I'm guessing we all maintain our beliefs that taking on the intelligence community is an astoundingly stupid idea ~ then again, down-is-up/day-is-night/hot-is-cold in the DiC's reality ~ ~ Sooz

"In Some Respects, We're A Nation In Crisis Right Now", Former CIA Director Says
July 21, 20179:54 PM ET / Carrie Johnson

Leaving federal government service after decades can be, well, liberating.

Just ask James Clapper, the former director of national intelligence, and John Brennan, the former leader of the Central Intelligence Agency. They unloaded on President Trump and the "baffling" way he has embraced Russia while criticizing his own intelligence apparatus during a session at the Aspen Security Forum on Friday in Colorado.

Asked whether the president is taking the Russia threat seriously, Clapper replied: "Well, it's hard to tell. Sometimes I think he's about making Russia great again."

That remark, playing off Trump's "Make America Great Again" campaign slogan, drew laughter and gasps from an audience of current and former government officials and the business executives who work with them. But underlying the humor was a tone of deep concern about the morale of people responsible for protecting the nation's security — and dismay about where the country may be headed.

"In some respects, we're a nation in crisis right now," Brennan said.

Then, for the next hour, they counted the ways.

The veteran spies expressed surprise that Trump campaign officials including then-chairman Paul Manafort, son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner would take a meeting in New York last year with a Russian lawyer who promised "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

"They should have known better," Brennan said. "If they didn't, they shouldn't have been in those positions. ... Seems as if some folks swallowed the bait."

Both men withheld judgment on why Kushner had repeatedly revised a government form seeking information about his foreign contacts. But, Clapper said, if that were done by an ordinary federal employee, he would at minimum suspend the person's security clearance, "take a pause" and investigate the reasons the material had been omitted.

Clapper and Brennan said they were particularly distressed by a series of Trump tweets attacking the U.S. intelligence community, including one where the president likened them to Nazis. "Well, I was kind of hopeful that after he got rid of the two chief Nazis — John and myself — things would improve," Clapper said.

They didn't. In recent weeks, the president has continued to cast doubt on a unanimous U.S. intelligence assessment that Russia interfered in the presidential election and has called the special counsel investigation "a witch hunt."

Compare that with the warm greeting the president offered Russian President Vladimir Putin, "a great honor to meet you," at their recent meeting.

Brennan said that was "a very, very bad negotiating tactic" for a man whose name appears on the front of a book called The Art of the Deal.

"This is Mr. Putin, who assaulted one of the foundational pillars of our democracy — our election system — invaded Ukraine, annexed Crimea, that has suppressed or repressed political opponents in Russia and caused the deaths of many of them," Brennan said.

Moderator Wolf Blitzer of CNN pointed out that prominent House Democrats such as Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi have been wondering, "What do the Russians have on Trump?"

Clapper replied, "Well, hopefully special counsel [Robert] Mueller will get to the bottom of that."

"If there's nothing to hide," Brennan said, "they should cooperate fully in an accelerated fashion."

They agreed Mueller, a former FBI director who worked under presidents from both political parties, was "absolutely" the right man for the job. And, Brennan said, if the president carries out a threat to fire Mueller, members of Congress need to stand up and take action.

Despite the gloomy portrait the two old hands painted, they said the intelligence community would continue to speak the truth, even if the White House doesn't want to hear it.

"The national security apparatus is bigger than one person," Clapper said, "even the president."

http://www.npr.org/2017/07/21/538661083/-in-some-respects-were-a-nation-in-crisis-right-now-former-cia-director-says

The DiC is a vindictive beast with absolutely ZERO self-control ~ Twitter is a public platform and the DiC frequently boasts how many millions of followers he has [even tho that number should be reduced by the proven millions of bots] ~ and while I know Adam Schiff has "other things" on his mind, I'd love to see him sue the DiC for defamation of character ~ ~ a few "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

Trump calls House intel's top Democrat 'sleazy'
By David Wright, CNN / Updated 11:37 AM ET, Mon July 24, 2017

[Video accessible via the end link.]

(CNN) President Donald Trump traded insults with the House intelligence committee's top Democrat, Rep. Adam Schiff, in a sharp exchange on Twitter Monday morning -- calling the California congressman "sleazy," while Schiff hit back over Trump's TV habits.

Just after 9 a.m. ET Monday, the President tweeted, "Sleazy Adam Schiff, the totally biased Congressman looking into "Russia," spends all of his time on television pushing the Dem loss excuse!"

About 10 minutes earlier, Fox News' "Fox & Friends" had played a brief clip of Schiff on TV over the weekend, previewing his questions for Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner, who was set to speak to House and Senate investigators Monday.


Schiff's role on the House intelligence committee is a high-profile position that has granted him a leading role in Congress' efforts to investigate Russian interference in the 2016 election and any potential collusion by the Trump campaign.

And Schiff -- who regularly appears on television including CNN to provide updates on his committee's investigation, as well as criticize the Trump administration -- leaned into the latest showdown with Trump.

