Bibi Busted Bigly

After more than eight months of investigation and three separate bribery probes and previous recommendations of corruption charges on two of them, Israeli police are finally to the point of recommending bribery charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara in the third and biggest case, a bribery scandal involving Israel's biggest telecom firm in exchange for press coverage over 15 years.

Israeli police on Sunday recommended indicting Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on bribery charges related to a corruption case involving Israel’s telecom giant, prompting immediate calls for his resignation.

Police say their investigation has established an evidentiary foundation to charge Netanyahu and his wife Sara with accepting bribes, fraud and breach of trust. The case revolves around suspicions that confidants of Netanyahu promoted regulations worth hundreds of millions of dollars to the Bezeq telecom company in exchange for positive coverage of the prime minister on Bezeq’s subsidiary news website, Walla.

Police have already recommended indicting Netanyahu on corruption charges in two other cases. One involves accepting gifts from billionaire friends, and the second revolves around alleged offers of advantageous legislation for a newspaper in return for positive coverage.

The prime minister has denied any wrongdoing, dismissing the accusations as a witch hunt orchestrated by the media.

“The police recommendations regarding me and my wife don’t surprise anyone,” Netanyahu said in a statement. “These recommendations were decided upon and leaked even before the investigation began.”

The Bezeq case, known as Case 4000, is the most serious of all those of which Netanyahu has been accused. Two of his top confidants have turned state witnesses and are believed to have provided police with incriminating evidence. Netanyahu held the government’s communications portfolio until last year and oversaw regulation in the field. Former journalists at the Walla news site have attested to being pressured to refrain from negative reporting of Netanyahu.

Police say the investigation, which included the testimony of 60 witnesses, revealed that Netanyahu and Bezeq boss Shaul Elovitch engaged in a “bribe-based relationship.”

From 2012 to 2017 the prime minister and his associates “blatantly intervened” on a near-daily basis in the Walla news site, using the connections with Elovitch to influence appointments there and to promote flattering articles and pictures while quelling critical stories of the prime minister and his family, police said.

Police are also recommending charges be brought against Elovitch and members of his family.

Needless to say, this being the third strike against Bibi, the calls for his immediate resignation are now louder than ever.

“The most serious bribery case yet leaves no room for doubt: a prime minister who is accused of the most serious offense for a public servant in the Israeli rule book cannot keep serving one minute longer,” said Tamar Zandberg, head of the dovish opposition Meretz party.

“The prime minister has no moral mandate to keep his seat and must resign today. Israel must go to elections.”

Other opposition figures, including opposition leader Tzipi Livni, quickly joined in the call for Netanyahu to resign.

Whether or not Bibi and the Likud Party can survive is still in the air, but at this point Israel's Attorney General, Avichai Mendelblit, has been dragging his feet, waiting for police recommendations in all three cases before deciding on any charges.  However, that time has now come.

We'll see if any indictments come or not.  If so, Bibi's most likely toast.

Exit question:  Will Trump step in and interfere on behalf of Netanyahu?  Don't be surprised if that eventually comes to light.

Sunday Long Read: The Boys Club

This week's Sunday Long Read comes to us from the Miami Herald, where Emily Michot and Julie K. Brown give us the history of Jeffrey Epstein, the Florida hedge fund millionaire who specialized in trafficking underage girls for sex parties.  The FBI had Epstein dead to rights, and then an extraordinary deal was struck where he got 13 months and the FBI investigation quashed.  The man behind the deal?

Trump's current Labor Secretary, Alex Acosta.

On a muggy October morning in 2007, Miami’s top federal prosecutor, Alexander Acosta, had a breakfast appointment with a former colleague, Washington, D.C., attorney Jay Lefkowitz.

It was an unusual meeting for the then-38-year-old prosecutor, a rising Republican star who had served in several White House posts before being named U.S. attorney in Miami by President George W. Bush.

Instead of meeting at the prosecutor’s Miami headquarters, the two men — both with professional roots in the prestigious Washington law firm of Kirkland & Ellis — convened at the Marriott in West Palm Beach, about 70 miles away. For Lefkowitz, 44, a U.S. special envoy to North Korea and corporate lawyer, the meeting was critical.

His client, Palm Beach multimillionaire Jeffrey Epstein, 54, was accused of assembling a large, cult-like network of underage girls — with the help of young female recruiters — to coerce into having sex acts behind the walls of his opulent waterfront mansion as often as three times a day, the Town of Palm Beach police found.

The eccentric hedge fund manager, whose friends included former President Bill Clinton, Donald Trump and Prince Andrew, was also suspected of trafficking minor girls, often from overseas, for sex parties at his other homes in Manhattan, New Mexico and the Caribbean, FBI and court records show.

Facing a 53-page federal indictment, Epstein could have ended up in federal prison for the rest of his life.

But on the morning of the breakfast meeting, a deal was struck — an extraordinary plea agreement that would conceal the full extent of Epstein’s crimes and the number of people involved.

Not only would Epstein serve just 13 months in the county jail, but the deal — called a non-prosecution agreement — essentially shut down an ongoing FBI probe into whether there were more victims and other powerful people who took part in Epstein’s sex crimes, according to a Miami Herald examination of thousands of emails, court documents and FBI records.

The pact required Epstein to plead guilty to two prostitution charges in state court. Epstein and four of his accomplices named in the agreement received immunity from all federal criminal charges. But even more unusual, the deal included wording that granted immunity to “any potential co-conspirators’’ who were also involved in Epstein’s crimes. These accomplices or participants were not identified in the agreement, leaving it open to interpretation whether it possibly referred to other influential people who were having sex with underage girls at Epstein’s various homes or on his plane.

As part of the arrangement, Acosta agreed, despite a federal law to the contrary, that the deal would be kept from the victims. As a result, the non-prosecution agreement was sealed until after it was approved by the judge, thereby averting any chance that the girls — or anyone else — might show up in court and try to derail it.

