NEW: Roger Stone says he believes the "U.S. person" mentioned in latest Mueller indictment refers to him. https://t.co/LqZdFd9qPV pic.twitter.com/mhiOMI5iRX
— ABC News (@ABC) July 13, 2018
At first he tried to bluff it out, but an hour later that statement (to quote from history) was “no longer operative”…
NEW: Charges against Russian intelligence officers intensify spotlight on Trump adviser Roger Stone via @PostRoz @RoigFranzia https://t.co/7x6PStFnPT
— Carol Leonnig (@CarolLeonnig) July 13, 2018
A federal indictment filed Friday accusing a dozen Russian military intelligence officers of conspiring to hack Democrats during the 2016 campaign spotlights communications between Roger Stone, a longtime adviser to President Trump, and an online persona allegedly operated by the Russians.
Stone has previously acknowledged exchanging direct messages on Twitter in August and September 2016 with Guccifer 2.0, who claimed to be a Romanian hacker. Stone has said there is no proof the account was connected to the Russians.
But according to criminal charges filed Friday by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, Guccifer 2.0 was actually operated by a group of Russian military intelligence officers based in Moscow. The Russians used Guccifer 2.0’s Twitter account to send multiple messages to “a person who was in regular contact with senior members” of Trump’s campaign, Mueller wrote in the indictment.
The messages quoted in court papers match exchanges that Stone had with the account, according to an image he posted on his personal website. A person familiar with the investigation also confirmed that the Trump campaign associate referred to in the indictment is Stone…
Really? That's odd. The CAMPAIGN MANAGER for the #orangesmear is sitting in solitary confinement. Wonder who he has done business with for decades…….. pic.twitter.com/cEEzqNyxTY
— GordonCrockett (@CrockettGordon) July 14, 2018
This is an *amazing* Roger Stone quote. It was already a stretch to claim that Manafort was a minor player in the Trump campaign. Now apparently Trump himself wasn't part of the Trump campaign either! https://t.co/VAEkqlm7Ai pic.twitter.com/6XP43889au
— Catherine Rampell (@crampell) July 13, 2018
Roger Stone "exposes the campaign itself—as an organization—to potential criminal liability as well as those unnamed senior members of the campaign." https://t.co/lN6A0a2ad5
— Justin Miller (@justinjm1) July 13, 2018
Correct https://t.co/h5mH2dqk3C
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 14, 2018
2/ My point is that he’s alone. He’s just the one who is crystal clear. I think there are others. I think I know roughly the pool of people they’ll come from. But I don’t know which people really. Stone clearly participated in what M has identified as a major …
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 14, 2018
4/ he may be more hosed if he’s alone. But again, not likely.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 14, 2018
"I've had this argument with" Roger Stone, "I've said I don't know why you're associating yourself with these people" – Sam Nunberg on Mueller indictments pic.twitter.com/3J55Oqm5Yh
— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) July 13, 2018
Lots of things were communicated. Trump of course knew in advance of a Trump Tower meeting. There is/ will be proof positive. Roger had advance word about Podesta emails (obviously). Of course he communicated that to Trump. It’s going to be ugly.
— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) July 14, 2018
JGabriel
No proof? Well, Stone, apparently Mueller’s team disagrees – since they’re unlikely to bring indictments, as they just did, without evidence & proof to back it up.
No who are we supposed to believe, Roger? The guy who self-brands himself as the original GOP ratfucker, or the former FBI director with a reputation for honesty, thoroughness, and reliability?
Platonailedit
Why does Josh pull a contortion act just to tell the plain truth?
sukabi
@Platonailedit: don’t know, but he’s finally putting together what’s been bloody obvious and staring everybody in the face for 2 dann years.
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Matt Taibbi must feel stoopid spending two years vigorously denying russian involvement in the hacks.
Chris Johnson
I’m really interested in Adam Silverman’s idea that, as a martial arts instructor, he has the sense that Trump took a really severe beating at some point which left him with a deviated septum and other issues, possibly including a fear of stairs.
People are talking about his schooling and his father, but the first thing that came to mind for me was Terry Pratchett’s gangsters and their ‘Do you like apples? Do you like pears?’ routine.
