Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

It may be funny to you motherfucker, but it’s not funny to me.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

There is no right way to do the wrong thing.

I’m more christian than these people and i’m an atheist.

This has so much WTF written all over it that it is hard to comprehend.

Republicans don’t lie to be believed, they lie to be repeated.

I’m starting to think Jesus may have made a mistake saving people with no questions asked.

We’re watching the self-immolation of the leading world power on a level unprecedented in human history.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

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

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

Many life forms that would benefit from greater intelligence, sadly, do not have it.

Only Democrats have agency, apparently.

We need to vote them all out and restore sane Democratic government.

… pundit janitors mopping up after the gop

Dear media: perhaps we ought to let Donald Trump speak for himself!

I might just take the rest of the day off and do even more nothing than usual.

You know it’s bad when the Project 2025 people have to create training videos on “How To Be Normal”.

SCOTUS: It’s not “bribery” unless it comes from the Bribery region of France. Otherwise, it’s merely “sparkling malfeasance”.

Jack Smith: “Why did you start campaigning in the middle of my investigation?!”

Putin must be throwing ketchup at the walls.

We will not go quietly into the night; we will not vanish without a fight.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / Nicolle Wallace Broke Some Interesting News Today: Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Special Counsel Mueller Edition

Nicolle Wallace Broke Some Interesting News Today: Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein and Special Counsel Mueller Edition

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This afternoon during her MSNBC show Deadline: White House, Nicolle Wallace broke some interesting news when talking to Rachel Maddow. Specifically, Wallace reported that based on her sources at the Department of Justice Deputy Attorney General is still overseeing the Special Counsel’s investigation. She supported this by explaining that today’s plea agreement between the Special Counsel’s Office and Michael Cohen went through the same chain of approval that all of the previous plea agreements that the Special Counsel has agreed to, as well as all of his indictments. That chain of approval stops with Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein. Here’s the clip – the information pertaining to Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein still supervising the Special Counsel’s investigation begins around the 20 second mark:

This is very interesting.

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

133Comments

  6. 6.

    Platonailedit

    Let me ask White House Senior Advisor @IvankaTrump about Trump Tower Moscow.

    Oh wait, she blocked me, a Member of Congress, because my questions bother her.

    Let me correct that. She blocked me, a Member of Congress who will be in the majority, because my questions bother her.

    https://t.co/9xFiHzPhsX— Ted Lieu (@tedlieu) November 30, 2018

    I so want the totus’ ugly spawns to go down before he himself is jailed.

  7. 7.

    NotMax

    Speculation leads to guessing that DOJ staff has concluded that so long as there is an open question legally as to the propriety of Whitaker in the top post absent Senate concurrence that the entire investigation could conceivably be attacked as irretrievably tainted if it moves totally under his direct purview, should he thereafter be forced to step aside.

  12. 12.

    Patricia Kayden

    And I see that some Rightwingers are furious that Trump is about to sign off on a bump stock ban.

  13. 13.

    Adam L Silverman

    Ruh Roh!

  16. 16.

    feebog

    This shit is like a fast and furious sequel. Can’t imagine how many shoes are going to drop tomorrow.

  28. 28.

    Amir Khalid

    @Adam L Silverman:
    If Ivanka is officially a White House Senior Advisor with initial caps in her job title, is she not bound by White House staff rules that prohibit also working in the private sector?

  30. 30.

    joel hanes

    @Adam L Silverman:

    Let’s check in with the armed intelligentsia

    Delicious. “If he breaks his promise, I’m not gonna vote in 2020.”

    Not that I think that Trump will survive until 2020 to be the R candidate; this is the moment when the great wheel turns at a touch.

  33. 33.

    Jeffro

    Here is the deal: Mueller has all of them…Trumpov, Jr, Ivanka, Jared, Stone…dead in his sights. He has. the. goods. Tax fraud. Conspiracy. Perjury. Obstruction. Bribery. Campaign Finance Fraud. And the Trump Org is going to go down under RICO, lock, stock, and barrel (along with a ton of other shady businesses that Deutsche Bank was working with – Trumpov ain’t the only one)

    So he’ll drop it all – hundreds of charges against dozens of people. And then what do the few remaining non-implicated members of the GOP do? NOT act? Just sit there and call ALL of it “process crimes”? With this…thing…still sitting in the White House rage-tweeting away every day?

    No way no how. Donnie’s already being revealed as the weakest of the weak, the dam is bursting. They will turn on him and his scuzzy crew and we’ll spend the next two years learning how they did it and who ran cover for them.

    I think in the end he will try to blanket pardon himself and his kids, that’s how pathetic this is going to be. And then, regardless of where they hole up, he’ll just spiral into his NPD/dementia even further, all the way down. I once thought he’d end up at a classic police interrogation room table, spilling his guts about decades of money laundering in order to avoid forfeiting his last million and having his kids jailed. But now I’m not so sure…

  35. 35.

    Aleta

    @Platonailedit: As long as she’s there he might as well ask about the deals Ivanka went after in Latvia and Azerbaijan, and about her encounter with Sater in Russia in 2006.

  36. 36.

    Platonailedit

    If Putin openly confesses that he colluded with the totus thug to flip steal the 2016 elections, will the party of traitorous thugs call Putin a liar? They are so far up the totus thug’s ass that I bet they will.

  38. 38.

    danielx

    @dmsilev:

    Eric Trump may not be all that dumb; it’s his brother whose name seems to be cropping up…over and over.

    It may be just positive thinking on my part, but I think Trump is – fairly quickly – going to run up against the problem that a lot of people who work for the Justice Department take their oaths of office a lot more seriously than Trump takes his. Specifically, the part where they swear allegiance to the constitution, rather than to Donald John Trump.

    Um…..maybe not.

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: I’m not sure the GOP is going to do anything. As I’ve written here repeatedly:
    https://www.rawstory.com/2018/11/gop-leadership-compromised-russian-money-trump-biographer/

    In the 90’s, Unger wrote, Russians began sending money to Rep. Tom DeLay (R-TX), a longtime congressman who later became House Majority Leader. He also suggested that the mafia was sending money to other Republicans as well.

    “I believe most of the GOP leadership has been compromised by” Russian money, the author added. “The Republican Senatorial Campaign Committee run by Mitch McConnell got millions from [Soviet-born businessman] Leonard Blavatnik.”

    Here’s the link to the whole AMA:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/a1ip6e/im_craig_unger_journalist_and_nyt_bestselling/

  40. 40.

    Viva BrisVegas

    Much of tropical Queensland is burning right now. Including rainforests that haven’t burnt since white settlement. This is a very unusually early and intense start to the fire season.

    Not as bad as the recent Californian fires, but it shows that our fire season now overlaps with yours.

    Previously it was possible for West Coast USA and East Coast Australia fire units to send men and equipment to each others aid because each had complementary quiet times.

    Now it’s all one fire season on both continents.

    The good news is that the next generation is stepping up. Large numbers of school students have gone on strike today in protest at the Federal Government’s inaction towards, or rather sabotaging, of efforts towards carbon reduction.

    The other good news is that these conservative coal coddlers are in political disarray right now, with disastrous results in last weeks Victorian state election leading to resignations, defections and call for right wing purity purges.

    Meanwhile our lame duck PM is off to the G20, desperately hoping for a face to face with his political hero, Donald Trump.

    Back home the electorate waits for the next election, due in May, with baseball bat in hand.

  42. 42.

    Marcopolo

    Dunno if there is one of those futures betting markets where you can lay money on Nancy Pelosi becoming the first woman to become President but if there is then after today’s news the value of that bet went up a few cents.

  43. 43.

    Mary G

    @Adam L Silverman: I could only get through a few comments, although

    You would expect something different of Negotiating Rights Away since 1934.

    is implying that the NRA is too liberal for them?

  45. 45.

    Adam L Silverman

    @danielx:

    It may be just positive thinking on my part, but I think Trump is – fairly quickly – going to run up against the problem that a lot of people who work for the Justice Department take their oaths of office a lot more seriously than Trump takes his. Specifically, the part where they swear allegiance to the constitution, rather than to Donald John Trump.

    They do.

  48. 48.

    pk

    I think even Pence is somehow involved in this. It would be ironic and poetic if we end up with President Pelosi instead of President Hillary.

  53. 53.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: Yes they are. The NRA was involved with/consulted on both the National Firearms Act in the 1930s and the Gun Control Act in the 1960s. This is, of course, pre Cincinnati Revolt NRA (1977) when the organization was taken over, via an internal coup, and pulled far to the right. The NRA is, however, incredibly risk averse, despite their PR on the subject, in regard to firearms legislation and litigation. The real heavy lifting is actually done by the 2nd Amendment Foundation (2AF or SAF). The 2AF are the folks that brought and won by the Heller and McDonald rulings. The NRA tried to sabotage both of the 2AF’s cases because they were worried the cases couldn’t be won.

  54. 54.

    Yarrow

    @pk: Pence is up to his eyeballs in this whole thing. Manafort picked him. He headed the transition team. Supposed to be lots of dirt in the redacted emails from his time as Gov.

  55. 55.

    Jeffro

    @Adam L Silverman: good point

    But it will only take one GOP Rep or Senator to admit that Majority Leader McConnell has been taking Russian Mob money for years.

    Or a Mueller. A Mueller could also turn that up, too

  56. 56.

    Adam L Silverman

    @debbie: I don’t know. Everyone around the President, and the President, have been all over the map over when the President first met Putin. I’ve seen, at least, four different versions just from the President himself.

  58. 58.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Jeffro: The one thing I am sure of is that Special Counsel Mueller’s counterintelligence and financial criminal enterprise investigators know where all the money came from and where it went to.

  59. 59.

    Mary G

    It’s raining shoes today. If I wasn’t so lazy, I’d research every Serious Pundit that said that Russiagate was a big fat nothingburger and point and laugh on twitter.

  60. 60.

    Adam L Silverman

  63. 63.

    Chetan Murthy

    @pk:

    It would be ironic and poetic and delightful if we end up with President Pelosi instead of President Hillary.

  64. 64.

    lamh36

    @Yarrow: Was just thinking…there is no way Pence ain’t a big part of this.

    But isn’t the focus Chump and his KLAN? Don’t know if, so far, Pence has been named dropped in much of any of the stuff that’s come out so far?

    Or could it just be Chump is more get-able than Race Bannon (h/t rikyrah)?

  66. 66.

    Mary G

    @Yarrow: I luxuriate every time they show a current photo of Manafort without his flashy suits and hair dye. You know he must hate it.

  67. 67.

    Yarrow

    @Mary G: Yes, yes. Let’s start with the fucking New York Times and their October 31, 2016 article: “Investigating Donald Trump, F.B.I. Sees No Clear Link to Russia.”

    Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, F.B.I. and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.

    Fuckers.

    (No link because fuck them.)

  68. 68.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: Yep. From what I understand, LaPierre isn’t actually a gun guy. He’s a fundraiser and lobbyist. I’ve seen people who know him say he couldn’t shoot straight to save his life/couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn. LaPierre is all about dollars and influence, that’s it. He plays a true believer because it gets him a multimillion dollar salary every year. Hammer is a true believer.

  71. 71.

    Yarrow

    @lamh36: The focus initially was on Russian involvement in the 2016 campaign. The investigation has broadened as more information has been discovered. As I said above, Pence was well involved in the 2016 campaign and has his own Russian connections, despite keeping a low profile.

  73. 73.

    Adam L Silverman

    @lamh36: When Flynn’s sentencing comes up is when we’re going to start hearing about the Vice President’s role in all of this.

