It's Mueller Time, Con't

While we're waiting on the big Mueller info dump this evening involving Michael Cohen's plea deal and Paul Manafort's non-compliance in his deal, we now have a pretty good idea of what Donald Trump's last straw moment was with White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, as it appears Kelly is singing along with Mueller's tune as well.

White House chief of staff John Kelly was interviewed by special counsel Robert Mueller's team in recent months, three people with knowledge of the matter told CNN.

Kelly responded to a narrow set of questions from special counsel investigators after White House lawyers initially objected to Mueller's request to do the interview earlier this summer, the sources said. Kelly is widely expected to leave his position in the coming days and is no longer on speaking terms with President Donald Trump, CNN reported earlier Friday. 

Kelly is the latest high-ranking White House official known to provide information for Mueller's investigation, though his interview marks a departure of sorts since Kelly didn't join the White House until July 2017. Most of the dozens of other interviews have been with people who were associated with the Trump campaign, were part of the transition or served in the early part of the administration.

The Mueller questions to Kelly centered on a narrow set of issues in the investigation of potential obstruction of justice, chiefly Kelly's recollection of an episode that took place after new reporting emerged about how the President had tried to fire Mueller. The President was angry at then-White House counsel Don McGahn about what had been reported by The New York Times. McGahn had refused to publicly deny the reporting. The special counsel wanted to try to corroborate McGahn's version of events. 

The White House counsel's office had initially fought the Mueller request. One source familiar with the matter said that Emmett Flood wanted to make sure "ground rules" were negotiated.

If Kelly is answering questions about the attempted firing of Robert Mueller as an obstruction of justice issue, then Trump knows he's dead meat, and Kelly is a fired man walking, and everyone knows it.

Stay tuned.  More on the Mueller info dump later.

The Adults In The Room Are Grounded

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly is out of time and Donald Trump is out of patience as it appears Kelly is the next regime staffer staked out on the tracks for the careening Trump train to run over on the way off the cliff.

John Kelly is expected to resign as White House chief of staff in the coming days, two sources familiar with the situation unfolding in the West Wing tell CNN. 

Seventeen months in, Kelly and President Donald Trump have reached a stalemate in their relationship and it is no longer seen as tenable by either party. Though Trump asked Kelly over the summer to stay on as chief of staff for two more years, the two have stopped speaking in recent days. 

Trump is actively discussing a replacement plan, though a person involved in the process said nothing is final right now and ultimately nothing is final until Trump announces it. Potential replacements include Nick Ayers, Vice President Mike Pence's chief of staff, who is still seen as a leading contender. 

The expected departure would end a tumultuous tenure for Kelly, who was brought on to bring order to the White House but whose time as chief of staff has often been marked by the same infighting and controversy that has largely defined Trump's presidency from its beginning. Many of the storms in which Kelly became embroiled were by his own making. 

CNN reported last month that Trump was considering potential replacements for several senior positions in his administration as part of a post-midterms staff shakeup. 

News of Kelly's imminent departure was first reported by Axios.

Yes, Kelly has been "fired" before, so many times it feels like he should be managing the Yankees in the 80's, so who knows if this one actually sticks.  Still, it feels like this time is the one where Trump actually does tell Kelly to hit the bricks.

Of course, Trump is also expected to announce replacements for UN Ambassador and Attorney General today as well, along with new WH legal counsel Pat Cipollone replacing Don McGahn starting Monday, so we'll see if the new "adults" fare better than the old ones.

Spoilers: they won't.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump is expected to announce his choice of State Department spokeswoman and former FOX News host Heather Nauert to replace UN Ambassador Nikki Haley on Friday.
• Trump also attacked the Mueller investigation ahead of today's expected filing by the Special Counsel detailing recommendations on former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort's plea deal failure.
• Heavy rains and a growing threat of torrential mudslides have prompted California officials to evacuate thousands near Malibu from hillsides burned by last month's deadly wildfires.
• The arrest of Chinese mobile giant Huawei's CFO in Vancouver this week has both the Trump regime and Trudeau government trying to explain to Beijing why Wanzhou Meng is facing extradition.
• Some 24 Amazon warehouse workers in New Jersey were hospitalized after a robot apparently punctured a can of bear repellent spray.

