Welcome to Volume #9 of the Master Trump Russia Corruption Timeline which seeks unravel this gordian knot by laying out day by day, week by week all off the relevant frackery of this semi-silent coup against Democracy which has been slowly growing ever since January 20, 2017.
In this installment we’ve had the Stormy Daniels scandal morph into no-knock warrant and major investigation by the New York U.S. Attorney Geoff Berman against Trump;s mob-adjacent personal attorney and “fixer” Michael Cohen revealing that he also happens to be the lawyer and real estate advisor for Sean Hannity. Hannity also has Trump’s last standing Russia investigation lawyer Jay Sekulow and his almost attorney Victoria Toensing on retainer.
While this has been going on former FBI Director James Comey has released his book and Congress has released the memos about his 9 wacky discussions with Trump before being fired. Trump has called for him to be prosecuting for illegally leaking classified material in his memos even though all the information he testified before Congress, and the one memo he had his friend from Colombia Law School shared with the New York Times was completely, totally Unclassified.
The DNC has sued Russia for their hacks and attack on our Democracy and the Trump campaign for their cooperation with and attempts to benefit from those attacks. Few people in the media have taken the suit seriously which betrays the greatest trick that Trump has been able to accomplish, which is to normalize his evil mendacity to the point that people think a lawsuit to counter-attack a full on assault against our Democracy and free elections “is just a distraction, a sideshow and a stunt.”
They apparently seem to think that when multiple people all from the same political campaign all plead guilty to lying to the FBI about their contacts with Russia government and intelligence operatives there isn’t already a bit more than the preponderance of evidence for a suit arguing all these people were complicit and cooperative in the greatest cyber crime against this nation ever.
Kellyanne Conway has a virtual meltdown when CNN’s Dana Bash dares to ask her what’s up with her husbands anti-Trump tweets bu claiming it’s a somehow “a sexist partisan attack by the mainstream media” to ask her a question about her husbands public tweets, as if no-one ever attacked Hillary Clinton for things she did while her husband was President [Whitewater, Travel-Gate, Biling-Gate, Vince Foster], or Michelle Obama [Sleeveless tops], or Khazir Khan’s wife, or Ted Cruz’s wife and his father as being complicit in the Kennedy Assassination or Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe’s wife for daring to run for state office as a Democrat while he’s a registered Republican. Conway responds on the McCabe question claiming that he's “Admitted to lying to the FBI” when in fact he’s consistently denied that and has filed a wrongful termination and defamation suit against Trump over it. Now, he’ll probably add Conway to the suit.
While that’s been going on Trump has been slowly crushing the clean energy industry, cranking up massive military spending while giving even more massive tax heist for the 1% and foreign shell corporations which will rocket the deficit up to $804 Billion in just the first year and over $1 Trillion by 2020, which completely erases the $900 Billion deficit cut and potentially the 6% improvement in unemployment accomplished by Barack Obama during his 8 years following the great recession, while the GDP has slipped back down to 2% growth despite Trump’s promise that his tax cuts would “pay for itself” by taking the GDP up over 4%. [Whoops!]
All the smoke and mirrors of Stormy Daniels and Trump little Tweet-Rants are really intended to distract everyone from the real crime in process — the feral raiding of our Treasury.
And the defenestration watch for Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Special Counsel Robert Mueller marches on.
Trumpster are constantly claiming that the “Economy is Great” because of low unemployment however they always fail to mention that unemployment was already improving during Obama’s last 7 years and that with Trump it’s only improved by 0.3 percent and since it hit 4.1 percent it’s gone totally flat.
The economy was improving, it was getting better, now it’s just holding — it’s locked in place.
They like to talk a lot about the stock market reaching record highs, well the Dow Jones has been repeatedly hitting records for years as shown here looking back all the way to 2002.
The Dow is nearly always increasing, but then again after it peaked in Jan 2018, it’s suffered a series of crashes — mostly likely as a result of Trump’s tariff threats. Here’s what it looks like for the past year.
That’s not exactly a positive trend. It’s the longest and most consistent period of value loss in the last 10 years since the great recession of 2008-2009.
They also like to claim that the GDP is just great under Trump and it was so so awful under Obama, but that’s not true. When they average Obama’s GDP during his entire precedency they also fail to mention that in his first year the GDP was actually NEGATIVE by 6%, that it went over 3% several times during his administration and that it’s actually fallen back down to 2.3% as of 1Q of FY2018.
So do you see a big giant improvement in 2017 when Trump came in? I don’t.
Meanwhile the improvements in the deficit made by Obama (a $900 Billion improvement) have quickly begun slipping away.
And most of that money is lining the pockets of international shell corporations, not U.S. Workers.
Why is Donald Trump planning to give away $700 billion — that’s billion, with a “b” — to foreigners, no strings attached? You probably didn’t know that he’s planning to do this. In fact, he himself almost surely has no idea that he’s planning to do this. But it would be one clearly predictable consequence of the tax “reform” he and his congressional allies are trying to pass.
Some features of the Trump tax plan are still up in the air. For example, we don’t know exactly how upper-middle-class taxpayers will be punished — will they lose their deduction on state and local taxes, some of their tax breaks on retirement accounts, or something else? But the core of the plan is clearly an enormous cut in taxes on corporate profits, which the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center estimates at $2 trillion over the next decade.
In fact Trump tax plan is likely to move jobs for U.S. worker overseas.
President Trump and his Council of Economic Advisors argue that cutting the corporate tax rate would be a major boon to American workers, in that it would substantially boost their household income. This is, as many economists and journalists have pointed out, wrong.
But there is another issue with the Trump- and GOP-proposed corporate-tax plan that has not drawn as much attention. A major provision of the plan—the full details of which are slated to be revealed on Thursday—fails its most basic claim: that it would “prevent companies from shifting profits to tax havens” and limit “offshoring.” Instead, the way that provision is designed, it would actually incentivize U.S. companies to move their operations overseas and to shift profits to tax havens.
Bottom line is that Unemployment is stagnant and not improving, GDP is essentially stagnant and getting slightly worse, while the deficit is climbing as spending has increased, graft has increased with Trump’s cabinet, and foreign investors are pocketing $Billions while most U.S. working are collecting crumbs.
And this is supposed to be the “good” economy?
Trump supports have been willing to overlook and ignore every one of his transgressions on the bet hat he’ll be the one to bring back U.S. jobs and a living wage for the U.S. workers — that is a bet they are likely to lose -— and once that’s gone, just what is their left for them to hope for from Trump?
More and better insults for immigrants and Democrats?
Daily details are as follows:
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April 14 —
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Trump pats himself on the back for “Mission Accomplished” in Syria echoing Bush’s tragically premature Aircraft Carrier Banner from 2003. Technically these strikes are a far more similar to the strikes ordered by President Clinton in 1998 against Iraqi chemical weapons facilities which destroyed their ability to produce new weapons at that time.
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In response to the Syrian attack and Trump’s harsh criticism of Russia and Iran the Russian embassy responds: “We are being threatened,” the Kremlin claimed. “We warned that such actions will not be left without consequences.”“All responsibility for them rests with Washington, London and Paris. Insulting the President of Russia is unacceptable and inadmissible,” the statement warned. However reportedly no Russia targets are hit during the attack, so all they have are hard feelings.
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Ivanka Trump is slammed as a “Fake Secretary of State” while visiting Peru.
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UN Ambassador Nikki Haley “U.S. is locked and loaded if Syria uses chemical weapons again.” — I’m sorry but that last attack was supposed to make it impossible for them to have any weapons left, are you admitting possible “Mission Failure?”
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April 15 —
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April 16 —
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Kellyanne Conway goes on a rampage across the news networks screaming that Comey is a “leaker and a liar”, claiming that he lied to Chuck Grassley about “never leaking” [However what he actually said was that he’d never been an “anonymous source” for a story and in fact sharing one memo with a Columbia Prof friend doesn’t make him an “anonymous” source, it was pretty clear whose memo it was) and also yadda yadda yadda. But she also claims that “Comey swung the election for Trump.” [Whoops! Slipped into a Truth-chasm there didja?]
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Rawstory reports that Comey doesn’t deserve sole blame for his letter to Congress about the Weiner/Abedine emails because in fact, it was likely former Rep. Jason Chaffetz who leaked that letter to the press.
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Trump tweets again. “(Comey) committed many crimes!” [Not as many as you asshole.]
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Stormy Daniels shows up in court along with Michael Cohen as their lawyers wrangle over whether a “Special Master” will be used to isolate any privileged materials from what the FBI seized last week before it goes to prosecutors.
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Cohen’s first two clients over the last year have been Trump and Eliott Broidy for whom he negotiated a $1.6 Million Hush Payout for his pregnant Playmate girlfriend. The Judge in the Michael Cohen case forces them to reveal who his third mystery client is; and it turns out to be Sean Hannity. In response the room audibly gasped.
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Meanwhile the Daily Beasts reveals that long before Comey compared Trump to a “mafia boss” Cohen had said he was the “Godfather of Politics” in an old interview.
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Hannity states live on the radio as his name is brought up in the case and slapped on the bottom of Fox News Chyrons that he “was never invoiced, or payed Cohen for any legal work” however he does admit that he occasionally “discussed legal issues” with Cohen during the last year. So while Trump constantly promotes Hannity’s show, and Hannity spends every minute on the air trying to stop Rosenstein and Mueller in order to protect Trump— they. have. the. same. attorney. [What a coinky dink!!?]
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The Cohen Judge rejects request by Trump and Cohen to review FBI-seized files before government prosecutors. [OH Damn, that’s a burn]
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Hannity opens his Fox Show yelling for an hour about James Comey then Alan Dershowitz goes on his show and publicly scolds him for not disclosing that he is represented by Cohen.
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Gateway Pundit : “So it has gone from Russia collusion, to a St. Petersburg troll farm, to Stormy Daniels,to Michael Cohen, and now, Sean Hannity?” a post written by GP founder Jim Hoft.. “Where does it stop and what the hell does this have to do with the Russia collusion?” [it doesn’t stop, because the corruption is everywhere.]
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The Governor and California Nation Guard tell Trump to “Go Spit” over the Border Wall. U.S. officials announced Monday, that California is now refusing to send their troops as a resource because the work is too closely aligned with immigration enforcement according to the Associated Press.
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The Trump obsessed Canadian mosque shooter says he only wished he’d killed more people during his attack. [Yeah, but of course he does.]
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Philadelphia Starbucks manager who called cops on black customers is no longer employed at company. [Thank heaven for baby steps.]
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Kendrick Lamar wins a Pulitzer. I’m just saying, Dayum.
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Wapo reports that after Nikki Haley stated that more Russian Sanctions were coming Trump had ordered them stopped. He had also reportedly blew his stack when he found out the U.S. had expelled 60 diplomats while France and Germany had only expelled 4, although the total number of diplomats expelled by all the European nations was close to 60 in response to the chemical weapon attack in England.“I DON’T CARE ABOUT THE TOTAL. If you had told me France and Germany were only doing [four], that’s what we would have done,” Trump said, one unnamed official told the Post.
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Ali Soufan — the real hero of the FBI after 9/11 — states to Don Lemon that “Comey is an honorable man, sometimes he gets it wrong but he always tries to do the right thing.”
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Rep.Jim Jordon tells Anderson Cooper that “he’s never heard Trump Lie.” [Have you been listening for the last 2 years? So Khazir Khan is aligned with ISIS? Criminals and terrorists are POURING over the border? A U.S. Federal Judge can’t be trusted because he has Mexican heritage? Mexicans are Rapists?]
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The GAO finds that Scott Pruitt’s $43,000 sound proof booth violated the law by exceeding the $5,000 limit on refurbishing expenses for cabinet officials.
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April 17 —
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Anastasia Vashukevich claims that the Kremlin is trying to jail her as Thailand officials add prostitution and “criminal association” charges against her and nine associates.
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Former NSA analyst John Schindler claims that Hannity has been has been under a counterintelligence investigation for his links to the Kremlin and spreading Russian propaganda in support of Trump — particularly the Seth Rich conspiracy for which he’s been sued by the family -— which appear to run through WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange. “Intelligence Community friends have told me that Sean Hannity has been under counterintelligence investigation for some time, based on his clandestine ties to Moscow,” he added. “Now we know why.”
