He probably will actually have a phone in his cell. Won't have to wait in line like all those other guys. It's who you know, you know.

He'll get his pizzas delivered by drone to his cell window.

The never ending story of the Trump kleptocracy continues ...

Trump son-in-law Kushner has his turn on the hot seat

In April, an anonymous Trump administration official said presidential adviser Jared Kushner had some bad press in his future. It wasn’t so much a veiled threat as it was a prophecy.

A few weeks later, that prediction has been confirmed.

Harvard-educated, urbane and widely considered a key moderating influence on an unpredictable yet demanding President, the 36-year-old Mr. Kushner wields immense power as the point person on the Middle East, reinventing government, innovation, criminal-justice reform and the response to the opioid epidemic.

Mr. Kushner was memorably dubbed the “Secretary of Everything” by CNN, but exactly who is he?

The short answer, of course, is he’s the privileged scion of a wealthy New Jersey real-estate family and Donald Trump’s son-in-law – husband to the President’s eldest daughter, Ivanka.

A picture is also emerging of a man whose youthful, composed bearing belies a tough-as-nails ruthlessness.

As his friend Strauss Zelnick, a Manhattan financier and long-time friend of Mr. Kushner told Politico , “he’s tough. In an exceedingly polite way, he is as tough as anyone is in New York City real estate.”

In the past seven days, Mr. Kushner has been the subject of a devastating series of articles, the most damaging of which – a scoop in the Washington Post – suggests that he sought to establish a secret communication channel last December with the Kremlin using Russian-secured facilities.

Perhaps a bigger problem is that Mr. Kushner omitted mention of his contacts with the Russians in filling out the documentation required to obtain his security clearance. And there may have been several of these contacts – Reuters later reported there had been at least three others.

It hasn’t been established that he lied on the forms. But if that were proven to be the case, it’s a criminal offence, punishable by up to five years in prison.

Other revelations that have emerged about Kushner in recent weeks: secret meetings with Chinese and Russian bankers amid mounting financial pressure over a family investment he oversaw at 666 Fifth Ave., a money-losing Manhattan office tower; his residential real-estate holdings have been accused of shady dealings; and the businesses he promised to divest upon becoming an adviser to the President largely remain under his control.

It has been reported widely that he advocated strongly for the controversial firing of FBI director James Comey, whose investigators were probing Mr. Kushner’s links to Russia.

That leaves aside the mini-scandal arising from a presentation his sister, Nicole Kushner Meyer, gave in China earlier this month that intimated her brother could help expedite the process of obtaining investor visas to the U.S. in exchange for putting money into a Kushner investment in New Jersey. The family company later apologized.

If it seems like an unusual amount of news for one person to generate over the space of a few weeks, it’s worth bearing in mind that the Kushner clan is no stranger to controversy.

Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles, the son of Holocaust survivors, took over his own father’s burgeoning commercial real-estate business and built it into an empire.

A long-time Democrat, Charles Kushner also managed to run afoul of the law, serving a jail term for illegal campaign donations, tax evasion and witness tampering – the latter charge stemmed from a nasty internecine family dispute and the fact that he hired a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law, who was providing evidence for the prosecution.

The elder Kushner later arranged to have a videotape of the encounter sent to his sister .

The federal prosecutor in the case, Chris Christie, went on to become New Jersey Governor, and eventually a close adviser to Mr. Trump; last December, he was dumped as head of the presidential transition committee, apparently at Jared Kushner’s urging.

The Kushner family’s vast wealth – according to Forbes magazine it exceeds $1.8-billion (U.S.) – has opened several doors for Jared, including acceptance to one of the world’s most prestigious universities.

According to The Price of Admission, a 2006 book by Harvard alumnus Daniel Golden, the younger Kushner’s admission to the famous Ivy League university was less a function of his academic achievement than his father’s bank account.

Writing last November for ProPublica, the investigative website that employs him as a senior editor, Mr. Golden cheekily thanked Mr. Kushner for reviving interest in his book, which exposed the “grubby secret” that American plutocrats routinely buy admission to elite colleges for their offspring.