This is the story of how Epstein, bolstered by unlimited funds and represented by a powerhouse legal team, was able to manipulate the criminal justice system, and how his accusers, still traumatized by their pasts, believe they were betrayed by the very prosecutors who pledged to protect them.

“I don’t think anyone has been told the truth about what Jeffrey Epstein did,’’ said one of Epstein’s victims, Michelle Licata, now 30. “He ruined my life and a lot of girls’ lives. People need to know what he did and why he wasn’t prosecuted so it never happens again.”

Now President Trump’s secretary of labor, Acosta, 49, oversees a massive federal agency that provides oversight of the country’s labor laws, including human trafficking. Until he was reported to be eliminated on Thursday, a day after this story posted online, Acosta also had been included on lists of possible replacements for former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who resigned under pressure earlier this month.
Acosta did not respond to numerous requests for an interview or answer queries through email. 

But court records reveal details of the negotiations and the role that Acosta would play in arranging the deal, which scuttled the federal probe into a possible international sex trafficking operation. Among other things, Acosta allowed Epstein’s lawyers unusual freedoms in dictating the terms of the non-prosecution agreement.

“The damage that happened in this case is unconscionable,” said Bradley Edwards, a former state prosecutor who represents some of Epstein’s victims. “How in the world, do you, the U.S. attorney, engage in a negotiation with a criminal defendant, basically allowing that criminal defendant to write up the agreement?”

As a result, neither the victims — nor even the judge — would know how many girls Epstein allegedly sexually abused between 2001 and 2005, when his underage sex activities were first uncovered by police. Police referred the case to the FBI a year later, when they began to suspect that their investigation was being undermined by the Palm Beach State Attorney’s Office.

This is such a damning piece on Acosta that he should be forced to resign and disbarred for life, even with him being knocked out of the running for Jeff Sessions's job, and that's before we get to Epstein himself, a monster who deserves the deepest abyss for eternity.  How Acosta was confirmed with this deal on his record shouldn't be a mystery at all, the most corrupt American regime in history is just doing business as usual.

Deportation Nation, Con't

Somebody at the Trump regime (probably Mad Dog Mattis) figured out that Republicans in the House and Senate might actually be forced to do something if the thousands of Trump's military troops on the border actually violate Posse Comitatus rather than twiddling their thumbs for another month or two, so apparently the end run around that is having Homeland Security deputize law enforcement from just about every other federal agency to do the heavy lifting.

Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen has requested the deployment of civilian law enforcement officers from several other Cabinet departments to the U.S.-Mexico border as early as next week, according to an internal memo obtained by POLITICO.

In what current and former U.S. officials said would be an unprecedented move, the officers — who in most cases have duties entirely unrelated to border security — would help Border Patrol agents repel what the memo calls “migrant caravans originating from Central America.”

The request suggests that personnel with such assignments as guarding diplomats, patrolling national parks, and protecting nuclear weapons might effectively “become Customs and Border Protection personnel,” as one former Justice Department official put it, with the power to arrest border-crossers.

Although the White House position on the request is unclear, such an action would be the latest extraordinary Trump administration effort to crack down on border security amid what President Donald Trump has increasingly cast as an immigration crisis. In particular, Trump has recently depicted a northbound migrant caravan as an attempted “invasion” of the U.S. But there is little evidence that existing border officials are unable to prevent members of the caravan, currently marooned in Mexico, from entering the country.

A senior DHS official who confirmed the memo’s authenticity said the Justice Department has already made a commitment to dispatch officers to the border, and that DHS is actively “working with” other departments named in the memo to determine the availability of law enforcement resources.

The memo was sent to leaders of the departments of State, Labor, Energy, Transportation, Interior and Justice.

In recent months, Trump has ordered thousands of active duty military troops to the border. But they are prevented by a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act from participating in searches or making arrests. Civilians at the departments contacted by Nielsen would not face such a restriction.

“The administration seems to recognize that under Posse Comitatus … the military can’t do something enforcement-wise. So they’re saying, ‘Let’s grab as many law enforcement people and bring them to the border,’” said Leon Fresco, former head of the Justice Department’s Office of Immigration Litigation under the Obama administration.

Because I'm sure the Diplomatic Protection Service really wants to be in San Ysidro lobbing tear gas at kids.

Look, I understand the need for a secure border and all, but at this point there's no way Trump's regime should be given benefit of the doubt on anything.  This will be at best a cynical waste o executive branch resources on things they wren't trained to do, and at worst, a ready-made goon squad or Trump to harass anyone darker than a paper bag with.

This is going to be a disaster.

Last Call For Space Cases, Con't

Donald Trump wants his cool Space Force as the sixth branch of the US military, a legacy he figures that will put in down in world history for centuries or something, and he expects Congress to give it to him.

President Donald Trump plans to go ahead with asking Congress to establish a Space Force as an independent branch of the military, according to a draft presidential directive obtained by POLITICO — committing to the biggest restructuring of the U.S. military in seven decades despite bipartisan skepticism on Capitol Hill.

The draft, produced after months of internal review, outlines much-awaited details for what would be the first new military service since 1947. It indicates that Trump, who has championed the standalone Space Force, is still interested in pursuing an entirely new branch, despite criticism of the proposal on Capitol Hill and even initial opposition within the Pentagon.

The White House directive provides no estimate of what the Space Force would cost, although previous estimates have ranged from less than $5 billion to as high as $13 billion over five years.

Under the proposal, the Department of the Space Force would be headed by a civilian secretary — just like the Army, Navy and Air Force — and either a four-star general or admiral. The latter person would also serve as a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, according to the draft directive dated Nov. 19.

