President Donald Trump’s claim that he did not have prior knowledge of a June 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer to get damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

CNN said it had more than one source for its story, co-authored by Jim Sciutto and Watergate legend Carl Bernstein.

CNN’s story, written on July 27, said that Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen was willing to say that he heard Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tell his father about the Russians’ offer to share material about Clinton, his Democratic rival for the presidency. It also said that Trump gave the go-ahead to take the meeting at Trump Tower. If true, that would contradict what Trump and representatives have long said, that he didn’t know about the meeting until long after it happened.

Such information would be of great interest to special counsel Robert Mueller and his investigation into Russian involvement in the 2016 American presidential campaign.

Yet, if Davis was actually an anonymous source for CNN, the story should not also say that Cohen’s lawyer declined to comment. You can’t have it both ways. That’s a big no-no in journalism.

If real doubt can be raised about CNN’s reporting on an important, damaging story regarding Trump and the Russia investigation, it gives Trump and his supporters major ammunition in its ongoing effort to make CNN seem like an unreliable news source.

Politico: Mueller wants to review emails between Manafort, former lawyer http://politi.co/2MCV6dj
// Manafort’s emails are a special case, Mueller’s team argued in a court motion Wednesday. Attorney-client privilege doesn’t apply when the client enlists a lawyer’s help to commit a crime — and that’s what Mueller’s team is arguing that Manafort did.

DemWritePress, Kseniya Kirillova: Why Russian “Soft Power” is Much More Dangerous Than Western “Soft Power” http://bit.ly/2PR7tR1 in Democracy, Political Corruption

MilitaryTimes: Trump makes it clear: No military exercises with South Korea http://bit.ly/2ww1KaI //➔ Trump appears to override Mattis, tauts ‘very good and warm’ relationship w Kim

CrimeRussia: Senior executive of steel plant in Russia, Bruno Charles de Kooman, falls out of window in Moscow http://bit.ly/2wrPCYZ
⋙ 🐣 RT @guitr25 List of Russians who have fallen from windows: Maxim Borodin, 32, reporter; Ivan Safranov, 2007; Olga Kotovskya, 2009; Victor Aphanesenko, 2012; Mikhail Lesin, 2015, Wash, DC fall in room; Nikolai Gorokhov, 2017 (moving bath tub (?) fell from 4th floor, survived) …

CNBC/Reuters: Trump presses Supreme Court chief justice for action on Russia dossier http://cnb.cx/2LGdigT

● The U.S. Supreme Court chief justice should order the judge in charge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to question FBI and Justice Department officials about their use of a so-called Russia dossier, the president tweeted on Wednesday.
● Rosemary Collyer is the presiding judge for the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which oversees electronic surveillance requests and search warrants sought by federal authorities.
● U.S. intelligence agencies have concluded that Russia tried to help Trump win the 2016 election but the Kremlin denies meddling. Trump denies any collusion and has said Steele’s Russia dossier is “bogus.”

Bloomberg, Mark Gongloff: Russia’s Putin Trap http://bloom.bg/2LGITzj
// Without the rule of law, economic rebirth is impossible.

WaPo: Trump suggests Bruce Ohr, Justice official linked to Russia dossier, should be fired http://wapo.st/2MDHXkn

VanityFair, Abigail Tracy: Don McGahn’s Exit Signals an Explosive New Phase in the Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2MC1Ybd
// With the White House counsel on his way out—and Jeff Sessions likely to follow—Trump is setting in motion a series of changes that could fundamentally alter the balance of power between the Justice Department and the president.

Reuters: Trump presses Supreme Court chief justice for action on Russia dossier http://reut.rs/2MDGg6v

NYT: Trump Attacks CNN After Source Raises Doubts About Report on Russia Meeting http://nyti.ms/2om1vLv

WaPo: ‘Winter is coming’: Allies fear Trump isn’t prepared for gathering legal storm http://wapo.st/2PPCKnq

TheAtlantic: Russia Is Co-opting Angry Young Men http://bit.ly/2LCo7R7
// Fight clubs, neo-Nazi soccer hooligans, and motorcycle gangs serve as conduits for the Kremlin’s influence operations in Western countries.

🐣 RT @MaggieNYT McGahn believes Kushner and Ivanka helped push out news about him to force his hand, ppl close to him say. Ivanka Trump complained bitterly to her father about Times story on McGahn intvu w Mueller a few weeks back, per people briefed
⋙ NYT: Don McGahn to Leave White House Counsel Job This Fall, Trump Says http://nyti.ms/2MD7muv

BuzzFeedNews, Jason Leopold and Anthony Cormier: “Suspicious” Transactions At Russian Embassy Sparked Deeper Bank Probe Than Previously Known http://bit.ly/2Nvsmjj
// The former Russian ambassador received a salary payment twice as large as past years, and bankers blocked a $150,000 withdrawal.

ForeignAffairs,James Goldgeier and Elizabeth N. Saunders: The Unconstrained Presidency http://fam.ag/2MB1amJ
// Checks and Balances Eroded Long Before Trump

CNN: Don McGahn to leave job as White House counsel, Trump says http://cnn.it/2BYXRAX

◕🐣💙💙 @jzikah’s awesome hand-drawn chart of #TrumpRussia
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1034829014907736065/photo/1
// Semion Mogilevich: Smart Don; Trump: Dumb Don

New media have always been disruptive: Printing Press: Reformation; Pamphlets: French & American Revolutions, Radio: Hitler (&Roosevelt), TV: McCarthy, Age of Spectacle, Reality TV. The Internet is the Mother-of-All-Media. Of COURSE it’s disruptive!

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Maria Butina: Private Messages Reveal Accused Russian Spy’s True Ties to D.C. Wise Man http://thebea.st/2wp8EPL
// The head of the Center for the National Interest said his interaction with Butina was limited, but emails and direct messages show it was closer than previously understood.

When federal prosecutors charged Maria Butina with covertly infiltrating the conservative movement on behalf of the Kremlin, questions began to swirl around a Washington think tank that had published her pro-GOP writing—and hosted then-candidate Donald Trump’s Russia-friendly first foreign policy speech.

But previously unreported emails and direct messages between Butina and officials at the Center show her relationship with the think tank’s president—former Richard Nixon adviser Dimitri Simes—was closer than previously understood. The two didn’t just make plans to have dinner together. According to emails and Twitter DMs reviewed by The Daily Beast, Simes looked to use his connections with Butina and her associate, Russian Central Bank official Alexandr Torshin, to advance the business interests of one of the Center’s most generous donors.

An attorney for the donor—Maurice “Hank” Greenberg, the former chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and the one-time CEO of insurance and financial services giant AIG—said he did nothing inappropriate

The meeting never happened. But if anyone could have pulled it off, it might have been the Moscow-born [Dmitri] Simes. A fixture of the D.C. foreign policy establishment, he worked at some of Washington’s most prestigious institutions—including the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and the Nitze School of Advanced International Studies—before being selected by Richard Nixon to lead the Center for National Interest. Simes is widely viewed as one of the Washingtonians with the closest Kremlin connections. And his think tank argues for foreign policy realism, including warmer relations between Washington and Moscow.

In other words, Butina and Simes exchanged multiple emails discussing the logistics of what could have been high-level Moscow meetings between an American billionaire and a powerful Kremlin official whom The Wall Street Journal characterizes as a Putin ally.

🐣 RT @ForeignPolicy He revealed a list of secret payments made by a Ukrainian pro-Russia party to Paul Manafort and others. We sat down with Serhiy Leshchenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, to discuss Manafort’s recent conviction.
⋙ ForeignPolicy, Elias Groll: The Ukrainian Who Sunk Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2MAQDbp
// 8/27/2018, The politician and former journalist Serhiy Leshchenko says Ukraine needs its own Robert Mueller.

🐣 RT @real [11:11pm] Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!
⋙ 🚫 [Disinfo] DailyCaller: SOURCES: China Hacked Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server | The Daily Caller http://bit.ly/2wDAVl1
// mentioned: Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, James Comey, Sally Yates, James Comey (of course)

● A Chinese-owned company penetrated former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s private server, according to sources briefed on the matter.
● The company inserted code that forwarded copies of Clinton’s emails to the Chinese company in real time.
● The Intelligence Community Inspector General warned of the problem, but the FBI subsequently failed to act, Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert said during a July hearing.

🐣 RT @anders_aslund Thanks, as I have argued for years, Gazprom is not a commercial company but an organized crime syndicate focused on corrupt rent seeking of Putin cronies & geopolitics. How can Germany allow an organized crime syndicate dominate its gas supplies?! Stop NS2!
⋙ 🐣 RT @bneeditor all change in Russian stocks. Novatek overtakes Gazprom to become 2nd most valuable stock behind Rosneft. ¤ Gazprom is now worth less than own oil subsid Gazprom Neft. ¤ & Rosneft’s charm offensive to be nice to investors seems to be working as its shares up 28% YTD vs flat RTS

🐣 RT @MaxBoot Reagan said: “The person who agrees with you 80 percent of the time is a friend and an ally–not a 20 percent traitor.” Republicans now disagree. Someone like McCain who agreed with them 87 percent of the time is, it seems, a traitor after all. Me:
🐣 RT @MaxBoot The GOP’s embrace of Trump and rejection of McCain is emblematic of the atavistic tribalism, ideological extremism, and authoritarian cultism that the senator spent his entire life combating. Me in @PostOpinions:
⋙ WaPo, MaxBoot: Republicans rejected McCain and embraced Trump. What does that say about them? http://wapo.st/2NsuRmk

🐣 RT @anders_aslund The connections between the #Trump gang & #Mogilevich are well known. It is indicative that Trump attacks the US experts on Mogilevich. This looks like half a confession from Trump. Mueller probably knows the truth.

🐣 RT @TrickFreee What if the “Budapest Bridge” was a metaphor for the bridge between the FSB/KGB and the Mogilevich Organization? Mogilevich ran the organization from Moscow, but it was based in Budapest. Lisa Page and Bruce Ohr spent a lot of time on those Budapest TOC investigations…
⋙ 🐣 RT @craigunger Nance is right. Ex-KGB Gen. Oleg Kalugin told me precisely that. Which makes it deeply disturbing that so many Russian mobsters laundered $ thru, lived in, and ran operations in the home of the man who is now president. #Mogilevich compromised @realDonaldTrump many times over.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @MalcolmNance Russian mafia is just an extension of Russian Intelligence. They’re not taking chances.
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @Tom_Winter NBC News: Banker who played key role in Paul Manafort investigation has apartment broken into. Briefcase and other items stolen.
Latest from @jonathan4ny
⋙⋙⋙⋙ NBCNewYork: One-Time Paul Manafort Banker Robbed of iPad, Briefcase in Mysterious Overnight Break-in at His NYC Penthouse: Sources http://bit.ly/2PPnVS7
// David Fallarino was one of three so-called key figures not called by Robert Mueller’s office to testify at the trial of Paul Manafort

⭕ 28 Aug 2018

📒 StratComCOE (Spring 2018): Gatis Krūmiņš: Soviet Economic Gaslighting of Latvia and the Baltic States. http://bit.ly/2NwvZ8u
// Spring 2018, NATO Strategic Command

🐣 RT @StacyJannis Oh and don’t forget how the Bank of New York case was litigated. Dershowitz represented the Kremlin.
⋙ NBC/AP (2008): Russia uses RICO statute to sue Bank of N.Y. http://nbcnews.to/2BXKMbb
// 7/27/2008
↥ ↧
LATimes (1999): Russian Money Trail Leading to More Banks : Scandal: U.S. is investigating international institutions’ reports of ‘suspicious activity’ that might be linked to possible laundering through a New York bank. http://lat.ms/2MAIyDA
// 8/31/1999, DeutscheBank, Bank of New York

Deutsche Bank and other international financial institutions have reported to U.S. authorities on suspicious account activity that could be linked to possible money laundering by Russian organized crime figures through Bank of New York Co., sources said Monday. …

But the case has emphasized the murky nature of international finance in the post-Soviet era. Money has been draining out of Russia at an alarming rate–some estimate $150 billion since 1991–as businesses and the political elite seek to protect their assets from economic collapse and Russia’s tax system.

Investigators now are trying to determine how much–if any–of the money flowing through the bank came from fraud related to Russian government contracts, commodities sales or securities.

But much of the capital flight from Russia is legal. Since Russian banks are notoriously unsafe, legal businesses find ways to convert their earnings to dollars, francs or deutsche marks and transfer them to banks in Switzerland, London or New York.

Still, U.S. officials have reported that Russia’s banks have contributed to the problem by assisting fraudulent schemes that allow profits to be concealed in offshore tax havens.

Investigators also have seen a rise in the use of forged securities by organized crime groups in financial transactions and in the emerging Russian stock market. One person allegedly linked to a similar scheme in the U.S. is Semyon Mogilevich, a reputed mobster who is believed to control YBM Magnex International, a Pennsylvania firm that pleaded guilty in June to securities fraud in U.S. District Court in Philadelphia.

Benex recently vouched for several Mogilevich associates who were seeking visas to enter the U.S., according to people familiar with the case. Russian authorities believed them to be mob associates and blocked the visas, the sources said.

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Like any other wannabe tyrant, Trump wants us to believe that true information is false and false information is true so that he won’t suffer the consequences of his corruption. He knows that even threatening the use of regulatory action against media will hinder their work.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Google search results for “Trump News” shows only the viewing/reporting of Fake News Media. […]

WaPo (Feb): Justice Dept. official who helped oversee Clinton, Russia probes steps down http://wapo.st/2PLqtAs chief of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section @maddow
// 2/7/2018, David Laufman

A Justice Department official who helped oversee the controversial probes of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server and Russian interference in the 2016 election stepped down this week.

David Laufman, an experienced federal prosecutor who in 2014 became chief of the National Security Division’s Counterintelligence and Export Control Section, said farewell to colleagues Wednesday. He cited personal reasons.

His departure from the high-pressure job comes as President Trump and his Republican allies have stepped up attacks on the Justice Department, the FBI and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III for their handling of the Russia probe.

Politico, Josh Meyer: McCain’s choice of Russian dissident as pallbearer is final dig at Putin, Trump http://politi.co/2LBG3v4

RollingStone, Seth Hettena: Michael Cohen, Lanny Davis and the Russian Mafia http://rol.st/2LyfCXi
// President Trump’s former fixer may not be the most notorious client of power lawyer Lanny Davis at this moment

WaPo: Trump privately revived the idea of firing Sessions this month, according to people familiar with the discussions http://wapo.st/2wwQGtT //➔ (why is this “Breaking”?)

NYMag, Benjamin Hart: Lanny Davis Says He Was Source for CNN Trump Tower Story http://nym.ag/2MDU8O3 //➔ @NickAckerman just said on @AriMelber’s show he thinks Cohen is cooperating w Mueller who made Lanny Davis recant his statements about what Cohen knew when re tower mtg

Politico, Kyle Cheney: GOP lawmakers grill DOJ official Ohr over Trump dossier http://politi.co/2NuXZJE

Ohr, who appeared for a closed-door interview in a Capitol office building, has become the Trump allies’ latest focus in their efforts to raise questions about the investigators who ran the probe into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia. As a senior Justice Department staffer, Ohr passed along Steele’s information to the FBI, even after the bureau terminated its formal relationship with Steele over media leaks.

At least seven GOP lawmakers — members of the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees — attended as well: Reps. Mark Meadows, Jim Jordan, Trey Gowdy, John Ratcliffe, Darrell Issa, Matt Gaetz and Andy Biggs. No Democratic lawmakers were on hand, but staffers of both parties attended.

Gaetz, emerging from the interview after nearly two hours, said Ohr appeared to be answering questions forthrightly but that his testimony about the timing of his contacts with Fusion appeared to conflict with answers given to lawmakers by Fusion GPS cofounder Glenn Simpson and former FBI attorney Lisa Page.

Gaetz, Meadows and Issa told reporters that Ohr’s testimony revealed that the FBI had more significant doubts about the credibility of the Steele dossier than the bureau revealed when it applied for a court-ordered surveillance warrant on a former Trump campaign adviser, Carter Page, in October 2016.

BuzzFeedNews, Craig Silverman: Revealed: Notorious Pro-Trump Misinformation Site True Pundit Is Run By An Ex-Journalist With A Grudge Against The FBI http://bit.ly/2ohqD68
// How award-winning former journalist Michael D. Moore came to run a site filled with false reports and conspiracies.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Devin Nunes’s Curious Trip to London http://bit.ly/2MWcpFF
// The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee flew to London to gather intel on Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who compiled the dossier alleging Trump-campaign ties with Russia. But MI5, MI6, and GCHQ didn’t seem interested.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Lindsey Graham is on @foxandfriends, where he says that if any other American did what Clinton did with her emails “they’d be in jail” and that Russia did interfere in the election…using the Steele dossier. Topic then moved on to John McCain.

💙💙 Medium, Jay McKenzie: Trump, Putin and the mob. Research collection. Part 1: Trump campaign connections. http://bit.ly/2wqY4XJ
// 8/21/2017, Six parts

🐣 RT @craigunger Now we’re getting there. Why was Bruce Ohr punished by Trump? He was going after Mogilevich, the RU Mafia’s financial genius whose operatives were living in and laundering $ thru Trump Tower for decades. For everything you wanted to know abt Mogi: http://bit.ly/TrumpPutinBook 

🐣 RT @LincolnsBible Will Mueller go after SM?
⋙ 🐣 Miller? I doubt it. I wish he could, but it don’t think SM’s been involved in any criminal activity. Unless The Hague charges him w Crimes against Humanity or the Congress grows a conscience. He is the most odious jerk in the WH, imho.

⭕ 27 Aug 2018

Law&Crime: Alleged Russian Troll Farm Vows to Challenge Robert Mueller’s Authority — Again http://bit.ly/2PL63aK

🐣 RT @wgeary The U.S. and Russia are the world’s largest weapons dealers. I mapped the flows of arms exports leaving the U.S. and USSR/Russia from 1950 to 2017. Full video (with audio) available here: https://vimeo.com/286751571
💽 https://twitter.com/wgeary/status/1034077099026526208/photo/1
// arms sales video graphic

💙 NYT, Paul Krugman: Why It Can Happen Here http://nyti.ms/2PcLq6d
// We’re very close to becoming another Poland or Hungary.

🐣 RT @BillBrowder @vkaramurza and I pay tribute to John McCain on @AliVelshi @MSNBC. Sen. John McCain stood up for the victims of Putin’s dictatorship including Sergei Magnitsky and we got some measure of justice with the passage of the Magnitsky Act. RIP hero John McCain
⋙ 💽 MSNBC: Russian dissident on McCain: He was never an enemy to Russia or its people http://on.msnbc.com/2C2f1xM
// Bill Browder and Russian dissident Vladimir Kara-Murza remember John McCain’s tireless efforts to expose the perils of Russia’s influence on foreign governments and reflect on how much McCain “hated injustice, and found a tool to address this injustice” through the Magnitsky Act.

🐣 RT @TrickFreee Federal prosecutors specifically reserved the right to make additional prosecutions related to Cohen with the explicit mention of 18 USC 1961, better known as the RICO Act.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaddowBlog Federal prosecutors are reserving the right to charge something here as an organized criminal entity under the RICO statutes. And that relates to Michael Cohen.
💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1034251542155735040/photo/1

🐣 RT @SteveKornacki
Mueller investigation (Fox News poll, August 2018)
Approve 59%
Disapprove 37%

Starr investigation (Fox News poll, August 1998)
Approve 36%
Disapprove 44%

Bloomberg (Mar): Czechs Extradite Russian Hacker Suspect to U.S., Snubbing Moscow http://bloom.bg/2LutjGB
// Yevgeniy Nikulin

🚫🐣 RT @maxbergmann Stone knew in August that Podesta had been hacked – weeks before Podesta knew himself. If Stone knew, Trump knew. ¤ We also know the Trump campaign knew the Russians had “thousands of emails” from Papadopoulos’ meeting w/ the Maltese prof. ¤ This is what a conspiracy looks like.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Roger Stone says in an Instagram video that a story is coming in The New Yorker which says Stone explicitly told Trump in October 2016 that WikiLeaks had/was going to dump the Podesta emails.
● Photo: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1034186365792079872/photo/1
[Note: 🚫 means I find interesting but not confident enough to RT]

WSJ: Manafort Sought Deal in Next Trial, but Talks Broke Down http://on.wsj.com/2wlVT8p
// Negotiations stalled after Mueller raised issues

VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “Trump Is Nuts. This Time Really Feels Different”: Trump Rejects “War Council” Intervention, Goes It Alone http://bit.ly/2P8QuZt
// With his closest allies defecting, the president increasingly trusts only his instincts. He “got joy” from stripping former C.I.A. director John Brennan’s security clearance. And after betrayals by Allen Weisselberg and David Pecker, a former White House official says, Trump “spent the weekend calling people and screaming.”
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @AntiTrumpReport VanityFair: “Trump is nuts” [Thread] http://bit.ly/2Pc5nKr
VanityFair: (THREAD) Senior officials talked about inviting Giuliani and a group of Trump’s NY real-estate friends including Tom Barrack, Richard LeFrak, & Howard Lorber to the WH to stage an “intervention” last week. “It was supposed to be a war council.”

“Trump is nuts,” said one former West Wing official. “This time really feels different.” Deputy Chief of Staff Bill Shine has privately expressed concern, a source said, telling a friend that Trump’s emotional state is “very tender.”

Even Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump are unsettled that Trump is so gleefully acting on his most self-destructive impulses as his legal peril grows. According to a source,

Jared and Ivanka told Trump that stripping security clearances from former intelligence officials would backfire, but Trump ignored them. Kushner later told a friend Trump “got joy” out of taking away John Brennan’s clearance.

Cohen’s plea and Paul Manafort’s conviction, which were followed by revelations that Trump Org C.F.O. Allen Weisselberg and National Enquirer publisher David Pecker are cooperating with federal prosecutors, have rattled Trump like few other turns in the investigation have.

Flying on Air Force One to his West Virginia rally last week, Trump seemed “bummed” and “down and out,” a person briefed on the matter said. “He was acting like, ‘I know the news is bad, but I don’t know what to do about it,’” the source said.

By the weekend, though, his anger had returned. “He spent the weekend calling people and screaming,” one former White House official said. According to sources, the president feels cornered with no clear way out.

His months-long campaign to get Sessions to resign—so that Trump could appoint a new AG to shut down the Russia probe—not only failed to get Sessions to step down, but it’s caused him to dig in, as evidenced by Sessions’s rare statement asserting the independence of the DOJ.

“Trump knows at least through the midterms he won’t get another A.G.,” a former White House official said.

After Cohen effectively named Trump an unindicted co-conspirator in campaign-finance crimes with the payments to Stormy Daniels and Playboy Playmate Karen McDougal, Trump’s public posture was that the payments weren’t crimes.

Privately, according to two sources, Trump attorneys suggested that a strategy for dealing with the issue could be for Trump to admit to having affairs with women and paying hush money to them for years.

That way, he could assert that the payments to Daniels and McDougal were normal business—not campaign donations meant to influence the 2016 election. Trump, according to the sources, rejected this advice. “It was because of Melania,” one source said.

Inside the West Wing, a sense of numbness and dread has set in among senior advisers as they gird for what Trump will do next. “It’s a return to the abyss,” said one former official who’s in frequent contact with the White House.

“This is back to being a one-man show, and everyone is on the outside looking in.”

Two sources said that Trump continues to raise the possibility of a pardon for Manafort. Trump has been clashing with WH counsel Don McGahn, who is strongly against granting Manafort a pardon.

Trump has told people he’s considering bringing in a new lawyer to draft a Manafort pardon, if McGahn won’t. “He really at this point does not care,” a former official said. “He would rather fight the battle. He doesn’t want to do anything that would cede executive authority.”

🐣 RT @brianklaas Roger Stone says (in an Instagram video posted 2 hours ago) that the New Yorker is about to drop a story about someone claiming they overheard Stone telling Trump about a Wikileaks dump in Oct. 2016 and giving a preview of it. Stone denies it in the video. H/t @NatashaBertrand

💙💙 NYT: Bruce Ohr Fought Russian Organized Crime. Now He’s a Target of Trump. http://nyti.ms/2BREuK0
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYT Ohr 8-27-2018

As President Trump has threatened to take away the security clearance of Bruce G. Ohr, a career Justice Department official, he has described him as a “creep,” accused him of profiting off “disgraced” information and wondered aloud why he still works in the executive branch.

But Mr. Ohr is far from corrupt, friends and former colleagues said. An experienced law enforcement official who spent years battling Russian organized crime, he developed a deep understanding of that dangerous underworld, they said, including raising concerns about at least one oligarch whose name has resurfaced amid the scrutiny of contacts between Trump associates and Russia.

As part of this work, Mr. Ohr, 56, met a British spy who specialized in Russia, Christopher Steele, and the two men developed a bond based on their shared expertise. Mr. Steele went on to investigate ties between Mr. Trump and Russia for the same research firm, Fusion GPS, where Mr. Ohr’s wife, Nellie, worked as a contractor.

Those connections have upended Mr. Ohr’s once relatively anonymous life, dragging him into the maelstrom of the Russia investigation. His meetings with Mr. Steele, who compiled a dossier of salacious, unverified material about Mr. Trump and was an F.B.I. informant, have prompted the president and his allies, armed with little evidence, to cast Mr. Ohr and his wife as villains, part of a pro-Clinton cabal out to destroy the president.

More consequently, Justice Department officials transferred Mr. Ohr, an associate deputy attorney general, to a less powerful post last year after learning about his contacts with Mr. Steele and the scope of his wife’s work. If he loses his security clearance, which is under review along with those of former senior national security officials viewed by Mr. Trump as political enemies, he would probably be forced to leave federal law enforcement after nearly three decades.

Mr. Ohr’s section supported the 2000 prosecution of Pavlo Lazarenko, the former prime minister of Ukraine, who was convicted of money laundering, wire fraud and extortion in a case brought by the office of the United States attorney in San Francisco at the time, Robert S. Mueller III, who is now the special counsel.

Also under Mr. Ohr’s oversight, a Russian crime boss, Semion Mogilevich, was indicted in 2003 on charges of defrauding a company outside of Philadelphia out of $150 million. The case made headlines and laid the groundwork for Justice Department efforts to combat Russian organized crime overseas.

In 2006, Mr. Ohr was part of a group of government officials who revoked the visa of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian billionaire and aluminum magnate.

Mr. Deripaska, a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, has been tied to the former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort … In April, the United States imposed sanctions on Mr. Deripaska.

In 2007, Mr. Ohr met Mr. Steele, who was still with MI-6, the British spy service …

For the F.B.I., their relationship would come in handy. A longtime informant who provided valuable tips on corruption, Mr. Steele violated his confidentiality agreement with the F.B.I. when he disclosed to a reporter in the months before the 2016 election that he had been working with the bureau. He had expressed frustration that his information about Mr. Trump, gathered for Fusion GPS, the research firm that hired him on behalf of Democrats to research the candidate, had gone seemingly nowhere in the F.B.I.

In early November 2016, the agent handling Mr. Steele told him not to obtain intelligence “on behalf of the F.B.I.”

That did not stop F.B.I. agents from collecting coveted information from Mr. Steele. While the F.B.I. could no longer considered him a confidential informant, former officials said, agents eager to assess the dossier as part of their counterintelligence investigation into links between Trump associates and Russia’s election interference could still document what he was telling a third party — Mr. Ohr.

Mr. Ohr met with Mr. Steele almost a dozen times beginning in late 2016 through May 2017, according to congressional officials. F.B.I. agents interviewed Mr. Ohr after the meetings and documented the information.

Republicans have seized on the meetings. …

Conservatives have also targeted Ms. Ohr, whose contract work at Fusion GPS involved monitoring Russian news media and compiling connections between Mr. Trump and Russia from public documents. She did not work on the dossier, according to a person familiar with her work for GPS.

Mr. Ohr still has a job at the Justice Department, though he is functionally no longer a manager. It is unclear how long that will last. Mr. Trump has called for Attorney General Jeff Sessions to fire Mr. Ohr.

“It seems that Bruce had two sins: He met with Chris Steele and his wife worked for Fusion GPS. None of that seems wrong to me,” Mr. Lowrie said. “Bruce is a straight arrow. He was totally nonpartisan, as we all were expected” to be.

🐣 RT @KKurzNHL Here’s something I didn’t know…Robert Mueller is a hockey player
● https://twitter.com/KKurzNHL/status/1033456223528468480/photo/1
⋙ 🐣 Swift, powerful and accurate.

🐣 RT @RusEmbassyUSA Washington’s hostile sanctions will have no effect on our determination to follow our own course in international relations. #US public has to know that sanctions against @Russia are futile. They meet the interests of neither Russian, nor American people http://bit.ly/2MTb9TW

WaPo: Too big to sanction? U.S. struggles with punishing large Russian businesses. http://wapo.st/2wpDwQf
// Oleg Deripaska

TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: John McCain’s Epiphany About Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2wk6Nvn
// Manafort saw managing the 2008 Republican Convention as almost a birthright. But McCain denied him the job. He couldn’t abide Manafort’s pro-Russian clients—and told him so.  

🐣 RT @AP: BREAKING: French President Macron announces new push for European defense project, says continent’s security shouldn’t rely on U.S.

Politico, Josh Gerstein: ‘Sleeper’ case could torpedo Mueller report http://politi.co/2LtQNfh
// It might even keep the special counsel from sending a report to Congress, shaking Democrats’ hopes that such a document could provide the impetus for impeachment proceedings.

⭕ 26 Aug 2018

TheAtlantic: Trump’s Contempt for the Law Will Be His Downfall http://bit.ly/2BTZJuM
// The president can keep crying “witch hunt,” but it won’t stop the evidence against him from mounting.

◕💙💙 Dkos: After Cohen/Manafort, we’re (still) only at the beginning of #TrumpRussia http://bit.ly/2wm9Mmi
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1033767818968420352/photo/1
● https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1033769409297489920/photo/1

◕🐣💙💙 RT @rigel2020 Here are the 3 examples SIZE wise of how trump touched / was aided by Mnuchin and Wilbur Ross dealings / see all the shell companies and connections to Russia.. https://bit.ly/FraudMapV3 
● https://twitter.com/rigel2020/status/1020852691142971393/photo/1
● https://twitter.com/rigel2020/status/1020852691142971393/photo/2
// 7/21/2018; awesome interactive graphics charts

🐣 RT @MeetThePress FULL INTERVIEW: @RepJerryNadler joins #MTP and says Congress’ role is not to protect the president and that the House Judiciary Committee should be conducting investigations. https://nbcnews.to/2PCvc7v 
// Ranking member

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec “Russia’s leaders, rich with oil wealth and corrupt with power, have rejected democratic ideals and the obligations of a responsible power.” ¤
“Putin wants to restore the Russian empire. That’s his ambition; he’s stated it many times.”
—Sen. John S. McCain III #WeHaveTheWatch

🐣 RT @FranklinFoer When John McCain realized that Paul Manafort was trying to exploit his campaign in 2007, he banished him and wanted nothing to do with him.

🐣 RT @TrickFreee “One of Manafort’s biggest clients was the dubious pro-Russian Ukrainian billionaire Dmytri Firtash. By his own admission, Firtash maintains strong ties with a recurrent figure on this scene, the reputed Ukrainian/Russian mob boss Semion Mogilevich.”
⋙ TheAmericanInterest, James Henry (2016): The Curious World of Donald Trump’s Private Russian Connections http://bit.ly/2NgeIQP ¤ #TrumpRussia ¤ #LongRead ¤ #HighlyRec
// 12/19/2016
See under Entire Articles: AmInt Curious Connect 12-19-2016

⭕ 25 Aug 2018

NYT, Peter Wehner: The Full-Spectrum Corruption of Donald Trump http://nyti.ms/2LsVR3l
// Everyone and everything he touches rots.

It is a stunning turnabout. A party that once spoke with urgency and apparent conviction about the importance of ethical leadership — fidelity, honesty, honor, decency, good manners, setting a good example — has hitched its wagon to the most thoroughly and comprehensively corrupt individual who has ever been elected president. Some of the men who have been elected president have been unscrupulous in certain areas — infidelity, lying, dirty tricks, financial misdeeds — but we’ve never before had the full-spectrum corruption we see in the life of Donald Trump.

A warning to my Republican friends: The worst is yet to come. Thanks to the work of Robert Mueller — a distinguished public servant, not the leader of a “group of Angry Democrat Thugs” — we are going to discover deeper and deeper layers to Mr. Trump’s corruption. When we do, I expect Mr. Trump will unravel further as he feels more cornered, more desperate, more enraged; his behavior will become ever more erratic, disordered and crazed.

Most Republicans, having thrown their MAGA hats over the Trump wall, will stay with him until the end. Was a tax cut, deregulation and court appointments really worth all this?

WaPo: ‘He can’t get rid of any of this’: Trump’s wall of secrecy erodes amid growing legal challenges http://wapo.st/2No5eDq

DailyBeast: Ex-CIA Director John Brennan to Bill Maher: Trump Is ‘A Real Threat to Our National Security’ http://thebea.st/2wfTYSW
// The former CIA director under President Obama—and the architect of the bin Laden raid—sat down with Bill Maher on ‘Real Time’ to discuss Trump revoking his security clearance.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan [7/16] Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

“There are two principal reasons why I used that term,” Brennan explained to Maher of the “treasonous” comment. “One, I think I exhausted all the other adjectives in the English language to describe Donald Trump’s failures to fulfill his responsibilities as president of the United States. And two, I saw him on that stage in Helsinki failing to be able to say to the world and to Vladimir Putin that Russia tried to interfere in our election, that it never should have happened and it never should happen again, and if it does Russia is going to pay some very severe consequences as a result, but he didn’t do that.”

He went on to describe how unique the revocation was. “I didn’t ask to keep my security clearances—former directors don’t do that. We keep those clearances because sometimes, those in government want to avail themselves of our experience, our expertise, our knowledge about certain issues,” Brennan said. “This is the first time in 38 years that I haven’t had a security clearance, and the basis for the revocation is bogus. Mr. Trump and the administration didn’t adhere even to the process that they reaffirmed last year, and the politicization of security clearances, either the granting or the revocation, is a real threat to our national security.”

Later on, Maher claimed that Trump’s presidency is “the third great crisis in American history” behind the Revolutionary War and the Civil War, before asking Brennan if he agreed with that ranking.

“I would,” said Brennan. “And I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better, because don’t forget: Donald Trump has the authority of the president of the United States in his hands, in terms of what he can do domestically here and as well as what he can do internationally to try to distract attention, whether or not he’s going to try to pursue some type of foreign adventure, military or otherwise. But fundamentally though, what he’s doing to this country: he’s dividing us.”

🐣 RT @BillKristol History will record that @LindseyGrahamSC went out of his way to court favor with Donald Trump at precisely the moment when Trump and his enablers needed to hear a message of resistance to his evident desire to act to subvert the rule of law.

⭕ 24 Aug 2018

TheAtlantic, James Fallows: The Greatest Disappointment of the Trump Presidency http://bit.ly/2LoCWXj
// The institutional fabric of the United States has proven more tenacious and resilient in responding than many feared. The Republican Congress has not.

WaPo, James Hohmann: Fox fallout shows why Trump’s lawyers don’t want Mueller to get an interview http://wapo.st/2MMZtC4

🐣 RT @AC360 Manafort juror, who supports Trump, says she wishes Manafort was convicted on all counts, add POTUS ought not to extend a pardon: ¤ “I feel it would be a grave mistake for Pres. Trump to pardon Manafort. Justice was done. The evidence was there, and that’s where it should stop.”
💽 https://twitter.com/AC360/status/1033153444322758656/photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump warns of economic collapse, Giuliani of civil unrest, Stone of blood in the streets. Whoa! Bringing down a president, even one as vile and disgusting as DJT, is a grave matter. But it needn’t be the apocalypse, and leaving such an ogre in power is no small matter either.

WaPo, Kathleen Parker: The juror who could save America http://wapo.st/2BS3oZQ
// Juror No. 0302 may not have sought fame, but Paula Duncan will long be remembered in connection with Paul Manafort, whom she and 11 others convicted on eight counts of financial crime.

WaPo, Philip Bump: The three illegal acts that may have helped Trump win the presidency http://wapo.st/2MvQOVp

NYT, Roger Cohen: How Far America Has Fallen http://nyti.ms/2MuL8uG
// The thing with every shocking revelation about Trump is that it’s already baked into his image. I’ve never met a Trump supporter who did not know exactly who he is.

There’s a deeper question, which comes back to the extraordinary Western landscape and the high American idea enshrined in it. Americans elected Trump. Nobody else did. They came down to his level. White Christian males losing their place in the social order decided they’d do anything to save themselves, and to heck with morality. They made a bargain with the devil in full knowledge. So the real question is: What does it mean to be an American today? Who are we, goddamit? What have we become?

Trump was a symptom, not a cause. The problem is way deeper than him.

NYT: Allen Weisselberg, Top Trump Organization Official, Was Granted Immunity for Testimony http://nyti.ms/2wpBTB9
// “but the deal was narrow in scope” (front page tag line only)

Politico Mag, Michael Kruse: Trump on Weisselberg: ‘He Did Whatever Was Necessary’ http://politi.co/2o8Z9Q1
// Perhaps the most important person in the Trump Organization has had the lowest profile. Until he agreed to cooperate with federal investigators.

CNN: Exclusive: Ex-Trump World Tower doorman releases ‘catch-and-kill’ contract about alleged Trump affair http://cnn.it/2P29jxi “I was instructed not to criticize President Trump’s former housekeeper due to a prior relationship she had with President Trump, which produced a child.”

NYPost, Rich Lowry: Trump’s best bet to survive: Come clean about the payoffs http://nyp.st/2Ngw2Fu

FiveThirtyEight (2017): The 4 Types Of Constitutional Crises http://53eig.ht/2MNcCLw
// 2/9/2017, And which ones are most likely to come up during Trump’s presidency.

🐣 RT @RogueSNRadvisor Increasingly, the smart move for Trump is resignation & I think even he’s starting to understand that. As the reality of Nov grows closer & the feds keep getting closer there’s going to be a tipping point – we’re almost there, but not yet.

Msnbc: The biggest domino to fall, so far, in Trump’s New York ‘empire’ http://on.msnbc.com/2MVBbGd
// NBC’s Ken Dilanian, former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance, former federal prosecutor Paul Butler, and Rev. Al Sharpton on the immunity deal granted to Trump Org CFO Allen Weisselberg, the latest in Trump’s inner circle to cooperate with federal prosecutors on the heels of Michael Cohen’s plea deal

🐣 Tony Schwartz was the ghost writer for “The Art of the Deal.” He knows Trump well.
⋙ 🐣 RT @TonySchwartz Trump will be at his most dangerous and unstable in the weeks and months ahead. Drowning, he will want to take as many of us down with him as he can. He should never have had access to the nuclear codes but especially not now.

Bloomberg, Kartikay Mehrotra: Jailed Russian of Interest in U.S. Election Probe, Official Says http://bloom.bg/2LmCXLn “Prosecutors are as eager to find out what, if anything, Nikulin knows about election meddling as they are to get to the bottom of the LinkedIn and Dropbox hacks”
● Lawyers say Russian embassy keen on visiting accused hacker
● Judge questions pychiatrist chosen to examine Yevgeniy Nikulin

NYT: Kremlin Sources Go Quiet, Leaving C.I.A. in the Dark About Putin’s Plans for Midterms http://nyti.ms/2BLOcxH

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews Admin official said the White House puts out readouts for every call Trump has with Putin, knowing that it “would’ve been a disaster if news leaked of a secret call.” The Russian state media may be threatening Trump with the possibility of such a leak.©
⋙ JuliaDavisNews: Russian state media touts the secret hotline between the White House and Moscow http://bit.ly/2P6qG05

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand It only took slightly more than a year for two of the president’s longest-serving employees, considered by many to be the last who would ever turn on him, to cooperate with federal investigators—and, in Cohen’s case, directly implicate Trump in a crime.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Lanny Davis admits he anonymously confirmed CNN’s reporting on Cohen/Trump Tower when he didn’t actually know if was right. Yikes.

🐣 RT @ArmandOnAir Holy moly. I just learned that Weisselberg wasn’t just granted “use immunity” but rather “complete immunity from prosecution” – which my legal pal @KatiePhang will surely confirm only happens when you’ve got ALL the goods #FollowTheMoney

🐣 RT @BillKristol Trump, Giuliani, Sekulow, Sanders, Shine, Conway….They’re all liars. Shameless liars.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Delavegalaw You don’t get to “walk back” a detail-rich assertion that Trump talked with you “a few weeks ago,” during the Manafort trial, explicitly about a pardon for Manafort, and simply now say it was a generic conversation in June. One of these statements is a lie. We all know which one.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @JDiamond1 .@RudyGiuliani walks back his comment earlier today suggesting Trump wanted to pardon Manafort & he/attorneys convinced him to hold off until after the Mueller investigation. Giuliani now says he & Trump talked about pardons once — back in June — and it wasn’t Manafort-specific
Statement: https://twitter.com/JDiamond1/status/1032785778068336640/photo/1

🐣 RT @RusEmbUSA #Zakharova: We have to once again draw attention to the loose interpretation of the content of contacts between the high-ranking Russian and #US representatives by the American side. @statedeptspox remarks contradict the reality
⋙ FB link: http://bit.ly/2PvO5ca

💙💙 TheAtlantic, Eliot Cohen: How This Will End http://bit.ly/2MueclS
// Sooner or later, tyrants are always abandoned by their followers.

Michael Gerson, one of the most eloquent and principled critics of Donald Trump, insists that we are at June 1973, the moment when John Dean’s testimony broke the dam that a year later swept Richard Nixon off into disgrace. Others agree: This is an inflection point. And yet an equally well-informed friend insists, “I no longer believe in political inflection points and neither should you.” Who knows? But even if we do not recognize the turning points in the moment, we can anticipate what the end will feel like when it does arrive.

To be sure, Trump could hang on until the 2020 election. It is even possible, if considerably less likely, that he could be re-elected and march off into a glitzy retirement at Trump properties in Florida and New Jersey, his retreat from public life punctuated only by bursts of increasingly senile bombast. But it does seem more likely than once it was that he will go down in disgrace.

But to really get the feel for the Trump administration’s end, we must turn to the finest political psychologist of them all, William Shakespeare. The text is in the final act of what superstitious actors only refer to as “the Scottish play.” One of the nobles who has turned on their murderous usurper king describes Macbeth’s predicament:

Those he commands move only in command,
Nothing in love. Now does he feel his title
Hang loose about him, like a giant’s robe
Upon a dwarfish thief.

And so it will be for Trump. To be clear, these are very different people. Macbeth is an utterly absorbing, troubling, tragic, and compelling figure. Unlike America’s germaphobic president, who copped five draft deferments and has yet to visit the thousands of American soldiers on front lines in Afghanistan or Iraq, he is physically brave. In fact, the first thing we hear about him is that in the heat of battle with a rebel against King Duncan (who he later murders) Macbeth unseamed him from the nave to th’ chops. He is apparently faithful to wife, has a conscience (that he overcomes), knows guilt and remorse, and has self-knowledge. He also has a pretty good command of the English language. In all these respects he is as unlike Trump as one can be.

But in the moment of losing power, the two will be alike. A tyrant is unloved, and although the laws and institutions of the United States have proven a brake on Trump, his spirit remains tyrannical—that is, utterly self-absorbed and self-concerned, indifferent to the suffering of others, knowing no moral restraint. He expects fealty and gives none. Such people can exert power for a long time, by playing on the fear and cupidity, the gullibility and the hatreds of those around them. Ideological fervor can substitute for personal affection and attachment for a time, and so too can blind terror and sheer stupidity, but in the end these fall away as well.

And thus their courtiers abandon even monumental tyrants like Mussolini—who at least had his mistress, Claretta Petacci, with him at his ignominious end. (Melania’s affections are considerably less certain.) The normal course of events is sudden, epic desertion, in which an all-powerful political figure who loomed over everything is suddenly left shrunken and pitiful, a wretched little figure in gaudy robes absurdly too big for him, a figure of ridicule as much as, and even more than, hatred.

For the moment, the Republicans will not turn on Trump. They fear a peasant revolt, many of them; they still crave favors; they may think his castle impregnable, although less so if they believe what the polls tell them about some of its tottering walls. But if they suffer a medieval-style slaughter on Election Day, the remnants of the knights of the GOP will know a greater fear than that of being primaried. And at the moment when they no longer fear being swept away in 2020, when the economy may be in recession and the Mueller probe is complete with revelations whose ghastliness would delight the three witches of the Scottish play, they will suddenly turn on Trump. Act V of this play will also have a non-linear finish.

And what of Trump himself? In this respect he will be like Macbeth. Where Nixon, who was a statesman, saw the inevitable and resigned, this president is more likely to go down spitting defiance. As for the rest of us, Macduff says to the cornered king just before their final death grapple:

This is going to happen to Trump at some point. Of the Republicans in Congress it may be said of most of them: Those he commands move only in command, nothing in love. For now, admittedly, there are those who still court his favor—Senator Lindsey Graham, for example, once the trusty vassal of Senator John McCain, the bravest of warriors and noblest of dukes, seems to have switched his allegiance from his dying lord to the swaggering upstart aged prince. But that is about ambition, not affection.

live to be the show and gaze o’ th’ time.
We’ll have thee, as our rarer monsters are,
Painted upon a pole, and underwrit
‘Here may you see the tyrant’

And so it will likely be, as Americans gaze back and wonder how on earth this rare monster, now deposed, ended up as their president.

WaPo: Trump Organization executive Allen Weisselberg, who allegedly helped arrange hush-money reimbursement to Cohen, granted immunity http://wapo.st/2NfJt8F

CNBC: Longtime Trump Organization CFO Weisselberg granted immunity in Cohen probe http://cnb.cx/2P4D0Ot
● Allen Weisselberg, longtime chief financial officer of the Trump Organization, has been granted immunity by federal prosecutors as part of their investigation into President Trump’s former personal attorney, Michael Cohen.
● Weisselberg’s ties to the president go back decades: He has overseen the Trump Organization’s finances, been involved in the Trump Foundation, the president’s charity, and has managed Trump’s private trust alongside his eldest sons, Eric Trump and Donald Trump Jr.
● Weisselberg was subpoenaed by prosecutors earlier this year to testify before a grand jury as part of that probe.

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz [Trump biographer] The other shoe has dropped — the smoking gun equivalent to Nixon’s tapes. Alan Weisselberg knows everything. Trump will resign as I always assumed. Only matter of time now.
🐣 RT @maggieNYT Huge []
🐣 RT @Lawrence HUGE: Trump’s life of (tax) crime is passing before his eyes. []
↥ ↧
🔥💥🔥 WSJ: Allen Weisselberg, Longtime Trump Organization CFO, Is Granted Immunity in Cohen Probe http://on.wsj.com/2BHW8Qh
// Weisselberg earlier this year was subpoenaed to testify before grand jury

🐣 RT @RWPUSA He said during the campaign that he would use DOJ to jail his political opponents. His fanatical base screamed “lock her up.” ¤ He is now urging his AG to do just that. ¤ This alone is a violation of his oath of office. ¤ Congress must impeach, convict and remove him NOW.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced by political considerations.” Jeff, this is GREAT, what everyone wants, so look into all of the corruption on the “other side” including deleted Emails, Comey lies & leaks, Mueller conflicts, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr……

◕🐣 RT @rachaelmyrow Pretty but troubling infographic of the US political landscape on @twitter shows echo chambers and intertwined network of elected officials, press, and policy professionals. There are extremes, but they are mediated through a robust middle. https://buff.ly/2OXgaYV via @techreview
https://twitter.com/rachaelmyrow/status/1033007786429480960/photo/1
// internet graphic

🌎◕🐣 How did June 2018 compare to the previous 50 years? #climate
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1033012672055402497/photo/1
// global warming climate change

🐣 RT @BillKrisrol Trump’s last tweet last night: 12:21 am. First tweet this morning: 5:57 am. ¤ Methought I heard a voice cry, “Sleep no more! ¤ David Pecker does murder sleep.”
⋙ MacBeth quotations abound lately. Makes sense ~ the downfall of a man who stole an election, err, kingdom.

WEF: This team of #Saudi women won a hackathon with their app to make the Hajj safer https://wef.ch/2KY5JSv  #technology
Hajj At-A-Glance https://twitter.com/wef/status/1032968277104963585/photo/1

🐣 RT @electionland The White House argued the bill was redundant to DHS’s existing powers and flew in the face of federalism
⋙ YahooNews: White House blocks bill that would protect elections http://yhoo.it/2N8AhTo
// Sponsors: Lankford Harris Kobuchar Graham Collins; Secure Elections Act

🌎◕ 🐣 RT @taxfoundation What’s the real value of $100 in your state? ¤ Adjusting incomes for price level can substantially change our perceptions of which states are truly rich or poor. ¤ #PurchasingPower ¤ http://bit.ly/2MJpJNv @ericadyork #CostofLiving
https://twitter.com/taxfoundation/status/1032979600501075971/photo/1
// cost of living by state

◕ WEF: Over 2000 years of economic #history, in one chart https://wef.ch/2HXOwrg  #economics https://twitter.com/wef/status/1032979613016903680/photo/1
// fave chart; GDP by country over time

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand “Dangling a pardon—essentially saying, ‘A pardon will be available for you at some point down the line,’ is tantamount to obstruction of justice and witness tampering,” says @sethwaxman
⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Paul Manafort and Trump’s Pardon Pattern http://bit.ly/2Py2Lrj
// As he has with Manafort, President Trump has decried the government’s “unfair” treatment of all three men he has pardoned to date. But will the pattern hold with his former campaign manager?

⭕ 23 Aug 2018

DailyBeast, Dean Obeiallah: This Idea That a President Can’t Be Indicted Is a Myth http://thebea.st/2MROYgG
// There’s no law saying a president can’t be indicted. Just a couple of Justice Department memos. And they can be rewritten.

Politico Mag, Michael Kruse: Trump’s Long War with Justice http://politi.co/2wbbCaj
// He fought the law—and won. Could he do it again?

🐣 RT @RVAwonk Those of you who have followed me for a while likely already know this, but this is how I ended up studying/writing about Russian information warfare. I was studying vaccine- and outbreak-related misinformation on social media, and a ton of it traced back to… Russia.
⋙ 🐣 @RVAwonk RT A new AJPH study looked at how Russian bots & trolls amplify disinformation surrounding vaccines. –> “Whereas bots…disseminated anti-vaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted divisions,” which ultimately “erod[ed] public consensus on vaccination.”
⋙⋙ AJPH, David Broniatowski et al: Weaponized Health Communication: Twitter Bots and Russian Trolls Amplify the Vaccine Debate http://bit.ly/2PC9G2X

WaPo, David Ignatius: Last chance, Republicans http://wapo.st/2o4Nd1N

Here’s how his lawyer, Lanny Davis, described the implication of Cohen’s plea that he facilitated payments to an adult-film star and Playboy Playmate: “Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election.”

The Cohen case, so far, has nothing to do with the two central allegations at the heart of the Mueller probe: obstruction of justice and election collusion with Russia. But interestingly, Russia does figure in Cohen’s motivations, according to Davis: After watching Trump support Russian President Vladimir Putin against U.S. intelligence agencies at the news conference following the Helsinki summit, Cohen “worried about the future of the country with somebody who was aligning himself with Mr. Putin,” Davis told NBC on Wednesday.

But this week, it seems more likely that America is heading toward a gradual recovery from the trauma of the Trump presidency. For Republicans, there is a last chance over these next two months to finally show some guts and principle by separating themselves from Trump.

Then come the November elections, and it seems a reasonable bet, after Tuesday, to trust in the good sense of the American public

WaPo, Michael Gerson: A cancer on the presidency http://wapo.st/2waMgcx

In the course of Michael Cohen’s guilty plea this week, a lawyer close to the president has admitted his part in a high-level cover-up, including the use of hush money, designed to influence the 2016 election. And he accused President Trump of directing this violation.

This is different from our daily dose of the president’s outrageous tweets and attacks. It is an inflection point in the Trump presidency. He has been credibly accused, not of violating civic norms, but of personal involvement in criminal law-breaking. If Trump were not the president, he might well be indicted, convicted and face jail time.

His violation of civic norms, by the way, is not a minor matter. The payment to Stormy Daniels was made 12 days before the election. This timing indicates not the prevention of personal mortification, but an attempt to deny voters relevant information. As a result, the 2016 presidential election will always have an asterisk — “outcome may have been influenced by Russian hacking and campaign fraud.”

Every time we gain a peek into the inner workings of Trump world, we see a leader with the ethics of an Atlantic City casino owner who surrounds himself with people chosen for their willingness to lie and cheat at his bidding. A world in which Paul Manafort is “a very good person.” A world in which payoffs and election tampering are all in a day’s work.

Left to his investigation, Mueller will expose this world to the light. And the choice for Congress is likely to be clear: Impeach, or tolerate massive corruption.

WaPo: Critics fear Trump’s attacks are doing lasting damage to the justice system http://wapo.st/2o8p2j0

💽 Msnbc: Republicans warn Trump against pardoning Manafort http://on.msnbc.com/2MLmg14
// Rudy Giuliani told the Washington Post that Trump discussed the possibility of pardoning Manafort with his lawyers “several weeks ago.”

💙💙 ForeignAffairs, Philip Gordon: The Worst Deals Ever http://fam.ag/2o8kYzg
// excellent: #highlyrec; What Trump Misses About the Art of Foreign Policy Negotiation

In fact, Trump is an ineffective negotiator not only because he is poorly versed in basic facts, inconsistent in his bottom lines, and susceptible to flattery but also because his entire approach is based on a fundamental misunderstanding of dealmaking. He wrongly views international relations as a zero-sum game and confuses punishing others with enhancing his own country’s long-term prosperity, security, and well-being.

Trump seems to believe that the United States’ trade deficits mean that the country is “losing” to other countries who are “stealing our wealth.” This misguided view overlooks the fact that when the United States runs a bilateral trade deficit its consumers and producers are not just sending money abroad; they are receiving the goods and services they want at the best prices available. Tariffs and other protectionist measures could theoretically reduce a trade deficit with one particular country, such as China. But this will simply lead to a trade deficit with a different country so long as the United States remains near full employment and is running foreign-financed budget deficits, which drive up the value of the dollar and make U.S. goods less competitive. 

Beijing has retaliated with higher tariffs of its own, particularly on U.S. agricultural exports such as corn, soybeans, and wheat. The damage to the U.S. farming sector has been significant. July saw the biggest drop in U.S. farm export prices in more than six years, and prices are likely to fall much further if the standoff continues and Chinese importers turn to other countries, such as Brazil, for new and more reliable suppliers. Already, the situation is dire enough that Trump has had to offer $12 billion in emergency subsidies to U.S. farmers to compensate them for the consequences of his own trade policy—at taxpayers’ expense. ¤ [D]espite Trump’s claim that tariffs are “leading us to great new trade deals,” he has yet to negotiate a single one. 

Newsweek: Donald Trump Says if He Got Impeached ‘Everybody Would Be Very Poor’ http://bit.ly/2BJvI0w

Politico: Republicans: Sessions gone after midterms http://politi.co/2wqp2hW
// As the president renewed his attacks on his attorney general, two Senate Republicans indicated they’d be open to replacing him — sparking a quick smackdown from GOP leaders.

🚫🐣 RT @timinhonolulu Giuliani’s threat of a revolt if Congress seeks to engage in Constitutional duty to review fitness of the President to remain in office is a clear act of incitement and @RudyGiuliani should be taken into custody and held without bail for violating 18 U.S. Code § 2383. @FBIWFO

🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs Many populists miss that the Bretton Woods system worked as well as it did and for as long as it did thanks only to the United States’ exceptional dominance of the global economy.
⋙ ForeignAffairs: Brand New Left, Same Old Problems http://fam.ag/2P2bNvH
// What Populism Can and Can’t Achieve

NewYorker, Adam Entous and Ronan Farrow: The Conspiracy Memo About Obama Aides That Circulated in the Trump White House http://bit.ly/2wpqOjg
// 8/23/2018, The 2017 document, titled “The Echo Chamber,” accused former Obama officials of undermining the incoming Administration.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYkr Farrow Conspiracy 8-23-2018

✅ Snopes: Election Law Violations Compared: Obama 2008 vs Trump 2016 http://bit.ly/2P2iqhE
// FactCheck, Federal Election Commission violations are a civil matter, while Michael Cohen is guilty of multiple felonies.

✅ Snopes (2017): Is James Comey ‘Best Friends’ with Robert Mueller, And Is That Friendship a Conflict of Interest? http://bit.ly/2MrPZNb
// 6/16/2017, FactCheck, Comey’s attorney said that the two men know each other from working together but are hardly “best friends”, and experts told us the relationship doesn’t meet conflict of interest legal criteria.

🐣 RT @jonathanswan Doesn’t get less subtle. Trump – on record – calls Manafort “brave” for not flipping, then Rudy goes on record to float pardon.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JDiamond1 The President, via his attorney, is essentially telegraphing that he’ll likely pardon Manafort after the Mueller investigation has wrapped. Meaning Manafort just has to stick it out, not offer damaging information about Trump & he’ll be home free

AP: National Enquirer hid damaging Trump stories in a safe http://bit.ly/2MK4A5U

“When it comes to the pickle Mr Pecker has put the president in…” – @maddow. Yeah, that’s 😆

NYT: Manhattan D.A. Eyes Criminal Charges Against Trump Organization http://nyti.ms/2NgboFk

🐣 RT @ChuckTodd After days of playing extra coy about whether they’d offer pardons, Giuliani is less coy now, signaling that pardons are on the table, just not until AFTER Mueller finishes. That’s quite the enticement to keep folks from flipping.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HallieJackson NEW / Rudy Giuliani tells @NBCNews the president agreed earlier this summer with his lawyers advice that he “shouldn’t do pardons” during the special counsel investigation: “We talked about pardons in general in June & he agreed he shouldn’t do pardons during investigation.”

🐣 RT @HeathaT An amazing photo spread shows how the National Enquirer covered Hillary Clinton’s campaign. From @jackshafer last year on Trump’s “mouthpiece”
NatEnq covers: https://twitter.com/HeathaT/status/1032701233205837829/photo/1
⋙ Politico Mag (2017): Pravda on the Checkout Line http://politi.co/2PzkHSA
// Jan-Feb 2017 issue, First Donald Trump got an endorsement from the tabloids. Now he’s getting a mouthpiece.

🐣 RT @maninthehoodie David Pecker used the National Enquirer to buy negative stories about Trump and kill them. He just got immunity and all those stories just rose from the dead. Mueller is the good witch.

🐣 RT @CatherineRampell ‘It should be illegal to testify against co-conspirators’ is definitely an argument innocent people make

🐣 RT @RenatoMariotti “One source close to Cohen told me Cohen wants to tell Mueller that Trump discussed the release of Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s e-mails during the weekend when the Access Hollywood ‘grab ’em by the pussy’ tape dominated the news cycle.”
⋙ VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “Holy Shit, I Thought Pecker Would Be the Last One to Turn”: Trump’s National Enquirer Allies Are the Latest to Defect http://bit.ly/2o6NBwM
// David Pecker and Dylan Howard corroborated Michael Cohen’s account implicating the president in a federal crime. And Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, says there are more revelations to come.

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance David Pecker, Trump friend, National Enquirer, “catch & kill” guy who kept stories that were bad for candidate Trump out of public view, is cooperating with federal prosecutors. This goes a long way to explaining why Trump is upset about “flipping.”
⋙ WSJ: David Pecker, CEO of National Enquirer Publisher, Granted Immunity in Michael Cohen Case http://on.wsj.com/2LmBpBd
// Publishing executive met with prosecutors to describe involvement of Cohen, Trump in hush-money deals to women ahead of 2016 election

🐣 RT @JohnHarwood Trump to Fox: “flipping almost ought to be illegal. 30-40 years I’ve been watching flippers” ¤ 32 years ago, crime boss Tony Salerno, who supplied Trump Plaza concrete, was convicted of racketeering. His top deputy flipped to help FBI ¤ lawyer for both Salerno and Trump: Roy Cohn

YahooNews: White House blocks bill that would protect elections http://yhoo.it/2N8AhTo

The Secure Elections Act, introduced by Sen. James Lankford, R-Okla., in December 2017, had co-sponsorship from two of the Senate’s most prominent liberals, Kamala Harris, D-Calif., and Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., as well as from conservative stalwart Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and consummate centrist Susan Collins, R-Me.

As it currently stands, the legislation would grant every state’s top election official security clearance to receive threat information. It would also formalize the practice of information-sharing between the federal government—in particular, the Department of Homeland Security—and states regarding threats to electoral infrastructure. A technical advisory board would establish best practices related to election cybersecurity. Perhaps most significantly, the law would mandate that every state conduct a statistically significant audit following a federal election. It would also incentivize the purchase of voting machines that leave a paper record of votes cast, as opposed to some all-electronic models that do not. This would signify a marked shift away from all-electronic voting, which was encouraged with the passage of the Help Americans Vote Act in 2002.

NYT: Jeff Sessions Rejects Trump’s Latest Attack, Says Justice Dept. Will Not Be Influenced by Politics http://nyti.ms/2P1CPmY

WSJ: David Pecker Granted Immunity in Cohen Case http://on.wsj.com/2Ln7Ejw
// Publishing executive met with prosecutors to describe involvement of Cohen, Trump in hush-money deals to women ahead of 2016 election

Bloomberg: Key Republicans Signal Trump May Fire Sessions After Election http://bloom.bg/2MsCddl

NYT: Manafort Jury Holdout Blocked Guilty Verdicts on 10 of 18 Charges, Juror Says http://nyti.ms/2BFsqLV

That juror, Paula Duncan, who described herself as a supporter of President Trump, said on Fox News that the rest of the jury believed that Mr. Manafort was guilty on all charges, but the holdout would agree to only eight.

Despite four days of deliberations and pleas from the other 11 jurors, the 12th one, whom Ms. Duncan only described as a female, did not budge in her belief that prosecutors had not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Manafort was guilty.

“We all tried to convince her to look at the paper trail,” Ms. Duncan said in an interview on “Fox News at Night with Shannon Bream.” “We laid it out in front of her again and again. She still said she had reasonable doubt. That’s the way the jury worked.”

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan I take no delight in seeing the steady collapse of a U.S. Presidency, but I do take strong comfort in knowing that the rule of law & our great government institutions are prevailing. Things ultimately will get better, and we will heal as a Nation.

Fortune: ‘He Makes a Better Deal When He Uses Me.’ Trump Accuses Michael Cohen of ‘Flipping’ http://for.tn/2wjqbrC

🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump tells FOX, pointing at his own head, “I can’t be impeached. You would be poor without me.” Recall when he said “I alone can fix it”? He really meant it — and really thinks he’s beyond the reach of law because of his imagined genius at doing stuff.

🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss Trump’s “friends” are abandoning him. They’re talking to prosecutors while Mueller methodically prepares his case. Trump can try to spin another fantasy and imagine he’ll escape punishment again. But it may be dawning on him this time it won’t work. ¤ No wonder he’s unraveling.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump hammers Jeff Sessions: “He took the job and then he said, ‘I’m going to recuse myself’ I said, ‘what kind of a man is this?’ And by the way, he was on the campaign. The only reason I gave him the job I felt loyalty.” (via Fox)
💽 F&F: https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1032592040058605568/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JenniferJJacobs “I guess it says something like high crimes and all. I don’t know how you can impeach somebody who’s done a great job. I’ll tell you what, if I ever got impeached, I think the market would crash,” Trump said in Fox News interview.
💽 https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1032589350930923520/photo/1

BBC: Trump insists hush money payments by Cohen were legal http://bbc.in/2MsciSJ

FoxNews: Manafort juror reveals lone holdout prevented Mueller team from winning conviction on all counts http://fxn.ws/2widoWA

🐣 12:10 am. Up past his bedtime.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real NO COLLUSION – RIGGED WITCH HUNT!

⭕ 22 Aug 2018

ForeignAffairs, Nigel Gould-Davies: Sanctions on Russia Are Working http://fam.ag/2LBsn3u
// Why It’s Important to Keep Up the Pressure

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: “The Worst Hour of His Entire Life”: Cohen, Manafort, and the Twin Courtroom Dramas That Changed Trump’s Presidency http://bit.ly/2BU3Xm2
// 8/22/2018, Is this finally the President’s accountability moment?
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYkr Glasser Worst Hr 8-22-2018

WSJ: Why Michael Cohen Agreed to Plead Guilty—And Implicate the President http://on.wsj.com/2wiYSO9
// Prosecutors had reams of evidence and a long list of counts, which also could have included the lawyer’s wife

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Tries to Deny His Crime With Cohen, Confesses by Mistake http://nym.ag/2LmETnm

Trump’s own defense, offered on Fox & Friends, is even more confused. Trump insisted he is in the clear because the payments “weren’t taken out of campaign finance … They didn’t come out of the campaign, they came from me.” That is not a defense. That is why it’s a crime. If the money came from the campaign, it would have been legal.

💙💙 NYMag, Benjamin Wittes: The Most Damaging Thing That’s Happened to Trump http://nym.ag/2LoHTzE
// It wasn’t what Michael Cohen alleged in court, or the conviction of his campaign chair.

NYT: Anatomy of a Crime: Sex, Hush Money and a Trump Fixer’s Guilty Plea http://nyti.ms/2BGWsio

The federal campaign finance and tax evasion case that is embroiling the White House began in the unlikeliest of places: the world of supermarket tabloids.

It is populated by porn stars and Playboy models, shadowy “story brokers” and the ultra rich and powerful, who can buy back their secrets on an underground exchange run by gossip scribes who set the rules, the prices and, frequently, the reputational toll.

That world has now come to life on the stark pages of federal court documents that detail violations of campaign finance and tax laws, implicating President Trump and reprising Watergate-era talk of “high crimes and misdemeanors” and possible impeachment.

The filings revealed the involvement of executives at The Trump Organization, who routed reimbursements to Mr. Cohen through a Trump trust using “sham invoices.”

For the first time, prosecutors said that the tabloid publisher American Media Inc. had been involved in deals to buy the silence of both Ms. Clifford and Ms. McDougal. And as early as August 2015, prosecutors revealed, Mr. Cohen communicated with the chairman of American Media, David J. Pecker, who agreed to turn the organization’s tip line into a trip wire that could detect potential trouble for Mr. Trump. Mr. Pecker agreed to “help deal with negative stories,” about Mr. Trump’s “relationships with women by, among other things, assisting the campaign in identifying such stories so they could be purchased and their publication avoided.”

Prosecutors and Mr. Cohen said that he undertook his work with A.M.I. at Mr. Trump’s direction — an assertion the president denied, telling Fox News on Wednesday that he learned of the payments only later.

[McDougal] has said that she decided to sell her story in 2016 when another former Playboy model hinted at it on Twitter, causing her to worry that it would become public whether she liked it or not. After a friend convinced her that she might as well make money from it, she decided to approach the tabloids and hired a Los Angeles lawyer, Keith M. Davidson, to help her do it.

According to prosecutors, when Ms. McDougal and Mr. Davidson approached American Media, Mr. Pecker, along with his top editorial executive, Dylan Howard, immediately informed Mr. Cohen. More important, the prosecutors allege, Mr. Cohen then urged A.M.I. to buy her story in order to suppress it, “so as to prevent it from influencing the election.”

But a media company makes an illegal corporate contribution if it acts outside its “legitimate press function” in coordinating with a campaign to spend money to influence an election. Such activity “is not like the action of a media company deciding what to cover and exercising editorial judgment,” [Trevor] Potter said.

Ms. Clifford met Mr. Trump in July 2006, at the American Century Championship golf tournament, where Mr. Trump also had an assignation with Ms. McDougal.

She had starred in pornographic movies including “Space Nuts” and “Love Potion 69”; Mr. Trump was on a top television show, “The Apprentice.” The idea that he would be president and she would pose a later legal threat would have seemed improbable as they spent one of their dates watching “Shark Week.” (Ms. Clifford has said they had sex only once; Mr. Trump denies the affair.)

But it was Ms. Clifford who helped blow open the case earlier this year, along with her aggressive, media-ready lawyer, Michael Avenatti, who could match Mr. Trump tweet for tweet, quip for quip — so much so that he says he is now considering a run for the presidency himself. Mr. Avenatti has been representing Ms. Clifford in a lawsuit to nullify her deal.

In the fall of 2016, Ms. Clifford was discussing selling her story at an inopportune time for Mr. Trump, just after a recording leaked of raw “Access Hollywood” footage in which he boasted about groping women.

Once again, the American Media trip wire alerted Mr. Cohen of trouble for Mr. Trump. Prosecutors reported Tuesday that an agent approached Mr. Howard, the A.M.I. editor, to tell him that Ms. Clifford was preparing to talk about her encounters with Mr. Trump. In fact, the prosecutors said, Mr. Howard and Mr. Pecker connected Mr. Cohen with Mr. Davidson, the lawyer who represented Ms. Clifford then.

According to prosecutors, executives at the company signed off on paying Mr. Cohen $420,000, which included a $60,000 bonus, money to cover any taxes on the payment to Mr. Cohen and a reimbursement for undefined “tech services.” As prosecutors noted, Mr. Cohen would be paid in $35,000 installments. Mr. Cohen submitted invoices that falsely identified the payments as part of a “retainer agreement.”

Upon receiving the first two invoices, a company executive whom prosecutors identified as “Executive-1” forwarded the invoice to “another executive of the company (‘Executive -2’),” and the fraudulent invoice was approved, according to the prosecutors. Several people familiar with the investigation said one of those executives was Allen Weisselberg, the Trump Organization chief financial officer. It is unclear who the other executive was.

Testifying under oath on Tuesday, Mr. Cohen said he arranged the payment “for the principal purpose of influencing the election,” and told the judge he knew at the time that he was doing so in violation of campaign finance laws.

TheAtlantic, Ben Judah: Washington Is Turning Into Moscow http://bit.ly/2LlAwJ9
// What upsets the Putin regime isn’t research into its military strength, but anything exploring its illicit finances. Something similar might now be said of the White House.
Dark skies over White House: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1032635762909560839/photo/1

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Those “non-crimes” are punishable by up to five years in prison and $250,000 fine. Each.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!

🐣 RT @ReSwalwell And there you have it. The #Manafort trial hung 11-1 on the other counts. Not uncommon. But shows how powerful the case was. In perspective: 96-0 was the cumulative vote count for guiltys on the eight convicted counts. 110-10 on the hung counts. I see a re-trial as likely.

HillReporter, Brian Krassenstein: Michael Cohen Subpoenaed in New York State Probe of The Trump Foundation http://bit.ly/2Li3Pw1

Slate, Jeremy Stahl: Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea Is a Massive Victory for Robert Mueller’s Divide-and-Conquer Strategy http://bit.ly/2NcqQCk

🐣 RT @jwpetersNYT Just talked one of Trump’s earliest supporters & true believers – very rattled – who’s been talking to big GOP donors. They want to support Trump. They tried hard to ignore all the noise. They can’t anymore. “They’re over it. This is not how a president comports himself.”

🐣 RT @DavidJollyFL This interview is damning, and will be cited for its historical significance. ¤ Wherein Trump directly confesses to being a co-conspirator with Michael Cohen during an exclusive interview with, wait for it, Fox News. ¤ Each of his actual lawyers just gasped, again.
💽 F&F: EXCLUSIVE: President @realDonaldTrump on if he knew about the Cohen payments./photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw Too bad election law crimes seem so technical. If Trump had paid to have his accusers, Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, physically gagged on the eve of the election so he could win, nobody would doubt the enormity of his crime. What Trump did was no better. It’s huge.

🐣 RT @nickconfessore Obama’s campaign, not Obama personally, paid a fine for what was essentially late or accidentally erroneous paperwork on a large number of small contributions. ¤ Cohen and the president personally engaged in a deliberate scheme to hide a payoff and lie about it.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Michael Cohen plead guilty to two counts of campaign finance violations that are not a crime. President Obama had a big campaign finance violation and it was easily settled!

🐣 RT @NormEisen BREAKING: In running away from Cohen’s claims today, Trump bumbled right into admitting that he lied on his financial disclosures & violated 18 USC 1001. This was already the subject of a @CREWcrew criminal complaint that led to an OGE referral to DOJ–Trump just proved our case!

🐣 RT @jaketapper Jury convicts his campaign chair on 8 felony counts; president pooh-poohs the charges, derides the process, praises the felon, compliments the felon for not flipping, and seems to be setting the stage for a pardon.

WSJ: Why Michael Cohen Agreed to Plead Guilty—And Implicate the President http://on.wsj.com/2wiYSO9
// Prosecutors had reams of evidence and a long list of counts, which also could have included the lawyer’s wife

WaPo: ‘How do you spin a fact?’ White House grapples with response to Cohen, Manafort convictions. http://wapo.st/2nZG3Ma

NYT, Bret Stephens: Donald Trump’s High Crimes and Misdemeanors http://nyti.ms/2Lgp81a
// The principled case for impeachment is clear. What’s missing is the courage.

… The Constitution’s standard for impeachment is “Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors.” The standard is now met.

Trump’s longtime fixer acknowledged in court on Tuesday that he violated campaign finance laws by paying hush money to two women “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” That means Trump. That means that, as a candidate, Trump is credibly alleged to have purposefully conspired with Cohen to commit criminal acts. That means the duo did so “for purposes of influencing [an] election for Federal office,” which is the legal definition of a campaign contribution.

It also means that, as president, Trump allegedly sought to conceal the arrangement by failing to note in his 2017 financial disclosure forms his reimbursements to Cohen. The president most likely continues to lie to the American people about the nature and purpose of those payments.

As for the Edwards standard, the case failed because prosecutors could not prove that the former North Carolina senator received campaign donations from benefactors to influence an election, rather than simply cover up an embarrassing affair. In Trump’s case, there is little doubt about the purpose of the payment to Stormy Daniels: To prevent disclosure of their alleged liaison, less than a month before the election and barely two weeks after the Access Hollywood tape came to light.

To suggest that this doesn’t amount to a felonious act also doesn’t pass the smell test. The president is now, in effect, an unindicted co-conspirator on charges already prosecuted by the government as a criminal matter against Cohen. Why should a lighter standard apply to Trump, since he’s the one at whose direction Cohen claims to have carried out the payments?

Pragmatists will rejoin that there’s no sense in advocating impeachment when the G.O.P. controls Congress. I’m sorry that so many congressional Republicans have lost their sense of moral principle and institutional self-respect, but that’s a reason to seek Democratic victories in the fall. The Constitution matters more than a tax cut. What the Constitution demands is the impeachment and removal from office of this lawless president.

NYT Editorial: Congress, Do Your Job http://nyti.ms/2w3V1FA
// After President Trump’s Terrible Tuesday, Republican lawmakers need to stop pretending that there are any red lines that he won’t cross.

… If Mr. Trump arranged secret payments to hush up his affairs, then he conspired to deny voters information he feared would harm his electoral chances. His efforts to hide the money trail suggest he knew his behavior wasn’t kosher. And while the initial payments to the women were made before Mr. Trump won the election, he didn’t begin compensating Mr. Cohen until February of 2017 — thus any conspiracy was carried straight into the Oval Office.

Congress, unfortunately, remains crouched and trembling in a dark corner, hoping this is all a bad dream. It’s not. Republican lawmakers need to buck up, remind themselves of their constitutional responsibilities and erect some basic guardrails to ensure that — in a fit of rage, panic or mere pique — this president does not wake up one morning and decide to drive American democracy off a cliff.

NYT, Sahil Chinoy et al: Trump’s Growing Obsession With the ‘Witch Hunt’ http://nyti.ms/2MKtxhr

NYT: Republicans Urge Embattled Incumbents to Speak Out on Trump http://nyti.ms/2PsmoB0 “Where there’s smoke, and there’s a lot of smoke, there may well be fire.”

Senior Republican Party leaders began urging their most imperiled incumbents on Wednesday to speak out about the wrongdoing surrounding President Trump, with Representative Tom Cole, a former House Republican campaign chairman, warning, “Where there’s smoke, and there’s a lot of smoke, there may well be fire.”

Democrats face their own pressure to shed their cautious midterm strategy and hammer the opposition for fostering what Democratic leaders are labeling “a culture of corruption” that starts at Mr. Trump and cascades through two indicted House Republicans to a series of smaller scandals breaking out in the party’s backbenches.

🐣 RT @TheDailyEdge That moment when POTUS admits that he personally paid hush money to the porn star he slept with without a condom while his 3rd wife was home nursing their only child. His lawyer, his lawyer’s lawyers and a federal judge confirmed yesterday this was a crime
[F&F interview:] 💽 https://twitter.com/TheDailyEdge/status/1032327915889934336/photo/1

💙💙 TheHill: Cohen’s lawyer on Trump Tower meeting: Cohen was ‘present at a discussion with’ Trump and Trump Jr. http://bit.ly/2OVXBEv
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @joshtpm “at this juncture I can only say that he was present during a discussion with junior and dad” about the Trump Tower meeting. [CNN Situation Room:]
💽 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1032395729099214848/photo/1

WaPo FactChecker: Not just misleading. Not merely false. A lie. http://wapo.st/2LlYCDt Payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal
// timeline

📊 FoxNews Poll: Democrats maintain lead in race for House http://fxn.ws/2nZaW3s
Support for Mueller Probe: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1032522745706409987/photo/1
Impeachable Offense: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1032523192542420993/photo/1
Vote in Midterms (Party): https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1032523524483760128/photo/1

🐣 RT @PreetBharara Practice note: Trump has no effective way to shut down any investigation being conducted by SDNY. That office is more insulated, enduring and “sovereign” than the Special Counsel’s Office. You can fire Mueller. You can fire the US Attorney. You can’t fire the SDNY.

🐣 RT @amandacarpenter Worth reminding folks, Michael Cohen also served as Deputy Finance Chairman for the RNC. And, he’s about to plead guilty to campaign finance crimes.

NYT: Democratic Party Says It Thwarted Attempted Hack of Voter Database http://nyti.ms/2LkXfVw

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw “Mr Cohen has direct knowledge … that suggests, I’m not sure it proves, that Mr Trump was aware of Russian government agents hacking illegally, committing computer crimes, to the detriment of the candidate he was running against, Hillary Clinton.” -Michael Cohen’s lawyer on PBS

🐣 RT @joshtpm Davis: ” I don’t know if it’s a smoking gun or how decisive it is. What I’m suggesting is that Mr. Cohen was an observer and was a witness to Mr. Trump’s awareness of those e-mails before they were dropped, and it would pertain to the hacking of the e-mail accounts.”
💽 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1032393228652371973/photo/1

RollingStone, Andrew Cohen: The Only Thing Keeping Trump Out of Jail http://rol.st/2Pw0tJa
// After Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort went down, Trump’s world suddenly became smaller and more dangerous

🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: Dem official: Hackers attempted to break into DNC voter file with phishing campaign.

CNBC, John Harwood: The reckoning is here for Donald Trump and the Republican Party, and it will only get worse for them http://cnb.cx/2whtpfq

● The reckoning has arrived for Donald Trump. The trouble for him and fellow Republicans will only get worse from here.
● Trump and his allies sought comfort asserting that none of Tuesday’s legal proceedings involved collusion with Russia to influence the 2016 election. That is true.
● But all the president’s men under prosecutorial scrutiny have important Russian connections that are problematic for Trump.

TheGuardian: Paul Manafort went to Kyrgyzstan to ‘strengthen Russia’s position’ http://bit.ly/2PrmatU
// Investigation claims former Trump campaign chair promoted Russian interests

🐣 RT @kremlintrolls Trump on the hush money payments: “They didn’t come out of the campaign. They came from me.” ¤ Appears that Trump is implicating himself. Oops. ¤ @kylegriffin1 m/t
💽 https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1032369707465076736/photo/1

🐣 Some of the best and brightest voices now on @msnbc are the conservatives who have broken with Trumpism, especially those on @DeadlineWH hosted by @NicolleDWallace, incl @SteveSchmidtSES @JRubinBlogger @BillKristol etc. They make me believe someday we will come through this.

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES This means Trump’s Presidency is not only illegitimate but criminal. It means a Presidential election was compromised by the most insidious criminal conspiracy in American History. It means Trump is a traitor and Putin determined the outcome. The impeachment bar has been reached

WaPo,Max Boot: Trump is an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud http://wapo.st/2MMeUui

The Manafort charges of tax and bank fraud do not directly implicate the president, but they do vindicate the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, showing that his inquiry is no “Rigged Witch Hunt” but a serious investigation that has produced 35 indictments, six guilty pleas and one conviction. No special counsel has done more, faster. If Manafort had been found not guilty, it would have been a massive blow to Mueller. Because he was found guilty, it is a blow to Trump.

But not nearly as a big a blow as Cohen’s admission under oath that he violated federal campaign laws by arranging illicit payments to adult-film star Stormy Daniels and Playboy playmate Karen McDougal “in coordination with and at the direction of a candidate for federal office.” For the first time since Watergate, the president is now an alleged co-conspirator in the commission of a federal crime. As Cohen’s lawyer, Lanny Davis, said, his client “testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?”

And Cohen may only have begun implicating the president. Davis said on MSNBC that Cohen would be happy to share other incriminating information with the special counsel, including “knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.” This would seem to vindicate an earlier leak that Cohen may be able provide the “smoking gun” evidence showing that Trump himself gave the go-ahead to collusion with the Kremlin.

In short, there is growing evidence that the president is, to use the word favored by Richard Nixon, “a crook.” Even buying the silence of his reputed playmates could by itself have been enough to swing an exceedingly close election decided by fewer than 80,000 votes in three states. Trump certainly would not have authorized the payments unless he thought it was politically imperative to do so. There is also considerable evidence, as I previously argued, that Russia’s intervention on Trump’s behalf affected the outcome. Even more than Nixon, Trump is now an illegitimate president whose election is tainted by fraud.

… A responsible Congress would have by now already convened an impeachment inquiry. But that is not the Congress we have. We have a Congress dominated by political hacks and moral invertebrates who are determined to act as the president’s enablers and legitimizers at all costs.

Terrible Tuesday also included the indictment of one of his earliest congressional supporters, Rep. Duncan D. Hunter (R-Calif.), and his wife, on charges of misusing campaign funds to pay personal expenses. This comes shortly after another of Trump’s early endorsers, Rep. Chris Collins (R-N.Y.), decided not to seek reelection after being indicted on insider-trading charges.

… They involve violating their oaths of office by failing to hold the president accountable for misusing his office. Some, such as Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), have gone much further by actively attempting to impede the Justice Department investigation into Trump’s alleged misconduct. They have become, in a moral if not legal sense, accessories to obstruction of justice.

And they have gotten away with it because the congressional leadership has allowed them to do so.

The voters of the United States must now say to this Congress what Oliver Cromwell said to the Rump Parliament in 1653: “Ye are a factious crew, and enemies to all good government. . . . Ye are grown intolerably odious to the whole nation. You were deputed here by the people to get grievances redressed, are yourselves become the greatest grievance. . . . Go, get you out! Make haste! . . . In the name of God, go!”

🐣 RT @costareports “No day during President Trump’s 19 months in office could prove as dangerous or debilitating as Tuesday.” @danbalz
⋙ WaPo, Dan Balz: After two convictions, pressure mounts on Trump http://wapo.st/2OT7nXV

TheHill: Cohen’s lawyer: Mueller a ‘great man’ http://bit.ly/2MHaLrl Cohen’s lawyer: Mueller is a “great man” operating like a silent submarine

🐣 RT @ChrisAlbertoLaw Rudy Giuliani publicly stated Trump directed Cohen to make the hush money payments; thus, Trump directed a crime & he was part of the cover-up. Now Cohen’s lawyer says Michael Cohen will tell Mueller of a “Conspiracy to Collude” With Russia. It’s not Witch Hunt, it’s Which Hunt!
https://twitter.com/ChrisAlbertoLaw/status/1032265880367972353/photo/1

RT @tribelaw From pg.60: “While creating the Constitution, [the Framers] repeatedly described corrupt acquisition of the presidency as a paradigm case for impeachment.” //➔ Wouldn’t Pence be equally illegitimate, having ascended to his position by the same act of corruption?

🐣 RT @blakehounshell This might be Trump’s best tweet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!

🐣 RT @real I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” – make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!

🐣 RT @ChuckGrassley will somebody at the WH ask @POTUS to read Gerald Seib’s WSJ article on pg4 2day? good advice to strengthen his presidency
⋙ 🐣 I think it’s time you guys look for a lifeboat.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1032253631221952513/photo/1
// Titanic named Trump

🐣 RT @yamiche Just got off the phone with Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer, who told me: “I have an impression that Mr. Cohen could address topics of interest to Mr. Mueller relating to whether Mr. Trump had advanced knowledge of the hacking of emails for political purposes.”

🐣 RT @tribelaw In addition to being impeachable, Trump’s election law offenses were FEDERAL CRIMES committed when he was a private citizen in Trump Tower. If Mueller decides he shouldn’t indict @POTUS in DC, the US Attorney for SDNY might give thought to doing so in NY. He has the evidence now.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw From pg.60: “While creating the Constitution, [the Framers] repeatedly described corrupt acquisition of the presidency as a paradigm case for impeachment.” The guilty plea by Trump’s private counsel Michael Cohen in SDNY on August 21 makes that case.
⋙⋙ 🐣 In that case, wouldn’t Pence be equally illegitimate, in that he would have ascended to the position he’s in by the same act of corruption?

🐣 RT @anbayanyay Russia always was a kleptocracy, still is. They’re just flying a different pirate banner now. The Soviet Union faked its own death, or today’s Russia is the zombie of the USSR, your pick, same diff.
⋙ 🐣 I read an article recently that made that point. I need to learn a lot more. It was such a mystery when I was growing up, then it kind of ‘disappeared’ from the radar after 1990 when we turned to the Middle East. It’s sure back with a vengeance!

CommonDreams, Jake Johnson: In a Functional Democracy, This Would Be a No-Brainer’: Warren Unveils Bold Anti-Corruption Legislation http://bit.ly/2w4lHFV
// “These reforms have one simple aim: to take power in Washington away from the wealthy, the powerful, and the well-connected who have corrupted our government and put power back in the hands of the American people.”

NBC: In case of Mueller firing, break glass: Democrats prep an emergency plan http://nbcnews.to/2wq8IxZ
// Congressional action and protest rallies are among the contingencies being planned if Trump tries to shut down the Russia probe.

🐣 MichaelCohenTruthFund.com (GoFundMe)

🐣 RT @PreetBharara Trump is the greatest magnet for corruption the swamp has ever seen. His endorsers, his fixers, his lawyers, his campaign managers, his cabinet members. It is never-ending corruption. And many are being locked up, as the chant goes.

🐣 The entire Republican Party crawled into bed with Donald Trump and now they’re going to get screwed.

TheAtlantic, Conor Friedersdorf: Trump Robbed Voters of What They Deserved to Know http://bit.ly/2w40rAa
// The 2016 election was won amid a coverup of illegal conduct designed to keep the truth from the electorate.

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: Cohen lawyer Lanny Davis suggests his client has knowledge implicating Trump in ‘criminal conspiracy’ to hack Democratic emails http://wapo.st/2w0K1c2
Text block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1032196068044357633/photo/1
// on The Rachel Maddow Show @maddow TRMS

[Lanny] Davis told The Washington Post that Cohen’s knowledge reached beyond “the obvious possibility of a conspiracy to collude” and included also the question of Trump’s participation in a “criminal conspiracy” to hack into the emails of Democratic officials during the 2016 election.

On “The Rachel Maddow Show,” Davis, who is a veteran of the Clinton White House, said his client had “knowledge about the computer crime of hacking and whether or not Mr. Trump knew ahead of time about that crime and even cheered it on.”

⭕ 21 Aug 2018

WaPo: Trump’s company approved $420,000 in payments to Cohen, relying on ‘sham’ invoices, prosecutors say http://wapo.st/2BGCioE

Globe&Mail, Sarah Kendzior: For Paul Manafort, justice is finally served – but is it too late for America? http://tgam.ca/2PvCfil

🐣 RT @ezraklein A Trump rally thunderously chanting “lock her up” about Hillary Clinton on the very day Trump’s campaign manager and personal lawyer face jail time really tells you all you need to know about GOP politics right now.
⋙ Vox: Trump rally crowd chants “lock her up” as Trump ignores Manafort and Cohen: That’s 2018 in a nutshell. http://bit.ly/2Pwd52T

🐣 RT @AmandaCarpenter Any other Republicans concerned that our National Security Advisor John Bolton was caught doing favors for known Russian spy Maria Butina? Anyone?

💙 WaPo Editorial: Twin convictions are a stunning rebuke of Trump http://wapo.st/2MGxvb6

🐣 RT @MichaelAvenatti The developments of today will permit us to have the stay lifted in the civil case & should also permit us to proceed with an expedited deposition of Trump under oath about what he knew, when he knew it, and what he did about it. We will disclose it all to the public.

Slate, Isaac Chotiner: Interview: Jeffrey Toobin on What the Craziest News Day of the Year Means for Trump http://bit.ly/2N6JfAB

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance This is cynical and it’s wrong. It’s not who we are as a country. We need to guard against people who inexplicably trivialize our history & experience in order to prop up the current occupant of the White House.
⋙ FoxNews: .@AlanDersh: “Every candidate violates the election laws when they run for president…here they’re trying to elevate this into an impeachable offense or a felony against the president.” #Tucker
💽 https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1032071989433966598/photo/1

🐣 RT @dlippman “The verdict in the Manafort trial isn’t nearly as worrisome to me as the Cohen agreement and the Cohen statement,” said former Trump adviser Michael Caputo. “It’s probably the worst thing so far in this whole investigation stage of the presidency.”
⋙ Politico, Christopher Cadelago, Andrew Restuccia, Nancy Cook and Daniel Lippman: ‘It’s the only excuse they’ll need’: Legal blows fuel impeachment fears http://politi.co/2wi6Dns
// (great photo) The conviction of Trump’s former campaign chairman, guilty plea of his former personal lawyer and indictment of a leading congressional supporter raise Trump’s risks.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Michael Cohen: Trump’s greatest fear comes true http://wapo.st/2MpydtO

WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Nope, not a witch hunt http://wapo.st/2BB3zJ4

🐣 RT @nowthisnews This parody song about Michael Cohen and Trump’s other leaking ex-staffers will add some much-needed levity to your night http://bit.ly/2LeatmZ
♫ https://twitter.com/nowthisnews/status/1032113380348362752/photo/1 😂 ;-D

NYT: 6 Takeaways From Michael Cohen’s Guilty Plea http://nyti.ms/2OVeXRE

💙 NYT, Noah Bookbinder, Barry Berke and Norman Eisen: What the Manafort Verdict Means http://nyti.ms/2nWF2o9
// It’s Robert Mueller’s biggest victory yet, in one of the most successful special counsel investigations in history.

💙 NYT Editorial: All the President’s Crooks http://nyti.ms/2whvJ5T
// One of them, Mr. Trump’s own lawyer, has now implicated him in a crime.

🐣 RT @brianstelter An admitted felon is “saying that his co-conspirator and/or his aider and abetter was the president of the United States. That is something that I think is basically without precedent in American history” —@JeffreyToobin

🐣 RT @brianstelter Trump mocking the press: “Where is the collusion? You know they’re still looking for collusion. Where is the collusion? Find some collusion. We want to find the collusion.”

CNN, Brian Stelter: Stranger than fiction: Journalists marvel at a day almost hard to believe http://cnn.mon.ie/2Pv7vOD

🐣 RT @brianstelter Page One headline of Wednesday’s @washingtonpost: “Convictions tighten squeeze on Trump” https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1032089204224864256/photo/1

🐣 RT @brianstelter NYT page one: “PLEADING GUILTY, COHEN IMPLICATES PRESIDENT” https://twitter.com/brianstelter/status/1032098147181453313/photo/1

🐣 RT @JohnHarwood Lanny Davis, on Rachel Maddow, suggests strongly that his client Michael Cohen has information for Mueller on Trump campaign collusion with Russia and Trump’s knowledge of plans for Russian hacking before the hacking occurred

‼️NYT: Paul Manafort Guilty of 8 Charges in Fraud Trial http://nyti.ms/2Lh1npw

‼️NYT: COHEN PLEADS GUILTY, IMPLICATING PRESIDENT http://nyti.ms/2nZGKFm Michael Cohen Says He Arranged Payments to Women at Trump’s Direction

🐣 RT @SethAbramson In June ’16, Felix Sater wrote Michael Cohen and said if Cohen accepted an invitation to Moscow for before the GOP convention, he’d meet Putin. Cohen declined—then went to Italy for a “vacation” where his alibi on where he went has fallen apart. The dossier wasn’t wrong on Cohen.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Michael Cohen’s lawyer says that Cohen has been having frequent chats with John Dean, ex-White House counsel who turned on Nixon.

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC If Bill Clinton’s actions deserved impeachment, then certainly Trump’s should warrant a congressional investigation.

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Seems like a good day to quote Kenny Rogers. “You can’t outrun the long arm of the law”. Dedicated to Paul Manafort, Michael Cohen, Chris Collins, Duncan Hunter and the Trump crime family.

🐣 RT @davidaxelrod This Cohen plea is as bad as it could be for @POTUS and maybe as bad as he feared.

🐣 RT @tribelaw 🐣 RT @tribelaw Whether or not *called* an unindicted co-conspirator, that’s what the sitting president IS as of close of business today, August 21, 2018, a day that will live in legal infamy. That’s the import of two of Michael Cohen’s guilty pleas.

🐣 RT @JimAcosta Source close to WH says WH had hoped for favorable verdict in Manafort case as they had plans to attack the Mueller investigation in the event of mistrial or not guilty verdict. The plan was to attack the Mueller investigation if the Manafort case had gone their way, source said.

🐣 RT @DanPfeiffer Amidst all the noise, the pleas, the convictions, the split screens, etc, here’s what matters — Michael Cohen stood in court and said that the President of the United States directed him to commit a crime

🐣 RT @MichaelAvenatti We. Are. Coming. We are going to end this dumpster fire of a presidency one way or another.
💽 Msnbc: https://twitter.com/MichaelAvenatti/status/1032023697891176448/photo/1

🐣 RT @EricHolder In spite of spurious, unjustified and unprecedented attacks, people in federal law enforcement did their jobs and, as usual, did them well. Guilty plea. Guilty verdict. Criminal acts. This is not a witch hunt.

🐣 RT @JohnHarwood President Trump’s campaign chairman, national security adviser and personal lawyer are now all convicted or admitted felons

🐣 RT @bradheath DOJ says Cohen billed “the Company” $180,035 for the payment to Stormy Daniels and what he called “tech services.” (He also wanted to be reimbursed the $35 wire fee.) Executives “grossed up” the payment to $360,000, then threw in a $60,000 bonus.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Christopher Steele’s Victory in a D.C. Court http://bit.ly/2LgQlAH
// A D.C. judge has dismissed a defamation suit filed by Russia’s Alfa Bank against the former British intelligence officer and author of the dossier alleging ties between Russia and the Trump campaign.

🐣 RT @LannyDavis Michael Cohen took this step today so that his family can move on to the next chapter. This is Michael fulfilling his promise made on July 2nd to put his family and country first and tell the truth about Donald Trump.
🐣 RT @LannyDavis Today he stood up and testified under oath that Donald Trump directed him to commit a crime by making payments to two women for the principal purpose of influencing an election. If those payments were a crime for Michael Cohen, then why wouldn’t they be a crime for Donald Trump?
// Lanny Davis is Cohen’s Lawyer

🐣 It’s a  Good Day  in America. It’s a Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day in Trumpmerica. #MAGA-Not!

💥 WaPo: Michael Cohen says he worked to silence two women ‘in coordination’ with Trump to influence 2016 election http://wapo.st/2OSVIZi

💥 WaPo: Manafort convicted on 8 counts; mistrial declared on 10 others http://wapo.st/2Bxf8kz

JustSecurity, John Sipher (Jan 2018): The Steele Dossier in 2018: Everyone’s Favorite Weapon http://bit.ly/2nVJxPK

JustSecurity, John Sipher (Sep 2017): A Second Look at the Steele Dossier: Knowing What We Know Now http://bit.ly/2wHK6BO
// 9/26/2017

Editor: In this special Just Security article, highly respected former member of the CIA’s Senior Intelligence Service, John Sipher examines the Steele dossier using methods that an intelligence officer would to try to validate such information

Although the reports were produced episodically, almost erratically, over a five-month period, they present a coherent narrative of collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign. …Orbis was not saying that everything that it reported was accurate, but that it had made a good-faith effort to pass along faithfully what its identified insiders said was accurate.

The dossier of FSB-collected information on Hillary Clinton was managed by Kremlin chief spokesman Dimitry Peskov.

They allege that Paul Manafort managed the conspiracy to exploit political information on Hillary Clinton in return for information on Russian oligarchs outside Russia, and an agreement to “sideline” Ukraine as a campaign issue.

Carter Page is also said to have played a role in shuttling information to Moscow … Michael Cohen, reportedly took over efforts after Manafort left the campaign, personally providing cash payments for Russian hackers. In one account, Putin and his aides expressed concern over kick-backs of cash to Manafort from former Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, which they feared might be discoverable by U.S. authorities. 

In late fall 2016, the Orbis team reported that a Russian-supported company had been “using botnets and porn traffic to transmit viruses, plant bugs, steal data and conduct ‘altering operations’ against the Democratic Party leadership.”  Hackers recruited by the FSB under duress were involved in the operations.  According to the report, Michael Cohen insisted that payments be made quickly and discreetly, and that cyber operators should go to ground and cover their tracks.

While in London [Steele] worked as the personal handler of Russian defector Alexander Litvinenko.

Well before any public knowledge of these events, the Orbis report identified multiple elements of the Russian operation including a cyber campaign, leaked documents related to Hillary Clinton, and meetings with Paul Manafort and other Trump affiliates to discuss the receipt of stolen documents.  Mr. Steele could not have known that the Russians stole information on Hillary Clinton, or that they were considering means to weaponize them in the U.S. election, all of which turned out to be stunningly accurate.

We learned that when Carter Page traveled to Moscow in July 2016, he met with close Putin ally and Chairman of the Russian state oil company, Igor Sechin.  A later Steele report also claimed that he met with Parliamentary Secretary Igor Divyekin while in Moscow.  Renowned investigative journalist Michael Isikoff reported in September 2016 that U.S. intelligence sources confirmed that Page met with both Sechin and Divyekin during his July trip to Russia. What’s more, the Justice Department obtained a wiretap in summer 2016 on Page after satisfying a court that there was sufficient evidence to show Page was operating as a Russian agent.

… In late December 2016, Sechin’s chief of staff, Oleg Erovinkin “who may have been a source for ex-British spy Christopher Steele’s Trump dossier,” according to multiple reports, was found dead in the back of his car in Moscow.

While the Orbis team had no way to know it, subsequent reports from U.S. officials confirmed that Washington-based diplomat Mikhail Kalugin was an undercover intelligence officer and was pulled out of the Embassy and sent home in summer 2016.

Xollowing the inauguration, Cohen was involved, again with Felix Sater, to engage in back-channel negotiations seeking a means to lift sanctions via a semi-developed Russian-Ukrainian plan (which also included the hand delivery of derogatory information on Ukrainian leaders) also fits with Orbis reporting related to Cohen.

Of the hundreds of Republican positions and proposals, they altered only the single sentence that called for maintaining or increasing sanctions against Russia,

The important factor to consider is that Trump did not engage with the prostitutes himself, but instead allegedly sought to denigrate Obama.  If there is anything consistent in what we have learned about President Trump, it seems that his policies are almost exclusively about overturning and eradicating anything related to President Obama’s tenure.

While it is not worth serious exploration, the notion that Trump might be involved with beautiful young women as alleged in the reports doesn’t seem to be much of a stretch. [Written before Stormy Daniels story broke]

Suffice it to say that Trumps obsequiousness toward Putin, his continued cover-ups, and his irrational acquiescence to Russian interests, often in direct opposition to his own Administration and Party, keep the issue on the table. [Again, this is Sep 2017]

[T]he hesitancy to be honest about contacts with Russia is consistent with allegations of a conspiracy.

DailyBeast: Russian Journalists Murdered in Africa May Have Been Set Up http://thebea.st/2OUvzcp
// The three thought they knew the risks, but the Central African Republic is a new military and mining playground for Putin and his greedy friends. Journalists aren’t welcome.

🐣 RT @brianklaas Trump’s cowardly remarks during his press conference in Helsinki make him effectively complicit in these ongoing Kremlin-directed cyber attacks against the US. He all but invited Putin to continue these attacks by again acting as Putin’s chief apologist.
RT @RVAwonk BREAKING: Microsoft has detected & seized websites created by Russian govt hackers targeting conservative US think tanks that have broken with Trump & are pushing for continued sanctions against Moscow, exposing oligarchs, or pressing for human rights.
⋙ NYT: New Russian Hacking of Republican Groups that have Broken with Trump, Microsoft Says http://nyti.ms/2BulCAt

⭕ 20 Aug 2018

🐣 RT @GenHayden And the special ops admiral who had tactical control of the bin Laden raid
⋙ 🐣 RT @NedPrice Trump is assailing the Marine who led the FBI in the years after 9/11 and the career CIA official who ended up coordinating the Bin Laden raid. That says a lot more about him than them.

DeadlineWH: Don McGahn…. has seen everything, knows everything and [he] is going to tell the truth. That is why the President had a meltdown. He figured out this weekend that the White House counsel is not your lawyer and he didn’t lie for you”- @SteveSchmidtSES w/ @NicolleDWallace 💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1031671114504855552/photo/1

🐣 RT @stuartstevens Keep pointing out that Gore 2000 campaign received stolen Bush debate book, which would have helped tremendously in prep. (I had one of few copies; it was well done.) They turned it over to FBI. That stolen info came from Austin, not Russia. What Rudy is saying is so absurd.
⋙ 🐣 RT @jonallendc Stunned by the number of people, including Rudy Giuliani, who confess the belief that anyone in politics would take stolen information from an adversarial foreign government to win an election. In this view, there are no means to victory that are not justified by victory.

FastCompany, Sarah Kendzior: Donald Trump Will Do Anything To Avoid Prosecution–And John Bolton Will Help http://bit.ly/2nViyUy

🐣 Reuters: Exclusive: FBI probing cyber attack on congressional campaign in California – sources http://reut.rs/2nUim8a

🐣💙💙 RT @BillKristol Trump tweets that Robert Mueller is “disgraced and discredited” and has working with him a “whole group of Angry Democrat Thugs.” The truth:
💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1031525995885547520/photo/1

WaPo, Paul Waldman: The most intense and dangerous period of the Trump presidency is about to begin http://wapo.st/2N767jC

🐣 RT @JillWineBanks 45 said don’t believe what you see or hear and Giuliani ssid “truth isn’t truth”, but the evidence is clear whether it’s about getting help from Russia, Trump Tower meeting, firing Comey, revoking security clearances as punishment for speaking against 45, and more.

🐣 RT @antontroian Putin quote for ages: “As for who to believe, who you can’t believe, can you believe at all — you can’t believe anyone.”

🐣 Chuck Todd gave Giuliani several chances to ‘take back the stupid.’ Don’t forget that a couple days earlier, he denied that Trump ever even talked to Comey about Flynn, then lied when a confronted w taped evidence. (Also, I seriously doubt that he wrote that recantation tweet.)

WaPo, Paul Waldman: The most intense and dangerous period of the Trump presidency is about to begin http://wapo.st/2Ppz5g0

WaPo: Brennan says he’s willing to take Trump to court over security clearances http://wapo.st/2N2FvQs

🐣 RT @MichaelAvenatti Contrary to Trump, Giuliani and the rest of Trump’s con men, Truth IS Truth. We need to end this con job.
“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passions, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.”-John Adams

🐣 To: @real Obstruction of Justice is like a “Chinese Finger Trap.” The harder you try to “FIGHT BACK” the harder it is to get free. In fact, if you “FIGHT BACK” by bullying, bribing, or coordinating with witnesses, you can get nailed for Witness Tampering.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031531380818280448/photo/1
🐣 To: @real Obstruction of Justice is a crime. So are witness tampering, bribery, bank fraud, tax evasion and money laundering. So is perjury. Abuse of power, though not crime, is an impeachable offense, as Nixon found out.
🐣 To: @real Conspiracy to defraud the United States is the crime.

🐣 .@MerriamWebster has its Word of the Year: Councel.

🔥⋙ FoxNews: “John Bolton on Sunday suggested that former CIA Dir John Brennan might have misused classified information, and that the ‘unprecedented leaks’ from the admin may prompt broader changes in how security clearances are handled.” http://fxn.ws/2BodKAs  @Morning_Joe

🐣 RT @jonallendc Stunned by the number of people, including Rudy Giuliani, who confess the belief that anyone in politics would take stolen information from an adversarial foreign government to win an election. In this view, there are no means to victory that are not justified by victory.

🐣 Wow! About 250 intel officials have now signed on to the letter rebuking Trump for politicizing security clearances, per @JoeNBC on @Morning_Joe @MSNBC

⭕ 19 Aug 2018

🐣 RT @BFriedmanDC Let’s talk about national security and what it means to be a patriot. This is the Situation Room during the raid to kill Osama Bin Laden. These are the people responsible for it. And this is what Donald Trump has to say about each of them. ¤ I know whose side I’m on.
https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1031253617301446658/photo/1
// photo annotated w Tweets

🐣 RT @AaronBlake … And the coup de grace: “Emin asked that I schedule a meeting with you and *The Russian government attorney* who is flying over from Moscow for this Thursday.” http://wapo.st/2MA16CW
⋙ “All they knew that a woman with a Russian name was going to meet with them, they didn’t know she represented the Russian government,” @RudyGiuliani says on the Trump tower meeting. #MTP

🐣 RT @JohnHarwood it’s the most important fact in the entire Trump/Russia scandal
⋙ 🐣 RT @armandodkos It’s amazing that this basic fact has not sunk in with parts of the Media- Donald Trump Jr, Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner took a meeting in Trump Tower on June 9, 2016 expecting to meet and conspire with officials of the Russian government to help Trump get elected.

🐣 RT @bjaninemorison Why is it that “FAKE NEWS” only became a phrase only after we had a “FAKE PRESIDENT” elected with the help of Russian hacking and collusion.
https://twitter.com/bjaninemorison/status/1031451559958212609/photo/1
// “You tell people a lie 3 times, they will believe anything …” ~ Art of the Deal

🐣 RT @CarlosLozadaWP
*When @seanspicer said inaugural crowd was the biggest, he wanted us to believe a specific untruth.
*When @KellyannePolls invoked “alternative truths,” it meant we could choose any truth.
*When Giuliani says “truth isn’t truth,” he means there is no truth but Trump’s.
#StepByStep

WaPo, EJ Dionne: America is slouching toward autocracy http://wapo.st/2OS6zTf

🐣 RT @djrothkopf To those of you who are too young to remember Watergate, rest assured, this is worse. Trump is a much less competent, much more dangerous, vastly more corrupt president than Nixon. And this time his co-conspirators are the entire GOP leadership of the Congress.

🐣 RT @MichaelBeschloss Soviet tanks roll into Prague to crush liberalization, 50 years ago today: https://twitter.com/BeschlossDC/status/1031402022078173184/photo/1
// newspaper

🐣 RT @justinhendrix Giuliani: “Truth isn’t truth.”
Trump: “Remember, what you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Orwell: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031408861402550272/photo/1
// 1984, stark white on black ⇈

🐣 RT @AaronBlake By far the most notable thing here is that Trump considers a guy who exposed a major presidential scandal to be a “RAT.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real The failing @nytimes wrote a Fake piece today implying that because White House Councel Don McGahn was giving hours of testimony to the Special Councel, he must be a John Dean type “RAT.” But I allowed him and all others to testify – I didn’t have to. I have nothing to hide……

🐣 RT @NormEisen With @JohnBrennan raising possibility of legal action, give a listen to this from @BrookingsInst in which I explain his valid Constitutional claim (tho getting a court to order relief on that claim is a steep hill to climb)
⋙ @NormEisen explains in five minutes why Trump’s action to revoke @JohnBrennan’s security clearance may violate the First Amendment

🐣 RT @walterdellinger Hugo Black, for whom I earlier clerked, wrote these words at age 85 in his own shaky but firm handwriting. He believed these words passionately
// free press; “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of the government and inform the people”

🔄🐣 Can’t wait for the next episode of @MuellerSheWrote! It’s gonna be a doozy! https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031390547380977664/photo/1

🐣 RT @brianklaas THIS IS A LIE. The e-mail proposing the meeting to Don Jr. specifically said: “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.” Don Jr. replied “I love it” and eagerly set-up the meeting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress “All they knew that a woman with a Russian name was going to meet with them, they didn’t know she represented the Russian government,” @RudyGiuliani says on the Trump tower meeting. #MTP

🐣 RT @AriMelber No, truth *is* truth *in court* — which is why witnesses are under oath, and courts rule on lies like perjury. ¤ Giuliani knows that as a prosecutor; and Trump knows that as the most litigious person to ever become President.

🐣 RT @DanRather Truth isn’t Truth” – It is as if Rudy Giuliani revels in writing the book titles for the historians of the future who will have to try to make sense of this President and all that is transpiring under his Administration.

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Destroying the concept of objective truth is both a general principle for autocrats and a legal defense strategy. Trump needs both. [re: RG]

🐣 RT @JohnHarwood Slate’s Slow Burn podcast reminds us how long Nixon allies stuck w/him, refusing to accept who he was and what he had done. called it “witch hunt,” blamed partisan Dems/biased media, said public didn’t care, let the president do his job etc. But truth came out, and won out. 1/2
🐣 RT @JohnHarwood [I]t was political tribalism before the term came into common usage. Nixon allies found affirmation in him because he picked the right enemies 2/2

🐣 RT @EricBoehlert reminder as Mueller’s team works in 100% anonymity, Ken Starr’s team used to leak to the press ALL THE TEAM. ¤ his prosecutors practically set up conference calls w/ reporters to leak **while they were investigating POTUS**

NYT: Cohen, Trump’s Ex-Lawyer, Investigated for Bank Fraud in Excess of $20 Million http://nyti.ms/2PrHakq

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok 🔥🎯 Historian @jmeacham says not only did @JohnBrennan have a right to call Trump treasonous, he had a duty as a statesman to say it if he felt it appropriate. Treason is defined in our constitution as giving aid & comfort to an enemy. This isn’t a time to dance around words.
💽 (msnbc clip)https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1031342883981340672

🐣 Lol @maggieNYT and @nytmike get to take a victory lap, describing the 🔥💥🔥 when the White House realized what their earlier article (http://nyti.ms/2N0qwqo) was saying ⋙
⋙ NYT: Trump Lawyers’ Sudden Realization: They Don’t Know What Don McGahn Told Mueller’s Team http://nyti.ms/2Mo1iG8
// Yeah, they probably finally read the article closely, and realized Mueller was not a source but McGahn most likely was (“a person familiar”). It implies McGahn felt he might be pressed out by new legal team; now they can’t do much. Nor can they box him out or keep him from meeting with Mueller without raising suspicions. Oh, the wicked web …
🐣 Love how @maggienyt and @nytmike make sure they get both exiled Bannon and Christie to rub Trump’s face in it, as well as allowing Dowd to cover his a**. The Schadenfreude is palpable as the #FakenewsNYT shows what it’s made of.

President Trump’s lawyers do not know just how much the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, told the special counsel’s investigators during months of interviews, a lapse that has contributed to a growing recognition that an early strategy of full cooperation with the inquiry was a potentially damaging mistake.

The president’s lawyers said on Sunday that they were confident that Mr. McGahn had said nothing injurious to the president during the 30 hours of interviews. But Mr. McGahn’s lawyer has offered only a limited accounting of what Mr. McGahn told the investigators, according to two people close to the president.

That has prompted concern among Mr. Trump’s advisers that Mr. McGahn’s statements could help serve as a key component for a damning report by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which the Justice Department could send to Congress, according to two people familiar with the discussions.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers realized on Saturday that they had not been provided a full accounting after The New York Times published an article describing Mr. McGahn’s extensive cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s office. After Mr. McGahn was initially interviewed by the special counsel’s office in November, Mr. Trump’s lawyers never asked for a complete description of what Mr. McGahn had said, according to a person close to the president.

Mr. McGahn’s lawyer, William A. Burck, gave the president’s lawyers a short overview of the interview but few details, and he did not inform them of what Mr. McGahn said in subsequent interactions with the investigators, according to a person close to Mr. Trump.

But Mr. McGahn, who as White House counsel is not the president’s personal lawyer, has repeatedly made clear to the president that his role is as a protector of the presidency, not of Mr. Trump personally.

Legal experts and former White House counsels said the president’s lawyers had been careless in not asking Mr. McGahn what he had planned to tell Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors.

The report by The Times also reignited a debate about whether Mr. Trump had been given bad advice by his former lawyers Mr. Dowd and Ty Cobb to allow full cooperation with Mr. Mueller’s team, including by waiving attorney-client privilege. Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb believed that the cooperation would help prove that the president had done nothing wrong and bring a swifter end to the investigation.

But the strategy “put Don McGahn in an impossible situation, because once you waive that privilege and you turn over all those documents, Don McGahn has no choice then but to go in and answer everything, every question they could ask him,” Chris Christie, a former United States attorney and a close ally of Mr. Trump, said on ABC News’s “This Week.”

“It’s bad legal advice, bad lawyering, and this is a result of it,” Mr. Christie added.

Stephen K. Bannon, the former White House chief strategist, who had argued last summer against cooperating with Mr. Mueller, said, “This was a reckless and dangerously naïve strategy, and I’ve vocally said that since the time I left the White House, and I’ve said it to the president.”

In an email to members of Mr. Trump’s legal team and other associates, which was obtained by The Times, Mr. Dowd said he had made the right choice in urging cooperation.

“We protected President by not asserting attorney-client privilege,” Mr. Dowd wrote. He added that, had the lawyers forced the Mueller team to subpoena witnesses, they would have lost the ability to exert privilege over witnesses and documents.

Last fall, Mr. McGahn believed that he was being set up to be blamed for any wrongdoing by the president in part because of an article published in The Times in September, which described a conversation that a reporter had overheard between Mr. Dowd and Mr. Cobb.

In the conversation — which occurred over lunch at a table on the sidewalk outside the Washington steakhouse B.L.T. — Mr. Cobb discussed the White House’s production of documents to Mr. Mueller’s office. Mr. Cobb talked about how Mr. McGahn was opposed to cooperation and had documents locked in his safe.

After the account of the lunch conversation was published, Mr. McGahn became convinced that Mr. Cobb believed that he was hiding documents. Concerned that he would be blamed, he decided to try to demonstrate to Mr. Mueller that he and other White House lawyers had done nothing wrong.

As Mr. Trump’s lawyers have shifted to a more antagonistic approach toward Mr. Mueller, it has seemed increasingly unlikely that Mr. Trump will sit for a voluntary interview. On “Meet the Press,” Mr. Giuliani repeated his fear of a “perjury trap.”

“It’s somebody’s version of the truth, not the truth,” Mr. Giuliani said of any statements by the president in such an interview.

“Truth is truth,” the show’s host, Chuck Todd, answered.

“No, it isn’t truth,” Mr. Giuliani replied. “Truth isn’t truth.”

🐣 RT @ReliableSources As a a former Russia analyst .. I am convinced that the President of the United States is in thrall to Vladimir Putin,” says Lt. Col. Ralph Peters
💽 https://twitter.com/ReliableSources/status/1031200171542163460/photo/1
// accused former colleagues at Fox of being “prostitutes” in same interview

🐣 Giuliani said no one knew the meeting had to do “with the Russian government”
TheGuardian (7/11/2017): Full text of the emails between Donald Trump Jr and Rob Goldstone http://bit.ly/2L8Riej
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031232459357278208/photo/1

🐣 .@secupp ~ @Ocasio2018 has NOT dominated news coverage on MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, WSJ or anything I watch/read. Trump’s meltdowns, his foreign policy debacles and separated families have. You must still watch @FoxNews @CNNsotu

DailyBeast: Ex-Fox News Analyst Ralph Peters Calls Former Colleagues Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson ‘Prostitutes’ http://thebea.st/2wdZuok
// ‘The polite word is prostitutes, so we’ll just leave it that,’ Ralph Peters said when he was asked about Sean Hannity and Tucker Carlson.

VanityFair: How Donald Trump and Roy Cohn’s Ruthless Symbiosis Changed America http://bit.ly/2Bnk63l
// 6/28/2017, In 1973, a brash young would-be developer from Queens met one of New York’s premier power brokers: Roy Cohn, whose name is still synonymous with the rise of McCarthyism and its dark political arts. With the ruthless attorney as a guide, Trump propelled himself into the city’s power circles and learned many of the tactics that would inexplicably lead him to the White House years later.

🐣 RT @renati_marriotti “Truth isn’t truth.” – Rudy Giuliani
This is their mantra. They overload the media with falsehoods because they know the falsehoods will be repeated and public opinion will shift accordingly. The Administration’s falsehoods should not be reported without proper context.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress ..@RudyGiuliani on Trump testifying with Mueller: “I am not going to be rushed into having him testify so that he gets trapped into perjury… it’s somebody’s version of the truth. Not the truth.”
@chucktodd: “Truth is truth”
GIULIANI: “No, it isn’t truth. Truth isn’t truth.” #MTP

🐣 RT @JakeTapper “Tough as he was, Roy (Cohn, McCarthy’s protege) always had a lot of friends, and I’m not embarrassed to say I was one. He was a truly loyal guy…a great guy to have on your side…” ¤ – Donald Trump. “The Art of the Deal”
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!

🐣 RT @ McCarthy’s chief counsel, Roy Cohn, was Trump’s lawyer and mentor in the 70s and ’80s. Trump still idolizes Cohn, even though Cohn used him as an easy mark who’d buy up tons and tons of concrete from Cohn’s other clients of the day…the Gambino and Genovese crime families.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!

🐣 Enjoy! 1984 http://amzn.to/2L5UYO8 1hr 50mins
McCarthy Hearings.: “Point of Order” https://youtu.be/wJHsur3HqcI 1hr 35mins

🐣 RT @GOPLeader Another day, another example of conservatives being censored on social media. @jack easy fix: explain to Congress what is going on. #StopTheBias cc @IngrahamAngle https://twitter.com/GOPLeader/status/1030501196879089670/photo/1
🐣 She controls that account setting.

Zakaria: 10% of companies ~ 80% of corporate profits. Productivity gains due to technology; intellectual property.

🐣 Between @RudyGiuliani and @AmbJohnBolton we’re definitely in Newspeak territory. #1984

🐣 RT @rgoodlaw The cruel irony of John Bolton’s justifying security clearance revocations will not be lost on many.
Bolton: “[@JohnBrennan] and others in the Obama administration were politicizing intelligence. I think that’s a very dangerous thing to do.”
💽 On @ThisWeekABC https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1031179538670206978/photo/1

🐣 RT @EdKrassen No Joke!
@RudyGiuliani really just said “Truth isn’t Truth” ¤
Truth has always been the truth.
Truth is based on facts.
Truth is what really happened.
Something is either True or it is False! ¤
I can’t believe people actually support this crap!
WAKE UP!
💽 ⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress https://twitter.com/EdKrassen/status/1031176014276304896/photo/1

🐣 RT @Rschooley I smell a convention theme. https://twitter.com/Rschooley/status/1031197902322843648/photo/1
🐣 RT @Rschooley Counterpoint: This will be a very good meme. https://twitter.com/Rschooley/status/1031193402983870464/photo/1
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @NBCNewsPR –> “Truth isn’t truth.”
Rudy Giuliani, lawyer for President Trump, just told @MeetThePress’ @ChuckTodd. #MTP
⋙ 🐣 Right up there with what the meaning of the word “is” is.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand What??? The email to Don Jr. said the meeting was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”
⋙ 🐣 RT @MeetThePress “All they knew that a woman with a Russian name was going to meet with them, they didn’t know she represented the Russian government,” @RudyGiuliani says on the Trump tower meeting. #MTP

🐣 RT @jk_rowling I do’nt care what Kids at School call me because they are all Disgusting Fake Losers and my Real Friends go to a diffrent Scool you haven’t heard of and they think Im the Coolest and Smartest and we go to parties and I don’t have to tell you there Names for this to be True.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Some members of the media are very Angry at the Fake Story in the New York Times. They actually called to complain and apologize – a big step forward. From the day I announced, the Times has been Fake News, and with their disgusting new Board Member, it will only get worse!

🐣 RT @emptywheel One does not need a secret source (or 12 of them!) at WH to show that Don McGahn’s in the thick of Roger Stone’s 2016 rat-fuckery. He’s on court filings for them. And public record shows that’s a focus of Mueller’s investigation.

🐣 [Why Hillary lost] I made a list the day after the election which is still on the refrigerator. 60+ reasons. And it didn’t even include Russia.

🐣 Rudy Giuliani: “Truth isn’t truth.” Srsly. It’s just someone’s version of the truth. To @chucktodd on @MeetThePress

🐣 RT @JoeNBC Anyone who has known Trump for years, and doesn’t have a stake in his political career or the GOP, says the same. He is unwell and has been getting progressively worse over the past 18 months.
⋙ 🐣 RT @PeterWehner Mr. Trump was emotionally/psychologically unwell when he became president. His condition is clearly worsening. He’s becoming more volatile, erratic and unstable. At some point he’s going to blow apart. When he does it’ll create a crisis. This won’t end well. Pray for our country.

🐣 RT @CNN: Former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper: “The common denominator among all of us that have been speaking up though is genuine concern about the jeopardy or threats of our institutions and values” #CNNSOT
💽 https://twitter.com/CNNPolitics/status/1031167201317986304/photo/1
// Chryon: Clapper: I didn’t mean Trump committed treason

🐣 Wow. @JohnBrennan does not deny @chucktodd’s challenge that he is accusing Trump of treason. @MeetThePress

🐣 RT @real Study the late Joseph McCarthy, because we are now in period with Mueller and his gang that make Joseph McCarthy look like a baby! Rigged Witch Hunt!
⋙ Psssst: You’re McCarthy. Mueller is Welch: “You have done enough. Have you no sense of decency?”

🐣 RT @PalmerReport WHAT THE HELL IS A COUNCEL?
⋙ 🐣 He used to refer the Special Counsel a “Council.” My guess is someone tried to correct him and he went half-way to “Councel.” He’s been using “Councel” for a while now.

⭕ 18 Aug 2018

🐣 RT @JohnDean Nixon, generally very competent, bungled and botched his handling of Watergate. Trump, a total incompetent, is bungling and botching his handling of Russiagate. Fate is never kind to bunglers and/or botchers! Unlike Nixon, however, Trump won’t leave willingly or graciously.

ABCNews: The conservative DC legal group behind a challenge to Mueller probe http://abcn.ws/2vUnai4 //➔ behind the refusal of Roger Sone’s associate, Andrew Miller, to appear before a grand jury is a plan “to mount a broad legal challenge to the legitimacy of the special counsel probe”

The National Legal and Policy Center is backing a subpoena fight launched by Andrew Miller, a former associate of Trump confidant and political provocateur Roger Stone, who has refused a demand from prosecutors to appear before a grand jury. He is objecting, the lawyers said, in order to mount a broad legal challenge to the legitimacy of the special counsel probe.

Slate, Isaac Chotiner: What John Dean Has to Say About the NYT’s Blockbuster Don McGahn Story http://bit.ly/2vWsFwV

🐣 RT @Frank_Schaefer Republicans have a habit of rejecting awkward facts and attributing them to conspiracies. It’s not a big jump from claiming that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the scientific community to asserting that Trump is the blameless target of a vast deep state conspiracy.

💽≣💙💙 MSNBC/TRMS, Steve Benen: Rachel Maddow interviews John Brennan: Read the full transcript http://on.msnbc.com/2BqJTaV
// with video

“I know what the Russians did in interfering in the election. I have 100% confidence in what they did. For Mr. Trump to stand on that stage in Helsinki with all the world’s eyes upon him and he doesn’t understand why would the Russians interfere in the elections. He’s given them a pass time after time after time and keeps referring to it as a witch-hunt and bogus and, to me, this was an attack against the foundational principle of our republic the right of all Americans to choose their elected leaders.” – Ex-CIA Director John Brennan

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: The Michael Cohen Bribery Scandal Is Now a Trump Bribery Scandal http://nym.ag/2OLjru8
// 5/16/2018

🐣 RT @GenMhayden Interesting theme. Since the Brennan thing started, the meme in the intel community is “I am Spartacus”
// context: The quote “I am Spartacus” is dervied from the 1960 movie “Spartacus” directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring Kirk Douglas as the titular role. Near the end of the film, a Roman general announces to a group of former slaves that unsuccesfully fought againsts their rulers that unless Spartacus is turned over to them, all of the slaves will be crucified. Spartacus is then willing to turn himself in to protect his friends by standing up and proclaiming “I am Spartacus!”, but then the rest of the slaves show their loyalty to him by also proclaming that himself is Spartacus in great numbers. Since the general still doesn’t know who the real Spartacus is, all of the slaves are led to crucifixion.

🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley Elie Wiesel said, “We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.”

NYT, Paul Krugman: The Slippery Slope of Complicity http://nyti.ms/2vX1dii

At this point, you have to be a truly fanatical practitioner of bothsidesism not to see that Trump is every bit as terrible a human being, and every bit as much a menace to the republic, as some of us warned when all the cool kids were busy snarking about Clinton’s emails.

The real news of the past few weeks isn’t that Trump is a wannabe Mussolini who can’t even make the trains run on time. It’s the absence of any meaningful pushback from Congressional Republicans.

Make no mistake: if Republicans hold both houses of Congress this November, Trump will go full authoritarian, abusing institutions like the I.R.S., trying to jail opponents and journalists on, er, trumped-up charges, and more — and he’ll do it with full support from his party.

But my guess is that most Republican politicians are spineless rather than sinister — or, more accurately, sinister in their spinelessness. They’re not really ideologues so much as careerists, whose instinct is always to go along with the party line. And this instinct has drawn them ever deeper into complicity.

To some extent this is just human weakness in action. But there are some special aspects of the modern GOP that make it especially vulnerable to this kind of slide into leader-worship. The party has long been in the habit of rejecting awkward facts and attributing them to conspiracies: it’s not a big jump from claiming that climate change is a giant hoax perpetrated by the entire scientific community to asserting that Trump is the blameless target of a vast deep state conspiracy.

And modern Republican politicians are, with few exceptions, apparatchiks: they are creatures of a monolithic movement that doesn’t allow dissent but protects the loyal from risk.

Even now, I don’t think most political commentators have grasped how deep the rot goes. I don’t think they understand, or at any rate admit to themselves, that democracy really could die just a few months from now.

And if it doesn’t, if Republicans lose Congress and Trump leaves office on or before January 2021, the same people who kept declaring that Trump just became president will try to go back to pretending that Republican politicians are serious, honorable people who care about policy. But they aren’t.

🐣 RT @tribelaw Brennan’s security revocation, as part of an orgy of revocations and threats overtly designed to punish and gag Trump’s critics and cripple those investigating him, is an unconstitutional and impeachable abuse of power endangering our national security.

🔄◕💙 NYT, Linda Qiu: Truth-Testing Trump’s 250-Plus Attacks on the Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2MY609E
Attacks accelerating: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031092360728530945/photo/1
// We assessed President Trump’s claims about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and the ensuing federal investigation of his campaign.

💙💙 NYT: McGahn, White House Counsel, Has Cooperated Extensively in Mueller Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2PmqQ4m
// by Michael Schmidt and Maggie Haberman

In at least three voluntary interviews with investigators that totaled 30 hours over the past nine months, Mr. McGahn described the president’s fury toward the Russia investigation and the ways in which he urged Mr. McGahn to respond to it. He provided the investigators examining whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice a clear view of the president’s most intimate moments with his lawyer.

Among them were Mr. Trump’s comments and actions during the firing of the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, and Mr. Trump’s obsession with putting a loyalist in charge of the inquiry, including his repeated urging of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to claim oversight of it. Mr. McGahn was also centrally involved in Mr. Trump’s attempts to fire the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, which investigators might not have discovered without him.

Mr. McGahn’s cooperation began in part as a result of a decision by Mr. Trump’s first team of criminal lawyers to collaborate fully with Mr. Mueller.

