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

Special Counsel Robert Mueller continues to connect the dots, and the people those dots represent ought to be really scared.

Special counsel Robert Mueller is focusing intensely on alleged interactions between former top Trump campaign official Rick Gates and political operative Roger Stone, one of President Donald Trump's closest confidants, according to sources with direct knowledge of the matter. 

Stone, a longtime advisor to Trump, is apparently one of the top subjects of the Mueller investigation into potential collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign, sources told CNBC on condition of anonymity. 

The questions have been largely about what was discussed at meetings, including dinners, between Stone and Gates, before and during the campaign, said the sources, who have knowledge of the substance of the recent interviews.

In February, Gates pleaded guilty to two counts stemming from the Russia investigation, and he is cooperating with Mueller's probe. 

The new developments indicate that Mueller's team is interested in Stone beyond his interactions with Wikileaks founder Julian Assange during the campaign. 

An attorney for Stone, Robert Buschel, did not deny the relationship between his client and Gates, but sought to downplay its importance. 

"Roger Stone did not have any substantive or meaningful interaction with Rick Gates during or leading up to the 2016 campaign," Buschel told CNBC in a statement. 

An attorney for Gates declined to comment. The special counsel's office declined to comment. 

The link between Gates and Stone goes back to their work at what had been one of the most powerful lobbying firms in Washington, which was founded by Stone along with former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. The special counsel's probe has yielded two indictments against Manafort, who is accused of several crimes, including bank fraud and conspiracy against the United States.

I've been wondering when Roger Stone would find himself in Mueller's direct crosshairs, and it seems we have our answer.  Don't be surprised if Stone is Mueller's next target, because as with the weeks before the Manafort and Flynn indictments, the grand jury subpoena game is heating up rapidly.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller on Thursday filed a request for 70 blank subpoenas in the Virginia court presiding over one of two criminal proceedings involving former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. 

The two-page filing doesn’t offer much in the way of details, but each subpoena orders the recipient to appear at the federal courthouse in Alexandria on July 10 at 10 a.m. to testify at Manafort’s trial on charges stemming from Mueller’s investigation of Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. 

Although Manafort faces no charges related to the Trump campaign, he is accused in cases filed both in Alexandria, Virginia and Washington, D.C. of hiding the work he did for and the money he made from a Russia-friendly political party in Ukraine and former Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych. 

In Virginia, he is also accused of concealing foreign bank accounts, falsifying his income taxes and failing to report foreign bank accounts. 

In Washington, Manafort faces counts of conspiracy to launder more than $30 million, making false statements, failing to follow lobbying disclosure laws and working as an unregistered foreign agent.

May brings the spring flowers and the seeds of justice.

The Great Wall Bean Ball Downfall

Trump's trade war with China has its first major casualty, and it's America's soybean exporters here in Ohio and other farm states.

The world’s biggest oilseed processor just confirmed one of the soybean market’s biggest fears: China has essentially stopped buying U.S. supplies amid the brewing trade war. 

“Whatever they’re buying is non-U.S.,” Bunge Ltd. Chief Executive Officer Soren Schroder said in a telephone interview Wednesday. “They’re buying beans in Canada, in Brazil, mostly Brazil, but very deliberately not buying anything from the U.S.” 

In a move that caught many in U.S. agriculture by surprise, China last month announced planned tariffs on American shipments of soybeans. As the market waited for the measure to take effect, there was some hope among traders and shippers alike that relations between the nations could ease in the meantime and the trade flow would continue. But that doesn’t seem to be the case, at least for now, according to Bunge.

It’s “very clear” that the trade tensions have already stopped China from buying U.S. supplies, Schroder said. “How long that will last, who knows? But so long as there is this big cloud of uncertainty, that’s likely to continue.”

Soybeans are a billion dollar crop in Ohio.  Lot of farmers here depend on those exports and China is by far the largest buyer.  Now they have stopped buying.

Gonna be a fun November around here.

Teaching Some Global Economics

If you want to know why teachers are on strike in Arizona and are considering striking in other states, consider this:  Red state education cuts have gotten so bad that we treat the teaching profession like we currently treat coders in IT or engineers in tech.  States want to fill teaching positions with qualified people, but they want to pay retail cashier salaries so they're looking to hire from outside the US. 

The latest wave of foreign workers sweeping into American jobs brought Donato Soberano from the Philippines to Arizona two years ago. He had to pay thousands of dollars to a job broker and lived for a time in an apartment with five other Filipino workers. The lure is the pay — 10 times more than what he made doing the same work back home.

But Mr. Soberano is not a hospitality worker or a home health aide. He is in another line of work that increasingly pays too little to attract enough Americans: Mr. Soberano is a public school teacher.

As walkouts by teachers protesting low pay and education funding shortfalls spread across the country, the small but growing movement to recruit teachers from overseas is another sign of the difficulty some districts are having providing the basics to public school students.

Among the latest states hit by the protests is Arizona, where teacher pay is more than $10,000 below the national average of $59,000 per year. The Pendergast Elementary School District, where Mr. Soberano works, has recruited more than 50 teachers from the Philippines since 2015. They hold J-1 visas, which allow them to work temporarily in the United States, like au pairs or camp counselors, but offer no path to citizenship. More than 2,800 foreign teachers arrived on American soil last year through the J-1, according to the State Department, up from about 1,200 in 2010.

“In these times, you have to be innovative and creative in recruiting,” said Patricia Davis-Tussey, Pendergast’s head of human resources. “We embrace diversity and really gain a lot from the cultural exchange experience. Our students do as well.”

Public school teachers are the new migrant workers in America.  We don't even give them a path to being citizens here.  Has teaching really become the new face of "jobs Americans won't do" in the Trump era?