"Under this proposal, the Space Force will organize, train and equip national security space forces of the United States to ensure unfettered access to and freedom to operate in space, and to provide vital capabilities ... in peacetime and across the spectrum of conflict," the draft directive says.

The Space Force's priorities, the draft says, would include "protecting the nation's interests in space and the peaceful use of space for all responsible actors"; "deterring aggression and defending the nation, U.S. allies and U.S. interests from hostile acts in and from space"; and "projecting power in, from and to space in support of the nation's interests."

The White House and Pentagon did not respond to requests for comment on the draft, which is still awaiting final review.

The new branch would draw troops from across the military, including the National Guard and Reserves, that are dedicated to a broad range of military tasks, including intelligence, weapons acquisition and cyber operations. It would also be responsible for overseeing the acquisition of all space technologies and weapons, including a new Space Development Agency.

The president also intends to carry out plans already underway at the direction of Congress to establish a U.S. Space Command, according to the draft. The command would absorb all space-related responsibilities now carried out by U.S. Strategic Command and would train space forces from all the military branches until a Space Force is established.

Let's just build orbital ion cannons and start killing people we don't like.  From space!

To recap, things America has to have under the Trump regime:

• A militarized, "sealed" border with Mexico
• Mass deportations and detainment facilities
• Militarization of outer space
• New oil and gas drilling in the Arctic and offshore
• Trillions in tax cuts for corporations and the wealthy

Things we can't possibly afford because they are unserious, Socialist proposals:

• Health care
• Clean air and water
• Roads, bridges, and streets
• High-speed rail and mass transportation
• Social Security

Any questions?

It's Mueller Time, Con't

Given all the Mueller news this week, I almost glossed over a major story involving our old friend, GOP fundraiser and Trump campaign finance fixer Elliott Broidy.  Remember back in August when the DoJ announced an investigation into whether or not Broidy took tens of millions in illegal foreign campaign contributions for Trump to end a US investigation into billions in Malaysian state embezzlement?  Turns out the investigation phase is over, and the indictment phase has now begun.

Federal prosecutors cited the involvement of a onetime top fund-raiser to President Trump on Friday in a scheme to launder millions of dollars into the country to help a flamboyant Malaysian financier end a Justice Department investigation.

Elliott Broidy, a Los Angeles-based businessman who was a finance vice chairman of Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign and inauguration committees, was paid to lobby the Trump administration to try to end an investigation related to the embezzlement of billions of dollars from a Malaysian state-owned fund, according to court filings made public on Friday.

The filings were released in connection with a guilty plea entered by George Higginbotham, a former Justice Department employee. Mr. Higginbotham admitted to conspiring to lie to banks about the source of tens of millions of dollars he funneled into the United States from the Malaysian financier Jho Low, who federal authorities say masterminded a scheme to loot the 1 Malaysia Development Berhad fund, also known as 1MDB.

Mr. Higginbotham, who left the Justice Department in August, was not involved in the department’s investigation of Mr. Low, and is cooperating with prosecutors.

In his guilty plea, Mr. Higginbotham admitted that he and the entertainer and businessman Pras Michel, a former member of the Fugees, a defunct hip-hop group, arranged for millions of dollars of Mr. Low’s money to be transferred to a law firm owned by Mr. Broidy’s wife to pay them to try to end the 1MDB investigation.

The charging papers and supporting documents do not identify Mr. Broidy or his wife, Robin Rosenzweig, by name, and neither has been charged with a crime. But the facts of the case align with previous reporting on Mr. Broidy’s efforts related to 1MDB, as well as emails from Mr. Broidy that were stolen from Ms. Rosenzweig’s account and disseminated to news outlets that match emails cited in Friday’s court filings. The filings identify Mr. Broidy as “Person 1” or “Individual 1,” and characterize him as “a nonlawyer business owner” who “owns several businesses, including an investment firm.”

In a brief interview on Friday, Mr. Broidy did not deny that the filings refer to him. But he referred specific questions to his lawyer, who did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Broidy, who pleaded guilty in 2009 in an unrelated pension fund bribery case, is one of several Trump associates whose business with foreign governments and figures has attracted scrutiny, including from investigators for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III.

A veteran Republican fund-raiser who also owns a defense contracting firm, Mr. Broidy had seemed positioned to become a highly influential figure in a political hierarchy that was upended by Mr. Trump’s victory. Mr. Broidy had started raising money for Mr. Trump’s 2016 campaign at a time when most elite Republican donors were staying away. After Mr. Trump’s election, Mr. Broidy marketed his connection to the new administration to politicians, businessmen and governments around the world, including some with unsavory records, and won big contracts for his defense firm.

I've said all along that the Mueller probe was going down three roads: Russian influence on Trump, international money laundering, and obstruction of justice.  The Broidy story is squarely in the second of these arenas, and you can absolutely bet that Mueller has the goods here on Broidy and Trump.

And that brings us to today's news on the third arena, where there actually is a GOP senator willing to go after Trump: Senate Intelligence chair Richard Burr of NC, who has all but promised that multiple Mueller indictments on charges of lying to Congress will be coming very soon.

Senate Intelligence Chairman Richard M. Burr said that Thursday’s guilty plea by Michael Cohen, President Donald Trump’s former attorney, should be seen as a clear warning.

“It’s a loud message to everybody that is interviewed by our committee, regardless of where that prosecution comes from: If you lie to us, we’re going to go after you,” Burr said Friday. “Our mandate is at the end of this to get as close to the clear truth as we possibly can, and we can’t do it on conjecture. We’ve got to do it on facts.”

The North Carolina Republican was appearing alongside Vice Chairman Mark Warner, D-Va., and Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas at a forum hosted by the University of Texas in Austin.

Burr made clear the Cohen situation was not an isolated case.

