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Month: March 2018

Robert Mueller can walk and chew gum at the same time

Robert Mueller can walk and chew gum at the same time


by digby
I wrote about the latest news that Mueller actually is investigating collusion (surprise!) for Salon this morning:

Despite all the guilty pleas among people associated with the Trump campaign and the growing pile of evidence about Russian interference in the 2016 election, members of the press have pushed a narrative that Special Counsel Robert Mueller could only go after President Donald Trump for obstruction of justice. After all, that was the heart of the case against former President Richard Nixon back in the day. (He was never shown to have known about the “third-rate burglary” at the Watergate.) And for some, it seems inconceivable that Trump could possibly have colluded with a foreign government — possibly because he’s too unorganized and inept to have pulled it off.

As it turns out, Mueller can walk and chew gum at the same time. He’s lately been questioning witnesses about just what Trump knew about all this Russian interference and when he knew it. He’s been inquiring specifically about whether Trump knew about the hacking of Democratic emails in advance and whether or not he might have had a hand in their “strategic release.” NBC reported:

Mueller’s investigators have asked witnesses whether Trump was aware of plans for WikiLeaks to publish the emails. They have also asked about the relationship between GOP operative Roger Stone and WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, and why Trump took policy positions favorable to Russia. 

The line of questioning suggests the special counsel, who is tasked with examining whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 election, is looking into possible coordination between WikiLeaks and Trump associates in disseminating the emails, which U.S. intelligence officials say were stolen by Russia.

Setting aside the fact that his campaign was crawling with Russian contacts, that he vetted no one and that his campaign manager was millions of dollars in hock to a Russian oligarch, it’s not as if Trump’s own behavior during the campaign wasn’t suspicious.

Obviously, the first thing was his uncharacteristic unwillingness to criticize Vladimir Putin, a privilege he has extended to no one else but members of his own family to this day. This stood out at the time and was remarked upon by all of us who were watching the campaign unfold. It looks even more dubious in retrospect. He stood alone among all the candidates of both parties in his unusual admiration for the Russian president.

Mueller has also been asking people if Trump has ever met Putin — which is a reasonable question, since Trump has been all over the map on the topic. For instance, on May 5, 2016 — about three weeks after Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos learned that Russia had possession of a boatload of Clinton emails and was drunkenly spilling the beans to Australian diplomats — Trump was asked by Bret Baier of Fox News if he’d ever spoken to Vladimir Putin.

“Yeah, I have no comment on that,” he responded. “No comment.” 

When Baier pressed him, Trump said: “Yeah, but I don’t want to comment because, let’s assume I did. Perhaps it was personal. You know, I don’t want to hurt his confidence. But I know Russia well.”

Later in the campaign he insisted he’d never spoken to Putin and didn’t know him, including at the infamous rally where he asked Russia to release the “33,000 emails.”

There’s also the matter of Trump’s speech the day after the June 6 meeting at Trump Tower between Russians bearing dirt and the trio of Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and campaign manager Paul Manafort.

“Monday of next week, and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons,” Trump announced. “I think you’re going to find it very informative and very, very interesting. I wonder if the press will want to attend. Who knows?”

So yes, there could be reasonable suspicion that Trump himself was aware of the Russian interference plot. There are dozens more. The man’s behavior toward Russia and the Russian president has been inexplicable from the beginning, long before we knew there was a plot to disrupt the election process.

Mueller was also said to be looking very closely at Trump’s relationship with Roger Stone, who allegedly was “fired” in 2015, as the campaign was just taking off. They have been close for years, and that parting of the ways was always rather obscure. But maybe the man who popularized the term ratf**king could have been involved in the biggest ratf**king in politics.

That brings us to Stone’s relationship with WikiLeaks. What he knows about the hacking of the DCCC’s proprietary information and his relationship with purported Russian hacker Guccifer 2.0 — which was used to help the GOP win in some congressional races — are two of the biggest missing pieces yet. Stone has denied any direct association with WikiLeaks itself, but this week The Atlantic’s Natasha Bertrand revealed private Twitter messages between them. This too is of great interest to the special prosecutor, since Stone foolishly tweeted “it would soon be Podesta’s time in the barrel,” weeks before WikiLeaks released the Clinton campaign chairman’s private emails to the public. What’s the likelihood that Stone wouldn’t tell Trump if he knew about this?

But Trump couldn’t stop praising WikiLeaks in the final days of the campaign. He publicly mentioned them 145 times in the last month alone. He clearly believed that it was a useful line of attack. If he knew about it in advance or helped strategize the emails release, that would be what we call “collusion” — something that Trump has insisted thousands of times that he did not do.

Of course, the minute his son read the email that said the Russian government was supporting his father’s campaign and wanted to offer dirt on his opponent and he declared that he “loved it” and suggested they might want to release it later in the summer — and sent it to Kushner and Manafort — the campaign was likely colluding. Reporters may forget it, but Mueller likely doesn’t.

Whether anyone in Trump’s inner circle broke the law is still to be determined. But Mueller, to our knowledge, hasn’t made a move yet on things that seemed so long ago. And when he does, it would be worth wondering if Donald Trump made Watergate into the second worst political scandal in American history.

Actually, he already did. What we already know is far worse. Richard Nixon is breathing a great sigh of relief from beyond the grave. He’s gone up a notch.
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While we’re watching the reality show by @BloggersRUs

While we’re watching the reality show
by Tom Sullivan

Wednesday’s news feed left the press scrambling so furiously that “bombshell” lost it’s punch.

White House communications director Hope Hicks announced her resignation. Hicks was the president’s “last emotional crutch,” a Donald Trump ally told CNN’s Erin Burnett. Her announced departure prompted jokes about Trump soon being “home alone.”

“People across the West Wing were surprised, people were crying, they were upset,” CNN White House correspondent Jeff Zeleny told viewers. “In fact, when she held a meeting with the few small staffers who report to her, she was crying and upset.”

Jeff Sessions, Trump’s imperiled attorney general, took a public dinner with deputy Rod Rosenstein and the Solicitor General Noel Francisco. Jonathan Swan, Alayna Treen at Axios noted the symbolism of the photo, “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.”

As the three dined, the New York Times reported that Jared Kushner’s cash-strapped family business received loans totalling over a half billion dollars from Apollo Global Management and Citigroup after the companies’ executives met with the president’s son-in-law in the White House. The Times reports that loan from Apollo was “triple the size of the average property loan” from its real estate lending branch.

“There is little precedent for a top White House official meeting with executives of companies as they contemplate sizable loans to his business, say government ethics experts,” the Times reports.

Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller’s team of untouchables draws the ring tighter around the White House. Mueller has begun asking witnesses when Trump learned about Russia’s stolen Democratic emails and if he was aware of plans by Wikileaks to publish them. What did Trump know and when did he know it?

In a White House meeting Wednesday, Trump suggested confiscating guns from dangerous individuals, complaining the courts take too long to act. Trump told stunned lawmakers, “Take the guns first, go through due process second.”

Trump cannot govern, but his reality show White House gets great ratings. Keeping our attention may be all he cares about.

But while we are glued to the show, Richard Haass warns, democracy is breaking down around the world. Haass, president of the Council on Foreign Relations, writes:

Not just democracy but the rule of law and respect for civil society and individual liberty are in decline around the world. One reason is that the United States is failing to set an example that many wish to emulate.

The president’s attacks “on everyone from judges to journalists undermine trust in essential institutions.” Removing promotion of democracy and human rights from the U.S. agenda is not helping. Neither does hollowing out the State Department and the Foreign Service, which Haass does not mention.

Haass continues:

Economic, social and physical insecurity have driven the global trend toward illiberalism. Understandably, those forces place greater emphasis on a government’s ability to deliver tangible goods than on its fealty to intangible ideals such as individual freedoms and human rights. We are seeing this in countries as diverse as Russia, China, Poland, Hungary, Turkey, Egypt and the Philippines.

Adding to the trend, China is headed towards reverting to a cult of personality, abolishing term limits and making Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, leader for life.

There are some bright spots, Haass writes, that suggest the anti-democratic trend may be cyclical. There are also some in this country.

Two weeks to the ides of March. Stay tuned.

* * * * * * * *

Request a copy of For The Win, my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Revealed! The secret reason FedEx supports the slaught lobby @spockosbrain

Revealed! The secret reason FedEx supports the slaught lobby 

by Spocko

So it turns out that the reason FedEx didn’t walk away from their discount for NRA members was the money they make from shipping guns. Surprise! From Thinkprogress.

EXCLUSIVE: FedEx’s secret deal with the NRA and the gun industry
While publicly trying to distance itself from the NRA, FedEx has made a secret agreement with the association and other major players in the firearms industry.

Base photo Justin Sullivan, Getty Images 

FedEx cut a deal with gun manufacturers on shipping guns in order to compete with UPS.

But FedEx’s decision to stand by the NRA probably has less to do with shipping NRA polo shirts than a much more profitable business: shipping guns.

In a stark contrast with FedEx’s recent attempts to distance itself from the gun lobby, the internal company document obtained by ThinkProgress outlines in great detail precisely how FedEx has secretly agreed to bend its own rules on gun shipments for powerful forces in the gun industry, including all major gun manufacturers and the NRA itself. 

The document, labeled “Confidential information. Internal use only,” was provided to ThinkProgress by a FedEx employee, who asked to remain anonymous due to concern that disclosing the document would cause the source to be terminated.

The United States Postal Service (USPS) won’t mail handguns except under certain rare circumstances, mostly for relic collection and museum purposes, meaning almost all handgun shipments need to go through either the United Parcel Service (UPS) or FedEx.
UPS requires all handguns be shipped overnight, according to its website.

FedEx’s public policy, like UPS’s, is that “[f]irearms must be shipped via FedEx Priority Overnight service,” according to the company’s 2018 Service Guide, which also states that FedEx will not transport handguns via FedEx Ground.

But FedEx does not apply its public rules to everyone. According to the document, the company has struck a deal with dozens of major gun manufacturers and dealers in an effort to woo the industry away from competitors with lower cost shipping. The agreement, which has not been previously reported, shows how important the handgun shipment business is to FedEx.

“Some customers have been approved for an exception to ship firearms with a 2-day (AM or PM) service,” the document says. Those customers include 86 firearms manufacturers and dealers, including nearly every major company in the business, like Smith & Wesson, Colt, Glock, SIG Sauer, and the NRA itself.

Corporations make a lot of money on guns. Not just the obvious ones like gun manufacturers, but all the industries that support it. Some of that money goes back to the NRA. The NRA then uses that money to lobby lawmakers.

If you do something that threatens or reduces these revenue streams, the companies that lose that money will fight back. Hard. They will enlist any allies they can to ensure they don’t lose their revenue.

FedEx is using it’s ‘common carrier’ status as a way to talk about non-discrimination on shipping. But a marketing deal is not the same as discrimination on shipping.

FedEx has a special price sheet for guns and ammo customers, they knew that if they dissed the NRA their gun manufacturing customers might take their business to UPS to protest.

So they listened to the big money, figuring they could hold off on the PR pain till this blew over. But they were busted by this ThinkProgress piece. Good job Addy Baird and Judd Legum! h/t to BL for the link.

A Teacher With A Gun by tristero

A Teacher With A Gun

by tristero

Arming teachers is such an insanely stupid and idiotic idea that it doesn’t deserve further discussion. But just for the record, this is one of the things that will happen far more often when teachers have guns:

A Georgia high school teacher is in custody after authorities say he barricaded himself inside an empty classroom and fired a handgun while students stood outside the door. 

The shooting, which took place around 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, led to a frantic lockdown at Dalton High School that resulted in only a minor ankle injury to a student as she was running down the halls, police said at a press conference. 

Dalton police spokesman Bruce Frazier said the teacher, identified as social studies teacher Jesse Randal Davidson, 53, had locked himself inside of the room, refusing to allow students inside. 

“When the principal put a key in the door to try to unlock the classroom, Mr. Davidson apparently fired a shot from a handgun through an exterior window of the classroom. It does not appear that it was aimed at anybody,” Frazier said.

Sex and drugs and Deripaska

Sex and Trump and Deripaska

by digby

Grab yourself a stiff shot of something strong and get ready to read something so strange you’ll think you are living in the middle of a John LeCarre novel.

Holy smokes:

A self-described sex expert whose videos highlighted the ties between one of Russia’s richest men and the Kremlin has been jailed in Thailand and is calling for U.S. help, claiming she has information about links between Russia and President Trump.

Anastasia Vashukevich, an escort-service worker from Belarus who catapulted to a certain measure of fame after filming a yacht trip with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko, was detained in Thailand over the weekend in a police raid on her “sex training” seminar. While still in custody on Tuesday, she published Instagram videos asking U.S. journalists and intelligence agencies to help her.

Deripaska, with whom Vashukevich said she had an affair, used to employ former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. But Vashukevich, better known by the alias Nastya Rybka, provided no evidence on Tuesday to back up the claim that she had new information to offer related to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A post to her Instagram account showed her sitting on the floor of what was described as a Thai jail cell and said she was sick.

“I am the only witness and the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections — the long chain of Oleg Deripaska, Prikhodko, Manafort, and Trump,” Vashukevich said in a live Instagram video Tuesday, apparently shot as she was driven in an open-air police van through the Thai resort city of Pattaya. “In exchange for help from U.S. intelligence services and a guarantee of my safety, I am prepared to provide the necessary information to America or to Europe or to the country which can buy me out of Thai prison.”

Vashukevich said in her video that she had already given an interview to U.S. broadcaster NBC. Representatives for Vashukevich and Deripaska did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman declined to comment.

Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny made Vashukevich famous last month after he broadcast old footage from her Instagram account showing an August 2016 yacht trip with Deripaska and Prikhodko. Navalny used the footage to allege that Deripaska, a metals magnate, had bribed Prikhodko, one of Russia’s most influential government officials, with the luxury getaway accompanied by women from an escort service.

Navalny also speculated that Deripaska and Prikhodko may have served as a link between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign in 2016, though Vashukevich’s videos offered no proof. According to emails described to The Washington Post last year, Manafort — who once worked for Deripaska — directed an associate to offer Deripaska “private briefings” about Trump’s presidential campaign. A Deripaska spokeswoman said he was never offered such briefings.

Prikhodko called Navalny a “political loser” whose investigation combined “the possible and the impossible.” Deripaska said Navalny’s “allegations have nothing to do with reality” and sued Vashukevich for violating his privacy. A court ordered Instagram to remove some of Vashukevich’s posts.

According to her Instagram account, Vashukevich was in Dubai when Navalny’s video came out and then traveled to the Thai beach resort of Pattaya. On Sunday, according to Russian news reports, Thai police raided a sex seminar for Russian tourists in which Vashukevich was participating. Attendees paid more than $600 each for a five-day course, Russian media said.

Did you get all that?

I’m going to take a break now. This rabbit hole is getting stuffy.

Update: Oh, by the way, Kushner lost his top security clearance. Probably in some part because of this:

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter.

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said.

Once again —