Last year, I started playing soccer for the first time in about thirty years in a local adult league. I had a lot of success at it, scored a lot of goals despite my decrepitude, and made it through the season in much better shape than I started it. I was hoping to play again this spring, but my boy reached the age where he could play organized baseball, was playing soccer himself, and there’s a limit to how much sports I can fit into my schedule.
I’m going to play this morning, however, and I hope a few more weeks in July before I take a much needed vacation in August. I need to stretch out for this because a 47 year old body requires this, so I don’t have time right now to do what I’d like, which is try to tell you just how messed up it is that Paul Manafort, Jared Kushner, and Donald Trump Jr. were meeting with Russian mob lawyers who are also pawns of the Kremlin back in June of 2016.
The story is very, very complicated and I spent several hours last night reading up on it. One lawyer involved in the case died in a Russian prison at the hands of the Interior Ministry. Another was recently pushed out of 4th story window. The key figure in the whole thing, Denis Katsyv, was represented by Natalia Veselnitskaya who was in the meeting with Trump’s inner circle. Another key figure, Andrey Pavlov, is described as “the consigliere for the Klyuev Group.” Members of the Klyuev Group are described as Russian mobsters linked to the Russian government.
One thing I did last night was sit down and read the complaint that Preet Bharara filed against Denis Katsyv. It makes for fascinating reading. The sophistication of their money laundering is dizzying. The reach of their corruption into Russian courts, the tax ministry and the Interior Ministry is simply astonishing. Preet Bharara was of course fired while conducting this case and it was recently settled for about 6 million dollars without Katsyv or his companies having to acknowledge any guilt.
Before you even tackle this material, one thing you should know is that Putin’s government has been ruthlessly defending these mobsters even though the root of the whole complaint is that they carried out the biggest tax fraud on the Russian treasury in recorded history.
Putin sent these folks to talk to Trump’s inner circle in June because he was pissed off that Congress passed a law after goons from his Interior Ministry beat the lawyer who uncovered this fraud to death. The law places sanctions on 44 individuals who are known to have been involved in this lawyer’s mistreatment and death. Putin suspended American adoptions of Russian orphans in retaliation, which is something he has done for other reasons in the past, too.
In any case, I’m just giving you the Cliff Notes here. Since I don’t have time to sift through this for you this morning, I recommend that you follow the links in this piece.
You won’t believe what you discover.
Didn’t Don Jr. say the meeting was very innocent and just about “Russian orphans”!
We all know how important adopting orphans are to Donald Jr., Manafort & Kushner.
Dipshits can’t even alibi properly.
“That’s why we didn’t report it, because it’s completely innocent, why report something so innocent?”
.
You are impatient. It took over a year for the situation with Richard Nixon and Watergate to become clear. This is turning out to be much more complicated than that because of the mixture of government and private actions and motives.
The hacking is still not definitively attributed; that is a too many suspects with a motive, means, and opportunity problem. And the difficulty of sorting out evidence from computer logs. You cannot yet discount the possibility of domestic GOP operatives themselves (or disgruntled campaign workers) or GOP plants within campaigns doing mischief. Cyrillic characters in logs can be as easily spoofed as .mil metadata in logs.
And the US media is cyber-ignorant; they see threats where there are none. US public utility business systems and the internet are still physically separate from the SCADA systems that run power generation and from the SCADA systems that manage loads. That’s more because the utilities have been too cheap to make those interconnections when the IT world was in a frenzy of connecting everything. But it has served to facilitate security, especially at nuclear plants. But an unauthorized access to a system is called a “attack” because fear sells advertising eyeballs.
Maybe someone, sometime will figure out this attribution. The only ones with the resources are the US $60 billion intelligence services. Their reports are still vague 8 months after the election.
The most productive area of investigation in my opinion is into Trump’s international mob connections and the whole nature of the informal economy and the failure of prosecuting white collar criminals under the judicial philosophies that accompanied the rush to deregulation.
Translation,
“If I accept Russian hacking then I have to accept my role in disseminating Russian propaganda, which I refuse to do for self esteem reasons. So best to follow the mob money, which I’ve always thought was a crime.”
.
Maybe you should retake your course in close reading, if that is what you think I said.
It actually is best to follow both, understand that in Russia they are intertwined, which might be the same in the US too if people don’t get out of their business as usual political mode.
But throwing insults and stirring shit is much easier on the internet.
Translation,
“Only what I write matters.”
.
What exactly do you write?
As little as possible.
You should try it.
.
You should try none at all.
It’s less disruptive.
But it doesn’t give as nearly as many LULZ.
The hacking is still not definitively attributed…
…as long as you are willing to discount the statements of everyone in a position to know the facts. People who have explicitly stated that they have hard proof, and have shown that proof to congressional overseers. Including Republican Trump supporters who nevertheless confirm Russia’s role.
Everyone’s lying, except for Trump and Putin. And even then Putin has all but claimed responsibility.
Who are they? Anonymous sources in the intelligence community. Folks associated with the Clinton campaign with no understand of IT or cybersecurity. Bloggers who rush to judgement. And commenters whose primary purpose is to defend something – not sure what – by attacking other commenters.
The key word is definitively as in how do those that assert it know what they know outside of deference to authority that will not put the evidence on the table.
My best source on the ongoing investigation of the hacking is instead tracking the unfolding Trump-Putin relationship in the context of cyber-security policy. That would be Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel. I post extracts from her latest below.
Translation,
“I would rather live in an artificial bubble of my own making than allow facts to penetrate that bubble and pop the persona I have spent so many words building. Look at the below post, that resonates in the fever swamp, why not here?”
.
Translation: I respond to User IDs, not information.
Here’s a thought: Maybe much of the evidence you refuse to accept is not readily available because it involves national security and is classified?
Just a thought.
And if you think the “unfolding Trump-Putin relationship” is any kind of “source” for the truth about the hacking, you are deluded.
This is no time for American intelligence services to be burning their sources and revealing their methods.
Our Secretary of State just said to the press that it is up to the U.S. intelligence community to lay out their evidence to Putin and the Russian Federation.
No, it is not up to them. It’s up to Tillerson and Trump to support the findings of his government and to enter into a discussion with their intelligence agencies about the quality of the evidence so they can stand behind the conclusions. And if they disagree with the conclusions they should disavow them and collaboratively come up with a set of conclusions which can pass muster with both the agencies and the American public.
What they’re attempting to do instead with this absurd half-position is dangerous, un-American, and appears to be supported by an unfortunately broad set of Americans who are working backward from their individual, agenda-driven places of motivation. These Americans are not considering the implications of their plain foolishness on this subject.
No this is just dangerous to whoever is named in any or the raw intelligence that Trump and Tillerson provide to the Russian government.
While the popular support agnosticism might irritate you, it is irrelevant to the situation.
Furthermore, this tactic hides the administration (and not just Trump and Tillerson) from its obligation to authorize the provision of that evidence to the appropriate committees of Congress, indeed to to all members of Congress.
The relevant ones with their head in the sand are the Republicans in Congress.
Going off of everyone else is just a waste of time and attention.
Members of Congress have been provided evidence. They are near monolithic and quite bipartisan in their support of the IC’s conclusion that Russia interfered with the 2016 election. They are not bipartisan in their remedies for the situation, however.
Revealing specifics of what we know to the Russian Federation damages our ability to collect intelligence in the future. It extends far past the limited danger you claim here.
What is up with you? You didn’t engage discussions here so mendaciously in past years.
You write:
Yes. They are indeed “vague.” The intelligence reports that we see in the media are always “vague,” unless of course they are trying to stampede the U.S. public in a certain direction. Then they’re not so vague…like Judith Millar’s reporting on Saddam Hussein and his WMDs or James Clapper’s succinct, lying “No” when the senate asked about unauthorized NSA surveillance.
I’ll bet that they are not nearly so vague in-house. And I will also bet that there has been information collected that involves centrist Dems and Republicans…centrist Dems and Republicans who are useful to intelligence forces. You won’t see that information anywhere public, even if it would help the neocentrist pursuit of Trump.
All of this self-important foofaraw over Russian mob ties? If “mob” is really the right word, of course. Criminal ties would be a better phrase. I ask you…do you think that similar ties with financial criminals do not exist in the U.S. government? In the Democratic and Republican parties? Do you folks really believe that the Russians could not put together a dossier that would make the U.S. government look as “criminalized” as this reporting does to Russia?
Just as criminal gangs run the U.S. disguised as corporate donors, so do they run the Russian government and the governments of every other powerful nation today.
Money buys power.
Money writes laws.
Money excuses its own criminal actions.
Why are the architects of the 2007-2008 U.S. financial collapse not in prison? Why have they instead occupied positions of power in every administration no matter what party is ostensibly in power?
Please!!!
They own the government, just as do the wealthy powers of Russia.
Just as the corrupt Republican and Demoicratic parties bicker over territorial control, so on a larger scale are Russia and the U.S.
As above, so below.
“The news.” Just a gigantic police blotter. All of it save the cooking sections and sports.
Read this. LIFE OFF THE GRID-Meet the Atchleys… the world’s most remote family
I am about to start trying to live off of the news grid.
I’m thorough with it all.
My daily disgust meter has hit the red line.
Fuck them all.
Later…
AG
I don’t live in New York. I wouldn’t know about how organized crime runs the government. Around here it’s good ole boy real estate developers. 🙂
All successful crime is “organized.” It’s just about different organizational forms. If it is not organized, than the organized…and often criminal itself on many levels…governmental opposition to said criminality is successful.
We ca’t have interlopers impinging on our territory, now can we?
Nope.
AG
Who is “our” AG?
Oh, that’s their self-talk.
The rest of us have maybe a tiny slice of territory in which to live our lives in which most of us obey the norms we were taught.
Wow. “All” successful crime is “organized”? I must have missed that working in the criminal justice system for over 30 years.
I suspect that if you saw them in the criminal justice system, they couldn’t be called “successful”.
Precisely. Not very well organized, at the very least.
AG
In NYC they overlap to a considerable extent. As they do with Trump.
The reports are not vague. You are simply ever increasing the bar.
You won’t settle for anything less than classified evidence proving the Russians were behind the DNC hacks and subsequent leaks to friendly cutouts. Even then, you have already set the ground to deny that any evidence can be trusted because such evidence can be faked.
Just like how Syria did not deploy a chemical weapons attack, despite the evidence continuing to pile up. Must defend narrative at all cost.
No, not “just like” — that’s a separate issue.
Of course it’s a separate issue, but their response to the facts follow a similar trend and it’s a topic related to similar actors (Russian client state), and the invented narrative of somehow starting WWIII if we don’t acknowledge the facts.
Throw the POC that make up the Democratic Party base to get a few WWC votes? ‘No problem, well worth it!’
Maybe tone down the anti-American conspiracy theories to get a few more WWC votes? ‘I refuse to compromise my beliefs!’
There are no coincidences.
.
Not going to put this in the right-hand column where it will be ignored but here.
Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel: Trump Was Worried HR McMaster or Fiona Hill Would Spy on His Conversation with Putin
McMaster was left outside of the meeting with Netanyahu. So what we know is that internationally to this point Trump has made secret deals with Netanyahu first and then Putin. So secret that only the people in the room know. We don’t even know whether they were trivial or significant–agreement that Trump is the greatest or handing over US policy to a foreign power, either Israel or Russia. Or that those two will be the exclusive confidants or whether there will be more tightly held meetings.
Marcy Wheeler, emptywheel: Trump’s impenetrable cyber-security unit to guard election hacking
Time to let the investigative reporter, who are on the case, sort out the past election and time to start focusing on Trump’s inadvertent clear admission (by excluding independent witness from his meeting with Putin) of the sensitivity of the subject to Trump. And the Putin-Lavrov readouts of the meeting that do not need hacking, just the US media in order to disrupt the US political process.
There’s more:
Sorry, there’s a bad blockquote in this. Marcy didn’t say all of that in the big box. Only the smaller boxes. The rest is my opinion.
Longing for the ability to edit comments after posting them.
With the events of the last week, we have gone from smoke billowing from the woodpile to flames licking from it, with Trump and Tillerson working the bellows to bring the flames ever higher.
Yet you display a level of consistent doubt which extends substantially further than the studious Marcy Wheeler. In her pieces you link to here, Marcy is telling us that something extremely rotten is going on, yet in your own rhetoric the fog is spread liberally.
You bring acuity and honest examination to much of your participation here. I’m mystified by your maintenance of a retreat from those habits on this subject.
My opinions about the dangers of the Trump administration go far beyond whether Russia hacked an election. If someone has that forensic evidence, they should lay it on the table. But that horse has left the barn. My consistent doubt is due to the fact that the folks who have the forensic information about any Russian attack have not seen fit to lay it on the table and that many who have other anonymous sources within the intelligence community doubt that such forensic evidence exists. At the moment the evidence is general and a battle of anonymous sources.
There is something rotten going on in the Republican Party that has been there for some time and is now obscured by the obsession about Russia. Trump is now the leader of the Republican Party; they accepted him as a bona fide candidate; they backed him in the general election; they had their own campaign of “any means necessary” independent of anything that any outside power might have done. That they so quickly aligned with Trump after years of savaging Democrats openings to Russia and negotiations to bring down nuclear weapons is mighty peculiar.
But Democrats have had their own rottenness that has been the cause of their electoral failures over the past four cycles in spite of a winning Presidential candidate. It is rottenness that has sapped state party after state party; it is rottenness that has caused them to fail deliver on what voters thought were their promised policies; it is rottenness that finally screwed up the campaign of the most experienced candidate they have brought forward and made an election easy for someone like Trump to win. To deal with the burning woodpile there must be a strong opposition party. The UK seems to be able to muster one. But the US doesn’t. There are institutional reasons for that and money is a part of that institution.
Finally, Putin is not just a cartoon character. He is a smart head of state who has amassed substantial domestic power. Russia is not a third world country; its economy is no longer the basket case it was 20 years ago. Its military procurement strategy seeks to do match US technology and power at lower cost. Given the amount of corruption and waste in US procurement, that has not been hard.
Instead of focusing on Russia, Russia, Russia and acting like military action against Russia might be a smart move, my I suggest:
Fixing the problems in the Democratic Party whereby consultants drain campaign coffers without producing results.
Fixing policy stances of the Democratic Party so that there is a clear and implementable policy message that is competitive in every state and differentiates the Democratic Party sufficiently from the Republican Party.
Arranging the Democratic Party as a mass opposition party to the Republican Party and not just Trump and not only to the Republican Party but the failed conservative ideology that they rode in on and pay lip-service to.
Start looking at the overall global situation with respect to international relations, which is experiencing major realignments and initiatives beyond those of the United States (which is not spending any money at all effectively). End the delusion that the US is “the most powerful nation in the world”; that hasn’t been true in any meaningful way since W bogged us down in the Greater Middle East.
Learn what cybersecurity is all about and what the US government has done to make all of us less secure online.
Learn a little about the forensics that follow unauthorized entries into information systems. Stop using “attack” to mean unauthorized entry. StuxNet and any IT delivered malware that causes physical damage in the real world is an “attack”; StuxNet was not propagated through the internet but through Microsoft updates delivered on physical media to the actual machines. Malware that conducts massive theft of personally identifiable information containing potential identity theft information is an “attack”. So is that that disrupts major segments of the internet. In this respect, major nations have conducted “attacks” that were kept secret. The US invented the concept, a lot of the technology, and often the first use of cyberattacks.
Advocate that the US be a little bit less quick on the trigger with offensive cyber-attacks and start worrying about the defense that protects its own servers and networks.
Advocate honesty in elections, an end to gerrymandering by any party, and adherence to “fair election’ norms. Accept observers who will do what the Carter Center does in other countries. The Carter Center will not audit a US election.
Stop responding reflexively to every Trump distraction. Focus on the actions and not the outrages.
Learn a bit about the international networks that governments use for covert operations, that other folks use for arms transfers, and the role of international financial institutions (the “respectable” ones) in those transactions. It is highly likely that Hobby Lobby helped financed DAESH/ISIL/ISIS for instance in their quest to control the archaeology behind the Biblical texts. It is possible that those 5500 clay tablets were some stolen from the Iraqi museum when Rumsfeld was so excited that Iraqis were demonstrating their freedom. This international network of down-low relationships is what makes BooMan’s looking at the “mob” (deferring to AG) connections among international real estate, hotel, and casino operations so relevant.
And why I argue (and AG does as well) that oligarchies use these relationships to end run formal government structures, cutting out popular accountability.
There is a lot of stuff going on not to get tunnel-visioned into whether one election got hacked. And trying to force everyone to have the opinion you do about that event. If that will bring Trump down, that process is already in some committee or another or will intrude in Mueller’s investigation.
Yes, Trump, Tillerson, and the Pepe Escobar piece I posted on the right clarify the Trump-Putin-Xi relationship immensely. But when there isn’t the evidence public about the election itself, one must say there is not evidence public.
Who here or on the left advocates for military action against Russia or thinks it would be a smart move? Stop repeating this mendacious lie. It eliminates any inclination to take the rest of your points, many of which are reasonable, seriously.
Who here on the left?
I dunno if there any. But what exactly are people advocating as a response to what Putin did other than to fix the consequences in the US? Transparency about what exactly did happen.
Sounds like taking offense at one item to avoid reading the others. That’s your privilege.
I’m not going to let you weasel out of that claim. No one this blog advocates military action against Russia and its not been expressed by any relevant politician or figure that I’m aware of. So stop repeating this kind of inflammatory bs equating commenters with neocons which makes it impossible to find you credible on other things.
So what is the importance of chanting about Russia and policing comments that point that the political problems is at home.
I didn’t know you take general statements so personally.
It’s like accusing my comments of being Russian propaganda. And most of those are not general comments in the midst of something longer but specific hits.
Good god man. Are you going to stop accusing people of wanting military action against Russia or not? I don’t care about your other innocuous points.
If you can’t point to where this happened then all you need to do is stop making this claim.
This is not complicated.
If you didn’t why does it matter?
I said it was a bad idea and policy.
I certainly did not say ishmael2 thinks we should go to war with Russia.
Sure. My last comment on this:
None of this has to do with going to war with Russia. No one has promoted this as a policy. It’s a total non sequitur that you’re using.
I join ishmael2 in calling out as a lie your claim that anyone here thinks that military action against Russia would be a smart move. That hasn’t been put on the table by anyone here, or anyone in Congress. So much of your lengthy response flows from malicious misrepresentations like that, including your claim that no evidence has been made public. That claim is propagandistic in its thoroughgoing desire to misinform us.
You may take the position that you are unpersuaded by the information which has been made public by government agencies and news reports, but you don’t get to claim as a fact that no evidence has been offered that the Russians wanted to help Trump’s campaign and appears to have done so.
Entering into a lengthy discussion of the political parties is a massive dodge which seems intent to take us away from the issue at hand. This should be a bipartisan search by all Americans. That it is not at the moment is not the fault of the Democratic Party- not its leaders, not its rank and file members.
I don’t dispute the Russians wanted to defeat Clinton. That is an obvious motive. I dispute that there is evidence that the Russian government itself succeeded through hacking.
Trump was and is a means to an end for Putin. No question there even before the clarifying G-20.
Except for accountability and clarity, that is past and any accountability and clarity will come from the business-as-usual processes that are grinding on through the Congress.
Time to figure out how to deal with the reality of Trump and his impeachment-protection Pence.
The reality of Trump is that he wants to work hand in hand with Putin to grow the number of illiberal, oligarch-supporting, self-enriching, democratic-institution-destroying nation state leaders, by any means necessary. There is urgency to prevent them from doing so. That is a reality many of us are attempting to confront.
It is thickheaded to believe that Trump should be left in place because President Pence would be worse. Pence is involved in some of these shenanigans, particularly the many shenanigans having to do with the transition team he led. Pence might (or might not!) survive in office after the takedown of the President he campaigned and served with, but he and the Congressional leaders who carried the corrupt and corrupting President’s water for so long would be politically damaged. It would be bizarre to assume that they would not be damaged.
In addition to the investigations by the Congressional Committees, there is the work being done by Mueller’s independent crew of attorneys. We should work together to give them the space they need to take the evidence where it leads us, so that their findings are not improperly terminated or truncated. One way to make a conclusive investigation and good faith finding less likely is for liberals to misrepresent what has been publicly revealed so far as meaningless or inconclusive. Congress doesn’t agree, many Americans don’t agree, and many strands of reporting quarrel with those misrepresentations.
It is you who are claiming that my opinions misrepresent what has been revealed as meaningless or inconclusive. I’m not sure I have any influence over what Congress or many other people think about it.
Other than that, I fundamentally agree that Putin seeks other aligned kleptocracies and while Trump prefers kleptocracy, what he has provide America is a kakocracy. The best way to prevent that in my humble but powerless opinion would be for Europe to give up austerity and start making Europe prosperous for all its people again. They have thousands of new refugees who would would benefit more from prosperity than austerity. But that’s their issue not mine. I also see the UK Brexit as fundamentally helping Putin’s agenda with the rest of Europe. Again, there’s nothing we can do about that.
I don’t think Trump should be left in place because of Pence; I think they both should go and soon. I just don’t see a lot of popular movement in that direction — yet. More specifics accepted by a broader range of politicians is what is needed; the GOP is still circling the wagons. The succession order really screws around with remedies.
Policing blog comments that disagree with you on minor issues is not a way to persuade people.
Our best actions have to do with strengthening the democratic institutions supporting elections in local and state governments. Taking back legislatures in some states in 2018 might be doable; ending veto-proof majorities in other legislatures might also be possible.
Whether they succeeded or not is debatable, but that is not the issue here. The issue is that they attempted it.
I think you nailed it: “fixing” the Democratic Party to function, not just as an opposition party but a functional, competitive and democratically representative political party — i.e. what political parties in democratic societies are supposed to be, at least in theory is a requirement for addressing what the corrupt and criminal organization the GOP has become and the damage its done to or institutions.
to wit:
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2017/07/all-in-family-by-bloggersrus.html
How are your claims any more factually supported than RWNJs’ claims that Russia bribed Hillary Clinton?
Other than both are just made-up.
TarheelDem please go look at the photo Digby has of the donald and Putin. That is the President of the US looking like the leader of nothing.
Huh,
To some here that is a feature, not a bug. They want America to look bad, fail, and be defeated. Trump is their weapon to achieve that.
Thousands die.
.
That underestimates the inertia in the US government civil service and uniformed military.
If Putin thinks Trump is his puppet, he is delusional.
I hope Trump sees that picture only after someone hide the football.
If Trump is not Putin’s puppet, he’s doing a pretty good imitation.
Of course, that is the very issue that is being investigated. Since it is being investigated, things may not end up so much to Putin’s advantage, despite all of Trumps efforts. Let’s hope they don’t.
Time to do what Marcy Wheeler does in an investigation — lay out a time line with notes of events.
When did Congress get exercised about goons from the Russian Interior Ministry beating a fraud-uncovering lawyer to death? How is it that bipartisanship magically worked in this case with Congress?
Who are the 44 individuals?
BTW, thanks for the establishing the connection with “Russian orphans” in Trump Jr.’s cover story.
When did the Russian contact occur?
When did this occur in relation to other news regarding US relations with Russia?
It’s a shame that the major media have not already done the legwork on this story before the election, instead of all of the vague stories about Russian hacking. They should have known Trump’s connections in the New York real estate world. It’s not like the social life of “respectable” wealthy is not publicized so they can measure their own notoriety.
The complaint that Preet Bharara filed is chilling.
The whole thing is chilling.
It’s incredible
.
Since we are doing a deep dive, here’s something worth reading. This is Felix Sater’s father’s boss:
This is an important knot in the piece of string leading to Trump’s dubious 2016 elevation to the presidency. The author, Freidman, is a legend among investigative journalists. Follow the string.
This article is from 1998.
Just exactly what is that knot?
Here’s what Wikipedia has:
Semion Mogilevich
Another Russian organized crime boss, free to roam Moscow.
And Felix Sater’s Wikipedia entry:
Felix Sater
Say more about Mikhail and Rachel Sheferovsky and their relationship to Mogilevich. And any connection Mogilevich and Sheferovsky had to the kleptocrats in Uzbekistan.
There seems to be stuff past 1998 out there somewhere. Judicial Watch picked up something in “The Ukrainian Connection” and right-wing bloggers (still anti-Russia) are slagging Sarah Kendzior about not documenting it in her coverage of Trump.
Information prior to November 2016 would be especially useful in deep dive.
https:/trump-russia.com/2017/02/23/russian-mafia-in-trump-tower
https:/trump-russia.com/2017/06/16/is-robert-mueller-examining-trumps-links-to-mogilevich
http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/what-the-cia-and-fbi-knew-about-trump-before-2016
http://www.alternet.org/investigations/investors-oligarchs-mobsters-and-capital-flight-inside-shadow
y-world-trumps-private
http://c10.nrostatic.com/sites/default/files/Palmer-Petition-for-a-writ-of-certiorari-14-676.pdf
As usual, Schindler doesn’t deliver the connection.
But the link does explain why Trump is going after Loretta Lynch so hard and why they worked the refs with the “collusion with Slick Willie” story during the election, forcing her to draw back from the investigation.
The Alternet story points to a Supreme Court filing as making the connection.
No, Schindler doesn’t but that’s why the SCOTUS filing citing Sater’s father’s relationship explicitly.
1998 was a landmark year for the Russian mob in NYC, the younger Sater and and his relationship with Trump. My point was that there is a pattern of illicit transactions among the Russian mob, Trump’s real estate and casino projects and various other actors including but hardly limited to Sater going back that far; for context. Arguably Trump has been facilitating a criminal conspiracy with Russian sponsorship since then.
Mogilevich points us straight to the highest levels of the Russian oligarchy, albeit where much ‘dirty work’ gets done outside the state hierarchy.
This comments thread is very clarifying. We are not surprised by the identities of those effectively picking sides with Trump, the Russian Federation and their oligarchic allies here. What I find fascinating is that these community members who are essentially taking sides with a group of very wealthy people who clearly want to destroy liberal democracy in the United States and around the world do not show the interest in reviewing the information that BooMan presents here.
To me, this reveals people with closed minds who are unwilling to reconsider their views. Their views have changed little in response to bombshell revelation after revelation. And here they are trotting out their “alternative facts” in the face of a direct request by the blog host to engage with the information he’s sharing with us here. They choose to substantially reject this request while simultaneously expressing their opposition to the basics of the blog host’s claims.
These are not behaviors of trustworthy members of a progressive community. BooMan and others here have clearly displayed that we don’t have a problem with an honest debate. What we see from these community members looks less like good faith debate and more like agenda-driven obfuscation.
When you’re locked into a Manichean struggle between ultimate good and ultimate evil — the US imperialist hegemon — you don’t have the luxury of being picky about your allies.
Putin’s Russia is the tool, however flawed, that comes to hand — so you use it. Or keep silent while it does its thing.
The ‘Manichean struggle between ultimate good and ultimate evil’ has always been, and always will be the Sanders Herculean, cleaning-out-the-Aegean-Stables-like battle against the omnipresent Clinton machine.
Everything in Politics flows from that. The Clinton’s must be, not just defeated, but utterly repudiated. The spawn of their loins must be hounded from public life, their supporters must be completely humiliated.
It’s the struggle of our age, and every weapon must be used.
.
.
You should have the sense to keep your own agenda out of this. it’s not as relevant as you’d like to think.
and also also extremely tedious
I have another, quite different idea,
I post my opinions, my ‘agenda’, my conclusions, whenever I want……just like you do.
.
That’s for sure.
So here is my post, which is simply a link.I invite everyone to compare this to yours.
https:/www.dailykos.com/story/2017/7/9/1679290-Abramson-connects-the-dots-collusion-is-certain-and
-Trump-knew
Page not found. Your link did not work.
Try this one instead: Abramson connects the dots: collusion is certain, and Trump knew.
Thanks. What I’ve been finding is that often when I paste in an https: link, a space opens up somewhere in the URL address. I don’t know why this happens, but it’s impossible for the poster to correct, because the space comes in automatically in the act of posting.
In order to correct it, the reader can skim the address to see if there is a space. Then when pasting in, close the space up manually and the address will work.
Nine times out of ten, that is the only problem with the linked address.
No worries. I am a bit old-school when it comes to hyperlinks and still use the html code that I learned back in the day.
Where will the goal posts move next?
Trump’s Son Met With Russian Lawyer After Being Promised Damaging Information on Clinton
extreme denialist voice, “look, this doesn’t implicate Trump personally.”
The pee tape is definitely real.
Something is going on. I have always assumed it’s just greed…the two families want cash. But then the Russians do something like this, specifically to embarrass Trump.
Putin owns Trump, 100%. We are completely fucked.
.
What is going on is pretty straightforward. Obama’s sanctions grabbed Putin by the…44 friends. He wants those sanctions reversed.
It is the GOP Congress that owns Putin if they halfway think about it. And the US attorneys who are supposed to apply the sanctions. And the operatives of US allies who are supposed to apply the sanctions.
It is not a one-way game. But it does depend on the GOP still being distrustful of Russia and Putin.
To the extent that Trump owns them, we are completely fucked. We will see if the Lindsey Graham McCain couple is OK with Trump’s G-20 performance.
It also a message to the US that it is no longer the sole superpower that can bully its way in the world.
Fascinating to see the bully in Trump totally deflated.
“Nobody has actually seen video of the meeting, with audio. It’s possible they really did talk about adoptions. You don’t know they didn’t, I don’t know they did. And anyway, did you see that op-ed by Kerry? One more like that and I’m voting third party”.
.
The spin on Clinton an Obama staffers is “sour grapes”.
If this is Trump staffers, that is significant.
“Briefing” points to a US intelligence community report. And points to sources inside the meeting.
Hoping this is Trump staffers breaking. If not, someone has to explain how that information got to the White House during a political campaign.
some troll comments over at TPM lay out the troll tps most of which are about changing the subject- attack Sanders is a big one, for example
I haven’t finished reading all that but these guys are seriously devious and nasty fuckers. And since the end result of the theft is real estate investment in NY…… hmmm . They make the mafia look like a social club, which is what I always thought until Bobby Kennedy ruined their name.
pussy-grabber-in-chief, via digby:
And another:
That’s a blood curdling similarity. The latter song struck me as eerily relevant starting last fall. History may not repeat, but it does have this funny way of rhyming.
it’s assault, a crime. why are you trivializing it with that label?
That’s the point of the reminder, obviously.
“Trivializing” it:
Surpassingly odd to see you uncharacteristically in their camp.
Did you likewise remonstrate with the hundreds of thousands(?) of women (and many men) who wore pussy hats to the Women’s March?
Anyway, we’ve had this conversation. I’ve agreed to disagree. You evidently haven’t.
So feel free to carry out your (ridiculous imo) threat. And I’ll have a laugh at your expense. But no, it won’t be a “good” laugh. Rather a sad one.
And it will have zero effect on anything I do here.
I haven’t agreed to disagree on this at all. He committed assault and is on record boasting about it. I find the use of language that trivializes what he did problematic – and that is my concern. since it’s just women who are victimized not too many ppl care about it, in my reading of those who use this language. btw Lawrence O’Donnell had a segment recently about that touched on this I thought was very well thought out and also goes to the point of T’s lashing out as a distraction from travel ban and the like. [turn to them the other cheek]
[tried to embed but system didn’t allow here’s link
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9fC9Pb27MDQ
as far as the hat business goes, Tarheel, iirc, wrote an insightful comment about the problem of the tenor of that demo – I agree with what he wrote.
language to condemn, in his own words, his crime is in no way “trivializing” it. Exactly the opposite. Weird that this would require repeat explanation.
And yeah, I know you haven’t agreed to disagree on this — that’s why I wrote “You evidently haven’t.”
A sweetener for the Putin face-to-face?
Once again, many more links of NY mobsters with Israel and equally with [Jewish] mobsters from Moldova, Ukraine and Russia. Israel’s Netanyahu looks after his own interests when dealing with foreign policy. Illegal contracts even reached Iran during the US and UN economic boycott.
Part of my diary – Globalisation: Katsyv links Moscow – London – NY – Tel Aviv .
here’s my recap:
1- your language recognizes only a body part [the only important body part] – to the one committing assault- not the personhood of the assaulted. that is a problem. In fact the phrasing renders it a “victimless crime”
2- would you consider it empowering to BLM, for example, to use, say, Eric Garner’s killer’s phrasing about the victim of his crime, i.e. the N word? no, I didn’t think so.
3 fortunately it’s not just the guys who insist on using this language, evidently women commenters on the blog also defend the use of what is essentially a porn insult