"With respect Mr. President, the problem is how often you watch TV, and that your comments and actions are beneath the dignity of the office," Schiff tweeted back.


Schiff was needling Trump about his television watching habits -- a subject Trump has bristled at in the past. In early July, Trump tweeted that he has "very little time for watching TV," seemingly in response to a New York Times article, published a day earlier, that discussed Trump's penchant for TV time.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/07/24/politics/trump-schiff-tweets-sleazy-tv/index.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_topstories+%28RSS%3A+CNN+-+Top+Stories%29

Serendipity strikes! ~ I'm sorry to take this thread clearly "off topic", but I read this confirmation after making my "... proven millions of bots ..." comment in the above post ~ ~ Sooz

Trump Trauma
Trump Is Obsessed With His Twitter Following—Too Bad Most of His Followers Are Fake
Ever obsessed with popularity, the president loves to brag about his "millions of followers."
By Celisa Calacal / AlterNet / July 24, 2017, 8:59 AM GMT

President Donald Trump loves to brag about his Twitter following. As more revelations brewed around the Trump campaign’s possible involvement with Russia, Trump tweeted on June 17 about his overall social media following: 100 million strong, or so he claims, and Twitter of course being his favorite method of communication.

A quick glance at Trump’s actual number of Twitter followers tells a different story, however; while president brags of about 34 million followers, the truth is far different. According to an analysis by Socialbakers in June for CNN Tech, one analytics tool estimates that 11.6 million of Trump's 32 million Twitter followers are either dormant or accounts run by bots.

"The analysis run by Twitter Audit, which estimates how many of an account’s following is made up of real people, gave Trump a 40 percent audit score and found that about 20 million of his followers are fake. Status People, another site that rates the authenticity of Twitter followers, found that 5 percent of Trump’s followers are fake and another 91 percent are inactive.

That Trump seemingly has more fake followers than real ones can be attributed to the existence of bots, an umbrella term referring to accounts with no profile picture and no tweets. A quick scroll through the most recent followers on the @realDonaldTrump account shows a number of accounts with Twitter’s default profile picture and no tweets, that seemed to have joined Twitter very recently.

Amassing bot followers is fairly easy. One only has to pay a certain amount of money, and voila, one has an instant bump in following count. A New York Times article by Nick Bilton describes the social media bot industry as a “giant pyramid scheme” often used by big-name brands, A-list celebrities and regular people seeking a “social media ego boost.”

Of course, Trump is not the only famous figure to have fake followers or bots. Politicians like Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama also have bots following their verified Twitter accounts. The rub is that Trump’s account seems to have a larger number of bots and presumably fake accounts than any other politicians on Twitter—in comparison, Barack Obama received a 90 percent audit score from Twitter Audit, Hillary Clinton was given a 52 percent audit score and Sen. Bernie Sanders garnered an 89 percent score.

According to the Washington Post, academic research in 2016 found that bots supporting Trump “massively outperformed the bots supporting Clinton” by a 5 to 1 margin days before Election Day. The research paper found that 81.9 percent of “highly automated” accounts carried some form of pro-Trump messaging.

The fact that so many of Trump’s followers are ghost accounts made solely to amplify the president’s message should undermine his own unabashed boastfulness that he’s speaking to 100 million people each time he goes on one of his uncensored and often deleterious tweetstorms. But if the president has one quality that is painfully obvious, it is his penchant for attention and his constant hunger for validation; it’s his whole brand. Those millions of Twitter followers and hundreds of thousands of likes and retweets serve as Trump’s affirmation, a co-sign from the public that he is indeed popular and powerful. After all, Trump has built his entire career, including his rise to the presidency, on popularity and a brazen wielding of power whenever it suits him.

If Trump is aware of the bots and fake accounts he has spawned, he’s done a fairly good job at hiding it. Of course, even if Trump were aware of his pooling of bots, he would decry these reports with his favorite phrase: "fake news." For a man whose ego is so fragile that he would even fabricate his own inauguration audience numbers, Trump needs those tens of millions of followers so much that he’ll even throw out a number like 100 million just to assert his dominance without even a simple fact check.

http://www.alternet.org/trump-trauma/trump-obsessed-his-twitter-following-too-bad-most-those-followers-are-fake

I can't testify to the accuracy of this one but, if true, somebody is in for a serious bruising ...

The FBI’s Entire Senior Staff Is Set To Testify Against Trump For Obstructing Justice

Acting Director Andrew McCabe of the FBI just briefed ten senior members of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, informing them that they’re all prospective witnesses against President Trump in the investigation into whether or not the President obstructed justice.

Fired FBI Director James Comey took copious notes but an expose by VOX.com reveals it isn’t just a case of “he said-he said” based on Comey’s memos – in which nobody would trust Trump over Comey anyhow – but that another high ranking FBI official personally overheard a key phone call between the two men.

