James Comey's book falls into the hands of reporters days before publication. And here we go.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Donald J. Trump asked Director James B. Comey of the F.B.I. to investigate and knock down a lurid but unverified report that placed Mr. Trump years earlier in a Moscow hotel suite with prostitutes, explaining to Mr. Comey that the fantastic story was untrue and was painful and distressing to his wife, Melania Trump.

By Mr. Comey’s accounts, Mr. Trump, then the president-elect, disputed the so-called Steele dossier, a document compiled by a former British intelligence officer that detailed an allegation in which Mr. Trump watched prostitutes urinate on each other. Mr. Comey writes that Mr. Trump insisted that “there’s no way I would let people pee on each other around me” in part because he is a self-professed germophobe. “No way.”

Here was Comey's take on Trump's overall personality: 

“This president is unethical, and untethered to truth and institutional values,” Mr. Comey writes in the book, saying his service to Mr. Trump recalled for him the days when he investigated the mob in New York. “The silent circle of assent. The boss in complete control. The loyalty oaths. The us-versus-them worldview. The lying about all things, large and small, in service to some code of loyalty that put the organization above morality and above the truth.”

Nothing startling about this revelation, we have all seen evidence of that ourselves.

Comey also makes a few other observations:  

“His face appeared slightly orange, with bright white half-moons under his eyes where I assumed he placed small tanning goggles,” Mr. Comey writes of his impressions during that first in-person session. He said Mr. Trump had “impressively coifed, bright blond hair, which upon close inspection looked to be all his.”

Comey also mentions that Trump is smaller in stature than he first thought, and had smallish hands.

He also writes that Trump  builds a “a cocoon of alternative reality” around himself and those who serve him.

Much of the book is devoted to Comey's fear about how the Trump  presidency is damaging the country: 

“We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country,” he writes, “with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized and unethical behavior is ignored, excused or rewarded.”

Comey also touches on why he felt he had to announce that the Hillary Clinton email case was reopened only a little over a week before the election.

Courtesy of The Hill: 

Comey has said that he made the public announcement in part because he was concerned concealing the FBI's investigation would imply bias. However, in the book Comey acknowledges that he assumed at the time that Clinton would win the election. 

“Certainly not consciously, but I would be a fool to say it couldn’t have had an impact on me,” he wrote of the assumption, according to ABC News. "It is entirely possible my concern about making her an illegitimate president by concealing the restarted investigation bore greater weight than it would have if the election appeared closer or if Donald Trump were ahead in all polls. But I don’t know.”

So it appears that Comey was concerned about protecting the FBI's reputation, and felt that Clinton was far enough in the lead that his announcement would not change the outcome.

If only that had been true.

There were reports that the Trump team was coming up with a strategy to deal with Comey's book, but it appears that Trump himself went with "unhinged."

James Comey is a proven LEAKER & LIAR. Virtually everyone in Washington thought he should be fired for the terrible job he did-until he was, in fact, fired. He leaked CLASSIFIED information, for which he should be prosecuted. He lied to Congress under OATH. He is a weak and.....

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018

....untruthful slime ball who was, as time has proven, a terrible Director of the FBI. His handling of the Crooked Hillary Clinton case, and the events surrounding it, will go down as one of the worst “botch jobs” of history. It was my great honor to fire James Comey!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 13, 2018

Trump might be right about that "botch jobs" comment as anything that might have helped to get HIM elected is likely going to be seen as a humongous mistake.

Per Trump's request Jeff Sessions speeds up investigation into Hilary Clinton's e-mails. Can you say "distraction?"

Courtesy of Newsweek:  

Attorney General Jeff Sessions has answered President Donald Trump’s demands for America’s top law enforcement agency to speed up the delivery to Congress of more than a million documents about an FBI investigation of Hillary Clinton’s email server. 

The Department of Justice and the FBI asked Chicago prosecutor John Lausch to oversee the redaction and production of documents over the weekend. Many of these concern the FBI’s investigation of Clinton’s use of a private email server while serving as secretary of state.

This March, the House Judiciary Committee issued a subpoena for 1.2 million documents connected to the investigation and other matters—including potential abuses of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act during the investigation of the Trump campaign and the firing of former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. The committee’s chairman, Republican Representative Robert Goodlatte of Virginia, said last month that just a few thousand documents have been delivered following his original requests last year. The subpoena is part of a joint investigation with the House Oversight Committee.

Trump took to Twitter (of course) to bitch about how long this process was taking.

What does the Department of Justice and FBI have to hide? Why aren’t they giving the strongly requested documents (unredacted) to the HOUSE JUDICIARY COMMITTEE? Stalling, but for what reason? Not looking good!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 7, 2018

Hey as far as I am concerned fucking go for it!

How many times have they investigated Hillary now?

And there is NEVER anything revealed which would constitute criminal or unethical behaviors.

My assumption is that either Donald Trump is too deep inside the Right Wing bubble to see how transparent all of this looks to most Americans, or he is so desperate for something he can use to distract attention that he just doesn't care anymore.

NONE of this is going to slow Robert Mueller down by the way, NOR convince the media not to report on the things he uncovers during that investigation.

Trump is pissing into the wind here, and it is splashing back all over him.

Same Russian hackers from the 2016 election are now targeting companies involved with developing military technology.

Courtesy of the AP: 

Russian cyberspies pursuing the secrets of military drones and other sensitive U.S. defense technology tricked key contract workers into exposing their email to theft, an Associated Press investigation has found. 

What ultimately may have been stolen is uncertain, but the hackers clearly exploited a national vulnerability in cybersecurity: poorly protected email and barely any direct notification to victims. 

The hackers known as Fancy Bear, who also intruded in the U.S. election, went after at least 87 people working on militarized drones, missiles, rockets, stealth fighter jets, cloud-computing platforms or other sensitive activities, the AP found. 

Employees at both small companies and defense giants like Lockheed Martin Corp., Raytheon Co., Boeing Co., Airbus Group and General Atomics were targeted by the hackers. A handful of people in Fancy Bear’s sights also worked for trade groups, contractors in U.S.-allied countries or on corporate boards. 

“The programs that they appear to target and the people who work on those programs are some of the most forward-leaning, advanced technologies,” said Charles Sowell, a former senior adviser to the U.S. Office of the Director of National Intelligence, who reviewed the list of names for the AP. “And if those programs are compromised in any way, then our competitive advantage and our defense is compromised.”

But remember we don't need to implement further sanctions against Russia because "sanctions on specific entities or individuals will not need to be imposed because the legislation is, in fact, serving as a deterrent."

I guess somebody need to inform Fancy Bear of that "fact."

We are so fucked.

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 DOJ is going to reopen the investigation into Hillary's emails. They should call it "Operation Smokescreen."

And here we go again.

Courtesy of the Daily Beast:  

Justice Department officials are taking a fresh look at Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server while she served as secretary of State, The Daily Beast has learned. 

An ally of Attorney General Jeff Sessions who is familiar with the thinking at the Justice Department’s Washington headquarters described it as an effort to gather new details on how Clinton and her aides handled classified material. Officials’ questions include how much classified information was sent over Clinton’s server; who put that information into an unclassified environment, and how; and which investigators knew about these matters and when. The Sessions ally also said officials have questions about immunity agreements that Clinton aides may have made. 

A former senior DOJ official familiar with department leadership’s thinking said officials there are acutely aware of demands from President Donald Trump that they look into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State—and that they lock up her top aide, Huma Abedin.

Just like clockwork.

Trump and his White House are under all kinds of increased scrutiny, so they throw out their favorite distraction. 

Millions of taxpayer dollars, and thousands of man hours have already been wasted on this bullshit, and the Republicans came up empty.

To do this again, while there are serious investigations concerning their man in the White House, is a nakedly transparent attempt at distraction.

Donald Trump takes to Twitter to suggest that a Clinton aide, and possibly James Comey, should be investigated and arrested by the "Deep State Justice Department." Update!

Crooked Hillary Clinton’s top aid, Huma Abedin, has been accused of disregarding basic security protocols. She put Classified Passwords into the hands of foreign agents. Remember sailors pictures on submarine? Jail! Deep State Justice Dept must finally act? Also on Comey & others

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

Courtesy of Politico:  

The emails to which Trump referred, released last week in response to a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the conservative group Judicial Watch, were the same batch uncovered during the final weeks of the 2016 presidential election. The FBI’s disclosure to Congress that it was examining the emails in relation to its closed investigation of Clinton’s use of a personal email server during her tenure as secretary of state offered Trump a powerful line of attack in the 2016 campaign’s closing days, and Clinton has blamed her loss in large part on the FBI’s resurfacing of the email scandal. 

The FBI’s review of the emails discovered on Weiner’s computer revealed nothing to change the bureau’s assessment that Clinton’s homebrew email system did not rise to the level of criminal charges, but their release has nonetheless prompted fresh calls from Trump and his allies for continued probing of Clinton and her team.

Let me reiterate once again that Hillary Clinton's email server was NOT hacked.

However the State Department, the DNC, the NSC, the RNC, John Podesta, and even the White House were all hacked. So exactly how did Huma Abedin forwarding the emails to her laptop to be printed off, make them any more vulnerable to hackers?

This is just Donald Trump once again going after his perceived political enemies again.

And speaking of going after his perceived enemies, for what exact reason would the Justice Department be investigating James Comey?

Because he failed to stop the Michael Flynn investigation, that has now led to a plea deal with Robert Mueller? Or is it because he refused to pledge his allegiance to Donald Trump when asked?

Speaking of Trump tweets, the imbecile also just took credit for keeping the skies safer in 2017.

Since taking office I have been very strict on Commercial Aviation. Good news - it was just reported that there were Zero deaths in 2017, the best and safest year on record!

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

Apparently Trump does not realize that aerodynamic designs and powerful engines keep commercial planes aloft, not mountains upon mountains of bullshit.

Update: By the way this is the email from the Abedin laptop that has Donald Trump and the Right Wing all worked up.

If you look at the bottom you will see that it say "unclassified." 

The good news is that they caught one of the guys behind that Nigerian Prince email scam. The better news is that he is not Nigerian, not a prince, and lives in Louisiana.

Courtesy of The Times-Picayune:

Slidell police say they have arrested a "Nigerian prince'' who is accused of helping scam people out of thousands of dollars. 

Michael Neu, 67, has been arrested and charged with 269 counts of wire fraud and money laundering following an 18-month-long investigation by the Slidell Police Department's Financial Crimes Division. Police said Thursday (Dec. 28) that Neu, of Slidell, is suspected of being the "middle man'' in hundreds of scams to separate people from their money. 

In the scam, an email arrives from someone claiming to be or represent a Nigerian prince who says the recipient is the beneficiary of a large sum of money - often millions of dollars -- but must first send personal financial information such a bank account number to speed the process. 

People do fall for the scam, police say. 

"Most people laugh at the thought of falling for such a fraud, but law enforcement officials report annual losses of millions of dollars to these schemes," Slidell police said in a news release.

I have different criteria for if I think you are worthy to interact with.

If you gave money to Sarah Palin, at any time, then I cannot have a conversation with you.

If you voted for Donald Trump you need to get off of my property NOW.

If you fell for this Nigerian Prince email scam, you literally may be too stupid to live on your own without some kind of adult supervision.

I mean seriously, how dumb does somebody have to be to fall for such a transparent  attempt to steal your money?

FBI issues search warrant on David A. Clarke Jr's. email account over plane altercation.

NEW: According to federal court filing made public today, the FBI has executed a search warrant on an e-mail address associated with Trump surrogate and former sheriff David A. Clarke Jr. pic.twitter.com/Q0AdDqyAaP

— NBC News (@NBCNews) December 29, 2017

Courtesy of The Daily Beast:  

The FBI investigated former Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke over a January incident with a passenger on a plane, according to a recently unsealed search warrant first spotted by the Detroit News. Clarke, a vocal Trump surrogate, had a minor disagreement with fellow passenger Dan Black on a Milwaukee-bound plane. Clarke texted one of his officers, asking him to detain Black when the plane landed. "Just a field interview, no arrest unless he becomes an asshole with your guys," Clarke texted, according to the FBI affidavit. Six officers and two police dogs met Black at the plane's exit, Black wrote in an official complaint. The affidavit also reveals that Clarke emailed subordinates asking them to post "memes and messages" including one calling Black a "snowflake" on the official Milwaukee County Sheriff's Facebook page.

Jesus! What an asshole!

But then again what would you expect from a douchebag who dresses like this?

Robert Mueller obtained thousands of Trump transition team emails during the summer and the Trump folks had no idea he had them.

Courtesy of Axios: 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller has obtained “many tens of thousands" of Trump transition emails, including emails of Jared Kushner, transition team sources tell Axios. 

Trump officials discovered Mueller had the emails when his prosecutors used them as the basis for questions to witnesses, the sources said. 

The emails include 12 accounts, one of which contains about 7,000 emails, the sources said. 

The accounts include the team's political leadership and the foreign-policy team, the sources said. 

Why it matters: 

The transition emails are said to include sensitive exchanges on matters that include potential appointments, gossip about the views of particular senators involved in the confirmation process, speculation about vulnerabilities of Trump nominees, strategizing about press statements, and policy planning on everything from war to taxes. 

“Mueller is using the emails to confirm things, and get new leads," a transition source told me.

Mueller apparently circumvented the transition team by going to the government agency that hosted their email system.

Apparently the transition team had been sifting through their own emails all of this time in preparation for a subpoena from Mueller, and taking out the ones they considered privileged or sensitive.

However unbeknownst to them Mueller has already had the emails in his possession since the summer and has been using them to crosscheck against testimony from Trump folks who have come in for questioning.

If you think that might panic the Trump team, well you are certainly right about that.

Courtesy of Politico: 

A lawyer for President Donald Trump’s transition team is accusing special counsel Robert Mueller of unlawfully obtaining tens of thousands of private emails during its investigation into Russian meddling in last year’s presidential election. 

Kory Langhofer, an Arizona-based attorney representing Trump for America, spelled out the complaint in a seven-page letter sent Saturday to the main House and Senate oversight committees where he raises potential violations of attorney-client privilege and the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unlawful search and seizure. 

Mueller’s office got the records earlier this summer from the General Services Administration, the government agency charged with holding all transition materials, even while it was “aware that the GSA did not own or control the records in question,” Langhofer wrote. 

The Trump attorney also argued that Mueller’s office has “extensively used the materials in question” during its investigation even though its prosecutors were aware some of the materials were subject to claims of attorney-client privilege and other protections.

That accusation received a response from a Mueller spokesman:  

Mueller spokesman Peter Carr defended the special counsel’s work in a statement issued just past midnight on Sunday, several hours after this story first posted. “When we have obtained emails in the course of our ongoing criminal investigation, we have secured either the account owner’s consent or appropriate criminal process,” he said.

Now I am not a lawyer but I am pretty sure that translates into "Boo hoo, you lose." 

Do not forget that Mueller's team is made up of top prosecutors who know full well what they can legally do to obtain information, and this is perfectly legal.

Now Trump's lawyers are of course going to challenge this and attack the Mueller folks for outsmarting them, but essentially, and remember I am not a lawyer, the Trump folks are fucked.

Earlier this year FBI officials sat down with Hope Hicks to warn her that Russian operatives were trying to make contact with her.

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

F.B.I. officials warned one of President Trump’s top advisers, Hope Hicks, earlier this year about repeated attempts by Russian operatives to make contact with her during the presidential transition, according to people familiar with the events. 

The Russian outreach efforts show that, even after American intelligence agencies publicly accused Moscow of trying to influence the outcome of last year’s presidential election, Russian operatives were undaunted in their efforts to establish contacts with Mr. Trump’s advisers.

After he took office, senior F.B.I. counterintelligence agents met with Ms. Hicks in the White House Situation Room at least twice, gave her the names of the Russians who had contacted her, and said that they were not who they claimed to be. The F.B.I. was concerned that the emails to Ms. Hicks may have been part of a Russian intelligence operation, and they urged Ms. Hicks to be cautious.

The meetings with Ms. Hicks, what the F.B.I. calls a “defensive briefing,” went beyond the standard security advice that senior White House officials routinely receive upon taking office. Defensive briefings are intended to warn government officials about specific concerns or risks. A lawyer for Ms. Hicks declined to comment. 

The contents of the emails to Ms. Hicks are unclear, as are the identities of the Russians who sent them. The people who described the briefing and the emails spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to openly discuss intelligence matters. The F.B.I. declined to comment.

Now some are suggesting that this indicates that the Russians were having trouble gaining access to Trump's inner circle.

However since they had already made contact with George Papadopoulos, Michael Flynn, Paul Manafort, and even Donald Trump Jr., it actually appears they had worked their way up the food chain to the one person who had interactions with Trump on a daily basis.

If they wanted Trump to get their message, then getting the opportunity to whisper sweet nothings into the ear of his Girl Friday was essentially hitting the jackpot.

The article says that there is no evidence that Hicks did anything wrong, but it also does not say whether she ever responded to the emails or forwarded them to her boss or others.

Well whatever the case, Robert Mueller was sure keen to talk to her:

On Thursday and Friday, investigators working for Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel, interviewed Ms. Hicks as part of his investigation into Russia’s efforts to influence the 2016 election and whether any of Mr. Trump’s advisers assisted the Russian campaign. It is not clear whether the Russian efforts to contact Ms. Hicks were discussed during that interview.

I have said it before but it bears repeating, Hope Hicks is likely the one person that the Mueller team should pay special attention to as I am convinced that she knows WAY more than most of Trump's associates.

Robert Mueller is now looking at the Trump Justice Department.

Courtesy of ABC News: 

Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team investigating whether President Donald Trump sought to obstruct a federal inquiry into connections between his presidential campaign and Russian operatives has now directed the Justice Department to turn over a broad array of documents, ABC News has learned.

In particular, Mueller's investigators are keen to obtain emails related to the firing of FBI Director James Comey and the earlier decision of Attorney General Jeff Sessions to recuse himself from the entire matter, according to a source who has not seen the specific request but was told about it. 

Issued within the past month, the directive marks the special counsel's first records request to the Justice Department, and it means Mueller is now demanding documents from the department overseeing his investigation.

Mueller's investigators now seek not only communications between Justice Department officials themselves, but also any communications with White House counterparts, the source said. Before this request, investigators asked former senior Justice Department officials for information from their time at the department, ABC News was told. 

The latest move suggests the Special Counsel is still actively digging into, among other matters, whether Trump or any other administration official improperly tried to influence an ongoing investigation.

Robert Mueller seems to be cutting pretty close to the bone here.

I would be very surprised if there were not incriminating emails somewhere in the Justice Department that Jeff Sessions and Donald Trump are desperate to keep out of Robert Mueller's hands.

I can almost guarantee that there will be a lack of cooperation which will tip Mueller off as to where to focus next.

Popcorn anyone?

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!

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. 

Cambridge Analytica reached out to Wikileaks for those Clinton emails only after they started working for the Trump campaign.

Alexander Nix

Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal:  

The chief executive of Cambridge Analytica contacted the founder of WikiLeaks to ask him to share Hillary Clinton -related emails at the same time that people familiar with the matter say the British data-analytics firm had begun working for President Donald Trump’s campaign. 

Cambridge Analytica CEO Alexander Nix said Thursday he asked the office that handles his speaking engagements to contact WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange in “early June 2016,” after reading a newspaper report that WikiLeaks planned to publish a trove of Clinton-related emails. He said Mr. Assange was asked “if he might share that information with us.” 

“We received a message back from them that he didn’t want to and wasn’t able to, and that was the end of the story,” Mr. Nix said at the digital conference Web Summit in Lisbon. He called the exchange “very benign.” 

When Mr. Nix’s approach to WikiLeaks was reported by The Wall Street Journal last month, it wasn’t clear whether Cambridge was working for the Trump campaign at the time. Federal Election Commission records show the first payment by the campaign to Cambridge Analytica is dated July 29, 2016.

Okay so how many people working for the Trump campaign actively tried to get those nonexistent Clinton emails now?

Five?

Six?

All of them?

To be clear the Russians only gave Wikileaks emails from John Podesta, the DNC, and the Clinton campaign.

These proved to be largely innocuous.

They NEVER got a hold of any of the emails on Hillary's private server, which once again proves the intelligence on her part of using that in the first place. 

Former Trump foreign policy adviser Carter Page admits that he totally went to Russia in 2016 to meet government officials.

What else do you want to know? Want the password to my wifi? How about my social security number?

Courtesy of the New York Times:  

Carter Page, a foreign policy adviser to the Trump presidential campaign, met Russian government officials during a July 2016 trip he took to Moscow, according to testimony he gave on Thursday to the House Intelligence Committee. 

Shortly after the trip, Mr. Page sent an email to at least one Trump campaign aide describing insights he had after conversations with government officials, legislators and business executives during his time in Moscow, according to one person familiar with the contents of the message. The email was read aloud during the closed-door testimony. 

The new details of the trip present a different picture than the account Mr. Page has given during numerous appearances in the news media in recent months and are yet another example of a Trump adviser meeting with Russians officials during the 2016 campaign. In multiple interviews with The New York Times, he had either denied meeting with any Russian government officials during the July 2016 visit or sidestepped the question, saying he met with “mostly scholars.” 

Mr. Page confirmed the meetings in an interview on Friday evening, but played down their significance. 

“I had a very brief hello to a couple of people. That was it,” he said. He said one of the people he met was a “senior person,” but would not confirm the person’s identity.

So not only did Page go to Russia while actively working with the Trump campaign, but he emailed folks in the campaign to give them a status report.

Maybe it's just me but that does not sound like the official talking points from the campaign.

By the way for Carter Page to openly admit that he made his trip and told Trump campaign personnel about it, but then be unwilling to identify who he met with, kind of makes it seem super important to find out who he met with.

Oh and while he was at it Page went ahead and confirmed that ole George Papadopoulos was telling the truth as well.

Courtesy of TPM:  

Carter Page acknowledged Friday that he was copied on an email chain in which fellow Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos suggested hooking the Trump team up with Russian government officials. 

“I was one of many people on that email chain,” the perpetually chatty Page told CNN’s Jake Tapper in an on-air interview.

Robert Mueller must love this guy.

Former Trump Campaign Adviser George Papadopoulos admits to lying about secretly attempting to set up meeting between Russian operatives and the Trump campaign. Update!

George Papadopoulos

Courtesy of NBC News: 

A former Trump campaign adviser struck a cooperation agreement with Special Counsel Robert Mueller, secretly pleading guilty three weeks ago to lying to federal agents about his contacts with Kremlin-connected Russians. 

George Papadopoulos, who joined the Trump team in spring 2016 as an energy and foreign policy expert, communicated with a "campaign supervisor" during the campaign about his attempts to arrange a meeting with the Russians to discuss U.S.-Russia ties during a Trump presidency, according to court documents. 

The supervisor, who was not named in the documents, told him, "Great work." 

He relayed to the superviser that during his communications with Russian contacts, the Russians said they had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton and thousands of emails. 

Papadopoulos lied to the FBI about the timing and nature of the communications, officials said. 

"Through his false statements and omissions, defendant ... impeded the FBI's ongoing investigation into the existence of any links or coordination between individuals associated with the Campaign and the Russian government's efforts to interfere with the 2016 presidential election," prosecutors wrote.

And now the dominoes are all starting to fall.

Oh man you just know that Trump's orange tinged sphincter is locking up tight right now.

Update: This seems like pertinent information.

George Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about contacts with an influential Russian. This is how it relates to the campaign. pic.twitter.com/iYFPGhq3Ve

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) October 30, 2017

Tsk, tsk, tsk, one should never lie to the FBI.

Makes me wonder who else lied, and when Mueller will pull the rug out from under them? 

Donald Trump pushing the State Department to release more of Hillary Clinton's emails. Can you say "distraction."

Courtesy of CNN: 

President Donald Trump has made it clear to the State Department that he wants to accelerate the release of any remaining Hillary Clinton emails in its possession as soon as possible, according to three sources familiar with the President's thinking. 

This latest move for disclosure from the State Department comes at the same time the President called upon the Justice Department to lift a gag order on a key FBI informant in an investigation into Russian efforts to gain influence in the US uranium industry during the Obama administration. 

The sources described the President's interest in the release of the emails -- and the testimony of the FBI informant -- as rooted in a commitment to "transparency," with one source adding that "the law requires cooperation with Congress and the courts."

After the initial publication of this story, one White House official confirmed the President expressed interest in the release of the Clinton emails, and later -- in a conversation with Secretary of State Rex Tillerson -- learned of the vast backlog of more than 13,000 outstanding FOIA cases. Those cases involve not just Clinton's emails but a multitude of topics -- some going back almost a decade. Trump then asked Tillerson to work to clear the backlog.

Transparency my ass.

Trump is simply looking for a way to distract from the upcoming Mueller indictments, and ongoing Russian investigations, and he knows that Clinton emails are like catnip to the media and they cannot resist rolling around in them every time a new batch is released.

Of course what we have learned from every other batch of Hillary emails that the press breathlessly awaited is that they are for the most part the most boring emails ever written.

Damn the smell of desperation in this White House must be almost overwhelming at this point.

From Hillary Clinton's book, "What Happened."

This is from page 297, in a chapter titled "Those Damn Emails."

"With respect to the potential intrusion by hostile actors, we did not find direct evidence that Secretary Clinton's personal email domain, in its various configurations since 2009, was successfully hacked."

--FBI Director James Comey, in a press conference on July 5. 2016.

A lot of people suggest that the server maintained by my husband;s office might be vulnerable to hacking. As it turned out, the State Department network and many other highly sensitive government systems, including the White House and Pentagon, were all hacked. Colin Powell's emails were hacked. But as Comey stated, there has never been any evidence that my system was ever compromised. Ironically, it turns out it may have been one the safest possible places for my email.

I wanted to share this portion with you, mostly because it was what I had been saying for more than a year. But also because it is one of the clearest signs that Hillary is treated completely differently than just about anybody else you can imagine.

If this had been a Republican who managed to outsmart the hackers and store their emails on a server that proved to be unhackable, while all around them supposedly secure servers were being hacked almost on a daily basis, the GOP would have insisted that they receive some kind of award.

But for Hillary Clinton, there is a completely different standard.

Hillary actually explains, in great detail, exactly how she first decided to use this server (Simple convenience.), which was already in place in her husband's office, and how amazed she was that it became weaponized and used against her by the Republicans.

When you read it you almost cannot believe that such a simple decision inspired so much vitriol, and even resulted in people screaming "Lock her up" at Trump campaign rallies.

Barack Obama slams Republicans for trying to once again repeal Obamacare. Update!

Courtesy of Yahoo News:  

Former President Barack Obama mocked Republicans in a speech on Wednesday for repeated efforts to repeal the Affordable Care Act, his signature health care law also known as Obamacare. 

“The legislation that we passed was full of things that still needed to be fixed,” Obama said at an event hosted by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation in New York City.

“It wasn’t perfect, but it was better,” he continued. “And when I see people trying to undo that progress for the 50th or 60th time with bills that would raise costs or reduce coverage or roll back protections for older Americans or people with preexisting conditions — the cancer survivor, the expecting mom or the child with autism or asthma, for whom coverage would once again be unattainable — it is aggravating.”

“All of this being done without any demonstrable economic or actuarial or plain common sense rationale, it frustrates,” Obama said. “It’s certainly frustrating to have to mobilize every couple of months to keep our leaders from inflicting real human suffering on our constituents.” 

Obama said Wednesday that the people who worked on drafting the Affordable Care Act weren’t just politicians and “policy wonks” but parents “who had the experience of a sick child or crushing medical bills that threatened to bankrupt them.” 

“And for the first time, more than 90 percent of Americans know the security of health insurance,” he said. “Paying more for insurance or being denied insurance because of a preexisting condition or because you are a woman, that’s not a thing anymore. We got rid of that and people are alive today because of it, and that’s progress.”

“Those of you who live in countries that already have universal health care are trying to figure out what’s the controversy here,” he said. “I am too.”

I think that these are the strongest statements that Obama has made on this topic so far, but I hope they are only the beginning because I think he really needs to fight to protect the progress he made while in office, or it will be erased for good.

The good news for him is the the Left has been mobilized: 

The liberal activists roused into the streets by President Donald Trump are revving up for one last campaign to save Obamacare. 

The sudden resurgence of Republicans’ repeal push appeared to catch Democrats and their base by surprise. But ahead of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s plans to vote next week on a new bill to dismantle the health law, the Democratic grass roots is on what one leading activist called “full war footing.”

From a new six-figure advertising campaign by the pro-Obamacare group Save My Care to a flurry of rallies planned on the ground, the left is throwing everything it can at the new repeal bill from Sens. Bill Cassidy (R-La.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.).

 "The reality is that the progressive coalition has never been more unified or determined than they are right now,” Organizing for Action spokesman Jesse Lehrich said in an interview.

Well that is good news indeed.

If you yourself have not yet joined the fight then please try to find local groups to join, or at the very least send those emails and make those phone calls to Senators, both Republican and Democrat, and tell them how important Obamacare is to you and your family.

Somebody the other day mentioned that they did not think phone calls worked, but the reports from the Senate are that they are currently overwhelmed with calls, and Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins both mentioned that phone calls and emails from their constituents helped to shape their votes last time around.

So yes, your voice does make a difference.

Update: It appears the Republicans are working hard to buy Lisa Murkowski's vote:

A Republican Senate aide told Independent Journal Review Thursday that Sens. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Bill Cassidy (R-La.) are attempting to buy Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski's support through new changes to their controversial Obamacare repeal proposal before an expected vote next week. 

According to the aide, here is a summary of what the new draft of the bill entails: 

"This draft includes 3 separate provisions benefitting Alaska.

1. Alaska (along with Hawaii) will continue to receive Obamacare’s premium tax credits while they are repealed for all other states. It appears this exemption will not affect Alaska receiving its state allotment under the new block grant in addition to the premium tax credits. 
2. Delays implementation of the Medicaid per capita caps for Alaska and Hawaii for years in which the policy would reduce their funding below what they would have received in 2020 plus CPI-M [Consumer Price Index for Medical Care].
3.  Provides for an increased federal Medicaid matching rate (FMAP) for both Alaska and Hawaii." 

This is repugnant as it would have Alaska receive special treatment while other states do without.

The ACA was set up to benefit ALL Americans not simply those living in blue states, Murkowski cannot think this is a good idea.

Alaskans are known for their generosity, to do this would be undermine our very identity.

Excellent point.

Courtesy of Reddit.

Remember if we don't laugh once in awhile then all that's left is the crying.