Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Come on, man.

Pessimism assures that nothing of any importance will change.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

People are complicated. Love is not.

My years-long effort to drive family and friends away has really paid off this year.

This blog will pay for itself.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

Something needs to be done about our bogus SCOTUS.

All your base are belong to Tunch.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Not so fun when the rabbit gets the gun, is it?

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

Too often we hand the biggest microphones to the cynics and the critics who delight in declaring failure.

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Despite his magical powers, I don’t think Trump is thinking this through, to be honest.

I’m pretty sure there’s only one Jack Smith.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Russiagate Open Thread: Meanwhile…

Russiagate Open Thread: Meanwhile…

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To quote Mr. Cohen, staying on message, “Says who?”…

Associates of President Trump and his company have turned over documents to federal investigators that reveal two previously unreported contacts from Russia during the 2016 campaign, according to people familiar with the matter.

In one case, Trump’s personal attorney and a business associate exchanged emails weeks before the Republican National Convention about the lawyer possibly traveling to an economic conference in Russia that would be attended by top Russian financial and government leaders, including President Vladi­mir Putin, according to people familiar with the correspondence.

In the other case, the same Trump attorney, Michael Cohen, received a proposal in late 2015 for a Moscow residential project from a company founded by a billionaire who once served in the upper house of the Russian parliament, these people said. The previously unreported inquiry marks the second proposal for a Trump-branded Moscow project that was delivered to the company during the presidential campaign and has since come to light.

Cohen declined the invitation to the economic conference, citing the difficulty of attending so close to the GOP convention, according to people familiar with the matter. And Cohen rejected the Moscow building plan.

Nonetheless, the information about the interactions has been provided to congressional committees as well as special counsel Robert S. Mueller III as they investigate whether Trump associates coordinated with Russian efforts to interfere in the U.S. election, according to people familiar with the inquiries who, like others cited in this story, spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the inquiry…

…[T]he new disclosures add to an emerging picture in which Trump’s business and campaign were repeatedly contacted by Russians with interests in business and politics. Trump’s son, his son-in-law, his campaign chairman, low-level foreign policy advisers and, now, Cohen, one of his closest business confidants, all fielded such inquiries in the weeks before or after Trump accepted the nomination.

The documents also underscore the Trump company’s long-standing interest in doing business in Moscow.

In a statement Monday, Cohen stressed that he did not attend the economic forum. “I did not accept this invitation,” he said. “I have never been to Russia.”…

Information, according to the article, provided by Felix Sater. There’s an old training joke about a dog being “extremely loyal”, meaning “too dumb not to comply even with a bad command, also too dumb to get themselves out of the mess they get into by complying”…
******

Paul Manafort, on the other hand: Probably not that kind of loyal, because he’s made a rich living working for Very Bad Dudes for quite a long time:

He wasn’t getting paid by the Trump campaign, but he’s not the sort of guy takes on a job “for free”.

Reader Interactions

116Comments

  1. 1.

    Corner Stone

    Manafort just looks like he should have had a major role in Devil’s Advocate w Keanu and Pacino.

  2. 2.

    Kay

    We attack media all the time here but the Washington Post has been great on Trump.

    Also- who among us would have predicted Politico would be the ones to dig thru the Trump Administration jet chartering records? Imagine what else the low quality hires are spending big bucks on. They have to record it all- it’s not like the sleazy Trump businesses- there are real records!

  3. 3.

    Corner Stone

    Alex, I’d like blastingly obvious questions for $1000.
    What is:

    Did Manafort Use Trump to Curry Favor With a Putin Ally?

  6. 6.

    CaseyL

    Just confirms what we already knew: Trump, Inc., is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Russian government.

  7. 7.

    Mnemosyne

    Cohen declined the invitation to the economic conference, citing the difficulty of attending so close to the GOP convention, according to people familiar with the matter. And Cohen rejected the Moscow building plan.

    I’m so old, I remember when the fact that some of the Clinton Foundation’s donors requested but were denied special treatment was PROOF POSITIVE that the Clintons were irredeemably corrupt. ?

  9. 9.

    Kay

    @JPL:

    Well, sure. They’ll have to gut aid to the poor in order to deliver huge tax cuts for the ultra-rich.

    That and cut Medicare.

  11. 11.

    Baud

    @Mnemosyne: We rightly criticize the media for EMAILS!, but the fake corruption insinuations (“clouds”) may have actually been more damaging.

  15. 15.

    germy

    @Corner Stone:

    Manafort just looks like he should have had a major role in Devil’s Advocate w Keanu and Pacino.

    He looks like a guy in a 1960s Jerry Lewis movie playing a casino boss; straight man to Jerry’s antics.

  16. 16.

    Corner Stone

    Reading a few of the snippets it is abundantly clear that Manafort is neither very bright or very cautious. I get how he ended up on Team Trump. But how in the world did he survive working for all these bloodthirsty dictators over the years?

  18. 18.

    Corner Stone

    @germy: He looks like a sleaze ball mafia goon trying to make the weekly payment by having people break off parking meters for their change.

  19. 19.

    Timurid

    Hillary will never live down Whitewater, Vince Foster or “Super Predators.” NEVER.

    A White House speechwriter hands Trump his BREAK GLASS IN CASE OF DISASTER speech template with today’s names and places pasted in… he reads the whole thing without (visibly) pissing himself… and his Presidency gets a total reset.

  23. 23.

    Mike in Pasadena

    I have a very off topic question for Juicers: How many of us are from states with drivers licenses that are not compliant with the REAL ID Act and are aware that as of October 10th, 2017, you’ll need your passport or a “passport card” in order to board an airline for domestic travel? I flew internationally late spring this year, and yet, there was not a single notice posted anywhere at LAX notifying Californians that their state ID’s were no longer going to be valid identification. If your state has an extension, you have until January 22, 2018. After that, you’ll have to travel with your passport or passport card. I, for one, am not going to depend on the “short grace period from enforcement”, that is, January 22, 2018. DHS, otherwise better known in the original German, Heimatsicherheitsamt, was responsible for making people aware of the phased-in enforcement. They’ve done a piss-poor job of it.

  25. 25.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Michael Cohen: “Somebody’s going to jail for treason over this, and it’s not going to be me.”

    @Kay:
    There are no tax cuts linked to this review process. The rich get nothing. This is 100% driven by cruelty, probably racist cruelty.

  43. 43.

    schrodingers_cat

    Saw giggle sisters (Amy Walter and Tamara Keith) on Snooze Hour, incessant giggling and smiling while discussing Puerto Rico and the mass shooting. What is so funny that they always have to keep smiling? Is it in their contract? Thankfully, Lisa Desjardins who was conducting the interview, was not smiling at all.

  49. 49.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:

    It actually completely boggles my mind that so many states, liberal ones too, couldn’t or wouldn’t get their asses in gear about this. What gives?

    There are a lot of objections to provisions in the Real ID Act. For example states are required to share information with every other state, which potentially makes everyone’s data as vulnerable as the state with the worst security. Conservative states are worried that it’s an attempt to institute a national ID. Liberal states are worried that it prevents them from issuing drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants. It’s basically an attempt to push a whole bunch of policy down on the states, and every state that objects to any part of that policy has a reason to resist implementation.

  50. 50.

    Suzanne

    @Mike in Pasadena: I didn’t know anything about this, and I flew last week. Apparently AZ has an extension. I have a passport, though. Now I’ll just have to bring it every time.

  52. 52.

    Patricia Kayden

    @germy: That’s fine with me. I just hope they hurry up. Their investigation can’t be completed quickly enough.

  53. 53.

    Cheryl Rofer

    From the Washington Post article:
    – Russians pitched TWO real estate projects to Trump DURING THE CAMPAIGN
    – Neither Trump nor anyone else in the campaign admitted to the contacts
    – I’ve concluded from other sources that Sater is a bullsh***er who puffs up his importance. Nothing he says can be believed, but he is AWFULLY friendly with Russians

    From the Atlantic article:
    – Manafort has been very friendly with Oleg Deripaska, a friend of Putin’s, for a long time.
    – The money connections are very suggestive but not yet clear.

    I’ll ask and answer my usual question about sources. It looks to me like the material was provided by someone (maybe more than one someones) on the Congressional investigations staffs.

    There still is not an overarching story line. Manafort is a friend of Deripaska’s, had a mixture of financial dealings with him. Other Russian contacts like Sater buzz around Manafort. Large sums of money are involved. Manafort was not paid by Trump when he was Trump’s campaign manager, although he needed money. I (and you) can probably figure out a story line, but it’s still got lots of holes in it.

  54. 54.

    Corner Stone

    There is an LV mass murder eyewitness on the phone to MSNBC named Buzz Brainard.
    Tell me I am hallucinating again.

  59. 59.

    Texasboyshaun

    I got my BA in poli sci and also took 2 yrs of Russian. Not sure if that’s an asset these days, or a liability.

  60. 60.

    Roger Moore

    @Major Major Major Major:
    The whole point, though, is that they’re using the need for a compliant ID to fly as a way to pressure states into compliance. It appears that the way this has worked in the past is that they come up with a deadline, threaten to stop letting people fly if the states can’t meet it, and then extend the deadline when the states still aren’t going to comply. I assume that’s what’s happening here, but I’m not 100% sure.

    In any case, I think it’s a terrible law. It gets back to the problem with identification vs. authentication vs. authorization. A driver’s license is really supposed to be an authorization to drive. It got shoehorned into the role of identification because states put photos on the licenses so people couldn’t share them, and because there weren’t any other convenient IDs around. I think we really ought to have a national ID card, but if the federal government wants us to have one they should implement it themselves rather than coercing the states into doing it for them.

  66. 66.

    japa21

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Illinois is close to but not quite compliant. It got an extension to 10/10/17 and has requested another one. Missouri, apparently, hasn’t figured out what a drivers license is yet. This I got from an online article. It’s partly why we had to take our passports when we visited our son at Fort Lost in the Woods.

    There has been nothing on the news lately.

  71. 71.

    KithKanan

    @Cheryl Rofer: Guess it depends what he knows and what his contingency plans are to make that information public in the event anything happens to him?

  78. 78.

    Adam L Silverman

    @JPL: This is Stephen Miller. He’s trying to turn the Domestic Policy Council, which he chairs, into an actual domestic equivalent of the National Security Council. This has his fingerprints all over it.

  83. 83.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Cheryl Rofer: Also, I’m pretty sure there’s a Presidential Policy Directive that says this is okay as long as they weren’t forwarded to Anthony Weiner.

  86. 86.

    Roger Moore

    @rikyrah:

    Passports cost over $100.

    Yep. And if we needed to issue one to every American citizen every 10 years, that would add up to a few billion dollars a year. I think we can find the money to do that in the federal budget.

  88. 88.

    Elizabelle

    I could use a soothing pet picture about now, or a recipe thread, or music, or whatever.

    I am mad as a wet cat. Stayed away from teevee all day; caught a tiny bit of CNN in the 8:00 p hour. They’re doing their patented shooting response “look at how many good people are helping in the aftermath” segment. If I had a gun, I would have shot. It’s like the best reality teevee show ever for these fuckers.

    So, having a glass of wine and cooking a little dinner. But so out of sorts.

  91. 91.

    hueyplong

    Danny Tarkanian is a class A prick. He’ll go from “the bodies aren’t even cold yet” to “we have to put this behind us.”

    Congrats to him for making Dean Heller look good.

  92. 92.

    Roger Moore

    @Patricia Kayden:

    Just seeing an ad for “Trumpy Bear”.

    I had heard about “Fancy Bear” and “Cozy Bear”, but this is the first I’ve heard of “Trumpy Bear”. And I didn’t think Russian espionage groups advertised.

  93. 93.

    Mike in Pasadena

    @BillinGlendaleCA: I guess when we attempt to board an airplane in Bumfuck, Idaho, and the officious TSA employee rejects our CA drivers license, I can say, “But, but, but, Artemio Armenta of the California DMV told the LA Times that my drivers license is good enough until 2020.” I have college friends who work for the Dept. of Homeland Security. They told me that its management was the most fouled-up and incompetent gaggle of brain dead meatheads ever collected together in a single department. They were talking about the DHS that existed before President Obama. Maybe President Obama was able to persuade the meatheads to retire. Put me down as unwilling to trust DHS and TSA to be consistent in their application of the rules, the exceptions, and the extensions. When I fly, the procedures for getting through security seem to be different every time and differ ever so slightly from airport to airport, even domestic airports.

  94. 94.

    Mnemosyne

    @Roger Moore:

    Technically, you CAN fly domestically without showing a driver’s license or state ID card, if you have other proofs of your identity. It’s not well-known, and they make it a pain in the ass, but it can be done.

  96. 96.

    Ruckus

    @Mike in Pasadena:
    Of course they’ve done a horrible job. They couldn’t fuck with people if people knew and complied. I don’t believe there was any money for the states to comply, so a state like CA, with more people with drivers licenses than a lot of states have in total population is going to have some issues making a card available to everyone.

  97. 97.

    Mike in Pasadena

    @Major Major Major Major: The LA Times article linked by Bill in Glendale mentioned that CA might get its act together in January 2018. The article was published in June of this year. As of that date, DHS had still not approved CA’s compliance. Really, was it that hard to comply? The CA DMV is pretty good about many things (license renewal online and fee payment online), but seems they dropped the ball on this.

  99. 99.

    Mike in Pasadena

    @Roger Moore: Thanks. That explains a lot, I suppose, about why some states dragged their feet. I’m a little tired of the “must share data with all the other states.” Equifax and Whole Foods apparently were not able to protect data from hackers. Should I trust Mississippi, or Alabama, or any other state?

  101. 101.

    Ruckus

    @Roger Moore:

    Conservative states are worried that it’s an attempt to institute a national ID. Liberal states are worried that it prevents them from issuing drivers’ licenses to undocumented immigrants.

    This is exactly what it is. And your point about all the data being as open as the worst states privacy efforts is also an issue. What I don’t get is that if this is a national travel issue what does each state need with the data on other states cards? It’s the DHS who works the airports not the states.

  103. 103.

    Elizabelle

    @chris: Love it. Gorgeous water. Ta.

    Although I also liked the item at top right: Fuck this person in particular. With some generic white female photo.

    FTPIP. That could be a good feature here.

  105. 105.

    rikyrah

    Kyle Griffin‏Verified account @kylegriffin1

    Politico: There’s a 3rd, previously unreported email account associated w/Kushner, hundreds of WH emails sent there.

  106. 106.

    chris

    @Elizabelle:

    Although I also liked the item at top right: Fuck this person in particular. With some generic white female photo.

    FTPIP. That could be a good feature here.

    That all went over my head

  107. 107.

    Vor

    In Minnesota, the Republicans were responsible for a provision which barred the state government from doing any planning at all for Real Id. I think it was out of fear of a national ID card.

  108. 108.

    rikyrah

    Just saw a report on MSNBC. Said what I had heard earlier:
    That the Domestic Terrorist was ” known to the police “.
    What 64 year old White Man is “known to the police” ?
    What are they not saying

  109. 109.

    Mnemosyne

    @rikyrah:

    IIRC, when old white dudes are “known to the police,” that usually means that people called and complained about them, but the cops decided not to arrest them.

  112. 112.

    Shalimar

    @Cheryl Rofer: I was waiting for news on Kushner’s 3rd email account as soon as I read the non-governmental account he was using to occasionally talk about government business was only started in December during the transition. It was pretty much inevitable that he hadn’t stopped using his longtime personal account if only because that is where friends would know to reach him, and there was no reason to believe he would be any more careful with that one than he was with the Republican server account.

  113. 113.

    JGabriel

    Anne Laurie @ Top:

    [Manafort] wasn’t getting paid by the Trump campaign, but he’s not the sort of guy takes on a job “for free”.

    Agreed. And we all know if you’re getting something for free, then you’re the product. So Trump is the product, we all know who the buyer is – now we just need Mueller to prove it.

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