It's Mueller Time, Con't

Yesterday's guilty plea from former Trump regime aide Rick Gates has led to some new developments in the Mueller probe and some familiar names now coming up in connection with Gates, his business partner and former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort, and their years' worth of lobbying violations, international money laundering and bank fraud.

First up, Mueller leveled new charges against Manafort as a direct result of Gates's guilty plea.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is accusing President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman of secretly paying former European politicians to lobby on behalf of Ukraine.

The new allegation against Paul Manafort comes in a newly unsealed indictment made public Friday. The indictment followed a guilty plea by Manafort’s longtime business associate, Rick Gates.

The indictment accuses Manafort of paying the former politicians, informally known as the “Hapsburg group,” to appear to be “independent” analysts when in fact they were paid lobbyists. Some of the covert lobbying took place in the U.S.

The indictment says the group was managed by a former European chancellor. Court papers accuse Manafort of using offshore accounts to pay the group more than 2 million euros.

We know that Manafort and Donald Trump have known each other and have worked together for decades, and that both have always been interested in Russian and European money...the untraceable, laundered kind.  Manafort has long been a deal-maker and fixer, that's why Trump hired him to run his campaign.  If anyone could have arranged a little "help" from Moscow, whether it was money or influence operations, it's Manafort.  Gates has long been Manafort's partner in crime on the business side and he was welcomed into the Trump campaign as a result.

But there's another name that has come up as a result of Gates's plea, and that's a particular California Republican congressman who has deep ties to Putin and Russia.

Former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates just admitted to lying to U.S. investigators about a March 19, 2013, meeting between his boss, Paul Manafort, and an unidentified U.S. congressman. Public filings show a meeting that day between Manafort and Dana Rohrabacher, a Russia-friendly Republican congressman from California.

You'd better believe Rohrabacher is squarely in Mueller's sights, too.

Details of a March 19, 2013, meeting surfaced last year in supplemental filings from DMP International, Manafort’s firm, and Mercury Public Affairs, whose partner, Vin Weber, also participated in the 2013 meeting.

Weber and a representative for him didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

The lobbying that Gates and Manafort are accused of hiding included work on behalf of Ukraine’s then-President Viktor Yanukovych, who was backed by Russia.

After the guilty plea on Friday, a spokesman for Rohrabacher, who has sought better relations with Russia, said: “As the congressman has acknowledged before, the meeting was a dinner with two longtime acquaintances –- Manafort and Weber –- from back in his White House and early congressional days.”

“The three reminisced and talked mostly about politics,” the spokesman said. “The subject of Ukraine came up in passing. It is no secret that Manafort represented Viktor Yanukovych’s interests, but as chairman of the relevant European subcommittee, the congressman has listened to all points of view on Ukraine.”

Now, there's no reason on the surface for Gates to lie about meeting Rohrabacher for dinner five years ago, but Mueller clearly knew what happened at that meeting, well enough to bring charges against Gates, and well enough for Gates to plead guilty to the charge of lying to the FBI.

The larger story remains that Gates is 100% cooperating with Mueller, and everyone knows it.

His Place In Infamy

The NY Times surveyed 170 political scientists and historians on where America's presidents rank in 2018, and absolutely nobody should be surprised as to who comes in dead last.

Where does Donald Trump rank on the list of American presidents?

We surveyed presidential politics experts to sketch out a first draft of Trump’s place in presidential history.

Since our previous survey in 2014, some presidential legacies have soared (Barack Obama’s stock has climbed into the Top 10), while others have fallen (Andrew Jackson toppled to 15, out of the Top 10).

And President Trump? Let’s say that, according to the 170 members of the American Political Science Association’s Presidents and Executive Politics section who filled out our survey, he has at least three years to improve on an ignominious debut.

James Buchanan, who was at the helm as the United States careened into civil war, was dislodged from his position as our nation’s worst president by our current president, Trump.

His Oval Office predecessor, Barack Obama, shot into the Top 10, up from 18th in the previous survey. Ulysses S. Grant also got a bump, up seven places from 2014, perhaps owing to a strong assist from Ron Chernow’s recent masterpiece.

The biggest declines were for Bill Clinton, arguably the result of contemporary scorn for his treatment of women, and Andrew Jackson, for evolving attitudes on his treatment of Native Americans.

The survey's top 10:

1. Lincoln
2. Washington
3. FDR
4. Teddy Roosevelt
5. Jeffeson
6. Truman
7. Eisenhower
8. Obama
9. Reagan
10. LBJ

Hell of a thing to see Obama edge out Reagan.  We really had no idea how lucky we were to have Obama when we did.  As for the bottom, Andrew Johnson, Pierce, William Henry Harrison, Buchanan, and Trump round out the worst chief execs.

The rehabilitation of Dubya continues as well, he's up to 30 now, when ten years ago historians had him down with Buchanan and the like.  On the "greatness" score, Lincoln is a 95, where Trump is a 12, if that tells you anything.  Obama came in at 71.  Most US presidents ended up in the middle between 35 and 65.  These days Nixon doesn't even make the bottom ten.

Trump really has redefined the American presidency, hasn't he?

Last Call For Immigration Nation

Trump thinks he has California right where he wants them, threatening to pull ICE out of the state and let it fend for itself.  Somehow I'm thinking the vast majority of Californians would be very cool with that.

President Donald Trump said Thursday he is considering pulling U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers from California, warning that the nation’s most populous state would turn into a “crime nest” without the federal agents. 

Trump said heavily Democratic California, which gave Hillary Clinton a resounding victory in the 2016 presidential race, was “doing a lousy management job.” He pointed to “a disgrace, the sanctuary city situation” and lamented the “protection of these horrible criminals.” 

The president’s comments were the latest effort by the Trump administration to pressure “sanctuary cities” to cooperate with federal immigration authorities. 

The Justice Department has threatened to deny millions of dollars in federal grant money to communities that refuse to comply with a statute requiring information-sharing with federal law enforcement. It’s an essential part of Trump’s efforts to crack down on cities and states that refuse to help enforce U.S. immigration laws. 

