Month: May 2018

Trump’s new legal strategy: “what’s wrong with selling out the country? It’s called winning.”

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

Much as he gleefully signaled in the days leading up to the election that the Trump campaign had “something up their sleeves” to derail Hillary Clinton, Rudolph Giuliani once again teased the press last week that the Trump team was preparing to “make a fuss” on the one-year anniversary of Robert Mueller’s assignment as special counsel for the Russia investigation. Yesterday was the day, and the Trump defense brigade unveiled its extravaganza. The Washington Post reported:

President Trump’s allies are waging an increasingly aggressive campaign to undercut the Russia investigation by exposing the role of a top-secret FBI source. The effort reached new heights Thursday as Trump alleged that an informant had improperly spied on his 2016 campaign and predicted that the ensuing scandal would be “bigger than Watergate!”

As usual Trump’s ignorance of facts and history is monumental. Perhaps it was the first scandal that came to mind since everyone’s always comparing him to Richard Nixon.

This is the latest smokescreen cooked up by House Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes and the House Freedom Caucus, who are working overtime to find ways to take the heat off of their beloved leader. You may recall that Nunes has threatened to hold Attorney General Jeff Sessions in contempt of Congress for failing to reveal the name of this secret informant. A New York Times report that it’s possible this same informant may have spoken to former Trump campaign officials Carter Page and George Papadopoulos seems to have ratcheted up the frenzy.

As is his wont, Giuliani took this and ran with it, telling the hosts of “Fox & Friends” on Thursday morning, “I’m shocked to hear that they put a spy in the campaign of a major party candidate, or maybe two spies. That would be the biggest scandal in the history of this town, at least involving law enforcement.” He further claimed that this proves there was no collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government because “that spy should have been enough to tell them, ‘These people were not talking to the Russians.’ If they had incriminating evidence, they’d be able to wrap this investigation up. I wouldn’t be sitting here.”

Actually, we know for a fact that the Trump campaign was crawling with Russians and that people at the highest levels were talking to them. There are a handful of former Trump officials either under indictment or cooperating after pleading guilty to various crimes, so Giuliani probably shouldn’t count his Chicken Kievs quite yet.

But this “fuss” about the so-called spy in the Trump campaign is just one part of the new Nunes-Freedom Caucus-Giuliani-Trump strategy to deal with the Mueller investigation. The congressional hitmen will continue to harass the Department of Justice and the FBI, assisted by Donald Trump’s mighty Twitter feed. It may lead to Sessions and others being fired, including of course Mueller and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. But more likely Team Trump’s job is just to lay down covering fire and keep Fox News amply provided with bizarro-world storylines like these:

Okay Sean Hannity is now seriously arguing that Robert Mueller is the one who is colluding with Russia pic.twitter.com/bVjQn0NNnb

— Brian Tashman (@briantashman) May 16, 2018

These fantasy stories are having an effect, by the way. MSNBC ran a focus group of Trump voters in Wisconsin, hosted by Emory University and pollster Peter Hart, earlier this week.Here’s a sampling of how they view the Mueller probe:

Unidentified male: They call it a farce by – created by the deep state. 

Unidentified female: I believe it was a witch hunt to overturn an election. He actually is there finding stuff that should be investigated on the Democratic Party’s side and all of this stuff that they say that Trump did they’re finding out that the Democrats did. 

Unidentified male: It’s been going on for a year and a half. They’ve found nothing. They told, “Oh, there’s something, there’s something. We’ll find it, we’ll find it.” There`s nothing. When Hillary was secretary of state, she made a deal with uranium enrichment selling it to the Russians. That’s known. But they’re still looking for stuff.

They characterized Mueller as a “desperate,” “unethical,” “partisan” and a “liar.” So the president’s base is firmly in his camp, although they all agreed it would be unwise for him to fire Mueller because it would “look suspicious.” That suggests they are sadly uniformed about the mountain of roiling suspicion that grows larger every single day of this presidency.

