May 23, 2018: The President Piles Up the Lies

 

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 is this: Everyone else is lying. The only person you can trust is me. 

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The Trump Tower of Lies is imploding.

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Up with the birds, Trump’s 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.”

 

This is when you realize that if Trump had the power to lock up enemies without trial he would. Hillary would already 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 an insulting video. 

Trump insisted that those who burn the American flag, a form of protected free speech according to the Supreme Court, should be jailed. 

We know the president would be happy to fill entire prisons with journalists who write or speak 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. Next, 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 6:12, the president tweets again: “SPYGATE could be one of the biggest political scandals in history!” 

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. 

As the day progresses, what do we learn? First, let’s revisit what Clapper said in an earlier 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, unless otherwise noted]. 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. And Manafort had neck-deep ties to Russian interests going back years. 

The best possible explanation would be that Trump knew nothing about Manafort’s shady past. But Manafort is dirty beyond question, a money launderer in the pay of Russians, if not worse. We know he was heavily in debt to a Russian oligarch when he took a job in the Trump campaign for free. 

A new report, issued by Bloomberg on the same day Trump is tweet-moaning about the “Criminal Deep State,” indicates Manafort made 17 trips to Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, just before joining Trump’s team. The purpose of all those trips was to perform lobbying work for the Opposition Bloc, a pro-Russia political group.

 

The magnetic pull of crook to crook was strong. Manafort had been advising a corrupt Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, who, when toppled in a popular uprising, fled to…Russia.

 

Bloomberg, noting that Rick Gates, Manafort’s right-hand man, has pled guilty and agreed to cooperate with the Mueller team, explained:

 

Gates worked with Manafort for a decade in Ukraine, serving as a loyal wingman. In his guilty plea, Gates admitted that he helped Manafort set up dozens of undisclosed offshore bank accounts, hide their work as unregistered agents for Ukraine and launder millions of dollars into the U.S. Manafort convinced Gates to help him create false documents for banks, urged his son-in-law [Jeffrey Yohai] to lie to a bank appraiser and misled lenders about the use of loans, prosecutors charged.

 

 

“Greatly benefit the Putin government.”

 

In an in-depth story last November, the Business Insider reported that in 2006 Manafort signed a $10 million annual contract with Oleg Deripaska, a Russian oligarch and allegedly murderous crime boss. Manafort agreed to perform lobbying work in the U.S. which he promised “would greatly benefit the Putin government.”

 

Nevertheless, money woes soon beset him. Deripaska filed suit in 2014 in The Cayman Islands (where all good money launderers go to shield bank accounts from pesky tax laws and legal oversight), claiming Manafort had disappeared after he gave him $19 million to invest. 

We can therefore assume Manafort was interested in placating a dangerous Russian crime boss. Once Manafort joined the Trump campaign he found time to email one of his many Russian friends. Had Deripaska been made aware of Manafort’s expanding role in Trump’s political operation? If so, maybe a deal could be worked out. Access to Trump for the Russian crime boss and knowledge about Trump’s plans – forgiveness for Manafort for that $19 million gone south? 

His Russian friend responded. Deripaska was paying close attention. Manafort emailed again: “How do we use to get whole. Has OVD [Deripaska’s initials] operation seen?” 

Being an evidence-based kind of guy, this hard-working blogger admits there are as yet no known links to tie the president directly to illegal contacts with Russians. Still, you can see why U.S. intelligence might have wanted to keep tabs on shady members of the Trump campaign team.

Trump's pal: Vlad.

 

The critical question then comes into view. Has the President of the United States been trying to derail an investigation into Russian interference in 2016, simply to cover the Trump rump? 

Later in the day the president pushes for a meeting 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 all about “total transparency.” He’s not blocking an 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.” 

He did a great service to himself, that’s for sure. 

The plan for the meeting 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 transparency... 

Wait. Two members of Congress? 

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

The second would be Rep. Trey Gowdy, another Republican. No Democrats! That is the president’s idea of “transparency.” 

 

“The truth-tellers.” 

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. And 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 comments on camera are equally harsh. Trump, he warns, ignores “objective reality.” The president has attacked what Hayden calls the “truth-tellers.” He has created “friction points.” Hayden ticks them off on his fingers, listing “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, where the president attacked reporters for what they had said, 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.

 

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A cool $400,000 will get you a meeting! 

THE CLOUDS around the Trump administration darken. 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 he set up a meeting with Trump at the White House in June 2017. At the time Cohen was not listed as a representative of the Ukraine as would be required under U.S. law. After the meeting, the government of the Ukraine stopped helping Mueller 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 the reporter for the BBC, “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.”

BLOGGER’S NOTE (6/6/2022): It’s always fun to check back on what I wrote and see if my sense of justice was proven correct. Manafort’s former son-in-law turns out to be a scammer and a crook, just like Paul. 

When I look it up, I discover that in November 2019, he was sentenced to nine years and two months in prison, for bilking clients out of $6 million.