Month: July 2018

Who saw it clearly at the time?

by digby

While the rest of the press was drooling over HER EMAILS!!! searching madly for signs of the disgusting Hillary Clinton’s obvious depravity, Franklin Foer saw the bigger picture:

A foreign government has hacked a political party’s computers—and possibly an election. It has stolen documents and timed their release to explode with maximum damage. It is a strike against our civic infrastructure. And though nobody died—and there was no economic toll exacted—the Russians were aiming for a tender spot, a central node of our democracy.

The Russian government knew us better than we knew ourselves. The press hated Clinton and was eager for anything to fill their bottomless need to humiliate her. The right has been primed for decades to see nasty trolling as the only legitimate form of politics. Donald Trump was speaking directly to the racist, misogynist lizard brain and millions of Americans were open to what he was saying. It was a perfect storm.

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A hard-core Trumpie gets the boot

by digby

For not hating immigrants quite enough:

Senior White House official, Jennifer Arangio, was fired Thursday and escorted from her office, ending a turbulent tenure that saw her clashing with President Donald Trump’s most hard-line advisors over human rights and refugee issues, according to several current and former U.S. officials.

The officials said Arangio, a senior director for international organizations and alliances at the National Security Council, had fallen out of favor with Trump aide Stephen Miller over the number of refugees who should be allowed to enter the United States.

She had also sparred with Miller over continuing U.S. participation in international negotiations on a global migration compact, insisting that the United States could better shape international policies on migration from inside the tent.

She lost the argument, but Miller remained embittered by the rift, the officials said. When Arangio sought his endorsement for a position in the State Department, he refused to take a meeting with her.

Adding to the tension, Arangio had defended the State Department’s embattled refugee bureau amid campaigns by other top Trump aides to dismantle or defund it — efforts that were ultimately rebuffed by Congress.

“This is a disaster for the bureau,” one State Department official said. “She is really a good ally.”
[…]
Arangio, who has served Trump since his presidential campaign, was charged with overseeing the administration’s policies on migration and refugees, two of the White House’s most politically charged issues.

One of her duties was to promote the administration’s controversial candidate for a top international migration job. It ended in a high-profile failure. In June, United Nations members voted against appointing Ken Isaacs, the Trump administration’s handpicked candidate, to head the International Organization for Migration.

The vote was seen as a sharp rebuke of the president.

Isaacs, the vice president at Christian aid organization Samaritan’s Purse, caught flak during his candidacy for past social media posts and radio interviews in which he disparaged Muslims. He denied he was anti-Islam.

Arangio defended Isaacs during his bid for the post. “He embodies what the United States believes,” she told reporters at a press event in March arranged by the U.S. mission to international organizations in Geneva.

Isaacs’s rejection was just one in a series of clashes between the Trump administration and international organizations.
[…]
Arangio had worked as the national director of women engagement for Trump’s presidential campaign in the run-up to his election in November 2016.

“The ironic thing is that she is all in for Trump — worked on the campaign, transition, talks all the time about her admiration for the president,” said one colleague.

She loved Trump which calls her judgment into question in the first place.

But clearly, unless you are willing to be a full-blown neo-fascist, you’d better watch your back.

And even then it might not be enough.

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Russia was so very helpful

by digby

Emptywheel has a detailed analysis of the indictment yesterday. If you want to get the gist of what’s new and important about it I’d recommend you read it.

