Month: July 2018

Daily Check-In 07/24/2018

Tuesday, July 24th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

 

COHEN

TRUMP: Get me a Coke, please!

COHEN: They don’t have a legitimate purpose, so —

TRUMP: And you have a woman that doesn’t want this.

COHEN: Correct.

TRUMP: Who you’ve been handling.

COHEN: Yes. And —

TRUMP: And it’s been going on for a while.

COHEN: About two, three weeks now.

TRUMP: All you’ve got to do is delay for —

COHEN: Even after that, it’s not ever going to be opened. There’s no, there’s no purpose for it. Um, told you about Charleston. Um, I need to open up a company for the transfer of all of that info regarding our friend, David, you know, so that — I’m going to do that right away. I’ve actually come up and I’ve spoken —

TRUMP: Give it to me and get me a [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

COHEN: And, I’ve spoken to Allen Weisselberg about how to set the whole thing up with …

TRUMP: So, what do we got to pay for this? One-fifty?

COHEN: … Funding . . . Yes. Um, and it’s all the stuff.

TRUMP: Yeah, I was thinking about that.

COHEN: All the stuff. Because — here, you never know where that company — you never know what he’s —

TRUMP: Maybe he gets hit by a truck.

COHEN: Correct. So, I’m all over that. And, I spoke to Allen about it, when it comes time for the financing, which will be —

TRUMP: Wait a sec, what financing?

COHEN: Well, I’ll have to pay him something.

TRUMP: [UNINTELLIGIBLE] pay with cash.

COHEN: No, no, no, no, no. I got it.

TRUMP: Check.

[Tape cuts off abruptly. Separate recording begins.]

MALE: Hey Don, how are you?

Allen Weisselberg is the CFO of Trump Organization.  David is either the pseudonym David Dennison, the one Cohen and Trump used in their NDA’s, or more likely David Pecker, Owner of AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer.  Karen McDougal sold her story to the Enquirer for $150,000. (Daily Check-In 01/12/2018)

Just reading this transcript makes my brain hurt.  Trump is a dipshit, a bull in a china shop with no understanding or concept of reality.  Cohen’s trying to come off as all slick and sly, using euphemisms and talking about “our friend, David” and “financing”, and Trump just blurts everything out like the dumbest fucking criminal on Earth.

As former prosecutor, 3 things notable about Cohen tape:

1) Clear Giuliani was untruthful when he said Trump didn’t know

2) Goal was to kill story before election, so campaign motivated

3) Regardless of cash or check, whole point of phony corp. was to hide campaign expenditure

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

TRADE WAR: THE FARMER WELFARE EDITION

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

SCOTUS

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT: SEX CRIMES DIVISION

Seagram’s liquor heiress Clare Bronfman used her family fortune to buy an entire island, the private plane to get there — and, the feds say, to bankroll a sex cult.

On Tuesday, the 39-year-old — who is worth roughly $200 million — was busted on racketeering chargesfor her role in running Nxivm, alongside three other high-ranking members.

The arrests are part of an ongoing federal investigation into the group’s leader, Keith Raniere, and his right-hand woman, former ​”Smallville​”​ star Allison Mack.

Raniere and Mack are charged with sex trafficking and conspiracy for allegedly coercing women into joining a secretive master-slave society within Nxivm— where “slaves” were forced to pleasure Raniere, have his initials permanently branded onto their skin and perform free labor.

In Brooklyn federal court Tuesday, a gaunt Bronfman pleaded not guilty to allegations she conspired with Raniere to steal email passwords from his “perceived enemies,” racked up charges on the credit card of his dead ex-girlfriend and laundered money to help a non-citizen fraudulently gain entry to the US.

​Bronfman was part of an “inner circle” of loyalists who “committed a broad range of serious crimes from identity theft and obstruction of justice to sex trafficking, all to promote and protect Raniere and NXIVM,” U.S. Attorney Richard Donoghue said in a statement.

​She faces up to 20 years behind bars if found guilty — a stunning change in circumstances for a woman who could have had anything in the world she wanted.

Bronfman and her older sister, Sara, are the daughters of late Canadian billionaire Edgar Bronfman Sr. and a British barmaid-turned-socialite 20 years his junior. She was his third of four wives — and they were the youngest of his seven kids.

