Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

The truth is, these are not very bright guys, and things got out of hand.

Historically it was a little unusual for the president to be an incoherent babbling moron.

Never give a known liar the benefit of the doubt.

How can republicans represent us when they don’t trust women?

An almost top 10,000 blog!

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

It’s easier to kill a dangerous animal than a man who just happens to have different thoughts/values than one’s own.

… gradually, and then suddenly.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

Republicans: “Abortion is murder but you can take a bus to get one.” Easy peasy.

Tide comes in. Tide goes out. You can’t explain that.

If you are in line to indict donald trump, stay in line.

When you’re a Republican, they let you do it.

I am pretty sure Katy Tur wasn’t always such a bootlicking sycophant.

Republicans in disarray!

The most dangerous place for a black man in America is in a white man’s imagination.

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

At some point, the ability to learn is a factor of character, not IQ.

“In the future, this lab will be a museum. don’t touch it.”

“I never thought they’d lock HIM up,” sobbed a distraught member of the Lock Her Up Party.

When we show up, we win.

Whoever he was, that guy was nuts.

I didn’t have alien invasion on my 2023 BINGO card.

You are here: Home / Politics / Trumpery / Dolt 45 / Another One Bites the Dust

Another One Bites the Dust

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drip… drip… drip…

Papadopoulos-Statement-Offense

a. Defendant PAPADOPOULOS claimed that his interactions with an overseas professor, who defendant PAPADOPOULOS understood to have substantial connections to Russian government officials, occurred before defendant PAPADOPOULOS became a foreign policy adviser to the Campaign. Defendant PAPADOPOULOS acknowledged that the professor had told him about the Russians possessing “dirt” on then-candidate Hillary Clinton in the form of “thousands of emails,” but stated multiple times that he learned that information prior to joining the Campaign. In truth and in fact, however, defendant PAPADOPOULOS learned he would be an advisor to the Campaign in early March, and met the professor on or about March 14, 2016; the professor only took interest in defendant PAPADOPOULOS because of his status with the Campaign; and the professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS about the “thousands of emails” on or about April 26, 2016, when defendant PAPADOPOULOS had been a foreign policy adviser to the Campaign for over a month.
b. Defendant PAPADOPOULOS further told the investigating agents that the professor was “a nothing” and “just a guy talk[ing] up connections or something.” In truth and
in fact, however, defendant PAPADOPOULOS understood that the professor had substantial connections to Russian government officials (and had met with some of those officials in Moscow immediately prior to telling defendant PAPADOPOULOS about the “thousands of emails”) and, over a period of months, defendant PAPADOPOULOS repeatedly sought to use the professor’s Russian connections in an effort to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and Russian government officials.
c. Defendant PAPADOPOULOS claimed he met a certain female Russian national before he joined the Campaign and that their communications consisted of emails such as, “‘Hi, how are you?”‘ In truth and in fact, however, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the
female Russian national on or about March 24, 2016, after he had become an adviser to the Campaign; he believed that she had connections to Russian government officials; and he sought to use her Russian connections over a period of months in an effort to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and Russian government officials.

It’s on bitches. Mind you- he pleaded guilty, so he has probably been talking for some time.

Reader Interactions

296Comments

  6. 6.

    zhena gogolia

    Ironically, what I’m supposed to be doing right now is reading a book about post-Soviet Ukraine

  7. 7.

    Betty Cracker

    @JPL: Same! My ass was already dragging because of baseball into the wee hours, and now this? Let’s just declare a national holiday. Productivity is shot to shit anyway.

  9. 9.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    Why do I suspect we may now know who flipped first?

    I have a question for anyone who wasn’t in elementary school during Watergate. Were the political junkies on the edges of their seats like this then?

  12. 12.

    scav

    And this is a day where I really really really have to be outside during the last two.point.ish days of solid sun allotted here. Bulbs are deprnding on me and aster seeds don’t crawl off the plant on their own (well, not with the eventual direction of attractively designed packets, at least).

  14. 14.

    zhena gogolia

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    Oh, yeah. I remember being in college, going for a walk with a friend and then sitting in a playground on a swing while he explained it all to me in excruciating detail. When he got to the part about the mysterious plane crash my head started hurting. I wasn’t following anything, but he sure was, and I know he wasn’t alone.

  16. 16.

    Fred Reisser

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I can safely say yes. I was in elementary school during Watergate and I was on the edge of my seat, or as much as I could as an 11 year old. I can only imagine how adults felt at the time. Probably how I feel today. I’m just glad I happened to take the day off.

  24. 24.

    Fred Reisser

    Har-de-har-har!! president* Donald F. Moron is still like, “What about Crooked Hillary?” That dog won’t hunt no more.

  27. 27.

    OldDave

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    Were the political junkies on the edges of their seats like this then?

    I took one semester of ‘Political Science’ in college … and the semester coincided with Watergate breaking. First day of class the professor asked if we had bought our texts, and if not, don’t bother. We spent the semester reading the Washington Post and NY Times. Fun times!

  29. 29.

    Barbara

    It’s the false statements that kill. It’s so easy to prove that someone is lying, and the way these guys work, by the time they sit down to ask you questions they are purposefully asking you about things that they already know the answers to so they can have at least one count ready to go whatever else happens. Martha Stewart, Web Hubbell, and many others seem to think that law enforcement agents are just asking random questions without any method or background knowledge.

  34. 34.

    Jeffro

    KRAKADOOM!!!!

    it’s raining indictments…somebody get the Mango Menace an umbrella…no wait, don’t…

  38. 38.

    mike in dc

    My mind is cautiously optimistic, but my heart is laying down the cardboard, putting the mixtape in and practicing popping, locking and headspins.

  39. 39.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @Betty Cracker: My clearest memory of my parents during Watergate was my mother being pissed that the hearings were pre-empting her soaps.

    @OldDave: Oh wow. That must have been an amazing class.

  41. 41.

    Gozer

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I just asked my father that same question. He graduated college in 1974 and wasn’t all that political at the time (not so anymore). For him it was kind of like everything was fine and then it was like “Holy shit…Nixon had ex-spies and cuban counter-revolutionaries break into the DNC headquarters!? Secret pay-offs…WTF?!”

    He’d always been generally liberal, but not terribly engaged. Watergate changed that.

  42. 42.

    bystander

    When I saw the header I thought this would be about Halperin being canned by NBC.

    Great day for schadenfreuding.

  49. 49.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    Shit, Manafort is beyond fucked if he doesn’t flip. The guidelines on his counts run on an upward slope. I don’t do that sort of practice anymore, but some of the folks here may run potentials based on him fighting it out.

    That presumes, of course, that he makes it to trial without drinking a polonium milkshake or stumbling into a poison umbrella.

  53. 53.

    gvg

    I seem to recall my mom and a bunch of other mothers seemed to have the TV tuned to the hearings all the time, then discussed with husbands over dinner. I was bored but curious about what so many adults were so sober about. I was about 10 and not interested in politics beyond just before elections until 2000. I was anti republican from the Bill Clinton witch hunt time frame on. 2000 was upsetting and then things have been getting more and more alarming since. My childhood recollection was that most adults were watching, not just political junkies. However I think my impressions aren’t just seeing friends parents, but from things like Doonesbury comic strip and even some others plus reading books and so many people on TV have referred to having watched them over the years.
    I wonder what the ratings were? I wonder what Donald will say about his ratings if we have hearings to impeach him?

  54. 54.

    sherparick

    @Fred Reisser: It hunts with the Base, Fox, and the right-wing Industrial Entertainment complex, for at least as long Rupert Murdoch keeps backing him. But if Rupert leaves the building, Fox’s line the next day will be that “Trump was/is a Democrat and Clinton pal all along.”

  57. 57.

    Yarrow

    @rikyrah: They’re all going down. Trump, Pence, all the top GOP leadership. Trump’s eldest kids. And a whole lot of people associated with his campaign. The Republican party has been acting as an arm of Russia for a long time. Traitors, the whole lot of them. Some Democrats will be involved as well, and good riddance to those who are. But far and away it will be Republicans who are guilty. Tick tock, motherfuckers. Hope you have your lawyers all lined up.

