Month: July 2018

Daily Check-In 07/12/2018

Thursday, July 12th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

manafortmugshot

 

Peter Strzok and Congress

This was a complete partisan shitshow, but Strzok delivered, including his own attacks on Gowdy, Jordan, and Goodlatte.  Watch the video of his dressing down Trey Gowdy.  It should go up there with “Have you no decency, sir?”

A Russian-American lobbyist who attended the infamous meeting with Trump campaign officials at Trump Tower in June 2016 has filed a libel suit against one of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s most prominent critics.

Rinat Akhmetshin filed the civil case Thursday against investor Bill Browder in federal court in Washington, alleging that Browder repeatedly defamed him by labeling him as a Russian intelligence operative.

The suit cites a series of statements Browder made last July on Twitter and in interviews with news outlets, calling Akhmetshin a “Russian intelligence asset” and “a Russian GRU officer.” The GRU is Russia’s main military intelligence agency focused overseas.

Most of the disputed statements relate to allegations by Browder that when Akhmetshin and others met the Trump officials in 2016, the lobbyist and businessman was acting on behalf of Putin in some capacity.

“In my opinion you had a member of Putin’s secret police directly meeting with the son of the future next president of the United States asking to change U.S. sanctions policy crucial to Putin,” Browder told Business Insider, in one example noted in the suit.

The suit insists that Browder’s claims were false.

 

COHEN

Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer who is under federal investigation, bought a $6.7 million apartment in April in a new Manhattan skyscraper that is being developed by two of Mr. Trump’s longtime friends, according to people familiar with the transaction.

Located at 111 Murray Street in Manhattan’s Tribeca neighborhood, the project is being developed by a partnership of real estate companies Fisher Brothers, Witkoff and New Valley. New Valley is headed by Howard Lorber, a real estate developer and longtime friend of Mr. Trump. Steve Witkoff, the founder of Witkoff, is also a longtime friend of Mr. Trump.

On the 19th floor, Mr. Cohen’s unit is about 2,697 square feet, with four bedrooms and 4½ bathrooms, according to listing website StreetEasy. It had been on the market for $7.475 million, according to the website. Amenities in the building include a Turkish bath, a private dining room, a 75-foot lap pool, a fitness center, an arcade and a concierge service that books private aircraft.

The glassy condominium project launched sales in the summer of 2015, and more than 70% of its 157 units were sold as of May, Lauren Witkoff, an executive vice president at Witkoff, said at the time.

The unit went into contract on November 2017, public records show, and the deal closed in early April 2018. Mr. Cohen’s purchase is the only closing in the building thus far, according to public records.

Mr. Cohen financed the purchase by securing a $3.5 million short-term mortgage from the developers, rather than getting financing from a bank, according to public records. While developers occasionally offer to finance purchases in their projects, such developer financing is unusual in Manhattan, real-estate attorneys say. People familiar with the deal said Mr. Cohen would have had trouble securing traditional financing because the unit did not yet meet the city’s legal requirements for occupancy.

People familiar with the transaction said Mr. Cohen had been in a rush to close due to an impending tax event. He’d sold a unit at New York’s Trump World Tower for roughly $3.3 million in October 2017, and needed to reinvest the profits within a fixed time frame to avoid incurring immediate taxes on the sale, they said. Mr. Cohen and his wife personally guaranteed the loan, according to people familiar with the deal. Mr. Cohen didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Mr. Cohen recently hired attorney Guy Petrillo to represent him in a federal investigation into his business dealings. Federal prosecutors in New York have been investigating Mr. Cohen on suspicion of bank fraud, campaign-finance violations and other possible crimes, The Wall Street Journal has previously reported. Mr. Cohen hasn’t been charged with any crime.

A spokesman for the listing brokerage Douglas Elliman declined to comment.

 

STORMYGATE: IS THIS SOME KIND OF BUST?

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

NATO

 

Great Britain

 

Russia and North Korea

 

 

 

TRADE WAR

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

FACEBOOK AND FAKE NEWS

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE: THE SACHA BARON COHEN EDITION

Sacha Baron Cohen is seemingly breaking his silence on the controversy swirling around his Showtime prank series to fire back at former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

The comedian retweeted a new Twitter account that’s apparently his new “citizen journalist” character, “Billy Wayne Ruddick Jr., PhD.” The character has a truther website called “truthbrary” that’s full of Alex Jones-like conspiracy theories (such as “Hillary is a satanist — Illuminati defector” and “The Military has been Implanting Mind Controlled Neural Dust to remotely control their victims” and “16 more reasons to question 9/11”).

On Twitter, Ruddick posted an open letter to Palin saying he never said he was a military veteran as Palin claimed, but rather “I was in the service — not military, but United Parcel, and I only fought for my country once — when I shot a Mexican who came onto my property.”

He also adds, “I have always admired you for TELLING THE TRUTH about Obama’s birth certificate and the location of Russia. But ma’am, I do believe you have been hit by a bulls–t grenade and are bleeding fake news.” He included the hashtags #MAGA, #buildthewall and #boycottsachacohen.

 

THE FCC

 

SCOTUS

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

JIM JORDAN

Before Jordan’s involvement in the story broke on July 3rd, one of Jordan’s accusers, Mike DiSabato interviewed Hellickson on videotape. The video has not been publicly released but it’s been shown to multiple news outlets, including CNN and USAToday. On that tape, Hellickson admits to precisely what Jordan is vociferously denying.

On the tape, Hellickson said that many of the wrestlers were “uncomfortable” with Dr. Strauss’s behavior and that he had confronted Strauss about it. There was Strauss’s lingering in the showers with wrestlers and fondling them during weigh-ins.

…

Nine wrestlers have come forward to say Jordan knew about the abuse. Two of them say they told him directly of specific instances in which Strauss has touched them inappropriately. Hellickson is basically trapped – because of what he said on the video before he realized Jordan would deny everything – into conceding that he knew about Strauss’s behavior and knew it was serious enough to confront him and bring his concerns to administrators. Given Hellickson’s admissions, Jordan’s claim that he was simply in the dark are absurd on their face.

 

#METOO

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

ENVIRONMENT

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for Thursday.  I don’t expect to have Friday posted until sometime Saturday morning.  I’m still getting used to this new schedule, new duties stuff.

Friday is big.  It’s 12:24 EST, and Mueller just indicted 12 Russian hackers for their attack on the DNC.  Right while Trump was meeting Queen Elizabeth II.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

Daily Check-In 07/11/2018

Wednesday, July 11th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Paul Manafort might just be legitimately mentally handicapped.  Most people in prison would assume that their phone calls are being monitored, because THEY ARE BEING MONITORED! How many people have been busted for ordering hits on witnesses from inside prison?  Many.  How did they get caught? Audio recordings of their phone calls.

By the way, the judge that ordered Manafort to another prison was the same one the Trump Cult was dry humping a couple months back for being tough on Mueller’s arguing lawyer Michael Dreeben (Daily Check-In 05/04/2018).

 

COHEN

 

IMMIGRATION

 

STORMYGATE

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Bechard sued Broidy and the two lawyers after he stopped making payments to her, purportedly because Davidson breached the non-disclosure agreement by telling Avenatti about it. Avenatti said outside the hearing Tuesday that he had done absolutely nothing wrong.

California Superior Court Judge Ernest Hiroshige left intact the 20-day conditional seal on the case that another judge ordered on June 6. Hiroshige ordered Bechard’s lawyer to provide a copy of the complaint to Avenatti and gave the parties three days to file briefs whether any additional requests to seal or unseal the case should be handled on an expedited basis.

The case is Bechard v. Broidy, BC712913, California Superior Court, Los Angeles County (Los Angeles).

Just rcvd word that my client @StormyDaniels was arrested in Columbus Ohio whole performing the same act she has performed across the nation at nearly a hundred strip clubs. This was a setup & politically motivated. It reeks of desperation. We will fight all bogus charges. #Basta

She was arrested for allegedly allowing a customer to touch her while on stage in a non sexual manner! Are you kidding me? They are devoting law enforcement resources to sting operations for this? There has to be higher priorities!!! #SetUp #Basta

 

COLD WAR 2.0

Washington, D.C. – House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer issued this statement as President Trump began the NATO Summit and Putin meetings:

“President Trump’s brazen insults and denigration of one of America’s most steadfast allies, Germany, is an embarrassment.  His behavior this morning is another profoundly disturbing signal that the President is more loyal to President Putin than to our NATO allies.

“If the President leaves the Putin meeting without ironclad assurances and concrete steps toward a full cessation of Russian attacks on our democracy, this meeting will not only be a failure – it will be a grave step backward for the future of the international order and global security.  A successful meeting means real action, now.

“The President needs to remember that, as Commander-in-Chief, his duty is to protect the American people from foreign threats, not to sell out our democracy to Putin.”