If you were going to look for a motivation to turn someone into a full-on Russian asset capable of everything we’ve seen out of Trump, just a really broken person serving their master at all costs, it’s hard to think of a better way than to suck the guy in using real estate transactions, allow him to try his usual fraud and nonsense as if he’s the most powerful and privileged guy around, and then bring in the gangsters and beat and torture him beyond what he can even imagine, to the point of permanent damage as Adam describes. Just wreck him until he fears you worse than he fears his own father.
If someone feels they can interpret this stuff enough to spot this kind of severe damage, it’d be very interesting and relevant to go back and try to pinpoint the time it happened, referenced against Trump’s history with Russian investments. There’d be a time period during which he’d drop out of sight and undergo really extensive and costly reconstructive surgery that’s not entirely successful. I think Adam’s suggestion is plausible but I don’t think it’s prep school or his father to blame.
I think he tried to run his usual bullshit even with Russian gangsters and/or KGB or its successors, and it was treated as an opportunity to break the guy. And what followed the stick was the carrot, and letting Trump have that ego back, but always with the threat that they could put him through all that again, kill him, they don’t care. The result would be forcing Trump to work for and praise the Russians and Putin evermore, and the result of THAT with such a awful human being would be a staggering case of self-justification and denial where Trump would insist to everyone and to himself that everything is fine and he’s doing everything he wants without question or resistance. Which gives us Trump as we know him.
Psychologically the way to run the guy as an asset, then, would be to indulge his narcissism and let him shower himself in gold, but hold the threat over his head. If this is how it went, the pee tape isn’t the thing that Trump would find most unbearable. It would be tapes of his years-ago beating and throwing down the stairs, etc. It’d be tapes of him grovelling and helpless and getting beat up. And such tapes would exist, whether it was gangsters or Russian intelligence or a combination: that would be a controlled situation just as much as US waterboarding, for a similar purpose. And Putin would directly control such tapes. This stuff happens and there’s no reason to think Russia’s less capable of it than us, and it’d explain a lot.
Oh: this would also explain why his doctors are total quacks. A real doctor’s report would reveal an experience like that. If this is true, Trump is physically a mess in a very obvious way. How much do we see of him and are there parts of him that are never, ever visible? (jokes aside about ‘who would want to see that, brain bleach please’)
David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch
Drumpf Man-baby blimp on cover todays’ front page (photo)
sukabi
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: unless it’s a family trait I thought Diaper Don was the name Don Jr. earned for his hard partying ways in college and lack of bladder control.
Raven Onthill
Harvard Law Professor Lawrence Tribe is speculating about treason charges on Twitter:
OzarkHillbilly
@Platonailedit: @sukabi: It’s one thing to “know”, it’s quite another to place evidence of malfeasance into a narrative that makes sense, especially when some facts revealed over a year previously only come to fit into that narrative in relation to recently revealed facts. Things that were suspicious (to the point of “Coincidence? We think not.”) become just plain damning when fit to new pieces of the puzzle. Josh is telling the story, a story he has to rewrite time and again because new facts keep coming to light, facts that make the story even clearer. And what becomes clearer and clearer every day is that it is a story which will hold up in court.
sukabi
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: chances are Taibbi’s denial of Russian election interference is a direct result of his spending time over there and acting like an ass.
Platonailedit
Wapiti
@Raven Onthill: Interesting. I was wondering if the charges against the Russians were there to set the stage that they did, in fact, attack us. And some people aided them.
Waldo
@Platonailedit:
I’d say Josh has as good a grasp of the case as anyone outside Mueller’s team. He tends to be granular in his approach, but he does pull together a lot of small but damning bits evidence that other analysts overlook.
OzarkHillbilly
If this doesn’t bring tears to your eyes, you have no soul: Terminally ill boy, five, writes own obituary: ‘See ya later, suckas!’
Garrett Michael Matthias
ETA Links to orgs for donations in his name at his Obit page (the 2nd link)
sukabi
@OzarkHillbilly: yeah, I realize that. I think it’s more the tone he takes with his pieces…the surprised ingenou…for a journalist it’s not a good look…
OzarkHillbilly
@sukabi: I think the only thing that surprises him is the depth of their stupidity. It always gets worse, always.
raven
@OzarkHillbilly: My friend/colleague/boss died yesterday and her dad wrote:
OzarkHillbilly
My wife found this video of Momma and Daddy cat snuggled up with their babies on the Book of Faces. Good thing it’s a Saturday, that much cuteness is against the law on weekdays.
hueyplong
@Chris Johnson: My knee-jerk reaction to the martial arts/hit in the face exchange between Adam an another poster was also something along the lines of “Wouldn’t it be interesting if a Russian gave him that beatdown back when he was broke and they were keeping him afloat?” It would certainly explain the lack of charges/lawsuits as well or better than an angry husband/boyfriend theory.
