Tag: Rumor Mill

Daily Check-In 04/11/2018

Wednesday, April 11th.

 

PAUL RYAN TO NOT SEEK RE-ELECTION

So, Paul Ryan is retiring.  The Speaker of the House, who was facing a stiff battle in November, decided to abandon ship.

One question that I have; does this mean Paul Ryan will grow a spine and stand up to Trump, or continue his invertebrate ways?

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION: COHEN IS SOL AND PWF, DANA BOENTE AND JAMES COMEY, TRUMP’S TEMPER TANTRUMS WORSEN, SENATE MAKING MOVES TO PROTECT MUELLER, DEVIN NUNES IS A FUCKWAD, MANAFORT IS MANAFUCKED

Michael Cohen is SOL and PWF.  Shit outta luck and pretty well fucked…

 

Dana Boente backed up Comey’s claims, and Comey taped an interview with ABC News…

 

Trump’s having more temper tantrums and getting shitty advice…

 

But as much as the Senate looks like it’s trying to protect Robert Mueller…

 

Dipshit Cowpoke Devin Nunes tries to do Trump’s dirty work.

 

That still won’t help Paul Manafort.  He’s not just fucked, he’s Manafucked.

U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller asked a judge in Alexandria, Virginia, to issue 35 sets of subpoenas to witnesses for a July 10 appearance at a trial. That’s when President Donald Trump’s former campaign Chairman Paul Manafort is set to go on trial on tax and bank fraud charges.

Mueller asked for blank subpoenas, with names to be filled in later.

 

By the way, the Senate Intelligence Committee just received a bunch of documents from Jill Stein’s campaign.

 

COLD WAR 2.0: SYRIA, RUSSIA, AND TRUMP LEAKS ON TWITTER

 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK: DAY 2 OF ZUCKERBERG’S SENATE TESTIMONY

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY

 

CAN WE GET BACK TO POLITICS?

 

RUMOR MILL: GETTING OUT WHILE THE GETTING IS…

With Paul Ryan leaving, expect even more retirements from Congress from Republicans. Especially as news comes out about the GOP taking Russian money during 2016, and before.

 

That’s it for today.  My plan for this weekend is to fill out the cast of characters a little bit, maybe include some media members as well.  Especially Maggie Haberman.  She’s an interesting character in this whole mess.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 04/10/2018

Tuesday, April 10th.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION:  ROSENSTEIN SIGNED OFF ON COHEN RAID, MUELLER MET WITH TRUMP’S LEGAL TEAM YESTERDAY, MULTIPLE SEYCHELLES MEETINGS TOOK PLACE AND MUELLER KNOWS ABOUT THEM, SPECIAL COUNSELOR OFFICE TOOK PRIVILEGED COMMUNICATIONS WITH COHEN, RACHEL MADDOW HAS DANA BOENTE’S NOTES FROM JAMES COMEY, AND MAGGIE HABERMAN TRIES TO BURY THEM ALL WITH OLD NEWS

Back in December, Daily Check-In 12/06/2017, Trump threw a temper tantrum and said “I’m gonna fire Mueller! Wa, Waaa!” after news broke about  Mueller subpoenaing Deutschebank for Trump Org records.  His staff talked him down (not that he could do much of anything in the first place).  There were tons of rumors, and stories, about Trump wanting to fire Mueller.

Fast forward to Daily Check-In 01/25/2018 and Daily Check-In 01/26/2018.  The Dutch announce that they pwned the Russian GRU sponsored groups of Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear, and they have proof that the Russians fucked with the American Election, and it wasn’t the first time the Dutch helped the Yankees.

What was the big story of the day?  Maggie Haberman releasing a story that Trump wanted to fire Mueller back in June 2017 when Jared did something stupid.  That story took the stage and pushed the Dutch Intelligence story out of the spotlight.  While the MSM tripped over their own dicks talking about Maggie’s story, they completely dropped the ball on should have been the biggest story in the world.

So, when Maggie dropped another story about Trump wanting to fire Mueller, my first question is “What is she trying to cover up?”

Let’s go through today’s topics.

Michael Cohen gets his shit fucked up…

 

Congress doesn’t like cut of Trump’s jib…

“I have confidence in Mueller. The president ought to have confidence in Mueller. I think … it would be suicide for the president to want, to talk about firing Mueller,” Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Charles E. Grassley (R-Iowa) said on Fox Business Network. “The less the president said on this whole thing, the better off he would be, the stronger his presidency would be.”

 

Trump attacks American law enforcement more ferociously than he has ever talked about the Russians…

 

Trump’s pick for the SDNY US Attorney had to recuse himself from the Cohen Investigation…

ABC News has learned that Geoffrey Berman, the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, is recused from the Michael Cohen investigation.

