Feeling Blue Anonish

.@elonmusk conspired with foreign leaders to get Trump elected and make himself the de facto President of the U.S. There is no reason to certify the results of this election. The result was achieved via a foreign influence operation and psychological warfare on our citizens. pic.twitter.com/q3vtKOUwl8

— Andrew—New YouTube Channel @LiveFromTheResistance (@AmoneyResists) December 23, 2024

I mean, my rational brain has no proof of anything going on that would stop Trump (Musk and Vance and their various going concerns through Trump) from taking office, but some part of me really, really thinks there ought to be? 

Like it's dumb and not happening and no controlling mechanism that I know of--but still?

I would very much prefer it if a kind of lunatic corrupt, insurrectionist jackaloon was not going to be made president just because a whole bunch of my fellow countrymen seem to be dumb, spiteful, mis-and dis-informed shooting pigeons. As if there actually were grown-ups somewhere who could call a do-over or takesies-backsies or something. I know these aren't real things!

Obeying in Advance, or: "What Rats Won't Do"

 

#FBI Director Christopher Wray announces that he will step down at the end of the current administration.

Learn more: https://t.co/W7xY34F37h pic.twitter.com/FIJ5QIjI29

— FBI (@FBI) December 11, 2024

I hear scientists are starting to use lawyers instead of lab rats in their experiments. They do this for two reasons. For one thing, they become less attached to the lawyers. For another, there are some things lab rats won't do.    

 I get the idea that one shouldn't obey in advance, I really do.  And I get the argument that FBI Director Wray should have said "C'mon and fire me." Take a damn stand. Show Mr. Trump and the world what you are made of. 

But he did that. Remember when he shit-canned all the tips about Brett Kavanaugh? Because I'm not forgetting that. Remember when he took the job in the first place after Trump, Jeff Sessions, and Rod Rosenstein concocted a reason for Trump to fire Jim Comey that wasn't what Trump expressly told Lester Holt (and Sergey Lavrov) the reason was (to end the Russia, Russia, Russia investigation).

Would I Call it Weaponization?

 

Somewhere, deep down, I feel like nothing is ever over with Republicans. Forget Benghazi or tan suits. They are going to get weird and bring up Chappaquiddick or Alger Hiss or Robert Byrd's Klan connections out of the blue.  So what do I think when Jim Jordan thinks maybe he'll target Hillary Clinton with a new investigation?

If Hunter Biden wasn't already done to death, why would the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy turning their lonely eyes to Hillary Clinton again hit any different?  I mean, Kevin McCarthy, the current and obviously temporary Speaker of the House explained out loud where people could hear that the email investigation hurt Clinton intentionally. And current crank James Comer admitted in the same vein that the investigation into President Biden's family members is supposed to help Trump. 

He still hasn't found what he's looking for, of course. The GOP can't keep track of their whistleblowers. To the extent they exist they are being paid by Trump insider Kash Patel who is a witness in the Mar-A-Lago document scandal and the first impeachment over the Ukraine president's being extorted. So that's not obviously sleazy as hell, right? 

But in the funny old round world kind of way, it comes out just now that the Trump DOJ was already investigating the Clintons via the Clinton Foundation, and they had nothing. See, unlike Trump's slush fund that he called a charitable enterprise which had to be shut down, and his kids had to go to mandatory don't run a charity as a slush fund school? The Clinton Foundation has been on the up and up. 

So--see how that seems like weaponization? And the thing where Trump get tried in courts and actually has done stuff is not weaponization? And how Durham had nothing, and most Republicans seem to be kind of distracting from 1/6 or the documents scandal by deflecting and whatabouting to other stuff? 

It's like they want to pretend "both sides" are equally as bad and they really aren't. And I would through very gritted teeth like to suggest the media report it that way, because sometimes, there are not two sides to everything (sorry current CNN management!) but one side is actually very bad, even seditious. And even undermines the very concept of rule of law via extreme partisanship. 

And what I mean by that isn't hard at all to see or hear if you're paying attention. 

TWGB: Rumbles in TrumpWorld

 

So, what if it seems like Trump's lawyers are "dropping like flies?"  What does it mean if Trump's kids are getting stripped from a lawsuit so that the law can focus on the former president himself? What are we looking at when Allen Weisselberg, recently released from his sentence, is faced with going back in on a perjury charge for protecting you know who? 

I know what Trump himself would call it--"Rigged!"  But maybe the problem is with the client himself. He's just, how do I delicately put this? Probably guilty of so, so much? 

See, let's talk about the exit of Tim Parletore. He says it's because one of Trump's other lawyers, Boris Epshteyn, was interfering with searches for government documents--I guess like he thought there was  good reason for some docs to remain unfound, which would be some very serious obstruction, right?  I mean, he would know what stuff he wanted to remain buried as a longtime Trump associate? (I don't trust this MF as far as I could throw him). 

But what am I going to do, pretend Parlatore isn't also a big lying Trump apologist kook here? He's the guy who pretended Trump using a former classified docs folder as a coverup for the little light on his bedside phone was a reasonable thing. That's nuts. You could use duct tape, a Post-It note, a sock. Why a classified docs folder?  

This is the kind of crazy out where the buses don't run kind of logic you employ when you know your client doesn't have any excuse. This is why the lawyers are rumbling--

They are running out of tables to pound. Eventually, someone is going to look at the bare facts of, say, what Trump even did in office, and maybe connect the dots to what docs were taken and understand why.

TWGB: Just the Mob, Russia, Echoes of 2016 and 1776

 

Depicted above is Donald Trump, former president, with Skinny Joey Merlino, formerly, to the best of my knowledge, of the Philadelphia mafia, if that's a thing, about which I have little to say. Anyhow, Trump very recently crowed that he had information about every person who came down to Mar-A-Lago and should know who Merlino is and so I would be astonished if this was accidental. Please--he doesn't care. He didn't care about Nick Fuentes, and he doesn't care about Joey Merlino--he needs all the friends he can get. He has long depended upon the kindness of strange people. 

