Unleash Hell

Fact is that there’s enough dirt on Trump as we speak that he could be thrown out of office and convicted on a number of counts.  The only thing protecting him is an equally corrupt Congress.

Yes it’s fun to see the White House try to explain away Kushner’s requested back channel (several pundits call it outright espionage, since Kushner wanted not so much a back channel as a key to the front door of Russian facilities here in the States, so he could communicate with the Russians in Moscow privately).  It’s fun to see Trump’s supporters try to shrug at it all and divert attention to his “accomplishments.” (Yes?  Waiting…)

But the fact is that the rest of us already have Trump where we want him, and where he deserves to be — impotent (in a manner of speaking), and in deep, deep trouble.  It’s almost as if we need the Russia angle only for our amusement at this point.

Of course that’s not totally true.  We do need the Russia angle to get the most corrupt members of Congress out of the path first, clearing the way to Trump.  So I guess it is imperative to build a clear picture of who/what/where/when/why in terms of the undoubted Russian influence over much of Congress if you’re not willing to wait for the elections in November 2018 (and I honestly don’t think we can wait that long; international pressure is rising, as is frustration at home).

By the time we get to Trump himself, though…well, the deal is already done.  Even if no one proves to the Republicans’ satisfaction (and they won’t) that he ever laid his eyes on Kislyak, et. al., let alone became financially entangled with various highly-placed, phenomenally wealthy  Russians over a period of decades — apparently acting as their money-laundering machine, it now appears — we still have him.  He’s going down.

Rumor a month ago was that Trump would be gone by June 1, and I said that seemed overly optimistic.  Instead I’m judging by the twit Chaffetz’s impending departure from Congress, which is June 30.  I’m thinking real stuff, not just bombshell revelations, will start to happen after that.

(That said, it’s funny how these people seem to think they can avoid trouble by leaving town.  But I digress.)

Anyway, I’m thinking the real action will happen starting in July.  Maybe something’s already happening in the background, as Trump is appearing ever the more obese, unsteady, and senile.  We know he’s too weak a person to deliberately act ill in public (and he’s not that great of an actor, anyway), so maybe he’ll be forced out due to disability sometime over the summer.  Some pundits have predicted that he’d use this ruse to leave office with his head held high, but I think that for him, showing any sign of weakness would be such a massive blow to his ego that he just couldn’t do it.  I’m thinking he may have to be forced out by his own people — his behavior may finally get so weird that they will be compelled to do it.  We’re almost there now.

But there’s even more interesting stuff happening in that vein.  Over this past weekend one of the supposed White House leakers tweeted something to the effect that Trump and Bannon were going to spend Memorial Day promoting right-wing conspiracy theories about the tragic death of Seth Rich, but they were frightened into silence by the generals on the White House staff who threatened to “unleash hell” if they did so.  That’s fascinating on a number of levels, especially since both Mattis and McMaster have tarnished their badges by defending Trump in recent weeks.  It makes you wonder what’s going on in the background: Bannon and Trump were cowed by the generals?  Who really has the power in the White House now, and how would they actually “unleash hell” if crossed?  Did the generals threaten Trump with the 25th Amendment, knowing Pence (who already believes he is the next president) would go along with it?  Fascinating.

If this tweet was accurate, it makes it clear that the one with the power is not Trump.  So that much is already accomplished; the rest just needs to be solidified and executed.

Nothing will happen very soon, but you can leave this article with this thought: even if the threads of the Russia situation remain hopelessly frayed as far as the White House is concerned, every knot does not need to be tied.  The supposed powers that be there are already on the way out.  Take a big, deep breath.  Now it may get interesting.

Wait ’til your father-in-law gets home

Until he got back to D.C., I’m offering a guess that Trump had no idea Jared Kushner was in such hot water. I’m guessing this because it’s apparent that the instant he found out, the tweets started — and they were all about leaks, not the treasonous acts Kushner is accused of.  Oh wait.  They were all about leaks except for the one supporting the new representative from Montana who got elected right after assaulting a reporter.  Yes.  That freedom of the press thing is bad, bigly.  Good boy for body-slamming the bastard!

No, definitely Trump had no idea.  If he had, he would not have been able to control himself overseas — not that he did — and not tweet about it.

Now the cat’s out of the proverbial bag, and the shit is hitting the proverbial fan.  All of a sudden Gary Cohn and H.C. McMaster seem on the verge of claiming they have no idea at all who Jared Kushner is, let alone anything about the potential charges against him.  “No comment” has become the official reply of the day.

I guess since we can’t rely on anything the White House says, all we have left is to observe what they do.  And what they’re doing seems to indicate that they are aware that some serious shit has come to light, and there’s no lying or dissembling this one away.  If they are that determined not to tell the truth, the only thing left for them to do is try to ignore the story and hope it’s forgotten in a few weeks, and/or try to distract by expressing a determination to find out who leaked it while simultaneously claiming that the story is false.

In fact, there’s word that Jared and Ivanka seem to think they can wait out the storm by going back to New York for a while.  And what after that?  Do they think they can come back to D.C. and resume looting, lying, spying and sneaking around, and no one will remember anything about the stories of treason?

Good luck with that.

Sometimes you just need validation

Turns out I’m not the only one who believes the 2016 election was thoroughly and completely corrupted and should be thrown out:

Elizabethparker.com

Okay, these are some large tidbits

Somehow the Washington Post got the information that the Russian ambassador to the U.S. had told the Kremlin that Jared Kushner wanted to establish a secret back channel between the Trump White House and the Kremlin (this was after the election, in December 2016).  Okay, that’s huge.  (Keith Olbermann seems to think so, too, but the New York Times is offering a tale that it was all quite innocent, which seems unlikely.)

Reuters is now piling on with the revelation that there are apparently recordings of Kusher talking with said ambassador before the election, dating all the way back to April, 2016 and that the December meeting involved an offer by Kushner to lift sanctions against Russia in exchange for private financing for those in Trump’s circle.  That’s gynormous, too.

Seth Abramson is now saying that Trump was in on the meeting with the ambassador in December, when the request for a back channel was made, and the meeting took place in Trump Tower in NYC, which Kislyak (the Russian ambassador) had entered through the back door — and this explains Trump’s obsession with Trump Tower being “wiretapped.”  This, folks, would be gigantic if proven true.

Trump is said to be setting up a “war room” and stocking it with bullies to fend off unfavorable Russiagate reports.  That would appear to be a tacit admission of guilt and therefore is bigly if true.

The Democrats in Congress are looking to strip Kushner of his security clearance, and apparently they can do this without obstruction from the Republicans.  That’s large as well.

Some RNC operative in Florida admits he sought and received hacked info on the Democrats from the Russian hackers, which he then shared with others, including Paul Ryan.  That could be sizeable (and it is apparently verified).

One Oleg Deripaska, who was once “tied to a Trump aide,” (Manafort) has sought immunity to testify before Congress and has been denied.  That’s somewhat notable too.

The Senate has asked the Trump campaign committee to produce all documents (including emails) going back to 2015.  That’s…interesting.

Put this together, and let’s see what it leads to.  I’m betting it will all end up in the towering landfill of discarded tidbits — some of them huge — we’re already faced with, but as I said, we’ll see.

P.S. some pundits are now claiming that the Kushner info is coming from pissed-off NATO allies, but I can’t verify that — especially since he was named a “person of interest” at least a week before Trump went and made an ass of himself before NATO.

P.P.S.  In the daily deluge of information, somewhere I read that the twit Chaffetz was rewarded with a $1,000,000 donation from Trump(?) after he leaked the supposedly-classified Hillary’s emails letter.  And now he’s confirmed that he’s leaving Congress by June 30 because after all, there’s only so much craziness you can put up with, right?

We should all have such luxury.

Republican corruption, via Russia

The Republican connection with Russia may go back further than I previously thought:

Grant Stern’s article

 

That was news?

One or two major news sources confirmed today that Jared Kushner is the person of the FBI’s interest in Trump’s immediate circle; other reports say that Ivanka Trump is another.  This was treated as a major revelation on Twitter and cable news, but I don’t know why.  We’ve known about the Kusher situation for almost a week; I remember writing about it here.

Frankly I’m getting tired of two tendencies: things we already know being treated as major revelations when merely repeated, and all the weird tangents people keep going off on.

An example of a tangent: big rumor of the evening after Trump spent the day making an ass out of himself before NATO is that our NATO allies may now be fed up enough with Trump that they will OOOPS, accidentally leak some of the intel they have on him.  *sigh*  We’ve already broached this subject, and they’ve been disgusted with Trump for months.  Nothing has happened.  I don’t know why people keep charging off down this dead-end road.

Even if the Europeans do leak something it will be publicly treated as “unverified” here, and be of no help to us.  Remember that Trump has the majority party behind him, and a bunch of billionaires and Russians (and Russian billionaires) behind him and the Republicans (the majority party) as well.  An “unverified” European pee-pee tape may serve as sufficient evidence to convict a Democrat, but it will not work with Trump, McConnell, Ryan, Pence, Flynn, Manafort, or any of the rest of the traitors simply because the cancer they are a part of is so advanced.

It’s been decades in the making, remember that.  It will not be undone overnight, or easily.  It will certainly not be undone by a European intelligence leak.

Anyway, there are some people who are still actually revealing new information.  As much as I hate to credit Seth Abramson, he posted this thread on Twitter tonight that may change the name of this scandal from “Kremlingate” (or “Trump-Russia,” or “Russiagate”) to simply, “Mayflower.”

Read:  Seth Abramson

Lost

I haven’t written because frankly there is so much going on that I’ve gotten lost.  Happily, Keith Olbermann has put it all together for us.  Take a big deep breath and dive in:

Olbermann

If nothing else, after listening to all that, you’ll know how I got lost.

And we now know almost for certain that the Republican Congress is almost as dirty as Trump.  Oddly Ryan is not mentioned in this article, but read it anyway:

Bluedotdaily

 

Open the door, let ’em in

This is a genuine scoop by CNN tonight.  In case you don’t want to click on it, the article basically says that the Russians bragged that they could use Flynn to influence Trump.

Meantime, Pence is using Facebook to beg Trump worshipers for donations to defend Trump against all those mean people who are trying to destroy him.  I wonder if Pence includes himself among the mean people.  After all, he’s the one who knew Flynn was dirty and hired him anyway.

Slightly louder explosions, but not really

Mother Jones just posted this.

I am assuming this is the big scoop that was hinted at…was it yesterday or the day before?  Anyway, someone on Twitter claimed that one of the major “newspapers” would publish a HUGE piece of information involving Trump/Russia “within 48 hours,” as I remember.

Well, if this is it,*shrug*.  In my view it’s nothing more than a couple more tidbits that will be quickly set buried under an avalanche of new tidbits, and the process will repeat itself over and over and over until…what?

The implication here is that Trump is safely at 30,000 feet, so shit is coming down back at home.  it isn’t.

All these tidbits do not amount to a stack of doodle y-squat, let alone a major scoop.  They’re just restatements of what we’ve already known for a long time.  I am frankly sick and tired of what Trump said about Comey to the Russians (except that he apparently did admit again that Comey was fired because of the Russia investigation, which we all knew anyway).  I am also sick and tired about names not being named; you know, “someone close to Trump is being investigated.”  Well, fucking thanks; that narrows it down to about 600.  (Other sources say it’s Jared Kushner, and state that he is merely “a person of interest.”)

Break a story about how they’re about to arrest somebody, and name that person, and be right…and then we’ll talk about real bombshells.

All sorts of tiddly $#*%

Nothing dramatic has happened this morning; just a steady drip, drip, drip.  No flood.

Trump is preparing to get on a plane to somewhere, not that anything he does or says really matters.  There is the odd report that he is paranoid that Pence will “take over” while he is gone, and certainly there has been a uptick in rumors of Pence funding his presidential campaign for 2020, etc.  But the fact is there has also been a sharp uptick in reports that Pence knew Flynn was crooked well before he allowed Flynn to become national security advisor to Trump.  So if I were Pence, maybe I wouldn’t be thinking about 2020, but surviving 2017 as a free man involved in politics instead.

As for Pence taking over, I doubt it.  Nothing dramatic will happen in Trump’s absence;  Washington is too scared right now.  Apparently Ryan is hiding under his desk after finding out that he had been recorded saying that the Russians were paying Rep. Dana Rohrabacher and Trump.  It’s said he’s now wondering what else he uttered that was recorded, and in typical Republican fashion who did it.  Right.  Let’s never face our own crimes, let’s worry about who exposed them.

Anyway, the Rohrabacher situation reveals that Russian influence in Washington may go back further than previously thought, and that the Republicans in particular have been identified by the Russians as sitting ducks.  (For a scathing Wisconsin editorial about our darling Ryan, read here.  This is interesting too.)

So that’s one thing that’s scaring the Republicans.  The other is Robert Mueller, who has now requested Congressional investigations halt, or at least curtail their activities.  Social media reacted to this request with fear and outrage, particularly since a story was planted yesterday about how the law firm Mueller worked for was connected to the Trumps or those associated with them.  People, people…

At this point there probably aren’t too many major law firms that haven’t had dealings with the Trumps and/or their associates.  That doesn’t mean Mueller himself did.  Also, the timing of this story suggests that it came from either the Russians or Trump’s camp.  Put all of that together and I say that unless Mueller starts doing things obviously pro-Trump, don’t panic.

The request that the Congressional committees dial back their investigations is no big deal considering the amount of interference and obstruction various Republicans on those committees were subjecting them to.  Remember all those questions about Hillary Clinton’s emails in at least two of the public hearings that were supposed to be about the Trump campaign’s connections to Russia?  It could be that Mueller saw that too, and decided the committees were just trying to score political points and deflections.  And he’s right on that.  Enough, already.  Let’s not let the inmates run the asylum, as the old saying goes.

Anyway, the little explosion this morning is that Trump signed financial disclosures for 2016 against the advice of his attorneys.  Why was he advised against signing?  Because the disclosures were false.

The other little explosion is that Julian Assange is a free man (odd that this happened at the same moment a massive cyber-attack on social media was in progress); he can leave the embassy now because the Swiss no longer want to question him about the possible rape charge.  It’s said the FBI may have had something to do with this, which is interesting.  It does seem that Assange’s even more vulnerable to Putin now if he doesn’t toe the mark.  So really, he may be free, but he isn’t free, and he will never be free.

And so that’s where we are at 12:30 p.m. on Friday, May 19, 2017.  Trump’s about to be in the thin air, Pence is stranded on the ground, Ryan is hiding under his desk, Mueller’s sniffing around, Assange thinks he’s free, and nobody’s is going anywhere for a while.