First things first in this week’s
incremental update to the Trump Russia Timeline series includes the amazing fact that last night the NYTimes publish almost 50 questions that Mueller has for Donald Trump, and
several of them are doozies which shows that not only is Mueller clearly investigating obstruction of Justice by Donny, he’s also investigating a corrupt criminal conspiracy to defraud the U.S. and the elections by Trump himself. Otherwise known as “collusion.”
On obstruction we have these juicy morsels:
• What was the purpose of your calls to Mr. Comey on March 30 and April 11, 2017?
• What did you mean when you told Russian diplomats on May 10, 2017, that firing Mr. Comey had taken the pressure off?
• What did you mean in your interview with Lester Holt about Mr. Comey and Russia?
• During a 2013 trip to Russia, what communication and relationships did you have with the Agalarovs and Russian government officials?
And on conspiracy and corruption we have these.
• What communication did you have with Michael D. Cohen, Felix Sater and others, including foreign nationals, about Russian real estate developments during the campaign?
• What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding any meeting with Mr. Putin? Did you discuss it with others?
• What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding Russian sanctions?
• What involvement did you have concerning platform changes regarding arming Ukraine?
• During the campaign, what did you know about Russian hacking, use of social media or other acts aimed at the campaign?
• What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?
All of those questions are very bad for Donald Trump because if he answers truthfully he’s essentially admitting to a crime and if he lies — which is easily proven by his own public statements, tweets, documents and the testimony of others — his chubby goose is cooked.
What’s even more interesting than the questions themselves is the fact that we have them at all. The Mueller investigation has leaked literally nothing so far, so this list of questions comes from Trump’s lawyer, most likely John Dowd who was directly involved in these discussion and took the notes during his talks with Mueller that produced this list. Dowd soon afterward quit as Trump’s lawyer most people seem to think because he couldn’t seem to take his client out of having this interview with Mueller and this leaks seems to be more in that vein. If Dowd couldn't’ convince Trump not to talk to Mueller with this battery of questions aimed at him, perhaps his real advisors — Hannity and Fox and Friends — might be able to reach him.
But somehow I doubt even they’ll get the truth through his thick skull.
• What was the purpose of your calls to Mr. Comey on March 30 and April 11, 2017?
On those dates according to Comey’s memos Trump called him up and pressed him on “lifting the cloud” over his head regarding Russia. Part of the problem here is that announcing that Trump himself wasn’t under investigation would essentially be revealing that several members of his campaign including Manafort, Page and Gates were under investigation and doing so this early — particularly while both Manafort and Page were under a FISA warrant — would have been directly against DOJ guidelines. Also during these calls Trump referred back to his previous request of “Loyalty” from Comey which had been couched in a question of whether he wanted to “keep his job.” Comey actually did follow up on “cloud” request with then Acting Attorney General Dana Boente and left it in his hands, but apparently that wasn’t good enough for Trump.
• What did you mean when you told Russian diplomats on May 10, 2017, that firing Mr. Comey had taken the pressure off?
Immediately after firing Comey Trump told Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov and Ambassador Kislyak that Comey was a “Nut job” and that now the “Russian pressure” had been taken off him, which indicates that he fired Comey in order to stop the Russia investigation.
• What did you mean in your interview with Lester Holt about Mr. Comey and Russia?
Ditto.
• During a 2013 trip to Russia, what communication and relationships did you have with the Agalarovs and Russian government officials?
Reported during his trip to Russia in 2013 for the Miss Universe pageant which was presented by his Russian business partners the Agalarovs Trump reportedly met with several high ranking oligarchs including board members from Russia’s Sperbank with ties to Putin at the restaurant Nobu.
Still, during his Moscow stay Trump also attended a private meeting with leading Russian businessmen at Nobu, the high-end Japanese restaurant chain for which Agalarov owns the Moscow franchise. The dinner was arranged by Herman Gref, Putin’s former energy minister and now chief executive of the state-owned Sberbank, Russia’s biggest bank. The bank, which was another sponsor of Miss Universe, was later among the Russian companies sanctioned by the US over Russia’s annexing part of Ukraine in 2014.
“He’s a sensible person, very lively in his responses, with a positive energy and a good attitude toward Russia,” Gref told Bloomberg.
Agalarov has said he and Trump also met with the businessmen Alex Sapir and Rotem Rosen – Trump’s old partners on the controversial Trump Soho project in New York – to discuss opportunities in Moscow. Agalarov later said they struck an agreement in principle to go ahead. Trump seemed to think so: “TRUMP TOWER-MOSCOW is next,” he said in a thank you note to Agalarov on Twitter. Eight days later, Sberbank announced it was lending Agalarov 55bn roubles ($1.3bn) to finance new projects in Moscow.
• What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding any meeting with Mr. Putin? Did you discuss it with others?
This is a key question even more than most people realize. George Papadopoulos was the point man on setting up a meeting between Trump and Putin during the campaign and George has stated publicly that Trump personally authorized his efforts in this area when he was brought into the campaign.
George Papadopoulos has already pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his meeting with a Kremlin-linked Russian academic who promised “thousands of emails” that would hurt the Clinton campaign, but the just-reported comments from Politico would be the first time Papadadoulos's work had a direct link to Trump himself, rather than lower-level campaign staffers.
Marianna Kakaounaki, an investigative reporter for the Greek newspaper Kathimerini, said Papadopoulos told her that Trump called him personally after he was hired to the campaign in March 2016. Trump later met with Papadopoulos one-on-one, when the aide told Trump about his ongoing efforts to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, Kakaounaki said.
If Trump lies about this he’s in deep shit because it was Papadopoulos lies about this that lead to his being prosecuted under 18 US 1001, lying to a Federal Officer. Even under the most generous reading of Papadopoulos efforts to setup a meeting between Trump and Putin you have the fact that they would have nothing they could legally discuss. Any discussion about U.S. Foreign Policy and issues like Syria would be in violation of the Logan Act since Trump was still a private citizen at the time, and any discussion of business issues — such as the relaunching of the stalled Trump Tower Moscow project — would run directly afoul of sanctions that had been imposed in 2014 against both Sperbank and VTB bank which had been previously slated to fund the project.
• What discussions did you have during the campaign regarding Russian sanctions?
This would also be a key question because again, efforts and negotiations to change the sanctions on Russia during the campaign would be another Logan Act violation. There’s also potential corruption charges here because lifting sanctions would again personally benefit Trump by re-opening the door to his stalled Trump Tower Moscow project. Once he became the White House Resident members of Trump’s staff immediately reached out to the State Dept to begin lifting sanctions on Russia for absolutely no good Foreign Policy reason only to be pushed back at least 3 times.
In the early weeks of the Trump administration, former Obama administration officials and State Department staffers fought an intense, behind-the-scenes battle to head off efforts by incoming officials to normalize relations with Russia, according to multiple sources familiar with the events.
Unknown to the public at the time, top Trump administration officials, almost as soon as they took office, tasked State Department staffers with developing proposals for the lifting of economic sanctions, the return of diplomatic compounds and other steps to relieve tensions with Moscow.
So what exactly was all that about?
• What involvement did you have concerning platform changes regarding arming Ukraine?
Similarly during the Republican National Committee a platform plank to arm Ukraine was blocked by Trump campaign aide J.D. Gordon a move that was later denied by Gordon and Manafort
“It absolutely did not come from the Trump campaign,” Manafort told NBC’s “Meet the Press”. Manafort, who has ties to ousted Ukrainian Prime Minister Victor Yanukovich, also denied having a personal role in altering the platform, saying “I had none. In fact, I didn’t even hear of it until after our convention was over.”
During the convention, the RNC eliminated specific calls to provide arms to Ukraine in its fight with Russia, “after Trump surrogates reportedly intervened,” according to the L.A. Times. The platform also weakened language criticizing Russia for intervening in Ukraine.
In an interview with ABC News, Trump claimed he was not personally involved in the platform change, saying “I was not involved in that. I’d like to – I’d have to take a look at it. But I was not involved in that.”
Until that is they finally admitted they had done it under the direction of Trump.
In January, Gordon told Business Insider that he "never left" his "assigned side table" nor spoke publicly at the GOP national security subcommittee meeting, where the amendment — which originally called for "providing lethal defense weapons" to the Ukrainian army to fend off Russian-backed separatists — was read aloud, debated, and ultimately watered down to "providing appropriate assistance" to Ukraine.
According to CNN's Jim Acosta, however, Gordon said that at the RNC he and others "advocated for the GOP platform to include language against arming Ukrainians against pro-Russian rebels" because "this was in line with Trump's views, expressed at a March national security meeting at the unfinished Trump hotel" in Washington, DC.
"Gordon says Trump said at the meeting ... that he didn't want to go to 'World War Three' over Ukraine," Acosta said.
So why did they lie about it at first?
• During the campaign, what did you know about Russian hacking, use of social media or other acts aimed at the campaign?
Again another key question because during the campaign Papadopoulos was told by Professor Mifsud that “Russia had thousands of Hillary’s Emails.” Even though Jeff Sessions had told him not to arrange a meeting between Putin and Trump he did tell him to “learn everything he could” about those Hillary emails. Carter Page was also told about the Hillary “dirt” and emails during his trip to Moscow in the middle campaign. Don Jr. also knew about the “Hillary Dirt” Russia had because they offered to give it to him right in his office. Also it appears that Micheal Flynn knew about the “emails and hacks” associated with the DNC at least a week before Wikileaks actually revealed them.
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).”
So did any of them bother to tell Trump? Is it even rationally conceivable that they didn’t? Not one of them?
• What knowledge did you have of any outreach by your campaign, including by Paul Manafort, to Russia about potential assistance to the campaign?
This is another question that I’ve noticed that the media talking heads don’t get. There are reports that after the meeting between Don Jr. and Veselnitskay eventually fizzled U.S. intelligence picked up chatter by potential Russia intel operatives talking about someone from the Trump campaign “asking for help against Hillary” and reportedly they mention Paul Manafort’s name during the discussion.
CNN has learned that investigators became more suspicious when they turned up intercepted communications that U.S. intelligence officials agencies collected among suspected Russian operatives discussing their efforts to work with Manafort, who served as campaign chairman for three months, to coordinate information that could damage Hillary Clinton's election prospects, the US officials say. The suspected operatives relayed what they claimed were conversations with Manafort, encouraging help from the Russians.
I watched CNN all night discussing the Mueller questions and they never got the full significance of this one — which is based on a CNN report. In addition there were Manafort multiple email and even face-to-face communications with his business partner and Russia intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik, and his efforts to reach out to and even give a “private briefing” on the Trump campaign to Russian Oligarch Oleg Deripaska who was recently added to the sanctioned list.
London based lawyer Alex Van Der Zwaan pleaded guilty to lying about the fact that Manafort’s partner Rick Gates was in contact with Kilimnik, so Donny better tread lightly here.
On top of all this we have some interesting new revelations courtesy of the House Intel Dems who report that Don Jr. was apparently lying when he said there was “no follow up” between the Trump campaign and Natalia Veselnitskaya over the Hillary Dirt and the Magnitsky Act.
Veselnitskaya herself specifically emailed the Trump campaign to follow up:
Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the intelligence panel, told CNN's Jim Sciutto on Friday that Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya reached out to the Trump family after the election with a request to follow up on efforts to repeal the Magnitsky Act, the 2012 Russian sanctions the US enacted over human rights abuses.
Veselnitskaya was the Russian lawyer at the center of the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, where Donald Trump Jr. expected to receive damaging information on Hillary Clinton but instead Veselnitskaya focused on the repeal of the sanctions.
"Clearly, there's an expectation there on the Russian side that they may now have success with the Magnitsky Act, given that the prior meeting and communications dealt with the offer of help," Schiff said. "It certainly seems like the Russians were ready for payback.”
For her part, Veselnitskaya said the meeting had commenced with high hopes. She began by raising the issue of the Obama-era sanctions against the Russians, known as the Magnitsky Act. With the hint that Veselnitskaya would provide dirt on Clinton, Trump Jr. promised to revisit the sanctions.
“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. told Veselnitskaya. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it.”
In addition Emin Agalarov’s British promotor Rob Goldstone also followed up on the meeting by forwarding a document on the Magnitsky act from Aras Agalarov to Trump’s assistant Rhona Graff — who is exactly who Don Jr. told him to get in contact with — which was ultimately forwarded by her to Steve Bannon.
"Later that day, Graff forwarded to Steve Bannon the email with Agalarov's document regarding the Magnitsky Act as an attachment, explaining, 'The PE [President Elect] knows Aras well. Rob is his rep in the US and sent this on. Not sure how to proceed, if at all.'"
These two emails show that Don Jr. lied about this — or else he’s a totally clueless fuckwit — and if he also lied to Congress about it, that’s not good, not good at all.
In another section of the Minority View the Democrats point out that Goldstone emailed Graff several more times including a personal invitation for Trump to meet Putin (yes, again) this time hosted by Emin Agalarov, and that Trump responded to these emails with his own hand written notes.
At key campaign milestones, the Agalarovs sent notes wishing good luck, conveying congratulations, and offering gifts to Donald Trump. These communications generally occurred through Rob Goldstone, Emin Agalorov’s business partner, who then emailed them to Rhona Graff, candidate Trump’s trusted personal assistant. On each occasion, Graff made sure that Mr.Trump saw these communications, and made it clear that doing so was “important.” Mr. Trump replied more than once to these gestures with hand-written notes of his own.54 For example, on July 24, 2015, Goldstone emailed Graff asking if then-candidate Trump would be tempted to come to Moscow (for Aras Agalarov’s 60th birthday) for a “meeting with President Putin which Emin would set up.”55 Later, on the eve of Super Tuesday in late February 2016, Agalarov congratulated then-candidate Trump and offered “his support and that of many of his important Russian friends and colleagues – especially with reference to U.S./Russian relations.”56
There can be just about zero doubt that Trump personally knew about the Magnitsky document sent by Agalarov and this was before he helped “dictate” the initial Air Force One response to media reporting about the Veselnitskay meeting. That means he knew a lot more than he let on when he claimed that the meeting “was about adoptions.”
And that’s not even counting the FEC violations for trying to “accept anything of value” from a foreign agent during the election in the first place.
Also as it turns out the Trump Admin has done literally nothing about the Magnitsky Act because why should they? It doesn’t do anything to help line their pockets the way that lifting sanctions on VEB or Sperbank would, and what they clearly wanted in exchange — the “dirt” on Hillary — they got anyway from Don Jr. and Roger Stone’s good pals at Wikileaks.
Yet again, Trump has left another woman frustrated and unsatisfied.
Further then House Intel Dems have pointed out that between the time that Goldstone originally emailed him about the meeting and it occurring phone records indicate that he talked to Emin Agalarov at least twice but he also received a call from a blocked number.
Trump Jr. made three phone calls on June 6, 2016, three days before the meeting, two of which were with Emin Agalarov, the Russian pop star who helped arrange the Trump Tower meeting, according to Democrats’ official response to the Republican report from the House Intelligence Committee released on Friday. In between the two phone calls, Trump Jr. spoke with someone using a blocked phone number, which may have been his dad, Donald Trump, according to the Democrats.
Democrats wanted to subpoena the phone records to determine the identity of that person, but Republicans refused, Schiff told the Washington Post.
All of this of course would relate to another pair of questions that Mueller has:
• When did you become aware of the Trump Tower meeting?
And also this one:
• What involvement did you have in the communication strategy, including the release of Donald Trump Jr.’s emails?
Reports are that Trump himself personally dictated the original press release that claimed that the Trump Tower meeting was “mostly about adoptions” — which it wasn’t — and his involvement is very odd since Junior has always stated, even under oath, that he didn't talk to his father about this meeting, he’s always said that he only talked to Hope Hicks and that he didn’t even do that until the day that the story broke.
So why was Donald the one writing this release if he didn’t know anything about it until that very day?
One last thing, not only did Veselnitskaya admit last week that she was an “informant” for the Kremlin she also admitted during an interview with NBC’s Richard Engle that she may have been part of the Official Russian government response to questions about the Magnitsky Act — by directly editing their document herself indicating she’s far more than just a “private lawyer”, she’s a government operative.
Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump campaign officials at Trump Tower in 2016 on the premise of gathering dirt on Hillary Clinton, was more deeply connected to the Kremlin than previously known, NBC News reported Friday, citing emails it had uncovered.
The emails appear to show a correspondence between Veselnitskaya and an official in Russia's state prosecutor's office coordinating a response to a case brought forward by the U.S. Department of Justice, NBC's Richard Engel said on MSNBC.
The newly discovered communications between Veselnitskaya and the Russian government indicate that the lawyer held a level of influence within the Kremlin, undercutting her long-held insistence that she was merely a private attorney.
It is interesting how he’s speaking in English and she’s speaking in Russian and neither is stopping for a translation — they’re just going back and forth at full speed. Yeah, clearly she speaks English and Engle speaks Russian. Also she admits during this interview that she “represents a Military Unit that has a remote association to the FSB” — Uh, so she’s works for Russian Military Spies?
Bojemoi!
[Please watch this interview when you get a chance, there’s a lot more to it than her just admitting she’s an “informant” for the Kremlin and only a small section of this report was included on the NBC Nightly News.]
Trump continues to believe he can talk his way out of this and apparently his attorneys like Dowd and now Giuliani think there’s some kind of soft landing spot available out there for him. However looking at the direction that these questions are coming from it appears that Trump isn’t just a subject of this investigation, he’s a target, and they probably don’t say that because DOJ guidelines don’t allow for a sitting White House Resident to be indicted.
That doesn't mean he couldn’t be indicted once he leaves — or is forced out — of office. Either way this ride is guaranteed to be fairly bumpy for Trump even if he refuses to testify and gets subpeonaed or else Mueller already knows what Trump’s answer to most of these questions will be because he kept wildly venting on live TV, or perhaps they have all Michael Cohen cell records and calls from the hard drive on his computer. Either way, buckle up Donnie.
PS. If any of you read my analysis of the Comey memos from last week and felt the top of your head nearly pop off when Comey stated during the CNN Town Hall that he was an “OCA” (Original Classification Authority) meaning he had the power to declassify FBI information HIMSELF just as I had predicted — I’d love to hear about it in the comments.
- 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.