What Does Preet Bharara Know? Does The NY Times Know It Too? And If So, Who Else?

12 Comments

1. 

   Arthur Gilroy on March 11, 2017 at 3:52 pm

   Yer FIRED!!!” Said The Big Bossman!!!”

   That’s Bannon, of course.

   Or Trump.

   Or maybe even Putin.

   Who knows!!!???

   Whomever…

   Like I said:

   

   So much for the smokesreen…

   Read on:

   From the NY Times, literally minutes after I posted the above article.

   Preet Bharara Is Fired After Refusing to Step Down as U.S. Attorney

   Preet Bharara, the Manhattan federal prosecutor who was asked by President Trump to remain in his post shortly after the election, was fired on Saturday after he refused an order to submit his resignation.

   Mr. Bharara’s dismissal capped an extraordinary showdown in which a political appointee who was named by Mr. Trump’s predecessor, President Barack Obama, declined an order to submit a resignation.

   “I did not resign. Moments ago I was fired. Being the US Attorney in SDNY will forever be the greatest honor of my professional life,” Mr. Bharara wrote on his personal Twitter feed, which he set up in the last two weeks.

   Mr. Bharara was among 46 holdover Obama appointees who were called by the acting deputy attorney general on Friday and told to immediately submit resignations and plan to clear out of their offices. But Mr. Bharara, who was called to Trump Tower for a meeting with the incoming president in late November 2016, declined to do so.

   —snip—

   Betcha he’s the only one to do so.

   Betcha.

   Like I said…so much for the smokescreen.

   Now the leaks are gonna hit the fan.

   Watch.

   More:

   Assemblyman Steven F. McLaughlin, a Republican who was fond of calling for draining the swamp in Albany long before Mr. Trump embraced that expression, had urged Mr. Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions to reconsider on Friday.

   “Big mistake,” he wrote on Twitter.

   He got that right].

   If Bharara has the goods on Trump?

   Big mistake!!!

   The Southern District of New York, which Mr. Bharara has overseen since 2009, encompasses Manhattan, Mr. Trump’s home before he was elected president, as well as the Bronx, Westchester, and other counties north of New York City.

   Mr. Trump last weekend accused former President Barack Obama of wiretapping Trump Tower in Manhattan, an allegation he has yet to back up.

   But federal investigators have been examining whether there was a connection between Russian officials and the Trump campaign. Intelligence officials believe that the hacking of emails belonging to the Democratic National Committee and campaign officials for Hillary Clinton was orchestrated by the Kremlin.

   It is on, now.

   Watch.

   AG

2. 

   mino on March 11, 2017 at 3:58 pm

   First, everyone can stop pretending that these appointments of the executive are NOT political.  Sheesh.

   • 

     Arthur Gilroy on March 11, 2017 at 4:19 pm

     This is way more important than that, Mino. I mean…anybody with an ounce of brains and a dollop of attention already understands that!

     This is about impeachment battlelines being set up.

     Watch.

     ASG

3. 

   Arthur Gilroy on March 11, 2017 at 4:56 pm

   From Bloomberg News, this time.

   Trump Fires Wall Street Enforcer Bharara Who Refused to Quit

   Notice the second sub-headline:

   

   It appears again later on in the story. (Emphasis mine.):

   In November, Bharara said shortly after meeting with Sessions and Trump that he was asked to stay on in the new administration and had agreed to do so. The move raises questions about whether the relationship changed, and is likely to call attention to the cases that Bharara’s office is handling.

   And is immediately amplified:

   What role, if any, Bharara’s team is playing in the multiple investigations of Russian influence in the 2016 presidential campaign, Russian contacts by Trump aides, and Michael Flynn’s actions leading up to and while serving as national security adviser is unclear. Many of the principals were working in or based in New York.

   —snip—

   Bharara’s office also was investigating a bank that Trump often had worked with, Deutsche Bank AG, over allegations that it helped Russians get money out of the country.

   “…if any!!!”

   Snort!!!

   Drip, drip, drippity drip, drip, drip.

   And another input from Charles Schumer:

   The Senate’s top Democrat, Chuck Schumer of New York, said the attorney general’s move to purge U.S. prosecutors would interrupt investigations and hinder the department’s work.

   “While it’s true that presidents from both parties made their own choices for U.S. attorney positions across the country, they have always done so in an orderly fashion that doesn’t put ongoing investigations at risk,” he said in a statement.

   And more:

   Bharara’s departure may mean some of the most prominent and difficult Justice Department investigations are disrupted. They include inquiries into Deutsche Bank’s handling of “mirror trades” that helped Russian clients convert rubles into Western currency…

   Plus some artful anti-Russian language use of the word “purge”…a codeword for Stalinesque political actions:

   While incoming presidents, most notably Bill Clinton, have replaced U.S. attorneys before, the new purge comes in a politically charged atmosphere as Democrats call for a special counsel to look into the Trump camp’s relationships with Russia during the presidential campaign.

   `Purge These Saboteurs’

   Sessions, who has recused himself from the Russia matter, told a conservative radio host on March 9 that he was open to naming a special counsel to look into the Justice Department under Obama. Later in the day, Sean Hannity of Fox News called for the Justice Department to be swept of Obama holdovers.

   “It’s time for the Trump administration to purge these saboteurs before it’s too late,” Hannity said.

   Very nice, Bloomberg propaganda people!!!

   Ignoring the irony of a Bloomberg publication pumping someone up for being a “Wall Street Enforcer”…hard to ignore, I realize, but…the PermaGov media forces are all over this one, aren’t they.

   Why, it’s almost as if they some kind of…foreknowledge..about the whole situation.

   New question:

   Who’s the mole in the Trump Org.???

   Well…who’s closest to the action that has kept his hands cleanest and stands to gain the most by a Trump impeachment??

   Yup.

   You got it.

   Pence.

   Watch.

   He’ll get his head on that piece of U.S. currency eventually.

   He was born for it.

   

   Watch.

   AG

   • 

     karl pearson on March 11, 2017 at 6:00 pm

     Now we know that Pence is not even worth 2 cents. LOL

     • 

       Marie3 on March 11, 2017 at 8:35 pm

       Wonder if Trump or some on his team appreciate that Pence is a weasel.  Unless or until a solid majority of the establishment insiders put their weight behind Pence (not an attractive alternative because he could be even more dangerous to them), Pence is playing a risky game.  One that could take down himself, Trump, and the party.  But only for two to four years unless a real opposition emerges.  Then they would wander in the wilderness for a very long period of time.

       • 

         Arthur Gilroy on March 11, 2017 at 9:08 pm

         It may dawn on them with time.

         Too late, probably.

         AG

         • 

           Marie3 on March 11, 2017 at 10:04 pm

           Off the Trump is great train already?

           Pence is dumb; so, and again absent the real powers in the GOP rallying behind him behind closed doors, still plenty of time to sideline him before he can inflict any serious stab in the back wounds to team Trump.  

         • 

           Arthur Gilroy on March 11, 2017 at 10:31 pm

           Dunno how “dumb”‘ he really is, Marie. He doesn’t seem to say much these days. One of the greatest dumb acts I have ever seen was that of a colleague on the NYC freelance commercial musician circuit who said “Never miss a chance to keep your mouth shut.”

           He worked his ass off.

           AG

         • 

           Marie3 on March 12, 2017 at 12:03 am

           Good advice, but Pence is dumb and lacks that cunning cleverness that GWB and Trump have.

4. 

   Arthur Gilroy on March 11, 2017 at 10:21 pm

   I want to add a separate possibility here:

   Steve Bannon has been quoted as saying saying that he essentially wants to “blow up the government.” He denies it. On the evidence? That is exactly what he is about, and I would bet my paltry life savings that he was drunk or otherwise high when he let slip the truth of the matter while talking to Ronald Radosh, the reporter quoted below.

   Or…Radosh and whomever he really represents were psychic in their anticipation of Bannon’s moves in the future.

   Here is the disputed quote…and more…from The Daily Beast (One of my least favorite leftiness publications, by the way. Alt. left, to coin a phrase.) :

   I met Steve Bannon–the executive director of Breitbart.com who’s now become the chief executive of the Trump campaign, replacing the newly resigned Paul Manafort–at a book party held in his Capitol Hill townhouse on Nov. 12, 2013. We were standing next to a picture of his daughter, a West Point graduate, who at the time was a lieutenant in the 101 Airborne Division serving in Iraq. The picture was notable because she was sitting on what was once Saddam Hussein’s gold throne with a machine gun on her lap. “I’m very proud of her,” Bannon said.

   Then we had a long talk about his approach to politics. He never called himself a “populist” or an “American nationalist,” as so many think of him today. “I’m a Leninist,” Bannon proudly proclaimed.

   Shocked, I asked him what he meant.

   “Lenin,” he answered, “wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” Bannon was employing Lenin’s strategy for Tea Party populist goals. He included in that group the Republican and Democratic Parties, as well as the traditional conservative press.

   I emailed Bannon last week recalling our conversation, telling him that I planned to write about it and asking him if he wanted to comment on or correct my account of it. He responded:

   “I don’t remember meeting you and don’t remember the conversation. And as u can tell from the past few days I am not doing media.”

   Riding on the Metro to the party, I read an article that had just been posted on National Review Online and in TownHall.com  by Thomas Sowell, the conservative economist, in which he opposed the tactics used by the Tea Party in shutting down the government. He favored the intent of the Tea Party, but strongly opposed its tactics. “The only question,” he wrote, “is about the tactics, the Tea Party’s attempt to defund Obamacare.” Their actions did not fit the standard set by Edmund Burke, he wrote, of a “rational endeavour.” There was no chance of making a dent in ObamaCare or defunding it when Democrats controlled the Senate. and the public created a “backlash against that futile attempt,” so that “there was virtually nothing to gain politically and much to lose.”

   I then asked Bannon whether or not he had read Sowell’s piece, since Bannon was in favor of the very Tea Party tactic that Sowell had criticized.
   “National Review and The Weekly Standard,” he said, “are both left-wing magazines, and I want to destroy them also.” He added that “no one reads them or cares what they say.” His goal was to bring down the entire establishment including the leaders of the Republican Party in Congress. He went on to tell me that he was the East Coast coordinator of all the Tea Party groups. His plan was to get its candidates nominated on the Republican ticket, and then to back campaigns that they could win. Then, Bannon said, when elected they would be held accountable to fight for the agenda he and the Tea Party stood for.

   If they didn’t, “we would force them out of office and oppose them when the next election for their seats came around.”

   That, essentially, was the tactic employed when Eric Cantor was ousted by a far right candidate, virtually unknown college economics professor Dave Brat, in his Virginia district’s primary. It was also the path Donald Trump’s supporters took in Wisconsin, when hoping to duplicate their successful tactics in Virginia, they ran a candidate in the Wisconsin Republican primary against Speaker Paul Ryan in his own district. There are a few Republicans that Bannon does respect. One of them is Rep. Louis Gohmert, the fiery congressman from Texas, who was also at the party. Gohmert, who is part of the self-proclaimed anti-establishment wing of the Republican Party, was an ally of Cruz in the government shutdown.

   Trump’s decision to take on Bannon indicates that he wants to wage his campaign along the lines laid down by him–that of destroying the Republican leadership and the Party as we know it. Trump’s behavior thus far has been compatible with Bannon’s belief in Leninist tactics. As the Bolshevik leader once said, “The art of any propagandist and agitator consists in his ability to find the best means of influencing any given audience, by presenting a definite truth, in such a way as to make it most convincing, most easy to digest, most graphic, and most strongly impressive.”

   Only one question remains. Knowing this, why do leaders like Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell, and others, who regularly condemn Trump’s statements but yet still endorse him, stick with such a self-defeating approach? They will only end up helping Bannon and company cast them into oblivion and finish their hostile take-over of the GOP.

   I think Ryan, McConnell and others have finally awakened to Bannon’s true intent and have joined the Dems in sheer self-defense. The ongoing downgrading of the State Department and this latest firing move are simply the latest elements in the tactical tools that are being used to achieve Bannon’s strategic goals.

   Bharara? Maybe just another lucky casualty in this overall movement.

   Watch.

   AG

   • 

     Marie3 on March 12, 2017 at 12:18 am

     Why does he cite Lenin?  He wasn’t aiming to destroy a government that functioned in some ways for the benefit of the people.  Perhaps Bannon thinks referencing Lenin makes him look educated, but he’s really quoting Grover Norquist who is idolized by the right.

     That said, agree that Bannon’s strategy is to slash and burn at a much quicker pace than the congressional rightwingers have been doing.  The McConnell camp is smart enough to know that such a pace will have significant blowback and he doesn’t want to lose his job or have his legacy trashed by it.