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
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
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
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
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
None of this is Normal 