Seeing things in Pictures

 

While Elon Musk is channeling Fonzi, 

The withered husk of Trump

is a played out Ponzi. 

His expression wry, 

his head seems bare

as if worry at last has

worn off his hair.

Family Values

 

Trump’s former fixer Michael Cohen testified that Melania Trump was the one who suggested that the ‘Access Hollywood’ tape be spun as “locker-room talk.” https://t.co/HFjiQhYgDO

— New York Magazine (@NYMag) May 14, 2024

Some folks might have wondered what effect this trial would have on Trump's marriage, but I don't really care, do you? 

And as for Trump himself:

But during his testimony, Cohen suggested that his former boss didn’t particularly care about protecting his family. He said he asked Trump what Melania would think about the scandal. “He goes, ‘How long do you think I’ll be on the market for? Not long,’” Cohen said. “He wasn’t thinking about Melania. This was all about the campaign.”

Some might say that's just Cohen's testimony--but given what we know about Trump's serial philandering, doesn't that ring true?  He just sheds people when they become a hassle and finds someone else who can do the job.  "Wife" is a job. 

TWGB: Predictable

 

Habba attacking the judge: But I was told to sit down today. I was yelled at and I've had a judge who is unhinged slamming a table. I don’t tolerate that in my life, I’m not going to tolerate it here pic.twitter.com/u6Sgd7dnqA

— Acyn (@Acyn) November 6, 2023

It took me forever to figure out what left me so bored and uninspired as a blogger following what should have been a BFD: the former president taking the stand in his own defense at the bench trial that he already...well, lost, to fight for whether he could continue to do business in the state he once called "home". 

It was predictable. Trump, after all, is a guy who said that the Emmy Awards were rigged against him.  The Nobel Peace Prize is rigged against him.  The 2016 Presidential election (that he won) was, nevertheless, rigged against him. The 2020 Presidential election was rigged against him, according to him, in various horrible ways. All these court cases that he has, in fact, managed to catch by the actual sweat of his very own brow, are supposedly "rigging" the 2024 contest. 

In Trump's world, if the results of any process are unfavorable to him, Donald J. Trump, Stable Genius, then, obviously, the process is the problem. And in the clip above, there's his lawyer, Alina Habba, complaining about how unfair the judge was to her, for admonishing her to sit her behind down when she was out of order and um, she did sit down because there was nothing the judge did wrong there.

She Was the Mother of His Children

 

They say if you want to know the measure of someone, see how they treat waitstaff and pets. Or take a look at how Donald Trump treats the gravesite of his first wife, the mother of his three oldest children. That little indent there is her flat little headstone. You can just about see it for the grass.

He owns that property. He pays groundskeepers. They keep up the greens that rich folks play on--but is Ivana Trump's grave kept nice? It's patchy. (Not unlike Trump's head.)

It's not because of affection or familial devotion, either. I know people who visit their dead loved ones regularly and get on their own knees to weed, because they care. They put flowers. They bring a weed whacker in the car. Sure. Regular people will do things like that. Cemetaries can only do so much.

But Trump is a wealthy man (so we hear) with exactly one grave with a more-or-less public view. He has to know the grave will be seen. He could have left standing orders to keep it nice just for the damn optics of not making look like he carted off her body to disrespectfully plant it at Bedminster for a tax break. 

But he doesn't really care, even about what it looks like. That's who he is. 

The Spirit of 2016 and the Illegal Meme

 

For some people, it's never stopped being 2020, and for the immuno-suppressed and their families, I get that. For me, it's never stopped being 2016, when begun, the meme wars were. The 2016 presidential election had an extraordinary amount to do with digital presence, and I don't think we've yet absorbed all of the lessons from how foreign influencers and Pepe-heads took over the conversation and suppressed part of the vote or rendered the importance of the franchise to "vibes". 

I have talked about the Brad Parscale/Internet Research Agency dual strategies at targeted voter suppression a few times in the course of TrumpWorld Grab-Bags because the similarities in tactics were tandem and synergetic. The Trump campaign in 2016 deliberately worked to target Black voters and peel them off of from the Democratic candidate. The same thing was done with the IRA. 

So if we take a look at recently convicted Douglass Mackey, who created voter suppression memes during 2016 as part of his online "Ricky Vaughn" persona, we see an individual not necessarily directly associated with a campaign or foreign influence, who nonetheless tried to influence an election through fraud. The text message, the option to vote via text, was inauthentic. The line was real, if not a valid way to vote. 

TWGB: What Rats Won't Do But Durham Might

 

So, a funny thing happened in the news that probably only makes sense to old heads who have been doing TrumpWorld for all this time--apparently, the hero that was going to save Trump from the whole Russia, Russia, Russia thing still hasn't found the no good dirty scoundrels who implicated Trump in a counter-intelligence investigation to the whole-ass nemesis people sometimes quite plausibly think Russia is, but along the way he did find Italian officials who said maybe Trump was up to some financial crimes. Because it was a day ending in "y" or something. I dunno. 

