Last Call For The New Adult In The Room

White House Chief of Staff John Kelly will be gone by the end of the year, Mike Pence's current Chief of Staff, Nick Ayers, doesn't want the job and Stephen Mnuchin is smart enough to stay at Treasury, so who does that leave?  If the rumblings from the DC access press are right, it's NC GOP Rep. Mark Meadows, of House Freedom Caucus fame.

Over the past 24 hours, President Trump has been privately asking many people who they think should be his new chief of staff, according to three sources with direct knowledge.

What's happening: Trump has asked confidants what they think about the idea of installing Rep. Mark Meadows, the chairman of the ultra-conservative House Freedom Caucus, as John Kelly's permanent replacement, according to these three sources. Trump has also mentioned three other candidates besides Meadows, according to a source with direct knowledge. I don't yet have their names.

Nick Ayers, previously considered the favorite, is out of the running to be Kelly's replacement, according to sources with direct knowledge.

"Nick couldn't give POTUS a two-year commitment, so he's going to help him on the outside instead," one of these sources told me. (This news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.)

Ayers is expected to run the pro-Trump outside group America First, according to another source with direct knowledge. Trump will make a decision on Kelly's replacement by the end of the year, the source said.

Again, the issue is Trump believes the Mueller probe will simply blow over and go away because Sean Hannity says it will, and that January will be business as usual.  He should be looking for a way out, not a new Chief of Staff.

We'll see, but at this pointanyone actively looking for a Trump regime job has to be the worst of the worst, and that fits Meadows to a T.

The Religion Of Hate

Evangelical Christians continue to tell American Muslims to go away because they're not American enough.

Conservative pastor commentator E.W. Jackson went on an anti-Islamic tirade on his radio show Wednesday, complaining that Muslims are taking over Congress.

Jackson's remarks were in response to reports that Democrats are attempting to change a rule banning headwear on the floor of the House to accommodate incoming Muslim lawmakers such as Ilhan Omar, who was recently elected in Minnesota.

“The floor of Congress is now going to look like an Islamic republic,” Jackson said. “We are a Judeo-Christian country. We are a nation rooted and grounded in Christianity and that’s that. And anybody that doesn’t like that, go live somewhere else. It’s very simple. Just go live somewhere else. Don’t try to change our country into some sort of Islamic republic or try to base our country on Sharia law.”

Omar and Rep.-elect Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) are set to be the first Muslim women in Congress.

Religious freedom of expression only applies to Christians you know, and Jews (when convenient).

Jackson in May lost a Republican primary to represent Virginia in the Senate and before that was the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor in the state in 2013.

During his radio show, he claimed that multiple women will be wearing hijabs on the House floor to honor Omar and not because they are themselves Muslim.

“The fact that we’re electing these people to Congress and electing them to office is just beyond the pale,” he said. “Now, don’t get me wrong, I believe in the freedom of religion, I believe in the First Amendment, but I’ll tell you what, I’m not voting for a Muslim to serve in any office. Me, personally, I’m not doing it. I’m not doing it. Period. I’m not doing it.”

Jackson said he is not Islamaphobic, but simply does not agree with the religion.

“The threat to humanity is not merely radical Islam,” he added. “The threat to humanity is Islam, period. That’s right, I said it and I mean it.”

Pretty sure Congress is better off with more Muslim women and less E.W. Jacksons.

Sunday Long Read: Pocket Full Of Miracles

Our Sunday Long Read this week finds freelance journalist Laurie Penny discovering that hell is not just other people, it is specifically other people trapped on a four-day cruise talking about cryptocurrency, and also John McAfee is there.

Two months ago, an editor from BREAKER called and asked if I wanted to go on a four-day Mediterranean cruise with hundreds of crypto-crazed investors and evangelists. We’ll cover the travel, he said. Write something long about whatever you find, he said. It was 2 a.m. and I was over-caffeinated. I remember explaining that I know almost nothing about either cruises or blockchain, in the way that Sir Ian McKellen, in the criminally underrated series Extras, explains that he is not actually a wizard. Five days later I was at the port of Barcelona, boarding a ship. By which point it was way too late to wonder for the umpteenth time about my life choices.