 

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for Tuesday.   I’m cutting it short today as I’m reaching way too late in Wednesday to be talking about Tuesday.  SecState Pompeo is set to testify before the Senate, and there are rumors of Cohen flipping, but I still think he’s trying to play both sides against each other.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 07/23/2018

Monday, July 23rd

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

A federal judge Monday unsealed the names of five witnesses granted immunity by special counsel Robert Mueller to testify at the upcoming trial of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

The witnesses, who Mueller’s team had sought to keep from public view until they were called to testify, are:

  1. James Brennan
  2. Donna Duggan
  3. Conor O’Brien
  4. Cindy Laporta
  5. Dennis Raico

The unsealed court documents do not provide details about what the witnesses may be expected to testify about. None of the newly revealed witnesses have figured prominently in the case or the coverage of the case to this point.

A person named Dennis Raico was previously affiliated with Federal Savings Bank (FSB), a small Chicago bank that provided Manafort with $16 million in loans shortly after Manafort left the Trump campaign. FSB founder Steve Calk served as an economic adviser to the Trump campaign. NBC has reported that Mueller is investigating whether Manafort promised to secure Calk an administration position in exchange for the loans.

An individual identified as “J. Brennan” was allegedly included in several email chains that Mueller’s team plans to submit for the trial, according to their exhibit list. Brennan is allegedly included on chains with Raico and Laporta about tax returns and a loan agreement. A LinkedIn profile for a James Brennan lists him as vice president commercial and construction loan manager at the Federal Savings Bank.

“Both O’Brien and Laporta work for the accounting firm of Kositzka, Wicks and Company, according to the firm’s website. KWC was Manafort’s accounting firm, according to a person familiar with the matter,” Bloomberg reported.

A “D. Duggan” appeared several times on a list of exhibits filed by prosecutors in the case last week. Duggan was allegedly part of email chains involving proof of insurance for a property at 377 Union St. in Brooklyn, which is known to be a brownstone owned by Manafort that is referenced in his indictment.

Wow.  We’ve talked about Federal Savings Bank before (Daily Check-In 02/21/2018), but not Dennis Raico.  We talked at length about Stephen Calk, and how he allegedly extended these loans to Manafort for an appointment or Cabinet position.  My guess is Dennis Raico was likely a party to that matter.  If he were just a witness, there wouldn’t be a need for immunity.  I can’t say for certain without more research, but he could have been the loan officer that certified the paperwork.  James Brennan was the Vice President of the bank.

O’Brien and Laporta worked at Manafort’s accounting firm, and Duggan has ties to an insurance scam.

 

 

COHEN

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

This last one is kind of big for Jeff Sessions, as this comes awfully close to him.  This case goes straight to the heart of Alabama politics.

 

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

ELECTION 2018

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Monday.  This article is shorter than normal, not because stuff didn’t happen, but I was still catching up on the previous post.  Because of that, this post isn’t as in-depth as most of them are.

On another note, I didn’t notice this until early this morning, but I started this blog a little over a year ago.  July 21, 2017.  368 days and 270 posts later, here we are.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 07/20/2018

Friday, July 20th and the weekend

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION: REDACTED PAGE FISA APPLICATION RELEASED, BUTINA HAD MULTIPLE CONTACTS ACROSS GOP, INCLUDING MARK SANFORD’S THANKSGIVING DAY BBQ, MUELLER SUBPOENAS A MADAM

The Sheldon Cooper of Treason is back in the news.  This time, we get the FISA application and renewals.  Yes, they are heavily redacted, but we do learn quite a few things from what is and isn’t there.

First, the surveillance worked.  They gathered quite a bit on Carter Page.  For example, his list of known Russian Intelligence connections nearly tripled from the first application to the last.

Second, we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that all of the Traitor Tots that screamed from the top of their lungs that this was poisoned fruit because of Christopher Steele were full of shit.  They lied about how much the FISA warrant was based off of Steele’s work, they lied about what was in the application, and they lied about how Carter Page was an innocent bystander.

Third, we see that the Traitor Tots of Devin Nunes, Jim Jordan, Mark Meadows, et al, have no strategic forethought.  Out of all of the hills to die on, Carter Page was tactically unsound.  Carter Page has had years of contacts with Russian Intelligence, to the point that the FISA court consider him to be an asset of the Russians.  Even worse is that every time he opens his mouth, he sticks his foot in it.  His decisions have been borderline braindead (Daily Check-In 11/07/2017), and when he does decide on a story, he finds the worst way possible to spin it.  The best conclusion I can draw from the Traitor Tots going balls out to protect Carter Page is that they are caught working with him, and they’re assuming that everything Carter knows, the FBI knows.

