Showing posts with label wikileaks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wikileaks. Show all posts

Saturday, September 2, 2023

Guiliani and the TrumpWorld Rabbit Hole

 

You know, the Mother Jones piece on Giuliani being the subject of a whistleblower investigation regarding whether he either knowingly or unwittingly became a laundromat for Russian disinformation against Joe Biden really takes me back to exactly when any rational person would have thought this was happening in 2019, when the first impeachment was going on. If you think about TrumpWorld a lot, and I do, you really only find yourself going "Dmitry Firtash or Pavel Fuchs?" 

See, the difference between a Trump fan rabbit hole and a Trump scholar rabbit hole is knowing where the rabbits actually are, having seen the rabbits. The Trump fan rabbit hole is where one just keeps digging. To be a little less circumspect in the discourse, Lev Parnas remembers, and he would know: Giuliani would listen to anyone who would say something bad about Biden, even if it was false. We've known for years now that Giuliani was trying to dig up/create a false impression for Trump's 2020 re-election. He didn't care who it came from.

You know, just like the 2016 Trump campaign didn't care where Wikileaks got their DNC hack stuff from. All fun and games until it becomes a national security issue:

Wednesday, September 7, 2022

Things that Make No Sense

 

I can't really remember which one of the Trump hangers-on who opined something on Twitter to the effect of "What if the documents Trump took to Mar-A-Lago had information that was exculpatory about the Russia investigation?" (If your Twitter-fu is better than mine--please help me dig up who that was. I thought it was Mulvaney, but that wasn't it.) And it struck me, that was just stupid.

For one thing--there's the whole Senate Intelligence Report to contend with.  We know the Russia investigation started with George Papadopoulos shooting his mouth off.  We know that Trump constantly referred to the "Russia, Russia, Russia" thing (I for one, always hear "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia!" when I see that, but of course, I am a person of a certain age) as a "hoax", but then again, he thinks climate change is a hoax too, and no, it is very real. 

(We don't really talk about how Hurricane Maria was Trump's "worse than Katrina" but I wish we would.)

I also remember AG Bill Barr, the latest truth-telling former Trump SOB flying around to Italy and elsewhere looking for exculpatory stuff to defend Trump on Russiagate, for whatever reason. And by the way, what have we heard from Durham, lately?

If there was anything at all exculpatory regarding Trump and Russia, he would have held 1) a press conference 2) a parade and 3) the nuts of anyone who shafted him to the fire. It doesn't make any sense that he would just ferret the stuff away at Mar-A-Lago, per his own folks' (well, Kash Patel, and he certainly a stable dude, right?)  public statements, with a standing order to declassify, and say absolutely nothing about it at all. 

If Trump had anything in his possession that somehow meant that Russia did not wage a digital campaign against Hillary Clinton and APT 29 did not hack the DNC and spill info through Wikileaks and that Roger Stone and other friends of the campaign weren't in touch with Assange, and Fox News hosts like Sean Hannity weren't spouting Russian disinfo talking points, well, boy, I dunno.  That would surely be really different from the reality I know. 

What makes more sense to me is, there is something in there tangential to Russia that actually screws him over that isn't even being talked about. (Every denial is a confession.) And he would really rather it not get looked at, which is why he "secured" it. But because he took it and it got seized, eventually everyone is going to look at it. Unless it's one of the missing docs that hasn't been recovered yet because it ended up somewhere other than Mar-A-Lago. 

Which is why I don't care if subpoenas/search warrants are still ready for elsewhere in Trump's domain. TBH.  

Sunday, October 18, 2020

TWGB: Trump Reads Marks and Angles

 

I keep saying Trump is basically a con-artist because his mode is definitely not that of a legitimate business man. He's business as performance art. The hair! The tan! The offensively not tailored suits! The third world dictator gilded glitz of his Trump Tower penthouse, and the marble and tile of his Winter White House, Mar-a-Lago. His rallies that cheer all his weird pronouncements, even his peculiar idea of dancing (and Ellen should sue, also she is a better dancer). 

It's a con. Things that give him some kind of brand and play up his schtick are a con. Trump University was a con.  Trump's supposed charitable foundation was a big con. The wall was a con. His business model is a con. This is a con--and Trump knows it

But cons sometimes work, kids. Don't forget that. And if you get away with a con once, what really stops you from trying it again? Conscience? Morality? Of course not! This is TrumpWorld. So, if "But her emails..." worked once (they weren't even her emails, but Podesta's, for crying out loud!) then why wouldn't "But Hunter Biden's emails..." do the same job? 

