Another Year of Robert Mueller (Part II of the Russian Investigation)

The Mueller Scorecard: At my last count the number of felonies racked up by members of the Trump campaign (and associated scumbags), related to the Russia investigation, totals:

33.

Paul Manafort (10), Michael Cohen (9), Rick Gates (8), Michael T. Flynn (1), George Papadopoulos (1), W. Samuel Patten (1), Richard Pinedo (1), Jeffrey Yohai (1) and Alex van der Zwaan (1).

This count does not include indicted Russians since they will generally remain beyond the reach of U.S. authorities.

*

As a former history teacher (but admittedly no fan of President Trump, I try to stick to the facts, as I find them. I use as many sources as I can find, from Reuters, to Time, to CBS and USA Today. I check news feeds like Politico and The Hill, but steer away from HuffPost, which seems out there. 

Finally, I almost never quote Democrats when talking about Trump. I make my case against him in other ways.

I’ve had to correct a couple of mistakes since I started writing about the investigation. Maria Butina, a young Russian woman, arrested in a possibly related case was originally said to have traded sex in return for access to leading conservative figures during 2015 and the 2016 campaign.

That report proved in error—although she did dupe one conservative gentleman into giving her help.

I have also made occasional errors in spelling of names or in transcribing numbers. I correct them as I identify them.

I started off trying to keep a count of the proven lies by Trump and members of his campaign and administration in regard to the Russian investigation. For the most part, I was restrained in that respect. I didn’t count repeat lies. If I had, Trump would have piled up hundreds by himself. Eventually, I found my system to be cumbersome and changed to adding little Russian flags to my posts. “Ruskies,” I call them. You keep count of them yourself, as you go along:

This flag will appear only when lies are proven. 

If you go to my first post on the topic you will see dozens of flags representing what we now know are proven lies.

I also changed my system slightly as I went, and began awarding “Grand Ruskies” for rare skill in lying or covering up any truth.

Trump is not exonerated.

Once we see the full Mueller report (I am cleaning up typos in this this post on 3/25/19) I may go back and make corrections. For now, I can say only say that Attorney General William Barr seems correct in quoting Special Counsel Mueller. “The Special Counsel states that ‘while this report does not conclude that the President committed a crime, it also does not exonerate him.’”

I do not find that comforting.

*

YOU CAN READ about the first year of the investigation (including brief background from 2011 to 2015) by following the link to “A Year of Robert Mueller.”

That post ends with events of May 16, 2018.

This particular post covers pertinent developments between May 17, 2018 and October 22, 2018.

There’s a brief gap without news. Then “Another Year of Robert Mueller (Part III)” picks up the story on October 29, 2018 and carries it forward till the end of February 2019.

Part IV picks up on March 1, 2019 and will be added to going forward. The sad saga is not ended.

Only Trump’s good friends in Moscow can be happy.

The Mueller Archive

5/17/18: Donald Trump rises early and sets out to do what he does best. First, he turns on the television and watches Fox & Friends. Then he tweet-whines. 

At 6:28 he offers up this nugget:

Congratulations America, we are now into the second year of the greatest Witch Hunt in American History...and there is still No Collusion and No Obstruction. The only Collusion was that done by Democrats who were unable to win an Election despite the spending of far more money!

Sadly, we learn later that another witch has pled guilty. This time the pointy hat sits on the head of Jeffrey Yohai, Paul Manafort’s former business partner and ex-husband of Manafort’s daughter.

5/20/18: It’s a quiet Sunday in Trumpistan. No one from the Trump administration or family has been indicted for days.

Still, a Trump Twitter Tantrum ensues. The first tweet comes at 8:04 a.m.:

Things are really getting ridiculous. The Failing and Crooked (but not as Crooked as Hillary Clinton) @nytimes has done a long & boring story indicating that the World’s most expensive Witch Hunt has found nothing on Russia & me so now they are looking at the rest of the World!

This tweet is flatly absurd. The New York Times has just reported that Don Jr. took a second meeting at Trump Tower, where it is alleged representatives of several foreign countries offered help during the 2016 election.

You know: the “failed and crooked” Times, which correctly called Don Jr. out on the June 2016 meeting with Russians.

Mueller has not “given up on Russia.” One of the participants in this newly revealed meeting is George Nader.

Nader is cooperating with Mueller. Nader was involved in another secret meeting with a Russian in the Seychelles.

For obvious reasons, investigators are looking at other possible foreign involvement in the U.S. election. 

And, yes, it does seem odd that Don Jr. now admits he met with a representative of Saudi Arabia, a representative of the United Arab Emirates, and an Israeli social media expert, all of whom offered to help Trump Sr. in the election.

No one knew about this meeting—until a few days ago—when The New York Times wrote it up.

  

Mueller has not given up on Russia. Nader may know about illegal offers from other foreign countries: Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. The story of how Don Jr. forgot about another meeting entirely gets even better when Erik Prince admits in March 2019 that he too was in attendance with Don Jr., Nader, and representatives from Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E. and Israel. In any case, both Don Jr. and Prince failed to disclose this meeting.

5/21/18: In the wake of his Sunday tantrum, the president partly gets his way. The Department of Justice will look into whether or not the F.B.I. “infiltrated” his campaign, or put a “spy” in his strategy meetings, or set up a secret camera to watch Melania undress for bed nightly.

Even the nit-wittiest nitwit could figure this out if they turned off Fox News and spent a few moments thinking. 

Page has to admit lying about his trip to Moscow.

A source “inside” the Trump 2016 campaign talked to three people. One was George Papadopoulos—who has since pled guilty to lying to the F.B.I. Papadopoulos is now cooperating with the Mueller investigation. A second was Carter Page, who shows up in the infamous Steele dossier, allegedly for traveling to Russia, talking to individuals with direct links to Vladimir Putin, and being offered a highly lucrative deal if Trump & Co. worked with the Russians.

Page did go to Moscow. 

At first, Page denied telling anyone in the Trump campaign about his trip. He later admitted he did. 

Then he said he didn’t meet with any high Russian officials. Then he said, okay, I guess I did.

Page said he never told anyone at the campaign about his trip to Moscow. He did. (We already counted the lie about meeting with Russian officials.)

The third individual contacted by the source was Sam Clovis. Clovis described the extent of his contacts with the “spy” during the campaign: “The meeting was very high level; it was like two faculty members sitting down in the faculty lounge talking about research. There was no indication or no inclination that this was anything other than just wanting to offer up his help to the campaign if I needed it.”

No cloaks were involved. No daggers, either. The pair talked in a hotel lobby. Clovis didn’t have a hidden gun in the side of a briefcase nor a pencil that could spray toxic chemicals. He had a cup of coffee and a notebook.

Clovis tells reporters,

I didn’t have any notes on the meeting because there must not have been anything substantive that took place. Because it was nothing new. It was an academic meeting. It was not anything other than him talking about the research that he had done on China. That was essentially what the discussion was about. We already had a lot of China people involved [in the campaign].

Clovis said he and the F.B.I. “spy” exchanged four emails. The source, says Clovis, then used this meeting to convince Page and Papadopoulos to talk.

At this point, Clovis went down the rabbit hole and explained how the F.B.I. and DOJ used all kinds of tricks to get a FISA warrant and go after Page—and make Papadopoulos lie about a meeting he had with Russians—and make Page forget he pretty much did anything in Russia.

*

Another “rabid Democrat” comes to the defense of Robert Mueller and…

Oh, a Republican?

Trump’s biggest problem is Trump.

In a speech at the University of Chicago, former Republican governor of New Jersey, Chris Christie, has this to say: “Bob Mueller himself is not a partisan, he’s an honest guy, he is a hard working guy, he’s smart and you can’t argue that the investigation hasn’t been effective so far.” Trump’s biggest problem is Trump. “There’s no way to make an investigation like this shorter,” Christie says he warned the president, “but there’s lots of ways to make it longer. He’s executed on a number of those ways to make it longer.”

5/22/18: It’s a bad day for Michael Cohen. A longtime business partner pleads guilty and agrees to cooperate with investigators. That partner is Evegeny A. Freidman, a Russian immigrant (what else), known as the New York City “Taxi King.” Freidman will avoid a lengthy jail sentence and have to pay back $1 million (out of $5 million the state says he owed) in unpaid taxes.

In a related story, Paul Campos, a professor at the University of Colorado, floats a theory about Cohen. Campos notes that Cohen was involved in three hush money settlements in 2016. Two involved Trump, one going to Stormy Daniels, another to Karen McDougal. The third reportedly involved Elliot Broidy, a heavy-hitting Republican fund raiser, who impregnated another Playboy Bunny, Shera Bechard. (See: 4/14/18 and 4/16/18.)

Campos notes several odd coincidences:

1.    In all three settlements the women were initially “represented” by a lawyer named Keith Davidson. Davidson has since been accused of conspiring with Cohen to insure all three remained quiet.

2.    In one Trump case and in the Broidy case, Cohen used almost identical non-disclosure language. He used the same pseudonyms: for the women, Peggy Petersen and for the men, David Dennison.

3.    The two Petersen-Dennison payoffs were routed through L.L.C., Essential Consultants, set up by Cohen during the 2016 campaign.

Initially, Broidy took the “hit” and paid $1.6 million to hush up the pregnant Bunny. In return he gained significant access to President Trump. This led to a private meeting with Trump, where a business deal with Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates was discussed. The United Arab Emirates then agreed to give Broidy a contract to provide security services worth hundreds of millions.

Now leaked emails between Broidy and George Nader (currently cooperating with the Mueller probe) show an interesting connection. Here the Associated Press picks up the story:

Just two days before that meeting, on November 30, Broidy wired $200,000 from his Bank of America account to Real Estate Attorneys’ Group, a California firm. On December 5, REAG transferred that money to attorney Keith Davidson. Davidson was at the time supposedly representing the legal interests of Shera Bechard, a Playboy model with whom Broidy now claims to have had an affair. (Bechard fired Davidson shortly afterward, when she became convinced that Davidson was actually working in concert with Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s personal attorney, to protect Cohen’s client’s interests rather than hers.) That $200,000 was supposed to be the first of eight quarterly payments that “David Dennison” agreed to make to Bechard, in order to buy her silence about an affair and a subsequent abortion. All this was laid out in an NDA recovered from Michael Cohen’s office when it was raided last month.

We don’t know where this story ends. We do know this. Nader is talking to Mueller. And Nader has been in several meetings with Broidy. If Broidy was taking the fall for the pregnant Bunny and covering for Trump a number of campaign finance laws would have been shattered.

The contract with the UAE might be seen, legally, as a quid pro quo.

And as an added bonus, the Playboy Bunny would have aborted….President Trump’s love child!

Possible lies: too many to count; we will have to wait and see what transpires.

This could be a complete fantasy; but a liberal can hope.

5/23/18: This may be the day Donald J. Trump proves conclusively that he has no shame, and possibly proves he’s nuts. He wakes from his slumber and launches another Twitter rampage. The gist of his message: Everyone else is lying. The only person you can trust is me.

Up with the birds, his first tweet comes at 5:54 a.m.:

Look how things have turned around on the Criminal Deep State. They go after Phony Collusion with Russia, a made up Scam, and end up getting caught in a major SPY scandal the likes of which this country may never have seen before! What goes around, comes around!

Clearly, we’re off to a bad start—with an unhinged president categorizing critics and federal investigators as “criminals.”

If Trump could lock up enemies without trial he would.

This is when you realize beyond doubt that if Trump had the power to lock up enemies without trial he would. Hillary would be behind bars, no trial required. Trump made that clear during the campaign. John Kasich and Ted Cruz, Trump once complained, were teaming up against him during the campaign. “It’s collusion,” he told Sean Hannity. “In business you go to jail for that, but it’s collusion where they’re coming together because they are getting beaten badly.”

America has plenty of cells. Trump would fill them. Snoop Dog would end up behind bars as punishment for making an insulting video about the president. Trump insisted that those who burn the American flag, an act protected by the First Amendment according to the U.S. Supreme Court, should also be jailed. I mean, who cares what some “crappy” federal court says?

And Trump would be happy to fill entire prisons with journalists who write about him in unflattering terms.

Comey would already be in jail. Trump said that too.

In any case, Trump was steaming to start his day. So his tweet tirade continued. We know he watches only one television network. We know he never picks up a newspaper and never reads a book. His thought processes are no more complicated than this: “What’s in this for me?”

Now he tweet-quoted a Fox News story: “‘It’s clear that they had eyes and ears all over the Trump Campaign’ Judge Andrew Napolitano” (See: 5/30/18 for a reversal in the judge’s thinking.)

At 6:33 he bends the words of James Clapper, who had blistered him on television the day before. Trump tweets: “‘Trump should be happy that the FBI was SPYING on his campaign’ No, James Clapper, I am not happy. Spying on a campaign would be illegal, and a scandal to boot!”

At this point, anyone who bothers to check what Clapper said begins to realize the Trump Tower of Lies is imploding.

                                                                                    

Let’s revisit what Clapper actually said in an appearance on The View. Joy Behar, one of the hosts, put the following questions to him:

BEHAR: So I ask you, was the FBI spying on Trump’s campaign?

CLAPPER: No, they were not. They were spying on, a term I don’t particularly like, but on what the Russians were doing [emphasis added]. Trying to understand were the Russians infiltrating, trying to gain access, trying to gain leverage or influence which is what they do.

BEHAR: Well, why doesn’t [Trump] like that? He should be happy.

CLAPPER: He should be.

The concept is simple. If Russians were infiltrating Trump’s campaign, the good guys (U.S. intelligence agents) would want to stop the bad guys (agents of a hostile foreign power, Russia).

If Manafort and others were working in the interest of foreign powers, Candidate Trump would surely want to know.

The best possible explanation would be that Candidate Trump knew nothing about Paul Manafort’s shady past. But Manafort is almost surely dirty—a money launderer in the pay of Russians.

A new report, issued by Bloomberg, indicates Manafort made 17 trips to the Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, just months before joining Trump’s team. The purpose of those trips was to perform lobbying work for the Opposition Bloc, a pro-Russia political group.

Clearly, the magnetic pull of crook to crook was at work. Manafort had been advising a corrupt Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who—when toppled in a popular uprising in 2015—fled to Russia.

Late in the day the president pushes for a meeting of top lawmakers to get to the bottom of this “spy” business during his campaign. He tells reporters in a quick gathering on the White House South Lawn that he’s for “total transparency.” He’s not blocking the investigation. “What I’m doing is a service to this great country and I did a great service to this country by firing James Comey.”

Yes, we remember what you said. You told Lester Holt you fired him because of the Russian investigation.

You did a service to yourself.

 

Trump lied about what Clapper said.

*

The plan for the meeting about spies is soon set. It will include White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, representatives of the F.B.I., the Department of Justice and U.S. intelligence and two members of Congress.

Great! Two branches of government working together in the name of transpare….

Wait. Two members of Congress?

Representative Devin Nunes is one. This is the same man whose hometown newspaper once labeled as “Trump’s stooge.”

The second would be Trey Gowdy, another Republican.

This is the president’s idea of “transparency.”

“The president never argues the facts of the case.”

On her 4:00 p.m. MSNBC show host Nicolle Wallace, a former member of the George W. Bush administration, puts up the following quote from former CIA head Michael Hayden’s new book, The Assault on Intelligence: American National Security in the Age of Lies. Hayden had a decades-long career in the U.S. military and retired from the U.S. Air Force as a decorated four-star general:

We have elected someone as president of the United States whose first instincts are to twist and distort truth to his advantage, to generate financial benefit to himself and his family. Andi in so doing, to demean the values this country has traditionally stood for. He has set a new low bar for ethics and morality. He has caused damage to our societal and political fabric that will be difficult and will require time to repair. And close to my heart, he has besmirched the intelligence community and the FBI, pillars of our country, and deliberately incited Americans to lose faith and confidence in them.

Hayden’s live comments are no less harsh. Trump ignores “objective reality.” The president has attacked what Hayden calls the “truth-tellers.” He has created friction points, and here Hayden ticks them off on his fingers, with “intelligence, law enforcement, courts, science, scholarship and journalism.”

Hayden admits the truth-tellers are imperfect in the stories they tell.

Yet, he adds, “Their only safe haven is to preserve and pursue truth as they best know it to be.”

Referring to the “scene” on the South Lawn earlier in the day, Hayden warns that the President of the United States is completely untethered from the truth. His comments represent “a created reality to meet the needs of the moment.” The president “never argues the facts of the case.” He simply attacks those who threaten him—plying truth as their swords.

Trump’s shield?

Lies.

*

Across town, Mike Pompeo is testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Committee. His performance is solid. But there’s a testy exchange between a Democratic congressman and the Secretary of State, related to Benghazi.

More to the point are Pompeo’s thoughts on the “Criminal Deep State.” Did he believe a deep state existed?

Ted Lieu, a California Democrat, noted that the president had tweeted just this morning about that.

If Pompeo looked under the bed, so to speak, did he see a Deep State Boogie Man or did he not?

“I haven’t seen the comments from the president,” Pompeo dodged. “I don’t believe there’s a deep state at the State Department.”

Phew.

Lieu asked about the C.I.A.

“I would say this,” Pompeo replied. “The employees that worked for me at the C.I.A. nearly uniformly were aimed at achieving the president’s objectives and America’s objectives.”

Phew.

*

The clouds around the Trump administration thicken. The BBC reports on another secret meeting involving Michael Cohen. Cohen took a payment of $400,000 from representatives of the president of the Ukraine, in return for which he set up a meeting with Trump at the White House in June 2017. Afterwards, the Ukraine stopped helping the Mueller probe pursue links between pro-Russian Ukrainian interests and Paul Manafort.

The BBC reports: “One source in Kiev said [Ukrainian President] Mr Poroshenko had given Trump ‘a gift’—making sure that Ukraine would find no more evidence to give the US inquiry into whether the Trump campaign ‘colluded’ with Russia.”

According to a BBC reporter, “Last week in Kiev, the prosecutor in charge of the case, Serhiy Horbatyuk, told me: ‘There was never a direct order to stop the Manafort inquiry but from the way our investigation has progressed, it’s clear that our superiors are trying to create obstacles.’”

A smell of rats is detected once more.

Manafort lied about making 17 trips to the Ukraine to work for Russian interests.

  

5/24/18: The president has a spy problem on his hands—or all in his head. The F.B.I. and other federal agencies were spying on his campaign! Trump tweets out the “evidence.” That is: he makes it up.

At 7:21 he tweets: “Clapper has now admitted that there was Spying in my campaign. Large dollars were paid to the Spy, far beyond normal. Starting to look like one of the biggest political scandals in U.S. history. SPYGATE - a terrible thing!” 

In any case, the meeting between members of Congress and top officials from the intelligence community is on for later that afternoon.

According to the propaganda people at Fox News, this meeting will allow Congress to get to the bottom of the SPYGATE mess. But for some odd reason, Democrats in Congress think they should attend.

Politicians begin arguing in all directions. The Democrats make a solid case. They should be included. One meeting becomes two. In the first, Devin Nunes and Trey Gowdy attend. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan appears, because he has a scheduling problem and can’t go to a second meeting as planned.

Assistant Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray and Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats are there.

Adam Schiff, ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, has by that time secured a seat at the table. Democrats had pointed out that the president’s interest in “total transparency” might seem more believable if members of both parties were allowed to show up.

Now it gets even stranger. Remember, this is a meeting supposedly called because Congress has a duty to exercise oversight over the Executive Branch. Suddenly, White House Chief of Staff John Kelly and Trump lawyer Emmet Flood appear. Flood is not a member of Congress and has no legitimate reason to sit in on such a meeting, unless to get the scoop on what investigators might know about the boss and the rest of the pirates on the ship.

Kelly and Flood—according to White House Press Secretary Pinocchio—speak briefly and leave.

At least one Republican congressional staffer, hearing they appeared, says, “That’s the craziest shit I ever heard.”

A second meeting, required because top Congressional leadership, not just a guy like Nunes, sucking up to Trump, and Gowdy coming along to watch, would like to be in the know, is held soon after the first concludes. Present are Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer for the Democrats, Nunes again, Senator Mark Warren, a Democrat, and Senators Richard Burr and Milksop Mitch, Republicans. 

The same three intelligence heads give the same briefing to the group.

On Fox News, soon after, Brett Baier asks Milksop Mitch to describe the meeting just ended. 

“Were you surprised by what you learned?” Baier wants to know.

“Nothing particularly surprising,” Milksop replies. “But again, it was classified, so there’s no real, no real report I can give to you.”

*

Meanwhile, details about both the idiocy and mendacity of President Trump continue to spill out.

Two days ago, after watching too much cable news, Trump claimed the F.B.I. informant who talked to three members of his campaign had been paid “a massive amount of money… many times higher than normal” to spy on his campaign. 

That informant, since revealed to be Stefan Halper, looks a lot less suspicious if one turns off Fox News and searches out the truth. As Politifact notes, his biography impresses. Halper is “professor emeritus at Cambridge University in England where he lectures on international security issues. He served as deputy assistant secretary of state for Political-Military Affairs in the Reagan administration.”

At the time he was paid to talk to members of the Trump campaign he was also being paid to work on a study of Russian-Chinese relationships. Halper was paid by the Pentagon, not the F.B.I. The tab for his work during the time he was “spying” on Trump and his team—and working on research: $244,960.

Guess how much Halper earned working for the Pentagon from 9/29/2017 to 3/29/2018, while Trump was on his Oval Office throne?

Halper earned $411,575 on Trump’s watch.

In related news, the president told allies earlier in the week that he wanted “to brand” Halper, name at the time unknown, a “spy,” not an informant. According to the Associated Press, he told allies that sounded ominous.

It would stir up his base. 

Trump lied when he said Halper received a massive amount of money for spying on the Trump campaign. Halper was not paid by the F.B.I.

5/25/18: Trump can’t let the “SPYGATE” story go. On late night TV, Stephen Colbert labels the matter “Stupidgate.” 

Naturally, the President of the United States lays out his “case” in a series of tweets:

The Democrats are now alluding to the the concept that having an Informant placed in an opposing party’s campaign is different than having a Spy, as illegal as that may be. But what about an “Informant” who is paid a fortune and who “sets up” way earlier than the Russian Hoax? 

Tweet #2: “Can anyone even imagine having Spies placed in a competing campaign, by the people and party in absolute power, for the sole purpose of political advantage and gain? And to think that the party in question, even with the expenditure of far more money, LOST!”

