Month: November 2019

No, thanks
by Tom Sullivan

The Women Disobey protest against US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s (ICE) “zero tolerance” policy separation children and families at the US/Mexico border. Photo by Sarahmirk [CC BY-SA 4.0], June 2018.

Whatever my own misfortunes, this Thanksgiving I count them nothing compared to those of people so much worse off: victims of natural disasters, life-threatening illnesses, violence and poverty. Also, victims of man-made disasters.

It is difficult to conceive of the pain families separated at the U.S. southern border endure each day. President Donald Trump’s “Zero Tolerance” effectively made orphans of thousands of children. It is no surprise there were more separated from parents than earlier reported:

The internal watchdog for the Department of Homeland Security found that the Trump administration anticipated it would separate 26,000 children if the “zero tolerance” policy of 2018 had been allowed to continue, and that the agency knew it lacked the technology to track and reunite children with their parents.

Officials at Customs and Border Protection, the DHS agency responsible for separating families under the May-June 2018 policy, estimated in May of that year that it would separate more than 26,000 children by September, according to the report from the DHS Office of Inspector General, released publicly on Wednesday. After mounting pressure, President Donald Trump signed an executive order ending the policy on June 20, 2018.

Even knowing in advance they might never reunite 26,000 children with their parents, the report finds, did not cause administration reconsideration of its policy that left several thousand children parentless by government action:

Wednesday’s report said CBP officials forged ahead with the policy even though they knew ahead of time that the agency lacked the proper technology to track and reunify children with their parents.

“Because of these IT deficiencies, we could not confirm the total number of families DHS separated during the Zero Tolerance period,” the report said.

[…]

“Under a normal operational cadence, we would have tweaked or adjusted DHS data systems, trained our officers, prepared our detention providers. But not one of these steps were taken,” said Andrew Lorenzen-Strait, former ICE deputy assistant director for custody management who now works at the Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service as the director for children and family services.

Banality

Rep. Bennie G. Thompson (D-MS), Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, issued a statement with the report’s release:

“If there was any doubt, the Inspector General’s report provides further proof the Trump Administration’s zero-tolerance policy was intended to inflict cruelty on asylum seekers. DHS separated children from their parents knowing they had no system to track them and no plan to reunify them. The Administration bungled implementation so badly the Inspector General still cannot verify whether more children were separated than reported or if they have been reunited. Meanwhile, tens of thousands of man-hours were wasted on separating families rather than further securing the border and facilitating cross-border travel and trade. The Trump Administration has had one failed border policy after another, but family separation stands out as a continual disaster.”

Trump did this. We did this.

“Home Alone” this is not for thousands of children and parents. Perhaps these pilgrim families can, in their anguish, find something for which they can be thankful today. Many left violent countries where their very lives were at risk. Here, at least, no one is actively threatening to kill them, only to deport them to where someone else might.

If your Thanksgiving table needs a moderator

by digby

You can book this guy:

Perhaps this might be helpful?

HOW TO SURVIVE THANKSGIVING WITH YOUR NOT-QUITE-LEFTIST-ENOUGH FAMILY

Thanksgiving is a time for family, feasting, and — let’s face it — fighting. And if your Thanksgiving is anything like mine, you know what it’s like to wade through political conversations with an insufficiently leftist family. From “Socialist” to “Democratic Socialist” to the dreaded “Progressive Democrat,” the political ideologies are truly all over the map. Feeling anxious about the inevitable liberal infighting that accompanies Thanksgiving? Grab a plate, help yourself to these tips, and enjoy a controversy-free Turkey Day. 

Avoid “off-limit” topics

The easiest way to avoid an argument is to circumvent controversial topics altogether. Remember that some family members may express beliefs that make zero sense to you, or anyone using common sense — and that’s okay! Perhaps your sister is open to nuclear as a short-term energy solution, or Cousin Derek thinks partial student loan forgiveness is “good enough for now.” Rather than having to point out that your relatives are corporatist shills, you’re better off playing it safe and broaching less contentious subjects, such as gun control, abortion, or Mayor Pete and how utterly terrible he is. Of course, in the event that a fight starts to brew…

Just ask questions

So you stumbled into an argument. Instead of firing green bean casserole across the table, try and understand where your family member is coming from. Did Mom just admit she voted for Hillary in the general? Ask her why she felt the need to support a neoliberal, centrist pig rather than voting third-party, or whether she’s proud to have enabled a massively corrupt Democratic National Committee. Although she’s revealed herself to be a shitlib, it can’t hurt to investigate how and when a family member became so morally bankrupt, if only from a sociological perspective. 

Try to change the subject

Sure, it was inevitable that the wealth tax would come up at some point — this is Thanksgiving, after all — but that doesn’t necessarily have to spoil dinner. Just because Aunt Jolene finds Elizabeth Warren’s tax plan palatable and thinks we can do without the extra two trillion dollars in revenue that Bernie’s model would generate doesn’t change the fact that she loves you. Forget that your aunt is an elitist who is forever tainted by that semester she worked as an adjunct at Dartmouth, and pivot to something everyone can agree on, like how excited you are to grab a slice of her famous Sweet Potato Pie!

Let it go

After it becomes clear that Aunt Jolene is too goddamn stupid to understand that using the public option as a bridge to Medicare-For-All is EXACTLY what the Republicans want, it’s time to acknowledge that you shouldn’t interact with certain family members altogether. Look, it’s Thanksgiving, and you’re going to hear some opinions that are harder to swallow than Aunt Jolene’s bullshit Sweet Potato Pie. Sometimes the safest option is to ignore your family for the remainder of the day, and to the extent possible, all future gatherings.

Leave

Desperate times call for desperate measures, but when you ask Dad if he can name another candidate who endorses a national rent control and he just stands there stuttering and you respond, “I didn’t think so, motherfucker,” and everybody laughs and your dad replies, “I know you didn’t mean it this way, son, but it is awfully humorous that you just called me, your dad, a motherfucker. You gotta admit that’s pretty funny,” there’s basically no other option than to tell your family off and leave in search of a better, less ridiculous one.

Drive home 

Thanksgiving is a time for gratitude and reflection, and what better way to reflect than by driving home listening to Aimee Mann’s “Wise Up” and coming to terms with the fact that you’re lucky to have friends and family who love you, and whom you love back, despite your vast, irreconcilable differences within an ultra-progressive ideology. Is there a seat at the table for a little old socialist who gets carried away from time to time? Truth be told, Aunt Jolene’s Sweet Potato Pie is quite tasty… 

Find the perfect icebreaker

“It’s just a little suspicious that he was taken off suicide watch, and that the lone security camera outside his cell was turned off, isn’t it?” is something you can offer to break the tension once you return. Surely your family will collectively agree that, not only was Jeffrey Epstein murdered, but also it was organized by the billionaire class, who should all be sent to the gallows. At this point a wave of relief should pass over everyone at the table, allowing for a timely clinking of glasses and cheers to a delightful Thanksgiving feast, to kinship, and merriment all around.

And keep in mind that it could be worse. A LOT worse:

“As a former Democrat, what is it about Trump that draws you to him?”

“Common-sense. He wants to get from point A to point B in a very logical way.” pic.twitter.com/zv8ZlobqtK

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 27, 2019

“How can you not love [Trump]? I just don’t understand.” pic.twitter.com/XIgYAAEOmc

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 27, 2019

“i think the trend for black voters is getting better” pic.twitter.com/j2bpQyHeF3

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) November 27, 2019

Have another drink. It’s really the only answer.

cheers —

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“I thought what the president was doing was fundamentally wrong…..’

by digby

Will any of today’s Republican officials be remembered this way?

William D. Ruckelshaus, who resigned as deputy attorney general rather than carry out President Richard M. Nixon’s illegal order to fire the independent special Watergate prosecutor in the constitutional crisis of 1973 known as the “Saturday Night Massacre,” died on Wednesday at his home in Seattle. He was 87.

His death was confirmed by his daughter Mary Ruckelshaus.

A lawyer and political troubleshooter, Mr. Ruckelshaus twice headed the United States Environmental Protection Agency, as its founding administrator from 1970 to 1973 under Nixon, and from 1983 to 1985 under President Ronald Reagan. He won praise for laying the new agency’s foundations, and later for salvaging an E.P.A. that had strayed from its mission and lost the confidence of the public and Congress.

Mr. Ruckelshaus was a champion of America’s natural resources in his home state of Indiana; in Washington State, where he lived; and while serving on presidential commissions and conservation groups. But he also worked for big business, was not an environmentalist of the Greenpeace and Sierra Club stripe, and in 50 years of public and private service was hailed and vilified by partisans on both sides as he tried to balance economic and ecological interests.

For many Americans, however, the deeds of Mr. Ruckelshaus’s varied career were all but eclipsed by his role in the events of a single night in the autumn of 1973, as the political dirty tricks and cover-up conspiracies of the Watergate scandal closed in on his boss, the beleaguered President Nixon.

The scandal had already forced some of Nixon’s closest associates to resign and face criminal charges, and Mr. Ruckelshaus, with his E.P.A. successes and reputation for integrity, was named acting head of the F.B.I. in April 1973, replacing L. Patrick Gray III, who had allowed Nixon aides to examine Watergate files and had even destroyed evidence in the case.

Mr. Ruckelshaus was soon named the top deputy to Attorney General Elliot L. Richardson. And on a night of high drama, as the nation held its breath and constitutional government appeared to hang in the balance, Nixon ordered his top three Justice Department officials, one after another, to fire the Watergate prosecutor, Archibald Cox, rather than comply with his subpoena for nine incriminating Oval Office tape recordings.

Mr. Cox’s complete independence had been guaranteed by Nixon and the attorney general during the prosecutor’s Senate confirmation hearings the previous May. He could be removed only for “cause” — some gross malfeasance in office. But none was even alleged. Nixon’s order to summarily dismiss Mr. Cox thus raised a most profound question: Was the president above the law?

Mr. Richardson and Mr. Ruckelshaus refused to fire Mr. Cox and resigned even as orders for their own dismissals were being issued by the White House. But Robert H. Bork, the United States solicitor general and the acting attorney general after the dismissal of his two superiors, carried out the presidential order, not only firing Mr. Cox but also abolishing the office of the special Watergate prosecutor.

The dismissals, all on Saturday, Oct. 20, labeled the “Saturday Night Massacre” by news media, set off a firestorm of protest across the country. Some 300,000 telegrams inundated Congress and the White House, mostly calling for Nixon’s resignation. The outcry was so ferocious that the White House said within days that it had decided to surrender the tape recordings after all.

Less than a month later, a federal judge ruled that Mr. Cox’s dismissal had been illegal and ordered him reinstated, but Mr. Cox indicated that he did not want the job back. After a protracted legal struggle, scores of tapes were eventually turned over to Mr. Cox’s successor, Leon Jaworski, and Mr. Nixon, facing certain impeachment in the House and conviction in the Senate, resigned in August 1974.

Vice President Gerald R. Ford assumed the presidency, Mr. Cox returned to teaching at Harvard, Mr. Richardson was named Mr. Ford’s commerce secretary in 1976, and Mr. Bork became a federal judge whose nomination to the Supreme Court by President Reagan in 1987 was defeated in the Senate. Mr. Ruckelshaus, who joined a Washington law firm and soon moved to Seattle, said he had no regrets.

“I thought what the president was doing was fundamentally wrong,” he told The New York Times years later. “I was convinced that Cox had only been doing what he had the authority to do; what was really of concern to the president and the White House was that he was too close. He hadn’t engaged in any extraordinary improprieties, quite the contrary.”

There are still some people like this around. Bill Taylor and Fiona Hill come to mind. The Navy Secretary Richard Spencer seems like he might be one of them.  Sally Yates, even showboating Jim Comey, spoke out  early but we’re still waiting for any current members of the DOJ to step up.  And all of those except Comey were non-partisan government officials.

So many just go along to get along and then, if they’re fired, they just keep their mouths shut and cash in in the private sector.

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Please put fresh batteries in your bullshit detectors

by digby

Democrats need to avoid being like this

“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction  and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.” – Hannah Arendt

Everyone needs to be just a little bit more discerning and stop using social media to spread lies, even if it’s a lie that benefits your chosen candidate or cause. It’s toxic to our culture and our society:

A tweet from liberal activists touting Elizabeth Warren drew what seemed like a typical response from one of the Democratic presidential candidate’s fans this September:

“Thank you for endorsing Elizabeth Warren!!!” the user wrote, sharing a photo of black women holding “African Americans with Warren” signs.

The post gained only a single retweet at the time. But it found new life this past weekend, making its way to sharp-eyed Twitter users who realized it was fake, with the campaign placards photoshopped over Black Lives Matter signs.

Twitter users seized on a side-by-side comparison of the doctored version and the original, assailing the Warren campaign for the apparent misrepresentation. What they did not realize was that the account that had propagated the photo has been identified by the Warren campaign as a “troll,” only feigning support for the Massachusetts Democrat as it pushed out falsified content in an apparent effort to undermine her candidacy.

As the image solidified negative views of Warren among some who favor other Democratic candidates, the incident offered a fresh lesson about political disinformation: Homespun operations on social media represent a rising threat, capable of inciting conflict among voters and turning unwitting users into agents of online deception.

Four years after Russian agents weaponized social media during the 2016 election, tech giants are grappling not just with foreign meddling but also with falsehoods spread by less sophisticated, and frequently U.S.-based, online sources. Such actors already have circulated misleading posts, doctored photos and manipulated video around the 2020 race.

The threat is especially acute as Twitter and its Silicon Valley peers maintain a mostly hands-off approach to deceptively edited content, so long as the originating account isn’t engaging in behavior designed to “artificially amplify or suppress information,” as Twitter’s rules state.

Relying on the anonymity and amplification that social media offers, such subterfuge “doesn’t necessarily change minds, but it certainly pushes us farther apart and it entrenches us in our existing positions,” said Darren Linvill, an associate professor at Clemson University who studies disinformation. “With these little home-grown cases that are clearly fake, and that a reasonable person can observe to be fake, someone who is already inclined to believe that thing is going to believe it.”

Actually, many of them just want to hurt someone they don’t like so they’ll  pass it along even though they know it’s not true.  This is the Nixonian dirty tricks theory of politics and it’s very, very bad.

We all get fooled sometimes. It’s happened to me many times over the years. But I try as hard as I can to maintain some common sense and if you do that you can usually see that something doesn’t make sense.

This is going to get worse over the next year. The right-wing is a professional bullshit operation led by a well-financed conman. You can count on them to be disseminating lies 24/7.  There are foreign actors, in particular Russians who have correctly surmised that Americans are a bunch of gullible fools and they’ll be playing in this election too.

It would be really helpful if Democrats did their best to cling to reality and made an effort to avoid this kind of propaganda. If we are to deal with big issues like climate change we’re going to need reality and reason. It would be very counterproductive to lose our ability to tell the difference.

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Rudy’s double dipping

by digby

Oh my:

President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudolph W. Giuliani, negotiated this year to represent Ukraine’s top prosecutor for at least $200,000 during the same months that Giuliani was working with the prosecutor to dig up dirt on former vice president Joe Biden, according to people familiar with the discussions.

The people said that Giuliani began negotiations with Ukraine’s top prosecutor, Yuri Lutsenko, about a possible agreement in February. In the agreement, Giuliani’s company would receive payment to represent Lutsenko as the Ukrainian sought to recover assets he believed had been stolen from the government in Kyiv, those familiar with the discussions said.

The talks occurred as Giuliani met with Lutsenko in New York in January and then in Warsaw in February while he was also gathering information from Lutsenko on two topics Giuliani believed could prove useful to Trump: the involvement of Biden and his son Hunter in Ukraine, and allegations that Ukraine, not Russia, had interfered in the 2016 election.

Put simply, Rudy was doing with Trump what they accuse Biden and his son of doing. Of course.
And it’s much, much worse since they were simultaneously doing Russia’s bidding and putting lives on the line in the war with Ukraine.

You knew they don’t do anything that doesn’t give them a little taste, right? That’s how this new kleptocracy works.  Of course there was money involved in all this.

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It’s time for cake!

 by digby

Hey @digby56 — as a Christmas present, I bought your recipe a new Bundt pan. But I’m still making it off the printout from 2008: pic.twitter.com/CydtOxIxKC

— Karen Tumulty (@ktumulty) December 16, 2018

Karen Tumulty Pumpkin Cake

For cake


* (3/4 cup) softened unsalted butter.
* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting pan
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
* 2 tablespoons crystalized ginger, finely chopped
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/4 cups canned pumpkin
* 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk 
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
* 3 large eggs


Icing


* 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons well-shaken buttermilk
* 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar, 
* 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
* a 10-inch nonstick bundt pan 




Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter bundt pan generously.


Sift flour (2 1/4 cups), baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, ginger and vanilla in another bowl.


Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture, just until smooth.


Spoon batter into pan, then bake until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool 10 minutes more.


Icing:


Whisk together buttermilk and confectioners sugar until smooth. Drizzle over warm cake, sprinkle with chopped walnuts (keep a little icing in reserve to drizzle lightly over walnuts) then cool cake completely. Icing will harden slightly.


Easy as pie (easier, actually.) 


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Is Lindsey putting on a show for Daddy?

by digby

My Salon column this morning:

One of the more common parlor games in online political circles these days involves analyzing one of the most stunning makeovers in Senate history. I’m speaking, of course, of Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, onetime wingman to the late “maverick” John McCain, who was widely assumed to be his successor as the leading independent Republican in the U.S. Senate. Instead, for whatever set of reasons, Graham has become Donald Trump’s obsequious majordomo.

McCain’s reputation was inflated, of course. He was most often a doctrinaire conservative who voted the party line. But there were occasions when he would step outside the box and sometimes it made a big difference. Graham would often follow him, fashioning himself as a “common sense” kind of guy who didn’t follow the crowd although even back in his first Senate term he showed he was willing to break the rules. In one overlooked perfidious act, Graham and Sen. Jon Kyl of Arizona conspired to put a fake floor debate into the legislative record to back up their argument in an important enemy-combatant case before the Supreme Court. So Graham’s willingness to play dirty has always been there.

Graham ran for president in 2016 and while he was far from alone in criticizing Donald Trump, he was among the most cutting of all the prominent Republicans who went after him. He said at one point, “I think he’s a kook. I think he’s crazy. I think he’s unfit for office,” and called the future president a “race-baiting xenophobic bigot.” He told CNN, “You know how you make America great again? Tell Donald Trump to go to hell!”

As one would expect, Trump returned the favor saying, “He’s one of the dumbest human beings I’ve ever seen” and “He says, ‘I know so much.’ He knows about the military? I could push him over with a little thimble.” One might have thought that Graham, the junior maverick, would have taken on the role of the loyal GOP opposition as his mentor McCain did. But Graham has gone the opposite way, becoming the most sycophantic of Trump supporters in the upper chamber of Congress. The aforementioned parlor game revolves around the question of why he is doing it.

Consensus seems to be that Graham had to do that in order to retain his Senate seat in South Carolina, where Trump is very popular. It’s kind of sad that a favorite son has built up so little good will in his home state after two decades, but apparently Trump trumps hometown loyalty for most Republicans.

Graham has taken this to such lengths, however, that it’s pretty clear that there’s more going on than his own 2020 re-election. Plenty of other senators are facing the voters in Trump-friendly states without feeling the need to turn themselves into fawning lackeys.

Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo theorized on Twitter this week that this is a character issue rather than a strictly political one. He wrote:

Yes, Graham’s political survival depends on there not being a Trump backed primary challenger. But the sheer level of obeisance, sycophancy and dignity loss cannot be described simply by a pragmatic judgment. It’s deeper. When McCain became ill and retreated from the Senate and then especially after McCain died, Trump became Graham new dad. I know we shouldn’t psychologize politicians. But the pattern is too clear to ignore with Graham. He’s a follower. He needs a big shouldered leader to glom onto. Self-interest may have led him in Trump’s direction at the start. But then character took over.

I think that’s correct. Graham’s flamboyant self-subjugation goes so far beyond what is necessary to curry favor that it is clearly something he feels the need to do for his own psychological reasons.

This week we had yet another example of Graham’s excessive servility when he angrily announced that as chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee he will begin hearings into the alleged Biden corruption in Ukraine in 2014. He promised to call Hunter Biden, son of the former vice president, to testify.

Graham also sent a letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last week requesting documents related to Joe Biden’s activities in Ukraine. It’s too arcane to get into all this here but suffice it to say this is clearly in response to Trump’s obsession with the Bidens, and accusations that have repeatedly been debunked because the timeline simply doesn’t make sense. Needless to say, Joe Biden was not happy about this. He told CNN:

I am disappointed, and quite frankly I’m angered by the fact — he knows me. He knows my son. He knows there’s nothing to this. Trump is now essentially holding power over him that even the Ukrainians wouldn’t yield to … Lindsey is about to go down in a way that I think he’s going to regret his whole life.

Graham protested that his conscience is clear, saying, “That’s the way it works in politics” and explaining, “We’re not going to live in a country where only one party gets investigated,” which seems like an admission that this is all a political stunt. (The idea that only Republicans get investigated is going to come as a huge surprise to every Democratic administration.) In other words, he’s currying favor with Trump. Again.

What’s interesting is that Graham has been promising to hold hearings and investigations for almost a year nos. As soon as he took the Judiciary gavel back in January, he announced that he planned to look into all the Fox News fever-swamp scandals, from Hillary Clinton’s email server to the FBI, the FISA warrants on Carter Page and former FBI Director James Comey’s alleged Clinton alliance.

After the Mueller Report was released, he doubled down, suggesting to Fox News’ Neil Cavuto that he wanted to hold hearings to question Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch because “Republicans believe that the FBI and DOJ — the top people — took the law in their own hands because they wanted Clinton to win and Trump to lose.” (If so, they had a funny way of showing it. The FBI publicly sabotaged Clinton’s campaign and kept the blockbuster investigation into Trump’s collusion with the Russian government under wraps. That illogic hasn’t stopped the right from promulgating this absurd conspiracy theory.)

After Comey was cleared by the DOJ inspector general at the end of August, Graham took to Sean Hannity’s show on Fox to declare that he planned to “investigate the investigators,” promising to call former acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. In early November, he announced to Maria Bartiromo on Fox Business he would insist that the whistleblower in the Ukraine scandal be called before his committee to testify. Now he says that he is going to call Hunter Biden.

You may have noticed that none of these hearings, or any hint of a real investigation, have come to pass. It is highly likely that Graham has discovered that his father-figure Donald Trump doesn’t have much of an attention span. As we have learned from the bribery scheme with the Ukrainian president, if all Graham wants to do is keep his big, strong, president happy he can just keep appearing on Fox and announcing investigations that never happen. That may be the best we can hope for at this point.

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Good morning

by digby

This is what your president is tweeting out this morning:

Hard to imagine why our adversaries around the world feel they can manipulate this man.  It’s not as if he doesn’t advertise his insecurities.

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No harm, no foul, yes?
by Tom Sullivan

U.S. President Donald Trump, right, and Russian President Vladimir Putin greet each other during bilateral meeting, July 2019. Image via Voice of America

The acting president, his staff, enablers in Congress, and red-hat true-believers have their golden oldies. Donald Trump’s Greatest Hits are material he trots out at rallies when he needs an applause line whether or not riff is already yesterday’s news or overtaken by subsequent events. “Lock her up” still shows up occasionally. “Fake news” is a staple. So is the “the phony, fake dossier, the disgusting fake dossier,” as he describes the report developed for Fusion GPS by former British intelligence official, Christopher Steele.

Fusion GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritsch have taken considerable heat for the material Steele leaked to the press. Simpson testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on his firm’s role in contracting the opposition research on candidate Donald Trump. BuzzFeed published the dossier in early 2017, but it had floated around Washington for months. Days before the election, David Corn of Mother Jones named Christopher Steele as the veteran British spy with a bundle of human intelligence detailing Trump’s ties to Russia.

Obscured by right-wing smears is the fact an unnamed conservative Trump opponent first contracted the opposition research project through the Washington Free Beacon, a conservative website. Once Trump became the presumptive Republican nomination, the pair explain, the donor pulled the plug and Democrats resumed the funding. Their interest was in Trump’s overseas business deals. They hired Steele for his Russia experience because of the opaqueness of the country’s business arrangements. Steele turned up troubling information that Russians had tried to cultivate Trump and develop blackmail material on him.

Simpson and Fritsch are making the rounds of talk shows promoting their book, “Crime in Progress: Inside the Steele Dossier and the Fusion GPS Investigation of Donald Trump.” Simpson and Fritsch explain they never met or spoke with Hillary Clinton. “As far as Fusion knew, Clinton herself had no idea who they were. To this day, no one in the company has ever met or spoken to her,” they write.

Steele defends his research as based on “tried and tested” sources, neither a fabrication nor Russian disinformation. Jane Meyer of the New Yorker adds:

Steele points out that the most critical criteria for judging disinformation is “whether there is a palpable motive for spreading it”; the ultimate Russian goal in 2016, he argues, “was to prevent Hillary Clinton from becoming president, and therefore, the idea that they would intentionally spread embarrassing information about Trump—true or not—is not logical.”

Steele, according to Simpson and Fritsch, is equally dismissive of those who claim that the Russians spread disinformation in order to discredit him. “The stakes were far, far too high for them to trifle with settling scores with me or any other civilian,” he said. “Damaging my reputation was simply not on their list of priorities. But helping Trump, and damaging Hillary was at the very top of it. No one denies that anymore.”

Even if everything contained in the dossier is proven, say Simpson and Fritsch, “a spy whose sources get it 70 percent right is considered to be one of the best.” The central message stands, they argue: Russian President Putin was actively meddling in the U.S. elections in an effort to “sow discord and disunity with the United States itself but more especially within the Transatlantic alliance.”

Nevertheless, the Steele dossier remains a bugaboo for Trump and Republican supporters who defend his Ukraine arms-for-political dirt scheme. Ukraine eventually got the aid, they argue. Ukraine’s President Zelensky never announced an investigation into Joe Biden and his son as Trump demanded. No harm. No foul.

Still, Republicans condemn Democrats for paying Fusion GPS for foreign dirt aimed at stopping Trump from being elected. Simpson and Fritsch should argue since Trump was elected and Steele’s dossier wasn’t published during the campaign, then no harm, no foul. Quit yer whining!!! Right?

Update: Cleaned up a sentence clarifying what Steele, not Mayer, said about his intel.

There is yet another Trump corruption scandal nobody’s paying attention to

by digby

This one is taking place before our very eyes:

Like so many Trump scandals, much of the evidence of corruption in regards to Turkey is sitting in plain sight. So I put my old oppo hat on and dug around to create a handy-guide to what we know about Trump’s conflicts of interest and a list of questions as to what Congress can find out.

For those who don’t want to wade into this particular Trumpian Black Sea, the tl;dr is:

Trump enabled a despot who has significant leverage over his business in a brutal ethnic cleansing of our ally, cutting an opaque sweetheart deal negotiated by the sons-in-law of Erdogan, Trump, and Trump’s business partner.

Meanwhile, Erdogan has empowered Trump’s business partner, making him Turkey’s key man in Washington, which gives him inordinate influence on the administration and ensures that the financial interests of all involved are maintained.

Here is a primer on the major players and events.

Click over to see the timeline. It is pretty stunning.

I have no doubt whatsoever that Trump is doing business from the oval office and doing everything he can to leverage the presidency for his advantage after he is out of office. Of course he is. Look at what he tried to do with Doral.

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