Last Call For The Heartbeat Of Ohio

Ohio's GOP-controlled state Senate has passed a House measure effectively outlawing abortion procedures after as little as six weeks, they have the votes in both chambers to override a John Kasich veto, incoming GOP Gov. Mike DeWine says he'll sign the bill anyway, and Republicans freely admit they're going to pass the measure specifically to go to the Supreme Court to end Roe v. Wade.

The anti-abortion movement has become more emboldened since the Trump administration was able to appoint two Supreme Court justices, paving the way for the new conservative federal bench to potentially overturn Roe v. Wade.

Indeed, in an 18-13 vote Wednesday, the Ohio Senate passed the so-called “heartbeat bill,” banning abortions after providers can detect a fetal heartbeat — which could be as early as six weeks, before many people even know they’re pregnant.

The House first passed the “heartbeat bill” in November, but a Senate committee amended the measure to clarify that officials would not be required to use a trans-vaginal ultrasound to detect the heartbeat. Providers could instead use an abdominal ultrasound, which detects the fetal heartbeat a few weeks later, usually around 11 weeks. Either way, the bill is a clear attempt by Ohio lawmakers to ban abortions before the fetus is viable. When talking about a fetus, the word “heartbeat” isn’t medically accurate, as it’s not a fully formed heart.

The measure now heads back to the House before heading to the desk of Gov. John Kasich (R). Kasich vetoed the measure before in 2016, but the lame-duck legislature is unfazed. Legislators have enough votes to override a veto, and they could always vote on the bill again next year after Gov.-elect Mike DeWine (R) takes office, as he said he supports the ban.

The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) suggested it would file a lawsuit should the bill become law. Federal courts have blocked similar measures in other states.

“[W]omen’s lives and our right to decide whether to have an abortion is not a political game; women and families suffer when abortion is pushed out of reach. If this bill becomes law, we will take this fight to court, and we will never stop fighting on behalf of women in Ohio and across the country,” said deputy director at the ACLU’s Reproductive Freedom Project, Brigitte Amiri, in a statement on Wednesday.

“We literally crafted this legislation to be the arrow in the heart of Roe v. Wade. It is made to come before the United States Supreme Court,” said the bill’s author, Janet Porter, who also worked on Roy Moore’s Senate campaign in Alabama and defended him when he was credibly accused of sexual misconduct with teen girls.

While Ohio’s ban is the first anti-abortion bill in the nation that could be sent to a governor since Brett Kavanaugh was appointed to the Supreme Court in October, it’s hardly the only measure teed up to challenge Roe. There are at least 13 cases in the court pipeline and a measure signed by Vice President Mike Pence when he was Indiana’s governor is the furthest along; the Supreme Court still needs to decide whether to hear arguments.

The only question is which case SCOTUS takes up in order to end Roe, but understand that by 2020, safe abortion procedures could be effectively illegal in dozens of states.  What happens after that, who knows.

A Case Of Zinke Deficiency

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke is the latest casualty in the rapidly disintegrating Trump regime as his legal pressures mounted over misuse and abuse of travel and department resources and a guaranteed investigation next month as House Democrats explored his sweetheart Montana federal land deal scandal.

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke has notified the White House that he intends to step down amid federal investigations into his travel, political activity and potential conflicts of interest, according to three people familiar with the matter.

Zinke’s decision, expected to be announced on Wednesday, comes as Democrats, who’ve vowed to grill the him over his conduct, are about to take control of the House of Representatives, raising the prospect of heightened oversight -- and a crush of legal bills from defending himself. Concern about all the scrutiny and legal costs on the horizon were factors in Zinke’s decision to quit, said the people, who asked not to be identified to discuss it.

The impending departure also emerges as President Donald Trump grapples with other changes to his Cabinet that underscore the challenges of filling vacancies in a tumultuous administration. On Friday, the president announced that budget director Mick Mulvaney would take over as chief of staff, replacing John Kelly, whose ouster on Dec. 8 touched off a roller-coaster search to fill the key White House post.

Trump’s been aware of Zinke’s plans for several days, and a search for a replacement is under way, the people said.

Like other disgraced cabinet officials who have resigned under clouds of personal scandal, Zinke overtly tried to enrich himself in the same way Donald Trump is doing, he just never had the same protection as Trump does.