More information came out about the Red Sparrow this weekend.  Not only did she have extensive communications with GOP high rollers across the government, but she likely influenced several White House hirings, including up to the Cabinet.  She did this by manipulating Paul Erickson, who then put pressure on his GOP friends to insist on hiring someone or not hiring someone.  They put pressure on Trump to not hire Mitt Romney as his Secretary of State, and pushed KT McFarland as Mike Flynn’s Deputy National Security Advisor.

Maria was also at Mark Sanford’s 2017 Thanksgiving Party.  There were about 300 people at his BBQ, and Maria was Paul Erickson’s plus 1.

She also had contacts with people at the Treasury Department.

So, I’d love it to hear someone explain to me how a 29 year old Russian National grad student was able to meet with so many different people in the government, in the lobbying world, and in all of these special interest groups, all the while no one thought her being around was weird or suspicious.

I’m taking a huge grain of salt since Glenn Greenwald wrote this, and he’s basically a stooge for Assange and Putin, but there could be something to this.  Keep an eye out over the next few weeks, especially if someone not Glenn Greenwald reports on this.

This might be the craziest thread I’ve followed in this whole investigation, but Roger Stone has connections to human trafficking, drug dealing, and prostitution.  This is gonna get pretty WTF, so bear with me.

Robert Mueller subpoenaed the madam that provided a high-end prostitute to former New York politician Elliot Spitzer.  This woman, Kristin Davis, is connected to Roger Stone directly through Andrew Miller, one of Stone’s aides who med with Mueller’s team earlier in the week. (Daily Check-In 07/18/2018).  After Spitzer resigned, Davis ran for public office because why the fuck not.  Her campaign manager was Andrew Miller.  In recent years, Ms. Davis has been arrested for providing drugs along with a piece of ass to her clients.

Here’s where it gets really fucked up.  Supposedly Stone, Davis, and Miller share connections to a group called NXIVM.  It’s one of these self-help pyramid schemes for rich people and almost rich people who want to be more right and well-connected.  If they sound familiar, I’ve mentioned them once or twice in the Crime and Punishment sections regarding Allison Mack getting busted for human trafficking, owning sex slaves, and blackmail. (Daily Check-In 04/20/2018).  The Frank Report has been on this shit like black clothes on a goth kid.  Anyway, Roger Stone supposedly has a connection with this group, and got into some trouble with them when he tried to hack to the email of the former leaders of the group looking for dirt on Hilary Clinton back in 2008.

To be honest, I wanted to avoid NXIVM like the plague.  I have enough conspiracy theories and crackpot shit to follow up on without adding a cult that makes look Scientology look normal to the list.  But, now that Roger Stone is neck deep in all of it, it warrants at least a cursory look.  I’ve long since resigned myself to the fact that everything else I cover is connected in one way, shape, or form, and I wanted at least one weird thing to not be involved.  Now there’s a whole new level of crazy to look into.

Fuck.

 

COHEN: LORDY, THERE ARE TAPES

Speaking of weird shit, the New York Times released a story Friday afternoon after Maggie Haberman got a call from Trump and his lawyers bitching about how Michael Cohen recorded their conversations.  They then proceeded to tell Maggie the contents of one of the tapes, which was about Trump and Cohen talking about paying back the National Enquirer for them buying Karen McDougal’s story before the election.  This recorded information was not in the FBI’s possession because the Special Master reviewing the evidence determined that attorney-client privilege applied to this tape, but that Trump’s team of lawyers were getting this out in the press and were waving that right.

Confused yet?  Good.

Michael Cohen recorded a lot of his phone calls, including those with Donald Trump because Cohen is a slime ball who does this, and Trump is a lying narcissistic shit.  When the FBI raided his shit( Daily Check-In 04/09/2018), and they had a Special Master decide that out of millions of record, only a handful were protected by privilege, that information was shared with both Cohen’s team and Trump’s team.  Trump, a man who is famous for recording phone calls himself, lost his shit when he found out Cohen did the same to him, and likely called his enabler Maggie Haberman to bitch about this.  Unlike other times where Maggie released a story to block other bad news from getting out (Daily Check-In 01/25/2018,Daily Check-In 01/26/2018), this time it feels like Trump wasn’t trying to cover something up, but trying to throw Cohen under the bus.

By the way, there are more tapes out there.  I’ll have more on Monday’s post.

 

TRUMP FOUNDATION

Another story that flew under the radar Friday, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is under pressure following the initial civil lawsuit against the Trump Foundation to do more, so this case has been forwarded to the state tax agency for criminal investigation.

