Thursday, April 19th.
THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION
Tonight, at 9PM EST, just as Jim Comey was sitting down at Rachel Maddow’s desk, redacted versions of his memos are released. While he’s a guest on the largest rated Cable News show, on an episode that Rachel has been plugging for weeks.
She is reading the memos to him.
Here’s the link to the memos. Want the direct PDF link? Have fun.
I’m amazed by this move. This is brilliant. The DOJ knew that the memos would leak to Fox News and the Right Wing Media in minutes, and they would release their tiny little selections, and we would be on the defensive. Instead, DOJ releases the memo on their own, and gets it out in the open,
Rachel asked Comey how it would be possible to end the investigation.
I actually don’t think that you could accomplish that by firing Director Mueller. I think you’d have to fire everybody in the FBI and the Justice Department to accomplish that in practice, given the commitment of the people in those organizations.
I think I’m going to sleep a little better tonight.
- Justice Department hands Comey memos to Congress
- Republicans Push Bill To Protect Mueller, Without McConnell’s Support
- House Republicans Lay the Groundwork for Trump to Fire Rosenstein
- Grassley: McConnell doesn’t control my committee
- McConnell, the Senate’s decider, discovers the limits of his control
- Bharara: We owe Mueller ‘incalculable thanks’
- Manafort Suspected of Serving as ‘Back Channel’ to Russia, DOJ Says
- Giuliani says he joins Trump’s legal team to ‘negotiate an end’ to Mueller probe
- Trump decided not to fire Rosenstein after being told he wasn’t a target in the Cohen probe, reports say
- The Washington Post: Inspector general referred findings on McCabe to U.S. attorney for consideration of criminal charges
- Rosenstein Said to Tell Trump He’s Not Target in Mueller Probe
Rosenstein, who brought up the Mueller probe himself, offered the assurance during a meeting with Trump at the White House last Thursday, a development that helped tamp down the president’s desire to remove Rosenstein or Mueller, the people said.
After the meeting, Trump told some of his closest advisers that it’s not the right time to remove either man since he’s not a target of the probe. One person said Trump doesn’t want to take any action that would drag out the investigation.
Just remember, cops and lawyers don’t have to tell the truth to suspects under investigation. While it could be a courtesy, what in any of this implies that Donald Trump deserves courtesy?
COMEY DON’T PLAY THAT
- Comey says there’s “some” evidence that Trump obstructed justice
- James Comey: Impeaching Trump won’t fix this crisis. America desperately needs a political reset.
- Evidence Suggests the GOP Bought at Least 17 Anti-James Comey Domains
COHEN
- ‘Is he 15 years loyal?’: Trump allies worry Cohen will flip
- Cohen drops libel suits against BuzzFeed, Fusion GPS
- Trump’s problem isn’t that he has bad lawyers. It’s that he’s a bad client.
- The dominoes are falling after the Michael Cohen raid
Spicy Mic’s thread on Alan Futerfas…
STORMYGATE
- Ex-Playboy model will sue Trump if he calls her a liar, her attorney says
- The Washington Post: In an industry that’s gone online, Stormy Daniels survives as ‘one of the last movie stars of porn’
COLD WAR 2.0
#NEVERAGAIN
- Police chiefs implore Congress not to pass concealed-carry reciprocity gun law.
- NRA flak complains about public Planned Parenthood funding, forgets NRA conventions are subsidized
- Laura Ingraham guest brings up her sponsor exodus, gets kicked off the show immediately
- What Gunshots Do to Bodies: Docs Speak Out
- Meet The Students Who Dreamed Up Friday’s National School Walkout: Thousands of students across the country are expected to walk out of class Friday to protest violence in schools. And the idea came from a group of k… npr.org
IN A NEW YORK STATE OF MIND
- Cuomo restores voting rights to all 35,000 parolees in New York
- A.G. Schneiderman Leads Amicus Brief Defending Women’s Access To Constitutionally-Protected Abortion Services | New York State Attorney General
GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD
- 9th Circuit appoints special prosecutor against Sheriff Joe Arpaio
- Three Kansas Men Found Guilty Of Bomb Plot Targeting Somali Muslim Immigrants
- Day of the trope: White nationalist memes thrive on Reddit’s r/The_Donald
- Democrats Ask Sessions About Whistleblower Allegations That DOJ Is Blocking Immigration Judges Based on Prohibited Political Considerations
- White people in America are sharply divided by education and income: Donald Trump is the result
- Madeleine Albright: Trump Is ‘The Least Democratic President of Modern History’
- Trump says feds won’t fund National Guard deployment, contradicting California gov
- The Washington Post: Abortion wars are heating up ahead of November midterms
- Republican Campaign Message: We Had to Jack Up Your Insurance Premiums to Help the Poor
Unable either to repeal Obamacare or to design a better alternative, President Trump has spent the last year engaged in a multifaceted campaign of sabotage against his predecessor’s legacy: weakening the law’s consumer protections and eliminating its individual mandate. Trump is symbolically peeing in Obama’s bed.
Later this year, Republicans in Congress will have to lie down on that pee-soaked mattress. The Urban Institute has calculated that the various acts of legislative and executive sabotage against the law will increase premiums on the individual market by an average of 18 percent. Republicans in Congress have already formulated a plan to explain away the disaster their party engineered, reports Caitlin Owens. And the plan, astonishingly, is to explain to their voters that higher premiums is the necessary sacrifice they must make to help relieve low-income households of the burden of paying the individual mandate…
BLUE WAVE
WHITE HOUSE CHAOS
- Scott Pruitt Is Now Being Investigated By The House of Representatives, Senate, White House, Office of Management and Budget, Government Accountability Office, and EPA Inspector General : Congressman Don Beyer
- Trump declared he’s running again. Many Republicans aren’t ready to back him.
- Judge rules Trump administration’s cut to Teen Pregnancy Prevention program illegal
- Exclusive: Two top Trump officials are ex-lobbyists for a billionaire with deep ties to Russian oligarchs – VICE News
- Kushner Cos. Subpoenaed Over Tenant Records
WASHINGTON—The real-estate company run by the family of White House adviser Jared Kushner in mid-March received a federal grand-jury subpoena for information related to paperwork the company filed in New York City concerning its rent-regulated tenants, according to people familiar with the matter.
The subpoena, part of an investigation by prosecutors in the Brooklyn U.S. attorney’s office, came shortly after an Associated Press article about the company having filed documents that said it had zero rent-regulated tenants, when in fact it had hundreds, an omission that relieved them of certain rules governing developers.
SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY
- As Workers See Crumbs, Biggest Wall Street Banks Have Already Pocketed $2.5 Billion From Trump Tax Scam
- Payday Lenders Convening At A Trump Resort Are Met By Protesters
- The Teacher Strikes Show That Workers Are Really, Finally, Fed Up
- The Washington Post: Regulators planning to slap Wells Fargo with $1 billion fine
THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE
- Alex Jones, Backtracking, Now Says Sandy Hook Shooting Did Happen
- How to Counter Russian Social Media Influence in Eastern Europe Russia uses social media in the Baltics, Ukraine, and nearby states to sow dissent against neighboring governments as well as NATO. Ways to coun… rand.org
- A letter explaining the links between Mike Flynn and SCL, the parent company of Cambridge Analytica
- Sean Hannity’s effort to tie Robert Mueller to Whitey Bulger was bullshit
RUMOR MILL: DIPSHIT COWBOY’S SCORES ON HIS OWN GOAL
Once again, Devin Nunes done fucked up good. Every time he thinks he has a fool-proof plan, it blows up in his face. It happened with the memo, his midnight ride to the White House, and it’s happening with the Comey Memo.
He thought, and I use that term loosely, that he would take these memos, deliver them to the White House and Hannity at Fox News, and use those places to release what they thought would help them the most.
Instead, someone released the memos to the press. destroying his thunder and putting the whole memo out there, preventing it from being used as propaganda.
That’s it for today. I’m curious how this works out tomorrow, but I’d put money down that The Dotard spews shit from the shitter in a 5am twitter rant. Something something “Lyin’ Comey, BAD! MAGA! No Hookers!” Then, he’ll contradict himself…again.
Why do I have a feeling that the history classes covering this time period in school will require parental permission slips?
Thank you, and have a good one.
“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”
None of this is Normal 
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