(Not that Team Trump has given up on Hillary Clinton's emails even still. At this point, they have to be considered some kind of completists.)

Thursday, September 24, 2020

A Republic, If You Can Keep It



This is from the sole Senate Republican who voted against Trump regarding the impeachment. Romney Tweeted this in response to Trump's failure to guarantee that he would stand by the results of the election, basically implying that if it went against him he would try to invalidate it (just as he peremptorily has been doing by talking trash about mail-in ballots and "rigging").

The Founders always knew that the idea of a democratic republic was a bit dodgy, and we are merely blessed that our first president had the outstanding wisdom to know when to say goodbye. But Trump seems a little stuck on the idea that maybe he can litigate the will of the people. Like he can throw out ballots or appoint better electors.

But I don't consent. I cried the night I knew this idiot was somehow elected by a trick of the white men of property who inserted the electoral college nonsense into the constitution, but I understood there were enough deeply wrong people who voted for him to make this happen, so we'd just have to endure. I wanted investigations of the obvious fuckery of his campaign's apparent coordination with Wikileaks, and therefore, probably Russia, but he was our president. Nobody domed him.

I don't like his vicious militias and his bloated tick of an AG, and I don't like his impeached ass fucking up our foreign policy. I think he's been a singular failure, and that his fan club are practically cultists, believing in things unseen and in fact, unreal, just to make their idiot bigot president palatable.

The media should not try to call the pandemic election early. Of course mail-in ballots matter just like they have mattered before Trump tried to invalidate them. The media should employ all restraint to allow for a complete and fair vote, and if he tries to invalidate it--call him out! Call it a coup! Call it what it is! And if the vote is against him--talk about the will of the people and don't "both-sides" this shit.

He said he might not even talk to the American people again if we voted against him. I want him to make that good. I genuinely wish to never hear from this fool again. It would be better for our Republic that way.

Wednesday, August 19, 2020

TWGB: This Never Was A Hoax

The long-awaited 5th volume of the Senate Intelligence Committee regarding Russian active intelligence measures is public, and goddamn. So, Russia was definitely trying to interfere, right? And the Trump campaign was definitely okay with that. And it really looks like there was probably kompromat, and like Trump lied about whether he ever spoke with Roger Stone (you know--this Roger Stone) about Wikileaks, and it looks like Wikileaks was laundering the DNC emails for Russia, and Paul Manafort is understood to have definitely been sharing campaign information with a "Russian intelligence officer", Konstantin Kilimnik. It also shows that criminal referrals were made to DOJ regarding untruthful statements being made by folks like Steve Bannon and Don Jr. in 2019--although somehow the DOJ must have eaten them, because whatever could have happened? (Why, AG Barr happened, just like he happened to the end of the Mueller report. I reckon he means to be the wall-to-wall rug of Trump cover-ups.)

What we find is, in short, there was plenty of reason for a counter-intelligence investigation into the potential manipulation of a US presidential election by a hostile foreign power (not that Donald "Love Letters to Dictators" Trump understood it as such) and real concern about the many contacts between the Trump campaign and Russia. along with the obvious business connections Trump had in Russia, despite his vehement denials about both (which only made things more suspicious). It would have been derelict not to have investigated.

And now, here we are--the Senate Intelligence Select Committee produces this (with intriguing redactions) report covering what I've been trying to cover with TrumpWorld Grab-Bags. The conclusion appears to be that, well, it looked bad because it was bad. This information was available to to certain senators since before the impeachment hearings, and even if it wasn't source material, news reports made these same conclusions likely--the Russians were trying it and the Trumpers were onboard.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

TWGB: Some Paragraphs on a Commuted Sentence

Roger Stone is depicted in the above shot having a pint and giving the white power sign while surrounded by the colorful group known as the Proud Boys. Old Rog is alleged to have stood for whatever a first degree Proud Boy is, which is where I think they still let you wank. Sometimes you need thug friends, I guess, when you need battles fought on the mean streets of social media, I mean, like the ones your friends are still allowed on.  Which is a paradoxical place to be in when one is also a guy who just gets his sentence for seven counts of assorted obstruction fuckery commuted by the actual president, after sentencing tampering by the AG itself just wouldn't do.

And lets not golf clap too hard for Bill Barr, who says he didn't think Trump's clemency order regarding Stone was a great idea--it's not a great idea, but he doesn't think that for "rule of law" reasons--it's optics. It looks bad--because...have I said this before? It is bad. Barr previously did urge for reduced sentencing but called the prosecution of Stone "righteous". What Trump has done undermines the DOJ. It practically screams: If you are of use to this president, he has got you covered.