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Former Dana Rohrabacker staffer Tara Setmeyer tweeted on Tuesday to a Washington Examiner article about CNN host Don Lemon claiming that Trump defenders he invites onto his show don’t even take their own arguments seriously. “This is 100% true. I’ve witnessed this first hand. Many are more concerned about “good TV” or favor with Trump than what’s right. It’s infuriating.”
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Stormy Daniels says she’s a better actor than Trump on The View, her attorney finally releases the sketch of the man who threatened her and her daughter and offers $100,000 for his identity.
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Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke tried to justify his decision to decrease Bears Ear National Monument by claiming that he is a scientist and thus he knows better. He’s claimed that he’s a geologist at least 40 times, but he’s not.
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Making a rare public statement Robert Mueller spokesman Peter Carr warned in a statement that many reports about his investigation of the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia are inaccurate.
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Comey. during his Stephanopolous interview called out Trump for saying he should be in jail. “That is not normal, that is not okay,” Comey told Stephanopoulos. “First of all, he’s just making stuff up. But most importantly, the President of the United States is calling for the imprisonment of a private citizen, as he’s done for a whole lot of people who have criticized him. That is not acceptable in this country.” He also claims he’s not making fun Trump or his “average” sized hands.
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Facebook has admitted that applications and websites that use Facebook services—such as embedded “like” or “share” buttons, login pages, analytics or advertising—are not able to distinguish if the user actually has a Facebook account. Even they don’t have an account aren’t logged into Facebook they receive information such as their IP address, operating system and cookies, anyway.
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500 former DOJ officials sign a petition requesting the Mueller be protected from Trump.
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Dozens of additional videos are releases indicating that Sacramento Officers took at least 5 minutes before they handcuffed Stephon Clark, and allowed paramedics to render aid before he was pronounced dead. His autopsy showed that he could had survived his shooting for 3-10 minutes. It also showed multiple officer muting their body cams after the shooting so their conversations as he lay bleeding to death were not recorded.
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The Interior Dept. inspector General says the Sec. Ryan Zinke’s $12,000 charter flight to speak before the Las Vegas Golden Knights hockey team in June 2017, which is owned by one of his campaign contributors, was legal but could have been avoided. Zinke is still under scrutiny for the $140,000 spent to repair a set of doors in his office.
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The Daily Beast reports that Comey had been deeply concerned about the WSJ leak to Devlin Barret over the fight between DOJ and FBI over the Clinton Foundation investigation and that he had began the IG investigation that ultimately resulted in McCabe being fired. McCabe contends that he told Comey he had authorized the leak and that he says he has emails to prove it, but Comey claimed to the IG to have no recollection of that.
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Former Attorney General Eric Holder explained to MSNBC anchor Chris Hayes that he doesn’t really have “fundamental faith in the judgement and integrity” of Attorney General Jeff Sessions. He also said he was “thinking about” running for President in 2020.
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Sources that spoke to the Washington Post on condition of anonymity told reporters that Hannity and Trump speak on everything from the president’s frustrations with special counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe to what he should tweet next. “He basically has a desk in the place,” one presidential adviser them.
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Former First Lady Barbara Bush dies at age 92.
Corey Lewandowski tries to blame the Boston Marathon Bombing and the killing rampage of Whitey Bolger on Comey and Meuller and it hilariously blows up in his face because Mueller was only at the FBI for a year in Boston way back in 1987 and wasn’t involved in Gangster cases, while Comey never was — at that time he was in private practice.
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A new Cambridge Analytica whistle blower Brittany Kaiser who had worked for the SCL group says that CA data grab affected far more than just 87 Million Americans. “I do not know the specifics of these surveys or how the data was acquired or processed. But I believe it is almost certain that the number of Facebook users whose data was compromised through routes similar to that used by Kogan is much greater than 87 million; and that both Cambridge Analytica and other unconnected companies and campaigns were involved in these activities.”
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Besides being a client — or maybe not — of Michael Cohen, Sean Hannity has also retained Trump’s primary Russia defense lawyer Jay Sekulow and also Victoria Toesing wife of Joe diGenova on his payroll because Sekulow and Toesing issued a “cease and desist” on Hannity’s behalf in May 2017 to Tulsa radio station KFAQ after conservative activist Debbie Schlussel alleged on the station’s Pat Campbell show that Hannity had acted in a “creepy” manner with her and invited her to his hotel room. [I know, i know — Fox Hosts being creepy with women, who could imagine such a thing?]
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Newsweek reports that Trump has multiple links to the NYPD and NY FBI including his former body guard Keith Schiller who is a former NYPD Detective, another of his bodyguards is former FBI Agent Gary Uher who had been part of the of deal to bring Trump’s Russian Mob associate Felix Sater back from Russia in the 1990s which allowed him to work as an FBI information in order to avoid prison time for a $40 Million stock fraud scheme, during the campaign Trump gave money to a charity for fallen veterans and law enforcement founded by ex-NYC FBI Chief Jim Kallstrom who is a avowed and documented Hillary and Comey hater.
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Comey states to NPR that that “If the [Trump’s] goal is to shut down an investigation, he would literally have to fire everyone in the Department of Justice and the FBI to accomplish that. And that’s impossible because someone will replace those people, and some agents will continue the work.”
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McConnell states that he won’t support a bill to protect Mueller simply because Trump won’t sign it. [Nobody thought he would sign the Russia sanctions bill either, but he did.]
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Mike Pompeo who isn’t CIA director anymore and hasn’t been confirmed as Secretary of State yet secretly met with King Jong Un to negotiate something.
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TPM reports that Cohen has many long time family based links to the Italian and Russian mob, starting with this life-long friend Felix Sater who father was a a reported capo in the Mogilevich crime syndicate one of Russia’s largest and most dangerous crime syndicates, Morton Levine, who owned and ran a Brooklyn social club, El Caribe, which was a well-known meeting spot for members of Italian and Russian organized crime families in the 1970s and 1980s, The Russian mobs top boss during the 70-80s was Evsei Agron, who was gunned down in 1985, after which the organization was taken over by Marat Balagula, who was suspected of being behind Agron’s killing but never charged and ran things until ‘91 when he was charged with bootlegging gasoline. Both Aaron and Balagula had run their operations out of an office in the Cohen’s uncles club, El Caribe, at least until the 90’s which Cohen had owneda partial stake in until Trump became President at which point he sold it.
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The Sandy Hook parents sue Alex Jones for Defamation. [About Damn Time!]
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TPM reveals that Michael Cohen’s family — particular his uncle Dr. Morton Levin — have long standing ties to the Russian Mob because Levin use to own the club El Caribe that operated as their U.S. headquarters from the 70s-90s.
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Newsweek reports that Cohen has had a 10 car pile-up of former and current associates who been convicted of insurance and tax fraud, assault and criminal mischief including his former law partner Melvyn Estrin, the landlord for the taxi garage where he had a law office Simon Barber, and his Ukranian father-in-law Fima Shusterman.
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Trump holds a self-congratulator rally during the WH Correspondents Dinner.
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Lawrence O’Donnell points out that Spears & Imes the new law firm Trump has hired to defend Michael Cohen happens to include former U.S. Attorneys who had worked with Comey and after his firing had written a letter for Rod Rosenstein asking for a Special Counsel.
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SecDef Mattis wanted Congress approval before the Syria bombing strike — just as Obama had requested an AUMF on Syria after they crossed his Red Line — but was overruled by Trump’s desire to back up his tweets.
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WaPo reports that Scott Pruitt has leased a Chevy Suburban with a leather interior, GPS navigation and, added subsequently, “Kevlar-like seat covers to the vehicle at a cost of hundreds of dollars.”
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EPA’s inspector general releases documents that show that Scott Pruitt’s Chief of Staff Ryan Jackson approved raises to five employees using funds from the Safe Water Act meant for hiring scientists during an emergency.
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UN Ambassador Nikki Haley slams back a Kudlow for claiming she “got confused” when she stated that there would be more Russia Sanctions. Apparently there won’t be most likely because Trump cancelled the sanctions plan once he found out about it.
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April 18 —
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Russian journalist Maxine Boradine mysteriously dies from a 5 story fall from his Moscow Apartment. Boradine had been doing investigative reports involving Oleg Deripaska and a Russian Militia in Syria called “Wagner.”
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Trump tweets about the sketch drawing by Daniels’ about the man who threatened her in 2011 and calls it a “Total Con Job” on the Fake Media, who he says know it’s a con and doesn’t care when retweeting a conspiracy theory post that the sketch is really of one of Daniel’s ex-boyfriends. Michael Avenatti says to Wolf Blitzer on CNN “it’s the gift that keeps on giving” and that he’s going to now add Trump personally to his defamation suit against Cohen.
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James Comey appears on The View and takes the expected pummeling from Meghan McCain who berates him for not being more like J. Edgar Hoover [You mean more corrupt racist and fascist?]
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NY Attorney General Schneiderman pushes to allow for State prosecutions of people that Trump might pardon who would be protected by the double jeopardy loophole.
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Trump’s former “Voter Fraud” czar Kris Kobach is held in contempt of court over his ‘proof of citizenship’ law.
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House Republicans including Matt Gaetz (R-FL) send a letter to the Sessions DOJ requesting the investigation and prosecution of Hillary Clinton, James Comey, Andrew McCabe, Loretta Lynch, Dana Boente, Peter Strzok and Lisa Page which is frankly not gonna happen because it’s nonsensical and groundless, but thanks for playing Banana Republican you’ve been a great sport.
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Trump tweets “Slippery James Comey, the worst FBI Director in history, was not fired because of the phony Russia investigation where, by the way, there was NO COLLUSION (except by the Dems)!” which directly contradicts what he told Lester Holt ON CAMERA about why he fired Comey. He later repeats this same claim during and Q&A and against complains about the FBI not issuing a warrant of subpoena for the DNC email server “The FBI takes what they want” [which is totally confusing the victim of a crime with the criminal], and says that it’s “Fake News” that he has been planning to fire Mueller or Rosenstein because they’re still here” [but there were rumors he was going to fire McMaster and Tillerson for months too any how did that work out?] and that “Nobodies been tougher with Russia” [which I think JFK would argue with] with reporters during an event with Japanese Prime Minister Abe.
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170 Congressman sign a letter asking for Scott Pruitt to resign.
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According to the WSJ, Trump sought out legal advice from Jay Goldberg who had negotiated both of his divorces, who in turn informed the president that on a stale of 1 to 100, where 100 is fully loyal to the president, Cohen “isn’t even a 1. “Michael will never stand up [for you] You have to be alert I don’t care what Michael says.” He also warned Trump not to speak with special counsel Robert Mueller. “Talking is a certain trap,” Goldberg says he told the president. “Don’t ever do it.”
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WaPO reports that the odds of Trump being interviewed by Mueller have dropped dramatically following the Cohen raid.
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Trump Campaign fund has paid $66,000 to his former bodyguard Keith Schiller’s legal defense fund.
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Scaramucci says Cohen will never turn on Trump [Sure, just wait until he hears all the charges!]
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Devin Nunes tells Hannity “It’s certainly possible the Russians could have something on Comey, or Hillary Clinton or all kinds of people.” [Now, that’s just childish “I’m rubber, you’re glue” bullshit! because none of them have taken $98 Million worth of real estate contracts with Russians]
AMI and National Enquirer lets Karen McDougal out of her $150,000 NDA contract.
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April 19th --
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April 20th —
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Trump has an early morning tweet storm attacking “Shady Comey”. “So General Michael Flynn’s life can be totally destroyed while Shadey (sic) James Comey can Leak and Lie and make lots of money from a third rate book (that should never have been written),” the president wrote on Twitter. “Is that really the way life in America is supposed to work? I don’t think so!”‘ [Since Flynn actually DID lie to the FBI and Comey didn’t — YES!]
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The New Yorker reports that after a fairly traumatic ICE raid in a small Tennessee town where nearly 500 students were suddenly absent from school pro-Trump voters have begun to rethink their stance on immigration.
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Reports surface that in 1988 then U.S. Attorney Rudy Giuliani had investigated Donald Trump for money-laundering after he was linked to being involved by mortgage broker Frank LaMagra, but Donald was dropped from the case right after said he raise $2 Million for Rudy Giuliani if he ran for NYC Major. LaMagra got no deal and was convicted, as was his mob associate, Louis (Louie HaHa) Attanasio, who was later also nailed for seven underworld murders. Robert Hopkins was convicted of running his gambling operation partly out of the Trump Tower apartment he’d been sold by LaMagra, where he was arrested. FBI Agent Tony Lombardi closed the Trump investigation without giving it a case number, so it was never visible to the NJ Gambling authority.
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The Hill reports that Andrew McCabe is planning to sue the Trump administration for defamation, wrongful termination and other possible civil suits.
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Giuliani claims the Mueller investigations should “wrap up in a few weeks.”
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Reuters reports that EPA spent $45,000 to send two staffers and three security agents to Australia in August to conduct advance work for Administrator Scott Pruitt’s planned meetings with Australian officials, but the meetings were later cancelled due to Hurricane Harvey.
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NYTimes’ Maggie Haberman reports that Roger Stone claims “Trump goes out of his way to treat Michael Cohen like garbage.”
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Thinkprogress notes that what Trump told Comey — as noted in his memos — defending himself about the Russian hookers by saying he “didn’t spend the night” is directly contradicted by his bodyguard Keith Schiller’s testimony that they both stayed the night, and that Emin Agalarov had offered to provide Hookers which he had turned down, but had also told Trump about before he left for the night.
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Colin Kaepernick receives a Humanitarian Prize - but no NFL job offers.
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Cohen reportedly apologized to Melania over the Stephanie Daniels payment, who knows if Trump has bothered to apologize yet.
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April 21st —
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Michael Avenatti claims that Trump is tweeting to kiss Michael Cohen’s ass to keep him from flipping.
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Trump tweet rants that Haberman is a “third rate reporter and Crooked H flunky that he’d never talk to” although she has a Pulizer Prize, he’s already given her multiple one-on-one interviews, he says she’s been listening to a “drugged up drunk” and that Cohen is loyal which isn’t the same thing as saying he’s honest or truthful. He also claims that the Mueller probe is “illegal” because it was prompted by the “illegal leak” of Comey’s memos but again he has that wrong, the one memo that Comey leaked to the NYTimes has been released and it’s completed and totally unclassified. And he blast Chuck Todd for claiming we’ve given up plenty already to North Korea and gained nothing, but Chuck is right.
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Roger Stone and Sam Nunberg both say they’re aren’t the “Drugged Up Drunk” but everybody knows that Nunberg is probably lying, although Stone was the one who gave Haberman the Cohen quote.
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Haberman fires back at Trump saying that he’s “abusive” [Yeah, because he is.] Then she tweets that Trump’s “drugged up drunk” is Nunberg, although her source was Stone and Trump is too afraid of him to take a shot like that.
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Barbara Bush’s funeral is held, The Bush Family, Clintons, Obamas and Meliania attend — Trump goes Golfing.
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WaPo reports that Sessions has told Trump that he’ll resign if Rosenstein is fired. [And where’s the threat part of that for Trump since he’s wanted Sessions out since he recused himself?] Trump denies he calls Sessions “Mr. Magoo” [Well, not to his face at least...]
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CNN reports that Keith Davidson the lawyer who setup the Daniels, McDougal and Broidy payoff deals with Cohen is cooperating with the Justice Dept.
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Scott Pruitt’s sugar daddy landlord Steven Hart retires from his lobbying firm just as it’s reported by the New York Times and Politico that Hart had personally met with Pruitt and a former executive at Smithfield Foods in 2017.
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Scaramucci desides he needs to give Comey advise on having “humility and self-awareness.”
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Devin Nunes rants on Fox the “Democrats should sue themselves” or some such even though his own committees report says confirms that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee. He lies claiming that Steele dossier “wasn’t started by Republicans” when it was and says “They’re just trying to stall. They think they can take back the House of Representatives in the November. They’re trying to stall so they can shut down these investigations come November.” [Uh, what investigations? — you’re investigation is already shutdown.]
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April 22nd —
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April 23rd —
- April 24th —
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April 25th —
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WaPo reports that the Toronto Van attacker Alex Minassian was an “incel”— a portmanteau for “involuntarily celibate,” an identifier used as a rallying point for virginal misogynists online — which reveal similarities between this most recent attacker and the Elliot Roger who killed six people in Santa Barbara, California in 2014. On Facebook he stated he considered Roger to be the “supreme gentleman” of a mens rights “rebellion” inspired by their shared sexual frustration. He’s charged with murder — but not terrorism — many of the victims are women.
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NYTImes reports that a new study shows that the economic frustration of the “forgotten man and women” who fueled Trump’s rise to power were really concerned with their own “loss of their power and prosperity” in the advent of changing racial and ethnic demographics. So they were basically older white people afraid of economic competition from the youth and people of color, and figured Trump would “fight for them” against immigrants, civil rights and voting rights.
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Richard Painter when talking about whether Cohen will flip or not tells Ari Melber on MSNBC that Trump is acting he’s either “guilty or psychotic”.
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Adult Star Jessica Drake who says that Trump sexually assaulted her and offered her $10,000 for sex and that she is one of people that Stormy Daniels told about being with Trump and being threatened over it back in 2011.
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Trump still hasn’t said anything about the Waffle House shooting, although Huckabee-Sanders has offered basic condolences and praise to James Shaw Jr. for his heroism but nothing about Travis Reinking’s being a Sovereign Citizen or terrorism. He also hasn’t said anything about the Toronto Van attacker, who just happens to not be Muslim.
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HUD Sec. Ben Carson proposes tripling the rent for poor people because of course he does.
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Secret recording of NFL owners reveals that they feared Trump would attack them if they offered Kaepernick a job.
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Government lawyer defends Muslim ban by saying Trump believes Islam is a ‘great country’.
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The Stock Market continues it’s longest downward slide in years.
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James Comey adds former Special Counsel Patrick Fitzgerald, who had prosecuted Scooter Libby and former Illinois Gov Blagojevich, to his legal team.
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CNN has a Town Hall with Comey at William & Mary College where he will be teaching a class on ethics in the fall. He again confirms that the memo he shared with Prof. Dan Richman from Colombia was UNCLASSIFIED and also that as FBI director he was an OCA (Original Classification Authority) who had the power to classify and declassify documents on his own. He also, as FBI Director had the ability to determine and authorize unclassifed public releases just like Andy McCabe. He explains that he did push back on Trump trying to get him to drop the Flynn case, but argues Trump knew he was doing something wrong when he kicked everyone else out and did he really have to tell him that was inappropriate? He obviously knew it was.
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CNN reports that some of the 60 Russian diplomats who were expelled were suspected of trying to identify and find former Russian defectors like the Skripals who were poisoned by a nerve agent in England.
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Huckabee-Sanders says it’s ‘Ridiculous to say Trump has hurt freedom of the press” as she cuts off and berates a reporter.
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Kellyanne Conway bashes Comey claiming that it’s somehow “inappropriate” that Prof Dan Richman had worked for the FBI at about the same time that Clinton investigation was taking place, as if that means something other than indicating that he may have had clearance even if the memo he was given wasn’t marked UNCLASSIFIED. Also Rick Wilson reveals that Conway spent the last days of the election calling every reporter she could to bash Trump saying he was going to lose.
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Giuliani meets with Mueller to discuss ending the Russia probe, I doubt that went very well.
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Ronny “Candyman” Jackson denies wrecking a government vehicle while drinking.
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Former President George H.W. Bush leaves intensive care.
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Michael Cohen announces to the court that he intends to plead the 5th amendment if asked to testify in the Stormy Daniels case, and the judges tells them to be prepared for Special Master to review the privileged documents. Avenatti says the “coverup” matters more than Trump’s sex life.
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Macron says that Trump will try to leave the Iran Nuclear Deal next month.
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Cambridge Analytica whistleblower Chris Wylie tells Democrats behind closed doors that Steve Bannon turned the company into “essentially a full service propaganda machine” run by its parent company, testing messages for American audience in support of Vladimir Putin.
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GOPers waste the nations time with a “Free Speech” hearing over Youtube “Stars” Diamond and Silk, who then proceed to perjure themselves over whether they had accepted funds from the Trump campaign. [They did.]
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Anti-LGBT post appear on MSNBC host Joy Ann Reid’s blog, she argues that she has been hacked — the FBI investigates. MSNBC states that she will stay on the air, but her Daily Beast column is suspended.
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April 26th —
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Trump gives a bonkers batshit crazed ranting 30 min phone interview to Fox and Friends.
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He says he called because it’s Melania’s birthday, but that he hasn’t done anything else for her except getting her a card yet.
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He claims he’s “left the DOJ alone so far, but he could change his mind” [Into what? Open obstruction of justice?
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He claims that most people don’t know that ‘Lincoln freed the slaves’ [Yeah, there was only an entire Oscar winning movie about that a couple years ago. What was it called again? Oh yeah, Lincoln!]
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He ranted about Senate Dems blocking his VA nominee Ronny Jackson over ‘totally made up stories’ [which happened to be documented in an Inspectors report] and threatens Senator Jon Tester over it.
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He admits that he did stay the night in Moscow, which means he lied to Comey about it [Shocker!] but there was no ‘collusion by him’ [Which means he is essentially admitting to collusion by Papadopoulos, Sessions, Page, Manafort, Gates, Don jr., Cohen, Sater, JD Gordon, Rick Dearborn, Bannon, Kushner and Flynn and he had nothing to do with it, except for authorizing it right from the beginning.]
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He claimed he doesn’t watch CNN at all, just before complaining about what he just saw watching CNN.
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He throws Michael Cohen under the bus, backs up and peels out over the corpse of his legal case by claiming he only represents “a tiny, tiny fraction of my legal cases.” Then he admits that he does know about the Stormy Daniels deal that Michael handled for him. A couple hours later this comment gets used in court by the DOJ in their effort to gain access to Cohen’s seized materials.[Oops!]
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Mike Pompeo is confirmed for Secretary of State.
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Sessions testifies that he won't be recusing himself in the Michael Cohen “matter”.
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Scott Pruitt testifies that the ethics charges against him are lies. [Hey buddy, you know you’re under oath right?] Rep. Frank Pallone, ranking member for Energy and Commerce tells him “You are unfit to hold office… you really should resign” [At this point I’m thinking he really should be impeached and then prosecuted for public corruption.]
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Michael Avenatti gloats over the gold-mine that Trump’s Fox and Friend rant just gave him. Anderson Cooper says Trump sounded like a ‘crazy guy mumbling incoherently’ [Hey have you read the Comey memos? Yup, just like that.] Avenatti also suggests that Cohen’s third client — as noted in court — wasn’t really Elliot Broidy, it was the ‘Trump organization” which brings into question if Broidy didn’t get the playmate pregnant, who did?
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The Asylum Caravan reaches Tijauana at the US Border and decides to bide their time as they begin filing their asylum paper work. [So, no ladders for the wall, eh?]
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Senate Judiciary passes a bill to protect Mueller from being fired.
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“Candy man” Jackson withdraws from his nomination for VA Secretary.
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Kim Jong-Un travels to South Korea to meet for a historic summit and agrees to “denuclearize.” it’s then revealed that Mike Pompeo had also met with Jong-Un after he was no longer CIA director but before he was confirmed as SecState — but then Trump admits he wasn’t supposed to do that.
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Paul Ryan boots the House Chaplain without any explanation.
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April 27th —
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April 28th --
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Joy Ann Reid apologizes for the anti-LGBT blog post from 10 years ago “I have to own this.”
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Congress argues over Paul Ryan’s firing of their chaplain.
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CIA nominee Gina Haspel promises not to implemented torture, rendition, detention or black sites [well, seeing as they were all made illegal by the McCain torture bill — I would hope now.]
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Trump launches Twitter tirade against Jon Tester for his comments regarding Dr. Ronny Jackson and says he should resign. Then he has a rally in Michigan and threatens Tester with “rumors” he could say about him but doesn’t, yet, [learn that trick from your Russian buddies did you?] then he attacks Comey, attacks Mueller, attacks Pelosi and says the GOP will win the mid-terms, because if they don’t Dems will Impeach him. [Oh pretty please...] He says that Veselnitskaya now claims that she works for the Kremlin because “Russia is trying to create Chaos” [Oh Really? Since when?] He says the Migrant Caravan is a “mess” because of “Democrat Laws” and that if he doesn't get his Wall, he’ll “shutdown the nation.” So yeah, it was your basic unhinged Nurembergian thing.
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Brad Pascale picks a twitter fight with Maggie Haberman. Don’t ask why.
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Trump-Pastor Mark Burns melts down when Al Sharpton asks him to name one thing Trump has down for black people. [Tax Crumbs I guess?]
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Repubs begin to freak out because Trump refuses to accept the reality that they’re gonna get shellacked in the mid-terms. [Oh, you’re just noticing he’s delusional now?]
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Paralympics fires back at Trump over his comments that there events are “tough to watch.”
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Michelle Wolf appears at the White House Correspondence dinner and after making jokes about Huckabee-Sanders “burning lies to get the perfect smokey eye”, that Mike Pence would love “Handmaiden’s Tale” which stars Sanders and “Aunt Lydia”, Ivanka is a useful to women as a box of empty tampons and the media is making tons money off of Trump who isn’t really that rich — the media freaks out and demands she apologize. She doesn’t.Trump says she “bombed” and it was “boring” — twitter rallies to her cause.
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April 29th —
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April 30th —
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Trump is still tweeting about Michelle Wolf, because apparently nothing else important is going on.
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Chris Cuomo melts GOPer Matt Schlapp for hypocrisy as he tries to attack Wolf for “going too far” compared to practically anything that Trump has said, and he wasn’t joking. Schlapp then goes on to say that Journalist shouldn’t say if Trump is lying. Scarborough calls BS on holding Trump to a lower standard than a comedienne.
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Kathy Griffin takes back her apology to Trump and his family; “Fuck Him I’m not holding back.”
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EPA grants “financial hardship” waiver on biofuels to Carl Icahn who helped pick Scott Pruitt to run the agency.
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The Section of the DOJ Internal Manual on “Press Freedom” suddenly disappears.
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Former House Intel Chairman Mike Rogers slams the GOP-only House Intel report that “clears” Trump of collusion.
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GOP Senators start to panic about the mid-terms because they’ve done literally nothing to deserve keeping their jobs.
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Former Bush Ethics Czar Richard Painter is switching parties and going for Al Franken’s seat in the Senate.
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Sen. Rubio admits the big Trump Tax Cut is a dud: “There is still a lot of thinking on the right that if big corporations are happy, they’re going to take the money they’re saving and reinvest it in American workers,” Rubio tells the publication. “In fact they bought back shares, a few gave out bonuses; there’s no evidence whatsoever that the money’s been massively poured back into the American worker.”
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Reuters reports that the benefit of Trump tax cuts for workers have been muted because of misplaced priorities on foreign workers rather than changes in technology. Jim McCaughan CEO of Principle Global Investors says “People “feel angry in part because the reason for their displacement and the lack of good job prospects isn’t the foreigner, the trade, the immigrant, it’s actually technology. And that is why re-skilling is so important”, he said.”
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Bofi Federal Bank which until last year was under investigation by the SEChas made two large investments in the Kushner organization one for $30 Million and another for $57 Million.
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The National Enquirer blasts Michael Cohen and all his scandals — which shows that he may be officially off the David Pecker’s Trump train now.
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Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu gives a big presentation claiming that Iran has been lying to the IEAE about Project Amad it’s past Nuclear Bomb program and continue efforts to continue that research, and suggests that the Iran Nuclear Deal should be blown up — although if they do that, the IAEA inspectors get pulled out and Iran can immediately restart their bomb program, but only if the other 6 nations including France, Germany, China and Russia do it too — and they probably won't.
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Former WH Ethics Czar Norm Eisen argues that the $228,000 the Trump campaign has paid Michael Cohen for legal expenses could be considered witness tampering.
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Trump does a joint press event with the President of Nigeria and refuses to apologize for anything he’s said about immigrants “Wouldn’t make 10 cents difference”, he continues to attack the Migrant Caravan. The Nigerian President says they didn’t discuss the “Shithole Countries” comment because he says he doesn’t trust the media (it was Senator Graham who claimed Trump said it) then Trump justifies the comment by saying “some countries are in really bad shape.”
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Obama Admin Defense and NSC Official Elizabeth Sherwood-Randall states on CNN that they already knew the Iranians were lying about their Nuclear weapons program and that’s why they made the deal in the first place, the goals was to slow that program down to a crawl. Fareed Zakaria points out that the blockade on mining new Uranium lasts for 25 years, not just 10 years. [So how do they make new bombs without any new Uranium?]
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Michael Avenatti files a Defamation Suit against Trump for his tweets disparaging Stormy Daniels.
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Buried inside the GOP House Intel ‘No Collusion” report is an email by Michael Flynn about the campaign social media operation stating that “a number of things happening (and will happen) this election cycle via cyber operations (by both hacktivists [and] nation-states and the DNC).” Which suggests he also had knowledge of the DNC hack by the Russians a week before the first release by Wikileaks.
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CNN reports that Dems on House Intel have pointed out that Don jr. may have lied under oath when he claimed there was “no followup” on the Veselnitskaya meeting because they found emails her to the Trump campaign asking again about the future status of the Magnitsky Act, and another email from Rob Goldston who had arranged the meeting, to Trump’s assistance Rhona Graff — which was a contact suggested by Don Jr. — that includes a document by Aras Agalarov about the Magnitsky Act which Rhona forwarded to Steve Bannon. They do not claim that the Trump campaign acted on these contacts..
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CNN reports that none of the 100-150 Caravan migrants have been processed they claim because “they have no more room” as if they didn’t know that they were coming for the past month. Former ICE General Counsel states that there were 50,000 asylum seekers last month and that the money for 1 mile of wall would pay for more immigration judges that would help clear the asylum backlog.
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CNN reports last year Mike Pence's physician had alerted the WH when Dr. Ronny Jackson had “inappropriately intervened” in a medical situation involving Karen Pence which might have violated HIPAA.
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CNN reports Kelly called Trump an idiot — he denies it and says it “Total B.S”. then they confirm it in another report saying that Kelly called Trump “Unhinged” during a meeting with the National Security Council and Trump tweets — during the report — that it’s all “fake news” and everything is fine in the WH. “These are terrible people.” [But I thought he didn’t watch CNN?]
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ABC news reports that EPA whistleblower and former Deputy chief of Staff Kevin Chmielewsk says that Administrator Scott Pruitt was "bold-faced" lying when he told members of Congress that no EPA employees were retaliated against for raising concerns about his spending decisions because HE was retaliated against.
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May 1st —
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Ashley Judd files a lawsuit against Harvey Weinstein for sexual harassment and defamation.
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Comey states during a George Washington University book store event that Mueller should want an “open ended” interview with Trump, he also says he’s learned to “shrug off” Trump’s constant threat to have him jailed, even though it’s really a big deal.
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Mueller’s former assistant Michael Zeldin who now works for CNN that grammatical errors prove ‘leaked questions’ came from Trump.
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WaPo reports that Dowd grew angry with Mueller’s team during their March 5th meeting over an interview when he threatened to issuing a subpoena against Trump. “This isn’t some game,” Dowd reportedly argued. “You are screwing with the work of the president of the United States.” [Well, he’s screwing with the Country — so we’re about even then.]
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Bankruptcy Trustee Thomas Casey has filed a lawsuit against Paul Manafort in Santa Ana, California alleging that he falsely claimed he was a creditor owed $2.7 million in a failed real estate deal with his former son-in-law Jeffrey Yohal.
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Andrew Pollack the rightwing pro-gun father of Parkland shooting victim Meadow Pollack files a wrongful death lawsuit against the former Parkland school resource officer Scot Peterson who didn’t go into the school during the shooting, calling him a “coward.”
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The first eight women from the Migrant Caravan enter the U.S. to seek asylum, Mike Pence says they will be processed within the law.
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Trump tweets that there were “no questions about collusion” in the Mueller list, but then Ben Wittes of the law fare blog tears this claim apart piece by piece.
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Fox and Friends celebrates the anniversary of the death of Bin Laden without once mentioning Barack Obama who gave the green light for the raid.
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Jill Stein while trying to explain why her campaign is refusing to turn over documents to the Senate Intel committee spouts Russian talking points about America interfering in elections too, when asked about Russian own interference and never addresses their hacking of the DNC.
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Trump’s personal private physician Harold Bornstein tells NBC news that 2 days after he had revealed that he had proscribed the hair-growth drug Propecia for Trump, his longtime bodyguard Keith Schiller had raided his office and taken all of Trump’s medical records without a properly signed release form that which would have violated HIPAA and even took the signed photo of the two of them on the wall. CNN’s Michael Zeldin says “it’s theft and looks like a burglary.” Huckabee-Sanders says the raid on Bornstein is “standard operating procedure” [The Hell, it is.] MSNBC analyst Danny Cevallos says that Trump seems to have robbed his own doctor’s office since the records belong to the provider and a proper release wasn’t provided. Bornstein says he felt “Raped and Sad” afterward.
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ABC News reports that Pasquale “Nino” Perrott the former Secret Service agent who acts as EPA Director Scott Pruitt head of security suddenly resigns and states that he will cooperate with the House probe into scandals involving Pruitt. Rawstory states: Albert “Kell” Kelly, who ran the agency’s Superfund cleanup program, also announced his resignation, the EPA confirmed. Kelly was barred by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from working at any U.S. financial institution after unspecified violations while working at a bank in Oklahoma.
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Deputy AG Rod Rosenstein says on C-SPAN while explaining why he won’t comply with the GOP House Intel Subpoenas for information about Uranium One and the Mueller probe that these are ongoing investigations and responds to calls for him to be Impeached for that with: “I can tell you that there have been people who have been making threats privately and publicly against me for quite some time and I think they should understand by now the Department of Justice is not going to be extorted… any threats that people make are not going to affect how we do our job.”
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Reports surface that Trump himself dictated the note on his health which his former Dr. Harold Bornstein had claimed to have written. [As if we couldn’t tell...] which could be a severe ethics violation and suggest that Adm. Ronny Jackson may have done the same thing with all his “excellent genes” comments.
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Trump tweets that it’s disgraceful that Mueller questions for him were leaked. [Yes, it’s a shame that YOUR LAWYERS did that — for you.]
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Pruitt’s chief of staff states that the EPA head wanted an office in his own hometown.
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Richard Smotkin, a former Comcast lobbyist and longtime Pruitt friend who also had ties to the Moroccan government was reportedly unusually involved in the planning of the $100,000 four-day trip by Pruitt and his staff to Morocco.
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Buzzfeed reports that Prof. Joseph Mifsud had travelled to Moscow on Oct 5, 2017 just two weeks before the Papapoulos guilty plea documents were revealed. He was interviewed and confirmed he was the same person mention in the docs on Oct 31st the day after the release, but he hasn’t been heard or seen since.
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CNN legal analyst Paul Callan argues with Avenatti that Stormy Daniels career as a Porn star hurts her claim that Trump’s tweet accusing her of a “con job” may have “damaged her reputation.” [Because what — having sex on camera makes you lie?” That’s very “Pre-MeToo” of him.]
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Former HHS Sec Tom Price admits the truth to the Washington Times that repealing the individual mandate will drive premium prices up in the exchanges. [No kidding, who didn’t know that?] But he claims also says he doesn’t agree with that assessment.
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John McCain announces this is his last term in the Senate as he continues to battle brain cancer.
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Bloomberg reports that the only Trump lawyer who had the security clearance needed to fully discuss the issues behind Mueller’s questions was John Dowd, and his new attorney’s Flood and Giuliani don't have a clearance.
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Bloomberg also reports that Michael Cohen owes the city of New York $235,000 in back taxes for his Tax Businesses.
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May 2nd —
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Trump biographer Gwenda Blair tell Chris Hayes that Trump may have robbed his doctors office because besides battling hair loss Propecia also has a side-effect of causing sexual dysfunction.
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Colbert mocks the raid to hide the Propecia prescription over Trump’s hair loss: ‘They know we can see, right?”
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Trump tweets that the Mueller probe is an “setup and trap and no collusion and blah blah blah.” Then responds to Rosenstein’s refusal to comply with GOP document request for an unredacted copy his memo authorizing the Special Counsel. “I may have no choice but to get involved” which suggests he’s going to obstruct justice [AGAIN] by releasing the documents himself over DOJ objection, which would MAKE HIM A LEAKER of confidential information, however he can't release anything until Rosenstein gives it to him and he probably won’t.
