Rudy Giuliani on Cuomo last night: Rudy Guiliani to @ChrisCuomo tonight: “I never said there was no collusion between the campaign or between people in the campaign… I have not. I said” no collision with, “the President of the United States.” pic.twitter.com/Smb0OuNzL9 — andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) January 17, 2019 According to Giuliani, what Trump meant in the sixty tweets in which he’s … Read More
Update On Nastya Rybka
About a year ago, I pointed to a curious story about Nastya Rybka, a Russian escort and sex trainer being held in Thailand and being charged with prostitution and related offenses. She had made curious claims about Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska (having spent time on his yacht) and the whole Trump-Russia connection. Deripaska is an ex-business associate of former Trump … Read More
Exhausting Futility Continues
Shutdown Day Number 23 and there is no sign of movement. Trump apparently has little to do but tweet all day — childish attacks on Elizabeth Warren (racist attacks there) and on Jeff Bezo’s personal life. But that is kind of the point that Trump wants to make — he’s ready to work on a deal and Dems are off … Read More
Breaking: Mystery Foreign Company Gets No Help From SCOTUS
A few weeks ago, there was a super-secret hearing in DC Court regarding a subpeona issued to an unknown foreign company from the Mueller investigation. The company was fighting the subpoena. This just happened: "(Bloomberg)—The U.S. Supreme Court refused to shield a mystery company from having to provide information in what’s believed to be the criminal investigation being conducted by … Read More
This Sounds Like Collusion
Ooops! Due to a redaction error by Manafort’s attorneys, we just learned that: 1) Paul Manafort and Konstantin Kilimnik, who has been tied to Russian intelligence, met in Madrid during the campaign; 2) Manafort shared 2016 polling data with Kilimnik; and 3) They discussed a “Ukrainian peace plan.” Here is the filing in question. You can copy (Ctrl-C) the redacted … Read More
Cohen, Who Claims To Never Have Been To Prague, Was In Prague It Seems
This story right now is a little under the radar, but McClatchy has the scoop: A mobile phone traced to President Donald Trump’s former lawyer and “fixer” Michael Cohen briefly sent signals ricocheting off cell towers in the Prague area in late summer 2016, at the height of the presidential campaign, leaving an electronic record to support claims that Cohen … Read More
The Treasury Department Did WHAT?!?
Buzzfeed has a scoop: US Treasury Department officials used a Gmail back channel with the Russian government as the Kremlin sought sensitive financial information on its enemies in America and across the globe, according to documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News. The extraordinary unofficial line of communication arose in the final year of the Obama administration — in the midst of what … Read More
The Barr Memo
Trump’s pick for the Attorney General (to replace Jeff Sessions) is William Barr, who previously served as Attorney General under President George H.W. Bush. In June 2018, Barr sent the Justice Department an unsolicited memo questioning the appropriateness of an obstruction probe special counsel Robert Mueller is said to be conducting of certain Trump actions in the White House. Barr in … Read More
A Snapshot of All 17 Trump Investigations So Far
From Wired — Here’s a complete rundown of the various known investigations targeting Trump’s world from local, state, and federal prosecutors: Investigations by the Special Counsel 1. The Russian Government’s Election Attack: The special counsel moved aggressively to outline and charge the Russian government’s core attack on the 2016 election, which included both active cyber intrusions and data theftby the military intelligence … Read More
Update On The OTHER Russia Scandal
In a week of political scandals, it is important that this one doesn’t get lost because, although it doesn’t implicate Trump, it implicates the Republican Party as well as the Republicans’ source of campaign income, the NRA. I’m talking of course about Marina Butina. I’ve talked about her here and here. Butina was arrested in July after the FBI raided … Read More
The Steele Dossier: Proven Or Unproven
Chuck Rosenburg at Lawfare reviewed the Steele Dossier to see if was BS or not. The answer is… well, is not UNproven, some has been proven, but most uncorroborated. Here’s the skinny: [W]e thought it would be worthwhile to look back at the dossier and to assess, to the extent possible, how the substance of Steele’s reporting holds up over … Read More
Crazy Days
It’s impossible to keep up with the news anymore. Here is just today: Donald Trump’s inauguration committee is under investigation. Apparently they managed to spend twice as much as any other recent president for an inaugural celebration that was half the size of any other recent president. Maria Butina pleaded guilty to infiltrating the NRA on behalf of Russia. Trump is now on … Read More
Trump On A Twitter Tear This Morning
He rants about the investigations, Cohen, the wall…. in a largely fact-free tirade. This is creative accounting at best. I don’t know how much the US benefits from the NAFTA 2.0 Trade Agreement (i.e., the USMCA), but by most accounts, it’s not that different from the original NAFTA. And anyway, the benefits go to manufacturers, farmers, etc. — not the … Read More
Breaking: Cohen Sentenced
I would like to believe that Michael Cohen has “seen the light” and regrets everything he did on the “path of darkness” (his words) as Trump’s fixer. Like Dean before him, I think he probably is sincere about starting a new life after getting so mired in seedy politics. But he has to pay the piper, and while he seems … Read More
Trump’s Reality Tremor
For all of Trump’s outward swagger, signs are mounting that the White House is deeply rattled. Federal prosecutors now claim Trump personally directed a conspiracy to secure his election in the form of illegal hush-money payments. We’ve learned that Trump negotiated business dealings with Russia throughout the GOP primaries, which he concealed. And there are solid grounds for believing Mueller still hasn’t tipped his hand … Read More