Remember, a Presidential Pardon is useless against state crimes.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

TRAITOR TOTS

During the last couple years, I’ve changed a lot as I’ve learned things.  One of the things I didn’t want to learn was Rand and Ron Paul’s connections to Russia.  They have some long-standing ties back to Russia, and both spouted the same Pro-Russia stances, even when they were at direct odds with their libertarian philosophies.

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

WELCOME TO THE PARTY

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR AND THE ECONOMY

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

SCOTUS

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

THANKS, OBAMA

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for Friday and the weekend.  Since I was late in posting Friday’s post, and the Carter Page stuff came out Saturday night, I said screw it, make it one post, and put it up sometime Monday.  That, and I needed a day or two off.

One of these months, I’ll finish the What’d I miss post from my vacation, as well as looking at old news through the lens of what we now know.  For example, we know that Trump has knows about Putin attacking the United States through his whole presidency, but we haven’t looked at previous stories now that we know.  Like, does knowing what we know make Devin Nunes’s hard-on for killing the 702(c) provision in the FISA Act fit with the new information?

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

Daily Check-In 07/19/2018

Thursday, July 19th

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Manafort’s trial is set to begin on July 24th, and a lot of the evidence is paperwork.  Looks like we were right about Jeffrey Yohai flipping (The Indicted,Cooperating Witnesses).

Deborah Curtis, the newest member of The Justice League.  She’s very familiar with prosecuting spies.  Just ask Chelsea Manning.

So, we’ve got at least TWO supporters of Donald Trump and Putin’s regime that traveled to Russia, with at least one of them having their expenses paid for by a Russian spy.  Remember, Trump wanted David Clarke for a government position, but he couldn’t get passed the approval process. Daily Check-In 01/18/2018 has a lot of in-depth work, including a picture of David Clarke and Alexander Torshin.  That was 6 months ago.  Imagine what is known by this point.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

Wow.  Another meeting, this time in D.C.?  Are you fucking kidding me?  Wait, let me check the timeline… dammit, not a joke.

 

TRAITOR TOTS

While writing this, I saw another report that Rand Paul used a fuckton of campaign funds for personal use.  I’ll have that link in tomorrow’s post.

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

TRADE WAR

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

MAIN STREAM MEDIA

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

SCOTUS

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

Something to keep in mind when seeing articles like “85% of Republicans support Trump’s most recent garbage, is America screwed?” and it deals with how statistics work.

The Republican Party is shrinking.  Fewer Americans identify as them, and their numbers are dwindling.  Their policies for the last 30 years have slowly pushed away anyone who isn’t either a rich person looking to avoid paying taxes, or white men who feel like their power is slipping away.  The last decade accelerated that, and the only people that flocked to the GOP were Baby Boomers.  News flash: they’re old and dying off.  Now, they can add open racists, Russian sympathizers and wannabe autocrats to their list.

Everyone else was pushed away or pushed out of the party.  The Log Cabin Republicans of two decades ago were shoved aside by the Religious Right.  The Hispanic Catholics are leaving as the Neo-Nazis openly attack them.  The young fiscal conservatives are leaving as they can’t reconcile the take-it-or-leave-it party package of misogyny, bigotry, and ignorance of science with their desire for responsibly sized government.

Getting back to statistics.  A higher percentage of a smaller sample size doesn’t correlate to a larger number of people in the whole.  Also, that percentage doesn’t take into account the quality of the individual item, either.

Think of it like football, with two quarterbacks playing in a game.  One completed 60% of their passes, the other completed 75%.  That means the 75% is a better quarterback, right?

Not necessarily.

First quarterback completes 30 of 50 passes for 500 yards, 6 touchdowns, and no interceptions.  The second quarterback completes 6 of 8 passes for 3 yards and 2 interceptions, and didn’t throw a long pass all game.  The two interceptions were returned for scores against his team.  In this example, the second quarterback sucks, even though they’re more accurate.

These headlines are meant to grab attention, but always remember, the pie is smaller.

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

ENVIRONMENT

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Thursday.  It wasn’t as crazy as the previous couple days, but still nuts.

I updated The Justice League with the new lawyers added to the team.  One of them, Deborah Curtis, is working on the Maria Butina case.

Heads up for Friday, the FBI has a recording Michael Cohen made of himself and Donald Trump talking about paying off Karen McDougal back in 2016.  Just in case anyone was wondering what happened to that thread.

I wish I was more surprised by how bad the Republicans in Congress are acting, but I can’t.  The entire GOP is complicit at this point, thanks to their accepting Russian money.  The only question is how many will split off when they see that Trump is completely, totally, absolutely finished.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur