Michael Cohen killed a US Weekly article about Donald Trump Jr's affair back in 2013. Update!

Courtesy of Mediaite:  

Another day, another story Trump lawyer Michael Cohen had to kill about a Trump family member having a scandalous affair. 

This time, the Wall Street Journal reports that Cohen killed an Us Weekly story being prepared in 2013 on Donald Trump Jr.’s alleged affair with pop singer Aubrey O’Day.

Don Jr., President Donald Trump’s adult son, was a year earlier a judge on Celebrity Apprentice while O’Day was a contestant.

Here is how the US Weekly staff characterized their interactions with Cohen:  

“We were all on speakerphone and huddled around the phone,” this person said. “He was just one of these New York characters where he was just like swearing at us and totally over-the-top threatening.” 

The magazine’s staff didn’t believe it was a big story that would be worth a legal fight and had a good working relationship with the elder Mr. Trump on stories related to the TV show “The Apprentice,” so they dropped the story.

So verbal abuse and threats, that sounds like the Michael Cohen method.

Speaking of Michael Cohen, his lawyers are flipping their proverbial shit about that FBI raid.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

Lawyers for President Donald Trump's personal attorney say investigators "took everything" during raids last week on his residence and office. 

The lawyers wrote in a court filing Monday that the raids a week ago to gather evidence from attorney Michael Cohen were "completely unprecedented." 

They said investigators seized more than a dozen electronic devices and other items including documents and data unrelated to the probable cause upon which the search warrants were based. 

The letter demanded Trump and Cohen's lawyers be allowed to decide which items seized are protected by attorney-client privilege before criminal prosecutors see them.

Gee I wonder if that bit about Junior's extramarital affair is part of what got scooped up?

The hearing over this is scheduled for today, and rumor has it that a Miss Stormy Daniels may be in attendance.

Should be a fun day for one and all.

Update: Let's also keep this in mind.

Remember why Trump and Elliott Broidy needed Michael Cohen's legal services. https://t.co/Fb6cOtihhX

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) April 16, 2018

Things that make you go, "Hmmm."

Donald Trump Jr. wanted to put a baby in his mistress, and cried because he was afraid that his wife would take his children away.

Courtesy of US Weekly: 

Donald Trump Jr. and Aubrey O’Day’s affair was much more than a one-night stand, so much so that they even considered the prospect of starting a family together, a source reveals exclusively in the new issue of Us Weekly.

“Don told Aubrey he wanted to have a baby with her,” the insider says. “They were trying for one.”

Wow, more unprotected sex.

I guess the apple does not fall far from the STD riddled tree.

The affair ended after Junior's wife found emails between her husband and O'Day.

But that did not stop Junior from making late night calls:

But even after the affair ended, Trump Jr. — who was the father of Kai, now 10, Donald III, 9, and Tristan, 6, at the time, and later welcomed Spencer, 5, and Chloe, 3 — still had the reality star on his mind. 

“He’d call Aubrey and leave long voicemails telling her he still loved her over and over,” the source tells Us. “He’d cry and say he was nervous his wife would take the kids away.

Well that's...fucking pathetic. 

And look his wife did leave him, and she is almost certainly going to try and take his kids away from him.

Well hey, maybe O'Day is available for impregnation, and Junior can look forward to ANOTHER custody battle in his future.

Because let's face it, these Trump folks never learn.

So it appears that Don Jr. was also sleeping around on his wife just like dear old dad.

Courtesy of Page Six: 

Years before Vanessa Trump filed for divorce from Donald Trump Jr., their marriage was rocked when — around the time she was pregnant with their third child — he cheated on her with a contestant from “The Celebrity Apprentice.” 

Page Six has exclusively learned that Don Jr. — then a so-called “adviser” on the NBC show — fell for busty Danity Kane star Aubrey O’Day while filming “Celebrity Apprentice” in 2011. 

Sources say that Vanessa — who filed for divorce from President Donald Trump’s eldest son last week after 13 years of marriage — was devastated when he told her that he planned to leave her for O’Day. 

Vanessa was pregnant with their third child, Tristan, around that time. 

Don Jr. “pursued [Aubrey]. It was him who chased her,” said a source familiar with the situation. “He told her that his marriage was already in the process of dissolving.”

Oh yeah, their marriage is always "in the process of dissolving" ladies, that is the answer that every philanderer gives when he is trying to bump uglies with some other woman.

Of course his marriage lasted another seven years and two more kids before his wife finally had enough of his shit.

O'Day may have even written a song about the affair back in 2013.

Courtesy of TMZ:

If Aubrey O'Day had an affair with Donald Trump Jr. -- as some reports have claimed -- she barely tried to conceal it when she released a song ... about an affair, entitled "DJT." 

The 2013 tune is about as on the nose as you can get ... featuring a phone convo between Aubrey and a guy, with her asking him, "You want to believe that everything with me was a lie? A fantasy?" He replies, "I'll always want you and always wonder about it, but it doesn't matter because I have to stay here."

I'm a little confused about what remains of the conservative moral compass.

Does Junior get a few extra points for this affair because at least it WASN'T with a porn star, or is only bedding a singer considered a swing and a miss because she doesn't actually get paid to have sex?

So confusing.