Two sources familiar with the matter tell ABC News Berman was not involved in the decision to raid Cohen’s office because of the recusal.

The recusal was approved by Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The raid of Cohen’s handled by others in the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and approved by a federal judge.

Berman is a Trump appointee with ties to Rudy Giuliani who donated money to the 2016 Trump campaign.

The U.S. Attorney’s office declined to comment.

Wow.  That’s what happens when the President personally interviews attorneys; they have to recuse themselves from investigations regarding the team who interviewed them.

The Assistant US Attorney for SDNY would have made the call to move forward with this line, but ultimately doing a no-knock raid on multiple locations belonging to an attorney requires high level DOJ sign-off, Associate AG or higher, and only after proving that there is no other way to get the required evidence.

The choice to the raid was probably pushed by Berman’s second, but was ultimately agreed to by Rosenstein.

Berman is located in the chart below.  Then again, so is everyone else.

Here’s a flowchart someone made showing the interconnections.  Who needs red string and a pegboard when Visio exists?

 

There were multiple meetings in the Seychelles, and Mueller knows because George Nader set them up…

 

The meetings – which included players from the U.S., Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – have become a key focus in Mueller’s probe, and suggest that investigators have become increasingly interested in whether foreign governments, particularly Gulf states, have sought to leverage influence in the Trump administration.

Several of those meetings took place around the same time that Blackwater founder Erik Prince met with Kirill Dmitriev, a wealthy Russian banker, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the de facto ruler of the UAE, in January 2017, NJ.com reported.

The sources said several of those meetings took place around the same time as another meeting in the Seychelles between Erik Prince, founder of the security company Blackwater, Kirill Dmitriev, the director of one of Russia’s sovereign wealth funds, and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed Al-Nahyan, the effective ruler of the United Arab Emirates (also known as “MBZ”). Details of that earlier meeting were first reported by the Washington Post last year.

That is meetings.  Plural.  As in more than one.

 

Problems from 2016 are coming forward…

 

Trump’s legal team met with Mueller’s team while the raid was going on…

 

 

Trump’s own people either signed off on the raid or know he’s wrong…

 

 

The raid involved Cohen’s communications with Manafort AND Stormy Daniels…

 

 

 

 

The Stooges helping him are cornered…

 

 

 

Oh, and by the way…

Former EDVA, Acting Deputy Attorney General, Acting Attorney General, and current FBI General Counselor Dana Boente has been approached by the Special Counselor’s Office to testify before the Grand Jury as a witness.  Boente, the poison pill from Daily Check-In 02/09/2018, and hired into a position by FBI Director Christopher Wray into a position where Sessions and Trump can’t touch him (Daily Check-In 01/23/2018  and Daily Check-In 01/29/2018).

Comey took notes on his meetings with Trump.  Know who he talked to?  Know who took notes?

Dana Fucking Boente.

And Rachel Maddow has some of those notes, and just broadcast them to the world.

This directly ties Donald J. Trump, President of the United States of America, to criminal activities.

Take a guess as to which story Maggie’s trying to cover up.

 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK: MARK ZUCKERBERG TESTIFIED BEFORE CONGRESS, REDDIT OUTS THE TROLLS

I have battled more than a few names on that list.  Instead of deleting them, I would like to see Reddit flag and tag them.  Illuminate the accounts and their actions, and highlight the trolls for the world to see.

Sunlight is the best disinfectant.

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE:  FOX NEWS TELLS TRUMP TO FIRE MUELLER, SINCLAIR ATTACKS CNN AS PARTISAN, RUPERT MURDOCH’S OFFICES IN LONDON RAIDED

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS:  JOHN BOLTON FIRES TOM BOSSERT

 

#NEVERAGAIN:  A RED HOT POKER?

He reportedly said Hogg should expect push-back if he’s going to “get his hands dirty” in political issues and advised him to “just be a grownup about it.”

“Which, in Allman’s world, apparently means being threatened publicly with sodomy before you’re even old enough to vote,” the Riverfront Times wrote.

Really?  Ass play with a red hot poker?  What the fuck, over?

 

 

STORMYWATCH:  NOW WITH THAT CRIMINAL FLAVOR

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY:  PEPPERIDGE FARM REMEMBERS

 

COLD WAR 2.0:  TROUBLE IN SYRIA

 

CAN WE GET BACK TO POLITICS?

 

RUMOR MILL:  BE READY TO WALK, RACHEL’S STORY, AND THE BATTLE OF THE REGULATION

The chatter about large-name firings is louder than normal, but still not completely freaking out.  That being said, I want to be like a little person with a stepladder in their backpack; ready for anything.

One thing that does strike me as odd is the subtext about Rachel Maddow’s show tonight. How did she get copies of the actual notes?  How long ago did they get this?  How long have they worked on this story?

Finally, it would be nice if some of these journalists actually looked at the Special Counselor regulation.  Trump can’t fire Mueller directly.  Only the AG, or DAG in this case, can fire him.  Firing the DAG moves the authority down the line to the next in line, and so on and so on.  Problem is, there’s no guarantee that would actually work.  Trump’s “action of last resort” would be to try to wipe out the regulation by changing the regulation himself, but that’s an even bigger legal battle.  Not only would DOJ slow walk this through, but it would be challenged in court faster than an NFL Instant Replay.

 

That’s it for today.  It’s only TUESDAY!  If things calm down this week (hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha) I’ll update a few of the smaller articles, like who flipped, the various Russians involved, the spies, et cetera.

Remember, this is gonna get crazier before it calms down, but liberty, democracy, and freedom are worth the fight.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 04/09/2018

Monday April 9th and the weekend.

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION: FBI RAIDS COHEN’S HOME, OFFICE, HOTEL.

Yeah, that happened.

Southern District New York, operating under a referral from Robert Mueller’s team, executed multiple search warrants against the President’s longtime lawyer Michael Cohen, at multiple locations, at the same time. This included seizing tax documents, campaign records, communications with his client Donald Trump, contracts, bank records, and other information related to several legal matters, including Stormy Daniels.

I hate to sound hyperbolic, but this is huge. The prosecutors were able to convince a judge of the following…

  • Cohen had information vital to the investigations.
  • Communication between Trump and Cohen was not covered completely under Attorney-Client privilege.
  • That information likely includes criminal activity.
  • If served with a subpoena, Cohen would not cooperate.
  • Cohen would likely move to destroy evidence.
  • Cohen’s behavior was so bad, a judge decided that several no-knock raids executed at the same time was the least intrusive method of obtaining this information.
  • The information on file was so atrocious that the judge ordered these actions, despite Cohen being the personal attorney of the President of the United States.
  • The prosecutors and judge feel that there is enough information to refer to Stormywatch as a criminal matter.

Yes, that’s right.  Trump attorney Cohen is being investigated for possible bank fraud, campaign finance violations, according to a person familiar with the case.  One of these matters is the Stormy Daniels payoff.  They’re also looking into a Ukrainian’s $150,000 Payment for a Trump Appearance.

Investigators subpoenaed the Trump Organization this year for an array of records about business with foreign nationals. In response, the company handed over documents about a $150,000 donation that the Ukrainian billionaire, Victor Pinchuk, made in September 2015 to the Donald J. Trump Foundation in exchange for a 20-minute appearance by Mr. Trump that month through a video link to a conference in Kiev.

$150,000 for a 20 minute speech?  From a man who has donated millions to the Clinton Foundation for years, and was accused, by Trump supporters no less, of paying for access?

Remember, everything they do is projection.  Every attack against an opponent is designed to distract.  That’s gonna make Pizzagate look pretty fucking awkward.

But aside from the why, what, where, and how, it’s who.  More precisely, who is the SDNY, and why did Mueller refer Cohen’s case to him?  This article explains Why Robert Mueller Handed Off the Michael Cohen Raid.  There are several reasons why Mueller handed this off to Geoffrey Berman, but the biggest reason is to use SDNY as a clean team, or taint team.

Ok, short version of a clean team.  Because they’re seizing documents related to conversations between an attorney and their client, the investigators have to go through them with a fine toothed comb.  If they found something that wasn’t covered by the warrant but was criminal, it would be inadmissible in court.  So, they have another group of people go through all of the correspondence to see what’s covered by the warrant and what’s not.  This way, the clean team can then forward on what’s covered, and leave the rest behind.

Cohen’s office in 30 Rock belongs to Squire Patton Boggs.  They also represent Gazprom, SCL, and Cambridge Analytica.  Well, used to be his office.  He got shitcanned via press statement.

By the way, Michael Cohen is a Deputy Finance Chair for the Republican Party.  They’ve wasted no time scrubbing his profile from their page.

 

 

RUSSIAN ECONOMY TAKES A HIT

 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRUMP HATES BROWN PEOPLE

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

STORMYWATCH, FROM THE STORMCENTER 6000 METEOROPORNOLOGICAL CENTER

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY

 

TRUMP TOWER FIRE

 

RED STATE TEACHER STRIKE

 

CAN WE GET BACK TO POLITICS?

