How Mitch McConnell Has Enabled Trump and Betrayed America

This blog - just like countless news articles and political commentary columns - has enumerated the many, many ways in which Donald Trump has harmed America's democracy and institutions. It Trump's not a Russian operative, he is nonetheless doing a great job of furthering Vladimir Putin's goals of destabilizing the west, causing disunity in the European Union (Putin's intelligence service interfered in the UK's Brexit vote), and dividing Americans into warring camps.   Often, however, focus is lost on the one man who has been key to aiding and abetting Trump in the infliction of harm on America and American interest: Senate majority leader, Mitch McConnell.  Should Mueller prove a conspiracy between Trump and Russia in flipping the 2016 presidential election, part of me cannot help but ponder whether McConnell was part of the conspiracy.  Let's not forget that McConnell cast doubt on CIA intelligence about Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and threatened that if Barack Obama publicly challenged Russia, McConnell would disingenuously make it into a partisan issue.  A column in the New York Times lays out all of the harm McConnell has done to the nation. Here are highlights:

Among the casualties of President Trump’s declaration of a national emergency to build his border wall is the reputation of the majority leader Mitch McConnell as a Senate institutionalist. The evidence of the last few days has confirmed, if there were still any doubt, that he is no such thing.

First, he helped prolong the longest government shutdown in American history by insisting that the Senate would act only with explicit approval from the president. Now Mr. McConnell has fully acquiesced in President Trump’s power grab by supporting an emergency declaration, which he opposed just weeks before, aimed at addressing a crisis that Senate Republicans know does not exist.

This display of obedience from the leader of a supposedly coequal branch of government is shocking only if you ever believed Mr. McConnell was an institutionalist. But his defining characteristic has always been his willingness to do anything and sacrifice any principle to amass power for himself. What separates him from the garden-variety politicians — what makes him a radical — are the lengths he is willing to go. Seeing this with clarity should help us grasp the danger to which he is subjecting the Senate — and, more important, our democracy.

The signs of Mr. McConnell’s malign influence were always there. Before he became a Senate leader, he dedicated himself to opening the floodgates for corporate money to flow into our political system. Mr. McConnell chased the McCain-Feingold campaign finance reform law all the way to the Supreme Court; the 2003 challenge to the law bears his name. Mr. McConnell lost that one, but his cause prevailed six years later when the Supreme Court overturned restrictions on corporate contributions in Citizens United.
 In 2010, as minority leader, Mr. McConnell stated that his main goal was not to help our country recover from the Great Recession but to make President Obama a “one-term president.”
 The two forces that characterized Mr. McConnell’s career, obstruction and increasing the power of corporate money in our democracy, have worked hand in hand to diminish the Senate and paralyze American politics.
 Republicans actually took the Senate majority in 2014 in large part on claims to restore the Senate. Unsurprisingly, they broke their promises. Under President Trump, Mr. McConnell continued to run roughshod over Senate traditions, jamming the $1.5 trillion tax bill through without so much as a proper hearing. The one place the Senate has functioned efficiently is in judicial confirmations, but even here Mr. McConnell has cast aside bipartisan norms and reduced the Senate to a rubber stamp for some unqualified, extremist judges, including those rated “unqualified” by the American Bar Association.  Mr. McConnell is not playing three-dimensional chess. There is no grand strategy or long game — there is only what best serves his narrow interest.

Mr. McConnell has rigidly adhered to whatever the base wants, institutions be damned. When the base wanted Judge Merrick Garland blocked, he obeyed. When the base wanted Mr. Trump embraced, he obeyed.
 The crass self-interest at so many turns now poses a danger to our democracy. With Mr. Trump increasingly erratic and Robert Mueller’s investigation advancing, there is simply no reason to believe he will stand up for American institutions when it counts. He has already demonstrated a willingness to put his self-interest above America’s national security: In a classified briefing in 2016, Mr. McConnell reportedly cast doubt on C.I.A. intelligence about Russia’s interference in our election and threatened that if President Obama publicly challenged Russia, he’d twist it into a partisan issue. And when the four congressional leaders drafted a bipartisan letter to the states urging them to take action to protect our election infrastructure against Russian interference, Mr. McConnell categorically rejected all efforts to strengthen the letter.

Last week, Mr. McConnell had a choice. He didn’t have to acquiesce to the emergency declaration — he could have asserted the Senate’s independence at a critical time by passing the spending bill without validating Mr. Trump’s emergency declaration. If that prompted a veto, Mr. McConnell could have overridden it. That would be real leadership, and a clear assertion of the Senate’s independence. Instead, he meekly acquiesced in another presidential power grab.

Under a strong leader, the Senate could provide a critical counterweight to an out-of-control executive. Instead, we have a man who will put his self-interest first, every single time. We should enter this chapter with clarity and finally see Mr. McConnell for what he is. He’s not an institutionalist. He is the man who surrendered the Senate to Donald Trump.

Not only is he not an institutionalist, but if he aided the Trump/Russia effort in any way, he is also likely a traitor. 

New Court Filings: How Totally Screwed Is Trump?