Why is this my lead-in into today's TrumpWorld Grab-Bag? Because this is a long and strange journey spurred by an echo of the 2016 campaign: a former head of FBI counter-intelligence in the NY office was arrested for taking money from a Russian oligarch with ties to the Trump Russia probe.  This is the outcome of an interesting story that gives us a little more about McGonigal back when this was in the grand jury stage. 

The federal scrutiny of McGonigal is especially striking given his work at the FBI. Before his retirement in 2018, McGonigal led the WikiLeaks investigation into Chelsea Manning, busted Bill Clinton's national security advisor Sandy Berger for removing classified material from a National Archives reading room, and led the search for a Chinese mole inside the CIA. In 2016, when reports surfaced that Russia had hacked the email system of the Democratic National Committee, McGonigal was serving as chief of the cybercrimes section at FBI headquarters in Washington. In that capacity, he was one of the first officials to learn that a Trump campaign official had bragged that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton, sparking the investigation known as Operation Crossfire Hurricane. Later that year, FBI Director James Comey promoted McGonigal to oversee counterintelligence operations in New York. 

Pretty flipping fascinating, no? Anyway, the NY office was described back in 2016 as TrumpLand and definitely leaked info regarding Anthony Weiner's laptop to various people, prompting James Comey's announcement of the reopening of the Clinton email case, which a lot of folks are pretty sure sank the election for her. And I don't know this for a fact and don't want to impugn the NYT's reporters on this, but even though the CI investigation of Trump in 2016 was based in DC, I would not be surprised if the front page news that the FBI found no connection to Russia in 2016 was leaked from that office. Funny how the folks not looking for it weren't finding it. 

TWGB: The Best Plans

 

You know, I had forgotten all about the RICO case Trump wanted to make of Jim Comey and Peter Stzrok and Hillary Clinton and all the wild cast of characters Trump wanted to say schemed against him in 2016 and spoiled his precious presidency.  It got tossed, because it was hopelessly dumb.  The full tossing of this meandering paranoid rant was a thing of beauty owing to it's entirely giving of no fucks about not just pointing out that it isn't really a crime for people to say bad things about someone if they are true or just opinions, but that the complainant got his term in office and in no way was materially harmed by an investigation that had a legitimate basis. 

It also holds open the question of whether Trump's lawyers should be sanctioned for bringing such a case forward as if they were overindulging a toddler to his own detriment (as I think this case would have been uncomfortably revelatory of what Trump lawyer should not, for the interests of their client, want pursued. So what's the plan? 

Alina Habba, an attorney for Trump, said Trump will "immediately move to appeal this decision." 

"We vehemently disagree with the opinion issued by the Court today," Habba told CNN in a statement. "Not only is it rife with erroneous applications of the law, it disregards the numerous independent governmental investigations which substantiate our claim that the defendants conspired to falsely implicate our client and undermine the 2016 Presidential election."

This is the best strip mall shingle across from your golf club lawyering a man can probably eventually pay for. (Or not.) There are no governmental investigations that find that Hillary Clinton and Jim Comey conspired to make Donald Trump look like he was colluding with Russia by shoving a hand up his ass puppetlike and making him say "Russia, if you are listening?" and so on. The Steele Dossier and the pee tape nonsense came out once he was already president and didn't harm him anymore than, say, Mike Flynn being on the payroll of Russia and Turkey did, or Trump's own firing of Jim Comey and then telling anyone who would listen he did it to end the Russia investigation did. The idea of appealing is just a dopey way to keep whether or not Trump was a puppet of Russia in the spotlight which is the dumbest thing imaginable when Russia is not really popular at the moment if anyone noticed and goddamn, Streisand effect, anyone?  Compounded by why has he taken secret documents out of the White House?

Nunes Left Congress for This

 

Anyway, you know the TMTG media thing that Trump launched after he left office and that looked like a pump and dump thing because the project seemed to have little material investment and lots of puffery?  The thing that started being investigated right away because wow, if it looks bad, maybe it is bad?  Anyway, subpoenas were issued to TMTG by the SEC and a grand jury for the SDNY--but Trump and Don, Jr. and a handful of other folks were already off the board. Apparently. It's amazing how that happens. 

So, according to the records, Devin Nunes, who left Congress for this, is still the CEO. It's very likely that the merger stuff between TMTG and Digital World was already in the can when he came aboard, and per Truth social posts, TrumpWorld is denying that Trump is really off the board. It's all a misunderstanding and a witch hunt. Except...

Is it? There's something really weird about a "successful" billionaire always being investigated to the extent Trump is (you know, like Trump University, and the Trump Foundation, and the tax fraud..) and always seeming to be dodging accountability (like, being himself or having associates in contempt of court for not turning over documents, which is still going on--would you believe?) that makes it seem like, maybe, just maybe, this Trump character isn't a great businessman, but a kind of possible...crook?

I'm not saying I know for sure. Maybe he's just extraordinarily unlucky. I mean, imagine the odds that Trump "foes" (also known as public servants who were just doing their jobs) like Jim Comey and Andrew Mccabe were selected for intrusive IRS audits by an agency run by a partisan Trump pick? Then throw in the odds that Michael Cohen fell under their gimlet eye as well (although that one doesn't necessarily feel as remote). 

The astronomical bad luck, am I right? You'd have to have some especial low opinion of how the world works (or at least, how certain people work in it) to see a not-so-hidden hand there, given how obviously bullies actually work in the open, yeah? 

Anyway, Devin Nunes, who left an influential seat in Congress for this, once sued an internet cow among other people who said very bad things about him on the internet, all of which were true. I think his current position is udderly ridiculous, and he should be cheesed off about it. 

