Daily Check-In 08/24/2018

Daily Check-In

Friday, August 24th, 2018 and the weekend.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Manafort

Back in 2006, the U.S. landed a bunch of Marines in Ukraine as part of a NATO goodwill mission.  They were to show up, be friendly with the neighbors, and do things like build parks and playgrounds.  That didn’t happen.

Right after they landed, the Marines were harassed by the locals.  They yelled at them, pushed them around, even threw rocks and garbage at them.  The locals chased them all the way to where the Marines were staying, and the harassment continued from there.  Eventually, the Marines had to call the whole thing off.

Later on, it was determined that these locals weren’t just regular locals, but were members of the Party of Regions.  Yes, the same party that Paul Manafort worked for and the same party that was in cahoots with Putin.  This attack was the brainchild of Paul Manafort, as an attempt to build hostility against NATO and the United States.

Paul Manafort helped organize an attack against American troops.  Remember that when you hear Trump talk about how Paul is “a good guy.”

 

McCain

There’s an entire section devoted to the Maverick towards the end of this post.

 

Stone

With all of the weirdness flying around, my money on the craziest shit to occur will be when Roger Stone gets indicted.  Not only will his first public indictment only be for something tangentially connected to Russia, but it will also include a metric fucktonne of extortion, blackmail, money, and sex crimes.  I think this will be on purpose.  The best way to get public opinion back on the side of the investigation is to first show that everyone involved is a criminal and was one before they took part in the Russian Conspiracy.  This will destroy the reputations of the people before their trials for espionage and treason.  Those are knockout punches, but the body needs softened up a bit first.  That’s what’s happening with Manafort, and will happen next with Stone.

 

Dems On The Hill

Check the Election 2018 section for why the GOP is so scared of the potential of a blue wave.

 

Butina

That request ain’t gonna happen.  All Maria has to do to escape the country is walk up to a car belonging to the Russian Embassy, hop in, and ask for asylum.  She was arrested while moving.  She is the definition of a flight risk.

 

Russia

 

This is yet another reminder that Mike Pence is neck deep in this shit.  He was hand-picked by Manafort to be the Vice President, was the head of the Trump Transition Team, and has repeatedly lied about who knew what about Russia, and when they knew.

 

COHEN

Cohen is the linchpin of the entire clusterfuck.  I’ll go into more detail in a future post, but his fingers are all over everything.

 

What a Pecker

A former Trump World Tower doorman who says he has knowledge of an alleged affair President Donald Trump had with an ex-housekeeper, which resulted in a child, is now able to talk about a contract he entered with American Media Inc. that had prohibited him from discussing the matter with anyone, according to his attorney.

On Friday, Marc Held — the attorney for Dino Sajudin, the former doorman — said his client had been released from his contract with AMI, the parent company of the National Enquirer, “recently” after back-and-forth discussions with AMI.

Back on Daily Check-In 04/12/2018 I mentioned this story that was originally broken by Ronan Farrow involving one of Trump’s old doormen claiming that he had knowledge that The Dotard knocked up the help.  This didn’t get a lot of traction because, well, we live in a fucked-up timeline where the President of the United States possibly having an illegitimate child with one of his cleaning ladies wasn’t even the worst news out of the Trump Organization that week.  That was the week Cohen got his shit raided. (Daily Check-In 04/09/2018)

It’s not so much that I don’t believe the doorman that Trump has a few baby mommas on the side, I’m counting on it.  In fact, I’m liable to believe this story just because AMI tried to spike it.  I think the only thing I’m surprised about is that there aren’t more cases of this.  Hell, I’m surprised that someone hasn’t done an AncestryDNA test or 23AndMe and that it hasn’t shown that one of the Trump children are step siblings.

Please, oh please, oh please, let the baby momma be a woman of color.  I’m sure that the MAGA’s will do some mental gymnastics to justify this along with their cries of White Power from Mommy’s basement, while the Evangelicals will give Trump yet another mulligan with some goalpost moving slogan like “at least he didn’t pay for her abortion” or some trite shit like that.  This will last just until the first wave of returned checks from the Trump Foundation for the local abortion clinic get entered into evidence in New York State.