Here she is on Chris Hayes last night:

TIMELINE

February 1, 2016: gfade147 0.026043 bitcoin transaction

March 2016: Conspirators hack email accounts of volunteers and employees of Hillary campaign, including John Podesta

March 2016: Yermakov spearphishes two accounts that would be leaked to DC Leaks

March 14, 2016 through April 28, 2016: Conspirators use same pool of bitcoin to purchase VPN and lease server in Malaysia

March 15, 2016: Yermakov runs technical query for DNC IP configurations and searches for open source info on DNC network, Dem Party, and Hillary

March 19, 2016: Lukashev spearphish Podesta personal email using john356gh

March 21, 2016: Lukashev steals contents of Podesta’s email account, over 50,000 emails (he is named Victim 3 later in indictment)

March 25, 2016: Lukashev spearphishes Victims 1 (personal email) and 2 using john356gh; their emails later released on DCLeaks

March 28, 2016: Yermakov researched Victims 1 and 2 on social media

April 2016: Kozachek customizes X-Agent

April 2016: Conspirators hack into DCCC and DNC networks, plant X-Agent malware

April 2016: Conspirators plan release of materials stolen from Clinton Campaign, DCCC, and DNC

April 6, 2016: Conspirators create email for fake Clinton Campaign team member to spearphish Clinton campaign; DCCC Employee 1 clicks spearphish link

April 7, 2016: Yermakov runs technical query for DCCC’s internet protocol configurations

April 12, 2016: Conspirators use stolen credentials of DCCC employee to access network; Victim 4 DCCC email victimized

April 14, 2016: Conspirators use X-Agent keylog and screenshot functions to surveil DCCC Employee 1

April 15, 2016: Conspirators search hacked DCCC computer for “hillary,” “cruz,” “trump” and copied “Benghazi investigations” folder

April 15, 2016: Victim 5 DCCC email victimized

April 18, 2016: Conspirators hack into DNC through DCCC using credentials of DCCC employee with access to DNC server; Victim 6 DCCC email victimized

April 19, 2016: Kozachek, Yershov, and co-conspirators remotely configure middle server

April 19, 2016: Conspirators register dcleaks using operational email dirbinsaabol@mail.com

April 20, 2016: Conspirators direct X-Agent malware on DCCC computers to connect to middle server

April 22, 2016: Conspirators use X-Agent keylog and screenshot function to surveil DCCC Employee 2

April 22, 2016: Conspirators compress oppo research for exfil to server in Illinois

April 26, 2016: George Papadopolous learns Russians are offering election assistance in the form of leaked emails

April 28, 2016: Conspirators use bitcoin associated with Guccifer 2.0 VPN to lease Malaysian server hosting dcleaks.com

April 28, 2016: Conspirators test IL server

May 2016: Yermakov hacks DNC server

May 10, 2016: Victim 7 DNC email victimized

May 13, 2016: Conspirators delete logs from DNC computer

May 25 through June 1, 2016: Conspirators hack DNC Microsoft Exchange Server; Yermakov researches PowerShell commands related to accessing it

May 30, 2016: Malyshev upgrades the AMS (AZ) server, which receives updates from 13 DCCC and DNC computers

May 31, 2016: Yermakov researches Crowdstrike and X-Agent and X-Tunnel malware

June 2016: Conspirators staged and released tens of thousands of stolen emails and documents

June 1, 2016: Conspirators attempt to delete presence on DCCC using CCleaner

June 2, 2016: Victim 2 personal victimized

June 8, 2016: Conspirators launch dcleaks.com, dcleaks Facebook account using Alive Donovan, Jason Scott, and Richard Gingrey IDs, and @dcleaks_ Twitter account, using same computer used for other

June 9, 2016: Don Jr, Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner have meeting expecting dirt from Russians, including Aras Agalarov employee Ike Kaveladze

June 10, 2016: Ike Kaveladze has calls with Russia and NY while still in NYC

June 14, 2016: Conspirators register actblues and redirect DCCC website to actblues

June 14, 2016: WaPo (before noon ET) and Crowdstrike announces DNC hack

June 15, 2016, between 4:19PM and 4:56 PM Moscow Standard Time (9:19 and 9:56 AM ET): Conspirators log into Moscow-based sever and search for words that would end up in first Guccifer 2.0 post, including “some hundred sheets,” “illuminati,” “think twice about company’s competence,” “worldwide known”

June 15, 2016, 7:02PM MST (2:02PM ET): Guccifer 2.0 posts first post

June 15 adn 16, 2016: Ike Kaveladze places roaming calls from Russia, the only ones he places during the extended trip

June 20, 2016: Conspirators delete logs from AMS panel, including login history, attempt to reaccess DCCC using stolen credentials

June 22, 2016: Wikileaks sends a private message to Guccifer 2.0 to “send any new material here for us to review and it will have a much higher impact than what you are doing.”

