Lowering The Barr, Con't

Donald Trump's reality has collapsed so completely in the wake of his election loss to Joe Biden that he's now openly blaming Attorney General Bill Barr for his "Deep State!" conspirator-laden loss.

 

Despite having finally assented to allowing his administration to cooperate with the transition of power to President-elect Joe Biden, President Trump on Sunday continued to spout baseless voter fraud claims in his first interview since Election Day, including suggesting that the FBI and Department of Justice were involved in rigging the election against him.

“This is total fraud,” Trump told host Maria Bartiromo during the interview on Fox Business’ “Sunday Morning Futures,” adding: “And how the FBI and Department of Justice—I don’t know—maybe they’re involved, but how people are getting away with this stuff—it’s unbelievable.”

The president offered no evidence to back up this claim, and then went on to complain at length about how the two agencies had been “missing in action” in investigating his voter fraud claims.

The DOJ and FBI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Forbes.

The heads of both the FBI and DOJ were picked by President Trump. FBI Director Christopher Wray was appointed by the president in 2017, while Attorney General William Barr was nominated in late 2018. Barr has been criticized for actions that have been perceived as overly partisan toward the president, including recently clearing the DOJ to investigate voting irregularities before the results are certified, a reversal of longstanding guidance to avoid the appearance of federal intervention in elections that prompted the head of the department’s Election Crimes Branch Richard Pilger to step down from his position in protest.

Almost all of the dozens of lawsuits filed by the Trump campaign in battleground states have been dismissed by judges—including GOP appointees. However, on Sunday morning, Trump claimed: “We’re trying to put the evidence in and the judges won’t allow us to do it.”

 

Trump also seems to think he can order Barr to appoint a special prosecutor to go after...everyone.  Including, apparently, Barr himself.

 

“Where is the DOJ and the FBI in all of this, Mr. President?” Bartiromo asked of Trump’s claims of voter fraud. “You have laid out some serious charges here. Shouldn’t this be something that the FBI is investigating? Are they? Is the DOJ investigating?”

“Missing in action. Missing in action. Can’t tell you where they are. I ask, ‘Are they looking at it?’ Everyone says, ‘Yes, they’re looking at it.’ Look, where are they with Comey, McCabe, and all these other people? You know, I said I’ll stay out of it. I wish I didn’t make that statement. There’s no reason, really, why I have to,” Trump said. “But where are they with Comey, with McCabe, with Brennan, with all these people. They lied to Congress. They lied, they leaked, they spied on our campaign. I see Carter Page is bringing a lawsuit, that’s good news. Where are they with all of this stuff? And, you know, what happened to Durham? Where’s Durham?”

Former Trump campaign associate Carter Page filed a lawsuit on Friday against Comey, McCabe, the FBI, the Justice Department, and others seeking $75 million in damages related to the “unjustified and illegal actions” and “unlawful spying” against him.

“Before we leave the subject of Durham, I feel like something happened in September. I don’t know what happened, but we were all expecting Durham to come out and A.G. Barr to be aggressive,” Bartiromo said, adding, “Will you appoint a special counsel to investigate and to continue the investigating into what took place in the 2016 election? You mentioned Jim Comey and Andrew McCabe not facing accountability — will you appoint a special counsel?”

“By the way, Comey, McCabe — that’s the least of it. You talk about the Logan Act, they used the Logan Act on General Flynn, who I was very proud to pardon. But they wanted to use and they did use the Logan Act on General Flynn, and you know where that started. Look, this whole thing is a terrible situation. This should’ve never been allowed to happen,” Trump claimed.

He added, “And yeah, I would consider a special prosecutor. Because you know this is not a ‘counsel’ — it sounds so nice. I went through three years of a special counsel prosecutor — I call it ‘prosecutor’ because it’s a much more accurate term. They spent $48 million, Weissmann and all Trump haters, they spent $48 million. That was the Mueller investigation. They went through taxes, they went through everything — for $48 million you look at everything, and they found no collusion, no nothing.” 

 

Again, it's easy to dismiss Trump's schizoid break as something piteous or sad, but the reality is at some point very soon, probably after the Supreme Court delivers the final blow by (hopefully) refusing to take up any of Trump's ridiculous lawsuits, Trump will openly tell his supporters to take up arms and get him his presidency back by any means necessary, and a non-zero percentage of them will take him up on the offer.

 

Civil wars throughout history have started over less, the kind that end up with hundreds of thousands of casualties.  

You know, on top of the hundreds of thousands of COVID-19 deaths so far this year in America.

Holidaze: They Learned Nothing In 2019

Our media is bad, it has been bad for years, that lack of common sense in the media is a big reason we have Trump in the White House, and after three years of this hurricane of fecal matter flying around the country leaving destruction in its wake, our media betters are still the same awful clods they were in 2016, as evidenced by Washington Post media critic Erik Wemple interviewing NY Times reporter Adam Goldman on the Steele dossier.

What was your first reaction to the dossier? Were you wary of it?

I hadn’t read the dossier until BuzzFeed published it. I was at The Washington Post, and I left in late August [for the New York Times], and I started hearing rumors, but nobody actually told me anything. I’m at the Times; I’m doing terrorism; I’m dealing with the Clinton Foundation; and I don’t actually read the dossier until it’s online.

Were you part of Steele’s media tour?

No, I was not.

You heard rumors, and then BuzzFeed posted it, and then did your focus turn to it?

No, my focus didn’t turn toward it because I was subsumed with the FBI Russia investigation itself, all the different components to it, right? Figuring out if he was under investigation, right? What was it based on, what were the origins of Crossfire Hurricane? I was trying to figure out the past and trying to keep up with what the FBI was doing. So the dossier for me was not a central — there was a lot of reporting to be done, and I wasn’t the one focused on the dossier.

But then it did obviously, eventually come closer into your world.

Of course I remember reading the memo — the [Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) memo claiming surveillance overreach at the FBI], the dueling memos from the Dems and the Republicans. … Who was right and who was wrong? The dossier had been used, we knew, from Nunes’s memo. We didn’t know how much of it was used, and we didn’t have a good understanding of what the FBI had done to vet it. The assumption was they certainly were trying to. And, well, what did they know that we didn’t know? And then how many months ago, the deputy attorney general says they need to look into this. There were all these accusations floating around. So the deputy attorney general has the IG start looking into it. But really for me, as the guy covering the FBI, I was very interested in what the IG was doing. There was a lot going on, as the IG developed his case and more people started to talk to more people, I was able to get a better sense eventually there were going to be problems not only with the dossier but obviously big problems with the FISA.

