Donald Trump tweeted in defense of Sinclair Broadcasting. Yep, time to act surprised again.

So funny to watch Fake News Networks, among the most dishonest groups of people I have ever dealt with, criticize Sinclair Broadcasting for being biased. Sinclair is far superior to CNN and even more Fake NBC, which is a total joke.

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2018

I am sure that you all remember Sinclair Broadcasting from my post just yesterday.

Yep, that's them.

For those of you with a longer memory you might remember late last year when Jared Kushner said this: 

Donald Trump's campaign struck a deal with Sinclair Broadcast Group during the campaign to try and secure better media coverage, his son-in-law Jared Kushner told business executives Friday in Manhattan. 

Kushner said the agreement with Sinclair, which owns television stations across the country in many swing states and often packages news for their affiliates to run, gave them more access to Trump and the campaign, according to six people who heard his remarks. 

In exchange, Sinclair would broadcast their Trump interviews across the country without commentary, Kushner said. Kushner highlighted that Sinclair, in states like Ohio, reaches a much wider audience — around 250,000 listeners — than networks like CNN, which reach somewhere around 30,000. 

“It’s math,” Kushner said according to multiple attendees.

Dammit! I have always worried that at some point the conservatives might figure out math. 

You almost have to admire how openly Donald Trump and his people discuss, and even brag, about their new propaganda machine.

They are not even trying to keep this a secret.

That might be the most troubling thing of all.

Saudi prince bragged that Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner was "in his pocket."

Courtesy of The Intercept:

In June, Saudi prince Mohammed bin Salman ousted his cousin, then-Crown Prince Mohammed bin Nayef, and took his place as next in line to the throne, upending the established line of succession. In the months that followed, the President’s Daily Brief contained information on Saudi Arabia’s evolving political situation, including a handful of names of royal family members opposed to the crown prince’s power grab, according to the former White House official and two U.S. government officials with knowledge of the report. Like many others interviewed for this story, they declined to be identified because they were not authorized to speak about sensitive matters to the press. 

In late October, Jared Kushner made an unannounced trip to Riyadh, catching some intelligence officials off guard. “The two princes are said to have stayed up until nearly 4 a.m. several nights, swapping stories and planning strategy,” the Washington Post’s David Ignatius reported at the time. 

What exactly Kushner and the Saudi royal talked about in Riyadh may be known only to them, but after the meeting, Crown Prince Mohammed told confidants that Kushner had discussed the names of Saudis disloyal to the crown prince, according to three sources who have been in contact with members of the Saudi and Emirati royal families since the crackdown. Kushner, through his attorney’s spokesperson, denies having done so.

On November 4, a week after Kushner returned to the U.S., the crown prince, known in official Washington by his initials MBS, launched what he called an anti-corruption crackdown. The Saudi government arrested dozens of members of the Saudi royal family and imprisoned them in the Ritz-Carlton Riyadh, which was first reported in English by The Intercept. The Saudi figures named in the President’s Daily Brief were among those rounded up; at least one was reportedly tortured. 

And then there was this:

One of the people MBS told about the discussion with Kushner was UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed, according to a source who talks frequently to confidants of the Saudi and Emirati rulers. MBS bragged to the Emirati crown prince and others that Kushner was “in his pocket,” the source told The Intercept.

So is it possible that Jared Kushner shared top secret information, that he is not even cleared to access, with a Saudi prince which allowed him to move on his potential enemies/family members and grab power?

Is that even really a question?

What's more the Trump Administration's support for the UAE over Qatar might have something to do with Kushner's financial situation:

Kushner's support for Saudi Arabia and the UAE over Qatar in the Gulf crisis has raised questions about a possible conflict of interest. Kushner backed the blockade a month after Qatar’s ministry of finance rebuffed an attempt by Kushner’s real estate firm, Kushner Companies, to extract financing for the firm’s troubled flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue.

The story is that Kusher's dad made a pitch to Qatar to gain financing for a Kushner property that is about to go under, when that deal fell through the Trump Administration suddenly sided with the UAE in setting up a blockade of Qatar.

Remember this photo?

This was the meeting that precipitated that blockade.

So to put it bluntly, diplomacy with other countries is apparently being determined by how they might benefit Trump and Kushner businesses.

And none of it has anything to do with what is good for America. 

Oh goody.

Natasha Bertrand ties it all together.

.@NATASHABERTRAND on the reported ties between Russia and #CambridgeAnalytica that she believes could "add an entirely new dimension to #Mueller's investigation" #AMJoy pic.twitter.com/clVKhyn2Eu

— AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) March 18, 2018

This my friends, is evidence of collusion.

I think that Mueller probably has all that he needs to make Donald Trump eat these words. 

The Mueller probe should never have been started in that there was no collusion and there was no crime. It was based on fraudulent activities and a Fake Dossier paid for by Crooked Hillary and the DNC, and improperly used in FISA COURT for surveillance of my campaign. WITCH HUNT!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 18, 2018

Data analysis group associated with Trump campaign harvested information from millions of Facebook accounts in order to target them more effectively.

