rolling trump-russian collusion

Hard to process the idea of anyone currently thinking there’s nothing to the Russia investigation.

If the Russians were out to defeat Hillary Clinton (which every intelligence agency says they were), why would try to damage her opponent?

If the Trump team is innocent, why have they consistently lied about almost every aspect of the Russia investigation?

Also there have been indictments, guilty pleas, publicly admitting to obstructing the investigation, almost everything Trump does and says etc

feel like there's enough out there in public to make a strong case for a half dozen cases of obstruction of justice, if nothing else

also think that if Trump & his gang were ever straight up offered a quid pro quo like this they'd gleefully accept w/o knowing that such a thing would even be illegal

all that said most likely outcome seems to be a zillion crimes getting uncovered and the House and Senate doing fuck all about it besides trying to throw Mueller in jail

Even Steve Bannon think Don Jr committed treason.

fake news. bannon and trump are still friends, chuckling at the gullibility of the libtards, and this is all going according to andrew breitbart's master plan from beyond his coke-lined grave

Thanks for the LRB link, actually.

In their personal interactions, Trump had found Comey to be a stiff -- he had no banter, no game. But Trump, who invariably thought people found him irresistible, believed that Comey admired his banter and game. When pressed, by Bannon and others, to fire Comey as one of his early acts -- an idea opposed by Kushner, and thus another bullet on Bannon's list of bad recommendations by Kushner -- the president said, "Don't worry, I've got him." That is, he had no doubt that he could woo and flatter the FBI director into positive feeling for him, if not outright submission.

Some seducers are preternaturally sensitive to the signals of those they try to seduce; others indiscriminately attempt to seduce, and, by the law of averages, often succeed (this latter group of men might now be regarded as harassers). That was Trump's approach to women -- pleased when he scored, unconcerned when he didn't (and, often, despite the evidence, believing that he had). And so it was with Director Comey.

In their several meetings since he took office -- when Comey received a presidential hug on January 22nd; at their dinner on January 27th, during which Comey was asked to stay on as FBI director; at their Valentine's Day chat after emptying the office of everybody else, including Sessions, Comey's titular boss - Trump was confident that he had laid on the moves. The president was all but certain that Comey, understanding that he, Trump, had his back (i.e. had let him keep his job), would have Trump's back, too.

But now this testimony. It made no sense. What did make sense to Trump was that Comey wanted it to be about him. He was a media whore -- this Trump understood. All right, then, he, too, could play it this way.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v40/n01/jackson-lears/what-we-dont-talk-about-when-we-talk-about-russian-hacking

― reggie (qualmsley), Sunday, December 31, 2017 4:43 PM (six days ago)

yeesh @ this essay, but i've lost track of the number of left-wing (or whatever they are) writers i've basically had to quit reading because they take the "russiagate was just made up by the democrats and also what's so bad about peace with russia anyway?" line. at this point i assume the ppl who take this attitude are being willfully ignorant. david bromwich, whose criticisms of obama i'm embarrassed to say i used to agree w/ back in like 2012, wrote basically this same piece for the LRB a few months ago.

I had to double check the date on that piece. It’s insanity for anyone to still be maintaining that take in Jan 2018.

“It’s McCarthyism to go after this one very powerful politician.”

The LRB author frames his essay in terms of what issues aren't being addressed, because the Russia investigation is all that democrats seem to want to talk about. He is less than convincing.

Among other things, he blandly states that democrats just aren't talking about the disenfranchisement of (mostly) minority voters by Republicans, as if the Democrats' unpardonable silence on this subject were somehow an indisputable fact. Except I've heard plenty of talk about it, both during and after the 2016 election, from many, many liberal sources who mainly align themselves with the Democratic party.

For myself, my two Democratic senators, Wyden and Merkley, have been talking about a very wide range of progressive issues, including disenfranchisement. The problem isn't their politics being too bland or timid, but their statements cutting through the deafening media noise around Trump without their turning into Trump-alike clowns in order to do it.

it is bizarre to see ppl condemn the russia business as a "conspiracy theory" because at this point insisting that all of the evidence was deliberately concocted by the FBI or the CIA and that there's *nothing* to the allegations, period, amounts to endorsing a really, really unlikely conspiracy theory.

were there progressives/leftists in the early 70s who took a similar line on watergate -- that it was no big deal or a distraction from 'the real issues,' etc?