Now the TWGB stylesheet having one entire unpaid employee (me) insists I interject the following observation: if it looks bad, it is bad. The baddies who said Trump's campaign was probably likely breached by Russian operatives were George Papadopoulos to Alexander Downer. Don Trump Jr. himself via email telling all and sundry folks boasting they were from the Russian government and were here to help.  Paul Manafort changing the Republican platform re: Ukraine. (Look , that article throws a whole cast of characters around and to ease your minds, hush, you know who worked for Yanukovich and has Maidan blood on his ever-loving ostrich boots, it's Manafort. Shh. Don't get it too twisted.) 

Now, I think it's just great Barr was working with Durham, bustling about Europe, raising questions about why Trump was being treated like Russia targeting him was somehow between anyone else but Russia and the Trump campaign, exactly when the 2019 impeachment thing was happening and we were discussing how Trump was fulfilling Putin's best wishes for Ukraine by denying them military hardware in exchange for Trump being given a better shot at being re-elected. 

It's just great because how stupid is anyone who isn't connecting these dots just yet--Durham will never find the damn dirty folks who implicated Trump in the Russia matter because a lot of what implicates him is him. So what else can we have? Side quests. 

They just don't go anywhere great either.  Frankly, I'd love to know what the Italian government shared about Trump. And why Barr and Durham never followed up on it. Did they bury it, the way Barr tried to bury the Mueller report? So, a special counsel is supposed to be independent, but it looks to me like Durham and Barr were cheek and jowl for a while and they covered up Trump's dirt like cats kicking about in a litter box. 

Now, in whole other news, John Eastman is up for disbarment in California, and has some supporters who are sketch as hell.  Trumpworld is like purgatory for lawyers and where folks are tested and figured out in the balance. I say supporters of Eastman are not honest--their hearts are heavier than the feather of Maat and they must do penance before they see the after-Trump life. But that is just like, my opinion. 

UPDATE: Think about the sanctions/disbarment/suspensions/need for their own lawyers that so often confronts legal professionals who work for Trump. It really seems so not worth it eventually. I would love if more people realized working for Trump will get you gout before it gets you clout. 

Ivana Trump ( 1949-2022)

 

I used to wonder where Don Jr. got his dark hair from until I saw this picture of his young, athletic built mother. She wasn't always blonde, but she was always striking. She passed at a strange time in the story of the Trump family--the post-White House period, a time of subpoenas and depositions (delayed) and occasional strife. 

I will admit--when I look back on when I got my first extremely negative impression of Donald Trump, it was because of the Big Divorce Story and Ivana's bid to get a little more than the prenup would allow after all she had been through. I took her side. I don't know what it was, but something about the whole deal told me that being married to Trump was absolutely a kind of work. And I didn't even know about the alleged abuse and rape, then, but felt like she had a story to tell that maybe we wouldn't ever know, fully, because she wasn't the type to tell, fully.  She struck me as a survivor. Not a person who tells tales. A person who lives through them.

I was a little proud of her "Living well is the best revenge" phase. She prepared for her landing.  She did not use her time after the dissolution of the marriage to disparage her ex, but to do her own thing. She raised the Trump kids until the age when they could choose to go follow in their father's path. 

Some people say she was Trump's twin, in that she also had an indefatigable will. Maybe.  I don't know what to make of the story that she fell down the stairs and received blunt force trauma to the chest a day before her ex and children were supposed to have a deposition in NY regarding their business dealings, but sometimes coincidences do happen.  It's only because of who Trump is and how naturally the question rises up in the mind that people are even thinking the thing that seems too shocking to say. 

But surely, that's only a delay and wouldn't be worth any person's actual life. Not anyone so near and dear to all concerned. Of course. We aren't so deranged by Trump's infamy to think the unthinkable. 

I do wonder what her residential security camera situation was, though. And whether she had any visitors that day. No reason at all. Just curious as any person might be. 

TWGB: Why I Don't Give A Frick About the Fricking Laptop

 

Six months after leaving the White House, Jared Kushner secured a $2 billion investment from a fund led by the Saudi crown prince, a close ally during the Trump administration, despite objections from the fund’s advisers about the merits of the deal. https://t.co/FDlmrzvYdw pic.twitter.com/OHfyPVHsHN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 10, 2022

For some damn dumb reason, Donald Trump needed to make his daughter and her husband part of his administration. Just the way his business has always been a family business, one might say. This gave them an extraordinary opportunity to enrich themselves, while carrying out "US policy", which could, given all we know, basically mean using the US as the means to facilitate very profitable and extremely unethical relationships for themselves without respect to actual US interests or even global reputation.