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Former NSA and CIA Director Gen. Michael Hayden states on Morning Joe that the Russians gained 4 advantages as a result of the Veselnitskaya meeting. 1) That the Trump campaign was “willing to deal” 2) That they would accepted information on Hillary Clinton that had the “provenance of the Russians.” 3) That they wouldn’t go to the Feds even though they were illegally offering information and 4) they got a Kompromat downpayment since the Trumpsters didn’t report the meeting, they could then use the threat of outing them as leverage.f outing them as leverage.
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Chris Cuomo audibly groans when Rick Santorum claims he doesn’t know if Trump has lied.
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Corey Lewandowski on CNN besides claiming he doesn’t understand that the DOJ doesn’t release information about ongoing investigations claiming “it’s a matter of transparency” when it’s not — they (almost) never do that because it would damage the investigation and/or unfairly tarnish a potential target, y’know like it did to Hillary Clinton— he says the Trump admin has been “fully cooperative” and he’ll answer any question but he in fact twice failed to answer questions from House Intel [“I’m not answering your Fucking Questions”] and also states he didn’t know “anyone in the Trump campaign who reached out to Russia (besides Manafort)”, but that’s a LIE because Papadopoulos repeatedly sent emails the campaign while he was reaching out to Russians and he also personally authorized Carter Page’s trip to Moscow where he was told about the “dirt” they had on Hillary. Also Gates was also talking to GRU member Konstantin Kilimnick at the time, while Don jr and Roger Stone were tweeting with Wikileaks but Corey was what — just clueless about all that?
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Two weeks after joining Trump’s legal time and vowing to “shut down” the Mueller probe “in 2 weeks” — which doesn’t seem to much shut downy — Rudy Giuliani claims that he wants to limit Mueller’s interview with Trump to just 2-3 hours — which isn’t really enough to get through question 5 out of the 49 they have for Trump.
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Trump WH lawyer Ty Cobb is out to be replaced by form Bush, Cheney and Clinton Impeachment Lawyer Emmet Flood. So his team is now Sekulow & Giuliani on the private side, Flood on the WH side. [Trump had called previous reports of lawyer shake ups and attempt to recruit Flood “Fake News” — seems rather Unfake” to me now.] Cobb had reportedly advised “calm” in response to the Mueller probe and was uncomfortable about Trump’s mudslinging tweets attacking them “I can’t go down that road” and that Trump is growing more aggressive. Giuliani admits to the WaPo that pushing Cobb out was part of a new “aggressive strategy”.
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Cambridge Analytica’s parent company announces that their shutting down in the midst of the Facebook Scandal [I guess that’s because they’re now fully outsourcing to St. Petersburg, Russia.]
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Trump’s lawyers claim “absolute immunity” in an attempt to have the Emoluments Suit against him tossed out.
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Gen Hayden states on WNYC that “No GOP Congress will ever impeach Trump” [And he’s right, because obviously they Hate America — or at least all the people in it at risk of living in a Rabid Kleptocracy.]
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Sessions announces that 35 lawyers and 18 judges are being added to the border and immigration courts. [Using what for money?]
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Summer Zervos’ defamation lawyers issues subpoenas to Beverly Hill Hilton and to MGM for tapes from the Apprentice which feature Trump talking-to, or about former contestant Zervos — and also any tapes showing him behaving in an “inappropriate sexual manner” with female contestants. [This may be one way to cut through the expensive punitive NDA that former Apprentice employees were required to sign.]
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Former Trump advisor, Roger Stone pal and PR agent for Putin Michael Caputo whines on MSNBC that his lawyer fees in the Mueller probe are costing him $150,000 and making him sell his house. [You should’ve known it would cost you to work for Putin, pal.] He’s also interviewed by the Mueller investigation and comes out saying “House and Senate are net fishing they’re spear fishing and they are deadly accurate. Collusion is definitely on the table” and “They know more about the Trump campaign than anyone who ever worked there.”
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ABC Reports that the Trump campaign has paid $228,000 worth of Cohen’s legal fees.
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18 GOP Reps led by Luke Messner (R-IN) send a letter nominating Trump for a “Nobel Peace Prize” in regards to his work to end the conflict between North and South Korea.
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White Supremacist Jacob Scott Goodwin is found guilty of the bloody beating of Deadre Harris in Charlottesville. The jury recommends a 10 year sentence after rejecting Goodwins “self-defense” claims. [One down, about 10 more to go!]
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Reuters reports that Trump has all but decided to pull out of the Iran Nuclear Deal he just hasn’t decided exactly how.
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At least 88 Central American asylum seekers from the caravan through Mexico cross into the US, which prompted Sessions to beef up legal resources on the border.
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Convicted owner of the Upper Big Branch Mine - which exploded due to failure to follow safety protocols killing 29 people — Mike Blankenship who is running for GOP nomination for Senate in West Virginia says that it’s not Racist to call Mitch McConnell’s wife Transportation Sec Elaine Chao a “Chinaperson”. He also releases an ad referring to McConell as “Cocain Mitch” because a small quantity was once found on a boat owned by his father-in-law.
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Giuliani goes on Hannity
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He says that Trump paid Cohen back his $130,000 through his retainer fees for $35,000 plus enough for taxes and a bonus and that means there’s no “campaign finance” problem, but that’s not how campaign finance law works — that would still be a violation by the size of an “in kind” contribution, by the fact they didn’t report it, plus potentially money laundering and fraud.
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He says that he won’t allow Trump to be interviewed for more than 2-3 hours because Hillary was only interview for 3 hours and he doesn’t want Trump “treated worse than her” when this has nothing to do with her case and if they get a subpoena that “limit” won’t matter.
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He says that the NY FBI who raided Cohen’s office were “Stormtroopers” — wait, didn't they use to work for Giuliani?
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He says that Trump fired Comey because he wouldn’t publicly exonerate him as being part of the Russia investigation [but technically that wasn’t up to him, it was up to Dana Boente at the time — and that also means that the Rosenstein letter was just an excuse, and again we’re back to obstruction.].
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He claims Sessions and Rosenstein should order the investigation “Over” [Because why when they have a pending trial against Manafort and 13 outstanding indictments against various Russians?]
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He says Cohen hardly did any “legal work” for Trump. [So what’s the retainer for because if its for legal work THAT’S FRAUD and how are they still claiming Attorney-Client privilege for something Cohen wasn’t doing?]
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CNN reports that Stormy Daniels manager Gina Rodriguez has turned over documents to the FBI in cooperation with their investigation of Cohen.
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Avenatti responds to Giuliani about the payback to Cohen: “That’s a felony.” He also goes on Stephen Colbert and shows the payment receipt made to Daniels and points out that it was made from First Republic Bank in San Francisco which indicates that California Attorney General Xavier Becerra would have jurisdiction over it and Trump can’t pardon someone charged with a State crime.
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May 3rd —
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May 4th —
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Federal Judge T.S. Ellis grills the Mueller team over the linkages between the Manafort case and Russian interference, and suggests that the case is intended to make Manafort “flip” and that they don’t really care about him and these charges, then requests copies of the unreacted Rosenstein memo authorizing Mueller’s investigation of Manafort to ensure that the remaining redacting portion are not about Manafort.
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Trump-loving Rosanne Barr tweet blasts at Patricia Arquette for the equation that if Storm Daniels is “classless” then so is Trump by saying “she’s known for Anal scenes” which is completely irrelevant to her level of “class” but then Stormy herself says: “I don't even do anal movies, you ignorant twat. That's like saying you are known for your beautiful rendition of The Star Spangled Banner.” [Oh, SNAP!!!] Then a fan replies “Hey! On behalf of my twat, please don’t insult twats by associating them with her.” to which “classless” Daniels says: “Touche'. Please send my sincerest apologies to your undercarriage. It was insensitive of me.” ‘[Classy and Funnier than Rosanne!]
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Obama Ethic Czar Norm Eisen writes a scathing Op-ED saying that Rep Jim Jordan (R-OH) and Mark Meadows (R-NC) have no business threatening the Impeachment of Rosenstein for political purposes and to inject themselves in the middles of an ongoing Justice Dept. criminal investigation.
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Trump slams NBC as “wrong again” when they correct a story about Cohen being “wire-tapped” to say that he was subject to a “pen register” which tracks calls in real time. Then he says that “Rudy’s only been on [the case] for a day, and he’s get his facts straight.” [Shouldn’t he have done that before he started spouting off on Fox News?] He also says that the Meuller team are “all angry Democrats” which they aren’t, but even if they were they’d still have to follow the law and DOJ guidelines.
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WSJ slams Trump for his lies about the Daniels case: Americans will stop believing anything the says. [Some of us never did.] He also says he’ll only talk to Mueller “If it’s fair” — which means what exactly?
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Ben Carson continues with his plans to screw up affordable housing by increasing rents by 3x and adding work requirements which means that housing will no longer be affordable.
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Kushner updates his financial disclosure form for the 40th time.
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Chris Hayes gets into a shouting match with Hannity lawyer Victory Toensing over the scope of Trump’s authority to fire anyone in the government.
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Ryan re-hires the House Chaplain.
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MSNBC’s Donny Deustch says that Michael Cohen told him “Rudy doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”
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Dr. Jen Pena, VP Mike Pence’s official WH physician abruptly resigns. No reasons are given
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NYTimes reports that the Russian Oligarch who had attended Trump’s inauguration and been questioned and had his electronics scanned as he departed his private plane by he Mueller team in April was Viktor Vekselberg, who has been since included on the list of sanctioned Russians released by the Treasury Dept. Vekselberg had also attended the 2015 RT anniversary dinner with Michel Flynn, Jill Stein and Putin.
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Trump brags before the NRA about Judge Ellis questioning the Mueller team about them not really “caring about Manafort’s bank fraud. You can to prosecute or impeach Trump” which isn’t at all a surprise, it’s how Federal Prosecutors work and it’s exactly what they did to get guilty pleas from Flynn, Papadopoulos and Gates
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Daily Beast reports that Trump and WH Counsel Don McGahn are barely on speaking terms after McGahn refused to deny the story that he has previously threaten to quit if Mueller were fired.
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Former FBI General Counsel James Baker — who had been considered a Comey loyalist by Jeff Sessions and had been replaced after pressure from Sessions was applied to FBI Director Chris Wray — quits the FBI to write for a national security column for the Brookings Institute’s Lawfare Blog. FBI trial attorney Lisa Page who had worked for FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe and had an affair with and sent numerous text message with FBI Agent Peter Strzok also resigns.
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Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein after claiming he won’t be “threatened or extorted” by efforts to charge him with contempt of Congress and even Impeach him allows House GOP Intel members to view his minimally redacted memo authorizing Mueller to pursue charges against Manafort. Ironically Devin Nunes didn’t bother to go read the document and sent Trey Gowdy instead who afterwards said he didn’t see any problems with the document or Rosenstein’s actions.
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NYTimes reports that Trump apparently did know about the $130,000 payment to Stormy Daniels months ago, so he’s been lying it about it all this time up until 2 days ago when Giuliani admitted he paid Cohen back.
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Devin Nunes calls for former Secretary of State Kerry to be the very first person prosecuted under the Logan Act based on a Boston Globe report that he’s been meeting with diplomats in France and Iran to try and save the Iranian Nuclear Deal which he originally negotiated — which is real odd since he doesn’t think Flynn, Papadopoulos, Manafort, Gates, Don Jr. or Kushner should be prosecuted under the Logan act despite all their meetings with Russians when they were private citizens.
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WSJ reports that during the election Michael Cohen established a $774,000 line of credit due to a 2 transactions he made involving a Trump Tower condominium that was owned by his in-laws (which would include his Soviet born father-in-law who had originally introduced him to Donald Trump).
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May 5th —
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May 6th —
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May 7th —
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May 8th —
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Politico reports that Trump complains about Giuliani’s TV appearances in private. AP says that he even snapped at his “shadow Chief of Staff” Sean Hannity for saying that money was “funneled through a law firm” because that sounded somewhat illegal [Because it is].
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Giuliani tells CBS news that Mueller had refused to accept written answers from Trump to their 49 questions.
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Political Reports that besides Devin Nunes Trump has “Four Horsemen” in Congress battling against Mueller by trying to smear his investigation and threaten Sessions and Rosenstein with contempt and Impeachment including Reps. Jim Jordan of Ohio, Mark Meadows of North Carolina, Matt Gaetz of Florida and Ron DeSantis, also of Florida
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Friends of Michael Cohen tell Vanity Fair that that he says the FBI investigation of him is a “Nightmare” that is “ruining the lives” of his family.
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Ronan Farrow tell CNN that the women who had come forward about Schneiderman’s abuse were reluctant because they supported him politically and personally. Meanwhile Governor Cuomo asks the Manhattan DA to investigate his case, and they say they have “no current reports” of abuse by him which is ironic since just weeks ago Cuomo had asked Schneiderman to investigate former DA Cyrus Vance Jr. for not looking into abuse by Harvey Weinstein.
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WSJ reports that during a four hour mock interview Trump’s lawyers were only able to get him through the first two questions due to his long answers and frequent National Security interruptions.
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NYTimes reports that Trump told President Macron that he was going to pull out of the Iran Nuclear deal, while Macron tried to talk him out of it.
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Trump announces that America will Violate the Iran Deal (JCPoA and attendant UN Resolutions) to re-instate US Sanctions on Iran and international companies that do business with Iran. This is cheered by Israel, but condemned by Britain, France & Germany and even President Obama.
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Trump’s State Dept can’t answer any questions coherently about why the deal was violated when the IAEA certified Iran’s compliance 11 times, or what happens next, or what sanctions will look like, or whether they have a “Plan B” or a timeline on what happens now.
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CNN reports that Mueller’s airport questioning of sanctioned Russian Oligarch Viktor Vekselberg included inquires about why Columbus Nova a US affiliate of his own company Renova Group which is run by his cousin Andrew Intratar had paid Michael Cohen over $500,000 during 2017 after Trump’s inauguration, which Vekselberg attended. These payments were made to the same LLC shell company Essential Consulting that Cohen had used to pay Stormy Daniels.
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WSJ reports Cohen had arranged $1.6 Million to be paid for the pregnancy and abortion had be former Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard, however Colorado Law professor Paul Campos argues in the New Yorker that this payment was probably made to protect Trump and not former RNC fundraiser Elliot Broidy. “Bechard was actually at one time Hefner’s girlfriend, while Trump and Hefner’s friendship mysteriously came to an end in 2016,” writes Campos. Broidy has a history of bribery and was likely to make tens of $Millions if the DOJ dropped a bribery inquiry involving him and a Malaysia based investment firm 1MDB.
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Senate Intel Chairman Richard Burr burns the House GOP Intel report on the Mueller probe. They didn’t ‘substantiate every conclusion with facts’ [Nope, they didn’t.]
Michael Avenatti releases a document that states that multiple corporations including Columbus Nova, Novartis, Korea Aerospace Industries (KAI) and also AT&T — who are in a lawsuit with Trump over their attempted merger with Time Warner — paid Michael Cohen’s Essential Consulting apparently for “insight” and possibly access to Trump. AT&T confirms they paid Cohen $600,000, which brings the grand total to over $4 Million that Cohen was paid simply for being close to Trump.
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Roger Stone falls to pieces under tough questioning by Andrea Mitchell. Stone then blamed a faulty earpiece for his brief delay before denying that he had met with Mueller and his investigators, and he cast doubt on the U.S. intelligence consensus about Russian hacking of Democratic targets during the 2016 election. “I don’t buy into the premise that Guccifer is indeed a Russian asset,” he said. “I think that is unproved.” [They have his IP address — which was from inside the GRU headquarters — you doof!]
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MSNBC viewers threatened to boycott MSNBC if the network does not fire conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt after a Politico report revealed that he had received special favors from embattled EPA chief Scott Pruitt.
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Coal production is projected to collapse at twice the rate that it had been prior to the Trump era.
- Under cover of night the WH changes the wording on Melania’s “Be Best” pamphlet to give proper credit for it’s creation to the FTC. Then the Office of First Lady blast the “opposition media” for reporting that facts about her pamphlet. “After giving a strong speech that was met with a standing ovation and positive feedback, the focus from opposition media has been on an eduction booklet, ‘Talking with Kids About Being Online’ produced by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) in 2009,” Grisham said. “Despite providing countless outlets with ample background, and on-the-record comments from the FTC, some media have chosen to take a day meant to promote kindness and positive efforts on behalf of children, to instead lob baseless accusations towards the First Lady and her new initiatives.” [Yeah, wow.]
- Don Jr. — the guy whose being divorced because of cheating on his wife and five kids with an Apprentice guest star — tries to throw shade on Eric Schneiderman’s resignation and only sounds like the fucking douche’ nozzle that he is.
- Europe and Iran vow to keep the Nuclear Deal going without the U.S. while Shep Smith scolds a Fox Guest saying we “violated the deal, we didn’t pull out.’
- WaPO reports that Trump is sending a bill to congress with $15 Billion in cuts to previously approved spending, $7 Billion of which comes from the Children's Health Care Fund while the deficit climbs back up to $804 billion.
- Axios reports that WH officials have said that “(Trump) likes it when ‘experts’ are on CNN freaking out,” because he ran his campaign against the “egg-heads” who negotiated the deal [which he doesn’t fully understand.]
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May 9th —
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WaPo reports that the senior DOJ officials the WH and Trump sided against releasing information to Devin Nunes about the start of the Mueller investigation because it involved a U.S. citizen who is a classified confidential source and could expose their identity.
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Fox News reports that 91% of the primetime network news about Trump is negative, so of course he tweets suggesting that he should “take away credentials” from reporters who tell negative stories (which he calls “fake”) about him, just like the tin-pot dictators he admires. He’s previously blocked the Washington Post, and is considering blocking the NYTimes. [The fact that 91% of the reality of Trump’s administration being horrible — doesn’t get mentioned]
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Alex Van der Zwaan the london based lawyer whose father in law is Russian Oligarch German Khan who happens to be business parters with Viktor Vekselberg, who also in turn is in business with Oleg Deripaska begins his 30 day prison sentence in Federal Prison for lying to Federal investigators in the Mueller probe about Rick Gates communicating with former GRU member Konstantin Kilimnick about guess who — Oleg Deripaska.
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Rachel Cook who accused Trump of kissing her without permission in Trump Tower in 2006 wins the Democratic Nomination for seat in the Ohio legislature. Also Don Blankenship loses his bid WV Senate GOP nomination and former CFPB head Richard Cordray wins the Dem nomination of Ohio Senator over Dennis Kucinich.
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WaPo reports that as a gesture of good will from Kim Jong-Un SecState Mike Pompeo will be returning from North Korea with the 3 detainees on his plane.
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Drug company Novartis in 2017 also paid Michael Cohen $1.2 Million through his Essential Consulting LLC apparently for work he didn’t actually do for them. Stat news reports that Cohen had offered to allow them to “gain access to Donald Trump” They had paid him 4 times what they’d paid any other lobbyist and about 10% of their entire lobbying budget for the year.
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RT’s former WH correspondent asks Huckabee-Sanders if Trump is aware that hiring in the government based on political affiliation — since he keeps complaining about 13 Democrats on Mueller’s team — is illegal? And she basically blows off the question.
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Reuters reports that German Foreign minister Heiko Maas says “The [Iran] deal is working. We want to keep in place the controls and transparency rules,” during a conference.
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Jonathan Chait points out that the money paid Cohen by various corporations thru his secret hush-money LLC could have been even more Kompromat for Russia.“For all the speculation about the existence of the pee tape, the latest revelations prove what is tantamount to the same thing,” he writes. “Russia could leverage the president and his fixer… by threatening to expose secrets they were desperate to keep hidden.”
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Chauncey DelaVega writes at Salon that Trump’s attack on America is an implementation of “Sadopopulism” He says “This existential confusion is by design: It is one of the primary weapons of the authoritarian. One of the ways to ground oneself, to create a defense shield against this malignant reality is to document how political, social and cultural norms are being continually broken.”
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Marland Deplorables warn of “Armed Conflict” if Trump is Impeached.
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Fox News says Democrats who opposed Gina Haspel for CIA Director are essentially in league with Khallid Sheik Mohammad. Meanwhile KSM himself makes an emergency request to have his six page statement read into the congressional record during Haspel’s confirmation hearings. During which Haspel refuses to say that torture is immoral under questioning from Sen. Kamala Harris.
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Novartis says that paid Michael Cohen $1,2 Million for one meeting, then determined he was useless but kept paying which shows they have more integrity than Trump when it comes to honoring deals and contracts. During the time that Trump has said he intends to bring down drug prices he supposedly promised them “direct access to Trump” but didn’t deliver it.
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Fox’s Napolitano warns of “imminent” Michael Cohen indictment.
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Trump says everybody wants him to have Nobel prize — even when he’s so far only done the same thing with bringing back NK detainees that Obama did in 2009, has tried to blow up the Paris Accords and the Iran Nuclear Deal — ‘Everyone thinks so but I would never say it’. [Right of course, because he’s obviously much too modest to say it.] Then Mr. Magic Peace Prize says “Iran will negotiate or something will happen.” [If we attack them without provocation or justification who exactly do you think is going to be on the other side? Other than Israel, everyone — even Russia.]
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Phil Mudd calls BS for “collective amnesia” of U.S. Senators who didn’t openly oppose torture who are now coming after Haspel, although the one coming after her is Kamala Harris who wasn’t there 15 years ago and also clearly ignoring the fact that John McCain opposed it openly and loudly.
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Huckabee-Sanders angrily argues that Cohen’s pay-for-play schemes have “nothing to do with the White House” — even though Novartis and AT&T thought that it did.
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20 Years ago Trump new video consigliere Rudy Giuliani argued to Charlie Rose that the President had to testify before the Grand Jury — when that President was Bill Clinton. “You’ve got to do it,” he said. “I mean, you don’t have a choice.”
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Trump Scottish golf course at Turnberry has banned the “second” national drink of Scotland, Irn-Bru, from being sold at it’s course because of potentially damage to it’s carpets -— and Scotland wants to declare war. “The piecemeal ban on Scotland’s other national drink, long avowed as the ultimate hangover cure, has caused inevitable outrage on social media, and will likely swell the protests already planned should Trump visit Scotland as part of his trip to the UK in July,” The Guardian explained.
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Fordham Professor Jed Schugerman writes for Slate that Michael Cohen’s “pay to play” scandal involving Vekselberg may be prove the “collusion case” if it’s linked directly to the Trump admins multiple attempts have Russian Sanctions scuttled — happening at the same time as Kushner and Flynn’s efforts to contact the Kremlin while Cohen attempted with Felix Sater to implement a Ukraine “peace plan” — until Congress overdid them, since Vekselberg owns 26.5% of Deripaska’s aluminum firm Rural and they were subsequently both sanctioned. Even if Trump didn’t initial know about the payments to Cohen he found about it later and attempted to cover it up so we’re back to obstruction of justice and misprision of felony. Cohen may have also violated FARA by lobbying for Russia and also Korea without being registered just like Flynn and Manafort.
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The Daily Beast reports that Erik Prince has spoken to Mueller’s investigators.
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John Kelly and Rosenstein schedule a meeting with Nunes and others for tomorrow to argue about providing House GOP intel members with information about a confidential source in the Mueller investigation.
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Sanctioned Russia oligarch Viktor Vekselberg was also represented by former Trump lawyer Mark Kasowitz.
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Under Mulvaney the CFPB will but shutting down it’s Student Loan office which had recovered over $750 Million in relief for students in debt.
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Lawyers representing Concord Management and Consulting LLC who were named along with other companies and 13 Russians involved in attempting to influence the 2016 election illegally plead “Not Guilty.” They also made an extensive discovery request of the U.S. Government asking for every document related to “U.S. election meddling” starting back in 1945 to the present in an attempt to try and minimize what their being accused of by saying that the U.S. “does it too.”
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Israeli accuses Iran of rocket attack in Golan.
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Columbus Nova scrubs their website of links to Renova and Vekselberg.
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Fox totally blacks out the latest revelations of corporate influence payments going to Michael Cohen for hours.
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Analysts state that 2019 Obamacare premiums will see double-digit increases mostly due to sabotage of the program by Trump and Republicans, including repealing the individual mandate and undermining the Exchanges.
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Cohen’s attorney files a motion contending that $20,500 worth of payments documented by Avenatti were really to a different “Michael Cohen” who is from Canada. Avenatti says that makes them only 99.35% accurate and tells Rachel Maddow that Novartis actually received a personal lunch meeting with Trump after paying Michael Cohen, and that it wasn’t just 1 Suspicious Activity Report that was sent to Treasury after the payment to Daniels, there were 3 SAR reports.
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May 10th —
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The 3 former North Korean Detainees are greeted by Trump, Pence and their wives at Joint Base Andrews at 3am along with 15 photographers to a pomp and circumstance ceremony that Trump brags has to have the “best ratings of any 3am show in DC ever” [Which tell us exactly what he really cares about. TV Ratings.]
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Scott Dworkin says that he was informed by a Hill Staffer to keep his distance from Devin Nunes and his staff on House Intel because they are under multiple investigations by Special Counsel Mueller.
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McCain defends his decision to give copies of the Steele dossier to James Comey [who already had it actually about a month or so previously.] “It had to be investigated.” He also says that he’s opposes Haspel for CIA Director “it’s disqualifying not to denoucne torture.” A WH staffer responds to McCain by saying “He’ll be dead soon.”
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Dallas Morning News reports that AT&T gave information about Cohen’s payments to Mueller back in November or 2017, which is about the time he also interviewed Vekselberg at an airport.
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Trump said to Giuliani that he knows nothing about the Columbus Nova or other payments to Cohen.
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Giuliani’s law firm fires him and denies that they would even complete a deal on behalf of their clients without their knowledge.
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Pence tells Andrea Mitchell that it’s time for Mueller to “wrap it up” ignoring the fact that congress spent two and a half years investigating Benghazi and ultimately found no wrongdoing or negligence by Hillary Clinton. No one told them to “wrap it up” after just one year.
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WH Chief of Staff John Kelly intervenes in the growing brush fire between Rosenstein and DOJ and Nunes Posse at House Intel over even more document releases beyond the initial memo that launched Mueller investigation, which DOJ has provided already with minimal redactions. They schedule a meeting, but no promises are made.
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Wapo reports that AT&T wanted Cohen’s advice on their merger with Time Warner which is being blocked by a DOJ lawsuit, as well as other regulatory matters. Their CEO states that the payment was a “big mistake.”
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WaPo also reports that during the 9 years before the election Trump properties received over $400 Million in cash sales.
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NASA program to track greenhouse gases is cancelled, meaning that such data will have to be provided by other nations.
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New NRA President Oliver North says that the organization is “under seige” from civil terrorists in a cyber war from gun control advocates. [It’s also a social and mainstream media blitz.]
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NYTimes reports that Trump ranted at his cabinet for 30 minutes straight, prompting DHS Sec Kirstjen Neilsen to draft a resignation letter in frustration, but she hasn't submitted it yet.
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Dem on the House Intel committee releases 3,400 ads placed on Facebook by the Russia Internet Research Agency for $100,000 which managed to reach 150 Million Americans which shows that they deliberately posted to inflame both the left and the right at the same time driving a wedges between them. They especially focused on Black Lives Matter issues and police violence as well as pro-police and anti-immigration ads.
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May 11th —
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Conservative Naval war college professor Tim Nichols wrote in a twitter thread how Fox News serves as an addictive drug for elderly Americans who are frightened about the pace of change in the United States.
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NPR reports on unearthed documents that show that Alexander Torshin had begun making regular trips to the U.S. to reach out to conservatives including Sarah Palin beginning in 2009,.
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Several cities including Las Vegas, San Antonio, Cleveland, Nashville, and Philadelphia have said they don’t want to host the 2020 Republican National Convention where Trump is likely to be re-nominated. Only Charlotte NC seems actively interested in being a host.
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Details revaeal that it was WH Congressional Communications aide Kelly Sadler who joked that they don’t need to worry about McCain voting against Haspel because “he’ll be dead soon anyway." She does later call Meghan McCain and the family to apologize, but Cindy McCain says it’s not just an attack on John, but his entire family including 7 children and 5 grand-children.
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WH Chief of Staff John Kelly says to NPR that immigrants come to America with too few skills, not knowing the language and not assimilating enough. Naval Officer and NSA analyst Malcolm Nance says his comments are “disgraceful” and that the chief of staff “embraces openly racist & bigoted ideals.” “He would have been kicked out of [the U.S. Marine Corps] for comments fractionally close to this,”
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Next week the Russian Duma will begin voting on measures to make it illegal to comply with U.S. and foreign sanctions punishable with 4 years in prison.
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ABC news reports that witnesses interviewed by Mueller say that he is investigating $Millions from Russia, Saudia Arabia, UEA and Qatar to Trump’s Inauguration, which was overseen by his friend and business partner Tom Barrack. Mueller is also reportedly investigating Cohen's failed attempt to solicit Ford Motor company.
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Dr. Bernice King daughter of MLK calls for a boycott of Waffle House after multiple racial incidents including a recent mass shooting.
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Trump blasts drugmakers, health insurers and pharmacy benefits managers for making prescription drugs unaffordable for Americans, arguing there should be fewer middlemen and more competition. “This is a total ripoff, and we're ending it.” [Yes, it is, but no you’re not. Have you said “Hi” to Novartis yet?] Then he fires his fatuous lips at NAFTA, again.
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Huckabee-Sanders refuse to comment or offer any apology for Kelly Sadler's tasteless joke about McCain saying it’s a “leak about an internal meeting” even though it was a meeting with staffers from congress, who aren’t internal, she ducks and dodges so much it shocks Shep Smith. She also ducks questions about whether Trump’s own tendency to insult people had any impact on Sadler’s comments claiming “We respect all Americans.” [No, you very seriously don’t.]
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Trump says he still has confidence in Scott Pruitt.
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CNN panel slams Huckabee-Sanders for “Willful Ignorance" whlie not even admitting that Sadler made her statements about McCain even after Sadler apologized to Meghan McCain. Except for CNN commentator Rick Santorum who like Huckabee-Sanders is more upset with the leaking of what Sadler said than what she actually said.
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Giuliani says he wouldn't debate Avenatti for $10 Million dollars. [Which is a nice round number for them to request in a defamation judgement. ] He also accelerates in his cheap shots from calling Avenatti an “ambulance chaser” to saying he's a “pimp.” He also says that “Trump blocked the AT&T deal” so that means the money paid to Cohen had no influence, [and/or Cohen committed fraud with his claims he could impact Trump’s decisions] but this also contradicts the DOJ who has claimed their suit wasn't motivated by his political fued with CNN, who are owned by Time Warner.
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WSJ reports that Mueller is seeking documents from Ford about the pitch made to them by Michael Cohen for consulting work which they had turned down.
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Geneologist Jennifer Mendelsohn looks up John Kelly’s ancestors and found out through a 1900 census bureau that Kelly’s great grandfather lived in America undotcumented for 18 years and could not “read, write, or speak English.”
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Right Wing writers like Ben Shapiro again whine that they aren’t taken seriously be legacy media simply because of “political correctness” and not the fact their ideas are obviously bigoted and dumb.
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Bill Maher hilariously points out how Trump’s WH is run exactly like Maria Puzo’s mob bosses.
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Thinkprogress reports that Mueller is investigating the $48 Million in corporate money that was taken in by Trump inaugural committee which included $250,000 from Columbus Nova, $1 Million from Access Industries which is run by Leonard Blavatnick who has extensive ties to Russia, AT&T which gave over $2 Milllion, Sheldon Adelson who gave $5 Million, as well as Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, Dow, Bank of America, Qualcomm, and Boeing who each contributed $1 million to the fund. Most of the record total $107 Million raised wasn’t spent and exactly where that money is now is an open question.
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Thinkprogress also reports that court filings have revealed that Trump was made aware of the sexual allegations against Eric Schneiderman in 2013 while he was perusing the Trump University case after two women came forward and shared allegations with NY lawyer Peter Gleason, who took the information to retired publicist Stephen Dunleavy who in turn told Michael Cohen. Not long afterward Trump tweeted about it painting Schneideman in the same light as former NY Rep. Anthony Weiner and former NY Gov Spitzer.
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Sarah Braasch who had called the police on a black Yale graduate student who was taking a nap in the common room had previously called the police on another black Yale student Jean-Louis Reneson who was simply present in the dorm’s stairwell, and was a friend of Lolade Siyonbola the student who took a nap. Braasch’s Yale biography touts that she had won a Pro/Con debate on slavery claiming “The pro-slavery contingent defeated the abolitionists because, in a democracy, in the land of the free, who are we to tell people that they can’t be slaves if they want to be?” [Yeah, thanks Kanye.] She apparently vehemently opposes hate crimes legislation and Yale’s Humanist blog had removed some of her writings as being “racially insensitive.”
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Wapo reports that Rep Mark Meadows has threatened to request the GAO audit the Mueller probe, even though they already provide detailed reports on their expenses every few weeks.
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May 12th —
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May 13th —
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May 14th —
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WSJ reports that Cohen had attempted to setup a contracting deal with Uber only to be turned down as they mentioned the conflict of interest since he owned so many taxi medallions.
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Trump exempts Chinese tech company ZTE from his Iran sanctions in order to save their jobs, even though there have been warnings since 2012 that ZTE phones have securit concerns and can carry malware that could expose the users personal data to hackers.
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Lucern Intenational CEO Mary Buchzeiger writes in Craine’s Detroit that Trump's proposed tariff’s could ruin her business by disrupting her supply chain. “I am… angry, frustrated and a little scared, because the unintended consequences of the president’s $50 billion tariffs on China would cripple my business in Auburn Hills and strip my 50 employees of their good-paying jobs,” she writes. “This is crazy.”
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The Gaza protest death toll rises to 41 people.
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HHS prepares to create a carve out for rural whites inside their proposed new Medicaid work requirement rules.
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WH aides provide leaks as a way to “fight back” when the lose a policy argument, they also impersonate each other in thier off the record quotes to throw off the sent of leak hunters.
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New York Magazine reports that Shadow Chief of Staff Sean Hannity calls up Trump most weeknights after his show goes off the air around 10pm. Trump is usually alone on the 3rd floor when he calls, and will discuss what Hannity tells him during the day and even call him back while his official aides are there.
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Fox viewers fume at Judge Napolitano “Did they get to Judge Nap too?” because he states that Mueller has a right to finish his investigation.
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Kushner gives a speech in Jeruselum on Israel and calls the 40 embassy protestors killed in Gaza "part of the problem.” [Uh, but the Israeli soldiers who killed them are what — a solution?]
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Reuters reports that EPA Chief Scott Pruitt demandsd his 24/7 protection detail on his first day on the job, which would be before any possible “threats” against him occurred.
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Law and Crime reports that Concord Management who had been charged by Mueller with conspiracy to defraud the US for their connections to the Troll Farm have filed a motion claiming that the indictment against them is too vague that they are being charged for merely “funding free speech” saying that isn’t a crime under the US codes.
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Paul Begala calls BS on Steve Cortes attempts to justify Sadler’s attacks on McCain while being a so-called “pro lifer.” “As a pro-life person, you must be really astoundingly offended that they are mocking a man who is fighting for his life. Right?” Begala said.
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Trumpster Jason Miller tries to claim that the leak is worst than what Sadler said about McCain dying soon, while John Walsh says his statements are “traitorous.”
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Melania is treated in the hospital for a kidney condition.
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Salon reports the Giuliani and Trump’s defense team now plan to “go on offense” against the Mueller probe.
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May 15th
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May 16th —
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Rep. Mike Quigley (D-IL) tells Chris Cuomo that the House GOP has been covering up the Russia scandal by cancelling the House probe before the revelations about Qatar’s attempt to bribe Trump officials were brought to light which means they have more questions for Michael Cohen, Erik Prince and Alexander Nix who may have perjured themselves.
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NYTimes reports that the FBI’s investigation into Russia and the Trump campaign was code-named “Crossfire Hurricane” and began with investigations of Paul Manafort, Carter Page, George Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn.
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Huckabee-Sanders rages that the person who leaked Sadler’s slur against John McCain is : ‘A total and complete coward and they should be fired’. But Sadler still works in the WH.
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To prevent leaks the WH has banned cell phones in the building and has hall monitors with sniffers to detect anyone with a “contraband” phone. [Welcome to the center ring of the Police State, people!]
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Democrats on Senate Intelligence releases a preliminary report on the Russian attacks on our elections and the June 6th Trump Tower meeting which concludes:
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Putin interfered because he wanted Trump to win over Hillary.
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Rob Goldstone had tried to setup a meeting directly between Trump and Putin in an email to Trump assistant Rhona Ghraff saying that “Emin [Agalarov] could set it up.”.
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During the June 6th meeting with Veselnitskaya Manafort cribed notes about “Offshore — Cyprus — 135 Million shares” of an undisclosed company. [Could this be reference to the Qatari QIA purchasing 19% of Rosneft?]
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Manafort also wrote : “Value in Cypress as inter,” followed by the word “illici,” followed by the phrase “Active sponsors of RNC.”
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Rinat Akhmetshin testified that Don Jr. opened the meeting directly asking for dirt on Hillary and he responded that they should “do their own research on her” then continued talking about the Magnitsky Act. [FEC violation & Misprision of Felony]
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Ike Kaveledze testified that Don Jr. had said after they won the election they might take look at the Magnitsky Act issue which confirms what Veselnitskay has said about it. [Corruption, Theft of Honest Services, Logan Act.]
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Don Jr. didn’t explain the phone call he received from a blocked number in between his calls with Emin Agalarov.
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Don Jr. said he didn’t talk to Trump about his meeting with Veselnitskaya, but he did text Hope Hicks about it and admitted that Hicks may have been involved in crafting the initial WH statement on AF1 along with Trump which turned out to be a lie.
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Trump’s attorney reached out to all those involved once the story broke and sought to help them get their story straight and on the same page.
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Russia may have attempted to fund Trump’s campaign via the NRA.
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Trump files his latest financial disclosure forms which now includes payments to Michael Cohen of nearly $200,000, not just the $130,000 reimbursement for the Stormy Daniels payoff. None of these payments were included on his forms last year which has prompted the Ethics Office to make a possible criminal referral to the DOJ for “false statements” under 18 USC 1001, the same law that Flynn, Papadopoulos and Van Der Zwaan have all pleaded guilty to.
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Fox host Katie Pavlich claims on Outnumbered that the Hillary campaign were the ones really behind the Don Jr/Veselnitskaya meeting because someone from Fusion GPS once talked to Veselnitskaya. [Yeah, Right….]
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Politico reports that EPA’s Inspector General is investigating the use of non-government emails accounts by Scott Pruitt in potential violation of records acts and FOIA.
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DHS Sec. Kistjen Neilsen denies she threatened to resign after being scolded by Trump over the border, however she doesn't deny that she wrote a resignation letter.
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EPA Admin Scott Pruitt potentially perjures himself during a House Budget hearing when he tells Rep. Tom Udall (D-MN) that his landlords wife Steven Hart “wasn’t registered as a lobbyist” before the EPA in 2017 when he lived in their apartment, but he and his firm were listed as lobbyist for Smithfield Foods with the EPA. And Pruitt had met with Hart and Smithfield reps in person at least twice during 2017 the New York Times and Politico reported.
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The New Yorker reports that Steven Cohen’s banking data was part of the Suspicious Activity Report filed with the Treasury Dept as was leaked because an anonymous law enforcement official became concerned when two other SAR reports on AT&T and Novartis linked to Cohen were missing.
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Rueters reports that Mueller issued a Grand Jury subpoena late last week to Jason Sullivan the social media consultant for Trump confidante Roger Stone. The subpoenas, Reuters reported, imply Mueller is focused on whether Stone had advanced knowledge of hacked Democratic emails that were eventually published by Wikileaks.
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Giuliani claims that Mueller ‘s team has admitted he “can’t indict” Trump due to DOJ rules and claims that they should therefore end the investigation, even though they have 3 pending trials and over a dozen outstanding indictments. “All they can do is write a report” about which the House can then vote on. All of that is true, but the House may not be in GOP hands in a few months, and if Trump is listed as an “Unindicted Co-conspirator” on future charges that might even sway the Senate to remove him. Maybe.
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NYTimes reports that a government informant had met several times with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos after they had both left the campaign. Rush Limbaugh and other conservatives have argued that his person was used to “spy” on the Trump campaign [actually they had an open investigation of them starting in July 2018 once they discovered from the Australians that Papadopoulos had been secretly in contact with Russian government officials] While Devin Nunes continues to threaten and subpoena the DOJ for more information.
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Giuliani claims to Laura Ingraham that “Mueller put a spy in the Trump campaign” targeting George Papadopoulos [echoing similar claims by Limbaugh] which ignores the obvious fact that Mueller has only been on the job for the year and the Trump campaign ended 17 months ago. Riddle me that will you without a TARDIS? He also claims Veselnitskaya wasn’t offering “illegal dirt on Hillary and since they didn't get that dirt it was still not illegal, which ignores FEC rules that say simply attempting to get anything of value from a foreign country is still against the law,
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During a WH panel on immigration following a question about MS-13 and illegal immigration Trump responds that Illegal immigrants aren’t even people, they're animals. “We have people coming into the country, or trying to come in — and we’re stopping a lot of them — but we’re taking people out of the country,” Trump replied. “You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals. And we’re taking them out of the country at a level and at a rate that’s never happened before. And because of the weak laws, they come in fast, we get them, we release them, we get them again, we bring them out. It’s crazy.” [No actually they aren’t, Trump’s rate on deporting 67,859 criminals from inside the nation may be up by 12% over 2016, but only 3% over 2015, then just 50% of what they were in 2013 (133,551), 1/3rd of what they were in 2012 (180,970), and 1/4th of what they were from 2008-2011 (~234,000 per year)]
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Gina Haspel is approved by the Senate Intel Committee 10-5 after 2 Democrats jump ship to support her.
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May 17th—
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NYTimes announces that Qatar has inked a deal with the Kushner companies via Brookfield investments and the QIA, just 1 month after the Trump administration announced that they now oppose the Saudi/UAE blockade that they have previously supported.
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Trump celebrates the 1st Anniversary of the Mueller investigation by saying it’s is fake, fraudulent and probably illegal. FBI Director Wray says “It’s not a Witch Hunt.”
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Giuliani again claims that Mueller has told him that Trump can’t be indicted, so he argues that means he can’t be subpoenaed — which is nonsense — he’s been named a “subject” in the investigation and they can certainly subpoena him.
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Judge Napolitano throws cold water on Giuliuani by saying there are two OLC memos one saying a President can’t be indicted and another one, from the Watergate Investigation, saying that he can.
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Orrin Hatch says that Trump can be indicted after he leaves the Administration even if Mueller doesn’t do it himself.
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Marco Rubio says “it the Trump camp colluded it would have been leaked a long time ago.” [It was, man!]
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Avenatti says two more women were paid hush money by Cohen — for much more than Stormy Daniels.
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China triples their purchases of Russian soybeans as U.S. farms begin to suffer from Trump’s tariffs.
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NY Appeals court approves the continuation of the Summer Zervos defamation suit against Trump.
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Buzzfeed reports that Michael Cohen and Felix Sater continued working on the Trump Tower Moscow project with sanctioned VTB Bank until at least July 2016 using an encrypted app to send message back and forth to each other. In December Sater promised Cohen that VTB’s powerful president would meet him in Moscow, thanks to a former GRU pal — and he asked for a photo of Trump’s passport, but that meeting fell through so Sater tried again through GenBank which Cohen rejected as a ‘third-tier” operation.
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Mueller’s office files a sealed unredacted copy of the Rosenstein Special Counsel memo with Judge T.S. Elliot in the Virginia case against Manafort.
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Gina Haspel is confirmed as the new CIA director by the Senate.
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South Korea attempts to restart stalled talks but North Korea says they won’t talk with ‘incompetent’ South unless their differences are settled.
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Trump’s WH is now so afraid of leaks they’ve cancelled weekly staff meetings.
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Former GOP congressman Tom Coleman (R-MO) argues that Trump may have committed “Treason” by offering aid and comfort to Russia while they were waging a CyberWar against us.
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Manafort’s former son-in-law Jeffrey Yohal has signed a guilty plea deal over his own shady financial transactions and has become a cooperating witness with Mueller’s investigation.
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John Bolton states that the U.S. would like to see a denuclearation plan for North Korea similar to that of made by Khadaffi in 2003 but Trump contradicts him and say we “destroyed Khadaffi” — even though that was 8 years later and done by his own people — then he says it’s possible that Kim Jong-Un might keep his regime.
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Education Sec Betsy Devos shuts down the Anti-Fraud section of the DOE, which had previously fined for-profits schools which overcharged and over-promised jobs for students like Devry — this is after she had assigned a former Dean from Devry to run that arm of the department.
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Reports from LVPD indicate the Mandalay Bay mass shooter Stephen Paddock who killed 58 people was obsessed with right-wing gun grabbing conspiracy theories of government overreach concerning the post-Katrina FEMA camps, Rudy Ridge and Waco.
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May 18th —
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Giuliani gives a bonkers interview with Chris Cuomo who backs him down on the “spy” inside the Trump campaign to saying “they were told there was an informant” [Which would be someone who didn't commit Misprision of Felony like the rest of them and also who would tell them that and why??] and catches him cold on his 1998 claim that a President [then Clinton] has to comply with a subpoena to testify as he screams “Unfair” and claims he's never said what he actually said. Avenatti has a field day with him via twitter. Giuliani also claims:
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FBI Director Chris Wray is wrong that it’s not a “Witch Hunt”, saying he knows more about the case than Wray does. [Which is possible how after just 3 weeks?]
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“I don’t know for sure, nor does the President, that there really was [an informant],” Giuliani said. “We’re told that.” [By someone who leaked confidential information to you and may have put that persons life at risk from retaliation by the Russians?}
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“At one point, the President thought there was a wiretap,” said Giuliani. “We were never notified that he was on a tap,” [Of course not because he wasn’t — but Page and Manafort were after they have both left the campaign.]
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WaPo reports that the FBI is moving to protect the identity of the informant who helped them with the Russia investigation before and after Mueller was involved in the case, and and who had spoken with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos after they left the campaign.
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Trump rants the media is “wrong as usual” for saying he slurred immigrants as “animals” saying he was only talking about MS-13, [Who still remain fully human technically] but at least the first time he himself didn’t mention MS-13 he only mentioned “people coming into the country.”
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Former Russian spy Sergei Skripal is released from the Hospital in England.
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Sessions’ DOJ blocks immigration judges from being able to use administrative closures to end immigration cases and stop deportations for immigrants with close ties to their families inside the U.S.
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A school shooting in Sante Fe Texas kills 8-10 students, wounding as many as 13 other people, a suspect is captured and several explosives are found in the area. [This is school shooting #22 so far this year] A Trump fan shows up at the school carrying a weapon and waving a big flag [Which is far too late, and helps no one.] It is ultimately confirmed that the fatalities were 9 students and 1 teacher.
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Trump promises to “do everything” to stop School Shootings — about which he's accomplished absolutely nothing so far.
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Buzzfeed’s Jason Leopold reports that the Treasury Dept had restricted access to Cohen’s SAR reports, this is why two of them were missing which is what had alarmed the Whistleblower who leaked the one about his payment to Stormy Daniels.
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42 year old South African Jonathon Oddi is shot and taken into custody by police after allegedly shouting “anti-Trump rhetoric” and firing a gun in the lobby of the Trump National Doral Miami Resort, he has however also posted pro-Trump memes on social media which had criticized Colin Kaepernick and praised Melania.
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NJ Advance Media reports that a plane owned by sanctioned Russian billionaire Andrei Skoch, arrived in the Seychelles just one day before Erik Prince arrived meet the chief of the sanctioned Russian sovereign investment fund Kirill Dmitriev, the UAE crown prince and his rep George Nader. Six passengers who were on the plane stayed at the Four Seasons Hotel, which, according to Prince, is where the meeting was held.
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Wapo reports that Trump personally requested that the Post Master General raise Amazon’s bulk postal rates — which is part of his ongoing feud with Jeff Bezos and the Capo itself— which he refused because the rate is based on contracts and regulatory standards.
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Foreign Policy reports that only days before he was raided by the FBI Michael Cohen had flown to Miami to meet with Qatar Finance minister Ahmed bin Jassim bin Mohammed Al Thani.