June 27, 2016: Conspirators contact US reporter, send report password to access nonpublic portion of dcleaks

Late June, 2016: Failed attempts to transfer data to Wikileaks

July, 2016: Kovalev hacks into IL State Board of Elections and steals information on 500,000 voters

July 6, 2016: Conspirators use VPN to log into Guccifer 2.0 account

July 6, 2016: Wikileaks writes Guccifer 2.0 adding, “if you have anything hillary related we want it in the next tweo [sic] days prefabl [sic] because the DNC [Democratic National Convention] is approaching and she will solidify bernie supporters behind her after”

July 6, 2016: Victim 8 personal email victimized

July 14, 2016: Conspirators send WikiLeaks an email with attachment titled wk dnc link1.txt.gpg providing instructions on how to access online archive of stolen DNC documents

July 18, 2016: WikiLeaks confirms it has “the 1Gb or so archive” and would make a release of stolen documents “this week”

July 22, 2016: WikiLeaks releases first dump of 20,000 emails

July 27, 2016: Trump asks Russia for Hillary emails

July 27, 2016: After hours, conspirators attempt to spearphish email accounts at a domain hosted by third party provider and used by Hillary’s personal office, as well as 76 email addresses at Clinton Campaign

August 2016: Kovalev hacks into VR systems

August 15, 2016: Conspirators receive request for stolen documents from candidate for US congress

August 15, 2016: First Guccifer 2.0 exchange with Roger Stone noted

August 22, 2016: Conspirators transfer 2.5 GB of stolen DCCC data to registered FL state lobbyist Aaron Nevins

August 22, 2016: Conspirators send Lee Stranahan Black Lives Matter document

September 2016: Conspirators access DNC computers hosted on cloud service, creating backups of analytics applications

October 2016: Linux version of X-Agent remains on DNC network

October 7, 2016: WikiLeaks releases first set of Podesta emails

October 28, 2016: Kovalev visits counties in GA, IA, and FL to identify vulnerabilities

November 2016: Kovalev uses VR Systems email address to phish FL officials

January 12, 2017: Conspirators falsely claim the intrusions and release of stolen documents have “totally no relation to the Russian government”

It’s the week-end, time for a promotional appearance

by digby

This is what he does every week-end. It’s his second job. Because he needs the money.

The New Yorker has the story of Trump’s mysterious purchase of Turnberry Golf Course for which he paid 200 million in cash and continues to lose money. If it wasn’t a money laundering scheme it should have been. It’s perfect for it:

Between meeting the Queen of England and Vladimir Putin, President Trump will spend this weekend at Turnberry, the golf course he bought in 2014 and rechristened Trump Turnberry. This property has not received the attention it deserves. It is, by far, the biggest investment the Trump Organization has made in years. It is so much bigger than his other recent projects that it would not be unreasonable to describe the Trump Organization as, at its core, a manager of a money-losing Scottish golf course that is kept afloat with funds from licensing fees and decades-old real-estate projects.

No doubt, the President will be excited to visit. After buying the property for more than sixty million dollars, he then spent a reported hundred and fifty million pounds—about two hundred million dollars total—remaking the site, adding a new course, rehabbing an old one, and fixing up the lodgings. It is possible, though, that he will have some harsh words for his staff. The Turnberry has been losing an astonishing amount of money, including twenty-three million dollars in 2016. The Trump Organization argued that these losses were the result of being closed for several months for repair. However, revenue for the months it was open were so low—about $1.5 million per month—that it is hard to understand how the property will ever become profitable, let alone so successful that it will pay back nearly three hundred million dollars in investment and losses.