Giuliani made the rounds over the last couple of days making another point that may be more salient. First, he said that Mueller’s office had told the Trump team that it would follow the Department of Justice guidelines that say a sitting president cannot be indicted or prosecuted. On one show he even relayed a colorful story about how Mueller himself refused to say that and one of his minions piped up, reminding Giuliani of the scene in “The Godfather” when Don Corleone admonishes Sonny, saying, “Never tell anyone what you’re thinking outside the family again.”

We only have Giuliani’s word for this, so who knows whether it’s true. But the upshot is interesting: Giuliani said numerous times in different venues that the only remedy for presidential misconduct is impeachment. Normally one might think a president’s lawyer would not be on television talking up impeachment as the proper way to deal with his client’s scandal. This makes more sense, however, when you realize that Giuliani is also saying that even if Trump did conspire with the Russian government to sabotage Clinton’s campaign in return for future favors, there was nothing wrong with that:

GIULIANI on the Russia investigation:

“If there was collusion with the Russians, they [the Trump campaign] would’ve used it.”pic.twitter.com/pIBMnmw09C— JM Rieger (@RiegerReport) May 17, 2018

And of course, if Trump’s team had received “dirt” as promised they would have used it like the patriots they are. So no harm, no foul.

This might sound like just another Rudy-ism but he’s not the only one making this argument. According to CNN, Michael Carvin, a GOP campaign law expert who is representing the Trump campaign in the lawsuit brought by the Democratic National Committee against Trump and several Russian and campaign affiliates, has floated a similar theory. Carvin apparently argued that even if there had been discussion between Russia and the Trump campaign to change the party’s platform and influence voters to oppose Hillary Clinton, “That conspiracy is not about an unlawful act. That’s all quite legal. It’s called democracy.”

Trump’s defenders are prepared to argue that if a presidential candidate conspires with a foreign adversary to sabotage a rival’s campaign — and secretly offer favors for the benefit of that adversary — it’s not a crime. That’s the way the game is played.

Richard Nixon famously said, “If the president does it, it’s not illegal.” It appears that Trump is taking that concept to a whole other level, especially when you consider he wasn’t president when this stuff was happening: “If the right presidential candidate does it, it is positively virtuous.”

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Kick down. Kiss up.
by Tom Sullivan

Former South Carolina lieutenant governor Andre Bauer summed up the attitude in 2010:

“My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals,” Bauer said during a town hall meeting, as the Greenville News reported over the weekend. “You know why? Because they breed. You’re facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply. They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”

The president of the United States this week compared poor immigrants to animals. The Republican-controlled Congress is preparing to make it harder for the poor to get food. These are not coincidences.

For the ruling class, laws are for the little people. Rulers are exempt. Laws should be punitive to keep the hoi polloi in line.

Thus the proposal in Congress to make it even harder for struggling Americans in need of nutritional support, i.e., food, to get any.

Catherine Rampell elaborates for the Washington Post on the Farm Bill scheduled for a vote today. It contains an overhaul of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (food stamps). The measure expands the federal oversight bureaucracy to ensure the breeders are working. Existing law already requires work by able-bodied recipients, and most, says Rampell, are already working. But insisting the poor work for their food is too good for them. The bill also has a few problems:

One is that low-wage workers often have limited control over their work schedules. If a restaurant cuts a single mom’s hours one week because business is slow, or she has to miss a few days because her child care fell through, she could lose food assistance for an entire year.

Checking eligibility every month is also expensive.

Currently, most states verify work status every six months, or when a major change occurs in a household. A new, monthly evaluation for millions of people would be a huge administrative undertaking, requiring governments to invest in new computer systems and more staff.

Documenting work hours each month would be challenging and burdensome for lots of workers, too, particularly the self-employed. A lot of people who legally qualify for food stamps would still likely lose them.

But, Rampell writes, “better to let 10 deserving people go hungry than let a single undeserving person be fed, right?”

Right.

Congress will spend more money that the effort saves to ensure the right people go hungry. Wouldn’t want the animals breeding.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Wingnut Propaganda FTW

by digby

I have noticed a lot more wingnut propaganda on YouTube lately and I guess this is why:

A network of dozens of automated, robot-driven YouTube channels are pumping out thousands of right-wing propaganda videos that have racked up hundreds of millions of views — and it seems Google isn’t doing anything to stop it.

