Tag: Politics

Daily Check-In 05/25/2018

Friday, May 25th through Memorial Day

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

A Russian oligarch who was questioned by special counsel Robert Mueller and recently sanctioned by the US visited President Donald Trump’s personal attorney Michael Cohen in Trump Tower during the presidential transition in January 2017, according to video reviewed by CNN.

The January 9, 2017, Trump Tower appearance by Viktor Vekselberg, which was also reported Friday by The New York Times, adds to the questions swirling over the payments to Cohen, which Mueller’s team questioned Vekselberg about after the FBI stopped his private jet at a New York-area airport earlier this year.

Vekselberg, chairman of Russian asset manager Renova Group, was accompanied at Trump Tower by Andrew Intrater, who is Vekselberg’s cousin and head of Columbus Nova. Vekselberg is Columbus Nova’s biggest client.

 

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s team has been probing Roger Stone’s finances as it summons a series of witnesses to gather more information about one of President Donald Trump’s longtime advisers, according to people familiar with the situation.

…

So far, Mueller’s team has contacted at least eight of Stone’s current or former associates, Stone told NBC News on Sunday. He subsequently told CNN “they are all young people who have no knowledge about my personal, political or business activities.”

 

Spanish authorities confirmed on Friday night that they had given the FBI copies of wiretaps that they gathered between Alexander Torshin and his allies in the Kremlin, discussing an upcoming meeting with Donnie Jr. at the May 2016 NRA meeting.  We’ve covered that meeting before, and how the Spaniards have been on Torshin for a long time.

 

TRUMP HATES IMMIGRANTS:  #WHEREARETHECHILDREN?

Immigration and Customs Enforcement recently asked the National Archives and Record Administration (NARA), which instructs federal agencies on how to maintain records, to approve its timetable for retaining or destroying records related to its detention operations. This may seem like a run-of-the-mill government request for record-keeping efficiency. It isn’t. An entire paper trail for a system rife with human rights and constitutional abuses is at stake.

ICE has asked for permission to begin routinely destroying 11 kinds of records, including those related to sexual assaults, solitary confinement and even deaths of people in its custody. Other records subject to destruction include alternatives to detention programs, regular detention monitoring reports, logs about the people detained in ICE facilities, and communications from the public reporting detention abuses. ICE proposed various timelines for the destruction of these records ranging from 20 years for sexual assault and death records to three years for reports about solitary confinement.

 

COHEN:  FOLLOW THE MONEY

(WASHINGTON) — Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, met with a Russian oligarch and discussed U.S.-Russia relations just 11 days before Trump was inaugurated as president, according to a person familiar with the meeting.

A firm connected to the oligarch, billionaire Viktor Vekselberg, later paid Cohen $500,000 for consulting work.

Vekselberg met with Cohen for about 20 minutes in Cohen’s 26th-floor office in Trump Tower in New York , said the person, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the meeting publicly. The two men were joined by Andrew Intrater, Vekselberg’s American cousin, who heads a New York private equity firm that manages financial assets for the Russian.

 

TRUMP ORG AND CORRUPTION, FROM THE “WATER IS WET” DEPARTMENT

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

Oh, by the way, he’s now an “alcoholic.”  You know you’re a supreme level dick when admitting to being a lush is your best defense against other crimes.

 

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Harvey Weinstein was arrested and charged with rape and other abuse charges Friday, months after allegations of sexual violence and harassment toppled the once-powerful Hollywood mogul.

Weinstein, 66, was charged with rape, criminal sex act, sexual abuse and sexual misconduct for cases involving two women, according to the New York Police Department.

After his arraignment on Friday morning Weinstein posted $1 million bail and surrendered his passport. He will wear an electronic monitoring device at all times, and face other travel restrictions.

 

BLUE WAVE

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

“The FBI recommends any owner of small office and home office routers reboot the devices to temporarily disrupt the malware and aid the potential identification of infected devices,” the bureau’s cyber division wrote in a public alert.

“Owners are advised to consider disabling remote management settings on devices and secure with strong passwords and encryption when enabled. Network devices should be upgraded to the latest available versions of firmware.”

Like I said in Daily Check-In 05/23/2018, do it now!

 

NFL:  THE F IS FOR FASCISM

 

SCHADENFRUEDE

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

 

That’s it for the weekend.  Not only was it busy in the news, but personally as well.  I may not have time to write an update every night, as I have several things going on at once.  I’ll go into more detail late June, early July.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 05/24/2018

Thursday, May 24th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

I know we’ve been waiting for months on Roger and Julian to go to prison, but it feels like the pace is accelerating.  I’m not sure when, but something will happen soon.  Just don’t ask me to quantify soon.

