Wasting Away In Kushnerville, Con't

I've talked about the allegations of monstrous debt collection by Jared Kushner's apartment management companies before, now it looks like legal action is finally being taken against Trump's slimy son-in-law by Maryland's AG.

The Maryland attorney general is investigating one of the Kushner family's real estate businesses after media reports surfaced earlier this year about allegedly abusive debt collection practices and poor conditions at several of its properties.

Kushner Companies said it is cooperating with Attorney General Brian Frosh, Maryland's top legal officer.

"We have been working with the Maryland Attorney General's Office to provide information in response to its request," Kushner Companies told CNN through a spokesperson. "We are in compliance with all state and local laws."

A Baltimore-based attorney is working with Kushner Companies on the matter, according to a person familiar with the attorney general's inquiry.

A spokesperson for the AG's office declined to comment, citing a policy of not confirming or denying investigations.

The inquiry does not mean charges will be filed.

This spring and summer, media reports exposed allegedly coercive tactics and inadequate maintenance in multifamily housing developments run by Westminster Management or related entities. An affiliate of Kushner Companies, Westminster manages about 17 properties in Maryland, including developments in Baltimore, Middle River and Essex, according to its website.

Kushner Companies has been under the microscope since President Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner, entered the political scene — first as Trump's confidant during the 2016 campaign and now as a senior White House adviser.

A Kushner financial disclosure form shows income of $1.6 million from Westminster. A White House spokesman declined to comment.

Meanwhile, Kushner continues to have undisclosed meetings with foreign powers, and the White House refuses to give any details on what Kushner is doing.  This time, Kushner visited Saudi Arabia.

President Donald Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser Jared Kushner returned home Saturday from an unannounced visit to Saudi Arabia — his third trip to the country this year.

Kushner left Washington, D.C., via commercial airline on Wednesday for the trip, which was not announced to the public, a White House official told POLITICO. He traveled separately from Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, who led a delegation to Riyadh last week to focus on combating terrorist financing.

Kushner was accompanied in the region by deputy national security adviser Dina Powell and Middle East envoy Jason Greenblatt. Greenblatt continued from Saudi Arabia to Amman, Jordan; Cairo; the West Bank city of Ramallah; and Jerusalem, where he was on Sunday.

The Trump administration has said its strategy is to try to draw in neighboring Arab leaders to play a role in Middle East peace. “Jared has always been driven to try and solve the Israel-Palestinian dispute,” said billionaire real estate investor Tom Barrack, a longtime friend and close Trump confidant. “The key to solving that dispute is Egypt. And the key to Egypt is Abu Dhabi and Saudi Arabia.”

It's cute that Trumpies are trying to unofficially sell this as a Mideast peace deal trip and maybe to a certain extent you could call it that, but nobody believes that this is about peace anymore.  The Saudis announce a new developmental region called NEOM, essentially a $500 billion mega-city built from scratch the same week Jared Kushner jets to Riyadh?

Doesn't take a genius to see what's going on here.  Trump Tower NEOM anyone?

Kushner is all about the real estate fraud.  Keep an eye on both of these stories.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Greg Sargent is sounding the alarm that Trump's counterstroke against Mueller is at the very least being set up as an option to use as Trump could clear the decks, Nixon-style.

Let’s be clear on what’s happening in our politics right now. President Trump and his media allies are currently creating a vast, multi-tentacled, largely-fictional alternate media reality that casts large swaths of our government as irredeemably corrupt — with the explicitly declared purpose of laying the rationale for Trump to pardon his close associates or close down the Russia probe, should he deem either necessary. 

We often hear that Trump and his allies are trying to “distract” from Special Counsel Robert S. Mueller’s intensifying investigation. That’s true, but this characterization inadequately casts this in terms ordinarily applied to conventional politics. Instead, Trump’s trafficking in this stuff should be seen as another sign of his fundamental unfitness to serve as president. Similar efforts by his media allies should be labeled as a deliberate effort to goad Trump into sliding into full-blown authoritarianism, and to provide the air cover for him if he does do so. 

That's a hefty charge to throw, but Sargent makes his case pretty solid.

The Associated Press reports that people who have spoken to Trump say that he has recently revisited the idea of trying to remove Mueller, now that Mueller appears to be digging into Trump’s finances. Meanwhile, CNN reports that former Trump strategist Stephen K. Bannon is privately urging Trump to try to get Republicans to defund Mueller’s probe. 

Last night, Sean Hannity delivered perhaps the most perfect expression yet of efforts to create the rationale for such moves. Hannity dismissed the news of major allegations against Trump’s campaign chair Paul Manafort and the cooperation adviser George Papadopoulos as big nothingburgers. He also hit all the high points of the new Trump/media campaign. Those include reviving the made-up scandal that Hillary Clinton approved a deal for a Russian nuclear agency to gain access to U.S. uranium extraction rights in exchange for kickbacks, and the absurdly exaggerated claim that the Clinton campaign, having paid through various intermediaries for research that ultimately led to the “Steele Dossier,” actually colluded with Russia to interfere in the election. These have been extensively fact checked and debunked. 

In an important new piece, Post fact checker Glenn Kessler blows another big hole in one of this campaign’s key story lines. Kessler notes that multiple Trump media allies are repeating the claim that Clinton gave away “20 percent” of our uranium capacity to Russia. And he shows that, for various technical reasons, this figure is itself absurdly inflated, and the description of this as a Clinton giveaway has no relation to reality. 

But the real point of Hannity’s presentation came when he flatly accused Mueller of trying to “change the narrative to distract from the real Russia collusion and massive cover-ups.” Hannity added that Mueller “is clearly complicit in the Uranium One scandal.” This is a reference to the fact that Mueller headed the FBI when the uranium deal happened. Reports that the FBI was investigating a Russian energy official at the time have led to GOP questions about why the Obama administration green-lighted the deal anyway. But this is also absurd, as Kessler explains, since the deal went through an extensive multi-agency process and no evidence has been presented that this process improperly skirted any FBI probe. 

Regardless, Hannity concluded: “We are at a real crisis point in America tonight.” Trump has tweeted in support of many of these allegations. And as Jonathan Chait details, other Trump media allies have explicitly cited these and other similar story-lines (Mueller’s investigators are Dem donors!) in support of the notion that Mueller should resign or that Trump should close down the Russia probe. 

Don't count on GOP leaders in Congress to lift a finger on stopping Trump should he fire Mueller.  Some are making noises that Mueller should be "allowed to continue" for now, but that's as far as they are willing to go.

But it's going to be an untenable position.  Fox News state media is screaming for the blood of Democrats and if Trump doesn't deliver, there will be hell to pay.  We all know how easily Trump is manipulated, so the question remains how long will it take (and how many additional Mueller indictments) before Trump orders him gone and for Jeff Sessions to drop those cases?

Will Sessions comply if he does order it?  Will Republicans do anything if he does?  What happens then, when we get into Constitutional crisis territory (not that we're actually far off now)?

John Schindler takes a look at what happens now.  The bottom line is that Trump's mental and emotional unfitness for office is only matched by his criminal unfitness.

Above all, this case proves that President Trump’s months of tweeting angrily that the Russian investigation is “fake news” and there’s “no collusion” between himself and Moscow are simply a lie. This morning, the president took to Twitter, as is his custom, and ranted that “Few people knew the young, low level volunteer named George, who has already proven to be a liar.” This is yet another lie, as there’s a picture of the March 31, 2016 campaign national security meeting in Washington, where Papadopoulos is seated just a few feet from Trump. Moreover, the notion that a young campaign staffer would conduct personal diplomacy with Russian spies on behalf of Team Trump without getting go-ahead from his superiors is laughable. 

For months, President Trump has insisted that the entire Mueller inquiry is a fraud, and that his campaign had no ties to Russia whatsoever. Now, we know that’s simply untrue. Things are about to get much worse for the White House, especially since the FBI has admitted that Papadopoulos has been cooperating with the Bureau and Team Mueller in their investigation into illicit Russian influence in our nation’s capital. 

In particular, his arrest and plea deal were concealed for months so that the FBI could protect Papadopoulos’ role as a “proactive cooperator” for the Bureau. That’s spook-speak for his use as a witting tool of the investigation. Anyone affiliated with the Trump White House who’s talked or met with George Papadopoulos since late July should be aware that whatever was said has been communicated to the FBI—indeed, Papadopoulos was likely wearing a wire that recorded the conversation. 

Robert Mueller’s investigation of Donald Trump and his Kremlin linkages entered a new phase yesterday, one from which there will be no return for the White House. Day One of this new phase delivered genuine bombshells, but many more are yet to come. Manafort, Gates and Papadopoulos represent a small piece of a much larger counterintelligence puzzle that the public will learn about in coming months.

Stay tuned.  November could be a pivotal month in American history.  It will mark one of two things: the beginning of the end of the Trump regime, or the beginning of the end of America.

Still not sure which.

StupidiNews!

• NYPD have arrested the suspect in Tuesday afternoon's truck attack in Manhattan that killed 8 and injured 15, Homeland Security is treating the incident as a terror attack.
• Defense Secretary James Mattis testified Tuesday before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that no plans for a nuclear strike against North Korea have been discussed.
• Republicans have delayed the release of their tax reform bill in the House until later this week, citing the need for last-minute changes to the proposed legislation.
• Open enrollment in Obamacare begins today, but many Americans will be facing sticker shock as GOP efforts to destabilize and repeal have raised premiums across the board for 2018.
• FCC Chair Ajit Pai is proposing lifetime caps on subsidies for rural and low-income broadband customers, citing rampant waste, fraud, and abuse of the 32-year-old Lifeline program.

Last Call For Generally Awful Kelly

If there were any doubts left that Trump regime chief of staff Gen. John Kelly is anything but another screamingly racist asshole, that got put to bed yesterday as he decided to come out as a Confederate apologist and fascist jackass.

White House Chief of Staff John F. Kelly on Monday called Robert E. Lee “an honorable man” and said that “the lack of an ability to compromise” led to the Civil War, once again thrusting himself into the public spotlight on an emotionally charged issue.

The comments, made on the debut night of conservative media host Laura Ingraham’s show on Fox News, came after Kelly was asked about the recent decision by a Virginia church to remove plaques that honored the Confederate general and George Washington.

“I would tell you that Robert E. Lee was an honorable man,” Kelly told Ingraham. “He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country. It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today. But the lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War, and men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”

Got that?  Former four-star general and student of history telling FOX news viewers that the Civil War was the fault of lack of compromise on slavery.  You know, it was both sides' fault.

Let that one sink in.

The comments came in the midst of an interview that touched on a wide range of topics including the indictments in the Mueller investigation, the United States’ relationship with China, and Kelly’s work as the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security.

Long seen as a force of order and discipline in the White House, the former Marine general became part of the controversy over the president’s calls to Gold Star families this month when he defended Trump’s statements to a widow, made false claims about a Florida congresswoman who had criticized the White House and said he would only take questions from reporters who knew families who had lost soldiers overseas. He told Ingraham on Monday that he didn’t believe he had anything to apologize for. 

Apologize to a black woman?  That doesn't happen in America.  Kelly wasn't put on Trump's team to contain Trump, he was put there because he's just like Trump and shares his racist, fascist tendencies.  Let's not forget Kelly was brought in as Homeland Security director and was happily making military plans for America's border with Mexico and rounding up the undocumented before Trump asked him to join the White House staff as its head.

No illusions here.  Kelly is just as awful as the rest of the Trump racists, and they can't be kicked out of power soon enough.

The Joy Of Cooking Turkeys

Joy-Ann Reid shows America how it's done in this clip from her MSNBC weekend morning show AM Joy as she dismantles Washington Examiner stenographer Jen Kerns on the Mueller investigation and right-wing Clinton hysteria.




The Mary Sue's Vivian Kane:

In addition to being an obvious deflection from the investigation into his own administration, this story is utter bullshit. Hillary Clinton had no involvement in the Uranium One deal. This was a transaction between a private company and a foreign government. The closest this deal got to Clinton was when it was reviewed by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, of which she is and was not a member, meaning she never got close to it at all. Also, Trump loves to scare the public by throwing out the word “nuclear,” while omitting the subsequent word “power.” 

Basically, Trump is trying to convince us that Hillary Clinton gave away 20% of our country’s uranium supply so that Russia could make bombs. Not one part of that is true, but it’s the kind of blatantly false claim that the media so often has trouble shutting down. 

When talking to Jen Kerns, a former GOP spokesperson and contributor for the conservative Washington Examiner, Reid had no such trouble. I’ve never had such a strong reaction to basic fact-checking, but this clip is making me feel all warm inside. 

“I want to ask you a couple fact-based questions” is my new favorite phrase in the English language. 

What makes this extra maddening is that Kerns has all the information Reid asks for. She knows that her talking points are misleading; she’s obviously just hoping she doesn’t get called on her BS. These people are lying to us, plain and simple, and we need more Joy-Ann Reids in the world, letting them know we see their lies for what they are, and we won’t stand for it.

This is so good I may actually start watching MSNBC again.

Well, at least AM Joy.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Nixon Trump is in full bunker mode right now after Monday's indictments, and nobody's happy around the White House as America's racist uncle is screaming at the TV and wondering why he's surrounded by idiots who might have already turned evidence on him.

And he's scared.  Poor thing.

President Trump woke before dawn on Monday and burrowed in at the White House residence to wait for the Russia bombshell he knew was coming.

Separated from most of his West Wing staff — who fretted over why he was late getting to the Oval Office — Trump clicked on the television and spent the morning playing fuming media critic, legal analyst and crisis communications strategist, according to several people close to him.

The president digested the news of the first indictments in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s probe with exasperation and disgust, these people said. He called his lawyers repeatedly. He listened intently to cable news commentary. And, with rising irritation, he watched live footage of his onetime campaign adviser and confidant, Paul Manafort, turning himself in to the FBI.

Initially, Trump felt vindicated. Though frustrated that the media were linking him to the indictment and tarnishing his presidency, he cheered that the charges against Manafort and his deputy, Rick Gates, were focused primarily on activities that began before his campaign. Trump tweeted at 10:28 a.m., “there is NO COLLUSION!”

But the president’s celebration was short-lived. A few minutes later, court documents were unsealed showing that George Papadopoulos, an unpaid foreign policy adviser on Trump’s campaign, pleaded guilty to making a false statement to the FBI about his efforts to broker a relationship between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. The case provides the clearest evidence yet of links between Trump’s campaign and Russian officials. 

The notoriously thin-skinned, easily-baited, entirely predictable old man is now Elvis, shooting the TV.

But Trump’s anger Monday was visible to those who interacted with him, and the mood in the corridors of the White House was one of weariness and fear of the unknown. As the president groused upstairs, many staffers — some of whom have hired lawyers to help them navigate Mueller’s investigation — privately speculated about where the special counsel might turn next.

“The walls are closing in,” said one senior Republican in close contact with top staffers who spoke on the condition of anonymity to speak candidly. “Everyone is freaking out.”

Trump is also increasingly agitated by the expansion of Mueller’s probe into financial issues beyond the 2016 campaign and about the potential damage to him and his family.

Clock's ticking for Trump and he knows it.  He knows Mueller has him.  He knows there's no way out.  And frankly I think there's a chance he might throw in the towel.

But I doubt that will happen.  A bully punched in the nose may back off for a while, but then they'll come back at you with twice the rage that you dared to stand up to them, and I expect we'll see Trump's response before he leaves for his Asia trip later this week.

I expect it won't be pretty.  If another indictment comes this week, all bets are off.  The smart money is on former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, but there's also a chance that Sam Clovis, Trump campaign co-chair and current nominee for the USDA's top science position (even though he's not a scientist at all) could be named next.  After all, the evidence strongly points to him being involved in the events detailed in George Papdopoulos's indictment.

Corey Lewandowski too is most likely in the crosshairs.  Manafort after all replaced him on the Trump team, but back in March 2016 Lewandowski was running the campaign and would have certainly known what was going on with the putative contacts to Russia to get dirt on Hillary.

Finally, former US Attorney for Manhattan Preet Bharara gives some insight as to where he thinks the Mueller case is going.

“Hard to tell, but the George Papadopoulos guilty plea tells us (a) Mueller is moving fast (b) the Mueller team keeps secrets well (c) more charges should be expected and (d) this team takes obstruction and lying very, very seriously,” Bharara said, referring to the former unpaid Trump campaign adviser, whose plea deal rocked Washington on Monday. “That should be of concern to some people.”

Remember, Bharara was fired by Trump.

We'll see who's next, but I guarantee you more indictments are coming, and soon.  As Preet says, Mueller is moving fast.  Now that he's pulled the pin on this indictment grenade, the real fun begins.

StupidiNews!

• The FBI is now reportedly looking into the $300 million contract Whitefish Energy had with Puerto Rico to repair downed power lines over ties to Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke.
• One person was shot and killed at the University of Utah late Monday night, police are looking for a 24-year-old male suspect in the shooting.
• The heads of Facebook, Google, and Twitter head to Capitol Hill for congressional testimony over Silicon Valley's role in spreading Russian disinformation during the 2016 election.
• Donald Trump is expected to name Jerome Powell as Chairman of the Federal Reserve, replacing Janet Yellen, on Thursday.
• The proposed Sprint/T-Mobile merger is done for now, Sprint owner SoftBank does not want to give up control to T-Mobile owner Deustche Telekom.

Last Call For It's About Suppression, Con't

The Trump/Russia collusion story certainly is important, but my number one concern going forward remains GOP voter suppression tactics against Democrats.  It's how they won in 2016, and how they plan to keep winning in 2018 and beyond.  And if Democrats won't do anything about it, then voting rights groups and the courts will.

Indiana Secretary of State Connie Lawson is once again being accused of violating federal elections laws.

Common Cause Indiana in a federal lawsuit filed Friday calls for an injunction to be issued against Lawson, whom the political watchdog group accuses of unlawfully purging voters from state rolls.

Specifically, Common Cause challenges the new "Interstate Voter Registration Crosscheck" system that allows election officials to immediately remove voters identified as having registered to vote in another state. The process finds a match based on first name, last name and date of birth. 

Common Cause alleges that the crosscheck system contradicts the protections in the National Voter Registration Act of 1993, resulting in "nonuniform, discriminatory and illegal cancellations of Indiana voter registrations." 

For example, one requirement of federal law says a state “shall not remove” a voter from its list of eligible voters due to change in residence unless the voter confirms a change in residence in writing or fails to respond to a notice sent by the state.

The ACLU of Indiana, national ACLU and voting rights group Demos are representing Common Cause in the suit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana.

I've talked about Crosscheck before: the twisted and flawed brainchild of Kansas GOP Secretary of State (and now Trump voter suppression commission head) Kris Kobach.  Indiana used the flawed system to disenfranchise thousands of Democratic voters in 2016 based on faulty information.  If there's someone with your name and your date of birth anywhere else in America that's registered to vote, both of you could get removed from the voter rolls under Crosscheck.

Now we're seeing lawsuits on this.  That's definitely a good thing, but whether or not they will be resolved in time for the 2020 election is anyone's guess.  And right now through a combination of gerrymandering and voter suppression, the GOP has Congress all but locked down for the foreseeable future, as well as multiple state legislatures.

No wonder then they are trying to get rid of the 17th Amendment and direct election of Senators too, instead putting their appointment in the hands of state legislatures.  If that were the case now, the GOP would have nearly 70 Senators instead of 52.

Getting rid of Trump is certainly necessary, but going forward after his term is even more important.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Hell of a day so far from Robert Mueller.  Two major indictments and a guilty plea with cooperation by the witness. Lawfare's Ben Wittes and Susan Hennessey recap where we're at now:

The first big takeaway from this morning’s flurry of charging and plea documents with respect to Paul Manafort Jr., Richard Gates III, and George Papadopoulos is this: The President of the United States had as his campaign chairman a man who had allegedly served for years as an unregistered foreign agent for a puppet government of Vladimir Putin, a man who was allegedly laundering remarkable sums of money even while running the now-president’s campaign, a man who allegedly lied about all of this to the FBI and the Justice Department. 

The second big takeaway is even starker: A member of President Trump’s campaign team now admits that he was working with people he knew to be tied to the Russian government to “arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government officials” and to obtain “dirt” on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of hacked emails—and that he lied about these activities to the FBI. He briefed President Trump on at least some them. 

Before we dive any deeper into the Manafort-Gates indictment—charges to which both pled not guilty to today—or the Papadopoulos plea and stipulation, let’s pause a moment over these two remarkable claims, one of which we must still consider as allegation and the other of which we can now consider as admitted fact. President Trump, in short, had on his campaign at least one person, and allegedly two people, who actively worked with adversarial foreign governments in a fashion they sought to criminally conceal from investigators. One of them ran the campaign. The other, meanwhile, was interfacing with people he “understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials” and with a person introduced to him as “a relative of Russian President Vladimir Putin with connections to senior Russian government officials.” All of this while President Trump was assuring the American people that he and his campaign had "nothing to do with Russia." 

The release of these documents should, though it probably won’t, put to rest the suggestion that there are no serious questions of collusion between the Trump campaign and the Russian government in the latter’s interference on the former’s behalf during the 2016 election. It also raises a profound set of questions of its own about the truthfulness of a larger set of representations Trump campaign officials and operatives have made both in public, and presumably, under oath and to investigators. 

And here’s the rub: This is only Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s opening salvo. 

As opening salvos go, it’s a doozy.

Every indication is that Papadoupolos was flipped to get Manafort and Gates, and that the two of them are going to be pressured to flip on everyone else: Michael Flynn and Carter Page, then Jared Kushner, then Jeff Sessions, and finally Donald Trump himself. 

Considering the charges being laid out for Manafort and Gates, there's zero doubt in my mind that indictments are sealed and waiting for Flynn and Page at the minimum.  The big tip-off is the FARA charges against Manafort and Gates: violations of the Foreign Agent Registration Act. We know Flynn and Page both lied about working for foreign powers, and being willing to prosecute on that means Flynn and Page are certainly in the crosshairs.  You can make the case that Kushner is facing similar charges considering all the times he's lied about foreign contacts.

It also means Jeff Sessions is most likely facing perjury charges.  Remember, he lied to Congress under oath on a number of occasions.  Sessions was at that same March 2016 meeting that Papadopoulos and Trump were at as part of the Trump foreign policy squad.  Sessions has tesified under oath that nothing happened there, but Papadopoulos's confession means otherwise.

And that leads us to Trump.  At the very least, as the Lawfare team points out, the collusion story is very, very real.  A lot of Trump regime folks, current and former, are in dire trouble right now.  Who and how much trouble, we're going to see over the next few weeks and months.

We're now in the next phase of the game, and everything is now playing for keeps.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

So CNN was correct: the first Mueller investigation indictments were indeed unsealed this morning.  Paul Manafort, you're our first contestant on Russian To Judgment, COME ON DOWN!

Paul Manafort surrendered to federal authorities Monday morning, after a person close to the case said the first charges were filed in a special counsel investigation. 

The charges against Mr. Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, were not immediately clear but represent a significant escalation in a special counsel investigation that has cast a shadow over the president’s first year in office. Also charged was Mr. Manafort’s former business associate Rick Gates, who was also told to surrender on Monday, the person said. 

Mr. Manafort walked into the F.B.I.’s field office in Washington at about 8:15 a.m. with his lawyer. 

Mr. Gates is a longtime protégé and junior partner of Mr. Manafort. His name appears on documents linked to companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe, records reviewed by The New York Times show. 

Mr. Manafort had been under investigation for violations of federal tax law, money laundering and whether he appropriately disclosed his foreign lobbying.

No doubt the Trump folks will say this has nothing to do with Trump and everything to do with Manafort's relationship as an unregistered foreign agent for the Turkish government.  That may be true, in the same way Alphonse Capone being indicted on income tax fraud had nothing to do with him being a gangster and everything to do with Capone being a lousy accountant.

Note Rick Gates being nabbed on this indictment as well.  We haven't really talked about Manafort's sidekick being in legal trouble, but I'm betting we will be.  The NY Times piece linked above on Gates is pretty thorough.

Nearly everywhere Paul Manafort went, it seemed, Rick Gates followed, his protégé and junior partner. Election campaigns in Eastern Europe and Africa. Business ventures with a Russian tycoon. The upper ranks of Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign. 

Mr. Gates survived Mr. Manafort’s purge last summer amid allegations that his mentor had taken millions of dollars from Kremlin allies, retaining a central role on Mr. Trump’s campaign and inaugural committee. But Mr. Gates, 45, soon followed in Mr. Manafort’s footsteps once again: In April, amid new questions about Russian interference in the 2016 election, he was abruptly forced out of a lobbying group formed to advance President Trump’s agenda. 

Now, Mr. Gates has been drawn into the burgeoning federal investigations into diplomatic and financial dealings between Russian interests and the president’s inner circle. In a newly disclosed memo, a lawyer for the Trump campaign ordered members of the president’s transition team to preserve records relating to five Trump associates, among them Mr. Manafort — already known to be a subject of the investigation — and Mr. Gates. The memo indicates that transition lawyers believe Mr. Gates’s actions are under scrutiny by the Justice Department or the House or Senate Intelligence Committees — or soon will be. 

As investigators examine Mr. Manafort’s financial and political dealings at home and abroad, they are likely to run into Mr. Gates wherever they look. During the pair’s heady days in Ukraine, it was Mr. Gates who flew to Moscow for meetings with associates of Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch. His name appears on documents linked to shell companies that Mr. Manafort’s firm set up in Cyprus to receive payments from politicians and businesspeople in Eastern Europe, records reviewed by The New York Times show.

Keep in mind Gates remained Manafort's man in the Trump regime until April and still made trips to the White House as recently as June.  Gates is now facing charges as well, and again, Gates met with the Russians, specifically Oleg Deripaska, who I first noted was a Putin ally back in August 2016 when I told you Manafort was dirty.  Gates was Manafort's right hand and definitely neck-deep in Manafort's slime pit.

We've seen the first Mueller indictments.  We're far from the last.  Manafort and Gates are the fulcrum, Mueller's pulling on the lever, and he may just end up shifting the world.

But where do we go from here?  What will Trump's response be?  What will McConnell/Ryan do?  What will the Dems do?  We'll see.

The full indictment is here, 12 counts for both men, including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy against the US, tax fraud, false statements and unlawfully being a foreign agent.  These are "in prison for the rest of your natural life" charges, guys.

And yes, the first charge, conspiracy against the US?  For actions from 2006 through 2017.  And note this:

But the bigger news might be the third indictment.  Former Trump foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to making false statements to the FBI.   He's the Trumpie who was behind the now-infamous March 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Three days after Donald Trump named his campaign foreign policy team in March 2016, the youngest of the new advisers sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: “Meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin.” 

The adviser, George Papadopoulos, offered to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,” telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity, according to internal campaign emails read to The Washington Post. 

The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments. 

But Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer with scant foreign policy experience, persisted. Between March and September, the self-described energy consultant sent at least a half-dozen requests for Trump, as he turned from primary candidate to party nominee, or for members of his team to meet with Russian officials. Among those to express concern about the effort was then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who rejected in May 2016 a proposal from Papadopoulos for Trump to do so. 

The exchanges are among more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees this month after review by White House and defense lawyers. The selection of Papadopoulos’s emails were read to The Post by a person with access to them. Two other people with access to the emails confirmed the general tone of the exchanges and some specific passages within them.

We now know Papadopoulos has plead guilty back on October 6, that was also unsealed today. The indictment is a doozy.



And unlike the first two sets of charges, there's a guilty plea and a direct connection to Trump's campaign and Russian collusion.

 Stay tuned.  More's coming.   Mueller has three birds in hand and at least one is singing.

Shit just got real, America.

StupidiNews!

• A reported majority of NFL owners, led by Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, now want to end the contract of NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell over the direction of the league.
• North Korea could conduct further nuclear tests during Donald Trump's visit to Asia later this week, making an already tense situation on the Korean peninsula worse.
• Puerto Rico has canceled a controversial $300 million contract with a two-person Montana power company to restore downed lines after both public and Congressional outrage.
• Spanish PM Mariano Rajoy has ousted Catalan's regional government and has called for snap elections in December in response to the region's independence declaration.
• New Zealand's National Party has been ordered to pay rapper Eminem more than $400,000 for copyright violations, the artist wants the money donated to hurricane relief.

Sunday Long Read: Mashed Potatoes

The GOP has everything they could possibly want in North Idaho: the Democratic party is non-existent here and there's nobody to challenge total Republican rule, it's 98% white and conservatives from all over the Western US have moved in, fleeing West coast blue state liberals.

Naturally it has degenerated into Lord of the Flies as they have completely turned on each other.

Brent Regan doesn’t work the room during the monthly meetings of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, because he doesn’t need to: People come to him, as if before a ruler, or a king. He has the confidence of a man who's rarely challenged but always has the upper hand when he is; he’s used to others agreeing that he’s the smartest person in the room. Over email — the only way he'll speak to reporters, after a history, he says, of being misquoted and misunderstood — the community college graduate and Mensa member wields his intellect combatively, like a tenured professor dressing down an unprepared freshman.

He frequently "rejects the premise" of a question and invokes everything from "Cartesian relativism" and "Greco-Roman philosophy" to the Magna Carta when asked to describe his political beliefs. "Your conclusions about conservatism remind me of the Indian fable about the blind men trying to describe an elephant," he told me.

It's this didactic tendency that has helped keep Regan, a man described as both the sugar daddy of the hard right and the godfather of North Idaho politics, from winning elected office. His only attempt — a run for school board trustee, back in 2014 — fell flat. But Regan doesn't want for power. According to those who’ve observed him closely, the loss, one of the few in a gilded life, taught him a lesson: He wasn’t a politician. He was a puppet master.

Many of the most powerful people in political history never held office. Instead, they had money, or they had strategy. Regan has both. As chairman of the Kootenai County Republican Central Committee (KCRCC), he oversees the political maneuvers of the only party that matters in the state’s third-largest county. He is the chairman of the board of the Idaho Freedom Foundation, which grades state legislators on their votes and acts as a de facto conservative policing service. He’s an inventor. He’s very good at enforcing Robert’s Rules of Order. He’s a major donor to PACs that have worked, somewhat surreptitiously, to influence local elections.

“Brent Regan is a real patriot,” a member of the KCRCC told me. “That movie, The Patriot, Brent is like that Mel Gibson character to me. He’s got the IQ and the common sense — he’s the smartest man I’ve ever known.”

And like so many others currently involved in North Idaho politics, Regan’s a California transplant: one of thousands of ex–LAPD officers, doomsday preppers, “traditionalist” Catholics, and far-right evangelicals who’ve flocked to the white, conservative utopia of North Idaho over the last 20 years, working to remake the Republican Party in their own image. Before, they were called libertarians and constitutionalists, or called nothing at all, because there was no political group conservative enough to represent their beliefs. But after the 2008 election of President Obama, they emerged, consolidated power, and began operating under a simple principle: It’s easier to take over a political party than to start one of your own.

Under Regan, the KCRCC has tacked farther and farther to the right, creating a political platform unrecognizable to Republicans of the past. Over the last three months, they’ve issued resolutions condemning Idaho’s two conservative senators for voting to sanction Russia (the bill passed the Senate 98–2); suggested that GOP gubernatorial candidate Tommy Ahlquist is not, in fact, a Republican (like President Trump, Ahlquist, a Boise businessman, has donated to both Democrats and Republicans); and called for the repeal of the local urban renewal law, dubbing it the “economic equivalent of fascism” (it’s not). In short, they’ve redefined what it means to be an Idaho Republican, working to clean house, on both a local and state level, of those who oppose them.

Those opponents, however, aren’t Democrats — whose political clout in North Idaho is essentially nonexistent. They’re fellow Republicans, who’ve been primaried, peer-pressured, and otherwise pushed out of the party, dubbed RINOs (Republicans in name only), Dirty Liberals, and Socialists. Those in power argue that they’re simply exercising their right to participate in the democratic process. But for those who’ve been excised from the party they’ve long considered their political home, it’s an embarrassing travesty.

“Lincoln founded the party of the ‘big tent’ back in 1854,” one long-serving state senator, fed up with Regan’s machinations, told me. “Why can’t we still have that?” He was referring to the idea, later reinforced by Ronald Reagan, that the Republican Party contains multitudes, that the “divergence of views” is one of its greatest strengths.

In North Idaho, that tent has narrowed to an exclusive and exclusionary group of individuals who, according to those who’ve been subject to their strategy, demand absolute fealty. The alternative is rejection, formal or otherwise, from politics altogether. Still, Regan doesn’t see the current political situation as “ugly,” even if it is destructive. If he had to pick a word to describe North Idaho politics, it would be “dynamic”: “What would beautiful politics look like?” Regan asked me. “Would it even be politics? To paraphrase Carl von Clausewitz, politics is war by other means.”

In many ways, this is a story of what happens when a two-party system is reduced to one: when a political party becomes so dominant that, without outside opposition, it creates it internally. This particular version of the story is specific to North Idaho, and to the particular type of conservatives who have flocked here to set down roots in its rural soil. Yet its lessons apply across the political spectrum, as battles between the two parties are eclipsed by the destructive and deeply tribalist strife within them.

In North Idaho, the liberals have already been wiped out, people of color are all but nonexistent here, so it comes down to "not being conservative enough" for each other.  They all want to be Idaho's Trump, they all want to rule, but only one can.

So the bloodletting begins.

It's the GOP returning to its fascist roots, pure and simple.

The Drums Of War, Con't

While the Trump regime is in now full panic mode over the coming Mueller indictments, the counter-operation that will make all this go away is in full swing, half a world away. Defense Secretary Gen. James Mattis is priming the pump for war, and right now it's a race to see which will happen first, an indictment that leads to Trump's downfall, or the bombs dropping on Pyongyang.

U.S. Defense Secretary Jim Mattis said Saturday the threat of nuclear missile attack by North Korea is accelerating. 

In remarks in Seoul with South Korean Defense Minister Song Young-moo at his side, Mattis accused the North of illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear programs — and vowed to defeat any attack. 

Mattis said North Korea engages in “outlaw” behavior and that the U.S. will never accept a nuclear North. 

He added that regardless of what the North might try, it is overmatched by the firepower and cohesiveness of the decades-old U.S.-South Korean alliance. 

“North Korea has accelerated the threat that it poses to its neighbors and the world through its illegal and unnecessary missile and nuclear weapons programs,” he said, adding that U.S.-South Korean military and diplomatic collaboration thus has taken on “a new urgency.” 

“I cannot imagine a condition under which the United States would accept North Korea as a nuclear power,” he said. 

As he emphasized throughout his weeklong Asia trip, which included stops in Thailand and the Philippines, Mattis said diplomacy remains the preferred way to deal with the North. 

“With that said,” he added, “make no mistake — any attack on the United States or our allies will be defeated, and any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response that is effective and overwhelming.”

And it won't be long before the case will be made that America must attack to stop North Korea, and the closer Mueller comes to Trump, the closer we come to a war that will kill millions.

Trump Cards, Con't

Red state faithful in Ohio are only realizing now how truly screwed they are by handing the country over to Trump, Paul Ryan, and Mitch McConnell, and will have to warm themselves at night with thought that at least it'll be worse for those people or something.

Doug Corcoran is in the trenches every day in the fight against the opioid crisis in the rural Ohio county he helps oversee.

So President Donald Trump’s failure this week to formally declare the overdose epidemic a “national emergency” - words that would have freed up more federal funds to tackle the crisis - was disappointing for him. 

“I have been hopeful for the last several years that the federal government would step up and help us with this crisis, and they haven’t. They’ve really dropped the ball on this and it’s sad,” said Corcoran, a county commissioner in Ross County, home to 77,000 people an hour south of Columbus, Ohio.

The county’s child services budget nearly doubled in the past five years to almost $2.4 million from $1.3 million, because of the number of children needing care due to addicted parents. For a county with a general fund of $23 million, that is a stress on the finances. 

Corcoran struggles constantly to make funds available from the county budget for the likes of drug treatment centers, the county jail and anti-drug education programs.
The disappointment about Trump’s announcement is more bitter in Ross County given that more than 60 percent of the county voted for the Republican at last year’s presidential election against Democrat Hillary Clinton. 

Oh well.  Hillary had a plan to help you, and I'm 99.99999% sure Doug Corcoran told his buddies at the church cookout that he would never vote for "that stupid Clinton bitch" and that Trump was going to MAGA the hell out of Ohio.

Now you get the Republican plan.  We all do, but it's going to cause the most suffering in Ohio's farm counties too, but as long as FOX News is filled with stories about those people suffering too, I'm pretty sure Doug will vote GOP straight ticket again and again.

They're Richie Rich Rich

The global wealth inequality phenomenon over the last ten years is hardly limited to the US, as the world's thousand-plus billionaires are now worth $6 trillion and counting.

The world’s super-rich hold the greatest concentration of wealth since the US Gilded Age at the turn of the 20th century, when families like the Carnegies, Rockefellers and Vanderbilts controlled vast fortunes.

Billionaires increased their combined global wealth by almost a fifth last year to a record $6tn (£4.5tn) – more than twice the GDP of the UK. There are now 1,542 dollar billionaires across the world, after 145 multi-millionaires saw their wealth tick over into nine-zero fortunes last year, according to the UBS / PwC Billionaires report. 

Josef Stadler, the lead author of the report and UBS’s head of global ultra high net worth, said his billionaire clients were concerned that growing inequality between rich and poor could lead to a “strike back”.

“We’re at an inflection point,” Stadler said. “Wealth concentration is as high as in 1905, this is something billionaires are concerned about. The problem is the power of interest on interest – that makes big money bigger and, the question is to what extent is that sustainable and at what point will society intervene and strike back?” 

Stadler added: “We are now two years into the peak of the second Gilded Age.” 

He said the “$1bn question” was how society would react to the concentration of so much money in the hands of so few.

Anger at so-called robber barron families who built up vast fortunes from monopolies in US rail, oil, steel and banking in the late 19th century, an era of rapid industrialisation and growing inequality in America that became known as the Gilded Age, led to President Roosevelt breaking up companies and trusts and increasing taxes on the wealthy in the early 1900s. 

“Will there be similarities in the way society reacts to this gilded age?,” Stadler asked. “Will the second age end or will it proceed?”

Considering Republicans in Congress are working to cut $6.5 trillion in taxes, 90% of which will go to the wealthiest, I'm betting the world's billionaires will see their total net worth grow by trillions more in the Trump era., at the direct expense of the rest of us poor slobs.

And yeah, as they say, something's gotta give.