With the November midterms looming and worries growing that disinformation campaigns will undermine the outcome of the elections, channels with names like World Broadcast, Breaking News Today, Latest News Today, Breaking News 24h, Hot News Today 365, USA News Feeder, or simply Hot News are popping up all over YouTube, with one clear strategy: to turn fringe right-wing blog posts into machine-narrated videos they can promote as breaking news.

“They upload thousands of new videos every month and are getting tens of millions of views each month,” said Christoph Burseg, an online marketing expert who specializes in video trends on YouTube.

For years, YouTube has been plagued with conspiracy theories and fake news, but these automated accounts that pump out pro-Trump propaganda present a new problem for the company — and it appears there’s little they can do about it.

Some of the channels VICE News reviewed have been operating for over a year, churning out hundreds of poorly produced robot videos every day, racking up hundreds of millions of views. Instead of earning ad dollars, the primary aim of these channels appears to be winning subscribers and funneling traffic to conservative blogs like Right Wing News and Truthfeed News.

“This is a new frontier of repurposing content, via a spoken audio API, where the lines get pretty blurred.”

Jonathan Albright, research director of the Tow Center for Digital Journalism, said that while the current network of channels don’t appear to be nefarious in nature, their very presence shows just how easily YouTube can be weaponized. “This is a new frontier of repurposing content, via a spoken audio API, where the lines get pretty blurred,” Albright told VICE News, adding: “YouTube is becoming a really interesting battleground right now.”

The operators of the channels are anonymous, but they seem to be well-versed in SEO marketing and understand intimately how the YouTube algorithm works. The result is explosive growth at virtually no cost to the creators.

“These channels are getting an 8-digit number of YouTube views every month, and they are designed to stir up outrage, to feed existing worldviews, and to amplify fears,” Burseg said.

While videos from popular YouTube channels like Jake Paul and PewDiePie regularly rack up millions of views, that is not the case for the typical bot-driven channel. An investigation last year by Albright of a network of 19 channels producing AI-generated content, found almost 70,000 videos with just a few hundred views a piece — highlighting just how surprisingly successful this new network has been at getting eyeballs on pro-Trump content.

“We’ve tried to report it to YouTube, but they tell us it’s not in any violation.”

The channels promise “24-hour,” “impartial,” “comprehensive” information on politics and world news, but in reality they’ve uploaded thousands of videos with a pro-Trump or anti-Democrat stance since 2016, racking up millions of views and tens of thousands of subscribers along the way. Breaking News Today, which even has a verified tick from YouTube, alone has netted almost 150 million views since 2016.

Burseg first spotted the phenomenon using his own YouTube analytics tool to search for Trump-focused channels. He quickly realized that a number of these channels were producing very similar content that was being uploaded in large numbers. Burseg believes that the similarities among these channels and how their content is posted suggests this is a small, fairly centralized operation. “I would not be surprised if it was only a couple of people running all these channels,” he said.

The scripts for the videos are typically sourced from fringe right-wing online publications like Truthfeed, Mad World News, Right Wing Tribune, and Right Wing News.

Breaking News Today is the most prolific of the channels with titles like “Trump Laughs As Obama Finds Out Exactly How John Kerry Helped Kill The Iran Deal” and “Clint Eastwood Had Enough, Blows Up On Hillary And Obama… Liberals Are Furious.”

I watched a Trump voter focus group on MSNBC the other day and it was clear that they are completely 100% deluded. Either that or they are excellent liars. Either way, they are clearly inundated with this kind of lunacy.

This is a bigger problem than people want to admit. Those everyday Americans are living in an alternate universe.

MATTHEWS: Welcome back to HARDBALL.

In a focus group in Wisconsin held by Emory University and pollster Peter Hart, Trump voters echoed many
of the president`s talking points.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They call it a farce by – created by the deep state.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: I believe it was a witch hunt to overturn an
election. He actually is there finding stuff that should be investigated
on the Democratic Party`s side and all of this stuff that they say that
Trump did they`re finding out that the Democrats did.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It`s been going on for a year and a half. They`ve
found nothing. They told, oh, there`s something, there`s something. We`ll
find it, we`ll find it. There`s nothing.