[…]

I might have figured [that the FBI had interviewed the dossier’s primary sub-source in January 2017] in early 2019 or late 2018. And that for me was an extraordinary moment: Right? I knew, s---, there were problems. So now there’s some indication that there were problems with the dossier and the FBI had a sense of it. But there were only a handful of people in that room with the source [in January 2017]. And I couldn’t — to be able to write a definitive story with the details the IG had was, I guess, a bridge too far, right? It was a mountain too high for me. Because as the IG report shows, the information didn’t even get to the FISA court. So it somehow rested with this very small group of people in the FBI. I did identify one former law enforcement official who I thought would know about it and I’m sure probably did, and this person did not answer any of my requests. So I went to great lengths to try to build out that information and also figure out who the primary [source] was, and it proved to be extraordinarily tough. I mean, you can imagine: That was an explosive part of the IG report. I would have liked to have known and reported what he said in January of 2017. If I had learned more, I would have liked to have written a much larger, more important story informing the public [about] the problems that the FBI uncovered.

[…]

People on the right on Twitter criticized us for our pre-IG leak stories. I thought they were all very sound. The New York Times was the first newspaper to identify Kevin Clinesmith by name. [Clinesmith is the FBI lawyer who, according to the Times account, “altered an email that officials used to prepare to seek court approval to renew the wiretap.”] My colleagues and I had the first comprehensive story about the main takeaways: No evidence of bias, no — [Joseph] Mifsud wasn’t working for the FBI, Crossfire Hurricane was legit; and these were all important takeaways. The immediate two stories we wrote — I wrote there are many errors, omissions and mistakes [in the FISA applications]. And I wrote there’s exculpatory evidence they should have included about [George] Papadopoulos and the FISA and about Carter [Page]. I didn’t have the nitty-gritty detail of a 500-page report to be able to walk through all 17 of those significant errors. And frankly it wasn’t even clear to me what Clinesmith had done and how he had altered that email. I had a sense of that. … The way it was described to me it was he took something from the positive and made it into a negative. And that’s what he did. … It was an important report, and I think we did a pretty good job previewing what a lot of it was going to say on a macro level.


Everything you did predict actually was in the report. The criticism, such as it is, is a matter of weighting.


Well, the president of the United States has been accusing the FBI of a coup. He said it in that news conference afterward, they tried to overthrow the government. This is a big, weighty accusation. Why wouldn’t we have tackled that one: Was the president right, did the president know something we didn’t? And if the president was right, that’s pretty extraordinary.

[…]

Also: I was very careful with this language reporting they hadn't placed reporters or undercovers inside the campaign. That was also a major takeaway.

Given that you’ve covered the FBI forever and law enforcement forever and surveillance and all this stuff, tell me what you think about the semantics and the technicalities of this debate about spying.

I mean, look, Matt Apuzzo and I wrote the NYPD stories [about the NYPD’s illegal surveillance of Muslim neighborhoods, for the Associated Press]. We used the word “spying” because it seemed that the NYPD didn’t have a legal justification to do what they were doing: going into coffee shops, eavesdropping on private citizens in public spaces, gathering intelligence about communities and putting them in secret documents. People had done nothing wrong and were not accused of doing anything wrong. In this particular case, you have what the IG says are informants who didn’t violate any rules or policies being used as a legitimate law enforcement investigation. Attorney General William P. Barr thinks it’s spying. I don’t think I would hesitate to use the word “spying” if they had found something illegal. If lawful surveillance is spying, then is every FBI investigation they do spying? Did they spy when they busted those NFL players for health-care fraud? God knows what they did in that investigation.

Is the investigation into Rudy and Lev and Igor — is that spying? Where is the line between lawful surveillance and spying?

It’s like torture, right? … The implication of “torture” is that somebody did something wrong. They violated someone’s human rights.

You reported in April about the alleged flimsiness of the dossier.

I had just been collecting a lot of information wanting to do a story about all of this. I'd just been filling up this bucket until I had enough information to write a story. And I kept refilling the bucket.

It was cited on “Hannity.” How do you feel oftentimes to see Sean Hannity and Trump rip the New York Times and then rely on it the next day?

I don’t pay much attention to it. But I’d love to go on “Hannity.” 

David Kris was on the Lawfare podcast and said he needed to emphasize a million times that the FISA problems were not political and he couldn’t emphasize that enough. And I know that there are representations in the Horowitz report saying that he couldn’t find political bias —

That’s fine, but he also said he didn’t get reasonable satisfactory answers. I mean, there were so many screw-ups. How is that possible — basic stuff that people were incapable of doing? My position is that we’re going to go with the Horowitz report until we learn otherwise from U.S. Attorney John Durham or whoever — somebody reputable.

And I mean, Goldman is a solid reporter, and Wemple has been all over the Trump regime's treatment of the media, but Goldman would also love to go on the Junior Fascist Hatred Hour, and Wemple is now up to part seven (this interview) of his long-winded criticism of how the media absolutely failed America in every sense of the word by even reporting on the Steele dossier and the Carter Page story.

Wemple has gone so far as to trash Steele himself, going after McClatchy for the Michael Cohen Prague story, slagging Rachel Maddow's coverage of the story over the months, and defending disinformation conduit John Solomon, among other attacks over the last several weeks that's had Wemple cited positively by the very right-wing outlets that have been horrible to him for years.

The media has learned nothing in 2019.  They still believe the Trump regime is operating in good faith. To paraphrase Upton Sinclair, their salary depends on not understanding that Trump is their mortal enemy.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

The long-awaited Justice Department inspector general report on the FBI's Crossfire Hurricane investigation into Donald Trump is out, and while the report is pretty scathing on what the DoJ sees as "missteps" by the FBI, the report also concludes that there was sufficient evidence to open the investigation into Trump's Russian collusion.

The 434-page report from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz found the FBI had an “authorized purpose” when it initiated its investigation, known as Crossfire Hurricane, into the Trump campaign, and rejected the assertion that the case was opened out of political animus or that informants were used in violation of FBI rules.

It asserted, though, that as the probe went on, FBI officials repeatedly decided to emphasize damaging information they heard about Trump associates, and play down exculpatory evidence they found.

Conservatives and liberals alike claimed victory in the report — with Democrats saying it validated the Russia investigation while Republicans asserted it exposed serious wrongdoing.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) said the inspector general had “completely demolished” some of conservatives’ assertions about the origins of the probe, though his investigators did find some problems.

“Clearly, there was a legitimate, factual basis; in fact the FBI had a moral imperative to begin this investigation,” Blumenthal said. In particular, he said the inspector general had rebutted claims that Trump campaign advisers were illegally surveilled or entrapped, or that political motive was “in any way a factor.”
In a statement, Attorney General William P. Barr disagreed with one of the inspector general’s key conclusions, saying the FBI launched an investigation of a presidential campaign “on the thinnest of suspicions that, in my view, were insufficient to justify the steps taken. It is also clear that, from its inception, the evidence produced by the investigation was consistently exculpatory.” So, too, did Connecticut U.S. Attorney John Durham, who Barr handpicked to conduct an investigation similar to that of Horowitz.

“Our investigation has included developing information from other persons and entities, both in the U.S. and outside of the U.S.,” Durham said in a statement. “Based on the evidence collected to date, and while our investigation is ongoing, last month we advised the Inspector General that we do not agree with some of the report’s conclusions as to predication and how the FBI case was opened.”

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina), a strong Trump ally, said “this is not a good day for the FBI.”

“There’s more than enough evidence in this report that would suggest a major overhaul in terms of policies and procedures,” he said.

Meadows has a point, although Republicans surely didn't care about FISA reform until it was legitimately used on Donald Trump's campaign.

Oh, and the report absolutely concludes that the Russians hacked the DNC email server and laundered the emails through WikiLeaks, and it concludes it was done to hurt Hillary Clinton and help Donald Trump.

So no, there wasn't any "deep state" anything, just overworked FBI agents who cut corners and who have already for the most part been disciplined if not already fired.

This should put an end to all this, but of course if Barr ends it here, he's fired by Trump, so he won't leave it where things are.

Count on that.

Lowering The Barr, Con't

The twin Trump regime Justice Department "reports" on the origins of the Russia probe and the FISA warrants into Carter Page are now being rolled into one giant pile of bullshit to use against Democrats right in the middle of impeachment hearings.

The Justice Department’s watchdog is nearing the release of its report on the early stages of the FBI’s Russia investigation, a document likely to revive debate about a politically charged probe that shadowed President Donald Trump’s administration from the outset.

The inspector general in recent days has invited witnesses and their lawyers who were interviewed for the report to review portions of a draft this week and next, a critical final step toward making the document public, according to multiple people familiar with the process who insisted on anonymity to discuss it.
As part of that process, the people will have opportunities to raise concerns or suggest potential edits, making it unclear precisely when in the coming weeks a final version could be ready for release. Inspector General Michael Horowitz told Congress in a letter last month that he did not expect a lengthy review period and that he intended to make as much of the report public as possible, with minimal redactions.

The release of the report is likely to coincide with House impeachment proceedings scrutinizing the Trump administration’s efforts to press Ukraine into investigating Democratic rival Joe Biden. Any finding of problems by the inspector general in how the FBI gathered and collected evidence in investigating ties between the Trump campaign and Russia could at least temporarily buoy Trump and other Republican supporters eager to turn the page from the congressional scrutiny now imperiling his White House.

Trump has long insisted that the investigation into his campaign was a “hoax” and “witch hunt,” asserting without evidence or elaboration as recently as last month that law enforcement officials had done “really bad things.”

A key question examined by the inspector general has been the FBI’s process for applying for, and receiving, a secret warrant to monitor the communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. The warrant was renewed multiple times by judges, but Republican critics of the Russia probe have decried the fact that the FBI relied in part in its application on uncorroborated information obtained by Christopher Steele, a former British spy who had been paid by Hillary Clinton’s campaign to conduct opposition research.

The government did disclose to the court the political loyalties of the people who hired Steele, according to Democrats on the House intelligence committee who released their own memo last year aimed at countering Republican allegations of law enforcement misconduct.

The FBI opened its investigation in July 2016 after receiving information that a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, had disclosed to an Australian diplomat that Russia had thousands of stolen emails that would be potentially damaging to Clinton, an election opponent. U.S. officials have said the emails were hacked by Russian intelligence operatives and given to WikiLeaks, which released them ahead of the election.

Papadopoulos, who served as a foreign policy adviser to Trump’s campaign, had learned from a Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud, that Russia had “dirt” on Clinton in the form of the stolen emails. Papadopoulos later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his conversations with Mifsud.

A spokeswoman for Horowitz declined to comment on Tuesday. Horowitz himself refused to answer questions about the report and its timing at an unrelated news conference last week. The inspector general provided a draft copy to Attorney General William Barr in September, and the Justice Department has since been conducting a classification review.

They've been sitting on it to try to unleash both for maximum effect, probably just after Thanksgiving.  It's going to be the major attack in order to derail impeachment.  We'll see how well it works.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

All sorts of news in our Friday Mueller News Dump™ this week, starting with a complete 180 on Donald Trump's plans to declassify information pertaining to the ongoing Mueller probe.

President Donald Trump on Friday abandoned plans to quickly declassify and release sensitive documents connected to the FBI's Russia investigation, citing a "perceived negative impact" on the probe and concerns raised by "key allies" about dumping the materials.

Trump instead announced that he would defer to a Justice Department watchdog — Inspector General Michael Horowitz, who he once derided as an "Obama guy" — to finish a review of whether anti-Trump bias affected the FBI's handling of its 2016 Russia probe.

"Therefore, the Inspector General ... has been asked to review these documents on an expedited basis," Trump tweeted Friday morning. "I believe he will move quickly on this (and hopefully other things which he is looking at). In the end I can always declassify if it proves necessary. Speed is very important to me — and everyone!"

Trump had sought the release of classified portions of a surveillance warrant application used to track former campaign adviser Carter Page. He also said he wanted to publish the interview notes of a top Justice Department official and the text messages sent by former FBI Director James Comey and other senior bureau officials.

The FBI's early investigation into the Trump campaign's ties with Russia eventually led to special counsel Robert Mueller's probe into whether Trump's aides assisted Moscow in its efforts to influence the 2016 election.

