Katie Hill and the Fuckery

The RedState editor who published nude photos of Rep. Katie Hill ID'd herself as an incoming "campaign manager" for one of Hill's 2020 challengers, @calebecarma reported yesterday.

Here's a copy of that email, and a few additional nuggets of info:https://t.co/Ak1aJ9bgY2

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) October 30, 2019

So wait? The death by revenge-porning of Katie Hill's House career by way of loads of pics happens to have been political and not just the fuckery of an abusive ex?

I am an "old"--it just never would occur to me to send nudes to people because whoa! the difference to me! hits me like I was online at a time when I already had a good job and never wanted the hassle of so much drama occurring where it could be forwarded to someone inconvenient. (Notwithstanding I have written so much fanfic porn.) It's just bad operational security from my POV. But I have a simple rule--body-shaming and selfie-shaming are out of bounds. It doesn't matter if that person is a young lefty or an old righty. It is never okay to rip someone for having a body that is sometimes naked that you want to share with someone you think cares about you. That vulnerability is something we all experience. I keep my nekkidness off the internets for the most part, but it isn't wrong to have a body. Or to share pictures of it. It isn't wrong to have consensual relationships even if they aren't conventional pairings.

It is kind of weird that formerly jailed Russian-influenced personage George Papadopoulos is now seeking Katie Hill's seat. Like he sort of knew fuckery would eliminate the main opponent. Weird, right?

I call what happened to Hill straight-up fuckery. It should not have been this way--and she should not have felt like she had to resign in order to prevent nameless others from fucking about with her naked images.

I don't know who she has to sue, but I genuinely hope some motherfucker gets their ass sued off over this.

TWGB: But What Does it Mean?!

George Papadopoulos deleted this tweet (using: Twitter for iPhone). #GeorgePapadopoulos #GeorgePapa19 #deletedtweet #screenshotbot #sshotbot pic.twitter.com/2eIKQixQy8

— Screenshot Bot (@sshotbot) December 29, 2018

There's something mysterious in the air lately, and, welp, I have no idea what's up with any of it. Nope. No freakin' clues. The above linked Tweet from George Papadopoulos regarding Maria Butina seems to pertain to the impression Russian tv is creating the Butina appears to have been "groomed" (in more ways than one) to perform some kind of campaign in the US. It appears to be a denial that this is even the case (and really, is it out of the way to suppose that Russian tv is not--GASP!--totally honest?) but frankly, what does he know?

I'm guessing he assumed the less said the better, in any case, which is a lesson better learned late than never, no?

In other fascinating news from McClatchy, it looks like a story they reported in spring may have firmed up a little, to the extent that Michael Cohen's phone (at least) appears to have been in the vicinity of Prague at the time when the Steele Dossier indicated that he was meeting with Russian officials to arrange a payment to hackers. This story from the dossier was originally met with by Cohen with a hard disavowal and a picture of the outside of his passport for some reason, and he still pretty firmly denies it--but a bit intriguingly:

He's never been, he says (although maybe he had, but it's been a while!) And yet, "#Mueller knows everything!"

Mueller knowing everything sounds good--but what does it mean?! (Stay tuned, I guess.) Sometimes these breadcrumbs we're following in this case seem like they are simply "for the birds". (I mean, honestly, one of the companies engaging in trolling during the 2016 campaign still appears to be trolling, filing a motion that tantalizingly refers to a "nude selfie".  Children, please do not let such sugar plums dance in your heads! It is probably nothing. Much.)

One of the things that does feel like "something" is that Russians appear to have actively promoted Jill Stein during 2016 to leech left-leaning votes away from Hillary Clinton as part of a protest contingent. This was enough to impact the totals for certain key swing states. (Although useless knob Gary Johnson impacted vote totals in my damn state by more apparently without Russian fuckery.) And remember her fascinating fundraising to try and get recounts? Well, it's paying for her legal defense, now. (And her ties to Russia aren't her only problem.) But all in all, the "something" I hope most people take away from this is that in America's two-party dominated system, right now, you have to vote your goals, not your feelings, and that might mean casting a vote for someone you don't love. It strikes me that I don't know if the problem is more about lack of civics or just innumeracy, but it gnaws at me that either deficiency could be so exploitable.

