Author Archives: oinsketta

There will be those who will try to refute this

The more I think about the coalition of conservatives who formed the Lincoln Project , their political views, the efforts they’ve made in the past to bring something like this about (Trump was an unintended consequence for them, though predictable) the less I like this group — though I respect that they’re trying to atone for bringing the nation to the brink of totalitarianism. And, as their type always has, they make very powerful political ads.

This hard-hitting spot is not going to sit well with the pro-evil forces, I can tell you for sure. It can be refuted only by calling all reports of federal action and inaction in a pandemic, all death and infection numbers, all comparisons to other nations, all reports about political calculation by the most nakedly “transactional” administration in history, all “news”, the product of vicious, lying partisans intent on destroying the greatest genius that has ever led a nation in the history of the world.

It’s perhaps worth noting that the teenaged daughter of Kellyanne and George Conway, Kellyanne perhaps the loyalest and most savage of Trump defenders, he of the Lincoln Project– and a man who holds that Trump suffers from an extreme and malignant form of narcissistic personality disorder — effectively forced both of her parents out of politics for the foreseeable future. The fifteen year-old “influencer” announced her intention to “emancipate” herself, to get out of the madhouse she’s been growing up in. Kellyanne and George both publicly agreed to a public ceasefire, Kellyanne announcing that she’s stepping down as Trump’s loudest mouthpiece, George stepping away from the Lincoln Project.

May the most malignant conspiracy theory… not win.

A Few More Thoughts About Time

When I got the call from my sister, during a festive meal at the home of old friends, that my father had been admitted to the hospital after being brought to the emergency room, time changed.   

“When I saw the doctor’s face I knew this was it,” my sister told me, “he looked like the malach ha mavet (Angel of Death).”  The specialists my father had been seeing regularly — cardiologist, endocrinologist, hematologist — collectively had no clue that their patient was in the last stage of liver cancer, days from death.    The ER doctor, assessing my father’s jaundiced color, difficulty moving and tapping his stomach, distended with ascites (liver-related fluid build up in the abdomen) [1] knew at once that this man was in the last days of liver cancer.

Two doctors were at the dinner table when I got the news.  When I mentioned the ascites they both told me not to worry, that ascites can be from many things [2], that I should wait and talk to the doctors at the hospital.  I consider their reassuring lies to have been a kindness, under the circumstances, and always think of their unspoken, united determination to shield me from extra worry with great fondness.

“If you have any family who want to see him before he goes, you should call them right away,” the ER doctor told my sister.

A couple of days later I arrived in Florida.   My father was attached to a bag hanging off the side of the hospital bed.  The bag was filling with the most unhealthy looking liquid I’ve ever seen.   It was the color of cancer.  It dripped away, along with what was left of his life, for the three or four days I was in Florida before my father breathed his last breath.

My father was eager to see his little brother, a man he had always bullied and dismissed.   Once, late in his life, when my father was returning from a short visit to his brother I asked him how my uncle was doing.   My father paused for a few seconds to reflect then uttered this great line:  “let’s just say, he remains unchanged.”   At the end my father was anxious for his brother to be there and his brother rushed to Florida.

I went to pick my uncle up at Ft. Lauderdale airport.   When we got to the hospital he immediately stopped the doctor, who’d met us in the hall to update us about the patient’s condition, to ask if there was any chance of a liver transplant for his dying 80 year-old brother.   I had to take my uncle by the arm to let the uncomfortable doctor get away.  The way the two brothers clung to each other at the end was poignant to see.

My uncle was a bossy man and he instructed us all, at around nine pm, that it was time to let the dying man rest.   For some reason we all left the hospital.  I even attempted to get to sleep, hours before my natural bedtime, which is around four a.m.    Suddenly I sat up, thinking “what the fuck?,” got in the car and headed back to the hospital.   

My father, who’d told me earlier in the day that he wanted to talk to me, that he was still assembling his thoughts, was wide awake when I arrived around one a.m.   He appeared to be expecting me.  I’d always had an adversarial relationship with my father, one I’d tried many times to improve, but my father was so deeply, fundamentally wounded that meaningful peace with him was pretty much out of the question.   

I’m a fairly creative person, with an active imagination, and, once I left my parents’ house, I’d tried everything I could imagine over the years to make peace with my old man.  In the end, when he angrily told me that if he ever told me what he really felt about me it would do “irreparable harm” to our relationship, I saw that his desperation was too great for him to overcome.   He would “win” by destroying what was left of our ability to discuss things beyond the weather, baseball, history and politics.   I stopped banging my head against the locked door at that point.

I am writing about time.   Two years passed from that final slamming of the vault on any hope for real dialogue with my father.  Nobody knows from one minute to the next how long the rest of their life will be.  I can measure it now:  two years elapsed from the time I became certain that no true peace with my father was possible.   