Sure looks like it.

StupidiNews!

• An Air National Guard C-130 cargo plane on its way to be decommissioned crashed shortly after takeoff into a highway near Savannah, Georgia, killing all nine on board.
• Arizona teachers remain on strike for a fifth day as state lawmakers consider a deal to get teachers back to work and to restore a decade of steep education budget cuts.
• Donald Trump reportedly will scrap the Iran nuclear deal, but wants an exit that doesn't alienate French President Emmanuel Macron, who urged Trump to keep the deal in a state visit last week.
• Trump legal adviser Rudy Giuliani says that Trump reimbursed lawyer Michael Cohen for $130,000 in money reportedly paid to Stormy Daniels, something Trump has previously denied.
• Oakland is joining a growing number of California cities passing local laws creating community oversight boards as a check on surveillance technology and privacy issues.

Last Call For Buy Buy Buyback

Corporations continue to reap record profits thanks to the Trump tax scam and Apple is no different, announcing a massive $100 billion in stock buybacks thanks to Uncle Sam's deep pockets.

Apple just announced a stock buyback equal to the size of Ecuador’s GDP, thanks to the Republican tax cut bill. 

In a quarterly earnings announcement on Tuesday, the Cupertino, California-based company said it would put in place a new $100 billion share buyback program and increase its quarterly dividend by 16 percent. It’s no coincidence that Apple is a major beneficiary of the GOP tax cuts — its effective tax rate (the amount it actually pays) has dropped by about 10 percent between this year and last, and it’s saving an estimated $47 billion on taxes on profits earned overseas as well. 

Of the multiple major buyback announcements companies have made since the tax bill was passed in December, Apple’s is by far the biggest. But there have been others as well:The tech conglomerate Cisco in February said it would put an additional $25 billion toward a stock buyback. Troubled megabank Wells Fargo in January announced about $22 billionin buybacks. Pepsi announced a $15 billion buyback, Amgen and AbbVie $10 billion, and Google’s parent company Alphabet $8.6 billion. 

Stock buybacks occur when companies repurchase shares of their own stock. That leaves remaining shareholders with a bigger chunk of the company and increases the earnings they reap per share. Buybacks have become increasingly popular in recent years and have boomed in the wake of the tax bill. 

By June, Apple will have delivered $210 billion in buybacks to its shareholders since 2012, and it is now earmarking an additional $100 billion. It’s also upping its dividend to 73 cents per share from 63 cents. 

Apple is returning more cash to shareholders than any company ever, the Financial Times’s Robin Wigglesworth wrote on Tuesday. By the summer, it will have given back more than the market value of all but 20 of the biggest publicly traded companies in the United States — bigger than Verizon, Mastercard, Coca-Cola, and Disney.

Not an owner of a thousand shares of Apple stock?  Oh well.

Just remember that when Republicans tell you that we can't afford roads, bridges, schools, clean water, Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security and health care, just remember they had no problem giving Apple $47 billion a year to buy their own stock.

Trump Gets His Chicken Kiev

Ukraine wants US missiles, so naturally the government is making things as pleasant as possible for the Trump regime by basically losing all the paperwork on any outstanding charges against Paul Manafort.

In the United States, Paul J. Manafort is facing prosecution on charges of money laundering and financial fraud stemming from his decade of work for a pro-Russian political party in Ukraine. 

But in Ukraine, where officials are wary of offending President Trump, four meandering cases that involve Mr. Manafort, Mr. Trump’s former campaign chairman, have been effectively frozen by Ukraine’s chief prosecutor. 

The cases are just too sensitive for a government deeply reliant on United States financial and military aid, and keenly aware of Mr. Trump’s distaste for the investigation by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, into possible collusion between Russia and his campaign, some lawmakers say. 

The decision to halt the investigations by an anticorruption prosecutor was handed down at a delicate moment for Ukraine, as the Trump administration was finalizing plans to sell the country sophisticated anti-tank missiles, called Javelins. 

The State Department issued an export license for the missiles on Dec. 22, and on March 2 the Pentagon announced final approval for the sale of 210 Javelins and 35 launching units. The order to halt investigations into Mr. Manafort came in early April. 

Volodymyr Ariev, a member of Parliament who is an ally of President Petro O. Poroshenko, readily acknowledged that the intention in Kiev was to put investigations into Mr. Manafort’s activities “in the long-term box.” 

“In every possible way, we will avoid irritating the top American officials,” Mr. Ariev said in an interview. “We shouldn’t spoil relations with the administration.”

Manafort? Never heard of the guy.  Who's he?  Robert Mueller?  Cooperate on what? Surely you're mistaken, my friend.

The Ukrainian investigators had been tracing money paid to Mr. Manafort and a New York law firm, Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, by figures in the political party of Viktor F. Yanukovych, the Russian-leaning Ukrainian president who was ousted by street protesters and fled the country in 2014. Mr. Manafort was a longtime adviser to Mr. Yanukovych, working with him to revamp his public image and acquire a pro-Western patina that helped him win the presidency in 2010.

And now, they are not tracing the money.  But they are getting anti-tank missiles, so everything is OK.

This is how America's foreign policy works now.  Everything is done to appease Dear Leader, because we shouldn't spoil relations with this administration.  Kiev is all but admitting that somebody from the Trump regime let them know that dropping the Manafort investigation would be viewed as a personal favor. 

When we find out soon that of course the White House set this up, nobody will care, because this is how Trump does business, so this is how America does business too.  We're a third-world banana republic, and we're all adjusting to the new reality.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

In a spate of either tightly-controlled Mueller team defensive leaks (or wildly self-damaging Trump regime leaks about Mueller's team) we've learned quite a bit about where the Mueller probe is going this week, and what Republicans are in turn up to.  