Mr. McGahn and his lawyer, William A. Burck, could not understand why Mr. Trump was so willing to allow Mr. McGahn to speak freely to the special counsel and feared Mr. Trump was setting up Mr. McGahn to take the blame for any possible illegal acts of obstruction, according to people close to him. So he and Mr. Burck devised their own strategy to do as much as possible to cooperate with Mr. Mueller to demonstrate that Mr. McGahn did nothing wrong.

It is not clear that Mr. Trump appreciates the extent to which Mr. McGahn has cooperated with the special counsel. The president wrongly believed that Mr. McGahn would act as a personal lawyer would for clients and solely defend his interests to investigators, according to a person with knowledge of his thinking.

But the two rarely speak one on one — the White House chief of staff, John F. Kelly, and other advisers are usually present for their meetings — and Mr. Trump has questioned Mr. McGahn’s loyalty. In turn, Mr. Trump’s behavior has so exasperated Mr. McGahn that he has called the president “King Kong” behind his back, to connote his volcanic anger, people close to Mr. McGahn said.

As White House counsel, not a personal lawyer, he viewed his role as protector of the presidency, not of Mr. Trump.

Mr. McGahn’s decision to cooperate with the special counsel grew out of Mr. Dowd’s and Mr. Cobb’s game plan, now seen as misguided by some close to the president.

Mr. McGahn was stunned, as was Mr. Burck, whom he had recently hired out of concern that he needed help to stay out of legal jeopardy, according to people close to Mr. McGahn. Mr. Burck has explained to others that he told White House advisers that they did not appreciate the president’s legal exposure and that it was “insane” that Mr. Trump did not fight a McGahn interview in court.

Even if the president did nothing wrong, Mr. Burck told White House lawyers, the White House has to understand that a client like Mr. Trump probably made politically damaging statements to Mr. McGahn as he weighed whether to intervene in the Russia investigation.

Worried that Mr. Trump would ultimately blame him in the inquiry, Mr. McGahn told people he was determined to avoid the fate of the White House counsel for President Richard M. Nixon, John W. Dean, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to obstruct justice in the Watergate scandal.

Mr. McGahn decided to fully cooperate with Mr. Mueller. It was, he believed, the only choice he had to protect himself.

“This sure has echoes of Richard Nixon’s White House counsel, John Dean, who in 1973 feared that Nixon was setting him up as a fall guy for Watergate and secretly gave investigators crucial help while still in his job,” said the historian Michael Beschloss.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers still had a chance to keep Mr. McGahn’s insider knowledge from the special counsel. By exerting attorney-client privilege, which allows the president to legally withhold information, they would have gained the right to learn what Mr. McGahn planned to tell investigators and what he might reveal that could damage the president. But the president’s lawyers never went through that process …

Mr. Mueller has told the president’s lawyers that he will follow Justice Department guidance that sitting presidents cannot be indicted. Rather than charge Mr. Trump if he finds evidence of wrongdoing, he is more likely to write a report that can be sent to Congress for lawmakers to consider impeachment proceedings.

Unencumbered, Mr. Burck and Mr. McGahn met the special counsel team in November for the first time and shared all that Mr. McGahn knew.

To investigators, Mr. McGahn was a fruitful witness, people familiar with the investigation said. He had been directly involved in nearly every episode they are scrutinizing to determine whether the president obstructed justice. To make an obstruction case, prosecutors who lack a piece of slam-dunk evidence generally point to a range of actions that prove that the suspect tried to interfere with the inquiry.

Mr. McGahn gave to Mr. Mueller’s investigators, the people said, a sense of the president’s mind-set in the days leading to the firing of Mr. Comey; how the White House handled the firing of the former national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn; and how Mr. Trump repeatedly berated Mr. Sessions, tried to get him to assert control over the investigation and threatened to fire him.

Mr. Mueller, armed with Mr. McGahn’s account, is still trying to interview witnesses close to the president. But the White House has a new lawyer for the investigation, Emmet T. Flood, who has strong views on privilege issues. When the special counsel asked to interview Mr. Kelly, Mr. Flood contested the request, rather than fully cooperate.

🐣 RT @ForeignAffairs The term “multiculturalism” at first was about large cultural groups, such as French-speaking Canadians, or Muslim immigrants, or African Americans. But soon it became a vision of a society fragmented into many small groups with distinct experiences.
⋙ 💙💙 ForeignAffairs, Francis Fukuyama: Against Identity Politics ~ The New Tribalism and the Crisis of Democracy http://fam.ag/2wbOJmd
// Sep-Oct 2018 issue

⭕ 17 Aug 2018

ForeignAffairs, Alina Polyakova and Benjamin Haddad: Europe in the New Era of Great Power Competition http://fam.ag/2OQbcwP //➔ Europe begins to slip away
Text (End): https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031414066361847808/photo/1
// How the EU Can Stand Up to Trump and China

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: What happened to Austrian Intelligence (BVT) by the Russian backed Far Right Freedom Party government (founded by WW2 Nazis) is what Trump wants to do to the CIA … gut it for personal reasons.
⋙ WaPo: Austria’s far-right ordered a raid on its own intelligence service. Now allies are freezing the country out. http://wapo.st/2wcVLqT

NYT: Mueller Asks for Jail Time for Papadopoulos, Saying He Repeatedly Lied http://nyti.ms/2Bk1cdz

The special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election has told a judge that a former adviser to the Trump campaign repeatedly lied about his contacts with Russian operatives and “caused damage” to the government’s inquiry.

In a document filed Friday evening, the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said that the former adviser, George Papadopoulos, misled investigators about the “timing, extent and nature” of the meetings. During one of them, Mr. Papadopoulos was told that Russia had damaging information about Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails.”

“The defendant lied in order to conceal his contacts with Russians and Russian intermediaries during the campaign,” the memo said. It happened early in the investigation “when key investigative decisions, including who to interview and when, were being made.”

In particular, the document said that during a January 2017 interview with the F.B.I., Mr. Papadopoulos misled agents about his conversations with Joseph Mifsud, a London-based professor who investigators believe reached out to Mr. Papadopoulos on behalf of the Russian government.

“The defendant’s lies undermined investigators’ ability to challenge the professor or potentially detain or arrest him while he was still in the United States,” the memo said. “The government understands that the professor left the United States on Feb. 11, 2017, and he has not returned to the United States since then.”

During a meeting in spring 2016, shortly after he was named as an adviser to the Trump campaign, Mr. Papadopoulos was told by Professor Mifsud that the Russians had thousands of incriminating emails about Mrs. Clinton. It has long been a mystery whether Mr. Papadopoulos told anyone inside the Trump campaign about the Russian dirt, and the document filed Friday does not answer the question.

Mr. Papadopoulos did, however, make reference to the Russian dirt during a conversation he had in a London bar in May 2016 with the senior Australian diplomat in Britain. The Australians passed the information to the United States and, in July 2016, the F.B.I. opened its investigation into links between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Mr. Mueller’s memo said Mr. Papadopoulos did not provide “substantial assistance” to the investigation, and that “much of the information provided by the defendant came only after the government confronted him with his own emails, text messages, internet search history and other information it had obtained via search warrants and subpoenas.”

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 John Brennan: “I think he’s out of control. He has the steering wheel of the American vehicle in his hands and he’s veering wildly right now. He’s trying to preserve and protect himself. And so what more demonstration do you want? When things get really, really bad?” @maddow

🐣 RT @GovHowardDean Let’s not forget through all this that Trump is nothing but a cheap crook in his soul. He happens to be President so he can avoid his ultimate fate for a time. But eventually he will go down because has never been anything but a cheap crook.

🐣 RT @NBC Sixty former CIA officials sign letter responding to the removal of former CIA Director Brennan’s security clearance: ¤ “The country will be weakened if there is a political litmus test applied before seasoned experts are allowed to share their views.”
Letter & Sigs: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1030624090703503365/photo/1
Rest of Sigs: https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1030624090703503365/photo/2

🐣 RT @JoshTPM 3/ fled the US after speaking to the FBI.
🐣 RT @JoshTPM 2/ Special Counsels office locates Mifsud a couple weeks after talking to Papadopoulos. But GP had lied to them. So their information about his activities was limited and they couldn’t question him effectively or detail him. The dates suggest that he more or less immediately …
🐣 RT @JoshTPM As far as I know, this is the first time we’ve heard that Jospeh Mifsud was in the United States. If I’m reading the document correctly he was in the US soon after President Trump’s inauguration. Why? The other point I take from the sentencing recommendation is that …

🐣 RT @MSNBC WATCH: Segment 3: Brennan raises the prospect to @maddow that President Trump could also revoke the security clearances of Mueller team investigators, effectively disabling their ability to carry out the investigation: “How desperate is he going to get?”
⋙ MSNBC: Brennan: Russian intrusion did not end with Trump inauguration http://on.msnbc.com/2L4g1ka
// John Brennan, former CIA director, talks with Rachel Maddow about Russia’s continued efforts to impose itself on American politics to ensure its interests are being served.

🐣 RT @MSNBC Trump claimed he has no ties to Russia, but reporting in a new book by Craig Unger describes Russian mafia-linked money laundering involving Trump properties that goes back to the 1980s.
⋙ MSNBC: Craig Unger: Trump is a Russian asset in the White House http://on.msnbc.com/2M
// Unger tells Ari Melber that he found “at least 1300 times” over the past “20 or 30 years” where Russian money helped “Trump get rich again”.

🐣 RT @SethAbramson Based on all we know, the chances the “other country besides Russia” Papadopoulos got money from was *Israel* is extremely high, and there is a reasonable chance the money came from someone associated with WikiStrat, whose CEO met with Nader, Prince, and Trump Jr. in August 2016.

🐣 RT @bradheath Mueller’s office has noticed the comments Papadopoulos’ wife has been making to the press professing his innocence, and has a detailed footnote about why they’re false. https://twitter.com/bradheath/status/1030641962758692864/photo/1

WaPo: White House drafts more clearance cancellations demanded by Trump http://wapo.st/2KZOtw1 “… Sarah Huckabee Sanders and Bill Shine, the newly named deputy chief of staff, have discussed the optimum times to release them as a distraction during unfavorable news cycles.”

🐣 RT @BillKristol Trump on a career DOJ attorney’s security clearance: “I suspect I’ll be taking it away very quickly.” But it’s not clear Trump can legally do this. The president has broad authority but he’s not unfettered by laws, rules and procedures. The rule of law constrains the president.

Observer, John Schindler: ‘Idiocracy’ Come True: Even Pentagon Says Morons Are Inheriting the Earth http://bit.ly/2wcDWsb

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand JUST IN: Mueller says “a sentence of incarceration” for Papadopoulos of between 0-6 months would be “appropriate and warranted.”
Court doc: https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1030613454217007104/photo/1

≣ Statement by 60 ex-CIA officials condemning Trump’s revocation of John Brennan’s security clearance. “The country will be weakened if there is a political litmus test applied before seasoned experts are allowed to share their views.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1030631298707152897/photo/1

🐣 RT @KyleGriffin1 “As part of their efforts, prosecutors have subpoenaed casino magnate Steve Wynn, the former RNC finance chairman and longtime Trump friend, for copies of records and communications related to Broidy.”
⋙ WaPo: GOP fundraiser Broidy under investigation for alleged effort to sell government influence, people familiar with probe say http://wapo.st/2waA7nq

The Justice Department is investigating whether longtime Republican fundraiser Elliott Broidy sought to sell his influence with the Trump administration by offering to deliver U.S. government actions for foreign officials in exchange for tens of millions of dollars, according to three people familiar with the probe.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand This is false. The alleged message said, “afraid they will be exposed.” Says nothing about an “anti trump Russia probe.” And “they” in this context meant the sensitive dossier sources.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real “Fox News has learned that Bruce Ohr wrote Christopher Steele following the firing of James Comey saying that he was afraid the anti-Trump Russia probe will be exposed.” Charles Payne @FoxBusiness How much more does Mueller have to see? They have blinders on – RIGGED!

🐣 RT @BillKristol Trump’s claim that he can personally choose to remove individuals’ clearances without consulting the agencies at which they work or used to work, without going through any of the normal procedures, with no documented showing of cause, etc., is another blow to the rule of law.

NYT, Tim Weiner: Trump Is Not a King http://nyti.ms/2nO2eEQ
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1031015213917773824/photo/1
// Mr. Weiner is the author of histories of the F.B.I. and C.I.A.; A group of top former intelligence and military leaders are sending a message to the nation’s troops and spies: think twice before following the president’s orders in a crisis.

In times of crisis, the leaders of the military and intelligence communities try to put aside their differences, often many and sundry, and work together for the good of the country. That’s what’s happening today with a remarkable group of retired generals, admirals and spymasters who have signed up for the resistance, telling the president of the United States, in so many words, that he is not a king.

The president aims to rid the government and the airwaves of his real and imagined enemies, especially anyone connected with the Russia investigation.

It’s clear that Mr. Brennan’s fierce political and personal attacks rattled the china in the Oval Office. The president essentially has accused Mr. Brennan of lèse majesté — the crime of criticizing the monarch, tantamount to treason.

It’s not a crime in the United States. That’s why we fought a revolution against a mad king.

You don’t need a secret decoder ring to see what’s happening here. John Brennan, who knows whereof he speaks, believes that the president is a threat to the security of the United States — a counterintelligence threat, no less, in thrall to President Vladimir Putin of Russia. The president attacks him, severing Mr. Brennan’s access to classified information. The deans of national security rise up to defend him — and, by implication, intelligence officers and federal investigators who are closing in on the White House.

They are sending a message to active-duty generals and admirals, soldiers and spies. Remember your oath to protect and defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic. Think twice before following this man’s orders in a crisis. You might first consider throwing down your stars.

NYT, Jeffrey Smith: Was It Illegal for Trump to Revoke Brennan’s Security Clearance? http://nyti.ms/2BiOSdG //➔ Mr. Smith is a former general counsel of the Central Intelligence Agency
// The president not only violated the former C.I.A. director’s First Amendment rights but also made it harder for the government to draw on his expertise.

WaPo: White House drafts more clearance cancellations demanded by Trump http://wapo.st/2PjVWt8

CNN: Brian Klaas: Trump is inflicting long-term damage on ‘political culture’ http://cnnmon.ie/2OJXTxZ

🐣 RT @TrickFreee Donald Trump is afraid of the big bad former Director of the Organized Crime division for the U.S. Attorney Generals Office and member of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime, Bruce Ohr.
// 8/11/2018

NYT: Embracing Conspiracy Theory, Trump Escalates Attack on Bruce Ohr http://nyti.ms/2BmwBfu

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Why the FBI Fired an Agent Who Wrote Anti-Trump Texts http://bit.ly/2Mzdh2X “Bowdich made a decision to have Strzok summarily dismissed … because he broke the cardinal rule that every agent is taught: Never embarrass the bureau.”
// The FBI’s disciplinary office had recommended Peter Strzok be suspended for two months but was overruled by the bureau’s deputy director.

The paperwork was signed. The former FBI agent Peter Strzok, who had become a lightning rod for efforts to undermine the Russia investigation, was set to receive a two-month suspension and a demotion as punishment for his alleged misconduct during the 2016 election. Then the FBI’s deputy director, David Bowdich, stepped in and fired him, saying he had undermined “the credibility of the FBI.”

James Gagliano, a retired FBI supervisory special agent who worked at the bureau for 25 years, acknowledged that Bowdich’s decision to overrule OPR was unusual. But “this was an unprecedented offense,” he argued. “OPR came up with what they thought was the most appropriate punishment, but Bowdich made a decision to have Strzok summarily dismissed instead, because he broke the cardinal rule that every agent is taught: Never embarrass the bureau.”

Bowdich told Strzok in a letter that he had no basis to appeal his dismissal, since it was made at a level above OPR, and it is still unclear whether Strzok plans to take legal action against the bureau for wrongful termination. “We’re considering our options,” his lawyer, Aitan Goelman, told me. For now, Strzok is fielding calls from book publishers and media outlets eager for a tell-all, according to a person familiar with his situation. But it’s a far cry from where he had hoped to be at this point. “He wanted to stay at the bureau,” this person said. “Obviously, now that’s no longer in the cards.”

💙💙 PoliticusUSA, Leo Vidal: Russian Oligarch Tweets Threat to Trump Over ‘Russiaphobia’ http://bit.ly/2Pg3UUh //➔ friend of Putin tweeted on 7/24 that Trump should stop access to secrets for Brennan, Hayden, Comey, McCabe, Clapper & Rice. Two days later, Trump wrote the order. 🔥

Klyushin is the Putin friend and oligarch who once claimed that it was because of him that Trump was elected president. Since he believes he is the one who put him in the White house, he now thinks it is up to him to control his behavior to make the U.S. more “Russia friendly.”

In his tweet, the powerful Russian businessman sent a warning to Trump that he needs to immediately stop encouraging a culture of fake news that spreads what he called “Russophobia.”

“Democrats and Republicans in the United States compete in the one who no longer loves Russia and who will come up with crueler sanctions. They stuff political points on this, and the people of Russia suffer. If Donald Trump does not extinguish the fire kindling FAKE NEWS Russophobia – it will be his last term,” Klyushin wrote according to Microsoft and Google translation applications. [sic]

Klyushin has also sent warnings to some Trump critics who the president has targeted for revocation of security clearances. In that tweet he wrote:

“Ex-CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, ex-FBI director James Comey and his deputy Andrew McCabe, ex-director of the National Intelligence Service James Clapper, ex-national security adviser Susan Rice say goodbye to access to classified materials. Welcome to the real world!”

That tweet was sent out BEFORE Trump revoked Brennan’s security clearance.

It almost seems like Russian oligarchs now believe the United States is under their control the same way Russia is.

President Trump has often attacked the news media for presenting “fake news” instead of his version of the truth. Because of Trump’s attacks on the press, the United States Senate introduced a new resolution standing up for journalists against the president’s attacks.

“We swore an oath to support and defend the Constitution, including the First Amendment,” Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, a Democrat and an sponsor of the resolution told Reuters. “Today, every senator upheld that oath by sending a message that we support the First Amendment, and we support the freedom of the press in the face of these attacks.”

So now Donald Trump is really in a difficult situation. On one hand he is being threatened by Russians. On the other hand, he is being attacked in the press. It seems that these competing interests cannot be reconciled. Either he will give up on attacking the press for “fake news” or he will continue fighting them and seeking to control the media the way his friend Putin does in Russia.

Based on what he has done so far, it is likely that Donald Trump will try to please Putin and his oligarch friends rather than the American people. Expect the attacks on freedom of the press to continue.

💙 WaPo: Trump gears up to strip more clearances from officials tied to Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2vRNQjH

NYT Editorial: Donald Trump, the Payback President http://nyti.ms/2L0ECpO
// What fun is it being president if you can’t use the tools of government to punish your critics?

… Mr. Brennan’s spanking is just the latest display of what has become standard operating procedure for this president: using the official levers of government to punish critics and to encourage other detractors to sit down and shut up.

Mr. Trump’s act of spite against Mr. Brennan is less ambitious and, frankly, less imaginative, than some of the other avenues of retribution he has explored[:] Aggrieved over what he considers insufficiently obsequious coverage by The Washington Post, Mr. Trump has repeatedly threatened to punish the paper’s owner, Jeff Bezos, by raising the postal rates paid by the online retail giant Amazon, of which Mr. Bezos is the founder and chief executive. Similarly, in the midst of his snit over the protests by National Football League players who have taken a knee during the national anthem, Mr. Trump instructed aides to brainstorm ideas for going after the league in last year’s tax-reform package.

Then there was the president’s failed attempt to block the merger between AT&T and Time Warner, which pretty much everyone recognized as part of his long-simmering animus toward the news media in general and CNN in particular. (The network is owned by Time Warner.)

At other times, Mr. Trump is vastly more forthright, as when explaining in an interview later Wednesday that he took away Mr. Brennan’s security clearance in part because of the latter’s early role in the Russia inquiry. Raging about how “these people” had led the “rigged witch hunt,” Mr. Trump reasoned, “So I think it’s something that had to be done.” The revelation was a remarkable echo of the president’s admission to NBC’s Lester Holt last year that he had fired the F.B.I. director, James Comey, in part over “this Russia thing” rather than the ludicrous official line that he had done so because of Mr. Comey’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

At this point, one might ask why the White House even bothers to invent cover stories that the president himself will inevitably contradict. Mr. Trump obviously cherishes — and actively cultivates — his reputation as someone who will work to crush those who dare defy him.

Following the Group of 7 summit in June, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada held a news conference in which he said that his country would respond in kind to any steel and aluminum tariffs imposed by the United States and he promised that Canadians “will not be pushed around.” Outraged, Mr. Trump vowed to make Mr. Trudeau and his entire country pay for such impudence. “That’s going to cost a lot of money for the people of Canada,” said Mr. Trump. “He learned. You can’t do that. You can’t do that.”

Politically palatable excuses aside, the president wants everyone to know that this is how he operates. It fuels his image as a tough guy. Where is the fun in punishing your enemies if you can’t rub their noses in it?

There’s a word for an approach to leadership that features treating the tax code, postal rates, antitrust laws and the First Amendment as weapons to settle one’s personal grudges. And that word is not “democratic.”

🐣 EUvsDisinformation (Jun): The Burrito Theft Theory http://bit.ly/2MQHk2T 11 different ways Russian disinformation works to not tell the truth, using the example of ~ a burrito

Yesterday should be forever known as “Trump 👋Smackdown👋 Day.” Smacked down by the American Legion over military parade, by the Senate for calling the press “the enemy of the people” and by ex-Intel Chiefs for revoking Brennan’s security clearance. Oh, and Omarosa.

🐣 Statement by Former Heads of the U.S. Intelligence Agencies on President Trump’s revoking of Former CIA Director John Brennan’s security clearance – Aug 16, 2018 (orig posted by @GenHayden and @JakeTapper)
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1030348128011124736/photo/1
// reformatted pdf to landscape, still small errors in text; they are clearly trying to stave off Trump moving forward with additional revocations; hoping Brennan gets his day in court
⋙ List from @mitchellreports includes Webster, Tenet, Hayden, Panetta, Petraeus, Goss, Clapper, Kappes, McLaughlin, Morell, Haines, Cohen

Slate, Fred Kaplan: Spy Vs. President http://slate.me/2Pe8Skl
// The nation’s top former intelligence officials come together to issue a stunning rebuke to Trump

⭕ 16 Aug 2018

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Elijah Cummings has sent a letter to John Kelly demanding a briefing and documents on the decision to revoke John Brennan’s security clearance. https://bit.ly/2MSjXGp https://twitter.com/kylegriffin1/status/1030164824095895552/photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw I’ve reluctantly concluded Mueller should proceed w/out subpoenaing Trump and gambling on how Justice Kavanaugh would vote only to have Trump take the 5th. The evidence already available almost certainly supports a report finding conspiracy with Russia and obstruction of justice

🐣 RT @mitchellreports List of former CIA and other agency officials supporting @JohnBrennan and criticizing Trump decision includes Webster, Tenet, Hayden, Panetta, Petraeus, Goss, Clapper, Kappes, McLaughlin, Morell, Haines, Cohen – bipartisan, military and civilian

RollingStone, Anna Merlan: A Deep Dive Into the Deep State: Unpacking the Summer of Trump Conspiracy Theories http://rol.st/
// Three of the year’s best-selling books claim shadowy forces in the U.S. government — and Hillary Clinton — are to blame for the ongoing Russia investigation

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: A crucial point made by John Brennan http://wapo.st/2PhGn5x
// what Don Jr did privately by email, DJT did publicly, before a group of reporters

NYT: Revoking Clearance, Trump Aims Presidential Power at Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2vQvjEa

DailyBeast: Former CIA Chiefs Blast Trump’s ‘Outrageous’ Move on Brennan http://thebea.st/2MRCIJS
// ‘We’re better than this,’ said former CIA director John Brennan, after the White House revoked his security clearance. ‘We have to be better than this.’

🐣 So why was the Russian who offered prostitutes to Trump http://bit.ly/2MqpLtL tweeting out the names of intel professionals on Trump’s hit list two days before date on Trump’s original order to strip Brennan of his clearance? https://twitter.com/ARTEM_KLYUSHIN/status/1021714949473808387
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1030289169011154944/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
@ARTEM_KLYUSHIN [Москва, Россия 7/24/2018] Экс-директоры ЦРУ Джон Бреннан и Майкл Хэйден, экс-директор ФБР Джеймс Коми и его заместитель Эндрю МакКейб, экс-директор Национальной разведслужбы Джеймс Клаппер, экс-советник по нацбезопасности Сьюзан Райс прощаются с доступами к секретным материалам. Welcome to the real world!
Auto-Translated: Former CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, former FBI director James Komi and his deputy Andrew McCabe, former director of the National Intelligence James Clapper, ex-adviser on Homeland Susan Rice are forgiven for access to classified materials. Welcome to the real world!

🐣 RT @AmicaAli “He (#Trump) is not after his critics, he’s after the witnesses.” -#RachelMaddow https://twitter.com/AmicaAli/status/1030269614738038791 /photo/1
// List: Brenner, Clapper, Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Rice, Yates, Hayden, Page, Ohr
⇈ ⇊
MaddowBlog: These people with unique and important perspectives on the Trump campaign’s relationship to Russia, what would revoking their security clearance do to their ability to prepare testimony and to testify? 💽 https://twitter.com/MaddowBlog/status/1030269072871747584/photo/1

🐣 RT @TrickFreee
$13.5 million – Robert Mercer
$10 million – Sheldon Adelson
$6 million – Linda McMahon
$7 million – Bernard Marcus
$2+ million – Geoffrey Palmer
$2 million – Ronald M Cameron
$1.25 million – Peter Thiel
$1 million – Walter Buckley Jr,
$1 million – Cherna Moskowitz…
⋙ @Parscale Latest tape from Omarosa shows how much Trump family cares about pocketbooks of our donors when @LaraLeaTrump warns about all campaign $$ coming from average Americans. Lara says the right thing protecting our donors and helping people understand we are powered by the people!

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump has now fired or threatened most senior officials related to the Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2MQSkgB A tally

🐣 Rachel Maddow: Trump “isn’t after his critics. He’s after the witnesses.” – The Rachel Maddow Show @MSNBC @maddow

DefenseOne, Evelyn Farkas: We Regret to Inform You That Russia Is (Probably) At It Again http://bit.ly/2wcfhUn

🐣 RT @PaulaChertok Russia accuses US of “discrimination, psychological pressure and humiliation” of accused Russian agent Maria Butina. Embassy diplomats say the 29yo was apparently strip-searched in jail and denied medical attention for arthritis.
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1030246207744954369/photo/1
https://twitter.com/PaulaChertok/status/1030246207744954369/photo/2

NYT: Meet the Special Counsel Team: So Careful They Won’t Even Disclose Their Shake Shack Order http://nyti.ms/2KYPkgG

NYMag, Margaret Hartmann: Trump Admits Revoking Brennan’s Security Clearance Was About the Mueller Probe http://nym.ag/2nJrdt3

HuffPo, Veronica Stracqualursi: Trump connects revoking Brennan’s security clearance to Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2MRbtPC

🐣 RT @WillDonnelly Bill McRaven, retired US Navy admiral who oversaw operation that killed Osama bin Laden, says he would “consider it an honor” for President Trump to also revoke his security clearance in solidarity with former CIA Director John Brennan
⋙ 🐣 RT @NBCNews McRaven: “Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation. If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken”
↥ ↧
WaPo, William McRaven: Revoke my security clearance, too, Mr. President http://wapo.st/2OLgie7
// Entire:

Dear Mr. President:

Former CIA director John Brennan, whose security clearance you revoked on Wednesday, is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Few Americans have done more to protect this country than John. He is a man of unparalleled integrity, whose honesty and character have never been in question, except by those who don’t know him.

Therefore, I would consider it an honor if you would revoke my security clearance as well, so I can add my name to the list of men and women who have spoken up against your presidency.

Like most Americans, I had hoped that when you became president, you would rise to the occasion and become the leader this great nation needs.

A good leader tries to embody the best qualities of his or her organization. A good leader sets the example for others to follow. A good leader always puts the welfare of others before himself or herself.

Your leadership, however, has shown little of these qualities. Through your actions, you have embarrassed us in the eyes of our children, humiliated us on the world stage and, worst of all, divided us as a nation.

If you think for a moment that your McCarthy-era tactics will suppress the voices of criticism, you are sadly mistaken. The criticism will continue until you become the leader we prayed you would be.

🐣 RT @davidaxelrod I wonder how morale is today within the Intel Community, now that some of their most decorated and respected leaders have been placed on an enemies list by the @POTUS?

RawStory: Here’s how the Russian mob used cash from a multi-billion dollar gas scam to get their hooks into Trump http://bit.ly/2OHedzw

President Donald Trump got his start laundering money for the Russian mob more than 30 years ago as part of one of the biggest scams in U.S. history, according to a new book.

Investigative reporter Craig Unger has described Trump Tower as a “cathedral to money laundering,” and his new book — “House of Trump, House of Putin” — examines the depth of the president’s relationship with the Russian mafia, which he says has no meaningful distinction from the country’s intelligence agencies.

“After seven years in New York, Bogatin had stashed away enough money to buy real estate anywhere he wanted,” Unger wrote. “For roughly a decade, thousands of Russian Jews like him had been pouring into Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. But Bogatin had his eyes on something more prestigious.”

Bogatin became fixated on a “garish” 58-story building that had opened a year before — Trump Tower — and he paid $6 million in cash from his fuel tax scheme for five apartments there.

Unger tracked more than 1,300 similar cash transactions at Trump Tower over the next three decades involving mobsters that ensnared the future president in the closely tied web of Russian spies and mobsters.

“Russian Mafia and Russian intelligence operatives successfully targeted, compromised, and implanted either a willfully ignorant or an inexplicably unaware Russian asset in the White House as the most powerful man on earth,” Unger concludes.

“In doing so, without firing a shot, the Russians helped put in power a man who would immediately begin to undermine the Western Alliance,” he added, “which has been the foundation of American national security for more than 70 years; who would start massive trade wars with America’s longtime allies; fuel right‐wing anti‐immigrant populism; and assault the rule of law in the United States.”

TheAtlantic, Julia Ioffe (2017): Russian Money in Silicon Valley http://bit.ly/2wdtctq
// 11/9/2017, The Paradise Papers tell a story about the Kremlin’s evolving methods of manipulating the internet—and how it exported them.

🐣 RT @aliasvaughn So Russians tweeting a list of those whose clearances should be revoked on July 24. (I have already RTd this but doing so again as some don’t see the tweet). Note: the Trump order came JULY 26 per date on huckabee Sanders’s doc. They waited until they needed a distraction.
// Artem Klyushin, a friend of Rykov, is a key character in the article below. Klyushin is supposedly the man who offered Trump prostitutes. He was the guy who tweeted this ⇊ this on July 24, two days before the Presidential Order rescinding Brennan’s security clearance was originally dated:
⇊ ⇊
@ARTEM_KLYUSHIN [Москва, Россия 7/24/2018] Экс-директоры ЦРУ Джон Бреннан и Майкл Хэйден, экс-директор ФБР Джеймс Коми и его заместитель Эндрю МакКейб, экс-директор Национальной разведслужбы Джеймс Клаппер, экс-советник по нацбезопасности Сьюзан Райс прощаются с доступами к секретным материалам. Welcome to the real world!

Auto-Translated: Former CIA directors John Brennan and Michael Hayden, former FBI director James Komi and his deputy Andrew McCabe, former director of the National Intelligence James Clapper, ex-adviser on Homeland Susan Rice are forgiven [forbidden] for access to classified materials. Welcome to the real world!

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand No, the Manafort trial did not disappoint. It painted a portrait of an operative who blithely defrauded his own government while working for pro-Russian entities—a striking microcosm of the question at the heart of the sprawling Russia investigation.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Government’s Revealing Case Against Paul Manafort http://bit.ly/2vLlsQe
// The trial of President Trump’s former campaign chairman offered a striking microcosm of the questions at the heart of the Russia probe.
‼️ ⋙⋙ National Compass, Tony Wyman (May): Konstantin Rykov – The Pimp Who Taught Vladimir Putin How To Troll The Internet http://bit.ly/2MqpLtL
// 5/21/2018
⋙ See under Entire Articles Rykov & Klyushin 5/21/2018

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump blurts out another Lester Holt moment http://wapo.st/2PfPSSq

💙💙 NYT, John Brennan: President Trump’s Claims of No Collusion Are Hogwash http://nyti.ms/2KTamNH
// That’s why the president revoked my security clearance: to try to silence anyone who would dare challenge him.

⭕ 15 Aug 2018

🐣 RT @BillBrowder Here is my TED Talk: “How I figured out the Achilles heel of Vladimir Putin”. Tells the whole story in 15 minutes. https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1029722389758631943/photo/1

WSJ: Trump Revokes Ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s Security Clearance http://on.wsj.com/2BhgAHC
// The president ties the move to the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election

President Trump drew a direct connection between the special counsel investigation into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election and his decision to revoke the security clearance of former CIA Director John Brennan and review the clearances of several other former officials.

In an interview Wednesday, Mr. Trump cited Mr. Brennan as among those he held responsible for the investigation, which also is looking into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. Mr. Trump has denied collusion, and Russia has denied interfering.

Mr. Brennan was director of the Central Intelligence Agency in the Democratic administration of former President Obama and one of those who presented evidence to Mr. Trump shortly before his inauguration that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election.

“I call it the rigged witch hunt, [it] is a sham,” Mr. Trump said in an interview. “And these people led it!”

He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”

Mr. Brennan—who since leaving office has become a frequent critic of the Republican president—in a tweet called the revocation of his clearance “part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics.” He wrote it “should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out.”

The president also drew attention to other investigators related to the Russia probe and the 2016 investigation of Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server, including former FBI agent Peter Strzok. Mr. Strzok worked on the early days of the Russia investigation until special counsel Robert Mueller removed him after the discovery of anti-Trump text messages Mr. Strzok had sent. He was fired from the FBI earlier this week.

“You look at any of them and you see the things they’ve done,” Mr. Trump said. “In some cases, they’ve lied before Congress. The Hillary Clinton whole investigation was a total sham.”

Earlier in the day, White House spokeswoman Sarah Sanders said the administration was also reviewing the clearances of former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, former FBI Director James Comey, and former National Security Agency and CIA chief Michael Hayden.

“I don’t trust many of those people on that list,” Mr. Trump said in the interview. “I think that they’re very duplicitous. I think they’re not good people.”…

🐣 RT @davidaxelrod Just for the record, @JohnBrennan is one of the finest public servants I have ever known. Strong, honorable and thoroughly committed to his country.

BBC: Mystery Russian satellite’s behaviour raises alarm in US http://bbc.in/2vONk5N

PopularMechanics: Is Russia’s Mysterious New Satellite a Space Weapon? http://bit.ly/2MQ15ru
// The U.S. is calling Moscow out over a satellite’s unusual behavior.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Steve Schmidt: “It’s an abuse of power. It’s retribution against a political opponent … When you look at an administration where Omarosa or Jared Kushner or Ivanka Trump have security clearances and John Brennan does not, then you know something is askew.” @TheLastWord

🐣 RT @EricHolder Trump move against John Brennan is unjustified- won’t silence him. Nor will his threats silence the others on his enemies list. All of this is designed to obscure facts/sow confusion in anticipation of a damaging report from Special Counsel. Look at everything through that lense

🐣 RT @nicolenavega Brennan is the man that killed Osama bin Laden at the order of President Obama by integrating CIA assets, producing intelligence, passing that on to our special mission war fighters & executing that mission. He has unique knowledge which must be shared w successors @MalcolmNance
💽 MSNBC, Steve Schmidt: https://twitter.com/nicolenavega/status/1029916551393304576/photo/1

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan This action is part of a broader effort by Mr. Trump to suppress freedom of speech & punish critics. It should gravely worry all Americans, including intelligence professionals, about the cost of speaking out. My principles are worth far more than clearances. I will not relent.

WaPo: Trump’s lawyers prepare to fight subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court http://wapo.st/2KWuIWn

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Trump Staffer Tried to Recruit Lobbyists for Russian Oligarch Roman Abramovich http://thebea.st/2Mz3ee2
// Once he worked to get Donald Trump into the White House. Then he started doing favors on behalf of someone else—one of Russia’s richest men.

A little-known former Trump campaign staffer named Daniel Gelbinovich reached out to a number of Washington lobbyists since the election with an eyebrow-raising ask: to shield well-heeled Russians from U.S. sanctions.

Gelbinovich confirmed the approach but initially declined to disclose the name of the firm. He later disclosed that it was GCap Holdings, located in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a booming Russian population, and GCap also confirmed it had retained Gelbinovich “to explore potential lobbying initiatives” on behalf of unnamed clients based in Russia.

[Trump’s] commerce secretary, Wilbur Ross, invested in a shipping firm linked to Putin’s judo partner, who is under U.S. sanctions, according to The New York Times. Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, received a six-figure payment from a firm with ties to sanctioned Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg; and Trump himself teamed up with oligarch Aras Agalarov to put on the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow in 2013.

Evelyn Farkas, an Atlantic Council senior fellow, said the Gelbinovich effort highlights the growing consternation in Moscow about U.S. sanctions.

“That just tells you how much nervousness there is in Russia about being put on the sanctions list,” said Farkas, who worked on Russia matters at the Pentagon during the Obama administration.

Gelbinovich was a low-level staffer on the Trump campaign, according to campaign sources, frequently booking travel for senior staff. He was on the campaign in its very early days.

When the Daily Beast first asked Gelbinovich about outreach, he said in a written statement that he understood he was approaching lobbyists on behalf Roman Abramovich, one of Russia’s wealthiest men.

“The firm claimed that this outreach was on behalf of the individual you mentioned,” Gelbinovich said in an email. “I do not have a direct connection to Mr. Abramovich myself.”

The lobbyists who spoke to the Daily Beast said Gelbinovich also told them he was looking for someone to help Abramovich in the sanctions arena.

But two days after the initial publication of this article, Gelbinovich backtracked and said his statement was inaccurate and “probably should have been clearer that Abramovich was NOT a client (but rather was among a group of well-known Russians that they might later seek to target for work).’’

“At no time has Mr. Abramovich, or anyone authorized to act on his behalf, engaged any individual or company to lobby on his behalf in the United States,” he said in an email to The Daily Beast. “We have instructed our attorneys to draft a cease-and-desist letter regarding the representations reportedly made by Mr. Gelbinovich, whom we had never heard of before today.”

… The BBC pointed to exacerbated diplomatic tensions between the U.K. and Russia over the chemical weapon attack on retired Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia as a possible explanation for Abramovich’s visa troubles. Abramovich then took up Israeli citizenship, according to the Guardian.

… In April of this year, Treasury announced a new round of sanctions targeting Russian entities and oligarchs, including Oleg Deripaska, the Putin ally who put millions into the pocket of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The sanctions list hasn’t just survived the Trump administration; it’s grown. And it’s generated plenty of potential leads for Trump allies like Gelbinovich looking to cash in on their influence in Washington.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 General Michael Hayden on CNN: “The W.H. just messaged the entire American Intelligence Community: if you stand up and say things that upset the president … he will punish you. And that is a horrible message to be sending to folks who are there to tell you objective truth.”

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump now explicitly says that he’s targeting Brennan and others for their roles in the Russia investigation. ¤ “I call it the rigged witch hunt,” Trump told the WSJ. “And these people led it!” He added: “So I think it’s something that had to be done.”
⋙ WSJ: Trump Revokes Ex-CIA Director John Brennan’s Security Clearance http://on.wsj.com/2BhgAHC interview
// The president ties the move to the investigation of Russia’s interference in the 2016 election

PoliticusUSA: Rachel Maddow Just Nailed Trump For Committing Another Impeachable Offense http://bit.ly/2MNSdSZ

As Maddow noted on Wednesday, Nixon’s corruption didn’t happen so brazenly in the light of day. Much of Trump’s, on the other hand, has been in public view – from his Twitter feed to his public statements.

In this case, as the MSNBC host pointed out, it could add more fuel to the impeachment fire. Trump hasn’t just obstructed justice in plain sight, but as was the case with Nixon, he is using the power of the presidency to hurt his political enemies.

Checking off the names on his Nixonian enemies list might make him feel strong, but it’s an abuse of power.

WaPo: Not even Republicans buy the Trump team’s ‘collusion isn’t a crime’ defense http://wapo.st/2MP24Ie

Esquire, Charles We tried to leave: Of Course Trump Stapled Something Putin Would Love to the Defense Spending Bill http://bit.ly/2MtzIXa
// We must respect Russia’s land grab in Ukraine. President’s orders!

💙 TheHill: Trump attacks Russia provisions in signed defense bill http://bit.ly/2w8DTxA //➔ President Trump said in a signing statement that he reserves the right to ignore a recently signed defense authorization law’s ban on recognizing Russian sovereignty of Crimea.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1029891378560598017/photo/1

In the signing statement issued Monday, the president objected to four of the eight provisions related to Russia. Included in the four is provision 1241, which states that none of the defense bill’s funds “may be obligated or expended to implement any activity that recognizes the sovereignty of the Russian Federation over Crimea.”

Trump also argued the bill would unjustly limit his presidential authority by restricting military-to-military cooperation with Russia and mandating he report to Congress if Russia violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty or if he discusses a new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Sen. Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), the ranking member on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released a statement slamming the president’s statements on the Russia provisions, particularly that regarding Crimea.

“This signing statement is troubling because, yet again, the President is showing the world he cannot be trusted when it comes to standing by U.S. commitments and promoting our interests over his own. … Last month, I welcomed a statement from the Administration saying it would not do so. Now, again we have to call on the President to unequivocally stand strong for the United States and our allies and against Kremlin aggression,” he said.

The White House’s criticism of the bill extended beyond Russia-related provisions.

The signing statement argues that provisions limiting U.S. support for the Saudi military campaign in Yemen, the transfers of Guantanamo Bay detainees and the number of troops in South Korea, as well as a provision mandating the president report on North Korea’s nuclear activities, among others, would limit Trump’s presidential powers.

◕📋 KremlinWatch.eu: Report: 2018 Ranking of Countermeasures by the EU28 to the Kremlin’s Subversive Operations [pdf] http://bit.ly/2PaPfK1 99p
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1029886214197919744/photo/1
// 6/13/2018, map also

TheConversation (7/26): With hacking of US utilities, Russia could move from cyberespionage toward cyberwar http://bit.ly/2KWLAvW
// 7/26/2018

🐣 RT @PhilipRucker John Brennan’s public service:
-CIA station chief in Saudi Arabia
-CIA chief of staff
-Director of Terrorist Threat Integration Center
-Director of National Counter terrorism Center
-White House Homeland Security Adviser
-CIA director
-Briefed three presidents

🐣 RT @NancyPelosi Revoking the security clearance of an honorable patriot is a stunning abuse of power & a pathetic attempt to silence critics. This is yet another disturbing attempt by @realdonaldtrump to distract & divert attention from his Admin’s #cultureofcorruption, cronyism & incompetence.

WaPo: Trump revokes security clearance of former CIA director Brennan, a critic of the president http://wapo.st/2nFayGX

⭕ 14 Aug 2018

WaPo, Greg Sargent: As Trump keeps raging at Mueller, another poll shows his lies are failing http://wapo.st/2wl8hVv

Fortune: Select Former Trump Aides Receive Monthly Salaries of $15,000, Reports Say http://bit.ly/2MDuwQw

Those receiving payments—either directly or through firms they manage—include former director of Oval Office operations Keith Schiller, former personal assistant to the president John McEntee, former digital media director of the Trump campaign Brad Parscale, and former director of advertising for the Trump campaign Gary Coby, ABC reports. The salaries are listed for “security services,” “payroll,” “digital consulting [and] management consulting,” and “media services [and] consulting,” respectively.

Alternet: Putin Wants Trump to Hand Over Three DHS Agents Who Are Investigating a Company Linked to the Don Jr Meeting http://bit.ly/2Mj1x5h
// He had a whole list of Americans he wanted to be turned over.

MSNBC, TheLastWord: Brennan: Trump is ‘dangerous to our nation’ http://on.msnbc.com/2PdqUmW
// Fmr. CIA Director John Brennan says Trump “will never understand what it means to be president” and tells Lawrence why Donald Trump is “the most divisive president we have ever had in the Oval Office.”

DailyBeast, Michael Weiss: This Is Why Putin Is Targeting Three DHS Agents http://thebea.st/2nGyb28
// Russia’s president is obsessed with the U.S. investigation into hundreds of millions in ill-gotten gains that have benefited his cronies—and very possibly him as well.

NewYorker, Joshua Yaffa: How Bill Browder Became Russia’s Most Wanted Man http://bit.ly/2Ozmzcq
// Jul-Aug issue, The hedge-fund manager has offered a fable for why the West should confront Putin.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYkr Yaffa Browder Jul 2018

Politico: ‘People are terrified’: Trump staffers live in fear of Omarosa’s next tape http://politi.co/2Pbb2RU
// Trump aides are suffering from the same type of psychological warfare that gripped Clinton’s campaign during the WikiLeaks dumps.

🐣 RT @petestrzok “There comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular, but he must take it because conscience tells him it is right.” -MLK

🐣 RT @MattAsherS The moral of the story is that Russia is going to continue to attack us by creating & amplifying content that serves to create division & muddy the waters around the very serious & professional #TrumpRussia investigation. ¤ The Russians are helping Trump in plain sight. Blatant.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RVAwonk Unsurprisingly, Russian-linked influence networks have seized on the firing of Peter Strzok (feeds a narrative of undermining credibility of US intel agencies). It’s currently occupying 6-8 of top 10 trending topics; 2 of top 10 trending hashtags; 2 of top 10 topics overall.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1029224657428332544/photo/1
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1029224657428332544/photo/2

🐣 RT @BradMossEsq: Does anyone want to inform @RudyGiuliani of the fourth and final prong of the misprision of felony provision? I think he may be rusty, as he appears to have forgotten that to have violated it Comey also would have had to take steps to conceal his knowledge of Trump’s crime.
⋙ 🐣 RT @CNN, CuomoPrimeTime: Rudy Giuliani: Former FBI Director James Comey is a “crazy liar,” alleged discussion between Trump and Comey about Michael Flynn did not happen https://cnn.it/2KVqf6d 

PoliticusUSA: Jared Kushner is Now Part of the Manafort Trial Record http://bit.ly/2MpFf18

MSNBC, RachelMaddowShow: Banker loaned millions to Manafort, sought Trump admin ‘rolls’ http://on.msnbc.com/2MMW6HX
// Rachel Maddow shares an exhibit from the trial of Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort in which banker Stephen Calk, who gave Manafort $16 million in loans, lists in a poorly spelled e-mail “perspective rolls” he would like to have in the Trump administration.
↥ ↧
💙 CNN: Manafort emailed Kushner with recommendations for senior administration posts http://cnn.it/2PbEZRZ
// “Perspective Rolls” in the Trump Administration (lol)
↥ ↧
BuzzFeed: Senate Intel Wants To Follow The Money In The Russia Probe. But Treasury Isn’t Making That Easy. http://bit.ly/2Ozfx7O
// Last year, staff inside Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network questioned whether the department was deliberately trying to stymie the Senate’s investigation.

MSNBC, Steve Benen: Russia is likely to approve of Trump’s latest signing statement http://on.msnbc.com/2w2U6Em

🐣 RT @MSNBC A new poll released today shows that a majority of Americans, 56 percent, think the president’s public statements about the Russia probe are “mostly or completely false.” https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1029518106962612224/photo/1
// Trump’s statements about Russia 56% All or Mostly False, 37% All or Mostly True
⋙ 📊 MSNBC: Poll: 56% find Trump’s statements about Russia are false http://on.msnbc.com/2Mkm7l9
// A new CNN poll released today shows that a majority of Americans, 56 percent, say the President’s public statements about the Russia probe are “mostly or completely false.”

WaPo, Matt Zapotosky and Devlin Barrett: ‘You stepped in it here’: How anti-Trump texts ruined the career of the FBI’s go-to agent http://wapo.st/2MKKmpm

🐣 RT @MSNBC President Trump’s approval number is at 39 percent, according to the latest @Gallup poll. https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1029412914489372672/photo/1

🐣 RT @MSNBC JUST IN: Omarosa asserts to @KatyTurNBC that President Trump knew about the forthcoming leak of Clinton emails before they were leaked.
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1029431749388976128/photo/1

🐣 RT @perlmutations Of course the FBI had to fire Peter Strzok. The FBI cannot afford to even seem to enable partisanship. And yet by doing so they damage the very integrity they think they are protecting. Because Peter Strzok was right; that dirty son of a bitch is unfit for the most important job.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan It’s astounding how often you fail to live up to minimum standards of decency, civility, & probity. Seems like you will never understand what it means to be president, nor what it takes to be a good, decent, & honest person. So disheartening, so dangerous for our Nation. [To @real]

Politico: Handler of alleged spy Butina tied to suspicious U.S.-Russia exchange program http://politi.co/2vIr4dQ
// Russian politician Alexander Torshin’s meetings with American students, coupled with his role managing alleged covert Russian agent Mariia Butina, suggest he may be a more important Kremlin operative than previously known.

🐣 RT @20Committee [John Schindler] As someone who was also cut loose from USG after decades of loyal service, by political enemies who seized upon personal foibles but they really hated that I outed Kremlin spies, I say: support @petestrzok here. ¤ Screw Putin and his American bitches.
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/20committee/status/1029164670312169477

🐣 RT @Redrum_of_Crows [Raven le Maven] Additional sites already determined to be ‘bad’ are on my #TrumpRussiaMatrix – and these sites written about by journalists can be found on my matrix – and fit into my logical, methodology which is behind the creation of this matrix. https://twitter.com/Hwy61Blues/status/1029283134980980737/photo/1
Orig: https://twitter.com/Redrum_of_Crows/status/1029278016185094145/photo/1
// locked account so I copied and re-posted: #TrumpRussiaMatrix Linked Domains
⋙ 🐣 RT @Redrum_of_Crows As further examples to validate my submission, note ‘PsyGroup’, ‘Black-Cube’, ‘DCLeaks’, ‘WikiLeaks’, ‘Project ALamo’, et al. ¤ Others include banks mentioned in indictments and news reports, are already included, as well. ¤ The remainder WILL be FUTURE news, if followed up.

⭕ 13 Aug 2018

NewYorker, John Cassidy: The FBI Needs to Explain It’s Reasons for Firing Peter Strzok http://bit.ly/2MNAqeP

… But, despite all the noise and fury, there is now a basic question that needs an answer: Why was Strzok fired? Before the Clinton and Trump investigations, Strzok had racked up twenty years of distinguished service in the Bureau, rising to the position of deputy assistant director of the Counterintelligence Division.

Since his communications with Page have become public, Strzok has insisted that his personal views about Trump didn’t affect his actions while overseeing the Clinton and Russia investigations. During his testimony on Capitol Hill, he insisted that when, in the course of discussing Trump’s Presidential bid with Page, he wrote to her that “we will stop it” he was referring to the American public at large.

Some people, particularly Trump supporters, find that explanation hard to believe. So far, though, no convincing evidence has been unearthed that contradicts Strzok’s assertions. The inspector general’s report, which was confined to the Bureau’s handling of the Clinton investigation, stated, “Our review did not find documentary or testimonial evidence directly connecting the political views these employees expressed in their text messages and instant messages to the investigative decisions we reviewed.” Elsewhere, the report said, “We further found evidence that in some instances Strzok and Page advocated for more aggressive investigative measures than did others.”

The inspector general did express some concerns about the slow pace with which Strzok reacted, in September, 2016, to the discovery of thousands of Clinton’s e-mails on a laptop owned by Anthony Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a close aide to Clinton. By that point, Strzok was also overseeing the Trump-Russia investigation, which was expanding. In light of the contents of Strzok’s text messages, the inspector general’s report said, “We did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.” But here, too, the report did not provide any actual evidence to support the theory that any of Strzok’s professional actions were politically motivated.

On Monday, Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan Goelman, claimed that his client’s firing had been ordered, late last week, by David Bowdich, the deputy director of the F.B.I., despite the fact that the Bureau’s Office of Professional Responsibility, which normally handles disciplinary matters, had recommended a lesser punishment: a demotion and a sixty-day suspension. “This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans,” Goelman told the Times. “A lengthy investigation and multiple rounds of congressional testimony failed to produce a shred of evidence that Special Agent Strzok’s personal views ever affected his work.” …

If there is such information, the F.B.I. needs to make this clear immediately. At the very least, it needs to explain the basis of the decision to dismiss Strzok, pointing out which internal rules he violated, and why these violations amounted to a firing offense. As things stand, it looks like the Bureau’s leaders buckled to Trump and his political and media outriders, dispensing with departmental norms and setting a highly disturbing precedent.

In a tweet that he posted just after noon on Monday, Trump crowed about what had happened. “Agent Peter Strzok was just fired from the FBI – finally,” he wrote. “The list of bad players in the FBI & DOJ gets longer & longer. Based on the fact that Strzok was in charge of the Witch Hunt, will it be dropped? It is a total Hoax. No Collusion, No Obstruction – I just fight back!”

In his larger quest to end the Mueller investigation, Trump clearly sees Strzok’s dismissal as a victory, albeit a relatively small one. That should be sufficient cause for alarm. Encouraged by what happened here, Trump will surely expand his attacks on Mueller and his colleagues. The leaders of the F.B.I. need to start talking.

🐣 RT @SarahKendzior Spare me talk of how the Mueller probe is moving fast. It’s not. The probe long predates Mueller. Its prior failures are not Mueller’s fault, but he has choices now. Institutions, already very weak before Trump, are in free fall. Act now or likely lose the option to act at all.

ABC: Strzok’s attorney calls his firing a “departure from typical Bureau practice.” http://abcn.ws/2KNXYOU “This decision should be deeply troubling to all Americans.”
Statement: https://twitter.com/ABC/status/1029027822537465857/photo/1

WaPo, Brian Klaas: The firing of Peter Strzok sends an ominous signal about the rule of law http://wapo.st/2w10Oe2

Unfortunately, Strzok’s firing is a much bigger deal than text messages or one FBI agent’s career. This is the latest warning sign that President Trump is politicizing the U.S. rule of law beyond repair.

The politicization of rule of law is, therefore, a serious threat to democracy. I’ve interviewed authoritarian heads of state in sub-Saharan Africa, the Middle East and in Southeast Asia. Off the record, they’ll admit that they deliberately politicized rule of law in order to crush dissent and remove constraints on their power. To achieve that goal, they usually launch two parallel campaigns. First, create the public perception that rule of law is already highly politicized against the leader in power. Second, use that pretext to much more aggressively politicize rule of law against the leader’s political opponents.

Building public trust in the rule of law as an impartial and apolitical institution can take decades, or even centuries. But that precious public trust can be torn to shreds in a matter of months. And once that happens, depoliticizing the rule of law is nearly impossible.

Thankfully, the United States is not Turkey. But the country is starting down Turkey’s perilous path. Trump is deliberately and falsely creating the perception among his supporters that he (and they) are the victims of a justice system that exists to target the president and his political allies. And, like Erdogan, he’s using that perception as a pretext to lash out at institutions and individuals who underpin the rule of law in the United States.

Since becoming president, Trump has attacked the FBI, the nation’s top law enforcement agency, 88 separate times on Twitter. Twenty-one of those tweets specifically attacked Peter Strzok, calling him a “sick loser” who was “incompetent and corrupt.” Trump also went after Strzok countless times during campaign rallies and in public remarks.

We will likely never know whether Strzok was fired because of political calculations or pressure from the White House. It is plausible, though. But we already have clear evidence — from his calls for jailing of his opponents to his use of pardons for political allies — that Trump sees the rule of law through a purely political lens and that he is trying to bend it to his will. Whether he succeeds or not, his ongoing efforts to politicize the rule of law have already injected a dangerous toxin into America’s political bloodstream. I fear any eventual antidote will take years or decades to expel the venom.

TheGuardian (Jan): The boss, the boyfriend and the FBI: the Italian woman in the eye of the Trump-Russia inquiry http://bit.ly/2vKnWhu
// 1/18/2018, Simona Mangiante, the girlfriend of ex-Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, also worked for a mysterious Russia-linked Maltese professor. No wonder Robert Mueller’s investigation came knocking

🐣 RT @jaffaesque “Russia’s Most Wanted”—my story for this week’s @NewYorker on Bill Browder and the many twists and turns in the legacy of the Magnitsky Act, from Trump Tower to Helsinki:
NewYorker, Joshua Jaffa: How Bill Browder Became Russia’s Most Wanted Man | The New Yorker http://bit.ly/2Ozmzcq
// 8/20/2018 issue; The hedge-fund manager has offered a fable for why the West should confront Putin.

CNN: Roger Stone ally: Mueller has ‘concern’ about Stone’s 2016 predictions http://cnn.it/2B8KHkf “Asked if she got the sense that investigators were coming for Stone, Davis said, ‘I did’.”

🐣 RT @StevenBeschloss So Rachel @maddow laid out the corroborating witnesses for Comey, all of whom have been fired or driven from the FBI, save one. ¤ If there’s ever a day when you imagine Trump is just reckless & mad, remember this infuriating list, a systematic attempt to obstruct justice.
TRMS slide: https://twitter.com/StevenBeschloss/status/1029188531439132672/photo/1

💙 TPM, Josh Marshall: The Archeology of Trumpism http://bit.ly/2KMww48 “Trump is a cretin and a racist and a buffoon. But we fool ourselves if we don’t recognize that he is a sort of savant”

🐣 RT @MarkSZaidEsq My comments to @washingtonpost via @jdawsey1 re: @POTUS WH NDAs. I view it unconstitutional beyond protecting classified information. Having viewed one NDA version it was clearly mocked up version of Trump Org NDA & still included NY choice of law provision which Feds never would
⋙ 🐣 RT @jdawsey1 In Situation Room firing meeting, Omarosa Manigault Newman told officials she didn’t consent to be recorded and asked them if they were — even as she clandestinely recorded herself. Latest w/@AshleyRParker:
⋙⋙ WaPo: ‘Everyone signed one’: Trump is aggressive in his use of nondisclosure agreements, even in government http://wapo.st/2MhuAWK

🐣 RT @MrFilmkritik Just a reminder that Peter Strzok ran the FBI division that caught the Russian “illegals” (the spy ring that was the basis of the show The Americans). ¤ Pretty sure Putin is happy to see him go.

🐣 RT @TCleveland4Real Davis on CNN:
Says Stone didn’t think/know Guccifer was Ru.
Emphasizes that were were many people running Stone’s twitter acount.
Says Mueller prosecutor has a rapport with jurors and was asking leading questions.
Says jury could be a “mixed bag” with respect to education level.
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/TCleveland4Real/status/1029173715723014145

🐣 RT @Moscow_Project: Donald Trump’s campaign was run by unrepentant crooks whose entire business model was trading political favors to shady clients with little regard for ethics or the law—and yet some people somehow still find the idea of collusion far-fetched.
⋙ 🐣 RT @awprokop Steve Calk, the bank chairman who pushed for $16M in shady loans to Manafort, also sent him a list of Trump Admin jobs he wanted “in rank order.”
≣ Tweet link w atts: https://twitter.com/awprokop/status/1029156358329905153

TheAtlantic, John Sipher: Convergence Is Worse Than Collusion http://bit.ly/2MkzOAm
// Trump and Putin share many more goals than just Trump’s election.

WaPo/AP: The Latest: Trump asks if firing means end to Russia probe http://wapo.st/2OzNzc0

Bloomberg, Caleb Melby, David Kocieniewski, and Gerry Smith: Kushner’s Ties to Russia-Linked Group Began With Kissinger Lunch http://bloom.bg/2P08oyl
● Trump son-in-law met Center for National Interest in March ’16
● Alleged Russian agent Butina used center to set up meetings

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The FBI just fired Peter Strzok http://bit.ly/2MH1a0l
// Robert Mueller had removed Strzok from the Trump-Russia investigation last year.

Bloomberg Editorial: Russia Sanctions Won’t Work If Trump Doesn’t Back Them Up http://bloom.bg/2nHHezX
// The president’s refusal to condemn Putin undermines any economic penalties.

Politico: Trump-appointed judge upholds Mueller’s legitimacy http://politi.co/2MjbhMd

CNBC, Kevin Brueninger: Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow and former top advisor Mike Flynn share ties to both Mueller’s probe and tensions over a US pastor detained by Turkey http://cnb.cx/2MhqVII

● One of Trump’s lawyers in the Russia probe, Jay Sekulow, also serves as chief counsel at a conservative legal organization representing Brunson.
● The Wall Street Journal reported that one of Trump’s former advisors, Mike Flynn, has caught Mueller’s eye for his alleged involvement in a plan to deliver exiled Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen back to Turkey.
● Turkey accuses Brunson of being connected to Gulen.

PBS: AP fact check: Trump’s claims on ‘record’ GDP, jobs and the Russia investigation http://to.pbs.org/2McuzDu

NBC: The Trumps’ changing story on the Russia meeting http://nbcnews.to/2KMD7LL
// President Donald Trump and his son Donald Trump Jr. have had a Russian evolution.

CNN: Kremlin “pleased” with Helsinki summit, US and Western intelligence assesses http://cnn.it/2vIUzfv

🐣 RT @Msnbc “In his decades of service, Special Agent Strzok proved himself to be one of the country’s top counterintelligence officers. ” — Aitan Goelman, Attorney for Peter Strzok ¤ @NicolleDWallace and her panel discuss the termination of the now former FBI agent
⋙ 💽 DeadlineWH: Despite pressure from Trump, was the FBI right to fire Peter Strzok? http://on.msnbc.com/2B5
// Former US attorney Harry Litman, former FBI assistant director Frank Figliuzzi, Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff, and The Root’s Jason Johnson on the bureau’s decision to fire the longtime agent whose anti-Trump texts prompted a political firestorm

HollywoodReporter (2016): Barry Diller: “Total Bullshit” That MGM Can’t Release ‘Apprentice’ Tapes http://bit.ly/2nAr8Yz
// 10/12/2016

Politico, Bradley Moss: Trump’s Purge of the FBI Is Complete http://politi.co/2vG3Yog
// With the odd firing of Peter Strzok, the president has cleansed the bureau of the men who started the Russia investigation. This is not normal.

🐣 .@petestrzok Please write a book, not just about #TrumpRussia but about all your great work for the US in the FBI. Secure film rights, also! You have a lot of support in this country. ♡

🐣 RT @renato_mariotti I agree with @ThePlumLineGS: Trump’s latest statement that “to the best of my knowledge” nothing happened after the Trump Tower meeting was clearly written by an attorney and suggests that there is some evidence that something followed from that meeting.
⋙ WaPo: There’s a big tell in Trump’s latest defense of Donald Jr. http://wapo.st/2Ow1UpW

🐣 RT @mkraju Dem congressman @CongressmanRaja writes to Wray to ask if the WH/Trump or Sessions played any role in the firing of Strzok https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1029151194265133056/photo/1

🐣 RT @DefenseOne Nationwide router reboot was related to a massive Russian attack still infecting global systems, warns NSA’s top hacker, writes @DefTechPat | https://buff.ly/2w6GUhB 
⋙ DefenseOne: Russian Military Spy Software is on Hundreds of Thousands of Home Routers http://bit.ly/2OzITD0
// In May, the Justice Department told Americans to reboot their routers. But there’s more to do — and NSA says it’s up to device makers and the public.

🐣 RT @JohnWDean This is the behavior of a good son. Having once been a staff atty for
this committee, I can confirm that Chairman Goodlatte has taken it to new lows, disgracing himself, the Committee, the Congress and the USA in the process. Protecting Putin is the wrong side of history!
⋙ 🐣 RT @rsg [Bobby Goodlatte, son of House Intel Chair] I’m deeply embarrassed that Peter Strzok’s career was ruined by my father’s political grandstanding. That committee hearing was a low point for Congress. ¤ Thank you for your service sir. You are a patriot.

🐣 RT @PuestoLoco “Trump blasted his oldest son as a ‘fuck up’ after learning he had released emails about a controversial Trump Tower meeting attended by a Kremlin-connected lawyer who had promised dirt on Hillary Clinton” NOTICE: Not for the meeting, but for releasing the e-mails about it.

🐣 RT @petestrzok Deeply saddened by this decision. It has been an honor to serve my country and work with the fine men and women of the FBI. https://www.gofundme.com/peterstrzok https://twitter.com/petestrzok/status/1029035185218699264/photo/1

🐣 RT @michaeldweiss A tremendous profile of Andrey Pavlov, the consigliere of the Klyuev Group, by @jamesrbuk:
⋙ DailyBeast, James Ball: Exclusive: Hacked Emails Take Us Inside the Billionaires’ Club Around Vladimir Putin http://thebea.st/2vGga8z
// How a little-known lawyer is at the center of a complex nexus of connections between Western fixers, Russian oligarchs, Vladimir Putin—and even Donald Trump
⋙ See under Entire Articles: DailyBeast:Billionaires Putin 8-12-2018

EmptyWheel: The Dossier as Disinformation: Why It Would Matter http://bit.ly/2vGwlT5

🐣 Cool. Peter Strzok gets to write a book!

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Full statement from Peter Strzok’s lawyer, who says the director of the FBI office that normally handles employee discipline had decided Strzok should face only a demotion and 60-day suspension—but was overruled by the FBI’s deputy director.
https://twitter.com/NatashaBertrand/status/1029027396081483776/photo/1

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump has released a *new* statement about the Trump Tower meeting, claiming “to the best of my knowledge, nothing happened after the meeting concluded.” ¤ “This statement was clearly lawyered,” Bob Bauer, ex-White House counsel under Obama says.
⋙ WaPo, GregSargent: There’s a big tell in Trump’s latest defense of Donald Jr. http://wapo.st/2OxDrAl

🐣 RT @ActiveMeasuresDoc FBI agents getting fired for private text messages in the era of Trump tweets is bizarre, disturbing, and just another day for this administration. ¤ “This isn’t the normal process in any way more than name,” Goelman said. ¤ The FBI declined to comment.”
‼️ ⋙ WaPo: FBI agent Peter Strzok fired over anti-Trump texts http://wapo.st/2KPHoht

⭕ 12 Aug 2018

◕📋💙💙 FPRI, Clint Watts (2017): Extremist Content and Russian Disinformation Online: Working with Tech to Find Solutions http://bit.ly/2B5HB0D https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1028883609086844928/photo/1
// 10/31/2017, Chart title: “Russia’s Social Media Influence Operations”; Foreign Policy Research Institute, Alliance for Securing Democracy, Center for Cyber and Homeland Security
⇈ ⇊
💽 FPRI Robert A. Fox Fellow Clint Watts’ Testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee, Subcommittee on Crime and Terrorism on October 31, 2017. Watch the hearing here: http://cs.pn/2MdTGFZ  (page down) //➔ for text: http://bit.ly/2B5HB0D

🐣 RT @LincolnsBible It’s time to stop thinking of the mafia as a Coppola film. That era is over. Done. Finito. We’re in transnational organized crime territory now – with trillions of dollars/deutsche marks/yens/cryptos. Bob Mueller warned us of this. We should have listened.
⋙ FBI, Robert S. Mueller, III (2011): The Evolving Organized Crime Threat http://bit.ly/2w2GBo1
// 1/27/2011, archives.fbi.gov via Citizens Crime Commission of New York; almost complete:

… This morning, I want to focus on one such evolving threat–that of organized crime. 

Some believe that organized crime is a thing of the past. Unfortunately, this is not the case. Traditional criminal syndicates still con, extort, and intimidate American citizens. 

But the playing field has changed. We have seen a shift from regional families with a clear structure, to flat, fluid networks with global reach. These international enterprises are more anonymous and more sophisticated. Rather than running discrete operations, on their own turf, they are running multi-national, multi-billion dollar schemes from start to finish.

We are investigating groups in Asia, Eastern Europe, West Africa, and the Middle East. And we are seeing cross-pollination between groups that historically have not worked together. Criminals who may never meet, but who share one thing in common: greed.  

They may be former members of nation-state governments, security services, or the military. These individuals know who and what to target, and how best to do it. They are capitalists and entrepreneurs. But they are also master criminals who move easily between the licit and illicit worlds. And in some cases, these organizations are as forward-leaning as Fortune 500 companies.

This is not “The Sopranos,” with six guys sitting in a diner, shaking down a local business owner for $50 dollars a week. These criminal enterprises are making billions of dollars from human trafficking, health care fraud, computer intrusions, and copyright infringement. They are cornering the market on natural gas, oil, and precious metals, and selling to the highest bidder. 

These crimes are not easily categorized. Nor can the damage, the dollar loss, or the ripple effects be easily calculated. It is much like a Venn diagram, where one crime intersects with another, in different jurisdictions, and with different groups. …

Yet we are concerned with more than just the financial impact. These groups may infiltrate our businesses. They may provide logistical support to hostile foreign powers. They may try to manipulate those at the highest levels of government. Indeed, these so-called “iron triangles” of organized criminals, corrupt government officials, and business leaders pose a significant national security threat.

Let us turn for a moment to the link between transnational organized crime and terrorism. If a terrorist cannot obtain a passport, for example, he will find someone who can. Terrorists may turn to street crime—and, by extension, organized crime—to raise money, as did the 2004 Madrid bombers.

Organized criminals have become “service providers.” Could a Mexican group move a terrorist across the border? Could an Eastern European enterprise sell a Weapon of Mass Destruction to a terrorist cell? Likely, yes. Criminal enterprises are motivated by money, not ideology. But they have no scruples about helping those who are, for the right price.

Intelligence and partnerships are key to our success in countering these threats.   

In the past nine years, we in the FBI have shifted from a law enforcement agency to a national security service that is threat-driven and intelligence-led. 

With organized crime, we are using intelligence to expand upon what we already know, from phone, travel, and financial records to extensive biographies of key players. And we are sharing this information with our partners around the world.

But we are also building a long-term strategy for dismantling these enterprises. Last year, we set up two units, called Threat Focus Cells, to target Eurasian organized crime. The first focuses on the Semion Mogilevich Organization; the second on the Brother’s Circle enterprise. 

For those of you not familiar with either group, their memberships are large, their reach is global, and their scope of operations is broad, from weapons and drug trafficking to high-stakes fraud and global prostitution. If left unchecked, the resulting impact to our economy and our security will be significant. Indeed, Semion Mogilevich is on the FBI Top Ten Most Wanted List, and he will remain so until he is captured. 

These Threat Focus Cells include FBI personnel from the Criminal, Cyber, Counterintelligence, and International Operations divisions. They also include our partners in the law enforcement and intelligence communities, both at home and abroad. 

We have also built a solid network of support with our international partners. We have more than 60 Legal Attaché offices overseas, where agents and analysts work closely with their foreign counterparts, sharing intelligence and investigating cases together.

In Budapest, FBI agents have worked side-by-side with the Hungarian National Police for more than 10 years, targeting Eurasian organized crime. Together, we have identified and arrested criminals from Bulgaria, Poland, Romania, and Russia, among others. 

Through these partnerships—these friendships—we are on a first-name basis with thousands of officers around the world, all of whom share the same goal—keeping their citizens safe from every threat, every day.

Nearly three weeks have passed since the tragic attack in Tucson. We still feel the impact of that attack—and the idea that one individual could inflict such damage.

Yet we also confront terrorists who seek to inflict the greatest damage possible. Gang members who cultivate crime and violence. Computer hackers who target our financial networks. And organized criminals who will stop at nothing to make money. 

Congresswoman Giffords’ husband, Mark Kelly, is an astronaut. His twin brother, Scott, is the current commander of the International Space Station.    

Two days after the attack, from space, Commander Kelly led NASA in a moment of silence. Speaking by radio, he said, “We have a unique vantage point [up] here. …I see a very beautiful planet that seems inviting and peaceful.  Unfortunately, it is not. …[But] we are better than this. We must do better.”

As we all know, a world that is often inviting and peaceful can become violent, even deadly, in the blink of an eye. We may not see the shift, but we certainly feel the impact. 

But we are better than the criminals and terrorists we face. Together, we can and we must do better. Together, we must do more, for the American people deserve no less.

Thank you for having me here this morning and for your support over the years. It has been my honor to work with you.

🐣 RT @pwnallthethings The $15k/pm was to be paid for by Donald J. Trump for President Inc, i.e. by political donations of Trump supporters. https://twitter.com/pwnallthethings/status/1028854048613576704/photo/1
// Omarosa’s non-disclosure $15K/mo contract (page w $ amt)

Reuters: Russia’s Lavrov says Putin-Trump meeting possible to improve relations: RIA http://reut.rs/2MfG0KQ

TheGuardian: Woodward and Bernstein: Watergate echoes loud in Donald Trump era http://bit.ly/2P4iqhN
// Veteran journalists may have thought their biggest story was behind them, then Trump came along. ‘This is worse than Watergate’, says Bernstein

TheGuardian: Giuliani now says Trump never discussed Michael Flynn with Comey http://bit.ly/2B4Uo39
// Trump will deny having ever discussed Flynn with James Comey if he’s questioned by special counsel Robert Mueller, says Giuliani

NYT: Amid Kremlin Victories, Putin Fails to Persuade West on Russian Sanctions http://nyti.ms/2MGuhkL

WIRED: Machine Learning Can Identify the Authors of Anonymous Code http://bit.ly/2B7IRjO
// Even Anonymous Coders Leave Fingerprints

WaPo, Joe Scarborough: History will wonder why these men defended Trump but not their country http://wapo.st/2OwHsF8

◕ Gallup Poll: During Nixon’s last year in office, his approval among Republicans never fell below 50%. Still, that was down from 90% at the beginning of his second term. Chart posted by @PollsAndVotes Thread: http://bit.ly/2Maykt6 📌 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1028801668589264897/photo/1
Gallup Poll: Nixon Job Approval in 1973 and 1974 as it responded to Watergate events. Chart posted by @PollsAndVotes More at Thread: http://bit.ly/2Maykt6 /photo/1
// Nixon job approval 1969-1974
http://bit.ly/2Maykt6

InsideHigherEd, Matt Grossman and David Hopkins: How Information Became Ideological http://bit.ly/2vCftNo
// 10/11/2016

Vox, Amanda Taub: The rise of American authoritarianism http://bit.ly/2tlDN28
// 3/1/2016, A niche group of political scientists may have uncovered what’s driving Donald Trump’s ascent. What they found has implications that go well beyond 2016.

⭕ 11 Aug 2018

WaPo Editorial: Don’t fall for Trump’s latest whataboutism http://wapo.st/2Mc1SGL

[T]he claim that Ms. Clinton’s 2016 opposition-research activities were on the same moral or legal plane with the Trump team’s direct interactions with Russians represents a preposterous effort to confuse and distract.

Here is what the Trump team did: Senior campaign officials, including then-chairman Paul Manafort, Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner, met in June 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya, a Kremlin-connected lawyer. They were told the lawyer could give them “very high level and sensitive information” on Ms. Clinton, as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Here is what the Clinton campaign did: It employed a U.S. law firm that hired a U.S. research outfit that brought in Christopher Steele, a British ex-spy, to gather information on Mr. Trump from his network of sources. That network included Russians.

For all of Mr. Trump’s efforts to muddy the waters, the two cases are decidedly different. There is no evidence of any direct meetings or even tenuous connections between Ms. Clinton’s senior staff and Russian operatives. When the information he was gathering on Mr. Trump seemed alarming, Mr. Steele informed the Federal Bureau of Investigation about his concerns. When the Russian government offered dirt on Mr. Trump’s opponent, his campaign didn’t alert authorities about this sketchy behavior. It eagerly took the meeting.

Mr. Trump’s whataboutism obscures the fundamental difference between engaging in opposition research that includes contacting foreign sources and lapping up information peddled by a foreign government. Mr. Steele, a well-regarded ex-spy, was acting as a compensated researcher with a specialty in Russia, not as a Kremlin cutout. He worked his network to deliver information to his client.

By contrast, Mr. Trump’s team opened itself to legal exposure when it took the unsolicited meeting with Ms. Veselnitskaya. It is illegal for foreign governments to contribute — in a broad sense of the word — to U.S. political campaigns. “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics,” Mr. Trump tweeted the other day. The efforts the president and others made to cover up the purpose of the meeting suggest otherwise. And the fact that the damaging information was not forthcoming, at least at that meeting, does not excuse the sordid fact of the meeting in the first instance.

One of Mr. Trump’s go-to defenses is insisting that others have done the things he is accused of, only worse. No matter how many times he tweets about Ms. Clinton’s supposed collusion, that doesn’t make it true, nor does it diminish legitimate concerns about his own campaign’s behavior. And that is even assuming there is nothing more to learn.

NYT: Trump Escalates Attack on Jeff Sessions, Calling Him ‘Scared Stiff’ http://nyti.ms/2B2Rf3V

“I have never seen anything so Rigged in my life,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter, referring to reports about meetings between a Justice Department official and a former British spy who helped compile a dossier that contained unverified but potentially damaging allegations about Mr. Trump. “Our A.G. is scared stiff and Missing in Action.”

The reports, featured mostly in conservative news outlets, suggest that even after the Justice Department stopped using the former spy, Christopher Steele, as an informant, he continued to meet with a top official at the agency, Bruce Ohr.

For months, Republicans have attacked Mr. Ohr because his wife, Nellie Ohr, worked as a contractor for FusionGPS, the opposition research firm that hired Mr. Steele. The two men had known each other before Mr. Steele began working for Fusion.

But Mr. Ohr worked on counternarcotics at the Justice Department, not counterintelligence, and he is not known to have played any role in the Russia investigation.

The president has repeatedly insisted that the investigation began with the dossier, paid for in part by Hillary Clinton’s allies, but the inquiry was prompted in part by a diplomat’s tip about a former Trump campaign adviser.

He has also continued to criticize Mr. Sessions, accusing his attorney general of taking a “weak” position over prosecuting Mrs. Clinton for issues that have long been considered settled by the Justice Department.

Politico: Donald Trump’s complicated relationship with technology http://politi.co/2Mi72Aj
// 12/30/2016, The incoming president has mastered Twitter, but he doesn’t do email and rarely uses a computer //➔ he has someone print out his emails, annotates with a black marker, has the responses scanned and sent as a pdf; doesn’t browse the web; prefers phone calls

🐣 RT @BenSasse One of the giant costs of the Trump-centric framing of the Mueller investigation (by cable news chyrons & by the President himself) is that few Americans understand Putin’s agents are now picking at the scabs of every cultural skirmish we have–from race to guns to media tribes.
⋙ 🐣 RT @joshrogin Republican @RepTomGarrett says he was told in a closed briefing that Russian meddling contributed to last year’s conflict and violence in Charlottesville. Wow. @CNN

Observer, John Schindler (2017): The 9 Russian Words That Explain KremlinGate http://bit.ly/2vEZSwq //➔ spycraft
// 3/28/2017, It’s International Talk Like a Chekist Day—here’s a quick primer on kombinatsiya, konspiratsiya and more

TheGuardian, Jonathan Freedland: We like to mock Trump, but Britain’s Russia stance is even worse http://bit.ly/2OtXQGp
// When it comes to evidence of Russian intervention in the 2016 referendum, Theresa May is unaccountably relaxed

When it comes to Russia, the US has become the Jekyll and Hyde superpower. Just three weeks ago, Trump stood next to Putin in Helsinki, unable to utter so much as a word of criticism of the Russian dictator who, a vast body of evidence shows, acted to subvert the American democratic process in 2016. And yet on Wednesday the US announced new sanctions on Moscow as punishment for the attempted assassination of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury with a lethal nerve agent.

On Friday it emerged that the president’s own national security adviser, John Bolton, plotted with European diplomats to rush through a new Nato strategy document when Trump wasn’t looking – in order to deny him the chance to wreck it and, especially, to soften its tough stance on Russia.

Isn’t the UK guilty of a similar contradiction, in fact one that’s even worse?

That Russia was ready to do its bit to make Brexit happen is already well-established. We have had for nearly a year the documented proof …

Where, though, is the outrage from the British government?

In a way, the UK situation is worse. The US is at least conducting an inquiry into Moscow’s campaign to sway the ballot two years ago …

For Trump, the motive for opposing Mueller is obvious: he fears that to admit Russian subversion would be to cast doubt on his own electoral legitimacy. For May, the calculation is not dissimilar: hers is now a Brexit government, and she dares do nothing that might undermine the so-called “will of the people”.

… May’s silence in the face of an attack on this country’s democracy – indeed, on its sovereignty – is no more defensible than Trump’s. The Americans are conducting a full-scale inquiry. Where is ours?

🐣 RT @BillKristol The claim that Mueller is a greater threat to the republic than Putin is so over the top one’s inclined to ignore it. But Levin said it soon after dinner with Trump and Pirro repeated it. Is Trump intensifying the assault on Mueller in case Trump wants to move against him soon?

🐣 RT @real Why isn’t the FBI giving Andrew McCabe text massages to Judicial Watch or appropriate governmental authorities. FBI said they won’t give up even one (I may have to get involved, DO NOT DESTROY). What are they hiding? McCabe wife took big campaign dollars from Hillary people……
⋙ 🐣 When Stormy went at you with that Forbes magazine, was that a “text massage”?
🐣 RT @real …..Will the FBI ever recover it’s once stellar reputation, so badly damaged by Comey, McCabe, Peter S and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, and other top officials now dismissed or fired? So many of the great men and women of the FBI have been hurt by these clowns and losers!

⭕ 10 Aug 2018

KyivPost, Josh Kovensky: Dirty Money: Manafort trial exposes seedy realities of Ukrainian politics http://bit.ly/2Pb5oz3
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Kyiv Dirty Money 8-10-2018

💙💙 DailyBeast: The Real Reason Roger Stone Crony Andrew Miller Ducked Robert Mueller’s Subpoena? To Challenge the Special Counsel’s Legitimacy. http://thebea.st/2nDZJ8a
// A longtime associate of the infamous Republican trickster is having his defense funded in part by a group that wants to challenge the constitutionality of the Russia probe.

ForeignPolicy: How to Kill a Presidential Scandal http://bit.ly/2KNaDBT
// Republicans smothered the Iran-Contra affair. The same might happen with Trump and Russia.

WaPo, David Von Drehle: Trump’s résumé is rife with mob connections http://wapo.st/2MDRX9p

NorwoodPost: Ex-Spy Bob Baer shares scoop on Trump and Russia http://bit.ly/2KNlTxY
// nothing new; Ex-spy reveals what he’s discovered about President Trump and Putin: recruited in 1991, there is a tape
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Bob Baer Ex-Spy

NYT, Roger Cohen: Trump’s Nemesis in the Age of Pinocchio http://nyti.ms/ //➔ Interview with Glenn Kessler, the Washington Post’s Factchecker
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1028250653901119488/photo/1
// Glenn Kessler’s database of presidential untruths will become a reference, a talisman.

It’s easy to experience an “unbearable lightness of being,” in Milan Kundera’s phrase, when the anchor of truth disappears. What was Trump’s Singapore summit with Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader? Theater? Farce? Should we run away? Should we care? Should we scream? Who would hear us? Is journalism remotely adequate to describe the moral decay and mind-bending corruption, material and spiritual, of the Trump administration?

I sought out Kessler because I believe he’s doing the critical work that might save the country. Trump, he says, is “in another realm completely.”

Are you going to go on doing this?” I ask.
“Yeah.”
“Indefinitely?”
“Yeah, I have the best job in journalism.”
“The best?”
“I write what I want, and I piss people off.”

Czeslaw Milosz, the Nobel Prize-winning poet, addressing a totalitarian leader “who wronged a simple man,” wrote this:

Do not feel safe. The poet remembers.
You can kill one, but another is born.
The words are written down, the deed, the date.

Kessler is doing the poet’s work. Honor him. The database he compiles with his colleagues Salvador Rizzo and Meg Kelly, listing every one of Trump’s untruths, will become a reference, a talisman.

Washingtonians know it. When Kessler went to the hospital last Sunday to get stitches in his hand after the run-in with the wine glass, the physician assistant recognized the Fact Checker and said: “Oh, we have to make sure you’re able to type!”
↥ ↧
🐣 .@NYTimesCohen Thank you for your beautiful tribute to @GlennKesslerWP. It is the Poet’s Work indeed. I’ve been fact-checking all my life, going back to when it was scribbled notes on slips of paper. Facts are stubborn things, not easy to unearth. 🥂to the Truth Tellers!

NYT Editorial: The Administration Gets Tough on Russia — Despite Trump http://nyti.ms/2M8BvBD
// The president holds chummy meetings with Vladimir Putin, while his administration imposes new sanctions.

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Are you still sure there’s no need to worry? http://wapo.st/2MzZ9mN

🐣 RT @ProcessServiceC DNC Lawsuit https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com
@wikileaks By Court order, you are being served with the following legal documents: https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Summons-WikiLeaks.pdf …,
https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/DNC-COMPLAINT-STAMPED.pdf …,
https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Electronic-Case-Filing-Rules-Instructions-SDNY.pdf …,
https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/Individual-Practices-of-Judge-John-G.-Koeltl.pdf ….
All of these documents may be found here: https://www.cohenmilsteinprocessserver.com/ .

🐣 RT @benjaminwittes Ok, here’s a little primer on the perjury trap: What it is, what it isn’t, and whether Bob Mueller’s seeking an interview with Trump in which Trump might lie is one or not. [📌 Thread:] https://mobile.twitter.com/benjaminwittes/status/982978272945459200?s=21
// 4/8/20/18

TheIndependent, Sean O’Grady [UK]: Trump’s silence on the Russia sanctions hints at his fear of being compromised by Putin http://ind.pn/2OmRbha
// What is it that the Russians have on the president? Why doesn’t he give a flying trump about the murder of British citizens?

DailyBeast, Elie Honig: Trump Will Fold if Mueller Calls His Bluff. Giuliani Is the Tell. http://thebea.st/2AWx2wN
// The president’s lawyer puts more preconditions on an interview that the special counsel will never agree to meet. It’s meant to make the eventual cave-in look magnanimous.

BuzzFeedNews, Kevin Collier and Jason Leopold: Massive Attack On Swedish News Sites Was The Work Of Russia, US Told Its Ambassadors http://bit.ly/2MCoQ6e
// According to a newly released State Department cable, the attack was part of a Russian campaign to sow disinformation about NATO. It came as Russia allegedly was stealing Democrats’ emails.

LawfareBlog: Peter Smith’s Search for Hillary Clinton’s Emails: The Subplot Thickens http://bit.ly/2nzflKl (by Victoria Clark, Matthew Kahn, Mikhaila R. Fogel, Quinta Jurecic and Benjamin Wittes)

DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova (2017): Russia’s Alt-Right Rasputin Says He’s Steve Bannon’s Ideological Soul Mate http://thebea.st/2vUaOpq
// 4/24/2017, Alexander Dugin says Trump’s ‘unforgivable’ attack on Syria makes him a traitor to the alt-right, and Putin’s a big disappointment. But Dugin still digs Bannon.

WaPo: Russia chastises U.S. after sanctions over chemical attack in Britain http://wapo.st/2Ose177 Medvedev: “If a kind of prohibition of bank activities or using this or that currency followed, this can be called, absolutely directly, this is a declaration of economic war.”

🐣 RT @LincolnsBible Lincoln Forecast: We’re gonna start seeing bodies on yachts.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ericgardland Decent forecast from 2017, but I guess he meant “at my building where there are Russian mobsters running sports betting,” and 18 U.S. Code § 2381.
⋙⋙ Politico.eu: Donald Trump says ‘people will die’ as a result of focus on Russia allegations http://politi.co/2MBZRzW
// 11/11/2017, ‘Every time he sees me he says, “I didn’t do that,” and I really believe, that when he tells me that, he means it,’ Trump says after meeting Putin at Vietnam summit.

🐣 RT @MaxBoot This is what Republican donors are paying to support: payoffs to ex-Trump staffers to keep them quiet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Huh. 15k per month is what Trump’s former bodyguard Keith Schiller has been getting from the RNC.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @meungminkim Oh boy — Omarosa was offered $15K per month to stay silent after her firing from the Trump campaign, via @jdawsey1
⋙⋙⋙ WaPo: Omarosa Manigault Newman says she refused hush money, pens White House memoir calling Trump racist http://wapo.st/2P0BbT9

🐣 RT @JasonLeopold SCOOP by @a_cormier_ & me ¤ We’re following the money ¤ GOP Operative Made ‘Suspicious’ Cash Withdrawals During Pursuit Of Clinton Emails ¤ Peter W. Smith withdrew $4,900 in cash the day after he finalized a plan to work with “dark web” hackers.
BuzzFeedNews: GOP Operative Made “Suspicious” Cash Withdrawals During Pursuit Of Clinton Emails http://bit.ly/2npUwR8
// Peter W. Smith withdrew $4,900 in cash the day after he finalized a plan to work with “dark web” hackers.

NYPost: Bethenny Frankel’s on-and-off boyfriend found dead in Trump Tower http://nyp.st/2MC8zya
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @truefactsstated So remember that time when @MichaelCohen212 texted some guy to warn him to get of Trump Tower when the fire happened? And the “art dealer” was killed? Well, the guy who Cohen texted was found dead today. In Trump Tower. #Goodfellas
// 📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/TrueFactsStated/status/1028008815587995648
↥ ↧
⋙ 🐣 RT @ContraryMary197 And so it begins, Putin’s wet work.

HillReporter, Ed Krassenstein: Former Top KGB General Says Trump is a Russian Asset and He Likely Knows It http://bit.ly/2Mg6Q4E “[A] new book by Craig Unger … claims that President Trump is and has been a Russian asset since 1987”; release date 8/14/2018
Cover: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1028031738021376000/photo/1

[A] new book by Craig Unger, entitled ‘House of Trump, House of Putin; the Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia‘, claims that President Trump is and has been a Russian asset since 1987.

In 1987 Donald Trump travelled to Moscow, and Unger says that the former head of counterintelligence for the KGB, Oleg Kalugin, insists that Trump would have very likely been filmed with prostitutes at that time, saying that Trump had ‘many young ladies at his disposal’ and that Russian spies would have jumped at the opportunity.

Kalugin also claims that Trump is an easy ‘Russian asset’ considering how greedy he has been over the years.  He goes as far as saying that Trump is most likely aware of the existence of blackmail material often referred to as ‘kompromat’.

If Russia was likely willing to gather ‘kompromat’ on Trump 31 years ago, it would seem to give further credence to the Steele Dossier which claims that Russia had gathered ‘kompromat’ on Trump back in 2013 as well.  It’s worth noting that no proof of this blackmail material was provided to Unger by Kalugin — only his opinion on what most likely would have taken place at the time of Trump’s visit to Moscow.

WaPo, Harry Litman: Time for Mueller to bring out the big guns http://wapo.st/2Mb9x8j “Enough is enough. It’s time to subpoena the president.”

So if Mueller can prove the legitimacy of his case, and if Giuliani and Trump conclude it’s objective, and if they receive sufficient information about the probe’s origins, then they might consider answering some questions in writing.

Trump’s intransigence raises the prospect that Mueller will need to submit his report to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein with no input from the president. This is simply an unacceptable resolution for a probe of this gravity. Mueller’s mission is not just to investigate and charge crimes. It is also to determine what happened. Indeed, he is the country’s only hope for some clear picture of the facts. As the recently released tapes of Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) makes clear, congressional Republicans are determined to avoid any serious investigation, and the media can probe only so far.

It is true, of course, that Trump could respond to a subpoena by invoking his Fifth Amendment rights. He is not legally required to fill in Mueller’s case for him. But that act would speak volumes to the country, while subjecting the president to historical ignominy. And there is no constitutional reason it shouldn’t: We are not an impaneled jury, but a citizenry entitled to know whether the president committed crimes and conspired with a hostile foreign power to try to swing the election.

It is also conceivable that the Supreme Court could agree with the president to quash the subpoena, but it is highly unlikely. Precedents in the cases of presidents Nixon and Clinton strongly indicate the subpoena would be enforceable. And it is in the interest of the country to get a definite resolution of the question from the Supreme Court in any event.

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV: Vitaly Tretyakov, dean of Moscow State University’s School of Television, argues that Russia should act decisively in response to the new sanctions. “Let’s turn this into a headache for Trump. If you want us to support you in the elections, do what we say.”
https://twitter.com/JuliaDavisNews/status/1027910487554576384/photo/1

🐣 RT @mkraju The special counsel has subpoenaed Randy Credico – the intermediary between Julian Assange and Roger Stone – to testify before a grand jury on Sept. 7, @SaraMurray reports. It’s the latest sign the Mueller probe isn’t finishing by September as Rudy has predicted

WaPo: Judge holds Roger Stone associate in contempt for refusing to testify in Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2P09FVR //➔ “U.S. District Chief Judge Beryl Howell made the ruling Friday after a sealed hearing to discuss Andrew Miller’s refusal to appear before the grand jury.”

🐣 RT @McFaul I support better relations with Russia. If Putin left Crimea, ended his war against Ukraine, stopped backing murderous regime in Syria, ended intervention in US elections & retracted his call for arresting USG officials , I’d support lifting sanctions & normalizing relations.

🐣💙💙 RT @The_UnSilent_ “All my new FBI agents visit the Holocaust Museum to better understand what happens when law enforcement becomes a tool of oppression, or worse.”
~ Robert Mueller, April, 2013
💽 Video: https://twitter.com/The_UnSilent_/status/1027708210633998336/photo/1

⭕ 9 Aug 2018

CNN, Frida Ghitis: Under Trump, the US has two separate foreign policies http://cnn.it/2McZeAE

The policies are a tangled mess, and Pompeo did his best to try to make sense of them without sounding disloyal to the President. But it’s no easy feat. In fact, Trump’s rambunctious style has spawned a pattern: The President speaks, meets, declares, and then foreign policy figures rush to clean up, often finding excuses for Trump’s statements.

TheIndependent, Sean O’Grady [UK]: Trump’s silence on the Russia sanctions hints at his fear of being compromised by Putin http://ind.pn/2OmRbha
// What is it that the Russians have on the president? Why doesn’t he give a flying trump about the murder of British citizens?

TheObserver, John Schindler: Donald Trump’s Nightmare Isn’t Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2vZtTq2 “President Trump has more than mere kompromat to worry about here. Under Vladimir Putin, Russian intelligence has embarked on a global assassination spree of a kind not seen in the Kremlin since Stalin’s time.”

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Allison Quinn: Exclusive: This Is Accused Russian Spy Maria Butina’s Secret Money Man in Moscow, Sources Say http://thebea.st/2OVAKtr
// When the accused infiltrator of the NRA needed cash, she turned to Igor Pisarsky, two sources familiar with her activities tell The Daily Beast.

… But what the prosecutors didn’t say was that when Butina needed money from the oligarch, Konstantin Nikolaev, she went to a Kremlin-linked public relations power player named Igor Pisarsky for the cash. That’s according to two sources familiar with her activities, speaking to The Daily Beast on the condition of anonymity.

Pisarsky was Butina’s point of contact for the Nikolaev money, according to these sources—the face of the financing. According to one of the sources, he essentially acted like he was distributing grant money.

This information, previously unreported, highlights the breadth of Butina’s support network; she had friends in a wide variety of high places. In Paul Erickson, she had a longtime Republican insider with close ties to the right’s most powerful groups. In Alexander Torshin, she had a Kremlin ally who was deeply involved in Russia’s banking sector. In Konstantin Nikolaev, she had an oligarch willing to help bankroll her undertakings. And now, in Igor Pisarsky, she had a worldly, sophisticated public relations professional whose firm boasts having worked for a host of Kremlin entities, as well as Vladimir Putin’s political party. Pisarsky’s firm also has worked for two banks whose CEOs have faced U.S. sanctions, according to its website and reports

🐣 RT @BillKristol Lest we lose sight of the forest for the trees: It seems to me likely Mueller will find there was collusion between Trump associates and Putin operatives; that Trump knew about it; and that Trump sought to cover it up and obstruct its investigation. ¤ What then? ¤ Good question.

NYT: U.S. Officials Scrambled Behind the Scenes to Shield NATO Deal From Trump http://nyti.ms/2M5zRkr

Senior American national security officials, seeking to prevent President Trump from upending a formal policy agreement at last month’s NATO meeting, pushed the military alliance’s ambassadors to complete it before the forum even began.

The work to preserve the North Atlantic Treaty Organization agreement, which is usually subject to intense 11th-hour negotiations, came just weeks after Mr. Trump refused to sign off on a communiqué from the June meeting of the Group of 7 in Canada.

The rushed machinations to get the policy done, as demanded by John R. Bolton, the national security adviser, have not been previously reported. Described by European diplomats and American officials, the efforts are a sign of the lengths to which the president’s top advisers will go to protect a key and longstanding international alliance from Mr. Trump’s unpredictable antipathy.

In June, weeks before the meeting, Mr. Bolton sent his demand to Brussels through Kay Bailey Hutchison, the American ambassador to NATO. He wanted the NATO communiqué to be completed early, before the president left for Europe, according to five senior American and European officials familiar with the discussions who described them on the condition of anonymity to avoid angering the White House.

NATO’s secretary general, Jens Stoltenberg, reinforced Mr. Bolton’s directive during a gathering of the ambassadors on July 4. The usual infighting over the summit agreement, he said, had to be dropped. He asked the delegations to finish their work by July 6 at 10 p.m. Brussels time.

Fearful of a repeat of the G-7 disaster — in which Mr. Trump refused to sign off on the joint communiqué, escalated a trade war and publicly derided Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada — the emissaries from the NATO countries all agreed.

Two senior European officials said Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Defense Secretary Jim Mattis were also keen to avoid another confrontation similar to the G-7, and the NATO declaration was completed days before leaders set foot in Brussels.

It achieved several goals critical to NATO officials.

Against Russian objections, the military alliance would formally invite Macedonia to join. It would establish an Atlantic Command post, hosted by the United States in Norfolk, Va., to coordinate a swift alliance response in the event of, for instance, a war in Europe between Russia and NATO allies.

And, most important, allies pledged to build up their militaries and provide 30 mechanized battalions, 30 air squadrons and 30 combat vessels, all ready to use in 30 days or less, by 2020 — a force to quickly respond to any attack on an alliance member.

Jamie Shea, a NATO deputy assistant secretary general, called the declaration “the most substantive” agreement that the alliance had put out in years. But its success, according to the American and European officials, lies in the feverish work before the summit meeting to keep it away from Mr. Trump.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Devin Nunes, Trump’s political stooge, is at it again http://wapo.st/2AWuXkf

💙💙 Msnbc, TRMS: Exclusive: Devin Nunes speaks candidly at fundraiser http://on.msnbc.com/2M2PaKB video clips and excerpts

The Rachel Maddow Show has obtained exclusive, secret audio of Rep. Devin Nunes speaking candidly to donors at a private fundraiser for Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers. NBC News: Secret recording shows GOP’s Nunes saying Rosenstein impeachment would delay Supreme Court pick Below are the transcripts of the portions aired on the August 8, 2018 episode of The Rachel Maddow Show:

Clip 1: REP. NUNES (R-CA): “So therein lies, so it’s like your classic Catch-22 situation where we were at a – this puts us in such a tough spot. If Sessions won’t unrecuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones. Which is really the danger. That’s why I keep, and thank you for saying it by the way, I mean we have to keep all these seats. We have to keep the majority. If we do not keep the majority, all of this goes away.

Clip 2: REP. NUNES (R-CA): “They know it’s ridiculous to go after the president for obstruction of justice. But if they tell a lie often enough and they put it out there and they say, ‘Oh, we’re looking at the tweets,’ cause you know you’ve got a mixed bag on the tweets, right? Like sometimes you love the president’s tweets, sometimes we cringe on the president’s tweets. But they’re trying to make a political, this is all political as to why that story ran in the New York Times on the tweets.”

Clip 3: REP. NUNES (R-CA): “Now if somebody thinks that my campaign or Cathy’s campaign is colluding with the Chinese, or you name the country, hey, could happen, it would be a very bad thing if Cathy was getting secrets from the Portuguese, let’s say, just because I’m Portuguese, my family was. So Cathy was getting secret information from the Portuguese. You know, may or may not be unusual. But ultimately let’s say the Portuguese came and brought her some stolen emails. And she decided to release those. Okay, now we have a problem, right? Because somebody stole the emails, gave ‘em to Cathy, Cathy released ‘em. Well, if that’s the case, then that’s criminal.”

Clip 4: AUDIENCE MEMBER: “But also, on things that came up in the House on Rosenstein impeachment thing. And it appears from an outsider that the Republicans were not supported.”

REP. NUNES (R-CA): “Yeah, well, so it’s a bit complicated, right? And I say that because you have to, so we only have so many months left, right? So if we actually vote to impeach, okay, what that does is that triggers the Senate then has to take it up. Well, and you have to decide what you want right now because the Senate only has so much time. Do you want them to drop everything and not confirm the Supreme Court justice, the new Supreme Court justice? So that’s part of why, I don’t think you have, you’re not getting from, and I’ve said publicly Rosenstein deserves to be impeached. I mean, so, I don’t think you’re gonna get any argument from most of our colleagues. The question is the timing of it right before the election.”

REP. MCMORRIS RODGERS (R-WA): “Also, the Senate has to start –”

REP. NUNES (R-CA): “The Senate would have to start, the Senate would have to drop everything they’re doing and start to, and start with impeachment on Rosenstein. And then take the risk of not getting Kavanaugh confirmed. So it’s not a matter that any of us like Rosenstein. It’s a matter of, it’s a matter of timing.”

WaPo, Isaac Stanley-Becker: Devin Nunes, in secretly recorded tape, tells donors GOP majority is necessary to protect Trump: ‘We’re the only ones’ http://wapo.st/2vWIAKA

◕💙 FiveThirtyEight (5/17/2018): How Mueller’s First Year Compares To Watergate, Iran-Contra And Whitewater http://53eig.ht/2Myi4hG And what those past investigations tell us about where the Russia investigation might go next.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1027628438121861121/photo/1
// 5/17/2018, fave chart scandals indictments

◕💙 IR.net, Brian Frydenborg (Mar): Think You Know How Deep Trump-Russia Goes? Think Again: This Chart/Info Will Blow Your Mind http://bit.ly/2M5UxbS
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1027622332846821381/photo/1
// 3/15/2018 Trump Russia flowchart and narrative fave chart

WaPo: Devin Nunes, in secretly recorded tape, tells donors GOP majority is necessary to protect Trump: ‘We’re the only ones’ http://wapo.st/2OX6KgP //➔ on tape made by Fuse Washington and obtained by The Rachel Maddow Show

⭕ 8 Aug 2018

DailyBeast, Amy Knight: This Russian Spy Agency Is in the Middle of Everything http://thebea.st/2AZS11O
// Only a few years ago, the GRU looked like it might be dissolved. But Putin found new uses for it: covert war in Ukraine and ‘active measures’ that helped Trump get elected.

Russia’s military intelligence agency, known as the GRU‍, is getting blamed for all sorts of things these days. Robert Mueller indicted 12 GRU officers for hacking into computers of the Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee. The GRU allegedly was behind the recent poisonings of four people in Britain, including former GRU officer Sergei Skripal, who survived, and a woman accidentally exposed to the powerful nerve agent used, who died.

The 2014 downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 over Ukraine has been laid at the door of the GRU. And recently there were reports that GRU hackers are directing their efforts at the U.S. power grid. Russian mercenaries serving in Syria and in Africa are largely drawn from GRU ranks. Three Russian journalists investigating their activities were murdered last month.

Igor Korobov, the head of the GRU, was singled out personally for U.S. Treasury sanctions in March, along with his organization, even though he had already been sanctioned by the Obama administration in late 2016 for interference in our elections.

Maybe Trump’s people felt they had to make the point after Korobov was invited, along with chiefs of other Russian secret services, to Washington, D.C., in late January—just weeks before the new sanctions were announced. The visit was supposed to be a secret, but the Russians leaked it. The others in attendance were Sergei Naryshkin, the head of the Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), and Aleksandr Bortnikov, director of the Federal Security Service (FSB).

Steven Hall, a former CIA station chief in Moscow, told Radio Free Europe it is always considered a “big political win” when a Russian spy chief meets one-on-one with his U.S. counterpart, because it puts them on equal footing.

The intelligence chiefs reportedly discussed with the Americans their mutual struggle against global terrorism, but it would be remarkable if the talks were limited to that subject. As a veteran of the FSB explained to a TV audience in Russia, “Many questions cannot be discussed by phone. It was necessary to look each other in the eye and talk about issues that threaten us and the Americans.”

Hall had a different take: “Given the political conditions in the United States now, it’s flabbergasting, to be honest. I can’t imagine who would have signed off on that.”

At home in Russia meanwhile, Korobov is riding high. In 2017, conceivably for his work helping to get Trump elected, Korobov was promoted to colonel-general, and Putin bestowed on him the highest state honor—Hero of the Russian Federation. …

By one estimate, of the 7,000 GRU officers working in the Soviet era, only 2,000 remained. This included a 40-percent reduction among GRU staff at foreign embassies. The GRU’s famed special combat brigades, the so-called Spetsnaz units, supposedly were going to be transferred to the regular army.
… TBC

WaPo, EJ Dionne: The path to autocracy is all too familiar http://wapo.st/2AWJvAy

🐣 RT @RichardHine The Devin Nunes tape:
– What Trump is accused of is definitely a crime
– That’s why we must impeach Rosenstein to shut the investigation down
– But first we have to confirm Kavanaugh and keep the House so we can be totally sure our treachery succeeds
https://twitter.com/richardhine/status/1027369631680475136/photo/1
NBC: Rep. Nunes: “If Sessions won’t un-recuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones — which is really the danger. That’s why I keep, and thank you for saying it by the way, I mean, we have to keep all these seats.” https://nbcnews.to/2KDxsrw 
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1027402614743490560/photo/1

NBC: Rep. Nunes: “If Sessions won’t un-recuse and Mueller won’t clear the president, we’re the only ones — which is really the danger. That’s why I keep, and thank you for saying it by the way, I mean, we have to keep all these seats.” https://nbcnews.to/2KDxsrw 
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1027402614743490560/photo/1

🐣 RT @AriMelber Wow the @Maddow scoop on this new secret tape of Devin Nunes reveals:
1) Nunes secretly wants another Rosenstein impeachment push — just after SCOTUS hearing
2) Nunes admits foreign *collusion* on stolen email *is a crime*
(A legal fact, but at odds with Trump legal team)

◕ FiveThirtyEight, Oliver Roeder: What You Found In 3 Million Russian Troll Tweets http://53eig.ht/2OoK0p4
By Type: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1027330420512313344/photo/1

WaPo: Like father, like son: Trump Jr. defiant about Russia probe http://wapo.st/2KzvDvH

WaPo: Trump lawyers reject interview terms sought by special counsel in Russia probe http://wapo.st/2AQHFB2

RussianReality: Kommersant: A set of measures to curb Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2Mrxa8H

At the disposal of “Kommersant” was the bill on new sanctions against Russia, prepared by Republican Lindsey Graham and three of his colleagues. A significant part of the provisions of the document is not so much Russia, but U.S. President Donald trump. He is required to bring into a system already entered earlier sanctions against Russia — from CAATSA to the “Magnitsky act”, to create in the US government “sanctions coordination office” for the agreements with the EU to support sanctions block dollar payments of Russian banks, prohibit the operation to US residents with a new Russian public debt, to create a national center to combat Russian threat, to search the world for the assets of Vladimir Putin and even to solve the issue of the recognition of Russia as “state sponsor of terrorism.” The document contains a mechanism designed to prevent Donald Trump to withdraw the U.S. from NATO. Basically, it looks like the American political project in which Russia for its authors more or less secondary in comparison with the US President who is too soft toward Russia.

⭕ 7 Aug 2018

TheHill, John Solomon: Opinion: How a senior DOJ official helped Dem researchers on Trump-Russia case http://bit.ly/2P0Bo97 //➔ builds on the Nunes/Jordan allegations that Steele had improper contacts w FBI, etc iow hatchet job

Ohr’s own notes, emails and text messages show he communicated extensively with Steele and with Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson. Those documents have been turned over in recent weeks to investigative bodies in Congress and the DOJ, but not reviewed outside the investigative ranks until now.

They show Ohr had contact with Steele in the days just before the FBI opened its Trump-Russia probe in summer 2016, and then engaged Steele as a “confidential human source” assisting in that probe.

They also confirm that Ohr later became a critical conduit of continuing information from Steele after the FBI ended the Brit’s role as an informant.

FBI officials now admit they continued to receive information from Steele through Ohr, identifying more than a half-dozen times its agents interviewed Ohr in late 2016 and 2017, to learn what Steele was saying.

That continued reliance on Steele after his termination is certain to raise interest in Congress about whether the FBI broke its own rules. //➔ rap their knuckles, Sister!

But the memos also raise questions about Ohr’s and the Justice Department’s roles in the origins of building a counterintelligence case against the Republican presidential nominee, based heavily on opposition research funded by his rival’s campaign, the DNC and the DNC’s main law firm, Perkins Coie. //➔ doesn’t mean the info is wrong

“There is something separate I wanted to discuss with you informally and separately. It concerns our favourite business tycoon!” Steele wrote Ohr on July 1, 2016, in an apparent reference to Trump. //➔ Steele and Ohr were old friends

That overture came just four days before Steele walked into the FBI office in Rome with still-unproven allegations that Trump had an improper relationship with Russia, including possible efforts to hijack the presidential election. //➔ many corroborated, none yet disproven

Ohr scheduled a call with Steele over Skype a few days later. But then the two men met in Washington on July 30, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel.

Ohr brought his wife, Nellie, who was working at Fusion GPS on the Trump-Russia research project. //➔ omg, omg, 😮 like so what?

“Great to see you and Nellie this morning Bruce,” Steele wrote shortly after their breakfast meeting. “Let’s keep in touch on the substantive issues/s (sic). Glenn is happy to speak to you on this if it would help.” //➔ country first!

That meeting occurred exactly one day before FBI counterintelligence official Peter Strzok formally opened an investigation, dubbed Crossfire Hurricane, into whether the Trump campaign was colluding with Moscow to steal the election.

At the time, the case was based mostly on an Australian diplomat’s tip that Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos appeared to know in advance that the Russians possessed information involving Hillary Clinton before hacked documents were released on WikiLeaks.

Soon, the case expanded to include allegations that another Trump adviser, Carter Page, might have ties to Russia — an uncorroborated allegation from Fusion GPS’s research now known as the “Steele dossier.” //➔ multiply sourced, enough for probable cause

Calendar notations and handwritten notes indicate Ohr followed up on Steele’s offer and met with Simpson on Aug. 22, 2016. Ohr’s notes indicate Simpson identified several “possible intermediaries” between the Trump campaign and Russia. //➔ as there appear to be

One was identified as a “longtime associate of Trump” who “put together several real estate deals for Russian investigators to purchase Trump properties.” Another was a Russian apparently tied to Carter Page, Ohr’s note of his Simpson contact indicated. //➔ Cohen? Page met with Russian officials; Mifsud?

Steele offered Ohr many other theories over their contacts, including a now widely discredited one that the Russian Alfa Bank had a computer server “as a link” to the Trump campaign, Ohr’s notes show. //➔ discredited? No links in this “opinion” piece …

Though much of Steele’s information remained uncorroborated, the FBI nonetheless took the extraordinary step in October 2016 of seeking a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to monitor Carter Page during the final days of the election, based mostly on Steele’s dossier. The warrant was renewed at least three times, but Carter Page was never charged. //➔ again, treating dossier a phoney, FISAs as unwarranted; Page May yet be charged …

Ohr’s connections to Steele are significant because at least one of the FISA warrants was approved by Ohr’s boss, Yates. //➔ omg!

By early November 2016, Steele was terminated for unauthorized media contacts — and the FBI was turning to Ohr as a back channel to Steele. //➔ knuckles

Ohr’s notes suggest he met Nov. 21, 2016, with FBI officials that included (lover boy!) Strzok, then-FBI attorney (lovely!) Lisa Page and another agent. Strzok and Lisa Page have become the poster children for Republicans who believe the FBI abused its authority by investigating Trump on flimsy evidence. FBI records confirm an interview with Ohr around that time. //➔ “if neither the facts or the law are on your side … ”

Ohr’s notes from that meeting indicate that FBI officials told him they “may go back to Chris” — an apparent reference to Steele — just 20 days after dismissing him. //➔ knuckles

In all, Ohr’s notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in recent American history. //➔ only 60? I’ve got a list of 80!

Most importantly, the new memos make clear that Ohr, a man whose name was barely uttered during the first 18 months of the scandal, may have played a critical role in stitching together a Democratic opposition research project and the top echelons of the FBI and DOJ. //➔ “The Truth has a well-known liberal bias”

WaPo, Michael Morrell: Putin is afraid of one thing. Make him think it could happen. http://wapo.st/2ARfl1H

🐣 RT @MitchellReports .@FranklinFoer: Manafort worked the system on behalf of Trump at convention and helped develop strategy for general election. He was key figure on campaign. He saw&knew a lot. He was in a lot of meetings incl that Trump Tower meeting. Thats why hes such great interest to Mueller.

🐣 RT @JohnHarwood 4/26/16: Mifsud tells Papadopoulos that Russians have email dirt
4/27: Papadopoulos tells Trump colleague
5/11: Trump aide Scavino tweets Russia has 20K stolen HRC emails
6/8: Manafort, Kushner, Jr meet w/Russians at Trump Tower
7/25: Wikileaks releases 20K stolen Dem emails
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Trump campaign was hoping to get these emails at the Trump Tower meeting. ¤ This from the campaign’s social media director in May 2016, one month before the meeting:
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @DanScavino [5/11/2016] Kremlin has Hillary’s emails. Russia has 20,000 emails stolen from her secret home server. @IngrahamAngle #Trump2016
⋙⋙⋙ Lifezette (5/11/2016): Kremlin Has Hillary’s Emails http://bit.ly/2OLSO9g
// 5/11/2016, Russia has 20,000 emails stolen from her secret home server

🐣 RT @seanhannity [8/19/2016] .@newtgingrich: “Nobody should underestimate how much Paul Manafort did to really help get this [Trump] campaign to where it is right now.”
// Tweet link: https://twitter.com/seanhannity/status/766819052656340993

⭕ 6 Aug 2018

CNN: President urged to stop tweeting on Trump Tower meeting http://cnn.it/2MndsuM

🐣 RT @tribelaw 52 USC 30121(a)(2) outlaws what POTUS has tweeted Don Jr did in soliciting campaign help from Russian nationals. 18 USC 371 makes all who agreed to this unlawful act guilty of a felony punishable by 5 years in prison if any conspirator did anything overt to further the plot. QED.

⭕ 5 Aug 2018

Reuters: China state media attacks Trump on trade in unusually harsh terms http://reut.rs/2nhb12a

Axios: Inside Russia’s invasion of the U.S. electric grid http://bit.ly/2ALq39P

WaPo: The Washington Post to publish book examining Russian interference in 2016 election http://wapo.st/2KwgUBA

TheHill: Schiff: There’s ‘plenty of evidence’ of collusion ‘in plain sight’ http://bit.ly/2LSNDqd

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump tweeted what?!? http://wapo.st/2OIsvRg

[It’s] worse than acknowledging to NBC’s Lester Holt that he was thinking about the Russia investigation when he fired then-FBI Director James B. Comey. It’s worse than his nonstop attempts to obstruct the prosecutors — who are investigating an obstruction-of-justice case. (You cannot make this stuff up.)

… Trump confirmed that the meeting with Russians was designed to obtain something valuable — previously undisclosed dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Trump fails to understand that the very meeting he is acknowledging is collusion — or conspiracy, if you will — to break campaign-finance laws. Insisting that it is legal to get dirt from a foreign national is politically and morally offensive (Trump was picked by the Kremlin) and contradicts his claim the Russians didn’t want him to win (another lie in the coverup). He knows they did — they had a meeting to help his campaign.

The email also suggests that Trump Jr. (allegedly with drafting help from his father) tried to conceal the true purpose of the meeting with a false cover story (it was all about adoption, you see.)

Trump’s insistence that the meeting was perfectly legal and perfectly normal is wrong on both counts. No presidential campaign has gone to a hostile foreign power for help in winning an election. It’s a invitation for a foreign power to help pick our elected leaders, a constitutional abomination and a repudiation of the very concept of democracy (i.e., we pick our own leaders).

Will the rest of the GOP go along with the position that it was perfectly fine for Russia to help Trump? That would sure be a change from “No collusion” (to “Collusion, so what?!”)

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump just made 2 problematic admissions about the Trump Tower meeting http://wapo.st/2M6uKiQ

Sunday’s tweet appears to acknowledge more explicitly than before that the meeting was indeed predicated on opposition research: “This was a meeting to get information on an opponent.” The initial denial — which, again, Trump himself dictated — is pretty irreconcilable with that.

[H]ere’s the thing: This is a tweet about how the Trump Tower meeting was totally fine — nothing illegal to see here. If you’ve got no real concern about legal exposure from the meeting, why distance yourself from it? Trump seems to be arguing against his own point by assuring us that he had nothing to do with this meeting, which — oh, by the way — was totally on the up-and-up.

🐣 So, if Trump goes down AND Pence goes down, we get … President Gym Jordan? Or President @NancyPelosi?
// re: John Harwood

🐣 I knew a woman when I worked in a psych half way house in college who had a poster of the film The Candidate in her room. Trouble is she really thought Redford was running for President. There are people out there who will take Trump just as literally.

🐣 RT @dtchimp An analysis of the sentiment of Trump’s Twitter feed over time corroborates that claim. Here’s a chart of daily counts of anger words in his tweets over the past several years, as of yesterday, with a line summarizing the trend over time (i.e., the smoothed conditional mean).
🐣 Tweets: https://twitter.com/dtchimp/status/1026119158747021314/photo/1
⋙🐣 Looks like it’s almost up to eleven

🐣 RT @ TheRickGates Shout out to my grandfather.
⋙ AtomicHeritage: August 6, 1945, 8:16:02 AM #Hiroshima time: Little Boy atomic bomb explodes over Hiroshima. Dr Michihiko Hachiya, survivor: “Nothing remained except a few buildings of reinforced concrete. For acres and acres the city was like a desert…” http://ow.ly/ikpm30lfSsL @BulletinAtomic
⋙⋙🐣 My mother’s first husband died on D-Day. She was 19. My father was on a Navy ship heading to Japan when the bomb was dropped, cutting the war short. My own existence is inextricably caught up with these two catastrophes. I honor these dates. @ManchuCandidate

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson It is, as they say, a distinction and a difference.
⋙ 💙💙 Steven_Strauss Steele was/is a private citizen of a NATO member who was contracted to provide info which he acquired legally. Hypothetical Russian help came from gov of hostile authoritarian kleptocracy, illegally obtained and delivered as part of illicit quid pro quo.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @sarahcpr Need some help here – what is the difference between Trump getting dirt on Hillary from Russia and Hillary getting dirt on Trump from the UK/Steele Dossier?
⋙⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @NYT It’s illegal for a campaign to get such help from a foreign power. http://nyti.ms/2OI8LNE

WaPo: Trump acknowledges, defends 2016 meeting between son, Kremlin-aligned lawyer http://wapo.st/2Ktbpnn

NYT: President Admits Focus of Trump Tower Meeting Was Getting Dirt on Clinton http://nyti.ms/2ndvHrC

💙💙 NewYorker, Adam Davidson: The Day Trump Told Us There Was Attempted Collusion with Russia http://bit.ly/2nfeLRq
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYkr Davidson Trump Admits 8-5-2018

The tweet contains several crucial pieces of information. First, it is a clear admission that Donald Trump, Jr.,’s original statement about the case was inaccurate enough to be considered a lie. He had said the meeting was with an unknown person who “might have information helpful to the campaign,” and that this person “primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children.” This false statement was, according to his legal team, dictated by the President himself. There was good reason to mislead the American people about that meeting. Based on reporting—at the time and now—of the President’s admission, it was a conscious effort by the President’s son and two of his closest advisers to work with affiliates of the Russian government to obtain information that might sway the U.S. election in Trump’s favor. In short, it was, at minimum, a case of attempted collusion. The tweet indicates that Trump’s defense will continue to be that this attempt at collusion failed—“it went nowhere”—and that, even if it had succeeded, it would have been “totally legal and done all the time.”

It is unclear why, if the meeting was entirely proper, it was important for the President to declare “I did not know about it!” or to tell the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, to “stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now.”

The President’s Sunday-morning tweet should be seen as a turning point. It doesn’t teach us anything new—most students of the case already understand what Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort, and Jared Kushner knew about that Trump Tower meeting. But it ends any possibility of an alternative explanation. We can all move forward understanding that there is a clear fact pattern about which there is no dispute:

The President’s son and top advisers knowingly met with individuals connected to the Russian government, hoping to obtain dirt on their political opponent.
Documents stolen from the Democratic National Committee and members of the Clinton campaign were later used in an overt effort to sway the election.
When the Trump Tower meeting was uncovered, the President instructed his son and staff to lie about the meeting, and told them precisely which lies to use.
The President is attempting to end the investigation into this meeting and other instances of attempted collusion between his campaign staff and representatives of the Russian government.

It was possible, just days ago, to believe—with an abundance of generosity toward the President and his team—that the meeting was about adoption, went nowhere, and was overblown by the Administration’s enemies. No longer.

The open questions are now far more narrow:

● Was this a case of successful or only attempted collusion?
● Is attempted collusion a crime?
● What legal and moral responsibilities did the President and his team have when they realized that the proposed collusion was underway when the D.N.C. e-mails were leaked and published?
● And, crucially, what did the President know before the election, after it, and when he instructed his son to lie?

Earlier on Sunday, Trump wrote another tweet, one that repeated a common refrain: journalists are the enemy of the people. “I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People,” it read. In a way, he did provide a great service. He allowed us to move away from a no-longer-relevant debate about whether or not he and his campaign had done anything wrong. Our nation can now focus on another question: What do we do when a President has openly admitted to attempted collusion, lying, and a coverup?

🐣 RT @brianklaas This tweet may turn out to be a major legal mistake; Trump helped dictate a false statement about this meeting—a lie claiming the meeting was supposed to be about adoptions. This tweet is further evidence that speaks to the question of whether he tried to deliberately cover it up
⋙ @real …

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Your son, staff and possibly you solicited valuable campaign assistance from a hostile foreign power, something other campaigns of either party would never do, not only because it’s illegal but because it’s an obvious betrayal of the American people and our sovereignty.
⋙ @real …

🐣 RT @krassenstein Trump admitted that the Trump Tower meeting was a political meeting to get dirt on an opponent. ¤ In other words, it was a violation of 52 U.S.C. 30121, 36 U.S.C. 510 – Contributions and donations by foreign nationals. ¤ Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner and Don Jr. are all guilty!

WaPo: Trump acknowledges, defends 2016 meeting between son, Kremlin-aligned lawyer http://wapo.st/2MlQnZw

🔥TheHill: Trump confirms Trump Tower meeting was to seek dirt on Hillary Clinton http://hill.cm/sYoehSE 
Trump’s tweet: https://twitter.com/thehill/status/1026125955805405189/photo/1

⭕ 4 Aug 2018

WaPo Editorial: Trump isn’t taking the Russia threat seriously. But lawmakers can show they are. http://wapo.st/2Kz2EIl

🐣 RT @sethabramson Yesterday’s breaking news on J.D Gordon’s ties to Russian spy Maria Butina has been grievously *undersold* by the media—largely because it failed to do the preparatory work of making sure Americans knew how key Gordon was to the Trump campaign. This was and is a *big* news story.
↥ ↧
Wikipedia:
Jeffrey D. “J.D.” Gordon is an American communications and foreign policy advisor, who served as a Pentagon spokesman from 2005–2009. Gordon is a retired United States Navy officer who has served as a senior advisor to Republican political figures and at conservative Washington, DC-based think tanks. Gordon is also a contributing columnist to Fox News, The Daily Caller, The Hill, The Washington Times and other media outlets. Gordon founded Protect America Today, a national security-themed Super PAC in February 2012.

Previously, he served as a spokesman for the Navy and Department of Defense, retiring as a Commander.[1][2] He managed communications and press relations in a wide variety of locations over a 20-year career, including posts in Europe, Latin America and Asia. His final assignment in the military was at the Pentagon, serving under Secretaries Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates. In March 2016, he joined the Trump campaign as the Director of National Security, managing the National Security Advisory Committee under its chairman, Senator Jeff Sessions (R. – Ala.). …

In July 2016, Gordon successfully advocated with elected delegates to defeat a proposed amendment to the Republican National Committee’s policy platform just prior to its 2016 Convention in Cleveland, softening one 82-year old delegate’s position on Russian aggression in Ukraine. The proposed amendment to the draft GOP Platform had originally included advocacy for providing “lethal defensive weapons” to the government of Ukraine. [18]

After the election, media outlets reported that Gordon had encountered Russian Ambassador to the US, Sergey Kislyak, the week after the platform amendment controversy while serving as a guest speaker to over 50 Ambassadors to the United States during the GOP National Convention as part of the U.S. State Dept’s Global Partners in Diplomacy Program (GPD). Previously, the campaign had denied any contacts with Russian diplomats. Gordon later said of his advice to soften the delegate’s proposed amendment on Ukraine that “this was the language Donald Trump himself wanted,” though he denied that Trump had been aware of the “details.”[18][19]. In August 2018 the Washington Post reported that Gordon had socialized with Mariia Butina in the weeks before the 2016 Presidential Election. In July 2018, Butina was arrested and charged for failing to register with the Dept. of Justice for her pro-Russia activities, presenting herself for years as a Russian gun rights advocate and graduate student at American University.[20]

Politico: Judge’s ruling invalidates FEC regulation allowing anonymous donations to ‘dark money’ groups http://politi.co/2OG6d2N

ForeignAffairs, Bob Knake (7/19): The Next Cyber Battleground http://fam.ag/2NwoApx
Text: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1025790440702918657/photo/1
// 7/19/2018, Defending the U.S. Power Grid From Russian Hackers

We know what Russia is capable of because we can see what it’s done elsewhere. A staff report from the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations found evidence that ahead of 2016, Russia had attempted to manipulate elections in 18 other countries. Now intelligence agencies and security companies have connected Russian hackers to the shutdown of a German steel mill, the cutting off of phone and Internet service to some 900,000 Germans, and most ominously, two disruptions of the power grid in Ukraine. The right takeaway from Russian interference in 2016 is not just that Washington needs to protect American elections; it’s also that what Russia does in cyberspace in its near abroad should be a warning about what can be done in the United States.

⭕ 3 Aug 2018

━━━━━━━▼ NRA Russia Maria Butina

RollingStone,Tim Dickinson (8/3): The NRA Says It’s in Deep Financial Trouble, May Be ‘Unable to Exist’ http://rol.st/2vgeSAO
// 8/3/2028, A new legal filing by the powerful gun group against the state of New York paints a grim picture

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (7/25): Making Sense of Maria Butina’s Curious Blog Posts About the NRA http://rol.st/2vzFI6m
// 7/25/2018, The accused Russian agent criticized the group’s lack of diversity and organizational structure in 2014, and also mused about the American tradition of brunch

RollingStone, Jamil Smith (7/20): The NRA Is Awfully Quiet About Maria Butina http://rol.st/2n6MKvA
// 7/20/2018, Why won’t the NRA comment on the arrest of the gun rights activist and accused Russian agent?

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (7/18): An Accused Russian Agent With NRA Ties Is Hit With Salacious New Court Filings http://rol.st/2OHkwUM
// 7/18/2018, The documents claim that NRA infiltrator Maria Butina allegedly communicated with Russian intelligence and was in a “personal relationship” with a GOP operative

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (7/16): Central Figure in the NRA-Russia Scandal Arrested for Acting as a Foreign Agent http://rol.st/2O4kFjK
// 7/16/2018, Maria Butina has been charged with conspiracy to infiltrate the gun rights group to further Russian interests

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (5/18): The NRA’s Russia Connection Is Now Under a Congressional Microscope http://rol.st/2n94nL6
// 5/16/2018, A new report from the Senate Judiciary Committee points to a number of red flags

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (4/27): Was Jeff Sessions Aware of a Proposed Trump-Putin Back Channel? http://rol.st/2naypOP
// 4/27/2018 New details from the House Intelligence Committee suggest the attorney general was privy to a critical episode of the NRA-Russia scandal

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (4/6): A Key Russian Figure with Connections to Trump and the NRA Faces Sanctions http://rol.st/2OJ2qS3
// 4/6/2018, Alexander Torshin is also reportedly under investigation by the FBI.