 

RUMOR MILL:  WAG THE DOG, AND AN EVIDENCE BURNING PARTY

This is the first time I’ve ever put WaPo in the Rumor Mill, but given the rest of the news, a few voices on Reddit were talking about Trump using Syria as a distraction from the news of Cohen’s raid, sort of a Wag the Dog scenario.

Wag The Dog was a movie about a White House Official that hires a Hollywood Producer to make a war to distract the country from a sex scandal.

I don’t think this will happen, but I wanted to mention what I was seeing.  None of the main Rumor Mill voices were talking about this being a possible scenario, so take it as it is.

 

That’s it for today.  If the week starts off with Cohen’s shit getting seized by the FBI, then we’re looking forward to a crazy week.  Real fucking crazy.

Time to grab on and hold tight.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Daily Check-In 04/06/2018

Friday April 6th

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

The following is a comment from Reddit user /u/CitCeasar.  Here’s the permalink.

Earlier this week, CNN broke the story that Mueller had stopped several oligarchs asking questions about Russian money being funneled to the campaign or inauguration. That story indicates that Mueller and his team were focused on two methods to accomplish this:

  1. One area under scrutiny, sources say, is investments Russians made in companies or think tanks that have political action committees that donated to the campaign.
  2. Another theory Mueller’s office is pursuing, sources said, is whether wealthy Russians used straw donors — Americans with citizenship — as a vessel through which they could pump money into the campaign and inauguration fund.

Previous stories from the Dallas Morning News have also raised questions about straw donors. One of these stories, “How Putin’s oligarchs funneled millions into GOP campaigns”, focused on several specific people:

  • Len Blavatnik, a dual U.S.-U.K. citizen and one of the largest donors to GOP political action committees in the 2015-16 election cycle. […] Data from the Federal Election Commission show that Blavatnik’s campaign contributions dating back to 2009-10 were fairly balanced across party lines and relatively modest for a billionaire. […] In 2015-16, everything changed. Blavatnik’s political contributions soared and made a hard right turn as he pumped $6.35 million into GOP political action committees, with millions of dollars going to top Republican leaders including Sens. Mitch McConnell, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham.
  • Andrew Intrater, according to Mother Jones, is Vekselberg’s cousin. He is also chief executive of Columbus Nova, Renova’s U.S. investment arm located in New York. (FEC records list his employer as Renova US Management LLC.). Intrater had no significant history of political contributions prior to the 2016 elections. But in January 2017 he contributed $250,000 to Trump’s Inaugural Committee. His six-figure gift bought him special access to a dinner billed as “an intimate policy discussion with select cabinet appointees,” according to a brochure obtained by the Center for Public Integrity.
  • Alexander Shustorovich, chief executive of IMG Artists, attempted to give the Republican Party $250,000 in 2000 to support the George W. Bush presidential campaign, but his money was rejected because of his ties to the Russian government, according to Quartz. So why didn’t the Trump team reject Shustorovich’s $1 million check to Trump’s Inaugural Committee?
  • Simon Kukes is an oil magnate who has something in common with Intrater. From 1998 to 2003, he worked for Vekselberg and Blavatnik as chief executive of TNK. Redacted CIA documents released in 2003 under the Freedom of Information Act said “TNK president Kukes said that he bribed local officials.” The CIA confirmed the authenticity of the reports to The Guardian newspaper but would not comment further. In 2016, Kukes contributed a total of $283,000, much of it to the Trump Victory Fund. He had no significant donor history before last year’s election.

Another name worth looking at is Timothy Kasbe, who was discussed in the Washington Post’s story about well-connected Russians who attended the Trump inauguration.

Prior to donating $150,000.00 to the Trump inauguration, Kasbe had no prior history of political contributions/donations. Kasbe was also an executive at a Russian-based jean company at the time he made the donation. Kasbe then left the country to take a job in New Zealand shortly after the inauguration.

Why was he covered in the WaPo story? It’s because he was the one who invited Alexey Repik, one of the wealthy Russians with rumored ties to the FSB who attended the inauguration. Kasbe told the WaPo that the Repiks were “family friends from California,” while Repik said “they had met months earlier during a tour of Silicon Valley companies for Russian business executives that Kasbe helped host on behalf of a headhunting firm.”

Repik had access to some major players during his inauguration visit. He attended various events where he met President Trump, Mike Pence, Reince Priebus, Rex Tillerson, and Mike Pompeo, posting some of these encounters on a public Facebook post and discussing others with the WaPo.

How did Repik get access to these power players? Well, Kasbe’s inauguration donation would have provided some access. However, it appears Kasbe told the New Zealand Herald that the event where Repik met President Trump was unrelated to his inauguration tickets/donations.