But in truth, the theory’s main asset is its off-the-charts Schadenfreudelicious aspects.
All kinds of gangster movie visions arise in anticipation of Helsinki:
Trump, half whining and half crying, saying “Godfather, what can I do?” and Putin yelling back at him, “YOU COULD ACT LIKE A MAN!”
Trump and Putin walking together and talking with their hands in front of their faces like Pesci an his pal in C a s i n o.
Etc., etc., with every scene being one in which Putin makes it clear that Trump was, is, and ever shall be his bitch.
Joel
Happy Bastille Day, everyone
NotMax
Repeat from downstairs.
So Queen Elizabeth has now survived dealing with both an Annus Horribilus and an Anus Horribilus.
Baud
@OzarkHillbilly: That almost makes Facebook worthwhile.
@raven: My condolences.
raven
My wife just triggered our “SImpliSafe” house alarm and it is outstanding how quickly the text alter came. I didn’t even have time to get off the couch and it dinged!
NotMax
@raven
Some days it can take me anywhere from ½ to 3 minutes to get off the couch!
;)
OzarkHillbilly
@raven: Nice, I doubt I could be so relentlessly upbeat. Probably more resigned than anything else. I’m with her on the ‘no funeral’ thing, they are becoming all too common an occurrence lately and I find them more and more distasteful (for lack of a better word). In fact, just nothing, nothing at all please. But then, it doesn’t matter what I think. Funerals aren’t for the dead, they’re for the living. I’ll be gone, I won’t care or notice.
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: She was incredible and accomplished a great deal in a relatively short time.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: How old was she?
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: when my bil died last year my sis had this great idea that we’d all stay at the gravesite until the casket was lowered and covered. Do you know how meaningful it is to watch a front loader go back and forth from a pile of dirt to a grave and drop one scoop at a time? Oh, they also hit it with a tamper over and over! I sat with two teenage girls and just said “be cool” it WILL be over sometime!
Raven
@OzarkHillbilly: 54
tobie
@Joel: The celebrations in France today should be amazing with les bleus in the World Cup Final on Sunday.
OzarkHillbilly
@Raven: Too soon, way to soon.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
I think we’re utterly fucked.
To some extent, I blame nonviolence – these people simply have no fear of a physical consequence for their actions.
The stock bubble persists based on years’ worth of undistributed earnings produced during 44’s term; meanwhile, wages are insanely flat.
Anecdotally, I’m noticing that economic vitality has withered. I can share two house stories – both desirable, in great locations. One listed for ten months, and sold for 15% under what it was purchased for 13 years ago. Another, in an awesome neighborhood, is currently listed at 10% under appraisal, and is looking at another drop.
The crash is looming.
At the same time, Meadows and Jordan run unchecked. McConnell continues to do McConnell things. We are so screwed.
Raven
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: go back to bed
OzarkHillbilly
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: The real estate market is hot around here. Was talking to somebody the other day who spoke of a neighbor who put their house on the market and sold it in less than 24 hrs. Obviously they weren’t asking enough.
eclare
@raven: So sorry to hear
different-church-lady
debit
@OzarkHillbilly: The market is hot here as well. I bought my house two years ago, have not made any improvements (other than installing central air) and could easily sell it tomorrow for 50k more. And I don’t live in a really desirable neighborhood. But rising interest rates will cool things down.
different-church-lady
@Platonailedit: At the rate we’re voluntarily rushing headlong towards The Ministry of Truth, there may be no such thing as history left.
different-church-lady
@sukabi: It’s like he starts every one of his articles with a tacit, “I’m just thinking out loud here, but…”
different-church-lady
@NotMax: Pfft. You meant hours, right?
different-church-lady
@hueyplong: Putin/Trump: A cat does not toy with a mouse because the cat wants to teach the mouse something about who is in charge. A cat plays with a mouse because it’s a cat, and that’s what a cat does with a mouse.
Yarrow
@David ??Merry Christmas?? Koch: Why would Taibbi feel stupid? He has been trying to protect himself. People in the media are also compromised. It’s good to remember that when considering the actions of journalists and other media personalities.
different-church-lady
@Yarrow: OR… maybe Taibbi’s just an asshole who happened to write things we liked for a while but now doesn’t.
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@different-church-lady: I politely suggest googling “Taibbi Moscow” before drawing premature conclusions.
SFAW
@sukabi:
I think you and plato misunderstand Josh. He’s generally circumspect in his writings — as compared to being a bomb-thrower or ranter, let’s say — but he does, as Ozark noted, generally pull together a lot of salient (and sometimes under-the-radar) information, and show the connections, and why those connections are important. He gets the job done well, with a lot of useful/valuable stuff in his analyses.
You want screaming throw-downs, go read Lee Papa. (Not a put-down of Papa, I like him a lot.)
Formerly disgruntled in Oregon
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I’m not giving 2016 Russian interference deniers the benefit of the doubt at this point anymore.
Kayla Rudbek
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: patent filings are down as well
SFAW
@NotMax:
I laughed. Does that make me a
badworse person?frosty
@Chris Johnson: Hmmm. That “irresponsible speculation” ties a few things together, like the doctor angle. My guess from Adam’s comment was mafia giving him a lesson on prompt payment without his usual bullshit. I like yours better. Someday maybe we’ll know.
Ladyraxterinok
@Formerly disgruntled in Oregon: I liked some of Taibbi’s writings. But the I saw him on Maher’s show and found him really obnoxious!
frosty
@OzarkHillbilly: We had a memorial service for my mom a year ago, where several people spoke in remembrance. No religion. The most remarkable thing was that all my cousins on both sides could be there, some of whom we hadn’t seen since the 60s. So we had a family reunion the night before.
So, not a funeral, exactly, but definitely worth doing.
Kathleen
@raven: I am so sorry, raven. My deepest condolences to you and her family. That brought tears to my eyes.
Chetan Murthy
Am I the only one who looks at that young Roger Stone and thinks “Dylann Roof”?
Sherparick
@Waldo: Marcy Wheeler & Jonathan Chait have both posted long articles that tie known facts with reasonable speculations that Trump has been a Russian “Agent of Influence” for a long time. And it’s not just financial or blackmail, but ideolgical as Trump shares with Putin white supremacist & Islamaphobe beliefs, as he stated most clearly in his press conference with May yesterday.
Sherparick
@raven: Words always fail, but sorry for you & her friends & family with her passing. I expect the pain is near unendurable.
Ruckus
@raven:
Beautiful!
Sherparick
@Yarrow: Tabbai had a legitimate argument about Geithner- Obama policy of saving the banks by crushing the homeowners; but with Hillary, who was actually far more sceptical of Rubin, Summers, & Geithner, he is one of those typical white male lefties who indulge their misogyny by hating Hillary. He, like Greenwald, does not do “nuance” and is loathed to admit a mistake of opinion or judgement.
Ruckus
@different-church-lady:
Would you rather he starts with, “This is what we know today, water is wet.”
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: ohhh…I am getting a little weepy. Bouncy houses and Batman.
Doug R
@Chris Johnson: This theory really hits Occam’s Razor for me. Any chance I could share it on Facebook?
Kristine
Roger looks worried.
This makes me happy.
Fair Economist
@Platonailedit: Josh Marshall always downplays evidence of Republican wrongdoing. He has some compulsion to play devil’s advocate.
Tenar Arha
@NotMax: I laughed too.
@SFAW: No it does not make you a horrible person, it likely does make us all incorrigible word nerds though ??
artem1s
@Chris Johnson:
would it really even take that much? there are people, most notably those who are the biggest blowhards ans bullies, who confronted with the least little bit of physical discomfort, will come completely unraveled. Waterboarding, which you note the US is completely capable, doesn’t leave visible scars, but lots of mental ones. So does extreme sensory deprivation. If what Silverman is describing took place, it could have been as little as putting his naked ass in a near freezing cell and sleep depriving him for a couple of days to induce crying and begging and complete mental breakdown. And could cause permanent PTSD and twitchiness. I can see Silverman’s point that those videos in tandem with the pee tapes would make someone completely compliant.
sukabi
@Chetan Murthy: no, he’s got that look about him.
sukabi
@artem1s: I don’t even think it would take that much. He learned much of what he knows from his father. From cheating, lying and bullying to the racism and cruelty all the result of his family life. I don’t think “country” and treason even enter his mind, this is his view of “doing business”, and as long as HE personally wins anything goes.
All the Russians, or anyone for that matter, has to do is dangle some cash or paste his name on something and he’s happy to oblige any request they make.
His only loyalty is to himself and a pile of cash
moops
@sukabi: not really. His racism is not really good for his business. In the early 80s his racism and the family being slumlords overlapped pretty well that you could say hurting minorities and boosting his pile of cash were the same.
then he took a trip to Russia in 1987
By 1989 he was taking out full page ads in the NY papers calling for the imprisonment of the Central Park Five. This was nothing to do with making him piles of money. It most likely cost him money in many many ways. The act was clearly political, and a brand new behavior for him.
Doug R
@Sherparick: TARP-Which when banksters ignored it, Obama had them change the rules to make the program easier to use.
SFAW
@Fair Economist:
I must be reading a different Josh Marshall.
Chris Johnson
It’s easier to make sense of the guy’s behavior in the context of an abusive upbringing, and just inside the family there’s plenty of evidence that Trump’s background involves that.
I hardly think it’s just only my theory, and nobody needs my permission to talk about it. I’m just saying: Russian gangsters are violent, like any gangsters. Adam suggests some things about Trump imply a really severe beating in his history, one that leaves irreparable damage. To my mind, family and fathers and schoolmates will typically lay off after reducing the victim to a defeated state (as a survivor of some things like that, I could say ‘in my experience’)
To go beyond this to the point of permanently damaging a person who’s wealthy and has access to all manner of reconstructive health care implies a different class of abuser: so, what comes to mind when Adam suggests permanent injury (and fear of stairs, etc) is that he got worked over by professionals.
Knowing that he got in deep with Russian oligarchs over real estate a long time ago suggests that he angered them, or simply seemed like a good target: his lifelong behavior would give ample reason for gangsters to do this to him as he’d cheat them without a second thought, believing himself immune.
You could call his subsequent egomania a compensatory mechanism: being compelled to serve Russian masters, no American wealth or fame would be really enough to make him feel powerful again. That’s the ideal state for him to be in. He’d be like a ‘mole’, too big and obvious and colorful to be suspected, not really very competent, propped up by his masters and subsidized. Knowing this would compel him to have more and more gold and crap and his name plastered on everything, because it’s a hollow exercise.
I’d feel sorry for him if he wasn’t wrecking the country I live in. It’s definitely the makings of a tragic story. You don’t need to look for exceptional evil, or exceptional luck, or any of that. It becomes a very normal story of a greedy and arrogant man who over-reached and got trapped with a crowd much meaner than him.
This would also explain why Melania can do things like bat his hand away and appear to hate him, and not be punished or discarded. She could have greater importance and represent the people who can really hurt him. Or do things like intentionally wear clothing with messages to inflame partisan division within America like ‘I really don’t care do u?’. I think she’s a very capable and intelligent woman, but I don’t think she’s loyal to Trump, and yet she seems to have a lot of power to do stuff that doesn’t serve him in the slightest. You would think a kept woman would feel obligated to present the appearance of fawning devotion to the POTUS and her husband, and she does not.
sukabi
@moops: that’s the thing though, he’s a shitty businessman. He doesn’t actually care if his businesses are successful, he’s interested in them only as far as he can extract money from them for his personal use. Which is why he’s had so many failed businesses. That’s why his ‘charity’ was used to funnel money into his pockets.
If he would have spent a 10th as much energy actually learning about his business interests instead of scamming people out of their money he’d actually be wealthy, instead he’s all about the fast buck regardless of where it comes from.
He’s a lazy, racist, narcissistic bully that’s gotten away with his shitty behavior his entire life.
Scott Alloway
@Raven: Attended two Jewish funerals where those who so chose took turns at the shovels to fill the grave. IIRC, it was an act to do something for the deceased he could not do himself. I found the experience as one which connected me with the family and the departed.