 

TRADE WAR

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

SCOTUS

 

PROTECT PROTESTS

 

NAME AND SHAME

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

JIM JORDAN

 

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

ASBESTOS?

 

RUMOR MILL

I’m looking for the original version of the FEATHERS chart.  Hopefully I won’t have to reverse engineer it.

 

That’s it for Wednesday.  Thursday, Trump makes his way to London after Brussels and Peter Strozk testifies publicly before the House Oversight Committee.  I expect those to be polite, evenhanded…

Wait, the head of the committee threatened Strozk with a contempt charge for refusing to answer a question about an ongoing investigation?

Nevermind.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 07/10/2018

Tuesday, July 10th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

 

COHEN

 

IMMIGRATION

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

TRADE WAR

 

SCOTUS

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

JIM JORDAN

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

RACISM

 

NAME AND SHAME

 

TRUMP HATES WOMEN

 

AND HIS DRIVER, TOO…

 

ELECTION 2018

 

DEMOCRATIC SOCIALISM

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for Tuesday.  I’m posting this on Wednesday morning, because that’s when I got to it.

Mike Flynn has a court date, Paul Manafort gets transferred to a new jail, the BBC talks about Trump’s rapey past, and CNN is finally going after Rudy’s foreign ties.  It’s about damn time.

I’m not sure how this week is going to unfold, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see an uptick in stories about Trump metaphorically slobbering all over Putin’s dick while he’s in Europe for the NATO summit.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 07/09/2018

Monday, July 9th.  I’m back.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Yeah, the Senate Intelligence Committee confirmed what I’ve been saying for a year; that the Russians interfered in the 2016 election on behalf of Donald Trump.

 

COHEN

Michael D. Cohen, the former personal lawyer to President Trump who is under investigation by federal prosecutors in Manhattan, has hired Lanny J. Davis, the Washington lawyer and public relations consultant best known for serving in the Clinton White House, to represent him.

The pairing is unusual. Mr. Davis has tried to position himself as a key defender of Bill and Hillary Clinton — particularly Mrs. Clinton, whom Mr. Trump defeated in the 2016 presidential election and continues to attack as “totally crooked.” Mr. Cohen was once a fierce defender of Mr. Trump.

 

IMMIGRATION

 

STORMYGATE/BROIDY CROSSOVER

A sealed legal complaint against GOP mega donor Elliott Broidy by his former mistress contains “troublesome claims that he wouldn’t want to become public,” a source with knowledge of the situation told The Daily Beast.

Broidy is being sued by former Playboy Playmate Shera Bechard, who became pregnant with his child before having an abortion. Bechard sued Broidy on Friday, alleging he violated their non-disclosure agreement when he stopped paying her installments totaling $1.6 million earlier this month. A source close to Broidy told The Daily Beast, “a cursory review of the lawsuit indicates it is full of falsehoods.”

On Tuesday, Michael Avenatti will ask a Los Angeles court to unseal the complaint that he said names him.

“You don’t sue someone and refuse to give them a copy of the complaint, unless you are playing a game,” Avenatti told The Daily Beast.

He currently represents porn actress Stormy Daniels in her lawsuit against Michael Cohen, who negotiated her non-disclosure agreement to keep quiet an alleged affair with Donald Trump. Cohen also negotiated Bechard’s NDA.

On April 12, Avenatti tweeted: “In last 18 mos, Mr. Cohen negotiated yet another hush NDA, this time on behalf of a prominent GOP donor who had a relationship with a LA woman, impregnated her and then made sure she had an abortion. The deal provided for multiple payments across many months.”

 

TRUMP ORG CORRUPTION

Donald Trump’s flagship Scottish resort received thousands of pounds in US taxpayers’ money to host VIP visits by officials from his administration, an investigation by The Scotsman can reveal. The US president’s resort at Turnberry received more than £5,600 in federal funds to provide accommodation for the trip earlier this year.

According to a source at the South Ayrshire hotel and golf course, the stay was in connection with Mr Trump’s official visit to the UK scheduled for this July, which is expected to include Scotland in the itinerary. The payment, sanctioned last month by the US State Department, represents the first time one of Mr Trump’s Scottish businesses has received direct federal funding from his own government.

 

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

BREXIT

 

SCOTUS

By the way, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy announced his retirement a couple weeks ago.  The very next day, it comes out that his son Justin underwrote a billion dollar loan for Trump Organization in 2009 while working at Deutsche Bank.  DB has been caught laundering money from Russian Oligarchs, and no one in their right mind would loan money to Trump under normal circumstances in a good economy.  2009 was the height of the housing bubble, Trump Org had the corporate equivalent of a 350 credit score, and Eric Trump was already on the record talking about how they got all the funding they needed from Russia.

I’ll cover that in more detail over the next week or so.

 

TRUMP HATES WOMEN, PART 792: ATTACKS ON BREASTFEEDING

 

TRUMP THE SEX OFFENDER

A few days before President Trump heads to the U.K. to meet the queen and the prime minister, a BBC investigative program has revealed fresh allegations of sexually inappropriate actions by Trump during the 1980s and 1990s, comparing him to a “predator” at parties with girls as young as 14.

The report featured Monday on the BBC Panorama investigative documentary series, entitled “Trump: Is the president a sex pest?” included testimony from two women who said they encountered Trump at parties during his time as a real estate magnate and operator of beauty pageants.

Trump’s behavior toward younger women was described by a man who attended the same parties as like that of a “predator.”

One of the women, Barbara Pilling, said she met Trump at a party in New York in the late 1980s while she was a young model. She alleged that then-businessman Trump asked her how old she was and approved when she said she was 17, allegedly responding: “Oh, great. So you’re not too old and not too young. That’s just great.”

Pilling said she was not the youngest girl at the party, claiming there were girls as young as 14 attending. “I felt I was in the presence of a shark,” Pilling said, describing Trump.

Another woman, Heather Braden, told Panorama that she saw Trump at a party in Miami in the 1990s attended by only four men and 50 female models.

“I felt like a piece of meat in a market,” Braden said. “I could have been auctioned off in some sort of a sex slave ring.”

One anonymous male source speaking to the show claimed to have been at many of the same events as Trump during the same time frame and described drug- and alcohol-fueled parties attended by older men and younger women.

…

Trump, in particular, was “notorious” for his behavior toward younger women, the man said.

“This guy was like a predator in action. The next day or days after we would hear about it, he would brag about it to his friends and it would get around that he scored. Maybe one or two girls at a time, which is what he loved to do.”

 

 

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

NAME AND SHAME

 

WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

Oh, by the way, Scott Pruitt is gone.  I’ll cover that soon.

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

This is another story I need to cover that broke recently.  Rep. Jim Jordan was a former wrestling coach at Ohio State University in the 80’s and 90’s.  At the same time, they had a very handsy and rapey doctor who molested the members of the wrestling team.  This doctor had a locker right next to Jim, and Jim’s team told him about the handsy doc.  Jim denied ever knowing anything about the alleged abuse.  Since his denial, 7 of his former wrestlers, including UFC Champion Mark Coleman, have come forward calling bullshit on Jim.

I hope they go full JoePa on his ass.

 

COLLEGE

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

The state’s high court issued an order Friday saying it would hear oral arguments on the contentious case July 18. The fiercely contested measure pits the group, Voters Not Politicians, which supports redistricting reform, against a Republican and business-backed group challenging the validity of the measure.

At issue is whether the redistricting petition merely seeks to amend the state’s constitution or instead is a far broader revision to the constitution, which can only be made through a more formal constitutional convention?

 

ECONOMY

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

 

RUMOR MILL

The unfolding of the Russia scandal has been like walking into a dark cavern. Every step reveals that the cave runs deeper than we thought, and after each one, as we wonder how far it goes, our imaginations are circumscribed by the steps we have already taken. The cavern might go just a little farther, we presume, but probably not much farther. And since trying to discern the size and shape of the scandal is an exercise in uncertainty, we focus our attention on the most likely outcome, which is that the story goes a little deeper than what we have already discovered. Say, that Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner, and Paul Manafort told their candidate about the meeting they held at Trump Tower with a Russian lawyer after they were promised dirt on Hillary Clinton; and that Trump and Kushner have some shady Russian investments; and that some of Trump’s advisers made some promises about lifting sanctions.

But what if that’s wrong? What if we’re still standing closer to the mouth of the cave than the end?

Welcome to the party, pal!  We’ve been spelunking this traitorous cave for a year, and we’re just getting started.

 

Seriously, take the time to read this article.  It looks at the whole Trump/Russia conundrum from a skeptical point of view, yet doesn’t discount the coincidences as “conspiracy theories” or “kooky.”

 

That’s it for today.  I’m working on a “What’d I Miss” post covering the major events from June 23 to July 8.  There was a lot of big stories that happened in that time, and I wanted to cover them, but needed to get back to daily posts.  I figure it will take at least a couple days to get caught up, but if I worked on that first, I’d fall behind further.  This way, I can get caught up faster.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

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