First, House Republicans are making it very clear that they will not only refuse to endorse the ongoing Mueller probe, and not only do they plan to fully back Trump when he tries to fire Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein, but that they're willing to impeach Rosenstein in Congress to protect Dear Leader.

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on Tuesday lashed out at Republican allies of President Donald Trump who have drafted articles of impeachment against him, saying the Justice Department won’t be extorted or give in to threats.

Rosenstein, speaking at a question-and-answer session at the Newseum, chided the lawmakers who have prepared the document by saying that “they can’t even resist leaking their own drafts” and that they lack “the courage to put their name on it.”

“I can tell you there have been people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time, and I think they should understand by now, the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted,” Rosenstein said, in response to a question about news reports on the articles of impeachment.

“We’re going to do what’s required by the rule of law,” he added. “And any kind of threats that anybody makes are not going to affect the way we do our job.”

He did not elaborate on what he meant by threats, but some congressional Republicans have excoriated him for his oversight role of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into possible ties between the Trump campaign and Russia.

Now the House Freedom Caucus is calling for Rosenstein to resign, and while there's zero chance of Rosenstein being removed by a two-thirds Senate vote, the point is to feed the perpetual outrage machine in an effort to try to keep Republican voters interested in the GOP's exploits. 

Back here in reality, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has apparently raised the possibility of subpoenaing Trump if he won't submit to those interview questions, and that has been the source of the White House's last two months of inchoate rage.

In a tense meeting in early March with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, President Trump’s lawyers insisted he had no obligation to talk with federal investigators probing Russia’s interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

But Mueller responded that he had another option if Trump declined: He could issue a subpoena for the president to appear before a grand jury, according to four people familiar with the encounter.

Mueller’s warning — the first time he is known to have mentioned a possible subpoena to Trump’s legal team — spurred a sharp retort from John Dowd, then the president’s lead lawyer.

“This isn’t some game,” Dowd said, according to two people with knowledge of his comments. “You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.”

The flare-up set in motion weeks of turmoil among Trump’s attorneys as they debated how to deal with the special counsel’s request for an interview, a dispute that ultimately led to Dowd’s resignation.
In the wake of the testy March 5 meeting, Mueller’s team agreed to provide the president’s lawyers with more specific information about the subjects that prosecutors wished to discuss with the president. With those details in hand, Trump lawyer Jay Sekulow compiled a list of 49 questions that the team believed the president would be asked, according to three of the four people, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to talk publicly. The New York Times first reported the existence of the list.

And that kind of kills my theory that Mueller provided the questions, it's Trump's lawyers who did, and either they're the worst lawyers in human history, or they know their client is toast (or both). Hell, they don't even have the security clearances needed to defend Trump now that John Dowd is gone.

However, a subpoena fight could go all the way to SCOTUS, and there's always the chance that Trump could win.

Many legal observers believe that if Mueller issues a grand jury subpoena for Trump's testimony, the courts will order the President to comply, because the Supreme Court has repeatedly ordered presidents to comply with subpoenas. 

During independent counsel Kenneth Starr's investigation of President Bill Clinton related to Monica Lewinsky, prosecutors eventually subpoenaed the president for grand jury testimony. Clinton's lawyers attempted to delay Clinton from speaking to prosecutors for months and told a federal judge they would avoid arguing the issue in court. They ultimately agreed to let Clinton appear before the grand jury without the weight of a subpoena. 

In 1974, in United States v. Nixon, the Justices unanimously directed President Richard Nixon to comply with a criminal trial subpoena for the White House tapes. And in 1997, in Clinton v. Jones, the Court directed Clinton to comply with a subpoena for his deposition in Paula Jones' civil sexual harassment lawsuit against him. 

Yet if Mueller attempts to force Trump to testify under subpoena -- as many legal analysts suspect could happen -- the sources familiar with the thinking of Trump's legal team say they believe Trump could successfully challenge the subpoena all the way to the Supreme Court. 

One of the sources says the legal team views a subpoena for a presidential interview as "precipitating a constitutional crisis." 

You read that right, the Trumpies believe a months-long subpoena fight would turn the country against Mueller and the Democrats, greatly boost GOP enthusiasm among outraged midterm voters, and ultimately result in a SCOTUS win that would cripple the Mueller probe, if not provide the legal context and political cover to end it by firing everyone in sight.

Also, I'm actually a world-class hot-air balloon racer and former British secret service agent.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Donald Trump's ex-physician, Dr. Harold Bornstein, says that then candidate Trump dictated his 2015 letter describing his health and stamina as "extraordinary".
• Texas and six other states with Republican governors are suing the Trump regime to end the DACA immigration program outright, saying it constitutes illegal overreach of executive power.
• British PM Theresa May's latest Brexit divorce issue from the EU: customs and border agreements with the EU that could split Ireland in half again.
• Guitar maker Gibson will file for Chapter 11 in order to shed its consumer electronics division and get back to making instruments the company has been famous for.
• Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has announced the company's next frontier is a mobile dating app that draws heavily upon data already collected by the social media giant.

Last Call For Criming While Republican

In the Trump era, being a felon no longer bars one from Republican office, because all you have to do to expunge your criminal record in the court of public opinion is blame Obama's evil deep state operatives for your false conviction.

Former New York congressman Michael Grimm is a felon who has admitted to hiring undocumented workers, hiding $900,000 from tax authorities and making false statements under oath. To hear him tell it, that’s a reason Staten Island Republicans should vote him back into office. 

“It’s almost identical to what the president has been going through,” Grimm says of the federal investigation that led to his imprisonment. “It’s not an accident that under the Obama administration the Justice Department was used politically. And that is all starting to come out.” 

Grimm has uncovered a new reality in the constantly changing world of Republican politics: Criminal convictions, once seen as career-enders, are no longer disqualifying. In the era of President Trump, even time spent in prison can be turned into a positive talking point, demonstrating a candidate’s battle scars in a broader fight against what he perceives as liberal corruption. 

In a startling shift from “law-and-order Republicans,” Trump has attacked some branches of law enforcement, especially those pursuing white-collar malfeasance, as his allies and former campaign officials are ensnared in various investigations. 

Following his lead, Republican Senate candidates with criminal convictions in West Virginia and Arizona have cast themselves as victims of the Obama administration’s legal overreach. Another former Trump adviser who has pleaded guilty to a felony has also become an in-demand surrogate, as Republicans jump at the chance to show their opposition to special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Here’s a general rule of thumb: Lawmakers should not be law breakers,” said Susan Del Percio, a New York GOP consultant who advised Grimm in 2010 but opposes his candidacy. “I guess it’s a different political norm we are facing today.”

No Republican can be guilty of a crime because it was all an Obama/Clinton plot to discredit them, and you can bet Donald Trump will be using that same excuse the second anything remotely resembling recommended charges from Mueller appear.

This is what I mean when I say Trump is a symptom of the utter rot of the Republican party, not the cause of it.  It's not Trump who believes he is above the law, it's the entire party that now believes laws and convictions no longer apply to them.

Republicans are proudly running for Congress while having been convicted of serious criminal charges and they are boldly declaring their criminal records to be meaningless politically-driven shams.  I disagree that Republicans have changed from being "the party of law and order" at all, they simply believe they are legally and morally righteous because no Republican could ever be convicted except by kangaroo courts run by those people.

And you can be damn sure Republicans want laws to apply to everyone besides them to boot.  It's not a change, it's an apotheosis.

Black Lives Still Matter, Con't

Darren Martin is currently working for the Commissioner of NYC's Social Services after serving a stint as an Obama White House intern and Dem House staffer.  He moved back to the Big Apple to start his job and had a hell of a housewarming gift: neighbors called 911 on him because being black, of course he was committing burglary.

It was an unsolicited homecoming that left Bronx native Darren Martin unsettled. 

After spending several years working on Capitol Hill and in the White House with the Obama Administration, Martin recently made the move back to New York, getting a job with the city and finding a unit in a 5-story walk-up on the Upper West Side. 

On moving day this past Friday, Martin got an unexpected visit from the NYPD. 

“I’m in my apartment but you know – you can’t go nowhere without the cops following me,” Martin said during the encounter live streamed via Instagram. 

Turns out, someone called 911 to report a “burglary in progress” and the suspect was the building’s brand new tenant – Martin. 

“Somebody called the cops on me in my own building,” he told viewers who were tuning in to watch the live video. “About how many are ya’ll? About six of ya’ll showed up, rolled up on me.” 

He has a packed work schedule and that was the only time he had to move into the building. 

“I didn’t really think anyone was going to call the cops on me because I mean – I was moving into the building.”

Wisely, Martin shared the encounter on social media, which is something I damn sure will do the next time I have a run-in with police here in Kentucky.  But it just goes to show you that no matter how educated and well-off you are being black in America, it just takes a phone call and the suspicion of a "well-meaning neighbor" in your newly gentrified neighborhood (just a few blocks from 110th Street and Harlem north of Central park mind you, like don't tell me you haven't seen a black person up across the hundred, man) to put you in a situation that could be fatal.

And we have to live with that fear every day.

Black lives still matter.

Bibi Wags That Dog Again

As embattled Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu continues to face multiple corruption investigations that threaten to bring down the government, it appears that he views his best chance of political survival as providing flimsy pretext for the Trump regime to scrap the US/EU nuclear deal with Iran in favor of a good old fashioned war. NY Magazine's Jonah Shepp:

In a special address on Monday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu presented what he described as shocking, indisputable evidence that Iran had lied about its covert nuclear weapons program in the past and “continued to preserve and expand its nuclear weapons knowledge for future use” after signing the 2015 deal with six world powers to halt its nuclear activities.

Netanyahu was speaking on primetime Israeli television, but his presentation was delivered primarily in English and appeared targeted to a daytime audience in the U.S. (and perhaps an audience of one, residing at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, Washington, D.C.) rather than to his fellow Israelis. If so, it certainly had its intended effect, causing President Donald Trump to declare that he was “100 percent right” about the failings of the nuclear deal, less than two weeks ahead of his next chance to derail it.

Much like Netanyahu’s previous dire warnings about Iran’s nuclear ambitions, however, this one is being hugely oversold. The trove of Iranian documents recently obtained by Israeli intelligence, most of which date to before the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action was adopted, do not constitute proof that Iran either has violated or intends to violate it. Several experts and European diplomats pointed out that the Israeli prime minister had not revealed anything they didn’t already know, nor did he provide a proverbial smoking gun to show that Iran was making an end run around the JCPOA. If Mossad had found slam-dunk proof of noncompliance in their brazen heist of Iran’s nuclear archive, surely Netanyahu would have included it in his PowerPoint. That he didn’t suggests that they haven’t.

The nuclear deal is an imperfect document, to be sure, as agreements signed between adversaries usually are, but right-wing criticism of it tends to proceed from the false premises that the Obama administration was unaware of Iran’s past behavior and unconcerned that the JCPOA would not prevent Iran from engaging in nuclear activity in perpetuity. Of course we knew that Iran was pursuing a covert nuclear weapons program prior to 2015: That’s why we made them agree to stop it.