Last Call For That Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

With Acting AG Matt Whitaker's woes piling up, and Special Counsel Robert Muller freely in his endgame phase, the Trump regime is reportedly looking to an old hand to solve Trump's legal problems.

Former attorney general William P. Barr is President Trump’s leading candidate to be nominated to lead the Justice Department — a choice that could be made in coming days as the agency presses forward with a probe of Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to multiple people familiar with the deliberations.

Barr, 68, a well-respected Republican lawyer who served as attorney general from 1991 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush, has emerged as a favorite candidate of a number of Trump administration officials, including senior lawyers in the White House Counsel’s Office, these people said. Two people familiar with the discussions said the president has told advisers in recent days that he plans to nominate Barr.

One person familiar with the discussions cautioned that while Barr is the leading candidate, the decision is not final and the president could decide to pick someone else.

Another person familiar with the discussions said Barr is “a really serious contender and possibly the front-runner” for the job but stressed it was impossible to predict Trump’s pick definitively until it was announced publicly.

That person said those advising the president viewed Barr as someone who knows the department well and is a good manager. Barr, this person said, also had a bluntness that is likely to resonate with the president.

Barr declined to comment.

Those familiar with the discussions said Barr, having already been attorney general, doesn’t feel a particular ambition for the position, but does feel a sense of duty to take it if offered.

It's no surprise then that Barr's name came up in the wake of the death of the President that he served.  I'm sure the Bush 41 camp was in contact with the Trump regime and Barr emerged as a "Hey, why don't we ask him?" kind of thing.  Also, it doesn't hurt that Barr backed up Trump's firing of James Comey 19 months ago and publicly congratulated Jeff Sessions on a "job well done" after his summary firing by Trump...oh, and did I mention that he too wants to "Lock Her Up?"

“There is nothing inherently wrong about a president calling for an investigation,” said William P. Barr, who ran the Justice Department under President George Bush. “Although an investigation shouldn’t be launched just because a president wants it, the ultimate question is whether the matter warrants investigation.”

Mr. Barr said he sees more basis for investigating the uranium deal than any supposed collusion between Mr. Trump and Russia. “To the extent it is not pursuing these matters, the department is abdicating its responsibility,” he said.

As usual, somebody is leading Donny by the nose and putting this out there so Trump thinks he thought of it, and Barr is connected enough to know how the game works.  We'll see if Trump taps Barr, and how quickly he'll be praised for a "serious, Presidential move" to "right a shaky ship" at the DoJ.

Will Barr be the hatchetman for Mueller?  Does that even matter now that Mueller is well into the endgame?  We'll see.

Get The Hence, Pence

Vanity Fair's Gabe Sherman informs us of the latest rumblings from the Trump bunker, where things have gotten so crazy that people are starting to ask if VP Mike Pence has outlived his usefulness.

But the ominous signs of Mueller’s progress have not completely overwhelmed other subplots. On Monday, Trump hosted a 2020 strategy meeting with a group of advisers. Among the topics discussed was whether Mike Pence should remain on the ticket, given the hurricane-force political headwinds Trump will face, as demonstrated by the midterms, a source briefed on the session told me. “They’re beginning to think about whether Mike Pence should be running again,” the source said, adding that the advisers presented Trump with new polling that shows Pence doesn’t expand Trump’s coalition. “He doesn’t detract from it, but he doesn’t add anything either,” the source said. Last month, The New York Times reported that Trump had been privately asking advisers if Pence could be trusted, and that outside advisers have been pushing Nikki Haley to replace Pence. One veteran of Trump’s 2016 campaign who’s still advising Trump told me the president hasn’t been focused enough on 2020. “What he needs to do is consider his team for 2020 and make sure it’s in place,” the adviser said. “He has to have people on his team that are loyal to his agenda.”

I think this is hysterical, considering Trump is going to have much larger problems than "whether or not Mike Pence helps him on the 2020 ticket."  Trump isn't thinking about 2020 enough?  He needs to be thinking about 2019 and whether or not he's in an orange jumpsuit.

It's About Suppression, Con't

North Carolina's largest newspaper, the Charlotte Observer, is calling for new elections in NC's 9th Congressional district as the evidence of massive GOP fraud that cost Democrat Dan McCready the election piles up.

In the week since the state Board of Elections declined to certify the results of North Carolina’s 9th Congressional District election, journalists and others have begun to fill in the details of a troubling case of apparent ballot fraud. In Bladen County — and perhaps other counties — individuals have interfered with the voting process by gaining access to others’ absentee ballots, according to witnesses and records. Investigators also are looking into the burgeoning scandal.

There may be no way, however, to know how widespread the fraud was, or whether it involved enough ballots to potentially change the outcome of the election — a 905-vote victory for Republican Mark Harris over Democrat Dan McCready. But we do know enough. Unless new evidence somehow clears the clouds hanging over this election, the Board of Elections should toss out the 9th District results.

Calling for a new election would be an enormously significant decision for the board. It should be done with the support of N.C. statutes and without a whiff of partisan politics. Republicans from Raleigh to Washington would surely howl; already, they’ve noted that the number of absentee ballots cast in Bladen County falls short of the overall margin of victory in the 9th.

This is true. But witnesses have said that their ballots, which were collected by individuals apparently working for ringleader McCrae Dowless, were never submitted to the county or state. There’s little certainty about how many ballots were wrongly tossed or destroyed in Bladen County (there were more than 1,500 that were requested but unreturned) or how much Dowless and his workers may have done the same in neighboring Robeson County, as reports suggest. It might have been enough to change the outcome of the race. It might not have been.

That possibility, however, triggers a statutory threshold for holding a new election. North Carolina General Statute 163A-1180 authorizes the Board of Elections to intervene and “take any other action necessary to assure that an election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption and without irregularities that may have changed the result of an election.” The board should call for a new NC-09 general election. The U.S. House can and should order a new primary, given that results show Harris winning a startling 96 percent of the Bladen absentee vote in his narrow 2018 primary victory over then incumbent Robert Pittenger. 

The Observer calls for not only new elections, but a new GOP primary in the case of Mark Harris's absolute malfeasance.  

CNN election analyst Harry Enten is a bit less sanguine about the situation in NC.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections and Ethics last week voted against certifying Republican Mark Harris' 905 vote win over Democrat Dan McCready in the state's 9th Congressional District. 

In the days since, allegations of election fraud involving absentee mail-in ballots have been made public. 

The case for election fraud appears to be strong. That's because it's doesn't rely on just one or two pieces of evidence. Rather, it's a slew of evidence. This means that even if one part of the case were to fall apart, there would be still be reason to believe that the election wasn't on the level.

BuzzFeed News drops this bombshell.

The allegations that Republicans tampered with absentee ballots in a close North Carolina election represent the most serious federal election tampering case in years, one that allegedly stole votes from elderly black voters in the state’s rural south.

Now two women intimately involved with McCrae Dowless’s absentee ballot machine have revealed to BuzzFeed News its grim and chaotic workings, in which Dowless tracked votes on yellow paper and paid his workers, including family members, from stacks of cash, and that some were on opioids while they worked.
The accounts of the women, Jessica Karen Dowless and Lisa Britt, add significant new details to those that have come out from investigators and other news reports, as the state election board considers whether it should order a new election between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready. The women, both related to McCrae Dowless, paint a picture of American political chicanery at its lowest levels — though with sweeping consequences both for voters allegedly denied the franchise, and for the outcome of a pivotal national election, which Harris won by 905 votes.

Jessica Dowless described the scene in the small office at the intersection of two highways, where she worked on Harris’s behalf for the last two months as chaotic. One worker, she said, “was so fucking high the other day she passed out at the fucking computer.” One of the workers who collected absentee ballots from residents was a “pill head,” she said.

Dowless, whose husband is distantly related to McCrae Dowless, described herself as a “housewife [who] needed a part-time job” and said she was one of about six employees. She often worked six days a week tallying the number of Democrats and Republicans who had recently voted. However, she explained, there were times when she did not quite understand what she was doing or what the grand purpose was.

She did say, though, that campaign workers delivered sealed absentee ballots from the homes of people who requested them to McCrae Dowless’s office — though North Carolina law forbids third parties from handling those ballots.

She said she spent her time tracking the number of ballots sent in to the county board of elections — and then tallying up the number that were collected by employees of McCrae Dowless, who the Washington Post reportedwould keep the Harris campaign updated on the latest figures.