Tweet #3:

“Everyone knows there was a Spy, and in fact the people who were involved in the Spying are admitting that there was a Spy...Widespread Spying involving multiple people.” Mollie Hemingway, The Federalist Senior Editor But the corrupt Mainstream Media hates this monster story! 

  

There was one informant involved. “Spies” is plural. And no one cares now that you won and Hillary lost.

Only Trump’s delusional supporters believe there was a spy, or a dozen spies, or maybe aliens took over the bodies of Trump campaign staffers. U.S. intelligence agents began gathering evidence that Trump aides might be involved with Russians interested in interfering in a U.S. election.

See, for example, why they might have been worried: all lies above.

The New Jersey Star-Ledger captures the sentiment of that fraction of the American people capable of rational thought.

A Star-Ledger editorial reads in part: 

The president demanded that Justice launch an investigation designed to torpedo another criminal investigation—the one in which Trump is the principle subject, which is probably his most audacious act of obstruction since he fired the FBI director who led another investigation against him. 

Somehow, that doesn't seem like the way the Founders drew it up.

But this is the same president who said, “I have absolute right to do what I want with the Justice Department,” despite the prevailing consensus that DOJ has operational independence from the executive branch.

And as long as Congressional Republicans issue strategic yawns rather than exercise their Article II duties, the administration of fair and impartial justice will be corrupted, and Trump will use federal law enforcement as a political truncheon to escape legal jeopardy. 

It’s all very predictable, given the jaw-dropping scorecard of an investigation which Trump has tried to disturb, derail, and delegitimize. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has extracted guilty pleas from Trump’s national security adviser, deputy campaign manager, and foreign policy adviser, and indicted his campaign manager, 13 Russians and 3 Russian companies.

Mueller has bagged all that in just 12 months. And he hasn't even frog-walked Michael Cohen and Roger Stone out of their caves yet, or shown whether Donald Trump Jr. tried to solicit anything of value in all those visits with foreign agents during the 2016 campaign. 

Gripped by victimhood and paranoia, Trump will use anything to kill the Mueller probe…And [Republican] congressional leadership has less allegiance to the integrity of judicial independence and constitutional norms than to a president who has no use for either.

Yet as the special counsel shoves it into fifth gear, the possibilities still seem endless. The last thing America needs is for its Justice Department to be complicit in this vandalism of democracy.

5/26/18: Trump is yelping on Twitter again:

With Spies, or “Informants” as the Democrats like to call them because it sounds less sinister (but it’s not), all over my campaign, even from a very early date, why didn’t the crooked highest levels of the FBI or ‘Justice’ contact me to tell me of the phony Russia problem?”

Okay. If you support Trump, try to follow the logic. No one warned him about the “phony Russian problem?” That would be true—unless you counted James Comey and James Clapper who spoke to him about the investigation on January 6, 2017. You should also count Sally Yates, who visited the White House on January 26, six days after he took the oath of office, to warn that General Michael T. Flynn had been lying about contacts with Russians.

The tweet barking continued:

Who’s going to give back the young and beautiful lives (and others) that have been devastated and destroyed by the phony Russia Collusion Witch Hunt. They journeyed down to Washington, D.C., with stars in their eyes and wanting to help our nation...They went back home in tatters!   

  

Trump says spies were “all over” his campaign; Rep. Trey Gowdy and Speaker Paul Ryan say later this is not true. Trump lies when he says no one informed him of the “phony Russia problem.”

6/2/18: Rick Gerson, a close friend of Jared Kushner, is said to be on Robert Mueller’s radar. Gerson took part in a secret meeting at the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City, also attended by Kushner, George Nader, General Michael T. Flynn, Steve Bannon, Crown Prince Mohamed bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi and Yousef Otaiba, the United Arab Emirati ambassador to the United States.

Maybe they were organizing a Scrabble Tournament.

Gerson also turned up in the Seychelles around the time of another secret meeting, involving Nader, Erik Prince and an ally of Vladimir Putin. According to a spokesman for Gerson, he just happened to be vacationing in the Seychelles at the time all these other folks showed up. (See: 3/7/18.)

Asked why Gerson would have been communicating via email with Nader and the Crown Prince, Gerson’s spokesman punted. “I don’t know,” he responded lamely. “Maybe they were organizing a Scrabble Tournament.”

Okay, I made that last line up.

But when it comes to the Russia investigation, there are a lot of meetings that people didn’t want anyone to know they had.

Evidence seems to indicate Prince lied when he testified before Congress that he just chanced to be in the Seychelles.

That meeting in January 2017 appears to have been pre-planned and meant to set up a secret channel between Team Trump and Moscow.

Prince likely lied about the meeting; as yet unproven.

$$$$$

6/3/18: Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s newest lawyer and contortionist-able-to-talk-with-both-feet-in-his-mouth, explains in a series of interviews that his client can’t be in trouble no matter what evidence the investigation turns up.

Giuliani says that under the U.S. Constitution the president has the power to pardon himself! 

Rudy tries to remember where in the Constitution it says a president can pardon himself.

6/4/18: Trump weighs in, via Twitter, on Rudy’s bizarre claim the previous day. Of course, the president believes him:

As has been stated by numerous legal scholars, I have the absolute right to PARDON myself, but why would I do that when I have done nothing wrong? In the meantime, the never ending Witch Hunt, led by 13 very Angry and Conflicted Democrats (& others) continues into the mid-terms!

Who are these “numerous legal scholars?” The beauty of tweeting is that Trump’s critics can never ask.

And Trump fans don’t care.

6/8/18: This is how the Russia investigation goes: Rudy Giuliani makes stupid comments on TV: “The president has the power to pardon himself! He can pardon a head of lettuce if he likes and turn it into salad!” 

Next, the president posts a stupid tweet: “I can pardon anyone I want. Even witches! I am totally innocent. But even if Special Counsel Mueller has pictures of me in bed with five Russian hookers, a pair of mallard ducks, and Vladimir Putin, I still have the power to pardon myself!!!”

Special Counsel Mueller and his investigators just keep on digging for evidence. On this fine day Mueller issues two fresh indictments. Paul Manafort gets hit with another. This time he’s charged with witness tampering.

Manafort has now been charged with conspiracy to defraud the United States, failure to register as a foreign agent, money laundering, tax evasion, bank fraud and being, generally, a scumbag.

Also indicted for the first time is Konstantin Kilimnik, Manafort’s business partner and man with ties (of course) to Russian intelligence.

*

AT THE G7 MEETING IN CANADA, President Trump, who all the other leaders there can’t stand, suggests Russia should be allowed to rejoin the group. That way he’d have at least one friend.

Trump also appears confused. He suggests Canada was responsible for burning down the White House in 1814. As for Russia invading the Crimea in 2014, Trump doesn’t care about that attack.

Trump does ♥ Putin.

Ohio Governor John Kasich, a Republican, issues this statement:

Russia was kicked out of the G-8 because of its invasion and annexation of Crimea. Since that time, Moscow has encouraged and directed a separatist insurgency in Eastern Ukraine, intervened in support Syria’s murderous dictator and the war crimes that he has perpetrated, interfered in the U.S. presidential election, waged an information war to undermine Western democracies, attempted to assassinate opponents on the sovereign territory of our allies, and made common cause with China to undermine the post-WWII international security system and the democratic values embedded in it.

…President Trump’s idea of renewing Russian membership in the G-7/G-8 does not protect or defend [emphasis added] the national security interests of the United States or our allies.

Ohio Sen. Rob Portman, also a Republican, says in a statement of his own, “Russia shouldn’t be let back into the G-8 until it changes the behavior that caused it to be expelled in the first place.”

A third Republican, Nebraska Sen. Ben Sasse, responds: “This is weak. Putin is not our friend and he is not the president’s buddy. He is a thug using Soviet-style aggression to wage a shadow war against America, and our leaders should act like it.”

Um…Trump doesn’t.

6/11/18: Trump and his surrogates have picked fights at the G7 summit meeting with almost everyone. One Trump aide gets all theological and insists there’s a special place in hell for anyone who crosses the president.

A real threat to Western values and security.

As for letting Russia rejoin the G7, our allies remain aghast. Peter Westmacott, former British ambassador to the U.S., openly questions the president’s approach. “Trump is readier to give a pass to countries that pose a real threat to Western values and security than to America’s traditional allies. If there is a ‘method to the madness’…it is currently well hidden.”

Not even Dan Coats, Trump’s Director of National Intelligence, is onboard. At a conference in France, Coats lists a series of recent actions inimical to Western nations, taken by Russia:

These Russian actions are purposeful and premeditated and they represent an all-out assault by Vladimir Putin on the rule of law, Western ideals and democratic norms.

His actions demonstrate that he seeks to sow divisions within and between those in the West who adhere to democratic norms. The Russians are actively seeking to divide our alliance and we must not allow that to happen.

So—if Putin is following news out of Canada—he has to be satisfied with his decision to help Trump win election.

Putin ♥’s Trump.

No new lies, really; bit it seems appropriate to add an American flag here to remind ourselves whose side we’re on.

6/14/18: It’s a momentous day for the president. It’s his birthday! And Flag Day! And the F.B.I. Inspector General is going to issue a report on the agency’s handling of the Hillary Clinton email investigation. He can hardly wait!

Bam.

The 500-page report lands on desks all around Washington. This is Donald’s best birthday present ever! Former F.B.I. Director James Comey gets faulted for “insubordination.” That “slimeball!” And…

What?

If you believe in the “Criminal Deep State,” as Trump and many of his knucklehead fans do, the report is a thumping dud. The IG report makes it clear that Comey’s actions were damaging to Hillary Clinton’s chances of being elected. The F.B.I. was not out to get Trump. (See: 6/18/18.)

*

One top legal expert—namely Donald Trump Jr.—senses trends going against his father. On Fox & Friends he explains why Dad, who has nothing to hide, should never sit for an interview with Mueller’s investigators:

I wouldn’t do it. I think it would be stupid. I don’t think any proper lawyer would say, “Hey, you should go do it,” because it’s not about collusion anymore. It’s about, “Can we get him to say something that may be interpreted as somewhat off or inaccurate,” and after 50,000 questions, maybe you make a mistake, and that’s how we get you, and that’s ridiculous.

“Listen, I don’t trust these people as far as I can throw them,” Don Jr. says in reference to federal prosecutors. The Fox & Friends hosts nod their heads in unison, like three Bobbleheads set in simultaneous motion.

Don Jr. continues:

You know, you can sit there and ask questions for 50 hours, for 100 hours, ask the same thing 1,000 times, and they’ll say, “Oh, the comma is different here. Now we got you.” You know, the reality is the greatest investigative bodies in the world have been looking for two years—two years—and they have come up with nothing.

Once again the Bobbleheads nod. That’s their job when any member of the Trump clan appears or calls in to chat.

In related Bobblehead news, Rudy Giuliani appears on Sean Hannity’s show later that evening. Rudy is fired up!! Waving a copy of the F.B.I. Inspector General’s report on the handling of the Clinton email investigation, he insists the Mueller investigation should be shut down immediately.

Meanwhile, every right-winger is obsessing over an email exchange between F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok and another F.B.I. agent with whom he was having an affair. Strzok was saying what at least half of Americans were thinking in 2016. Basically: Trump was a terrible human being.

This email traffic, according to Rudy—his opinion seconded without hesitation by Hannity —proves that anyone indicted by Robert Mueller, even those who have already pled guilty —should immediately be pardoned and have statues erected in Lafayette Park, where President Trump can gaze upon them from his White House window. “Tomorrow, Mueller should be suspended and honest people should be brought in, impartial people to investigate these people like Strzok,” Giuliani slobbered. “Strzok should be in jail by the end of next week.”

Yes, impartial people! People like Rudy! Or the first president in history to claim he can pardon himself.

People like Rudy who insist an F.B.I. agent should go to jail, mainly for expressing political opinions.

6/15/18: Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, puts on a clean shirt and tie and an expensive suit (he’s known to have spent at least $500,000 on fancy suits) and heads for court.

When proceedings open, defense lawyers tell the judge Paul didn’t realize what he was doing when he contacted two potential witnesses in his case. Prosecutors disagree. Mr. Manafort, they allege, engaged in a sustained effort to suborn perjury, including sending encrypted messages, while out on $10 million bail.

The judge orders Manafort to jail, where he will be wearing a much less expensive suit until further notice.

Meanwhile, the president has prepared for this development by laying out the “coffee boy” defense. This was first used after campaign adviser George Papadopoulos copped a guilty plea and started cooperating with investigators. No big deal, Trump said. George was merely a “coffee boy.”

Trump now informs reporters he feels bad for Manafort, who “worked for me for a very short period of time…for what, 49 days, or something?”

His math is off. Manafort worked for the campaign for 144 days. He led the campaign for three months.

Trump lies about how long Manafort worked for his campaign. Sometimes you get the idea he can’t really help himself.

6/16/18: The plot thickens. Investigators have pieced together sixteen pages of shredded documents seized in the raid on the office of Michael Cohen. They have also recovered 731 pages of encrypted text messages—because what upstanding lawyer doesn’t encrypt his text messages!

Cohen fires his entire legal team.

6/17/18: The Washington Post reports—and Roger Stone and Michael Caputo suddenly admit—that Stone met during the 2016 campaign with a Russian individual who was offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Caputo now remembers arranging the meeting after a man going by the name of “Henry Greenberg” approached Caputo’s Russian-immigrant business partner, at an art showing in Miami in the spring of 2016.

Asking $2 million for a wheelbarrow full of dirt.

The meeting may not have borne fruit: save perhaps to alert Russian intelligence agents that Team Trump was willing to play ball if conditions were right. Greenberg asked for $2 million for his wheelbarrow full of dirt.

Stone claims he turned him down, telling him, “You don’t understand Donald Trump. He doesn’t pay for anything.”

Or, to put it another way, Stone wasn’t saying no because it would be wrong to allow a foreign adversary to tilt a U.S. election. He was saying no because Donald J. Trump was cheap.

Afterward, Caputo texted Stone to ask: “How crazy is the Russian?” So there’s no doubt Caputo realized who Greenberg meant to represent.

Here’s what seems odd. Stone has long denied meeting with any Russians during the 2016 campaign. Stone and Caputo could have admitted to this meeting during testimony before Congress. Both forgot they helped arrange or had a meeting.

Even the pattern is odd. The meeting with Greenberg was set up a few weeks after George Papadopoulos met in secret with what he believed were people with direct links to Vladimir Putin and dirt on Clinton. Papadopoulos forgot that meeting, too.

Stone’s meeting with Greenberg came two weeks before Don Jr., Jared Kushner, and the now-incarcerated Paul Manafort agreed to take a meeting specifically arranged on the basis of agents of the Russian government providing dirt on…Hillary! Typical of the amnesia that afflicted everyone associated with the 2016 campaign, Don Jr. quickly forgot about that meeting.

Jared forgot.

Manafort forgot.

*

Now, when the Post contacted Greenberg about the story, he denied that he and Stone had met.

Not long after, he texted reporters and admitted, okay, they did. Now that he thought about it he could remember exactly what Stone said two years ago. Greenberg didn’t understand Trump. He wouldn’t give him $2 million. “He doesn’t pay for anything,” Greenberg said Stone said.

In other words, no dirt was passed—no harm done—no campaign laws broken or even slightly bruised.

Stone told the Post he met with Greenberg alone. Greenberg said he was accompanied by a Ukrainian friend named Alexei, who had worked for the Clinton Foundation and had dirt he wanted to share.

Caught, as it were, with their Collusion Pants half down, both Stone and Caputo now claimed that when they talked to Congressional investigators sometime back they forgot all about this unimportant meeting where someone with Russian connections asked for $2 million.

In fact, Caputo now claims the meeting was an F.B.I. setup and so he’s the actual victim in all of this.

As for Mr. Stone, he insisted in a videotaped interview given to the Post last year: “I’ve never been to Russia. I didn’t talk to anybody who was identifiably Russian during the two-year run-up to this campaign. I very definitely can’t think of anybody who might have been a Russian without my knowledge. It’s a canard.”

Finally, Greenberg told reporters Alexei had returned to the Ukraine and he had no idea how to reach him.

     

Assorted lies: Greenberg tells the Post the meeting never occurred. Greenberg and Stone can’t agree on who attended. Stone initially denies having had a meeting in testimony before Congress. Caputo “forgot” arranging the meeting.

6/18/18: F.B.I. Director Christopher Wray and Inspector General Michael Horowitz testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Republicans are miffed because they demanded an Inspector General’s report on the F.B.I.’s handling of Hillary’s emails.

While both Wray and Horowitz admit errors were made during the investigation of her emails, they say there is no evidence of political bias influencing the final outcome. What about F.B.I. bias against Trump—possibly shaping the investigation into the Trump campaign?

A Democratic senator wonders, “Is there a ‘witch hunt?’”

Wray says again, there is no “witch hunt.”

Horowitz says there was no plot to harm the Trump campaign before the election.

6/26/18: If you study Donald J. Trump’s Twitter feed you sense he’s more and more worried about the Russian probe.

Yesterday, Trump’s first tweet came at 6:28 a.m., and seemed to hint again that the F.B.I. and President Obama and Sponge Bob were all out to get him. “Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that President Trump is probably correct,” his tweet read, “that there was surveillance on Trump Tower. Actually, far greater than would ever have been believed!” 

Trump purposely twists Mukasey’s words.

There would be seventeen more tweets before the day ended. But this first tweet took this blogger by surprise. Had Mukasey just weighed in on Trump’s “witch hunt” theory and supported it too?

It soon became clear, Trump was dredging up any argument he could, in this case citing a story from March 2017.

If you read the story it doesn’t bolster Trump’s position at all. If there was surveillance of Trump Tower, Mukasey told ABC News, “It means there must have been a basis to believe [emphasis added] that somebody in Trump Tower may have been acting as an agent of the Russians for whatever purpose—not necessarily the election—but for some purpose.”

Mukasey further explained that the F.B.I. would have been doing what it always did in such situations: “They keep track of people who act as agents of the Chinese, the Russians, the Israelis, everybody.”

Trump was trying to build support for the idea that he was the victim of a witch hunt, using the testimony of a former Attorney General who said, basically, that there was no witch hunt.

Trump’s third tweet of the day, at 7:02 a.m., was more ominous. The President Who Can Pardon Himself hinted that he might soon step in and interfere directly with the Mueller probe:

I have tried to stay uninvolved with the Department of Justice and FBI (although I do not legally have to), because of the now totally discredited and very expensive Witch Hunt currently going on. But you do have to ask why the DOJ & FBI aren’t giving over requested documents?

The clouds of a threatening constitutional crisis continued to gather. Most Americans remained oblivious to the threat.

Trump says a former Attorney General said there was surveillance of Trump Tower far greater than anyone could believe; Mukasey said nothing of the sort.

6/28/18: Paul Manafort’s legal problems continue to multiply and the logic behind the F.B.I.’s original interest in investigating the Trump campaign grows ever more manifest. An application for a search warrant unsealed by the courts reveals that the F.B.I. had evidence Manafort and his wife had received a $10 million loan from a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin.

More ominously, from the point of view of Manafort and the president’s crew, Reuters explains:

The search warrant application also confirmed that Mueller has been investigating Manafort’s role in a June 9, 2016, meeting that he attended at the Trump Tower in New York between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer and self-professed Kremlin informant who purportedly was carrying damaging information on Hillary Clinton, the Democratic nominee for president.

The FBI sought “communications, records, documents and other files involving any of the attendees of the June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump tower, as well as Aras and Amin Agalarov,” said the application, which misspelled the first name of Emin Agalarov.

Aras Agalarov is a Russian oligarch close to Putin who joined the elder Trump in staging the 2013 Miss Universe contest in Moscow.

His son, Emin, is a popular singer. (See: Spring, 2013; 7/10/17.)

6/29/18: Arron Banks, a person you have never heard of, may turn out to be an important link in the Mueller investigation.

Think: Russians, lots of Russians, lots of gold, lots of diamonds, shady deals, stolen emails and the Isle of Man.

Banks is not your typical “person of interest” in the Mueller probe. He never worked to get Trump elected. He’s not American. Nevertheless, if you want a template for what the Russians were up to during the 2016 campaign, you have it with Banks. 

By the time Britons voted to leave the European Union that summer of 2016, Banks was already a well-known financier. He was also a leading backer of the Brexit strategy, to leave the European Union, a position favored by Vladimir Putin. Banks spent eight million pounds out of his own pocket in furtherance of that cause. 

(That’s $12 million American.)

You might imagine that here was a patriotic citizen who envisioned a better day for his country. If only the United Kingdom would chart a different course in trade and border policies!

Emails leaked recently from one of Mr. Banks’s accounts paint a darker picture. Behind the scenes, Russian agents were cozying up to the Brexit-loving tycoon. We now Mueller and his investigators are pouring through Banks’s emails, looking for clues. No smoking gun has been found. But as with so many leading characters from the Trump campaign, there are plenty of spent shell casings lying about. Earlier this month, The New York Times noted, Banks was called in front of Parliament to answer questions. British lawmakers, knowing Russia had wished to see their country leave the Union, wanted to ask Banks about ties to Putin and his pals.

Would he be interested in investing in a Russian gold mine?

Like almost every member of the Trump team under investigation, Banks’s memory began failing. He admitted he had “two lunches and a cup of tea” with Alexander V. Yakovenko, the Russian ambassador to Great Britain. This was during the run-up to the Brexit vote (June 23, 2016).

Banks added as an afterthought, that the ambassador did inquire: Would he be interested in investing in a deal involving Russian gold mines? Why, no, Banks says he told Yakovenko. He did not wish to be bothered.

Alas, now that his emails have surfaced, it becomes clear there was much that Banks “forgot” to mention during testimony or chose to omit. He wasn’t offered just one chance to invest. He was offered three. The second involved Alrosa, a state-controlled Russian diamond mining operation. The third involved a rich Russian, described to Banks in an email from an investment adviser as “a mini oligarch,” and a gold mine in Guinea, Africa.

British reporters began sniffing about earlier this month. On Friday reporters from The New York Times joined the hunt. Banks said in an interview with the Times, now that he thought about it, he did recall being offered those additional deals. But wasn’t it mean, he added—this “wholesale theft” of his emails! Why, who would stoop so low as to steal a man’s emails!

On this side of the Atlantic, where Republicans control Congress, lawmakers aren’t exactly working overtime to pursue similar leads. 

Across the pond, Damian Collins, chairman of the parliamentary committee looking into Russian interference in the Brexit vote, sounded suspicious after perusing Banks’s email trail. “The question is,” Collins wondered, “Why would the Russians do this for Banks? What it looks like is that Russia decided he was someone they wanted to do business with and they wanted to see prosper and succeed—and Banks, alongside that, wanted to hide the extent of his contacts with the Russians.”

