Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

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

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

Speaker Mike Johnson is a vile traitor to the House and the Constitution.

There are times when telling just part of the truth is effectively a lie.

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

The fight for our country is always worth it. ~Kamala Harris

Russian mouthpiece, go fuck yourself.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

GOP baffled that ‘we don’t care if you die’ is not a winning slogan.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

Republican speaker of the house Mike Johnson is the bland and smiling face of evil.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

A fool as well as an oath-breaker.

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

She burned that motherfucker down, and I am so here for it. Thank you, Caroline Kennedy.

No one could have predicted…

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

Every decision we make has lots of baggage with it, known or unknown.

I don’t recall signing up for living in a dystopian sci-fi novel.

Giving in to doom is how authoritarians win.

Just because you believe it, that does not make it true.

I see no possible difficulties whatsoever with this fool-proof plan.

But frankly mr. cole, I’ll be happier when you get back to telling us to go fuck ourselves.

You are here: Home / Politics / America / A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

A Badly Executed Mob Shakedown: The President’s Ukraine Mess Is Just An Extension of His Russia Mess

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On Friday I wrote the following in an email explaining what is actually going on with the Ukraine mess that the President has made:

I amazed that all of this current brouhaha is just a really bad Russian mob shakedown. The play here is to get Parnas’s and Fruman’s boss in the Russian mob, Dmitri Firtash, off of house arrest and out from under the extradition warrant to the US so he can go back to Kyiv and take over the Ukrainian natural gas industry, strip it of every last penny, then crash it on behalf of Putin and the Russian mob. This then forces Ukraine to buy natural gas from Russia, which allows Putin to then further knuckle Ukraine by sucking resources out of Ukraine to create leverage to force Ukraine back into his orbit. As was reported last night, Giuliani is on Parnas’s payroll and has been for a while. Parnas is on DiGenova’s and Toensing’s payroll, who are working pro bono with Giuliani on behalf of the President, though they’re using him as their translator for their legal work for Firtash. Parnas and Fruman report to Firtash in regard to Russian organized crime activities. Firtash works for the Kyiv born Semion Mogilevich, who is the titular head of the Bratva. Mogolivech works for Putin who is the functional krysha/roof/protector of the Bratva. The Biden stuff is simply disinformation recycled from the Russians from 2014 as part of the maskirovka.

Earlier this evening, Andrew Weiss, who is the Vice President for Studies of The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and is in their Russia and Eurasia Program, tweeted the following explainer that really delineates all the parts of the network I was describing in my email from last Friday. (I’m going to put the first half above the jump and the second half below it).

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183912838378774530

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183913536893964290

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183914236822589440

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183914952706445312

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183915674927804417

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183916542158950401

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183918366131736576

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183919958369198081

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183921130115084294

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183921466926161920

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183922013045432323

https://twitter.com/andrewsweiss/status/1183922430752022529

Weiss’s thread, however, goes beyond just making explicitly clear the different key nodes in the network behind this poorly executed mob shakedown. Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob. And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.

Open thread!

 

Reader Interactions

170Comments

  1. 1.

    Mary G

    Thanks as always, Adam. Lot cheaper than nuclear missiles, and Russian TV gets a lot of yuks out of it. And I think Barr is in this up to his chubby little Dominionist cheeks.

    ETA: Also, Comic Sans? How are we still losing to these people?

  3. 3.

    David Fud

    Since the GOP is owned by the Russian mob, and it is a slave to white supremacy, other than utter defeat at the ballot box, how can America clean these guys up? We can’t impose this from the outside, we have to clean up our own mess somehow. We will basically have a civil war on our hands if we really dig in and root out the corruption.

  4. 4.

    Quaker in a Basement

    Clearly, there are many people with personal interests at stake: the oligarch who needs to get right with DOJ, Putin and his designs on the Ukrainian gas business, and lots and lots of money being thrown around.

    Wouldn’t you think that would be enough to keep all the conspirators working quietly and in the shadows? But no. Trump needs to up the ante and screw the Bidens at the same time. Like so many other times, his insistence on overreach blows up the plan.

  5. 5.

    Amir Khalid

    Jho Low! He has definitely eclipsed Jimmy Choo, the shoe guy, as Malaysia’s most world-famous person. It makes me proud — not.

  6. 6.

