Whodunnit? Plus: Pro-Bernie election-rigging

Many are wondering: Did someone within the White House aid the NYT investigation which uncovered the meeting between Jared Kushner, DJT Jr., Paul Manafort and Natalia Veselnitskaya?

Lawrence O'Donnell has hinted that Jared Kushner is the leaker. According to this theory, press attention paid to DJT Junior means that everyone will pay less attention to Jared Kushner, who is at far greater legal risk -- after all, it was Jared (not Donnie the younger) who lied on that security form. Would Jared sell out his own brother-in-law? Perhaps. Kushner's father went to jail for a crime committed against his brother-in-law.

Roger Stone hints that he blames someone with the initials "JK," which probably refers to Jared Kushner, although there are a couple of other possibilities.

I don't buy the Kushner theory, for one simple reason: The NYT stories have led to calls for his resignation. If Kushner had any sense, he'd go now.

Another weirdly popular theory blames Putin. If you believe that, then you may also be in the market for Trump's nutball allegation that Putin wanted Clinton to win.

Other theorists point to Corey Lewandowski and Mike "46" Pence. The former may be the classic disgruntled former employee, while the latter...well. Cui bono?

Rachel Maddow's show contained a segment outlining the possibility that Mike Pence may be as dirty as DJT Jr. when it comes to Russiagate. Fascinating! Perhpas the real plan is to rid the political world of both POTUS and his Veep. Perhaps the entire Trump presidency (both its creation and its undoing) is a massive Batman Gambit engineered by Paul Ryan -- who, being an unlovable Ayn Randian prick, knows full well that he has no other shot at the Oval Office.

I suppose it's possible that someone from Mueller's office is secretly feeding info to the press. The emails could have been acquired via warrant or subpoena. A plausible idea, this -- and very boring. Where's the palace intrigue, the backstabbing, the melodrama?

My favorite suspect remains Steve Bannon. This is the theory favored by Joe Scarborough, and for good reason.

He also claimed that Mr Bannon was the source of embarrassing leaks about Mr Kushner’s alleged Russia ties.

“Steve Bannon has been leaking – I believe, based on everything that I've heard – has been leaking these stories,” he said.

“People very close to Steve Bannon were telling me before the stories were leaked that he was going to be leaking these stories.”

The TV host said his sources told him that Mr Bannon had been bragging about how he was going to sideline Mr Kushner.

“Two days after I heard this – two days! – front-page New York Times story about the links between Kushner and Russia,” he added. “A coincidence? Absolutely not.”

As I've said before: Bannon heads up the Russiagate war room, in which capacity he may have been granted access to campaign-related emails and text messages. He has probably also established contacts with the mainstream press.

Is Bannon ballsy enough to attempt to separate Donald Trump from his own whelplings and whelpling-in-law? Yes. I would go so far as to opine that Bannon somewhat resembles a giant ambulatory testicle.

Did Russia rig the Michigan primary election for Bernie? This edition of the Palmer Report addresses the question.

Apart from the stunning general election swing state victories for Donald Trump, the only other truly shocking result in the entire 2016 presidential elect cycle was when Bernie Sanders won Michigan. It was the only other time in which the polls, and the pundits, ended up being wildly and inexplicably wrong. Hillary finished eighteen points worse than she was supposed to – and those kinds of things just don’t happen in presidential races. For reference, wasn’t a single other state in the Democratic Primary where the polls were off by more than a few points. And that Michigan primary changed everything. Bernie generally won the states he was expected to win, by the expected margins. Hillary generally won the states she was expected to win, by the expected margins. Then there was Michigan, one of the most insane outliers in election history.

When Bernie shockingly won the Michigan primary, it breathed new life into his campaign after he had just gotten blown out on Super Tuesday. Even though Michigan didn’t come close to putting him back into contention (he also got blown out in Mississippi that same day, for instance), the momentum from the upset meant he was able to stay in the race for much longer. If he had lost Michigan as expected, his donations would have dried up much sooner, and he’d probably have had to drop out at least two months earlier than he did.

Those two months prevented the Democratic Party from being able to formally unite behind Hillary during Donald Trump’s most vulnerable stretch. And as the Democratic primary dragged on into May and June, it created bitterness for all involved.

For a long time now, I've made no secret of my view that the MI primary was the most obviously fraudulent election this country has ever seen. But is there any evidence pointing to Russia? Nope. Not unless you count this tidbit:

Come to think of it, why was the Trump Tower email server only communicating with Russia and a Betsy DeVos-controlled company in Michigan?

Added note: The DJT Jr. phone call that nearly everyone missed. Last night, Chris Hayes devoted a segment to an interesting discovery (or deduction). The emails released by Donald Trump Jr. strongly indicate that Junior spoke to one or both of the Agalarovs on the phone on June 6, prior to the meeting with the lawyer in Trump Tower. No-one outside of MSNBC seems to have noticed that phone call...

...except for little old me. I mention it here.

The phone call is important because it undercuts Junior's claim that he had no idea what the lawyer was going to say. I think he's lying his ass off. So is the lawyer. So is Agalarov.