This is because Trump and family don't give a shit about those things.  I have nothing but hollow, mocking laughter for people who pretend otherwise, and I'll append the phrase "And they called it 'America First'!" in the same way comedians have delivered the punchline of the infamous dirty joke: the aristocrats.

Take Don, Jr (please!).  It appears that the boy determined to be too stupid to collude when he actually received an email offering dirt on the opposition that basically said: We are from the Russian government and we're here to help you, was actively passing on methods on how to subvert the lost election and overturn it in his father's favor.  Before the election was actually called, as if he knew (because eveyone did) that his dad would lose and didn't care whether it was "rigged" or not, because of course he didn't.

TWGB: Soon to be Deposed.

 

The decision today (to be appealed--hopefully unsuccessfully) that Donald Trump, Donald Trump Jr. and Ivanka Trump should sit for deposition in the NY AG civil case regarding "copious financial fraud" sounds like the gentle rumble of the accountability train, coming at long last.  I think. I mean, I've had my head on this track listening for fucking ever. 

The case that was put on by Trump's lawyers to quash the subpoenas for his documents (is someone pouring ketchup on Trump Organization papers even as we speak?) and the deposition of Trump and family was absurd, but then again, TrumpWorld is a funhouse mirror universe where things always look bizarre. Is NY AG Tish James unduly biased against Trump? It would hardly matter given that the actual case against him based on copious available documents suggests justice would be served by giving him his day in court--why does Trump have a problem with that?  

And isn't Trump in a protected class? While obviously, former one-term twice-impeached presidents are rare, no, he isn't a protected class just because he used to have some vague kind of immunity (which should never have covered shit he did before assuming the office of POTUS, anyway). 

In a bit of weirdness, one of Trump's lawyers even pulled out "Why aren't you investigating Hillary Clinton for spying?" This is the sort of thing a badly-overmatched attorney might bring up if her briefcase were stuffed with notebook paper with unhelpful suggestion from the client scrawled in Sharpie marker. This is exactly how I imagine it, and how it will be portrayed in the screenplay. 

Another argument--won't it look bad? Was knocked down by the obvious answer: well, what if it is bad? If Trump pleads the Fifth Amendment, yes, it does work against him in the civil trial, and he should obviously consider whether telling the truth might be one way of avoiding that disaster. But if he obviously would incriminate himself if he told the truth and that information is shared in a criminal context--

Why are we doing this? Look, Trump has history. He had to settle Trump University cases and his Trump Foundation was scattered to the winds. It isn't that he isn't known to be crooked, it's that his fan club doesn't admit it to themselves because they are enjoying the ride he's taking them on and the system hasn't figured out how to shut him all the way down yet. NY AG Tish James is doing something very important here: the hard work of bringing a lawless business to account. Trump having been president should not exculpate him or his dumb kids. If anything, that and his potential for running again makes inspecting his morality and concern for the law more important, not less. 

Especially because there is every reason to expect that he ran the office of the presidency, from the very first day, with the same lawless attitude he engaged in his business practices. Especially because even his exit from that office is marred by lawlessness and involves the complicity of his family.  

Should Trump continue to benefit from the same luck he's experienced all his gifted, grifting, and corrupt life after all we know now? (Shouldn't his lease to his Washington DC hotel be voided because of fraud before he can sell it and get an ill-gained cash infusion for his suffering business?) 

Trump's party always likes to talk about being in favor of the rule of law, against crime, and for personal responsibility. Well, Trump is being made responsible. You gotta love it. 

I mean, unless for some stupid reason you put all your eggs in a deplorable handbasket, or something. But who is that dumb? 

Intimidation

 

Good on Alexander Vindman for filing a suit against Rudy Giuliani, Trump, Jr. et als. No one should face personal ruin for telling the truth.The worst feature of TrumpWorld is a culture of intimidation it has fostered: the slander, death threats, the angry mob-mentality that was most clearly on display 1/6, but has shown itself over and over again. I don't think TrumpWorld people understand that there are folks who don't respond to threats (or bribes), but only care about doing what is right. I don't think the suit will open their eyes to a moral awakening, but if it just discourages their tactics in others, that would be something.

TWGB: No Moneyman Can Win My Love

 

So: Allen Weisselberg and the Trump Org have been indicted with multiple counts in a 15 year tax avoidance scheme where many company officers received "fringe benefits" that were not reported for tax purposes. This is a good start. It probably should involve more years but there's statutes and whatnot. Anyway, bags of cash in the form of rent, tuition, and other nifty expensive shit kept top bosses happy so they didn't have to pay tax on their full compensation and went about their jobs (and I dunno, I'm not a lawyer, let alone a mob lawyer, but when folks in your employ are paid extra--it's because you expect extra--like keeping shtum about things that might otherwise be very interesting.)