The criminal prosecution against Charles Kushner helped fill in the picture.

“While looking into Kushner’s taxes, though, federal authorities had subpoenaed records of his charitable giving. I learned that in 1998, when Jared was attending The Frisch School and starting to look at colleges, his father had pledged $2.5-million to Harvard, to be paid in annual instalments of $250,000,” Mr. Golden wrote. “Charles Kushner also visited Neil Rudenstine, then-Harvard president, and discussed funding a scholarship program for low- and middle-income students.”

After his time at Harvard, Jared Kushner moved on to an MBA and law degree at New York University, his father’s alma mater and an institution that happens to lease office space from the Kushner Companies.

In February, ProPublica published a scoop concerning his pledge to divest himself from a raft of family owned assets: it hasn’t happened.

This past week, correspondent Alec MacGillis published the results of an investigation into Mr. Kushner’s residential properties.

It uncovered decrepit rental units, humiliation of late payers, multiple lawsuits against former tenants even years after they had moved out – behaviour that has prompted accusations he is essentially a slumlord.

Mr. Kushner has also shown little hesitation to use the power of the pen to achieve his ends.

When he was owner and publisher of the New York Observer (he ceded ownership of the paper to his brother-in-law after the Nov. 9 election), the paper went after Trump foes such as New York Attorney-General Eric Schneiderman, who has led an investigation into Trump University (the President settled a class-action fraud lawsuit brought by former students for $25-million two days before his inauguration).

When Mr. Kushner suggested an investigation of Richard Mack, a fellow real-estate developer, and it yielded less than hard-hitting results, he demanded it be assigned to another reporter, according to former editor Elizabeth Spiers .

When the second reporter found nothing, he asked that another journalist outside the newsroom look into it.

When Ms. Spiers resigned a few months later, Mr. Kushner is said to have brought the story up with her successor.

In the White House, Mr. Kushner has become an influential – some might say central – player.

Among other things, he appears to be Canada’s main interlocutor in the White House.

When Mr. Trump began making noises about cancelling the North American free-trade agreement, someone from Mr. Kushner’s team reached out to Canadian officials with the suggestion it would be worth their time to call the President to persuade him otherwise.

Such is Mr. Kushner’s importance to Mr. Trump that when the latter met with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu last week, Mr. Kushner was asked to stay in the room after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and national security adviser H.R. McMaster were shown out.

It has also recently emerged that Mr. Kushner argued for the dismissal of the FBI’s Mr. Comey, whose firing on May 9 caused a considerable political ruckus.

It’s around that time the first reports surfaced that Mr. Kushner was a person of interest in the probe involving the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

One of the Trump White House’s defining characteristics is the vicious infighting among factions led by Mr. Kushner, chief of staff Reince Priebus and strategist Steve Bannon.

Indeed, it was an unidentified Bannon associate who was quoted last April in an Axios Media newsletter saying of Mr. Kushner: “I see some bad press in his future.” It was a response to rumours of Mr. Bannon’s fall into disfavour and impending departure. Similar talk has intermittently hounded Mr. Priebus, an establishment Republican. Both are still there.

Now a man sometimes described as “the princeling“ is having his turn on the hot seat.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/wo ... e35138994/

From a few days ago ~ just let this sink in for a few minutes ~ ~ Sooz

TPM EDITOR'S BLOG
The Trump/Russia Story Just Got A Lot Darker
By Josh Marshall Published May 26, 2017 8:54 pm

For the last few hours I was writing [another] post and then on the phone about something not news related. Then I went online and saw this stunning piece from the Post about Jared Kushner. It has frankly taken me a while to absorb what it means and I’m still trying to.

Put simply, in secret meetings in December, Jared Kushner proposed to Russian Ambassador Sergei Kislyak setting up a “back channel” so the Trump team could communicate secretly and securely with Moscow. But this use of the phrase “back channel” does a serious disservice to back channels. A back channel is secret and unofficial communication through trust intermediaries that goes around the national security and diplomatic bureaucracy and provides some plausible deniability. Kushner proposed using the Russian government’s own secure communication facilities, presumably housed in Russian diplomatic facilities in Washington and New York, to communicate with Moscow behind the back of the US government, state, intelligence apparatus, military, etc.

Why exactly would you want to do that?

Here are key passages from the Post.


This is truly extraordinary. As the Post notes, even Kislyak seems to have found it shocking, not least because under normal or even abnormal circumstances the Russians (or any other government) would never let the US government see or have any contact with these facilities and hardware.

Frankly, I’m still forming my opinions about what this means. But it makes all the most ominous reads about what is at the heart of Trump/Russia story considerably more plausible. What exactly did the Trump team need so urgently to discuss with the Russian government? Why the need for such absolute security? After all the transition would be the US government in little more than a month.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-trumprussia-story-just-got-a-lot-darker

One would have to ask why Kislyak would even comment about this at all. This is not a guy who just "lets things slip" or makes off the cuff comments. I'm suspicious of his motives for making this revelation... unless Kushner missed a blackmail payment.

A distraction to get the Yanks looking in the wrong direction?

Which in turn only adds more smoke and confusion. It could well be accurate information - but his intent throws a cloud over it.

Man these guys are good.

Too good for the pols but maybe not for the acronym agencies.

Trump Personal Lawyer Becomes 'A Focus' of Congressional Investigations Into Trump Campaign and Russia
Michael Cohen Says He Has 'Declined the Invitation' to Provide Information

President Donald Trump's longtime personal attorney Michael Cohen has become "a focus" of both the House and Senate investigations into the Trump campaign and Russia, according to ABC News.

"Cohen confirmed to ABC News that House and Senate investigators have asked him 'to provide information and testimony' about any contacts he had with people connected to the Russian government, but he said he has turned down the invitation," ABC News notes.



MSNBC confirms:

Video at site

In 2011 ABC News reported "Cohen, 44, is known around the office -- and around New York -- as Trump's 'pit bull.'"



Here's Cohen introducing then-candidate Trump last year:

Another video

http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.co ... and_russia

The DiC is "gaining weight" and "feeling glum"??? ~ ~ if he multiplies that by a gazillion, he might be closer to recognizing how we-the-people are feeling ~ my advice to him: SUCK IT UP, BUTTERCUP! ~ Sooz

Russia Probe Is Getting to Trump: 'I See Him Emotionally Withdrawing. He's gained Weight. He Doesn’t Have Anybody Whom He Trusts'
"A pretty glum mood" at the White House.
By Elizabeth Preza / Raw Story / May 31, 2017, 5:58 AM PDT

Donald Trump is “emotionally withdrawing” and gaining weight as the FBI investigation into possible collusion between his campaign and the Russian government creeps closer to the Oval Office.

As he returns from his mercurial trip abroad, the president is forced to deal with the fallout from news that members of his inner circle, including son-in-law and “Secretary of Everything” Jared Kushner is a person of interest in the FBI probe.

CNN’s Gloria Borger reports the president was already “in a pretty glum mood” when he set out for a multi-day blitz through Europe and the Middle East. But now he faces even more legal woes after reports revealed Kushner tried to establish a backchannel line of communication between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin. He’s even brought on his longtime personal attorney, Marc Kasowitz, who will “supervise” the president’ legal team.

One source told Borger Trump’s major misstep was firing former FBI Director James Comey, which ultimately resulted int he appointment of special counsel Robert Mueller.

“Allowing a special counsel to happen was idiocy,” a Trump ally told Borger. “Special counsels never end well.”

Commenting on the White House’s less-than-strategic handling of all matters Russia, another ally remarked, “These guys don’t play chess. They play checkers.”

The culmination of distracting and damaging scandals at the White House have caused the president to withdraw from others, a source told CNN.

“He now lives within himself, which is a dangerous place for Donald Trump to be,” a confidante said. ”I see him emotionally withdrawing. He’s gained weight. He doesn’t have anybody whom he trusts.”

And as the president receives conflicting advice from aides and officials, there’s concern over whether the president will even listen to the information. “No one is giving him the landscape—this is how it works, this is what you should do or not do,” a friend told Borger. “And no one has enough control—or security—to do that.”

Instead, the president hopes for a magic bullet to quell the Russia scandal.

“He’s sitting there saying, like he does with everything, ‘You guys work for me. Fix this,’” a source said.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/russia-investigations-are-making-trump-gain-weight-and-withdraw-emotionally-report

The rest of that quote should have been: "...because I don't know how to do anything".

That's the way he's always run his businesses - I'm sure he thought he could do the same thing as POTUS

Rather gives the lie to the rightie theory that a nation should be run like a business, eh?

Today's winning exchange!!! ~

Sooz

This is a good companion read to post #135 above ~ Cohen and the DiC work well together since both are totally amoral ~ but for me, the 2 most alarming comments below are "He is a much, much more significant player." and "Cohen is a much bigger deal in this whole story than I think is broadly realized." ~ ~ there are "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

TPM EDITOR'S BLOG
Investigators Are Right To Be Looking at Michael Cohen
By Josh Marshall Published May 30, 2017 3:11 pm

This morning we heard news that investigative committees in the House and Senate have made broad document requests to Michael Cohen, longtime Trump Organization lawyer and Trump operative. These are similar or the same as those which have been issued to others often mentioned in the Russia probe. But Cohen declined the requests. (He can do that at this point since they are requests, not subpoenas.) I’ve done a lot of research and reporting on Cohen and plan to have our expanding team do quite a lot more.

Let me share a few thoughts.

This is a very bad sign for Donald Trump and Michael Cohen. In simple terms, whatever happened during the 2016 campaign, if I wanted to understand Donald Trump’s ties to Russia, the countries of the former Soviet Union and money from those countries and emigres from those countries, there’s no single person I’d want to look at more closely than Michael Cohen.

This may all sound very odd since for those who got to know Cohen during the campaign he comes off as nothing more than Trump’s bully lawyer who makes legal threats and mouths off on TV. He is a much, much more significant player.

Cohen is referred to as Trump’s personal lawyer. Not likely. President Trump has other lawyers who sue people on his behalf, defend him in lawsuits and criminal matters. From everything I’ve been able to tell, Cohen fills a business role for Trump as well as being his public threatener. Cohen has multiple personal and business relationships with people from Russia, Ukraine and emigres from those countries. He is a major real estate player in his own right, as well as working on numerous deals within the Trump Organization. Just back in 2015 Cohen bought a $58 million apartment building on New York’s Upper East Side. $58 million. That’s a lot of money. He appears to have made his original money in the New York City taxi business and remains heavily involved in it. That is a rough and unlovely business. He also has or had businesses in Ukraine. There was also the casino boat business he launched with other Russian/Ukrainian emigres.

Here’s one look at Cohen’s background in the Trump world which I wrote on March 1. More recently Cohen was the conduit that Felix Sater and that Ukrainian parliamentarian chose for their peace plan to settle matters between Russia and Ukraine and end sanctions. Cohen was supposed to deliver the paper dossier to Michael Flynn. He said he did deliver it to Flynn. Then he denied delivering it to him. What stuff gets hand delivered these days in paper copies? This was shortly before Flynn was fired. Cohen was also reportedly in touch with the same Ukrainian parliamentarian discussing peace overtures and sanctions relief during the campaign, going back to the first half of 2016. Again, that’s very interesting and something that seems considerably more interesting today than it did a few months ago when we first learned about it.

How did Cohen first come to Donald Trump’s attention and join the Trump Organization just over a decade ago? That’s another interesting story. It was apparently his ability to serve as a conduit for money emigres from the former Soviet Union were using to buy apartment units at Trump branded luxury developments. That was I believe what brought Cohen into the Organization.

Cohen is a much bigger deal in this whole story than I think is broadly realized. I’m not surprised the investigative committees are interested in him. Federal investigators are too.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/investigators-are-right-to-be-looking-at-michael-cohen

First on CNN: Sources: Congress investigating another possible Sessions-Kislyak meeting

By Jim Sciutto, Jamie Gangel, Shimon Prokupecz and Marshall Cohen, CNN

Updated 8:00 PM ET, Wed May 31, 2017

Washington (CNN)Congressional investigators are examining whether Attorney General Jeff Sessions had an additional private meeting with Russia's ambassador during the presidential campaign, according to Republican and Democratic Hill sources and intelligence officials briefed on the investigation.

Investigators on the Hill are requesting additional information, including schedules from Sessions, a source with knowledge tells CNN. They are focusing on whether such a meeting took place April 27, 2016, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC, where then-candidate Donald Trump was delivering his first major foreign policy address. Prior to the speech, then-Sen. Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attended a small VIP reception with organizers, diplomats and others.

In addition to congressional investigators, the FBI is seeking to determine the extent of interactions the Trump campaign team may have had with Russia's ambassador during the event as part of its broader counterintelligence investigation of Russian interference in the election. The FBI is looking into whether there was an additional private meeting at the Mayflower the same day, sources said. Neither Hill nor FBI investigators have yet concluded whether a private meeting took place -- and acknowledge that it is possible any additional meeting was incidental.

"The Department of Justice appointed special counsel to assume responsibility for this matter," Department of Justice spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement to CNN. "We will allow him to do his job. It is unfortunate that anonymous sources whose credibility will never face public scrutiny are continuously trying to hinder that process by peddling false stories to the mainstream media. The facts haven't changed; the then-Senator did not have any private or side conversations with any Russian officials at the Mayflower Hotel."

Sessions has previously failed to disclose meetings with Russian officials. During his confirmation hearing on January 10, Sessions testified that he "did not have any communications with the Russians" during the campaign. He also said in a written statement submitted to the Senate judiciary committee that he was not in contact with anyone linked to the Russian government during the election.

Those answers became problematic for Sessions when reports emerged in March that he did have two meetings with Kislyak during the campaign -- one at the Republican National Convention in July and one in his Senate office in September. Sessions conceded that the meetings happened but insisted they were part of his Senate duties and had nothing to do with the campaign. Nonetheless, Sessions was forced to recuse himself from the Russia investigation.

Asked at a news conference on March 2 whether there were any other meetings with Russians besides those two, Sessions told reporters, "I don't believe so -- you know, we meet a lot of people -- I don't believe so."

Later that week, when Sessions updated his sworn testimony to the Senate judiciary committee, he acknowledged the two meetings with Kislyak but did not mention any encounter at the Mayflower Hotel.

"I do not recall any discussions with the Russian ambassador, or any other representative of the Russian government, regarding the political campaign on these occasions or any other occasion," Sessions wrote.

CNN reported last week that Sessions didn't list the two Kislyak meetings that he disclosed in March on the security forms he submitted this year. Flores said the FBI employee who helped Sessions fill out the forms instructed him to exclude foreign meetings that he considered to be part of his official Senate duties.

Russia was already trying to help Trump before the Mayflower Hotel speech, according to a US intelligence community assessment released in January. The report concluded that by March 2016, Kremlin-backed news outlets began supporting Trump and Russian military intelligence had kicked off its election-related cyber operations.

One day before the speech, Trump won commanding primary victories in five Northeast states, cementing his front-runner status and putting him on a track to secure the bitterly contested Republican nomination.

In the speech, Trump stressed his "America first" message and talked about the fight against terrorism. He offered an olive branch to the Kremlin in line with his comments throughout the campaign -- but out of step with much of the US foreign policy establishment and all of his fellow presidential hopefuls.

"We desire to live peacefully and in friendship with Russia and China," Trump said in his remarks. "We have serious differences with these two nations, and must regard them with open eyes. But we are not bound to be adversaries. We should seek common ground based on shared interests. Russia, for instance, has also seen the horror of Islamic terrorism. I believe an easing of tensions and improved relations with Russia -- from a position of strength -- is possible."

Kislyak listened to the speech from the front row.

CNN's Dan Merica contributed to this story.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/31/politics/congress-investigating-jeff-sessions-russian-ambassador-meeting/index.html

Includes Mother Jones updated timeline of the Trump-Russia relationship dating back to the 80's

Trump Is Already Guilty of Aiding Putin's Attack on America

The Trump-Russia scandal is the subject of multiple investigations that may or may not unearth new revelations, but this much is already certain: Donald Trump is guilty.

We don't need additional information about the Russian covert scheme to undermine the 2016 campaign, or about the curious interactions between Team Trump and Russia, or about Trump pressuring and then firing FBI Director James Comey, to reach the judgment that the president of the United States engaged in wrongdoing.

From the start, Trump and his crew have claimed they had nothing to do with the hack-and-leak operation mounted by Russian intelligence to help Trump nab the presidency. They have dismissed the matter as fake news, and they have insisted there is no issue because there has been no proof that the Trump campaign conspired with Russia. In May, for instance, Trump proclaimed, "Believe me, there's no collusion." Nothing to see; move along.

Explicit collusion may yet be proved by the FBI investigation overseen by special counsel Robert Mueller or by other ongoing probes. But even if it is not, a harsh verdict can be pronounced: Trump actively and enthusiastically aided and abetted Russian President Vladimir Putin's plot against America. This is the scandal. It already exists—in plain sight.

Did Team Trump conspire with the Kremlin? Here's a timeline of everything we now know about the attack on the 2016 election.
As soon as the news broke a year ago that the Russians had penetrated the Democratic National Committee's computer systems, Trump launched a campaign of denial and distraction. For months, he refused to acknowledge the Kremlin's role. He questioned expert and government findings that pinned the blame on Moscow. He refused to condemn Putin. Far from treating these acts of information warfare seriously, he attempted to politicize and delegitimize the evidence. Meanwhile, he and his supporters encouraged more Russian hacking. All told, Trump provided cover for a foreign government's attempt to undermine American democracy. Through a propaganda campaign of his own, he helped Russia get away with it. As James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, testified to Congress this spring, Trump "helps the Russians by obfuscating who was actually responsible."

On June 15, 2016, the day after the Washington Post reported that the DNC had been hacked and that cybersecurity experts had identified two groups linked to the Russian government as the perps, Trump's campaign issued a statement blaming the victim: "We believe it was the DNC that did the 'hacking' as a way to distract from the many issues facing their deeply flawed candidate and failed party leader." The intent was obvious: to impede somber consideration of the Russian intervention, to have voters and reporters see it as just another silly political hullabaloo.

In the following weeks, Trump continued to claim the Russia story was fiction. After WikiLeaks dumped nearly 20,000 DNC emails—a move that nearly blew up the Democratic convention—Trump tweeted, "The new joke in town is that Russia leaked the disastrous DNC e-mails, which should never have been written (stupid), because Putin likes me." Two days later, he proclaimed at a news conference, "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press." Trump supporters including Rep. Mike Pompeo, who would become Trump's CIA director, and Roger Stone, the longtime political dirty trickster, cheered on WikiLeaks.

What could be better for Putin? The US government had called him out—yet Trump was discrediting this conclusion.

By midsummer, numerous cyber experts had bolstered the conclusion that Russia was behind the hacks. And President Barack Obama echoed those findings. So anyone paying attention to the facts—say, a presidential candidate and his advisers—would have been aware of this fundamental point. Indeed, in August, during his first intelligence briefing as the Republican presidential nominee, Trump was reportedly told that there were direct links between the hacks and the Russian government.

Still, he didn't change his tune. During a September 8 interview with RT, the Kremlin-controlled broadcaster that has been accused of disseminating fake news and propaganda, Trump discounted the Russian connection: "I think maybe the Democrats are putting that out. Who knows, but I think it's pretty unlikely." (Yes, he did this on RT.) He repeated a similar line at the first presidential debate at the end of that month, with his famous reference to how the DNC hacker "could be somebody sitting on their bed that weighs 400 pounds, okay?"

Private experts and US intelligence had already determined that Russia had pulled off this caper. Trump had been told this. Yet he continued to deny Russia's culpability, actively protecting Moscow.

Many Republicans followed his lead. Trump's stance—treating a widely shared conclusion as controversial speculation—essentially foreclosed a vigorous and bipartisan response to the Moscow intervention. It is hard to imagine how this did not embolden Russian intelligence and reinforce Putin's belief that he had backed the right horse.

On October 7, the Department of Homeland Security and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence blew the whistle on Moscow, issuing a statement that the DNC hack and related cyberattacks had been authorized by "Russia's senior-most officials." Yet Trump remained on the side of the enemy. That same day, the now notorious grab-them-by-the-pussy video surfaced—and less than an hour after that story broke, WikiLeaks began releasing thousands of stolen emails from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign's chairman. Trump's response, at the second presidential debate: "I notice, anytime anything wrong happens, they like to say 'the Russians.' Well, [Hillary Clinton] doesn't know if it's the Russians doing the hacking. Maybe there is no hacking." The next day at a campaign rally, Trump, citing some of the Podesta emails, exclaimed, "I love WikiLeaks!"

Trump continued calling the Russia story a hoax, asserting that the hacks might have been waged by China or others. And he still showed no signs of confronting Putin.

What could be better for Putin? The US government had called him out, yet the GOP presidential candidate was discrediting this conclusion. Trump made it tougher for Obama and the White House to denounce Putin publicly—to do so, they feared, would give Trump cause to argue they were trying to rig the election against him.

At the final debate, Clinton accurately summed up Trump's position: "It's pretty clear you won't admit that the Russians have engaged in cyberattacks against the United States of America, that you encouraged espionage against our people." Trump replied, "Our country has no idea" who pulled off the hacks.

After the election, he maintained this stance. "It's time for the country to move on," he said in December. Two weeks later, after the US intelligence establishment released a report concluding Putin had implemented this covert op to install Trump in the White House, the president-elect compared the intelligence community to Nazi Germany. Though he did at one point concede Russia was the culprit, Trump continued calling the Russia story a hoax whipped up by Democrats and eventually reverted to form, asserting that the hacks might have been waged by China or others. And he still showed no signs of confronting Putin. At the Russian leader's request, he jovially hosted the Russian foreign minister and ambassador in the Oval Office—and then disclosed top-secret information to them. Moreover, he did this the day after brazenly ousting Comey, who was overseeing the bureau's probe of Moscow's meddling and links between Trump associates and Russia.

It's been common for political observers to say the Trump-Russia controversy has generated a great deal of smoke, but the amount of fire is yet to be determined. It's true that the various links tying Trump and his associates to Russia have yet to be fully explained. Many questions remain: Was there any specific coordination? If not, did the Trump camp privately signal to Moscow that Russia would get a better deal if Trump were elected? That alone would have provided encouragement for Putin to attack.

This country needs a thorough and public investigation to sort out how the Russian operation worked, how US intelligence and the Obama administration responded, and how Trump and his associates interacted with Russia and WikiLeaks. But whatever happened out of public view, the existing record is already conclusively shameful. Trump and his crew were active enablers of Putin's operation to subvert an American election. That is fire, not smoke. That is scandal enough.

See our entire updated Trump-Russia timeline dating back to the 1980s.

http://m.motherjones.com/politics/2017/ ... dal-guilty

Numerous live links in original article (note the captions to the pics are also links)

I'm just gonna leave this here ~ ~ Sooz

TPM EDITOR'S BLOG
Sorry. On Kushner, There’s No Innocent Explanation
By Josh Marshall Published May 31, 2017 9:43 am

The title of this post is, I confess, rather dramatic and declarative. I’ve written elsewhere about possible ‘innocent explanations’ of the Trump/Russia story, particularly Donald Trump’s role in it. I will leave that all-encompassing question aside for the moment. Here I’m talking about Jared Kushner’s attempt to set up a secure line of communication to Moscow, as well as meeting with the head of that government-backed Russian bank.

In commentary on these revelations we’re hearing a variety of possible explanations. The first was that this was an attempt to hold confidential discussions over Syria. As we’ve discussed, that’s very hard to believe. There are plenty of ways to have those conversations, plenty of ways to get detailed briefings on whats happening in country. None of them involve or require what Kushner was trying to do.

In the last 48 hours, we’ve increasingly heard it suggested that the issue was Kushner’s naïveté or inexperience in government. Perhaps he simply didn’t realize that this would be a problem. Let’s call this the ‘naive Jared’ theory. Like the Syria back channel it simply does not add up. I would say it’s absurd on its face. But if you don’t buy that, remember that Mike Flynn was there too when this was discussed. Flynn was a retired three star general who had spent his entire adult life in service and risen to near the very pinnacle of the US military. We may find out many things about Michael Flynn. But not one of them will be that he lacked the most basic understanding of how the US government or security apparatus worked. So the naïveté argument is ruled out.

There’s one other argument that gets tossed around a lot now and seems widely believed even though I think there’s little to no basis for it. Even if it’s paranoid or weird or suspicious it’s now treated as a given that the Trump Team was wary of being monitored by the Obama administration. But is there really any evidence of that? Not really. If anything, the Obama team – operating largely at the then-President’s direction – seemed fairly accommodating. If you remember incidents like the call to the President of Taiwan, the Trump team’s attitude toward the outgoing Obama administration seemed most characterized by indifference. They ignored established channels but they didn’t try to hide anything. In any case, why would they even care? The Obama administration would be gone within a month. Most things could wait. If they couldn’t wait, again, who cares? They were leaving. There’s really nothing they could do. Worried about holdovers? They can be fired on day one. Just have replacements ready. Or don’t. It just didn’t matter and evidence at the time showed little sign they cared.

The idea that the Trumpers were afraid of being surveilled by the Obama team is something we’ve now projected back onto the transition because of things that happened months later – specifically, President Trump’s early March claim that Obama had “wire-tapped” him in 2016.

The idea that Kushner and Flynn would use Russian secure communications facilities to set up a secure channel to Moscow is so inexplicable and beyond the pale that it almost beggars the imagination. Critically, this key part of the story has not been disputed by the White House. The only possible explanation of this effort is that Flynn and Kushner (perhaps others, but at least them) wanted to discuss topics that would not only be hidden from Obama administration political appointees but from everyone in the US government – people who would continue to make up the government long after the Obama team was gone.

There’s simply no innocent explanation for that. Not naivete, no fear of Obama snooping, not plausible deniability. The only explanation for that level of secrecy and security, that level of collaboration with an adversary foreign power is that they were doing something wrong, something that had to stay secret. What it was I don’t know. It wasn’t innocent.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/sorry-on-kushner-theres-no-innocent-explanation

I don't think Flynn is going to skate on any of this. There are a lot of Cold Warriors in America's government, and I don't think they're going to be in any mood to forgive him. He's been fully compromised by Putin (and yes - I'll personalize this one and blame Putin personally, instead of making a blanket accusation against the Russian people) and the old Cold Warriors are going to make him pay.

Ya think?
I'm not so sure. Even McCain is clamming up.

Prosecutors usually do before they start filing charges. McCain is being prudent to protect the integrity of the investigation.

You have a lot more faith in McCain than I do.

I don't think it's faith - I have no faith in any Republican - I think it's more like Republicans sharpening their knives.

I think it's safe to say that Trump hasn't many friends on either side of the aisle. But the Republicans will keep him around as long as he's useful to them and not a moment longer.