Following the Money….
We’ve just had a more active few days on the Russian scandal, which I’ll comment on & provide numerous links in the related articles below. Before we explore the new evidence on following the money, Mueller did issue a grand jury subpoena for Bannon, which instead was negotiated into an interview in front of Mueller coming soon. This follows a congressional interview which basically turned into an antagonistic evasion. The problem with the congressional hearings is that the GOP reps are running interference for the witnesses (& for Trump), while those being questioned can’t be compelled to answer so it becomes a game of dodgeball. That’s certainly what we heard about Bannon’s testimony, where he refused to answer any questions about his time during the transition or in the White House, which was enough to immediately earn him a subpoena from the House Intel Committee. He & his lawyer claimed the White House told Bannon not to squeal, while they actually called the White House during the session for instructions, which even irritated GOP reps. Reports are Trump personally called the shots to restrict Bannon’s testimony. But Bannon did say enough to admit he had discussions with top staff members about the infamous Trump Tower meeting in June 2016. The heart of what we know about possible collusion largely stems from that meeting. That is a hornet’s nest Mueller will certainly want to learn more about.
It’s hard, if not impossible, for congressional committees to bring out the facts when they have no teeth to compel witnesses to answer all their questions. But what this whammy of a double-subpoena suggests is Bannon does know stuff the investigators want to know. With the quotes inside the Fire & Fury book, he did allude to money laundering & used the word treasonous to describe that Trump Tower meeting, while also speculating Trump knew of the meeting as it was happening. As for the White House, putting a gag order on Bannon for the interview in front of a congressional committee is basically an admission there’s something to hide, so they don’t want the facts coming out. We’ve also found out Lewandowski has a similar aversion to answering questions, with Hope Hicks bowing out of her scheduled congressional testimony perhaps due to the White House looking to muzzle her too. With the White House pulling the strings on restricting witness testimony on the Hill, that could be construed as yet another form of obstruction. They can’t even hide anymore the fact they’re engaged in a full-scale cover-up.
That same kind of silence won’t fly in front of Mueller, & executive privilege won’t apply in that interview, so the word is Bannon will cooperate in Mueller’s interview. It’s very possible Mueller actually prefers Bannon not say much to congressional committees, so Trump’s stooges in the GOP won’t find out what Bannon knows. From his perch where Bannon was a close insider, he could see lots of what was going on & should help provide plenty of new information, which the Mueller team can match up with the reams of evidence already collected. We’ve also gotten word Flynn & Papadopoulos are fully cooperating with Mueller (plus who knows who else), so although we’re not hearing about it since the Mueller team is disciplined not to leak, there must be a treasure cove of juicy revelations coming together as the pieces to that jigsaw puzzle are being put in place. It will be fascinating at whatever point the media & public learn of all the compelling details. I predict the nation will be shocked when the facts do come out, as it will produce turmoil along the partisan divides throughout the nation, but we can anticipate our constitutional laws will require drastic actions be taken. Expect earthshaking drama & rocky times for America coming up sometime this year, but we’ll have to get through it & hope we come out better for it on the other end.
I’m becoming more convinced Trump’s constant attacks on the media & intelligence agencies, along with his policies & rhetoric strictly designed to keep his base on his side, may be a calculation the White House knows Mueller is digging up strong enough evidence of criminal wrongdoing to take him down, which his relevancy in a post-presidency life is dependent on keeping that fan base happy. That would extend towards carrying on his core businesses where his branding is so important, plus any far-right media empire he may be inclined to initiate. Much like the way Trump said during the campaign if he’d shoot someone on 5th Avenue, his supporters wouldn’t leave him, so the same might be said of obstruction, money laundering, conspiracy &/or treason. He may soon need them as loyal customers & possibly even as a Get Out Of Jail Free card. So if the evidence comes out here in 2018 in the way I believe all signs are pointing to, maybe Trump can negotiate himself out of the big house, but he’ll also be out of the White House.
In more than 150 pages of testimony released by the House Intelligence Committee on Thursday, Glenn Simpson, the co-founder of the firm behind the so-called “Steele dossier,” alleged a constellation of business deals that he said suggested the Russians could be laundering money through then-candidate Donald Trump.
Getting into more specifics, I patched together these details in the next 2 paragraphs from the link fusion-gps-kremlin-purge-
Simpson said he also saw a pattern of unusual business deals involving Trump properties, especially projects in Panama and Toronto; both projects drew investment of Russian mobsters in a way that “smacks of fraud.” Simpson specifically pointed to Irish and Scottish Trump golf courses as possible thoroughfares for Russian funds. Simpson explained that the Trump-owned golf-courses in Ireland and Scotland have financial statements that “don’t, on their face, show Russian involvement, but what they do show is enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources […].” He elaborated that these payments amount to “hundreds of millions of dollars.” Simpson described how this was particularly suspect, considering that golf courses as “sinks” that “don’t actually make any money.”
“I think we saw patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering,” he said. One person Simpson mentioned was an accused Russian organized crime figure named Alimzhan Tokhtakhunov, known as “Taiwanchik.” He allegedly ran organized crime network out of Trump Tower, as ABC News detailed, and is currently on the lam. “[I]t gradually reached a point where it seemed like most of the people around Trump had a connection to Russian organized crime or Russia in one way or another,” Simpson said. But one of Simpson’s most dramatic revelations was that the Kremlin used the publication of his firm’s dossier—which contains salacious and unsubstantiated allegations about Trump—as a pretext for a spate of arrests and killings, Simpson said. He also said some of those people who were purged may have been sources for the American intelligence community.
In the other news articles seen below, Gallup polling has just released stats showing a huge drop in the world’s perception of U.S. leadership. We are literally frittering away our international status & reputation. We’re now helping make China the world’s leader economically & otherwise. Such diplomatic damage could be irreparable & permanent. The next group of links involve hush money used to pay off a porn star so her story didn’t come out a month before the election. In normal times with a normal presidency, this would be a huge scandal, but our current prez has somehow normalized deviancy. And it seems likely based on reports many others were also paid off. With these new revelations of Trump’s sexual debauchery, it makes the pee tape with Russian prostitutes mentioned in the British dossier seem that much more plausible. Here is a 2-paragraph clip I pulled from the article how-trump-convinced-
The simple explanation for why the Stormy Daniels story — and I repeat, President Trump paid a porn star $130,000 in hush money to cover up an extramarital affair — isn’t the subject of screaming headlines and round-the-clock cable news attention is that there are 10 other insane stories going on at the same time. This administration is such a chamber of horrors that neither the media nor the public can possibly follow every potential scandal, and since nobody’s all that surprised that Trump was shtupping a porn star or that he paid her off, it isn’t worth talking about.
But there’s another explanation, one that gets deeper into the way Trump has twisted and degraded our entire national debate: President Trump is such a horrifying human being that he has ironically made it harder for us to draw the right connections between presidential character on the one hand, and leadership and policy on the other. Never has character mattered more, and yet at times we’re almost blinded by the utter madness and chaos emitting from the White House on any given day.
On the group of links where Dems hope for a wave, signs are pointing in that direction as a Dem just won another GOP district, this time in Wisconsin. The extent of the wave will be influenced to a great degree on Trump’s status from the scandal come November, plus the state of the economy. The links wrap up at the bottom with a group of articles on more of Trump’s incompetent failings & then his dismal poll numbers, where it was just revealed more than half of Americans strongly disapprove of Trump. A USA Today article discusses the carnage he has wrought, from America’s reputation, to rule of law, & competence in government, plus race relations, it’s a real train wreck in so many ways. In Rubin’s Right Turn article on dementia-cannot-explain-what-i
We could go on, but you get the point. We now return to the central dilemma of the moment: what we do when a president is manifestly unfit and his own party controls both houses but refuses to hold him accountable for his words and actions. The answer is, as it has always been, twofold. First, voters must change the majorities in one or both houses. Second, if there is a basis for impeachment — which I believe exists now — Democrats and Republicans can take the action set forth in the Constitution. The first is easy, the second manifestly more difficult.
Another huge news week! Particularly the updates on the scandal look more damning than ever. Following the money towards possible Trump money laundering could expose the facts of this whole Russian scandal. The more we learn, the worse it looks for the prez. Once again there are lots of important/relevant news articles below to peruse. A half-hour spent here is dramatically more informative than the evening news, & infinitely more factual than anything found on Fox fake-news (certainly their delusional early morning & evening shows).
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