Courtesy of The Guardian:  

The data analytics firm that worked with Donald Trump’s election team and the winning Brexit campaign harvested millions of Facebook profiles of US voters, in the tech giant’s biggest ever data breach, and used them to build a powerful software program to predict and influence choices at the ballot box. 

A whistleblower has revealed to the Observer how Cambridge Analytica – a company owned by the hedge fund billionaire Robert Mercer, and headed at the time by Trump’s key adviser Steve Bannon – used personal information taken without authorisation in early 2014 to build a system that could profile individual US voters, in order to target them with personalised political advertisements. 

Christopher Wylie, who worked with an academic at Cambridge University to obtain the data, told the Observer: “We exploited Facebook to harvest millions of people’s profiles. And built models to exploit what we knew about them and target their inner demons. That was the basis that the entire company was built on.” 

Documents seen by the Observer, and confirmed by a Facebook statement, show that by late 2015 the company had found out that information had been harvested on an unprecedented scale. However, at the time it failed to alert users and took only limited steps to recover and secure the private information of more than 50 million individuals. 

The New York Times is reporting that copies of the data harvested for Cambridge Analytica could still be found online; its reporting team had viewed some of the raw data.

Couple of things to note here.

First off Jared Kushner took credit for bringing Cambridge Analytica into the Trump campaign:  

“I called somebody who works for one of the technology companies that I work with, and I had them give me a tutorial on how to use Facebook micro-targeting,” Kushner told Steven Bertoni of Forbes. “We brought in Cambridge Analytica. I called some of my friends from Silicon Valley who were some of the best digital marketers in the world. And I asked them how to scale this stuff . . . We basically had to build a $400 million operation with 1,500 people operating in 50 states, in five months to then be taken apart. We started really from scratch.”

Secondly if this breach happened way back in 2014, it might indicate that Trump was already getting his ducks in a row to run way back then, despite his claims that he did not decide until 2015. 

Thirdly using Facebook data was also how the Russians targeted users for their propaganda campaign, which could link their efforts directly to Kushner and the Trump campaign, something I am certain Robert Mueller is already looking into.

Have you noticed that the more we learn, the more it seems to indicate that the Russians and the Trump campaign worked hand in hand to win that 2016 election?

P.S. The Massachusetts Attorney General is now launching in investigation into Cambridge Analytica. 

Quatari officials have evidence that Jared Kushner is compromised by the Saudis but did not tell Robert Mueller for fear of damaging relationship with Trump Administration.

Courtesy of NBC News: 

Qatari officials gathered evidence of what they claim is illicit influence by the United Arab Emirates on Jared Kushner and other Trump associates, including details of secret meetings, but decided not to give the information to Special Counsel Robert Mueller for fear of harming relations with the Trump administration, say three sources familiar with the Qatari discussions. 

Lebanese-American businessman George Nader and Republican donor Elliott Broidy, who participated in the meetings, have both been the focus of news reports in recent days about their connections to the UAE and Trump associates.

.........

Qatari officials believe the meetings — as well as fallout from Qatari business dealings with Kushner — may have influenced President Trump's public endorsement of a blockade of Qatar by its neighbors that began last year. 

A Qatari delegation came to Washington in late January and early February and met with Trump officials to discuss shared national security interests. Despite Trump's endorsement of the blockade in June, the Qataris felt the meetings with top advisers had been productive and decided against reaching out to Mueller in order to preserve the relationship, according to people familiar with the internal Qatari deliberations. 

A spokesperson for the Qatari embassy in Washington said in a statement last week that Qatar won't be providing materials to the Mueller investigation. 

The Qataris also met with FBI Director Chris Wray while they were in Washington, but never shared their information about the UAE's alleged influence on the administration.

Fear of sharing intelligence vital to an ongoing investigation, because it is assumed the American government will retaliate against you.

THAT is how America's relationship with other countries is damaged beyond repair.

By the way this means that Donald Trump clearly knows that his son-in-law is compromised, and yet he continues to let him sit in on classified briefings, and even put him in charge of solving the crisis in the Middle East.

And Trump had the gall to accuse Hillary Clinton of being careless with classified materials.

Donald Trump is looking to clean house and replace his senior staff with people who will not try to rein him in. Uh oh!

Courtesy of Vanity Fair:  

With the departures of Hope Hicks and Gary Cohn, the Trump presidency is entering a new phase—one in which Trump is feeling liberated to act on his impulses. “Trump is in command. He’s been in the job more than a year now. He knows how the levers of power work. He doesn’t give a fuck,” the Republican said. Trump’s decision to circumvent the policy process and impose tariffs on imported steel and aluminum reflects his emboldened desire to follow his impulses and defy his advisers. “It was like a fuck-you to Kelly,” a Trump friend said. “Trump is red-hot about Kelly trying to control him.” 