So let's talk about what's wrong with the statement the White House put out about the rationale--and how impolitic and purely political it happens to be.  The statement leans heavily towards Trump's regular assertion that the entirety of the Russia investigation was a "hoax", but the entirety of it is not, even if the actual collusion with the Trump campaign part were. The DNC hack and the subsequent leaks by Wikileaks (regardless of any extent to which Roger Stone might have had advance knowledge and shared it with Trump himself) were real, as was the disinfo scheme that promulgated fake news on social media. Special Counsel Mueller made a rare op-ed to reiterate the legitimacy of this investigation.

Tuesday, September 24, 2019

In Case You Missed it




President Trump actually told everybody that he thought former Vice-President Joe Biden should get the electric chair for some random made-up thing he thinks happened based on Russian disinfo (and is wholly wrong) and his own disapproval of the sheer gall of anybody to run against what is supposed to be our favorite president.

He said that out loud where the people could hear.  The electric chair. Because this whole "innocent until proven guilty thing"? That's not his bag. His idea of due process is "do process people I don't like in a blender until liquid."

Trump's wheeling and dealing with Mulvaney withholding the Ukrainian military aid and having a very urgent phone call with President Zelensky has House Dems looking way more seriously at impeachment, because of the extortion of a foreign government (who are basically at war with Russia so, also what is Trump's entire deal, here?) over help with his election thing he was very apparently doing. So Trump is out here doing the most impeachable shit imaginable, but he's going to offhandedly say, no, but Biden is the real treason, you guys.

Just like "But her emails," while he was getting all the help by Russia trickling DNC dirt via WikiLeaks?

Yeah, we saw this movie before. This man is not fit to be president. Even if his semi-treasonous and altogether Constitution-violating shit was together, his mouth gives him away. If he wants to say Biden deserves the electric chair for his corruption-adjacency, whatever are we to make of Trump's hydra of office abuse?

I shudder to think about saying out loud what the conduct he has displayed deserves using the electric chair on this scale. My personal morality would only feature very non-luxurious accommodations, for a long time, for his infractions.


Friday, April 12, 2019

Stay Bull Jean Yuss 3: Turns on a Dime



I have a few thoughts that I might work into a longer piece but the immediately remarkable thing to me post-Assange arrest is how Trump's public comments went from "I love WikiLeaks" to "I don't know much about it". Sure, it's about whatever his current use for Assange is (he had a use for him, then he didn't--nota bene, Trump allies, there's a pattern). But the way he does it is just stark.

He doesn't know much about it. Maybe he could ask his son what he knows about it. Maybe he knew at one time something about it, but hasn't thought about WikiLeaks for a minute.

Who knows? It is a mystery, huh?

Saturday, February 16, 2019

TWGB: Everyone's Lying For Some Reason



There's a weird common thread that runs through all the Trump World Grab-Bag posts: people just keep lying about things. Michael Flynn lied about contacting Russia. Jeff Session lied about it, too. Michael Cohen seems to have lied about things having to do with Russia because Trump told him to. It hasn't become an issue just yet, but Don Trump Jr. has apparently lied to Congress.


It's been established now that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, lied about certain particulars involving the Trump campaign and this voided his plea agreement. He's now looking at about 20 years or so in prison, which for a man his age, is basically a life sentence. Roger Stone sort of told on himself about contacting Wikileaks, and seemed kind of forthcoming about the depth of his WikiLeaks contacts, but this picture looks to be complicated.

The big, operant question here is, "Why does everyone around Trump lie?" Just recently, two of Trump's other attorneys were openly suspected of having lied about details regarding Michael Cohen's hush money deals, and this sounds pretty much in line with how Trump wants his circle to operate. With "alternative facts".


Pretty much everyone around Trump lies. For some reason.


And even regarding the congressional investigations, we already know Rep. Devin Nunes didn't always tell the truth (actually, he straight up lied) about matters dealing with the Russia investigation. But for that matter, it looks like Senator Richard Burr is also falling short of accuracy, with claims (picked up by the White House) that he sees no evidence of collusion. But Burr is basically lying about how accessible Christopher Steele has been, and Burr, just like Nunes, can be connected to the Trump campaign.

It's not a curiosity or a coincidence when you see this pattern of lying. It looks like a coordinated cover-up, and that means that the parties involved know very well what it is they don't want to be known because it's real and it's bad. It's Manafort is willing to void his plea agreement bad. It's Cohen goes to jail bad. It's Roger Stone's last ratfuck bad. It's respectable people will possibly become anathema bad.