 

CFO

In late 2016, I had lunch with a former high-ranking Trump Organization executive, a person who said he was happy to share dirt on his old boss, but who confessed to not having much dirt to share. This executive wrote a list of people whom I might contact to find out about anything potentially illegal or unethical that Donald Trump may have done. At the bottom of the list was the name Weisselberg. “Allen is the one guy who knows everything,” the person told me. “He’ll never talk to you.” I have had nearly identical conversations with different people who work or have worked for the Trump Organization many times since. They all described his role similarly: Allen Weisselberg, the firm’s longtime chief financial officer, is the center, the person in the company who knows more than anyone.

On Friday, the Wall Street Journal broke the story that Weisselberg had been granted immunity by federal prosecutors in the Southern District of New York so that he could share information in the investigation of Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and dealmaker. It is safe to say that the entire world of Trump watchers—those journalists, political folks, and advocates who carefully monitor every bit of Trump news—went bonkers. Weisselberg is the man to whom those people most want to speak. He is also the man who has, for decades, been the most circumspect.

As the C.F.O., Weisselberg tracked the money that came into the Trump Organization and the money that went out of it, former employees told me. I often found myself wondering what the Weisselberg part of the operation looked like. (I called and e-mailed him a few times, but, not surprisingly, never heard back.) Some told me he had a couple of bookkeepers, but that he personally handled most of the paperwork. Weisselberg knew who was paying or lending money to Trump, and he knew to whom Trump was giving money. When Trump became President, he placed his business interests in a revocable trust overseen by his son Donald Trump, Jr., and Weisselberg.

Uh oh.  How many times have we seen this movie?  The criminal organization is under investigation, but the cops can’t get anything to stick to the boss.  Then, they bust the bookkeeper, who decides that dying in prison isn’t a good retirement option, so they help the investigators.  Next thing you know there’s a montage of bad guys getting arrested, and we cut to a subdued celebration by the cops that flipped the accountant.

Allan Weisselberg, Chief Financial Officer for Trump Organization, has been granted immunity for his testimony against Michael Cohen.  That’s not the big part of the story.  The big part is that the CFO of Trump’s company, charity, campaign, and every other operation they run had enough information for the government that they decided it was better to grant immunity for his unabashed testimony than it was to prosecute him.

We’ve talked about Allan once or twice before (Daily Check-In 07/26/2018), but he’s always stayed out of the limelight.  Now, he’s become a worldwide name overnight thanks to this investigation.

The Feds didn’t need Weisselberg to take down Cohen.  They had more than enough on him down on taxes and other crimes alone.  But they still offered Allan immunity.  Why?

Because doing so let the U.S. Government tie Michael Cohen to AMI to McDougal and Daniels, and it all tied back to the Trump Campaign, the Trump Organization, and the Trump Foundation.  The accountant ties all of it together.

I’ve mentioned before how the Trump Organization is being investigated like a mob family, and that RICO and Enterprise Corruption charges were the end-goal for the organization. (Daily Check-In 8/7/2017, Daily Check-In 02/05/2018)  The first steps in that would be to prove that a pattern of criminal activity has occurred, and that the business benefited from it.  After showing this pattern, the next step is to show that individuals associated to the company benefited.  Once the conspiracy is established, it’s just a matter of time before everyone does down.

The Feds don’t give immunity to someone take down one little fish.  They do it to take down a big fish, and the only fish bigger than Pecker and Weisselberg in TrumpWorld have the last name Trump.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET

 

IMPEACHMENT AND INDICTMENT TALK

 

TRAITOR TOTS

Rand Paul

 

Duncan Hunter

 

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

IMMIGRATION

 

ATTACKS FROM RUSSIA: THE ANTI-VACCINE EDITION

Check out Jay’s thread.  It includes stories from all of the Traitor Tots associated to this scandal.  Both Paul family members, Alex Jones, Jill Stein, Trump, Roger Stone, and several others all spouting the same “talking points” about vaccines, all around the same time that Russia was pushing the Anti-Vax movement in Europe and here.