Federal prosecutors submitted filings in three federal court cases involving Trump insiders Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen.  Due to heavy redacting, many specifics are not readily determinable, but the net result is that  things appear to be looking bad for the foul occupant of the White House and a number of his sycophants and even family members.  Personally I want to see Trump fall and I sincerely hope that collusion/conspiracy with Russia is ultimately documented - in no small part so I can rub it in the faces of Trump supporters who brag about their patriotism and being "real Americans" only to have allowed themselves to be duped by a traitor.  A piece in New York Magazine pulls together opinions for a number of commentators and media outlets that look at the situation.  Here are highlights:

On Friday, federal prosecutors filed sentencing memos for Michael Cohen and Paul Manafort detailing their cooperation in the investigations into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential election and alleged campaign finance crimes by members of the Trump campaign. The three briefs — two for Cohen and one for Manafort — don’t just make recommendations about how much prison time the former Trump insiders should get, but point to new details about what prosecutors know and the ramifications to come.

[H]ere is a running roundup of the most insightful commentary and analysis we’ve read on the memos — from experts and pundits who actually understand them:

Intent and TimingJust Security’s Ryan Goodman and Andy Wright zero in on how, if Trump is going to be charged with a felony after leaving office, the smoking gun will need to be evidence of his intent (Rick Hasen makes a similar point at the bottom of this roundup):

[A]fter these filings, Trump faces meaningful criminal exposure upon the end of his term in office. What’s more, the fact that these alleged crimes related to his election to office, they would clear a potential hurdle for impeachment purposes. That is, some impeachment scholars, like Cass Sunstein, take the view that the Impeachment Clause applies only to acts committed in office or in the course of getting elected. A Turn of the ScrewIf Trump thought the Russia investigation was bad before, he’s really not going to love what comes next, contends former federal prosecutor Ken White at the Atlantic:

Manafort and Cohen are in trouble, and so is Trump. The special counsel’s confidence in his ability to prove Manafort a liar appears justified, which leaves Manafort facing what amounts to a life sentence without any cooperation credit. The Southern District’s brief suggests that Cohen’s dreams of probation are not likely to come true. All three briefs show the special counsel and the Southern District closing in on President Trump and his administration. They’re looking into campaign contact with Russia, campaign-finance fraud in connection with paying off an adult actress, and participation in lying to Congress. A Democratic House of Representatives, just days away, strains at the leash to help. The game’s afoot.

Trump Tower Moscow and the Kind of Leverage That Can Turn a President Into an Asset

Barry Berke, Noah Bookbinder, and Norman Eisen highlight the Trump Tower Moscow angle in a New York Times op-ed:

The special counsel also advanced [Trump's] the president’s potential exposure under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act for activities relating to a potential Trump Tower Moscow. Mr. Mueller noted that the Moscow project was a lucrative business opportunity that actively sought Russian government approval, and that the unnamed Russian told Mr. Cohen that there was “no bigger warranty in any project than the consent” of Mr. Putin.

If recent reports that Mr. Cohen floated the idea of giving Mr. Putin a $50 million luxury apartment in a future Trump Tower Moscow prove true, both [Trump] the president and his company could face substantial jeopardy.

Meanwhile, two Russia experts at the liberal Center for American Progress think tank, Max Bergmann and Sam Berger, remind us how all the Trump team’s lies about Russia links would have been plainly obvious — and tempting — to Moscow:

Russia not only knew that Trump was lying, but when investigators first started looking into this deal, the Kremlin helped Trump cover up what really happened. That made Trump doubly compromised: first, because he was eager to get the financial payout and second because Russia had evidence he was lying to the American people — evidence they could have held over Trump by threatening to reveal at any time. . . . there has been open speculation about what leverage the Kremlin has over him. Now we know at least part of the picture, raising the specter of what other information Putin has, and how he is using it to influence Trump’s policy decisions.

White Collaring the Trump Organization?

In an op-ed for the New York Times, Barry Berke (a white-collar criminal defense attorney), Noah Bookbinder (a former federal corruption prosecutor) and Norman Eisen (a Brookings fellow) point out that more shoes may drop on the Trump family’s business — and that Trump could conceivably face charges on January 21, 2021:

The Trump Organization’s reimbursements to Mr. Cohen for payments were fraudulently disguised as legal fees — and, according to the memo, were approved by senior executives at the organization. The New York prosecutors also disclosed that they are investigating additional unspecified matters involving Mr. Cohen and, presumably, the Trump Organization. In light of these disclosures, the likelihood that the company and the Trump campaign face charges is now high.

Tip of the Mueller Investigation IcebergDetailing how the Mueller investigation is nearing “the worst case scenario” at Wired, Garrett M. Graff elaborated on several takeaways from the memos, including how key sentences “hint at much more to come — and that the Trump campaign, the Trump Organization, and even the White House likely face serious jeopardy in the continuing investigation”:

As Mueller writes, “Cohen provided the [Southern District of New York] with useful information concerning certain discrete Russia-related matters core to its investigation that he obtained by virtue of his regular contact with Company executives during the campaign.” What precisely those “discrete Russia-related matters” are, we don’t know —yet — but the known behavior of the Trump campaign associates and family members appears damning.

And the truth may have been taped, as “surreptitious recordings made by the Cohen and quoted in the document remind us that it’s possible that prosecutors even have recordings of Trump ordering his fixer to commit a felony”:

Mueller doesn’t say precisely what he has, but the new documents are littered with breadcrumbs — mentions of travel records, testimonial evidence, emails, draft documents, recordings, and more.

Speaking with the Guardian, Patrick Cotter, a former federal prosecutor who was helped take down mobster John Gotti, also suggested that the current phase of Mueller’s strategy is more midgame than endgame:

We’re in stage two. We’re hearing the indictments and the pleas, people cooperating. Then there’s going to be a stage three, where people who are not cooperating, just — the hammer falls. And I don’t know if it’s going to be Don Jr., or [Jared] Kushner, or who knows. But I think it’s going to happen, and I can’t tell you when. But I think it’s going to happen.

Yo, CollusionIt also seems clear that Russia must have been overjoyed with the success of their meddling, as Garrett M. Graff sums up for Wired:

What intelligence professionals would call [the Kremlin’s] assessment and recruitment phases seems to have unfolded with almost textbook precision, with few stumbling blocks and plenty of encouragement from the Trump side.

Mueller’s court filings, when coupled with other investigative reporting, paint a picture of how the Russian government, through various trusted-but-deniable intermediaries, conducted a series of “approaches” over the course of the spring of 2016 to determine, as [Lawfare’s Benjamin] Wittes says, whether “this is a guy you can do business with.”
 The answer, from everyone in Trumpland— from Michael Cohen in January 2016, from George Papadopoulos in spring 2016, from Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016, from Michael Flynn in December 2016 —appears to have been an unequivocal “yes.”

Trump Is Compromised by Russia

Today has been a busy news day in the context of the Russiagate investigation ranging from a new plea deal by Michael Cohen, this time in the realm of the Russiagate investigation and Cohen's testimony at hearings before Congress, and what appear to be increasingly desperate lies from Der Trumpenführer himself,  Meanwhile, the Feds have raided the office of Trump's former tax attorney and Germany has raided the offices of Deutsche Bank, the last bank that was willing to make loans for Trump projects (former Justice Anthony Kennedy's son over saw the bank's real estate lending).  These raids may be unrelated and coincidentally happened on the same day as Cohen's new guilty plea.  Nonetheless, some commentators have even indicated that in retrospect today might indeed be looked back upon as the beginning of the end of Trump's time in the White House.  Trump will not go down quietly and one big worry is to what extent he is willing to do severe damage to the nation as he desperately tries to save himself.  Here are highlights from a column in the New York Times: 

One of the chief questions in the Trump-Russia scandal has been whether Vladimir Putin has leverage over the president of the United States, and, if so, what that leverage looks like. The significance of the fabled “pee tape,” after all, is not that it would reveal Donald Trump to be a pervert bent on defiling the place where Barack Obama slept. Rather, the tape matters because, if real, it would show the president to be vulnerable to Russian blackmail.

That’s also why evidence of Trump’s business involvement with Russia would be significant, as Trump himself acknowledged shortly before his inauguration, when he tweeted, “Russia has never tried to use leverage over me. I HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH RUSSIA — NO DEALS, NO LOANS, NO NOTHING!”

We still don’t know for certain if Russia has used leverage over Trump. But there should no longer be any doubt that Russia has leverage over him.

On Thursday morning, Trump’s former lawyer Michael Cohen — the former executive vice president of the Trump Organization — pleaded guilty to making false statements to Congress about efforts to build a Trump-branded property in Moscow that extended into the 2016 presidential campaign.

In an August 2017 letter to the House and Senate intelligence committees, Cohen said that the Moscow project ended in January 2016. He claimed not to recall contacts with Russian government officials about a potential deal. Cohen told Congress that he spoke about the project with Trump — identified as “Individual 1” in the criminal information document that Robert Mueller, the special counsel, filed on Thursday — only three times. He said he never briefed Trump’s family.

According to Mueller’s filing, all of this was false. Efforts to obtain Russian government approval for a Trump-branded development in Moscow went on until “approximately June 2016,” after Trump had effectively secured the Republican nomination for president. Cohen, Mueller’s document said, “discussed the status and progress of the Moscow project with Individual 1” more than three times. He also “briefed family members of Individual 1 within the company about the project.”

In January 2016, according to Mueller’s document, Cohen had a 20-minute conversation with the assistant to a Russian official in which he sought Russia’s help moving the project forward. The next day, Felix Sater, a Trump associate identified in the court filing as “Individual 2,” wrote Cohen to tell him he’d heard from Putin’s office. Cohen made plans to travel to Russia, calling them off only on June 14, which happened to be the day that The Washington Post first reported that Russian government hackers had penetrated Democratic National Committee computers. At one point, Cohen and Sater were also coordinating with figures in Moscow about a potential Trump visit in connection with the project.

So we now know that Trump lied to the American people about at least one part of his business relationship with Russia, a geopolitical foe that interfered in our election process on his behalf.

In a Jan. 11, 2017, news conference, Trump said that the “closest I came to Russia” was in selling a Palm Beach mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008. While we’re just learning precisely how dishonest this was, Putin has known it all along. That means that throughout Trump’s campaign and presidency, Putin has had the power to plunge him into political crisis.

“If the Russians are aware that senior American officials are publicly stating things that are not true, it’s a counterintelligence nightmare,” Adam Schiff, the California Democrat in line to take over the House Intelligence Committee, told me.

Speaking to reporters before flying to Argentina on Thursday, Trump justified his pursuit of a Moscow project this way: “There was a good chance that I wouldn’t have won, in which case I would have gotten back into the business, and why should I lose lots of opportunities?” This could be read as a confession of motive. In the 2016 campaign, Russia wanted to humiliate Hillary Clinton and delegitimize America’s election. Trump wanted help building his brand.