My mantra all along has been "It looks bad because it is bad." Lying can temporarily make things look like they are not bad. But badness will out.

Sunday, January 27, 2019

TWGB: Roger Stone's Time in the Barrel

You know, if I could save time in a barrel, the first thing that I'd like to do, is to save every email, text, and random Tweet from Roger Stone until eternity passes away, just to give them to Robert Mueller and fuck Stone the way he would fuck unto others. (My deepest apologies to Jim Croce for my appropriation of one of his tenderest songs. I'd like to think he would have understood.)

The Friday morning fortuitously-filmed arrest of Roger Stone was a great start to a very awkward day in Trump World, but in all honesty, Roger Stone had been hinting that his ass was due for an indictment or a half dozen or so for a good long while. I don't doubt the CNN claim that good reporting was the reason they had Stone's Florida abode staked out, because the day before, four indictments were filed after a rare bit of Mueller Grand Jury activity. (This is why my last post indicated that I knew I needed to clear my tabs in advance of Friday news, because I am not a reporter, but neither am I ever unplugged--RW journos claiming a tip-off for CNN exclusively for some reason are just mad they got scooped or trying to neg the Mueller investigation and the FBI for reasons that are not entirely wholesome.)

But let's get down to the barebones details--in August of 2016, Stone was caught bragging on his knowledge about what Wikileaks might drop. Even this little blog wondered if pimping the Wikileaks thing wasn't just meta-ratfucking from a person who only pretended he wasn't still working for the Trump campaign, and there's been good reason to think Roger Stone always was still "on the bus".  We've got glimmers of what folks like Randy Credico, Jerome Corsi, and Steve Bannon might have given up, but in any event, the so far collected private communications of Roger Jason Stone are amazeballs nasty.

Look, you can tell me perjury is bad and suborning perjury in others is bad, but literally going full "Wicked Witch of the West" and telling someone straight up "I will get your little dog too!" is just some crazy witness-tampering obvious almost fictional villain batshit evil. I will tell you right now, you get an entire posse of two dozen or so entirely for-free FBI just for threatening a man's little floofdog if I was running this arrest operation (complete with warrant for assorted whatever collection).

Which is about what happened, and which could be arguably overkill for some piddly "process crimes"--except let's be honest about what Stone has been doing here. Back to referencing the barebones details, if one is threatening violence, and frankly talking about abusing or leveraging other people to get certain results in a legal matter, that doesn't make them look good. To my mind, that says, you have to look at why they are engaging in these sorts of crimes that specifically try to effect the legal outcome of the Mueller investigation.

I think it's hard to say he'd have been doing these things if there wasn't some truth to the connection(s) between Wikileaks and the Trump Campaign, and their apparent foreknowledge that the info WikiLeaks had was from a Russian-sponsored cyber attack.  Although the indictment itself doesn't throw all the info Mueller has out there (and it shouldn't and for obvious reasons) we can nonetheless understand that Stone wouldn't have been indicted unless he was already screwed by what Mueller had in writing regardless of what Stone, a notoriously unreliable witness, might offer.

Which makes Stone's talk about not flipping fascinating--because this is something Trump has stated he really likes about Stone--he isn't gonna talk. But that sort of implies that there is a something he shouldn't be talking about, n'est-ce pas? The more Stone crows on various news outlets about what he will and won't do, the more it looks a bit like he's either pimping himself out for a pardon or trying to make himself look like a martyr for his legal GoFundMe. (And he isn't, based on his real estate, necessarily a poor man. He's just poor in his political choices, morality, and well, everything else that makes one human.)  Also his head is shaped very amusingly and his hair looks to be sewn-in--which probably adds to the sympathy some are wasting on this peculiarly buff-backed Nixon tattoo-sporting reprobate. But when I hear the RW Tweeters go on about poor old Rog, at age 66, the fact that he looks like  Abe Simpson is all about his life choices and he seems to be the reason weirdos like Loomer, Prosobiec and a score of other internet simple trash exist.

Miss me with any sympathy for this devil.

(Although, and to give him his due, his back tattoo is really quite good and the artist should be praised. It's awkwardly placed and sized, which is entirely Stone's choices, and the tattoo artist can't be faulted for that. But photo-representations of human faces are notoriously tricky when rendered as skin art, and entire websites exist of bad tattoo art to prove that. The Nixon tattoo is actually scaled well, and the features are proportioned correctly and do not look like a bad caricature. A piece of art like this would probably be better served on a bicep or, as a back piece, be larger. Located where it is, it's not somehow tattoo-correct. I guess a similarly-sized Nixon tramp-stamp would be far worse, of course. Maybe he could have it elaborated upon with borders of US flags or some shit when he goes to his eventual incarceration--because none of these minions even know how stingy Trump is gonna be with these pardons. He will want proofs of loyalty beyond your wildest indulgence. He's a narcissist. He can't help it.)

Saturday, November 17, 2018

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!


Tuesday, April 10, 2018

Raiding the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag

There's just something about a raid on Trump's personal attorney and the deputy national finance chairman of the RNC (or at least, he was--maybe not so much anymore) and Stormy Daniels pay-off patsy that perks me right up. It's not very usual to see a raid that goes after various documents at a president's lawyer's office, home, and the hotel room were he happens to be staying.

You just don't. I take people more experienced in these things at their word that this is a serious development that suggests Cohen has got himself into something deeper than just the Daniels pay-off situation (although that in and of itself might touch on campaign finance violations, bank fraud, bribery and intimidation if Daniel's recollection of being personally threatened bears out). I recall in Michael Wolff's Fire and Fury reading that Steve Bannon had indicated that there might be rather a large number of similar arrangements, but that still doesn't quite seem like what would call down this kind of activity. 

It kind of reminds me of the raid of Paul Manafort's offices and home and whatnot. Deputy AG Rosenstein and special counsel Mueller seem to be proceeding from a pretty high confidence that there was a "there" there in pursuing connections between Manafort and Russia.  What they uncovered was sufficient to indict him for a buttload of money laundering and it looks like he was up to some damn unsavory shenanigans for the benefit of then Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych (which included, interestingly enough, smear campaigns against political rivals and a certain US Secretary of State). I doubt Cohen was into anything that deep, but he did arrange for a 20 minute Trump speech to be made in exchange for a $150K contribution to the Trump Foundation by a Ukrainian billionaire, right at the beginning of Trump's campaign. 

Laundering contributions by foreign nationals through one's foundation in return for speeches in what is an apparent attempt to gain influence? Gosh--where have I heard of such a thing before?

Anyhow, and this is all very slap-dash, since the last damn TrumpWorld Grab-bag I've filed, Guccifer 2.0 turned out to be probably GRU and was in contact with Roger Stone and WikiLeaks seems to have been communicating with him, too, and Stone either did or didn't have foreknowledge about Wikileaks', um, leaks, maybe someone heard from George Papadapolous in a nightclub that Jeff Sessions wanted him to go after dirt on Clinton (the Papadapolous guy either needs a big operational security lecture or to start attending AA). Basically, there were a lot of people in the Trump orbit who were really all about those damn emails. None of it looks like a big old smoking gun that of course the Trump campaign was coordinating with Russian agents mind you. It looks like a pattern of just not being terribly particular where dirt on Clinton came from. And odd connections with Russians keep coming up.

Of course, we'll doubtless learn more about what this Cohen situation anon, and it does seem like this particular development has POTUS exceptionally rattled. It may be that this really does just boil down to the bizarre ethic compromise of paying off an adult film actress to keep shtum over a one-night stand, but then again, even that points to a takeaway from the Steele Dossier--that Trump could be subject to blackmail over his sexual business. 

Friday, February 16, 2018

This TrumpWorld Grab-Bag Tries to Keep Up

Sometimes, I think the dumbest thing about the "collusion/no collusion" argument regarding the 2016 presidential campaign is that what Trump's campaign relied on never was all that low-key. Trump was pretty openly loving the Wikileaks' release of carefully curated DNC emails. Russian bots retweeted Trump and WikiLeaks material very heavily in the final push of the campaign. (And, for what it's worth, Russian bots are still giving Trump's agenda a digital assist.) This wasn't subtext--it was text! Trump was briefed on the intel about Russian hacking, and publically continued to deny it was even a thing. Everything, he contended, was rigged against him. Even though, you know...her emails. 

It turns out that WikiLeaks, for their part, really were trying to help Trump! Who knew? (Everyone.)  And Assange seems sympathetic to Russia, and in addition is misogynistic and anti-Semitic. Which probably should make him more of a Pepe peep (I am still kind of salty about people on The Left who have a soft space for this fail-souled Bond villain.) The things you learn, and from The Intercept, at that. Huh.