Zinke had championed using federal lands to pursue U.S. “energy dominance,” and that agenda will be continued by his likely successor as acting Interior Secretary: David Bernhardt, the agency’s No. 2 official. As deputy he’s played a key, behind-the-scenes role in shaping the department’s policies. 

Other potential contenders for the post include Cynthia Lummis, a former congresswoman from Wyoming; Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes; Adam Laxalt, the Nevada attorney general who lost his bid to be governor ; Idaho Governor C.L. “Butch” Otter; former Nevada Senator Dean Heller, who lost his re-election bid in November; and outgoing Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker. The role is typically filled by Western politicians who have experience navigating the vast federal lands.

Trump will appoint somebody who will make it easier to drill on federal land and extract oil, gas, and minerals.  That person too will resign in scandal, because at this point only the most corrupt would take the job, and that basically goes for any and every cabinet position Trump needs to fill.

They're After Your Health Care Again

With Democrats winning the House back, Republicans are again turning to the Supreme Court to eliminate the Affordable Care Act, and that process started Friday with a long-awaited (but pretty garbage) ruling from a Texas federal judge on the case filed by red state attorneys general.

The decision Friday finding the Affordable Care Act unconstitutional comes just before the end of a six-week open enrollment period for the program in 2019 and underscores a divide between Republicans who have long sought to invalidate the law and Democrats who fought to keep it in place.

U.S. District Judge Reed O’Connor in Fort Worth agreed with a coalition of Republican states led by Texas that he had to eviscerate the Affordable Care Act, the signature health-care overhaul by President Barack Obama, after Congress last year zeroed out a key provision -- the tax penalty for not complying with the requirement to buy insurance. The decision is almost certain to be appealed all the way to the Supreme Court.

“Today’s ruling is an assault on 133 million Americans with preexisting conditions, on the 20 million Americans who rely on the ACA’s consumer protections for health care, and on America’s faithful progress toward affordable health care for all Americans,” California Attorney General Xavier Becerra said in a statement. A spokeswoman for Becerra said an appeal will be filed before Jan. 1.

Texas and an alliance of 19 states argued to the judge that they’ve been harmed by an increase in the number of people on state-supported insurance rolls. They claimed that when Congress repealed the tax penalty last year, it eliminated the U.S. Supreme Court’s rationale for finding the ACA constitutional in 2012.

The Texas judge agreed.

“The remainder of the ACA is non-severable from the individual mandate, meaning that the Act must be invalidated in whole,” O’Connor wrote.

Chief Justice Roberts already critically wounded Obamacare by ending the individual mandate, and the argument is that the entire law must be thrown out because part of it was ruled unconstitutional.   Blue states are arguing that the fact SCOTUS refused to do that when they had the chance is proof enough, but Republicans are betting Trump will get to replace either Justice Ginsburg or Breyer soon, and if that happens, the law is certainly gone (along with the entire civil rights, women's rights, and labor rights movements over the last 60 years.)

The battle won't end anytime soon.

The Best-Kept Secret In DC

Robert Mueller's team had a hearing involving a sealed court order before the DC Circuit Court involving a grand jury subpoena Friday morning, and nobody -- and I mean nobody -- has any clue as to what the subpoena involves.

The tight-lipped approach of Mueller and his team has led to rampant speculation and curiosity. In October, Politico reported that on the day a filing was due in the sealed grand jury case, a journalist overheard a man in the clerk’s office request a copy of the special counsel’s office’s latest sealed filing so that the man’s law firm could put together a response. Several hours later, a sealed response was filed in the grand jury case.

It was not confirmation that the sealed grand jury case was indeed related to Mueller’s investigation, but it was enough to make Friday’s arguments a must-attend event.

More than an hour before arguments were scheduled to begin at 9:30 a.m., reporters started to gather in the hallway outside the courtroom, hoping to see a familiar face go inside — a member of Mueller’s team, perhaps, or a defense lawyer known to represent someone connected to the Russia investigation or the administration. None were spotted. By the time arguments began, at least a dozen reporters were huddled outside the courtroom, and more continued to show up as the morning went on.

Faces eagerly turned toward the elevators when they dinged to announce a new arrival, and then fell when it was another reporter, or someone no one recognized.

The first case was argued. Then the second. Still nothing. At the end of arguments in the second case, court employees instructed everyone in the courtroom to leave. Court staff and security officials then cleared the entire floor, an unusual occurrence in the courthouse. Reporters scattered, staking out other hallways, stairwells, and exits. At one point at least 20 journalists roamed the courthouse building and its grounds.
After roughly an hour and a half, reporters were allowed back onto the floor, although the courtroom was locked and it wasn’t clear if arguments had ended. A little after noon, the courtroom deputy confirmed that the judges were, in fact, done hearing arguments for the day. 

“I’m ready to go to sleep forever,” one reporter was heard saying as she boarded an elevator to leave.

Even after Friday’s arguments, little is known about the case. Publicly available court records show that the sealed grand jury case was first filed in August and then made two trips to the DC Circuit. The first time, an appeal was filed in September and then dismissed by the court in early October because the court didn’t have jurisdiction. It was appealed again a week later. That was the case a three-judge panel heard Friday.

There's a fair amount of speculation that the person under grand jury subpoena is Donald Trump himself, and this hearing was about whether or not a sitting president could be subpoenaed.

The speculation about who this unidentified individual is reached a fever pitch when Politico theorized that this person could be President Donald Trump. It was argued that maybe Trump had already been subpoenaed by the special counsel and was secretly litigating that behind the scenes. One legal expert clearly told Law&Crime why that was a “bogus” idea. However, the identity of this person has remained elusive and there were some strange things about this case.

The speed with which these appeals have been traveling through the courts and the special attention the case has been receiving has only added to the intrigue.

Former federal prosecutor Nelson W. Cunningham, the author of the aforementioned Politico piece, noted that “when the witness lost the first time in the circuit court (before the quick round-trip to the district court), they unusually petitioned for rehearing en banc—meaning they thought their case was so important that it merited the very unusual action of convening all 10 of the D.C. Circuit judges to review the order.”

Cunningham argued that this itself was telling, but added that something else was “even more telling,” namely: “President Trump’s sole appointee to that court, Gregory Katsas, recused himself.” Trump attorney Jay Sekulow forcefully denied that this related to the president at all.

Whatever happened, the hearing came and went, and the results are unknown.  Whoever the subject of the subpoena is, they aren't talking themselves to the press.  That makes me think it's actually not Trump, as Trump cannot, cannot, cannot keep his mouth shut.  He would have taken to Twitter long ago to scream about Mueller specifically doing this.

But whoever it is, they are important as hell.

Stay tuned.

Last Call For A Distant Warning

We know that impeachment talk has gotten to Donald Trump, because he's actually talking about it with the press, a sure sign that he's obsessed with it.  But there's a larger issue.

President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he was not concerned that he could be impeached and that hush payments made ahead of the 2016 election by his former personal attorney Michael Cohen to two women did not violate campaign finance laws.

“It’s hard to impeach somebody who hasn’t done anything wrong and who’s created the greatest economy in the history of our country,” Trump told Reuters in an Oval Office interview.

“I’m not concerned, no. I think that the people would revolt if that happened,” he said.

Trump's delusions about the economy aside, the last part about the revolt?  Nearly assured.  I guarantee you there will be bloody violence if Trump is impeached, and it will grow exponentially worse if it becomes clear he will be removed from office.

The standing threat of violence from Trump's white supremacist militia supporters has always been the ugliest part of this regime, and I fully expect any efforts to remove him will be met with a flurry of attacks on targets these bastards have long wanted to take down.

It'll be open season, and a bloody one.  And Trump is counting on that fear to keep him and his family safe from the law.  Remember, impeachment is political in nature.  There are going to be a lot of politicians who will say "I don't want this violence to happen".  They know they will be targeted too.

The threat of violence is a real factor in the calculus of impeachment, guys.  That's something that has to be kept in mind.

Both Sides Do It, And That's The Point

For once, somebody found a use for Both Sides Do It that is both true and actually might help save the Republic, and of all places, it's Democratic party gerrymandering in New Jersey.

The Democratic lawmakers’ proposal would amend the New Jersey Constitution, and New Jersey voters would need to approve it through a ballot measure.

It overhauls the makeup of a redistricting committee to give more power to legislative leaders. It also establishes a “fairness test” requiring district maps to reflect how major political parties perform in statewide elections for governor, senator and president.

In New Jersey, which has not elected a Republican senator since 1972 and where registered Democrats outnumber Republicans by nearly 1 million voters, that standard ensures that the redistricting process would begin on an uneven playing field. (New Jersey did elect a Republican governor in 2013, but the state has been trending Democratic.)

“It institutionally strips away the will of the voter,” said Tom Kean Jr., the Republican leader in the Senate. “The will of the Republicans and unaffiliated voters in New Jersey would be ignored to the benefit of incumbent majority party legislators forever more.”
Proponents of the plan, Stephen M. Sweeney, the Senate president, and Nicholas P. Scutari, a co-sponsor of the bill, argue that the redistricting process is too often conducted behind closed doors by unelected officials and where deals are hashed out without any voter input.

By putting their plan before the electorate, supporters argue, New Jersey Democrats are letting voters decide how redistricting should be done.

“There’s nothing gerrymandering about it,” Mr. Scutari said. “If we have a significant advantage in voters, then you’re going to have a significant difference in legislative districts. If you took this matrix of guidelines and put it in Texas, you’d probably get significantly more legislative districts that favored Republicans.’’

It is, quite frankly, the Democrats lowering themselves to the level of Republicans in refashioning a state to entrench a permanent majority.   And as Kevin Drum puts it, it's about goddamn time.

I am all for this. Is that because I’m a political hack who eagerly looks forward to giving Republicans a taste of their own medicine? Of course not. It’s more that … it would … oh hell. Yes, that’s part of it. The prospect of watching Republicans whine and moan about this is really pretty delightful.

But here’s the real reason: this is the only thing that will ever get the Supreme Court off its butt to do something about gerrymandering. I’m dead serious here. Conservatives on the Supreme Court aren’t likely to ever address gerrymandering until it’s crystal clear that Democrats can be every bit as ruthless and shady as Republicans. As long as red-state Republicans pass bill after bill screwing Democrats, while blue states like California and New Jersey and New York do nothing, there will always be a majority on the Supreme Court to shrug it off as a “political” question and do nothing.

The Supreme Court is likely to hear a gerrymandering case later this year that merges a suit over Democratic gerrymandering in Maryland with a suit over Republican gerrymandering in Wisconsin. That’s a good start to getting them to take gerrymandering seriously, and the New Jersey stunt might force a bit of rethinking too. I hate the fact that I believe this, but I do, in fact, believe pretty strongly that conservatives on the Supreme Court will never strike down even the most egregious gerrymanders unless Democrats prove that they can play the game too. So let’s play.

Nothing quite convinces Republicans to attack a practice than to see Democrat benefiting from it, (see everything Obama ever did with executive power as an example.)  Maybe it'll get SCOTUS to clear the decks.  We'll see.

But like Drum said, Republicans made this ballgame, so let's play.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

As if this week could actually get worse for the Trump regime, things did manage to get worse.

Federal prosecutors in Manhattan are investigating whether President Trump’s 2017 inaugural committee misspent some of the record $107 million it raised from donations, people familiar with the matter said.

The criminal probe by the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office, which is in its early stages, also is examining whether some of the committee’s top donors gave money in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, policy concessions or to influence official administration positions, some of the people said.

Giving money in exchange for political favors could run afoul of federal corruption laws. Diverting funds from the organization, which was registered as a nonprofit, could also violate federal law.

The investigation represents another potential legal threat to people who are or were in Mr. Trump’s orbit. Their business dealings and activities during and since the campaign have led to a number of indictments and guilty pleas. Many of the president’s biggest campaign backers were involved in the inaugural fund.

The investigation partly arises out of materials seized in the federal probe of former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s business dealings, according to people familiar with the matter.

In April raids of Mr. Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents obtained a recorded conversation between Mr. Cohen and Stephanie Winston Wolkoff, a former adviser to Melania Trump, who worked on the inaugural events. In the recording, Ms. Wolkoff expressed concern about how the inaugural committee was spending money, according to a person familiar with the Cohen investigation.

The Wall Street Journal couldn’t determine when the conversation between Mr. Cohen and Ms. Wolkoff took place, or why it was recorded. The recording is now in the hands of federal prosecutors in Manhattan, a person familiar with the matter said.

The inaugural committee hasn’t been asked for records or been contacted by prosecutors, according to a lawyer close to the matter, who said: “We are not aware of any evidence the investigation the Journal is reporting actually exists.”

The inaugural committee has publicly identified vendors accounting for $61 million of the $103 million it spent, and it hasn’t provided details on those expenses, according to tax filings. As a nonprofit organization, the fund is only required to make public its top five vendors.

This is just part of the gold mine Cohen uncovered for prosecutors, and we know now that the investigation is moving towards Trump's pay-to-play arrangements with the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel as well as Russia, and let's remember Cohen was not just Trump's lawyer at the time, he was Deputy Finance Chair of the RNC. 

Eliott Broidy, Trump's top fundraiser and RNC Finance Chairman, was recently tagged with a massive pay-to-play campaign finance scandal from Malaysia too.  All of this goes back to the inauguration fund, which was a slush fund free-for-all and all kinds of foreign actors lined Trump's pockets.

Now in the last two weeks, we know that the feds are closing in on all three scams, the Malaysia kickback at Justice, the inauguration fund mess, and the Seychelles meeting brokered by Erik Prince and the UAE.  Any of the three could send Trump to prison.  He's guilty of all three.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

StupidiNews!

• Dozens of businesses and state and federal office buildings across the US and Canada received identical e-mail bomb threats Thursday, federal investigators are looking into the threats.
• Incoming House Speaker Nancy Pelosi says that Democrats will be subpoenaing Donald Trump's tax returns in January, prompting warning threats of legal action by the Trump White House.
• The Senate has passed legislation ending US operations in Yemen and rebuking Saudi Arabia's involvement in the murder of Jamal Khashoggi, similar House legislation has been blocked by the GOP.
• The Trump regime will officially delay planned Chinese tariff hikes until March 1, avoiding a January 1 hike that could cost Americans tens of billions in higher consumer good prices. 
• Verizon plans to cut over 10,000 US jobs by the end of the year as the cable and content giant's plan to correct its ailing AOL and Yahoo division has failed.

Last Call For The Pension Dimension

Kentucky's public pension law that would have wrecked public employee benefits and kicked teachers off pensions entirely (while of course keeping lawmakers on it) has been unanimously struck down by Kentucky's Supreme Court.

The Kentucky Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously struck down a controversial law that would have reduced retirement benefits for public employees, most notably by ending traditional pensions for school teachers hired after Jan. 1.

In a decision written by Justice Daniel Venters of Somerset, the court ruled on the most narrow of terms, finding that Republican legislative leaders erred by not giving the pension bill the constitutionally required three public readings in the Senate and House chambers before passing it last March.

Instead, the legislature hastily converted a sewage treatment bill into a pension bill on the 57th day of the 60-day session and then rushed it through final chamber votes in a matter of hours with no public review and little chance for debate. The sewage treatment bill already had received most of its necessary public readings, lawmakers said at the time.

That maneuver violated a process meant to provide transparency at the Capitol, the court said Thursday. Public readings of a bill over three separate days should give lawmakers and citizens a chance to understand what legislation is on the table, the court said.

“In deference to the General Assembly, we necessarily stop short of providing a complete and precise definition of what must occur to qualify as a reading of the bill, but we are well-settled in the conviction that what occurred here falls far short of the requirements,” Venters wrote.

The unanimous high court decision is a resounding defeat for Republican Gov. Matt Bevin and GOP legislative leaders, who have argued that an overhaul of Kentucky’s pension systems is essential for eliminating the state’s $37.9 billion public pension shortfall, which is one of the nation’s worst.

It was a victory for opponents, led by Democratic Attorney General Andy Beshear, who say the pension plans gradually will strengthen if the state simply sticks with its new-found commitment to full funding after roughly two decades of under-funding. And they say Bevin failed to show exactly how cuts in retirement benefits would produce the billions in savings that he touts.

Bevin screwed up so badly on this he had teachers protesting in front of the State Capitol.   His tax austerity plan blew up in his face, and now his pension wrecking plan is dead too...at least until the the next general assembly session in 2019, but Bevin may not have the votes now after November's GOP losses.

We'll see what happens, but next year's election is going to be a national fight, I can guarantee it.

It's Mueller Time...Around The World

A big scoop from Erin Banco at the Daily Beast: the Mueller investigation is set to indict foreign nationals from countries that tried to influence the Trump campaign, and it's a whole lot bigger than just Russia.

Over the past year, the indictments, convictions, and guilty pleas have largely been connected, in one way or another, to Russia. But now, special counsel Robert Mueller’s office is preparing to reveal to the public a different side of his investigation. In court filings that are set to drop in early 2019, prosecutors will begin to unveil Middle Eastern countries’ attempts to influence American politics, three sources familiar with this side of the probe told The Daily Beast.

In other words, the “Russia investigation” is set to go global.

While one part of the Mueller team has indicted Russian spies and troll-masters, another cadre has been spending its time focusing on how Middle Eastern countries pushed cash to Washington politicos in an attempt to sway policy under President Trump’s administration. Various witnesses affiliated with the Trump campaign have been questioned about their conversations with deeply connected individuals from the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, and Israel, according to people familiar with the probe. Topics in those meetings ranged from the use of social-media manipulation to help install Trump in the White House to the overthrow of the regime in Iran.

Now, according to those same sources, the Special Counsel’s Office is ready to outline what cooperating witnesses have told them about foreigners’ plans to help Trump win the presidency. Two sources with knowledge of the probe said Mueller’s team has for months discussed the possibility of issuing new charges on this side of the investigation.

“If this is going to be unveiled, this would be like the surfacing of the submarine but on the other plank which we haven’t seen,” said Harry Litman, a former U.S. attorney. “I guess what Mueller has to date has turned out to be pretty rich and detailed and more than we anticipated. This could turn out to be a rich part of the overall story.”

The switch in focus comes as Mueller winds down cooperation with former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, who participated in 19 interviews with the special counsel’s team. In often-heavily redacted court documents made public over the last two weeks, the Special Counsel’s Office hinted at ways in which Flynn helped with its investigation into links between Trumpworld figures and the Russian government.

But Flynn was also involved in conversations with representatives and influential individuals from other foreign governments, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel—encounters The Daily Beast has reported over the last several months. Flynn’s cooperation with Mueller could bring new details about the scope of the special counsel’s probe into how individuals from those countries offered not only to help Trump win the presidential election, but also how they sought to influence foreign policy in the early days of the administration.

ZVTS readers shouldn't be surprised by this, I've told you this was coming for months.  The story first surfaced in June 2017, but really gelled in March 2018.

Hey look, it's our old friend Erik Prince, Blackwater founder and brother of Trump Education Secretary Betsy DeVos!  If  the Times story seems familiar, that's because it should be. The CNN story that got retracted was really the other half of last year's Washington Post story from April on Prince attending this secret early January 2016 meeting with the Russians in the Seychelles.

Now we know who the UAE's broker was, George Nader...and he's cooperating with Mueller over possibly extremely illegal foreign campaign contributions to Trump. Kudos to the New York Times for putting these together.

Prince runs as a fixer for this meeting where money flows to Trump, and his sister ends up in Trump's cabinet.  Oh, and Prince gets access to the Pentagon to sell his latest mercenary war scheme just as the drums of war start up for North Korea.

Now imagine what Mueller's team knows about Nader, Prince, and DeVos, folks.  If Nader is getting a deal to talk to Mueller, the information he has is valuable to his investigation.  That means it's high-level stuff, like say, the Russians sending money to Trump's campaign through the UAE, and expecting things in return.

George Nader is the key to this side of the collusion and influence game.  He's been cooperating with Mueller for close to a year now., and yes, that includes Erik Prince's attempt to set up a Trump backchannel to Putin through the UAE.

Turns out that Robert Mueller knows all about that meeting because Nader is cooperating with Mueller's team, and that means there was far more to this January 2016 meeting than just a friendly chat.  We now know what that additional info is and what Nader is providing: it was a secret attempt at a backchannel between Trump and Putin and Nader was a witness to it all.


It also means that Prince lied to Congress straight up about the meeting when he testified.  Perjury is the kind of thing that puts you in federal prison.  Remember, Republicans impeached and attempted to remove Bill Clinton from office over his perjury.  We'll see what happens to Prince, but at this point, assume Robert Mueller has a nice box for him to live in for a while.

You, the ZVTS readers, knew about this nine months ago.  I told you then it was going to bear fruit, and it looks like the grim harvest is coming next month.

Stay tuned.

BREAKING: Russian Spy Pleads Guilty To Conspiracy

Russian spy Maria Butina's plea deal went through today and in a federal courtroom she pleaded guilty to conspiracy against the United States.

A Russian gun rights activist pleaded guilty Thursday to conspiring with a senior Russian official to infiltrate the conservative movement in the United States as an agent for the Kremlin from 2015 until her arrest in July 2017.

Maria Butina, 30, became the first Russian national convicted of seeking to influence U.S. policy in the run-up and through the 2016 election as a foreign agent, agreeing to cooperate in a plea deal with U.S. investigators in exchange for less prison time.

Butina admitted to working with an American political operative and under the direction of a former Russian senator and deputy governor of Russia’s central bank to forge bonds with officials at the National Rifle Association, conservative leaders, and 2016 U.S. presidential candidates, including Donald Trump, whose rise to the Oval Office she presciently predicted to her Russian contact.

“Guilty,” Butina said with a light accent in entering her plea with U.S. District Judge Tanya S. Chutkan at a hearing Thursday morning in federal court in Washington.

As part of her plea, Butina admitted seeking to establish and use “unofficial lines of communication with Americans having influence over U.S. politics” for the benefit of the Russian government, through a person fitting the description of sanctioned Russian central banker Alexander Torshin, prosecutor Erik Kenerson said.

The court did not set a sentencing date pending Butina’s ongoing cooperation with prosecutors but set another hearing for Feb. 12 on the status of her case.

Butina is expected to provide evidence against a Republican Party consultant with whom she had a romantic relationship and worked closely with after they met while he visited Moscow in 2013. The operative, previously named as Paul Erickson, is a longtime GOP political advisor from South Dakota who managed the 1992 presidential campaign of Pat Buchanan.

Here's your Russian collusion, right the hell there, and the NRA was in on it.

Merry Christmas, Donald.

The Turtle Gets Hemped In

After years of pressure from Kentucky's junior GOP Senator Rand Paul, Kentucky's senior senator, GOP Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, has finally given in on legalizing hemp across the US.

The US Congress on Wednesday approved the legalization of large-scale hemp cultivation and its removal from a list of controlled substances.

“This is the culmination of a lot of work by a number of us here in Washington but really the victory is for the growers, processors, manufacturers and consumers who stand to benefit from this growing market place,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said.

The measure was supported by both Republicans and Democrats who argued it was an opportunity for American farmers.

It appears in a major law on agriculture that was adopted by a clear majority in the House of Representatives (369-47) after comfortably passing the Senate (87-13) the day before.

The law has not yet been signed by President Donald Trump.

“I’ll be happy to loan him my hemp pen for the occasion,” joked McConnell, a conservative from the state of Kentucky who had vigorously defended the measure after already pushing for the authorization of pilot programs in 2014.

The real reason that it took so long is that McConnell didn't want President Obama getting credit for signing a bill into law that helped rural farmers in places like Kentucky.  Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden of Oregon has been pushing industrial hemp legalization legislation for even longer than Rand Paul, but the bill never got past the Senate Judiciary Committee while Obama was President.

Trump comes along though, and suddenly we have a smooth trip through in the lame duck session.

Anyway, it is what it is, and Kentucky farmers need a cash crop to replace tobacco.  They could have had it four years ago, but the President was black or something.

StupidiNews!

• The Boy Scouts of America is facing possible bankruptcy in the wake of lawsuits over sexual misconduct by employees against boys.
• The roulette of possible replacements for White House Chief of Staff John Kelly continues to spin, the latest candidate appears to be disgraced former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich.
• Chinese retaliation for the Vancouver arrest of cell giant Huawei's CFO now has seen a second Canadian national picked up in Beijing on charges of "harming state security".
• Having survived a no-confidence vote yesterday, UK PM Theresa May now faces calls from her cabinet ministers to vote on Brexit alternatives to prove her plan is the best.
• A new FCC panel plan would tax business internet to pay for rural broadband initiatives across the country, but the catch is consumers would also be taxed on streaming subscription services.

Last Call For May Or May Not

UK Prime Minister Theresa May has survived a no-confidence vote by her own party and will remain PM, but the fact is Brexit is continuing to hurtle off a cliff, and it will eventually take May with it into oblivion.

Britain’s prime minister, Theresa May, survived the gravest threat yet to her embattled leadership on Wednesday, winning a confidence motion called by Conservative Party lawmakers angry at her handling of the country’s troubled departure from the European Union.

But the victory celebration, if any, is likely to be short-lived. While Mrs. May survived to fight another day, her win did nothing to alter the parliamentary arithmetic that forced her this week to delay a critical vote on her plan for withdrawal from the European Union, or Brexit.