Personally, I suspect that Cohen's new guilty plea and what it is revealing is only the tip of the ice berg.  Moreover, it's a safe bet that Mueller has emails, text messages, and a great deal of documentation to back up the fact that Cohen's previous false testimony was all untrue.  They may well show that Trump was deeply involved in the multiple conspiracies. 

Senate Intelligence Committee: Russia Interfered and Backed Trump

While the Republican controlled House Intelligence Committee proved itself to be little more than a patsy for Donald Trump and claimed that it found no evidence of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, the Senate counterpart found the exact opposite.   In a rebuke to Trump and Denin Nunes' farcical - if not treasonous - committee, the Senate found that (i) Russia had indeed interfered and had backed Trump, and (ii) the intelligence community's conclusion to that effect was accurate.  The take away on today, the 4th of July?  The stooge of a foreign power occupies the White House and is destroying the western alliance and framework that has held Russia in check for 70 years. Frighteningly, Trump's base, which claims to be the most patriotic of Americans, slavishly supports a likely traitor.  The Hill looks at the Senate Committee's conclusions. Here are excerpts:

The Senate Intelligence Committee has unequivocally upheld the conclusion of the intelligence community that Russia developed a "clear preference" for then-candidate Donald Trump in the 2016 election and sought to help him win the White House. 

The assessment, announced in an unclassified summary released Tuesday, represents a direct repudiation of the committee’s counterpart in the House — and of President Trump himself, who has consistently rejected assertions that Moscow sought to bolster his candidacy through its election interference. 

“The Committee has spent the last 16 months reviewing the sources, tradecraft and analytic work underpinning the Intelligence Community Assessment and sees no reason to dispute the conclusions,” said Chairman Richard Burr (R-N.C.) said in a statement. 

The so-called "intelligence community assessment," or ICA, is a "sound intelligence production," according the Senate panel.

 

The ICA relied not only on public Russian leadership commentary and state media reports, but also "a body of intelligence reporting to support the assessment that Putin and the Russian Government developed a clear preference for Trump," the committee found. 

Senate investigators also rejected the notion that the ICA was inappropriately influenced by politics, as some of Trump's supporters have alleged. 

In yet another contradiction to Trump allies claims, the Senate panel also found that a piece of Democratic-funded opposition research known as the Steele dossier did not "in any way inform the analysis in the ICA — including the key findings."

 

All in all, the Senate panel's report was a unflinching contradiction of many of the core claims made by Trump allies in the House. 

 

The Senate committee is still in the process of preparing the classified report detailing its conclusions about the ICA, which when completed will go through a classification review with an eye towards making a version public.

The Senate panel's overall investigation into Russian election meddling is also still ongoing, with interim reports like this one released on a rolling basis. 

While Trump Attacks Clinton, Mueller Steadily Builds His Case

Gates with Der Trumpenführer.

Yesterday the cheeto colored occupant of the White House attacked Hillary Clinton yet again at the CPAC gathering of the mentally unhinged, white supremacists - check out the major set to by former RNC chair Michael Steele here over racist remarks about him at CPAC - and Christofascist extremist.  One would think that it was still back during the 2016 presidential campaign to listen to the liar-in-chief.  Of course, the unwashed at CPAC ate it up, even as Robert Mueller seemingly continues to quietly and relentlessly works on building his case.  Obviously, Paul Manafort is a major target for Mueller and, as many suspect, Manafort may have been the lead interface with Russians if collusion to throw the 2016 election to Trump.  A piece in the New York Times provides an overview of developments and how the noose may be tightening.  Here are article excerpts:

In a fiery speech to supporters on Friday, President Trump went after his vanquished opponent from 2016. “We had a crooked candidate,” he declared. The crowd responded with a signature chant from the campaign trail: “Lock her up!”

About three hours later and 10 miles to the north, Mr. Trump’s former deputy campaign chairman, who helped put him in the White House, arrived at a federal courthouse in Washington to plead guilty to being crooked and face the prospect that the authorities will now lock him up.

With each passing day, Robert S. Mueller III, . . . . seems to add another brick to the case he is building — one more indictment, one more interview, one more guilty plea. Mr. Trump and his advisers insist they are not worried because so far none of the charges implicate the president. Yet no one outside Mr. Mueller’s office knows for sure where he is heading and the flurry of recent action seems to be inexorably leading to a larger target.

“When you put that all together, the White House should be extremely worried,” said Benjamin Wittes, editor in chief of Lawfare, a blog that analyzes legal issues, . . . . . “You have to ask the question about whether there is a certain measure of self-delusion going on here.”