In another interesting "something" --look, I'm just going to post the lede of this Leopold and Cormier story and admit this is messed up and I also don't know what it means, either:

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 multiple US intelligence agencies have said was a secret campaign by the Kremlin to interfere in the US election. Russian agents ostensibly trying to track ISIS instead pressed their American counterparts for private financial documents on at least two dozen dissidents, academics, private investigators, and American citizens.

Most startlingly, Russia requested sensitive documents on Dirk, Edward, and Daniel Ziff, billionaire investors who had run afoul of the Kremlin. That request was made weeks before a Russian lawyer showed up at Trump Tower offering top campaign aides “dirt” on Hillary Clinton — including her supposed connection to the Ziff brothers.

And why in the hell would there be any cooperation when the information asked for was this? If there's any transparency, it looks like transparent fuckery!

But nope, I can't fit it all into the big, messy, clearly fucked-rotten story about what happened during the 2016 presidential election. It just looks like one more way among several that a foreign entity wanted to skew the election against Clinton--and in favor of Trump.

This is Not your Father-in-Law's TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

As you might have surmised, this edition of the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag is going to feature pretty heavily on Jared Kushner, who just had his security clearance downgraded, which seems great, although there is a pretty big issue with his ever having had one in the first place. Leaving aside the obvious problem of nepotism, Kushner is crazily in debt, his family has shown a willingness to use his position to get mad unethical, and, as was revealed today, a pattern of financial insecurity and poor, naïve decision-making has made foreign countries decide he is a super great halfwit to work with.  This was kind of a no-brainer--Kushner should not have high security access because his position is really insecure.

It's also probably a no-brainer to suppose that this means he either can't do his presumed job (which is, last I checked, all the foreign policy things we're supposed to have a State Department for) or, Daddy Trump and Ivanka are going to let him crib from their notes. This is a situation of such abominable stupidity it could only be happening in the Trump White House.

But in the world of "Jared can't catch a break", he's also facing a Hatch Act violation for talking up President Trump's 2020 campaign manager, Brad Parscale, while using his official White House title. Kushner, of course, brought Parscale on to the 2016 campaign and worked closely with him, so he has a good idea about the quality of his work-product from the digital end of the campaign, but even that is darn problematic. Parscale went from being pretty much no one in politics, to being a weird 2016 success story, but the funny thing is, he's tied to Cambridge Analytica, which is tied to Steve Bannon, Mike Flynn and, obviously, the Russia investigation.  Parscale has already had a chat with Congress, and is probably going to get another one with Robert Mueller and friends. (Don't sweat, pets, there's other hang-ups this cat likely has.)

Among the things that are kind of alarming about Parscale's "genius" strategy is that it counted on using social media as a voter suppression tactic for targeted demographics. And oh! Hey! Far out! Neat! That was exactly the game the Russia interference was playing at, the Mueller has already indicted folks for. But really, who knows just how Russian assets intersected with the Trump campaign--yet? 

You know who might or might not know? Roger Stone. Apparently, it turns out he was all up in the WikiLeaks DMs (even though he tried to front like he wasn't and WikiLeaks tried to front like he wasn't) getting told to please stop telling people he was in touch with WikiLeaks. These reads are a little funky. You know who's digital back and forth I might like to know about, though--Assange and Sean Hannity. I know. This might just be a fanfic "ship" I have in my head. Anyhow, Sean Hannity recently said something kind of funny--that he was actively involved in the Trump campaign, and he never heard of George Papadopoulos.  "Actively involved"? Wow. This was a journalistic integrity half-minute with Sean Hannity.

I can't assess whether Hannity ever crossed paths with George Papadopoulos, but Joseph Mifsud, the professor that dangled Hillary Clinton "dirt" obtained by Russia to him, is missing. Is he the victim of foul play, or just ducking child support? I can't even pretend I know for sure, but if he's alive, I'm sure he has stories.

But as it must, this TrumpWorld Grab-Bag has to circle back around to Trump himself. Jared Kushner wasn't the only person whose dodgy background interfered with performance of his job--four Commerce employees just got the boot for clearance issues. There's definitely still "vetting" issues. But the poor vetting might not even be as bad as the failure of this Administration to address the Russian election hacking to any real degree. NSA Chief, Admiral Mike Rogers advised that he had not been given any order about disrupting the ongoing Russian plot. That is not good, because we know that Russia will try to affect the 2018 midterms.  We've also recently found out that the election-related systems of seven states were breached by Russian hacking in 2016.

And the GOP-lead Congress doesn't seem arsed to do much about any of it, either. (If anything, they still want to make our election systems less secure.) But if Congress doesn't seem interested in things like seeing if Trump is financially compromised due to his foreign indebtedness (which is, rather like his son-in-law's a pretty big deal, whatever Rep. Conaway thinks), Robert Mueller is, as always, on that case.

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Has Been Out Drinking

The New York Times tale of how the FBI investigation into the Trump-Russia connection really began, not with the Steele dossier, but with an Australian diplomat being told interesting and alarming things by Trump campaign foreign policy adviser, George Papadopoulos, is an absolute delight. It squares away some important details--for one thing, the Steele dossier (which is not, despite the best efforts of Trump and his supporters to pretend it is, actually discredited) did not spur the investigation, but the actual behavior of the Trump campaign folks did.

It also highlights a disturbing feature of the Trump campaign--when presented with various contacts alleging that illicitly gained "dirt" had been obtained by Russia, a hostile actor regarding US interests, and that said dirt was being peddled with the intent of fuxx0ring a US election, instead of bringing this to the attention of anyone involved in national security like responsible patriotic citizens would have done, the Trump boys rolled with it. It was up to Alexander Downer, an Australian, and Christopher Steele, a Briton, to do the necessary and give the US government a heads-up about what was going on. Which either means that the Trump folks never understood the intent or implications of what these various Russian contacts were for (undermining democracy and helping either sway an election, or effectively dirtying a nascent Clinton Administration so badly as to render it ineffective) or simply did not care.  Or both. Both is also a possibility, and a sickening and grave one.

The story moots the central claim from Trumpists that George Papadopoulos was low-level, and therefore, what he knew was not relevant. It also reinforces, to me, the idea that the Trump Campaign openness to this kind of attention from Russia was clearly visible, and not nearly so covert as the geniuses running it seemed to believe. (In rather the same way as the apparent coordination between Russia/WikiLeaks/Trump messaging would turn out.)

From the NYT:

Mr. Papadopoulos was trusted enough to edit the outline of Mr. Trump’s first major foreign policy speech on April 27, an address in which the candidate said it was possible to improve relations with Russia. Mr. Papadopoulos flagged the speech to his newfound Russia contacts, telling Mr. Timofeev that it should be taken as “the signal to meet.”

“That is a statesman speech,” Mr. Mifsud agreed. Ms. Polonskaya wrote that she was pleased that Mr. Trump’s “position toward Russia is much softer” than that of other candidates.

Stephen Miller, then a senior policy adviser to the campaign and now a top White House aide, was eager for Mr. Papadopoulos to serve as a surrogate, someone who could publicize Mr. Trump’s foreign policy views without officially speaking for the campaign. But Mr. Papadopoulos’s first public attempt to do so was a disaster.

That foreign policy speech was attended by the forgettable yet ever-present Sergei Kislyak. In it, Trump called for "an easing of tensions and improved relations".  It was quite the day.  Was it quite the day when the connection got real? I can't say--but the Russians sure were at it again when they contacted Trump, Jr. in June 2016. Because they had not been definitively told to fuck off. And I can't see where they ever were told to fuck off, because if they had been, the Trump folks could point to that "when".

And would have done ages ago. So I think they never told Russia to go away, and that's why they never did.