It also takes some chutzpah for the prime minister of Israel — whose own nuclear program involved lying to the international community, duping American nuclear inspectors, and possibly stealing highly enriched uranium from the U.S., and which has never acknowledged that program’s existence — to accuse another country of engaging in this particular kind of duplicity. But surely Netanyahu feels that the choices Israel made in its pursuit of the bomb were justified for the sake of its national security, given that it has always been surrounded by enemies.

The White House immediately issued a blaring press release stating that Iran has a covert nuclear program, as in present tense today, which would be a clear violation of the agreement, and only several hours later bothered "correcting" the release to say Tehran had a covert nuclear program, which...yeah, was the whole point of the Iranian nuclear deal. The correction came of course after dozens of breathless right-wing armchair generals declared the nuclear deal dead amid depressingly familiar expectations of a replay of sixteen years ago.

Trump needs a war as much as Bibi does right now, and a fight of some sort with Iran seems like their best collective bet.  Remember, it only took 18 months before the Bushies had convinced the world that we needed to bomb Baghdad into scrap metal after 9/11.

And hell, it was only seven weeks between Colin Powell's UN speech on Saddam having "weapons of mass destruction" and the US invasion of Iraq.

Might want to keep that in mind.

StupidiNews!

• Arizona GOP Sen. John McCain has announced in his new book that this will be his final term, the 81-year-old has been diagnosed with stage 4 brain cancer and will retire in or before 2022.
• The first of Central American asylum-seekers crossing Mexico have reached the US, the Trump DoJ has already announced several arrests and deportation proceedings.
• The Trump regime has pushed back steep new metal tariffs on Canada, the EU and Mexico for another month, while Argentina, Australia and Brazil have negotiated permanent exemptions.
• The Obama recovery has now extended into the second year of the Trump era as the US has reached 94 consecutive months of economic expansion, the nation's second-longest streak.
• Caterpillars of the Oak Processionary Moth are invading London, the toxic hairy crawlers can cause severe allergic reactions and British forestry officials are working to eliminate nests.

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

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is well aware of the fact that his greatest shield in his investigation of Donald Trump is a sniper-accurate leak from the press gallery just to remind everyone that the investigation is moving along particular lines, and today's round from way downtown is a solid hit.

Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s election interference, has at least four dozen questions on an exhaustive array of subjects he wants to ask President Trump to learn more about his ties to Russia and determine whether he obstructed the inquiry itself, according to a list of the questions obtained by The New York Times.

[Read the questions here.]

The open-ended queries appear to be an attempt to penetrate the president’s thinking, to get at the motivation behind some of his most combative Twitter posts and to examine his relationships with his family and his closest advisers. They deal chiefly with the president’s high-profile firings of the F.B.I. director and his first national security adviser, his treatment of Attorney General Jeff Sessions and a 2016 Trump Tower meeting between campaign officials and Russians offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

But they also touch on the president’s businesses; any discussions with his longtime personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen, about a Moscow real estate deal; whether the president knew of any attempt by Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, to set up a back channel to Russia during the transition; any contacts he had with Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser who claimed to have inside information about Democratic email hackings; and what happened during Mr. Trump’s 2013 trip to Moscow for the Miss Universe pageant.

The questions provide the most detailed look yet inside Mr. Mueller’s investigation, which has been shrouded in secrecy since he was appointed nearly a year ago. The majority relate to possible obstruction of justice, demonstrating how an investigation into Russia’s election meddling grew to include an examination of the president’s conduct in office. Among them are queries on any discussions Mr. Trump had about his attempts to fire Mr. Mueller himself and what the president knew about possible pardon offers to Mr. Flynn.

“What efforts were made to reach out to Mr. Flynn about seeking immunity or possible pardon?” Mr. Mueller planned to ask, according to questions read by the special counsel investigators to the president’s lawyers, who compiled them into a list. That document was provided to The Times by a person outside Mr. Trump’s legal team.

A few questions reveal that Mr. Mueller is still investigating possible coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia. In one of the more tantalizing inquiries, Mr. Mueller asks what Mr. Trump knew about campaign aides, including the former chairman Paul Manafort, seeking assistance from Moscow: “What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?” No such outreach has been revealed publicly.

Mueller has been pretty tight-lipped since the Comey book and the Cohen raid, and there's been a lot of speculation as to what he's been up to.  Sometimes it's good to keep your opponent guessing, but other times, it's good to show a few cards in your hand just to let the other guy know he's the mark at the table and there's not a damn thing he can do about it.

Mueller asking specific questions about Flynn, Sessions, Comey and that fateful June 2016 meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower, mean Trump is in real trouble.

And Mueller wants Trump to know that.

PS:  Mueller already knows the answers.  All of them.

Your move, Donny.

Kelly Green

White House Part-Time Maybe Chief of Staff John Kelly is back at it, saving the world from Donald Trump's stupidity or something.

White House chief of staff John Kelly has eroded morale in the West Wing in recent months with comments to aides that include insulting the president's intelligence and casting himself as the savior of the country, according to eight current and former White House officials. 

The officials said Kelly portrays himself to Trump administration aides as the lone bulwark against catastrophe, curbing the erratic urges of a president who has a questionable grasp on policy issues and the functions of government. He has referred to Trump as "an idiot" multiple times to underscore his point, according to four officials who say they've witnessed the comments.

Three White House spokespeople said they don't believe it's accurate that Kelly called the president an "idiot," adding that none of them has ever heard him do that or otherwise use that word. 

Officials said Kelly's public image as a retired four-star general instilling discipline on a chaotic White House and an impulsive president belies what they describe as the undisciplined and indiscreet approach he's employed as chief of staff. The private manner aides describe may shed new light on why Kelly now finds himself — just nine months into the job — grappling with diminished influence and a drumbeat of questions about how long he'll remain at the White House. 

"He says stuff you can't believe," said one senior White House official. "He'll say it and you think, 'That is not what you should be saying."

Trump, who aides said has soured on his second chief of staff, is aware of some though not all of Kelly's comments, according to the current and former officials.

The White House spokespeople said they haven't heard Kelly talk about himself as the one saving the country, and that if anything he may have spoken in jest along those lines. 

Presidential historian Michael Beschloss said Kelly's comments about Trump, when compared to previous White House chiefs of staff, "suggest a lack of respect for the sitting president of a kind that we haven't seen before." Beschloss said the closest similarity would be President Ronald Reagan's chief of staff during his second term, Don Regan, who "somewhat looked down on" his boss and eventually lost the support of the staff and the president. Regan was replaced after two years by Howard Baker. 

The last time it became public that one of Trump's top advisers insulted his intelligence behind his back, it didn't go over well with the president. White House aides have said Trump never got over former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson calling him a "moron" in front of colleagues, which was first reported by NBC News. Trump later challenged Tillerson to an IQ test and fired him several months after the remark became public. 

Current and former White House officials said Kelly has at times made remarks that have rattled female staffers. Kelly has told aides multiple times that women are more emotional than men, including at least once in front of the president, four current and former officials said.

So just a reminder that yes, John Kelly is far, far from the "adult in the room" when it comes to riding herd on Trump.  He goes on to say that he takes credit for scrapping the DACA deal last year, and saved Trump because he's an idiot.

Trump actually is pretty dense, but that doesn't mean Kelly isn't a screaming racist asshole.

The National Russia Association, Con't

Lost in the noise this weekend about Trump and the WHCD this weekend was the NRA quietly going to the ramparts because they know they're going to be under investigation for their ties to Russian oligarchs and funneling Russian money to the Trump campaign.

The National Rifle Association is setting aside years of documents related to its interactions with a Kremlin-linked banker, as the gun-rights group appears to be bracing for a possible investigation, according to sources familiar with the situation. 

The NRA has faced fresh scrutiny from congressional investigators about its finances and ties to Alexander Torshin, one of the 17 prominent Russian government officials the US Treasury Department recently slapped with sanctions. The gun-rights group has said it is reexamining its relationship with Torshin, who is a lifetime NRA member, in the wake of the sanctions. 

The renewed attention has highlighted the close-knit if sometimes uneasy alliance between top NRA officials and Torshin -- a relationship that ensnared members of Trump's team during the presidential campaign, inviting further congressional scrutiny. 

Those inquiries could shed light on the tightly held fundraising practices and political activities of the NRA. The political powerhouse shelled out more than $30 million in 2016 to back Donald Trump's candidacy -- more than it spent on 2008 and 2012 political races combined, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Vice President Mike Pence is slated to speak at the National Rifle Association's annual convention in Dallas next Friday, an official told CNN. 

The NRA recently found itself facing allegations that the FBI was investigating whether Torshin illegally funneled money through the group to bolster Trump, according to a McClatchy report. The NRA has publicly denied any contact from the FBI and insisted it hasn't accepted illegal donations. 

Despite the public denials, officials at the gun-rights group have been anxiously preparing as if they were already under investigation, sources said. Some employees have been tasked with preserving years of documents mentioning Torshin or his associate, Maria Butina, who runs a pro-guns group in Russia, a source familiar with the situation said. Privately, some officials have expressed anxiety about a potential investigation and the group's Russian ties.

Even the Trump regime has acknowledged Torshin is a mobbed-up Putin flunky, leveling sanctions against him last month.  Sure, the Trumpies dragged their feet long enough for the Russians to move their cash out of the US and into offshore safe havens, but the point is Torshin's on the list, and his favorite charity is the NRA.

And suddenly the NRA had $30 million to give just to Trump's campaign.

I know foreign campaign donations are pretty small potatoes compared to the rest of the wrongdoing by the Trump regime, but if it takes both Trump and the NRA out of the GOP equation in 2018 and especially 2020, I'm all for it.

StupidiNews!

• Eight journalists are among the 29 dead in Afghanistan as Taliban suicide bombers attacked the Afghan security HQ and then detonated a second blast to kill reporters who had shown up.
• WH physician Dr. Ronny Jackson will reportedly resign his position after his withdrawn nomination for VA Secretary, his temporary replacement Dr. Sean Conley will remain in the role.
• T-Mobile and Sprint are once again looking for a merger, betting that Trump-era regulators will be far more receptive to the $26 billion wireless carrier deal than President Obama was in 2014.
• Ohio refinery giant Marathon wants to buy Texas-based rival Andeavor for $23.3 billion, the combined largest US refinery company would control 17% of the nation's refinery capacity.
• Russia has built a floating nuclear power plant for use in the Arctic Circle, but environmentalists are sounding the alarm that the vessel could cause a disaster in rough weather.

Last Call For The Wolf Among The Sheep

The White House Correspondents' Dinner did have a comedian last night, Michelle Wolf, and she unloaded on Trump, the press, and the whole nine yards in the most brutal takedown since Colbert.




Do watch the whole thing, it's hysterical.

Here's your money quote though:

“You guys are obsessed with Trump. Did you use to date him? Because you pretend like you hate him, but I think you love him. I think what no one in this room wants to admit is that Trump has helped all of you. He couldn’t sell steaks or vodka or water or college or ties or Eric. But he has helped you. He’s helped you sell your papers and your books and your TV. You helped create this monster and now you’re profiting off of him. And if you’re going to profit off of Trump, you should at least give him some money because he doesn’t have any.”

Needless to say, the Sunday shows have been howling all day about this.  Hit dogs holler the loudest. But as Steve M. points out, Wolf's real accomplishment was upstaging Donald Trump.

Since Trump descended that escalator in 2015, no one's managed to upstage him -- except a comedian who was as harsh and vulgar as he is.