Trump's Friday tweet likely staves off a confrontation between the president and his own intelligence officials, who have publicly and privately warned of the dangers of revealing classified intelligence. Democrats have attacked the initial decision to release the documents as reckless, arguing it could endanger international intelligence partnerships and sources. Trump told the Hill in an interview earlier this week that he had decided to release the documents in part at the urging of conservative Fox News TV hosts.

Gosh, I don't understand, clearly Mighty God-Emperor Trump could destroy the Evil Deep State by doing this but...backed down completely?

It's almost like he hasn't read any of the classified material, and that declassifying it would have been the end of his regime.  Who knew?

Well, Mueller knew. And speaking of what Mueller knows, that brings us to Story #2: BuzzFeed News is reporting that Robert Mueller's team is now looking into millions in suspicious money transfers just days before that now-infamous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

Documents reviewed by BuzzFeed News show that $3.3 million began moving on June 3 between two of the men who orchestrated the meeting: Aras Agalarov, a billionaire real estate developer close to both Vladimir Putin and President Donald Trump, and Irakly “Ike” Kaveladze, a longtime Agalarov employee once investigated for money laundering.

That money is on top of the more than $20 million that was flagged as suspicious, BuzzFeed News revealed earlier this month, after the money ricocheted among the planners and participants of the Trump Tower meeting. Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, which has been investigating whether any individuals colluded with Russia to influence the 2016 presidential election, is examining the suspicious transactions, four federal law enforcement officials said. A spokesperson for Mueller’s office declined to comment.

Although the documents do not directly link the $3.3 million to the meeting, they show that officials at three separate banks raised red flags about the funds. Many of the transfers seemed to have no legitimate purpose, bankers noted. Kaveladze quickly moved money to other accounts he controlled, and appeared to use some of it to make payments on Agalarov’s behalf — including more than $700,000 to pay off American Express charges.

The transfers happened the same day Donald Trump Jr. supposedly signed off on the meeting, June 3, 2016. I've always said that the Russian money laundering angle of this story was connected to the Russian election interference angle, and Mueller is following both.

And speaking of suspicious money trails, that leads us to story #3:  Former Trump lawyer John Dowd apparently directed White House legal defense funds to help Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.

A top lawyer for President Trump this year sought to help pay legal fees for Paul Manafort and Richard Gates, initially trying to divert money from the White House legal defense fund and later soliciting donors and pledging $25,000 of his own.

In both cases, the president’s advisers objected to the lawyer’s actions over concerns it could appear aimed at stopping the two former aides from cooperating with investigators.

John Dowd, who at the time was heading Mr. Trump’s legal team, at the start of the year told associates of the president he wanted to direct money from the legal defense fund set up for White House officials and campaign aides to the lawyers for Messrs. Manafort and Gates, according to people familiar with the matter. The pair had pleaded not guilty to charges of tax, bank and lobbying violations in the fall of 2017.

That idea was rebuffed by ethics advisers in the White House, the people said. The fund had been set up specifically to aid those who faced legal fees stemming from their involvement with the president. While the charges facing Messrs. Manafort and Gates had stemmed from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation, they pertained to activities that predated the Trump campaign, making the two aides ineligible for those funds.

On Feb. 22, Mr. Dowd told associates of the president in an email that Messrs. Manafort and Gates needed funds immediately, according to people familiar with the matter. He said he planned to donate $25,000 to Mr. Manafort’s legal defense fund the next day.

The next day, Mr. Gates pleaded guilty and agreed to cooperate with investigators.

Oops.  Guess they didn't need the "defense money" after all, huh.  Totally doesn't look like a last-ditch effort to pay off Gates before he flipped, either.

But Mueller knows.

Mueller knows it all.

And that report is coming.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

The Mueller probe is moving into the endgame as the investigation closes in on Trump and his inner circle, and possibly Trump himself.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller is preparing to accelerate his probe into possible collusion between Donald Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians who sought to interfere in the 2016 election, according to a person familiar with the investigation.

Mueller and his team of prosecutors and investigators have an eye toward producing conclusions -- and possible indictments -- related to collusion by fall, said the person, who asked not to be identified. He’ll be able to turn his full attention to the issue as he resolves other questions, including deciding soon whether to find that Trump sought to obstruct justice. 

Mueller’s office declined to comment on his plans.

Suspicious contacts between at least 13 people associated with Trump’s presidential campaign and Russians have fueled the debate over collusion.

Some of those encounters have been known for months: the Russian ambassador whose conversations forced Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from overseeing the Russia investigation and led Michael Flynn to plead guilty to perjury. The Russians who wangled a meeting with Donald Trump Jr. at Trump Tower in July 2016 after dangling the promise of political dirt on Democrat Hillary Clinton.
Other encounters continue to emerge, including a Russian’s chat with veteran Trump adviser Roger Stone at a cafe in Florida.

Signs of suspicious Russian contacts first surfaced in late 2015, especially among U.S. allies who were conducting surveillance against Russians, according to a former official, who spoke on condition of anonymity. 

By the spring of 2016 the frequent contacts set off alarm bells among U.S. intelligence officials, according to James Clapper, who was director of national intelligence at the time. The FBI’s Russia investigation officially began that July. 

“The dashboard warning lights were on for all of us because of the meetings,” Clapper said in an interview this month. “We may not have known much about the content of these meetings, but it was certainly very curious why so many meetings with Russians.”
On three occasions, Russians offered people associated with Trump’s campaign dirt on Democrat Clinton -- all before it was publicly known that Russians had hacked the Democratic National Committee and Clinton’s campaign chairman. 

Mueller has interviewed or sought information about many of the people known to have met with Russians during the campaign. But it’s not known publicly whether the barrage of Russian contacts was instigated or coordinated by the Kremlin. Trump, for his part, has repeatedly denied any such plotting, tweeting on June 15, “WITCH HUNT! There was no Russian Collusion.”

The article goes on to list the folks under Mueller's sights:

1. Michael Cohen
2. Paul Manafort
3. Michael Flynn
4. Jared Kushner
5. Erik Prince
6. Rick Gates
7. J.D. Gordon
8. Carter Page
9. Roger Stone
10. Michael Caputo
11. Donald Trump Jr.
12. George Papadopoulos
13. Jeff Sessions

The question: how many of these Dirty 13 are headed for prison?  We know that Gates, Papadopoulos, Prince and Flynn are talking, Manafort and Cohen are looking at spending the rest of their lives in a box if they don't cooperate, Gordon and Caputo have most likely already flipped to get bigger fish, and that Kushner, Sessions, and Don Jr. are currently sweating it out.

Stone I think is the real prize that's shifted Mueller towards the focus on collusion.  He knows way too much about the WikiLeaks/DNC hack connection, but doesn't have the personal protection of Trump like Kushner, Junior, and Sessions does.  Mueller only went after Stone in the last month or so too, when it became clear that he couldn't keep his mouth shut.

Now don't get me wrong, Cohen, Kushner, Flynn, Erik Prince and Paul Manafort are all going to cough up what they know.  But I think it's funny that Roger Stone's discount Batman '66 Penguin self could be the guy that actually brings down Trump.

Stay tuned.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

As I said yesterday, the Nunes memo was a massive dud to the point where the GOP can't possibly use it for cover for Trump to fire special counsel Robert Mueller or his boss Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who is overseeing the Trump/Russia investigation as Attorney General Jeff Sessions has recused himself.

That's not going to stop the Trump regime and the GOP from trying to salvage their attack, and Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass gives away the game this weekend as to where the GOP will now be parking the Mueller firing goalposts.

What we’re looking at is politics.

It was politics when the political left loved WikiLeaks boss Julian Assange, back when he released sensitive information, even though it undercut American foreign policy. He was a hero then. But he was hated later, when his work involved Democratic National Committee emails. Then Republicans loved him.

Republicans were once adamantly in support of the FBI, the CIA and some of the other shadowy agencies with great powers to watch us and to monitor our phones, to listen to what we say in the interests of security and to ignore or avoid the Fourth Amendment. And Democrats were once adamantly opposed to even suspected abuses by federal police and the intelligence agencies — what is now called “the Deep State” — and they railed against those who’d step on American civil liberties in a political hunt.

But now, Democrats are the champions of shadow warriors in the CIA and the FBI, arguing that we must not challenge these agencies at the risk of national security. And Republicans hammer at the FBI — whose leadership they once respected — including former FBI director Robert Mueller.

Now that he’s special prosecutor investigating Trump, his final report could provide a political basis for Democrats to impeach Trump, should they gain control of Congress in the 2018 midterm elections.

So we’re in the Upside Down now. You see how this goes. You can see where it’s going.

The best thing to do in this business of the president and the investigation and the memo is to have everything released, all the information, and hope that the American people actually care enough about their country to read it, rather than accept the spin by some that it’s a nothing burger, and the spin by others that it’s a book of revelations.

Americans should read the Republican memo, and also read the complete rebuttal from the Democrats that is sure to come.

And also read the Department of Justice Inspector General’s report that is being compiled about this matter, and is reportedly digging into any FBI political bias in favor of Hillary Clinton when she was under investigation for tens of thousands of emails, some classified, on her private server.

What would be best is if we could all read the FBI’s FISA application used against Trump, which Republicans allege was based on opposition research done for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee.

If this is, in fact, true, then it is an outrage and an assault on our freedom. If it is not, we best know it quickly.

Getting all this out in the open is preferable to relying on whispers and leaks from shielded investigators to political hacks.

And while the partisans are either pro-Trump or anti-Trump, there’s something else that may be even more important.

It’s the argument — once offered by big-government Republicans and now cleaved to by big-government Democrats — that we shouldn’t challenge the huge federal bureaucracies that spy on us, and watch us.

The only branch of our government to have proper oversight is Congress. And the only real answer is sunshine, so we may see to make up our own minds about how our country is governed.

Kass neatly lines up where the GOP is going:

1. Trump should somehow declassify information crucial to the ongoing investigation of Trump himself, a novel approach that assumes somehow the GOP is smart enough to obfuscate the "mysterious sausage-making process" without actually giving away the dirt on Trump.  This will never happen, but Republicans will say that Trump's refusal to do this is proof the FBI is corrupt.  Or something.
2. Same goes with the FISA process, which after renewing said process only a few weeks ago as part of the regular renewal of Patriot Act surveillance legislation, suddenly now the GOP objects to it. Or something.
3. Also the only branch that matters isn't actually Trump but Congress, which the GOP controls totally, so do we really need Mueller at all when we have the House and Senate investigations which as sure to be fair and impartial? Or something.

Anyway, this is how the rest of the Mueller investigation will play out.  He's not going anywhere, but if the GOP can shout loudly enough that HEY THIS IS NOT BEING DONE OUT IN THE OPEN AND PUBLIC WHERE WE CAN SEE IT like all criminal investigations are never, ever done even then Mueller will be...discredited...somehow...look I don't know, I didn't say it was a good plan, I said this is where they are going with it, and let's face it these guys are terrible at this whole nonsense.

I mean...look at Carter Page.

Former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page referred to himself as an “advisor to the staff of the Kremlin” in a 2013 letter to an academic publisher, Time reported Saturday.

The publication reported that it had obtained the 2013 letter sent during a dispute about edits on a manuscript Page had written. 

“Over the past half year, I have had the privilege to serve as an informal advisor to the staff of the Kremlin in preparation for their Presidency of the G-20 Summit next month, where energy issues will be a prominent point on the agenda,” Page wrote, according to Time.

Come on.

It's (Still) Mueller Time

The Nunes memo arrived with all the fanfare of an incontinent warthog loose at the Louvre, and it stank just as badly.  

The main argument that this odious GOP-doctored summary of the House Intelligence Committee's info made is that somehow, those super-crafty Democrats tricked four separate FISA judges into extending surveillance on suspected foreign agent and Trump campaign staffer Carter Page by omitting that the "primary source" of the info on Page was the "paid-for-by-Democrats" Steele dossier, which is "compromised by partisanship". 

However, the Nunes memo can't prove any of this, because the memo's sources remain classified, so you just have to take Devin Nunes's word for it.  This is basically your drunken estranged uncle telling you that Bigfoot exists man, but the CIA has the proof in a file cabinet somewhere in a top secret mountain bunker in Virginia but you have to believe me, I'm not crazy.

The main assumption to bolster the argument the Nunes memo makes is that FISA court judges are dumber than a box of rusty hammers at the bottom of the Everglades, which apparently didn't sit too well with people who know FISA court judges.

The court that approved surveillance of a former campaign adviser to President Trump was aware that some of the information underpinning the warrant request was paid for by a political entity, although the application did not specifically name the Democratic National Committee or the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, according to two U.S. officials familiar with the matter.

