Wednesday, January 24th, 2018.

MUELLER AND TRUMP CIRCLING ONE ANOTHER

Special Counselor Robert Mueller wants to interview President Donald Trump.  Trump said he’d love to speak to Mueller, even under oath.  Trump’s lawyers had a shit fit because they have the Worst. Client. Ever.

A normal interview does not require anyone to swear to tell the truth, but lying to federal investigator is a crime.  At best, Donald Trump has a tenuous relationship with the truth.  He is a pathological liar.  If this interview lasts more than 10 minutes, he’ll have broken the law.

If Trump were subpoenaed to appear before a Grand Jury, then he’d have to answer questions under oath.

Personally, I don’t think this interview should happen, but it will.  Trump’s only chance is to listen to his lawyers and shut the fuck up.  But, this is Trump.  He won’t listen to his lawyers.  His ego won’t let him listen to people he’s paying.  He views lawyers like his employees, and he treats his employees like slaves.  How dare one of his slaves tell him what to do?  He pays their salary, he’ll do what he wants, and their job is to protect him after the fact.

MUELLER INTERVIEWS CIA DIRECTOR POMPEO AND OTHER INTEL HEADS

This was reported by Reuters.  I found the following to be of particular interest:

In interviews last year with Pompeo, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats and National Security Agency Director Admiral Mike Rogers, Mueller’s team focused on whether Trump had asked them to lean on former FBI Director James Comey, the sources said.

 Mueller also asked the officials if Trump tried to shut down intelligence investigations into Russian election meddling and into contacts between Russian officials connected with President Vladimir Putin’s government and associates of Trump or his campaign, the sources said on condition of anonymity.

That’s right, Mueller’s asking them about Trump’s ties to Russia.  Considering that prosecutors don’t ask questions they don’t already have the answers to, Mueller already knows, and wants to know what they know.

POMPEO DELEGATED AWAY 40% OF JOB

On the one year anniversary of his new position, CIA Director Mike Pompeo explained that he had delegated away much of his job.

Shortly after Pompeo took over at the CIA is right when the Russian Investigation hit the main stream press. The people on the inside knew that Pompeo shouldn’t be trusted, and that his loyalties were in question. However, they couldn’t completely cut him out of the loop, he’d have to be involved on some things, but he didn’t need nor want the keys to the kingdom.

What does a mid to upper-level bureaucrat do to keep their boss from screwing up the life’s work of thousands of agents and analysts? Bury the good stuff in the mundane, and make the job so mind-numbing that the new boss wants nothing to do with it. They inundate the boss with reports, analysis, reports about reports, reports about reports about reports, and reports about analysis about reports about analysis about reports. Bury him under every travel request, every equipment requisition, every pointless meeting and committee that is humanly possible.  Slow walk every one of his requests and require triplicate confirmation on the smallest stuff he asks for.  Throw so many things at them that “need DIRCIA approval” that the new boss eventually says “Screw it! You deal with it!” and he throws his hands up in disgust.

I think this is part of what happened. The “Deep State” buried Pompeo in so much minutiae that he delegated it to different department heads, and in doing so inadvertently gave the agents fighting Russia the room to operate without having Trump’s pick get in the way.

RICK GATES HIRES LAWYER THAT SPECIALIZES IN MAKING PLEA DEALS

Holy Mother of Pearl, this is a big deal.  Like, ‘can take down the entire fundraising arm of the GOP’ big.

Rick Gates wasn’t just an aide for Paul Manafort, but was also Tom Barrack’s right hand man during the Inauguration.  As you’ll recall, Tom Barrack was the Chairman for the Trump Inauguration Committee.  The same committee that raised over $110 million, spent maybe $20 million of it, and can’t find the rest.  Rick Gates was the Deputy Committee Chairman.

So, we’ve got a known money launderer, $80-90 million that went missing, a long list of people that donated to this committee in exchange for political favors, and a team of prosecutors that include specialists in white collar crimes.  Now, we add a lawyer who specialty is making deals to keep his clients from dying of old age in prison.

Why would the Special Counselor’s Office make a deal with Rick Gates?  Because he knows where the missing money went, and can tie dozens of people to it.