Friday, in the face of fresh email evidence, Banks found himself in a pickle. He was forced to admit that there had been a fourth meeting with the Russian ambassador. Banks was quick to say that his testimony previously, about “two lunches and a cup of tea” was “relatively accurate.”

If that sounds to you like Trump and his campaign aides describing meetings with Russians, it should.

It turns out Banks and his media adviser Andrew Wigmore had another meeting—that would be five—with a Russian diplomat named Alexander Udod.

Udod was recently listed as one of 23 suspected Russian spies and expelled from Great Britain in the wake of the attempted poisoning of Putin critic and former Russian spy, Sergei V. Skripal.

For Banks, of course, the meeting with Udod was good. This led to his first meeting with the Russian ambassador—which led to a meeting with a Russian businessman—who offered the chance to invest in gold mines. “I am very bullish on gold so keen to have a look,” Banks emailed the businessman later. Banks was interested enough to contact a banker familiar with Russian gold and diamond mines to say he was pondering a possible role in what he called “the gold play.”

“I intend to pop in and see the ambassador as well,” Banks said in that email. He copied it to Udod.

Banks now swears on his bank book that he never engaged in any deal. But he failed to mention in testimony that was offered a second investment opportunity by the same Russian tycoon, Siman Povarenkin. Povarenkin told Banks that the Russians were about to sell a 10 percent stake in Alrosa, a giant diamond mining operation. Would Banks prefer to invest in diamonds rather than gold?

In an email on January 16, 2016, an investment adviser working for Banks wrote to Povarenkin to assure him that his client had “not forgotten about your Alrosa project.” So: diamonds it was.

You might think Banks’s memory would have been jogged a bit in September 2017 when an Alrosa mine in Russia turned up a 27.85 carat pink diamond estimated to be worth roughly $10 million.

But no.

In interviews this week, Banks first told reporters he knew nothing about the Alrosa project. Then email evidence forced him to admit he had heard of it, But he insisted he did not pursue it. Then it turned out his business partner and friend James Mellon, also a major backer of Brexit, did get in on the deal.

And in case you’ve forgotten, some of the most serious allegations in the Steele dossier involve lucrative deals in Russian gas and oil offered to leading figures in the Trump campaign.

Greed before God and Country.

Mellon, The New York Times reported, is “a prominent investor based in the Isle of Man” and “a partner with Mr. Banks in a financial institution on the island. Mr. Mellon has made hundreds of millions of dollars investing in Russia since the fall of the Soviet Union, often alongside businessmen close to President Vladimir M. Putin.”

$$$$$

The Times continued:

Three weeks after the 2016 Brexit vote, the Russian government sold the Alrosa stake in a private offering to a restricted group of investors. The shares were sold at a discount to the market price at a time when the value of both the stock and diamonds were rising.

Mr. Mellon’s fund management company, Charlemagne Capital, was among a restricted number of investors who were allowed to participate.

A third Russian investment deal surfaced in April 2016, two months before the Brexit vote. Yet another investment banker—with connections in Russia—emailed Banks. Would he like to invest in a gold mine in Guinea, with a Russian businessman who “shares your passion for the yellow metal?”

Banks first told reporters he had no memory of such a discussion. Who would remember talking about a gold mine in Africa and an oligarch who owned it! Now Banks had to ring up reporters again and admit there had been a meeting on May 10, 2016, that possibly involved a discussion about a gold mine.

Banks and Russian ambassador discussed Trump campaign.

In August 2016, Banks met with the Russian ambassador for lunch again. Banks’s emails reveal that the two men discussed the Trump campaign. They met again on November 12, 2016, after Trump won. This time discussion turned to Jeff Sessions and the role he might play in the Trump cabinet.

In the end, Banks professed complete innocence, telling The New York Times, “The idea that things were dangled as some sort of carrots for me to be involved with the Russians is very far-fetched. I wonder what the Russians wanted from me?”

I think I can answer that—but, first, I’d like to answer the question Banks didn’t pose. What did Banks want?

Banks wanted what all these shady crooks want—vast wealth—more money than any human being can easily spend. Think guys like Banks and those Russian oligarchs pillaging their homeland and at least some members of the Trump campaign wouldn’t be happy to cheat their own people?

Think again.

Consider, the Isle of Man, where Banks and his partner Mellon do business. It’s a notorious tax haven where the superrich gather, financially speaking, to avoid paying taxes. 

Meanwhile, taxi drivers, truckers and teachers, the butcher, the baker and the candlestick maker, cough up their dough.

Ordinary folks help pay for government services, such as healthcare for poor children, protecting the environment, and national defense.

(I, for one, would advocate invading the Isle of Man, and capturing all their banks and bankers.)

Hackers broke into bank records in 2015.

Those with accounts on the Isle of Man, where the tax rate is essentially zero, normally enjoy total secrecy. But hackers broke into bank records in 2015 and revealed a number of crooked operations. Those with hidden accounts include John Whittaker, a Briton, sitting atop a fortune estimated at 2,300 million pounds, or $3.4 billion American. Trevor Baines, a man who amassed a fortune of 130 million pounds—and then went to jail for money laundering—also does his banking on the Isle of Man. 

Adding to the irony, Nigel Farage, leader of the Brexit movement, had an account on the island. Meanwhile, he was campaigning against leaders of the European Union who were dodging taxes.

How greedy are these people? How low are they willing to go to sell out their countries? In another vast leak of tax records, involving a Panamanian law firm and multiple offshore tax shelters, several interesting names appeared. First among thieves, were Wilbur Ross, President Trump’s Secretary of Commerce and Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin. In other words, you had Secretary Mnuchin weaseling out of paying taxes to the Treasury he runs. Gary Cohn, Trump’s former chief economic adviser, set up 22 companies in Bermuda, another tax haven. Trump’s former Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, set up other fake companies on the island. Ben Carson also sheltered part of his wealth on the island.

Who else appears to be evading their taxes? Tom Barrack, the billionaire businessman who organized the Trump inauguration ceremonies, favors the Cayman Islands, one of the more famous tax havens.

Jay Clayton, Trump’s SEC chairman, also has a stash in the Caymans.

*

How absurd is this? And why might we suspect a guy like Trump—whose tax returns are eternally under audit? To put it bluntly, more than 100,000 corporations  claim their headquarters are located in the Caymans. This means they avoid paying most of the taxes they might owe to the U.S. government and governments round the globe. That figure includes 20,000 corporations with addresses in one five-story office tower, the Ugland House.

If you are still wondering how far these greedy SOB’s will go to pile up more and more wealth, consider the population of the Cayman Islands, where all these corporations claim they have their headquarters. We can provide you with that population figure: It would be 62,347.

(Banks on the Isle of Man and in other tax havens are estimated to be hiding assets equal to 10% of the world’s GDP.) 

            

That’s about fifty lies for Banks and his fat cat friends; but for our purposes we’ll just add one more Russian flag to the count. And we’ll award one Russian flag for each member of Team Trump avoiding paying their taxes to the government they run.

7/2/18: That engine you hear revving may be the bus getting ready to run over the President of the United States. Metaphorically, I should add. As a good liberal I do not advocate violence against anyone, not even the most disgusting human ever to serve as America’s chief executive. 

But back to the bus! The driver is none other than Michael Cohen, Trump’s former self-described “fixer” and “pit bull” lawyer. Cohen is a guy who once claimed he’d “take a bullet” for the president.

Now he’s hinting he’ll duck.

In a 45-minute interview Saturday with George Stephanopoulos, Cohen was asked if he was ready to cooperate with investigators if indicted, not that we are saying he will be indicted. I mean, what crimes could he have committed to keep Donald J. Trump out of sundry legal and ethical jams? 

You know what the president says. There’s “NO COLLUSION.” This is a “WITCH HUNT.” 

“I did NOT BOINK A PORN STAR!”

So, what’s new in the Russia investigation? On June 28 we got a quick look behind the curtain. Andrew Miller, an aide to Roger Stone, Trump’s longtime confidant, was served with a subpoena to provide documents and testify before a Grand Jury.

Miller worked for Stone throughout the 2016 campaign and may know about the meeting Stone had with the Russian guy offering dirt on Hillary. He’s fighting the subpoena. (See: 6/17/18.)

Other warning signs are flashing brightly. While Trump keeps hinting he can pardon himself and all his cronies—and maybe random fire plugs—General Flynn, the first campaign figure to be indicted and plead guilty says nothing in public. The Mueller team has delayed sentencing on Flynn, who faces one felony charge, but could face several should he decline to cooperate fully.

Politico explains: 

At a hearing last December before another federal judge, Rudolph Contreras, Flynn admitted under oath that he’d lied to the FBI about his contacts with the Russian ambassador to the U.S., about his lobbying during the presidential transition on a United Nations resolution critical of Israel and about his lobbying work favorable to the Turkish government.

That would be three felonies right there, if you’d like to keep score. Each could result in a sentence of five years in jail and a fine of $250,000, which does add up quickly.

  

We’ve already counted one of those felony lies. Here, we add two more.

As for Cohen—whose felonies could easily reach double digits—he’s not ready to go to jail just yet.

Recently, he hired a new lawyer, Guy Petrillo, “a highly regarded former federal prosecutor who once led the criminal division of the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan.” That’s the same office conducting the criminal investigation of Cohen, which in itself is a hint that Cohen sees his best chance to avoid spending time behind bars in cooperating with prosecutors.

Once Petrillo takes charge, Cohen is expected to withdraw from a joint defense agreement with President Trump. That agreement allows the two witches to share information and documents.

From that point forward, the bus is warmed up and ready to roll. In his interview with Stephanopoulos, Trump’s former fixer made it clear he’s not going to take a bullet for the president. 

He’s not even going to take a shot from a t-shirt gun. 

“My wife, my daughter and my son have my first loyalty and always will,” Cohen explained. “I put family and country first.”

It that turns out to be true, President Trump could be up to his eyebrows in new legal problems.

7/7/18: In the afternoon, the president’s fancy turns to the Russia investigation. At 3:29 p.m. we get this tweet:

Public opinion has turned strongly against the Rigged Witch Hunt and the “Special” Councel because the public understands that there was no Collusion with Russia (so ridiculous), that the two FBI lovers were a fraud against our Nation & that the only Collusion was with the Dems!

At 5:24 p.m., he tweets again:  

The Rigged Witch Hunt, originally headed by FBI lover boy Peter S (for one year) & now, 13 Angry Democrats, should look into the missing DNC Server, Crooked Hillary’s illegally deleted Emails, the Pakistani Fraudster, Uranium One, Podesta & so much more. It’s a Democrat Con Job! 

At this point you begin to wonder what other issues Trump will toss into the Hopper of Idiocy.

Who the hell is “the Pakistani Fraudster?”

7/12/18: F.B.I. agent Peter Strzok testifies for ten hours in front of a joint panel of the House Oversight and House Judiciary Committees. Republicans spend the day shouting about Strzok’s bias against President Trump.

Strzok could have sunk Trump’s gold boat.

Strzok, who served as an officer in the U.S. Army (1991-1996), admits he had in 2016 and still has a bias against Trump. 

He says he could not imagine that any man who trashed a Gold Star family, said John McCain was not a hero, and bragged about grabbing women by the pussy could be elected President of the United States.

In other words, he had a bias against assholes.

Republicans lawmakers take an Evel Knievel-size leap from there to land a wild claim that since Strzok was biased he had to have been working against Candidate Trump in 2016 and President Trump to this day. He could not, they insist, have conducted himself in a professional manner when helping launch an investigation into the Trump campaign and possible links to Russian agents.

That, in turn, according to GOP illogic, proves the entire Mueller investigation is a witch hunt.

(And, I suppose, it “proves” that none of the Republicans shouting all day have any biases of their own.)

Strzok keeps pointing out that the F.B.I. Inspector General’s 500-page report (which these same lawmakers demanded should be compiled) found that bias did not affect either his professional conduct or the professional conduct of former F.B.I. Director James Comey or other top agency officials.

Strzok says repeatedly that had he wanted to stop Trump from being elected he had the tools at hand. He was one of a handful of top F.B.I. officials who knew in the summer of 2016 that the Trump campaign had had an array of suspicious contacts with Russians. He knew an investigation had been opened. He could have leaked that to the press before the election.

He could have sunk Trump’s gold boat.

Irrefutably, he did not.

Highlights of the day’s hearing include Rep. Paul Gosar (R-AZ) attacking Strzok on the basis of body language.

At one point, in answer to a question by Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-TX), Strzok had made it clear he was appalled when Candidate Trump attacked the Gold Star family of a slain Muslim-American soldier.

Keen-eyed Rep. Gosar pounced near the close of the hearings, like a three-legged cat with one eye. 

Angrily, he posed this question for Strzok:

You talk about bias. This morning I watched—and by the way, I am a dentist, OK, so I read body language very, very well. And I watched you comment on actions with Mr. Gowdy. You got very angry in regards to the gold star father. That shows me that it is innately a part of you and a bias.

You could call it a “bias” if you liked. I guess you could say most people are “biased” against child molesters too.

Meanwhile, Democratic lawmakers kept spoiling the fun. They pointed out—correctly—that the two Republican-controlled committees had failed to subpoena a single witness in over a year of “investigating.” They pointed out that the Senate Judiciary Committee had reported in bipartisan fashion that the Russians did interfere in the election. They did want Trump to win.

Yet, in ten hours, not a single Republican on the committees asked Strzok a question about Russian meddling.

The nadir was reached when Rep. Louis Gohmert (R-TX) attacked Strzok for smirking during testimony. Gohmert asked if Strzok had the same smirk on his face when he lied to his wife about having an affair with another F.B.I. agent. 

(Strzok has long admitted the affair.)

Oh! Snap! You could almost hear Gohmert thinking. But as a good liberal, I had to wonder: Did Rep. Gohmert ever wonder in the same way about that sappy smirk Trump wears on his face?

You know: The look on his orange mug when he lies about cheating to his three wives in succession?

At any rate, one Democratic lawmaker could be heard shouting at Gohmert, “You need your medication!”

Loony Louis Gohmert.

7/13/18: The president is traveling in Europe, where he trashes most of our closest allies.

On this side of the Atlantic, the Department of Justice and the Mueller team fire three shots across the bow of the idiots who have been insisting the Russian investigation is a witch hunt. That would include:

Donald J. Trump, the Idiot-in-Chief

Rep. Paul Gosar, the Body Language Dentist

Rep. Louis Gohmert, the Smirk Buster

An even dozen Russian military officers are indicted for interfering in the 2016 election. It wasn’t some 400-lb. fat guy sitting on his bed doing the hacking, as Candidate Trump once hinted. It wasn’t China or any other country. It wasn’t chipmunks or muskrats with super powers. It was Russian military—which means they had to have the go-ahead from Putin himself.

The White House responds to the latest indictments by noting that no Americans were named. Apparently, the White House is hoping we won’t notice the fine print in the 29-page court filing.

If you do read the indictment, and reach page 15, you notice something odd. The Russians clearly had suspicious contacts with Americans during the 2016 campaign. In Paragraph 43 we learn that a candidate for Congress requested dirt on his opponent from Guccifer 2.0, a hacking site run by the Russian military. The Russians “sent the candidate stolen documents” as requested.

Also, on page 16, we learn that 2.5 gigabytes of stolen information were sent to a “then state-registered lobbyist and online source of political news.” That same day the hackers sent information related to Black Lives Matter to a reporter, so the reporter could attack that group.

In Paragraph 44, investigators note that the Russians communicated with “U.S. persons about the release of stolen documents” including at least one American “in regular contact with senior members of the presidential campaign of Donald J. Trump.”

In Paragraph 45, we learn that the Russians contacted a second U.S. reporter and provided links to stolen Hillary Clinton documents.

In Paragraph 57, we learn that the hackers are accused of money-laundering in furtherance of their scheme.

In Paragraph 69, on page 25, we learn that the Russians are charged with conspiracy,

…to hack into the computers of U.S. persons and entities responsible for the administration of the 2016 U.S. elections, such as state boards of election, secretaries of state, and U.S. companies that supplied software and other technology related to the administration of U.S. elections.

Of course, if you had been listening to President Trump for more than a year and listened again when he spoke in Helsinki (see: 7/16/18), you would have thought none of this illicit activity ever occurred.

                         

Here we award one “Ruskie” for every indicted enemy agent and a special “Grand Ruskie” to the Trump campaign people who, at best, were unwitting tools of the Russians.

*

Here, we might all be wise to stop a moment and return to a May 2017 report from the Washington Post.

In a leaked recording of a meeting of top Republican lawmakers, House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy can be heard joking, “There’s two people I think Putin pays: [Rep. Dana] Rohrabacher and Trump.”

The Post explained:

Some of the lawmakers laughed at McCarthy’s comment. Then McCarthy quickly added: “Swear to God.”

“This is an off the record,” Ryan said.

Some lawmakers laughed at that.

“No leaks, all right?” Ryan said, adding: “This is how we know we’re a real family here.”

“That’s how you know that we’re tight,” [Rep. Steve] Scalise said.

“What’s said in the family stays in the family,” Ryan added.

The remarks remained secret for nearly a year. Now the Post has the story:

Evan McMullin, who in his role as policy director to the House Republican Conference participated in the June 15 conversation, said: “It’s true that Majority Leader McCarthy said that he thought candidate Trump was on the Kremlin’s payroll. Speaker Ryan was concerned about that leaking.”

McMullin ran for president last year as an independent and has been a vocal critic of Trump.

When initially asked to comment on the exchange, Brendan Buck, a spokesman for Ryan, said: “That never happened,” and Matt Sparks, a spokesman for McCarthy, said: “The idea that McCarthy would assert this is absurd and false.”

   

That’s two more lies about Russians.

After being told that The Post would cite a recording of the exchange, Buck, speaking for the GOP House leadership, said:

“This entire year-old exchange was clearly an attempt at humor. No one believed the majority leader was seriously asserting that Donald Trump or any of our members were being paid by the Russians. What’s more, the speaker and leadership team have repeatedly spoken out against Russia’s interference in our election, and the House continues to investigate that activity.”

“This was a failed attempt at humor,” Sparks said.

  

Now the two men were lying to obscure the fact they were lying before.

And there you have it. As has so often been true where Russians and investigations are concerned, first you get lies from GOP politicians. Then the free press confronts the liars with evidence.

Then the liars back-pedal furiously.

POSTSCRIPT: We now know that Rep. Rohrabacher traveled to Moscow during the 2016 campaign. We know he received documents from Yuri Y. Chaika, Russia’s prosecutor general, a post similar to that of the U.S. Attorney General. 

Rohrabacher denies using anything he received to damage Hillary Clinton or any other Democrats.

More recently we learned Rohrabacher had friendly ties to Maria Butina, a young Russian woman, indicted for secretly operating on U.S. soil as an agent of the Russian Federation. (See: 7/18/18.)

7/16/18: Trump is in Helsinki for a meeting with Vladimir Putin. He starts the day by tweet-complaining: “Our relationship with Russia has NEVER been worse thanks to many years of U.S. foolishness and stupidity and now, the Rigged Witch Hunt!”

If you started rubbing your eyes right there, you’d be excused. Did our president just say our poor relationship with Russia was our fault? Did it have anything to do with the fact that Russia invaded the Crimea in 2014?  Did it have to do with the fact Russia continues a low-level war (if you can call 10,000 Ukrainian dead a low-level war), along the Ukrainian border? Was it a problem when Russia shot down a civilian jet liner and killed everyone aboard?

Were the hundreds of billions of rubles Putin and his cronies laundered through the world’s banks—often investing ill-gotten gains in U.S. real estate—an issue?

No, none of that bothered the president.

What about Russian agents poisoning a Putin critic on British soil? What about all the critics of Putin who ended up dead?

What about Russian military forces propping up Bashar-al-Assad in Syria while the Syrian people died by the hundreds of thousands?

What about the attack by Russian mercenaries in Syria on a U.S.-held military base?

Perhaps the problems between our countries were exacerbated by Russia’s extensive meddling in our 2016 election?

No. Trump wasn’t troubled by that. The problem was us. The problem was the United States.

It only got worse as the day wore on. After sitting down alone for a two-hour meeting with Putin (not that President Trump has anything to hide), he and the Russian strongman came out, read prepared statements, agreed that their discussions had gone great and took questions.

The puppet President of the United States danced perfectly as Putin jerked him up and down on his strings.

(Later, we learn that the president confiscated his interpreter’s notes for the meeting that day.)

*

A reporter asked Mr. Trump if there was anything he held the Russians responsible for, in terms of our poor relations. Specifically, did Trump believe the Russians had interfered in the 2016 campaign?

Trump’s answer was stunning.

“I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish. I think we’ve all been foolish ... we’re all to blame,” he responded.

Whether or not he believed the assessment of the U.S. intelligence community, that the man standing at the next podium was responsible for a campaign to undermine the 2016 election, the president danced furiously on his strings. Rather than answer directly, he decided to attack the F.B.I. for not confiscating the hacked e-mail server of the Democratic National Committee.

Here, in view of the entire world, he was peddling a convoluted conspiracy theory (that the Democrats hacked themselves and ditched the evidence) and letting Putin and the Russians slide.

“Where is the server?” Trump asked. “I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying.”

Yes, his Director of National Intelligence, Dan Coates, “and some others” had told him “they think it is Russia,” they think Russia hacked the election. Trump was still skeptical. “I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server. I have great confidence in my intelligence people,” he added.

“But I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today.”

His response was so unexpected—so bizarre—that even seasoned reporters watching were stunned.

 At times you had to wonder if Trump remembered which flag he served.

*

You could expect Democrats—and probably most patriotic Americans—to hit the roof. And they did. 

It would be easy quoting Democrats to bolster the point. Let’s sample Republican reaction, instead.

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, a former U.S. Air Force officer: “The American people deserve the truth, & to disregard the legitimacy of our intelligence officials is a disservice to the men & women who serve this country. It’s time to wake up & face reality. #Putin is not our friend; he’s an enemy to our freedom.”

Rep. Liz Cheney of Wyoming:

As a member of the House Armed Services Committee, I am deeply troubled by President Trump’s defense of Putin against the intelligence agencies of the U.S. & his suggestion of moral equivalence between the U.S. and Russia. Russia poses a grave threat to our national security.

Former CIA and National Security Agency Director Michael Hayden, who led the NSA during the final years of George W. Bush’s presidency, says Trump looked “raw, naked and unfiltered.”

In a tweet, Hayden expressed agreement with an analysis that Trump believes Putin more than American intelligence agencies.

When another user tweeted “holy f****n s**t” following the president’s remarks, Hayden responded simply, “I agree.”

Holy f---ing shit!!!

Mark Lowenthal, a former assistant director at the C.I.A. called Trump’s response “beyond the pale.” “He’s the best president that Russia’s ever had.” 

Chuck Hagel, decorated war hero, former Republican senator from Nebraska, former Secretary of Defense under Obama, said it appeared Trump had no real strategy. “This was not a golf outing. This was not a real estate transactional kind of arrangement.... Engagement must be connected to a strategic interest, a strategic purpose. I don’t know what that strategic purpose was. I am now convinced we didn’t have one.” The meeting with Putin, he later added, marked “a sad day for America.”

Sen. Orrin Hatch, a key Trump ally, issued a statement backing up the intelligence community.

Russia interfered in the 2016 election. Our nation’s top intelligence agencies all agree on that point. From the President on down, we must do everything in our power to protect our democracy by securing future elections from foreign influence and interference, regardless of what Vladimir Putin or any other Russian operative says.

Sen. Susan Collins of Maine warned that Russian attacks on our elections were “relentless” and certain to continue. “It’s certainly not helpful for the President to express doubt about the conclusions of his own team,” Collins said. “He has assembled a first-rate intelligence team handled by Dan Coats and I would hope that he would take their analysis over the predictable denials of President Putin.”

In a lengthy statement, Sen. John McCain, chairman of the Senate Committee on Armed Services, let rip:

Today’s press conference in Helsinki was one of the most disgraceful performances by an American president in memory. The damage inflicted by President Trump’s naiveté, egotism, false equivalence, and sympathy for autocrats is difficult to calculate. But it is clear that the summit in Helsinki was a tragic mistake.

President Trump proved not only unable, but unwilling to stand up to Putin. He and Putin seemed to be speaking from the same script as the president made a conscious choice to defend a tyrant against the fair questions of a free press, and to grant Putin an uncontested platform to spew propaganda and lies to the world.

…No prior president has ever abased himself more abjectly before a tyrant. Not only did President Trump fail to speak the truth about an adversary; but speaking for America to the world, our president failed to defend all that makes us who we are—a republic of free people dedicated to the cause of liberty at home and abroad. American presidents must be the champions of that cause if it is to succeed. Americans are waiting and hoping for President Trump to embrace that sacred responsibility. One can only hope they are not waiting totally in vain.

Sen. Lindsey Graham said the president had handed Putin a victory. “This answer…will be seen by Russia as a sign of weakness and create far more problems than it solves. Bad day for the U.S. Can be fixed. Must be fixed.”

In a rare moment of levity, considering the disaster Americans had just seen unfold, Graham warned the president to leave a soccer ball, a World Cup souvenir from Putin, outside when he returned home.

“If it were me, I’d check the soccer ball for listening devices and never allow it in the White House.”

Former C.I.A. Chief John O. Brennan, who served both Republican and Democratic presidents, had seen all he could stand. In a scathing tweet he blasted President Trump.

Let’s give Brennan, a man who devoted a long career to serving our country, the last word for today:

Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of “high crimes & misdemeanors.” It was nothing short of treasonous. Not only were Trump’s comments imbecilic, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???"

Apparently, Trump’s “art of the deal” means selling out to Vladimir and all the other Russians with fat wallets.

7/17/18: Trump leaps from the frying pan of disgrace into the fire of farce. Battered by criticism of his performance in Helsinki—even by actual journalists at Fox News—he puts out a new story.

And that story, despite what you saw with your own two peepers and heard thumping your own two eardrums, is that he is the toughest president ever to take on the Russians.

With a script prepared by top aides in his mitts, the president reads to reporters, adding a few random thoughts as he proceeds. In the face of near-universal condemnation, he is backtracking for once:

So I’ll begin by stating that I have full faith and support for America’s great intelligence agencies, always have. And I have felt very strongly that while Russia’s actions had no impact at all on the outcome of the election, let me be totally clear in saying that—and I’ve said this many times—I accept our intelligence community’s conclusion that Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election took place. It could be other people also. There’s a lot of people out there.

Reporters can’t believe it. Who knew there were “a lot of people out there?” You know, like, seven billion!

A one-word “slip” wouldn’t negate everything else Trump said.

Well, what the president really wants is to clarify one point—which would make everything else he said seem so much better. When he said, “I don’t see why they would,” in response to a reporter’s question about whether or not the Russians interfered in the election, it was a slip of the tongue!

“I don’t know why they wouldn’t,” he says he meant to say.

This lie is so big, so bold, so stupid we need to award a “Grand Ruskie” to President Trump. He should probably have three or four by now.

*

So, let’s go to the transcript. Let’s read exactly what Trump said. And to help your thought processes, if you’re a loyal Trump fan, I will annotate the record.

First, we need to remember that Trump had multiple chances to address the question of Russian interference. First, he blamed America for problems with Russia in a tweet. He had more than one chance to stand up for fair elections, for the rule of law and for democracy. He repeatedly failed. 

He stood at the podium, representative of the United States of America, and groveled instead.

The first exchange with a reporter, after his private meeting with Putin was ended, led to this:

REPORTER, JEFF MASON, REUTERS: Thank you. Mr. President, you tweeted this morning that it’s U.S. foolishness, stupidity, and the Mueller probe that is responsible for the decline in U.S. relations with Russia. Do you hold Russia at all accountable [f]or anything in particular? And if so, what would you what would you consider them that they are responsible for?

(Okay. Here’s your chance, Mr. President. Tell Putin to stay out of our elections. You’ve got this! Easy peasy.)

TRUMP: Yes I do. I hold both countries responsible. I think that the United States has been foolish.

(WTF!)

I think we’ve all been foolish. We should have had this dialogue a long time ago, a long time frankly before I got to office. And I think we’re all to blame.

(Not me, personally, he’s saying. It was all those stupid presidents who came before. Trump could have offered a better response if he simply stood there and belched the words.)

I think that the United States now has stepped forward, along with Russia, and we’re getting together and we have a chance to do some great things, whether it’s nuclear proliferation in terms of stopping, have to do it, ultimately that’s probably the most important thing that we can be working on.

(Mention the elections. You fool! We can work on nuclear, too; but, the elections…say something to Putin.)

But I do feel that we have both made some mistakes. I think that the probe is a disaster for our country. I think it’s kept us apart, it’s kept us separated.

There was no collusion at all. Everybody knows it. People are being brought out to the fore. So far that I know virtually none of it related to the campaign. And they’re gonna have to try really hard to find somebody that did relate to the campaign. That was a clean campaign. I beat Hillary Clinton easily and frankly we beat her.

(We already know this!! The election was two years ago. The reporter isn’t asking about Hillary. We know you won. That’s why Hillary isn’t standing at the podium. Do you hold Russia accountable for anything? Do you or don’t you? You idiot! You are blowing it!)

And I’m not even saying from the standpoint...we won that race. And it’s a shame that there can even be a little bit of a cloud over it. People know that. People understand it. But the main thing and we discussed this also is zero collusion and it has had a negative impact upon the relationship of the two largest nuclear powers in the world.

We have 90 percent of nuclear power between the two countries. It’s ridiculous. It’s ridiculous what’s going on with the probe.

(Did Trump just say we’re nuclear rivals, with enough bombs to blow up the world many times over, and it’s because of the probe? Does this dimwit remember the way the Russians crushed the Hungarian Revolution in 1956, built the Berlin Wall in 1961, stamped out a Czech revolt in 1968, invaded Afghanistan in 1979, and so much more, continuing to this day?)

Clearly, Trump muffed his first chance. A few minutes later, he had a second opportunity to clean up the mess.

REPORTER, AP: President Trump, you first. Just now, President Putin denied having anything to do with the election interference in 2016. Every U.S. intelligence agency has concluded that Russia did. My first question for you sir is, who do you believe? My second question is would you now, with the whole world watching, tell President Putin, would you denounce what happened in 2016 and would you warn him to never do it again?

(Would you? Did that reporter really mean “wouldn’t?” That would mean his entire question was nonsense. Did he say Putin? Maybe he meant “putting.” Election? Did he mean “erection?” Maybe he meant to ask about eels. God, this is nuts!)

TRUMP: So let me just say that we have two thoughts. You have groups that are wondering why the FBI never took the server. Why haven’t they taken the server? Why was the FBI told to leave the office of the Democratic National Committee?

(You are screwing the pooch. He asked if you would you denounce Putin. Not the Democratic National Committee!)

I’ve been wondering that. I’ve been asking that for months and months and I’ve been tweeting it out and calling it out on social media. Where is the server? I want to know where is the server and what is the server saying?

With that being said, all I can do is ask the question.

My people came to me, Dan Coates [sic], came to me and some others they said they think it’s Russia. I have President Putin. He just said it’s not Russia.

(Someone stop this idiot before he hurts himself! Can we get Coats out to the stage right now! Can he grab Trump by the lapels and drag him away? Our intelligence agencies don’t “think” it was Russia. They know it was Russia. Trump isn’t even talking about Russian interference. He’s babbling about some server. He might as well be answering in Pig Latin.)

I will say this: I don’t see any reason why it would be. But I really do want to see the server but I have, I have confidence in both parties.

(Okay, there’s the “slip” of the tongue. Wait? Did he mean to say “constipation,” not confidence? Who knows what he meant. I don’t think Trump knows what Trump meant.)

I really believe that this will probably go on for a while but I don’t think it can go on without finding out what happened to the server. What happened to the servers of the Pakistani gentleman that worked on the DNC?

Where are those servers? They’re missing. Where are they? What happened to Hillary Clinton’s emails? 33,000 emails gone, just gone. I think in Russia they wouldn’t be gone so easily.

(Does Trump realize Russia is a police state? Does he realize the secret police get any information they want by tapping reporters’ phones, arresting musicians who criticize Putin, blocking most candidates from running in fair elections and secretly recording people in compromising situations? Of course he doesn’t. We have a moron for president.)

I think it’s a disgrace that we can’t get Hillary Clinton’s thirty three thousand e-mails.

I have great confidence in my intelligence people but I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today and what he did is an incredible offer.

He offered to have the people working on the case [Russia investigation] come and work with their investigators, with respect to the 12 people [Russians that have been indicted for hacking the election]. I think that’s an incredible offer. Ok? Thank you.

And there you have it, everything supposedly fixed by changing one word. First, the President of the United States disgraced himself on the world stage.

Second, he and his aides concocted a ridiculous story to help him find his way out of the woods.

Or should that be “woulds.”

Words can be tricky, right Mr. President? 

7/18/18: If you’ve been busy making dinner for your family, cutting the lawn or watching the All-Star Game, several large pieces of footwear fell this week. On Friday, Special Counsel Mueller dropped combat boots on a dozen Russian military officers charged with trying to influence the 2016 election. 

The White House immediately released a statement saying no Americans were indicted for collusion.

But Trump and his team were really hoping Americans heading for the pool or the park would be too busy slathering on sun screen to notice. At least one GOP candidate for Congress had asked Guccifer 2.0, now conclusively identified as a Russian “front,” to provide dirt on his opponent. An unnamed Trump associate had a series of contacts with Guccifer. Roger Stone has admitted that unnamed associate is “probably” him. This follows on the heels of Stone’s recent admission that he did have a meeting with a Russian agent during the campaign—and that Russian just happened to have dirt on Hillary Clinton, but wanted $2 million to share it. 

So you figure Stone, and maybe Michael Caputo, are seeing the shadow of large footwear hovering above. (See: 6/17/18.)

What other shoes dropped? On Sunday the F.B.I. arrested a young Russian woman, Maria Butina. She was charged with working as an unregistered foreign agent, one step below an espionage charge. For three years Butina is alleged to have been acting in the interests of the Russian Federation. 

Purportedly a gun-rights activist back home, she wormed her way into the graces of the N.R.A.  It may have helped that according to court records she was willing to trade sex in return for political access.

We know the N.R.A. paid her way to this country more than once so she could speak on gun rights. 

Prosecutors later back off the claim that Butina offered sex for access; so I will call this a mistake on my part and line out the errors, leaving them on view; several good jokes will go by the wayside; but we try to report only what is true.

I award myself one “Toilet Cleaning Job” for this error. That’s me (above) bravely serving my country as a Marine from 1968 to 1970, when Donald J. Trump was still suffering the crippling effects of his draft-deferment winning bone spurs.

*

At any rate, Butina’s public stance was in favor of private ownership of guns by Russian citizens. (Here, I might note that the N.R.A. argument for armed citizens to fight tyrannical governments makes great sense.)

Butina also went to the trouble to speak on at least one American campus and called Putin “a dictator and a tyrant.”

Would the sanctions be lifted?

Strangely, her criticism never led to arrest when she returned home. We now know that she rubbed shoulders with a variety of top Republican movers and shakers. She also rubbed other body parts. In one photo, the attractive redhead from Siberia stands smiling next to Gov. Scott Walker of Wisconsin. In another, she looks fetching in pearls, with N.R.A. president Wayne LaPierre gaping by her side.

In July 2015 she was in the audience at Freedom Fest in Las Vegas. By chance or design she was called on to ask Candidate Trump a question. What would his position toward Russia be if he were elected? 

Would the sanctions be lifted?

 “I know Putin, and I’ll tell you what, we get along with Putin….I believe I would get along very nicely with Putin, OK?” Trump said. “And I mean, where we have the strength. I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think we would get along very, very well.”

In August she was back in Russia at the same time Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, was visiting. The congressman says he can’t remember much about the young lady. Yes, he says, Butina did arrange a breakfast meeting with Alexander Torshin, but all he—your good old congressman—had was tea and toast.

Because…you know…the waistline.

No, seriously, Rohrabacher said the breakfast was of “no consequence,” which is probably a good way to cover your ass, if you broke bread with a Russian spy and her Russian spy master.

If you do a little digging you understand why Rohrabacher might be feeling the heat. He is said to have met in early 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya. She’s the Russian lawyer who took part in the Trump Tower meeting in June of that year, a meeting of key interest to Mueller’s team.

Well, what did Rohrabacher think about the indictment of poor Ms. Butina? “It’s ridiculous. It’s stupid,” he fumed. “She’s the assistant of some guy who is the head of the bank and is a member of their Parliament. That’s what we call a spy? That shows you how bogus this whole thing [the Mueller investigation] is.”

Even a few moments spent searching the internet, however, reveal that “some guy who is the head of the bank” is a seriously shady character. 

Torshin is one of 24 individuals and 14 Russian companies sanctioned by the Treasury Department in May. They ended up on that list because they were individuals and entities that had benefitted “from [ties with] the Putin regime and play a key role in advancing Russia’s malign activities.”

So, yes, Mr. Rohrabacher—we’re talking malign Russian activities. And you’re slinging bullshit.

Rohrabacher is probably lying through his teeth; still unproven, though.

But don’t forget what Rep. Kevin McCarthy said.

*

Who else exactly will be squashed by all the falling shoes we cannot know. But several Americans would be wise to scurry for cover. We know Torshin is an ally of Putin. And this latest indictment—not directly tied to the Mueller investigation, but of obvious interest—makes clear that Torshin was giving Butina orders. Both became life members of the N.R.A., which even the head of the N.R.A. would probably admit is not a great look for the group.

Certainly, longtime Republican fixer, Paul Erickson, appears likely to get whacked like a cock roach. For some reason, he formed a company with Butina in South Dakota in 2016. That company is currently the subject of a fraud investigation.

Erickson, almost twice her age, and Butina were shacking up and Erickson had been helping her do homework while she studied (under a student visa gained by lying on her application) at American University.

The Kremlin had approved her efforts.

From the official indictment, we know Torshin was telling Butina to play the long game during the 2016 campaign. He advised her “not [to] burn out prematurely.” She admitted she was tired of living with Erickson. (She was also tired of offering to have sex with other men high up in conservative ranks in order to gain political access.) She responded via Twitter: “Only incognito!” That is, she was operating in secret. “Right now everything has to be quiet and careful.”

At least one American, unnamed in the indictment, most likely Erickson, may very well get hit by a size-22 shoe. The New York Times reports: “In the F.B.I. affidavit, Ms. Butina assured that person that the Kremlin had approved her efforts to connect members of the Trump team with allies or associates of Vladimir Putin. ‘All that we needed was “yes” from Putin’s side.’”

Later she wrote again to her American contact, “My dearest president has received ‘the message’ about your group initiatives.”

That exchange came in March 2016. So you can understand why the F.B.I. might have been suspicious. We now know Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos met with what he thought were Russian agents offering dirt on Hillary Clinton that same month. Later he lied about it.

Stone met his Russian in May. Eventually, he denied meeting with any Russians in testimony before Congress.

The famous meeting in Trump Tower with assorted Trump people and assorted Russians took place in June.

You catch the drift.

So: to clarify. Butina is not known to have had sex with other Americans to gain access; she definitely had sex with Erickson.

    

Butina was lying. Torshin was lying. The unnamed American was lying, too.

Anything else fishy we should mention? We know Butina and Torshin attended President Trump’s inauguration. In February 2017 she and Torshin organized a delegation of a dozen Russians to attend the National Prayer Breakfast and hear the new president speak. Torshin scored a meeting at the White House later that year. At the last minute, the sit down with Trump was canceled when a security aide noticed Torshin was under investigation for money laundering in Spain.

Ms. Butina.

 *

LAST, BUT NOT LEAST, Mueller’s team swatted a big old cockroach with a wingtip this week. Mueller asked a judge for immunity for up to five witnesses to testify in the coming trial of Paul Manafort.

That means there are five witnesses who may be compelled to give testimony as to possible crimes. They will be granted “use immunity,” which means nothing they say can be used against them.

*

F.B.I. Director Wray sits before an audience at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado. He’ll be taking questions from Lester Holt of NBC, discussion moderator. For the third time, over the course of more than a year, including this past May and in June 2017, Wray makes it clear he does not believe the Russia investigation is a witch hunt.

Wray says no one should doubt what his spine is made of.

In the wake of the president’s recent statements in Helsinki—that he believes Putin—then he doesn’t—then he kind of does—you sense exasperation and even doubt about the president’s innocence in Wray’s response. “I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt [emphasis added]. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.”

Remember now. Wray was Trump’s pick to head the F.B.I. He just backed up Mueller 100 percent.

Holt wonders: “There have also been stories that you threatened to resign. Have you ever hit a point on that issue of sources and methods or anything else when you said, this is a line?”

Wray replies, “I’m a low-key, understated guy, but that should not be mistaken for what my spine is made out of. I’ll just leave it at that.”

Did he just dare President Trump not to interfere further in the Mueller probe? I believe he did.

7/19/18: The president continues to try to dig his way out of the gigantic hole he made in Helsinki. He decides the best way to do it is to take a shovel and hit the free press upside the head.

Trump fires off this tweet:

The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media [emphasis added]. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear........

You may recall that Putin offered to allow American investigators to come to Russia and interview the twelve Russian officers indicted for interfering in the U.S. election.

In return, the Russians would be allowed to grill 11 Americans who Putin insists committed crimes while in Russia. This would include former U.S. ambassador to Russia, Michael McFaul.

Apparently, Trump has never heard of diplomatic immunity, or the rule of law, or U.S. sovereignty. It seems he has no idea Putin prefers to deal with critics by having them poisoned or clubbed to death. On Monday, the president responded to the question of whether or not Russia had interfered in our election like so:

I will tell you that President Putin was extremely strong and powerful in his denial today [of Russian interference in 2016] and what he did is an incredible offer. He offered to have the people working on the case come and work with their investigations with respect to the 12 people. I think that’s an incredible offer.

Once again, the “Deep State” shoots down another muddled idea that spews from the president’s lips.

On Wednesday, a State Department spokeswoman reads the following statement for reporters:

The overall assertions that have come out of the Russian government are absolutely absurd: the fact that they want to question 11 American citizens and the assertions that the Russian government is making about those American citizens. We do not stand by those assertions that the Russian government makes.

Well, it could have been worse. At least she didn’t ad lib, “What meathead thought this was a good idea?”

How bad was that idea—which the White House admitted on Wednesday the president was considering?

On Thursday, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution, by a vote of 98-0, warning Trump not to allow Russians to interrogate American citizens.

*

In an editorial in The New York Times, Republican congressman Will Hurd has this to say:

Over the course of my career as an undercover officer in the C.I.A., I saw Russian intelligence manipulate many people. I never thought I would see the day when an American president [emphasis added] would be one of them.

The president’s failure to defend the United States intelligence community’s unanimous conclusions of Russian meddling in the 2016 election and condemn Russian covert counterinfluence campaigns and his standing idle on the world stage while a Russian dictator spouted lies confused many but should concern all Americans. By playing into Vladimir Putin’s hands, the leader of the free world actively participated in a Russian disinformation campaign that legitimized Russian denial and weakened the credibility of the United States to both our friends and foes abroad.

As a member of Congress, a coequal branch of government designed by our founders to provide checks and balances on the executive branch, I believe that lawmakers must fulfill our oversight duty as well as keep the American people informed of the current danger.

…Russia is an adversary not just of the United States but of freedom-loving people everywhere.

Who, then, is the real “enemy of the people?” Certainly, Putin fits the description. 

Wray says it is not a witch hunt.

7/20/18: F.B.I. Director Wray has already undercut Trump at the Aspen Security Forum. (See: 7/18/18.)

Now Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats takes a shot.

Mr. Coats is answering questions from Andrea Mitchell, a reporter for NBC, in front of a large audience, when news breaks. Press Secretary Pinocchio announces, via Twitter, that Putin will be invited to the White House in the fall.

Coats’s reaction is telling, and we learn later that White House aides feel Coats is laughing at Trump.

That’s probably because he is—and like Wray, on Wednesday—almost daring the president to fire him.

Meanwhile, Defense Secretary James Mattis makes it clear what our country’s biggest problem in Europe is.

It isn’t NATO:

Russia should suffer consequences for its aggressive, destabilizing behavior and its illegal occupation of Ukraine. The fundamental question we must ask ourselves is do we wish to strengthen our partners in key regions or leave them with no other option than to turn to Russia, thereby undermining a once in a generation opportunity to more closely align nations with the U.S. vision for global security and stability.

Trump is probably too busy tweet-bitching about how great he did in Helsinki and how reporters never give him all the credit he deserves to notice. Instead, he repeats his attacks on the free press: 

The Summit with Russia was a great success, except with the real enemy of the people, the Fake News Media. I look forward to our second meeting so that we can start implementing some of the many things discussed, including stopping terrorism, security for Israel, nuclear........

No one knows yet what Putin and Trump talked about during their private meeting. We do know this. They both agree the free press is a pain in the ass.

*

IN RELATED NEWS, we learn that Mueller has issued a subpoena for Kristin Davis, 41, formerly known as the “Manhattan Madam.” Ms. Davis, who operated a high-priced prostitution ring, ran an abortive campaign for governor of New York in 2010.

Since then she has worked for Roger Stone.

That is: not counting the twenty-four months she spent behind bars, starting in 2013, for illegally peddling prescription pills.

7/21/18: Sometimes, you do wonder if the president can ever go through an entire day without doing or saying something objectionable.

Today is not that day.

Once again, he’s tweeting criticism about the U.S. judicial system. This time his topic is former personal lawyer Michael Cohen. As most Americans know, in April, Cohen’s home, office, safety deposit boxes and electronic devices were searched after authorities convinced a judge to issue a warrant.

Sadly, the man in charge of our government has no idea how warrants and U.S. judges work:

Inconceivable that the government would break into a lawyer’s office (early in the morning) - almost unheard of. Even more inconceivable that a lawyer would tape a client - totally unheard of & perhaps illegal. The good news is that your favorite President did nothing wrong! 

First of all, if “your favorite President did nothing wrong,” how come he whines about the Russian probe almost every day? Why doesn’t he go about his business and show what a great president he is? Secondly, dawn raids are a favorite tactic of the F.B.I. and most police departments.

Take, for example, F.B.I. raids in January 2011 that netted 125 mob figures from seven Mafia crime families.

Or a pre-dawn raid on a murderous gang in Long Beach, California in 2009 that led to 88 arrests.

Trump might also remember the pre-dawn raids carried out by ICE in January. In that case more than a hundred 7/11 stores were raided and undocumented workers were swept up by the score. 

So, yes, Mr. Trump, dawn raids are common. They work against mob families. They work against street gangs. They work against crooked business types who hire undocumented workers.

In fact, fearing Cohen was planning to destroy evidence, F.B.I. agents showed up in the wee hours because they wanted to catch him unawares.

 7/22/18: Sunday turns into a whine-fest when the president starts tweeting about how unfairly he’s being treated by everyone in the Department of Justice. He even puts the word “Justice” in quotes.

In this case, Trump is tweet-moaning about the FISA courts and how the F.B.I. and the C.I.A. and probably the Sisters of Charity are all out to get him. But first, they have to get Carter Page to get to him.

The president’s Twitter Day begins at 5:28 a.m.:

Congratulations to @JudicialWatch and @TomFitton on being successful in getting the Carter Page FISA documents. As usual they are ridiculously heavily redacted but confirm with little doubt that the Department of “Justice” and FBI misled the courts. Witch Hunt Rigged, a Scam! 

The second tweet comes at 5:49:

Looking more & more like the Trump Campaign for President was illegally being spied upon (surveillance) for the political gain of Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC. Ask her how that worked out - she did better with Crazy Bernie. Republicans must get tough now. An illegal Scam!

Three more Twitter yowls follow later that morning:

Andrew McCarthy - “I said this could never happen. This is so bad that they should be looking at the judges who signed off on this stuff, not just the people who gave it. It is so bad it screams out at you.” On the whole FISA scam which led to the rigged Mueller Witch Hunt! 

@PeteHegseth on @FoxNews “Source #1 was the (Fake) Dossier. Yes, the Dirty Dossier, paid for by Democrats as a hit piece against Trump, and looking for information that could discredit Candidate #1 Trump. Carter Page was just the foot to surveil the Trump campaign...” ILLEGAL!

I had a GREAT meeting with Putin and the Fake News used every bit of their energy to try and disparage it. So bad for our country!

Now let’s go to the evidence and see how Trump’s tweets hold up. First, the president’s loyal fans should understand that Carter Page was being surveilled under a FISA warrant in 2014.

That would be before Trump ran for office.

Second, the president keeps calling the Mueller investigation a “witch hunt.” Clearly, the president never listens to F.B.I. Director Wray. Wray insisted again recently that the Russian investigation was not a witch hunt. 

Third, Trump keeps insisting that the F.B.I. and Department of Justice were working to help Hillary Clinton win the election. Even a babbling idiot should be able to figure this out. By the summer of 2016, the F.B.I. was already worried because several members of the Trump campaign had had questionable contacts with Russians. Trump’s worst “enemy” in the F.B.I., Peter Strzok, knew an investigation had been launched.

And yet, no one in the “Justice” Department leaked that story which might have destroyed Trump’s pussy-grabbing campaign once and for all.

The president is lying again; the F.B.I. had real reason to be suspicious of Page and there’s no witch hunt. People who could have destroyed his campaign didn’t.

7/23/18: Trump wakes up grumpy and starts tweeting, because that’s what he does. Plus, he wants to vent. As shoes continue to drop around him in the Russian investigation he’s increasingly angry.

At 5:13 a.m., the president calls on fans to warm up their TVs: “Tom Fitton on @foxandfriends at 6:15 A.M. NOW! Judicial Watch.” 

Ah, the joys of tweeting!

The Department of Justice has just released a 400-page document explaining why four FISA warrants were issued in 2016 and 2017 allowing intelligence agencies to surveil one Mr. Carter Page.

Trump and his allies know the book-length document undercuts his claims that the Russian investigation is a witch hunt. The president also knows none of his Twitter fans are going to plow through it or try to get to the truth.

At 5:30 a.m. we get this: 

So we now find out that it was indeed the unverified and Fake Dirty Dossier, that was paid for by Crooked Hillary Clinton and the DNC, that was knowingly & falsely submitted to FISA and which was responsible for starting the totally conflicted and discredited Mueller Witch Hunt!

At 5:52, 6:01 and 6:09 a.m. Trump starts quoting Fox News (god, he loves Fox News, all those hot female hosts, all the fawning praise):

“It was classified to cover up misconduct by the FBI and the Justice Department in misleading the Court by using this Dossier in a dishonest way to gain a warrant to target the Trump Team. This is a Clinton Campaign document. It was a fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump.... 

....and the DOJ, FBI and Obama Gang need to be held to account. Source #1 was the major source. Avoided talking about it being the Clinton campaign behind it. Misled the Court to provide a pretext to SPY on the Trump Team. Not about Carter Page..was all about getting Trump.....

.....”Carter Page wasn’t a spy, wasn’t an agent of the Russians - he would have cooperated with the FBI. It was a fraud and a hoax designed to target Trump.” Tom Fitton @JudicialWatch A disgrace to America. They should drop the discredited Mueller Witch Hunt now! 

For variety, Trump finishes his day with a fresh attack on the media, because, to put it bluntly, the only news he thinks should be allowed is Fox News, not “Fake News.” “Fake News” is any news Trump doesn’t like.

7/24/18: Trump ends another wild day with a stunning admission. He finally realizes the Russians do hack U.S. elections!

It only took two years for the Slow-Learner-in-Chief to work it out. He announces his discovery in a tweet. “I’m very concerned that Russia will be fighting very hard to have an impact on the upcoming Election,” he cries. “Based on the fact that no President has been tougher on Russia than me, they will be pushing very hard for the Democrats. They definitely don’t want Trump!”

Yeah. Why would they be happy to keep the Crimea? 

And why would they be happy to see Trump end sanctions, which he has said he’s willing to consider? How much dough is currently beyond the reach of various oligarchs and crooked, corrupt Russian firms?

It would be hard to overestimate how much loot Russia’s fat cats have stashed in other countries. Often, laundered money is used to buy solid assets: jewelry, fine art, vintage cars and multiple mansions.

Consider the divorce case of one oligarch, who sold out his stake in the Russian gas company Nortgas and eventually moved to Great Britain. He and his ex-wife were arguing over their many assets, including a humble boat. Yes, Farkhad Akhmedov decided to use some of the cash he snuck out of Russia—before sanctions clamped down—to buy a little pleasure craft.

A nine-deck beauty (above), with a crew of 50, two helipads for choppers, a 65-foot swimming pool, a mini-submarine, and anti-missile defenses, the 380-foot Luna is worth an estimated $500 million.

Now a judge has ordered the ex-husband to turn over the helm to his ex-wife as part of a $635 million settlement.

How rich are these oligarchs? Mr. Akhmedov and his wife were sitting on a $1.51 billion fortune.

If you look at a list of crooked billionaires drawn up by the U.S. Treasury Department, as part of a sanctions package last year, you notice names that will be familiar to those who closely monitor the Mueller probe. 

Akhmedov is on the list.

So is Aras Agalarov, who helped set up the Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. (See: 7/8-14/17 .)

Also making an appearance: Sergei Gorkov, a banker with whom Jared Kushner had a secret meeting in early 2017.

Don’t forget Dmitry Rybolovlev, who bought (at a highly-inflated price), a Palm Beach mansion from Donald J. Trump a decade ago.

Or: Viktor Vekselberg, who had a secret meeting with Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, at Trump Tower in January 2017.

The list keeps growing if you do a little cross-checking. It includes Igor Sechin, Chief Executive Officer of Rosneft, with whom it is alleged Trump adviser Carter Page met in Moscow during the campaign; also listed is Roman Abramovich, a Russian billionaire and owner of the Chelsea Football Club. Abramovich is known to be a close friend of Ivanka Trump and her husband. As Newsweek recently reported, “In 2014, the Kushners spent four days in Russia after Abramovich’s wife, Dasha Zhukova, invited them.”

Last, but not least, throw in Sergey Ivanov, last seen sitting at a table with General Michael T. Flynn and Vladimir Putin—and Jill Stein, of the Green Party, for some strange reason—at a celebration in Moscow in December 2015. (See: 5/7/18.) 

          

Not lies, exactly; but a lot of sanctioned Russians who have crossed fiscal paths with the Trump family and Trump businesses.

7/25/18: One of Trump’s first tasks every morning is to tweet. At 7:34 a.m. we learn what’s foremost in his mind. The revelation—on tape—that he discussed how to go about paying off a Playboy Bunny. That would be the Bunny claiming he and she had a ten-month affair.

How do we know about this tape? The “Fake News” folks at CNN have released it, via Trump’s old personal lawyer’s new lawyer, Lanny Davis.

A payoff is routine.

Talking heads on cable news spend the day debating the legal ramifications. The bottom line is clear. Trump and his lawyer at the time, Michael Cohen, can be heard discussing how to pay the Bunny to keep her mouth shut. Trump is not shocked to be discussing his infidelity.

A payoff is routine.

He may not be guilty of any crimes in the matter; but as for “exculpatory,” which his current lawyer Horndog Rudy says the tape is, someone should probably ask Mrs. Trump what she thinks.

At any rate, the president is up early and ready to tweet!

What kind of a lawyer would tape a client? So sad! Is this a first, never heard of it before? Why was the tape so abruptly terminated (cut) while I was presumably saying positive things? I hear there are other clients and many reporters that are taped - can this be so? Too bad!

And might we add: this taped conversation took place only weeks before the 2016 election. When the Wall Street Journal reported on a secret payment to a Playboy Bunny, Hope Hicks, speaking for the Trump campaign, denied that anyone on Team Trump knew anything about any payment.

Later, Donald J. Trump denied the affair.

Later still, Trump said he knew nothing about the payment, and you’d have to ask Lawyer Cohen. Then Horndog Rudy said on Sean Hannity’s show that, yes, Trump did know about the payment.

Then…aw, the hell with it. Just call it all “Fake News” and keep lying. 

Hick had to be lying at the time; the question is, was she lying, or just repeating a lie someone higher up had told her?

7/26/18: In other news, the Wall Street Journal reports that Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization has been served with a subpoena by federal prosecutors. 

Mr. Weisselberg was recently mentioned during a taped conversation between Trump and Trump’s personal lawyer as someone involved in potentially illegal payoffs during the 2016 campaign.

It may not be a coincidence that on this same day, Michael Avenatti, lawyer for Stormy Daniels, says he has three new clients who are willing to state that they were also paid hush money during the campaign.

These clients have still not emerged (as of 3/17/19).

7/27/18: After weeks of wobbling and weaving, Michael Cohen appears poised to turn on his old boss.

Multiple sources confirm that Cohen is prepared to state that Trump knew about the secret meeting at Trump Tower in June 2016.

This report is now in doubt. Here we have to go back reduce the count of lies by one.

Naturally, the president’s response to this threat comes Friday morning in three tweets (6:26, 6:38 and 6:56 a.m.):

Arrived back in Washington last night from a very emotional reopening of a major U.S. Steel plant in Granite City, Illinois, only to be greeted with the ridiculous news that the highly conflicted Robert Mueller and his gang of 13 Angry Democrats obviously cannot find Collusion... 

....,the only Collusion with Russia was with the Democrats, so now they are looking at my Tweets (along with 53 million other people) - the rigged Witch Hunt continues! How stupid and unfair to our Country....And so the Fake News doesn’t waste my time with dumb questions, NO,....

.....I did NOT know of the meeting with my son, Don jr. Sounds to me like someone is trying to make up stories in order to get himself out of an unrelated jam (Taxi cabs maybe?). He even retained Bill and Crooked Hillary’s lawyer. Gee, I wonder if they helped him make the choice!

That allusion to taxis relates to possible tax evasion by Cohen, related to business in New York City.

Not that Trump would ever dodge taxes, himself—I mean, if we could see his tax returns we would know what an honest fellow he is….

In what will likely shape up as a battle of “he said-he said,” the American public may be forced to decide which gentleman to believe. It’s a tough call. Both Cohen and Trump are badly tainted individuals.

Fine person…honorable lawyer…going to…tell the truth.

Then again, as recently as April, the president bemoaned an F.B.I. raid on Cohen’s office—called it “disgraceful”—“an attack on our country”—and insisted Cohen was a “good man.” It was terrible what the “fake news” New York Times was doing to this fellow, the president wailed. Cohen was “a fine person with a wonderful family…who I have always liked & respected.”

In May, Rudy Giuliani went to bat for Trump’s aggrieved pal. It was unclear at that point if Cohen would flip. So, Rudy was all roses and chocolates. Cohen, he said, was an “honest, honorable lawyer.”

On July 8, Giuliani chimed in again. Would Cohen flip on his former boss, a reporter inquired? No sweat, Rudy responded, “I have no concern that Michael Cohen is going to do anything but tell the truth.” 

Now the tune Trump and his band like to tootle has changed dramatically. In an almost laughable interview on CNN, Giuliani sets out to trash Cohen’s reputation. Horndog Rudy, famous himself for cheating on assorted wives, says the dirty rat has been “lying for years.” Cohen’s a “pathological liar.” He’s “not creditable.” He’ll put out “a string of lies.” Cohen is “an incredible liar.” 

The key question is this. Did Trump know about the meeting with the Russians in Trump Tower? Or didn’t he? 

In addressing that quandary, it helps to consider all the related lies that have been told and by whom. We know three top Trump campaign leaders did attend a June 9, 2016 meeting with agents of the Russian government.

The president wasn’t involved in drafting the statement.

Eventually the meeting was revealed, participants listed, various denials by Team Trump issued. A letter was penned, saying we could all stop worrying. The meeting was called to discuss adoptions. Reporters revealed on July 11, 2017, that the president himself had helped draft the false letter. 

The next day, Jay Sekulow, a lawyer for Team Trump, insisted the president had nothing to hide. “I wasn’t involved in the statement drafting at all, nor was the president,” he insisted. In a second interview, he elaborated: “The president didn’t sign off on anything. He was coming back from the G-20 [summit in Europe]. The statement that was released on Saturday was released by Donald Trump Jr., I’m sure in consultation with his lawyers. The president wasn’t involved in that.” 

Just to be sure the American people got the message, Sekulow made a similar claim on July 16: “I do want to be clear that the president was not involved in the drafting of the statement and did not issue the statement. It came from Donald Trump Jr. So that’s what I can tell you because that’s what we know.” 

This allowed Mr. Sekulow to complete a rare trifecta of lies—as we shall see below.

  

One lie counted previously; two fresh repetitions of that same lie.

On July 16, in a pair of pre-dawn tweets, the president lashed out at the “Fake News” folks at The New York Times and in the media generally:

HillaryClinton can illegally get the questions to the Debate & delete 33,000 emails but my son Don is being scorned by the Fake News Media? 

With all of its phony unnamed sources & highly slanted & even fraudulent reporting, #Fake News is DISTORTING DEMOCRACY in our country!

Alas, the “fake news” bastards at the Washington Post wouldn’t let poor Jr. or our aggrieved president rest. On July 31, 2017, the Post reported that the president “personally dictated a statement in which Trump Jr. said that he and the Russian lawyer had ‘primarily discussed a program about the adoption of Russian children’ when they met in June 2016, according to multiple people with knowledge of the deliberations.”

On August 1, Press Secretary Pinocchio Sanders assured reporters that her boss could not tell a lie even if he tried. “The president weighed in, as any father would, based on the limited information that he had,” she says. “He certainly didn’t dictate, but like I said, he weighed in, offered suggestions like any father would do.”

That was also a lie.

Already counted.

How do we know? In January 2018, in a confidential letter to Special Counsel Robert Mueller, Sekulow and John Dowd, another Trump lawyer (since kicked off the team) admitted: Okay, we’ve all been lying.

Trump did dictate that misleading letter. So what!

He can pardon himself.

7/29/18: Trump is still at his Bedminster, N.J. golf club (make that 133 days of golf, so far, as president), but he’ll be back at the White House around 7:30 p.m., just in time to don his jammies, grab his remote, and watch TV.

Back in Washington, Horndog Rudy is making the talk show rounds. He insists again that the tape of the president and Cohen talking about payoffs to a Playboy Bunny puts Trump in the clear. No laws were broken.

None at all.

As for Cohen, who now plans to turn on his old boss, Giuliani calls him a “pathological manipulator.”

It’s the cover-the-president’s-ass “Phrase of the Day.”

As for Trump, he again insists the Russia investigation is rigged. He can’t cite specific examples because Mueller has so far advanced the investigation methodically and with near total absence of leaks. Frankly, for all Trump knows, the Special Counsel might be on the cusp of exonerating his dumb ass.

Now he goes after Mueller by name in a series of tweets:

There is No Collusion! The Robert Mueller Rigged Witch Hunt, headed now by 17 (increased from 13, including an Obama White House lawyer) Angry Democrats, was started by a fraudulent Dossier, paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC. Therefore, the Witch Hunt is an illegal Scam! 

Is Robert Mueller ever going to release his conflicts of interest with respect to President Trump, including the fact that we had a very nasty & contentious business relationship, I turned him down to head the FBI (one day before appointment as S.C.) & Comey is his close friend.. 

....Also, why is Mueller only appointing Angry Dems, some of whom have worked for Crooked Hillary, others, including himself, have worked for Obama....And why isn’t Mueller looking at all of the criminal activity & real Russian Collusion on the Democrats side-Podesta, Dossier?

At this point, really, you begin to wonder if the president isn’t coming completely unhinged.

7/30/18: The battle to bolster the crumbling credibility of Trump and his cronies continues to falter. 

In one poll 54 percent of Americans believe Trump acted illegally or unethically in dealing with the Russians during the 2016 campaign.

Only 36 percent think he did not.

Sensing growing danger on several fronts, Horndog Rudy turns up on Fox News. He’s there for only reason: to trash the reputation of Michael Cohen. So that’s what he does. Rudy explains that he has been listening to dozens of tapes that Trump’s former lawyer secretly made. Suddenly, it hits him, he tells the three hosts of Fox & Friends: “I’ve got a scoundrel on my hands.” In this first TV appearance of the day, Rudy decides to mention a new report, which hasn’t appeared yet in print or on film. Apparently, he warns, Cohen is prepared to tell investigators that that Don Jr., Jared, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, “and possibly two others,” attended a strategy session on June 6, 2016, in which they discussed plans for a meeting scheduled for June 9, with agents of the Russian government who were promising dirt on Hillary.

No one has ever heard of this earlier meeting—and Rudy is at pains to say the president wasn’t there. But he seems to be implying that the meeting did occur. A few hours later, realizing he’s made another fine mess, Rudy calls into Fox News and does his best to explain. This time he gets Harris Faulkner on the phone. Oh, no, he tells her, he wasn’t unclear. He has been saying all along, that there was no collusion. But if there was, and there wasn’t, it won’t matter.

Because collusion is no crime!

How does Ol’ Horndog know this is true? He has been looking all through the federal statutes to make sure.

For once, Giuliani gets his facts all in a tidy row; but if “collusion” is no crime, “fraud” and “conspiracy” are. The Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, for example, gives this definition first, for the word “collude:” “come to an understanding or conspire together, esp. for a fraudulent purpose.”

For “collusion” we have: “a secret understanding, esp. for a fraudulent purpose” and “Law such an understanding between ostensible opponents in a lawsuit.”

If we go to “conspiracy,” the Oxford Dictionary has this as the first definition: “a secret plan to commit a crime or do harm, often for political ends; a plot.” One of the synonyms listed: “collusion.”

Rudy now insists no such meeting, as he said earlier Cohen was about to allege, occurred on June 6. He tells Ms. Faulkner, who is clearly baffled by Rudy’s verbal dance, that he contacted the lawyers of four of the six men allegedly involved. All four said the story, if it ever comes out, would be patently untrue. 

Of course, lawyers always claim their clients are innocent up to the moment juries decide they’re not.

Regardless, Rudy goes on to say that the Mueller probe is not entitled to ask his client, the President of the United States, any questions about “obstruction of justice.” Why not? Rudy insists that the U.S. Constitution gives any president the right to remove the head of the F.B.I.

Again: true.

The Constitution does not give a president or any other member of the federal government the right to act in such a way as to thwart an investigation into possible criminal behavior in which they might be prime suspects. A vice president cannot take $100 million in bribes from the mafia and have the president fire the director of the F.B.I. because agents are knocking at his front door. If Trump murdered the White House butler in the Oval Office with a candlestick, he could not fire the Attorney General for putting experts to work to gather evidence. And, no, someone should tell Rudy, the president cannot pardon himself.

But Rudy can’t be stopped. He tells Ms. Faulkner his totally innocent client would love to chat with Special Counsel Mueller; but no way is he ever going to do it. Giuliani won’t let him because the investigation has “no legitimacy” at all.

Besides, the jury will be the American people—and if only they will watch Fox News, we know they will find Trump innocent of all crimes. He did not jay-walk. He did not break any laws, ever, in paying off porn stars and Playboy babes. He did not know about the June 9 meeting, before, during, or after it was held. He did not collude with the Russians, or conspire, or perspire. 

Donald J. Trump is an innocent man.

So sayeth his hack lawyer!

7/31/18: The President of the United States unleashes a Twitter blizzard to bring July to a close. He posts 19 times in one day, starting at 5:14 a.m. That early hour hints at a man who realizes the depth of his guilt and may be having difficulty with sleep.

At 6:58 a.m., he changes the tune he has long been whistling. He still claims there’s “NO COLLUSION.”

But if there is: “Collusion is not a crime, but that doesn’t matter because there was No Collusion (except by Crooked Hillary and the Democrats)!”

Interestingly enough, if you have a brain in operation, you realize that tweet goes in a circle and ends at total stupidity. First, Trump did not collude. Second, if he did it’s no big deal. He’s innocent of any crimes. Third, Hillary is crooked because she colluded and we should all chant, “Lock her up!” with increasing fervor, even though…collusion is no crime.

Conspiracy, however, is a crime and Trump and his minions may very well be guilty of that. Here we consult the statutes:

18 U.S. Code § 371 - Conspiracy to commit offense or to defraud United States

If two or more persons conspire either to commit any offense against the United States, or to defraud the United States, or any agency thereof in any manner or for any purpose, and one or more of such persons do any act to effect the object of the conspiracy, each shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than five years, or both.

(See, for example: dozens of examples cited in these blog posts.)

8/1/18: In a series of frightening tweets, the President of the United States walks up to the line where the rule of law ends and authoritarianism begins. He’s ready to trample the U.S. Constitution underfoot in order to protect himself. First he savages the free press again.

Then:

“FBI Agent Peter Strzok (on the Mueller team) should have recused himself on day one. He was out to STOP THE ELECTION OF DONALD TRUMP. He needed an insurance policy. Those are illegal, improper goals, trying to influence the Election. He should never, ever been allowed to........

.....remain in the FBI while he himself was being investigated. This is a real issue. It won’t go into a Mueller Report because Mueller is going to protect these guys. Mueller has an interest in creating the illusion of objectivity around his investigation.” ALAN DERSHOWITZ....

We have said this before. We will say it again. Strzok had it in his power to destroy the Trump campaign in the summer of 2016. He could have leaked the story that an investigation into Trump’s campaign, involving suspicious contacts with agents of the Russian government, was already open. He could have leaked to the press and the Trump campaign would almost surely have ended then and there. We can say this once, twice, we can say it again. The people in the red MAGA hats won’t hear because they don’t care to hear. (See: 7/12/18.)

Donald J. Trump could still be proven innocent in the end.

They are loyal to their Leader. Increasingly, they only wish to yelp. Trump knows it and so tweet-stomps his foot over the line:

..This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now [emphasis added], before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to USA!

Stop and think about what the president just said. 

He wants the Department of Justice to shut down an investigation into his 2016 campaign. He doesn’t want Mueller and his team to pursue evidence of Russian meddling during the election. He doesn’t want investigators to discover whether or not American citizens (“known and unknown,” as one indictment reads), broke the law. He doesn’t want us to find out whether or not persons “known and unknown” helped a hostile power undermine democratic norms.

Look. Donald J. Trump could still prove innocent in the end. But he doesn’t want us to wait to discover the truth. If members of his campaign were working with Russians to subvert the election—and here the evidence is gathering in ever darker clouds—he doesn’t want us to know. 

Still, Trump wasn’t done undermining the rule of law. Three more highly questionable tweets followed:

Paul Manafort worked for Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole and many other highly prominent and respected political leaders. He worked for me for a very short time. Why didn’t government tell me that he was under investigation. These old charges have nothing to do with Collusion - a Hoax!

Russian Collusion with the Trump Campaign, one of the most successful in history, is a TOTAL HOAX. The Democrats paid for the phony and discredited Dossier which was, along with Comey, McCabe, Strzok and his lover, the lovely Lisa Page, used to begin the Witch Hunt. Disgraceful! 

Looking back on history, who was treated worse, Alfonse Capone, legendary mob boss, killer and “Public Enemy Number One,” or Paul Manafort, political operative & Reagan/Dole darling, now serving solitary confinement - although convicted of nothing? Where is the Russian Collusion?

Then, complete with a misspelling of the word “smoking” which he later corrected, Trump sealed the authoritarian deal:

“We already have a smocking gun about a campaign getting dirt on their opponent, it was Hillary Clinton. How is it OK for Hillary Clinton to proactively seek dirt from the Russians but the Trump campaign met at the Russians request and that is bad?” Marc Thiessen, Washington Post

We could explain again why this is wrong. We could spell it all out with blocks for Trump’s greatest fans.

It doesn’t matter if Manafort worked for Ronald Reagan. He’s charged with a wide array of crimes in recent years.

That includes witness tampering in 2018.

And, of course, Manafort hasn’t been convicted. Good god. Let’s try blocks: H-E…I-S… N-O-W…O-N…T-R-I-A-L. I-F…C-O-N-V-I-C-T-E-D…H-E…C-O-U-L-D…S-P-E-N-D…T-H-E…R-E-S-T…O-F…H-I-S…L-I-F-E…I-N…J-A-I-L.

In this country that’s how the courts work. We don’t like to shout, “Lock her up! Lock her up!” until evidence has been gathered, juries seated, lawyers engaged, witnesses called and verdicts rendered.

*

Realizing how much Trump’s call for the Attorney General to shut down the investigation sounds like an attempt to obstruct justice, the president’s lawyers quickly set to work to walk his comments back.

Oh, don’t worry, they say, the President of the United States isn’t really saying he’s above the law.

“It’s not a call to action,” Rudy Giuliani explains. The most powerful man in the world is simply venting. Mr. Trump really wants the legal processes to play out.

“He’s expressing his opinion, but he’s not talking of his special powers he has” as president, Mr. Giuliani says.

Giuliani later adds that the fact Trump made his statements on Twitter, “a medium that he uses for opinions,” is proof that what he said should not be seen as an order.

Jay Sekulow, another Trump lawyer, serves up the same dish in an interview on TV. The president “doesn’t feel that he has to intervene in the process, nor is he intervening,” Mr. Sekulow insists.

Finally, Press Secretary Pinocchio comes to the president’s defense. “The president is not obstructing,” she tells the White House press corps. “He’s fighting back.” 

POSTSCRIPT: Trump surrogates have increasing cause for worry in the wake of his most recent series of tweets. Again, those who follow The Leader will argue that collusion is no crime. We all know that “conspiracy” and “obstruction of justice,” certainly are—and today’s tweets may fill the bill.

Here’s just one of many examples of obstruction of justice described in the federal codes:

18 U.S. Code § 1503 - Influencing or injuring officer or juror generally

(a)  Whoever corruptly, or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, endeavors to influence, intimidate, or impede any grand or petit juror, or officer in or of any court of the United States, or officer who may be serving at any examination or other proceeding before any United States magistrate judge or other committing magistrate, in the discharge of his duty, or injures any such grand or petit juror in his person or property on account of any verdict or indictment assented to by him, or on account of his being or having been such juror, or injures any such officer, magistrate judge, or other committing magistrate in his person or property on account of the performance of his official duties, or corruptly or by threats or force, or by any threatening letter or communication, influences, obstructs, or impedes, or endeavors to influence, obstruct, or impede, the due administration of justice, shall be punished as provided in subsection (b).

In criminal cases where no violence is involved in the commission of obstruction, the punishment for such a crime shall be “imprisonment for not more than 10 years, a fine under this title, or both.”

8/2/18: Paul Manafort takes a beating in court. Did Trump’s onetime campaign manager launder tens of millions of dollars? It appears so. Did he avoid paying taxes whenever he could? Again, it appears he did.

Did he live a lavish lifestyle, while doing the bidding of Putin and his allies in the Ukraine? Apparently, yes. Testimony shows Manafort once spent $10,000 for a karaoke machine and $21,000 on a watch. He shelled out $15,000 for a coat made from ostrich skin and $9,500 for a vest to match. He spent $450,000 for landscaping at just one of his seven homes, $900,000 at one store in five years on suits, and millions on renovations for a home he gave a daughter.

Oddly enough, Manafort liked to pay bills with drafts on banks in Cyprus. The reason would seem clear. “Cyprus is, effectively, the money-laundering country of choice for criminals from Russia,” Bill Browder, a leading critic of Vladimir Putin has said. “And the reason … is because the Cypriot authorities turn a very active blind eye to the money-laundering.”

How extensive is the spider’s web of cash woven by criminals working through Cypriot banks? According to the Dallas Morning News, when the Panama Papers leaked in May 2016 (revealing massive tax evasion by many of the world’s wealthiest individuals), the Bank of Cyprus was cited 4,657 times.

Why might all of this worry the current President of the United States? Consider who organized a group of investors to buy that very bank for $1.3 billion in 2014.

That would be Wilbur Ross, Trump’s own Secretary of Commerce. 

Who co-chaired the bank with Mr. Ross, who stepped down to join the cabinet in 2017? The News reports:

Ross’s first co-chair was Putin appointee Vladimir Strzhalkovsky, a former KGB agent and long-time associate of Putin. In 2015, Strzhalkovsky was replaced by Maksim Goldman, is [sic] director of strategic projects at Viktor Vekselberg's Renova Group and sits on the board of Rusal.

Just for fun, consider the criminal possibilities revealed in those sentences above. Putin’s name appears in the Panama Papers. So does President Trump’s. (Actually, his name appears 3,540 times; although there may be some plausible explanation why “Trump” turns up as often as it does.)

The Guardian, a leading British paper, has examined the leaked documents and detailed a complex $2 billion money trail that leads right back to Putin. Vekselberg is under sanction by the U.S. government, which means he’s blocked from getting his greedy mitts on an estimated $1.5-$2 billion dollars in overseas assets. Rusal, a company which exports aluminum, is owned by Oleg Deripaska, also placed under sanctions by the Treasury Department in April. Deripaska and Manafort have a long history of working on all kinds of questionable deals. In June, for example, NBC reported that the two had done $60 million worth of business, including work in the Cayman Islands, another offshore tax haven for superrich crooks. (See: 6/29/18.)

We also know that Manafort possessed something of immense potential value during the campaign. In an email to a Russian intermediary, he offered to keep Deripaska informed about positions Candidate Trump was planning to take in regard to the sanctions on Russia.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$

Here it seems likely Manafort would have been happy to steer Trump in a direction the Russians would be thrilled to see him go—to have sanctions ended—perhaps for the right price. “If he [Deripaska] needs private briefings we can accommodate,” Manafort wrote in a July 7, 2016 email, sent to Konstantin Kilimnik, as reported by the Washington Post months ago.

Who is Kilimnik? His name surfaced again last March when Mueller’s team was wrapping up a case against a Dutch lawyer, Alex van der Zwaan. Zwaan’s crime: lying to the F.B.I. about dealing with Kilimnik and Rick Gates.

Zwaan wasn’t the only man dealing with the fellow during the campaign. As Bloomberg explained last spring:

Now, Special Counsel Robert Mueller has fleshed out another detail. Gates [Rick Gates, who is now cooperating with the Mueller probe] said he knew Kilimnik was a onetime Russian military intelligence officer, according to a Tuesday court filing. The FBI is even more direct: Agents believe he has “ties to a Russian intelligence service and had such ties in 2016,” according to the filing.

You can call all of the above “Fake News” if you’re inclined. But there’s more we already know and likely a great deal more that Mueller and his team have uncovered in the last fifteen months.

We’ve all heard the cliché about the duck.

Let’s try this instead: If it walks like a skunk, hisses like a skunk and reeks like a skunk, it’s a skunk.

Asha Rangappa, a former FBI counterintelligence agent, recently put it this way in talking with reporters:

I can’t believe we are actually still debating whether one or more people was seriously compromised while they were working at the top level of a U.S. presidential campaign. And this should bother everyone. We don’t want a hostile foreign power infiltrating our electoral processes.

The fundamental question Mueller must answer: Does President Trump have a white stripe down his back?

8/3/18: It’s another day of “Fake News” in Trumpistan. We already know what Trump thinks. Paul Manafort is being victimized by investigators gone wild. (Try to remember other times you have heard presidents comment on active criminal cases in the courts.) 

And reporters are mean! Why are they picking on poor Paul?

Cindy Laporta, Manafort’s former tax accountant (testifying under limited immunity) admits in court that she filed false returns in her client’s name. She says she reported $900,000 in income for Manafort as a loan, meaning the money wouldn’t be taxed. Philip Ayliff, who handled Manafort’s taxes till he retired and passed the job to Laporta, testified that he had never been told by his client that he had multiple offshore bank accounts —although he had multiple chances to reveal their existence in the years Ayliff did his tax work.

8/4/18: J. D. Gordon’s name surfaces in connection with Maria Butina, the alleged Russian Federation agent. Gordon may be innocent in this matter. But to be honest, I like making fun of conservatives on my blog. And you know, if this kind of story had ever touched the Obama White House in any way, the right would have gone bonkers and bought another ten million guns.

Kidding aside, Butina is said to have been interested in getting as close to the Trump campaign and conservative leaders as she could. And it is said she was willing to trade sex with older men for access if needed. Gordon had served as director of national security for Trump’s presidential campaign; but by the time he and Butina started emailing in the fall of 2016 he had moved on from that post.

Still, after meeting at the Swiss ambassador’s D.C. residence in September, the two began corresponding. A mutual friend described Gordon to the Russian redhead as a person who would have a “crucial role in the Trump transition effort and would be an excellent addition to any of the US/Russia friendship dinners to occasionally hold.”

Gordon responded to that email with a clip of an appearance he’d made on the state-run, Russian, English-language media outlet RT, in which he said Trump had a “real common-sense approach to Russia.”

In other words, maybe we can get rid of those sanctions and free up all those billions you Russians can’t get your hands on right now.

Butina responded with an invitation to attend a group dinner hosted by another of her U.S. contacts. Gordon, 50, wasn’t able to go. But the invitation did get him thinking, and he invited Butina, 27, to get drinks and go to a Styx concert and attend his birthday party the following month.

Gordon could well be innocent—and perhaps all he wanted was the young lady’s help blowing out the candles on his cake. When asked by reporters about contacts with the redhead from Russia, J.D. decided to exit Stage Right. 

“From everything I’ve read since her arrest last month,” he complained to the Washington Post, “it seems the Maria Butina saga is basically a sensationalized click bait story meant to smear a steady stream of Republicans and NRA members she reportedly encountered over the past few years.”

The point he misses: Butina and the Russians were actively working to contact the Trump campaign in all kinds of ways. If sex with a then 27-year-old redhead would do it, then sex it would be.

As mentioned above; investigators have now backed off from the claim that Butina was trading sex for access. So I have made edits; but don’t want to cover up flaws in writing. I will award myself a second “Clean Toilet Job.”

(Again, that’s me, above, serving my country in the Marines.)

8/5/18: Trump is hunkered down at his private golf course in Bedminster, New Jersey once more. A check of the president’s schedule shows that he’ll have plenty of time to hit the links. There are no public events and Trump can putter all day if he wants.

What to do? What to do with all that presidential time hanging heavy on one’s hands? He could read a book…ha, ha. No way. The man does not read books. He’s ignorant and happy to remain so.

Suddenly, a light bulb flickers dimly in his head. Why not tweet! Anyone he’d like to insult today? Reporters! Of course!

His fat orange digits begin to tap:

The Fake News hates me saying that they are the Enemy of the People only because they know it’s TRUE. I am providing a great service by explaining this to the American People. They purposely cause great division & distrust. They can also cause War! They are very dangerous & sick!

War?

The Fake News people can cause war?

I’d assume Trump might be talking about the “yellow journalism” of 1898, when the Hearst papers stirred up a fever to go to war against Spain. But Trump knows about as much U.S. history as your typical head of cabbage.

Is this fool hinting, then, that supporters should go to war against reporters? Is he calling for civil war if the truth about his campaign’s ties to Russia and probably his lead to impeachment?

Who knows?

We have the obligatory howls about “Fake News” in a number of follow-up tweets. Oddly enough, one howl turns into a strange kind of admission:

Fake News reporting, a complete fabrication, that I am concerned about the meeting my wonderful son, Donald, had in Trump Tower. This was a meeting to get information on an opponent, totally legal and done all the time in politics [emphasis added] - and it went nowhere. I did not know about it!

What makes this tweet so telling in the end? The meeting in June 2016 in Trump Tower was unknown until The New York Times revealed it in July 2017. That would be the “Fake News” New York Times.

Don Jr. participated in the meeting but for thirteen months never admitted having had it. 

Jared Kushner was there. 

Manafort was, too.

Now, more than two years after the initial meeting took place, you had the president admitting what the “Fake News” revealed last summer. A meeting was held in Trump Tower—with Russians—with the purpose of the meeting to get some dirt on Hillary Clinton. 

“I didn’t know about it!”

That wasn’t “Fake News.” That was the truth all along.

You had the president insisting it didn’t matter—because what Don Jr. had done was never illegal—and everyone else does it—and so, who cares if the Russians meddled in a U.S. election?

But, to be safe, he added, “I didn’t know about it!”

*

I decided to do a little digging and went back to July 12, 2017. News of Don Jr.’s emails, showing he met with agents of Russia to get dirt on Hillary, had just broken in the news. Now Christopher Wray, Trump’s nominee to head the F.B.I., was answering questions before a Senate panel.

Sen. Lindsey Graham read parts of the emails, including one where Don Jr. was told the Russians will have the goods on Clinton. If that’s true, Don Jr. indicates, “I love it.”

This exchange between Graham and Wray now follows. “Should Donald Trump Jr. have taken that meeting?” Graham inquires.

Wray says he doesn’t know the details and is not in a position to speak.

“Well, let me ask you this: If I got a call saying the Russian government wants to help Lindsey Graham get re-elected, they’ve got dirt on my opponent, should I take that meeting?”

Wray admits he would want Graham to consult with “some good legal advisers before you did that.”

Still dissatisfied, Graham presses: “Should I call the FBI?”

“I think it would be wise to let the FBI know,” Wray responds.

“You want to be director of the FBI, pal,” Graham replies with a hint of anger. “So here’s what I want you to tell every politician: If you get a call from somebody suggesting that a foreign government wants to help you by disparaging your opponent, tell us all to call the FBI.”

Wray smiles, scans the seated senators and says: “To the members of this committee: Any threat or effort to interfere with our election, from any nation state, or any non-state actor, is the kind of thing the FBI would want to know.”

“Alright, so I’ll take it we should call you—that’s a great answer,” Graham beams.

Amen, to that.

8/8/18: Tom Cole (R-OK) reacts to news that Michael Cohen has pled guilty and Paul Manafort has been convicted by a jury. Cole warns that Republicans are living in a “fantasy world” if they don’t accept the fact Trump is in legal jeopardy.

The twin guilty verdicts mean “you can’t dismiss” the Mueller investigation as “a witch hunt.”

“I don’t know what it is,” Cole tells reporters. “The Mueller probe needs to be allowed to proceed.”

Rep. Cole says the “sword of Damocles” hangs above the president’s head. Republicans may face a “legacy moment” when they must decide whether to support Trump or defend the Constitution.

8/10/18: Andrew Miller, a close associate of Roger Stone, is held in contempt of court after failing to appear before the Grand Jury.

8/22/18: President Trump is finally draining the swamp! Papadopoulos has been drained. (See: 8/21/18.)

And Omarosa has been yanked from the muck, although we should mention that Trump hired the woman he now describes as “wacky and deranged.” We, the taxpayers, then forked out $179,700 in annual salary, even though the president insists she was “vicious, “not smart” and “a lowlife.”

Consider her drained!

Then, with the help of Special Counsel Mueller and federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York (and can we mention that the Southern District is led by a Trump-appointed Republican district attorney), the president watched two more alligators plucked from the swamp and carted off to jail.

Okay, technically, all the president did was tweet and watch. Still! Alligator #1, Michael Cohen, pled guilty to eight felony counts.

Alligator #2, Paul Manafort, was convicted by a jury on eight felony counts. And he still faces a second trial on fresh charges in a month.

The president ponders the fates of the two felons and starts to tweet. First, he slams Cohen: “If anyone is looking for a good lawyer, I would strongly suggest that you don’t retain the services of Michael Cohen!” This is the lawyer he trusted for more than a decade to do his dirtiest work.

Then he praises Manafort in a pair of heartfelt tweets: 

I feel very badly for Paul Manafort and his wonderful family [emphasis added]. “Justice” took a 12 year old tax case, among other things, applied tremendous pressure on him and, unlike Michael Cohen, he refused to “break” - make up stories in order to get a “deal.” Such respect for a brave man!

A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case. Witch Hunt!

(We later learn that had it not been for a lone jury holdout, Manafort would have been convicted on all eighteen counts.)

As for Cohen, who did agree to cooperate with prosecutors—which law-abiding Americans would normally consider a good thing—Trump insisted two of the felonies he pled to were “not a crime.” 

These are two felonies in which Trump himself may be implicated.

In fact, they were. How could the president tell? Cohen was charged with crimes. Then Cohen pled guilty in court.

See how easy that was?

Later, Trump puts out a heads up for his most loyal, but perhaps not particularly astute fans. He will be appearing on Fox News tomorrow morning. This will allow him to tap dance around a few unpleasant facts.

“I will be interviewed on @foxandfriends by @ainsleyearhardt tomorrow from 6:00 A.M. to 9:00 A.M. Enjoy!” (See: 8/23/18.)

At an afternoon press conference, Press Secretary Pinocchio is asked to comment on all the fresh crime-related news. “The president has done nothing wrong,” she insists. “There are no charges against him. There is no collusion.” She’s like one of those cheap dolls which can talk but has only four or five stock response. And, as a taxpayer, I know I can say how happy I am to help pay her salary!

*

THE PRESIDENT STAYS UP LATE on this momentous drain-the-swamp-you-filled-yourself Washington, D.C. day. Perhaps sleep eludes him as he considers his fate. Ten minutes after midnight he hits the caps button again and tweets: “NO COLLUSION - RIGGED WITCH HUNT!”

Then he turns in for the night.

8/23/18: As promised, the president sits for a softball chat with Human Bobble Head Doll, Ainsley Earhardt, of Fox News.

Apparently, he’s fixated on her shapely legs. When she asks him how he thinks he’s doing as president, Trump is quick to reply. “I’d give myself an A+.”

Earhardt’s empty head wobbles on its spring.

It appears she agrees.

