Part One – Russian News & Nikki Haley Pushes Back

Russian Scandal, Lawyer Juggling & Nikki Haley….

To open with, we just learned of breaking news on a DNC lawsuit: democratic-party-sues-russia-trump-campaign-and-wikileaks-alleging-conspiracy-influence-2016-electio. It was against the Trump campaign, Russia & WikiLeaks about their apparent conspiracy to disrupt the 2016 election. Some of the key players in the scandal were named individually. It’s a good move, calling attention to the current president refusing to protect the integrity of our elections, so somebody had better start doing it! It also further puts the spotlight on what looks to be collusion in altering the 2016 election results, a plot that appears to have succeeded! We’ll never know if the election was changed, but we must wait for Mueller to tell us about the collusion.

Even those among the GOP base who don’t yet believe the collusion, we would think by now even Trumpeters & echo-fans would be disgusted at least over the president’s obvious lies, appalling insults & deliberate divisiveness.  But like zombies blankly walking around & are only seeing their leader through rose-colored glasses, I’m not sure anything can break this mentality behind the cult of Trump.  Even if there’s eventually an indictment or reports against the prez showing conspiracy, obstruction of justice, blackmail, money laundering, bank fraud, wire fraud, campaign finance violations, intimidation of witnesses &/or possibly even treason, his loyal fans would still find a way to excuse him & blame the investigators.  That’s how adverse to the truth the Trump-echo base has become.  For Americans who haven’t been deceived or corrupted, we should take this attitude: bharara-we-owe-mueller-incalculable-thanks.

In other Trump news from the Related Articles below, we keep seeing outlandish smears & conspiracies against Rosenstein & Mueller by Trump, his political supporters & state-run echo: smearing-robert-mueller (also some articles on this in part 2 where some Freedom Caucus wackos even threatened Rosenstein with impeaching him).  The constant threats against the intelligence agencies by Trump cronies only to smear the Mueller probe, it’s as dangerous as it is self-serving when it shreds the very fabric of our democratic institutions, especially when it’s causing a sizable percentage of the conservative base to now falsely perceive these important agencies as corrupt & bias.  Trump & echo-world are willing to risk wrecking our constitutional democracy in order to take down an investigation, reasoning by uncovering the truth it could take down this presidency.  So those of us outside the echo-bubble remain on guard a firing of Rosenstein would be done only to derail the Mueller probe, sparking a constitutional crisis.

Check out what-matters-and-what-doesnt-in-the-russia-probe where Rubin offers a perspective.  The large glacier that’s visible above the surface to us in the public, it’s but a small fraction of what’s out-of-sight below the water, which is what Mueller knows.  We constantly get diversions & distractions coming from Trump & his echo.  One I’ve heard the echo ballyhoo in the last day are reports Rosenstein told Trump last week he wasn’t a target.  But recall last week Trump was fuming over the raid of Cohen’s office, & in his rage it was suspected he was ready to fire Rosenstein, even having Rosenstein himself bracing for it.  So Rosenstein met with Trump & no doubt wanted to calm him down.  The haul of Cohen’s records was based on info implicating Cohen in a criminal case, so the raid was not based on Trump directly.  But what they find will likely bring Trump into it.  There’s another report that came out from Mueller’s office, which they rarely say anything, but they cautioned some news reports about the probe’s findings were inaccurate.  That could mean either the media or the echo are off base, or both.  And again, it may have been a way to calm down Trump while he was going ballistic last week, before he started going crazy & firing people.  Nobody really knows what Mueller knows until we allow him to complete his work.

As we see from this excerpt in trumps-rage-at-mueller-is-increasingly-delusional-but-its-even-worse-than-that, the FBI must have had strong evidence against Cohen to get permission for that raid:

Conservative legal writer Andrew McCarthy, a skeptic of the Russia probe, has similarly argued that the very fact that prosecutors sought to raid a lawyer’s office suggests that they are examining potentially serious crimes, such as “conspiracy to commit fraud and extortion” to silence “potentially compromising sources” who were in a position to discuss Trump’s alleged affairs, which could implicate Trump himself. (As the New York Times noted, a warrant was granted to prosecutors working separately from Mueller to search for all documents relating to Cohen’s efforts to “suppress negative publicity ahead of the 2016 election.”)

In other news, we see Andrew McCabe is the subject of a criminal inquiry.  I smell a rat here, as I suspect certain people within the Justice Dept. loyal to Trump wanted to create a diversion for the Comey book tour.  The echo has dredged up all these accusations of bias within the DOJ/FBI, but with tens of thousands of employees with political opinions on both sides, I’m sure the bias runs both ways.  Ideally, we’d like all of our democratic institutions to not be politicized, but we’re dealing with human nature here.  But I continue to view these repeated attacks on McCabe as a cheap shot, & for some reason Trump seemed obsessed with him: mccabe-to-sue-trump-admin-for-defamation-wrongful-termination.

This excerpt is the beginning to the article is-this-the-endgame-stage-for-trump-or-just-a-trainwreck, & to read their four projected scenarios how the Mueller probe provides an endgame for this presidency, you’d need to read the whole article:

The next time you walk out to your car, or head down the street to the subway, or cross the parking lot on your way to the grocery store, look up and squint your eyes, and you’ll be able to see the end of the Trump presidency. It’s still a moving target, kept out of reach and out of focus by Trump’s chaotic daily delivery of distractions and dissembling, but it’s out there, and at this point it’s coming toward us, rather than headed in the other direction. The impending doom is all Trump’s fault, of course. The first mistake he made was running for the office. The second was winning. The third was thinking that being president would be just like running his business in New York. (“I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly. There’s never been a case like this,” Trump told The New York Times soon after he won the election.) The fourth was believing he could protect himself from the law because he thought as president, he would control the FBI and the Department of Justice.

In other links, there are plenty saying Cohen could likely flip on Trump: signs-michael-cohen-will-flip-on-president-trump.  We see as Trump frets over the legal dangers present for him in the Cohen case (trump-reportedly-worried-in-dark-moods-over-michael-cohen), we also see this curious choice for his new lawyer (rudy-giuliani-trump-lawyer-mueller).  Yes, that Rudy, the one we thought had disappeared from sight over his own apparent involvement in the Russian collusion.  Manafort is also never far from the news, like this report manafort-suspected-serving-back-channel, where he may have served as Trump’s backchannel to Russia, after which Cohen may have assumed that same role.

In international news, we can only hope Mike Pompeo meeting with Kim Jong-un is a good sign: trumps-cia-chief-in-secret-meeting-with-north-korean-leader-u-s-officials, although the timing smells of politicizing this top secret meeting to help get Pompeo confirmed for Secretary of State.  Perhaps as much as the Mueller findings, the success or failure over talks to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula could make or break his presidency.  We have no idea yet whether Jong-un is sincere, or is it a trick.  If they really meet in a month or so, we’ll likely find out.  Also be aware his father had a deal with President Clinton, only to wind up cheating.

Trump keeps saying nobody’s been tougher on Russia than him.  In the same week, he gets irate when his U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley announces new sanctions on Russia, which he quickly rescinds.  That logic would be like the Cleveland Browns coach announcing nobody’s been tougher on the NFL than his football team, while they’ve won a total of one game the last two years.  When Larry Kudlow tried to throw Nikki Haley under the bus by calling her confused over the new Russian sanctions, she forcefully pushed back by emphasizing she does not get confused: nikki-haley-hits-harder-emerges-stronger-for-oval-office-run.  That spat only elevates her profile.  With the #MeToo movement & Trump repelling so many women voters, America seems about ready to elect a woman.  A 2020 possible match-up of candidates like Kamala Harris vs. Nikki Haley could be intriguing.

Also, see some interesting articles in the final 3 groups of links. There’s one section where we have a sketch of the thug who threatened Stormy, & a settlement is now allowing the ex-Playboy model McDougal to talk. Then we see sections of links accurately depicting Trump’s shady business practices (including this weird story trump-lied-to-me-about-his-wealth-to-get-onto-the-forbes-400-here-are-the-tapes), & finally in the final group where we again see Trump corrupts all around him.  Please spread the word by sharing The Voracs, since reviving America will take a much more highly-informed voter base, refuting all the falsehoods, distortions & conspiracies regularly coming from Trump-echo world.