TWGB: This Bullshit All Over Again

The news cycle lately has me doing TrumpWorld Grab-bags every other day, which is a dump of like, twenty-something tabs each time I wade into the saga of the terrible little White House that should not have ever happened. I grow weary.* 

Anyways, Trump's cornpone Renfield, Lindsey Graham has offered the "incoherent defense that Trump's foreign policy was too incoherent to even cobble together a decent "quid pro quo".  If only "We weren't evil, we're just incompetent" was gong to suffice at this juncture! See, we already heard the "too incompetent to collude" defense regarding Russia, and I would still call that defense shaky at best. After all, the best part of collusion with Russia lay in staying still and not reporting anything to the FBI when weird people reached out and offered things. But ah, whatever. Let's concede the Trump Administration has an incoherent Ukraine policy. Let's just stipulate that the policy started to get weird when the Trump campaign backed down on aiding Ukraine against Russian aggression in the party platform for the RNC in 2016 for some damn unknown reason. And there is no good excuse, at all, for accepting a presidential candidate who has a basically incoherent approach to foreign policy. 

That much, right there, would be absurd. And yet, that is something Graham is trying to sell us about the Trump experience as if it were a feature, not a bug. (Of course, Graham himself has promised that he doesn't want to read any stinking transcripts, so the mindset there is basically "bugs all the way down.")

Now, this isn't by far the stupidest defense of Trump--you have the "attempted but failed" folks, who would tell you that even if Trump wanted to get an announcement of a Biden investigation from Ukrainian president Zelenskyy, for the low, low price of military aid that was already approved and promised by the US Congress, then it totally failed because he got his aid, thanks, and the Biden investigation never came off. (As if attempted manslaughter, attempted burglary, etc., were never charges people went to trial over.)

Did He Try Listening?

It now seems the General Flynn was under investigation long before was common knowledge. It would have been impossible for me to know this but, if that was the case, and with me being one of two people who would become president, why was I not told so that I could make a change?

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 17, 2019

Trump seems to be conflating being warned about Flynn being under investigation with being warned about the Russian threat at all (which he also was warned about, and then claimed he wasn't). But--

Obama warned Trump not to hire Flynn.

Sally Yates warned Trump about Flynn (and got fired).

Trump knew well enough that there was a problem and fired Flynn, but still told Comey to go easy on Flynn (and Comey got fired).

He was warned--he just didn't listen. Or he knew what the situation was, and did not care. Trump is mad at the world on Twitter today because he suddenly cares now.

Seems a bit late, I'm just saying.

Build it and They Will Come

Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Barr contempt vote: "Yes. I do agree with Chairman Nadler because the administration has decided that they are not going to honor their oath of office." pic.twitter.com/1uFKw7ic1W

— The Hill (@thehill) May 10, 2019

One of the things that had me seething during the 2017 Presidential Inauguration was my unshakeable sense that a man was about to take an oath of office that he could not personally, in any sense, be true to. It did not strike me as even plausible that Trump was a person who could respect the Constitution over his own interests, anymore than he could separate his ego from the office he was about to hold. Within a span of less than 24 hours from taking that oath, he spoke before the CIA and rambled about the size of his inaugural crowd and his war with the media, right in front of a memorial for fallen intelligence officers. The note that struck has been the tone of his entire administration--at war with intelligence, with the media, with the judicial system, with Congress. President Trump, and multiple members of his party, have demonstrated a wholly partisan approach to their conduct, not the least with respect to the Russian interference investigation.

Barr has failed here on this very thing. But only because he's determined to back Trump. (His choice here is amazingly bad.)

This is why I think Speaker Nancy Pelosi makes a very reasonable point in saying that Trump is "self-impeachable". What she is saying is that, as what some are starting to call a "constitutional crisis" grows larger, the violations of norms and the nature of Trump's obstruction will only become more apparent. It can be argued, for example, that the installation of Bill Barr as AG and Barr's very clear legalistic leger de main has been the kind of overreach that a conservative legal thinker in good standing can easily see through.

We are in a very strange place when it should appear remarkable that a GOP Senator subpoenas a person who has dodged further inquiry, specifically because that person was the President's son. It's sheer batshit when another GOP Senator suggests it's just fine and dandy for that individual to dodge a subpoena.

What harm does talking to the Senate do, if what Trump, Jr. has to say would not be problematic? Oh, but wait--it probably would be! When your choices look like: don't show up, plead the fifth, or staying lying, you probably are in a bit of trouble. And while that sucks, for Don Jr., it doesn't give him any especial right to call this a stunt, or Senator Burr a coward.


See, those are not things you do when you can just walk in and deliver your truth. Those are things you do when you are not legit. As with Trump Sr.'s refusal to release his taxes, or respond to further subpoenas for docs, this kind of refusal looks bad in a way that sort of suggests the whole situation is bad. (What do I keep saying?) The fuckery about this is pretty upfront, and Republican politicians are drawing lines between supporting Burr's request or supporting Trump Jr.'s vastly telling silence. What I think we have here is an odd loyalty question--loyalty to Trump? Or that old oath of office Pelosi was talking about?

Former FBI Director Jim Comey in a recent op-ed described how a politician like Trump could co-opt the soul of someone working for him by slowly dragging them down, compromise by little compromise. He's really on to something, there. Josh Marshall in 2016 described the phenomena as "dignity-wraithing", where once respectable people suddenly lost whatever they were respected for because Trump eats that. I view it as a kind of ethical "sunk cost fallacy" (rather like the kind the banks who lent to him found themselves in upon discovering he was extraordinarily unreliable, except with morality instead of money). There will be people scrambling to cover Trump's ass as more of his awfulness comes out, only to discover they have less and less credibility themselves to cover it with.

This is why I am not in such an all-fired hurry to see Pelosi go straight to impeachment--her apparent delay looks to me to be strategic to get Trump and 'em to hang themselves just a bit more with whatever rope she hands them. Sure, I want to see Trump impeached, but there's a timetable to consider--when do we want the hearings, how long should they be, and how would they intersect with an entire election bid that's already underway? Put Trump's ass on trial right now, and the Trumpsters can lie and call themselves exonerated and we can all fully expect the Senate to agree (at least McConnell will, that bloated reprobate). Pelosi is leaving impeachment open, but I am certainly not inclined to rush it and fuck it up.

But I still insist the case needs to be made every day. The one thing I can say for the House trying impeachment even if the Senate would not boot Trump so long as it is GOP-held, is that it is a massive negative ad for Trump and his dignity wraith Senate minions. Build that case, and people will come to appreciate it. Right now, support for impeaching Trump is on the rise. But on the other hand, his approval rating is sort of high, for him? So I think a course of slow, steady, and always be chiseling away at how shitty, brutal and not the most legal Trump (and friends ) is everyday. The crescendo builds through 2020.

Build the case for Trump being out of office, and people will come. But I respect that it will take time to hang out as many people as truly need to get good and publicly diminished.

Sarah Sanders Proudly Lies for Trump

Pressed repeatedly on her comments on FBI agents, Sarah Sanders tells @GStephanopoulos, "It was the heat of the moment, meaning that it wasn't a scripted talking point. I'm sorry that I wasn't a robot like the Democratic Party" was about Mueller probe. https://t.co/mOQZNKl1wy pic.twitter.com/y3xcNwVYHg

— ABC News (@ABC) April 19, 2019

I noted a little bit earlier that Sarah Huckabee Sanders lies for Trump and sounds more like him all of the time. The Mueller report revealed that Sarah Sanders lied and admitted she did when she said that she had received messages from people in the FBI who were happy about the firing of Director Jim Comey. Her answer to being pinned down on that was less than great: it was 100% accurate that she got some messages to that effect, but it couldn't be considered "countless".


Yeah. Because whether the messages were "countless", and not whether they were happening at all, was the issue. I direct to others who were paying attention:

TWGB: That's Not What She Said!

Wow -- Manafort's attorney, Kevin Downing, is shouted down outside the courthouse after he falsely claims "2 courts have ruled no evidence of any collusion with any Russians."

"Liar! That's not what she said!" someone yells. pic.twitter.com/gGqdrP2ihJ

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) March 13, 2019

Paul Manafort, President Trump's former campaign manager, has now been convicted and sentenced for a variety of crimes, some of which he plead guilty to (the ones being addressed here). Last week, he was sentenced to 47 months for tax and bank fraud. The judge in that case. T. S. Ellis, commented to the effect that his downward revision of the sentencing guidelines were being made in respect of Manafort's "blameless life"--which was really just so extra when a good hard look at Manafort doesn't really indicate "blamelessness" at all. Only a chilling lack of accountability, and a startling level of heretofore not getting blamed.

In the case where Manafort was just sentenced, the judge had a different view taking in the evidence of obstruction of justice and avoiding full compliance with a plea deal with all the other evidence of Manfort's selfishness and failure to show remorse. The most striking sentence of her comments to me was something on the lines of "saying 'I'm sorry I was caught' is not an inspiring call for leniency". The lawyers for Manafort tried to make a case that Manafort was only in court because he had participated in the 2016 campaign for Donald Trump.

That is very much a case of saying "he would not have been caught unless you were looking". What a cynical take!

The judge had also stressed that her pronouncement regarding the charges was no reflection on the collusion claim, which was somehow interpreted as claiming there was no collusion by Manafort's counsel in the above video, which smart protestors were quick to claim "That's not what she said!" I think the most important thing that she actually did say, if not directly, was "Lock him up!

TWGB: Investigations and Investments

Of all of the astonishingly stupid things I have seen in following the Trump/Russia investigation(s), the above Instagram post from Roger Stone qualifies as, well, pretty up there. He posted a photo of the judge assigned to his case with a caption bollocks-full of paranoid Deep State speculation. Of course, this was not going to go over well regarding his legal jeopardy, and even though his lawyers (probably twisted his arms) persuaded him to sign on to an apology to keep his ass out of further trouble, he is still going to pay the court a visit because yes, he is in further trouble.

I'm of two minds about why Stone made such a singularly dipshit move; it could very well be that Stone has simmered in the right wing fever swamp for so long that signifying to his digital comrades has more importance for him than not fucking up his bail terms. But it also seems possible to me Stone meets the qualifications of "crazy as a fox" and is trolling the court and his followers alike in a race to see who can benefit him--either he thinks fuxxoring any good will with Berman Jackson would result in a recusal (um, no, because that's a little too easy, isn't it, sunshine?) or because he feels fit enough to do a jail stand if his bail is revoked and that would do miracle sympathy-numbers for his legal GoFundHimself. And either way, standing up against the investigation earns him points with He Who Must Not Be Incriminated, the POTUS with the Mostest (ability to issue pardons).

Long story short, Stone has an investment in Trump that he is willing to sink his liability further into. Maybe that's bad money. I have a theory that many of Trump's supporters right now are in a kind of sunk-cost deal with Trump where they think he'll compensate them for the cost of getting him elected, when getting him elected was the only benefit of their output they will ever, ever see.

Now, some folks necessarily thought they did have actual payable on election contracts as far as I can tell. Take Michael Flynn's dealings. He apparently did have a deal that would result in nuclear proliferation in the Middle East. And it now turns out that whistle blowers realize that nuclear know-how is about to be transferred to KSA, even though Flynn is long gone. It's possible this has something to do with Jared Kushner's relationship to Brookfield. Or maybe it just has to do with Trump's odd indifference to the concept of nuclear proliferation at all, as evidenced by his ignoring North Korea's continuing program and the scrapping of our treaty with Russia and also the promotion of the end of the Iran nuclear deal, that basically would result in us having no say or inspection over what they do. There is literally no thing in Trump's foreign policy that does shit at all re: nuclear proliferation except maybe encourage it.

But I tend to believe that most of TrumpWorld does revolve around some kind of quid pro quo, because Trump has gone so far above and beyond to try and shaft an investigation that would turn up nothing, if there wasn't anything amiss to be found.  I'm reading Andrew McCabe's Threat at the mo, and realize he is in a position of giving no fucks. His investment--career-long, was screwed by Trump with caprice or perhaps, a lack of judiciousness. The word that a CI investigation into Trump was accepted by the Gang of Eight, and that maybe Nunes was a little run'n'tell fool, should let everyone know how real the investigation is, regardless of one's investment in Trump as a political figure.

Trump is a tainted investment, and not solely because of the investigations against him, but because of how and why and what he's done to establish his knowledge of guilt and the behaviors he engaged in stemming from that. He is a likelier candidate for impeachment than reelection, in a world where facts counted more than feelings. And the conspiracy or collusion that gave the US this fool probably also hobbled our good ally the UK (although their politics was also pretty fucked and asking for it).

Anyway, we need to learn from this. Now. I would like to see Trump impeached. But the present GOP is too invested to understand why he is simply bad.

TWGB: Of course!

EXCLUSIVE: Trump’s actions so alarmed FBI after Comey firing that it began investigating if he was working for Russia @adamgoldmanNYT @npfandos https://t.co/uP52f8m2qf

— Michael S. Schmidt (@nytmike) January 12, 2019

That's it. That's the whole post. It looks bad because it is bad, but then, it has always looked bad.

UPDATE:  I'm adding to this port the further story from The Washington Post that Trump has gone to great lengths to conceal what has been said during meetings with Russians, to the extent that Russia has records of these communications and the US does not. This is also an "Of course!" moment, because of course! that is how you would expect someone to behave who is working on behalf of Russia, not the US.

Trump has been suspiciously weird about his communications in other ways--take the odd story that there were aides who have to follow him around with tape because of his habit of ripping up documents, or the yet more bizarre tale from Omarosa Manigeault Newman that she caught him literally chewing up notes after a meeting with Michael Cohen.

But the May 10, 2017 meeting with Lavrov and Kislyak was notably weird because it was closed to US press, but a Russian photographer was allowed, and classified information was revealed to them. But it would seem less weird if one took it as being how Trump would behave if he felt he owed something to Russia (like ROI for the election assistance?)

We can debate how "witting" an asset Trump actually is; but what is right in front of us is fishy as hell.

TWGB: The Messy Things Called "Details"

Even though I'm just a normal person who waits with bated breath for things like surprise indictments of peripheral Trump/Russia figures or who refreshes Twitter threads about secretive federal Grand Jury hearings like a twitchy addicted lab animal looking for a fix (especially on Fridays), I'm also kind of relieved that Saturday was relatively quiet on the news front, so I could finally catch up with some of the hanging news out there. There are times when taking in Trump World news is a little like trying to drink from a fire hose.

On Thursday, Maria Butina plead guilty to engaging in a conspiracy to infiltrate the political sphere of a certain political party with the goal of influencing US/Russia relations as a foreign agent working in hand with Russian billionaire Alexander Torshin. Some people might quibble over whether political folks who met her through the NRA should have been a little suspicious over whether she was just a little...obvious or whether being an agent of Russia or a spy are different things, but I think The Daily Beast article includes a pretty valuable perspective:

John McLaughlin, former deputy director and acting director of the CIA, described Butina as an example of Russian “espionage lite,” operating openly but hiding the direction and support she got from the Russian government.

Steve Hall, a former CIA chief of Russian operations, said Thursday, "It's my theory that Butina is not actually a staff officer of any Russian intelligence service. She is somebody who has been co-opted by somebody else in the Russian government to do a job."

So maybe not a spy like a "secret agent"--but some kind of agent, anyway.  I kind of suspect her gun rights org was a cut-out but what do I know? But did US people think this back when she was making friends and influencing people--and did they care?  Eh, details!

In other news, we got a further corroboration of the activities of Individual One with respects to Michael Cohen's activities: Donald Trump was in the room with Cohen and AMI's David Pecker when they discussed what to do about Trump's long and winding road vis a vis horndoggery--in August 2015. So the idea that Trump would be making arrangements regarding the silencing of troublesome wenches was not a spur of the moment post TMZ video thing; it was known to Trump that this would be a problem (how big, though--a real quote from Steve Bannon in Wolff's Fire and Fury suggested Trump's other attorney, Marc Kasowitz, handled maybe "a hundred"). It was a part of Trump's entire campaign strategy to minimize a seedy existence (which may entail snorting Adderall and sleazing on underage beauty contestants--stuff which was known about, but never really addressed, by MSM during 2016 when it might have mattered--thanks!) But eh, details!

It also turns out that Paul Manafort, of the maybe kinda/sort of JDA with the Trump defense even since his plea deal and the being too close to Russia to stay on as campaign manager in 2016, but who still shaped the Trump transition, also gave Trump advice about how to discredit the lawful investigation of his activities by the FBI. Who would have thought? But there was so much suggestion of obstructing justice and lying to create a bad opinion about the FBI's work. And it really seems in retrospect like this is what Trump did--with a will! Take the regular snipes against McCabe (who offended Trump I guess because of the opening of an obstruction of justice investigation that was totally well-deserved?) and the low-hanging fruit of the Strzok/Page relationship, which, while interesting, never resulted in any leaks from their Clinton investigation or from their general distaste for Trump, and never actually resulted in any out of the way cover-up by the FBI of their texts. Some RW pundits are maintaining that the standard resetting of returned electronic devices to factory specs (as is procedural) was somehow a "wiping" (great shades of the "acid-washing" of Hillary Clinton's emails!) of damaging material--but no. Information was recovered because that is how data retention works. But eh, details!

