The Prince Of Loot

I've talked several times on the blog about Erik Prince, the closest we've got to a James Bond villain/video game bad guy around, founder of Blackwater security and the kind of guy who has his own private army for hire.  He's neck deep in Russia too, having pitched his services to some of our friends in the Gulf and using his contacts there to arrange off-the-record meetings with Moscow. His sister, Betsy DeVos, married into the Amway fortune and is now Secretary of Education, and Erik wanted to hustle his way into replacing the US military in Afghanistan. 

It's that last part that the crew at BuzzFeed News have a story on this week, having obtained the presentation that Prince made to the US military and as you can probably expect from a mercenary warlord literally named Prince, it's all about looting the country.

Controversial private security tycoon Erik Prince has famously pitched an audacious plan to the Trump administration: Hire him to privatize the war in Afghanistan using squads of "security contractors." Now, for the first time, Buzzfeed News is publishing that pitch, a presentation that lays out how Prince wanted to take over the war from the US military — and how he envisioned mining some of the most war-torn provinces in Afghanistan to help fund security operations and obtain strategic mineral resources for the US. 

Prince, who founded the Blackwater security firm and testified last week to the House Intelligence Committee for its Russia investigation, has deep connections into the current White House: He’s friends with former presidential adviser Stephen Bannon, and he’s the brother of Betsy DeVos, the education secretary. 

Prince briefed top Trump administration officials directly, talked up his plan publicly on the DC circuit, and published op-eds about it. He patterned the strategy he's pitching on the historical model of the old British East India Company, which had its own army and colonized much of Britain's empire in India. "An East India Company approach," he wrote in the Wall Street Journal, "would use cheaper private solutions to fill the gaps that plague the Afghan security forces, including reliable logistics and aviation support." 

But the details have never been made public. Here is the never-before-published slide presentation for his pitch, which a source familiar with the matter said was prepared for the Trump administration.

One surprising element is the commercial promise Prince envisions: that the US will get access to Afghanistan’s rich deposits of minerals such as lithium, used in batteries; uranium; magnesite; and "rare earth elements," critical metals used in high technology from defense to electronics. One slide estimates the value of mineral deposits in Helmand province alone at $1 trillion. 

The presentation makes it plain that Prince intends to fund the effort through these rich deposits. His plan, one slide says, is "a strategic mineral resource extraction funded effort that breaks the negative security economic cycle." The slides also say that mining could provide jobs to Afghans.

It's the best of "the oil will pay for the war!" days of Dubya.  Only it's rare earth metals.

And man, this slide show is something.

"What is laid out in the slides is a model of an affordable way for the US to stabilize a failed state where we are presently wasting American youth and tens of billions of dollars annually," a Prince spokesperson emailed BuzzFeed News Thursday.

Defense Secretary James Mattis “did meet with Mr. Prince earlier this year,” a Defense Department spokesperson said. “He meets with people all the time to listen and hear new ideas.” The CIA declined to comment. It’s been widely reported that the Pentagon pushed back against Prince’s concept, and that national security adviser H.R. McMaster was opposed to it as well. 

Prince currently runs a Chinese security and logistics company, as BuzzFeed News has previously reported. Still, in his pitch to America's policymakers, he plays the US against China. One slide, devoted to "market manipulation in rare earth elements," presents China as dominating the market for the valuable minerals. 

Ironically, the statement from Prince's spokesman that said Prince's Chinese company, Frontier Services Group, would participate in the Afghanistan plan, and "would provide logistics support to the extractive firms with secure transportation and camp support."

Not only will Prince help you get the loot, he'll help you move it as well.  I mean mercenary armies already have to be pretty good at large-scale logistics, right?  For a percentage of the take, that is.

A pretty good scam if you ask me.  Guess Trump didn't get enough of the pie to pursue it.  He's all about real estate, not commodities.  Can't build a luxury hotel on a strip mine, ya know.  Bad neighborhood.

The Shine Comes Off The Orange

The latest comprehensive polling from Pew Research shows Donald Trump is in far worse position than he was in February.  In other words, Trump being in the mid-40s was, as many of us predicted, the high point of the regime's popularity.

Trump’s job rating of 32% is lower than those of recent presidents dating back to Ronald Reagan near the end of their first year in office. In follow-up questions, those who approve of Trump were asked if he has done things that have disappointed them, while those who disapprove (63% of the public) were asked if he has done things they have been happy with. 

Overall, 37% of Trump approvers cite something Trump has done to disappoint them (62% say they can’t think of anything). In December 2009, by comparison, somewhat fewer (30%) of those who approved of Barack Obama’s job performance said there was something Obama had done that had made them unhappy; at the time, Obama’s job approval was 49%. 

The criticisms raised by Trump supporters are quite different from those cited by Obama’s backers eight years ago. About a quarter (26%) say they have been disappointed by aspects of Trump’s personal style, with 14% specifically mentioning his use of Twitter or social media. An identical share (14%) points to his behavior or speech. Only 13% of those who approve of Trump cite a disappointment related to policy. 

In December 2009, disappointments among those who gave Obama a positive job rating were mostly about policies, not Obama’s personal style. Just 5% of those who approved of Obama cited an aspect of Obama’s personality or style, while 29% said they had been disappointed by policies such as Afghanistan or health care. 

Among the majority of Americans who disapprove of Trump’s job performance, 14% say there is something he has done that they have been happy with (84% say they are unable to think of anything). The most frequent responses focus on Trump’s domestic policies (8%), while just 3% mention his personal style. Eight years ago, a higher share of those who disapproved of Obama (24%) said there was something they had been happy with; as with Trump, most who disapproved of Obama’s job performance in 2009 cited policies, rather than his style, as what they had been happy with.

But the most interesting part is that Trump is starting to lose his core supporters.  After all, he doesn't have much of anyone else to lose as his numbers keep dropping.



You catch that?  Trump has a big drop with moderate Republicans,  losing 16 points with them down to 55% approval.    He's also lost a huge chunk, 17 points, with white evangelical Christians, down from 78% approval to 61%.