Following yesterday’s (Daily Check-In 05/23/2018) news about the DOJ briefing about the FBI Informant into the Trump Campaign, it was decided that the Gang of 8, along with Adam Schiff, Democratic lead of the House Intelligence Committee, would attend their own briefing.

Two other people that were there that had no right to be were White House Chief of Staff John Kelly, and Trump’s impeachment lawyer Emmett Flood.

A lawyer, representing a client who is the subject of an ongoing investigation, attending a meeting about how evidence was collected for said investigation.

That’s about 50 Shades of Fucked Up.

Supposedly, Flood left after making an opening statement, but the mother fucker should never have been there to begin with.  And depending on what he did say and do while there, he exposes himself to legal jeopardy, including possible Obstruction of Justice charges.

As far as why the informant was there, he wasn’t “planted.”  He was monitoring the Russians as they talked to Page, Papadopoulos, and Manafort.  And Flynn.  And Clovis.  And Sessions.  And EVERY OTHER FUCKER IN THE CAMPAIGN THAT TALKED TO A RUSSIAN!  Normally, that’s one or two people.  With Trump, it’s like everyone.

The Associated Press, CNN, New York Times, Washington Post and Politico are suing for the unsealing of various types of warrants used in the special counsel’s investigation, as well as sealed court documents specific to the case of former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who was indicted last fall.

“The fact that certain charges have been brought does not imply that the Special Counsel’s investigation into the assigned matters is closed,” Mueller said, arguing against the release of the records. “Nor does it imply that the search warrant materials could be unsealed at this time without creating a serious risk of jeopardizing the ongoing and interconnected aspects of the investigation.”

…

In the filing, Mueller also said that many media reports about the nature of the investigation “may be inaccurate or incomplete” and may be “based on unofficial sources, half-understood facts, or speculation.”

Mueller, in the filing, said that he was not opposed to unsealing the two Manafort warrants that have been subject to legal challenges that Manafort has brought seeking to throw out certain evidence, with Mueller acknowledging that many of the details about them were already coming out in open court proceedings.

This is interesting, but not unexpected.  Mueller’s team is working on many things that haven’t been released to the media yet, and giving them everything they’re asking for would cripple their other investigations.

 

 

COHEN:  FOLLOW THE MONEY

 

COLD WAR 2.0

For the first time, the Dutch-led team said the missile had come from a unit based in western Russia.

All 298 people on board the Boeing 777 died when it broke apart in mid-air flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.

It was hit by a missile fired from rebel-held territory in Ukraine. Russia says none of its weapons was used.

But on Thursday Wilbert Paulissen, a Dutch official from the Joint Investigation Team (JIT), told reporters: “All the vehicles in a convoy carrying the missile were part of the Russian armed forces.”

He restated the JIT’s conclusion that the plane had been destroyed by a Russian-made Buk missile, adding that it had been supplied by the country’s 53rd anti-aircraft brigade in Kursk.

At a news conference in the Dutch city of Utrecht, the investigators also showed social media pictures which they said traced the route the missile convoy had taken to reach eastern Ukraine.

MH17 was shot down flying over Europe by a missile launched from Crimea, the part of Ukraine that Russia invaded in 2014.  Here are the two hypothesis in place.

Russia’s story, at first, was that the plane was shot down by Ukrainians.  Then, it was “Ukranian Rebels” using Ukrainian missiles.  Somehow, this evolved to the exploits of a B-grade action movie where a handful of rebels, armed with AK-47’s, commandeered a missile launcher from a fully armed convoy (though no soldiers were lost, no injuries sustained, and no equipment damaged).  Then, used the missile they just stole, and instead of attacking a Russian Air Force jet, of which there were plenty of targets, they decide to shoot down a passenger plane flying overhead.  Just to frame the Russians.

The second hypothesis is the Russians shot the plane down themselves and blamed Ukraine for it.

The first stretches credulity.  The second fits all know facts, evidence, and known patterns.

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

I’ve said for a while, but nearly ANYONE ELSE would be better as a President than Donald Trump.  Anyone.  Pick a random stranger off of the street, they’d do a better job.

Why?

This random person would be so scared of the job duties, and sobered by the overwhelming responsibility of each and every action, that they would view each and every action with panic-inducing fear, and would be forced to ask experts what to do.  Trump’s narcissism is so complete that he doesn’t think, but he KNOWS that he’s smarter than the experts.  Combine the narcissism with incompetence, impatience, and mendacity, and Trump is a shit sandwich with a side of shit.

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

A lot of ink has been spilled over the last year and a half explaining how congressional Republicans are complicit in the damage Trump is doing to the country because of their failure to hold him accountable. I certainly don’t disagree with that. But based on what has been reported from behind the scenes, it is obvious that most of them know that he is unfit for office, but are too afraid to say so in public. That represents a new level of political cowardice, but the truth is that they are simply trying to protect their jobs in an atmosphere where Republican base voters won’t tolerate disloyalty to the president.