During those years I was in psychotherapy, and I finally reached a point where I was able to understand that my father was incapable of doing any better; that he was actually, sad as it was, doing the best he could.  Knowing this allowed me to let go of a lot of the anger I had toward him.   

Luckily, I had this revelation a few months before I got that call from my sister than our father was not long for this world.  I was ready, in a sense, in a way I couldn’t have been holding on to the pain and anger my father’s righteous prosecutorial rage inspired in me.

Now, on April 29, 2005,  it is after one a.m. on what would turn out to be the last night of my father’s life.   The first question he asked is if I’d brought the digital recorder I’d bought for him earlier in the day.   I’d left it with the nurse, got it, turned it on, propped it on his chest.   

The next thing he said was that his life was basically over by the time he was two.   He didn’t mention why, it was something I already knew (though not from him) — his angry, religious mother had whipped him in the face from the time he could stand.   Add to that “grinding poverty” and turning five as The Depression began, being the poorest of the poor in a small town as everyone in your family back in Europe is being rounded up and killed, you begin to get the picture.   Betrayal by a mother, shame and humiliation are not easily overcome.   I can’t imagine the struggle my father had, to appear strong, infallible, while making only glancing references to the “demons” we all must deal with.

Because I was no longer that angry, because my father was dying, I knew my purpose in that room was to make his death as easy as it could be.   I was not there to challenge him, I was there to comfort him.  I understood without needing to think about it that these moments were not about me, they were about him.

When he apologized for putting obstacles in front of my sister and me, making our lives harder instead of helping us in times of need as a loving father should, I told him he’d done the best he could.   

When he told me he’d felt me reaching out many times over the years, I nodded, thankful to hear him finally acknowledge it.   He lamented that he’d been too fucked up and defensive for us to have this kind of conversation fifteen years ago.   

At the time the number seemed off to me — thirty years of war, fifteen of peace?   Later I realized that fifteen days, or even fifteen hours, of this kind of honesty would have been an amazing blessing.

We spoke quietly for several hours, the door to my father’s hospital room open, everyone else on the floor asleep.   The nurse, an angel in human form, sat outside the room.    The look of love she gave me when I left I will never forget.

Early next evening, as the sun was beginning to set, my father told my sister, my uncle and my mother that since I’d arrived it was a good time for them to take a break, go to the cafeteria and get something to eat. 

As soon as they were gone my father said to me “I don’t know how to do this.”   I assured him that nobody did, that it would be fine.   The nurse helped take down the bar on one side of the bed so I could sit closer to my father.  I don’t remember if I had my hand on him, or arm around him, or anything like that, but I sat close by.   

His breathing got shallower and shallower, death from liver cancer is supposed to be one of the gentler ways to go.   After the liver goes, the kidneys shut down and you go to sleep, only forever.   

A friend later told me the Talmud poetically compares the moment of death to removing a hair from a glass of milk.  It is an excellent description in the case of death from liver cancer.

Within twenty minutes or so my father took his last breath.   I reached over and closed his dead eyes with the fingers of one hand, like I’d done it a thousand times.

[1] A 0.66 second search reveals: 

Ascites is when over 25 milliliters of fluid fills the space between the abdominal lining and the organs. It’s usually caused by cirrhosis.

[2]  It turns out they were misleading me, not lying:

But the most dangerous problem associated with ascites is infection, which can be life-threatening. Ascites may go away with a low salt diet, and with diuretics (water pills) ordered by your provider.

Worthwhile investigations take time

I heard two award winning investigative reporters say that time is the single most important aspect of doing a full investigation into anything.   If you have the time to follow every lead, and go where that lead takes you, you will discover things that are impossible to learn if you’re working under a deadline.   To perfect any difficult thing, there is no substitute for time.   Robert Caro, the great biographer and historian, famously sometimes takes a year or longer to dig for the truth about a single disputed fact that troubles him.

Let’s take a moment to consider the gift of time itself, the single greatest gift we have, until we don’t have it any more.  Brother David Steindl-Rast gives a beautiful meditation on gratefulness for the gift of time and our ability to appreciate the wonders our senses provide us, if we take a few moments every day to pay attention.   He speaks midway through this beautifully illustrated TED talk by visionary nature photographer Louie Schwartzberg.   Well worth ten minutes to watch in its entirety, the monk’s inspirational short speech is cued up HERE (if you’re in a hurry).

 

 

Back to investigations, my own leisurely dive into my father’s life is a perfect example of the benefit of spending as much time as needed to gather something worthwhile.  Without any time limit, I carefully wrote out everything I know or could imagine about my father’s life.  I constructed this tricky puzzle, with many key pieces missing, in a darkened room, free from any thought that I had to rush.  In the end, after more than two years of doing this daily, I am finally able to truly understand my father’s motivations — in a way that was impossible for me to grasp as I was working toward it.   I don’t agree with every position he took, but I feel like I completely understand why he took each one.  That empathetic view was unimaginable to me as I was working over the sketchy puzzle in the dimness.