Trump and his kids aren't named in the indictment--but I feel like we will get to that at some point in this investigation. I find it hard to believe randos not named "Trump" got special compensation and people actually named "Trump" working for that company did not. Have you seen these large adult children? 

Anyway, the charges here definitely imply lots of IRS tax fraud, and I would like to hope DOJ follows up on that part, because cha-ching. 

Anyway, Weisselberg is pleading "not guilty" because he is very loyal and has been comfortable for a long time and is totally stalling and maybe he thinks Trump still has some pull to help a brother out. I don't know about that, and I definitely suspect someone else is already diming out every bit of what Weisselberg could already offer, except for a few pieces. It might not matter whether Weisselberg "flips"  (All Trump scandals presume Trump is guilty and the only question is whether associated parties talk--you ever notice that?)

Today's Republican Party

You know, it might just be another of those days ending in "y", but let's tear into this RNC week with all the verve of Don Jr's girlfriend trying out for Evita whilst not being able to feel her lips. At all. Like, is her face even attached?  What is going on in this picture?

Anyways, it was a tough day in TrumpWorld, what with the investigation in NY going on with whether the Trump Organization was both committing tax fraud and bank fraud being announced, and also with the "pool boy" in the Falwell saga coming forward with the receipts on a seven-year affair with both Mrs. and Mr. in what I believe the kids these days call a "cucking" scenario.  Before being revealed as a kinky grifter, the son of the far-right Rev. Jerry Sr.'s endorsement was very valuable to Trump in getting a toehold on the evangelical set.

(And I assume the evangelicals will forgive Falwell, and continue to support Trump, for reasons.)

Michael Cohen used to cover shit like this up for TrumpWorld, but he doesn't work there anymore.

Maybe that's part of what was in Don Jr.'s eyes when he gave his speech at the RNC, betraying absolutely nothing about the fatherly warmth of the man who gave him his name and the reputation of an absolute idiot bigot to live up to. (Naaaaiiiiilllling iiiittttt!) The boy isn't right and should have no political future if words even still mean things.

The Bonnie and Clyde of the suburban shooty-shoot threat fame cleaned up good for the camera and threatened that the you-know-whos could come into your own suburban enclave at any moment, which was not actually supposed to sound racist, I guess. Also they are coming to congress. You know. Them.

For some reason, Trump has made it this big thing that the Democrats supposedly did not say "under God" in the pledge of allegiance, which now the zombies believe.  But they totally said it.  I don't care myself, but OMG--the lying! Like wow. This RNC is all about lots of lying about Democrats.

The speeches of Sen. Tim Scott and former ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley seemed to come from such a different planet from the rest of the RNC offerings that I wondered just where they had been, or what alternative Republican party they actually belonged to. What color was the sky there? Was there candy for breakfast? Did turds roll up or still downhill? Clearly they both had more wonders to reveal to us, but time prevented them.

Anyway, maybe this was inspirational and motivational and not a policy-free and fairly mendacious bigoted shitshow to the Republicans who tuned in. But I found it unappealing and unpersuasive in every way.

I Can Feel Bad About It

I don't want to slam Tara Reade. I don't even know her. Her week has probably fucking sucked. After all, The Vox story that detailed the difficulty a sympathetic reporter had in trying to nail down the details of Reade's claims was a good look into the seriousness that reporting on survivor stories needs to take on, and reminded us that her story has changed, and that her new admissions have even made people who recalled her sharing pieces of it with her change their own recollections.  That was not helpful to her. Her own reporting history has been cast somewhat into doubt. And now, a well-reported deep-dive into her claims from PBS featuring dozens of Biden staffers brings certain discrepancies into focus, and a Politico piece examining Reade's fraught personal history, cast further doubt on her character.

I really wish it wasn't this way. It feels a little like a pile-on, the way her claims have been battered by solid reporting. And every person who has concerned themselves with survivors' rights knows things in their hearts, like there are no perfect victims, and trauma and time can cause situations to blur. I can feel a lot of sympathy for Tara Reade, because even if I don't know her whole story, I strongly suspect something bad went down in her life. And I truly believe that her story needed to be vetted and protected from the kind of way it was reported out. Because it could have not been politicized. And she could have been treated like the both the subject of a news story and a person, not as an issue.

I think that's how she was treated, though, and I feel bad about it.

See You on the Dark Side of The Loon

At my most cynical, I wonder if the sheer mindless stupidity of TrumpWorld is a kind of rodeo-clown act intended to distract. In just the way the staggering stupidity bordering on mental disorder of the "stable genius" could be an act, the last refuge beyond religion or patriotism when neither could be believed, the argument of non compos mentis, the weird and constant misspellings found in White House productions, and in even Trump Tweets, seems so glaring as to possibly be a set-up for the grossest of pleadings: We are not evil--we is incompetent!

So it could just be that a supposedly benign picture of Trump from the White House Twitter account that somehow spotlights his incredibly awful too-orange television make-up is put out to take attention away from the "Day of the Pikes". That is to say, the day that Alex and, for some reason, his brother Yevgeny, Vindman (I guess because they are twins and...shenanigans regarding mistaken ID could ensue as if in a nutty comedy?) were fired, and so was Ambassador Sondland. (Lt Col Vindman, fired despite what DOD Chief Esper said about it. Maybe as bad as Pompeo at protecting key personnel, I think.) 

So, maybe one could chalk up the release of Lt. Col. Alex Vindman due to a preplanned reduction in NSC personnel (that only was planned after a certain event, you know?) but I think I want to call bullshit on that.  Here's the score:

Marie Yovanovitch retired last week, Kurt Volker turned over texts and quit, Sondland testified now fired, Taylor testified removed Jan 2., Morrison left week after testified, Vindman testified, escorted out today along w twin brother, Pence aide Williams left OVP for Centcom

— Laura Rozen (@lrozen) February 8, 2020

That looks like a purge. That is getting rid of troublemakers. There's rumors he's getting rid of Mulvaney too, but I thought he was still the cat who know where all the mice were buried, so that could be dead wrong.

Maybe he'll have trouble starting his car or something. See, the thug people of Trumpworld, like Sonny, I mean, Donald Trump Jr., can be hotheads,

Allow me a moment to thank—and this may be a bit of a surprise—Adam Schiff. Were it not for his crack investigation skills, @realDonaldTrump might have had a tougher time unearthing who all needed to be fired. Thanks, Adam! 🤣 #FullOfSchiff

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 8, 2020

and don't care if they telegraph their thuggery--it's kind of the point. Even if it looks like witness retaliation, which is a real law, just like witness tampering or jury tampering, or any of a number of things TrumpWorlders seem to take in stride. Which should be impeachable (again!), Or illegal!

So, I know, "heh heh, orange man weird." But my eye is also on the ball: this looks bad because it is bad.

Also there is a great argument to be made that Trump is genuinely incompetent, and doesn't know he looks like he's been sloppily snorting lines of nacho dust. That just doesn't make him, yet, incompetent enough to not be liable for what he says and does--but where are the people who care about him?

I'm reading this as a cry for help. Why isn't Don Jr. tending to his infirm Papa like Lev Parnas is taking care of this obviously unwell drooling old man?

Eh, Trump is dangerous, whether the White House is competent or not. There is a dark side to this loon.

I Hate to Be Mean, But...

Actually just said by Donald Trump Jr: "I wish my name was Hunter Biden. I could go abroad and make millions off my father's presidency. I'd be a really rich guy" pic.twitter.com/9ohFDbwJn4

— Andrew Lawrence (@ndrew_lawrence) October 31, 2019

I can thoroughly relate to the idea that Donald Trump, Jr. might wish his name to be anything else in the world. Imagine living an entire life where every person you meet has to smile in your face sympathetically knowing your dead-ass entire life has been "Take your Shithead Namesake to Work Day" and no matter what you do, your hollow Easter Island-head dad will still love that little suck-up Ivanka just that much more. Just imagine being a drunk-ass pants-wetting college bitch still sniveling over mom and dad's break-up and wearing a suit because otherwise baggy-pants pop would wreck your ass, and not even considering throwing his being a fucking worthless plutocrat scumbag in his face and going your own way--just being, this a dozen or so years later. A sad fucking merkin-bearded kiss-ass pugnacious unaware racist-retweeting dirty-money scion so placidly bereft of situational awareness that your fifth-pleading ass was deemed too dumb to be capable of collusion accusing anyone else of outstanding corruption. Imagine being so fucked in the head by privilege you blithely seem unaware of the hand-over-fist buck-raking you are actually a part of.

I can imagine Don Jr. wishing he had a different dad. I can imagine his mom wishing Don Jr. had a different dad. I can imagine lots of folks wishing we had a different president.

As my own dad said to me when I was a pup--"What's it like to want?"

And if that was mean, well. Politics is mean. And Don Junior's dad is unfit for office no matter whatever transpired with the Bidens, but it's interesting to watch Trump's kids deflect from him using other people as an example in a way that highlights their own issues. They are all going to inherit his debts. Which will be massive. So I guess that is great for them.

TWGB: It's Getting Real, Now

A top House Democrat issues subpoenas for six years of President Trump's tax returns, giving Treasury secretary, IRS commissioner a May 17 deadline to deliver them. https://t.co/3yPYyBqlw9

— The Associated Press (@AP) May 10, 2019

So, adding to the subpoena issued to Don Jr. (which he could very well try to bail on, thanks to the weird blow-off advice of Uncle Lindsey and his own really dumb failure to still know what trouble looks like), we've now got subpoenas for Trump, Sr.'s tax returns.

And maybe these subpoenas will go nowhere at first--after all, former White House Counsel Don McGahn was subpoenaed to provide documents and testimony, and seems to be hanging in with White House instruction to just say "No" to that (even though, as a former White House employee and a grown man, he doesn't have to let them tell him to do anything.) Maybe that will change though, as it comes out that just after the Mueller report dropped, the White House tried to induce McGahn to go on record saying he effectively wasn't told to obstruct justice, in a way that looks sort of further obstruction of justice-y. And while McGahn isn't going to say it totally did happen out loud where the people can hear, he also doesn't want to say it didn't.

I feel like there are good reasons for that. But the truth might actually be more compelling in the long run because it looks like McGahn actually was told by Trump to do a crime, and didn't, which I guess really counts for something? (This nudge to say Trump is cleared on at least one count of obstruction reminds me ever so much of his pressure on Comey to say that he wasn't under investigation--it is hard to separate whether he has consciousness of guilt or just consciousness of looking bad. Heh--narcissism!)

But maybe there's reason to think the IRS/Treasury tax requests are going to also resolve themselves sooner than later--and one thing to note from my happy little New York appreciation post--once the information from the NY returns are out and about, the justification for holding back the federal returns weakens. The toothpaste doesn't get back in the tube.

Also. House Democrats are exploring a legal basis to add juice to their subpoena power by investigating the seldom utilized power of inherent contempt to make their legal requests more compelling. (And honestly, Jr. should just honor the Senate subpoena after contacting a good lawyer or so because eventually....I think he's just going to have to say something, and doing it as CYA as possible is his best bet.)

In my last post, I noted that public opinion is a factor in impeachment, and one of the things I think should be considered is that so many former US prosecutors have found themselves willing to sign their name to support the evidence for obstruction of justice in Trump's case. These are professionals who are legitimately saying they think, knowing what they know that they could try that one. That is really saying a lot.

Now, the White House and Barr's DOJ are still stalling on releasing the full Mueller report, and we hear that Mueller won't be reporting in person on May 15 after all. This seems to have something to do with the White House preferring he doesn't , which is really amazing for folks who want to pretend the Mueller report exonerated Trump when, oh, for goodness sakes, no. Also, Mueller too, is a grown person whose investigation was ended and doesn't need to keep hanging around DOJ, and if he wasn't at Trump's or Barr's say so, would be able to agree on his own volition without strings I am pretty sure?

I don't know. I'm not at that level. But from where I'm looking, Senator McConnell's claim that what we know of the Mueller report thus far means "Case closed" is like pretending the Super Bowl is over at the half based on who's up in the scoring.

That isn't how this works, at all. That isn't going to be how this works, regardless of what he wants to say.

TWGB: Messages in Many Bottles

“This wasn’t just one email or call, or one this or that. Over 100 contacts is really significant because you don’t just have 100 contacts with a foreign power if there’s nothing going on there,” said research analyst Talia Dessel. https://t.co/LCr1vJnQ4F

— HuffPost (@HuffPost) January 10, 2019

At some point, the brain protests being introduced to the sheer number of players involved in l'affaire Russe (as this thing is tagged at Lawfare). Several persons in the campaign and later, the Trump Administration, attempted to put forward the astonishing claim that there were no ties with Russia for the Trump Organization, for Jeff Sessions, and on and on, and it now really seems like there were so many contacts with Russia it is deeply suspicious, and also Putin-friendly Ukrainians, because, well, you can't forget those (I mean, unless you are trying to keep them a secret then you might pretend you have....)

It's getting hard to keep everyone straight.

There is also a lot of reading between the lines, or, in some cases, just copying and pasting blacked out lines to find that they actually reveal some surprising stuff--as happened when the lawyers of Paul Manafort sort of had a technology-fail and inadvertently revealed that prosecutors understood that Manafort slipped 2016 polling data to his associate Konstantin Kilimnik to kick it up to someone else for some odd reason. Due to a case of mistaken identity, the NYT ran with the assumption this was Oleg Deripaska, which is reasonable because Manafort owed Deripaska a shit-ton of money and used Kilimnik as a go-between, but actually, it was two Ukrainian  oligarchs.