  76. 76.

    cain

    @Platonailedit:

    If Putin openly confesses that he colluded with the totus thug to flip steal the 2016 elections, will the party of traitorous thugs call Putin a liar? They are so far up the totus thug’s ass that I bet they will.

    My hope is that he’ll release all the dirt he has on the Republican party. Now that his asset is about to get burned, he’ll probably try to create maximum chaos and destroy the rest of the party. I wouldn’t be surprised if some NYT people get caught up in it too as well as your usual Fox people.

  78. 78.

    Mandalay

    @Amir Khalid:

    If Ivanka is officially a White House Senior Advisor with initial caps in her job title, is she not bound by White House staff rules that prohibit also working in the private sector?

    Even if she is, it’s not clear to me what crime she might have committed with respect to today’s news.

    I’d love to see her in the slammer as much as anyone else, but it’s probably better if she is found guilty of something first.

  82. 82.

    Platonailedit

    Fuck the ‘conservative’ oldies.

    Thousands of Australian school students have urged greater action on climate change in protests across the country.

    The students skipped school on Friday to highlight what they say are inadequate climate policies by the Australian government.

    On Monday, Australian PM Scott Morrison rebuked their plans for “activism” during school hours and insisted his government was tackling climate change.

    Many students said his remarks had bolstered their resolve to protest.

    “We will be the ones suffering the consequences of the decisions they [politicians] make today,” protester Jagveer Singh, 17, told the BBC.

    Organisers say they were inspired by Greta Thunberg, a 15-year-old girl in Sweden who has undertaken similar protests.

  85. 85.

    Ceci n est pas mon nym

    Tick Tock: When I had made an end of these labors, it was four o’clock –still dark as midnight. As the bell sounded the hour, there came a knocking at the street door. I went down to open it with a light heart, –for what had I now to fear? (E. A. Poe, The Tell-Tale Heart)

  86. 86.

    Chetan Murthy

    @cain:

    Now that his asset is about to get burned, he’ll probably try to create maximum chaos and destroy the rest of the party.

    I doubt it. The way to create maximum chaos is to ensure that the GrOPers are as empowered as possible, so they can fight All. The. Way. Down. At the moment you propose, if I were Putin, I’d be sending massive cash infusions by every covert channel possible. Massive. Cash. Infusions. Also ramping up all the social media influence operations. I’d be taking it all to “11”. B/c once the GrOPers are burnt and dead, the Dems are gonna come after Pootie-Poot — he needs to delay that day as long as possible.

  87. 87.

    Mandalay

    @Platonailedit:

    On Monday, Australian PM Scott Morrison rebuked their plans for “activism” during school hours…

    Of course Morrison knows very well that if they had protested on the weekend nobody would know anything about it. That would have been as effective as Colin Kaepernick kneeling in his kitchen every Tuesday morning.

  89. 89.

    clay

    @Adam L Silverman: I can understand his/her confusion, poor thing. I mean, you’d never know Trump had business ties to Russia unless you listened to all the times he and his family bragged about all of their business ties to Russia!

  94. 94.

    Mnemosyne

    @Chetan Murthy:

    I’m starting to suspect that a lot of the covert channels the Russians were using until 2016 have been quietly closed off. The NRA is suddenly pleading poverty after swimming in dough for the last decade and Republican candidates didn’t seem to have as much super PAC cash available to them in this election cycle. I can’t quote anything for sure, but it definitely seemed like the Republicans had less money this time around.

  95. 95.

    Elizabelle

    @Mnemosyne: I was thinking the icing on the cupcake today would have been learning the NRA offices had been raided by the feds.

    But I can be patient. And not greedy.

    It was lovely to learn of the Deutsche Bank raid before I’d finished my first cup of coffee. A good day, indeed. Bring on more, please.

  96. 96.

    Mnemosyne

    @SRW1:

    Eric is the family’s designated Scapegoat, so Golden Child Ivanka and aspiring Golden Child Don Jr. insisted on doing all of the important stuff themselves so Daddy would continue to love them.

