This week we’ve had the Democratic National Convention which was a enthusiastic infomercial showing a great fetish for social distancing with pre-recording speaches and set pieces. It was dry and safe, and will contrast greatly with the GOP Convention coming this next week which will be a gathering of crazed conspiracy theorists screaming at the moon in various super-spreader events.
Whereas we had the calm of speeches from Michelle and Barack Obama they will have the nutbag meanderings of the St. Louis couple who pulled guns on a Black Lives Matter march that wasn’t paying any attention to them on it’s way to the Mayor’s house down the road.
The GOP has claimed they stand for “law and order” against the “anarchy” of the BLM movement, when in reality the bulk of the property damage and violence has been coming from their own people including members of the Proud Boys and Boogaloo Bois white supremacist movements.
It’s a scam, it’s a con job.
And Steve Bannon was just arrested for one of the biggest con jobs of all.
Bannon was arrested by Postal Security while sailing on a the yatch of a Chinese Billionaire for fraud and embezzlement with his “We Build the Wall” charity project.
A federal grand jury in Manhattan has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Stephen K. Bannon, accusing him and three others of conspiracy to commit wire fraud and conspiracy to commit money laundering in a border wall fundraising scheme.
The sealed indictment, made public Thursday, accuses the four of organizing a scam around a fundraising campaign called “We Build The Wall,” which offered to crowdsource donations to build President Trump’s long-promised wall along the Mexican border.
Brian Kolfage, an Air Force veteran and triple amputee who ran the crowd-funded border wall project, was also charged. The group raised at least $25 million since its December 2018 inception.
Kolfage is accused of taking more than $350,000 in money raised for the project “for his personal use,” while Bannon allegedly siphoned more than $1 million out of the fundraising effort through an unnamed non-profit.
This was a total grift. They took money from xenophobic GOP supporters to supposedly build part of the border wall and stuffed it in their own pockets. This is a project that was heavily promoted by Don Jr.
- Donald Trump Jr. was a special guest last year an event for the group Steve Bannon was just arrested over.
- Trump Jr. once described "We Build the Wall" as "what capitalism is all about" and "private enterprise at its finest."
- A Facebook page run by the founder of the group in December 2019 ran an ad promising autographed copies of Trump Jr.'s book in exchange for donations.
Donald Trump Jr. was a special guest last year at an event hosted by "We Build the Wall," the group that former Trump campaign CEO Steve Bannon was arrested over on Thursday.
In a 15-minute speech at the July 2019 event, "Symposium at the Wall: Cartels, Trafficking and Asylum," Trump Jr. praised the group as an example of "private enterprise at its finest."
"This is what capitalism is all about. This is private enterprise at its finest. Doing it better, faster, cheaper than anything else. What you guys are doing is amazing," Trump Jr. said at the time, per the El Paso Times.
Yeah, it's amazing all right.
Meanwhile, since Trump seems to be losing the election he’s placed his handpicked donor Louis Dejoy as Post Master General and had him sabotage the post office to prevent the gathering of mail-in ballots.
At least 20 states are reportedly poised to sue the U.S. Postal Service and Postmaster General Louis DeJoy over his wide-reaching restructuring of the agency’s operations that threatens to hamper mail-in voting ahead of the elections in November.
The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that there will be two lawsuits on the issue filed by different states, all led by Democratic attorneys general.
They will reportedly argue that DeJoy’s new policies will keep states from holding “free and fair elections” and that USPS had implemented the changes in violation of a law that required the agency to receive permission from the Postal Regulatory Commission beforehand.
Maryland Attorney General Brian Frosh told the Post that he and his colleagues are trying to curb President Donald Trump’s “attacks” on the postal service “which we believe to be an attack on the integrity of election.”
“This conduct is illegal, it’s unconstitutional, it’s harmful to the country, it’s harmful to individuals,” said Frosh.
“Recent post office changes have been implemented recklessly, before checking the law, and we will use our authority to stop them and help ensure that every eligible ballot is counted,” Pennsylvania Attorney General Josh Shapiro told the Post.
In even greater scam news the Senate Intelligence Committee has released it’s long awaited report on the Russia attack on our election from 2016 and it’s turns out there was plenty of collusion going on.
The biggest new revelation is that Paul Manafort’ s Russian associate Konstantin Kilimnick was apparently a Russian Intelligence agent with the GRU and that he had close ties to the GRU’s hack and leak operation that provided Wikileaks with DNC and John Podesta’s emails.
Several members of the Trump campaign and its unofficial circle are labeled by the committee as potential vectors of Russian intelligence efforts. The bipartisan report calls former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort a “grave counterintelligence threat” for his coordination with a GRU-tied figure; former campaign advisor George Papadopoulos is presented as a “prime intelligence target,” and Trump ally Roger Stone is confirmed to have communicated “directly” to Trump and the campaign supposedly insider information about the release of Democratic emails that had been hacked by Russia.
Those vulnerabilities to Russian influence continued through the post-election transition, the report said, while Russia wasn’t alone in taking advantage of the “relative inexperience” of those advising Trump.
[...]
Delving into Manafort’s associations with Russian-intelligence tied figures, the lawmakers appear to have dug up the first public evidence suggesting that Manafort’s decision to offer internal campaign information to pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs via an intermediary, Konstantin Kilimnik, may have been linked to Russian military intelligence’s hacking campaign during the election.
The report said that senators “obtained some information” suggesting “Kilimnik may have been connected to the GRU’s hack and leak operation.”
The section of the report substantiating that allegation is entirely redacted, only saying that “a channel for coordination on the GRU hack-and-leak operation may have existed through Kilimnik.” The report describes Kilimnik as “a Russian intelligence officer,” citing pages of redacted information in support of that claim.
The report also documents the heavy involvement by Roger Stone on contacting Wikileaks and coordinating the John Podesta leak with the Trump campaign.
In examining the campaign’s reaction to Russia’s hack-and-dump effort, the committee concluded in its bipartisan report that the Trump Campaign “sought to maximize the impact of those leaks to aid Trump’s electoral prospects.
Its report confirmed what had long been alleged about Trump ally Roger Stone: that he had shared “directly” with Trump and others on the campaign his “purported knowledge” about Wikileaks’ release plans.
The committee noted that Trump in written answers to special counsel Robert Mueller had claimed to have no recollection of Wikileaks-related conversations with Stone or the campaign, nor did Trump remember the specifics of any Stone conversations between June and November.
The bipartisan report of the committee said that “despite” Trump’s recollections, it “assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his Campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”
Trump knew about the Podesta hack because Roger Stone had told him, then he lied about it with Robert Mueller. Then when the Washington Post contacted the campaign for a comment on the Access Hollywood tape the campaign — via Steve Bannon — reached out to Stone and had him contact Wikileaks to have the Podesta emails released that very day. They were published about 30 mins after the Access Hollywood tape was released.
Mueller’s own report didn’t focus much on Kilimnick since he was a foreign national, and all the sections about Roger Stone were redacted since his legal case was still in process at the time. In the end, based on press reports and the Mueller report, there was lots and lots of collusion.
There was Manafort communicating and sharing internal polling information with Kilimnick. Don Jr’s meeting with Veselnitskaya over the Magnitsky Act — which he agreed to pull back and limit, until he discovered that Veselnitskaya “dirt” on Hillary was nonsense. Jr. also met with Alexander Torshin and Russian spy Maria Butina. Carter Page met with deputy prime minister Dvorkovich and an exec from sanctioned oil company Rosneft named Baronov who told him that 19% of Rosneft stock was being sold. Popadopoulos met with Professor Mifsud and a representative from the Russia Ministry of Foreign affairs named Timofeev as part of his attempt to setup a meeting between Trump and Putin. Flynn and Kushner met with Ambassador Kislyak during the transition. Jeff Sessions met with Kislyak twice even though he testified during his confirmation hearings the no members of the campaign had met with Russians. Kushner also met with a banker and former graduate of Russian spy academy named Gorkov. Michael Cohen and Felix Satir emailed and phoned with Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov as part of their effort to have a meeting between Trump and Putin over their stalled Moscow Tower project. Stone communicated with Russia operative Guccifer 2.0 over twitter and then Stone, Jerome Corsi & Ted Malloch communicated with Wikileaks through an RT reporter named Rattansi.
None of them reported any of these contacts to the FBI as they should have, in fact, several of them lied about these contacts — Trump, Flynn, Stone, Papadopoulos, Manafort, Sessions — lied to the FBI and under oath about who they talked to and when. That’s consciousness of guilt.
And these people are going to be presenting their “convention” to us next week.
Heaven help us.
Here are the detailed events for this week:
August 15th —
August 16th —
August 17th —
August 18th—
- Dejoy collected millions from company with ties to Postal Service. He will testify to the Senate on Friday. He announces he will pause the USPS overhaul until after the election.
- Indignant Trump lashes out at Michelle Obama’s Convention speech: “Thank you for your very kind words Michelle.” He tells her “No, you are over your head.” [No, She's not.] Trump pardon's Susan B Anthony from being arrested for voting while being a woman. He claims Gov. Cuomo “killed” 11,000 uncounted people who were from nursing homes.
- Missouri couple who pulled guns on peaceful protesters will speak at the RNC.
- Senate Intel publishes their Russia probe report which massively implicates Manafort and Stone. It links Konstantin Kilimnick to the GRU hack and leak operation while he was working with Manafort which explains why he gathered up Trump polling information. It documents that Stone was in communication both with Guccifer 2.0, Wikileaks and with Trump through Keith Schiller’s phone, and that he had been contacted by the campaign and requested Wikileaks dump the Podesta email information to divert the press narrative from the Access Hollywood tape. GOPers claim they found “No collusion” [Except for Manafort and Kilimnick, Don Jr with Veselnitskaya, Torshin and Butina, Carter Page with Dvorkovich and Baronov, Popadopoulos with Mifsud & Timofeev, Flynn with Kislyak, Kushner with Gorkov & Kislyak, Cohen and Satir with Peskov, Stone with Guccifer 2.0 and Stone, Corsi & Malloch with Rattansi.], Dems say “This is what collusion looks like.” The Report documents how the Trump campaign organized itself around the Hacked Russian emails and it scolds the WH and Trump allies for “sketchy obstructiony tactics.” It also slams a “fawning" Trump for his praise of “Murderous" Putin.
- Former USPS Board leader meets privately with House Dems.
- Bernie Sanders preferred Harris for Biden’s VP pick.
- Jim Jordon mocks protests as he back Trump’s mail-in vote Jihad.
- 20 States plan to sue Dejoy and USPS over the agency restructuring.
- MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell goes nuts on CNN with Anderson Cooper while trying to claim poisonous supplement Oleandrin has been “tested” for Covid-19 with 1,000 people, but he can’t name or identify the test, or whether it was peer reviewed. [It was a test by the military using a test tube to see if Oleandrin could kill viruses back in 2016, before Covid-19. Bleach does that too. Also poison.]
- Former DHS Chief of Staff Miles Taylor says that his revelations about Trump's incompetence, ignorance and danger to national security are just an “opening salvo.”
- Former Deputy Post Master is skeptical of Dejoy’s assurances that the postal slowdown is on hold.
- Georgia officials knew of severe shortage of PPE as they moved to re-open.
- The Democratic Convention features a Roll Call from every state and territory which highlights the breathe and diversity of the nation including activist Ady Barkan, Ocasio-Cortez nominates Bernie Sanders but Biden is chosen as the nominee. Colin Powell and a flurry of Republicans speak, Bill Clinton speaks. Jill Biden delivers the keynote.
August 19th—
August 20th —
August 21st —
August 22nd —