A now-declassified Republican memo alleged that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court was duped into approving the wiretap request by a politicized FBI and Justice Department. The memo was written by House Intelligence Committee Republicans and alleged a “troubling breakdown of legal processes” flowing from the government’s wiretapping of former Trump aide Carter Page.

But its central allegation — that the government failed to disclose a source’s political bias — is baseless, the officials said.

The Justice Department made “ample disclosure of relevant, material facts” to the court that revealed “the research was being paid for by a political entity,” said one official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

“No thinking person who read any of these applications would come to any other conclusion but that” the work was being undertaken “at the behest of people with a partisan aim and that it was being done in opposition to Trump,” the official said.

Former senior Justice Department officials who handled applications for wiretap warrants under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) say that such applications typically include dozens of pages and undergo rigorous vetting.

“We didn’t put in every fact, but we put in enough facts to allow the court to judge bias and motive and credibility of the sourcing,” said Matthew G. Olsen, former deputy assistant attorney general for national security who oversaw the Justice Department’s FISA program from 2006 to 2009.

The Republican memo, he said, “is unconvincing and one-sided. It raises more questions than it answers.”

If the FISA application to surveil Page referred to funding by political opponents “or included similar references that revealed a motivation against then-candidate Trump, even if they did not name the DNC . . . then the FISA applications would be fine,” said David Kris, a FISA expert who led the Justice Department’s National Security Division from 2009 to 2011.

It's patently clear that there are other intelligence sources besides the Steele Dossier that were followed up on.  The last paragraph of the Nunes memo even says so.

The Page FISA application also mentions information regarding fellow Trump campaign advisor George Papadopoulos, but there is no evidence of any cooperation or conspiracy between Page and Papadopoulos. The Papadopoulos information triggered the opening of an FBI counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016 by FBI agent Pete Strzok. Strzok was reassigned by the Special Counsel's Office to FBI Human Resources for improper text messages with his mistress, FBI Attorney Lisa Page (no known relation to Carter Page), where they both demonstrated a clear bias against Trump and in favor of Clinton, Whom Strzok had also investigated. The Strzok/Lisa Page texts also refect extensive discussions about the investigation, orchestrating leaks to the media, and include a meeting with Deputy Director McCabe to discuss an "insurance" policy against President Trump's election.

Everything but the bolded sentence in that entire memo is Nunes trying to hide that bolded sentence.  Why he included it I don't know, because instead of pointing the blame at FBI agent Peter Strzok, it just proves that there's other intel sources besides the Steele Dossier that started the FISA warrant process in the first place.

Anyway, the game's still afoot.

 

It's Mueller Time, Con't

In the wake of last week's revelations that Trump wanted to fire Robert Mueller back in June (and the dark comedy that was Trump calling the report "fake news" and then failing completely to deny the actual allegations) we now see the regime's counterattack: to go after the DoJ official who appointed Mueller in the first place: Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein.

A secret, highly contentious Republican memo reveals that Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein approved an application to extend surveillance of a former Trump campaign associate shortly after taking office last spring, according to three people familiar with it. 

The renewal shows that the Justice Department under President Trump saw reason to believe that the associate, Carter Page, was acting as a Russian agent. But the reference to Mr. Rosenstein’s actions in the memo — a much-disputed document that paints the investigation into Russian election meddling as tainted from the start — indicates that Republicans may be moving to seize on his role as they seek to undermine the inquiry. 

The memo’s primary contention is that F.B.I. and Justice Department officials failed to adequately explain to an intelligence court judge in initially seeking a warrant for surveillance of Mr. Page that they were relying in part on research by an investigator, Christopher Steele, that had been financed by the Democratic National Committee and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign. 

Democrats who have read the document say Republicans have cherry-picked facts to create a misleading and dangerous narrative. But in their efforts to discredit the inquiry, Republicans could potentially use Mr. Rosenstein’s decision to approve the renewal to suggest that he failed to properly vet a highly sensitive application for a warrant to spy on Mr. Page, who served as a Trump foreign policy adviser until September 2016.

A handful of senior Justice Department officials can approve an application to the secret surveillance court, but in practice that responsibility often falls to the deputy attorney general. No information has publicly emerged that the Justice Department or the F.B.I. did anything improper while seeking the surveillance warrant involving Mr. Page. 

Mr. Trump has long been mistrustful of Mr. Rosenstein, the Justice Department’s No. 2 official, who appointed the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, and now oversees his investigation into Mr. Trump’s campaign and possible obstruction of justice by the president. Mr. Trump considered firing Mr. Rosenstein last summer. Instead, he ordered Mr. Mueller to be fired, then backed down after the White House counsel refused to carry out the order, The New York Times reported last week. 

Mr. Trump is now again telling associates that he is frustrated with Mr. Rosenstein, according to one official familiar with the conversations.

Again, the GOP plan here is to paint the FISA warrants on foreign nationals who were involved with members of the Trump campaign as "illegal FISA surveillance on the Trump campaign" itself.  As such, anyone involved in approval for the surveillance is part of the "Obama Deep State" and must be purged from the Department of Justice.  Retaliatory idiocy on the part of Trump has claimed several people in the DoJ and FBI, Sally Yates, Preet Bhrahra, James Comey, and now FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe stepped down Monday, multiple sources familiar with the matter told NBC News. 

McCabe will remain on the FBI payroll until he is eligible to retire with full benefits in mid-March, the sources said. 

One source familiar said McCabe was exercising his retirement eligibility and characterized his decision as "stepping aside." 

McCabe has been at the center of ongoing tensions between the White House and the FBI and has reportedly been under pressure to quit from President Donald Trump, whose campaign is being investigated for possible collusion with Russia.

McCabe was forced out, no question.  Trump is systematically firing civil servants who move to question his wrongdoing.  If Obama had fired anyone in the FBI who was investigating his campaign, Republicans would have delivered articles of impeachment before the end of the day.  Now, government workers, even Republicans like Comey and McCabe, are all suspects to be purged.

This is how Trump is planning to justify cause to fire Rod Rosenstein, and appoint a new Deputy AG who will fire Mueller. saying that the FISA surveillance is "fruit of the poisoned tree"  He will be purged too just like McCabe..  And no, Republicans in Congress aren't going to lift a finger to protect Mueller when Rosenstein's replacement fires him.

Republican lawmakers warned President Trump on Sunday not to fire Robert S. Mueller III, but showed little sense of urgency to advance long-stalled legislation to protect the special counsel despite a report that Mr. Trump had tried to remove him last June. 

“I don’t think there’s a need for legislation right now to protect Mueller,” Representative Kevin McCarthy of California, the House majority leader, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” “Right now there’s not an issue. So why create one when there isn’t a place for it?” 

Mr. McCarthy’s comments, similar to those made earlier by other Republicans, come amid bipartisan outrage over a report last week in The New York Times that Mr. Trump sought in June to fire Mr. Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

The president backed down only after Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel, threatened to quit rather than execute Mr. Trump’s order. 

Democrats immediately seized on the report, saying they would try to ensure that continuing budget negotiations included legislation to protect the special counsel. But on Sunday, even Republicans who have backed such a bill appeared to settle instead on providing a warning to the president. 

“It’s pretty clear to me that everybody in the White House knows it would be the end of President Trump’s presidency if he fired Mr. Mueller,” Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said on ABC’s “This Week.”

The FISA surveillance nonsense is justification for Republicans to back Trump when he tries to fire Rosenstein and eventually Mueller.  I don't believe a word Sen. Graham says about the Trump regime being "over" if Mueller is fired.  Luckily, Mueller's isn't the only investigation in town, and Trump knows it.

Congress late last year received “extraordinarily important new documents” in its investigation of President Donald Trump and his campaign’s possible collusion with the 2016 Russian election hacking, opening up significant new lines of inquiry in the Senate Intelligence Committee’s probe of the president, Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) says in an exclusive new interview.

Warner, the intel committee’s top Democrat, says “end-of-the-year document dumps” produced “very significant” revelations that “opened a lot of new questions” that Senate investigators are now looking into, meaning the inquiry into Trump and the Russia hacking—already nearly a year old—will not be finished for months longer. “We’ve had new information that raises more questions,” Warner says in the interview, an extensive briefing on the state of the Senate’s Trump-Russia probe for The Global Politico, our weekly podcast on world affairs. 

Warner also warns about a “coordinated” attack by the president and “Trump zealots” in the House of Representatives to undermine the legitimacy of the investigations against him, an effort Warner says includes the president’s threats to fire special counsel Robert Mueller and other officials as well as a secret Republican memo alleging “shocking” FBI surveillance abuse against Trump that Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) is now threatening to release. Warner calls out Nunes, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, in arguably more explicit terms than any Democrat has yet, saying he has read the underlying classified material used in the memo and that Nunes misrepresented it as part of a McCarthyite “secret Star Chamber” effort to discredit the FBI probe of the president. 

“We’re seeing this coordinated effort to try to impede the investigation,” Warner says. The Nunes memo, which is apparently drawn from information contained in the same late-2017 document dumps that has caused the Senate panel to expand its inquiry, is based on “fabrications” and “connecting dots that don’t connect,” Warner asserts.

The battle continues apace.

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Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

If there was somehow any doubt left that computer anti-virus maker Kaspersky Labs was a Russian FSB front to steal data, that just got shattered this morning with the story of how the latest NSA breach revealed last week was discovered when the Israelis found Kaspersky Labs sitting on stolen NSA hacker tools.

It was a case of spies watching spies watching spies: Israeli intelligence officers looked on in real time as Russian government hackers searched computers around the world for the code names of American intelligence programs. 

What gave the Russian hacking, detected more than two years ago, such global reach was its improvised search tool — antivirus software made by a Russian company, Kaspersky Lab, that is used by 400 million people worldwide, including by officials at some two dozen American government agencies. 

The Israeli officials who had hacked into Kaspersky’s own network alerted the United States to the broad Russian intrusion, which has not been previously reported, leading to a decision just last month to order Kaspersky software removed from government computers. 

The Russian operation, described by multiple people who have been briefed on the matter, is known to have stolen classified documents from a National Security Agency employee who had improperly stored them on his home computer, on which Kaspersky’s antivirus software was installed. What additional American secrets the Russian hackers may have gleaned from multiple agencies, by turning the Kaspersky software into a sort of Google search for sensitive information, is not yet publicly known.
The current and former government officials who described the episode spoke about it on condition of anonymity because of classification rules.

Like most security software, Kaspersky Lab’s products require access to everything stored on a computer in order to scour it for viruses or other dangers. Its popular antivirus software scans for signatures of malicious software, or malware, then removes or neuters it before sending a report back to Kaspersky. That procedure, routine for such software, provided a perfect tool for Russian intelligence to exploit to survey the contents of computers and retrieve whatever they found of interest. 

The National Security Agency and the White House declined to comment for this article. The Israeli Embassy declined to comment, and the Russian Embassy did not respond to requests for comment.

The Washington Post is backing up the NY Times story on this as well and I have to ask at this point if we knew in 2015 that the Russians basically had the NSA's set of cyber-lockpicks dead to rights like this, what the hell did we do about it?  Apparently the answer was "not a damn thing" and the Russians happily came in and helped put Trump in the Oval Office.

Meanwhile on the congressional investigations side of things, former Trump regime foreign policy adviser Carter Page apparently plans on taking the Fifth rather than testify.

Carter Page, a former foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign, informed the Senate Intelligence Committee on Tuesday that he will not be cooperating with any requests to appear before the panel for its investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election and would plead the Fifth, according to a source familiar with the matter. 

A former naval-officer-turned-energy consultant, Page came under fire last year after reports emerged that he had met with high-level associates of Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow in 2016. While Page denied those meetings occurred, the Trump campaign distanced itself from the adviser not long after, with former officials saying that Page and Trump had never met.

Page also attracted attention earlier this year after it was revealed that he once came under scrutiny by the FBI for his contact with a Russian intelligence operative in New York City in 2013. Page was never charged with a crime, and the association happened years before he came into Trump’s orbit. 

The Intelligence Committee has sought documents and testimony from Trump associates — including Page — as it seeks to piece together Russian efforts to manipulate and interfere with the 2016 presidential race. It has held high-profile closed-door meetings with several current White House and Trump-related officials, including Trump's son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Trump's son, Donald Trump Jr. But the panel has also signaled an interest in interviewing former campaign associates such as Page, to determine how, if at all, the Russians sought to infiltrate Trump's circle in the throes of the presidential race.

If Page is clamming up and pleading the Fifth, well as they say the smoke just became a five-alarm fire.  On the House side, it seems investigators there want to have a talk with Fusion GPS, the political information firm that gave us the Steele Dossier.

The chairman of the House intelligence committee has issued subpoenas to the partners who run Fusion GPS, the research firm that produced the dossier of memos on alleged Russian efforts to aid the Trump campaign, according to sources briefed on the matter. 

The subpoenas -- signed by California Republican Rep. Devin Nunes -- were issued Oct. 4, demanding documents and testimony later this month and early November. 

Earlier this year, Nunes announced that he was stepping aside from directing the committee's Russia inquiry after he became the subject of an ethics investigation into his handling of classified information. But more recently, he has made clear that he is still playing an influential role, despite announcing that he had delegated authority on the Russia matter to Republican Rep. Mike Conaway of Texas. 

A source familiar with the matter told CNN that all Russia-related subpoenas have been approved by Conaway, and Conaway confirmed to CNN Monday he asked for the most recent subpoenas. 

But the subpoenas appear to be the latest fight in an investigation that has periodically been hobbled by controversy and infighting. 

A Democratic committee source said "the subpoenas were issued unilaterally by the majority, without the minority's agreement and despite good faith engagement thus far by the witnesses on the potential terms for voluntary cooperation." 

Indeed, the move blindsided some committee members, multiple sources told CNN. And it has angered some on the committee who say that Nunes is still seeking to direct an investigation he was supposed to have no involvement in leading. 

"He's not in any way, shape or form working on the investigation," said one Democratic committee member. "He's sitting outside the investigation and pushing it in a political direction." 

Rep. Eric Swalwell, a California Democrat, told CNN's Wolf Blitzer that Nunes appeared to be "trying to undermine the investigation." 

"This would violate that recusal if this is indeed what he has done," Swalwell said.

The Grand Unifying Theory on the GOP covering up the Trump/Russia investigation starts with discrediting Fusion GPS as a Clinton front as a political hit job on the Trump campaign, and that it was Clinton colluding with Moscow to swing the election towards her or something, which is as stupid as it sounds, but it's not like Devin Nunes hasn't gotten in trouble over putting his thumb on the scale for Trump before.

Anyway, we'll see where all this takes us as the week is young still.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

More on last night's Mueller grand jury investigation news, last night of course the WSJ confirmed that the special counsel investigating the Trump campaign had empaneled a grand jury to look at a wide range of evidence related to the Russian collusion investigation.  Other news outlets running after this story have released additional information now, and together it paints a pretty grim picture for Trump and company.  First, CNN confirms that the grand jury is looking into Donald Trump Jr.'s meeting with Russian nationals in June of 2016 and has issued subpoenas.

Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller has issued grand jury subpoenas related to Donald Trump Jr.'s 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower, according to a person familiar with the matter. 

The subpoena seeks both documents and testimony from people involved in the meeting, CNN has learned. That meeting has drawn scrutiny since an email exchange beforehand indicated the Russians offered damaging information on Hillary Clinton. 

Mueller's grand jury activity was first reported by The Wall Street Journal and Reuters. 

Mueller's team of investigators continue to look into whether President Donald Trump or any of his campaign associates colluded with Russia during the presidential contest.

Ahh, but there's more from CNN.

In the summer of 2016, US intelligence agencies noticed a spate of curious contacts between Trump campaign associates and suspected Russian intelligence, according to current and former US officials briefed on the investigation. James Comey, in his Senate testimony, said the FBI opened an investigation into Trump campaign-Russia connections in July 2016. The strands of the two investigations began to merge. 

In the months that followed, investigators turned up intercepted communications appearing to show efforts by Russian operatives to coordinate with Trump associates on damaging Hillary Clinton's election prospects, officials said. CNN has learned those communications included references to campaign chairman Paul Manafort. 

That's a big one, folks.  Manafort again was Trump's campaign chairman in 2016.

Even before Mueller was appointed, FBI investigators focused on four Trump associates: Paul Manafort, former campaign chairman, Michael Flynn, former national security adviser, Carter Page, cited by Trump as a national security adviser, and Roger Stone, a Trump friend and supporter who openly engaged with hackers calling themselves Guccifer 2.0, which US intelligence says was an online persona created as a cover for Russian intelligence agents. 

The approach to the Manafort and Flynn probes may offer a template for how investigators' focus on possible financial crimes could help gain leverage and cooperation in the investigation. 

CNN has learned that investigators became more suspicious when they turned up intercepted communications that US intelligence agencies collected among suspected Russian operatives discussing their efforts to work with Manafort, who served as campaign chairman for three months, to coordinate information that could damage Hillary Clinton's election prospects, the US officials say. The suspected operatives relayed what they claimed were conversations with Manafort, encouraging help from the Russians. 

Manafort faces potential real troubles in the probe, according to current and former officials. Decades of doing business with foreign regimes with reputations for corruption, from the Philippines to Ukraine, had led to messy finances. 

The focus now for investigators is whether Manafort was involved in money laundering or tax violations in his business dealings with pro-Russia parties in Ukraine. He's also been drawn into a related investigation of his son-in-law's real estate business dealings, some of which he invested in. 

The Trumpies will no doubt tell you that the focus on finances means that the collusion case can't be proven.  As I say, the Feds eventually got Al Capone on tax evasion.

Oh, and the CNN story ends thusly:

Page had been the subject of a secret intelligence surveillance warrant since 2014, earlier than had been previously reported, US officials briefed on the probe told CNN.

No big deal.  The government had a FISA warrant on Carter Page for two years before the Trump campaign hired him, nice.

And that brings us to this: The bigger point is that grand juries don't happen if there's no charges to be brought.  The Mueller investigation is moving inexorably forward, and they are issuing subpoenas (Reuters too backs up the CNN subpoena story.)

Again though this case will take months, if not years.  There's a lot here, there's a lot of evidence to examine that we don't know about yet, but the grand jury will have access to it all.  But the train is moving forward and somewhere down the line will be the decision to seek indictments against Trump campaign officials.  We're most likely very far from that point. 

But just six months into this administration and we're already at the grand jury stage.  Things may not be moving as fast as we'd like, but they are moving, deliberately, inexorably, and inevitably forward, towards one Donald J. Trump.

Count on it.