According to sources the affair broke up after daddy Trump found out about it.

He probably wanted O'Day for himself I'm guessing.

P.S. It should be noted that I originally had this scheduled for yesterday, but it got bumped due to breaking stories about daddy's various extramarital liaisons.

Even when it comes to being a complete douchebag Junior has to play second fiddle to his dad.

Sad.

Sarah Palin flew all the way to Florida, and all she got for her troubles was an absentee president, and an inattentive crowd. Update!

Courtesy of WaPo: 

If they came to see the president, they were disappointed. But the well-dressed crowd of Republican activists who gathered at President Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club here Friday night still got a glimpse of party royalty. 

There by the poolside, in a pink shirt and sport jacket, was Donald Trump Jr., the president’s eldest son. And the headliner of the night was Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate, who could not help but observe the differences between the palm-fringed setting and her home state. 

“Just days ago I was out plowing slow. I was chopping wood,” Palin told the crowd. “And I was — I kid you not — cooking caribou stew. Just like all of you, making a meal for the family. I just have to shoot it first.”

Okay first let's set the record straight that this idiot does not plow snow, chop wood, or actually shoot her dinner.

All of that is part of the Palin mythology which I would hope people can actually see through these days.

Which seemed to be the case as indicated by the end of this article: 

Some of Palin’s lines drew laughter and applause, particularly those that echoed the phrases that propelled her to fame. 

She derided the inquiries into Russian interference in the 2016 election as “resource-sucking investigations to nowhere.” She questioned whether Hillary Clinton had ties to “Russian oligarchs,” and repeated some favorite anti-Clinton talking points.

“How do I know all that? Because I keep my eye on Russia from my house,” Palin joked, drawing appreciative hoots from the audience. 

As her speech veered into policy specifics about trade with China and other matters, however, the crowd’s attention appeared to shift to their meal. “I wish you would pay attention,” Palin admonished. “I traveled two days from Alaska to get here.” 

As she was walking out the ballroom, Palin was asked if the crowd’s inattention and noisy chatter bothered her. She thought for a long second, and then said with a smile: “I like a crowd with energy.”

If this was Palin's audition for a cabinet position I think she might have blown it.

She is not just yesterday's news, she is ten year old news.

However if Trump is scraping the bottom of the barrel in search of replacements for the more competent people that he is firing on a daily basis, there may yet be some hope for this bottom dweller.

By the way that would actually indicate to EVERYBODY that Trump's presidency was in free fall.

Update: Here's a little more from the Sun-Sentinel:  

Many in the the audience lost interest about a quarter of the way through the speech. Attendees voted with their voices, which kept getting louder and louder as Palin spoke, eventually sounding like a roar – so noticeable that she made a couple of comments noting the audience’s lack of attention.

“The first 10 minutes was inspirational. The last 10 minutes was blah, blah, blah, blah. She went way too long,” said Lori Konis of Coral Springs, an independent who voted for Trump in 2016.

God that's fun to read.

The wife of Donald Trump's eldest son files for divorce.

Courtesy of Page Six:  

Vanessa Trump filed for divorce against her husband Donald Trump Jr. late Thursday in Manhattan Supreme Court. 

The president’s daughter-in-law filed for an uncontested proceeding, meaning she’s not expecting a legal battle over custody of the couple’s five children or their assets. 

They were married in 2005.

I would actually not be surprised if all of the Trump's end up in divorce court by the time we get to 2020.

Let's face it all of the idiots that married into this family did so for money.

I mean does anybody think that Eric Trump attracted this woman with his looks, charm, or savoir faire?

Hell no. She saw an easy way to get rich, and she took it.

But now that the Trump brand is so badly damaged, and investors are starting to flee like rats leaving a sinking ship, these women (and Jared), are likely going to start reevaluating their options.

But the divorce that I am most certain about is the one between these two.

There was clearly not much holding them together before the election, and now with the Trump brand in tatters, and the Stormy Daniels' allegations thrown into the mix, I just do not see Melania staying once her contract is up.

I would say that the Evangelicals are about to have a "come to Jesus" moment, but those idiots could not find Jesus if he was standing at the foot of their bed when they woke up in the morning.

Melania Trump voices support for the Parkland student's gun control crusade.

Now Melania Trump is addressing governors' spouses. She offers thoughts and payers to the victims and praises the students speaking out https://t.co/szBUkFmMdD

— Meg Wagner (@megwagner) February 26, 2018

Courtesy of The Hill: 

First lady Melania Trump on Monday said she was "heartened" to see students across the country speaking out following a school shooting in Parkland, Fla., earlier this month. 

"I have been heartened to see children across this country using their voices to speak out and try to create change. They're our future, and they deserve a voice," the first lady said, addressing governors' spouses at a luncheon at the White House. 

"Our continued thoughts and prayers go out to all who were affected by such a senseless act. As a parent, I cannot imagine the kind of grief a tragedy like that brings," she added. 

Monday's appearance marked the first time she has addressed the shooting publicly. She offered her condolences on Twitter immediately after the shooting took place.

When I first heard this I thought that Melania was publicly disagreeing with her husband, but then the other day Trump suggested that he wanted stronger background checks and to do away with the "bump stocks" that were used in the Las Vegas massacre.

I don't believe him of course, because he pulled this same shit by promising to work on DACA and protect people's access to health care.

What I do know is that Melania is on a completely different side of this issue than Junior, who retweeted conspiracy theories about these kids.

Don Jr. has liked at least two tweets pushing content that attempts to discredit one of the most vocal student survivors of the Parkland school shooting. pic.twitter.com/YI9ANh5dlL

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 20, 2018

That led to one of the Parkland kids reaching out to Melania on social media.

Hey @FLOTUS you say that your mission as First Lady is to stop cyber bullying, well then, don’t you think it would have been smart to have a convo with your step-son @DonaldJTrumpJr before he liked a post about a false conspiracy theory which in turn put a target on my back

— Lauren Hogg (@lauren_hoggs) February 23, 2018

So maybe that got Melania's attention and that is why she is voicing support for these kids.

Or this could simply be some Trump family double speak and she really could not care less.

Hard to tell really. 

Right after the RNC came under pressure for paying Trump's legal fees, they suddenly decided to pay an exorbitant amount of rent to Trump properties.

Hey, they stopped paying my legal fees. What more do you want?

Courtesy of CNBC: 

Soon after the Republican National Committee came under pressure for paying legal bills for President Donald Trump and his eldest son in the special counsel's Russia probe, it started covering expenses for the president's re-election campaign. 

The RNC is using campaign funds to pay Trump's company more than $37,000 a month in rent, and to pay thousands of dollars in monthly salary to Vice President Mike Pence's nephew, John Pence, party officials confirmed this week. The rent pays for office space in the Trump Tower in New York for the staff of Trump's re-election campaign. John Pence is the Trump campaign's deputy executive director. 

Campaign finance experts who spoke to CNBC said this type of spending by a party committee on behalf of a campaign is highly unusual but legal, and it appears the RNC disclosed it correctly.

"This is permissible and it's being reported properly, but why they are doing it is a mystery," said Brendan Fischer, senior counsel for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center. "One would think the RNC could be spending their money more effectively right now on the 2018 campaign, rather than spending it to pay Trump's rent." 

So far, the party has spent more than $290,000 to cover the Trump campaign's expenses since September, the first month it paid the Trump Tower rent or Pence's salary. Before then, both expenses had been paid directly by the Trump campaign.

So the RNC stopped paying Trump's legal fees, and then just suddenly started paying the Trump campaign's rent at a Trump property?

Wow! What a coinky dink!

My favorite part of all this is that in Trump world this seems to be considered super sneaky and virtually undetectable. 

I suddenly have the feeling that Robert Mueller is having very little difficulty building a money laundering case against Donald Trump and his minions.

Conservatives attack credibility of students who survived the school shooting in Florida. Seriously? Update!

As of this morning, the teenaged Florida mass-shooting survivors have variously been criticized as:
-Soros plants
-The biased children of FBI agents
-Too traumatized to have worthwhile opinions about an event that directly involved them https://t.co/YbZmsBGsuL

— Matt Pearce 🦅 (@mattdpearce) February 20, 2018

Courtesy of Think Progress:

David Hogg, a senior at the school, was one of the first to appear on national television and demand action. “We’re children. You guys are the adults. You need to take some action and play a role. Work together. Come over your politics and get something done,” Hogg said, looking directly into the camera. 

Hogg is now being targeted by Gateway Pundit, a far-right blog that has press credentials from the Trump White House. A post published on Monday by the site’s White House correspondent, Lucian Wintrich, features Hogg’s photo with the word “EXPOSED” stamped in red.

Wintrich says Hogg and other students throw up some “red flags.” The first “red flag” is that Hogg’s father is a retired FBI agent. (Hogg freely admitted this on national television.) The insinuation is that Hogg’s father, who does not even work for the FBI, has tasked his son with talking about gun control to take the heat off the agency. 

Wintrich also uses an edited YouTube video of Hogg having some difficulty answering questions for a taped interview as evidence that Hogg is “heavily coached on lines and is merely reciting a script.” There is no evidence, in the video or elsewhere in the article, supporting this claim. 

Wintrich then drops all pretenses and fully embraces the conspiracy: 

Why would the child of an FBI agent be used as a pawn for anti-Trump rhetoric and anti-gun legislation? Because the FBI is only looking to curb YOUR Constitutional rights and INCREASE their power. We’ve seen similar moves by them many times over. This is just another disgusting example of it.

Is anybody else having a Sandy Hook deja vu?

Some version of this conspiracy theory has now spread across social media.

Pro-Trump media really reaching for attacks on Fla. shooting survivor David Hogg. The latest: True Pundit says Hogg going on a tour of CNN HQ, apparently years ago, is proof that he's up to something. pic.twitter.com/rMi114quJf

— Will Sommer (@willsommer) February 20, 2018

It has even been embraced by Donald Trump Jr.:

Don Jr. has liked at least two tweets pushing content that attempts to discredit one of the most vocal student survivors of the Parkland school shooting. pic.twitter.com/YI9ANh5dlL

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 20, 2018

And Hogg is not their only target.

Writer for Jim Hoft's The Gateway Pundit now saying student survivors of the Parkland school shooting are "are milking the deaths of their peers for careers" and "only care about their SJW agenda" pic.twitter.com/YAIgguU8tO

— Timothy Johnson (@timothywjohnson) February 20, 2018

Trust me when I say that I have seen the conservatives go low before, but to attack these kids, or suggest that they are "milking the deaths of their peers for careers," is so incredibly disgusting that it literally makes me sick to my stomach.

I understand the fear that the Right is feeling right now, if I saw these kids coming after me and my party I might be wetting my tighty whiteys as well, but all that attacking them accomplishes is to make them even more determined and erase ANY hope of convincing them that the conservatives and Republican party are not their enemies.

To use perhaps too apt of a metaphor the conservatives are essentially shooting themselves in the foot right now.

And while all this is going on a critically clueless conservative journalist is suggesting that the gun control debate needs to wait until people start showing respect to gun owners:

So if you want to stop school shootings it’s not enough just to vent and march. It’s necessary to let people from Red America lead the way, and to show respect to gun owners at all points. There has to be trust and respect first. Then we can strike a compromise on guns as guns, and not some sacred cross in the culture war. 

You know I have heard of "tone deaf" before, but this David Brooks guy is just "deaf deaf."

(Buzzfeed by the way has a rather expansive article on the student's grass roots activism, that essentially drives a stake through the heart of the whole "manipulated by the Left Wing" narrative.)

Update: People are starting to lose their jobs over these smear campaigns.

JUST IN: Aide to Florida GOP lawmaker fired for spreading false claim that shooting survivors are "actors" https://t.co/uY4WGB7IQX pic.twitter.com/revhfMj8aN

— The Hill (@thehill) February 21, 2018

Nice to see a little justice served. 

Just a reminder that this information exists.

Isn't it just like kids to screw up your best laid plans?

Let's talk "Secret Memo."

Courtesy of NBC News:

President Donald Trump is expected to tell the House Intelligence Committee that he does not object to the release of a classified memo about the Russia investigation, a senior White House official said Thursday. 

A decision not to block the memo's release would fly in the face of warnings from law enforcement officials — the FBI has said it has "grave concerns" about the memo's disclosure — as well as Democrats, who contend the memo is designed to distort the federal probe into Russian interference in the 2016 election. 

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, the senior White House official said the White House has had time over the last couple of days to look over the memo "to make sure it doesn’t give away too much in terms of classification." 

"Right now, I think it will be that we tell the Congress, probably tomorrow, that the president is okay with it," the official added, noting that the ultimate public disclosure of the memo is in the hands of Congress. 

So all day journalists have been breathlessly awaiting the release of the memo, only to learn that if it is released it will not be until tomorrow.

If you have been watching any news (Or regularly visiting here.) you likely already know that this memo contains information cherry picked by House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes, and that it is being used to undermine Rod Rosenstein, attack the FBI, and derail the Robert Mueller investigation.

And there was quite a lot of activity concerning the release of this memo yesterday and today.

First there was this:

FBI takes aim at the secret memo drafted by GOP staff of Rep. Nunes... FBI statement: pic.twitter.com/RrNLnvEThE

— Mike Levine (@MLevineReports) January 31, 2018

That is the FBI coming out publicly to say that releasing this memo is a bad idea for the country.

Not typically something you would see the FBI do.

There were also reports that Trump's own FBI Director may quit if this memo is released in defiance of the FBI's wishes:  

Top White House aides are worried FBI Director Christopher Wray could quit if the highly controversial Republican memo alleging the FBI abused its surveillance tools is released, multiple sources with knowledge of the situation tell CNN. 

Wray has made clear he is frustrated that President Donald Trump picked him to lead the FBI after he fired FBI Director James Comey in May, yet his advice on the Nunes memo is being disregarded and cast as part of the purported partisan leadership of the FBI, according to a senior law enforcement official. 

Wray's stance is "raising hell," one source familiar with the matter said.

There were also some reports that Wray was planning to debunk the memo point by point.

And then there was this today from Adam Schiff:

BREAKING: Discovered late tonight that Chairman Nunes made material changes to the memo he sent to White House – changes not approved by the Committee. White House therefore reviewing a document the Committee has not approved for release. pic.twitter.com/llhQK9L7l6

— Adam Schiff (@RepAdamSchiff) February 1, 2018

Nunes claimed that he only altered some inconsequential things like dates.

Because you know, how often are getting the dates accurate really that important? Sheesh!

Then another odd thing happened.

Remember how after Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe quit and the official reason given was that it had something to do with his work on the Hillary Clinton email investigation?

Well here it is to remind you: 

FBI Director Chris Wray made clear in a message sent to all bureau employees on Monday night that Deputy Director Andrew McCabe's decision to step aside was a result of forthcoming information to be detailed in an inspector general report, according to a copy of his message obtained by NBC News. 

Wray alluded to having seen aspects of the IG's report into the way the FBI handled the investigation into Hillary Clinton's use of a private e-mail server.

Yeah, that's the one!

Well today Junior kind of fucked up that story line as well.

ATTORNEY: Hello?
DON, JR: Hey, it's me. I did it again.
ATTORNEY: JFC.... pic.twitter.com/PdSsBb1TLn

— Eric Schmeltzer (@JustSchmeltzer) February 1, 2018

Talking about the secret memo:

"It was good enough to fire McCabe, no one argues it's factually inaccurate, but now days later they want to protect the names  of those involved in a scandal that was big enough to fire a senior official a month before retirement? They don't deserve a pass on that!"

So much for Eric being the dumb son.

If you ever wondered what it would be like if the Keystone Kops, who also were secret Russian operatives, ran the White House, well now you know. 

Robert Mueller hones in on fake story put out by Trump team about meeting with Russian lawyer in Trump Tower.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Aboard Air Force One on a flight home from Europe last July, President Trump and his advisers raced to cobble together a news release about a mysterious meeting at Trump Tower the previous summer between Russians and top Trump campaign officials. Rather than acknowledge the meeting’s intended purpose — to obtain political dirt about Hillary Clinton from the Russian government — the statement instead described the meeting as being about an obscure Russian adoption policy. 

The statement, released in response to questions from The New York Times about the meeting, has become a focus of the inquiry by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel investigating Russian interference in the 2016 election. Prosecutors working for Mr. Mueller in recent months have questioned numerous White House officials about how the release came together — and about how directly Mr. Trump oversaw the process. Mr. Mueller’s team recently notified Mr. Trump’s lawyers that the Air Force One statement is one of about a dozen subjects that prosecutors want to discuss in a face-to-face interview of Mr. Trump that is still being negotiated.

We all know this story, right?

Claim is made that Russian lawyer has dirt on Hillary,  meeting happens in Trump Tower which includes, Junior, Michael Flynn, and Jared Kushner, when meeting is exposed Trump team makes up story that it was about Russian adoptions.

But here's a new wrinkle:

The latest witness to be called for an interview about the episode was Mark Corallo, who served as a spokesman for Mr. Trump’s legal team before resigning in July. Mr. Corallo received an interview request last week from the special counsel and has agreed to the interview, according to three people with knowledge of the request. 

Mr. Corallo is planning to tell Mr. Mueller about a previously undisclosed conference call with Mr. Trump and Hope Hicks, the White House communications director, according to the three people. Mr. Corallo planned to tell investigators that Ms. Hicks said during the call that emails written by Donald Trump Jr. before the Trump Tower meeting — in which the younger Mr. Trump said he was eager to receive political dirt about Mrs. Clinton from the Russians — “will never get out.” That left Mr. Corallo with concerns that Ms. Hicks could be contemplating obstructing justice, the people said.

Uh oh, not Trump's Girl Friday.

 Of course the lawyer for Hicks has already said this is, altogether now, "fake news." 

However let's keep in mind that Mr. Carallo will be testifying under oath, will Hope Hicks do the same?

Does anybody else get a kick that this always seems to go back to emails?

The Senate Judiciary Committee chairman announces that he will release transcripts of interviews with Donald Trump Jr. and others who attended that notorious Trump Tower meeting.

Courtesy of Politico:  

The Senate Judiciary Committee will soon release the transcript of its interview with Donald Trump Jr. as well as other witness testimony related to a controversial 2016 meeting at Trump Tower with a Kremlin-linked lawyer, Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) said Thursday. 

Grassley's comments Thursday come the day after two Democrats on the committee publicly pressed for the release of the panel's closed-door interview transcripts to special counsel Robert Mueller. Even as partisan disputes roil the House's Russia investigation, Grassley's alignment with Democrats on releasing the transcripts signals that the Senate — for now, at least — remains in a more collaborative mode. 

The committee is finished with work related to the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, attended by President Donald Trump's eldest son and his son-in-law Jared Kushner as well as campaign chairman Paul Manafort, Grassley said. "So, now it’s time to start releasing the transcripts of all witness interviews we have done related to that meeting. Let’s get them out there for everyone to see." 

In addition to Trump Jr., who sat for an interview in September, the committee also has received written responses from Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer who said the Trump team pressed her for negative information about Hillary Clinton during the 2016 meeting.

Well this should prove to be some interesting reading, assuming of course all the juicy parts have not be redacted.

Apparently the committee has still not managed to get Jared Kushner locked down for an interview, which is too bad because somehow I think he would crack the minute somebody turned off the air conditioning.

In new book, Steve Bannon calls Trump Tower meeting "treasonous," and claims Mueller will get Trump by focusing on "money laundering."

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, reportedly based on more than 200 interviews with the president, his inner circle and players in and around the administration, is one of the most eagerly awaited political books of the year. In it, Wolff lifts the lid on a White House lurching from crisis to crisis amid internecine warfare, with even some of Trump’s closest allies expressing contempt for him. 

Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final three months, then White House chief strategist for seven months before returning to the rightwing Breitbart News, is a central figure in the nasty, cutthroat drama, quoted extensively, often in salty language. 

He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York. A trusted intermediary had promised documents that would “incriminate” rival Hillary Clinton but instead of alerting the FBI to a potential assault on American democracy by a foreign power, Trump Jr replied in an email: “I love it.” 

The meeting was revealed by the New York Times in July last year, prompting Trump Jr to say no consequential material was produced. Soon after, Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers. 

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

Well there goes Junior, right under the bus.

But if you think Bannon is planning to spare is former boss, well you would be mistaken.

Bannon has criticised Trump’s decision to fire Comey. In Wolff’s book, obtained by the Guardian ahead of publication from a bookseller in New England, he suggests White House hopes for a quick end to the Mueller investigation are gravely misplaced. 

“You realise where this is going,” he is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

Bannon went on to say that he himself had no interactions with any Russians, and does not feel he will need the services of a lawyer at any time soon.

And in the book Bannon is only ONE of the many sources inside the Trump White House that were willing to spill their guts.

And Trump buddies as well. Here is what one of Trump's oldest associates told a friend about the Donald: 

Wolff writes that Thomas Barrack Jr, a billionaire who is one of the president’s oldest associates, allegedly told a friend: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.”

Certainly hard to argue with that assessment.

Here is what New York Magazine reported about this book:

Even though the numbers in a few key states had appeared to be changing to Trump’s advantage, neither Conway nor Trump himself nor his son-in-law, Jared Kushner — the effective head of the campaign — ­wavered in their certainty: Their unexpected adventure would soon be over. Not only would Trump not be president, almost everyone in the campaign agreed, he should probably not be. Conveniently, the former conviction meant nobody had to deal with the latter issue. 

As the campaign came to an end, Trump himself was sanguine. His ultimate goal, after all, had never been to win. “I can be the most famous man in the world,” he had told his aide Sam Nunberg at the outset of the race.

.......

Not only did Trump disregard the potential conflicts of his own business deals and real-estate holdings, he audaciously refused to release his tax returns. Why should he? Once he lost, Trump would be both insanely famous and a martyr to Crooked Hillary. His daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared would be international celebrities. Steve Bannon would become the de facto head of the tea-party movement. Kellyanne Conway would be a cable-news star. Melania Trump, who had been assured by her husband that he wouldn’t become president, could return to inconspicuously lunching. Losing would work out for everybody. Losing was winning. 

In the end perhaps nobody was as surprised by Trump's victory, than Trump himself. (With the possible exception of Hillary Clinton.)

And once he won he had no idea what to do with that victory:  

From the moment of victory, the Trump administration became a looking-glass presidency: Every inverse assumption about how to assemble and run a White House was enacted and compounded, many times over. The decisions that Trump and his top advisers made in those first few months — from the slapdash transition to the disarray in the West Wing — set the stage for the chaos and dysfunction that have persisted throughout his first year in office. This was a real-life version of Mel Brooks’s The Producers, where the mistaken outcome trusted by everyone in Trump’s inner circle — that they would lose the election — wound up exposing them for who they really were.

Is anybody else having and out of body experience right now? Because I am having an out of body experience.

This is what we have all suspected all along, and here it is in black and white from Trump White House sources themselves.

The two articles have way too much information to adequately summarize here, including that the idea of Ivanka becoming the first female president was seriously touted, so I strongly suggest that you read them thoroughly.

Who knew that Wednesday was going to be such a big news day?

Donald Trump Jr. refuses to reveal details of phone call to his father citing attorney client privilege. No such privilege exists in this case.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

Donald Trump Jr. refused on Wednesday to provide a congressional committee details of a July telephone conversation with his father about a meeting last year at which Trump campaign officials had expected to receive damaging information from the Russian government about Hillary Clinton. 

Testifying in a closed session before the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump claimed that his conversation over the summer with his father, two days after The New York Times disclosed the June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower in Manhattan, was protected under attorney-client privilege because lawyers for both men were on the call. 

What, if anything, Donald J. Trump knew about the Trump Tower meeting as a presidential candidate — and his role in drafting a misleading statement about it once he was president and it became public — are key questions for the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, who is investigating Russian interference in the election.

The problem with that whole attorney client privilege thing is that it really does not protect Junior in this situation.

Here let the venerable John Dean explain it:

Donald Trump Jr. claimed attny-client privilege in today before the House Intel Committee re discussions with his father based on the apparent fact an attny was present. Problem: (1) Jr. has no such privilege; (2) Congress does not recognize the privilege even when it exists.

— John Dean (@JohnWDean) December 7, 2017

If anybody would know about the limitations of the attorney client privilege it would be John Dean.

And why is this important?

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

During eight hours of questioning by the House intelligence committee on Wednesday, Donald Trump Jr. acknowledged that he and his father had discussed news of his controversial 2016 meeting with a Russian lawyer after the New York Times revealed the secret sitdown this summer. But he refused to disclose the contents of their conversations. 

Trump Jr. “acknowledged having discussed the June 9 meeting and the emails that went into establishing that meeting after those emails became public,” Rep. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the intelligence committee, told reporters after Trump Jr.’s interview with the panel. 
“He acknowledged discussing that meeting with his father.” 

The admission by his Trump’s eldest son raises the question of how closely the Trumps coordinated on their response to the bombshell revelations and could bolster the case that President Trump participated in an effort to craft a false public explanation for the Trump Tower meeting. Trump Jr.’s initial statement about the meeting, reportedly dictated by his father on Air Force One during a July 8 flight from Germany, inaccurately claimed that the discussion focused on adoption. 

So finding out what was said during that phone call would likely prove that Trump and Junior conspired to cover up what that meeting was about, which of course we now know had really nothing to do with Russian adoptions.

And the kicker is that I would bet my house that Robert Mueller already knows exactly what Donnie and his son talked about that day, and is simply waiting for the proper moment to spring it on them in court.

Russian lawyer at center of that notorious Trump Tower meeting during the 2016 campaign, says that Donald Trump Jr. asked for dirt on the Clinton Foundation.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Donald Trump Jr. asked a Russian lawyer at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting whether she had evidence of illegal donations to the Clinton Foundation, the lawyer told the Senate Judiciary Committee in answers to written questions obtained exclusively by NBC News. 

The lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, told the committee that she didn't have any such evidence, and that she believes Trump misunderstood the nature of the meeting after receiving emails from a music promoter promising incriminating information on Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump's Democratic opponent. 

Once it became apparent that she did not have meaningful information about Clinton, Trump seemed to lose interest, Veselnitskaya said, and the meeting petered out.

Now the only way that this Natalia Veselnitskaya, could have obtained any inside information about Hillary Clinton's campaign, or the Clinton Foundation, would be by way of those Russian hacks that Junior was well aware took place.

This means that Junior was asking for data illegally obtained by a long time foreign adversary in order to win an election.

I'm sorry, what is the definition of "collusion" again?

Or have we now moved to the more appropriate definition, "conspiracy?"

Well Junior will get the opportunity to answer questions about this when he appears before various committees.

Courtesy of Mother Jones: 

Donald Trump Jr. will face questions from two congressional committees in coming weeks about his multiple meetings with Russian representatives and his efforts to obtain damaging information on Hillary Clinton from the Kremlin. 

Trump, the president’s eldest son, will meet Wednesday with members of the House Intelligence Committee. He is also scheduled to appear this month before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Richard Burr (R-N.C.), the committee’s chairman, told Mother Jones. Committee aides declined to specify the date of the Senate interview. Alan Futerfas, Trump Jr.’s lawyer, did not respond to questions. 

The interviews, both of which will occur behind closed doors, come as investigations into the Trump campaign’s contacts with Russia last year accelerate in the wake of special counsel Robert Mueller’s charges against four Trump associates, including former national security adviser Michael Flynn and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort. Trump Jr. will face questions on at least three aspects of the campaign’s suspected coordination with Russia.

I still do not have a lot of confidence in the House Intelligence committee, but the Senate committee seems popcorn worthy.

Donald Trump Jr. goes after Al Franken on Twitter in light of new allegations. Actor Billy Baldwin puts him in his place.

Talk amongst yourselves: Two more women accuse Sen Al Franken of inappropriate touching https://t.co/rM17xQdbz6 # via @HuffPostPol

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 23, 2017

That is the original tweet on Wednesday.

But it was met rather quickly by this one.

Your Dad is a 5th degree black belt when it comes to sexual impropriety allegations.
In fact… I once had a party at the Plaza Hotel… your father showed up uninvited & hit on my wife… invited her on his helicopter to Atlantic City.

She showed his fat ass the door.#TrumpRussia https://t.co/A8BInetbbZ

— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) November 23, 2017

And then later by this one.

Think that's good… wait till I tell you about doing scenes in acting class with Marla Maples (terrific person!!) in the late 80s.

It was before Ivana or the press even knew. We rehearsed in her apartment & Donny Boy would call every 20 mins to check up on us.#VeryInsecureDude https://t.co/dGIKw6dyGd

— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) November 24, 2017

Clearly Trump was extremely jealous of anybody spending time with his new girlfriend, before even the press or his wife realized he had one.

Let's keep in mind who the REAL serial sexual abuser is folks. 

(BTW Baldwin's wife is the gorgeous Chynna Phillips.

The British publicist who set up the meeting between Junior and the Russian attorney now claims he was a "useful idiot." I buy that.

Courtesy of The Independent:  

The British music publicist who arranged a meeting between Donald Trump's inner circle and a Russian lawyer who claimed to have damaging information on Hillary Clinton has insisted he was a merely "useful idiot" who became inadvertently embroiled in the scandal. 

Rob Goldstone has agreed to be questioned by Special Counsel Robert Mueller about the meeting, which is at the heart of a probe into alleged collusion between Mr Trump presidential campaign and the Kremlin. 

The publicist emailed the US leader's son, Donald Trump Jr, last year offering "official" Russian documents he claimed would "incriminate" Hillary Clinton and "be very useful to your father".

......

In his first interview since the scandal erupted, Mr Goldstone said he regretted his involvement but insisted he had merely been a "useful idiot". 

"I never thought in a million years that an email I wrote to [Donald Trump Jr]... would be examined by the world many times over," he told The Sunday Times. "I should have listened to that little voice in my head. I remember specifically saying to Emin: you know, we probably shouldn't get involved in this." 

He said the meeting at Trump Tower ended inconclusively, adding he believed the Russians used the promise of dirt on Ms Clinton as a "pretext" to lobby the Trump campaign on unrelated issues.

Mr Goldstone claimed he "puffed up" the wording of his emails to Mr Trump Jr to secure the meeting. 

"If I'm guilty of anything, and I hate the word guilty, it's hyping the message and going the extra mile for my clients," the publicist added.

Goldstone claims that he does not know of any other collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign but that if there was he had no part in it. 

It really does not make any difference if Goldstone "puffed up" the wording or not, the important thing is that Junior thought he was taking a meeting with the Russians in order to receive illegally obtained information that could be used against his father's opponent, because the Kremlin wanted them to win the election.

Collusion.

Trump administration reverses ban on shipping elephant trophies to America from hunts in Zimbabwe. Gee, I wonder why?

Courtesy of WaPo:

The Trump administration announced Wednesday that the remains of elephants legally hunted in Zimbabwe and Zambia can now be imported to the United States as trophies, reversing a ban under former president Barack Obama. 

African elephants are listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act, but the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service has determined that large sums paid for permits to hunt the animals could actually help them “by putting much-needed revenue back into conservation,” according to an agency statement. 

Under the Obama administration, elephant-hunting trophies were allowed in countries such as South Africa but not in Zimbabwe because Fish and Wildlife decided in 2015 that the nation had failed to prove that its management of elephants enhanced the population. Zimbabwe could not confirm its elephant population in a way that was acceptable to U.S. officials, and did not demonstrate an ability to implement laws to protect it. 

The Service’s new statement did not specify what had changed in that country — where the African elephant population has declined 6 percent in recent years, according to the Great Elephant Census project — to allow hunting trophies. A spokeswoman said an explanation will be published in the Federal Register on Friday.

Yeah I really don't get it.

I guess there is just no part of my body that is so small and shame inducing which would require that I murder these magnificent animals in order to make up for it. 

Donald Trump Jr. communicated with Wikileaks via Twitter and appears to have done their bidding on a few occasions.

Courtesy of the Atlantic:  

Just before the stroke of midnight on September 20, 2016, at the height of last year’s presidential election, the WikiLeaks Twitter account sent a private direct message to Donald Trump Jr., the Republican nominee’s oldest son and campaign surrogate. “A PAC run anti-Trump site putintrump.org is about to launch,” WikiLeaks wrote. “The PAC is a recycled pro-Iraq war PAC. We have guessed the password. It is ‘putintrump.’ See ‘About’ for who is behind it. Any comments?” (The site, which has since become a joint project with Mother Jones, was founded by Rob Glaser, a tech entrepreneur, and was funded by Progress for USA Political Action Committee.) 

The next morning, about 12 hours later, Trump Jr. responded to WikiLeaks. “Off the record I don’t know who that is, but I’ll ask around,” he wrote on September 21, 2016. “Thanks.”The messages, obtained by The Atlantic, were also turned over by Trump Jr.’s lawyers to congressional investigators. They are part of a long—and largely one-sided—correspondence between WikiLeaks and the president’s son that continued until at least July 2017. 

The messages show WikiLeaks, a radical transparency organization that the American intelligence community believes was chosen by the Russian government to disseminate the information it had hacked, actively soliciting Trump Jr.’s cooperation. WikiLeaks made a series of increasingly bold requests, including asking for Trump’s tax returns, urging the Trump campaign on Election Day to reject the results of the election as rigged, and requesting that the president-elect tell Australia to appoint Julian Assange ambassador to the United States.

......

Though Trump Jr. mostly ignored the frequent messages from WikiLeaks, he at times appears to have acted on its requests. When WikiLeaks first reached out to Trump Jr. about putintrump.org, for instance, Trump Jr. followed up on his promise to “ask around.” According to a source familiar with the congressional investigations into Russian interference with the 2016 campaign, who requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, on the same day that Trump Jr. received the first message from WikiLeaks, he emailed other senior officials with the Trump campaign, including Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Brad Parscale, and Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner, telling them WikiLeaks had made contact. Kushner then forwarded the email to campaign communications staffer Hope Hicks. At no point during the 10-month correspondence does Trump Jr. rebuff WikiLeaks, which had published stolen documents and was already observed to be releasing information that benefited Russian interests.

First off Wikileaks "guessed" the password to a progressive anti-Trump website?

Yeah, right.

And secondly, Wikileaks was echoing the message from the Kremlin trolls for Trump to refuse to concede even if he lost the election?

Interesting.

Thirdly, gotcha Junior!

For his part Don Junior has already confirmed that these emails exist, though I am not sure he understands how devastating they will turn out to be for his father's claim there was no collusion with Russia.

Here is the entire chain of messages with @wikileaks (with my whopping 3 responses) which one of the congressional committees has chosen to selectively leak. How ironic! 1/3 pic.twitter.com/SiwTqWtykA

— Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) November 14, 2017

(There! Happy now? I gave you the emails.)

For instance Junior somehow got his father to tweet about the hacked Podesta emails 15 minutes after Wikileaks asked him to.

We've now updated the story with @ByronTau's great catch: @realDonaldTrump tweeted about the release of Podesta's emails *15 minutes* after @Wikileaks wrote to @DonaldJTrumpJr about it. https://t.co/pVGEBqmB9O pic.twitter.com/pOszShJ7JY

— Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffe) November 13, 2017

🤔 https://t.co/ZYk79Niw5a pic.twitter.com/3OpXf8ii1v

— Byron Tau (@ByronTau) November 13, 2017

As we now know the American intelligence community recognizes Wikileaks as an agent for the Kremlin.

In other words, smoke meet gun. 

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.