Want to know if someone has had Russian ties for a while?  Look at their stance on vaccines back from 2012 to 2016, and then see if they also supported Brexit, the Sandy Hook Hoax, Shrinking or Limiting NATO, Trump, Stein, or Bernie.  If they checked three of those boxes, they’re in Putin’s pocket.

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

SCOTUS

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR AND ECONOMY 

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS

 

#METOO

 

ENVIRONMENT

 

ELECTION 2018

Congressional Republicans are getting ready for hell. Axios has obtained a spreadsheet that’s circulated through Republican circles on and off Capitol Hill — including at least one leadership office — that meticulously previews the investigations Democrats will likely launch if they flip the House.

Why this matters: Publicly, House Republicans are putting on a brave face about the midterms. But privately, they are scrambling to prepare for the worst. This document, which catalogs requests Democrats have already made, is part of that effort.

It has churned Republican stomachs. Here are some of the probes it predicts:

  • President Trump’s tax returns
  • Trump family businesses — and whether they comply with the Constitution’s emoluments clause, including the Chinese trademark grant to the Trump Organization
  • Trump’s dealings with Russia, including the president’s preparation for his meeting with Vladimir Putin
  • The payment to Stephanie Clifford — a.k.a. Stormy Daniels
  • James Comey’s firing
  • Trump’s firing of U.S. attorneys
  • Trump’s proposed transgender ban for the military
  • Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin’s business dealings
  • White House staff’s personal email use
  • Cabinet secretary travel, office expenses, and other misused perks
  • Discussion of classified information at Mar-a-Lago
  • Jared Kushner’s ethics law compliance
  • Dismissal of members of the EPA board of scientific counselors
  • The travel ban
  • Family separation policy
  • Hurricane response in Puerto Rico
  • Election security and hacking attempts
  • White House security clearances

The spreadsheet — which I’m told originated in a senior House Republican office — catalogs more than 100 formal requests from House Democrats this Congress, spanning nearly every committee.

  • The spreadsheet includes requests for administration officials to be grilled by committee staff, requests for hearings to obtain sworn testimony, efforts to seize communications about controversial policies and personnel decisions, and subpoena threats.
  • These demands would turn the Trump White House into a 24/7 legal defense operation.

The bottom line: Thanks to their control of Congress, Republicans have blocked most of the Democrats’ investigative requests. But if the House flips, the GOP loses its power to stymie. Lawyers close to the White House tell me the Trump administration is nowhere near prepared for the investigatory onslaught that awaits them, and they consider it among the greatest threats to his presidency.

 

 

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

JOHN McCAIN

There’s going to be a lot about John McCain in the news for the next week, some good and some bad.  No matter what I thought of his individual stance on positions, I never doubted his patriotism, love of this country, or his desire to make sure that democracy survived another generation.

John McCain was Putin’s Enemy #1.  He led the fight through the Senate to get the Magnitsky Act passed.  He was the first Senator to meet with Bill Browder and get it going through committee.  He was also the go-between for the Steele Dossier, making sure it was personally delivered to James Comey. (Daily Check-In 8/23/2017, Daily Check-In 10/19/2017, Daily Check-In 05/15/2018, Daily Check-In 05/14/2018). He was an outspoken critic of Trump’s, and in his last public speech he said that Rand Paul was working for the Kremlin.

His passing also marks the end of the Republican Party as we knew it.  It’s now perverted into the Party of Trump.  Without more people like McCain to stand up for the GOP, the GOP won’t survive the next few years.  Without more people like McCain, the GOP doesn’t deserve to survive the next few years.

 

RUMOR MILL

I’m glad you touched on “a more perfect union”, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about the last couple of weeks.

Based on what I’ve read about the American revolution and the earliest days of the nation, I get the impression that the founding fathers were aware that the government they were working on wasn’t perfect, but that didn’t stop them from trying to include every possible protection for us against tyranny and corruption. The result was a more perfect union that gave us the tools to improve things as we went along, so that our government can adapt to the world as it changes.

Back in 2016, when Trump was asked in an interview about his admiration for Putin, a man who has killed anyone who stands in his way, Trump fired back with “You think we’re so perfect?” And to me, that underscores his lack of understanding about what this country is about, who we are, and where we should be going. The United States government has done some awful things throughout our history. While we should never forget or attempt to whitewash those things, we shouldn’t dwell on them either. We should remember our errors and shortcomings, and we should strive to never repeat them. Perfection is not in our past, but we should never stop working to make it a part of our future.

Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, and every person between them have highlighted the fact that our democracy is not as secure as we would like to believe, not from foreign threats, and certainly not from domestic ones. Once this entire matter is resolved, we must work toward securing our election process and expanding it so that as many people as possible can make their voice heard. We must work toward rooting out corruption and the corporate influence at all levels of government, so that the voice of the people is never drowned out. We must better educate our children and young adults so that they can be informed voters and less susceptible to propaganda. We must elect leaders who truly lead by example, and demonstrate compassion, cooperation, and honor. We must earn back the trust and respect that we have lost. We must give people something to fight for, instead of something to fight against. We must do these things together, as one nation, indivisible. It’s going to require hard work, hard questions, and honest answers.

We may not be that perfect union, and we may never become a perfect union, but we must never, ever stop working toward it. We owe it to generations past, and generations yet to be born.

As MSM becomes more comfortable discussing Trump in the context of organized crime/mafia/mob, I’d like to give a simple review of how television polarized this issue about him, long ago. Let’s explore what happened to US – you & me, when a mobster played CEO on TV… – THREAD –

  1. NYC is an incredible place. But it has a real problem. A dangerous problem. It’s soaked in organized crime. In the mob. It has been for a century. So, folks there know the mafia all too well. It’s in their family. Their businesses. It’s on the ladder to their dreams…
  2. They touch the mob – day in, & day out. This is life for them. It’s normal. The mob is the city and the city is the mob. So, Donald Trump – all his life – was just another mobbed-up crook to them. A con man. They knew his game, & shrugged it off. And then a TV show happened…
  3. “The Apprentice” – where the mobbed-up conman was presented as a CEO billionaire extraordinaire. This was pure bullsh*t. NYC knew it. The greater trip-state area knew it. Everyone in D.C. who’d ever encountered him knew it. And every NYC journalist & media outlet knew it. So..
  4. Trump became a colossal joke. Not that he wasn’t 1 already – from all the John Barron, Genovese-Cohn fixing, Gambino-concrete building, Epstein-partying ridiculousness & horror. But “The Apprentice” was just over the top 4 New Yorkers. So, they shrugged him off completely…
  5. And here’s the thing about New Yorkers: it’s kinda unfathomable 2 them that the rest of the world doesn’t know what they know. Especially, something as OBVIOUS and LONG-DOCUMENTED as Donald Trump & the mob. So, they didn’t blare the alarm. Not really. Not en masse. In fact…
  6. Many are not alarmed about the mob themselves. Because it’s in their families, & businesses, & on that ladder to their dreams. They’ve made themselves immune to the stakes of organized crime. Immune to the human misery that mobsters profit off of. Not all, but enough…
  7. They defend their mob friends on TV, even. Calling them good dads, and patriots. Near tears that their friends are finally facing accountability for a lifetime of profiting off organized crime. Perhaps, that mirror is just too tough to face. Meanwhile…
  8. For the rest of the country, Trump as a mobster was not a known thing. It wasn’t. Most all Americans know him as the business CEO that The Apprentice presenting him as being. As unthinkable as this is for the trip-state area in which Donald was raised…
  9. It’s true. The vast majority of Americans believed that Donald was a successful businessman. “The Apprentice” made sure of that. And the largely NYC-based, MSM press went right along with it. Despite what they knew was true. So, that coverage of him throughout his campaign…
  10. …the repeated narrative of Donald as “the billionaire businessman” served to reinforce the only thing the majority of Americans knew (in addition to the birther stuff), from “The Apprentice.” Just like that, in the eyes of the American voter, he became what he played on TV.
  11. Now, here is where it gets REALLY dangerous. On BOTH sides. For New Yorkers & tri-state, he’s a joke. Combine that with how immune most of them are to the stakes of organized crime – because of how normal it is to them, and we have a real problem…
  12. The normalization, 4 those who knew Trump best, is blinding/distracting them from grasping the national security threat this a**hole presents. This includes the NYC press. For those of us who study organized crime, we get it. He’s going to rip it all down 4 his overlords…
  13. The mob wants to traffic & exploit. They want the resources of our nation in their wallets. And they don’t give a f*ck who or what they have to destroy to have it. In fact, they relish the misery. That’s where the big money is – that’s what they know how to do best.
  14. Anyone from NYC – especially in the media, who continues to joke or laugh about Donald’s mob history – rather than report on it seriously (as they should have 3 years ago) is participating in the disinformation about him. They are polarizing, when they should be informing…
  15. Because that other end of the Donald spectrum – the rest of America, who were sold “the billionaire businessman” lie? Yeah. They’re still in that confusion. I’m experiencing it everyday. Even out in Hollywood, where folks get that reality TV is a lie. Here’s where they’re at:
  16. They absolutely can’t wrap their minds around the fact that it was known that Trump was mobbed-up, and no one reported on it. Or, if it was reported, it wasn’t above-the-fold, 24/7 headline news throughout the election. They cannot fathom why MSM, especially NYC-based…
  17. Did NOT report on all his mob history, non-stop. This is a big deal – that a President launders money for global organized crime. This seems, to them, to be the biggest story in the history of stories. And for NYC, including the media? Yeah…
  18. The fact that no one already knew this about Donald seems unfathomable to them. Also, they’re not quite sure if it’s a big threat – or newsworthy, because it’s their daily life, and they seem to be doing okay. So, that’s our pickle. In a nutshell.
  19. I’m going to keep putting out information on not just donald and the mob behind him, but on the truth about organized crime as a whole: its history, its tactics, its goals, its role in Trump-Russia and beyond. If the MSM press were to start prioritizing the same…
  20. We might just find our way out of this… And back to each other. – END –

PS – I promise “trip-state” is not my creation. It is Twitter, doing its spell-check thing. And, for once, I kinda love it.

 

 

That’s it for the last couple days.  Yes, I know that last tweet thread is a big block of text, but I liked it so much I felt the need to copy it down, lest it disappear into the ether.

Reading that makes me think of living in a rough part of town.  In my past, I’ve lived in a few “shady” areas.  I’ve also crashed in more than a couple projects, and used to travel to several others for work.  At the time, I was actually pretty comfortable in them, because I was young, stupid, and had some experience with shadiness myself.  It was just part of the culture.  No one thought twice about the fact Johnny was dealing or Frankie was carrying a stolen pistol.  That was normal.  It was only when getting outside of that culture that hanging out with criminals felt weird.  Even when I tell friends nowadays about some of the crew I ran with, I get sideways looks.

That is what Lincoln’s thread reminds me of.  In New York, not only is the mob a thing, but it’s such an ingrained part of the culture that no one thinks about it.  It’s only when Cousin Timmy from Topeka hears about how “dangerous” New York is on TV that they give any thought to the mob.  Even then, the image they get is something from a movie of gentleman criminals only hurting each other.  The regular New Yorker knows to keep their head down and stay out of the their way.  If they told Timmy about all they knew, then Timmy would ask too many questions about how you know.

The MSM, who has their own ties to the mob, let Trump run roughshod all over this country, and only now are they asking questions about his mob ties.  Now, they’re finally digging into Trump’s ties to La Cosa Nostra and the Russian Mafia.

It’s about fucking time.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Published by noneofthisisnormal

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