  58. 58.

    La Caterina (Mrs. Johannes)

    @Betty Cracker: I was about 15. My mom and I watched every second of the televised watergate hearings that we could. I remember being fascinated and horrified that we could have such a crook as a president.

  60. 60.

    Hill Dweller

    Papadopoulos was arrested on July 27, 2017. He subsequently “met with the Government on numerous occasions to provide information and answer questions”.

  62. 62.

    rikyrah

    @gvg:

    I wonder what the ratings were? I wonder what Donald will say about his ratings if we have hearings to impeach him?

    Remember, there were only 3 main channels back then. It was on all of them.

  63. 63.

    Betty Cracker

    @gvg: I think we only had four channels back then, in the Tampa media market, at least. The big three networks, plus the local station that ran cartoons and Creature Feature!

  65. 65.

    Corner Stone

    @Yarrow:

    They’re all going down. Trump, Pence, all the top GOP leadership. Trump’s eldest kids. And a whole lot of people associated with his campaign. The Republican party has been acting as an arm of Russia for a long time. Traitors, the whole lot of them.

    I am *very* aroused right now. Don’t act like you’re not impressed!

  67. 67.

    Barbara

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): He apparently started tweeting before the second announcement regarding Papadopoulos, which clearly goes to collusion between the campaign and Russian officials. And because the indictment and plea were entered at the same time, pleading to one count no doubt is the product of an agreement for ongoing cooperation, with sentencing pending such cooperation. I have my doubts whether any of this will be enough to bring down Trump let alone the rest of the Russian stooges that currently inhabit the Republican Party, but it’s nice to see the facts being vindicated.

  68. 68.

    ARoomWithAMoose

    @Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: At this point, no need to have anybody tragically fall down the stairs in their bathroom while brushing their teeth, this chaos further paralyzes the US executive branch and will play out over years. If you’re a foreign regional power, means you now have quite a bit more room to maneuver. This is the end-game.

  69. 69.

    Elizabelle

    CNN has Jack Kingston. Fucking liar, lying, lying and lying to cover Trump et al. Asking why Mueller wasn’t more on the ball about the uranium.

    I am glad I know what Kingston looks like. He’s an automatic hit “mute”; maybe switch channels.

    Shame on CNN. He’s not “analyzing.” He is up their lying his ass off.

  70. 70.

    Corner Stone

    I wonder how many times Papa Doc has been to the WH since he flipped to Mueller? Anybody taking odds on wearing a wire?

  76. 76.

    germy

    74/ The Papadopoulos plea is BIGGER than the Manafort indictment—at least for the moment. Anyone who knows about Trump-Russia will say so.— Seth Abramson (@SethAbramson) October 30, 2017

  77. 77.

    Raoul

    This seems fking brilliant.

    Lots and lots of eyes on Manafort, and then the real killer knife in the ribs happens an hour or two later when the Papadopoulos plea is released.

    The FBI was on him on January 27th. January! It also appears that he was charged in early October and two days later flipped and accepted a plea. So that’s weeks of him assisting Mueller, now. And he was an official advisor to the campaign, and his near invisibility makes him strangely harder to distance from Trump, IMO: he wasn’t hired to bring flash. He was hired to dig dirt.

    Trump may not understand the gravity of this one, and lots of stuff will fly back and forth about Manafort. But keep your eyes on the flip productivity of Papadopoulos.

    Wow.

  78. 78.

    Ken

    How often does someone plea within a few hours of receiving an indictment? I suspect that this plea deal has been in the works for a while now, under the radar.

    Wouldn’t a plea be step one of flipping?

    So we have a plea deal where a long term member of Trump’s campaign is admitting he lied to the FBI about efforts by the campaign to set up a contact to the Russian government, possibly to set up a pipeline or communications strategy.

    I find it interesting that this happens the same day as the unsealing of charges announced Friday.

    I can’t help but wonder if the arrests being talked about today aren’t at least partly to provide a smoke screen for this, which seems to have the potential to go straight to the heart of the Trump campaign and its efforts to collude.

    Don’t get me wrong, the indictments unsealed today are important, and I think it’s relevant that each of the men charged can be promptly indicted by the NY AG if Trump pardons them, leaving aside the fact that they can’t take the Fifth if Trump pardons them.

    These are both men that are Trump campaign ‘Outsiders’, so that the RW Press is going to be tempted to paint them as rouge agents, rather than gearing up to defend them as victims of a political witch hunt. That would, however, mean tacitly admitting that there were crimes committed by people involved with the Trump campaign…

    And reduce any confidence that Manafort and Gates might feel that Trump has the ability and the inclination to protect them. Which increases the pressure on them to flip. Which would give Mueller’s team three tracks to pursue, each in a position to support the other, each able to be checked against the other.

    I’m certain Trump is leaning very hard towards the ‘Fire Mueller and take the political heat’ option right now, which is probably the reason for his lunchtime meet with Sessions and his talk about somebody doing something over the weekend.

    Mueller’s built firebreaks to protect his investigation. I suspect we may be seeing what they are, and if they are strong and wide enough to serve.

    GOP pols on the Hill are going to be facing two contradictory urges. 1) Let Mueller dispose of the man who is a negative asset in terms of advancing their agenda, and whom most of them have come to despise without their fingerprints being all over the murder weapon. 2) Covering their own asses.

    This should be an interesting week.

    ETA Raoul beat me to it.

  81. 81.

    Yarrow

    @Gin & Tonic:

    He was questioned by (and lied to) the FBI on January 27. Talk about an investigation that hits the ground running.

    Comey was well along in the investigation. Mueller didn’t start from scratch.

  82. 82.

    NotMax

    @Ken

    Indictment has been under seal since October 5. Plea deal reportedly for a sentence of 0 to 6 months (in legalese, that usually means a result of probation). Which suggests he’s been singing the equivalent of the full Ring cycle.

  83. 83.

    Rommie

    @delk: Nah, the Wizard of Wall Street would’ve steered clear of these idiots right away. Treason is bad for business…

  84. 84.

    sherparick

    The WSJ came out with an editorial this weekend calling for Mueller to be fired. And of course Judge Jeanne went ballistic not only calling for Mueller to be fired but for Hillary to be thrown in jail (apparently on the charge of being Hillary Clinton, which apparently is good enough Greenwald, and the other Bernie Bros of the left.) Rupert is all in on the Donald, as he expects to get a lot out of the FCC, tax cuts, and bringing UK’s Sky News into his Empire. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/16/donald-trump-rupert-murdoch-friendship-fox-news and http://money.cnn.com/2017/09/12/media/sky-fox-rupert-murdoch-review/index.html
    Also, the FSM must love Kevin Spacey because this otherwise huge sex scandal involving an assault on Anthony Rapp when Rapp was 14 years old would normally end a career (which no matter how creepy he is (and his great roles, lets face it, have been playing a creepy figure) would be a loss to us the audience of House of Cards, American Beauty, Glengarry Glen Ross, etc.)

  85. 85.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    So who’s gonna do the explainer on how money is laundered through flipping real estate in Manhattan and Florida?

    @Rommie: to say nothing of exposing Lovey to these vulgar people from a place called “Queens”….

  86. 86.

    mike in dc

    Papadopoulos would have to be testifying regarding misconduct by members of the campaign in regards to Russia. The charges against Manafort and Gates are intended to coerce them into testifying as to collusion–they would know nothing about Trump’s obstruction, but they would know whether there was a conspiracy to coordinate with Russia. So all of this is about collusion/coordination/conspiracy.
    If someone says to you, “Even if he falls, we’ll be stuck with President Pence”, feel free to slap them for missing the fucking point. Also, I’m a lot less concerned about a President Pence constrained by a Democratic majority in one or both houses of Congress than I am by Trump with Republicans in control of both chambers(or neither, frankly).

  87. 87.

    West of the Rockies (been a while)

    Throw into the mix the delicious downfall of smug Mark Halperin who was fellating conservatives on MSNBC for far too long….

  88. 88.

    The Moar You Know

    And Trump has seized the phone:

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): It’s far too late, but damn, Trump REALLY needed a lawyer to sit his ass down and explain that his fucking Twitter account needed to end inauguration day or he was going to jail, full stop. I’m personally glad that did not happen, but he has not been well served by the people around him.

  91. 91.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    I have a question for anyone who wasn’t in elementary school during Watergate. Were the political junkies on the edges of their seats like this then?

    I was 19 when McCord spilled the beans in March 1973 and broke the story wide open.

    The answer is, yes, we were, to the extent that one could back then. The big difference is that, back in those pre-Internet dark ages, you had more time in between stuff coming out, and life went on. No matter how closely you were following Watergate, there were large chunks of time when there was nothing big to follow.

    The summers of 1973 and 1974 were still normal in a way that the summer of 2017 was unequivocally not. Thanks to the Orange Abomination and his GOP henchmen and henchwomen, stuff has been coming at us nonstop in a way that it never used to.

  93. 93.

    randy khan

    @sherparick:

    And of course Judge Jeanne went ballistic not only calling for Mueller to be fired but for Hillary to be thrown in jail (apparently on the charge of being Hillary Clinton, which apparently is good enough Greenwald, and the other Bernie Bros of the left.)

    Well, of all of the things people have said she’s done, that’s the only thing I think can be proved.

  96. 96.

    Spanky

    So, for some reason the intertubes in the office are totally hosed, so I came out to the car to see if there’s any news of note this AM.

    I guess not, eh?

    BTW,my recollection of the Watergate hearings during college is of crowds of kids gathered around the TVs in the dorms and union buildings. Hope the Kids These Days will do the same.

  98. 98.

    Elizabelle

    @The Moar You Know: Yeah. It will be interesting to see if Manafort decides to stay at Hotel Fed.

    Am sure they could give him some privileges and make him comfortable, if it keeps him alive while they pursue the investigation and trial.

  102. 102.

    Corner Stone

    I, for one, can’t be thankful enough that there is a “Guilty Plea” involved in today’s action. The dude *admitted* he did some bad shit.

  103. 103.

    Ryan

    drip…drip…drip… BOOM!

    Seriously, the news is breaking Fridays for this administration. Think of what the week may bring!

  106. 106.

    danielx

    Mom and pop were more or less Eisenhower Republicans until Watergate. After that pop referred to Nixon, et al, as “that scoundrel and his enablers” and mom was all “that lying sonofabitch”. Neither of them voted for a Republican again, with the exception of Richard Lugar.

  107. 107.

    mike in dc

    Every Republican pol has denied this verbally, but their tone of voice and body language tell the truth: this is really, really bad for them.

  108. 108.

    Chris

    @Corner Stone:

    I am now waiting to see how Fox News spins this, much the same way all the seceding states *admitting* that they were doing it for slavery was spun for 150 years or so as “they did it for states’ rights! And tariffs!”

  109. 109.

    Jeffro

    @mike in dc:

    If someone says to you, “Even if he falls, we’ll be stuck with President Pence”, feel free to slap them for missing the fucking point.

    I’ve been email-slapping my RWNJ dad and brother when they throw the Pence crap out there – as if we should just look the other way on Trumpov’s selling out of our country, just because Pence will be mostly sane and therefore not fuck up the GOP agenda as badly. The law’s the law, the country is too important to just go-along/get-along with this corrupt moron squatting in Obama’s house.

  110. 110.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    GOP backbencher on MSNBC looks like I imagine I did when my mom found the pot in the closet of the room I shared with my brother. “Um, what? No, I don’t know what that is…” (I confess, I stashed it on his side.)

  111. 111.

    p.a.

    @The Moar You Know:

    he has not been well served by the people around him.

    The only way his handlers could control him is by using a pillow while he sleeps. He’s the world’s smartest man, dontcha know?

  113. 113.

    Elizabelle

    I want Giuliani to go down too, and a housecleaning at the NYC FBI office. Comey may take a personal interest in the latter.

  114. 114.

    Roger Moore

    @Enzymer:

    Seth Abramson has been pointing to Papadopoulos as a major link to the Kremlin for while
    https://mobile.twitter.com/SethAbramson

    It makes me wonder if the thing that triggered the Republican freakout last week wasn’t them getting word that Papadopolous had flipped, and the Manafort/Gates indictment was a surprise.

  116. 116.

    Mary G

    I just woke up feeling like a kid on Christmas morning! I guessed Manafort would be first.

    So the NYT (yes, Baud, garbage) had to finally put up a story after ignoring the indictment news all weekend. Either they are a lousy organization that cannot get the sources CNN and others have or they are protecting Maggie’s access to the Twitler pipeline. Not a good look there.

  117. 117.

    Elizabelle

    Gonna be fun to watch political ads in Virginia. How quickly will an ad with photo of Gillespie and Manafort go up?

    Or take the (relatively) high road. Just hit “Enron Ed” Gillespie again and again, for his lobbying work and selling out to the highest bidder.

    I hope the GOP candidates’ road to victory in Virginia just got a LOT harder this morning.

  118. 118.

    Bruuuuce

    What’s the over/under on a pardon for Papadopoulos (and a sudden flight to Moscow), or is the WH willing to let him continue spilling? Or would that not stop him, as he could then be compelled to testify (without Fifth Amendment protection)? IANAL, and wondering whether or if.

  119. 119.

    Jeffro

    Rubin is clearly enjoying this: Trump’s Meltdown is Telling (gee, ya think?)

    President Trump and his surrogates — most especially the Fox News lineup (which includes a fleet of conservative pundits who disgrace themselves by facilitating a political distraction game for Trump), obsequious Republicans in Congress, old allies such as Roger Stone (who wound up getting banned by Twitter) and the talk radio crowd — have been frantically fanning Hillary Clinton non-scandals about Uranium One (it was baseless before and baseless now) and the dossier’s funder. (Fusion GPS initially was hired by the conservative Free Beacon, which at one time claimed not to know the identity of the Republican outfit that first hired Fusion.) The unhinged rants from Trump’s defenders demanding Clinton be locked up for one or both of these reveal how tightly Trump and the right-wing ecosystem that supports him rely on Clinton as an all-purpose distraction.

    Upon a moment’s reflection, the non-scandals make no sense (Clinton was colluding with Russia to beat herself in the election?), have been debunked before and in no way affect the liability, if any, of current or ex-Trump administration figures. This is “whataboutism” run amok. It does expose the degree to which Fox News has given up the pretense of a real news organization, preferring the role of state propagandist. (And it’s not just the evening hosts; the non-scandals now monopolize the rest of the schedule.)

    The intensity of Trump’s frenzy underscores the peril in which the president now finds himself. Beyond the indictments unsealed this morning, Trump does not know what special counsel Robert S. Mueller III has uncovered; which witnesses are flippable; what financial documents have revealed about the Trump business empire; and whether, for example, Mueller finds support for an obstruction of justice charge from Trump’s own public dissembling (e.g., hinting at non-existent tapes of former FBI director James B. Comey). For someone who insists on holding all the cards and intimidating others, Trump finds himself in a uniquely powerless position.

  120. 120.

    Aleta

    Wild winds here, big old tree is down across the lines and lots more on the roads. Must … access … news … from DC …

    Deeply grateful for to Mueller and all the lawyers and other staff for fighting evil and lifting some weight from my heart. Thanks to John and the Fpers for the same ….

  122. 122.

    Raoul

    @lrozen
    FBI and Mueller know a lot more about the case, even the minor characters, they know who met who when, who got rid of their cell phone, etc

    Laura Rozen has a great thread running. Trump may be stupidly blundering through the day, working to whip up his 38% base of knuckle-draggers.

    But anyone with any smarts or savvy in the GOP will be grasping what Rozen and others are pointing out. Mueller has a ton of info. And from the fact that Pop-a-dop was arrested in July and there have been no leaks, he’s doing this work airtight and a lot more will be dropping. Be worried, Republicans. Seriously.

  124. 124.

    Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism

    @low-tech cyclist: Yes, I remember. I was thinking about how much this weekend’s atmosphere of anticipation reminded me of waiting for the appointed hour for the news to start when something big had been happening.

    @danielx: That would have been a little later in the timeline. :D

  125. 125.

    Corner Stone

    @Bruuuuce: Papa Doc is guilty of being insufficiently loyal. I would suggest he check the crosswalk multiple times before stepping off the curb as the bus he’s about to get thrown under doesn’t give much chance to miss.

  126. 126.

    Ryan

    @Elizabelle: What, Trump’s going to sic O’Reilly’s former producer to stalk Manafort? He sure seems unaware that he has his own intelligence service and doesn’t need Fox News for his news.

  127. 127.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Corner Stone: I wish they had asked him “What will you do if trump fires Meuller?” Every fucking elected Republican should be asked this question.

  128. 128.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Spanky:

    BTW,my recollection of the Watergate hearings during college is of crowds of kids gathered around the TVs in the dorms and union buildings. Hope the Kids These Days will do the same.

    I remember there were a whole bunch of us in a dorm room hooting at Nixon’s April 30, 1973 speech where he announced that he’d accepted Haldeman’s and Ehrlichman’s resignations (“two of the finest public servants it has been my privilege to know”) and that he’d fired John Dean. But the Senate Watergate Committee (aka the Ervin Committee) hearings were during the summer of 1973, back in an era where my college pretty much shut down for the summer. I was working construction, but I stayed home to watch the first day of John Dean’s testimony.

  130. 130.

    Jim Parish

    I was raised a Republican; my family was rooting for Reagan as early as the 1968 GOP convention. (I have a vague memory of the 1964 convention, grainy on a B&W TV.) My journey to the Democratic Party began the day after the Saturday Night Massacre. (I bet my big brother $5 that Nixon would be impeached. He was honorable enough to pay off, even though technically he won the bet.) Yeah, we were paying close attention.

  131. 131.

    Kay

    This second one is a better read.

    “The professor brought with him a female Russian national…” instead of Paul Manafort’s gross corruption and sleazy real estate deals.

  135. 135.

    Corner Stone

    @Bruuuuce: This should give you an idea of where Papa Doc is headed. Retweeted by Don Jr.

    John Cardillo‏Verified account @johncardillo

    Papadopoulos was an unpaid foreign policy campaign adviser who stupidly lied to the FBI. He wanted Trump to meet Putin, Trump Team said no.

  142. 142.

    Corner Stone

    @catclub: I completely disavow any and all knowledge of Uncle Roger’s actions and/or activities!
    I also too disavow Stalin.
    But not broccoli. Fuck the haters.

  144. 144.

    Kay

    Matthew Yglesias‏Verified account @mattyglesias 10m10 minutes ago
    More
    Has anyone heard from Jeff Flake or Bob Corker today? Last week they seemed to have some opinions.

    Guffaw. They’re just bad people. Cowardly, venal phonies. There isn’t a good one among them.

  147. 147.

    Corner Stone

    @Kay: That’s just it. The Trump campaign has no idea why he would lie! All they know is that he kept mumbling Putin something something but they were too busy to pay attention to an unpaid intern with no real presence in the campaign that hardly anyone has even heard of. They were too busy winning! With NO COLLUSION!

  151. 151.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @manyakitty: They love their morning outings. At first, they were more likely to charge the door at other times. Now, once they’ve checked things out, they’re cool for the rest of the day. They do insist on the outing, though. Much meowing and jumping at me through breakfast and then if I have the poor judgment to go back to the computer.

  153. 153.

    Roger Moore

    @ARoomWithAMoose:

    This is the end-game.

    I think this is pretty far down their list of goals. The main goal was to hinder Hillary, with getting their puppet installed as a stretch goal. Once they got Trump in the White House, I think their best outcome was to keep him there, since he could do them a lot of good fighting against sanctions- it’s clear the Magnitsky sanctions are a huge deal to Putin and his cronies- and generally weakening international cooperation against Russia. Throwing the US government into chaos is distinctly second best.

  154. 154.

    GregB

    @Corner Stone:

    Thus telling any sentient blob wrapped up in this conspiracy horror show that they will all be tossed into the wood chipper, one by one, by Team Treason.

  156. 156.

    Corner Stone

    Where is Ms. Vyessel NEETS Skuyuh in all this? Can we get a non-denial denial from her about now? Or maybe Putin has given her the green light to fucking sink his good friend Trump and she will spill her guts, nyet?

  162. 162.

    manyakitty

    @Cheryl Rofer: Hmmm…we’re heading into the snowy season soon (hopefully), so maybe I’ll spend the winter getting them chipped, tagged, and used to collars, harnesses and leashes. Thanks!

  163. 163.

    Raoul

    This makes a ton of sense. Not only was Pap-a-dop the real stab in the ribs on the campaign-Russia ties, but also the warning to anyone being sweated by the Mueller probe now: Cooperate and get a deal. Or, not. You choose.

    @matthewamiller
    Mueller’s choreographed one-two punch today sends a signal to every Trump official: cooperate & get a good deal or resist & get hammered.

  165. 165.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    @FlipYrWhig: The only charitable explanation is that he doesn’t want Snowden to get a bullet in his head.

    Of course, Glenn is pond scum, so there’s no need to be so accommodating.

  166. 166.

    Aleta

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: I just realized that the picture I have in my mind of people following Watergate comes mostly from Gary Trudeau and Doonesbury. I was a teen and not living in the US and I must have read most of the strips later, collected in his books. When I think of WG I clearly see Mike in front of the TV. I can Actually hear Mark on his radio show say “Guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.” The power of art on the mind ….(Btw,Trudeau re printed that ‘guilty’ panel just 2 weeks ago. And all the strips from that time are in the open archives on the site.)

  167. 167.

    Kay

    @Corner Stone:

    They were too busy winning! With NO COLLUSION!

    Did we all know that the far Right in the US was so aligned politically and ideologically with the current Russian government? I mean, I didn’t, but did everyone else know?

  168. 168.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Ana Navarro‏Verified account @ ananavarro 1h1 hour ago
    Folks, drop what u’re doing, & say a prayer for Mueller. If u don’t believe in God but do believe in saving US democracy, pray too. Hard.

    Or, if you have the phone numbers of people like Marco Rubio, maybe shoot him a text and ask what the fuck they intend to do to protect his position and independence

  169. 169.

    Tenar Arha

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Heh. My clearest memory is of my parents watching the evening re-broadcast of the hearings, and that every holiday or family get-together for like a year, the adults were almost always mad and arguing.

    ETA My kid thought bubble was “The President did something bad, and made every grownup angry.”

  170. 170.

    ? Martin

    I think we’ll discover that just as everyone in Hollywood knew about Harvey Weinstein (despite their protestations that they are shocked), we’ll (re-) discover that autocrats looting their country’s wealth have a LOT of accomplices in western financial markets. In fact, I would argue that the connective tissue between Trumps brain trust of rich assholes – the thing that got them all in the administration – is that they all know of each other due to their involvement in such matters. Looting countries and money laundering is their real primary skill.

  171. 171.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Uncle Ebeneezer:

    My RWNJ mom found my stash when I was 15. I tried to say I was keeping it for the big brother of my best friend two doors away.

    I ended up getting killed twice – once by her and Dad, and once by my best friend’s big brother when they told him that I tried to lay it at his feet.

  172. 172.

    r€nato

    @Elizabelle: Kingston is – or, at least was – a semi-regular on Bill Maher’s show. A smarmy, smug serial rationalizer of whatever a Republic#nt does. 2nd most punchable face in the universe next to Martin Shkreli. Anybody who votes for this ambulatory excrement should never again complain about lying politicians.

  173. 173.

    hueyplong

    Good Lord, what a morning. I’m on a countdown to calling a doctor at the 4 hour mark.

    I never thought I’d think of Jen Rubin that way.

  174. 174.

    Bard the Grim

    @Dorothy A. Winsor (formerly Iowa Old Lady): Thanks for the links–just skimmed the first one. No telling who “The Professor” is I suppose, but any wild speculation on: “Female Russian National” aka “Putin’s niece” (Veselnitskaya?), the “Senior Policy Advisor,” “High-Ranking Campaign Official,” “Campaign Supervisor,” or “another” High-Ranking Campaign Official”? The last four all got emails from Papa about the Russian eagerness to set up a meeting.

  176. 176.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Kay: Rudi Giuliani was praising Putin as ‘real leader’ before trump was. It was something that got tossed around on Fox News a lot, I think. The idea of Russia as a white Christian bulwark, and weapon, against the Moose Lamb hordes has a lot of appeal to Clash of Civilization types.

  177. 177.

    WaterGirl

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: A senior in high school.. I had tucked a joint from my boyfriend in my bra and had forgotten about it. When I got ready for bed, it apparently landed on the floor in full view. I was bent over the sink, splashing water on my face when my mom stood in the doorway with the joint in her hand. I recall the water that was supposed to splash on my face landing on the door behind me, as I said “Um, uh, I have no idea where that came from”.

    In my defense, my mom had always told us that if she caught us with drugs she would be calling the police on us.

  178. 178.

    Raoul

    @mike in dc: This little footnote on Pg. 8 in the Pap-is-a-dope indictment seems huge to me.

    2 The government notes that the official forwarded defendant PAPADOPOULOS’s email to another Campaign official (without including defendant PAPADOPOULOS) and stated: “Let[‘]s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

  180. 180.

    Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes

    @Raoul:

    In this instance, these guys are the low hanging fruit that Trump will be less likely to issue pardons for.

  181. 181.

    walden

    was in college during watergate and worked summer camps in summer. No TV either place (dorm room tvs weren’t really a thing….and there was pretty much only one tv per entire dorm building in a common area.) There was radio, but we basically just played stereo all the time. And certainly didn’t shell out for a newspaper (no money). Yet found myself delighted to have the week off in summer 74 when Nixon resigned and I could watch the denouement.

  182. 182.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Kay: People who follow the far right generally knew. People who follow Russia and Eastern Europe did, for sure.

  187. 187.

    Matt McIrvin

    I was a little kid through Watergate, 5-6 years old, and I was utterly baffled by the idea that people (including my parents) were saying bad things about the President–he was the President, so he must be a good guy. I had little idea what the bad things were about, except there was something involving tapes that people were trying to get. I do vividly remember seeing Nixon announce his resignation on TV, though.

  188. 188.

    Kay

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Right, thanks, and also Martin’s point :

    I think we’ll discover that just as everyone in Hollywood knew about Harvey Weinstein (despite their protestations that they are shocked), we’ll (re-) discover that autocrats looting their country’s wealth have a LOT of accomplices in western financial markets. In fact, I would argue that the connective tissue between Trumps brain trust of rich assholes – the thing that got them all in the administration – is that they all know of each other due to their involvement in such matters. Looting countries and money laundering is their real primary skill.

  192. 192.

    JMG

    Worth remembering head of the foreign policy team in Trump’s campaign was Jeff Sessions. Bet he and Trump will have a nice lunch today. Probably talk about the Redskins or the Series.

  194. 194.

    rikyrah

    Comment from POU:

    BoomerGal

    CYPRUS! Trump is doomed!

    12 Investment companies from Cyprus are listed in the indictment

    Why is this damning for Trump?

    1. Conspiracy: Trump cannot pardon these people if he is a co-conspirator. And conspiracy is heavily used throughout the indictment.

    2. Cyprus: Let’s take a closer look at Trump’s ties with investment companies in Cyrpus, shall we?

    (keep in mind the SoHo companies listed in the indictment)

    – Felix Sater, a major player in the Bayrock group that developed the Trump SoHo Hotel in New York and a twice-convicted felon who spent a year in prison for stabbing a man. Sater later scouted for Trump investments in Russia.

    – Alexander Mashkevich, a Kazakh mining billionaire,was another source of funds for Bayrock financing and the SoHo project, and was accused by Belgian authorities in 2011 in a $55 million money-laundering scheme.

    – Anatoly Golubchik, Vadim Trincher and Michael Sall are three owners of Trump condos in Florida and Manhattan who were accused in federal indictments of belonging to a Russian-American organized crime group and working for a major international crime boss based in Russia.

    – Viktor Khrapunov, a former Kazakhstan energy minister and mayor of Almaty, owns three units in the Trump SoHo through shell companies and was accused in a federal lawsuit filed in Los Angeles in 2014 of hiding millions of dollars looted from his city, some of which was spent on three Trump SoHo units.

    – Peter Kiritchenko, a Ukrainian owner of two Trump condos in Florida, who was indicted in a money-laundering scheme involving a former prime minister of Ukraine.
    From: http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/04/trump-financial-ties-russia-money-laundering-banks-oligarchs-manafort/

    Why is SoHo important? Because it represents Trump Properties in the SoHo Neighborhood of Manhattan. Manafort’s company laundered money through MC Soho Holdings into Trump Properties. See the below link in conjunction with the indictment:http://www.refinblog.com/tag/mc-soho-holdings-llc/

  195. 195.

    Cheryl Rofer

    Papadopoulos’s reports of continuing Russian contacts throw a different light on Jared Kushner’s and Manafort’s meeting in June 2016 with Natalia Veselnitskaya.

    ETA the date.

  196. 196.

    Gin & Tonic

    @raven: Better today, thanks for asking. Stressed it too much with the free weights yesterday, but that was just muscle soreness. PT tomorrow, she won’t be happy.

  197. 197.

    catclub

    @Elizabelle:

    Comey may take a personal interest in the latter.

    ha ha, yeah, sure. Helping or encouraging the Soiling of the PUBLIC image of the FBI happens all the time with ex-FBI bigwigs.

  199. 199.

    Arm The Homeless

    LOL

    That Papa Doc footnote is life:

    “Let’s discuss. We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips. It should be someone low level in the campaign so as not to send any signal.”

    And these idiots colluded on Facebook Messenger!?!

    Where is that Stringer Bell gif from The Wire?

    “…is you takin’ notes on a criminal fuckin’ conspiracy?”

  202. 202.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist:

    Rudi Giuliani was praising Putin as ‘real leader’ before trump was. It was something that got tossed around on Fox News a lot, I think.

    I don’t think it had a lot to do with Christianity, though. AFAICT, and to put it deliberately offensively, that whole line about Putin on Fox was “Obama is half a fag and Putin is a man’s man.” Huge psychosexual baggage about masculinity among that party. They figured, “Obama is skinny and wears mom jeans and can’t bowl and eats arugula, mustard, and orange juice, blarhar. But that Putin rides horses shirtless and practically wrestles tigers, he’s a badass who makes people fear him, wish we had a man like that here to protect us, um, let’s not think about these longings too much.”

  203. 203.

    dexwood

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:
    Like others here, I was in college during tbis time (U of MD) and the interest was intense. Summer of 73, I signed up for marijuana research at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital. Paid $50 a day, free lunch, 5 days. We joked constantly about smoking Nixon’s stash. During breaks and down time, we spent every minute we could warching the Watergate hearings on an old black and white TV in the lounge. Good times.

  206. 206.

    InternetDragons

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism: Yes, absolutely. Today feels very much like those days. I was in undergrad school and working part-time as a laboratory assistant in a big university research lab.

    Everyone including the lab director brought portable televisions into the lab so that we could follow the hearings.

  207. 207.

    The Moar You Know

    I love that you think a lawyer and others didn’t tell hair furor to get off Twitter and that he isn’t so stupid that he ignored them.

    @Schlemazel: If only my ignorance were that blissful. I just, personally, cannot comprehend the idea of not following my lawyer’s advice. Good lawyers, anyway, they don’t say shit just to hear themselves talk. Oh well. The President, in addition to being a Nazi, isn’t even a smart Nazi but a moron.

    For me, the real takeaway from his Twitter madness is how well social media has been designed to be addictive – so addictive that the President of the United States may well go to jail because he couldn’t stop using it.

  209. 209.

    Brachiator

    It’s on bitches. Mind you- he pleaded guilty, so he has probably been talking for some time.

    I must admit that I feel in a better mood just knowing that some of this political scum is being dealt with. And knowing that it is possibly driving God Emperor Trump crazy.

  210. 210.

    Arm The Homeless

    OMG. I love these euphemisms:

    “Daniel Dale Retweeted Brad Heath

    Papadopoulos is described as “proactive cooperator.” Former prosecutor tells me that sometimes means “wore a wire.”

  211. 211.

    tobie

    @Cheryl Rofer: I’ve been wondering if the unnamed Russian woman Papadapoulos met with “the professor” is not in fact Veselnitskaya. Mueller’s team clearly doesn’t want to reveal the name just yet.

  213. 213.

    catclub

    @Kay:

    Did we all know that the far Right in the US was so aligned politically and ideologically with the current Russian government? I mean, I didn’t, but did everyone else know?

    Apparently the only reason to hire Manafort was his connections to Russia. The fact that I learned that today means something, I guess.

  215. 215.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Corner Stone: It now looks like one of continuing meetings by various campaign operatives to take the oppo research the Kremlin was so generously sharing with them. And, further, they very well knew what it was about when it was set up.

    We may yet see all those orange jumpsuits.

  216. 216.

    hueyplong

    The best way to drive Trump to a medical emergency is to tell him that Hillary got rid of Halpern so he couldn’t defend Trump on TV today.

    He’d believe that.

    And he’d melt down.

  217. 217.

    scav

    Much local giggling about Ryan saying none of this will “derail what we’re doing in Congress,” Mom s just content with the giggles, I’m busy wondering if the reporters merely misheard a neologism “derâling”

    rale. Yes, mom is the one with more basic good sense.

  219. 219.

    Gin & Tonic

    @FlipYrWhig: But that connects back to the Russian Orthodox Church, which very closely allies itself with Putin and which very clearly is a “good” church, because no fags and no darkies. Look up Matthew Heimbach, who considers Putin’s Russia the “third Rome.”

  220. 220.

    Kay

    @FlipYrWhig:

    There was that sort of authoritarian hero worship going on but I feel like we skipped right from Clinton saying Trump is Putin’s puppet – which is a shocking thing – to the GOP base just going “oh, SURE. We’ve always loved Putin!”

    I missed a couple steps in there. When this started I remember people dismissing it as ridiculous. Now it’s just one of the GOP’s political alliances. I have that feeling of “how long has THIS horror been going on?”

    These people are fucking exhausting. I can’t keep up.

  222. 222.

    Kay

    @catclub:

    Apparently the only reason to hire Manafort was his connections to Russia. The fact that I learned that today means something, I guess.

    Wow. Well that at least explains why they hired a well-known criminal to run their campaign! I thought he just generally aligned with their values. It’s amazing how profitable racism is- but only at the top. The White Lives Matter protesters don’t look so good- they look like they may not survive to the next protest.

  223. 223.

    Chris

    @Kay:

    What I continue to find remarkable is the extent to which our upper classes promote looters – whether it’s deliberate (Romney) or accidental (Dubya, Trump), people whose business model consists largely of just leaving behind them a long string of broken businesses. I mean, the traditional defense for robber-barons is “yes, they treat their workforce terribly and they break the law and defraud their business partners, but they build important and valuable shit!” Which was always a shitty defense, but it doesn’t even apply here anymore.

  224. 224.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Gin & Tonic: I believe that but my experience with most conservative Christians is that they have virtually no idea what kind of Christian _they_ even are. They go to those nondenominational churches with a lot of singing and passing of collection plates and just think “Christian” means “good” and “heaven-bound.”

  227. 227.

    Brachiator

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    I have a question for anyone who wasn’t in elementary school during Watergate. Were the political junkies on the edges of their seats like this then?

    Through a lot of luck and a little bit of family connections, I got a summer job at the LA Times as a proofreader as Watergate was going down. Best job I ever had because I got paid great wages, and made out like a bandit on Thursdays when parts of the huge Sunday paper was being put together.

    I got to proof some of the Watergate hearings. One day (absolutely true story) I had to go to my boss and note that there was a big error in the copy. There was a dash before some of the testimony, went on for pages and pages of testimony. Now I was a teen who had somehow got one of the plum jobs in the company for the summer, and was not expected to know the ropes or do well without close supervision.

    But I pointed out that one of the Watergate counsels was Samuel Dash and that someone had misinterpreted the name “Dash” to be the symbol for a dash. Some frantic phone calls were made and a chunk of the paper was hurriedly redone.

  228. 228.

    FlipYrWhig

    @Kay: Fair enough. I think they themselves are confused about whether their attitude towards Putin is supposed to be grudging admiration or just the regular kind of admiration.

  229. 229.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    It scares me because I feel like it’s the only thing we’re good at anymore. Everyone is looting everyone else. There’s no creation of anything. Even privatization is just replacing a sector that already exists. It’s like money musical chairs. Someone has to make some NEW- a net plus.

    We had a case here where this local woman is being prosecuted for being a fake agent who arranges fake conventions – WTF? She was sitting in her kitchen in rural Ohio and she said “I’ll make up a job and then do nothing but take deposits for conventions that will never be held”

    Why did she think this was a sustainable career choice?

  230. 230.

    CaseyL

    Today is a good day to be taking time off from work: I can follow these stories, these glorious glorious stories. I absolutely LOVE how Mueller waited a bit after announcing the Manafort-Gates indictments to announce the Papadopolous news.

    And if you’re not following Seth Abramson on Twitter, you’ll want to. He’s got an ongoing thread analyzing the significance, relating it back to previous reports.

  231. 231.

    Groucho48

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    I had a summer job painting houses and John Dean was testifying during one job. We had a transistor radio on while we were painting and had a station that was broadcasting his testimony. All the folks walking by would ask for updates and we’d chat.

    There was lots of interest but not nearly as much access to what was going on. Half hour of national news plus public service radio stations for the current day events. Newspapers for the previous day.

  234. 234.

    MCA1

    @Arm The Homeless: Exactly. His e-mails and other communications history appears to be a freaking treasure trove. I would have loved to have seen look of “OMG they really are that stupid” on the investigators’ faces while they were reading through this stuff.

    What’s the over/under on number of hours until the rightwing coalesces on “Papadopoulos was a Dem plant?” I’ll say 36. By tomorrow afternoon they’ll be making entrapment noises.

  235. 235.

    Mike J

    Has anyone looked at TCM’s schedule today?

    The Red Danube
    The Whip Hand
    I Was a Communist For the FBI
    The Woman On Pier 13
    Big Jim McLain
    The Confession
    The Manchurian Candidate

    Russian collusion all day long.

  236. 236.

    Thoroughly Pizzled

    @CaseyL: Was he one of the guys jumping the gun on everything slightly Russia-related? I don’t want to be burned again.

  237. 237.

    The Moar You Know

    I missed a couple steps in there. When this started I remember people dismissing it as ridiculous. Now it’s just one of the GOP’s political alliances. I have that feeling of “how long has THIS horror been going on?”

    @Kay: Bush #2 normalized him. Which was probably appropriate. We didn’t have any conflicting interests at the time. But then the Jesus freaks and American Nazis saw Putin doing God’s work by having all the queers, blacks and libtards murdered and decided they liked the cut of his jib. And then Obama. And then the Jesus freaks and American Nazis got a little jealous. Why can’t we have a guy like that here?

    Here we are.

  239. 239.

    Ruckus

    @Ryan:

    He sure seems unaware

    drumpf, unaware? Surly you jest. The list of what he is unaware of is a stack of single spaced 8x11s as tall as he is. The list of what he is aware of is two lines on one page.
    1. drumpf.
    2. faux news.

  240. 240.

    ? Martin

    @Kay: Yes, but I didn’t expect they were directly organized.

    There’s two elements here:

    1) White Christian supremacy. As white christians in the US have steadily marched toward minority (in terms of population) status, their obvious ally was Russia that has a similar agenda, with no qualms about suppressing LGBTs, etc. (see Chechnya).

    2) The GOPs investor class which bankrolls them has been making bank off of money laundering/arbitrage/preferential investment opportunities in Russia.

    The goals of the above two groups are different, but they are political allies, and they have the GOP and Putin as benefactors. Now, two people can want the same goal without directly coordinating their activities, but it’s looking like a lot more coordination has been going on than has been reported on. The disappearance/death of Russian journalists and activists and the willingness of nations to turn a blind eye toward tax shelters and shell companies serve as evidence of just how widespread this is. Consider that Delaware is one of the worlds better tax havens, right up there with the Caymans and Belize.

  241. 241.

    Aleta

    @Gin & Tonic: it’s wild (to me) that statements made to the press about the GOP platform change at the convention re Ukraine provide a place of access for the investigation to begin untangling the knot linking the campaign to Russia. And interesting (to a novice at understanding how skilled investigatiors work) to see that moment become one access point for investigative pressure,

    I’d like to understand this stuff better, to be able to appreciate what Mueller is doing.

  243. 243.

    Mike J

    The Associated Press‏Verified account @AP 7 minutes ago

    BREAKING: US court bars Trump from changing military policy on service by transgender people.

  244. 244.

    Arm The Homeless

    @rikyrah: I kno, right? But Trump surrounds himself with the best people. The.Best.People

    @MCA1: They’ll all be clutching pearls and sadly asking for Mueller’s resignation. For the children!

  246. 246.

    Mike J

    Pwn ██ ██ ███ (b)(5)‏ @pwnallthethings 15 minutes ago
    Retweeted the grugq
    Can’t make this stuff up (based on the 2013 Adobe mega-password breach)

    the grugq‏ @thegrugq
    Manafort’s email password is: Bond007

    Seriously.

  248. 248.

    Chris

    @The Moar You Know:

    I think the Obama years are when it really picked up. Under Bush, Putin was mostly just another ally of convenience. Under Obama, that’s when you started having those pictures circulating all over the web of twenty-year-old Obama smoking weed next to twenty-year-old Putin in his KGB uniform, and more and more people dreamily sighing that oh, if only we could have a REAL man in power like bare-chested manly Vladimir instead of that “metrosexual” “intellectual” “liberal elitist” “man-child.”

    Then Trump asked Putin to hack Hillary’s emails, and suddenly, Putin’s approval rating among Republicans took a big upwards jump.

  249. 249.

    Kay

    The only prudent thing to do is put aside the tax bill until this gets sorted out.

    We can’t have Russian oligarchs writing the US tax code.

  250. 250.

    Corner Stone

    Now I have a deep and abiding case of The Curiouses about what our good friends Spicey and Reincy may have had to share with Mueller.

  251. 251.

    Gin & Tonic

    @Aleta: To people who follow Ukraine and have known about Manafort that shit at the convention was sirens and flashing lights.

  252. 252.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Brachiator: That’s pretty cool. BTW have you seen the trailer for SLB’s upcoming movie, Padmavati?*. Its based on a 15th century poem by the same name.
    I think Ranveer Singh is going to be awesome as Khilji. The dude with the long hair and a scar on his face. IRL Khilji repelled the Mongol invasion of India. He expanded the rule of Delhi Sultanate deeper into the Indian heartland.

    *Padmavati is part myth-part history, about the siege of Chittor Fort by Aladdin Khilji of the Delhi Sultanate in 13-14th century India.

  254. 254.

    Kay

    @Chris:

    It’s funny they love him because he’s so vain, Putin. He’s had some work done on his face. It’s all fucked up and nerve-damaged. Those silly pictures with the horse remind me of the cliche perfume ads with the woman riding on the beach.

  255. 255.

    The Moar You Know

    I believe that but my experience with most conservative Christians is that they have virtually no idea what kind of Christian _they_ even are. They go to those nondenominational churches with a lot of singing and passing of collection plates and just think “Christian” means “good” and “heaven-bound.”

    @FlipYrWhig: I have one of those leasing space at the elementary school across the street from me. Which I think should be illegal, but whatever. The school, I am sure, could use the money. The husband/wife team running the scam came by our house to “invite the neighbors”. I have rarely had that sort of instinctual revulsion to anyone, and I’ve met both Republican House members and child molesters. These people rang every alarm bell I have.

    They are all-white and a “prosperity gospel” type of assembly, which gets a lot of traction here. I have had a look at all of their promo material. The fuckers do not mention “Jesus Christ” in any of it, not even once. Now, I am not religious, but frankly that really disturbs me. You’re supposed to, as I understand it, at least give a token nod of respect to The Man. They don’t. What the fuck kind of church is this? I could not tell you and I don’t think they could either.

  256. 256.

    seaboogie

    @Aleta: For better understanding of Mueller’s strategy, follow @SethAbramson on twitter. He has a great thread today.

  257. 257.

    catclub

    @Kay:

    Someone has to make some NEW- a net plus.

    well mostly true, but airbnb and uber were making better/more use of underused things ( in principle, anyway) that could be made more useful because of the network and computers. The self driving car (again in principle) can make better use of a smaller number of cars and use less parking.

  258. 258.

    Kay

    @Corner Stone:

    No tax code rewrite ’till the Ruskies are rooted out. We have our own thuggish oligarchs to deal with, thank you very much.

    Russians can deal with theirs- hopefully in some stern way that lands them in the dock.

  260. 260.

    Aleta

    @Mike J: fantastic. May this week go down in history for a hailstorm of defeats hitting Trump’s head at the speed of falling dominos.

  264. 264.

    catclub

    @Ruckus:

    The list of what he is aware of is two lines on one page.
    1. drumpf.
    2. faux news.

    Don’t underestimate opponents. Trump has mastered the media attention cycle. He got them to televise -live!- his empty podium while other candidates were giving speeches.

  267. 267.

    Brachiator

    @rikyrah:

    @Aleta:

    That’s a great story :)

    I also got to visit the newsroom, talk to some of the editors and reporters during this time. There was a sense of excitement in the air, that had even jaded, cynical seen-it-all journalists wondering what new shoe might drop.

    Good times.

  268. 268.

    Spanky

    @Kay:

    Russians can deal with theirs- hopefully in some stern way that lands them in the dock.

    In Russia, the dock is where they fish them out of the river.

  269. 269.

    Ruckus

    @Kay:

    Why did she think this was a sustainable career choice?

    That’s part of the problem. How many people now have what used to be called a career choice? We’ve been told that you won’t have a job for 30 yrs any more. That you may have several jobs. That you may require retraining because someone moved your old job to where ever offshore. Professional people like yourself don’t even have all that much stability. It may be that we never really did but a lot of people in your part of the country were told that stability was a hallmark of their lives and now we all understand that instability/uncertainty is the byword of business. I don’t know if a case could be made that it is a base of modern working life from the boss perspective that uncertainty has been used to keep workers from complaining/organizing/expecting but wages have not kept up to where they should be except for management wages. I think that’s pretty telling that having management stir that pot of lowered expectations has gotten them a lot, and from the backs of most the workforce below.

  270. 270.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Ruckus:

    wages have not kept up to where they should be except for management wages

    Really just executive wages. Managers are doing better than line workers, but they aren’t getting rich. Only the execs are, and at the expense of the other workers and the shareholders.

  271. 271.

    TenguPhule

    @The Moar You Know:

    What the fuck kind of church is this?

    Old style religion, the one that takes money from the gullible and gives the owners license to do whatever the hell they want.

  273. 273.

    Miss Bianca

    @gvg: I was one of those kids (10-11 at the time) who got most of my information about the Watergate affair thru’ “Doonesbury”. I’m pretty sure that my parents watched the hearings, but I don’t remember much discussion in the house about it (both parents country-club WASP Republicans, I’m sure they found it all pretty shocking and distasteful). I do remember being in the car on a road trip out West when the news of Nixon’s resignation came over the car radio,

  274. 274.

    Tom Q

    Another old-timer weighing in to say, yes, we were obsessed with Watergate, though only as much as we could be in a world with three major TV networks and no all-news cable stations. Developments broke at what probably would seem a glacial pace today but seemed lightning-fast to us. It was a time when you’d be walking down the street and catch a startling headline on a just-delivered afternoon newspaper (yes, there used to be such a thing); I remember seeing “Colson Pleads Guilty”, which came from nowhere. And, yes, catching the evening news was essential, every night.

    I’ve been saying for months that this scandal is like Watergate on fast-forward, which is apt for our more ADD-like times. What might have been dribbled out over weeks in ’73/’74 can emerge over the course of a day now. Of course, this scandal covers a lot more ground, and is vastly more serious in its implications. (Not that Nixon’s crimes were minor, but what Trump & Co. appear to have done strikes at the very core of our democracy.)

  276. 276.

    Ruckus

    @catclub:
    See number one.
    I didn’t say he is simple (although he is) I said his only thoughts involve himself. Sure he’s in the office, but he thought about that from the standpoint of “How great would it be to show Obama that I’m as good as he is?” He’s not a drooling moron, even as he sounds like one. But his every thought runs through the me filter. Every single one.

  277. 277.

    Brachiator

    @schrodingers_cat:

    BTW have you seen the trailer for SLB’s upcoming movie, Padmavati?*. Its based on a 15th century poem by the same name.

    Great trailer. Looks intense. It’s a whole ‘nother thing, but I think that some of the visuals, costumes and jewelry has influenced the way the Klingons are depicted in the new “Star Trek:Discovery” series.

    I was listening to the UK movie review podcast, “Kermode and Mayo.” The guest hosts noted that AAmir Khan’s “Secret Superstar” was one of the top UK movies over the past weekend.

    They also noted that a Tamil film, whose title I do not recall, was also in the top weekend box office.

  279. 279.

    TenguPhule

    @Davebo:

    Off topic but this is pretty good.

    Boehner Unchained

    Look, what you do in your private time is your own business. No need for us to know.

  281. 281.

    schrodingers_cat

    @Brachiator: Have not heard about that movie, but everything that Aamir Khan does is usually good. He is selective about his projects and known to be a perfectionist.
    I just discovered a topical talk show that he did a few years ago, where he traveled the length and breadth of India. Its title song is pretty awesome.
    Satymeva Jayate ==Truth alone Triumphs, which is India’s official motto as well.

  282. 282.

    patrick II

    I think Tillerson is in a strange place in all of this. He wasn’t part of the campaign so he isn’t involved with this the early criminal activity. However, he was CEO of Exxon, a friend of Putin (if someone can be a friend and not a hand puppet), and against sanctions. Clearly he was brought on because of that, and the deals that would be made after sanctions were off. But I have the sense that, though he would have been happy to see sanctions lowered and his ex-company finish that big oil deal they have been working on, he has not had criminal intent and is not all of what Trump was hoping for.

  283. 283.

    catclub

    @TenguPhule:

    Old style religion

    In the church of Aphrodite
    Priestess wears a see through nightie
    Its an awfully righteous sightie
    And its good enough for me.

  286. 286.

    Aleta

    @Gin & Tonic: What I remember about the moment that Manafort crawled into the open at the convention — sort of blinking, he’d been under the rocks so long– was that the press then broke a story about him and Ukraine and Russian influence on the GOP, and it sounded critical for the election. But almost overnight it dropped out of the media coverage.

    At the time I wondered — ‘Maybe the FBI/CIA don’t want their investigation exposed yet’ or ‘Is the coverage getting switched out again by Rs amping the hate up *even* higher on the last two days — and by Flynn’s cheerleading L H Up.’ ‘But surely the story will be back as it develops….’

    But it barely returned to the mainstream, even when Manafort dropped out just before Ivanka left for vacation tin Russia. (Leaving her new baby ? Come ON now.) And now I wonder if the press did actually hear from the FBI, but only because Giulliani was working his connections, FBI and press, to freeze the story.

    Bunch of fucking traitors no matter how you look at it.

    Still not confident about how many will actually go to jail, but keeping an open mind and eternal hope.

  287. 287.

    Aleta

    @Kay: Is it too much to hope that they bring it but enough Rs get too nervous now to associate with ‘Trump’s tax bill’ and vote against? I’d rather it was defeated, but more likely it will be pulled if support changes. Any port in a storm will do.

  288. 288.

    Brachiator

    @catclub:

    well mostly true, but airbnb and uber were making better/more use of underused things ( in principle, anyway) that could be made more useful because of the network and computers. The self driving car (again in principle) can make better use of a smaller number of cars and use less parking.

    I don’t know. I think with self driving cars, we will see an incredible expansion of vehicles on the roadways.

  289. 289.

    Miss Bianca

    @catclub:

    In the church of Aphrodite
    Priestess wears a see through nightie
    Its an awfully righteous sightie
    And its good enough for me.

    Another version runs thus:

    Let us all praise Aphrodite
    Who is beautiful but flighty
    In her see-thru’ satin nightie
    She’s good enough for me

  293. 293.

    J R in WV

    @Sister Rail Gun of Warm Humanitarianism:

    MRs J and I left a perfectly good party to go to our workplace, where there was a small room with teletypes, printing out the content on The AP wires, the UPI wires, the NYT Wires, etc. This was the night of the Saturday Night Massacre, when Nixon fired the leadership of the Department of Justice until he got down to a lawyer/manager capable of and willing to fire the Independent Special Prosecutor investigating the Watergate criminal conspiracies.

    It was late at night, and Sunday AM paper was nearly done on the press run, and the newsrooms were dark but for small desk lamps. But the teletype room was a 24/7 operation, with big boxes of fanfold newsprint-quality paper running through slow printers getting TTS signals over dedicated phone lines, rented by the news services and the newspapers (and bars, who subscribed to the racing/sports wire), where bells rang when important stories began to be printed out.

    The most important stories were five-bell stories, like JFK’s murder, then Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder. Before that I expect the last five-bell stories were out of Korea, perhaps when the Chinese Red Army poured across the Yalu River and were on the verge of destroying the US Army Corps they surrounded. Before that, nuclear bombs in Japan and the end of WW II.

    We heard a five-bell story begin on every wire for every firing, and then all of them when Nixon accepted the resignations of Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus, who both refused to fire the Special Prosecutor then appointed Bork acting AG, and Bork fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox.

    Later on Leon Jaworski was appointed, but that was long after that late Saturday Night.

    Wife and I both worked at the family business, which published two daily newspapers, one Republican (my dad) and one Democratic (my uncle). In the very old days, this allowed both papers to make money for legal ads, which made the difference between survival and failure at many small town newspapers. So we knew the doors were virtually never locked, and we could go in late on a Saturday night and watch history happen right before our eyes.

    So, yes, news junkies were the same back then as they are now. It was just much harder to get a fix earlier than from radio or TV, or the morning paper.

  294. 294.

    J R in WV

    @Shana:

    I would suspect that he would have been forced to surrender his passport.

    Again, I ask which one? Now there are small nations selling citizenship and a passport for a few hundred thousand dollars. Sometimes they make you buy property, of invest in a business, or just contribute to a “fund” for someone. Malta, most of the island nations south of Bermuda, these wealthy guys can be citizens of half-a-dozen nations.

  295. 295.

    J R in WV

    @catclub:

    The Russians involved with Trump are stealing so much money – and oil – that they can’t find places to put it all. If it wasn’t for the sanctions placed on Russian businessmen by President Obama, there would be a flood of money, enough to upset the economies of many nations.

    IIRC Sec of State Exxon Tillerson (et al) stood to make $500 billion if the sanctions against Russian billionaires and banks were to be lifted. So anyone with connections to Russia was in a position to suck much money from the Rs. With the expectation that more money would come gushing from Russian banks and money launderers in the immediate future.

    ETA fix a typo

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