But he's now underwater with non-college white voters, down from 56% to 46%.  That's the big one.

And that overall 32% approval rating?  Trump is the least-liked president in generations.  Here's the thing though, there's room for it to fall even further should Mueller drop the hammer.

Of course, there's also plenty of room for a Dubya-style boost into the 70-80% range should we end up in a Great Patriotic War or something.  If there's anyone left after the bombs drop to praise him, that is.

Last Call For Russian To Judgment, Con't

Time for our pretty regular Friday round-up of this week's news dumps on Trump/Russia collusion, and once again our star is America's favorite knucklehead son, Donald Trump Jr.  Young Donnie can't seem to tell the truth, and he was grilled this week by the House Intelligence Committee behind closed doors, and the conversation was on Donald Trump Jr's conversations with WikiLeaks.  CNN posted a story on an email Junior got on it, but The Washington Post followed up on the CNN story, clarifying that the email in question was sent September 104h, not on September 4th of last year, meaning it was after the DNC leak was made public.

A 2016 email sent to President Trump and top aides pointed the campaign to hacked documents from the Democratic National Committee that had already been made public by the group WikiLeaks a day earlier. 

The email — sent the afternoon of Sept. 14, 2016 — noted that “Wikileaks has uploaded another (huge 678 mb) archive of files from the DNC” and included a link and a “decryption key,” according to a copy obtained by The Washington Post. 

The writer, who said his name was Michael J. Erickson and described himself as the president of an aviation management company, sent the message to the then-Republican nominee as well as his eldest son, Donald Trump Jr., and other top advisers.
The day before, WikiLeaks had tweeted links to what the group said was 678.4 megabytes of DNC documents. 

The full email — which was first described to CNN as being sent on Sept. 4, 10 days earlier — indicates that the writer may have simply been flagging information that was already widely available.

The message also noted that information from former secretary of state Colin Powell’s inbox was available “on DCLeaks.com.” That development, too, had been publicly reported earlier that day. 

Alan S. Futerfas, an attorney for Trump Jr., described it as one of “a ton of unsolicited emails like this on a variety of topics.” 

Futerfas said Erickson was unknown to Trump Jr. or the campaign. The message was one of thousands turned over to the House Intelligence Committee and others investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, emails that included spam and junk emails. Trump Jr. was asked about the email Wednesday, when he spent about seven hours behind closed doors answering questions from members of the committee. 

“The email was never read or responded to — and the House Intelligence Committee knows this,” he said. “It is profoundly disappointing that members of the House Intelligence Committee would deliberately leak a document, with the misleading suggestion that the information was not public, when they know that there is not a scintilla of evidence that Mr. Trump Jr. read or responded to the email.” 

Futerfas said that he and Trump Jr. had been required to surrender their electronic devices during the interview for security reasons. He expressed anger that details of the session leaked out before it had even concluded.

“We are concerned that these actions, combined with the deliberate and misleading leak of a meaningless email, undermines the credibility of the serious work the House Intelligence Committee is supposedly undertaking,” he said.

And while CNN definitely got it wrong (again) it doesn't change the fact that the Trumps are in real trouble.  Meanwhile, Jon Chait believes the Mueller firing is imminent:

The administration and its allied media organs, especially those owned by Rupert Murdoch, have spent months floating a series of rationales, of varying degrees of implausibility, for why a deeply respected Republican law-enforcement veteran is disqualified to lead the inquiry: He is friends with James Comey, who is biased because Trump fired him; Comey is biased because he pursued leads turned up in Christopher Steele’s investigation, which was financed by Democrats; Mueller has failed to investigate Hillary Clinton’s marginal-to-nonexistent role in a uranium sale.

The newest pseudo-scandal fixates on the role of Peter Strzok, an FBI official who helped tweak the language Comey employed in his statement condemning Clinton’s carelessness and has also worked for Mueller. 

His alleged crime is a series of text messages criticizing Trump. Mueller removed Strzok from his team, but that is not enough for Trump’s supporters, who are seizing on Strzok’s role as a pretext to discredit and remove Mueller, too. The notion that a law-enforcement official should be disqualified for privately expressing partisan views is a novel one, and certainly did not trouble Republicans last year, when Rudy Giuliani was boasting on television about his network of friendly agents. Yet in the conservative media, Mueller and Comey have assumed fiendish personae of almost Clintonian proportions. 

When Mueller was appointed, legal scholars debated whether Trump had the technical authority to fire him, but even the majority who believed he did assumed such a power existed only in theory. Republicans in Congress, everyone believed, would never sit still for such a blatant cover-up. 

Josh Blackman, a conservative lawyer, argued that Trump could remove the special counsel, but “make no mistake: Mueller’s firing would likely accelerate the end of the Trump administration.” Texas representative Mike McCaul declared in July, “If he fired Bob Mueller, I think you’d see a tremendous backlash, response from both Democrats but also House Republicans.” Such a rash move “could be the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency,” Senator Lindsey Graham proclaimed. 

In August, members of both parties began drawing up legislation to prevent Trump from sacking Mueller. “The Mueller situation really gave rise to our thinking about how we can address the current situation,” explained Republican senator Thom Tillis, a sponsor of one of the bills. By early autumn, the momentum behind the effort had slowed; by Thanksgiving, Republican interest had melted away. “I don’t see any heightened kind of urgency, if you’re talking about some of the reports around Flynn and others,” Tillis said recently. “I don’t see any great risk.” 

In fact, the risk has swelled. Trump has publicly declared any investigation into his finances would constitute a red line, and that he reserves the option to fire Mueller if he investigates them. Earlier this month, it was reported that Mueller has subpoenaed records at Deutsche Bank, an institution favored both by Trump and the Russian spy network.

Both the Strzok poutrage and Deutsche Bank financial dealings lead Chait to believe that this is a concerted effort to influence Trump to pull the trigger on his Saturday Night Massacre, and a GOP that not only blithely accepts Roy Moore but actively champions him won't take any action whatsoever when he does.

If that's the case, it's a good think Mueller is taking precautions.

As Mueller’s probe has gotten closer to Trump’s inner orbit, speculation has risen over whether Trump might find a way to shut it down. The Flynn deal may make that harder. For one thing, it shows that Mueller is making progress. “Any rational prosecutor would realize that in this political environment, laying down a few markers would be a good way of fending off criticism that the prosecutors are burning through money and not accomplishing anything,” says Samuel Buell, a former federal prosecutor now at Duke Law School.

The Flynn plea also makes it difficult for Trump to fire Mueller without inviting accusations of a cover-up and sparking a constitutional crisis, says Michael Weinstein, a former Department of Justice prosecutor now at the law firm Cole Schotz. “There would be a groundswell, it would look so objectionable, like the Saturday Night Massacre with Nixon,” Weinstein says, referring to President Richard Nixon’s attempt to derail the Watergate investigation in 1973 by firing special prosecutor Archibald Cox. 

Even if Mueller goes, his team is providing tools that other prosecutors or investigators can use to continue inquiries. Flynn’s deal requires him to cooperate with state and local officials as well as with federal investigators. That includes submitting to a polygraph test and taking part in “covert law enforcement activities.” Mueller also has provided a road map to state prosecutors interested in pursuing money laundering charges against Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort. 

Mueller’s case against Manafort lays out a series of irregular wire transfers made from Manafort’s bank accounts in Cyprus to a variety of companies in the U.S. The sums that Manafort transferred suggest the possibility that some of the money was diverted for other purposes. Mueller stopped short of filing charges related to where the money went. But by including the details in his indictment, he left open the possibility of bringing charges in a follow-up indictment and perhaps left breadcrumbs for state authorities to pursue.

Mueller's not stupid, he knows Trump is going to try to fire him and end the investigation.  I'm confident he has mutually assured destruction tactics set up just in case.

Let Them Eat Austerity

With Republicans feeling very confident now that they can pass their horrid tax scam bill, talk is moving towards the long-predicted other shoe dropping: Paul Ryan's cruel and draconian austerity budget for 2018.  Republicans are feeling so confident right now that Ryan is openly saying now that he will destroy Medicare, Medicaid, and federal welfare programs and he fully expects to make it happen.

The House GOP caucus plans to work on entitlement reform next year as a way to "tackle the debt and the deficit," according to House Speaker Paul Ryan. 

Speaking to Ross Kaminsky on his talk radio show, the Wisconsin Republican said Wednesday that the House would be working to reform health care entitlements in 2018, calling them "the big drivers of our debt," during a discussion about the Republican tax bill. 

"Tax reform grows the economy," Ryan said. "So we basically planned in this term three big budget bills: two entitlement reform bills, one economic growth tax reform bill. The first one passed the House, failed the Senate, this one, both tax bills have passed the House and the Senate, we're on track with that, and then next year we're going to have to get back at entitlement reform." 

Ryan specifically mentioned Medicare as being the "biggest entitlement that's got to have reform." 

"Really, what it is is we need to convert our health care system to a patient-centered system, so that people have more choices, we have more competition," Ryan later said. 

Ryan also noted that, in addition to health care, the GOP plans to work on reforming the US welfare system. 

"We think it's important to get people from welfare to work," Ryan said. "We have a welfare system that's basically trapping people in poverty and effectively paying people not to work, and we've got to work on that." 

Independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders responded to Ryan's comments critically on Twitter, arguing that the Republican Party planned to pay for its tax bill with cuts to entitlements. 

"There it is. Paul Ryan just admitted that after providing $1 trillion in tax breaks to the top 1% and large corporations, Republicans will try to cut Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and help for the most vulnerable Americans," Sanders wrote.

I have plenty of problems with Sanders, but he's 100% right about Ryan's plans.  As it is the GOP tax bill will make hundreds of billions in cuts to Medicare and Medicaid over the next decade, and Republicans will not stop the carnage there.  Anyone my age or younger can forget about retirement or health care at age 70, and that's if we make it there at all.

This is why tens of millions of Americans, including myself, said that we needed Hillary Clinton to stop Ryan and the GOP from doing exactly what they are planning right now. Another four years of gridlock would be preferable to Ryan's scorched earth economics and trillion in austerity spending cuts.

Instead, America said "Hey, let's elect Trump, he's a populist.  He won't screw us over."

Still feeling good about that choice, guys?

The GOP Handmaid's Tale Simulator, 2017 Edition

What a lot of guys don't get about harassment is that it's about power at its core, power derived from being an employer or political figure or religious figure or from other sources, that is being used against women to put them in situations that makes them powerless.  It's not always physical, although it most often is.  It can very much be verbal, social, mental, and/or emotional or a combination of that too.  Any situation where you have power over somebody else can be harassment.

That brings us to the latest iteration of the GOP's Handmaid's Tale Simulation program, apparently being run out of Arizona Rep. Trent Franks's office.

Arizona Republican Trent Franks said Thursday he is resigning from Congress effective Jan. 31 amid an Ethics Committee investigation into discussions he had with two female staffers about surrogacy.

In a lengthy statement Thursday evening, Franks said he and his wife struggled with fertility.

“I have recently learned that the Ethics Committee is reviewing an inquiry regarding my discussion of surrogacy with two previous female subordinates, making each feel uncomfortable,” Franks said. “I deeply regret that my discussion of this option and process in the workplace caused distress.”

Rather than allowing “a sensationalized trial by media damage those things I love most,” he said he had notified House leadership he would resign effective Jan. 31. 

Speaker Paul D. Ryan’s office said in a statement the speaker had accepted Franks’ resignation letter. Ryan was first briefed about the allegations Nov. 30. In a meeting with Franks the following day, he told the Arizona lawmaker he needed to step down and Ryan later referred the allegations to the House Ethics Committee.

“The speaker takes seriously his obligation to ensure a safe workplace in the House,” Ryan’s office said.

Franks said that in “this current cultural and media climate,” he was “deeply convinced” he would be unable “to complete a fair House Ethics investigation before distorted and sensationalized versions of this story would put me, my family, my staff, and my noble colleagues in the House of Representatives through hyperbolized public excoriation.”