Trump can’t see it, because he’s a delusional nut job. But his grades are getting worse by the hour. He says again that Paul Manafort is a guy for whom he has “great respect.” Manafort worked for years for Ukrainian politicians who were in the pocket of Vladimir Putin. And Manafort has now been convicted on charges of hiding $30 million dollars in offshore bank accounts to avoid taxes.

Trump has “great respect” for the guy?

Trump again expresses his anger with his Attorney General. Why did Jeff Sessions recuse himself in the Russia investigation! Trump can’t believe it! “What kind of man is this?” he fumes.

Bobble Head Ainsley wobbles her empty head.

Trump informs her that he only knew about the payoffs to the porn star and the Playboy Bunny at a “later time.”

If the Bobble Head could actually think, she would have asked, just when that would have been.

Or: she could have asked, “Mr. President, you said on Air Force One, that you didn’t know anything about the payments? Why should all our catatonic viewers at Fox News believe you now?”

Trump implies that the “Justice” Department is crooked and rigged and unfair and run by members of the Deep State. This includes his pick to head the Department, Mr. Jeff Sessions. Prosecutors, he grumbles, just put people on the stands who are going to lie.

Bobble Head Ainsley smiles.

She could ask, “Mr. President, Mr. Manafort was convicted on eight felony counts. The jury heard evidence against him and decided he was a gigantic crook. Are you saying you have no faith in the U.S. justice system?”

She doesn’t ask.

What do you expect? She works for Fox News.

Trump is on tape talking with Michael Cohen about hush money payments to women in September 2016.

*

The day goes downhill for the president from there. Once again, we have fresh court news! Prosecutors in the Southern District of New York grant immunity to David Pecker—who is almost certain to testify against the president and back up Cohen’s accusations of felonious behavior by Trump. (See: 8/22/18.)

Pecker runs American Media—which publishes multiple supermarket tabloids—and played a key role in “capturing and killing” the story of Karen McDougal. She’s the Bunny who alleges she had a lengthy affair with Donald J. Trump while he was married to the now First Lady. Even more worrisome for the president, there are hints that there were more than two hush money payments.

In any case, Attorney General Sessions soon fires back at his boss. As he heads for a meeting at the White House, he releases the following statement:

While I am Attorney General, the actions of the Department of Justice will not be improperly influenced [emphasis added] by political considerations. I demand the highest standards, and where they are not met, I take action. However, no nation has a more talented, more dedicated group of law enforcement investigators and prosecutors than the United States. I am proud to serve with them and proud of the work we have done in successfully advancing the rule of law.

Allow me to explain to Trump fans: Here you have the Attorney General of the United States making it clear that he believes the president is trying to improperly influence current investigations. 

Sessions is defending the integrity of his Department and warning Trump. He will uphold the rule of law.

Multiple Republican lawmakers now warn the president not to fire Sessions, which would certainly be seen by thinking human beings, and maybe even Bobble Head Ainsley, to be a blatant attempt to obstruct justice. You can read all about it in the “Fake News” Washington Post, which has the audacity to quote Senators John Cornyn, Susan Collins and Orrin Hatch on the matter.

And what was the meeting about, which brought Sessions to the White House on this fine day? The topic was prison sentencing reform.

You can see why Trump might suddenly care. 

*

AINSLEY EARHARDT, who interviewed the president earlier in the day, says Trump told her “he would consider” a pardon for Paul Manafort. 

“I think he feels bad for Manafort. They were friends,” she explains during an appearance on Sean Hannity’s evening show.

Technically, no new lie: but floating a pardon for a man who might still be a witness in the Russia investigation….

You’d think even Hannity might be suspicious.

POSTSCRIPT: Sources say David Pecker and Dylan Howard, of American Media, have been granted immunity to testify in the case about illegal hush money payments to at least two women during the campaign. Also granted immunity: Allen Weisselberg, chief financial officer of the Trump Organization.

Not good news for the devious Leader of the Free World.

8/29/18: President Trump is busy trying to cover up the fact that the Russians hacked Hillary’s emails—that his campaign encouraged them to do it—and that a foreign power hostile to U.S. interests helped swing the election in his direction. In a pair of tweets (on August 28) he insists:

Report just out: “China hacked Hillary Clinton’s private Email Server.” Are they sure it wasn’t Russia (just kidding!)? What are the odds that the FBI and DOJ are right on top of this? Actually, a very big story. Much classified information!

Hillary Clinton’s Emails, many of which are Classified Information, got hacked by China. Next move better be by the FBI & DOJ or, after all of their other missteps (Comey, McCabe, Strzok, Page, Ohr, FISA, Dirty Dossier etc.), their credibility will be forever gone!

Apparently, Trump is referring to a story he heard about in the Daily Caller, one which relied on anonymous sources. 

We all know how much the president hates anonymous sources.

The F.B.I. issues a quick response: “The FBI has not found any evidence the [Clinton] servers were compromised.”

The F.B.I. (which is currently run by a Trump appointee) says the Chinese did not hack Clinton servers. 

Trump says they did. 

8/30/18: Trump attacks NBC News once more. This time he implies that he did not say on tape what he clearly said on tape in an interview with Lester Holt. That was when he said he fired James Comey because of the Russia investigation.

You heard his words. You saw his lips moving.  Don’t believe your “Fake News” senses.

Even for Trump, this is a bizarre line of defense. Still, it’s not out of character. One is reminded of the time he hinted that the voice on the Access Hollywood tape wasn’t his—or when he said, on Air Force One that he knew nothing about hush money payments to a porn star or Playboy Bunny. 

Anyway, Trump denies the obvious:

What’s going on at @CNN is happening, to different degrees, at other networks - with @NBCNews being the worst. The good news is that Andy Lack(y) is about to be fired(?) for incompetence, and much worse. When Lester Holt got caught fudging my tape on Russia, they were hurt badly!

Trump says he didn’t say what he clearly said on tape to Lester Holt. (I guess you could argue he’s not lying, if you wanted to claim he was delusional, instead.)

8/31/18: At this point, if federal investigators caught Donald J. Trump with a conical hat on his head, a book of spells in his hands, and a bubbling vat of noxious ingredients cooking in the Oval Office, his Helen Keller-like fans would still insist he had nothing to do with witchcraft.

Friday, prosecutors bring another witch to justice. That witch, like several others, pleads guilty and agrees to cooperate with authorities. This time the man in the pointed black hat is W. Samuel Patten, heretofore a little-known Republican lobbyist. 

What makes Patten interesting in this whole “Russia story” is that he has long had ties with Paul Manafort (the convicted felon).

Like Manafort, Patten worked secretly for a pro-Russian Ukrainian political party, backed by Vladimir Putin (of course). In the process he earned a cool million plus for his services. If the Russians killed a few thousand Ukrainians in attacks on their country, Patten couldn’t be bothered.

Hey: a million plus!

Patten later worked for Cambridge Analytica, the now-bankrupt company under investigation both here and in Great Britain, which had deep ties to the Trump campaign in 2016.

Patten also formed a company with Konstantin Kilimnik, a former Russian intelligence agent (naturally).

Patten now pleads guilty to funneling a secret $50,000 donation from foreign sources to the Trump Inaugural Committee—which is, for obvious reasons, illegal. That crime may not seem like much to Trump’s Hellen-Keller-like supporters. But Patten copped to a single felony, while admitting to several.

In theory he has to know about bigger crimes and more of them or he would not have merited a plea deal.

Is there anything else rotten in regard to the Trump Inaugural Committee? It was led by two men, Elliott Broidy, a bigtime Republican financier, aided by Rick Gates (now a convicted felon). A year ago the “Fake News Media” revealed that Broidy had agreed to pay $1.6 million in hush money to a Playboy Bunny who claims he impregnated her Bunny self. That Bunny went on to have an abortion (because, of course, Republicans want to overturn Roe v. Wade).

Who set up that deal? It was Michael Cohen (now an admitted felon), who is cooperating with prosecutors.

And why might that be relevant? There have been hints Broidy actually took the fall for the president in the case of the impregnated, aborting Bunny. (See: 5/21/18.)

Patten is free on bail. He had to surrender his passport and may face five years in prison unless he cooperates.

*

In related “witch-hunting news, Senators Richard Byrd (R-NC) and Mark Warner (D-VA) issue a bipartisan statement Friday. 

Their committee sent a “criminal referral” to federal authorities, involving Patten, but related to an entirely different matter.

Patten said the donation was from a U.S. source..

9/4/18: Just when you think President Trump might make it through an entire day without trampling on the rule of law, he puts his fat orange thumb on the Twitter button and pushes down on the scales of justice. This time he’s upset about the indictments of two Republican members of Congress.

Two tweets follow:

Two long running, Obama era, investigations of two very popular Republican Congressmen were brought to a well publicized charge, just ahead of the Mid-Terms, by the Jeff Sessions Justice Department. Two easy wins now in doubt because there is not enough time. Good job Jeff......

 ....The Democrats, none of whom voted for Jeff Sessions, must love him now. Same thing with Lyin’ James Comey. The Dems all hated him, wanted him out, thought he was disgusting - UNTIL I FIRED HIM! Immediately he became a wonderful man, a saint like figure in fact. Really sick!

It’s a package of idiocy wrapped in a bow of rank ignorance.

I know it won’t dent the thinking of Trump lovers; but let’s sort this out. The Department of Justice is run by a Republican appointed by President Trump. Trump can remove Sessions any time he wants but doesn’t dare until after midterms. If he were to fire Sessions now most Americans would see it as proof of intent to obstruct justice. Sessions would get it first. Trump puts a stooge in his place. Devin Nunes?

Presto: The stooge fires Special Counsel Mueller and the “witch hunt” ends.

Even on the president’s favorite cable news channel, where logic goes to die, real journalists grow restive. Brit Hume, senior political analyst at Fox News, counters Trump’s tweets with one of his own: “Will DJT never learn that an attorney general’s job is not to play goalie for a president or his party, or any party for that matter?”

*

In fact, there’s nothing sinister about the indictments of the two Republican lawmakers. The DOJ regularly investigates politicians of all stripes.

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) was indicted on fourteen felony counts in April 2015, when Obama was in the White House. Menendez managed to survive a trial (this blogger still suspects he’s a crook).

In most cases the Department of Justice gets its man (or woman). Prosecutors indicted Sheldon Silver, a powerful New York State legislator in 2015. This time the feds proved Silver was a bribe-taking bum. He survived a first trial only to be convicted in a second this past May.

You can easily look this up. Trump could look it up himself, save for the fact he has the intellectual curiosity of a clam.

When Obama was president the Department of Justice went after miscreants in bipartisan style. Anthony Weiner, a Democrat, was convicted after sending pictures of his weenie to a 15-year-old girl. Rick Renzi, a Republican congressman, was acquitted on 15 felony charges. At last, an innocent politician. Or not! Renzi was found guilty on 17 other felony counts. Dennis Hassert, a former Republican lawmaker was convicted of paying off a wrestler he had sexually assaulted when Hassert was coaching in high school. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-IL), scion of a famous Democratic clan, was nailed for misusing $750,000 in campaign funds. Trey Radel (R-FL) got busted for cocaine possession. Chaka Fattah (D-PA) got hit with 23 felony counts. Michael Grimm (R-NY) pled guilty to a single count of felony tax evasion. In return, he avoided trial on nineteen additional counts and was sentenced to eight months in jail.

Still, if you like audacity, props to Mr. Grimm! Fresh out of the slammer, he decided to run for Congress again in 2018. 

Alas, he went down to defeat in a primary in June.

*

With public attention focused on late summer picnics and last-chance swimming, Rudy Giuliani announces that once Special Counsel Mueller completes his investigation and reports to Deputy Attorney General Rob Rosenstein the White House will assert executive privilege. The president will attempt to suppress any findings so the public cannot see them.

9/7/18: George Papadopoulos, the first member of the Trump campaign to be sentenced, gets off easy, with only 14 days behind bars. He must perform 200 hours of community service and pay a $9,500 fine.

Plus: he’s a convicted felon.

In court, the “coffee boy” (as Trump apologists like to call him) explains to the judge why he lied to the F.B.I. during the earliest stages of the Russia investigation. “I was surrounded by important people. I was young and ambitious and excited.”

His lawyer, Thomas M. Breen, shifts blame from his client to Trump. “The president of the United States hindered this investigation more than George Papadopoulos ever could.”

Naturally, when asked about the case aboard Air Force One, during a trip to Fargo, N.D., Trump pretends nonchalance. “I see Papadopoulos today; I don’t know Papadopoulos, I don’t know,” the president tells reporters.

“They got him, on I guess, on a couple of lies.”

Yes: felonies.

For his part, Papadopoulos assures the judge he feels the Mueller investigation is legitimate, investigators fair-minded. He is paying for his mistakes. “And if anyone else made mistakes, they’re going to have to pay a price, too.”

9/15/18: The president wakes to grim reality. Hurricane Paul is bearing down on the nation’s capital. Paul Manafort, a man Trump said would never “break,” a “brave man,” with a “wonderful family,” has shattered.

For more than a year, Manafort insisted he was as innocent as O.J. Simpson in a cutlery factory.

Then a Virginia jury convicted him on eight felony counts. 

Having been lodged in jail since June 16 (after a judge ruled him a serious flight risk), Manafort, 69, is staring a bleak future in the face. If he goes to trial again on a battery of fresh charges, and loses again, he is never going to live in a penthouse bought with laundered Russian-Ukrainian money again.

For three long months, Manafort has pined for a presidential pardon. But if President Twitter Thumbs awarded a pardon before the midterms it would look as if he had something to hide.

So the “brave man” broke.

Manafort, who ran the Trump campaign for several critical months, copped to a pair of felonies, catapulting himself into the lead among Trump operatives with a total of ten. (Rick Gates now lags with eight.) Under a general charge of “conspiracy,” Manafort admitted that ten more felony counts with which he had previously been charged. Yeah, he committed those too.

A jury in his first trial had deadlocked 11-1 for conviction on ten of eighteen charges. That had been enough for Twitter Thumbs to claim: “A large number of counts, ten, could not even be decided in the Paul Manafort case,” Trump had noted on August 22. “Witch Hunt!”

Now the witch was confessing and showing investigators the broom closet. Manafort agreed to a plea deal which requires him to cooperate “fully, truthfully, completely and forthrightly …in any and all matters” with the Russia investigation.

So what could be bothering the totally innocent orange-colored man in the White House? What kept the president tossing and turning and tangling his sheets last night? We know it couldn’t be Melania. 

She’s keeping an assured clear distance from her husband these days.

First, the president knows Manafort attended a crucial June 9, 2016 meeting when agents of the Russian government offered campaign dirt on Hillary. Trump knows Manafort knows whether or not he himself approved that meeting or received a briefing afterward. Don Jr., who helped arrange the meeting, and Dad for sure, and former White House Babe Hope Hicks, possibly, have already lied at least once about what went on behind Trump Tower closed doors.

As soon as that meeting ended, Don Jr. made an 11-minute call to a blocked number. He later assured Congress he would love to tell the truth but forgot who he called. Now Don Jr. and Don Sr. must realize how thorough investigators are. They must assume Mueller has Don Jr.’s phone records. And Mueller’s team has a witch who was at that meeting and willing to talk.

The president knows the door to a useful pardon—one that shuts Manafort up—is closing. Several of the charges Manafort has pled to could be, if he were pardoned on federal charges, revived by state courts. Trump knows Manafort knows he’s going to spend a long time in jail. The only question is how long. Three years? Five? Or, considering his age, the rest of his life?

Trump knows Manafort worked on his campaign for free. He can only pray his fans don’t realize how bizarre that was.

Manafort was dealing with spiraling debt in 2016. Trump knows now—if not then—that Manafort offered to provide “private briefings” to a Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska, during the campaign. Deripaska is a bosom buddy of Vladimir Putin and currently under sanction by the U.S. government.

How close is he to Putin? Deripaska once told a reporter he understood he controlled the Russian aluminum industry only so long as Putin allowed him. “If the state says we need to give it up, we’ll give it up,” the billionaire said. “I don’t separate myself from the state. I have no other interests.”

Why would he? He’s a billionaire.

And how close was Manafort to Deripaska? Close enough to do the oligarch’s bidding for years. Close enough to get a $10 million annual contract and to put in place a secret plan “to greatly benefit the Putin government.” Close enough—and devious enough—to fall millions of dollars into debt to Deripaska. 

Close enough, once he took over the Trump campaign, to see a way forward to get out of that debt. In fact, he realized he might even cash in big.

The president knows, if he tunes in to some channel besides Fox News, that Manafort was cooking up some scheme with a Russian friend, Konstantin Kilimnik. “I assume you have shown our friends my media coverage, right?” Manafort emailed his pal that summer.

“Absolutely,” replied Kilimnik. “Every article.”

“How do we use to get whole,” Manafort inquired. “Has OVD operation seen?” Investigators believe Manafort was hoping to wipe out his debt to Deripaska and that “OVD” refers to him by his initials (Oleg Vladimirovich Deripaska). And the Russians knew they had a friend in the Trump camp.

Trump is also aware that Manafort’s lawyer explained in court on Friday his client’s decision to reach a plea deal. “He wanted to make sure his family was able to remain safe and live a good life.”

Remain safe?

See, for example: Deripaska’s ties to Russian crime syndicates; also, the murders of assorted Putin critics.

Also: the attempted poisoning of a member of Pussy Riot, a Russian punk rock band that has been frequently critical of Putin.

Manafort also agreed to forfeit three houses and two apartments, one in Trump Tower (of all places), and cough up funds he has hidden in secret offshore bank accounts, investment funds, and even a life insurance policy. His real estate holdings alone are worth $22 million.

That means President Twitter Thumbs can stop tweeting about how much money the Russia investigation is costing taxpayers. On June 18 Trump said the “scam investigation” had cost $17 million.

Now, Mueller has turned a profit.

Trump has to believe Hurricane Paul may gather strength and become a Category 5. This past March, The New York Times reported that John Dowd, then the president’s lawyer,  floated the idea of presidential pardons in front of lawyers for Manafort and former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn.

Was that pardon offer an attempt to obstruct justice? Both Manafort and Flynn are in position to tell.

And so it was that the president tossed and turned Friday night, into Saturday morning. He had heard that Manafort’s legal team had made two “proffers” to Special Counsel Mueller. That means they had twice approached investigators: “Here is what our client knows and what he is willing to say.”

If Mueller felt the defendant had information that was of real value he could respond with a counteroffer.

Now the president knows: Manafort has something of real value he’d like to share and Mueller wants him to share it.

The president knows that “Lock Her Up” Flynn is still cooperating with prosecutors. Rick Gates, who worked on his campaign throughout, is cooperating. Manafort makes three.

It could be four. White House Chief Counsel Donald McGahn has reportedly talked with investigators for 30 hours; and McGahn has told friends he doesn’t want to end up like “John Dean.”

There may soon be five. Trump’s former personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, has also been rumored to be in talks with the Special Counsel. According to one reporter, Cohen has expressed a desire to “be on the right side of history.”

That’s the wrong side of President Trump.

Investigators aren’t “in search of a crime.” They already have at least 32 felony convictions.

9/17/18: The president is up before 5 a.m. and busy tweeting, for once, sticking to the main story: catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas. His first eighteen tweets relate to the storm.

At 5:01 a.m., however, he realizes he’s been up for an hour and hasn’t bragged about himself once. Well then:

A lot of small & medium size enterprises are registering very good profit, sometimes record profits-there stocks are doing very well, low income workers are getting big raises. There are an awful lot of good things going on that weren’t during Pres. Obama’s Watch. 

Perhaps he drifts off to asleep. Not till 9:23 does he tweet again. He’s trying to stay afloat in a flood he caused himself, as a rain of convictions continues to rise around his circle of aides and advisers.

So he’s looking for any signs of rescue and knows there’s always Fox News. So he tweets about a story he’s watching:

“Lisa Page Testimony- NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BEFORE MUELLER APPOINTMENT.” @FoxNews by Catherine Herridge. Therefore, the case should never have been allowed to be brought. It is a totally illegal Witch Hunt! 

Immediately after Comey’s firing Peter Strzok texted to his lover, Lisa Page “We need to Open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy (McCabe, also fired) is acting. Page answered, “We need to lock in (redacted). In a formal chargeable way. Soon.” Wow, a conspiracy caught?

Since neither Strzok nor Page has anything to do with the investigation currently, we may have to answer that “conspiracy” question by turning to Trump’s convicted aides. We know Flynn, Gates, Manafort, and possibly McGahn, have agreed to cooperate with Mueller and his team.

Cohen? We still don’t know.

9/19/18: If you can’t stand the heat they say, “Get out of the kitchen.” For President Trump, you can tell the heat in the Oval Office is becoming oppressive. In an interview with The Hill, he lashes out at Jeff Sessions yet again, complaining, “I don’t have an Attorney General.”

“I’m so sad over Jeff Sessions because he came to me,” Trump says. “He was the first senator that endorsed me. And he wanted to be Attorney General, and I didn’t see it. But he came very strongly he really wanted to be. And, I let him be.

“And then he went through the nominating process and he did very poorly,” Trump adds. “I mean, he was mixed up and confused, and people that worked with him for, you know, a long time in the Senate were not nice to him, but he was giving very confusing answers. Answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him.”

The president was asked if he might then decide to fire the Attorney General. Trump responded:

“We’ll see what happens. A lot of people have asked me to do that. And I guess I study history, and I say I just want to leave things alone, but it was very unfair what he did [recusing himself].

“And my worst enemies, I mean, people that, you know, are on the other side of me in a lot of ways, including politically, have said that was a very unfair thing he did.”

“We’ll see how it goes with Jeff,” Trump finally admitted. “I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed.”

POSTSCRIPT: At least one GOP strategist told The Hill he thought Trump would try to replace Sessions with Rudy Giuliani after the midterms.

9/20/18: ABC News reports that Michael Cohen is talking to the Mueller team. The president’s former personal lawyer has had “multiple interview sessions lasting for hours.” Those interviews have been held in both Washington, D.C. and New York City, where Cohen has spoken to prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Topics of interest include:

Trump’s dealings with Russia, including financial and business ties (possible money laundering)

Collusion with Russians during the 2016 campaign (a.k.a. conspiracy)

Any pardon offers Cohen might have received (i.e. “obstruction of justice; witness-tampering)

The inner workings of the Trump family charity and Trump Organization, where Cohen served as executive vice president for ten years (tax fraud).

