Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

Imperialist aggressors must be defeated, or the whole world loses.

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You can’t love your country only when you win.

Narcissists are always shocked to discover other people have agency.

And we’re all out of bubblegum.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

“And when the Committee says to “report your income,” that could mean anything!

“Squeaker” McCarthy

The GOP couldn’t organize an orgy in a whorehouse with a fist full of 50s.

They were going to turn on one another at some point. It was inevitable.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

This really is a full service blog.

“Can i answer the question? No you can not!”

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

We’ll be taking my thoughts and prayers to the ballot box.

They are lying in pursuit of an agenda.

Make the republican party small enough to drown in a bathtub.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / It’s Going to be One of Those Nights! News Dump Part II: The News Dumpening!

It’s Going to be One of Those Nights! News Dump Part II: The News Dumpening!

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From The New York Times’ article:

Separately, Deutsche Bank has been in contact with federal investigators about the Trump accounts, according to two people briefed on the matter. And the bank is expecting to eventually have to provide information to Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel overseeing the federal investigation into the Trump campaign’s ties to Russia.

It was not clear what information the bank might ultimately provide. Generally, the bank is seen as central to understanding Mr. Trump’s finances since it is the only major financial institution that continues to conduct sizable business with him. Deutsche Bank has also lent money to Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, and to his family real estate business.

And it’s only 9:30 PM EDT…
Open thread!

Reader Interactions

209Comments

  5. 5.

    bystander

    Trump is threatening Mueller to stay away from investigating his family’s business. He has said that Session’s recusal from the Russia investigation was very unfair “to the President”.

    Trump is about to blow a gasket. I hope.

  6. 6.

    M. Bouffant

    I so wish the entire global financial structure that benefits these pigs, real estate developers, oligarchs, capitalists, Mafia (from whatever nation) & other deplorable scum could be brought down as a result of seeing just how Trump & his fellow monsters operate.

  8. 8.

    dmsilev

    @bystander:

    Trump is about to blow a gasket. I hope.

    One of the things I work with are gaskets made from materials like stainless steel and even stronger things. Trump’s going to have enough internal pressure to blow even one of those.

  10. 10.

    amygdala

    @Baud: This. I read somewhere (here?) recently that Melania being seated next to Putin was Merkel trolling the Orange nightmare. Which made me giggle.

  11. 11.

    lollipopguild

    @bystander: The problem for trump is that he was taking/getting money from Russia to keep his “family” business afloat. It is part of the Russia investigation whether trump likes it or not.

  12. 12.

    lollipopguild

    @dmsilev: I think trump’s “private” meeting with his owner putin has caused some more information drops.

  14. 14.

    Mike in DC

    1. Deutsche Bank already has a rep for laundering money for Russia.
    2. DB only bank willing to lend to Trump.
    3. Any linkage between 1 and 2 potentially damning to entire Trump business enterprise, let alone his administration.

  15. 15.

    joel hanes

    Only six months, and it’s all unraveling.
    Deutsche Bank says it’s being asked for information about Trump’s finances from its regulators.
    Mueller is hiring prosecutors.

    I don’t think the Trump claque can last in the White House until January 1.

  16. 16.

    dmsilev

    So, apparently pissing off both the US Intelligence community and the entirety of the governments of Western Europe may, in retrospect, not have been the wisest course of action. Who knew?

  17. 17.

    catbirdman

    Trump has no actual “allies” in the US Government. He throws the word “friend” around, and by now everyone knows that means “someone I can use, and the second I can’t use them any more they’re dead to me.” As the number of people he throws under the bus continues to mount, doesn’t there come a tipping point where Rs in the government realize it’s not going to be worth it to them, in the long run or even the medium run, to be this guy’s “friend”?

  23. 23.

    scav

    But little Donnie loves to go vrooom vrroooom when it’s a big yellow truck on the front lawn. Dump Donnie Dump! Show him where the dirt is, dump dump dump!

  24. 24.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @bystander: Trump is threatening Mueller to stay away from investigating his family’s business. He has said that Session’s recusal from the Russia investigation was very unfair “to the President”.

    Trump is about to blow a gasket. I hope.

    Things do seem to be heating up rather quickly since Junior go sucked into it, don’t they?

  25. 25.

    dmsilev

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: I’m picturing him right now as Yosemite Sam, with steam literally coming out of his ears just before he pulls out a pistol and shoots his own foot off.

  27. 27.

    geg6

    @dmsilev:

    For real. That, to me, seems the most mindblowing thing about all of this. You’d think the self-proclaimed world’s greatest negotiator would know that this is a bad strategy.

  28. 28.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @bystander:
    He’s unraveling before our eyes. I can’t wait till he comes to visit my town next Tuesday! He’ll be screaming about fake banks and how Mueller is trying to destroy him, his family, and his business “empire”. Maybe he’ll even take a massive dump on the stage at the Covelli Centre.
    Couldn’t have happened to a nicer traitor.

    http://wkbn.com/2017/07/18/president-trump-announces-youngstown-visit-next-week/

  29. 29.

    Adam L Silverman

    @bystander: What the President doesn’t understand is that AG Sessions didn’t tell him he was going to recuse because (either) a: AG Sessions honestly forgot that he’d met with Ambassador Kislyak (codename: The Invisible Man) or b: AG Sessions lied under oath when providing unprompted testimony during one of his Judiciary Committee hearings and didn’t expect to be found out. Either way, once the information came out, as what I think was a preemptive shot across his bow to warn him off interfering in the counterintelligence investigation, he had no choice but to recuse. He got the message the leakers were sending him. In a normal world tomorrow would be AG Sessions last day as Attorney General as he’d retire because he’d lost the confidence of the President. What will actually happen tomorrow I have no idea.

  33. 33.

    david spikes

    The NYT is amazing-even for Trump. He dumps, dumps, dumps, on Mueller, Sessions, Comey. Declares how totally unfair the world is to even hint that he’s not as pure as the drifted snow-and makes himself seem even more awful-and guilty-than usual.
    Most interesting to me, and certain to infuriate Sessions- is Donnie pointing out that Sessions lied in his congressional testimony-yikes. Can Sessions do anything but resign? Yeah, I know, these guys are dead to shame.

  34. 34.

    Frankensteinbeck

    New York regulators investigating Trump’s connections to DB. People he has no power over. He is going to flip. His. Shit. Even if somehow those connections are all aboveboard, which beggars the imagination given how corrupt Trump is.

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @joel hanes: There’s a safe room and a fully stocked kitchen. Also, both Spicer and Huckabee Sanders have plenty of marbling if supplies run low… So they can hold out for a bit if necessary.//

  37. 37.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: I thought it was interesting that all the Don Jr. stuff flared up right after he said, after the incident where Ivanka sat in for Don Sr., that the liberals sure wouldn’t want HIM to sit in! He got a lot of attaboys on Twitter for that. Then the roof started to fall in.

  42. 42.

    Keith P.

    I think the only reason more people haven’t quit is that once that happens, Trump is done. Sessions is a fun one – Trump desperately wants to fire him, but since DJT mouthed off on Twitter, any confirmation would be a nightmare, as the nominee is going to have to tell Congress that he will not act as Trump’s personal attorney and that the Justice Dept will still operate independently. Trump is stuck (unless Sessions fucks him by quitting)

  45. 45.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop saying Merry Christmas

  53. 53.

    La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)

    Oh goody! Can’t wait til it comes out that Deutsche Bank is all involved in the Trump-Putin crime thang. I litigate against them all the time (the bank, not the despots).

  54. 54.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to sell my shares of World Wide Popcorn

  58. 58.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to leave my wife and kids for Mika Brzezinski

  59. 59.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @geg6: I live in a suburb outside of Youngstown. The local political scene sucks even though the county is dominated by Democrats (owing mostly to POC in Youngstown proper). Not very liberal and somewhat corrupt. I live in a development of middle class people, and never brought up politics to them. However, in Boardman and rural areas of Mahoning/Columbiana counties there were a lot Trump signs during the campaign.

    Some asshole on my route to school still has a big Trump sign on his property. Not to mention a big increase in those “Thin Blue Line” American flags

  60. 60.

    Yoda Dog

    Man I have my beefs with John McCain, but he has been diagnosed with brain cancer and that is horrible.

    Whatever else he’s done with his life, he was a true hero in Vietnam. God be with him.

  61. 61.

    Keith P.

    Aaand here we go. After this article, Trump’s gonna fire *somebody* in law enforcement. If it’s Mueller, there will be resignations, and Congress (the Senate, at least) will go bananas. This has the potential to be a very, very big deal, like people-dying-in-prison big.

    EDIT: Louise Mensch has gone nuclear and is saying she’s hearing that “the death penalty, for espionage, being considered for @StevenKBannon”. I don’t believe that one at all (that would have to be some major-serious espionage), but damn.

  64. 64.

    lamh36

    Honestly, at this point, I’m no longer titillated by this entire thing…smh…I’ve decided to wait for actual indictments ore IDK demonstrable actions by Mueller.

    All these Senate hearings, I just think are political theaters…I have seen Adam Schiff on so many news shows everytime a new shoe drops, and yet I don’t feel anymore confident in Congress doing anything bout anything Russia related.

    It’s basically indictments or actions from Mueller, or nothing…

  66. 66.

    farthestnorth

    What if Sessions resigns or is fired. Could new AG wrestle back supervision of investigation?

    Sorry if this has been covered; I’m overwhelmed by all the breaking news…

  68. 68.

    Barbara

    I don’t know how people can watch Rachel Maddow every night. I was pulling out my hair and obsessively doing Internet word games to keep my mind from wandering to dangerous places when she spoke about Trump’s interview with the NYT. I turned it on to see if she had any news about John McCain and she really didn’t. Glioblastoma is a harsh diagnosis.

  69. 69.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to throw out a cake that had a file baked in it.

  70. 70.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Keith P.: As I said to someone in the previous thread: stop reading her timeline, you’re going to get social media diabetes.

  71. 71.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I remember the Doonesbury cartoon from the day after Nixon’s last day.

    Workmen dismantling the concrete block “stonewall” that had, in the Doonesbury strips, notionally hidden the White House from public view during the Watergate investigation.

    And the sun shone again.

  75. 75.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @schrodingers_cat:
    The funny thing is, Trump still lost here in Mahoning county 49-46 percent. This isn’t coal country and steel left a long time ago. Downtown has gotten much better in recent years thanks the Business Incubator. The future in Youngstown isn’t the heavy manufacturing like in the past, it’s these guys and small businesses:

    https://www.turningtechnologies.com

  76. 76.

    Barbara

    @Keith P.: She might be the one person I can think of who is actually crazier than Trump. She is just always off the charts and somehow nothing she says is ever verified.

  77. 77.

    Keith P.

    @Major Major Major Major: Is that by law or by JD regulation? Trump said something tonight about how the FBI reports to the JD only as a courtesy since Nixon (implying he can just say that the head of the FBI works for him now). I took from that he’s going to start claiming that he does have that power, short of it being an actual law.

  78. 78.

    David ?Canadian Anchor Baby? Koch

    Looks like I picked the wrong week to stop processing my asylum request to Russia.

  82. 82.

    hoodie

    Trump is making too many enemies. He may have been asking Putin about asylum at that second G20 meeting.

  83. 83.

    Keith P.

    @Adam L Silverman: Too late…I read the *comments* for that tweet, and she adds that Trump is also being considered for the death penalty. I really wonder if she’s part of a more elaborate Russian fake news operation than folks assume, creating several different bizarro camps to play off each other

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: Pour vous! From McKay Coppins most recent article in The Atlantic:
    https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/07/what-congressional-republicans-really-think-about-trump-and-russia/533784/

    And:

    Read the whole thing, it is very enlightening.

  85. 85.

    cynthia ackerman

    @scav:

    I drive fire trucks for a living.

    He makes the first graders we bring over every October look like they have thousand-yard stare.

  86. 86.

    GregB

    Trump wants to be an authoritarian cool kid.

    In his zeal to impress Putin, he must have spilled some serious beans into the miked up plant on the table in front him and Vlad at that G20 dinner.

  91. 91.

    Adam L Silverman

    @farthestnorth: If he fires AG Sessions, or if AG Sessions resigns, it is going to take months to get his replacement confirmed. The Senate is about out of time. The BCRA thing has sucked up a lot of the calendar. There are about 90 or so executive branch appointments in the pipeline for senatorial hearings and confirmation votes. There are also about 4 or 5 Federal judicial nominees also wending their way through. And they still haven’t finished tilting at the ACA windmill. Or gotten to tax reform. Or done budgeting and appropriations, which is going to likely be another omnibus CR (meaning we’re budgeting under Obama Administration priorities). Or done the debt ceiling increase. They are running out of time to get things done before the end of the Federal fiscal year. So Deputy AG Rosenstein would be acting AG again.

  92. 92.

    LAO

    So, I can’t get caught up on previous thread because (1) had a couple of drinks at dinner and (2) they were gin drinks. Is Sessions going to resign or will he make a Trump fire him. I’m voting resignation.

  94. 94.

    Steeplejack

    Goddamn, Bernie Sanders is coming up on Lawrence O’Donnell’s show. I thought with Chris Hayes off tonight we’d dodge that bullet. But apparently they’ve made up a permanent cot for him in the MSNBC green room.

  96. 96.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Keith P.: He may try. He is unlikely to win on that one. So after starting a war with the news media and the Intel Community/IC, he’s now opened one, via Jay Sekulow, with the US Secret Service. Opening a fourth front with the FBI is, I’m sure, somewhere on the three classic blunders list.

  97. 97.

    Bill Arnold

    Since it’s an open thread, a question:
    Does POTUS Donald Trump understand that his anti-Obama-legacy monomaniacal focus makes him rather predictable? And that he prides himself on his unpredictability as a strength, and tactical approach? And that these two approaches, predictability and unpredictability, cancel each other out?
    Just wondering. He could, hypothetically, pick some elements of Obama’s legacy and decide that he either likes them or is neutral about them, and surprise everyone. Would garner some respect as an adult move. Perhaps he’s only interested in base respect, but why wouldn’t he’d prefer broader respect?
    (Don’t mind me, just belatedly noticed this particularly glaring contradiction while reconciling some mental models of political figures with their public biographies.)

  99. 99.

    lamh36

    @Adam L Silverman: If Trump fires Sessions…I’m thinking he REALLY wants out of this Presidency….smh

    As for Sessions, I don’t see him resigning, a)his Senate seat is gone and his Senate years are over, b)he’s too busy rolling back the provisions and policies AG Holder and Obama admin put in place to protect Black and Brown folks…

    Keebler Elf aint’ going no where

  100. 100.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Waratah: My understanding from the news reporting is that it wasn’t all that effective. So in that regard “meh”… The optics look terrible because of the undisclosed informal meeting with Putin at the G20.

  101. 101.

    Immanentize

    @Evap: When Mike Lee and that other Senator came out as “nos” on the health care debacle, I had an inkling that people in the Senate knew McCain was not returning.

    And oh the irony. The brain tumor death of Teddy Kennedy is what forced Obamacare into the final reconciliation vote posture…. And oh how the Republicans howled. They couldn’t get this craptastic repeal done and they started with reconciliation.

    FSM may not have a sense of humor, but appreciates symmetry.

  108. 108.

    Immanentize

    @farthestnorth:

    What if Sessions resigns or is fired. Could new AG wrestle back supervision of investigation?

    Absolutely. But would they? It is possible they would promise not to interfere, but would cut funding to starve the investigation.

  109. 109.

    Adam L Silverman

    @LAO: As I wrote above, in a normal administration tomorrow would be AG Sessions last day. He’d resign because he’d lost the confidence of the President. What actually will happen? Who knows?

    Also: ABJ – Always be Balloon Juicing!

  110. 110.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Steve in the ATL: I’ve been saving that one for the annual war on Christmas. Which usually, for some strange reason, seems to start in July. Though with O’Reilly off the air and Megyn Kelly at NBC, who knows when the first skirmish of 2017 is scheduled.

  111. 111.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Bill Arnold:
    Short answer is no. He’s a fucking idiot. He used that unpredictability as an excuse for his ignorance

  114. 114.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Bill Arnold: As I’ve written here before: These folks are clumsy. They’re sloppy. They’re loud. They telegraph everything. It provides an opportunity to protect the Republic.

  118. 118.

    Yarrow

    Money laundering for Russians. That’s what they’re going to find. Sorry, Donnie. You did do something wrong.

  120. 120.

    Immanentize

    @Keith P.: The head of the FBI can only be removed by the President, but the FBI is part of the Department of Justice. The DOJ are the prosecutors and the FBI are the police if you want an imperfect analogy. Independent Director, but completely woven into DOJ even by budget. So complicated a bit, too complicated for Trump as the FBI does not work for the President.

  121. 121.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Adam L Silverman:

    These folks are clumsy. They’re sloppy. They’re loud.

    What’s interesting to me is, this is built into the scenario. It’s a feature, not a bug. The GOP base didn’t just want a bigot. They wanted Your Racist Uncle, a ranting, selfish moron who won’t shut up even when it’s smart to do so.

  122. 122.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Immanentize:
    As evidenced by his firing of Comey, he seems to think the FBI is his secret police. Don’t work that way, NY office aside

  124. 124.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    both Spicer and Huckabee Sanders have plenty of marbling if supplies run low…

    ‘marbling’…OMG…I’ll use that at the next inappropriate opportunity…

  126. 126.

    Aardvark Cheeselog

    Came here to remark on the McCain story which I see has already been pointed out.

    I predict he’s dead within 2 years, on disability some while before that.

  129. 129.

    Immanentize

    @LAO: When I was a bartender we used to say, “There is drunk. Then there is Gin drunk.”. When I moved to Texas I learned the same applied to tequila.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    I still can’t believe he made it to President without “hundreds of millions” in bank loans being looked at!

    Compare:

    Unless something drastic changes, Donald Trump, the self-proclaimed “King of Debt,” will enter the White House on January 20 with about $713 million in debt. He carries mortgages for all his prized properties—including Trump Tower, the Doral golf course in Miami, and his swanky new Washington, DC, hotel—and this does not count another $2 billion in debt (including massive loans from the state-owned Bank of China) that finances partnerships in which he participates.
    These loans create significant conflicts of interest. For instance, his biggest lender, Deutsche Bank, is in the middle of negotiations with the Justice Department over how many billions of dollars in civil penalties it should pay for its role in the 2008 financial crisis.
    As Trump has pointed out, there is no law that requires him to sell these assets. But since the 1970s, presidents have taken steps to minimize their conflicts of interest—even if only to avoid the appearance of a conflict. One good example for Trump: President Barack Obama. In 2013, as home mortgage interest rates plummeted, Obama publicly urged Americans to take advantage of the falling rates and save themselves a bundle of money. Alas, Obama told a town hall audience in 2013, he couldn’t follow his own good advice.
    “Well, not to get too personal, but our home back in Chicago—not the White House, which, as I said, that’s a rental—our home back in Chicago, my mortgage interest rate, I would probably benefit from refinancing right now, I would save some money,” Obama said. “When you’re President, you have to be a little careful about these transactions, so we haven’t refinanced.”
    Obama’s mortgage, which he took out in 2005, carries a 5.62 percent interest rate—significantly higher than the current rates that are around 4 percent for a 30-year mortgage. In 2015, USA Today estimated that Obama could save almost $2,100 a month by refinancing. But though he was not prevented from taking advantage of the lower rates, he chose not to do so. He had learned his lesson. Years earlier, when he first entered office, his 5.62 percent mortgage was heavily scrutinized, with the question being whether he had received a below-market rate as an act of favoritism. A Federal Election Commission investigation determined that Obama had obtained a discounted rate but that it was legal because it was within the range offered by Obama’s bank to customers who may provide the bank with additional business.

    Obama’s home mortgage was “heavily scrutinized”- an ordinary mortgage on a regular (if really nice!) family home. He paid 2100 dollars a month extra to avoid even the appearance of a conflict when everyone was refinancing.

    How was this not an issue? Trump is up to his ears in debt. It’s a conflict. Of course it is.

  135. 135.

    Jeffro

    @lamh36: more proof that we are living in an alternate reality…douchebag congressman tweets (tweets!) at his party’s douchebag president to not fire the douchebag AG because of the AG’s sorta-properly recusing himself from a much-needed investigation of the president.

    I can’t even keep up with how many wrongs are making right, or wrong, or not, at this point.

  136. 136.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: I last drank tequila 38 years ago. I still remember the date and the location. Not an event I have any interest in repeating, ever.

  138. 138.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @Kay:
    Emails.

    Sadly, the actual answer, not a trite joke. The people who were supposed to be investigating for the American public had priorities, and those priorities did not include revealing Trump’s corruption.

  140. 140.

    LAO

    @Kay: I really hate to say this, but people don’t seem to care. Trump should have been disqualified from the presidency for a hundred different reasons, but here we are stuck with him.

  143. 143.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Immanentize: I’m sure I’m not the only one commenting here who thanks his lucky stars that neither smartphones nor the Internet existed back when I was young and stupid.

    Plus, this was the sort of establishment where pulling out a camera would likely have led to significant physical injury, if you get my drift.

  149. 149.

    Jeffro

    @Kay: part of the 2019 (or 2021) Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s mandate has to be “how did we get here?”, with one of the most obvious avenues being “why the fuck didn’t/couldn’t/wouldn’t the GOP properly vet their candidates?” Full tax disclosure (previous 10 years, minimum) is a nice first step.

    It’s not to say that the mouth-breathers wouldn’t still have supported Trumpov, but the rest of the party would have had even more reasons to see where this was going to go, and step up their efforts to unify behind the anti-Trumpov.

  152. 152.

    Miss Bianca

    @LAO: every night during the Trumptastic Years is the wrong night to stop lurking.

    ETA: Some people seem to be actually allergic to gin. An ex of mine being one of them. As long as it just makes you a crazy drunk and not a mean one, you should be OK.

  153. 153.

    WaterGirl

    @LAO: Millions of people care, it’s just that we’re not the ones with the power to take direct action.

  155. 155.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: I’m thinking of a theme restaurant. The Donner Family Style Buffet. Bring your own meat. Smith party of 9 your table for four is ready!

  156. 156.

    Immanentize

    @LAO: Did y’all see that in the letter from the Senate Committee to Junior, in the long list of Russian folks he has to supply documents about, also included is one

    Wait for it

    Jill Stein?

  159. 159.

    Kay

    @LAO:

    Emails. I know. But this:

    A Federal Election Commission investigation

    The Obama’s merit an election commission investigation for the house they bought and lived in but nothing for Trump with hundreds of millions in loans? WTF is that? How could there possibly be such different standards from 2005 to 2016? There was a complete collapse we didn’t hear about? Just no more scrutiny of any kind?

    It’s like 2 different countries. Trump got a complete pass. Forget the Access Hollywood tape. Look into the loans. There’s a 1000 documents that exist for every one of them. It’s not unknowable! There’s paper!

  163. 163.

    LAO

    @Immanentize: That threw me. But, I have a difficult time believing his lawyer will actually let him testify. So we may never know what’s up with that.

  164. 164.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro:
    https://www.justsecurity.org/43270/trump-campaign-collude-russia-defeat-republican-opponents-gop-primary/

    Russia’s election interference began well before the general election. It started during the GOP primaries and clearly in support of Donald Trump over his GOP opponents. Thanks to investigative reporting by the New York Times, we now know, at the very least, the Trump campaign was open to support from the Russian government by early June 2016 when senior campaign members met with Russians purporting to have information from the Kremlin that would harm Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, discussed timing for implementing Russian support, and failed to report any of this to U.S. authorities. Many have raised the question whether the Trump campaign’s knowledge of Russian government support and these kinds of exchanges began before June 2016. Yet to truly understand the scope of Russian interference in the U.S. election, we must ask a more specific question: did the Trump campaign know about, accept, or work with the Russian government when the Kremlin interfered in the GOP primary?

    The publicly available information on this matter should prompt Congress, Robert Mueller, news media, and others to pursue that question with utmost concern. Let’s take a closer look.

    Much more at the link!

  169. 169.

    LAO

    @Kay: I actually don’t think it was the email (non) scandal. I think the press assumed he couldn’t and wouldn’t win, so they didn’t want to waste their time. I still infuriates me.

  172. 172.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman:

    I’m thinking of a theme restaurant. The Donner Family Style Buffet. Bring your own meat. Smith party of 9 your table for four is ready!

    Eww. In Transmetropolitan, they have the “Long Pig” fast food chain (although I think the human ‘long pig’ meat is clone-grown, not um ‘free range’). I’ll just stick with Panera thanks.

  173. 173.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: I have been saying that here for almost a year. And given that the President’s private attorney, Mark Kasowitz, has bragged that he got Bharara fired, well there had to be some reason why the President’s private attorney wanted Bharara gone.

  175. 175.

    Adam L Silverman

    More profiles in courage! I’m not sure these folks are even vertebrates.

  176. 176.

    Chris

    @Frankensteinbeck:

    This reminds me of a discussion I read years ago on another blog about the Nazis, intelligence/counterintelligence work, and why they were so awful at it. One of the commenters theorized that it was inherent to the fascist/right-wing mentality: Real Men don’t investigate conspiracies, with all the tedious mind numbing work that that implies, Real Men deter conspiracies, with manly shows of force. All the noise and bluster and goose stepping and monuments and parades were, to them, a kind of substitute for the actual hard work.

    Needless to say, I found that a pretty fair description of our wingnuts too. All that obsession with projecting strength, as if it were a substitute for actual work and skill.

  179. 179.

    LAO

    @Adam L Silverman: it still. It still infuriates me.

    And on that note, I’m off to bed hoping against hope to wake up on Earth 1, where Hillary Clinton is president and Trump is nowhere to be seen or heard. A girl can dream.

  180. 180.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: I may have missed your comments about Preet specifically, but I’m pretty sure I noted – and therefore gave you props – for the ‘follow the money’ theme right? If I change “But here’s one” to “And here’s one” (which I should have done in the first place) I’m pretty sure we’re good here. ;)

    (plus I really just wanted to do the Khan thing, to be honest – everything else was kinda of rushed towards that goal)

  185. 185.

    clay

    From the NYT interview:

    So Jeff Sessions takes the job, gets into the job, recuses himself. I then have — which, frankly, I think is very unfair to the president. How do you take a job and then recuse yourself? If he would have recused himself before the job, I would have said, “Thanks, Jeff, but I can’t, you know, I’m not going to take you.” It’s extremely unfair, and that’s a mild word, to the president. So he recuses himself. I then end up with a second man, who’s a deputy.

    So much nonsense, just in this one paragraph. Setting aside the fact that Sessions obviously had no intention of recusing himself when he took the job, so how could he have told Trump about it… From the way Trump speaks, it kinda seems like he thinks Sessions recused himself from the entire AG position!

    He DOES know that Sessions still is AG, that he only recused himself from the Russia investigation… right? Unless… he sees the AG job as solely being in charge of said investigation…

    Rosenstein became extremely angry at that because, as a prosecutor, he knows that Comey did the wrong thing. Totally wrong thing. And he gives me a letter, O.K., he gives me a letter about Comey. And by the way, that was a tough letter, O.K. Now, perhaps I would have fired Comey anyway, and it certainly didn’t hurt to have the letter, O.K. But he gives me a very strong letter, and now he’s involved in the case. Well, that’s a conflict of interest.

    First of all, no it isn’t. Second, we all saw Trump on national TV state he was going to fire Comey no matter what, and now he’s saying “perhaps” he would’ve done it? I cannot wait for this guy to get under oath.

    The stock market is the highest it’s ever been. It’s up almost 20 percent since I took office.

    Wut.

  187. 187.

    Bill Arnold

    @Immanentize: @Immanentize:

    Did y’all see that in the letter from the Senate Committee to Junior, in the long list of Russian folks he has to supply documents about, also included is one
    Wait for it
    Jill Stein?

    Yep. Interesting. Not all Russian for sure. (For those who’d like a link, bipartisan Senate letter to DTJr )

    Full list:

    all documents related to the June 9, 2016 meeting or any other meeting, or effort to arrange a meeting with Natalia Veselnitskaya or Rinat Akhmetshin, including all documents provided during the meeting and all documents relating to scheduling, what happened during the meeting(s), and any related actions taken after the meeting(s); 2. all communications to, from, or copied to you relating to Rob Goldstone, Emin Agalarov, Aras Agalarov, Natalia Veselnitskaya, Rinat Akhmetshin, Anatoli Samochornov, Irakly (Ike) Kaveladze, Christopher Steele, Aleksej Gubarev, Webzilla B.V., XBT Holdings S.A., Alfa Group, Dmitry Peskov, Vladimir Putin, the Ritz Carlton Moscow Hotel, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Igor Sechin, Sergei Ivanov, Igor Divyekin, Sergei Millian, Dmitry Medvedev, Michael Flynn, Jill Stein, Michael Cohen, Konstantin Kosachev, Viktor Yanukovych, Corey Lewandowski, Sergei Kislyak, Yuri Ushakov, Anton Vaino, Mikhail Kalugin, Andrei Bondarev, Mikhail Fridman, Petr Aven, German Khan, Oleg Govorun, Sergey Lavrov, Rosneft, Sergei Kiriyenko, Oleg Solodukhin. This shall include any documents referring to any of the aforementioned using alternate spellings, pseudonyms, nicknames, abbreviations, or codes;

  188. 188.

    Omnes Omnibus

    @clay:

    Unless… he sees the AG job as solely being in charge of said investigation…

    We have a winner.

    First of all, no it isn’t. Second, we all saw Trump on national TV state he was going to fire Comey no matter what, and now he’s saying “perhaps” he would’ve done it? I cannot wait for this guy to get under oath.

    Don’t do this to yourself. Please. Try cutting instead.

  190. 190.

    patrick II

    @Adam L Silverman:
    Sessions won’t resign: his mission is too important. Who else can stop immigrants as well as Jeffrey? Who else can stop the marijuana plague or make sure cops everywhere are capable of forfeiture of property without a conviction? Don’t go Jeffrey we need you !

  192. 192.

    ? ?? Goku (aka The Hope of the Universe) ? ?

    @Adam L Silverman:

    “Some consider the murders a polarizing issue, however, because accused killer is a white supremacist and is associated with the alt-right.”

    Murder is murder. That wacko killed those people when they tried to defend two women from his verbal assault and he was PROUD of it. That’s the most infuriating part. No regrets. I hope he gets the death penalty and I’m against the death penalty on general principle

  199. 199.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: Well, that was pretty unsubtle. I wonder if Preet has considered a career in talk radio, or just kicking asses at random? He’d be great at either.

  204. 204.

    Ruckus

    @Miss Bianca:
    I used to drink gin. Always amazed me to walk in a bar and ask for a PG and they always knew what I wanted. Of course I also used to drink whiskey straight, and… oh what the hell, pretty much any hard liquor, including moonshine. Except foo foo liquor. That’s just wrong.

  205. 205.

    Fair Economist

    @Keith P.:

    EDIT: Louise Mensch has gone nuclear and is saying she’s hearing that “the death penalty, for espionage, being considered for @StevenKBannon”. I don’t believe that one at all

    *Somebody* handed over our spy network in Russia immediately after Trump took office, because Putin arrested a bunch of people for spying for the US then. Not clear who it is, but it was somebody, and that might well be death penalty material.

  206. 206.

    dww44

    @Adam L Silverman:

    In a normal world tomorrow would be AG Sessions last day as Attorney General as he’d retire because he’d lost the confidence of the President. What will actually happen tomorrow I have no idea.

    In a sane world the President would resign tomorrow..

  207. 207.

    dww44

    I hope a reputable polling entity does a poll tomorrow, one that targets those in Trump’s BASE. I’d love to know if the more sane among them have come to their senses now.

  208. 208.

    dww44

    @Barbara: She did cover McCain’s cancer diagnosis. Perhaps not in the segment you saw? LOD read the quite touching news release that Meghan McCain put out for the family.

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