StupidiNews!

• The Trump regime has lifted sanctions on three Russian firms with links to Putin confidante Oleg Deripaska, arguing that the sanctions should be against Deripaska and not the companies.
• Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte says the country's military will "crush" those responsible for killing 20 and injuring 81 in a twin church bombing during a Sunday service.
• Former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz is considering an independent bid for President in 2020, several Democrats have already blasted Schultz saying that will only help Donald Trump.
• Canadian PM Justin Trudeau has fired Ottawa's China ambassador after comments criticizing the Vancouver arrest and planned extradition to the US of Chinese tech giant Huawei's CFO.
• The Trump regime's annual national energy outlook finds the share of fossil fuels like coal and natural gas powering America's electrical grid are expected to increase through 2050.

Last Call For It's Mueller Time: Rolling Stone Edition, Con't

As I pointed out yesterday, Mueller has flipped all the major players that he has charged so far.  No surprise then that it certainly didn't take long for newly collared Roger Stone to go from "I'll never testify against Donald Trump" to signalling cooperation with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, did it?

Roger Stone, following a pre-dawn arrest at his home in Florida and ahead of an arraignment in Washington on Tuesday, said that he would discuss cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller, if asked.

"You know, that’s a question I would have to –- I have to determine after my attorneys have some discussion," Stone told ABC News' Chief Anchor George Stephanopolous on “This Week” Sunday. "If there’s wrongdoing by other people in the campaign that I know about, which I know of none, but if there is I would certainly testify honestly. I’d also testify honestly about any other matter, including any communications with the president. It’s true that we spoke on the phone, but those communications are political in nature, they’re benign, and there is –- there is certainly no conspiracy with Russia. The president’s right, there is no Russia collusion."

Stone, 66, President Donald Trump’s longtime friend and a veteran political operative, was arrested after the special counsel filed a seven-count indictment against him as part of an ongoing probe into Russia interference during the 2016 election.

Now anybody who is in a position to know truly how much trouble Roger Stone is in (even a short prison sentence at Stone's age could be a life sentence) can read between the lines that Stone wants a deal here. The question is whther or not Stone has anything to offer Mueller that he doesn't already have. 

There's two positions on this, one, that Stone has nothing Mueller wants and that Mueller is going to put him in prison for the rest of his natural life as Daily Beast writer Peter Zeidenberg suggests:

Finally, do not expect to see Special Counsel Robert Mueller make any attempt to flip Stone and have him cooperate. A defendant like Stone is far more trouble than he is worth to a prosecutor. Stone is too untrustworthy for a prosecutor to ever rely upon. He has told so many documented lies, and bragged so often about his dirty tricks, that he simply has too much baggage to deal with even if here to want to cooperate—which seems unlikely in any event. Mueller, I suspect, would not even be willing to engage in a preliminary debrief with Stone to just test the possibility of cooperation out of concern that Stone would immediately go on television with his pals at Fox News to decry Mueller’s Gestapo tactics.

In short, Mueller does not need Stone to get to someone else and, even if he did, he could not rely on whatever Stone told him. Stone has nothing to sell that Mueller would be interested in buying.

Stone is clearly enjoying being in the spotlight now. He should enjoy it while he can. His remaining years won’t be nearly as pleasant.

Position two is Cato Institute's Julian Sanchez and his theory in his op-ed in the NY Times that Stone's electronic communications are the real target.

Of course, as the indictment also makes clear, the special counsel has already managed to get its hands on plenty of Mr. Stone’s communications by other means — but one seeming exception jumps out. In a text exchange between Mr. Stone and a “supporter involved with the Trump Campaign,” Mr. Mueller pointedly quotes Mr. Stone’s request to “talk on a secure line — got WhatsApp?” There the direct quotes abruptly end, and the indictment instead paraphrases what Mr. Stone “subsequently told the supporter.” Though it’s not directly relevant to his alleged false statements, the special counsel is taking pains to establish that Mr. Stone made a habit of moving sensitive conversations to encrypted messaging platforms like WhatsApp — meaning that, unlike ordinary emails, the messages could not be obtained directly from the service provider.

The clear implication is that any truly incriminating communications would have been conducted in encrypted form — and thus could be obtained only directly from Mr. Stone’s own phones and laptops. And while Mr. Stone likely has limited value as a cooperating witness — it’s hard to put someone on the stand after charging them with lying to obstruct justice — the charges against him provide leverage in the event his cooperation is needed to unlock those devices by supplying a cryptographic passphrase.

Of course, Mr. Mueller is likely interested in his communications with Trump campaign officials, but the detailed charges filed against the Russian hackers alleged to have broken into the Democratic National Committee’s servers also show the special counsel’s keen interest in Mr. Stone’s communications with the hacker “Guccifer 2.0,” an identity said to have been used as a front for the Russian intruders. By Mr. Stone’s own admission, he had a brief exchange with “Guccifer” via private Twitter messages. On Mr. Stone’s account, Guccifer enthusiastically offered his assistance — at the same time we now know Mr. Stone was vigorously pursuing advance knowledge of what other embarrassing material stolen from Mr. Trump’s opponents might soon be released — and Mr. Stone failed to even dignify the offer with a reply. With no easy way of getting hold of “Guccifer’s” cellphone, searching Mr. Stone’s devices might be the only reliable way for the special counsel to discover whether the conversation in fact continued on a more “secure line.”