According to five Republicans close to the White House, Trump has diagnosed the problem as having the wrong team around him and is looking to replace his senior staff in the coming weeks. “Trump is going for a clean reset, but he needs to do it in a way that’s systemic so it doesn’t look like it’s chaos,” one Republican said. 

Sources said that the first officials to go will be Chief of Staff John Kelly and National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, both of whom Trump has clashed with for months. On Tuesday, Trump met with John Bolton in the Oval Office. When he plans to visit Mar-a-Lago next weekend, Trump is expected to interview more candidates for both positions, according to two sources. “He’s going for a clean slate,” one source said. Cohn had been lobbying to replace Kelly as chief, two sources said, and quit when he didn’t get the job. “Trump laughed at Gary when he brought it up,” one outside adviser to the White House said. 

Next on the departure list are Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump. Trump remains fiercely loyal to his family, but various distractions have eroded their efficacy within the administration. Both have been sidelined without top-secret security clearances by Kelly, and sources expect them to be leaving at some point in the near future.

"He doesn't give a fuck."

Okay this article legitimately made my legs shake.

I think it is safe to say that Donald Trump is clinically insane.

And the only hope for this nation is that the people around him exert some control over his impulses.

If he simply fires those that are doing that, and replaces them with sycophants afraid to correct him or raise objections to his lunatic ravings, we are seriously fucked here.

Robert Mueller better put his investigation on the fast track because as long as Trump is in office this whole country, if not the entire world, remain in serious danger.

Donald Trump openly expresses admiration for President of China's power grab, while behind the scenes his frustration and anger threatens to overwhelm him.

Courtesy of CNN:

President Donald Trump bemoaned a decision not to investigate Hillary Clinton after the 2016 presidential election, decrying a "rigged system" that still doesn't have the "right people" in place to fix it, during a freewheeling speech to Republican donors in Florida on Saturday. 

In the closed-door remarks, a recording of which was obtained by CNN, Trump also praised China's President Xi Jinping for recently consolidating power and extending his potential tenure, musing he wouldn't mind making such a maneuver himself. 

"He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great," Trump said. "And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day." 

The remarks, delivered inside the ballroom at his Mar-a-Lago estate during a lunch and fundraiser, were upbeat, lengthy, and peppered with jokes and laughter. But Trump's words reflected his deeply felt resentment that his actions during the 2016 campaign remain under scrutiny while those of his former rival, Hillary Clinton, do not. 

"I'm telling you, it's a rigged system folks," Trump said. "I've been saying that for a long time. It's a rigged system. And we don't have the right people in there yet. We have a lot of great people, but certain things, we don't have the right people."

What President Xi did was push to abolish term limits, effectively making him China's leader for life.

If President Obama had even hinted at such a thing, there would be outrage echoing throughout Washington, and it would be subject one on every Sunday morning talk show in the country.

Especially if the public were aware of what was in this Washington Post report as well: 

Inside the White House, aides over the past week have described an air of anxiety and volatility — with an uncontrollable commander in chief at its center. 

These are the darkest days in at least half a year, they say, and they worry just how much farther President Trump and his administration may plunge into unrest and malaise before they start to recover. As one official put it: “We haven’t bottomed out.” 

Trump is now a president in transition, at times angry and increasingly isolated. He fumes in private that just about every time he looks up at a television screen, the cable news headlines are trumpeting yet another scandal. He voices frustration that son-in-law Jared Kushner has few on-air defenders. He revives old grudges. And he confides to friends that he is uncertain about whom to trust.

In an unorthodox presidency in which emotion, impulse and ego often drive events, Trump’s ominous moods manifested themselves last week in his zigzagging positions on gun control; his shock trade war that jolted markets and was opposed by Republican leaders and many in his own administration; and his roiling feud of playground insults with Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Retired four-star Army general Barry McCaffrey said the American people — and Congress especially — should be alarmed. 

“I think the president is starting to wobble in his emotional stability and this is not going to end well,” McCaffrey said. “Trump’s judgment is fundamentally flawed, and the more pressure put on him and the more isolated he becomes, I think, his ability to do harm is going to increase.”

Trump is becoming increasingly isolated within that White House, feeling abandoned and increasingly mistrustful, left only with his increasing madness to keep him company.

Even his attempts at levity are tinged with darkness and insecurities.

Courtesy of Variety:

President Donald Trump joked about impeachment, Jared Kushner’s security clearance and Melania Trump leaving him as he attended his first Gridiron Club dinner, a highly formal and traditional event full of the news media he often dubs “fake news.”

A number of his quips made fun of the atmosphere in the West Wing after a chaotic week, what with more staff departures and rumors of more to come. 

“It’s been really another calm week at the White House,” he quipped. “We finally have it running like a fine-tuned machine.” 

He was joined on the dais by his wife, First Lady Melania Trump, and the most controversial joke of the evening involved her. 

“I like turnover. I like chaos. It really is good. Now the question everybody keeps asking is, ‘Who is going to be the next to leave? Steve Miller or Melania?”

Trump is known for saying out loud the things that are bothering him or frightening him, and then attempting to pass them off as jokes.

Trump also tried to joke about Jared Kushner's security clearance,  the attention Mike Pence pays to news about impeachment, and his difficult relationship with Jeff Sessions.

You do not have to have a PHD in Psychology to recognize that he finds none of those topics actually humorous.

Trump is crumbling before our eyes.

And we can only hope that when he finally snaps, he does not take the whole country down with him.

Jared Kushner's security clearance downgraded as foreign countries discuss how easily he can be manipulated.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, has been stripped of his top-secret security clearance after months of delays in completing his background check, and will now be limited in his ability to view highly classified information, a White House official and another person familiar with Mr. Kushner’s situation said on Tuesday. 

Mr. Kushner’s clearance was reduced to the level of secret and his official portfolio inside the West Wing, especially with regard to his globe-trotting foreign affairs work on behalf of President Trump, is expected to be sharply reduced, as well, the people said. 

Since the beginning of the Trump administration, both Mr. Kushner, 37, and his wife, Ivanka Trump, the president’s eldest daughter, 36, have enjoyed a special status within the White House as both family members and assistants to the president. But the complicated finances surrounding Mr. Kushner’s family’s vast real estate empire and his qualifications for the foreign policy responsibilities given to him by his father-in-law invited scrutiny from the start.

Apparently one of the things that continued to complicate Kushner's security clearance was that he kept adding contacts with foreign nationals that were not on his initial application for clearance.

In fact those contacts had recently become a focus of the Mueller investigation: 

Special counsel Robert Mueller's interest in Jared Kushner has expanded beyond his contacts with Russia and now includes his efforts to secure financing for his company from foreign investors during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the inquiry. 

This is the first indication that Mueller is exploring Kushner's discussions with potential non-Russian foreign investors, including in China.

Speaking of foreign contacts, apparently some of these countries saw Kushner as a soft touch.

Courtesy of WaPo: 

Officials in at least four countries have privately discussed ways they can manipulate Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, by taking advantage of his complex business arrangements, financial difficulties and lack of foreign policy experience, according to current and former U.S. officials familiar with intelligence reports on the matter. 

Among those nations discussing ways to influence Kushner to their advantage were the United Arab Emirates, China, Israel and Mexico, the current and former officials said. 

It is unclear if any of those countries acted on the discussions, but Kushner’s contacts with certain foreign government officials have raised concerns inside the White House and are a reason he has been unable to obtain a permanent security clearance, the officials said.

Man this is going to really make it hard for Jared to solve that Middle East crisis.

And he was so close.

You know to thinking about maybe starting to do something about that.

What was it that Donald Trump said about only hiring the "best people" again?

So pretty much everybody.

Partial list of W.H. officials lacking permanent security clearances as of November 2017, per NBC News:
Ivanka Trump
Jared Kushner
Don McGahn
Dan Scavino
Christopher Liddell
Sarah Huckabee Sanders
Raj Shah
Dina Powell
Nadia Schadlow
Fiona Hill
Kevin Harrington
John Rader
Ty Cobb https://t.co/Lo0PI9f0so

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 15, 2018

Okay are we actually sure that Donald Trump himself has been cleared for access to top secret information?

Because to tell you the truth, I don't think he should be. 

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?

Donald Trump's favorite bank has identified some "suspicious transactions" concerning Jared Kushner, and is going to hand that information over to the Mueller investigation.

Courtesy of Mother Jones:  

A German business magazine is reporting that Deutsche Bank, the German financial giant which is a major lender to both President Donald Trump and his son-in-law Jared Kushner, identified “suspicious transactions” related to Kushner family accounts, and has reported them to German banking regulators. The bank is reportedly willing to provide the information to special prosecutor Robert Mueller’s team of investigators. 

Manager Magazin, a respected German business magazine, reported in its latest print edition, which hit German newsstands on Friday, that Paul Achleitner, chairman of Deutsche Bank’s board, had the bank conduct an internal investigation and the results were troubling. Those results have been turned over to the Federal Financial Supervisory Authority—Germany’s bank regulatory agency, which is commonly known as BaFin. 

“Achleitner’s internal detectives were embarrassed to deliver their interim report regarding real estate tycoon [Jared] Kushner to the financial regulator BaFin,” the Manager Magazin article, translated from German, reports. “Their finding: There are indications that Donald Trump’s son-in-law or persons or companies close to him could have channeled suspicious monies through Deutsche Bank as part of their business dealings.”

The magazine did not provide additional details about the “suspicious monies”, but Manager Magazin reports that Deutsche Bank’s leadership is worried about the public relations hit the bank might take when—not if—the results of the investigation are turned over to Mueller. “But what BaFin will do about [the bank’s findings] is not the bank’s greatest concern,” the article states. “Rather, it’s the noise that US special counsel Robert Mueller (73) will make in his pursuit of Trump. For he will likely obtain this information—a giant risk to [the bank’s] reputation.”

You know perhaps Donald Trump does not fully appreciate what is happening, but international banks are well aware that when a Special Counsel turns their attention your way it is time to throw up your hands and just give them every single thing they are asking for, even if you know it ain't going to make you look too good.

And keep in mind that if Deutsche Bank is dropping a dime on Kushner, they have already shared all of Trump's financial records with Robert Mueller's team of prosecutors.

Tick Tock.

Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirms that they will definitely still be interviewing Jared Kushner. Court date for Paul Manafort announced.

Courtesy of Newsweek: 

The Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee confirmed Friday that President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, will still be interviewed as part of the committee’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

“Kushner is still going to be interviewed,” Republican Senator Chuck Grassley, of Iowa, said at a town hall meeting in western Iowa. “We’re getting some more documents, and that’s not done.”

Grassley assured constituents Friday that the interview would happen just days after expressing hesitation that his committee could easily secure a voluntary interview with Kushner after his Democratic counterpart, Senator Dianne Feinstein, published a 312-page transcript detailing a private interview with the founder of Fusion GPS, the organization behind the so-called Trump dossier. Grassley said Friday that the committee is just waiting on documents that Kushner has delayed in handing over before conducting the interview. 

“We’re going to do that,” Grassley said as an Iowan rebuked him over the committee’s five-month delay in interviewing Kushner. “Right now, Senator Feinstein is wanting more documents, and we wait until we get the documents, go through the documents, then we have a basis for the interviews that we’re going to have.”

While we are on the topic it appears that Paul Manafort and his associate , Richard Gates, have a shiny new court date to look forward to.

Courtesy of Reuters:  

U.S. Special Counsel in the Russia probe Robert Mueller will request a trial date of May 14 for Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort and Manafort’s associate Richard Gates, Mueller said in a court filing in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia Friday.

Just a reminder that while all of these distractions about Trump's racism and piggish behavior are dominating the news cycle that the wheels of justice are still slowly moving forward. 

The Special Counsel's investigation is rapidly reaching a critical stage.

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

As described by sources familiar with various aspects of the investigation, the Mueller probe is fast approaching a critical crossroads. The president’s lawyers, Ty Cobb and John Dowd, are pressing Mueller to wind down the investigation and exonerate their client, which they have assured the president will happen by early next year. 

But the sources familiar with the probe say that such a rapid conclusion is — as one put it — “fanciful.” Mueller and his team, they say, are pursuing new leads, interrogating new witnesses and collecting a mountain of new evidence, including subpoenaed bank records and thousands of emails from the campaign and the Trump transition. 

In just the last few weeks, his prosecutors have begun questioning Republican National Committee staffers about the party digital operation that worked with the Trump campaign to target voters in key swing states. They are seeking to determine if the joint effort was related to the activities of Russian trolls and bots aimed at influencing the American electorate, according to two of the sources. 

In what is potentially another ominous sign for the White House, the lawyer for Jared Kushner, the president’s son in law and senior adviser who was in charge of the campaign’s digital operation, recently began searching for a crisis public relations firm to handle press inquiries — a step frequently taken by people who believe they may be facing criminal charges. (Kushner has denied all wrongdoing, and his lawyer, Abbe Lowell, has said he is cooperating with the Mueller investigation.)

And then there is this:

The investigation will reportedly seek to determine whether the Trump campaign and the RNC worked in conjunction with Russian-backed social media accounts that posted false or inflammatory political content. Business Insider's Natasha Bertrand pointed out that Russian hackers reportedly stole private voter records from several state and local election boards throughout the United States during the 2016 election. Curious minds in Congress have wanted to know about the fate of those stolen records since June. 

Now, Mueller is reportedly considering the possibility that the Trump campaign and the RNC coordinated their voter outreach in swing states using Russian-acquired information. "Investigators have been looking into whether Russia provided the campaign with voter information stolen by Russian hackers," Bertrand explained, "and whether the Trump campaign helped Russia target its political ads to specific demographics and voting precincts." 

This of course explains why the Trump supporters have come out en masse to try and discredit the FBI, Mueller, and this investigation.

I cannot even imagine what Trump will do when his handlers are no longer able to placate him and convince him that everything will be alright in the end.

Trump is going to lose what little is left of his mind, and that really could put this country in grave danger.

I had kind of hoped that the Republicans would at some point recognize that protecting this president, while attacking the intelligence and law enforcement agencies that are supposed to protect us, was an untenable position to take.

However if Mueller uncovers evidence that the RNC colluded with Russia, I can no longer hold out any hope of that realization ever occurring.

Do you want to see Jared Kushner get humiliated on live TV? Sure you do.

Ouch!

Here is a breakdown courtesy of Washington Journals:  

Kushner made an appearance at the Saban Forum as part of his role as lead U.S. negotiator for Middle East peace — a job for which he has neither the qualifications nor aptitude. 

Speaking on live television with Haim Saban, the forum founder and an Israeli-American telecom billionaire, Kushner seemed as if he thought he was in safe territory. 

Saban has made clear that his global political priority is Israeli security, and Kushner and Trump have actually sabotaged the peace process in order to give symbolic victories to his home country. Saban let Kushner play expert for one full minute, listening to him rattle off a laundry list of Middle-Eastern issues — as though he were diagnosing a complex problem when he was really giving a third grade report — before he had heard enough. 

“I understand that,” Saban said with a chuckle. “But, to achieve that, the team has in it an entrepreneur, a real estate lawyer, a bankruptcy lawyer. I don’t know how you’ve lasted eight months in this lineup, but that’s for another day. And it’s impressive that it’s still going! There’s not a Middle East macher [Yiddish for expert] in this group, so, I mean, how do you operate with people who basically, you know…with all due respect, a bunch of Orthodox Jews who have no idea about anything?” 

And Saban was just getting started. Sure, he and Kushner may be ostensibly on the same pro-Israel side, but Saban is not an idiot. He understands that putting dangerously unqualified people into positions of real power is a threat to everybody. It’s something only the most deeply entrenched factions of Donald Trump’s base have yet to figure out.

"I don’t know how you’ve lasted eight months in this lineup, but that’s for another day."

That's a burn that will leave a mark. 

 Apparently nobody really takes this administration, or Jared Kushner, seriously. 

"Very senior member" of Trump Campaign named in Flynn guilty plea is son-in-law Jared Kushner. Update!

NBC News: “very senior member” named in Flynn guilty plea is Jared Kushner pic.twitter.com/tnPPCV0BlU

— TheBeat w/Ari Melber (@TheBeatWithAri) December 1, 2017

Courtesy of CNN:

Jared Kushner is the "very senior member" of President Donald Trump's transition team" who directed incoming national security adviser Michael Flynn to contact the Russian ambassador to the United States and other countries about a UN Security Council vote on Israeli settlements, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN. 

The court filings from Flynn's plea hearing Friday say a "very senior member" of Trump's transition team asked Flynn to contact officials from UN Security Council countries, including Russia, to learn where each country stood on the vote on a resolution condemning Israeli settlement activity. 

An attorney for Kushner did not respond to a request for comment.

And that means he is "Guilty, Guilty, Guilty!"

So that's part of why Mueller offered Flynn a plea deal, to get to Kusnher.

Now who will Kushner have to give up to get HIS pleas deal?

Oh, I think we know the answer to that.

I don't know about all of you but I never expected Santa to start delivering the items on my wish list quite this early.

Update: Apparently Trump suspected for weeks that Flynn had flipped on him.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:   

For weeks, Trump has vented privately to advisers and confidants about his anxiety over signs that Flynn had flipped. He noted the possibility that Flynn had “turned on me,” three sources close to the president independently recall him saying. These sources had relayed details of these conversations to The Daily Beast over the course of the past week. 

Trump’s fears came into sharp focus this past month, as several media outlets began to report that Flynn appeared to be cooperating with special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into alleged Russian meddling in the 2016 election. 

The president—an avid and voracious consumer of Twitter and cable news—began privately fuming, according to an administration official and two outside allies of Trump. Two of the three sources noted that it sounded at times as if Trump felt personally hurt by the prospect that someone whom he admired professionally and liked personally had potentially turned. 

Sources said that President Trump’s flourish in his Thanksgiving speech to members of the U.S. Coast Guard—during which he said, “You never know about an ally. An ally can turn”—was intended as not-so-subtle jab at his former national security adviser.

By the way if you are starting to get a little tired of popcorn, might I suggest putting a little cheddar flavoring or caramel coating to spice things up again.

After all it appears that there are buckets and buckets of popcorn in our future.

Mueller Time Update: Special Counsel questions Jared Kushner about meeting with Russian ambassador as new evidence points to deal with Michael Flynn.

Courtesy of the New York Times:

President Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, Jared Kushner, met this month with investigators working for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, and answered questions about a meeting with a Russian ambassador during the presidential transition, according to a person briefed on the investigation. 

The questions focused on a meeting in December between Mr. Kushner, the ambassador and Michael T. Flynn, who at the time was the president’s incoming national security adviser, the person said on Wednesday. 

Prosecutors also asked Mr. Kushner about other interactions between Mr. Flynn and the Russian government, the person briefed on the investigation said. 

It appears that Mueller's team is now zeroing in on the meetings that may provide the most evidence of collusion, and this one becomes even more interesting when you read this about Flynn's upcoming grand jury testimony.

Courtesy of CNN:  

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team has postponed an anticipated grand jury testimony linked to his investigation into Michael Flynn amid growing indications of possible plea deal discussions. 

Additional witnesses were expected to be questioned soon including a public relations consultant hired by Flynn's lobbying firm who was given an early December date deadline to appear before the grand jury, according to a person at the company. 

Ahead of the delay, the impression was that the testimony needed to happen soon, the source said. 

"Time seems to be of the essence," said the source at Sphere Consulting, the PR firm where the consultant worked. 

The grand jury testimony was postponed, the person said, with no reason given. There could be many reasons for a delay, including scheduling issues.

One of which is of course a plea deal which would mean that Flynn is spilling his guts and that Mueller is comparing his testimony against that provided by Kushner in those recent meetings. 

There has been quite a lot of talk about a possible subpoena headed Kushner's way in the near future, and it appears that may not have been such idle gossip.

It also appears that this investigation is in no way going to be over anytime soon, so I guess we can all look forward to watching Trump "blow a gasket."

Is Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner really cooperating with the Russian investigations? Because it does not appear that Jared Kushner is really cooperating with the Russian investigations.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) and ranking member Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) on Thursday disclosed that White House senior adviser Jared Kushner received an email about WikiLeaks in the lead-up to the 2016 presidential election. 

The two senators sent a letter to Kushner's lawyer Thursday demanding additional documents from Trump's son-in-law as part of the committee's ongoing investigation of Russia's election interference. 

In the letter, Grassley and Feinstein say Kushner received an email about WikiLeaks in September 2016 that he passed on to an official within President Trump’s campaign, in addition to communication about a “Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite." 

“For example, other parties have produced September 2016 email communications to Mr. Kushner concerning WikiLeaks, which Мr. Kushner then forwarded to another campaign official,” the letter reads. 

“Likewise, other parties have produced documents concerning a ‘Russian backdoor overture and dinner invite’ which Mr. Kushner also forwarded," the letter says. "And still others have produced communications with Sergei Millian, copied to Mr. Kushner. Again, these do not appear in Mr. Kushner’s production despite being responsive to the second request. You also have not produced any phone records that we presume exist and would relate to Mr. Kushner’s communications regarding several requests.”

Wait, an email about Wikileaks, a "back door" contact with Russia?

Yeah, those seem like things the investigators are going to want to see.

But wait, there's more.

Courtesy of Raw Story: 

Among the revelations from Congress’ news blast claiming the president’s aide and son-in-law Jared Kushner failed to provide documents about an alleged “Russian backdoor overture” is a smaller — but still controversial — contact he had with a Belarusian-American businessman. 

Discussing the findings from a letter sent to Kushner’s lawyers by the Senate Judiciary Committee, Business Insider’s Natasha Bertrand told MSNBC host Chris Hayes that the lawmakers called the young real estate magnate out for failing to disclose that he’d been copied on emails from a businessman Sergei Millian. 

Millian, who founded the Russia-America Chamber of Commerce trade group, has claimed to have a business relationship with Donald Trump. He is also the alleged source of the rumor that Trump once hired prostitutes in Moscow to urinate on a bed that gave the infamous Fusion GPS document the nickname “golden showers dossier.” 

Millian’s name has appeared multiple times in 2017, most recently in relation to former Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos. The reports from the Senate Judiciary Committee also claim that Millian was in regular contact with Papadopoulos after the latter tried to set up a meeting with him, Bertrand said.

If this plot thickens anymore we may have to place it on a diet.

Damn!

Melania Trump came to Alaska?

Courtesy of ADN: 

First lady Melania Trump landed Friday morning at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage for a jet refueling stop that coincided with a military celebration. 

A security-screened crowd packed into Arctic Oasis Community Center, which serves the base as a family gym, indoor playground, hair salon, arcade and more. Trump arrived with a traveling team that included step son-in-law Jared Kushner on an Air Force jet from Beijing on their way back to Washington, D.C., after touring Asia with President Donald Trump.

The first lady spent less than an hour at a preplanned event to celebrate families of active-duty members that included arts and crafts, stories and games. It occurred on the observed holiday for Veterans Day, which falls on Saturday this year. Kushner stopped in as well, but was not front and center the way Melania Trump was. 

"JBER Welcomes The First Lady," said a hand-painted red banner decorated with stars taped to the lockers. 

People held their phones over their heads and crushed up against barricades to document the moment. Some were trying for good shots of their children, handpicked to show the first lady activities including making rainbows in jars and creating decorative fish from plastic jewels and CDs. Retired military people came and active duty ones too.

Of course they were handpicked. Can't have any of those nasty kids of liberal parents getting close to the First Hostage.

I wonder if Melania felt at home here in our frigid little state?

After all this is a state fairly bulging with sexual abuse victims, and she is married to most famous abuser on the planet.

P.S. By the way I think the reason I did not know this earlier, is that our local news has turned to shit and I have been boycotting it for several years now.

Former DNC Chairman, Howard Dean, pretty confident that Jared Kushner will soon also be indicted.

Howard Dean: ‘Jared Kushner will be indicted for money laundering’ and ‘the next step will be Trump family’#TrumpRussia pic.twitter.com/qGIc7SO61r

— PoliticsVideoChannel (@politvidchannel) November 5, 2017

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Former Democratic National Committee (DNC) chairman Howard Dean said he thinks there's a good chance President Trump's son-in-law, White House adviser Jared Kushner, will be indicted. 

“I expect there’s a good likelihood Jared Kushner will be indicted for money laundering,” Dean said Sunday on MSNBC. 

“And then we’re going to have to see how far the Russian involvement goes. This is serious business. These people are undermining our democracy.” 

Dean said it appears special counsel Robert Mueller is investigating whether President Trump "engaged with a foreign power in order to get where he got." 

"That's a very serious matter for this country," Dean said. 

Dean also said he thinks Mueller is working his way up from the bottom. The former DNC chairman expects that eventually "either the Flynns are going to plead guilty or they're going to ... cooperate for some leniency." 

"And the next step is going to be the Trump family itself," he said.

Now you might consider simply dismissing Dean's statement as wishful thinking, after all he is not an investigative journalist or prosecutor, but then there is this recent revelation courtesy of The Daily Beast:  

The so-called Paradise Papers were leaked to the German newspaper Süddeutsche Zeitung, the same publication that obtained the “Panama Papers.” Süddeutsche Zeitung shared the new documents with the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which led a global effort of 96 media organizations from 67 countries to pore through the records. The findings were published on Sunday. The documents show that many of the wealthy individuals Trump brought into his administration have worked to legally store their money in offshore havens where they would be free from taxation in the United States. Trump has promised repeatedly to “drain the swamp,” in condemning the idea that well-connected individuals in Washington, D.C., preserve their own interests at the expense of the rest of the country.

Top White House adviser Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, is also implicated. The documents reveal that Russian tech leader Yuri Milner invested $850,000 in a startup called Cadre that Kushner co-founded in 2014. 

Milner has long had a reputation in Silicon Valley as a big-league investor; his firm at one point owned major chunks of both Facebook and Twitter. But Milner was never considered particularly Kremlin-connected. These new documents call that reputation into question. The investing arm of Gazprom, the state-backed energy company, financed a share of Facebook worth up to $1 billion; a Kremlin-owned bank invested $191 million into a Milner firm, and some of that money was then injected into Twitter. 

Despite Milner’s investment in his startup, Kushner said in July that he told the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door meeting that he never “relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector.”

Well gee, apparently that's not true.

Also keep in mind that Kushner was in attendance at that Trump Tower meeting where Junior offered to change policies in exchange for dirt on Hillary Clinton. 

So would it be any surprise if Robert Mueller indicted Jared Kushner sometime soon?

Nope, but it would be a surprise if he didn't.

Jared Kushner has handed over documents to the Robert Mueller investigation.

Courtesy of CNN: 

Jared Kushner has turned over documents in recent weeks to special counsel Robert Mueller as investigators have begun asking in witness interviews about Kushner's role in the firing of FBI Director James Comey, CNN has learned. 

Mueller's investigators have expressed interest in Kushner, President Donald Trump's son-in-law and a White House senior adviser, as part of its probe into Russian meddling, including potential obstruction of justice in Comey's firing, sources familiar with the matter said. 

Their questions about Kushner signal that Mueller's investigators are reaching the President's inner circle and have extended beyond the 2016 campaign to actions taken at the White House by high-level officials. It is not clear how Kushner's advice to the President might relate to the overall Russia investigation or potential obstruction of justice. 

Sources close to the White House say that based on their knowledge, Kushner is not a target of the investigation. 

Kushner voluntarily turned over documents he had from the campaign and the transition, and these related to any contacts with Russia, according to a source familiar with the matter. The documents are similar to the ones Kushner gave to congressional investigators.

Of course the White House is going to say that Kushner is not a target of this investigation, just like they keep saying that there is no real evidence of collusion.

However I would suggest that with Mueller now focusing on many of those who are, or were at one time, the closest to Donald Trump, such as Kushner, his former bodyguard, and Reince Priebus, that it is only a matter of time before his sons, Ivanka, and Trump himself find themselves answering pointed questions about who knew what when.

In fact Trump seems prepared to blame everything on Kushner in order to deflect attention away from his family:

A seething President Trump is placing blame for the current state of the widening Russia investigation on his son-in-law Jared Kushner, according to a report on Wednesday. 

The charges against former campaign chairman Paul Manafort, which Trump himself said happened “long before” he joined the eventual GOP nominees team, should also worry, not relieve the President, according to former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. 

“Here’s what Manafort’s indictment tells me: Mueller is going to go over every financial dealing of Jared Kushner and the Trump Organization,” said former Trump campaign aide Sam Nunberg. “Trump is at 33 percent in Gallup. You can’t go any lower. He’s f---ed.”

 “Jared is the worst political adviser in the White House in modern history,” Nunberg said. 

“I’m only saying publicly what everyone says behind the scenes at Fox News, in conservative media, and the Senate and Congress.” 

Even supporters of Trump have to admit by now that the noose is clearly tightening.

And if Trump actually throws Kushner, who knows where all the bodies are buried, under the bus, that will likely signal the end of the Trump presidency.