Trump issued the threat during a meeting with state and local officials on school safety and gun violence. He told Attorney General Jeff Sessions and others that his administration has targeted members of the violent MS-13 gang but has been “getting no help from the state of California.” 

“Frankly, if I wanted to pull our people from California you would have a crime nest like you’ve never seen in California. All I’d have to do is say is, ‘ICE and Border Patrol, let California alone,’ you’d be inundated. You would see crime like nobody has ever seen crime in this country.” 

He added: “If we ever pulled our ICE out, and we ever said, ‘Hey, let California alone, let them figure it out for themselves,’ in two months they’d be begging for us to come back. They would be begging. And you know what, I’m thinking about doing it.” 

The White House did not immediately comment on the president’s suggestions.

I mean, let's dissect this.  First of all, Trump is 100% okay with making the people of California suffer if it makes them bend to his will.  That's not the act of a president, that's the act of a fascist dictator.  That's literally the approach Rodrigo Duterte is taking in the Philippines right now and 20,000 people have died at the hands of his paramilitary police squads selectively enforcing order against drug gangs.  If Trump's right, he's going to have the blood of thousands on his hands.

Second, I'm pretty sure California would be thrilled to have ICE go away for a while, which is the point.  The state would be very happy not to have to worry about feds coming in and grabbing undocumented folks willy-nilly. If California's right, Trump is going to look like a complete idiot (I know, what a stretch.)

Either way, this is a colossally bad idea for Trump, and I'm sure he's being talked out of this right now.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

We know Rick Gates, the business partner (and now indicted co-conspirator) of Paul Manafort, has been shopping a plea deal since last week with Robert Mueller's office.  With yesterday's massive new indictments of money laundering, bank fraud and tax charges, it was only a matter of time before Gates came begging for a deal, as I said yesterday:

Both of these guys are in mucho trouble. Somebody's going to flip. These charges are enough to put a guy in prison for a very long time. And remember, there could be more sealed charges waiting. Manafort's money laundering venue of choice? The same Cypriot banks that Vlad Putin's guys hang out with.

Less than 24 hours after those charges against Manafort and Gates were revealed, it looks like Rick Gates has copped a plea and will sing like Nina Simone.

A former top adviser to Donald J. Trump’s presidential campaign indicted by the special counsel was expected to plead guilty as soon as Friday afternoon, according to two people familiar with his plea agreement, a move that signals he is cooperating with the investigation into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. 

The adviser, Rick Gates, is a longtime political consultant who once served as Mr. Trump’s deputy campaign chairman. The plea deal could be a significant development in the investigation — a sign that Mr. Gates plans to offer incriminating information against his longtime associate and the former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort, or other members of the Trump campaign in exchange for a lighter punishment. 

The deal comes as the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has been raising pressure on Mr. Gates and Mr. Manafort with dozens of new charges of money laundering and bank fraud that were unsealed on Thursday. Mr. Mueller first indicted both men in October, and both pleaded not guilty. 

Mr. Gates’s primary concern has been protecting his family, both emotionally and financially, from the prospect of a drawn-out trial, according to a person familiar with his defense strategy who was not authorized to publicly discuss the case and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

If Mr. Manafort continues to fight the charges in a trial, testimony from Mr. Gates could give Mr. Mueller’s team a first-person account of the criminal conduct that is claimed in the indictments — a potential blow to Mr. Manafort’s defense strategy.

It was unclear exactly what Mr. Gates might have to offer the special counsel’s team, whether about Mr. Manafort or about other members of the Trump campaign. Neither indictment indicated that either Mr. Gates or Mr. Manafort had information about the central question of Mr. Mueller’s investigation — whether President Trump or his aides coordinated with the Russian government’s efforts to disrupt the 2016 election. 

But Mr. Gates was present for the most significant periods of activity of the campaign, as Mr. Trump began developing policy positions and his digital operation engaged with millions of voters on platforms such as Facebook. Even after Mr. Manafort was fired by Mr. Trump in August 2016, Mr. Gates remained on in a different role, as a liaison between the campaign and the Republican National Committee. He traveled aboard the Trump plane through Election Day.

Gates flips on Manafort, Manafort then flips on bigger fish like Jared Kushner or maybe even Trump himself.  Mueller knows what he's doing, believe this.  Again, Gates pleading makes it clear where this investigation is heading, as he will plead guilty to several charges, including conspiracy against the United States of America.

Could all this be derailed by a Trump pardon?  I think Mueller has made arrangements for that as well, particularly with NY state AG Eric Schniederman.  Remember, Trump can't pardon state offenses, only federal ones (and even then there are consequences).

We'll see where this goes from here, but Mueller just took another step closer to Trump.

And Trump knows it.

Three People Outside Jefferson City, Missouri Con't.

Missouri GOP Gov. Eric Greitens has been caught up in a scandal over having an affair and allegedly tying up his mistress and taking pictures in order to blackmail her in an apparent revenge porn insurance policy.  The plan blew up in his face when the woman bravely came forward to tell her story, inspired by the #MeToo movement.  The state launched an investigation into the governor's conduct and calls for Greitens to resign were mostly ignored by both the Governor and state Republicans.

Now Greitens has been indicted on felony charges under Missouri law as the result of the investigation.

Missouri Gov. Eric Greitens, who was swept into office in 2016 with a vow to clean up a corrupt state government, was indicted and booked Thursday on a felony invasion of privacy charge for allegedly taking and transmitting a non-consensual photo of his partly-nude lover shortly before that campaign started.

It stems from a scandal that broke last month, in which Greitens was accused of threatening his lover with the photo — an allegation that isn't mentioned in the indictment. Greitens has admitted having an extramarital affair, but has denied the rest.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Kimberly M. Gardner's office announced the indictment Thursday afternoon. A Post-Dispatch reporter saw Greitens being led down a hallway by several St. Louis city deputies on the first floor of the Carnahan Courthouse in downtown St. Louis at about 3:45 p.m. Officials later confirmed Greitens had been taken into custody and then booked at the St. Louis Justice Center.

Greitens, a Republican, declared his innocence in a written statement, and alleged the indictment is a "misguided political decision" by a "reckless liberal prosecutor." Gardner is a Democrat.

Greitens' legal team immediately filed a motion to dismiss the indictment, on grounds that any activity Greitens engaged in was "consensual."

Judge Rex M. Burlison allowed Greitens' release on a personal recognizance bond that permits him to travel freely throughout the United States. Greitens was scheduled to travel to Washington this weekend for an annual meeting of the nation’s governors. But Elena Waskey, spokesperson for the National Governors Association, said late Thursday that Greitens informed the organization that he would not be attending.

Online court records indicate Greitens is due back in court on March 16.

In recent weeks it appeared Greitens had weathered the worst of the scandal, but as news of the indictment spread Thursday, it became clear his political future is again in jeopardy.

A joint statement by top legislative Republicans, including Speaker of the House Todd Richardson, said they will appoint a group of legislators to investigate the charges: “We will carefully examine the facts contained in the indictment and answer the question as to whether or not the governor can lead our state while a felony case moves forward." Any impeachment proceedings would begin in the House.

Gardner, in her statement announcing the indictment, said the grand jury found probable cause to believe Greitens violated a Missouri statute that makes it a felony to transmit a non-consensual image showing nudity in a manner that allows access to that image via a computer.

"As I have stated before, it is essential for residents of the city of St. Louis and our state to have confidence in their leaders," Gardner said in the statement.

We'll see what happens.  Greitens was considered a rising star in the GOP, a charismatic, relatively young former Navy SEAL with no political experience, who publicly turned his back on the Democratic party and attacked President Obama after attending the 2008 Democratic National Convention and being recruited in 2010 to run against Missouri GOP Sen. Roy Blunt as one of the promising young veterans that the Democrats were trying to recruit to win in the Midwest.

Greitens was carried into office by the MAGA movement getting a million and a half votes. Now?  People are a bit less happy with him, and once again the calls to resign are strong.  Couldn't have happened to a more deserving guy if you ask me.

He's been able to dodge calls to resign and remain in office so far, but a felony indictment is the kind of thing that ends a career in prison.

We'll see.

StupidiNews!

• A Broward County Florida Sheriff's Deputy has resigned after security footage of the Parkland school shooting showed him waiting outside the school building as the shooter attacked.
• Police in Argentina have seized 400 kilos of cocaine from the Russian Embassy in Buenos Aires after a joint sting operation uncovered a drug gang using couriers to ship product to Europe. 
• Republicans are categorizing the replacement of the nation's top election protection official as "routine" as US Election Assistance Commission chair Matthew Masterson is now out.
• A tweet by Kylie Jenner to her 24 million followers that she doesn't really open Snapchat anymore caused the company's stock to tank by 6% and wiped out over a billion in market value.
• Electric van startup Workhorse will sell 50 delivery vehicles to UPS after bringing the cost of the vans down to being comparable to diesel vehicles over time, a major step.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

Well, we now know what at least some of those sealed charges were for Paul Manafort and Rick Gates from earlier in the week: Mueller's office just unloaded 32 counts including international money laundering against the pair.

New charges were filed Thursday against former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his business partner, ratcheting up the legal pressure on them as they prepare for a trial later this year. 

A new indictment has long been expected in special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s prosecution of Manafort and his right-hand man, Rick Gates, on fraud and money laundering charges. Manafort served as President Trump’s campaign chairman from June to August 2016. Gates also served as a top official on Trump’s campaign. The new indictment contains 32 counts, including tax charges. 

The filing Thursday comes at a time of significant uncertainty in the case about when a trial might happen, or even who the defense lawyers will be. Last week, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson criticized both sides for what she called “unacceptable delays” in a case which still doesn’t have a trial date set.

Manafort and Gates were hit with a 12-count indictment in October — the first criminal charges in Mueller’s probe of Russian interference with the 2016 election. That indictment focused not on events in the 2016 race but financial transactions involving work by Manafort and Gates for a Ukrainian political party, and their failure to notify U.S. authorities that they were allegedly acting as lobbyists for a foreign government.

The new charges come as Gates’ legal strategy and defense team are still in question. His three lawyers have asked to leave the case, a request the judge is considering. The details of those discussions have not been described publicly, beyond a court filing that said they involve “highly sensitive matters” that would “potentially be prejudicial to (Gates) as well as embarrassing.”

And yeah, the money laundering charge is ugly:

Vox has the full indictment here.

Both of these guys are in mucho trouble.  Somebody's going to flip. These charges are enough to put a guy in prison for a very long time.   And remember, there could be more sealed charges waiting.  Manafort's money laundering venue of choice? The same Cypriot banks that Vlad Putin's guys hang out with.

Stay tuned.

The Nasty Rhetoric Association

The student survivors of last week's school shooting in Parkland, Florida represent the largest threat yet to the NRA's total political dominance of lawmakers, and after biding their time over the weekend, NRA President Wayne LaPierre is leading the full-on assault against these kids and their families as this year's right-wing CPAC political conference gets underway today.

After a week of media silence following the school shooting in Florida, the National Rifle Association went on the offensive in its first public response to the massacre, pushing back against law enforcement officials, the media, gun-control advocates and the teenage survivors of the massacre who have pleaded for stricter gun laws. 

In a series of statements, speeches and videos, the gun rights group — a powerful force in American politics — sought to stem what has been an emotionally charged wave of calls for new gun restrictions since police say a teenager armed with an AR-15 rifle killed 17 people at his former high school. An NRA spokeswoman debated survivors of the attack during a heated town hall Wednesday night, and in a speech Thursday morning, Wayne LaPierre, the NRA chief executive, excoriated the media for its coverage of the shooting.

“They don’t care about our school children,” LaPierre said near the start of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the largest annual gathering of American conservatives. “They want to make all of us less free.” 

The NRA also released an advertisement Thursday morning that said “the mainstream media love mass shootings” and claimed that members of the media benefit from covering mass shootings in an effort “to juice their ratings and push their agenda.” 

La Pierre, whose confrontational speeches have become a CPAC tradition, was not on early versions of the conference’s schedule. But when he arrived to speak, he reiterated his pitch for armed guards at schools and free firearms training of teachers. Then he rattled off businesses and people — from jewelry stores to Hollywood actors — who pay for security, calling for Americans to “harden our schools” in the same way.

“We at the NRA are Americans who continue to mourn, and care, and work every day to contribute real solutions to this practical problem,” he said. “Do we really love our money and our celebrities more than we love our children?”

LaPierre was particularly awful towards the students of Parkland today in his CPAC speech, and it's the same rhetoric that has ensured that the overwhelming majority of Americans who want fewer military-grade firearms and more background checks never get anywhere with Congress.  It's worked every time so far.

I'm not 100% sure it will work this time.  But that largely depends on how Americans vote in November, and by then the Parkland school shooting will have long been erased from America's memory banks by the deadly mass shootings that will almost certainly happen in the next several weeks and months ahead.

We'll see.

Selling The President's Brand™

Don Jr. is in India this week selling Trump stuff to the locals as the Trump Regime International Grift Tour continues.

Donald Trump Jr. arrived in India on Tuesday for a week-long visit, and his trip has already revealed a couple of things. 

First, it’s clear that the Trump administration is still embroiled in huge conflicts of interest. And second, it’s evident that the Trump brand, though toxic at home, commands surprising power in the world’s second most populous country. 

President Trump’s eldest son will be spending his time in India promoting Trump-branded luxury apartments across the country. He’ll be meeting with real estate brokers and potential buyers throughout the week in his family business’s biggest market outside the US. 

He’s also offering a special reward to Indians who buy property from him: He’ll join them for an intimate meal. 

Indian newspapers have been running advertisements that promise homebuyers willing to pay a roughly $38,000 booking fee an opportunity to “join Mr. Donald Trump Jr. for a conversation and dinner.” 

Government ethics experts in the US are appalled by that prospect, and say that the arrangement encourages Indians — especially those with ties to India’s government — to use purchases of Trump-branded property as a way to gain favor with the Trump administration. 

“For many people wanting to impact American policy in the region, the cost of a condo is a small price to pay to lobby one of the people closest to the president, far away from watchful eyes,” Jordan Libowitz, the communications director for Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, told the Washington Post. 

Trump Jr.’s India visit also highlights something else: While Trump’s polarizing presidency has put a dent in his domestic businesses, it doesn’t seem to have damaged his reputation in India. In fact, the Trump brand seems to be chugging along quite nicely there.

I'm trying to imagine the near-relativistic speeds at which Republicans would demand Congressional hearings, introduce legislation, and probably deliver articles of impeachment if Chelsea Clinton went to India to promote the Clinton Foundation while her mother was in the Oval Office.

But that's the new normal now, Trump Jr. is allowed to take money on trips abroad to sell the Trump brand wherever he goes, and people are expected to pay up if they want America to keep playing nice.

Sure we should be appalled at this, but nothing will change as long as Republicans remain in power.  This is how American diplomacy works now, you buy the Trump brand or else we pick up our $18 trillion a year economy and take it somewhere else.

StupidiNews!

• A CNN town hall meeting between Parkland school shooting survivors and their families and GOP Sen. Marco Rubio and NRA spokeswoman Dana Loesch quickly turned combative last night.
• "The Pastor to Presidents" Rev. Billy Graham is dead at 99, but Graham's legacy is at best complicated and at worst detrimental to the values he ascribed to.
• The UN is asking the Syrian regime to stop bombing the rebel stronghold district of Ghouta as the air assault enters its fifth day.
• The US women's hockey team finally snapped Canada's 20-year steak of gold medals with a 3-2 shootout victory last night at the PyeongChang games.
• Twitter has suspended tens of thousands of bot accounts, causing outrage among right-wing Twitter users who lost followers as a result.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

Two new developments in the Mueller probe today, first, a pretty big one: new sealed charges have been leveled against Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.

New sealed criminal charges have been filed in federal court in the criminal case brought by Special Counsel Robert Mueller against President Donald Trump’s former senior campaign aides Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, a court record seen by Reuters on Wednesday showed.

The single page, filed at the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, does not shed light on the nature of the new charges. Its inclusion in a binder in the court clerk’s office that is routinely updated with new criminal charges signals that Mueller’s office has filed a superseding indictment replacing a previous one from last year.

Manafort, who was Trump’s campaign manager for almost five months in 2016, and Gates, who was deputy campaign manager, were indicted by Mueller’s office in October. They face charges including conspiracy to launder money, conspiracy to defraud the United States and failure to file as foreign agents for lobbying work they did on behalf of the pro-Russian Ukrainian Party of Regions. Both have pleaded not guilty.

This is big, because the fact these charges are sealed are immensely suggestive of charges forthcoming against other individuals, and also neatly sticks a fork in the complaint that Manafort and Gates weren't charged with anything close to a conspiracy involving the Trump campaign.  Those sealed charges?  You want to bet somebody's scared as hell?

It also means that if Rick Gates really is turning state's evidence against Manafort, these new charges could be what he's pleading guilty to.  We'll find out eventually, but my guess is Paul Manafort is screwed...or maybe he too is now cooperating.  Mueller has been one step ahead of everyone, it seems.

That brings us to story number two today: Manafort is in a lot of trouble regardless of those sealed charges.

Federal investigators are probing whether former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort promised a Chicago banker a job in the Trump White House in return for $16 million in home loans, two people with direct knowledge of the matter told NBC News. 

Manafort received three separate loans in December 2016 and January 2017 from Federal Savings Bank for homes in New York City, Virginia and the Hamptons. 

The banker, Stephen Calk, president of the Federal Savings Bank, was announced as a member of candidate Trump's Council of Economic Advisers in August 2016. 

Special counsel Robert Mueller's team is now investigating whether there was a quid pro quo agreement between Manafort and Calk. Manafort left the Trump campaign in August 2016 after the millions he had earned working for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine drew media scrutiny. Calk did not receive a job in President Donald Trump's cabinet. 

The sources say the three loans were questioned by other officials at the bank, and one source said that at least one of the bank employees who felt pressured into approving the deals is cooperating with investigators. 

In court filings Friday related to Manafort's bail, federal prosecutors said they have "substantial evidence" that a loan made from the bank to Manafort using the Virginia and Hamptons properties as collateral was secured through false representations made by Manafort, including misstatements of income. 

When asked by NBC News if Manafort had lobbied the Trump transition team or the White House for a position for Calk, the White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Again, this has less to do with Trump and conspiracy than it does Paul Manafort being a really awful criminal who has been busted a mile wide open by Mueller, but the fact remains the same that Manafort is looking at some very lengthy prison time for all this if he's not pardoned by Trump...or Trump's successor.

We'll see.  Stay tuned.

Those Dedicated Disinformatzia Dupes Next Door

CNN looks at the people all too eager to give in to Russian interference in the November 2016 race for Trump, and finds people who would make P.T. Barnum proud to fleece.

A Donald Trump supporter who unwittingly helped a Kremlin-linked operation to meddle in American politics says he only learned of his part in the Russian plot when the FBI showed up at his doorstep months later. 

Harry Miller was paid as much as $1,000 by the Russians to build a cage that was used to depict a person dressed as Hillary Clinton in a prison cell at a rally in West Palm Beach, Florida in August 2016. 

The stunt was part of an elaborate scheme run by the Internet Research Agency, a troll group in St Petersburg, Russia with links to the Kremlin, that was designed to undermine the American political system, according to a new federal indictment. The agency and thirteen Russian nationals associated with it were named in the indictment, which was made public by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's office on Friday. 

In early August 2016, the indictment says, the Internet Research Agency began reaching out to Trump supporters in Florida to organize a statewide "flashmob" that it dubbed "Florida goes Trump." 

The group used its "Being Patriotic" Facebook page, which was designed to look like it was run by real Americans, along with Instagram and Twitter accounts, to organize and publicize the event. 

The people behind the "Being Patriotic" page reached out to Miller, a vocal Trump supporter who lived in Florida at the time. Miller agreed to build a cage on the back of his flatbed truck and was paid somewhere between $500 and $1,000 to cover the cost of materials, he told CNN. 

Miller said he had multiple phone calls with people from the group. He noticed that a man with whom he spoke did not speak English fluently, he told CNN, but assumed he was speaking to a first-generation immigrant who supported Trump. 

Miller posted pictures on social media that show the cage, and a man and woman dressed as Bill and Hillary Clinton in it, during the August 2016 West Palm Beach event.

Miller was duped, though.  He was an unwitting participant in international espionage!

But he sure wanted to lock that Clinton bitch up, didn't he?  He had no problem with that.  Our Russian friends knew exactly who would be receptive to their message, so much so that an outside observer would wonder if the Russians had very willing help from this side.

That's going to be the real story now that Mueller has established the Russian conspiracy existed.  Who helped them unwittingly, and who gladly assisted them?

The Pope Of Kentucky, Con't

Back in December I talked about the awful case of state Rep. Dan Johnson, a long-time fire-and-brimstone Kentucky preacher who instead of facing charges of sexual assault of a member of his congregation, he drove to a bridge and shot and killed himself instead. 

Last night Kentucky voters in Bullitt County elected Johnson's replacement to the State House, in a county where Donald Trump won in 2016 by 49 points.  The Democrat who ran against Johnson in 2016, Linda Belcher, lost narrowly to Johnson then.

This time around Belcher took on Johnson's widow, Rebecca Johnson.  And last night, Linda Belcher won by 36 points.  Today, Johnson is claiming massive voter fraud cost her the election.

An hour after being defeated by Linda Belcher in a special election in Bullitt County Tuesday night, a spokesman for Rebecca Johnson said she is claiming voter fraud.

"The big story out of Bullitt County appears to be voter fraud," David Adams, Johnson's campaign manager said in a text message.

Belcher secured 68.45 percent of the vote, according to the Bullitt County Clerk's office. Rebecca Johnson, Dan Johnson's widow, secured 31.55 percent. There were 4,947 votes cast.

Johnson, however, claims that numerous people were turned away as being ineligible to vote at their local polling place.

"I've heard from people all day long saying they went to vote for me at the correct polling place and were refused the opportunity to vote," Johnson said in a statement. "It's like we are in a third world country."

The Bullitt County Clerk's Office did not respond to a request for comment after the election results were announced.

Let me tell you something about Bullitt County, Kentucky, guys. The notion that a Republican would have been turned away from a polling place here trying to vote for the widow of Dan Johnson is about as realistic as Betty White sprouting two extra pairs of arms and becoming the world's best mountain climber.

We'll see where this goes, but for Belcher to win by 36 points here is a massive shift.  And if that's any indication as to how voting will go in November, Republicans need to be terrified.

It means every red seat where a Democrat is challenging the GOP is in play.  Every one of them.

Let's go.

StupidiNews!

• In the wake of last week's deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida, state Republicans blocked a weapons ban bill as survivors from the massacre looked on.
• A new Quinnipiac University poll finds two-thirds of Americans, including a majority of gun owners, back stricter gun laws, and 97% want stricter background checks on gun purchases.
• The final version of the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal was unveiled Tuesday, with several provisions the US wanted stripped from the deal ahead of the official signing March 8th.
• The 2016 Supreme Court public union dues case that ended in a 4-4 split decision will go back before justices next week, a decision expected later this summer could gut public unions for good.
• Coming off their successful Falcon Heavy launch two weeks ago, SpaceX will be launching satellites this morning to test the company's plans for global, orbital internet service.

Last Call For Trumpcare Returns

Trumpcare is coming whether you want it or not, and the latest broadside to try to sink the Affordable Care Act is turning cheap, garbage temporary health insurance plans into year-long plans that will happily wreck the market.

It’s another day and the Trump administration is trying to stick another knife in the Affordable Care Act. This time it comes courtesy of a proposed expansion in the length of time a household can receive a lower cost, short-term health-coverage plan that does not meet the Affordable Health Care’s standards for insurance.

Under the new proposal, households can purchase the more limited plan for a year — up from three months.

If this proposal goes through — and the chances are very high that this regulatory change will ultimately be finalized — it could cause enormous damage to the Affordable Care Act, while at the same time not do a thing to help people with the increasingly high cost of health insurance.

That’s not what the Trump administration says, of course. Officials claim people will find it easier to afford health insurance under the new rules. As Seema Verma, administrator for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, tweeted out this morning: 

Today, @HHSgov and @CMSgov took a decisive first step to help Americans left behind by #Obamacare. Our short-term, limited-duration (STLD) insurance plan will provide increased consumer choice to those who can’t afford the current system’s skyrocketing premiums.

— Administrator Seema Verma (@SeemaCMS) February 20, 2018

The short-term plans are currently limited to three months of use. The ACA originally intended them as stop-gap coverage — if, say, someone is in-between jobs or transitioning between work and school. The ostensible goal of lengthening that period is to extend coverage to people who are currently not covered by the ACA — because they cannot afford the premiums — by creating longer-term cheap insurance options.

It’s true that these plans will be cheaper than typical insurance. But there is a reason for that. As Sabrina Corlette, senior research fellow at Georgetown University’s Center on Health Insurance Reforms put it to me Tuesday: “The first thing for people to know is that these plans are not health insurance.”

As Corlette explained, under the ACA, insurance companies have a lot more leeway with the short-term plans. They can screen people for preexisting conditions — and either charge them more or refuse to offer them a policy entirely. The short-term plans don’t need to offer coverage for things such as prescription drug coverage, maternity care and mental-health services. They can impose an annual or overall lifetime limit on how much they will cover.

All of these things are prohibited for ordinary plans under the ACA. And so, by trying to expand the period the shorter-term plans can be utilized by consumers (by the way, the administration is also contemplating allowing people to renew the plans), the administration is essentially setting up a parallel system to the ACA, and one that allows insurance companies to offer much skimpier plans in the way of benefits.

In other words, by turning the temp plans into 12 month plans, Trumpcare will flood the market with cheap plans that people will buy thinking Trump "saved them money".  The damage will be catastrophic and it almost certainly means that insurance companies will turn the market of good plans into a dumpster fire.

Between this and the death of the individual mandate, the ACA is pretty much done.

Meanwhile, In The Rest Of The World

The US was largely absent from the 2018 Munich Security Conference over the weekend, after all Donald Trump had to play golf and sent National Security Adviser HR McMaster in his stead, but as Judy Dempsey of Carnegie Europe points out, lack of US leadership right now is leaving a world facing utter turmoil with nobody steering the boat.  Dempsey identifies five issues that the world has yet to deal with:

First, North Korea. During a Congressional debate on U.S. foreign policy, the American delegation saw North Korea as its main threat. Senator James E. Risch, who is a member of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, said that if Trump uses force in North Korea, it will be of “biblical proportions,” not a “bloody nose.” Unfortunately, Risch had to leave the panel early so he couldn’t take questions. 

The bipartisan panel was at a complete loss about how to deal with North Korea on the diplomatic level. They did not rule out the use of force, but they did not endorse regime change, having seen the consequences of the latter in Iraq and Libya. They did call on China to do more, such as impose a stricter sanctions regime and in some way apply pressure on North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un. It would have been very helpful during the question and answer session to really engage with Fu Ying, the chairwoman of the Committee of Foreign Affairs of the National People’s Congress, instead of listening to her anodyne answer. 

Second, NATO. There were plenty of reassurances by American diplomats about Washington’s commitment to the transatlantic alliance. “Continuity” was the word they kept using. There was no cajoling about the Europeans having to spend more on defense or take on more of the burden sharing. 

Yet the alliance is in bad shape. One of its leading members, Turkey, is attacking Syria, is locking up journalists, judges and civil servants, and is running roughshod over the rule of law. There’s hardly a whimper about this from NATO, which professes to be an alliance based on values and democracy. 

And NATO, as a military and political organization, has to cope with a myriad of issues, from cybersecurity to its new training role in Iraq, which some diplomats fear might mutate into a combat mission. This is what happened in Afghanistan when the original stabilization mission turned into a full-fledged military operation. 

Third, Russia’s presence in Munich was pathetic. The speech by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov verged on bitterness and paranoia. There wasn’t one spark or one foreign policy idea raised by Lavrov. Instead, his speech revealed the immense chasm between Russia and the United States. This was pretty obvious not only by the language Lavrov used but by the speech given later by H.R. McMaster, the U.S. National Security Adviser. He told the conference that there was “incontrovertible” evidence of Russia’s interfering in the U.S. presidential election. 

Fourth, Ukraine. Whatever the reason, the countries (France, Germany, Russia, and Ukraine) that forged the 2015 Minsk accord aimed at ending the fighting in eastern Ukraine didn’t even convene in Munich to discuss how, if at all, to take Minsk II further. If anything, there was a depressing sense of drift when it came to trying to resolve this conflict that has displaced or affected nearly two million people, not to mention the continuing skirmishes in the Donbas region. 

The speech by Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko didn’t help matters, either. His unwillingness to tackle corruption and strengthen the rule of law has been a feature of his presidency over the past few years. Things will not improve in the run-up to next year’s presidential and parliamentary elections. And blaming Russia is no substitute for Kiev delaying fundamental reforms.

Fifth, with the Middle East being torn to bits by ambitions led by Iran and Saudi Arabia—and Turkish, Russian, and Qatari interference all playing their own insidious roles—there was no meeting of minds during the high-level discussion on the region.

The main protagonists—Syria, Saudi Arabia, and Iran—weren’t part of the panel debate (which probably wouldn’t have taken place had the organizers insisted on including these countries). Instead, there were separate statements made by the three regional actors. Each had their own agenda. Each openly showed their disdain for each other. 

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the conference that Israel was ready to take action against Iran. Brandishing a piece of an Iranian drone that was shot down in Israeli airspace last week, Netanyahu looked directly at the Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, who was in the audience, and asked him: “Mr. Zarif, do you recognize this? You should. It’s yours. You can take a message back to the tyrants of Tehran: Do not test Israel’s resolve.” Netanyahu was right to raise all of Iran’s human rights violations. But the audience was in no mood to listen given the way he delivered his speech. 