    Dan B

    What does it mean to good old fashioned Republicans to be quiet about the direct connection between the Russian mob and the top brass in the White House? And are there connections to our MSM? This feels like we reached the top of the first roller coaster hill and can’t yet see the bittom of the first drop. But it does feel like there’s going to be some sort of metaphorical or real bloodbath.

  8. 8.

    Cheryl Rofer

    As usual, I’m going to counsel a bit of caution. Although your email summary is plausible, I think not all those links have been proved, like who’s on whose payroll. Finding out who pays Guiliani (certainly more than one source) would go a long way to supporting what you say, or showing where holes are.

    Weiss doesn’t go as far as your email summary, but the connections he lists are still damning in a very broad sense. No President of the United States should have people involved in this stuff in this way.

    This week’s testimonies in the House should also help to delineate things within the US government, the other side of all this. Ten hours of testimony can cover quite a bit of ground. Tomorrow is Michael McKinley’s turn. McKinley was Pompeo’s senior advisor, so he will have a lot to say.

  11. 11.

    Another Scott

    Weiss’s thread makes it very clear that the Republican Party has been bought by Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs and incorporated into their influence network, including the Russian mob.

    How much of this is hyperbole? It seems clear that Donnie and his minions are in Vlad’s pocket, and lots of GOP people were more than willing to take money from just about everyone, and willing to let Donnie do pretty much what he wanted, but were they doing more than turning a blind eye?

    Weiss talks a lot about Donnie and Rudy and their associates, but not so much about the GOP as a whole.

    Thanks.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  12. 12.

    Zelma

    This administration is a criminal conspiracy. It’s part of a world wide criminal conspiracy centered in Moscow. Russia isn’t a country; it’s a criminal cartel. And I’m pretty sure there are lots of career folks in intelligence and justice who know it.

    Who are the players or their patsies? Putin is clearly at the center, although there is part of him who is a Soviet revanchist. Murdoch is certainly part of it. Trump may be too dumb to be anything but a tool. Likewise Boris. And the Republican pols are likewise fellow travelers.

    What is embarrassing is how cheaply the Americans have been bought.

  13. 13.

    randy khan

    ETA: Also, Comic Sans? How are we still losing to these people?

    The contrast of the belligerent tone – I mean, how awful that the committee released its letters to the public! Oh, the indecency! – with the, ah, comical typeface is pretty amazing.

  14. 14.

    Gin & Tonic

    An old, old friend worked for the US gov’t (ahem) during the Cold War years, then after the breakup of the Soviet Union ended up in the “private sector” (ahem) – he knew everything and everybody in Russia-Ukraine natural gas circles. His untimely passing is such a shame, as he’d be delightful with this stuff.

    But thanks for this post, Adam. As soon as I saw Parnas and Fruman were busted with one-way tickets to Vienna, the cartoon lightbulb over my head went off.

    p.s. In your intro text you misspell Mogilevich.

  17. 17.

    Adam L Silverman

    @David Fud: Truth & Reconciliation Committee with actual teeth. I keep saying I’ll do a post on it. I’ll try to get to it this week.

  18. 18.

    Zelma

    Just an aside. Wasn’t McCabe an expert on the Russian mob? Was that why he had to be destroyed?

    At least the Italian Mafia were patriotic.

  19. 19.

    Mary G

    The roof is about to cave in from all the leaks:

    Breaking: Bolton instructed aide to report Giuliani pressure campaign to White House lawyer. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton said, according to testimony to House investigators. @npfandos t.co/GO1pnMSyBl— Peter Baker (@peterbakernyt) October 15, 2019

  21. 21.

    dmsilev

    @Mary G: Apparently, pissing off a guy with a bunch of secrets, a bad mustache, and a grudge might be self-defeating. Who knew?

  22. 22.

    zhena gogolia

    MoreJon Zal Retweeted Tulsi Gabbard
    “Yay!” – No one

    @TulsiGabbard
    I will be attending the debate.

    Sigh.

  25. 25.

    Mary G

    Brilliant idea:

    Does anyone else hope that Trump represents himself in the Senate trial? t.co/XBMjl1Ucm3— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) October 15, 2019

    It would be the highest rated TV in history. Do it.— Preet Bharara (@PreetBharara) October 15, 2019

    "The highest rated TV in history!" an exuberant Trump shouts as guards escort him from the courtroom in handcuffs.— R.L. Ripples (@TweetsofOld) October 15, 2019

    I said they could do it on pay-per-view and put a nice little hole in the deficit.

