Nut job. Plus: Is Jared Kushner under investigation?

Earlier today, this blog predicted that today's first bombshell news story would hit before 2 p.m. It came around 3 p.m.; Cannonfire apologizes for the error. The day's second bombshell hit about an hour later, although it did not fully explode until just a few minutes after I started to write this piece.

Bombshell story #1: The NYT somehow learned the exact wording of what Trump said to his Russian guests in the Oval. No-one disputes the accuracy of this document.

President Trump told Russian officials in the Oval Office this month that firing the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, had relieved “great pressure” on him, according to a document summarizing the meeting.

“I just fired the head of the F.B.I. He was crazy, a real nut job,” Mr. Trump said, according to the document, which was read to The New York Times by an American official. “I faced great pressure because of Russia. That’s taken off.”

Mr. Trump added, “I’m not under investigation.”

First: The idea of a wacko like Trump calling Comey or anyone else a "nut job" is hilarious.

Second: We now have absolute confirmation that the sole purpose of the firing was to block the Russia probe. If the claim of collusion had no merit, then why would Trump seek to quash the probe? Why would he brag about what he did to the Russians themselves?

And why on earth would Trump make such a boast on the record? (Obviously, someone kept a record, or the exchange would not be in the NYT.)

Once again, Trump has screwed himself by blurting out what he should keep unspoken. He's the blurter-in-chief. Every new Trumpian blurt reminds me of the restaurant scene in Mad magazine's parody of The Godfather, in which Michael Corleone rises from the table and says: "Excuse me. I have to take a pistol."

I don't know whether Trump's blabbiness indicates a guilty conscience or an imperious disdain for the need to deceive. Obviously, he wants to spill.

Bombshell story #2: Just who is this "person of interest"?

The law enforcement investigation into possible coordination between Russia and the Trump campaign has identified a current White House official as a significant person of interest, showing that the probe is reaching into the highest levels of government, according to people familiar with the matter.

The senior White House adviser under scrutiny by investigators is someone close to the president, according to these people, who would not further identify the official.

Just minutes ago, the UK Independent identified this adviser as -- hold onto your hats! -- Jared Kushner, the Trump son-in-law who basically serves as the shadow president, due to The Donald's incompetence.

Yashar Ali, a contributor to New York magazine said on Twitter: “It’s Jared Kushner. Have confirmed this with four people. I’m not speculating.”

We've long known about Jared's Russian links. For example:

When Jared Kushner, President Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, sought the top-secret security clearance that would give him access to some of the nation’s most closely guarded secrets, he was required to disclose all encounters with foreign government officials over the last seven years.

But Mr. Kushner did not mention dozens of contacts with foreign leaders or officials in recent months. They include a December meeting with the Russian ambassador, Sergey I. Kislyak, and one with the head of a Russian state-owned bank, Vnesheconombank, arranged at Mr. Kislyak’s behest.

Why would our "shadow president" secretly meet with the head of a Russian bank, and then lie about the event?

Sergey N. Gorkov, the bank president in question, was graduated from Russia's "spy school." His bank (often referred to as VEB) is widely thought to be have strong links to the FSB.

See this story, which quotes from an official DOJ release alleging that the bank provided cover for Russian spies in the United States. The investigation was headed by U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who was so mysteriously fired by the Trump administration.

U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said: “An unregistered intelligence agent, under cover of being a legitimate banker, gathers intelligence on the streets of New York City, trading coded messages with Russian spies who send the clandestinely collected information back to Moscow. This sounds like a plotline for a Cold War-era movie, but in reality, Evgeny Buryakov pled guilty today to a federal crime for his role in just such a scheme.

Beginning in 2012, BURYAKOV worked in the United States as an agent of Russia’s foreign intelligence agency, known as the “SVR.” BURYAKOV operated under “non-official cover,” meaning he entered and remained in the United States as a private citizen, posing as an employee in the Manhattan office of a Russian bank, Vnesheconombank, also known as “VEB.” SVR agents operating under such non-official cover – sometimes referred to as “NOCs” – typically are subject to less scrutiny by the host government, and, in many cases, are never identified as intelligence agents by the host government. As a result, a NOC is an extremely valuable intelligence asset for the SVR.

Can you imagine the uproar on Fox News if any Democrat had secretly met with Gorka? For more, see here...

A member of the SVR’s Directorate ER, the division tasked with gathering economic intelligence, Buryakov was paid $200,000 to pump his fellow Wall Streeters on information ultimately beneficial to Russia’s GDP, or at least harmful to the nation’s marketplace competitors. His biggest coup, evidently, was helping Rostek, the state-owned defense manufacturer, nearly come away with a handsome contract with Bombardier, the Canadian aerospace firm.

VEB has was sanctioned by both the U.S. Treasury Department and the European Union in 2014 for its role in underwriting the ongoing war in Ukraine, a penalty the bank has said would have “no effect” on its operations.

Now Gorkov finds himself in the national spotlight for having kibitzed with Kushner last year at undisclosed locations, either before or after Kushner also sat with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S. Sergei Kislyak — but hey, who hasn’t in Trumpland? All we know about these encounters were that they were perfectly innocent marriages of true minds between two captains of industry. VEB met "with a number of representatives of the largest banks and business establishments of the United States, including Jared Kushner, the head of Kushner Companies,” the bank told Reuters in a written statement.

Before Kushner was identified by The Independent, the WP's bombshell had me flashing on another possibility: Steve Bannon. Don't be surprised if Mueller decides to focus on Steverino.

Bannon played a leading role in Cambridge Analytica, the psychological warfare firm. Louise Mensch and others have claimed that Cambridge Analytica is funded in part by the Russians, although Time Magazine does not go so far. However:

Researchers at the University of Southern California, meanwhile, found that nearly 20% of political tweets in 2016 between Sept. 16 and Oct. 21 were generated by bots of unknown origin; investigators are trying to figure out how many were Russian.

As they dig into the viralizing of such stories, congressional investigations are probing not just Russia's role but whether Moscow had help from the Trump campaign. Sources familiar with the investigations say they are probing two Trump-linked organizations: Cambridge Analytica, a data-analytics company hired by the campaign that is partly owned by deep-pocketed Trump backer Robert Mercer; and Breitbart News, the right-wing website formerly run by Trump's top political adviser Stephen Bannon.

The congressional investigators are looking at ties between those companies and right-wing web personalities based in Eastern Europe who the U.S. believes are Russian fronts, a source familiar with the investigations tells TIME. "Nobody can prove it yet," the source says. In March, McClatchy newspapers reported that FBI counterintelligence investigators were probing whether far-right sites like Breitbart News and Infowars had coordinated with Russian botnets to blitz social media with anti-Clinton stories, mixing fact and fiction when Trump was doing poorly in the campaign.

Newsweek published a major piece on Bannon's "ideological ties to Russia" -- ties which have much to do with Alexander Dugin, Putin's mentor and philosopher-king of the new international fascism.

In early April, Bannon was booted off Trump’s National Security Council in a White House coup that was at least partly a scuffle over how to confront a resurgent Russia. Days later, after the Moscow-protected government in Syria killed civilians in a chemical attack, Bannon lost a heated debate with Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, over whether to punish the regime in Damascus.

A former banker turned film producer and right-wing polemicist, Bannon has praised not only Russian President Vladimir Putin but also a brand of Russian mystical conservative nationalism known as Eurasianism, which is the closest the Kremlin has to a state ideology. Eurasianism proclaims that Russia’s destiny is to lead all Slavic and Turkic people in a grand empire to resist corrupt Western values. Its main proponent is Alexander Dugin, a Russian political scientist.

Despite their nationalism, Bannon and Dugin have something in common: They both believe global elites have conspired against ordinary people. Their enemies: secularism, multiculturalism, egalitarianism. In both Bannon’s and Dugin’s worldview, the true global ideological struggle is not between Russia and the United States but between culturally homogenous groups founded on Judeo-Christian values practicing humane capitalism on one side and, on the other, an international crony-capitalist network of bankers and big business.

Of course, the Trump/Putin version of capitalism is cronyism, purified and unapologetic. There is nothing humane about it. Dugin is a master of doubletalk: He pretends to decry fascism even as he creates neo-fascism; he claims to oppose "elites" even as he embraces the work of Julius Evola, the ultimate elitist.

Is that it? Any more bombshells...? Honestly, I would not be surprised if yet another blockbuster story has hit while I was engaged in the process of writing this piece. Folks, there's such a thing as too much fun.

Update: The bombshells keep a-comin! Chris Matthews just announced that Kushner is, in fact, the Trump official referenced by the above-mentioned WP report.

MSNBC also reports that Comey will testify in a public session.

CNN says that White House lawyers are gearing up for impeachment, which is still described as "a distant possibility."

And Germans think that Trump is a "laughingstock." That's not really a bombshell bit of news, but I thought I'd mention it anyways.

One last bombshell: 1001 ghosts led a protest march in front of the White House today, demanding the full restoration of their voting rights. "We're citizens too," said spectral media liaison Chester A. Arthur.

(Cannonfire has not yet verified this report.)

Soon

Once again, yesterday's post feels like last year's post. That's how fast things are moving.

Today, I think I'm going to wait until a bombshell or two has already dropped. I'm guessing that the first bombshell of the day should hit by 2 p.m. or so.

Mueller is no messiah. Plus: Louise Mensch and her "sources"

Things are moving so fast that yesterday's post reads like last year's news. Oh, for the gift of a slow news day!

Ivanka, why not start with your Dad's Russian pals? From Ivanka's twitter feed:

Human trafficking is a pervasive humanitarian epidemic both domestically and abroad. Together we are working to combat this critical issue.

This is infuriatingly hypocritical. The worst human trafficker in history is Semyon Mogilevich, close Putin friend, leader of the Red Mafiya and supplier to terrorists of illegal Russian nukes. His organization uses underaged prostitutes to compromise western leaders and intelligence services. Trump's pal Felix Sater is linked to Mogilevich's group; the FBI has identified Sater's father as a key underboss in that organization.

The ties between Mogilevich and the Trump circle are complex. You may wish to start your research here and here.

Mueller. I'm sure you already know that we now have -- finally -- a special prosecutor: Former FBI head Robert Mueller. Although I am grateful for this development, it is far too soon to proclaim that the Republic has been saved.

The talking heads on teevee applaud this choice because Mueller served under both Republicans and Democrats. They've forgotten about the many campaign-season stories which said -- correctly, I think -- that today's real divide is not so much Republican vs. Democrat as Outsider vs. Establishment.

Mueller is Mr. Establishment. The man who headed the FBI during 9/11 carries much more baggage than the teevee talking heads will admit. If you favor the Establishment, that baggage will be invisible to you. If you hang out with Outsiders, you can see it clearly.

Dunno about you, but I really, really, really don't want to spend the upcoming weeks and months rehashing all of those ancient 9/11 conspiracy theories. Although I haven't yet worked up the courage to check up on the Infowarriors, I suspect that they have already started to demonize Mueller.

(This is a sore spot for me because, for some reason, the so-called truthers always considered me an important "get." Every time a 9/11 nutjob would proclaim that he or she has NEW NEW NEW information -- facts and figures that would surely turn me around, if only I would listen to it with an open mind -- all they ever gave me were the same old conspiracy cliches. You know: The melting temperature of steel; Larry Silverstein saying "pull it." That crap.)

The demonization of Mueller will provide cover for Trump, should he ever seek Mueller's removal. Politically, Trump may be in a position to do so after the mid-terms.

Another likely demonization target: Rod Rosenstein. The "smear Rosenstein" campaign has probably started already. As soon as he has the political space to do so, Trump will replace him with someone willing to replace Mueller.

Not only that. Both the Special Prosecutor's office and the Intelligence Committee inquiries will rely on FBI manpower for the actual work. Soon enough, Trump will appoint Joe Lieberman or some similar fiend to head the FBI, and the whole thing will go to hell. Manpower will be reduced; seasoned agents will be replaced by rookies (or by Giuliani's pals); documents will disappear. That's when the Trumpers will proclaim "Nothing to see here." Then they will do their damnedest to turn the nation's attention to the crimes of Evil Hillary, Evil Obama, Evil Podesta and Evil Susan Rice.

In my last post, I called Trump a wrinkled tomato dying on the vine. Today, I'm thinking that he can stay attached. Dirty tricks won the election; dirty politics can keep him in office.

Do I sound downbeat? Hey, it's me. People come here for the thoughts of a natural-born contrarian; if the Group Mind says "X," I'll say "Not X" just to be a shit about it. The sight of all of those beaming, relieved liberal faces on teevee naturally sent my thoughts in the opposite direction: We're doomed.

Louise Mensch. What are we going to do with her? Malcolm Nance has turned against her, the Jester (whose name I refuse to spell in that idiotic "cute" hacker fashion) has dissed her, her tweets are no longer respected by well-known people, and she has become (shall we say) a very controversial figure on once-friendly terrain like Democratic Underground.

Despite my continuing crush on her, I think that she shares with Donald Trump a crippling psychological disability: A phobic reaction to humility. She cannot admit error. Like many other slap-happy optimists, Mensch feels that saying "I'm sorry" or "Oops" would harsh her buzz. Mensch and Trump both refuse to understand that there can be long-term tactical advantages to self-deprecatory wit and the occasional mea culpa.

I'm certain -- well, 95% certain -- that there is no secret indictment against Trump. I'm 100% certain that Orrin Hatch has not received security briefings to prepare him for his imminent entry into the Oval Office. If Mensch's sources told her such things, her sources lied.

She's starting to remind me of a pre-Alex Jones conspiracy peddler named Sherman Skolnick, a name which some of you will know. Throughout much of the first Bush presidency, Skolnick would tell his listeners that "a group of generals are on their way to Washington to arrest George Bush for treason" -- a word which Skolnick always pronounced TREEEEzun. (Of course, generals don't arrest leaders; they conduct coups.) This went on for months. Skolnick kept assuring us that those generals were "on their way to Washington" -- yet they kept making that wrong turn at Albuquerque, just like Bugs and Daffy.

Skolnick had "sources" for this nonsense. One of them turned out to be a spooky fellow named Gunther Russbacher, best known for telling tall tales about the October Surprise of 1980. Gunther concocted a ridiculous story about George H.W. Bush flying to Paris in an SR71. In the original version of his tale (yes, I've heard the tape), he claimed that Ronald Reagan flew an SR71!

As most of you know, I believe that the October Surprise was one conspiracy theory based on reality. As I've said in a previous post:

The October Surprise thesis has been confirmed by:

* French intelligence chieftain Alexandre de Marenches
* Former Russian prime minister Sergei V. Stepashin
* Israeli secret agent Ari Ben-Menashe
* Former Iranian president Abolhassan Bani-Sadr
* Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat
* Former Israeli prime minister Yitshak Shamir.

I doubt that you could ever have gotten those six guys to agree on anything else. They probably would not have agreed that the sun is hot. But they all said that, to their personal knowledge, the October Surprise thesis describes actual events. After a certain point, we have to consider the matter resolved beyond intelligent debate.

Here's the problem: During the brief window when this theory might have had some history-changing political potency, those six men had not yet spoken up in public. At that time, the sourcing was a lot worse -- and some of those sources, like dear old Gunther, turned out to be rats.

A more sophisticated October Surprise "rat" contacted former Reagan White House staffer Barbara Honegger early in her inquiry. (She wrote the first book on the topic.) Identifying himself only as "Razin" -- pronounced Ra-ZEEN -- this source claimed to have insider information about the secret deal between Reagan and the Iranians in 1980. It was all very mysterious and exciting.

It was also bullshit.

"Razin" turned out to be one Oswald LeWinter, who was literally looking at a box of Raisin Bran when he thought up his pseudonym. LeWinter (who died in 2013) was a CIA asset who considered himself a disinformation specialist. This article tells much of the story...

On that occasion LeWinter told Robert Parry how he had undermined the work of the investigative author Barbara Honegger on the alleged plot to delay the release of US hostages in Iran in order to favour the election of Ronald Reagan. It involved using tactics that would recur throughout his career.

“I managed to pass on some information to her which had factual elements in it, but also elements that with a little bit of digging could be discovered to be questionable,” Parry quoted him as saying. “The story would lead some investigators to spend time and effort running into blind alleys, with the result that eventually the whole story would be discredited.”

As you might have guessed, the congressional investigation into the October Surprise was basically the Oswald LeWinter show. When he confessed in public to being a fabricator (but not to being a CIA fabricator), he brought the whole inquiry tumbling down. That's disinfo-tainment!

The above-linked article notes that LeWinter was imprisoned on a drug smuggling charge in 1985. The judge who put him away, oddly enough, was Donald Trump's sister, Marianne Trump Barry.

Saul Bellow wrote her a letter of recommendation on his behalf. “He is personally charming and good-natured, nothing of the criminal psychopath about him. He simply suffers from a serious misunderstanding of what is appropriate in the career of a literary man...”

Boy, did he ever. (Then again, there's precedent.)

LeWinter claimed that he joined the Agency in 1966. Perhaps so; perhaps no. Although I'm pretty sure that he did develop Agency ties, I believe that his career as a rat began more modestly. I used to be on friendly terms with a guy who briefly knew LeWinter at a time when LeWinter was parading around under another alias. (He pretended to be a general.) My friend found out that LeWinter had been a college professor during the heyday of the SDS and the anti-Vietnam protests. Since he was considered one of the "hip" professors, student radicals would hang out with him and share their secrets over wine and reefer. Any interesting tidbits of information were, of course, passed right on to the FBI.

One day, we will all learn the names of Louise's sources. It's inevitable. No matter what she says now, I'm telling you: It's inevitable.

I'm pretty sure that at least one of her sources is the spiritual heir to Oswald LeWinter. For now, let's call him Little Razin.

Why Trump is a wrinkled tomato dying on the vine

Update: There's a report that Vladimir Putin is now bragging that he has a recording of Trump's meeting with Kislyak and Lavrov. Good Lord. I don't know what to say. For now.

So let's get back to our post as originally published...

I suspect that we're going to see more than one Comey memo. I think that they are gonna keep drip-drip-dripping out.

The one that everyone is talking about arguably reveals an attempt to obstruct justice. It also reveals that Trump had told the FBI Director that the Bureau should imprison reporters who publish leaks. This, from the same man who said "I love Wikileaks" during the campaign, who welcomed any leak that could harm an adversary.

The scandals now plaguing Donald Trump would be survivable if he were more politically adept, if he did not possess the instincts of a crime boss, and if he did not habitually lie about smaller matters, thereby destroying his credibility in a my-word-vs-Comey's situation. Trump is haunted by his past, and by our collective distaste for his impulsive and imperious personality.

In short: If Trump had a different history, he'd have a different future.

Take, for example, the current contretemps over the Comey memo, in which Agent Orange expresses a hope for the end of the investigation into Michael Flynn. I honestly don't think that it ever occurred to Trump that his words could be construed as an obstruction of justice. Being a New York thug by nature, the non-Teflon Don probably thought that he was being polite and statesmanlike in his communications. If Donnie had intended to obstruct justice, his words would have been more along the lines of Do as I say or else.

One could say something similar about Trump's revelation of classified material in his meeting with the Russians. Ronald Reagan could have gotten away with spilling those particular beans, because Reagan was a better politician. Can you imagine Ronald Reagan nervously bragging "I get the best intel"? Of course not. That phrase (and no-one denies that Donnie said it) reinforces the perception of Donald Trump as a swaggering oaf with poor impulse control and a puerile need to impress.

If caught out, Reagan would have found a way to justify revealing code-word intelligence to his adversaries. In somber tones, he would have told the public that a humanitarian need to save lives overwhelmed other considerations. It's easy to imagine how Peggy Noonan would have sold that product -- hell, Reagan's approval numbers probably would have shot up.

I was hardly a fan of Ronald Reagan. But no-one can imagine him tweeting a thuggish threat to a fired FBI Director. If Reagan had a thuggish streak, he kept it hidden. Even during the Iran Contra scandal, Reagan's adversaries usually pictured him as a dolt, not as a conspirator or a crime lord. There was a famous SNL sketch (glimpsed here) in which the public Reagan seems genial and slow-witted, while the behind-the-scenes Reagan becomes a devious, fast-talking mastermind. This sketch got laughs because portraying Reagan as cunning and manipulative struck the audience as funny.

By contrast, nobody considered Nixon a dolt. He always seemed like the sharp lawyer for a crime family who had finagled his way into the Godfather's chair.

Trump has the worst of both worlds: He is seen as both a dolt and a mob boss. He still possesses the ability to fool paranoid rubes; he knows how to talk to gun-totin' Illuminati-spotters who want something done about the cannibalistic Sasquatches prowling our national forests. But that audience is limited, and Trump has lost whatever ability he once possessed to speak to other kinds of people.

For all the non-rubes out there, the truth is pretty plain: Trump wanted -- wants -- to squelch the Flynn probe because such a probe could reveal some serious Trumpian dirt. If the Donald were innocent, he wouldn't act so guilty.

My current TOT (Theory of Trump) is that the relationship between Donnie and the Russian oligarchs tightened around 2005, when he regained control of his Atlantic City casino after coming up with $100 million from...well, somewhere. At that time, Putin and his pals were siphoning billions out of Russia; the money needed cleaning and casinos provide excellent laundry services. Trump, for his part, needed banks who would loan to him. That's when certain Russian-linked banks (Deutsche Bank, the Bank of Cyprus) stepped in.

Why else would even a crooked bank loan to such a poor businessman? Trump must have offered a service which justified the risk.

If I may boast: Toldja it was Israel. As a rule: Whenever the WP or the NYT becomes skittish about revealing the name of a Middle East nation, the correct answer is either Israel or Saudi Arabia.

David Corn had a couple of quotable tweets yesterday.

There's been way too much winning today. Please make it stop.

Spoke to a DOJ lawyer. He said obstruction of justice cases have lower bar than other cases. Not always so hard to prove "corrupt" intent.

A Corn reader offered a filk which I shall slightly improve:

And now, the end is near
And so I face the prosecutin'.
My crime, I'll say it clear,
was when I climbed in bed with Putin

The source, the ally, the money and the warrants

The source. Conservative writer Erick Erickson says he knows personally one of the WP's sources for its bombshell story. The source was staunchly pro-Trump but has since become...well, let us say a tad concerned.

But the President will not take any internal criticism, no matter how politely it is given. He does not want advice, cannot be corrected, and is too insecure to see any constructive feedback as anything other than an attack.

Again I ask: What the hell did Fred Trump do to his kid?

I am told that what the President did is actually far worse than what is being reported. The President does not seem to realize or appreciate that his bragging can undermine relationships with our allies and with human intelligence sources. He also does not seem to appreciate that his loose lips can get valuable assets in the field killed.

The implication here is that the Russians may be able to back-engineer the source of the intelligence and thus endanger the life of an asset in the field.

The ally. A few people, including myself, have speculated that Israel is the unnamed allied country referenced in this instantly-famous WP article. Newsweek doesn't come right out and say "It was Israel," but if you enjoy reading between the lines...

The money. Trump's defenders keep saying that he has nothing to do with Russian money. Trump's lawyers have been making that same claim.

However, it is well-known that one of the few banks willing to lend big money to Trump after his bankruptcies was Deutsche Bank, which was fined for a $10 billion money laundering scheme benefiting Russians. The scheme involved something called "mirror trading," described in this fine New Yorker piece.

It worked like this: between 2011 and 2015, related corporate entities in Moscow and London bought and sold identical quantities of the same stock, through Deutsche Bank’s Moscow equities desk. By this alchemy, rubles in Russia were transformed into dollars in London. The process bypassed tax officials, currency regulators, and anti-money-laundering controls.

The head of Deutsche Bank, Josef Ackermann, was forced out by the scandal. Guess where he ended up? That's right: The Bank of Cypus -- the favorite bank of Vladimir Putin and his Russian oligarch pals. He was chosen for that position by Wilbur Ross, the Trump chum who just became our Commerce secretary, and by a billionaire crony of Vladimir Putin's named Viktor Vekselburg. It seems that Putin turned against Vekselburg late last year; they've since kissed and made up.

As it happens, Vekselburg has a partner named Len Blavatnik, worth $20 billion. Although Blavatnik made his money in Russian oil, he has strong American ties -- in fact, he owns Warner Music. He also made a seven figure donation to a Super PAC controlled by Mitch McConnell -- which explains why you should not expect Mitch to show any enthusiasm for any kind of probe (either independent or congressional) which might inconvenience Trump's Russian buddies.

Trump's lawyers did concede that a Russian purchased a Donald Trump property in Florida for $95 million, even though most observers agree that its actual market value was less than half that. Such a purchase is a good way to hide a "donation" or a bribe. (Paul Manafort seems to have benefited from a similar deal, albeit on a smaller scale.)

The man who bought the house was -- as most of you already know -- Dmitry Rybolovlev, who also owns the largest stake in the Bank of Cyprus. Therefore, we may say that he is part of the Putin/Vekselburg/Wilbur Ross "club." Rybolovlev also owns the private jet registered as M-Kate which has mysteriously followed Donald Trump's peregrinations the way my dog would follow me if I were carrying a BLT sandwich.

Another point. People forget that Deutsche Bank and Donald Trump were not always on good terms -- in fact, their conflict gave rise to one of the more bizarre lawsuits of Trump's career. He later got loans not from Deutsche Bank per se but from a subsidiary, which always seems to go unnamed in news accounts. See this Mother Jones investigation from last year:

Trump has four large mortgages with Deutsche Bank, borrowing against three of his most prized possessions: the Doral golf resort in Florida, his Chicago tower, and his brand new Washington luxury hotel. For the Washington hotel, Trump has a $170 million line of credit from Deutsche Bank that was granted in 2015, just as his presidential campaign was kicking off. According to a bank spokeswoman, all four of the loans were obtained from Deutsche's "private bank"—a division that caters exclusively to high-net-worth individuals and that can lend separately from the corporate side of the bank.

The corporate side of Deutsche Bank previously loaned to Trump, but the relationship fell apart around the time of the financial crisis. In 2005, Trump borrowed $640 million from Deutsche Bank and several other lenders for the construction of his Chicago hotel tower. When he failed to pay back the money on time in 2008, the banks, including Deutsche Bank, demanded he pay the $40 million he had personally guaranteed. In response, Trump sued Deutsche Bank for $3 billion, saying the project's financial troubles were the fault of the economic recession, which he claimed the bank had helped cause. He accused Deutsche Bank of undermining the project and his reputation. The lawsuit was eventually settled.

It's not clear if Trump has personally guaranteed any of the loans his businesses have with Deutsche Bank.

If Trump didn't guarantee those loans, then who did?

The warrants. Louise Mensch and Claude Taylor report separately (based on "sources") that the US Marshalls have come up with a plan to serve warrants in relation to the Trump/Russia investigation. Here's Mensch's piece.

Sources say that the extensive plan, multiple pages in length, covered not only the serving of warrants, but logistical arrangements such as the closure of streets, if necessary.

They further report that while timing is uncertain, such plans are normally only presented and approved when arrests are imminent.

Do I believe this? Ummm...not really. Does my crush on Ms. Mensch remain intact? Oh yes.

"But her emails...!" (UPDATED: Is Trump considering resignation?)

During his meeting with the Russians last week -- a meeting much-derided for its poor "optics" -- Trump blabbed incredibly sensitive information about ISIS.

The information the president relayed had been provided by a U.S. partner through an intelligence-sharing arrangement considered so sensitive that details have been withheld from allies and tightly restricted even within the U.S. government, officials said.

The partner had not given the United States permission to share the material with Russia, and officials said Trump’s decision to do so endangers cooperation from an ally that has access to the inner workings of the Islamic State.

“This is code-word information,” said a U.S. official familiar with the matter, using terminology that refers to one of the highest classification levels used by American spy agencies. Trump “revealed more information to the Russian ambassador than we have shared with our own allies.”

Trump went on to discuss aspects of the threat that the United States learned only through the espionage capabilities of a key partner. He did not reveal the specific intelligence-gathering method, but he described how the Islamic State was pursuing elements of a specific plot and how much harm such an attack could cause under varying circumstances. Most alarmingly, officials said, Trump revealed the city in the Islamic State’s territory where the U.S. intelligence partner detected the threat.

Buzzfeed tells us that the WP report (quoted above) barely scuffs the veneer.

Two US officials who were briefed on Trump’s disclosures last week confirmed to BuzzFeed News the veracity of the Washington Post report, with one noting that “it’s far worse than what has already been reported.”

Let's put this into perspective. Hillary's alleged "sin" was her use of private email server which -- according to the right-wing media -- discussed classified information in an insecure setting. In reality, the only "sensitive" document found on that server was a piece of piffle about Malawi that never should have had any kind of classification stamp in the first place. Nevertheless, that "sin" caused Paul Ryan to tweet "It's simple: Individuals who are ‘extremely careless’ w/ classified info should be denied further access to it."

And now Trump is blithely spewing code-word information to his Russian pals, placing sensitive assets at risk. Republicans want us to think that a trifling message about Malawi -- a piece of boilerplate containing information available on Wikipedia -- is more important than an ultra-secret source of information on ISIS, a code-word secret.

Has Trump been a witting Putin agent all along?

If you believe that he is not, then let me ask you this: If Trump were an agent, what would he have done differently?

Since he attained office, our moles within the Russian intelligence services have been rounded up and killed. A hidden Windows exploit used by the NSA was revealed to the world by Russian hackers, who used this information to create a computer virus that damaged millions of computers and throttled Britain's National Health Service. Trump's Attorney General and National Security Adviser both have had scandalous Russian links. The FBI Director was fired when he started to investigate the Russian financial ties of Trump and his close associates.

The simplest explanation that covers all the facts is usually the best. Right now, the simplest theory is that Trump has been a witting Russian agent all along. I'm not saying that this theory is proven; I'm saying that it has the virtue of simplicity.

According to the WP, Trump bragged to the Russians: "I get great intel." Of course the President of the United States has great intel! Can this pompous oaf really be so insecure that he feels the need to make such a puerile boast to the Russians? I wouldn't be surprised if he also handed them a map of his electoral college victory.

What the hell did Fred Trump do his kid?

UPDATE: As is his Trumpian wont, Donnie has issued a tweetstorm which confirms the story even as he attempts to portray it as "fake news." He writes: "Information is being illegally given to the failing @nytimes & @washingtonpost by the intelligence community (NSA and FBI?)." If the basic claim was false, it cannot be given illegally, and it could not come from the intelligence community.

(Incidentally, it is very cute to see Donald Trump accuse others of trafficking in conspiracy theories and blind hatred.)

Louise Mensch says that Trump is considering resignation. The claim was first made by a Twitterer calling herself "Rogue WH Staffer."

BREAKING: Some staffers are saying @realDonaldTrump is considering resignation. Can't take the negativity anymore

I don't know if this person's tweets are legit; for the nonce, it may be safest to suspect that we're dealing with a hoaxer. But her messages are fun. Her bio:

I work in East Wing. Speaking out b/c it is crazy here. Dysfunctional is understatement. I'm a nasty woman and not one to put up with hatefulness.

Sealed

The Dutch documentary embedded above is absolutely outstanding. Even if you think you already know it all, you'll encounter material here which will stun you. This documentary makes absolutely clear that Trump is tied in with an international criminal network. It even offers rare footage of the incident involving the underaged prostitutes linked to Semyon Mogilevich, discussed in an earlier Cannonfire post.

I'll have much more to say about the Chabad connection anon. Before I saw this documentary, I didn't know how close Jared Kushner is to Chabad.

Claude Taylor and Louise Mensch stand by their story that a sealed indictment against Trump has already been granted. Taylor:

Sealed indictments out of Eastern District of Virginia - under Dana Boente. Trump, Manafort and Flynn-among others under sealed indictment.

I'd like to repeat a very basic question: Can anyone tell me the purpose of a SEALED indictment in this situation? Mensch makes clear that there is no possibility of a prosecution outside of impeachment. But impeachment will happen if and when the world learns about the indictment. So why the secrecy? I don't get it.

Boente is a Trump appointee. Here's what the Intercept has to say about him:

Both of Boente’s current roles involve supervising the ongoing investigation into the Russian government’s ties to Trump’s campaign. As discussed by former FBI Director Comey in congressional testimony last week, and reported by CNN, a grand jury is now gathering evidence in the Eastern District of Virginia as part of its investigation of Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, for his ties to the Russian government. Comey also described the broader Russia probe as a “counterintelligence investigation,” a category of inquiry overseen by the National Security Division, which Boente headed after the resignation of Mary McCord last month.

Counterintelligence is molehunting. As much as I would love to think that Trump is being viewed as a potential Putin agent, I see no evidence of that. As of this writing, nothing backs up the claim that Trump himself is a target of this investigation.

WannaCry: Putin has denied any involvement with this rather horrific piece of ransomware.

Vladimir Putin has blamed the US for the global cyber attack that has crippled computer systems around the world since Friday.

Putin said Russia had "nothing to do" with the attack and blamed the US for creating the hacking software that affects Microsoft computers.

The denial naturally leads me to think that Putin is involved. After all, the Shadow Brokers is widely thought to be a Russian group. The question is: How did they do it?

The mysterious organisation - called Shadow Brokers - claimed in April it had stolen a ‘cyber weapon’ from an American spying agency that gives unprecedented access to all computers using Microsoft Windows, the world’s most popular computer operating system.

The hacking tool had been developed by the National Security Agency (NSA), America’s powerful military intelligence unit. The NSA had developed its ‘Eternal Blue’ hacking weapon to gain access to computers used by terrorists and enemy states.

But in an astonishing twist, the NSA’s tool was stolen by Shadow Brokers.

The gang in turn ‘dumped’ the computer bug on an obscure website on April 14, just a week after President Donald Trump ordered the US bombing of Syria.

Some experts believe that timing is significant and indicates that Shadow Brokers has links to the Russian government.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc is a classic fallacy, of course. But it's still fascinating that that Shadow Brokers attained this big score right after Trump -- and Flynn -- took office. It's also worth noting that American assets within the Russian intelligence apparat suddenly began to, well, die during this same brief period.

Again: Comey described the Russia probe as a "counterintelligence investigation." As Ian Fleming used to say: Twice is coincidence; three times in enemy action. We're way past three.

We once again come to the old question: Is Shadow Brokers really Russian? Look at this part of their message, delivered just after the Syria airstrikes:

In a statement, the group said in broken English: “Respectfully, what the f*** are you doing? The Shadow Brokers voted for you. The Shadow Brokers supports you. The Shadow Brokers is losing faith in you. Mr Trump helping the Shadow Brokers, helping you. Is appearing you are abandoning ‘your base’, ‘the movement’, and the peoples who getting you elected.”

Russians did not vote for Trump, except in a very poetic sense. I suspect that we are dealing with a multinational force rather than a state actor, although Russia may be the state with which this force is, at the moment, most closely allied.

TAPE! Plus: President Hatch?

One of the many lingering mysteries of Watergate concerns burglar James McCord, the former CIA employee turned CREEP agent who -- some say -- intentionally blew the operation in order to screw Nixon. Back in the 1970s, major publishers offered big bucks for his insider's account of what really happened. Instead of going for the payday, McCord went with an unknown publisher ("Washington Media Services") and produced a small book called A Piece of Tape, which received hardly any publicity or distribution.

I've read it; you haven't. I've never encountered another book (outside the ouvre of A.E. Waite) which managed to be simultaneously so weird and so dull. Without revealing anything interesting about Watergate, McCord keeps repeating TAPE TAPE TAPE in all caps, as though the incantatory power of that word could reveal the mysteries of the parapolitical universe, but only to those few initiates who vibrate on McCord's level. Perhaps this strange book contains a Dan Brownian code. If so, I couldn't find it.

You can guess why that book has been on my mind lately. Stories like this one have me flashing back to McCord and those chants of TAPE...TAPE...TAPE...

A tweet from President Donald Trump on Friday suggesting that he might have taped phone conversations from the White House made waves in Washington, but some former employees and a former associate said it wasn’t a surprise to them that he would mention taped conversations.

As a businessman, Mr. Trump sometimes taped phone conversations with associates and others from his Trump Tower office in New York, according to three people who say they have direct knowledge of the recordings.

Mr. Trump had one or more recording devices that he used to tape his phone calls from his office, the three people said. All are former high-level employees who worked for Mr. Trump over a span of three decades. They said they saw devices in use recording phone calls.

A fourth person said he knew that Mr. Trump had recorded a phone conversation with him because it was later entered into evidence in a lawsuit.

Also see here.

The photo reproduced above made the rounds yesterday. Let's take a closer look at one of the items on Donnie's desk...

That's a digital voice recorder next to the iPhone. I've been trying to identify the model: It resembles my own Olympus (purchased in happier days), although mine has a retractable USB plug in the bottom. Could this be one of those cheap Chinese knock-offs you get on Ebay? If it is, how...Trumpy!

Many people, including some high-level observers, seem to be under the impression that Donald Trump's threatening "tape" tweet refers to a specific conversation which Trump had with Comey on the night when loyalty oaths were allegedly demanded. (I picture the scene as a modern version of this image.)

No. Donald Trump's tweet was not so specific. His precise words:

"James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press."

In other words: "If you reveal my secrets I will reveal yours." We have no clue as to what those secrets are or when they were discussed.

To me, the most obvious reading is that they concern Comey's pre-election 11th hour revelation of the emails on the Weiner laptop. We've all heard the reports that Comey went public as a result of ill-defined pressure put on him by a cabal of agents close to Giuliani. The full story remains untold.

Conceivably, the "taped" conversations could help to explain why Comey gave such bizarre testimony just before his firing. As you may recall, he claimed that there were "hundreds or thousands" of emails on that laptop, when such was simply not the case. Note that Trump fired Comey directly after a flurry of stories appeared correcting Comey's mistake. At the time, I wondered if Comey himself might have been a source for those corrections. In other words, I theorize that Comey -- as a condition for keeping his job -- was directed to "misspeak" in such a way as to justify a new Clinton probe, a plan which went south when corrections appeared in the press the next day.

Is that theory too outlandish? Perhaps so. Nevertheless, I am persuaded -- perhaps not convinced, but persuaded -- that the great unspoken issue underlying Trump's tweeted threat to Comey comes out of THAT realm. Trump still hopes to lock her up.

President Orrin Hatch! Claude Taylor and Louise Mensch are spreading an amazing rumor throughout liberal-land. They say that Donald Trump will be brought down soon -- very soon, maybe tomorrow, maybe a little later, but soon soon soon -- and that the scandal will also engulf Mike Pence.

So that means President Paul Ryan, eh? Not so fast.

Mensch and Taylor say that Ryan is on tape admitting that the GOP coffers contain laundered funds. Next in the line of succession would be President pro tempore of the Senate, Orrin Hatch -- who is 83.

Remember when liberals considered Hatch unimaginably far to the right? How things have changed! Nowadays, many Dems would thank God for the chance to say "President Hatch."

As you may have guessed, the only sources for this fantasia are unnamed. Louise Mensch has her own sources, while Claude Taylor has a separate set of sources. Mensch and Taylor say that the Unnamed Ones tell stories that converge.

Mensch goes so far as to say that Orrin Hatch is already receiving security briefings. At this writing, if you type "Orrin Hatch" into Google, the first suggested autocompletion is "president," followed by "security briefings."

This is from Taylor's twitter feed:

@LouiseMensch and I are reporting that a sealed indictment has been issued against Trump by FISA court to serve as the basis of Impeachment.

Now let us look at one of their joint story in Patribotics -- yes, Mensch has actually signed one of her stories!

Separate sources with links to the intelligence and justice communities have stated that a sealed indictment has been granted against Donald Trump.

While it is understood that the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution means that, until Mr. Trump is impeached, he cannot be prosecuted, sources say that the indictment is intended by the FBI and prosecutors in the Justice Department to form the basis of Mr. Trump’s impeachment. The indictment is, perhaps uniquely, not intended or expected to be used for prosecution, sources say, because of the constitutional position of the President.

C'est tout. That's the full story. Dare I ask a logical question? What would be the purpose of a sealed indictment under these circumstances? Impeachment proceedings will occur only when the public demands impeachment, and the public will make that demand if the world learns about the indictment.

Thus, the Mensch/Taylor story of a secret indictment makes no sense. I'm reminded of the Doomsday Device in Dr. Strangelove: The device works only if it is not secret.

Defenders of Mensch and Taylor will quickly point out that they've both been right before -- in fact, at times they have been miles ahead of mainstream journalists. My response: For precisely that reason, they have made themselves likely targets for a disinformation plot designed to discredit everything they've said.

Many years ago, I had lunch with...well, let's just say that he was a writer who thought that he could play the kind of game that Louise Mensch is playing now. Call him Alan. I think he meant well, just as I now think that Louise Mensch means well.

Like Louise, Alan thought -- at first -- that he had been made privy to a wonderful and exciting world of insider information. Over time, Alan realized that his "sources" were using him, playing games with him. In the end, they more or less ruined his life.

Over lunch, Alan told me something I've never forgotten. When someone "on the inside" leaks information (Alan used the example of an Air Force guy leaking Top Seekrit material to Aviation Week), the leaker is usually caught. Often, he is not prosecuted, although he is threatened with prosecution. The leaker is instructed to meet with the same writer and to provide certain information which may be genuine or bogus. Bogus information will eventually be exposed as such, thereby discrediting the writer forever.

In my opinion, that scenario explains a number of mysteries discussed in these very pages over the past thirteen years. To cite an obvious example, consider some of the things that Jason Leopold wrote during the "Fitzmas" season. (Remember this? Another one of those "sealed indictments" that turned out to be hallucinatory. Poor Jason Leopold is still getting shat upon for that one.)

I can guess what Louise Mensch would say in response, were she to read these words: "But Claude Taylor and I have received the exact same information from separate sources!" Right now, I have no pressing reason to doubt that such is the case. But this congruence does not, in and of itself, mean that the "President Hatch" claim is accurate. Coordinated, multi-sourced disinformation is still disinformation. And the naive writer who makes the disinformation public without any maybes or ifs will end up wearing the same expression Princess Leia displays when Grand Moff Tarkin tells her "You're far too trusting."

Incidentally, Mensch's own lawyer doubts this "Hatch" tale. 

I've said it before and I've said it again: Louise Mensch's great error is her refusal to address the many indications that our own spooks played a role in electing Trump, using psy-war tactics honed since the heyday of Paul Linebarger. Cambridge Analytica may have Russian connections, but it also has far stronger wires leading directly to MI6, the CIA and environs. Moreover, Mercer's psywar shop is locatable within the Tory Establishment. Being a Tory herself, Mensch simply cannot accept that this Establishment might be dirty. Her basic framework -- "Heroic western spooks versus Evil Putin and his puppet Trump" -- was always simplistic, even if that construct does contain elements of the truth.

Here's my forecast: Orrin Hatch will not be president.

I'd love to be wrong about that, but I'm probably not. If the last laugh belongs to Mensch and Taylor, I'll be giddy with joy. If the last laugh is mine, I will be as depressed as Eeyore writing his suicide note. In other words, situation normal.

(Actually, Eeyore -- lacking opposable thumbs -- would have to dictate his suicide note. Maybe he can borrow Trump's voice recorder...?)

A final point: What will happen if and when the "Orrin Hatch" claim proves false? Should we assume that all of the claims about Trump's Russian adventures are false?

Of course not. In fact, we should presume the opposite. The presence of disinformation indicates that something real is being protected. As a notable British conservative once said: "In wartime, the truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies."

Added note: For the sake of argument, let's say that Hatch is offered the presidency. If he declines to serve due to age, the next in the line of succession would be Rex Tillerson, Secretary of State.

FBI raid, Comey, DiFi, Trump, Felix Sater -- and Neil Bush

RAID! A couple of days ago, the FBI raided Strategic Campaign Group, a Manafort-linked Republican consultancy group in Annapolis. Was this raid linked to Russiagate or the Comey firing? Newsweek says no...

It prompted speculation on social media that the raids were linked to the ongoing investigation, but Rogers told the Gazette that the raids were connected to the work the company did on candidate Ken Cuccinelli’s failed 2013 gubernatorial race.

Cuccinelli, the former Virginia attorney-general, sued the Strategic Campaign Group in 2014, alleging the group had formed a political action group (PAC) taking donations to help fund his campaign, but he did not see a dollar of the money.

Is that all there is to it? Similar allegations have been leveled against campaign "consultants" in the past without triggering this kind of reaction from the Bureau. Note, for example, this...

The day after the FBI raided the offices of a Maryland campaign consulting firm that has done work on national and local races, the firm deleted or locked much of its online presence.

The website for Strategic Campaign Group, which had previously featured more than a dozen pages detailing the firm's various campaign services, blog posts, social media, frequently asked questions and biographical information about its founders, has been pared down to just a homepage — which itself has several dead links still pointing to pages that were active one day ago.

In addition, Strategic Campaign Group's Facebook, Instagram and Google Plus accounts have all been closed, and the firm made its Twitter feed private. Its Pinterest and LinkedIn pages remain active.

On Thursday, FBI agents swarmed the firm's offices on Main Street in Annapolis, placing garbage bags over the windows to keep onlookers from peering inside while agents worked.

Also see here...

First of all, so-called "scam PACs" are normally the domain of the Federal Elections Commission, which conservative activists have rendered toothless. Yes, the FBI does investigate fraud, yet the amounts at issue in the Cuccinelli scandal are in the mid five figures - hardly the kind of operation that the Washington, DC FBI office normally goes out of its way to take down. And the FBI has never said anything about a new focus on scam PACs.

Furthermore, Cuccinelli told the Associated Press "that he'd not spoken to any federal law enforcement officials about Strategic Campaign Group but is ‘curious' to see where the case goes" - which is odd, since the FBI normally talks to alleged victims as part of any investigation.

Odd indeed. It's fair to suggest that the FBI was after something else, and that Cuccinelli's complaint merely served as a convenient excuse for the raid.

Strategic Campaign Group has more than one connection to Trump's world.

Although the information has been scrubbed from the organization's website today, Senior adviser Dennis Whitfield used to be a director at BKSH and Associates, a company founded by Trump conspiracy-wrangler Roger Stone and former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort that more or less invented the foreign lobbying trade. Through a merger, BKSH later became Prime Policy Group, which worked for the government of Russian puppet Victor Yanukovitch in Ukraine. Prime Policy Group acknowledged its relationship to Stone and Manafort as late as last July.

Remember, Yanukovich is the fellow who poisoned his rival. He also hired Tad Devine, the master manipulator behind the Bernie Sanders campaign.

I stand with those who strongly suspect that there is more -- much more -- to this raid than at first meets the eye. But that doesn't mean I'll go out on a limb with Louise Mensch...

The @FBI raids yesterday were connected to #TrumpRussia - there is a #RICO case against the entire @GOP sources say

The entire GOP? The entire GOP is millions of people. That'd be one hell of a RICO case.

Comey's a-comin'! My earlier story must have been based on an overly-cynical assessment of the situation. It turns out that James Comey does want to testify -- in public.

Time for those alleged tapes, Mr. Trump. Put up or shut up.

DiFi gets it right. I was never a big fan of Diane Feinstein. But she's doing the right thing right now...

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) said in a statement that she supports "Senator Durbin’s call for Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to resign if he is unwilling to appoint a special counsel. These investigations are far too important to risk disruption, delay or interference."

Morgan Lewis is the name of Trump's TREMENDOUS law firm that wrote the TREMENDOUS letter which Josh Marshall reproduces here (tremendously). But Morgan Lewis also has TREMENDOUS ties to a TREMENDOUS country called Russia. The following comes from the Morgan Lewis website:

MOSCOW, May 2, 2016: Morgan Lewis has been recognized by Chambers & Partners’ 2016 Chambers Europe guide as Russia Law Firm of the Year. The prestigious honor was announced at the publication’s recent annual awards dinner in London, where firms from 24 countries were recognized.

Could the optics possibly be more tremendously awful? Does Trump even care about optics anymore? What's next? Is he going to start quoting Pushkin and humming Prokofiev?

Speaking of Mother Russia: Forbes' Richard Behar has written a new piece on Trump's Russian links. This one takes us back to Bayrock, Felix Sater and Tevfik Arif, names you will recall from previous posts. Bottom line: Sater and Arif (both former Trump partners) have fallen out.

Sater warned Arif, in writing, that news headlines will read: “The Kazakh Gangster and President Trump,” unless Arif forks over $3.5 million to reimburse Sater for legal expenses he claims he’s owed, the Journal reported. Specifically, Sater is threatening to reveal negative information about Arif’s “past relationship with President Trump and the Republic of Kazakhstan”—as well as Arif’s alleged connections to “organized crime figures and his business activities in Kazakhstan,” which involve “dealings in the post-Soviet metals industry there.”

Spokespeople for Bayrock and Arif have called the allegations “unsubstantiated falsehoods.” The general counsel of Trump Organization didn’t respond to calls and emails.

Sater, however, may not even need the dough. I’ve discovered that he and a former Trump Organization colleague, Daniel Ridloff, received roughly $20 million—in a settlement of a case that is linked to an alleged multi-billion-dollar global money laundering scheme originating in Kazakhstan, and stretching to Russia and the U.S.

Here's where the story becomes absolutely delicious...

Specifically, both men were accused in a 2013 complaint filed by a Swiss financier of absconding with nearly $43 million from the sale of an Ohio shopping mall (Tri-County Mall near Cincinnati) to—American Pacific International Capital (APIC). That company is based in San Francisco. One of the directors is businessman Neil Bush—the son of former President George H.W. Bush and brother of former President George W. Bush.

Bush says he knows nothing about Sater, and that his company bought the mall at a public auction. However, Sater's bio lists himself as an adviser to a Neil Bush oil company that used to drill in Turkmenistan.

Was Donald Trump an FBI asset? Such was the claim made by someone in the comments section of this very blog, just a few days ago. Unfortunately, the commenter couldn't back up his words with evidence. (Some parapolitical theorists have reached such a heightened level of cosmic awareness that they have transcended the need for "evidence" and "proof" and "citation of sources" and similar mundane trifles.)

Yet the allegation has a certain attraction. As all readers of Wayne Barret and David Cay Johnston know, Donald Trump has gotten away with all sorts of legally dubious crap over the years. It makes sense that Donnie would protect his interests by making various deals with the feds.

You may have noticed that Trump Tower has a history of renting to high-level crooks, and that the feds always found it easy to "tapp" those particular suites. (Apparently, there has been a lot of bugging in that building.) One example would be Felix Sater, a former Trump Tower tenant who himself functioned as an FBI informant.

A piece of tape -- or: Welcome to Kompromat Kountry

In an act of blatant thuggery unprecedented in the history of his office, Trump tweeted:

James Comey better hope that there are no 'tapes' of our conversations before he starts leaking to the press.

Every time I think that Donnie can no longer shock us, he shocks us. It is hard to argue that this tweet does not meet the legal definition of extortion.

With this statement, Trump admits that he believes in governance by kompromat, as has become the norm in Russia. If one of Putin's underlings defies him, Russians can expect to see video of said underling's sexual escapades on television. If Trump defies Putin, the world will either see the pee-pee tape or (more likely) will learn the unsavory details of Trump's finances.

Such is the world we now inhabit.

Josh Marshall has opined that any such "tape" is fictitious. Sorry, but he's guilty of wishful thinking. Everything in Trump's history proves that he thinks and acts like a mob boss -- and a mob boss would not issue such a threat without possessing something to back it up.

Of course, that something might not be an actual recording: It could be the knowledge that Comey said something in private that he might not want the world to know. In other words, the tweet exists to press Comey's paranoia button: "Was I or was I not on Candid Camera?"

Comey has said that he is "not worried about any tapes." Not a reassuring statement. One would expect a proud man to say "I'm not worried" even if he's hyperventilating with angst. Ignore the words; heed the actions:

The source said Comey is likely not going to testify next week to Senate intelligence. As of Friday morning, Comey had not responded to the request.

Translation: He's worried.

LBJ used to say that "I don't trust a man unless I have his pecker in my pocket." That's how Trump operates: A pocket full of peckers. That's why Trump kept Comey on for so long: At some point, a pecker was pocketed.

And that's why we cannot trust any replacement Trump chooses. The new guy -- whoever he is, however impressive his credentials may seem -- will also have a "pocketed pecker problem."

That's also why we cannot trust either the House or Senate intelligence committees. James Jesus Angleton once said that if the CIA couldn’t find out its own future from tapping the Hill, it had no business being in intelligence. Russell Tice of the NSA (used as a source by the NYT) once said:

They went after–and I know this because I had my hands literally on the paperwork for these sort of things–they went after high-ranking military officers; they went after members of Congress, both Senate and the House, especially on the intelligence committees and on the armed services committees and some of the–and judicial.

But they went after other ones, too. They went after lawyers and law firms. All kinds of–heaps of lawyers and law firms. They went after judges. One of the judges is now sitting on the Supreme Court that I had his wiretap information in my hand. Two are former FISA court judges.

They went after State Department officials. They went after people in the executive service that were part of the White House–their own people.

There is, in fact, a long history of the intelligence services spying on members of the intelligence committee.

But the problem isn't just our own spooks. It's the FSB. It's private firms like Cambridge Analytica, owned by Trump's funder, billionaire idealogue Robert Mercer.

Why do so many Republican congresscritters continue to enable Trump, even though most of them can't stand the guy, and even though most of them would much rather deal with Pence? Kompromat. I cannot prove it, but I am personally convinced that their otherwise-mystifying loyalty to this embarrassing oaf has little to do with ideology. It's all a matter of carrots and sticks: The carrot of cash and the stick of extortion.  

I don't know why liberals speak as though this is the beginning of the end for Trump. It's the beginning of the end of democracy. Welcome to a brutish new era of primal criminality. Welcome to Kompromat Kountry.

Cute, eh? The White House claimed that Comey had lost the respect of the rank and file -- yet Trump himself dare not visit FBI headquarters.

Source E. When another Twitter user asked  "Is "Source E" Epshteyn?", Claude Taylor responded: "That's "A" for Affirmative."

Is it permissible to remind the world that this humble blog was the very first political website to identify Ephsteyn as the likeliest candidate, way back in January?

Claude Taylor is now tweeting

Everyone needs to be patient. You may not see it but the process that will end with Trump's resignation or impeachment has begun.

Yeah, but. A couple of days ago he was acting as if IT -- whatever "it" may be -- was going to hit very, very soon. Didn't a guy named Aesop once write a story about a boy and a wolf? The "spooks against Trump" should re-read that story.

Trump, the Lizard King

John Schindler -- one of the "spooks against Trump" -- predicted that a big break in what he calls Kremlingate would emerge yesterday. "The Lizard is coming," promised Schindler.

No lizard arrived. Moreover, in his latest batch of tweets, Schindler offers no explanation for the lizard's absence.

There was some big news yesterday -- but it was made by Trump himself, who ever-so-helpfully confirmed that the firing of Comey really was an attempt to squelch the Russia investigation. How convenient! Liberals no longer needed to prove the obvious to dolts who refuse to believe the obvious.

"In fact when I decided to just do it, I said to myself, I said you know, this Russia thing with Trump and Russia is a made-up story, it's an excuse by the Democrats for having lost an election that they should have won," he said.

Why did Trump blurt out this confession? I think that he has morphed into Jack Nicholson's "Colonel Jessup" in A Few Good Men. Remember this scene?

Lt. Weinberg: And now you think you can get him to just say it?

Kaffee: I think he wants to say it. I think he's pissed off that he's gotta hide from this. I think he wants to say that he made a command decision and that's the end of it.

Note that Trump admits that the Democrats should have won the last election. On some level, he wanted to make that admission as well.

Elsewhere in the interview, he talked about a dinner with Comey which allegedly occurred at Comey's instigation (as if an FBI Director would ever issue such an invite to a President). We've since learned that Comey was the one who was invited, and that this dinner party was akin to one of those movie scenes in which a mob boss extracts loyalty oaths from his underbosses. Within the great cinema of the imagination, the image of Trump-as-Colonel-Jessup vanishes, replaced by footage of Trump as Al Capone in The Untouchables.

As they ate, the president and Mr. Comey made small talk about the election and the crowd sizes at Mr. Trump’s rallies. The president then turned the conversation to whether Mr. Comey would pledge his loyalty to him.

Mr. Comey declined to make that pledge. Instead, Mr. Comey has recounted to others, he told Mr. Trump that he would always be honest with him, but that he was not “reliable” in the conventional political sense.

Within the great cinema of the imagination, the image of Trump-as-Capone vanishes; Trump has now become Mayor Mel Brooks in Blazing Saddles. He demands a "Hail Trump" from all present, but one voice remains silent. "I didn't get a 'Hail Trump' outta you," snarls Donnie-Brooks. "You watch your ass!"

Yet the Republican Senators still won't call for a special prosecutor. To the GOP mind, fluff and nonsense like Whitewater supposedly deserved an independent investigation, but not Kremlingate.

“I say, let’s see who he nominates to replace Comey,” Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.), who tweeted after Comey’s firing that he could not find an “acceptable rationale” for its timing, said of a special prosecutor. “You never rule anything out, but I’m not going there. I don’t want to jeopardize the Senate investigation going on.”

The Senate investigation has become an all-purpose excuse for the prevention of a real investigation. Since the Trumpers are making no serious effort to discredit the Senate intelligence committee, then we must presume that it has been compromised. When will people start to take seriously the many stories we've read about kompromat? Everyone has secrets, which means that even the decent may be manipulated. I believe it was Miles Copeland who once admitted that the CIA tries to get dirt on pretty much everyone who serves on those committees.

For all the recent talk about the role of blackmail in Russian politics, we still prefer to hallucinate that such things cannot happen here. I will mistrust Trump's choice for the next FBI head no matter who gets the nod. Whoever the new person is, either Mercer or Putin will have a file on him (or her).

On the other hand, a Special Prosecutor might be uncontrollable. That's why we must keep pressing for that outcome.

Be forewarned: Even if an honest, un-blackmailable SP is named, the Trumpers will have much room for nasty hijinks. Some of you may know the story of the House Select Committee on Assassinations, which began life under the honorable and honest Richard Sprague. Sprague was forced out of his position by smears, deception, and the deliberate seeding of paranoia among liberals. Mark my words: The Trumpers will resort to exactly similar trickery if the "wrong" man is ever chosen to lead an independent inquiry -- and Kos will probably provide the launching pad for the smears.

Louise Mensch is usually much more measured in her longer blog pieces than when she tweets-from-the-hip. But her latest gets into some pretty wild areas...

Several separate sources with links to the intelligence communities of more than one nation, and with links within the US state and federal justice systems, have outlined evidence that exists against multiple men in the line of succession to the US Presidency, as it relates to Russia’s hack on America. I can also exclusively report a RICO case is being considered against the Republican party for laundering Russian money.

These sources say that Senator Orrin Hatch of Utah, who was the ‘Designated Survivor’ at the inauguration of Donald Trump (yes, really) is likely to become President if charges are pursued, according to the evidence, of illegal collusion with Russia, money laundering, and obstruction of justice.

Remember when Orrin Hatch was as far to the right as the American mind could conceive? Now he seems almost reasonable.

You may be wondering how Paul Ryan (third in succession) fits into this new Mensch schema.

On Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House, normally third in the line of succession, I can report as fact that sources say that Ryan has been legally intercepted, and is on tape, admitting that he knew Russian money was being laundered into the Republican party. Without co-operation pending resignation Ryan may find himself swept up into a RICO prosecution involving the apparatus of the Republican party who accepted laundered Russian money.

Does such a recording actually exist? I'll believe it when I hear it. At any rate, the phrase "I can report as fact that sources say" is not likely to convince anyone. I can report as fact that sources say Bigfoot is real.

When people tell you a story that you want to hear, be on guard. This yarns sounds about as over-the-top as Pizzagate and some of the other anti-Hillary fables we heard during the finale of the last campaign.

Ms. Mensch, if you're reading this: Even an intelligence source who has fed you good information in the past may be deceiving you now. Happens all the time.

What if the lizard does NOT come...?

John Schindler of the 20committee -- which, I remind you, is an ever-so-clever reference to the double-cross committee of spy lore (XX=20) -- seems to think that something big will happen tomorrow.

By "tomorrow" I mean today, for this post will be published after midnight.

I've received a briefing from a senior intel official who's worked #KremlinGate from the beginning. I'll share the findings ASAP. Big stuff.

The Lizard is coming.

Like I promised.

Tomorrow.

We've seen too much of this, and we've seen it on both sides: Throughout the 2016 campaign, prominent voices on the right kept promising major, major stuff that would hit "tomorrow" or the day after. In their world, Alt Rightists kept expecting some major breakthrough that would force an end to Hillary's campaign and result in her being frog-marched off to the Big House.

Tomorrow. The breakthrough was always scheduled to hit tomorrow. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.

Didn't happen.

More recently, on the other side of the political aisle, the spooks-against-Trump led a lot of people to believe that Donnie's presidency would end before the 100 day mark. That, too, did not happen.

Yet we keep scrambling after every crumb of hope offered by the anti-Trump twitterers. Let's admit it: We have become the gambler who suspects that the game is rigged but can't walk away from the table because it's the only game in town.

Louise Mensch -- God, I don't trust her! God, she turns me on! -- assures us:

Rosenstein good
McCabe good
Don't listen to naysayers
Comey made contingency plans with both men
Trump trolls want you hate them #TeamDeza

This claim re: McCabe is very dubious. Rosenstein? Well, I noted with some interest this WP article:

Rosenstein threatened to resign after the narrative emerging from the White House on Tuesday evening cast him as a prime mover of the decision to fire Comey and that the president acted only on his recommendation, said the person close to the White House, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the matter.

On initial scan, this seems convincing, so let's give Rosenstein the benefit of the doubt -- for now. But if he decides to stand in the way of a special prosecutor, then we'll hand him the black hat and glue it to his scalp.

For what it's worth, Mensch also says that arrests could come tomorrow.

Two separate sources with links to the intelligence community say that the first arrests in the criminal and counter-intelligence probe will shortly take place, possibly as soon as Thursday, May 11th.

Yeah, but. If one of those sources is Schindler and the other is The Jester, then all we have here is a Twitter circle-jerk.

Senator Markey announced on CNN that a Grand Jury had been empaneled in New York and cited this blog. I referred to a probably linked document from the Southern District of New York in my last piece, which reported as fact that no fewer than six separate FISA warrants had been issued in the Trump-Russia probe, but I am able to report tonight as fact both that my own sources, who are independent of Mr. Taylor’s sources, confirm multiple sealed indictments delivered at State Grand Jury level in the Southern District of New York, and that intelligence sources also believe that the first arrests in Trump Russia will shortly be announced and may come as quickly as tomorrow.

For the sake of clarity, I still cannot report anything further than a probability on the linking of a civil document in the New York case to the indictments that have been obtained in New York under RICO. People familiar with the matter speculate that General Flynn may be among the first people arrested but they do not confirm the news.

Claude Taylor is also singing that familiar song: "Something's coming/I don't know what it is/But it is/Gonna be great!" He also makes a point first aired in these humble pages:

Source: Comey's firing timed to coincide with his trip to Los Angeles in order to gain immediate access to Comey's computer systems/files.

I had no sources, just a smidgen of common sense. Or paranoia. Take your pick.

Common sense also tells me that Comey may not have prepared for this eventuality, even though many people presume that he must have done. Here are three reasons why I disagree with this presumption: 1) Comey seemed genuinely shocked to learn of his firing. 2) When it comes to computer stuff, nobody ever backs things up the way they should. 3) If an FBI Director were to place classified info on a USB stick -- well, that raises all sorts of ethical/legal questions, dunnit?

Let's say he does have a USB stick full of juiciness. Just how would Comey make use of that data?

As you ponder that, ponder this: Access to Comey's computers would give Team Trump a pretty good idea as to the length and the breadth of what the Bureau knows. Who, exactly, would have gone through Comey's computer? Obviously, there must be Trump loyalists within the Bureau.

The new FBI Director will probably come from that group. I'm guessing that the nod will go to one of Rudy Giuliani's boys out of NY.

Let us return to the main theme of this post: Something's Coming. Another singer of that song is Malcolm Nance (who doesn't always get along with Mensch, btw). When writer Xeni Jardin tweeted "I'd lay money on extremely dark, damning Trump content hitting sunlight soon," Nance responded:

Concur. My guess is it will originate in Europe & be irrefutable. Standby.

Note that Nance's prophecy does not really align with what we hear from Schindler and others. Which is it going to be: An arrest in America or a data-blast out of Europe? The answer to that question will tell us which of the "spooks against Trump" is the truly wired-in.

By the way: Just in case you were in any doubt, Jake Tapper says...

There are two reasons why President Donald Trump fired James Comey, according to a source close to the now-former FBI director:

1. Comey never provided the President with any assurance of personal loyalty.

2. The fact that the FBI's investigation into possible Trump team collusion with Russia in the 2016 election was accelerating.

Moreover, the letter the President wrote to Comey firing him includes zero references to the Clinton investigation and one big one about the Russia investigation.

At least one reader has noted that Trump's dismissal note does not mention Russia by name. Technically, that is true. But I tend to believe that reports that Trump has been singularly fixated on "Kremlingate" in recent weeks. Tapper's "source close to" Comey may well be Comey himself, in which case the above-listed reasons 1 and 2 both fall under the heading "speculation." I'd call it reasonable speculation.

Added note: Folks, you have no idea how much of my romantic history is summed up by these ten horrifying words: "God, I don't trust her! God, she turns me on!"

Firing Comey: Motive and timing

Preet Bharara has tweeted: "EVERYONE who cares about independence & rule of law in America should be "troubled by the timing and reasoning" of Comey firing. Period." That's the topic I wish to address here and now: Timing and Reasoning.

In response to the Comey firing, Evan Osnos (of The New Yorker) asked an important question (retweeted by Rachel Maddow):

Serious question: Where are Comey’s files right now? Who controls them? After Nixon fired special prosecutor, office was sealed. Important.

To which Grant Stern of OccupyDemocrats responded:

Totally explains what I just heard through a 3rd party source about offices in the FBI being sealed.

On MSNBC and CNN earlier, everyone seemed stunned by the sudden nature of the Comey firing: The memos offering rationales were all dated March 9, and show every sign of being concocted hastily -- yet the incidents described in those memos are ancient news. Ostensibly, Comey had to go because he mishandled the Hillary Clinton email investigation, a "sin" committed months and months and months ago. Suddenly, what he did back then has become a big damned deal.

Or so the Trumpers want us to think. The stated reasons are clearly ersatz:

The Department of Justice was told to come up with justification to fire FBI Director James Comey, The New York Times and CNN reported Tuesday.

White House and Justice Department officials "had been working on building a case against [Comey] since at least last week," according to the Times, which cited administration officials. The report said Attorney General Jeff Sessions "had been charged with coming up with reasons to fire him."

This is akin to hanging the prisoner before anyone can come up with a charge.

Most observers think that this firing is really about Russia. Trump (who often blurts out more than he intends) has nearly confessed as much: In his "you're fired" letter, he brags that Comey has said "on three separate occasions that I am not under investigation." As one wit on DU noted, that remark gives us a classic "Don't think of an elephant" moment. Remember when Nixon said "I am not a crook"? From that moment on, everyone -- even Republicans -- started to see him as a crook.

Just minutes ago, Occupy Democrats reported that Trump is in fact the subject of an FBI investigation. This revelation apparently came about as a result of an FOIA request filed by Jason Leopold and an associate. Leopold asked to see FBI documents pertaining to Trump's infamous "Russia, if you're listening" remark, which shocked so many people during the campaign.

The FBI said originally that they could not confirm or deny the existence of said documents, but soon backtracked and agreed to search for the documents.

During the filing of this lawsuit, a Department of Justice attorney stated that there is an “’active, ongoing investigation’ pertaining to this matter and claimed that disclosing the ‘records that are responsive to the Russia Request’ could reasonably be expected to interfere with ‘enforcement proceedings.’”

Fascinating stuff -- although skeptics still have room to argue that this response does not necessarily indicate that Trump himself is under investigation.

We do know that Trump's associates are under investigation.

We also know that, in a criminal conspiracy case, smaller fry are often pressured to rat out larger fry. The likeliest to crack is Michael Flynn. The latest from CNN:

Federal prosecutors have issued grand jury subpoenas to associates of former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn seeking business records, as part of the ongoing probe of Russian meddling in last year's election, according to people familiar with the matter. CNN learned of the subpoenas hours before President Donald Trump fired FBI director James Comey.

The subpoenas represent the first sign of a significant escalation of activity in the FBI's broader investigation begun last July into possible ties between Trump campaign associates and Russia.

Claude Taylor had said much the same thing days before; people who doubted his credibility 48 hours ago won't be so quick to scoff now. Not too long ago, Taylor tweeted: "A source with knowledge of the investigation says that nine sealed indictments came down in one case with sixteen more expected in others."

Speaking of possible indictments: In the video embedded above, Keith Olbermann lays out an important new revelation. A very credible source reports that both Donald and Eric Trump bragged about receiving $100 million "from Russia" in 2014, which the Trumps were investing in golf courses at a time when no reputable bank would loan money for that purpose.

Those "following the money" should also check out the Rachel Maddow segment embedded below.

A few teevee pundits has speculated that Trump will choose Rudy Giuliani as the new FBI head. The Palmer Report says that Rudy suddenly showed up at Trump's hotel in DC.

The Nixon Library offered a classic diss: "FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI." Here's another fun fact: Tomorrow, Donald Trump meets personally with Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. You may recall that his name came up in the Steele Dossier.

Politico reports that Trump had a screaming meltdown just before the firing:

He had grown enraged by the Russia investigation, two advisers said, frustrated by his inability to control the mushrooming narrative around Russia. He repeatedly asked aides why the Russia investigation wouldn’t disappear and demanded they speak out for him. He would sometimes scream at television clips about the probe, one adviser said.

Politico also reports that the chief instigator of the Comey firing was none other than Roger Stone -- the political dirty trickster who got his start during the days of Watergate.

While shock dominated much of the FBI and the White House, the mood was more elated at Roger Stone's house in Florida. Several Stone allies and friends said Stone, who has been frequently mentioned in the investigation, encouraged the president to fire Comey in conversations in recent weeks.

On Twitter, Stone signaled praise for the move by posting an image of Trump from The Apprentice saying "You're fired."

Stone's twitter responses have been stupefying. Get this:

What Comey did to Hillary was disgraceful. I'm glad Trump fired him over it.

When I first read this tweet, my jaw hit the floor with a loud CLONK, as in a Tex Avery cartoon. Roger Stone didn't exactly leap to Hillary's defense at the time -- in fact, he was calling her a witch and circulating the loopiest anti-Hillary conspiracy theories ever to dupe the gullible. Also see here. This site offers an interesting argument that Roger Stone invented Pizzagate. (Before you say it: Yes, I know that the link goes to a disreputable anti-Semitic conspiracy blog. The Stone claim intrigues me nonetheless.)

Stone also tweeted the "church" photo reproduced above. Nobody will ever refer to Roger Stone as a Goliath in stature, although he is certainly a philistine.

Let's talk timing. I was gobsmacked to learn that Comey got the bad news while giving a speech in California; at first, he thought that the TV headlines were an elaborate prank. Cable news covered his exit motorcade as though he were OJ in the Bronco. On reflection, I could understand why Trump decided to pounce while the FBI Director was out of town.

Recall what Grant Stern said: "Totally explains what I just heard through a 3rd party source about offices in the FBI being sealed."

Curt Gentry's J. Edgar Hoover: The Man and the Secrets -- the most respected of the Hoover bios --contains a fascinating (and well-sourced) account of the scramble for Hoover's blackmail files immediately after he joined the Choir Invisible. I suspect that a similar scramble is going on right now.

Added historical note: One very likely repository for the Hoover files was the Blue Ridge Club overlooking Harper's Ferry -- a hangout for spooks loyal to James Jesus Angleton. Senate investigators hoped to visit this club and make a personal inspection, but just before they showed up, the whole place burned to the ground in a mysterious fire. (The remains of that building may still be visible; the grounds are owned by something called the Adventure Center.)

Incidentally, the Harvard Crimson reported that the Ervin Committee heard testimony indicating that Hoover's heart attack was induced by a "poison of the thiophosphate genre." They played rough in those days.