A long, thoughtful investigation will always be more fruitful than one done in a hurry.   We tend to miss details when we rush.  Sometimes these details can be very important.   The gift of time can cut both ways, as when it is extended or contracted for an unscrupulous purpose.

If, for example, A.G. Bill Barr empowers a federal prosecutor to launch a limitless, global exploration into the detailed investigation into Mr. Trump and associates that he calls “a travesty” based on the “flimsiest” of evidence, embarked on after illegal “spying” — after enough time and resources are invested something will likely be turned up about some irregularity or impropriety.    Something concrete to support Barr’s politically handy theory of partisan “presidential harassment” and baseless “spying” on a president who (in spite of massive proof to the contrary) took no help from Russia or anyone else.

As it turned out, in the case of “Russiagate,” there was incorrect information on two of the four original FISA warrants that began the surveillance and investigation into the Trump campaign’s coordination with Russian state actors who were later shown to have meddled directly in all fifty US states on behalf of Mr. Trump.  False information, perhaps a dozen instances of it, in at least two applications for the FISA warrants to wiretap Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page [1]. 

After enough digging by a team of prosecutors and investigators, a malefactor was found, an FBI lawyer who left out that Page had been an informant for the CIA at one time.    A smoking gun!    As announced a few days ago, this now unmasked traitor (who claims the mistake was inadvertent, not part of a Deep State coup d’etat against a duly elected American president) is going to plead guilty for this deliberate misstatement on an application for the original FISA warrant that got operation Crossfire Hurricane up and running.   

I’d always thought the standard of proof for a FISA warrant to be approved was fairly low.  I’d understood that something like 99% of them were approved by the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court.  Though 99% of them are granted, based on probable cause to reasonably suspect a national security threat, the standard of proof to submit a warrant is higher than I supposed.   Here is an article extensively quoting an FBI insider’s description of how high the bar for a FISA warrant actually is.

That said, the DOJ’s own Inspector General, like the DOJ’s Special Counsel Mueller before him, and the Republican majority Senate Intel Committee since [2], determined that there was adequate legal predicate for the investigation of what is now known to be widespread, high level cooperation between the Trump campaign and Russia, an investigation that resulted in numerous prosecutions and guilty pleas.   The DOJ’s IG pointed out the errors and omissions in the paperwork to get the FISA warrant and concluded that ambiguities in FBI and DOJ policy need to be tightened up.   He also made a referral for prosecution, which was not publicized much at the time.

It turns out the FBI lawyer was referred for prosecution by DOJ Inspector General Horowitz, not by the Barr/Durham criminal investigation [3].   But that is not for lack of effort by Barr/Durham who are determined to have some dramatic criminal indictments for an October Surprise to help their candidate.

With enough time and effort, a dogged team of investigators can usually turn up some kind of wrongdoing, about something.  If not Whitewater, for example, incriminating, irrefutable DNA on a blue dress.   Contrast this kind of thorough long-game investigation with one conducted under a tight deadline.

The tight negotiated deadline in the FBI’s five-day investigation into the sexual impropriety charge against Brett Kavanaugh is an example of a  investigation starved for time to investigate.   Even within that tight time frame, if the intent had been to verify or dismiss the allegation against the judge, the FBI could easily have learned if there was a house among that small circle of people at the gathering nobody specifically recalled (except for the girl who was traumatized) that fit the description the witness gave.   You walk up the stairs, bathroom on the left, bedroom directly across.   Who owned the home during the summer in question?   Did the parents work late every day?   Were they in town during the month the event nobody remembered took place? 

The answers to those relatively straight-forward questions make it more likely than not that one or the other was telling the truth, based on a now verified (or not) recollection of place.  Confirm the place, confirm the time frame, re-interview everyone there with this new information, other leads emerge, in time.

Of course, some investigations are merely for show, to demonstrate a willingness to investigate the truth or falsity of the statements of those involved, even if, as in the case of the Kavanaugh/Blasey Ford controversy, the FBI spoke to neither Kavanaugh nor Blasey Ford, nor Kavanaugh’s high school best friend, who was allegedly also in the room, also drunk, laughing uproariously and finally throwing himself on top of the two teenagers struggling on the bed, allowing one to escape.

Time, the only gift any of us cannot do without.

 

[1]  Wikipedia

Carter William Page (born June 3, 1971) is an American petroleum industry consultant and a former foreign-policy adviser to Donald Trump during his 2016 presidential election campaign.[1] Page is the founder and managing partner of Global Energy Capital, a one-man investment fund and consulting firm specializing in the Russian and Central Asian oil and gas business.[2][3][4]

[2]  Wikipedia:

The Republican-controlled Committee released its final report on 2016 Russian election interference in August 2020, finding that despite problems with the FISA warrant requests used to surveil him, the FBI was justified in its counterintelligence concerns about Page. The Committee found Page evasive and his “responses to basic questions were meandering, avoidant and involved several long diversions.” The Committee found that although Page’s role in the campaign was insignificant, Russia may have thought he was more important than he actually was.[101]

[3] Wikipedia 

Horowitz did fault the FBI for overreaching and mistakes during the investigation. These included failing to disclose when applying for a FISA warrant to surveil Page in October 2016 that he had provided the Central Intelligence Agency details of his prior contacts with Russian officials, including the incident the FBI indicated made Page’s conduct most suspicious.[84] In addition, Horowitz found that Kevin Clinesmith, an attorney in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Office of General Counsel (OGC), intentionally altered an interagency email to exclude from the FISA warrant application that Page was a CIA source from 2008 to 2013.[84][92] According to the Horowitz Report, if the FISA court judges had been informed of Page’s CIA relationship, his conduct might have seemed less suspicious, although the Report did not speculate on “whether the correction of any particular misstatement or omission, or some combination thereof, would have resulted in a different outcome.”[84][93] Horowitz referred Clinesmith to prosecutors for potential criminal charges.[94] On August 14, 2020, Clinesmith pleaded guilty to a felony for making a false statement by altering the email.[95][96]

Horowitz attributed the warrant problems to “gross incompetence and negligence” rather than intentional malfeasance or political bias.[97] In a December 10, 2019, interview on Hannity, Page indicated that he had retained attorneys to review the Horowitz Report and determine whether he has grounds to sue.[98]

In December 2019, the Justice Department secretly notified the FISA court that in at least two of the 2017 warrant renewal requests “there was insufficient predication to establish probable cause” to believe Page was acting as a Russian agent.[99]

In a subsequent analysis of 29 unrelated FISA warrant requests, Horowitz found numerous typographical errors but just two material errors, which were determined not to impact the justifications for the resulting surveillance.[100]

Update on Trump 2020-RNC filing of evidence of vote-by-mail fraud!

In granting a motion in the case Trump 2020 and the RNC brought to restrict alternatives to live, in-person voting in Pennsylvania, Judge Ranjan ordered Trump’s lawyers to submit evidence of mail-in voting fraud or admit that it has no evidence.    Never ones to be put in a corner, or back down, or admit their claim was based on nothing but a desire to win at any cost, the Trump campaign chose a third option:   they submitted 524 pages of what purported to be evidence of fraud. 

Did they offer any actual evidence that allowing voters to submit mail-in ballots at drop boxes (to get around Trump mega-donor Louis DeJoy’s multi-pronged slowdown of US Postal Service mail delivery): “provides fraudsters an easy opportunity to engage in ballot harvesting, manipulate or destroy ballots, manufacture duplicitous votes, and sow chaos.”???

No.

Did they admit that they had no proof?

No.

524 pages, your honor, some of it redacted.   Read it and weep, chumps.  One of the parties in the lawsuit had this comment after reading it all.

“Not only did the campaign fail to provide evidence that voter fraud was a widespread problem in Pennsylvania, they failed to provide any evidence that any misconduct occurred in the primary election or that so-called voter fraud is any sort of regular problem in Pennsylvania,” said Suzanne Almeida, interim director of Common Cause PA, one of the parties in the lawsuit. The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment for this story.

source

Beautiful NY Times nuance in arguable Trump perjury

You have to admire a newspaper that can report that Senate Republicans “rejected” Trump’s claim (under oath) that he did not recall talking to Roger Stone about the perfectly timed release of hacked DNC emails, while fairly pointing out that the Senate Intel Committee report did not state that Trump was lying.   They rejected his claim, yet didn’t claim he was lying, though they rejected the truth of what he submitted under oath.

A neat display of lawyerly Republican contortions and a nice bit of New York Times journalism, in an article that notes Trump and Stone spoke by phone at least 39 times (that are known) from March to November 2016, and that they spoke (on a Trump assistant’s phone, as the careful conspirators often did, for deniability) on the eve of the disclosure of hacked emails that was timed to knock the “you can grab ’em by the pussy” tape off of the news.

Let’s have a look at this neat bit of journalistic fairness:

The Republican-led committee rejected Mr. Trump’s statement to prosecutors investigating Russia’s interference that he did not recall conversations with his longtime friend Roger J. Stone Jr. about the emails, which were later released by WikiLeaks.

Senators leveled a blunt assessment: “Despite Trump’s recollection, the committee assesses that Trump did, in fact, speak with Stone about WikiLeaks and with members of his campaign about Stone’s access to WikiLeaks on multiple occasions.”

The senators did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying in their report, released on Tuesday, the fifth and final volume from a three-year investigation that laid out extensive contacts between Trump advisers and Russians.

source

Beautiful, no?   They rejected Trump’s claim under oath that he didn’t recall ever talking to Stone about the WikiLeaks dump, yet… they did not accuse Mr. Trump of lying.   

Both fair and balanced. 

Meanwhile, no Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee will talk to the New York Times.   You can’t blame them.  As Mr. Barr told Representative Swalwell in reply to his question about whether he was investigating Mr. Trump for commuting the sentence of Mr. Stone, who bragged about dummying up for Mr. Trump and not turning rat, “why should I?”

As for convicted perjurer Roger Stone, he dismissed the whole thing as a fabrication based on the sworn testimony of two fucking liars, two stinkin’ rats.

In fairness to the Grey Lady, the editorial board did publish this today, entitled The Trump Campaign Accepted Russian Help to Win in 2016.  Case Closed:

A bipartisan report released Tuesday by the Republican-controlled Senate Intelligence Committee cuts through the chaff. The simplicity of the scheme has always been staring us in the face: Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign sought and maintained close contacts with Russian government officials who were helping him get elected. The Trump campaign accepted their offers of help. The campaign secretly provided Russian officials with key polling data. The campaign coordinated the timing of the release of stolen information to hurt Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

The editorial board takes a paragraph or two to debunk the narrative being spun by AG Barr that “Russiagate” was a transparent partisan attempt to persecute the president.   Then:

The committee documented that, on Oct. 7, 2016, Mr. Stone received advance notice of the impending release of the “Access Hollywood” tape, in which Mr. Trump brags about sexually assaulting women. In response, Mr. Stone made at least two phone calls arranging for WikiLeaks to release stolen internal emails from the Democratic National Committee.

it concludes:

There’s no way to sugarcoat it. In less than three months, the American people could re-elect a man who received a foreign government’s help to win one election and has shown neither remorse nor reservations about doing so again.

Case closed, voters?   Or, a second Civil War against the angry, violent hoards who hate the white Christian values typified by great men like Donald Trump, William Barr, Mike Pompeo, Mike Pence and Michael Flynn?

 

Blood libel 2020 style

In recent centuries, whenever angry European peasants and other low paid workers, their masters’ foot on their necks, needed a reason to riot and rape and kill Jews in springtime, the Blood Libel was a handy rationale.   The idea was simple:  Jews kidnapped and killed young Christian children around Easter time because they needed young Christian  blood to make matzoh for Passover.

Matzoh, a crisp, very thin flatbread, is made of flour and water.   Of course we don’t list the secret ingredient, Christian child blood, on the box!  Proves the cunning of my accursed race, does it not?   There you go.

We have a similar conspiracy theory afoot in the United States at the moment.   QAnon believers are convinced, by a secret soothsayer named Q, that the “Democrat” party is run by a cabal of pedophiles who kidnap and traffic young children for sex and then kill and eat them.   These evil perverts seek something in the children’s blood, apparently to give them superpowers or something.

Naturally, when asked about this conspiracy theory point blank, a theory that many of the president’s most ardent supporters take as gospel, Mr. Trump had a nonchalant reply.    From the Grey Skank:

When told by a reporter about the central premise of the QAnon theory — a belief that Mr. Trump is saving the world from a satanic cult made up of pedophiles and cannibals connected to Democratic Party figures, so-called deep-state actors and Hollywood celebrities — Mr. Trump did not question the validity of the movement or the truth of those claims.
 

Instead, he offered his help.

“Is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?” the president said lightly, responding to a reporter who asked if he could support that theory. “If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there.”

Mr. Trump’s cavalier response was a remarkable public expression of support for conspiracy theorists who have operated in the darkest corners of the internet and have at times been charged with domestic terrorism and planned kidnapping.

In normal times, this would be very alarming.   But these are not normal times.   

I’m more interested in what unreported tissue of bullshit the president’s army of lawyers presented to Judge Ranjan in the Federal District of Western Pennsylvania almost a week ago.   You will recall they were ordered by the Trump-appointed judge to present evidence of mail-in voter fraud, or admit they have none, by close of business Friday, August 14.   Since then: crickets.

Of course, whatever that legal filing might or might not contain, or whatever its implications, it pales next to the horrific specter of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris gleefully sodomizing terrified white children and then drinking their blood.   You know what I’m sayin’?   

Paul Manafort — the spy who did not “collude”

“According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik [Russian intelligence officer] on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.” 

source

Paul Manafort, former Trump campaign manager, a man fond of expensive jackets made out of things like ostrich, was a founding partner, with self-proclaimed “political dirty trickster” Roger Stone, of the longtime DC lobbying/campaigning firm Black, Manafort and Stone.   They were pioneers in campaigning for national elections (starting with Ronald Reagan’s presidential run) and then profiting as lobbyists by providing paid access to their candidates once in office.

Manafort later made millions grooming and helping Kremlin-backed Ukrainian politician Viktor F. Yanukovych become president of Ukraine.  Yanukovych’s successful presidential run, orchestrated by Manafort, was backed by pro-Russian Ukrainian oligarchs, as well as at least one Russian oligarch, Oleg V. Deripaska.   Would-be strongman Yanukovych was forced out of office for corruption and abuses of power by a popular uprising in 2014 and fled to Russia. 

Manafort felt he’d been stiffed out of millions in fees that were owed to him for his tireless efforts on behalf of Yanukovych and his pro-Putin backers.  The billionaire Deripaska believed Manafort owed him a small fortune on a business deal gone bad.   Manafort, needing money, volunteered to head Trump’s presidential campaign, working without a fee, for the promise of a big payday from his wealthy longtime associates in Russia and Ukraine.   

In the course of his work for the Trump campaign Manafort met with, communicated secretly with, and gave detailed, strategic voter and campaign information to, a Russian intelligence officer named Konstantin V. Kilimnik.   Manafort did this important but illegal work, with agents of a foreign adversary, to get his client Mr. Trump elected secretly, like a spy.   Thus concludes the Rubio-Cotton Report, volume five, released by the Senate Intel Committee yesterday.   The report Marco Rubio spins as proving once and for all that there was “no collusion” between the Trump campaign and Russian intelligence.

Stone and Manafort are both convicted felons who lied under oath to the Mueller investigators, but the extent of Manafort’s direct ties to Putin’s intelligence service was revealed yesterday for the first time by the Senate report.

The following is from the New York Times article outlining what was revealed about Manafort’s extensive ties to, and communications with, a close longtime associate, Russian intelligence officer Konstantin Kilimnik. 

The report portrayed Mr. Manafort as deeply compromised by years of business dealings with those oligarchs. Collectively, they had paid him tens of millions of dollars, lent him millions more and may also have owed him millions.

These complex financial entanglements apparently figured in Mr. Manafort’s decision to give Mr. Kilimnik inside campaign information, including confidential polling data and details of Mr. Trump’s campaign strategy. The report builds on other evidence suggesting that Mr. Manafort hoped that Mr. Kilimnik would open up lucrative business deals with the oligarchs in return or that they would consider the value of the information as its own form of payment.

and:

The report said Mr. Kilimnik was Mr. Manafort’s link to Oleg V. Deripaska, a Russian oligarch who is close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and has acted “as a proxy for the Russian state and intelligence services” since at least 2004, when Mr. Manafort apparently met him.

Mr. Deripaska, who has worked to install pro-Kremlin governments around the globe, initially hired Mr. Manafort as a political consultant, the report said. A group of pro-Russia oligarchs in Ukraine later became the financiers of Mr. Manafort’s operations to help Viktor F. Yanukovych, a politician aligned with Russia, become Ukraine’s president.

Mr. Manafort recognized the Kremlin’s interests, the report said. “This model can greatly benefit the Putin government if employed at the correct levels with the appropriate commitments to success,” he wrote in a memo to Mr. Deripaska.

The report called Mr. Manafort’s efforts for the oligarch “in effect, influence work for the Russian government and its interests.”

No collusion, baby!!!   Nothing to see here!   Liberal fascist lies, unwittingly abetted by Tom Cotton and Marco Rubio!    Traitors, devils and darkness!!!!

Of course, the president’s enemies will try to spin this to make Manafort look guilty of spying or treason.   The New York Times continues, citing the Cotton-Rubio report released yesterday:

Despite questions about who was behind Mr. Kilimnik — both financially and politically — Mr. Manafort increasingly depended on him. But by 2014, the Ukraine work had dried up.

Mr. Yanukovych had been forced out as president after a popular uprising and fled to Russia. Mr. Manafort claimed the Ukrainian oligarchs had stiffed him out of millions for his work for Mr. Yanukovych. And Mr. Deripaska was trying to collect from Mr. Manafort for a failed private equity deal in Eastern Europe.

Now broke, Mr. Manafort volunteered to work for the Trump campaign, which hired him in March 2016. In a memo, Mr. Manafort offered to brief Mr. Deripaska on “this development with Trump.”

Mr. Manafort also speedily passed along the news of his new job to Mr. Kilimnik, who traveled to the United States specifically to meet him in May and again in August 2016. According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.

After he rose to campaign chairman, Mr. Manafort also instructed his deputy, Rick Gates, to periodically share confidential Trump campaign polling data with Mr. Kilimnik, including surveys showing what voters most disliked about Hillary Clinton, Mr. Trump’s Democratic opponent. Mr. Gates “understood that Kilimnik would share the information with Deripaska,” the report said.

The transfer of internal campaign data to a known Russian agent is “about as clear a coordination or cooperation between two entities as could be established,” said Senator Angus King, a Maine independent on the Senate Intelligence Committee who votes with Democrats.

The president’s enemies try to make it sound like secretly meeting with a member of a foreign intelligence organization and sharing detailed election polling and voter information with a country that later is shown to have hacked into electronic elections in all fifty states, in order to give their chosen candidate victories by tiny majorities in each key swing state, is some kind of nefarious crime, something akin to treason.

We never get tired of slinging these kind of outrageous, slanderous, libelous allegations against the best people, do we?

“According to the report, Mr. Manafort was forthcoming: He briefed [Russian intelligence officer] Mr. Kilimnik on Mr. Trump’s path to victory and his strategy to win in battleground states.”

SO?

A Word to my Christian Brothers and Sisters

This guy really nails it with his test based on the Seven Cardinal Virtues and the Seven Deadly Sins.   

In deadly sins (Gluttony, Avarice, Pride, Sloth, Anger, Lust, Envy)  our president is seven for seven. 

In virtues — and this guy’s list is a little idiosyncratic (Truth, Love [agape type], Courage, Wisdom, Tolerance, Freedom, Creativity [1]) the president’s score is much lower.   

Check this guy out, he gives a pretty good test in about two and a half minutes. 

[1]  The president doesn’t fare much better in the virtue test with the traditional Christian Seven Cardinal Virtues

After Pope Gregory released his list of seven deadly sins in AD 590, the seven virtues became identified as chastity, temperance, charity, diligence, patience, kindness, and humility. Practicing them is said to protect one against temptation from the seven deadly sins.

Virtue Latin Gloss Sin Latin
Chastity Castitas Purity, abstinence Lust Luxuria
Temperance Temperantia Humanity, equanimity Gluttony Gula
Charity Caritas Will, benevolence, generosity, sacrifice Greed Avaritia
Diligence Industria Persistence, effortfulness, ethics Sloth Acedia
Patience Patientia Forgiveness, mercy Wrath Ira
Kindness Humanitas Satisfaction, compassion Envy Invidia
Humility Humilitas Bravery, modesty, reverence Pride Superbia

Flynn– from the Mueller witch hunt

While I was looking for something else (Mueller’s characterization of Trump’s evasive written statements under oath– I think it was “incomplete and inadequate”), I came across these paragraphs on former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn.  These are from the section, starting on page 191 of Mueller’s first volume, about obstruction of his investigation into Russian interference.

4. False Statements and Obstruction of the Investigation

The Office determined that certain individuals associated with the Campaign lied to investigators about Campaign contacts with Russia and have taken other actions to interfere with the investigation. As explained below, the Office therefore charged some U.S. persons connected to the Campaign with false statements and obstruction offenses.

 

Michael Flynn agreed to be interviewed by the FBI on January 24, 2017, four days after he had officially assumed his duties as National Security Advisor to the President. During the interview, Flynn made several false statements pertaining to his communications with the Russian ambassador.

First, Flynn made two false statements about his conversations with Russian Ambassador Kislyak in late December 2016, at a time when the United States had imposed sanctions on Russia for interfering with the 2016 presidential election and Russia was considering its response. See Flynn Statement of Offense. Flynn told the agents that he did not ask Kislyak to refrain from escalating the situation in response to the United States’s imposition of sanctions. That statement was false. On December 29, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak to request Russian restraint. Flynn made the call immediately after speaking to a senior Transition Team official (K.T. McFarland) about what to communicate to Kislyak. Flynn then spoke with McFarland again after the Kislyak call to report on the substance of that conversation. Flynn also falsely told the FBI that he did not remember a follow-up conversation in which Kislyak stated that Russia had chosen to moderate its response to the U.S. sanctions as a result of Flynn’s request. On December 31, 2016, Flynn in fact had such a conversation with Kislyak, and he again spoke with McFarland within hours of the call to relay the substance of his conversation with Kislyak. See Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 3. 194 U.S. Department of Justice Attorney Work Product // May Contain Material Protected Under Fed. R. Crim. P. 6(e)

Second, Flynn made false statements about calls he had previously made to representatives of Russia and other countries regarding a resolution submitted by Egypt to the United Nations Security Council on December 21, 2016. Specifically, Flynn stated that he only asked the countries’ positions on how they would vote on the resolution and that he did not request that any of the countries take any particular action on the resolution. That statement was false. On December 22, 2016, Flynn called Kislyak, informed him of the incoming Trump Administration’s opposition to the resolution, and requested that Russia vote against or delay the resolution. Flynn also falsely stated that Kislyak never described Russia’s response to his December 22 request regarding the resolution. Kislyak in fact told Flynn in a conversation on December 23, 2016, that Russia would not vote against the resolution if it came to a vote. See Flynn Statement of Offense ¶ 4.

Flynn made these false statements to the FBI at a time when he was serving as National Security Advisor and when the FBI had an open investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, including the nature of any links between the Trump Campaign and Russia. Flynn’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on that ongoing investigation. Flynn Statement of Offense ¶¶ 1-2. They also came shortly before Flynn made separate submissions to the Department of Justice, pursuant to FARA, that also contained materially false statements and omissions. Id. ¶ 5. Based on the totality of that conduct, the Office decided to charge Flynn with making false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a). On December 1, 2017, and pursuant to a plea agreement, Flynn pleaded guilty to that charge and also admitted his false statements to the Department in his FARA filing. See id.; Plea Agreement, United States v. Michael T. Flynn, No. 1:17-cr-232 (D.D.C. Dec. 1, 2017), Doc. 3. Flynn is awaiting sentencing.

source  at 194-195

Flynn is awaiting sentencing, the immediate dismissal of his case by Trump gunsel William Pelham Barr (who overruled Mueller and deemed Flynn’s lies innocently immaterial [1]), or, if all goes south, a pre-hearing — perfectly legal — pardon by the president.

USA!   USA!!!

 

[1]  From Mueller (above)   

Flynn’s false statements and omissions impeded and otherwise had a material impact on that ongoing investigation. Flynn Statement of Offense ¶¶ 1-2.

They also came shortly before Flynn made separate submissions to the Department of Justice, pursuant to FARA, that also contained materially false statements and omissions. Id. ¶ 5. Based on the totality of that conduct, the Office decided to charge Flynn with making false statements to the FBI, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001(a).

Did Trump 2020 and the RNC submit evidence of mail-in voting fraud late Friday afternoon?

As the president throws bloody Trump steaks to his hungry base, calling moderate, longtime compromiser (sometimes in the worst sense of the word) Joe Biden a “puppet of the radical left” and fomenting against “left wing fascists” (why not just call us by our proper name — liberal cucks?) his reelection campaign filed papers Friday, as ordered by federal Judge J. Nicholas Ranjan, with evidence of mail-in voting fraud or an admission that they don’t have squat.

The papers were filed in the District Court of Western Pennsylvania where the Trump campaign and the RNC are trying to block the expansion of mail-in voting in one of a handful of swing states, a state whose 20 electoral votes Trump took last time by a whopping 0.7% of votes cast [1] — a state whose electoral votes went to the Democratic presidential candidate in 1992, 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012. 

I know that Trump 2020 and the RNC filed papers late Friday only because someone at the Pittsburgh Public Radio station, WESA, returned my email to tell me so.   Otherwise, the news of what was filed remains unreported– anywhere.   THE FILINGS ARE APPARENTLY ON-LINE RIGHT NOW.  (More about that shortly — eh, I’ll drop a footnote [2])

I followed up with the guy at WESA just now (the only news service I contacted that got back to me):

Any update on this story?   It’s odd to me that there has been ZERO follow-up in the media, anywhere.   The outcome of this federal lawsuit could radically change the voting landscape in Pennsylvania and in every other “battleground” state.   I learned (from Wikipedia) that the case is scheduled for oral arguments on September 22, but not a peep about the Friday filing… whether Trump 2020 and RNC presented evidence of mail-in voting fraud or admitted they have none — a little disquieting.     I believe the documents should be currently available on PACER.

A few hours later, this update from the news director, Patrick:

There’s an entry in PACER suggesting exhibits were filed yesterday, but the link doesn’t have any materials. We’ll continue to follow.

to which I replied:

Thanks, Patrick.  

The plot thickens?  Does it strike you as odd that this is not a national story?

 

 

 

[1]

According to the final tallies, Trump won Pennsylvania by 0.7 percentage points (44,292 votes), Wisconsin by 0.7 points (22,748 votes), Michigan by 0.2 points (10,704 votes). If Clinton had won all three states, she would have won the Electoral College 278 to 260.     source

 

[2]  I haven’t used PACER for years, certainly not since retiring from the practice of law several years ago.   Don’t remember my log-in.   The PACER website did not send me the email it told me was on the way, a code that would only be active for 15 minutes.  Ten minutes on hold did not connect me to anyone at their live desk– a robot eventually came on to recite, in an uncanny impersonation of Stephen Hawking, the bit about experiencing longer than usual wait times. 

At a federal agency that only fields calls from people, who forgot their log-in info, looking for help getting on the federal database of court filings.   It is what it is.