In other news, a couple days back, it was revealed in a Senate Intelligence Committee sit-down with the IC agency heads that the Trump Administration didn't order the least little thing to do with stopping Russia from interfering with future elections, even though Russia is so totally going to interfere, because that is their thing. This would be kind of shocking, except it isn't because Trump's still pretending he can shout "No collusion" and then on the other hand not enact sanctions that Congress overwhelmingly passed against Russia. For the election interference. Which Trump still denies

You might think that sort of thing would disturb more people. Because once again--it isn't even in hiding but plain sight. Trump does not give a shit about whether Russia interfered because it benefits him, and America First is a neat slogan with a racist past, but it essentially does not mean Trump is putting America First. He puts himself first.

You know who else puts Trump first though? The NRA. They gave a record amount to the Trump and other Republican campaigns in 2016,  but it appears they also received some money from Russia. Could that have been some money laundering right into the Trump Campaign?  That would be a great avenue of inquiry.  (Needless to say, I'm feeling some kind of way about the NRA right now and after every horrifying mass shooting event.)

Now, money laundering--that comes up a lot when I do these TrumpWorld Grab-Bag things. That seems to have been a Paul Manafort specialty,  but there is a interesting thing that has happened in that corner of Bob Mueller's investigation--Manafort's partner Rick Gates looks to be cooperating, and he was active with the campaign even after Manafort was out.  That seems significant. It also strikes me as damn fascinating that Steve Bannon has given about 20 hours of his precious time to Mueller's team (and 4 hours to the Congressional Committee, which might be saying something about the respect accorded to the different investigative bodies). He is sticking with an "executive privilege" line with the Congress critters, but I don't know what he might have given Mueller and his team. I wonder if Trump has any idea?

Lastly, the Rob Porter situation has laid bare a pretty shocking White House story--130 or so White House staffers have not got permanent security clearances for some reason or other.  Maybe because they could be easily subject to blackmail, or, as they say, the Kompromat! I don't pretend I know, but my word, if anyone says "but her emails" ever again  I surely will think about skull-thumping that person with great vigor. Because, like Rob Porter's wife-beating or Jared Kushner's astonishing debt problems, this represents national security problems that feel deliberate, and, with this Administration, are probably not fixable for the foreseeable. Because this Administration is lead by careless jerks who have always been compromised--for reference, see the entirety of the TrumpWorld Grab-Bag page!

Cheers!

Monday, January 29, 2018

In TrumpWorld, Grab-Bag Investigates You!

Imagine that nothing else happened today, but that a president who was accused during his campaign of being a "puppet" of a foreign dictator, who spoke effusively at times of that foreign dictator, when faced with a mandate from congress that overwhelmingly voted to put sanctions on that dictator for interfering in that election, just said "No, because it's such a deterrent to them doing stuff with us." Umph! Like, a deterrent to influencing more of our elections or making other decisions as a sovereign nation? 

It would seem from an actual real-time event like that, just as we have had other real-time events that kind of suggested that Donald Trump was doing the bidding of Russia, this should bother the Congress that passed that act bringing those sanctions, but what actually happened was they decided to release a memo that was made by Devin Nunes, who I will be referring to as Trump's Renfield, and did not release a memo drafted by House Democrats. 

This seems odd. It's like Congressional Republicans both understand that Russian interference was a real thing, but also will only pay the merest lip service to doing anything about it. Huh! And yet, the same House is investigating DOJ decisions for a while, now.  As if the real sin in today's politics is finding fault with Trump.

In other news, FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe is leaving because there's really only so much a person can put the hell up with before one's legit retirement and maybe one's Director is giving strong hints where the exit door is. He joins a storied company that includes Sally Yates, Preet Bharara and Jim Comey. 

I wouldn't wonder what lessons the DOJ in general and the FBI specifically are taking from this politicized display regarding their office and the approach it shows regarding the rule of law. It might not be what the authors of this deplorable exercise had in mind, though.

In other news, we are sad to hear that Julian Assange is in bad shape because he lacks Vitamin D and the courage to just suck it up and deal with the thing where he took off his condom and tried it.  It's rumored he also doesn't smell great and sent DMs to Sean Hannity parody accounts.  Which does not only suggest Assange's mind has gone a little soft, but also that he and Hannity have possibly had a previous correspondence or so. 

Anyway, what I am saying is, the history of dirt against Trump seems to have been spot on, and the dirt against Clinton and the DNC seems to have been spotty. Trump and his admirers striking out against the investigation seems to me not like they see wrongdoing there, but like they are afraid it will be found with their team.

I'm just saying, as I always do: It looks bad because it is bad.

