July 18, 2018: Russians to the Right, Russians to the Left, Russians Dead Ahead, Sh*tloads of Russians!

 

7/18/18: Who’s sweating profusely today when it comes to the Russia investigation? If you’ve been busy shampooing the dog, several shoes dropped this week. On Friday Special Counsel Robert Mueller dropped combat boots on a dozen Russian military officers charged with influencing the election in 2016. 

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“I don’t think you’d need the sanctions.” 

Candidate Trump

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The White House immediately released a statement saying: Hey, no Americans were indicted for collusion with said Russians! But the White House knew plenty and Trump and his team were praying that Americans heading for the beach or the pool would be too busy slathering on sunscreen to take note. According to the indictment at least one unnamed Trump associate had a series of contacts with Guccifer 2.0, now conclusively shown to be a Russian front. Roger Stone has admitted that unnamed Trump associate is “probably” him. (See: 6/17/18.) 

Ms. Butina.

What other shoes dropped? On Sunday, the F.B.I. arrested Maria Butina, a young Russian. She was charged with working as an unregistered foreign agent, one step removed from an espionage charge. For at least three years Butina is alleged to have acted on U.S. soil 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 access. We know the N.R.A. paid her way to this country more than once so she could speak on gun rights. Her public stance was in favor of private ownership of guns by Russian citizens. 

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

That at least was true.

 

Strangely enough, her criticism never led to arrest whenever 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 Scott Walker, governor 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 then-candidate-Trump a question. What would his position toward Russia be, she asked, 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 told her. “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 home when Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a California Republican, was visiting. The congressman says he can’t remember much about the young lady. Yes, Butina did arrange a breakfast 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 that June, a meeting which is of key interest to Mueller’s team. (See: 7/13/18.) 

Well, now, what did Rep. Rohrabacher think about the indictment of Maria, this poor little girl! “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.” 

Actually, 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 just slinging the bull.

 

Who exactly will be squashed by all the falling shoes we cannot yet know. Several Americans would be wise to scurry for cover. We know Torshin is an ally of Putin. 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 admit is not a great look. 

Rohrabacher may be in trouble. Some say he’s the congressman in Paragraph 43 of the latest Mueller indictment. (See: 7/13/18.) 

Longtime Republican fixer, Paul Erickson, is likely to get whacked with a size-22 shoe. For some reason he formed a company with Butina in South Dakota in 2016. That company is the subject of a fraud investigation. Erickson is not named in the indictment but is thought to be the unnamed political operative with whom she was said to be coordinating activities. 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. 

 

“Everything has to be quiet and careful.” 

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.” 

“In the F.B.I. affidavit,” The New York Times reports, Ms. Butina assured some unnamed person, likely Erickson, “that the Kremlin had approved her efforts [emphasis added] 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 [Putin, not Trump] 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. 

Torshin tried to set up a meeting between Trump and Putin that month. 

In June 2016, Paul Manafort, Don Jr. and Jared Kushner took a secret meeting with individuals they knew were Russian agents. 

We know Torshin scored a short meeting with Don Jr. at an N.R.A. convention in May 2016. 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 Putin Pal President speak. Torshin scored a meeting at the White House later that year. At the last minute, his meeting with Trump was canceled when a White House security aide noticed that Torshin was under investigation for money laundering in Spain.

 

* 

ON MONDAY, Mueller’s team swatted a big cockroach with a wingtip. Mueller asked a judge for immunity for up to five witnesses to testify in the coming trial of former Trump campaign manager Manafort. That means there are five people who may be compelled to give testimony as witnesses. They are to be granted “use immunity,” which means nothing they say can be used against them. 

They will not be able to plead the Fifth. 

Is it still possible that President Trump will be absolved of all crimes during his campaign? I taught history for decades. I go only with facts I think are proven. He could be innocent. He could be nothing more than a poor dupe. I can’t deny, however, that I think a Nike Mag 2016 basketball shoe (cost: $26,000) may be hovering over his orange, hair-spray-helmeted head.

 

*

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“I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. I think it’s a professional investigation conducted by a man that I’ve known to be a straight shooter.” 

F.B.I. Director Wray

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F.B.I. DIRECTOR CHRISTOPHER WRAY sits down in front of an audience at the Aspen Security Conference in Colorado. He’ll be taking questions from moderator Lester Holt of NBC. 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. 

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 a real hint of doubt about the innocence of the president in Director Wray’s response. “I do not believe special counsel Mueller is on a witch hunt. 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.” 