John Springford, deputy director of the Center for European Reform, a London-based research institute, said that the size of the vote against her “is an even clearer signal that she won’t be able to get her deal through Parliament, and makes it even more likely that when she puts the deal to the vote she will lose that.”

Mrs. May won the support of 200 Conservative lawmakers, while 117 voted against her. The protest vote exceeded many forecasts, and is expected to compound her difficulties in Parliament. Her enemies were already pressuring her.

“This was a terrible result for the prime minister,” said Jacob Rees-Mogg, a leader of the hard-line pro-Brexit faction.

She won only after promising that she would step aside soon after the Brexit agonies were over, according to reports from a meeting of Conservative Party lawmakers preceding the vote. That removed the generally unwelcome possibility that she would stand as party leader in the next general election.

One Conservative lawmaker, George Freeman, said that Mrs. May had made clear “that she has listened, heard and respects the will of the party that once she has delivered an orderly Brexit, she will step aside for the election of a new leader.”

The problem of course is that May cannot deliver anything close to an "orderly Brexit" and she doesn't have the votes and likely never will.  Yes, the bluff by the Tories was called and May survived the no-confidence measure, but there's no visible Brexit solution, and when it all blows up in a few months, it's going to be a disaster of epic proportions.

And somewhere, Vladimir Putin is laughing his ass off.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

President Trump's former lawyer and current convicted felon Michael Cohen is going to prison for three years.

A federal judge on Wednesday sentenced President Trump’s former attorney Michael Cohen to three years in prison for financial crimes and lying to Congress, as the disgraced former “fixer” apologized but said he felt it was his duty to cover up the “dirty deeds” of his former boss.

Cohen made an emotional apology to U.S. District Judge William H. Pauley III, taking responsibility for what the judge called a “veritable smorgasbord of criminal conduct” — crimes that included tax violations, lying to a bank and buying the silence during the 2016 campaign of women who claimed that they once had affairs with the future president.

The downfall of the hard-charging, high-profile lawyer has potential consequences far beyond Cohen, as authorities have alleged Trump directed him in violating campaign finance laws. Facing his day of reckoning, Cohen laid plenty of the blame at the president’s feet, and his lawyer said he would continue to cooperate with the ongoing special counsel investigation of the president’s campaign.

“My weakness could be characterized as a blind loyalty to Donald Trump,” Cohen told the packed courtroom. He stood, sniffling and fighting back tears as he spoke, and paused occasionally to regain his composure.

Cohen had faced as much as five years and three months in prison, but Pauley said his sentence should reflect two key elements of Cohen’s case — punishing those who repeatedly break the law while rewarding those who cooperate and provide truthful testimony. Cohen has provided information to investigators about Trump and the Trump campaign, but prosecutors said he refused to tell them everything he knew.

“Our democratic institutions depend upon the honesty of our citizenry in dealing with the government,” Pauley said, calling Cohen’s crimes serious, particularly given his profession.

“As a lawyer, Mr. Cohen should have known better,” the judge said. “While Mr. Cohen is taking steps to mitigate his criminal conduct by pleading guilty and volunteering useful information to prosecutors, that does not wipe the slate clean." 

“Mr. Cohen selected the information he disclosed to the government,” Pauley said. “This court cannot agree with the defendant’s assertion that no jail time is warranted. In fact, this court firmly believes that a significant term of imprisonment is fully justified in this highly publicized case to send a message.”

The judge also ordered Cohen, a multimillionaire who owns pricey real estate and a taxi medallion business, to pay nearly $2 million in financial penalties.

And off to prison he goes, along with a hefty fine that will probably bankrupt him.  Oh, but it gets better:

Separately, New York prosecutors announced Wednesday that they had struck a non-prosecution agreement with AMI, the company that produces the National Enquirer tabloid, for its role in squelching stories of women who said they had relationships with Trump. AMI paid $150,000 to one of the women before the 2016 election. As part of the agreement, AMI admitted it made the payment principally “in concert” with Trump’s campaign to “suppress the women’s story so as to prevent it from influencing the election,” according to a statement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York.

So Trump's pals at the National Enquirer are rolling over on his deal to pay them to silence his mistresses, and because this is a state case, there's not a goddamn thing Trump can do about it.