“I don’t want you to get us mixed up with Bob Mueller’s special prosecutor investigation. We have no criminal responsibilities. If we identify a crime in our investigation that has been committed, we refer it to the special prosecutor,” Burr said, referring to former FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III. “I won’t tell you the number of times, but we have made referrals to the special prosecutor.”

It was fairly clear that Burr was alluding to this week’s legal action in the Southern District of New York.

“One of them, one instance just highlighted of late was the special prosecutor made the indictment yesterday using the transcripts of interviews we have done in our committee to indict somebody forlying to Congress,” the North Carolina Republican said, a reference to Cohen.

Burr said that the committee was regularly going back over previous interviews as new information has come to light regarding the investigation of Russian interference.

“I think the myth out there was that we did interviews and never read them,” Burr said later at the same event. “We continue to go back and look at the testimony we’ve been given and we weigh it against any new information that might be out there.”

And speaking of Michael Cohen, CNN is reporting that he believed Trump would pardon him, and then things got...messy.

Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney for President Donald Trump who is now a key witness in special counsel Robert Mueller's Russia investigation, was under the impression Trump would offer him a pardon in exchange for staying on message in support of the President in discussions with federal prosecutors, according to two sources. 

After a March 2018 visit to Mar-a-Lago, the President's private club in Florida, Cohen returned to New York believing that his former boss would protect him if he faced any charges for sticking to his story about the 2016 payments to adult film actress Stormy Daniels, according to one source with knowledge. Trump was also at Mar-a-Lago at the time of Cohen's visit. 

Another source said that after the April 2018 FBI raid on Cohen's office and home, people close to the President assured Cohen that Trump would take care of him. And Cohen believed that meant that the President would offer him a pardon if he stayed on message. It is unclear who specifically reached out to Cohen. 

"The President of the United States never indicated anything to Michael, or anyone else, about getting a pardon," said Rudy Giuliani, the President's attorney. "Pardons are off the table, but it's not a limitation on his power in the future to pardon in any case." 

Cohen's lawyers could not be reached for comment. 

Following the raid on Cohen's home and office, Cohen's attorneys had a legal defense agreement with Trump and his attorneys. During this time, there was a steady flow of communication between the two sides, according to two sources familiar with the matter. 

At first, publicly, Trump seemed very supportive of his former attorney. On the day of the raid, Trump said Cohen was "a good man" and that the investigation reached "a whole new level of unfairness." He unloaded on law enforcement, calling the raids "a disgraceful situation." 

But in the days that followed the raid, one source says, things started heading south with the President. 

Trump started to distance himself from Cohen. And when Trump appeared on "Fox and Friends" two weeks after the raids and said that Cohen only did a "tiny, tiny little fraction" of his legal work, Cohen knew the game had changed. According to one source, Cohen knew that things had changed and he acted to protect his family -- and himself. 

It couldn't be learned whether Cohen shared this information with Mueller, though Cohen has spent more than 70 hours providing testimony over the last several months.

So many people are going to jail over this mess, and it's going to happen soon.  Stay tuned.

The Passing Of Poppy Bush

Former President George H.W. Bush passed away last night at the age of 94.

George Bush, the 41st president of the United States and the father of the 43rd, who steered the nation through a tumultuous period in world affairs but was denied a second term after support for his presidency collapsed under the weight of an economic downturn and his seeming inattention to domestic affairs, died on Friday night at his home in Houston. He was 94.

His death, which was announced by his office, came less than eight months after that of his wife of 73 years, Barbara Bush.

Mr. Bush had a form of Parkinson’s disease that forced him to use a wheelchair or motorized scooter in recent years, and he had been in and out of hospitals during that time as his health declined. In April, a day after attending Mrs. Bush’s funeral, he was treated for an infection that had spread to his blood. In 2013, he was in dire enough shape with bronchitis that former President George W. Bush, his son, solicited ideas for a eulogy.

But he proved resilient each time. In 2013 he told well-wishers, through an aide, to “put the harps back in the closet.”

Mr. Bush, a Republican, was a transitional figure in the White House, where he served from 1989 to 1993, capping a career of more than 40 years in public service. A decorated Navy pilot who was shot down in the Pacific in 1944, he was the last of the World War II generation to occupy the Oval Office.

Mr. Bush was a skilled bureaucratic and diplomatic player who, as president, helped end four decades of Cold War and the threat of nuclear engagement with a nuanced handling of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of Eastern Europe.

Yet for all his success in the international arena, his presidency faltered as voters seemed to perceive him as detached from their everyday lives. In an election that turned on the economy, they repudiated Mr. Bush in 1992 and chose a relatively little-known Democratic governor from Arkansas, Bill Clinton, a baby boomer, ushering in a generational shift in American leadership.

If Mr. Bush’s term helped close out one era abroad, it opened another. In January 1991 he assembled a global coalition to eject Iraqi invaders from Kuwait, sending hundreds of thousands of troops in a triumphant military campaign that to many Americans helped purge the ghosts of Vietnam.

But the victory also brought years of American preoccupation with Iraq, leading to the decision by George W. Bush in 2003 to topple the Iraqi leader, Saddam Hussein, in a war that taxed American resources and patience.

The elder Mr. Bush entered the White House with one of the most impressive résumés of any president. He had been a two-term congressman from Texas, ambassador to the United Nations, chairman of the Republican National Committee, United States envoy to China, director of the Central Intelligence Agency and vice president, under Ronald Reagan.

And he achieved what no one had since Martin Van Buren in 1836: winning election to the presidency while serving as vice president. (Van Buren did so in the footsteps of Andrew Jackson.)

Now that the "speaking nicely of the recently departed" part is out of the way, let's get back to reality. Poppy Bush's claim to fame is that he's the elected Republican president who arguably did the least amount of damage to America in my lifetime (and arguably the Republican who did the least amount of damage to America in the last 70 years outside of Eisenhower) precisely because he was limited to one term.  And he got that one term with his infamous Willie Horton ad in 1988 that ushered in the era of modern race-baiting politics.

Ford's caretaker stint was wholly undone a few days in with his pardon of Nixon, a supremely immoral act that haunts us to this day, Reagan was a racist, hateful monster of a bigot who was essentially Trump without the Russia baggage (and Poppy was his Mike Pence), Dubya was a foreign policy and economic disaster that we've still never recovered from, and Trump, well, is Trump, just two years in and already at the bottom of this list of rogues.

And yet the damage he did to America was substantial.  He carried over Reagan's awful and inhuman AIDS policies. His former CIA Director days meant his meddling in America's foreign policy led directly to the Bosnian conflict, the narcotraficante era in Mexico and Central America, the war crimes in Iraq and rise of Al Qaeda and the American militia movement, and he wrecked the economy to boot

It was only that last one that cost him so badly we threw him out for Clinton and Ross Perot.  People forget in 1992 he got just 37% of the vote.  Even with Perot's performance, that was abysmal.  Even McGovern did better at 38% in 1972, and Goldwater got 39% in 1964.  Only Alf Landon in 1936 did worse in the last 100 years with his 36%, losing to FDR.  Hell, even Hoover got 40% in 1932.

This is the moment he lost to Clinton, Perot or no Perot.



We basically dodged a massive bullet on a second Poppy Bush term, so he was limited in the carnage in his wake.  The nicest thing I can say about him is that he didn't veto the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1992, the full extent of my hagiography.

And now he's gone.  I shed not a tear.

The Partake Head Fake Take In The Lakes

Michigan voters overwhelmingly approved the legalization of marijuana earlier this month in order to gain tax revenue to pay for schools and roads.  But Republicans in the state's lame duck session are making sure that tax money goes to cops instead, with nothing for students, and that the profits go to corporate growers with both deep ties and deep pockets to give to lawmakers.

A bill proposed by outgoing Senate Majority Leader Arlan Meekhof, R-West Olive, would significantly change the voter-approved recreational marijuana program in Michigan, including by drastically lowering the tax revenue the state is set to receive.

Proposal 1 passed with 56 percent of the vote Nov. 6. It will take effect next week.

Meekhof, R-West Olive, introduced the bill Thursday.

In addition to lowering the tax rate from 10 percent to three percent, the bill cuts out Michigan's schools and roads from receiving tax revenue from legal marijuana. The state's six percent sales tax would still apply, said Amber McCann, Meekhof's spokeswoman.

"It's disrespectful to the political process and it's disrespectful to the voters of Michigan," said Josh Hovey, spokesman for the coalition behind the ballot proposal, of Meekhof's bill.

"The people of Michigan have spoken. They knew what they were voting on."

Tax revenue from marijuana sales could reach $287.9 million by the time the market matures in Michigan under the tax structure in Proposal 1, according to a Senate Fiscal Agency analysis. It's unclear how much revenue Meekhof's proposal would draw.

Under Proposal 1, Michigan has one of the lowest tax rates on adult-use marijuana in the country. Under Meekhof's proposed bill, Michigan would have the lowest tax rate in the country. The bill redirects the revenue to municipalities (25 percent), counties (30 percent) and county sheriffs (5 percent) that have marijuana facilities, and 30 percent for state police, police training and first responder disability benefits.

Meekhof's bill, Senate Bill 1243, proposes other major changes to the voter-approved Proposal 1; including eliminating the ability for individuals to grow marijuana at home and cutting out a micro-grower's license.

Proposal 1 allows for individuals to grow up to 12 plants at home, and up to 150 plants at home with a micro-grower's license.

Republicans have such a huge majority in Michigan thanks to gerrymandering that there's a chance that this passes, but it'll take Democrats too because the measure would need a 75% margin to pass. But sending all the tax money to counties with state-approved growing operations (all rural, natch) means Detroit gets zero, and it means that the growing can become yet another industry in the pocket of corporate owners and donors.

That was the plan all along, and it's dank as hell.

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

For all the talk of Republicans repeatedly accusing Democrats of "voter fraud" and "fixing close elections", the one clear example of election fraud this year is from Republicans, cheating in North Carolina.  The NC GOP is quickly moving to get the nation's strictest voter ID measure in place, all while it looks like Democrat Dan McCready may have had victory stolen by election officials in Bladen County, to the point where it now looks like the House race for NC-9 may get a new election.

North Carolina officials voted Friday to continue investigating fraud in the 9th Congressional District election, potentially delaying certification of the results for weeks and leaving open the possibility that a new election could be called.

The decision cast new uncertainty on the race between Republican Mark Harris and Democrat Dan McCready, who are separated by only 905 votes out of 283,317 ballots cast, according to unofficial returns. The Associated Press on Friday announced it was revoking its projection that Harris won the southeastern North Carolina seat. The inquiry further roiled a state already divided over issues of voting rights, voter suppression and fraud.

Republicans spent the week in Raleigh drafting legislation to implement a new voter-approved requirement to present identification at the polls — an effort that the GOP has said is necessary to combat voter fraud. But they were mostly mum as evidence mounted that a different kind of election fraud may have taken place 100 miles south, other than to demand that the state board quickly certify Harris’s narrow lead.

“It’s a big juxtaposition to focus on a non-problem and ignore a huge problem,” said Gerry Cohen, a former counsel to the state legislature and an expert on election law. He noted that voter ID laws can’t prevent the kind of absentee ballot fraud alleged in the 9th District.

Harris of course wants his victory certified ASAP.

In a statement Friday, Harris accused the election board of a lack of transparency and called for the results to be immediately certified.

“Make no mistake, I support any efforts to investigate allegations of irregularities and/or voter fraud, as long as it is fair and focuses on all political parties,” Harris said. “But to date, there is absolutely no public evidence that there are enough ballots in question to affect the outcome of this race. Accordingly, the Board should act immediately to certify the race while continuing to conduct their investigation. Anything else is a disservice to the people of the Ninth District.”

The problem is it looks like there was a major GOP vote-stealing operation in Bladen County involving scamming black voters specifically out of their absentee ballots, and Harris's campaign looks like it was involved.

The State Board of Elections and Ethics Enforcement has collected at least six sworn statements from voters in rural Bladen County, near the South Carolina border, who described people coming to their doors and urging them to hand over their absentee ballots, sometimes without filling them out. Others described receiving absentee ballots by mail that they had not requested.

Among the allegations is that an individual who worked for the Harris campaign coordinated an effort to collect and fill in, or discard, the ballots of Democratic voters who might have otherwise voted for McCready. Several of the affidavits come from elderly African American voters. It is illegal to take someone else’s ballot, whether to turn it in or discard it.

Officials are also examining unusually high numbers of absentee ballots cast in some precincts in the 9th District — and unusually high numbers of ballots requested but never returned. Harris’s narrow victory over incumbent Rep. Robert Pittenger (R-N.C.) in the Republican primary is also under scrutiny, with new attention on the in­cred­ibly high proportion of absentee ballots — 96 percent — that Harris won in Bladen County.

The nine-person state board, which includes four Democrats, four Republicans and one unaffiliated member, voted 7 to 2 in favor of holding a hearing by Dec. 21 “to assure that the election is determined without taint of fraud or corruption and without irregularities that may have changed the result.”

If these allegations are true, then Mark Harris stole an election, period.  He should be going to jail, not the House.

Stay tuned.  This one's not over by a long shot.

The Whole Saturday Night Massacre Thing, Con't

As the Mueller probe reaches the endgame stages it's important to note that so far, we haven't seen Acting AG Matt Whitaker play too much of a role.  He hasn't issued any directives about the Mueller investigation specifically, and if Trump is saving Whitaker for a strike against Mueller, it's already looking like Mueller has already made arrangements that Whitaker can't really stop.

But that doesn't mean Whitaker's surprise appointment isn't in real trouble, and we're learning now just how much of a problem he may end up being for the Trump regime.

New documents released by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission suggest that acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker misled the agency’s investigators as he was stepping into his role last year as Justice Department chief of staff.

After several attempts to reach Whitaker about the Miami company where he was on the advisory board, the FTC investigator emailed his colleagues to relay that he finally reached Whitaker, who was willing to cooperate and asserted that he “never emailed or wrote to consumers” in his consulting role.

That statement to James Evans of the FTC appears to be inaccurate. Whitaker had written a letter in 2015 to a disgruntled customer who planned to report the company, World Patent Marketing, to the Better Business Bureau. In the letter, which was included in the FTC’s disclosure and reported previously by the news media, Whitaker threatened the customer, writing: “I am assuming you understand there could be serious civil and criminal consequences for you if that is in fact what you and your ’group’ are doing.”

In the letter, Whitaker noted that he was a former U.S. attorney in Iowa and that he was aware that the customer had complained to the company’s chief executive officer, Scott Cooper, in the past. “I am familiar with your background and your history with Scott,” Whitaker wrote. “Understand that we take threats like this quite seriously.”

President Donald Trump appointed Whitaker acting attorney general after asking Jeff Sessions to step down. That appointment, outside the usual chain of succession, is now being challenged in several court cases.

The documents, produced Friday in response to Freedom of Information Act requests, contain internal correspondence among FTC investigators, who are frustrated at being unable to reach Whitaker at several points during 2017.

They show repeated attempts by the FTC to contact Whitaker during 2017, when the agency was investigating complaints about World Patent Marketing, which it described as an “invention promotion scheme” that it accused of “bilking millions of dollars from consumers.”

They also show how shocked the FTC investigators were in October 2017 when -- in the latter stages of their investigation -- Whitaker was suddenly named chief of staff to Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

“You’re not going to believe this,” Evans, who works for the agency’s Bureau of Consumer Protection, wrote on Oct. 24, 2017. "Matt Whitaker is now chief of staff to the Attorney General. Of the United States."

Whitaker has been on the FTC's hit list for a while thanks to his patent troll company that apparently bilked consumers out of millions.  He's dirty as hell, but he still ended up as Jeff Sessions's chief of staff, now Acting AG.  And now it seems he lied to investigators.

Whitaker too is going to jail at some point.  The whole Trump regime is crashing down.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

NY Times columnist Michelle Goldberg is correct: there's no longer any question about whether or not Vladimir Putin has something on Donald Trump, the question America will have to reckon with is how the information revealed in Michael Cohen's plea deal this week on Trump's Moscow Tower project directly influenced Trump's decisions and America's foreign policy towards Russia.

One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.

On Thursday morning, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen — the former executive vice president of the Trump Organization — pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about efforts to build a Trump-branded property in Moscow that extended into the 2016 presidential campaign.

In an August 2017 letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Cohen said that the Moscow project ended in January 2016. He claimed not to recall contacts with Russian government officials about a potential deal. Cohen told Congress that he spoke about the project with Trump — identified as “Individual 1” in the criminal information document that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, filed on Thursday — only three times. He said he never briefed Trump’s family.

According to Mueller’s filing, all of this was false. Efforts to obtain Russian government approval for a Trump-branded development in Moscow went on until “approximately June 2016,” after Trump had effectively secured the Republican nomination for president. Cohen, Mueller’s document said, “discussed the status and progress of the Moscow project with Individual 1” more than three times. He also “briefed family members of Individual 1 within the company about the project.”

In January 2016, according to Mueller’s document, Cohen had a 20-minute conversation with the assistant to a Russian official in which he sought Russia’s help moving the project forward. The next day, Felix Sater, a Trump associate identified in the court filing as “Individual 2,” wrote Cohen to tell him he’d heard from Putin’s office. Cohen made plans to travel to Russia, calling them off only on June 14, which happened to be the day that The Washington Post first reported that Russian government hackers had penetrated Democratic National Committee computers. At one point, Cohen and Sater were also coordinating with figures in Moscow about a potential Trump visit in connection with the project.

So we now know that Trump lied to the American people about at least one part of his business relationship with Russia, a geopolitical foe that interfered in our election process on his behalf.

In a Jan. 11, 2017, news conference, Trump said that the “closest I came to Russia” was in selling a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008. While we’re just learning precisely how dishonest this was, Putin has known it all along. That means that throughout Trump’s campaign and presidency, Putin has had the power to plunge him into political crisis.

Donald Trump is compromised on multiple levels by his financial relationship with Vladimir Putin, period.  That is unacceptable for an American leader.  The information in Cohen's plea alone should be the death knell for the the regime, leading to Trump's resignation and a growing demand by both parties until he does resign.  That won't happen of course, as Republicans have no honor, no morals, and no patriotism.

Everything past this point should be whistling past the graveyard of this disaster.  Trump's spiral into oblivion should take the GOP with it, permanently.  Let's understand here that Trump's plans to give Putin the penthouse of the Trump Tower Moscow as a $50 million gift is absolutely a violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act, and he should be impeached and removed from office on that alone. Josh Marshall:

Small point in the rapidly unfolding batches of information about the Trump campaign’s dealing with Russia in the summer of 2016. There’s this thing called the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). The gist of it is that American business people can’t bribe people abroad to do business overseas. There are some questions on the margins about what entails bribery or related corrupt practices. But offering a $50 million penthouse to the strongman of the state where you’re trying to build a luxury real estate development is definitely not legit.
As you probably saw yesterday, Michael Cohen and Felix Sater planned to do just that. They may even have made the offer. It clearly wasn’t finalized since the building was never built. But this suggests a line of criminal activity entirely separate from all the issues tied to conspiracy, collusion and the more outlandish activities we’re focused on.

There may be no criminal vulnerability on this front because they didn’t actually give Putin the Penthouse. Perhaps it was just Felix and Michael brainstorming between themselves. But the crime doesn’t need to be completed to be a crime. So it’s worth keeping an eye on this part of the equation.

There's no way Trump gets out of this one.  At the very least, the $50 million penthouse looked like a payoff to Putin for his help with Trump's campaign. 

It's only a question now of just how bad the final tally will be.

StupidiNews!

• With California's most recent deadly wildfires under control, the problem now is increased risk of mudslides and flash flooding across burned-out areas.
• Statistics Canada finds that hate crimes in the country increased by nearly 50% from 2016 to 2017, particularly against Jews, Muslims, and African-Canadians.
• California Democratic Party chair Eric Bauman has resigned his position amid allegations of sexual misconduct with party staffers, the state party is investigating Bauman for multiple claims.
• Donald Trump says he will not meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin at this week's G20 summit in Argentina, but Moscow say the meeting will happen anyway.
• Netflix has canceled Daredevil, the third Marvel Defenders series to get the axe, but strongly hints that the characters will return as part of Disney's planned streaming service.

Last Call For A Bridge Too Farr

It turns out that yes, there are federal judges that won't get rubber-stamped by the Senate GOP.  You actually can be too much of a racist asshole to get a lifetime federal judgeship, and former Jesse Helms campaign lawyer and NC judge Robert Farr was too much for South Carolina GOP Sen. Tim Scott and outgoing Arizona GOP Sen. Jeff Flake.

Sen. Tim Scott said Thursday he will oppose the nomination of Thomas Farr to the federal bench, assuring the controversial pick will not be confirmed.

The South Carolina Republican was the deciding vote in determining whether Farr, accused of efforts to disenfranchise black voters, would become a U.S. District Court judge in the Eastern District of North Carolina. The seat has been open since Jan. 1, 2006.

Scott’s decision comes after four days of intense drama and speculation about what the Senate’s only black Republican would do.

Sen. Jeff Flake, R-Arizona, made it clear earlier in the day he, too, would oppose Farr’s nomination. Senate Republicans could only afford to lose one vote and still confirm Farr. Senate Republicans control 51 seats, and all 49 Democratic caucus members announced they would oppose Farr.

In a brief statement explaining his decision, Scott cited a 1991 Department of Justice memo obtained by The Washington Post this week, just days before the Senate was set to vote on Farr’s confirmation. It detailed Farr’s involvement in “ballot security” activities by the 1984 and 1990 campaigns of then-Sen. Jesse Helms, R-North Carolina.

Farr worked for the campaign in 1984 and represented the 1990 campaign as a lawyer.

Helms’ 1990 re-election campaign against former Charlotte mayor Harvey Gantt, who is black, included charges of voter intimidation for postcards mailed to primarily black voters warning of possible arrest at the polls. The Department of Justice investigated the voter intimidation claims and settled with the Helms campaign in a consent decree.

“I am ready and willing to support strong candidates for our judicial vacancies that do not have lingering concerns about issues that could affect their decision-making process as a federal judge,” Scott said in his statement. “This week, a Department of Justice memo written under President George H.W. Bush was released that shed new light on Mr. Farr’s activities. This, in turn, created more concerns. Weighing these important factors, this afternoon I concluded that I could not support Mr. Farr’s nomination.”

The 1991 memo said that “Farr was the primary coordinator of the 1984 ‘ballot security’ program conducted by the NCGOP and 1984 Helms for Senate Committee. He coordinated several ‘ballot security’ activities in 1984, including a postcard mailing to voters in predominantly black precincts which was designed to serve as a basis to challenge voters on election day.”