This Comey Transcript is Something

So, I've been reading this thing, and I'm a little weirded out, because it kind of looks like House Republicans are trying to legitimize idiotic stuff Tweeted out by President Trump.  They are asking him about private messages between Peter Strzok and Lisa Page that he wouldn't have been privy to during 2016, and trying to get him to admit political bias made its way into their work product against Trump when I'm pretty sure that doesn't match either what publicly was released from FBI or what they could expect to get from Comey himself (which might have been a part of why they did not want this questioning made public). 

This definitely makes me wonder: was there some quiet, secret, desperate hope amongst Republicans that Hillary Clinton would have won in 2016, so that they could endlessly litigate what she had done (thus and so) over Benghazi and emails and any other little thing, and never actually shoulder the mantle of governance? Because this transcript reads like the forlorn hope that Hillary Clinton would become relevant again so they could get another bite. But all they have is Jim Comey, and his Boy Scoutish but dry-humored implications that they are not only not barking up the wrong tree, but that he is not, in fact, a tree at all, but a very tall human who was simply trying to do his job. 

In other news, they do, in fact, have Donald Trump as president, who Tweets things like this:

which must truly be a very great comfort to them. But it doesn't necessarily obscure the rather difficult reality that Trump lies and probably has materially obstructed justice rather a lot, right in front of us, and it is not the FBI's fault if they noticed it.

Also, Trump probably posts awful Tweets like the above, not because he is barking mad (although he might be) but to try and change the news cycle from a bad thing happening to him (because he is incompetent) to a bad thing he said (because he is a very bad boy, please love his badness). He also is using the John Kelly resignation announcement as the same kind of deflection, for the great number of people who don't speak knuckle-dragger. But the subtext is that the guy who sometimes facepalmed moments of utter Trump depravity will be banished, so let's bring on someone who is more of a Scaramouche. 

We don't know who this person will be, but rest-assured, they will be awful, and should not ever, ever, be intro'd as a signal of a Trump pivot. This dude doesn't pivot. He just spirals, wildly, always, flailing, like a tantrum-y toddler, and maybe takes a big enough dosage of adulting to sit through a funeral, a little bit. But it will not ever last.

And GOP needs to stop fronting for his dumb ass.

Not Too Jaded, This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

In a way, I feel a little trepidation stepping back into doing a TrumpWorld Grab-Bag blogpost, because they are pretty obsessive. It requires paying a lot of attention to little stories and trying to weave them together, which I don't necessarily have the time to do that I once did. I don't have any specialized knowledge (like, you know, legal stuff) or connections or insider tidbits. But I do read a shit-ton of news, and this is the internet, and I have one of those weird brains that likes sorting out details. Of course, I haven't done this for simply months.

And yet! One thing I have gained from my self-imposed vacation is that I have rested the little grey cells and am a bit less jaded than some Mueller/Russia investigation observers.  There were any number of Twitterati who were of the very strong opinion that surely, with the elections a fait accompli, Robert Mueller would now be handing out indictments like so much Halloween candy, certainly by Friday of this week.  Now that we are on the other side of midnight from Friday, the lack of a Don Jr. perp-walk (which seems like too much to ask of the times we live in, but people will dream!) might seem anticlimactic, but as for me, things continue to look pretty interesting.

For one thing, Trump basically fired his AG Jeff Sessions, largely because he never understood that by recusing from the Russia investigation, Session was doing him a solid. The President appears to suffer from the appalling idea that public servants are his servants, and doesn't entirely grasp that they give an oath to the Constitution, not to him, and clearly believed that Sessions' job was to be involved in limiting, ending, or waylaying the Comey investigation (at first) to help Trump. However, if Trump was ever to get any inkling that there are proprieties to be observed, the fallout from firing former FBI director Comey should have been a lesson in "what not to do". To wit: Trump fires Jim Comey for "reasons", partially because he claims the Clinton email investigation was handled badly, and had Sessions and Rosenstein fig leaf that justification with letters that sound serious enough, and then blows that reason up in a nationally-viewed interview with Lester Holt. (He also tells a few Russians, in a particularly stupid way.) And that is how he ended up with a Special Counsel. 

So how does he go about the firing of his AG this time out? Well, for one thing, he picks a very Trump-sympathetic hack (Bigfoots! Time travel hot-tubs! Massive hog toilets!) and then lets it be known he basically picked this person because he was a Trump-sympathetic hack. This might be construed, even to a layperson like myself, like even more obstruction of justice. (Like the Sally Yates, Andrew McCabe, Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, etc., things.) But then he has so little idea that what he is doing is abusive of justice, he just says what he did!

Meanwhile, the Mueller investigation does it's quiet and necessary work, despite obstacles. For one thing, an indictment made by Mueller's team against a Russian troll farm was upheld by a Trump-appointed judge. This is good news. (For another bit of good news this week, another Trump appointed judge ordered CNN reporter Jim Acosta's WH hard pass be restored, in a pretty refreshing victory for the 1st Amendment and reminder of judicial independence. )  Of note is that the indictment was about conspiring to defraud the US government. Free speech is one thing, but there are applications of speech that are by no means acceptable--for a recent example, the harassment of a Jewish woman by white supremacists was found not to be covered. 