Sunday, November 19, 2017

The TrumpWorld Grab-Bag That Wore It Well

Sometimes, I try too hard to pull off a cohesive TrumpWorld Grab-Bag, and the effect is somewhat like Carter Page in the above pic--suited up for serious business, but with a jaunty little red something or other, like that rolled-rim bucket hat, a signifier of being the Cardinal of Casual.  Sure, he can say he was warding off the sun from his otherwise unprotected pate on a sunny Washington, DC day--but that's boring. He was dropping off subpoenaed documents, and I feel like he was sending a little semaphore by haberdashery. "Red hat at morning, co-conspirators take warning," perhaps? 

We will just have to see. It looks like an investigation that involves the House and Senate Intelligence Committees and a Special Counsel certainly takes a lot of documents. The DOJ has been sent a request by Special Counsel Mueller to send over a broad array of docs, some centering on the firing of FBI Director Jim Comey, which wasn't really supposed to involve AG Jeff Sessions but kind of did, because he recused himself for reasons that are both obvious and really need to be explained.  It's probably a good idea to get a paper trail on Sessions' business, because as has been previously elaborated upon, his memory could be called "fickle".

But I guess when in the heat of getting campaign advisors together or sorting out a chaotic transition, things can often be forgotten--for example, would you believe Jared Kushner forgot to disclose that he had some other Russian contact and maybe a little Wikileaks contact too? That is such a weird thing to forget to mention on your security clearance application, like forgetting maybe a hundred or so other things?  

But stuff gets forgotten all the time. George Papadopoulous was practically forgotten, but apparently not everybody is willing to leave his arrested, plead, co-operating behind out in the cold

(Remember, in case this bizarre quality of folks like G-Papa and Page get you wondering "Who the hell even let these guys on this campaign?" the answer is probably Sam Clovis, who had very special feelings about Russia for some time. )

But in case the rogue's gallery of characters we know quite well haven't complicated things enough--there's probably a talk between Rob Goldstone and the Special Counsel's team coming up. Congressional investigators want to look more deeply into the Russian side of the Trump Tower meeting that happened last year. And there are still so many questions out there about what the hell Mike Flynn was doing.  It looks like these several avenues of investigation will wear well into the future. 

Tuesday, November 14, 2017

The Sins of the TrumpWorld Grab-Bags

One of the things I do kind of love about the Trump family is their enthusiasm and loyalty. I would. And for what it is worth, while much is made of the puzzling pair of Javanka and the weird nepotism of their even being White House advisers, and having security clearances (especially Jared, amirite?), it's the contributions to our culture made by Donald Jr. that truly fascinate me.  

It looks like Don Jr. is once again the focus of the collusion question, because WikiLeaks definitely decided that the way to the father was through the son.  (Not sure where Assange got that idea.) The messages in Jr's DM's, while not necessarily responded to, did apparently result in Trump Sr. pushing WikiLeaks info. 


The thing with Don Jr's involvement in coordinating with WikiLeaks is that no one can just decide that he was a low-level volunteer. Unlike George Papadopoulos, who definitely conveyed to WH Senior Advisor Stephen Miller that Russia had "dirt" on Clinton. His position, being the person currently charged with running his father's business, should be clearly seen as important. 

But what does this mean, besides the links between the Trump campaign and various Russian cut-outs becoming more obvious? Well, it might mean statements that make no sense and are, whether intentionally or unintentionally, degrading to our intelligence community coming from the White House and POTUS himself. Or it could mean poor national security decisions

It does not mean anything good. As I keep saying--it looks bad because it is bad. 

It also will not mean Julian Assange is Ambassador from Australia. WTF? No, this silly boy is staying at the Ecuadoran Embassy until they get sick of his pasty ass and put his bunk out on the street with him in it. Which will be a day.

Sunday, September 17, 2017

With TrumpWorld Grab-Bags Like These...

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R.--Kremlin) had a little side-trip to the Ecuadoran Embassy in London last month which was partially arranged (!?) by RW blogger-provocateur Chuck C. Johnson (which sounds nicer than "creepy little muck-dwelling alt-right alleged floor-shitter, Chuck C. Johnson") to meet with Wikileaks' founder Julian Assange. It sort of feels inexcusable that this escaped my attention--the guy who fellow GOP congressman Kevin McCarthy described as possibly on Putin's payroll, meets with the WikiLeaks guy, through this guy.  Sure, it all sounds flaky as hell, but I'm trying to be a Trump/Russia compleatist over here. 