The SCO’s office doesn’t need Gates to flip on Paul Manafort.  They have enough on Manafort to guarantee he dies in prison of old age, and this is before the superseding indictments fall from the sky.  Manafort’s only chance of not dying in prison in the United States or being extradited to Ukraine for war crimes is to flip on someone hire up the food chain, and he’s shown no desire to do that so far.

But Gates, on the other hand, has a wife and a family with small children.  Plus, he’s tied to the Inauguration Committee, which ties him to Tom Barrack and others.  Gates can provide all of the information on the donors, the banks used, and if anyone received a quid pro quo for their donations.

Just in case Rick needed any more incentive to work with Mueller’s team, he should ask Andrew Fastow.  Andrew was the former CFO at Enron.  Like Rick, Andrew asked his wife to get involved by hiding ill-gotten funds in her name.  The prosecutor in the Enron case went after Lea Fastow, Andrew’s wife and used that to get Andrew to flip on the rest of the board.  The lawyer in that case was Andrew Weissman.  He reported to Robert Mueller.  Just like he does now.

MANAFORT LEGAL TEAM ACCIDENTALLY UPLOADS CASE NOTES TO PUBLIC DOCKET

Paul’s lawyers done fucked up.

Unlike Rick Gates, Paul Manafort is pulling out every trick in the playbook in a long shot attempt at beating these charges.  It doesn’t help when the legal team uploads an internal memo into the public docket, for everyone, including the prosecutors, to see.

FLYNN KEPT WHITE HOUSE IN DARK ABOUT FBI MEETING

Can you believe it’s been one year since Mike Flynn lied to the FBI about his calls to the Russian Ambassador?

This story confirmed a piece that I’d previously reported. Sally Yates had given her information to the FBI and the Special Counselor’s Office.

Also, this story reports that Mike Flynn didn’t have a lawyer present, even though there was one on staff available for him, and that he didn’t think this was about him until well into the interview.

HANNITY THE RUSSIAN MOUTHPIECE, AND HOW THE PARTY OF “LAW AND ORDER” AND THEIR ATTACKS AGAINST LAW ENFORCEMENT

Mother Jones has a nice write-up about how Russian Trolls are using Sean Hannity to reinforce their talking points.

I’ve mentioned rumors over the last few months about how Sean was, and likely is, under investigation by the FBI for rumored ties to Russia.  Something strikes me as a little too weird for coincidence.

We’ve seen evidence of the White House coordinating stories with Fox News in an attempt to distract from bad news and discredit Trump’s enemies.  Seth Rich, Uranium One, Unmasking, Susan Rice, FBI Text Messages and Secret Societies.  Now, they’re engaging in a full-court press to discredit the FBI and Law Enforcement.  While the rest of the media is at least talking about the likelihood that Trump obstructed justice by trying to kill the Russian Investigation, Fox News is too busy carrying Trump’s water and spouting off short-sighted Pro-Trump and Pro-Putin talking points that only serve to harm this country in the long term.

Fox News and their ilk are why 30% of Americans still support Trump, even after all of the crap he’s done.  I’m afraid that number will hover around that point even as news of Trump’s crimes come to the forefront.

RUMOR MILL – RESTORE THE FAIRNESS DOCTRINE

Earlier in this country’s history, we had this thing called the Fairness Doctrine.  It had several components to it, but the two largest parts were restrictions on who could own media companies, and that media companies had to give a factual representation of the news, and had to give equal representation to both sides of a political story.

This lasted until Ronald Reagan’s administration did away with this in the late 80’s.  After that, companies could own television and papers in different markets, and multiple outlets in the same market.  They also didn’t have to give both sides of a story, only what they wanted to tell people to believe.  This led to the rise of Right Wing Media with the likes of Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, and the rest.

Eventually, we end up with media outlets that only tell the story they want to tell, and people that only get news they want to hear. If anything happens that disrupts that narrative, it disappears or gets written off as the ramblings of a madman.

This works for the most part, but something interesting happened during the 2016 election. While evidence of Trump’s crimes were strewn about for anyone to see, and his history of terrible behavior was known far and wide, the media ignored all of this to follow the “Hilary is Evil” storyline. Even as obvious evidence of Russian interference came to light, the story remained the same.

That’s where Eric Garland enters the picture.

In December 2016, he wrote a thread on Twitter called Game Theory. Here’s a link to it. It’s very long, and gives a quick description of what went wrong since the 90’s. It’s one of those things that seems nuts at the time, but feels inevitable when looked at from the future.

But something else happened. He became internet famous, with several hit pieces written about him from various outlets all at the same time. It wasn’t just RWM either, but places like Esquire, GQ, and some technology sites wrote about him. Over the last year, I’ve seen quite a few of them attacking him. The strangest one was when a young woman accused him of “mansplaining” how Intelligence Agencies worked.

Why in the Crystal Pepsi flavored fuck did all of these agencies write hit pieces on a nobody from Twitter in December 2016 on short notice?

How did they all come to the same decision to attack this nobody?

Did they think he wouldn’t keep track of all of this?

Eric wrote his findings Here. He also comes to the same conclusion that I have been saying for a while.

It is long past due to restore the Fairness Doctrine. Our future depends on it.

That’s it for today. Well, yesterday. I didn’t get this posted on Wednesday due to a technical glitch. Thursday is already heating up, as the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they would release Donnie Jr.’s testimony.

Thank you, and have a good one.

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Tuesday the 23rd.  Here’s a few things that happened today…

ATTORNEY GENERAL JEFF SESSIONS INTERVIEWED BY ROBERT MUELLER LAST WEEK

So, last week there was a large push to discredit the FBI and the Special Counselor’s office.  It started on the 17th.  What else happened that day?

The Keebler Nazi met with Robert Mueller for several hours.

This has been a bad 24 hours for the Evil House Elf.  First, news comes out that he pressured the new FBI Director to fire people that Trump doesn’t like.  Next, this story leaks that Mueller interviewed the Attorney General for several hours about Obstruction of Justice.

Yes, I said leaked.  I think this was selectively leaked by Team Mueller to send a message to Trump.  That message is “We are inside you’re cabinet, and are coming for you.”

 

MUELLER WANTS TO INTERVIEW TRUMP BY END OF FEBRUARY

Speaking of Trump, Mueller has his nuts on a platter, and is coming for him.

From what I’ve learned studying this drama over the last year, prosecutors do not go into meetings like this without already knowing the answers.  They have at least 90% of the answers, and are giving the interviewee a chance to come clean with any extra information or giving them a chance to hang themselves.

Mueller will not accept written answers to questions, he wants the Dotard face to face.  He knows that Trump can’t help but lie, and that he’s an idiot.  He also knows that he’s smart enough to know that Trump is dumb enough to think that Mueller is dumb enough to think that Trump is smart enough to get out of this.

This also gives us a timeline to work with.  Like I’ve said before, I don’t believe we’ll get any new indictments until either after the Trump Interview or as incentive for him to meet.

 

TRUMP ASKED MCCABE WHO HE VOTED FOR

This just came in as I’m finishing up the article, and is highly irregular.  It’s also of very special interest to Robert Mueller.

 

FBI DIRECTOR WRAY NAMES DANA BOENTE AS FBI GENERAL COUNSEL

I’m still skeptical of new FBI Director Chris Wray due to his connections with Trump and Christie, but I’m starting to warm up to him.

Remember when Jeff Sessions asked for Dana Boente’s resignation on Indictment Eve?  In retrospect this was some obvious obstruction of justice, but even at the time it was shady.

Well, Chris Wray just hired Dana Boente as the new General Counsel of the FBI.  This is a classic “Fuck You” maneuver.  Wray’s sort-of boss ordered a restructure of the FBI to remove people that were knowledgeable of Trump’s crimes, so to fill a position he shouldn’t have had to fill in the first place, he hired the most dangerous man that was fired by his so-called boss, and put him in a high profile position that doesn’t require an appointment or political authorization.

 

CONFIRMATION: COMEY MET WITH MUELLER MULTIPLE TIMES LAST YEAR

This confirms some rumors I heard last year that weren’t exactly state secrets, and everyone assumed happened, but it’s now part of the public record.

James Comey, former Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigations, was debriefed by Special Counselor Robert Mueller.  Formally.  On the record.

 

TWITTER WARNINGS PISS OFF RUSSIAN TROLLS ON REDDIT

Recently, Twitter sent out letters to many people informing them that they had interacted with known Russian trolls and bots during the 2016 election.  I did not receive one of these since I didn’t rejoin Twitter until last February, but I know a few people who did.  Some of them are members of the Rumor Mill, some are politicians, and a few are some other random people.

However, not everyone who received this notice realizes what it says.  For example, on the The_Donald subreddit, many “people” that received the letter “claim” that they didn’t get involved on Twitter until after the election.

Notice all of the quotes in that sentence?  I’m not sure how to grammatically point out bullshit in a sentence with a quick mark, so I use quotes.

First, T_D is the largest collection of known Russian trolls on the Internet.  Many of the users and most of the mods are Russians.

Second, this article takes an interesting point.  It assumes that these users are people, Americans, and being honest.  I can call bullshit on these comments because I have personally battled at least two of the users mentioned in the article.

Finally, of all of the people they could have found for a quote, the author goes with Glenn Fucking Greenwald.  Of Wikileaks and Ed Snowden fame.

Some left-wing voices also pushed back against the move on the part of the social media company. “Twitter is sending out messages to people telling them that, for their own good, they are documenting that the user has either followed, cited or re-tweeted an account Twitter decided is linked to Russia & its propaganda efforts. That’s not creepy at all,” wrote Glenn Greenwald—the journalist who first reported the Snowden leaks revealing mass government spying in 2013—in a tweet.

Glenn Greenwald is in it neck deep with Wikileaks.  He’s bought their story full-on, and has been pushing their talking points for a while.  And by Wikileaks, I mean Russia’s.

He attacks Twitter for informing users that they were used by or interacted with Russian trolls and bots, claiming a violation of privacy and freedom of speech, he immediately pivots to whataboutism.

“Is Twitter going to track and inform users when they follow, re-tweet or approvingly cite accounts that are linked to western governments and their propaganda efforts, too?” Greenwald asked in a separate tweet, linking to a story about America’s efforts to to influence Cubans on social media.

 Greenwald is a mouthpiece for Assange, Wikileaks, and by extension the Russians.  Whether he knows it or not is the only point left for debate.  Personally, I think he’s dirty AF.  And this is a sentiment shared by all members of the Rumor Mill.

 

GP FIANCEE: GEORGE WILL BE THE JOHN DEAN OF THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

John Dean was Nixon’s White House Counsel.  He plead guilty to felony charges, then received immunity for his crimes in exchange for testimony against the Nixon White House.

 

BIDEN: MCCONNELL WOULD NOT LET OBAMA CALL OUT RUSSIAN INTERFERENCE BEFORE ELECTION

This confirms a report from last year by the Washington Post that in a closed door meeting before the 2016 election, Obama asked for support from Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan for a joint statement against Russia and the shit they were pulling during the campaign.  Mitch put the kibosh on it, and threatened to claim it was a partisan attack by the President to attack Trump.

Knowing what we know now, Mitch was likely covering his ass and found a way to blame the Democrats at the same time.

Mitch is evil and competent.

 

TRUMP SUPPORTER THREATENED TO KILL CNN EMPLOYEES

Trump’s continuous attacks on media he doesn’t like is going to get someone killed.

 

SCHUMER WITHDRAWS OFFER ON TRUMP’S WALL

This was part of the deal to get a Continuing Resolution signed until February 8 or 9 while a budget is debated.  Since negotiation with Trump is like negotiating with jello, this was getting pulled in a matter of minutes.

 

TRUMP WANTS TO IMPOSE 30% CHINESE SOLAR CELL TARIFF

Fuck Trump.  Solar is the future, coal is dead, and fossil fuels are dying.

 

STORMYWATCH: PAYOFF IS ILLEGAL CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTION

It’s time for another story about Stormy Daniels.

The watchdog group Common Cause is following up on a train of thought I brought up a couple days ago, that this payoff to Stormy was an illegal campaign contribution.

As if that wasn’t enough, CREW, found a payment in December from the Trump Campaign to one of Trump’s businesses.

Here’s the payment from the Campaign, as well as a tweet from CREW.

 

 

That’s it for today.  It’s been a crazy week so far, and it’s only Tuesday.  As Mueller gets closer to Trump, it’s only going to get weirder.

Hang on to your butts.

Now that we’ve got a timeline for a Trump/Mueller interview, I feel that I should try to do another Wargame article.  I think I have an idea how things could work out.  Then again, it’s all speculation.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur