The Russian Connection

[onekidanddone]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Oh, Kellyanne, I'm thinking the only two people who believe your spin are you and the TT.

Why is anything she has to say relevant in any way.

[GreyhoundFan]

54 minutes ago, onekidanddone said:

Why is anything she has to say relevant in any way.

It's not. Unfortunately, she keeps booking herself on the Sunday talk shows. I wish they'd all banish her. If that happened, I can just see her wandering up and down Pennsylvania Avenue, trying to get someone to listen to her. I, for one, would be cheering. Hopefully she'll be on Kelly's hit list for all her lies.

[onekidanddone]

46 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

It's not. Unfortunately, she keeps booking herself on the Sunday talk shows.

They can say no ya know. She can try to book herself all she wants, but what ever happened to "just say no"

[GreyhoundFan]

I like this op-ed by Maureen Dowd about Mueller: "Bobby Sticks It to Trump"

Spoiler

WASHINGTON — As we contemplate crime and punishment in the Trump circle, it should be noted that our Russia-besotted president does share some traits with Dostoyevsky’s spiraling protagonist, Rodion Raskolnikov.

Both men are naifs who arrive and think they have the right to transgress. Both are endlessly fascinating psychological studies: self-regarding, with Napoleon-style grandiosity, and self-incriminating. Both are consumed with chaotic, feverish thoughts as they are pursued by a relentless, suspicious lawman.

But it is highly doubtful that Melania will persuade Donald to confess all to special counsel Robert Mueller III and slink off to Siberia.

We are in for an epic clash between two septuagenarians who both came from wealthy New York families and attended Ivy League schools but couldn’t be more different — the flamboyant flimflam man and the buttoned-down, buttoned-up boy scout. (And we know the president has no idea how to talk to scouts appropriately.)

One has been called America’s straightest arrow. One disdains self-promotion and avoids the press. One married his sweetheart from school days. One was a decorated Marine in Vietnam. One counts patience, humility and honesty as the virtues he lives by and likes to say “You’re only as good as your word.”

And one’s president.

Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio says the president has been lying reflexively since he was a kid bragging about home runs he didn’t hit. He gets warped satisfaction from making up stuff, like those calls from the head of the Boy Scouts and the president of Mexico that the White House just admitted never happened.

Back when he was a Page Six playboy, Trump even invented two P.R. guys to play on the phone with reporters, so he could boast about himself three times as much, including fictitious claims of dating Carla Bruni and being hit on by Madonna.

He is never deterred by the fact that he can be easily caught. But considering he survived the “Access Hollywood” video, it’s no wonder he has a distorted sense of what is an existential threat.

Going hammer and tong after hammer and sickle, Mueller has crossed Trump’s Red Line, using multiple grand juries and issuing subpoenas in a comprehensive inquiry covering not only possible campaign collusion but also business dealings by Trump and his associates with Russia. The Times reported Friday that Mueller’s investigators had asked the White House for documents related to Michael Flynn.

A White House adviser told me recently about how scary Mueller’s dream team is, and how Jared Kushner should be nervous. Every time Mueller adds a legal celebrity to his crew, the music gets cued for an “Ocean’s Eleven” or “Dirty Dozen” array of talent. One lawyer helped destroy the New York City mafia; another helped bring down Nixon; another tackled Enron; others are experts on foreign bribery and witness-flipping. As GQ’s Jay Willis wrote, “If these people were coming for you over a parking ticket, you’d be thinking about liquidating your life savings.”

Even before his panting, bodice-ripper of a report came out, Ken Starr was getting dismissed as a partisan Javert. He’s still risible, warning Mueller on CNN Friday that “we do not want investigators and prosecutors out on a fishing expedition.” You know you’re in trouble when Mr. Rod & Reel warns you about going fishing.

Mueller is taken seriously as Mr. Clean Marine, a Republican willing to stand on principle even against other Republicans, as when he and James Comey resisted W. on warrantless wiretapping. Mueller is seen as incorruptible, so his conclusions will most likely be seen as unimpeachable.

Trump does not yet seem to fathom that Mueller is empowered in a way no one else is to look at all sorts of things. This isn’t some tiff over a casino, where Trump can publicly berate opposing counsel and draw him into a public spat. Mueller won’t take the bait.

At a boisterous West Virginia rally Thursday night, Trump was back in fiery campaign mode, mocking the idea that he was the Siberian candidate.

“Are there any Russians here tonight?” he said. “Any Russians?”

All I can say is: Hurry up, Bobby Three Sticks. (Mueller got this moniker from F.B.I. agents because of the three Roman numerals at the end of his name.)

There may be no more bizarre, byzantine mystery in the history of American politics than Trump’s insistence on dancing with the red devil in the pale moonlight. Even for this most unlinear, illogical, uninformed president, it is flummoxing.

When I talked to Trump about the Russians in 1987, when Mikhail Gorbachev made his first visit as Soviet leader to America and invited businessmen to meet with him in New York, Trump seemed normal, saying he was willing to listen but was suspicious and we should not be overly eager to make a deal.

But something happened to give him a Blame America First attitude when it comes to the Russians. How transcendentally strange that the new president’s own party has to help the Democrats box him in both on sanctions against the Russians and on a measure preventing him from firing Mueller.

On Thursday, the president pout-tweeted that it was Congress’s fault that “our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low.” So he was blaming lawmakers who punished Russia for a cyberattack on our election rather than blaming Russia for sticking a saber in the heart of our democracy.

Hustle, Bobby Three Sticks.

I agree that Jared should be nervous. If Agent Orange had more than two active brain cells, he'd be terrified.

[AmazonGrace]

I'm not a trumpkin so my opinion doesn't count but it seems to me like "Bring it on, we have nothing to hide because we committed no crimes" would be a far preferable PR response than, "oh dear this is a witch hunt and you need to stop because we're so afraid what will be uncovered".

[GrumpyGran]

14 hours ago, onekidanddone said:

They can say no ya know. She can try to book herself all she wants, but what ever happened to "just say no"

She's desperate for attention and to remain relevant. I think they book her because she has become the media version of a freak show. I think they bait her and she's too stupid and self-involved to see it.

[GrumpyGran]

13 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

“our relationship with Russia is at an all-time & very dangerous low.”

Dangerous for whom, Fuhrer? And isn't it interesting that Vlad is on vacation now too. Unofficial communications made easier?

Dear Vlad,

    Summer vacation is great so far! Tremendous! So many beautiful young girls in short golf skirts! It's better than anybody else's vacation! Except yours, of course. I miss you and can't wait to see you again. Hope you're having fun!

                                                                                              Love,

                                                                                                           Don Jon XOXOXOX

[GreyhoundFan]

34 minutes ago, GrumpyGran said:

She's desperate for attention and to remain relevant. I think they book her because she has become the media version of a freak show. I think they bait her and she's too stupid and self-involved to see it.

Maybe they're compiling video of all her performances to make a whopper of a "Best of" (actually Worst of) video when she either has a complete nervous breakdown, quits, or is fired.

[GrumpyGran]

5 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

Maybe they're compiling video of all her performances to make a whopper of a "Best of" (actually Worst of) video when she either has a complete nervous breakdown, quits, or is fired.

I think she's very close to becoming a TLC show. I don't really see any other option for her going forward.

[GreyhoundFan]

This is from Vanity Fair: "Trump’s Lawyers Sound Like They’re Getting Nervous"

Spoiler

Back in June, Donald Trump was still treating the Russia investigation like just another defamation suit, one of a countless number of lawsuits that Trump has been involved in over the years. The first attorney he retained to lead his legal team, Marc Kasowitz, was his longtime personal lawyer from his New York real-estate days, and he responded as if former F.B.I. director James Comey’s sworn Senate testimony was just another meritless claim he could dismiss with a cease-and-desist letter. “Comey’s excuse for this unauthorized disclosure of privileged information . . . appears to be entirely retaliatory,” Kasowitz said in the statement, characteristically going on the offensive. “We will leave it [to] the appropriate authorities to determine whether this leaks [sic] should be investigated along with all those others being investigated.”

Two months later, the Russia probe looks much more serious—and Trump’s lawyers appear to be treading much more carefully. Kasowitz, who was busted sending an unhinged e-mail sent to a total stranger (“I’m on you now. You are fucking with me now. Let’s see who you are. Watch your back, bitch.”) has stepped down, and Ty Cobb, a mustachioed Washington super-lawyer, has taken over. Special Counsel Robert Mueller has impaneled a grand jury, and Jay Sekulow, who occupies the role of Trump’s “TV lawyer,” defending the president on news shows, has apparently tempered his rhetoric.

The reboot appears to be happening on several levels as Trump’s team work to prevent any additional attacks on Mueller, Comey, or other people central to the investigation, that might be perceived as attempts to obstruct the Russia probe. While Trump has accused Mueller of conducting a “witch hunt,” Cobb notably told Politico in a recent interview that he had “a very respectful and professional relationship with Bob Mueller [and] I think very highly of him.” He also promised that he would attempt the impossible and unite the scattershot efforts of Trump’s communications strategy. “I’ll certainly provide background willingly when appropriate, but will work primarily with the comms staff and try to make sure the message is accurate and not confusing and let them run with those kind of things,” he said.

Though the communications team has yet to become organized, and the president continues to put himself in jeopardy with his ever-shifting explanations, Trump’s legal team has become more disciplined. As Axios reported on Monday, the messaging seems to have shifted from furiously denying all wrongdoing to the “more sustainable position that the President did nothing wrong,” as well as dialing back attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Sekulow, formerly one of the more vocal members of the legal team, told Axios that there wasn’t particularly a “message change,” but more of an acknowledgement of the situation: “It’s just as issues develop, we respond to them within the context of what you can discuss and what you can’t.”

I'm surprised that the loudmouths hired by Agent Orange are smart enough to realize they need to keep their mouths shut or they will be getting subpoenaed.

[AmazonGrace]

http://www.newsweek.com/russian-bots-attacking-republican-party-paul-ryan-mcmaster-breitbart-647528

Vlad is kinda mad after the sanctions bill I guess 

Russian bots are using #resignpaulryan hashtag

[AmazonGrace]

Trump is having such a hard time leaving Mueller alone and have a vacation from obstructing justice. 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2017/08/08/donald-trump-exchanged-private-messages-special-counsel-mueller/547917001/

President Trump has exchanged private messages with Russia special counsel Robert Mueller

Spoiler

 

WASHINGTON – President Trump has publicly called the widening federal investigation into Russia's election meddling a "witch hunt." But through his lawyer, Trump has sent private messages of "appreciation" to special counsel Robert Mueller.

"He appreciates what Bob Mueller is doing,'' Trump's chief counsel John Dowd told USA TODAY in an interview Tuesday. "He asked me to share that with him and that's what I've done.''

Trump's legal team has been in contact with Mueller's office, and Dowd says he has passed along the president's messages expressing “appreciation and greetings’’ to the special counsel. 

“The president has sent messages back and forth,’’ Dowd said, declining to elaborate further.

Trump has come under fire for his prior contacts with former FBI Director James Comey, whom he abruptly fired in May because of his handling of the Russia matter. In a break with longstanding precedent to avoid even the appearance of influencing the nonpolitical law enforcement agency's investigations, Trump spoke privately with Comey on several occasions.

In those conversations, Comey said, Trump tried to convince him to drop parts of the Russia investigation and asked for a pledge of loyalty – accounts that not only led to the appointment of a special counsel, but also an expansion of the probe to include possible obstruction of justice. 

Related: 

Special counsel Robert Mueller using multiple grand juries in Russia inquiry

Trump's contacts with FBI Director James Comey break longstanding precedent

After President Trump's public attacks, can Jeff Sessions survive as attorney general?

Dowd has said all communications with Mueller have been proper. 

“We get along well with Bob Mueller; our communications have been constructive,’’ the attorney said. “But it is important that our communications remain confidential. It’s important that there not be any breakdown in that trust.’’

For weeks, Washington political circles have been on high alert for the possibility the president could try to get rid of Mueller or otherwise wrest control of the Russia probe he denounces as a "hoax."  

Yet in a sign that forcing out the former FBI director overseeing the federal Russia investigation is politically untenable, a growing number of government officials have moved to tamp down any talk of ousting Mueller – including, apparently Trump himself.

“That’s never been on the table, never,’’ Dowd said of the possibility Trump might try to remove the special counsel. “It’s a manifestation of the media. My dealings with Bob Mueller have always been cordial, respectful — the way it should be."

Trump and his aides have been highly critical of Mueller and his widening investigation into possible collusion between associates and Russians who sought to influence the presidential election. Trump says Mueller's job is unnecessary because he hasn't done anything wrong, and has accused the former FBI director of having unspecified conflicts of interest. 

Lawmakers, including Republicans, started sounding the alarm about Mueller after days of concerted attacks on Attorney General Jeff Sessions. The unusual public criticism of a cabinet official who was one of Trump's earliest supporters – months after his recusal from the Russia investigation – raised questions about whether the president was trying to get Sessions to quit or would fire him. 

Trump cannot fire Mueller directly, but he can fire Sessions. And a new, more pliable attorney general – without conflicts in the Russia investigation – could oust the special counsel. 

Yet the two men appear to be at a stalemate: Sessions has has refused to resign in the face of attacks by Trump, and so far, Trump has not moved to fire Sessions. 

And senators from both parties have since introduced legislation that would make it harder for the president to dismiss Mueller. A pair of pending proposals would require judges to to review any presidential firing, and force the president to provide specific legal reasons for taking such action. 

What's more, with the public now aware that Mueller has tapped a grand jury for his inquiry into possible collusion between Trump associates and Russians who sought to influence the election, getting rid of the top prosecutor seems like a near impossibility. 

One Republican senator, Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, said late last month any move against Mueller could be "the beginning of the end of the Trump presidency." 

Sen. Thom Tillis, a North Carolina Republican who is sponsoring one of the proposals designed to protect a special counsel, said that "a back-end judicial review process to prevent unmerited removals of special counsels not only helps to ensure their investigatory independence, but also reaffirms our nation’s system of checks and balances.”

A recent poll of battleground districts indicated that firing Mueller would be unpopular with voters as well.

Mueller is supervising a long-running inquiry that focuses on Russian efforts to influence the 2016 election through fake news and hacking political organizations and Democrats close to nominee Hillary Clinton. 

The wide-ranging inquiry now includes a June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower where the president’s eldest son, Donald Jr., hosted a Kremlin-linked attorney whom he believed had damaging information on Clinton.

Trump Jr. was told that that information would be provided by the Russian government. Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner and then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort also attended the meeting. 

Trump Jr. and the Russian attorney both said no actual information about Clinton was provided at the meeting. The special counsel’s team also is reviewing financial transactions involving campaign officials. 

As the probe continues to mount, Trump and his aides have complained that some of Mueller's staff members have given political contributions to Democrats. Trump has also objected to the idea of having Mueller investigate his personal finances.

"No, I think that’s a violation," he told The New York Times. "Look, this is about Russia."

But this has not deterred Mueller, who is now using at least two grand juries — in Virginia and Washington, D.C. — to advance the investigation.

The use of the grand jury located in Washington, first disclosed last week, is potentially significant, as it likely means investigators are examining activities that happened within that jurisdiction. Those actions include former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn’s pre-inaugural contacts with Russian ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

Shortly after his appointment in May, Mueller also took control of an existing federal grand jury in Alexandria, Va., that had been examining Flynn's prior lobbying business involving Turkey.

While Trump and some of his aides have criticized Mueller and his operation, they also said there is no sign that the president himself is under investigation. 

Dowd said he knew of no immediate request for Trump’s testimony, and he declined to comment on any request for documents related to the president.  

 

 

[GreyhoundFan]

"The baseless new attacks on Robert Mueller"

Spoiler

Since special counsel Robert S. Mueller III began his Russia investigation, Trump’s supporters have sought to impugn the probe’s integrity. Now some are accusing Mueller of ulterior motives after news broke that Mueller is using a grand jury in the District of Columbia in addition to the one already at work in Alexandria, Va. Like other attacks on the investigation, these charges are baseless.

Mueller’s critics allege he purposely chose a grand jury from a heavily Democratic area. Harvard Law Professor Alan Dershowitz has claimed that Mueller is turning to a D.C. grand jury to obtain a tactical advantage. Any resulting trials would take place in D.C., which, Dershowitz argues, “is always solidly Democratic and has an ethnic and racial composition that might be very unfavorable to the Trump administration” — in contrast, presumably, to whiter and more conservative Northern Virginia.

For his part, Newt Gingrich offered the following on Twitter:

... < Newt's dumbass tweet about it being suspicious that the grand jury is in DC, not WV >

Such misguided claims are par for the course in an environment where everything is political, the motives of career professionals are routinely attacked, and any investigation is dismissed as a “witch hunt.”

Let’s begin with Gingrich, whose tweet is particularly ridiculous. The former House speaker apparently believes prosecutors are free to conduct grand jury investigations wherever they feel the environment might be politically favorable.

In the real world, a grand jury must have venue over the potential crimes it investigates. That means at least some part of the criminal acts must have taken place in the district where the grand jury is sitting.

The reason there is not a grand jury in West Virginia, or Texas, or any other state that Gingrich might prefer is that none of the matters being investigated took place there. Unless Gingrich knows something we don’t, West Virginia is completely irrelevant.

Dershowitz also ignores the venue issue. He assumes that anything Mueller is investigating could readily be prosecuted either in D.C. or in Virginia. I suspect that is not the case. Crimes such as filing a false security clearance form or failing to register as a foreign agent, for example, may take place entirely in D.C. Other acts potentially under investigation took place on Capitol Hill or in the White House and may lack the requisite ties to Virginia.

Dershowitz’s claims also betray a lack of familiarity with Justice Department practice in recent years. In many high-profile cases, if it does have a choice, the Justice Department — under both Democrat and Republican administrations — has often preferred the Eastern District of Virginia (Alexandria) to D.C.

The Eastern District of Virginia is known for its “rocket docket” that moves cases along very quickly, which the prosecution usually prefers. Its judges are considered no-nonsense and not terribly sympathetic to criminal defendants. And Eastern District of Virginia juries often consist of law-and-order types sympathetic to the government and law enforcement.

But put aside such trial lawyer folklore. Fundamentally, this is a D.C. case. It involves potential foreign interference with our national government. Washington is the epicenter of all the events under investigation. It is the logical venue for almost any criminal charges that might result.

There’s no reason to believe Mueller’s move is anything other than a routine, appropriate step in his investigation. Sadly, that won’t stop critics who continue to disregard legal norms, assign political motives to every action and further erode respect for the rule of law.

I wish Pope Francis would ban twitter in perpetuity for Newt when he slithers to the Vatican with Calista.

[AmazonGrace]

 

Cue Kellyanne and Kayleigh: "No one in the campaign even knows Paul Manafort... we don't know who he is..."

[onekidanddone]

15 hours ago, GreyhoundFan said:

I wish Pope Francis would ban twitter in perpetuity for Newt when he slithers to the Vatican with Calista.

Has this Pope ever told anybody to STFU? May be time for that.  God will be okay with it.

[GreyhoundFan]

"Why is the FBI so interested in Paul Manafort that agents were literally at his door before dawn?"

Spoiler

There are a couple reasons the special counsel's expanding Russia investigation might be so interested in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort that FBI agents showed up at his door before dawn, unannounced, searched his home and seized documents, as The Washington Post reports.

In many ways, Manafort is squarely in the crosshairs of the Russia-Trump collusion investigation: His brief tenure as the head of Trump's campaign happened as concerns about Russia's meddling in the 2016 election were heating up, he's got high-level connections to Russia in his own right, and he's got a whole host of scrutinized financial dealings that could make him a useful tool for investigators seeking cooperation.

He's also the perfect target to send a message to the rest of Washington that the special counsel investigation means business, said Jack Sharman, a white-collar lawyer in Alabama and former special counsel for Congress during the Bill Clinton Whitewater investigation.

"One purpose of such a raid is to bring home to the target the fact that the federal prosecution team is moving forward and is not going to defer to or rely on Congress," he said.

Let's zero in why Manafort was the target the FBI decided to send a message through.

1. He was Trump's campaign chairman for several months in 2016. If Robert S. Mueller III's team is investigating Trump-Russia connections, it is not going to stop at some low-level Trump associate. These investigators are going straight to the top to see if they find evidence of collusion, and for several key months in 2016, Manafort was the top.

2. He was in *that* meeting. When Donald Trump Jr. was told the Russian government was trying to help his father win, and oh by the way, do you want to meet with a Russian lawyer who has dirt on Hillary Clinton, Trump Jr. didn't go alone. He brought along Manafort and Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law.

It appears Manafort took detailed notes of that meeting, and those notes could be key evidence if there are any collusion-related charges.

That meeting's circumstances are “as close as you can get to a smoking gun” on whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, said Jeffrey Jacobovitz, a white-collar lawyer who represented officials in the Clinton White House.

3. He's got lots of ties to Russia. A Russian aluminum magnate. A pro-Russian former Ukrainian president. A Republican congressman who advocates for close ties between the United States and Russia. A business associate from his time in Ukraine who once served in the Russian army and had dinner with Manafort during the campaign.

Of all the Trump campaign officials, Manafort has the most known connections to Russia. Before he joined Trump's campaign, he was a political consultant in Ukraine, where he helped elect a president backed by Russia. (That president was toppled four years later and fled to safety in Russia.) The Post reported in June that Manafort's consulting firm received $17 million over two years from that president's political party, the Party of Regions.

During the campaign, the New York Times uncovered ledgers in Ukraine for secret, under-the-table payments to the Party of Regions' allies. Manafort's name was in them, though he denied any wrongdoing. The news eventually led to Manafort's resignation from Trump's campaign, three months after he got elevated to the top job.

4. Investigators could use him as leverage. Manafort's role in the Trump campaign isn't the only aspect of his life under federal investigation. The Wall Street Journal has reported that the special counsel is investigating him for money laundering allegations. NBC has reported federal investigators have subpoenaed records related to a $3.5 million mortgage Manafort took out on his home in the Hamptons. And The Post reports that Justice Department officials are also looking into whether he violated any laws by not fully disclosing his work as a foreign agent in Ukraine. (Manafort retroactively filed as one in June, which is how we know how much money he got paid by Ukrainian politicians.)

Much of that is now under Mueller's umbrella. That's significant leverage investigators have on Manafort. If they can't persuade Manafort to cooperate on the Russia investigation — and this search warrant is evidence that they feel they couldn't — they could potentially force him to cooperate by threatening him with unrelated legal trouble. (Manafort has not been, nor do we have any indication he will be, charged with a crime.)

Snagging a big fish with an unrelated crime is a common tactic used by investigators, Jacobovitz said. It's possible the special counsel is using those same kinds of tools on Michael Flynn, Trump's former national security adviser, who is facing legal questions over his failure to disclose his lobbying work for Turkey.

Flynn has asked for immunity from Congress to testify about what he knows. Manafort has provided documents to multiple House and Senate committees and plans to testify sometime later this year — which raises a whole host of questions about why the FBI felt the need to show up and search his home. Either way, now those documents are in the hands of FBI agents, and the message has been sent: They mean business.

Short answer: because he's a shady dude.

[onekidanddone]

9 minutes ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"Why is the FBI so interested in Paul Manafort that agents were literally at his door before dawn?"

Short answer: because he's a shady dude.

Trump hires the best criminals.  The best!

[GreyhoundFan]

Interesting: "Feds sought cooperation from Manafort's son-in-law"

Spoiler

Federal investigators sought cooperation from Paul Manafort’s son-in-law in an effort to increase pressure on President Donald Trump’s former campaign chairman, according to three people familiar with the probe.

Investigators approached Jeffrey Yohai, who has partnered in business deals with Manafort, earlier this summer, setting off “real waves” in Manafort’s orbit, one of these people said. Another of these people said investigators are trying to get “into Manafort’s head.”

Manafort, who is a focus of the broad federal and congressional investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign, is also under investigation for his business and real estate transactions, including some that involve Yohai.

That probe has accelerated in recent weeks, according to one of the people familiar with it.

FBI agents conducted an early morning raid last month on Manafort’s home in Alexandria, Virginia, rousing him from sleep and seizing reams of material.

Manafort has not been accused of any wrongdoing.

It is unclear if investigators have secured cooperation from Yohai, who also hasn't been accused of wrongdoing. A lawyer for Yohai didn’t respond to a request for comment.

A Manafort spokesman declined to comment. A spokesman for special counsel Robert Mueller also declined to comment.

Manafort’s team has repeatedly pushed back on suggestions he’s cooperating with federal investigators. “Paul’s been forthcoming, but he’s not a cooperating witness and any suggestion to that effect is silly,” Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni said in a July interview when asked about concerns from former colleagues that Manafort had turned against the Trump team.

People close to Manafort reiterated Wednesday that he has no plans to become a cooperating witness.

Another high profile Trump associate touched by the Russia probe has suggested he'd be willing to talk with federal investigators. Michael Flynn, Trump’s first national security adviser, asked for an immunity deal in March in which he’d testify to Congress. A lawyer for Flynn declined to comment on the Mueller probe.

Mueller’s targeting of both Manafort and his son-in-law over potential criminal wrongdoing is a familiar tactic in white-collar cases, commonly called “climbing the ladder.”

“Manafort is — on many levels — a key subject of the investigation and someone who might be leveraged to share information about others,” said one Washington-based white-collar attorney with a client involved in the Russia probe.

The approach involves finding a suspected crime — false statements on tax returns or loan applications, for example — and then offering leniency on prosecution in exchange for cooperation. “They always start with the people on the low end of the ladder and try to get information on someone high up on the ladder,” said William Jeffress, a white-collar attorney who represented Vice President Dick Cheney’s chief of staff, I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, in the President George W. Bush-era Valerie Plame leak investigation.

Mueller would clearly have jurisdiction over any real estate dealings between Yohai, Manafort and Russians, Jeffress said. In addition, he could press Yohai for details on what he knows about Manafort’s role in the campaign.

Renato Mariotti, a former federal prosecutor, said cooperating witnesses are “often very significant to make your case” when it gets to trial.

“They can provide direct evidence of what the defendant said or did,” he said. “That’s usually far more compelling to a jury than just looking at documents.”

Mariotti also brushed aside comments by Manafort associates who insist the former Trump campaign manager has nothing about Trump that would matter to investigators. “I wouldn’t take much from it,” he said. “I’d take it with a grain of salt.”

He noted a number of potential politicians under investigation who have been less than candid with their public statements: perhaps most notably President Bill Clinton, who insisted that he didn’t carry on a sexual affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky.

“That’s very often the case that people involved in wrongdoing aren’t candid with even their closest friends and associates and family because they don’t want to disappoint the people they’re closest to,” Mariotti said. “Sometimes they’re not even candid to their own lawyers.”

I wonder if another son-in-law is starting to feel the heat.

[Howl]

So, I took a little trip in time back to August 19, 2016, the day that Paul Manafort resigned as the head of the Trump campaign.  I'm laughing now, because I remember that I was utterly GOBSMACKED when reports came out about Manafort's Ukraine dealings and, by extension, his relationship to Russia.  I mean, mind blown, truly shocked.  Now items like that arrive with regularity weekly or even daily.  I look back at that time and sadly recall my lost naiveté. 

Anyway, here are some excerpts from the New York Times article about it. This article is prescient in that so many things observed about Trump then are playing out in the White House now. Paul Manafort Quits Donald Trump’s Campaign After a Tumultuous Run

Spoiler

Paul Manafort, a professional Republican political operative since the 1970s, was supposed to impose order on Donald J. Trump’s chaotic presidential campaign. On Friday, the chaos devoured him...

...Then a wave of reports about Mr. Manafort’s own business dealings with Russia-aligned leaders in Ukraine, involving allegations of millions of dollars in cash payments and secret lobbying efforts in the United States, threw a spotlight on a glaring vulnerability for Mr. Trump: his admiration for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia.

Nor did Mr. Trump ever quite buy into what Mr. Manafort was selling.  Just as Mr. Trump has resisted behaving like a traditional presidential candidate, he has also felt little need to construct the sort of hierarchical organization typical of a campaign for the White House. This is in part, Mr. Trump’s advisers say, because he relies on his instincts and the counsel of his family.  But it is also because he simply prefers to improvise, unconstrained by convention or by a chain of command...

...A change in the leadership of his campaign may not stop Mr. Trump from making abrupt decisions based on news coverage, playing advisers off one another and following the guidance of whoever may be traveling with him or has just spoken to him on the phone.

And now I've just fallen down the Manfort family  rabbit hole via this article from Business Insider from this past March, titled Hacked text messages allegedly sent by Paul Manafort's daughter discuss 'blood money' and killings, and a Ukrainian lawyer wants him to explain  Caveat: dark web, hacked emails, but Business Insider is a German-owned news source leaning slightly left of center with a reputation for well sourced information.  There are some conditional words  (purported, appear to, according to) but holey schmoley frijole guacamoley! 

Spoiler

Late last month, hackers broke into Manafort's daughter's iPhone and published four years' worth of purported text messages — roughly 300,000 messages — on the dark web, an encrypted network that can be accessed only with a special browser...

...In a series of texts reviewed by Business Insider that appear to have been sent by Andrea to her sister, Jessica, in March 2015, Andrea said their father had "no moral or legal compass."  "Don't fool yourself," Andrea wrote to her sister, according to the texts. "That money we have is blood money."

"You know he has killed people in Ukraine? Knowingly," she continued, according to the reviewed texts. "As a tactic to outrage the world and get focus on Ukraine. Remember when there were all those deaths taking place. A while back. About a year ago. Revolts and what not. Do you know whose strategy that was to cause that, to send those people out and get them slaughtered."

...In a later exchange with a man who appeared to be Andrea's cousin — and one of her father's former employees — Collin Bond, Andrea appears to have said her mother and father couldn't go through a "public divorce" because Manafort had "too many skeletons" and "his work and payment in Ukraine is legally questionable."

Bond worked as a political consultant and election-law attorney for Manafort's consulting firm, Davis Manafort Partners Inc., from 2005 to 2010, according to a LinkedIn page with his name..."He is a sick f---ing tyrant," Andrea appears to have said to Bond about her father. "And we keep showing up and dancing for him. ... We just keep showing up and eating the lobster. Nothing changes."

Wow, to be a fly on the wall at family celebrations at the Manafort house! 

Were I Manafort, I'd be less concerned about lawyers and more concerned about personal protection; he just knows too much about very, very bad people. His lobbying resume includes extensive skullduggery advising only the very best dictators/rank pieces of sh*t:  Africa ( Mobutu Sese Seko, Jonas Savimbi), the Philippines (Ferdinand Marcos) and Ukraine (Viktor Yanukovych).  And you know how Russia feels about people who rat them out.  Plutonium tea, anyone?

And I don't think that Manafort is a low-on-the ladder kinda guy.  He's been a US political operative for decades and advised presidential campaigns for Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George H. W. Bush, and Bob Dole. 

[fraurosena]

Is there nothing that doesn't lead back to Russia???

[GreyhoundFan]

You couldn't make this up: "Trump campaign emails show aide’s repeated efforts to set up Russia meetings"

Spoiler

Three days after Donald Trump named his campaign foreign policy team in March 2016, the youngest of the new advisers sent an email to seven campaign officials with the subject line: “Meeting with Russian Leadership - Including Putin.”

The adviser, George Papadopoulos, offered to set up “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump,” telling them his Russian contacts welcomed the opportunity, according to internal campaign emails read to The Washington Post.

The proposal sent a ripple of concern through campaign headquarters in Trump Tower. Campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis wrote that he thought NATO allies should be consulted before any plans were made. Another Trump adviser, retired Navy Rear Adm. Charles Kubic, cited legal concerns, including a possible violation of U.S. sanctions against Russia and of the Logan Act, which prohibits U.S. citizens from unauthorized negotiation with foreign governments.

But Papadopoulos, a campaign volunteer with scant foreign policy experience, persisted. Between March and September, the self-described energy consultant sent at least a half-dozen requests for Trump, as he turned from primary candidate to party nominee, or for members of his team to meet with Russian officials. Among those to express concern about the effort was then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who rejected in May 2016 a proposal from Papadopoulos for Trump to do so.

The exchanges are among more than 20,000 pages of documents the Trump campaign turned over to congressional committees this month after review by White House and defense lawyers. The selection of Papadopoulos’s emails were read to The Post by a person with access to them. Two other people with access to the emails confirmed the general tone of the exchanges and some specific passages within them.

Papadopoulos emerges from the sample of emails as a new and puzzling figure in the examination of the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russian officials and their proxies during the 2016 election, now the subject of a special-counsel investigation.

Less than a decade out of college, Papadopoulos appeared to hold little sway within the campaign, and it is unclear whether he was acting as an intermediary for the Russian government, although he told campaign officials he was.

While the emails illustrate his eagerness to strengthen the campaign’s connections to the Russian government, Papadopoulos does not spell out in them why it would be in Trump’s interest to do so. His entreaties appear to have generated more concern than excitement within the campaign, which at the time was looking to seal the Republican nomination and take on a heavily favored Hillary Clinton in the general election.

But the internal resistance to Papadopoulos’s requests is at odds with other overtures Trump allies were making toward Russia at the time, mostly at a more senior level of the campaign.

Three months after Papadopoulos raised the possibility of a meeting between Trump and Russian President Vladi­mir Putin, the president’s son Donald Trump Jr. and son-in-law Jared Kushner met with a delegation led by a Russian lawyer offering to provide damaging information on Clinton.

Manafort attended that Trump Tower session in June 2016, a meeting now under scrutiny in the special counsel’s collusion inquiry. But the new emails reveal that Manafort had rejected a request from Papadopoulos just the previous month to set up a meeting between Trump and Russian officials.

In July 2016 and again two months later, Jeff Sessions, then a senator and senior foreign policy adviser to Trump, met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak.

And also in July, a few weeks after Papadopoulos asked his superiors whether other campaign advisers or aides could accept some of the Russians’ invitations, Carter Page, another foreign policy adviser, spoke at a Russian university in Moscow. Page said he made the trip independently of the campaign.

To experts in Russian intelligence gathering, the Papadopoulos chain offers further evidence that Russians were looking for entry points and playing upon connections with lower-level aides to penetrate the 2016 campaign.

Former CIA director John Brennan in May told the House Intelligence Committee that he had seen worrisome evidence of “contacts and interactions” between Russian officials and the Trump campaign, although he offered no specifics.

Steven L. Hall, who retired from the CIA in 2015 after 30 years of managing the agency’s Russia operations, said when told by The Post about the emails: “The bottom line is that there’s no doubt in my mind that the Russian government was casting a wide net when they were looking at the American election. I think they were doing very basic intelligence work: Who’s out there? Who’s willing to play ball? And how can we use them?”

Papadopoulos, a former intern and researcher at the conservative Hudson Institute, was on a list of campaign volunteers that Trump announced as his foreign policy advisory team during a meeting with The Post’s editorial board in March 2016. Trump called Papadopoulos an “excellent guy.”

Almost immediately, Papadopoulos came under scrutiny for his lack of experience. He graduated from college in 2009, and his LinkedIn profile cited his participation in a Model U.N. program for students among his qualifications. Papadopoulos did not respond to repeated requests for comment.

Page, who has been the subject of a foreign surveillance warrant over his connections to Russia, said the Papadopoulos email exchange was another sign that the Russia communications were inconsequential.

“The entirely benign offer from a volunteer member of the Trump movement is infinitely less relevant than the real collusion in the 2016 election,” said Page, who was copied on the first Papadopoulos email communication in March. Page said in an email exchange Saturday that “the real scandal lies among Clinton and Obama associates who fed false evidence” to investigators that he said formed the basis of the federal warrant concerning him.

Papadopoulos made more than a half-dozen overtures on behalf of Russians or people with Russia contacts whom he claimed to know.

On March 24, Clovis, the campaign co-chairman who also served on the foreign policy team, reacted to one proposed Russia meeting by writing, “We thought we probably should not go forward with any meeting with the Russians until we have had occasion to sit with our NATO allies.”

In the same email chain, Kubic, the retired admiral, reminded others about legal restrictions on meetings with certain Russian officials, adding, “Just want to make sure that no one on the team outruns their headlights and embarrasses the campaign.”

Undeterred, Papadopoulos alerted then-campaign manager Corey Lewandowski in an April email that he was receiving “a lot of calls over the past month” about arranging a Russia meeting.

“Putin wants to host the Trump team when the time is right,” he wrote on April 27.

On May 4, Papadopoulos forwarded Lewandowski and others a note he received from the program head for the government-funded Russian International Affairs Council. In it, Ivan Timofeev, a senior official in the organization, reached out to report that Russian foreign ministry officials were open to a Trump visit to Moscow and requested that the campaign and Russians write a formal letter outlining the meeting.

Clovis responded to the Timofeev invitation by noting: “There are legal issues we need to mitigate, meeting with foreign officials as a private citizen.”

The email chain does not show a response from Lewandowski, who did not return calls seeking comment.

Several weeks later, Papadopoulos forwarded the same message from Timofeev to Manafort, the newly named campaign chairman.

“Russia has been eager to meet with Mr. Trump for some time and have been reaching out to me to discuss,” the adviser told Manafort.

Manafort reacted coolly, forwarding the email to his associate Rick Gates, with a note: “We need someone to communicate that DT is not doing these trips.”

Gates agreed and told Manafort he would ask the campaign’s correspondence coordinator to handle it — “the person responding to all mail of non-importance” — to signify this did not need a senior official to respond.

A spokesman for Manafort, whose Virginia home was raided by FBI agents three weeks ago as part of an investigation by special counsel Robert S. Mueller III, said the email chain provides “concrete evidence that the Russia collusion narrative is fake news.”

“Mr. Manafort’s swift action reflects the attitude of the campaign — any invitation by Russia, directly or indirectly, would be rejected outright,” Manafort spokesman Jason Maloni said in a statement.

In an email to The Post, Timofeev confirmed that his organization had discussed a meeting with the Trump campaign in the spring of 2016.

The Russian International Affairs Council was created in 2010 by a decree of then-President Dmitry Medvedev as a project of various Russian government agencies. It is led by former foreign minister Igor Ivanov. Its board includes Russia’s current foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, as well as top Russian scholars and business leaders, among them the chairman of Alfa-Bank and Sberbank, two of Russia’s largest banks.

“We discussed the idea informally as one of the opportunities for . . . dialogue between Russia and the U.S.,” Timofeev said in the email. “RIAC often hosts meetings with prominent political figures and experts from the US and many other countries.”

He said the group would have been open to meeting with other campaigns.

Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said officials with the Democrat’s campaign have “no recollections or record” of having been contacted by the group. Similarly an adviser to the Barack Obama’s first presidential campaign, former Russian ambassador Michael McFaul, said he could not recall any similar invitation.

"entirely benign", my foot.

[candygirl200413]

Like I've mentioned, since November 8th I've been praying on a nightly basis for things to hit the fan and that he gets impeached, it's like we are getting so so close!!

[Childless]

11 hours ago, candygirl200413 said:

Like I've mentioned, since November 8th I've been praying on a nightly basis for things to hit the fan and that he gets impeached, it's like we are getting so so close!!

But then we'll be stuck with Pence who is so much worse.

[GreyhoundFan]

"New campaign emails make it harder for Trump to deny Russia meddled in the election"

Spoiler

As early as March 2016, a low-level Trump campaign aide claimed none other than the president of Russia was trying to meet then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign.

From March to October, aide George Papadopoulos presented some seven requests from people who claimed to be tied to the Russian government who wanted to meet with Trump and his team, report The Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman, who obtained emails from the Trump campaign during that time.

One of the most eyebrow-raising subject lines from Papadopoulos: “Meeting with Russian Leadership — Including Putin.”

There’s no evidence Trump’s campaign took Papadopoulos up on the invitations to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin; in fact, emails show senior campaign officials thought it could be a bad idea.

But news that Russia was trying at all completely unravels President Trump’s claim that Russia wasn’t trying to meddle in the election, or that the investigations into whether the Trump campaign helped are “fake news.” The Russians were meddling in the election, and it appears the Trump campaign was aware they were seeking its help to do it. Which raises the question of why Trump aides met with anyone tied to the Russian government at all during the campaign.

There can be only one reason for Russia’s attempts to reach out to Trump’s campaign, former intelligence officials have said: The Russians wanted to infiltrate it. The intelligence community has determined the Russians wanted Hillary Clinton lose, Donald Trump to win, and to undermine Americans’ confidence in their democracy in the process. And it’s very possible they wanted Trump’s help doing it.

“I know what the Russians try to do,” former CIA director John Brennan told Congress in May. “They try to suborn individuals, and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to try to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly. And I was worried by a number of contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons.”

Donald Trump Jr. more or less confirmed Brennan's suspicions in July. Emails he released about setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer to get dirt on Clinton show he got a heads up that Russia was trying to help his dad win.

...

Now we know that months before that meeting, an aide was pinging Trump’s top advisers telling them Russia wanted “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump.” When it comes to Russia’s interest in the presidential election, it doesn’t get much clearer than that.

None of this is proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. The emails show that then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort outright rejected at least one proposal to have Trump meet with Russian officials. (Manafort’s home was raided by the FBI in July in conjunction with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.)

There’s also nothing unusual about campaigns meeting with foreign officials in normal circumstances.

But what’s not normal is to get repeated overtures from a government that U.S. intelligence later determined tried to undermine democracy and not have the president at least acknowledge those findings, or the resulting investigation. It’s also odd that a lower-level aide would continue to try so hard to set up a meeting even as his superiors appeared to bat him away, as Hamburger, Leonnig and Helderman point out.

The CIA’s attention certainly spiked when it started noticing all these Trump-Russia connections, real and proposed. The Russians are uncannily good at getting people to do their will, either by persuasion or blackmail, experts say.

“My radar goes up early when I see certain things that I know what the Russians are trying to do, and I don’t know whether or not the targets of their efforts are as mindful of Russian intentions as they need to be,” Brennan told Congress.

Brennan’s radar also likely went up as top-level Trump officials continued to meet with a number of Russians during the campaign, suggesting they weren’t nearly as wary about the dangers as seasoned intelligence officials were.

Also perplexing: After the campaign, Trump’s team was the opposite of forthcoming about all of these meetings — even though once they became public, they described all of them as benign. While under oath in his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he couldn’t recall meeting with any Russians. Later reporting showed he did meet twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign and apparently talked politics with him.

Trump Jr. originally said, at the behest of his father, that his meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Clinton was primarily about adoptions. President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Sessions both didn’t initially disclose in official government security clearance forms that they each met with the Russian ambassador, and Kushner was in the meeting with the Russian lawyer.

Three big questions here that keep popping up the more journalists reveal the extent of Russia’s interest in the campaign: If Trump’s campaign was sophisticated enough to decide not to meet with Putin, then why did campaign aides keep meeting with other top Russians? And why didn’t they acknowledge those meetings afterward? And why does Trump refuse to acknowledge Russia’s meddling?

“I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries. I won’t be specific,” Trump said in Poland in July.

“There is no collusion,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf course Thursday. “You know why? Because I don’t speak to Russians.”

At the very least, Trump’s campaign was totally naive about the dangers of Russia trying to infiltrate them. At worst, they were or are hiding something.

Only investigations will determine if Trump’s campaign actually conspired to collude with Russia. We now know that a low-level aide at least gave the impression Russia wanted to establish a relationship with Trump’s campaign. And that makes it impossible for Trump to keep ignoring that Russia messed with the 2016 election.

Oh, but this is "fake news", right? I keep going back to the thought that if a single Dem had done anything like this, they would have been crucified right on the National Mall.

[GrumpyGran]

1 hour ago, GreyhoundFan said:

"New campaign emails make it harder for Trump to deny Russia meddled in the election"

  Hide contents

As early as March 2016, a low-level Trump campaign aide claimed none other than the president of Russia was trying to meet then-candidate Donald Trump and his campaign.

From March to October, aide George Papadopoulos presented some seven requests from people who claimed to be tied to the Russian government who wanted to meet with Trump and his team, report The Washington Post’s Tom Hamburger, Carol D. Leonnig and Rosalind S. Helderman, who obtained emails from the Trump campaign during that time.

One of the most eyebrow-raising subject lines from Papadopoulos: “Meeting with Russian Leadership — Including Putin.”

There’s no evidence Trump’s campaign took Papadopoulos up on the invitations to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin; in fact, emails show senior campaign officials thought it could be a bad idea.

But news that Russia was trying at all completely unravels President Trump’s claim that Russia wasn’t trying to meddle in the election, or that the investigations into whether the Trump campaign helped are “fake news.” The Russians were meddling in the election, and it appears the Trump campaign was aware they were seeking its help to do it. Which raises the question of why Trump aides met with anyone tied to the Russian government at all during the campaign.

There can be only one reason for Russia’s attempts to reach out to Trump’s campaign, former intelligence officials have said: The Russians wanted to infiltrate it. The intelligence community has determined the Russians wanted Hillary Clinton lose, Donald Trump to win, and to undermine Americans’ confidence in their democracy in the process. And it’s very possible they wanted Trump’s help doing it.

“I know what the Russians try to do,” former CIA director John Brennan told Congress in May. “They try to suborn individuals, and they try to get individuals, including U.S. persons, to try to act on their behalf, either wittingly or unwittingly. And I was worried by a number of contacts that the Russians had with U.S. persons.”

Donald Trump Jr. more or less confirmed Brennan's suspicions in July. Emails he released about setting up a meeting with a Russian lawyer to get dirt on Clinton show he got a heads up that Russia was trying to help his dad win.

...

Now we know that months before that meeting, an aide was pinging Trump’s top advisers telling them Russia wanted “a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss US-Russia ties under President Trump.” When it comes to Russia’s interest in the presidential election, it doesn’t get much clearer than that.

None of this is proof that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. The emails show that then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort outright rejected at least one proposal to have Trump meet with Russian officials. (Manafort’s home was raided by the FBI in July in conjunction with special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation into Trump-Russia collusion.)

There’s also nothing unusual about campaigns meeting with foreign officials in normal circumstances.

But what’s not normal is to get repeated overtures from a government that U.S. intelligence later determined tried to undermine democracy and not have the president at least acknowledge those findings, or the resulting investigation. It’s also odd that a lower-level aide would continue to try so hard to set up a meeting even as his superiors appeared to bat him away, as Hamburger, Leonnig and Helderman point out.

The CIA’s attention certainly spiked when it started noticing all these Trump-Russia connections, real and proposed. The Russians are uncannily good at getting people to do their will, either by persuasion or blackmail, experts say.

“My radar goes up early when I see certain things that I know what the Russians are trying to do, and I don’t know whether or not the targets of their efforts are as mindful of Russian intentions as they need to be,” Brennan told Congress.

Brennan’s radar also likely went up as top-level Trump officials continued to meet with a number of Russians during the campaign, suggesting they weren’t nearly as wary about the dangers as seasoned intelligence officials were.

Also perplexing: After the campaign, Trump’s team was the opposite of forthcoming about all of these meetings — even though once they became public, they described all of them as benign. While under oath in his confirmation hearing, Attorney General Jeff Sessions said he couldn’t recall meeting with any Russians. Later reporting showed he did meet twice with the Russian ambassador during the campaign and apparently talked politics with him.

Trump Jr. originally said, at the behest of his father, that his meeting with a Russian lawyer promising dirt on Clinton was primarily about adoptions. President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser Jared Kushner and Sessions both didn’t initially disclose in official government security clearance forms that they each met with the Russian ambassador, and Kushner was in the meeting with the Russian lawyer.

Three big questions here that keep popping up the more journalists reveal the extent of Russia’s interest in the campaign: If Trump’s campaign was sophisticated enough to decide not to meet with Putin, then why did campaign aides keep meeting with other top Russians? And why didn’t they acknowledge those meetings afterward? And why does Trump refuse to acknowledge Russia’s meddling?

“I think it could very well have been Russia, but I think it could well have been other countries. I won’t be specific,” Trump said in Poland in July.

“There is no collusion,” Trump told reporters at his New Jersey golf course Thursday. “You know why? Because I don’t speak to Russians.”

At the very least, Trump’s campaign was totally naive about the dangers of Russia trying to infiltrate them. At worst, they were or are hiding something.

Only investigations will determine if Trump’s campaign actually conspired to collude with Russia. We now know that a low-level aide at least gave the impression Russia wanted to establish a relationship with Trump’s campaign. And that makes it impossible for Trump to keep ignoring that Russia messed with the 2016 election.

Oh, but this is "fake news", right? I keep going back to the thought that if a single Dem had done anything like this, they would have been crucified right on the National Mall.

Yes, this is the very thing that the loony right is still trying to pin on Hillary. Finding this alone with regard to her would have them calling for her head. 

Now I wonder if Manafort was the voice of reason regarding Russia in the campaign and that's why he was fired. He's been rather silent since then, not a lot of overt Trump support, or am I wrong? He might have had some very good stuff and he might have asked for the raid to protect himself. Plausible deniability with Trump until he can testify.