Mr. Trump is correct that nothing produced publicly by Mr. Mueller to date has claimed any wrongdoing by the president nor any illegal collaboration with the Russians seeking to influence the 2016 election.  . . .  The charges against Mr. Manafort and Mr. Gates depict an expansive money-laundering and fraud operation stemming from their work for Ukrainian leaders aligned with Moscow, not from their involvement in the campaign. Still, as the pileup at the courthouse indicates, allies of Mr. Trump acknowledged that the investigation had taken a toll. . . . . Inside the White House, officials expressed calm resignation on Friday as Mr. Gates marched into the courthouse. But there was low-grade concern out of recognition that Mr. Gates was in a lot of meetings over a long period of time. The fact that Mr. Gates was allowed to plead guilty to just two relatively lower-level charges indicated to legal experts that he must have something of value for Mr. Mueller. The presumption in Mr. Trump’s circle is that Mr. Gates may not have any incriminating information about the president but could be a dangerous witness against Mr. Manafort, who in turn could threaten Mr. Trump. Mr. Manafort participated in a meeting in June 2016 along with Donald Trump Jr., the candidate’s son, and Jared Kushner, his son-in-law, with a Russian lawyer on the promise of receiving incriminating information about Hillary Clinton on behalf of Russia’s government. Mr. Manafort also reportedly offered during the campaign to give “private briefings” to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch allied with President Vladimir V. Putin . . . Prosecutors are interested in learning how a Republican convention platform plank on Russia’s intervention in Ukraine was watered down. [B]eing surrounded by people who are prosecuted has damaged other presidents even when they were not directly implicated. . . . In the current case, the targets so far have included not just a “coffee boy,” as Mr. Papadopoulos was described by an adviser to Mr. Trump, but the president’s top two campaign officials and national security adviser. While Mr. Trump has dismissed the relevance of allegations against Mr. Manafort because they involved business dealings before the campaign, the latest indictment claims that he was scheming to defraud banks while serving as Mr. Trump’s chairman. Mr. Wittes said Mr. Mueller’s actions could be seen as building a pyramid — establishing that there was a Russian influence campaign and assembling a group of cooperating witnesses. But the special counsel has not tipped his hand yet.

“The basic contours of the puzzle is that he’s constructed his actions in a way that we don’t know where it’s leading,” he said, “and that’s on purpose.”

Why Republicans Wanted to Hide the Fusion GPS Transcript

Lindsey Graham and Chuck Grassley - self prostitutes for Trump?  

The previous post looked at Senator Diane Feinstein's release of the Fusion GPS trnascript to the dismay of Republicans who disingenuously claimed its release would harm the investigation as a way of trying to throw up a smoke screen to distract the public from what the transcript reveals, none of which is good for Der Trumpenführer and his sycophants.  Conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin who has put nation - and basic morality - ahead of her party has a column that neatly lays out what Lindsey Graham and others prostituting themselves to Trump wanted to hide from the American public.  Here are highlights from her column:

You can understand why the Republicans were furiously trying to suppress the transcript, which contains no classified information.

• First, it makes clear that Steele was engaged because of his expertise and contacts. He was not told to find anything in particular, but just to research the totality of Trump’s involvement in Russia.
• Second, according to Simpson, Trump was doing business all over the former Soviet states of Georgia and Azerbaijan. Interestingly, Trump repeatedly denied having financial ties in Russia itself but never publicly denied operations in states in which Russians exercised substantial influence.
• Third, in investigating Trump’s finances they found his properties were not as highly valued as he suggested and, in the case of several golf courses, weren’t making money.
• Fourth, Steele took it upon himself to report his finding to the FBI because he believed there was a “crime in progress” and matter of national security. He later relayed to Simpson that the FBI already had information from a campaign source.
• Fifth, Trump lied about not knowing who Felix Sater is. Simpson testified, “This was something he didn’t want to talk about and testified under oath he wouldn’t know Felix if he ran into him in the street. That was not true. He knew him well and, in fact, continued to associate with him long after he learned of Felix’s organized crime ties. So, you know, that tells you something about somebody.” We do not know if Sater was in fact tied to organized crime.
• Sixth, Simpson called it a reasonable “interpretation” that the Trump Tower meeting was designed by Russian officials to reach out to and cooperate with the Trump team.
• Seventh, far from interfering in the election to benefit Hillary Clinton, the FBI did not publicly disclose during the campaign the wealth of information it was learning about Trump and Russia.

What stands out most from an initial perusal of the transcript is the professionalism and seriousness of Fusion GPS and Steele. By attempting to suppress a candid look into the dossier (really a series of memos, Simpson explains), Republicans once again are caught acting like Trump henchmen, trying to play down the investigation into Russia, not unearth and air what they learn.

I'd love to know what "kompromat" Trump and/or the Russians have on Graham. 

Secret GOP Congress Members Seek to Subvert FBI and CIA

Is Nunes conspiring with Trump to derail the Russia investigation?

I love to read spy and espionage thrillers.  Books like those written by David Baldacci or Nelson DeMille which have plots that pale in comparison to what is now taking place in Washington, D.C.  Between possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives to just released news that a group of Congressional Republicans have been using materials gathered by the House Intelligence Committee investigating collusion with Russia to run their own effort to discredit the FBI, the U.S. Justice Department and the CIA.  The beneficiary of the effort? Der Trumpenführer, of course, and perhaps Republicans who knew of illicit communications between Trump personnel and Russian operatives.  Politico broke the news of this pernicious GOP undertaking.  Note how Democrats were kept in the dark even as the White House was involved in the effort.  Here are excerpts:

A group of House Republicans has gathered secretly for weeks in the Capitol in an effort to build a case that senior leaders of the Justice Department and FBI improperly — and perhaps criminally — mishandled the contents of a dossier that describes alleged ties between President Donald Trump and Russia, according to four people familiar with their plans.

A subset of the Republican members of the House intelligence committee, led by Chairman Devin Nunes of California, has been quietly working parallel to the committee's high-profile inquiry into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential election. They haven't informed Democrats about their plans, but they have consulted with the House's general counsel.

The people familiar with Nunes' plans said the goal is to highlight what some committee Republicans see as corruption and conspiracy in the upper ranks of federal law enforcement. The group hopes to release a report early next year detailing their concerns about the DOJ and FBI, and they might seek congressional votes to declassify elements of their evidence.

That final product could ultimately be used by Republicans to discredit special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether any Trump aides colluded with Russia during the 2016 campaign — or possibly even to justify his dismissal, as some rank-and-file Republicans and Trump allies have demanded. Tuesday, his son Donald Trump Jr. told a crowd in Florida the probes were part of a “rigged system” by “people at the highest levels of government” who were working to hurt the president [Trump]. The sources familiar with the separate inquiry said it was born out of steadily building frustration with the Justice Department's refusal to share details of the way the Trump dossier was used to launch the FBI's investigation of his campaign team last year — or whether it was the basis for any court-ordered surveillance of Trump associates. It's unclear how many members of the intelligence committee are participating in the side effort. Lawmakers on the full committee interviewed by POLITICO refused to discuss it. A congressional aide with knowledge of the meetings said Rep. Trey Gowdy (R-S.C.) was not among the participants. ”While he does believe the FBI and DOJ have recently made decisions worth looking into, he is and will always be a defender of the FBI, DOJ and the special counsel," the aide said. DOJ and FBI officials also declined to comment. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein defended the FBI and Mueller's team at a recent hearing on Capitol Hill. "The special counsel investigation is not a witch hunt," he said.

Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the House intelligence committee, said he wasn't aware of the Nunes effort but said it fit with what he sees as an increasingly destructive bent in Republicans’ rhetoric and actions.

The Nunes-led group is the latest evidence of an increasingly toxic and bruising confrontation between Republicans on Capitol Hill and the highest ranks of the justice system. Some Hill Republicans are irate about the Justice Department's refusal to provide more details about its investigation of Trump associates' ties to Russia. To Democrats, the GOP offensive is an attempt to distract from the investigation of Trump associates by Mueller, who has already indicted Trump's former campaign chairman Paul Manafort and secured a guilty plea from his first national security adviser, Michael Flynn. There are indications he's investigating whether Trump obstructed justice by firing former FBI Director James Comey, whose exit led to Mueller taking over the Russia probe.

The more dangerous Mueller's probe has seemed to become to the White House, the louder the attacks have gotten from Trump allies on Capitol Hill, Democrats say.

“Republicans are terrified that Special Counsel Mueller is getting closer to the truth, and they are desperate to grind his investigation to a halt — even if they undermine the foundations of our democracy," Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-Md.) said in a statement after Republicans requested the FBI interviews.

Schiff said committee rules require consultation between Republicans and Democrats, but House Speaker Paul Ryan must enforce bipartisan cooperation if he wants it to occur.  "And at this point, you have to conclude that he doesn’t," Schiff said. Ryan’s office declined to comment.

One of the ways that Hitler and the Nazis increased their power in the early 1930's was to attack the integrity of those who opposed them in government agencies or sought to expose the truth about Nazi activities and lies.  Be very, very afraid if Trump/the GOP  manage to silence those seeking evidence and the truth.

First Charges Filed in Mueller Investigation

Things apparently going to get interesting as early as Monday when those charged in the first indictments in special prosecutor Robert Mueller's may be taken into custody.  Obviously, we need to be prepared for a twitter orgy flowing from Der Trumpenführer and fake news outlets like Fox News, a/k/a Faux News, and Breitbart which will ramp up obfuscation campaigns to distract the ignorance and conspiracy theory embracing base of Trump supporters.  The names of those indicted have not yet been released as arrangements are being made.  CNN looks at this development.  Here are excerpts:

A federal grand jury in Washington on Friday approved the first charges in the investigation led by special counsel Robert Mueller, according to sources briefed on the matter.

The charges are still sealed under orders from a federal judge. Plans were prepared Friday for anyone charged to be taken into custody as soon as Monday, the sources said. It is unclear what the charges are. A spokesman for the special counsel's office declined to comment.
 Under the regulations governing special counsel investigations, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, who has oversight over the Russia investigation, would have been made aware of any charges before they were taken before the grand jury for approval, according to people familiar with the matter.

On Friday, top lawyers who are helping to lead the Mueller probe, including veteran prosecutor Andrew Weissmann, were seen entering the court room at the DC federal court where the grand jury meets to hear testimony in the Russia investigation.

Reporters present saw a flurry of activity at the grand jury room, but officials made no announcements.
 Mueller's team has also examined foreign lobbying conducted by former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, former national security adviser Michael Flynn and others. His team has issued subpoenas for documents and testimony to a handful of figures, including some people close to Manafort, and others involved in the Trump Tower meeting between Russians and campaign officials.

One can only hope that the indictments will cause those indicted to spill their guts and, with luck, implicate Trump, Pence and others in activities colluding with Russia and/or obstruction of justice.  

Trump Campaign Company Contacted WikiLeaks for Documents Stolen by Russia

Yet another shoe seems to be dropped that further validates the allegations that the Trump/Pence campaign engaged in efforts to collude with Russia in order to damage Hillary Clinton's campaign.  Naturally, as CNN and other real news outlets are reporting on Wikileak's confirmation that the Trump/Pence campaign made contact seeking documents stolen by Russian intelligence from the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, Der Trumpenführer is launching into full obfuscation mode and is being aided and abetted by the fake right wing "news" sites who are working desperately to concoct faux counter scandals against Hillary Clinton. It goes without saying that the Fox News viewing, racist and Christofascist base of Trump supporters are eating up the lies flowing from Breitbart and Fox News even as Fox News is ignoring damning new evidence against the Trump/Pence, et al.   It is sadly, all part of the right wing cover up effort for Der Trumpenführer.  Here are highlights on the real news from CNN:

The head of a data analytics company linked to the Trump campaign contacted WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in 2016 regarding thousands of Hillary Clinton's emails kept on a private server while she was secretary of state, according to four sources familiar with the outreach.

Alexander Nix, the chief executive of Cambridge Analytica, sent an email to several people including top Donald Trump donor Rebekah Mercer, relaying that he had emailed Assange seeking access to emails from Clinton's private server to turn them into a searchable database for the campaign or a pro-Trump political action committee, two of the sources said.

Cambridge Analytica was hired in the summer of 2016 as part of the Trump campaign's three-pronged data operation, which was led by Brad Parscale and overseen by Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
 The attempt at collaboration raises fresh questions about the willingness of people associated with the Trump campaign to work with Wikileaks for political gain. The site, which publishes leaked documents, released hacked emails in July from the Democratic National Committee and in October from Clinton campaign chair John Podesta. US intelligence has said the Podesta emails were stolen by Russia and handed over to WikiLeaks through an intermediary.

News of the email exchange comes amid federal investigations into whether there was collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Parscale, the Trump campaign's digital director, was interviewed Tuesday by the House intelligence committee as part of that inquiry.

Assange confirmed the exchange in a post on Twitter Wednesday. "I can confirm an approach by Cambridge Analytica [prior to November last year] . . . .

Nix and Cambridge Analytica, which is backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, did not respond to requests for comment. After the Daily Beast report published, the Trump campaign issued a statement by campaign executive director Michael S. Glassner: "Once President Trump secured the nomination in 2016, one of the most important decisions we made was to partner with the Republican National Committee on data analytics. Leading into the election, the RNC had invested in the most sophisticated data targeting program in modern American in history, which helped secure our victory in the fall. . . . . Any claims that voter data from any other source played a key role in the victory are false."
 The statement does not address contacts between Cambridge Analytica and WikiLeaks. . . . . Parscale downplayed the campaign's connections to Cambridge Analytica, one of the sources said.

He began working for the Trump Organization's digital team in early 2015 before Trump officially announced his plan to run for office. Parscale and employees from his firm, Giles-Parscale, incorporated some staffers from Cambridge Analytica into their data operation.
 In July 2016, Trump called on Russia to find the emails. - "Russia, if you're listening, I hope you're able to find the 30,000 e-mails that are missing. I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press. Let's see if that happens. That'll be next," Trump said in a news conference.

News of the outreach comes after an earlier disclosure that a Republican operative, Peter W. Smith, had been on the hunt for Clinton's missing emails during the campaign. Smith spoke to The Wall Street Journal in May, saying he and the colleagues he enlisted found five groups of hackers claiming to have 33,000 deleted emails from the private server Clinton used during her tenure as secretary of state. He [Smith] said that he determined two of the groups were Russian. "We knew the people who had these were probably around the Russian government," Smith told the Journal. Smith was found dead of an apparent suicide weeks after the interview. Steve Bannon, Trump's former White House chief strategist, was vice president and secretary of Cambridge Analytica until he stepped down to run the Trump campaign in August 2016, according to The New York Times. The Mercers are investors in Breitbart News, the far-right site where Bannon served as executive chairman before he ran Trump's campaign.

Political strategist Roger Stone, Trump's long-time confidant, had boasted during the campaign of knowledge about upcoming Wikileaks publication of damaging documents, at one point telling the Boston Herald Radio that he expected "Julian Assange and the Wikileaks people to drop a payload of new documents on a weekly basis fairly soon. 

Given that more than three  quarters of Trump's claims and statements have been documented to be untrue - lies in common parlance - I put little credence on anything Trump and his sycophants say to deflect attention from their underhanded dealings and possible treason.    

Quote of the Day: Russiagate - It’s Probably A Lot Worse Than We Thought

As noted numerous times, my gut feeling is that Donald Trump and his campaign sought to collude with Vladimir Putin's operatives to throw the 2016 presidential election to Trump.  I further believe that Putin likely has blackmail information on Trump either involving personal misconduct - remember the "golden shower" rumor? - or more likely financial improprieties involving  money laundering and/or undisclosed financial reliance on Russian funding, the latter explaining Trump's refusal to release his tax returns.  As the train wreck that is the Trump presidency hurls down the tracks towards disaster, the increasing smoke plumes suggest that the Russiagate situation is likely far worse than many want to admit.  Josh Marshall explains why:

Yesterday we learned that President Trump had a second, undisclosed discussion with President Putin for as long as an hour with only Putin’s translator present. In other words, no other American citizen was there to make a record of or hear what was discussed.

It’s been noted that President Obama spoke for a few minutes one-on-one once with Dmitry Medvedev when he was President or Russia. My understanding is that Medvedev actually speaks decent English; so translation is less of an issue. But no one had any reason to believe that President Obama was compromised by the Russian government or somehow in league with it. We have plenty of reasons to believe that about President Trump. (Is this circular reasoning? No, as I’ll explain in a moment.) I see no plausible explanation for this latest revelation other than President Trump wanting to discuss things with President Putin that he does not want any other American citizen to hear.

I know that sounds ominous and even hyperbolic. But what is the alternative explanation – when all the other relevant evidence is considered? I can’t see any.

Add into the mix that even if you think that most or all of the Trump/Russia stuff is a bum rap, it is clearly the case that speaking privately with Putin for an hour – with no witnesses – would raise an insane level of suspicion. Why would you do that? You would only do that if you thought having the conversation was really, really, really important. It’s not circular reasoning because the suspicion is a fact; courting it for no reason is all but impossible to explain.

The mix of President Trump’s bizarre toadying to Russia and Putin himself, combined with the latest revelations about Don Jr and the rest make it no longer credible that there’s any innocent explanation to this mystery. I think a lot of higher-ups in government have not fully thought through and absorbed what this means.

Trump Just Incriminated Himself

I have been a fan of Andrew Sullivan for years and have even had the pleasure to meet him once at an Equality Virginia event some years back.  I often disagree with him, especially in respect to his views on Catholicism and remaining a Catholic - he did while I left the Catholic Church for the less soul killing Episcopal and then Evangelical Lutheran Church where gays are not deemed "intrinsically disordered."  Where we do agree is on the descent of the Republican Party into something evil itself. That cancer has now fully metastasized in the form of Donald Trump and the Vichy Republicans  - who like the Vichy French in WWI who collaborated with the Nazis - who continue to put party over country.  Conservatives are working strenuously to downplay the consequential nature of the Comey firing and now Trump's apparent threats directed at Comey and suggestion that White House tapes exist.  The parallels with Watergate just seem to keep growing, but with a much more dangerous underlying betrayal.  Here are highlights from Sullivan's latest piece in New York Magazine:

At the center of the Comey firing is, it seems to me, a simple question. Is the presidency of Donald Trump a threat to liberal democracy? This has always been the question. It’s why his presidency is different than any other. Yes, there are policy goals that can be debated — health care, foreign policy, mass immigration, etc — and he can be opposed or supported on those grounds. There are appointments — or a stunning lack of them across the executive branch — that reflect amateurishness and incompetence outside the norm. There are habits — like Trump’s tweeting — that degrade the office of the president. There are skills — such as shepherding legislation through Congress — that may be absent, and their absence might even be a cause for relief. There is evidence that the president knows close to nothing about the world — see this latest jaw-dropping interview with The Economist, where he imagines you can buy health insurance for $15 a month. And there are clear indications he is off his rocker — see this staggering exchange about steam, “digital,” and aircraft carriers in an interview with Time. These are horrifying indications he is unfit for the office he holds. But they can all be handled within the boundaries of democratic electoral accountability — and, with any luck, will be in 2018 and 2020.

The core concern was always deeper than this. It was that Trump doesn’t understand the Constitution he has sworn to protect; that he would abuse his executive power, to lash out at enemies; that he would undermine the rule of law by trying to get his way, consequences be damned; that he would turn vital democratic institutions, such as the Justice Department and the FBI, into mere handmaidens of his own interest, rather than guarantors of the public’s. And it is clear to me that the firing of Comey — while within the president’s Constitutional powers — falls squarely into this category. To fire someone who is conducting an investigation into your own campaign cannot help but be seen as an interference with the rule of law. It is to cast doubt on the integrity of that investigation, and its future. It undermines public confidence that the executive branch can enforce the law against itself. It politicizes what should not be politicized. It crosses a clear line.

And it also crosses a line when you keep lying brazenly about why you did it. You don’t pin it on Rod Rosenstein. You don’t pretend it’s about “showboating.” You don’t ludicrously argue that you’ve just finally realized that Comey did Hillary wrong. You don’t also say that you were going to fire him anyway. You don’t say the FBI was in turmoil under Comey, when it wasn’t. And you don’t say you want to get to the bottom of the matter when you have already declared the entire story a hoax. More to the point, you don’t lie about all these things and then go on television and blurt out the truth: “When I decided to just do it [fire Comey], I said to myself, I said, you know, this Russian thing with Trump and Russia … is a made up story, it’s an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election.” Read that again. The president has just said on national television that the Russia investigation was in the front of his mind when he decided impulsively to fire Comey. He has admitted he wanted to remove the FBI director because his investigation — which is fast intensifying — was targeting his campaign. That is called obstruction of justice. His spokeswoman yesterday reiterated that, after the Comey firing, the administration hoped the Russia investigation, which was trivial, would be wound up soon.

We also learned overnight that, according to sources close to Comey, just seven days after his inauguration, Trump invited the former FBI director to a private dinner. At the dinner, he twice asked him for his personal loyalty. Comey demurred, as any decent FBI director should. But the very idea that a president should ask the FBI director this is astonishing and deeply disturbing. It’s an attempt — just a week into his presidency — to control an agency he absolutely must not control.

All of this is simply unacceptable. An attempt to obstruct justice is an impeachable offense. And Trump has just openly admitted to such a thing. When, one wonders, will the patriots in the Republican Party stand up and confront this? If Clinton had done such a thing, the House would be drawing up articles of impeachment right now.

Now, if I am not to be stupefyingly naive, I have to assume the president is guilty of something and is busy rigging the system to stymie any attempt to bring potential traitors to justice. And yes: This is about the possibility of treason against our democratic system. And the president, chumming it up with Lavrov and Kislyak the next day, seems incensed that there is even an investigation at all.

If this is swept under the rug, we take one giant step toward the authoritarianism Trump has always threatened. When a democracy believes its own president can put his finger on the scales of justice whenever his own interests are at stake, and get away with it, it is on its way to disintegration. I hope the Senate understands that this is not a drill. There needs now to be an independent prosecutor to take charge of the FBI case. If there isn’t, the checks in our system will have failed.