  28. 28.

    Duane

    @Adam L Silverman: Not too long ago a T&R committee seemed far-fetched, even ridiculous. Now it seems necessary. The evidence is abundant. The crimes have to be stopped or it’s going to get worse.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    @Zelma:

    Russia isn’t a country; it’s a criminal cartel.

    A quibble: Russia is still a country. Putin and his administration are the criminal cartel.

  35. 35.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    @Mary G:

    Breaking: Bolton instructed aide to report Giuliani pressure campaign to White House lawyer. “I am not part of whatever drug deal Rudy and Mulvaney are cooking up,” Bolton said,

    damn.
    I guess it was inevitable Mulvaney would be caught up in this, but I guess Bolton thought “inevitable” wasn’t fast enough

    @Mary G:

    It would be the highest rated TV in history. Do it.— Preet Bharara

    If it happens, it will be because trump saw that tweet

  36. 36.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Dan B: In terms of the elected officials and the party officials, they’re compromised. There is extensive documentation on how Russian money, much of it oligarch/mob money, was laundered through their political action committees and campaigns. Both McConnell’s and Ryan’s leadership PACs were used as laundries for this money. As was, of course, the NRA. And a whole host of other Republican and conservative funding sources.

  39. 39.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Another Scott: Elliot Brody wasn’t just the deputy co-chair of the President’s 2016 campaign, he was, until he was arrested last year, one of three finance and fundraising co-chairs at the RNC. The other two were Michael Cohen and Steve Wynn. As for the rest of the links, I’ve been delineating them for over three years now on the front page.

  41. 41.

    dmsilev

    @Mary G:

    It would be the highest rated TV in history. Do it.—

    It’d be a mashup of A Few Good Men, The Caine Mutiny, and The Manchurian Candidate. Box Office gold!

  45. 45.

    tokyokie

    @Amir Khalid:

    Jho Low! He has definitely eclipsed Jimmy Choo, the shoe guy, as Malaysia’s most world-famous person. It makes me proud — not.

    Then obviously, you need to focus on Michelle Yeoh Choo-Kheng as Malaysia’s most world-famous person.

  46. 46.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Mary G: It is important to remember that the National Security Council’s counsel used to work for Devin Nunes. He was Nunes’ chief counsel for the House Intel Committee when Nunes ran it. He went to the NSC under Flynn.

  49. 49.

    dmsilev

    @Mary G: Also, imagine the modern equivalent of Frost/Nixon. An interview conducting either by Twitter DM or jailhouse phone, depending.

  50. 50.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Richard M. Nixon @ dick_nixon
    5m5 minutes ago
    Bolton would still kill us all if given half the chance, but he’s a politician. He’s survived this long in spite of being nuts. The rest are the Keystone Kops.
    Anyway, I’m glad he put the finger on Mulvaney too. Shitty-ass clown. One hand counting beans, the other waiting to get greased.

  51. 51.

    zhena gogolia

    I would so love to see Mulvaney go down.

    What about Stephen Miller? How can we get him?

    (Time to go to bed!)

  54. 54.

    ByRookorbyCrook

    I am amazed at the brazenness of all this. It is not just the audacity of selling out the nation for campaign funds, it is the chutzpah of the implied ask of, “What are you going to do about it?” At least 27%, but most likely more are completely ok with the corruption and foreign interference as long as it upsets the right people. Liberals, celebrities, and all the others on the Right’s Enemies List need to be punished even if it destroys the nation and holding the perpetrators responsible will be inconceivable to the Deplorables. I hope a Truth and Reconciliation committee can repair the nation, but I fear that there is a lot that is irreparable. Sorry I am being a bit of a negative lurker. This stuff is just depressing

  57. 57.

    Cheryl Rofer

    @Adam L Silverman: It’s useful to put narratives like that together, to see how well stuff fits. One of the difficulties of understanding the Trump presidency is that there are so many crimes, cutouts, mobs, bribes, and varieties of extortion that it’s hard to keep track of the main themes.

    We’re just starting now to have enough information to put together something like what you have in your email. But there are still lots of holes. The House hearings will fill some of them, particularly on the government side. Which will open things up to learn more in other aspects.