CORRECTION: PAUL MANAFORT asked KONSTANTIN KILIMNIK to pass TRUMP polling to the Ukrainian oligarchs SERHIY LYOVOCHKIN & RINAT AKHMETOV, & not to OLEG DERIPASKA, as originally reported. We have corrected the story & I deleted a tweet repeating the error. https://t.co/xfnnr5KNQR

— Kenneth P. Vogel (@kenvogel) January 9, 2019

Serhiy Lyovochkin and Rinat Akhmetov were actually long-time backers of Manafort's efforts to keep Putin's thug Yanukovych in power. So, you know. There's really just a lot of foreign gents who had some leverage on Manafort. So instead of Oleg Deripaska (who was sanctioned by the US, and had those sanctions precipitously dropped by the Trump Administration, a scenario that AHEM! is still poorly answered), we have these guys who backed Manafort's Ukrainian business on behalf of Putin, who now for some reason have an interest in Trump's campaign (on behalf of Putin? Da! or Duh!) So, what did they want with this data, and what did they plan to do with it? (Pollsters who have been in contact with Mueller might have the details on this.)

Funny one should ask! (Okay, that question was mine.) Near as I can figure, and as far as I think Mueller has figured, it's something to do with what Putin and them have always been doing, Pinky--taking over the world!

I mean, winning friends and influencing people, just like good old Dale Carnegie said. The way Manafort and company's Ukraine tactics involved influencing the west via the media in ways that talked up Russia and denigrated then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  This shouldn't be a surprise, because Russia has been using PR all over the place for a while. I can point to Fox News openly admiring Big Bad Mad Vlad and his manly resolve back in 2014--isn't that funny?

Not when it looks like foreign interests have good and infiltrated our country's elections it doesn't. Which leads me to another really interesting thing--remember Natalya Veselnitskaya, who met with Don Jr. in the infamous Trump Tower meeting that included Jared Kushner, Paul Manafort, and several Russians, and was supposedly about adoptions (which entirely meant Magnitsky Act sanctions)? Well, in a case involving Prevezon Holdings, she was found out to be working very closely with the Russian prosecutor's office. Which backs up the Don Jr. email that indicated that Veselnitskaya was from the Russian government and here to help the Trump campaign. The "adoptions" thing was always about ending the sanctions.

And sometimes, even broadly hinted at favors are a little bit rewarded.

And don't even get me started on the Ukrainian/Russian inaugural funding thing, because again, so many names, so much influence, so much grift exceeding beyond the wildest dreams of most cons ever, and too showingly and fed-alarmingly so.

Messages between the Trump people and Russia were obviously sent. Now that so many messages have been prised out of their bottles, and shown to us regular folks, how are we apt to feel about it?

I know I don't like it one bit, but then, I never did.

TWGB: She's a Real Pistol and He's a Son of a Gun

The new pleading from Maria Butina in the Trump/Russia, changing her admission of guilt from "not guilty" to "guilty", with the potential of a cooperation agreement, is apt to be down-played and misunderstood, and I definitely understand why. Butina was apparently very good at making friends and influencing people and a catalog of Google images with her and numerous different people in the Republican milieu  is uncomfortable extensive....to conservatives. Among people she has met with--Scott Walker, Bobby Jindal. Meh. Donald Trump, Jr. 

Wait a minute. Donald Trump, Jr.? It sort of seems that Maria Butina's status as an agent of Russia falls somewhere between Anna Chapman (who her handler indicates she may have "upstaged") and Natalya Veselnitskaya. I don't think it's far-fetched to consider her status as "spy"--she apparently successfully and intentionally infiltrated a known very conservative-oriented social political group with the intent of coming into the orbit of prominent political figures. Making kissy-faces at NRA politics has been a big part of the Republican party for yonks. 

And of course, people meet people and have all kinds of interesting international contacts all the time. But there is reason to believe Russian money got funneled through the NRA to the Republican party, and that the NRA illegally coordinated with the Trump campaign. A very worrisome thing is that the first introduction we have to Maria Butina regarding the 2016 GOP race is in 2015.   Meaning Russia already, before the primary had taken off in earnest, had an interest in Trump (which could have developed in 2013, or 2011, or thirty years ago--this is how far back Trump has had Russian involvement in his affairs).

And yet, Trump wants to allege that somehow, the connections are only being drawn to himself and Russia because he won the 2016 election. Not even close. The timeline on the investigation into the DNC hack started well before Trump ever won. But in the meanwhile, at least 16 Trump associates have been found to have been contacted by Russia, which is more than the "zero" he once claimed, and certainly his very own family's contacts should have been known to him. Not in the least because his family and immediate associates are a terribly chatty lot.

I mean, is it even coincidental that potential front-running AG pick, William Barr, who has written such favorable things about Trump's defense and delusions was previously contacted by Trump prior to his pick for AG as a possible attorney for Trump's defense? (Which would be a very good reason, were he to take the job as AG, to promise to recuse, that sort of thing being very ethically troubling. But I think he's a throwback nutter in several ways, so who knows what he'd do?)