Two senior federal law enforcement officials explained that all of the FBI’s brass who were involved took detailed notes and carefully documented every discussion. Vox reports:



FBI General Counsel James Baker is known to have taken particularly detailed notes in his discussions with Comey and with others in the agency. Ironically, Trump’s own improper request that the FBI make a statement clearing his name in advance is what drew Baker deeper into the orbit of the case, as he argued for generally sticking to the agency’s guidelines of remaining silent about who is and is not being investigated.

However, the news that Comey’s former Chief of Staff Jim Rybicki can give direct testimony against Trump based on his personal witness to a phone conversation between the two men is likely to be explosive.

None of this would be possible without Trump’s disorganized style of management, which created the availability of a key corroborating eye witness to (un)Presidential tampering in the Russia investigation when he placed a surprise call to Comey during a meeting with his top aide Rybicki, according to Vox:



Republicans have worked tirelessly to sell the bunk idea that the FBI Director would for some reason keep to himself all of President Trump’s transparent, inappropriate attempts to influence his investigation.

The reality of the situation is that the FBI works as a team; they document conversations and deliberations carefully at all times because that’s how they build many of their cases with testimony and decisions are often made by consensus.

Furthermore, a very credible, recently unearthed legal memo – ordered by the Republicans who ran the Whitewater investigation – says that it’s entirely permissible to file a criminal indictment against a sitting President, and to try, and to convict that President if the facts permit, regardless of impeachment proceedings taking place.

President Trump can’t possibly expect a criminal jury to believe his shoddy word above the FBI’s entire top brass and it’s beginning to look more and more like we will witness exactly that.

http://occupydemocrats.com/2017/08/03/f ... g-justice/

Things aren't going well for Trump. My fear is how his supporters are going to respond to his removal from the presidency. If they respond with the belief that this is a coup, I would say "No... it's a counter-coup."

#179 is true.

Meanwhile, Canadians are watching this slow-motion train wreck as it happens ...

We now know how the Trump presidency will end. Let's hope we survive: Burman
The outlines of the end are becoming more clear, as Robert Mueller’s investigators dig away. Expect things to be vicious.

How will the Donald Trump presidency end? It will end badly, so let me count the ways:

1. America is hurtling towards a constitutional crisis that will rock its institutions to the core.

2. Its president and his business empire will soon be exposed as beholden to Russian oligarchs and mobsters.

3. Trump will try to fire special counsel Robert Mueller to prevent this from becoming known, but Congress will intervene.

4. His only remaining hope will be a 9/11-scale disaster or contrived war that he can exploit.

5. If we are lucky enough to survive all of the above, Trump will resign before he is impeached — but only in exchange for a pardon from his servile vice-president, Mike Pence.

Yes, this scenario is anything but far-fetched.

One lesson we have learned from the slow-motion train wreck of this Trump presidency is that precise predictions are impossible to make. That is true, except for one thing.

We are now getting a much clearer sense of where this high-stakes drama is heading. The details may change but the contours of this epic chapter in American political history are beginning to emerge.

Although it has been another head-spinning week, perhaps the most important disclosure was a Washington Post story (notwithstanding reports that Mueller empanelled a grand jury to probe Russia’s ties to the 2016 campaign). The story suggested how centrally involved Donald Trump has become in the expanding inquiry about his secret connections with Russia.

The story revealed that, contrary to previous public assurances, Trump himself dictated a misleading statement about the nature of a meeting with a Russian lawyer during the campaign.

Mueller, a former FBI head, is examining Russian interference in the 2016 election, including potential obstruction of justice and allegations of cover-up. But much to Trump’s horror, Mueller’s investigation is expanding to include the history of connections between Trump’s controversial business empire and Russian government and business interests.

In this latter category are some of the most corrupt Russian oligarchs and mobsters, involved in widespread money laundering, who rose to prominence after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

On the surface at least, one of the most perplexing questions still unanswered from last November’s shocking election result has been Trump’s persistent refusal to single out Russia or President Vladimir Putin for dramatically interfering in the American presidential election.

This has prompted many people in the U.S. and abroad, not only his critics, to ask the question: “What does Russia have on Trump?”

Increasingly, it appears that the Mueller investigation will help answer that question by examining the close but largely secret relationship between the Trump empire and Russian financial interests.

According to leaks, it has only been in recent days that Trump has realized that this Mueller probe, if not stopped, may even include an examination of his tax returns that he has been so stubborn to keep secret.

A revealing preview of what Mueller is undoubtedly discovering was featured as the extensive cover story of September’s issue of the U.S. magazine New Republic. Written by investigative journalist Craig Unger, the story was titled: “Married to the Mob: What Trump Owes the Russian Mafia.”

Unger was stark in his conclusions: “Whether Trump knew it or not, Russian mobsters and corrupt oligarchs used his properties not only to launder vast sums of money from extortion, drugs, gambling and racketeering, but even as a base of operations for their criminal activities. In the process, they propped up Trump’s business and enabled him to reinvent his image. Without the Russian mafia, it is fair to say, Donald Trump would not be president of the United States.”

More than anyone, Trump knows what Mueller will discover. He knows the legal peril that he and his family are in. He also knows that his presidency is certain to end — in some way — if that story ever becomes public.

We should remember this when we see how Trump acts in the weeks to come. Like a cornered rat, he will fight to protect his interests. In every conceivable way, he will work to stop Mueller’s probe, to challenge Congress if it intervenes, to undermine the press and judiciary if they get in the way and — yes — even to engage in reckless military adventures if he thought that would strengthen his position.

This next stage of this Trump story will no longer be a diverting reality show. It will be the moment when Americans — and the rest of us — will learn if U.S. democracy is strong enough to stop him.

https://www.thestar.com/news/insight/20 ... urman.html

"This next stage of this Trump story will no longer be a diverting reality show. It will be the moment when Americans — and the rest of us — will learn if U.S. democracy is strong enough to stop him."

That's THE burning question I've had since the beginning of Trump's rise and seizure of the presidency. All through Harper's "government", I had the same concerns about the Canadian democratic institutions and it was only as the CONservatives were imploding all by themselves that I realized all the governance institutions really had to do was remain stoic and the right-wing stupidity would take care of the rest all by themselves.

I'm not so sure this would be the case in the US. The government institutions have to withstand "stupid" going mainstream - that's a lot harder to do.

While I had issues with Harper he didn't come close to being another Trump. Not even a "Trump-lite". And that applies to his policies, his personality, and the power that their respective offices yield.

Senate has blocked Trump from making any recess appointments during August break. He's slowly being forced into a corner.

The only difference between Trump and Harper is that Harper had the charisma of a bean sprout. The policies and the nativism were much the same. Harper just let the stupidity flow from his surrogates, like Rob Ford.

The DiC is clearly tightening his own noose ~ ~ "live links" to more/corroborating information in the original ~ Sooz

The Latest Explosive Developments in the Russia Probe Might Have Sealed Trump's Fate
The bipartisan consensus is that the president is in big, big trouble.
By Heather Digby Parton / Salon / August 25, 2017, 7:49 AM GMT

It’s been another wild ride this week with President Trump holding one of his serious teleprompter speeches announcing that he has a secret plan to win in Afghanistan that he can’t tell us anything about, and then turning around to hold a raucous campaign rally in Phoenix reminding the world that he’s really an undisciplined narcissist. More than one pundit observed that Trump is more clever than he seems with his crazed behavior, because as long as he’s giving succor to Nazis and neo-Confederate racists nobody’s talking about the Russia investigation.

That’s giving Trump way too much credit. He is an impulsive person who has shown no sign that he’s that strategic about anything. And even if his frantic efforts this week were attempts at misdirection, it was to no avail. There have been quite a few developments in the Russia story, none of which are good news for the president.

The first big revelation was in the blockbuster New York Times story on Tuesday about Trump’s deteriorating relationship with Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. Trump has been tweeting his disappointment with McConnell for some time, so it was no big secret that he is unhappy with him over the health care vote. But apparently the two men had an angry confrontation over the phone on Aug. 9, in which Trump cursed at the majority leader over his inability or unwillingness to “protect” Trump from being investigated over Russia.

Trump doesn’t seem to understand that the Congress is an equal branch of government, endowed with oversight responsibilities. But if there was ever any chance that congressional Republicans could provide cover it went out the window when Trump fired the FBI director and then reassured the Russian ambassador the next day in an unpublicized meeting in the Oval Office that he’d relieved the “pressure” by doing it. Everything in his behavior since then, including his incessant whining about Jeff Sessions’ recusal from the probe as a personal betrayal, has made it more impossible.

Perhaps we might excuse Trump’s argument with McConnell as a general temper tantrum; maybe he threw in the complaint about Russia as an afterthought. But Politico followed up the Times story with more reports of phone calls with Republican senators in which the president requested that they abandon their plans for Russia-related legislation. He reportedly tried to convince Sen. Bob Corker of Tennessee that the bipartisan bill sanctioning Russia was unconstitutional and damaging to his presidency. Corker didn’t listen and the bill passed with overwhelming bipartisan support, which is not something you see every day.

Trump also called up Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina to complain about the latter’s bill designed to protect special counsel Robert Mueller from a presidential firing. Unsurprisingly, Trump is not a fan of the legislation or of the legislative branch exercising its oversight responsibilities over his administration when it comes to Russia.

As one GOP aide told Politico, “It seems he is just always focused on Russia.”

Meanwhile, there was some intriguing news about the investigation this week. ABC News reported that Christopher Steele, the former MI6 operative who compiled the notorious “dossier” about Trump’s Russian ties has spoken to Mueller and turned over all his sources. Perhaps that shouldn’t be surprising, but Steele had reportedly gone underground for his own protection and was unreachable by investigators.