X xpost Yeah this whole “democrats are ONLY talking about Russia” line you see sometimes is not said by anyone who pays any attention to what democrats have actually saying

kinda hate the whole "why are we talking about X when we should be talking about Y and Z?" genre of progressive writing. as if this administration hasn't given us dozens of awful things to talk about.

https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/_cache/files/3/9/3974a291-ddbe-4525-9ed1-22bab43c05ae/934A3562824CACA7BB4D915E97709D2F.simpson-transcript-redacted.pdf

copied from elsewhere ~

- 7 references to "mafia" links
- 20 references to Putin links
- Trump repeatedly said he and his buildings were worth less than people and agencies imagined

- the intelligence community seems to think Trump's being blackmailed
- the specific reason for the blackmail has to do with "Russians having cameras in all the luxury hotel rooms" **PEE TAPE
- Steele believed a "human source from inside the Trump organization" had already gone to FBI: "a voluntary source, someone who was concerned with the same concerns we had" (pp.175-6) - that being, that the now president was/is being blackmailed by the Kremlin. The FBI viewed Steele's info as credible because they already had the same info from a Trump insider. possible conflicting info about the source (the Australian diplomat may have been the source that opened the FBI investigation)

- on page 154, on Trump: "However, he and his inner circle have accepted a regular flow of intelligence from the Kremlin"
- on page 242, Fusion believed because of their research Carter Page was compromised, and he was being offered business deals for his cooperation
- on page 279, Simpson said someone was already killed because of the information contained in the dossier (because they were revealed to be a source..I wonder if that would happen if the information contained was all false /s)

- on page 73, "So in the course of reading that litigation we would follow up on things that were interesting, such as a libel case against a journalist that he settled, which, in other words, he didn't prevail in his attempts to prove that he was a billionaire."
- on pages 71-72, "One of the things we found out was that, you know, when it comes to paying taxes, Donald Trump claims to not have much stuff. At least the Trump organization. So they would make filings with various state and local authorities saying that their buildings weren't worth much."
- on page 179, "Sometime thereafter the FBI -- I understand Chris severed his relationship with the FBI out of concern that he didn't know what was happening inside the FBI and there was a concern that the FBI was being manipulated for political ends by the Trump people and that we didn't really understand what was going on. So he stopped dealing with them." - this after a few pages of concern that the FBI was too pro-Trump
- on page 296, "We learned that Felix Sater had some connections with these people, and it's been more recently in the media that he's helping the government of Kazakhstan to recover this money. There's been media reports that the money went into the Trump Soho or it went into the company that built the Trump Soho. I can't remember the name"

- page 77, "We were interested in the fact that the Trump family was selling merchandise under the Trump brand in the United States that was made in sweat shops in Asia and South America -- or Latin America."
- page 79, "Trump had made a number of trips to Russia and talked about doing a number of business deals but never did one, and that struck me as a little bit odd and calling for an explanation."
- page 287-288, Simpson calls Sarah Huckabee Sanders a liar for the fourth time about Fusion GPS being a solely democratic tool, confirms they also investigated Obama during his campaign for senator.

- the specific reason for the blackmail has to do with "Russians having cameras in all the luxury hotel rooms" **PEE TAPE

god bless america

I’m having trouble with the idea that Russia would have hidden cameras in all their luxury rooms but I’m no expert.

I think it's just all hotel rooms period

a taped montage of a groggy 1/2 term pre- and post-spiral combover wouldn't be that hard to put together imho

I only see CNN when it's on in the background at the gym, but I'm there almost every day, and so far Russia's been on the menu every single day for the last few weeks.

- Trump repeatedly said he and his buildings were worth less than people and agencies imagined

I am the greatest smartest kazillionaire on this or any other planet, but my buildings? Oh, my buildings are very humble edifices of very little monetary value, sir, I wouldn't want to bore you with the details of such an insignificance.