 

BLOGGER’S NOTE (8/22/19): Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, resigns from the company and admits having an on-and-off sexual relationship with Ms. Butina for three years. This was at the same time Ms. Butina was living with longtime Republican fixer Paul Erickson. 

Byrne says he only did it for the sake of the country. That was the only reason he had sex with the young redhead. He sacrificed patriotic semen for us all. 

Byrne told an interviewer on Fox Business News, where no story is too stupid to fly, that the F.B.I. encouraged him to boink the babe. 

It was part of a “soft coup” (no pun intended) to undermine Donald J. Trump! “There is a Deep State, like a submarine, lurking just beneath the waves at periscope depth, watching our shipping lanes,” he claimed. “And a nuclear icebreaker named the USS Bill Barr has snuck up on them and is about to ram them at midship.”

December 11, 2018: The President Says He Is Proud to Shut Down the Government.

 

12/11/18: God damn those Mexicans! I was sure they were going to pay for the Great Wall of Trump! 

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“I am proud to shut down the government.” 

President Trump

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Now, Trump is mad because Democrats won’t give him $5 billion to build his pet project and he’s too lame-assed to work out a compromise. 

He’ll just pout. 

In a televised confrontation with Democratic leaders, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Chuck Schumer, Trump grumbles, “If we don’t get what we want one way or the other...I will shut down the government. I am proud to shut down the government for border security... I will take the mantle of shutting it down.” 

Considering who’s in charge of the federal government, it might not be a bad idea to close shop for a year. 

(You can watch the tape of the meeting between President Trump and Democratic leaders in the U.S. House and Senate, below. I think Nancy Pelosi mentions Article I around the four-minute mark - because she realizes the president has never read and never will read the U.S. Constitution. As for Vice President Pence, who sits at Trump’s left, he might as well be a dummy. He does not speak a syllable in over ten minutes, but practices looking concerned and serious.)

 

* 

IN RUSSIAN-INVESTIGATION NEWS, Maria Butina, the hot young Russian redhead who infiltrated the N.R.A. and spent the 2016 campaign hanging with leading conservatives, has agreed to a plea deal and will cooperate with prosecutors. That includes testifying in front of a grand jury. 

Her crime: conspiring to act as a Russian agent without registering with the Justice Department. That’s a felony. 

Now we may find out how it happened she was called on during a campaign rally in 2015 to ask Trump what he thought about sanctions on Russia. He said he didn’t think we needed them, which would have been sweet Tchaikovsky music to Putin’s ears. 

Ms. Butina, looking fetching.

 

Butina may spill a whole new can of beans. 

We might learn a great deal. We might learn what Paul Erickson, a much older conservative leader who had spoken publicly in favor of warmer relations with Russia (and with whom Butina was sleeping), was up to behind the scenes, when not fostering warmer relations with Butina between the sheets. We might learn whether or not the N.R.A. accepted Russian money and funneled it to the Trump campaign, as at least one U.S. senator suspects. We might get to the bottom of odd connections between the N.R.A., Alexander Torshin, a Russian placed under sanctions earlier this year, and Ms. Butina, his protégé. We might learn how the hot redhead maneuvered in close for a picture with Don Jr. (and pictures with assorted lecherous old Republicans). We might also learn why an N.R.A. delegation traveled to Russia in 2015, and why Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), the leading suck-up to Russia in Congress, spent four hours chatting with Torshin and Butina at a prayer breakfast in Washington D.C. in 2017. 

This Russian investigation – actually, several investigations now – isn’t going to end anytime soon.

February 5, 2019: Trump Set to Give State of the Union Address - State of the Is Russians!

 

2/5/19: Trump is scheduled to give his third State of the Union address. Possible topics to cover: 

o   Trump will declare a national emergency so he can send the U.S. military down to the Mexican border and start building his pet wall. 

o   Trump will declare Nancy Pelosi a witch and ask Evangelicals to support him in bringing her to justice, up to and including burning at the stake. 

o   Trump will announce that the U.S. capital is being moved to Mar-a-Lago. 

o   The Department of the Interior will blast the face of George Washington off Mt. Rushmore, and spend $500 million to replace it with the granite visage, complete with granite jowls, of Mr. Trump.

 

* 

Are the beaches nice? 

Time magazine releases a scathing report on President Trump and his “willful ignorance” when it comes to intelligence matters. Breaking two years of silence, 

“The officials, who include analysts who prepare Trump’s briefs and the briefers themselves, describe futile attempts to keep his attention by using visual aids, confining some briefing points to two or three sentences, and repeating his name and title as frequently as possible.” 

What is most troubling, say these officials and others in government and on Capitol Hill who have been briefed on the episodes, are Trump’s angry reactions when he is given information that contradicts positions he has taken or beliefs he holds. Two intelligence officers even reported that they have been warned to avoid giving the President intelligence assessments that contradict stances he has taken in public.

 

As for the president’s focus, and grasp of details, sources reveal two sad examples to put a point to the story. During one briefing, discussion turned to a key U.S. military base on the island of Diego Garcia, in the Indian Ocean. Trump asked two questions: Are the people nice, and are the beaches good?” As for a growing threat from the Chinese in the region…well, no matter. During another briefing, when the president was shown a map of Afghanistan and Pakistan, and that area, he told briefers he knew Nepal was part of India. They had to tell him gently he was wrong. Well, at least Bhutan was part of India, Trump tried next. And he was wrong again. 

More to the point of the dangers of the man’s ignorance, when North Korea blew up facilities on one of its giant nuclear arms production sites, Trump insisted that Kim Jong-un was really destroying his nuclear facilities. Intelligence experts built a large model of the facility to show the president how much of the site remained untouched, even adding a model “Statue of Liberty” to give Trump a sense of scale. 

Still, he insists on going out in public and bragging about how great it is that he and Kim are “friends.”

 

* 

“Kremlin connection.” 

ONCE AGAIN, WE FIND MONEY at the heart of the story of Trump, his grifter crew, and the Russians who love them. 

Federal investigators have questions they hope to put to heads of three D.C. lobbying firms. All three powerhouse firms, including two that are run by individuals with strong ties to Democrats, were originally recruited by Paul Manafort for the job in question. This lucrative work – of questionable morality – involved burnishing the dark image of the Ukrainian government, which was pro-Russian and essentially anti-Ukrainian people at the time. 

Since thousands of Ukrainians were dying in the fighting with Russia, and since this public relations work was sketchy, and since the three firms didn’t want their efforts to be known, court records indicate they lied about how much money they were paid. They back-dated payments to try to obscure their significance, and hide the fact a mysterious $150,000 check from a Ukrainian oligarch ended up in the hands of the Trump charitable foundation. 

There have been hints, so far unsubstantiated, that this money was used to pay off Karen McDougal, the Playboy Bunny, who eventually got a check for…$150,000. 

(That may well be internet bullsh*t; but I include it here because the possibilities are amusing.)

 

In other, “I’ll do anything for cash” news, we learn that Republican fund-raiser Paul Erickson was indicted on charges of wire fraud and money laundering. I’m going to assume you don’t recognize his name, since one recent poll found 12% of adults don’t know who Mike Pence is.

The indictment charges Erickson with bilking investors, beginning in 1998, and continuing through 2016. Erickson claimed he was building assisted living facilities across the U.S.A. Actually, it appears he was pocketing investors’ money and building a first-class Ponzi “facility.”

 

Now, let’s bring Russians into the story! Evidence suggests that $30,000 in laundered cash, courtesy of Mr. Erickson, was used to pay Ms. Maria Butina’s college tuition. Butina is a hot little Russian redhead who pled guilty recently to acting as an agent of the Russian Federation during the 2016 campaign. And Butina was shacking up with Erickson at the time. 

(Erickson is not exactly your idea of a stud; so, there’s that.) 

We know that in May 2016, Erickson sent an email with the subject line, “Kremlin connection,” to Trump campaign adviser Rick Dearborn. According to an article in The New York Times, based on email evidence, Erickson wrote that Russia was “quietly but actively seeking a dialogue with the U.S.” An attempt would be made to use the N.R.A.’s annual convention to make “‘first contact.’” 

 

Trump’s answer could be worth tens of billions. 

By some freak of chance (or plotting) Butina had appeared at the N.R.A. convention the previous year. There she managed to be picked to ask Trump, who was speaking at the gathering, a question. If elected, would he continue with the economic sanctions aimed at Russia by President Obama, following the invasion and annexation of Crimea? His answer could be worth tens of billions to Russian oligarchs whose funds had been frozen overseas as a result. 

“I wouldn’t think you’d need the sanctions,” Trump replied, not when he was in charge and the United States was “respected” again. 

In Moscow, they had to love that answer.

$$$

BLOGGER’S NOTE: Ms. Butina eventually pleads guilty to conspiring, from 2015 to 2017, “to establish unofficial lines of communication” between top Republicans, and advance the interests of the Russian government. One main avenue was through her connections with the National Rifle Association. Having posed as a gun-rights critic of Vladimir Putin during her time in the U.S., she returned to Russia in 2019, having served fifteen months in a federal prison.