Keep in mind that these possibilities aren't mutually exclusive, either.

Stone certainly should keep it in mind, at least.

Get Gillum: The Movie

Florida GOP Gov. Ron DeSantis certainly isn't wasting any time when it comes to seeking vengeance against the man DeSantis beat in last year's gubernatorial race, Tallahassee's Democrat Mayor Andrew Gillum.  The race was ugly and DeSantis got nailed several times by the press for being a racist, but in the end he eked out a win anyway.  So when the FBI investigation into Tallahassee's City Hall didn't collar Gillum, DeSantis has decided to go the state route to abuse his power to punish the man who called him a racist on national TV by bringing state ethics charges against Gillum.

The Florida Commission on Ethics found probable cause today that former Tallahassee Mayor Andrew Gillum, the Democratic nominee for governor in 2018, violated state ethics laws when he allegedly accepted gifts during on out-of-town excursions with lobbyists and vendors and didn't report them.

The Ethics Commission’s vote happened behind closed doors. But the probable cause finding was confirmed by Gillum’s attorney, Barry Richard of Tallahassee, and Erwin Jackson, a local businessman who filed a state ethics complaint against Gillum in 2017.

Allegations of ethical improprieties over trips Gillum took while he was mayor to Costa Rica and New York City dogged him in the closing days of the general election. Depending on how the case shakes out, the allegations could further tarnish Gillum, whose political aspirations didn’t end with his defeat in the governor’s race to former GOP Congressman Ron DeSantis.

Gillum has the option of entering into a settlement with the Ethics Commission, which typically involves an admission of guilt, or contesting the allegations in a court-like administrative hearing.

Jackson’s ethics complaint alleged Gillum violated state law when he traveled to Costa Rica in May 2016 and New York City in August 2016. Both of the trips overlapped with with attempts by undercover FBI agents investigating public corruption to get close to Gillum.

During the Costa Rica trip, Corey, who later turned against Gillum, sent the mayor a calendar invitation for the two of them to meet with one of the undercover agents, who posed as a developer from Atlanta under the guise of Mike Miller. During the New York City trip, Gillum went on outings with Corey, Miller and at least one other undercover FBI agent, including a boat ride around Liberty Island and a performance of the Broadway hit “Hamilton.”

Gillum’s campaign released documents during the campaign that it said proved Gillum paid for all of his expenses on the Costa Rica trip. Gillum also said his brother, Marcus Gillum, gave him the ticket to “Hamilton” and that he stayed one night with his brother in a downtown hotel where Corey and the undercover agents also had rooms.

After Gillum publicly distanced himself from Corey, a central figure in the FBI’s investigation, their friendship ended in acrimony. Working with Chris Kise, a Tallahassee attorney, Corey released emails calculated to damage Gillum in the closing days of the general election campaign.

It's obvious here that DeSantis is behind the effort to turn the FBI's investigation that so far has cleared Gillum into state ethics charges.  DeSantis isn't going to rest until Gillum is behind bars, because the worst thing a black person could ever do to a white racist politician is call them a racist during the campaign and have people believe that's true.

Stay tuned.

Sunday Long Read: One Hell Of A Commute

It's almost impossible today for tens of millions of women in America to get an abortion if they want one, and this is before the inevitable Roberts Court ruling that will almost certainly allow states to criminalize it.

The protesters are already positioned when she pulls up in her rental car. One lurches at women approaching the clinic, rosary beads dangling from her outstretched palm. Another hands patients tiny fetus dolls that match their skin color.

The doctor tries to ignore them. There are demonstrators at every abortion clinic and they’re all the same, she thinks: a nuisance. In Northern California, where she lives, a man yells, “Don’t take the blood money,” as she arrives at work.

At least here, in Dallas, the protesters mostly stay on the sidewalk. The doctor slips inside the mirrored glass doors of the clinic — one of the busiest abortion facilities in the United States.

She comes here once a month, part of an unofficial network of physicians who travel across state lines to perform abortions in places where few doctors are willing.

It’s not yet 9 a.m., and the clinic’s waiting rooms are filled, navigating them a game of human Tetris. Women with their husbands. Women pushing strollers. Women alone.

The young doctor will spend 60 hours in Dallas this trip and perform 50 abortions. She will have to run in the hallways to keep up with her packed schedule.

The California physician was one of more than a dozen doctors interviewed by The Times who commute to other states to perform abortions. She allowed a reporter and a photographer to accompany her to Dallas on the condition that she not be named and that her face not be shown in photographs, citing concerns for her personal safety.

The doctor acknowledged that when she began traveling out of state to perform abortions, she was nervous, recalling stories of abortion providers who have been attacked or harassed while far from home. But she said that abortion doctors living in states where access has been restricted face heightened danger and deserve her help.

“I can’t have people scare me away,” she said.

California doctors go to other states to help perform abortions because in red states, being a doctor who is willing to perform the procedure means you and your family will be a target for the rest of your life.  However long -- or short -- it may be.

Now watch what happens when Roe is overturned.

The Drums Of War, Con't

The Trumpies know that they lost last week, and badly. 

As President Donald Trump announced in the Rose Garden on Friday that his quixotic bid to secure more than $5 billion for a border wall would end with no money, he was met with applause from his Cabinet secretaries and senior aides. 

But the clapping belied a pervasive sense of defeat. 

Instead of emerging victorious, many of Trump's allies are walking away from a record-breaking government shutdown feeling outplayed, not least by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The President is now more unpopular than he was before the shutdown began, sacked with blame for the 35-day lapse in funding. 

Friday's announcement was an extraordinary comedown that left many in the White House and those who support Trump marveling at the futility of the preceding four weeks of brinkmanship. In the eyes of some aides and outside advisers, an entire fruitless month has passed that cannot be recouped, a waste of the most valuable asset a White House has: the President's attention and time. 

"A humiliating loss for a man that rarely loses," one Trump adviser said. "I miss winning."

But press briefings are back, and if you're wodering why, it's because the Trumpies want to get a hold of the narrative again.  It looks like Dr. Propaganda has ordered 100ccs of regime change stat in Venezuela and Team Trump is on board for a classic wag the dog scenario, that will almost certainly result in either a miscalculation or purposeful move leading to military action.

The United States on Saturday called on the world to “pick a side” on Venezuela and urged countries to financially disconnect from Nicolas Maduro’s government, while European powers signaled they were set to follow Washington in recognizing Venezuelan opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s rightful leader.

In heated back-and-forth exchanges at a United Nations Security Council meeting, the opposing camp led by Venezuela and Russia, which has invested heavily in Venezuela’s oil industry, accused Washington of attempting a coup, and lambasted Europeans’ demand that elections be called within eight days.

Guaido, who took the helm of the National Assembly on Jan. 5, proclaimed himself interim president on Wednesday. The United States, Canada and a string of Latin American countries recognized the young leader in quick succession. Maduro, who has led the oil-rich nation since 2013 and has the support of the armed forces, has refused to stand down.

But on Saturday Guaido gained support from a key military official. Venezuela’s defense attache to Washington, Colonel Jose Luis Silva, told Reuters that he has broken with the Maduro government and recognized Guaido as interim president.

Speaking at the U.N. meeting called by the United States, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Maduro’s “socialist experiment” had caused the economy to collapse and reduced ordinary Venezuelans to rooting through dumpsters for food.

“Now it is time for every other nation to pick a side. ... Either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem,” Pompeo told the council. “We call on all members of the Security Council to support Venezuela’s democratic transition and interim President Guaido’s role.”

Pompeo also called on the international community to disconnect their financial systems from Maduro’s regime. Washington has signaled it was ready to step up economic measures to try to drive Maduro from power, but on Saturday Pompeo declined to elaborate on any such plans.

We're not that far our from a "Coalition of the Willing™" scenario, because Trump's gonna need to throw a crappy little country against the wall just to prove he's serious after getting smoked by Nancy Pelosi on his wall, and it's definitely looking like Venezuela is the next big winner in a long line of countries that the US will smack around in order to make voters forget about garbage domestic policy.

At least it's not Iran, I guess.

It's Mueller Time: Rolling Stone Edition

Former Manhattan federal prosecutor Elie Honig takes a look at what it would take to make Trump adviser and WikiLeaks conduit Roger Stone turn states' evidence against Donald Trump.

So what would it take to turn Roger Stone into a government witness? I see three areas of vulnerability. First, a prosecutor would need to appeal to – perhaps exploit – Stone’s natural sense of self-preservation. For all the trouble he has been mixed up in over his long career, Stone has never been at any real risk of serving time behind bars. Friday’s indictment might change his bearing a bit. It’s one thing to rail publicly against the possibility of a theoretical future indictment, but another to see seven federal criminal charges, carrying a total maximum sentence of 50 years, in black and white. As a practical matter, Stone isn’t looking at anything close to 50 years, but he easily could be facing five years or so if convicted on all counts. For a 66 year-old man like Stone, that could mean most or all of the rest of his life, which has to be at least a bit sobering. And the evidence laid out in the indictment seems locked in; over and over again, the indictment quotes Stone’s lies and then cites hard proof – typically Stone’s own texts – to prove that he lied. A good prosecutor could make a compelling case that cooperation offers Stone his best and most realistic chance to get through the case without having to serve time.

Second, as much as we don’t like to acknowledge it in our quest for pure justice, money matters. It is expensive to defend yourself in federal court, and it is jaw-droppingly costly to go to trial. Stone has flashed vulnerability on this, declaring that he faces legal fees of $2 million – not an outrageous estimate, if a trial is involved – while noting that he is “not a wealthy man” and begging for crowdfunded donations.

Third, Stone is nothing if not ego-driven. We all are, of course, but Stone’s in his own league. A prosecutor might therefore make a pitch to Stone along these lines. You can stay quiet, you can be a “stand-up” guy, you can fight the government and maybe even go to trial. Trump will send nice tweets about you, you’ll have a heavy media following for a couple years, but ultimately you’ll be a strange footnote in history. Or you can flip and be John Dean.