Farr is an old school master of caging, a guy so racist that Poppy Bush's DoJ called him out on it. It's not going to make up for the decades of awfulness that will be caused by the Trump judges Scott and Flake have already rubber-stamped, but it's one slightly human thing to happen.

Farr should never have been considered, but at least one racist lost this week.  From a person who grew up in NC apologizing to people for the monster that Jesse Helms was as a Senator for years, it's something that is personally meaningful.

It's a victory we have to take.

Meat The Press, Con't

CNN contributor Marc Lamont Hill is no longer a contributor, after absolutely stepping in it this time over Israel.

CNN severed ties with contributor Marc Lamont Hill on Thursday, following comments the university professor made in a speech at the United Nations.

“Marc Lamont Hill is no longer under contract with CNN,” a CNN spokesperson told Mediaite.

Hill urged countries to boycott Israel in a speech on Wednesday, calling for a “free Palestine from the river to the sea.” His comments sparked an immediate backlash, with many noting “from the river to the sea” is a phrase used by Hamas and other anti-Israel terror groups. Critics argue the phrase implies the replacement of Israel by a Palestine stretching from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea — though Hill disputes this characterization of his comments.

“We have an opportunity to not just offer solidarity in words but to commit to political action, grass-roots action, local action and international action that will give us what justice requires and that is a free Palestine from the river to the sea,” Hill said in his speech.

Israel is not above criticism. lord knows I've laid into Netanyahu's Trump-level corruption and Israel's multiple war crimes of collective punishment.  But Hill should have damn well known better to say something his critics would twist into him "wanting to eliminate Israel" in a world where the right wants any excuse to turn anti-Semitic charges and full-fledged neo-Nazi dealings back on the left.

Besides, the whole point of being a pundit is choosing your words carefully to make your argument (or at least on any non-FOX station).  Hill failed at that both miserably and spectacularly, and it's far from the fist time he's completely screwed up.

He makes bad choices often, especially when it comes to Israel.

It's Mueller (On German) Time

The headquarters of Germany's largest bank, Deutsche Bank, was raided today by scores of German police in connection with a massive international money laundering scheme.

One hundred seventy officers searched the headquarters of Deutsche Bank in Frankfurt and five other sites in the area early Thursday as part of a money-laundering investigation involving hundreds of millions of euros, prosecutors in Frankfurt said.

Two employees, who were not publicly identified but whose ages were given as 50 and 46, and other “unidentified people in positions of authority” are suspected of failing to report possible money laundering for transactions worth 311 million euros, or more than $350 million.

The money flowed to organizations in the British Virgin Islands before spring 2016, prosecutors said in an emailed statement.

The German bank confirmed in a statement that the police were investigating several of its offices in Germany and said the investigation related to the Panama Papers, a trove of files that put a spotlight on global money laundering. “We are cooperating fully with the authorities,” Deutsche said in the statement.

In April 2016, news organizations in cooperation with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists released the Panama Papers, which revealed how some of the world’s wealthiest individuals, including more than 900 customers of Deutsche Bank, dodged taxes in their home countries by transferring money to offshore accounts.

Prosecutors said the documents indicated “that Deutsche Bank helped customers found offshore organizations in tax havens by transferring illegally acquired money without alerting authorities to suspected money laundering.”

Paper and electronic documents were gathered during Thursday’s raid, they said.

The prosecutor’s office said two bank employees were suspected of helping Deutsche Bank clients set up offshore accounts and the bank had failed to report the suspected money laundering.

A lot of people are going to jail over this one, but my guess is that the client list of laundered cash may involve one or more members of the Trump Organization.   Remember, Donald Trump and his kids have a long-standing relationship with the bank including a $285 million loan for Jared Kushner that happened just before Election Day 2016 and Trump still owes them $175 million or so.

You'd better believe that this raid and Mueller shifting to the endgame are related.  Mueller has documents from the bank and that trail leads to the Russian mob.  And if you think Trump is having a bad day...it just got infinitely worse for him.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reached a tentative deal with Michael Cohen, the former personal attorney and long-time fixer for President Donald Trump, sources told ABC News.

Cohen is scheduled to appear in federal court in Manhattan on Thursday where he is expected to enter a guilty plea for misstatements to Congress in closed-door testimony last year about his contacts with Russians during the presidential campaign.

Once among the president’s most loyal and zealous defenders in business and politics, Cohen has now promised to “put family and country first” by cooperating with prosecutors, becoming perhaps the most pivotal public witness against his former boss.

Cohen’s earlier plea deal with federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York implicated President Trump in campaign finance felonies. Since then, Cohen has spent more than 70 hours in interviews with Mueller's team. The questioning has focused on contacts with Russians by Trump associates during the campaign, Trump’s business ties to Russia, obstruction of justice and talk of possible pardons, sources familiar with the discussions have told ABC News.

“The potential significance of Cohen’s cooperation is immense,” said Kendall Coffey, a former United States Attorney in Florida.

Cohen now giving testimony to Mueller on Trump's failed Moscow Trump Tower scheme and this bank raid on Trump's largest loan partner for money laundering are, as they say, a hell of a coincidence.

Things are moving very quickly now on the Mueller front as Trump jets to Argentina for the G20 summit and of course a meeting with his boss, Putin.  Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime is expected to move to classify the sale or possession of rifle bump stocks as illegal, the rule is expected to be challenged in court.
• A new study finds that with family and child care time off from working, women made half as much as men did from 2001 to 2015.
• A bill to protect Special Counsel Robert Muller's investigation from Trump regime interference has stalled in the Senate, setting off a fight between outgoing GOP Sen. Jeff Flake and GOP leaders.
• Outdoor clothing company Patagonia will donate the $10 million it got from the Trump tax bill to environmental, conservation, and climate issue groups.
• Facebook in 2012 did consider charging companies a hefty sum to access user data, data it allows companies to access for free today.