Robert Mueller suspects that Paul Manafort may have been the Trump campaign's back channel to Russians intent on meddling in the election.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s interest in former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort stemmed in part from his suspected role as a “back channel” between the campaign and Russians intent on meddling in the election, a Justice Department lawyer told a judge. 

The disclosure by U.S. prosecutors came Thursday during a hearing on whether Mueller exceeded his authority in indicting Manafort on charges of laundering millions of dollars while acting as an unregistered agent of the Ukrainian government. Manafort’s lawyers say those alleged crimes have nothing to do with Mueller’s central mission -- to determine whether anyone in the Trump campaign had links to the Russian government. 

Defense attorney Kevin Downing argued anew to U.S. District Judge Amy Berman Jackson in Washington that even Mueller’s appointment order permitting him to probe “any matters that arose or may arise directly from the investigation” wouldn’t cover the political consulting work that Manafort did in Ukraine for a decade. 

But Justice Department attorney Michael Dreeben said prosecutors were justified in investigating Manafort because he had served as Trump’s campaign chairman. “He had long-standing ties to Russia-backed politicians,” Dreeben told Jackson. “Did they provide back channels to Russia? Investigators will naturally look at those things.” 

Prosecutors hadn’t previously used such explicit language to describe their suspicions about Manafort. In a previous court filing, Mueller also cited business ties between Manafort and the Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska.

Well if this pans out Manafort might be what they refer to in the legal profession as F.U.C.K'd.

David Corn of Mother Jones gets it:

How many times does this have to be explained? DJT Jr., Manafort & Kushner met with Russian emissary & signaled to Moscow they would gladly collude with secret Russian plan to help Trump by accepting HRC dirt. They showed Moscow they approved of efforts to intervene. https://t.co/JaLX9lxKiD

— David Corn (@DavidCornDC) April 19, 2018

And this only adds to the avalanche of legal problems that is crushing the life out of Manafort which include a five-count indictment in Washington on charges of money laundering and failing to register as a foreign agent for Ukraine, and an 18-count indictment in Virginia on charges of bank fraud, tax evasion and failing to report foreign bank accounts.

Did I mention that he was F.U.C.K'd? 

Manafort would also like to have access to his bank accounts returned.

Not because he wants to flee the country, but because he desperately wants to flee the country.

You know all of this reminds me of that word we kept hearing all year. You know the one that rhymes with "confusion."

Contusion, intrusion, foregone conclusion, nah that's not it.

Don't worry, I am sure it will come to me eventually.

It appears that Stormy Daniels has reinforcements.

Courtesy of  NBC News:

Adult film actress Stormy Daniels underwent a polygraph exam in 2011 about her relationship with Donald Trump, and the examiner found there was a more than 99 percent probability she told the truth when she said they had unprotected sex in 2006, according to a copy of the report obtained by NBC News Tuesday. 

Daniels, whose legal name is Stephanie Clifford, took the lie detector test at the request of a magazine that interviewed her in 2011, but didn’t publish the content at the time. 

The report is accompanied by a sworn declaration from the examiner, signed on Monday, March 19, 2018, attesting to the polygraph report’s authenticity. Details of the report were first published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.

Now that by itself is pretty unfortunate news for a certain tangerine teapot tyrant.

However it was only the beginning of the shitty Trump news for today.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

A former Playboy model who claimed she had an affair with Donald J. Trump sued on Tuesday to be released from a 2016 legal agreement requiring her silence, becoming the second woman this month to challenge Trump allies’ efforts during the presidential campaign to bury stories about extramarital relationships.

The model, Karen McDougal, is suing the company that owns The National Enquirer, American Media Inc., which paid her $150,000 and whose chief executive is a friend of President Trump’s. The other woman, the adult entertainment star Stephanie Clifford, better known as Stormy Daniels, was paid $130,000 to stay quiet by the president’s personal lawyer, Michael D. Cohen. She filed suit earlier this month.

Ms. McDougal, in a lawsuit filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, claims that Mr. Cohen was secretly involved in her talks with A.M.I., and that the media company and her lawyer at the time misled her about the deal. She also asserts that after she spoke with The New Yorker last month after it obtained notes she kept on Mr. Trump, A.M.I. warned that “any further disclosures would breach Karen’s contract” and “cause considerable monetary damages.”

Kinda feels a little coordinated doesn't it?

Well if it is that is a damn smart play.  After all there is strength in numbers.

And speaking of numbers, they are continuing to grow.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

President Donald Trump can’t avoid a former "Apprentice" contestant’s defamation lawsuit and may be forced to respond under oath to allegations of sexual assault and his treatment of women. 

Summer Zervos, a contender on The Apprentice in 2005, sued Trump in January 2017 alleging he “ambushed” her on more than one occasion starting in 2007, kissing her, touching her breast and pressing his genitals against her. On Tuesday, New York State Supreme Court Justice Jennifer Schecter denied the president’s request to throw out the lawsuit or delay it until he leaves office.

"No one is above the law," Schecter wrote in an 18-page decision. “Nothing in the Supremacy Clause of the United States Constitution even suggests that the president cannot be called to account before a state court for wrongful conduct that bears no relationship to any federal executive responsibility.” 

The ruling could subject Trump to extremely broad questions about this case and similar ones, and he might be forced to testify under oath and provide documents, said Naomi Mezey, a professor at Georgetown Law School and an expert on civil procedure.

Damn! I almost forgot about Zervos.

And if SHE can get Trump to testify under oath, that means that his other accusers might be able to do the same. 

 Remember it only took one intern, with one stained dressed, to get Bill Clinton impeached.

By the time this is over there could be over a dozen women, with a whole closet full of DNA stained clothing to bring to the courtroom.

Russian hackers breach power grids, water processing plants, and air transportation facilities all over the United States.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Russian hackers are conducting a broad assault on the U.S. electric grid, water processing plants, air transportation facilities and other targets in rolling attacks on some of the country’s most sensitive infrastructure, U.S. government officials said Thursday. 

The announcement was the first official confirmation that Russian hackers have taken aim at facilities on which hundreds of millions of Americans depend for basic services. Bloomberg News reported in July that Russian hackers had breached more than a dozen power plants in seven states, an aggressive campaign that has since expanded to dozens of states, according to a person familiar with the investigation. 

"Since at least March 2016, Russian government cyber actors" have targeted "government entities and multiple U.S. critical infrastructure sectors," including those of energy, nuclear, water and aviation, according to an alert issued Thursday by the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

Critical manufacturing sectors and commercial facilities also have been targeted by the ongoing "multi-stage intrusion campaign by Russian government cyber actors." 

Cyber-attacks are "literally happening hundreds of thousands of times a day," Energy Secretary Rick Perry told lawmakers during a hearing Thursday. "The warfare that goes on in the cyberspace is real, it’s serious, and we must lead the world."

In other reporting it was made clear that the Russians had gained control over some of these facilities, and could turn off power to millions of Americans or interfere in air travel at will.

This means that the Russians can render us helpless with a literal flip of the switch.

No phone, no internet, no lights, no nothing.

And while all this was going on the Trump Administration did NOTHING to protect us.

But hey they finally moved on those old sanctions to punish the Russians for interfering in the 2916 elections.

Courtesy of CNN:

The Trump administration announced Thursday it is enacting new sanctions on Russia, including individuals indicted last month by special counsel Robert Mueller, in a sweeping new effort to punish Moscow for its attempts to interfere in the 2016 US election. 

In enacting the sanctions, the administration is finally meeting a congressional mandate to impose measures punishing Moscow for its cyber intrusion. The delay had led to questions over President Donald Trump's willingness to punish Moscow. The new measures, however delayed, amount to the most stringent punishment yet by Trump for Russia's election interference.

This is the very definition of "A day late, and a dollar short." 

By doing nothing for over a year the administration empowered the Russians to keep right on hacking into our systems and now they have gained control over our communications, air travel, and security. 

I have felt we were fucked before, but this is a whole new level of fucked.

Robert Mueller may delay bringing obstruction charges against Trump and his associates, until he has also completed his collusion and conspiracy investigations.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether President Donald Trump obstructed justice is said to be close to completion, but he may set it aside while he finishes other key parts of his probe, such as possible collusion and the hacking of Democrats, according to current and former U.S. officials. 

That’s because Mueller may calculate that if he tries to bring charges in the obstruction case -- the part that may hit closest to Trump personally -- witnesses may become less cooperative in other parts of the probe, or the president may move to shut it down altogether. 

The revelation is a peek into Mueller’s calculations as he proceeds with his many-headed probe, while pressure builds from the president’s advisers and other Republicans to show progress or wrap it up. 

The obstruction portion of the probe could likely be completed after several key outstanding interviews, including with the president and his son, Donald Trump Jr. The president’s lawyers have been negotiating with Mueller’s team over such an encounter since late last year. But even if Trump testifies in the coming weeks, Mueller may make a strategic calculation to keep his findings on obstruction secret, according to the current and former U.S. officials, who discussed the strategy on condition of anonymity.

Mueller may have concerns that if he moves forward with the obstruction charges that Trump will pull out all of the stops in shutting him down.

Apparently while Trump still has some small hope of vindication, he is less likely to freak out.

However that freak out is definitely coming.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Special counsel Robert Mueller and his prosecutors have invoked an unusual "conspiracy to defraud the government" charge to ensnare a Russian cyber network and could use the same legal strategy to go after President Trump and his associates, even if the conspiracy is not linked to a criminal act.

Last month, Mr. Mueller, a Republican and former FBI director indicted 13 Russian nationals connected to the Internet Research Agency (IRA) Russian "troll farm," accusing the IRA of interfering in the 2016 U.S. presidential election by spreading fake news stories through U.S. social media. The same approach was employed in securing a plea deal last month with Rick Gates, the aide for former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. 

What has attracted attention in legal circles is the underlying legal theory behind the indictments, accusing the Russians of essentially committing a crime by preventing agencies of the U.S. government from carrying out the duties. Mr. Mueller appears to be leveraging the theory "into a powerful instrument with respect to both foreign and domestic actors," according to a recent article on Lawfare, a national security blog by the Lawfare Institute and Brookings Institution. 

Emma Kohse, Harvard International Law Journal editor-in-chief, Benjamin Wittes, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and the Lawfare blog's top editor, argue that, based in the language of the indictments and the legal precedents behind them, the "conspiracy to defraud the government" charge provides the Mueller team with significant flexibility in trying to build a case against Mr. Trump and members of his 2016 campaign.

Yeah, at this point the noose must be so tight that it is starting to cut off Trump's circulation. 

Robert Mueller hands out new tax and bank fraud charges to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates. Update!

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

Former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort and his onetime deputy, Rick Gates, were indicted on tax and bank fraud charges as U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller mounted a fresh attack to strengthen his legal pressure against the men. Mueller used a new 32-count indictment in Alexandria, Virginia, to raise the legal stakes against the duo, who were initially indicted on Oct. 27 in Washington on charges of laundering millions of dollars and failing to register as foreign agents for their political consulting work over a decade in Ukraine.

The second indictment complicates the legal defense for both men and appears to signal that plea negotiations have been fruitless. Gates had been weighing a guilty plea, according to several reports. Mueller, who is investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election, has charged a total of 19 people and picked up the tempo of his public actions in recent days. 

“Manafort and Gates generated tens of millions of dollars in income as a result of their Ukraine work,” the new indictment said. “From approximately 2006 through the present, Manafort and Gates engaged in a scheme to hide income from United States authorities, while enjoying the use of the money.” 

The men are accused of filing false tax returns in each year from 2010 to 2014, and of conspiring to defraud three banks of more than $22 million through loans secured by Manafort’s properties. At one bank, a conspirator helped in the fraud, the indictment said. It also charged that as their political consulting income dwindled in Ukraine in 2014 and 2015, Manafort and Gates defrauded banks to allow Manafort “to have the benefits of liquid income without paying taxes on it.”

Apparently part of the evidence used against these two idiots is an email of Manafort asking Gates to convert a fraudulent document from a word file to a pdf.

Y'all I'm dying, Manafort created an incriminating paper trail because he needed someone to help him convert a Word doc to PDF. pic.twitter.com/CTE4oV7zj0

— Susan Simpson (@TheViewFromLL2) February 22, 2018

Pair of real geniuses here.

Speaking of geniuses this kind of makes me wonder just HOW MUCH incriminating evidence that Mueller has compiled to use in this investigation.

I mean he started out with indictments against Manafort and Gates accusing them of conspiracy, and when they failed to cooperate he simply indicts them on tax and bank fraud charges like it's nothing.

One has to wonder what else he has in the chamber if Manafort continues to hold out on him?

(You can read these new indictments here.)

Update: Well that was quick.

Gates has now agreed to plead guilty.

Courtesy of NBC News:

Former campaign aide Rick Gates has agreed to plead guilty, becoming the third associate of President Donald Trump to make a deal with special counsel Robert Mueller, a source familiar with the proceedings told NBC News. 

Gates, who was indicted with former Trump campaign chair Paul Manafort in October on conspiracy and other charges related to their lobbying work in Ukraine, is expected to appear in federal court in Washington on Friday to enter the plea. 

The development comes a day after Mueller filed a new 32-count indictment against Gates and Manafort, hitting them with new charges of tax and bank fraud. It also follows a guilty plea by a Russia-linked lawyer who admitted he lied to investigators about his contacts with Gates.

And the dominoes just keep right on falling.

I think that once Mueller convinces Manafort to flip, that it is game over.

Update 2: Damn! Manafort just doubled down on his innocence.

NEW / Paul Manafort says Rick Gates did not have the “strength to continue the battle to prove our innocence” —> pic.twitter.com/2N3sDIDaqp

— Hallie Jackson (@HallieJackson) February 23, 2018

Okay somebody has definitely been offered a presidential pardon.

House Republicans have voted to release the "secret memo" that was written by Devin Nunes to undermine the Robert Mueller investigation.

Courtesy of Vox: 

House Republicans have voted to release a controversial secret memo that has become a rallying point for allegations of bias in the Trump-Russia investigation. 

Nicholas Fandos of the New York Times reported that a House panel voted Monday along party lines to take the unprecedented move to release the memo, over the objections of the Justice Department and House Democratic colleagues. 

The Justice Department said making the document public would be “extraordinarily reckless” and represent a potential risk to national security and ongoing investigations. House Democrats have portrayed the memo’s release as a political ploy, designed to undermine special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the Trump campaign. 

President Donald Trump has five days to review the document and decide on its release, though he has previously indicated he wanted the memo made public.

It is already clear that Trump definitely wants this made public, as reported by Bloomberg:  

President Donald Trump’s frustrations with the Russia investigation boiled over on Air Force One last week when he learned that a top Justice Department official had warned against releasing a memo that could undercut the probe, according to four people with knowledge of the matter. 

Trump erupted in anger while traveling to Davos after learning that Associate Attorney General Stephen Boyd warned that it would be “extraordinarily reckless” to release a classified memo written by House Republican staffers. The memo outlines alleged misdeeds at the FBI and Justice Department related to the Russia investigation. 

For Trump, the letter was yet another example of the Justice Department undermining him and stymieing Republican efforts to expose what the president sees as the politically motivated agenda behind Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s probe.

Of course the problem with the memo is that it will state conclusions based on classified information that it will not reveal, meaning that the Republicans can make various charges against the FBI and DOJ, without giving the press the opportunity to fact check them.

In other words it provides them the opportunity to create a reality that may in fact not, in any way, be related to actual reality.

The house Democrats want to poke a hole in that false reality by releasing a rebuttal memo, but it is unlikely to see the light of day:  

In an interview with me, Rep. Jim Himes of Connecticut — the No. 2 Democrat on the House Intel Committee — noted, ominously, that there is a reasonable chance that Schiff’s rebuttal memo will never be released. Himes pointed out that Republicans on the committee could vote against its release, or, worse, if Republicans did vote to release it, that Trump could block it. 

“I’m under no illusion that there’s much probability at all that the Democratic memo ever sees the light of day,” Himes told me. “It is an extraordinarily detailed, point-by-point rebuttal of unbelievably shoddy allegations on the Republican side. If it were to get voted out of committee for public release, I would be very surprised if Trump didn’t block its release.”

Oh, I can hardly wait for the 2018 midterms.

Man who emerged victorious from a lawsuit filed against him by Donald Trump, explains why he is doomed when Robert Mueller gets a hold of him.

Courtesy of Bloomberg News: 

Trump sued me for libel in 2006 for a biography I wrote, "TrumpNation," alleging that the book misrepresented his business record and understated his wealth. Trump lost the suit in 2011, but during the litigation my lawyers deposed him under oath for two days in 2007. We had the opportunity to ask Trump about his business and banking practices, his taxes, his personal finances and his professional relationships. 

Trump's attorney then was Marc Kasowitz, who also briefly represented the president when the Justice Department investigation first got rolling in Washington. My attorney was Mary Jo White, a former federal prosecutor steeped in many of the same legal traditions and courtroom experiences as Mueller. It didn't go well for the future president. 

Hammered by White and her deputies, Trump ultimately had to admit 30 times that he had lied over the years about all sorts of stuff: how much of a big Manhattan real estate project he owned; the price of one of his golf club memberships; the size of the Trump Organization; his wealth; his speaking fees; how many condos he had sold; his debts, and whether he borrowed money from his family to avoid going personally bankrupt. He also lied during the deposition about his business dealings with career criminals. 

Trump's poor performance stemmed in part from the fact that he was being interrogated by shrewd attorneys wielding his own business and financial records against him. But there were lots of other things that went wrong as well. 

Trump is impatient and has never been an avid or dedicated reader. That’s OK if you’d rather play golf, but it’s not OK when you need to absorb abundant or complex details. Lawyers typically prepare binders full of documents for their clients to pore over prior to a deposition, hoping to steel them for an intense grilling. My lawyers did that prior to my own deposition in the Trump lawsuit. But Trump didn’t appear to be well prepared when we deposed him, a weakness that my lawyers exploited (and that Mueller surely would as well). 

This is why Trump's lawyers, and friends are in a panic over Trump suggesting that he is "looking forward" to being interviewed by Robert Mueller.

It would appear that Trump's overwhelming arrogance and exaggerated confidence in his own intellect have convinced him that he is Mueller's equal.

That is clearly not true.

And I can hardly wait to see what happens when Trump comes to that realization as well.

Because guaranteed it will either be during, or immediately after his interview.

Pre-post update: About an hour before this was to post I learned that Trump's attorney John Dowd is now saying that, despite what Trump may have said, no decision has yet been reached on whether he will  voluntarily agree to an interview.

Sounds like the lawyers are perfectly aware that once Trump sits down with Mueller it is game over.

We are DEFINITELY going to need more popcorn.

FBI rattled, worried about ability to do their job, after Justice Department gives documents to Congressional Republicans.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

The Justice Department’s decision to give congressional Republicans access to documents about FBI investigations risks exposing sensitive sources or material and poses a critical early test for bureau Director Christopher Wray, current and former U.S. law enforcement officials say. 

Some officials view the department as capitulating to a small group of Republicans who are intent on helping President Donald Trump undermine the integrity of the FBI and, by extension, Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into whether Trump or any of his associates helped Russia interfere in the 2016 election. 

It’s the latest setback for a law enforcement agency that has long held itself out as doggedly independent and above partisan politics, only to be besieged over the last two years by questions about its handling of politically sensitive investigations into Democrat Hillary Clinton and Republican Trump. 

One agent said he’s now concerned that forms identifying FBI informants would be handed over to Congress. If that happened, he said, it would cause him to think carefully about whether to withhold sensitive information from future reports. 

Another agent said recent statements about the bureau by Trump and congressional Republicans have made it more difficult for him to get informants to open up. 

Trump has tweeted that the Federal Bureau of Investigations is “in Tatters -- worst in history” and has said a senior official committed “treason.”

The FBI knows full that is it only a matter of time after the Republicans get their hands on the documents, that the leaks and spreading of false information will begin.

Their agenda right now is to protect Donald Trump from the Mueller investigation, and they will burn down the entire American justice system to achieve that goal.

Bet on it.

Former Fox News employee claims that she was blocked from investigating Trump's ties with Russia.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

A former Fox News employee said the network blocked her from going to Moscow to investigate President Donald Trump’s links with Russia, one of several claims of news bias at 21st Century Fox Inc. made by former and current workers opposing its takeover of Sky Plc. 

“You can’t do in-depth reporting if you’re not there,” said Jessica Golloher, a former Fox Radio correspondent who is suing the division for gender discrimination, at a gathering with U.K. lawmakers and citizens in Parliament on Monday. 

“Fox didn’t let me go to Moscow to dig into Trump’s Russian connections, even when I offered to pay my own way.” “Fox is just buying what the White House is selling,” she said. 

Golloher’s claim follows allegations earlier this year that Trump colluded with Fox on a story to divert attention from his ties with Russia. She made the remarks shortly after meeting the Competition & Markets Authority, which is investigating the 11.7 billion-pound ($15.5 billion) Sky merger on grounds of media plurality and whether Fox has a genuine commitment to broadcasting standards. 

When reached for comment, a Fox representative cited a Fox News statement from May without reference to Monday’s hearing. In May, the company said, “Jessica Golloher’s claims are without merit. Her allegations of discrimination and retaliation are baseless. We will vigorously defend the matter.”

I'm not sure we even need confirmation that Fox News had no interest in pursuing this story.

After all they have done virtually everything they could to bury it and deflect attention from it.

That is why every time there is a new revelation about the Mueller investigation on CNN or MSNBC a new allegation against the Clintons gets trotted out on the Sean Hannity show and Fox and Friends.

At this point they should simply rename Fox News "The Donald Trump Network of Deflection and Misinformation."

So now that Russian lawyer is saying that Donald Trump Jr. offered her a quid pro quo for information on Hillary Clinton.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:  

A Russian lawyer who met with President Donald Trump’s oldest son last year says he indicated that a law targeting Russia could be re-examined if his father won the election and asked her for written evidence that illegal proceeds went to Hillary Clinton’s campaign. 

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, said in a two-and-a-half-hour interview in Moscow that she would tell these and other things to the Senate Judiciary Committee on condition that her answers be made public, something it hasn’t agreed to. She has received scores of questions from the committee, which is investigating possible collusion between Russia and the Trump campaign. Veselnitskaya said she’s also ready -- if asked -- to testify to Special Counsel Robert Mueller.

Veselnitskaya said she went to the New York meeting to show Trump campaign officials that major Democratic donors had evaded U.S. taxes and to lobby against the so-called Magnitsky law that punishes Russian officials for the murder of a Russian tax accountant who accused the Kremlin of corruption.

“Looking ahead, if we come to power, we can return to this issue and think what to do about it,’’ Trump Jr. said of the 2012 law, she recalled. “I understand our side may have messed up, but it’ll take a long time to get to the bottom of it,” he added, according to her.

Veselnitskaya also said Trump Jr. requested financial documents showing that money that allegedly evaded U.S. taxes had gone to Clinton’s campaign. She didn’t have any and described the 20-minute meeting as a failure.

According to the email that British publicist Rob Goldstone sent to Junior in order to set up this meeting, there was really no doubt that Veselnitskaya was representing the Kremlin and "its government’s support for Mr. Trump."

That means Junior knew he was communicating with a Russian government operative, and still he was offering to make a deal to change American policy in order to get information, that they likely discovered through illegal hacking, that the campaign could then use against his father's political opponent.

But remember, according to Donald Trump there is NO evidence of collusion.

Oh yeah, I think Robert Mueller is definitely going to want to talk to this woman.

North Korea warns that nuclear war could "break out at any moment."

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

North Korea warned that a nuclear war “may break out any moment” as the U.S. and South Korea began one of the largest joint naval drills off both the east and west coasts of the peninsula.

Kim In Ryong, North Korea’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations, said on Monday that his nation had become a “full-fledged nuclear power which possesses the delivery means of various ranges” and warned that “the entire U.S. mainland is within our firing range.” He also called North Korea “a responsible nuclear state.” 

“As long as one does not take part in the U.S. military actions against the DPRK, we have no intention to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against any other country,” Kim said, referring to his country’s formal name. 

The comments are similar to other warnings North Korea has made over the past few months as tensions have increased with President Donald Trump’s administration. Kim Jong Un’s regime has repeatedly said it needs the capability to strike the U.S. with a nuclear weapon in order to deter an American attack.

So now there are two megalomaniacs with itchy fingers just waiting for a reason to start World War III.

And our only hope is that cooler heads will intervene before either of them decides that their manhood is being questioned and slaughters thousands, if not millions of people, to prove that their dick is the biggest.

Trump fundraising committee uses Mike Pence's NFL walkout to raise money.

Mike Pence walkout 'stunt' at NFL game after players kneel 'cost at least $250,000' #PenceResignhttps://t.co/cVi8ITCxQz

— Scott Dworkin (@funder) October 8, 2017

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

President Donald Trump’s joint fundraising committee sent an email Monday asking donors to show support for Vice President Mike Pence’s decision to leave an NFL game in Indianapolis after some members of the San Francisco 49ers kneeled during the national anthem. 

The solicitation from the Trump Make America Great Again Committee, which jointly raises money for Trump’s presidential campaign committee and the Republican National Committee, asks supporters to give at least $5 to the campaign to receive a “I STAND FOR THE FLAG” sticker. 

“Immediately after the vice president’s honorable display of leadership and patriotism, the Fake News Media relentlessly ATTACKED him,” the email says. “The media is NOT going to win this fight, because we have the AMERICAN PEOPLE standing on our side.”

So the whole thing was a phony ass attempt to get the suckers to pony up more money.

Gee, I so wish I could feign surprise here.

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington are pissed at getting the runaround from Trump.

Here's more courtesy of Bloomberg: 

A government transparency group vowed on Friday to continue a court battle to open up visitor logs at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort, after the administration provided only the names of Japanese staff who attended a February visit from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. 

Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, one of three government transparency groups that sued the Department of Homeland Security for the information, obtained and released the records on Friday. 

The Justice Department said in a letter to CREW that the records were responsive to the group’s request under the Freedom of Information Act. “The government seriously misrepresented their intentions to both us and the court,” CREW Executive Director Noah Bookbinder said in a statement. “This was spitting in the eye of transparency. We will be fighting this in court.” 

CREW and other ethics specialists have criticized Trump for not divesting from his business holdings -- including Mar-a-Lago and other properties he visits -- saying they provide an avenue for those seeking influence to curry the president’s favor.

This kind of arrogance on the part of Trump and his businesses will ultimately only bring more heat in their direction.

And that last part is becoming a real issue now that we are learning just how much Trump himself is benefiting financially from using Mar-a-Lago as his "winter White House."

Courtesy of WaPo: 

On a weekend in early March, during one of seven trips by Trump and his White House entourage to the posh Palm Beach property since the inauguration, the government paid the Trump-owned club to reserve at least one bedroom for two nights. 

The charge, according to a newly disclosed receipt reviewed by The Washington Post, was $1,092. 

The amount was based on a per-night price of $546, which, according to the bill, was Mar-a-Lago’s “rack rate,” the hotel industry term for a standard, non-discounted price. 

The receipt, which was obtained in recent days by the transparency advocacy group Property of the People and verified by The Post, offers one of the first concrete signs that Trump’s use of Mar-a-Lago as the “Winter White House” has resulted in taxpayer funds flowing directly into the coffers of his private business.

I am very hopeful that these groups really turn the screws on Trump and bring transparency to what is now perhaps the most secretive administration since Richard Nixon's.

Online advertising makes the spreading of fake news as easy as tying your shoes.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

The intentional spreading of false stories has been credited with swaying such monumental events as last year's Brexit vote and U.S. presidential election. Tech firms such as Alphabet Inc. unit Google and Facebook Inc. have been trying to find ways to weed it out, or at least help users spot it. Some say we need to start earlier, educating children on how to think critically. 

But understanding the unique epidemiology of fake news may be no less important. Unlike a typical virus, purveyors of falsehood don't have to infect people at random. Thanks to the wealth of information available on social media and the advent of targeted advertising, they can go straight for the most susceptible and valuable victims -- those most likely to spread the infection. 

This insight emerges from a recent study by network theorists Christoph Aymanns, Jakob Foerster and Co-Pierre Georg, who ran computer simulations of the way fake news moves through social networks. Using state-of-the-art machine learning algorithms, they examined how individuals might learn to recognize false news, and sought to identify the most important factors in helping fake news spread. 

They found that the most important catalyst of fake news was the precision with which the purveyor targeted an audience -- a task that can easily be accomplished using the data that tech companies routinely gather and sell to advertisers. The key was to seed an initial cluster of believers, who would share or comment on the item, recommending it to others through Twitter or Facebook. False stories spread farther when they were initially aimed at poorly informed people who had a hard time telling if a claim was true or false. 

Hence, we've unwittingly engineered a social media environment that is inherently prone to fake news epidemics. When marketers use information on surfing habits, opinions and social connections to aim ads at people with just the right interests, this can facilitate beneficial economic exchange. But in the wrong hands, the technology becomes a means for the precision seeding of propaganda.

I read through the entire article and to sum it up in a few words, we're fucked.

It seems the only possible long tern solution to this problem is to convince people to stay off social media entirely, and we know that ain't happening.

Or to dramatically improve our education system.

What was that first one again?

Bloomberg reveals that Paul Manafort was the source who initially revealed that meeting between Trump Junior and the Russians.

Currently Paul Manafort is persona non grata among the Trump folks, and they have even started a smear campaign against him.

The reason for that is now starting to become clearer.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

In fact, Manafort had alerted authorities to a controversial meeting on June 9, 2016, involving Trump’s son Donald Jr., other campaign representatives and a Russian lawyer promising damaging information on Hillary Clinton, according to people familiar with the matter. The president and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, were dragged into the matter as details repeatedly emerged that contradicted the initial accounts of that meeting.

Actually the New York Times more or less confirmed this as well back in June:  

Mr. Manafort, the former campaign chairman, also recently disclosed the meeting, and Donald Trump Jr.’s role in organizing it, to congressional investigators who had questions about his foreign contacts, according to people familiar with the events.

The way the Times reported on this it sounded as it Kushner's attorneys had compelled him to reveal this meeting in order to finally come clean about how many meetings he had with Russian representatives during the campaign.

However if in fact the initial revelations came from Manafort's testimony to congressional investigators that would not only fit team Trump's pattern of only revealing information they are forced to reveal, but also explain the animosity currently being directed at Manafort.

It is fairly clear that this meeting between Junior, Kushner, and Manafort with the Russians has really turned up the heat on these investigations, so it would stand to reason that the person responsible for the word getting out is currently at the top of Trump's list of enemies.

He also seems to be number one with Robert Mueller who has now not only had his home raided by the FBI but has also subpoenaed his bank records.  

I would suggest that Manafort start cooperating fully with the investigators, get himself a food taster post haste, and avoid taking any long strolls out in public.

New lawsuit claims that Donald Trump worked with Fox News to concoct story that Hillary Clinton had DNC staffer murdered. Update!

That guy on the left is Jay Sekulow, Trump's attorney.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

President Donald Trump collaborated with Fox News to concoct a story claiming a Democratic National Committee staffer was killed in retaliation for furnishing information damaging to Hillary Clinton to Wikileaks, according to a lawsuit by a private investigator for the slain man’s family.

Rod Wheeler -- the investigator, a former Washington police detective, and an occasional Fox News contributor -- claims in his lawsuit that the president read the Fox story before it was published and suggested the insertion of quotes falsely attributed to Wheeler supporting the story’s premise. Trump wanted the story published to divert attention from the widening investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, Wheeler claims.

The complaint’s first paragraph includes screen shot of a May 14 text message to Wheeler from another Fox News contributor that reads: “Not to add any more pressure but the president just read the article. He wants the article out immediately. It’s now all up to you. but don’t feel the pressure." 

Seth Rich was killed on a Washington street in the middle of the night last year. The crime remains unsolved. The story was published on May 16 and later retracted by the network, according to the complaint. 

Fox News didn’t immediately respond to requests for comment.

So just mull that over in your mind a little.

Donald Trump worked with is propaganda outlet, Fox News, to frame Hillary Clinton and the DNC for murder.

And the really troubling part is.....I'm not surprised.

Nor am I surprised by this:

The White House previously denied knowledge of Fox News' false report on Seth Rich. pic.twitter.com/Qcmf3lpaFt

— Adrienne Watson (@Adrienne_DNC) August 1, 2017

There is nothing, and I mean NOTHING, that these people are unwilling to do to gain, or retain, power.

Here is a response from Fox News:  

Wheeler alleges Fox News and the Trump supporter intended to deflect public attention from growing concern about the administration's ties to the Russian government. His suit charges that a Fox News reporter created quotations out of thin air and attributed them to him to propel her story. 

Fox's president of news, Jay Wallace, told NPR on Monday that there was no "concrete evidence" that Wheeler was misquoted by the reporter, Malia Zimmerman. The news executive did not address a question about the story's allegedly partisan origins. Fox News declined to allow Zimmerman to comment for this story.

There is "no concrete evidence." Well that's an interesting way to phrase it.

And the fact that they declined to comment on Trump's participation in pushing this narrative speaks volumes.

Update: Okay here is a more aggressive denial from Fox News:

Statement from @foxnews news president Jay Wallace on Rod Wheeler lawsuit claims: pic.twitter.com/bbXDqsZydx

— Paul Farhi (@farhip) August 1, 2017

Gee, if only we trusted the word of Fox News.

Update 2:

—@SarahHuckabee: "The White House didn't have any involvement in this story"

(FWIW, Spicer told me he was told about it before publication)

— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) August 1, 2017

 Okay so we are now asked to believe that once Spicey read this news that it did not find it's way to Donald Trump.

Seriously? 

Trey Gowdy served as unofficial lawyer for Jared Kushner during closed door questioning about possible collusion with Russia.

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

Republican Trey Gowdy acted behind closed doors like a lawyer for President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, during questioning Tuesday by the House Intelligence Committee, said the top Democrat on the panel. 

"Mr. Gowdy took the role as a second attorney for Mr. Kushner," Adam Schiff of California told reporters. 

Gowdy declined to comment Wednesday on Schiff’s remarks. But he said a day earlier that Democrats on the Intelligence panel, which is looking into potential connections between Russia and the Trump campaign, uncovered "zero" new or revelatory information in more than three hours of questioning. Gowdy of South Carolina said in an interview that Democrats "even ran out of questions."

Schiff said the information obtained in questioning Kushner left Democrats on the committee with "a number of things to follow up" but didn’t elaborate. Schiff said he and other Democrats also were hampered because they didn’t have a number of documents they had wanted to see prior to the interview. 

Later Gowdy responded to Schiff's accusation during an interview on CNN:  

“I think that’s Adam’s frustration that Jared Kushner didn’t tell him what he wanted to hear from a political ambitions standpoint. This investigation has been very good for the Adam Schiff for Senate campaign, but yesterday was not good for him.” 

He then slammed his Democratic colleagues. 

“What I was tired of, Erin, were the Democrats asking non-relevant questions,” he continued. “The Democrats ran out of good questions, but they didn’t run out of questions.”

I would like to remind everybody that Gowdy hounded Hillary Clinton for years over the Benghazi nothing burger, and continued asking the same questions repeatedly, in different ways, when he did not like the responses he received.

So for him to ding Adam Schiff on something like this is laughable on its face.

And by no means surprised to learn that Gowdy is running interference for the Trump Administration in this Russia probe.

He is a particularly pungent POS whose allegiance is to his party and those willing to pay for it.

Despite threats from The Donald, Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating the Trump family finances. Update!

Let's see, what else does Donald Trump not want me to investigate?

Courtesy of Bloomberg:

The U.S. special counsel investigating possible ties between the Donald Trump campaign and Russia in last year’s election is examining a broad range of transactions involving Trump’s businesses as well as those of his associates, according to a person familiar with the probe. 

FBI investigators and others are looking at Russian purchases of apartments in Trump buildings, Trump’s involvement in a controversial SoHo development in New York with Russian associates, the 2013 Miss Universe pageant in Moscow and Trump’s sale of a Florida mansion to a Russian oligarch in 2008, the person said. 

The investigation also has absorbed a money-laundering probe begun by federal prosecutors in New York into Trump’s former campaign chairman Paul Manafort.

John Dowd, one of Trump’s lawyers, said on Thursday that he was unaware of the inquiry into Trump’s businesses by the two-months-old investigation and considered it beyond the scope of what Special Counsel Robert Mueller should be examining. 

“Those transactions are in my view well beyond the mandate of the Special counsel; are unrelated to the election of 2016 or any alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia and most importantly, are well beyond any Statute of Limitation imposed by the United States Code,” he wrote in an email.

The MINUTE I read that New York Times article, where Trump essentially threatened the Special Counselor, I HOPED that Mueller was going to aggressively go after the Trump family finances, and lo and behold he is.

I am sort of torn between hoping that Trump DOES NOT fire Mueller so that he can continue to do his investigations without interruption, and hoping that he DOES find a way to get rid of Mueller so that we can witness the devastating fallout that it will surely trigger.

All I know for certain is that Donald Trump's problems are really only just beginning.

Update: This just broke from the Washington Post:   

With the Russia investigation continuing to widen, Trump’s lawyers are working to corral the probe and question the propriety of the special counsel’s work. They are actively compiling a list of Mueller’s alleged potential conflicts of interest, which they say could serve as a way to stymie his work, according to several of Trump’s legal advisers. 

A conflict of interest is one of the possible grounds that can be cited by an attorney general to remove a special counsel from office under Justice Department regulations that set rules for the job.

The president is also irritated by the notion that Mueller’s probe could reach into his and his family’s finances, advisers said. Trump has been fuming about the probe in recent weeks as he has been informed about the legal questions that he and his family could face. 

His primary frustration centers on why allegations that his campaign coordinated with Russia should spread into scrutinizing many years of Trump dealmaking. He has told aides he was especially disturbed after learning Mueller would be able to access several years of his tax returns.

Yeah, not hard to see that this was coming.

So yes, Trump is looking for a way to fire Robert Mueller.

But wait, there's more.

The article goes on to reveal that Trump is also exploring with his legal team his ability to grant pardons.

Including the possibility of pardoning himself.

And I think that would be what we might call Trump's plan B.

Update 2: Spokesman for Trump's legal team resigns. 

Now that Putin's puppet is in place America is busy jumping through Russia's hoops.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

President Trump has decided to end the CIA’s covert program to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad, a move long sought by Russia, according to U.S. officials. 

The program was a central plank of a policy begun by the Obama administration in 2013 to put pressure on Assad to step aside, but even its backers have questioned its efficacy since Russia deployed forces in Syria two years later. Officials said the phasing out of the secret program reflects Trump’s interest in finding ways to work with Russia, which saw the anti-Assad program as an assault on its interests. 

The shuttering of the program is also an acknowledgment of Washington’s limited leverage and desire to remove Assad from power.

Officials said Trump made the decision to scrap the CIA program nearly a month ago, after an Oval Office meeting with CIA Director Mike Pompeo and national security adviser H.R. McMaster ahead of a July 7 meeting in Germany with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

If that were not troubling enough, we also have this bit of troubling news, courtesy of Bloomberg: 

Secretary of State Rex Tillerson is shutting down an office that coordinates cyber issues with other countries, according to two people familiar with the plan, in a move that critics said will diminish the U.S. voice in confronting hackers. 

The Office of the Coordinator for Cyber Issues, established under President Barack Obama in 2011, will be folded into the State Department’s Bureau of Economic and Business Affairs, according to the people, who asked not to be identified in advance of an announcement. The coordinator will no longer report directly to the secretary of state, going instead through the bureau’s chain of command as Tillerson pushes ahead with a department-wide reorganization, they said. 

“It’s taking an issue that’s preeminent and putting it inside a backwater within the State Department,” said Robert Knake, a senior fellow for cybersecurity at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington who was director of cybersecurity policy at the National Security Council under Obama. “Position to power matters both within the U.S. government and within the international community.”

If somebody actually believe this move will help protect us from the next cyber attack, or that it is NOT playing right into the hands of the Kremlin, then they have not been paying attention at all.

As far as I am concerned Tillerson is likely just as compromised as Donald Trump and allowing him oversight of this crucial government department is like putting the fox in charge of guarding the door to the hen house.

These are of course only a few of the things that Putin clearly demanded of Trump, and the Russian government has now become so used to getting their way in Washington that when there is a hiccup they get pissed off.

Courtesy of the LA Times:  

Russia said Tuesday that it is losing patience over the return of properties that the United States seized as penalty for Moscow's election interference, as tense talks between the two countries have yielded no resolution. 

In Moscow, officials threatened to take "retaliatory measures" if the United States continued to "hinder" their government's diplomatic mission, and the spokesman for President Vladimir Putin said the Kremlin's patience "is expiring." 

"We are still counting on the reasonableness of our American counterparts to at least bring the situation into the legal framework in accordance with the international law," said the spokesman, Dmitry Peskov.

To be clear the Russian government has done NOTHING to deserve the return of these compounds, which were taken from them in response to their very aggressive interference in our last presidential election, for which they have not yet even admitted responsibility, and yet they feel empowered to make threats? 

Let's face it if America were one of Trump's casinos the roulette wheel would be rigged to land on whatever number Putin picked and the slot machine would pay off for every Russian's pull of handle.

More evidence that the Russian hack was more invasive than previously reported.

Courtesy of Bloomberg: 

Russia’s cyberattack on the U.S. electoral system before Donald Trump’s election was far more widespread than has been publicly revealed, including incursions into voter databases and software systems in almost twice as many states as previously reported. 

In Illinois, investigators found evidence that cyber intruders tried to delete or alter voter data. The hackers accessed software designed to be used by poll workers on Election Day, and in at least one state accessed a campaign finance database. Details of the wave of attacks, in the summer and fall of 2016, were provided by three people with direct knowledge of the U.S. investigation into the matter. In all, the Russian hackers hit systems in a total of 39 states, one of them said.

The new details, buttressed by a classified National Security Agency document recently disclosed by the Intercept, show the scope of alleged hacking that federal investigators are scrutinizing as they look into whether Trump campaign officials may have colluded in the efforts. But they also paint a worrisome picture for future elections: The newest portrayal of potentially deep vulnerabilities in the U.S.’s patchwork of voting technologies comes less than a week after former FBI Director James Comey warned Congress that Moscow isn’t done meddling. 

“They’re coming after America,” Comey told the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian interference in the election. “They will be back.”

Thirty nine states is significantly more than we were told about before.

Which makes me concerned that there is still more to be uncovered about these hacks and how deeply they actually reached into out election system.

Check how deeply they were able to penetrate in to Illinois' voting systems:

Illinois, which was among the states that gave the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security almost full access to investigate its systems, provides a window into the hackers’ successes and failures. 

In early July 2016, a contractor who works two or three days a week at the state board of elections detected unauthorized data leaving the network, according to Ken Menzel, general counsel for the Illinois board of elections. The hackers had gained access to the state’s voter database, which contained information such as names, dates of birth, genders, driver’s licenses and partial Social Security numbers on 15 million people, half of whom were active voters. As many as 90,000 records were ultimately compromised. 

But even if the entire database had been deleted, it might not have affected the election, according to Menzel. Counties upload records to the state, not the other way around, and no data moves from the database back to the counties, which run the elections. 

The hackers had no way of knowing that when they attacked the state database, Menzel said. The state does, however, process online voter registration applications that are sent to the counties for approval, Menzel said. When voters are added to the county rolls, that information is then sent back to the state and added to the central database. This process, which is common across states, does present an opportunity for attackers to manipulate records at their inception.

This could have allowed the hackers to change the voter registration to be affiliated with another party, or changed their home address so that they were shown to no longer living in their voting district. 

It only takes a few manipulations to invalidate a person's vote, or frustrate them into giving up the attempt. 

The only thing I can take away from such a huge and determined operation is that Putin REALLY did not want Hillary Clinton to win the election, or else he REALLY wanted Trump to emerge victorious, or perhaps a combination of the two.

This is simply not like any other attempts that we have heard of in the past.