This is the first edition of a weekly column in which I hope to expose, explore, and analyze the financial activity of our President and his associates—including his family, his political appointees, and business partners—and make the case for greater transparency. We know, of course, that the Trump Organization has worked with some truly questionable business associates, that it has run afoul of anti-money-laundering laws, and that its most high-profile business expansion—a line of three- and four-star hotels—has all but collapsed. But, for all the coverage of Trump’s finances, there is so much we just don’t know. And Trump Turnberry offers a tantalizing and maddeningly incomplete glimpse into the ways in which our President makes and spends money.

President Trump has proclaimed himself the “king of debt,” a proud master of “doing things with other people’s money.” So it was quite surprising when Jonathan O’Connell, David A. Fahrenthold, and Jack Gillum revealed in a Washington Post story in May that Trump had abruptly shifted strategies and begun spending hundreds of millions of dollars in cash to fund projects. In the nine years before he ran for President, the Post reported, the Trump Organization spent more than four hundred million dollars in cash on new properties—including fourteen transactions paid in full. In fifteen years, he bought twelve golf courses (ten in the U.S., one in Ireland, and a smaller one in Scotland), several homes, and a winery and estate in Virginia, and he paid for his forty-million-dollar share of the cost of building the Trump Hotel in Washington, D.C.—a property leased to Trump by the U.S. government. But his largest cash purchase was the Turnberry, followed by tens of millions of dollars in additional cash outlays for rehabbing the property.

Using what appears to be more than half of the company’s available cash to purchase Trump Turnberry makes no obvious sense for any business person, but especially for Donald Trump. It is a bizarre, confounding move that raises questions about the central nature of his business during the years in which he prepared for and then executed his Presidential campaign.

While Trump has portrayed himself as uniquely aggressive in his use of debt, borrowing money is central to any real-estate business. By borrowing money, developers increase their profits when successful, reduce their losses when they fail, and are able to diversify their holdings to increase the likelihood of success. By 2014, Trump was seen by lenders as a high-risk bet because he had so many bankruptcies and so few successful projects. But, if he had used the three hundred million dollars he spent on Turnberry as a pledge, he could have surely received several hundred million in loans at a competitive rate. With, say, a billion dollars total, he could have invested in projects around the world. Instead, he chose to put nearly all of his available cash in an old, underperforming course in a remote corner of Scotland.

We know so little about the internal finances of the Trump Organization’s activities elsewhere that it is hard to understand where all of the money spent on Turnberry came from. Through the public disclosures required of someone running for and becoming President, many media outlets have tried to re-create a model for Trump’s business, recognizing that, by his own frequent admission, he often exaggerates his worth. Forbes came up with a figure of a net worth of just over three billion dollars, with less than two hundred million in available cash. This is an astonishing sum, of course.

However, the portfolio of assets that Trump owns does not suggest that he would have so much money that he can casually spend a few hundred million on a whim. Much of his wealth is tied up in properties that lose money or are not especially profitable. A comprehensive analysis by the Wall Street Journal, in 2016, concluded that Trump brought in about a hundred and sixty million dollars in income a year. (“The income number is wrong by a lot,” Trump said, though he provided no details.) With that money, Trump had to pay for his business, his taxes (if he paid any), his personal life style, and that of his family. His Boeing 757 alone cost more than ten thousand dollars per hour of use, not to mention the dozens of staffers at his various properties, the clothes and food and jewelry of a status-conscious family, and countless other expenses that could easily eat up all of that income. There simply isn’t enough money coming into Trump’s known business to cover the massive outlay he spent on Turnberry.

In congressional testimony, Glenn Simpson, the founder of Fusion GPS, the firm that hired Christopher Steele to report out the document that became known as the Steele dossier, wondered aloud if the money really was Trump’s. If so, why would he have spent it in this location and not elsewhere? (A recent report by R&A, the world’s leading golf organization, shows that there is far more opportunity in Asia, Africa, and Latin America—where golf is growing quickly—than in Scotland, the country most oversupplied with courses, clubs, and resorts.)

We don’t know. We can’t, until we learn far more about Trump’s internal finances. It can’t be dismissed, out of hand, that there is an innocent explanation for the Trump Turnberry purchase. Eric Trump told the Post that Trump had “incredible cash flow,” and that none of the cash used to purchase the fourteen properties in full came from outside investors or from selling off other assets. Perhaps Trump actually did make far more than we know. Perhaps he sees something in the business of golf that others have missed, and he has a vision for how to turn the money-losing property into a thriving concern. Or, as some have suggested, he may have become sentimental and wanted a deeper connection to his mother’s Scottish roots.

There is another way to view the investment in Trump Turnberry. Even before the financial crisis of 2008, Trump found it increasingly difficult to borrow money from big Wall Street banks and was shut out of the rapidly growing pool of institutional investment. Faced with a cash-flow problem, he could have followed other storied New York real-estate families and invested in the ever more rigorous financial-due-diligence capabilities required by pension funds and other sources of real-estate capital. This would have given him access to a pool of trillions of dollars from investors.

Instead, Trump turned to a new source of other people’s money. He did a series of deals in Toronto, Panama, the Dominican Republic, Azerbaijan, and Georgia with businesspeople from the former Soviet Union who were unlikely to pass any sort of rigorous due-diligence review by pension funds and other institutional investors. (Just this week, the Financial Times published a remarkably deep dive into the questionable financing of Trump’s Toronto property.) He also made deals in India, Indonesia, and Vancouver, Canada, with figures who have been convicted or investigated for criminal wrongdoing and abuse of political power.

We know very little about how money flowed into and out of these projects. All of these projects involved specially designated limited-liability companies that are opaque to outside review. We do know that, in the past decade, wealthy oligarchs in the former Soviet Union and elsewhere have seen real-estate investment as a primary vehicle through which to launder money. The problem is especially egregious in the United Kingdom, where some have called the U.K. luxury real-estate industry “a money laundering machine.” Golf has been a particular focus of money laundering. Although the U.K. has strict transparency rules for financial activity within the country, its regulators have been remarkably incurious about the sources of funds coming from firms based abroad. All we know is that the money that went into Turnberry, for example, came from the Trump Organization in the U.S. We—and the British authorities—have no way of knowing where the Trump Organization got that money.

There’s more.

The fact that he got away with not having his businesses vetted, particularly under these circumstances, remains one of the most obvious failures of our political system and our sick obsession with wealth. This man has serious and obvious personality defects which should have disqualified him from the beginning. But he is a business failure many times over and yet 60 million people believed his hype and assumed that because he lives a lavish lifestyle that he must be smarter than everyone else. He isn’t. He’s a fraud and a criminal.

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Who didntit
by Tom Sullivan

Screengrab/YouTube/Washington Post via Daily Kos.

Perhaps the strangest element of the Russian indictment story yesterday was the White House’s non-response. The sitting president visiting England found time to cut the knees from under his host, British Prime Minister Theresa May, in a London tabloid. Then he back-peddled when he next saw her in person, claiming he didn’t say what he said in the recorded Sun interview. He found time to take high tea with the queen after reportedly keeping her waiting. He found time to blame Barack Obama for the Russian hacks aimed at helping the Trump campaign. What Donald Trump didn’t find time for was any criticism of Russian president Vladimir Putin.

Meanwhile, Robert Mueller’s Department of Justice investigators in Washington, D.C. indicted 12 named Russian military intelligence officers over a complex 2016 operation run from Moscow using cryptocurrency, malware, and fake identities to hack computers at the DNC, DCCC, the Hillary Clinton campaign, and state election boards. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein had briefed Trump on the coming indictments days earlier. All the White House could muster was a series of bullet points on who didntit:

o “There is no allegation in this indictment that Americans knew that they were corresponding with Russians.

o There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.

o There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.”

Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along.”

Except the DOJ indictment includes a loudly silent yet to the end of the three bullets above.

After the prosecution and guilty pleas of campaign associates in connection to the investigation, the sitting president found time yesterday, for the nth time, to declare the investigation into Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 elections a witch hunt even as his Department of Justice rolled out indictments he knew about in advance against the latest dozen witches.

Yet there was no allegation anyone in a White House charged with defending the United States of America was angry about a documented, coordinated attack on an American election by a hostile foreign power. A Trump accustomed to prompting rally crowds to chant “Lock her up” gave off no hint of condemnation for the alleged Russian crimes. Trump still plans to speak one-on-one, in private, with Russian president Vladimir Putin on Monday in Helsinki.

Humans are pattern-seeking animals. We want the world to make sense. Over the course of this Russia investigation and even during the Trump campaign, the unanswered question has been why the sitting president is so in thrall to Russia. Speculation has piled upon speculation, but the answer is not forthcoming. Perhaps that is special counsel Robert Mueller’s problem. Perhaps the rest of us are approaching this conundrum all wrong.

The problem for protesting thousands in London struggling to express their distaste in words fit to print, and the problem for the United States of America and rest of the world Trump seems bent on destabilizing, is not why Trump behaves as he does, but that he behaves as he does.

What the world wants to know is if the United States has remaining enough integrity and self-respect to stop this administration before the damage to world order is irreparable.

* * * * * * * * *

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

Friday Night Soother: Scotland edition

by digby

Pour yourself a tall Scotch and enjoy these adorable babies. Get some rest. This hell isn’t over yet.

Two rare Scottish Wildcats, born at the Royal Zoological Society of Scotland’s Edinburgh Zoo, may help provide a lifeline for the iconic species.

The kittens will join a conservation breeding programme, which it is hoped will save the species from extinction in the wild through future reintroductions.

David Barclay, RZSS cat conservation project officer, said, “Scottish Wildcats are facing severe threats due to cross-breeding with domestic and feral cats, disease transfer and accidental persecution.”

“Wildcat populations have suffered a sharp decline in Scotland in recent decades with studies suggesting there may be as few as 115 Scottish Wildcats left in the wild, making them one of the UK’s most endangered mammals. Our conservation breeding programme and work with partners in Scottish Wildcat Action, the national conservation project, is therefore vital.”

David continued, “Every birth is a potential lifeline and improves the chances of a genetically healthy population that can act as a source for future wildcat release.”

Born in April, the kittens have recently started to emerge from their den and explore their habitat.

These Scottish Wildcats aren’t one bit happy that Trump is in their country. They’d like him to leave.

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The Invitation

by digby

That’s the original exchange between Trump and Katy Tur when he invited Russia to release Hillary Clinton emails. She was shocked, as were we all. He wasn’t joking. It’s obvious:

By the way, here’s how this was handled during the campaign. That lying Hillary Clinton was at it again:

Hillary Clinton said that Donald Trump gave Russian president Vladimir Putin the thumbs up to hack away at U.S. emails.

Putin has “let loose cyber attackers to hack into government files, to hack into personal files, hack into the Democratic National Committee,” Clinton said during the first general election presidential debate at Hofstra University.

She continued:

“But we will defend the citizens of this country, and the Russians need to understand that. I think they’ve been treating it as almost a probing, how far will we go? How much will we do? And that’s why I was so shocked when Donald publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans. That is just unacceptable.”

We will fact-check whether Clinton is right about what Trump said about Putin and the emails.

Trump’s comments about Russia hacking Clinton’s emails

A Clinton campaign spokesman pointed us to Trump’s comments at a press conference at Trump National Doral golf course July 27.

“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Trump said to a room full of TV cameras as well as reporters from the Miami Herald/Tampa Bay Times. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”

He also said: “By the way, they hacked — they probably have her 33,000 e-mails. I hope they do. They probably have her 33,000 e-mails that she lost and deleted because you’d see some beauties there. So let’s see.”

Clinton’s lawyers had turned over work-related emails but deleted thousands that she said were about personal matters.

FBI Director James Comey said earlier that month that Clinton should have known that some of the emails stored on private servers in her New York home were classified, but concluded there wasn’t enough evidence that she intentionally mishandled classified information.

Although the Justice Department declined to prosecute, Trump continued to hammer Clinton for the email controversy:

“That gives me a big problem,” Trump said in Doral. “After she gets a subpoena! She gets subpoenaed, and she gets rid of 33,000 emails? That gives me a problem. Now, if Russia or China or any other country has those emails, I mean, to be honest with you, I’d love to see them.”

When Katy Tur, an NBC reporter, asked Trump whether he was encouraging a foreign country to hack into emails, Trump snapped back: “Be quiet. I know you want to save (Clinton).”

Trump also attacked the DNC over thousands of leaked emails published by WikiLeaks in July. Those emails showed its leaders — including party chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz of South Florida — favored Clinton over rival Bernie Sanders. Two days later Wasserman Schultz, a U.S. representative, announced she would step down from her party post.

As for any invitation to Russia to hack emails, a Trump campaign spokesman told PolitiFact that Trump said he was being “sarcastic” in an interview that Fox News posted the next day.

Trump told Fox News’ Brian Kilmeade, “You have to be kidding. His client, his person, deleted 33,000 emails illegally. You look at that. And when I’m being sarcastic with something …” Asked by Kilmeade if he was indeed being sarcastic, Trump snapped, “Of course I’m being sarcastic.”

Our ruling

Clinton says Trump “publicly invited Putin to hack into Americans’ (emails).”

Trump said at a press conference in South Florida that he hoped Russia was able to find “the 30,000 emails that are missing.” That was a reference to Clinton’s emails, not Americans’ emails more broadly.

We rate this claim Half True.

I guess Hillary Clinton isn’t American. Who knew?

Also, they hacked John Podesta, the DNC, the DCCC, Secretaries of State and local voting systems, all presumably Americans.

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Defensive much?

by digby

Naturally Rudy Giuliani came out with the most fatuous comment about the indictments:

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.— Mayor Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) July 13, 2018

The White House statement:

“As Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein said today:

o “There is no allegation in this indictment that Americans knew that they were corresponding with Russians.

o There is no allegation in this indictment that any American citizen committed a crime.

o There is no allegation that the conspiracy changed the vote count or affected any election result.”

Today’s charges include no allegations of knowing involvement by anyone on the campaign and no allegations that the alleged hacking affected the election result. This is consistent with what we have been saying all along.

”

Aside from the ridiculous implication that a lack of indictments of the White House in this indictment of a bunch of Russian agents means they are in the clear, they just can’t bring themselves to condemn the interference. I wonder why?

QOTD: a stunned reporter

by digby

Tom Newton Dunn, the reporter from the Sun who interviewed Trump:

Yup, @realDonaldTrump just asserted he would be vindicated by a recording as he lied about not having criticized the prime minister of Great Britain… IN A RECORDED INTERVIEW we all just heard.

— Ken Dilanian (@KenDilanianNBC) July 13, 2018

The Dotard

Mr Trump has sparked a backlash from UK politicians after telling The Sun the PM’s Brexit plan would “probably kill” a UK-US trade deal.

He also said Boris Johnson would make a “great prime minister”.

But after talks with Mrs May he claimed “tremendous things” he said about her had been left out of the Sun story.

He said the paper’s story was “generally fine”, but “it didn’t put in what I said about the prime minister, and I said tremendous things”.

“Fortunately, we tend to record stories now so we have it for your enjoyment if you’d like it,” he said.

“We record when we deal with reporters, it’s called fake news and we solve a lot of problems with the good old recording instrument.”

The Sun’s write-up of its interview, which was recorded, quoted him describing her as a “nice person” and saying they get along “very nicely”.

Later in the press conference at the prime minister’s country residence, Chequers, Mr Trump verbally sparred with the Sun reporter who had interviewed him, Tom Newton Dunn.

Mr Newton Dunn told the president that his positive remarks about Mrs May had been included in the story.

“If you reported them that’s good,” Mr Trump told the political correspondent.

“Thank you very much for saying that.”

He added: “I didn’t think they put it in, but that’s all right.

“They didn’t put it in the headline, I wish they put that in the headline, that’s one of those things.”

He’s a sick puppy.

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#MeToo among the Master of the Universe

by digby

Dave Dayen has written a fascinating long read about a Kafkaesque sexual harassment case on Wall Street. I’ve been wondering why there’s been so little #MeToo action among those Masters of the Universe. This partially explains it, and it has a really surprising twist:

ON MAY 5, 2011, Mike Picarella’s first day at HSBC, his boss wanted to know if he was sexting. “No, no,” he reassured her—his wife was just curious how things were going, so he was texting her back. His boss then inquired whether his wife had ever heard of the three-minute rule. “What’s that?” Mike asked. Well, his boss said, leaning in, if she ever wanted her husband to do something, she would give him a blowjob that lasted exactly three minutes, and voila, her wish was his command. Surveying Mike’s blank stare, she belted out one of her giant, guttural laughs and plopped herself down at her desk, a mere two feet from his.

Mike, a 22-year veteran of Wall Street, learned quickly that this was just the way Eileen Hedges interacted with the world. She was raised in a well-off suburb in New Jersey and joined HSBC, one of the largest foreign-owned banks in the United States, shortly after graduating from college in 1991. It was a time when male behavior on Wall Street was particularly noxious. “Women started getting jobs … and men did everything they could to make them feel like they didn’t belong,” says Susan Antilla, author of Tales From the Boom-Boom Room, a history of women in banking. That meant parades of strippers in the office, Playboy centerfolds hung up at the desks, care packages for female employees containing dildos or calzones shaped like penises. It could also mean verbal abuse or sexual assault.

And yet, Eileen managed to thrive in this atmosphere, eventually becoming head of business development for HSBC in the Americas. She moved up, in large part, by cultivating a reputation for being brash, boisterous and profane. By becoming one of the boys. Short and stocky, with blond hair and a penchant for holstering her Blackberry in her bra, Eileen would pant like a dog with her tongue out when certain men walked by her desk, Mike said. Sometimes, he would overhear her musing about which executives would be better in bed: “Mike H. would be fun but Mike S. would be boring.” (Apparently, there is no shortage of men named Mike at HSBC.)

On most work nights, Eileen posted up in her favorite seat at Windfall, the neighborhood bar a block from HSBC’s offices, where bartenders treated her like Norm from “Cheers.” Mike had even been told there was a drink named in her honor, “The Eileen,” a pink concoction with vodka and club soda. She held at least one performance review with a subordinate at the bar. And from time to time, Mike discovered, Eileen would have an assistant book her a hotel room nearby while her husband and two kids slept across the river in New Jersey. Her drinking buddies became a support network for her, a club, an identity. As she wrote to a male co-worker after a night out: “I’d rather hang out with you guys and laugh. … I at least feel normal?”

Mike wasn’t sure what to make of Eileen, but he had strong incentives not to think about it too hard. “He was hired with a view to ultimately being her successor,” said Ian Mullen, a managing director who helped bring him to HSBC. If Mike did end up taking her job, he’d rise to the level of managing director, the fanciest position of his career, worth at least half a million dollars a year in salary and bonuses.

Mike’s arrival boded well for Eileen, too. Having a viable replacement would set up her own promotion to the upper echelons of the bank, maybe some posh new assignment in Hong Kong or London. “Did I tell you I love my new guy,” Eileen wrote a colleague on Sametime, HSBC’s internal chat network, a couple weeks into his tenure. “I am almost floored. … I don’t have to go to meetings with him.”

Read on. You won’t believe what happens. It’s a real life dark thriller.

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