"the end is nigh, and only putin can save us"

https://www.thedailybeast.com/white-house-official-floated-withdrawing-us-forces-to-please-putin

argh

Harrington is the NSC’s senior official for strategic planning. He had neither military experience nor significant government experience before joining the White House. But he had an influential credential: As a managing director for the Thiel Macro hedge fund, he was close to Trump patron and ally Peter Thiel.

putin is our savior: kevin harrington, current deputy director of the national security agency

before 1/2 term took office, mike flynn told vladimir putin who ratted out their american election infiltration, resulting in oleg ovechkin's death, it's looking more and more like :(

https://www.foreign.senate.gov/press/ranking/release/cardin-releases-report-detailing-two-decades-of-putins-attacks-on-democracy

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/01/putins-trolls-keep-targeting-john-mccain-and-other-gop-trump-critics/

http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/13/trey-gowdy-resigns-from-house-ethics-committee-amid-tumultuous-tenure/

Tre cool.

gowdy = outie 9000. 8999 to go

this "chelsea manning was a russian agent all along" stuff we're seeing from some ppl is really embarrassing

luv2spend seven years in jail in appalling conditions to own the libs for mother russia

I’m very glad I’m not following whatever it is y’all are talking about

don’t worry, u will

it rains again on brighton beach

this couldn't possibly be obstruction of justice

Steve Bannon’s attorney relayed questions, in real time, to the White House during a House Intelligence Committee interview of the former Trump chief strategist, people familiar with the closed-door session told The Associated Press.

As lawmakers probed Bannon’s time working for President Donald Trump, Bannon’s attorney Bill Burck was asking the White House counsel’s office by phone during the Tuesday session whether his client could answer the questions. He was told by that office not to discuss his work on the transition or in the White House.

It’s unclear who Burck was communicating with in the White House. He is also representing top White House lawyer Don McGahn in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

https://apnews.com/b8bcb053fda9444a9c0f1dc0ea7b87e4/House-panel-subpoenas-Bannon-in-Russia-probe-showdown

starting to think these dudes might be guilty

cyrano de bannonac

Wasn’t Cyrano the one who whispered info and not the one who asked for and received direction about what to say?

stevebannon de cognac

I’m gonna go take a walk

be careful out there. it's not obstruction of justice when a republican does it. loretta lynch and eric holder on the other hand. whitewater, benghazi, harvard law review : )

He is also representing top White House lawyer Don McGahn in special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia.

this is dirty as fuck

the whole thing stinks

https://www.buzzfeed.com/jasonleopold/newly-uncovered-russian-payments-are-a-focus-of-election?utm_term=.iq9EMr3RK5&bftwnews#.vdEEMN62RA

11/14/17 -- fusion GPS testimony with the house intelligence committee

https://lawfareblog.com/document-fusion-gps-ceo-glenn-simpson-house-intelligence-committee-interview

https://thinkprogress.org/blue-detectives-collapse-trump-russia-a42a94537bdf/

Despite his scant relevant expertise, as well as his public history of outright, fantastical fabrication, Seth Abramson (434,000 followers on Twitter currently) has managed to separate himself from the rest of his conspiratorial claque and carve a niche on both social media and cable news as a Trump-Russia analyst. Where Mensch, Taylor, Khan, and Garland generate as much mockery as they do retweets, Abramson has thus far managed to see his credibility somehow remain afloat

http://thehill.com/policy/technology/369797-russian-twitter-accounts-are-pushing-house-intelligence-to-release-shocking

Hamilton 68 is a joke but there are at least two or three articles per week taking it at face value, most of them include the caveat “Russia-linked” rather than “Russian”, as per the headline.

The dashboard supposedly follows around 500 accounts determined by the organisers to be “Russia-linked” but only about seven - including RT, the Russian Ministry of Foreign Relations, etc are ever named. The accounts are secret, as is the methodology for determining they are a) bots / trolls and b) Russian. They’ve indicated it is determined subjectively based on the idea that accounts putting out little but pro-Trump or “Kremlin-aligned” points are probably Russian bots.

The #ReleaseTheMemo hashtag has increased by 286,700 percent over the past two days and is being used 100 times more than any other hashtag by accounts Hamilton 68 is tracking.

The percentage increase is ludicrous at face value and the stats don’t match up with Hamilton 68’s own dashboard - which had “America” as the number one hashtag yesterday with 1200 or so mentions in the previous 48 hours. “Memo” didn’t crack the top ten, but even if it had, it would have needed 120,000 mentions from those accounts to be used 100 times more.

Gotta say, I’ve lived my entire life with the stain of Russian heritage in my family. Then came their conspiracy to alter the 2016 election. A year later they hacked my computer.

But now they’ve attacked my boy Panarin so I’ll make it official:

Fuck you, Vladimir Putin.#NYR https://t.co/MGFd1xPeZp

— Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) February 22, 2021

"stain" 🤔

unfortunate word choice there.

fun fact: Keith Olbermann has never left the United States in his life

wait i may have that wrong - he's definitely never visited Europe though