Of course, there’s one trump card – sorry, it’s just the right word – that could override all of this: a presidential pardon. A pardon is the golden ring for Stone. He’d walk free and it costs nothing. Many took Trump’s tweet supporting Stone’s silence as a hint of Trump’s inclination to issue a pardon. Perhaps the best response then is to remind Stone that he’d be taking an awfully big roll of the dice on the generosity of a guy not exactly known for it. Stone knows Trump’s personality: do you think Trump would do a favor for you, I’d ask Stone, if it meant putting himself in one ounce of political jeopardy over the backlash? Trump’s already got enough problems, legal and political, without taking on any more water to protect a far-past-his-prime political brawler.

If Stone somehow did see the light and cooperate, the rewards could be dizzying. If Stone did come clean, imagine what he could deliver. Starting with Friday’s indictment, Stone presumably could identify the “senior Trump Campaign officials” he spoke with about Wikileaks and dissemination of hacked e-mails – including, most tantalizingly, the person who “directed” a “senior Trump Campaign official” to contact Stone about the Wikileaks releases. Stone also could bolster a long-rumored case against Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, identified as “the head of Organization-1” in the indictment. And that’s just based on Friday’s indictment, without even getting into Stone’s decades of political rough trade.

Stone remains unlikely to cooperate. But I’ve seen crazier things happen. If a prosecutor played it just right, he just might press the right buttons of self-interest and grandeur necessary to get Stone in the door. And if that happened somehow, Stone would pose a unique threat to Trump and his administration.

Here's the thing though: I think the fact that Mueller delivered a dozen sealed indictments on Thursday along with Stone's (and the only reason we know about Stone is that he was an immediate flight risk) means he's going to make an offer, and yes, we know every other major player Mueller has dropped the hammer on has cooperated in some way.

More arrests are coming, but we're at the point now where there's not a lot of people left above Manafort, Cohen, and Stone.  The two people who should be sweating bullets right now are Jared Kushner and Donald Trump Jr. and believe me, both of them know it.

Russian To Judgment, Con't

Karen Yourish and Larry Buchanan at the NY Times helpfully chart out the fact that Trump campaign officials had contact with Russian nationals more than 100 times before Trump's inauguration, and Donald Trump lied about every single one of them at one time or another, including the half-dozen times Trump himself came in contact with Russians.

During the 2016 presidential campaign and transition, Donald J. Trump and at least 17 campaign officials and advisers had contacts with Russian nationals and WikiLeaks, or their intermediaries, a New York Times analysis has found. At least 10 other associates were told about interactions but did not have any themselves.

Knowledge of these interactions is based on New York Times reporting, documents submitted to Congress, and court records and accusations related to the special counsel investigating foreign interference in the election.

Among these contacts are more than 100 in-person meetings, phone calls, text messages, emails and private messages on Twitter. Mr. Trump and his campaign repeatedly denied having such contacts with Russians during the 2016 election.

The special counsel has also investigated connections between the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks, which released thousands of Democratic emails that were hacked by Russia before the election.

Aras Agalarov, a Russian billionaire who hosted a Miss Universe pageant with Mr. Trump in Moscow, and the billionaire’s son, Emin, reached out to Mr. Trump several times. (Separately, both men helped arrange the now-famous June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Kremlin-linked attorney about getting information that could be damaging to Hillary Clinton.) Mr. Trump was also pursuing a plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow.

Mr. Cohen was deeply involved in the plan to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. His partner in the effort was Felix Sater, a Trump business associate with deep contacts in Russia. Mr. Cohen admitted lying to Congress about the duration of the project’s discussions and the extent of Mr. Trump’s involvement in them. And Mr. Cohen is also now known to have met with a Russian oligarch on a separate matter.

Mr. Trump Jr. had various contacts with Russians and a Russian intermediary regarding the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, as well as the possibility of setting up a campaign page on a Russian social media site. He also exchanged private messages with WikiLeaks.

And the list goes on.  For a witch hunt, there's enough here for an eighth Harry Potter book and possibly a sequel to Hocus Pocus.

Trump was up to his neck in Russians.  We know the Russians interfereed with the 2016 election process on behalf of Trump.  Don't let the GOP gaslight you on these facts.

Mueller has the receipts, and when he delivers, it's up to us to act upon that information and force the Trump regime out.

The Wall Is Dead, Long Live The Wall

There are pretty much two constants in 2019:

1) The Wall is a scam.

2) Kris Kobach never met a scam he didn't like.

With President Trump’s border wall tied up by his fight with congressional Democrats, and public opinion about the wall mixed, Kris Kobach wants to take matters into his own hands.

Fresh from his defeat in the race for Kansas governor, Mr. Kobach, the former Kansas secretary of state, is involved in an audacious new project — a privately-funded wall along the Mexican border.

Mr. Kobach, a hard-line ally of President Trump known for his strident stand on immigration, has long advocated a tough border policy.

He is currently an advisory board member of “We Build the Wall Inc.” a nonprofit group that has collected more than $12 million toward the effort. Mr. Kobach says the group has obtained the presidential seal of approval for the private initiative.

President Trump gave the undertaking his “blessing” in a telephone conversation Wednesday night, according to Mr. Kobach.

The White House press office did not respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Kobach, 52, says the group will begin construction soon on its first section of the wall on donated property, likely in Texas, and that the work can be completed cheaply and efficiently by the private sector.

The private wall idea is an outgrowth of a plan started in December as a GoFundMe campaign by Brian Kolfage, a disabled Air Force veteran living in Florida who says the impetus for his project was mounting public frustration over the government’s failure to reach an agreement on border protection.

After raising nearly $20 million, the organization was forced to contact donors because it hadn’t reached its initial goal of $1 billion. At that point, contributions would be automatically returned to donors unless they opted back in. Mr. Kobach said that efforts to retain contributors had been very successful, with 94 percent of those contacted transferring the money into the new effort.

So basically Kris Kobach saw a small scam, and decided he could make it a REALLY REALLY BIG SCAM instead.  Never let it be said that Republican crooks lack ambition.

In all seriousness, "privatize the wall" was going to happen anyway.  Now we get to see the MAGA types hem and haw rather than donate to this thing.

Last Call For One Hell Of A Week

I have to say, between the Roger Stone indictment all but pointing the finger at Trump for ordering Stone to work with WikiLeaks to get more DNC hacked emails, and the collapse of his leverage on the government shutdown this afternoon, Friday has basically topped off the Worst Week For Trump So Far™.

I'm not going to go as far as to say Trump is broken, he's not, but he just took two right crosses to the jaw, and he's wobbling on his feet.  He's had an abysmal week, and it shows.

As far as the Roger Stone indictment and why it's important, we go back to two Washington Monthy pieces from November 2017, first, Martin Longman on WikiLeaks being a Russian intel clearing house.

But it’s the naked way that WikiLeaks was acting as a Kremlin front that I think is the most important news here. There’s an implied understanding in these messages between the two parties. There’s no sense of caution on the WikiLeaks end that they might be presumptuous about Donald Jr.’s willingness to push the Kremlin line or that Donald Sr. might be offended by the suggestion that he delegitimize the election for Russia’s benefit even though it would clearly hurt his own country. There’s a conspiracists’ bond between them as they discuss the desirability of throwing people off their scent by working together to leak damaging information in a preemptive way (the classic “limited hangout.”)

A limited hangout or partial hangout is, according to former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the Central Intelligence Agency Victor Marchetti, “spy jargon for a favorite and frequently used gimmick of the clandestine professionals. When their veil of secrecy is shredded and they can no longer rely on a phony cover story to misinform the public, they resort to admitting—sometimes even volunteering—some of the truth while still managing to withhold the key and damaging facts in the case. The public, however, is usually so intrigued by the new information that it never thinks to pursue the matter further.”

Admittedly, there’s no direct admission in these communications that the leaked emails were obtained by Russian hackers, nor do they come right out and say that they’re discussing a Russian agenda. But, collectively, these messages are incredibly strong evidence of Wikileaks being a Russian front organization, or at least that they have been so strongly coopted that they might as well be run from Moscow.
The evidence of Russian hacking has been coming in from other sources, including George Papadopoulos, who was informed that Russia had obtained hacked material long before any of it was actually released. What remained a question was whether Wikileaks was a witting or unwitting participant in Russia’s game. In my opinion, these Twitter messages remove any doubt about that. Wikileaks was acting in a way that was completely indistinguishable from how a Russian intelligence agency would act. And they weren’t making any effort to disguise this from the Trump campaign.

This completes the case, in a sense, because it not only connects the dots between Russia and Wikileaks, but it makes clear that the Trump campaign knew how closely the two were working together. The only remaining defense relies on the stupidity and naivety of the Trump team, but they’ve been caught in so many lies now that it will be hard for them to be believed if they try to argue that they just didn’t know who they were dealing with.

The other piece is from Nancy LaTourneau on Stone and Assange's connection to Randy Credico...and Bernie Sanders.

It could be that Credico was like other extremist liberals who continue to support Wikileaks and are simply consumed with a rabid hatred of anyone named Clinton. But it is also worth keeping in mind something that was reported in the Steele dossier.

Unlike with Jill Stein, I see nothing that suggests that Bernie Sanders or anyone in his campaign knew about, much less condoned any of this. But it remains an open question whether Credico was simply one of those activists that the Russians hoped to target, or if his association with the likes of Roger Stone and Julian Assange—combined with what Steele uncovered—suggests a lot more than that.

The Stone indictment is absolute bad news for Trump, for certain.

What I'm afraid of though is that this becomes the point where Trump decides that if he's going to go down, he's taking America with him, and earlier this afternoon Secretary of State Mike Pompeo showed his cards on what Trump could do to throw the country and the world into chaos.

Elliott Abrams, a controversial neoconservative figure who was entangled in the Iran-Contra affair, has been named as a Trump administration special envoy overseeing policy toward Venezuela, which has been rocked by a leadership crisis.

Abrams’ appointment, announced Friday by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, is something of a surprise — President Donald Trump nixed his 2017 bid to be deputy secretary of state after learning that Abrams had criticized him.

Abrams will now be one of several special envoys Pompeo has brought on board to tackle thorny issues. He takes on his role at an unusually volatile time in U.S.-Venezuelan relations.

Earlier this week, Trump announced he no longer recognized the legitimacy of the Venezuelan regime of Nicolas Maduro and said the U.S. now considers opposition leader Juan Guaido as the country’s “Interim president.” But Maduro is refusing to leave power and has declared that Venezuela will cut off diplomatic ties with the United States.