 

TRUMP HATES IMMIGRANTS

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY

 

NFL:  THE F IS FOR FASCISM

The NFL got played, and played itself.  This new policy is a blatant violation of free speech, and since there was no official vote by the owners, also in violation of their own guidelines.

Expect lawsuits against this by the end of June.

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Morgan Freeman?  That sucks.  I could use some good news to cheer me up after that.

YEAH!!!!!  That’s what I needed.

The lawsuit is from an employee of Alpha Omega Winery, who was asked to work a 2015 charity cruise on the San Francisco Bay. What may have begun as a charity event was filled with men who “appeared to be cocaine and ‘drawing straws’ for which sex worker to hire” the lawsuit says. The cruise was part of a night that was auctioned off at a fundraiser. The winning bidders were allegedly “important investors in Alpha,” the lawsuit revealed.

The staffer, Alene Anase, described the sounds of “sexual activity” happening in bedrooms and saw one man “fondling and suckling” sex workers’ breasts. She noted that the sex workers also seemed to be “too young to consent” to the activity.

I heard a rumor from Pace that Devin was about to have a prostitution problem.  Not sure if this is it, but it’ll be interesting to see how close this gets to him.  I can only hope he’s balls deep in this scandal.

The Pun Jar is now $26.

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

SCHADENFRUEDE

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

PROGRESS

 

RUMOR MILL

Keep this in mind for when the sex abuse cases against Trump and his ilk ramp up.  When I get time, I’ll link to the actual case documents from here.

 

That’s it for Thursday.  This post is going on up on Friday, as Thursday night was hectic.  This weekend will be as well, but I hope to get something posted.  I have a few articles on deck.  Maybe I’ll dive into one of those.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 05/23/2018

Wednesday, May 23rd.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

The Ledes

Remember on Daily Check-In 05/02/2018 when it came out that Ukraine stopped working with the Mueller Investigation in exchange for missiles to defend themselves against Russia?  It turns out that they set the meeting up by bribing Michael Cohen.  A bribe of $400,000 set up a meeting between Ukraine and Donald Trump, which led to this agreement.

So not only is it straight up bribery, but this is also a FARA violation.

Lost in the noise of Kushner getting a security clearance from wife’s lover/father, last month Jared Kushner met with Mueller’s team for 6-7 hours worth of interviews.  I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve said that the investigators don’t ask questions that they don’t already have the answers to, and 6 hours is a long time.

He was interviewed as a witness, not a subject or target.  Same thing was said of Paul Manafort, Mike Flynn, Rick Gates, and George Papadopoulos as well.

George pled guilty to lying to the FBI back in October, but his sentencing was deferred while he assisted the investigation and provided evidence.

There’s a few things we can infer from this action…

First, Mueller doesn’t need George any more.  He’s either provided all that he can, or he’s no longer of use.  If they use him any more, they’ll have to file an addendum to this motion.

Second, the timing.  George won’t be sentenced tomorrow, but sometime in the next couple months.

Finally, the sentencing itself will be of note.  While there’s no hard rule about it, the more helpful a cooperating witness is, the less time they serve in jail.  What he pled to carries a maximum 5 year sentence, but normally results in a 2 year prison term.  If he gets a few months, or even a suspended sentence or probation, George delivered the goods.

Pompeo, who previously was Trump’s CIA director, was pressed by Democrats on whether he accepted that finding during testimony Wednesday before the House Foreign Affairs Committee.

“Yes, sir,” he said. But that was only after he initially said the judgment that Russian President Vladimir Putin wanted to help Trump win “was the least confirmed, that is, there was the least support for that” in the report issued by the CIA, the FBI and the National Security Agency in January 2017, a few weeks before Trump took office.

WASHINGTON – Three months before the 2016 presidential election, an Israeli social media specialist joined a Gulf Arab emissary and a former Middle East security contractor for a meeting with Donald Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., to discuss ways they could help the Republican nominee beat his opponent.
The existence of the meeting in Trump Tower in New York City, first revealed on Saturday by The New York Times, has prompted US special counsel Robert Mueller to send investigators to Israel to probe the activities of the Israeli social media firm, which allegedly employed former Israeli intelligence officers and collects user data to help manipulate public opinion. The Israel Police is cooperating with the probe, the Times found.

 

 

COHEN:  FOLLOW THE MONEY

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

FBI agents armed with a court order have seized control of a key server in the Kremlin’s global botnet of 500,000 hacked routers, The Daily Beast has learned. The move positions the bureau to build a comprehensive list of victims of the attack, and short-circuits Moscow’s ability to reinfect its targets.