When Hillary was secretary of state, she made a deal with uranium
enrichment selling it to the Russians. That`s known. But they`re still
looking for stuff.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

MATTHEWS: And here`s how they described special counsel Robert Mueller.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Desperate.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Unethical.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Liar.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Partisan.

Just remember, you are required to respect them.

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Gun terrorism cover-up?

by digby

It sure looks like it:

On October 1, Stephen Paddock locked himself into a 32nd floor suite at the Mandalay Bay hotel in Las Vegas and opened fire on the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival on the fairgrounds below.

In about 10 minutes, he unloaded more than 1,000 rounds of ammunition, leaving 51 people dead and 851 others injured and bleeding. It was the worst mass shooting in U.S history and until this week, the motivation behind Paddock’s massacre remained unknown.

But on Wednesday, the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department released 1,200 pages of police reports, witness statements, and other evidence, for the first time shedding new light on the man responsible for the shooting.

Just days before the massacre, at least two people told police that a man they believed to be Paddock ranted to them about federal government efforts to impose gun control measures. Another witness recounted how a man thought to be Paddock shared his belief that a “camp” set up by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) after Hurricane Katrina in 2005 was in fact “a dry run for law enforcement and military to start kickin’ down doors and … confiscating guns.”

The widespread seizure of guns by the federal government — specifically through FEMA — is a popular conspiracy theory amongst extremist gun nuts, and one that was heavily promoted by the National Rifle Association.

On the 10th anniversary of Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans, an NRA article published in the Daily Caller vastly overstated the degree to which authorities were disarming gun owners during rescue and evacuation efforts in the city. Even other pro-gun groups criticized the NRA’s portrayal of the situation as inaccurate and overblown.

One of the Las Vegas witnesses recalled Paddock telling him that “somebody has to wake up the American public and get them to arm themselves,” during a conversation less than a month before the shooting. “Sometimes sacrifices have to be made.”

Others shared similarly unnerving encounters with the shooter. A woman overheard a man she later identified as Paddock talking belligerently about past anti-government standoffs in Waco, Texas and Ruby Ridge, Idaho, three days before the shooting. A Mandalay Bay housekeeper recalled how Paddock sat at a table and stared at her while she cleaned his room. And a man who rejected an offer from Paddock to modify his semi-automatic weapons to fire automatically said Paddock grew upset and launched into a tirade about gun control.

County Commission Chairman Steve Sisolak told the Associated Press however, that law enforcement was able to establish no clear motive for the shooting.

The release of documents was the result of a court order, after the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department lost its fight to keep the documents sealed. Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo sought to keep the documents secret because the investigation is still ongoing and he apologized to the public, stating that the release would “further traumatize a wounded community.”

No clear motive? Well, no he didn’t leave a manifesto. But it appears that he told plenty of people that he believed all these pro-gun proliferation conspiracy theories and that “sacrifices would have to be made.” What more do you need?

The government would have no problem identifying the motive if he were a Muslim who had told people in the past that he believed the US was the enemy of Islam and was trying to take over the Middle East.

If that is terrorism, this is terrorism.

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The New York Times reports:

People close to the White House said the scattershot nature of the messages on North Korea reflected the newness of the president’s national security team, but also the fact that Mr. Trump was distracted by the swirl of legal issues around him, from the Russia investigation to the payments made by his personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen … Some suggested that Mr. Trump needed to rein in [John] Bolton.

If anyone but Bolton was in that position I would think it was a blessing that Trump is obsessed with himself as usual. But dear Lord — he’s chosen the worst possible person to be running the negotiations because he actually wants war. 

Pray for some sort of accidental peaceful resolution. That’s all we’ve got.

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Tillerson talks truth. Better late than never, I guess.

by digby

He gave a commencement address this week and said this:

“A responsibility of every American citizen to each other is to preserve and protect our freedom by recognizing what truth is and is not, what a fact is and is not, and begin by holding ourselves accountable to truthfulness and demand our pursuit of America’s future be fact-based — not based on wishful thinking, not hoped-for outcomes made in shallow promises, but with a clear-eyed view of the facts as they are, and guided by the truth that will set us free to seek solutions to our most daunting challenges. When we as people, a free people, go wobbly on the truth, even on what may see the most trivial of matters, we go wobbly on America.”

That’s nice.

It’s better than continuing to kiss the ring of the criminal in the White House, I guess. But at some point these people are going to have to step up and tell it like it is publicly. He knows the president is a fucking moron. He should just say it. That would be real truth.

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At least he didn’t call them vermin. BUt that’s probably next.

by digby

There’s so much going on that it’s hard to know what to pay attention to. But this … oh my God it’s bad

The president said this yesterday:

“We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — we’re stopping a lot of them. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people, these are animals, and we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before.”

These are animals:

Mr. Trump’s remarks came as the local officials invited for the event took turns praising his immigration policies and lamenting California’s law, arguing that it was making it more difficult for their communities to find and deport criminals.

Sheriff Margaret Mims of Fresno County said the statute barred Immigration and Customs Enforcement authorities from using her databases “to find the bad guys,” or from entering prisons to locate people who might be in the country illegally.

“It’s really put us in a very bad position,” Sheriff Mims said.

“It’s a disgrace,” Mr. Trump answered, “and we’re suing on that.”

The president’s language and his focus on California drew a sharp rebuke from Jerry Brown, the state’s Democratic governor.

“Trump is lying on immigration, lying about crime and lying about the laws of California,” Mr. Brown said in a statement. “Flying in a dozen Republican politicians to flatter him and praise his reckless policies changes nothing. We, the citizens of the fifth-largest economy in the world, are not impressed.”

Naturally he wants to jail another of his opponents:

During the session, Mr. Trump suggested that the mayor of Oakland, Calif., should be charged with obstruction of justice for warning her constituents in February of an impending large-scale immigration raid and arrests.

“You talk about obstruction of justice,” said the president, who is himself the subject of a special counsel’s investigation into whether he sought to thwart a federal examination of Russia’s meddling in the 2016 elections. “I would recommend that you look into obstruction of justice for the mayor of Oakland.”

Turning to Jeff Sessions, his attorney general, who sat at the other end of the large wooden conference table, Mr. Trump said: “Perhaps the Department of Justice can look into that.”

And then there was this gibberish:

He alluded to a recent push by his administration that parents be separated from their children when families cross illegally into the United States, but blamed Democrats — many of whom have vehemently opposed the practice — for the new policy.

“I know what you’re going through right now with families is very tough, but those are the bad laws that the Democrats gave us,” Mr. Trump said. “We have to break up families. The Democrats gave us that law.”

The president also took aim at Mexico as unhelpful on immigration.

“Mexico does nothing for us,” Mr. Trump said. “Mexico talks, but they do nothing for us, especially at the border. Certainly don’t help us much on trade, but especially at the border, they do nothing for us.”

His people are listening:

Mr. Trump’s heated remarks on immigration, both private and public, appear to have resonated with his advisers, who have been moving to put in place ever-stricter policies in line with the president’s vision. Mr. Sessions said the Department of Justice would be adding immigration judges and prosecuting twice as many immigration cases this year.

“The president has made clear to all of us that we have to do better,” he said. “We are going to do better.”

The attorney general, a former senator who helped to derail previous attempts at revamping immigration laws, also expressed hope that a legislative overhaul could be enacted this year, although Republicans on Capitol Hill have shown little appetite for undertaking one.

Now I know it’s unfashionable to think that Trump is different than any other Republican. But I can’t remember any of them calling immigrants animals. And while we’ve seen crack-downs before I’m going to guess that this one will be different. They are putting together plans to house the little children they plan to separate from their parents on military bases. I suspect they think that’s a big step up from concentration camps so it’s all good.

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Baby steps for a few Republicans: Ok maybe there was some Russian “meddling”


by digby

My Salon column today:

Wednesday was one of those scandal detail overload days. It’s one thing if there is a big blockbuster scoop that changes everything. We all run toward the light. But days like yesterday are filled with various emerging details of different aspects of the Trump scandals that are potentially important  (and in any other administration would cause bipartisan garment rending and calls for commissions, select committee investigations and special counsels) but are out of left field so don’t really clarify anything.

Just to choose a couple of the news nuggets yesterday, we learned from the New Yorker that the person who leaked Michael Cohen’s financial information was a law enforcement official who did so out of concern that some important reports seemed to have been removed from the central FBI and Treasury FINCEN databases. It’s possible that it was walled off by the Special Prosecutor’s office or someone else without nefarious intent but corruption is so rampant in this administration and much of the congressional majority so protective of Trump that government bureaucrats are concerned that documents are being destroyed.

Keep in mind that the woman who is about to be confirmed as CIA director destroyed video tapes of torture. We learned just this week that the EPA had buried a major study about contaminated drinking water throughout the US because it would be a “public relations nightmare.” It’s not really paranoid to wonder if there might be something hinky about Michael Cohen’s financial records being incomplete or to figure your best bet was to give the info to an outside lawyer.

Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani told the Washington Post that the Special Prosecutors office had assured him that they planned to follow DOJ guidelines which say a sitting president cannot be indicted, sparking bold “breaking news” headlines. However, it later turned out that Giuuliani had heard this second hand from Trump’s other lawyer Jay Sekulow and it wasn’t clear at all exactly what had been said:

Key exchanges tonight between Giuliani and @washingtonpost — Mueller himself didn’t seem to say anything, but a SC deputy called days later, per Giuliani pic.twitter.com/mRGosNAh5K

— Robert Costa (@costareports) May 16, 2018

Then the New York Times posted a story late in the day about the early days of the Russia investigation which shows that contrary to the right wing narrative, the FBI and the DOJ went much easier on Trump than Clinton with parallel investigations into their respective campaigns. The NY Times even sort-of copped to their own culpability in flogging a story late in the campaign that the feds had found no link between Trump and Russia which was incomplete if not outright misleading. The full story of both the DOJ’s decisions and the New York Times editorial choices has yet to be written, but this was a start.

But the big story of the day was the release of 2500 pages of transcripts of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence’s interviews regarding the Trump Tower meeting between Trump campaign staff and emissaries of the Russian government. We already knew much of what transpired but there were a few little tid-bits that hadn’t been widely known before. For instance, as Yahoo News reported, the day after the meeting, which Trump ostensibly knew nothing about, Aras Agalarov,the influential oligarch who had been said to confer with the Russian “crown prosecutor” about dirt on Hillary Clinton, sought to deliver a large gift along with a personal note to Donald Trump for his birthday. That was very sweet of him.

Donald Trump Junior’s answers were of particular interest since he’s the one who agreed to meet. He was not particularly forthcoming. He claimed he never told his father about the meeting, which he admitted was set up to get “dirt” on Hillary Clinton, a wildly improbable statement particularly considering that Donald Trump went out and said this shortly after the meeting was set up:

“I am going to give a major speech on probably Monday of next week, and we’re going to be discussing all of the things that have taken place with the Clintons. 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?”

We are supposed to believe that announcement was unrelated to the anticipated meeting in which Trump Junior was to receive derogatory info on Clinton. That speech never took place but if the Russians were “dangling” (seeing if someone would take the bait) or gathering kompromat about Don Junior which could be used against him later, it was still a success. And, if nothing else, they made it known that their price for helping Trump in the election would be the lifting of sanctions which we know the Trump transition team and early administration set out to do almost immediately.

Junior also could not recall if the blocked phone number he rang immediately after the meeting was his father’s blocked number and he said he never spoke to the president on Air Force One when they drafted the response to the NY Times’ reporting about the meeting although he noted that his father might have helped “through Hope Hicks.” And he seemed to have some serious memory problems for one so young. He said he couldn’t recall what happened at least 54 times.

None of that changed our understanding of what happened in that meeting. What is new about all this is the fact that Senate Republicans on the committee agreed to release the transcripts with a summary that also endorsed the intelligence community findings that the Russian government had indeed interfered in the election on behalf of Donald Trump, which is in direct opposition to the House Intelligence Committee whitewash of the whole matter. (The House report stated that there were “significant intelligence tradecraft failings” in that assessment from the intelligence community.)

This is the first time that any congressional Republicans have stated unequivocally Russia sought to undermine American democratic processes to benefit Trump. Senators Susan Collins (R-ME) and James Langford (R-LA) both said they thought the Intelligence Community’s assessment back in January 2017 was legitimate and even Senator John Cornyn (R-Tx) agreed that Russia “meddled” but said  there was no collusion, which may be a preview of the final report which is currently undergoing classification review. Hard right Trump loyalist Tom Cotton (R-AR) refused to comment indicating that there may still be some dissension on the committee.

It may seem strange that this is considered a big step considering everything we know. But Republicans have circled the wagons so tightly that stating the obvious is an act of patriotic courage. Perhaps this report is the first sign that the wagons are starting to come apart.

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Is the volcano about to blow?
by Tom Sullivan

Lava lake at Kilauea volcano summit last week. (U.S. Geological Survey)

If yesterday did not feel like a crossfire hurricane, you’re not keeping up.

The Senate Judiciary Committee released 2,500 pages of documents relating to the Trump Tower meeting. Committee chair Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) and vice chair, Sen. Mark Warner (D-VA) issued a joint statement agreeing with the intelligence community’s assessment on Russian election meddling: “The Russian effort was extensive, sophisticated, and ordered by President Putin himself for the purpose of helping Donald Trump and hurting Hillary Clinton.”

In a mandatory financial disclosure, the sitting president formally admitted he did — contrary to previous assertions — pay hush money to Stormy Daniels. The omission in previous campaign filings is a potential violation of federal law.

The New Yorker reported late yesterday that a career law enforcement official had leaked details from a confidential Suspicious Activity Report (SAR) on Michael Cohen’s shell company because two other SARs supposed to reside permanently in the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FINCEN) database had gone missing. The anonymous official told New Yorker‘s Ronan Farrow, “I have never seen something pulled off the system. . . . That system is a safeguard for the bank. It’s a stockpile of information. When something’s not there that should be, I immediately became concerned.” Where the reports went and why is a mystery.

The whistleblower who leaked Michael Cohen’s financial records is stepping forward to say why: records of bigger, potentially more sensitive, swaths of suspicious transactions appeared to be missing from a government database. My @newyorker investigation: https://t.co/5nR2CHNOUc— Ronan Farrow (@RonanFarrow) May 16, 2018

The New York Times revealed “Crossfire Hurricane” (inspired by a Rolling Stones song) was the code name for the investigation the FBI began into the Trump campaign’s Russia connections days after the Trump Tower meeting.

For his part, Michael Cohen tells friends, “I just can’t take this anymore.” The scrutiny is beyond anything Cohen (or Trump) has seen before, and his family is suffering for it. Yet, in spite of the fact friends tell him no one in Washington has his back, Cohen insists, “I’m not going to just roll over.” Now he has principles.

Finally, from the Big Island:

On Wednesday, a magnitude 4.4 earthquake rattled the volcano’s main caldera, damaging roads and buildings in Hawai`i Volcanoes National Park. Earlier, ash plumes led to an aviation red alert and raised the threat of acid rain and volcanic smog or “vog” from toxic sulfur dioxide gas that spews forth from the earth along with the lava.

The volcano is spewing “ballistic blocks” the size of appliances and could see a massive steam explosion. But Kilauea is too far from Donald Trump to provide a sufficient distraction.

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For The Win 2018 is ready for download. Request a copy of my county-level election mechanics primer at tom.bluecentury at gmail.

Can you see the subtle difference between these two headlines?

by digby

I knew that you could.

If what Giuliani says is true, what Mueller told him was that he would follow the DOJ guidelines which say that that you can’t indict a sitting president. So, yes, technically that does mean Mueller is not going to indict Trump, but the Fox headline suggests that he’s exonerated Trump while the other shows that it’s the technical DOJ rule not the merits of the case.

I’m pretty sure the Nixon Grand Jury that returned indictments on a boatload of his staffers had Nixon as an un-indicted co-conspirator. Trump and his followers probably wouldn’t care about that and they’d carry on about witch hunts and the like. But it would hardly be an exoneration.

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