    But that is JUST THE UKRAINIAN EXTORTION!

    There’s a lot more, like Mike Flynn’s Turkish connections and crazy energy schemes. For instance, today Rosatom’s CEO said they’d be glad to work with the US to build reactors in Saudi Arabia. That was part of one of Flynn’s schemes. Collusion? Coincidence? Trolling? Can’t tell yet.

    And we haven’t begun to hear about Jared’s 666 Fifth Avenue and other schemes.

  59. 59.

    Cheryl Rofer

    So this is the least worst of Rudy’s funding

  61. 61.

    sheldon vogt

    What connection, if any, between this bunch and the group of Senators who celebrated the Fourth in Moscow in 2018?

  63. 63.

    Cacti

    It’s not enough for Trump to be removed from office.

    The whole rotten GOP structure that supported and enabled him needs to burn with him.

  66. 66.

    Mary G

    Rudy’s still talking:

    WASHINGTON (Reuters) – President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, was paid $500,000 for work he did for a company co-founded by the Ukrainian-American businessman arrested last week on campaign finance charges, Giuliani told Reuters on Monday.

    And:

    Giuliani told Reuters the money came in two payments made within weeks of each other. He said he could not recall the dates of the payments. He said most of the work he did for Fraud Guarantee was completed in 2018 but that he had been doing follow-up for over a year.

    And:

    Giuliani said he was confident that the money he received was from “a domestic source,” but he would not say where it came from.

    “I know beyond any doubt the source of the money is not any questionable source,” he told Reuters in an interview. “The money did not come from foreigners. I can rule that out 100%,” he said.

    He declined to say whether the money had been paid directly to him by Fraud Guarantee or from another source.

    Nice work if you can get it.

    ETA: Sorry, Cheryl, was still messing with blockquotes while you posted this.

  69. 69.

    Dan B

    @Mary G: Brian Williams was good this evening about Bolton saying Giuliani was in a metaphorival drug deal. Michael Steele blamed it on people being sucked into Trump’s schemes.

    So, as I’d feared the “good republicans” will proclaim their pure hearts when it’s long been clear that a worldwide syndicate(s) had tenterhooks in the GOP for years. It finally came into fruition with a bumbling egomaniac. Will it be Romney or Weld, or one of the crazy Tea Partiers, who are lauded by FOX and Sinclair, and Traitorbook, as the savior of freedom?

  74. 74.

    Dan B

    @Adam L Silverman: I wonder who in the GOP has not been compromised by Putin. Are there any credible Senators or Representatives? Or is the fact that they had no knowledge of the NRA and fossil fuel lobbyist money laundering? Innocent like the three monkeys with their well placed hands?

  75. 75.

    patroclus

    Sorry, but I need a lot more proof before I buy all aspects of this. The post says multiple times that all this has been “made clear.” No it hasn’t. Interesting theory though. They should keep digging.

  76. 76.

    SFAW

    Reading this thread, I had a vision of Oprah saying either

    “And YOU get an indictment! And YOU get an indictment! And YOU get an indictment! etc.”
    or
    “And YOU get an indictment! And you get ANOTHER indictment! And you get ANOTHER indictment! etc.”

    Yeah, yeah, I know — Por que no los dos?

  77. 77.

    Hitlesswonder

    @Adam L Silverman: That July 4th trip was weird and I think underreported. Was it just Putin demanding that a bunch of compromised senators and congressman humiliate themselves by being in Moscow on the 4th? That’s what it seems like. Why wasn’t that a huge story?

  84. 84.

    Adam L Silverman

    @Hitlesswonder: I have no idea why it wasn’t a bigger story, especially as it wasn’t the first time nor the last time it happened during this administration. Senator Paul made the same trip over a different holiday weekend. And there was another one of those trips for Republican members of Congress this year too.

  85. 85.

    GregB

    By the way, the third GOP finance co-chair, after the jailed Cohen and criminally charged Broidy, is Steve Wynn. He just got banned from the casino business in Vegas for poor character.

    All the trees are falling.

  86. 86.

    Dan B

    @Dan B: I’m at the point where it might be easier to figure out which republicans are not compromised and then start combing through their staffs and funding sources to nartow the list to zero.

  87. 87.

    Redshift

    @Mary G:

    “I know beyond any doubt the source of the money is not any questionable source,” he told Reuters in an interview.