Another key figure behind that oppo research report on Donald Trump’s ties to Russia reportedly testified for 10 hours before Senate Judiciary Committee investigators. Glenn Simpson is a former reporter who is now a principal in Fusion GPS, the company hired to compile the information. He has supposedly turned over 40,000 documents to the committee. We don’t know what was said, obviously, but on Wednesday the committee chair was quizzed by an astute constituent at a town-hall meeting and told him that if the committee voted to release the testimony and Simpson agreed, it might be made public. Simpson’s attorney released a statement saying they have no objection to making the transcript of the testimony public.

Then CNN reported on an explosive new tie between the Trump campaign and Russian government, right around the same time as the infamous Donald Trump Jr meeting meant to gather dirt on Hillary Clinton.


It is unclear where this request went and CNN reports that Dearborn was “skeptical” of it. But Dearborn was formerly chief of staff to then-Sen. Jeff Sessions, and investigators are said to be interested in whether or not he had anything to do with arranging meetings between his boss and former Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak — the meetings Sessions failed to disclose during his Senate confirmation hearings.

This new email is in addition to reports from earlier this month that yet another Trump campaign official, George Papadopoulos, had tried to arrange meetings between Trump and Russian officials.

One might ask whether meeting with Russian emissaries and leaders is a normal function of presidential campaigns. It’s not. Nobody in that business can think of another instance. In fact, Republican strategist Steve Schmidt — who worked on George W. Bush and John McCain’s presidential bids — had this to say back on Aug. 4 to MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace, also a former GOP strategist who worked on the same campaigns:


All of this is circumstantial. But between Trump’s increasingly manic insistence on discrediting the press, resisting any sanctions or pushback for Russian meddling, and demanding the Congress cease exercising its oversight duties it’s hard to escape the suspicion that he’s getting ever more nervous about something. He must be going against his lawyers’ advice, since he is clearly feeding suspicions of obstruction of justice, which is one of the charges the special counsel is investigating.

Common sense says that normal people who have nothing to hide don’t act this way. Of course, nobody ever said Donald Trump was normal.

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/latest-explosive-developments-russia-probe-might-have-sealed-trumps-fate

good stuff in there. thanks for posting.

“We will get Donald elected”: Emails show Trump ally was working with Russia during campaign
Emails from Trump's inner circle suggest that Moscow was connected to his campaign through a business venture VIDEO

video at site

Felix Sater, a Russian-born real estate broker who worked with President Donald Trump before 2017, sent a series of emails to Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, about a potential hotel in Moscow, The Washington Post reported on Sunday.

On Monday, The New York Times published copies of the emails it had obtained, which reveal that the project in Russia was intricately linked to Trump’s campaign for the presidency.

“I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote in one email to Cohen. “Our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

Sater has been a nebulous figure in the probe on Russia’s election interference. Sater often boasts of his close relationship with Trump, but when the Associated Press asked the president last year about Slater, Trump acted as if he did not know the man.

“Felix Sater, boy, I have to even think about it,” Trump told the AP. “I’m not that familiar with him.”

In a series of conversations with Talking Points Memo, Sater said he tried to orchestrate a deal in Russia all the way up to December 2015, months after Trump announced his campaign for the presidency.

“Once the campaign was really going-going, it was obvious there were going to be no deals internationally,” Sater told TPM. “We were still working on it, doing something with it, November-December.”

The emails obtained by the Times demonstrated an enthusiastic Sater who felt that this deal could help boost Trump’s campaign.

“Michael, we can own this story,” Sate wrote in an email. “Donald doesn’t state down, he negotiates and understands the economic issues and Putin only want to deal with a pragmatic leader, and a successful business man is a good candidate for someone who knows how to negotiate.”

When asked for comment, the Trump Organization provided the Times a non-denial denial.

“To be clear, the Trump Organization has never had any real estate holdings or interests in Russia,” the statement said.

The Washington Post reported on Monday that Trump’s consigliere directly reached out to the Putin regime:



live links and video at site

http://www.salon.com/2017/08/28/we-will ... 7eefa2109b

And the noose tightens another couple of notches ~ ~ Sooz


5 Points On The Moscow Deal Trump And Co. Pursued During The Campaign
By Sam Thielman Published August 28, 2017 5:58 pm

There’s been a steady drip-drip-drip of information over the past 24 hours stemming from correspondence that the Trump Organization was turning over to investigators on the House Intelligence Committee, which is probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. New details about a development proposed by the Trump Organization in Moscow first appeared to leak to the Washington Post, then to the New York Times and Bloomberg.

The day-long stream of new details, which gel with some of TPM’s reporting from earlier this summer, show more clearly than ever before the extent of the contacts between President Donald Trump’s business associates and the intertwined worlds of Russian real estate and government.

1 -- Trump associates explored the deal right up until the first presidential primaries

TPM reported earlier this month that Felix Sater, a business associate of Trump’s who’d been secretly convicted of securities fraud in the late 1990s, was trying to find a way to build a Trump Moscow tower as late as November or December 2015, six months into the U.S. presidential campaign.

Plans for a Trump Moscow project ultimately fell through, however; Sater told TPM it was because Trump became President, but emails between Sater and Michael Cohen, Trump’s former lawyer and frequent press surrogate, reportedly say that the deal stalled out in January 2016 over land permits.

2 -- Michael Cohen was the lead negotiator on the prospective deal

Per the Washington Post, Cohen was the most important figure on the Trump Organization’s side of the Trump Moscow equation. Sater’s projects with Trump through his erstwhile firm, Bayrock Group, were often ephemeral—the Trump Fort Lauderdale and Trump SoHo failed spectacularly, while the Trump Phoenix Plaza never materialized all.

But Trump had been saying for years that he wanted a Moscow tower. It’s probably one of the reasons he held Miss Universe 2013 in Moscow with the sponsorship of Azeri billionaire Aras Agalarov, with whom a separate attempt to build a Trump project in Russia fell though.

In his capacity spearheading the Moscow exploration, Cohen went so far as to email the Kremlin directly to ask for help reviving the deal after it stalled in late 2015. “As this project is too important, I am hereby requesting your assistance,” Cohen wrote to Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin’s press secretary, according to the Washington Post. “I respectfully request someone, preferably you, contact me so that I might discuss the specifics as well as arranging meetings with the appropriate individuals. I thank you in advance for your assistance and look forward to hearing from you soon.”

It’s unclear who the “appropriate individuals” Cohen wanted to contact were.

All the while, on top of his duties at the Trump Organization, Cohen was appearing on television and in print media regularly to speak on campaign-related matters.

3 -- Sater thought a Moscow deal would help “our boy” get elected

Sater, one of Cohen’s acquaintances from the pair’s teenage years, was very enthusiastic about getting Putin’s help to elect Trump.

“Buddy our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it,” Sater wrote to Cohen in an email that has been turned over to congressional investigators, according to the New York Times. “I will get all of Putins team to buy in on this, I will manage this process.”

That is probably the most normal sentence from the email. “Michael I arranged for Ivanka to sit in Putins private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin,” it continued, as quoted in the Times.

He also felt that he and Cohen were the two men for the job: “We both know no one else knows how to pull this off without stupidity or greed getting in the way. I know how to play it and we will get this done,” Sater wrote.

He is not a man with modest aspirations. In one of several interviews with TPM this summer, Sater said that if he had to do it all over again, he would still try to pull off the audacious plan for a ceasefire deal between Russia and Ukraine that he attempted to get to the White House with Cohen’s help in January.

4 -- Trump repeatedly discussed the Moscow plans with Cohen

As reported by Bloomberg, Cohen spoke three times with Trump about the prospective Moscow tower. Again, it was something Trump wanted very much to bring about—in 2005, he and Sater had tried to build the tower on the site of a closed pencil factory along the Moscow River, as reported by the Times.

In a statement to congressional investigators, Cohen said he talked to Trump about the project on three separate occasions. He said that the Trumps were not involved in the decision to quash the project, however, and denied that the prospective business deal had anything to do with the campaign in the first place.

“I did not ask or brief Mr. Trump, or any of his family, before I made the decision to terminate further work on the proposal,” Cohen said in the statement, as quoted by Bloomberg. “The Trump Tower Moscow proposal was not related in any way to Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.”

5 -- Trump signed a letter of intent with a mysterious Moscow-based entity

Citing Cohen’s statement, both the Washington Post and Bloomberg list a Moscow-based business entity called I.C. Expert Investment, which doesn’t at press time show up on Google in any other context than today’s news articles, as the developer the Trump Organization planned to work with.

Trump himself signed a letter of intent with the company on Oct. 28, 2015, according to the Post, making official the agreement to begin developing the property. The Trump Organization then began exploring further financing and soliciting architectural blueprints.

It’s not clear who would have constituted the company; where its financing came from; or why a Moscow-based business would need Cohen to ask for intervention from “appropriate individuals” who knew Putin’s press secretary.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/fivepoints/five-points-moscow-deal-trump-sater-cohen

No illegalities by Agent Orange that I can see, so far.

The wheels of justice just keep on turning, albeit s-l-o-w-l-y ~ ~ Sooz

Trump loses leverage as Russia scandal investigation intensifies
08/31/17 08:00 AM
By Steve Benen

For Donald Trump, the Russia scandal has long been an existential threat to his presidency, but he’s likely taken comfort in the idea that there’s an escape hatch: if all else fails, Trump can abuse the powers of his office and simply start pardoning everyone.

Indeed, the president has reportedly sought information from aides on his power to issue pardons to White House aides, members of his family, and even himself.

[Video, The Rachel Maddow Show, 8/30/17, 9:25 PM ET, "Mueller working with NYAG Schneiderman on Manafort case: Politico", accessible via the end link.]

Which makes last night’s Politico report all the more important.


Politico’s Josh Dawley talked to Rachel on the air last night, and explained that the special counsel and the New York attorney general’s office have been in contact over much of the summer, sharing evidence.

And that’s important because it closes a potential avenue. If Manafort, Trump’s former campaign chairman who insists he’s done nothing wrong, believes a presidential pardon is his get-out-of-jail-free card, so he has no incentive to cooperate with investigators, Mueller’s work with Schneiderman reapplies pressure.

Since a president can’t pardon a defendant in a state case, the trump card, so to speak, has effectively been taken away.

And as it turns out, that’s not the only development of note in the Trump-Russia scandal:

* The Associated Press reports that Rinat Akhmetshin, the Russian-American lobbyist who attended last summer’s collusion meeting in Trump Tower, has testified to the federal grand jury. It’s the latest evidence that Mueller is taking that 2016 meeting, scheduled so that Team Trump could obtain dirt on Hillary Clinton from Russia, quite seriously.

* The Wall Street Journal reports on the scope of Paul Manafort’s work with Russian political interests over the course of a decade.

* And Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley noted yesterday that the president called him out of the blue yesterday to remind the Iowa senator of the White House’s support for ethanol subsidies. There doesn’t appear to be a substantive reason for Trump to privately restate his position on the issue, though it’s worth noting for context that Donald Trump Jr. will soon be testifying before Grassley’s committee.

Watch this space.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-loses-leverage-russia-scandal-investigation-intensifies

Since a president can’t pardon a defendant in a state case, the trump card, so to speak, has effectively been taken away.

That explains the huge "clang" I heard all the way up in northern Manitoba the other day. It was Grabem's asshole slamming shut.

yeah, i think it is clear that there is enough dirt to move forward. question:

i am getting varying estimates of the closure of the Muller investigation- from months to years.

sooz et al: does anyone have a feel for how long this might take?

one half of me wants to wrap it up ASAP so we can get on with doing what is needed.
the other half of me wants it as thorough and damaging as possible.
so right now, i don't care much either way. i just want some idea of what we are looking @.

If only we knew how long it would take to ferret out and turn over all of the rocks! ~ it's a maddeningly slow process ~ but you've summed up my own sensibilities with your comment from above:


Sooz

Robert Mueller Eliminates Trump’s Trump Card

Donald Trump’s ability to issue presidential pardons has been the ultimate weapon looming over Robert Mueller’s investigation. Trump could potentially pardon himself of any crimes. More important, he could dangle a pardon to his former staffers to encourage them not to supply Mueller with any incriminating information on Trump. Mueller is apparently handling his investigating like the prosecution of a mob boss, pressuring underlings to flip on the boss. Trump’s advantage is that, unlike a mob boss, he can give out an unlimited number of get-out-of-jail-free cards. Trump has reportedly mused in public about using the pardon — and his pardon of Joe Arpaio flaunted his willingness to use it on behalf of a political ally, even in outrageous fashion.

But it turns out that there is a flaw in Trump’s strategy. The presidential pardon only applies to federal crimes. As NBC reported last night, it is possible for state governments to press charges in some of the alleged crimes committed by Trump’s cronies. “You would have to find that one of those [election] crimes occurred in New York,” Jennifer Rodgers, a former federal prosecutor, told NBC. Of course, some of the alleged crimes almost certainly did take place in New York. And sure enough, Josh Dawsey reports, Mueller is teaming up with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. “One of the people familiar with progress on the case said both Mueller’s and Schneiderman’s teams have collected evidence on financial crimes, including potential money laundering,” he notes.

Trump can pardon anybody facing charges from Mueller, but not from Schneiderman. It is probably significant that Mueller is letting this fact be known to Trump’s inner circle. Trump’s biggest source of leverage over Mueller just disappeared.

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/20 ... rebutton-b

yeah, that guy is brutally smart. it is amazing he got the job.

Bob Mueller is racing up my personal "hero list"! ~ ~ Sooz

Exclusive: Mueller Enlists the IRS for His Trump-Russia Investigation
Will the accountants take down key members of Team Trump? Or force the president’s tax returns into the open?
Betsy Woodruff / 08.31.17 7:05 PM ET

Special counsel Bob Mueller has teamed up with the IRS. According to sources familiar with his investigation into alleged Russian election interference, his probe has enlisted the help of agents from the IRS’ Criminal Investigations unit.

This unit—known as CI—is one of the federal government’s most tight-knit, specialized, and secretive investigative entities. Its 2,500 agents focus exclusively on financial crime, including tax evasion and money laundering. A former colleague of Mueller’s said he always liked working with IRS’ special agents, especially when he was a U.S. Attorney.

And it goes without saying that the IRS has access to Trump’s tax returns—documents that the president has long resisted releasing to the public.

Potential financial crimes are a central part of Mueller’s probe. One of his top deputies, Andy Weissmann, formerly helmed the Justice Department’s Enron probe and has extensive experience working with investigative agents from the IRS.

“From the agents, I know everyone has the utmost respect for both Mueller and Weissmann,” said Martin Sheil, a retired IRS Criminal Investigations agent.

And he said Mueller and Weissmann are known admirers of those agents’ work.

“They view them with the highest regard,” Sheil said. “IRS special agents are the very best in the business of conducting financial investigations. They will quickly tell you that it took an accountant to nab Al Capone, and it’s true.”

“The FBI’s expertise is spread out over so many statutes—and particularly since 9/11, where they really focused on counterintelligence and counterterror—that they simply don’t have the financial investigative expertise that the CI agents have,” Sheil continued. “When CI brings a case to a U.S. Attorney, it is done. It’s wrapped up with a ribbon and a bow. It’s just comprehensive.”

But the team-up between the IRS and Mueller probe could come with political complications. Mueller has already taken some criticism for the number of Democratic donors on his team. Those critiques intensified yesterday, when word leaked that Mueller was coordinating some of his activities with New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, a long-time Trump adversary.

The IRS, for its part, became a target of conservative ire during the Obama administration for its investigations into Tea Party groups—probes that Republicans called political witch hunts. The complaints about politicized taxmen could begin again, with the IRS joining forces with Mueller.

A spokesman for the special counsel’s office declined to comment for this story.

It’s been widely reported that the special counsel’s team is trying to “flip” Paul Manafort, the president’s former campaign CEO, in hopes he will provide evidence against his former colleagues. Former federal prosecutors tell The Daily Beast one of Manafort’s biggest legal liabilities could be to what’s called a “check the box” prosecution. Federal law requires that people who have money in foreign bank accounts check a box on their tax returns disclosing that. And there’s speculation that Manafort may have neglected to check that box, which would be a felony. This is exactly the kind of allegation the IRS would look into.

These investigations, which are often extremely complex, can take a lot of time. That means the people involved sometimes have to spend significant amounts of money on legal fees. The Daily Beast previously reported that targets of Mueller’s probe—including Manafort—are facing financial strain because of the probe, and that Manafort recently parted ways with the law firm WilmerHale in part because of his financial troubles.

As special counsel, Mueller is subject to the same rules as U.S. Attorneys. That means that if he wants to bring charges against Trump associates related to violations of tax law, he will need approval from the Justice Department’s elite Tax Division. Trump hasn’t yet named his pick to run the division, which is a post that requires Senate confirmation. At the moment, career officials are helming the division.

One former Tax Division prosecutor told The Daily Beast that this could cause trouble for Trump.

“The fact that there is not a senate-confirmed Assistant Attorney General for the Tax Division, and that the Trump people have disregarded it despite warnings as far back as December that they needed to fill the AAG’s spot… shows what a self-created mess the Trump administration has found itself in,” said the former prosecutor, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. “They have no one to keep Mueller and his Brooklyn team honest. They should be concerned about that.”

The former prosecutor said it could have benefitted Trump if he had an appointee in the division as these proceedings unfold—and that he’s now missed that opportunity.

“They could have picked any two people in the world,” he added, “and they picked nobody.”

http://www.thedailybeast.com/exclusive-mueller-enlists-the-irs-for-his-trump-russia-investigation

NYT: Mueller obtained draft of letter Trump wrote explaining Comey firing

By Miranda Green, CNN

Updated 5:34 PM ET, Fri September 1, 2017

Washington (CNN)The special counsel investigating potential ties between Donald Trump's presidential campaign and Russia has obtained a draft of a letter that explains reasons why Trump planned to fire former FBI Director James Comey, The New York Times reported Friday.

The Justice Department turned over a copy of the letter, which was drafted by Trump and top aide Stephen Miller, to Mueller in recent weeks, the Times reported, citing interviews with a dozen administration officials and others briefed on the matter.

The Times report doesn't say what was in the letter, which was originally meant to be sent directly to Comey, according to the Times. Ty Cobb, a White House lawyers, declined to discuss the letter or its contents to the Times.

But it was met with opposition from White House counsel Don McGahn, who saw its contents as "problematic," the Times reported.

Instead, a letter written by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein that was focused on criticizing Comey's handling of the investigation into Hillary Clinton's private email server was cited behind Trump's decision to fire the FBI chief.

After Comey was fired in May, Trump has said he was thinking of "this Russia thing" when he decided to fire Comey, who had been leading the bureau's investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election.

Trump told NBC News in May that he was frustrated by the ongoing investigation and believes it was motivated by Democrats' fury at losing the election.

With those comments, Trump explicitly tied the Russia probe to his rationale for firing Comey. It was one of a series of explanations for dismissing the FBI director, some of which directly contradict those offered earlier by top White House officials.

CNN's James Griffiths and Marshall Cohen contributed to this report.

[Video at link]

http://www.cnn.com/2017/09/01/politics/mueller-comey-draft-letter/index.html

The "draft letter" in Sid's above post is a VERY BIG DEAL ~ it apparently proves and ties together all the "hints" that the DiC's mindset was to stop the Russia investigation and he saw firing Comey as the quickest way to do just that [IOW, "obstruct justice"] ~

Sooz