    If it had ever occurred to them that they might get caught, that’s when they would have put Eric in charge, at least nominally, so he could be the fall guy. But they weren’t even smart enough to do that.

  97. 97.

    Kelly

    @Patricia Kayden: I cannot figure out how bump stocks were judged not a full auto in the first place. If I understand the mechanism correctly the rifle is moving your trigger finger for you. If the machine moves everything to fire a round it’s a machine gun.

  99. 99.

    Dman

    WTF!?!?!?

    Two million federal workers receive memo warning they can’t use the word ‘resist’ or discuss Trump impeachment at work

  100. 100.

    lollipopguild

    @Mnemosyne: Get caught? Why would any of them think that they might get caught? Daddy has gotten away with a lifetime of criminal acts, so why would any of them get caught?

  102. 102.

    Aleta

    @lamh36:

    Jon Cooper ‏@joncoopertweets

    As the story swirls of Michael Cohen’s guilty plea and how it further implicates Donald Trump in the #TrumpRussia scandal, one GOP source tells me to “keep an eye on Mike Pence.” What did the @VP know and when did he know it? It’s only a matter of time before the truth comes out.

    I like to think Pence was compromised with a money-making deal or fraudulent loan before they took him on. And when he went out of his way to announce that he refuses to be alone in a room with any woman … it did sound like one of those preventative lies.

  103. 103.

    cain

    @Yarrow:

    @cain: There will be people in all news organizations caught up in it. Democrats as well.

    OH yeah, I’m sure Democrats are involved as well. Money has no party affiliation. It would be naive to think Democratic politicans haven’t been getting any smack. Russians will try to get in any way they can . Just happens that Republicans are easier marks.

  105. 105.

    cain

    @Mnemosyne:

    I’m starting to suspect that a lot of the covert channels the Russians were using until 2016 have been quietly closed off. The NRA is suddenly pleading poverty after swimming in dough for the last decade and Republican candidates didn’t seem to have as much super PAC cash available to them in this election cycle. I can’t quote anything for sure, but it definitely seemed like the Republicans had less money this time around.

    Yeah, the NRA pleading poverty is pretty nuts. What the fuck do these people do with the money? I can never understand rich people.

  106. 106.

    Aleta

    It’s pretty funny, the report from a ‘source’ that some WH staffers didn’t realize you can be indicted for lying to Congress. Hard to believe no one informed them (not).

  107. 107.

    NotMax

    Uh oh. TCM, showing Z starting at 4 a.m. Eastern time. May have to channel surf elsewhere because even though have seen it probably around 100 times*, am constitutionally incapable of not watching it raptly through to the end yet again if so much as 10 seconds of the film is sighted, and have other stuff planned to get to tonight..

    *It played for three months or so at the movie theater where I was working at the time.

  109. 109.

    Mandalay

    @Chetan Murthy:

    She’s been pretty good since Shitler’s coup.

    Maybe so, but only because she is an opportunistic hack. She happily stuck the boot in on Democrats when Dubya was in power, and if Jeb! had become president she’d happily be doing it again right now.

    I think she is amoral in the same way that virtually all Republicans in Congress are: she will readily adopt whatever positions happen to be most beneficial to herself.

  110. 110.

    dmsilev

    NYT headline: “How a Lawyer, a Felon and a Russian General Chased a Moscow Trump Tower Deal”.

    Spoiler alert: In a surprise twist ending, it turns out that all three protagonists were all actually Jared Kushner.

  111. 111.

    Steve in the ATL

    @Mary G: I’ve been in Florida since Tuesday and I haven’t been shot once!

    Glad I’m leaving tomorrow before the odds revert to the means. Or however you phrase that.

  113. 113.

    Chetan Murthy

    Oh, this is interesting: https://youtu.be/EtVqsMzQ2yE?t=2565

    Maddow interviewing Emily Jane Fox about whether Cohen has a wide-ranging cooperation agreement. Fox doesn’t believe he does. Which might explain how Cohen’s able to give up the goods on Shitler, without also giving up the goods on his Russian mob buddies (who would most likely revenge themselves in blood on Cohen & family). *Interesting*.

  114. 114.

    Mnemosyne

    @cain:

    The Chicago alderman whose office was raided today is nominally a Democrat but worked closely with Trump for years.

    I think there will be some Democrats who get caught up in the net, but I think they will be much smaller fish than on the Republican side. I wouldn’t be surprised if it turns out that Israel was laundering donations to some Democrats on behalf of Russia without said Democrats knowing where the money originated, but that’s only a guess.

    And I’ve said before that I’ve suspected for some time that a certain independent senator’s unexpectedly strong fundraising had at least some of its source in Russia, and that Tad Devine at a minimum was in on it. Even I would be able to figure out how to launder multiple donations of $27 that just happen to be too small to require reporting to the FEC.

  117. 117.

    Achrachno

    @Mandalay: Grudge much? She’s changed and is no longer a Republican. She’s better than most news/commentary hosts from a democratic POV — very hard hitting in a pleasant way. She laughs at things that T and his minions say in a spontaneous and infectious way. Hers is an approach that will bring people toward reason.

  118. 118.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @cain:
    I also think the GOP is more ideologically compatible with Putin’s regime. They’re far-right fascist white supremacists. But I repeat myself.

  120. 120.

    Redshift

    @Chetan Murthy: Based on what I’ve heard on Preet Bharara’s podcast, I’d guess that he could be allowed that because to Mueller, he’s just a useful witness (mainly for laying traps for other clown car passengers) rather than a target.

    If I recall correctly, he didn’t have a plea agreement with the NY prosecutors, he just pleaded guilty, which seemed odd. But if his overriding interest was in not being compelled to testify against everyone (Russian mobsters particularly), then it makes more sense.

  121. 121.

    Amir Khalid

    @Dman #99
    Your Rawstory link has captured the reply button.
    Can the White House really forbid civil service staff to use a word that by itself has no partisan political meaning?

  124. 124.

    Yarrow

    @Mnemosyne: If Tad Devine was in on it, it’s useful to have a look at who Tad Devine has worked for. Didn’t he work for Al Gore? There will be more than a few Democrats caught up in the investigation but at this point in time Republicans are by far a more fertile ground for Russia than Democrats are because of biases and beliefs (white supremacy, misogyny, Christianity, homophobia, etc.).

  125. 125.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)  ??

    @Amir Khalid:
    Personally, I don’t know. That would be governed by the Hatch Act. I don’t think it would be particularly enforceable.

  130. 130.

    Tenar Arha

    @Aleta: Whut? No seriously, whaaat? It’s not common to charge people, but the power exists. It’s the basis of more than a few movies even, so it’s not exactly a piece of hidden lore. I mean, why do they think there’s an oath before testifying in particular? Photographers even aim for that shot of that one pose, you know the one, hand raised, elbow bent, palm flat.

    (TFW you wonder if you’re such a dork that you’re one of the fewer who notices stuff like this).

  131. 131.

    Tenar Arha

    @Achrachno: I’m not interested in going into the details, but how do you think our major media ecosystem ended up being wired for Republicans? People like Nicolle Wallace & Joe Scarborough made careers there. It’s not the only reason that teh Sunday Showz have a majority of Republican operatives & guests on them all the time, but it’s one of the reasons.

    We all should hold grudges just enough to remember that they’re not reliable allies who’ve had a change of heart but people who are horrified by Orange Julius’ vulgarity, and watch our backs accordingly.

    ETA yes, I know it’s a dead thread

  132. 132.

    Mike Furlan

    Nicolle Wallace, previously the “mouth of Sauron” for Cheney/Bush, is on MSNBC, so everybody is OK with that? Including secular saint Rachel Maddow. This, by itself is proof that this nation is too far gone to save.

    We are Sodom and Gomorrah, where you cannot find even one righteous person.

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