 

You figure, as a Putin critic, she’s going to get tossed off the high balcony of the apartment where she lives. Or someone will smear a fatal poison on her front doorknob.

 

Or she gets arrested, at least.

 

In fact, she later runs for a seat in the Russian parliament and wins. She’s also famous for “ambushing” Aleksei A. Navalny, a leading critic of Vladimir Putin, during a visit to the Siberian penal colony where he’s serving nine years. She compares the fine conditions, under which she claims Navalny is being held, with the horrors she faced in U.S. prisons.

 

Her interview with Navalny then runs on state-owned television. Nobody mentions the fact that Navalny almost died, after someone managed to get his luggage taken off a plane, and then smeared the seems of his underwear with a deadly nerve agent.

 

Her boyfriend, Erickson, is eventually sentenced to seven years in prison, but on January 19, 2021, he snags a pardon from President Trump, on Donald’s last full day in the White House. Not only does Erickson avoid jail time, the pardon means he can avoid repayment of $3 million he owed in restitution to victims of his fraudulent business schemes.

 

At the time of his pardon, NPR explains,

The Trump administration issued a statement…and said it was supported by former Trump adviser Kellyanne Conway. The statement described Erickson as a victim of broader allegations that Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with Russia.

“Mr. Erickson’s conviction was based off the Russian collusion hoax,” the statement said. “After finding no grounds to charge him with any crimes with respect to connections with Russia, he was charged with a minor financial crime.

As in $3 million. Victims of Erickson’s schemes were out anywhere from $10,000 to $500,000.

 

As for Butina’s first Russian patron, Aleksander P. Torshin, in April 2018, along with a list of other oligarchs, he was placed under sanction by the U.S. Treasury Department.

January 21, 2021: The Bizarre Circus Act that Was the Trump Presidency is Ended

 

1/21/21: According to the CDC, during Rejected-President Trump’s last weeks in office a record number of citizens whom he had failed to protect died from a virus he once insisted was no worse than flu. On January 6, January 7, January 12, and January 13, more than 4,000 Americans died each day. 

Like four 9/11’s. 

And then, on his last day in office, another 

4,029 Americans died.

 

Yet, Trump never once expressed sympathy for the hundreds of thousands of families who lost loved ones. 

Nor did he ever mourn the dead.

 

*

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“It’s obvious now we’ve been had. No plan, no Q, nothing.” 

Disappointed QAnon believer

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SO ENDED the bizarre circus act that was the single-term presidency of Donald J. Trump. For one sizeable lump of Americans, this was a sad day. QAnon folks learned a harsh truth. That Santa can’t fit down the chimney on Christmas Eve (or any other night). That the Easter Bunny doesn’t bring chocolate eggs. That leprechauns don’t guard pots of gold. That there aren’t any leprechauns to begin. And “Q,” whoever he or she might be, is a modern-day phrenologist.

Phrenologists believed you could know what a person was like by studying

the shape of their head.

 

Trump did not magically appear to claim a second term. No righteous angels swept the inaugural stage clear of Joe Biden, and Dr. Jill Biden, and the lovely young poet, Amanda Gorman. 

As one white supremacist moaned, the outgoing president failed to pardon “middle class whites who risked their livelihoods by going to ‘war’ for Trump” on January 6. Instead, what QAnon believers had been calling “national popcorn day” turned out to be a grand fizzle for fools. No one came to stop the Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic, child-molesters from taking over. 

Not to be denied their delusions, a few put forward the preposterous proposition that Trump had switched faces with Biden. 

He was still in charge!

 

Other believers wiped away tears, dabbed at snot on their upper lips, and turned to the calendar. The original Constitution set March 4 as Inauguration Day. Ah ha! Trump was biding his time. He would be back on that date, rising like Orange Jesus, from the political grave. 

Still, some had tasted the bitter medicine and admitted it was nasty. “Been played for fools,” one wrote on social media. Another believer expressed the general feeling of disappointment even more vehemently. “It’s obvious now we’ve been had. No plan, no Q, nothing.” 

 

*

 

AS FOR MR. BIDEN, we cannot know whether he will succeed or fail at his job. He may turn out to be a good president, a fair president, or a poor president. Greatness is rarely achieved.

 

This blogger is confident that “46” will not be a terrible and a dangerous president, as was his predecessor.