Jessica Dowless said she would also note voters’ race and party affiliation.

“My job was at the office and I read emails and counted how many Republicans and Democrats and non-affiliated people voted every day... I added up how many voted that day and wrote it on a piece of paper and then they read it and then I don’t know what it did with it. McCrae was the only one who saw it,” she said. “I would go down each page and count how many black Republicans, white Republicans and I did the opposite, black unaffiliated, black Democrats, and add them up and then calculate the percentage of how many people voted that way each day.”

Mark Harris cannot be seated in the US House come January.  That is an absolute certainty. 

In fact, he should be in prison.

StupidiNews!

• USA Gymnastics has filed for bankruptcy after the 200,000-member organization was sent reeling financially in 2018 after lawsuits related to convicted sex abuser Larry Nassar's sexual assaults.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin threatened to have Russia begin development of nuclear missiles banned under the existing INF treaty as the US gave 60-day notice it was leaving the nuclear pact.
• Six US Marines are still missing after two military aircraft seemingly collided off the coast of Japan during a refueling exercise that went awry.
• Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin has now reversed course on Donald Trump's nominee to run the FERC after activists called for Manchin's ouster as ranking member of the Senate Energy Committee.
• Two Iranian nationals have been charged in connection with the March 2018 ransomware attack on the City of Atlanta's computer network, which knocked out city services for over a week.

Last Call For Goodbye Poppy

Former Presidents, Vice Presidents, First Ladies, lawmakers, and dignitaries both foreign and domestic assembled at the National Cathedral for the funeral of George H.W. Bush on Wednesday.  It was a somber affair, certainly worthy of the funerals of America's great leaders, and then an orange elephant showed up and managed to basically ruin everything.

Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said he was "struck" by the reception of President Trump and first lady Melania Trump upon their arrival at the funeral for George H.W. Bush on Wednesday, saying "a chill had descended" on the front row that included the Clintons, Obamas and Carters.

“I have to say I was struck when President Trump and Melania Trump came to the front row, that it was as if a chill had descended on that front row," Wallace said on Fox's "America's Newsroom" during live coverage of the Bush state funeral at Washington National Cathedral.

"You had seen a lot of chatty talk between the Clintons and the Obamas, the Carters. But when Donald Trump sat down, the greeting that he was given by Barack Obama and Michelle Obama was about as cool as it could have been.”

Trump and the first lady greeted the Obamas and shook hands when sitting down next to them in the front row of the service for Bush, who passed away last Friday at the age of 94. There was no greeting between the Trumps and Clintons, who sat farther down the row.

Hillary Clinton, Trump's rival during the 2016 presidential election, turned when Melania Trump entered the area but did not appear to turn to acknowledge President Trump's arrival. Her husband, former President Clinton, and former President Carter turned their direction when Trump greeted the Obamas.

Trump managed to not soil himself in front of the planet, although it was close.

Watch Trump's face. pic.twitter.com/irLhFxqS0C

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) December 5, 2018

Dubya said some nice stuff about his dad and then everyone avoided Donald Trump like a family reunion with the drunk racist uncle that just got out of Scientology. 

But in the end, a bunch of men whose decisions helped millions of lives, ruined millions of lives, and took millions of lives over the last 40 years all got together to bury one of their own.

That was really about it.  The rest of us press on, one day at a time.

Sore Losers, Inc. Con't

Democrats won big victories in Wisconsin and Michigan, ousting two of the worst GOP governors in the nation with Scott Walker and Rick Snyder, men who have caused countless damage to millions of working-class folk and done everything they could to hurt people of color in cities like Detroit and Milwaukee, Flint and Madison.  Voters in November also approved a number of measures to help the state's most vulnerable.

Now Republicans, in unprecedented and awful lame duck midnight sessions, have passed bills that would scrap all that and as with North Carolina in 2016, strip much of the power over elections, legal challenges, and regulations from the governors and attorneys general in both states by giving the massively gerrymandered Republican state legislatures a final veto over day-to-day operations of the states' executive branches.

The Republican-led Michigan Legislature on Tuesday passed bills that would delay a minimum wage hike and scale back paid sick leave requirements, an unprecedented lame-duck strategy that was endorsed legally by the state’s conservative attorney general despite criticism that it is unconstitutional.