Clinton aide Philippe Reines told us last month that the Democrats should run someone in 2020 who'll get down and dirty the way Trump does, who'll be as brazen and uncensored. Last night suggests that he has a point -- except that nearly all the coverage of Michelle Wolf is negative.

So you can't seize attention from Trump except by being Trump, but if you are Trump, they'll slam you. You can't win.

Democrats need to keep that in mind.  No matter what the Dems' message is in 2020, it will be drowned out by the Trump Show.  "Hillary Clinton didn't have a platform" was the biggest lie of 2016, and I expect the same will be true of the Dem running in 2020.  The media certainly didn't care.  What they cared about was Trump, because Trump sold copy, commercials, and clicks.

Clinton wasn't news until she lost.

Looking Through The Genes Catalog

Last week an arrest was made in the 40-year old Golden State Killer case, and it seems like one of America's most notorious unsolved serial killers was nabbed thanks to DNA evidence.  But that evidence meant California investigators went through commercial DNA databases from online genealogy companies to catch a killer, and not through criminal databases. 

Police may have their man, but at what cost to the rest of us in an era where data privacy already is greatly flawed and companies have, and own, your genetic information?

No one has thought about what are the possible consequences.”The trail of the Golden State Killer had gone cold decades ago. The police had linked him to more than 50 rapes and 12 murders from 1976 to 1986, and he had eluded all attempts to find him. 

In the years since, scientists have developed powerful tools to identify people by tiny variations in their DNA, as individual as fingerprints. At the same time, the F.B.I. and state law enforcement agencies have been cultivating growing databases of DNA not just from convicted criminals, but also in some cases from people accused of crimes. 

The California police had the Golden State Killer’s DNA and recently found an unusually well-preserved sample from one of the crime scenes. The problem was finding a match. 

But these days DNA is stored in many places, and a near-match ultimately was found in a genealogy website beloved by hobbyists called GEDmatch, created by two volunteers in 2011. 

Anyone can set up a free profile on GEDmatch. Many customers upload to the site DNA profiles they have already generated on larger commercial sites like 23andMe. 

The detectives in the Golden State Killer case uploaded the suspect’s DNA sample. But they would have had to check a box online certifying that the DNA was their own or belonged to someone for whom they were legal guardians, or that they had “obtained authorization” to upload the sample. 

“The purpose was to make these connections and to find these relatives,” said Blaine Bettinger, a lawyer affiliated with GEDmatch. “It was not intended to be used by law enforcement to identify suspects of crimes.”

But joining for that purpose does not technically violate site policy, he added.
Erin Murphy, a law professor at New York University and expert on DNA searches, said that using a fake identity might raise questions about the legality of the evidence. 

The matches found in GEDmatch were to relatives of the suspect, not the suspect himself. 

Since the site provides family trees, detectives also were able to look for relatives who might not have uploaded genetic data to the site themselves.

On GEDmatch, “it just happens they got lucky,” said Dr. Ashley Hall, a forensics science expert at the University of Illinois in Chicago. 

23andMe has more than 5 million customers, and Ancestry.com has 10 million. But the DNA in databases like these are relevant to tens of millions of others — sisters, parents, children. A lot can be learned about a family simply by accessing one member’s DNA. 

“Suppose you are worried about genetic privacy,” Ms. Murphy said. “If your sibling or parent or child engaged in this activity online, they are compromising your family for generations.”

If I'm DeAngelo's defense attorney, I'm moving to have all this DNA evidence tossed on on that technicality.  And even though from a genetic perspective, I'm adopted and I'd like some genetic testing done for the possibility of hereditary diseases, I'm loathe to do so for exactly these reasons.

It's a lot to think about in the era of privacy.  When I was in school the Human Genome Project was just getting underway.  20 years later we have commercial DNA databases with millions of subjects.  It's something that needs regulation, and fast.  It doesn't meet the Dr. Ian Malcolm test:

"Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."

We've got to get a handle on this fast, because it's going to be used again, and quickly.  The intersection of Silicon Valley tech, police investigation, and data privacy is already a massive trainwreck.

Sunday Long Read: Rebuilding In Boise

Idaho, like nearly all of the Rocky Mountain states, flipped heavily to Trump and the GOP in the last six years (and even then Colorado is purple at best).  Democrats have been all but wiped out between the Mississippi River and the West Coast, and the Gem State is no exception. 

Coming out of the wilderness and getting back to the kind of balance that brought Western Dems to power won't be easy, but in this state, there's at least one candidate who isn't waiting around and wants to surf the blue wave right into the Governor's office.

Shake Paulette Jordan’s hand and you likely won’t forget it. Her handshake is firm enough to be just shy of crushing, and she’s an expert at that disarming, straight-in-the-eye engagement. Jordan wants to make sure you know that she sees you. She’s tall — just under 6 feet — and her years on the basketball court compound the air of dominance with which she navigates a room. You could call it cocky. Or you could just use the word her supporters use: confident.

On a blustery day in March, Jordan is in Boise, Idaho, for an evening fundraiser featuring local indie-rock darlings Built to Spill. She’s spent a fair amount of time in the state capital, both as a representative of her tribe, the Coeur d’Alene, and the tribes of the Northwest, but also as a member of the Idaho state legislature. 

But Boise isn’t home. That’s up north, in the Idaho Panhandle, just outside of Plummer, Idaho, where her family grows timothy hay and bluegrass. As a teen, Jordan’s parents or grandparents drove her an hour each way, every day, to go to school at Gonzaga Prep in Spokane, Washington — a city where another Democrat, Lisa Brown, is making national headlines running as a candidate in an area previously assumed to be a Republican stronghold. 