 

We know, as Joe Biden takes charge, that he has “inherited a mess.” We remember when Trump complained that he had, even though he hadn’t. We know thousands of friends, relatives and neighbors are dying daily from coronavirus. We know millions are struggling to pay bills.

 

The weekly employment report out today has 900,000 additional workers filing for regular unemployment.

 

Worse still, 423,734 individuals filed for Pandemic Unemployment Assistance, marking a worrisome three-week trend:

 

1/2:     161,159

1/9:     248,886

1/16:   423,734

 

So, the spread of the deadly coronavirus continues to eat at the vitals of the U.S. economy.

 

*

 

NOR IS THERE any sign the pandemic is abating. Today, on the first full day of Mr. Biden’s term in office, another 3,373 Americans perish from COVID-19.

 

That pushed the total to:

 

443,997 dead.**

 

That figure easily tops the number of soldiers, sailors, air personnel and Marines killed during all of World War II: 407,316.

 

*

 

Defining the nature of the Trump presidency.

 

A HANDFUL of Americans are having a good week, having been pardoned by Loser Don as he lumbered off stage. Steve Bannon, accused of defrauding suckers who donated to a private project to build the border wall, received a pardon.

 

Elliott Broidy, who raised money for Trump’s 2016 campaign and pled guilty to selling influence to foreign individuals got a coveted pardon. Very possibly it came with the understanding that he would henceforth keep his mouth shut about any criminal behaviors he had witnessed.

 

Most news outlets have focused on Bannon and the rapper Lil’ Wayne since their names are more recognizable.

 

This blogger would suggest that Broidy is dirty for a number of reasons, and a key actor in a much seedier tale in the end. (See: 7/21/21.)

 

Another little known name, Paul Erickson, also looms larger in this writer’s view. Erickson plead guilty to fraud and money-laundering charges. His “claim to fame” was sleeping with Maria Butina, a Russian foreign agent. Butina, an attractive redhead, had odd connections with some of the top people at the N.R.A. She was also on good terms with former Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, a GOP congressman so chummy with Russians, that he was sometimes tagged “Rep. Rohrabacher (R-Moscow).”

 

Equally worthy of mercy, in Trump’s gimlet eyes, was former Rep. Robin Hayes of North Carolina. He and several others were arrested after they tried to bribe a state official. In return they expected preferential treatment of an insurance business in which they had an interest. To get what they wanted, they were offering an illegal payment of $1.5 million. The price of business, as it were.

 

Even more inexplicable was the pardon of Robert “Bob” Zangrillo, a Miami real estate dealer. Zangrillo was one of a number of high-rolling parents busted after a scheme to bribe college coaches and officials to get their children into prestigious schools was revealed. Alone among parents charged in “Operation Varsity Blues,” Zangrillo caught a Trumpian break.

 

According to a White House press release dad avoided jail because daughter Amber was doing well in her studies at the University of Southern California. She was “currently earning a 3.9 GPA.” Team Trump claimed that Amber’s pop deserved the slack because Amber “did not have others take standardized tests for her.”

 

I suppose that makes Ms. Zangrillo unique among millions of high school seniors who also didn’t have ringers take their SATs last year.

 

At any rate, Amber is enjoying her time at college, despite the fact her parents bought her a spot at the expense of some other individual who surely deserved to be attending USC more.

 

We also know that Rejected-President Trump rose early on the morning of January 20, and with 45 minutes left in office, decided…hey…why not cut the ex-husband of Judge Jeanine Pirro, his staunchest fan on Fox News, a break! Al Pirro, famous for cheating on his taxes, made the pardon list with little time to spare.

 

Pardons went to such luminaries in crookery as Michael Liberty, convicted of making illegal campaign donations, Drew Bronstein a former hedge fund manager, and Aviem Sella, friend of GOP megadonor Sheldon Adelson and his wife Miriam – who now has her own Presidential Medal of Freedom. More than one hundred assorted felons got pardons in Don’s last 24 hours in office.

 

The president’s final acts of “justice” fit a pattern that has been constantly revealed these last four years. People who lied to investigators, but lied to protect the president, got pardons. To wit: Paul Manafort, Roger Stone, Gen. Michael T. Flynn, Bannon and Broidy.

 

People who didn’t lie for Trump but cooperated with investigators, did not get pardons. To wit: Michael Cohen and Rick Gates.

 

Benjamin Ginsberg, a Republican election lawyer who has worked on several previous presidential campaigns, but not Trump’s, was pained by what he witnessed. “The granting of even more sleazy crony pardons as the clock ran out on his one term,”  Ginsberg said, “will define the nature of his presidency.”