The fast-tracked legislation, which drew protesters to the Capitol, was pushed through on largely 60-48 and 26-12 party-line votes. Changes were made at the request of Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, who stayed mum on whether he will sign the measures despite Senate leaders saying they expect him to do so.

To prevent minimum wage and paid sick time ballot initiatives from going to the electorate last month, after which they would have been much harder to change if voters had passed them, GOP legislators — at the behest of business groups — preemptively approved them in September so that they could alter them after the election with simple majority votes in each chamber.

One bill would gradually increase the state’s $9.25 minimum wage to $12.05 an hour by 2030 — maybe later in the case of a recession — instead of $12 by 2022. It would also repeal provisions to tie future increases to inflation and bring a lower wage for tipped employees in line with the wage for other workers.

Another bill would exempt employers with fewer than 50 employees from having to provide paid sick time as required under the existing law that is scheduled to take effect in March. It also would limit the amount of annual mandatory leave at larger businesses to 40 hours, instead of 72 hours, and make other changes. About 162,000 small businesses that collectively employ 1 million workers would be exempt from awarding paid sick leave under the legislation, according to the Michigan League for Public Policy.

Democratic Rep. Darrin Camilleri of Wayne County’s Brownstown Township, who voted against the measures, said gutting the minimum wage hike “would not only hurt thousands of workers in Michigan but would also betray the trust of millions more by ignoring the will of the people.”

Wisconsin too saw a midnight session last night stripping power from incoming Gov. Tony Evers.

The Wisconsin Senate voted just before sunrise Wednesday following an all-night session to pass a sweeping bill in a lame-duck session designed to empower the GOP-controlled Legislature and weaken the Democrat replacing Republican Gov. Scott Walker.

Republicans pushed on through protests, internal disagreement and Democratic opposition to the measures designed to reduce the powers of incoming Democratic Gov.-elect Tony Evers and Democratic Attorney General-elect Josh Kaul. Both Evers and Kaul urged Republicans not to do it, warning that lawsuits would bring more gridlock to Wisconsin when the new administration, and the first divided government in 10 years, takes over.

But Republicans forged ahead regardless, passing it 17-16 with all Republicans except one in support. All Democrats voted against it. The Assembly was expected to pass the bill later Wednesday, sending it on to Walker for his consideration. Walker has signaled support.

"This is a heck of a way to run a railroad," Democratic Senate Minority Leader Jennifer Shilling said as debate resumed at 5 a.m. "This is embarrassing we're even here." 

In one concession, Republicans backed away from giving the Legislature the power to sidestep the attorney general and appoint their own attorney when state laws are challenged in court. An amendment to do away with that provision was part of a Republican rewrite of the bill, made public around 4:30 a.m. after all-night negotiations.

Walker, who was booed and heckled during an afternoon Christmas tree lighting ceremony in the Capitol rotunda, has signaled support for the measures that he would have to sign before they take effect. He's in his final five weeks as governor after losing a bid for a third term to Evers, the state schools superintendent.

Despite the victories by Evers, Kaul and every other Democrat running for statewide office, Republicans maintained majority control in the Legislature for the next two years. Democrats blamed partisan gerrymandering by Republicans for stacking the electoral map against them.

But faced with a Democratic governor for the first time in eight years, legislative Republicans came up with a package of lame-duck bills to protect their priorities and make it harder for Evers to enact his.

"Why are we here today?" Democratic Assembly Minority Leader Gordon Hintz said as the debate of more than nine hours began late Tuesday night. "What are we doing? Nothing we're doing here is about helping the people of Wisconsin. It's about helping politicians. It's about power and self-interest."

You have to admit, pushing back a minimum wage hike 12 years is pretty hideous, even for Republicans.  But that's exactly what's ahead for Michigan, and Wisconsin is going to face years of lawsuits, where North Carolina is now.

This is what happens when Republicans come to power.  When you evict them, they still cheat.

It's Mueller Time, Mike Flynn Edition

Last night's Mueller team court sentencing filing on Michael Flynn did not disappoint, as it turns out that the good General has been cooperating with the FBI since before the Mueller probe was even authorized.

Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s first national security adviser, helped substantially with the special counsel’s investigation and should receive little to no prison time for lying to federal investigators, prosecutors said on Tuesday.

Mr. Flynn was a key cooperator who helped the Justice Department with several investigations, prosecutors for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, said. He sat for 19 interviews with Mr. Mueller’s office and other prosecutors and handed over documents and communications, they said.

“His early cooperation was particularly valuable because he was one of the few people with long-term and firsthand insight” into the subject of Mr. Mueller’s investigation — Russia’s election interference and whether any Trump associates conspired, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing recommendation memorandum and an addendum that was heavily blacked out.

In particular, they wrote, he might have prompted others to cooperate with the inquiry. “The defendant’s decision to plead guilty and cooperate likely affected the decisions of related firsthand witnesses to be forthcoming,” prosecutors said.

They also indicated that Mr. Flynn helped with other investigations without revealing details about them.

Mr. Flynn, who served briefly as the president’s national security adviser, is the only White House aide and the first person from the president’s inner circle to strike a cooperation deal with the special counsel’s office in exchange for a more lenient penalty. He pleaded guilty a year ago to lying to the F.B.I. about conversations he had with the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time, Sergey I. Kislyak.

“The defendant deserves credit for accepting responsibility in a timely fashion and substantially assisting the government,” prosecutors wrote.

The cases of some other former Trump aides caught up in the special counsel investigation are also nearing resolution, marking an active week for Mr. Mueller’s inquiry. By Friday, Mr. Mueller’s prosecutors are due to enumerate how they believe Paul Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, violated a plea agreement and separately to outline the extent of cooperation by Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s longtime lawyer and fixer.

Another longtime Trump associate whom Mr. Mueller is scrutinizing, Roger J. Stone Jr., said on Tuesday that he had invoked his the Fifth Amendment rights in response to a request from Democratic investigators for the Senate Judiciary Committee to hand over documents and testimony relevant to their own Russia inquiry. Mr. Stone’s lawyer, Grant J. Smith, said the committee’s request was “overbroad” and stressed that Mr. Stone was “an innocent citizen who denounces secrecy.”

Basically everything we've suspected about Mike Flynn is true.  All the stuff about him getting rounded up by the FBI nearly immediately after Trump took office, getting caught lying red-handed, and then turning states' evidence, is 100% accurate.

And Flynn's plea deal made it clear to everyone else that Mueller's investigation was for real, and that people should start cutting deals ASAP.  There are only two people that Flynn, Manafort, and Cohen could give up more important than themselves, and that's Mike Pence and Donald Trump.

The two of them should be crapping cinder blocks right now.  We know what role Flynn played, according to the sentencing filing, there are at least three investigations, one involving Flynn's lies, one involving the Trump campaign's relationship with Russia, and a third, completely redacted investigation.  It's that last one that should have Trump and Pence paralyzed with fear.

We'll know what roles Manafort and Cohen played before the end of the week, too.  More is coming, folks.  A lot more.

And then the indictments will come like the cleansing rain of justice.

StupidiNews!

• After a classified briefing from intelligence officials, GOP Sen. Bob Corker says there's "zero question" that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman ordered the murder of Jamal Khashoggi.
• Disgraced former CBS network chairman Leslie Moonves allegedly destroyed evidence and misled an internal CBS investigation of sexual misconduct claims.
• US prosecutors have announced indictments against four individuals in connection with the massive "Panama Papers" leak of offshore tax evasion schemes by corporations over decades.
• The Dow Jones took an 800-point tumble Tuesday as investors remain skittish over Chinese trade war concerns and growing issues in the UK and France.
• The loss by Texas GOP Rep. John Culberson in last month's midterm elections could spell the end of NASA's plans to send a probe to Jupiter's moon of Europa.

Last Call For Hacking Off The GOP

Politico today reported a major e-mail hacking story involving the House GOP 2018 campaign arm, the National Republican Campaign Committee, when of course the Trump regime did everything it could to weaken data security before the midterm elections.

The House GOP campaign arm suffered a major hack during the 2018 election, exposing thousands of sensitive emails to an outside intruder, according to three senior party officials.

The email accounts of four senior aides at the National Republican Congressional Committee were surveilled for several months, the party officials said. The intrusion was detected in April by an NRCC vendor, who alerted the committee and its cybersecurity contractor. An internal investigation was initiated and the FBI was alerted to the attack, said the officials, who requested anonymity to discuss the incident.

However, senior House Republicans — including Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) and Majority Whip Steve Scalise (R-La.) — were not informed of the hack until POLITICO contacted the NRCC on Monday with questions about the episode. Rank-and-file House Republicans were not told, either.

Rep. Steve Stivers (R-Ohio), who served as NRCC chairman this past election cycle, did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Committee officials said they decided to withhold the information because they were intent on conducting their own investigation, and feared that revealing the hack would compromise efforts to find the culprit.

"We don't want to get into details about what was taken because it's an ongoing investigation," said a senior party official. "Let's say they had access to four active accounts. I think you can draw from that."

The hack became a major source of consternation within the committee as the midterm election unfolded. The NRCC brought on the prominent Washington law firm Covington and Burling as well as Mercury Public Affairs to oversee the response to the hack. The NRCC paid the two firms hundreds of thousands of dollars to help respond to the intrusion. The committee’s chief legal counsel, Chris Winkelman, devoted hours of his time to dealing with matter.

Party officials would not say when the hack began or who was behind it, although they privately believe it was a foreign agent due to the nature of the attack.

Three observations:

One, it was Russia, you knobs, and everyone knows it.  Let's put aside all the "but we don't have proof" and "ongoing investigation" crap, it's Putin.

Two, the timing on this reveal right now seems weird but probably related to observation one.

Three, nobody told House Republicans, including their own leadership, because of possibly compromising the investigation and that's related to observation number two and definitely to observation number one.  Steve Stivers knew as the head of the NRCC, but who else knew, and how did they keep a lid on it?

We'll find out more as this goes along, I would imagine.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The GOP scheme to allegedly steal the US House election in NC's ninth congressional district is coming to light, and it looks like GOP Rep. Mark Harris hired a convicted fraudster named McCrae Dowless to run his illegal absentee ballot farming operation, according to Charlotte ABC affiliate WSOC-TV.

What Channel 9 found appears to be a targeted effort to illegally pick up ballots, in which even the person picking them up had no idea whether those ballots were even delivered to the elections board.

Consistently, Channel 9 found the same people signing as witnesses for the people voting, which is very rare.

Of the 159 submitted and accepted absentee ballot envelopes, below is the breakdown of those who signed as witnesses:

• Woody Hester witnessed 44
• James Singletary witnessed 42
• Lisa Britt witnessed 42
• Ginger Eason witnessed 28
• Jessica Dowless witnessed 15
• Cheryl Kinlaw witnessed 13
• Deborah Edwards witnessed 11
• Sandra Dowless witnessed 10

Many times, people on that list witnessed ballots together.

Channel 9’s political reporter Joe Bruno went door-to-door in Bladen County trying to find out who these people are.

No one answered at Woody Hester’s home. James Singletary wasn’t home either and Lisa Britt doesn’t live at the address she said she did on the ballots.

Bruno then visited Ginger Eason. She told him why her name appeared so many times as a witness.

“I was helping McCrae pick up ballots,” Eason said.

Eason said Leslie McCrae Dowless, Jr. paid her $75 to $100 a week to go around and pick up finished absentee ballots.

Once again, Dowless is a convicted felon who has served time for both fraud and perjury and it looks like he may have been running similar scams for multiple candidates over the years in NC.

Dowless’ past work includes huge differences between his candidate’s absentee by mail total and opponents.

Dowless wasn’t always connected to the Harris campaign.

In the 2016 primary, records show Dowless worked for Todd Johnson, who ran against Harris and Robert Pittenger.

Campaign finance reports show Dowless was paid $6,456 by Johnson’s campaign.

The disbursement description was for “get out the vote.”

In the June 2016 primary, Johnson finished last in the race, trailing the top vote-getter Pittenger by a little more than 1,100 votes. Despite the loss, Johnson dominated in Bladen County, carrying 68 percent of the vote.

A deeper look at the votes reveals Johnson received 98 percent of absentee by mail votes.

Johnson received 221 absentee-by-mail votes.

Pittenger and Harris combined for five.

The 221 absentee-by-mail votes amounted to 51 percent of his total votes received by that method and 21 percent of the total amount of absentee-by-mail votes when each candidate’s totals are added together.

As Channel 9 reported last week, Dowless was referenced in two affidavits that are now included in NCSBE’s investigation.

In one affidavit, a witness claims he overheard a person saying Dowless would be paid $40,000 for a Mark Harris victory.

Another man claims in an affidavit that Dowless told him he was doing “absentees” for the Mark Harris campaign and James McVicker’s campaign for Bladen County sheriff.

I would have to at this point assume a new election will be held, and I wouldn't want to be in Mark Harris's shoes when all this mess comes out to voters.

The only real election fraud in 2018 was perpetrated by Republicans against elderly voters, mostly poor black ones.  Let's keep this in mind.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

As I said last week, the Manafort court filing last Friday by Robert Mueller is the beginning of the endgame.  

So bottom line, Mueller knew all along that Manafort was going to renege on his plea deal.  He had every suspicion that Manafort was going to relay any information right back to Trump, and then after Trump used that information to answer his questions to submit to Mueller, Manafort was going to drop the deal and Trump was going to pardon him.

Only Mueller knew this the entire time, deliberately fed Manafort misinformation which went right back to Trump, and then beat Trump and Manafort to the punch and filed today that Manafort was lying.

It also means Mueller can, in a future open court filing, lay out exactly what Manafort was lying about, which will basically consist of a copy and paste text of Mueller's final report.

There's nothing Acting AG Matt Whitaker can do about it, either.  By lying, Manafort assured that the report can't be buried, because Trump and Manafort really are this stupid.

 

It's that third paragraph that's the key.  We now know that "future open court filing" date for Flynn is today, and for Cohen and Manafort on Friday.  Grab your popcorn, the last month of 2018 is going to be a doozy.

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s prosecutors have told defense lawyers in recent weeks that they are “tying up loose ends” in their investigation, providing the clearest clues yet that the long-running probe into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election may be coming to its climax, potentially in the next few weeks, according to multiple sources close to the matter.

The new information about the state of Mueller’s investigation comes during a pivotal week when the special counsel’s prosecutors are planning to file memos about three of their most high profile defendants — former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn, former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and former Trump personal lawyer Michael Cohen.

A Flynn sentencing memo is due Tuesday, and memos about Manafort and Cohen are slated for Friday. All three documents are expected to yield significant new details on what cooperation the three of them provided to the Russia investigation.

There has been much speculation that Mueller might file his memo in Manafort’s case under seal in order to prevent public disclosure of the additional crimes his office believes Manafort committed when he allegedly lied to prosecutors and broke a plea deal after agreeing to cooperate.

But Peter Carr, spokesman for the special counsel, confirmed to Yahoo News on Monday that the Manafort memo “will be public,” although he added there could be some portions that are redacted or filed as a sealed addendum. The Manafort memo has been requested by the federal judge in his case so that prosecutors could, for the first time, spell out what matters they believe Manafort has lied to them about.

The fact that Mueller is planning a public filing about Manafort suggests he may no longer feel the need to withhold information about his case in order to bring additional indictments against others. That would be consistent with messages his prosecutors have given defense lawyers in recent weeks indicating that they are in the endgame of their investigation.

Again, by making these court filings public, Mueller is almost assuredly and publicly laying out his report against the Trump campaign in a way where Acting AG Matt Whitaker or Republicans in Congress can't bury it.

It doesn't mean that the prospect of more indictments are over, though.  It means that Mueller may serve them all at once and it may mean that Mueller safely has all the information he needs to unseal those indictments and start rounding up people.

Plus, the Trump Organization case in New York state continues regardless.

Stay tuned.  It's going to be a bumpy week.

StupidiNews!

• The US Postal Service will suspend most mail deliveries on Wednesday in honor of a national day of mourning for former President George H.W. Bush.
• Trump regime economic adviser Larry Kudlow says the White House will end federal subsidies for electric cars and renewable energy sources within the next three years.
• A new study finds corporate tax giveaways cost schools $1.8 billion in 28 states in fiscal year 2017, enough to hire 28,000 teachers.
• Opposition lawmakers in the UK have blocked debate on Brexit legislation pending an emergency contempt motion for not releasing the May government's legal advice on leaving the EU.
• Verizon says online blogging site Tumblr, owned by Verizon subsidiary Oath, will block all adult content starting December 17th, something that could end 20% of the site's traffic.