I knew about bitcoin only as an investment vehicle favored by several essentially sweet nerds close to my heart—and I knew, too, that cryptocurrencies are the pet untraceable funding model of the far-right. I was told there would be an overall “Burning Man theme” to the adventure, guaranteed by the presence of Brock Pierce, the cryptocurrency mogul, former child actor, and one-man art installation about peer pressure. (More about him later.) I was anticipating evenings spent listening to crypto-hippies describe the angel-faced space elves they met when they took DMT. I was expecting to fetch water and painkillers for half-conscious corporate executives with dust in their perfect hair and no idea how to get home. I was expecting to get a bit carried away and end up shouting about the government and chalking poetry all over the walls. I was expecting to hear very rich men talk without blinking about tax planning and sacred geometry. I was expecting corporate-branded swimwear. I was expecting to meet smug Californian polyamorists, about whom smug European polyamorists like me are relentlessly judgy. Reader, all of these things transpired, but by the time they did they were a blessed relief.

Let’s step back a moment. For those of you still idling by the side of the cryptocurrency bandwagon, here’s a brief primer, based on a week’s frantic pre-trip cramming. Blockchain is the technology behind cryptocurrencies, which are peer-to-peer electronic cash systems unregulated by any central authority. The system bitcoin, pioneered by an anonymous genius (or geniuses) going by the handle “Satoshi Nakamoto” in 2008, was the first digital currency. Those who bought bitcoin at the start are now on-paper squidzillionaires. Other, newer currencies like Ethereum, Ripple, and Bitcoin Cash, are emerging—and there are obvious reasons to get behind the idea of decentralizing the financial system. Beyond money, blockchain has lots of exciting potential applications with very few actual users. For instance, in October, artist Kelly Donnelly released the feminist anthem “I Am She” using Ethereum, making it, in her words, the “first unblockable music video ever released … meaning women living in censored regions like Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, and Turkey have been able to watch the video.” Sounds good to me.

In the short term, though, that’s not what most big players care about—and the major social change blockchain has brought about so far is that a small number of people have become very rich indeed. As blockchain skeptic David Gerard writes, “the cryptocurrency field is replete with scams and scammers. The technology is used as an excuse to make outlandish near-magical claims. When phrases like ‘a whole new form of money’ or ‘the old rules don’t apply any more’ start going around, people get gullible and the ethically-challenged get creative.”

A huge bitcoin price crash occurs a few hours before we set sail. As I board, I am surprised to find that nobody seems to be particularly worried. CoinsBank, the company organizing the cruise, has left little welcome gift boxes in each of the rooms. They contain painkillers, Alka-Seltzer, several condoms, the world’s flimsiest pregnancy test, and a half-bottle of Jägermeister. It’s the kind of thing you’d leave at the bottom of the chimney for Skeezy Uncle Santa, hoping he’ll stuff a new sex doll under your tree.

The women on this boat are polished and perfect; the men, by contrast, seem strangely cured—not like medicine, but like meat. They are almost all white, between the ages of 30 and 50, and are trying very hard to have the good time they paid thousands for, while remaining professional in a scene where many thought leaders have murky pasts, a tendency to talk like YouTube conspiracy preachers, and/or the habit of appearing in magazines naked and covered in strawberries. That last is 73-year-old John McAfee, who got rich with the anti-virus software McAfee Security before jumping into cryptocurrencies. He is the man most of the acolytes here are keenest to get their picture taken with and is constantly surrounded by private security who do their best to aesthetically out-thug every Armani-suited Russian skinhead on deck. Occasionally he commandeers the grand piano in the guest lounge, and the young live-streamers clamor for the best shot. John McAfee has never been convicted of rape and murder, but—crucially—not in the same way that you or I have never been convicted of rape or murder. I do not interview John McAfee. He interests me less than he scares the shit out of me, though his entourage seems relaxed. They’re already living in the crypto-utopia behind his strange pale-blue eyes.

The only genuinely happy person I meet on this trip is Femi, a forklift driver from Birmingham who wears a Dogecoin T-shirt and proudly shows me videos of him practicing with the samurai sword he bought with his bitcoin stash. I ask him why he’s so proud of his selfie with McAfee, given the guy’s not-unmurdery reputation.

“Well, yeah.” says Femi. Then he grins. “But he’s just a legend, isn’t he? And his wife’s really nice.”

I cannot fault this reasoning. Over the next four days I find myself drifting back to Femi and his unstoppable optimism whenever I get the urge to throw myself overboard.

I don't blame her.  Any truly transformation technology throughout history can be applied to either sex, killing, or theft, and the all-time great social advances, like the internet, are tied to all three.  Crypto is definitely the theft part, judging by the people surrounding it, and it's tiresome to hear people talk about it all the time, but as soon as somebody figures out how to use cryptocurrency for sex and or murder, it'll really take off.

Last Call For The French Connection (To Russia)

Russian social media attacks on French President Emmanuel Macron are stoking violence as protests against the government continue in Paris and other cities.

Emmanuel Macron successfully dodged cyberattacks and fake news reports that were widely blamed on a Kremlin effort to destabilize his 2017 presidential campaign.

Now, with France convulsed by violent protests, the Russians appear to be back – and may be hitting closer to their mark. Among 600 Twitter accounts known to promote Kremlin views, the top hashtag now is #giletsjaunes, the French name for the so-called Yellow Vests protest movement, according to the Alliance for Securing Democracy, a unit of the German Marshall Fund of the U.S. that monitors those accounts and other pro-Kremlin activity.

The Twitter accounts monitored by the alliance usually feature U.S. or British news. But the French protests “have been at or near the top” of their activity for at least a week, says Bret Schafer, the alliance’s Washington-based social media analyst. “That’s a pretty strong indication that there is interest in amplifying the conflict” for audiences outside France, he says.

A major theme of recent tweets is that French law enforcement is on the verge of mutiny. That assertion – which doesn’t appear to be supported by facts – resembles other Kremlin-backed disinformation campaigns that have tried to engender mistrust in Western governments and show that liberal democracies are in decline, Schafer says.

Much of the tweeted material comes from Russian state media outlets including the Sputnik news website, the RT television network, and Ruptly, a German-based video news agency that belongs to RT. These outlets are covering the French crisis closely; RT has said that 12 of its journalists have been injured in the protests, far more than any other news organization.

Sputnik and RT have reported in recent days that most French police no longer support Macron and are siding with the protesters. Their sources: representatives of two small police unions that together won less than 4 percent of votes in nationwide union elections this month. Sputnik and RT also have shown a video – widely shared on French social media -- of police in the southwestern town of Pau removing their helmets in what was described as a sign of solidarity with protesters. Local police and journalists on the scene said the description was untrue. They said some officers had briefly removed their helmets to talk with protesters before putting them back on.

Sputnik and RT didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

No reason to ask why Putin's state media outlets are trying to destabilize Macron. A weakened EU helps Putin with his real goal: a fully reconstituted Soviet bloc with a compliant America under his heel.

Of course Putin is moving to cause as much chaos as possible.  He'd love nothing more than to see Paris come under control of someone like Marine Le Pen.  And I honestly don't know if the Macron government will survive much longer.  Between France, the UK May government coming apart due to Brexit, and the German government's changing of the guard, all three of the EU's major leaders may be gone within the next few months.

Putin couldn't be happier.

It's Mueller Time, Review Edition

Over at the Daily Beast, Center for American Progress think tank authors Max Bergmann and Sam Berger go over where we are at the Mueller Moment approaches and conclude that collusion is the crime, not just the obstruction of justice to cover that crime up.

First, Mueller has clearly identified collusion in the efforts of Trump aides and associates to contact WikiLeaks. In a draft plea agreement provided to conservative operative Jerome Corsi, Mueller details how Roger Stone, who the special counsel notes was in frequent contact with Donald Trump and senior campaign officials, directed Corsi to connect with WikiLeaks about the trove of stolen materials it received from Russia. Corsi subsequently communicated WikiLeaks’ release plan back to Stone, and the Trump campaign built its final message around the email release. That is collusion.