Who invited Repik to that event? According to Repik’s own Facebook post, it was Reince Priebus.

 

George Nader has given information to Mueller’s team at least 7 times so far; 3 interviews and 4 grand jury appearances.  This is on top of the documents he provided to the team.

If the warrants against the five phones are “not the subject of either of the current prosecutions involving Manafort,” then they would seem to not be connected to the crimes arising out of the Ukrainian imbroglio, which is the subject of his current prosecutions. By process of elimination, they are related to either a potential collusion case against Manafort, or additional targets. If there are additional targets, though, they would have to be connected in some way to Mueller’s wider mandate to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and/or the Trump campaign’s potential cooperation with that interference and links to Russia.

In other words, Mueller appears to be going after someone for collusion using the Manafort connection.

Legal analyst Renato Mariotti observed on Twitter that this new warrant could very well mean that Mueller is seeking “historical cell site information” for Manafort’s old phones, which would mean he’s trying to track the timing of Manafort’s previous movements. Again, this all came soon after Gates began cooperating with the investigation. Gates has already plead guilty and confessed to lying in February to the FBI about his knowledge of a meeting between Manafort, Mercury Public Affairs lobbyist and former Congressman Vin Weber, and Rep. Dana Rohrabacher at the Capitol Hill Club in 2013. (Republican House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy was recorded in 2016 saying that he—“swear to God”—believed Rohrabacher was on Putin’s payroll, which his staff first denied and then argued was “clearly an attempt at humor.”)

By the way, here’s a link to the Mueller filing re: Manafort search warrants. Enjoy.  Here is also the  Manafort Motion Bill of Particulars – Mad Dog PAC, courtesy of Spicy Mic.

 

Here are the Russians people and entities that were hit with the sanction hammer:

  • Andrey Akimov
  • Vladimir Bogdanov
  • Oleg Deripaska
  • Alexey Dyumin
  • Mikhail Fradkov
  • Oleg Govuron
  • Sergei Fursenko
  • Alexander Torshin
  • Viktor Veksleberg
  • Suleiman Kerimov
  • Vladimir Kolokoltsev
  • Konstantin Kosachev
  • Miguel Jose Leone Martinez
  • Alexey Miller
  • Nikolai Patrushev
  • Jesus Perez Alvear
  • Vladislav Reznik
  • Igor Rotenberg
  • Kirill Shamalov
  • Evgeny Shkolov
  • Andrei Skoch
  • Timur Valiulin
  • Alexander Zhorov
  • Viktor Zolotov
  • AgroHolding Kuban
  • Basic Element Limited
  • B-Finance Ltd.
  • EN+ Group PLC
  • JSC EuroSibEnergo
  • GAZGroup
  • Gazprom Burenie, 0 0 0
  • Ladoga Menedzhment, 0 0 0
  • NPV Engineering Open Joint Stock Company
  • Renova Group

Full list Here.

Joseph Schmitz, former Inspector General at the Pentagon, used to work with Blackwater.  Just like George Nader.

Gee, I wonder how Mueller found out about this guy.

 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA AND FACEBOOK

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

When Geraldo Rivera is calling something bullshit, it’s bullshit.

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

THAT’S KIND OF A WAR CRIME…

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS:  TRUMP IS A THIN SKINNED PANSY AND PRUITT IS STILL EMPLOYED?

 

RED STATE TEACHER STRIKES

 

SAY GOODBYE TO THE ECONOMY

 

STORMYWATCH, FROM THE STORMCENTER 6000 METEOROPORNOLOGICAL CENTER

 

CAN WE GET BACK TO POLITICS?

Here’s part of his press statement

Since being elected to Congress in 2010, I’ve worked to make government more efficient and responsive, cut government spending, repeal Obamacare, protect life and reduce the debt. Locally, I’ve worked tirelessly to get federal funding for the widening and deepening project at the Port of Corpus Christi and help our other area ports and military facilities. I’ve also been extremely successful in working with our communities on recovering from Hurricane Harvey. Most importantly, I’ve been able to help countless people, especially veterans with their problems with the federal government.

“While I planned on serving out the remainder of my term in Congress, I know in my heart it’s time for me to move along and look for new ways to serve.

 

 

RUMOR MILL: DARK MONEY

I’m beginning to think that Spicy Mic had the day off from work today, and spent a lot of it doing research.

Below is a link to a tweet about dark money ties from Viktor Vekselberg to Len Blavatnik.  From Len to the GOP, as Len is an American citizen.

 

That’s it for today.  In the future, I’ll do a run-through of all the recently sanctioned Russians and their companies.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur