Yet two Flynn associates tell Mother Jones that Flynn has informed friends and colleagues that prior to Election Day he spoke with Kislyak about how Trump could work productively with Russia if he won the presidency.
One of these Flynn associates, who each asked not to be identified, notes that Flynn said he discussed with Kislyak a grand bargain in which Moscow would cooperate with the Trump administration to resolve the Syrian conflict and Washington would end or ease up on the sanctions imposed on Russia for its annexation of Crimea and military intervention in Ukraine.
Had Flynn privately met or communicated with Kislyak during the summer or fall, it would mean Trump’s chief national security aide was secretly interacting with the representative of a foreign power as that government was mounting information and cyber warfare against the United States.How is this not collusion? At the time, Trump had been privately briefed about the Russian attack on our election -- an attack which Trump continued to deny in public. The campaign knew that the Russians was rigging our system in Trump's favor, even as Flynn privately told the Russians "We will give you what you want." Service rendered; payment rendered. That's collusion.
Corn's piece does not address what I consider the most disturbing questions: If Flynn has offered genuine aid to Mueller, why has Trump not demonized Flynn the way he demonizes all other opponents? And why do Flynn and his son continue to spew the MAGA line?
It's on. NBC reports that Trump is privately talking about impeachment. Trump is also making strenuous efforts to pin the blame for his misdeeds on Michael Cohen...
“I never directed Michael Cohen to break the law. He was a lawyer and he is supposed to know the law. It is called ‘advice of counsel,’ and a lawyer has great liability if a mistake is made. That is why they get paid..."This, despite the audio recording of Trump discussing the matter with Cohen. The SDNY has agreed that Cohen acted at Trump's direction, and they would not so stipulate without hard evidence.
Everyone is asking not if the House should vote to impeach, but when. God knows I want "President" Trump gone as soon as possible, but I don't want the public to ascribe his downfall to a sex scandal. Trump is a major criminal, and this crisis goes way beyond wee-wee issues. We don't want a "lost cause" mythology to spring up. To paraphrase a point made in many cheap melodramas, Trump can do even more harm to democracy as a martyr than as a president.
Mueller may not be able to stake the vampire. Think state. Trump cannot pardon state crimes.
Thank God, New York has risen to the challenge, first by bringing charges against Michael Cohen. Even more significant, perhaps, is the rise of NY Attorney General Letitia James -- her friends call her Tish -- who has promised to uncover the entire history of Trumpian racketeering in that state.
If she succeeds, I will bow down and worship that woman.
A RICO action can be filed in a state court. If ever an organization deserved such a probe, it's the Trump family. If I were on her staff, I would concentrate on the number of Russian criminals infesting Trump Tower. If not for Russian investment, Trump's properties would have failed.
It's important to nail down the exact ties between Felix Sater (Trump's partner and Trump Tower resident) and master criminal Semyon Mogilevich. Among his many other sins, Mogilevich traffics in women, including unwilling and underaged women. It is said that he uses underaged women to collect kompromat.
James should also look into the theory that Jeffrey Epstein is the money launderer for Mogilevich and/or other Russian oligarchs.
I'd also like to know the truth about those card games that Molly Bloom ran in Trump Tower. Her book lied. The movie also lied, omitting all reference to Trump Tower and pretending that Molly was not working with (for?) the Russians.
(One of these days, I'm going to complete my detailed response to that film.)
If only the Dems had won the Governer's race in Florida! We might then stand a better chance of getting to the real truth about Trump and Epstein. And that legendary safe at AMI headquarters could be subpoenaed. Apparently, Trump's flings with Karen and Stormy are just the tip of iceberg. Well, the tip of something.
(On MSNBC last night, one of the talking heads said that Giuliani represented AMI at the time of the anthrax attacks. Is that possible? Didn't Rudy have some other noteworthy gig at that time?)
People are now debating whether a state AG can indict a President. Most say that such a thing is possible. Many are visualizing a scene straight out of Hollywood: State officers attempting to place Trump under arrest while he still holds the office. In truth, we can accomplish much without so dramatic a confrontation. A damning Complaint -- filed with hard, incontrovertible evidence -- may be the thing that finally pushes Republican senators into accepting reality.
At some point, we need to bring this thing to a head.
The IG is Michael Horowitz, who was at one time the target of a far-right smear campaign. The smears suddenly stopped, and Horowitz appears to have boarded the Trump train. I've written about him before; see here and here.
Why doesn't he give us the real shit? Where's the investigation into the FBI agents in New York who were secretly working with Giuliani in 2016?
Speaking of alternative realities... Hilariously, Republicans pretend that the Trump/Russia "theory" has no evidence to back it. Let's look at some conspiracy theories that the rightists consider worthier of consideration.
Many QAnon followers believe that JFK Jr. is still alive. A growing number of them believe that the Earth is flat. This increasingly popular right-wing notion has caused a serious rift within the movement. A sample offering from a Q-friendly Flat Earther:
Umm...they make more valid points then nasa...the same people who tell u that global warming is real are telling us the Earth is a spinning ball...True. I cannot deny it. I, for one, will be very happy to tell "u" that global warming is real and that the Earth is a spinning ball.
Naturally, the Q folk are also very interested in Gematria, that hoary old Jewish method of driving oneself mad.
"Germatria" is a kind of Jewish numerology. And in QAnon it can apparently be used to calculate that "Jeff = 666."— Travis View (@travis_view) December 11, 2018
As illustrated by this person live tweeting their rapidly disintegrating ability to derive coherent meaning from words. pic.twitter.com/8OESvNV4Lj
Finally, a rare piece of non-Trump weirdness. Did you know that Yandex (the Russian version of Google) has an equivalent of Google Earth, offering satellite imagery of the whole planet?
The Federation of American Scientists has exposed a fascinating bit of whoops-a-daisy. At the request of Israel and Turkey, Yandex blurred out the locations of various sensitive military and intelligence facilities in those countries. The problem: By blurring out those locations, the Russian identified where they were and what they were. Some of these areas were not previously known to have a military function. (At least, that fact was kept hidden from we mere mortals; I'm sure that our spy agencies had a pretty good idea.)
It then became an easy matter to look up those same locations on Google Earth, which offers a clearer view. That's the modern age for you: If you try to hide, you reveal yourself.
Oddly, the Russians did not blur their own secret facilities.
3 comments:
You are reading my mind Joseph. You posted this article just as I was coming here to say that Trump has started attacking the Flynn investigation.
So, Michael Cohen has been pulling a Nixon all these years, recording everything when meeting with Trump and other bad actors. How many people who had business with Cohen are shitting their pants right about now.
Mike, when you are the bag man, it is definitely in your interest to record what you can. There is a long history of bag men being left holding the bag. I've compared Cohen to Hugh Plunkett, the Doheny clan's bag man in the Teapot Dome scandal. If Hugh had recorded his interactions with the Dohenys, he would have survived and his bosses would have gone to jail.
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