Sometimes news in the #TrumpRussia matter comes at you like a firehose and it’s easy to miss some things. I did not realize, for example, that Felix Sater is being sued by television producer and celebrity agent Stella Bulochnikov Stolper for illegally and remotely accessing her home computer in an effort to get a movie made about his bizarre life. If you’ve been following along with my coverage of Sater, this will not surprise you, and it doesn’t surprise me. After all, he wanted me to write a screenplay and offered to help if I would give a writer’s credit. Still, I didn’t notice this when it was first reported, nor did I realize that Sater’s scheduled testimony before the House Intelligence Committee had been postponed from this week until March 27th. Perhaps these two things are related.
Another thing that slipped by my radar is that former acting attorney general Matthew Whitaker was making an appearance on Wednesday to clarify his congressional testimony before the House Judiciary Committee.
Former acting attorney general Matthew G. Whitaker met behind closed doors Wednesday with the leaders of the House Judiciary Committee to discuss testimony he gave during a contentious hearing last month in which, Democrats say, he was less than forthcoming.
Whitaker’s meeting with the panel’s chairman, Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), and its ranking Republican, Douglas A. Collins (Ga.), took place despite a sharp disagreement between the lawmakers about whether there is any value in continuing to engage Whitaker, who has not been with the Justice Department since the Senate confirmed William P. Barr as attorney general early last month.
“We thought the hearing shouldn’t have happened, so if you want to bring him back in then fine,” Collins said in a brief interview before the hearing Wednesday. “It’s the chairman’s meeting, so I’m just going to sit there and listen and see what he says.”
Republican petulance by the ranking member of the committee aside, it doesn’t appear like the meeting went well for the president.
BREAKING: Former acting Attorney General Matthew Whitaker admits he lied to Congress under oath, and we all know what Republicans think of people who do that. Right? Or does the law just apply to people who have stopped lying for Trump? https://t.co/xBZZ6PyAoX
— Facts Do Matter (@WilDonnelly) March 13, 2019
Like I said, it’s hard to keep up. It took me almost an hour just to review Marcy Wheeler’s latest scribblings on Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, and Roger Stone. Then there were the new indictments against Manafort out of New York that I already covered.
On days like this, it’s hard to believe that anyone will remember what Nancy Pelosi had to say about impeachment. But I do wonder how much evidence of criminality the American people can absorb at one time.
There are days where I feel like an Indonesian with Tidal Wave Don rolling in.
Missed the bit about Sater. I saw that Flynn asked for another sentencing delay and now this about Sater’s delay.
Perhaps we need to stop asking Trump about various people being pardoned and start asking Pence?
All of this daily negative news for the donald is an erosion of trust in America. The world just forced him and Boeing to admit some thing is wrong with the plane and it requires a Boeing fix. Word is out the donald wants to sign China trade thing at Mar A Lago. Xi does not want to come as he thinks the donald will just walk out on him. Is that reflection of no trust or is Mar a Lago not safe as it is full of all kinds of swamp creatures?
Holy shit, Martin! Has any of this made today’s news cycle? Everyone is so laser focused on the Manafort drama today that all of this seems to have just floated by completely unnoticed. While I was at work, and simply trying to follow, in real time, what was happening with Manafort, this complete flood of much more consequential news took place, and almost no one knows it even happened. That is just fucking insane, man!
I guess on days like this I have some modicum of sympathy for the uninformed voter who simply takes in their information by some sort of mysterious and undefined type of osmosis from water cooler talk at work and chyrons running across the screen of a muted news channel while they try to get their kids ready for soccer practice. The pace of this flood of criminality is really almost beyond the comprehension of the average human being. The fact that all this seems so unimaginable just seems to lend to an inherent and reasonable accusation of craziness which will be attributed to anyone who actually tries to chronicle this massive clusterfuck for the average John Q. Voter in this country. It seems so unimaginable for most people that it simply has to all be “fake news”, right?
But it’s not. It is this fucking bad. Amazing.
For a normal Presidency, any day would be a scandal so huge that it would sink his presidency. Trump is only floated by the fact his Trumpites simply don’t care. They hired a thug and a fixer to beat up the Libtards and uppity N*** and women and put them all in their places, and not at the head of the table. That’s where the MAN of the house sits. Not some damn woman in pant-suits, dammit!
The fact that their Don is a career criminal doesn’t matter. IT’s a FEATURE, not a bug. The rest of America doesn’t get it. For them criminal = bad. For the Trumpites, as one of his supporters said “Would I vote for him if he shot somebody in the middle of Pennsylvania Avenue? It would depend on who it was. If he shot Nancy Pelosi? Sure.” They’re not kidding.
“Just because we wave the flag, don’t think we really give a crap about the Constitution! What we care about is making sure we keep the blacks and “Mesicans” out of the Country. And Trump is going to do that. Build that Wall! Make Mexico pay!”
But, every day is another bad day for Trump. You’ll notice that there are no good days. No triumphs. No real successes to point to. The economy was his last ace, and he keeps trying to talk about that, but people aren’t that happy with the economy any more, so that’s not resonating.
Basically he’s like a 50’s comedian who isn’t funny any more, but he can always get a laugh from a certain type of rough crowd by making racist jokes about Puerto Ricans. There’s a limit to how popular you’re going to be with that kind of routine, but there will be some cretins who come back week after week to hear you tell the same tired jokes about people they hate. Amos & Andy, the blackface radio comedy duo made an entire career out of it. For a while. Then people get tired of the act and they shuffle you off-stage.
People will remember what Nancy Pelosi said about impeachment, because it will come up every time the word is mentioned. And it will be mentioned a lot over the next 2 years as scandal after scandal roll across this administration.
Yes, it is precisely on days such as this that people will remember what Pelosi said about impeachment.
And if she ever thinks they’ve forgotten, indications have been that she’ll be quite happy to remind them.
Sadly, you are entirely correct. The old, preemptive surrender as strategy, guard needs to go.
“On days like this it’s hard to believe anyone will remember what Pelosi said about impeachment.”
Why in the hell did she say it then, much less draw a line in the sand about needing overwhelming Republican support? Her statement normalizes patent criminality and will make moving against Trump that much harder. She has publicly stated that all we already know about Trump does not merit action to remove him, thereby setting the bar for action almost impossibly high….
Maybe if he shot someone on 2nd Ave? Only with overwhelming Republican support, says Nancy…