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (4/2): Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump http://rol.st/2LqWkEa
// Femme fatales, lavish Moscow parties and dark money – how Russia worked the National Rifle Association

RollingStone, Tim Dickinson (1/18/2018): The Trump-Russia-NRA Connection: Here’s What You Need to Know http://rol.st/2LRjI1B
// 1/18 2018, Did the Kremlin funnel payments to help Trump’s campaign through the National Rifle Association?
━━━━━━━▲

🐣 RT @JillWineBanks There is one reason to get 45 on the record under oath: so that #Mueller’s #Russiagate report can rebut his “defense” in the report rather than in rebuttal after it is released and attacked by Trump and his sychophants in Congress.

Politico: ‘Be brave’: Russian firm urges judge to nix Mueller indictment http://politi.co/2vC3Yoa

Bloomberg: Trump Fury Over Mueller ‘Conflicts’ Goes Back to Oval Office Meeting http://bloom.bg/2ve0Xvd

MotherJones, David Corn (Oct 2016): A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2natNIe
// 10/31/2016, Has the bureau investigated this material?

🐣 RT @brianklaas Every time that democracies erode and lurch toward authoritarianism, the politicization of rule of law is an essential precursor to it. Wannabe despots understand that, as rule of law constrains them. Politicization has already happened in Trump’s America (via Pew Research).
◕ Views of FBI: https://twitter.com/brianklaas/status/1025505566972682240/photo/1

Vox, David Roberts: Donald Trump and the rise of tribal epistemology http://bit.ly/2LSDUQE
// 5/19/2017, Journalism cannot be neutral toward a threat to the conditions that make it possible.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Vox Roberts Tribal Epist 5-19-2017

TheGuardian: ‘Enemy of the people’: Trump’s phrase and its echoes of totalitarianism http://bit.ly/2OKr98S
// The phrase the president has repeatedly said in his attacks on the media was used by dictators including Stalin and Mao

TheNewRepublic, Craig Unger: Trump’s Russian Laundromat http://bit.ly/2vHEEvA
// 7/13/2018, How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: TNR Unger Trump Laundromat 7-13-2018

🐣 RT @Hell_HasCome 4-Star General Barry McCaffrey: “The president is starting to wobble in his emotional stability & this is not going to end well. Trump’s judgment is fundamentally flawed…& the more isolated he becomes, his ability to do harm is going to increase”

🐣 RT @JoshRogin Oh look, Putin is violating UN sanctions on North Korea, undermining Trump’s diplomatic effort. http://on.wsj.com/2O8Kf7f

🐣 RT @tribelaw At his two latest rallies, Trump has been even more incoherent, unhinged, self-absorbed, rambling, demagogic & demented than usual. That’s saying a lot. And, given the power he wields — and fails to wield against the cyberwar Putin is waging against us — this is really dangerous

🐣 RT @profcarroll Excellent summary. I would add one thing. Jurisdictions must cooperate to plug loopholes about where data gets processed for electioneering. Campaigns shouldn’t be able to evade privacy and campaign laws while complicating accountability by processing voter data internationally.
⋙ 🐣 RT @justinhendrix Two years after Brexit and the US election, lawmakers in Britain and the United States are heading toward similar conclusions on what to do about the problems at the intersection of technology, media and democracy- my latest for @just_security
⋙ ⋙ JustSecurity: Lawmakers in UK and US Propose Sweeping Changes to Tech Policies to Combat Misinformation http://bit.ly/2Mgfqx2
// US Senator’s white paper and UK Parliamentary interim report point toward an emerging consensus

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “This afternoon in the White House briefing room an extraordinary sight… a five person janitorial crew carrying their mops and brooms trying to clean up the lingering toxic spill that was Donald Trump’s disastrous news conference in Helsinki with Vladimir Putin” – @jheil
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1025112136962514944/photo/1

Bloomberg: Trump Fury Over Mueller ‘Conflicts’ Dates to Oval Office Meeting http://bloom.bg/2ve0Xvd //➔ But his golf fees!

AP: Trump trashes media as ‘fake, fake disgusting news’ at rally http://bit.ly/2LOWx8g
// by Jonathan Lemire

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: It’s True: Trump Is Lying More, and He’s Doing It on Purpose. http://bit.ly/2ADnmHj
⋙ See under Entire Articles: Nykr Glasser Trump Lies 8–3-2018

Buzzfeed: What Did We Learn From That White House Briefing On Election Security? That No One’s In Charge. http://bit.ly/2AK34w2
// The heads of all the government agencies with election security responsibilities appeared at a White House briefing Thursday, but no one said they were in charge
⋙ 🐣 We learned that the intel community is banding together, in defiance of Trump, and doing its duty to defend America from foreign election interference. Leadership would be nice, but this is the next best thing. At the same time, Senators intro’d tough new sanctions bill.

⭕ 2 Aug 2018

LawfareBlog, Bob Bauer: Trump’s Preposterous ‘Collusion is Not a Crime’ Defense http://bit.ly/2MeQcyV
// What Real Lawyers—If Asked—Would Have Advised His Campaign About the Trump Tower Meeting

NBC: Hours after White House warns of new election meddling, Trump again points to ‘Russian hoax’ http://nbcnews.to/2LOGkQk
// Earlier Thursday, several of Trump’s top lieutenants took to the White House briefing room to warn of the latest threat.

ThinkProgress, Casey Mitchel: Russian journalist explains the role of the Panama Papers in Russia’s interference operations http://bit.ly/2O8yduy
// Andrei Soldatov takes ThinkProgress through the role the financial leak played in propelling Russian interference efforts.

Writing in a new edition of The Red Web: The Kremlin’s Wars on The Internet, which he co-authored with Irina Borogan, Soldatov took readers through the Kremlin’s reactions to the 2016 Panama Papers revelations, which unveiled the international clients who looked to the Panamanian Mossack Fonseca firm to coordinate a series of offshore companies.

Soldatov: “In my view, the Panama Papers provoked the Kremlin to think that Hillary was striking his personal friends, and now he needed to strike her back, and they should do that very visibly.

“So I think it was this very triggering moment — that ‘We should teach them a lesson.’ Nobody actually believed in the idea that you can elect Trump. That wasn’t in the cards, and nobody actually predicted that. What they wanted to do was, very visibly, to show that they could make the next American president very weak. …

“[I]f you’re a journalist in Moscow writing about the Kremlin, that if you touch Putin’s immediate family — his daughters, for instance — that’s crossing the line. If you touch his very personal friends, not just associates, that’s also crossing the line, and you can see some consequences. And that’s what happened with the Panama Papers.”

🐣 RT @BillKristol This ad from @ForTheRuleOfLaw will air on @foxandfriends in D.C. Friday morning. We trust the president will learn from it.
💽 https://twitter.com/BillKristol/status/1025190523458543616/photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw The good news — as @selectedwisdom says — is that these US institutions are at long last circumventing the Commander in Chief. The bad news is that they have to move around the White House if they’re to protect our republic from its most dangerous foreign adversaries.
⋙ 🐣 RT @selectedwisdom FBI Director Wray demonstrates today that US institutions, with regards to Russia election interference, have moved around the White House to fulfill their obligations to the American people. President Trump has weakened defenses against foreign interference via neglect.

ABAJournal: Deputy Attorney General Rod #Rosenstein receives a rock-star welcome with multiple standing ovations from a standing room-only crowd during the opening forum at the #ABAAnnual Meeting in #Chicago. http://ow.ly/dbXd30lfkq3  via @ABAJournal.

🐣 RT @TheOnion Giuliani Insists Breaking The Law Not A Crime https://trib.al/6vMNHHC
https://twitter.com/TheOnion/status/1024030741917851648/photo/1
// 7/30/2018, satire

DefenseOne, Patrick Tucker (7/24/2016): How Putin Weaponized Wikileaks to Influence the Election of an American President http://bit.ly//2vfpHmF //➔ Check the date; these people were not fooled

Fortune: Edward Snowden Is Not Down With WikiLeaks’ Methods http://for.tn/2mBXjId
// 7/29/2016

ABCNews (2016): The 4 Most Damaging Emails From the DNC WikiLeaks Dump http://abcn.ws/2LWcadj //➔ 20,000 emails(!) and all they could find were things like Bernie wasn’t a Dem and his campaign was “disorganized”
// 7/25/2016, and “disorganized” item was squashed; also: let ppl know Bernie Jewish and some tussling

🐣 Wikileaks planted Seth Rich conspiracy and offered a reward for information, knowing full well the real source was Russia:
⋙ 🐣 RT @Wikileaks Our original and only statement on the murder of US Democratic National Committee staffer Seth Rich. #DNCLeak
https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/763565863861616640/photo/1
// 8/10/2016

VanityFair, Gabriel Sherman: “The Manafort Trial Is Spinning Him into a Frenzy”: Inside the White House, Trump Is Going Crazy—Threatening to Fire Rosenstein and Talking About a Timeline to End the Mueller Probe http://bit.ly/2v9DHhW

In the Trump West Wing, new external pressure inevitably brings the buildup of internal heat, followed by its release, often most visibly in a series of tweets. The start of Paul Manafort’s federal trial this week has triggered Trump’s hottest blast yet, and has renewed the possibility that Trump will fire Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. “This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further,” Donald Trump tweeted yesterday. “Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!”

Whether it’s confidence, bluster, or delusion, Trump is venting to advisers both inside and outside the White House that the Manafort trial proves Mueller has nothing on him and his family, because Manafort’s trial doesn’t involve Russia or the 2016 campaign. “The Manafort trial is spinning him into a frenzy,” one Republican in frequent contact with the president told me. Another Republican told me Trump thinks “the only thing the trial shows is that Manafort is a sleaze.”

RawStory, Chris Sosa: ‘He spoke gibberish’: Omarosa reveals Trump’s ‘mental decline’ was so obvious it ‘could not be denied’ http://bit.ly/2O3Rc9K

Press Release: Senators Graham, Menendez, Gardner, Cardin, McCain & Shaheen Introduce Hard-Hitting Russia Sanctions Package http://bit.ly/2O5LFPQ //➔ THIS looks like a foreign policy. Well-stated. The Trump admin doesn’t do policy. It does propaganda.
// the Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act of 2018, comprehensive legislation that would increase economic, political, and diplomatic pressure on the Russian Federation in response to Vladimir Putin’s continued interference in our elections, malign influence in Syria, aggression across Eastern Europe, and other destabilizing activities.
⋙ 🐣 .@LindseyGrahamSC @SenatorMenendez @SenCoryGardner @SenatorCardin @SenJohnMcCain @SenatorShaheen The Defending American Security from Kremlin Aggression Act of 2018 is powerful statement of policy that will reassure Americans and our allies. http://bit.ly/2O5LFPQ
Key elements of the legislation include:
● A strong statement of support for NATO and a requirement for two-thirds of the United States Senate to vote to leave NATO
● Provisions expediting the transfer of excess defense articles to NATO countries to reduce some NATO countries’ dependence on Russian military equipment.
● The establishment of an Office of Cyberspace and the Digital Economy within the Department of State. This office will lead diplomatic efforts relating to international cybersecurity, Internet access, Internet freedom, the digital economy, cybercrime, deterrence and responses to cyber threats.
● Provisions aimed to pressure the Russian government to halt its obstruction of international efforts to investigate chemical weapons attacks as well as punish the Russian government for chemical weapons production and use.
● Making interfering in our elections a ground of inadmissibility under immigration law
● The International Cybercrime Prevention Act which would give prosecutors the ability to shut down botnets and other digital infrastructure that can be used for a wide range of illegal activity; create a new criminal violation for individuals who have knowingly targeted critical infrastructure, including dams, power plants, hospitals, and election infrastructure; and prohibit cybercriminals from selling access to botnets to carry out cyber-attacks
● The Defending the Integrity of Voting Systems Act which would allow the Department of Justice to pursue federal charges for the hacking of any voting system that is used in a federal election
● New sanctions on political figures, oligarchs, and family members and other persons that facilitate illicit and corrupt activities, directly or indirectly, on behalf of Vladimir Putin
● Sanction on transactions related to investment in energy projects supported by Russia state-owned or parastatal entities
● A prohibition on and sanctions with respect to transactions relating to new sovereign debt of the Russian Federation
● Sectoral sanctions on any person in the Russian Federation that has the capacity or ability to support or facilitate malicious cyber activities
● A requirement for the Secretary of State to submit a determination of whether the Russian Federation meets the criteria for designation as a state sponsor of terrorism.
● A prohibition on licenses for United States persons to engage in activities relating to certain projects to produce oil in the Russian Federation
● A requirement for domestic title insurance companies to report information on the beneficial owners of entities that purchase residential real estate in high-value transactions
● An extension on the cap of Russian uranium imports
Reinforcement for the State Department Office of Sanctions Coordination
● A report on the net worth and assets of Vladimir Putin
● The creation of a National Fusion Center to Respond to Hybrid Threats. The aim of this center is to better prepare and respond to Russian disinformation and other emerging threats emanating from the Russian Federation.
● A reauthorization of the Countering Russia Influence Fund

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom FBI Director Wray demonstrates today that US institutions, with regards to Russia election interference, have moved around the White House to fulfill their obligations to the American people. President Trump has weakened defenses against foreign interference via neglect.

🐣 RT @PhilipRucker As FBI, DNI, DHS & Pentagon announce that Russia is attempting to interfere in US midterm elections, as long warned, recall 2.5 weeks ago Trump stood next to Putin, refused to confront him and called his denial of 2016 interference strong and powerful.

NYRB, Michael Weiss: What Russia Understands about Trump http://bit.ly/2n6rg1Z

TheHill: Mueller wants to interview Russian pop star who helped set up Trump Tower meeting: report http://bit.ly/2vtZAaR //➔ he should just watch the music video! Got Me Good (Official Video) https://youtu.be/8cs4tKdiiI4 

🐣 Sarah Huckabee Sanders refuses to say the press is not “enemy of the people,” adding that the president has made his thoughts clear.

NYT: The Russian Threat ‘Is Real,’ Trump Officials Say, Vowing to Protect U.S. Elections http://nyti.ms/2O7jL6d

CNBC/Reuters (30 mins ago): U.S. senators introduce bill with new Russia sanctions http://cnb.cx/2O5tycO ⋙ Lindsey Graham and Bob Menendez

CNN: Senators: Trump ‘not paying attention’ to Russian threats in 2018 http://cnn.it/2Me3OdZ

🐣 Where is Congress? #electionsecurity

🐣 It does make me feel better to see Wray and Coates speaking like leaders. We need a few. Nielsen will need to fix the family separation problem before I will have a positive thing to say about her.

🐣 My guess: The IC pretty much insisted the prez let them go forward on cyber-security. The fact he left mtg after only 30mins last Friday and his reluctance to call out Russia show Trump could care less – or worse.

◕ WaPo, Christopher Ingraham: The Trump administration: What’s normal, what’s not and what matters http://wapo.st/2OEWzxd by Bright Line Watch, a group of political scientists who “monitor democratic practices, their resilience and potential threats” in the Trump era.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1025064565669879808/photo/1

TheAtlantic, David Frum: Collusion Is Worse Than a Crime http://bit.ly/2ve2a5z
// To debate whether Trump acted criminally is to miss the greater point: He’s a national-security threat.

PolitiFact: Fact-checking Fox News analyst’s pro-Trump book ‘The Russia Hoax’ http://bit.ly/2O5q2zb Claims checked: False, False, Half-True, False

“Active Measures” Documentary https://activemeasures.com
// In Theaters and On Digital Platforms August 31, 2018

⭕ 1 Aug 2018

WaPo, Max Boot: The president is flouting the law in plain sight http://wapo.st/2AEjqpG

NYT, Seth Hettena: Another Gift for a Putin Buddy http://nyti.ms/2Ox3ngt

This week, the Trump administration further eased its pressure on Rusal, Russia’s largest aluminum company, less than four months after sanctions on it and its notorious leader were imposed. Even as the White House seems willing to inflict pain on American farmers and consumers with its trade wars, Russian aluminum workers are apparently worthy of special protection.

Rusal is controlled by Oleg Deripaska, a member of Mr. Putin’s inner circle. As the Treasury Department acknowledges, he has been investigated for money laundering and accused of threatening the lives of business rivals, illegally wiretapping a government official and taking part in extortion and racketeering. There are also allegations, made public by the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control, that Mr. Deripaska bribed a government official, ordered the murder of a businessman and had links to a Russian organized crime group. During the 2016 presidential campaign, Paul Manafort, then Mr. Trump’s campaign manager, tried to offer Mr. Deripaska private briefings about the campaign. On Tuesday, Mr. Manafort went on trial on charges of bank and tax fraud not directly related to the campaign.

Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin has said he is considering lifting the sanctions altogether because they are punishing the “hardworking people of Rusal.” But Mr. Mnuchin has it backward. If he was truly concerned about Rusal’s 61,000 employees, he would not relent until the company fully washed its hands of Mr. Deripaska and the corrupt regime the aluminum giant serves.

Behind Mr. Deripaska’s estimated fortune of as much as $5.3 billion, there stands a great crime. During the “aluminum wars” of the 1990s, when that economic sector was consolidating in the chaotic privatization that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union, the young metals trader was suspected of ties to gangsters as he seized control of huge Siberian smelters. According to testimony by a gang member in Stuttgart, Germany, part of Mr. Deripaska’s value to the group were his links to Russia’s security services. While his rivals were killed off or fled Russia, Mr. Deripaska somehow emerged as the director general of Rusal, a company that reported revenues last year of nearly $10 billion. But suspicions that the oligarch has had links to organized crime have denied him a visa to enter the United States.

Mr. Deripaska is little more than a trustee for his aluminum concern. In Russia, oligarchs like him owe their wealth and status to the Kremlin. In return, they must do its bidding, which in Mr. Deripaska’s case meant spending more than $1 billion, through his holding company, on new infrastructure for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. Mr. Deripaska has embraced his role, stating that he does not separate himself from the Russian state. In line with that conceit, a memo obtained by The Associated Press showed that Mr. Manafort tried to pitch him a plan for an influence campaign to “greatly benefit the Putin government.”

Almost immediately, however, the Treasury Department eased the pressure on Rusal. Deadlines were extended more than once. In May, Lord Gregory Barker of Battle, the chairman of Mr. Deripaska’s holding company, hired a $108,500-a-month lobbyist to continue to negotiate with the Treasury Department. The firm he chose, Mercury Public Affairs, is the firm Mr. Manafort paid $1.1 million to lobby members of Congress on behalf of Ukraine and its then-president, Viktor Yanukovych before 2014.

The specter of a fellow traveler with gangsters dictating terms to the United States government is yet another sign of the Trump administration’s inexplicable capitulation to Russia. And the timing of this latest surrender follows the July 16 summit in Helsinki, at which President Trump and President Putin met privately for more than two hours.

NYT Editorial: Russia Attacks America’s Election System. Trump Shrugs. http://nyti.ms/2v88Im2
// The midterms are approaching, and the president has yet to get serious about protecting the nation’s electoral system from cyberinvasion.

WaPo, EJ Dionne: Trump is working with the trolls http://wapo.st/2vvvRyt

WaPo: Trump calls Manafort prosecution ‘a hoax,’ says Sessions should stop Mueller investigation ‘right now’ http://wapo.st/2Azlwaf

WaPo: As midterm elections approach, a growing concern that the nation is not protected from Russian interference http://wapo.st/2n5f5Cz

WaPo, Ruth Marcus: Future generations will feel only contempt http://wapo.st/2McKYEb

🐣 RT @EricHolder Adherence to the rule of law and accepted norms are principal reasons why this nation is exceptional. Trump telling Sessions to end an inquiry where he is, at least, a “subject” challenges all of that. Be warned: We cannot assume that, without defense, our system will endure.

🐣 RT @SenatorBurr Foreign influence ops using social media -& our own rights & freedoms- to weaken us from within represents an intolerable assault on the democratic foundation this republic was built on. We cannot afford ineffective half-measures, let alone doing nothing. http://bit.ly/2NXGnpy

ABCNews: Special counsel Mueller wants to ask Trump about obstruction of justice: Sources http://abcn.ws/2OBHqwx

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] SSCI social media hearing: There are more than Internet Research Agency (IRA) social media accounts – some Russia accounts are influence oriented (IRA), some are intelligence oriented (GRU) – they pursue different objectives in pursuit of shared goals in a defined strategy

TPM, Josh Marshall: Something Big Is Happening in The Background http://bit.ly/2KjgJK1 “I think we should be prepared for the President to fire Jeff Sessions and Rod Rosenstein”

NYT: Trump Tells Sessions to ‘Stop This Rigged Witch Hunt Right Now’ http://nyti.ms/2AuzZVd

TheProgressive, Bill Lueders: ‘Not Good for a Democracy’ ~ Interview with James Clapper http://bit.ly/2M98FND
// Interview: James Clapper, Director of the Defense Intelligence Agency under George H. W. Bush and Director of National Intelligence under President Barack Obama speaks out against the current President.

🐣 Can el presidente declare war by tweet? Asking for a country.
⋙ 🐣 RT @chrisgeidner This conflicts with the Justice Department’s position on Trump’s tweets, as well as Trump’s position on Trump’s tweets.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @CarolLoennig NEW: Trump lawyers tell me his tweets this morning are simply “his opinions” and not evidence of an ongoing effort to obstruct the Russia probe. @RudyGiuliani and @JaySekulow call in to explain @realDonaldTrump well-established practice

WaPo Factchecker (Feb): Did Hillary Clinton collude with the Russians to get ‘dirt’ on Trump to feed it to the FBI? http://wapo.st/2LO122f FOUR👺👺👺👺PINOCCHIOS
// 2/9/2018

WSJ: Trump Presses Sessions to End Russia Investigation http://on.wsj.com/2LIDCfs
// President renews public pressure to halt probe; ‘stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now’

🐣 RT @SecyNielsen #ICYMI my quote from yesterday’s first ever #DHSCyberSummit:
“Let me be clear: Our intelligence community had it right. It was the Russians. We know that, they know that. It was directed from the highest levels. And we cannot and will not allow it to happen again.
⋙ 🐣 Is this what the meeting on cyber-security with Trump last Friday was about? – the meeting he left after 30mins? To indicate that you, the VP and others were going to go ahead against Russian interference? If so, good for you; better late than never (I guess).

DCExaminer: McCain, Cardin seek to shield Magnitsky sanctions from Trump http://washex.am/2OAzmwk

🐣 RT @angryWHstaffer The dam is breaking. The biggest political scandal in American history is about to reach a boiling point. Trump is working himself and his base into a frenzy, but he can’t stop the news that’s coming. It’s going to get ugly, folks.

SenateIntelCommittee, Laura Rosenberger: Foreign Influence Operations and their use of Social Media Platforms http://bit.ly/2MbOCOj
// witness to Committee from German Marshall Fund

Today, nearly two years after the alarm bells first began sounding about this activity, imagination is no longer required to understand this threat. Thanks in part to the bipartisan work of this Committee, we now know that social media and online information platforms have provided a powerful means for the Russian government to interfere in our democracy. But despite acknowledging and discussing this issue, meaningful efforts to close off these vulnerabilities by both government and the private sector remain woefully lacking. And I worry that even as we focus on the past, we are missing what still is happening at this very moment, and what will certainly happen again. What may have once been a failure to imagine is now a failure to act with the urgency and measures required to meet this threat to our democracy.

⭕ 31 Jul 2018

ComputerWeekly (7/31): Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links http://bit.ly/2NZnQcw
// A British IT manager and former hacker from Darlington ran a disinformation campaign that duped former US intelligence agents and provided Donald Trump with manufactured “evidence” to deny that Russia interfered with the US election
🐣 ComputerWeekly (7/31): Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links http://bit.ly/2NZnQcw  //➔ VERY technical (and long) but describes how Seth Rich was framed by the GRU and a British hacker
⋙ See under Entire Articles: CW UK Hacked Seth Rich 7-31-2018
⇈ ⇊
To: Walter, Max, Greg, Fred

This article is 18! pages long and highly technical.

ComputerWeekly (7/31): Briton ran pro-Kremlin disinformation campaign that helped Trump deny Russian links http://bit.ly/2NZnQcw
// 7/31/2018, A British IT manager and former hacker from Darlington ran a disinformation campaign that duped former US intelligence agents and provided Donald Trump with manufactured “evidence” to deny that Russia interfered with the US election

Here’s the salient section:

The GRU team had three weeks to decide what to say and do in London, after getting the conference invite. They played up a theory which had started to circulate in obscure conspiracy-focused chat-rooms on 4chan and Reddit, placing blame on Seth Rich, a then recently murdered DNC employee, for the DNC leaks.

Two bullets in the back had taken the life of 27-year-old DNC researcher Rich, as he walked home from work late at night in Washington. The date, significant to how his death was later exploited, was 10 July 2016. Six weeks later, in a private message exchange with Guccifer 2.0 published by a US actress, the pretend hacker referred to Rich’s death and claimed, “His name is Seth, he was my whistleblower”.

Rich’s bereaved parents have repeatedly pleaded for the torrent of conspiracy claims about their dead son to come to an end. “Anyone who claims to have such evidence is either concealing it from us or lying,” his father Joel said, adding: “They have a transparent political agenda or are a sociopath.”

WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange also planted a public pointer to Rich, after Guccifer 2.0 claimed to have provided the stolen DNC emails to WikiLeaks – a claim also shown to be accurate, according to evidence described in the latest US indictment. On 9 August 2016, WikiLeaks tweeted a $20,000 reward offer for information leading to the conviction of Rich’s killer. WikiLeaks had previously offered rewards for leaks, but never, before or since, used the tactic to point to a possible confidential source. WikiLeaks attempted to backtrack the next day.
Forensic analysis of the files prepared for the conference suggests that the GRU team then hoped to exploit the London conference opportunity by framing Rich.

[⇈ At this time, Assange knew perfectly well the hacked data came from the Russians – Pat]

By early September 2016, Guccifer 2.0’s operators had 2,280 stolen DNC files ready to publish at the conference. None of the files concerned Rich or his work. File internal data analysis shows that they were all stale, deadwood information, and of no relevance in 2016. All had been completed and closed before the previous presidential election in 2012.

Using a combination of copying and compression techniques, the “last modified” timestamps of all but 12 of the aged files was changed to 5 July 2016, just five days before Rich was killed and 17 days before WikiLeaks published its first share of the DNC hacks. While this was done, the computer in use for copying had its clock set to Eastern Daylight Time (EDT), the zone covering Washington DC and the eastern US seaboard.

‼️ PoliticalWire, Taegan Goddard: Mueller Has Evidence Trump Obstructed Justice http://bit.ly/2v6Curx //➔ this is from an articles from NYBooks http://bit.ly/2KbFFTn, but they have a paywall ~ so here is main quote:
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1024467078177320960/photo/1

Murray Waas: “Previously undisclosed evidence in the possession of Special Counsel Robert Mueller — including highly confidential White House records and testimony by some of President Trump’s own top aides — provides some of the strongest evidence to date implicating the president of the United States in an obstruction of justice.”

“Several people who have reviewed a portion of this evidence say that, based on what they know, they believe it is now all but inevitable that the special counsel will complete a confidential report presenting evidence that President Trump violated the law. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who oversees the special counsel’s work, would then decide on turning over that report to Congress for the House of Representatives to consider whether to instigate impeachment proceedings.”

“I have learned that a confidential White House memorandum, which is in the special counsel’s possession, explicitly states that when Trump pressured Comey he had just been told by two of his top aides—his then chief of staff Reince Priebus and his White House counsel Don McGahn—that Flynn was under criminal investigation.”

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Accused Russian Spy Maria Butina Told American CEO: Send Cash to Moscow http://thebea.st/2M4LJ1L
// ‘It’s more evidence that she had a broader agenda, she was doing other work for the Kremlin,’ one observer tells The Daily Beast.

Spectator: Has mom been tested for STDs?’ The Manaforts’ home life and why it matters http://bit.ly/2OzuEyW
// “Tolstoy wrote one of literature’s most famous opening lines, in Anna Karenina: ‘Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’.” Forced group sex, murder in Ukraine, “blood money”; Hacked text messages containing several damaging stories about the former campaign manager can now be viewed by anyone with an Internet connection.

There are different versions of how and when Manafort and Trump first met, but it is a matter of record that Manafort went into business with Trump’s adviser Roger Stone in 1980. Stone, Trump, and Trump’s lawyer Roy Cohn were then fixtures on the bacchanalian Manhattan party scene. Trump spoke about a visit to the notorious nightclub Studio 54. “I would watch well-known supermodels getting screwed on a bench in the middle of the room. There were seven of them and each one was getting screwed by a different guy.”  Stone would later be fired from a job working on Bob Dole’s presidential campaign after he – Stone – advertised in a magazine called Local Swing Fever for “exceptional, muscular single men” to have sex with his wife. This foreshadowed Manafort’s own troubles and the stories, none proven, of Trump presiding over strange orgies at Mar-a-Lago or in a Moscow hotel room.

This is why some intelligence sources believe that Manafort was deliberately put into the Trump campaign by the Kremlin (taking an unpaid post).  It is no coincidence, the sources say, that in a later indictment drawn up by Mueller Manafort is jointly charged with his former translator and business partner in Ukraine, Konstantin Kilimnik. Kilimnik was once an officer in Russia’s military intelligence service, known as the GRU. Trump’s former business partner, Felix Sater, told a Congressional committee: “No such thing as a former Russian spy.”

The texts may be testimony to the banal truth that everyone saves their worst behaviour for those closest to them. As Hegel once said of Napoleon: “No man is a hero to his valet” – or to his daughters after forcing their mother into deviant sex games. If Manafort had never run Trump’s campaign, perhaps his daughter’s iPhone would never have been hacked. Perhaps the FBI would not have tried to take his fortune away. He must wish he had never met Donald Trump.

WaPo: Pence condemns Russian meddling, an issue that has vexed Trump http://wapo.st/2n0WuYk “vexed?”

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “When Paul Manafort came to the Trump campaign, he was broke and scrambling for cash to fund his lavish lifestyle and deeply in debt to some Russian oligarchs. That makes him a ripe target for Russian intelligence recruitment.” – @KenDilanianNBC w/ @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1024425480378888192/photo/1

Reuters, David Eckels Wade: Commentary: Manafort’s trial is about Putin, not tax evasion http://reut.rs/2KgJRRX

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance WARNING: Ignore nay sayers. The #facebook plot was likely basic ground work on a broad campaign to sew racial division in the minds of Trump voters by creating fake violent “left” extremist movements -a Viral Vector that will poison the system of not confronted. #SaveDemocracy

◕ TheHill: Poll: Some Republicans find Russian help in midterms ‘appropriate’ http://bit.ly/2LHcugQ 11% “appropriate”; 29% “inappropriate but wouldn’t be a big deal”

CNN: Exclusive: Mueller refers foreign agent inquiries to New York prosecutors http://cnn.it/2n0Ek96

BusinessInsider: 3 Russian journalists shooting a documentary on Russian mercenaries were reportedly just killed in the Central African Republic http://read.bi/2LCJsyR

JustSecurity, Katherine Cheasty Kornman: The Trial of Paul Manafort: What to Expect http://bit.ly/2M6PYtT
// “Trials are designed to resolve factual disputes”

🐣 RT @ForeignPolicy In @realDonaldTrump, we could be witnessing a tectonic shift in international relations, with the U.S. voluntarily relinquishing its role as the custodian of world order and a return to 19th-century-style nationalism and competition.
⋙ ForeignPolicy: Trump Wants to Destroy the World Order. So What? http://bit.ly/2mYr0lt
// 7/26/2018, Whatever the U.S. president’s intentions, his efforts to rock the foundation of international politics are hopeless.

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Ton of news on the obstruction probe in this story, including a look at WH documents showing Trump knew both that Flynn was under investigation when he asked Comey to back off and that he had lied to the FBI. Both contradict what Trump lawyers have said.
⋙ NYRB, Murray Waas: Flynn, Comey, and Mueller: What Trump Knew and When He Knew It http://bit.ly/2KbFFTn

I have learned that a confidential White House memorandum, which is in the special counsel’s possession, explicitly states that when Trump pressured Comey he had just been told by two of his top aides—his then chief of staff Reince Priebus and his White House counsel Don McGahn—that Flynn was under criminal investigation. This memo, the existence of which I first disclosed in December in Foreign Policy, was, as one source described it to me, “a timeline of events [in the White House] leading up to Flynn’s resignation.” It was dated February 15, 2017, and was prepared by McGahn two days after Flynn’s forced resignation and one day after Trump’s meeting with Comey.

The memo’s own statement that Trump was indeed told that Flynn was under FBI investigation was, in turn, based in part on contemporaneous notes written by Reince Priebus after discussing the matter with the president, as well as McGahn’s recollections to his staff about what he personally had told Trump, according to other records I was able to review. Moreover, people familiar with the matter have told me that both Priebus and McGahn have confirmed in separate interviews with the special counsel that they had told Trump that Flynn was under investigation by the FBI before he met with Comey. …

Two days later [[on Jan 26, after Flynn talked to the FBI]], Acting Attorney General Sally Yates met with White House counsel Don McGahn. One of the things they discussed was the FBI’s interview of Flynn. The McGahn timeline memorialized what McGahn says Yates told him about Flynn’s FBI interview thus:

Yates… indicated [that] on January 24, 2017, FBI agents had questioned Flynn about his contacts with Kislyak. Yates claimed that Flynn’s statements to the FBI were similar to those she understood he had [already] made to… the Vice President.  

Later that same day, McGahn briefed the president about what he had learned from Yates, according to confidential White House records and interviews. McGahn apparently made no contemporaneous notes of what he told the president. Reince Priebus was also present for this briefing, according to the same records. The McGahn timeline demonstrates that President Trump was clearly informed during that meeting that Flynn was under criminal investigation by the FBI.

… McGahn also relayed to President Trump that Flynn had told the FBI the same false story he’d earlier told Pence (that Flynn had never spoken to Kislyak about sanctions). Because Trump and McGahn knew of Flynn’s misstatements to the FBI, they would have understood the legal jeopardy Flynn was in: it is a felony to lie to the FBI—precisely the federal criminal charge Flynn would later plead guilty to. 

The next day, on January 27, McGahn summoned Yates back to the White House to follow up. According to the testimony Yates gave to the Senate Judiciary committee in May 2017, Yates said that McGahn “was concerned that taking action [against Flynn] might interfere with the FBI investigation.” Yates responded by telling McGahn that “it wouldn’t really be fair of us to tell you this and then expect you to sit on your hands,” in reference to Flynn’s misleading Pence about Flynn’s contacts with Kislyak.

Trump’s knowledge of the criminal investigation of Flynn is central to the special counsel’s obstruction case because of what Trump’s action later that same day, January 27, might reveal about his intent and motivation. It was then that the president called Director Comey and invited him to dinner that evening at the White House. Comey has testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that he did not understand until he arrived that he and the president would be dining alone. At this dinner, Trump suggested to Comey that his job might not be secure, leading Comey to believe that Trump was attempting to “create some sort of patronage relationship,” something that was very troubling to Comey “given the FBI’s traditionally independent status.” Comey testified that:

A few moments later the president said, “I need loyalty, I expect loyalty.” I didn’t move, speak, or change my facial expression in any way during the awkward silence that followed. We simply looked at each other in silence.

On February 13, faced with the prospect of being fired by Trump, Flynn resigned as national security adviser. The next morning, after an Oval Office meeting with the vice president, the attorney general, the deputy CIA director, and other national security and law enforcement officials, the president asked FBI Director Comey to remain behind. Once they were alone, Trump allegedly pressured Comey to shut down the FBI’s investigation of Flynn. Comey has testified that Trump said, “I hope you can see your way clear to letting this go, to letting Flynn go. He is a good guy.” The president then repeated: “I hope that you can let this go.”

The next day, McGahn, Eisenberg, and Burnham completed work on their timeline memo of the events leading up to Michael Flynn’s forced resignation. The memo said nothing about the president’s conversation the day before with Comey. The three White House lawyers would later tell the special counsel that Donald Trump had not consulted with them first.

In arguing that the president did nothing wrong, Trump defense attorneys John Dowd and Jay Sekulow, in both informal conversations and later in formal correspondence with the special counsel, relied on the false statements of Flynn to Priebus, McGahn, and Eisenberg that the FBI had closed out their investigation of him. In the attorneys’ reasoning, if Trump had no reason to think that Flynn was under criminal investigation when he allegedly pressured Comey to go easy on Flynn, the president did not obstruct justice. …

The February 15 memo, combined with accounts given to the special counsel by Priebus and McGahn, constitutes the most compelling evidence we yet know of that Donald Trump may have obstructed justice. In an effort to persuade the American people that the president has done nothing wrong, Trump and his supporters have blamed those they identify as their political adversaries—from President Barack Obama to Jim Comey, and including entire institutions such as the FBI and CIA, and an ill-defined “Deep State.” But the most compelling evidence that the president may have obstructed justice appears to come from his own most senior and loyal aides. The greatest threat to his presidency is not from his enemies, real or perceived, but from his allies within the White House.

WaPo: Facebook says it has uncovered a coordinated disinformation operation ahead of the 2018 midterm elections http://wapo.st/2LIzNa0

Facebook said Tuesday that it had discovered a sophisticated coordinated disinformation operation on its platform involving 32 false pages and profiles engaging in divisive messaging ahead of the U.S. midterm elections.

The social media company that it couldn’t tie the activity to Russia, which interfered on its platform around the 2016 presidential election. But Facebook said the profiles shared a pattern of behavior with the previous Russian disinformation campaign, which was led by a group with Kremlin ties called the Internet Research Agency

DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng: Rudy Giuliani on His Odd Cable News Blitz: I Was Trying to Kill a New York Times Story http://thebea.st/2OrTqRr
// It is not even clear if the Times story, as laid out by President Trump’s attorney, even exists.

CREW: The Smear Campaign Against Mueller: Debunking the Nunes Memo and the Other Attacks on the Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2wlXnCa
⋙ Report: [PDF] http://bit.ly/2LRMfmQ 45p
// 1/31/2018

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Giuliani outlives his usefulness to Trump http://wapo.st/2NXCYHm

⭕ 30 Jul 2018

NBC: Fact check: What Trump got wrong in his attacks on Mueller http://nbcnews.to/2v0mS91
// The president’s tweetstorm on Sunday contained a number of factual inaccuracies and misstatements.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: How Russia Persecutes Its Dissidents Using U.S. Courts http://bit.ly/2Kftu83
// Russia’s requests to Interpol for Red Notices—the closest instrument to an international arrest warrant—against Kremlin opponents are being met with increasing deference by the Department of Homeland Security.

WaPo, Max Boot: Michael Cohen may have the smoking gun http://wapo.st/2LLYn9d

Reality check: It is not okay for the president and his minions to work with a foreign power to influence a U.S. election. It is shocking that this argument even has to be made. If the allegations of collusion are true, then the Trump campaign conspired with the Russians to violate numerous statutes. As laid out by law professor Ryan Goodman during Senate testimony, these include “conspiracy to defraud the United States” by interfering with the lawful functioning of federal elections; anti-hacking laws that prohibit unauthorized access to computers and transmission of information gained thereby; and campaign-finance rules that prohibit candidates from soliciting or receiving anything of value from foreign nationals. Above all, there is obstruction of justice: If Trump knew about the offer of Russian help, that greatly strengthened his motive to fire FBI Director James B. Comey to stop the inquiry into the “Russia thing.”

DailyBeast, Elie Honig: Giuliani Knows ‘Collusion’ Isn’t a Crime—But Conspiracy Is and Trump Looks Guiltier Today http://thebea.st/2LIsbEA
// The president can’t be charged with a crime that doesn’t exist, so no wonder Rudy keeps saying this. The crimes he can be charged with are very real though.

DailyBeast: Mystery Sting Targets U.S. Senator for Dirt on Russia Sanctions http://thebea.st/2LMVxAJ
// Democrat Jeanne Shaheen is known for her vocal opposition to Vladimir Putin. Maybe that’s why someone tried to get her to give up inside information about anti-Russia sanctions.

TheHill: Activist publishes 11,000 Wikileaks Twitter direct messages http://bit.ly/2M6smp1 Best said in an exchange with the website Motorboard that she released the messages because she wanted to show how Wikileaks was working with other online entities to shape public discussions. 
The messages show that Wikileaks wanted the GOP to defeat Hillary Clinton during the 2016 presidential elections.

USAToday: Rudy Giuliani says Donald Trump team preparing report to counter Robert Mueller http://usat.ly/2mV17ms

Giuliani cited the counter-report as he and the president questioned the legal basis for two aspects of Mueller’s investigation: possible collusion with Russia and obstruction of justice.

“I have been sitting here looking in the federal code, trying to find collusion as a crime,” Trump told “Fox & Friends”on Monday. “Collusion is not a crime.”

Giuliani said that, as a legal matter, there is no obstruction of justice claim. Mueller’s team is looking into whether Trump sought to undermine the Russia investigation by firing FBI Director James Comey and attacking Justice Department officials such as Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who appointed Mueller, and Trump had many reasons for taking such action with Comey. He said Trump has done nothing to impede the investigation.

According to Giuliani, presidents have the unfettered right to remove FBI directors.

🐣 MT @JamesFransham Trump’s attacks on the media are backfiring… (Trust in mainstream American newspapers has grown, even among conservatives) Economist: https://econ.st/2v0W6gM https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1024027888255942656/photo/1

TheHill: MSNBC legal expert Jonathan Turley: Cohen flipping puts Trump ‘one witness away’ from catastrophe http://bit.ly/2vh8sAF

◕ FocusEconomics: The World’s Top 10 Largest Economies Do Not Include Russia http://bit.ly/2NRm1OI https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1024003307063439361/photo/1

💽 WaPo, Max Boot: Here’s why Trump wouldn’t have won without Russia http://wapo.st/2uWIX8r [3:17]
// Columnist Max Boot walks through the evidence he says shows Russian meddling pushed President Trump over the finish line in 2016.

TPM, Josh Marshall: Rudy’s Big Admission? http://bit.ly/2vj7aVT

Now let’s get to what Giuliani said this morning. In a back and forth with CNN’s Alisyn Carmerota, he appears to say that two days before the meeting with the Russian lawyer there was a planning meeting to prepare for that meeting. This prep meeting would have been on June 7th, 2016. Giuliani says that meeting included Don Jr., Jared Kushner, Manafort, Rick Gates and others.

I don’t think I’d ever heard of this planning meeting. If nothing else, it suggests that the Trump team took the planned encounter with the Russian government emissary much more seriously than they’ve suggested to date. And then there’s Rick Gates, Manafort’s deputy. As we know, Gates is now a cooperating witness. Big problem for the Trump Team, if he was at such a planning meeting.

Giuliani’s key aim throughout is to insist that Trump was not in that meeting. He seems to allow that Cohen was in the meeting, just that Cohen’s lying about Trump’s presence. But that point (Cohen’s presence) is less clear to me. Again, watch the video.

The other point is the date: June 7th. That’s the date when Trump made that primary election night victory speech where he teased his upcoming anti-Hillary speech where he’d reveal a bunch of new dirt on Hillary, a speech that ended up never happening.

What Giuliani appears to be saying is that earlier that day the top people in Trump’s campaign had a planning meeting to prep for the dirt meeting with the Russians two days later. This is hardly surprising. But it lines up perfectly with what many have long suspected: that Trump was so excited about the dirt his campaign was going to receive from Russia two days later that he couldn’t help but brag about it in public that night.

WaPo, Greg Sargent: Trump’s latest rage-tweets about Mueller and border wall reveal GOP weakness http://wapo.st/2M4tXfk

[From NYT article:] Cohn’s central finding is that the House map is turning out to be a lot broader than we expected. The districts that are in play aren’t merely suburban ones in which Hillary Clinton did well in 2016; they also include many working-class and rural districts that voted for Trump. Cohn analyzed the 60 GOP-held House seats that are rated competitively (Lean Republican, Toss Up, and Lean/Likely Democratic) by the Cook Political Report. Here are the key conclusions about the aggregate electorate in those districts:

The electorate in those 60 districts is 78 percent white, whereas the United States is 70 percent white overall.
The electorate in those 60 districts is 65 percent suburban, whereas the United States overall is 55 percent suburban.
The electorate in those 60 districts boasts about 31 percent college graduates, whereas the United States overall is 28 percent college graduates.
Forty-nine percent of the electorate in those 60 districts voted for Trump in 2016, while 46 percent voted for Hillary Clinton. (Nationally, of course, Clinton actually won the popular vote by over two points.)

The bottom line: The fact that this electorate shows Democrats with so many pickup opportunities suggests, as Cohn says, both that Democrats have recruited strong candidates in tough areas and that the national political environment may be “more favorable to Democrats than the generic ballot polls imply.” What’s more, Cohn notes that in special elections, Democratic candidates have already been running further ahead of Clinton in Trump districts than in Clinton-friendly ones.

But Republican incumbents are campaigning much less than expected on the tax cut, and the broader map may help explain why: Working-class whites (and, of course, minorities) are not the tax cut’s beneficiaries. Indeed, a new Politico analysis finds that some of the “biggest winners” from the tax cut are “corporate executives who have reaped gains as their companies buy back a record amount of stock, a practice that rewards shareholders by boosting the value of existing shares,” even as it is producing “less clear long-term benefits for workers.” Not exactly a potent message in fabled Trump country.

From WSJ: 66% of Democratic women have so far won their races, or 70 out of 106 contests, according to the nonpartisan Cook Political Report. By contrast, only 38% of GOP women have won open primaries this year, or 11 out of 29 races.

Also, female lawmakers already make up a third of House Dems, while white men constitute almost 87 percent of the House GOP. Thanks to Trump, these trends are only likely to grow more marked.

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Rudy Giuliani just obliterated the goal posts on Trump-Russia collusion http://wapo.st/2mPvrim //➔ ‘These aren’t the maladroits you’re looking for’
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1023936817236770817/photo/1
// chart: that was then …

“I don’t even know if that’s a crime — colluding with Russians,” Giuliani said on CNN. “Hacking is the crime. The president didn’t hack. He didn’t pay for the hacking.”

In case you forgot, Trump himself has been arguing for more than a year not that collusion wasn’t a crime, but that there simply was “no collusion.” Just like Trump’s legal team has taken to arguing that a president can’t legally be guilty of obstructing justice, it’s now arguing that the other side of the investigation that has to do with Trump — the collusion side — is also a bogus standard. Or at least that seems to be where this is headed.

Giuliani also, at one point, seemed to offer a very narrow denial of what happened with the Trump Tower meeting. While discussing Michael Cohen’s allegation that Trump knew about the meeting, Giuliani focused his defense on arguing not necessarily that Trump didn’t know about it — but that he wasn’t physically at the meeting. And he did it on both shows.

“I’m happy to tell Mueller that Trump wasn’t at the Trump Tower meeting,” Giuliani said. Asked how he can say that, he said: “Because Cohen is a liar, and Don Jr. says he wasn’t there.”

“He did not participate in any meeting about the Russia transaction,” Giuliani said. “And the other people at the meeting that he claims he had without the president about it say he was never there.”

The president’s former lawyer [Cohen] says there are other people who can vouch for the fact that Trump knew about the meeting in real time. With that potentially damning revelation emerging, Giuliani seems to be guarding against the idea that Trump actually did know about the meeting — but arguing that he wasn’t in the room and even that working with the Russians wouldn’t be criminal.

⭕ 29 Jul 2018

CNN: Trump rails against Mueller in Sunday tweetstorm http://cnn.it/2AmjWZl

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz [biographer] Trump on tweeting rampage is just what I expect: desperate attempt to destroy credibility of Mueller, news media, and anyone who criticizes him. Fear that he will finally be caught is prompting him to lash out and say anything to survive.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @real [MELTDOWN] (3pm or so)
1) When the media – driven insane by their Trump Derangement Syndrome – reveals internal deliberations of our government, it truly puts the lives of many, not just journalists, at risk! Very unpatriotic! Freedom of the press also comes with a responsibility to report the news…
2) …accurately. 90% of media coverage of my Administration is negative, despite the tremendously positive results we are achieving, it’s no surprise that confidence in the media is at an all time low! I will not allow our great country to be sold out by anti-Trump haters in the…
3) …dying newspaper industry. No matter how much they try to distract and cover it up, our country is making great progress under my leadership and I will never stop fighting for the American people! As an example, the failing New York Times…
4)…and the Amazon Washington Post do nothing but write bad stories even on very positive achievements – and they will never change!
5) There is No Collusion! The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13, including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam!

6) Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend..
7) …Also, why is Mueller only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary, others, including himself, have worked for Obama….And why isn’t Mueller looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the Democrats side-Podesta, Dossier.?

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: House Republicans cannot be allowed to obstruct justice http://wapo.st/2OrW5us

Former U.S. district judge John S. Martin, writing in The Post to debunk the baseless proposal by House Freedom Caucus members to impeach Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, observes:

The actions of the Freedom Caucus members are not only baseless, they are also shameful. While they call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Rosenstein, it may be more appropriate to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate an attempt to corruptly obstruct justice by members of Congress who so obviously use their office to intimidate the deputy attorney general and to undermine the credibility of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

[ List ]

Some of these aren’t legally actionable. It’s no crime to be a rotten committee chairman, although it’s a very good reason to vote Nunes and others out of office. If being a jerk to a witness at a hearing were a crime, most of Congress would be locked up. However, an accounting of how the oversight process went badly awry and how to fix it will be needed. That perhaps can be undertaken in the context of an ethics proceeding, a subsequent Congress’s intelligence committee or an independent commission. In short, we cannot have another House Intelligence Committee that behaves like this one; preventing that is the job of responsible lawmakers. Representatives who behaved dishonestly can be sanctioned by the House.

Norman Eisen, Laurence Tribe and Caroline Frederickson wrote in February: “Endeavoring to stop an investigation, if done with corrupt intent, may constitute obstruction of justice. Plotting to assist such action may be conspiracy to obstruct justice. Normally, what is called ‘speech or debate immunity would provide a strong bulwark against any such liability for Mr. Nunes or his staff.” However, they argued, “Mr. Nunes and company may have ranged so far afield that those protections no longer apply. Under the clause, mere peripheral connection to legislative acts cannot serve as a fig leaf to shield criminal conduct.” They argued that if “a member or staff employee of the House Intelligence Committee engaged with the White House to stifle the special counsel inquiry, it would be difficult to see how such collaboration would be” protected by the speech or debate clause.

⭕ 28 Jul 2018

CNN: GOP Reps.’ attack on Rosenstein is an attempt to undermine Mueller investigation http://cnn.it/2mT7FCc

Bloomberg: Trump and Son at Legal Risk If Found Lying About Russia Meeting http://bloom.bg/2LGijdB

“If Trump knew in advance that the Russians had stolen information, and understood its importance, that puts him at risk, in legal jeopardy, of being part of the conspiracy that the Russians have been charged with to defraud the U.S.,” [former federal prosecutor Mimi Rocah] said.

There may be an obstruction charge as well, said Harry Sandick, a former federal prosecutor now at Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. If Cohen’s reported version is correct, “it would make it very hard for Trump to say there was no collusion,’ he said. “There would also be a potential obstruction charge, because he tried to prevent prosecutors from knowing what happened.”

While the most serious potential criminal charges relate to conspiracy and obstruction of justice, there are lesser offenses too. It’s illegal to knowingly solicit political contributions from foreign nationals, and providing stolen emails could be viewed as an “in-kind” contribution. Enforcement of a violation depends on which agency would pursue it.

If it’s the Federal Election Commission, it’s a civil matter, with the biggest penalty being a fine. The Justice Department can bring criminal charges for willful violations of federal election law, though its track record of winning convictions has been mixed. The maximum sentence for violating election laws is five years’ imprisonment, depending on the offense.

Salon: Writer Greg Olear on “Dirty Rubles”: Trump is “gravest existential threat” to America in 150 years http://bit.ly/2AiGWZ9
// Greg Olear decided only a fiction writer could tell the story of a president who’s “been mobbed up for decades”

⭕ 27 Jul 2018

ForeignAffairs: Pakistan’s Sham Election ~ How the Army Chose Imran Khan http://fam.ag/2NSaw9O

WaPo, Michael McFaul: Putin wanted to interrogate me. Trump called it ‘an incredible offer.’ Why? http://wapo.st/2LVmWgx
// When foreign affairs are, literally, personal.

… Putin made his American counterpart an offer: He would permit U.S. law enforcement officials to witness the Russian interrogation of 12 Russian spies accused by the United States of interfering in the 2016 campaign, if his own agents could observe the interrogation of a similar number of American intelligence officers who, Russia alleges, committed crimes on Russian soil. In the fantasy Putin spun during the joint news conference, U.S. intelligence officers had helped American-born British citizen Bill Browder launder money out of Russia, which Browder then gave to Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. It was a ludicrously false equivalency that linked the documented efforts of Russian hackers to tilt the election to Trump with a host of completely imagined offenses by U.S. government officials. Amazingly, Trump called Putin’s crazy proposal “an incredible offer.”

🚫 WSJ, Kimberly Strassel: Devin Nunes, Washington’s Public Enemy No. 1 http://on.wsj.com/2vlIrAn
// See Communications for comment; What did the FBI do in the 2016 campaign? The head of the House inquiry on what he has found—and questions still unanswered.

WaPo, John S Martin: The baseless, shameful campaign to discredit Rod Rosenstein http://wapo.st/2mQvBWW

Applications for warrants for either electronic surveillance or a physical search usually rely on information provided by informants who have some motive other than a concern for the general good. In a typical case, the informant is a criminal who is hoping for either a monetary reward or some help with a pending criminal case. What is important to the judge is not whether the informant has a motive, but whether there is reason to believe that the information is reliable. Usually, the judge accepts the informant information as reliable because the affiant swears that the informant has provided reliable information in the past.

This is exactly what happened in the Carter Page application. The first time the affidavit mentions information from “Source #1” — understood to be Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who authored the infamous Trump dossier — there is a footnote stating that he had been a source in the past. The affidavit goes on to state: “Source #1’s reporting has been corroborated and used in criminal proceedings and the FBI assesses Source #1 to be reliable.”

The court was also advised by the FBI that the source had been compensated. The affidavit states that Source #1 had an intelligence gathering business and that he had been hired by a “U.S. person to conduct research regarding Candidate #1’s ties to Russia.” The affidavit also states: “The FBI speculates that the unidentified U.S. person was likely looking for information that could be used to discredit Candidate #1’s campaign.” Although the affidavit does not identify Trump by name as Candidate #1, the totality of the information in the affidavit makes that clear.

The actions of the Freedom Caucus members are not only baseless, they are also shameful. While they call for the appointment of a special prosecutor to investigate Rosenstein, it may be more appropriate to appoint a special prosecutor to investigate an attempt to corruptly obstruct justice by members of Congress who so obviously use their office to intimidate the deputy attorney general and to undermine the credibility of special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation.

NYRB, Michael Tomasky: Hail to the Chief http://bit.ly/2Op52Vl
// Summer issue, 7/19/2018

Soon, according to a June report in The Washington Post, the moment of truth will arrive. Robert Mueller, the special counsel investigating the president, his administration, and his campaign, will deliver his verdict on whether Donald Trump obstructed justice.

On the larger and more complicated question of his campaign’s possible collusion with Russia, Mueller may take longer to issue a second report. But it is widely expected in Washington—which has been wrong about such matters before—that a first report, on obstruction, will drop before Labor Day.

It seems inconceivable that Mueller will absolve the president in that first report. Trump has obstructed justice right in front of our noses, and more than once, either because he doesn’t know what obstruction of justice is or because he knows and doesn’t care. … [Lester] Holt asked Trump about the reasons stated in the letter, and eventually Trump acknowledged that they hadn’t a thing to do with it:

I was going to fire Comey knowing there was no good time to do it. And in fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story.

That is obviously Trump saying, as directly as Trump can say anything, that he fired Comey because of the FBI’s investigation into his campaign’s possible Russia ties. But it’s hardly the only example we know of. … Arguably every single tweet the president writes about the investigation, attacking Mueller’s “13 Angry Democrats” and denouncing it as an invariably upper-cased Witch Hunt, is an attempt to obstruct justice; if you don’t think so, get yourself placed under federal investigation and try mimicking Trump’s Twitter habits and see what happens to you.

If that happens, what comes next? Three days before Trump’s inauguration, the neoconservative Bush administration official Eliot A. Cohen wrote that “this will be a slogging match until the end.” He felt confident, however, that “the institutions will contain him and the laws will restrain him if enough people care about both, and do not yield to fear of him and whatever leverage he tries to exert from his mighty office.”

Of those forty-five words of Cohen’s, the most important is “if.” When Cohen wrote his piece, there may have been reason for optimists to hope that the Republicans who control Congress and the conservative jurists who constitute the majority on the Supreme Court, as well as rank-and-file Republicans, would tire of this vulgar burlesque and would find ways to check Trump, to communicate to him that even a president can’t just do whatever he wants.

… The Supreme Court, which will presumably soon have two Trump appointees, is far more political and less independent than the Supreme Court that in 1974 ordered Richard Nixon to hand over his tapes. Trump’s base, as long as he is deporting asylum-seekers and inveighing against knee-taking football players and fake news journalists, grows more and more besotted. And undergirding it all is the Fox News Channel, now a pure propaganda network, from which Republicans take their cues and get their talking points. What will they do when Mueller’s first allegations appear?

It’s worth stepping back here to review quickly the steps by which the Republican Party became this stewpot of sycophants, courtesans, and obscurantists. …

This is the remarkable thing we have witnessed: the Republican Party has essentially ceased to be a political party in our normal understanding of the term and has instead become an instrument of one man’s will. …

All that was bad enough for the country—it led us to a war waged under false pretenses against an “enemy” that hadn’t attacked us and a campaign to dismantle a social compact carved out over the course of a century. But at least through all those phases, the Republican Party remained committed to the basic idea of democratic allocation of power. …

No one had come along to suggest that power should be unlimited. But now someone has, and we have learned something very interesting, and alarming, about these “conservatives,” both the rank and file and holders of high office: their overwhelming commitment is not to democratic allocation of power, but to their ideological goals—the annihilation of liberalism, the restoration of a white ethno-nationalist hegemony.

It has often been written, and I’ve written it myself, that the Republicans have been weak in the face of Trumpism. But I’ve come to think that’s wrong. They’re not weak at all. Most of them are perfectly happy to have become Trump’s vassals. They were waiting for just such a man.
…
[Peter] Strzok did what too few people do—he stood up to his questioners and embarrassed them:

I think it’s important when you look at those texts that you understand the context in which they were made and the things that were going on across America. In terms of…“We will stop it”…it was in response to a series of events that included then candidate Trump insulting the immigrant family of a fallen war hero. And my presumption, based on that horrible, disgusting behavior, that the American population would not elect somebody demonstrating that behavior to be president of the United States.

I’m not sure what the Republicans can do to Strzok from here, but it seems unlikely that he will be permitted to serve out his career in peace (he was transferred to human resources).

… Mueller made public the names and identities of seventeen lawyers he had hired, and researchers found that thirteen were registered Democrats. Five had made donations to Clinton (two large, three small). It’s a complaint that in fairness one could imagine either party lodging. At the same time, it’s worth noting that it’s a violation of Justice Department rules, under which a special counsel operates, for Mueller to ask the political affiliations of people he hires. And Mueller is himself a Republican, but that is dismissed now, because in the Fox version of events he has capitulated to the deep-staters.

Barring a bolt of unexpected lightning, Kavanaugh will win confirmation. Eventually, the question of whether this president (or any president) can face legal punishment while in office will make its way to the Court. We will see then whether the tumor that afflicts the legislative branch has also consumed the judicial. In 1974 no one had to worry seriously that the Supreme Court would issue a “political” decision on such a matter, and indeed the Court ruled 8–0 that Richard Nixon was not above the law (Nixon appointee William Rehnquist recused himself because he had worked in the administration, but Lewis Powell, Nixon’s other appointee, ruled with the majority). We can permit ourselves no such sanguinity now. The conservative movement is a few Supreme Court decisions away from having unlimited power, and one sees no Cincinnatus among them.

FoxNews: Steve Bannon on 2018 midterms: “This is President @realDonaldTrump’s first re-elect. This is gonna be an up or down vote. It’s a referendum on the Trump presidency.” #Hannity 💽 https://twitter.com/FoxNews/status/1023089419312492544/photo/1

NYT: Russian Hackers Appear to Shift Focus to U.S. Power Grid http://nyti.ms/2LWeMoj

Newsweek: Jeff Stein: How Vladimir Putin Will Take Down Donald Trump When He’s No Longer Useful http://bit.ly/2LrstiR

Following the controversial Helsinki summit between the Russian and American presidents, Moscow’s media commentators greeted Trump’s deference toward Putin with a mix of concern, pity and ridicule, none of which could have been uttered without the Kremlin’s approval, says Ukrainian-born Julia Davis, an expert on Russian propaganda.

“They usually get a printout of some kind, about which topics they’re supposed to discuss and what their position is supposed to be,” said Davis, a featured expert at the Atlantic Council’s Disinfo Portal. The state-controlled commentary “is very closely monitored, and they would not take a chance on stepping outside of the line,” she told Newsweek.

The Kremlin, she continued, is “growing very frustrated because there’s so many controls that are being placed on” Trump by Congress, starting with Russian sanctions, upgrades to the U.S. nuclear arsenal and beefed-up military aid to Ukraine, which is under assault by Moscow-backed forces in its eastern Donbas region. And then there are the ongoing investigations into Russian interference in the 2016 elections by special counsel Robert Mueller and the Senate Intelligence Committee, independent actions that would be unthinkable in Putin’s Russia.

🐣 RT @KenDelanianNBC In a statement, the White House says it put in motion a “whole of government strategy” to fight foreign election intervention when Trump took office. I can’t find anyone who has seen it–but I can find lots of folks who say it doesn’t exist.

“They like to talk about him as weak and incompetent and just pretty much a clown,” Davis said of the Moscow analysts before the Cohen disclosure. “They still think he might prove himself to do what he promised him to do. But if he goes down, I expect they would not skip a beat. They would jump in to help finish him off.”

Measures at Putin’s disposal include leaking a mix of real and fabricated details on Trump’s suspected debts to Russian bankers and oligarchs, said Milton Bearden, a legendary former CIA officer who worked against the Soviet target and later co-authored a book, The Main Enemy, with the cooperation of several former KGB officials.

[L]ast year a Russian opposition politician, Vladimir Milov, alleged in an interview with a Russian exile journalist that Moscow’s secret services had been “closely ‘following’ Trump for over 30 years and the dossier they have on him certainly comprises many, many volumes.”

[D]avis said, that he’s “laying the groundwork” for dumping Trump by less murderous means if he’s mortally weakened by Congress or indictments.

“When Trump goes,” she said,  “Putin certainly doesn’t want to be seen as someone who’s on his team.”

CNN: Sanctions on Russia’s Rusal could be lifted, Mnuchin says http://cnn.it/2mPjBF9

The Trump administration is looking into lifting sanctions against a major Russian aluminum company founded by one of Vladimir Putin’s closest allies.

The Treasury Department is considering relieving Rusal of penalties even though its former owner, oligarch Oleg Deripaska, was sanctioned this year by the US in an attempt to punish the Kremlin for interfering in the 2016 US presidential election.

By targeting Deripaska and six other prominent Russian oligarchs the Treasury specifically hit members of Putin’s inner circle.

The law passed by Congress last year gives Treasury new powers to go after Russian oligarchs. Trump reluctantly signed the bill, which was passed with a veto-proof majority, despite criticizing the legislation and previously questioning the effectiveness of US sanctions against Russia.

While seeking sanctions relief, Rusal has taken steps to water down Deripaska’s involvement in the company. Deripaska has previously agreed to reduce his stake to below 50% and resign from the firm’s board in order to give Rusal a shot at getting off the sanctions list. Seven other members of the board, nominated by a Deripaska-owned company, also resigned in May.

Deripaska also has financial ties to Paul Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign chairman in 2016 and is now awaiting trial on a slew of financial crimes related to his work for the Russia-friendly government of Ukraine. Manafort was charged by special counsel Robert Mueller, who is tasked with investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and related matters.

The Treasury said Deripaska had been accused of bribery, extortion, racketeering, ordering the murder of a rival businessman and having links to organized crime. Deripaska has denied “the alleged basis” of US sanctions, according to statements he provided to London’s High Court, the Telegraph reported in May.

WaPo (7/17): NSA and Cyber Command to coordinate actions to counter Russian election interference in 2018 amid absence of White House guidance http://wapo.st/2Anj1rs
// 7/17/2018

💙💙 TheGuardian: Democracy at risk due to fake news and data misuse, MPs conclude http://bit.ly/2Ol2Z4p
// Parliamentary inquiry to demand urgent action to combat ‘relentless targeting of hyper-partisan views’ 📒 The Cambridge Analytica Files: read the Observer’s full investigation

💙💙 Politico: How Silicon Valley Became a Den of Spies http://politi.co/2NRC7Ii
// The West Coast is a growing target of foreign espionage. And it’s not ready to fight back.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Case for a Trump-Russia Conspiracy Just Got a Little Stronger http://bit.ly/2uT7lI8
// If proven true, the president’s alleged role in the Trump Tower meeting could help prosecutors make judgments about his “character, truthfulness, and culpability.”

NYT: How Trump’s Public and Private Acts Line Up in a Possible Obstruction Case http://nyti.ms/2NSbm6n

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff and Asawin Suebsaeng: ‘Dead to Each Other’: Team Trump Prepares to ‘Bury’ Michael Cohen, ‘Weakling’ and ‘Traitor’ http://thebea.st/2mOIsIW
// This could get ugly.

Esquire, Charles Pierce: If Cohen Is Telling the Truth, That Ought to Be Ballgame http://bit.ly/2K1UdoH
// We now stand at a yes-or-no moment in this country’s history.

NBC: What did corporate America do with that tax break? Buy record amounts of its own stock http://nbcnews.to/2K3qOKH
// The White House promised ’70 percent’ of the tax cut would go to workers. It didn’t.

NYRB, Tim Weiner: The ‘Witch Hunters’ http://bit.ly/2Luv9MM //➔ review of Clapper, Comey, and Hayden’s books
// Summer issue

To Donald Trump it seems as though the “Deep State” has arisen from the depths of the dismal swamp of Washington to torment him. He sees a cabal of his political enemies—foremost the men who have led the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency, and the Central Intelligence Agency—as a cryptocracy operating under the cover of the constitutionally established government, an immense conspiracy, a dark force seeking to destroy him.

The Deep State, to Trump, is a secret brotherhood of military and intelligence officers secretly manipulating the body politic, and is still run by the leaders of the American intelligence organizations under President Obama, along with unnamed sinister forces still resilient within the Justice Department. These are the same people who revealed a brazen covert operation by Vladimir Putin and his spy services to help elect Trump in 2016. To the president, they are not defending the republic but running a slow-rolling coup d’état.

[Hayden] takes umbrage at the idea that he and his old cohorts are working in secret to undermine Trump: “There is no ‘deep state’ in the American Republic. There is only ‘the state,’ or, as I characterize it, career professionals doing their best within the rule of law. Not that they always play nice….”

I believe that whoever backhanded the information on the intelligence intercepts to the Times and the Post was more savior than saboteur; there are more virtuous leaks than vicious ones. Goldsmith, a formidable voice in national security affairs and a staunch conservative critic of Trump, thinks that the Deep State is real and that it did dirty work here. I think not. Yet the fear of a Deep State has a long history.

James Comey first encountered Donald Trump in the gilded palace of Trump Tower on January 6, 2017. He (along with Clapper and Brennan) were to deliver their unanimous assessment of the Russian effort to interfere in the 2016 election … ¤ Everything about Trump’s presidency turns on this moment … ¤ This gave the conspiracy-minded president-elect cause to fear the leaders of American intelligence, and especially Comey. It gave them greater reason to fear his presidency.

The confrontations memorialized here [in Comey’s book], especially when Trump says he wants the FBI to drop its criminal investigation of the disgraced Mike Flynn and “lift the cloud” of the investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 election—and then fires Comey for refusing to put the fix in—are as gripping as any chapter of presidential history has ever been. It’s better than Watergate’s smoking gun tape: the president of the United States was trying to suborn the FBI director in an obstruction of justice. Comey testified about much of this last year, but the added atmospherics in the book are powerful. The image of the president as mob boss is indelible. The stench of criminality hangs in the air of the West Wing like cordite.

If we see another season when high crimes are charged against a president, the likeliest count will again be obstruction of justice, again regarding a break-in at Democratic headquarters, again with the FBI working—this time with Mueller as chief investigator and Comey as his star witness—to bring the president to justice. The power of secret information gathered by American intelligence and made public in Congress or a court of law may be his downfall. We may then see proof that what afflicts us is not a deep state but a shallow and corrupted government.

Politico Mag, Bandy Lee and Tony Schwartz: Inside the Mind of Donald Trump http://politi.co/2LObyqh
// He’s grandiose, deceitful and paranoid—but don’t let him drive you crazy.

WaPo, Paul Waldman: The fantastical tale Trump wants you to believe about collusion http://wapo.st/2v8BVg5

If you want to believe Donald Trump is innocent when it comes to Russia, you’re going to have to do some work. It’s not just that new information keeps coming out, and you’ll have to figure out whether it should be disbelieved (It’s not true!) or explained away (Even if it’s true, it’s perfectly fine!). You’ll also have to keep abreast of the president’s shifting stories and justifications so you can be up to date on what you’re supposed to say. And you’ll have to believe some things that are frankly unbelievable.

Now that Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former fixer, has publicly said that he was in the room when Trump was told beforehand of the infamous Trump Tower meeting Trump’s son, son-in-law and campaign chairman had with a group of Russians they believed would provide dirt on Hillary Clinton, and Trump gave the go-ahead for the meeting, Trump advocates are being called upon yet again for a new round of denials. So we should step back and remind ourselves of exactly what it is they’re asking us all to accept. …

🐣 RT @nedprice Putin is essentially turning down a White House visit and, instead, summoning Trump to Moscow. ¤ This is what he paid for.
⋙ NBCNews: JUST IN: 2 days after US pushes date for a second Trump-Putin summit, President Putin says he is ready for another meeting with President Trump, as phone conversations are not sufficient, and has extended an invite for President Trump to visit Moscow – (corrects: 2 days, not 1)

🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Russian President Putin says he is ready to go to Washington and has invited President Trump to Moscow under “necessary conditions.”

MotherJones, Kevin Drum: Cohen: Trump Knew Everything http://bit.ly/2uTOigG

🐣 RT @stevebenen Trump said Russians aren’t interfering in our elections anymore. He also said Russia might intervene to help Dems. The McCaskill story discredits both contradictory claims

MotherJones: Bombshell Report: Michael Cohen Claims Trump Knew About Infamous Trump Tower Meeting http://bit.ly/2LsJZmQ
// According to CNN, Donald Trump’s former personal attorney is willing to refute the president’s denials.

WaPo: Trump maintains not knowing in advance about meeting with Russians, disputing Cohen claim http://wapo.st/2LFncDE

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: What Michael Cohen’s bombshell means http://wapo.st/2LUDO7d

Prosecutors will need to interview Cohen, get those phone records, interview all other people possibly aware of Trump’s decision to authorize the meeting and track down other corroborating evidence to make out a compelling case. Cohen’s testimony, if credible, would make for a compelling case, possibly entailing conspiracy; perpetrating a fraud on the United States; soliciting illegal, foreign help in a campaign; and obstruction. Anyone who denied Trump’s role or otherwise intentionally misled prosecutors and/or Congress will have to worry about his own liability for perjury, obstruction and other related crimes.

Max Bergmann, who heads the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress, tells me, “This revelation reveals what has been staring us in the face: Trump was part of the collusion. He wasn’t some innocent bystander on his campaign.” He argues, “Trump ran the Trump campaign. We know this because everybody — from embedded reporters, to Trump campaign staff, to Trump himself — told us that he was fully in charge. So when it came to the most important decision of his campaign — whether or not to collude with Russia — of course he was involved.” He adds, “This is now a national security crisis. We have a President of the United States that almost certainly aided and abetted an attack on American democracy.”

Constitutional scholar and Supreme Court litigator Laurence Tribe tweeted, “If Cohen credibly testifies Trump knew in advance of the 6/9/16 meeting that Donald Jr, Jared, etc, had with Viselnitskaya & other Russians in Trump Tower to get dirt against Clinton in June 2016, that’s direct evidence of Trump/Putin collusion. Huge.”

Second, if Trump’s direct approval of cooperation with Russians can be proved, it will be the biggest political scandal in American history. His presidency for all intents and purposes would be delegitimized. We are talking about a presidential candidate who sought and received help from a hostile foreign power, covered it up and “repaid” the favor by public obsequiousness to that power’s leader. Again, this has yet to be proved.

Third, Republicans who have enabled Trump by smearing law enforcement, creating bogus scandals, defending Trump’s attacks on the Justice Department and rationalizing support for his presidency (“But Gorsuch!”) risk public humiliation and ruin. Nothing Trump has done or could possibly do would make up for participation in a conspiracy and obstruction, not to mention betrayal of his country. (Members of Congress who may have actively conspired with the White House themselves could have legal exposure.)

Fourth, the potential discrediting of a presidency and the delegitimization of an elected commander in chief  is gravely serious and should be resolved before Trump picks a Supreme Court justice (who potentially could determine Trump’s fate). Finally, members of the administration should be very, very careful before throwing around Trump’s favorite phrases (“witch hunt!”) and trying to discredit the investigation. In fact, before this gets even messier, now might be a good time for staffers to exit and get far away from this unfolding legal disaster.

🐣 RT @barbarastarrcnn Mattis on stopping Russian elex interference: “I am not at liberty to explain what we are doing in that regard. Just rest assured there are actions underway to protect our elections or to expose any external by anybody, external efforts to influence the American public”

⭕ 26 Jul 2018

NYT Editorial: Impeach Rosenstein? C’mon, Man http://nyti.ms/2LGQzoX
// In its latest and futile gesture, the House Freedom Caucus sets its sights on ousting the man overseeing Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation.

Ms. Yates is right to be concerned. It’s not that the Freedom Caucus members don’t recognize the damage they’re doing — or even that they don’t care. It is that delegitimizing government is at the heart of their movement. These backbench bomb-throwers came to power on an explicit promise to stop President Barack Obama from achieving his goals and, as a bonus, to punish any Republican lawmaker showing even the slightest inclination to cooperate with the opposition. Conflict and obstructionism have always been their purpose, fueled by their relentless message that government is always the problem, that all experts are idiots, that cultural and coastal elites hate Real Americans and that all of Washington is corrupt and broken beyond repair. Except themselves, of course.

🐣 RT @20committee “Cohen alleges that he was present, along with several others, when Trump was informed of the Russians’ offer by Trump Jr. Trump approved going ahead with the meeting with the Russians, according to sources.”
Don will die in jail. Don Jr, we’ll see.
⋙ CNN: Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting http://cnn.it/2vadsqu

NYT Editorial: When Trump Talks, the World Listens. Should It? http://nyti.ms/2Ag1odg
// Secretary of State Pompeo leaves unclear whether the president’s foreign policy pronouncements are actual policy.

TheHill: GOP lawmakers abandon effort to impeach Rosenstein after less than a day http://hill.cm/65yW57O 

🐣 I honestly don’t care about return of dead from a war 70 years ago. I DO! care about the dismantling of a system for peace and prosperity forged 70 years ago. “Let the dead bury the dead.” (Matthew 8:22)

🐣 RT @TheLastWord .@DavidCornDC tells @Lawrence: If it’s true that Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting with Russians ahead of time “this is collusion!” #lastword #msnbc
💽 https://twitter.com/TheLastWord/status/1022682759112876033/photo/1

🐣 RT @Alt_FedEmployee Guys, guys… so what the president lied about knowing Don Jr, Kushner, & already guilty campaign manager Manafort colluded with foreign agents to gain information on a political opponent???
It could be much worse. He could have eaten fancy mustard in a tan suit.

🐣 RT @mattyglesias I think it’s important to understand that even if incontrovertible proof of collusion and lawbreaking emerges, 97% of the folks who are still with Trump today will keep supporting him after the pivot to an explicit “collusion is good because it helped us win” message.

🐣 RT @SethAbramson REMEMBER, the illegal campaign contribution Trump wanted to get from our gravest geopolitical enemy comprised *stolen materials* he’d every reason to believe were illegally procured. So it’s a traitorous *computer crimes* conspiracy atop a traitorous *election-crime* conspiracy.

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC If Cohen’s account is accurate, Trump conspired with a foreign power to attack and skew a US presidential election for his benefit. How is this not the biggest political scandal in US history?

🐣 RT @joshtpm You’re leaving out the reasonable amount of circumstantial evidence that Putin helped him concoct the cover story when they had their secret, no witnesses, meeting the night before in Hamburg.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff If Trump knew about the June 9 meeting, this is the chronology:
The Russians offered Trump help
Trump approved getting Russian help
The Russians delivered help
Trump dictated a false statement about the true purpose of the meeting
Trump covered up his own role

🐣 RT @20committee It’s simple. As you know if you’ve read my @observer columns in recent years, Trump ran for the WH in 2016 as a longtime Kremlin agent of influence who had Putin’s clandestine backing. This was a weird one-off, uncharted waters for all sides, but Trump knew what he was doing.

🐣 As of tonight, Trump is a Lame Duck president. NO SCOTUS noms!

🐣 If Trump was elected “under false premises,” as @JRubinBlogger says, then so was Pence. Or not?

🐣 “This is collusion.” – @JRubinBlogger on @TheLastWord

🐣 RT @JamesGleick Remember, it’s already known that Trump dictated a false statement issued by his son about this meeting with an agent of the Kremlin, and then they both lied about that. Game over, really. If we weren’t living in bizarro world.
⋙ 🐣 Big “if.”

TPM, Josh Marshall: Putting Tonight’s Revelation Into Perspective http://bit.ly/2LrsFyJ

Then there’s what happened in the aftermath of the Times stories breaking the news about the Trump Tower meeting that were published just over a year ago. Mueller’s investigators have focused closely on the fact that President Trump dictated a statement which was released in the name of his son Don Jr. about the meeting. It was a false cover story which quickly fell apart. He claimed it was about adoptions. How did he know about it? Well, it seems that he knew about it in advance. But there’s another thread to the story.

Trump dictated that false statement, with the cover story about adoptions only hours after he had a one on one meeting with Vladimir Putin (with no other US persons involved) which was apparently also about adoptions. As I explain here, if you put all this information together, there’s a pretty strong case to be made that not only did President Trump know about the Trump Tower meeting in advance but that he concocted his false cover story with the assistance of Vladimir Putin. See the details here

🐣 RT @tribelaw Neither Cohen nor Mueller benefits from the public revelation of what Cohen says he’s prepared to tell Mueller or a grand jury. So Trump is the likely source. But he can’t really think it’ll help him by taking away the surprise factor. So what explains this leak?

🐣 RT @SamanthaJPower 2 yrs ago Trump called on Russia to hack HRC emails. Since, he’s said many times he believes Putin, Russians didn’t interfere. He squandered 1 1/2 years when we should’ve been hardening our defenses. Now, only bc/ of Helsinki debacle, he’ll chair a meeting
⋙ Politico: Trump to chair National Security Council meeting on election security http://politi.co/2LpM5nw

🐣 Lanny Davis, Michael Cohen’s lawyer, says they did not leak info about Trump knowing about Trump Tower meeting. Suggests Trump’s people leaked it. Why? Who knows? Maybe they’re trying to devalue potential of Cohen cooperating?

🔆 This❗️⋙ CNN: Cohen claims Trump knew in advance of 2016 Trump Tower meeting http://cnn.it/2vadsqu

Buzzfeed: Bernie Sanders Adviser Tad Devine Is Assisting Special Counsel Investigation In Manafort Case http://bit.ly/2K0wbKJ
// Tad Devine, a top adviser to Sanders’ 2016 campaign, previously worked with Manafort in Ukraine.

‼️ DailyBeast, Andrew Desiderio and Kevin Poulsen: Russian Hackers’ New Target: a Vulnerable DEMOCRATIC Senator http://thebea.st/2LWq7F2 //➔ Take THAT, Donald!
//. Sen. Claire McCaskill is a top target for Republicans looking to grow their slim Senate majority in 2018. Turns out, Russia’s “Fancy Bear” hackers are going after her staff, too.

🐣 RT @NathanHRubin What we’re living through is much darker than Watergate.
During the Nixon years, the @GOP was in the dark. Once they learned of his crimes, they turned on him.
Now, Paul Ryan, McConnell & Nunes have all seen the intelligence & are STILL obstructing for him. Not good.

🐣 RT @sruhle This could be yuuuuuuuuge.
Weisselberg worked for Fred Trump & Donald. No one is more deeply entrenched in the inner working of their businesses than he is.
He’s been in the mix for decades
⋙ 🐣 RT @TimOBrien Trump’s longtime CFO, Allen Weisselberg, called to testify before a grand jury in the Cohen probe.
⋙ ⋙ 🐣 RT @yashar NEW: Loyal Trump CFO Allen Weisselberg has been summoned to testify before a grand jury in the Michael Cohen probe
⋙ ⋙ ⋙ WSJ: Trump Organization Finance Chief Called to Testify Before Federal Grand Jury http://on.wsj.com/2mIfEBU
// Longtime Trump executive Allen Weisselberg has been subpoenaed in Michael Cohen probe

MMFA: Conservative media want you to believe Trump has been “tough” on Russia. They’re not telling the full story. http://bit.ly/2NMWO88
// Secretary of State Pompeo echoed right-wing media talking points on Trump’s toughness. In reality, Trump has undercut a number of actions Congress and his administration have tried to take against Russia.

Quartz: Robert Mueller is investigating Trump’s Twitter. These 22 tweets might raise an eyebrow http://bit.ly/2mKeqGn

TheAtlantic, Uri Friedman: Secretary of a State of Confusion http://bit.ly/2Ae8hvt
// “We really need a clear understanding as to what is going on, what our president is agreeing to, and what our strategy is on a number of issues.”

TheHill: Nunes: House Intel probing whether informants gathered data on Trump, Russia prior to authorized probe http://bit.ly/2LrL3HK

HuffPo, Kurt Bardella: House Republicans Aren’t Ignoring Trump And Russia, They’re Actively Blocking The Truth http://bit.ly/2Aa70pr

DailyBeast, Asawin Suebsaeng et al: Henry Kissinger Pushed Trump to Work With Russia to Box In China http://thebea.st/2LAahD5

Vox: John Bolton’s complete reversal on Russia, in one tweet http://bit.ly/2OiN1b3
// Bolton before Trump: Russia’s election interference is “an act of war.” Bolton with Trump: Mueller’s Russia probe is a “witch hunt.”

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: After Trump’s Russia Summit, Freaked-out Republicans Are Supporting Mueller Probe http://nym.ag/2mKcxcD

NBC: Foreign Affairs chair says Trump is ignoring sanctions on Russia for former spy poisoning http://nbcnews.to/2NJPnyD
// Rep. Ed Royce is asking the president for new sanctions on Russia for attack in Britain.

TheHill: Meadows backs off impeaching Rosenstein after leadership talks http://bit.ly/2OiMHZT

🐣 RT @Hardball “There’s no Twitter-client privilege in the law, so that’s not going to save him.” @RepSwalwell on Mueller looking at Trump’s tweets going after Sessions, Comey. #Hardball

AP: Emails: Lawyer who met Trump Jr. tied to Russian officials http://bit.ly/2v7loZS

The Moscow lawyer said to have promised Donald Trump’s presidential campaign dirt on his Democratic opponent worked more closely with senior Russian government officials than she previously let on, according to documents reviewed by The Associated Press.

Scores of emails, transcripts and legal documents paint a portrait of Natalia Veselnitskaya as a well-connected attorney who served as a ghostwriter for top Russian government lawyers and received assistance from senior Interior Ministry personnel in a case involving a key client.

The data was obtained through Russian opposition figure Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s London-based investigative unit, the Dossier Center, that is compiling profiles of Russians it accuses of benefiting from corruption. The data was later shared with journalists at the AP, the Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger, Greek news website Inside Story and others.

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “A tweet is just a tweet…Except when it isn’t. That’s Donald Trump’s new reality today. New reporting in the NY Times reveals Robert Mueller is examining Trump’s tweets and public attacks on witnesses in the obstruction of justice investigation.” – @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1022574969698570241/photo/1

🐣 RT @McFaul So help me understand this, the Russian government considers it a crime to be involved in the creation of the Magnitsky Act? So they will indict @BarackObama too, since he signed it into law? Surely, even Putin’s regime is not that crazy. Can Russian speakers help clarify?
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @BillBrowder BREAKING: Russian government announces opening of a new criminal case against me and various US officials involved in the creation of the Magnitsky Act and the investigation into Russian organized money laundering in US connected to Magnitsky case http://bit.ly/2Oi76hI

NYT: Mueller Examining Trump’s Tweets in Wide-Ranging Obstruction Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2mKhZwj

🐣 RT @LauraAJarrett Sessions asked about Rosenstein impeachment threat during news conference in Boston: “My deputy Rod Rosenstein is highly capable. I have the highest confidence in him,” says lawmakers should focus their time on changing immigration laws.

💽 CSIS: The Kremlin Playbook Spotlight is new series that offers a visual and contextual snapshot of the workings of Russian malign influence in Europe. http://cs.is/2L9ULhu 

USAToday, Cindy Otis: Ex-CIA analyst: If Trump were a foreign leader, I’d raise possibility of blackmail http://usat.ly/2LSOt2a
// Donald Trump’s appeasement of Russia is unprecedented for a US president. His behavior is consistent with that of an asset being blackmailed.

⭕ 25 Jul 2018

NYT, Linda Qiu: Pompeo Oversells Trump’s Enthusiasm for Sanctions on Russia http://nyti.ms/2uUX4uM
// Mike Pompeo, the secretary of state, played up the administration’s sanctions against Russia during a Senate hearing. But they were issued under a law that the president criticized and tried to water down.

CNN: Pompeo defiant in clash over Trump-Putin summit http://cnn.it/2v7hHDv

NYMag, Heather Hurlburt: Five Takeaways and One Surprise from Mike Pompeo’s Congressional Testimony http://nym.ag/2mJmPty

NYT: Pompeo Defends Trump With ‘Proof’ of Administration’s Actions vs. Russia http://nyti.ms/2v5r4Dv

WaPo, Max Boot: The evidence doesn’t prove collusion. But it sure suggests it. http://wapo.st/2Oh4aSk

While this was going on, the Moscow Project of the Center for American Progress reports, there were 82 known “contacts between the Trump team and Russia-linked operatives.” “None of these contacts were ever reported to the proper authorities,” according to the project. Team Trump tried to conceal all of them. 

Mueller’s recent indictment of 12 Russian military intelligence officers who ransacked Democratic Party servers notes that the Russians first tried to hack into Clinton’s email on July 27, 2016, hours after Trump asked them to do just that (“Russia, if you’re listening”).

Finally, as Anne Applebaum noted , the indictment also reveals that the Russians stole not just emails but also the data analytics Democrats used to run their campaign. This happened in September 2016. A few weeks later, the Trump campaign shifted its “datadriven” strategy to focus on the states that would provide the margin of victory, raising the question of whether it benefited from stolen Democratic data.

[Carter Page FISA warrant:] It also says that Putin aide Igor Diveykin “had met secretly with Page and that their agenda for the meeting included Diveykin raising a dossier or ‘kompromat’ that the Kremlin possessed on Candidate #2 [Clinton] and the possibility of it being released to Candidate #1’s campaign.” (Page admits to being an “informal adviser” to the Kremlin but denies serving as a Russian agent. He also denies meeting Diveykin but admits to meeting deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich.) 

Former director of national intelligence James R. Clapper Jr. , among others, suspects that Putin has “something” on Trump — perhaps evidence of financial wrongdoing. But, by now, any such “kompromat” could well include the help that Russia provided in 2016.

🐣 RT @RichardHaass Today is ending considerably better than it started what with 1) postponement of Putin visit; 2) possible US-EU trade truce; 3) @SecPompeo declaring US does not/will not recognize Russian annexation of Crimea; and 4) US District judge ruling to allow emoluments case to proceed.

◕ NPR/PBS NewsHour/Marist Poll: Americans Don’t Think Trump Is Tough Enough On Russia http://n.pr/2uPWzCb
Tough on Russia: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1022332962828890112/photo/1
Interference: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1022329769608798208/photo/1
Confidence in:
Military/SCOTUS: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1022331965293375488/photo/1
FBI/Presidency: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1022332289093722112/photo/1

WaPo, EJ Dionne: Trump lies. And lies. And lies. http://wapo.st/2uODrVn

WaPo: Conservative lawmakers introduce resolution calling for impeachment of Rod Rosenstein, who oversees special counsel probe on Russia http://wapo.st/2NNk2v9

NBC Poll: Trump approval sags in trio of Midwest states http://nbcnews.to/2LPI0Fk
// Trump fav: MI 36/54; WI 36/52; MN 38/51; Democrats also enjoy an advantage on congressional preference in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.

Coda: Dissecting the Trump-Russia Dossier http://bit.ly/2OhZ7RD

About: Coda Story puts a team of journalists on one crisis at a time and stays with it, providing unique depth, continuity and understanding to events that shape our world. Coda is for those who believe that understanding a crisis is essential to addressing it and those who want to know what happens after the spotlight moves on. In music a Coda is a distinctive passage, usually towards the end, which defines the entire composition. In journalism, Coda is a stand-out voice that helps to define a crisis.

💙💙 NYT, Sylvie Kauffman: Trump Reveals Himself as the Bully of His Allies http://nyti.ms/2LSZlgM Sylvie Kauffman is editorial director of Le Monde
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYT Le Monde Trump Bullies

LATimes: In his own words: Trump on Russian interference and Vladimir Putin http://lat.ms/2mGfhYB

CNN: 1 Trump Russia tweet, translated http://cnn.it/2NKxD6p //➔ Chris Cillizza decomposes Trump’s ‘From Russia to Dems with 💙’ tweet

Politico: McFaul to meet with U.S. officials about possible indictment from Russia http://bit.ly/2NJCZ1C

Politico: Senate eyes hitting Russia in slap to Trump http://bit.ly/2uQ6CY6
// A bipartisan push to impose new sanctions is gaining ground after Donald Trump’s widely criticized press conference with Vladimir Putin.

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Trump’s Russia problem is getting worse and worse http://wapo.st/2OgrTCc //➔ The latest Quinnipiac poll:

American voters believe 51 – 35 percent “that the Russian government has compromising information about President Trump.” … The Helsinki summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin was a failure for the U.S., voters say 52 – 27 percent. The summit was a success for Russia, voters say 73 – 8 percent. Trump was not acting in the best interest of the U.S., voters say 54 – 41 percent. … A total of 68 percent of American voters are “very concerned” or “somewhat concerned” about President Trump’s relationship with Russia, while 32 percent are “not so concerned” or “not concerned at all.” [ much more! ]

The good news here is that by large majorities the American people haven’t been snookered by Trump’s pro-Putin propaganda. The bad news is that Republicans have — raising the question as to whether the country should trust them with government oversight, national security and/or foreign policy. Voters who want a president who is strong on Russia, defends American interests and sticks by allies will have to look elsewhere in 2020.

🐣 RT @MollyMcKew As comparatives, here are Vox, Kremlin, and WH transcripts.
Vox is unaltered. Kremlin omits whole exchange. WH omits question.
To be clear: “Did you want Trump to win elex & did you direct your officials to help him?”
“Yes I did. Yes I did.”
// 3 atts: link https://twitter.com/MollyMcKew/status/1022092682041155586

⭕ 24 Jul 2018

Brookings, Elaine Kamarck: Putin’s Russia becomes Trump’s America http://brook.gs/2K2qRqa

Vox: Trump says he’s worried about Russian meddling … to elect Democrats http://bit.ly/2OiBcBB
// Trump now believes in Russian election interference. To help his political opponents.

NYT: Spotting CNN on a TV Aboard Air Force One, Trump Rages Against Reality http://nyti.ms/2NKtUFU

“Stick with us. Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news,” Mr. Trump said Tuesday at the annual convention of the Veterans of Foreign Wars in Kansas City, Mo.

And then: “What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”

On Tuesday, the president effectively said black was white when he claimed without evidence that Russians would be helping Democrats — but not him — in the coming midterm elections. In January 2017, American intelligence agencies assessed that Russia had interfered in the 2016 presidential election in an effort to help Mr. Trump.

“I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election,” Mr. Trump wrote on Twitter. “Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!”

WaPo, Max Boot: Without the Russians, Trump wouldn’t have won http://wapo.st/2NIrgjH

The second tranche of stolen documents was released on Oct. 7, just 29 minutes after The Post reported on the “Access Hollywood” videotape in which Trump is heard boasting about grabbing women by the genitals. These emails, stolen from Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, distracted voter attention by revealing the transcripts of lucrative speeches Clinton had given to Goldman Sachs, a populist boogeyman.

🐣💙💙🔥 RT @MSNBC Rachel Maddow shows how the White House transcript and video of the Trump-Putin press conference in Helsinki has been edited to remove the question asking Putin if he wanted Trump to win the election.
💽 https://twitter.com/MSNBC/status/1021975897249906688/photo/1

💙💙 WaPo, Elizabeth Bruenig: America’s heart of darkness http://wapo.st/2JTVNbZ

Before he ventures into the depths of the Belgian-colonized Congo in Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness,” the novel’s narrator, English sailor Charles Marlow, visits a doctor who is only meant to declare him fit for travel. But the doctor has other interests — namely insanity. “Ever any madness in your family?” he asks Marlow, suggesting it may set in “out there.” As, indeed, it does, deep in the jungle where European officers and ivory traders have wrought vast and senseless savagery in the supposed service of Western civilization. …

Those emails the Russians loosed upon the electorate were damning precisely because they revealed a similar scheme operating in miniature during the Democratic primary campaign: The supposedly neutral DNC functioned as more or less a Clinton campaign organ …

The gravity and legality of the two exercises in meddling differ, certainly. But they both operate to wound our faith in democratic legitimacy. It has gone this way before. It took several incidents, from Vietnam to Watergate to scattered episodes of civil unrest, to permanently damage American trust in government; but as distinct as each event was, they all fractured the same essential faith. We haven’t returned to consistent levels of pre-’70s levels of trust in 40 years, and I doubt this current civic unease will fade much sooner.

This particular horror — Trump and his failures, whatever ridiculous thing he has said or done today, whatever international incident he causes on Twitter tomorrow, however authentic the next panic is — will pass. What will last is the frank revelation of a point that, while ugly and dark, is at least true: You really don’t have the choices you ought to in American democracy, because of decisions made without your consent by people of wealth and power behind closed doors. It’s possible to continue to participate in a democracy after that. But not with a quiet mind.

CNN: Russia slams US general, says he ‘discredited’ Trump http://cnn.it/2mE4Btk

The Russian Ministry of Defense slammed US Gen. Joseph Votel Tuesday, accusing America’s top military commander in the Middle East of discrediting President Donald Trump’s position after Votel expressed hesitancy about working with Russia in Syria.

“With his statements, General Votel not only discredited the official position of his supreme commander-in-chief, but also exacerbated the illegality under international law and US law of the military presence of American servicemen in Syria,” the Russian Ministry said in a statement published on social media in response to an interview Votel gave to ABC News.

“I would want to make sure that this isn’t something that we stepped into lightly,” Votel, the commander of US Central Command, said when asked about the idea of the US and Russia working together to facilitate the return of refugees.

“I am not recommending that. And that would be a pretty big step at this point,” Votel added.

On Friday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo confirmed that the issue of refugee return had been discussed during last week’s meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin but did not say that any agreements had been reached. …

Votel told reporters at the Pentagon that he had received no new direction following the Trump-Putin meeting and Trump has also appeared to suggest that while many issues related to the region had been discussed, the implementation of any agreements would not take place until a second meeting between Trump and Putin.

On Tuesday, Secretary of Defense James Mattis also confirmed that the US was not cooperating with Russia in Syria while speaking with Pompeo in Palo Alto, California, alongside their Australian counterparts.

“In regard to Syria, what we do with the Russian Federation is we de-conflict our operations, we do not coordinate them,” Mattis said.

“We will not be doing anything additional until the secretary of state and the President have further figured out at what point we’re going to start working alongside our allies with Russia in the future, that has not happened yet and it would be premature for me to go into any more detail at this point because we’re not doing any more than this,” he added.

🐣 RT @chessninja Putin seeks moral equivalence with the free world, prestige on the international stage & legitimacy as a power broker in the Middle East and Ukraine so he can appear indispensable to his cronies in Russia. All of that has come from Trump.

🐣 RT @jaketapper “We don’t apologize for America anymore,” President Trump tells the @VFWHQ convention, 8 days after blaming poor U.S.-Russia relations entirely on the U.S.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!
// 7/16/2018

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Kremlin shows more sense than Trump. Post-Helsinki, it realizes that a Putin-Trump meeting before the midterm elections is not likely to help Trump and the GOP.

🐣 RT @funder [Dworkin] Putin is making Trump look like a laughingstock, pretty much turning down his White House invite. The Kremlin says Putin might consider meeting at the G20. This is so embarrassing. It shows how weak Trump really is. A coward and a traitor who lets Putin call all of the shots.

DeadlineWH: “Donald Trump’s Helsinki hangover stretches into its 9th day today. The president tweeting another bizarre message designed to muddle the indelible image of servitude to Vladimir Putin over Russia’s role in the 2016 election…. ” – @NicolleDWallace
💽 https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1021849473423691777/photo/1

🐣 RT @atDavidHoffman [sic] Oh. Just. Stop. It.
Even your supporters aren’t stupid enough to believe this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election. Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!

CNN: Burr breaks with Nunes: ‘Sound reasons’ for judges to approve FISA warrant http://cnn.it/2mLIPUV

◕ 🐣 RT @ JohnHarwood Quinnipiac Poll:
-51% say Trump has weakened US as leader of free world
-53% say he wants what’s best for himself, not the US
-55% say Mueller probe is fair
-51% say Russians have compromising info on Trump
-73% say Russia succeeded in Helsinki
-27% say US succeeded in Helsinki

🐣 RT @Green_Footballs “Coy?” Seriously, Reuters? There’s absolutely nothing “coy” going on here. Putin is showing Trump who’s the real boss. “Coy” is a weirdly inappropriate way to refer to this.
⋙ Reuters: Kremlin, coy on new summit idea, says Putin and Trump can meet at G20 https://reut.rs/2NH4Mj3 

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Who met with Maria Butina? http://wapo.st/2uLwe8w

⭕ 23 Jul 2018

WSJ: Russian Hackers Reach U.S. Utility Control Rooms, Homeland Security Officials Say http://on.wsj.com/2JQ0La1
// Blackouts could have been caused after the networks of trusted vendors were easily penetrated

The Russian hackers, who worked for a shadowy state-sponsored group previously identified as Dragonfly or Energetic Bear, broke into supposedly secure, “air-gapped” or isolated networks owned by utilities with relative ease by first penetrating the networks of key vendors who had trusted relationships with the power companies, said officials at the Department of Homeland Security.

“They got to the point where they could have thrown switches” and disrupted power flows, said Jonathan Homer, chief of industrial-control-system analysis for DHS.

DHS has been warning utility executives with security clearances about the Russian group’s threat to critical infrastructure since 2014. But the briefing on Monday was the first time that DHS has given out information in an unclassified setting with as much detail. It continues to withhold the names of victims but now says there were hundreds of victims, not a few dozen as had been said previously.

NYT, Linda Qiu: Trump Again Falsely Claims Russia Investigation Started With Steele Dossier http://nyti.ms/2v0ti73
// The president and his press secretary repeated the false claim that the findings of a former British spy prompted the inquiry. A congressional report found it began with a diplomat’s tip about a Trump political adviser.

The New York Times has reported — and Republicans who hold the majority vote on the House Intelligence Committee have concluded — that the investigation began in July 2016 and was prompted by the actions of George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign.

Mr. Papadopoulos told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia had political “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic presidential candidate. Australian officials then alerted their American counterparts of the conversation with Mr. Papadopoulos.

The information provided by Mr. Steele did not reach F.B.I. officials who were investigating Mr. Trump’s campaign until mid-September of 2016, The Times reported in May.

Politico: How U.S. intelligence agencies can find out what Trump told Putin http://bit.ly/2uKqJ9V
// A top-secret Special Collection Service has extraordinary capabilities to hoover up intel from foreign adversaries.

“Most of the questions about what happened in Helsinki — and about the risks the president created there — are skipping over a more fundamental concern: How can intel officers effectively support policy, at any level, when only the president knows what the policy is?” asks David Priess, a former CIA officer and daily White House intelligence briefer. “If, one-on-one with Putin, the president made or changed policy, and he refuses to tell anyone exactly what happened, how can the national security bureaucracy prepare the memos and talking points for future meetings to be held about those very policies?”

🐣 RT @PeterBakerNYT Days after saying he really does accept the findings of the intelligence agencies that Russia intervened in the election, Trump walks back the walk back and says again that “it is all a big hoax.”

🚫 USAToday, James Robbins: Suspend Robert Mueller’s politically tainted investigation into Russia-Trump collusion http://usat.ly/2uFUw3s
// 12/11/2017; well laid out but TTLG

TheGuardian: Trump says Iran will ‘suffer consequences’ after speech by president Rouhani http://bit.ly/2A3T4gK
// US president issues late-night tweet in capital letters, saying Iran must ‘never, ever threaten the United States again’

TheGuardian, Simon Tisdall: Trump and Putin’s unholy alliance could lead to war with Iran http://bit.ly/2Oavphn
// 7/15/2018, When will Europe realise the American president is an antagonist, not an ally?

Axios, Mike Allen: Trump’s “America First” becomes a global reality http://bit.ly/2Ltimcy

🐣 Our child-president wants his news cycle‼️ Give it to him or he’ll start throwing his toys at Iran‼️

⭕ 22 Jul 2018

Politico: Risks pile up for Trump as Manafort heads to trial http://bit.ly/2v0B2Gu
// The president’s former campaign chairman is set to be the first to go before a jury in the Mueller investigation.

CNN, Brian Stelter: Trump’s ‘hoax’ tweet means the press has even more questions to ask http://cnnmon.ie/2mC1e6t

WaPo: Trump again reverses course on Russian interference, calls it ‘all a big hoax’ http://wapo.st/2uVsUa8

🐣 RT @KremlinTrolls Ret. Lt. Colonel Peters: “I am convinced Trump is basically a slave of Vladimir Putin. I do believe, as a former Russian analyst, that the salient points in the infamous dossier, the Steele dossier, are true. I believe Trump is subject to blackmail, certainly financially.”
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/KremlinTrolls/status/1021017171126882305
// on msnbc TheBeat w @AriMelber

🐣 RT @SethAbramson BREAKING NEWS: Trump’s Fragile Psyche Finally Snaps; World Awaits Whatever the Hell Comes Next
⋙ 🐣 RT @real To Iranian President Rouhani: NEVER, EVER THREATEN THE UNITED STATES AGAIN OR YOU WILL SUFFER CONSEQUENCES THE LIKES OF WHICH FEW THROUGHOUT HISTORY HAVE EVER SUFFERED BEFORE. WE ARE NO LONGER A COUNTRY THAT WILL STAND FOR YOUR DEMENTED WORDS OF VIOLENCE & DEATH. BE CAUTIOUS! [sic]
Tweet Link: https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1021234525626609666
// 10:24pm; weird

WSJ: Officials’ Stark Warnings on Russia Diverge From White House View http://on.wsj.com/2uX5st1
// Clashing assessments raise a question ahead of the next Trump-Putin summit: Can the U.S. formulate a coherent Russia policy?

NYT: How a Trump Decision Revealed a G.O.P. Memo’s Shaky Foundation http://nyti.ms/2JLZXTm

WaPo: Russian billionaire with U.S. investments backed alleged agent Maria Butina, according to a person familiar with her Senate testimony http://wapo.st/2O9lrgw
// Konstantin Nikolaev, a Russian billionaire with investments in U.S. energy and technology companies, according to a person familiar with testimony she gave Senate investigators.

In a court filing last week, prosecutors said Butina’s emails and chat logs are full of references to a billionaire as the “funder” of her activities. They wrote that the billionaire is a “known Russian businessman with deep ties to the Russian Presidential Administration.”

Nikolaev’s connections to the Russian government “cannot be characterized as deep,” his spokesman said.

“Mr. Nikolaev has no connections to the Russian government other than those that are strictly required professionally,” said the spokesman, who requested anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

HuffPo/Reuters: Accused Russian Agent Maria Butina Met With 2 Senior U.S. Officials In 2015 http://bit.ly/2JGTVn2
// The meetings involved officials at the U.S. Federal Reserve and Treasury Department.

🐣 RT @krassenstein What did she know, and when did she know it???
⋙ 🐣 Who did she screw and when did she screw them? #Путинсутенер #PutinPimp #FreeMariaButina

WaPo, Philip Bump: With the release of new documents, Devin Nunes’ memo on Carter Page has gotten even less credible http://wapo.st/2LzXBMw

🐣 RT @ZachsMind Were there ppl still supporting Nixon up to and past his resignation and pardon? Did they sound as crazy as Trumpsters do today?
⋙ 🐣 They did. Agnew (whose speeches were written by Pat Buchanan, the Stephen Miller of his day) was particularly good at rousing the base. Middle-aged women were especially fanatical. Then Agnew left under corruption charges. But in the end ‘Lordy there were tapes.’ Then it turned.
⋙ 🐣 What was different: There was no Fox News (though Roger Ailes worked for Nixon) and Nixon knew statecraft and, despite his MANY failings, cared about the country. Trump has no sense of honor or shame. None.

TheGuardian: ‘Trump derangement syndrome’: the week America went mad http://bit.ly/2JGfjZD
// The president kowtowed to Putin, Democrats and the media cried treason … and the Republican base stayed solid

◕ TheSternFacts, Grant Stern (2017): Trump Russia Dossier Decoded: Yes, There Really Was A Massive Oil Deal http://bit.ly/2O8U8Tx
Dossier timeline: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020955982967422976/photo/1
Rosneft privatization: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020956702718427136/photo/1
Rosneft’s privatization sale: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020956990158376960/photo/1
Trump’s American handlers: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020957352831397889/photo/1
// 3/20/2017

ABCNews [AU]: FBI documents show Trump campaign aide Carter Page was ‘collaborating’ with Russia http://ab.co/2NCATQT

⭕ 21 Jul 2018

NYT, Charles Sykes: Republicans, Don’t Just Tweet About It. Do Something. http://nyti.ms/2A0TDYv

In just a few days, President Trump undermined the global world order, weakened our alliances, cast doubt on our commitments to NATO, sided with Vladimir Putin over our own intelligence agencies and suggested that the Russians be allowed to interrogate a former ambassador to their country. Despite the attempted walkbacks, clarifications and various obfuscations about dropped contractions, the damage is real. And now Mr. Trump wants Mr. Putin to come to Washington.

The danger should be obvious. That’s why mere expressions of outrage simply are no longer adequate.

… Republican members of Congress need to act like a political party with principles rather than outsourcing their consciences to a handful of critics who are willing to say out loud what many of them are saying in private.

“The dam is finally breaking. Thankfully,” tweeted Senator Corker, who heads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. But it will break only if he and his colleagues actually do something.

Although Republican voters are sticking with the president, an analysis of results from a recent NBC News-Wall Street Journal poll found that more than half of the voters in competitive House districts prefer candidates who promise to be a check on Mr. Trump.

Congress could pass a resolution like the one co-sponsored by Senators Flake of Arizona and Chris Coons, Democrat of Delaware, reaffirming the intelligence community’s finding of Russian meddling in the 2016 election, commending the Justice Department for its investigation and making it clear that the Russian Federation should be held accountable.

As the editors of The Weekly Standard suggested last week, Congress could pass a resolution of censure for the president’s conduct and his subsequent comments. Congress can also take steps with concrete consequences:

● Pass legislation imposing new sanctions on Russia in the event of any future attacks on our democratic process. Dare President Trump to veto it. Override him if he does.

● Hold hearings that would include in-depth testimony from the national security team on the Russian attacks, putting the case on the record (again), while putting pressure on members of the administration to correct the president’s comments. Similar hearings should focus on our commitments to NATO.

● Take up legislation that would protect the special counsel, Robert Mueller, from Mr. Trump. That bill has already been approved by the Senate Judiciary Committee with bipartisan support but has been blocked by the Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.

● Pass legislation that would limit President Trump’s power to impose unilateral tariffs without congressional approval.
● Call off the lap dogs. Speaker Paul Ryan could back up his verbal support for the Mueller probe by signaling to his colleagues that they should stop their attempts to obstruct and undermine the investigation. Better yet, he could force the embarrassing Devin Nunes, Republican of California, out of the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee.

In addition, Congress could draw on the model of the post-Watergate era and adopt bipartisan legislation limiting the abuse of presidential power and strengthening public integrity and anti-corruption legislation. This would include requiring the release of the tax returns of presidential candidates, the extension of conflict-of-interest laws to the president and members of his immediate family, requiring the divestment of ongoing business investments and a ban on the acceptance of foreign emoluments.

🐣 RT @ShannomWatts Paul Erickson, boyfriend of alleged Russian agent Maria Butina, reportedly lobbied for K.T. McFarland to serve as deputy national security advisor and deputy to Michael Flynn. Both Erickson and Butina are GOP and @NRA operatives.
⋙ 💽 msnbc video https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1020726066258890756/photo/1

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The NRA & gun rights were used by Russia as the crucible to divide & diminish our country. Now-indicted Russian agent Maria Butina wrote in a conservative publication in 2015 that the GOP Elephant had more in common with the Russian Bear than the Democratic Donkey.

TheHill: GOP to White House: End summit mystery http://bit.ly/2NxVeXM

CNN: Clinton criticizes Trump, saying ‘hardly anybody who believes in freedom gets along with’ Putin http://cnn.it/2uIslB2

Clinton said “it’s no surprise” that she and Putin “did not exactly get along,” but added, “to be fair, hardly anybody who believes in freedom gets along with him because he is always trying to dominate, intimidate and direct how people and nations behave.”

Clinton also warned that the US is still “very vulnerable” to potential future election interference from Russia.

“Several of the intelligence professionals, including Dan Coats, the director of national intelligence, have said the Russians are still at it,” Clinton said. “They are still looking for ways to steal information about voter registration, for example.”

Clinton added, “there are some tech experts in Silicon Valley with whom I have met who say that maybe what they’ll do this next time is to really disrupt the actual election — shut down the servers that you send results to, interfere with the operation of voting machines because still too many of them are linked to the internet. We are still very vulnerable and we don’t have leadership from the administration.”

WaPo, Julia Ioffe: The surreal world ~ Vladimir Putin has his own version of reality. And President Trump believes it. http://wapo.st/2uFlGYz

BusinessInsider, Natasha Bertrand (2017): Memos: CEO of Russia’s state oil company offered Trump adviser, allies a cut of huge deal if sanctions were lifted http://read.bi/2O8QwB0
// 1/27/2017

Slate, Jed Shugarman (Mar): L’Affaire Kushner http://slate.me/2Luu5HL
// 3/2/2018, A series of revelations about the White House princeling have added further credence to the key claim of the Steele dossier.

The Steele dossier alleges that Russians made a deal with Carter Page in the summer of 2016 to sell 19 percent of fossil fuel giant Rosneft, a multibillion dollar deal, and secretly transfer benefits to Trump officials. The dossier alleged that Page was a campaign intermediary to meet personally with Russians, and that Igor Sechin—the CEO of Rosneft and a close Putin ally—and Page had held a “secret meeting” to discuss “the issues of future bilateral energy cooperation and prospects for an associated move to lift Ukraine-related western sanctions against Russia.” The dossier further alleged that Sechin offered Page the brokerage of a 19 percent stake in the company in exchange for the lifting of U.S. sanctions on Russia. Page has denied that this meeting with Sechin ever took place.

🐣 RT @conspirator0 This publicly available evidence lends credibility to the dossier, and the FISA warrant: Page was in Moscow the same time as 19.5% of Rosneft was sold to an undisclosed buyer, matching the quid pro quo described in the dossier.
↥ ↧
⋙ RT @conspirator0 Did Carter Page tell an audience in Moscow that he had recent contact with a Rosneft executive? Oh yes he did. #TrumpRussia (12/12/2016)
// 3/5/2017
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @aaronjmate totally – because Page met w/ a Rosneft exec — and Steele reported it after it came out publicly — that definitely should lead us to think that Trump acquired billions of dollars in the Russian state oil company.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @JamesHaning The Steele Dossier stated Putin would pay Trump 19% of ROSNEFT, Russia’s state owned oil company if he became president and removed US sanctions. After the election, 19% of ROSNEFT was sold to an ‘unknown party’ via a forgivable loan from the VTB through a Cayman Island shell co.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @s0L1dforce Carter Page met with the president of Rosneft while in Russia when he was part of Trump’s campaign. This confirms a huge part of the Steele Dossier
Carter Page sought damaging material on Clinton while in Russia from Russian intel. Direct collusion and criminal conspiracy.

NYT: Carter Page FISA Documents Are Released by Justice Department http://nyti.ms/2mETJvD

SaltLakeTrib: Ambassador Huntsman to Gehrke: Why I’m staying http://bit.ly/2LeEY1f
// Huntsman is US Ambassador to Russia

Representatives of our foreign service, civil service, military and intelligence services have neither the time nor inclination to obsess over politics, though the issues of the day are felt by all. Their focus is on the work that needs to be done to stabilize the most dangerous relationship in the world, one that encompasses nuclear weapons, fighting terrorism, stopping bloodshed in Ukraine, and seeking a settlement of the seemingly intractable Syrian crisis. Their dedication to service to their country is above politics, and it inspires me to the core. It is my standard.

I have taken an unscientific survey among my colleagues, whom you reference, about whether I should resign. The laughter told me everything I needed to know.

◕🐣 Russian players https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020854124747939841/photo/1
// RUSAL at center; source?

🐣 RT @conspirator0 This does not affect the fact that Page (a Trump associate) meeting with Rosneft exec around the time the deal was completed supports (doesn’t prove, but supports) the assertion in the dossier that the 19% stake was sold to Trump.

NYT: Russia Seeks Release of Maria Butina, Woman Accused of Being Covert Agent http://nyti.ms/2LdOoK5
// A trickle of leaks and hints from Moscow about the closed-door Helsinki talks gave the impression of Russian officials controlling the narrative on global affairs, from the Middle East to Ukraine.

Only on Friday did a spokesman for the National Security Council, Garrett Marquis, finally dismiss the idea. “The administration is not considering supporting a referendum in eastern Ukraine” he said.

🐣 RT @KBbrannen “The FBI believes that the Russian Government’s efforts are being coordinated with Page and perhaps other individuals associated with Candidate #1’s campaign.” — FBI’s application to conduct surveillance on Page in October, 2016

WaPo: Carter Page FISA Documents Are Released by Justice Department http://wapo.st/2zZ4Oky

🐣 RT @Traciemac_Bmore “While the president suggested on Saturday that Mr. Cohen’s recording may have been illegal, New York law allows one party to a conversation to tape it without the other knowing.“

TheHill: Russia urges support of alleged agent with #FreeMariaButina campaign http://bit.ly/2uEa0Fg

DailyBeast, Glenn Greenwald: Ecuador Will Imminently Withdraw Asylum for Julian Assange and Hand Him Over to the UK. What Comes Next? http://thebea.st/2Lfuv5F

WaPo: Trump’s Putin fallout: Inside the White House’s tumultuous week of walk backs http://wapo.st/2mE9m6x

ForeignAffairs, Sven Biscop: Letting Europe Go Its Own Way ~ The Case for Strategic Autonomy http://fam.ag/2uHkp2Y
// 7/6/2018

Reuters: Lavrov tells Pompeo: free Russian woman accused in U.S. of espionage http://bit.ly/2LaoRlb

🐣 Actually, there were three things Putin listed that made sense:
1) don’t weaponize space,
2) the Paris Climate Agreement is a good thing, and
3) the Iran Agreement should remain in place.
It’s good that Trump hears these things from someone he trusts, no?

TheIntercept, James Risen: The Butina Indictment Isn’t About the Sex Life of an Accused Spy. It’s About Following Russian Money in U.S. Politics. http://bit.ly/2LmPJxN

🐣 RT @GaryKasparov Yes. It’s the “autocratic method”. As soon as it’s no longer profitable to deny a crime, boast about it. Never apologize or show regret, because for a strongman that shows weakness.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump’s base is being conditioned to accept a dangerous new syllogism: It’s good for America that Trump defeated Clinton. So whoever helped Trump win — including Putin — is good. So it’s dumb to worry about whether Trump colluded with Putin to win: even if he did, that’d be fine.

⭕ 20 Jul 2018

WaPo, Vladimir Kara-Murza: What’s really behind Putin’s obsession with the Magnitsky Act http://wapo.st/2NC9Ipz

🐣 RT @krassenstein This is a Pretty big BOMBSHELL:
8 months before the 2016 election, Kremlin-Connected Alexander Torshin tweeted:
“Maria Butina is now in the United States. Writes to me that Trump (member of the NRA) is really for cooperation with Russia… This is how the map will fall.”

USAToday, Kurt Bardella: Steve Bannon is a parasite abroad in search of a new host to ruin http://usat.ly/2NwNrta

DailyBeast, Kevin Paulson: Mueller Finally Solves Mysteries About Russia’s ‘Fancy Bear’ Hackers http://thebea.st/2zYWOjj
// They may be part of the Kremlin’s best-known hacker crew. But many of their most important players were unknowns—until the Special Counsel stepped in.

🐣 RT @OMGno2trump Here’s how I see things:
– Trump knows Russia helped him win
– he knows that makes him illegitimate
– so above all else he has to deny Russia helped
– Russia has the evidence of what they did
– Trump knows if Russia leaks any of it his presidency is over
– so Putin owns trump

Politico: Accused Russian agent says she was twice denied visas to travel to U.S. http://bit.ly/2uW6AwS

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Did Putin share stolen election data with Trump? http://wapo.st/2LaXEPa

Now we need to ask a new question: Was data also at the heart of the relationship between the Trump campaign and Russia? Nearly a year ago, I speculated that the Trump campaign might have shared data with the Russian Internet Research Agency, the team that created fake personas and put up fake Facebook pages with the goal of spreading false stories about Hillary Clinton. The Russians certainly seemed to know what they were doing. On the one hand, the Russian team targeted people who they thought might be moved to support Trump by anti-immigration slogans and messages; on the other hand, they targeted black voters with messages designed to discourage them from voting at all. …

The Russian hackers, in other words, are the modern equivalents of the Watergate burglars in 1972. The only difference is the technology. The Watergate burglars broke into the Democratic campaign offices to tap phones and steal documents; the Russian hackers used malware and “cloud-based accounts” to achieve the same goal.

Did they share this information with the Trump campaign? If so, the timing is interesting. In October, a few weeks after the hackers broke into the DNC servers, New York Times journalist Maggie Haberman observed a major shift in the way the Trump campaign was spending its advertising budget. Access to Democratic Party data would, of course, have been useful in redirecting that spending. At about the same time, Trump also began using a curious set of conspiratorial slogans and messages, all lifted directly from Russian state television and websites. From Barack Obama “founded ISIS” to Hillary Clinton will start “World War III,” Trump repeated them at his rallies and on his Twitter feed. It was as if he had some reason to believe they would work.

… [S]hared data could explain why Russian state media, the Russian Internet Research Agency and the Trump campaign were all doing the same kinds of things at the same time. Shared data could also explain why Trump appeared to feel so indebted to Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, why he wanted to speak to him with no aides present, why he is so reluctant to acknowledge Russian interference. It could even explain why he talks so obsessively and inaccurately about the size of his great electoral victory: because he himself believes that the Russians helped him win. He fears that this would make his presidency illegitimate. Which it would.
⇈ ⇊
⋙ WaPo, Anne Applebaum (Oct 2016): Why is Trump suddenly talking about World War III? http://wapo.st/2O6Rxct
// 10/28/2016
… [W]e have a Republican presidential nominee who regularly repeats propaganda lines lifted directly from Russian state media. Donald Trump has declared that Hillary Clinton and Obama “founded ISIS,” a statement that comes directly from Russia’s Sputnik news agency. He spouted another debunked conspiracy theory — “the Google search engine is suppressing the bad news about Hillary Clinton” — soon after Sputnik resurrected it.

Now Trump is repeating Kiselyov’s threat, too. “You’re going to end up in World War III over Syria if we listen to Hillary Clinton,” he said this week. Just like Kiselyov, he has also noted that Russia has nukes and — perhaps if Clinton is elected — will use them: “Russia is a nuclear country, but a country where the nukes work as opposed to other countries that talk.”

WaPo, David Von Drehle: Trump is reviving the policies that once darkened the world http://wapo.st/2Nz0ydo

Lately, I can’t shake the image of a young man on a battlefield in France or the South Pacific. It’s 1944. He’s dying — one more incremental death amid the worst carnage the world has ever seen. What if I told you that experts’ estimates of the death toll in World War II range from 50 million to 85  million? …

I’ve been wondering how I could explain to such a man that many of his fellow Americans — most notably the president — have already forgotten where his war came from and why he had to fight it. America in the age of Trump is undermining, if not dismantling, the international framework put in place to prevent such a catastrophe from happening again.

… The isolationism that fueled the original America First movement died with the first bomb at Pearl Harbor. The Smoot-Hawley tariffs of 1930 had deepened the Great Depression, and that crisis fanned nationalism from Berlin to Tokyo.

So when the wasteful war finally ended, the United States led the world away from those policies and built institutions to prevent new eruptions. The United Nations was formed. The World Bank and International Monetary Fund were created. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was negotiated (and later replaced by the World Trade Organization). The seeds of the European Union were planted, and America’s commitment to stability was made concrete through the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

Because these were human institutions, not one of them has been perfect. By any historical measure, however, the postwar order has been a tremendous success, for the United States as well as its allies.

This U.S.-led network of international institutions has produced the longest period without a war between great powers since the days of the Roman Empire. We’re at 73 years and counting. Prior to its creation, Europe had plunged the world into two global wars in the span of just 25 years. This alone — peace among the great powers — has been worth every penny spent and every hour of haggling.

But peace is not the only benefit. There’s prosperity, too.

In 1945, the U.S. economy had its best year to that point, producing $228 billion in gross domestic product. Adjusted for inflation, that is $3.2 trillion in today’s dollars. The people working round-the-clock in America’s factories and dawn to dusk on its farms, straining to feed, clothe and arm the Allied war effort, might have imagined that no economy could ever run faster. And yet, during the ensuing decades of peace, the GDP of the United States has grown to roughly $20 trillion — more than 500 percent. We’ve accomplished that while also enabling the ruined nations of Europe and Asia, our partners in free trade, to achieve similar economic miracles.

Warts and all, this Pax Americana is the unparalleled gem of diplomatic history and the epitome of bipartisan achievement. President Barack Obama was widely seen as backing away from America’s lead role; now President Trump is reviving the very policies that once darkened the world. I can’t shake the image of that young man. He’s asking: How can you forget?

WaPo: Russia continues to shape narrative of Helsinki summit http://wapo.st/2NurCdR

Russia’s U.S. ambassador, Anatoly Antonov, said separately that Syria had been the primary topic in the Trump-Putin conversations, along with “the removal of the concerns that the United States has regarding the well-known claims about alleged interference in the elections.”

Administration officials have said repeatedly in the past that no U.S. or European reconstruction assistance will go to any part of Syria that remains under the expanding control of Russian-backed President Bashar al-Assad.

[A] National Security Council spokesman said: “As President Trump stated, the two sides agreed that their national security council staffs will follow up on the presidents’ meetings, and these discussions are underway. There were no commitments to undertake any concrete action, beyond agreement that both sides should continue discussions.”

The spokesman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that the NSC and its Russian counterparts were “continuing a working-level dialogue” to review suggestions by Putin for a new “cyber-group” and “restarting a counterterrorism group.” The two leaders also discussed forming groups of businesspeople and of retired diplomatic and military officials to provide ideas for cooperation, the administration has said.

Pompeo said he was “happy” that Trump wants the Russian leader to visit Washington this fall to continue their talks. “I think it’s all to the good,” he told reporters.

Russia and Iran have enabled Assad to decimate Syrian opposition forces, once backed by the United States … Withdrawal of Iranian forces “throughout the entirety of Syria” is at the top of the administration’s Iran strategy.

The Pentagon and U.S. allies in the region have pushed back at Trump’s stated desire to withdraw the relatively small U.S. military contingent currently in Syria, where it has organized and armed local proxy forces to fight against the Islamic State. Removal of U.S. forces on the ground, currently numbering about 2,200, is seen as reducing whatever leverage the United States has to press both Russia and Iran.

U.S. intelligence does not believe the Russians will deliver. “We have assessed that it’s unlikely Russia has the will or the capability to fully implement and counter Iranian decisions and influence” in Syria, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats said Thursday at the Aspen Security Forum.

On Friday, Russia’s ambassador to Iran, Levan Dzhagaryan, said that Moscow has no intention of pressing Iran to withdraw and denied any strain between them.

“Like Russia’s military presence” in Syria, [Dzhagaryan] said, Iran’s military presence there “is legal because our military presence and Iran’s is taking place at the request of the legitimate government of the Syrian Arab Republic.”

[“Five Eyes” countries] were briefed by an NSC official who reassured them that “no agreements were made” in Helsinki and no “negotiations” took place, according to one attendee.

At the NSC briefing for allies, an NSC official did not mention what Putin said Thursday was his suggestion to Trump that a referendum be held in the separatist regions of Ukraine. On Friday, State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the Trump administration is “not considering supporting a referendum.”

NYT, Natan Sharansky: The Essay That Helped Bring Down the Soviet Union http://nyti.ms/2JGLgB5
// It championed an idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones.

Fifty years ago this Sunday, this paper devoted three broadsheet pages to an essay that had been circulating secretly in the Soviet Union for weeks. The manifesto, written by Andrei Sakharov, championed an essential idea at grave risk today: that those of us lucky enough to live in open societies should fight for the freedom of those born into closed ones. This radical argument changed the course of history.

NYT: Trump Doubles Down on Russia. The Spies Shake Their Heads in Disbelief. http://nyti.ms/2JMOB1C
…
The Pentagon declared on Friday that it would provide $200 million in assistance to Ukraine to help fight the Russian-controlled separatists in the country’s east. “Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine,” Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said in a statement.

And a day earlier, the director of national intelligence, Dan Coats, pledged to offer Mr. Trump a candid assessment of the vast risks of inviting Mr. Putin to the White House.

The disconnect between the policies aimed at curbing Russia and the president’s position has never been wider, a gap that presents serious risks, current and former American officials said.

“If you are not clear about what the policy is, you are going to have an ineffective government,” said John Sipher, a 28-year veteran of the C.I.A. who served in Moscow in the 1990s and later ran the agency’s Russia program for three years. “It is worse than that. Parts of the government are working at cross-purposes to each other.”

In administration strategy documents, NATO communiqués and other official orders, Russia is called a growing threat, a potential or actual adversary intent on undermining democratic institutions of the United States and its allies. The Trump administration has imposed sanctions on Russia’s elite, and the special counsel has indicted about two dozen Russians on charges of interfering with the 2016 presidential election.

But in recent days, as Mr. Trump sustained his attacks on European allies, declared his meeting in Finland with Mr. Putin a success and signaled that he wanted a more constructive relationship with Moscow, following a policy of isolating Russia has grown more difficult, officials said.

“The combination of the president’s repeated attacks on NATO, his repeated failure to hold Putin accountable for the 2016 assault on our elections and his refusal to call Putin out regarding the current efforts to subvert the midterms all raise legitimate questions about what is going on with the president,” said David Laufman, the former chief of the Justice Department’s counterintelligence and export control section.

Adding to the difficulty of deciphering American policy toward Moscow is the fact that Mr. Trump seems to have told relatively few people about what he and Mr. Putin discussed at their one-on-one meeting in Helsinki on Monday.

Mr. Coats said he did not know what went on in the summit meeting, and other national security officials said they were in the dark as well. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said on Friday that he had spoken to the president about the meeting, but Mr. Trump has not shared his thoughts widely with the government. …

The disconnect between the White House and intelligence agencies could create a thorny situation if American spies collect information that might be embarrassing to Mr. Trump — such as Russian officials saying that Mr. Putin had extracted concessions from Mr. Trump during the Helsinki meeting. …

… Pentagon officials have said they will continue to oppose Moscow’s aggression in Europe, and the intelligence community and law enforcement agencies have vowed to continue to draw attention to continuing Russian attempts to interfere in American elections. …

Mr. Wray joked that he meets people who frequently say to him, “We are all praying for you.” He said that prompts him to think to himself: “I haven’t seen television in the last two hours. Is this all the other stuff, or did something new happen?”

BusinessInsider (2014): These Countries With Large Russian Populations Should Fear What Putin Might Do Next http://read.bi/2O6wsyR //➔ Russia wants the unification of all Russian-speakers. It wouldn’t end with Ukraine.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020596367385858048/photo/1
// 4/21/2014

◕💙💙💙💙 ActingMan, Peter Tenebrarum (2014): Mapping the Conflict in the Ukraine http://bit.ly/2uTZwkz //➔ lots of maps; pro-Russian; that said, persuasively argued
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020598519265144832/photo/1
// map: dates sections of Ukraine were annexed

◕ Vox (2014): This very funny map shows what Vladimir Putin really thinks of Europe http://bit.ly/2JG172R //➔ not so funny anymore, is it?
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020588849377038336/photo/1

🐣 RT @tribelaw If this is true, it’s unfathomably treacherous. But Trump can’t refute it without making the American interpreter available. So that plot is thickening by the hour.
⋙ HillReporter: Putin Says Trump Gave Up Crimea And Other Parts Of Ukraine During Private Summit http://bit.ly/2LD2QYy

🐣 The Michael Cohen hush money story is a distraction. The FEC will do nothing. All that matters is what Trump & Putin talked about during their two hours off-line. The GOP is breathing a collective sigh of relief that they no longer have to weigh in on whether Trump is a traitor.

CNN: Trump team worries: Could Helsinki disaster strengthen Mueller’s hand? http://cnn.it/2JGf2pj

Bloomberg: Putin Tells Diplomats He Made Trump a New Offer on Ukraine at Their Summit http://bloom.bg/2mw6f0b //➔ didn’t we fight a civil war over this concept?

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Four reasons we’ve reached a tipping point on Trump http://wapo.st/2NzDUSn

💙💙 NYMag, Andrew Sullivan: Why Trump Has Such a Soft Spot for Russia http://nym.ag/2JEiXTS https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020405132104695808/photo/1
//➔ clarifying and terrifying

This is not treason as such. It is not an attack on America, but on a version of America, the liberal democratic one, supported by one of the great parties in America. It is an attack on those institutions that Trump believes hurt America — like NATO and NAFTA and the E.U. It is a championing of an illiberal America, and a partnering with autocrats in a replay of old-school Great Power zero-sum politics, in which the strong pummel and exploit the weak. Trump is simultaneously vandalizing the West, while slowly building a strongman alliance that rejects every single Western value. And Russia — authoritarian, ethnically homogeneous, internally brutal, internationally rogue — is at its center. That’s the real story of the last week, and at this point, it isn’t even faintly news.

CNN, Chris Cillizza: The week the whispers about Trump and Russia became a roar http://cnn.it/2uCXCFG

WaPo: Inside the Putin-Netanyahu-Trump deal on Syria http://wapo.st/2JFZMJa “Trump now endorses a deal on Syria that Putin struck the week before with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.”

💙 BigThink: 34 years ago, a KGB defector chillingly predicted modern America http://bit.ly/2O5OvFA //➔ wow

Once demoralization is completed, the second stage of ideological brainwashing is “destabilization”. During this two-to-five-year period, asserted Bezmenov, what matters is the targeting of essential structural elements of a nation: economy, foreign relations, and defense systems. Basically, the subverter (Russia) would look to destabilize every one of those areas in the United States, considerably weakening it. 

The third stage would be “crisis”. It would take only up to six weeks to send a country into crisis, explained Bezmenov. The crisis would bring “a violent change of power, structure, and economy” and will be followed by the last stage, “normalization.” That’s when your country is basically taken over, living under a new ideology and reality.

TPM: INFOGRAPHIC: Alleged Russian Agent Mariia Butina’s Influence Operation http://bit.ly/2LzJGT6 https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020320968290467840/photo/1

🐣 RT @SRuhle Wow… John McLaughlin- former CIA Director on @11thHour “We were attacked & @realDonaldTrump has sided with the enemy”

NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Are Republicans Covering for Trump, or for Themselves? http://nyti.ms/2O55MPi
// If the N.R.A. was compromised by Russia, the whole party’s in trouble.

… Speaker Paul Ryan, a Russia hawk who is retiring in January, allowed his party to torpedo the House Intelligence Committee investigation into Russian interference in the election. Ryan, after all, knows full well who and what Donald Trump is. In a secretly recorded June 2016 conversation about Ukraine, obtained by The Washington Post, the House majority leader, Kevin McCarthy, said, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump.” Far from disagreeing, Ryan said, “What’s said in the family stays in the family.” If he were patriotic — or even if he just wanted to set himself up for a comeback should Trump implode — he would have stood up for the rule of law in the Russia inquiry. It’s hard to see what he got in return for choosing not to.

This week, however, a new possibility came into focus. Perhaps, rather than covering for Trump, some Republicans are covering for themselves.

If the N.R.A. as an organization turns out to be compromised, it would shake conservative politics to its foundation. And this is no longer a far-fetched possibility. “I serve on both the Intelligence Committee and the Finance Committee,” Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, told me. “So I have a chance to really look at this through the periscope of both committees. And what I have wondered about for some time is this whole issue of whether the N.R.A. is getting subverted as a Russian asset.”

This is not a question that Republicans are eager to answer. Before Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee abruptly closed their investigation into Russian election interference, committee Democrats wanted to interview both Butina and Erickson. Their Republican colleagues refused. “If there were efforts towards a back channel towards the N.R.A., they didn’t want to know,” Representative Adam Schiff, a California Democrat who is the ranking member on the committee, told me. “It was too hot to handle.”

According to an audit obtained by the Center for Responsive Politics, the N.R.A.’s overall spending increased by more than $100 million in 2016.

On Monday, a few hours after news broke of Butina’s arrest, the Treasury Department announced a new rule sparing some tax-exempt groups, including the N.R.A., from having to report their large donors to the I.R.S. Wyden called the move “truly grotesque,” saying it would “make it easier for Russian dark money” to flow into American politics. You might ask who benefits. The answer is: not just Trump.”

Newsweek: Donald Trump Will Never Meet With Vladimir Putin Alone Again, Says Lindsey Graham http://bit.ly/2JFeAIh

Politico, Blake Hounshell: Why I’m No Longer a Russiagate Skeptic http://bit.ly/2uHVLQ3
// Facts are piling up, and it’s getting harder to deny what’s staring us in the face.

WaPo: Dan Coats: Once the Senate’s ‘Mister Rogers,’ he’s now an outspoken voice of reason on Russian meddling http://wapo.st/2LznSXZ

🐣 RT @rosenbergerIm Very welcome news from DOJ. This from Rod Rosenstein is exactly right: “Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them. The American people have a right to know if foreign governments are targeting them with propaganda.”

🐣 RT @JohnJohnmintz Of course, this head of the CIA’s so-called Alec Station–according to the superb history The Looming Tower & the TV dramatization–was an author of the genius move to prevent the FBI from knowing CIA info on the al Qaeda men in the US, pre-9-11? An ass from start to finish.
🐣 RT @ScottMStedman A former CIA officer and Chief of the Bin Laden Issue Station is advocating for the murder of US citizens who he claims are organizing a “coup d’état against the legitimately elected Trump government”
// attached Tweet now unavailable

⭕ 19 Jul 2018

ForeignAffairs (Jul): The Next Cyber Battleground http://fam.ag/2NwoApx
// 7/19/2018, Defending the U.S. Power Grid From Russian Hackers

CFR, Philip Gordon and Ivo Dalder: Trump’s Biggest Gift to Putin http://on.cfr.org/2LCc5vn
// The totality of President Donald Trump’s statements and actions against NATO makes clear that the United States cannot be relied on to come to the defense of its European allies.

USAToday, Jordan Libowitz: Maria Butina is the ‘spy’ the Trump administration asked for http://usat.ly/2uXCGIC

Due to Trump’s astonishing reversals regarding government transparency, we’ve arrived at an ethical morass that must look like a neon “Open for Business” sign to those who want to influence our government. And if things don’t change, we should expect to see more cases like this one.

Politico: White House morale tanks amid Helsinki fallout http://bit.ly/2LDLgTZ
// Staffers are considering accelerating their departures in the wake of the president’s equivocations on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

TheAtlantic: The World Burns. Sarah Sanders Says This Is Fine. http://bit.ly/2uUWnRm
// The White House press secretary has set a new precedent: Partisanship over patriotism. Victory over truth.

Here was the White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders responding to a question from The New York Times’ Maggie Haberman about the notion that Putin had raised of a group of U.S. officials, including the former ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, being interrogated by Russia: “The president is going to meet with his team, and we’ll let you know when we have an announcement on that.”

Here, on the other hand, was Heather Nauert, the State Department spokesperson, on the same issue: “The overall assertions are absolutely absurd—the fact that they want to question 11 American citizens and the assertions that the Russian government is making about those American citizens. We do not stand by those assertions.”

Politico: White House morale tanks amid Helsinki fallout http://bit.ly/2LDLgTZ
// Staffers are considering accelerating their departures in the wake of the president’s equivocations on Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

TheAtlantic, McKay Coppins: A New Talking Point From the Pro-Trump Fringe http://bit.ly/2LdISHF “If Russia assists MAGA Candidates on the internet in this year’s midterms, that’s not the end of the world.”
// A new line of punditry is bubbling up among the president’s followers online: It was a positive thing that the Russians hacked the 2016 election.

TaskAndPurpose, Katherine Voyles: An Alarming Guide To The National Security Dangers Of Social Media http://bit.ly/2LztNfF

Clint Watts’s engaging new book, Messing With the Enemy: Surviving in a Social Media World of Hackers, Terrorists, Russians, and Fake News, is about forms of engagement. Watts’s experiences as an Army officer and FBI agent are important to his background. He begins the book with his interactions, through his blog and Twitter feed, with an American-born member of al-Shabaab, Omar Hammami, and then shares his observations about the Syrian Electronic Army’s insistent Twitter presence before examining Russian influence operations in the 2016 election.

WaPo: Justice Department plans to alert public to foreign operations targeting U.S. democracy http://wapo.st/2uMlpSN

🐣 RT @DeadlineWH “It’s remarkable that you see all of these senior figures in the administration, the DNI, the FBI director, who come out publicly and don’t even try to pretend that everything is okay anymore … ” – @matthewamiller w/ @NicolleDWallace
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1020079194401886208

🐣 RT @PhilipRucker Inside White House, there’s anger and frustration with Dan Coats over @mitchellreports interview. “Coats has gone rogue,” a senior official told me. Trump, who nurses grudges, is unlikely to be pleased with the headlines about his DNI’s performance.
WaPo: ‘That’s going to be special’: Tensions rise as Trump invites Putin to Washington http://wapo.st/2NvAuQa
[Also:] 🐣 RT @DanRather I have never seen such a civil war within the Executive Branch. President Trump is at war, not only with the truth, but many people in government.

🐣 Whoopi Goldberg: “Listen, I’m 62 years old. There have been a lot of people in office that I didn’t agree with. But I have never, ever seen anything like this. I have never seen anybody whip up such hate. I have never seen anybody be so dismissive.” — Whoopi Goldberg, to Jeanine Pirro re: Trump

🌀 Spinner Confusion/Collusion https://twitter.com/BFlyReport/status/1019240867117355008/photo/1

🐣 RT @TheLoyalO Sally Yates explains to @maddow why Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein is so important. We agree, which is why our coalition of pro-democracy groups has set his firing as a red line that Trump can’t cross without triggering massive civic protest. 1/2 MSNBC
💽 Video: https://twitter.com/TheLoyalO/status/1020142995339870213/photo/1

🐣 RT @AspenSecurity I’m concerned about a cyber 9/11…you have to try to anticipate what are the capabilities that our adversaries now have if they wanted to use them.”—DNI Daniel Coats
Tweet link: https://twitter.com/AspenSecurity/status/1020038510978510850

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance The American 5th Column: League Of The South Reaches Out To ‘Russian Friends’ | Right Wing Watch
⋙ RightWingWatch: League Of The South Reaches Out To ‘Russian Friends’ http://bit.ly/2msRDPb

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] Another page from Kremlin info wars playbook. When in trouble, instill fear (calamitous messages) into the audience, create perception of a dangerous alternative (Like nuclear war) “go with me or there will be War, awful things will happen”
⋙ WaPo: Trump says news media wants to see a confrontation with Russia, even war http://wapo.st/2Lyh1he

🐣 RT @JoeNBC My Latest: “Are today’s Republicans so tribal as to blindly endorse a foreign policy warped by President Trump’s obvious allegiance to a former KGB chief who controls Russia through repression, bribery and political assassination?”
WaPo, Joe Scarborough: Republicans should be repulsed http://wapo.st/2mx5Evm

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: “No Way to Run a Superpower”: the Trump-Putin Summit and the Death of American Foreign Policy http://bit.ly/2zVeix5
// Days after Helsinki, the Russians claim big “agreements” were reached, and Washington is silent.
⋙ See under Entire Articles: NYkr Glasser Superpower 7-19-2018

◕ CBS News poll: Most Americans disapprove of Trump’s handling of Putin summit http://cbsn.ws/2uOSkWS
CBS News poll: Trump’s Handling of Summit with Putin http://cbsn.ws/2uOSkWS https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020141413726646272/photo/1
CBS News poll: Do you believe US Intelligence Agencies on Russia interference? http://cbsn.ws/2uOSkWS https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020141615762067456/photo/1
CBS News poll: Is Trump’s approach to Russia … ? http://cbsn.ws/2uOSkWS https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020141803020996608/photo/1
CBS News poll: Concerned about Russia Interference in 2018 Elections http://cbsn.ws/2uOSkWS https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020142022810898439/photo/1

◕🐣 Economist/YouGov Poll (Mar): Russia’s impact on the election seen through partisan eyes http://bit.ly/2L7YXyl //➔ Trump’s disinformation campaign against the fact that Russia hacked the 2016 has been effective with Republicans @Lawrence
Chart: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1020136250727182336/photo/1
// Russia hacked R 26, D 83; Fake news R 29, D 82

NYT, Rep Will Hurd (R-TX): Trump Is Being Manipulated by Putin. What Should We Do? http://nyti.ms/2JFpb5J //➔ Rep Hurd is ex-CIA
// Lawmakers must keep the American people informed of the current danger, writes a Republican congressman from Texas.

NYT (2017): Top Russian Official Tried to Broker ‘Backdoor’ Meeting Between Trump and Putin http://nyti.ms/2zWBNGc
// 11/17/2017

🐣 RT @BillKristol Having spoken to mid-level government officials, career and political, here at #AspenSecurity, I’m not inclined to urge the senior national security officials to resign. They seem to be running parts of the government in responsible ways and minimizing damage from Trump. For now.

🐣 RT @US_Stratcom “Twenty years from now, if we’re not careful, somebody could catch up to us. I believe we can never let that happen, so we have to stay ahead of technology.” – #USSTRATCOM Gen Hyten #GoFast #Fusion
⋙ Airman: Speed and Fusion ~ Air Force Research Laboratory and DARPA expand the realm of possibility in developing and countering new technology http://bit.ly/2uRh6FE
// 6/15/2018
↥ ↧ 🐣 Russian media has had quite a day with war imagery #psyops
⋙ RT: The Soviet’s RDS-220 hydrogen bomb – nicknamed Tsar Bomba – is considered the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created. Its test on 30 October 1961 remains the most powerful explosive ever detonated.
💽 https://twitter.com/RT_com/status/1020111045715783681/photo/1

TheGuardian: Accused spy Maria Butina met with Russia’s former US ambassador http://bit.ly/2mwlUgc
// Photos emerge of Butina with Sergey Kislyak, whose contacts with Trump advisers have raised conserns

🐣 RT @KenDilanianNBC “Trump’s advisers were in an uproar over Coats’s interview in Aspen, Colo. They said the optics were especially damaging, noting that at moments Coats appeared to be laughing at the president, playing to his audience of the intellectual elite…”
⋙ WaPo: ‘That’s going to be special’: Tensions rise as Trump invites Putin to Washington http://wapo.st/2L7T981

🐣 RT @MuellerSheWrote Whether this is true or not isn’t the point. The problem is that by agreeing to have no US diplomats or press in the room, @realDonaldTrump will not be able to prove he DIDN’T say this. And with his track record of truth telling, who’s going to believe him? #TRE45ON
⋙🐣 RT @RVAwonk wow. Per @bpolitics, Putin told Russian diplomats he & Trump discussed the possibility of holding a referendum in Russian separatist-controlled Eastern Ukraine (which would be used to justify Russia’s illegal invasion), but Trump asked him not to disclose the plan publicly.
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1020097009796231168/photo/1
https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1020097009796231168/photo/2

🐣 RT @MollyJongFast I’d delete this one little buddy, @torshin_ru
https://twitter.com/MollyJongFast/status/1020101912434130944/photo/1
// Aleksandr Torshin re: Maria Butina: “D. Trump – is really for cooperation with Russia”

🐣 RT @SethAbramson (UPDATE) A reader notes that the referendum Trump is considering backing wouldn’t be for Crimea, as Putin already held his sham vote there, but even MORE of Ukraine (areas where there is conflict in Eastern Ukraine). So all this is WORSE than my initial post indicated—by a *lot*.

🐣 RT @TrickFreee Three cybersecurity officials are reportedly leaving their posts at the FBI amid concerns about cyber attacks from abroad and relentless disagreements with Trump.
⋙ NYPost: 3 top FBI cybersecurity officials are reportedly retiring http://nyp.st/2NvcuN4

CNN: Rosenstein: Russian attack on 2016 election ‘one tree in a growing forest’ of cyber activity http://cnn.it/2JD3GSZ

DeadlineWhiteHouse: Watch as DNI Dan Coats learns from @mitchellreports that Putin is set to visit DC in the fall
💽 Video: https://twitter.com/DeadlineWH/status/1020046330968801288/photo/1

BusinessInsider: LARRY SUMMERS: Trump just took another step toward turning the US into a ‘banana republic’ http://read.bi/2LAIm2j

NYT: Trump to Invite Putin to Washington as Top Advisers Seek Details of Their Summit Talks http://nyti.ms/2LqtDKy

🐣 RT @McFaul 98-0. Bipartisanship is not dead yet in the US Senate. Thank you all for your support.

ABCNews: Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats informed on stage at Aspen Security Forum that the Trump administration has invited Vladimir Putin to the White House.”Say that again,” he responds. https://abcn.ws/2Nu7fxf 

🐣 RT @TheLoyalO NEW from Deputy AG Rosenstein: The DOJ plans to start alerting the public if it discovers foreign hacking & disinformation operations targeting U.S. democracy. “Exposing schemes to the public is an important way to neutralize them.” #AspenSecurity

🐣 RT @BetsyWoodruff Standing ovation at Aspen when Rod Rosenstein comes out to give his cybersecurity speech

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Sources close to Trump tell Axios that they’re already speculating about whether Trump ends up firing DNI Dan Coats. Per a source with knowledge, Trump has never had much affection for Coats.
⋙ Axios: Dan Coats says he wishes Trump took a different approach in Helsinki http://bit.ly/2JIBRsQ

🐣 RT @RobbyMook If Trump is effectively a Russian asset, at what point do the staff who support him become accessories to Russia’s plan, too?
⋙ 🐣 RT @PressSec [✅️] In Helsinki, @POTUS agreed to ongoing working level dialogue between the two security council staffs. President Trump asked @Ambjohnbolton to invite President Putin to Washington in the fall and those discussions are already underway.

🐣 RT @jimsciutto Breaking: Senate votes 98-0 to oppose Putin proposal to interrogate US officials even after POTUS reversed himself on considering the proposal.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Jeff Flake: “We saw earlier this week in Helsinki what was truly an Orwellian moment. What we saw … is what happens when you wage war on objective reality for nearly two solid years, calling real things fake and fake things real.” (via ABC) [link]

Reuters: Putin warns NATO against closer ties with Ukraine and Georgia Reuters http://reut.rs/2Loy2xD

Russian President Vladimir Putin on Thursday warned NATO against cultivating closer ties with Ukraine and Georgia, saying such a policy was irresponsible and would have unspecified consequences for the alliance.

The issue has been a source of anger for Russia — which shares a border with both countries and does not want to see them join what it regards as a hostile military bloc — since 2008 when NATO leaders promised Ukraine and Georgia they would one day join the alliance.

Putin, speaking to Russian diplomats from around the world assembled in Moscow, said on Thursday there was a need to restore trust in Europe and spoke out against what he said was NATO’s attempts to deploy new bases and military infrastructure near Russia’s borders.

“We will respond appropriately to such aggressive steps, which pose a direct threat to Russia,” said Putin.

“Our colleagues, who are trying to aggravate the situation, seeking to include, among others, Ukraine and Georgia in the orbit of the alliance, should think about the possible consequences of such an irresponsible policy.”

The Russian leader said he had discussed the matter with U.S. President Donald Trump at a summit in Helsinki on Monday.

NATO leaders discussed ties with Ukraine and Georgia – both former Soviet republics once ruled from Moscow — at their summit in Brussels earlier this month.

Prominent politicians in both countries are keen to join the Western military alliance, but have seen their chances of joining hampered by Russian territorial incursions.

Under NATO rules, countries with territorial conflicts cannot join NATO.

VOA: Russia Tests New Nuclear Weapons After Summit With Trump http://bit.ly/2Lpbi0k

ForeignAffairs, Rob Knake: The Next Cyber Battleground ~ Defending the U.S. Power Grid From Russian Hackers http://fam.ag/2NwoApx

🐣 RT @mitchellreports .@jmclaughlinSAIS: You are dealing with adversaries who are very well coordinated – if you don’t know what you want, they are going to get what they want. #AMR

🐣 Interesting: Russian media seems to be featuring quite a lot of missile and bomb imagery today. Couldn’t help but notice.
⋙ Tweet link: https://twitter.com/mod_russia/status/1019911273914478592

🐣 RT @EmmaKennedy So in the past few days, @GOP have blocked a rebuke of Donald, blocked funding to safeguard elections, blocked any attempt to find out what Donald agreed with Putin. They want Putin to meddle in the midterms. Only explanation.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Kirstjen Nielsen says at #AspenSecurity that she does not think there is evidence that Russia targeted US election infrastructure in 2016 with the specific intent of helping Trump win. (Putin said the other day that he wanted Trump to win.)

WaPo: Outrage erupts over Trump-Putin ‘conversation’ about letting Russia interrogate ex-U.S. diplomat Michael McFaul http://wapo.st/2mv8pNq

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson The desperation caucus is out in force, arguing that holding Trump to account results in civil war or holding Russia to account results in nuclear war. Both of these arguments are course of risible, but also quite telling. The feel it closing in now, hard.

🐣 RT @tribelaw We know Trump burned an under-cover Israeli source in his unrecorded (by our side) Oval Office meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak. We need to know whom Trump might’ve burned in his infamous 1-on-1 Helsinki meeting with Putin. @MalcolmNance

🐣 RT @AaronBlake Chris Wray on whether he has considered resigning: “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I’ll just leave it at that.” (NBC)

🐣 RT @davidfrum And within 9 months of that briefing, quite a number of senior Russian officials suddenly died ⋙ CNN: Nine months, nine prominent Russians dead http://cnn.it/2L9gwyb
// 8/24/2017
⋙ 🐣 RT @eorden Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election. [link]

🐣 RT @real The Fake News Media wants so badly to see a major confrontation with Russia, even a confrontation that could lead to war. They are pushing so recklessly hard and hate the fact that I’ll probably have a good relationship with Putin. We are doing MUCH better than any other country!

🐣 RT @BFriedmannDC Michael Scheuer, the former senior CIA official and NYT bestselling author of Imperial Hubris, is calling for Trump supporters to kill Trump opponents
https://twitter.com/BFriedmanDC/status/1018852773448900609/photo/1
⋙ Non-Intervention.com: A republican citizenry’s greatest, last-resort duty is to kill those seeking to impose tyranny http://bit.ly/2LvAO0Y
// 7/14/2018, As this week’s end, it seems likely that it is quite near time for killing those involved in the multiple and clearly delineated attempts to stage a coup d’état against the legitimately elected Trump government and thereby kill our republic.

🐣 RT @DavMicRot Serious people need to take Republican POTUS Trump SERIOUSLY & LITERALLY. He wants US security & economic alliance with Russia. He wants to sever US security & economy alliance with Canada & Europe. This would make US much less safe and prosperous. We need to debate and address.
↥ ↧
TIME’s new cover: Trump wanted a summit with Putin. He got way more than he bargained for https://ti.me/2zRJayx 
🌀 Trump/Putin: https://twitter.com/TIME/status/1019905190370119680/photo/1

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson NatGeo Narrator voice: “Notice the behavior of the feral Trump as its pursuers close in: manic tweeting, ludicrously obvious lies, a panicked flight back to the safety of it’s den at Fox News, and finally, gorging itself on KFC. Thus is the circle of life.”
⋙ Stay. On. Target. He’s tweeting out canards, snares, and media bait to try to make the press cover his distractions, not his ever-deepening Russia crisis. The press should decline the bait, stay rigidly focused on covering the biggest political story in modern media history.

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson NatGeo Narrator voice: “Notice the behavior of the feral Trump as its pursuers close in: manic tweeting, ludicrously obvious lies, a panicked flight back to the safety of it’s den at Fox News, and finally, gorging itself on KFC. Thus is the circle of life.”

🐣 RT @real The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear……..
⋙ …proliferation, cyber attacks, trade, Ukraine, Middle East peace, North Korea and more. There are many answers, some easy and some hard, to these problems…but they can ALL be solved!

FoxNews: Trump was briefed about Putin’s meddling role 2 weeks before taking office: report http://fxn.ws/2zTz0O2

🌀We know the truth https://twitter.com/NBCBlacklist/status/1019601458491207680/photo/1
// #TheBlacklist; no more lies

⭕ 18 Jul 2018

TheGuardian, Nouriel Roubini: Donald Trump may kill the global recovery http://bit.ly/2mAEgwh
// The economy is being buffeted by growing concerns over the US president’s trade war

🐣 RT @JoshMarshall At beginning of Presidency Trump received deep detail of Russian operation from intel brief, apparently including human intel very close to Putin. Who’s confident Trump didn’t share that with Putin either in Hamburg of Helsinki?

Brookings, John R Allen: Chaos from order http://brook.gs/2zQVsaB
// President, Brookings Institution

WaPo, Max Boot: The stench from Trump’s execrable performance grows ever more putrid http://wapo.st/2LsxTGe

Politico: States slow to prepare for hacking threats http://bit.ly/2mvhJBa
// Most states aren’t planning to use federal funds to make major election upgrades before November.

🐣 RT @JillWineBanks This makes it even more inexplicable why 45 continues to defend and protect Putin instead of America. It proves he’s aiding and abetting an enemy of the US and democracy and violating his oath of office. [link TheHill]

🐣 RT @tribelaw If true, this shows that Donald Trump obstructed justice throughout 2017 and 2018 as an accessory after the fact to the crimes charged in the Mueller indictment of the dozen officers of Russia’s GRU, Putin’s military intelligence arm. The “high Crimes” seem to be piling up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tribelaw Here’s the NYT story exposing Trump as someone who tried, from 2 weeks before taking the oath of office, to deceive the entire country about how Putin personally helped him win by criminal hacking [link]

🐣 To .@ManchuCandidate, Guardian/Observer’s @CaroleCadwalladr has done yeoman’s work, exposing the #BrexitHeist almost single-handedly, including ties to #TrumpRussia. Everyone should read this and weep: NYRB, Nick Cohen: How the BBC Lost the Plot on Brexit http://bit.ly/2LmkVtP

CNBC: Mark Cuban says studying philosophy may soon be worth more than computer science—here’s why. http://cnb.cx/2Nt1zUi It has to do with A.I.

FreeBeacon: State Department spokesperson Heather Nauert said Wednesday that Russian requests to question former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul were “absolutely absurd.” http://bit.ly/2L7I7jm

When asked if Russian investigators would be assisted by the United States in their efforts to interview McFaul and others, Nauert said she couldn’t speak to White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ earlier comments on the matter.

“Well, I can’t answer on behalf of the White House with regard to that,” Nauert said. “But what I can tell you is that the overall assertions that have come out of the Russian government are absolutely absurd. The fact that they want to question 11 American citizens and the assertions that the Russian government is making about those American citizens, we do not stand by those assertions that the Russian government makes.”

🐣 “In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility–I welcome it.” – JFK, Inaugural Address, January 20, 1961 http://bit.ly/2LvrgTu
I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it–and the glow from that fire can truly light the world.

President John F. Kennedy’s Speech Announcing the Quarantine Against Cuba, October 22, 1962 http://bit.ly/2ux5hFq at a time of danger, maybe worth a read

🐣🔥‼️ Trying to see the big picture, I’ve got to think that the intelligence community finally after Helsinki &, realizing the GOP will not stand up, has pulled out all the stops w the NYT 🔥bombshell🔥 http://nyti.ms/2zR1IPh They believe the country is at an “hour of maximum danger”

WaPo: Putin’s push to interrogate U.S. officials Russia accuses of crimes, explained http://wapo.st/2zROPEP

WaPo: As Russians describe ‘verbal agreements’ at summit, U.S. officials scramble for clarity http://wapo.st/2NrOGcZ

Trump continued to praise his private meeting with Putin and an expanded lunch with aides as a “tremendous success” and tweeted a promise of “big results,” but State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said the administration was “assessing . . . three takeaways,” which she characterized as “modest.” They were the establishment of separate working groups of business leaders and foreign policy experts, and follow-up meetings between the national security council staffs of both countries.

🐣 “For there is nothing hidden that will not be disclosed, and nothing concealed that will not be known or brought out into the open.” – Robert Mueller (Actually, Mark 8:27)

🐣 The RNC was hacked, too. Page 13 at the bottom of the last Mueller indictment, if I’m not mistaken. They either did nothing with it or are holding it as Kompromat.

🐣 RT @RichardHaass It has been an awful week for the US. @realDonaldTrump did real damage to foreign relationships that have served this country well. Serious people are raising serious questions as to his motives. And too many who know better have said nothing or, worse yet, rushed to defend him.

🐣 Russia is a foreign country. Not only that, it is an adversary. It is illegal for foreign countries to meddle in US elections. There are walls other than physical ones that define sovereignty. #AmericaFirst
⋙ 🐣 Citibank can contribute to campaigns because “corporations are people” & speech is money“ acc to two recent SCOTUS decisions, Buckley v Valeo & Citizens United v FEC, both of which I hope are overturned someday; but separate from the sovereignty issue, really.

💙 Buzzfeed, Ali Watkins (2017): The Strange Case Of The Russian Diplomat Who Got His Head Smashed In On Election Day http://bit.ly/2Ns4vAr
// 2/15/2017, How did Sergei Krivov die? And why did the NYPD close the case?

🐣 RT @McFaul I hope the White House corrects the record and denounces in categorical terms this ridiculous request from Putin. Not doing so creates moral equivalency between a legitimacy US indictment of Russian intelligence officers and a crazy, completely fabricated story invented by Putin

WaPo, Michael McFaul (May): The smear that killed the ‘reset’: Putin needed an American enemy. He picked me. http://wapo.st/2uxEokN
// 5/11/2018

🐣 Doesn’t this mean they will indict Putin? Can they try him like they did Milošević in the International Criminal Court? That would be cool.

💙💙💙💙 NYT: From the Start, Trump Has Muddied a Clear Message: Putin Interfered http://nyti.ms/2zR1IPh
Text: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019770370067521536/photo/1
⋙ See under Entire Articles as: NYT Trump Knew Putin Interfered 7-18-2018

Two weeks before his inauguration, Donald J. Trump was shown highly classified intelligence indicating that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia had personally ordered complex cyberattacks to sway the 2016 American election.

The evidence included texts and emails from Russian military officers and information gleaned from a top-secret source close to Mr. Putin, who had described to the C.I.A. how the Kremlin decided to execute its campaign of hacking and disinformation.

Mr. Trump sounded grudgingly convinced, according to several people who attended the intelligence briefing. But ever since, Mr. Trump has tried to cloud the very clear findings that he received on Jan. 6, 2017, which his own intelligence leaders have unanimously endorsed.

The shifting narrative underscores the degree to which Mr. Trump regularly picks and chooses intelligence to suit his political purposes. That has never been more clear than this week.
– – – – – – – – – – –
The Jan. 6, 2017, meeting, held at Trump Tower, was a prime example. He was briefed that day by John O. Brennan, the C.I.A. director; James R. Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence; and Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and the commander of United States Cyber Command.

The F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, was also there; after the formal briefing, he privately told Mr. Trump about the “Steele dossier.” That report, by a former British intelligence officer, included uncorroborated salacious stories of Mr. Trump’s activities during a visit to Moscow, which he denied.

According to nearly a dozen people who either attended the meeting with the president-elect or were later briefed on it, the four primary intelligence officials described the streams of intelligence that convinced them of Mr. Putin’s role in the election interference.

They included stolen emails from the Democratic National Committee that had been seen in Russian military intelligence networks by the British, Dutch and American intelligence services. Officers of the Russian intelligence agency formerly known as the G.R.U. had plotted with groups like WikiLeaks on how to release the email stash.

And ultimately, several human sources had confirmed Mr. Putin’s own role.

Mr. Trump and his aides were also given other reasons during the briefing to believe that Russia was behind the D.N.C. hacks. … [more at separate doc and link]

🐣 Assuming we come through this nightmare intact, I swear I will never ever again take our freedoms or our civic institutions for granted. It will take a decade to fix the wreckage of Trump but we can and must do it. 🇺🇸

🐣 It IS 🧙‍♀️Witch Hunt🧙‍♀️ ~ one that’s already indicted 26 Russian Witches. And that’s not counting the Americans. @Lawrence

🐣 🕯Vigils🕯in highly visible locations are a great idea for the hot days of summer. My heart is with you all!

🐣 RT @JohnKerry The administration needs to make it unequivocally clear that in a million years this wouldn’t be under consideration, period. Full stop. Not something that should require a half second of consultation. Dangerous.

🐣 To @SecPompeo What about Ambassador @McFaul? Please ~ issue a statement immediately. This is alarming. The implications are enormous.

🐣 So Russia involved in blocking @MittRomney from @StateDept acc to @maddow wow

🐣 RT @atrupal TRUMP on MERKEL: “She allowed millions of people to come in & when they came into Germany they passed everywhere else & they went to other countries. Obviously it’s hurt Angela, I don’t want to say who is better [between her & Putin] but she’s been very badly hurt by immigration”

BuzzFeed: The Democrats Thought In Mid 2016 That Their Computers Were Free Of Russian Hackers. They Were Wrong. http://bit.ly/2zRYHOP
// Russians hacked a Democratic Party computer in September 2016, probably looking for details on likely Clinton voters.

🐣 RT @GeneralClark As former NATO Allied Commander, I know NATO’s Article 5 exists to PREVENT war. That’s why it’s only been invoked once – after 9/11. Montenegro is still sending troops to Afghanistan, for us. Worrying to hear Trump use Russian talking points with Tucker Carlson, about Montenegro.

🐣 RT @KenDelanianNBC FBI Director Wray: The Russians are continuing to exert malign influence on the American political system. #AspenSecurity

🐣 RT @SamanthaJPower Let’s recall why Putin began making outrageous, false accusations against @McFaul: Mike stood up for human rights and against Russian oppression. That terrified Putin. The fact that @realDonaldTrump won’t stand up for an American patriot is a travesty

🐣 RT @jimsciutto That’s probably even lower on our list” says FBI Director Wray of Putin request to interview former US Ambassador @McFaul which WH says Trump is considering.
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @mitchellreports .@LesterHoltNBC asks FBI Director if he could imagine accepting Putin offer to have FBI go to Moscow says wryly it’s not high on his list of investigative techniques

💙💙 ForeignAffairs, Michael McFaul: The U.S. Needs a Russia Strategy Now More Than Ever ~ The Real Lesson From the Helsinki Summit http://fam.ag/2Ly8r1W
Text: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019731728678735874/photo/1

Most disturbing, it appears that Trump and Putin discussed the possibility of having Mueller and his investigative team interview Russian military intelligence officers indicted for conspiracy against the United States in return for Russian legal authorities having the opportunity to interview U.S. government and former government officials (including the author) regarding alleged money laundering … To add to the craziness of this story, Putin suggested that Browder used some of these alleged laundered funds to finance the Clinton campaign in 2016.

There is no equivalency whatsoever between Russian government operatives violating U.S. sovereignty during a presidential election and the completely invented Russian allegations against Browder and U.S. government officials who supposedly helped him. Putin appears to have lied to Trump about Browder and his alleged confederates as a way to silence Putin critics. Yet at the Helsinki press conference, Trump called this outrageous Putin proposal “an interesting idea.” And who knows what other “interesting ideas” were discussed behind closed doors when the two presidents met one-on-one. Already, the Russian government is affirming its commitments to implement the security agreements negotiated in Helsinki, yet Americans have yet to learn what security agreements were discussed.

🐣 RT @JohnWDean That the White House would make such a statement, and even worse that Trump is considering it, is HORRIFYING. Congress should pass legislation stating all USA ambassadors retain their diplomatic immunity for their time in service FOREVER! They’re untouchable by other governments!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JeffZeleny An extraordinary disconnect between White House and State Department: .@PressSec says @realDonaldTrump is entertaining proposal from Putin to let Russia question former U.S. ambassador to Moscow, Michael McFaul. State calls idea “absurd.”

VanityFair, Tina Nguyen: Putin’s “Incredible Offer” to Trump Is Even Worse Than We Feared http://bit.ly/2mr85PV
// The White House is considering handing over American diplomats to Putin for questioning.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Undoing the Magnitsky Act sanctions is among Putin’s top priorities. It explains the Trump Tower meeting, the dinner where he & Trump discussed “adoptions” (sanctions) and the public remarks re: Browder. Seems like it’s all been leading up to this moment.
⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Putin’s Big Tell? http://theatln.tc/2L5WtRg
// Putin’s decision to reference William Browder at the post-summit press conference provided even more evidence that a 2016 meeting between Trump-campaign officials and a Russian lawyer was blessed by the Kremlin.
⋙ 🐣 RT @KatieTur Don’t let this question by @maggieNYT go unnoticed. Sanders says Trump will discuss allowing Russia to question American citizens:
Text: https://twitter.com/KatyTurNBC/status/1019661925850984448/photo/1

🐣 RT @waltshaub This is stunning, outrageous and very very dangerous. The thought that the president would commit to even considering turning a former US Ambassador over to Russia — in connection with his federal service, no less — is amazing even for this administration. Where is Congress?!
⋙ 🐣 RT @JohnHarwood WH press sec Sanders acknowledged that Putin talked to Trump about his interest in prosecuting financier Bill Browder and former US Michael McFaul. she declined to rule out US cooperation in that effort, saying Trump would consult his national security team

RawStory: ‘He’s going to sell out any American’: MSNBC panel rails against Trump ‘stabbing’ ambassadors ‘in the back’ http://bit.ly/2L5bz9I

💙💙 DailyBeast: U.S. Officials ‘at a Fucking Loss’ Over Latest Russia Sell Out http://thebea.st/2O1UA63
// The White House’s refusal to rule out turning over former U.S. ambassador Michael McFaul to the Russians has current and former State Department officials seeing red.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 Trump effectively walks back his walk back.

🐣 RT @GenMhayden OMG. OMG. OMG.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BradMossEsq This literally contradicts exactly what the Director of National Intelligence just said. Point blank.
⋙⋙ RT @W7VOA Asked if #Russia is still targeting the US, @POTUS shakes his head and says “no.”

‼️🐣 RT @ryanobles NEW: During WH Cabinet meeting pooler @CeciliaVega asks POTUS “Is Russia still targeting the US?” to which the President answers “No”.

MotherJones: Trump Has Dreams of a New Energy Boom That Even the Fossil Fuel Industry Thinks Is Too Extreme http://bit.ly/2LsMP7e
//. “We’re giving away leases for pennies on the dollar.”

WaPo: Trump’s intel chiefs fight Russia’s election interference — with or without him http://wapo.st/2LiRHPA

🐣 RT @SenJohnMcCain The people of #Montenegro boldly withstood pressure from #Putin’s Russia to embrace democracy. The Senate voted 97-2 supporting its accession to #NATO. By attacking Montenegro & questioning our obligations under NATO, the President is playing right into Putin’s hands.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @SenJohnMcCain #Putin will do anything to shatter the transatlantic alliance. In 2016, he nearly succeeded in overthrowing #Montenegro’s democratically elected government & murdering its prime minister in order to prevent it from joining #NATO. Read more:
⋙ USAToday, John McCain (2017): McCain flashback: Russia threat is dead serious. Montenegro coup and murder plot proves it http://usat.ly/2JzBYqq
// 6/29/2017

🐣 RT @SethAbramson The Washington Post agrees with my assessment from yesterday that Erickson is likely cooperating with federal law enforcement (and is unnamed for that reason). I don’t think anyone is fully appreciating how deep in the sh*t the NRA, GOP leadership, and Trump family are right now.

◕💙💙 Project-Syndicate, Carl Bildt: The End of NATO? http://bit.ly/2NUgJmF
// US President Donald Trump escalated his war on US alliances and multilateral institutions at NATO’s summit in Brussels and then at his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki. There is now little doubt that Trump’s strange affinity for Putin represents a serious threat to European security.

More fundamentally, Trump’s complaint that the US is shouldering an unfair share of the burden for NATO’s collective defense is dubious. While the US military budget equals roughly 72% of combined defense spending by all NATO member states, roughly three-quarters of US military spending is directed toward regions other than Europe. Around half of the US defense budget is spent on maintaining a presence in the Pacific, and another quarter is spent on operations in the Middle East, strategic nuclear command and control, and other areas.

[T]he US has long used Europe as a staging ground for deploying forces elsewhere. And the early-warning and surveillance facilities that the US maintains in the United Kingdom and Norway are there to defend the continental US, not Europe.

The fact is that total European defense spending is around twice what the US spends on European security, and also roughly twice what Russia spends on defense, according to estimates produced at the US National Defense University.

… Although the US Army recently rotated heavy brigades through Europe for military exercises, its permanently stationed troops are equipped only for limited interventions.

This is why NATO must continue to improve its defense capacity in Europe. At a minimum, Europe needs more military forces, and those forces need to be equipped for rapid deployment to critical areas. The new mobility command that is being established in Germany is a promising first step.

Carl Bildt was Sweden’s foreign minister from 2006 to October 2014 and Prime Minister from 1991 to 1994, when he negotiated Sweden’s EU accession. A renowned international diplomat, he served as EU Special Envoy to the Former Yugoslavia, High Representative for Bosnia and Herzegovina, UN Special Envoy to the Balkans, and Co-Chairman of the Dayton Peace Conference. He is Chair of the Global Commission on Internet Governance and a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Europe.

🐣 RT @NateSilver538 It wasn’t even like he was asked about this case specifically. Asked an open-ended question about a *single* case that he thought should be overturned, Kavanaugh named the decision that upheld the constitutionality of the independent counsel.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mkraju NEWS: Kavanaugh bluntly said he wanted to overturn SCOTUS ruling upholding constitutionality of independent counsel. There’s difference bw independent counsel and special counsel (like Mueller) – but it’s bound to spark questions about how he views Mueller

VanityFair: “This Was the Nightmare Scenario”: The West Wing Revolts After Trump Embraces Putin http://bit.ly/2Lf3hLJ
// As Trump grappled with his error, Chief of Staff John Kelly went into overdrive to get Trump to walk it back.

🐣 RT @juliadavisnews Yes. Russian Intelligence.
⋙ 🐣 CNN Headline: President Trump continues to defend his meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin: “So many people at the higher ends of intelligence loved my press conference performance in Helsinki”

💙💙 🔆 This❗️⋙ Bloomberg, Ramesh Ponnuru: Trump’s Russia Fixation Has a Simple Explanation http://bloom.bg/2NYeJd1 “I’ve seen Trump’s tax returns myself”
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019511228044136448/photo/1
// He can’t separate the question of interference in the election from the question of his own legitimacy.

I’ve seen Trump’s tax returns myself as part of a legal action that began in 2006 when he sued me for libel for a biography I wrote, “TrumpNation.” (Trump lost the suit in 2011; a court order precludes me from discussing specifics in the returns.) As I wrote in a May 2016 column about the tax returns, I suspect that Trump is hesitant to make them public because they would reveal, among other things, sensitive information about his business activities, conflicts of interest and financial pressures that might come to bear upon him in the White House. Pressure from places like Russia, for example.

Imagine if Trump were acquiescent to Putin because financial favors were exchanged, for example, for policy reversals involving the lifting of economic sanctions on Russia or supporting Russia’s military annexation of part of Ukraine. In that context, Trump’s finances — and his tax returns — touch on national security and the public interest.

It’s time for the president to release his tax returns publicly. If he won’t, then Congress and the Republican Party — if they are truly disturbed by Trump’s Helsinki performance — should demand that he do so. 🐣 RT @AltUSPressSecy Trump is claiming he “misspoke” when he denied Russia’s cyberwar against our election systems.

Russian State Media is claiming Putin was “mistranslated” when he admitted to directing Russian officials to ensure Trump’s election.
Orwell w/o Spicer: https://twitter.com/AltUSPressSec/status/1019482869004165120/photo/1

Mediaite/Msnbc: Fmr CIA Director Panetta: The Way Trump Behaves, It’s a ‘Clear Signal That The Russians Have Something On Him’ http://bit.ly/2LrI4uM

◕ The GDP of the entire country of Russia is $1.28 trillion (World Bank). This is HALF the GDP of California (Wikipedia http://bit.ly/2uxlURb)

⭕ 17 Jul 2018

ForeignPolicy: Robert Mueller Is Fighting a War http://bit.ly/2uKgQZf
// The special prosecutor’s latest indictments prove he’s waging more than just a legal battle.

💙💙 NewYorker, David Remnick: The Unwinding of Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2O12fkJ
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @JohnWDean The last 48 hrs in a nutshell: “Trump’s performances in Europe, and now in Washington, clarified nothing. They only raised dark suspicions and aroused the sickening feeling that we are living in the pages of the most lurid espionage novel ever written.” Remnick, New Yorker 7/18

🐣 RT @McFaul As I discuss in detail in From Cold War to Hot Peace, Putin has been harassing me for a long time. That he now wants to arrest me, however, takes it to a new level. I expect my government to defend me and my colleagues, in public and private.

TheAtlantic, Kori Schake: There’s No Defending Trump Anymore http://theatln.tc/2L70kgE
// The spectacle in Helsinki is over. Now it’s time for Congress—and the American people—to act. http://theatln.tc/2L70kgE

CNN: US offers no details as Russia claims Trump and Putin reached military agreements http://cnn.it/2L3lvQW

RT: Russia wants to question Christopher Steele, Michael McFaul, top politicians for aiding Bill Browder http://bit.ly/2O0eNci //➔ I usually don’t post from RT, but this is for perspective on the ridiculous case Russia is making against @BillBrowder, @McFaul and Christopher Steele

Politico: What Mueller Knows About the DNC Hack—And Trump Doesn’t http://bit.ly/2L2LAQ1 The president’s bizarre obsession with “the DNC server” defies logic or even a basic understanding of what actually happened.

💙 ForeignPolicy: Robert Mueller Is Fighting a War http://bit.ly/2uKgQZf
// The special prosecutor’s latest indictments prove he’s waging more than just a legal battle.

NYT, William Webster: Let Robert Mueller Do His Job http://nyti.ms/2uwM0E6
// Mr. Webster is a former director of the F.B.I. and the C.I.A.; Faith in the justice system and in our intelligence agencies cannot be collateral damage in a partisan grudge match.

WaPo, Kathleen Parker: It’s time to excise the Trump cancer http://wapo.st/2NrI7Y1

NYT, Thomas Friedman: A President With No Shame and a Party With No Spine http://nyti.ms/2Jum5l7 “There is tremendous madness to Trump’s method”
// It’s become a huge source of power for Trump and trouble for the rest of us.

NYT Editorial: Time for Republicans to Grow a Spine http://nyti.ms/2L6ZwbS 10 concrete things they can do
// Some Republicans say President Trump embarrassed himself and the country in his meeting with Vladimir Putin. Here’s what they can do about it.

💙 ForeignPolicy: Robert Mueller Is Fighting a War http://bit.ly/2uKgQZf
// The special prosecutor’s latest indictments prove he’s waging more than just a legal battle.

NYT, Thomas Friedman: A President With No Shame and a Party With No Spine http://nyti.ms/2Jum5l7 “There is tremendous madness to Trump’s method”
// It’s become a huge source of power for Trump and trouble for the rest of us.

NYT Editorial: Time for Republicans to Grow a Spine http://nyti.ms/2L6ZwbS 10 concrete things they can do
// Some Republicans say President Trump embarrassed himself and the country in his meeting with Vladimir Putin. Here’s what they can do about it.

WaPo, Michael McFaul: The Trump-Putin summit in Helsinki was a historic event — in the worst possible way http://wapo.st/2L5X4Cc

CNN: Cambridge Analytica’s Facebook data was accessed from Russia, MP says http://cnnmon.ie/2zKi2kQ

🐣 RT @Comey This Republican Congress has proven incapable of fulfilling the Founders’ design that “Ambition must … counteract ambition.” All who believe in this country’s values must vote for Democrats this fall. Policy differences don’t matter right now. History has its eyes on us.

🐣 Paneta: “I’d be very disappointed if we don’t know what went on in that room” (ie Putin/Trump alone time). My hope too that our IC bugged room. Paneta is ex-CIA chief. On @11thHour. Thinks Putin “has something” on Trump.

💙 Axios, Jonathan Swan: Trump officials embarrassed by Putin show http://bit.ly/2Npfued
// reaction to Helsinki press conference

🐣 RT @DanaScottLO That’s like saying: “Scientists concluded that the earth is spherical, but it could be a square or a rhombus.” Trump can’t admit to the Russian attack because doing so would not only prove that he was not legitimately elected, it would also be strong evidence of collusion.
⋙ 🐣 RT @christinawilkie Trump: “I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could be other people also. A lot of people out there.”

🐣 RT @McFaul I hope the U.S. government that I served faithfully for five years will stand up and defend us with public outrage over these ridiculous accusations. cc: @JonHuntsman @WhiteHouse @StateDept @USEmbRu
⋙ WashingtonExaminer: Helsinki update: Russia ready ‘to charge’ US officials for financial ‘crimes’ http://washex.am/2uJXXFF

… Putin’s team wants to question McFaul and at least three National Security Agency officials in connection to a case involving Bill Browder, a hedge fund manager who has led an international effort to impose sanctions on Russian officials implicated in human rights abuses.

Browder has been a gadfly for Putin’s team for years, dating back to his tenure as a high-profile investor in state-owned companies. Those clashes continued until Russian officials barred him from the country and shut down his investment company, a series of steps that culminated in Russian officials using his then-destroyed company to apply for a $230 million tax refund. One of Browder’s attorneys, Sergei Magnitsky, uncovered the fraud, only to be arrested and then to die in Russian government custody in 2009.

A year later, Russian authorities convicted Magnitsky of tax evasion in a posthumous trial, and convicted Browder in absentia. Putin revived those charges during his joint press conference with Trump.

“They never paid any taxes, neither in Russia nor in the United States, and yet the money escaped the country,” Putin said in Helsinki. “So we have a solid reason to believe that some intelligence officers accompanied and guided these transactions.”

Putin offered to allow Mueller’s team to attend a questioning, in Russia, of the Russian cyber-spies in exchange for access to those U.S. officials. President Trump seemed to look favorably on the idea.

“President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial [of election interference] today,” Trump said. “And what he did is an incredible offer; he offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigators with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer.”

But the White House didn’t say if Trump would accept the Russian officials’ request.

“While the administration will continue to hold Russia accountable for its malign activities, this meeting is the beginning of a process between the United State and Russia to reduce tensions and advance areas of cooperation in our mutual interest,” a National Security Council spokesperson told the Washington Examiner. “We are reviewing the discussion between President Trump and President Putin, considering possible next steps, and have nothing further to announce at this time.”

The Russian government is determined to punish Browder. “We won’t let [Browder] sleep peacefully,” Russian Prosecutor General Yury Chaika said in June.

Motherboard: Top Voting Machine Vendor Admits It Installed Remote-Access Software on Systems Sold to States http://bit.ly/2LqL8HD
// Remote-access software and modems on election equipment ‘is the worst decision for security short of leaving ballot boxes on a Moscow street corner.’

The nation’s top voting machine maker has admitted in a letter to a federal lawmaker that the company installed remote-access software on election-management systems it sold over a period of six years, raising questions about the security of those systems and the integrity of elections that were conducted with them.

In a letter sent to Sen. Ron Wyden (D-OR) in April and obtained recently by Motherboard, Election Systems and Software acknowledged that it had “provided pcAnywhere remote connection software … to a small number of customers between 2000 and 2006,” which was installed on the election-management system ES&S sold them.

‼️🐣 RT @McFaul Absurd. I hope the Trump administration will push back on this nonsense, on the record.
⋙ 🐣 RT @BillBrowder BREAKING: The Russian authorities want to question former US Ambassador @McFaul along with officers of DHS and the DOJ who were investigating the Magnitsky case as part of the Putin/Trump Helsinki quid pro quo over me and the 12 Russian GRU agents
⋙⋙ Sputnik: Russian Prosecutors Want to Question US Officials, Ex-Envoy, Over Browder Case http://bit.ly/2JxPY3Y

William Browder, founder of UK-based Hermitage Capital Management investment fund, is wanted in Russia for various offenses, including tax evasion, since 2013.

The Office of Russian Attorney General is poised to send an official request to the United States’ authorities to question a number of US officials and intelligence agents, including the former US ambassador to Russia Michael McFaul, as part of a criminal case against Hermitage Capital Management CEO William Browder.

“As part of the investigation of one of the criminal cases against William Browder and his criminal group, we’re ready to send another request to the US authorities to grant us permission to question these very employees of the US intelligence agencies, as well as a number of other US government officials and businessmen, in order to charge them for the crimes committed by Browder,” Alexander Kurennoy, spokesman for the Russia’s Office of Prosecutor General, said.

According to him, the list of people sought by Moscow for questioning includes “employees of the US National Security Agency — Todd Hyman, who signed under an oath a lawsuit filed in the US court on behalf of Browder, Svetlana Engert, who took from Russia the stolen materials from the criminal case, Alexander Shvartsman, who was Browder’s handler while he was in the US.”

Kurennoy also added that the prosecutors “have questions not only for US citizens”, and would also like to have a word with certain intelligence agents from other countries.

“For example, we would like to talk with Christopher Steele, an agent of the British MI-6. For a long time, he had contacts with a group of lobbyists of the ‘Magnitsky Act’ and, interestingly, it was through this person that the very investigation of the special prosecutor [Robert] Mueller, which everyone knows as the Trump Dossier, was initiated,” he added.

The Prosecutor General’s Office also claimed that Browder’s group employed offshore schemes to withdraw over $1.5 billion from Russia, with about $400,000 of which “were transferred to the accounts of the US Democratic Party.”

READ MORE: Hermitage Capital CEO Browder Urges Interpol to Suspend Russia’s Membership

In May 2018, Browder announced on Twitter that he was arrested by the Spanish police in Madrid on a Russian Interpol arrest warrant.

However, several hours after being detained, Browder was released after Spanish authorities announced that the warrant was invalid.

In Russia, the UK financier has been wanted for various offenses since 2013. In the most recent case in December, a Moscow court found Browder guilty of tax evasion, sentencing him in absentia to nine years in prison and charging him and his business partner Ivan Cherkasov with $72.9 million in unpaid taxes.

In February 2017, a Moscow court ruled to arrest Browder and Cherkasov in absentia. The United Kingdom has denied requests to have them extradited to Russia.

🐣 Also, Trump meant Boris Johnson WOULDN’T be a great Prime Minister. #CorrectTrump
Orwell (square): https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019339809364611072/photo/1
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Alice in Wonderland: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019344547279704065/photo/1

🐣 RT @jaketapper There was no actual walk-back. The president continues to question the IC conclusion it was Russia: “I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia meddling in the 2016 election took place. Could have been other people also. Lots of other people out there”

DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Russia’s Plan to Buy Off the GOP Began Before the Rise of Trump http://thebea.st/2LpE6Tv “The Russia infiltration plot was not dependent on Trump. … The pre-Trump Republican Party, that is to say, was already plenty corrupt for them.”
// Republicans placed an anti-patriot in the Oval Office—just as the Russians bet they would.

There is no shortage of bombshell angles to this Maria Butina matter, announced by the Justice Department on Monday just hours after Donald Trump helped make Russia great again in Helsinki.

[I]t didn’t take Trump being a candidate for the Russians to decide to work to influence American electoral politics. They decided before Trump. The pre-Trump Republican Party, that is to say, was already plenty corrupt for them.

If this doesn’t inspire some soul-searching among Republicans, I don’t know what will. …

Well, it’s a little late now, isn’t it? You have placed an anti-patriot in the Oval Office. Exactly as the Russians bet you would. Never again browbeat us with your cheap shows of patriotism. You’re the un-Americans.

🐣 RT @HansNichols JUST IN: Rod Rosenstein was summoned to the WH today, four days after he indicted 12 Russian Intelligence Officers. He was seen leaving the WH at 11:28AM. Unclear if he met with President Trump, who is still in the residence and hasn’t showed up in the West Wing this morning.

🐣 RT @kenvogel COINCIDENCE? PUTIN’s claim about @BillBrowder’s associates funneling $400M in ill-gotten $ from Russia to @HillaryClinton was laid out in the memo that NATALIA VESELNITSKAYA brought to her June 2016 TRUMP TOWER mtg with @DonaldJTrumpJr, KUSHNER & MANAFORT.
⋙ NYT: Talking Points Brought to Trump Tower Meeting Were Shared With Kremlin http://nyti.ms/2JuN0gs
// 10/27/2018

💙💙 Rollingstone, Tom Dickinson (Apr): Inside the Decade-Long Russian Campaign to Infiltrate the NRA and Help Elect Trump http://rol.st/2LqWkEa //➔ Aleksandr Torshin, Maria Butina, John Bolton and Right To Bear Arms
// 4/2/2018, Femme fatales, lavish Moscow parties and dark money – how Russia worked the National Rifle Association

This part of the affadavit against Mariia Butina – a series of DMs between her and her handler (likely banker Aleksandr Torshin) – seems like something out of Homeland or The Blacklist.
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019148114874241024/photo/1

🐣 RT @EmmaKennedy Maria Butina. In the Oval Office. (Towards the back red hair) Note “knowingly” in the indictments when it comes to the US citizens who aided her.
https://twitter.com/dustinhines/status/1019111118810337280/photo/1

DailyBeast: Stephen Colbert: ‘Alarming’ Trump-Putin Summit Has ‘Shaken Me to My Core’ http://thebea.st/2JtXLja
// ‘The Late Show’ host spent his entire monologue Monday night breaking down Trump’s “disturbing” summit with Vladimir Putin.

⭕ 16 Jul 2018

WIRED: What Robert Mueller Knows—and 9 Areas He’ll Pursue Next http://bit.ly/2LypFMR
⋙ See under Entire Articles: WIRED Mueller Knows 7-16-2018

🐣 RT @McCaffrey Reluctantly I have concluded that President Trump is a serious threat to US national security. He is refusing to protect vital US interests from active Russian attacks. It is apparent that he is for some unknown reason under the sway of Mr Putin.

DailyBeast, Betsy Woodruff: Russia-NRA Arrest: This Is as Close as It Gets to Collusion http://thebea.st/2LioJPK “In a sworn affidavit, FBI agent Kevin Helson said Maria Butina worked to set up ‘back channel’ communications between Americans and the Kremlin.”
// For all the indictments, arrests, and guilty pleas in the far-flung investigation into Russian influence, none has come close to alleging collusion. Until Maria Butina was nabbed.

In a sworn affidavit, FBI agent Kevin Helson said Maria Butina worked to set up “back channel” communications between Americans and the Kremlin.

“These lines could be used by the Russian Federation to penetrate the U.S. national decision-making apparatus to advance the agenda of the Russian Federation,” Agent Helson wrote.  

Butina’s apparent supervisor, former Russian senator Alexander Torshin, also spent years building relationships in the NRA. In 2015, he was pictured at a meeting in Moscow with a high-level delegation from the NRA and sanctioned Putin deputy Dmitry Rogozin. Rogozin, an ultra-nationalist hardliner, believes Russia should retake Alaska. Torshin faces money-laundering allegations from Spanish authorities.

Butina, who moved to Washington in 2016, has claimed multiple times to have been a conduit between the Trump campaign and Russia, as The Daily Beast reported last year.

[Trump:] “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we’ll get along with Putin,” Trump replied. “I would get along very nicely with Putin, I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.”

On Oct. 4, 2016, according to the affidavit, U.S. Person 1 wrote an email copping to his role in Butina’s efforts.

“Unrelated to specific presidential campaigns, I’ve been involved in securing a VERY private line of communication between the Kremlin and key POLITICAL PARTY 1 leaders through, of all conduits, the [GUN RIGHTS ORGANIZATION],” he wrote.

U.S. Person 1 appears to be Paul Erickson, a longtime Republican insider who claimed to advise the Trump transition team.

RawStory: Putin tells Russian state TV Trump gave him a ‘very interesting offer’ on Ukraine and discussed getting around sanctions http://bit.ly/2Lq5joV “We heard none of it in the press conference”

“They talked about a deal in southern Syria, which would possibly be about pushing Iranian forces out,” he explained. “That this had been pre-agreed with the Israelis. That this would increase security. But in exchange [Bashar al] Assad clearly was going to re-take the country. Putin noted he already had 90 percent of the country.” //➔ NYT story

They also evidently discussed Ukraine.

“And Putin described something as ‘a very interesting offer,’” Rojansky said. “We don’t actually know of what the offer consisted, but it’s very interesting to me that they discussed Ukraine and Putin said that there is ‘an interesting offer’ there.” //➔ Artemenko plan?

He then said that the “kicker” was that they spoke about sanctions without talking about sanctions.

“So, when asked whether Putin asked for sanctions relief, Putin, of course, as a matter of Russian pride and also, I think, a negotiating tactic, knowing Trump could hand over sanctions relief, he simply says, ‘No but we talked about the interests of our two business communities in increasing economic ties and how we might do that in the current environment.’ So, that’s code for, ‘Yeah, they talked about how to get around sanctions.’ They actually had it as surprisingly substantive conversation. We heard none of it in the press conference,” Rojansky closed.

WaPo: ‘Very much counter to the plan’: Trump defies advisers in embrace of Putin http://wapo.st/2NjTlxJ

Administration officials had hoped that maybe, just maybe, Monday’s summit between President Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin would end differently — without a freewheeling 46-minute news conference in which Trump attacked his own FBI on foreign soil and warmly praised archrival Russia.

Trump’s remarks were “very much counter to the plan,” the person said.

“Everyone around Trump” was urging him to take a firm stance with Putin, according to a second person familiar with the preparations. Before Monday’s meeting, the second person said, advisers covered matters from Russia’s annexation of Crimea to its interference in the U.S. elections, but Trump “made a game-time decision” to handle the summit his way. NYT: Trump, at Putin’s Side, Questions U.S. Intelligence on 2016 Election http://nyti.ms/2Lmva16
// staff reaction

WSJ Editorial: The Trump First Doctrine ~ Putin respects strength but Trump showed weakness. http://on.wsj.com/2Lqsa3N
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1019173427477929985/photo/1

Russia. Details from the private Trump-Putin talks in Helsinki will spill out in coming days, but Monday’s joint press conference was a personal and national embarrassment. On stage with the dictator whose election meddling has done so much harm to his Presidency, Mr. Trump couldn’t even bring himself to say he believed his own intelligence advisers like Dan Coats over the Russian strongman.

“I have—I have confidence in both parties,” Mr. Trump said. “So I have great confidence in my intelligence people, but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.” Denials from liars usually are strong and powerful.

🐣 RT @JohnKerry https://twitter.com/JohnKerry/status/1018962239632658433/photo/1
// long statement

WaPo, Carl Bildt: Trump just gave Putin complete free rein http://wapo.st/2Njq4TM

It was indeed a remarkable summit. In just about four hours, if we are to believe President Trump, the relationship between the United States and Russia went from the worst it’s been in a very long time to “very, very good.”

The reasons for the deterioration in the U.S.-Russia relationship are numerous: Russian aggression against Ukraine including the illegal annexation of Crimea, the Russian intervention to shore up the Bashar al-Assad regime in Damascus, blatant and extensive interference in the U.S. presidential election — to mention just the most obvious issues.

During the press conference, on none of these issues did Trump have anything critical to say about Russian policy and behavior, and on none of these issues did Putin in any way indicate a willingness to change course.

≣💙TIME: Read a Transcript of Trump and Putin’s Joint Press Conference http://ti.me/2NVBiiv
⋙ See extended excerpts under Entire Articles

DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova and Christopher Dickey: Trump Just Fell for ‘a Classic KGB Trick’ http://thebea.st/2ut8m9B
// Putin, former KGB case officer that he is, certainly knew that details would bore Trump, who imagined he was engaging in big-time statecraft even as he sounded petty and defensive.

Suddenly the question of collusion between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin was visible to all the world, and it was no longer a question.

Putin laid out his version of their talks. Then Trump, in a jaw-dropping moment, dissed his own intelligence services and deferred to Putin’s denials on the critical question of Russia’s ongoing cyber attacks targeting American democratic institutions.

WaPo, Dana Milbank: We are a deeply stupid country http://wapo.st/2Lby103

We brainlessly criticized Russia when it invaded Georgia and Ukraine. We idiotically protested when Russia poisoned people in Britain. Like dunces, we punished Russians for killing human rights activists. Morons that we are, we complained when Russia shot down a passenger jet. And then, revealing ourselves to be truly daft and inane, we blamed Russia for interfering in our election.

NYT Editorial: Why Won’t Donald Trump Speak for America? http://nyti.ms/2Jteh37
// The president lays himself at Vladimir Putin’s feet.

On Monday, Mr. Trump again engaged in immoral equivalence, this time during a gobsmacking news conference after his meeting in Helsinki, Finland, with the Russian president, Vladimir Putin. A reporter referred to last week’s indictments of 12 Russian military officials for a coordinated cyberattack on the 2016 election and asked Mr. Trump if he held Russia responsible. “I hold both countries responsible,” Mr. Trump said.

Even in a presidency replete with self-defeating moments for the United States, Mr. Trump’s comments on Monday, which were broadcast live around the world, stand out.

The spectacle was hard to fathom: Mr. Trump, standing just inches from an autocratic thug who steals territory and has his adversaries murdered, undermined the unanimous conclusion of his own intelligence and law enforcement agencies that the Russian government interfered with the 2016 election with the goal of helping Mr. Trump win.

“My people came to me, Dan Coats came to me, and some others, they said they think it’s Russia,” Mr. Trump said at one point, speaking of his director of national intelligence. “I have President Putin; he just said it’s not Russia. I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be.” (In a statement on Monday afternoon, Mr. Coats reiterated that, in fact, it was.)

Mr. Trump called the special counsel’s Russia investigation “a disaster for our country” and then performed a selection of his greatest solo hits: “Zero Collusion,” “Where Is the D.N.C.’s Server?” and finally the old chestnut, “I Won the Electoral College by a Lot.”

Not to worry, Mr. Trump assured us: Mr. Putin “was extremely strong and powerful in his denial.” So he must have been telling the truth.

Mr. Putin, for his part, was happy to admit that he wanted Mr. Trump to win the election: “Yes, I did. Because he talked about bringing the U.S.-Russia relationship back to normal.” He mocked the idea that he had compromising material on President Trump — though without denying it — perhaps because Mr. Trump’s own words were compromising enough.

Mr. Putin offered to have Russian intelligence work with its American counterpart to get to the bottom of the meddling case, on the condition that Russian authorities were allowed to question American intelligence officials as well — which Mr. Trump called “an incredible offer.” Yes, incredible.

In theory, such objectives make sense. But Mr. Trump seems to be singularly naïve, or deliberately ignorant, about why his own senior national security advisers have identified Russia as one of America’s chief geostrategic adversaries, along with China.

Despite a weak economy, corruption and other domestic problems, Mr. Putin has crushed most political opposition at home and is aggressively asserting Russian power abroad. His agents — possibly those from the same military intelligence service that interfered in the American election — have used chemical weapons that poisoned four people in Britain, one of whom died.

He is working hard to sabotage America’s ties to NATO and the European Union and to weaken American influence in the Middle East. Russia poses such a cyberthreat to the United States that Mr. Coats last week said “the warning lights are blinking red again.”

It remains a mystery why the president, unlike any of his Republican or Democratic predecessors, is unwilling to call out Russian perfidy. He has no trouble throwing his weight around when he is in the company of America’s European allies, attacking them as deadbeats and the European Union as a “foe,” or when he excoriates the news media as “enemies of the people.” Put him next to Mr. Putin and other dictators, and he turns to putty.

All that’s clear is that a president who is way out of his depth is getting America into deep trouble.

🐣 RT @BillBrowder Crazy day today as Putin wants to swap 12 Russian GRU agents who hacked the US election for me in his meeting with Trump in Helsinki. Here’s my take for @TIME on why I’ve gotten Putin so rattled and what he’s really afraid of
⋙ TIME, Bill Browder: I’m Bill Browder. Here’s the Biggest Mistake Putin Made When Trying to Get Access to Me Through Trump http://ti.me/2NnMPGd

NYT: Mariia Butina, Who Sought ‘Back Channel’ Meeting for Trump and Putin, Is Charged as Russian Agent http://nyti.ms/2LeO0KM

At the behest of a senior Russian government official, the woman, Mariia Butina, made connections through the National Rifle Association, religious organizations and the National Prayer Breakfast to try to steer the Republican Party toward more pro-Russia policies, court records show. Privately comparing herself to a Soviet Cold War propagandist, she worked to infiltrate American organizations and establish “back channel” lines of communication with American politicians.

The charges were filed under seal on Saturday, the day after 12 Russian intelligence officers were indicted on a charge of hacking Democratic computers during the 2016 campaign. Ms. Butina, 29, was arrested Sunday and appeared Monday in court. The records were unsealed hours after Mr. Trump stood beside Mr. Putin in Helsinki and said that he saw no reason the Russian leader would try to influence the presidential election.

The charges were filed by Justice Department national security prosecutors, not the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. The investigation into Ms. Butina has been proceeding for some time and was carried out parallel to Mr. Mueller’s investigation, a former official said. F.B.I. agents raided her home in April, her lawyer said.

The Justice Department said that Ms. Butina worked at the behest of an unidentified high-level Russian government official. He has been previously identified as Alexander Torshin, the deputy governor of the Russian central bank who has been linked both to Russia’s security services and organized crime. Mr. Torshin is among the nearly two dozen Russian officials or oligarchs who were sanctioned this year for actions including trying to subvert Western democracies.

🐣 RT @GovCTW [Christie Whitman] Mr #President, you should be ashamed. To deny your own country and government in favor of a foriegn leader whose country has, for decades, tried to undermine the #UnitedStates is irrational and dangerous. Please step down, you are not fit to lead this great #nation. #TrumpPutin

🐣 RT @GovCTW [Christie Whitman] Mr #President, you should be ashamed. To deny your own country and government in favor of a foriegn leader whose country has, for decades, tried to undermine the #UnitedStates is irrational and dangerous. Please step down, you are not fit to lead this great #nation. #TrumpPutin

🐣 RT @McFaul So how many more times are we going to hear from unnamed Trump officials that they had a tough script planned for Putin, but their boss ignored them. Maybe it’s time to speak on the record — like Coats — or get out. Your country needs more from you.

≣💙💙💙💙 Maria Butina cover: Russian National Charged in Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States http://bit.ly/2uztppW 1p
Maria Butina complaint: http://bit.ly/2NmOwUs 4p
Maria Butina affadavit: http://bit.ly/2mophpp 17p

🐣 RT @TonySchwartz Just stunning to watch Fox tonight, as hosts and guests trash Trump and Putin. This could be the turning point we’ve all been waiting for these past 18 months. Trump shot his supporters on Fifth Avenue today.

🐣 RT @just_security Former senior CIA officer: “This is a time for choosing. Government officials, senior and junior alike, take an oath to uphold the Constitution and the laws of the United States, not to obey any single President….”

WaPo: Freedom Caucus leaders want Rosenstein investigated for alleged threats http://wapo.st/2mmmOf5

🐣 RT @repjohnlewis I am deeply disturbed by the outcome of the Helsinki summit. The leader of this nation takes an oath before God to defend this country from all enemies both foreign and domestic, but this president is not defending the American way of life.

⚡️ Moment: “Fact Checks: Helsinki Summit”
https://twitter.com/i/moments/1019050257919938560
⇈ ⇊ (reverse chrono)
“DNC server” debunked here: Politifact: Did John Podesta deny CIA & FBI access to DNC server, as Donald Trump claims? http://bit.ly/2zCN7qC FALSE “Pakistani fraudster” debunked here: Axios: “No evidence” http://bit.ly/2KF1kbZ
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 WaPo Factchecker: The facts missing from Trump and Putin’s news conference http://wapo.st/2KXYLln
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 NYT/AP: AP Fact Check: Trump Nearly Alone in Russia Meddling Doubts http://nyti.ms/2LoBiWL
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 AP Fact Check: Trump, Putin and their Hall of Mirrors http://bit.ly/2NZUBaz
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 NYT: 8 Suspect Claims From the Trump-Putin News Conference http://nyti.ms/2uug8zM
// President Trump contradicted U.S. intelligence assessments that Russia meddled in the 2016 election, and President Vladimir V. Putin said he didn’t know that Mr. Trump was in Russia in 2013. http://nyti.ms/
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 PolitiFact: Donald Trump’s ‘missing’ server comments get all of the details wrong http://bit.ly/2uF3M7s
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 PolitiFact: Fact-checking Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin in Helsinki http://bit.ly/2NqOb2O
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 FactCheck.org: Trump’s Remarks on Putin and the Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2JuX4Gp Including “Where is the server” and “The ‘Pakistani Gentleman’”
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 NBC: Fact check: Trump promoted conspiracy theories. Here’s the truth. http://nbcnews.to/2zGX1Yg
// At a joint news conference in Helsinki with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Trump brought up the DNC and Hillary Clinton.
⇈ ⇊
💙💙 DailyBeast, Kevin Poulsen: Trump’s ‘Missing DNC Server’ Is Neither Missing Nor a Server http://thebea.st/2NRn9CS
// FactCheck; The president can spout conspiracy theories all he wants. But the DNC turned over all its key data to the FBI after it got hacked. And that info wasn’t stored on a single server.
⇈ ⇊
All the major fact-checkers plus NBC and NYT have done fackchecks on “the servers‼️” and “the Pakistani‼️” I expect there will be more. See my recent tweets. Take your pick! #HelsinkiSummit2018
━━━━━━━▲

🐣 RT @RichardHaass The purpose of foreign policy is not “to get along” w other countries. It is to shape the behavior of others in ways that are consistent w your interests and w international order. The measure of Helsinki is not whether Trump and Putin get along but how Russian behavior changes.

🐣 RT @tribelaw .@juliaioffe put her finger on it: Trump is convinced he won by virtue of his brilliant campaign, so why should he object that Putin helped him a bit — especially by releasing stuff, even if stolen, that made his opponent look as bad as he’s convinced she really was? Ego rules.

🐣 RT @paulbegala How many right-wingers who are offended when an athlete kneels before a football game are going to be outraged that Trump kneels before Putin?

🐣 RT @jbendery Sen. Tammy Duckworth says it’s “a very real possibility” that Putin has turned Trump “into a Russian asset.” All is normal.
https://twitter.com/jbendery/status/1018925510565482499/photo/1

Politico: Putin’s Attack on the U.S. Is Our Pearl Harbor http://bit.ly/2zMWZyg
// Make no mistake: Hacking the 2016 election was an act of war. It’s time we responded accordingly.

CNN: In rebuke to Trump, senators may vote to side with US intel community http://cnn.it/2mkhMjc

🐣 RT @SenatorBurr Vladimir Putin is not our friend and never has been. Nor does he want to be our friend. His regime’s actions prove it.
https://twitter.com/SenatorBurr/status/1018934437504077830/photo/1

TheHill: Fox News’s John Roberts: Consensus is Trump ‘threw the US under the bus’ http://bit.ly/2NZcZQS

NYT: Putin Says Democrats Are to Blame for ‘Manipulations’ of Their Party http://nyti.ms/2uFMjvD

WaPo, Seung Min Kim: Trump’s eagerness to get along with Putin was on display in Helsinki http://wapo.st/2LoASiX

NYT: Trump Sheds All Notions of How a President Should Conduct Himself Abroad http://nyti.ms/2KZHcl1

Jill Wine-Banks on @allinwithchris “This is treason.” #inners

WaPo Editorial: Trump just colluded with Russia. Openly. http://wapo.st/2utciHb

CBSNews: Trump fist-bumped Turkish leader Erdogan, said he “does things the right way” http://cbsn.ws/2uEMveF

🐣 RT @hardball “We’ve never seen an American President do this.” @JohnKasich on the Trump/Putin summit. #Hardball

🐣 RT @brhodes After the sacrifices of World War II and the Cold War and the post-9/11 era, how does the United States have a President who can’t find a way to get along with NATO allies, and can’t bring himself to criticize anything about Putin? This is not who we are.

🐣 RT @NancyPelosi This is a sad day for America, and for all Western democracies that Putin continues to target. #TrumpPutin
⋙ Axios: Trump’s extraordinary press conference was not normal http://bit.ly/2Lofomv

🐣 RT @HillaryClinton Well, now we know.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HillaryClinton Great World Cup. Question for President Trump as he meets Putin: Do you know which team you play for?

🐣 RT @Comey This was the day an American president stood on foreign soil next to a murderous lying thug and refused to back his own country. Patriots need to stand up and reject the behavior of this president.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Mariia Butina, a Russian national, has been charged with acting as a surreptitious Russian agent and establishing a secret back channel with the GOP through the NRA. More likely to come on this; no wonder GOP members of HPSCI refused our request to bring her and others in.

🐣 Putin gave Trump a soccer ball because Trump had no balls.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Why did Trump meet 1 on 1 with Putin? What might he be hiding from Bolton, Pompeo, Kelly, & the American public? How will Putin use whatever Trump could be hiding to advantage Russia & hurt America? Trump’s total lack of credibility renders spurious whatever explanation he gives.

🐣 RT @SallyQYates Our President today not only chose a tyrant over his own Intel community, he chose Russia’s interests over the country he is sworn to protect. All Americans should raise their voices. Let the world know what we stand for.

PolitiFact: Vladimir Putin said @HillaryClinton got $400 million from financier Bill Browder partners. If true, that would be 70% of her total haul. http://bit.ly/2urXLvi 

🐣 RT @JuliaDavisNews #Russia’s state TV: Tatyana Parkhalina: “Amazingly, Trump’s main slogan is ‘Make America Great Again’… He doesn’t seem to understand that by undermining the transatlantic unity, Trump is undercutting one of the very foundations that make America great.”

🐣 RT @20committee Dear GOP: Remember that the “I just chatted with some Russians, I didn’t really know who they were, exactly” defense has been tried already. Specifically by Alger Hiss and the Rosenbergs.
How’d that work out for them?

CNN: Trump clashes with intelligence chief over Russian threat http://cnn.it/2KZxhMj
// Dan Coates

WaPo, Max Boot: We just watched a U.S. president acting on behalf of a hostile power http://wapo.st/2zJ1nhA

🐣 RT @MichaelJMorrell POTUS’s refusal today to stand with the men and women of the Intelligence Community with regard to Putin’s interference in the 2016 election was disgraceful. By doing so, he undermined the very people who are working tirelessly to keep us safe. They deserve better. So do we all.

NYT (2016): The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S. http://nyti.ms/2uMaEjx //➔ hey, @realDonaldTrump: here’s the hacked DNC server, right next to the file cabinet the Watergate burglars broke into

“DNC server” debunked here: Politifact: Did John Podesta deny CIA & FBI access to DNC server, as Donald Trump claims? http://bit.ly/2zCN7qC FALSE “Pakistani fraudster” debunked here: Axios: “No evidence” http://bit.ly/2KF1kbZ

WaPo, Ruth Marcus: If you work for Trump, quit now http://wapo.st/2JszIkL

TheHill: McConnell: Russians are not our friends http://bit.ly/2NVNkZe

🐣 I hope @SteveSchmidtSES is on @DeadlineWH today w @NicolleDWallace. He really does have “the best words.”

🐣 Reading the indictment, Mariia Butina did not just fail to register as a lobbyist. She was a serious spy. #NRARussia

🐣 To: @real Accidents aside, the danger that Russian and US nuclear weapons pose to each country, on balance, is zip ~ MAD. The danger is terrorists or crazy countries getting them. It does not provide an excuse for @realDonaldTrump’s brown-nosing. Russia is not our peer.

🐣 What could be better than an arrest and indictment that bundles together #TrumpRussia and the @NRA? @DLoesch

🐣 Putin would have knocked B.B. off already if he didn’t know it would turbo-charge the adoption of the Magnitsky Act across the world. @AliVelshi

🐣 RT @LauraRozen GOP member of House intel Hurd and ex cia officer says he never thought he would see a US President get played by KGB.
⋙ 🐣 RT @HurdOnTheHill As a former CIA officer and a Congressman on the House Intelligence Committee, I can affirmatively say there is nothing about agreeing with a thug like Putin that puts America First.

NPR: John Bolton’s Curious Appearance In A Russian Gun Rights Video http://n.pr/2Nhjv4b

NYT, Tom Friedman: Trump and Putin vs. America http://nyti.ms/2L2wiuz

Justice.gov: Russian National Charged in Conspiracy to Act as an Agent of the Russian Federation Within the United States http://bit.ly/2uztppW
// Mariia Butina

🐣 RT @POLITICO_Steve This @SenJohnMcCain statement is extraordinary for a senator to make of any president, let alone one in his own party.
https://twitter.com/POLITICO_Steve/status/1018919387254968321/photo/1

🐣 RT @edokeefe INBOX: Senate Intelligence Committee Chairman @SenatorBurr (R-N.C.) with strong words for Pres. Trump: https://twitter.com/edokeefe/status/1018924211065192449/photo/1

🐣 RT @EricGeller Statement from DNI Dan Coats, responding to, oh, nothing in particular: “We have been clear in our assessments of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and their ongoing, pervasive efforts to undermine our democracy.”
https://twitter.com/ericgeller/status/1018925022742794241/photo/1

WaPo: Putin again denies Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. election; Trump calls probe a ‘disaster for our country’ http://wapo.st/2zKMEmv

NYT: Trump, at Putin’s Side, Questions U.S. Intelligence on 2016 Election http://nyti.ms/2Lmva16

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Spoiler: They don’t.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NormOrnstein If Congressional Republicans had an ounce of integrity and a scintilla of patriotic duty, they would impeach and remove this president before he does further irreparable damage to our country. He meets the Constitutional definition of treason, the highest crime and misdemeanor

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Many of us have said so for years and we will do so again: Trump is dangerously unfit for his office. He is not a loyal American and he should be relieved of his duties expeditiously.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Putin says Trump “mentioned the issue of the so-called interference. I had to reiterate things I said several times, including that the Russian state has never interfered.” Says they should revisit the idea of a joint working group on cyber security.

🐣 RT @kylegriffin1 John Brennan: “I’m at a loss … One can only conclude that he fears Vladimir Putin and that one-on-one discussion — who knows what was discussed there — and how Mr. Putin now is the master puppeteer of Donald Trump, the person who is in our oval office. Outrageous.” @MSNBC

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Well, now we know the line of the day. “Putin said he didn’t attack us, and I believe him. Mueller’s witch hunt must stop.”

🐣 RT @MarkSalter55 I don’t think the U.S. has had a more contemptible president. Johnson and Buchanan look like Washington and Lincoln in comparison to this childish, ignorant, stupid, lying, self-obsessed tub of overflowing insecurities, resentments and hate.

🐣 RT @EdwardTHardy Former FBI Assistant Director Frank Figliuzzi: “In 25 years of working counterintel for this government, I never thought that I’d sit here and watch a US President castigate & denigrate the US intelligence community…standing alongside the leader of an adversarial country”

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson Putin is to Donald Trump as Donald Trump is to a single-celled life form. He’s played Trump like a fiddle. This is a disaster for America.

🐣 RT @jonathanvswan NEW: Statement from Speaker Ryan on the Trump-Putin press conference— https://twitter.com/jonathanvswan/status/1018910627245580288/photo/1

🐣 RT @brhodes The complete capitulation to Putin and abandonment of our values, the separation of children from their families, a reckless tax give-away to the wealthiest, and a constant assault on the truth – these are the defining events and characteristics of this catastrophic presidency.

🐣 RT @digby56 It doesn’t matter whether he colluded during the campaign at this point. He’s colluding right now. In front of our eyes.

🐣 RT @ProgressOutlook This was one of the most shameful displays of American “leadership” in history. The so-called president completely surrendered our country to a long-standing enemy who attacked our democracy. I hope each Trump voter feels deep shame and embarrassment until his or her dying day.

🐣 RT @CharlesMBlow Ok, that’s treason! Seriously. I’m not joking. I’m calling this treason. Point. Blank. Period. TREASON.

🐣 RT @JohnWDean Wow. If you aren’t horrified by Trump’s performance at the Helsinki Putin/Trump press conference you don’t love our country. Trump is disgusting, only interested in himself not the American people. RESIGN MR. TRUMP, YOU ARE NOT AMERICA FIRST, YOU ARE TRUMP AND ONLY TRUMP!

🐣 RT @davidaxelrod And whatever happened before, what we saw TODAY was a disgraceful act of collusion.

🐣 RT @MichaelSteele “My people came to me…they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia. I will say this, I don’t see any reason why it would be.” –Trump
That’s how a press conference sounds when an Asset stands next to his Handler.

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz Trump refuses to rebuke Putin on election interference or even acknowledge that it happened. We are now at a wholly new level of crisis. Trump has effectively sided with our totalitarian enemy. Most Republicans are fully complicit. Democracy in America hangs in the balance.

🐣 RT @ddale8 Here’s the transcript of Trump’s answer when he was asked whether he believes Putin or U.S. intelligence.
https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1018895453935624192/photo/1

🐣 RT @SenWarren Once again, @realDonaldTrump takes to the international stage to embarrass America, undermine our institutions, weaken our alliances, & embrace a dictator. Russia interfered in our elections & attacked our democracy. Putin must be held accountable – not rewarded. Disgraceful.

🐣 RT @SenWarren Once again, @realDonaldTrump takes to the international stage to embarrass America, undermine our institutions, weaken our alliances, & embrace a dictator. Russia interfered in our elections & attacked our democracy. Putin must be held accountable – not rewarded. Disgraceful.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???

🐣 RT @steven_pifer [ambassador] I have watched US-Soviet/#Russia presidential press conferences for more than 30 years, sometimes in the room. Have never seen anything as bad or embarrassing as @realDonaldTrump’s just-concluded performance.
[Steven Karl Pifer is a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Center on the United States and Europe as well as the Director of Brookings’ Arms Control Initiative – Wikipedia]

🐣 RT @chucktodd Wow, Trump is going out of his way to praise Russia. I guess “wow” is now an understatement, but this is truly a remarkable moment in American history, 72 hours after the DoJ accused Russia of a criminal act against the democracy, POTUS essentially forgives Russia on world stage
⋙ 🐣 The word you’re looking for is “f*ck”

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Anyone who works for Trump is assisting a man who sides with a foreign adversary against his own country and the US government. You are enabling a treacherous puppet who cares more about his relationship with Putin than American national security interests.

🐣 Nice the very last question was about the pee tape lol #TreasonSummit

🐣 RT @TheRickWison OMG Putin is trolling the pee tape.

🐣 No, the FBI relied on a third party (Crowdstrike) to analyze DNC server; it’s a big nothingburger

🐣 Browder is “not some guy”; he’s the lynchpin Putin wants to dislodge

🐣 RT @pbump THIS WAS THE PITCH in the Trump Tower meeting.
⋙ 🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Putin just raised Bill Browder without being asked, attacking him and his associates for making money illegally and contributing it to Hillary Clinton.

🐣 RT @emptywheel Putin suggests Mueller can come to Russia and question the witnesses. “Then we would expect Americans would reciprocate, they would question officials including LE and IC, whom we believe, who have something to do w/illegal activities on territory of RU.”

🐣 RT @RFERL Trump maintains “there was no collusion” and “there was no lie” regarding alleged Russian meddling in U.S. elections. “We ran a great campaign and that’s why I’m President.” Putin adds: “I trust #Trump completely.” The “collusion” in the campaign is “absurd”. #TrumpPutinSummit

🐣 RT @InvestigateRU Trump-Putin mtg=repeat of Singapore mtg w/North Koreans:
*Vague deliverables
*Mtg itself win for Putin
*Praise for Putin, harsh words for allies
*Slams democrats-politics no longer ends at waters edge
*Promises follow up mtgs for which Pompeo must create deliverable
*flags

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Three days after indictments of Russian military officers, a week after Russia murdered a British citizen on British soil, Trump says our relationship with Russia is getting stronger and criticizes Democrats and the media. Somehow even worse than expected.

🐣 RT @EvelynNFarkas If Potus makes concessions on doing business w/ Russia he risks writing a check for the GRU to cyberhack and prepare future attacks on elections and infrastructure. & any cybercooperation would just be treasonous. @craigmelvin @AriMelber @NBCNews @SangerNYT

🐣 RT @RichardEngel So Putin seems to be proposing replacing Mueller probe: says Russia /US cooperation can investigate the allegations of cyber attacks on US elections, which Putin denies

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Putin again denies attack US. But he says he’s “ready to analyze together” any evidence. He suggests doing so in a joint cybersecurity working group. What an offer. What a guy. He’s so fine.

🐣 RT @AllMattNYT Putin, standing next to Trump says “The Russian state has never interfered, and is never going to interfere in internal American affairs, including election processes.”

🐣 RT @MichaelBirnbaum This is Putin’s long-held dream: listing off a long list of global challenges, then saying he’ll work on them one-on-one with an American president. Final restoration of Russia to the global stage.

CPI: Inside John Bolton Super PAC’s deal with Cambridge Analytica http://bit.ly/2Llnjka
// Former aide says Bolton had ‘$5 million reasons’ to work with disgraced firm

🐣 RT @NPRKelly Commotion at press conference as Secret Service enters the room, pull a credentialed journo who says he’s with The Nation out of the WH press pool, and escort him out.

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin President Trump’s meeting with Vladimir Putin today is an encounter between a hostile Russian autocrat and an American head of state who he sponsors and over whom he wields significant influence. This is not a relationship that serves the American interest in any way.

WIRED, Garrett Graff: What Robert Mueller Knows—and 9 Areas He’ll Pursue Next http://bit.ly/2zKvDZI
// The special counsel has collected a mountain of evidence in the Trump-Russia investigation, but so far only a tiny amount of it has been revealed in official indictments. Here are nine areas where we should expect answers as the inquiry unfolds.

WHEN THE HISTORY books are written, Rod Rosenstein might just be the most interesting figure of the Russia investigation—the beleaguered deputy attorney general whose memo in his first days on the job was used to justify the firing of James Comey.

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Why did Trump meet 1 on 1 with Putin? What might he be hiding from Bolton, Pompeo, Kelly, & the American public? How will Putin use whatever Trump could be hiding to advantage Russia & hurt America? Trump’s total lack of credibility renders spurious whatever explanation he gives.

HillReporter, Ed Krassenstein: Gowdy: If Trump is ‘dissatisfied with Rod Rosenstein, he can fire him with a tweet’ http://bit.ly/2LjxokS

🐣 RT @mat_johnson The biggest espionage story in American history was happening while the press was focused Podesta’s risotto recipe.

🐣 To @McFaul Artemenko plan? McClatchy (6/22): Inside the Ukraine peace plan in Mueller probe: More authors, earlier drafting than believed http://bit.ly/2usQaN4

🐣 RT @MarkWarner Again, unless POTUS holds Putin accountable for:
– 2016 election interference
– Undermining European democracies
– The UK chemical attack
– Invading Crimea
– Arming Ukrainian separatists
– Supporting Assad’s war crimes
This is just another photo-op with a dictator.

🐣 RT @RichardHaass Regardless of Helsinki 1:1, Mueller indictments signal Putin that US foreign policy and US-Russian relations are not 100% controlled by @realDonaldTrump and US govt knows a great deal about what Russian govt is up to and has options for responding to what Russia has done/might do

🐣 RT @ JuliaDavisNews Trump reportedly requested alone time with Putin to prevent leaks and also because he “doesn’t want aides, who may take a harder line on Russia, undercutting or interrupting him in his conversation with Putin.”

🐣 After the downing of MH17, someone local tweeted out photos of some of the bodies of the passengers. It was the most disturbing thing I have ever seen on Twitter. And I’ve seen a lot. #NeverForget

🐣 Autocratophilia ~ if it isn’t a thing, it should be, because the current resident of the denigrated states of America has it. bigly.

🐣 RT @Kasparov63 Putin wants: legitimacy as the ruler of Russia & stature on the global stage; Russia as power broker in Ukraine, Syria, Iran; weakening US commitment to G7, NATO & EU; lowered Western defenses against his attacks; Trump’s help in all these things.

🐣 RT @dmataconis 90 minutes alone with Putin will give Trump plenty of time to lift sanctions against Russa, promise to get Russia back into the G-7, and trade Alaska for a small bag of magic beans

🐣 RT @mitchellreports Trump tells #Putin they have great opportunities to work together, that our countries have not been getting along for the past few years, says getting along with Russia is a good thing not a bad thing. Will talk about trade nuclear, missiles & China. Doesn’t mention hacking

◕ Statistica: Countries Ranked by GDP (2017) http://bit.ly/2KZ0M0A Russia ranks 12th. So, why do they belong in the G8? https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018819233982099456/photo/1

⭕ 15 Jul 2018

🐣💙 RT @leahmcelrath (2016) Guess who said this was their goal: “the strategic control of the USA…and the refusal to allow liberal values to dominate us.”
⋙ Alexandr Dugin is Putin’s geopolitical ideological mentor. He outlined a vision for a new Russian Empire.
// 12/11/2016 📌 thread https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/808027467617288193

🐣 RT @HowardFineman We’ve got to assume that #Putin has tons of hidden financial, political and other information on .@realDonaldTrump, ranging from the merely interesting to the explosively damaging. I’ve covered many presidents; never has one been so PERSONALLY vulnerable to another world leader.

≣ FutureToday, Jeremy Leggett: How Liberal Democracy Can Die – In Our Lifetimes http://bit.ly/2L1NNvj 30 slides

WaPo, David Ignatius: Putin must wonder what else America knows about Russia http://wapo.st/2miECrf

🐣 RT @leahmcelrath These tweets today from Trump’s account use some very specific and distinct language. (They definitely aren’t written by him.)
So…I got curious and started researching. And I’m going down a rabbit hole that is weird af. That’s all I’m going to say right now.
📌 thread https://twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/1018575142409179136
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @real Heading to Helsinki, Finland – looking forward to meeting with President Putin tomorrow. Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia…

Heading to Helsinki, Finland – looking forward to meeting with President Putin tomorrow. Unfortunately, no matter how well I do at the Summit, if I was given the great city of Moscow as retribution for all of the sins and evils committed by Russia…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

…over the years, I would return to criticism that it wasn’t good enough – that I should have gotten Saint Petersburg in addition! Much of our news media is indeed the enemy of the people and all the Dems…

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

…know how to do is resist and obstruct! This is why there is such hatred and dissension in our country – but at some point, it will heal!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 15, 2018

🐣 Um, just a small question … When Trump is meeting w his BFF Vlad, where is the “Nuclear Football”?

WarOnTheRocks, Edward Fishman and Mark Simakovsky (7/11): Playing with Fire in Helsinki: How Trump’s Summit with Putin Could Split the Transatlantic Alliance http://bit.ly/2LewBll //➔ Mueller indictments, Dan Coates speech are shot-across-the-bow to Russia not to get ideas
// 7/11/2018

🐣 NoKo nuclear tests: There were none between 2013 and 2016 //➔ then they started, a provocation to the in-coming president, to start a new Lucy-and-the-football game, which you are now in the middle of. Rinse, repeat. @realDonaldTrump

🐣 To get to the number of the US paying 80-90% of NATO, he’s mixing apples and oranges. The US ≃ 20% of shared cost of NATO (based on GDP). The 80% is the total defense budgets, something different. If he thought we spent too much on defense, why’d he push so hard to increase it?

🐣 To @McCaul The 30K emails were something specific (State Dept emails Hillary’s lawyers determined were private, so per dept policy didn’t have to be turned over*). But I doubt Trump even knew that, so I think you could be right. The Russians broke into her private office email.
// *to the Benghazi Committee

🐣 Russia is a third-rate power. ⋙ Has anyone told Trump?
Military Spending: US 36%, Russia 4.1% (SIPRI)
GDP: US 24.3%, Russia 1.8% (World Bank)
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018836209945268224/photo/1

NYT: Just Sitting Down With Trump, Putin Comes Out Ahead http://nyti.ms/2zIxXAk

🐣 I hope the intelligence community got a FISA warrant on Trump and are busily bugging him (cuff links? MAGAt hat, shirt buttons?). He is clearly a threat to US national security.

SundayExpress [UK]: US has WORSE record than DICTATORSHIPS’ – Russian minister Sergey Lavrov claims ahead of Trump summit http://bit.ly/2uwjaCM
// THE US has killed more people than the dictators they have sought to depose and the West is built on double-standards, according to Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov

🐣 RT @DavidCornDC Trump was told during the campaign the Russian attack was underway. But he repeatedly claimed publicly this was a hoax and provided cover to Putin’s operation. That’s the big deal. That’s treachery.

CBSNews: “I think the European Union is a foe,” Trump says ahead of Putin meeting in Helsinki http://cbsn.ws/2mi4hQQ

🐣 Whatever Trump claims happened during his Playdate with Vlad, Polifacf tells us that 69% of it will be “Mostly False” or worse (15% 🔥Pants On Fire🔥). http://bit.ly/28NRNHJ
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018487623944265729/photo/1

🐣 RT @Serion 100+ criminal counts
35 total indictments
32 people indicted
3 companies indicted
5 guilty pleas
Paul Manafort in jail
Michael Flynn guilty
Trump told Russia to hack
Trump staff met with Russians
Trump Jr. worked w/Wikileaks
This is not a witch hunt.
It’s a criminal conspiracy.

🐣 Trump is like “Why didn’t Obama keep my campaign from colluding with Russia during his administration?”

🐣 The issue isn’t what Obama did during the Obama administration but what YOU and Vlad did during the Obama administration @realDonaldTrump

◕💙 SIPRI//RadioFreeEurope/RadioLiberty: Report shows Russia’s defense budget last year was lower than France’s. http://bit.ly/2uyE6ta (Data from Stockholm Intl Peace Research Institute; chart by RFE/RL)
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018408540879376385/photo/1
// 2017 data

💽 Frontline: The Putin Files offer an extensive oral history of Putin’s rise to power, his motivations and his relationship with the U.S. Explore: https://to.pbs.org/2uAzulY 
// (undated)

🐣 RT @McFaul Of course, the Russian attack on American soil in 2016 was not on the scale or scope as Pearl Harbor or 9-11. But it was an attack, conducted by Russian military officers. Tomorrow, Trump must treat Putin as the person who ordered that attack. Any other approach is appeasement.

⭕ 14 Jul 2018

🐣 RT @caitlinmoran The Times has now started accompanying pieces on Donald Trump with boxes pointing out where he’s been incorrect, exaggerated, or lied. Extraordinary times to be living through.
Text: https://twitter.com/caitlinmoran/status/1018100945262206976/photo/1
// predicting Brexit, US % of NATO, Russian gas; wry; paywall for The [London] Times

🐣 RT @acscowcroft Former deputy secretary general of NATO, @ARVershbow: “There are no arrears owed to the US or NATO. President Trump is under the delusion that Allies pay the US for protection, or is feigning ignorance on how NATO works.” https://buff.ly/2LgYiXB  #NATOSummit
⋙ WaPo Factchecker: Many fact checks later, President Trump is (still) botching NATO spending http://wapo.st/2mgYKKp
// 7/13/2018

🐣 RT @ditzkoff Iceberg watcher on the Titanic gets new pair of binoculars
⋙ 🐣 RT @jimrutenberg FLASH: Twitter suspended accounts of Guccifer 2.0 and DCLeaks today, post indictment.

TheSundayTimes [UK]: Britain is in high-level talks with Ecuador in an attempt to remove Julian Assange from its London embassy http://bit.ly/2uyyHSU
// LondonTimes

DailyBeast, David Rothkopf: The Way Trump and the GOP Deal with Russian Attacks is ‘Textbook Treason’ http://thebea.st/2NgiVni
// This is an extraordinary moment. It is without equal not only in American history but in modern history.

[Re: Mueller indictments and Coates’ warning] It is clear that the intelligence and law enforcement communities of the United States — adhering to the principles of patriotism enumerated by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein yesterday — felt that a message needed to be sent to the Russians that we were on to them.  

Typically, such a message would be delivered by the president in such a meeting but this president has proven to be the staunchest defender of Putin and the most active advocate of covering up or denying these attacks. He did it again this week even while knowing of the indictments.

Do the indictments and the Coats statement (again, both delivered by Republicans) also send a message that they do not fully trust the president to deliver that message or to press the Russians on it?  I believe they do.

This is an extraordinary moment. It is without equal not only in American history but in modern history. A hostile foreign power intervened in our election to help elect a man president who has since actively served their interests and has defended them at every turn.

Trump may deny collusion. But given that this the attack continues, denying it is collusion, distracting from it is collusion, obstructing the investigation of it is collusion — because all these things enable it to go on.

That the president is abetted in his aid for the Russians — again, in the midst of this ongoing attack — by the leadership of the Republican Party makes the situation all the more extraordinary and dangerous. As they seek to undermine the investigation, they serve Russia as directly as if they were officers of the GRU. Some now reportedly seek to impeach Rosenstein on trumped up charges. To attack one of the leaders of our national defense as we are being attacked and to do so to benefit our foreign adversary is textbook treason.

That is strong language. But consider this: If we updated our definitions of war to include cyberwar, then aiding a foreign power engaged in such a war against us would certainly meet the Constitutional definition: “Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”

… Coats and as do the leaders of our intelligence community and as does every law enforcement and national security expert with whom I have spoken that this is, above all and most urgently, is a national security crisis for the United States.

🐣 RT @KennWhite The DNC server was forensically imaged by incident response experts, those snapshots were cryptographically signed, cataloged, and turned over to the FBI. Copies reside at Quantico, Ft Meade, and the Bureau’s DC office.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1012295859072126977

🐣 RT @RepSwalwell FDR didn’t meet w/ the Japanese after Pearl Harbor. George H.W. Bush didn’t meet w/ Saddam after Iraq invaded Kuwait. And George W. Bush didn’t meet w/ Bin Laden after 9/11. So tell me, @realDonaldTrump, what does America get out of you meeting w/ Putin after he attacked us?

NYT: Trump Opens His Arms to Russia. His Administration Closes Its Fist. http://nyti.ms/2meXTdc

Snopes/AP: Charges Undermine Assange Denials About Hacked Email Origins http://bit.ly/2zF3Sl9
Text on Assange, Seth Rich: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018263357370052608/photo/1
// DOJ indictments suggest WikiLeaks received material from Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff and even gave Russian hackers advice on how to disseminate it.

Fox News host Sean Hannity pointed straight to the purloined emails from the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

“Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?”

“Yes,” Assange said. “We can say — we have said repeatedly — over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”

The Justice Department’s indictment Friday of 12 Russian military intelligence officers undermines those denials. And if the criminal charges are proved, it would show that WikiLeaks (referred to as “Organization 1” in the indictment) received the material from Guccifer 2.0, a persona directly controlled by Russia’s Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff, also known as GRU, and even gave the Russian hackers advice on how to disseminate it. …

“If you have anything hillary related we want it in the next (two) days pref(er)able because the DNC is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after,” says a message from July 6, 2016, referring to the upcoming Democratic National Convention and Clinton’s chief party rival, Bernie Sanders.

Assange’s eagerness to get his hands on the alleged material from GRU reflected in the indictment — and prevent anyone else from beating WikiLeaks to the punch — is also revealed in leaked messages to journalist Emma Best. She, like several other reporters, also was in communication with Guccifer 2.0.

In copies of Twitter messages obtained by The Associated Press and first reported by BuzzFeed, WikiLeaks demands that Best butt out.

“Please ‘leave’ their convers(a)tion with them and us,” WikiLeaks said on August 13, 2016, arguing that the impact of material would be “very substantially reduced” if Best handled the leak.

The indictment also puts to rest a conspiracy theory, carefully nurtured by Assange and his supporters, that slain DNC staffer Seth Rich was at the origin of the leaks.

It was Assange who first floated the idea into the mainstream, bringing up Rich’s case in an interview with Dutch television the following month.

Over the next few months, WikiLeaks would continue to amplify the conspiracy theory — all while stopping short of endorsing it outright. During all this time, the indictment alleges, WikiLeaks knew full well that Guccifer 2.0 was its source, cajoling the account’s operators to hand it more data and ordering rival journalists to steer clear.

The conspiracy theory has been a source of deep pain for Rich’s family, who declined to comment on the indictment.

Lisa Lynch, an associate professor of media and communications at Drew University who has written about WikiLeaks, said the indictment highlighted the cynicism of WikiLeaks’ wink-wink support for conspiracy theories.

“We can see very well-intentioned people arguing about whether those documents should be published,” Lynch said of the DNC documents. “But the whole Seth Rich thing is incredibly venal.”

🐣 RT @real The stories you heard about the 12 Russians yesterday took place during the Obama Administration, not the Trump Administration. Why didn’t they do something about it, especially when it was reported that President Obama was informed by the FBI in September, before the Election?
⋙ 🐣 Ask Mitch McConnell

Politifact: Did John Podesta deny CIA and FBI access to DNC server, as Donald Trump claims? No http://bit.ly/2zCN7qC FALSE

💙💙 TheGuardian, Michiko Kakutani: The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump http://bit.ly/2mk182V
// From post-modernism to filter bubbles, ‘truth decay’ has been spreading for decades. How can we stop alternative facts from bringing down democracy, asks Michiko Kakutani

Two of the most monstrous regimes in human history came to power in the 20th century, and both were predicated on the violation and despoiling of truth, on the knowledge that cynicism and weariness and fear can make people susceptible to the lies and false promises of leaders bent on unconditional power. As Hannah Arendt wrote in her 1951 book The Origins of Totalitarianism, “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (ie the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (ie the standards of thought) no longer exist.”

Nationalism, tribalism, dislocation, fear of social change and the hatred of outsiders are on the rise again as people, locked in their partisan silos and filter bubbles, are losing a sense of shared reality and the ability to communicate across social and sectarian lines.

The term “truth decay” has joined the post-truth lexicon that includes such now familiar phrases as “fake news” and “alternative facts”. And it’s not just fake news either: it’s also fake science (manufactured by climate change deniers and anti-vaxxers, who oppose vaccination), fake history (promoted by Holocaust revisionists and white supremacists), fake Americans on Facebook (created by Russian trolls), and fake followers and “likes” on social media (generated by bots).

In a speech on press freedom, CNN’s chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour addressed this issue in the context of media coverage of the 2016 presidential race, saying: “It appeared much of the media got itself into knots trying to differentiate between balance, objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, truth … I learned long ago, covering the ethnic cleansing and genocide in Bosnia, never to equate victim with aggressor, never to create a false moral or factual equivalence, because then you are an accomplice to the most unspeakable crimes and consequences. I believe in being truthful, not neutral. And I believe we must stop banalising the truth.”

The US’s founding generation spoke frequently of the “common good”. George Washington reminded citizens of their “common concerns” and “common interests” and the “common cause” they had all fought for in the revolution. And Thomas Jefferson spoke in his inaugural address of the young country uniting “in common efforts for the common good”. A common purpose and a shared sense of reality mattered because they bound the disparate states and regions together, and they remain essential for conducting a national conversation. Especially today in a country where Trump and Russian and hard-right trolls are working to incite the very factionalism Washington warned us about, trying to inflame divisions between people along racial, ethnic and religious lines.

There are no easy remedies, but it’s essential that citizens defy the cynicism and resignation that autocrats and power-hungry politicians depend on to subvert resistance. Without commonly agreed-on facts – not Republican facts and Democratic facts; not the alternative facts of today’s silo-world – there can be no rational debate over policies, no substantive means of evaluating candidates for political office, and no way to hold elected officials accountable to the people. Without truth, democracy is hobbled.

⭕ Friday 13 Jul 2018

🐣 RT @KatyTurNBC Trump and his campaign tried to claim he was kidding. He was not. At that same press conference, minutes later, I asked if it gave him “pause” to ask a foreign government to hack into the emails of any American citizen. He said no and then accused me of trying to “save” Clinton.
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjysarlin . @KenDilanianNBC notes indictment alleges Russia “on or about July 27, 2016” started trying to access Clinton’s personal emails. Which is the same day Trump gave his “Russia if you’re listening, I hope your able to find the 30,000 emails…” news conference.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Mueller Indictment Shows Trump Colluding With Russia http://nym.ag/2upN7p1

On July 27, 2016, Donald Trump denied Russia was the likely culprit in the email hacks, but also announced, “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think that you’ll be rewarded mightily by our press.”

In what is possibly an astonishing coincidence, but probably not, that very night, according to the new indictments from the Department of Justice, Russian hackers “attempted after hours to spearphish for the first time email accounts at a domain hosted by a third-party provider and used by Clinton’s personal office. At or about the same time, they also targeted seventy-six email addresses at the domain for the Clinton campaign.” Trump asked Russia to hack his opponent, and Russia did “[f]or the first time,” as the indictment says.

… The danger for Trump is the implication of collusion scattered throughout the indictments.

… The indictment charges that the conspirators “received a request for stolen materials from a candidate for the U.S. Congress,” and “sent the candidate stolen documents.” The Wall Street Journal reported a year ago that “Guccifer 2.0,” one of the Russian hackers, communicated with Florida-based Republican operative Aaron Nevins.

The most direct path to the Trump campaign indicated in this indictment runs through Roger Stone. The Republican dirty trickster officially left the Trump campaign in 2015, but remained in regular contact with Trump throughout the campaign.

Stone admittedly engaged in direct communication with one of the indicted Russian agents. The indictment cites Stone’s contact with Guccifer 2.0:

That certainly looks like acting as an accessory to a crime. Stone promises he will “never roll on Trump,” unlike John Dean, who fingered President Nixon for crimes during Watergate. The promise and the analogy both suggest that Stone has evidence of culpability between Trump and Russia.

Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani writes, “The indictments Rod Rosenstein announced are good news for all Americans. The Russians are nailed. No Americans are involved. Time for Mueller to end this pursuit of the President and say President Trump is completely innocent.” The absurdity of this defense is so palpable that it underscores the sheer desperation of Trump’s legal defense. As Giuliani surely understands, the prosecution is building its case step by step, and the absence of formal charges against an individual in any one indictment hardly indicates they are in the clear. President Trump has been all but charged with collusion in this indictment.

Politico: Mueller indictment sheds new light on Russia’s ‘nasty’ secret election hacking units http://politi.co/2KUZ14o
// The Russia special counsel described in rich new detail how Russian military intelligence officials infiltrated Democratic servers with fearsome skill.

The operatives from two units within Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency meddled in the election through an elaborate series of coordinated high-tech influence operations, and by using a global network of anonymous servers, bitcoin purchasers and other unwitting cutouts to cover the digital tracks, according to the indictment.

“These GRU units are dedicated, well-organized and well-funded, and they’re perfectly capable of causing havoc in our electric grid as well as insecure election systems,” said Joel Brenner, a top official at the National Security Agency and Directorate of National Intelligence during the Bush and Obama administrations.

One of them, Unit 26165, meticulously hacked and stole the information, while the other, 74455, set up the elaborate infrastructure around the world that was used to disseminate the material and make it look like a series of unrelated incidents.

By capturing the keystrokes and computer activities of their victims, they also captured communications about fundraising, voter outreach projects, data about the DCCC’s finances, personal banking information and even files about Clinton’s Achilles Heel, the Benghazi investigations. They also accessed third-party cloud-computing services to obtain politically valuable data about the DNC’s analytics, the indictment said.

And both units covered their tracks so meticulously through an elaborate series of countersurveillance measures that they secretly remained inside the Democrats’ systems until October 2016, the indictment said, despite the efforts of a top U.S. cybersecurity firm to flush them out that began five months earlier. … included the GRU units’ penetration of a state election board’s website, from which they stole information related to about 500,000 voters.

[Joel] Brenner, the former NSA senior official, said the investigation must have been “amazingly thorough,” for instance, to be able to identify the GRU agents operating behind the scenes, including those who engineered the custom malware used in the DNC intrusions.

JustSecurity: Six Big Takeaways from Mueller’s Indictment of Russian Intel Officers http://bit.ly/2LgFLdH
// by Andy Wright, Alex Whiting, Ryan Goodman and Kate Brannen

1. WikiLeaks Collaboration with Russian Intelligence
2. Russian State Attribution
3. Americans’ Liability
4. Media Introspection Time
5. Mueller Investigation Vitality
6. The Level of Detail

NYT: ‘Warning Lights Are Blinking Red,’ Top Intelligence Officer Says of Russian Attacks http://nyti.ms/2uyEibO

The nation’s top intelligence officer said on Friday that the persistent danger of Russian cyberattacks today was akin to the warnings the United States had of stepped-up terror threats ahead of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.

“The warning lights are blinking red again,” Mr. Coats said as he cautioned of cyberthreats. “Today, the digital infrastructure that serves this country is literally under attack.”

Coming just days ahead of President Trump’s meeting with President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, Mr. Coats’s comments demonstrate the persistent divisions within the administration on Russia — and on how hard a line senior administration officials should take with Moscow on its cyberspace activities.

In his remarks on Friday, Mr. Coats did not directly address Mr. Trump’s coming meeting with Mr. Putin. But Mr. Coats did say that if he was meeting the Russian president, he would deliver a sharp message that the United States knows what the Russians are doing and that Mr. Putin’s government is responsible for the cyberattacks.

Mr. Coats also expressed frustration with cyberspace strategies that emphasize only defense, and not offense as well. Evoking President Ronald Reagan’s Cold War approach to the Soviet Union, Mr. Coats suggested that if Russia continued to try to take on the United States in the cyberarena, then the administration should “throw everything we have got into it.”

The comments by Mr. Coats reflect the view by the intelligence community that Russia’s campaign remains a grave threat.

“Russia continues to be aggressive across the board,” Mr. Jones said. “Much as the Soviets did in the Cold War, the Russian active measures are much bigger than just elections.”

Mr. Coats said Russian and other actors were exploring vulnerabilities in critical infrastructure and trying to infiltrate energy, water, nuclear and manufacturing sectors.

He did not outline any details of what exactly the United States or its intelligence agencies will do to curtail the intrusions. But he did say intelligence and other government agencies will speak more publicly about the threat of cyberattacks and cyberinterference to increase public knowledge.

🔄 FactCheck.org: Timeline of Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2KZ4qaQ
// posted 6/7/2018, updated 7/13/2018; Key moments in the FBI probe of Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election; Readable

WaPo Editorial: A timely reminder that Putin is no friend of ours http://wapo.st/2mfd321

The indictment mentions communications with a U.S. congressional candidate and someone in regular contact with senior Trump campaign officials [Stone]. It also notes that the Russians stepped up their hacking just as Mr. Trump was calling on them to obtain and release Hillary Clinton’s emails.

[Trump] could point to the indictments and say, “We know you did this, here are the sanctions you will suffer for it, and here are the additional sanctions we will impose if you do it again.”

The country — and all its leaders — must keep top of mind that the Russian government meddled in the nation’s democratic process and plans to do so again. The Russians should be punished and deterred. Ignoring or minimizing these overriding points is an abdication of responsibility.

Slate, April Glaser: What the Latest Mueller Indictment Reveals About Guccifer 2.0, the “Lone Hacker” Who Was Really a Group of Russian Agents http://slate.me/2mgpnz6
Text Block: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018088263079350273/photo/1

Guccifer 2.0 communicated directly with numerous reporters, including Trump confidante Roger Stone, who posted screenshots of his private Twitter exchange with the disguised Russian hacking group in March 2017. The indictment is presumably referring to Stone when it describes a person who was “in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.”

Guccifer 2.0 didn’t hit the scene, however, until after the cybersecurity firm Crowdstrike, brought in to analyze the DNC’s data breach, published a report that found “two separate Russian intelligence-affiliated adversaries present in the DNC network.” The next day, Guccifer 2.0 claimed responsibility for the hack in a WordPress blog, noting the infiltration “was easy, very easy.” The blog posted opposition research on Donald Trump stolen from the DNC. A few days later, Guccifer 2.0 started a Twitter account declaring that he wasn’t a team of Russians but rather a “lone hacker”—a claim the indictment says is false—and admitted to handing his bounty to WikiLeaks. In an interview with Motherboard, Guccifer 2.0 claimed to be Romanian, but when pressed to explain how he hacked into the DNC servers in Romanian, the person behind the account sent back only a few sentences riddled with mistakes. Still, that summer the Kremlin denied any involvement in the DNC breach.

The indictment brings previously unknown details to light about just how active Guccifer 2.0 was, including the allegation that the Kremlin hackers “received a request for stolen documents from a candidate for the US. Congress,” a request they fulfilled. …

WikiLeaks, which the indictment refers to as Organization 1, allegedly conspired with the fictitious Guccifer 2.0 character in order to receive a trove of more than 20,000 private emails stolen from the DNC server, which WikiLeaks eventually made public.

Organization 1 [Wikileaks]: if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.

The Russian agents: 0k … i see.

Organization I: we. think trump has only a 25% chance of winning against hillary … so conflict between bernie and hillary is interesting.

[T]he emails, which contained correspondence between high-level DNC staff criticizing Sanders and discussing ways to undermine him, undoubtedly turned many of Sanders’ staunch supporters off to the idea of supporting a Clinton presidency.

≣💙💙 DOJ: Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein Delivers Remarks Announcing the Indictment of Twelve Russian Intelligence Officers for Conspiring to Interfere in the 2016 Presidential Election Through Computer Hacking and Related Offenses http://bit.ly/2KTOhTT
Video: https://twitter.com/TheJusticeDept/status/1017823027319500800/photo/1

◕🔄💙💙 FiveThirtyEight, Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux: The Mueller Investigation Keeps Growing Fast http://53eig.ht/2uxfyk4
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1018047820866125824/photo/1
// chart comparing major federal investigations, Watergate, Whitewater, TrumpRussia etc

NYT Editorial: How Do You Say ‘Witch Hunt’ in Russian? http://nyti.ms/2LcZa2s
//. It sure is strange that Donald Trump is so angry at American justice for the indictment of 12 Russian military officers.

NYT: 12 Russian Agents Indicted in Mueller Investigation http://nyti.ms/2Jo8gED

🐣 RT @McFaul Those indicted Russians can now be arrested all over the world. No more trips to London or French Riviera. Their lives just changed forever.
⋙ 🐣 RT @soith_feargach I honestly don’t understand why this means anything. It’s good I suppose that he has the names, but they won’t be extradited here to stand trial, ever. This seems like a lot of noise without meaning. They need to go after the Americans who helped.

🐣 RT @krassenstein BOOM!
Apr 19, 2016 – DCLeaks domain registered by Russians
Apr 19, 2016 – Manafort Takes over as Campaign Chair
Jun 8, 2016 – DCLeaks launches
Jun 9, 2016 – Trump Tower Meeting
Jul 27, 2016 – Trump asks Russia to hack Clinton
Jul 27, 2016 – Russia Starts hacking Clinton

🐣 RT @tribelaw Even if VP’s spear-fishing into H’s emails on 7/27, hours after DJT invited just that, doesn’t lead Mueller to indict Trump, given DOJ policy, it’s likely to support an article of impeachment against T for intentionally getting a foreign adversary’s criminal help to become POTUS.

🐣 RT @tribelaw Trump asked Russia to hack Clinton’s email servers on 7/27/16. Within HOURS, Russia obliged. That’s the pair of overt acts needed to prove criminal conspiracy. All that’s missing is the express or implied agreement. That can be shown circumstantially.

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance The idea of Trump meeting with Putin alone, at this moment in time, is so out of beyonds that it cannot be interpreted in a benign light if it happens.
⋙ 🐣 RT @tedlieu In light of the charges against 12 GRU officers announced by Rod Rosenstein, @realDonaldTrump should cancel his meeting with Putin, who ordered the attack on the US. @POTUS shouldn’t meet Putin until he accepts responsibility. And Trump should definitely not meet him alone.

🐣 RT @chrislhayes Keep thinking about this line: “Given all this, it seems increasingly likely that the Russians have pulled off the most consequential covert action operation since Germany put Lenin on a train back to Petrograd in 1917.”
⋙ TheIntercept (Feb), James Risen: Is Donald Trump a Traitor? http://bit.ly/2GnyBl9
// 2/16/2018

Politico: The 327 people connected to the Russia probes http://politi.co/2FUDhz2 //➔ constantly updated

🐣 RT @juliaioffe Have been out of pocket all day and have just finished reading the indictment and I can’t believe Trump is still going to meet Putin afterwards. The message to Putin is clear: I believe you, not my own judicial system.

🐣 RT @RighteousBabe4 Best Mueller Twitter 📌 Thread https://twitter.com/RighteousBabe4/status/1017826651340713984

NewYorker, Susan Glasser: Thanks to Robert Mueller, Trump and Putin Now Have a Summit Agenda http://bit.ly/2JlFOTU

🐣 People speculate that Mueller indictments were released today to head off Trump/Putin meeting. They could also have been released to protect Rosenstein:
⋙ Politico: House conservatives prep push to impeach Rosenstein http://politi.co/2zBJTng “as soon as Monday”

ABCNews: Roger Stone says he’s the ‘US person’ mentioned in Mueller indictment http://abcn.ws/2LgSHjO

🐣 RT @juliaioffe This quote from the indictment is the highest level of special. “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tvveo [sic] days prefable [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after.”

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson A reader notes that since this was the GRU – Russian *Military* intelligence behind this attack that it falls under article 5 in the NATO Treaty…

Reuters: U.S. intel chief warns of devastating cyber threat to U.S. infrastructure http://reut.rs/2L7YP18 “warning lights are blinking red again”

🐣 RT @keithboykin 100+ criminal counts
35 total indictments
32 people indicted
3 companies indicted
5 guilty pleas
Paul Manafort in jail
Michael Flynn guilty
Trump told Russia to hack
Trump staff met with Russians
Trump Jr. worked w/Wikileaks

This is not a witch hunt.
It’s a criminal conspiracy.

🔆 This❗️⋙ Politico: House conservatives prep push to impeach Rosenstein http://politi.co/2zBJTng
Text:https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1017897987484340224 /photo/1

House conservatives are preparing a new push to oust Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, according to three conservative Capitol Hill sources — putting the finishing touches on an impeachment filing even as Rosenstein announced the indictment of 12 Russian intelligence officers for interfering in the 2016 election.

House Freedom Caucus Chairman Mark Meadows, in fact, had the impeachment document on the floor of the House at the very moment that Rosenstein spoke to reporters and TV cameras Friday.

Conservative GOP lawmakers have been plotting to remove Rosenstein for weeks, accusing him of slow-walking their probe of FBI agents they’ve accused of bias against President Donald Trump.

Democrats contend Republicans’ fixation on Rosenstein is really an effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller, who reports to Rosenstein and has been making inroads in his investigation of the Russian election interference plot. Mueller’s probe has entangled members of Trump’s inner circle and Trump has increasingly assailed it as a politically motivated “witch hunt” as it’s presented greater danger to him and his allies.

Conservative sources say they could file the impeachment document as soon as Monday, as Meadows and Freedom Caucus founder Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) look to build Republican support in the House. One source cautioned, however, that the timing was still fluid.

But House GOP leaders like Speaker Paul Ryan have clearly been uncomfortable with the notion of going after Rosenstein. It’s unlikely that will change anytime soon, especially so soon after the latest indictments. Ryan’s office was not immediately available for comment.
[ But Trump could seize on it to fire him ]

Rosenstein has clashed with House Republicans for months, with Rosenstein insisting that he’s working to comply with the GOP’s intensive demands for documents — some directly relevant to Mueller’s ongoing probe.

But Ryan and other top GOP lawmakers have accused him of stonewalling and flouting Congress’ oversight authority. Trump, too, has frequently sided with lawmakers to pressure Rosenstein to turn over more documents, an effort Democrats say is really meant to arm Trump with more insight into the Russia probe.

The House, with Ryan’s blessing, adopted a measure last month accusing Rosenstein and other DOJ officials of bucking Congress and demanding access to thousands of sensitive FBI documents by July 6. It’s unclear whether Republican leaders are satisfied with DOJ’s efforts since then or if they’re preparing a renewed push for the materials. …

In his remarks Friday, Rosenstein urged the public to be wary of leaks surrounding the Mueller probe.

“We do not try cases on television or in congressional hearings. Most anonymous leaks are not from the government officials who are actually conducting these investigations,” he said.

“We follow the rule of law, which means that we follow procedures, and we reserve judgment,” he added. “We complete our investigations, and we evaluate all of the relevant evidence before we reach any conclusion. That is how the American people expect their Department of Justice to operate, and that is how our department is going to operate.”

But House Judiciary Committee Chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) has made clear that he doesn’t consider Rosenstein out of the woods yet.

After a daylong grilling Thursday of FBI counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok — whom Republicans have accused of bias in the Russia probe — Goodlatte said he blamed Rosenstein for limiting Strzok’s ability to reveal details of his work.

“Rosenstein, who has oversight over the FBI and of the Mueller investigation is where the buck stops,” he said. “Congress has been blocked today from conducting its constitutional oversight duty.”

Politico: House conservatives prep push to impeach Rosenstein http://politi.co/2zBJTng

NYT: Trump Invited the Russians to Hack Clinton. Were They Listening? http://nyti.ms/2L7XwPL

WaPo, Karen Tumulty: Rod Rosenstein said just what we needed to hear http://wapo.st/2mihhWQ

WaPo, Paul Waldman: If this is a ‘witch hunt,’ it sure is finding a lot of witches http://wapo.st/2KUlIWC

WaPo: Mueller probe indicts 12 Russians with hacking Democrats in 2016 http://wapo.st/2NfrgHI

Russian Intelligence Services
Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) – The Foreign Intelligence Service reports directly to the President of Russia.
GRU – Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian Armed Forces.
Federal Security Service (FSB) – The Federal Security Service is responsible for counter-intelligence, state security and anti-terrorist operations

🐣 RT @davidfrum Mueller alleges that Gufficer 2.0 was a Russian GRU officer. And Roger Stone has acknowledged emailing with Guccifer

🐣 RT @McFaul I’m very impressed that Mueller was able to name the 12 GRU officers in the new indictment. Demonstrates the incredible capabilities of our intelligence community. Kremlin will take note.

🐣 RT @brianklaas This was breathtakingly stupid when Trump proposed this idea almost exactly a year ago. Today, it looks even worse.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Putin & I discussed forming an impenetrable Cyber Security unit so that election hacking, & many other negative things, will be guarded..
// 7/9/2017

🐣 RT @anneapplebaum Mueller is suggesting Russians stole Clinton campaign election analytics. If they gave that to Trump campaign, then how is that different from Nixon’s Cuban burglars breaking into Democratic campaign offices?

📒 💙💙 Justice.gov: Mueller Indictment of 12 Russians in the GRU in Election Hacking [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NbphV6 29p

🐣 RT @carolecadwalladr Polite reminder. Trump & Brexit are not 2 different things. They are the same thing. Same companies. Same data. Same Facebook. Same Russians. Same Cambridge Analytica. Same Robert Mercer. Same Steve Bannon. Same Breitbart. Same Alexander Nix. Same Donald Trump. Same Nigel Farage.

TheHill: Mueller: Russian officers launched leaks website in June 2016 http://bit.ly/2LgKAnF

Russian intelligence officers allegedly launched a website in June 2016 to release emails stolen from Clinton campaign officials, special counsel Robert Mueller alleged in an indictment released Friday.

Mueller alleges that the Russian officers initially registered the domain for DCLeaks.com in April 2016, and launched the site “[o]n or about June 8, 2016.”

“Starting in or around June 2016 and continuing through the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the Conspirators used DCLeaks to release emails stolen from individuals affiliated with the Clinton Campaign,” the indictment reads.

Mueller’s investigation into Russian efforts to meddle in the election have focused on a number of other events in the spring and summer of 2016.

One of those events, held June 9, 2016, was the infamous Trump Tower meeting between a Russian lawyer and several top Trump campaign officials.

President Trump’s eldest son Donald Trump Jr. agreed to the meeting with Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya after British music producer Rob Goldstone told him that Veselnitskaya had damaging information on Hillary Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

🐣 RT @SethAbramson 33/ The Kremlin DIRECTLY RESPONDED to Trump’s public call to try to get Clinton’s “missing” emails WITHIN HOURS of him making the request—WITHIN HOURS. Either Trump was coordinating OR he KNEW he had sufficient pull with the Russians that his words could have this sort of effect.
https://twitter.com/SethAbramson/status/1017822330914050049/photo/1

💥 NYT: 12 Russian Agents Indicted in Mueller Investigation 💥 http://nyti.ms/2L9FyMI

🐣 RT @woodruffbets NEW INDICTMENT
-12 Russian GRU officials
-Used Bitcoin to pay for servers etc
-targeted DCCC, DNC, and HRC
-Released emails under the names DCLeaks and Guccifer 2.0

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Mueller is brilliant: he is setting the table by showing the American people that Russia hacked and interfered in our election. Today we know Americans were in contact with those Russians. Next shoe to drop is the role of the Trump campaign in colluding with Russia.

🐣 RT @afneil NATO facts. US does not account for 90% NATO spending (Trump). It’s 22%. NATO Europe spends $250bn/year on defence, 2nd in world after US. Contrary to Trump’s claims, NATO did not agree to his demands. Merely reaffirmed 2014 agreement to spend more.

⭕ 12 Jul 2018

USAToday, Mark Warner (D-VA) and Marco Rubio (R-FL): As Trump meets Putin, we’ll spotlight and resist Russian aggression http://usat.ly/2upcU0v

💙💙 NYRB, Nick Cohen: How the BBC Lost the Plot on Brexit http://bit.ly/2LmkVtP

If you only know the BBC from its slots on NPR, I doubt you will have grasped the extent of its journalistic cowardice in covering the 2016 referendum that decided to take Britain out of the European Union, and its aftermath.

Here is an incomplete list of uncomfortable truths that the British government, its supposedly left-wing opposition in the Labour party, and the 17.4 million people who voted for Britain to leave the EU do not want to hear. There is no plan, and there never was a plan. The “Leave” campaign never had the integrity to present the public with a program for withdrawal. If it had, voters might have realized that Brexit would either bring a huge dislocation as Britain tore itself out of an integrated European economy, or would turn Britain into an EU satellite state, obeying its rules but without a voice in their formulation.

Instead of honestly confronting Britain’s place in the world, the campaign offered brazen lies: Brexit would deliver £350 million ($462 million) a week to our health service; Turkey was about to join the EU and flood Britain with millions of Muslim migrants.

The chaos that has rendered Britain all but powerless as Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump tear up the international order stems from the original sin of not leveling with the public. Both the Conservative and Labour parties are being torn apart by a pressure to do the impossible: to square the promises of charlatans with the realities of Britain’s economic and strategic position. Both left and right, or at least their leaders, talk as if the European Union will allow us to retain the benefits of membership when we have left. …

“The referendum is over,” declared another Today presenter, Nick Robinson. … Real journalists should be able to see that everything is wrong with his statement. If Brexit were over, Britain would not be in a rolling crisis with no end in sight. As pertinently, journalists should never assume a subject has become off-limits, because that is what the enemies of free expression demand.

Much of contemporary politics resembles the brainwashing techniques of religious sects, which discredit sources of information that might contradict the cult’s teachings. … Their most effective technique is to take a half-truth—that all journalistic choices are ideological to some extent—and use it as a weapon to suppress the full truth.

… Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are masters of the tactic of saying that, regardless of the truth of the research or the importance of the story, the very fact of the story’s existence proves its illegitimacy. … He tells his followers that no honest person would have covered the story in the first place. Its truth and relevance are immaterial; it has no right to exist. … …

The BBC’s reporting of the scandals around the Brexit referendum is not biased or unbalanced: it barely exists. It is as though the US networks had decided the Mueller investigation was no concern of theirs. There have been three huge stories the BBC has covered with only the most perfunctory reports: the Facebook/Cambridge Analytica data leak, the Brexit campaign funding scandal, and the exposure of Russian interference in British politics.

That 2018 has been the year that Western publics realized how much Facebook knew about them, and how that information could be used by hostile foreign powers and malicious plutocrats, is thanks in large part to the efforts of Carole Cadwalladr, my colleague at the London Guardian and Observer. … Cadwalladr has inspired investigations of global interest in the Brexit referendum. She did it the old-fashioned way, by banging away at the story week in, week out. The more often she appeared in the paper, the more potential whistleblowers realized they could trust and talk to her.

… No one has done more to expose how the axis of technology, demagoguery, and oligarchy operates in Britain. She is everything BBC journalists are not.

When the whistleblower Christopher Wylie brought The Observer and The New York Times details of how data Cambridge Analytica, a British company partly owned by the family of Robert Mercer (who funds numerous conservative causes), Cadwalladr and Wylie offered the BBC a share of the story. The firm was at the center of the Anglo-American alt-right. Steve Bannon was on its board. It worked for Donald Trump and, at the very least, had dealings with Leave.EU, a pro-Brexit campaign group fronted by Trump’s British ally Nigel Farage and funded with what is thought to be the largest campaign donation in British political history from one of our local oligarchs, a loudmouthed insurance tycoon named Arron Banks. When news broke that Cambridge Analytica had collected identifying personal information for some 87 million Facebook users, Facebook stock fell by $134 billion.

The BBC was given the opportunity to interview the whistleblower and have a documentary ready to go once the news was out. But like Eliot rejecting Orwell, the BBC’s investigative program Panorama backed away. There was no “smoking gun,” it said. Within days, the smoke from Facebook’s burning reputation was billowing from its Palo Alto headquarters.

Cadwalladr received copies of Arron Banks’s emails showing that he had had multiple meetings with the Russian ambassador during the referendum campaign and was offered a business deal involving six Russian goldmines. … …

In the preface to Animal Farm, George Orwell provided a line that today would be apt for the walls of the BBC headquarters: “Unpopular ideas can be silenced, and inconvenient facts kept dark, without the need for any official ban.” No doubt, if the shift of public opinion against Brexit continues, the BBC’s silence will end and, like a weather vane, it will swing with the prevailing wind. It will receive no plaudits from me. No one should praise journalists who speak out when, and only when, they are certain that public opinion is with them. Not just journalists, but anyone engaged in political life should learn from the BBC’s abject performance. Whether you are on the left or the right, there will be times when you will be frightened of saying what you believe for fear of offending your friends, breaking a taboo or going against the ephemeral consensus of the day. Allow that fear to dominate you and you will end up like the BBC: platitudinous, frightened, and irrelevant.

WaPo, Aaron Blake: 7 key moments from Peter Strzok’s wild hearing http://wapo.st/2NbYvM5

≣ Politico: Full text: FBI agent Peter Strzok’s statement before Congress http://politi.co/2zHrHsm
// transcript

In the summer of 2016, I was one of a handful of people who knew the details of Russian election interference and its possible connections with members of the Trump campaign. This information had the potential to derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind.

That’s what FBI agents do every single day, and it’s why I am so proud of the Bureau. And I am particularly proud of the work that I, and many others, did on the Clinton email investigation. Our charge was to investigate it competently, honestly, and independently, and that is exactly what happened.

I’m also proud of our work on the Russian interference investigation. This is an investigation into a direct attack by a foreign adversary – and it is no less so simply because it was launched against our democratic process rather than against a military base. This is something that all Americans, of all political persuasions, should be alarmed by. In the summer of 2016, we had an urgent need to protect the integrity of an American Presidential election from a hostile foreign power determined to weaken and divide the United States of America. This investigation is not politically motivated, it is not a witch hunt, it is not a hoax. …

I understand we are living in a political era in which insults and insinuation often drown out honesty and integrity. But the honest truth is that Russian interference in our elections constitutes a grave attack on our democracy. Most disturbingly, it has been wildly successful – sowing discord in our nation and shaking faith in our institutions. I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart.

As someone who loves this country and cherishes its ideals, it is profoundly painful to watch and even worse to play a part in.

💙💙 HillReporter: 4 Moments From Peter Strzok’s Testimony That You Must See http://bit.ly/2ukr2YO

HuffPo: Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) uses GOP members of Congress’ own words to highlight the hypocrisy of their criticism against FBI Agent Peter Strzok.
💽 Video: https://twitter.com/HuffPostPol/status/1017555455189700608/photo/1

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES That wasn’t oversight and you know it. It was harassment, conspiracy theories, wackjobbery, dishonesty and demagoguery wrapped in a blanket of venality and rot. This country needs statesmen and women. You know one well. Think about stepping it up. @NicolleDWallace @MarkSalter55
⋙ 🐣 RT @LindseyGrahamSC If Democrats and the FBI believe the bias displayed by Strzok and Page will not be subject to congressional oversight, they are kidding themselves. That’s delusional.

🐣💙💙 RT @KenDilanianNBC FBI agent Peter Stzrok: In the fall of 2016, I had info that could “derail, and quite possibly, defeat Mr. Trump. But the thought of exposing that information never crossed my mind….This investigation is not politically motivated, it is not a witch hunt, it is not a hoax.”

NYT: Stephen Colbert Criticizes Trump for Attacking Germany http://nyti.ms/2zxWTdR

TheHill: Fox News lands exclusive interview with Putin http://hill.cm/841KzAk 

🐣 RT @brianklaass Trump weeded out or sidelined anyone who wasn’t a feeble sycophant. The leader of the most powerful country on Earth is objectively ignorant, frequently unhinged & a serial liar — and he is also mostly unbound from the remaining advisers who have more knowledge and better traits.

Vox, Andrew Prokop: The wild Peter Strzok congressional hearing, explained http://bit.ly/2zxRALt
// The FBI agent accused of political bias defended himself in a raucous hearing.

Politico, David Herszenhorn & Jacopo Barigazzi: ‘Very stable’ Trump? European leaders beg to differ http://politi.co/2LhHlfK
// The president’s wild shifts in tone left many NATO allies concluding no hidden strategy lies behind his unpredictability.

Trump’s wildly unpredictable performance over two days in Brussels left many European leaders convinced that there is little method to the American president’s rhetorical madness, and simply no way to anticipate what he might do next.

“Nobody knows when Trump is doing international diplomacy and when he is doing election campaigning in Montana,” Danish defense minister Claus Hjort Frederiksen said. “It is difficult to decode what policy the American president is promoting. There is a complete unpredictability in this, and one of the things you need in this alliance is predictability towards Russia.”

Trump upended the summit even before it started by unleashing a tirade against Germany during a breakfast meeting on Wednesday with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and created further upheaval by hijacking a meeting Thursday morning about Ukraine and Georgia during which he again demanded that allies quickly increase their national military spending and threatened that if they failed to do so, the U.S. could break with the alliance and start conducting security policy unilaterally, by going its “own way.”

Trump also committed a cardinal sin of diplomacy by conflating issues that are typically kept in silos — like military spending and trade, or energy policy, in the case of the German gas pipeline project — to reduce the chance of rupturing negotiations.

NPR: Trump Says ‘No Problem’ In NATO, Touting Allies’ Spending Pledges http://n.pr/2Nc5B3r //➔ the pledges were established in 2014
// Macron

NYT, David Leonhardt: It Just Got Harder to Fire Mueller http://nyti.ms/2LcWsHa

NYT, William Davies: Boris Johnson, Donald Trump and the Rise of Radical Incompetence http://nyti.ms/2JlclcH
// Like America’s president, Brexiteers resent the very idea of governing as complex and based in facts.

NYT: With May’s Government Teetering, Trump Gives It a Shove http://nyti.ms/2L5o04p

Crooks&Liars, Karoli: Trump Gives ‘Insane, Incendiary, Insulting’ Interview To British Tabloid http://bit.ly/2L2FoqB Trump’s interview with Murdoch’s Sun is crazier than anything he’s done so far

MSN: Inflation jumps 2.9 percent in largest annual gain in 6 years http://bit.ly/2mcvRPt Meanwhile payscale index is down .9 percent

🐣💙 RT @Kris_Sacrebleu You know what I enjoyed most about the #PeterStrzokHearing ?
his DEFIANCE.
It was pure, man.
https://twitter.com/Kris_Sacrebleu/status/1017635988573581312/photo/1

🐣 RT @AdamSchiffCA While the President disparages our closest allies in Europe and NATO, Putin glories in new fractures in the Western alliance. All the while, autocrats all over the world are on the rise. And still, the GOP slumbers.

TheSun [UK]: TRUMP’S BREXIT BLAST I told May how to do Brexit but she wrecked it — the US trade deal is off, says Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2KU845N
// “The” interview; text: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1017634300785844224/photo/1

His comments, damaging to the Prime Minster, come as he delivers his most brutally honest verdict yet on Britain in which he also:

Accused EU leaders of destroying its culture and identity by allowing in millions of
migrants
● Tore into London Mayor Sadiq Khan for not standing up to terrorists
● Blamed Khan for spiralling crime in the capital
● Insisted former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson would make “a great Prime Minister”
● Denied once branding Theresa May a “bossy schoolteacher”
Maintained he would keep ties with Russian tyrant Vladimir Putin despite the
Salisbury Novichok poisonings
● Demanded Britain and other Nato countries spend more on defence
● Spoke of his sadness at feeling unwelcome in the capital by anti-Trump protesters
● Claimed millions of Brits backed his policies
● Told of his pride at taking wife Melania to meet the Queen

WaPo: Trump blasts Prime Minister Theresa May in interview published during his first official visit to Britain http://wapo.st/2uBTxAT

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: White House Orders Broader Access to Files About F.B.I. Informant http://nyti.ms/2L9kw0G

🐣 RT @Amy_Siskind Just a reminder: the FBI helped Trump win and Hillary lose. We voted in November 2016 not knowing the Trump campaign was under investigation for colluding with Russia. That’s how far down the rabbit hole of ridiculousness we have gone.

🐣 RT @JohnWDean This House joint committee shows how Trump has taken the GOP into the gutter w/ him as they seek to use their official power to obstruct the Mueller investigation of him. Little wonder the public holds Congress in such low esteem. Strzok had shown this circus for what it is.

💙💙 RollingStone: FBI Agent Peter Strzok’s Hearing About Trump and Russia Got Ugly http://rol.st/2JjA7po
// the good quotes; From allegations of lying under oath to dragging a personal life through the mud, it was a wild day on Capitol Hill

All that was made clear on Thursday was that the president has successfully corrupted his Republican allies to the point that lawmakers consider the FBI to be conspiring against the state, while an adversary like Russia launching a cyberwar on America is an afterthought. Trump isn’t concerned, so neither are Republicans, who now use the president’s Twitter account as a North Star for where to direct their attention and, apparently, how to behave.

“I understand we are living in a political era in which insults and insinuation often drown out honesty and integrity,” Strzok said in his opening statement. “I have the utmost respect for Congress’s oversight role, but I truly believe that today’s hearing is just another victory notch in Putin’s belt and another milestone in our enemies’ campaign to tear America apart.”

NYT (7/20/2016): Donald Trump Sets Conditions for Defending NATO Allies Against Attack http://nyti.ms/2uvy2kX
// 7/20/2016

WaPo, Robert Kagan: Things will not be okay http://wapo.st/2uvw7wL

WaPo Editorial: The Strzok hearing damaged our democracy http://wapo.st/2JnqGp0

Politico: Trump ‘plays Russia’s game’ with NATO attacks, former officials say http://politi.co/2mbphsB
// His threat to withdraw U.S. commitment ‘strikes at the heart’ of the alliance, says one former NATO ambassador.

WaPo: FBI agent at center of clash over Russia probe faces off with Republicans at tense hearing http://wapo.st/2mbWkN7

WaPo: Trump blasts Prime Minister Theresa May in interview published during his first official visit to Britain http://wapo.st/2NaGv4I

NYT: F.B.I. Agent Peter Strzok Defends Actions in Russia Inquiry in Contentious House Testimony http://nyti.ms/2L8R0bA

NYT: Trump Rattles Britain Hours After Unsettling NATO http://nyti.ms/2LehhC3

NYT, Susan Rice: Trump Must Not Capitulate to Putin http://nyti.ms/2uqKKSb
// There is so much to lose and so little to gain for the United States in the Trump-Putin summit next week.

💙💙 NYT, Paul Krugman: For Trump, Failure Is the Only Option http://nyti.ms/2usP2bK

WaPo: Peter Strzok just gave a hard-to-rebut defense of the objectivity of the Russia investigation’s origins http://wapo.st/2mj2YS1

TheHill: Trump says he feels ‘unwelcome’ in London due to protests http://bit.ly/2L9aDQC

🐣 Unfortunately, they ran out of Democrats. Remaining Republicans are just delivering short floor speeches pummeling Strzok, hardly even letting him speak. They planned this for primetime. They are shameless, diminishing America.

🐣 DailyBeast: Republicans Thought Peter Strzok Would Be a Punching Bag. He Just Knocked Them Out. http://thebea.st/2usFSf7
// He was supposed to be a key in the imaginary conspiracy Trump’s congressional lackeys and media fantasists have desperately tried to write as history. He was having none of it.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff GOP leadership at the Strzok hearing demonstrating again that there is no water they will not carry, no character they will not assassinate, no institution they will not destroy in service of the President. Giuliani will be pleased with the additions to Trump’s legal defense team

🐣 RT @PaulBegala I didn’t see smugness from Special Agent Strzok. I saw righteous indignation over his life & career upended, and the entire FBI trashed by partisan hacks seeking to divert from the deadly serious question of whether our POTUS has been compromised by a hostile foreign power.

🐣 RT @EvanMcMullin House Republicans’ efforts today and otherwise to expose the sources of an ongoing counter-intelligence investigation of immense national importance are utterly reprehensible and dangerous. They’re abusing their authorities to protect the president at the country’s expense.

🐣 RT @MarshallCohen FBI agent Peter Strzok just testified that the Steele dossier was not the reason why the FBI opened its Trump-Russia investigation in July 2016.

Esquire: Peter Strzok’s Testimony Was a Reminder of How Dumb the ‘Deep State’ Theory Is http://bit.ly/2uv5O9Q https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1017512938708570112/photo/1
// Text block below; Which investigation did the FBI go public about again?

But the real haymaker was Strzok’s reminder that he had a ton of dirt on Trump before Election Day—potentially decisive dirt—and didn’t call a single reporter or tweet a single bit out. We didn’t see it on Wikileaks. We didn’t hear about any of it. Strzok’s grandstanding about how bias would never infect an FBI investigation doesn’t hold water, but the simple fact is that the agency had an opportunity to fire a cannonball at the U.S.S. Trump, but chose Clinton instead. That points to the bias in the FBI’s New York field office, which likely fed into Comey’s decision to go public with the Clinton probe details.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [Clint Watts] I’m not sure which has degraded US democratic institutions more since 2016: Russia’s Active Measures or the behavior of the House of Representatives.

🌀Time cover, White House becomes Kremlin https://twitter.com/PaladinCornelia/status/1017489651366424576/photo/1

.@RepGutierrez makes a great point. Peter Strzok knew the information that could destroy the Trump candidacy BUT DID NOT LEAK IT. Proof his personal opinions did not affect his professional activity. His texts did not lead to acts.

WaPo: At NATO, Trump claims allies make new defense spending commitments after he upends summit http://wapo.st/2ugSJSj

🐣 Harken! @RepMolester speaks!

🐣 RT @PaulaChertov Rep Connolly makes key & obscured point by the GOP campaign to taint Strzok & Mueller investigation generally: Saying negative things about Trump and not wanting him to be president was the majority view in the country—including from prominent Republicans. #Strzok was no outlier.
⋙ 🐣 “Saying negative things about Trump and not wanting him to be president was the majority view in the country”~ It still is.

🐣 RT @matthewamiller Oh Issa. He just told Strzok he is the target of a congressional investigation, which is not actually a thing.

🐣 I have known GOP surgeons and Dem surgeons. I have never known a surgeon incapable of performing surgery equally well on GOP and Dem patients. That is what a “professional” is. FBI agents are professionals. They are bound by professional ethics. @cspan #PeterStrzok

WaPo: GOP lawmakers threaten FBI agent Peter Strzok with contempt for refusing to answer question on Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2zAH2uQ

🐣 RT @DavidCicilline Republican hypocrisy is ridiculous today. GOP has until 5pm to tell me why I can’t release Peter Strzok’s closed-door transcript. If they don’t, @RepRaskin and I are going to send to DOJ to scrub for sensitive info and then release it when it’s ready.

WaPo, Max Boot: NATO is based on credibility and trust. Trump has struck a blow against both. http://wapo.st/2KQXbBv

🐣 RT @JakeTapper Strzok says re: investigation: “the information we had which was alleging a Russian offer of assistance to a member of the Trump campaign was of extraordinary significance. It was credible. It was from an extraordinarily sensitive and credible source.”

🐣 RT @tedleu This #GOP controlled hearing into the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails is stupid.
But having said that, Peter Strzok is a great witness who is obliterating conspiracy theory after conspiracy theory.

🐣 RT @matthewmiller I can’t believe how calmly and professionally Strzok is handling this. I am ready to punch a wall just from watching this travesty.

🐣 RT @selectedwisdom [ Clint Watts ] I’m not sure which has degraded US democratic institutions more since 2016: Russia’s Active Measures or the behavior of the House of Representatives.

🐣 RT @EricHolder House Republicans are irresponsibly more concerned with Strzok, Rosenstein and Clinton than they are with Putin/Russian actions. Smoke screen. Trying to delegitimize expected results of Mueller inquiry and protect people in Trump campaign and a very likely complicit President.

🐣 RT @BillKristol House Republicans are increasingly behaving like legislators from the ruling party in a banana republic. And while I remain committed to trying to save the GOP, it’s become awfully hard to make the case for saving GOP control of the House in 2018.
⋙ 🐣 RT @benjaminwittes ALERT: Rep. Goodlatte is right now threatening to hold an FBI agent in contempt of Congress for refusing to answer questions about a pending counterintelligence investigation when the agent has been specifically instructed by the FBI not to answer such questions.

TheGuardian: Russian mining firm puts Trump’s face on its asbestos products http://bit.ly/2uhKzsZ
// As US officials decide against banning product, producer Uralasbest puts Trump ‘seal of approval’ on pallets

🐣 I love 💙 Peter Strzok 💙 my new hero. @cspan @CSPANnow

Politico: What Trump Should Have Told Germany About Russian Gas http://politi.co/2KNNJ21
// The president had a point – but as usual, he got the details wrong.

🐣 They’re trying to skewer Strzok for having been anti-Trump. Like no one else ever was. Talk about a witch hunt. @cspan3

CBS: Trump blasts Germany at NATO summit over gas pipeline deal with Russia http://cbsn.ws/2NJSgAg

🐣 Strzok hearing gets 🔥FIERY🔥 @Cspan3 now

🐣 Goodlatte is wrong. He can’t force Strzok to disclose info on on-going FBI investigation. Unbelievable.

Axios: Why Trump is mad about Russia’s new pipeline to Germany http://bit.ly/2LfGSKE

HuffPo: Colbert: My Agent ‘Doesn’t Do As Much For Me As Trump Does For Russia’ http://bit.ly/2ug3q7C
// The “Late Show” host isn’t surprised at all that Donald Trump gets along with Vladimir Putin.

CNN: Merkel responds to Trump: ‘I have witnessed’ Germany under Soviet control http://cnn.it/2zzEAF0

PBS: Trump scolded Germany for buying gas from Russia. Here’s what we know http://to.pbs.org/2zxXwE7

CNN: Democrats frustrated Nunes left mid-hearing after questions about Russia probe http://cnn.it/2N8msny

TheHill: Ex-Russia ambassador: Trump has done more damage to NATO in months than Russia has in decades http://bit.ly/2NaWxf0
// @mcfaul

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump creates a big, self-contradictory spectacle at NATO http://wapo.st/2Jhohfr

🔆 Hearing live now on C-Span❗️⋙ Politico: FBI agent Strzok slams hearing as ‘victory notch in Putin’s belt’ http://politi.co/2mbUJXC

🔆 Live now on C-Span❗️⋙ WaPo: Embattled FBI agent to appear before Congress http://wapo.st/2L1Vd0y

WaPo: In major abortion ruling, Kavanaugh offers clues of how he might handle divisive issue on the Supreme Court http://wapo.st/2Jmf0TK

🐣 “humiliating of a person” is poor usage; better be careful. I’m sure I’m richer than you & people like me pwn your party. Oligarchs buy your votes with red meat just so they can get their tax cuts. you’ll come crawling when they crash the economy again & use it to cut SS & Mcare.

🐣 Who would have thought that a porn star would end up having more integrity than the resident of the denigrated states of America?

🐣 Peter Strzok hearing about to begin. His story was featured on @maddow last night. Though less familiar to the left, he has been demonized on the right for having *gasp!* texted anti-Trump sentiments while working on the Clinton email and #TrumpRussia cases. @cspan3

WaPo: Trump upends NATO summit, demanding immediate spending increases or he will ‘do his own thing’ http://wapo.st/2KSspbs

Vox: Controversial FBI agent Peter Strzok’s upcoming hearing, explained http://bit.ly/2L7qfEq
// The agent who sent texts about stopping Trump is about to be grilled on the Hill.

AP: BREAKING: French President Macron denies Trump claim that NATO powers agreed to increase defense spending beyond previous targets.
// no article

WaPo: Trump upends NATO summit, demanding immediate spending increases or he will ‘do his own thing’ http://wapo.st/2upZksT

⭕ 11 Jul 2018

WarOnTheRocks, Edward Fishman and Mark Simakovsky (7/11): Playing with Fire in Helsinki: How Trump’s Summit with Putin Could Split the Transatlantic Alliance http://bit.ly/2LewBll

[T]he Trump administration’s Russia policy has demonstrated the degree to which federal agencies can shape policies in absence of consistent presidential leadership. The Helsinki summit, however, seems likely to mark the beginning of a period in which Trump puts more of a personal stamp on U.S. policy toward Russia, which carries serious risks. Trump seems intent on taking back control of the relationship with Russia, congressional obstacles and the Mueller investigation be damned.

… [T]he optics of a U.S. president shaking hands and smiling with Putin will contrast greatly with the combative images that seem likely to come out of the NATO summit days prior.

… [T]here are worrying signs that the Republican party is creeping toward Trump’s position on Russia, as evidenced by the recent congressional delegation. To mitigate the harm Trump’s summit could do, America needs lawmakers to maintain unity across the aisle in support of a clearheaded Russia policy.

Since passing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA) last summer, which legally codifies most U.S. sanctions against Russia, Congress has thwarted Trump’s efforts to shape policy toward Moscow. Partly in response to congressional pressure and to compensate for a perceived “softness” against an adversary, the Trump administration levied sanctions against Russia in April, the most damaging ones since at least 2016. As long as Mueller’s investigation marches forward, however, Trump will continue to have trouble shaping a coherent, effective approach to Russia. He will also find quickly that a Putin meeting notwithstanding, his administration will remain hamstrung in its ability to promise the Kremlin any relief from sanctions.

Trump’s own advisors may also seek to counter the president’s wishes to improve ties at all costs, as Pompeo, Mattis, UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, and National Intelligence Director Dan Coats have all expressed the threat that Russia presents and the need to counter Russian aggression with real American action. It is no coincidence that Coats himself is speaking publicly in Washington three days before the U.S.-Russia summit specifically to describe Russia’s current efforts to destabilize the 2018 mid-term elections. 

🐣 RT @RonaldKlain IMPORTANT: Tonight, Trump issued an order replacing non-partisan career Administrative Judges — who decide on benefits cases & regulations — with his own political appointees. A HUGE POWER GRAB. I warned about this in a column I wrote last November:

FinancialTimes: Tower of secrets: the Russian money behind a Donald Trump skyscraper http://on.ft.com/2maWzYJ

🐣 ‘Trump threatened to go it alone unless the Europeans IMMEDIATELY begin paying two percent of their GDP for defense.’ The existing agreement is to reach two percent by 2024.
⋙ Stern: Trump droht Nato-Partnern offenbar mit Alleingang in Verteidigungsfragen http://bit.ly/2L7kLGp

NYT: Trump vs. Merkel: Blistering Salvo Meets Quiet Rejoinder http://nyti.ms/2KZ1qun
Last ¶ below: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1017334594838949888/photo/1

Ms. Merkel has been hesitant to engage in harsh exchanges with Mr. Trump. In fact, her foreign minister, Heiko Maas, gave a much sharper response to Mr. Trump’s disparaging remarks on Wednesday, writing on Twitter, “We are no captives — neither of Russia nor of the United States.

They have called the idea of spending 2 percent of gross domestic product on defense — which Mr. Trump has not only insisted on but now says he wants to double — ludicrous and arbitrary.

That view is shared by many Germans, which led Ms. Merkel to record a video over the weekend explaining why she believed Germany must spend more on defense, as pledged. But the more Mr. Trump attacks Germany, the less its people feel like appeasing him on military spending or with trade concessions.

The Nord Stream 2 pipeline project has been opposed by the United States for many years, including under President Barack Obama, as well as by some European countries, like Poland, that warn it will give Russia too much leverage.

The Germans argue that they have been diversifying their gas supplies, that they now get only about 9 percent of their energy from Russia — not the 70 percent that Mr. Trump claimed — and that Washington is angling to sell liquid natural gas to Germany instead.

NYT: Battling Fake Accounts, Twitter to Slash Millions of Followers http://nyti.ms/2ma3Qbl

BBC FactCheck: How much of Germany’s gas comes from Russia? http://bbc.in/2NIyOUE Trump says Germany imports 60%–70% of its energy from Russia. Reality Check: Germany relies on Russia for most of its imports of natural gas. But gas makes up less than 20% of Germany’s energy…
// “… mix for power production”; may not include gas etc for cars

Politico: Trump sparks Republican rift on Russia http://politi.co/2zweJhg
// The GOP is increasingly divided as Trump undermines NATO and warms to Vladimir Putin.

NYT, Ivan Krastev: Sorry, NATO. Trump Doesn’t Believe in Allies. http://nyti.ms/2NJXWdK
// Europe has to understand that in the American president’s twisted worldview, there are only fans and enemies.

The logic of the post-Cold War world has been that the United States exercises its global influence by preserving and expanding its alliances. This logic no longer holds. The gravest risk the European Union faces is to be the guardian of a status quo that has ceased to exist.

🐣 RT @Lawrence Senate just had overwhelming bi-partisan vote against Trump’s illegal tariffs–88 to 11.

NYT, Nicholas Burns: What America Gets Out of NATO http://nyti.ms/2Na6PMD

Last week in Great Falls, Mont., he said that he had told Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany, “I don’t know how much protection we get by protecting you.” Mr. Trump has been even tougher on the European Union, branding it “as bad as Nafta” and adding, “Sometimes our worst enemies are our so-called friends.”

I have visited four European countries during the last two weeks, and it has been shocking to see how far from grace the United States has fallen in the eyes of its allies. European leaders point to Mr. Trump’s support for anti-democratic populists in Hungary, Poland and Italy. They view his recent Twitter attack on Ms. Merkel as a transparent attempt to push her from office.

Many fear he may now remove American sanctions against Moscow over its occupation of Crimea after his meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia in Finland next week. Confidence in Mr. Trump has plummeted so much that the German foreign minister, Heiko Maas, recently grouped “Donald Trump’s egotistic policy of America First” along with Russia and China as global concerns.

… [T]here are compelling reasons that NATO in particular will be a distinct advantage for America’s security far into the future.

First, NATO’s formidable conventional and nuclear forces are the most effective way to protect North America and Europe — the heart of the democratic world — from attack. Threats to our collective security have not vanished in the 21st century. Mr. Putin remains a determined adversary preying on Eastern Europe and American elections. NATO is a force multiplier: The United States has allies who will stand by us, while Russia has none.

The United States has relied on NATO allies to strike back against Al Qaeda in Afghanistan and the Islamic State in the Middle East. European troops have replaced American soldiers in peacekeeping missions in Bosnia and contribute the large majority in Kosovo.

A second reason for maintaining the trans-Atlantic alliance is America’s economic future. The European Union is our country’s largest trade partner, and its largest investor. The United States and the European Union are the world’s two largest economies, and can steer global trade to their advantage if they stick together. More than four million Americans work for European companies in the United States. Forty-five of the 50 states export more to Europe than to China.

Third, future American leaders will find Europe is our most capable and willing partner in tackling the biggest threats to global security: climate change; drugand cybercrime cartels; terrorism; pandemics and mass migration from Africa and the Middle East. And America’s NATO allies will continue to be indispensable in safeguarding democracy and freedom, under assault by Russia and China.

Mr. Trump may believe his blistering attacks on Europe’s trade policies and defense budgets are a good negotiating tactic before the summit. But in fact they have already done enormous damage. While he cannot outright kill NATO — the American public and Congress support it too strongly — he has eroded significant levels of trust and good will. As it became clear during my recent visits across Europe, a dangerous breach has opened in the trans-Atlantic alliance — by far the worst in seven decades.

Mr. Trump wants Americans to believe that their allies are simply taking advantage of them. On Sept. 11, 2001, I witnessed a far different reality as American ambassador to NATO. Canada and the European allies volunteered within hours of the attacks to invoke Article 5 of the NATO treaty, which compels all members to respond to an attack on any single member, for the first time in history. They came to our defense when we most needed them. They sent troops to fight with us in Afghanistan. They are still there with us 17 years later.

Are we now going to throw off that mutual protection, and go it alone in a dangerous 21st-century world? That would be a historic mistake.

WaPo: ‘Rubbing salt in the wounds’: Trump won’t take yes for an answer at NATO http://wapo.st/2L3Tckn

After a year of haranguing by President Trump, Western leaders had agreed to his administration’s long-sought priorities on defense spending and counterterrorism — and were prepared to let him take all the credit.

But Trump had other plans.

The U.S. president began a remarkable day of transatlantic diplomacy by attacking Germany as “captive to Russia,” later called on NATO countries to double their previous commitment to defense spending and then effectively renounced the gathering altogether.

Publicly, however, Trump bristled and bickered, interrupted and impeded — making clear to the world he is impatient and annoyed with an alliance that he says takes advantage of the United States.

“This is Trump’s strategy,” said the diplomat, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to candidly recount the private meeting. “He raises the stakes, then he calms things down.”

As Trump unspooled his case against Merkel, his aides looked stricken and stone-faced. Trump’s broadside set the tone for a summit that the Europeans feared could be contentious and perhaps even disastrous — especially after they watched him refuse to sign onto an agreement at the Group of Seven summit in Canada last month and railed against NATO at a campaign rally last week in Montana.

“The rapid erosion of trust in Donald Trump, I’ve never seen anything like it for any of our post-World War II presidents,” said Nicholas Burns, a former U.S. ambassador to NATO. “They’re infuriated at these persistent attacks on NATO. . . . They all listened to the Great Falls, Montana, speech and follow him on Twitter. There’s tremendous disappointment that an American leader would be so ungrateful and so mean-spirited.”

Trump has complained that such summits are largely a waste of his time, and he prefers one-on-one meetings with counterparts in which he can negotiate deals or gatherings where he is feted, such as his visits last year to China and Saudi Arabia.

Trump arrived at NATO headquarters here Wednesday later than most leaders and did not walk down the long path on which others strode and took questions. In the closed session, he listened only to some of the statements from the 29 allied leaders and left soon after he demanded in his own remarks that NATO allies double their defense spending commitments to 4 percent of their countries’ gross domestic product.

Despite their differences, the NATO leaders all signed onto a far-reaching declaration that any other U.S. administration would have touted as an unqualified success.

“On substance, this is one of the most successful NATO summits I’ve seen,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO.

He cited the alliance’s new training mission in Iraq and an initiative sought by Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to get more NATO battalions, ships and planes ready for combat, a plan known as 30-30-30-30.

Derek Chollet, an Obama administration official, said the concrete progress during the meeting offered a surprising contrast to Trump’s rhetoric.

“There’s a fundamental disconnect in this administration, because many of the ideas that are being agreed to are U.S. ideas,” he said. “The 30-30-30 plan is a Mattis initiative. The Iraq training mission was a U.S.-driven decision to have a bigger NATO presence in Iraq.”

“Everyone’s saying this is good, but Trump is saying it’s going badly because fundamentally he’s a contrarian,” he said.

Just after Trump was whisked out of NATO headquarters in his motorcade, he punched out a combative tweet that again singled out Germany and even questioned the value of the overall alliance.

“What good is NATO if Germany is paying Russia billions of dollars for gas and energy?” Trump wrote.

WaPo: The Russian pipeline to Germany that Trump is so mad about, explained http://wapo.st/2NK7k0H
Map of Nord Stream 1&2 pipeline: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1017157925192728577/photo/1

Germany is indeed Russia’s biggest export market in Europe for gas, with a dependency that may grow further once Nord Stream 2 is finished. The project would roughly double Russia’s export volume via the Baltic route that goes through the original Nord Stream pipeline.

Over the next few decades, Europe’s own gas resources — which accounted for more than a third of its supplies in 2016 — are expected to gradually disappear. (Britain, Norway and the Netherlands are Western and Northern Europe’s biggest producers, primarily relying on natural gas fields in the North Sea.)

As Europe’s own supplies are running out, the United States is hoping to gain access to a profitable market with growing demand. But U.S. economic interests only partially explain why the pipeline conflict is now emerging as a key point of contention.

Nations such as Poland and Ukraine also fear that Russia may be diversifying its gas routes into Europe to be able to exploit its grid for political reasons. In June 2014, amid the fallout over the Russian annexation of Crimea months earlier, Russia cut off Ukraine’s gas supplies for weeks in what Kiev said was an attempt to blackmail Ukraine.

In 2005, Russian President Vladimir Putin’s friend [Former PM Gerhard] Schroeder hastily signed the deal just as he was departing the office from which he had been voted out days earlier. Within weeks, he started to oversee the project implementation himself, leading the Nord Stream AG’s shareholder committee.

Schroeder went on to become a board member of several consortia in which Russian government-controlled energy company Gazprom is at least the majority shareholder. Most recently, he became chairman of Rosneft, which is Russia’s largest oil company and controlled by the Kremlin.

The plans were drawn up at a time when Russia appeared eager to engage with the West — and many Germans still see Russia more positively than other countries do. The Germans’ hope on that front may also be based on their long dealings with the Soviet Union throughout the Cold War, when open hostility and more low-key cooperation went hand in hand.

While gas supplies are now raising concerns over the risks they may pose to international security, they were actually seen as a way to prevent conflicts during the Cold War.

In response to Trump’s accusations that Germany was captive to Russia, Merkel — who grew up in East Germany — on Wednesday cautioned the president that she may be in a better position to judge her country’s dependence. “I’ve experienced myself a part of Germany controlled by the Soviet Union, and I’m very happy today that we are united in freedom,” Merkel said.

WaPo: At NATO, Trump lashes out at allies and then asks them to double their defense spending goals http://wapo.st/2L7hZkl

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin America has allied with a growing number of other free nations for decades. Together we’ve defeated freedom’s foes and become the most prosperous peoples ever on earth. President Trump seeks to break these ties, not for our benefit, but for himself and his sponsors in Moscow.

WaPo: When Trump attacked Germany in Brussels, his aides pursed their lips and glanced away http://wapo.st/2KOgn2N

WeeklyStandard: Flake Gets His Tariff Vote https://tinyurl.com/ybdebavp

🐣 RT @SecPompeo .@NATO is the most successful alliance in history. All #NATO allies have committed to extending this success through increased defense spending, deterrence and defense, and fighting terrorism. Weakness provokes; strength and cohesion protects. This remains our bedrock belief.

🐣 RT @BillKristol Who, in this moment of abdication of American leadership by the president, will speak for America? Who will speak for American greatness?
⋙ 🐣 The Senate Resolution yesterday was a start: 97-2 – and introduced by a Democrat. A rare demonstration of bipartisanship and a stern rebuke. Just like they knew he was going to be provocative. Maybe after the mid-terms, we’ll see more such.

🐣 RT @McFaul Trump doesn’t think about “endgames” , or long term American foreign policy interests. As he told us honestly before meeting KJU, he just goes with his intuition. And so far, that approach to diplomacy has produced 0 tangible achievements for American national security.

🐣 RT @tonyschwartz Trump’s brazen gaslighting technique is not just to lie repeatedly, but also to say about others what is most true of him. He bizarrely calls Germany captive to Russia. No one is more captive to Russia and to Putin than Trump. No one.

🐣 RT @ddale8 “No YOU are” is a go-to Trump strategy. In just the past month, he’s called Democrats the real colluders and real family separators, Canada the real trade protectionist, now Germany the real Russia puppet.
⋙ 🐣 RT @davidfrum What he’s performing this AM at NATO breakfast is a repeat of his 2016 “No puppet, you’re the puppet” routine, accusing others of what is suspected of him: dependency on Russia, Putin. Does not fool anybody at the NATO table of course, but they’re not the intended audience.

🐣 This works: Sing to the melody of “Tomorrow” from “Annie”:
♫ The sun’ll go down Collusion so you got to hang on to Collusion …
Collusion, Collusion, I love ya Collusion
You’re only an indictment away! ♫
(It sorta writes itself lol)

🐣 I think he’s projecting. People say he’s controlled by Russia so he flips it and says Germany is. He also doesn’t like clean energy. Plus, oil companies back here have big plans for shipping liquified natural gas, though the tech isn’t there quite yet.

🐣 RT @KerrAvon4 My bet is: he wants to sound tough on Russia to deflect suspicion ahead of Helsinki, while using the opportunity to drive a wedge between Merkel and the rest of NATO. Trump and his team have been persecuting Merkel for months.

◕ Oil-Price.net (2017): Russian gas pipelines and hacking the elections http://bit.ly/2ztbUgT Russian gas pipelines interconnected into Europe are the crown jewel of Putin’s geopolitical arsenal. https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1016975774556057602/photo/1
// 1/17/2017, Nord Stream Pipeline ✛ Ukrainian pipelines

ForeignPolicy (6/1/2018): U.S. Close to Imposing Sanctions on European Companies in Russian Pipeline Project http://bit.ly/2up0HrR
// 6/1/2018, The decision would test already fraught relations with Germany, other allies.

CleanEnergyWire: Renewable power hits record high in Germany in 2017 http://bit.ly/2L87AVM Renewables produce record 33 percent of German electricity
// 12/20/2017

TIME: President Trump Kicks Off NATO Summit by Claiming Germany Is ‘Controlled’ by Russia http://ti.me/2NGdteg

🐣 Seven decades ago, NATO (and the EU and the U.N.) were formed to decrease the likelihood of another conflagration like WWI & WWII.
Albert Einstein: “I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones.”
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1016963997055291392/photo/1
// chart: war deaths 1900-2000, HuffPo (7/23/2014): What the News Media Won’t Tell You About Global Violence http://bit.ly/2KNTKvG

🐣 RT @DanielBShapiro The Pentagon will not just sit there and do nothing and “The President shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided TWO THIRDS of the Senators present concur…” NATO involves Treaties.

WaPo, Ishaan Tharoor: Trump’s NATO trip shows ‘America First’ is ‘America Alone’ http://wapo.st/2m88DtZ

European observers are worried by Trump’s linkage of the two issues, a position still based on a misunderstanding of how the alliance works. “If it’s really a threat linking security to trade, that can destroy the basis of NATO,” said Stefano Stefanini, a former Italian ambassador to NATO, to my colleague Michael Birnbaum.

“The fear is not only that Mr. Trump will spoil the ‘unity’ of the summit with harangues before flying to Helsinki for a far friendlier meeting with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin,” observed The Washington Post’s editorial board. “It is that, having shrugged off the strong support for NATO among his national security team, he is bent on wrecking a multilateral organization he regards as obsolete and a means for European nations to freeload at the expense of the United States.”

Such moves have “been corrosive to relations with allies who increasingly believe that Trump — on trade, NATO and diplomacy — is undercutting the post-World War II order in pursuit of short-term, and likely illusory, wins,” my colleagues reported over the weekend.

There are also fears Trump could somehow recognize Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. “It’s such a fundamental issue,” a senior NATO diplomat told Birnbaum. “It would legitimize a whole range of actions. If you have the power, the raw conventional military power, you can do what you want.”

“Dear President Trump: America does not have and will not have a better ally than Europe. Today Europeans spend on defense many times more than Russia and as much as China,” Tusk said. He urged Trump to think more clearly about “who is your strategic friend and who is your strategic problem,” a direct nod to the coming summit with Putin.

“Dear America, appreciate your allies,” Tusk said. “After all, you don’t have that many.”

⭕ 10 Jul 2018

RawStory: Republican strategist Rick Wilson says Trump ‘eager as a schoolgirl’ to hang with Putin and destroy NATO http://bit.ly/2N6IVS4

🐣 RT @JeffFlake FINALLY, Senate will push back on the President’s abuse of Section 232 to impose tariffs. We will vote Wednesday on a “Motion to Instruct,” a first step toward reasserting Congress’s constitutional role on tariffs.

RawStory: Republican strategist Rick Wilson says Trump ‘eager as a schoolgirl’ to hang with Putin and destroy NATO http://bit.ly/2N6IVS4

CNN, By Eliot L. Engel and Anders Fogh Rasmussen: President Trump, you need NATO more than ever http://cnn.it/2uaEqii

The relative peace and stability that NATO and other postwar institutions provided the United States and Europe in the late 20th century cannot be underestimated. With American leadership, allied democracies created the conditions for unparalleled prosperity for ordinary Americans and Europeans alike — and defeated the communist threat.

Today, that world is facing renewed danger, and our common challenges are no less significant. They include the growing Russian threat, transnational terrorism, cyberwarfare, piracy on the high seas and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, among others. Just as the United States underpinned NATO’s resolve to provide collective security against the Soviet Union, an American retreat today will allow autocrats and dictators to advance.

Even with the ever-expanding list of challenges, NATO has responded. Recent and ongoing NATO missions include bolstering defenses against Russia’s aggressive posture along the alliance’s eastern border; leading the 41-country-strong stabilization operation in Afghanistan; the counter-ISIS mission in Iraq and Syria; anti-terrorist activities in the Mediterranean Sea region; anti-piracy missions to secure vital shipping routes in the Gulf of Aden off the African coast, enhancing cybersecurity measures among allies; and supporting humanitarian and peacekeeping missions, which at one time included delivery of 189 tons of relief supplies for Americans affected by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

If the last 70 years of peace on the European continent show us anything, it’s that the international political willpower and the joint military resources mustered by NATO are critical to global security.

… Going it alone in the world is a gravely misguided approach that risks the lives of Americans as well as Europeans and millions of others around the world.

The United States has ensured its own security, in part, by embracing the pre-eminence of American and European shared values, including democracy, freedom, human rights, market-based economies and the rule of law around the world. No other alliance in the history of the globe has provided greater wealth, peace or freedom for its citizens. It must continue to do so.

We must remember that NATO allies’ acceptance of American global leadership is not preordained. Indeed, America has gained substantially from the world order that it built and has fought to sustain for 70 years. Trump dismantles that system at America’s peril, and that of its allies and partners around the world.

WaPo: As Trump hammers NATO allies on defense spending, military planners worry about his ‘2 percent’ obsession http://wapo.st/2NG49aw

🐣 RT @SenWhitehouse We need a DOJ Criminal Division head who is independent, experienced and free from Russian connections. @SenatorDurbin & @JudiciaryDems agree Brian #Benczkowski isn’t that person.

🐣 RT @ RBReich This is a perilous moment for our democracy. The President of the United States is about to hold private meetings with a foreign power that sought to undermine our elections. Meanwhile, his enablers are working to confirm a judge with sweeping views of presidential powers.

MilitaryTimes: US Senate votes to defend NATO as Trump attacks alliance http://bit.ly/2uaQVKB

Lawmakers in Washington worked quickly Tuesday to set legislative guardrails in support of NATO as President Donald Trump, who has repeatedly bashed the alliance, arrived in Europe for a NATO summit and meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin later in the week.

Hours after Trump landed in Brussels, the Senate passed a non-binding measure, 97-2, that expresses support for NATO, its mutual self-defense clause and calls on the administration to rush its whole-of-government strategy to counter Russia’s meddling in the U.S. and other democracies.

With the established global order on shaky footing, Trump’s weeklong trip to Europe will test already strained bonds with some of America’s closest allies, then put him face to face with the leader of the country whose electoral interference was meant to help put him in office.

“I join my colleagues this afternoon in support of the motion which sends an important message to our allies, our partners, and our adversaries that the United States is unwavering in its support of Europe free from the threat of external aggression and in support of the rules-based international order that has promoted international security for decades,” Reed said.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was expected Wednesday to debate a separate measure supporting NATO. One proposed amendment to it, from panel chairman Bob Corker, R-Tenn., would reaffirm support of Ukraine’s sovereignty and condemn “Russia’s illegal invasion and attempted annexation of Crimea.” A second proposed amendment from Sen. Robert Menendez, the panel’s ranking member, would reaffirm support for U.S. sanctions against Russia.

Trump’s wavering on NATO has led allies to question America’s trustworthiness, Menendez, D-N.J., said in a blistering floor speech.

“In the absence of U.S. presidential leadership, I want to make clear to our allies abroad, as well as our adversaries in the Kremlin, as to where members in the United States Senate stand,” said Menendez, adding that the chamber stands for the rule of law, an international order based on democratic values and with its allies.

“President Trump’s slap-dash approach to foreign policy, borne out of heated campaign rallies, instead of thoughtful Cabinet meetings, has real implications for our national security,” Menendez said. “Such reckless behavior by President Trump has weakened the United States on the global stage and created a more dangerous world for our citizens and our troops serving abroad.”

Menendez ripped Trump for saying his meeting with Putin would be the easiest of his four-country trip, as a sign Trump “would rather deal with an autocrat than negotiate with democratically elected leaders.”

“Let’s be clear: Meeting with a thug intent on undermining American democratic values should not be easy and it should not be chummy,” he said.

Menendez’s pursuit for a vote on Russia sanctions follows Sen. Ron Johnson, R-Wis., saying — after a trip to Russia last week — the Senate may have gone too far with mandatory sanctions against a host of Russian entities, leaving Trump with too little negotiating room on other matters.

Johnson, chairs the Foreign Relations subcommittee for Europe, told the Washington Examiner, the sanctions, “don’t seem to be having a real horrible economic effect, not in Moscow anyway.”

Speaking with reporters and on Twitter from his flight, Trump repeated his call for NATO countries to fulfill their goal of spending 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense by 2024. The summit is expected to be marked by disagreements over trade and military spending. …

Senior administration officials said discussions of withdrawing U.S. troops from Germany will not be included in next week’s NATO summit, despite reports that Trump has considered the move.

“I think the president should listen to his security council and his secretary of defense on anything of substance dealing with the U.S. military posture,” Shelby said of the issue. “We’ve got to be careful. We’ve got to be strong. Concede nothing.”

DailyBeast: On the Eve of the NATO Summit, Trump Has Pissed Away the Pax Americana http://thebea.st/2ulPVTq //➔ not yet: Senate rebuked by a vote of 97-2 ✛ McCain issued a powerful statement
// What Trump calls a ‘free ride’ for Europe is in fact the cost of an American empire that has guaranteed peace on the bloody European continent—and for the U.S.—for 74 years.

🐣 RT @peterbakernyt Once again, Trump has this wrong. The 2% spending target is not a current commitment but a goal set for 2024, still six years away. No one is “delinquent” or owes the US any payments.
⋙ 🐣 RT @real Many countries in NATO, which we are expected to defend, are not only short of their current commitment of 2% (which is low), but are also delinquent for many years in payments that have not been made. Will they reimburse the U.S.?

🐣 RT @BillKristol These NATO tweets seem so insistent and aggrieved that they’re hard to interpret as, “Oh, he’s just pressuring them to increase defense spending in his Trumpian way.” One has to wonder if Trump’s laying the predicate for breaking up NATO.

🐣 RT @mikecarpenter This is awful. Facebook gave private user data to Russian internet company http://Mail.ru , which is subject to Russia’s SORM-2 data collection system. That means Russia’s intelligence services now have access to all that data, legally (in Russia).
⋙ WIRED: Facebook Gave Russian Internet Giant Special Data Extension http://bit.ly/2KK1pLn

🐣 RT @jimsciutto As Trump says of Putin meeting: “Frankly, Putin may be the easiest of them all.” a reminder:
-Putin annexed Crimea
-Putin invaded E. Ukraine
-Putin interfered in 2016 to aid Trump
-Putin supports Assad in Syria & targets civilians to do so
-Putin used nerve agent to murder in UK

WaPo: Trump hits combative notes as he undermines May, praises Putin ahead of NATO summit http://wapo.st/2NDp0uW
// alt headline: Trump signals he’s ready for a fight at NATO summit

CNN: NATO leaders hope to ‘avert disaster’ amid concern Trump may undermine alliance http://cnn.it/2zs8LxF

🐣 Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity. – Yeats

Vox (2016), Gallup Poll: What Americans Think Foreign Trade Means for the U.S. http://bit.ly/2m9er6x https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1016860143298994176/photo/1

TheGuardian: Trump picked Brett Kavanaugh as ‘barrier’ to Russia inquiry – Schumer http://bit.ly/2NFtlh6

WaPo, Asha Rangappa: No, the Trump-Russia investigation isn’t a conflict of interest for Kavanaugh http://wapo.st/2KOoV9U

◕ Pew Poll: Almost eight-in-ten Democrats approved of NATO in 2017 – a 20-point increase from the 58% who approved in 2016. In contrast, just 47% of Republicans felt the same. https://pewrsr.ch/2MXHAwL https://twitter.com/FactTank/status/1016835730201567240/photo/1
// GOP little changed from previous years. Roughly six-in-ten independents (59%) approved as of last year.

WaPo: Donald Trump Jr. said he didn’t recall talking to Emin Agalarov. Agalarov remembers it. http://wapo.st/2NKv8Sm

🐣 RT @ NySteveo2AOLcom Alan Dershowitz just claimed even if a President is impeached, the Supreme Court can overturn it. They just spelled out the final act of this ongoing coup.

🐣 RT @Hardball “I think Putin has a grand plan and it’s playing out.” @brhodes on Trump going after NATO allies. #Hardball

TheHill: Senate votes to support NATO ahead of Trump summit http://bit.ly/2Jc82jZ
↥ ↧
🐣 RT @AliABCNews As Trump arrives in Brussels for NATO summit, the Senate just passed, 97-2, a motion to “reaffirm the ironclad US commitment under Article 5 to the collective defense of the alliance,” as @SenJackReed put it earlier today
🐣 RT @SenSchumer Today, in a 97-2 vote, the Senate sent an overwhelming message to President Trump to stand by our NATO allies and to stand against President Putin.

WaPo: Giuliani works for foreign clients while serving as Trump’s attorney http://wapo.st/2L7fnTy

◕💙💙 FactCheck.org  (Dec): Trump’s Distorted NATO Funding Figure http://bit.ly/2u0QPFu  //➔ The U.S. spends a lot more on its own defense compared with other nations in the international security alliance, but its share of the commonly funded NATO budget is 22%, not 80%.
⋙ But per a 2006 agreement, NATO members are not required to outlay 2% until 2024 and most are increasing their contributions. FactCheck.org (Dec): Trump’s Distorted NATO Funding Figure http://bit.ly/2u0QPFu
⋙ No NATO members are delinquent! Per a 2006 agreement, NATO members are not required to outlay 2%‼️UNTIL 2024‼️ and most are increasing their contributions. FactCheck.org (Dec): Trump’s Distorted NATO Funding Figure http://bit.ly/2u0QPFu
⋙ The 2% goal was agreed on in 2006 to be realized BY 2024. According to the agreement, members can’t be held to that goal NOW just because Trump wants it. http://FactCheck.org  (Dec): Trump’s Distorted NATO Funding Figure

🚫 TheWeek, Matthew Walther: Liberals’ Trump-Russia fever dreams have reached parody status http://bit.ly/2JcEaE6 //➔ who has eyes, let them see

NBC: Trump’s European trip: Trade wars, Brexit chaos — and a Russia quandary http://nbcnews.to/2zrdDTS
// The president’s allegiance to allies — and his willingness to deliver a tough message to Russian President Vladimir Putin — will be put to the test.

He does so in an environment defined by his foreign policy choices to date: the rising self-created tension between the U.S. and its European partners over tit-for-tat tariffs, his increasingly laissez-faire approach toward Russia’s projection of physical and cyber power, and his explicit and implicit threats to diminish America’s role in an alliance built to protect the rest of Europe from Moscow if partner nations don’t pony up more cash.

… Trump administration officials insist that the president’s aims are to strengthen NATO by extracting more concessions from American allies, and to deliver a stern message to Putin about Russia’s meddling in U.S. elections — even as his own rhetoric and actions suggest the former claim is in question, and he doesn’t believe the latter is true.

“The major thing, the major deliverable, the major overall theme of this summit is going to be NATO’s strength and unity,” Kay Bailey Hutchison, the U.S. ambassador to NATO, said. “I would say our major areas of deterrence would be Russia and the malign activities of Russia, the efforts of Russia to divide our democratic nation, [Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces] Treaty violations. All of those things are now being addressed by NATO in a strengthened deterrence and defense.”

One fear in Europe — and among those in Washington’s foreign-policy establishment — is that Trump might eventually follow through on his threat to withdraw U.S. forces from Germany, where more than 30,000 American troops are stationed, and diminish that deterrent to Russian aggression.

VanityFair, Bess Levin: Is This The Secret Deal Putin Will Offer Trump? http://bit.ly/2L0aAqg
// From Russia with Love; The president is being played by nearly half a dozen foreign governments.

In less than a week, Donald Trump will fly to Helsinki to sit down with Vladimir Putin for a meeting that has experts and non-experts alike very, very worried. For one thing, contrary to his own claims, Trump is and always has been a terrible negotiator. For another, Putin is a former K.G.B. officer trained in manipulating adversaries far more intelligent than Trump. For yet another, the president of the United States has said he will meet alone with the Russian dictator, suggesting not only that he might have something to hide, but that he may make concessions in order to keep said things hidden. And now we’ve got a hint about what one of those concessions might be.

According to New Yorker reporter Adam Entous, shortly before the election, leaders from Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and Israel began to discuss a way to get Iran out of Syria. Perhaps, they mused, Russia could pressure Iran to take a hike, in exchange for the U.S. dropping its punishing economic sanctions on Moscow. Mohammed bin Zayed, the crown prince of Abu Dhabi who initially floated the idea, knew that if Hillary Clinton won, there was an approximately zero percent change that she would essentially forgive Russia’s aggression in the Ukraine, for which the sanctions were punishment. But as luck would have it, the Queens-born real-estate developer was elected instead, and suddenly the idea didn’t seem quite so far-fetched, given how easy it is to manipulate the guy:

After Trump took office, the idea was raised again, by Adel al-Jubeir, the foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, and Abdullah bin Zayed, the foreign minister of the U.A.E., during a private March 2017, dinner that included several other guests. “Their message was ‘Why don’t we lift the Ukrainian sanctions on Russia in exchange for getting the Russians to push Iran out of Syria,’” an attendee recalled the foreign ministers saying. A senior U.A.E. official said that he did not recall the discussion. The dinner attendee told me, “It wasn’t a trial balloon. They were trying to socialize the idea.”

As an inducement for Putin to partner with Gulf states rather than Iran, the U.A.E. and Saudi Arabia started making billions of dollars in investments in Russia and convening high-level meetings in Moscow, Abu Dhabi, Riyadh, and the Seychelles.

Incidentally, special counsel Robert Mueller has been investigating, among other things, whether or not the U.A.E. helped facilitate contacts between Team Trump and Russian officials, and whether it tried to influence U.S. politics. One interaction of particular interest? The meeting that took place in the Seychelles nine days before the inauguration between Blackwater founder and Steve Bannon confidant Erik Prince and Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund who, per The New Yorker “the Emiratis used as a go-between with Putin.” Mueller is also looking into a Trump Tower meeting that took place during the transition in which Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and First Son-in-Law Jared Kushner reportedly discussed establishing a back channel to keep conversations between incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn and Kislyak’s “generals” off the radar of intelligence agencies. (In his July 2017 testimony before Congress, Kushner said that the idea had been Kislyak’s, and that it ultimately died on the vine.)

While Trump’s favorite Middle Eastern nations have enjoyed unprecedented influence within the White House during his tenure, experts say the deal they’re trying pushing is “unworkable” not only in light of Mueller’s investigation, but based on the fact that Congress is highly unlikely to go for it. And yet, it appears Trump is making a valiant effort to do the bidding of Israel, Saudi, and the U.A.E. by currying favor with his favorite Eastern European dictator, anyway!

On June 8, Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of Seven industrial nations. (Russia was expelled four years ago, after it annexed Ukraine’s Crimea region.) Then, during a dinner at the G7 summit in Canada, Trump reportedly said that Crimea was Russian because the people who lived there spoke Russian. Several weeks later, when asked whether reports that he would drop Washington’s long-standing opposition to the annexation of Crimea were true, Trump responded, “We’re going to have to see.

NYT: Trump Poised to Enter NATO Meeting as Wild Card Among Allies http://nyti.ms/2L5Nhbs

TheHill: ‘Air Clinton’ and the circular flight path of the Trump-Russia dossier http://bit.ly/2JbO20Q //➔ beside point if the findings of the dossier have been verified, as many have; in addition to the fact that the dossier did not trigger the investigation ~ Papadopoulos did, as even House Intel Comm agreed

WaPo, David Kramer: Putin is about to con Trump in Helsinki. Here’s how. http://wapo.st/2KQfkzK

🐣 Robert Mueller won’t save us. No one will save us. November is too late. Just post-mortem effects. All the progress in my life is being washed away. Just. Like. That.

🐣 Right. How hard is it to say, “Yes, Vlad,” “Yes, Vlad,” “Of course you’re right, Vlad”?
⋙ CBSNews: “Frankly, [Russian President] Putin may be the easiest of them all — who would think?” President Trump says on dealing with U.K. and NATO leaders during his Europe trip. https://cbsn.ws/2L3VdwW pic.twitter.com/pM5SQhM78d

🐣 If Trump is going to achieve world peace by being BFFs w Putin, Xi and Kim, what’s all the Defense 💰 for? A war with Canada?

🐣 The darkness drops again; but now I know   
That twenty centuries of stony sleep
Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle,   
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,   
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born? – Yeats

🐣 RT @eucopresident [Donald Tusk] Dear @realDonaldTrump. US doesn’t have and won’t have a better ally than EU. We spend on defense much more than Russia and as much as China. I hope you have no doubt this is an investment in our security, which cannot be said with confidence about Russian & Chinese spending :-)

⭕ 9 Jul 2018

FactCheck.org: Trump Still Distorting NATO Spending http://bit.ly/2umbz9R

President Donald Trump continues to wrongly claim that the United States is paying as much as 90 percent of the cost of operating the North Atlantic Treaty Organization.

In reality, the U.S. share of the commonly funded NATO budget is currently just over 22 percent, according to the most recent figures from NATO.

Trump’s complaints about NATO spending are actually based on how much the U.S. spends on its own defense compared with what other member nations spend on theirs.

Still, the U.S. share of total defense spending by all alliance members in 2017 was an estimated 67 percent, according to inflation-adjusted figures from NATO.

Trump, however, is referring to so-called indirect spending, which is the amount that the U.S. and other NATO countries willingly spend on their own defense budgets.

All together, the 29 alliance members spent an estimated $917 billion on defense in 2017, and the U.S. portion was about $618 billion.

(NATO says those figures are based on 2010 constant prices and exchange rates. In current prices and exchange rates, the U.S. share would be roughly 72 percent of total defense spending by the alliance.)

… [I]t does mean that there is an over-reliance by the Alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refuelling; ballistic missile defence; and airborne electronic warfare.”

In 2006, NATO members agreed to try to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense spending. In 2014, they agreed again to aim to meet that standard by 2024.

There was an estimated 4.87 percent increase in total defense spending by Canada and European allies in 2017, marking the third straight year that defense spending by those countries increased, according to NATO. That was after several years of declines in spending by those countries. ECFR, Jeremy Shapiro: Trump’s meaningless NATO spending debate http://bit.ly/2NEuTIh Europeans spending more on defence will not satisfy Donald Trump. Here’s why

As in a bad marriage, the arguments of US President Donald Trump and his European partners have descended into a sort of ritual exchange. So at this week’s NATO summit, we can be confident that Trump will complain about the lack of European defence spending and threaten to leave Europe if the NATO allies don’t stump up. The Europeans will accept the premise of his argument, point to what they have recently achieved, and pledge to do more.

Rinse and repeat.

The whole affair has the structure of an Apprentice episode. We don’t know what crazy shit Trump will say during the show, but we know how it will end.

The main difference now is that Trump has an advantage in pushing Europeans to spend more relative to past US presidents. Because he doesn’t care about the transatlantic alliance, he can more credibly threaten to withdraw the US security blanket from Europe. And because Europeans still rely on US security guarantees for their defence, they feel that they simply can’t risk it and so do their best to satisfy his demands.

… But regardless, there is no satisfying Trump’s demands about European spending.

… [H]e wants to use Europeans’ collective sense of guilt over their lack of spending, as well as the European fear of American abandonment, to gain concessions on what really matters to him: reducing the American trade deficit. Indeed, at the summit, he may explicitly link a continued American security guarantee with economic concessions from Europe.

… In the end, he doesn’t believe in the idea that America should defend Europe, so why should the United States pay anything at all? He is only interested in it if it brings in a profit.

… Rather, [Europeans] should focus on creating a truly independent defence capability. That effort probably does involve more spending, but more importantly it means creating a European military capability that can stand on its own. Such a capability will allow the Europeans to negotiate with Trump, and future American presidents, from a position of equality.

The NATO alliance does not depend on equal burdens, which it has never had; it depends on solidarity. And solidarity only comes when both sides are getting what they need and feel they are being treated fairly. Effective bullying can perhaps create some wasteful defence spending, but it cannot create a new transatlantic bargain that will preserve that essential solidarity

NewYorker, Adam Entous: Israeli, Saudi, and Emirati Officials Privately Pushed for Trump to Strike a “Grand Bargain” with Putin http://bit.ly/2L4zMsy

🐣 RT @SenatorDurbin Remember Brian Benczkowski? He represented Russia’s Alfa Bank and was a top staffer to then-Senator Sessions. Senate Republicans plan to vote next week to confirm him to head the DOJ Criminal Division.
🐣 RT @SenatorDurbin Benczkowski has no prosecutorial experience. He showed poor judgment by choosing to represent Alfa Bank while he was seeking a DOJ job despite reports that Alfa was under criminal investigation. And he won’t commit to recuse himself from Russia-related matters if confirmed.

Medium: Cambridge Analytica: the Geotargeting and Emotional Data Mining Scripts http://bit.ly/2m4tqOX
// 10/13/2017; Last year, Michael Phillips, a data science intern at Cambridge Analytica, posted the following scripts to a set of “work samples” on his personal GitHub account.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Glenn Greenwald Tells Russians Liberals Are Blaming Them As Excuse for Clinton http://nym.ag/2N4At5V

Stars&Stripes/WaPo, Jackson Diehl: Why did Trump side with Russia on Crimea? http://bit.ly/2J8i7OX

Reuters: The issues on the table when Trump and Putin meet http://reut.rs/2L016eL

LasVegasSun, Llewellyn King: Trump sneers at Europe, winks at Russia http://bit.ly/2zql8KT

Al-Monitor, Kirill Semenov: Can Russia deliver on Trump’s hope of ousting Iran from Syria? http://bit.ly/2uiWXbu

LATimes, Noah Bierman: Trump heads to Europe amid frayed alliances, and worries about his tilt to Putin http://lat.ms/2Jb5B11

Brookings, Steven Pifer: Trump, Putin, and Crimea http://brook.gs/2KIAZJT
// When Presidents Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin meet in Helsinki on July 16, the Crimean peninsula will loom large over their summit talks. How Trump handles the issue will have implications for European security and American credibility.

Alternet/IMI, Stan Salett: Trump Is Creating a New World Order — Where China and Russia Will Be Its Leaders http://bit.ly/2zoDT15
// As Trump visits NATO and then Russia, we can’t lose sight of how the old world order has been disrupted.

ChicagoTrib, Ivo Daalder and James Lindsay: Will Trump choose Russia over NATO? http://trib.in/2Jb6oPt

WSJ, Gerald Seib: The Risks Lying Within Donald Trump’s One-on-One Meeting With Vladimir Putin http://on.wsj.com/2L3fz9X (2/2)
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1016544782573887489/photo/1
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1016545018557890560/photo/1
// GOP senator, who recently met with Russia’s leader, warns of ‘denial, hostility, blaming others’

NYT, Maxim Trudolyubov: Trump’s Retreat From the West http://nyti.ms/2NCZZA5

WaPo, Philip Bump: The market demands a broad Trump-Russia theory — but the evidence doesn’t support one http://wapo.st/2m75eLM

Politico: What Trump’s Supreme Court pick means for the Russia probe http://politi.co/2L2IOq0
// Kavanaugh could find himself weighing in on thorny legal issues related to Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation, including whether a sitting president can be indicted.

Politico, John McKay, Joyce Vance and Norm Eisen: Congress Should Stop Messing With Rod Rosenstein http://politi.co/2m3K15t
// Oversight? Please. The real aim of the attacks on the Department of Justice is perfectly clear.

WaPo: Trump’s combative words on NATO put Mattis in an increasingly tough spot http://wapo.st/2zmPuOd

WaPo: Boris Johnson and ‘Brexit minister’ resign, leaving Theresa May’s government in disarray http://wapo.st/2N2lOb9

TheGuardian: May’s plan ‘sticks in the throat’, says Boris Johnson as he resigns over Brexit http://bit.ly/2NDopcU
// Senior Conservative becomes third minister to walk out over ‘common rulebook’ proposal

🐣 RT @20committee [John Schindler] That Trump has some sort of unsavory clandestine relationship with the Kremlin (agent-of-influence-like) since at least 1987 is screamingly obvious to anyone versed in FCI & RIS. Nice to see the MSM now join the party. Would have been nice if they noticed a couple years earlier.

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin It’s time to stop treating Trump as a naive actor on the world stage, though he is that too. More so, he is an ally of tyrants and tyranny who seeks to fracture the free world and weaken its strength against the corrupt, oppressive regimes that model the despotism he prefers.

Wonkette: Chris Christie, Giuliani & Dershowitz Hit Legal Stupid Trifecta http://bit.ly/2m6CXoQ

Bloomberg: Face of Brexit Boris Johnson Resigns, Plunging May Into Crisis http://bloom.bg/2KH01ZT

⭕ 8 Jul 2018

WSJ, Jens Stoltenberg: America’s NATO Allies Are Stepping Up http://on.wsj.com/ Only three members spent 2% or more of GDP on defense in 2014. This year we expect eight will.

WaPo, Margaret Sullivan: A journalist’s conscience leads her to reveal her source to the FBI. Here’s why. http://wapo.st/2KGDjRH
// Marcy Wheeler, @emptywheel

But her dealings with him [her source] have brought her around to believing something she initially questioned: that Russian interference in the 2016 election was a very real thing, and that Trump associates played a part.

What exactly did the source do to deserve outing to the FBI, in her view? Wheeler is circumspect in describing that.

Her blog post centers on a text message she says she got from the source on Nov. 9, 2016 — about 14 hours after the polls closed — predicting that Michael Flynn, who would be Trump’s appointee for national security adviser, would be meeting with “Team Al-Assad” within 48 hours. Russia has been perhaps the Assad regime’s staunchest ally.

As she noted: “The substance of the text — that the Trump team started focusing on Syria right after the election — has been corroborated and tied to their discussions with Russia at least twice since then.”

Wheeler won’t say when she went to the FBI other than that it was in 2017. In December 2017, Flynn flipped, pleading guilty to one count of lying to the FBI about his contact with the Russian government during the presidential transition; Trump had fired him in February.

In addition to the knowledge of her source’s inside information, Wheeler said, she had reason to believe that the source was involved with efforts to compromise her website and other communications. And perhaps most important, that he was involved in cyberattacks — past and future — that had done and could do real harm to innocent people.

Wheeler, who has written blog posts about national security for almost 15 years, is clear that she wasn’t motivated to talk to the FBI because she is out to get Trump. She certainly doesn’t like him, but she is also not at all a Hillary Clinton fan.

But what motivated her recent revelation that she went to the FBI has plenty to do with politics: She is disgusted by the way House Republicans are, in her view, weaponizing their oversight responsibilities and making it all too likely that FBI informants will have their names revealed — and their safety threatened.But as a public figure, she has a measure of protection that others who have come forward don’t have.

“If something happens to me — if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow — everyone will now know why and who likely did it,” she wrote.

Overly dramatic? Not really. The Russians do have a penchant for disposing of people they find threatening.

Both decisions — to talk to the FBI and to write about it — required her wrestling with three main issues; concerns about journalistic ethics, the possibility of unintended national-security consequences, and the growing certainty that her suspicions about the source were true.

And as Wheeler put it, “I believe this is one of those cases where it’s important to hold a source accountable for his actions.”

TheGuardian, Simon Tisdall: Whose side is Trump’s America on? The answer is becoming more and more obvious http://bit.ly/2KYuzFR

If Trump’s crude, nationalistic policies and uncouth persona were the only problems, the European allies might just cope. But in recent months, as he has jettisoned experienced advisers and his belief in his own infallibility has grown, Trump has moved from difficult partner to potential enemy.

The question grows ever more pressing: whose side is Trump’s America really on?

Trump’s sycophantic courting last year of the Saudi royals and China’s authoritarian president, Xi Jinping, were early indications of his preference for dictators over democrats. His recent summit with Kim Jong-un did nothing to curb North Korea’s nuclear arms buildup. But it did reveal Trump’s almost indecent love of raw power and ostentation.

As with Kim in Singapore, Trump’s big day out with Putin in Helsinki will be noisily declared, by him, to be an outstanding success contributing to global harmony. If, as is suggested, the two men agree to extend the New Start nuclear arms treaty, that will be a rare plus.

But just as likely are unilateral, Nato-busting Trump moves to ease sanctions on Russia over Ukraine, a deal to keep Bashar al-Assad in power in Syria, the “normalisation” of Putin’s regime, and other concessions undermining the post-Salisbury western consensus. WaPo, Michael Birnbaum: Ahead of NATO summit, allies wonder: Will NATO survive Trump? http://wapo.st/2KWF1xq
// European leaders worry that President Trump could set into motion NATO’s unraveling and bargain away their security in the name of better relations with the Kremlin.

[L]eaders and diplomats worry that Trump could soon go further to undermine the alliance. They are concerned he could halt U.S. participation in military exercises in eastern Europe to avoid “provoking” Russia, since he made a similar concession about joint exercises with South Korea after his meeting with Kim Jong Un. They fret he could draw down the U.S. military presence in Europe, a move that could poke holes in the U.S. security umbrella that reaches up to Russia’s border.

On paper, at least, Trump is set to condemn Russian behavior in Ukraine, endorse collective defense and sign off on a range of new plans that would expand U.S. military activity in Europe, not diminish it.

“This is a very substantive and meaty summit,” the U.S. ambassador to NATO, Kay Bailey Hutchison, told reporters last week. “NATO is doing many of the things that the president has asked them to.”

💙💙 NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Prump/Tutin: Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? http://nym.ag/2MZUlqN
Amazing zoom in chart: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1016144626141540354/photo/1
// A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion.
⋙ See under Entire Articles

NYT Editorial: Why NATO Matters http://nyti.ms/2J5oG4L
// The allies are looking with dread to this week’s summit as President Trump continues his campaign to undermine a decades-old partnership.

Mr. Trump is burning up all the credit the United States has accrued with our allies across decades by attacking the basis of this alliance, if not the very idea of any alliance — thus, deliberately or not, doing the bidding of Mr. Putin in his quest to divide the West.

“NATO can withstand four years under Trump,” one former NATO ambassador said in an interview. “I don’t think we’ll withstand eight.”

The NATO meeting is expected to approve significant new steps to contain Russia, which most of the allies, and most of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, recognize as a threat, even if the president does not. These measures include establishing two new military commands, expanding cyberwarfare and counterterrorism efforts and approving a new plan to speed the reinforcement of troops and equipment to Poland and the Baltic States to deter Russian aggression.

Sooner rather than later, NATO is also going to have to decide what to do with Turkey and the other countries that are eroding the fabric of the alliance by repudiating democratic principles.

At this week’s gathering, the result that matters most is a firm and convincing commitment to a strong NATO, ready to contribute to stability today, and to adapt to future challenges. With no coherent vision of his own to make Americans, and democracy generally, more secure in a world without NATO, Mr. Trump would do well to make that commitment, and honor the friends we have.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Prump/Tutin: Will Trump Be Meeting With His Counterpart — Or His Handler? http://nym.ag/2MZUlqN
// A plausible theory of mind-boggling collusion.

🐣 RT @DevilIsRepublicn TRUMP screwed up the North Korea deal after giving away the store. No military exercises in S Korea.. No Iran Deal. No Paris Accord. Moved the Embassy to Jerusalem. TRUMP wants out of NATO. TRUMP’S list of screw ups is endless. #DonTheCon #VoteBlue for America.

🐣 Fact Check of Trump Mega-Tweet (links: LATimes http://lat.ms/2L1yfmW, Vox http://bit.ly/2KS5BrI, WaPo http://wapo.st/2KElQsZ, The Hill http://bit.ly/2MXMutG, Polifact http://bit.ly/2dxRGmI, … (1/2) https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1015949300008935425/photo/1
🐣 Fact Check of Trump Mega-Tweet ( … Axios http://bit.ly/2KF1kbZ, Snopes http://bit.ly/2m31lrc, Politifact http://bit.ly/2KEDE7n, Snopes http://bit.ly/2NAC8Bd (2/2) https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1015949732059992064/photo/1

“The Rigged Witch Hunt”
~ 5 guilty pleas, 17 indictments (LATimes http://lat.ms/2L1yfmW)
“Originally headed by FBI lover boy Peter S (for one year) & now”
~ DOJ OIG report: Did not affect conclusions (Vox http://bit.ly/2KS5BrI)
“13 Angry Democrats”
~ Rosenstein, Cray & Mueller are Republicans, appointed by Trump; 9 of 17 donated to Dems; so did Trump (WaPo http://wapo.st/2KElQsZ)
“Should look into the missing DNC Server”
~ Analysis done by Crowdstrike used by FBI (The Hill http://bit.ly/2MXMutG)
Crooked Hillary’s illegally deleted Emails
~ “Unprovable if not flat wrong” (Polifact http://bit.ly/2dxRGmI)
The Pakistani Fraudster
~ American citizen; “No evidence” (Axios http://bit.ly/2KF1kbZ)
Uranium One
~ “False” (Snopes http://bit.ly/2m31lrc)
Podesta
~ Huh? All PolitiFact statements (You won’t like #1): (http://bit.ly/2KEDE7n) Spirit Cooking? “False” (Snopes http://bit.ly/2NAC8Bd)
& so much more
~ Google them yourself!
It’s a Democrat Con Job ~ You’re the con job!

TheGuardian: Madeleine Albright: ‘The things that are happening are genuinely, seriously bad’ http://bit.ly/2KGg2iM

⭕ 7 Jul 2018

Observer, John Schindler: No, President Trump, the KGB Is Not ‘Fine’ http://bit.ly/2u2ZZBm

WaPo: Trump lawyers call Comey ‘Machiavellian’ in note to Mueller http://wapo.st/2KIgFby
📒 Text of memo: http://bit.ly/2KVNvoH

HuffPo, SV Date: In The World According To Trump, NATO Allies Are Bad And Putin Is Good http://bit.ly/2KG2VxV
// Everybody’s nervous as the president prepares to sit down with U.S. partners and then the Russian boss.

TheAtlantic, David Frum (Mar): How to Build an Autocracy http://theatln.tc/2jNtdPV
// March issue; The preconditions are present in the U.S. today. Here’s the playbook Donald Trump could use to set the country down a path toward illiberalism.

📒💽💙💙 WaPo: Read the transcript of the conversation among GOP leaders obtained by The Post http://wapo.st/2MZIOaX
// Undated; Trump Russia collusion; The conversation provides a glimpse at the internal views of GOP leaders who now find themselves under mounting pressure over the conduct of President Trump. The exchange, which was obtained by The Washington Post, shows that the Republican leadership in the House privately discussed Russia’s involvement in the 2016 election and Trump’s relationship to Putin, but wanted to keep their concerns secret.

🐣 RT @davidcox74 Trump: “You know President Putin is KGB… Putin is fine. He’s fine. We are all fine, we’re all people” Reporters killed by Putin: https://twitter.com/davidcox74/status/1015276732511916032/photo/1

RawStory: Devin Nunes calling for a ‘task force’ to investigate officials and activists who exposed Russian election meddling http://bit.ly/2Nz93WP

🐣 RT @MatthewAMiller First new comments to the NYT, now a leak to the AP, tomorrow Rudy showing up on two Sunday shows. What explains this sudden new assault on the Mueller probe by Trump? Seems something is coming.
⋙ 🐣 RT @etuckerAP NEW: The Trump legal team blasted Jim Comey as “Machiavellian,” dishonest and “unbounded by law and regulation” on a confidential memo last year that was addressed to Mueller and was obtained by The Associated Press. @ChadSDay

🐣 I hope they do get a FISA warrant to listen in on Trump’s private discussion w Putin. Why would he want that? Seems strange and potentially treacherous, given just what we know.

💙 WaPo: ‘A little steel in the spine’: Rod Rosenstein, facing mounting criticism from Congress, is starting to fight back http://wapo.st/2u3m6Y9

On Friday, the Justice Department formally responded to the resolution, telling top lawmakers on the House Intelligence and Judiciary committees that officials believed they had “substantially complied” with Congress’s requests and any leftover production of materials would be completed “expeditiously.” Just before that, some of the lawmakers most bent on holding Rosenstein responsible for the production of the documents were sounding notes of optimism about the Justice Department’s expected compliance.

So far, the strategy has paid off. The Justice Department has for months been haggling with lawmakers over requests for various materials on the Russia investigation and the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she was secretary of state. But even as the president has raged about Rosenstein, and lawmakers have repeatedly escalated the confrontation with new subpoenas and threats, each seemingly ominous moment has passed without incident.

At least publicly, Rosenstein has not acted like a dead man walking. He was spotted at a July 4 celebration at the White House, in a VIP viewing area, according to Politico. Those who know him say Rosenstein is playing the long game. He doesn’t put too much stock in any single daily development, they say, but is mindful about what his place in history will be.

Rosenstein has opined publicly that the Justice Department cannot essentially open its files to Congress. Discussing the document spat during an event at the Newseum in May, Rosenstein said of those threatening to impeach him, “I think they should understand by now that the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

“There’s kind of a fatalism to it that’s good,” Trusty said. “He doesn’t overreact.”

Butler, who worked with Rosenstein when he was a Justice Department public integrity prosecutor years ago, said colleagues would jokingly refer to Rosenstein as “Opie,” a character on TV’s Andy Griffith Show, in part because of his boyish face, and in part because he was always asking questions. But Butler said Rosenstein was more shrewd and strategic than his aw-shucks mannerism leads some to believe.

Butler said that while Rosenstein has had to “make some difficult compromises,” many career prosecutors look at him “as essentially responsible for preserving the integrity of the department and by extension preserving the rule of law during the Trump administration.” On that score, Butler said, Rosenstein has had more good days than bad, and his recent congressional testimony shows he’s trying to tell Republicans: The Department of Justice is not to be played with.

“He’s already compromised that message some,” Butler said, “but there is a line with him that you can’t cross.”

⭕ 6 Jul 2018

NYT, Daniel Beer: Does Vladimir Putin Speak for the Russian People? http://nyti.ms/2NyAG2b
//➔ Review of: FROM COLD WAR TO HOT PEACE ~ An American Ambassador in Putin’s Russia, by Michael McFaul

ForeignAffairs, Michael Kimmage (Jul/Aug): The People’s Authoritarian ~ How Russian Society Created Putin http://fam.ag/2lYrNlV
// Jul/Aug 2018 issue

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Trump is hinting at concessions to Putin. So what do we get back? http://wapo.st/2J1FJEE

WSJ, Tunku Varadarajan: If America Is Divided, So Is Europe http://on.wsj.com/2zkEsco
// A Polish philosopher-politician on NATO’s future, ‘degenerate’ liberalism, and what it’s like to be a ‘dissident’ nation in the EU.

WaPo, Bill Frist: The Senate I led put country over party. This one must do the same for Robert Mueller. http://wapo.st/

It is with some trepidation that I offer thoughts on how the good people still serving in the Senate should address a current crisis, but staying silent is no longer an option. Special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is under assault, and that is wrong. No matter who is in the White House, we Republicans must stand up for the sanctity of our democracy and the rule of law.

I’m a Republican because I stand for small government and also, as a physician, for the dignity of every life. But I am also a Republican because I believe in the rule of law. Republicans must fight for that principle today — even if it means pushing back against a Republican administration. As a party, we can’t let the president or his allies erode the independence of the Justice Department or public trust in the vital work of law enforcement. That would be true even if the stakes were much lower, but it is overwhelmingly so when it comes to investigating foreign interference in our elections. Congress must ensure that Mueller is able to do his job without interference or intimidation.

It isn’t easy to tell a president of your own party that he is wrong. But the assault on Mueller’s investigation does not help the president or his party. When Trump talks about firing the special counsel or his power to pardon himself, he makes it seem as though he has something to hide. The president must remember that only Mueller’s exoneration can lift the cloud hanging over the White House.

The special counsel’s investigation is not about Trump. It is about our national security. Every American should be rooting for Mueller’s success in determining precisely how Russia interfered in our fundamental democratic process. I had no illusions about the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and I have none about Putin now. Mueller’s most recent court filings indicate that Putin is seeking to meddle in this year’s elections. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and FBI Director Christopher A. Wray — all Trump appointees confirmed by the Republican-led Senate — have also warned of foreign interference. We should heed these warnings and empower Mueller to see his important work through to its conclusion.

… I don’t worry about Robert Mueller. He is a lifelong Republican with a career of distinguished service running the Criminal Division of the Justice Department for President Ronald Reagan and serving as President George W. Bush’s FBI director, twice unanimously confirmed by the Senate. And his investigation is getting results: By any objective standard, he has moved swiftly, obtaining 23 indictments and five guilty pleas in just more than a year.

Congress must never abandon its role as an equal branch of government. In this moment, that means protecting Mueller’s investigation. We’re at our best as senators and Republicans when we defend our institutions. But more than that, it’s our best face as Americans.

People around the world admire not just the material well-being of the United States but our values, too. The rule of law is something many die trying to secure for their countries. We can’t afford to squander it at home.

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: Trump is hinting at concessions to Putin. So what do we get back? http://wapo.st/2J1FJEE

ForeignAffairs, Michael Kimmage (Jul-Aug): The People’s Authoritarian ~ How Russian Society Created Putin http://fam.ag/2lYrNlV
// Jul/Aug 2018 issue

CSIS: The U.S. and the West are currently unprepared to meet the challenge that Russia presents. http://cs.is/2n8lBe1 A CSIS report from 2017 offers a comprehensive strategy to address Russian belligerence.
https://twitter.com/CSIS/status/1015513249570283520/photo/1
// 3/30/2017
CSIS: Report: Recalibrating U.S. Strategy Toward Russia: A New Time for Choosing [pdf] http://bit.ly/2NxVLda 212p

ForeignAffairs, Joshua Busby: Warming World ~ Why Climate Change Matters More Than Anything Else http://fam.ag/2u30ew9
// Jul/Aug 2018 issue

WaPo, Dana Milbank: Eight Republicans pick the worst possible place to celebrate July 4 http://wapo.st/2u7R6Xl

So, what do we call these Red Square Republicans? My interlocutors on Twitter suggest “Moscow Mules.” Or, given the position they put themselves in before our masters in Moscow, perhaps they should be called the Prostrate Eight: Sens. Richard C. Shelby (Ala.), Steve Daines (Mont.), John Hoeven (N.D.), John Neely Kennedy (La.), Jerry Moran (Kan.), John Thune (S.D.) and Johnson, plus Rep. Kay Granger (Tex.).

Their excellent adventure included a ballet performance of “Sleeping Beauty,” and fairy-tale notions pervaded their official meetings, too. “I’m not here today to accuse Russia of this or that or so forth,” Shelby told Duma Speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. “I’m saying that we should all strive for a better relationship.

Yes, let us strive for camaraderie with a government that attacks us with cyberwarfare, meddles in our elections, denies entry to American officials who are critical of Moscow, destabilizes Europe and the Middle East, kills critics at home and abroad, occupies its neighbors’ land and shoots down the occasional passenger jet. Or, as Shelby put it, “this, that or so forth.”

The Post’s Karoun Demirjian reports that state television in Russia mocked the meek Americans. One Russian military expert said, “We need to look down at them and say: You came because you needed to, not because we did.”

Sergey Kislyak, Russian legislator and former ambassador to Washington, dismissed the Prostrate Eight’s message as “things we’d heard before,” and said “our guests heard rather clearly and distinctly” Russia’s denial that it interfered in U.S. elections.

They hardly needed to go to Moscow for that, though, because Trump himself tweeted last week: “Russia continues to say they had nothing to do with Meddling in our Election!”

This came after Trump pushed for Russia to be readmitted to the Group of Seven, and in advance of the July 16 Putin-Trump meeting in Helsinki that an Esquire writer called Trump’s “annual performance review.”

DemWritePress, Kseniya Kirillova: The Propaganda Schemes of TrumpPutinism http://bit.ly/2lWL5Il
// RUSSIAN JOURNALIST KSENIYA KIRILLOVA DRAWS DIRECT COMPARISONS BETWEEN THE BEHAVIORS AND PROPAGANDA STRATEGIES OF TRUMP AND PUTIN. This piece was originally published in Euromaiden Press, and reprinted with permission of the author.
Renown Russian opposition politician and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov recently described the typical game plan that an autocratic leader follows when he gets caught “red-handed.” This is what it looks like:
Deny, lie, slander.
Claim that it was a misunderstanding.
Boast and jeer: “And what are you going to do about it?”

DailyBeast, Spencer Ackerman: Bipartisan Senate Panel Gives Middle Finger to Devin Nunes http://thebea.st/2zgt9lk
// A bipartisan report from the Senate Intelligence Committee says intelligence agencies were right to find the Russians interfered in the election to harm Clinton and elect Trump.

NYT: Shifting Strategy, Trump’s Lawyers Set New Conditions for Mueller Interview http://nyti.ms/2KNuK6J

Vox: The most important part of the Trump-Putin summit no one is talking about http://bit.ly/2MVnByV
// START Treaty; National Security Adviser John Bolton isn’t happy about it.

StateDept, Heather Nauert (Spokesperson): Eroding Press Freedom in Russia http://bit.ly/2zgFB4z re: Russian Duma taking steps to sanction “individual persons taking part in the creation of materials for media outlets … Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA)”

The Russian government continues to stifle press freedom and media independence. We condemn the selective targeting of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) and Voice of America (VOA) under Russia’s law on “foreign agent” media outlets. RFE/RL and VOA remain the only media outlets designated under this law, which exacerbates long-standing restrictions on their distribution in Russia. Moreover, on July 3 the State Duma took another step toward approving legislation that would extend the “foreign agent” designation from media outlets to individual persons taking part in the creation of materials for media outlets. This bill could provide the Russian government a new tool to target independent journalists and bloggers in retaliation for their work.

The United States again calls on the Russian government to uphold its commitments under the Helsinki Final Act and its obligations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political rights to respect the exercise of fundamental freedoms, including freedom of expression, in Russia. AP: Another warning shot? Trump’s ex-lawyer hires Clinton ally http://bit.ly/2KUnZwU

KyivPost/Newsweek: Former US ambassador to Russia said Putin ‘obviously’ helped Trump win http://bit.ly/2ziC31H

FactCheck.org (Dec): Trump’s Distorted NATO Funding Figure http://bit.ly/2u0QPFu //➔ The U.S. spends a lot more on its own defense compared with other nations in the international security alliance, but its share of the commonly funded NATO budget is less than one quarter.
// 12/14/2017

Trump conflates two kinds of spending by NATO countries — direct and indirect – to wrongly claim that the U.S. is “paying 80% for NATO.”

As for direct costs, the U.S. currently pays about 22 percent of NATO’s “principal budgets” that are funded by all alliance members based on a cost-sharing formula that factors in the gross national income of each country. The principal budget categories include the civil budget, the military budget and the NATO Security Investment Programme.

“Direct contributions are made to finance requirements of the Alliance that serve the interests of all 29 members — and are not the responsibility of any single member — such as NATO-wide air defence or command and control systems,” NATO says. “Costs are borne collectively, often using the principle of common funding.”

Direct spending may also include other “joint funding” projects that are arranged by participating NATO countries, but that are still overseen politically and financially by NATO.

Trump, on the other hand, is referring to so-called indirect spending — that is, the amount that the U.S. willingly spends on its defense budget compared with what other NATO countries spend on theirs. …

As NATO said in the June update: “This does not mean that the United States covers 72 per cent of the costs involved in the operational running of NATO as an organisation, including its headquarters in Brussels and its subordinate military commands, but it does mean that there is an over-reliance by the Alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refuelling; ballistic missile defence; and airborne electronic warfare.”

In 2006, NATO members agreed to try to spend at least 2 percent of their gross domestic product on defense spending. In 2014, they agreed again to aim to meet that standard by 2024.

As of now, though, only the U.S., Greece, Estonia, Britain, Romania and Poland meet the 2 percent target, which led Trump to argue that our allies are not paying their “fair share.”

But other countries have been spending more in recent years. The estimated 4.3 percent bump in 2017 was the third straight year that defense spending by Canada and European allies increased, according to NATO.

🐣 2017 NATO Chart by Axios: https://twitter.com/cvpayne/status/1015202534355537921
// posted on Twitter

💙💙 TheGuardian, Tim Adams (Apr): The Road to Unfreedom by Timothy Snyder review – chilling and unignorable http://bit.ly/2tYhqmE
// 4/15/2018, This persuasive book looks at Putin’s favourite Russian political philosopher and the template he set for fake news 🐣 RT @NormEisen I know it feels that way, but I have done the analysis, and just as I called Pruitt’s demise, the coming Cohen flip & much more, the evidence tells me that no one can survive all the civil and criminal cases now hurtling at Trump. Not sayin’ when or how–but I am sayin’

RawStory, Travis Gettys: Russian officials and state media mock ‘weak’ GOP senators after Moscow visit http://bit.ly/2KSkEy9

🐣 RT @McFaul Mr. President, you erroneously suggested in Montana last night that our NATO allies have never done anything for our security. Before you get the summit, check out these numbers of soldiers who gave the ultimate sacrifice to defend us: http://icasualties.org/oef/ 

TIME, Ian Bremmer: Trump and Putin Will Call Their Summit a Success. But Don’t Expect U.S.-Russia Relations to Improve http://ti.me/2zfnfRv

The post-summit glow won’t last long though. Trump, unlike Putin, has constraints on his power back home (see: media, fellow Republicans, Trump’s own bureaucracy), and the mounting Mueller investigation will only make it more difficult for Trump to defy American political gravity when it comes to all things Russia.

If it were not for the specifics surrounding Trump, a rapprochement between the U.S. and Russia would actually make plenty of geopolitical sense. China is a much bigger strategic problem for Russia than the U.S. is, and friendships have been built on much less. But unfortunately – and despite his best intentions — Trump may be the least likely President to be able to deliver one. TIME, Ian Bremmer: Trump and Putin Will Call Their Summit a Success. But Don’t Expect U.S.-Russia Relations to Improve http://ti.me/2zfnfRv

TheHill: The Senate’s grown-ups in the Trump-Russia probe follow facts, not politics http://bit.ly/2m0X1Ja

WashingtonExaminer, Byron York: What is Devin Nunes up to? House Trump-Russia probe expands as Intel chair focuses on informants http://washex.am/2KVsN55

Newsweek: Donald Trump Falsely Claims He ‘Won’ Lawsuit Over Russian Collusion http://bit.ly/2MVr3t0

🐣 RT @TheRickWilson This is Russian Intel 101, folks. Evan is spot-on.
⋙ 🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin While in Russia you accept enticements you ought not and learn it was all for a purpose. You feel angry and trapped at first until money begins to flow and opportunity seems greater than risk. Then with every compromising step, cords tighten around you until your will is theirs.
⋙⋙ 🐣 RT @dcexaminer Trump: “You know President Putin is KGB… Putin is fine. He’s fine. We are all fine, we’re all people”

🐣 RT @PuestoLoco Do you get it yet America? Putin & Trump have been working together for several years to merge U.S. & Russian oligarchies into similar fascistic governments based on the Putin model. The GOP is helping & European democracies are in the way.
https://twitter.com/PuestoLoco/status/1015225898767970304/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
LATimes, Chris Megerian: As Trump plans meeting with Putin, Europeans fear further meddling by Moscow http://lat.ms/2KSyh0v

⭕ 5 Jul 2018

Bloomberg: Putin Is Preparing a Deal Trump Can Tout After Summit http://bloom.bg/2MV4KE4

Msnbc: “Today Trump normalized the KGB. [Putin] murders people, invades our allies, subverts American democracy & today [Trump] normalized [the] KGB just like the Nazis in Charlottesville. This is very dangerous for American democracy & 7 R’s go there shows the R’s have surrendered to Russia” @MalcolmNance

Today Trump normalized the KGB. He murders people, invades our allies, subverts American democracy & today normalized KGB just like the Nazis in Charlottesville. This is very dangerous for American democracy & 7 R's go there shows the R's have surrendered to Russia @MalcolmNance pic.twitter.com/f6CZDeiKDr

— 🇺🇦 La Fella Nikita, PhD 🇺🇦 (@LaF3mm3Nikita) July 6, 2018

🐣 RT @brianklaas Confidence in American leadership from Obama to Trump:
-75% Germany
-71% South Korea
-70% France
-68% Spain
-61% Canada
-57% UK
-55% Australia
-54% Japan
+42% Russia
(Pew Research)

🐣 RT @McFaul Mr. President, Putin is not fine. He annexed Crimea, intervened in eastern Ukraine, propped up the most ruthless dictator of our time in Syria, violated our sovereignty in the 2016 presidential reelection, constructed autocracy in Russia, etc. Meet him; dont make excuses for him.

🐣 RT @ddale8 To recap: In rapid succession, Trump said Americans don’t benefit much from protecting Europe from Russia, said Americans are “schmucks” for paying for NATO, and said, “Putin is fine.”

USNews/AP: Trump-Putin Meeting an Accomplishment in Itself, US Envoy Jon Huntsman Says http://bit.ly/2NsO3Rm
// US ambassador to Russia [Jon Huntsman] says Trump’s upcoming summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin will be an achievement in itself.

NYT: Brett Kavanaugh, Supreme Court Front-Runner, Once Argued Broad Grounds for Impeachment http://nyti.ms/2KymJ6t

WaPo: Republicans on Russia trip face scorn and ridicule from critics at home http://wapo.st/2tYIlPd

RawStory: ‘Collusion by any definition’: Legal expert uncovers ‘clear pattern’ of Trump ‘criminal’ conspiracy with Russia http://bit.ly/2KM0ych
// Seth Abramson; includes entire 60-tweet Twitter thread

Seth Abramson, a professor and legal analyst, on Thursday provided what he said was “evidence of criminal collusion” between President Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign and the Russian government

In a massive Twitter thread, Abramson said that there was a “clear pattern” of actions taken by the Trump campaign before and after the election which points to a conspiracy to undermine U.S. sanctions against Russia.

🐣 RT @ AngrierWHStaff Periodic reminder: #WalkAway and #AbolishICE are both being propagated by Kremlin and right-wing trolls.

RadioFreeEurope: Huntsman: Russia’s ‘Malign Activity’ To Top Trump’s Meeting With Putin, NATO http://bit.ly/2KVkaHy

Missoulian: Daines, back from Russia, flying to Montana with Trump http://bit.ly/2KRya5t

ArcDigital, Caroline O.: Pro-Trump & Russian-Linked Twitter Accounts Are Posing As Ex-Democrats In New Astroturfed Movement http://bit.ly/2tYallP (#-WalkAway)
// #WalkAway from this deceptive propaganda campaign

Re-upping ⋙ WaPo, Michael McFaul (2016): Mr. Trump, NATO is an alliance, not a protection racket http://wapo.st/2NwWxHk
// 7/25/2016

LATimes: As Trump plans meeting with Putin, Europeans fear further meddling by Moscow http://lat.ms/2KSyh0v

TheWeek: Mueller is tapping FBI agents and federal prosecutors to help with his growing Trump-Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2KJy8j1

Vox, Andrew Prokop: Why Trump’s inauguration money is a major part of Mueller’s Russia investigation http://bit.ly/2NqCeLw
// Russia-tied donations and oligarch connections have drawn Mueller’s interest.

DailyBeast: Inside the Online Campaign to Whitewash the History of Donald Trump’s Russian Business Associates http://thebea.st/2KNTc85
// Who is paying bloggers on the other side of the globe to scrub the Internet of Trump’s Russian business ties?

⭕ 4 Jul 2018

WaPo, George F Will: Trump’s summit with Kim could foretell catastrophe with Putin http://wapo.st/2u5jEzG

As the president prepares, if this time he does prepare, for his second summit, note all that went wrong at the first. If he does as badly in his July 16 meeting with Vladimir Putin in Finland as he did with Kim Jong Un in Singapore, the consequences could be catastrophic.

An exceptionally knowledgeable student of North Korea, the American Enterprise Institute’s Nicholas Eberstadt, writing in National Review (“Kim Wins in Singapore”), says the one-day meeting was for the United States “a World Series of unforced errors.” The result was that North Korea “walked away with a joint communique that read almost as if it had been drafted by the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] ministry of foreign affairs.”

Singapore was, Eberstadt believes, probably the greatest diplomatic coup for North Korea since 1950 and a milestone on “the DPRK’s road to establishing itself as a permanent nuclear power.” And the sanctions that were the Trump administration’s strategy of “maximum pressure” will be difficult to maintain now that a “defanged” — Eberstadt’s description — Trump has declared the nuclear threat banished.

… The danger is of him lashing out in wounded vanity. Meanwhile, this innocent abroad is strutting toward a meeting with the cold-eyed Russian who is continuing to dismantle one of Europe’s largest nations, Ukraine. He is probably looking ahead to ratcheting up pressure on one of three small nations, Lithuania, Latvia or Estonia, each a member of the NATO alliance that, for the first time in its 69 years, is dealing with a U.S. president who evinces no admiration for what it has accomplished or any understanding of its revived importance as the hard man in Moscow, who can sniff softness, relishes what Singapore revealed.

CNN: Two people poisoned by same nerve agent used on ex-spy, police say http://cnn.it/2zcBTJp

🐣 I thought all Presidential discussions had to be recorded in some way for archival purposes. If not, they should be. Lord knows what they’ll cook up. Heaven help us.

PasteMag, Jacob Weindling (2017): 5 Twitter Accounts to Avoid When it Comes to Donald Trump’s Russian Connections http://bit.ly/2u7uepI //➔ note: I follow all of these (at least on my Investigators Twitter list)
// 3/29/2017

🐣 RT @OlgaNYC1011 Russia’s Duma speaker Volodin who is sanctioned by both US & Europe for his role in Crimea discussed the invitation by Republicans for a Russian delegation to come speak in Senate and House in the fall Will he be part of the visit and will sanctions be lifted to let him enter US?
📌 Thread: https://twitter.com/olgaNYC1211/status/1014644940989718529
🐣 RT @ Vyacheslav Nikonov has been in the State Duma since 2011 and its interesting that his focus of study was the history of the Republican Party
🐣 RT @ And if their staff members posted the tweets on their accounts then why no mention prior to visit? How could they meet w Nikonov a former aide to Putin who bragged last year that American spies slept while the Russians helped elect Trump and whose grandfather worked for Stalin

Mediaite: Conservative Writer Max Boot Calls GOP ‘White-Nationalist Party’, Endorses Democratic ‘Takeover’ http://bit.ly/2zaZsCb

The GOP ‘still cuts taxes and supports conservative judges,” writes Boot. “But a vote for the GOP in November is also a vote for egregious obstruction of justice, rampant conflicts of interest, the demonization of minorities, the debasement of political discourse, the alienation of America’s allies, the end of free trade and the appeasement of dictators.”

Like postwar Germany and Japan,” he says, “the Republican Party must first be destroyed before it can be rebuilt.”

Along with Boot, Will,and Schmidt, other conservatives and newly-former Republicans have made the same argument to varying degrees, including Tom Nichols, Matt Lewis, and Mediaite’s John Ziegler, who wrote last month that the only way to save the GOP was by first tearing it down.

“As a true conservative … my primary motivation is always based on what is in the best long-term interest of my country, and my family,” he wrote. “I can’t believe it has come to this, but I am now sure that this means actively hoping that the Republican Party gets crushed in November.”

🐣 RT @JoyceWhiteVance Because, this doesn’t look suspicious at all. A man in Trump’s position, who had any choice at all in the matter, would not do this.
⋙ 🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand Trump wants to meet with Putin alone, with no other aides present on either side, in Helsinki this month. That means no note-takers, witnesses, or official record. http://cnn.it/2MMxvCU

🐣 RT @AmoneyResists Let’s make sure to never forget the names of the GOP Congressmen who are spending Independence Day groveling at Putin’s heels:
(AL) @senshelby
(MT) @stevedaines
(ND) @SenJohnHoeven
(WI) @SenRonJohnson
(LA) @SenJohnKennedy
(KS) @JerryMoran
(SD) @SenJohnThune
(TX) @RepKayGranger

From Objections and Answers Respecting the Administration, August 1792. A letter in which Hamilton calls out those who alleged that he was working to reinstitute a monarchy in the States. http://bit.ly/2MQesYr

“The truth unquestionably is, that the only path to a subversion of the republican system of the Country is, by flattering the prejudices of the people, and exciting their jealousies and apprehensions, to throw affairs into confusion, and bring on civil commotion. Tired at length of anarchy, or want of government, they may take shelter in the arms of monarchy for repose and security.

“Those then, who resist a confirmation of public order, are the true Artificers of monarchy—not that this is the intention of the generality of them. Yet it would not be difficult to lay the finger upon some of their party who may justly be suspected. When a man unprincipled in private life desperate in his fortune, bold in his temper, possessed of considerable talents, having the advantage of military habits—despotic in his ordinary demeanour—known to have scoffed in private at the principles of liberty—when such a man is seen to mount the hobby horse of popularity—to join in the cry of danger to liberty—to take every opportunity of embarrassing the General Government & bringing it under suspicion—to flatter and fall in with all the nonsense of the zealots of the day—It may justly be suspected that his object is to throw things into confusion that he may “ride the storm and direct the whirlwind.”

TheWeek: 5 great non-corny songs about America http://bit.ly/2MJXf2D #1 Tie: Simon and Garfunkel, “America” (1968) / Paul Simon, “American Tune” (1973) //➔ American Tune is best

https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1011777402081611776/photo/1

⭕ 3 Jul 2018

📒 CSIS: Counting Dollars or Measuring Value ~ Assessing NATO and Partner Burden Sharing http://bit.ly/2KNIS0H
// Report [PDF] http://bit.ly/2N6WJMp 45p

DailyBeast, David Sanger: The Brits Told Us the Russians Were Hacking Our Election http://thebea.st/2IUAEy1

WaPo: Senate report affirms intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia favored Trump over Clinton http://wapo.st/2KPuPns

🐣 RT @mitchellreports You would think GOP Senators would be embarrassed to be cozying up to FM Lavrov in Moscow the same day GOP led Senate Intel committee issues report endorsing 2017 intel assessment that Kremlin tried to tip 2016 election to Trump over Clinton. Check @Maddow take on all this.

RawStory: Peter Strzok’s lawyer nails Republicans who aren’t ‘searching for truth’ on Russia — only appeasing ‘conspiracy-minded constituents’ http://bit.ly/2u2EKi3
// on CNN

“If you have a committee that actually wants to facts, that wants to find out the truth, you might actually have an interest,” he continued. “But from our experience with the committee thus far, it is obvious that they don’t want the truth.”

Goelman went on to say that his client has listened as he’s been caricatured, disparaged “and accused by the President of treason and of being a sick loser. And on Fox News they talk about him as the center of this anti-Trump cabal that was determined to throw the election against Trump. None of this has a shred of truth.”

He also conceded that it was fair for those to scrutinize the text messages between him and Lisa Page. However, Goelman recalled sickening things the president did during the campaign, such as attacking the Gold Star family, that justified being horrified by Trump.

🐣 RT @ForeignPolicy Attorney Anne Chandler has been providing legal aid to asylum-seekers at the U.S.-Mexican border for years. A few months ago, she noticed things were changing. The refugees were being brought to court in shackles. Check out @SarahAWildman’s FP podcast.
⋙ ForeignPolicy: They Took the Children for a Bath and Never Brought Them Back http://bit.ly/2tTGBq9
// 6/29/2018; On our podcast: An immigration lawyer tells harrowing stories of asylum-seekers at the southern U.S. border. Photo: children in cages, chains
https://twitter.com/ForeignPolicy/status/1014320433225748486/photo/1

🐣 RT @MaddowBlog “I’m not here today to accuse Russia of this or that or so forth,” Shelby told Duma speaker Vyacheslav Volodin. “I’m saying that we should all strive for a better relationship.”
⋙ WaPo: Republican lawmakers come to Moscow, raising hopes there of U.S.-Russia thaw http://wapo.st/2NmrMVv

🐣 RT @JimSciutto What are Putin’s goals? 1- Undermine NATO. 2- Force West to accept Crimea annexation. 3- Undermine western democracies thru election interference. 4- Ensure survival of Assad regime & Russia bases in Syria. Trump is now aiding Putin on each one.

RT @MaggieDay55 The tangled web between the Bad Boys, Trumpworld, and Russia can be traced back to 2012, when Nigel Farage, then-leader of the anti-immigration party UKIP, met Steve Bannon, who was then still at the helm of Breitbart News.
⋙ VanityFair, Isobel Thompson: Did The Bad Boys of Brexit Break America? http://bit.ly/2MKGtAh
// Two years after Trump’s election and the Brexit referendum, a small, transatlantic faction of pinstripe-clad populists is under international scrutiny for its role in both votes—and for its shadowy ties to Russia.

The tangled web between the Bad Boys, Trumpworld, and Russia can be traced back to 2012, when Nigel Farage, then-leader of the anti-immigration party UKIP, met Steve Bannon, who was then still at the helm of Breitbart News. Bannon’s site would go on to vocally support Farage’s campaign, and as Bannon and Farage’s parallel agendas flourished, so too did an alliance between Banks, who bankrolled Farage’s Leave.EU effort after it failed to score official backing; his associate and ally Andrew Wigmore; and Russian ambassador to the U.K. Alexander Yakovenko. Banks had previously admitted to at least one meeting with Yakovenko: a “boozy six-hour lunch” at Yakovenko’s London dwelling in 2015. But pressured by reports from The Guardian’s Carole Cadwalladr, among others, Banks later admitted he met with the Russians three times. On Friday, the number of meetings rose to four, and details piled up: per the Times, Banks’s Russian contacts offered him “at least three potentially lucrative investment opportunities in Russian-owned gold or diamond mines.” One of Banks’s business partners, James Mellon, was reportedly presented with similar offers, and appears to have taken advantage of at least one:

Three weeks after the 2016 Brexit vote, the Russian government sold the Alrosa stake in a private offering to a restricted group of investors. The shares were sold at a discount to the market price at a time when the value of both the stock and diamonds were rising.

Mr. Mellon’s fund-management company, Charlemagne Capital, was among a restricted number of investors who were allowed to participate.

… Banks is alleged to be worth up to £250 million, meaning his roughly £9 million contribution to Farage’s Leave.EU campaign—thought to be the the largest political donation in British history—would’ve been hefty, but doable. But multiple reports have called Banks’s net worth into question, and OpenDemocracy has suggested the figure may be far lower, casting doubt as to whether he could’ve facilitated such a transaction on his own.

The second theory is that Banks and his Bad Boys enabled a less obvious exchange between the Trump campaign and Russia: Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, told the Post he has questions about whether Banks and Co. “served as a conduit of information to and from the Russians on behalf of the Trump campaign.” (Rep. Joaquin Castro added that the documents “[open] a whole new chapter” in the Trump-Russia probe.) Not only was Banks connected to Bannon through Farage, with whom he reportedly signed a five-year lease on a Washington property nicknamed the “alternative British Embassy,“ but his ties to Yakovenko also link him to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos, who sought a meeting with the Russian ambassador in March 2016. (Papadopoulos’s efforts were ultimately unsuccessful.)

🐣 RT @sahilkapur As Trump echoes Russia’s claims that it didn’t meddle in the 2016 election, the GOP-led Senate Intel Cmte releases a bipartisan report concurring w/ U.S. intel community that Russia interfered to help Trump and Putin approved it.
↥ ↧
RawStory: Senate intel committee concludes Putin personally approved meddling to aid Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2Ku5ALk

⋙ “We assess Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered an influence campaign in 2016 aimed at the U.S . presidential election. Russia’s goals were to undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency. We further assess Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump,” the document reads.

🐣 RT @sahilkapur As Trump echoes Russia’s claims that it didn’t meddle in the 2016 election, the GOP-led Senate Intel Cmte releases a bipartisan report concurring w/ U.S. intel community that Russia interfered to help Trump and Putin approved it.
↥ ↧
📒💙💙 SenateIntelComm, Richard Burr et al: Report on Russian Interference in 2016 Elections: Initial Findings [pdf] http://bit.ly/2KHwHSg 7p
Conclusions: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1014338294405050368/photo/1
Intentions: https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1014259009904365568/photo/1
Efforts to influence: https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1014260762855043072/photo/1
Cyber ops: https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1014261522217029632/photo/1
Dossier not used: https://twitter.com/DrDenaGrayson/status/1014262383085281280/photo/1
// actual doc is untitled

WaPo: Republican lawmakers come to Moscow, raising hopes there of U.S.-Russia thaw  http://wapo.st/2MJ42JS

━━━━━━━▼ Trump-Russia-Israel
WSJ: Trump Expected to Seek Putin’s Help to Curb Iran’s Military in Syria http://on.wsj.com/2z4hdmA
// 6/28/2018, U.S. President Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin plan to meet in Helsinki on July 16

AlJazeera, Joe Macaron: In southern Syria, the US faces a Russia-Israel challenge http://bit.ly/2z7ybRj
// 6/20/2018, The US is being pushed to take action on Syria’s southern front.

WSJ (6/6): At Putin’s Parade, Netanyahu Seeks Understanding on Iran http://on.wsj.com/2tShvrW
// 6/6/2018, Israeli leader wants to make sure that the Russians consider his security concerns

Observer, John Schindler (6/5): Mueller Finally Starts to Target Trump’s Israel Ties http://bit.ly/2HmkM6I
// 6/5/2018

A genuine bombshell dropped yesterday, seemingly out of nowhere. It came in an interview with Simona Mangiante, the wife of George Papadopoulos, the Trump campaign foreign policy advisor who pled guilty last October to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russian agents—especially Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious Maltese professor with suspicious Kremlin ties—during the president’s election campaign. As expected, Mangiante explained that her husband, whom she married just three months ago, is innocent of what he admitted he did, and in no way was working for Russian intelligence.

“George had nothing to do with Russia,” she explained, seemingly in an effort to convince the White House that Papadopoulos lacks any dirt on the president’s Kremlin connections that could assist Special Counsel Robert Mueller in his investigation of Team Trump. However, what Mangiante said next was the real shocker: her husband “pled guilty because [Mueller’s prosecutors] threatened to charge him with being an Israeli agent.”

The notion is hardly implausible. Before joining the Trump campaign in early March 2016, Papadopoulos was a self-styled energy consultant who was known for taking strongly pro-Israeli positions in print. To boot, during the 2016 campaign, he met with an Israeli settler leader and assured him that Donald Trump, if elected president, would take a favorable view of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.

Then there’s the backstory to Papadopoulos’ infamous May 10, 2016 meeting at an upscale London wine bar with Alexander Downer, the Australian high commissioner (i.e. ambassador) to Britain. At that hard-drinking affair, the young Trump staffer informed Downer that Russia possessed derogatory information about Hillary Clinton—a claim the Australian diplomat found so troubling that he shared it with Australian security officials, who passed it on to their American partners, thus officially beginning the FBI’s investigation of Trump’s Kremlin ties.

That fateful boozy chat was set up by an unnamed Israeli diplomat. This fact, namely that “the meeting came about through a series of connections involving an Israeli diplomat who introduced Papadopoulos to an Australian counterpart,” was reported at the end of last year, “sourced from four current and former American and foreign officials.” This revelation has not been rebutted, nor has it received the attention it deserves. Given that a high percentage of Israeli diplomats serving abroad are spies, this story needs further investigation. …

[T]here are strange Israeli footprints all over the Trump-Russia story. Quite a few of the shady figures close to the president and his business affairs are American Jews of Soviet heritage who possess connections to Israel. Felix Sater and Michael Cohen are only the best-known of this dubious crew. Those men are also connected to Chabad of Port Washington, a Jewish community center on Long Island that is part of the worldwide Chabad movement—which reportedly possesses close links to Vladimir Putin and his Kremlin. The recent BBC report that Cohen accepted at least $400,000 from the Ukrainian government to set up a substantive meeting with President Trump last year included the tantalizing detail that this dirty deal ran through attendees of Chabad of Port Washington.

Then there’s the explosive New York Times report just two weeks ago about a hush-hush meeting in Trump Tower on August 3, 2016—less than two months after the other hush-hush meeting there with Kremlin operatives—between Team Trump and George Nader, who reportedly offered Donald Trump, Jr. help with getting his father elected. According to the Times, Nader proffered unofficial (and probably illegal) foreign aid to the Republican nominee’s campaign, including from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

That day, Nader brought with him Joel Zamel, an Israeli expert in several things that were of interest to Team Trump, including social media manipulation. Zamel is known to possess a close relationship with a bunch of former Israeli intelligence officials, and Nader reportedly paid him a large sum, perhaps as much as $2 million, after Trump’s election as compensation for Zamel’s shadowy social media assistance to the president-elect’s campaign in 2016 (both men visited the White House as well).

Zamel is best known as the founder of Wikistrat, a private intelligence firm that was founded in 2010, ostensibly as a “crowdsourced” geopolitical analysis outfit. Although it’s based in Washington, D.C., as The Daily Beast recently uncovered, “Wikistrat is, for all intents and purposes, an Israeli firm; and that the company’s work was not just limited to analysis. It also engaged in intelligence collection.” For this reason, Wikistrat is under investigation by Team Mueller, whose investigators have interviewed Zamel, while FBI agents have traveled to Israel to dig deeper. Several prominent Wikistrat staffers formerly worked for Israeli intelligence—and some experienced espionage professionals in our nation’s capital wonder if they still do.

Israeli espionage against the United States is a perennially touchy subject in Washington. …

Indeed, some counterintelligence pros in Washington have a rather different take on the Mueller inquiry than most Americans do. While Moscow’s secret role in subverting our election in 2016 is plain to see and is now denied only by the willfully obtuse or congenitally dishonest, detecting a direct Kremlin hand on the Trump campaign is trickier. Trump’s links to Moscow are visible but remain somewhat obscure.

His ties to Israel, however, are much plainer to see. Based on the available evidence to date, Team Trump’s 2016 links to shadowy Israelis appear just as troubling as those to dodgy Russians—indeed, in some cases they are the very same people. As a veteran counterspy in our Intelligence Community whom I’ve known for years recently asked me with a wry smile, “What if the real secret of the Trump campaign isn’t that it’s a Kremlin operation, rather an Israeli operation masquerading as a Russian one?” …

Few of America’s friends around the world are happy with the Trump administration, given its habit of gleefully trashing our longstanding alliances and declaring trade wars on our allies. Israel stands as a significant exception, however, and it’s no wonder that Mueller and his investigators are trying to get to the bottom of what certain Israelis were doing in 2016 in secret to boost the Trump campaign. That answer may eventually prove just as important as Mueller’s inquiry into the Kremlin and its clandestine attack on our democracy two years ago.

AlJazeera, Joe Macaron: In southern Syria, the US faces a Russia-Israel challenge http://bit.ly/2z7ybRj
// 6/20/2018, The US is being pushed to take action on Syria’s southern front.
━━━━━━━▲

🐣 Am I getting this right? Israel considers Russia a reliable ally against Iran, may have worked w Russia in election hack. Trump and Putin will talk about leaving Assad in power if Iran pushed out of Syria. Then what? War w Iran? Educate me, please. @emptywheel @ignatiuspost

💙💙 WaPo, David Ignatius (6/28): Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria? http://wapo.st/2z3zwbL //➔ interesting in light of @emptywheel’s blog post on a source she believes aided the Russians http://bit.ly/2KHDcRH
Text: https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1014196520080551936/photo/1

An intriguing aspect of the possible Syria deal is that it’s driven by close cooperation between Russia and Israel. The Israeli agenda, like Trump’s, is narrowly focused on blocking Iran — and Israelis seem to have concluded that Putin is a reliable regional partner.

💙💙 Dkos: Marcy Wheeler (emptywheel): “If something happens to me …everyone will now know why and who did it” http://bit.ly/2KHDcRH

Marcy Wheeler, an independent journalist (who some may remember around dKos as emptywheel), wrote an extraordinary post on her blog today. In it, she describes sharing information with the FBI about someone she had reason to believe was helping the Russians interfere with the 2016 election. 

Oh, also, she points out that Putin won on Syria.

EmptyWheel: Putting a Face (Mine) to the Risks Posed by GOP Games on Mueller Investigation http://bit.ly/2KuSfSP

Sometime last year, I went to the FBI and provided information on a person whom I had come to believe had played a significant role in the Russian election attack on the US. Since that time, a number of public events have made it clear I was correct.

I never in my life imagined I would share information with the FBI, especially not on someone I had a journalistic relationship with. I did so for many reasons. Some, but not all, of the reasons are:

● I believed he was doing serious harm to innocent people
● I believed (others agreed) that reporting the story at that time would risk doing far more harm than good
● I had concrete evidence he was lying to me and others, including but not limited to other journalists
● I had reason to believe he was testing ways to tamper with my website
● I believed that if the FBI otherwise came to understand what kind of information I had, their likely investigative steps would pose a risk to the privacy of my readers

To protect the investigation, I will not disclose this person’s true identity or the identity and/or role I believe he played in the attack. …

I always planned to disclose this when this person’s role was publicly revealed. But I’m doing so now for two reasons. First, I think the public deserves to see the text he sent me at 3:15 PM on November 9, 2016.

Text: “Off the record. You likely don’t want to hear this anymore than I did, I have it on very good intel (A 1 if you know humint ratings) that Flynn is speaking to Team Al-Assad in the next 48 hours.

“Obviously that in and of itself is very disconcerting on a number of levels. You can probably figure out [a] lot more than I can.”

[Related Tweet] https://twitter.com/emptywheel/status/1014120713089888256

The substance of the text — that the Trump team started focusing on Syria right after the election — has been corroborated and tied to their discussions with Russia at least twice since then. Most importantly, in his statement to Congress, Jared Kushner explained his request for a back channel with the Russians by describing an effort to cooperate on Syria.

The Ambassador [Sergei Kislyak] expressed similar sentiments about relations, and then said he especially wanted to address U.S. policy in Syria, and that he wanted to convey information from what he called his “generals.” He said he wanted to provide information that would help inform the new administration. He said the generals could not easily come to the U.S. to convey this information and he asked if there was a secure line in the transition office to conduct a conversation. General Flynn or I explained that there were no such lines. I believed developing a thoughtful approach on Syria was a very high priority given the ongoing humanitarian crisis, and I asked if they had an existing communications channel at his embassy we could use where they would be comfortable transmitting the information they wanted to relay to General Flynn.

Less credibly, in the days after Mike Flynn pled guilty, an inflammatory Brian Ross report was corrected to reveal that “shortly after the election” Trump asked Flynn personally to work with Russia on Syria (Ross left ABC yesterday but as far as I understand the corrected story stands).

Retired Lt. Gen Michael Flynn has promised “full cooperation” in the special counsel’s Russia investigation and, according to a confidant, is prepared to testify that Donald Trump directed him to make contact with the Russians, initially as a way to work together to fight ISIS in Syria.

[snip]

The source said Trump phoned Flynn shortly after the election to explicitly ask him to “serve as point person on Russia,” and to reach out personally to Russian officials to develop strategies to jointly combat ISIS.

The text sent to me matches both those reports — indeed, it makes it clear that “shortly after the election” means just over 14 hours after polls closed. But the text doesn’t come from anyone, like Kushner or Flynn, inside the Trump team. It comes from someone who, I believe, had already done real damage to the United States as part of the Russian attack. That person understood the cooperation with Syria in terms of the US backing Bashar al-Assad, not in terms of fighting ISIS.

I’m making this public now because a David Ignatius report Thursday maps out an imminent deal with Russia and Israel that sounds like what was described to me within hours of the election. This deal appears to be the culmination of an effort that those involved in the Russian attack worked to implement within hours after the election.

The other reason I’m disclosing this now is to put a human face to the danger in which the House Republicans are putting other people who, like me, provided information about the Russian attack on the US to the government.

My risk isn’t going to go away — indeed, going public like this will surely exacerbate it. That’s to be expected, given the players involved.

But I’m a public figure. If something happens to me — if someone releases stolen information about me or knocks me off tomorrow — everyone will now know why and who likely did it. That affords me a small bit of protection. There are undoubtedly numerous other witnesses who have taken similar risks to share information with the government who aren’t public figures. The Republicans’ ceaseless effort to find out more details about people who’ve shared information with the government puts those people in serious jeopardy. …

[M]y decision to share information with the FBI had nothing to do with my dislike for Donald Trump. It had to do with the serious damage that someone else I believed to be involved in the Russian attack — someone I had been friendly with — was doing to innocent people, almost all of those people totally uninvolved in American politics.

This investigation is not, primarily, an investigation into Donald Trump. It’s an investigation into people who attacked the United States. It’s time Republicans started acting like that matters.

🐣 RT @MarkHertlin I wish someone could help me understand why these GOP Senators are in Russia. I know what CODELs are supposed to do, and I just don’t get this. It’s a bad action and an especially bad optics. Please,someone explain this.

🐣 RT @johnson_carrie NEWS from @NPR – Scott Schools, the highest ranking career lawyer at the Justice Dept., who helps oversee the Mueller probe and other sensitive issues, is stepping down.

🐣 RT @dcpoll Mar 2006 photo of Russian intelligence operative Konstantin Kilimnik [1] & his associates:
2- Tad Devine, BERNIE SANDERS 2016 senior campaign strategist
3- Manafort, TRUMP 2016 campaign chair
4- Christian Ferry, LINDSEY GRAHAM 2016 campaign manager
https://twitter.com/dcpoll/status/1013870942194462720/photo/1

⭕ 2 Jul 2018

WaPo: Facebook’s disclosures under scrutiny as federal agencies join probe of tech giant’s role in sharing data with Cambridge Analytica http://wapo.st/2MH9HA5

🐣 Maria Bartiromo’s interview of Trump wasn’t softball. It was WIFFLE BALL.

🐣 RT @SenBobCorner Recognizing Crimea as part of Russia would undermine the rules-based international order that was created with U.S. leadership and has caused democracy to thrive around the world and made America a safer home for our citizens.

VanityFair, Emily Jane Fox: “He Was Trying to Get Ahead of Things”: Michael Cohen, Former Trump Shield and Current Regency Prisoner, Got Sick of Being a Whipping Boy http://bit.ly/2KtZydx

NYPost, Benny Avni: It’s up to the hawks to save Donald Trump from himself http://nyp.st/2KpqhYF

🐣 RT @Billbrowder What are the odds that Putin brings up his obsession to repeal the Magnitsky Act in his one-on-one meeting with Trump (without aides present) at the US Russia summit in Helsinki?

🐣 RT @McFaul Agreed. Remember, Bolton is the National Security ADVISER. He is supposed to give expert advise on these matters to a president with no foreign policy experience at all.
⋙ 🐣 RT @RichardHaass Disconcerting that NSA John Bolton unable/unwilling to reassure that @realDonaldTrump would not recognize Russian annexation of Crimea at Helsinki summit. The unacceptability of acquiring territory by force underpins what little international order exists.

TheGuardian: Will Michael Cohen flip on Trump? The key questions answered http://bit.ly/2lSeUd4
// Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer has told an interviewer that his first loyalty is to his family. Is he about to change tack?

Newsweek: Can Donald Trump Convince Vladimir Putin to Turn Against Iran? Syria War to Be Discussed at U.S.-Russia Summit http://bit.ly/2Ni3pZ3

McClatchy: Russia investigators likely got access to NRA’s tax filings, secret donors http://bit.ly/2NjIC7l

Carnegie: Can the Trump-Putin Summit Restore Guardrails to the U.S.-Russian Relationship? http://ceip.org/2z0RU53

BuzzFeed: The Senate Intel Committee Is In Regular Contact With The Trump–Russia Dossier Author http://bzfd.it/2MJIMUt
// The committee’s chair, Richard Burr of North Carolina, told BuzzFeed News that there are weekly contacts with Christopher Steele.

Politico: Russia becomes 7th WTO member to challenge Trump tariffs http://politi.co/2IKJ2QI

Axios: Trump sends letters to NATO allies demanding more defense spending http://bit.ly/2KIlGwP

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: John Bolton’s ‘case of the vapors’ http://wapo.st/2KGluyd

If Bolton is right about his boss’s toughness, Trump will play hardball with Putin, pushing back on Russian war crimes in Syria, its illegal occupation of Crimea, its poisoning of defectors in England, its killing of journalists and its continuing support for Iran. If he does not, and instead goes to his default position with Putin (eager subservience), Bolton should seriously consider resigning. At this point, Bolton is enabling a president who favors foes over friends and is simply too foolish to be left in the room alone with an enemy of the United States. In short, he’s become a purveyor of the foreign policy he’s spent his life decrying.

🐣 William L Shirer wondered if Hitler would have risen to power if his name had remained “Schicklgruber.” If you replaced “strong” and “a disgrace” in Trump’s vocabulary, would that help? I suggest “babydimply” and “poodlepoo.” Except it might reflect poorly on babies and poodles.

WaPo, Ben Rhodes: Obama worried with foreign leaders about Trump. The president has proved them right. http://wapo.st/2lNK4SP

NYRB, Umberto Eco: Ur-Fascism http://bit.ly/2IN4QuL
// 6/22/1995

USAToday, Norm Eisen and Andrew Wright: How Donald Trump could speed up Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation: Talk to him. http://usat.ly/2IMTdUN

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Michael Cohen Apparently Flipping Is Extremely Bad News for Trump http://nym.ag/2Ng6dWl

NBC: Trump continues to deny Russia interfered in 2016. Here’s why that’s a problem. http://nbcnews.to/2IN5p7Z

Politico: The Trump-Russia election interference seesaw rides on http://politi.co/2z3X5Bn 🌼They did interfere 🌼They didn’t interfere 🌼They did interfere 🌼They didn’t interfere 🌼They did interfere 🌼 …

TIME: Russia Says Crimea Is Off the Table for Trump’s Meeting With Putin http://ti.me/2MGq0Nx //➔ Dmitri Peskov: The status of Crimea “can not and will never be on the agenda because it is an inseparable part of Russia”

AP: Internal records show that Konstantin Kilimnik, indicted for alleged witness tampering along with President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, played a bigger role formulating pro-Russia strategy with Manafort than was previously understood
⋙ AP: Russian charged with Trump’s ex-campaign chief is key figure http://bit.ly/2KJJ68t
//➔ 2004 Kilimnik memo to Manafort: “Russia is ultimately going to lose if they do not learn how to play this game.”

Kilimnik — who special counsel Robert Mueller believes is currently in Russia and has ties to Russian intelligence — helped formulate Manafort’s pitches to clients in Russia and Ukraine, according to the records. Among Manafort’s clients were Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska and other mega-wealthy Russians with close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Kilimnik began that work in secret, the records show, even while working for the International Republican Institute — a U.S. government-funded nonprofit supporting the Western-friendly democratic movements that Manafort and his patrons sought to counter.

The records do not reveal what motivated Kilimnik’s work for Manafort, though Mueller’s team has alleged in U.S. court filings that Kilimnik’s ties to Russian intelligence remained active through the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. Kilimnik has denied that.

The records show Kilimnik helped conceive strategies that Manafort sold to clients, and that he served as a key liaison between Manafort and principal financial backers, including Deripaska.

Deripaska has denied hiring Manafort for any pro-Russian political work, and unsuccessfully sued the AP last year over reporting that he had paid Manafort more than $10 million to influence political decisions and news coverage in Eastern Europe and Western capitals. Manafort also denied to the AP last year that he had performed political work for Deripaska.

A new filing by the U.S. government in Manafort’s court cases showed that Manafort acknowledged that work in a 2014 FBI interview, and files seized by the FBI showed that Deripaska was the source of a $10 million loan to a Manafort-controlled company in 2010.

At least some of Kilimnik’s channels to Deripaska remained open through the 2016 presidential campaign, when Kilimnik and Manafort sought to return to the oligarch’s good graces after a falling out. Deripaska has said he never received or discussed any proposal for new Manafort business during the campaign. …

The records show that Kilimnik participated in an early Manafort plan to influence Western politicians and media outlets. Officially, the project — known as Eurasia21 — would offer news and expertise on former Soviet states. Unofficially, it would be a propaganda operation intended to target Washington and European capitals and “train a cadre of leaders who can be relied upon in future governments,” according to one memo. …

🐣 RT @McFaul And by discussing all of these incredible concessions for nothing in return, Trump reinforces the theory that he is beholden to Putin. Why is that in Trump personal interests?
⋙ 🐣 RT @McFaul In last 2 weeks Trump has invited Russia to join G7, denied Russian interference in 2016 election, hinted at recognizing Crimean annexation, pulling out of Syria & reducing US troops in Germany. In return for these monumental concessions Trump has asked Putin to do…? #Artofdeal

🔆 This❗️⋙ ABCNews, George Stephanopoulos: EXCLUSIVE: Michael Cohen says family and country, not President Trump, is his ‘first loyalty’ http://abcn.ws/2z2zBwg

⭕ 1 Jul 2018

CBS: Blumenthal says Trump’s Supreme Court pick “ought to recuse” themselves from Russia decisions http://cbsn.ws/2tYJrcZ

🔄 StandUpAmerica: Trump Crimes Watch http://bit.ly/2KF4T12
// alt link trumpcrimewatch.org; linkups for protests etc

Vulture: Alec Baldwin Is Going to Need You to Get Personally Involved in Robert Mueller’s Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2Koa9GY

WaPo: John Bolton: No one should have ‘a case of the vapors’ over Trump’s summit with Putin http://wapo.st/2KCkY7x

TheAtlantic, David Frum: The Great Russian Disinformation Campaign http://theatln.tc/2tOiMPQ
// In a new book, Timothy Snyder explains how Russia revolutionized information warfare—and presages its consequences for democracies in Europe and the United States.

TheSternFacts: Grand Old Putin Party http://bit.ly/2KyvyfM
// 5-part series

Recent Books:
Trumpocracy – Frum
How Democracies Die – Levitsky/Ziblatt
Despot’s Apprentice – Klaas
People vs. Democracy – Mounk
Future is History – Gessen
Road to Unfreedom – Snyder

SundayTimes [UK]: National Crime Agency examines Russian link to Arron Banks http://bit.ly/2MC0qt5

⭕ 30 Jun 2018

Politifact: Did Justice Kennedy quit due to family ties to Trump and Russia? http://bit.ly/2unYkFA No: FALSE

WaPo: Arron Banks: The brash British millionaire who backed Brexit, befriended the Russian ambassador and loves Trump http://wapo.st/2Kl1Uvk

TheTelegraph [UK]: Donald Trump’s aide held secret talks with Brexiteers over trade deal agreement http://bit.ly/2tGIpTs

🐣💙💙 RT @tribelaw If SCOTUS overturns Roe v. Wade in 2019 or 2020, I’d predict a massive backlash: Dems would win the presidency and both the House and Senate in Nov 2020, and Congress would enact a law adding 2 seats to SCOTUS in 2021 or 2022. Remember there’s no constitutional magic in nine.

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance He is in debt. Payoff is Soft ideological take over of America & Europe’s democracies & ending Sanctions & the Atlantic Alliance. This deal was made in 2013 at Nobu restaurant Moscow. Trump’s paying up.
⋙ 🐣 RT @mcfaul Trump continues to hint at concessions he might offer Putin. Appeasement (almost always a bad idea) usually occurs in response to some threat, but Putin (to the best of my knowledge!) is not preparing to invade Europe. So what is the strategy here? I just dont get it.

WaPo: U.S. judge bars evidence-sharing with ‘Putin’s chef’ in Mueller probe of Russian election interference http://wapo.st/2Km9d5F

WaPo, Max Boot: Trump wants to Finlandize the United States http://wapo.st/2KkL0g1
// “I have never believed that Trump is a Manchurian candidate — a Russian mole — but it’s hard to know how he would be acting differently if he were. If the Atlantic alliance survives his presidency in its current form, it will be a miracle.”

WaPo: ‘What would you give your life for?’: Michael Moore warns of fight to save democracy from Trump http://wapo.st/2tOlowY

NPR: The Russia Investigations: Big Implications For The New Supreme Court Justice http://n.pr/2MD1JYW

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: The Other Russia Collusion Scandal Is Breaking Wide Open http://nym.ag/2tFgqUk

🐣 RT @ jedshug Thread: A president under investigation for impeachment has never appointed a Justice. Not Nixon, not Clinton, not Andrew Johnson. Never. Democrats should make clear that if the GOP destroys this tradition, they will expand the Court to 15 in 2021 without filibuster. http://bit.ly/2Kln3pd

DailyBeast, Clive Irving: It Is Happening Here, Trump Is Already Early-Stage Mussolini http://thebea.st/2KmEqFZ
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1013437953522196480/photo/1
// The false threat of murderous immigrants, the draconian response, a government agency going rogue—it’s all been seen before and it’s very dangerous.

… This is not Italy in 1925. Nonetheless there is no comfort to be gained from the gap in place and time. There are too many clear similarities in the Trump administration’s language, techniques and actions.

First, there is the flashpoint issue designed to make populations feel insecure—and therefore, to justify a draconian response.

Trump has used immigration as that issue from the day of his notorious candidacy-launching “rapists and murderers” speech.

And, like Mussolini, Trump is surrounded by his own hard core of fanatics eager to use that issue to achieve their own ideological purposes.

Mussolini was greatly under the influence of Roberto Farinacci, a lawyer and one of the most unrelenting dogmatists of the fascist movement. Trump has Stephen Miller, under the nebulous title of political adviser, who has for years been in lockstep with Attorney General Jeff Sessions in whipping up fears about the browning of America (which is, in any case, already demographically inevitable).

The ultimate ghastly achievement of the Miller-Sessions axis has been the “zero tolerance” policy for those crossing the Mexican border without permission. In other words, the automatic criminalization of refugees.

All along, Miller and Sessions knew that in Trump they had an easy accomplice. The man who created the birthing smear against Obama and who thought the fascists at Charlottesville were OK was innately racist, and they exploited it.

In fact, “zero tolerance” has the same intransigent tone, the same absolutism and the same indiscriminate cruelty that Mussolini conveyed in his speeches when he used the unrest that he had himself fomented to justify seizing absolute power.

And the language used in attacking immigrants is based on lies used with the same frequency and conviction that was recommended by the original fascist dictum that if a lie is repeated often enough it becomes accepted as fact.

Immigration across the Mexican border has been continually presented as a threat to public safety. Thousands of innocents fleeing from terror in Central America are equated with terrorists. The MS-13 gangs become shorthand for a crime wave that doesn’t exist.

And Trump, as ever an empathy amputee, is still using words like “infest” and “invade” as a catch-all term for thousands of people who are refugees and asylum seekers.

Forced into stopping the separation of children from parents—albeit when it had become untenable—Trump pulled a sordid stunt by inviting to the White House a group of people who had lost loved ones to crimes committed by illegal immigrants. This sad and bewildered group found themselves suddenly complicit in sustaining the toxic fiction that nobody is safe when sharing the streets of our cities with illegal immigrants.

Where Mussolini had his militia, Trump has Immigration and Customs Enforcement, ICE. Created in 2003, ICE was a child of the response to 9/11, part of the Bush administration’s plan to reinforce institutions to deal more effectively with terrorism, and it fell under the Department of Homeland Security.

Probably because of the haste of that change—and the priorities given to anti-terrorist powers—ICE has suffered from weak oversight. As a result, it has a long record of abusing detainees through both the Bush and Obama administrations and now in the era of Trump it seems alarmingly unfettered.

Last December the inspector general of the Department of Homeland Security, belatedly responding to disturbing reports about the treatment of immigrants, confirmed widespread cases of the abuse of detainees in ICE jails across the country.

The abuse included strip searches in violation of rules, failure to provide medical care, physical abuse by guards and unsafe and unhygienic conditions. Other reports have indicated systemic sexual harassment and abuse.

Indeed, since the arrival of “Zero tolerance” ICE has shown all the signs of going rogue. It scooped up and bundled off detainees to many parts of the country in the confidence that nobody was looking—until the whole miserable farrago of family separations was suddenly exposed. It remains belligerently opaque in its methods, consistently rebuffing the attempts of lawmakers to inspect its premises.

Not even Mussolini could have imagined concentration camps for babies. But that is where we are.

Trump and the White House are, in theory, constrained by Congress, an independent judiciary, a government staffed by people who are supposed to follow the law and a free press.

Looked at in the context of Mussolini’s Italy, how well are these constraints performing?

The judiciary is yet to be fully tested, but the Supreme Court is looking worryingly complaisant after its blessing of Trump’s Muslim travel ban, shaped indelibly by his splenetic Islamophobia. In contrast, the professionals at the Department of Justice have so far, in spite of Sessions, managed to secure their integrity. …

The most obvious failure, though, is Congress. It is, at best, in denial and, at worst, calculatingly supine.

In Mitch McConnell the Senate has a majority leader who has spent years perfecting his impersonation of Uriah Heep, piously lamenting the lack of bipartisan support for any legislation, particularly on immigration, while making sure there is none. He has been typically AWOL during every stage of Trump’s moral depravities.

In the House Paul Ryan, half out the door already, was revealed as spineless long ago and now looks like a beaten man.

At least we still have the free press at the top of its form. But, at the same time, we also have Fox News, serving basically as a state propaganda machine so sycophantic and so malign that Mussolini would have found it exemplary.

Before we descend into hell let’s make sure we recognize the signs of its approach. They are all there now, in plain sight. History does not have to repeat itself.

NYT, Paul Krugman: Trump’s Potemkin Economy http://nyti.ms/2KljwHr

⭕ 29 Jun 2018

WaPo, Randall Eliason: Why are Republicans hiding Peter Strzok’s testimony? http://wapo.st/2KBJ8vM

TPM, Josh Marshall: Trump on trade, Russia and NATO http://bit.ly/2tEqTPG

TPM, Josh Marshall: Clear and Present Danger http://bit.ly/2tZqV4f

We’re far past the point where it matters whether President Trump is a ignorant and destructive fool or operates as some sort of agent of the Russian Federation. The upshot appears to be the same. The Washington Post reports that President Trump has tasked the Pentagon with analyzing withdrawing US troops from Germany. Quoting the nominal explanation the Post was given: “Trump was said to have been taken aback by the size of the U.S. presence, which includes about 35,000 active-duty troops, and complained that other countries were not contributing fairly to joint security or paying enough to NATO.”

This is in advance of the NATO summit next month which will be followed shortly after by a summit with Vladimir Putin. The German troop presence news comes after we learned that in April Trump tried to persuade President Macron of France to leave the European Union. Days ago Trump told a crowd in North Dakota that “the European Union, of course, was set up to take advantage of the United States, to attack our piggy bank.” Trump apparently ‘joked’ about pulling the US out of NATO with the Prime Minister of Sweden. More strikingly, he told G-7 members in Canada earlier this month that “NATO is as bad as NAFTA.”

What The Times of London calls a “senior EU diplomat” says of these comments and gambits, “we are more and more concerned they are not just incidents. It starts to look like a very worrying pattern” and refers to “an American doctrine in which there are no friends, only enemies” with no “rules-based order”. “It is very dangerous,” the source told the paper.

Some of this comes from Trump’s longstanding protectionist views which I would argue are rooted in his zero sum concept of deal-making. But the role of Russia, the efforts to liquidate NATO and the continuing and aggressive courtship of Putin show it is part of some broader agenda. Someone, eventually, will have to place some check on Trump’s power. For the moment, the entire cadre of political appointees in the administration and the leadership of Congress appears entirely inert and passive, if not outright supportive. It is important to remember that the President has zero constitutional authority over trade policy. That is 100% on loan from Congress. It’s remarkable that this is all happening before our eyes and no one [ends]

We’re in a lot of danger.

TheDiplomat, Aileen Torres-Bennett and Anna Gawel: Trump’s Transactional Realpolitik Alienates America’s European Allies http://bit.ly/2KB7G8d

NYT, Roger Cohen: Of Course, It Could Not Happen Here http://nyti.ms/2MzTltf
// We are all frogs in Trump’s slow-boiling pot

Politico Mag, Michael Kruse: The Lost City of Trump http://politi.co/2tFvnpn
// Jul-Aug 2018; It was supposed to be his legacy. Today it’s a mere shadow of his dream—but he declared victory anyway. How the saga of Trump City foreshadowed the president’s chaotic path to the White House.

◕ Chart: Duration and Results of Investigations https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1012836788304531457/photo/1
// Trump Russia shortest with most results

NYT/AP: Trump Says He’ll Bring Up Election Meddling With Putin http://nyti.ms/2Kk68mV

TPM, Josh Marshall: Trump on trade, Russia and NATO http://bit.ly/2tEqTPG

TheHill: Five highlights from the tense Wray-Rosenstein hearing http://bit.ly/2ICOuoo

Politico: Trump on meeting Putin: ‘I’ll talk to him about everything’ http://politi.co/2tHNQ4z oh. great.

DallasNews: Cornyn frets that Trump fails to see Putin as a thug ahead of U.S.-Russia summit in Helsinki http://bit.ly/2tVeM0a

WaPo, Anne Gearan: Trump hopes he and Putin will get along. Russia experts worry they will. http://wapo.st/2lNFtQN

ForeignPolicy: U.S. Ambassador to Estonia Resigns in Disgust After Trump Anti-Europe Rants http://bit.ly/2KvVusw
// James Melville is the latest in a string of career diplomat resignations over Trump’s comments and policies.

CNBC: Special counsel Mueller reportedly interested in Brexit boosters’ ties to Trump associates, Russia http://cnb.cx/2IBM6P2
Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team is interested in a British businessman and his pro-Brexit associates’ contacts with Russian diplomats and Trump campaign operatives, The Washington Post reported.
Wealthy businessman Arron Banks reportedly met the Russian ambassador to London in August 2016, the Post reported.
Less than a week later, Banks and his associates traveled to attend a fundraiser in Mississippi, where they had been invited by then-campaign chief executive Steve Bannon.

MotherJones: Trump’s Supreme Court Pick Could Have a Dicey Task: Deciding Trump-Russia Cases http://bit.ly/2N5XGW5
// The president might have a very personal interest in his next appointee.

TheIndependent [UK]: Russian TV boasts about electing Trump ahead of summit with Putin http:/ind.pn/2IzY2kh
// ‘What trouble did we cause? We just elected Trump, that’s all,’ a Russian news presenter said

NYT: ‘Shaken’ Rosenstein Felt Used by White House in Comey Firing http://nyti.ms/2yS2NGh

🐣 RT @EricHolder The unprecedented disclosure of ongoing investigative material, FISA and national security documents to the complicit and unprincipled House Republicans sets a dangerous precedent and impacts the Mueller inquiry. It must stop. Lines have to be drawn.

NYMag, Jonah Shepp: In Trump’s Russia Summit, Putin Holds All the Cards http://nym.ag/2tMQmWt

CBSNews: Some questions in Trump-Russia dossier now finding answers http://cbsn.ws/2MznUPG

⭕ 28 Jun 2018

WaPo, David Ignatius (6/28): Is Trump handing Putin a victory in Syria? http://wapo.st/2z3zwbL //➔ interesting in light of @emptywheel’s blog post on a source she believes aided the Russians (see at 7/3/2018)

An intriguing aspect of the possible Syria deal is that it’s driven by close cooperation between Russia and Israel. The Israeli agenda, like Trump’s, is narrowly focused on blocking Iran — and Israelis seem to have concluded that Putin is a reliable regional partner.

Politico: Ahead of summit, U.S. and Russia tussle to control the narrative http://politi.co/2MAlNuZ
// The Kremlin is often the first to share news with the world, leaving some to wonder whether Putin will best Trump in messaging.

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES Rod Rosenstein doesn’t look like an action hero, but that is what he is. Guts, integrity and courage. Americans don’t get to see that from our high ranking public officials these days but today they did and America is strengthened because of it.

TheHill: Trump cites Russia’s denial of meddling: ‘Where is the DNC Server?’ http://bit.ly/2IF6EWY

Venture Capital Twitter Thread http://bit.ly/2KlVjAQ
🐣 RT @kelly2277 Deutsche Bank’s “Private Wealth Division” bailed out Trump w help from Commerce Sec Wilbur Ross, Vekselberg, Rybolovlev & Robert Mercer (shares of BOC bought by Renaissance Technology)- ALL major shareholders in Bank of Cyprus – BOC
⋙ Newsweek (Dec 2017): Is Donald Trump’s Dark Russian Secret Hiding in Deutsche Bank’s Vaults? http://bit.ly/2KrXYrD
⇊
Look at names, biz & orgs here. See how they ALL tie together? See why Trump appointed @SecretaryRoss for CommerceAckerman, Ross, Deutsche BOC Vekselberg, Rybolovlev- he bought Trump mansion for excessive amt. KGB Spy Strzhalkovsky, Renova Rosneft, Blavatnik, Fridman
⇊
Bank of Cyprus shareholder Rybolovlev managed to overpay Trump $40M for his Palm Beach mansion- only to quickly tear it down Rybolovlev & Mercer’s yachts were seen anchored next to each other. RenTec, Mercer’s hedge fund uses tax haven at BOC
[ Etc Etc Etc ]

🐣 RT @KaitlanCollins News — Sens. Murkowski, Collins and Heitkamp were all at the White House tonight meeting with President Trump, along with Sens. Manchin and Donnelly. Heitkamp, Manchin and Donnelly are the three Dems who voted for Gorsuch.

🐣 RT @StevenJHarper1 With respect to Mueller’s investigation, @TGowdySC told Rosenstein to “finish it the hell up.” Context:
Watergate: 4 yrs
Iran-Contra: 6 yrs
Whitewater: 7 yrs
#TrumpRussia: 1 yr; 5 guilty pleas; 17 indictments

NYT: Political War Over Replacing Kennedy on Supreme Court Is Underway http://nyti.ms/2KwfGXX

Politico: Dems tell Rosenstein, Wray not to bow to GOP pressure http://politi.co/2IyzOGV Pelosi, Schumer, Warner, Schiff

TheNewYorker, Robin Wright: Will Trump Get Played By Putin? http://bit.ly/2Kt5LFP

DailyBeast, David Litt: Robert Mueller Must Finish Investigating Before Trump Gets His Supreme Court Pick http://thebea.st/2KxA0Ii
// A profound, debilitating constitutional crisis awaits if we find out that the Senate confirmed an illegitimate president’s nominees.

WaPo/AP: Trump-Putin meeting to follow NATO gathering at tense moment http://wapo.st/2KlOyPu

NYT: In Meeting With Putin, Experts Fear Trump Will Give More Than He Gets http://nyti.ms/2IAxBef

NBC, Keith Koffler: Trump’s Russia summit is part of a broader (winning) strategy to treat allies like dirt and tyrants like friends http://nbcnews.to/2tNPOjf
// Critics accuse Trump of cuddling up to dictators instead of democrats. But there might be a method to what critics cite as his madness.

HuffPo: Democrats Tie Trump Supreme Court Pick To Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2KvZZA7
// Some Democrats say the president shouldn’t get to pick a Supreme Court justice while he’s under criminal investigation.

💙💙 WaPo: How the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’ forged ties with Russia and the Trump campaign — and came under investigators’ scrutiny http://wapo.st/2IAww6b

🐣 RT @tribelaw A president under active criminal investigation of whether he won legitimately and whether he has obstructed that very investigation should not be permitted by a mere Senate majority to designate the justice whose votes could prove pivotal to the fate of his presidency.

TPM, Josh Marshall: The Critical Question Facing Democrats and the Court http://bit.ly/2yRpbiP

TPM: Rosenstein: ‘We Are Not Going To Be In Contempt Of This Congress’ http://bit.ly/2KxN1os

TPM, Josh Marshall: Please Read This Through. He’s Right. http://bit.ly/2KjaH0u “Looking through my email I found this from a former federal public corruption prosecutor …”
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1012467574708326401/photo/1

“Consider that the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide, for example, whether the President can pardon himself or others to protect himself, whether a sitting President can be indicted, whether a sitting President can be compelled to testify before a federal grand jury, whether the appointment of the Special Counsel somehow violated the Appointments Clause (as some conservatives absurdly assert), and whether a President can ever obstruct justice. Even beyond the Mueller investigation, the Supreme Court may be called upon to decide whether the President’s acceptance of significant foreign funds through his businesses violates the Emoluments Clause. We have no idea how Justice Kennedy would have ruled on these questions (he hasn’t exactly distinguished himself in the last two days). But we have no doubt how a Trump appointee will. Never before has the selection of a Supreme Court nominee been so thoroughly compromised by the President’s profound personal interest in appointing a judge the President can count on to protect the President. This is DEFCON 1 for the rule of law in this country.”

… Democrats have a much stronger case to make: no vote should be taken until after the Special Counsel has submitted a report to Congress, or closed the investigation of the President. A President under federal criminal investigation for stealing an election should not be able to nominate the person who may decide his fate. There will be a cloud over the legitimacy of this nomination unless and until the cloud of the Mueller investigation has been lifted.

NYT: House G.O.P. Breaks Into Open Warfare With Rosenstein, Demanding Russia Files http://nyti.ms/2lD0D3M MoscowProject: Another Trump Supreme Court Pick Could Imperil the Russia Investigation. Here’s How. http://bit.ly/2lEXikJ

WaPo Editorial: Trump is kowtowing to the Kremlin again. Why? http://wapo.st/2lE8RZv

WaPo: Republicans berate Rosenstein and urge him to end Russia probe http://wapo.st/2KtCx6s

WaPo: Rod Rosenstein shuts down Jim Jordan over Fox News report http://wapo.st/2KuzZFf

WaPo: How Rosenstein and Wray’s testimony undermined GOP efforts to undermine the Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2Na4RfN

WaPo: A broad debunking of Trump’s claims about Russian interference and the Mueller investigation http://wapo.st/2KghAjs

ABCNews: Special counsel eyeing Russians granted unusual access to Trump inauguration parties http://abcn.ws/2MwG6cN

🐣 RT @MarkWarner The President can either believe the unanimous conclusion of our intelligence community, or he can believe Vladimir Putin. 📒 [pdf] http://bit.ly/2lFhEKD 25p

NYT: Ex-Aide to Roger Stone Is Subpoenaed in Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2N8ZLAj
// Andrew Miller

A lawyer, Paul Kamenar, said he planned to file a motion on Thursday on behalf of a client who was subpoenaed to be questioned in front of the grand jury, though he did not identify Mr. Miller. Mr. Kamenar said the National Legal and Policy Center, a conservative nonprofit organization, was paying for his services.

His motion will argue that Mr. Mueller’s appointment “was unconstitutional,” he said. Peter Flaherty, the chairman of the NLPC, said, “The founders feared exactly what we see in Mueller: a runaway federal official. We hope to see Mueller’s operation disbanded, once and for all.”

Though that argument has gained prominence in conservative circles, the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, who appointed Mr. Mueller, has repeatedly said he has seen nothing untoward in his conduct.

RollCall: War Over FBI and Justice Reaches Crescendo on Hill http://bit.ly/2yR2nzV
// Divided House passes resolution demanding surveillance documents by July 6

⭕ 27 Jun 2018

Politico: Mueller reveals closer Manafort ties to Russian oligarch http://politi.co/2IBjk13
// Paul Manafort and his wife received a $10 million loan from Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch with ties to Vladimir Putin.

Reuters: Manafort had $10 million loan from Russian oligarch: court filing http://reut.rs/2N3dxEN

The affidavit unsealed on Wednesday also disclosed that Deripaska had financially backed Manafort’s consulting work in Ukraine when it started in 2005-2006, citing information from a source whose name was redacted, a sign that a former Manafort associate may have cooperated with the investigation.

⭕ 26 Jun 2018

McClatchy (6/26): The winding money trail from Kazakhstan to Trump SoHo http://bit.ly/2z1vOzu

USAToday: House panel votes to direct DOJ to hand over more documents in Russia inquiry, Clinton case http://usat.ly/2tIWcIn

Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, pressed Republicans on what they plan to do to Rosenstein if the House passes the resolution and he doesn’t turn over all the documents.

“The intent is to call to attention to the Department of Justice that they are not in compliance with what is requested of them,” said Chairman Bob Goodlatte, R-Va., who voted for the resolution even though he said he wasn’t sure it was necessary.

Jordan said Republicans “want the weight of the full House behind this.” If the Justice Department balks at the demands, “we will cross that bridge when we come to it,” Jordan said, adding that “every option is on the table.”

Those options include issuing more subpoenas, holding Rosenstein in contempt of Congress or trying to impeach him – a rarely used penalty that would be difficult to impose because it would be nearly impossible to pass in the closely divided Senate.

Under an amendment from Jordan, the resolution seeks documents related to the Justice Department and FBI’s inquiry into the Clinton Foundation, which was investigated in 2016 amid allegations that people who donated to the foundation got access to Clinton when she was secretary of state. No charges were filed in the case.

◕ WaPo: A poll commissioned by Bush and Biden shows Americans losing confidence in democracy http://wapo.st/2yHvm9q
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1011707488272572416/photo/1
↧
“Half of Americans think the United States is in “real danger of becoming a nondemocratic, authoritarian country.” A majority, 55 percent, see democracy as “weak” — and 68 percent believe it is “getting weaker.” Eight in 10 Americans say they are either “very” or “somewhat” concerned about the condition of democracy here.”

These are among the sobering results of a major bipartisan poll published Tuesday that was commissioned by the George W. Bush Institute, the University of Pennsylvania’s Biden Center and Freedom House, which tracks the vitality of democracies around the world. The three groups have partnered to create the Democracy Project, with the goal of monitoring the health of the American system.

LATimes: Trump tax cuts carry a big price tag: Huge debt and risk of another financial crisis, budget office warns http://lat.ms/2txkTZ8

🐣 RT @QuinnipiacPoll: VA Voter support for allowing undocumented immigrants brought to the US as children to apply for citizenship https://bit.ly/2KnXEdn  #DACA GRAPH by partyid
https://twitter.com/QuinnipiacPoll/status/1011676720251002880/photo/1
// Favor: All 77%, GOP 57% (37% no), Dem 97%, Ind 75%

🐣 RT @Commonwealthfnd Poll: Survey Question: Should Affordable Health Care Be a Right?Survey Answer: 92% of working-age adults think that all Americans should have the right to affordable health care. https://buff.ly/2tl8iYZ 

WaPo, Josh Rogin: Biden: European leaders reeling from Trump’s hostile behavior http://wapo.st/2N3fqBh

Vox: Russian pop star Emin Agalarov who arranged Trump Tower meeting makes music video about colluding with Trump [ video ] http://bit.ly/2KmMouy He’s joking … right? //➔ funny :D

💙💙 RCP Investigations, Lee Smith: Seven Mysterious Preludes to the FBI’s Trump-Russia Probe http://bit.ly/2ItXX1t

TheHill, Joseph Moreno: Prepare to be disappointed with Russia investigation conclusion http://bit.ly/2yIc2J9

VanityFair: Robert Mueller Could Have an October Surprise for the G.O.P. http://bit.ly/2yMRPle
// The special counsel is expected to reach a conclusion—and produce possible indictments—right around the midterm elections this fall.

Bloomberg, Chris Strohm and Shannon Pettypiece: Mueller Poised to Zero In on Trump-Russia Collusion Allegations http://bloom.bg/2tC9ExN
⋙ See under Entire Articles

Mueller and his team of prosecutors and investigators have an eye toward producing conclusions — and possible indictments — related to collusion by fall, said the person, who asked not to be identified. He’ll be able to turn his full attention to the issue as he resolves other questions, including deciding soon whether to find that Trump sought to obstruct justice.

On three occasions, Russians offered people associated with Trump’s campaign dirt on Democrat Clinton — all before it was publicly known that Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman.

Mueller has interviewed or sought information about many of the people known to have met with Russians during the campaign. But it’s not known publicly whether the barrage of Russian contacts was instigated or coordinated by the Kremlin.

⭕ 25 Jun 2018

CNN: Conservatives grumble about House GOP’s handling of investigation into FBI http://cnn.it/2K9FxbY

Several Republicans who serve on the two panels told CNN they are dissatisfied with the pace of the investigation, saying the chairmen have been slow to schedule witness interviews and have held marathon sessions with just four witnesses who have shed little light on both the Clinton investigation and the start of the FBI’s Russia probe in 2016.

“The major frustration is with a lack of tenacious spirit in getting documents and scheduling interviews with appropriate witnesses,” Rep. Mark Meadows of North Carolina, a member of the House Oversight Committee and chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus, told CNN on Monday. “While the time frame may be viewed as appropriate, conservative members and the American people feel like much more could be done.”

“No,” Rep. Matt Gaetz, a Florida Republican, said when asked if he was satisfied by the investigation. “Because we haven’t been tough about getting the documents. We keep playing this game, and it’s starting to look like it’s a low-energy investigation if we don’t start holding people in contempt and beginning impeachment proceedings in the absence of compliance with congressional oversight.”

Amid the criticism, the House Judiciary Committee is stepping up its pace. On Tuesday, the panel is slated to vote on a resolution by conservative lawmakers directing the Justice Department to provide documents about surveillance on Trump associates in the 2016 elections, although the committee had to mark up the resolution or it would go straight to the House floor for a vote.

On Wednesday, the FBI agent at the center of controversy in both inquiries — Peter Strzok — will meet with the House Judiciary Committee behind closed doors for a deposition after being slapped with a subpoena by Goodlatte, even though Strzok had voluntarily agreed to be interviewed.

And on Thursday, the panel will hold a public hearing with FBI Director Christopher Wray and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein about the inspector general’s report, giving the Republicans an opportunity to dress down the FBI and Justice Department leaders about their document requests.

The fight with the Justice Department over documents — which has also involved House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, a California Republican, battling over subpoenas for his investigation into the start of the FBI’s Russia investigation in 2016 — has prompted calls for the firing of Rosenstein from several of Mueller’s most vocal critics in the House

WSJ: Justice Department Tells Devin Nunes It Complied With His Requests on FBI Probe http://on.wsj.com/2tEFqdf
// Assistant Attorney General Stephen Boyd says department’s efforts to accommodate committee’s demands while protecting ongoing investigations were ‘consistent with the law’

Mr. Nunes has previously accused Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein of obstruction and has threatened to hold him in contempt of Congress or even force him from his job if he refuses to comply. Democrats say the demands go far beyond Congress’s traditional oversight work and are an effort to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s ongoing investigation.

“Under the guise of oversight, the president’s allies continue to seek documents in a pending investigation for the purpose of assisting the Trump legal team or, if the Justice Department refuses, using that refusal to undermine Mueller’s investigation or give the President a pretext to fire Rod Rosenstein,” Rep. Adam Schiff of California, the senior Democrat on the House intelligence committee, wrote in a statement Monday.

Mr. Trump, who has privately mulled dismissing Messrs. Rosenstein and Mueller and has frequently attacked Attorney General Jeff Sessions, has supported Mr. Nunes’s efforts. On Monday morning, he tweeted: “I have tried to stay uninvolved with the Justice Department and FBI (although I do not legally have to), because of the now totally discredited and very expensive Witch Hunt currently going on. But you do have to ask why the DOJ & FBI aren’t giving over requested documents?”

Mr. Trump has denied any collusion between his campaign and Russia, and Moscow has denied election meddling. Mr. Mueller’s investigation has obtained guilty pleas or indictments from 20 individuals so far, on charges related to tax fraud, money laundering and lying to investigators.

TheHill (1:42pm): Nunes sets new deadline for DOJ on use of FBI informant http://bit.ly/2Kcz6F1 //➔ Deadline was 5pm tonight (Monday): he’s just itching to hold Rosenstein in contempt, isn’t he?

A small cadre of House Republicans, led by Nunes, have been wrangling for months over documents related to the federal investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election, which includes probing possible ties between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. They have accused the department of stonewalling Congress.

In a pair of letters turned over late Friday night, the FBI revealed that it had handed over thousands of new documents to lawmakers probing the origins of what is now special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

But although House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) said that lawmakers were “finally getting access” to the documents they had requested — calling a Justice Department request for more time “reasonable” — Nunes on Sunday said the bureau’s latest responses “raised more questions than answers.”

“These questions include whether the FBI and Department of Justice leadership intend to obey the law and fully comply with duly authorized congressional subpoenas,” Nunes wrote.

Among the information Nunes is seeking is documentation on the use of a confidential informant in the early stages of the investigation into the campaign. The use of such sources is common in counterintelligence investigations, but the revelation of the source and his role has ignited outrage on the right. President Trump and his allies have characterized the man as a “spy” planted there by the FBI to undercut his campaign.

The Justice Department has resisted providing information on the informant to the whole of Congress, arguing that it would needlessly expose sensitive sources and methods and endanger lives. It has limited briefings to the Gang of Eight — the top Republican and Democrat in each chamber, as well as the top Republican and Democrat on each of the Intelligence committees.

Nunes on Sunday blasted that limitation as “unacceptable” and said that “the alleged referral of the ‘Committee’s request for transcripts or summaries of conversations between human source(s) and Trump campaign officials’ to the Director of National Intelligence does not relieve the FBI and DOJ from full compliance with the Committee’s subpoena.”

Trump has threatened to involve himself in the dispute over the documents related to the investigation into his own campaign — something critics have said risks a dangerous politicization of the Justice Department. Previous presidents have sought to maintain at least the appearance of an independent Justice Department. NBCNews: JUST IN: Attorneys for Michael Cohen say that they have reviewed the more than 4M files seized by the government from a search warrant and have turned over materials to the Trump organization, the president, and non-privileged material to federal investigators.

TheHill, John Solomon: How Comey intervened to kill WikiLeaks’ immunity deal http://bit.ly/2MZsMPc
// An opinion piece: lots of Investigators list people seems to question motives

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump’s Latest and Most Insane New Theory for Shutting Down Mueller Probe http://nym.ag/2IpGnvC

1. The jumping-off point for their defense of Trump is the recent FBI Inspector General report, which lambasted former director James Comey for evading Bureau protocol and announcing the reopening of the investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails. … Comey confessed “that his election-eve decision to reopen the Clinton email investigation was motivated by a desire to protect her assumed presidency’s legitimacy.”

This finding of “bias” is the foundation for the argument. What they authors don’t acknowledge is that it was bias against Hillary Clinton. Yes, Comey was trying to safeguard the legitimacy of her presumably certain election. But what was he trying to safeguard it against? The conspiracy theories of the Republican Party, which was already ginning up a postelection campaign to discredit the election as “rigged.”

2. They proceed to argue that texts between Lisa Page and Peter Strzok, expressing a wide array of centrist political views including heavy criticism of Donald Trump, reveal a fatal bias in the department …

There are two problems with this line of argument. First, the report only details the personal views of Page and Strzok, and not any other FBI agents. Why is that? Because Page and Strzok were having an affair … [Y]ou’d have to be insane to think they were the only FBI agents who had strong partisan beliefs. Lots of FBI agents had preferences in 2016, and the strongest leanings reportedly were those in favor of Trump.

Second, as the IG report states, the personal views of those agents did not affect their work.

3. Rivkin and Foley go on to assert that the investigation of Trump was opened up in order to prevent him from winning. They do not explain why the FBI kept its investigation hidden, even going so far as to disinform the public by telling the New York Times they saw no connection between Trump’s campaign and Russia. They infer this anti-Trump motive from the fact that Trump’s campaign was being investigated despite there being no evidence of anything shady going on[!] …

Rivkin and Foley don’t want to take any chances of letting Mueller produce this [possible] evidence. They propose “that the special counsel’s activity be paused.” Then of course there won’t be any evidence of collusion, and they can kill the investigation for good, and conclude that Trump was innocent.

🐣 RT @kelly2277 Remember last year When I told you Trumps Bodyguards were Felix Sater’s @fbi handler’sGuess what? They’re also friends of Rudy Giuliani & FELON Bernard KerikAre they the @NewYorkFBI Giuliani leaks @COMEY warned us about

NewYorker, Jane Mayer: A Parlor Game at Rebekah Mercer’s Has No Get Out of Jail Free Card http://bit.ly/2MXmdwp
// 7/2/2018 issue; Members of the right-wing family that helped put Trump in the White House can relive the campaign in an elaborate dinner-party game.

FoxNews: Republicans ask Rosenstein for names of everyone working on Mueller probe http://fxn.ws/2tBMtni

JustSecurity: Trump as a Russian Target – Through the Eyes of a former CIA Russian Expert http://bit.ly/2yHDOoY

RawStory: Russia expert Michael McFaul explains the extremely unusual disconnect between Trump’s policies and his friendship with Putin http://bit.ly/2K61FUw

… [A] mass mobilization, a societal mobilization against the Putin regime starting in December 2011 and lasting for about six months, where in response to a falsified parliamentary election in December 2011, you had the greatest mobilization against the regime since 1991, the year that the Soviet Union collapsed. I think the confluence of those two factors together, Putin’s return and that protest against him, led to renewed tension in U.S.-Russia relations, because Putin blamed us for that mobilization against his regime.

Do you think, and I’m going to be blunt in this question, that Donald Trump has been compromised by the Russian government?

I don’t know. I think it’s an important question. I’ll tell you what I know, and then I’ll tell you what I think we need to learn from Mr. Mueller. What I know is Vladimir Putin and his proxies did various things [referring to stealing data, spreading propaganda on social media and openly siding against Hillary Clinton]. I keep adding “proxies,” by the way because I think some people that are not familiar with that system don’t understand that he deliberately developed cutouts and third parties to do these things so that he can deny that he was involved. Nobody should be confused: You do not bring allegedly compromising material on a candidate in the U.S. presidential election unless the Russian government is sanctioning that act. It just doesn’t work any other way in that system.

So he did all those things for sure. The things that I don’t know are two things. One, I don’t know what compromising material the Russian government may have gathered on Trump when he visited in 2013. I can tell you that the Ritz-Carlton [in Moscow], where he stayed — the Russian government has tremendous capabilities to monitor people that stay there. As I write in my book, when we stayed there with President Obama, we built a submarine-like structure within one of the suites in the Ritz-Carlton to give us the opportunity to have a confidential conversation with President Obama. Those are the lengths to which we went in that facility.

So the capacity, I think, is pretty clear. Everybody understands that, but what happened there [during Trump’s visit], I don’t know. And then the second thing, and to me more important or possibly more damning in some ways, is on the financial side. And here’s what I know and here’s what I don’t know: I know that President Putin and his proxies use money to create leverage over individuals within Russia and Europe.

They provide lucrative deals and free money and assets, but in return they then have leverage on you when you accept those terms. That’s just a very common instrument of influence that the Kremlin uses today. That I know. But what I don’t know is whether they used that instrument with the Trump campaign, with the Trump family and with Trump’s associates. That’s the piece that we need Mr. Mueller to help us understand.

Q: To me, it would seem we know for a fact that Trump has extensive business connections to Russia and Ukraine. That’s beyond dispute. It would seem highly implausible that these connections would exist and that Putin wouldn’t use them, especially on someone who is a presidential candidate. Am I wrong?

I just want to wait for the facts. I think it’s plausible. Yes, absolutely. But to make such a claim, I think, requires really hard evidence, and we have anecdotal evidence, we have circumstantial evidence. We have strange meetings. You know, why is your Jared Kushner meeting with the head of your bank, Mr. Gorkov, a bank that is completely controlled by the Kremlin? That seems very odd to me. Why is he seeking to have a conversation with people in Russia through some confidential channel, and even asking to go to the Russian embassy to have that? That seems very odd to me. But in my mind, there are two explanations: One is that there was some leverage created and two, that Mr. Kushner was just extremely naïve in dealing with the Russians at that time. I think we need to wait for the investigation to complete its work.

Q: I’d like to pivot to Trump’s recent foreign policies. During interview with Fox News, you said that in many ways you’re pleased with his policies toward Russia … Yes, because the second part of my question was going to note that Trump’s rhetoric seems at odds with his own administration’s policies at times. To what do you ascribe this discrepancy?

Well, first of all, I want to say it is extremely unusual. I can’t think of another case with any president, with any bilateral relationship, where you have just this giant gap between the administration’s policy and the president himself. It’s extraordinary. Time and time again we get new evidence to underscore the fact, right, including just recently when the president suggested that Russia should join the G7. To the best of my knowledge, that was not a policy that was discussed and treated and chewed on in the White House situation room: Does that make a policy recommendation for the president.

As far as I can tell nobody had discussed that issue and then he just said it. And it’s the same with Trump’s more recent comments about how it’s legitimate that Crimea should be part of Russia. To my knowledge, unless there are secret document I haven’t seen, that is not official administration policy. How do we explain it? That’s harder. On t[he ]one hand, I think candidate Trump and President Trump just kind of doubled down on this affinity with Putin. He seems to like this alleged strongman.

I personally don’t think Vladimir Putin is a very strong leader. He has to repress people the way he does. That doesn’t, to me, exhibit strength. That exhibits weakness. But Trump talks about these kinds of leaders in a consistent pattern. He admires some of them, so maybe that’s the explanation. The other explanation is about some leverage that they have on him and, again, I just honestly don’t know if that’s true yet.

United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations: Menendez Demands Trump Admin Fully Implement Bipartisan Russia Sanctions http://bit.ly/2ttdLga

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Under Mueller’s Scrutiny, Trump Allies Cry FBI Entrapment http://theatln.tc/2yH50UP
// The president has handed his associates a new way to characterize any suspicious interactions they may have had during the election.

Politico: Fight for Russia probe documents splits top Republicans http://politi.co/2MlNHup
// Trump allies are blasting the Justice Department for withholding documents from Congress — even as key chairmen touted progress.

◕ Medium, Wendy Siegelman: Social Media and Influence Companies Related to the Trump Russia Story http://bit.ly/2tqNNKg
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1011213232479064064/photo/1
// Chart and highlights of companies reportedly involved with influence campaigns supporting Trump including SCL/Cambridge Analytica, Psy-Group, Black Cube, Data Propria and others.

AP: Looming question for Mueller probe: How much to make public? http://bit.ly/2KjR5W0

NBC: Mattis is out of the loop and Trump doesn’t listen to him, say officials http://nbcnews.to/2IqBZMB
// On Iran, North Korea and other major issues, the defense secretary has been out of the loop

⭕ 24 Jun 2018

Bloomberg: Brexit’s Big Short: How Pollsters Helped Hedge Funds Beat the Crash http://bloom.bg/2lzavM0
// Private polls—and a timely ‘concession’ from the face of Leave—allowed the funds to make millions off the pound’s collapse.

Politico: Silence on Russian election meddling frustrates lawmakers http://politi.co/2K53mSd
// Top Republicans and Democrats are pressing for details about allegations that Moscow aims to interfere in the midterm

🐣 Peter Strzok’s August text “We’ll stop it” is ambiguous. Yes, it could have meant ‘We’ll do something (nefarious) to (actively) stop Trump.’ It could also have just been a statement of confidence in the investigation. (1/2)
⇈ ⇊
🐣 Had McConnell in September not squelched alerting the public http://politi.co/2tAonJw, the exposure of the investigators’ findings of #TrumpRussia ties might have indeed ‘stopped it.’ Trump would have lost. Iow, McConnell stole not only a SCOTUS seat but a presidency. (2/2)

⭕ 23 Jun 2018

Politico: Trump-Putin summit: Wing-it meets meticulous http://politi.co/2MlvxsV
// The contrast troubles Russia experts and former U.S. officials who worry the president is liable to make promises to a Russian autocrat he seems eager to please.

“Putin comes extremely well prepared for these meetings,” said Michael McFaul, a Trump critic who served as the U.S. ambassador to Russia during President Barack Obama’s second term. “He knows what he is seeking to achieve. He does psychological work ahead of time to think about the strengths and weaknesses of the people he’s talking to.”

The former KGB spy is known as an incisive negotiator who has an uncanny ability to read people. Putin likely understands that when it comes to Trump, the fourth American president since Putin’s ascension as Russia’s top leader, flattery pays off — and that Trump, as recent events show, can be persuaded to agree to things that fly in the face of his advisers’ counsel.

“The bipolar world we got used to in the second half of the 20th century did have a range of deficiencies but also secured something that was extremely important, namely stability,” Vladimir Chizhov, Russia’s ambassador to the European Union, said in a recent speech in Athens. “Despite all efforts within the last 20 years, a unipolar world never fully materialized — notwithstanding the illusions of those who expected to be able to manage all geopolitical processes and came to believe in their own exclusiveness.”

Russia has long tried to suggest that it is a more natural ally of the EU than the United States, and Putin could use any meeting with Trump to highlight Russia’s continued support for the Paris climate change accords, and the Iran nuclear deal — both of which Trump has repudiated — as evidence that the U.S. is now out of step with its European allies.

Newsweek: DOJ Gives Republicans Key Information on Russia Investigation, Potentially Compromising National Security, Experts Warn http://bit.ly/2lrUOpM

The FBI gave House Republicans access to thousands of documents with information about the Special Counsel’s investigation into whether members of the Trump campaign collaborated with the Russian government to influence the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. Part of those records included information on why the FBI had issued a FISA warrant for former Trump associate Carter Page, a move Republicans have questioned in recent months despite the fact that Page has longstanding ties to Russia. The records also include information on the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server.

The FBI gave the documents to congress as House Republicans, led by House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes, and the White House pressure the DOJ to comply with subpoenas requesting classified information. Some analysts said the DOJ was trying to placate the Republicans by handing over some of the documents. On Friday, however, House Republicans said that the DOJ had failed to comply with all of their requests.

◕ CNN/SRSS Poll: Trump supporters are less with him on Russia than they are on other issues http://cnn.it/2IlcTyZ
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1010798940839653376/photo/1

TheAtlantic, David Graham: The Many Scandals of Donald Trump: A Cheat Sheet http://theatln.tc/2yC5k7o
// 1/23/2017; bankruptcies etc (long list)

ForeignAffairs, Amy Chua: Tribal World ~ Group Identity Is All http://fam.ag/2yyCBQR
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1010625324512628737/photo/1
// Jul-Aug issue

Political tribalism thrives under conditions of economic insecurity and lack of opportunity. For hundreds of years, economic opportunity and upward mobility helped the United States integrate vastly different peoples more successfully than any other nation. The collapse of upward mobility in the United States should be viewed as a national emergency.

Research Paper: Psychopathy by U.S. State http://bit.ly/2tr3PUo //➔ D.C. takes the cake!
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1010619462352031745/photo/1
// 6/12/2018, MN 33, WI 8(!), MT 43

Politico: FBI hands House GOP thousands of documents on Russia probe http://politi.co/2lseNVc

Democrats have raised increasingly pitched concerns about the intrusiveness of GOP requests. Republicans have argued that their demands for information are part of a constitutional responsibility to oversee the FBI and Justice Department, but Democrats and some FBI defenders say their efforts appear aimed at providing fodder for Trump to defend against the ongoing investigation of his campaign’s contacts with Kremlin-linked individuals. That probe is now being led by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Politico: FBI hands House GOP thousands of documents on Russia probe http://politi.co/2lseNVc

⭕ 22 Jun 2018

NYT: President Trump, Deal Maker? Not So Fast http://nyti.ms/2KgiWqn
// Peter Baker; After 17 months in office, Mr. Trump has yet to seal many major deals on trade, security, health care, immigration or gun control.

His 17 months in office have in fact been an exercise in futility for the art-of-the-deal president. No deal on immigration. No deal on health care. No deal on gun control. No deal on spending cuts. No deal on Nafta. No deal on China trade. No deal on steel and aluminum imports. No deal on Middle East peace. No deal on the Qatar blockade. No deal on Syria. No deal on Russia. No deal on Iran. No deal on climate change. No deal on Pacific trade. ‼️

Even routine deals sometimes elude Mr. Trump, or he chooses to blow them up. After a Group of 7 summit meeting this month with the world’s leading economic powers, Mr. Trump, expressing pique at Canada’s prime minister, refused to sign the carefully negotiated communiqué that his own team had agreed to. It was the sort of boilerplate agreement that every previous president had made over four decades.

TheHill, Brent Budowsky: Trump is the GOP’s midterm Katrina http://bit.ly/2Mjetn8

💙💙 MotherJones: The Mystery of the American Lawyer Who Worked for a Putin-Friendly Oligarch and Julian Assange http://bit.ly/2yH20bg
// Was there a connection?

In February, Fox News published a series of text messages from early 2017 between Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) and a Washington-based attorney named Adam Waldman, a registered lobbyist for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Fox News and other conservative media focused on messages in which Waldman had unsuccessfully sought to put Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, in touch with Christopher Steele, the former British intelligence officer who wrote a series of memos during the 2016 campaign reporting alleged ties between Donald Trump and Russia. The point seemed to be to bolster the claim of Trump defenders that the Trump-Russia scandal was somehow concocted by Democratic partisans.

💙💙 WSJ: Mueller’s Fruit of the Poisonous Tree http://on.wsj.com/2IiJfKG
// It makes no difference how honorable he is. His investigation is tainted by the bias that attended its origin in 2016.

💙💙 VanityFair, Nick Bilton: “The Russians Play Hard”: Inside Russia’s Attempt to Hack 2018—And 2020 http://bit.ly/2K3aiPF
// According to various cyber-security experts, everything is on the table. And it’s already happening.

So what exactly is Russia planning for the upcoming election? The correct question, a half dozen security experts and former and current government officials have told me, is what are they not planning? These people all said that 2018 will likely be a testing ground for 2020. Many of the tactics that Russia experiments with could (and likely will) be enacted on a much larger scale two years from now. Some of these strategies and maneuvers appear grounded in reality, while others seem speculative, but all have the same sinister goal of breaking the system—by cleaving our polity, distracting us with feuds large and small—by sowing discord through technology platforms and services. “Having the U.S. at war with itself is giving Russia credit internationally,” explained Andrew Weiss, the vice president for research on Russia for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, noting that we as a country are more divided on almost every issue than at any other time in history. “[Russia is] not the creator of this problem, but they have exploited it. Just creating mistrust, and throwing a question mark over the legitimacy of our government, is a pretty big prize for Russia.”

In the coming months, these experts told me, Russian operatives will likely start creating fake Facebook groups (if they haven’t already)—some that slam to the left, others that lean as far right as humanly possible—that will argue with one another, and help us do the same; there will be accounts on social media that use Cambridge Analytica-style targeting to serve up ads, and a barrage of cleverly designed and perfectly disguised bots on Twitter. All stuff we’ve seen already, but with much more advanced algorithms and snakier and more aggressive tactics. (This time, for example, fake video and audio will start circulating through the social stratosphere, all with the intended purpose of trying to make real news seem fake, and fake news seem real.) As we’ve seen with the various e-mails posted on WikiLeaks—ranging from the Hillary Clinton campaign and the D.C.C.C. to the countless hacking attempts around the world that preceded the French national election—any modern candidate should expect that their e-mails, text messages, and personal social-media data are hacked and published. At least any candidate that Russia wants to harm.

USAToday, Jill Lawrence: Immigration, ethics, Russia: Welcome to Trump World, where all scandals are above average http://usat.ly/2KeXbdG

CNN Poll: Americans think Russia investigation is serious and should continue http://cnn.it/2MSAnz1

TheTelegraph [UK]: Poisoned Russian spy Sergei Skripal was close to consultant who was linked to the Trump dossier http://bit.ly/2Ijrhre
// 3/7/2018

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Britain Has a Russia Collusion Scandal Now. It Looks Exactly Like Trump’s. http://nym.ag/2KbI2tw

CNN: GOP sources: Justice Department has not satisfied all House GOP document requests http://cnn.it/2McDel1 //➔ ‼️ Sheila Jackson Lee predicted at House Judiciary Comm hearing that GOP would use this to give Trump a pretext for firing Rosenstein

McClatchy: Inside the Ukraine peace plan in Mueller probe: More authors, earlier drafting than believed http://bit.ly/2tluGBs

A controversial peace plan for Ukraine and Russia that has drawn headlines and scrutiny from Special Counsel Robert Mueller was initially devised in early 2016 with significant input from an ex-congressman and a Ukrainian-American billionaire, according to a former Ukrainian legislator who promoted the proposal before Donald Trump’s election.

Ex-Ukrainian legislator Andrii Artemenko told McClatchy in several recent interviews that the peace proposal, which some analysts believe had a pro-Moscow tilt, was hatched in February 2016 during side discussions at a Ukraine-focused conference at Manor College in suburban Philadelphia. Former Republican Rep. Curt Weldon and New York real estate mogul Alexander Rovt were involved, said Artemenko, who also participated.

“It was called the Rovt-Weldon plan,” said Artemenko, noting that he had been friends with Weldon for almost a decade.

Neither the roles of Weldon and Rovt in the early framing of the plan, nor the fact that it was being devised nearly a year before it was given to a Trump associate for delivery to the administration, have been reported previously. The new names add to a roster of individuals with close ties to Trump who have been identified in connection with the proposal: Trump’s personal lawyer and “fixer,” Michael Cohen; a former sometimes-real estate partner, Felix Sater, who was also an old friend of Cohen; and the president’s first national security adviser, Michael Flynn, who has pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador during the transition and is cooperating with the Mueller probe.

Some observers say the new names, timing and other details raise questions about whether and to what extent Moscow or its allies influenced the proposal. …

The proposal would have lifted sanctions on Moscow if the Kremlin withdrew Russian forces from Eastern Ukraine; it also could have permitted Russia to keep control of Crimea, which it annexed in 2014.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the senior Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee, has indicated interest in interviewing Weldon …

Artemenko said Weldon “introduced me to high society in the U.S.,” including other lawmakers such as Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., who is sometimes called Russian President Vladimir Putin’s best friend in Washington, GOP Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, and Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur of Ohio.

Weldon and Rovt have each had links to Russian business interests.

Weldon’s two decade career in Congress ended with the 2006 elections, weeks after the FBI raided his then-29-year-old daughter’s office and home. The Justice Department was probing his actions to support a Russian-managed oil and gas company that gave his daughter a $500,000 contract to do public relations work, Soon after the contract was signed, Weldon helped corral some 30 lawmakers for a dinner, which his daughter’s firm worked on too, to honor the chairman of the Russian company, Itera International Energy Co, and Weldon also intervened to help Itera when federal agencies canceled a contract with the company. Weldon was never charged.

Rovt made his fortune initially in the fertilizer business, with some operations in Russia, but sold most of his foreign fertilizer assets in 2007 to another Ukrainian, oligarch Dmitry Firtash, who was a chief financier of ex-President Viktor Yanukovych’s pro-Russian political party before Yanukovych was ousted in 2014 and fled to Moscow. That party paid millions of dollars to yet another figure in the Trump-Russia investigation, lobbyist and political consultant Paul Manafort, who was a key Yanukovych adviser …

NBC has reported that Rovt was an investor with Spruce Capital, a subsidiary of which made a $3.5 million dollar mortgage loan to a small company set up by Manafort …

Artemenko’s interviews with McClatchy provided other new details about his 2016 efforts to promote the plan in Russia and in the U.S. before Trump’s election.

Just a few weeks before the election, the Ukrainian said he started talking about the peace initiative with Sater, whom Artemenko had met earlier in 2016, during a visit to Sater’s Long Island home.

Artemenko said he also met in Russia in 2016 with two members of the Russian Duma to brief them on the plan and that they “responded positively to the ideas.” The Ukrainian said he also discussed his plan with former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko.

Rep. Adam Schiff, the leading Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee and an outspoken critic of Russia’s interference in the 2016 elections, said in a statement that “The fact that this proposal was being considered a year in advance of its provision to the White House raises serious questions about how far along the discussion had progressed and the extent to which Russia was involved in the planning or consideration of the proposal.” …

Similarly, some Russia experts say that the involvement of Weldon and Rovt and other new details provided by Artemenko suggest that the plan had links to Moscow.

“There remain a lot of unanswered questions about who ultimately stood behind this so-called ‘peace plan,’” said Michael Carpenter, a top Russia policy analyst in the Pentagon under President Obama. “ Given the nature of the people involved in disseminating the proposal, it seems likely that its ultimate sponsors were either Kremlin surrogates or pro-Russia forces in Ukraine.”

When the plan was first detailed in February 2017 by the New York Times the paper said it included a provision that called for a referendum to be held in Ukraine after Russian troops withdrew on whether Crimea, which Moscow had annexed, would be leased to Russia for 50 to 100 years. But Artemenko, who in 2016 was an obscure legislator allied with a right wing party in his country, and Sater told McClatchy separately that the plan included no such lease language. However, Artemenko said the plan did call for a referendum on whether Crimea should be part of Russia, Ukraine or independent.

On June 8th, Artemenko testified for several hours before a Washington, D.C., grand jury tied to the Mueller investigation. The Ukrainian, who was ousted from his country’s legislature and lost his citizenship because of fallout from the initial revelation of the plan and its perceived pro-Moscow tilt, said that Cohen was a major focus of the grand jury questions he fielded.

After his grand jury appearance, Artemenko added, he realized that Cohen “is a target” of interest to Mueller. …

The Ukraine Russian peace initiative fizzled in early 2017 after the Times disclosed its existence along with a late January meeting in New York that Artemenko and Sater had with Cohen to persuade him to pass it along to a top administration official, like Flynn. Both Artemenko and Sater told McClatchy that Cohen agreed to do so.

Artemenko “asked me if I could help introduce him to the administration,” Sater recalled in an interview, adding that Cohen promised he would “get the plan” to Flynn.

Artemenko said he never gave Cohen anything in writing about the plan. But a few days after they met, Sater phoned the Ukrainian and read him a few sentences that contained the gist of it; Artemenko signed off on the language — which Sater described as “four bullet points” — for Cohen to give to Flynn.

A few days later Artemenko said that in another call with Sater he was informed that “the package had been delivered” to Flynn.

Cohen has offered shifting and contradictory statements about what he did with the document. Initially, he told the New York Times that he delivered the plan to Flynn’s office.

But Cohen quickly changed his story, telling the Washington Post within days that he never gave it to Flynn or anyone in the White House. Then Cohen changed his account again in two subsequent interviews. He said at one point that he threw the envelope, unopened, in the trash.

These contradictory accounts by Cohen have likely spurred Mueller’s team to look more closely at the plan, say former prosecutors.

“Whenever a subject changes his story, especially multiple times, he draws a lot more interest from prosecutors, who will want to know what he’s hiding,” said former New York prosecutor Jaimie Nawaday who’s now a partner at Kelley Drye & Warren. …

⭕ 21 Jun 2018

💙 JustSecurity: Trump as a Russian Target – Through the Eyes of a former CIA Russian Expert http://bit.ly/2utBgFA

DailyHerald, Byron York: What Republicans suspect about the FBI’s Trump-Russia probe http://bit.ly/2InwSwG
// tags: GOP, set up, setup, set-up, frame, subpoena, dossier, FISA, oversight, Devon Nunes, Christopher Steele, Roger Stone, Carter Page, Stefan Halper, George Papadopoulos, Michael Caputo, promising dirt on Hillary Clinton

WaPo, Alexander Vershbow: Trump’s ‘grand bargain’ with Russia is an illusion http://wapo.st/2tpALN4
// author former deputy secy gen of NATO

We all would like to halt the downward spiral in U.S. relations with Moscow. But wishing for a better relationship won’t make it so. Fundamental differences cannot easily be overcome. A durable improvement cannot be achieved by sweeping those differences under the rug or by throwing sovereign countries such as Ukraine under the bus — as Trump apparently did during the recent Group of Seven summit . It is only possible if we stick to our principles and insist on changes in the Russian behavior that led to the breakdown in relations.

By illegally annexing Crimea, waging an undeclared war in Eastern Ukraine, and occupying large swaths of Georgia’s and Moldova’s territory, Putin’s Russia has torn up the international rule book and firmly established itself as a revisionist power, undermining the basis for cooperation on European security. In Syria, Putin has not been fighting the Islamic State, but propping up Bashar al-Assad’s regime and giving a strategic foothold to Iran, increasing the threat to Israel. On arms control, Putin has withdrawn from some agreements and flagrantly violated others, including the 1987 INF Treaty. He has systematically sought to interfere in Western elections and discredit our democratic institutions, along with NATO and the European Union.

🐣 RT @committee20 [John Schindler] I was the tech dir of NSA’s biggest operational division. I’m TOTALLY sure, @kylegriffin1 that you at MSNBC have on-air people who know a LOT more about this whole SIGINT thing than I do….right HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHHA

NYT: Trump Seeks Meeting With Putin Even as Allies Seek to Isolate Russia http://nyti.ms/2MUfOSO
// Peter Baker

🐣 RT @committee20 Wow, Kyle, cool story! ICYMI — I’ve EXCLUSIVELY reported many times since 2015 at @observer about US IC (ie NSA) SIGINT showing clear Kremlin interaction (you know: COLLUSION) with the Trump campaign & presidency. Did you miss that somehow?
⋙ 🐣 RT @kylegriffin Sen. Chris Coons tells @mitchellreports that the FBI has transcripts that may show Russian leaders colluding with the Trump campaign.

CommonDreams, Michael Winship: Trump’s Mean Boy Nation http://bit.ly/2IkOSYS
// Never forget that the president’s gang may be incompetent at a spectacular level but they’re cruel and nasty to the bone

HillReporter: Trump Had Hillary Clinton’s Stolen Emails for a Month Before WikiLeaks Published Them http://bit.ly/2lsO5Mw
// Donald Trump’s campaign had access to Hillary Clinton’s stolen emails a full month before they were published by WikiLeaks.

British magazine Spectator revealed on Thursday that Cambridge Analytica, the now-defunct data-collection house that helped Donald Trump steal data from 83 million Facebook users, was in possession of Clinton’s emails.

“The US intelligence agencies believe that Russian internet ‘troll factories’ were also pushing out pro-Trump propaganda on social media: sometimes fake news, sometimes real news, such as the hacked contents of Clinton’s emails,” he adds. “The question is whether this was done in coordination with the Trump campaign,” BBC Correspondent Paul Wood reveals.

An anonymous “American lawyer” revealed the bombshell information to Wood. That information was obtained by Russian hackers who gained access to the former Secretary of State’s private email server.

The lawyer says a Cambridge Analytica employee contacted them following Trump’s election victory to explain the situation. When asked what they should do with that information, the lawyer told the employee to immediately contact the Special Counsel’s Robert Mueller.

🐣 RT @NatashaBertrand: BBC’s Paul Wood: “An American lawyer I know told me that he was approached by a Cambridge Analytica employee after the election. They had had the Clinton emails more than a month before they were published by WikiLeaks.”
⋙ TheSpectator: What does the British government know about Trump and Russia? http://bit.ly/2lpCxcL
// Many trails in the Mueller inquiry lead straight to the UK

🐣 RT @AltUSPressSec Why did a Russian government flight land at Joint Base Andrews?

CyberScoop: Adm. Mike Mullen: Cyber Command should be empowered to go on offensive http://bit.ly/2tqcG8f

🐣 RT @chrisinsilico In other words, the referendum was won with illegal money and a joint criminal enterprise. Of course the BBC won’t say what’s blatantly obvious. How can we continue with Brexit when systemic cheating occurred in the Referendum?
⋙ BBC: Watchdog expected to find Vote Leave broke rules http://bbc.in/2MOdFYr

Gizmodo: AggregateIQ Created Cambridge Analytica’s Election Software, and Here’s the Proof http://bit.ly/2IdnGLn
// 3/26/2018

A little-known Canadian data firm ensnared by an international investigation into alleged wrongdoing during the Brexit campaign created an election software platform marketed by Cambridge Analytica, according to a batch of internal files obtained exclusively by Gizmodo.

Discovered by a security researcher last week, the files confirm that AggregateIQ, a British Columbia-based data firm, developed the technology Cambridge Analytica sold to clients for millions of dollars during the 2016 US presidential election. Hundreds if not thousands of pages of code, as well as detailed notes signed by AggregateIQ staff, wholly substantiate recent reports that Cambridge Analytica’s software platform was not its own creation.

What’s more, the files reveal that AggregateIQ—also known as “AIQ”—is the developer behind campaign apps created for Texas Senator Ted Cruz and Texas Governor Greg Abbott, as well as a Ukrainian steel magnate named Serhiy Taruta, head the country’s newly formed Osnova party.

Other records show the firm once pitched an app to Breitbart News, the far-right website funded by hedge-fund billionaire Robert Mercer—Cambridge Analytica’s principal investor—and are currently contracted by WPA Intelligence, a US-based consultancy founded by Republican pollster Chris Wilson, who was director of digital strategy for Cruz’s 2016 presidential campaign.

DailyBeast, Anna Nemtsova: The World’s Beating a Path to Putin’s Door, and Not Just Because of Soccer http://thebea.st/2IaBVjW
// The fact is, Trump’s ‘insane’ America is leaving many former friends and potential allies with the feeling they’d better tighten ties to Moscow.

WaPo: Former Obama officials warn Trump not to repeat their mistakes on Russia http://wapo.st/2MI5HA6

Politico: Bolton headed to Moscow next week to broker Trump-Putin meeting http://politi.co/2MbbY6s

TheGuardian: Nato head calls for unity after Trump discord and Russia threat http://bit.ly/2lmRY5t
//. Jens Stoltenberg speech to argue strategic value of transatlantic partnership

The Nato secretary-general, Jens Stoltenberg, is to use a major speech in London on Thursday to express hope the alliance will hold together in spite of threats from Donald Trump.

He will acknowledge differences and disagreements between the US and other allies are real. But he will argue that Nato has been able to overcome such problems in the past and can do so again.

The Nato summit in Brussels in July is shaping up as one of the most fraught in the alliance’s history, with Trump openly at odds with Germany and Canada on trade and other issues and warning he will deal with Europeans refusing to increase their share of defence spending.

In advance excerpts of his speech, Stoltenberg will argue that maintaining the transatlantic partnership is in the strategic interest of all Nato members.

“The lesson of history is that we have been able to overcome our differences. Again and again, we unite around our common goal. We stand together. We protect each other.”

Russia has been chipping away at Nato since it annexed Crimea in 2014. It has been blamed for cyberattacks, interventions in European elections and for the nerve agent attack in Salisbury in March this year.

VanityFair, Chris Smith: The NRA Spent $30 Million to Elect Trump. Was It Russian Money? http://bit.ly/2MavPm5

The F.B.I. and special counsel Robert Mueller are investigating meetings between N.R.A. officials and powerful Russian operatives, trying to determine if those contacts had anything to do with the gun group spending $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—triple what it invested on behalf of Mitt Romney in 2012. The use of foreign money in American political campaigns is illegal. One encounter of particular interest to investigators is between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian banker at an N.R.A. dinner.

The Russian wooing of N.R.A. executives goes back to at least 2011, when that same banker and politician, Alexander Torshin, befriended David Keene, who was then president of the gun-rights organization. Torshin soon became a “life member,” attending the N.R.A.’s annual conventions and introducing comrades to other gun-group officials. In 2015, Torshin welcomed an N.R.A. delegation to Moscow that included Keene and Joe Gregory, then head of the “Ring of Freedom” program, which is reserved for top donors to the N.R.A. Among the other hosts were Dmitry Rogozin, who until last month was the deputy prime minister overseeing Russia’s defense industry, and Sergei Rudov, head of the Saint Basil the Great Charitable Foundation, one of Russia’s wealthiest philanthropies.

It’s possible that the men were merely bonding over a shared love of firearms. Mike Carpenter, a Russian specialist who worked in the Pentagon during the Obama administration, laughs at the notion.“The Russian state is run by a K.G.B. elite that wants nothing less than to have an armed citizenry,” Carpenter says. “Rogozin is a heavyweight in Russian politics. . . . Torshin has a direct line to Putin . . . and also has possible ties to organized crime. Rudov is the right-hand man of Konstantin Malofeev, who is sort of a paleo-conservative, ultra-nationalist figure who bankrolls a lot of projects involving mercenaries in Ukraine.” Carpenter sees how a dark money trail could connect the Kremlin to the gun lobby. “Those three would only meet with N.R.A. officials if there were some concerted effort by senior members of the Russian government to try and co-opt the N.R.A. politically,” he continues. “And they are all money men. They can throw tens of millions around.”

Torshin—who Spanish authorities wanted to arrest in 2013 on money-laundering allegations—made energetic efforts to ingratiate himself with the Trump campaign. (Torshin was never charged and has denied any wrongdoing in the money-laundering case.) He met Donald Trump Jr. at a private dinner during the N.R.A.’s convention in Louisville, Kentucky, in May 2016. Alan Futerfas, a lawyer for Trump Jr., has dismissed the conversation between his client and Torshin as “all gun-related small talk.”

USAToday, Bill Pascrell and Ted Lieu: If Donald Trump thwarts Russia investigation with pardons, we might never recover http://usat.ly/2te1xrw
// If Donald Trump issued pardons to his advisers, his children or himself, that would constitute perhaps the gravest abuse of power in American history.

🐣 RT @NedPrice Trump’s plan to meet Putin immediately before or after the NATO summit is a slap in the face to the alliance, whose mission centers largely around deterring Russian aggression. And that’s probably just as Trump intended.
⋙ Bloomberg: Trump Plans July Meeting With Vladimir Putin http://bloom.bg/2Kbhad2 //➔ “Trump wants Russia to be restored to international community”

⭕ 20 Jun 2018

TheObserver, Mike Albanese (6/20): People Can’t Stop Reading This Professor’s #TrumpRussia Theories http://bit.ly/2K4261K //➔ Seth Abramson
//➔ metamodernism; See under Entire Articles

FinancialTimes: Insurance losses sharpen focus on finances of Arron Banks http://fn.ft.com/2yyzpVk
// Brexit donor under scrutiny over involvement in referendum campaign

The Gibraltar-based insurance company owned by Arron Banks made a loss of £32m in 2016, raising questions about the financial health of his insurance business when UK authorities are investigating the source of millions of pounds of reported donations to a campaign for Brexit.

Southern Rock Insurance Company — the main underwriter for Eldon Insurance, another of Mr Banks’ companies — has made multimillion-pound losses on its core business of underwriting in five of seven years since 2010. …

Mr Banks attended several previously undisclosed meetings with the Russian ambassador in the run-up to Brexit, but has denied that Russia tried to influence the Brexit campaign.

But at a Commons select committee meeting last week, he failed to clarify the provenance of at least £9m in Leave campaign donations.

The UK electoral commission is probing if Mr Banks or his companies breached campaign finance rules and whether he is the true source of loans and other funds given to the Leave.EU campaign group. When the investigation was announced last November, Mr Banks tweeted: “Gosh I’m terrified”.

Southern Rock Insurance Company, alongside UK-based Eldon Insurance, forms the cornerstone of Mr Bank’s insurance business.

Southern Rock earlier this decade was deemed “technically insolvent” — meaning it did not have enough reserves to cover potential payouts as required by the regulator.

Mr Banks told European TV channel ARTE in 2016 that the Solvency II rules imposed by Brussels required “unnecessary” capital injections into insurance businesses.

In the past decade, Mr Banks and other shareholders were forced to pump millions of additional capital into the company including funds from the transfer to Southern Rock of shares in Webis, a gaming company owned by entrepreneur Jim Mellon, a business partner of Mr Banks.

The exact amount of donations Mr Banks and his companies made to the Brexit campaign is unclear. Mr Banks said last year he had donated a total of £8.8m, including a loan of £6m to Leave.EU, and more than £2m in donations to Grassroots Out, a related campaign group.

Andy Wigmore, Mr Banks’ spokesman, declined to comment on Mr Banks’ financial affairs or on the performance of Southern Rock Insurance Company.

🐣 RT @NormEisen An overlooked clue to the likely coming Cohen flip: his new lawyer is a former SDNY prosecutor who worked with Comey & for Preet. And every single one of his partners in his firm is an SDNY USAO veteran who either worked for &/or with Comey or Preet. They were hired to do a deal.

Esquire, Charles Pierce: Wow, It’s Strange These Russians Paid Millions in Cash for Trump Properties http://bit.ly/2K07G10
// Sometimes, they used shell corporations to hide their identities!

CNN, Marshall Cohen: False denials, misleading statements and faulty memories behind Trump-Russia meetings http://cnn.it/2K5R9J3

TheGuardian: US lobbyist for Russian oligarch visited Julian Assange nine times last year http://bit.ly/2totuwm
// It is unclear whether Adam Waldman’s 2017 visits had connection to Oleg Deripaska

🔄 JustSecurity: Timeline: Trump’s Acts of Accommodation/Engagement with Russia, Nov. 2016-June 2018 http://bit.ly/2t9NVxs

⭕ 19 Jun 2018

McClatchy: Buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties http://bit.ly/2yKHm9W

TheHill: Cohen ally says he may cooperate with investigators against Trump http://bit.ly/2tk4OVG

🐣 RT @VickerySec Holy shit. This guy, George Cottrell, was advertising money laundering services on the dark web. He was caught red-handed in a FBI sting. Guy is (was) top aide to the Brexit campaign leader, Nigel Farage. His super secret dark web username was “Banker”.
https://twitter.com/VickerySec/status/1008464624167968773/photo/1

NYPost: House Republican Mark Meadows unmasks identities of anti-Trump FBI agents http://nyp.st/2taVQuL

A House Republican Tuesday unmasked two of the five FBI investigators cited in the recently released inspector general’s report for expressing anti-Trump and pro-Clinton sentiment in work-related instant messages.

The previously unnamed FBI officials — “FBI Attorney 2” and “Agent 5” — are Kevin Clinesmith and Sally Moyer, respectively, according to House Judiciary Committee member Rep. Mark Meadows (R-NC), who revealed their identities over the objection of the FBI during a hearing on the IG’s findings.

TheHill: Clapper: It’s getting ‘harder and harder to believe’ Trump didn’t know about Russia contacts http://bit.ly/2t6O2dp

Politico: DOJ reviewing whether anti-Trump bias infected Russia probe launch DOJ reviewing whether anti-Trump bias infected Russia probe launch http://politi.co/2K4OIGr
// It’s the first time DOJ has specified it is examining the origin of the much-scrutinized probe into Russia’s attempts to contact the Trump campaign.

WaPo: Trump campaign manager calls for firing Sessions, ending Russia probe http://wapo.st/2tnWTXk

President Trump’s campaign manager, Brad Parscale, brashly called Tuesday for the firing of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and ending the investigation into Russian election interference led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

It was not immediately clear whether Parscale — who shared his views in a tweet — was speaking for the president.

His tweet was sent as Michael E. Horowitz, the inspector general of the Justice Department, testified before Congress about the release of a report last week highly critical of several key FBI figures in the Hillary Clinton email probe, including former FBI director James B. Comey.

MiamiHerald: Mystery Miamian tied to Trump probe had many names, foul mouth, 2 DUI busts http://hrld.us/2tc8mtN

Lying, cheating and charming, spying and scamming his way through the world with a warm smile on his face and a gun tucked in his back pocket, Henry Greenberg — or whatever his name is; he uses at least four — was born in Russia. But the sun and the swindles brought him to South Florida, which is now the backdrop for the latest chapter in the seemingly endless controversy over who may have have ripped off whom in the 2016 presidential election.

But if it’s true, was Greenberg part of a Russian government attempt to tilt the scales of the election in Trump’s favor? Or a sinister undercover shill for the FBI, trying to lure Trump’s lieutenants into an illegal act for which they could be prosecuted? Or just a run-of-the-mill Russian con man trying to make a quick freelance score for himself?

USAToday: J.D. Gordon: I am learning what it is like to be caught up in the Russia witch hunt http://usat.ly/2JPDXM8

TPM: DOJ IG Responds To Trump Claims Of Exoneration: ‘We Don’t Address’ Russia http://bit.ly/2yqaxz4

NYT: F.B.I. Agents Gave Trump a Weapon Against Mueller. Republicans Are Wielding It. http://nyti.ms/2ljXhm8 YahooNews: Rudy Giuliani Says FBI Questioned Him On Leaks That Hurt Clinton Campaign http://yhoo.it/2taDzO6

RawStory: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee: Republicans plan on ‘firing’ Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein ‘on Friday’ http://bit.ly/2tscup5

💙💙 ForeignAffairs, Michael McFaul: Russia as It Is ~ A Grand Strategy for Confronting Putin http://fam.ag/2I2zFew

McClatchy: Buyers tied to Russia, former Soviet republics paid $109 million cash for Trump properties http://bit.ly/2I1sHGE

⭕ 18 Jun 2018

NYT: Senators Remain Split as They Question Justice Dept. Watchdog on F.B.I. Report http://nyti.ms/2I3LUYi

Republicans raised doubts about key conclusions of Mr. Horowitz’s report, saying that they believed political bias among bureau officials may have improperly shaped its decision not to recommend charges against Mrs. Clinton. Democrats insisted that whatever F.B.I. officials had intended, their actions only served to harm Mrs. Clinton’s candidacy and potentially cost her the election.

Mr. Horowitz’s 500-page report, released Thursday after a yearlong investigation, found ample evidence of personal political bias by top F.B.I. officials working on the Clinton investigative team and said it cast a cloud over the F.B.I. and its work. Mr. Horowitz’s report found that actions by James B. Comey, the former F.B.I. director, had likewise harmed the bureau. But Mr. Horowitz said he found no evidence that F.B.I. officials’ political views influenced prosecutorial decisions in the Clinton case that he reviewed, though he expressed deep concern about their apparent openness to the idea.

Democrats zeroed in on Mr. Comey’s earlier actions: namely, his decision to break with longstanding policy to publicly discuss the Clinton case — the decision they said might have cost Mrs. Clinton the presidency, not helped her. And though they conceded that political statements by the investigative team were inappropriate, they said Mrs. Clinton’s election loss provided proof to support Mr. Horowitz’s conclusions.

“If the F.B.I. was trying to throw the election to Hillary Clinton, it couldn’t have done a worse job,” said Senator Patrick J. Leahy, Democrat of Vermont. “Every single misstep by the F.B.I. damaged Hillary Clinton and helped Donald Trump.”

Democrats demanded to know whether anyone at the F.B.I. had provided information during the campaign to Rudolph W. Giuliani, who appeared to hint at the time that he knew that agents had reopened the Clinton email investigation in October.

Two days after the election, Mr. Giuliani told Fox News, “I had expected this for the last — honestly, tell you the truth, I thought it was going to be about three, four weeks ago.” He added: “I did nothing to get it out. I had no role in it. Did I hear about it? You’re darn right I heard about it.”

Neither Mr. Wray nor Mr. Horowitz would comment on whether there was an investigation into whether anybody at the F.B.I. provided information to Mr. Giuliani, who is now a lawyer for Mr. Trump in the special counsel investigation.

Mr. Wray also took a swipe at Mr. Comey for previously disclosing the F.B.I. had been investigating any leaks to Mr. Giuliani. “There are a number of things I probably would have done differently,” Mr. Wray said with a wry smile and raised eyebrow.

Mr. Wray also continued to express confidence in the special counsel leading the Justice Department’s investigation into Russian election interference and Mr. Trump’s campaign, Robert S. Mueller III.

“I do not believe that Special Counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt,” he said, later adding, “I believe Special Counsel Mueller is conducting an important investigation.”

WSJ: Inspector General Disputes Trump’s Exoneration Claim http://on.wsj.com/2MFidQX “Horowitz said he ‘didn’t look into collusion questions,’ referring to the continuing special counsel investigation into whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with Russia”
// Michael Horowitz, Justice Department’s inspector general, makes first public appearance since report’s release

💙💙 WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans continue to play clueless on the Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2LYWcvp
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1008928806504161280/photo/1

… On Sunday, Gowdy ludicrously claimed that the “only person in the universe” to have evidence of collusion is Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.). The claim is akin to House Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s recent insistence that there is no collusion.

Gowdy, a lawyer and former prosecutor, knows that “collusion” is not a crime, has no agreed-upon definition in the context of the campaign and is not what Robert S. Mueller III was authorized to look for. Mueller was supposed to look for “any links/and or coordination” between Russians and Trump campaign associates. He has found it in spades, even if you count only the links and coordination that the media has discovered.

Max Bergmann, a former State Department official who heads the Moscow Project at the Center for American Progress, tells me, “The evidence of collusion is clear and obvious. The Trump campaign met with the Russians with the expressed purpose to collude. ” He continues: “The June 9th meeting [at Trump Tower] was collusion — secret cooperation for an illegal purpose. It also showed that the Trump campaign wanted to collude. They wanted Russia’s help. And then what happened? Russia helped.”

The Trump Tower meeting in June 2016 is just the tip of the iceberg. Recall that there was also Roger Stone’s meeting with Henry Greenberg, who “offered damaging information about Hillary Clinton,” as The Post reports; Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos reached out for dirt from Russia on Clinton; another foreign policy aide, Carter Page, met with the Russian ambassador and gave a pro-Putin speech in Moscow; the RNC platform was changed while Paul Manafort was running the campaign to eliminate support for arms to Ukraine to fight off Russian invaders; Alexander Torshin, a former member of the Russian parliament, cultivated the National Rifle Association (which heavily supported Trump) and met with Donald Trump Jr. on at least one occasion; and Stone “was in contact with someone calling himself ‘Guccifer 2.0,’ who was leaking information stolen from the DNC in mid-2016. The Daily Beast reported . . . that Guccifer 2.0 had accidentally revealed his connection to the GRU by failing to mask his [Internet] activity on one occasion.” We have also learned Cambridge Analytica, Trump’s data firm, reached out to Julian Assange, head of the Russia cut-out, WikiLeaks.

I could go on, because there are some 80 different contacts and at least 23 meetings between at least 24 Trump associates and Russian operatives. Moreover, the president and numerous other Trump allies repeatedly and falsely denied such contacts. Trump went so far as to draft a misleading account to explain away the Trump Tower meeting.

Is this conclusive proof that Trump personally was on the phone with the Kremlin plotting strategy? Of course not. However, to say that there is no evidence — not a speck — that the Russians were in touch with Trump’s people or that Trump figures were eager to cooperate with Russians (and met with them for that expressed purpose) is blatantly false. Mueller’s 20 indictments and five plea deals suggest that Mueller has found ample evidence of illegality at the most senior levels of Trump’s campaign. The only issue is the extent of the cooperation and whether Trump knew about it. At worst, Mueller will have unearthed enough evidence to send the president’s former campaign CEO to prison for decades, if convicted on the slew of charges brought against him.

Over and over again, Republicans repeat the “No collusion” mantra as a way of preemptively discrediting the investigation. When Mueller comes out with his report detailing a list of Russian contacts the length of his arm, many of which are already publicly known, Gowdy and other Republicans might look as though they’ve been intentionally clueless and uninterested in getting to the bottom of the Russian plot to tilt the election in Trump’s favor

CNN: Peter Strzok says he’s willing to testify before House Judiciary Committee http://cnn.it/2MBy0jL

Peter Strzok, the FBI agent removed from the Russia probe for sending anti-Trump text messages, is willing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee or any other congressional committee, his lawyer wrote in a letter to the committee on Saturday.

[The DOJ OIG’s] report was harshly critical of Strzok, who exchanged anti-Trump text messages with former FBI lawyer Lisa Page, asserting they “cast a cloud” over the FBI’s actions.

But the report said there was no evidence “to connect the political views expressed in these messages to the specific investigative decisions” that were the subject of controversy, such as allowing immunity agreements or having fact witnesses sit in on others’ interviews prior to July 5, 2016.

However, the inspector general was troubled by the FBI’s month-long delay in obtaining a search warrant to review emails possibly related to the investigation on former Rep. Anthony Weiner’s laptop in the fall of 2016. The report specifically calls out Strzok’s decision to “prioritize” the Russia investigation over following-up on the laptop issue, leading the report unable to conclude it was “free from bias.”

[Strzok’s lawyer, Aitan] Goelman called that conclusion “bizarre” and said the delay was caused by a “variety of factors and miscommunications that had nothing to do with Special Agent Strzok’s political views.” He added that “every witness asked by the (inspector general) said that Strzok’s work was never influenced by political views.”

The inspector general’s report also included newly found text messages between Strzok and Page.

In a message on August 8, 2016, Page says, Trump’s “not ever going to become president, right? Right?!”

Strzok replies: “No. No he’s not. We’ll stop it.”

In a statement following the IG report’s release, Goelman said there was “no evidence” Strzok’s political views impacted the handling of the Clinton email investigation. Strzok himself told investigators that he didn’t want to prevent a potential Trump victory, arguing that the proof of this rested in the fact that the investigation into potential Russian collusion remained confidential.

Goelman also said Friday that Strzok “has cooperated fully with the IG investigation and intends to fully and voluntarily cooperate with any congressional investigation.”

Alleged misconduct by Justice Department officials investigating the Clinton email scandal and taking part in the Russia investigation have been the targets of the White House’s ire — with Republicans, White House officials, and the President alike taking to singling out Page and Strzok for their behavior.

CNBC: Justice Department officials challenge Trump’s claim that report about Clinton’s email probe ‘exonerates’ him http://cnb.cx/2t8smO9
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1008917984264540161/photo/1
● President Donald Trump claimed that a Department of Justice report last week ‘totally exonerates me’ with regard to Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe.
● “We did not look into collusion questions,” Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the Senate Judiciary Committee Monday.
● “I don’t think this report speaks to the special counsel investigation,” FBI Director Christopher Wray said.

ChicagoTrib: Justice Department watchdog says probes ongoing into disclosure of Comey memos, FBI leaks http://trib.in/2tdOBkO
// Same as WaPo article

WaPo: Russia used to see itself as part of Europe. Here’s why that changed. http://wapo.st/2t8TRqD

… Putin repeatedly asserted that the post-Cold War system is unfair. You can hear it in his speech at the 2007 Munich Security Conference, when he railed against a “unipolar” international order. The United States, he argued, had “overstepped its borders in all spheres — economic, political and humanitarian — and has imposed itself on other states.” As a result, he said, Russia would “carry out an independent foreign policy.”

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo, Paul Waldman: There may have been an FBI conspiracy involving the 2016 election. But not the one you think. http://wapo.st/2ti4BCk

… But to this point, it has been something only the most dedicated aficionados of the story of how James B. Comey all but handed Trump the election knew anything about.

Let’s begin with the fact that during 2016, the FBI’s New York office was by numerous accounts the epicenter of an effort to undermine Clinton through leaks to the media and prominent Republicans. As one report put it just before the election, “Deep antipathy to Hillary Clinton exists within the FBI, multiple bureau sources have told the Guardian, spurring a rapid series of leaks damaging to her campaign just days before the election.” As one agent put it, “The FBI is Trumpland.” A former Justice Department official told Vanity Fair in 2017, “It was widely understood that there was a faction in [the New York] office that couldn’t stand her and was out to get her.”

Their efforts became critical when the office, in the course of its investigation of Anthony Weiner, husband of Clinton aide Huma Abedin, acquired Weiner’s laptop on Sept. 26, 2016, and found on it thousands of emails to and from Clinton. Rep. Devin Nunes, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee and Trump’s most slavish water carrier, said last week: “We had whistleblowers that came to us in late September of 2016 who talked to us about this laptop sitting up in New York that had additional emails on it. So good F.B.I. agents brought this to our attention.” It’s a bit curious to characterize FBI agents who rushed to tell a Republican congressman about Weiner’s laptop within just a few days of its discovery, and before they had gone through the emails to see whether there was anything problematic about them (which, it turned out, there wasn’t), as “whistleblowers.” Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the Intelligence Committee, said yesterday that Nunes never told him at the time.

At the same time, there were agents leaking information about investigations into the Clinton Foundation to none other than Rudy Giuliani, who would then go and air the charges on Fox News. Two days before Comey would tell Congress that the bureau had reopened the investigation into Clinton’s emails — a blockbuster announcement that may well have thrown the election to Trump — Giuliani said on Fox News, “I do think that all of these revelations about Hillary Clinton finally are beginning to have an impact. He’s got a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days.”

To give you one more example, just days before the election, an FBI source told Fox News’s Bret Baier that Clinton’s email had been hacked and she would soon be indicted — a false story that Baier later apologized for airing. But of course by then the damage had been done, and the picture of Clinton as an impossibly corrupt figure who would be locked up any day was firmly entrenched in the public’s mind.

To return to the question of Comey’s fateful decision to announce the reopening of the Clinton investigation, the inspector general’s report faults him, quite appropriately, for violating the bureau’s policy on not making any public statements close to an election that could affect the election’s outcome. Many have long speculated that Comey, knowing about the antipathy toward Clinton in the New York office, assumed that if he didn’t make it public, the information would be leaked and he’d look as though he was trying to conceal it. In the IG report, former attorney general Loretta Lynch describes a conversation she had with Comey:

And then I said, now, we’ve got to talk about the New York office in general. And he said yes. And I said we both work with them. We both know them. We both, you know, think highly of them. I said, but this has become a problem. And he said, and he said to me that it had become clear to him, he didn’t say over the course of what investigation or whatever, he said it’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton.

For the record, Comey says that his decision to announce the reopening of the Clinton investigation wasn’t because he was afraid that news of the laptop’s discovery would be leaked, and of course we can’t know everything that was in his head.

But it’s obvious that we have to ask some pointed questions about the agents in the New York office. If they acted inappropriately, who were they? How many of them were involved? Were they coordinating their activities? Now that we’ve read Strzok and Page’s personal communications, should we see theirs as well?

Republicans are certainly not going to ask those questions. But perhaps the IG will in his next report, or Democrats will if they can take back Congress. Because there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that at least some FBI agents were indeed trying to swing the outcome of the 2016 campaign, and they may well have succeeded.

WaPo, Paul Waldman: There may have been an FBI conspiracy involving the 2016 election. But not the one you think. http://wapo.st/2ti4BCk

TPM: Trump Explodes After Strzok Agrees To Testify Before Congress http://bit.ly/2JWcSmw

MotherJones: The FBI’s New York Office Really Hated Hillary Clinton http://bit.ly/2JW4i7i

There’s very little evidence that the FBI was biased in any way against Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign. The sole piece of evidence that Trump relies on for this allegation is a series of private texts between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, but there’s no evidence at all that their private views ever affected any of their actions.

Just the opposite is true for the FBI’s New York office, which obviously harbored considerable animus toward Hillary Clinton and just as obviously took concrete steps to help Trump. Here’s a short version of the evidence:

1. The Nunes Revelation

A few days ago, Rep. Devin Nunes admitted something he had never acknowledged before: In late September of 2016, New York FBI agents had told him about the existence Anthony Weiner’s laptop, which eventually led to the Comey letter of October 28.

2. The Giuliani Whisper Campaign

On October 26, Rudy Giuliani boasted to Fox News’s Martha MacCallum that Donald Trump had “a surprise or two that you’re going to hear about in the next two days. I’m talking about some pretty big surprise.” He later backtracked, but it’s pretty clear that agents in the New York office had told Giuliani what was going on.

3. The Inspector General’s Report

The recent inspector general’s report confirms what we’ve long known: one of the reasons Comey wrote his October 28 letter was his fear that the New York office would leak about the Weiner laptop if he didn’t.

As we describe in Chapter Ten of our report, the factors considered during those discussions included…Fear that the information would leak if the FBI failed to disclose it.

Jim Baker, the FBI’s general counsel, confirmed that the possibility of a leak was widely discussed within the bureau:

Baker told us that a concern about leaks played a role in the decision to send the letter to Congress. Baker stated: “We were quite confident that…somebody is going to leak this fact. That we have all these emails. That, if we don’t put out a letter, somebody is going to leak it. That definitely was discussed.”…Baker told us that “the discussion was somebody in New York will leak this.”

4. The Dickey Conversation

On the day of the Comey letter, a fellow named Jeremy Dickey overheard an FBI agent making a telephone call on a plane.

🐣 RT @JeremyDDickey Update he now is talking about how the NY FBI office pressed to have the A. Weiner info leaked

🐣 RT @JeremyDDickey Now saying “You know how the run things out of NY office, they would have leaked the email connection with Weiner”

5. The Loretta Lynch Confirmation

The IG report also includes a conversation Comey had with Attorney General Loretta Lynch three days later. Here is Comey’s recollection of that conversation:

I said, “Look this is really bad, but the alternative is worse.” And then she said, “Yeah would they feel better if it had leaked on November 6th?” And I just said, “Exactly Loretta.”

And Lynch’s:

He said it’s clear to me that there is a cadre of senior people in New York who have a deep and visceral hatred of Secretary Clinton. And he said it is, it is deep. It’s, and he said, he said it was surprising to him or stunning to him.

This isn’t everything, just the clearest evidence we have not just that the New York office hated Hillary Clinton and were widely known leakers, but that everyone knew they hated Clinton and that a leak was inevitable once the Weiner laptop was discovered. This was, for some reason, not a topic that the inspector general highlighted much in his report. However, the more general topic of the FBI’s “culture of leaks” will apparently be the subject of a future report.

🐣 A Twitter List: Investigators ~ Intel Community; investigative journalists; bloggers & sleuths (about 380 members). Feel free to follow.
A Twitter List by Auriandra

🐣 RT @MplsMe Fascism has come to America. It’s wrapped in U.S. flag and carrying a Bible. Trump administration is spouting same scripture used by Nazis to justify the separation of children from their parents at the border. #ComplicitGOP doing NOTHING to stop them.
// paraphrasing Sinclair Lewis, first 2 sentences

🐣 RT @joshtpm It is bonkers that we’re talking abt one Peter Strzok text when there’s abundant evidence, much of it buried in IG Report, that Clinton probe was driven forward by anti-Clinton agents in NYC who took repeated ACTIONS to push case, even possibly breaking the law.

⭕ 17 Jun 2018

TPM: Schiff: First We Heard About Leaks To Nunes http://bit.ly/2HXTsMr

TPM, Josh Marshall: “A Deep and Visceral Hatred”, The Timeline http://2yhKYQF

NewYorker, George Packer: Donald Trump Goes Rogue http://bit.ly/2tgEHiu
// In half a week, between Quebec and Singapore, Trump showed that the liberal order is hateful to him, and that he wants out.
// 6/25/2018 issue

When President Trump walked out early from the meeting of the Group of Seven in Charlevoix, Quebec, on June 9th, he left the group’s collective statement without an American signature. It was hardly a controversial document—the language was G-7 boilerplate, affirming “our shared values of freedom, democracy, the rule of law and respect for human rights and our commitment to promote a rules-based international order.” U.S. officials had negotiated a change in that last phrase from the definite article to an indefinite one—apparently, “the rules-based international order” threatened American sovereignty. But Trump still refused to sign. A spat with Canada over steel and aluminum tariffs had fouled his mood, and as he was leaving Canadian airspace the President insulted his host, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, calling him “dishonest” and “weak.” Air Force One flew on to Singapore, where Trump lavished time and enthusiasm on the North Korean tyrant Kim Jong Un—“a very talented man” and a “funny guy” with a “great personality.

Dean Acheson, President Truman’s Secretary of State, called his autobiography “Present at the Creation.” The title referred to the task that confronted American leaders at the end of the Second World War and the start of the Cold War, which was “just a bit less formidable than that described in the first chapter of Genesis,” Acheson wrote. “That was to create a world out of chaos; ours, to create half a world, a free half, out of the same material without blowing the whole to pieces in the process.” A network of institutions and alliances—the United Nations, NATO, the international monetary system, and others—became the foundation for “the rules-based international order” that the leaders in Charlevoix saluted. It imposed restraints on the power politics that had nearly destroyed the world. It was a liberal order, based on coöperation among countries and respect for individual rights, and it was created and upheld by the world’s leading liberal democracy. America’s goals weren’t selfless, and we often failed to live up to our stated principles. Power politics didn’t disappear from the planet, but the system endured, flawed and adaptable, for seventy years. …

Trump, with his instinct for exploiting resentments and exploding norms, has sensed that many Americans are ready to abandon global leadership. The disenchantment has been a long time coming. Barack Obama saw that the American century was ending and wanted to reduce U.S. commitments, but he tried to do so within the old web of connections. In pulling back, he provided Trump with a target. Now Trump is turning retrenchment into rout.

What would it mean for the United States to abandon the liberal order? There’s no other rules-based order to replace it with, which is why the definite article in the G-7 communiqué was appropriate. The alternative to an interconnected system of security partnerships and trade treaties is a return to the old system of unfettered power politics. In resurrecting the slogan “America First” from prewar isolationists who had no quarrel with Hitler, Trump was giving his view of modern history: everything went wrong when we turned outward.

… After Quebec, the German Foreign Minister, Heiko Maas, placed the United States among the rogue regimes: “Donald Trump’s egotistical politics of ‘America First,’ Russia’s attacks on international law and state sovereignty, the expansion of gigantic China: the world order we were used to, it no longer exists.” Europe is rapidly pulling away from the United States, but the European Union is weak and divided. The liberal order always depended on American leadership.

Trump imagines that America unbound, shaking hands or giving the finger, depending upon short-term interests and Presidential whims, will flourish among the other rogues. After his meeting with Kim, he flew home aglow with wonder at his own dealmaking prowess, assuring Americans that they could now sleep in peace. In fact, Trump had secured nothing except the same vague commitment to dismantling North Korea’s nuclear program which the regime has offered and routinely betrayed in the past. Meanwhile, he gave up something real—joint U.S.-South Korean military exercises, which he called “provocative,” the language of totalitarian and aggressive North Korea. Without allies and treaties, without universal values, American foreign policy largely depends on what goes on inside Trump’s head. Kim, like Putin, already seems to have got there.

💙 TheGuardian, Nick Cohen: Why isn’t there greater outrage about Russia’s involvement in Brexit? http://bit.ly/2JWgsgq
// This scandal should cause uproar but the BBC and Labour just change the subject

The first duty of the leaders and citizens of a democracy is to defend its elections from subversion. Yet a country that boasts of giving the world free parliaments feels no obligation even to look at allegations that Russia subverted British democracy. The government and opposition are compromised and want the scandal closed down. As does an embarrassed rightwing press and a shamefully negligent BBC.

One issue remains: a campaign that purported to be for the “left behind” was organised and funded by men with links across the global network of far-right American demagogues and kleptomaniac dictators such as Putin. We know that Russia has interfered in elections in North America and Europe. Russia had a direct interest in promoting Brexit because it would destabilise a strategic rival.

For months, you’d be forgiven for thinking [The BBC’s] editors have not let its reporters cover Russia-Brexit. They can report on Trump’s links to Russia – and I suppose we should be grateful for that – but not on allegations of the subversion of the electoral process in the country whose taxes fund them.

If the BBC mentions the Brexit scandal at all, it treats it as boxing match in which the corporation occupies the lofty position of impartial referee. Andrew Marr and the Today programme have both tried to titillate their audiences with catfights between Cadwalladr and Banks and Isabel Oakeshott, who helped Banks with Bad Boys of Brexit. They would be all very well if, to date, the BBC had not failed to produce investigative journalism of its own on the subject. Real journalism is hard work and, if the job is well done, its conclusions, however impartially presented, won’t make comfortable listening for ideological factions and moneyed interests with the wealth to hire libel lawyers.

… Rather than report, it has reduced public service broadcasting to a modern version of the Roman circus: a show that stops the plebs worrying their little heads about the future of their country. I’ve defended the BBC against Scottish nationalists, Corybnistas, Remainers and the Brexit right. But how can anyone respect a news organisation that prefers staged confrontations to reporting?

… You only have to raise the possibility of a British version of the Mueller inquiry to realise why Labour and Conservatives, left and right, would hate it.

The Tories are committed to Brexit. They will not push for investigations into a Brexit campaign whose wishes they are now meeting. Psychologically, Tories and the Tory press cannot separate the Russia allegations from Brexit. They fear that, if they look too hard, the legitimacy of the referendum will dissolve before their eyes.

In the US, opposition Democrats want Trump’s every dealing with Russia exposed. But in Britain the leaders of the opposition Labour party are as anxious as Farage and May to change the subject. Never forget the far left’s soft spot for thieving autocrats. …

… In any other democracy, there would be uproar. But here, the Tory and Labour frontbenches must pretend there’s nothing to see. …

TheHill: Schiff: ‘Deeply disturbing’ that FBI gave Nunes confidential info on Clinton’s emails http://bit.ly/2K44Pr0

🐣 The Roger Stone article is nothing; perhaps a smokescreen. The two important things to get your head around are 1) The Guardian’s stories on links between #TrumpRussia and #Brexit and 2) Giuliani/Nunes’ possible role in leak about Weiner laptop to get HRC email case reopened.

TPM, Josh Marshall: Stunning Brexit/Farage/Russia Revelations http://bit.ly/2JXO3df

We know that Russian diplomats and intelligence officers were supporting the Brexit campaign in the UK in much the same way they were funding and supporting the Trump effort in the U.S. We also know that the two campaigns ended up intertwining. Once Brexit was successful in the UK, its top campaigner and its top money man, Nigel Farage and Arron Banks, literally went to the U.S. and started campaigning for Trump.

It turns out that an aide to Farage, George Cottrell, was arrested by the FBI just after attending the GOP convention in July along with Farage. He was charged with a series of crimes related to money laundering, wire fraud, bribery, blackmail and more. He was also something of a denizen of the so-called “dark web.” Cottrell had a close personal relationship with both Farage and Banks, though both sought to diminish the extent of that relationship after Cottrell’s arrest.

Cottrell later cooperated and had the charges against him dramatically reduced. But parliamentary investigators in the UK have now confirmed that roughly a month after Cottrell’s arrest, Banks’ business partner and fellow Brexit campaign leader Andy Wigmore, the spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign, forwarded a package of confidential legal documents related to Cottrell’s case to a Russian diplomat marked “Fw Cottrell docs – Eyes Only.”

Note that this is all during a period of about two months when Paul Manafort’s history of secret payments in Ukraine was getting him bounced from the campaign, when Steve Bannon was taking over the campaign, when Farage was campaigning in the U.S. with Trump and while Farage and Banks were carrying on an active dialog with Russian diplomats including the Russian Ambassador to the UK, Alexander Yakovenko.

Farage, Banks and Wigmore have long denied their contacts with Russian diplomats were anything more than scheduling social occasions. But it seems all but impossible to think up innocent explanations for why Wigmore would be sharing legal documents tied to Farage’s aide’s arrest in the US on money-laundering and blackmail with Russian diplomats.

WaPo: Trump associate Roger Stone reveals new contact with Russian national during 2016 campaign http://wapo.st/2teJtwJ

⭕ 16 Jun 2018

TheGuardian, Carole Cadwalladr: Arron Banks, Brexit and the Russia connection http://bit.ly/2JIrKc1
// An 18-month investigation leads to a trail of new evidence showing the ‘bad boys of Brexit’ had closer links to Russia and its ambassador than they have disclosed

Players:
Arron Banks – the biggest funder of Brexit, business partner of Wigmore
Carole Cadwalladr – a British journalist (the author)
Damian Collins – chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, aka “Commons” (Parliament)
George Cottrell – an aide/fundraiser to Nigel Farage, arrested by FBI on money-laundering charges (Wigmore was w him, passed legal docs re: arrest about him to Russia)
Nigel Farage – lead of UKIP party, Leave.eu campaign, Brexit (Cottrell his aide)
Sergey Fedichkin – a ‘third secretary’ at the Russian embassy, docs on Cottrell sent to him by Wigmore with note saying: “Have fun with this.”
Philip Hammond – the foreign secretary (UK)
Isabel Oakeshott – ghostwriter of The Bad Boys of Brexit which gave her access to
Arron Banks’ emails
Andy Wigmore, spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign and the business partner of Banks (Wigmore was Belize’s trade envoy to Britain), passed legal docs about Cottrell’s arrest to Russia
Alexander Yakovenko, Russian ambassador (to UK) “identified by US special counsel Robert Mueller as a high-level intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin”

On 11 March 2016, three months before the European referendum, and long before anyone had started to wonder about foreign interference in the two political cataclysms of 2016 – Brexit and Trump – the Russian embassy in London put out a press release.
[ In response to: ]
Philip Hammond, the foreign secretary, had made a speech at Chatham House a few days earlier. A speech in which he noted that “the only country who would like us to leave the EU is Russia”. And the embassy had taken exception. …

The press release said it showed Russia “being dragged into the domestic debate on Brexit” as part of a “wicked Russia thesis”. Written more in the language of a slighted lover than a nation state, it claimed that “this was “unfair”, and the government needed to “explain itself”. “We wouldn’t have dwelt on it,” it said, had the British government not alluded to the Russian threat “at every opportunity”. The Leave.EU team appeared to think so, too. A message from an employee to Banks and Andy Wigmore, Leave.EU’s press spokesman and Banks’s business partner, sent on the same day – 11 March 2016 – says: “Pretty strong stuff from the Russian embassy! Risky area but this might possibly be worth using for a tile?” (A “tile” is an image that they could use in social media messaging, on Twitter or other platforms.)

Last week, the Observer published details of multiple meetings between Banks and Wigmore and the Russian embassy, the details of which they confirmed when they passed the original emails to the Sunday Times in order to try to scoop us. The documents seen by the Observer suggest Banks replies: “I think we should – let’s draft a press release in response to the Russian letter.”The documents suggest that the employee’s response included a press release he says he has drafted on “the great looming threat” of Russia, though he notes that one of the sentences is optional as it “may be seen as too overtly Russophile”.

Wigmore responds: “Suggest we send a note of support to the Ambassador.”

It’s a brief exchange between colleagues – the language is matter-of-fact, the tone workaday, the import that there’s nothing unusual here. But two years on, in the midst of the Trump-Russia investigation, against the backdrop of a tumultuous week in parliament, including a parliamentary committee hearing at which Banks and Wigmore attacked MPs and then walked out, it suggests an extraordinary relationship.

The foreign secretary of Britain had made critical remarks about a hostile foreign power. And, so these documents appear to suggest, prompted the Leave.EU team to swing into action in support of the hostile foreign power. And, astonishingly, to write a personal note of support to the country’s ambassador.

Was the “personal note of support” sent? We don’t know, but it’s a fascinating, revealing, and disturbing insight into the nature of the relationship between officials representing the Russian government and the main funder of the Leave campaign. A relationship that was, until now, partly covert and hidden. And which Banks conceded in parliament on Tuesday that he’d lied about for two years.

This was the campaign headed by Nigel Farage, whose close friend and ally, Steve Bannon, had been Trump’s campaign manager and who said, on Wednesday: “I have never received any Russian financial or political support…”

And it plunges Britain directly into the same nexus of relationships that is the focus of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation. Two years on, we are in the dark about so much. What was the exact nature of Farage’s Leave.EU campaign’s relationship to the Russian government? Why did it exist? And to what end? …

So far, all that we can say for sure is that, for the last two years, Banks and Wigmore have lied about it. And, it’s this, perhaps, that raises the most critical question of all: why?

A week and a half ago, a fellow journalist, Peter Jukes, showed me this material for the first time, and my jaw dropped. I’d left parliament where I’d heard Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, give evidence to the investigation into fake news to a parliamentary inquiry over many hours. And later that night, I found myself looking at a computer screen that shone on a light on a part of the investigation that I had never expected to uncover.

This was material – obtained legitimately – from inside the Leave.EU campaign. There were names, times, dates. Meetings. Official invitations. Gold deals. And, in a starring role, Ambassador Alexander Yakovenko, a name I knew instantly from FBI documents, who had been named by Mueller as a high-level intermediary between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. [ In the Papadopoulos plea deal ]

There were references to the content of the astonishing email that Wigmore was said to have sent to his contact at the Russian embassy in August 2016. Farage had been on the campaign trail for Trump when his aide and fundraiser, George Cottrell, was arrested by the FBI on money-laundering charges. Material seen by the Observer suggests Wigmore sent confidential legal documents, including the FBI indictment, to the Russian embassy.

And then there was the possibility of the gold deal. A deal, brokered by Yakovenko, and funded by the state-owned Russian bank, Sberbank, negotiated in the months leading up to the referendum, and announced on 5 July, 12 days after the country voted to leave the EU. There is no public record of whether Banks invested or not. Twelve days later, he tweeted: “I’m buying gold at the moment and big mining stocks.”

[ Several paragraphs how the author was targeted by Yakovenko as an “unscrupulous journalist” ]

I have a different relationship to this story, to these revelations, perhaps, than most. Because I have experienced the impact of this relationship with Russia, first-hand. I have felt it and lived it – viscerally, emotionally. But it was always there, out in the open. There was nothing hidden or covert about the hundreds of social media postings and tweets that showed Leave.EU’s and Farage’s support of Russian policies and the Russian political agenda. What I hadn’t contemplated, until now, was that this may have been co-ordinated with the Russian government.

Did the deal take place? The gold deal that Yakovenko made the introduction for? Journalists and investigators will hopefully now try to find out, to unravel the complex, offshore structures through which Banks runs his businesses.

Because what we appear to see through Banks and Wigmore is a linked series of relationships between the Trump campaign – via Steve Bannon – to the public face of Leave.EU’s campaign, Nigel Farage. Through Farage to Banks and Wigmore. And through Banks and Wigmore to the Russian government. Whether it’s a channel for anything else is for other specialist investigators to figure out. Because ever since Watergate, we’ve known that you need to follow the money.

But, in this the new age of information, there are new lines to pursue. One can follow the lies, for example. The meetings Banks and Wigmore admit they lied about, a third passport – a diplomatic one from Belize – that Banks told me about last year, but which he denied to MPs on Tuesday. Wigmore is the country’s trade envoy to the UK. A legal letter they told MPs they’d sent to the Atlantic Council but which the head counsel of the Atlantic Council told the Observer, many months ago, they had never received.

In 2016, Brexit and Trump were the first fake news elections. Though by “fake news”, one means sophisticated information operations, developed out of hybrid warfare techniques – pioneered by Russia and now aped across the world. In 1972, the year of the Watergate break-in, money was the sole source of power.

Today, information is also power. This is “asymmetric warfare”. It’s how an economically struggling power – Russia – can strike a blow against the richest nation in the world. Through weaponising words. And unleashing them in ways we can’t understand or even see.

Because you can also follow the tweets. Follow the Facebook posts. Follow the memes. It’s all out there: the Leave campaign’s intimate relationship with the Russian government appears public, visible, undisguised. Just as Banks – and his ghostwriter, Isabel Oakeshott – were careful to include the approach from the Russian embassy and a nine-hour “boozy lunch” in The Bad Boys of Brexit, is this a relationship between the Russians and the Leave campaign that is hiding in plain sight?

What we know now is that this relationship is deeper and more complex than we could have imagined. And that Banks and Wigmore lied about it: to the public, to parliament. And we don’t know why.

What we don’t know, or at least I don’t know, is whether this is collusion. If the Leave campaign colluded with the Russian government. That’s a word freighted with meaning and significance. A question that Farage won’t answer.

When I rang into his LBC phone-in show on Monday, he slammed down the phone on me, in what, in the video, looks like a moment of panic.

We don’t know if there was collusion. But here’s what we do know, what these communications suggest to us: that there was co-ordination.

TheGuardian, Carole Cadwalladr and Peter Jukes: Leave. EU faces new questions over contacts with Russia http://bit.ly/2MyMsJm
// MPs say latest revelations show Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore may have misled parliament

A leader of the Leave.EU campaign suggested sending a “message of support” to the Russian ambassador after the then foreign secretary made a speech that was critical of Russia, documents seen by the Observer suggest.

The material also appears to show that Andy Wigmore, spokesman for the Leave.EU campaign and the business partner of Arron Banks, the biggest funder of Brexit, passed confidential legal documents to high-ranking officials at the Russian embassy and then denied it to parliament.

The documents related to George Cottrell, an aide to Nigel Farage who was with him on the campaign trail for Donald Trump in July 2016. Cottrell was arrested by the FBI and charged with 21 counts of money laundering, bribery and wire fraud.

Damian Collins, chair of the culture, media and sport select committee, said that Banks and Wigmore appeared to have misled parliament and “what we really need to know is why”. He added: “It makes you question whose side they are on.”
↥ ↧
HuffPo (6/12): Nothing ‘Sinister’ About Meetings With Russian Officials, Claims Leave.EU ¤ http://bit.ly/2JJf3hf //➔ Arron Banks and Andy Wigmore, key figures in #Brexit, are just as goofy as Carter Page and Roger Stone
// 6/12/2018; Arron Banks walks out of Commons committee hearing.
↥ ↧
ViceNews: Everything you need to know about the bombshell report linking Russia to Brexit http://bit.ly/2LVvJPk
// 6/11/2018 (clearer)

💙💙 BBC, Kevin Ponniah (2017): Yuri Drozdov: The man who turned Soviet spies into Americans http://bbc.in/2JTVEcK
// 6/23/2017

TPM, Josh Marshall: More Evidence of the Critical Failure of the IG Report http://bit.ly/2JWqcri //➔ Giuliani and Nunes complicit in reopening of Clinton email investigation shortly before election! 💥‼️

🐣💥‼️ RT @lauferlaw Ok folks. Just got a whisper from a contact re: Rosenstein. Elevated risk of him being fired w/n the next 3-4 weeks. If that occurs, several DOJ heavies will most likely resign in protest. Hang in there. This move by Trump was definitely anticipated. The Republic stands.

🐣 RT @PaulaReidCBS Giuliani tells me he advised POTUS not to pardon anyone before Mueller probe ends & POTUS agrees. But pardons possible *after* Mueller probe

🐣 RT @sarahkendzior My interview on #AMJoy on Trump’s authoritarian infatuation: “We are way past hypotheticals now. We know how Trump wants to govern — like a dictator.”
https://twitter.com/sarahkendzior/status/1008025683208138752

🔆 This❗️⋙ WaPo: ‘Prepared for war’: As Mueller moves to finalize obstruction report, Trump’s allies ready for political battle http://wapo.st/2yglSBF

President Trump’s lawyers and special counsel Robert S. Mueller III are hurtling toward a showdown over a year-long investigation into the president’s conduct, with Mueller pushing to write up his findings by summer’s end and Trump’s lawyers strategizing how to rebut a report that could spur impeachment hearings.

The confrontation is coming to a head as Trump and his allies ratchet up their attacks on the special counsel probe, seizing on a report released Thursday by the Justice Department’s inspector general that castigated FBI officials for their conduct during the 2016 Hillary Clinton email investigation.

Rudolph W. Giuliani, the president’s personal attorney, said that he planned to use the inspector general’s conclusions to undermine Mueller, suggesting he may ask Attorney General Jeff Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to examine the current probe.

“We want to see if we can have the investigation and special counsel declared illegal and unauthorized,” Giuliani said in an interview Friday.

If the president agreed to a sit-down, the special counsel has told Trump’s lawyers that he could finish within roughly 90 days a report on whether Trump sought to obstruct a probe into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign, according to two people familiar with the discussions. A separate report outlining Mueller’s broader findings on Russian attempts to bolster Trump’s candidacy is expected to take longer.

The confidential obstruction report, which would be delivered to Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, is expected to contain the prosecutors’ conclusions about whether Trump engaged in any criminal wrongdoing by trying to derail the investigation into his campaign’s contact with Russians, according to the people.

The filing of the report could trigger a political firestorm over whether to make the special counsel’s findings public — just as this fall’s midterm campaign season kicks off.

At the center of that standoff would be Rosenstein, who oversees the Mueller probe. Friends and foes predict he would face intense pushback over every aspect of the report — when to release the information to Congress, whether to refer the report to Congress to consider impeachment and whether to make any aspect of the report public.

“He’s the final decision-maker,” said Giuliani, adding: “There will be pressure from all ways.”

Rosenstein, who has repeatedly sought to defuse attacks on the Justice Department by the president and his congressional allies, has indicated he will only bend so far. Last month, after House Republicans threatened to impeach him for withholding investigative documents, he warned that “the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted.”

That round of political and legal drama could be delayed until after the November elections if Mueller decides to hold back the report to avoid releasing it too close to Election Day, or if Trump refuses an interview and the special counsel tries to issue a subpoena, kicking off a lengthy court struggle.

In the meantime, anticipation for Mueller’s report has put Washington on a kind of emergency storm watch.

“What we’re going through now is a walk in the park compared to what’s coming when the report [on Trump’s conduct] comes out,” said Peter Wehner, a Trump critic who has advised several past Republican presidents. “Even if the report is a devastating indictment of Trump, the political tribalism in the country is so deep and won’t suddenly go away.”

After the Justice Department’s inspector general released his findings Thursday, Giuliani said he and fellow Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow conferred about legal options they could take to stymie Mueller — including possibly sending a letter to the Justice Department raising questions about the credibility of the special counsel investigation. They also discussed whether to ask Sessions to appoint a second special counsel to investigate the Mueller probe, based on the inspector general’s report and some FBI agents’ conduct, Giuliani said.

“We’re going to take the weekend to talk it all through, with our team and with the president,” Giuliani said.

The Mueller investigation is already facing internal scrutiny. Last month, under pressure from Trump, the Justice Department asked its inspector general to assess whether political motivation tainted the FBI investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign after revelations that a longtime FBI source secretly assisted the probe.

The attacks by the president and his advisers on the special counsel appear to be having an impact: Public support for Mueller’s investigation has been gradually eroding. A Quinnipiac University poll taken in early June found that 50 percent of registered voters say Mueller is conducting a fair investigation, a drop of 10 points since November. [But more want it to continue.” [ President Trump should not fire Special Counsel Robert Mueller, voters say 70 – 13 percent. Republicans say 50 – 23 percent Trump should not fire Mueller.” – same poll ]

Doug Kmiec, a legal scholar on presidential power and a former Reagan administration Justice official who knew Mueller from his prior work at the department, said the special counsel wants — but does not need — to question the president to finish his report.

“He wants to give the president an opportunity to explain any ambiguity and any impression that he was favoring a foreign adversary,” Kmiec said. “Robert Mueller would say it would be irresponsible not to give the president a chance to explain himself.”

The regulations would allow Rosenstein to refer the report to Congress, Katyal said, and release it to the public if he decides doing so could better serve the public.

Rosenstein will have near-total control over how the probe concludes and what the public learns about the findings. It will fall to Rosenstein to decide whether Mueller’s report contains findings about Trump that warrant some remedy or punishment by Congress.

It remains to be seen how he will navigate the pressure.

At a speech in Philadelphia earlier this month, Rosenstein appeared to allude to the punches thrown so far and those perhaps coming his way, quoting the classic boxing movie “Rocky.”

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows . . . But it ain’t about how hard you hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit, and keep moving forward,” Rosenstein said. “That advice applies in boxing, in law and in life.”

🐣 RT @JamesGunn So I guess the Deep State has been proven to be a single text message between a fired FBI agent and his lover. They got us.

CNN, Stephen Collinson: Why Donald Trump’s wild week matters. A lot. http://cnn.it/2lcSbYJ

🐣 RT @brianklass Mattis is absolutely correct. And yet his boss wants to reward Putin’s aggressive behavior by granting him renewed international legitimacy by reinstating Russia at the G7. And Trump has done more to advance Putin’s goal of splintering NATO than any other president.
⋙ 🐣 RT @ZcohenCNN Sec. Mattis: “Putin seeks to shatter NATO. He aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America’s moral authority, his actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals”

⭕ 15 Jun 2018

CNN: Mattis slams Russia, says Putin ‘attempts to undermine America’s moral authority’ http://cnn.it/2JPZCQk

Secretary of Defense James Mattis slammed Russia on Friday, saying Russian President Vladimir Putin “attempts to undermine America’s moral authority” and “seeks to shatter NATO.”

“He aims to diminish the appeal of the western democratic model and attempts to undermine America’s moral authority, his actions are designed not to challenge our arms at this point but to undercut and compromise our belief in our ideals,” Mattis said at a graduation ceremony for the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island.

Mattis also alluded to Moscow’s military actions in Crimea and eastern Ukraine, saying Russia has “proven willing to use conventional and irregular power in violation of international norms.”

“For the first time since World War II, Russia has been the nation that has redrawn international borders by force in Georgia and Ukraine while pursuing veto authority over their neighbors’ diplomatic, economic and security decisions,” he added.

His remarks came shortly after President Donald Trump said his predecessor, President Barack Obama, was responsible for Putin’s actions in Ukraine, including Moscow’s 2014 military incursion into and annexation of Crimea.

The harsh words on Russia comes as Moscow and Washington are “exploring” the possibility of a meeting between the Trump and Putin, according to US officials and a Russian media report.

Mattis also slammed China, saying that Beijing is “harboring long-term designs to rewrite the existing global order.”

“The Ming Dynasty appears to be their model, albeit in a more muscular manner, demanding other nations become tribute states kowtowing to Beijing,” Mattis said, accusing China of militarizing artificial islands in the South China Sea and of practicing “predatory economics” via its acquiring of debts from countries in the region.

The defense secretary sounded a more optimistic note on North Korea, saying the recent summit between the US and North Korean leadership had opened “a possible new avenue to peace.”

“Certainly President Trump’s historic summit with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un proves, and I quote here, ‘the past does not have to define the future,’ end quote, but while a possible new avenue to peace now exists with North Korea, we remain vigilant regarding the pursuit of nuclear weapons anywhere in the world,” Mattis said.

ForeignAffairs, Daniel Deudney & G John Ikenberry: Liberal World ~ The Resilient Order http://fam.ag/2JPvwws
// tags: neoliberalism, decline of the west, populism, capitalism, nationalism, globalism; It is too soon to write the obituary of liberalism. Even though the United States’ relative power is waning, the international system that the country …
⋙ See under Entire Articles

WaPo: After forging new ties with North Korea, Trump administration turns to Russia http://wapo.st/2JWq6CX

Meanwhile, U.S. Ambassador to Russia Jon Huntsman is arranging for a delegation of Republican senators to visit Moscow, ending a long dry spell of congressional trips to the country following the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 presidential election.

The push for engagement with the Kremlin follows months of prodding by Trump, who has faced resistance from senior political aides and diplomats questioning the value of meeting with Putin and worry that the tête-à-tête could cast a shadow over the NATO summit in Brussels.

“From Trump’s point of view, he’s had one successful meeting with Kim Jong Un, and now he wants to do the same with Putin,” said Angela Stent, a Russia expert who worked in the George W. Bush administration. “His advisers have been skeptical from the beginning.”

Trump’s success in advancing the summit planning marks a victory over his aides, who have pushed him to embrace a number of hawkish policies toward Russia that he has later regretted. In April, the Trump administration imposed sweeping sanctions against Russian oligarchs, sending shock waves through the Russian economy. In March, Trump ordered the largest U.S. expulsion of Russian officials in history, although he later accused his aides of misleading him about the size of the purge. Last year, he approved the transfer of anti-tank missiles to Ukraine, but scolded his aides after the policy decision became public.

Now, Trump has become a strong public advocate for engagement with Russia.

On Friday, he repeated his view that Russia should be reinstated in the group of industrial economies formerly known as the Group of Eight.

“I think it’s better to have Russia in than to have Russia out. Because just like North Korea, just like somebody else, it’s much better if we get along with them,” Trump said.

Russia was expelled from the group after it annexed Crimea in 2014, a military intervention Trump blamed on President Barack Obama.

“President Obama lost Crimea because President Putin didn’t respect President Obama, didn’t respect our country and didn’t respect Ukraine,” Trump said Friday.

Most U.S. allies view the land grab as a clear breach of international law that was solely the responsibility of Putin.

WaPo, Anne Applebaum: This is how Putin buys influence in the West http://wapo.st/2t0on5V

In the old days, these things were done differently. There were KGB couriers, bags of cash, “Moscow gold,” secret subsidies for far-left printing presses: The Soviet Communist Party was seeking to undermine Western democracy, covertly. But it was all pretty small-scale. …

Modern Russia, by contrast, has a far easier task. Nowadays, when the Kremlin makes a covert effort to exert political influence and undermine democracy, it has far more tools available — big companies, rich oligarchs, both of which need to keep in with the government — and far more psychological leverage. Instead of the brotherhood of mankind and the unity of the proletariat, modern Russia can appeal to a much simpler instinct: greed. Instead of offering small bits of cash or secret bank accounts, they can now offer deals with friendly Russian businessmen. These are legal, they can be discussed openly, and they create the right atmosphere for friendly relations, even if they never happen.

That’s the background to the curious story of Russian influence unfolding in Britain over the past week, thanks to the revelation of a cache of documents, including email exchanges, published recently in both the Observer and the Sunday Times. The main character, Arron Banks, was the most important funder of the pro-Brexit UK Independence Party (UKIP) as well as Leave.EU, one of the organizations that campaigned to persuade the British to leave the European Union. Banks invested $11 million of his own money into both of those causes and raised an additional $5 million. These are big numbers in U.K. politics, where there is nothing like the spending circus so familiar to Americans.

But where did that money come from? Banks has always said it came from his insurance business, which doesn’t appear to make as much money as he says it does, as well as “diamond mines” he owns in Lesotho, a proposition that at least one scientist says is “geologically impossible.” Now it also appears that Banks, who is married to the daughter of a Russian state official, may have sought business advice further east. On at least one occasion — he and his colleagues visited the Russian Embassy multiple times — the Russian ambassador to Britain, Alexander Yakovenko, offered to help him set up an investment in some gold mines in Siberia.

Banks denies that anything came of it. But this curious revelation is interesting on a number of levels. For one, it provides yet another link in the chain of common interests that ties together the Russian government, Banks, the Brexit campaign and UKIP leader Nigel Farage — Farage being a man who has, in turn, links to Julian Assange, Stephen K. Bannon and Donald Trump. Much more interestingly, it also illustrates how the modern Kremlin political influence machine operates — legally, and without necessarily incurring any government expense. …

“Let us introduce you to some useful business contacts” was also, it seems, one of the ways in which the Russian government kept the attention of the Trump family. Even as late as fall 2015, with the presidential campaign well underway, the Russian-born businessman Felix Sater was seeking to broker the construction of Trump Tower Moscow. The goal, he told Trump’s lawyer [Michael Cohen], was both political and personal: “Help world peace and make a lot of money, I would say that’s a great lifetime goal for us to go after.” Also, he would help get Russian President Vladi­mir Putin on board with the project, see what could be done to help with the campaign: “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it.” The corrupt implications explain, presumably, why special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has subpoenaed all of the papers surrounding that deal.

Trump Tower Moscow was never built, of course, and it seems that Banks didn’t invest in the Siberian gold mines, either. But they do reveal the Russian government’s modus operandi. Contacts are offered. Connections are made. Some deals go through. Others are dangled, perhaps to keep everyone interested in ongoing relations. Maybe someone will help you win your election, maybe not. Anyway, if you play your cards right, your business will prosper — and you might even get rich like Schroeder when you leave office. Just because it’s legal doesn’t mean it’s not corrupt.

🐣 RT @page88 Just to keep eyes on the ball: Manafort’s crimes are not only financial & obstruction. The *underlying* crime is his profound complicity in the mass murder of civilians under Viktor Yanukovych in Ukraine.

TPM, Josh Marshall: There’s Something Fatally Wrong in the IG Report on the FBI and DOJ http://bit.ly/2HTgrbm

… The Inspector General was troubled by the fact that the FBI was prioritizing the Russia probe in the fall of 2016 over the Clinton email probe. The key passage comes on page 329 of the report where the Inspector General writes that in light of Strzok and Page’s texts showing hostility to Donald Trump, “we did not have confidence that Strzok’s decision to prioritize the Russia investigation over following up on the Midyear-related investigative lead discovered on the Weiner laptop was free from bias.”

… There’s virtually no record of anyone in a comparable position to Secretary Clinton being charged with a crime over anything like this. This, as I note, is key to what the probe was so freely discussed: it was always largely political and to a great degree theater. However that may be, the matter was extensively investigated and investigators found no basis for filing charges. FBI Director James Comey still felt it was necessary to publicly chastise Clinton in order to protect himself and the FBI from claims of bias. But the decision was clear: no basis for filing charges.

… There was very little chance that anything discovered in those emails would change the decision not to charge Clinton with a crime. Indeed, the people who ran the investigation told the IG as much. …

As Priestap makes clear, even though it was important to review the emails, as a matter of completeness, he did not see it as a high priority because it was highly unlikely they would change the investigators’ view of the case. In the event, they turned out to be duplicates of emails the FBI had already examined.

… The Clinton emails had been thoroughly investigated. The purportedly new evidence had little chance of changing the verdict of the investigation in the eyes of the people who made the key decisions, as opposed to the agents in New York. What’s more, whatever you make of the emails matter, it was literally all in the past, years in the past. There were no potential crimes in motion. In the other case, the FBI had an active and expanding investigation into whether a major party presidential campaign had either been infiltrated by or was conspiring with a hostile foreign power. This was in motion and the election was six weeks away. Again, to ask which was the higher priority borders on the absurd. …

Comey claimed that fears of leaks did not play a role in his decision. Basically all his advisors said the opposite. One of the big mysteries of the IG Report is what happened to the investigation into reports of anti-Clinton bias in the FBI Field Office in New York and claims that anti-Clinton agents had leaked the news of the laptop to Rudy Giuliani in order to restart the Clinton probe. … I have heard suggestions that this part of the investigation will be addressed in a subsequent IG Report. But I’ve been able to find no concrete evidence of that. Even if that is the case, since the Inspector General looked so hard for anti-Trump bias in the FBI leadership in Washington, it seems odd to deal separately with possible anti-Clinton biases of those whose potential leaking that leadership team was apparently reacting to.

Rudy Giuliani’s name literally is not mentioned once in the report. But there is substantial evidence that he was leaked information about the Weiner laptop which he then took to Fox News. In April 2018, in expectation of this question beyond addressed in the IG Report, Reuters reported that “law enforcement officials previously told Reuters the information was leaked to former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, an adviser to the Trump campaign who subsequently discussed the contents on Fox News.” …

On October 21st [2016], Strzok briefed a group of retired FBI personnel in a conference call to try to calm the clamor over how the investigation was handled. Lisa Page recalled “[W]e got a ton of criticism from the formers about the, why we let her off the hook, and why she should have been prosecuted, and why if she had, if they had done this, they would have prosecuted, all those sort of criticism that you have surely heard.”

These are just a few examples from the report itself. It’s clear that lots of former special agents were very upset that Clinton hadn’t been indicted and FBI leadership was trying to explain their decision-making and calm the clamor. In this context, note that when Giuliani was pressed on how he’d known about the restarting of the Clinton investigation he claimed that he’d only been in contact with retired agents, notwithstanding Reuters law enforcement sources who said he’d been leaked the information directly.

Here’s where the new information from Thursday evening [6/14/2018] comes into play. Last night on Fox News Rep. Devin Nunes (R-CA) said that in late September 2016 “good FBI agents” from the New York field office told him and members of the House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) that they’d found new Clinton emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop. Nunes presented these agents as “whistleblowers” and that can be the case when government employees believe they’ve uncovered wrong-doing. But the timing suggests they more or less immediately went to congressional Republicans, about six weeks before the election. The emails were discovered on September 26th. They were talking [to] Nunes in “late September.” That means they had to be “whistleblowing” in four days or less. That sounds more like politicized leaking of details of an on-going investigation than anything that could pass as whistle-blowing. If the “good FBI agents” went to Nunes and other congressional Republicans one or two days after the laptop was discovered that means they didn’t allow any reasonable amount of time to decide the top officials in DC were dragging their feet. They were clearly trying to force the matter.

Step back from the intricacies of the IG Report on the FBI and DOJ and there’s a lot of reason to believe that James Comey made what all consider a bad decision in large part because he and his advisors feared leaks and that these leaks would encourage claims of political bias against Comey and the FBI. There’s also quite a lot of evidence that fear of those leaks was driven by hostility to Clinton among agents in New York as well as members of the fraternity of retired FBI Agents. This hostility or bias toward Clinton seems like a very big driver of events in the fall of 2016. This would not absolve Comey of responsibility for his actions. But it seems impossible to understand the fullness of the situation without trying to get to the bottom of this part of the story. And yet, again, it’s largely ignored in the IG Report. No mention of Giuliani. No mention of the “good FBI agents” who went to House Republicans. I can only imagine what the texts of those “good FBI agents” might contain if scrutinized like Strzok’s and Page’s have been.

As I noted above, it’s possible that this is part of a future IG Report. There’s conflicting word on that. Even if that’s the case, presenting only one distorted side of the story in this report seems highly questionable. However that may be, we still need to get to the bottom of what happened here and why. Because the decision to send that letter on October 28th clearly had a big impact on the election of Donald Trump. And it never should have happened.
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TPM, Josh Marshall: Nunes: FBI Agents Leaked Clinton Info to Me http://bit.ly/2lavMeO

Note that the reference to late September 2016 makes it clear that the agents in question basically went to Nunes and other Capitol Hill Republicans immediately after they found the laptop.

💙💙💙💙 JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Paul Manafort = Evidence of Collusion http://bit.ly/2lbdZUD
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw [Ryan Goodman] 1. Manafort proposes to Putin-linked, Russian oligarch a plan to “greatly benefit Putin,” and they get to work (2005-) Original Scoop for this story is @AssociatedPress story by @JeffHorwitz @ChadSDay:
⋙ AP Exclusive: Before Trump job, Manafort worked to aid Putin http://bit.ly/2l9Bm0S
// 3/22/2017
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 2. Manafort joins Trump Campaign and stays in frequent contact with a Kiev-based operative who has active ties to Russian military intelligence (March 2016-) (WaPo got their emails @thamburger @PostRoz @CarolLeonnig @adamentous)
⋙ WaPo: Manafort offered to give Russian billionaire ‘private briefings’ on 2016 campaign http://wapo.st/
// 9/20/2017
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 3. Manafort remains an unregistered foreign agent of Kremlin-linked Ukraine political forces. To understand how deeply Manafort’s Ukrainian principals are connected with, and infiltrated by, Kremlin intelligence, read @violagienger:
⋙ JustSecurity: What’s Ukraine Got to do With It? A Sideshow or Central Inquiry in Russia Probe? http://bit.ly/2tdPdXB
// 6/14/2018
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 4. Trump Campaign is told Russia has damaging info against Clinton in form of “thousands of emails,” and Manafort and Campaign then continue to set up meeting with Campaign reps and senior Russian officials (April 2016 -) Note references to Manafort in Papadopoulos guilty plea
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 5(a). Manafort and two senior Campaign officials meet with Russian gov’t emissaries offering damaging info on Clinton (June 2016). Two members of the Russian delegation are now thought to be Russian spies.
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 5(b). One of the Russians at the June 9 meeting “apparently has ties to Russian intelligence” and “allegedly specializes in ‘active measures campaigns’” such as subversive political operations involving disinformation and propaganda. Who said that? Republican Senator Chuck Grassley:
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1007617708144328704/photo/1
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 5(c). Guess who else says two Russians at the June 9 Trump Tower meeting with Manafort were likely Russian spies: In testimony before House Intel Committee, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher “acknowledged that [Akhmetshin and Veselnitskaya] were probably spies” based on his own knowledge of them.
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 5(d). But did Manafort know what the meeting would be about? According to the House Intelligence Committee’s MAJORITY report, Manafort, Trump Jr., Kushner attended the meeting “where they expected to receive…derogatory information on candidate Clinton from Russian sources.”
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1007619216449658882/photo/1
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 6. Manafort offers “private briefings” on the campaign to Putin-linked Russian oligarch (July 2016) [Deripaska]
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 7(a). Manafort oversees Campaign when it intervenes to defeat a call for Republican Party platform to include a provision for arming Ukraine to defend itself against Russian incursions Important admissions reported by @NatashaBertrand:
⋙ BI, Bertrand: It looks like another Trump adviser has significantly changed his story about the GOP’s dramatic shift on Ukraine http://read.bi/2lcHpSf
// 3/1/2017
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 7(b). On @MeetThePress, Manafort adamantly and categorically denies that the Trump Campaign played any role in the platform discussions. The same day on @ThisWeekABC, candidate Trump essentially admits his Campaign “softened” the platform language on Ukraine.
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw This is one of the biggest bombshells of all: 8(a). Russian operatives reportedly discuss (a) Russia’s efforts to coordinate with Manafort on the election and (b) Manafort’s encouraging help from the Kremlin @evanperez @PamelaBrownCNN
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1007621488495792128/photo/1
⋙ CNN: One year into the FBI’s Russia investigation, Mueller is on the Trump money trail http://cnn.it/2MxmDJB
// 8/4/2017
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 8(b) US intercepts of Russians in #8 are consistent with #SteeleDossier: Steele Dossier: the “well-developed conspiracy of co-operation between [Trump campaign] and the Russian leadership…was managed on the TRUMP side by the Republican candidate’s campaign manager, Paul MANAFORT.”
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw 9. Manafort officially resigns from the campaign, BUT reportedly continues to be involved up through the transition (August 2016-). @politicoalex @EliStokols @ShaneGoldmacher @kenvogel)
https://twitter.com/rgoodlaw/status/1007623255337861120/photo/1
⋙ Politico: Inside Trump’s Stunning Upset Victory http://politi.co/2yg0Zqb
// 11/9/2016, ‘Jesus, can we come back from this?’ the nominee asked as his numbers tanked. Because of Clinton, he did.
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🐣 RT @rgoodlaw In sum, the public record on Manafort, on its own, is fairly damning on the question of alleged collusion with Russia. Now just think of what Mueller knows.Anyone who says there is no evidence of collusion is misleading you.
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NYT: Trump, Riding a North Korea High, Unloads on the F.B.I., Comey and Obama http://nyti.ms/2JQ8tS0

… The president seized on the Justice Department inspector general report released Thursday that sharply criticized the F.B.I. and its former director James B. Comey for their handling of the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. The report, he said, exposed what he called “the scum on top” of the F.B.I. as “total thieves,” and he insisted that Peter Strzok, a senior F.B.I. agent who had spoken privately against him, should be fired.

“They were plotting against my election,” he said. When it was pointed out that the report actually found that no decisions were made out of political bias, he dismissed the conclusion. “The end result was wrong. I mean, there was total bias. I mean, when you look at Peter Strzok, and what he said about me. When you look at Comey, all his moves. You know, it was interesting, it was a pretty good report. Then I say that the I.G. blew it at the very end with that statement.” [Throughout the report indicated actions taken disadvantaged Clinton.]

Mr. Strzok was a top agent on the investigation into Mrs. Clinton in 2016, and his text messages to a colleague, Lisa Page, were cited by the inspector general for showing an unprofessional bias. When Ms. Page was alarmed in August 2016 at the prospect of Mr. Trump’s winning the election, Mr. Strzok reassured her. “We’ll stop it,” he wrote.

Mr. Trump said that proved the F.B.I. was out to get him. “Peter Strzok should have been fired a long time ago, and others should have been fired,” he said.

Mr. Strzok was removed last year from the Russia investigation led by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III. But the inspector general found no evidence that the F.B.I. did anything to stop Mr. Trump or rig the investigation into Mrs. Clinton in her favor. In fact, the report’s criticisms of Mr. Comey and the bureau’s conduct focused on actions that damaged Mrs. Clinton, not Mr. Trump, and it deemed the decision not to prosecute her a reasonable one.

Mr. Trump was asked on “Fox & Friends” whether Mr. Comey should be prosecuted and put in prison. “I would never want to get involved in that,” Mr. Trump said. “Certainly he, they just seem like criminal acts to me. What he did was criminal. What he did was a terrible thing to the people. What he did was so bad in terms of our Constitution, in terms of the well-being of our country. What he did was horrible.”

Mr. Trump continued, “Should he be locked up? Let somebody make a determination.”

He added: “If you read the I.G. report, I’ve been totally exonerated.”

But the report dealt only with the handling of the investigation into Mrs. Clinton and did not address allegations against Mr. Trump and his campaign related to contacts with Russia during the election and possible obstruction of justice after he took office.

In his first extended comments on his meeting with Mr. Kim since returning to the United States, Mr. Trump hailed their agreement, enshrined in a vague 391-word statement that committed North Korea to “complete denuclearization.”

“I signed an agreement where we get everything, everything,” he said.

Although there is no concrete arrangement for how that would happen, when it would happen or who would verify that it happen, Mr. Trump dismissed such questions as details that will be worked out.

“I have solved that problem,” he told reporters. “Now, we’re getting it memorialized and all. But that problem is largely solved.”

He praised Mr. Kim, brushing aside questions about the repressive regime and gulags in North Korea. “Hey, he is the head of a country, and I mean he is the strong head,” Mr. Trump said. “Don’t let anyone think anything different. He speaks and his people sit up at attention. I want my people to do the same.”

He later said he was joking about that, but he defended his decision to salute back when a North Korean general he met saluted him. “I’m being respectful to the general,” he said.

Mr. Trump confirmed that he wants to meet President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia this summer. Asked about Russia’s annexation of Crimea, which has been condemned by the rest of the world as an illegal aggression, Mr. Trump blamed not Mr. Putin for ordering it but Mr. Obama for letting it happen.

“President Obama lost Crimea,” Mr. Trump said. “Because Putin didn’t respect President Obama. President Obama lost Crimea because President Putin didn’t respect President Obama. Didn’t respect our country and didn’t respect Ukraine. President Obama, not Trump — when it’s my fault, I’ll tell you.”

Likewise, he faulted Democrats in Congress for the federal authorities’ separating children from parents trying to cross the border from Mexico.

“I hate the children being taken away,” he said. “The Democrats have to change their law. That’s their law.”

Both houses of Congress are run by Republicans, who control whether legislation comes to the floor, but Mr. Trump said they could not act because it would require at least nine Democratic votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster. There seems no reason to assume, however, that Democrats would filibuster a bill barring the separation of families at the border, since they have already introduced such legislation with more than 30 Democratic co-sponsors.

Indeed, Mr. Trump made clear later in the day with a Twitter message that he would not support legislation on family separation unless it includes provisions that Democrats oppose, including full financing for his proposed border wall and a complete overhaul of the system of legal immigration to end policies allowing immigrants to sponsor relatives to come into the country. …

Over the course of the Fox interview and the subsequent conversation with White House reporters, Mr. Trump also returned to other frequent topics. He mocked National Football League players for protesting racism when they are “making $15 million a year.”

He again assailed Prime Minister Justin Trudeau of Canada for rejecting new American tariffs after a summit meeting. “We’re all happy, and then he got up and started saying that he doesn’t want to be pushed around by the United States,” Mr. Trump said.

And he dismissed the importance of a misleading statement he dictated last year about a Trump Tower meeting with Russians during the 2016 campaign, a statement that his lawyer and spokeswoman at first denied he had dictated even though his legal team later admitted that he had. “It’s irrelevant,” Mr. Trump said. “That’s not a statement to a high tribunal of judges. That’s a statement to the phony New York Times.”

The Justice Department report that seemed to animate the president so much on Friday had nothing to do with the special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible ties with Russia. But one of Mr. Trump’s lawyers, Rudolph W. Giuliani, said on Thursday that Mr. Mueller’s investigation should be suspended and predicted that Mr. Strzok would be in jail in the coming days.

Mr. Trump’s decision to fire Mr. Comey in May 2017 was the first in a series of steps that led to the appointment of Mr. Mueller, whose team continues to investigate possible links between the Trump campaign and Russia’s meddling in the lead-up to the 2016 election. The inquiry, which Mr. Trump regularly calls “phony” and a “witch hunt,” has ensnared some of Mr. Trump’s former aides and has been a dark cloud over his administration.

In his conversation with reporters on Friday, Mr. Trump again attacked the special counsel investigation as “13 angry Democrats,” referring to campaign donations some of the prosecutors have made, although Mr. Mueller is a lifelong Republican.

I feel bad about a lot of it because I think a lot of it is very unfair,” Mr. Trump said before the latest development. “Manafort has nothing to do with our campaign. I feel a little badly about it. They went back 12 years to get things that he did 12 years ago.” He added, “He worked for me, what, for 49 days or something [5+ months]? A very short period of time.”

Mr. Trump even suggested that his former national security adviser, Michael J. Flynn, a retired three-star general, did not actually lie to investigators even though he has pleaded guilty to doing so. …

AP: Trump 2020 working with ex-Cambridge Analytica staffers http://bit.ly2JMOow8/

🐣 RT @GenMhayden Post truth is Pre-fascism

🐣 RT @nahaltoosi I understand the desire to throw up your hands and say “LOL, nothing matters.” Who hasn’t done it?
But I can’t operate that way for long.
Everything matters.
Everything.
Citjourno
⭕ 14 Jun 2018

WSJ: Giuliani Calls for Mueller’s Suspension, Criticizes Top Justice Department Officials http://on.wsj.com/2yfopvU
// President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer says Mueller probe is ‘phony’ after watchdog report released

🐣 RT @EdKrassen BREAKING: Rudy Giuliani just called for Rod Rosenstein to suspend Robert Mueller tomorrow and arrest Peter Stzok next week.
This guy is literally going insane! It’s funny and sad at the same time!

WaPo: Trump allies seize on DOJ report as they seek to undercut Mueller probe http://wapo.st/ 2HRDpQ3

… Republicans quickly seized on the report as a meaningful development that they believe will further bruise Mueller’s credibility with the public and bolster the president, whose administration has long been gripped by the probe. …

… [T]he furor is almost tailor-made for Trump, who throughout his career has clutched onto small details and controversy as weapons he uses to define his enemies and erode trust in institutions.

Particularly notable, from the perspective of Trump’s allies, was the searing criticism in the report reserved for the conduct of one of Trump’s most high-profile critics, former FBI director James B. Comey, as well as the revelation that lead FBI agent Peter Strzok had shown anti-Trump bias. “We’ll stop it,” Strzok wrote in a text message, referring to Trump’s presidential campaign. …

On Capitol Hill, there was an outcry. Sen. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.), a Trump ally, said Thursday that he would support a new federal probe of Mueller’s special counsel investigation. “You’re going to need independent eyes,” he told reporters. …

“None of this reflects on the special counsel’s work,” said Rep. Adam B. Schiff (Calif.), ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee.

Republicans, however, sought to use the report to tarnish investigators.

Since the Strzok text message had not been previously disclosed to Congress, a number of Republicans immediately asked whether the Justice Department had purposefully hidden that missive from them.

Republican Reps. Andy Biggs (Ariz.), Matt Gaetz (Fla.) and Ron DeSantis (Fla.) — all Trump supporters — sent the Justice Department a letter Thursday demanding that the inspector general turn over all previous reports to see if “people may have changed the report in a way that obfuscates your findings.”

The coming political storm, spurred by the report, may only deepen the divide between those who see the Mueller investigation as a nonpartisan endeavor and those who argue it is the product of an anti-Trump “deep state,” a conspiratorial term the president and his Republican allies have used to describe some federal employees who they suspect could be working against Trump and his administration.

Trump-allied Republicans on Thursday put the inspector general report atop their pile of grievances, once again casting the Justice Department as biased and defending Trump’s decision to fire Comey — though the report criticized Comey for his handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation.

NYT, Peter Baker: Report Gives Trump an Opening, but Undercuts His Narrative http://nyti.ms/2MrGB8I

The report that had much of Washington buzzing on Thursday required 500 pages to outline its findings, but to President Trump, three words mattered most — “we’ll stop it.” …

But the same inspector general report also undercut Mr. Trump’s narrative. Whatever the agent, Peter Strzok, meant, the F.B.I. did not “stop” Mr. Trump, nor did the inspector general find evidence it tried. To the extent that the F.B.I. and its director at the time, James B. Comey, did anything wrong in 2016, according to the report, it was to the disadvantage of Mr. Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton.

If anything, the report affirmed the complaints that Mrs. Clinton and her team have lodged against Mr. Comey — that he went too far by criticizing her conduct while declining to bring charges, and that he erred by disclosing days before the election that he was reopening the inquiry while never revealing an investigation into contacts between Mr. Trump’s campaign and Russia.

“A fair reading of the report shows that the F.B.I. applied a double standard to the Clinton and Trump investigations that was unfair to Clinton and helped elect Trump,” said John D. Podesta, who was Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman. “That said, he’ll use one random Strzok email to spin a deep-state conspiracy which plays to his core.”

LawFareBlog: Nine Takeaways From the Inspector General’s Report on the Clinton Email Investigation http://bit.ly/2JQZhg8

NYT, Barry Berke, Norman Eisen and Dani James: Why Trump Is Wrong on the Comey Report http://nyti.ms/2lcrjs1

WSJ: DOJ Clinton Report Blasts Comey, Agents, but Finds No Bias in Conclusion http://on.wsj.com/2sY76un
// Then-director deviated from policies and separate texts cast cloud over entire FBI investigations

A report on the FBI’s handling of the 2016 investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server found missteps by then-Director James Comey but no evidence of bias affecting the conclusions.

WaPo Editorial: The key takeaways from the Justice Department inspector general’s report http://wapo.st/2HPgLb3

NYT, David Leonhardt: The Report’s Real Message: Trump Is Lying http://nyti.ms/2Mu9u4f

NYT, James Comey: This Report Says I Was Wrong. But That’s Good for the F.B.I. http://nyti.ms/2JYA1Ix

Politico: Watchdog rips Comey but says bias didn’t taint Clinton probe http://politi.co/2laEaLl
// The inspector general turned up fresh evidence of FBI officials exchanging messages critical of Trump and leaking to the media.

NYT: Comey Cited as ‘Insubordinate,’ but Report Finds No Bias in F.B.I. Decision to Clear Clinton http://nyti.ms/2lbJPR8
⋙ Read: Justice Dept. Report on the F.B.I.’s Handling of Clinton Inquiry [link]
The Justice Department’s inspector general released a report on Thursday detailing the F.B.I.’s handling of the Clinton email investigation during the 2016 presidential election.
⇈ ⇊
💙💙💙💙 ≣ DOJ/OIG: A Review of the Various Actions by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Department of Justice in Advance of the 2016 Election [pdf] http://bit.ly/2t6DI4g 568p

CNN, Maegan Vasquez: Sessions takes responsibility for keeping Rosenstein in charge of Russia investigation http://cnn.it/2JLCJxt
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1007300339299684353/photo/1

Sessions said in an interview released Thursday that he was the one who made the decision to recommend to Trump that he fire Comey, not Rosenstein — and that therefore Rosenstein isn’t disqualified from his role in the Russia investigation.

“That decision … really fell to me, ultimately, on the Comey matter,” Sessions, who recused himself from the Russia investigation, told CNN affiliate Hill.TV’s morning show “Rising.” “And that’s not a disqualifying thing.”

South Carolina GOP Sen. Lindsey Graham told CNN last week that he believes Rosenstein is “conflicted” from overseeing special counsel Robert Mueller’s work given his role in Comey’s firing — an issue of interest to the Mueller team as it determines whether the President inappropriately sought to interfere with the Russia investigation.

“If you’re looking at obstruction of justice misconduct post-presidency, the Comey firing as being a form of obstruction of justice, then Rosenstein is a key witness in that and you can’t be a witness and oversee the investigation,” Graham told CNN.

Graham also sent Rosenstein a short letter questioning whether he needs to recuse himself from the investigation

⭕ 13 Jun 2018

🐣 RT @paulkrugman I’m old enough to remember when it was considered “shrill” to suggest that the GOP had become an alliance of plutocrats and racists — policy agenda of tax cuts for rich and slashing social programs, win elections by appealing to fear and prejudice

DailyBeast, Rick Wilson: Trump’s Negotiating Style Is Pure Art of the Moron http://thebea.st/2LMAXg8
// Even by this blowhard’s YUGE standards, it’s been an exceptionally bad and destructive week of terrifying our allies and legitimizing our enemies.

DailyBeast: Trump’s Former Pentagon Deputy: His Korea ‘War Games’ Comments Play Into Russian Hands http://thebea.st/2yb9tz2
// Robert Work, the one-time deputy defense secretary, warns that Trump’s shock announcement to pause drills with South Korea is a gift to Moscow and Beijing.

⭕ 12 Jun 2018

JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman: Testimony from the Senate Judiciary Committee’s Hearing on Election Interference http://bit.ly/2tbPzxT
// hearing on, “Election Interference: Ensuring Law Enforcement Is Equipped to Target Those Seeking to Do Harm.” http://bit.ly/2Mu4Y5z
// Goodman’s testimony [pdf] http://bit.ly/2ldzKDv 37p
⋙⋙ See pdf-to-pages version in Huge Reports file

NYRB, Cass Sunstein: It Can Happen Here http://bit.ly/2JKITBc
// 5/28/2018 issue; review of:
⋙ Milton Mayer: They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933–45
⋙ Konrad Jarausch: Broken Lives: How Ordinary Germans Experienced the 20th Century

TheHill: Bolton paid over $100K by group tied to Ukrainian businessman for panel talks http://bit.ly/2y8de85

⭕ 11 Jun 2018

McClatchy: Web of elite Russians met with NRA execs during 2016 campaign http://bit.ly/2sO80JE

Several prominent Russians, some in President Vladimir Putin’s inner circle or high in the Russian Orthodox Church, now have been identified as having contact with National Rifle Association officials during the 2016 U.S. election campaign.

The contacts have emerged amid a deepening Justice Department investigation into whether Russian banker and lifetime NRA member Alexander Torshin illegally channeled money through the gun rights group to add financial firepower to Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential bid.

⭕ 10 Jun 2018

🐣 RT @67jewelCDH Trump sycophant Lindsay Graham just said on national television that if Trump doesn’t get what he wants, we must declare war against North Korea and destroy them. We are talking about potentially hundreds of thousands of human casualties here. We should be terrified.

🐣 RT @WillDonnelly When the US sends its people to Singapore, they’re not sending their best people. They’re not sending experts. They’re sending people that have lots of problems. They’re bringing conmen. They’re bringing Nazis. They’re bringing warmongers. And some, I assume, are morons.

TheGuardian: MPs call for police to investigate Arron Banks’ links to Russia http://bit.ly/2LElYEV

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: The fallout from Trump’s international temper tantrum http://wapo.st/2sMTFgL

💙💙 KyivPost: Kseniya Kirillova: Russian ideology for export http://bit.ly/2Mhfq0j

💙💙 TIME: President Trump Complained About U.S. Trade With Canada. Here’s What He Got Wrong http://ti.me/2HAVphr

🐣 RT @chrisinsilico I will be providing the DCMS committee with more information about the Russian embassy’s involvement with Brexit campaigners on Tuesday. People need to know what happened and if Brexit was part of a Russian influence operation @DamianCollins @CommonsCMS

🐣 RT @RNicholasBurns According to President Trump’s own Trade Representative, the U.S. actually enjoys an $8.4 billion surplus in goods and services trade with #Canada. Facts matter.
⋙ 🐣 RT @realDT Fair Trade is now to be called Fool Trade if it is not Reciprocal. According to a Canada release, they make almost 100 Billion Dollars in Trade with U.S. (guess they were bragging and got caught!). Minimum is 17B. Tax Dairy from us at 270%. Then Justin acts hurt when called out!

TheGuardian, Will Hutton: As their cause crumbles, Brexiters turn to fantasy and bitter recriminations http://bit.ly/2MiNWqO

Similarly, Boris Johnson’s now infamous leaked dinner remarks declaring that he had no doubt that Britain would leave the EU, which would be “irreversible”. It was a sign that the Brexit cause has its back against the wall – constructing an alternative reality based on faith and ideology in the face of real world facts that refuse to accommodate themselves to Brexiter will. This is the first harbinger of political doom: if you can’t think straight, you regress to claims of irreversibility. The policy that follows will prove unworkable.

TVLine: Robert De Niro Says ‘F–k Trump’ at Tony Awards, Gets Standing Ovation http://bit.ly/2JxVtAi
Video, uncensored: https://twitter.com/dialmformovies/status/1006005583160360960

Slate: Robert De Niro, Onstage at the Tony Awards: “F— Trump!” http://slate.me/2sXNAgr

“I’m gonna say one thing: fuck Trump,” De Niro told the crowd, to gasps that quickly became cheers that then turned into a standing ovation. He raised both fists like a boxer, then added, “It’s no longer ‘Down with Trump,’ it’s ‘Fuck Trump.’ ” Both lines were bleeped on CBS, but survived in the Australian broadcast. The applause lasted for 40 solid seconds.

TheHill: France takes jab at Trump, says international cooperation can’t depend on ‘fits of anger’ http://bit.ly/2sMtgQd

The statement, which did not mention Trump by name, appeared to come down on the president for “incoherence and inconsistency” in his snub of the communique, which includes a commitment to a “rules-based international trading system” and to combating protectionism.

“We spent two days to obtain a text and commitments. We will stand by them and anyone who would depart from them, once their back was turned, shows their incoherence and inconsistency,” the statement said.

Germany, according to Reuters, also pledged to stay committed to the G-7 communique.

🐣 RT @ReliableSources .@davidfrum on grappling with “news fatigue:” “If your child is feverishly ill, it can be very fatiguing to… take care of her. But it’s what you do, because that’s duty… [And] if your country is ill, you have the same responsibility.”

DailyBeast, Nico Hines: How a Journalist Kept Russia’s Secret Links to Brexit Under Wraps http://thebea.st/2JzImyT
// A pro-Brexit journalist held back evidence of links between Russia and the Brexit campaign while playing down so-called conspiracy theories on TV.

… For much of that time, a reporter in England has been in possession of extraordinary details about Russia’s cultivation and handling of Brexit’s biggest bankroller. Arron Banks was secretly in regular contact with Russian officials from 2015 to 2017, according to a cache of emails apparently not seen in those Transatlantic investigations until they were published in Britain on Sunday.

Banks, who ran the Leave.EU campaign group, was one of the first foreign political figures to visit Donald Trump—accompanying Nigel Farage to Trump Tower—soon after the shock presidential election of 2016. Farage is reportedly a “person of interest” in the FBI’s Trump-Russia investigation.

Isabel Oakeshott, a former Sunday Times journalist who ghost-wrote Banks’ book, The Bad Boys of Brexit, was granted access to his emails in the summer of 2016 in order to help draft the diaries. The book mentions one meeting at the Russian embassy which has been the focus of great interest ever since, especially amid questions about where Banks’ sourced the multi-million pound funding of Brexit. He has denied the money came from Russia.

Oakeshott says she did not discover the stunning extent of Banks’ true dealings with Russia until last year. Even then, she decided not to publish saying she wanted to wait until the publication of her next book White Flag? in August. It is unclear whether the Electoral Commission’s investigations into Banks’ financing of the Brexit campaign would have been completed by August. …

Three months ago she confronted The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr live on the BBC after Cadwalladr’s stories uncovering the misuse of tens of millions of Facebook profiles by Cambridge Analytica, which was linked to the Trump campaign and Leave.EU.

Cadwalladr, who has spent the last two years investigating the nexus of Farage, Banks, Trump, Cambridge Analytica and Russia, raised concerns about the validity of the Brexit vote. When the presenter asked Oakeshott about her relationship with Banks, she said: “There just isn’t a conspiracy here, Carole, I just feel like you’re chasing unicorns.”

Oakeshott’s attitude apparently changed on Friday when she learned that Cadwalladr—along with Peter Jukes—was preparing another story for Sunday.

An email, seen by The Daily Beast, was sent to Banks at 11.57am on Friday by Cadwalladr advising him that The Observer had obtained copies of his emails which laid bare the scale of his interactions with Russia. They appeared to show that he and Leave.EU colleague Andy Wigmore had multiple meetings with high-ranking Russian officials, that Banks visited Moscow in February 2016, and that he had been introduced to a Russian businessman by the Russian ambassador who allegedly offered him a multibillion dollar investment opportunity in Russian goldmines. …

The Sunday Times reported that Banks admitted passing over contact details for members of the Trump transition team to Russian officials and meeting with the Russian ambassador in London just three days after their Trump Tower summit.

Their package came complete with a commentary from Oakeshott herself, in which she expressed her shock at the revelations. “I was very surprised by what I found, which conflicted with the public accounts of the relationship with the ­Russian embassy,” she wrote. “Suddenly the Russian embassy in ­London had a potential back channel to the White House.” …

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: After Trump’s G-7 summit fiasco, be afraid http://wapo.st/2Jv11zy

After President Trump’s atrocious and irrational behavior leading up to and at the Group of Seven summit, the disintegration of the liberal world order in place since the end of World War II and the potential for a serious international crisis no longer seem hard to imagine. The president, unmoved by history, ignorant of facts and guided by sycophants, has not been forced to grapple with the real world nor to hear views that don’t coincide with his twisted worldview, in which allies are ripping us off and aggressive strongmen are to be admired and accommodated.

Trump — after departing the G-7 meeting early — reversed his earlier decision to sign on to the joint statement with other member nations. He no doubt was reacting to the public tongue-lashing from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who told the press, “I highlighted directly to the president that Canadians did not take it lightly that the United States has moved forward with significant tariffs on our steel and aluminum industry.” Trudeau continued by declaring that the Trump administration’s decision to invoke “national security” to justify tariffs was “insulting” given Canada’s alliance with the United States in multiple wars. As Trudeau put it, “Canadians, we’re polite, we’re reasonable, but we also will not be pushed around.” Trump can never tolerate criticism, let alone such public and direct criticism, so he accused Trudeau of making “false statements” and reneged on the decision to sign the joint communique.

Trump demonstrated once again that he is erratic and untrustworthy — with his own allies! The contrast between his antagonistic relationship with democratic allies and his never saying a bad word about Russia defies explanation, unless one is to buy into the theory that he is indebted in some fashion to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whose campaign to interfere in the U.S. elections helped land Trump in the White House. …

“We’re the piggy bank that everybody is robbing,” Trump said. “And that ends.”

I have no idea what he is talking about. Our allies are not stealing anything. It is far from clear what, if anything, would satisfy him. If — and it is a big if — Trump is serious about erecting barriers to U.S. markets, we are looking at a full-blown trade war with our closest allies and trading partners, along with the trade wars with China and Mexico. All this would redound to the benefit of exactly one country, Russia. A worldwide recession would not be hard to imagine.

Trump becomes irrational and unhinged when contradicted, and given the degree of contradiction permitted within his inner circle (none), it must be unnerving indeed to discover that our allies view him with disdain if not contempt. Arriving late and leaving early from the G-7 gathering, Trump played the petulant child, trying so very hard to say that he didn’t want to be part of their group anyway — so there! Worse still, his disturbing invitation for Russia, the United States’ most worrisome foe, to join the G-7 suggests he really cannot tell who is a friend and who is an enemy.

Trump’s Republican enablers, who ridiculed liberal Democrats for coddling dictators and ignoring allies (ah, the good old days when they groused, inaccurately, about the return of a Churchill bust!), should see what their groveling has wrought. They now back a president who does not put America or the West first. A Manchurian candidate could not show greater fealty to Russia nor more diligence in helping Russia pursue its goals. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), who refuses to consider reclaiming Congress’s role in trade, will see the consequences that flow from his and his fellow Republicans’ neglect of their constitutional obligations. Republicans have rejected their obligation to restrain an unfit executive and lessen the damage by reasserting Congress’s rightful power in areas such as trade. They are now Trump’s facilitators in his apparent desire to blow up the international world order — the world order America helped created and has always led. In that sense, McConnell, too, is helping, wittingly or not, to make Russia great again. …

As Trump is poised to meet with North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un, he declares he’ll know within a minute whether the meeting will be a success. Here is a man declaring his gullibility and waiting to be snookered with a few smiles, some stomach-turning flattery and many empty promises from a calculating adversary. Trump seems not to know that the first meeting between the U.S. president and the dictator of North Korea is not an amazing achievement for the United States; it’s a huge win for Pyongyang.

In the case of the Singapore summit, we really do see a zero-sum equation. Trump, for fear of failing, seems to have defined “success” down to a photo op, thereby giving a massive victory to Kim, who obtains legitimacy and reduces, if not eliminates, any real risk of military action against his regime. Kim will do what North Korea has done again and again: speak nice words, pull the United States into fruitless discussions and give up nothing of consequence. The empty gesture of formally ending a war that has been over for 65 years achieves nothing for the United States but will burnish Kim’s image.

Trump is now so desperate to show he’s “right” — a master negotiator who breaks every precedent — that it is becoming more and more likely the summit will deliver plenty of glad-handing but no concrete moves toward denuclearization. In that respect, Trump is exactly like every other American president who got pulled into a process whose end result is North Korea’s continuing status as a nuclear power. The main difference is that none of Trump’s predecessors were dim-witted enough to give the ghoulish dictator of North Korea a public-relations triumph. Oh, and they managed not to get into fights with Canada.

🐣 RT @shearm [Michael Shear] The thing is, I was at the @JustinTrudeau news conference, and he went out of his way to try to downplay tensions. He didn’t attack @realDonaldTrump in any way, other than restate Canada would retaliate for tariffs. Not sure what @larry_kudlow means re: “stabbed” US in the back

🐣 RT @JohnJHarwood it was not a “stunt press conference.” Trudeau was very measured.
there was no “bad-faith.” Trudeau’s position at G-7 was exactly the same as his publicly-stated position before G-7. this is just crazy talk.

Politico: Angela Merkel on Trump’s G7 show: It’s ‘depressing’ http://politi.co/2MgCqwb
// ‘We don’t let ourselves be taken advantage of again and again,’ chancellor says.

At the end of a long weekend of rhetorical salvos over the G7 summit’s chaotic ending, German Chancellor Angela Merkel added her voice to the chorus, saying she found Donald Trump’s actions “sobering and a bit depressing,” while calling for more civility in international exchanges.

“The situation isn’t very nice,” Merkel told German public television in a lengthy interview. “I don’t think that ratcheting up the rhetoric is going to improve things.”

While Merkel, who has been frustrated over the past year by Trump’s decision to withdraw from international agreements including the Iran nuclear deal and the Paris climate accord, said she intends to engage the president, she voiced a deepening disappointment over her failure to win him over to her point of view.

“Sometimes I get the impression that the U.S. president believes that only one side wins and the other loses,” Merkel said, adding that she believes in “win-win” situations.

Trump’s tweets triggered a bizarre string of appearances by his surrogates on American television. Top Trump economic adviser Larry Kudlow said Trudeau “stabbed us in the back,” suggesting that the Canadian leader’s criticism of Trump’s trade policies undermined the president before his summit meeting with North Korea.

Peter Navarro, another top counselor, abandoned any semblance of decorum, suggesting “there is a special place in hell” for Trudeau.

The latter comment prompted European Council President Donald Tusk to quip “there is a special place in heaven” for Trudeau for his organization of the G7.

NYT, David Leonhardt: Trump Tries to Destroy the West http://nyti.ms/2l2D6ZW

TheAtlantic, David Frum: Trump Goes to War Against the Democracies http://theatln.tc/2Mg2ojn
// Through the G7 summit, the brittle pretense of unity held together. Then came the tweets.

TheHill: GOP strategist: Trump ‘beclowned himself’ at G7 summit http://bit.ly/2MbTjrQ
// Steve Schmidt

🐣 To @JenniferRubin Cape Breton wants people to move there. Bonus: With climate change, Canada (and Siberia) will be in the temperate zone.

🐣 Her father is the current US Ambassador to Russia. She should know!
// Abby Huntsman, daughter of Jon Huntsman, referred to Trump/Kim meeting as one between “two dictators” ~ God knows why

🐣 I hope the next large export to Canada are people, our people. I’ve advised my kids to consider moving there. Who wants to stay here and live in a fascist state?

WaPo: European leaders are indignant and defiant over Trump’s G-7 statement. But they’re not surprised. http://wapo.st/2LGOyWu //➔ Trump’s surrogates on “the shows” tried to demonize Trudeau but the critiques of Trump were widespread

“It was not a surprise,” said Norbert Röttgen, chair of the foreign affairs committee in Germany’s parliament, the Bundestag. “The president acted and reacted in the childish way he could be expected to.”

The depth of exasperation showed in a Sunday afternoon statement from French President Emmanuel Macron’s office. 

“International cooperation cannot be dictated by fits of anger and throwaway remarks,” the statement said. “Let’s be serious and worthy of our people.”

Following Trump’s tweets, Trudeau’s office issued a statement saying he “said nothing he hasn’t said before — both in public, and in private conversations with the President.”

Röttgen, the Bundestag’s foreign affairs committee chairman, said they have learned to anticipate his outbursts and U-turns, and should respond to them accordingly. He criticized Merkel’s team for releasing the much-discussed photo.

“By portraying him as the naughty boy in the room, he will stick even more to his behavior and it will get worse,” said Röttgen, who is a member of Merkel’s center-right Christian Democratic Union. “We have to ignore his behavior and concentrate on what is left of the substance of the transatlantic relationship.”

Others used the image to mock Trump: “Just tell us what Vladimir has on you,” European Parliament member Guy Verhofstadt imagined Merkel saying. “Maybe we can help.” 

The relationship between the United States and its allies could be frayed even further if the trade war escalates — a scenario that Röttgen said he expects, with the United States in his view likely to move against German carmakers.

Of all European countries, Germany has the most to lose from a trade war with the United States. The United States had a $151 billion trade deficit in goods with the European Union last year. Germany alone, with its high-end automobile and appliance exports, accounted for $64 billion of that.

“President Trump saw that he had a united front before him,” Macron said via Twitter. “To find itself isolated in a concert of nations is contrary to American history.”

… Britain’s Prime Minister Theresa May preferred tact to confrontation, even after Trump allies allegedly told the Telegraph newspaper that the U.S. president had grown weary of May’s “school mistress tone.”

In much of the European press, the tendency was to underscore the historical significance of the rift between the United States and its continental allies.

Newsweek: G-7 Summit Schedule in Full http://bit.ly/2sLgKjI //➔ Trudeau did not wait until after Trump left to “stab him in the back”: Trump left early, gave his own unscheduled (rambling, incoherent, self-serving) press conference and Trudeau gave his scheduled one

TheGuardian: Why Canadian milk infuriates Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2sW150n //➔ pssst: Canada imports 5X more US dairy products as the US does from Canada [chart: US trade deficit by country]
// Trump’s latest trade war target is Canada’s protected dairy industry. But Canadians have no intention of abandoning it – because it works

MotherJones, Kevin Drum: US Trade Policy on Dairy Is Simple: We Basically Allow No Imports at All http://bit.ly/2MdrmzS

“But you and I, we’ve been through that, and this is not our fate
So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late” – Bob Dylan
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1005772565401559041/photo/1
// All Along the Watchtower

⭕ 9 Jun 2018

TheHill: Trump says he will honor Italy’s prime minister at White House ‘shortly’ http://bit.ly/2JGRox1
// because he went along with idea of adding Russia

Politico, Strobe Talbott: Trump Just Blew Up the G7. Now What? http://politi.co/2sVlHFQ
// With his call to invite back Russia and his refusal to sign the final statement, the U.S. president showed his true colors.

… Then there is Putin’s new cold war with the West. A menacing trend, clearly authorized by the Kremlin, has been a rash of assassinations (“wet affairs”) on foreign soil, including what U.S. intelligence officials believe was the murder of a former Putin protégé in Washington, D.C., several blocks from the White House on the eve of an appointment with U.S. law enforcement agents.

The main battlefield is cyberspace, and the weapons are manipulation of social media, publicizing private emails, and new means to falsify electoral outcomes by hacking voting machines. The KGB, Putin’s professional alma mater, had some triumphs against the USSR’s enemies in Cold War I, such as stealing secrets from the Manhattan Project. But sophisticated enterprises like Fancy Bear and Cozy Bear have already scored incredible victories, perhaps putting Trump in the Oval Office. …

CNN: McCain to allies: ‘Americans stand with you, even if our president doesn’t’ http://cnn.it/2sUa3uT

💙💙 NYT, Paul Krugman: Debacle in Quebec http://nyti.ms/2LFyXqa

Still, there has never been a disaster like the G7 meeting that just took place. It could herald the beginning of a trade war, maybe even the collapse of the Western alliance. At the very least it will damage America’s reputation as a reliable ally for decades to come; even if Trump eventually departs the scene in disgrace, the fact that someone like him could come to power in the first place will always be in the back of everyone’s mind.

What went down in Quebec? I’m already seeing headlines to the effect that Trump took a belligerent “America first” position, demanding big concessions from our allies, which would have been bad. But the reality was much worse.

He didn’t put America first; Russia first would be a better description. And he didn’t demand drastic policy changes from our allies; he demanded that they stop doing bad things they aren’t doing. This wasn’t a tough stance on behalf of American interests, it was a declaration of ignorance and policy insanity.

Trump started with a call for readmitting Russia to the group, which makes no sense at all. The truth is that Russia, whose GDP is about the same size as Spain’s and quite a bit smaller than Brazil’s, was always a ringer in what was meant to be a group of major economies. It was brought in for strategic reasons, and kicked out when it invaded Ukraine. There is no possible justification for bringing it back, other than whatever hold Putin has on Trump personally.

Then Trump demanded that the other G7 members remove their “ridiculous and unacceptable” tariffs on U.S. goods – which would be hard for them to do, because their actual tariff rates are very low. The European Union, for example, levies an average tariff of only three percent on US goods. Who says so? The U.S. government’s own guide to exporters.

True, there are some particular sectors where each country imposes special barriers to trade. Yes, Canada imposes high tariffs on certain dairy products. But it’s hard to make the case that these special cases are any worse than, say, the 25 percent tariff the U.S. still imposes on light trucks. The overall picture is that all of the G7 members have very open markets.

So what on earth was Trump even talking about? His trade advisers have repeatedly claimed that value-added taxes, which play an important role in many countries, are a form of unfair trade protection. But this is sheer ignorance: VATs don’t convey any competitive advantage – they’re just a way of implementing a sales tax — which is why they’re legal under the WTO. And the rest of the world isn’t going to change its whole fiscal system because the U.S. president chooses to listen to advisers who don’t understand anything.

Actually, though, Trump might not even have been thinking about VATs. He may just have been ranting. After all, he goes on and on about other vast evils that don’t exist, like a huge wave of violent crime committed by illegal immigrants (who then voted in the millions for Hillary Clinton.)

Was there any strategy behind Trump’s behavior? Well, it was pretty much exactly what he would have done if he really is Putin’s puppet: yelling at friendly nations about sins they aren’t committing won’t bring back American jobs, but it’s exactly what someone who does want to break up the Western alliance would like to see.

Alternatively, maybe he was just acting out because he couldn’t stand having to spend hours with powerful people who will neither flatter him nor bribe him by throwing money at his family businesses – people who, in fact, didn’t try very hard to hide the contempt they feel for the man leading what is still, for the moment, a great power.

Whatever really happened, this was an utter, humiliating debacle. And we all know how Trump responds to humiliation. You really have to wonder what comes next. One thing’s for sure: it won’t be good.

🐣 RT @georgetakei Trump is acting so much like a Russian asset that the Kremlin has decided to start referring to him as Agent Orange.

TheGuardian: Arron Banks ‘met with Russian officials multiple times before Brexit vote’ http://bit.ly/2HzsxWM
↥ ↧
LondonTimes: Exclusive: Emails reveal Russian links of millionaire Brexit backer Arron Banks http://bit.ly2LDDuJC

Arron Banks, the millionaire businessman who helped fund Brexit, had three meetings with the Russian ambassador to Britain — raising explosive questions about attempts by Moscow to influence the referendum result.

Emails by Banks and his sidekick Andy Wigmore, shown to The Sunday Times, reveal an extensive web of links between Banks’s Leave.EU campaign and Russian officials.

They show they made repeated contact with officials to discuss business opportunities and issues of mutual interest throughout the referendum campaign and its aftermath.

In his book on the referendum, The Bad Boys of Brexit, and in another public statement, Banks claimed to have had only one meeting with Putin’s envoy Alexander Yakovenko, in September 2015.

But today The Sunday Times can reveal that the pair also had lunch with the ambassador just three days after they and Nigel Farage visited US president Donald Trump in New York in November 2016.

Last night Banks admitted that he handed over telephone numbers for members of Trump’s transition team to Russian officials.

Trump, whose campaign staff are under investigation by a special prosecutor probing whether they colluded with Moscow, stunned the world yesterday by calling for Russia to be readmitted to the G7 group of nations.

The 40,000 emails were obtained by the journalist Isabel Oakeshott, Banks’s ghostwriter on The Bad Boys of Brexit. She is now writing a book with Lord Ashcroft, a former treasurer of the Conservative Party, that covers Russian “hybrid warfare” techniques to influence western politics.

⭕ 8 Jun 2018

🐣 RT @SteveSchmidtSES It does if you consider the unthinkable. If he behaves like a Russian asset maybe it’s because he is one.
⋙ 🐣 RT @JoeBiden Putin’s Russia invaded its neighbors, violated our sovereignty by undermining elections, and attacks dissidents abroad. Yet our President wants to reward him with a seat at the table while alienating our closest democratic allies. It makes no sense.

TPM, Josh Marshall: A Crooked Pol Resurfaces as Key Player in Michael Cohen ‘Peace Plan’ Deal http://bit.ly/2Jv8db2

The “peace plan” Michael Cohen, Felix Sater and a pro-Russian Ukrainian parliamentarian Andrii Artemenko met to discuss at the Loews Regency Hotel in Manhattan in January 2017 has always been part of a much larger story. … [A] big one emerged yesterday. So I want to take a moment to explain how the different pieces fit together. …

… A decade ago, [Curt]Weldon’s corruption scandal was tied to what the DOJ and specifically the FBI believed were intensified Russian efforts to buy influence and collect information in Washington. …

The new information suggests Weldon’s stayed in the same line of work in retirement. Yesterday The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand reported that Weldon apparently played a role in the aforementioned “peace plan.” He has apparently known Artemenko for a decade and they seem to have been working on projects together over the course of 2016 and 2017. Remember that, according to Artemenko, he and Cohen starting discussing his “peace plan” early in 2016. There’s a lot in Bertrand’s piece. We should remember too that the “peace plan” was likely at least in part a cover for a sealed “dossier” of dirt on Ukrainian political leaders which Artemenko gave Cohen to hand deliver to the White House. But this is the crucial paragraph.

Weldon, who has known Artemenko, the Ukrainian politician, for more than a decade, was furious that The New York Times had learned about the meeting, according to a person who spoke with him at a separate gathering last March, two weeks after the story in the Times had been published. “We were so close,” Weldon complained, this source recalled. Then Weldon dropped a bombshell: “He said [he and Artemenko] had already secured funding for the promotion of the plan from Viktor Vekselberg’s fund in New York City.”

Vekselberg is a top Russian oligarch who is close to Putin and often seen as a sort of informal ambassador to the US, in the sense of someone who has tried to build influence and financial ties in this country. He is also the man whose US investment affiliate, Columbus Nova, signed Michael Cohen to a $1 million consultant contract days before the “peace plan” meeting in New York. Indeed, Vekselberg met with Cohen at least three times during this period — on January 7th, 2017, January 19th and 20th and then again in March 2017…. [Timeline:] here.

It’s not totally clear what funding the promotion of the plan would mean or how Vekselberg’s money would be involved. Perhaps it’s as simple as putting Cohen on retainer. But it probably went further than that. Weldon refused any interviews with Bertrand but told her in a LinkedIn message: “I have never met Viktor Vekselburg [sic] and am not aware of any peace plan that he would have funded.”

It’s clear we still only know the outlines of what happened here. Perhaps it’s better to say we have nine pieces of a 40-piece puzzle set out in place on the table. Earlier reporting indicated that Cohen’s brother’s father-in-law, a Ukrainian immigrant named Alex Oronov, had put the meeting together. Oronov was another emigre purchaser of Trump properties and the guy who got Cohen involved in businesses in Ukraine. … Was Oronov’s involvement a cover story? Were they both involved? I strongly suspect the latter. …

NYT/AP: Trump Attends G-7 with Defiance, Proposing to Readmit Russia http://nyti.ms/2JFkltb

President Trump aggressively confronted America’s closest allies on Friday as they convened their annual summit meeting, calling for Russia’s readmission to the Group of 7 nations and refusing to ease his assault on the global trading system.

The response from the leaders of Europe, Canada and Japan was swift and angry. Most rejected the return of Russia [except Italy], which was ousted from the diplomatic forum after President Vladimir V. Putin violated international norms by seizing parts of Ukraine in 2014. And they assailed Mr. Trump’s embrace of protectionism as illegal and insulting.

At a meeting devised for cooperation and comity, public smiles and descriptions of “cordial” conversations were undercut by what officials said was a struggle to agree on a common direction. The likelihood grew that the United States could be frozen out of a joint statement of principles by the countries that have so often followed America’s lead.

“The rules-based international order is being challenged, quite surprisingly, not by the usual suspects, but by its main architect and guarantor, the U.S.,” Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, said as the summit meeting got underway in Quebec’s picturesque resort town of La Malbaie on the banks of the St. Lawrence River.

The American side objected to including the phrase “rules-based international order” …

The Kremlin spokesman, Dmitri S. Peskov, speaking with Russian journalists accompanying Mr. Putin on a trip to China, expressed indifference to the idea of Russia being readmitted to the Group of 7. “We are putting emphasis on different formats,” Mr. Peskov said.

Mr. Putin was visiting Beijing ahead of a weekend meeting in the Chinese port city of Qingdao of leaders of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a group that includes China, Russia and Central Asian states that was set up by Beijing in 2001 as an alternative to American-dominated groups like the Group of 8.

Reuters: G7 to cooperate against malign interference in elections: draft http://reut.rs/2sRQT93 //➔ (they sure know how to pull his chain)
https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1005287956658249728/photo/1

The Group of Seven leaders are to agree on Friday to share information between themselves and work with internet service providers and social media companies to thwart foreign meddling in elections in their countries, a draft summit commitment said.

The draft, seen by Reuters, also says the G7 – the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, Italy, Germany and France – agreed to ensure high transparency of funding for political parties and all political advertising, especially during election campaigns.

The draft appeared to be a thinly veiled reference to allegations by the United States and the governments of some European Union countries that Russia interfered in their elections. Moscow has denied the allegations.

“Foreign actors seek to undermine our democratic societies and institutions, our electoral processes, our sovereignty and our security,” the G7 leaders said in the draft.

🐣 RT @tribelaw For invading Ukraine, annexing Crimea, attacking our democracy to elect Trump, and murdering Brits, Putin gets — of all things — Trump’s help ruining the Western Alliance and reversing Russia’s expulsion from the G-8. Treachery seems too weak a word for Trump’s conduct.

💙💙 TheNewYorker, Susan Glasser: Under Trump, “America First” Really Is Turning Out to Be America Alone http://bit.ly/2Ly3y8W
// From trade to the Iran deal to NAFTA, the President has created the highest level of tension between the U.S. and its allies in decades.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: Trump Is Fulfilling Russia’s Dream of Splitting the Western Alliance http://nym.ag/2LzC8PP

CNBC, John Harwood: Trump is helping Putin with a key goal when he spurns US allies http://cnb.cx/2MaqvA9

Politico: Trump clashes with friends while flirting with foes http://politi.co/2y5MYvp
// After tense exchanges with allies before the G-7, the president looks forward to meeting the leaders of North Korea and Russia.

🐣 RT @MalcolmNance Only counterintelligence explains Trumps slavishness. He a witting asset of the Kremlin. Since the Nobu Resturant meeting with the Russian Oligarchs in November 2013 he has been convinced Russian is his greatest supporter. He won’t let them down. #HailHydra

JohnMcCain: Statement on Re-Admitting Russia to G-7 http://bit.ly/2xVcpzH

Washington, D.C. ­– U.S. Senator John McCain (R-AZ), Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, released the following statement today on President Trump’s suggestion that Russia be readmitted to the Group of Seven (G-7) nations:

“Vladimir Putin chose to make Russia unworthy of membership in the G-8 by invading Ukraine and annexing Crimea. Nothing he has done since then has changed that most obvious fact. Every day, Russian-led separatist forces are killing Ukrainians in the Donbass. Every day, Putin’s forces are helping the Assad regime slaughter the Syrian people. And every day, through assassinations, cyber-attacks, and malign influence, Russia is assaulting democratic institutions all over the world. 

“The President has inexplicably shown our adversaries the deference and esteem that should be reserved for our closest allies. Those nations that share our values and have sacrificed alongside us for decades are being treated with contempt. This is the antithesis of so-called ‘principled realism’ and a sure path to diminishing America’s leadership in the world.”

Background: Senator McCain was one of the first lawmakers to call for Russia’s ejection from the G-8 following its atrocities against civilians in Chechnya. He introduced legislation in 2003 urging the president to suspend Russia’s membership until the Russian government ended its assault on democratic principles and the rule of law.

🐣 RT @SenJeffMerkley Ok, really: what does Putin have on @realDonaldTrump? Russia has attacked our election, invaded Ukraine, slaughtered innocent Syrians, and yet Trump does Russia’s bidding while alienating our allies who stand with us. Which country is the American President working for?

WaPo: Trump calls for Russia to be reinstated to G-7, threatens allies on trade http://wapo.st/2y2icDE

NYT, Susan Rice: How Trump Helps Putin http://nyti.ms/2xVcG5r

NYT: Mueller Adds Obstruction Charge on Manafort and Indicts His Right-Hand Man http://nyti.ms/2xSvsdW
// Konstantin Kilimnik

NYT: Trump Attends G-7 with Defiance, Proposing to Readmit Russia http://nyti.ms/2y2eg5Q

🐣 RT @tedlieu Dear @realDonaldTrump: Even if we ignored Russia’s bad behavior, it doesn’t deserve to be in the G-7 because it’s not even a top ten economy. Both Brazil & India have far larger economies.
↥ ↧
WaPo: Trump calls for readmitting Russia to G-7 four years after it was expelled for its role in Crimean crisis https://wapo.st/2JlVED2 

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Republicans deny evidence Russia meddled while Trump invites Putin to rejoin G-7 http://wapo.st/2M9E3Mf

💙💙 DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: President Trump Is What Happens After Republicans Spend Decades Rebranding Knowledge as Elitism and Ignorance as Bliss http://thebea.st/2xRO9yo

💙💙 CNN, Chris Cillizza: Donald Trump’s 26 most astonishing comments on his way to the G7 summit http://cnn.it/2sGhre3

🐣 RT @GovHowardDean Please hire someone who knows something about foreign policy and trade policy and listen to them.
⋙ 🐣 RT @realDT Please tell Prime Minister Trudeau and President Macron that they are charging the U.S. massive tariffs and create non-monetary barriers. The EU trade surplus with the U.S. is $151 Billion, and Canada keeps our farmers and others out. Look forward to seeing them tomorrow.

RawStory: Here are the 14 most bonkers moments from Trump’s impromptu press conference http://bit.ly/2sHHdi2

Wikipedia: “The Group of Seven or G7 is a group consisting of Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These countries [are] seven of the largest advanced economies in the world.” Aside from Russia having been kicked out, it remains “a regional power” (Obama) https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1005096024237662208/photo/1
// Wikipedia: http://bit.ly/2LyZuVW

💙💙 Dkos: Trump blows up trade and treaties with closest U.S. Allies, coddles China, Russia, N.Korea – MAGA!! http://bit.ly/2HxMM7q
// 6/3/2018

As both Trudeau and the EU have correctly stated, these unilateral Trumptard tariffs are a violation of our WTO agreements, and they’re taking all reasonable measures under the accord (not breaking it as we are doing).  We’ve been a signatory since 1994, when the WTO replaced GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) to which we belonged since 1948 as a founding member.  So Trump basically just blew up 70 years of bipartisan U.S. economic and security policy.

… Veselnitskaya’s primary job for the Putin regime was as a lobbyist against the Magnitsky Act.  Both she and Trump swear up and down they never discussed it or any anti-HRC intelligence either, though Reuters reported otherwise.  And hey presto:  On Sept. 8, 2017, Trump issued a memorandum delegating authority to alter financial sanctions to the Secretary of the Treasury, which he just exercised.  Another astounding coincidence.

In July 2017, Bill Browder testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee that Putin “is the biggest oligarch in Russia and the richest man in the world” who built his fortune by fleecing his oligarchs for 50% of their profits:

“I estimate that he has accumulated $200 billion of ill-gotten gains from these types of operations over his 17 years in power. He keeps his money in the West and all of his money in the West is potentially exposed to asset freezes and confiscation. Therefore, he has a significant and very personal interest in finding a way to get rid of the Magnitsky sanctions.”

Blowing the Oslo Accords sky-high by moving our Embassy to Jerusalem, and walking out of the Iran Deal or JCPA, has made the Middle East far more dangerous, to the fury of our friends and partners.  And walking away from the Paris Accords certainly didn’t help our trans-Atlantic or trans-Pacific alliances.  Contrast that with Trump’s relatively generous recent treatment of N. Korea.  Look at his admiration for Duterte, Erdogan, Putin, Jinping, and Kim — it’s quite obvious that on a personal, visceral level, Trump likes dictators and gets along with them better than democratic leaders like Trudeau, Merkel or Macron.  He’s ‘joked’ more than once he’d like to be President for Life like that first bunch, not funny

TheHill: Trump calls for Russia to be reinstated into G7 http://bit.ly/2xRYzOv //➔ (I swear there must be a pee tape)

🐣 RT @GovHowardDean This is truly unbelievable. This man is unbalanced.
⇈ ⇊
⋙ 🐣 RT @AP BREAKING: Trump calls for Russia, ousted from group of leading industrial nations after annexing Crimea, to be reinstated.

🐣 RT @RichardHaass Much of pres trump’s & world’s focus on Singapore, but the more significant summit may be in Quebec. NK constitutes a significant but narrow challenge, but the rupture in transatlantic ties is structural, constituting a systemic challenge to what has been a US-led world order.

⭕ 7 Jun 2018

NYT: With Mueller Closing In, Manafort’s Allies Abandon Him http://nyti.ms/2LxG5o9

NYT, Charlie Savage: How The Times Decides When to Publish Leaked News http://nyti.ms/
// In an effort to shed more light on how we work, The Times is running a series of short posts explaining some of our journalistic practices.

NYT Editorial: The Cult of Trump http://nyti.ms/2HvwdZE

🐣 RT @mkraju Schiff writes to Nunes and asks him to share witness transcripts to Mueller’s team, suggesting that “certain witnesses” may have lied to the House committee and may have to face perjury charges https://twitter.com/mkraju/status/1004849412303130624/photo/1

WaPo: Trump’s tariffs teach Europe a lesson, Putin says  http://wapo.st/2xTr3HE

TheNewYorker, Miranda Carter: What Happens When a Bad-Tempered, Distractible Doofus Runs an Empire? http://bit.ly/2xT3GOf
// Kaiser Wilhelm II

🐣 RT @brhodes For anyone who asks why Putin helped Trump get elected, take a look at this G-7 Summit.

🐣 RT @sbg1 You know all those warnings about the international order melting down? it’s pretty much happening folks… POTUS vs the entire rest of the G-7 in a Twitter feud hours before summit. To repeat: this is NOT normal

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Trump’s pardons are not only intended desensitize the electorate to frequent interventions on behalf of his political allies, but also to make a mockery of the federal justice system, to suggest that law enforcement and the courts are incapable and illegitimate to begin with.

🐣 RT @Evan_McMullin Authoritarians work to create a purely transactional condition in which there is no virtue and no common good, only parochial interests to satisfy with state power in exchange for the support of those who benefit. Frustrated single issue voters and groups are the most vulnerable.

FoxNews: DOJ watchdog sets date for release of long-awaited review of Hillary Clinton probe http://fxn.ws/2Jy6OUv
// scheduled for 6/14/2018 ➔ 2 days after North Korea summit

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Senate Investigators May Have Found a Missing Piece in the Russia Probe http://theatln.tc/2sQPiAt
// An ex-congressman has alleged ties to the Trump campaign—as well as to powerful figures in Russia and Ukraine. Finding out what he knows is crucial, a top Democrat in the Senate says.

🔆 This❗️⋙ TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: Senate Investigators May Have Found a Missing Piece in the Russia Probe http://theatln.tc/2sQPiAt //➔ Awesome article; Pulitzer-worthy ‼️ https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1005025123144011776/photo/1
// 6/7/2018; An ex-congressman has alleged ties to the Trump campaign—as well as to powerful figures in Russia and Ukraine. Finding out what he knows is crucial, a top Democrat in the Senate says.

Take-always:

● Bertrand’s source ties the $500K that Cohen got from Columbus Renova directly to Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg, who was present at Trump’s Inauguration

● The money was arranged by GOP ex-congressman Curt Weldon and a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament named Andrii Artemenko

● The money went to Cohen to ‘grease the skids’ in the promotion of a “peace plan” for Ukraine that Artemenko was pushing. The money was described as being “funding for the promotion of the plan”

● The peace plan (“approved by Putin”) “involved lifting sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia’s retreat from eastern Ukraine.” [ More on this at the end ]

● Cohen met with Artemenko before the Inauguration [ a violation of the Hatch act ]

● Cohen said he would deliver it to then-National-Security adviser Michael Flynn. It’s not clear if it was successfully delivered.

● Weldon “was furious” when the story of the plan hit the NYT. Bertrand’s source quotes him: “He started saying, ‘Putin is not that bad. The U.S. is much worse in many ways.’ He was very cynical.”

● Bertrand points out a number of lies that have been told by various people, at least according to what has appeared in the press.

So, what was the money for actually? To set up a meeting? Seems a bit steep. And why would an ex-US congressman and ex-Ukrainian congressman go to a Russian oligarch for it?

The elephant-in-the-room, though, is: What was the “peace plan” – “lifting sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia’s retreat from eastern Ukraine”? Would that mean Putin would get to keep the Crimean peninsula? If he were to cede both Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, that is all NATO currently asks. It’s not clear. Did it involve the language change in the GOP platform regarding arming Ukraine? Why didn’t they just wait until after the election and go through normal channels?

Notes:

… Curt Weldon, a Republican and former Pennsylvania congressman, lost his re-election campaign more than a decade ago following an FBI probe into his ties to two Russian companies. …

… Members of Congress believe, for example, that Weldon may lead to answers about why the Trump administration sought to lift sanctions on Russia in the aftermath of the 2016 election despite a public statement by intelligence agencies that the Kremlin tried to help Trump win. Weldon may also have information about the role a Russian oligarch [Vekselberg] may have played in trying to influence the Trump administration….

… Mueller has been investigating, for example, whether Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman, tried to use his position to repay old debts to a Russian oligarch [Deripaska?], and whether Ivanka Trump and her husband, Jared Kushner, have influenced Trump’s foreign-policy decisions based on their business interests. …

… [Weldon’s] connection to [Michael] Cohen may lie in a mutual acquaintance who has since testified before Mueller’s grand jury: a former member of the Ukrainian Parliament named Andrii Artemenko.

In January 2017, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, Artemenko met with Cohen at a New York City hotel to discuss bringing peace to Russia and Ukraine. Also present was Felix Sater, a friend of Cohen’s and a former business partner of Trump’s. All three men confirmed to me that this meeting took place. When Artemenko pitched the peace plan, which involved lifting sanctions on Russia in exchange for Russia’s retreat from eastern Ukraine. Cohen said he would deliver it to then–National-Security adviser Michael Flynn, according to The New York Times. Artemenko told the newspaper that he had received encouragement for his peace plan from top aides to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Artemenko also told me that he had gotten “confirmation” that the peace plan had been left on Flynn’s desk. But Cohen walked back his story after the meeting was exposed by the Times, insisting that he had thrown the plan in the garbage.

Weldon, who has known Artemenko, the Ukrainian politician, for more than a decade, was furious that The New York Times had learned about the meeting…. “We were so close,” Weldon complained, this source recalled. Then Weldon dropped a bombshell: “He said [he (Weldon) and Artemenko] had already secured funding for the promotion of the plan from Viktor Vekselberg’s fund in New York City.” [ ⋙ Ties Cohen’s “‘Stormy’ slush fund” directly to Vekselberg ]

Vekselberg, a Russian oligarch who attended Trump’s inauguration, was questioned by Mueller’s team late last year, according to The New York Times. The peace plan would have benefited Vekselberg: He has been doing business in the United States since at least 1990, when he co-founded the conglomerate Renova Group as a joint U.S.–Russian venture. …

The New York City fund Weldon was allegedly referring to was Columbus Nova, the lone U.S. investment arm of Renova, according to the source who spoke to Weldon in March. Months later, given recent developments in the Russia Probe, the detail about Columbus Nova is shocking. When this source relayed the conversation with Weldon to me earlier this year, it had not yet been reported that Columbus Nova gave more than $500,000 to Cohen’s LLC, Essential Consultants, over a seven-month period in 2017. Weldon’s alleged reference to Columbus Nova, and his comment about Vekselberg’s role in funding the plan’s promotion, renews questions about what that $500,000 was actually for.

The New York Times has reported that Cohen and Vekselberg met 11 days before Trump’s inauguration, and discussed U.S.–Russia relations. Columbus Nova acknowledged in a statement that it hired Cohen “after the inauguration” for consulting work, but insisted that Vekselberg had nothing to do with it. “Columbus Nova itself is not now, and has never been, owned by any foreign entity or person including Viktor Vekselberg or the Renova Group,”@ the statement read. Columbus Nova did not mention in the statement that its president, Andrew Intrater, is Vekselberg’s cousin. The company did acknowledge it had hired Cohen as a “business consultant.”

[ ⋙ @So, untrue! They’re trying to cover 1) that they were engaging w Cohen before the Inauguration and 2) that the source of the money was Russian ]

According to the BBC, Cohen has in the past leveraged his relationship with the president to land a lucrative deal with a foreign entity. The outlet reported last month that Ukraine paid Cohen at least $400,000 to arrange a meeting between Trump and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in June 2017. (Poroshenko and Cohen have both denied that money was exchanged.) [ ⋙ So Cohen gets paid for arranging meetings? Talk about pay-for-play! ]

Neither Cohen nor his attorney responded to multiple requests for comment regarding the payments Cohen’s company received from Columbus Nova in 2017. They also ignored repeated questions about whether the money was connected to the proposed Russia-Ukraine peace plan. Weldon told me in a LinkedIn message: “I have never met Viktor Vekselburg [sic] and am not aware of any peace plan that he would have funded.” [ ⋙ First part may be true; if her source is right, second part is untrue] He then made a reference to his work with Ukraine’s Rada, or parliament, during his time in office. “As one of the founders of the Rada/Congress Relationship during my 29 years in Congress, I spent much time on US/Ukraine relations and tried repeatedly to strengthen the US/Ukraine relationship.”

Artemenko, the Ukrainian, told me that he and Weldon have known each other for more than 10 years, but tried to minimize the significance of their appearance together at an event, in February 2016, about “how Americans can promote peace and stability in Ukraine.” Last year, Weldon asked his colleague Tommy Allen, the founder of Allen Tactical Security Consultants, to vet Artemenko’s plan, Allen told me. “We were at a meeting in Washington, and Artemenko walked in because he was meeting with Curt [Weldon],” Allen said. “We tried to warn him off of Artemenko, because you never know who the oligarchs are behind these guys, and the players behind the players tend to stay pretty static.” Allen said he did “not recall” Weldon ever asking anyone for money. “The individuals I know of who were providing funding were all U.S. entities.” [ ⋙ Her source says Weldon and Artemenko arranged funding from Russian oligarch Vekselburg ]

Fast forward to another meeting in Washington, the one in March 2017, where Weldon told my source about Vekselberg’s role in the peace plan. Only four or five people were in the room, and the gathering “had nothing do with politics—it only had to do with Curt [Weldon]’s businesses,” this source said. Still, Weldon “couldn’t help himself” when the topic of Russia came up. “He started saying, ‘Putin is not that bad. The U.S. is much worse in many ways.’ He was very cynical.” That’s when he started complaining about the peace plan’s demise, this source said.

Felix Sater, who says he initiated the conversation between Artemenko and Cohen about the peace plan told me he didn’t remember Vekselberg’s name coming up when they gathered in New York. He also said that, as far as he knew, Columbus Nova hadn’t been involved. [ ⋙ It gave $500K to Cohen’s LLC ] He noted, however, that Cohen had been looking for new clients around that time. “It seems clear,” Sater said, “that the company was paying for access.”

[ ⋙⋙ And to think we know all of this because of Stormy Daniels! ]

━━━━━━━
⋙ What doesn’t make sense is that the “peace plan” would involve Russia pulling out of Ukraine in exchange for lifting of sanctions. That’s always been the deal! Why go outside of normal diplomatic channels? Why would Putin agree to that? My guess ~ the “plan” was more insidious.

NYT: Justice Dept. Seizes Times Reporter’s Email and Phone Records in Leak Investigation http://nyti.ms/2xRYCcP

Shortly before she began working at The Times, F.B.I. agents approached Ms. [Ali] Watkins seeking information about a previous three-year romantic relationship with James A. Wolfe, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s former director of security, saying they were investigating unauthorized leaks.

Mr. Wolfe was not a source of information for Ms. Watkins during their relationship, she said, adding that she told editors at Buzzfeed News and Politico about it and continued to cover national security, including the committee’s work. Ben Smith, the editor of Buzzfeed News, declined to comment. A Politico spokesman, Brad Dayspring, said that the situation was “managed accordingly” after Ms. Watkins disclosed the matter, and that her primary beat was national security and law enforcement, not solely the committee, which other reporters primarily covered.

Politico: Spare the Rod http://politi.co/2sE0r8k //➔ Should Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein recuse himself from the Russia probe? The relevant ethics rules say no.

NYT: Former Fox News Analyst Calls Network a ‘Destructive Propaganda Machine’ http://nyti.ms/2LrY3bN
// Ralph Peters

CNN: Justice Dept. internal report expected to fault former FBI, DOJ officials http://cnn.it/2Jzi82K

Of particular focus are the events leading up to his decision to announce in July 2016, without Justice Department approval, that “no reasonable prosecutor” would recommend charges against Clinton, as well as the decision to tell lawmakers days before the November 2016 election that FBI agents had recovered additional emails possibly relevant to the investigation.

CNN reported that at the time that Comey was advised by the Justice Department that his letter to Congress would run counter to department policy to not comment publicly on investigations close to an election, but he sent it anyway.

One crucial question is the extent to which the inspector general will provide clarity on whether political bias tainted the outcome of the investigation, providing the President with further ammunition to lambaste those in law enforcement or offering a more nuanced assessment. When Horowitz announced the review in January 2017, he said it would address whether “certain underlying investigative decisions were based on improper considerations.”

Another source briefed on the report said it’s expected to criticize former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe for the apparent lag between the time that agents discovered possible Clinton investigation-related emails on Anthony Weiner’s laptop in late September 2016 and when the FBI obtained a search warrant in late October 2016.

As part of his review, Horowitz’s office uncovered a stockpile of private text messages exchanged between two top FBI officials who regularly mocked Trump, dreading that he would win the presidency. Given their roles at the FBI and brief stints on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, the texts have been regularly held up by Trump and his allies as the textbook example of political bias infecting the FBI — which will heighten the ultimate findings reached by the inspector general on that score.

One source familiar with the scope of the report said accusations that FBI agents in New York leaked information about the Clinton investigation to former Mayor Rudy Giuliani have been examined.

⭕ 6 Jun 2018

TIME, Molly Ball & Tessa Berenson: Donald Trump’s Campaign to Discredit the Russia Investigation May Be Working. It’s Also Damaging American Democracy http://ti.me/2M4RH3n
// King Me cover

It’s a dangerous moment for Trump. If he agrees to talk, the notoriously undisciplined President risks making a false statement, which could be a crime like the one that led to Bill Clinton’s impeachment. But if he refuses, Mueller could issue a subpoena, instigating a long, high-profile court battle over whether Trump could be forced to testify. The two legal teams–Mueller’s squad of top prosecutors and Trump’s rotating cast of advocates–are haggling over what an interrogation would look like: how long it would be, what topics would be on the table and whether the session would be recorded. Before the President talks to investigators, Trump’s team wants to see the authorization letter that established Mueller’s authority, according to Trump’s lawyer Rudy Giuliani. They are also demanding the special counsel’s report to be issued within 60 days of any interview.

Dkos: IG report says what everyone knew: Comey screwed up by being too hard on Clinton http://bit.ly/2sNhILF

But what Horowitz has uncovered is what was already clear from the beginning: Comey violated department rules in making public pronouncements about an investigation that did not lead to indictments, and massively mishandled re-opening the investigation in the last days of the campaign. The report does show that Comey was “insubordinate” to his supervisors—the supervisors appointed by President Obama, not by Trump.

Trump may be relieved that the report appears to back up the statement that Rod Rosenstein issued in providing a cover story for Comey’s firing. But the problem with the Rosenstein letter was never that it overstated the case against Comey. It was that it was completely at odds with the reasoning that Trump and Stephen Miller argued in an earlier, angry letter which admitted that Comey was being fired for his failure to interfere in the Russia investigation.

Instead, the complaints are that both Comey and McCabe acted rashly and improperly in forcing the issue into the public a week ahead of the election—an action that polling has indicated was more than sufficient to account for Trump’s margin of victory.

So Donald Trump appears to be about to get his inspector general’s report. And he may even be able to select sentences and partial sentences he can use to attack the integrity of Comey and McCabe. What he’s not getting is any evidence of some grand Clinton conspiracy. And, just as with the Rosenstein letter, Trump is left in the position of attacking Comey, for something Comey did which helped Trump.
↥ ↧
💙💙 ABCNews: DOJ watchdog finds James Comey defied authority as FBI director, sources say http://abcn.ws/2Jk9UMF https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/1004605640671711232/photo/1

The draft of Horowitz’s wide-ranging report specifically called out Comey for ignoring objections from the Justice Department when he disclosed in a letter to Congress just days before the 2016 presidential election that FBI agents had reopened the Clinton probe, according to sources. Clinton has said that letter doomed her campaign.

Before Comey sent the letter to Congress, at least one senior Justice Department official told the FBI that publicizing the bombshell move so close to an election would violate longstanding department policy, and it would ignore federal guidelines prohibiting the disclosure of information related to an ongoing investigation, ABC News was told. …

In an interview in April, ABC News Chief Anchor George Stephanopoulos asked Comey: “If Attorney General Lynch had ordered you not to send the letter, would you have sent it?”

“No,” Comey responded. “I believe in the chain of command.”

But in backing Trump’s ultimate decision to fire Comey last year, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein slammed Comey’s letter to Congress and said it “was wrong” for Comey “to usurp the Attorney General’s authority” when he announced in July 2016 that the FBI would not be filing charges against Clinton or her aides. [iow Rosenstein’s critique is different from Horowitz’s at least from what we know now]

“It is not the function of the Director to make such an announcement,” Rosenstein said in a letter to Trump recommending Comey be fired. “At most, the Director should have said the FBI had completed its investigation and presented its findings to federal prosecutors.” …

By then, Lynch had taken the unusual step of publicly declaring she would accept the FBI’s recommendations in the case, after an impromptu meeting with former president Bill Clinton sparked questions about her impartiality. … Lynch haphazardly announced that she would not recuse herself from the matter but would “fully expect to accept” whatever recommendation the FBI made. …

The inspector general’s office seemed to similarly view Lynch’s announcement as strange, with the draft report criticizing her for how she handled the impromptu tarmac meeting and its aftermath, according to sources familiar with the findings.

Nevertheless, ABC News has confirmed that Horowitz’s draft report went on to criticize senior FBI officials, including Comey and fired FBI deputy director Andrew McCabe, for their response to the late discovery of a laptop containing evidence that may have related to the Clinton investigation. …

It took weeks for the FBI to start analyzing the laptop’s contents, and Horowitz’s draft report criticized senior FBI officials for how long the laptop languished inside the bureau, sources told ABC News.

The Associated Press first reported that the draft report criticized senior FBI officials for their handling of the laptop. …

ABC News was unable to ascertain information about another key part of the inspector general’s report: whether animus toward Trump may have influenced the FBI’s investigation of Hillary Clinton’s emails or the subsequent probe of Russian meddling in the 2016 election. [re: FBI senior agent Peter Strzok and FBI attorney Lisa Page]

[All the above points say Hillary was screwed by the FBI, not Trump.
● Comey going public and calling her “extremely careless” in public
● Delaying analysis of the Abedin/Weiner laptop
● Disclosing to Congress about new emails found on laptop
● No mention (so far) that Strzok/Page texts were material
⇈ ⇊
IG CONCLUSIONS (according to ABCNews):

● Comey should not have gone public w findings of Clinton investigation,
but submitted them internally //➔ iow no “extremely careless” tongue-lashing
● FBI should not have delayed analysis of Abedin/Weiner laptop
● Comey should not have disclosed reopening of case so soon to an election
● (As yet no word about anti-Trump bias, eg Strzok/Page texts)

IN SHORT, Hillary would have won the election.

Note: This is the gist of ABC’s reporting, We have to wait for the full IG report to
see if the reporting is correct.

TheAtlantic: The Astonishing Tale of the Man Mueller Calls ‘Person A’ http://theatln.tc/2kUpoby
// One of the most shocking revelations from the special counsel’s investigation is the suggestion that Paul Manafort’s longtime aide is a pawn of Russian intelligence.

🐣 RT @justinjm1 Fancy Bear campaign approximately began on March 19, 2016 at 4:30 a.m. (12:30 p.m. Moscow) when Podesta got spearfishing email. So Trump is claiming the FBI opened a counterintelligence investigation before Russian election espionage started.
⋙ 🐣 €realDT Wow, Strzok-Page, the incompetent & corrupt FBI lovers, have texts referring to a counter-intelligence operation into the Trump Campaign dating way back to December, 2015. SPYGATE is in full force! Is the Mainstream Media interested yet? Big stuff!

🐣 RT @TheLoyalO IMPORTANT 1/2: Via @guardian, we now know that #CambridgeAnalytica, the nefarious firm closely associated w/Bannon & hired by Trump to run his digital ops, directly funneled cryptocurrency to Russian propaganda front #Wikileaks & personally met w/Assange.
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @The LoyalO 2/2 – If the Guardian report is true, it is direct evidence of financial/strategic cooperation between the Trump campaign & Putin. [ … ] This is collusion – legally known as conspiracy, & it’s blatantly illegal both from a campaign finance as well as a national security/treason angle.
↥ ↧
🔆 This❗️⋙ TheGuardian: Cambridge Analytica director ‘met Assange to discuss US election’ http://bit.ly/2M324o8
// Brittany Kaiser also claims to have channelled payments and donations to WikiLeaks

Buzzfeed: Ivanka Trump Was In Contact With A Russian Who Offered A Trump-Putin Meeting http://bzfd.it/2Ls0xXv
// Her contact, a Russian Olympic weightlifter, said a meeting between Trump and Putin could expedite a Trump tower in Moscow.

In November 2015, Ivanka Trump told Cohen to speak with Klokov, according to the four sources. Cohen had at least one phone conversation with the weightlifter, they said. It is not known what the men discussed over the phone, but they exchanged a string of emails that are now being examined by congressional investigators and federal agents probing Russia’s election meddling.

In one of those emails, Klokov told Cohen that he could arrange a meeting between Donald Trump and Putin to help pave the way for the tower. Later, Cohen sent an email refusing that offer and saying that the Trump Organization already had an agreement in place. He said he was cutting off future communication with Klokov. Copying Ivanka Trump, the Russian responded in a final brusque message, in which he questioned Cohen’s authority to make decisions for the Trump Organization. Frustrated by the exchange, Ivanka Trump questioned Cohen’s refusal to continue communicating with Klokov, according to one of the sources.

TheGuardian: Alexander Nix blames ‘global liberal media’ for Cambridge Analytica collapse – as it happened http://bit.ly/2M7qkpk
// Former CEO of Cambridge Analytica, at centre of Facebook data-mining scandal, appears before Commons fake news inquiry
Cambridge Analytica director ‘met Assange to discuss US election’

NYT: Alexander Nix, Ex-Chief of Cambridge Analytica, Is Defiant in British Hearing http://nyti.ms/2M6nyR8

WaPo: Cambridge Analytica’s Alexander Nix says he’s a victim of Trump haters and liberal media. British lawmakers don’t buy it. http://wapo.st/2sDebjF

WaPo: Paul Ryan splits with Trump, says ‘no evidence’ FBI spied on president’s campaign http://wapo.st/2sBLMus

⭕ 5 Jun 2018

TheObserver, John Schindler: Mueller Finally Starts to Target Trump’s Israel Ties http://bit.ly/2HmkM6I

Few of America’s friends around the world are happy with the Trump administration, given its habit of gleefully trashing our longstanding alliances and declaring trade wars on our allies. Israel stands as a significant exception, however, and it’s no wonder that Mueller and his investigators are trying to get to the bottom of what certain Israelis were doing in 2016 in secret to boost the Trump campaign. That answer may eventually prove just as important as Mueller’s inquiry into the Kremlin and its clandestine attack on our democracy two years ago.

MotherJones: Manafort’s Dumbest Move Yet: Using a Former Russian Intelligence Officer for Witness-Tampering? http://bit.ly/2LpBZ1v
// Trump’s former campaign chief once again allegedly conspired with a Russian.

NPR: What You Need To Know About The Coming Showdown Between Trump And Mueller http://n.pr/2sBmNqY

TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Paul Manafort Loses His Cool http://theatln.tc/2JfxytH
// Special Counsel Robert Mueller says the longtime Trump associate tried to tamper with witnesses while awaiting trial on conspiracy and money-laundering charges.

What Mueller recounted, in a new court document filed Monday night, is how Manafort attempted to contact members of the so-called Hapsburg Group earlier this year. Manafort had created the Hapsburg Group back in 2011. It comprised European politicians he’d recruited to help beautify the image of his authoritarian client Viktor Yanukovych, the president of Ukraine. It was a perilous moment for Yanukovych. He had brought his country to the brink of joining the European Union. But Yanukovych had jeopardized this momentous step by arresting his primary political opponent, Yulia Tymoshenko, in a fit of antidemocratic spite. The Hapsburg Group was sent to lobby against accusations of malfeasance.

There is another suggestive fact that Mueller posits in passing. Manafort’s witness-tampering scheme featured a co-conspirator. Mueller doesn’t name the accomplice, but his identity is not hard to discern from Mueller’s description. Manafort tried to contact his Hapsburg Group collaborators through his old Russo-Ukrainian aide, Konstantin Kilimnik.

By any rational standard, Manafort should have long ago jettisoned his relationship with Kilimnik. On two separate occasions, Mueller has described Kilimnik as having “ties to Russian intelligence.” Put differently, in the middle of a scandal featuring collusion with the Russian state, Manafort seems to have relied on an asset of Russian intelligence to abet a plot to tamper with a witness. That’s hardly the work of a strategic genius.

🐣 RT @realDT The Russian Witch Hunt Hoax continues, all because Jeff Sessions didn’t tell me he was going to recuse himself…I would have quickly picked someone else. So much time and money wasted, so many lives ruined…and Sessions knew better than most that there was No Collusion!
⋙ 🐣 RT @How could he know to recuse himself from an investigation that wouldn’t start until 4 months later? Also, he didn’t know you’d fire Comey. Just sayin’ …

Politico: Law professors torch Trump legal memo http://politi.co/2Jdsbeg
// letter: http://bit.ly/2sx6Ouf

A recently published letter from President Donald Trump’s attorneys claiming that the president could not have obstructed the federal investigation into ties between his campaign and Russia is deeply flawed, 14 prominent law professors and legal scholars said Monday in a pointed and blunt rebuttal sent to top lawyers at the White House.

“The Office of the President is not a get-out-of-jail free card for lawless behavior,” the professors wrote in their letter, obtained by POLITICO. “Indeed, our country’s Founders made it clear in the Declaration of Independence that they did not believe that even a king had such powers; they specifically cited King George’s obstruction of justice as among the ‘injuries and usurpations’ that justified independence. Our Founders would not have created — and did not create — a Constitution that would permit the President to use his powers to violate the laws for corrupt and self-interested reasons.”

Among the better known signers of the rebuttal: Harvard Law Professor Laurence Tribe, former U.S. Attorneys Harry Litman and Joyce Vance and former Obama White House ethics czar Norm Eisen. The letter was coordinated by Project Democracy, a watchdog group.

⭕ 4 Jun 2018

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: His Majesty Czar Donald I claims imperium http://wapo.st/2Jhervb

NYT, Michelle Goldberg: Does the Law Apply to Donald Trump? http://nyti.ms/2LWxrAG

NYT: Mueller Accuses Paul Manafort of Attempted Witness Tampering http://nyti.ms/2sFVHhT

NYT: Trump and His Lawyers Embrace a Vision of Vast Executive Power http://nyti.ms/2M04fJa

Politico: Trump’s Travel Ban Is in Trouble at the Supreme Court http://politi.co/2xH6Q7H
// Justice Kennedy’s ruling in the Masterpiece Cakeshop case suggests the court’s next big decision might go badly for the president.

🐣 RT @JillWineBanks Because Cohen was a fixer, not a real lawyer, only .0578% of his documents are privileged.

Esquire: Trump’s Authoritarian Movement Is Reaching an Inevitable Conclusion http://bit.ly/2LnT6AR
// The president and his allies have declared him above the law, and his power unchecked by other democratic institutions.

🐣 RT @RepSwalwell Go ahead, pardon yourself, and you will hear my voice — with millions of Americans — outside OUR @WhiteHouse. #TrumpRussia

WaPo, Ruth Marcus: Mueller has waited long enough. It’s subpoena time. http://wapo.st/2xJAxoI

WaPo: Secret memo to Mueller actually reveals weakness of Trump’s position http://wapo.st/2Jdo7a0

WaPo, Richard Cohen: A laughable letter from Trump’s lawyers http://wapo.st/2JdG9gb

WaPo, Steve Vladek: Presidents aren’t kings. Someone should tell Trump’s legal team. http://wapo.st/2sw7CiZ

WaPo: Trump says he has ‘absolute right’ to pardon himself of federal crimes but denies any wrongdoing http://wapo.st/2JbAgjw

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: What GOP cowering has gotten us: Talk of self-pardon and absolute power http://wapo.st/2kR5ded

RawStory, Robert Reich: It’s not absurd to imagine Trump igniting a second Civil War — here’s why http://bit.ly/2M0v8Nc

⭕ 3 Jun 2018

CNN: Giuliani to HuffPost: Trump could have ‘shot James Comey’ and not be prosecuted http://cnn.it/2xB4JCi

NYT: President Trump Thinks He Is a King http://nyti.ms/2ssICZJ

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Word salads, contradictions and hints of authoritarian delusion http://wapo.st/2JhffQM

Democrats have been struggling with how to address the “I” word (impeachment) in the campaign. Now they have the most powerful argument imaginable in the first referendum on the president since his election: Republicans support Trump’s claim to absolute power; Democrats do not. Which party should we have control Congress?

Where does this leave us? Trump and his attorneys are prepared to argue that his power is near absolute to shut down investigations into his own conduct and that in any event he could pardon himself. That is not the system we have, but we are heading toward that constitutional face-off — especially if voters return GOP majorities ready to defend Trump’s claims to unfettered power.

Vox, Matt Yglesias: Trump’s legal memo to Robert Mueller is a recipe for tyranny http://bit.ly/2LisyRi
// A clear and present danger to the rule of law

⭕ 2 Jun 2018

Politico: Trump allies gang up on Gowdy http://politi.co/2ssfdz5
// The GOP lawmaker was once a conservative hero. Now he’s under fire on the right for balking at Trump’s ‘spygate’ theory.

ForeignPolicy (2016): 10 Ways to Tell if Your President Is a Dictator http://bit.ly/2xBAsU2
// 11/23/2016, Just because the United States is a democracy now, it doesn’t mean it will stay that way.

NYT, Teddy Wayne: Rules for WITCH HUNT!: The Board Game http://nyti.ms/2Hfyeck

ENDGAME: There are two possible conclusions: 1) You do not convince anyone that this is a WITCH HUNT! and your teammates send your token directly to jail; or 2) You do not convince anyone that this is a WITCH HUNT!, but your teammates, making a cynically calculated political bet, do not send your token directly to jail. In that case, congratulations, you have won WITCH HUNT!, defeating not only the Special Counsel, but the 325 million spectators, whom you thought of as losers all along!

CNN: Trump lawyers say he ‘dictated’ statement on Trump Tower meeting, contradicting past denials http://cnn.it/2Jc6t6q

After the initial statement came out, news outlets reported Trump was involved in preparing the statement. Some reports said he helped draft it, others said he personally “dictated” the words. Trump Jr., meanwhile, told the Senate Judiciary Committee in private testimony in September, released last month, that he didn’t speak to his father about the statement, but that the President “may have commented through Hope Hicks,” the then-White House aide, and that some of those comments might have made it into the statement.

NYMag, Jonathan Chait: The Constitutional Crisis Is Already Underway http://nym.ag/2sqfMcm

For most of Donald Trump’s presidency, the specter of a coming constitutional crisis has loomed over the Russia investigation. The newly leaked memo by Trump’s lawyers, obtained by the New York Times, suggests that such a crisis is not merely a likelihood, but that it has already begun.

The memo proposes several tendentious interpretations of the publicly available facts of Trump’s behavior, along with some legally questionable and amateurish citations of precedent. But the most important passage is its sweeping assertion of presidential authority.

“The President not only has unfettered statutory and Constitutional authority to terminate the FBI Director, he also has Constitutional authority to direct the Justice Department to open or close an investigation, and, of course, the power to pardon any person before, during, or after an investigation and/or conviction,” they write, “Put simply, the Constitution leaves no question that the President has exclusive authority over the ultimate conduct and disposition of all criminal investigations and over those executive branch officials responsible for conducting those investigations.”

Should Trump’s legal case prevail in the courts — and the legality of such broad claims remains largely untested — it would confer upon any president, but immediately Trump, the ability to open charges against anybody the president wants to charge, and prevent investigations of anybody the president wants to protect, beginning with himself. This is l’état, c’est moi rendered as a formal legal case.

Indeed, the conclusion of the memo hints a even more expansive uses for the terrifying powers Trump has claimed. “Every action that the president took was taken with full constitutional authority pursuant to Article II of the United States Constitution,” they write, “As such, these actions cannot constitute obstruction, whether viewed separately or even as a totality.” Article II of the Constitution establishes the Executive Branch, which has numerous other offices, some quite powerful. The Internal Revenue Service lies within Article II. Trump’s lawyers would seem to believe the president can direct the IRS to open or close any tax audit of any figure the president wants to subject to, or protect from, scrutiny.

Trump cannot obstruct justice, according to his official legal stance, because justice is whatever Trump says it is. Before this is over, either Trump’s sweeping claim will survive, or the rule of law will, but not both.

TheHill: Chuck Schumer: Trump lawyers’ argument that he can’t obstruct justice would be valid in a dictatorship http://bit.ly/2HfElxx

💙💙 NYT: Trump’s Lawyers, in Confidential Memo, Argue to Head Off a Historic Subpoena http://nyti.ms/2swIZSc
⋙ 📒 NYT: The Trump Lawyers’ Confidential Memo to Mueller, Explained [ Document ] http://nyti.ms/2kKPgq9
// Annotated

⭕ 1 Jun 2018

ForeignPolicy (6/1/2018): U.S. Close to Imposing Sanctions on European Companies in Russian Pipeline Project http://bit.ly/2up0HrR
// 6/1/2018, The decision would test already fraught relations with Germany, other allies.

WaPo: As Justice Dept. inspector general moves from Clinton email to Russia and Trump, he risks becoming a political weapon http://wapo.st/2sIUnut
// Michael E. Horowitz

McClatchy: New internet accounts are Russian ops designed to sway U.S. voters, experts say http://bit.ly/2ssayx7

⭕ 31 May 2018

NYT: Trump Pardons Dinesh D’Souza, Weighs Leniency for Rod Blagojevich and Martha Stewart http://nyti.ms/2soaOwV

The president was focusing on cases where he argued that the justice system had unfairly treated celebrity figures, all of whom were convicted of crimes that in some ways mirrored charges that have been made or mentioned in connection with allies of Mr. Trump in recent weeks, including campaign finance violations and lying to investigators.

Moreover, all three of the cases were tied to prosecutors who have become nemeses of the president. Mr. D’Souza was prosecuted by Preet Bharara, the United States attorney in New York who was fired by Mr. Trump last year and has been one of his fiercest critics. Ms. Stewart was prosecuted by James B. Comey, the F.B.I. director who was fired by Mr. Trump last year and has engaged in a running war of words ever since.

As for Mr. Blagojevich, he was prosecuted by Patrick J. Fitzgerald, a close friend and colleague of Mr. Comey. Mr. Trump previously pardoned I. Lewis Libby Jr., a top aide to former Vice President Dick Cheney, who was also prosecuted by Mr. Fitzgerald.

Axios: Scoop: Trump repeatedly pressured Sessions on Mueller investigation http://bit.ly/2LbH4dB

🐣 RT @chrislhayes It’s all happening right in front of our eyes, in broad daylight.

⭕ 30 May 2018

🐣 ‼️ ⋙ @realDonaldTrump [11:00p]: “The recusal of Jeff Sessions was an unforced betrayal of the President of the United States.” JOE DIGENOVA, former U.S. Attorney

🐣 ⋙ @realDonaldTrump: The soon to be released book, “The Russia Hoax, The Illicit Scheme To Clear Hillary Clinton And Frame Donald Trump,” written by Gregg Jarrett, looks like a real deal big hit. The Phony Witch Hunt will be opened up for the world to see! Out in 5 weeks.

PolitiFact: Fact-checking Donald Trump’s claims about Democrats on Robert Mueller’s team http://bit.ly/2srPXIb //➔ Half-True

Politico: Michael Cohen’s lawyers accuse Avenatti of ‘reckless and improper’ behavior http://politi.co/2LLAc7L

💙💙 Newsweek, Jeff Stein: ‘There Is No Deep State:’ Former Intelligence Directors Slam Trump’s Conspiracy Theories http://bit.ly/2LLOwxp

NYT: F.B.I. Official Wrote Secret Memo Fearing Trump Got a Cover Story for Comey Firing http://nyti.ms/2LJN3Yh

In the document, whose contents have not been previously reported, Mr. McCabe described a conversation at the Justice Department with the deputy attorney general, Rod J. Rosenstein, in the chaotic days last May after Mr. Comey’s abrupt firing. Mr. Rosenstein played a key role in the dismissal, writing a memo that rebuked Mr. Comey over his handling of an investigation into Hillary Clinton.

But in the meeting at the Justice Department, Mr. Rosenstein added a new detail: He said the president had originally asked him to reference Russia in his memo, the people familiar with the conversation said. Mr. Rosenstein did not elaborate on what Mr. Trump had wanted him to say.

To Mr. McCabe, that seemed like possible evidence that Mr. Comey’s firing was actually related to the F.B.I.’s investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia, and that Mr. Rosenstein helped provide a cover story by writing about the Clinton investigation.

One person who was briefed on Mr. Rosenstein’s conversation with the president said Mr. Trump had simply wanted Mr. Rosenstein to mention that he was not personally under investigation in the Russia inquiry. Mr. Rosenstein said it was unnecessary and did not include such a reference. Mr. Trump ultimately said it himself when announcing the firing. …

In conversations with prosecutors, Mr. Trump’s lawyers have cited Mr. Rosenstein’s involvement in the firing of Mr. Comey as proof that it was not an effort to obstruct justice, according to people familiar with the president’s legal strategy.

That argument has only made Mr. Rosenstein’s position even more peculiar: He oversees an investigation into the president, who points to Mr. Rosenstein’s own actions as evidence that he is innocent. And Mr. Rosenstein could have the final say on whether that argument has merit

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: How Jeff Sessions could bring about Trump’s downfall http://wapo.st/2IWlj4W

If the [NYT] report is accurate, Mueller is looking at a possible obstruction of justice claim based on conduct over a substantial period of time — from Trump’s failed effort to extract a pledge of loyalty from former FBI director James B. Comey, to asking Comey to lay off fired national security adviser Michael Flynn, to Comey’s firing, to Trump holding a threat of imaginary “tapes” over Comey’s head, to drafting on Air Force One a phony explanation of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting. Pushing for Sessions to reverse his recusal, like any other single action, is unlikely to support an obstruction charge. However, the pattern of conduct is powerful evidence of Trump’s attempt to control and defang an investigation.

If Sessions is a central witness in the probe, one can hardly question the appropriateness of Sessions’s recusal. He cannot be both a key witness and the investigation’s supervisor. Ironically, Sessions also is the one Republican whose credibility cannot readily be called into question by Trump’s base. …

The fight over Sessions’s recusal marks another instance in which the White House has reached down into the Justice Department in ways no other administration has done. “Asking Sessions to ‘unrecuse’ himself despite his conflict of interest, in palpable violation of the Department of Justice recusal rules, can only have one purpose: the corrupt obstruction of justice,” says constitutional scholar Laurence Tribe. “The purpose of pressuring Sessions is, of course, to put the work of the Special Counsel under the supervision of someone willing to do Trump’s bidding rather than under the supervision of [Deputy Attorney General Rod J.] Rosenstein, who has been less loyal to Trump than to the truth and the rule of law.”

Trump has crossed the line time and again for the purpose of throwing suspicion on investigators, investigating political enemies, providing highly confidential information to his congressional allies and seeking to protect himself and his associates. Trump, in his attack on the democratic norms that keep our criminal-justice system free from political taint, surely has no peer.

PoliticusUSA: Smoking Gun Found As Michael Avenatti Confirms Prosecutors Have Trump Tapes http://bit.ly/2skg7gZ

It is clear now why Trump was fighting so hard to get access to the Cohen evidence. The tapes with Trump’s voice on them are the evidence that no one can deny. If the tapes are released to the public, depending on what is on them, it could mean the end of the Trump presidency. PoliticusUSA has been reporting for months that Trump and Cohen were on tape. The only difference between this detail and the original report is that Michael Cohen was dumb enough to tape Trump and now prosecutors have evidence of their crimes. While the country has been focused on Special Counsel Robert Mueller and the Russia investigation, it may end up being Stormy Daniels and her lawyer Michael Avenatti who destroy the Trump presidency.

🐣 Sessions was sworn in 2/9/2017. Trump fired Comey on 5/9/2017. How could Sessions have told Trump he would recuse himself? ✛ Sessions was the ONLY Senator to endorse Trump in the primaries.

⭕ 29 May 2018

NYT: Trump Asked Sessions to Retain Control of Russia Inquiry After His Recusal http://nyti.ms/2ISVrXH

By the time Attorney General Jeff Sessions arrived at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort for dinner one Saturday evening in March 2017, he had been receiving the presidential silent treatment for two days. Mr. Sessions had flown to Florida because Mr. Trump was refusing to take his calls about a pressing decision on his travel ban.

When they met, Mr. Trump was ready to talk — but not about the travel ban. His grievance was with Mr. Sessions: The president objected to his decision to recuse himself from the Russia investigation. Mr. Trump, who had told aides that he needed a loyalist overseeing the inquiry, berated Mr. Sessions and told him he should reverse his decision, an unusual and potentially inappropriate request.

Mr. Sessions refused.

The confrontation, which has not been previously reported, is being investigated by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, as are the president’s public and private attacks on Mr. Sessions and efforts to get him to resign. Mr. Trump dwelled on the recusal for months, according to confidants and current and former administration officials who described his behavior toward the attorney general.

The special counsel’s interest demonstrates Mr. Sessions’s overlooked role as a key witness in the investigation into whether Mr. Trump tried to obstruct the inquiry itself. It also suggests that the obstruction investigation is broader than it is widely understood to be — encompassing not only the president’s interactions with and firing of the former F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, but also his relationship with Mr. Sessions.

NYT: Trump Asked Sessions to Retain Control of Russia Inquiry After His Recusal http://nyti.ms/2smsEzJ

WaPo: Giuliani says Trump won’t sit for Mueller interview unless all FBI informant documents can be reviewed http://wapo.st/2JdfdMV

⭕ 28 May 2018

NYT: With ‘Spygate,’ Trump Shows How He Uses Conspiracy Theories to Erode Trust http://nyti.ms/2xjT0b2

🔆 This❗️⋙ 💙💙💙💙 TheObserver, John R Schindler: Here’s How the FBI Investigation Into Russia and Trump Campaign Actually Started http://bit.ly/2ISGN2q
The Observer is a British newspaper published on Sundays. In the same place on the political spectrum as its sister papers The Guardian and The Guardian Weekly, whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. It takes a social liberal or social democratic line on most issues. – Wikipedia

Although it’s now evident that in mid-2016 the FBI used one or more informants to sniff around the Trump campaign, inquiring discreetly about connections to the Kremlin—a major concern for the Bureau when people with documented and troubling ties to Russia and its spy agencies like Carter Page and Michael Flynn appeared in Trump’s orbit—there was nothing untoward or disturbing about this. This is the FBI’s standard operating procedure in counterintelligence cases. Although Trump and his defenders have frequently stated that employing informants was illegal and scandalously inappropriate, that’s just one more Trumpian falsehood.

Senator Marco Rubio, a Republican, was equally blunt in his weekend comments on “Spygate,” explaining in an acid-etched interview that he has seen “no evidence” that the FBI spied on the Trump campaign. Since Rubio sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, which is less plagued by partisanship than its House counterpart, his comments deserve an airing. “What I have seen is evidence that they were investigating individuals with a history of links to Russia that were concerning,” Rubio explained, continuing, “It appears that there was an investigation not of the campaign, but of certain individuals who have a history that we should be suspicious of, that predate the presidential campaign of 2015, 2016. And when individuals like that are in the orbit of a major political campaign in America, the FBI, who is in charge of counterintelligence investigations, should look at people like that.”

Trump’s aggressive propaganda against any public airing of his secret Kremlin ties has taken many mendacious forms since his inauguration. In early 2017, the president claimed that he had been “wiretapped.” When that lie (which, coincidentally or not, was of Russian origin) fell apart, he tried out the accusation that members of his campaign had been improperly “unmasked” in top-secret intelligence documents. That lie likewise withered away under its own dishonesty, so now the White House insists it was “spied” on illegally by the FBI. This noxious myth is slowly dying as well outside the feverish swamps of Trump bitter-enders—as it deserves to.

… For months, the White House, including President Trump himself, insisted that a private dossier complied by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence officer, was the real origin of the inquiry. That is simply not true. Trumpian suspicion has also fallen on a drunken conversation in June 2016 between George Papadopoulos, a campaign adviser, and the Australian ambassador to London. The FBI did indeed get wind of that boozy chat and was troubled by Papadopoulos’ claim that Moscow had dirt on Hillary Clinton from her hacked emails—but that shocking assertion wasn’t actually news to the Bureau. …

… [A] high percentage of counterintelligence inquiries begin with signals intelligence (SIGINT), in other words an electronic intercept (or several) which sparks FBI interest. Wanting to know more, Bureau agents start digging—doing research, thumbing through intelligence reports, asking judges for wiretaps, dispatching informants to get information—in other words, all the things which the FBI actually did in 2016, as it tried to understand why so many Trump associates were so chummy and chatty with Kremlin officials. It bears noting that the most successful counterintelligence operation in American history worked just like this, with bombshell SIGINT reports leading to close collaboration between the National Security Agency and the FBI to slowly, carefully unmask Kremlin spies in the United States. …

Let me put my cards on the table: The counterintelligence investigation of Donald Trump was kicked off by not one, not two, but multiple SIGINT reports which set off alarm bells inside our Intelligence Community. This has been publicly known, in a general way, for some time. A little over a year ago, the Guardian reported, based on multiple intelligence sources, that the lead was taken by Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ – Britain’s NSA), which “first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious ‘interactions’ between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the U.S. as part of a routine exchange of information.”

NSA isn’t just the world’s most powerful intelligence agency, it’s the hub of the whole Western spy system. In late 2015, based on GCHQ reports, the word went out to NSA’s close friends and partners to be on the lookout for any intercepts touching on Russian efforts to infiltrate the Trump campaign. They found plenty. As the Guardian explained, in the first half of 2016, as Trump’s presidential bid gained unexpected steam, Australia, Germany, Estonia, and Poland all had SIGINT hits that indicated a troubling relationship between Trump and Moscow. So, too, did the French and the Dutch—the latter being an especially savvy SIGINT partner of NSA’s.

As the Guardian tactfully phrased the matter, “GCHQ was at no point carrying out a targeted operation against Trump or his team or proactively seeking information. The alleged conversations were picked up by chance as part of routine surveillance of Russian intelligence assets. Over several months, different agencies targeting the same people began to see a pattern of connections that were flagged to intelligence officials in the U.S.” In other words, Western intelligence agencies that were eavesdropping on the Kremlin and its spies—not Trump or any of his retinue—heard numerous conversations about Trump and his secret Russian connections. As I’ve told you previously, senior Kremlin officials got very chatty about Trump beginning in late 2014, on the heels of his infamous Moscow trip, and NSA knew about this.

In truth, NSA understood quite a bit about Trump’s connections to Moscow, and by mid-2016 it had increased its efforts to get to the bottom of the mystery regarding the candidate’s Russian ties. In response to urgent FBI requests for more information, NSA rose to the occasion, and by the time that Donald Trump officially accepted the Republican nomination in mid-July 2016, “We knew we had a Russian agent on our hands,” as a senior NSA official put it to me recently.

The official went on: “We had several reports in late 2015 and early 2016, mostly from Second and Third Party”—that being spy-speak for NSA’s foreign friends—“but by the spring of 2016 we had plenty of our own collection.” These reports, based on multiple intercepts, were tightly compartmented, that is, restricted to a small group of counterintelligence officials, given their obvious sensitivity, but they painted an indelible picture of a compromised GOP nominee. “The Kremlin talked about Trump like he was their boy, and their comments weren’t always flattering.” The NSA official stated that those above-top-secret reports left no doubt that the Russians were subverting our democracy in 2016—and that Team Trump was a witting participant in the Kremlin’s criminal conspiracy: “Trump and his kids knew what they were doing, and who they were doing it with,” the official explained.

This information helps explain why James Clapper, our country’s most experienced spy-boss, recently amplified his previous statement that our president was Vladimir Putin’s “asset” by explaining that he has “no doubt” that Russian spies “swung the election to a Trump win.” This weekend, Clapper stated that he was “absolutely” unaware of the FBI’s use of informants to gain information about the Trump campaign in 2016. Tellingly, Clapper said nothing about top-secret-plus intelligence which might have spurred the Bureau to rustle up some informants in this case—and, like any veteran spook with a half-century in the spy business, Clapper isn’t likely to blab about high-grade SIGINT anytime soon, particularly when it implicates the president in espionage and worse.

⭕ 27 May 2018

NBC, Berlatsky: The Trump effect: New study connects white American intolerance and support for authoritarianism http://nbcnews.to/2L1HqTU
// The research suggests that when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

Political scientists Steven V. Miller of Clemson and Nicholas T. Davis of Texas A&M have released a working paper titled “White Outgroup Intolerance and Declining Support for American Democracy.” Their study finds a correlation between white American’s intolerance, and support for authoritarian rule. In other words, when intolerant white people fear democracy may benefit marginalized people, they abandon their commitment to democracy.

Miller and Davis used information from the World Values Survey, a research project organized by a worldwide network of social scientists which polls individuals in numerous countries on a wide range of beliefs and values. Based on surveys from the United States, the authors found that white people who did not want to have immigrants or people of different races living next door to them were more likely to be supportive of authoritarianism. For instance, people who said they did not want to live next door to immigrants or to people of another race were more supportive of the idea of military rule, or of a strongman-type leader who could ignore legislatures and election results.

The World Values Survey data used is from the period 1995 to 2011 — well before Donald Trump’s 2016 run for president. It suggests, though, that Trump’s bigotry and his authoritarianism are not separate problems, but are intertwined.

Miller and Davis’ paper quotes alt right, neo-fascist leader Richard Spencer, who in a 2013 speech declared: “We need an ethno-state so that our people can ‘come home again’… We must give up the false dreams of equality and democracy.” Ethnic cleansing is impossible as long as marginalized people have enough votes to stop it. But this roadblock disappears if you get rid of democracy. Spencer understands that white rule in the current era essentially requires totalitarianism. That’s the logic of fascism.

Blaming authoritarianism on partisanship suggests that both sides are equally to blame for the erosion of democratic norms. But greater commitment to abortion rights and free healthcare in the Democratic party isn’t a threat to the foundations of democracy. The growing concentration of intolerant white voters in the GOP, on the other hand, has created a party which appears less and less committed to the democratic project. When faced with a choice between bigotry and democracy, too many Americans are embracing the first while abandoning the second.

NYMag: Giuliani Admits ‘Spygate’ Is PR in Anticipation of Impeachment http://nym.ag/2kvqA4A

Politico: Here’s What Russia’s Propaganda Network Wants You to Read http://politi.co/2IPdM3S
// 8/23/2018, How a new system for tracking Kremlin influence operations reveals what Moscow is thinking.

One of the most prevalent themes pushed by RIOT is the promotion of conspiracy theories that muddy the waters regarding any wrongdoing by Russia or its allies, particularly the Syrian regime. This material is significantly promoted over social media, with occasional help from the attributed outlets. Examples over the past year include conspiracy theories seeking to discredit Bana al-Abed, a young girl in Syria who tweeted about the civil war with assistance from her mother, and reports of chemical attacks by the Syria regime, as well as the Seth Rich conspiracy theory, which conveniently exonerates Russian hackers from being the source of the WikiLeaks dump of Democratic National Committee emails during the 2016 election.

⭕ 26 May 2018

WaPo: Trump’s war of attrition against Mueller bears fruit among Republicans http://wapo.st/2GUEwOr

NYT: Trump Versus Law Enforcement: A Confrontation with No Precedent http://nyti.ms/2J90e6E

⭕ 25 May 2018

NBC, Richard Engel: Black Cube: Inside the shadowy Israeli firm accused of trying to undermine the Iran deal http://nbcnews.to/2scYa2U
// An NBC News investigation reveals a business intelligence company with governmental contracts and a special department for politically motivated work.

PoliticusUSA, Dr. Mark Bear: The Hypocrisy And Challenge To White Evangelicals http://bit.ly/2sfDFTc
// religion

NYT: Donald Trump’s Guide to Presidential Etiquette http://nyti.ms/2ISIkSo
// by the Editorial Board; Wow! What a list!

FoxNews: White House wants briefing on Mueller probe info that was shared with lawmakers: report http://fxn.ws/2KWztQ8
// fair reporting, actually

WaPo, Ruth Marcus: No amount of capitulation will ever sate Trump http://wapo.st/2kvSWvX

The line between appeasement and deflection is inevitably blurry. It tends to be written in invisible ink, discernible only in the clarifying light of retrospect, when the damage has already been done.

This tension, and this danger, has been evident in the recent outbreak of open warfare between President Trump and his Justice Department. The president, always itching to yell “Witch Hunt,” has switched to claiming “spy” with wild assertions of improper campaign infiltration and loud demands that this pseudo-scandal be investigated.

The dispute is a subset of the broader dilemma for any political appointee in the age of Trump: Is it possible to serve both this president and the greater good? Is it better to be inside, attempting to mitigate the damage he is capable of causing? Or is that a sucker’s game, one that Trump, uncontainable, will always win, leaving subordinates stained in the process?

The temptation is to advise avoiding signing up altogether or a quick escape at the first sign of trouble. That might be best for the individual reputation but not for the public interest. And so it is with the high-wire act that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein has found himself performing, balancing presidential demands and presidential pique against the imperative of investigative independence and, all the while, teetering on the brink of being fired. …

[T]his is the thing about Trump: No amount of capitulation will suffice. He is interested only in self-preservation, no matter what the cost to the rule of law. That grim reality raises the risk of every deviation from ordinary practice — that it will set a dangerous precedent without achieving more than a temporary reprieve — even if it does not dictate where, exactly, to draw the line.

WaPo: A wolflike creature was stalking livestock in Montana. Authorities have no idea what it is. http://wapo.st/2shlaOp

🐣 Giuliani will demand a classified briefing and Rosenstein will be forced to decide. If he says no, he’s fired. If he says yes, Trump will claim the info “proves” the probe is illegitimate, demand it be closed. When he says no, he will be fired. #GetReady #Resist

🐣 It’s becoming clear that when Giuliani said the Mueller probe could wrap up in a few weeks that he wasn’t talking about it coming to a natural end. #Resist

🔆 This❗️⋙ AP: Giuliani: White House wants briefing on classified info http://bit.ly/2INfqTq //➔ “If the spying was inappropriate, that means we may have an entirely illegitimate investigation,” Giuliani said of Mueller’s probe.

WaPo: President Trump’s fog of ‘scandals’ and outrages about the Mueller investigation http://wapo.st/2Lq6y89

CNBC, John Harwood: Trump calls the special counsel’s probe a ‘witch hunt,’ but his links to Russia go back a long time http://cnb.cx/2ILdGdy

Salon: Roger Stone should be worried about Robert Mueller http://bit.ly/2xbCEBe
// Roger Stone is believed to have asked Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for dirt on Hillary Clinton in 2016

MotherJones: Democratic Senator Demands Investigation Into Whether Trump Jr. Lied to Congress http://bit.ly/2IMfze2
// A bombshell New York Times story appears to contradict testimony from Trump Jr.

TheAtlantic, Natasha Bertrand: The Chilling Effect of Trump’s War on the FBI http://theatln.tc/2ks69Wz
// As the president ramps up his attacks on the law-enforcement and intelligence communities, long-standing damage to key agencies seems inevitable.

WaPo: Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg met with Trump lawyer Michael Cohen days before the inauguration http://wapo.st/2KVlxpy

🐣 Bret Stephens on @msnbc: “When I was young, I grew up in a bipolar world. Now I live in a bipolar presidency.” lol ~ clever …

Vanity Fair, Abigail Tracy: Trump Goes Full Alex Jones as “Spygate” Falls Apart http://bit.ly/2J6lhH2
// Republicans have gone silent after getting a secret briefing on the “informant” in the Trump campaign. Democrats say they were shown “no evidence” for the allegations at all.

Almost four months ago, allies of Donald Trump found themselves consumed by a scandal so mind-boggling, they felt sure it would turn the political world on its head. “Watergate times a thousand,” Sean Hannity warned. “This is 100 times bigger [than what led to the American Revolution],” Sebastian Gorka insisted. “[This is] a component of what looks like a much larger conspiracy involving the #Obama DOJ & FBI & more,” tweeted Iowa Rep. Steve King, clearly incensed. They were referring to a memo compiled by G.O.P. Congressman Devin Nunes, which allegedly revealed abuses of surveillance power by key members of the Justice Department and F.B.I., including James Comey, his former deputy Andrew McCabe, and current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. Yet when the memo itself was revealed to the public, it turned out to be such a hopeless dud that the conspiracy around it dissipated almost immediately.

It seems the cycle may repeat with the president’s newest pet theory, perhaps his most desperate attempt yet to discredit Robert Mueller: that the F.B.I. planted an illegal “spy” within his campaign for political purposes. Despite his feverish claims, which continued into Friday, that #SPYGATE “could be one of the biggest political scandals in history”—“Can anyone even imagine having Spies placed in a competing campaign, by the people and party in absolute power, for the sole purpose of political advantage and gain?” he tweeted Friday morning—a small group of lawmakers who met with F.B.I. and D.O.J. officials to be briefed on their use of an “informant” came away wholly unimpressed.

🐣 I watched 15 minutes of Tucker Carlton last night. The gist: “informant” is just an elitist, politically correct way of saying “spy.” #TrumpRussia

⭕ 24 May 2018

NBC, Michael Conway: Trump ‘Spygate’ meeting followed Nixon’s playbook. But having inside information didn’t help Nixon. http://nbcnews.to/2sbJGAv
// The president should never abuse his power in this way. But it might not do him any good anyway.

Knowing that key targets or subjects of the investigation will no doubt have learned whatever is disclosed to the White House, though, DOJ prosecutors will be vigilant to see if these individuals attempt to modify their previous public or private statements based on what they learned from the leaks. Taking it one step further, if, unexpectedly, the classified information is not publicly leaked, but the subjects of the investigation appear to be aware of the disclosures, that’s a huge problem: Possible obstruction of justice.

WaPo, Greg Sargent: James Clapper’s bombshell: Russia swung the election. What if he’s right? http://wapo.st/2J5cQeM

WaPo: After day of negotiations, Democrats and Republicans will be briefed on secret FBI source who aided Russia probe http://wapo.st/2GM7jVx

⭕ 23 May 2018

CNBC: The Trump-Russia ties hiding in plain sight http://cnb.cx/2JdaBXO
// 5/23/2018 Trump’s in-plain-sight embrace of Russia gets obscured by the Trump news avalanche. But long before running for president, Trump relied on Russian money. Trump also consistently defends Russia and attacks U.S. officials investigating Russia.

Vox: Most Americans don’t realize Robert Mueller’s investigation has uncovered crimes http://bit.ly/2LCISgI
// 17 indictments and five guilty pleas so far.

Politico: Fox hosts amplify Trump’s ‘Spygate’ line http://politi.co/2GS2slD
// An unsubstantiated allegation, tweeted incessantly by the president, has become ‘maybe the greatest scandal in modern political history,’ according to network hosts.

That effect seems to be what Trump and his new attorney, Rudy Giuliani, are hoping for in using all their rhetorical force to drive home the claim — for which they’ve produced no evidence — that the FBI had a “spy” in the Trump campaign. Trump’s and Giuliani’s efforts to link the claim to the Obama administration, as if the alleged informant were planted for political reasons, is also unconfirmed. Finally, FBI agents note that there are proper and legal procedures for the use of informants — as Giuliani, a former U.S. attorney, understands — that are neither new nor scandalous.

“It seems like he’s gone to an entirely new stage of accusations, abetted by his allies at Fox,” said Bill Grueskin, formerly a senior editor at The Wall Street Journal and now a professor at Columbia School of Journalism. “We’ve gone from saying there’s no collusion, i.e. investigators haven’t found any evidence of anything, to actually accusing the deep state of concocting a conspiracy to get the president in trouble.”

At 9 p.m., host Sean Hannity, known to speak frequently with Trump, said, “If we as a country do not get to the bottom of this and expose everything about these deep-state actors spying on an opposition party during a presidential campaign, rigging one candidate’s email investigation, lying repeatedly to FISA court judges, we will lose the country. We will destroy the rule of law. We will shred our constitution completely.”

Lawfare, Bob Bauer: Putting the Responsibility for “Crossing the Line” Where It Belongs: The President and his White House Staff http://bit.ly/2KTenCj

TheAtlantic, David Graham: Collusion Happened http://theatln.tc/2IJdw6m Despite what the president says, the question is answered.

BBC: Trump lawyer ‘paid by Ukraine’ to arrange White House talks http://bbc.in/2s5swEs

NYT: How the Mueller Investigation Could Play Out for Trump http://nyti.ms/2IIxHBm

WaPo: ‘SPYGATE’: Trump steps up attacks on FBI’s probes during campaign http://wapo.st/2x5HYWL

⭕ 22 May 2018

WaPo: Republican lawmakers will review classified information on FBI source Thursday, White House says http://wapo.st/2LjksZH

WaPo: Former intelligence chief’s argument that Putin did indeed sway the 2016 vote http://wapo.st/2IG9L5N
// “And Clapper grew up with the conviction that the very essence of intelligence work is the collection of carefully analyzed “truths,” conveyed in confidence, however unpleasant the conclusions might be for policymakers and politicians.”

WaPo: Trump admitted he attacks press to shield himself from negative coverage, Lesley Stahl says http://wapo.st/2J3eygX

WaPo: A big shoe drops in the Mueller probe, as the Taxi King flips http://wapo.st/2s230kf

NYT: Michael Cohen’s Business Partner Agrees to Cooperate as Part of Plea Deal http://nyti.ms/2kkuMUW

A significant business partner of Michael D. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer, has agreed to cooperate with the government as a potential witness, a development that could be used as leverage to pressure Mr. Cohen to work with the special counsel examining Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

Under the deal reached with the New York attorney general’s office, the partner, Evgeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant who is known as the Taxi King, specifically agreed to assist government prosecutors in state or federal investigations, according to a person briefed on the matter.

⭕ 21 May 2018

Bloomberg: Twitter Bots Helped Trump and Brexit Win, Economic Study Says http://bloom.bg/2IMJPBn

NYT: Republican Leaders Will Be Allowed to See Some Information on Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2s0j2et

NYT Editorial: Trump v. the Department of Justice http://nyti.ms/2kbSPVY

This self-interested assault is doing incalculable damage to the integrity of American law enforcement. It’s up to those people who have devoted their lives to the nation and to the rule of law, like Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein and the F.B.I. director, Christopher Wray — both Republicans and Trump appointees, don’t forget — to stand up to the president and defend these institutions.

One doesn’t have to agree with the particulars of every investigation to see the fundamental difference here: The members of our law enforcement and intelligence communities are trying to protect the country. Donald Trump and his supporters are simply trying to protect Donald Trump.

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: The constitutional crisis is here http://wapo.st/2rZbatO

The informant was not embedded or implanted or otherwise inserted into the campaign. He was asked to contact several campaign figures whose names had already surfaced in the FBI’s counterintelligence probe. It would have been an appalling dereliction of duty not to take a look at Trump advisers with Russia ties, such as Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, when the outlines of a Russian campaign to influence the election were emerging.

Trump claims this is the nation’s “all time biggest political scandal” because, he alleges, Justice Department officials and the FBI used a “spy” to try to “frame” him and his campaign, in an effort to boost his opponent Hillary Clinton’s chance of winning the election. This conspiracy theory has so many holes in it that it’s hard to know where to begin. But let’s start with the glaringly obvious: If the aim was to make Trump lose, why wasn’t all the known information about the Trump campaign’s Russia connections leaked before the election, when it might have had some impact?

The truth appears to be precisely the opposite of what Trump says, which is not uncommon. The record suggests that Justice and the FBI were so uncomfortable investigating a presidential campaign in the weeks and months before an election that they tiptoed around promising lines of inquiry rather than appear to be taking a side. The FBI director at the time was James B. Comey, and while we heard plenty about Clinton’s emails before the vote, we had no idea that such a mature investigation of the Trump campaign was underway.

TIME/Bloomberg: Twitter Bots May Have Boosted Donald Trump’s Votes by 3.23%, Researchers Say http://bit.ly/2rYdst2

⭕ 20 May 2018

WaPo: Justice Department calls for inquiry after Trump demands probe into whether FBI ‘infiltrated or surveilled’ his campaign http://wapo.st/2rV3Pve

Under pressure from President Trump, the Justice Department on Sunday asked its inspector general to assess whether political motivation tainted the FBI investigation into ties between Russia and Trump’s campaign — a remarkable step officials hoped might avert a larger clash between the president and federal law enforcement officials.

Trump, who spent much of Sunday railing against the year-old special counsel probe, tweeted in the afternoon that “I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes — and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Hours later, the Justice Department responded by saying it had asked its inspector general to expand an ongoing review of the applications to monitor a former Trump campaign adviser “to include determining whether there was any impropriety or political motivation in how the FBI conducted its counterintelligence investigation of persons suspected of involvement with the Russian agents who interfered in the 2016 presidential election.”

The department noted that a U.S. attorney would be consulted if evidence of criminal conduct was found.

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein said in a statement.

NYT: Trump Demands Inquiry Into Whether Justice Dept. ‘Infiltrated or Surveilled’ His Campaign http://nyti.ms/2s0niKh

But in ordering up a new inquiry, Mr. Trump went beyond his usual tactics of suggesting wrongdoing and political bias by those investigating him, and crossed over into applying overt presidential pressure on the Justice Department to do his bidding, an extraordinary realm where past presidents have hesitated to tread.

“I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes,” Mr. Trump tweeted on Sunday afternoon, “and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!”

Legal experts said such a presidential intervention had little precedent, and could force a clash between the sitting president and his Justice Department that would be reminiscent of the one surrounding Richard M. Nixon during Watergate, when a string of top officials resigned rather than carry out his order to fire a special prosecutor investigating him.

In response to Mr. Trump’s post, the Justice Department asked its internal watchdog, the Office of the Inspector General, to expand its current inquiry into the surveillance of a former Trump campaign official to include the questions raised by the president.

“If anyone did infiltrate or surveil participants in a presidential campaign for inappropriate purposes, we need to know about it and take appropriate action,” Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general who is overseeing the Russia inquiry, said in a statement.

By handing the question to the inspector general, Mr. Rosenstein appeared to be trying to thread the needle, giving the president what he said he wanted without fully bowing to his demands.

But it was not clear whether that would satisfy Mr. Trump, who in February complained that it was “disgraceful” for the Justice Department to hand over the surveillance investigation to an inspector general who lacks prosecutorial power, saying it would “take forever” and suggesting that he was “an Obama guy.”

WaPo: Michael Cohen payments put spotlight on New York investment firm linked to Russian billionaire http://wapo.st/2wY8pxT

Slate, Daniel Politi: Trump Doubles Down on Unhinged Rant, “Hereby Demands” Probe Into Whether FBI “Infiltrated” Campaign http://slate.me/2x0TW40

With the tweet, Trump was taking to a new level his response to reports that an FBI informant talked to two of his campaign advisers that investigators believe had suspicious contacts with people tried to the Kremlin. And it came shortly after House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes fanned the outrage flames by saying that “if they ran a spy ring or an informant ring and they were paying people within the Trump campaign—if any of that is true, that is an absolute red line.” In an interview on Fox News, Nunes said he and his fellow Republicans have not been able to confirm whether there really was an informant because they haven’t received the appropriate documents from the FBI and Justice Department. But officials warn that turning over the information that Republicans are requesting would pose a serious risk to the source’s life.

The New York Times reported that the FBI used an informant to covertly approach Trump campaign associates that had suspicious contacts with people tied to Russia, and not that it had infiltrated the informant to spy on the campaign. “No evidence has emerged that the informant acted improperly when the F.B.I. asked for help in gathering information on the former campaign advisers, or that agents veered from the F.B.I.’s investigative guidelines and began a politically motivated inquiry, which would be illegal,” notes the Times.

PhillyInquirer, Will Bunch: How the Trump family sold U.S. foreign policy to the highest bidder http://bit.ly/2IVQfBj

Trump stunned his own foreign policy team — including then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Defense Secretary James Mattis — when he tweeted [on 6/6/2017] that Qatar is a sponsor of terrorism and seemingly endorsed an economic and political blockage of the tiny, oil-rich nation organized and led by two powerful neighbors, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, or UAE.

How to make sense of a 180-degree shift in policy that seemed so counter to U.S. interests in the region? A few months later, people who suspect the worst about Trump and his minions learned a possible motive that was almost too cynical to comprehend. Not long before Team Trump switched gears on Qatar, key officials from the emirate had met with Charles Kushner — father of Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared, who’s in charge of Trump’s Middle East portfolio — to discuss a massive Qatar-funded bailout of 666 Fifth Ave., the debt-laden Manhattan skyscraper that was threatening to sink the Kushner family real estate empire. But the Qataris rejected the deal — just weeks before the policy about-face. Whatever actually happened, the appearance was simply awful.

It also seems not to have been the full story. This weekend, the New York Times published a stunning report about a plan floated by a longtime emissary for the Saudis and the UAE in early August 2016, when Trump had just grabbed the GOP nomination but faced an uphill campaign against Hillary Clinton. Donald Trump Jr., aide Stephen Miller and Erik Prince, founder of the notorious mercenary outfit once know as Blackwater, listened intently as the emissary offered Team Trump millions of dollars in assistance, including a covert social-media campaign, to help Trump win that would be run by a former Israeli spy who specializes in psychological warfare, or psywar.

“The emissary, George Nader, told Donald Trump Jr. that the princes who led Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates were eager to help his father win election as president,” the Times reported. Some key elements — exactly who was behind the plan, and what parts, if any, were carried out — remain murky.

But like a lot of Trump scandals, the smoke from any alleged fire was clearly visible. Nader became a Trump ally who met frequently with key players like then-national security adviser (and future felon) Michael Flynn. He also, according to the Times, later made a large payment to the ex-spy Joel Zamel, as much as $2 million. After Trump was elected, Erik Prince attended a then-secret meeting in the Seychelles believed to have been brokered by UAE to cement ties with Vladimir Putin’s Russia. After Trump became president, American foreign policy has been almost unwaveringly consistent in fighting for the foreign policy goals of nations believed to have supported his 2016 election: Russia, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE — most notably with Trump’s rejection of the Iran nuclear deal that is seriously destabilizing the Middle East. These dealings increasingly appear to have benefited the Trumps and Kushners not just politically but financially — even as they are not helpful, and even counterproductive at times, to the American people whom Trump was allegedly elected to represent.

The Times scoop on Trump’s dealings with the Saudis and UAE is the puzzle piece that finally brings the big picture into focus. As Trump’s unlikely 2016 campaign drew closer to the White House, it triggered a mad dash to sell American foreign policy to the highest bidder — and some of the world’s worst autocrats stepped up to the plate. What happened next is arguably tantamount to treason. What is beginning to take shape is the outlines of a scandal that threatens to be worse than Watergate on a massive scale, that would make Richard Nixon’s crimes truly seem like “a third-rate burglary” in comparison.

A shadowy network of computer hackers in Eastern Europe and experts in psywar techniques used illegal methods — including voter suppression aimed at African Americans — to essentially steal a U.S. presidential election decided by a mere 100,000 or so votes in a few key states. Meanwhile, the foreign countries that backed this enterprise and their billionaire allies also found myriad ways to financially support America’s new ruling junta — dangling real estate deals, hiring Trump allies, booking big parties at Trump hotels, giving millions to Trump’s inauguration that no one can now account for — in ways that have built a bonfire out of the Emoluments Clause of the U.S. Constitution.

And here’s the worst part: The sudden trashing of long-standing American policy objectives — like the Iran deal or delaying any move of the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem until a true Israel-Palestinian peace deal — risks war on large scale. People could die in the name of keeping 666 Fifth Ave. and the Trump Organization afloat. Arguably, some already are.

The scope of the Trump-Kushner foreign policy auction is so vast that it would take a whole book to cover, and indeed several have been written. But it helps to break down the outlines of a conspiracy into three simple components. In each of these areas, the accumulating evidence has grown from a whisper to a scream over the last two years. …

It never should have gotten to this point. The political pundits are still busy debating whether Trump impeachment is a good fall political strategy for the Democrats or a losing hand. But things have already moved way beyond that. If we’re at the point where we can tolerate soliciting foreign governments for help in a presidential election, using stolen data, reality-bending psychological warfare and voter suppression of blacks to win, a president and his son-in-law senior adviser profiting from deals while sitting in the White House, slush funds to pay off mistresses and God knows what else, and then making life-or-death decisions based on all of these utterly corrupt things, then the United States is not a country anymore. How much worse does the worst political scandal in American history have to get before the people who actually can do something wake up and do something?

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan Senator McConnell & Speaker Ryan: If Mr. Trump continues along this disastrous path, you will bear major responsibility for the harm done to our democracy. You do a great disservice to our Nation & the Republican Party if you continue to enable Mr. Trump’s self-serving actions.
↥ ↧
💥🐣 RT @realDonaldTrump I hereby demand, and will do so officially tomorrow, that the Department of Justice look into whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for Political Purposes – and if any such demands or requests were made by people within the Obama Administration!

NYT: Mueller Hopes to Wrap Up Obstruction Inquiry Into Trump by Sept. 1, Giuliani Says http://nyti.ms/ 2IyE2Dz

⭕ 19 May 2018

WSJ: Mueller Probe Expands to Israeli Entrepreneur With U.A.E. Ties http://on.wsj.com/2rWM0Ll
// Investigation has sought testimony regarding work of Joel Zamel, founder of several private consulting firms http://on.wsj.com/

NYT: Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election http://nyti.ms/2wYrtfg
↥ ↧
WaPo: Blackwater founder held secret Seychelles meeting to establish Trump-Putin back channel http://wapo.st/2k7Ytbw
// 4/3/2018

NYT: F.B.I. Used Informant to Investigate Russia Ties to Campaign, Not to Spy, as Trump Claims http://nyti.ms/2rTDPAf
// “According to people familiar with Mr. Flynn’s visit to the intelligence seminar, the source was alarmed by the general’s apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in attendance. The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter.”

⭕ 18 May 2018

WaPo: Your cheat sheet to Trump’s push to expose an FBI informant http://wapo.st/2wSWNvJ

⭕ 17 May 2018

WaPo: ‘Bigger than Watergate’: Trump joins push by allies to expose role of an FBI source http://wapo.st/2GxeK2Q

NYT: ‘Bigger Than Watergate’? Both Sides Say Yes, but for Different Reasons http://nyti.ms/2KwDlHq

⭕ 16 May 2018

💙💙 TheAtlantic: The Lingering Mysteries of a Trump-Russia Conspiracy http://theatln.tc/2IsStF4
// A year of dizzying developments have bolstered both Mueller’s critics, who say he’s on a “fishing expedition,” and his defenders, who believe he’s leaving no stone unturned.

NewYorker, Ronan Farrow: Missing Files Motivated the Leak of Michael Cohen’s Financial Records http://bit.ly/2wN0kvQ
⋙ Excerpts under Articles

Politico: Senate intelligence leaders: Russians schemed to help Trump http://politi.co/2GmN68l

It’s a powerful bipartisan endorsement of a conclusion that had been called into question by Republicans on the House Intelligence Committee, who have accused intelligence agencies of failing to employ proper “tradecraft” when they concluded Russia came to support Trump’s candidacy. Instead, it’s the Republicans on the House panel who find themselves isolated in their position in what has become an increasingly antagonistic relationship with the FBI and Justice Department.

The assessment, which U.S. intelligence leaders issued weeks before Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, concluded that Russian leader Vladimir Putin had ordered an “influence campaign” intended ” to undermine public faith in the US democratic process, denigrate Secretary Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency.” It added that the Russians eventually developed “a clear preference” for Trump, and in time “aspired to help President-elect Trump’s election chances when possible by discrediting Secretary Clinton and publicly contrasting her unfavorably to him.”
🐣 RT @SenatorBurr Vice Chairman @MarkWarner and I released the following statements regarding today’s Senate Intelligence Committee closed hearing to complete its review of the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) on “Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections”: https://twitter.com/SenatorBurr/status/996782613611282434/photo/1
⇈ ⇊
🐣 RT @MarkWarner CONFIRMED: After a thorough review, Senate Intel has found no evidence to dispute the intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia, on orders from Putin, carried out an unprecedented election interference effort to help the Trump campaign and hurt the Clinton campaign in 2016.

🐣 RT @krassenstein This week @EdKrassen & I have been concentrating on the “brokerage of 19%” of the sale of Rosneft from the dossier. Today’s Senate release of 1,500 documents and testimony related to the June 9 Trump Tower Meeting, seems to perhaps confirm this deal was discussed! (1)
Link: https://twitter.com/krassenstein/status/996755836352548867

DailyBeast: ‘Kremlin Used’ NRA to Help Trump in 2016, Says Senate Judiciary Committee http://thebea.st/2KumLbb

The Senate Judiciary Committee said Wednesday that the Russian government apparently used the National Rifle Association to help Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016. “The committee has obtained a number of documents that suggest the Kremlin used the National Rifle Association as a means of accessing and assisting Mr. Trump and his campaign,” according to a report on the panel’s preliminary findings on Russia and the presidential campaign. The NRA may have been used to “secretly fund Mr. Trump’s campaign,” the report states. While the report didn’t discuss the documents, it said two Russian nationals—Alexander Torshin and Maria Butina—were “involved in this effort.” Torshin, a member of Russia’s central bank, hosted an NRA delegation in Moscow in 2013. Butina, founder of a pro-gun group in Russia, boasted at a Washington, D.C. party following the election that she was “part of the Trump campaign’s communications with Russia,” The Daily Beast reported last year.

🐣 RT @brianklaas Remember: Trump publicly announced that he would be unveiling new dirt on Hillary Clinton related to Russia *three hours* after Don Jr. confirmed the meeting with the Russians who were offering dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of a “high-level” effort to help Trump win.
⋙ 🐣 RT @MaggieNYT What @DonaldJTrumpJr told committee re whether he spoke to his father re the statement on Russian lawyer meeting: “I chose not to because I didn’t want to bring him into some thing that he had nothing to do with.”

⭕ 15 May 2018

NYT: Tantalizing Testimony From a Top Trump Aide Sets Off a Search for Proof http://nyti.ms/2jXmm5E

⭕ 14 May 2018

Politico: Ukrainian politician behind controversial peace proposal to appear in Mueller probe http://politi.co/2jV1KuI

🐣 RT @HowardDean Finally I get why Nunes is such a toady. It’s not about Trump. He is terrified of his own fate because of his role on the transition team which might well be treasonous and land him in prison.
⋙ 🐣 RT @AshaRangappa_ December 2016. So much going on. The Kushner-Kislyak secret back channel proposal. Flynn’s secret convo with the Russians. That pesky Carter Page FISA which @DevinNunes is *terrified* of (and during which time he was on the transition team). And now this.
↥ ↧
MotherJones, Dan Friedman: Qatari Investor Accused in Bribery Plot Appears With Michael Cohen in Picture Posted by Stormy Daniels’ Lawyer http://bit.ly/
// 5/13/2018, He’s shown meeting with Cohen at Trump Tower shortly after the election.

⭕ 12 May 2018

NYT: Suspicions, Demands and Threats: Devin Nunes vs. the Justice Dept. http://nyti.ms/2jP4ry6

“The goal is not the information,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the top Democrat on the committee. “The goal is the fight. And the ultimate objective is to undermine the Justice Department, undermine Bob Mueller and give the president a pretext to fire people.”

The requests have also sent waves of tension through the department itself. The F.B.I. is generally opposed to giving lawmakers access to any materials related to a continuing investigation. But Rod J. Rosenstein, the deputy attorney general, who is overseeing the Russia investigation, has political considerations to weigh. To completely withhold information could be politically untenable — and potentially put the Mueller investigation at risk — given the support Mr. Nunes enjoys from Mr. Trump.

“If we were to just open our doors to allow Congress to come and rummage through the files, that would be a serious infringement on the separation of powers,” Mr. Rosenstein said at an event this month, amid reports that another House Republican had drafted articles of impeachment against him.

But Mr. Nunes’s handling of his secretive memo, released in early February, has been a source of lasting ill will. The document accused top F.B.I. and Justice Department officials, including Mr. Rosenstein, of abusing their authorities to spy on a former Trump campaign adviser suspected of being an agent of Russia. Law enforcement officials warned that the document was dangerously misleading and pointed out that Mr. Nunes had not read the underlying surveillance applications on which his four-page document was based.

⭕ 11 May 2018

WIRED: If Trump Is Laundering Russian Money, Here’s How It Works http://bit.ly/2G8Gdrr
⋙ See under Entire Articles

NBC: Former Diplomats: Trump Team Sought to Lift Sanctions on Russia http://nbcnews.to/2IcL4tq
// 7/1/2017

WIRED: Robert Mueller Likely Knows How the Trump Russia Investigation Ends http://bit.ly/2Kht41y
// 5/1/2018

⭕ 10 May 2018

Slate, Jed Shugarman: Why Is Mike Pence Calling for an End to the Mueller Probe? http://bit.ly/2x4TlvL
// 5/10/2018, What did Mike Pence know and when did he know it?

🐣 Yogi Berra to @MikePenceVP: It ain’t over til it’s over. #MuellerTime

ChicagoSunTimes/AP (6:44am): Pence to Mueller: ‘Wrap it up’ http://bit.ly/2I4wrw5 (‼️)

⭕ 9 May 2018

WaPo: ‘I’m crushing it’: How Michael Cohen, touting his access to President Trump, convinced companies to pay millions http://wapo.st/2jKzE5l

WaPo: Russia-linked company that hired Michael Cohen registered alt-right websites during election http://wapo.st/2KciLMj

Politico: How Michael Cohen cashed in http://politi.co/2IzVlmC
// ‘It’s a little bit like Lucy hanging out behind her table and charging people five cents for wisdom,’ said Rich Gold, a longtime Democratic lobbyist.

🐣 I worked as a healthcare consultant for 20 years for the world’s premiere group practice (yeah, that one) to put away for my kids what Michael Cohen made in 8 months pretending to be one. Our society is seriously broken. @Morning_Joe @MorningMika @JoeNBC

Slate, Shugerman: How Michael Cohen’s Apparent Russia Payment Might Help Prove Collusion http://slate.me/2KMKrZ9
// We might have a quid. Here’s the possible pro quo.

First, Vekselberg recently increased his share to 26.5 percent in the aluminum firm Rusal. That firm was owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian billionaire whose ties to former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort are under scrutiny by Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Two of Vekselberg’s American partners, meanwhile, donated more than $1 million to Trump’s inaugural committee and Vekselberg also had business ties to Trump’s Commerce Secretary Wilbur L. Ross.

Now, Congress has been legislating tougher sanctions against Putin and Russia over the past year by sweeping, close to unanimous bipartisan majorities. But the Trump administration has been softening or delaying those sanctions at every turn. Last month, the Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control finally implemented Congressional sanctions against Deripaska and Rusal, in addition to other Russians. The Treasury Department cited allegations that Deripaska ordered the murder of a businessman and had links to a Russian organized crime group. But on April 23, the Trump administration announced major delays on implementation, “slow-rolling” the sanctions seemingly to give Rusal time to minimize the damage and to appeal the sanctions. Treasury gave Rusal an extension to next October, and Reuters reported the department would “consider lifting [the sanctions] if United Company Rusal PLC’s major shareholder, Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska, ceded control of the company,” which he soon did. “Given the impact on our partners and allies, we are… extending the maintenance and wind-down period while we consider RUSAL’s petition,” Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said in a statement.

Given the outrageous conduct of Putin and Deripaska, and given the almost unanimous votes in Congress to impose tough sanctions, these accommodations should have been considered stunning. As of Tuesday night, they stink to high heaven.

And the question must be raised: Was there a quid pro quo understanding between Vekselberg and Trump associates in January 2017? It is crucial to remember here what was happening in December 2016 and January 2017 in regards to Russia sanctions. Here’s what I summarized in an earlier Slate piece on Kushner, Qatar, and Russian money: The Steele Dossier alleged that Russians had made a deal with Trump associates for the Russians to sell Rosneft, the massive state energy company, and use the commissions to give Trump associates payments under the radar, in return for lifting or softening sanctions. The Rosneft sale went through in December 2016, a month after the election, coinciding with Jared Kushner, Michael Flynn, and Carter Page’s various alleged communications with Russians. Just eight days before this oil megadeal, Flynn and Kushner met Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower, and Kushner reportedly proposed a secret communication link with the Kremlin through the Russian embassy. Then, a few days after the Rosneft deal, Kushner met Sergey Gorkov, chair of Russia’s government-owned VE Bank (VEB) and Putin’s close confidant.

Analysts have described VEB as Putin’s “private slush fund,” a source of money independent from official Russia budgeting. VEB is under strict U.S. sanctions.

Gorkov reportedly flew to Japan to meet with Putin practically immediately. On Dec. 29, President Obama ordered new Russian sanctions for election hacking and interference—and Flynn reportedly had five calls with Kislyak. We later learned that they discussed Russian sanctions after Flynn pled guilty to lying about this fact to federal investigators. Trump tweeted about Putin the next day, calling him “very smart” for not responding to Obama’s sanctions before Trump has had a chance to transition into office.

We’ve now learned, in the very next month after the Kushner/Flynn backchannel contacts with Russia, the Vekselberg-connected payments to Cohen began. And they occurred, inexplicably enough, after the Steele Dossier was published. Again, this is all clearly now a subject of Mueller’s probe. As the New York Times first reported last week, Mueller’s agents questioned Vekselberg when he flew into New York earlier this year. CNN reported on Tuesday that they asked him about these particular payments. What might be the plausible innocent explanation for a Putin-associated Russian oligarch, to use Rudy Giuliani’s phrase, “funneling” money to Trump’s personal lawyer through a fund used to pay hush money to one or more women and as that oligarch was due to benefit from Trump’s sanction policies? Maybe they have an explanation, but it’s hard to imagine it, and it’s hard to imagine how persuasive a jury would find it.

The Avenatti document, meanwhile, suggests a road map for trying to substantiate this hypothetical. The first part of Avenatti’s summary offers more detail for the allegation that Cohen may have committed bank fraud, misrepresenting the reasons for opening his bank account. I’ve explained in an earlier piece how this is one of several federal and state crimes that Cohen is potentially facing. He is also still on the hook for possible campaign finance felonies, even if one accepts all of Giuliani’s spin about reimbursement. Furthermore, Avenatti suggests that California has jurisdiction over these possible crimes, opening up another set of state and federal prosecutors who could potentially bring charges. Which is all just to say, there is more pressure on Cohen to cooperate with Mueller and other prosecutors than ever. If he were to flip, he would presumably have to provide insight into what these payments were for.

This new information about Vekselberg potentially puts pressure on other witnesses as well. Who else in Trump’s orbit had contact with Vekselberg, and might they have more information about the communications and intent behind the payments? Rick Gates, Manafort’s former deputy who has pled guilty to conspiracy and lying to investigators, was also helping with the transition as these events were unfolding. What has Gates already told Mueller in exchange for a plea deal and what might he have to say now? Vekselberg was also at the Moscow dinner attended by Putin and Michael Flynn. What has Flynn told Mueller? One road to proving any conspiracy now clearly goes through Vekselberg, those who were in contact with him, and those who may have been paid off by him.

Finally, even if Trump denies that he knew about any of the questionable Cohen payments, he still might not be off the hook. If it can be demonstrated that he found out later about an illegal such payment but sought to cover it up, Trump might have committed one of the following felonies: a) being an accessory after the fact (18 U.S.C. 3), b) misprision of a felony (18 USC 4, especially by a public official), and c) obstruction of justice

⭕ 8 May 2018

DallasNews, Ruth May: How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns http://bit.ly/2I6EicN
// interactive charts

VanityFair: Michael Cohen Must Be the Most Gifted Consultant in America http://bit.ly/2wrGPIN
// The four corporations that hired Cohen’s shell company claim they were paying for his “insights” into government, “health-care policy,” “real estate,” and “accounting advice.” Who knew the president’s lawyer was such a renaissance man?

⭕ 7 May 2018

WaPo (Costa): Secret intelligence source who aided Mueller probe is at center of latest clash between Nunes and Justice Dept http://wapo.st/2KPC5jg

WaPo: Trump’s attorney Michael Cohen was hired by U.S. affiliate of Russian company http://wapo.st/2wroHPh

President Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen was hired last year by the U.S.-based affiliate of a Russian business magnate who attended Trump’s inauguration and was recently sanctioned by the U.S. government, the company said Tuesday.

The New York investment firm Columbus Nova said it retained Cohen as a consultant “regarding potential sources of capital and potential investments in real estate and other ventures.” Though Columbus Nova has been described in federal regulatory filings as an affiliate of the Renova Group, founded by Russian billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, the company said Vekselberg was not involved with hiring or paying Cohen.

NYT: Firm Tied to Russian Oligarch Made Payments to Michael Cohen http://nyti.ms/2FWzmkK

A shell company that Michael D. Cohen used to pay hush money to a pornographic film actress received payments totaling more than $1 million from an American company linked to a Russian oligarch and several corporations with business before the Trump administration, according to documents and interviews.

Financial records reviewed by The New York Times show that Mr. Cohen, President Trump’s personal lawyer and longtime fixer, used the shell company, Essential Consultants L.L.C., for an array of business activities that went far beyond what was publicly known. Transactions totaling at least $4.4 million flowed through Essential Consultants starting shortly before Mr. Trump was elected president and continuing to this January, the records show.

MotherJones: Here’s Another Trump Cabinet Pick With Close Financial Ties to Russians http://bit.ly/
// 12/19/2016, Wilbur Ross joined with a Russian oligarch and a former KGB official to run a troubled bank in Cyprus.

MotherJones: A Putin-Friendly Oligarch’s Top US Executive Donated $285,000 to Trump http://bit.ly/2rtdGHq
// 8/17/2017, The head of Viktor Vekselberg’s American subsidiary helped finance Trump’s inauguration.

WaPo: Trump pulls United States out of Iran nuclear deal, calling the pact ‘an embarrassment’ http://wapo.st/2wjYke6

NBC: Daniels’ lawyer: Cohen got $500K from Russian oligarch Viktor Vekselberg http://nbcnews.to/2I0QHyO
// Michael Avenatti provided no documentation for his claims, which he posted on Twitter

SeekingAlpha: 10 Reasons To Buy Comcast Near Its 52-Week Low http://bit.ly/2woK6J8
// CMCSA

CREW, Bookbinder, Eisen et al: The Smear Campaign Against Mueller: Debunking the Nunes Memo and the Other Attacks on the Russia Investigation http://bit.ly/2wlXnCa
// 1/31/2018, link to PDF 45p

⭕ 5 May 2018

TheGuardian: Revealed: Trump team hired spy firm for ‘dirty ops’ on Iran arms deal http://bit.ly/2HXfbop
// Israeli agency told to find incriminating material on Obama diplomats who negotiated deal with Tehran

People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to “get dirt” on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

The extraordinary revelations come days before Trump’s 12 May deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear programme.

🐣 RT @tribelaw I know both @AlanDersh and Richard Painter. Alan was totally out of line in attacking @RWPUSA on MSNBC as “unAmerican.” His denunciation of Mueller shocked me. Sorry to have to say it, but this unhinged assault on Painter leaves me aghast.
↥ ↧
RawStory: MSNBC segment explodes after Dershowitz calls lawyer Richard Painter ‘un-American and a liar’ http://bit.ly/2FPeXhc

NYT: How Michael Cohen, Trump’s Fixer, Built a Shadowy Business Empire http://nyti.ms/2HVtIRu

CNN: FBI officials Lisa Page and James Baker resign http://cnn.it/2JXxNWa

Lisa Page, who served as an FBI lawyer and close adviser to former Deputy Director Andrew McCabe, voluntarily resigned Friday, a source close to Page told CNN.

Page came under increasing attack after her text messages with FBI special agent Peter Strzok criticizing President Donald Trump came to light last winter. She briefly served on special counsel Robert Mueller’s team last summer before returning to her duties at the FBI.

The text messages between Strzok and her became fodder for the President and Republican lawmakers who leveled accusations that some members of the FBI working on the Russia probe are biased against Trump.

James A. Baker, the former general counsel for the FBI and one of former FBI Director James Comey’s closest advisers, also resigned Friday, according to a source familiar with Baker’s departure. A second source familiar with Baker’s thinking said his departure was unrelated to Page’s resignation and that hers came as a surprise to him.

Baker will be going to Lawfare, a national security blog affiliated with the Brookings Institution. He was tapped as the FBI’s top lawyer in January 2014, but was reassigned from his post as general counsel elsewhere in the agency last year.

Comey said in a statement on Friday, “Jim Baker represents the best of the Department of Justice and the FBI. He has protected the country and the rule of law throughout his career and leaves an inspiring legacy of service. He is what we should all hope our kids become, a person of integrity.”

⭕ 4 May 2018

NYT: Judge Questions Whether Mueller Has Overstepped His Authority on Manafort http://nyti.ms/2rmbEts

NYT: Viktor Vekselberg, Russian Billionaire, Was Questioned by Mueller’s Investigators http://nyti.ms/2HVgPai

⭕ 3 May 2018

HuffPo: Fox News Host Neil Cavuto Tells Trump He Stinks In Fiery Takedown http://bit.ly/2FHgJB4
// “I guess you’re too busy draining the swamp to ever stop and smell the stink you’re creating.”

NYT, Michele Goldberg: Does Giuliani Have a Plan, or Is This Just a Freakout? http://nyti.ms/2riZ0LL

… Rudy Giuliani, whose appointment to Trump’s legal team was announced two weeks ago, appeared on Sean Hannity’s Fox News show and casually admitted that Trump had repaid Cohen for the money he gave to Daniels “over a period of several months.”

This was a bombshell. And in the 12 hours that followed, both Trump and Giuliani made a series of statements so seemingly self-sabotaging and undisciplined that observers began searching for some sort of hidden strategy or logic. Were they trying to get out ahead of a coming revelation? To set off a metaphorical smoke bomb that would distract from some other scandalous development? Or were they really as blundering and incompetent as they appeared?

NYT: Giuliani May Have Exposed Trump to New Legal and Political Perils http://nyti.ms/2waTwaT

WaPo: ‘I was going to get this over with’: Inside Giuliani’s explosive Stormy Daniels revelation http://wapo.st/2HMgBpG

WaPo: Analysts: Giuliani’s media blitz gives investigators new leads, new evidence http://wapo.st/2wdrg7u

⭕ 2 May 2018

NYT: Cambridge Analytica to File for Bankruptcy After Misuse of Facebook Data http://nyti.ms/2KwGQOP

NYT: Trump Assails Justice Dept., Siding With House Conservatives in Dispute http://nyti.ms/2I8i758

WaPo, Philip Bump: What is Trump threatening to do to the Justice Department, exactly? http://wapo.st/2rfhQTY

⭕ 1 May 2018

WaPo: Mueller raised possibility of presidential subpoena in meeting with Trump’s legal team http://wapo.st/2re68t5

⭕ 30 Apr 2018

💙💙 NYT, Matt Apuzzo and Michael Schmidt: The Questions Mueller Wants to Ask Trump About Obstruction, and What They Mean http://nyti.ms/2HExEKi
// The questions show the special counsel’s focus on obstruction of justice and touch on some surprising other areas.

WaPo: Trump-allied House conservatives draft articles of impeachment against Rosenstein as ‘last resort’ http://wapo.st/2r9Apcy

NYT: Mueller Has List of Questions for Trump http://nyti.ms/2rfDuqK
// Majority Relate to if Trump Obstructed Inquiry on Russia

⭕ 27 Apr 2018

NYT: Lawyer Who Was Said to Have Dirt on Clinton Had Closer Ties to Kremlin Than She Let On http://nyti.ms/2I22YzD
// Natalia V. Veselnitskaya

WaPo: House Intelligence Committee Republicans release final Russia report http://wapo.st/2r458r8

NYT: Trump Renews Attacks on Comey Before Turning to Praise of Korean Talks http://nyti.ms/2HzaL78

⭕ 26 Apr 2018

Dkos: Donald Trump was so unhinged in this call to ‘Fox & Friends,’ even they had to cut him off http://bit.ly/2I3sqET

CNN: Trump’s ‘Fox & Friends’ rant was beyond unhinged http://cnn.it/2I1zKAP

NYT: For Many, Life in Trump’s Orbit Ends in a Crash Landing http://nyti.ms/2KjzIoH

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s unwieldy ‘Fox and Friends’ interview, annotated http://wapo.st/2HTSZig

CNN: The 53 most stunning lines from Donald Trump’s ‘Fox & Friends’ interview http://cnn.it/2FiArCR

⭕ 25 Apr 2018

WSJ: Trump Lawyers Seek to Determine Whether Mueller Has ‘Open Mind’ http://on.wsj.com/2HsRrwp
// Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani met with special counsel’s team this week to discuss interview with president

WaPo: Michael Cohen to invoke Fifth Amendment right in Stormy Daniels case http://wapo.st/2qZH34Z

⭕ 24 Apr 2018

WaPo: Three Mexican film students were killed, their bodies dissolved in acid, authorities say http://wapo.st/2HrfjfJ
// The Stewmaker comes true

WaPo, David Ignatius: We know an awful lot about Manafort and Russia. Trump can’t make it disappear. http://wapo.st/2qXCvuP

WaPo, Philip Rucker: Trump keeps saying he’s innocent. So why does he keep sounding like he’s guilty? http://wapo.st/2vGxzQL

⭕ 23 Apr 2018

Politico: U.S. eases sanctions on aluminum firm tied to Russian oligarch http://politi.co/2JlYmUC
// Oleg Deripaska, RUSAL

⭕ 20 Apr 2018

WaPo: Democratic Party files lawsuit alleging Russia, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks conspired to disrupt the 2016 campaign http://wapo.st/2HPUZWv

NYT: D.N.C. Lawsuit Alleges Trump-Russia Conspiracy http://nyti.ms/2qT8lJx

NYT: Michael Cohen Has Said He Would Take a Bullet for Trump. Maybe Not Anymore. http://nyti.ms/2Jcyb2w

NYT: 6 Takeaways From the James Comey Memos http://nyti.ms/2HitfJ1

🐣 Trump needs to slap an import/excise tax on Russian hookers. “Screw American!” @Morning_Joe

🐣 RT @AvoAhVee Trump’s claim that he didn’t spend a night in Moscow is disproven by his own tweets. Let’s take a look: https://twitter.com/AviAhvee/status/987200983884320768

⭕ 19 Apr 2018

WaPo: Comey memos offer new details on his interactions with Trump as the FBI’s Russia probe intensified http://wapo.st/2F2I3Jv

NYT: Comey Memos Provide Intimate Look Into Trump Presidency http://nyti.ms/2qN2jtM

WaPo: Trump hires Giuliani, two other attorneys amid mounting legal turmoil over Russia http://wapo.st/2J9RxW4

Trump also loudly and repeatedly complained to several advisers earlier this week that former FBI director James B. Comey, former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and former Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, among others, should be charged with crimes for misdeeds alleged by Republicans, the associates said.

Although White House officials said Thursday that Trump has not called Justice Department officials or taken any formal action, the persistent grousing has made some advisers anxious, according to two people close to the president. A publicity tour by Comey to promote his book critical of Trump, “A Higher Loyalty,” has attracted particular attention from the president, who has disparaged Comey publicly and privately.

Trump also complained this week about Supreme Court Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, saying the judge had proved too liberal in recent cases, according to administration officials who heard about the complaints. Associates said he was incensed that Gorsuch had voted against the administration on an immigration case and said it renewed his doubts that Gorsuch would be a reliable conservative. One top Trump adviser played down the comments as unhappiness with Gorsuch’s decision rather than with Gorsuch broadly.

Giuliani is certain to come under intense scrutiny for his role. His own pre-election activities two years ago have been the subject of criticism from Democrats, especially television interviews in which he suggested he had sources providing him inside information about the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s private email server when she was secretary of state.

NYT: Justice Department Gives Congress Comey’s Memos on Trump http://nyti.ms/2HdLe2Z
//➔ DocumentCloud: http://bit.ly/2HOGC4z

WSJ: Michael Cohen Drops Defamation Suits Against BuzzFeed, Fusion GPS Over Russia Dossier http://on.wsj.com/2HeL7bJ

WaPo: Giuliani says he is joining Trump’s legal team to ‘negotiate an end’ to Mueller probe http://wapo.st/

WaPo: Republicans are actively interfering in the Mueller probe to protect Trump http://wapo.st/2JaLmRz

⭕ 18 Apr 2018

Lawfare, Benjamin Wittes: Behind James Comey’s ‘A Higher Loyalty’ http://bit.ly/2JY6VG2

WaPo, EJ Dionne: Trump can’t steer a steady course. Maybe Nikki Haley should jump ship. http://wapo.st/2HIDffr

WaPo: Trump allies press Rosenstein in private meeting in latest sign of tensions http://wapo.st/2HaNCvz

WSJ: Cohen Would Turn Against President if Charged, Counselor Warned Trump http://on.wsj.com/2J6Uy9r
// Former prosecutor Jay Goldberg says he cautioned president that his personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, could be compelled to cooperate with prosecutors

NYT, Nancy Gertner: Smearing Robert Mueller http://nyti.ms/2qHC20J

⭕ 17 Apr 2018

NYT: ‘I Don’t Get Confused,’ Nikki Haley Says, Rebuffing White House in Sanctions Dispute http://nyti.ms/2HxpaE6

⭕ 16 Apr 2018

NYT: Judge Says Trump and Cohen Can’t Yet Review Materials Seized by F.B.I. http://nyti.ms/2ERU1Wz

NYT: Trump Scraps New Sanctions Against Russia, Overruling Advisers http://nyti.ms/2J1xB7K

💙💙 DailyBeast: Julian Assange Offered Hannity Impersonator ‘News’ About Top Democrat http://thebea.st/2ER1SDG
// 1/29/2018

“I can’t believe this is happening. I mean… I can. It’s crazy. Nothing can be put past people,” Gilliam, posing as Hannity, wrote to Assange. “I’m exhausted from the whole night. What about you, though? You doing ok?”

“I’m happy as long as there is a fight!” Assange responded.

Gilliam reassured Assange that she, or Hannity, was also “definitely up for a fight” and set up a call for 9:30 a.m. Eastern, about six hours later.

“You can send me messages on other channels,” said Assange, the second reference to “other channels” he made since their conversation began.

“Have some news about Warner.”

Less than 48 hours later, Warner made headlines claiming that the Senate intelligence committee received “end-of-the-year document dumps” that “opened a lot of new questions” about Trump and Russia.

When reached by The Daily Beast about the messages, Warner’s spokesperson pointed to WikiLeaks’ ties to the release of recent document drops performed by Russian entities, like Kremlin cutout Guccifer 2.0.

“Give me a break. WikiLeaks is a non-state hostile intelligence service with longstanding ties to the Russian government and Russian intelligence.”
↥ ↧
💙💙 Dkos: Hannity Might Be Partly The Reason Cohen’s Offices Were Raided. He’s Involved With Assange. http://bit.ly/2HDlDBN

🐣 RT @RVAwonk (Caroline O.) Gabriel Sherman just told @MSNBC that Sean Hannity hired Michael Cohen to defend against “left-wing groups” who were boycotting other Fox hosts. Hannity reportedly got really paranoid and even hired private investigators to look into these “left-wing groups.”

WaPo: Trump puts the brakes on new Russian sanctions, reversing Haley’s announcement http://wapo.st/2JNYey6

NYT: Sean Hannity Is Named as Michael Cohen’s Client http://nyti.ms/2EQRGuU

WaPo: Trump lawyer Michael Cohen did legal work for Fox News commentator Sean Hannity http://wapo.st/2vk7nLF

⭕ 15 Apr 2018

🐣 When Trump told Comey “There’s no way I’d let people pee on each other around me” he’s actually being more specific than the description in the dossier. Insider knowledge?

WaPo: Whom is Comey trying to convince? The third of Americans with no opinion of him. http://wapo.st/2IXA42P

WaPo: Comey says Trump ‘morally unfit to be president,’ possibly susceptible to Russian blackmail http://wapo.st/2J0h5Vr

NYT: James Comey’s Interview on ABC’s ‘20/20’: Annotated Excerpts http://nyti.ms/2vjtFwX

NYT: In Interview, Comey Calls Trump ‘Morally Unfit’ and a ‘Stain’ on All Around Him http://nyti.ms/2JLFFL7

⭕ 14 Apr 2018

TheAtlantic, Quinta Jurecic (April): How Courts Are Neutralizing Trump’s Deceptions http://bit.ly/2r3NYJQ
// 4/16/2018, The president deploys obfuscation as a political weapon, but both the Russia and Michael Cohen investigations show that facts really do matter in the courtroom.

Vox, Andrew Prokop: Why the question of whether Michael Cohen visited Prague is massively important for Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2quLPHw
// The Steele dossier claimed Cohen went to Prague to meet Russians. He’s said for more than a year that he didn’t.

WaPo: Michael Cohen’s visiting Prague would be a huge development in the Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2JKBnDD

[McClatchy] suggests that Cohen took over management of the relationship with Russia after campaign chairman Paul Manafort was fired from the campaign in August (because of questions about his relationship with a political party in Ukraine). Cohen is said to have met secretly with people in Prague — possibly at the Russian Center for Science and Culture — in the last week of August or the first of September. He allegedly met with representatives of the Russian government, possibly including officials of the Presidential Administration Legal Department; Oleg Solodukhin (who works with the Russian Center for Science and Culture); or Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign relations committee in the upper house of parliament. A planned meeting in Moscow, the dossier alleges, was considered too risky, given that a topic of conversation was how to divert attention from Manafort’s links to Russia and a trip to Moscow by Carter Page in July. Another topic of conversation, according to the dossier: allegedly paying off “Romanian hackers” who had been targeting the Clinton campaign.

⭕ 13 Apr 2018

💙💙 McClatchy: Sources: Mueller has evidence Cohen was in Prague in 2016, confirming part of dossier http://bit.ly/2JKJz6F

The Justice Department special counsel has evidence that Donald Trump’s personal lawyer and confidant, Michael Cohen, secretly made a late-summer trip to Prague during the 2016 presidential campaign, according to two sources familiar with the matter.

Confirmation of the trip would lend credence to a retired British spy’s report that Cohen strategized there with a powerful Kremlin figure about Russian meddling in the U.S. election.

It would also be one of the most significant developments thus far in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of whether the Trump campaign and the Kremlin worked together to help Trump win the White House. Undercutting Trump’s repeated pronouncements that “there is no evidence of collusion,” it also could ratchet up the stakes if the president tries, as he has intimated he might for months, to order Mueller’s firing.

Trump’s threats to fire Mueller or the deputy attorney general overseeing the investigation, Rod Rosenstein, grew louder this week when the FBI raided Cohen’s home, hotel room and office on Monday. The raid was unrelated to the Trump-Russia collusion probe, but instead focused on payments made to women who have said they had sexual relationships with Trump.

It’s unclear whether Mueller’s investigators also have evidence that Cohen actually met with a prominent Russian – purportedly Konstantin Kosachev, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin — in the Czech capital. Kosachev, who chairs the Foreign Affairs Committee of a body of the Russian legislature, the Federation Council, also has denied visiting Prague during 2016. Earlier this month, Kosachev was among 24 high-profile Russians hit with stiff U.S. sanctions in retaliation for Russia’s meddling.

The dossier alleges that Cohen, two Russians and several Eastern European hackers met at the Prague office of a Russian government-backed social and cultural organization, Rossotrudnichestvo. The location was selected to provide an alternative explanation in case the rendezvous was exposed, according to Steele’s Kremlin sources, cultivated during 20 years of spying on Russia. It said that Oleg Solodukhin, the deputy chief of Rossotrudnichestvo’s operation in the Czech Republic, attended the meeting, too.

Further, it alleges that Cohen, Kosachev and other attendees discussed “how deniable cash payments were to be made to hackers in Europe who had worked under Kremlin direction against the Clinton campaign.”

U.S. intelligence agencies and cyber experts say Kremlin-backed hackers pirated copies of thousands of emails from the Democratic National Committee and Clinton campaign chief John Podesta during 2015 and 2016, some politically damaging, including messages showing that the DNC was biased toward Clinton in the party’s nomination battle pitting her against Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders. Mueller’s investigators have sought to learn who passed the emails to WikiLeaks, a London-based transparency group, which published them in July and October, causing embarrassment to Clinton and her backers.

Citing information from an unnamed “Kremlin insider,” Steele’s dossier says the Prague meeting agenda also included discussion “in cryptic language for security reasons,” of ways to “sweep it all under the carpet and make sure no connection could be fully established or proven.” Romanians were among the hackers present, it says, and the discussion touched on using Bulgaria as a location where they could “lie low.”

It is a felony for anyone to hack email accounts. Other laws forbid foreigners from contributing cash or in-kind services to U.S. political campaigns.

If Cohen met with Russians and hackers in Prague as described in the dossier, it would provide perhaps the most compelling evidence to date that the Russians and Trump campaign aides were collaborating. Mueller’s office also has focused on two meetings in the spring of 2016 when Russians offered to provide Trump campaign aides with “dirt” on Clinton – thousands of emails in one of the offers.

If the Prague meeting actually occurred, Kosachev’s possible involvement would be especially significant given his close ties to Putin and other roles he has played in covert Moscow efforts to destabilize other countries, Russia experts said.

“While not a member of Putin’s innermost circle, (Kosachev) is one of the most influential Russian voices on foreign affairs,” said Michael Carpenter, a former senior Pentagon official. “When Kosachev speaks, everyone knows he’s speaking for the Kremlin.”

Kosachev appears to have been a booster of Trump over Clinton in early June of 2016, according to a post on his Facebook page at the time.

“Trump looks slightly more promising,” Kosachev wrote. “At least, he is capable of giving a shake to Washington. He is certainly a pragmatist and not a missionary like his main opponent [Hillary] Clinton.”

The Prague meeting would have occurred during a period when Trump advisers had become jittery about publicity swirling around the campaign’s Russian connections and seemingly friendly posture toward Moscow, according to the dossier and a source familiar with the federal investigation.

Campaign chairman Paul Manafort resigned abruptly on Aug. 19, shortly after the revelation that he had received $12.7 million in secret consulting fees over five years from the pro-Russia Party of Regions in Ukraine. Manafort was instrumental in the 2010 election of pro-Russian president Viktor Yanukovych, who was ousted in early 2014 and fled to Moscow.

Another flap stemmed from a secretive maneuver at the Republican National Convention in July. Party officials weakened language in the 2016 Republican platform calling for a boost in U.S. military aid to support Ukraine’s fight with Russian-backed separatists who invaded Eastern Ukraine and Crimea.

The dossier cited multiple sources as reporting that Kremlin officials also had grown edgy about the possible exposure of their secret “active measures” effort to defeat Clinton and help Trump. According to the dossier, Russian diplomat Mikhail Kalugin was brought home from Russia’s embassy in Washington last August because he had played a key role in coordinating the cyber offensive. McClatchy quoted several Russia experts on Feb. 15 as saying they suspected Kalugin was an intelligence operative. Kalugin has denied any espionage activities.

NYT: Madeleine Albright Is Worried. We Should Be, Too. http://nyti.ms/2qwmP2y

NYT: Trump Sees Inquiry Into Cohen as Greater Threat Than Mueller http://nyti.ms/2qysST8

The raids on Mr. Cohen came as part of a monthslong federal investigation based in New York, court records show, and were sweeping in their breadth. In addition to searching his home, office and hotel room, F.B.I. agents seized material from Mr. Cohen’s cellphones, tablet, laptop and safe deposit box, according to people briefed on the warrants. Prosecutors revealed in court documents that they had already secretly obtained many of Mr. Cohen’s emails.

But it is difficult to extract Mr. Cohen from his work for Mr. Trump. For more than a decade, Mr. Trump has unleashed Mr. Cohen on his foes — investigative journalists, business rivals and potential litigants. And the New York search warrant makes clear that the authorities are interested in his unofficial role in the campaign.

Prosecutors also seized recordings of conversations that Mr. Cohen had secretly made, but he told people in recent days that he did not tape his conversations with Mr. Trump. Mr. Cohen frequently taped conversations with adversaries and opposing lawyers, according to the two people briefed.

Federal agents seized documents that dated back years, some of which are related to payments to two women who have said they had affairs with Mr. Trump. Other documents seized included information about the role of The National Enquirer in silencing one of the women, people briefed on the investigation have said.

WaPo: U.S. launches missile strikes in Syria http://wapo.st/2EJr8Mb

WaPo: RNC deputy finance chair steps down after admitting Trump’s lawyer negotiated settlement between him and pregnant Playboy model http://wapo.st/2GYrQeB

Los Angeles-based investor Elliott Broidy, who has been a top fundraiser for Trump and the party, issued a statement Friday acknowledging that he “had a consensual relationship” with the woman, who got pregnant. He said he retained Cohen after Trump’s personal lawyer told Broidy he had been contacted by the woman’s attorney.

⭕ 12 Apr 2018

WaPo: Trump’s allies worry that federal investigators may have seized recordings made by his attorney http://wapo.st/2GVfHXD

WaPo: Trump touts Hannity’s show on ‘Deep State crime families’ led by Mueller, Comey and Clintons http://wapo.st/2HgAVia

WaPo: Bannon pitches White House on plan to cripple Mueller probe and protect Trump http://wapo.st/2qnIzO4

⭕ 10 Apr 2018

RollingStone, Seth Hettena: A Brief History of Michael Cohen’s Criminal Ties http://rol.st/2qw72Av
// From the Russian mob to money launderers, Trump’s personal attorney has long been a subject of interest to federal investigators

During Trump’s presidential run, reporters noticed a curious thing about Cohen. Questions about Trump’s business or his taxes went to his chief legal officer or another staffer, but Cohen handled questions about Russia. “One of the things that we learned that caught my interest,” Simpson testified to Congress in November 2017, “serious questions about Donald Trump’s activities in Russia and the former Soviet Union went to Michael Cohen, and that he was the only person who had information on that subject or was in a position to answer those questions.”

In the 1990s, there was an informal group of federal and local law enforcement agents investigating the Russian Mafiya in New York that called themselves “Red Star.” They shared information they learned from informants. It was well known among the members of Red Star that Cohen’s father-in-law was funneling money into Trump ventures. Several sources have told me that Cohen was one of several attorneys who helped money launderers purchase apartments in a development in Sunny Isles Beach, a seaside Florida town just north of Miami. This was an informal arrangement passed word-of-mouth: “We have heard from Russian sources that … in Florida, Cohen and other lawyers acted as a conduit for money.”

An investigation by Reuters found that at least 63 individuals with Russian passports or addresses have bought at least $98.4 million worth of property in the seven Trump-branded luxury towers. And that was a conservative estimate. At least 703 – or about one-third – of the 2044 units were owned by limited liability companies, or LLCs, which could conceal the property’s true owner. Executives from Gazprom and other Russian natural resource giants also owned units in Trump’s Sunny Isles towers. In an observation that several people I spoke with echoed, Kenneth McCallion, a former prosecutor who tracked the flows of Russian criminal money into Trump’s properties, told me, “Trump’s genius – or evil genius – was, instead of Russian criminal money being passive, incidental income, it became a central part of his business plan.” McCallion continued, “It’s not called ‘Little Moscow’ for nothing. The street signs are in Russian. But his towers there were built specifically for the Russian middle-class criminal.”

Cohen joined the Trump Organization around the time that the second Sunny Isles tower was being built. A few years earlier, he had invested $1.5 million in a short-lived Miami-based casino boat venture run by his two Ukrainian business partners, Arkady Vaygensberg and Leonid Tatarchuk. Only three months after its maiden voyage, it would become the subject of a large fraud investigation. But Cohen was saved from his bad investment by none other than Trump himself, who hired Cohen as an attorney just before his casino ship sank. A source who investigated Cohen’s connections to Russia told me, “Say you want to get money into the country and maybe you’re a bit suspect. The Trump organization used lawyers to allow people to get money into the country.” 

Residents at Sunny Isles included people like Vladimir Popovyan, who paid $1.17 million for a three-bedroom condo in 2013. Forbes Russia described Popovyan as a friend and associate of Rafael Samurgashev, a former championship wrestler who ran a criminal group in Rostov-on-Don in southeastern Russia. Peter Kiritchenko, a Ukrainian businessman arrested on fraud charges in San Francisco in 1999, and his daughter owned two units at Trump Towers in Sunny Isles Beach worth $2.56 million. (Kiritchenko testified against a corrupt former Ukrainian prime minister who was convicted in 2004 of money laundering.) Other owners of Trump condos in Sunny Isles include members of a Russian-American organized crime group that ran a sports betting ring out of Trump Tower, which catered to wealthy oligarchs from the former Soviet Union. Michael Barukhin, who was convicted in a massive scheme to defraud auto insurers with phony claims, lived out of a Trump condo that was registered to a limited liability corporation.

Selling units from the lobby of the Trump International Beach Resort in Sunny Isles was Baronoff Realty. Elena Baronoff, who died of cancer in 2015, was the exclusive sales agent for three Trump-branded towers. Glenn Simpson, who spent a year investigating Trump’s background during the campaign, testified before the House Intelligence Committee that Baronoff was a “suspected organized crime figure.”

An Uzbek immigrant who arrived in the United States as a cultural attaché in public diplomacy from the Soviet Union, Baronoff became such a well-known figure in Sunny Isles Beach that she was named the international ambassador for the community. Baronoff accompanied Trump’s children on a trip to Russia in the winter of 2007–2008, posing for a photo in Moscow with Ivanka and Eric Trump and developer Michael Dezer. Also in the photo, curiously, was a man named Michael Babel, a former senior executive of a property firm owned by Oleg Deripaska, the Russian metals tycoon Paul Manafort allegedly offered personal updates on Trump’s presidential campaign. Babel later fled Russia to evade fraud charges.

Michael Cohen’s in-laws, the Shustermans, also bought real estate in Sunny Isles. The development was paying off. Trump’s oldest son, Don Jr., would later note, “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.” There is no question Trump owed his comeback in large part to wealthy Russian expatriates.

Cohen and Felix Sater have known each other for nearly 30 years. They met in Brighton Beach when Cohen started dating his future wife, Shusterman’s daughter, Laura, who Sater says he knew from the neighborhood. When Cohen joined the Trump organization, Sater had become a fixture in the office. Sater was developing Trump SoHo, a hotel-condo in lower Manhattan that later would be consumed by scandal, and had earned Trump’s trust. Trump asked him to look after his children, Ivanka and Don Jr., on a 2006 visit to Moscow. (It was during the Moscow trip that Sater used his Kremlin connections to impress Trump’s daughter. Sater would later boast: “I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin.”) When Sater’s criminal past was exposed in The New York Times, Trump suddenly looked and acted like a man with something to hide. Despite laying claim to “one of the great memories of all time,” he seemed to be having trouble recollecting who Sater was. “Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump told The Associated Press in 2015. “I’m not that familiar with him.” Sater flatly contradicted Trump’s version of their relationship. In a little-noticed interview with a Russian publication, Snob, Sater was asked if his criminal past was a problem for Trump. “No, it was not. He makes his own decision regarding each and every individual.”

In the midst of Trump’s presidential run, Sater was shopping a deal to build a Trump World Tower Moscow. Between September 2015 and January 2016, Sater tried to broker a deal for a Moscow company called IC Expert Investment Company. (Sater worked for IC Expert’s owner, Andrei Rozov, after he left Bayrock.) Trump signed a letter of intent in October with IC Expert Investment for a Moscow hotel-condo with the option for a “Spa by Ivanka Trump.” Providing financing was VTB, a Russian bank subject to U.S. sanctions. Sater’s contact at the Trump Organization was his old friend, Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen. In mid-January, Sater urged Cohen to send an email to Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, “since the proposal would require approvals within the Russian government that had not been issued.” Cohen sent the email, got no reply, and said he abandoned the proposal two weeks later.

What Cohen called his old friend’s “colorful language” attracted attention from congressional investigators and Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s office: “Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” Sater emailed Cohen in November 2015. “I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected. We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become President of the USA and we can engineer. I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this.”

Sater gave an unsatisfactory answer to BuzzFeed about why he wrote this email. “If a deal can get done and I could make money and he could look like a statesman, what the fuck is the downside, right?”

Shortly after Trump took office, Sater teamed up with Cohen to submit a Ukrainian peace plan to then national security advisor Michael Flynn that would have opened the door to lifting sanctions on Russia. What happened to the plan? The lawyer at first told The New York Times that he left the plan in Flynn’s office. Then, after the story became an embarrassment, he called the Times story “fake news” and claimed he pitched the plan into the trash.

Cohen has always acted to protect Trump, and he likely believed that he could always rely on the impenetrable shield of attorney-client privilege. Arguably, no one who has worked with Trump over the past decade knows more about the president’s past business dealings in Russia and elsewhere abroad than Cohen. Now that prosecutors have him in their sights, here’s the question: Will Cohen’s shield, now broken, become a sword?

NYT Editorial: The Law Is Coming, Mr. Trump http://nyti.ms/2Jysb50

Why don’t we take a step back and contemplate what Americans, and the world, are witnessing?

Early Monday morning, F.B.I. agents raided the New York office, home and hotel room of the personal lawyer for the president of the United States. They seized evidence of possible federal crimes — including bank fraud, wire fraud and campaign finance violations related to payoffs made to women, including a porn actress, who say they had affairs with the president before he took office and were paid off and intimidated into silence.

That evening the president surrounded himself with the top American military officials and launched unbidden into a tirade against the top American law enforcement officials — officials of his own government — accusing them of “an attack on our country.”

Oh, also: The Times reported Monday evening that investigators were examining a $150,000 donation to the president’s personal foundation from a Ukrainian steel magnate, given during the American presidential campaign in exchange for a 20-minute video appearance.

Meanwhile, the president’s former campaign chairman is under indictment, and his former national security adviser has pleaded guilty to lying to investigators. His son-in-law and other associates are also under investigation.

This is your president, ladies and gentlemen. This is how Donald Trump does business, and these are the kinds of people he surrounds himself with.

Mr. Trump has spent his career in the company of developers and celebrities, and also of grifters, cons, sharks, goons and crooks. He cuts corners, he lies, he cheats, he brags about it, and for the most part, he’s gotten away with it, protected by threats of litigation, hush money and his own bravado. Those methods may be proving to have their limits when they are applied from the Oval Office. Though Republican leaders in Congress still keep a cowardly silence, Mr. Trump now has real reason to be afraid. A raid on a lawyer’s office doesn’t happen every day; it means that multiple government officials, and a federal judge, had reason to believe they’d find evidence of a crime there and that they didn’t trust the lawyer not to destroy that evidence.

On Monday, when he appeared with his national security team, Mr. Trump, whose motto could be, “The buck stops anywhere but here,” angrily blamed everyone he could think of for the “unfairness” of an investigation that has already consumed the first year of his presidency, yet is only now starting to heat up. He said Attorney General Jeff Sessions made “a very terrible mistake” by recusing himself from overseeing the investigation — the implication being that a more loyal attorney general would have obstructed justice and blocked the investigation. He complained about the “horrible things” that Hillary Clinton did “and all of the crimes that were committed.” He called the A-team of investigators from the office of the special counsel, Robert Mueller, “the most biased group of people.” As for Mr. Mueller himself, “we’ll see what happens,” Mr. Trump said. “Many people have said, ‘You should fire him.’”

In fact, the raids on the premises used by Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, were conducted by the public corruption unit of the federal attorney’s office in Manhattan, and at the request not of the special counsel’s team, but under a search warrant that investigators in New York obtained following a referral by Mr. Mueller, who first consulted with the deputy attorney general, Rod Rosenstein. To sum up, a Republican-appointed former F.B.I. director consulted with a Republican-appointed deputy attorney general, who then authorized a referral to an F.B.I. field office not known for its anti-Trump bias. Deep state, indeed.

Mr. Trump also railed against the authorities who, he said, “broke into” Mr. Cohen’s office. “Attorney-client privilege is dead!” the president tweeted early Tuesday morning, during what was presumably his executive time. He was wrong. The privilege is one of the most sacrosanct in the American legal system, but it does not protect communications in furtherance of a crime. Anyway, one might ask, if this is all a big witch hunt and Mr. Trump has nothing illegal or untoward to hide, why does he care about the privilege in the first place?

The answer, of course, is that he has a lot to hide.

This wasn’t even the first early-morning raid of a close Trump associate. That distinction goes to Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman and Russian oligarch-whisperer, who now faces a slate of federal charges long enough to land him in prison for the rest of his life. And what of Mr. Cohen? He’s already been cut loose by his law firm, and when the charges start rolling in, he’ll likely get the same treatment from Mr. Trump.

Among the grotesqueries that faded into the background of Mr. Trump’s carnival of misgovernment during the past 24 hours was that Monday’s meeting was ostensibly called to discuss a matter of global significance: a reported chemical weapons attack on Syrian civilians. Mr. Trump instead made it about him, with his narcissistic and self-pitying claim that the investigation represented an attack on the country “in a true sense.”

No, Mr. Trump — a true attack on America is what happened on, say, Sept. 11, 2001. Remember that one? Thousands of people lost their lives. Your response was to point out that the fall of the twin towers meant your building was now the tallest in downtown Manhattan. Of course, that also wasn’t true.

NYT: Trump Sought to Fire Mueller in December http://nyti.ms/2JAy15S

⭕ 9 Apr 2018

WaPo: Trump attorney Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud, campaign finance violations http://wapo.st/2qiodog

NYT: Trump Denounces F.B.I. Raid on His Lawyer’s Office as ‘Attack on Our Country’ http://nyti.ms/2Jz7ztI

NYT: F.B.I. Raids Office of Trump’s Longtime Lawyer Michael Cohen; Trump Calls It ‘Disgraceful’ http://nyti.ms/2Hn8Zqg

WaPo, Fred Hiatt: McMaster warned against officials who ‘glamorize and apologize’ for dictators. Hmm. http://wapo.st/2GN4W5J

“The victory of free societies is not predestined,” the general warned. “There’s nothing inevitable about the course of human events and history. And there is no arc of history, there is no so-called end of history, that will ensure our success.”

⭕ 6 Apr 2018

NYT: Facebook to Require Verified Identities for Future Political Ads http://nyti.ms/2HfBLJt

NYT: Trump Administration Imposes New Sanctions on Putin Cronies http://nyti.ms/2GFJeQY

⭕ 4 Apr 2018

WaPo: H.R. McMaster delivers a parting shot to Russia as he prepares to bow out as national security adviser http://wapo.st/2IsnAQK

⭕ 3 Apr 2018

NYT, Clint Watts: For Russia, Trump Was a Vehicle, Not a Target http://nyti.ms/2Gzjg5x

In Trump and his campaign, Mr. Putin spotted a golden opportunity — an easily ingratiated celebrity motivated by fame and fortune, a foreign policy novice surrounded by unscreened opportunists open to manipulation and unaware of Russia’s long run game of subversion.

Mr. Putin has succeeded where his Soviet forefathers failed by leveraging money and cyberspace to subtly infiltrate and influence Americans while maintaining plausible deniability of their efforts. And the Kremlin’s ground game “cut outs” — intermediaries who facilitate communication between agents — conducted a more complex game.

Each Mueller indictment and investigative lead illuminates more Kremlin influence avenues into President Trump’s inner circle. Mr. Van Der Zwaan, whose father-in-law is the Russian oligarch German Khan, lied to investigators about his conversations with Mr. Gates, the Trump deputy campaign manager, and a Person A, whom the F.B.I. assessed as a Russian intelligence agent and many believe to be Konstantin Kilimnik, an associate of both Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort, a Trump campaign manager.

Evidence of Russia’s intent to interfere in the election is overwhelming, and documentation of Trump campaign members’ collusion not only exists but is growing. The special counsel’s investigation into collusion ultimately comes down to two questions. First, did President Trump or any member of his campaign willingly coordinate their actions with Russia? And did President Trump or any member of his campaign knowingly coordinate their action with Russia?

Trump campaign members certainly colluded with Russian influence efforts, some willingly, some possibly knowingly. The president denies the Kremlin’s hand, either still unaware or in denial of being manipulated by Mr. Putin’s minions. For Mr. Putin, it’s likely everything he hoped for — America riddled with political infighting and mired in investigations, a weakened NATO alliance vulnerable to aggression and a United States president seeking his adoration, obstinate and ignorant of the great caper the Kremlin just orchestrated.

The problem for the president is that ignorance is not immunity. The problem for America is that ignorance of Russian interference is vulnerability.

WaPo: Mueller told Trump’s attorneys the president remains under investigation but is not currently a criminal target http://wapo.st/2uO43bo

⭕ 2 Apr 2018

ThinkProgress: At Chicago nightclub, George Papadopoulos allegedly makes explosive new claim about Jeff Sessions http://bit.ly/2GPXzgN
// A chance encounter with a man at the center of the Russia investigation.

… Papadopoulos, according to this new acquaintance, said that Sessions was well aware of the contact between Papadopoulos and Joseph Mifsud, an academic from Malta with high-level connections in Russia. Papadopoulos’ indictment revealed that Mifsud had told Papadopoulos that the Russians had “‘dirt’ on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of ‘thousands of emails.’”

Jason Wilson, a computer engineer who lives in Chicago, told ThinkProgress that Papadopoulos said during their conversation that “Sessions encouraged me” to find out anything he could about the hacked Hillary Clinton emails that Mifsud had mentioned.

Wilson said he recognized Papadopoulos and his wife Simona Mangiante at Hydrate, a Chicago nightclub, on Thursday night at approximately 11 p.m. Wilson sat down their table and introduced himself. He said the couple, who were drinking vodka, were extremely friendly and a bit flattered that Wilson had recognized them.

After some conversation about the city and their marriage, Wilson turned the topic to the Russia investigation, asking Papadopoulos whether he thought Wilson would be disappointed when all the facts came out. Papadopoulos responded that things were “just getting started” and emphasized Sessions’ role, particularly his connection to Papadopoulos’ contacts with Mifsud.

Wilson provided ThinkProgress with a photo of Papadopoulos, Mangiante, and himself outside of Hydrate. The bar’s address is visible over Papadopoulos’ shoulder.

Simona Mangiante, in an interview with ThinkProgress on Friday night, confirmed that she was at Hydrate with George Papadopoulos on Thursday.

In an interview last December with ABC News, Mangiante said that Papadopoulos was “constantly in touch with high-level officials in the campaign.” Speaking on Friday with ThinkProgress, Mangiante said that Sessions was one of the officials in contact with Papadopoulos. “[Sessions] talked with George,” Mangiante said. She declined to provide further details. …

⭕ 29 Mar 2018

🐣 RT @kelly2277 [VentureCapital, 3/29] Evidence to charge Trump w Treason is here. Konstantin Rykov’s confession on Facebook named Aleksander Kogan who worked w Joseph Chancellor at GSR. Rykov connected to Artem Klyushin Yulia Alferova & Emin Agalarov who were w Trump when Putin called
// 3/29/2018
📌 Thread: https://mobile.twitter.com/kelly2277/status/979403917636395009

WaPo: Sessions, for now, rebuffs GOP calls for second special counsel to probe FBI actions in Clinton and Russia investigations http://wapo.st/2pTHGvl

DailyBeast: Trump and His Lawyer May Have Conspired to Obstruct Justice If They Dangled Pardons for Manafort and Flynn http://thebea.st/2GnGEyZ

⭕ 28 Mar 2018

Vox: It’s not just elections: Russia hacked the US electric grid http://bit.ly/2GDFORW
// And it may be just the first phase of a bigger attack.

WaPo: Ecuadoran Embassy in London cuts off Julian Assange’s Internet http://wapo.st/2J4kN12

WaPo: Mueller just drew his most direct line to date between the Trump campaign and Russia http://wapo.st/2utCS5l

That line is drawn in a new court filing related to the upcoming sentencing of London attorney Alex van der Zwaan. Van der Zwaan has pleaded guilty to lying about his contacts with deputy Trump campaign manager Rick Gates and a person identified in the document only as “Person A.” Person A appears to be a former Ukraine-based aide to Gates and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort named Konstantin Kilimnik.

NYT: Trump’s Lawyer Raised Prospect of Pardons for Flynn and Manafort http://nyti.ms/2IdYyEX

⭕ 22 Mar 2018

DailyBeast: EXCLUSIVE: ‘Lone DNC Hacker’ Guccifer 2.0 Slipped Up and Revealed He Was a Russian Intelligence Officer http://thebea.st/2puiYCz

⭕ 20 Mar 2018

NYT: Cambridge Analytica Suspends C.E.O. Amid Facebook Data Scandal http://nyti.ms/2u2zYog

DailyBeast, Michael Tomasky: Yes, This Is Going to Be Worse Than Watergate http://thebea.st/2fe5QPM
// In 1973, there were still some independent-minded lawmakers in the Grand Old Party. Today, not so much.

WaPo: Fox News commentator exits with a searing attack on Fox News http://wapo.st/2u7v1u7
// military Ralph Peters, “He described President Trump as being “terrified” of Russian president Vladi­mir Putin”

Slate: The Real Scandal Isn’t What Cambridge Analytica Did http://slate.me/2pwGL4X
//. It’s what Facebook made possible.

WaPo, James Homan: Trump’s increasingly confrontational approach to Mueller enabled by congressional GOP timidity http://wapo.st/2psmk8m

DailyBeast, Nik Ackerman and Jonathan Alter: The Opening Argument in the Trial of Donald J. Trump http://thebea.st/2FR1sP6
⋙ This is the Best Article I’ve read so far in 2018 on where we’re at with #TrumpRussia ~ pulls all the pieces together and makes a convincing case w/o assuming things we don’t know (yet). By Nik Ackerman and Jonathan Alter //➔ #HighlyRec

⭕ 19 Mar 2018

NYT: Alex Stamos, Facebook Data Security Chief, To Leave Amid Outcry http://nyti.ms/2FYPLWn

NYT: Cambridge Analytica, Trump-Tied Political Firm, Offered to Entrap Politicians http://nyti.ms/2FKaL7r

NYT: Trump to Hire Lawyer Who Has Pushed Theory That Justice Dept. Framed the President http://nyti.ms/2u1nME1
// Joseph diGenova

Mr. diGenova has endorsed the notion that a secretive group of F.B.I. agents concocted the Russia investigation as a way to keep Mr. Trump from becoming president. “There was a brazen plot to illegally exonerate Hillary Clinton and, if she didn’t win the election, to then frame Donald Trump with a falsely created crime,” he said on Fox News in January. He added, “Make no mistake about it: A group of F.B.I. and D.O.J. people were trying to frame Donald Trump of a falsely created crime.”

Mr. diGenova is law partners with his wife, Victoria Toensing. Ms. Toensing has also represented Sam Clovis, the former Trump campaign co-chairman, and Erik Prince, the founder of the security contractor Blackwater and an informal adviser to Mr. Trump. Mr. Prince attended a meeting in January 2017 with a Russian investor in the Seychelles that the special counsel is investigating.

Axios, Mike Allen: A huge clue about Mueller’s endgame http://bit.ly/2GHIdbN

Axios has learned that special counsel Robert Mueller has focused on events since the election — not during the campaign — in his conversations with President Trump’s lawyers. The top two topics that Mueller has expressed interest in so far: the firings of FBI director James Comey and national security adviser Michael Flynn.

Why it matters: That suggests a focus on obstruction of justice while in office, rather than collusion with Russia during the campaign. But both sagas are interwoven with Russia: Trump himself has linked Comey’s firing to Russia, and Flynn pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about conversations with the Russian ambassador during the transition.

The Mueller and Trump teams are hoping to work out the specifics of a presidential interview within the next few weeks.

The big question they’re debating is whether it’ll be in person, in writing, or some combination of the two.

After a weekend of increasingly personal and vocal battles with Mueller, the White House extended an awkward olive branch on Sunday night, with White House lawyer Ty Cobb issuing this statement:

“In response to media speculation and related questions being posed to the Administration, the White House yet again confirms that the President is not considering or discussing the firing of the Special Counsel, Robert Mueller.”

But that’s too late. Veering from the White House legal strategy of cooperating with Mueller, Trump attacked him by name on Twitter, seeking to discredit the eventual findings with Republican supporters.

Someone familiar with the process said that was presidential frustration, and that the Trump team continues its ongoing dialogue with Mueller.

⭕ 18 Mar 2018

DailyBeast, Nik Ackerman and Jonathan Alter: The Opening Argument in the Trial of Donald J. Trump http://thebea.st/2FR1sP6
⋙ This is the Best Article I’ve read so far in 2018 on where we’re at with #TrumpRussia ~ pulls all the pieces together and makes a convincing case w/o assuming things we don’t know (yet). By Nik Ackerman and Jonathan Alter //➔ #HighlyRec

⭕ 17 Mar 2018

🐣 RT @JohnBrennan When the full extent of your venality, moral turpitude, and political corruption becomes known, you will take your rightful place as a disgraced demagogue in the dustbin of history. You may scapegoat Andy McCabe, but you will not destroy America…America will triumph over you.
⋙ to Trump

WSJ: Andrew McCabe Kept Notes About Conversations With Trump, Gave Them to Mueller http://on.wsj.com/2pm9uZj
//John Dowd, President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, called for the Mueller probe to end ‘on the merits in light of recent revelations’

WaPo: Trump’s lawyer calls on Justice Department to immediately end Russia probe http://wapo.st/2FHamlX

⭕ 15 Mar 2018

WaPo, Max Boot: Russia’s been waging war on the West for years. We just haven’t noticed. http://wapo.st/2FYuWxH

WaPo, David Ignatius: Putin has finally gone too far http://wapo.st/2DxTQie

🐣 RT @tribelaw BREAKING NEWS: The Trump administration today announced that Russia has successfully launched a cyberattack on our nuclear power grid, has compromised the grid, and can shut it down at will. This is on top of what Russia did to our election. We are under attack by a hostile power

WaPo: New Russia sanctions are Trump’s strongest action against Moscow — but far short of what Congress wanted http://wapo.st/2FXLZQp

NYT: Mueller Subpoenas Trump Organization, Demanding Documents About Russia http://nyti.ms/2HEJq39

NYT: Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says http://nyti.ms/2FMmzSF

⭕ 13 Mar 2018

🐣 RT @Biz_Ukraine_News From Crimea to Salisbury: Time to Acknowledge Putin’s Global Hybrid War ¤ This March 2018 article seems particularly relevant as the world struggles to digest the implications of the Kremlin’s chemical weapons attack on British soil.
⋙ AtlanticCouncil (Mar): From Crimea to Salisbury: Time to Acknowledge Putin’s Global Hybrid War http://bit.ly/2NXmMqd
// 3/13/2018

LawfareBlog: Document: House Intelligence Committee Minority Russia Investigation Status Report http://bit.ly/2pcSLrd

⭕ 12 Mar 2018

Slate, Sam Berger: Mueller’s Choice of Criminal Charges: Why the Trump Team Should Be Very Worried http://slate.me/2tFfHVt

Ryan Goodman recently highlighted an important revelation contained in the memo written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee: Not only had the Russians told the Trump campaign that they had dirt on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails, but they had also previewed for George Papadopoulos, a foreign policy adviser on the campaign, that they could help with disseminating them.

This revelation would suggest significant legal exposure on its own. But when viewed within the broader context of what we know about the Russia investigation, it is further evidence of an extremely troubling pattern of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russia-linked operatives, which show an intertwining of two campaigns to elect Donald Trump: one run out of Trump Tower and one run out of the Kremlin.

Goodman and the experts he spoke with identified four types of actions that could create criminal liability for the Trump team stemming from this new information: if the campaign consulted with the Russians on their plans to disseminate the emails, if the Trump campaign gave tacit assent or approval or support, if Trump officials intentionally encouraged the Russians, or if they sought to conceal the facts of a crime. Just looking at the publicly available information shows the outlines of a potential legal case against members of the Trump team along these very lines.

As campaign finance law expert Paul S. Ryan points out, campaigns cannot coordinate with foreign nationals on any expenditure that seeks to influence a U.S. election. Coordination includes cooperation, consultation, or acting in concert with, or at the request or suggestion of the candidate or his team. A key word is or—each of those actions could independently suffice to establish a violation.

The emails to set up the now infamous June 9, 2016, Trump Tower meeting contain a particularly incriminating piece of evidence on this score. While significant focus has been given to Donald Trump Jr.’s enthusiastic response to the offer of damaging information on Clinton as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” equal attention should be paid to the rest of his response, in which he says that such information would be helpful “especially later in the summer.” In this statement, Trump Jr. was not only communicating a willingness to collude with Russia; he was also telling them when the campaign thought the release of such information would be most politically useful. …

After Trump Jr. shared his assessment of the best timing for the release of damaging material on Clinton, WikiLeaks, which the U.S. intelligence community assessed with high confidence was provided the stolen Democratic emails by Russia, released a slew of emails later that summer right before the Democratic National Convention, exacerbating divisions within the Democratic Party and undermining the convention’s unifying message.

… Perhaps the starkest example was the timing of WikiLeaks’ release of the hacked emails of John Podesta, chairman of the Clinton campaign. His emails were made public a scant 29 minutes after the Washington Post broke the story late on a Friday afternoon of the Access Hollywood tape in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women. …

… Trump campaign … proved surprisingly effective at weaponizing the Clinton-linked emails released by WikiLeaks. Trump mentioned the website 164 times—an average of more than five times per day—in the final month of the campaign …

… We now know that Trump Jr. was also exchanging private messages with WikiLeaks both during and after the campaign. In one instance, Trump tweeted about the hacked emails just 15 minutes after WikiLeaks messaged Trump Jr. suggesting his father promote them. Trump Jr. wasn’t the only person talking with the people behind WikiLeaks; both Roger Stone and the head of Cambridge Analytica, a firm the Trump campaign employed to help with data analytics, were also reportedly in contact with them.

But what we do know is that the Trump team undertook a massive effort to cover up its collusion with Russia. They repeatedly denied any contacts with Russian officials, calling the claims “absurd,” “disgusting,” and even “dangerous.” But subsequent reporting, admissions, and indictments have revealed there were many, many contacts between the Trump team and Russia-linked operatives, including numerous in-person meetings. Knowledge about these contacts was widespread in the campaign: Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, Jeff Sessions, Sam Clovis, and Corey Lewandowski all knew, as did many others.

Yet no one on the campaign ever revealed these contacts or told the authorities about Russia’s hacking and offers of help. In fact, they actively participated in the cover-up by lying about their contacts every step of the way. …

NYT: Britain Blames Russia for Nerve Agent Attack on Former Spy http://nyti.ms/2HpkBbi

⭕ 9 Mar 2018

💙💙 MotherJones: “Why the Hell Are We Standing Down?” http://bit.ly/2p6wsDg
// The secret story of Obama’s response to Putin’s attack on the 2016 election.

MotherJones: Trump Spoke to a Russian Activist About Ending Sanctions—Just Weeks After Launching His Campaign http://bit.ly/2Ge3sBG
// Here’s the video of their exchange.

⭕ 8 Mar 2018

CNN: Amid renewed scrutiny, Erik Prince to host fundraiser for Russia-friendly congressman http://cnn.it/2oZJuCw
// Dana Rohrabacher

RawStory: Trump partied with Russian oligarchs at Vegas nightclub shut down over ‘lewd’ acts involving women and urine: report http://bit.ly/2tvFbEv
// David Corn and Michael Isikoff book; possible source of “pee tape” legend

MotherJones: The Very Strange Case of Two Russian Gun Lovers, the NRA, and Donald Trump http://bit.ly/2oWn2eB
// Here’s what we uncovered about an odd pair from Moscow who courted the Trump campaign.

NYT: How Russian Trolls Crept Into the Trump Campaign’s Facebook Messages http://nyti.ms/2IdG5ZF

💙💙 MotherJones: What Happened in Moscow: The Inside Story of How Trump’s Obsession With Putin Began http://bit.ly/2oShFNy
// His 2013 visit paved the way for a scandal that shook the world; This is the first of two excerpts adapted from Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin’s War on America and the Election of Donald Trump (Twelve Books), by Michael Isikoff, chief investigative correspondent for Yahoo News, and David Corn, Washington bureau chief of Mother Jones. The book will be released on March 13.

NYT: Trump Accepts Kim Jong-un’s Invitation to Meet http://nyti.ms/2p3uweK

⭕ 7 Mar 2018

WaPo: Mueller gathers evidence that 2017 Seychelles meeting was effort to establish back channel to Kremlin http://wapo.st/2FyLbRT

In January 2017, Erik Prince, the founder of the private security company Blackwater, met with a Russian official close to Russian President Vladi­mir Putin and later described the meeting to congressional investigators as a chance encounter that was not a planned discussion of U.S.-Russia relations.

A witness cooperating with Mueller has told investigators the meeting was set up in advance so that a representative of the Trump transition could meet with an emissary from Moscow to discuss future relations between the countries, according to the people familiar with the matter, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive matters.

⭕ 6 Mar 2018

NYT: Adviser to Emirates With Ties to Trump Aides Is Cooperating With Special Counsel http://nyti.ms/2D6hEcM

Mr. Mueller appears to be examining the influence of foreign money on Mr. Trump’s political activities and has asked witnesses about the possibility that the adviser, George Nader, funneled money from the Emirates to the president’s political efforts. It is illegal for foreign entities to contribute to campaigns or for Americans to knowingly accept foreign money for political races.

Mr. Nader, a Lebanese-American businessman who advises Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the Emirates, also attended a January 2017 meeting in the Seychelles that Mr. Mueller’s investigators have examined. The meeting, convened by the crown prince, brought together a Russian investor close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia with Erik Prince, the founder of Blackwater and an informal adviser to Mr. Trump’s team during the presidential transition, according to three people familiar with the meeting.

Mr. Nader’s cooperation in the special counsel’s investigation could prompt new legal risks for the Trump administration, and Mr. Nader’s presence at the Seychelles meeting appears to connect him to the primary focus of Mr. Mueller’s investigation: examining Russian interference during the 2016 presidential campaign.

[ UAE, US, Russia ]

Mr. Nader represented the crown prince in the three-way conversation in the Seychelles, at a hotel overlooking in the Indian Ocean, in the days before Mr. Trump took office. At the meeting, Emirati officials believed Mr. Prince was speaking for the Trump transition team, and a Russian fund manager, Kirill Dmitriev, represented Mr. Putin, according to several people familiar with the meeting. Mr. Nader, who grew close later to several advisers in the Trump White House, had once worked as a consultant to Blackwater, a private security firm now known as Academi. Mr. Nader introduced his former employer to the Russian. …

Mr. Dmitriev, a former Goldman Sachs banker with an M.B.A. from Harvard, was tapped by Mr. Putin in 2011 to manage an unusual state-run investment fund. Where other such funds seek to earn returns on sovereign wealth, Mr. Dmitriev’s Russian Direct Investment Fund seeks outside investments, often from foreign governments, for unglamorous infrastructure projects inside of Russia.

The Obama administration imposed sanctions on the fund as part of a raft of economic penalties after the Russian government sent military forces into Ukraine in 2014.

The United Arab Emirates, which Washington considers one of its closest Arab allies, has invested heavily in Mr. Dmitriev’s fund as part of an effort to build close relations to Russia as well. After Crown Prince Mohammed met with Mr. Putin in 2013 in Moscow on a state visit, two investment arms of the government in Abu Dhabi committed to invest $6 billion in the Russian Direct Investment Fund …

Mr. Dmitriev became a frequent visitor to Abu Dhabi, and Emirati officials came to see him as a key conduit to the Russian government. In a 2015 email, the Emirati ambassador to Moscow at the time described Mr. Dmitriev as a “messenger” to get information directly to Mr. Putin. The email was among a large number hacked from the account of the ambassador to Washington and published online. The now former ambassador to Moscow, Omar Saif Ghobash, did not respond to an email about the leak.

Mr. Nader was first served with search warrants and a grand jury subpoena on Jan. 17, shortly after landing at Washington Dulles International Airport, according to two people familiar with the episode. He had intended to travel on to Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump’s Florida estate, to celebrate the president’s first year in office, but the F.B.I. had other plans, questioning him for more than two hours and seizing his electronics.

Since then, Mr. Nader has been questioned numerous times about meetings in New York during the transition, the Seychelles meeting and meetings in the White House with two of Mr. Trump’s senior advisers, Jared Kushner and Stephen K. Bannon, who has since left the administration.

The meeting in the Seychelles also took place against the backdrop of a larger pattern of secretive contacts between the Trump team and both the Russians and the Emiratis. In the weeks after the 2016 presidential election, Crown Prince Mohammed aroused the suspicions of American national security officials when they learned that he had breached protocol by visiting Trump Tower in Manhattan without notifying the Obama administration of his visit to the United States.

Mr. Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law and a senior transition adviser, met at Trump Tower with Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to Washington at the time, and discussed setting up a back channel to communicate with Moscow during the transition — circumventing American diplomatic channels normally used during a presidential transition. Mr. Kushner met a few days later with a Russian banker close to Putin, Sergey N. Gorkov — whose bank was also under sanctions — in what Mr. Kushner has said was an attempt to establish a direct line of communication to Mr. Putin during the transition.

Public accounts of the Seychelles meeting have varied sharply. Questioned about it during testimony in November before the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Prince dismissed his encounter with Mr. Dmitriev as little more than a chance run-in.

He was in the Seychelles for a meeting with Crown Prince Mohammed and Emirati officials, Mr. Prince said, and after the meeting, the officials suggested he meet Mr. Dmitriev at the bar of the Four Seasons hotel.

“I remember telling him that if Franklin Roosevelt could work with Joseph Stalin to defeat Nazi fascism, then certainly Donald Trump could work with Vladimir Putin to defeat Islamic fascism,” he told lawmakers.”

Shortly after the Seychelles meeting, Mr. Dmitriev met with Anthony Scaramucci, then an informal Trump adviser, at the 2017 World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. In an interview afterward with TASS, a Russian news agency, Mr. Scaramucci criticized the Obama administration’s economic sanctions on Russia as ineffective and suggested that the Trump administration and Russia could find common ground on numerous issues.

“We have to make the world safer, we have to eliminate from the world the radical Islamic terrorism, and we have to figure out the ways to grow the wages for working class-families,” said Mr. Scaramucci, who later had a brief but calamitous stint as White House communications director. “Whether in Russia or in the U.S., I think there are a lot of common objectives.”

For his part, Mr. Dmitriev seemed particularly optimistic at the dawn of the Trump era. In an interview with The New York Times two days after the 2016 election, he said he was excited that Mr. Trump’s dramatic victory would “reshape the U.S.-Russia relationship.”

“When Russia is treated with respect,” he said, “we can move forward.”
↧(also this)↧
WaPo: Businessman with ties to United Arab Emirates is cooperating with Mueller probe http://wapo.st/2oVb2Jy

The UAE agreed to broker the meeting in part to explore whether Russia could be persuaded to curtail its relationship with Iran, including in Syria, a Trump administration objective that would be likely to require major concessions to Moscow on U.S. sanctions, those officials said.

Prince, the founder of the former Blackwater contracting firm, had no formal role with the Trump campaign or transition. However, according to officials familiar with the meeting, he presented himself as an unofficial envoy for Trump to high-ranking Emiratis involved in setting up his meeting with the Russian official.

Prince has sharply disputed that account, saying he did not present himself as a representative of the incoming administration. He told congressional investigators that his meeting with Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, was a passing encounter over a drink at the bar of the Four Seasons in the Seychelles, an island nation in the Indian Ocean.

Prince said his meeting with Dmitriev came up at the last minute and at the suggestion of the crown prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan, who Prince said invited him to the Seychelles — although he told congressional investigators he could not remember when or who from Zayed’s staff extended the invitation. The crown prince is widely known as MBZ.

H.R. McMaster, Trump’s national security adviser, learned that Kushner had contacts with foreign officials, including from the UAE, that he did not coordinate through the National Security Council or officially report. The issue of foreign officials talking about their meetings with Kushner and their perceptions of his vulnerabilities was a subject raised in McMaster’s daily intelligence briefings, according to the current and former officials.

WaPo, David Ignatius: America ignores Russia at its peril http://wapo.st/2D6H4XM

Putin’s speech was a plea for attention by a leader who sees himself avenging his nation’s humiliation after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Despite Putin’s wounded, chip-on-the-shoulder posture, this struck me as the core of his address, and worth a well-considered response.

The crux of Putin’s argument is that Russia was ignored during its years of weakness and is only taken seriously now because it looks threatening. Putin recounted that before he took power, “the military equipment of the Russian army was becoming obsolete, and the armed forces were in a sorry state.” With the collapse of the Soviet Union, he said, “the nation had lost 23.8 percent of its territory, 48.5 percent of its population, 41 percent of its gross domestic product and 44.6 percent of its military capability.

“Nobody really wanted to talk to us about the core of the problem [of the nuclear-weapons balance], and nobody wanted to listen to us. So listen now,” he demanded.

Putin is a bully, but a predictable one. He has been advertising his desire to restore Russia’s lost glory since he became president in 2000. Last month’s indictment by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III of 13 Russians and three companies for interfering in the 2016 presidential election describes an organization, the Internet Research Agency, that, according to other accounts, field-tested Putin’s Internet manipulation techniques in 2014 in Ukraine before deploying them in America. To manage these covert actions, Putin turned to a billionaire oligarch pal, Yevgeniy Prigozhin , who also helped organize Russian mercenaries in Syria.

Ukraine has been Putin’s laboratory. Oleksandr Danylyuk was, the chairman of the Center for Defense Reforms in Ukraine, warned in a 2016 paper for the Naval Postgraduate School that Russia has “been carrying out not only information operations but also other clandestine and special operations against Ukraine for more than a decade.” His conclusion: “Russia is not preparing for war with the West; the war is already being actively conducted — on Russia’s terms.” …

“In an autocracy, the traits of character are magnified; everything personal is political,” wrote Montefiore about the Romanovs. Putin is inescapable. The U.S. military will counter Putin’s death-star weapons, but in the meantime, American diplomacy needs to open better channels. Ignoring Russia may be good politics, but it is bad policy.

CNN: ‘Man of mystery’ cooperates with Mueller in Russia probe http://cnn.it/2oTwb6I
// George Nader, UAE, Seychelles

⭕ 5 Mar 2018

WaPo: Mueller is casting a wide net. We now know the target is Trump. http://wapo.st/2I51mEU

WaPo: Ex-Trump aide: Trump ‘may very well have done something during the election with the Russians’ http://wapo.st/2D2gIGF

There have been few more surreal moments in the Russia investigation — indeed, in the entire Trump era — than the one we just witnessed. …

NewYorker, Jane Mayer: Christopher Steele, the Man Behind the Trump Dossier http://bit.ly/2oSvMl8
// 3/12/2018 Issue; How the ex-spy tried to warn the world about Trump’s ties to Russia.
⋙ See under Entire Articles

⭕ 4 Mar 2018

NYT: State Dept. Was Granted $120 Million to Fight Russian Meddling. It Has Spent $0. http://nyti.ms/2H2BsAi

Axios: Scoop: Mueller’s hit list http://bit.ly/2oHICTM

🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast: Mueller Subpoenas Communications With Trump and Inner Circle http://thebea.st/2FhHaO8

⭕ 2 Mar 2018

Buzzfeed: Even Italian Prosecutors Can’t Find The Professor At The Center Of The Trump-Russia Probe http://bzfd.it/2FMdx8X
// Papadopoulos contact; Records at the prosecutor’s office in Palermo, Italy, show that Joseph Mifsud is “unreachable”.

⭕ 1 Mar 2018

JustSecurity, Ryan Goodman (3/1): Russia “Previewed” Plan to Disseminate Emails with Trump Campaign http://bit.ly/2FAZQsF
// And how that’s legally significant

A significant recent revelation in the Russia investigation has been largely overlooked in the rush of several breaking news stories over the past few days. A nugget of information is contained in the memo written by Democrats on the House Intelligence Committee (the so-called Schiff Memo), which was released on Saturday morning.

Prior to the memo, we knew that a Russian agent told Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos of “Moscow possessing ‘dirt’” on Hillary Clinton “in the form of ‘thousands of emails,’” according to Papadopoulos’s plea statement. The memo went a legally significant step further. As Rep. Adam Schiff recently told Chris Hayes, “our memo discloses for the first time that the Russians previewed to Papadopoulos that they could help with disseminating these stolen emails.” Rep. Schiff added, “When Donald Trump openly called on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, they’d be richly rewarded if they released these to the press, his campaign had already been put on notice that the Russians were prepared to do just that and disseminate these stolen emails.” (The full transcript and video clip is below.)

A legally important question is what the Trump campaign did after the Russians previewed that they could help disseminate the stolen emails. If Trump campaign officials consulted with the Russians on their plans to disseminate the emails, it could involve direct violations of campaign finance laws (see the statement below from leading election law expert Paul Seamus Ryan). If Trump campaign officials gave tacit assent or approval or support, it could directly implicate them in the “conspiracy to defraud the United States” by evading the Federal Election Commission—the very conspiracy for which Mueller has already indicted thirteen Russian nationals (see the statement below by former White House official and also top election law expert Bob Bauer). If Papadopoulos intentionally encouraged the Russians and if he was instructed to do so by other campaign officials, they could be liable as accomplices (see statements below from law professors and former federal prosecutors Barbara McQuade and Alex Whiting). The Trump campaign as an organization could also be criminally liable (see statement below from McQuade). Finally, if members of the Trump campaign tried to conceal the facts of a crime (potentially including either the original DNC hack or the dissemination of the stolen emails) they could be guilty of “misprision of a felony” (see statements below by former federal prosecutors including Renato Mariotti).

REP. SCHIFF [All In]: “Well, unfortunately, I can’t go beyond what the Department of Justice has authorized us to disclose in the memo, but I think it’s the first time the public’s been able to see one of the links here. And that is we knew from the Papadopoulos plea that the Russians had told the Trump campaign very early on in April 2016 that they were in possession of these stolen emails. We now know that the Department of Justice presented to the FISA Court information that the Russians previewed what they would do with this information, their dissemination of it. So when Donald Trump openly called on the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s emails, they’d be richly rewarded if they released these to the press, his campaign had already been put on notice that the Russians were prepared to do just that and disseminate these stolen emails.”

DailyBeast: Leaked: Secret Documents From Russia’s Election Trolls http://thebea.st/2GWcB0X
// An online auction gone awry reveals substantial new details on Kremlin-backed troll farm efforts to stir up real protests and target specific Americans to push their propaganda.

NBC: Mueller eyes charges against Russians who stole, spread Democrats’ emails http://nbcnews.to/2HXHWBG

WaPo: Putin speech adds to freeze in U.S.-Russia relations http://wapo.st/2GXo5Bk

⭕ 28 Feb 2018

CNN: Trump furious after Schiff hires former NSC aides to help oversee his administration http://cnn.it/2TIWJWy

WaPo: Mueller investigation examining Trump’s apparent efforts to oust Sessions in July http://wapo.st/2COFWrO

Axios: Scoop: Besieged Sessions dines with Rosenstein http://bit.ly/2F4vcHC

The symbolism was unmistakable: the three top ranking officials in the Justice Department appearing together in a show of solidarity on the same day Trump is publicly and privately raging about Sessions.

When Trump sees this photo he’ll have to absorb a concept that some of his aides have been trying to impress upon him for nearly a year, since he first began telling them he wanted to get rid of Sessions.

The concept: Fire Sessions, then what next? Are you going to fire Rosenstein too? And then what after that? 

Sources close to the situation say today feels different than Trump’s usual rages. Sessions’ allies are deeply concerned and Trump is totally fed up with his AG.

Trump has been taunting and publicly humiliating Sessions for months now, but his tweet this morning was as rough as any he’s sent:

“Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!”

NYT: Trump Calls Sessions’s Handling of Surveillance Abuse Allegations ‘Disgraceful’ http://nyti.ms/2CQaPvS

The long-simmering friction between President Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions erupted into an extraordinary public face-off on Wednesday as the investigation into Russia’s election interference roiled the administration and raised new questions about the independence of law enforcement agencies.

Mr. Trump excoriated Mr. Sessions for not ordering his own investigation into the handling of the Russia inquiry during its early months, calling his attorney general “DISGRACEFUL” in a lacerating Twitter post. Mr. Sessions, who has absorbed blows from the White House since last year mostly in silence, responded with a rare statement defending his “integrity and honor.”

The back-and-forth, unthinkable in previous administrations, came during a week of unrest at the White House. As the president railed about the special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation, his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was stripped of his top-secret security clearance. One of Mr. Trump’s closest aides, Hope Hicks, announced that she will step down as communications director. And Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman was back in court pleading not guilty to new charges.

The schism between Mr. Trump and his attorney general has become a persistent subplot of his administration, an almost Shakespearean rift between a president and one of his earliest and strongest supporters. Mr. Sessions was the first senator to back Mr. Trump’s candidacy but has fallen out of favor because the president wanted an attorney general who would protect him and investigate his political enemies.

⭕ 27 Feb 2018

NBC: U.S. intel: Russia compromised seven states prior to 2016 elections http://nbcnews.to/2GPcnc0

CNN: US cyber chief says Trump hasn’t told him to confront Russian cyber threat http://cnn.it/2t00Zbf

🐣 RT @jimsciutto Explain: @NSA chief Mike Rogers told lawmakers he would need to be granted authority to “disrupt Russian cyber threats where they originate” by President or SecDef. Asked if he has been directed by President to do so, Rogers said “No, I have not.”

CNN: Mueller team asks about Trump’s Russian business dealings as he weighed a run for president http://cnn.it/2CNkH9C

⭕ 26 Feb 2018

NewYorker, Jeffrey Toobin: Trump’s Miss Universe Gambit http://bit.ly/2CMLSS9
// For years, he used his beauty pageants to boost business interests abroad. A 2013 contest, in Moscow, may also have helped give him the Presidency.

⭕ 24 Feb 2018

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Democratic memo discredits Nunes, tantalizes on dossier corroboration http://wapo.st/2Cj1aT4

As Democrats have said publicly, the memo from committee ranking member Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) states there was ample evidence to conduct surveillance of Carter Page entirely apart from the dossier compiled by Christopher Steele, including “contemporaneous evidence of Russia’s election interference; concerning Russian links and outreach to Trump campaign officials; Page’s history with Russian intelligence; and … Page’s suspicious activities in 2016, including in Moscow.”

Notice that the memo says the suspicious activities included not merely the trip itself but activities in Moscow. If the FBI had detailed knowledge of Page’s activities beyond his bizarre pro-Russia speech, that could provide insight into the interaction between the Trump campaign and the Russian campaign for then-candidate Donald Trump. Those activities reportedly include meeting with Igor Sechin, a close associate of Russian president Vladimir Putin, to discuss energy deals if sanctions were lifted and meeting with a senior Kremlin official who disclosed that the Russians had compromising information on Hillary Clinton and that such information might be released to the Trump campaign. 

In short, not only did the dossier play a minor role in obtaining the surveillance of Page, but Page’s own actions provide an extraordinary window into communications from and to the Russians about dirt on Clinton. Do we think Page kept all this to himself when he returned?

The Schiff memo also makes clear that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was told the dossier was funded by a political operation “likely looking for information that could be used to discredit [Trump’s] campaign,” although Steele did not know the identity of the person who funded his work. …

The memo also states that “Russian agents previewed their hack and dissemination of stolen emails.” Was this a heads-up to Roger Stone? If they were previewing the email release to anyone associated with the Trump campaign, that surely constitutes collusion by anyone’s definition.

[I]t also hints at a wealth of information not yet revealed that may substantiate ties between the Russians and the Trump campaign. The more of these ties, the more people involved and the more detailed these interactions were, the more likely, of course, is that someone, at some point told Trump or his inner circle about them. If Schiff intended to whet our appetite for more details and confirm the extent of the Trump campaign-Russia ties, he succeeded.

🐣 RT @RepAdamSchiff Wrong again, Mr. President. It confirms the FBI acted appropriately and that Russian agents approached two of your advisors, and informed your campaign that Russia was prepared to help you by disseminating stolen Clinton emails. (‼️)
⋙ Re: Trumptweet: The Democrat memo response on government surveillance abuses is a total political and legal BUST. Just confirms all of the terrible things that were done. SO ILLEGAL!

CNN: New indictment accuses Manafort of paying European politicians http://cnn.it/2GGaChm

NYT: Mueller Is Gaining Steam. Should Trump Worry? http://nyti.ms/2ESvilP

Mr. Trump’s defenders have focused on questioning the original basis for the investigation, accusing the F.B.I. of misconduct in relying on an unverified dossier assembled by a former British spy hired by investigators working for Mrs. Clinton’s campaign.

To the extent that Mr. Mueller is exploring whether Mr. Trump obstructed justice by firing Mr. Comey, the president’s defenders contend that under the Constitution, he has the power to dismiss executive branch officials and dictate their work. They also point to testimony by Mr. Comey and other officials who said the investigation was not impeded.

Therefore, they argue, the original order appointing Mr. Mueller was itself invalid and should be revoked.

Mr. Wittes said Mr. Mueller’s actions could be seen as building a pyramid — establishing that there was a Russian influence campaign and assembling a group of cooperating witnesses. But the special counsel has not tipped his hand yet.

“The basic contours of the puzzle is that he’s constructed his actions in a way that we don’t know where it’s leading,” he said, “and that’s on purpose.”

⭕ 23 Feb 2018

DailyBeast: Putin Sends His Stealth Jets Into Air War Over Syria http://thebea.st/2EZDP9M
// Two of Russia’s T-50s prototype stealth fighters landed at Khmeimim air base this week, potentially intensifying the risk to U.S. and allied warplanes over the war-ravaged country.

CNBC: NRA, Russia and Trump: How ‘dark money’ is poisoning American democracy http://cnb.cx/2Cf4mig

CNN: Putin’s ‘chef’ accused of trying to cover his tracks http://cnn.it/2EOlGMQ

WaPo: What we know about the shadowy Russian mercenary firm behind an attack on U.S. troops in Syria http://wapo.st/2CDbNvn

WaPo: Inside the Manafort money machine: A decade of influence-peddling, lavish spending and alleged fraud http://wapo.st/2BNju5C

WaPo: Former Trump campaign official Rick Gates plans to plead guilty to 2 charges http://wapo.st/2CEfqkQ

Rick Gates, a former top official in President Trump’s campaign, plans to plead guilty to conspiracy and lying to the FBI, according to court papers filed Friday by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III.

According to a criminal information — a document filed with the permission of the defendant which traditionally signals that person plans to plead guilty — Gates conspired to defraud the United States regarding the money he and his business partner Paul Manafort earned and lied to the FBI in a Feb. 1, 2018 interview about a 2013 meeting he’d had with Manafort and an unidentified lobbyist.

NYT: Rick Gates, Trump Campaign Aide, to Plead Guilty in Mueller Inquiry and Cooperate http://nyti.ms/2CFkvJu

⭕ 22 Feb 2018

WaPo: Putin ally said to be in touch with Kremlin, Assad before his mercenaries attacked U.S. troops http://wapo.st/2ork1Sk
⋙ 🐣 Fascinating stuff: Guy behind the Russian troll farm was also involved with attack on Americans in Syria that left dozens of Russian “mercenaries” dead: WaPo: Putin ally said to be in touch with Kremlin, Assad before his mercenaries attacked U.S. troops https://twitter.com/Auriandra/status/967128458747838465/photo/1

A Russian oligarch believed to control the Russian mercenaries who attacked U.S. troops and their allies in Syria this month was in close touch with Kremlin and ­Syrian officials in the days and weeks before and after the assault, according to U.S. intelligence reports.

In intercepted communications in late January, the oligarch, Yevgeniy Prigozhin, told a senior Syrian official that he had “secured permission” from an unspecified Russian minister to move forward with a “fast and strong” initiative that would take place in early February.

Prigozhin made front-page headlines last week when he was indicted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III on charges of bankrolling and guiding a long-running Russian scheme to conduct “information warfare” during the 2016 U.S. presidential campaign. …

Prigozhin has made himself indispensable to the Kremlin, said Andrew S. Weiss, a Eurasia expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

“On the one hand, he does things that are at the pointy end of the spear, like operating a significant information operation against America,” Weiss said. “On the other, he is deeply intertwined in the activities of the Ministry of Defense and provides combat capabilities and other services.”

NYT: Mueller Files New Fraud Charges Against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates http://nyti.ms/2FqiQL9

⭕ 18 Feb 2018

TheAtlantic, Franklin Foer: Cover Story: Franklin Foer on Paul Manafort and the Fall of Washington http://theatln.tc/2CClWbU
// 1/18/2018, on Paul Manafort

NYT, Thomas Friedman: Whatever Trump Is Hiding Is Hurting All of Us Now http://nyti.ms/2EPNlMB

Our democracy is in serious danger.

President Trump is either totally compromised by the Russians or is a towering fool, or both, but either way he has shown himself unwilling or unable to defend America against a Russian campaign to divide and undermine our democracy.

In sum, Trump is either hiding something so threatening to himself, or he’s criminally incompetent to be commander in chief. It is impossible yet to say which explanation for his behavior is true, but it seems highly likely that one of these scenarios explains Trump’s refusal to respond to Russia’s direct attack on our system — a quiescence that is simply unprecedented for any U.S. president in history. Russia is not our friend. It has acted in a hostile manner. And Trump keeps ignoring it all.

Up to now, Trump has been flouting the norms of the presidency. Now Trump’s behavior amounts to a refusal to carry out his oath of office — to protect and defend the Constitution. Here’s an imperfect but close analogy: It’s as if George W. Bush had said after 9/11: “No big deal. I am going golfing over the weekend in Florida and blogging about how it’s all the Democrats’ fault — no need to hold a National Security Council meeting.”

NYT: Inside the Russian Troll Factory: Zombies and a Breakneck Pace http://nyti.ms/2sFT42G

LATimes: Former Trump aide Richard Gates to plead guilty; agrees to testify against Manafort, sources say http://lat.ms/2ENF9MO

NYT: Trump’s Evolution From Relief to Fury Over the Russia Indictment http://nyti.ms/2BBrCG9

WaPo: Trump lashes out over Russia probe in angry and error-laden tweetstorm http://wapo.st/2CuKS4X

WaPo, Glenn Kessler: Fact-checking Trump’s error-filled tweetstorm about the Russia investigation http://wapo.st/2ERSYty

TheHill: Gates plans to testify against Manafort in Mueller probe: report http://bit.ly/2Fe3WHR

⭕ 17 Feb 2018

WaPo: A former Russian troll speaks: ‘It was like being in Orwell’s world’ http://wapo.st/2Ezg44V

“I arrived there, and I immediately felt like a character in the book ‘1984’ by George Orwell — a place where you have to write that white is black and black is white. Your first feeling, when you ended up there, was that you were in some kind of factory that turned lying, telling untruths, into an industrial assembly line. The volumes were colossal — there were huge numbers of people, 300 to 400, and they were all writing absolute untruths. It was like being in Orwell’s world.”

⭕ 16 Feb 2018

WaPo: Russian troll farm, 13 suspects indicted for interference in U.S. election http://wapo.st/2HohYHe

TheIntercept, James Risen: Is Donald Trump a Traitor? http://bit.ly/2GnyBl9

NYT: Meet Yevgeny Prigozhin, the Russian Oligarch Indicted in U.S. Election Interference http://nyti.ms/2sCHtBz

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT: 13 Named in Russia Indictment by Special Counsel in First Charges on 2016 Election Interference http://nyti.ms/2o4iySq

⭕ 10 Feb 2018

WaPo: Trump seizes on report that Russian sold ‘phony secrets’ about him to the U.S.  http://wapo.st/2CbxmDd

⭕ 9 Feb 2018

NYT: U.S. Spies, Seeking to Retrieve Cyberweapons, Paid Russian Peddling Trump Secrets http://nyti.ms/2G484c

WaPo, Woodward and Bernstein: Nixon fired the man investigating him. Will Trump? http://wapo.st/2EhXL85
// history of Watergate ~ excerpt from “The Final Days”; Woodward and Bernstein: Are we watching the lead-up to another Saturday Night Massacre?

⭕ 7 Feb 2018
CNN: Right-wing media obsesses over FBI text message story; hours later it’s debunked http://cnnmon.ie/2BL5LNw

In the early hours of the morning, Fox News published an article on its website based on newly-released communications between senior FBI officials Peter Strzok and Lisa Page. The text messages were released Tuesday in a report produced by the office of Republican Sen. Ron Johnson.

In one September 2, 2016, text message, Page wrote that there was a meeting at the bureau setup because Obama wanted “to know everything we are doing.”

Johnson, in his report, said the text message raised questions about Obama’s involvement in the FBI’s investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server. In fact, the message more likely indicated that Obama wanted to be kept informed of an investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

In its story, Fox News reiterated Johnson’s claim without scrutiny. In fact, it’s not clear if Fox News even reached out to Obama’s office prior to publishing to see if there were any other explanation for what Page said in her text. The story makes no note of the reporter having sought comment. In an email to CNN, Fox News spokeswoman Carly Shanahan declined to answer whether Fox’s reporter had contacted Obama’s office. “It’s clear you’re getting your talking points from a partisan analysis by Think Progress,” Shanahan said, referring to a liberal news website.

⭕ 6 Feb 2018

WaPo: Hero or hired gun? How a British former spy became a flash point in the Russia investigation. http://wapo.st/2FSJ0Fd
// Christopher Steele dossier

⭕ 5 Feb 2018

💙💙 WIRED: Robert Mueller’s Investigation Is Larger—and Further Along—Than You Think http://bit.ly/2Bhmoz0
// rec’d by Sen Sheldon Whitehouse

NYT: Trump’s Lawyers Want Him to Refuse an Interview in Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2sfcA60

⭕ 4 Feb 2018

WaPo: Devin Nunes tried to discredit the FBI. Instead, he proved it’s onto something. http://wapo.st/2BUc3WH

⭕ 3 Feb 2018

TIME: Carter Page Touted Kremlin Contacts in 2013 Letter http://ti.me/2FK2GLB

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” the letter reads.

Esquire, Adam Schiff: Memo to the Public: The President Wants to Make the FBI His Instrument http://bit.ly/2GKyeCh

NBC: Democratic rebuttal calls Nunes memo ‘deliberately misleading’ http://nbcnews.to/2GIZ5i3

⭕ 2 Feb 2018

Vox: The 9 biggest questions about the Nunes memo, answered http://bit.ly/2GNSTpd
// The controversial memo about the FBI and the Trump-Russia investigation, explained.

Vox: Read: the full text of the Nunes memo http://bit.ly/2nHPlfi
// transcript, The allegations aim to call the FBI and Justice Department’s professionalism into question.

CommonDreams: ‘Shit Show of Dishonesty Across the Board’: #MemoDay Sparks Wave of Critique http://bit.ly/2GIXBUS
//. Critics unleashed ire at Republicans—including Trump, Ryan, and Nunes—while offering an array of informed context regarding the memo

Esquire, Charles Pierce: ‘Nothingburger’ Doesn’t Do This Memo Justice http://bit.ly/2BTyBXD
// Devin Nunes, everybody.

WaPo, Ruth Marcus: Trump is far worse than Nixonian http://wapo.st/2BRP5iV

“Nixonian” is not the right word to use to describe the behavior of President Trump. In important ways, that characterization smears Richard Nixon.

It is hard to believe I am writing this. But it is also hard to believe it has come to this: The president is in open warfare with his Justice Department and the FBI — asserting flatly that its “top Leadership and Investigators . . . have politicized the sacred investigative process in favor of Democrats and against Republicans — something which would have been unthinkable just a short time ago.”

This was a breathtaking gut punch to the constitutional system. The release of the House Intelligence Committee memo purporting to discredit the Russia probe was predictably followed by a White House statement bemoaning “serious concerns about the integrity of decisions” by senior law enforcement officials.

Politico: GOP defies FBI, releases secret Russia memo to partisan fury http://politi.co/2GGaEXn
// ‘Congress will do whatever they’re going to do, but I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,’ the president says.

Politico: Trump escalates his war with U.S. law enforcement after memo release http://politi.co/2s4xdSi
// The president hinted openly that he might yet fire senior officials over claims of bias against him.

WSJ: Inside the FBI Life of Peter Strzok and Lisa Page, as Told in Their Text Messages http://on.wsj.com/2E1jFfN

Politico: GOP defies FBI, releases secret Russia memo to partisan fury http://politi.co/2GGaEXn
// ‘Congress will do whatever they’re going to do, but I think it’s a disgrace what’s happening in our country,’ the president says.

⭕ 1 Feb 2018

Politico: How the Nunes memo became the latest political football in the Russia investigation http://politi.co/2E533Dj

NYRB, Ruth May: Putin: From Oligarch to Kleptocrat http://bit.ly/2DcnVZ1

WaPo, Eugene Robinson: Trump has picked a fight with the FBI. He’ll be sorry. http://wapo.st/2BO1hBj

WaPo Editorial: A process that tarnishes the House http://wapo.st/2BOrkbk

NYT Editorial: The Republican Plot Against the F.B.I. http://nyti.ms/2rWfCvE

⭕ 31 Jan 2018

WaPo, Adam Schiff: Nunes’s memo crosses a dangerous line http://wapo.st/2nyScag

On Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) moved to release a memo written by his staff that cherry-picks facts, ignores others and smears the FBI and the Justice Department — all while potentially revealing intelligence sources and methods. He did so even though he had not read the classified documents that the memo characterizes and refused to allow the FBI to brief the committee on the risks of publication and what it has described as “material omissions of fact that fundamentally impact the memo’s accuracy.” The party-line vote to release the Republican memo but not a Democratic response was a violent break from the committee’s nonpartisan tradition and the latest troubling sign that House Republicans are willing to put the president’s political dictates ahead of the national interest.

The reason for Republicans’ abrupt departure from our nonpartisan tradition is growing alarm over special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign. In a matter of months, the president’s first national security adviser and a foreign policy adviser have pleaded guilty to felony offenses, while his former campaign chairman and deputy campaign manager have also been indicted. As Mueller and his team move closer to the president and his inner circle, a sense of panic is palpable on the Hill. GOP members recognize that the probe threatens not only the president but also their majorities in Congress.

In response, they have drawn on the stratagem of many criminal defense lawyers — when the evidence against a defendant is strong, put the government on trial. The Nunes memo is designed to do just that by furthering a conspiracy theory that a cabal of senior officials within the FBI and the Justice Department were so tainted by bias against President Trump that they irredeemably poisoned the investigation. If it wasn’t clear enough that this was the goal, Nunes removed all doubt when he declared that the Justice Department and the FBI themselves were under investigation at the hearing in which the memo was ordered released.

This decision to employ an obscure rule to order the release of classified information for partisan political purposes crossed a dangerous line. Doing so without even allowing the Justice Department or the FBI to vet the information for accuracy, the impact of its release on sources and methods, and other concerns was, as the Justice Department attested, “extraordinarily reckless.” But it also increases the risk of a constitutional crisis by setting the stage for subsequent actions by the White House to fire Mueller or, as now seems more likely, Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, an act that would echo the 1973 Saturday Night Massacre.

⭕ 30 Jan 2018

WaPo: FBI challenges accuracy of GOP’s surveillance memo http://wapo.st/2rT3fk1

WaPo: Justice Dept. officials appealed to White House to halt release of memo alleging FBI abuses related to author of Trump dossier http://wapo.st/2E0KBvl

⭕ 29 Jan 2018

Politico: White House to Congress: Russia sanctions not needed now http://politi.co/2nq3uO9

NYT: House Republicans Vote to Release Secret Memo on Russia Probe http://nyti.ms/2EmKR5M

⭕ 28 Jan 2018

NYT, David Leonhardt: An Article of Impeachment Against Donald J. Trump http://nyti.ms/2nob9fV

NYT: Secret Memo Hints at a New Republican Target: Rod Rosenstein http://nyti.ms/2DMaID9

⭕ 27 Jan 2018

WaPo: Trump sought release of classified Russia memo, putting him at odds with Justice Department http://wapo.st/2Gra5AE

As Mueller narrows his probe — homing in on the ways Trump may have tried to impede the Russia investigation — a common thread ties many of the incidents together: a president accustomed to functioning as the executive of a private family business who does not seem to understand that his subordinates have sworn an oath to the Constitution rather than to him. 

On Wednesday, speaking briefly to reporters, Trump defended his actions in the probe as “fighting back” against unfair allegations. “Oh, well, ‘Did he fight back?’ ” Trump said. “You fight back, ‘Oh, it’s obstruction.’ ” …

Sally Q. Yates, the acting attorney general whom Trump fired early last year for failing to enforce his travel ban, said in an interview that Trump’s behavior — from his June decision to call for Mueller’s firing to other meddling throughout the year — is “beyond unusual” and “really dangerous.” 

“If you get to what’s most essential and important and, I think, really damaging to our country, beyond just the confines of this administration, it’s this attack on our democratic institutions and particularly the Department of Justice,” she said. “It is a firm tradition at the Department of Justice that the White House just has absolutely no involvement in criminal investigations or prosecutions, period.”

She added: “It seems like there are almost weekly efforts to try to get DOJ to open up a case on his former political rival. . . . The near daily attacks on the FBI — we’ve never seen anything anywhere close to this before.” 

Indeed, Trump has shown a repeated pattern of attempting to regain control of the Russia investigation and deploy the Justice Department for his own protection and personal gain — comments and actions Mueller’s team could include in the obstruction-of-justice portion of their probe.  …

A person who has interacted with Mueller’s team said the prosecutors seem to be pursuing a theory that Trump’s actions over months have followed a consistent pattern. “Their theory appears to be that he goes after people who are not loyal,” this person said. “He wants in place people who are loyal, to make sure he doesn’t get in trouble in the investigation.”

This person added that key episodes in this narrative include Trump’s order that Sessions not recuse himself from the investigation; the firing of Comey; his efforts to intervene to get the Flynn investigation dropped; and then, above all, Trump’s dictation aboard Air Force One in July of a misleading statement to be released by his son, Don Jr., about his meeting with the Russian lawyer at Trump Tower during the campaign — “the most obvious obstructive act,” this person said.

To prove obstruction of justice, Mueller would have to show that Trump didn’t just act to derail the investigation but did so with a corrupt motive, such as an effort to hide his own misdeeds. Legal experts are divided over whether the Constitution allows for the president to be indicted while in office. As a result, Mueller might seek to outline his findings about Trump’s actions in a written report rather than bring them in court through criminal charges. It would probably fall to Rosenstein to decide whether to submit the report to Congress, which has the power to open impeachment proceedings.

⭕ 26 Jan 2018

ForeignPolicy: Trump Launched Campaign to Discredit Potential FBI Witnesses http://bit.ly/2ncWPHI
// The president targeted three bureau officials who could provide key testimony in the Mueller probe.

WaPo, Aaron Blake: Trump’s handling of the Russia investigation has never looked more like a coverup http://wapo.st/2DQDG7U

⭕ 25 Jan 2018

WaPo Editorial: GOP leaders’ complicity grows as their members undermine the rule of law http://wapo.st/2BwZ1OG

Republicans have embarked on a smear campaign of the FBI that can end only in a dangerous erosion of trust in law enforcement, the subjugation of law enforcement to partisan interests or both.

[T]hey are allowing Fox News personalities, the president and loose cannons such as House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes (Calif.) and Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman Ron Johnson (Wis.) to turn the United States into a country where law enforcement becomes another pawn in the partisan war.

Mr. Johnson irresponsibly recycles nonsense about corruption “at the highest levels of the FBI,” offering no evidence because of course there is none. Mr. Nunes abuses his access to classified information as Intelligence Committee chairman, a title Mr. Ryan long ago should have revoked, to manufacture dark conspiracies.

“We learned today about information that in the immediate aftermath of his election, there may have been a ‘secret society’ of folks within the Department of Justice and the FBI . . . working against [Mr. Trump],” Rep. John Ratcliffe (R-Tex.) says.

Then he adds: “I’m not saying that actually happened.”

No matter; the purpose is achieved. Doubts are planted, and a share of the country will discount anything federal law enforcement says about Mr. Trump.

These men are destroying something that won’t be easily recovered: faith in the idea of impartial law enforcement. It amounts to an assault on the rule of law. Mr. Trump openly wishes for an attorney general who will protect him, asks law enforcement officials whom they voted for, and fires or attempts to fire those he deems disloyal. He does not believe that FBI agents or anyone else is motivated by public-spiritedness or respect for the law, only by self-interest and personal loyalty to his or some other clan.

If Mr. Ryan, Mr. McConnell and others continue in their acquiescence, his cynical view may come closer to reality.

⭕ 24 Jan 2018

WaPo, Paul Waldman: Republicans are desperate to protect Trump from Mueller. But will their strategy work? http://wapo.st/2Bw4c14

⭕ 23 Jan 2018

WaPo: Top Democrats warn of ‘ongoing attack by the Russian government’ amid push to publish classified memo http://wapo.st/2n6azEa

⭕ 20 Jan 2018

WaPo: In the crowd at Trump’s inauguration, members of Russia’s elite anticipated a thaw between Moscow and Washington http://wapo.st/2mYEaz6

The Washington Post identified at least half a dozen politically connected Russians who were in Washington on Inauguration Day — including some whose presence has not been previously reported. Among them was Viktor Vekselberg, a tycoon who is closely aligned with Putin’s government.

Another was Natalia Veselnitskaya , the Russian lawyer whose June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with Donald Trump Jr. has become a focus of the Russia investigation. She attended a black-tie inaugural party hosted by the campaign committee of Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), according to an associate who accompanied her.

⭕ 16 Jan 2018

WaPo, David Ignatius: Are Republicans right about the Russia probe? http://wapo.st/2DhPDnJ

What’s true here, and what’s false? A careful look at the evidence rebuts the claim that the FBI was misused by Steele and that the bureau’s operations are in disarray. The FBI isn’t perfect, and text messages show that some officials favored Clinton (just as others supported Trump). But Republicans delude themselves in claiming that the Russia probe is a partisan concoction. Trump operatives have admitted in plea agreements that they lied to the FBI about their contacts with Russia.

What about Republican claims that Steele spawned what Trump calls a “witch hunt”? It’s true that Steele was hired by Fusion GPS, an investigative firm paid to dig up dirt on Trump, first by Republican opponents, then by Clinton supporters. But Steele went through well-established contacts, and the FBI got serious only after it obtained its own independent information. …

What does this narrative tell us? Far from a yarn concocted by Steele, the FBI probe was driven by its own independent reporting about Papadopoulos, who pleaded guilty last October to lying about his Russia contacts. The bottom line: There may be something in tatters at the center of this investigation, but it isn’t the FBI.

⭕ 10 Jan 2018

USSenateForRelCom: U.S. Senator Ben Cardin Releases Report Detailing Two Decades of Putin’s Attacks on Democracy, Calling for Policy Changes to Counter Kremlin Threat Ahead of 2018, 2020 Elections | United States Senate Committee on Foreign Relations http://bit.ly/2FsvEjt
// Senate Foreign Relations Committee, “Putin’s Asymmetric Assault on Democracy” [pdf] http://bit.ly/2D0bXSN

⭕ 9 Jan 2018

🐣 RT @tedlieu Fusion GPS transcript shows that what Senators Grassley & Graham did last week in publicly referring Christopher Steele for criminal investigation was, at best, a partisan publicity stunt and, at worst, intentionally designed to mislead the American people.

WaPo: Fusion GPS founder told Senate investigators the FBI had a source in Trump’s network http://wapo.st/2DfVp5S

WaPo, Glenn Kessler: What you need to know about Christopher Steele, the FBI and the Trump ‘dossier’ http://wapo.st/2mc3a4J

🔆 This❗️⋙ DailyBeast: Democrats Release the Fusion GPS Testimony on Trump and Russia http://thebea.st/2qMmH1d w attachment
⋙ via Dianne Feinstein http://bit.ly/2FjtlPP

⭕ 8 Jan 2018

WaPo: Mueller indicates he will likely seek interview with Trump http://wapo.st/2FhJx3U

⭕ 6 Jan 2018

NYT: ‘Everything I’ve Done Is 100 Percent Proper,’ Trump Says of Russia Inquiry http://nyti.ms/2F3UHJE

⭕ 5 Jan 2018

WaPo, Jennifer Rubin: Senate Republicans become Trump accomplices in manipulating the system http://wapo.st/2D2HsZ7

MotherJones, David Corn: Republican Senators Target Christopher Steele—and the Reason Is Obvious http://bit.ly/2F5xs1X
// Anything to distract from the big picture: Putin’s attack on the US and Trump-Russia contacts.

NYT: Republican Senators Raise Possible Charges Against Author of Trump Dossier http://nyti.ms/2m367FJ

⭕ 4 Jan 2018

CNN: Ryan backed Nunes in spat with Justice Dept. over Russia documents, sources say http://cnn.it/2CU7AFB

NYT: Obstruction Inquiry Shows Trump’s Struggle to Keep Grip on Russia Investigation http://nyti.ms/2AtYOeB
// Don McGahn tried to keep Sessions from recusing himself; McGahn works for taxpayers, not trump

TheGuardian: Trump Tower meeting with Russians ‘treasonous’, Bannon says in explosive book http://bit.ly/2qkT2fg

⭕ 2 Jan 2018

🔆 This❗️⋙ NYT, Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch [FusionGPS]: The Republicans’ Fake Investigations http://nyti.ms/2qkEDjB
// Simpson and Fritsch, both former journalists, are the founders of the research firm Fusion GPS.

WaPo, Glen Kessler er al: In 347 days, President Trump has made 1,950 false and misleading claims http://wapo.st/2CrhUYD
// The Fact Checker’s ongoing database of the false and misleading claims made by President Trump during his first 365 days in office.

WaPo, Greg Sargent: How bad is the Republican coverup on Trump and Russia? We may soon find out. http://wapo.st/2lFAth7

⭕ 30 Dec 2017

NYT: Republican Attacks on Mueller and F.B.I. Open New Rift in G.O.P. http://nyti.ms/2zThSm3