The Arizona Republican said he had “absolutely never physically intimidated, coerced, or had, or attempted to have, any sexual contact with any member of my congressional staff.”

That's right, Franks asked not one, but at least two of the female staffers in his office if they would bear his children as surrogates.  And he thought nothing of it.  I can certainly appreciate the struggles and heartbreak of infertility, but you don't get to ask one of your employees if you can rent their wombs, especially if you're a public servant.  That's a brutal misuse of power over employees and over women.

And given the speed at which Franks is resigning (imagine that, a Republican resigning over harassment of women) and his statements, I believe honestly that it didn't even occur to Franks at the time that this was a wildly awful idea, that it would (correctly) be perceived as Franks believing he has agency over the uterus of a female employee because "Hey, I'm Trent Franks, I'm so awesome that surely you want to help your boss have children" and that he thought they would say yes, otherwise he wouldn't have asked in the first place.

That level of stunning arrogance is astounding.  And note that Franks's statement mentioned "former subordinates", women who had come to work for him but left, obviously over being asked to give Franks not only their work but their bodies as well, as if he was entitled to them.

I'm not sure what kind of level of privilege you have to have in order to say to yourself that it's okay to ask an employee about having your kid for you, but nobody with that broken a soul needs to be anywhere near politics or near making laws for anybody, but especially laws for what women are allowed to do with their bodies. Of course Franks voted for the latest House GOP legislation calling for a national ban on abortion procedures later than 20 weeks.

[UPDATE] And Franks is resigning immediately due to this story:

Arizona Rep. Trent Franks allegedly made unwanted advances toward female staffers in his office and retaliated against one who rebuffed him, according to House GOP sources with knowledge of a complaint against him. 

The allegations, which reached Speaker Paul Ryan and top GOP leaders in recent days, led to Franks' sudden resignation this week. Franks originally announced that he would resign on Jan. 31, 2018. But just hours after POLITICO inquired about the allegations, he sped up his resignation and left office Friday.

The sources said Franks approached two female staffers about acting as a potential surrogate for him and his wife, who has struggled with fertility issues for years. But the aides were concerned that Franks was asking to have sexual relations with them. It was not clear to the women whether he was asking about impregnating the women through sexual intercourse or in vitro fertilization. Franks opposes abortion rights as well as procedures that discard embryos. 

A former staffer also alleged that Franks tried to persuade a female aide that they were in love by having her read an article that described how a person knows they’re in love with someone, the sources said. One woman believed she was the subject of retribution after rebuffing Franks. While she enjoyed access to the congressman before the incident, that access was revoked afterward, she told Republican leaders.

Scumbags, all of them.

 

StupidiNews!

• Some 141,000 acres in across Southern California have been scorched by wildfires as a sixth blaze broke out in San Diego County, nearly 200,000 people have been evacuated this week.
• The Department of Justice is opening an investigation into Planned Parenthood's handling of fetal tissue after abortion procedures, a 2015 Senate investigation found no wrongdoing.
• World leaders will meet in Paris this weekend to find a solution to the crisis in Lebanon after the country's Prime Minister resigned while in Saudi Arabia, fearing for his life.
• UK and EU officials say they have reached a "breakthrough" in Brexit talks, but that only means more difficult post-Brexit trade negotiations for the UK's future place in Europe.
• After mastering the game of Go in three days in October, the IBM DeepMind team's newest AI, AlphaZero, has become a chess master in about four hours.

Last Call For Who's The Boss?

I mentioned last week that the growing battle over the future of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was in full effect, as Richard Cordray left the agency to run for Governor in Ohio.  He left the agency to its deputy director, but Trump appointed his budget direct Mick Mulvaney to run the agency.

A federal court sided with Mulvaney, and within a week, the "Consumer" has all but been removed from the title of the agency, it's now very much the Financial Protection Bureau.

The defanging of a federal consumer watchdog agency began last week in a federal courthouse in San Francisco. 

After a nearly three-year legal skirmish, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau appeared to have been victorious. A judge agreed in September with the bureau that a financial company had misled more than 100,000 mortgage customers. As punishment, the judge ordered the Ohio company, Nationwide Biweekly Administration, to pay nearly $8 million in penalties. 

All that was left was to collect the cash. Last week, lawyers from the consumer bureau filed an 11-page brief asking the judge to force Nationwide to post an $8 million bond while the proceedings wrapped up. 

Then Mick Mulvaney was named the consumer bureau’s acting director. 

Barely 48 hours later, the same lawyers filed a new two-sentence brief. Their request: to withdraw their earlier submission and no longer take a position on whether Nationwide should put up the cash. 

It was a subtle but unmistakable sign that the consumer bureau under Mr. Mulvaney is headed in a new direction — one that takes a lighter touch to regulating the financial industry. The reversal is part of a broad push by the Trump administration to unfetter companies from Obama-era regulations.

Inside the agency, change has been swift. Mr. Mulvaney briefly stopped approval of payments to some victims of financial crime, halted hiring, froze all new rule-making and ordered a review of active investigations and lawsuits. Some, he has indicated, will be abandoned. 

“This place will be different, under my leadership and under whoever follows me,” Mr. Mulvaney said Monday about an agency that he previously denounced as a “sad, sick” example of bureaucracy gone amok. 

Mr. Mulvaney took over leadership of the bureau, created in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, less than two weeks ago. The abrupt resignation of Richard Cordray, the bureau’s longtime director, who had been appointed by President Barack Obama, set off an extraordinary public fight for control of the agency. The battle pitted Mr. Mulvaney, who was named acting director by President Trump, against Leandra English, the bureau’s deputy director under Mr. Cordray. While Mr. Trump can appoint his own director, confirmation could take months. Until then, the acting director is in charge. 

Last week, a federal judge ruled in Mr. Mulvaney’s favor, denying an emergency motion that Ms. English had filed to stop the White House from selecting a temporary director. The lawsuit is continuing. 

The bureau has been investigating Santander, the giant Spanish bank, for overcharging auto loan customers. Given the tenor of recent conversations inside the bureau, agency lawyers suspect the investigation could be shelved under Mr. Mulvaney, according to four people with knowledge of the case who requested anonymity to discuss an investigation. 

Raschelle Burton, a spokeswoman for Santander, said the company was not aware of any planned lawsuit from the C.F.P.B.

By the time the matter gets to the Supreme Court -- if they even bother to take it up -- Mulvaney will have long ended the agency's investigations and will have wrecked any hope of consumers getting their money back from the banks.

Mulvaney wasn't brought in to streamline the agency.  He was brought in to dismantle it.  And there's every reason to believe the GOP will find a way to eliminate the agency sooner rather than later.  Remember the Dubya days, where industry regulators were tasked to protect industries from lawsuits?  We're back to that with a vengeance.

But hey, this is what the country voted for, right?

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Michael Flynn is the gift that keeps on giving...to Robert Mueller, that is.  His major problem is he could never keep his mouth shut, especially when it comes to how smart he is.  And while conservatives point to the lack of conspiracy charges against Flynn so far as "proof" there was no Trump campaign collusion with Russia, the reality is far, far different.

Michael T. Flynn, President Trump’s former national security adviser, told a former business associate that economic sanctions against Russia would be “ripped up” as one of the Trump administration’s first acts, according to an account by a whistle-blower made public on Wednesday. 

Mr. Flynn believed that ending the sanctions could allow a business project he had once participated in to move forward, according to the whistle-blower. The account is the strongest evidence to date that the Trump administration wanted to end the sanctions immediately, and suggests that Mr. Flynn had a possible economic incentive for the United States to forge a closer relationship with Russia. 

Mr. Flynn had worked on a business venture to partner with Russia to build nuclear power plants in the Middle East until June 2016, but remained close with the people involved afterward. On Inauguration Day, according to the whistle-blower, Mr. Flynn texted the former business associate to say that the project was “good to go.” 

The account is detailed in a letter written by Representative Elijah Cummings of Maryland, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee. In the letter, Mr. Cummings said that the whistle-blower contacted his office in June and has authorized him to go public with the details. He did not name the whistle-blower.

Remember, Mueller isn't the only investigatory body looking at Trump and Russian collusion, it's important not to forget that.  Yes, Mueller almost certainly knows everything that the House Oversight Committee, Senate Judiciary, and House Judiciary Committees know, but he's not going to leak anything directly.  Democrats on these committees, well, they made it clear that they're not bound by such fetters.

“These grave allegations compel a full, credible and bipartisan congressional investigation,” Mr. Cummings wrote. 

Mr. Flynn has been under investigation by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russia’s attempts to disrupt last year’s election, for calls he made last December to Sergey I. Kislyak, the Russian ambassador to the United States at the time. Mr. Flynn pleaded guilty on Friday to lying to the F.B.I. about the nature of his calls, during which the men discussed the sanctions that the Obama administration had just imposed on Russia.

In his letter, Mr. Cummings also said that his staff had been in consultations with Mr. Mueller’s team, which brought the criminal charge against Mr. Flynn. Staffers for the special counsel asked Mr. Cummings not to make the whistle-blower’s account public until “they completed certain investigative steps,” he wrote. 

According to the account detailed in the letter, the whistle-blower had a conversation on Inauguration Day with Alex Copson of ACU Strategic Partners, a company that hired Mr. Flynn in 2015 as an adviser to develop a plan to work with Russia to build nuclear power plants throughout the Middle East. Mr. Flynn served as an adviser until June 2016. 

During the conversation, Mr. Copson told the whistle-blower that “this is the best day of my life” because it was “the start of something I’ve been working on for years, and we are good to go.” Mr. Copson told the whistle-blower that Mr. Flynn had sent him a text message during Mr. Trump’s inaugural address, directing him to tell others involved in the nuclear project to continue developing their plans.

Clearly Flynn, as national security adviser, believed Russian sanctions would be eliminated under the Trump regime and that the projects he was working on, mainly these Russian nuclear plants in the Middle East, would be a cakewalk.

He of course was wrong.

Whether or not Mueller can prove that in court is something for another day, but the right is dreaming if it thinks Mueller and the various Congressional Committees are bluffing.  Again this is going to be a political fight in the end, and indeed the Flynn indictment is starting to make Americans realize that there's something fundamentally wrong with this regime, as a new CBS News poll finds.

Most Americans think former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn's guilty plea and cooperation with the special counsel is a serious issue for the Trump administration, including a third of Republicans. But most Republicans see the Russia investigation overall as politically motivated.

Americans divide in their views on the Russia investigation: eight in 10 Republicans call it politically motivated, while three in four Democrats say it is justified. 

Some Republicans – just over four in 10 - do think it's at least somewhat likely that senior Trump advisers had improper dealings with Russia, but they are less likely than Democrats to think that Flynn's guilty plea is a serious issue for the administration.

Overall, most Americans think the whole situation is an important issue to the country, but fewer Republicans think that.

Americans who think the Russia investigation is justified overwhelmingly see the Flynn matter as serious. But even the more than four in 10 who view the investigation as politically motivated also think the Flynn matter is a serious issue for the administration.

The big number in that CBS poll: 67% of Americans overall believe the Trump regime had improper dealings with Russia.  That two-thirds figure includes 43% of Republicans.  Two out of three Americans believe there was collusion, guys.  We're not at a critical mass where the GOP will drop support of Trump yet, but we're getting awfully close, and Trump knows it. 

This week in Trump's foreign policy proves that.

BREAKING: Justice For Walter Scott

Two-and-a-half years ago I predicted that former South Charleston cop Michael Slager would never be found guilty of murder for shooting unarmed black man Walter Scott in the back eight times as Scott ran away, and in a bystander's mobile phone video Slager appeared to plant "evidence" at the scene after Scott was killed. 

Slager plead guilty to a federal violation of civil rights charge in May after the jury in his state trial was deadlocked.  I had little hope that federal charges would amount to much, even though Slager was possibly facing a life sentence for murder one.  Slager and his lawyers obviously thought the same and they had every reason to believe that Slager would get off lightly, if serve any time at all.

Today a federal judge ruled that Michael Slager will be sentenced to prison for murder.

Former South Carolina police officer Michael Slager has been sentenced to 19 to 24 years in prison for the deadly shooting of unarmed black man Walter Scott. 

U.S. District Judge David Norton ruled today that the former officer committed second-degree murder and obstruction of justice. The judge's sentencing decision comes after Slager, who is white, pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights offense. 

Slager shot and killed Scott on April 4, 2015, while Slager was an officer with the North Charleston Police Department. Witness video that surfaced shortly after the encounter appeared to show the moment Slager fatally shot Scott as he ran away. He was fired from the force after the shooting. 

Slager was charged in South Carolina with murder and pleaded not guilty. During the murder trial, Slager's attorney said his client shot Scott because he was in fear for his life. In 2016, the case ended in a mistrial. The state retrial and federal trial were expected to take place this year, but instead, in May Slager pleaded guilty to violating Scott's civil rights in federal court, ending the federal case against him and also resolving the state charges that were pending after the mistrial. 

The judge's ruling today followed several days of testimony, including from Feiden Santana, the witness who filmed the shooting, and Judy Scott, Walter Scott's mother.

I'm good with this, if not ecstatic.  There are federal judges that still can see obvious abuses of power by police in America and can deliver justice.  But keep in mind as I said recently that if Donald Trump has his way, federal courts will be packed with hundreds of new terrible right-wing judges with lifetime tenures.

And then black lives truly won't matter anymore.

Olympic Levels Of Trolling

I'm sure there's still readers out there who still don't believe that the Trump regime is taking orders from the Russians, but I'm going to make another case for that here: this week the Russians were kicked out of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Games in South Korea in February as the International Olympic Committee dropped the hammer on Putin and Russian sports doping in Sochi in 2014. The Atlantic's Julia Ioffe:

In rigging the Olympics, Putin got what he wanted—a successful event and a winning medal count—but the conspiracy that Russia needed to get there inevitably surfaced, and now 11 of those 33 medalists have been stripped of their prizes. Others will be given medals in their stead at Pyeongchang Olympics. Russian sport officials, like Mutko, are now banned from the Olympics for life. Russian athletes won’t be able to compete in Winter Olympics under their flag—athletes proven to be clean can compete under a neutral flag. In fact, neither the Russian anthem nor the Russian flag will appear in Pyeongchang.

In October, Putin, anticipating the IOC’s decision, said that this would be “a humiliation for the country.” Humiliation, a word echoed by many Russians when the punishment was handed down on Tuesday, the same word in the mouths of so many Russians in the wake of the Vancouver flop. Humiliation is a particular obsession for Putin, the fear of it informing his posturing at home and abroad. Before Americans spoke of making America great again, Russians spoke of Putin raising Russia up off its knees, a two-decade exercise of expunging the humiliation of the Soviet collapse. Sochi and the elaborate doping scheme used there was intended to do just that, to erase the humiliation of Vancouver, to show that Russia had restored its historic glory, to end the international mockery and disdain. Instead, like so many of Russia’s moves under Putin, it achieved the opposite. Yet again, the glitz turned out to be a sloppy front for the rot.

It may have been an impressive, FSB-orchestrated operation, but what did it get them? After Vancouver, Russia may have been smarting with the perceived humiliation of performing below their own expectations—but after Sochi, the Russian flag won’t fly at the next Olympics at all. Russian officials are busy denouncing this kind of Olympic Games as hopelessly “hobbled” and “not even the Olympics,” while others call for a full boycott by the clean Russian athletes. This wasn’t what Sochi was supposed to achieve. This is a humiliation far worse than Vancouver’s; this is pariah status. Except that Russia was already a pariah for its actions in Ukraine and for meddling in America’s 2016 presidential election, both of which made Russia’s position in the world more complicated, not less. If Putin is the omniscient mastermind many Americans imagine him to be, surely he would have anticipated this?

When I was last in Moscow, a military analyst told me that, after two decades of post-Soviet Western mockery, Russia had decided that, since no one in the West was going to love it, at least they’d fear it. But what comes after that, when the consequences set in and the fear turns to loathing condescension? Isn’t that … humiliating?

So where am I going with this?  The Olympic world humiliated Putin, so now Putin will do everything he can to turn the 2018 Winter Games into an international joke.  That apparently starts with the US suddenly floating the idea to drop out of the Olympiad.

Whether US athletes will be able to attend the 2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea remains an "open question," US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley said Wednesday night. 

The Winter Olympics are set to be held Feb. 9-25 in Pyeongchang, South Korea. The situation with neighboring North Korea, which has grown increasingly hostile while pursuing its nuclear ambitions, is "changing by the day," Haley said on Fox News, making the security of US athletes uncertain. 

Still, Haley said she believes President Donald Trump's administration will work to "find out the best way" to make sure the athletes are protected. 

"I think those are conversations we are going to have to have, but what have we always said? We don't ever fear anything, we live our lives," Haley said. "And certainly that is a perfect opportunity for all of them to go and do something they have worked so hard for. What we will do is, we will make sure that we're taking every precaution possible to make sure that they're safe and to know everything that's going on around them." 

Asked if it's a "done deal" that US athletes will be able to attend the Olympics, Haley said: "There's an open question. I have not heard anything about that, but I do know in the talks that we have -- whether it's Jerusalem or North Korea -- it's about, how do we protect the US citizens in the area?"

Suddenly, a day after the Russians were banned from the 2018 games in South Korea, the security of US athletes at the games is "an open question".  And if the security of the mightiest nation on earth is in question, maybe nobody else will be safe at the games either.  If the Trump regime may not send a delegation because of "security" then what do they know is coming? Maybe that makes everyone else nervous.  Maybe they shouldn't send delegations either, it's "too risky".

And suddenly it's not Russia being punished.  It's everyone, starting with host nation South Korea.

Putin may have his revenge.  And he may very well get it now if the US drops out of the Games.  Now, it's maybe a trial balloon, but I'm betting if the IOC were to change its mind about Russia, maybe the US would decide that the Games have to go on in the Olympic Spirit.

I can't prove of course that this is what happened, that Putin picked up the phone and called Trump and said "You need to threaten to pull out of the Olympics over North Korea".

But there are never coincidences this big at this level of the game.

StupidiNews!

• Major wildfires driven by hurricane-force Santa Ana winds are ripping through Los Angeles and surrounding Southern California communities and could continue burning for weeks.
• House Republicans have passed legislation that would require states to recognize concealed carry firearms permits issued by any state, a de facto national concealed carry law.
• Hamas is calling for a new Palestinian uprising in response to Donald Trump recognizing Jerusalem as the exclusive capital of Israel, Israeli troops are on standby in the West Bank.
• General Electric is announcing 12,000 job cuts in its electric power division in 2018, most of the cuts will come outside the US due to sharp drops in coal and gas power plant systems.
• A federal judge has sentenced a former Volkswagen executive to 7 years in prison and a $400,000 fine for his role in the automaker's diesel emissions cheating scandal.

Last Call For Conyers's Karma

Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers finally couldn't withstand the pressure to resign anymore and did the right thing...or was forced to, kicking and screaming.

Embattled Rep. John Conyers, D-Michigan, has announced Tuesday that he is retiring and has endorsed his son, John Conyers III to run for his seat. Conyers' lawyer confirmed that the retirement is effective immediately. 

"My legacy can't be compromised or diminished in any way by what we're going through now. This too shall pass," said Conyers on a local Michigan radio station Tuesday morning.

He added, "I want you to know that my legacy will continue through my children. I have a great family here and especially in my oldest boy, John Conyers III who incidentally I endorsed to replace me in my seat in Congress." 

Shortly after the announcement, Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas, took to the House floor to read a statement from Conyers. She said he asked her to read his statement announcing his decision and that he's notified House Speaker Paul Ryan, Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Michigan Governor Rick Snyder of his plans to step down. 

"Given the totality of the circumstance of not being afforded the right of due process in conjunction with current health conditions, and to preserve my legacy and good name, I am retiring. I hope my retirement will be viewed in the larger perspective of my record of service as I enter a new chapter," the statement from Conyers read.

But as politically useless as the Congressional Black Caucus has been over the last decade or so, they have a valid point when it comes to the double standard of Democrats not having the back of black lawmakers like Conyers compared to say, Sen. Al Franken.

Many CBC members see a double standard at play. They won't say the treatment of Conyers is racist, necessarily — and all express strong support for his alleged victims — but they think white politicians accused of similar misconduct like Blake Farenthold, Al Franken, Roy Moore and Donald Trump get a "benefit of the doubt" that black politicians don't enjoy.

Some members believe House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and other party leaders moved too quickly in calling on Conyers to resign and should have let the process play out more, although they understand the pressure she was facing. And still another faction thinks Conyers' declining health and mental acuity after more than 52 years in Congress led to the debacle, despite evidence that Conyers allegedly had been harassing female staffers for years. 

There is also significant anger within the CBC, aimed at one of their own: Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee (D-Texas). Conyers was going to announce his retirement from Congress last Friday. Then Monica Conyers, the congressman's wife, and Jackson Lee got involved and stopped it from happening, said several Democratic lawmakers and aides. That decision dragged out the controversy for five days, although the delay ultimately allowed Conyers to endorse his son, John Conyers III, for his seat. Ian Conyers, the congressman's grand-nephew and a Michigan state senator, also may run, setting off an intrafamily battle.

Franken, by the way, has yet another accusation out against him today.

A former Democratic congressional aide said Al Franken tried to forcibly kiss her after a taping of his radio show in 2006, three years before he became a U.S. senator. 

The aide, whose name POLITICO is withholding to protect her identity, said Franken (D-Minn.) pursued her after her boss had left the studio. She said she was gathering her belongings to follow her boss out of the room. When she turned around, Franken was in her face.

The former staffer ducked to avoid Franken’s lips. As she hastily left the room, she said, Franken told her: “It’s my right as an entertainer.” 

“He was between me and the door and he was coming at me to kiss me. It was very quick and I think my brain had to work really hard to be like ‘Wait, what is happening?’ But I knew whatever was happening was not right and I ducked,” the aide said in an interview. “I was really startled by it and I just sort of booked it towards the door and he said, ‘It’s my right as an entertainer.’” 

The former staffer, who was in her mid-20s at the time of the incident, said she did not respond to Franken.

That was a bridge too far for Senate Democrats, who called on Franken en masse to resign, and tomorrow he is expected to do just that.

A Democratic official who has spoken to Al Franken and key aides says Franken will resign his Minnesota Senate seat on Thursday, the official tells MPR News.

The official spoke to Franken and separately to Franken's staff. A staff member told the official that Franken had gone to his Washington home to discuss his plans with family.

MPR News agreed to withhold the official's name because the official wanted to give Franken the chance to talk about his decision in his own words.

Franken faced a cascade of calls Wednesday from fellow Democrats and other political allies to leave office in response to multiple allegations of sexual harassment.

So in the same week, within 48 hours of each other, both Conyers and Franken are gone.  I did say both had to go, but of course I also believe the same holds true for Roy Moore and Donald Trump.

And I know the argument, "If only Democrats resign then eventually there will be nothing but Republicans in Congress."  I'm sorry, but morality shouldn't be wholly dependent on the cynicism of political expediency.  That's what Republicans do.

Breaking The Silence, Finally

In a move sure to upset Donald Trump, TIME has not named Donald Trump person of the year in 2017.

TIME has named the Silence Breakers, the individuals who set off a national reckoning over the prevalence of sexual harassment, as its 2017 Person of the Year. 

The magazine's editor-in-chief Edward Felsenthal revealed the selection Wednesday on TODAY along with the cover, a composite group photo that includes actress Ashley Judd, singer Taylor Swift, former Uber engineer Susan Fowler and a woman whose face cannot be seen. 

"The galvanizing actions of the women on our cover … along with those of hundreds of others, and of many men as well, have unleashed one of the highest-velocity shifts in our culture since the 1960s," Felsenthal said in a statement. 

The Silence Breakers emerged amid burgeoning allegations of sexual misconduct and assault by film executive Harvey Weinstein. As his list of accusers swelled, so did the number of people who spoke up to expose dozens of other famous individuals in Hollywood, politics, journalism and other industries as sexual predators.

Actor Kevin Spacey, journalist Charlie Rose, comedian Louis CK and U.S. Sen. Al Franken of Minnesota were among the high-profile names snared in an ever-growing web of alleged sexual harassers. Last week, former TODAY anchor Matt Lauer was also accused of sexual misconduct. 

The women, and men, who broke their silence to share their stories of victimization gave traction to the #MeToo campaign, which took off on social media and fueled a worldwide discussion on just how endemic sexual harassment has been. 

Felsenthal noted the hashtag, which he called "a powerful accelerant," has been used millions of times in at least 85 countries.

This was a good call from TIME.  Women are coming forward now and telling their stories, and we should believe them.  I have friends and family who have similar stories, and who have kept the stories to themselves for various reasons, most of all the victim blasting America does to anyone who comes forward to claim a powerful man has abused them.

Maybe going forward that will finally be different.

Here's the thing though, the #MeToo hashtag movement was started a decade ago by a black activist named Tarana Burke.  It gained steam only when actor Alyssa Milano mentioned it, giving credit to Burke for her long years of work in Brooklyn helping women.  The movement was there, it just wasn't visible.

Oh, and using Ollivander's Rule ("After all, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named did great things. Terrible! Yes. But great.") Donald Trump did come in second. To several women who claimed powerful men abused them.

There's a lesson there if America and the world chooses to learn it.

It's Mueller Time, Con't

In GOP fantasy land, Trump fires Robert Mueller and then has Jeff Sessions appoint a special prosecutor to go after Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.  The fact that I can say "yes, that's still certainly possible" says worlds about what kind of gross chancre Trump is on the ass of humanity. In reality however, Mueller is still making his three-pronged attack.  

As I've said several times, the Mueller probe is focusing on three things: Russian collusion, money laundering, and obstruction of justice covering up the previous two crimes. We haven't talked about the Russian Money laundering angle much in the last month or so with the indictments, but Mueller is definitely looking into that.

Special counsel Robert Mueller has reportedly subpoenaed Deutsche Bank for financial information on President Donald Trump and his associates as part of the investigation into potential collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia during the 2016 presidential election.

Multiple news outlets report that Germany’s largest bank received a request from Mueller’s team several weeks ago for data on money and financial transactions made by Trump and his associates.

It’s still unclear which specific individuals Mueller requested information on and whether the president himself was one of them. One of Trump’s personal lawyers, Jay Sekulow, disputes the reports. “We have confirmed that the news reports that the Special Counsel had subpoenaed financial records relating to the President are false,” he said in a statement. “No subpoena has been issued or received. We have confirmed this with the bank and other sources.”

Trump’s family has relied Deutsche Bank for past business loans: The real estate company owned by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and top White House adviser, finalized a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank one month before election day as part of a refinancing package for one of Kushner’s company’s properties in Times Square.

The bank has also been linked to criminal activity. In January 2017, Deutsche Bank received $630 million in penalties because it was involved in a $10 billion Russian money-laundering scheme that involved the bank’s Moscow, New York, and London branches, CNN reports.

Deutsche Bank has long been Moscow's major bank of choice when it comes to high-end money laundering,  and the bank has been one of the Trump Organization's major go-to partners on real estate deals. If Trump was getting payoffs in the form of real estate loans that never got paid back through the bank from Moscow, Mueller would definitely want to know.

I've also seen the theory that that Flynn's single charge of lying to the FBI means that's all there is and Mueller doesn't have anything else that can stand up in a court of law. The right certainly is dancing around, saying that this is proof there's no collusion, because otherwise Flynn would have been charged with the kitchen sink.  I think that's possible but unlikely.  Rather, as Preet Bharara says, Mueller's playing his cards close to the vest because he doesn't want to tip his hand yet.

So what does Bharara think could be going on? One possibility, he suggests, is that Mueller doesn’t have anything else on Flynn that might stand up in court: “People need to really consider the possibility that this might be it.”

But Bharara also suggests another scenario: that Mueller is “holding back on other charges to which Michael Flynn will plead guilty if and when they form the basis of charging some other folks.”

That is — certain potential charges against Flynn could implicate others in Trump’s orbit as well, and Mueller’s team just isn’t ready to make those charges yet (and might never be).

This case, of course, could be rather different than Bharara’s own past prosecutions. For one, Mueller’s potential endgame might be an impeachment referral rather than a high-profile court trial. Additionally, Mueller could be concerned about Trump’s pardon power — perhaps he’s holding off on some potential charges against Flynn so he could bring them later, in case of a pardon.

This is almost certainly the correct scenario.  When the rest of the charges come, they will be manifest. But until Mueller makes his final recommendations to Congress and the Justice Department, I still beleive it isn't over for Flynn.  Maybe he's not singing like a bird, maybe he is. But it's not over for him.

Not by a long shot.

StupidiNews!

• Democrat Keisha Lance Bottoms pulled off a razor-close win over Independent Mary Norwood in Atlanta's mayoral race last night, Norwood is already calling for a recount.
• Donald Trump will attend the opening of Mississippi's Civil Rights Museum on Saturday, prompting condemnation from local Democrats and the NAACP.
• British police say they have foiled a terrorist plot to attack 10 Downing Street and attempt to kill P Theresa May, cabinet officials were briefed on the arrests made two weeks ago.
• US Ambassador to China Terry Branstad says that North Korea must immediately halt all missile tests before the US would consider diplomatic talks.
• Hyperloop One co-founder Shervin Pishevar is the latest tech figure to be booted over sexual harassment claims, he will step down effective today.