Second, we now know that Trump’s personal lawyer Michael Cohen and former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn have provided evidence to Mueller related to collusion. In Cohen’s sentencing memo, Mueller said that Cohen provided his office with “useful information” on “Russia-related matters core to its investigation.” One of those central elements, according to the Justice Department: “any links and/or coordination” between the Kremlin and Trump campaign figures. Collusion, in other words.

In Flynn’s sentencing memo Mueller said that Flynn’s false statements to the FBI about his calls with the Russian ambassador during the transition were “material” to the investigation into “links or coordination between Russia and individuals associated with the Trump campaign.”

Third, Mueller has found evidence that Trump was compromised by a hostile foreign power during the election. In his plea deal, Cohen revealed that Trump had repeatedly lied to voters about the then-candidate’s financial ties to Russia. While Trump claimed during the campaign to have no business dealings with Russia, he was negotiating a wildly lucrative business deal not simply with Russian businessmen, but also involving with the Kremlin itself. Trump’s team even reportedly tried to bribe Russian President Vladimir Putin by offering him a $50 million penthouse.

Worse, Russia not only knew that Trump was lying, but when investigators first started looking into this deal, the Kremlin helped Trump cover up what really happened. That made Trump doubly compromised: first, because he was eager to get the financial payout and second because Russia had evidence he was lying to the American people—evidence they could have held over Trump by threatening to reveal at any time.

Since the president’s embarrassing performance at the Helsinki summit with Vladimir Putin—when he kowtowed to a foreign adversary rather than stand up for American interests—there has been open speculation about what leverage the Kremlin has over him. Now we know at least part of the picture, raising the specter of what other information Putin has, and how he is using it to influence Trump’s policy decisions.

Fourth, we know that Trump has engaged in an increasingly brazen attempt to cover up his actions: installing a political crony to head the Department of Justice by potentially illegal means in an effort to shut down the investigation; using his former campaign chairman and convicted criminal Paul Manafort to find out information about Mueller’s investigation; and even appearing to offer Manafort a pardon if he helps him obstruct the Russia probe. These may be components of an obstruction of justice case, but they also provide strongly circumstantial data points as to how serious Trump himself views the allegations of collusion being levelled against him.

Lastly, federal prosecutors have told us Trump broke the law to influence the 2016 election by hiding evidence of his affairs. Trump clearly had no qualms about breaking the law to win an election.

In the face of what Mueller has revealed, there is little question where this is going. Mueller may still be only showing us part of his hand, but it’s a damn good hand. He has signaled to us he’s found collusion. He has shown us that the president is compromised. He has told us that he has gathered information important to his investigation about contacts with people in the Trump Organization, the campaign, the transition, and even the White House. That’s everyone Trump has been connected with since he started running. And given all the redacted information in his filings and all that he’s been told by cooperating witnesses, we can be confident that Mueller will show us even more.

Garrett Graff over at Wired comes to a similar conclusion: that there is no possible exculpatory explanation for what Mueller has already revealed to us through court filings.

The potential innocent explanations for Donald Trump’s behavior over the last two years have been steadily stripped away, piece by piece. Special counsel Robert Mueller and investigative reporters have uncovered and assembled a picture of a presidential campaign and transition seemingly infected by unprecedented deceit and criminality, and in regular—almost obsequious—contact with America’s leading foreign adversary.

A year ago, Lawfare’s Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic outlined seven possible scenarios about Trump and Russia, arranged from most innocent to most guilty. Fifth on that list was “Russian Intelligence Actively Penetrated the Trump Campaign—And Trump Knew or Should Have Known,” escalating from there to #6 “Kompromat,” and topping out at the once unimaginable #7, “The President of the United States is a Russian Agent.”

After the latest disclosures, we’re steadily into Scenario #5, and can easily imagine #6.

The Cohen and Manafort court documents all provide new details, revelations, and hints of more to come. They’re a reminder, also, that Mueller’s investigation continues alongside an investigation by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York that clearly alleges that Donald Trump participated in a felony, directing Cohen to violate campaign finance laws to cover up extramarital affairs.

Through his previous indictments against Russian military intelligence and the Russian Internet Research Agency, Mueller has laid out a criminal conspiracy and espionage campaign approved, according to US intelligence, by Vladimir Putin himself. More recently, Mueller has begun to hint at the long arm of that intelligence operation, and how it connects to the core of the Trump campaign itself.

In fact, what’s remarkable about the once-unthinkable conclusions emerging from the special counsel’s investigation thus far is how, well, normal Russia’s intelligence operation appears to have been as it targeted Trump’s campaign and the 2016 presidential election. What intelligence professionals would call the assessment and recruitment phases seems to have unfolded with almost textbook precision, with few stumbling blocks and plenty of encouragement from the Trump side.

Mueller’s court filings, when coupled with other investigative reporting, paint a picture of how the Russian government, through various trusted-but-deniable intermediaries, conducted a series of “approaches” over the course of the spring of 2016 to determine, as Wittes says, whether “this is a guy you can do business with.”

The answer, from everyone in Trumpland—from Michael Cohen in January 2016, from George Papadopoulos in spring 2016, from Donald Trump, Jr. in June 2016, from Michael Flynn in December 2016—appears to have been an unequivocal “yes.”

Former federal prosecutor Ken White concurs at The Atlantic.

And that brings us to brief No. 3: Special Counsel Mueller’s separate sentencing brief in Cohen’s lying-to-Congress case. He does not recommend a sentence but informs the court about the nature of Cohen’s assistance to his office. Mueller discloses that Cohen has “taken significant steps to mitigate his criminal conduct” by pleading guilty to lying to Congress and meeting with the special counsel seven times to discuss his own conduct and other “core topics under investigation.” That includes information about multiple cases of contact between other Trump-campaign officials and the Russian government, and about Cohen’s contact with the White House in 2017 and 2018, suggesting an ongoing inquiry into obstruction of justice. Most significant, the special counsel indicates that Cohen “described the circumstances of preparing and circulating his response to the congressional inquiries, while continuing to accept responsibility for the false statements within it.” That statement suggests that the special counsel believes that someone in the Trump administration knew of, and approved in advance, Cohen’s lies to Congress. That’s explosive, and potentially impeachable if Trump himself is implicated.

The president said on Twitter that Friday’s news “totally clears the President. Thank you!” It does not. Manafort and Cohen are in trouble, and so is Trump. The special counsel’s confidence in his ability to prove Manafort a liar appears justified, which leaves Manafort facing what amounts to a life sentence without any cooperation credit. The Southern District’s brief suggests that Cohen’s dreams of probation are not likely to come true. All three briefs show the special counsel and the Southern District closing in on President Trump and his administration. They’re looking into campaign contact with Russia, campaign-finance fraud in connection with paying off an adult actress, and participation in lying to Congress. A Democratic House of Representatives, just days away, strains at the leash to help. The game’s afoot.

Ryan Goodman and Andy Wright at Just Security provide this analysis that the Russian contacts with Trump are pervasive and that Trump has most likely been involved with them for years.

The Special Counsel’s sentencing memorandum for Cohen very deliberately tells the public that Trump himself was caught up in the connections to and embrace with Russia, and some of those actions were in fact the candidate’s idea. The Special Counsel’s memo says that it was Trump’s idea to initiate contact with the Kremlin in the early stages of the campaign, and that he tasked his fixer, Cohen, to begin that process as early as September 2015. This information should now inform how we think about other subsequent events in the Trump-Russia timeline. At least some Russian overtures should be seen as a potential second step (a receptive response) in the two side’s engagement, not the first step (an initial overture or invitation).

This is likely just the tip of the iceberg. Mueller specifically refers to “examples” of Cohen’s and Trump’s actions, indicating these instances are representative of a broader set of cases. Mueller’s brief states that Cohen “corrected other false and misleading statements that he had made concerning his outreach to and contacts with Russian officials during the course of the campaign. For example, in a radio interview ….” And the brief states that: “the defendant provided information about his own contacts with Russian interests during the campaign and discussions with others in the course of making those contacts. For example, and as described above, the defendant provided a detailed account of his involvement and the involvement of others in the Moscow Project …”

As one of us has written previously, a key question is not just whether the Russians interfered in the GOP primary, but whether any collusion with the Trump campaign began back then. Mueller’s sentencing memorandum for Cohen adds significant evidence to suggest that’s what happened. Two of the examples Mueller chooses to include in the document occurred early in the primaries. By September 2015, Cohen publicly suggested a meeting between Putin and Trump after having “conferred with Individual 1 about contacting the Russian government before reaching out to gauge Russia’s interest in such a meeting.” In November 2015, a Russian national who identified themselves as a “trusted person” in the Russian Federation reached out to Cohen proposing such a meeting with Putin and offering the campaign support in the form of “political synergy.” The only reason Cohen declined is because already by thenhe considered Felix Sater, with whom he was arrange the Moscow Trump Tower project, provided sufficient “connections to the Russian government.”

What’s more, these interactions may also shed light on other aspects of the publicly known timeline. First, when senior campaign officials appeared to brush away some overtures by Russian agents (think: Kushner at the time of the NRA convention), it may have been because they considered other established connections with the Kremlin sufficient. Second, these earlier interactions with Trump and Cohen may also shed light on Rob Goldstone’s email to Donald Trump Jr. In the first email on June 3, 2016, Goldstone’s message appeared to pick up mid-conversation and assume Trump Jr. already knew about Kremlin efforts to help Trump get elected. “This is obviously very high level and sensitive information but is part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump,” Goldstone wrote.

And Paul Waldman at the Washington Post suggests that the endgame for Trump is now upon us.

One of the remarkable things about the discussion we've been having lately is that the president still seems to think that he can be saved from whatever this investigation uncovers. He just announced that William Barr will be his next attorney general, and the New York Times reported that in private, "Mr. Trump has also repeatedly asked whether the next pick would recuse himself from overseeing the special counsel investigation into whether his campaign conspired with Russia in its interference in the 2016 election." It's as though he thinks this investigation is in its early stages and can be quashed by a properly loyal underling.

But at this point it doesn't matter. It's far too late. Trump's former aides have cooperated, they've conducted their interviews with the special counsel, they're being sentenced, the documents have been reviewed, the connections have been traced, and the full picture is soon to be revealed.

This scandal can’t be hidden away. Republicans in Congress can’t save Trump, his attorney general can’t save him, and no amount of desperate tweets can save him. Accountability is on its way, and it’s arriving very soon.

I continue to say that the impeachment and removal of Donald Trump will be a political matter, not a legal one.  The only way Trump is forced from office is that like with Nixon, the political situation becomes untenable for him.  Robert Mueller can lay down as much of the case as he wants to, but the reality is unless there are 67 United States senators willing to remove Trump, nothing matters.

We are not at that point.

Yet.

Caught Dead To Rights

Mother Jones reporter Mike Spies catches the NRA in what definitely looks like illegal advertising coordination with the Trump campaign, to the tune of $30 million in in-kind advertising.

The National Rifle Association spent $30 million to help elect Donald Trump—more than any other independent conservative group. Most of that sum went toward television advertising, but a political message loses its power if it fails to reach the right audience at the right time. For the complex and consequential task of placing ads in key markets across the nation in 2016, the NRA turned to a media strategy firm called Red Eagle Media.

One element of Red Eagle’s work for the NRA involved purchasing a slate of 52 ad slots on WVEC, the ABC affiliate in Norfolk, Virginia, in late October 2016. The ads targeted adults aged 35 to 64 and aired on local news programs and syndicated shows like Jeopardy! and Wheel of Fortune. In paperwork filed with the Federal Communications Commission, Red Eagle described them as “anti-Hillary” and “pro-Trump.”

The Trump campaign pursued a strikingly similar advertising strategy. Shortly after the Red Eagle purchase, as Election Day loomed, it bought 33 ads on the same station, set to air during the same week. The ads, which the campaign purchased through a firm called American Media & Advocacy Group (AMAG), were aimed at precisely the same demographic as the NRA spots, and often ran during the same shows, bombarding Norfolk viewers with complementary messages.

The two purchases may have looked coincidental; Red Eagle and AMAG appear at first glance to be separate firms. But each is closely connected to a major conservative media-consulting firm called National Media Research, Planning and Placement. In fact, the three outfits are so intertwined that both the NRA’s and the Trump campaign’s ad buys were authorized by the same person: National Media’s chief financial officer, Jon Ferrell.

“This is very strong evidence, if not proof, of illegal coordination,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel for the Federal Election Commission. “This is the heat of the general election, and the same person is acting as an agent for the NRA and the Trump campaign.”

Reporting by The Trace, which has teamed up with Mother Jones to investigate the NRA’s political activity, shows that the NRA and the Trump campaign employed the same operation—at times, the exact same people—to craft and execute their advertising strategies for the 2016 presidential election. The investigation, which involved a review of more than 1,000 pages of Federal Communications Commission and Federal Election Commission documents, found multiple instances in which National Media, through its affiliates Red Eagle and AMAG, executed ad buys for Trump and the NRA that seemed coordinated to enhance each other.

The NRA and the Trump campaign both bought similar message ads at the same time in the same television markets, approved by the same person, and it happened multiple times throughout the 2016 campaign season.  Pretty much illegal campaign coordination 101 here, an open and shut case.

And considering how badly the NRA is doing in its finances, with Mueller's team breathing down their necks over Maria Butina, well, you can bet things are only going to get worse for the NRA.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time, Liar Liar Edition

So turns out Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen are a really, really, really bad liars.  And now, we know what the two of them were lying about.

Federal prosecutors on Friday accused Paul Manafort, President Trump’s former campaign chairman, of lying to them about his contacts with Trump administration officials and other issues, including his interactions with Konstantin V. Kilimnik, a Russian tied to Moscow’s intelligence services.

After signing a plea agreement in September, Mr. Manafort “stated he had no direct or indirect communications with anyone in the administration while they were in the administration and that he never asked anyone to try to communicate a message to anyone in the administration on any subject matter,” prosecutors working for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, wrote in a memo to Judge Amy Berman Jackson of United States District Court for the District of Columbia.

But, they said, Mr. Manafort hid information from them about his contacts with Trump administration officials, telling “multiple discernible lies — these were not instances of mere memory lapses.”

They also accused Mr. Manafort of lying about a $125,000 transfer of funds.

Mr. Mueller’s team has left open the possibility that it could file new charges for lying against Mr. Manafort. Mr. Manafort’s lawyers say he believes he was honest during his interviews with them.

Mr. Mueller’s office also filed a recommendation for the sentencing of Michael D. Cohen, Mr. Trump’s former lawyer, alongside a scathing attack from prosecutors in Manhattan who rejected Mr. Cohen’s request to avoid a prison term and accused him of using his power and influence “for deceptive ends.”

The prosecutors sought about four years in prison for Mr. Cohen when he is sentenced next week for lying to Congress about the extent of Mr. Trump’s business dealings in Moscow, as well as for campaign finance violations and other charges.

The Manafort stuff is bad enough, but the real fun is Cohen. The Cohen filing by federal prosecutors in New York, also out today, is of particular interest because once again, it indicates that Donald Trump committed a felony.

Mr. Cohen, 52, is to be sentenced in Manhattan next week for two separate guilty pleas: one for campaign finance violations and financial crimes charged by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, and the other for lying to Congress in the Russia inquiry, filed by the Office of the Special Counsel in Washington.

Prosecutors in Manhattan said the crimes Mr. Cohen had committed marked “a pattern of deception that permeated his professional life,” and though he was seeking a sentence of no jail time for providing assistance to the government, he did not deserve much leniency.

In a lengthy memo to the judge, William H. Pauley III, prosecutors wrote that Mr. Cohen was motivated by “personal greed” and had a “rose-colored view of the seriousness of the crimes.”

They once again emphasized that Mr. Cohen had implicated the president in his guilty plea, writing that Mr. Cohen “played a central role” in a scheme to purchase the silence of two women who claimed to have affairs with Mr. Trump, so they would not speak publicly during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“Cohen himself has now admitted, with respect to both payments, he acted in coordination with and at the direction of Individual-1,” the prosecutors wrote. “Individual-1” is how Mr. Trump is referred to in the document.

Mr. Cohen’s actions “struck a blow to one of the core goals of the federal campaign finance laws: transparency,” the prosecutors wrote, adding that he “sought to influence the election from the shadows.”

Cohen also copped to dealing with the Russians on Trump's behalf to arrange a meeting with Putin as early as November 2015.

In November 2015, as discussions about a possible Trump Tower Moscow project were gaining momentum, Mr. Cohen told prosecutors he was approached by a Russian claiming to be a “‘trusted person’ in the Russian Federation,” who offered “synergy on a government level” with the Trump campaign.

The individual, who was not named, pushed for a meeting between Mr. Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Such a meeting, he said, could have a “‘phenomenal’ impact ‘not only in political but in a business dimension as well.’”

BuzzFeed News reports the unnamed Russian individual is Russian bodybuilder Dmitri Klokov, who was introduced to Cohen by Ivanka Trump in a story they broke back in June.

Amid intense scrutiny of contacts between Donald Trump's inner circle and representatives of Vladimir Putin, Ivanka Trump's name has barely come up. But during the campaign, she connected her father’s personal lawyer with a Russian athlete who offered to introduce Donald Trump to Putin to facilitate a 100-story Trump tower in Moscow, according to emails reviewed by BuzzFeed News and four sources with knowledge of the matter.

There is no evidence that Ivanka Trump’s contact with the athlete — the former Olympic weightlifter Dmitry Klokov — was illegal or that it had anything to do with the election. Nor is it clear that Klokov could even have introduced Trump to the Russian president. But congressional investigators have reviewed emails and questioned witnesses about the interaction, according to two of the sources, and so has special counsel Robert Mueller’s team, according to the other two.

The contacts reveal that even as her father was campaigning to become president of the United States, Ivanka Trump connected Michael Cohen with a Russian who offered to arrange a meeting with one of the US’s adversaries — in order to help close a business deal that could have made the Trump family millions.

These interactions also shed new light on Cohen, the president’s former personal lawyer and fixer, who is under criminal investigation and who played a key role in many of Donald Trump’s biggest deals — including the audacious effort to build Europe’s tallest tower in the Russian capital.

Ahh, but now we know from today's filing that the Klokov meeting absolutely did have to do with the election, and of course the Trump Tower Moscow project, which Cohen has now admitted to lying about.  And from the Cohen filing by Mueller, we know Cohen cooperated on matters involving "discrete Russia-related matters" and the Trump Organization, namely Ivanka, Eric, and Don Jr. and how they relate to the Russia mess.

This is far from over, of course.  Again, the big takeaway is Cohen in the filing saying he committed major campaign finance violations by paying hush money to two of Trump's mistresses, and that he did it with and at the direction of "individual-1" who of course is Donald Trump, and that the Trump Organization issued fraudulent invoices to Cohen for the payments.

That's conspiracy to commit a felony, guys.

Stay tuned.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Stay tuned.  More on the Mueller info dump later.

The Adults In The Room Are Grounded

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Spoilers: they won't.

StupidiNews!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Barr declined to comment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Get The Hence, Pence

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

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

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

It's About Suppression, Con't

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BuzzFeed News drops this bombshell.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In fact, he should be in prison.

StupidiNews!

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

Last Call For Goodbye Poppy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— Caroline Orr (@RVAwonk) December 5, 2018

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

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

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