Demented and dangerous

 

Christ, he will never get over it.

Speaking of Israel

"The base" will believe anything

Last week, the staggeringly unqualified toady serving as Trump’s director of the FBI, Kash Patel, breathlessly announced that his team had “uncovered” long-ignored proof “buried in a back room at the FBI.” It is a smoking gun: “evidence that the Clinton campaign plotted to frame President Trump and fabricate the Russia collusion hoax.”

Hot damn! It’s like a real-life re-enactment of Patel’s children’s book, The Plot Against the King, in which Wizard Kash thwarts a plot by the evil Hillary Queenton to unseat good King Donald by accusing him of “working with the Russionians” to steal the throne. (I am not making that up.)

  The Bulwark

There is room for infinite numbers of ridiculous, assinine, and insane shit in our current alternate universe. It's an absurd place.

But wait: As Patel notes, this evidence had already been included as a classified “annex” to the 2023 report by special counsel John Durham, who had been hired as a special prosecutor in 2020 by Trump and his then-attorney general, Bill Barr. If this evidence is as potent as Patel says, then why would Durham—who was hired to blow the lid off the supposed “Russiagate hoax”—have relegated it to a mere annex?

Because, it turns out, Wizard Kash’s “smoking gun” is not only ridiculously fake (as Durham concluded), it actually blows a massive hole in the Trump/Patel “Russia hoax” theory.

Continue reading.

2016 Trump gang still in Russia propaganda business

[A] group of former Trump advisers and operatives have quietly helped build a pro-Russian website that frequently spreads debunked conspiracy theories about the war in Ukraine, election fraud and vaccines.

Working alongside contributors for Kremlin state media, the former Donald Trump policy aide George Papadopoulos, his wife, Simona Mangiante, and others have become editorial board members of the website Intelligencer, which is increasingly becoming a source of news for those in the rightwing ecosystem.

  Pressway

You remember Papadopoulos - Trump's early 2016 foreign policy aide who was drunkenly giving info to an Australian diplomat, which started the Russian collusion investigations, and whom Trump claimed was no more than a coffee boy. BTW, he pled guilty in 2018 to lying to the FBI about contacts with Joseph Mifsud, the professor who was linked to the Kremlin and offered dirt on Hillary Clinton. Remember all that?

The site appears to have launched at the end of 2023 – and nearly half of Intelligencer’s board members are either former aides, surrogates or fake electors for Trump’s previous two campaigns.

[...]

Intelligencer appears to be gaining in popularity. It recently had its best month for internet traffic, with an increase of nearly 300% during August, according to data from Similarweb, and its articles have been shared on social media by the conspiracist Alex Jones, former Trump White House staffer Garrett Ziegler and former Trump aide Roger Stone.

“Since the invasion of Ukraine, Russia has increasingly been forced to rely on networks of proxies and influencers whose conspiracist ‘brand’ generates income and audiences through social media monetization and some of whom Russia has now been caught covertly subsidizing,” [Emma Briant, an associate professor of news and political communication at Monash University in Australia,] said.

The website’s opaque ownership structure makes it difficult to understand its financial backing, and there is no direct evidence of Kremlin funding. There is no corporate entity listed anywhere on the website, just a business address in Los Angeles.

[...]

Show hosts and guests frequently deny climate change, discuss culture war issues in the US, espouse pro-Russian viewpoints on the war in Ukraine, and spread conspiracy theories about Covid-19.

[...]

Many of the articles promote debunked conspiracy theories about vaccines and fraud in the 2020 presidential election, as well as stories that are aggressively anti-Ukrainian.

[...]

[Papadopoulos' wife, Simona Mangiante,along with fellow board member Igor Lopatonok, appears to have parlayed this work into a new documentary about the Hunter Biden laptop saga called Hunter’s Laptop: Requiem for Ukraine. According to social media posts, the documentary premiered on 5 September at the Trump International hotel in Chicago.

[...]

According to invitations for the Hunter Biden documentary premiere, the event was hosted by the Christian Orthodox Coalition, an organization which claims to educate Orthodox Christians on social and cultural issues. Four of the organization’s board members are also board members of Intelligencer, including Papadopoulos, Mangiante and Lopatonok.

[...]

Three other editorial board members also have close connections to the Trump campaigns. Leah Hoopes and Greg Stenstrom, both from Pennsylvania, have written a book falsely alleging the 2020 election was stolen. Both of them have been litigants in court cases challenging the results of the election in Pennsylvania, and Hoopes was one of Pennsylvania’s fake electors, who falsely signed paperwork saying that Trump had won the election.

[...]

“Intelligencer appears to be one of several [Russia-friendly] operations targeting the upcoming US elections, leveraging a network of far-right figures and disinformation tactics,” Olga Lautman, a senior fellow at the Center for European Policy Analysis, said.

[...]

“With an editorial board that reads like a who’s who of Putinist propaganda, Intelligencer is not your usual Russian ‘fake news’ site,” Briant said. “We may see more efforts like Intelligencer, which brings together cohorts of recognizable pro-Russian writers and consolidates their effort into a respectable-looking ‘news’ platform aiming to promote Russia’s influence in the US election and beyond.”

[...]

Eliason said that the website is funded out of pocket and the contributors contribute pieces because it “because it makes sense to them”.

Well, that's all that matters, surely.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Of course he did

There's just no way Trump would turn down money.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

She could recycle this ad

This is from four years ago when she was running.  Probably not the wisest thing to be posting it.  People are logically assuming it's current and blaming Harris for undermining Biden.  Is that what Molly Jong-Fast is hoping?  

[Paid for by Kamala Harris For the People]

And that's another reason Kamala would be the natural choice: she already has ads and debate experience from her prior run.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 10:18 am:

A handful of alumni of Hillary Clinton’s and Sen. Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaigns have come together to form United for Harris, the first public-facing effort to promote a potential 2024 presidential campaign for Harris so far, news of which was shared first with NBC News.

[...]

The pro-Harris camp argues that she represents enough change to re-energize Democratic voters and reset the presidential race, while retaining enough continuity from Biden to avoid the potential divisiveness of presidential primary do-over.

[...]

The effort is not authorized by Harris or her team, which has assiduously avoided doing anything that could interpreted as disloyal to Biden.

  NBC

This

A thousand times this. Did we not notice that in 2015 Sanders was gaining ground at a surprisingly rapid rate, and when it looked like he was going to be the nominee, the other democratic contenders pulled out and consolidated support for Biden? They didn't try to hide it.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

About that Russian hoax

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Alvin Bragg is afraid Letitia James will beat him to the prize

"Potential".  Yeah. Whatever.  I'll believe he pays consequences for his crimes when I see it.  So far, the only person near or in on Trump's many crimes to remotely pay anything for it is his ex-attorney, Michael Cohen.  And in fact, this particular crime is the one Cohen ended up serving time in jail for.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

UPDATE 01/31/2023:

Keep talking, pal.

Earlier this month, prosecutors met with Michael Cohen, Trump’s former personal attorney and fixer who was convicted of federal charges in 2018 for paying the hush money to Daniels and ex-Playboy model Karen McDougal.

[...]

National Enquirer’s former publisher David Pecker was spotted heading into the Centre Street building in the morning as part of Bragg’s revived efforts to charge Trump, 76, according to sources.

Pecker was involved in the $130,000 payout to Daniels .

[...]

Prosecutors want to interview other witnesses, like Dylan Howard, the Enquirer’s former editor, and Jeffrey McConney and Deborah Tarasoff, two workers at Trump’s company, sources told the New York Times. The three have not yet testified before the grand jury.

[...]

Trump could face charges of falsifying business records, as federal filings show Cohen was reimbursed for the hush-money payment as a legal expense.

[...]

One of the [former] prosecutors, Mark Pomerantz, has since penned a book, “People V. Donald Trump: An Inside Account,” whose impending publication has prompted Bragg to issue a warning to Simon & Schuster that the book could prejudice his investigation.

  NY Post

There is no justice where Trump is concerned

And it often looks like there never will be.

Egged on by Mr. Trump, Attorney General William P. Barr set out in 2019 to dig into their shared theory that the Russia investigation likely stemmed from a conspiracy by intelligence or law enforcement agencies. To lead the inquiry, Mr. Barr turned to a hard-nosed prosecutor named John H. Durham, and later granted him special counsel status to carry on after Mr. Trump left office.

But after almost four years — far longer than the Russia investigation itself — Mr. Durham’s work is coming to an end without uncovering anything like the deep state plot alleged by Mr. Trump and suspected by Mr. Barr.

  NYT

Surprised?

Mr. Barr assigned Mr. Durham to scour the origins of the Russia investigation for wrongdoing, telling Fox News that he wanted to know if “officials abused their power and put their thumb on the scale” in deciding to pursue the investigation.

[...]

Interviews by The Times with more than a dozen current and former officials have revealed an array of previously unreported episodes that show how the Durham inquiry became roiled by internal dissent and ethical disputes as it went unsuccessfully down one path after another.

[...]

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham never disclosed that their inquiry expanded in the fall of 2019, based on a tip from Italian officials, to include a criminal investigation into suspicious financial dealings related to Mr. Trump.

Was that the basis for Trump's false claims that Italy was involved in nefarious activity against his 2020 campaign? An attempt to preempt whatever might come out from that investigation? No doubt it would have been retaliation, a typical kneejerk Trump reactionto any negative publicity.

The specifics of the tip and how they handled the investigation remain unclear, but Mr. Durham brought no charges over it.

[...]

Mr. Barr and Mr. Durham decided that the tip was too serious and credible to ignore. But rather than assign it to another prosecutor, Mr. Barr had Mr. Durham investigate the matter himself — giving him criminal prosecution powers for the first time — even though the possible wrongdoing by Mr. Trump did not fall squarely within Mr. Durham’s assignment to scrutinize the origins of the Russia inquiry.

[...]

The extraordinary fact that Mr. Durham opened a criminal investigation that included scrutinizing Mr. Trump has remained secret.

Well, until now, I guess.

Taciturn and media-averse, the goateed Mr. Durham had spent more than three decades as a prosecutor before Mr. Trump appointed him the U.S. attorney for Connecticut.

[...]

As a career federal prosecutor, Mr. Durham already revered the office of the attorney general, people who know him say. And as he was drawn into Mr. Barr’s personal orbit, Mr. Durham came to embrace that particular attorney general’s intense feelings about the Russia investigation.

[...]

Referring to the C.I.A. and British spies, Mr. Barr also said he suspected that the N.S.A.’s “friends” had helped instigate the Russia investigation by targeting the Trump campaign, aides briefed on the meeting said. And repeating a sexual vulgarity, he warned that if the N.S.A. wronged him by not doing all it could to help Mr. Durham, Mr. Barr would do the same to the agency.

[...]

Mr. Durham used Russian intelligence memos — suspected by other U.S. officials of containing disinformation — to gain access to emails of an aide to George Soros, the financier and philanthropist who is a favorite target of the American right and Russian state media. Mr. Durham used grand jury powers to keep pursuing the emails even after a judge twice rejected his request for access to them. The emails yielded no evidence that Mr. Durham has cited in any case he pursued.

[...]

The publicly unexplained resignation in 2020 of his No. 2 and longtime aide, Nora R. Dannehy, was the culmination of a series of disputes between them over prosecutorial ethics. A year later, two more prosecutors strongly objected to plans to indict a lawyer with ties to Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign based on evidence they warned was too flimsy, and one left the team in protest of Mr. Durham’s decision to proceed anyway. (A jury swiftly acquitted the lawyer.)

[...]

By summer 2020, it was clear that the hunt for evidence supporting Mr. Barr’s hunch about intelligence abuses had failed. But he waited until after the 2020 election to publicly concede that there had turned out to be no sign of “foreign government activity” and that the C.I.A. had “stayed in its lane” after all.

I'm guessing it wasn't a "hunch" anyway.  It was simply Barr's own attempt to "find" something to exonerate Trump and keep him in power.

Mr. Barr has never prosecuted a case and is known for using his law enforcement platform to opine on culture-war issues and politics. He had effectively auditioned to be Mr. Trump’s attorney general by asserting to a New York Times reporter that there was more basis to investigate Mrs. Clinton than Mr. Trump’s “so-called ‘collusion’” with Russia, and by writing a memo suggesting a way to shield Mr. Trump from scrutiny for obstruction of justice.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

As was Bill Barr.

Trump and his lawyer got some bad news yesterday

This is sanction - and rather hefty sanction - for Trump's "frivolous" lawsuit against Hillary Clinton, the DNC, et al., for conspiring against him.

In case you're unfamiliar with FAFO, it's social media shorthand for "fuck around and find out."

In a scathing ruling, US district court judge Donald Middlebrooks castigated Trump and his lead attorney, Alina Habba, for abusing the legal system by advancing a lawsuit that furthered his political grievances over the 2017 Russia investigation using arguments replete with misinformation and errors.

[...]

Middlebrooks dismissed the case after he found that Trump engaged in a scattershot pleading that amounted to an obstruction of justice, and which included allegations that were known to be false.

[...]

The lawsuit, originally filed by Trump in March 2022, alleged that Clinton and the Democratic National Committee conspired with senior FBI officials and others before the 2016 election to fabricate ties between the Trump campaign and Russia in order to damage him politically.

[...]

“We are confronted with a lawsuit that should never have been filed, which was completely frivolous, both factually and legally, and which was brought in bad faith for an improper purpose,” Middlebrooks wrote in the 46-page order.

[...]

“I find that the pleadings here were abusive litigation tactics. The complaint and amended complaint were drafted to advance a political narrative; not to address legal harm caused by any defendant,” Middlebrooks wrote of Trump’s lawsuit.

[...]

Middlebrooks examined other seemingly politically motivated lawsuits filed by Trump and wrote that they all followed a playbook of including provocative rhetoric, political language carried over from rallies, attacks on political opponents and, typically, a lack of legal analysis.

[...]

“Misuse of the courts by Mr. Trump and his lawyers undermines the rule of law, portrays judges as partisans, and diverts resources from those who have suffered actual legal harm” he wrote.

[...]

“Trump is a prolific and sophisticated litigant who is repeatedly using the courts to seek revenge on political adversaries. He is the mastermind of strategic abuse of the judicial process,” the judge wrote. “He knew full well the impact of his actions.”

  Guardian

It's not the first sanction judgment in the case.

The suit was dismissed in September and Trump was ordered to pay tens of thousands in November after one defendant sought sanctions. The latest order came after a group of the remaining defendants, including Clinton, filed a separate request for sanctions.

[...]

Trump had wanted to drop the lawsuit after the case was assigned to Middlebrooks, an appointee of Bill Clinton, but Habba told Fox News in a segment referenced in the ruling that she had advised him to press ahead.

Somehow I doubt that's accurate. Can you imagine Trump having to be persuaded to file a revenge lawsuit?

But let me guess...Habba won't be getting paid.

UPDATE 10:38 am:

So maybe he's not a COMPLETE idiot.*

*Or maybe Habba had the sense - or self protection - to do it.

UPDATE 03:56 pm:

UPDATE 01/24/2023:

Former President Trump on Tuesday dropped a second lawsuit against New York Attorney General Letitia James (D) that sought to block her investigations into him and his businesses.

Trump’s and James’s attorneys indicated in a one-page filing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 2nd Circuit that they agreed to end the former president’s suit.

When reached for comment, Trump attorney Alina Habba said, “This appeal was voluntarily withdrawn for strategic purposes.”

  The Hill

The strategy being to stay out of jail and keep her license to practice law.

UPDATE 02/07/2023:

He lives and he will die by lawsuits

U.S. District Judge Donald Middlebrooks last month tossed out Trump’s suit against his 2016 presidential opponent, calling it a “political manifesto” with no legal standing. The former president’s legal team has now filed a notice of civil appeal.

[...]

Trump’s suit argued that Clinton, the Democratic National Committee, White House national security adviser Jake Sullivan and others “maliciously conspired to weave a false narrative” with accusations of Russian collusion during his 2016 presidential bid — and alleged the former president lost more than $24 million as a result.

  The Hill

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Another GOP ad using Russian stock footage

A recent campaign ad for Arizona gubernatorial candidate Kari Lake (R) uses stock footage of Russian soldiers.

The footage is shown while the ad claims Lake will use the National Guard to help secure the U.S. border with Mexico. There is a brief, zoomed-in view of soldiers marching that is implied to be the Arizona National Guard. However, this footage can be found in its original form on the stock footage website Shutterstock, which shows that the troops are, in fact, Russian soldiers marching in a victory parade.

  Heartland Signal

This isn't a first. My guess is they're either using the same unbeknowst-to-them Russian based consultants, or they're intentionally seeking the Russian support that Trump got in his campaigns. Or both.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Harry Reid has died

The man who warned of Trump campaign Russian ties passed away today.

Read the letter Reid wrote to James Comey in August of 2016.  It concludes:

Indeed, the recent staff changes within the Trump campaign have made clear that the Trump campaign has employed a number of individuals with significant and disturbing ties to Russia and the Kremlin.

The foregoing – and more – has led me to believe that this matter should be fully investigated and the investigation made public.

  Trump File

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

(Which is what Reid may as well have appended to his letter to Comey.)

Investigating the investigators follow-up

The key source of information used to compile a salacious 2016 dossier on former President Donald Trump has been arrested and charged with [five counts of making false statements] to the FBI as part of special counsel John Durham's long-running inquiry into the Russia investigation.

Igor Danchenko, 43, an associate of former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele, was taken into custody in northern Virginia and is expected to make his first court appearance Thursday afternoon, a Durham spokesman said Thursday.

[...]

In September, Durham, who has been examining abuses during the Russia investigation, secured an indictment against a Washington attorney accused of lying to the FBI.

The charge against Michael Sussmann, a prominent cybersecurity attorney whose firm is closely tied with Democratic Party interests, is linked to a 2016 contact with the FBI when he raised concerns about a secret channel of communications between a Russian bank and the Trump Organization.

[...]

In one instance, according to federal prosecutors, Danchenko falsely claimed he obtained information from an anonymous caller who indicated that there were "communications ongoing between the Trump campaign and Russian officials and that the caller had indicated the Kremlin might be of help in getting Trump elected."

[...]

The dossier, first published by BuzzFeed just before Trump's 2017 inauguration, suggested in part that Russia had obtained compromising information as part of a Kremlin effort to co-opt Trump.

Its explosive contents became part of the FBI's investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 campaign and were used to help support a surveillance request for former Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

  Yahoo News

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Trump gets away with another one

The Federal Elections Commission (FEC) has closed its investigation into whether former President Trump illegally made hush money payments to women prior to the 2016 election.

The FEC voted 4-1 to close the inquiry after failing to find that Trump or his campaign “knowingly and willfully” violated campaign finance law when his former attorney Michael Cohen paid $130,000 to porn star Stormy Daniels to keep her from disclosing an alleged affair.

[...]

FEC said that it failed by a 2-2 vote to prove any of the parties violated campaign finance law.

  The Hill

Tie means defeat? Should there maybe be five members?

Republican Commissioners James "Trey" Trainor and Sean Cooksey voted to dismiss the matter. Republican Vice Chairman Allen Dickerson recused himself, while independent Commissioner Steven Walther did not vote.

So, it wasn't a tie. It was that only 2 members voted. Why are there no Democrats on the Commission?

In a separate statement, Democratic Commissioner Ellen Weintraub and Commission Chair Shana Broussard said the probe should have been continued after the general counsel said there was reason to believe campaign finance law was broken.

“To conclude that a payment, made 13 days before Election Day to hush up a suddenly newsworthy 10-year-old story, was not campaign-related, without so much as conducting an investigation, defies reality,” the commissioners wrote.

Wait, there are Democratic Commissioners, but they didn't get a vote? This story is raising more questions than it answers.  But I'm not going to go in search of any.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What goes around, comes around

Not to mention the 4 million plus margin Biden has in the popular vote.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What a coincidence

Virginia’s online voter registration system crashed on Tuesday morning just before the final registration deadline for the November 2020 general election. Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law issued the following statement:

“Election officials in Virginia have again failed the public. The state’s online voter registration portal has crashed on the eve of the registration deadline, leaving thousands of eligible people in the dark. This error is particularly astounding given that this same problem occurred at virtually the same time in 2016. We sued the state and secured an extension of the registration deadline allowing tens of thousands of voters the ability to register and vote. It is astonishing that Virginia has not learned from failures of the not-so-distant past.”

  Common Dreams

Learned from its failures? One might be forgiven for imagining it DID learn, and repeated it intentionally.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

What's Barr got the DOJ up to recently?

The Justice Department said Wednesday that it "inadvertently" altered documents that it recently submitted to a federal court as part of its ongoing effort to dismiss the criminal case against former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn.

[...]

After a recent batch of handwritten notes were released, two former FBI officials wrote to the court saying that their notes contained dates and markings that were not authentic.

Federal prosecutors acknowledged the discrepancies on Wednesday, saying they were accidentally caused by the FBI agents who examined the original files[, referring to notes by former top FBI official Peter Strzok. They also said a similar error was made on a document written by former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe].

  CNN

Accidentally.

The handwritten notes weren't dated, so the FBI agents put sticky notes on the files with "estimated dates," and forgot to remove them before scanning the documents, which were later entered into the court record.

Forgot.

The Department of Justice has weakened its long-standing prohibition against interfering in elections, according to two department officials.

Avoiding election interference is the overarching principle of DOJ policy on voting-related crimes. In place since at least 1980, the policy generally bars prosecutors not only from making any announcement about ongoing investigations close to an election but also from taking public steps — such as an arrest or a raid — before a vote is finalized because the publicity could tip the balance of a race.

[...]

[N]ow if a U.S. attorney’s office suspects election fraud that involves postal workers or military employees, federal investigators will be allowed to take public investigative steps before the polls close, even if those actions risk affecting the outcome of the election.

  ProPublica

My guess is especially if they risk affecting the outcome.

Three former American Bar Association presidents, as well as several former judges and state and local bar leaders, are offering support to any Justice Department officials who resign or speak out against evidence of politicization in the waning weeks of the 2020 presidential election.

“The public and these professionals should know that if they stand up to such misuse — whether via resignation, public statements, or other forms of expressive dissent — they will have broad support in the legal profession, whose best traditions they will be upholding,” the attorneys and judges wrote in an open letterhttps://lawyersdefendingdemocracy.org/open-letter-supporting-the-us-doj/ signed by 600 attorneys, judges and DOJ alumni issued Thursday.

The letter is meant to lend backing to officials like James Herbert, a veteran assistant U.S. attorney from Massachusetts, who wrote a scathing letter assailing Attorney General William Barr in the Boston Globe last month, as well as prosecutors who have withdrawn from cases amid concerns about political interference.

[...]

The lawyers say Barr has enabled President Donald Trump’s false claims about alleged voter fraud, raised the specter of releasing politically explosive documents in the heat of the 2020 presidential campaign and routinely intervened in cases affecting allies of the president.

[...]

“Presiding over a federal courtroom for 37 years, I relied on a nonpartisan, independent Justice Department,” said Henderson, the retired federal district judge appointed by Carter. “I fear that under Attorney General Barr, that trust has been shredded.”

[...]

Barr has rejected the notion that he has turned the Justice Department into political weapon for Trump. But in remarks in September, he made a case for rethinking the role of politics in the Justice Department.

[...]

“The Justice Department is not a praetorian guard that watches over society impervious to the ebbs and flows of politics,” Barr said in a Sept. 16 speech at Hillsdale College. In his speech, Barr said the actions of political appointees carry greater weight than those taken by career employees, who “simply do not possess” the demorcratic legitimacy conferred upon those more senior officials.

  Politico

I'd like to say this is surprising

But that would be a lie.

Donald Trump repeatedly discussed with advisers the idea of naming his daughter Ivanka as his running mate in 2016 before settling for Mike Pence, according to a former Trump campaign aide who became a star witness in Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation.

Rick Gates, who in the summer of 2016 was Trump’s deputy campaign chairman, describes in a new book how Trump -- wary of the “Never Trump” sentiment in the Republican party and still stinging from his competitors’ attacks during the GOP primary -- deliberated for about a month on a vice presidential candidate he could trust completely.

“During a VP discussion that included Jared and the other kids all assembled in one room, Trump said, ‘I think it should be Ivanka. What about Ivanka as my VP?’ There was silence,” Gates writes in “Wicked Game: An Insider’s Story on How Trump Won, Mueller Failed and America Lost,” referring to Ivanka Trump’s husband, Jared Kushner.

  Bloomberg

Junior must have been devastated. Again. Imagine what Melania would have done!

“All heads turned toward her, and she just looked surprised. We all knew Trump well enough to keep our mouths shut and not laugh,” Gates writes, according to a copy of the book obtained by Bloomberg News. “He went on: ‘She’s bright, she’s smart, she’s beautiful, and the people would love her!”’

Junior at this point was seethe-crying inside.

The book is set to be released by Post Hill Press on Oct. 13.

[...]

Gates was indicted in October 2017 by prosecutors investigating Russian interference in the election and ties between Trump’s campaign and Moscow. He became a cooperating witness and was sentenced in December 2019 to three years’ probation and 45 days of intermittent confinement for tax and lobbying crimes committed with Trump’s former campaign chairman, Paul Manafort.

[...]

Gates, who served out his time in home confinement because of the coronavirus pandemic, writes that he chafed for two years under a judge-mandated gag order, and expresses outrage over the Mueller probe. But the bulk of the book is about his recollections of working on Trump’s insurgent campaign, the president’s inauguration, and the pro-Trump group America First Policies.

Don't try tax and lobbying crimes at home. You won't fare so well.

The former aide’s testimony helped send Manafort to prison and also to convict Trump ally Roger Stone.

Manafort is also serving his time at home. How nice for him. But what didn't he have that Stone has that Trump has not commuted his sentence or pardoned him?

Trump was open to the possibility of adding former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice or then-Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee to the ticket. Both took themselves out of consideration, Gates writes.

No fools, they.

Another potential VP choice, Iowa Senator Joni Ernst, “drew harsh comparisons to Sarah Palin” because of her inexperience, Gates writes. And Trump derided another possibility, Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, as “Mr. Magoo,” Gates says. Sessions went on to be Trump’s first attorney general.

And regrets it to this day, I'm sure. Sad.

Manafort then “subtly pushed once more for someone who could bring balance to the ticket, like Pence,” Gates writes.

“But Trump said, ‘Look, I don’t like any of these people,’” Gates writes. “Once again, he said, ‘I think it should be Ivanka.’”

What a fucking idiot.

Trump continued to bring up the idea over the next few weeks, which signaled to his advisers “just how serious he was about putting his politically inexperienced daughter just a heartbeat from the presidency,” Gates writes.

She couldn't do any worse than him. But what made him think a family duo would fly?

Oh, wait. Manafort tried it out!

Manafort twice tested voters’ opinions of Ivanka Trump by placing her name next to a dozen potential vice presidential candidates in internal campaign polls, Gates writes. “She didn’t poll tremendously high, but higher than we expected, and that only added to the seriousness of her consideration.”

They're now hoping to run her for the top job in 2024. And letting Junior think it's him they're grooming.

In early July 2016, according to Gates, “Trump still seemed cool to Pence,” and “the Ivanka idea started to catch some momentum. People on the team argued that Ivanka brought a balance to her father. ‘She’s more moderate.’ ‘She could help with independents!’”

But Ivanka Trump pulled herself out of the running, Gates writes. “She went to her father and said, ‘No, Dad. It’s not a good idea.’ And he capitulated.”

She's not quite as stupid as the others, apparently.

Trump and Pence had a “cordial” meeting, but Trump wasn’t sold, Gates writes. Trump had early called Pence “a loser” because he’d endorsed Texas Senator Ted Cruz in the Republican primaries and was struggling in his own gubernatorial re-election contest, Gates writes.

Then Gates got a phone call from campaign aide John McEntee, who said there was a mechanical issue with Trump’s plane. Stranded overnight in Indiana, Trump had breakfast with Pence, and was impressed with the governor’s assertive side when he verbally ripped into Hillary Clinton, Gates writes.

Pathetic. Want to bet that there was nothing wrong with the plane, and that Manafort and McEntee set the meeting up, prepping Pence in advance how to win Trump over?

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.