And while we were fixated on the Russian indictments...

Special counsel Robert Mueller’s office has told a federal judge it has found evidence that Paul Manafort, the former Trump campaign chairman, committed bank fraud not addressed by the indictment last October in which he was charged with money laundering and failure to register as a foreign agent.

As legal wrangling continues over a $10 million bail package for Manafort, prosecutors this week accused him of submitting false information to a bank in connection with one of his mortgages.

  Politico

Perhaps they were informed by Rick Gates, who is apparently now cooperating with Mueller's investigation.

No criminal charges are known to have been filed over the alleged fraud, and Mueller’s office does not say in the filing whether it intends to bring any.

The filing by Mueller’s office says Manafort obtained a mortgage using “doctored profit and loss statements” overstating “by millions of dollars” the income for his consulting company, DMP International. Prosecutors appear to be referring to a $9.5 million mortgage that Federal Savings Bank of Chicago extended in late 2016 to a Manafort-linked firm, Summerbreeze LLC.

Gee, who else do we know who regularly overstates his income and secured a huge loan after being turned down by Deutsche Bank, not from a different bank, but from a different department of Deutsche Bank? 

Prosecutors’ references to “conspiracies” suggest that someone beyond Manafort was involved in the alleged fraud, but no further details were given.

[...]

A report in The Wall Street Journal last year said investigators from the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman were examining loans that Manafort obtained in connection with various real estate transactions, including mortgages issued by Federal Savings Bank. That and other articles also noted that the bank’s chairman, Stephen Calk, was an economic adviser to the Trump campaign.

If you're interested, here's a post from last summer about Mr. Calk, Federal Savings Bank, and Paul Manafort.

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

Why Trump fired Preet Bharara

He had to get someone in that position favorable to him, because that's where the money laundering trial will take place. Which is just as much evidence of obstruction of justice as anything directly involving White House and FBI personnel.

[T]he recent appointments at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York are particularly alarming. U.S. Attorney offices across the United States prosecute the criminal and civil cases in their jurisdiction in which the United States is involved. Because Donald Trump’s questionable business dealings and campaign activities occurred mainly in New York, and he has a residence there at Trump Tower, it is most likely that this would be the U.S. Attorney’s office prosecuting any charges of crimes brought against him, his businesses or his family.

Given Trump’s past demands for loyalty, alarm bells sounded earlier this month when Jeff Sessions, the Attorney General of the U.S. Justice Department, announced that he was naming Geoffrey Berman to replace Preet Bharara as U.S. Attorney for the SDNY on an interim basis. Trump had fired Bharara 20 hours after Bharara had declined to return a phone call to Trump that he feared would involve an inappropriate request from the president.

Berman has been able to skip Senate confirmation due to his interim appointment and would serve for 120 days as U.S. Attorney at the SDNY unless he is formally nominated for the position, in which case he would have to undergo Senate confirmation.

  Wall Street on Parade

And with the Seenate we have now, I don't see how that would be a problem.

At the time of his appointment, Berman was also a fellow shareholder and law partner of Rudy Giuliani at Greenberg Traurig. Berman has worked there for more than a decade. (Giuliani is a Trump ally and loyalist.) Berman’s LinkedIn profile shows that he remains a shareholder at Greenberg Traurig.

Berman is the son of Ronald Berman, a major real estate developer in New Jersey.

But, here's the clincher:

Just two days after Berman was named U.S. Attorney for the SDNY, he named Robert Khuzami to be his Deputy U.S. Attorney for that jurisdiction. More sirens went off. Khuzami was General Counsel to Deutsche Bank-Americas from January 2002 to February 2009. Deutsche Bank has been a major lender to Trump’s businesses for decades, even as other major Wall Street banks refused further lending to him. In January of last year, Deutsche Bank was charged with laundering billions of dollars out of Russia and paid approximately $630 million in fines.

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

Why Cobb keeps making ridiculous predictions about the end of Mueller's investigation

“I’d be embarrassed if this is still haunting the White House by Thanksgiving and worse if it’s still haunting him by year end,” Cobb told Reuters in August. In December, Cobb — who leads the White House’s legal response to Mueller’s Russia probe — told POLITICO he thought the special counsel could exonerate Trump by the end of January.

That has prompted snickering among some of Cobb’s peers. “When I see these predictions that Mueller will be done by Thanksgiving, year end, March 1, etc., I’m reminded that marijuana is legal in D.C. and wonder just who’s lighting up,” said a lawyer who represents a senior Trump aide immersed in the probe.

But a day after reports that Trump sought to fire Mueller in June, the rationale for his West Wing lawyer’s seeming over-optimism may be coming into clearer view.

Cobb, legal experts and political operatives say, has been trying to keep a lid on his temperamental client — downplaying the threat of Mueller’s investigation as a way of preventing Trump from firing him. As lawmakers of both parties have warned, that move would make matters only worse for Trump.

“I’ve thought for a long time that Cobb was speaking to an audience of one and that rigorous allegiance to reality was not a prerequisite,” the lawyer representing a Trump staffer added.

  Politico

At first blush, this sounds reasonable. But then you have to think about Cobb's actual position and Trump's personality. Trump's a blowhard, but he's not brave. And he's stupid beyond belief for someone his age and position, but he can't be put off that many times by someone telling him we're almost there. His behavior is very juvenile, but even as a toddler, he wasn't likely put off that easily. He's volatile and he wants what he wants NOW. I think he's scared to fire Mueller. He's the only one who could actually make that happen, and he hasn't done it. At this point, his fear is greater than his rage at being questioned. Cobb's bullshit is for Trump's base. They're possibly stupid enough to buy it, and they can't do anything about Mueller, so they'll keep repeating Cobb's assurances to each other: almost done, about to be cleared.

Cobb might also be pursuing a public relations goal — signaling to the outside world that Trump has nothing to hide from Mueller and that he is not obstructing justice.