“Lisa Brown is really great,” Jordan told me at a coffee shop just blocks away from the capitol building. “She’s a nice lady. But I don’t do nice. That’s not me.” 

At 38, after serving just two terms as a state representative, Jordan is not a conventional gubernatorial candidate. Until she resigned to dedicate herself full-time to running for governor, she was the only left-leaning legislator from North Idaho to survive the 2016 Trump wave that took out even the most established Democrats in the area. She’s a progressive, but declines comparisons to Bernie Sanders; she’s a woman of color, running to become the US’s first Native American governor, in a state that is 82% white. In the Idaho house, she refused to toe the party line. She’s referred to state Rep. Heather Scott, a far-right legislator and favorite liberal enemy, as a friend. 

And while the bulk of the Idaho Democratic establishment has endorsed Jordan’s opponent, Boise school board member A.J. Balukoff, Jordan has earned the support of the progressive PAC Democracy for America, Planned Parenthood, Our Revolution, and was among the first five candidates endorsed on the national level by Indivisible. In January, Jordan was asked to speak at the national Women’s March gathering in Las Vegas; while there, she met and was endorsed by Cher. 

Her candidacy has come to symbolize the breadth of the post-Trump wave of candidates who are energizing Democrats on both the local and national levels. When Mic ran a brief piece about Jordan in January, it stamped a picture of Jordan with “Young, Progressive, and Running.” At least 250,000 people shared or liked the piece on Facebook — several thousand more than live in all of North Idaho. 

Jordan’s not a centrist or a moderate, nor is she a veteran or a handsome white guy with two kids, like many of the candidates who have been forwarded by the Democratic Party to win over swing states and districts. And she’s not intimidated by calls, such as those from her opponent, that she should bide her time. “I think I bring more experience this time around and had leadership roles that Paulette hasn’t had,” Balukoff, who previously ran for governor in 2014, told Idaho Politics Weekly. “I think people should stay with me this time around. She may be what we need next time.” 

“We’ve seen this attitude all across the country, especially with female candidates,” Jordan said in reference to the article, which had been published just days before. “We saw it with Hillary Clinton’s campaign. We see it now. People say, well, not this time. But my grandmothers were always at the forefront. They’d say, we make the difference we want to see.” 

Jordan has caught the national eye as a Native woman, and a progressive at that, who is vying to make history in a conservative state. In Idaho, however, she’s marketed herself as an independent, straight-talking, ranch-raised woman, in touch with the needs of people outside of urban areas and willing to work across the aisle to find solutions that work. But ahead of the May 15 primary, she still needs to persuade Idaho Democrats — many of whom remain convinced of their party’s impotency and irrelevance across the state — that the person they choose to run in a long-shot race against Republicans actually matters.

I have no idea if Jordan can succeed outgoing GOP Gov. Butch Otter, , who is hanging up his hat after 3 terms, let alone win her primary against Balukoff.  But keep an eye on her.  She's the kind of candidate the Dems need right now and in the future.

Throwing The New Guy In The Deep End

There's no rest for the wicked as newly confirmed Trump Regime SecState Mike Pompeo is already off on his first leg of the "Sorry We Didn't Have A Secretary Of State For Two Months" Tour and is already trying to put out fires in the Middle East.

As Saudi Arabia considers digging a moat along its border with Qatar and dumping nuclear waste nearby, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in Riyadh on his first overseas trip as the nation’s top diplomat with a simple message: Enough is enough.
Patience with what is viewed in Washington as a petulant spat within the Gulf 

Cooperation Council has worn thin, and Mr. Pompeo told the Saudi Foreign Minister, Adel al-Jubeir, that the dispute needs to end, according to a senior State Department official who briefed reporters on the meetings but who was not authorized to be named. 

Last June, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates led an embargo by four Arab nations of Qatar, accusing the tiny, gas-rich nation of funding terrorism, cozying up to Iran and welcoming dissidents. Years of perceived slights on both sides of the conflict added to the bitterness. 

Mr. Pompeo’s predecessor, Rex W. Tillerson, spent much of his tenure trying to mediate the dispute, which also involved Egypt and Bahrain, but without success. The Saudis, keen observers of Washington’s power dynamics, knew that Mr. Tillerson had a strained relationship with President Trump and so ignored him, particularly because Mr. Trump sided with the Saudis in the early days of the dispute.

But Mr. Pompeo is closer to Mr. Trump and thus a more formidable figure. And in the nearly 11 months since the embargo began, Qatar has spent millions of dollars on a Washington charm offensive that paid off earlier this month when its leader, Emir Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani, had an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump during which the president expressed strong support for the tiny country.

So Mr. Pompeo came here to deliver the same message to Mr. Jubeir at an airport meeting Saturday afternoon; to Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman later that night; and to King Salman in a meeting planned for Sunday: Stop. 

Confronting Iran, stabilizing Iraq and Syria, defeating the last of Islamic State, and winding up the catastrophic civil war in Yemen are seen in Washington as increasingly urgent priorities that cannot be fully addressed without a united and more robust Arab response. 

Mr. Pompeo arrived in Riyadh on the same day that Houthi forces in Yemen shot eight missiles at targets in the southern Saudi province of Jizan, killing a man. The fusillade was the latest sign that Yemen’s blood bath is a growing threat to the region.

I'm thinking that the Saudis are going to continue to tell the State Department to go screw themselves because they know they can go over Pompeo's head to Trump the same way they did with Rex the Wreck.  It's sad that at this point everyone is freely admitting how awful Tillerson was at this job, and that how Pompeo is actually an improvement somehow, but the point is that the real problem with America's foreign policy is Donald Trump, and until that changes, nobody's going to take us seriously.

Qatar might get a break, but the Saudis do love picking on them, and Trump does love a bully, so who knows?