The FBI counter-operation goes after “VPN Filter,” a piece of sophisticated malware linked to the same Russian hacking group, known as Fancy Bear, that breached the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign during the 2016 election. On Wednesday security researchers at Cisco and Symantec separately provided new details on the malware, which has turned up in 54 countries including the United States.

So, what should you do?

If a victim reboots an infected router, the malicious plugins all disappear, and only the core malware code survives. That code is programmed to connect over the Internet to a command-and-control infrastructure set up by the hackers. First it checks for particular images hosted on Photobucket.com that held hidden information in the metadata. If it can’t find those images—which have indeed been removed from Photobucket—it turns to an emergency backup control point at the hard-coded web address ToKnowAll[.]com.

On Tuesday, FBI agents in Pittsburg asked federal Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan in Pittsburgh for an order directing the domain registration firm Verisign to hand the ToKnowAll[.]com address over to the FBI, in order to “further the investigation, disrupt the ongoing criminal activity involving the establishment and use of the botnet, and assist in the remediation efforts,” according to court records. Lenihan agreed, and on Wednesday the bureau took control of the domain.

REBOOT YOUR MOTHER FUCKING ROUTERS NOW!  Don’t worry, I’ll wait.

…

If there isn’t a button, just unplug the power cable, leave it out for 15 seconds to a minute, then plug it back in.

…

It’ll take a moment to come back on.

…

Ok, if your roommates, kids, or spouses are yelling about the WiFi being out, this is why.  Just make up something.  They’ll freak out less if they think the cable cut out for a second than if you tell them that the Russians are using were using your router to engage in espionage against the United States, and the guy in the quasi-conspiracy theory blog told you to do this.

…

Did it?  Good.

 

#NEVERAGAIN

In Texas, Santa Fe High School had two armed, trained school resource officers who roamed its halls. The student who opened fire in it knew that full well. That did not stop him from bringing weapons onto the campus and opening fire.

 

He had a death wish and the means to execute it.

 

Not only was the deterrent effect nonexistent, but once the carnage was underway, the presence of two good guys with guns did not “solve the problem instantly.” Rather, the guards confronted the shooter within four minutes and intermittently exchanged gunfire with and negotiated with him for 25 minutes before he surrendered.

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

SCHADENFREUDE

 

BLUE WAVE

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT:  THE “FUCK ROGER GODDELL” EDITION

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for today.  I’m not going to guarantee a post for both of the next couple days, but I’ll see what I can do.  The weekend is booked, but I want to write something.  Not sure what yet, but something.  But, that assumes I get a few hours.

There’s an overwhelming sense of desperation coming down the pipe from Trump’s camp.  Their actions aren’t thought out, they’re desperate and without direction, like throwing haymakers in a brawl.

These aren’t smart people.  They’re mobsters in way over their heads, going up against the best that Democracy has to offer.

We’ll get through this. But we have go through it first.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 05/21/2018

Monday, May 21st and Tuesday, May 22nd.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

The Ledes

The Gulf Meeting Fallout

Rudy Giuliani is a liar, demented, or both

Trump in a Panic

Burning the Source

Reactions and OpEds

 

COHEN:  THE TAXI KING FLIPS

Evgeny Friedman, the “Taxi King” and former business partner of Michael Cohen, decided to plead guilty to one count of tax evasion and receive 5 years probation and testify against Michael Cohen.  It was either that, or face up to 125 years in prison.

Evgeny Freidman, welcome to Cooperating Witnesses.

Don’t be surprised when it comes out that Trump knocked up the Playmate, not Broidy.

 

EPA ROUGHOUSING

The Environmental Protection Agency is barring The Associated Press, CNN and the environmental-focused news organization E&E from a national summit on harmful water contaminants.

The EPA blocked the news organizations from attending Tuesday’s Washington meeting, convened by EPA chief Scott Pruitt.

EPA spokesman Jahan Wilcox told the barred organizations they were not invited and there was no space for them, but gave no indication of why they specifically were barred.

Pruitt told about 200 people at the meeting that dealing with the contaminants is a “national priority.”

Guards barred an AP reporter from passing through a security checkpoint inside the building. When the reporter asked to speak to an EPA public-affairs person, the security guards grabbed the reporter by the shoulders and shoved her forcibly out of the EPA building.

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

CORRUPTION ON A RIDUNKULOUS SCALE

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

GOP:  THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

BLUE WAVE

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for today.  And yesterday.  I try to put a post together every night, but sometimes that’s not possible.

It’s easy to get lost in sadness, despair, and depression when it feels like everything if falling apart, but the men and women working in the background to bring these villains to justice.  America is a country of laws, not people, money, or personalities.

It feels like nothing’s happening, but Justice is like a zombie horde.  Slow, methodical, and relentless.  And nothing can stop it.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur