The Russian Connection 3: Mueller is Coming

[AmazonGrace]

Hoo boy.

[Howl]

SRSLY.  Axe Body Spray can't  cover up the smell of flop sweat and desperation emanating from Janvanka, Junior, and Erick right now.  They have to weigh the short term benefits of deliberately withholding incriminating evidence vs. getting caught deliberately withholding incriminating evidence.  Decisions, decisions! 

Also, there are rumors about Junior getting divorced from Vanessa.

[fraurosena]

Dun-dun DUNNNNNN... 

Mueller Subpoenas Trump Organization, Demanding Documents About Russia

Quote

The special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, has subpoenaed the Trump Organization to turn over documents, including some related to Russia, according to two people briefed on the matter. The order is the first known instance of the special counsel demanding records directly related to President Trump’s businesses, bringing the investigation closer to the president.

The breadth of the subpoena was not clear, nor was it clear why Mr. Mueller issued it instead of simply asking for the documents from the company, an umbrella organization that oversees Mr. Trump’s business ventures. In the subpoena, delivered in recent weeks, Mr. Mueller ordered the Trump Organization to hand over all records related to Russia and other topics he is investigating, the people said.

The subpoena is the latest indication that the investigation, which Mr. Trump’s lawyers once regularly assured him would be completed by now, will drag on for at least several more months. Word of the subpoena comes as Mr. Mueller appears to be broadening his investigation to examine the role foreign money may have played in funding Mr. Trump’s political activities. In recent weeks, Mr. Mueller’s investigators have questioned witnesses, including an adviser to the United Arab Emirates, about the flow of Emirati money into the United States.

The Trump Organization has typically complied with requests from congressional investigators for documents for their own inquiries into Russian election interference, and there was no indication the company planned to fight Mr. Mueller’s order.

“Since July 2017, we have advised the public that the Trump Organization is fully cooperative with all investigations, including the special counsel, and is responding to their requests,” said Alan S. Futerfas, a lawyer representing the Trump Organization. “This is old news and our assistance and cooperation with the various investigations remains the same today.”

The White House press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, reiterated during her daily briefing that the president was cooperating with the inquiry and referred questions to the Trump Organization.

The Trump Organization has said that it never had real estate holdings in Russia, but witnesses recently interviewed by Mr. Mueller have been asked about a possible real estate deal in Moscow. In 2015, a longtime business associate of Mr. Trump’s emailed Mr. Trump’s lawyer, Michael Cohen, at his Trump Organization account claiming he had ties to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia and said that building a Trump Tower in Moscow would help Mr. Trump’s presidential campaign.

Mr. Trump signed a nonbinding “letter of intent” for the project in 2015 and discussed it three times with Mr. Cohen.

Mr. Mueller could run afoul of a line the president has warned him not to cross. Though it is not clear how much of the subpoena is related to Mr. Trump’s business beyond ties to Russia, Mr. Trump said in an interview with The New York Times in July that the special counsel would be crossing a “red line” if he looked into his family’s finances beyond any relationship with Russia. The president declined to say how he would respond if he concluded that the special counsel had crossed that line.

A month before Mr. Trump spoke of his red line, the White House counsel, Donald F. McGahn II, threatened to quit after Mr. Trump asked him to have Mr. Mueller fired because the president believed he had conflict-of-interest issues that precluded him from running the special counsel investigation.

Mr. Mueller was appointed in May to investigate whether Mr. Trump’s campaign colluded with the Russians to influence the 2016 presidential election and any other matters that may arise from the inquiry. He is also examining whether the president has tried to obstruct the investigation.

Mr. Trump’s lawyers are in negotiations with Mr. Mueller’s office about whether and how to allow his investigators to interview the president. Mr. Mueller’s office has shared topics it wants to discuss with the president, according to two people familiar with the talks. The lawyers have advised Mr. Trump to refuse an interview but the president wants to do it, as he believes he has done nothing wrong and can easily answer investigators’ questions.

At the same time, Mr. Trump is considering whether to bring on a new lawyer to help represent him in the special counsel’s investigation. Last week, Mr. Trump spoke with Emmet Flood, a longtime Washington lawyer who represented former President Bill Clinton during the impeachment process, about coming into the White House to deal with the inquiry.

Two things spring to mind:

1)  Is this the reason the presidunce spoke to that impeachment lawyer?

2) Is this ever a clever move by Mueller! Subpoenaing the Trump organization at the very moment there are rumors that the presidunce wants to fire Sessions and replace him with Pruitt in order to fire Mueller is a bold counter move, that immediately feeds an 'obstruction of justice' case against the presidunce. 

Oh yes, Mueller is playing chess while the presidunce is posturing while moving little black and white chips around on a checkerboard.

 

[fraurosena]

Ahem. You can come down from the rafters now, presidunce dear. Faux News says these are good subpoenas!

Fox News assures Trump that subpoena from Mueller is the good kind

Quote

A Fox News correspondent laughably suggested on Thursday that special counsel Robert Mueller’s new subpoena of the Trump Organization could signal that the end of the Russia investigation is nearing — and might even be “the kind of subpoena you want.”

Catherine Herridge, chief intelligence correspondent for Fox News, made the remarks during an appearance on “The Daily Briefing with Dana Perrino.”

Her comments came less than an hour after the New York Times reported Mueller had subpoenaedthe Trump Organization for “all documents related to Russia and other topics he is investigating.”

The subpoena was widely seen as an ominous sign for Trump, signaling that Mueller is willing to put the full force of the government behind his demand for a wide range of financial and business-related documents.

New York Times reporter Michael Schmidt said the subpoena “moves the investigation closer to the president,” while MSNBC legal analyst Danny Cevallos said the fact that Mueller used a subpoena instead of requesting documents shows that “the government means business.”

Meanwhile, University of Alabama law professor and former U.S. attorney Joyce Vance suggestedthat Mueller may have chosen to use a subpoena because he “already knows what they have and is waiting to see if they’ll turn it over.”

“Subpoenas have teeth,” Vance added.

But over on Fox, Trump’s favorite propagandists were busy spinning the story, saying it could even be good news for Trump that his business had been subpoenaed by federal investigators.

Asked about The New York Times report, Herridge suggested to Fox’s Perrino that Mueller’s move might mean that he is in the process of wrapping up the investigation.

The subpoena, Herridge said, could have been a “wrap-up subpoena or a cleanup subpoena, which is when you request records as you’re getting close to the end of the investigation and trying to tie up loose ends.”

“So it might not signal a new aggressive approach by the special counsel,” Perrino responded.

[video of the exchange]

Herridge went on to suggest that the subpoena was old news, arguing that “this issue is at least six months old” — a remark that flatly contradicts The New York Times, which reported that the subpoena had been issued in recent weeks.

She concluded by telling Perrino that this could even be “the kind of subpoena you want.”

This is the first time the Trump Organization has been subpoenaed by the special counsel’s office as part of the ongoing Russia investigation, so the idea that this is a “clean-up subpoena” — one that seeks to get any remaining documents after a first round of subpoenas — doesn’t even make sense.

The fact that federal investigators are using the full force of the government to investigate Trump’s financial and business dealings is not a good sign for Trump. But as the quasi-propaganda arm of the Trump White House, Fox News is doing its best to downplay the report and reassure Trump — and his supporters — that the deluge of bad news is secretly good news.

According to previous reports, White House aides frequently turn to Fox News to try to calm Trump down in the midst of damning revelations about the Russia investigation.

Trump may take comfort by hiding out in the Oval Office and blocking out the real world with a steady diet of Fox News — but unfortunately for him, right-wing talking points are not accepted as evidence in a court of law.

 

[AmazonGrace]

Wondering if Mueller thinks they were holding stuff back since he decided to go with a subpoena.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Manafort adds a lawyer, judge orders Gates to keep wearing GPS monitor"

Spoiler

Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, has added another former federal prosecutor and tax fraud expert to his legal defense team, while his onetime deputy Rick Gates was rebuffed on Wednesday in a request for extra freedoms after pleading guilty and cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller.

Manafort, who is facing the prospect of fighting Mueller’s prosecutors in two separate trials, has hired Richard Westling, according to a document filed on Wednesday in a U.S. District Court.

Westling’s online biography at the law firm Epstein Becker Green emphasizes his experience in health care compliance issues but also notes that he has nearly 30 years dealing with a range of white-collar defense issues. He worked for more than eight years at the Justice Department, including as an assistant U.S. attorney in New Orleans and as a trial attorney in the tax division’s criminal section.

Manafort is scheduled to go to trial — on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent — on Sept. 17 in Washington. But it’s also possible a Manafort trial in Alexandria, Virginia, involving bank and tax fraud charges could be set sooner because the court is known for its “rocket docket.”

The judge in the Virginia case, T.S. Ellis III, said in an order made public on Tuesday that Manafort must remain on a “24-hour-a-day lockdown” at his Alexandria condo, except for medical appointments or emergencies, court appearances and meeting with his defense attorneys.

“The defendant is a person of great wealth who has the financial means and international connections to flee and remain at large, as well as every incentive to do so,” wrote Ellis, an appointee of President Ronald Reagan, adding that “given the nature of the charges against the defendant and the apparent weight of the evidence against him, defendant faces the very real possibility of spending the rest of his life in prison.”

Manafort’s legal team already includes two attorneys with tax expertise: former federal prosecutors Kevin Downing and Thomas Zehnle.

In a separate ruling on Wednesday, U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson rejected Gates’ request to remove the electronic GPS monitoring device that he’s been forced to wear since October after his indictment alongside Manafort.

Gates pleaded guilty in February to Mueller’s charges and agreed to cooperate with the Russia investigation. Because of that cooperation, Mueller’s attorneys had consented to Gates’ request to lose the GPS device.

But Jackson wasn’t convinced, noting in her three-page ruling that Gates’ “change of heart is quite recent” and that he’s also pleaded guilty to lying to Mueller during a special “Queen for a Day” interview in which defendants are typically allowed to speak freely without facing more criminal charges.

Jackson did accept Gates’ request to end court-imposed restrictions on his travel from his home in Richmond, Virginia, for meetings with Mueller or the FBI in Washington.

I wonder if Dumpy is paying attention. If he is, I'm sure he's thinking this won't happen to him. Of course, unless it's on Faux & Friends or Shammity's show, he probably won't hear about it.

[Cartmann99]

Quote

The trouble began Monday evening, when Rep. Mike Conaway (R-Texas), the House Intelligence Committee's lead Russia investigator, rolled out an overview of the committee's findings from its yearlong Russia probe. Conaway had been leading the effort since last April, when the committee's chairman, Rep. Devin Nunes (R-Calif.), stepped aside amid an ethics complaint. (The complaint was dismissed in December.)

In addition to determining that the Trump campaign made no attempt to cooperate or conspire with the Russians, the committee faulted the Obama administration's handling of the Russian operation, accused Russia of "a pattern" of attacks on American allies in Europe and described leaks from senior intelligence community officials to reporters.

My congressman, y'all. I contacted him and let him know how much I was looking forward to voting for his Democratic challenger this November.  

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why hasn’t Mueller talked to Donald Trump Jr. yet?"

Spoiler

We will stipulate at the outset that the investigation being conducted by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III and his team is a black box, by design. We get trickles of information about who Mueller’s team is talking to and who’s been called before a grand jury, usually thanks to those people subsequently revealing those conversations publicly. (Sometimes, as in the case of former Trump aide Sam Nunberg, we are informed ahead of time, loudly.)

It’s almost certain that Mueller’s team has talked to scores more people than we know about or can think of simply by the nature of his investigation. At one point, Paul Manafort’s real estate agent testified before the grand jury. Who knew?

So it’s odd that one very prominent name appears not to have talked to Mueller: Donald Trump Jr. Again, it’s unclear. Maybe Trump Jr. has had extended conversations with Mueller’s investigators and we don’t know about it. Given how closely Mueller’s efforts are being watched, though, that seems unlikely. And there are few people who might be able to offer more insight on the Russia investigation than Donald Trump Jr.

We got another reminder of that Thursday, when the New York Times reported that Mueller’s team had subpoenaed Trump Organization records related to potential investments in Russia. The scope of the subpoena isn’t clear, nor is any specific focus of Mueller’s efforts.

We do know, though, that President Trump and the Trump Organization had been looking for a project in Moscow or elsewhere in Russia for years before the presidential campaign. At one point about a decade ago, Trump Jr. and his sister Ivanka traveled to Moscow pursuing a deal. Even after Trump declared his candidacy, the Trump Organization was pursuing a project in the Russian capital, prompting Trump attorney Michael Cohen at one point to reach out to a spokesman for Russian President Vladimir Putin for assistance in moving the project forward.

The Trump Organization, subpoenaed by Mueller, is now run jointly by Trump Jr. and his brother Eric.

In the past, Trump Jr. has bragged about the company’s Russian business ties.

“In terms of high-end product influx into the U.S.,” Trump Jr. said during an interview in 2008, “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets. … We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

In 2011, a woman who worked for a company that facilitated obtaining visas noted on social media that the Russian consulate in New York City had an autographed photo of Trump Jr. on the wall. Contacted by The Post, she said she couldn’t remember specifically what the photo depicted or what the signature said. (Beyond the contemporaneous post, we were unable to confirm the photo’s existence.)

There are few people beyond the president who are as knowledgeable about the Trump Organization’s efforts in Russia as Trump Jr.

Then, of course, there’s the infamous meeting in Trump Tower in June 2016.

The first layer here is the meeting itself. Trump Jr., contacted by a music promoter he’d met when the Miss Universe pageant was held in Moscow, is offered dirt on Hillary Clinton that was collected by the Russian government as “part of Russia and its government’s support for Mr. Trump.”

“If it’s what you say it is, I love it,” Trump Jr. replied. He then asked to speak with the music promoter’s client, Emin Agalarov, before finalizing the meeting time. After calls were placed between Trump Jr. and Agalarov, the meeting was set — though Trump Jr. has claimed that he doesn’t remember actually speaking with Agalarov. Trump Jr. then invited Trump’s then-campaign chairman Manafort and Jared Kushner to the meeting, and both attended.

There are a slew of questions that arise. Did Manafort and Kushner know what the meeting was about? What were they told? Did Trump Jr. speak to Agalarov? What was promised?

That brings us to the other layer. When the Times first reported on the Trump Tower meeting, the response from Trump Jr. was a deeply misleading statement claiming that it was predicated on the issue of adoption. When the emails surfaced proving that this was false, Trump Jr. changed his story. Mueller’s been investigating the initial response to that report to determine whether Trump Jr. or others tried to obstruct justice by misrepresenting what had happened. Hearing Trump Jr.’s description of how that statement was developed seems important.

The FBI is reportedly looking at another question that involves Trump Jr. We learned last year that Alexander Torshin, a deputy governor of Russia’s central bank, repeatedly sought to be connected to the Trumps using connections he’d made at the NRA. The FBI is reportedly investigating whether the NRA took money from Russian interests that was then used to boost Trump’s campaign. Torshin himself leveraged his relationships to reach out to the Trumps, seeking, at one point, to set up a dinner between Trump and Putin. At some point that same month, Trump Jr. and Torshin met briefly at an NRA-related event in Kentucky.

Beyond those specifics, Trump Jr. was also deeply involved in the campaign itself. He was regularly on the trail with the president and involved in key decisions like the firing of Trump’s first campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski. Trump Jr. was also involved in the presidential transition, despite criticism. Even had he not been involved in the business or involved in the Trump Tower meeting or linked to Torshin, that involvement would seem to make him an important point of contact.

So why hasn’t Mueller talked to Trump Jr. — assuming he hasn’t? One reason may be that Trump Jr. is so important. Since Trump Jr. was so involved in so many important parts of the campaign and the business, Mueller may be trying to figure out what he needs to ask Trump Jr. before he asks it.

There are really two possibilities here: Mueller has already spoken with Trump Jr. and we don’t yet know about it — or he will at some point soon. It seems impossible that Mueller won’t want to know what Trump Jr. knows.

Update: Former federal prosecutor Elizabeth de la Vega raised another possibility.

“It’s entirely true, based on public reports so far, that Donald Trump, Jr. appears to have been involved in many significant events that would be of interest to Special Counsel Mueller,” she wrote in a message to The Post. “That very fact suggests a third alternative explanation for Mueller’s failure to interview him thus far: Don, Jr. is a serious subject or, quite possibly a target of the Special Counsel investigation.”

“Federal prosecutors rarely interview targets of an investigation,” she continued. “Instead, they build the case around them, with documents, emails, public admissions and other witnesses.”

I hope this means Mueller's team is shining up a pair of handcuffs with Junior's name on them.

[fraurosena]

This is very, very frightening. Russia doesn't have a foothold, it has a stranglehold.

Cyberattacks Put Russian Fingers on the Switch at Power Plants, U.S. Says

Quote

The Trump administration accused Russia on Thursday of engineering a series of cyberattacks that targeted American and European nuclear power plants and water and electric systems, and could have sabotaged or shut power plants off at will.

United States officials and private security firms saw the attacks as a signal by Moscow that it could disrupt the West’s critical facilities in the event of a conflict.

They said the strikes accelerated in late 2015, at the same time the Russian interference in the American election was underway. The attackers had compromised some operators in North America and Europe by spring 2017, after President Trump was inaugurated.

In the following months, according to a Department of Homeland Security report issued on Thursday, Russian hackers made their way to machines with access to critical control systems at power plants that were not identified. The hackers never went so far as to sabotage or shut down the computer systems that guide the operations of the plants.

Still, new computer screenshots released by the Department of Homeland Security on Thursday made clear that Russian state hackers had the foothold they would have needed to manipulate or shut down power plants.

“We now have evidence they’re sitting on the machines, connected to industrial control infrastructure, that allow them to effectively turn the power off or effect sabotage,” said Eric Chien, a security technology director at Symantec, a digital security firm.

“From what we can see, they were there. They have the ability to shut the power off. All that’s missing is some political motivation,” Mr. Chien said.

American intelligence agencies were aware of the attacks for the past year and a half, and the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. first issued urgent warnings to utility companies in June. On Thursday, both agencies offered new details as the Trump administration imposed sanctions against Russian individuals and organizations it accused of election meddling and “malicious cyberattacks.”

It was the first time the administration officially named Russia as the perpetrator of the assaults. And it marked the third time in recent months that the White House, departing from its usual reluctance to publicly reveal intelligence, blamed foreign government forces for attacks on infrastructure in the United States.

In December, the White House said North Korea had carried out the so-called WannaCry attack that in May paralyzed the British health system and placed ransomware in computers in schools, businesses and homes across the world. Last month, it accused Russia of being behind the NotPetya attack against Ukraine last June, the largest in a series of cyberattacks on Ukraine to date, paralyzing the country’s government agencies and financial systems.

But the penalties have been light. So far, Mr. Trump has said little to nothing about the Russian role in those attacks.

The groups that conducted the energy attacks, which are linked to Russian intelligence agencies, appear to be different from the two hacking groups that were involved in the election interference.

That would suggest that at least three separate Russian cyberoperations were underway simultaneously. One focused on stealing documents from the Democratic National Committee and other political groups. Another, by a St. Petersburg “troll farm” known as the Internet Research Agency, used social media to sow discord and division. A third effort sought to burrow into the infrastructure of American and European nations.

For years, American intelligence officials tracked a number of Russian state-sponsored hacking units as they successfully penetrated the computer networks of critical infrastructure operators across North America and Europe, including in Ukraine.

Some of the units worked inside Russia’s Federal Security Service, the K.G.B. successor known by its Russian acronym, F.S.B.; others were embedded in the Russian military intelligence agency, known as the G.R.U. Still others were made up of Russian contractors working at the behest of Moscow.

Russian cyberattacks surged last year, starting three months after Mr. Trump took office.

American officials and private cybersecurity experts uncovered a series of Russian attacks aimed at the energy, water and aviation sectors and critical manufacturing, including nuclear plants, in the United States and Europe. In its urgent report in June, the Department of Homeland Security and the F.B.I. notified operators about the attacks but stopped short of identifying Russia as the culprit.

By then, Russian spies had compromised the business networks of several American energy, water and nuclear plants, mapping out their corporate structures and computer networks.

They included that of the Wolf Creek Nuclear Operating Corporation, which runs a nuclear plant near Burlington, Kan. But in that case, and those of other nuclear operators, Russian hackers had not leapt from the company’s business networks into the nuclear plant controls.

Forensic analysis suggested that Russian spies were looking for inroads — although it was not clear whether the goal was to conduct espionage or sabotage, or to trigger an explosion of some kind.

In a report made public in October, Symantec noted that a Russian hacking unit “appears to be interested in both learning how energy facilities operate and also gaining access to operational systems themselves, to the extent that the group now potentially has the ability to sabotage or gain control of these systems should it decide to do so.”

The United States sometimes does the same thing. It bored deeply into Iran’s infrastructure before the 2015 nuclear accord, placing digital “implants” in systems that would enable it to bring down power grids, command-and-control systems and other infrastructure in case a conflict broke out. The operation was code-named “Nitro Zeus,” and its revelation made clear that getting into the critical infrastructure of adversaries is now a standard element of preparing for possible conflict.

The Russians have gone farther.

In an updated warning to utility companies on Thursday, Homeland Security officials included a screenshot taken by Russian operatives that proved they could now gain access to their victims’ critical controls.

American officials and security firms, including Symantec and CrowdStrike, believe that Russian attacks on the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 and 2016that left more than 200,000 citizens there in the dark are an ominous sign of what the Russian cyberstrikes may portend in the United States and Europe in the event of escalating hostilities.

Private security firms have tracked the Russian government assaults on Western power and energy operators — conducted alternately by groups under the names DragonFly, Energetic Bear and Berserk Bear — since 2011, when they first started targeting defense and aviation companies in the United States and Canada.

By 2013, researchers had tied the Russian hackers to hundreds of attacks on energy grid and oil and gas pipeline operators in the United States and Europe. Initially, the strikes appeared to be motivated by industrial espionage — a natural conclusion at the time, researchers said, given the importance of Russia’s oil and gas industry.

But by December 2015, the Russian hacks had taken an aggressive turn. The attacks were no longer aimed at intelligence gathering, but at potentially sabotaging or shutting down plant operations.

At Symantec, researchers discovered that Russian hackers had begun taking screenshots of the machinery used in energy and nuclear plants, and stealing detailed descriptions of how they operated — suggesting they were conducting reconnaissance for a future attack.

As the American government enacted the sanctions on Thursday, cybersecurity experts were still questioning where the Russian attacks could lead, given that the United States was sure to respond in kind.

“Russia certainly has the technical capability to do damage, as it demonstrated in the Ukraine,” said Eric Cornelius, a cybersecurity expert at Cylance, a private security firm, who previously assessed critical infrastructure threats for the Department of Homeland Security during the Obama administration.

“It is unclear what their perceived benefit would be from causing damage on U.S. soil, especially given the retaliation it would provoke,” Mr. Cornelius said.

Though a major step toward deterrence, publicly naming countries accused of cyberattacks still is unlikely to shame them into stopping. The United States is struggling to come up with proportionate responses to the wide variety of cyberespionage, vandalism and outright attacks.

Lt. Gen. Paul Nakasone, who has been nominated as director of the National Security Agency and commander of United States Cyber Command, the military’s cyberunit, said during his Senate confirmation hearing this month that countries attacking the United States so far have little to worry about.

“I would say right now they do not think much will happen to them,” General Nakasone said. He later added, “They don’t fear us.”

 

[AmazonGrace]

Putting a face on Sater

[Howl]

16 hours ago, Cartmann99 said:

My congressman, y'all. I contacted him and let him know how much I was looking forward to voting for his Democratic challenger this November.  

To be perfectly crass, the Republicans are trying to get their feet out of their mouths so they can be ready to collectively step on their own dicks at a moment's notice. 

Liz Mair at The Daily Beast sums up why ending the investigation is such an astoundingly stupid idea with predictable results, which is, you are further enraging Democrats, who are awakening the sleeping giant of voter turnout. 

House Intel Committee Screwed Itself—and the President It’s Trying to Save

[GreyhoundFan]

"Mueller is peeling back the layers of Trump’s finances"

Spoiler

The New York Times has broken the news that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III issued subpoenas to the Trump Organization for documents, the first confirmation that Mueller is examining the president’s business interests. This news came with few details, but it’s enormously significant for a couple of reasons.

First, it means that Mueller is looking right at President Trump, not just the people who worked for him or circled around him. And second, it gets to the heart of the president’s area of greatest potential legal liability: his money.

Trump may or may not have directly engaged in some kind of collusion with the Russian government in 2016. But if Mueller starts turning over rocks in his business, he’s going to find a lot of unsightly critters squirming around.

So what exactly is Mueller looking for? We don’t know, but it’s unlikely that he’s just fishing around. It’s obvious that Mueller’s investigation has been extremely systematic, and he has on his team a number of prosecutors with experience in areas such as money laundering. If he’s demanding documents from the Trump Organization, chances are he knows exactly what he’s after.

Mueller has a wide mandate. He’s charged with investigating not only Russian involvement in the 2016 election but also any other potential matters that arise from that investigation. So if he finds that, for instance, the Trump Organization was used as a conduit for money laundering from Russian mobsters, he’s going to pursue it even if it doesn’t have anything to do with 2016, and even if there’s no evidence Trump himself knew about it.

It’s important to note that the president has deep ties to Russia that go way beyond his unfulfilled desire to build a Trump Tower in Moscow or the Miss Universe pageant he held there. When Trump is asked about whether he has such ties, he tends to say things such as, “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” This is a clever sleight of hand, because the question isn’t whether Trump has put money into Russia, but whether Russians have put money into Trump. And they almost certainly have.

You can’t succeed in the real estate business without access to capital. But after a series of business bankruptcies in the 1990s, Trump found it impossible to borrow money, because banks refused to lend to him (the one exception was Deutsche Bank). So he had to find new sources of cash, and he went abroad, especially to the former Soviet Union.

A few years ago, a golf journalist asked Trump how he was able to get the money to continue to build golf courses after the financial crisis, and he replied that he had access to $100 million. The journalist later asked Eric Trump what his father was talking about, and according to him, Eric Trump replied, “Well, we don’t rely on American banks. We have all the funding we need out of Russia.” (Eric Trump has denied saying this.)

Donald Trump Jr. admitted this, too. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” he said in 2008, “say in Dubai, and certainly with our project in SoHo and anywhere in New York. We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Trump has been making deals for a very long time, and there are many Trump projects that are full of shady characters and questionable transactions with money moving around the world, including that of the Trump Tower in Toronto, which also went bankrupt. The tale is detailed here. There are others; one is described here.

I spoke today with James Henry, an economist, attorney and journalist with affiliations at Yale and Columbia who has done extensive work on these issues, including investigating some of Trump’s finances. He argued that Trump might be vulnerable to a deep exploration of his finances, because our laws might make it harder for him to plead ignorance about sources of funding.

“We have fairly stiff money laundering statutes compared to other countries,” Henry told me. “They actually put a lot of responsibility on commercial real estate investors to know who they’re dealing with.” That’s true both of the source of funds Trump got to build these projects in the first place, and the people who eventually bought the units. If these Trump buildings were indeed used as a vehicle for large-scale money-laundering, Trump could well be legally vulnerable.

For decades, Trump acted as though rules and laws were for other people, allegedly stiffing contractors and workers, deceiving investors, running scams like Trump University and getting into bed with sketchy characters. There are so many stories of egregious behavior on his part that you’ve almost certainly not heard of them all. For instance, did you know Trump was once forced to pay a $750,000 fine by the Federal Trade Commission over questionable stock deals?

As I said, we don’t know exactly what Mueller is looking for. What we can say is that there are multiple Trump projects that were financed with money coming from sources that were questionable at best, and possibly criminal at worst. We know that the more you look into these projects, whether they’re in SoHo or Toronto or Panama, the more suspicious you get and the worse things look.

As Henry pointed out to me, while Mueller might not be able to indict a sitting president if illegal behavior is discovered, he could certainly go after all the people around him: “I think a prosecutor could look at this fact pattern and say, ‘Yeah, it’s indictable. A bunch of people should go to jail.'”

I'm guessing Dumpy is panicking more every day, and that's why he's becoming more and more erratic.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

31 minutes ago, AmazonGrace said:

 

It's no wonder the administration is ramping up it's disparagement of the FBI, with McCabe's firing the latest iteration.

[apple1]

26 hours. TWENTY-SIX.

For a long-time federal government employee - that government pension would have been analogous to somebody else's 401K and/or pension and/or social security. (He would not have social security for the years he accrued federal pension service).

The insult added to the injury - finding out by press release. (The claimed other notification apparently was an email sent to his work email at 10PM on a Friday night while he was using vacation hours).

Insult to injury number 2: Jeff Sessions doing the dirty job, claiming "lack of candor". Jeff Sessions of "I do not recall" fame.

[AmazonGrace]

 

[Cartmann99]

Blessed are the note takers...

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[GreyhoundFan]

Because of course: "Trump’s lawyer calls on Justice Department to immediately end Russia probe"

Spoiler

President Trump’s lawyer called on the Justice Department to immediately shut down the special counsel probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election, in the wake of the firing of FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe.

Attorney John Dowd said in a statement that the investigation, now led by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, was fatally flawed early on and “corrupted” by political bias. He called on Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein, who oversees that probe, to shut it down.

“I pray that Acting Attorney General Rosenstein will follow the brilliant and courageous example of the FBI Office of Professional Responsibility and Attorney General Jeff Sessions and bring an end to alleged Russia Collusion investigation manufactured by McCabe’s boss James Comey based upon a fraudulent and corrupt Dossier,” Dowd said in an emailed statement.

Dowd told The Washington Post on Saturday he was speaking for himself and not on Trump’s behalf. Earlier Saturday, Dowd told the Daily Beast that he was speaking on behalf of the president and in his capacity as the president’s attorney. (After the Daily Beast published its story, Dowd emailed the publication and said he was not speaking on the president’s behalf.)

In a Saturday afternoon tweet, Trump reiterated his claim that there was “no collusion” between his campaign and Russians, and bemoaned what he described as “leaking, lying and corruption” in federal law enforcement agencies. But he stopped short of echoing Dowd’s call for an end to the Mueller probe.

Trump tweeted: “As the House Intelligence Committee has concluded, there was no collusion between Russia and the Trump Campaign. As many are now finding out, however, there was tremendous leaking, lying and corruption at the highest levels of the FBI, Justice & State. #DrainTheSwamp.”

Trump was referring to the Republican members of the House Intelligence Committee’s announcement this past week that they were concluding their investigation of Russian interference in the election, though a separate investigation by the Senate Intelligence Committee continues, as does Mueller’s probe.

Sessions late Friday night fired Mc­Cabe, a little more than 24 hours before McCabe was set to retire — a move that McCabe alleged was an attempt to “slander” him and undermine the ongoing special counsel investigation into the Trump campaign.

Sessions announced the decision in a statement just before 10 p.m., noting that both the Justice Department inspector general and the FBI office that handles discipline had found “that Mr. McCabe had made an unauthorized disclosure to the news media and lacked candor — including under oath — on multiple occasions.”

An inspector general raised questions about McCabe’s discussions with reporters about a case related to Hillary Clinton.

If Dowd’s statement reflected Trump’s legal strategy, it would represent a significant shift in the president’s approach to the Mueller investigation.

Trump’s lawyers and spokesmen have long pledged that he and his White House staff would cooperate fully with Mueller’s probe. The White House has responded to requests for documents, while senior officials have sat for hours of interviews with the special counsel’s investigators.

Asked Thursday whether the special counsel’s subpoena of documents from the Trump Organization regarding its dealings with Russia crossed a red line in the view of the president, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders said it did not.

“As we’ve maintained all along, and as the president has said numerous times, there was no collusion between the campaign and Russia,” Sanders told reporters. She added, “We’re going to continue to fully cooperate out of respect for the special counsel.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) said in a statement Saturday that there will be “severe consequences” for both Democrats and Republicans if Trump and his legal team take steps to interfere with or end Mueller’s probe.

“Mr. Dowd’s comments are yet another indication that the first instinct of the president and his legal team is not to cooperate with Special Counsel Mueller, but to undermine him at every turn,” Schumer said.

McCabe’s firing touched off a firestorm late Friday. The now-former No. 2 at the FBI, who is a witness in the Russia case, shot back immediately.

“This attack on my credibility is one part of a larger effort not just to slander me personally, but to taint the FBI, law enforcement, and intelligence professionals more generally,” McCabe said. “It is part of this Administration’s ongoing war on the FBI and the efforts of the Special Counsel investigation, which continue to this day. Their persistence in this campaign only highlights the importance of the Special Counsel’s work.”

His firing — which was recommended by the FBI office that handles discipline — stems from a Justice Department inspector general investigation that found McCabe authorized the disclosure of sensitive information to the media about a Clinton-related case, then misled investigators about his actions in the matter, people familiar with the matter have said. He stepped down earlier this year from the deputy director role after FBI Director Christopher A. Wray was briefed on the inspector general’s findings, though he technically was still an employee.

Trump tweeted early Saturday morning, “Andrew McCabe FIRED, a great day for the hard working men and women of the FBI - A great day for Democracy. Sanctimonious James Comey was his boss and made McCabe look like a choirboy. He knew all about the lies and corruption going on at the highest levels of the FBI!”

When asked by The Post if he believed the Russia case was flawed because of new findings about McCabe or larger issues with the early FBI handling of the investigation, Dowd declined to elaborate.

“Just end it on the merits in light of recent revelations,” he said. “My statement is clear.”

 

[Howl]

McCabe: "But it will not erase the important work I was privileged to be a part of, the results of which will in the end be revealed for the country to see."

First shot fired across the bow of Trump's garbage barge "Hook, Line and Sinking" 

I am going to speculate that Trump will fire Mueller in the next two to three weeks, and I am CERTAIN that Mueller has prepared contingency plans for that eventuality. 

I am also going to speculate that Trump's business also prepared for the possibility that their business records would be subpoenaed.  Right now, I bet they are procrastinating, waiting for Mueller to get the ax, because what is in their records, especially related to Russia,  is simply too damaging to be released.  That said, the Deutsche Bank records may have already told the tale, and the Trump financials would just corroborate that and also give Mueller a sense of what they are already withholding.  Can't remember if any of the records of a certain bank in Cyprus known to launder money were ever subpoenaed. 

And fu*k Trump. 

AND, this move will absolutely enrage the FBI rank and file. 

[fraurosena]

The petty presidunce will be so enraged by this. 

Foiled again! 

[Howl]

Rep. Mark Pocan FOR THE WIN! 

[AmazonGrace]

 

[fraurosena]

Bromwich served as counsel for McCabe. This is his statement of how this matter went down. 

The link in the tweet directs to the full statement. A must read.