Anyways, Rohrabacher wants to talk with Trump about getting Assange exonerated for disseminating various bits of classified US info, if Assange provides information that exonerates Russia from the DNC hack. A sort of mutual back-washing scheme. 

That's. But. How does he? Can you even? The sad thing is, Trump does denial over the Russian hack thing so convincingly, I wonder if he wouldn't go for it. It would be really dumb. But I wonder.

I'm not sure that whatever Assange means to provide is going to quite prove anything of the "exonerating Russia" quality, and I suspect the decision to "exonerate" Assange really isn't up to Trump, anyway. But it's the thought that counts, since Rohrabacher hasn't been able to do anything about Magnitsky. And Trump probably won't, either. (Sorry, Vlad, I know a lot of money is probably at stake here.)

Meanwhile, back at the Mueller investigation, he obtained a warrant for and received information from Facebook relating to the troll farm of fake accounts that pumped all kinds of ads and fake news and whatnot to the eyeballs of US voting people. It would be a darn shame if this could be verified as having been coordinated with Jared Kushner's data operation. For Jared Kushner. And the campaign. 

In other weird news, it looks like Mike Flynn had been working on a nuclear power project involving  putting plants all over the Middle East (which would count on Russian companies for maintaining site security)--and while it should have been tidily wrapped up in December 2016, um, it wasn't. And maybe he and Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner met with King Abdullah II of Jordan before the inauguration to discuss...the nuclear "Marshall Plan", as it might be called. 

There's so many moving pieces of wrong in this scenario it's kind of hard to know where to start. But in any event, the DNC hack and Wikileaks' participation in throwing the information out to the public, and the way that information release seemed to be timed to the needs of the Trump Campaign in a way that seemed, maybe, a little coordinated, is definitely just one, and not even necessarily the top, messed-up thing with the TrumpWorld milieu. It's really a target-rich environment, and Robert Mueller just keeps adding sharp-shooters to his team. 

Sunday, May 7, 2017

Congratulations to Emmanuel Macron!

It's unusual for me to remark on the politics of other countries (I don't pretend I understand'em all that well), but this one interested me because of the nationalist thing that people keep talking about. Trump is being chalked up as nationalist--whatever that means in the US. Norbert Hofer lost in Austria, Geert Wilders in the Netherlands--which made it seem like maybe this far right nationalism thing wasn't really taking off on all cylinders. But LePen was getting the kind of attention that made it seem like maybe...

I mean really, when are our US bigots ever wrong? (Besides nearly always.) Also, there was that odd specter of Russian hacking going on. But when the story of Macron's rise from longshot to landslide is told, it should be pointed out that he was fortunate in his opponent, because LePen and what she stands for is truly awful. The world does not need leaders who refuse to learn from history and let bigotry stand in for intelligent policy. We don't need verbal bomb-throwers--we need people of good will and honest ability to listen and work with others.

I think the people of France have chosen wisely and taken to heart the difficulties presented by bad examples--not that I'm naming any names.

Wednesday, March 22, 2017

And Now it Looks Worse



In case anyone's memory needs to be refreshed, Paul Manafort was Donald Trump's campaign manager and also consulted with the transition. It seems like he had an interesting plan in the hopper that would be pretty beneficial to the Putin government:


WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump's former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, secretly worked for a Russian billionaire to advance the interests of Russian President Vladimir Putin a decade ago and proposed an ambitious political strategy to undermine anti-Russian opposition across former Soviet republics, The Associated Press has learned. The work appears to contradict assertions by the Trump administration and Manafort himself that he never worked for Russian interests.

Manafort proposed in a confidential strategy plan as early as June 2005 that he would influence politics, business dealings and news coverage inside the United States, Europe and the former Soviet republics to benefit the Putin government, even as U.S.-Russia relations under Republican President George W. Bush grew worse.

That's, um. Well. Pretty much the sort of thing that sounds like proposing to have operatives fiddle with elections through massaging news coverage. If only we could connect him to the Trump Campa...

Oh.

So, I said I believe that this all looked bad because it is bad? I also do not think it will start looking better.

UPDATE: And this presser by Rep. Nunes only seems to reiterate that the Trump campaign wasn't directly wiretapped, but that they seemed to be in contact an awful lot with people who (quite lawfully) were under surveillance. Great try though!

UPDATE 2: I wonder if what Rep. Nunes is talking about was classified? And why he has to run'long and brief POTUS on it right sharpish. Not at all like you'd think an investigation would work, right?

TWGB: It's Raining Shoes!

  It certainly has been a minute, hasn't it? So, what brings me out of self-imposed blogging exile, if not something very relevant to my...