In the also "funny, but that likely merits a recusal" vein, Jared Kushner (last seen bucking up Prince MbS from the "just killed a guy and got caught" doldrums) had met with acting AG Matt "Hot Tub Time Machine Bigfoot DNA Big Dick Toilets" Whitaker, and presumably sipped tea and didn't mention at all the shit he was liable to be indicted for. Because why would that even come up. right?

And this is why people like Nick "Silver Spoons looking got $50 million from consulting and shit MF" Ayers does not even want to be WH COS, even if that would be a really cherry thing to put on the old resume in one's mid-thirties. But the job is poison, now. Being a Trump-wrangler is not worth it, even with hazard pay. Even Mark Meadows has too much sense (as of last I checked).

I have said it before, but it stays current: This looks bad because it is bad. The Trump Administration has to throw lies after other lies are proved to be wrong, because the truth is not good. Other members of the GOP defend this for reason I can not fathom at this point, unless there is also leverage against them (real or imagined).

But the overall picture: not good. And among the potential casualties, the NRA now wonders if they are not able to survive, and are cutting things like NRATV "talent".

To which I say: "Good".

TWGB: The Truth Shall Set You Free

The best place to start the post is with Trump's tweetstorm from Monday, wherein he implied that his longtime associate, Michael Cohen, had done terrible things (with Trump's knowledge apparently), and that he should under no circumstances receive any kind of sentencing deal for his cooperation in the Mueller investigation. He also indicated that the better example was set by Roger Stone, who had vowed not to testify against Trump, and also sort of tilted his hat at the peculiar claim by Larry Klayman on behalf of Jerome Corsi, that it was Special Counsel Robert Mueller who was trying to suborn perjury by leaning on witnesses to lie, instead of being engaged in a truthful fact-finding mission, which grasps at the same kind of "conflict of interest" straws as Trump's claim regarding "Angry Democrats".

Well, why wouldn't President Trump echo the ideas of Corsi's defense team? After all, he and Jerome Corsi have a joint defense agreement, almost just like the one Trump has/or had with Paul Manafort, according to Corsi who was told it by Jay Sekulow (who is so a good lawyer, stop that!) with the difference being I think Manafort is more screwed (because state charges)and yet Manafort is the one I've heard more newsiness about getting a pardon. Also--Mueller has Stone/Corsi emails, which might just be enough without Corsi--

Or without Stone, who is pleading the Fifth. (Egads, it only feels like it was a year and half ago, give or take a century, that it was Michael Flynn pleading the Fifth.) He will show up to any opportunity he is subpoenaed to and will say nothing. And he'll be goddamned if you take his papers, either. Also, maybe Mueller could get a warrant. Or grant limited immunity to get him to talk about, you know, other stuff. He is not a dead end, yet.

Anyways, don't worry--based on Tweets like these, the JDAs and some of the "who talks, who walks" stuff all looks like orchestrated obstruction of justice on Trump's part, a little bit. Or so noted conservative lawyer George Conway seems to think:

The statutes being mentioned here are, well, about witness tampering and obstruction--which is, after all, the crux of the Mueller purview: initiated with whether Trump was trying to tamper with Jim Comey and then fired him to stymie the investigation into whether Russia helped Trump (which it pretty ostensibly did). Folks may well grumble about whether the investigation is taking its sweet time--but this is bosh--it's been terribly successful at getting indictments, guilty pleas, and even a few convictions, and it could certainly be shortened: by people telling the truth more! (They could also probably try not continuing to obstruct justice in other ways.) But it is clearly by no means done, yet.

The best reason we have for knowing this is the Michael Flynn sentencing memo we waited so long for this Tuesday.  Michael Flynn has pleaded guilty to lying about his Russia contacts and has now been interviewed 19 times, and has been very forthcoming about more than one investigation (?) with so many details redacted it is not even cute if you are a Trump or related personage sweating it. Because all that "redacted" means there is more truth out there. And Mueller has a pretty good idea of what it is and where to get more.

Michael Flynn is a great case where offering lower sentencing is a good deal for him--he was facing a lot of damage, as Martin Longman points out.

One great resource I have seen about this is Ryan Goodman's perjury chart, which gives a great overview about who, so far, has demonstrably lied about what, and which includes folks like Jared Kushner and Don Trump Jr, who haven't yet been indicted, but potentially could be.

So, it is to be noted, it is Robert Mueller who is sending the message "The truth will set you free". It is Trump who is saying "Keep shtum". Now, "tempus tacendi et tempus loquendi" is a very fine device for the Trump coat of arms, but maybe with applied friction, that "tempus loquendi" will start seeming more desirable?

But why is it Trump demands so much silence? (hush money, NDA's?) It looks like he is always about squashing the bad news that follows him as exhaust follows a bad muffler. He seems allergic to truth--

Maybe because he thinks it will do anything but set him free?

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!