That sounds more like it to me.

[T]he strategic divide over how to handle Mueller was on display just this week, after Trump told reporters at the White House on Wednesday that he was “looking forward” to speaking with Mueller under oath. In a statement hours later, Cobb hedged on whether Trump would testify under oath while affirming that the president is “looking forward to speaking with Mr. Mueller.”

Dowd, meanwhile, took a sharply different tack. “I will make the decision on whether the President talks to the special counsel,” he said in a statement the next day. “I have not made any decision yet.”

I don't see that as a strategic divide. Cobb was brought in by the White House counsel to manage the response to Mueller's investigation. Dowd is Trump's personal lawyer. I see that as Cobb and Trump still playing the public innocence game. They can say whatever they want to make Trump look like he's so very willing to cooperate because he has nothing to hide. Then Dowd can take the blaime for not letting him do it. Dowd might want to be careful how he conveys that, however. "I will make the decision," could trigger Trump's well-documented ire at anyone who says they're telling him what to do.

Having said that, it's absolutely possible, and even likely, that Cobb and Dowd do have differing strategies, since in the end, Cobb represents the office and Dowd represents Trump. I just don't think this example indicates any such difference.

Another challenge Cobb faces is just how much to encourage the president to speak to Mueller, given Trump’s history of fudging the truth, including in courtroom depositions from his real estate business.

Cobb on Thursday declined to comment on the media reports about Trump’s June call to fire Mueller “out of respect for the Office of the Special Counsel and its process.”

Therein lies Cobb's problem. He's got to protect the office from the man in it. That's why I think he offers obviously false information to the base, trying to keep them calm. When the press publishes one of those comments, that's what he's telling the press. Who knows what he's telling Trump? Undoubtedly nothing without McGahn and Dowd's presence.  Cobb definitely won't have the final say in what Trump does or doesn't do.  And who knows if even Dowd will?

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

Mainstream analysis of Simpson's House testimony

I expected this morning to see blaring headlines about the newly released Simpson testimony to the House Intel Committee last November. The Guardian, RT, al Jazeera, IB Times, Daily Intelligencer all have absolutely nothing. Not even a story down the page somewhere. So, I Googled for other sources.

CNN

California Rep. Adam Schiff, the top Democrat on the committee, said the transcript reveals "serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals."

Simpson "testified that if the Trump Organization did engage in money laundering with the Russians, it would be with the knowledge or approval of the Kremlin and constitute powerful leverage over the President of the United States," Schiff said. "Thus far, Committee Republicans have refused to look into this key area and we hope the release of this transcript will reinforce the importance of these critical questions to our investigation."

  CNN

It's like they've rolled right over the obvious criminal connections with the Russian mob to get to the Kremlin's possible interference in the election. To be fair, I guess possible criminal business activity is not in the purview of their investigation.

Rep. Jim Himes, a Connecticut Democrat on the committee, also said that Simpson "did not provide evidence," and suggested that the question of criminality was better suited for special counsel Robert Mueller than the intelligence panel.

Should somebody maybe suggest a Congressional investigation? Maybe back in November? Maybe somebody did and got nowhere?

At one point, Schiff seemed to ask Simpson for a blueprint for how to investigate Trump's potential financial improprieties -- a facet of the investigation Democrats have criticized Republicans in the House for not pursuing.

[...]

Simpson advised Schiff to subpoena the people involved in the business deals, the banks that handled their accounts, and the shell companies that are traditionally used to hide financial trails.

[...]

Democrats, including Schiff, pressed Simpson to detail Trump's alleged links to organized crime. In the interview, Simpson went over the connections his firm and Steele found between Russians and numerous figures in Trump's orbit, including Felix Sater, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Cohen. All have denied colluding with Russians during the election.

[...]

Simpson said before Fusion had hired Steele, the firm started looking into Trump's ties to Russia when it was investigating Trump's real estate deals and suspicions of money laundering through Russian officials.

In addition to the Trump Organization real estate, Simpson said that Fusion GPS had also investigated Kushner's real estate deal in Jersey City, New Jersey.

If I'm not mistaken (and I could be), this happened when Fusion was still being paid by Republicans to investigate Trump, before the Democrats hired the company. If that's true, the Republicans should be investigated as to why they dropped the investigation and rallied behind someone they had reason to believe was criminally involved with the Russian mob.

The criminal activities with the Russian mob, which I am personally convinced have been a part of the Trump organization for years concerns me much more than any Russian interference in our elections. Maybe it shouldn't. Maybe the interference is the scandal of scandals and most detrimental to our country. But I feel that our own politicians have gerry-rigged and interefered with our elections to a criminal degree for so long now that it seems almost silly to act like some other country might ruin our democracy. We've ruined it ourselves over many years with voter machine rigging, district gerrymandering, voter suppression, super delegates and corporate funding.

NBC

It was the second release of Congressional testimony by Simpson, and it contained no Earth-shattering revelations, but Simpson went into much greater detail with the House committee than he did with the Senate judiciary committee about his research into Trump’s alleged business dealings with Russians and organized crime figures, in passages that at times read like a work of pulp fiction.

  NBC

So, that's not "Earth-shattering"? Is foreign-mob related criminal activity by a US president just old hat? Meh.

“As we pieced together the early years of his biography, it seemed as if during the early part of his career he had connections to a lot of Italian mafia figures, and then gradually during the 90s became associated with Russian mafia figures,” Simpson said at one point, under oath, about the 45th president of the United States.

Pretty Earth-shattering. Or, it should be.

Simpson also delves into some of his own research on Trump’s business dealings, allegations familiar to reporters but not the general public. For example, Simpson testified that he believes Trump’s golf courses in Scotland and Ireland may have been financed with illicit Russian money, something media organizations investigated — but reached no conclusion about — during the campaign.

President Trump's son Eric told golf reporter James Dodson in 2014 that the family's company got much of its funding to build its golf courses from Russia, according to an interview Dodson gave last year to Boston public radio station WBUR. But Eric Trump then went on Twitter and denied saying that.

Simpson said he poured over the financial statements of the golf courses.

Time out. He didn't "pour over" anything. Bugs the heck out of me when I all too often read that somebody "poured over" something. No. You "pore over" documents. You "pour" gravy and sauce over something. Not over documents.  Not on purpose.

Another thing that grates on me every time I see it is the use of "lead" as the past tense of "lead". No, no, no. "Led" is the past tense of "lead".

Okay, that rant is over. Back to the "Earth-shattering" news that doesn't seem to be making much of a splash.

[Simpson's] team also observed patterns in real estate dealings involving Trump properties — purchases by unknown entities that were quickly re-sold for a loss — that "were suggestive of money laundering."

He singled out projects in Panama and Toronto where Russian mafia figures were listed as buyers, which he said "smacks of fraud."

[...]

“That's exactly my point, is that if we knew that Donald Trump was working with the Russian mafia to fund Doonbeg in Ireland, then there's no way he would be President,” [Representative] Rooney said, according to the transcript.

Oh, bullshit. Republicans wouldn't have cared.  There's no way they would vote for Hillary - or any Democrat - andour voting system, with the electoral college is so rigged that, even with 3 million or so more votes, the Democrat lost.

Simpson said at first it seemed to him that Trump's own lawyers would step in to prevent Trump from pursuing real estate deals in Russia, on the basis that transactions could trigger the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Michael Cohen? That lawyer? He's as dirty as Trump.

"What I later came to believe was that he was, in fact, developing different kinds of business relationships with the Russians," he told the committee. "He'd found other ways to profit from his relationship with that."

NBC doesn't clarify which lawyer they're talking about.

Simpson said he was shocked and angry when FBI Director James Comey said publicly he was reopening the Clinton email investigation in October 2016, just weeks before the presidential election.

“I was sitting on this piece of knowledge, which was that, in fact, the FBI was investigating the Trump organization for possibly having illegal dealings with the Government of Russia,” Simpson said. “We decided that if James Corney wasn't going to tell people about this investigation that, you know, he had violated the rules, and we would only be fair if the world knew that both candidates were under FBI investigation.“

It's my understanding that Comey's hand was pushed by the New York FBI branch with Rudy Giuliani's involvement threatening to release some incriminating, but discredited, information about Clinton. Maybe that doesn't absolve him. I thought it explained it anyway.

Simpson also asserted that the Russian government had “infiltrated “ the National Rifle Association, which spent more than $400 million in the 2016 election, according to public records. The NRA supports mainly Republicans.

[...]

"[A]nd there is more than one explanation for why,” he said in the testimony. “But I would say broadly speaking, it appears that the Russian operation was designed to infiltrate conservative organizations. And they targeted various conservative organizations, religious and otherwise, and they seem to have made a very concerted effort to get in with the NRA."

And, that's the other big story floating around, making it sound like we're practically a Russian subsidiary. This time around the "Red scare" isn't that you could wake up Russian, but that you already are.

FOX

The co-founder of the opposition research firm Fusion GPS told the House Intelligence Committee this past November that "people were arrested or died mysteriously" after the existence of the now-infamous "Trump-Russia dossier" was made public.

However, Glenn Simpson did not say whether those affected actually contributed information to the unverified dossier.

[...]

Simpson told the committee that he and Steele began shopping the dossier to media outlets in late October of 2016, after then-FBI Director James Comey announced that the Bureau was re-opening the investigation into Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton's private email server. He said he was "angry" that Comey, in Simpson's view, had "violated the sort of one of the more sacrosanct policies, which is not announcing law enforcement activity in the closing days of an election."

[...]

In his testimony, Simpson described how Fusion GPS was retained by Perkins Coie, a law firm representing the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, in the summer of 2016. He said the committee was paid a "flat fee" of $50,000 per month, plus expenses to research Trump on the Democrats' behalf.

[...]

Simpson also detailed facts Fusion GPS claimed to have uncovered about the president while the firm was contracted by the conservative Washington Free Beacon to do research on then-candidate Trump and other GOP contenders for the White House.

"Various [Russian] criminals were buying [Trump] properties," said Simpson.

  Fox

So, Fox News is halfway through a somewhat lengthy article before it makes any mention of the mob ties. No Trump voter has read that far.

Even at that mention, the article identifies only one such criminal, makes a couple of comments about him being seen with Trump, and moves on to the Steele dossier. After a few paragraphs on that, it  then mentions Adam Schiff's claims of possible money laundering.

The committee's top Democrat, California Rep. Adam Schiff, said in a statement that Simpson had made "serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals ..."

"Mr. Simpson ... testified that if the Trump Organization did engage in money laundering with the Russians, it would be with the knowledge or approval of the Kremlin and constitute powerful leverage over the President of the United States," Schiff added.

That's it.  The article then closes with three short paragraphs of Simpson speculating on whether there was any coordination between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin.

I'm still waiting for The Most Notable Loser to watch a Fox & Friends segment and find out his mob ties are in the news. If, indeed, they even tell him.

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

Adam Schiff's statement on release of Simpson's testimony

“Today, the House Intelligence Committee voted on a bipartisan basis to release the transcripts of Glenn Simpson. Those transcripts reveal serious allegations that the Trump Organization may have engaged in money laundering with Russian nationals, the same subject which Mr. Bannon described in his interview with the author of Fire and Fury.

“Mr. Simpson, who, prior to his time at Fusion GPS, was an investigative journalist for the Wall Street Journal with a focus on Russia, the Russian government and mafia, and illicit financial transactions, testified that if the Trump Organization did engage in money laundering with the Russians, it would be with the knowledge or approval of the Kremlin and constitute powerful leverage over the President of the United States.

“Thus far, Committee Republicans have refused to look into this key area and we hope the release of this transcript will reinforce the importance of these critical questions to our investigation.”

  Democrats Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence

This testimony was taken November 14, 2017. 

A bit of a surprise: House Intel released their Simpson transcript

Rather than home in on the nature of Simpson's relationship with Christopher Steele — the former British intelligence officer hired by Fusion to research Trump's Russia ties — Schiff and his Democratic colleagues asked Simpson pointed questions about Russian money laundering, Russian organized crime, and whether Trump could be susceptible to Russian blackmail.

The result was a long trail of breacrumbs for investigators probing Trump's relationship with Russia.

  Business Insider

This could add some time to the Mueller probe. On the other hand, I wonder if Mueller doesn't already know even more about those things.

"You mentioned that you'd done a lot of work as a journalist in terms of Russian organized crime, financial crimes, organized crime more generally," Schiff said. "What can you tell us about how the Russians launder their money and whether that was an issue of concern during the first phase of your work for Free Beacon?"

Yes, do tell. Free Beacon first hired Fusion GPS for opposition research on Trump in 2015.

"I guess the general thing I would say is that, you know, the Russians are far more sophisticated in their criminal organized crime activities than the Italians, and they're a lot more global," Simpson replied. "They understand finance a lot better. And so they tend to use quite elaborate methods to move money...I mean, if you can think of a way to launder money, the Russians are pretty good at it."

Simpson explained that "real estate deals" were a common Russian method of hiding and moving money. Asked whether Fusion had found "evidence" of corruption and illicit finance related to the purchase of Trump properties, Simpson replied that his firm had seen "patterns of buying and selling that we thought were suggestive of money laundering."

[...]

Simpson said Trump's golf courses in Scotland and Ireland were also "concerning" because financial statements obtained by Fusion showed "enormous amounts of capital flowing into these projects from unknown sources."

[...]

"And these golf course are just, you know, they're sinks. They don't actually make any money."

GOP Rep. Tom Rooney said "the story about [Trump] financing Doonbeg in Ireland through money that we can't really trace but has sort of the fingerprints of Russian mobsters" was "fascinating."

[...]

Simpson also suggested that the committee examine the travel histories of Trump's children, Don Jr. and Ivanka, " and whether they had other meetings with Russians."

"And specifically, the connections between the Abramovichs and Ivanka and Jared is something that requires looking into, if it hasn’t been," Simpson said, referring to Roman Abramovich and Jared Kushner.

Orange suits all 'round!

I'll just let you take it from here with this article, where names drop right and left. Get comfortable.

And buckle your seatbelt for a Trump twitter storm tomorrow morning.

I wonder how they convinced Nunes to let this out.  Maybe it was just too hot, and keeping it under wraps might have implicated Nunes in a cover up.

The transcript is also published at the end of this article.

...To be continued, no doubt.

Follow the money, honey

Speaking of Haiti...

Records show more than 1,300 Trump condos were purchased through shell companies, which allow buyers to shield their finances and identities, and without a mortgage, which protects buyers from lender inquiries.

Those two characteristics raise alarms about possible money laundering, according to statements issued in recent months by the Department of Treasury, which has investigated transactions just like those all over the country.

[...]

Trump companies reportedly sold $35 million in real estate last year alone — mostly to secretive shell companies that open the president up to possible influence peddling.

  Raw Story

AND money laundering.

According to the Buzzfeed News report, the Haitian government complained in the 1980s that former dictator Jean-Claude Duvalier laundered money stolen from the Caribbean nation’s treasury by purchasing an apartment in Trump Tower.

Duvalier, nicknamed “Baby Doc,” was overthrown in 1986, but three years earlier used a Panamanian shell company called Lasa Trade and Finance to buy apartment 54-K in Trump’s Manhattan tower for $446,875 cash.

Trump, the future U.S. president, signed the deed of sale.

A copy of which is no doubt in Mr. Mueller's files.

Federal prosecutors charged a Russian native in 1984 with laundering the proceeds from a gasoline bootlegging operation through five Trump Tower condos purchased for $4.9 million.

David Bogatin pleaded guilty in 1987 and served eight years in federal prison.

And how did Trump get off?

Trump Taj Mahal casino was charged under anti-money laundering regulations 106 times in 1990 and 1991 by failing to identify gamblers who bought or cashed out more than $10,000 in chips.

Those reports are required to help authorities identify gamblers who may be laundering money, and Trump’s casino paid a $477,000 fine to the Treasury Department in 1998 without admitting wrongdoing.

MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” hosted Time deputy managing editor Michael Duffy, who wrote the magazine’s cover story this week on Trump’s first year in office, and USA Today senior politics reporter Heidi Przybyla asked him about the president’s business dealings.

[...]

“There could be explanations for this, like people just don’t want their names identified with Trump properties,” she said. “But according to our reporters, there’s a lot of people who say these could be used for influence buying, influence-seeking groups including foreign people who have purchased these properties if we’re able to identify.”

Duffy said the president had already tipped off investigators about how much influence peddling could be going on.

“President Trump told, warned special counsel (Robert) Mueller not to look at his family finances which, of course, was a great big red flag to go ahead and look at his family finances,” Duffy said. [...] "I think the family’s finances will move front and center this year.”

  aAw Story

I wonder how you pronounce that woman's name.

Yes, shell companies can ge legitimate, but Baby Doc's cash purchases definitely weren't.  But the Baby was friends with powerful people in the US.

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

Jesus, indeed

What an amazing load of information the GOP have been trying to hide from us.

I have to repeat, I am not a Dianne Feinstein fan - far from it, but I have to hand it to her here.  She did what was absolutely right, whether it was a good political move or not.  It was right.

I always complained about Ron Wyden, knowing what he did about NSA spying, and only had nerve enough to ask Clapper on the stand whether it was happening, but letting him go with denying it.  Even though Wyden was privy to classified information, at that point, when it was illegal behavior, he should have used his privilege to tell the American public what was going on.

DiFi did it.

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

UPDATE:

But wait! There's more.

I think we owe Dianne Feinstein a big thanks on this.

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

Why didn't the Republicans want the Fusion GPS transcript released?

See if you can spot a reason.

Transcript excerpt:

Transcript

Seth Abramson reading.

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

I can see why they might not really want to win that election

Glad to hear it.  She should be. 

How perfectly rich that in fearing a look into their criminal finances they actually caused it to happen.

Yes, we know.  Trump is a cruel, pitiless piece of shit. 

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

Circling in on the guy at the top

[Former NY federal attorney Preet] Bharara predicted that Trump will want to meet with Mueller and his investigative team, even if his lawyers advise against it. The meeting with a "high profile, potential target" like the president would likely come as the special counsel is nearing the end of his probe.

[...]

"Now, the president doesn't have to talk, but I imagine the president will talk because that's what he does," he added.

  The Hill

Trump’s legal team sat down with representatives from the special counsel’s office in late December.

[...]

Anticipating that Special Counsel Robert Mueller will ask to interview President Donald Trump, the president’s legal team is discussing a range of potential options for the format, including written responses to questions in lieu of a formal sit-down, according to three people familiar with the matter.

[...]

Trump’s legal team is seeking clarification on whether the president would be interviewed directly by Mueller, as well as the legal standard for when a president can be interviewed, the location of a possible interview, the topics and the duration. But the president’s team is also seeking potential compromises that could avoid an interview altogether, two of those interviewed told NBC News.

[...]

In addition to the possibility of suggesting the president submit written responses in place of an interview, a second person familiar with the president’s legal strategy said another possibility being contemplated was an affidavit signed by the president affirming he was innocent of any wrongdoing and denying any collusion

  NBC

Yeah, Mueller would accept that, sure.

“Prosecutors want to see and hear folks in person,” said Chuck Rosenberg, former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia and chief of staff to FBI Director Comey. [...] The odds of prosecutors agreeing to written responses are somewhere between infinitesimally small and zero."

[...]

Robert Dallek, a presidential historian, said any risk in Trump speaking to the special counsel under oath depends on what he would say.

“It very much depends on whether the president has things to hide. If there’s really nothing to hide, then I would think there’s no danger in him sitting down with anyone and speaking freely to them,” Dallek said. "But if there are things to hide, obviously there are risks."

Number one: he definitely has things to hide. Number two: there's always a danger of letting someone like Trump testify to the FBI. His propensity to blab and let things slip could even give them another lead to follow to something they don't already know about. And anyone near him would be in danger of having him spill some beans on them. I think the lawyers will do everything they can to try to keep him from being interviewed.

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

Bannon likes Mueller's "pit bull"

Sources who've spoken to Steve Bannon tell me they're perplexed by his apparent fixation on Andrew Weissmann — the Russia investigation prosecutor described as Robert Mueller's "pit bull."

The intrigue: What's raised the eyebrows of some who've heard Bannon hold court about Weissmann is that he refers to him only positively and with great admiration.

"He obsesses on Weissmann in a positive way, labeling him a 'killer' which is his [Bannon's] highest form of compliment," said one source who's spoken to Bannon about the prosecutor.

"He [Bannon] would give the impression he had an inside knowledge of what was going with the [Mueller] investigation," the source added.

[...]

[Michael] Wolff [...] quotes Bannon saying this of Mueller hiring Weissmann: "You've got the LeBron James of money laundering investigations on you, Jarvanka."

  Axios

I'd say there's a good possibility Bannon has been cooperating with Mueller for a good while.

Sources who've spoken to Bannon about the Mueller probe say he's telling everyone that Mueller's team hasn't contacted him and that he's told them nothing.

HIGHLY unlikely.

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

Fusion GPS would like to clear the air on the Steeele Dossier

Republicans won't release the GPS testimony transcripts, and instead, keep using GPS to tarnish the Clinton campaign and to support their own false claims about the Russia investigation. GPS is tired of it.

In the year since the publication of the so-called Steele dossier — the collection of intelligence reports we commissioned about Donald Trump’s ties to Russia — the president has repeatedly attacked us on Twitter. His allies in Congress have dug through our bank records and sought to tarnish our firm to punish us for highlighting his links to Russia. Conservative news outlets and even our former employer, The Wall Street Journal, have spun a succession of mendacious conspiracy theories about our motives and backers.

We are happy to correct the record.

[...]

Three congressional committees have heard over 21 hours of testimony from our firm, Fusion GPS. In those sessions, we toppled the far right’s conspiracy theories and explained how The Washington Free Beacon and the Clinton campaign — the Republican and Democratic funders of our Trump research — separately came to hire us in the first place.

We walked investigators through our yearlong effort to decipher Mr. Trump’s complex business past, of which the Steele dossier is but one chapter. And we handed over our relevant bank records — while drawing the line at a fishing expedition for the records of companies we work for that have nothing to do with the Trump case.

Republicans have refused to release full transcripts of our firm’s testimony, even as they selectively leak details to media outlets on the far right. It’s time to share what our company told investigators.

[...]

As we told the Senate Judiciary Committee in August, our sources said the dossier was taken so seriously because it corroborated reports the bureau had received from other sources, including one inside the Trump camp.

  NYT

Who are we talking about here? Papadopoulos? Someone else?

The intelligence committees have known for months that credible allegations of collusion between the Trump camp and Russia were pouring in from independent sources during the campaign. Yet lawmakers in the thrall of the president continue to wage a cynical campaign to portray us as the unwitting victims of Kremlin disinformation.

This is a favorite from the Karl Rove playbook. Accuse the other party of doing what you're doing (or what you are, or how you've been duped) before they can accuse you of it. We see it time and time and time again.

We suggested investigators look into the bank records of Deutsche Bank and others that were funding Mr. Trump’s businesses. Congress appears uninterested in that tip: Reportedly, ours are the only bank records the House Intelligence Committee has subpoenaed.

We told Congress that from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Fla., and from Toronto to Panama, we found widespread evidence that Mr. Trump and his organization had worked with a wide array of dubious Russians in arrangements that often raised questions about money laundering. Likewise, those deals don’t seem to interest Congress.

Those Congressional investigations are utterly worthless. Not to worry, though. Mueller's team has subpoenaed all those pertinent records.

Finally, we debunked the biggest canard being pushed by the president’s men — the notion that we somehow knew of the June 9, 2016, meeting in Trump Tower between some Russians and the Trump brain trust. We first learned of that meeting from news reports last year — and the committees know it. They also know that these Russians were unaware of the former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele’s work for us and were not sources for his reports.

Yes, we hired Mr. Steele, a highly respected Russia expert. But we did so without informing him whom we were working for and gave him no specific marching orders beyond this basic question: Why did Mr. Trump repeatedly seek to do deals in a notoriously corrupt police state that most serious investors shun?

[...]

What came back shocked us. Mr. Steele’s sources in Russia (who were not paid) reported on an extensive — and now confirmed — effort by the Kremlin to help elect Mr. Trump president. Mr. Steele saw this as a crime in progress and decided he needed to report it to the F.B.I.

We did not discuss that decision with our clients, or anyone else. Instead, we deferred to Mr. Steele.

[...]

After the election, Mr. Steele decided to share his intelligence with Senator John McCain via an emissary. We helped him do that. The goal was to alert the United States national security community to an attack on our country by a hostile foreign power. We did not, however, share the dossier with BuzzFeed, which to our dismay published it last January.

[...]

Congress should release transcripts of our firm’s testimony, so that the American people can learn the truth about our work and most important, what happened to our democracy.

I wonder why Mr. Steele waited until after the election and then informed McCain (and why he chose McCain).  Steele is not an American citizen and had no obligation to alert the FBI, but I'm wondering why he decided to hold the information back until after the election.  Did he think it wouldn't matter if Trump lost the election and figured he would?  Or was there another reason?  And who gave the document to Buzzfeed, and why in January?  McCain - because that's when he got it?  Just curious.

Maybe Trump will actually read a book

Donald Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon has described the Trump Tower meeting between the president’s son and a group of Russians during the 2016 election campaign as “treasonous” and “unpatriotic”, according to an explosive new book [Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House] seen by the Guardian.

Bannon, speaking to author Michael Wolff, warned that the investigation into alleged collusion with the Kremlin will focus on money laundering and predicted: “They’re going to crack Don Junior like an egg on national TV.”

  Guardian

I've always thought it would be moneylaundering, too, but I also think now that there will indeed be at least some people who get nailed for helping Russia interfere with the election.

[The book] will be published next week. Wolff is a prominent media critic and columnist who has written for the Guardian and is a biographer of Rupert Murdoch.

[...]

[Wolff] told the Guardian in November that to research the book, he showed up at the White House with no agenda but wanting to “find out what the insiders were really thinking and feeling”. He enjoyed extraordinary access to Trump and senior officials and advisers, he said, sometimes at critical moments of the fledgling presidency.

[...]

[He] lifts the lid on a White House lurching from crisis to crisis amid internecine warfare, with even some of Trump’s closest allies expressing contempt for him.

That book is going to set a world record for sales, isn't it?

Bannon, who was chief executive of the Trump campaign in its final three months, [...] is a central figure in the nasty, cutthroat drama, quoted extensively, often in salty language.

He is particularly scathing about a June 2016 meeting involving Trump’s son Donald Jr, son-in-law Jared Kushner, then campaign chairman Paul Manafort and Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya at Trump Tower in New York.

[...]

Wolff writes, Bannon remarked mockingly: “The three senior guys in the campaign thought it was a good idea to meet with a foreign government inside Trump Tower in the conference room on the 25th floor – with no lawyers. They didn’t have any lawyers.

“Even if you thought that this was not treasonous, or unpatriotic, or bad shit, and I happen to think it’s all of that, you should have called the FBI immediately.”

Why would they, though? And, Bannon himself, given his position in the campaign and following in the White House might have known about some of these things, his contrary relationship with Kushner notwithstanding. And if he did, he's in trouble, too. Or else he's also cooperating with Mueller. Kushner must be shitting his britches these days. If he's not so arrogant he thinks his relationship with Trump will land him a get out of jail free card.  Which it might, I suppose.  Until it comes to state crimes involving his businesses.  As I understand it, Trump can only pardon federal crimes.

“You realise where this is going,” [Bannon] is quoted as saying. “This is all about money laundering. Mueller chose [senior prosecutor Andrew] Weissmann first and he is a money-laundering guy. Their path to fucking Trump goes right through Paul Manafort, Don Jr and Jared Kushner … It’s as plain as a hair on your face.”

[...]

“It goes through Deutsche Bank and all the Kushner shit. The Kushner shit is greasy. They’re going to go right through that. They’re going to roll those two guys up and say play me or trade me.”

[...]

The rancour between Bannon and “Javanka” – Kushner and his wife Ivanka Trump – is a recurring theme of the book.

[...]

Trump is not spared. Wolff writes that Thomas Barrack Jr, a billionaire who is one of the president’s oldest associates, allegedly told a friend: “He’s not only crazy, he’s stupid.”

I think we're all aware of that now, but do you think Barrack will deny he said it?

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

Both Walsh, and Trump’s longtime pal Tom Barrack (quoted as calling Trump “crazy” and “stupid”), both claimed they were quoted inaccurately.

  The Daily Beast

Trump's buddy Sater in the news again

As The Washington Post reported on Sunday, the Trump Organization was actively pursuing real-estate opportunities in Russia in late 2015 and early 2016 to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. The project was spearheaded by Russian-born developer and longtime Trump associate Felix Sater (who helped build Trump SoHo) and Michael Cohen, an executive vice president at the Trump Organization and the president’s longtime personal attorney.

[...]

On Monday, The New York Times followed up on the Post report, releasing portions of the e-mail exchanges between Sater and Cohen, which the Trump Organization turned over to Congressional investigators . “I arranged for Ivanka [Trump] to sit in Putin’s private chair at his desk and office in the Kremlin. I will get Putin on this program and we will get Donald elected,” Sater wrote in an e-mail to Cohen on November 3, 2015, the Times reports. “I know how to play it and we will get this done. Buddy our boy can become president of the USA and we can engineer it. I will get all of Putin’s team to buy in on this,” he continued.

[...]

There is no evidence that Sater fulfilled the promises he outlined in his correspondence. “He has sometimes used colorful language,” Cohen said in a statement to the Times, describing Sater as “prone to ‘salesmanship.’” Cohen added that he “ultimately determined that the proposal was not feasible and never agreed to make a trip to Russia.”

[...]

Earlier this month, Sater confirmed the deal to Talking Points Memo, but said Trump’s candidacy derailed the Moscow plans. “Once the campaign was really going-going, it was obvious there were going to be no deals internationally,” Sater said. “We were still working on it, doing something with it, November-December.”

[...]

In a subsequent article on Monday, the Post reported that Cohen e-mailed Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s personal assistant, in an attempt to reboot the stalled development deal, according to e-mails provided to congressional investigators.

[...]

In a statement to the Post, Cohen downplayed the importance of the deal as “simply one of many development opportunities that the Trump Organization considered and ultimately rejected.” He also dismissed the idea that it was in any way tied to Trump’s presidential bid.

  Vanity Fair

As you would. And hope the FBI doesn't ask you directly. Never mind you're telling it to Congress. They're a bunch of worthless twits and can't hurt you. And won't even try as long as they're led by Republicans.

He added that he only sent the e-mail to Peskov at the urging of Sater and does not remember receiving a response.

I've got a feeling there's an agent in some FBI office who could tell him whether he did or not.

But he did also note that he discussed the Trump Tower Moscow deal with Trump on three occasions and said the president signed the letter of intent in 2015, according to an ABC News report.

The revelation that the Trump Organization reportedly sought a massive commercial real-estate deal in Moscow during the campaign may help explain why Trump was so passionate about thawing relations between the United States and Russia.

[...]

The e-mails also belie repeated denials by both Trump and his legal team that he had any business interests in Russia.

[...]

Cohen and Sater have been recurring figures in the Russian melodrama currently roiling Capitol Hill. In February, The New York Times reported that Cohen and Sater met with Andrii Artemenko, a member of the Ukrainian parliament, to discuss a proposal outlining how Trump could lift U.S. sanctions against Moscow. According to the Times, Cohen told the outlet that he hand-delivered the “peace plan” to then National Security Adviser Mike Flynn. (Cohen later denied that he delivered it to the former general.)

Has he talked to the special prosecutor's team yet?

Sater, who pleaded guilty for his involvement in a Mafia-related stock manipulation scheme in 1998, has also worked closely with Trump on a number of real-estate deals in the past, including the controversial Trump SoHo development.

And Sater won't be a bit shy about telling the FBI everything he knows. This is why, I believe, Trump was so "passionate" about keeping the FBI out of his real estate business.

“The next three years of hearings about Trump and Russia will yield absolutely nothing. I know the man, they didn’t collude,” he told New York magazine in an interview earlier this month. “Did a bunch of meetings happen? Absolutely. The people on the Trump team who had any access to the Russians wanted to be first in and be the guys that ran the whole détente thing. Michael Flynn wanted to be the détente guy, and then [Paul] Manafort, I’m sure, wanted to be the détente guy. Shit, I wanted to be the détente guy, why not? But was it really a conspiracy between Putin and Donald to get him elected? A little bit of a stretch.”

That was for public consumption. Has he talked to Mueller yet?

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

Getting' too close

The smear campagin on the FBi may be intended to cast doubt on Mueller's investigation, but what will it actually accomplish? I just wonder what we'll be dealing with when Trump is incontrovertibly  tied to the Russian mob and money laundering.

The FBI has asked officials in Cyprus for financial information about a defunct bank that was used by wealthy Russians with political connections and has been accused by the US government of money laundering, two sources have told the Guardian.

The request for information about FBME Bank comes as Cyprus has emerged as a key area of interest for Robert Mueller, the US special counsel who is investigating a possible conspiracy between Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and the Kremlin.

People familiar with the FBI request told the Guardian that federal investigators and the US Treasury approached the Central Bank of Cyprus in November seeking detailed information about FBME, which was shut down this year.

[...]

Mueller’s team has separately issued a subpoena for information from Deutsche Bank. According to a person close to the bank, the subpoena was issued in the autumn. The German bank is Trump’s biggest lender.

[...]

One person familiar with the FBI request said it appeared to be connected to Mueller’s ongoing examination of Paul Manafort.

[...]

A spokesman for FBME bank told the Guardian that Manafort was never a client of FBME.

[...]

Bloomberg reported last week that FBME was the subject of two US investigations: one into the bank’s credit card unit, and another into alleged laundering of money from Russia. Bloomberg said the Russia-related investigation, which is being led by the US attorney’s office in New York, was connected to a flow of illegal Russian funds into the New York real estate market.

[...]

It is not clear why Mueller and his team of investigators appear to be interested in FBME’s financial data.

  Guardian

I've got a pretty good guess.

Whatever else might be in the works, the Trump cabal is feeling the heat.

Yeah, you can't use Russian mobsters connected to the Kremlin to promote your campaign, either.  And you ought to stop using your twitter account to weigh in on an investigation into that.  If you had any sense.



Yes, we know.  You're not losing.  You're popular.  The most popular president since Lincoln.  Your BASE is Big and Strong, your administration is running smoothly, and your inauguration had the biggest crowd in US history.  Sorry, Biggest crowd in US History!  (He's either channeling a 17th century English writer or translating himself from German.)

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

UPDATE:

The truth is not Trump's concern.




This lie was debunked back in July when he tweeted it twice, but he's still tweeting it.

From one money launderer to another

President Donald Trump on Wednesday commuted the prison sentence of an Iowa kosher meatpacking executive sentence to 27 years in prison for money laundering — the first time he’s used the presidential power.

The decision to intervene on behalf of Sholom Rubashkin, who ran the Iowa headquarters of a family business that was the country’s largest kosher meat-processing company, came at the urging of multiple members of Congress and other high-ranking officials who argued Rubashkin’s sentence was too harsh, the White House said.

  TPM

I'm pretty sure all they'd need to say is, "There's a money launderer in trouble."

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

The WSJ is vying for State propaganda honors

In a short period of time, five staffers have departed The Wall Street Journal editorial page.

[...]

Sam Tanenhaus, deep into his excellent story on the dwindling band of anti-Trump conservative intellectuals, reports more specifically on the circumstances surrounding their departure. As Trump’s chances of winning the nomination grew, the paper buried an editorial highlighting his underworld connections.

[James] Freeman wrote a strong attack on Trump’s Mob dealings, and had a second ready to go. But as Trump got closer to clinching the nomination, Paul Gigot kept delaying publication, saying “it needed work.” Once Trump became the likely Republican nominee, Freeman executed a neat volte-face. “The facts suggest that Mrs. Clinton is more likely to abuse liberties than Mr. Trump,” he wrote. “America managed to survive Mr. Clinton’s two terms, so it can stand the far less vulgar Mr. Trump.”

[...]

On the subject of the president’s authoritarianism and contempt for governing norms, the Journal now runs interference with the same gusto as Fox News.

  NY Magazine

On the other hand, where were the other mainstream news outlets on this story?  They can share the blame.  And on the third hand, would it have made any difference?

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

UPDATE:

Don't forget Deutsche Bank

Seth Abramson‏Verified account
@SethAbramson
When history looks back on today, it will note not the Jill Stein story, or Don Jr. trumpeting "Deep State" conspiracy theories, or even a destructive tax bill that will either discredit the GOP or be ditched when the Dems take over—or both—but this story:

(And not the Ivanka Trump inappropriately dressed at the 2016 US Open story, either, I might add.)

Representative Maxine Waters, the California Democrat who is the ranking member on the House Committee on Financial Services, has been pushing since March to connect dots that could link Donald Trump, his associates, Germany’s Deutsche Bank, and Russian oligarchs. Now, it appears, she’s getting some help from Robert Mueller, the Russiagate special counsel, whose office has issued a subpoena to Deutsche Bank over accounts linked to various associates of the president.

The twin efforts could determine whether or not various members of Trump’s inner circle benefited from the flow of money-laundered funds from Russian oligarchs, through Germany and Cyprus, to Trump-linked businesses and people in Trump’s inner circle, including Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law.

[...]

Since March, Waters has been relentless is demanding that both DOJ and the Republican-controlled committee investigate ties between Deutsche Bank and Trump.

[...]

To understand why this might be important, consider two facts: First, Deutsche Bank was caught red-handed in a money-laundering scheme that involved $10 billion in dirty money from Russian oligarchs, and in 2017 it was forced to pay fines totaling $671 million to New York’s Department of Financial Services, Britain’s Financial Conduct Authority, and the US Federal Reserve. Second, since the 1990s the German financial colossus has been Donald Trump’s personal, go-to piggybank, which has supplied Trump and his companies with a staggering $3.5 billion in loans and loan-guarantee agreements since 1998.

[...]

Did Trump, Kushner, and their partners—along with others in Trump World, including Paul Manafort, Gen. Michael Flynn, and Wilbur Ross, the billionaire who serves as Trump’s commerce secretary—benefit from illegal Russian money that flowed through Deutsche Bank? If so, does President Trump have a hidden obligation to Russia or to Russian oligarchs? And why did the official US investigation of Deutsche Bank’s illegal transactions, conducted under the auspices of Jeff Sessions’s Justice Department, go “dormant” earlier this year?

  The Nation

Because Jeff Sessions is in trouble, too?

[T]he bank loaned Donald Trump $300 million—money that the president still owes the bank—to get him out of a sticky debt situation. And, second, Jared Kushner secured a $285 million loan from Deutsche Bank on the eve of last year’s election, in a transaction that, The Nation reported in August, involved a cast of characters tied to the infamous June 6, 2016, Trump Tower.

[...]

[E]xasperated, and concerned over reports that the Justice Department had let the Deutsche Bank inquiry go cold, in a December 1 letter Waters wrote to Rod Rosenstein, the deputy US attorney general, asking Rosenstein why DOJ had not moved forward with the investigation. “Not only is the President a client of Deutsche Bank, but so too are his daughter, Ivanka Trump, his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, and Kushner’s mother, Seryl Kushner."

[...]

(1) Is the investigation into Deutsche Bank’s role in a $10 billion Russian mirror trading scheme still ongoing? If not, what is its present status? (2) What has Attorney General Sessions’ involvement been with the investigation since his appointment? (3) Has President Trump, or his immediate family or any other campaign or White House official inquired about or sought to influence the investigation of Deutsche Bank in any way, including any other potential investigations into the Bank? (4) Is the Department committed to determining who participated in and who may have benefited from the Deutsche Bank Russian mirror trading scheme? (5) Should there be any nexus between Deutsche Bank, the Russian mirror trading scheme and the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 Presidential election, will the information be provided to Special Counsel Robert Mueller?

I'm sure it will.

So far—and contrary to some initial reports, which claimed that Mueller’s Deutsche Bank subpoenas were aimed at Trump directly—the subpoena from Mueller apparently involves only people in Trump’s orbit, but not the president himself. That could change, however, as Mueller’s inquiry moves forward.