Another interesting detail is the likely charges against Julian Assange of Wikileaks, which also carries potential First Amendment concerns. Nonetheless, the involvement of Wikileaks in disseminating Russian-obtained federal information specifically to act against the US government (specifically, the security of it's democratic elections) potentially at the direction of a foreign entity (Russia) seems like it supersedes straightforward First Amendment concerns. And that's something they kind of seem to have been doing. I don't know if, for example, Maria Butina's discussed plea deal will reveal information that enlightens us about that side of the operation, but on the "connections to GOP operatives" side of the equation, Roger Stone was apparently in the loop regarding what Wikileaks had and was dropping, and also, maybe, waste of protein Jerome Corsi (known for "Swiftboating" and "Birtherism"--two terms that never should have been entered into the American lexicon) both appear to have had relations with that man, Julian Assange (as had Dana Rohrabacher, with human hairy nevus Charles C. Johnson in his train--who also might be a yet another link to a potential Don Jr perp-walk fantasy, and Nigel Farage, who acted as if he always sometimes dropped by the Ecuadoran embassy for no particular reason).

But of people who Mueller seems to have dead-to-rights from the Trump campaign as having been all up in some kind of skullduggery, it is interesting to me that sentencing is delayed for Rick Gates and there has been an extension in reporting on the status of Paul Manafort's plea agreement. One really cool interpretation of this is that they are both being so very helpful. So. Very. Helpful. To the investigation. Which seems truer when you consider both those things in tandem, but I would guess anything further might be delayed until after Thanksgiving--

And I don't even mind! Because I am not jaded, and am genuinely interested in how all of this shakes out!

A Celebrity Apprentice TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

This week was rife with tales of TrumpWorld government departures and speculation about who was next. The firing of Rex Tillerson left some speculating whether the "suicide pact" resignations would be enacted. There was some fluttering rumor 24 hours or so ago that H.R. McMaster was due to leave and the General Kelly was likely to resign. So far, McMaster is safe (or as safe as one can be in that milieu) and as this anecdote supports, Kelly is still fitting in quite nicely as Trump's CoS with all the dignity that position entails:

According to those sources, Kelly recounted a very awkward conversation with Tillerson during which he informed the secretary that President Donald Trump would very likely soon fire him. The awkwardness was less a result of the contents of the conversation than its setting.

Tillerson, Kelly told the room, was suffering from a stomach bug during a diplomatic swing through Africa, and was using a toilet when Kelly broke the news to him.

Sources were stunned that, even in an off-record setting, Kelly would say this—to a room filled with White House officials and political reporters—about Tillerson, who does not officially leave the State Department until the end of the month.

Classy!

Someone certainly had to go. It couldn't be McMaster (and I think this is because the firing got leaked before Trump could pettishly do it by Tweet which just killed the drama) but Trump was planning on fucking with Deputy FBI Director McCabe anyway. And with a couple days to go before he was safe to get his pension and retire--Boom! Time of career death 10 PM EST on a Friday. As one does. If one is AG Jeff Sessions, and supposedly recused from things having to do with the Russian election interference investigation, of which the Comey firing which McCabe has important details about is a part, and which now folds into the Mueller investigation that also includes obstruction of justice because (taking a deep bloggy breath) Trump didn't fire Comey because of his tenderness over how Hillary Clinton was treated by the FBI during the 2016 election, and that surely has nothing to do with his direction to Sessions regarding McCabe in this instance. (I don't really think the recommendation of the OIG matters that much here because we have Twitter-proof that Trump was always fixing to have McCabe fired. Trump couldn't help but let us all know via Twitter because, I think, he doesn't really have much of an internal life.)

In other words--Trump was feeling bitchy and needed to holler "Off with their heads" like the little Queen of Hearts he is. But I don't think it will be without repercussions. If the result from media coverage isn't the pick-me-up the White House Celebrity Apprentice Boss was looking for, Trump has a little list (or a big one) of people he can go to remove (Shulkin, McMaster, really, why isn't he thinking of getting rid of Ryan Zinke? That guy is awful!) to try and give his mood a boost. But some personnel decisions can come back to bite him. McCabe's might, in part because he telegraphed via Twitter his feelings. And also because it ties in to whether McCabe is a witness regarding the obstruction of justice charge(s).  And because he screwed over a guy with 21 years of honorable service to the FBI as a demonstration to other law enforcement professionals who might not actually receive the takeaway perception Trump hoped they did.

Trump is Having an Angry Weekend

CNN's latest reporting about Trump's weekend: He's "watching TV" and "getting riled up by his sons who are encouraging him to go harder on FBI" pic.twitter.com/BlRlHzC2AB

— Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) February 18, 2018

I think it's a little bit astonishing that after being relatively satisfied with the Mueller indictments and Deputy AG Rosenstein's press conference, and then a nice photo op with Broward County first responders (since he and Melania were already in the neighborhood) followed with a Studio 54 disco party but, sadly, no golfing!! Trump allowed himself to get all riled up by his two large adult sons and go a-Tweeting in the most disgraceful manner.

This collection is where Trump, annoyed at his press, starts blaming others for shit. He blames Democrats for not passing DACA (they are the minority party in Congress, and he himself actually ended DACA) and not passing gun control (see also--the minority party but they tried). He blamed the FBI for not catching "all the signals sent out" by Nikolas Cruz and blames this on the focus on the Russian meddling the ine 2016 election (specifically, the "collusion") but seems unaware that with 35K employees, the FBI can do numerous things at once, and that there really is no legal way of holding someone on suspicion of being really screwed up and dangerous forever--it isn't a crime to just be screwed up and owning guns. There was little they could actually do there because maybe the laws are kind of lax regarding dangerous people getting guns?  Seriously--using the 17 dead bodies in Florida to fig-leaf the investigation into his campaign ad Russia is damn low.

He also wants General McMaster to go beyond what the indictments or what Rosenstein said and publically waive him from allegations that the election results were impacted or...various conspiracy theory bits of glurge that I term the "Trump trots". If you are familiar with the "gish gallop", the Trump trot is the same thing, only a stickier mess of nonsense delivered by Tweet by a US President.  The Democratic party or the DNC never would have colluded with Russia to...smear Hillary Clinton and install Trump--that's just a fucking stupid thing to allege. There's no sign they did anything at all to boost Hillary Clinton during the election. Also, Uranium One is just really dumb and already debunked an awful lot. The Steele Dossier is not debunked, but holds up. The rest of the tweets that burbles about "Speeches, Emails, and the Podesta Company!" is just sad. Really sad. Throwing spaghetti at the wall.

Donald Trump doesn't seem to get that he is in office right now because these bullshit things got pushed even though they should not have mattered. Trump got paid large money for Wall Street speeches, just like Hillary Clinton. His transition team and his White House staff are using private email trust me. Also his son in law Jared (let me amend this here form) Kushner is not only not supposed to have a security clearance, but is requesting lots of classified info. 

What Trump is saying is bullshit, but he isn't thwarted, because he is apparently quite peevish:

Here we go--he references the dumb "pallets of cash" thing he swears he saw on Fox News which never happened to pretend there is a scandal about the thing where the US refunded Iran money they paid us for weapons they never got. He's just a bit mistaken as to what happened there.

He insults House Democratic Congressman Adam Schiff for a thing he hasn't said. And then he disgracefully lies about his long-held position regarding Russian meddling, which has been that Trump treated it as entirely a hoax. He hasn't admitted their wrongdoing even still, is blaming everyone else in sight, and never has either brought the additional sanctions requested by Congress or suggested any other punishment. In fact, I kind of think being back on his bullshit about why the FBI is supposedly wasting their time with the Trump connection to Russian meddling is, in a very real way--more obstruction, very much along the lines of firing Comey quite obviously for his attention to Trump's Russian connections.

Although I have not ever really figured out when Trump was at his smartest, I can safely say that the experience of angry Trump is fairly dumb. The position of President is stressful enough as it is--but most likely more so for a person woefully uninformed with a staff he either distrusts or which is also incompetent and probably not suitable to be there either.

This sort of thing is very sad and transparently an admission of knowledge of guilt and rank incompetence on his part.

The State of the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

I didn't really pay attention to the State of the Union address because I'm starting to think these staged deals don't really signify all that much. For one thing, they should probably be called the State of the Current President Address, since they seem to be about the president's vision of what the United States is about and what he (or, someday, she) is going to do about it. Your level of approval of the speech probably has as much to do with your level of approval for the current office-holder, and if that's not much, well, you won't think much of that speech, then. And given the current president, I figured it was sure to be a bit dishonest. 

And as for the rebuttals, and I guess we are going to now have multiple liberal responses since there is a Republican in office, the general effect is something like a BBS forum in ye olden 14.4 days. It's not what one would call a rapid response. I had half an inkling that Trump deliberately spoke slowly and had a speech padded out with boring talk to push the response speeches from the opposition until later in the evening to dull their impact. (I think the Kennedy youngster did good, even though he was excessively Chapsticked and sometimes seemed to be falling into his very best Barack Obama cadence. His speech was brief and inclusive and spoke of a much less divided America where we didn't leave people behind so others could get ahead. I liked that very much.)

As for hidden messages amongst the muted dog-whistles of Trump's speech, the one thing that I and others found a bit chilling was the implication that Trump meant to see Federal employees to the door if they weren't on board with his agenda. I know that a kinder, gentler interpretation of this part of his speech might just indicate a weakening of civil service protections to ensure that non-hackers who just weren't pulling their weight get the axe because a federal job ain't a hammock. That's fair. Nobody likes to see taxpayer money wasted. But I've been interpreting this sentiment from Trump differently since way before yesterday. And this is particularly true just now, since the hot new word going around on Fox News and from House Speaker Ryan is "cleansing". There has been a greater turnover rate during this administration,  than has been seen for years.

But one of the problems here is that Trump seems to think he needs to get loyalty from people he interviews. For some civil and public servants, it's really enough that they pledge loyalty to the Constitution, and at least consider the rule of law their polar star. But he has variously leaned on Jim Comey for his loyalty and sacked him when he did not get what he wanted, sacked Preet Bharara and Sally Yates for having a peculiar lack of faith, and has apparently even tried to get Rod Rosenstein to admit to being on "his team".  That sounds needy as hell.  It really does seem like Trump doesn't want any kind of independent government agencies, but wants people who answer to himself, not the voters or taxpayers or the Constitution itself.

Which brings us to the ongoing Nunes Memo saga, which suggests that even powerful members of a separate but equal branch of government, can be momentarily compromised, because this daft git seems to have recognized that the thing in question didn't do all he wanted, and tried to alter it.  This information comes after the FBI indicated that this memo was likely chock full of wrong.

I'm glad that the FBI under Wray is still expressing it's independence. After some of the "text message" charade regarding FBI agents Strzok and Page being critical of Trump meaning they would try to throw the election (although there never was any indication any negative thiing about Trump from any investigation ever leaked) it is interesting to know that Pete Strzok actually helped fuxxor over Hillary Clinton bigtime.  So much for the "rigged in favor of Hillary" thing. It is amazing what comes to light after all, eventually. 

There never appears to have been any rigging in favor of Hillary Clinton at all, which sort of undermines the "rigged" cries of one Donald J Trump.  It's really as if he might have been the one to have help. I really must say. Which sort of does point back towards Russia helping Trump--a lot, materially and obliquely. Or so my eyes do say.

Also something to do with Hope Hicks.  . Because she witnessed Donald Trump using the White House to try and sort out his son's messaging, and also probably stated for a kind of record that DJT JR would not just...Tweet all his bullshit out. Like he did. This sounds bad because it is bad.