We can also assume investigators will ask Cohen:

Did you travel to Prague in early 2016 and meet with Russians about covering up payments to hackers who were going after Clinton’s emails? (conspiracy)

Who knew about the secret June 9, 2016 meeting with Russians? Was there another meeting, three days earlier, to strategize? (perjury; obstruction of justice)

Did Trump pay hush money to other than the two women already known, and the doorman, during the campaign? (campaign finance violations)

And, more generally:

As a businessman, is Trump a crook? (everything)

ABC also reports: “Cohen’s participation in the meetings has been voluntary—without any guarantee of leniency from prosecutors, according to several people familiar with the situation.”

Investigators aren’t “in search of a crime.” They already have at least 32 felony convictions.

9/17/18: The president is up before 5 a.m. and busy tweeting, for once, sticking to the main story: catastrophic flooding in the Carolinas. His first eighteen tweets relate to the storm.

At 5:01 a.m., however, he realizes he’s been up for an hour and hasn’t bragged about himself once. Well then:

A lot of small & medium size enterprises are registering very good profit, sometimes record profits-there stocks are doing very well, low income workers are getting big raises. There are an awful lot of good things going on that weren’t during Pres. Obama’s Watch. 

Perhaps he drifts off to asleep. Not till 9:23 does he tweet again. He’s trying to stay afloat in a flood he caused himself, as a rain of convictions continues to rise around his circle of aides and advisers.

So he’s looking for any signs of rescue and knows there’s always Fox News. So he tweets about a story he’s watching:

“Lisa Page Testimony- NO EVIDENCE OF COLLUSION BEFORE MUELLER APPOINTMENT.” @FoxNews by Catherine Herridge. Therefore, the case should never have been allowed to be brought. It is a totally illegal Witch Hunt! 

Immediately after Comey’s firing Peter Strzok texted to his lover, Lisa Page “We need to Open the case we’ve been waiting on now while Andy (McCabe, also fired) is acting. Page answered, “We need to lock in (redacted). In a formal chargeable way. Soon.” Wow, a conspiracy caught?

Since neither Strzok nor Page has anything to do with the investigation currently, we may have to answer that “conspiracy” question by turning to Trump’s convicted aides. We know Flynn, Gates, Manafort, and possibly McGahn, have agreed to cooperate with Mueller and his team.

Cohen? We still don’t know.

9/19/18: If you can’t stand the heat they say, “Get out of the kitchen.” For President Trump, you can tell the heat in the Oval Office is becoming oppressive. In an interview with The Hill, he lashes out at Jeff Sessions yet again, complaining, “I don’t have an Attorney General.”

“I’m so sad over Jeff Sessions because he came to me,” Trump says. “He was the first senator that endorsed me. And he wanted to be Attorney General, and I didn’t see it. But he came very strongly he really wanted to be. And, I let him be.

“And then he went through the nominating process and he did very poorly,” Trump adds. “I mean, he was mixed up and confused, and people that worked with him for, you know, a long time in the Senate were not nice to him, but he was giving very confusing answers. Answers that should have been easily answered. And that was a rough time for him.”

The president was asked if he might then decide to fire the Attorney General. Trump responded:

“We’ll see what happens. A lot of people have asked me to do that. And I guess I study history, and I say I just want to leave things alone, but it was very unfair what he did [recusing himself].

“And my worst enemies, I mean, people that, you know, are on the other side of me in a lot of ways, including politically, have said that was a very unfair thing he did.”

“We’ll see how it goes with Jeff,” Trump finally admitted. “I’m very disappointed in Jeff. Very disappointed.”

POSTSCRIPT: At least one GOP strategist told The Hill he thought Trump would try to replace Sessions with Rudy Giuliani after the midterms.

9/20/18: ABC News reports that Michael Cohen is talking to the Mueller team. The president’s former personal lawyer has had “multiple interview sessions lasting for hours.” Those interviews have been held in both Washington, D.C. and New York City, where Cohen has spoken to prosecutors from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

Topics of interest include:

Trump’s dealings with Russia, including financial and business ties (possible money laundering)

Collusion with Russians during the 2016 campaign (a.k.a. conspiracy)

Any pardon offers Cohen might have received (i.e. “obstruction of justice; witness-tampering)

The inner workings of the Trump family charity and Trump Organization, where Cohen served as executive vice president for ten years (tax fraud).

We can also assume investigators will ask Cohen:

Did you travel to Prague in early 2016 and meet with Russians about covering up payments to hackers who were going after Clinton’s emails? (conspiracy)

Who knew about the secret June 9, 2016 meeting with Russians? Was there another meeting, three days earlier, to strategize? (perjury; obstruction of justice)

Did Trump pay hush money to other than the two women already known, and the doorman, during the campaign? (campaign finance violations)

And, more generally:

As a businessman, is Trump a crook? (everything)

ABC also reports: “Cohen’s participation in the meetings has been voluntary—without any guarantee of leniency from prosecutors, according to several people familiar with the situation.”

9/22/18: Yet another book about Trump and the Russians is scheduled for release. This time it’s Pop Stars, Pageants and Presidents: How an Email Trumped My Life by Rob Goldstone.

Goldstone, you may recall, touched off the fuse that led to the meeting of Don Jr., Jared Kushner and Paul Manafort with a team of Russians bearing gifts at Trump Tower in the summer of 2016.

I, for one, will not be rushing out to get an autographed copy of his book. But Goldstone’s insights may be telling. He says now he has no doubt Russians interfered in the election and believes the Trump campaign was open to foreign assistance. Was this a “dirty offer,” he was asked in a recent interview?

“Yes,” he replied. “That is true.”

Goldstone, who has made a living as a publicist for many years, had several ties that interested investigators and now admits he has spent a total of nine hours talking to the Mueller team.

He once won a spot on The Celebrity Apprentice for a client, Venezuelan actress Patricia Velasquez.

So he knew the current president.

In 2012 he took on a new client, Emin Agalarov, a “Moscow-based crooner.”

*

The Washington Post tells the Goldstone story in great detail, hinting at possible problems for the President of the United States.

The following spring, Agalarov and Goldstone (who has dual U.S. and British citizenship and lives in New Jersey), approached Paula Shugart, president of the Miss Universe Organization. Would she help them book a pageant contestant to appear in one of Emin’s music videos?

Not only would she try, she’d talk to Trump about making a cameo.

Shugart mentioned the possibility of bringing the pageant to Russia. Emin suggested Moscow. He and his father would help pay for the move and would eventually spend $15 million to host the Miss Universe show. Eventually, Emin, Goldstone and Emin’s father, Aras Agalarov, met Donald Trump in Las Vegas, where the Miss USA pageant was being conducted. Goldstone sat at dinner next to Michael Cohen, Trump’s personal lawyer at the time.

As Goldstone explains now, according to the Post:

Trump appeared to hit it off with Emin Agalarov. At one point during dinner, Trump loudly challenged the young singer: “‘Hey Emin! I’ll reduce the [pageant] fee right now by a million dollars if you tell me if you’ve ever slept with any contestants!’” Goldstone recalled Trump saying.

Agalarov shot back: “Interesting. I’ll increase your fee by $5 million right now if you tell me if you’ve ever slept with any contestant.”

Trump responded with a smile, “‘We should just forget the bet.’” The room cracked up.

“It was like frat boy behavior,” Goldstone said. “It was kind of a bonding thing.”

Scott Balber, an attorney for the Agalarovs, said he was not aware of such an exchange. An attorney for Trump declined to comment.

At any rate, the “frat boys” bonded. The Miss Universe pageant in Moscow was a success. Trump either did or didn’t sleep with a number of Russian hookers while he was there. And Emin got his wish.

In November 2013 he released a nearly four-minute-long music video of his song, In Another Life. Lip-synching all the way, the handsome Russian fellow spills coffee on his t-shirt, strips down, and dances across the top of a living room sofa before performing an exuberant handstand. 

All the while he fantasizes about beautiful contestants. The first appears in a mirror as he brushes his teeth. Later, Miss Russia plunks down on the bench beside him as he plays the piano and lip-synchs. She disappears, too, to be followed by a sultry Miss USA in a red-sequined dress. Poof! and she is gone, replaced by Miss Puerto Rico, Miss Switzerland and Miss Poland, all lip-synching badly.

Eventually, the confused crooner searches under his bed, trying to figure out where all the babes have been coming from and where they’ve gone. Eventually, you lose track of all the beauties that appear, five following him down a flight of stairs, a dozen scattered about a beautiful indoor pool. Then a hefty lady jumps into the pool, splashes Emin, and he awakes from a dream. 

I think the moral of the story is that Emin is actually trapped in a terrible nightmare, because Donald J. Trump appears at the head of a conference table, demanding, “Wake him up right now! Emin, wake up. Come on. What’s wrong with you? What’s wrong with you, Emin? Let’s get with it.”

The video ends when Trump fires Emin.

And that’s it. I was hoping the last scene would show Trump turning into a Mr. Potato Head version of himself.

But no.

*

So what do we know? We know the future president and the Russian tunesmith knew each other fairly well. We know a meeting scheduled between Trump and Putin during the time the pageant was in Moscow fell through because Putin was delayed by a meeting with the King of Holland. We know when Trump decided to run for president that Emin and his dad remembered how much fun they had had in Moscow with the orange-tinted tycoon.

Goldstone had high hopes himself. He remembers thinking, in early 2016, that if Trump won, perhaps his client would be invited to sing at the inauguration or visit the White House. Instead, on the morning of June 3, Goldstone fielded a call from the singer, asking him to use his contacts with the Trump family.

Emin wanted to hook up a few agents of the Russian government with the leaders of the campaign.

Agalarov had met with a “well connected” lawyer earlier that day, he explained, and that lawyer had serious dirt on Hillary.

Goldstone sat down and banged out an email to Don Jr., who he knew. The Russians, he said, had info that “would incriminate” Hillary. But Don Jr. should beware. This offer was “very high level and sensitive.”

Goldstone explained that the information was “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

Today, he insists that he was puffing up his story, bragging as it were, to get Don Jr.’s attention.

But Jr. quickly responded by email, “If it’s what you say I love it.”

From that point forward, Don Jr.’s memory begins to fail. According to the Goldstone interview in the Washington Post, phone records provided to Congress show Jr. talked briefly with Emin on June 6.

Called before Congress to testify in front of a House Intelligence Committee chaired by Rep. Devin Nunes, Don Jr. claimed he had no memory of that call at all. In fact, you had to wonder if someone slugged him upside the head on or about June 10, because Jr. eventually forgot:

A)   having had the meeting with the Russians on June 9

B)    who he talked to on the phone (at a blocked number that might well have been his Dad’s) before, during, and after the meeting

C)   who was at the meeting

D)   and why he, Jared, Manafort and the Russians gathered at all.

Goldstone makes one particularly interesting point during his interview. He says Don Jr. must have been impressed by what Emin said over the phone. “My email didn’t get a meeting at Trump Tower,” he says. “My email got a call.” Unless Jr. or Jared or Paul can offer insight, Goldstone adds, “we’ll never know why there was a meeting” on June 9, 2016.

Jr. clearly isn’t going to “remember.”

Ivanka might have to kill Jared if he tried to talk.

Manafort, however, was there; and he’s cooperating with prosecutors, and he just might have something to say.

10/10/18: Richard Pinedo, “a California computer whiz caught by the special counsel's office selling fake online identities to Russians,” gets a six-month prison sentence, meaning score one for Robert Mueller and his team.

Pinedo is a small fish, but may know where the big fish like to swim. CNN—also known to Trump fans as “Fake News,” because they report stories Trump fans don’t want to hear—explains:

Prosecutors told the judge that Pinedo gave them “significant assistance” and that his admissions and testimony “saved the government significant time and resources in the investigation.”

Pinedo helped the investigators identify previously anonymous Russians who allegedly ran the social media propaganda scheme during the election. He then explained to investigators how the scheme of using false identities worked….

Pinedo testified before a federal grand jury in DC, which approved the indictment of the Internet Research Agency, Concord Management and Consulting and the oligarch Yevgeny Prigozhin, known as “Putin’s chef.”

In other words, Mueller’s investigators pulled one thread and several began to unravel. Once again, we have one Russian and two possibly-complicit American companies.

Pinedo was selling fake online identities to Russians.

10/18/18: Amid the turmoil of the Judge Kavanaugh confirmation hearings and the pummeling of Florida by Hurricane Michael, several developments in the Russia investigation may have escaped notice.

First, did you realize President Trump had not tweeted: “WITCH HUNT” in almost a month? 

That streak was broken this past week, complete with lots of question marks and Trump’s trademark CAPITAL LETTERS: 

Is it really possible that Bruce Ohr, whose wife Nellie was paid by Simpson and GPS Fusion for work done on the Fake Dossier, and who was used as a Pawn in this whole SCAM WITCH HUNT, is still working for the Department of Justice????? Can this really be so?????

While he was at it, the president also thought it might be cool to attack Stormy Daniels, a private citizen, just for fun.

Recently, a judge dismissed one of two lawsuits filed by Daniels against our beloved Pussy-Grabbing-Chief-Executive. In case you live under a bridge where the Three Billy Goats cross, Stormy is the porn star Trump paid off in 2016 so she wouldn’t talk about their one-night stand a decade ago.

You know: Melania might be pissed.

So, with “victory” in hand, Trump just couldn’t resist a tweet. Would his tweet demean the office of president? Trump pondered a moment, giving it the kind of serious consideration he used to give before grabbing women by their privates.

Then he started to type:

“Federal Judge throws out Stormy Danials lawsuit versus Trump. Trump is entitled to full legal fees.” @FoxNews Great, now I can go after Horseface and her 3rd rate lawyer in the Great State of Texas. She will confirm the letter she signed! She knows nothing about me, a total con!

I, for one, spend a few minutes trying to imagine Abraham Lincoln communicating in the same way. Maybe, during a debate: “Get ‘Liddle Toadstool’ off this stage! Am I the only person who thinks Stephen Douglas looks like a midget?”

Stephen Douglas.

Well, Stormy is a porn star with enormous breasts. So she’s not easily embarrassed. She fires back:

Ladies and Gentlemen, may I present your president. In addition to his...umm... shortcomings, he has demonstrated his incompetence, hatred of women and lack of self control on Twitter AGAIN! And perhaps a penchant for bestiality. Game on, Tiny.

“Tiny!” It has a certain ring. Even more insulting, in the Trumpian style, than “Lyin’ Ted” or “Crooked Hillary.”

Anyway, as I was saying before I got distracted, the topic is Russians! We now know that Paul Manafort has dropped by to talk to Mueller and his investigators nine times in just over a month. We also know investigators have zeroed in on Roger Stone, whom they suspect may have played a direct—and illegal role—in release of all the stolen Hillary Clinton and Democratic National Convention emails. At least nine of his associates have been called in for questioning. Stone claims he’s innocent and says any stories to the contrary are “defamatory.”

But he has predicted—and for once I agree—that he will soon be indicted by Mueller and his team.

Investigators also want to know about any contacts with Russians Manafort might have had during the campaign. If he had contacts, and it seems certain he did, who else in the campaign knew? A key area of inquiry, of course, is: Who knew about the secret meeting with Russians in Trump Tower in June 2016? What was really discussed? Did Don Jr., who helped set it up, brief his dad?

Manafort was in that meeting, and the potential for a “smoking gun” to turn up as a result is not easily discounted.

If that’s not bad enough for Team Trump—but good for the country—we know Michael Cohen has also been talking to Mueller’s crew. And he is talking a lot. Like 50 hours, so far.

His old boss is worried enough to start downing Cohen whenever he can. In a recent interview with the Associated Press, Trump said Cohen’s claim that then Candidate Trump told him to pay Stormy Daniels $130,000 to buy her silence was “totally false.” Trump could hardly remember the man, who was his personal lawyer for a decade. He was nothing but “a PR person who did small legal work.”

In the meantime, honoring a tradition of not interfering in upcoming elections, Mueller’s investigators have been quietly going about their jobs during the run-up to the midterms. Reporters note, however, “a flurry of court paperwork.” The Grand Jury has continued to meet almost every Friday. Scores of witnesses have been called as investigator try to build a case. Those not called—indicating they could be targets of investigation—include Stone, Donald Jr. and Jared Kushner.

Rick Gates, who is also cooperating with investigators, has been providing valuable insights into the machinations of the Trump campaign. According to The New York Times, Gates has told Mueller’s people that in early 2016, he solicited proposals from an Israeli company “to create fake online identities, to use social media manipulation and to gather intelligence to help defeat Hillary Clinton.”

That’s a little better than working with Russians—a hostile power—but still indicative of a campaign that might have been willing to accept help from foreign nations to impact a U.S. election.

(You know who used to worry about that kind of interference: George Washington and the Founding Fathers.)

First, Gates wondered if the company could create “bogus personas” to sway the opinions of the 5,000 delegates to the National Republican Convention. The target in that case would be Sen. Ted Cruz, by then Trump’s only remaining GOP challenger. Another proposal, sources told the Times, would involve “complimentary intelligence activities” to damage Mrs. Clinton and individuals close to her.

If that sounds to you exactly like what the Russians are known to have done to help Team Trump, it should.

A third proposal involved the Israelis working to “expose and amplify” divisions among rival campaigns and among the American people in such a way as to aid Candidate Trump. That operation would be code named, “Project Rome.” Mr. Trump would be “Lion.” (Given his weird orange mane, I think “Orangutan” would have worked better.) Mrs. Clinton would be “Forest.”

Ted Cruz would be “Bear.”

The Times is careful to note that there is no evidence the campaign acted on any of these proposals. But the owner of the company, Psy-Group, Joel Zamel, did meet with Donald Trump Jr. in August 2016.

Sources told the Times that Mueller’s team had copies of the proposals and had questioned Psy-Group employees.

Gates told investigators he first heard about Psy-Group during a March 2016 meeting with George Birnbaum. The Times calls him “a Republican consultant with close ties to current and former Israeli government officials.” Birnbaum is a protégé of Arthur J. Finkelstein, according to the Times. Finkelstein is remembered for helping Benjamin Netanyahu win election to be prime minister of Israel in 1996. And we know Netanyahu had no love for Secretary of State Clinton.

Evidence hints at several legal problems for the Trump team. Birnbaum allegedly initiated contact with Gates, first asking a man named Eckart Sager, to pitch ideas to Gates. Sager’s name came to light this past summer when investigators charged Paul Manafort with witness tampering. That is: he wanted Sager to lie about what he had been doing during the campaign. So: Sager may know more than the Trump folks would like investigators to know. 

And there are plentiful of signs the people floating these ideas knew they might be illegal. The proposals all promise high-level secrecy, with code names for people involved and password-protected documents. All this at the low price of only $3,000,000! Psy-Group would hire an additional fifty employees to make sure the work got done, including at least a few Americans. (It would be totally illegal for foreigners to perform campaign work on U.S. soil—which gives you some idea how closely these people were skirting the line.) 

We do know that on August 3, 2016, Mr. Zamel pitched his ideas on interference in a meeting with Don Jr. Also attending that day were George Nader, an emissary of the United Arab Emirates—holy crap, another foreign power—and Erik Prince, former head of Blackwater Security.

What would make you think, then, that these same people might not work out a deal with Russians?

It is not known if any members of the Trump campaign crossed lines into illegality in these matters. At best, however, they were perilously close to the line. We do know they have repeatedly lied about what they were up to during the campaign. In fact, Marc Mukasey a lawyer for Mr. Zamel, obviously understood the danger his client might be in if additional damaging information surfaced. “Mr. Zamel never pitched, or otherwise discussed, any of Psy-Group’s proposals relating to the U.S. elections with anyone related to the Trump campaign, including not with Donald Trump Jr., except for outlining the capabilities of some of his companies in general terms,” he told reporters for the Times.

Yet there seems to be disagreement among thieves. Zamel and Nader clash over whether any work was carried out for the campaign.

Mueller’s team is interested in why Nader paid Zamel $2,000,000 after the election. We know U.S. investigators presented a court order to Israeli police to confiscate Psy-Group’s computers.

So the threads Mueller and his team need to pull lead all the way to Petah Tivka, just east of Tel Aviv, where the company was once located. Psy-Group, as the Times report concludes, “is now in liquidation.”

*

Is there any other pertinent news involving President Trump and the Russians? Yes, there is. 

And thanks for asking.

Mueller’s team has presented questions to the president to be answered and—surprisingly enough—seem willing to let Trump’s lawyers help him craft written responses. Not that Trump would ever lie while speaking to investigators—or supporters—or his own wives, serially. The virtue of getting Trump’s answers down in writing, even if lawyers do have to sedate him to keep him from going off on wild tangents and perjuring himself, might not be clear. Several legal experts note that if investigators get his answers on paper and have other evidence to undercut those answers, good old Donald won’t be able to weasel his way out of trouble.

Not that he would ever try.

And here it strikes me: “Weasel” would also have been a good code name for Trump in all the Psy-Group proposals. I’m sorry the Israelis never thought of that.

In any case, Trump was asked in a recent interview with the Associated Press, if he would sit for an interview with Robert Mueller, or stick to the writing.

“You know that’s in process. It’s a tremendous waste of time [emphasis added] for the president of the United States,” he grumbled.

Yes, this from the man who really hates to “waste” time. That’s why, since he took office, he has tweeted roughly 6,000 times and “limited” time spent at his private golf clubs, far away from Washington, D.C., to a mere:

162 days (so far).

10/22/18: In news you may have missed, Ty Cobb, the president’s former lawyer is asked during a CNN forum if he believes the Mueller investigation is a “witch hunt.” Cobb doesn’t waste time answering.

“I don’t think it’s a witch hunt,” he responds.

*

IN A MEETING with Russian officials in Moscow, National Security Advisor John Bolton informs them he knows they meddled in our last election. “Today, I told our Russian colleagues I don’t think their meddling in our election had any real effect,” he explains to reporters later. “But something else is important. The very desire to meddle in our affairs creates mistrust toward Russians, toward Russia. I consider it intolerable, it should not be allowed.”

(Also: it creates mistrust toward your boss, who said for over a year the Russians never meddled.)

News also leaks in regard to the Mueller “witch hunt.” Prosecutors have presented twelve hours of evidence against Roger Stone to a Grand Jury. It is alleged Stone may have been a conduit between the Trump 2016 campaign and Russian-operated internet sites offering dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Stone himself has said he expects to be indicted. His protestations of innocence are undercut by his belated admission that he did meet with at least one Russian offering dirt on Clinton during the 2016 election. But, hey, no problem! Stone says the man wanted $2 million and he informed the Russian that Trump was too cheap to pay that much for help from a hostile foreign power.

Stone didn’t say his boss wouldn’t take help from the Russians if it were free, mind you, but hey, “the Art of the Deal!”