    So, would you attest to that under oath, Mr. Giuliani?

  88. 88.

    Adam L Silverman

    @NotMax: Unacceptable, despicable, and for all intents and purposes it has now bespoiled the court martial because it is undue command interference by the commander in chief. It is also a perfect example of why shitbirds like Pete Hegseth should not have access to power.

  92. 92.

    Mary G

    The latest “fuck you” to Trump & Republicans from my state:

    ⚠️ REMINDER TO CALIFORNIANS: The INDIVIDUAL MANDATE PENALTY is back for you! As of 2020, if you don’t have #ACA-compliant coverage or qualify for an affordability or other exemption, you’ll have to pay $695/ea or 2.5% of your household income when you file your state taxes.— Charles Ghoulba (@charles_gaba) October 15, 2019

    I didn’t know that, glad I have Medicare.

  93. 93.

    trollhattan

    Posted this earlier today but I think this is a better thread.

    A Ukrainian-born man indicted in a campaign-finance scheme along with two associates of Rudy Giuliani, President Trump’s personal attorney, is an officer in a Sacramento cannabis dispensary controlled by a local businessman with a considerable share of the city’s pot business, records show.

    Andrey Kukushkin was among four men indicted last week in an intricate plan to funnel foreign campaign donations to U.S. politicians and enter the legal pot business in Nevada and other states. Two of the defendants, Lev Parnas and Igor Fruman, are associates of Giuliani and were reportedly helping him investigate former Vice President Joe Biden, one of the leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, and his son.

    Now, that international scandal has unraveled a considerable subplot in Sacramento.

    City and state records show Kukushkin’s partner in Sacramento is Garib Karapetyan, a permit holder for a total of eight dispensaries in the city. Karapetyan and his associates have become the de facto pot kings of Sacramento, controlling far more licenses than anyone else and papering the city with billboards and ads for their dispensaries.

    Karapetyan, 35, has for years quietly and systematically expanded his pot-selling business throughout the city with the consent of Sacramento regulators, controlling nearly a third of the industry here. He has donated to the campaigns of local elected officials, including Mayor Darrell Steinberg, and purchased a $1.1 million condo in the luxury Sawyer Hotel near the Golden 1 Center.

    There is no evidence that any of the money cited in last week’s indictment has been used to invest in the pot business in Sacramento.

    However, the arrests draw a direct line from the alleged plan to funnel foreign donations to U.S. politicians, and the impeachment investigation in Congress, to the doorstep of Sacramento’s burgeoning legal pot industry. Several California politicians, including House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, accepted donations from Parnas and Fruman, and their work for Giuliani has become part of the impeachment investigation against Trump.

    Nothing to see here, nosir.

  94. 94.

    Redshift

    @Dan B: A lot of them are very stupid, to the point where I’d actually believe they had no idea they were taking laundered Russian money. That doesn’t mean they should be off the hook, of course.

  96. 96.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    And as was the case with the cost of Putin’s information warfare and active measures campaign against the US, they did it for pennies on the dollar.

    Did Putin ever stop to consider that helping a buffoon become in charge of the country with the world’s largest nuclear stockpile might be dangerous?

  97. 97.

    Miss Bianca

    @Dan B:

    I’m at the point where it might be easier to figure out which republicans are not compromised

    Recalling to mind Brian Blessed’s cri de coeur as Augustus Caesar in I, Claudius: “Is there any man in Rome who HASN’T slept with my daughter?”

    @GregB: Man, when you get banned from running a casino in *Vegas* because of “poor character”…wow.

  99. 99.

    JWR

    More on Bolton:

    Peter Baker
    ‏Verified account @peterbakernyt
    On another occasion, he said, “Giuliani’s a hand grenade who’s going to blow everybody up,” according to testimony by Fiona Hill. 7:43 PM – 14 Oct 2019

    Ka-Blooie!

    ETA and boy, will I ever be happy to be rid of this comment editor!

  100. 100.

    Calouste

    @Dan B: Three GOP governors have come out for impeachment investigations, I can’t remember who they are. And possibly Romney is not bought by the Russians.

  101. 101.

    Aleta

    Yesterday’s 538 impeachment tracker:

    50.3% support, 43.8% don’t support

    We are collecting all the polls we can find that ask respondents some version of a yes-or-no question about whether they support impeaching Trump, though some polls also give respondents a “don’t know” or “no opinion” option. If the same poll asks more than one impeachment question (using different wording), we include both questions, but the results of those questions are averaged together, then input into the model, so the poll is not double counted.

  102. 102.

    Kent

    @Gin & Tonic:

    @Mary G: If you’d told me a couple of months ago that I’d be cheering for John Bolton…

    Worse still. If you told me that he looked like the adult in the room. That’s one terrifying room.

  106. 106.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Adam Steinbaugh @ adamsteinbaugh
    37m37 minutes ago
    john bolton brings down yet another regime with no plan for what comes next

  108. 108.

    Kent

    @Dan B:

    @Jim, Foolish Literalist: Finally we have an answer to who the honest republicans are!
    How about Eisenhower?

    Well, there was Lincoln. After that things started to fall apart.

  110. 110.

    tokyokie

    “I know beyond any doubt the source of the money is not any questionable source,” (Giuliani) told Reuters in an interview.

    I take that to mean Giuliani took the dough without asking any questions.

  114. 114.

    Aleta

    @PJ: Humiliation-domination was probably first on that menu, but I also picture blatant loyalty soundings at all Trump’s nomination meetings. Grooming, testing.

  117. 117.

    lgerard

    @PJ:

    Mitt should have realized he wasn’t going to be offered a cabinet position

    He didn’t get any beautiful chocolate cake

  120. 120.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @Kent:
    I remember reading that the Republicans in the 50s tried to pass some pretty crazy shit under Eisenhower

  121. 121.

    jl

    @a lurker: We may be living in a golden age of non-denial denials. We’re in the midst of the high baroque of non-denial denials.
    Reverse double flip double dog dare non-denial denials.

  122. 122.

    JWR

    Oh my!

    Donald J. Trump
    ‏Verified account @realDonaldTrump

    “Project Veritas-Obtained Undercover Videos Highlight Jeff Zucker’s (@CNN) Campaign To Destroy Trump. Videos Reveal @CNN’s BIAS!” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews Does this sound like a good, or even great, lawsuit? 5:51 PM – 14 Oct 2019

    James O’Keefe on the job!

  123. 123.

    jl

    Need to break out the full text of famous verses from Proverbs

    6:18 Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.
    8:18a Especially amongeth dumbells.

    6:19 Better it is to be of an humble spirit with the lowly, than to divide the spoil with the proud.
    6:19a: And if ye be witless about it, they will the bus throweth ye under

  124. 124.

    jl

    @JWR: ” James O’Keefe on the job! :

    Figures O’Keefe would pop up, with Wohl & Burkman hogging all the glory.

    O’Keefe’s stuff is little better than W&B’s. brand, but it is taken far more seriously. Or more precisely, the ratio of serious attention given to O’Keefe is far out of proportion to how much better it is than W&B. Maybe because O’Keefe is on some big funder payroll, who tells the hacks to funnel the stuff into the corporate media.

    Edit: Maybe W&B didn’t quite make the credibility cut on their first outings to be worthy of big sponsorship, so it’s been all down hill for them since then, except as a novelty act.

  125. 125.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @JWR:

    Does this sound like a good, or even great, lawsuit?

    Sorry, II Douche. Public figures are except from libel law protections

  126. 126.

    NotMax

    @JWR

    Surely totally coincidental that Tuesday’s D debate is on CNN.

    (*crouches to avoid being whacked upside the head by flying pigs*)

  127. 127.

    patrick II

    “The money did not come from foreigners. I can rule that out 100%,” he said.

    Hey Rudy , the name of the company that you can rule out a foreign payment from is named “Fraud Guarantee”. From their mug shots I don’t think they are the type of guys who are into irony.

  129. 129.

    sukabi

    @randy khan: re: comic sans in a lawyer’s letter, probably a distraction ploy, like the rumpled suits. Don’t underestimate the sloppy schlub.

  131. 131.

    ??? Goku (aka Amerikan Baka) ??

    @NotMax:

    Surely totally coincidental that Tuesday’s D debate is on CNN.

    (*crouches to avoid being whacked upside the head by flying pigs*)

    Are you saying Trump is trying to distract from/delegitimize the D debates through CNN?

  134. 134.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    Earthquake! I’m in San Francisco. Felt big and far away, not small and close.

  137. 137.

    MisterForkbeard

    @?BillinGlendaleCA: Yeah, just felt it. Then called a recent immigrant that reports to me to make sure she wasn’t panicking – she lives about 10 miles from the epicenter and hadn’t been in an earthquake before.

    @JWR: It was a REALLY sad report from O’Keefe. The big points:

    1) Zucker said Fox News was brainwashing people.
    2) Zucker also said he understood that some of his people were friends with Lindsay Graham and Tucker Carlson.
    3) Some low-level employees that don’t go on air and aren’t in charge of content at all said they really didn’t like Trump.

    Basically, it’s was about 10% as wild as what’s been repeatedly reported at FOX in terms of political bias. Trump (and O’Keefe) can go fuck themselves off into the wild blue yonder.

  140. 140.

    Comrade Colette Collaboratrice

    @trollhattan: By all accounts, you Sac’tans are too dang high to feel the earth move anyway, what with all your illegal Ukrainian legal cannabis all over the place. At least that’s my takeaway from this thread.

  143. 143.

    Mandalay

    A completely shallow comment on my part, but former Amb.Yovanovitch (as shown in the OP) and Fiona Hill arriving to testify yesterday both look absolutely fucking badass in those photos. When Hollywood eventually does a movie of this wretched shitshow they won’t be able to improve on reality.

    And of course all the villains are fat, ugly, white men. Hollywood won’t be able to come up with baddies who look worse than those vile fuckers either.

  145. 145.

    JWR

    Hmm. From Daniel Dale’s Twitter page:

    Nicholas Fandos
    ‏Verified account @npfandos

    On the “drug deal” quote: 1 person in the room during Hill’s testimony initially said Bolton mentioned Rudy, but 2 others now say Hill said he actually cited Sondland: “I am not part of whatever drug deal Sondland & Mulvaney are cooking up” @peterbakernyt 9:22 PM – 14 Oct 2019

  147. 147.

    Ruckus

    @Mary G:
    I agree that he is stupid but also that his narcissism is so overriding that it is his sole operating premise. He thinks everything through his vision of himself. And because he’s so in debt to vlad, he has to put himself subordinate to vlad. And that means he will do anything vlad asks of him. Vlad literally owns him, in every meaning possible of the word owns.

  149. 149.

    Ruckus

    @ByRookorbyCrook:

    Liberals, celebrities, and all the others on the Right’s Enemies List need to be punished even if it destroys the nation and holding the perpetrators responsible will be inconceivable to the Deplorables.

    They don’t think they are doing anything wrong. OK they probably know they are breaking the law but that’s OK because they are republicans saving the world for fascists everywhere and the law only applies to others.

  153. 153.

    Ruckus

    @Comrade Colette Collaboratrice:
    4.5, one mile from Pleasant Hill, a minute before your comment.

    ETA and of course others got there first. That’s what I get for watching entertainment rather than a horror flick that is our current executive branch.

  155. 155.

    NotMax

    @Ruckus

    Entertainment is good. Even stuff like the ‘stick with it solely to see what new levels of crapitude it reaches’ one season SF series I finished up half paying attention to tonight.

  156. 156.

    prostratedragon

    @Gin & Tonic: Just another reason to hate these fucking guys.

    @Mary G: Explosive laughter in the wee hours!

    I recall soon after the election sharing a moment of introspection with my brother as we wondered what the first State of the Union address would be like.

  161. 161.

    Another Scott

    @Adam L Silverman: Ok, but remember this:

    KIEV, Ukraine — A month before Donald Trump clinched the Republican nomination, one of his closest allies in Congress — House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy — made a politically explosive assertion in a private conversation on Capitol Hill with his fellow GOP leaders: that Trump could be the beneficiary of payments from Russian President Vladimir Putin.

    “There’s two people I think Putin pays: Rohrabacher and Trump,” McCarthy (R-Calif.) said, according to a recording of the June 15, 2016, exchange, which was listened to and verified by The Washington Post. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher is a Californian Republican known in Congress as a fervent defender of Putin and Russia.

    House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.) immediately interjected, stopping the conversation from further exploring McCarthy’s assertion, and swore the Republicans present to secrecy.

    Before the conversation, McCarthy and Ryan had emerged from separate talks at the Capitol with Ukrainian Prime Minister Vladi­mir Groysman, who had described a Kremlin tactic of financing populist politicians to undercut Eastern European democratic institutions.

    […]

    (Hmm… There’s Ukraine again.)

    McCarthy was House Majority Leader. He obviously wasn’t on-board with the GOP being in Putin’s pocket – yet. Maybe he was too stupid to realize what had happened, or was kept out of the loop. But it looks like the ‘purchase of the GOP’ was sometime after June 2016. I’m not seeing much in the way of their actions that are that different before and after that date (other than changing the Platform on Ukraine).

    There’s more to come, I’m sure.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  162. 162.

    low-tech cyclist

    @Cheryl Rofer:

    And we haven’t begun to hear about Jared’s 666 Fifth Avenue and other schemes.

    During the summer when the Dems were doing their best to stay away from impeachment, I occasionally called my (Dem) Congressman suggesting other things they should be having hearings on, if they weren’t going to bother to impeach.

    This was one of them. Debt that was threatening to bankrupt Kushner’s family mysteriously disappeared overnight. It still boggles my mind that the House Dems didn’t want to dig into this. Apparently what they really wanted to do was pass a zillion pieces of legislation that the Senate would never look at.

  163. 163.

    jonas

    @Zelma:

    Trump may be too dumb to be anything but a tool.

    Pretty much. Former CIA agent John Sipher has a very detailed and (at the time — pre-Mueller report) prescient run-down of exactly how the Russians got inside and compromised TrumpWorld and, by extension, the GOP. Is Trump a Russian agent? As Sipher explains, Russians view intelligence assets differently than their US counterparts. Trump is what is classically referred to as a “useful idiot” — someone sympathetic to Russian interests who can be compromised or easily manipulated to disseminate Russian disinformation. Manafort may be a different story, however. He was in deep with the Ukrainian-Russian underworld and we still don’t entirely understand how he came to be hired by Trump in the first place, or why he was willing to work for free. He engaged in a lot more traditional passing-intelligence-to-a-handler kind of behavior (in this case, giving internal Trump polling data to Konstantin Kilimnik); he was desperate for money. Mueller was never able to get to the bottom of Manafort’s corruption due to all the obstruction and stonewalling he faced. Hopefully unraveling the Giulliani scheme in Ukraine will lead us back to whatever Manafort had been up to — and, ultimately, what Trump knew and when he knew it.

  165. 165.

    Matt McIrvin

    The more complicated this gets, the harder to understand it becomes and the easier it is to just ignore it or conclude that it’s a bunch of incomprehensible bullshit. It’s important to investigate all the threads but we need to maintain a coherent central story– that’s what distinguishes the Ukraine story from Mueller’s Russia investigation.

  167. 167.

    Taobhan

    Big thanks for the post, Adam, Wow, it connected a lot of dots for me – I had no idea of the full extent of the Russian mob penetration into the Trump mob and the GOP. I wonder how much of this information will eventually be explained to the American people. I think that the American people are fairly ignorant about and consequently disinterested in Russian or Ukraine affairs. But exposure about how these foreign entities burrowed so deeply into one of the two major Americans political parties could actually resonate with the public.

  168. 168.

    Jay C

    @Matt McIrvin:

    It’s important to investigate all the threads but we need to maintain a coherent central story– that’s what distinguishes the Ukraine story from Mueller’s Russia investigation.

    AFAICT, the more info that leaks out, the more it comes to look like the “Ukraine story” and “Mueller’s Russia investigation” are actually both parts of a single tale of corruption and high-stakes jockeying for influence on/control over Ukrainian energy resources.

    A tale whose “coherent central story” is that the President Of The United States – through a cabal of corrupt cronies – attempted to aid one side in that struggle by attempting to use withholding U.S. military assistance as a lever to get the Ukrainians to back said cronies in the energy business. And as an aside, “uncover” – or manufacture – “dirt” to be used against Trump’s political opponents. With Russia/Russian interests in back of the whole thing.

    Sounds coherent enough….

  169. 169.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Adam L Silverman: Be nice if whatever geenyuss photoshopped this could spell America’s Goombah’s last name correctly. I despise the clown as much as the rest of yinz, but it’s a continuing sore spot for paesani of all political persuasions how many medigani can’t be arsed to get our names right. /rantissimo.

    O/t: Go Gnats!

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