Later, in his statement, Zarif, who is rarely criticized by Europe’s top diplomats for Iran’s abuse of human rights and support of terrorist movements, said: “What has happened in the past several days is the so-called invincibility [of Israel] has crumbled.” He was referring to the recent downing of an Israeli F-16 jet in Syria. Separately, in an interview with NBC News, Zarif warned that if Israel fulfilled its threat to attack Iran, that “they will see the response.” No shortage of threats there.

There are a huge number of serious foreign policy issues right now, and the Trump regime is wholly and completely unequipped to handle any of them, let alone all of them at once.  We've ceded North Korea to the Chinese, Russia and Ukraine to Moscow, NATO to the Germans, and the Middle East to the Saudis and Israel.

Meanwhile, the "leader of the free world" is too busy golfing and tweeting...and gaslighting the world on how the Russians somehow didn't help him in 2016.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

The Mueller investigation continues to build the case against Trump, Russia, and his associates, and Mueller is starting to close in on Trump's inner circle.  The biggest target close to Trump is his shifty son-in-law, Jared Kushner, who's most likely neck deep in the Russian game as well as the international money laundering angle and has been for years.  Lo and behold, that's exactly who Mueller is zeroing in on these days.

Special counsel Robert Mueller's interest in Jared Kushner has expanded beyond his contacts with Russia and now includes his efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the inquiry. 

This is the first indication that Mueller is exploring Kushner's discussions with potential non-Russian foreign investors, including in China. 

US officials briefed on the probe had told CNN in May that points of focus related to Kushner, the White House senior adviser and son-in-law of President Donald Trump, included the Trump campaign's 2016 data analytics operation, his relationship with former national security adviser Michael Flynn, and Kushner's own contacts with Russians. 

Mueller's investigators have been asking questions, including during interviews in January and February, about Kushner's conversations during the transition to shore up financing for 666 Fifth Avenue, a Kushner Companies-backed New York City office building reeling from financial troubles, according to people familiar with the special counsel investigation. 

It's not clear what's behind Mueller's specific interest in the financing discussions. Mueller's team has not contacted Kushner Companies for information or requested interviews with its executives, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

During the presidential transition, Kushner was a lead contact for foreign governments, speaking to "over fifty contacts with people from over fifteen countries," according to a statement he gave to congressional investigators. 

Before joining the administration, Kushner was also working to divest his interests in Kushner Companies, the family company founded by his father. In early 2017, Kushner also divested from the 666 Fifth Avenue property that his family's company purchased in 2007 for $1.8 billion. The interests were sold to a family trust that Kushner does not benefit from, a spokesperson said at the time. 

Trump's money laundering operation is global.  China, Russia, the Middle East, South America, where there's a Trump property, there's Kushner, playing fast and loose with the rules.  If Mueller's looking at Kushner and non-Russian money laundering, then the door's wide open on what he can find.

And somehow, Kushner still has a temporary security clearance.  Still.

With Mueller now taking a look at Kushner, the probe has now reached Trump's family. And if anyone knows where all the bodies are buried in the Trump Organization, it's Jared Kushner.

Meanwhile this morning, another indictment has dropped.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has filed a charge against a lawyer for lying to investigators about his interaction with former Trump campaign aide Rick Gates in September 2016. 

Alex Van der Zwaan is expected to plead guilty Tuesday afternoon. 

He is also accused of lying about the failure to turn over an email communication to the special counsel's office. He was speaking with investigators about his work with Skadden Arps in 2012 when the firm did work for the Ukrainian Ministry of Justice to prepare a report on the trial of Yulia Tymoshenko. 

Van der Zwaan has a plea hearing scheduled for Tuesday afternoon at US District Court in Washington, DC.

This looks like part of the Rick Gates plea deal that we expect later this week, as well at yet another connection to the Russian nationals who met with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Marvel's "Black Panther" brought in over $200 million for the largest 3-day opening by a black director, and nearly $400 million worldwide.
• Two associates of Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu were named as suspects in a third major corruption case this week, Netanyahu himself is involved in the other two cases.
• Brazil's lower house has approved a measure allowing government troops to provide security in Rio de Janeiro state, the bill now goes to Brazil's Senate.
• Koch-funded conservative groups are taking aim at Trump's 25-cent gas tax proposal, arguing red state taxpayers would be hurt the most and receive the least funding.
• AT&T is demanding any communication between Donald Trump and AG Jeff Sessions over its planned merger with Time Warner, AT&T says Trump's anti-CNN bias is hurting the deal.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Con't

Over the weekend the news broke that Rick Gates has flipped and is willing to testify against former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort.  If you want to know how terrified the Trump regime is of the Mueller investigation right now, and of Mueller's indictments on Friday of 13 Russian nationals in a conspiracy to influence to 2016 election, it seems once again that Trump supporters are floating trial balloons of mass pardons to derail the Mueller probe once and for all.

After months of criticizing special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe, President Donald Trump’s supporters are issuing increasingly bold calls for presidential pardons to limit the investigation’s impact. 

“I think he should be pardoning anybody who’s been indicted and make it clear that anybody else who gets indicted would be pardoned immediately,” said Frederick Fleitz, a former CIA analyst and senior vice president at the conservative Center for Security Policy.

The pleas for mercy mainly extend to the four former Trump aides who have already been swept up in the Russia probe: former campaign manager Paul Manafort, former deputy campaign manager Rick Gates, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos. But they don’t stop there. 

“It’s kind of cruel what’s going on right now and the president should put these defendants out of their misery,” said Larry Klayman, a conservative legal activist. “I think he should pardon everybody — and pardon himself.” 

Klayman and Fleitz spoke before Mueller indicted thirteen Russian nationals on Friday for staging an elaborate 2016 election interference operation in the United States. Democratic leaders said the hard evidence of Russian meddling underscores the importance of letting Mueller’s investigation run its course. 

But many conservatives note that the new indictment shows no evidence of collusion between Trump associates and the Kremlin. That reinforces their view that Mueller’s real target, if any, should be Russian President Vladimir Putin — not Trump’s circle. “[H]ow long will the leftist witch hunt against @RealDonaldTrump continue,” the president’s son, Donald Trump Jr., tweeted hours after the indictment’s release.

Trump's running out of time.  Once Gates starts singing on Manafort -- and Trump -- things get a lot more complex.  It shows how utterly terrified Trump's people are over the events of the weekend.  The only out they see is mass pardons for everyone involved, including Trump himself.  It's self-serving and awful, but it worked for Dubya and Scooter Libby and kept him out of prison.

The fact that the Trump people wasted no time going straight to pardons this week shows how shaken they are by this.  They know full damn well more indictments are coming.  Lots of them.  Trump's people are going down and hard.

So why the pardon talk now?  Trump may be more receptive to it.  After all, people are beginning to openly question the legitimacy of his presidency after this weekend.

Mueller’s indictment details a well-financed propaganda campaign, undergirded by identity theft, wire fraud, and illegal subversion of U.S. election law, which involved the recruitment of unwitting American political activists, and the creation of thousands of troll accounts on social media. We know that this is just one compartment of the Russian government’s efforts to help Trump win, because it excludes charges related to the theft of Democratic emails, and it is silent on the multiple other channels Russia had available to them to harm Hillary Clinton’s candidacy, including propaganda outlets like RT and Sputnik, and a partnership with Wikileaks. 

Whatever Trump’s specific awareness at the time of the facts alleged in the indictment, we know Trump and his most senior aides were aware that the Russian government was involving itself in the campaign on his behalf, and endeavored to encourage and conceal the meddling. 

The fact that the election turned out to be so close is perhaps the crowning achievement of the conspiracy. With a budget of over $1 million a month to target swing state voters with disinformation on social media, multiple troves containing thousands of stolen emails, “news” outlets at your fingertips, the complicity of a major party political nominee, and impunity from American law, could you move 80,000 votes in three states? 

It’s clearly not crazy to believe the answer is yes, and thus that the crimes that made the election unfair also determined its outcome. In an election so close that many individual factors were decisive, a major foreign espionage attack surely could have been as well. The difference is that the other factors were seemingly legal, and internal to American politics. 

There is no mechanism in American politics to annul a corrupted election, and a congressional majority determined to prop up a president who cheated his way to power can assure he serves out his term. But a question mark like the one that now hangs over Trump’s victory is a potent political fact unto itself, and acknowledging it is perhaps our best means of stigmatizing the bad deeds Trump engaged in to win the presidency. We can’t ignore it because it feels uncouth, or even because those who want to undermine American democracy are surely thrilled that an argument over whether the election was stolen for Trump is now inevitable.

You have to admit, issuing blanket pardons would definitely change the narrative, because right now the narrative is becoming lethal for Trump and the 2018 chances for the GOP in the midterms.

Stay tuned.

It's About Suppression, Con't

The Pennsylvania congressional map saga is far from over as the state's Supreme Court is expected to issue a newly-redrawn map today. State Republicans are immediately expected to challenge the new map in federal court with the intent of tying up the proceedings for months, if not years.

The Pennsylvania Supreme Court is set to release a new congressional district map on Monday, after weeks of political and legal fighting following its ruling that the map adopted in 2011 was an unconstitutional partisan gerrymander. 

But whatever the map looks like, don’t expect it to end the battle. 

Republican lawmakers have vowed to resist the court’s order, saying they will seek a federal challenge to whatever map is selected.

“This issue has grown bigger than the map,” Drew Crompton, chief of staff to Senate President Pro Tempore Joe Scarnati (R., Jefferson) and top attorney for Senate Republicans said last week. “I don’t know what the court’s going to do, I really don’t. But it’s not like we’re planning a lawsuit only if certain things happen — we don’t know what’s going to happen. We’re working on every sort of gyration.” 

Senate Majority Leader Jake Corman (R., Centre) said Republicans would likely seek an injunction in federal court. 

It would continue a nasty fight that has only intensified in the weeks since state high court last month ruled the congressional map unconstitutional and ordered a new one drawn in time for the primary election in May. Republicans immediately attacked the justices as partisan and accused the court of overstepping its bounds.

Scarnati and House Speaker Mike Turzai (R., Allegheny) have made several attempts to block the court’s ruling, including a request that the U.S. Supreme Court intervene, which Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. denied. They also attacked a state Supreme Court justice as biased in an attempt to get him disqualified; the justice declined to recuse himself, saying he had not crossed any lines. Scarnati has refused to comply with court orders to share data intended to help the justices draw a map, and a rank-and-file Republican lawmaker is seeking cosponsors to sign onto an attempt to impeach the court’s Democratic justices. 

As those fights raged, the deadline loomed: The state Supreme Court had given the Republican-controlled legislature less than three weeks to draw a new map and send it to Wolf, a Democrat. Pennsylvania’s congressional map is normally enacted as legislation, going through the normal process of passing through the legislature and being signed by the governor. When it became clear the legislature had run out of time, Scarnati and Turzai drew their own map and sent it directly to Wolf. 

Wolf rejected that map last week, joining a growing consensus that the map was still a partisan gerrymander.

I don't think it'll be hard for the GOP to find a federal judge who will block the map itself, saying the state Supreme Court somehow overstepped its authority in authoring it.  When that happens, the fight will be brutal, but the practical upshot is that I expect the new map to be tied up in court for months, to the point where the US Supreme Court will block any new map from going into effect for the 2018 election saying that changing the map that close to an election would do more harm than good.

It'll be "regrettable" of course, but really the GOP is in the position where they can wait out the clock on this and win by default. If the map never actually gets changed, then the GOP wins by default.

The new map came out earlier this afternoon:

The clock begins ticking today.  Remember, a map like this would put something like 5 or 6 safe Republican seats into play overnight, and that many seats would be enough to make the difference in turning a blue wave that crashes against a solid GOP gerrymander wall into Speaker Nancy Pelosi in January. 

They will fight this every millimeter of the way.  Trust in that.