“This crisis in Venezuela is deep and difficult and dangerous, and I can’t wait to get to work on it,” Abrams said in brief remarks to reporters.

Abrams, who served in the Reagan and George W. Bush administrations, is a well-known and somewhat controversial figure in U.S. foreign policy circles.

He has often expressed hawkish views and is fiercely pro-Israel, but he also has written and spoken eloquently about the need to support human rights around the world.

If there are two people who can get un into a shooting war in Venezuela, it's John Bolton's Mustache and Elliott Goddamn Abrams.

And they can absolutely do that.

Just a thought.

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

As the Trump Shutdown reaches the 35-day mark, we've finally reached a major tipping point as several major US airports are now in "ground stop" mode, causing massive flight delays due to lack of air traffic controller staff.

Federal officials temporarily restricted flights Friday into and out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport, another example of the toll that the partial government shutdown — in its 35th day — is taking on the nation’s airports.

“We have experienced a slight increase in sick leave at two facilities,” a spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration said in a statement. “We’ve mitigated the impact by augmenting staffing, rerouting traffic and increasing spacing between aircraft when needed. The results have been minimal impacts to efficiency while maintaining consistent levels of safety in the national airspace system."

White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Friday that President Trump had been briefed on the situation.

"We are in regular contact with officials at the Department of Transportation and the FAA,” she said.

The FAA fiasco immediately turned into a deal to temporarily reopen the government as Trump realized he has to reopen the government, and that Pelosi has won this round.

President Trump on Friday announced a deal with congressional leaders to temporarily reopen the government while talks continue on his demand for border wall money, a move expected to bring an end to the longest shutdown in U.S. history.

The pact, announced by Trump from the Rose Garden at the White House, would reopen shuttered government departments for three weeks while leaving the issue of $5.7 billion for the U.S.-Mexico border wall to further talks.

The outcome was a win for Democrats and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who had insisted on no negotiations until the government was reopened.

Trump said that a congressional conference committee would spent the next three weeks working in a bipartisan fashion to come up with a border security package. He made it clear that he expects wall funding to be a prominent part of that.

“No border security plan can never work without a physical barrier. It just doesn’t happen,” Trump said in his remarks.

Trump said he was asking Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to put legislation on the floor immediately to implement the deal.

If approved by Congress, the deal would allow federal employees to return to work. But it sets up another fight in coming weeks over the same issues at the heart of the impasse.

No wall funding, and no leverage to get it, but it does mean this comes as the Trump regime is now apparently preparing to go ahead and break the self-created Feb. 15 impasse with an emergency powers declaration and skipping Congress entirely.

The White House is preparing a draft proclamation for President Donald Trump to declare a national emergency along the southern border and has identified more than $7 billion in potential funds for his signature border wall should he go that route, according to internal documents reviewed by CNN. 

Trump has not ruled out using his authority to declare a national emergency and direct the Defense Department to construct a border wall as Congress and the White House fight over a deal to end the government shutdown. But while Trump's advisers remain divided on the issue, the White House has been moving forward with alternative plans that would bypass Congress. 

"The massive amount of aliens who unlawfully enter the United States each day is a direct threat to the safety and security of our nation and constitutes a national emergency," a draft of a presidential proclamation reads. 

"Now, therefore, I, Donald J. Trump, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, including the National Emergencies Act (50 U.S.C 1601, et seq.), hereby declare that a national emergency exists at the southern border of the United States," the draft adds. 

The draft was updated as recently as last week, a US government official told CNN.

According to options being considered, the administration could pull: $681 million from Treasury forfeiture funds, $3.6 billion in military construction, $3 billion in Pentagon civil works funds, and $200 million in Department of Homeland Security funds, the official said. 

As lawmakers discussed a short-term measure to fund the government Thursday, Trump again raised the prospect of other ways to fund a border wall without congressional approval. 

"I have other alternatives if I have to and I'll use those alternatives if I have to," he told reporters. 

"A lot of people who wants this to happen. The military wants this to happen. This is a virtual invasion of our country," Trump said. 

The Defense Department referred a request for comment from CNN to the White House.

So the emergency declaration has reached the leakable draft document stage at least.  What this means isn't clear, Congress does have to sign off on any emergency declaration eventually, but Trump figures he can move the money, declare victory, and then...we don't know, does he shut down the government again then?  Does he militarize the border?  It all gets really crazy after that point.

I don't know if Trump will actually do it, he was scared off once before, but if it's gotten this far along in the draft process, my guess is that this is a trial balloon heading into the weekend and possible action on Monday.

But even if he does declare an emergency, why then would he agree to keep open the government?  He clearly doesn't care about people suffering given his past actions on policy, and he clearly doesn't care about the economic consequences given the same history of policy actions.  Since the cruelty is the point, why wouldn't he choose to continue it and demand more/different concessions from Pelosi?

.@realDonaldTrump did not “cave” nor “surrendered”. What he’s doing right now is a standard tactics in torture. They torture you, then they give you a break to see if you will start to cooperate. If not, the torture continues. https://t.co/itwQlzpzju

— Ksenija Pavlovic McAteer (@ksenijapavlovic) January 25, 2019

We'll see what happens here, but anyone who believes Trump getting funding for his wall through this end run next month means he'll keep open the government is in for a surprise, should he go that route, and I actually think it makes an emergency declaration more likely as a result.  He's setting us up for Round 2 next month, but at least he gets his Super Bowl weekend in the meantime. Whether or not Pelosi wins that round, well, we'll see.  Hostage taking is much more effective when you're willing to shoot some hostages.

And of course an emergency declaration means he'll start claiming more and more executive power.  That how this always works.

It's Mueller Time, Stone Cold Edition

Long-time Trump adviser Roger Stone has been predicting his indictment by Robert Mueller for a while now, and in a glorious return to Mueller Fridays, the hammer finally dropped.

Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime informal adviser to President Trump, was charged as part of the special counsel investigation over his communications with WikiLeaks, the organization behind the release of thousands of stolen Democratic emails during the 2016 campaign, in an indictment unsealed Friday.

Mr. Stone was charged with seven counts, including obstruction of an official proceeding, making false statements and witness tampering, according to the special counsel’s office.

F.B.I. agents arrested Mr. Stone before dawn on Friday at his home in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., and he was expected to appear in a federal courthouse there later in the morning. F.B.I. agents were also seen carting hard drives and other evidence from Mr. Stone’s apartment in Harlem.

The indictment is the first in months by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and possible coordination with Trump campaign associates. Citing details in emails and other forms of communications, the indictment suggests Mr. Trump’s campaign knew about additional stolen emails before they were released and asked Mr. Stone to find out about them.

Mr. Stone’s lawyer, Grant Smith, dismissed the charges, calling them “ridiculous,” and said, “this is all about a minor charge about lying to Congress about something that was apparently found later.”

Mr. Stone, a self-described dirty trickster, began his career as a campaign aide for Richard M. Nixon and has a tattoo of Nixon on his back. He has spent decades plying the political dark arts including scandal-mongering to help influence American election campaigns, and has long maintained that he had no connection to Russia’s attempts to disrupt the 2016 presidential election. He sometimes seemed to taunt American law enforcement agencies, daring them to find hard evidence to link him to the Russian election interference.

According to the indictment, between June and July of 2016, Mr. Stone told “senior Trump campaign officials” about the stolen emails in WikiLeaks’ possession that could be damaging to Mrs. Clinton. On July 22, WikiLeaks released its first batch of Democratic emails. After that, according to the indictment, the Trump campaign sought more.

“A senior Trump Campaign official was directed to contact Stone about any additional releases and what other damaging information Organization 1 had regarding the Clinton campaign,” the indictment said, referring to WikiLeaks. The indictment did not make clear who directed the senior campaign official to reach out to Mr. Stone, though it left open the possibility that it was Mr. Trump.

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, sought to broadly distance Mr. Trump from the charges. The charges brought against Mr. Stone have nothing to do with the president,” she told CNN. Asked whether he directed a campaign aide to contact Mr. Stone about the WikiLeaks emails, she repeated that the charges did not involve the president.

The full indictment is here.

Needless to say, the indictment straight up accuses Stone of knowing WikiLeaks had the stolen DNC emails and was going to drop them online, Stone was Trump's contact to WikiLeaks to get more of them, and that Stone was directed to do so by the Trump campaign.  Marcy Wheeler reminds us the "high-ranking Trump campaign official" who asked Stone about more emails was Steve Bannon but for now, we don't know who ordered Stone to contact WikiLeaks in July 2016, although Manafort was Trump's campaign chairman then, so why not name him since he's already in the bag?  My guess is as with the NY Times article, the person is Trump himself, and that's deadly for him.

The "high-ranking campaign official" is Bannon (who was Campaign Manager at the time).

NYT covered these exchanges here:https://t.co/55yZlDFi6D pic.twitter.com/jzyWFkNheu

— emptywheel (@emptywheel) January 25, 2019

The bigger problem for Trump is that obstruction of justice charge, too.  This is as close as we've come to a case for impeachment against Trump yet.

Stay tuned.

StupidiNews!

• Both Republican and Democratic Senate bills to reopen the government failed to pass the Senate on Thursday, senators from both parties are still looking to make a deal.
• With US diplomatic personnel being told to leave Venezuela by President Nicolas Maduro, the Trump regime has ordered all non-emergency government employees out of the country.
• The Trump regime will begin returning asylum seekers to Mexico starting Friday, all non-Mexican asylum seekers will eventually be transferred to Mexico while awaiting processing.
• Poultry giant Tyson Foods is donating nearly 700,000 meals to federal workers furloughed as the shutdown enters its sixth week.
• SpaceX has performed a rocket test firing ahead of a scheduled February commercial crew spaceflight demonstration mission.

Last Call For The GOP's Race To The Bottom, Con't

Racism isn't a by-product of the GOP, it's the point of the party, especially in Florida.

Florida’s top elections official abruptly resigned Thursday after a newspaper obtained pictures of him in blackface dressed as a Hurricane Katrina victim at a 2005 party.

Secretary of State Michael Ertel, who had been on the job less than three weeks, resigned just hours after he testified about election lawsuits before a state legislative committee.

The Tallahassee Democrat obtained pictures taken at a Halloween party 14 years ago that show Ertel dressed in blackface while wearing earrings, a New Orleans Saints bandanna and fake breasts under a purple T-shirt with “Katrina Victim” written on it. The photos were taken two months after the deadly storm ravaged the Gulf Coast region and eight months after Ertel was appointed Seminole County supervisor of elections. The newspaper hasn’t said how it got the photos or identified the source.

Ertel was the Seminole elections supervisor until new Gov. Ron DeSantis picked him last month to take over the department that oversees elections.

DeSantis said Ertel regretted dressing up in blackface, but he said that he was right to step down after the pictures emerged.

“I want people to be able to lead and not have any of these things swirling around,” said DeSantis, who was in Marianna to discuss hurricane relief efforts for areas hit hard by Hurricane Michael in October.

Bye.

Three weeks on the job and this pops up.  Frankly, this should have been revealed last decade and Ertel's career ended then, but hey, now's good too.

Of course I expect he'll be fine with a nice sinecure somewhere in Right-Wing Noise Land, most likely a Trump Regime position somewhere.

But there was no way Ertel was going to survive as the state's top election officials with Ron DeSantis's racist campaign and current efforts to re-disenfranchise a million-plus black Florida residents fresh on everyone's mind.

Still, not only is the cruelty the point, so is the racism.

A Collegiate DREAM In New York

With the Republicans disguised as Democrats no longer blocking New York's state Senate, and Gov. Andrew Cuomo with no place to hide and no place to run, the Empire State is finally on it way towards long overdue liberal policies like we've seen in California over the years.

Supporters erupted in applause and tears Wednesday as New York lawmakers passed their own version of the DREAM Act. 

The measure shares the same name -- but is different from -- the DREAM Act that's failed to pass in Washington for years. 

Unlike the proposed federal measure, which would give conditional green cards to undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, New York's version is more narrowly focused on another battleground in the immigration debate: college tuition. 

The Jose Peralta New York State DREAM Act: 

• Makes state tuition assistance programs available to undocumented immigrants who attended high school in New York for at least two years and graduated or obtained an equivalency diploma. 

• Creates a "DREAM Fund" -- funded by private contributions -- to give scholarships to the children of immigrants. 

The measure passed the New York State Senate 40-20 and the New York State Assembly 90-37. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is expected to sign it into law. 

Immigrant rights advocates praised the measure as a sign of successful organizing efforts at the state level. Its passage comes as so-called Dreamers, undocumented immigrants who were brought to the United States as children, find themselves in limbo during a political stalemate in Washington. 

New York state lawmakers who voted to pass the measure said it's particularly important at a time when federal authorities have increasingly targeted immigrant communities.

It couldn't have come at a better time too, with Donald Trump getting a constant reminder that in the state he lives in, basically everyone hates his ass.

 

Shutdown Meltdown, Con't

The support pillars for Donald Trump's wall as the longest shutdown in US history drags on are definitely beginning to crack.

A strong majority of Americans blame President Donald Trump for the record-long government shutdown and reject his primary rationale for a border wall, according to a new poll that shows the turmoil in Washington is dragging his approval rating to its lowest level in more than a year.

Overall, 34 percent of Americans approve of Trump’s job performance in a survey conducted by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s down from 42 percent a month earlier and nears the lowest mark of his two-year presidency. The president’s approval among Republicans remains close to 80 percent, but his standing with independents is among its lowest points of his time in office.

“Trump is responsible for this,” said poll respondent Lloyd Rabalais, a federal contractor from Slidell, Louisiana, who’s not affiliated with either political party.

The 47-year-old has been furloughed for more than a month. He said he’d need to start drawing on his retirement savings next week to pay his bills if the shutdown continues.

“I do support a wall, but not the way he’s handling it,” Rabalais added. “Trump guaranteed everybody that Mexico would pay for the wall. Now he’s holding American workers like me hostage.”

The drop in approval comes as Trump begins the third year of his presidency under the weight of the longest government shutdown in U.S. history, an international trade war that’s straining the global economy and new revelations about his push for a real estate deal in Russia during his 2016 campaign.

Trump has similarly abysmal numbers in the latest CBS poll as well.

Seven in 10 Americans don't think the issue of a border wall is worth a government shutdown, which they say is now having a negative impact on the country. But partisans don't want their own side to budge: 65 percent of Republicans say President Trump should refuse a budget unless it includes wall funding, and 69 percent of Democrats think congressional Democrats should keep refusing to fund it.

Among Americans overall, and including independents, more want to see Mr. Trump give up wall funding than prefer the congressional Democrats agree to wall funding. Comparably more Americans feel House Speaker Nancy Pelosi is handling negotiations better than the president is so far.
Republicans are more divided than Democrats are on whether the shutdown is worth it.

Pelosi is seen as doing a better job than Mr. Trump on handling the negotiations over the shutdown. Partisans divide on this, while independents give the edge to Pelosi.

Overall, two-thirds of the country now say Republicans should agree to fund the government without any money for the wall, according to CBS.  That's a fatal position for the GOP to be in, and Mitch McConnell knows it.  Trump's approval rating according to CBS has dropped to 36% and falling. It's gotten so bad that Americans are remembering things like "general strikes" exist.

Something's going to give, and soon.