Tag: Russian

Daily Check-In 03/04/2019

Monday, March 4, 2019.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

House Judiciary Wants All The Things…

The House Judiciary Committee sent requests out for information to 81 people and entities tied to Trump, Russia, the GOP, and the rest of the giant spiderweb of fuckery.  This is a bit more than the 60 that was rumored on Friday (Daily Check-In 03/01/2019), and isn’t a comprehensive list.  I hope to have a full list tomorrow.

I don’t want to jump on a right wing talking point, but this is what an Impeachment procedure looks like in its infancy.

 

Fox News

When Shine assumed command at Fox, the 2016 campaign was nearing its end, and Trump and Clinton were all but tied. That fall, a FoxNews.com reporter had a story that put the network’s journalistic integrity to the test. Diana Falzone, who often covered the entertainment industry, hadobtained proof that Trump had engaged in a sexual relationship in 2006 with a pornographic film actress calling herself Stormy Daniels. Falzone had worked on the story since March, and by October she had confirmed it with Daniels through her manager at the time, Gina Rodriguez, and with Daniels’s former husband, Mike Moz, who described multiple calls from Trump. Falzone had also amassed e-mails between Daniels’s attorney and Trump’s lawyer Michael Cohen, detailing a proposed cash settlement, accompanied by a nondisclosure agreement. Falzone had even seen the contract.

But Falzone’s story didn’t run—it kept being passed off from one editor to the next. After getting one noncommittal answer after another from her editors, Falzone at last heard from LaCorte, who was then the head of FoxNews.com. Falzone told colleagues that LaCorte said to her, “Good reporting, kiddo. But Rupert wants Donald Trump to win. So just let it go.” LaCorte denies telling Falzone this, but one of Falzone’s colleagues confirms having heard her account at the time.

Despite the discouragement, Falzone kept investigating, and discovered that the National Enquirer, in partnership with Trump, had made a “catch and kill” deal with Daniels—buying the exclusive rights to her story in order to bury it. Falzone pitched this story to Fox, too, but it went nowhere. News of Trump’s payoffs to silence Daniels, and Cohen’s criminal attempts to conceal them as legal fees, remained unknown to the public until the Wall Street Journal broke the story, a year after Trump became President.

In January, 2017, Fox demoted Falzone without explanation. That May, she sued the network. Her attorney, Nancy Erika Smith, declined to comment but acknowledged that a settlement has been reached; it includes a nondisclosure agreement that bars Falzone from talking about her work at Fox.

After the Journal story broke, Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter for CNN, published a piece revealing that Fox had killed a Stormy Daniels story. LaCorte, who by then had left Fox but was still being paid by the company, told Mediaite that he’d made the call without talking to superiors. The story simply hadn’t “passed muster,” he claimed, adding, “I didn’t do it to protect Donald Trump.” Nik Richie, a blogger who had broken the first story about Daniels, tweeted, “This is complete bullshit. Ken you are such a LIAR. This story got killed by @FoxNews at the highest level. I know, because I was one of your sources.”

Richie told me, “Fox News was culpable. I voted for Trump, and I like Fox, but they did their own ‘catch and kill’ on the story to protect him.” He said that he’d worked closely with Falzone on the article, and that “she did her homework—she had it.” He says he warned her that Fox would never run it, but “when they killed it she was devastated.” Richie believes that the story “would have swayed the election.”

Fox News played a major role in getting Trump elected, but the fact that they spiked the Stormy Daniels story just days before the election now implicates the individuals and the company in Campaign Finance violations.  Spiking the Stormy Daniels story just before the election could be considered an in-kind campaign donation.  Wonder how that’s a crime?  Ask Michael Cohen.

That’s not even the most screwed up thing from this report.  We’ve got Rupert Murdoch and his cronies pulling the strings on our democracy by controlling the media that a third of the country watches.

Plus, because Tangering Tojo didn’t like something that CNN said, he tried to get the Department of Justice to break up a proposed merger between Time Warner and AT&T.  Granted, there’s a hundred reasons why they shouldn’t merge, but that is the stupidest one.

Kusher

 

Manafort

Manafort asking for a reduced sentence is like a kid asking for less time in time out because they were already in time out yesterday.  Fucker, you get more until you learn your lesson.

Roger Stone

Roger Stone might not even last two whole weeks out in the world with his gag order before going to prison.  How hard is it to not post something on Instagram?  Seriously, the only people that should have that problem are teen girls and food writers.

 

Corsi

So, let’s rewind a moment…

Jerome Corsi and Alex Jones helped spread the ‘Seth Rich was killed by the DNC’ story pushed by Roger Stone.  Roger got this from Russia and Wikileaks.  This story then made its way over to Fox News where several of their anchors, including Sean Hannity, repeated it ad nausuem.

Now, after Roger Stone was indicted and evidence that the plot originated with Russia, we get Jerome Corsi trying to walk this back.  It’s almost like he knows that he committed a crime.

What’s the crime that a person commits when they push propaganda from a hostile state?  It rhymes with Breason.

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

WSJ reports that a lawyer for Michael Cohen reached out to President Trump’s attorneys to inquire about the possibility of a pardon after his home and office were raided by the FBI. But in testimony before Congress last week, Cohen said he had never asked for a pardon from Trump.

An attorney for Michael Cohen, Donald Trump’s former personal lawyer, raised the possibility of a pardon with attorneys for the president after federal agents raided Mr. Cohen’s properties in April, according to people familiar with the discussions.

Conversations among those parties are now being probed by congressional investigators, according to document requests issued Monday by the House Judiciary Committee to dozens of Trump associates, including one of the president’s current lawyers and Mr. Cohen.

This story came in pretty late Monday night.  Right when I was thinking “Damn, there’s a ton of shit here, I don’t think that anything else could possibly drop between now and midnight.”  Then the Wall Street Journal throws this story up behind their paywall.  I’m waiting for more information on details and sourcing.  Until we get more, take this story with a grain of salt.  It sounds and smells like a possible hit piece

Cohen’s attorney at the time, Stephen Ryan, discussed the possibility of a pardon with lawyers for Trump in the weeks after the Federal Bureau of Investigation raided Cohen’s home, office and hotel room, the people said. The pardon discussions occurred while Ryan was working alongside lawyers for Trump to review files seized from Cohen’s premises by the FBI to determine whether they were protected by attorney-client privilege.

The president’s lawyers, including Jay Sekulow, Rudy Giuliani and Joanna Hendon, dismissed the idea of a pardon at the time, these people said. But at least one of them, Giuliani, left open the possibility that the president could grant Cohen one in the future, they said. Ryan left the impression that if Cohen couldn’t rely on a pardon, he might cooperate with prosecutors from the Manhattan U.S. attorney’s office investigating Cohen, the people said.

I’m still waiting for more information, but it sounds like a couple things are going on here.  Either this was a hit piece meant to destroy Cohen’s character, paint him as a liar, or show that pardon discussions did take place.  The likely twist from RWM will be that Cohen must have directed the lawyers to talk about pardons to Sekulow, Hendon, and Giuliani, so therefore Cohen is a liar.  My guess is that the conversations did take place, but were more low-key, like asking someone to pass the salt.  The fact that Rudy leaves the door open for talks about it in the future sounds fishy.

Like I said, until I hear otherwise, this sounds like it might be a hit piece.  Rupert Murdoch now owns the Wall Street Journal

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

 

TRAITOR TOTS

Whitaker Quits

Maybe he can go back to screwing over inventors in Iowa.

 

Gaetz

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

CONGRESS

 

EMERGENCIES, SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

RACISM, RIGHT WING TERRORISM, & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Monday.  Fuck.

I should have a list of the 81 letter targets on Tuesday.  Also, it looks like some of the targets are already responding.  Also, there’s a possible criminal referral for Kushner’s 8,541 SF-86 edits.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 03/01/2019

Friday, March 1, 2019 and the weekend.

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Taxes

The House Ways and Means Committee has begun the process of acquiring the tax returns for Donald Trump and his businesses.  While they were going to originally wait until the Mueller Report was released, everything that disclosed on Wednesday (Daily Check-In 02/27/2019), they decided to start this process.

Get ready for Tangering Tojo to lose his shit on Monday.

 

Roger Stone

I’d almost feel bad about Roger facing jail time for not keeping his mouth shut, but he really deserves it.

 

Paul Manafort

 

Security Clearances

In any normal universe, this would be the greatest scandal of any administration.  Here, it’s just Friday.

 

Hannity

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Cohen

He’s the guy with the thick mustache in the top right corner.

 

Ex VP

 

UK and Scotland

Why was the Scotland course on his mind?

 

CONGRESS

 

The following are a list of House and Senate committees that made significant traction in their investigations against Trump.

Oversight

 

Ways and Means

 

Finance

 

Judiciary

 

House Intelligence

 

Senate Intelligence

That’s 6 investigations all making moves on one day.  Damn.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

North Korea

 

 

TRAITOR TOTS

Epstein

 

Gaetz

 

Pence

 

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

EMERGENCIES, SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

RACISM, RIGHT WING TERRORISM, & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

WHITE HOUSE CHAOS

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

Full article for anyone who can’t get past the pay wall.

Is Ben Bernanke the father of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez? Not in the literal sense, obviously, but in the philosophical and political sense. As we mark the 10th anniversary of the bull market, it is worth considering whether the efforts of the US Federal Reserve, under Mr Bernanke’s leadership, to avoid 1930s-style debt deflation ended up spawning a new generation of socialists, such as the freshman Congresswoman Ms Ocasio-Cortez, in the home of global capitalism. Mr Bernanke’s unorthodox “cash for trash” scheme, otherwise known as quantitative easing, drove up asset prices and bailed out baby boomers at the profound political cost of pricing out millennials from that most divisive of asset markets, property. This has left the former comfortable, but the latter with a fragile stake in the society they are supposed to build. As we look towards the 2020 US presidential election, could Ms Ocasio-Cortez’s leftwing politics become the anthem of choice for America’s millennials? But before we look forward, it is worth going back a bit. The 2008 crash itself didn’t destroy wealth, but rather revealed how much wealth had already been destroyed by poor decisions taken in the boom. This underscored the truism that the worst of investments are often taken in the best of times.

Mr Bernanke, a keen student of the 1930s, understood that a “balance sheet recession” must be combated by reflating assets. By exchanging old bad loans on the banks’ balance sheets with good new money, underpinned by negative interest rates, the Fed drove asset prices skywards. Higher valuations fixed balance sheets and ultimately coaxed more spending and investment. However, such “hyper-trickle-down” economics also meant that wealth inequality was not the unintended consequence, but the objective, of policy. Soaring asset prices, particularly property prices, drive a wedge between those who depend on wages for their income and those who depend on rents and dividends. This wages versus rents-and-dividends game plays out generationally, because the young tend to be asset-poor and the old and the middle-aged tend to be asset-rich. Unorthodox monetary policy, therefore, penalises the young and subsidises the old. When asset prices rise much faster than wages, the average person falls further behind. Their stake in society weakens. The faster this new asset-fuelled economy grows, the greater the gap between the insiders with a stake and outsiders without. This threatens a social contract based on the notion that the faster the economy grows, the better off everyone becomes. What then? Well, politics shifts.

Notwithstanding Winston Churchill’s observation about a 20-year-old who isn’t a socialist not having a heart, and a 40-year-old who isn’t a capitalist having no head, polling indicates a significant shift in attitudes compared with prior generations. According to the Pew Research Center, American millennials (defined as those born between 1981 and 1996) are the only generation in which a majority (57 per cent) hold “mostly/consistently liberal” political views, with a mere 12 per cent holding more conservative beliefs. Fifty-eight per cent of millennials express a clear preference for big government. Seventy-nine per cent of millennials believe immigrants strengthen the US, compared to just 56 per cent of baby boomers. On foreign policy, millennials (77 per cent) are far more likely than boomers (52 per cent) to believe that peace is best ensured by good diplomacy rather than military strength. Sixty-seven per cent want the state to provide universal healthcare, and 57 per cent want higher public spending and the provision of more public services, compared with 43 per cent of baby boomers. Sixty-six per cent of millennials believe that the system unfairly favours powerful interests.

One battle ground for the new politics is the urban property market. While average hourly earnings have risen in the US by just 22 per cent over the past 9 years, property prices have surged across US metropolitan areas. Prices have risen by 34 per cent in Boston, 55 per cent in Houston, 67 per cent in Los Angeles and a whopping 96 per cent in San Francisco. The young are locked out. Similar developments in the UK have produced comparable political generational divides. If only the votes of the under-25s were counted in the last UK general election, not a single Conservative would have won a seat. Ten years ago, faced with the real prospect of another Great Depression, Mr Bernanke launched QE to avoid mass default. Implicitly, he was underwriting the wealth of his own generation, the baby boomers.

Now the division of that wealth has become a key battleground for the next election with people such as Ms Ocasio-Cortez arguing that very high incomes should be taxed at 70 per cent. For the purist, capitalism without default is a bit like Catholicism without hell. But we have confession for a reason. Everyone needs absolution. QE was capitalism’s confessional. But what if the day of reckoning was only postponed? What if a policy designed to protect the balance sheets of the wealthy has unleashed forces that may lead to the mass appropriation of those assets in the years ahead?

 

STUDENT ISSUES

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

CPAC

 

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for the last few days.  It’s been crazy, and it’s gonna get crazier from here on out.  Monday will bring new action from the Judiciary committee, and some amazing reporting about Fox News knowing about the Stormy Daniels affair before the election.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/28/2019

Thursday, February 28, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Kushner’s Clearance

WASHINGTON — President Trump ordered his chief of staff to grant his son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, a top-secret security clearance last year, overruling concerns flagged by intelligence officials and the White House’s top lawyer, four people briefed on the matter said.

Mr. Trump’s decision in May so troubled senior administration officials that at least one, the White House chief of staff at the time, John F. Kelly, wrote a contemporaneous internal memo about how he had been “ordered” to give Mr. Kushner the top-secret clearance.

The White House counsel at the time, Donald F. McGahn II, also wrote an internal memo outlining the concerns that had been raised about Mr. Kushner — including by the C.I.A. — and how Mr. McGahn had recommended that he not be given a top-secret clearance.

We know that the FBI, CIA, DOJ, and most anyone who’s ever been anywhere near top secret info knew that giving Jared Kushner a clearance was a bad idea.  Let’s add the White House Counsel and Chief of Staff to that list.

The only people who thought this was a good idea was Trump and Kushner.

 

 

 

 

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Something I completely overlooked yesterday Daily Check-In 02/26/2019 was that Cohen claimed that Trump’s lawyers Jay Sekulow and Abbe Lowell edited his statement to Congress.  You know, the statement that was proven to be false and earned Mike a felony conviction for lying to Congress.  There was so much that was uncovered yesterday that it was hard to keep track of it all.

Also, the ball is now rolling on bringing EVERYONE in.  This ends with RICO against Trump Org.  In yesterday’s hearing alone, Cohen pointed out dozens of crimes committed on behalf of the organization and family.  Names are being named, evidence being collected, and subpoenas are getting issued.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A INDIVIDUAL-1

North Korea

I’d like to say that I’m surprised that Trump screwed this up, but I can’t.  I’m waiting to find out that the whole meeting was a cover for Trump to meet Lavrov.

 

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

Gaetz

I’m waiting for a little more information on this, but if this is accurate, then Florida Man Matt Gaetz deserves to be well and truly fucked.

Gaetz has no connection to Cohen, but he is connected to Roger Stone and the Trump Administration.  And if he received a call from Trump, was overheard saying that he was “happy to do it” for him, and it was about that tweet to Michael Cohen, he can look at some serious penalties.

 

SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION & EMERGENCIES

 

CONGRESS

Mark Meadows

 

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

RIGHT WING TERRORISM & WHITE NATIONALISM

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

#METOO & WOMEN’S RIGHTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

This became a hot topic during the 2000 presidential campaign when Vice President Al Gore was criticized for saying he had invented the Internet. (Hence McDaniel’s aside.) As with Obama, that wasn’t really what Gore was saying: He was hyping (or overhyping) his role in encouraging the commercialization of the Internet. Gore should have said that he helped create the Internet as we now know it, which is more accurate, if still grandiose.

But as Scientific American wrote in 2012, the Internet itself derived directly from government work. It began as ARPAnet — named for the Department of Defense’s Advanced Research Projects Agency. In 1972, ARPA became DARPA, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

ARPAnet was a network that at first, in 1969, ran only between Utah and three universities in California. Slowly, it built outward and by 1977 covered locations on both coasts. During that period, DARPA scientists Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn invented a protocol for carrying traffic over the Internet called TCP/IP, or Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol. If you’ve ever heard of an “IP address,” in essence you’re hearing about Cerf and Kahn’s work.

We’re cruising through this awfully quickly, but: About a decade later, engineer and computer scientist Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. He created a way that the Internet could be used to more easily share information by developing a language that more easily allowed for documents to link to one another. And, voilà.

ARPA was the government. DARPA was the government. Berners-Lee was working for CERN, a European agency. Oh, and he’s British.

Certainly there were innovations that stemmed from the private sector — many innovations, and important ones. But saying that the Internet didn’t come from government is simply wrong.

Flight and cars? McDaniel is on more-solid ground, though the invention of the car is usually credited to Karl Benz. As a Michigander, though, she should also probably be aware of the central role the government has played in recent years in bolstering the continued viability of the automotive industry. A minor reason her uncle lost in 2012 was popular support for Obama’s intervention to support the automobile industry after the recession.

Incidentally, it’s worth quoting Obama’s “you didn’t build that” speech more fully:

“If you were successful,” Obama said, “somebody along the line gave you some help. … Somebody helped to create this unbelievable American system that we have that allowed you to thrive. Somebody invested in roads and bridges. If you’ve got a business — you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.”

He continued: “The Internet didn’t get invented on its own. Government research created the Internet so that all the companies could make money off the Internet.”

As it turns out, that’s true.

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, & ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

THINKING AHEAD

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

I had more stuff from Twitter, but my notes app crashed and lost it.  Shit happens.

 

That’s it for Thursday.  I wanted to make a correction.  On Daily Check-In 02/21/2019 I talked about the Enterprise Theory, and I left out an important part.  I didn’t realize this until I started listening to Andrew McCabe’s book early this week.  I’d like to add the following aspects of Enterprise Theory.

One tool that law enforcement uses in fighting organized crime by viewing all of the crimes performed by the individuals as a way to benefit the organization. The actions and crimes executed by one group may not be directly related to those performed by another group, but they both benefit the whole organization.

Think of it like a regular company with multiple divisions.  There’s an IT department, and HR department, a Maintenance department, Legal, Logistics, Sales, Marketing, R&D, and a few others.  IT doesn’t do things that directly relate to Sales, and Sales doesn’t relate to Logistics, but what they all do benefit the company.

That’s what Enterprise Theory looks at.  Who benefits from the crimes, and how are they related?  John the Pimp might not have anything to do with Barry the Scumbag Lawyer’s insurance scam, but money from both of their projects goes up the chain to Vinny the Boss.  Eventually, Barry’s clients and John’s clients might overlap, and John and Barry might work together on setting up another scheme involving trafficking or drugs.  All of this goes to benefit Vinny the Boss and his organization.

I hope to take some time this weekend to write some background on the Grand Theory, and do some housecleaning on the site.  That said, I look forward to the shit sandwich I’m about to eat.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur

Daily Check-In 02/27/2019

Wednesday, February 27, 2019

 

THE RUSSIAN INVESTIGATION

Yes, stuff happened that wasn’t Michael Cohen.

 

COHEN, NEW YORK, AND THE OTHER LAWSUITS

Michael Cohen’s Testified Before the House Oversight Committee

Just with how much there is to parse through this, I’m not going to break the articles down by groups, but I want to go through what happened.  I watched the first 6 hours of the hearing, then listened to the last hour on the radio.

So, where to begin?  How about at the beginning.

Michael Cohen, former attorney as of yesterday Daily Check-In 02/26/2019, convicted felon, cooperating witness, and former personal attorney and fixer for President Donald J. Trump, testified before the House Oversight Committee on a range of topics covering Trump’s role in the hush money bribes to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal, Cohen’s work on other Catch & Kill stories with the National Enquirer, Trump’s financial fraud, his racist actions, threatening his schools if they released his grades, and Trump’s ties to Russia.

At least, as much as he could talk about that isn’t under investigation by the Special Counselor, SDNY, the State of New York, State of Florida, the militant wing of the Salvation Army, and whoever else is looking to them.

Cohen’s opening statement brought straight fire.  He entered into evidence two checks that Trump used to reimburse him for paying off Stormy Daniels from his HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit).  He also talked about Trump inflating or deflating his assets when it pleased him or suited his needs.  To support this claim, Cohen included financial documents from 2011 to 2013.

He also included information about the abuses at Trump Foundation. One main example was using a straw bidder to pump up the price of a painting of Trump at an auction, then reimbursed him with money from the charity.

Cohen also talked about some of Trump’s racist actions.  While not illegal, they certainly speak to this lack of character.

As far as Russia goes, Cohen described two events that he had some knowledge of: Wikileaks and the June 9th meeting.

Cohen says that he was in the room when Roger called a couple days before the Wikileaks DNC email drop and told him that it was coming soon.  Trump said “Wouldn’t that be great.”

As far as the June 9th meeting, Michael says he didn’t know about it at the time, but does recall a meeting a few days earlier where Donnie Jr. walked behind Daddy’s desk and told him “The meeting is set.”  Trump Sr. responded with “Let me know.”  Michael thought it was odd because Jr. has, according to Trump “The worst judgement in the world” and nothing happens in Trump Org without his knowledge or consent.

As far as the hearing goes, it started off exactly as I thought it would: a shitshow.  The Republicans tried to cancel the hearing with some timing technicality bullshit, then spent the entire time attacking Cohen’s character.  Jim Jordan, the Ranking Member and congressman from the Ohio State Men’s Locker Room where he ignored institutionalized sexual assault, spent every second he could attacking Cohen as a liar, a cheat, a swindler, and a bad lawyer.  Most of the Republicans kept this up, even throwing in constant questions about a potential book deal or movie deal when he gets out of prison, as if he’s going on vacation and not heading to PMITA Prison.  (That’s Pound Me In The Ass Prison for those that didn’t watch Office Space).

The most fucked up moment for the Republicans was when Mark Meadows decided to refute Cohen’s claims of Trump’s racism by bringing one of Trump’s black aides to the stand and using her as a prop.  Mark’s argument was literally “how can Trump be racist when he employs her?”  Rashida Tlaib called his ass out at the end of the hearing, saying that was racist.  Mark became extremely upset, saying that he’s not a racist and his nieces and nephews are people of color, and that he was very upset with that.  Chairman Elijah Cummings came to Mark’s defense, and eventually things got cleared up.  Turns out that yes, you can do something racist without being a racist.  Especially if you don’t stop to think about it first.

While the Republicans went out of their way to attack Cohen, they didn’t defend Trump.  The only thing they could pretend to defend Trump on were the claims in which Cohen didn’t have hard evidence.  Not one person defended Trump for paying bribes to Stormy Daniels or defended using a charity as a slush fund or cooking the books to get a loan or commit insurance fraud.

Yes, insurance fraud. Cohen didn’t go into too much detail on this topic since it’s under investigation by SDNY.  This is part of their ongoing investigation into Donald Trump.

Oh, by the way, Cohen said that SDNY was investigating Donald Trump.

We also got a lot of names of people to follow up with, like Mark Calamari, Allen Weisselberg, and Ronna Graf.

We also got an explanation as to why the Stormy Daniels payment was done the way it was done: Cohen didn’t want his wife to find out.  Trump Org didn’t want to get caught making this payment during the campaign, and since they didn’t have another source, Cohen used his HELOC to keep his wife from seeing it.  If he withdrew the money from the checking account, he’d have a lot of questions to answer.

What do I think?  It’s complicated.  Cohen is a bad guy who did a lot of bad things, but he came off as remorseful and honest, in a shady way.  He admitted his guilt, owned it, and is trying to make amends.  The attacks from the Republicans made him pitiable.

As far as what’s next, look for more hearings coming up, and a lot of interest in Allen Weisselberg.

 

TRUMP THE RUSSIAN ASSET A.K.A. INDIVIDUAL-1

North Korea

 

TRAITOR TOTS

 

 

 

FIGHTING BACK

 

EMERGENCIES, SHUTDOWN & IMMIGRATION

 

SCOTUS & COURTS

 

COLD WAR 2.0

 

#NEVERAGAIN

 

FIXING THE INTERNET

 

THE PROPAGANDA MACHINE

 

THE ULTIMATE COCKFIGHT: BEZOS’S PECKER VS. DAVID PECKER

 

TRADE WAR, HEALTH CARE, AND ECONOMY

 

GOP: THE PARTY OF LINCOLN IS DEAD

 

CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

 

PRIESTS & RELIGION

 

ENVIRONMENT & SCIENCE

 

ELECTIONS

 

PROGRESS IS PROGRESS

 

IN OTHER NEWS…

 

RUMOR MILL

 

That’s it for Wednesday.  I’ve got to agree with Tea Pain.  This might be the beginning of the end.  Michael Cohen isn’t exactly the most trustworthy person, but he’s got receipts and provided evidence of multiple crimes for Trump, the family, and the organization.  Insurance fraud, self-dealing, local tax evasion, state and federal tax evasion, bribery, extortion, lying to Congress, fraud, money laundering, and a few other things.  We can’t base an impeachment off of Michael Cohen, but his info can lead to more and more evidence.

 

Thank you, and have a good one.

 

“Without Journalists, it’s just propaganda.”

– Katy Tur